Saturday, November 28, 2009

The Return of Wonderbat

Sorry sorry sorry, I know its been a really long time since my last post and I hate to lose any of the small momentum I’ve gained so far but this is always a busy time of year for me.

I did not write last weekend, because I was, once again, fighting off a contingent of whitetail deer in the Florence County region of Wisconsin. Once again, I kept the hostiles at bay with my Browning 270 WSM but I think I may have done TOO good of a job defending our great state because not one single deer appeared to attack me.

It’s okay though, actually shooting a deer ranks about fourth on my favorite aspects of the deer hunting experience with binge drinking, playing poker, and not showering for five days rounding out the top three reasons why deer camp is awesome.

Then I did the Black Friday shopping experience yesterday for the first time.

Never. Again.

I already hate shopping as it is, I don’t need that hatred compounded by people cramming me in aisles, sitting in check out lines ten people deep, or spending twenty minutes trying to get out the Dicks Sporting Goods parking lot. That shopping center was pure bedlam yesterday.

But I did emerge from the carnage victoriously with a ST3000 competition-grade ping pong table for $229, regularly priced at $500. So basically I got the greatest deal of all time and I’ll finally be able to practice regularly so I can beat the greatest ping pong player in the tri-state area, that player being my brother, Joey Wollin. He's good. Maybe the best.

So far I am undefeated on my new table but if we're being honest here, I’ve only played against three opponents: Greg, Rim, and myself when I play against the wall. So far the only real challenge has been myself, I really know how to get into my head and exploit my inconsistent forearm smash.

So between all the hunting, Thanksgivinging, shopping, and ping ponging, I’ve just been crazy busy so sorry about that.

Oh yeah, I got a job this week too. I start Monday. More on that next week.


If anyone dares to challenge me and my Wonderbat, you know where to find me.

Monday, November 16, 2009

1498 Glen: Magic in the Making

Please evaluate the following:

A down-on-his-luck nerd is forced to move back to his hometown and share a house with a jock that formally tormented him throughout high school.

Is the following statement
A. an upcoming sitcom slated for NBC’s mid season line up or
B. my current living situation?

If you guessed A, you would be incorrect.

So yeah, I moved in with Greg “You got a fuckin’ dart in your neck, man” Altmann about six weeks ago.

And I’m exaggerating that first statement, of course. Greg and I were actually pretty decent friends in high school with the exception of the occasional Wollin Beatdown but EVERYONE participated in those so I really can’t hold that against him.

Oh. And one time he threw me into a stack of lunch trays and another time, he forced me to walk home from the airport without shoes in the middle of winter as mentioned in this previous post.

But Greg totally redeemed himself because our house is great and really cheap and Cheese digs it and best of all, it got me out of my parents place.

I should also mention that Greg did attempt to pick me up last night when I thought it would be a good idea to walk home from Anduzzi’s but idiot me decided to stumble down Lombardi to Shady instead of just stumbling down Cormier like any sane person would do so he's off the hook for the airport incident.

Mike Servais still owes me for that one, however.

As far as chores go, I do all the dishes and mow the lawn and in exchange, Greg does NOT force me to watch an old VHS tape of his quarterback highlights from our varsity football season. It’s a great system.

Apparently Greg also has a tape of the 1999 Bay Conference Shrine Bowl in its entirety but I think he is saving that for winter if I don’t shovel the driveway.

So that’s where I am living these days. Come swing by and I’ll be happy to give you a tour and maybe we can play some SNES Mario Kart but I don’t know, I don’t know if we’ll have enough time. We have a drum set too but it’s shitty.


If you come visit on a Saturday night, there’s a good chance you could win our traveling Rummy 500 trophy. It’s got a karate guy on top so you know it’s good.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

First Things First

My first order of business is to talk about the 800 lb gorilla in the room i.e. my take on this whole Brett Favre dominating in Minnesota thing that’s going on right now. Obviously I could write a book on the subject but you’ve heard all the arguments so I’m going to skip all that and go right to the heart of the matter.

How do I feel about my boyhood and currently manhood idol playing for my most hated team in the NFL?

To use an analogy, it feels a lot like how I first felt about that chick from the progressive auto insurance commercials. The first time I saw those commercials, I thought, “wow, this chick is REALLY obnoxious. What network wonk decided this bubble head was fit for prime time television?”

But after a few months, she started to grow on me and now I have a crush on her a little bit because I can’t look away whenever she’s on the tube. I can’t quite put my finger on it, perhaps it’s her expressive facial features and her brimming optimism. Or maybe it’s because she likes to save money and is kind of busty.

Whatever it is, I’m down. I can’t wait to see what kind of zany adventures lay ahead for progressive auto chick.


I’d like to see her challenge that googly eyed stack of cash in the Octagon for total auto insurance domination. Not gonna happen though. Not her style. She would more likely become friends with it and lower its monthly premium.


Anyways, that’s how I kind of feel about Brett Favre. Make sense?

It’s clear that Brett Favre is a very polarizing figure in Wisconsin. You’d have a more cordial Thanksgiving discussing the pros and cons of abortion at the dinner table than you would talking about Brett Favre’s trade to the Vikings.

But in today’s era, with the popularity of fantasy football, it is becoming more and more acceptable to be a fan of individual players while still supporting your favorite team. I don’t see why it has to be contentious to root for Brett Favre and still be a Packer fan.

Even harder still, despite the fact that the Vikings are coached by someone who looks like and probably is a rapist, that team has a lot of likable characters. It’s hard not to like Adrian Peterson or Jared Allen, they are such ferocious competitors and they are the best in the league at their respective positions. And they’re not assholes about it so that makes them okay in my book.

I’ll go back to hating the Vikings once Brett Favre is gone (and especially if Cris Carter remains an analyst at ESPN) but until then, I’m going to root for both teams and I’m not going to feel guilty about it.



Vikings Head Coach, Brad Childress, doing a “different” kind of scouting at the local park.

Monday, November 09, 2009

Fuck It. Brain Litter Is Back.

Yep. It’s back.

I couldn’t help being inspired by a certain hero of mine. You might have heard of him. This particular gentleman devoted his entire career to entertaining a generation of fans for countless years to a craft very few people could perform. But then one day, certain management said he was washed up, no good anymore, and he was banished from the place he was loved by all.

Night is always darkest before the dawn. Bound by determination and the strength of his convictions, this man among men returned to the spotlight and is now just…just absolutely crushin’ it out there.

Yes, Jay Leno’s comeback from the Tonight Show debacle is an inspiration for us all.

How could I NOT bring Brain Litter back from the depths of obscurity?

So let’s do some catching up. I got no job. I got no house. And my pet’s head is falling off.

Well not quite that last bit but things are looking relatively grim for ol’ Benny Wollin compared to one year ago today. But I’m cautiously optimistic for the future which is why I’m going to start writing again. To make a long story short, I’m looking for new ways to start taking back control of some of the things I lost and what better to start than by reclaiming my dominance in the blogosphere.

I’m going to mostly go back to the original Brain Litter formula so instead of being 25% funny / 75% adventure chronicling like Brain Litter California, it’s just going to be 100% funny again but I’m crossing my fingers it will be slightly more mature as I am a few years older and dealing with significant new obstacles.

No worries though, in addition to learning about the joys of unemployment, rest assured I won’t gloss over your favorite topics such as fast food, zombies, and hero worship of that wily new quarterback playing for the Minnesota Vikings.

Oh FYI Brain Litter is the now the official home of Ted Thompson hate mongering. A loss against the defeated Buccaneers!? Child please.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Chicago: More Than Just Windiness, Toll Ways, and Steve Urkel

So I got kind of this running theme of visiting cities and making hilarious references to early 90’s sitcoms and Chicago will be no exception.

My reason for this excursion was to see the exhibition soccer match between the number one ranked futbol team in the world, Brazil, versus the not so much ranked team in the world, the United States. More on that in a bit.

My Chicago buddies are classic. We tend to regress to a state of high school-ness when we hang out which is awesome, especially since we didn’t meet each other until college. It just sets a great tone for the weekend and this one was definitely a top-fiver.

One keen observation I had and maybe this was just a fluke in Chicago but it’s never happened to me before anywhere else and that is this: I was a Barley Corns on Friday and the Hange-Uppe on Saturday and both nights I cut a rug with a girl that seemed to dance at a noticeably faster pace than everyone else at the bar. Don’t get me wrong, they were both incredibly good dancers and they kept a rhythm with the beat, it was just like a double-time rhythm that was rather off-putting.

Has this ever happened to anyone else? Give me a call, we’ll talk about it.

To make a long story short, I got scared of the girls and ran away on both occasions. It was my primordial flight instinct at work.

Barley Corns was fun but rather standard fare. This bar Hange-Uppe though was something else. My buddy told it was impossible to frequent this bar without getting violated and he was apparently right. If I was a Steve on Friday, I definitely became a Stefan on Saturday. Within about a half hour this one chick grabbed me and made me make out with her while her friends were in hysterics taking pictures. It wouldn’t have been so bad except this girl was a real lunker.

I was more pissed at myself because I made an oath after my 26th birthday that I wasn’t going to embarrass myself at bars any more and I already fell off the wagon after three weeks. In my defense, I’m not acclimated to these 4 am bars and the make out jam only lasted about 10 seconds but it was still definitely 10 seconds too long.

Not a lot of other stories to tell except I’m going to go on the record and claim bean bag toss game as my new favorite waste of time, which will effectively knock Guitar Hero off it’s long-seated throne. Also, I managed to get gum stuck on TOP of my sandal, which I am still trying to figure out, given I wasn’t personally chewing gum at all this weekend. Gross.

The soccer match was sweet. Soccer is very fast and very violent. People were getting checked and slapped and tripped and there were fast kicks all over the place. This was mostly coming from the Brazilians who are a bunch of thugs. The Americans played with class, but they also played like a bunch of suck asses so I guess playing dirty is what it takes to be number one.

The best is when there is a penalty kick and the dudes have to line up and get their nuts get kicked at by a soccer ball going a 100 miles per hour. It’s pure hilarity. Especially when you look around and every dude in the stadium is holding their junk while it happens. You gotta feel for those guys out there.

So that’s that. You know, I was never that big of a Family Matters fan, to tell you the truth. Although, I still wonder what happened to Aunt Rachel and her kid and also that middle sister who all just seemed to vanish to make room for more Urkel antics. The producers of the show must have thought Family Matters actually meant getting rid of family matters so Urkel could start a short-lived novelty dance. I think those assholes marketed a line of cereal, too.

Whatever happened to Urkel-O’s, anyway?



This is the reason I became a Marketing major.



“You’re firing me because you want to make time for Urkel to invent a machine that makes him a womanizer so he can seduce my cousin? Well, I guess that’s show business!”

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

PART 2 BELOW: San Francisco – More than just Trolleys, Sourdough Bread, and Tanner Family Situational Comedy

So many clichés and stereotypes to work with here…I could just have a field day…oh I might as well start with my debacle of a journey on the way to San Fran.

Wake up at 5:30 am, drive to Milwaukee in a torrential downpour, sat next to the quintessential obese person whose love handles basically spilled into my shitty aisle seat and talked my ear off while I was clearly focused on dominating the sudoku puzzle before me, five hour layover in St. Louis…all…ALL of these things I was willing to overlook on the onset of my odyssey. Why?

Because I had a first class ticket for the remainder of my trip to San Fran.

(The ticket was a gift by the way, there's no way I'd personally that kind of money on something so frivolous.)

That’s right, a ticket to the good life, a ticket to pointless pampering, a ticket for ample foot and elbow room, and most importantly, a ticket for free booze. For once in my life, it was going to be ME that was going to give smug looks to all the incoming peons riding coach, instead of the other way around. It was going to be sweet.

But American Airlines had different plans for me. Apparently they thought it would be hilarious to cancel my flight and reroute me through Dallas and as an extra jab, make me wait an extra couple of hours in St. Louis’s crappy smelly airport.

I mean, I get it, that is funny, but I was starting to get anxious and goofier. I’m a great person to travel with because the more shit that goes down, the weirder and funnier I become. Kind of like when Clark W. Griswold does anything. Or when I start drinking.

Anyways, my plane finally arrived and I was ready to booze. I was hoping to enjoy some sophisticated conversation with my fellow upstanding first class passengers while mulling over champagne and caviar but everyone around me looked really lame so I proceeded to slam as many Bud’s down as I could before touching down in Dallas.

A few Shiner Bock’s later at Dallas International and I was back in the skies again. I caught a little nap initially which was a poor idea because it made me groggy and I think I dropped ass a few times, which may be perfectly acceptable in coach, but is generally frowned upon in first class judging by the looks people were giving me when I was yawning/signaling the flight attendant for a Jack and Coke as I woke up.

Three cocktails later and I was definitely getting in the mood to talk to someone, anyone at that point, you know how it is when you’ve had a few drinks in you. Unfortunately the chick next to me was watching The Guardian, or as I am now calling it, Shitty Top Gun. All I could think from the occasional glance at her notebook screen was that if the Coast Guard wanted this film to be used as recruitment propaganda, then they shouldn’t have used fucking Kelso as their poster boy.

I thought this was pretty clever so I told her what I just said above in so many words but it must not have came out right because she gave me a dirty look and went back to her suckfest movie. I was forced to remain in sitting in silence until we landed in California, which I did not particularly enjoy.

But alls well that end well. I made it to my destination even though it was 12:30 Pacific, 2:30 Central, or in other words, the longest traveling day ever. But at least my luggage wasn’t left behind in St. Louis. Oh wait…

American Airlines, you have zinged me again!


The rest of my trip was far more exciting and will contain numerous references to Full House when the narrative continues. This much I promise you.

8/31/07

Sorry to drag this one out, it was not deliberate, once again, more of a timing crunch for me but, alas, here is a quick wrap up of the rest of San Francisco.

Since I missed out on a party night on Thursday and my luggage whereabouts were unknown, I was a little bitter and pessimistic going into the trip on Friday which is why I didn’t start off with the right perspective.

For instance, I wanted and expected to see a lot of hippies walking around but all I saw was a lot of bums and homeless people. Ditto for Chinatown. I was expecting to see a fight break out between Lo Pan and Kurt Russell any second but all I saw were Chinese people there. At least the homosexuals didn’t disappoint. That stereotype seems to ring true.

Was that last paragraph politically incorrect? I am not trying to be an asshole here, just trying to get down my travel notes.

Anyways, the only thing of note on Friday was Cody’s attempt to start a San Francisco Fight Club chapter and by that, I mean some drunk ass frat boy type took off his shirt for no particular reason and jumped my friend. It was not much of a fight, though. I would compare it to more of a spat between DJ Tanner and Kathy Santoni at lunch hour.

Saturday was sight seeing day for us. Alcatraz, Fisherman’s Wharf, that stupid road that’s really curvy all the way down, Full House Mountain; we did everything you’d expect from some jackass tourist.

One thing I found odd about San Fran is that everywhere you go is up hill. Everywhere. Even if you turned around to retrace your steps, the city would somehow still make you traverse on an incline. My calves are still hurting me.

Nightlife in San Fran is kind of weak. Everyone clears out and takes off at bar time faster than you can say, "How Rude!". I presume everyone goes home to bask in their own farts but that's not for me (sorry, this is an obscure South Park reference, but I had to work it in here somehow).

Sunday was capped with our second Brewer game, where the Brewers performed a stunning display of athleticism by losing their third straight game to the last place Giants. It made our heckling of the fans much more difficult. Since we couldn’t defend the Brewers, we had to yell politically charged statements into the crowd.

I think we represented Wisconsin proudly with, “Global Warming is only a myth!” and “Ronald Reagan was our greatest president!”

I’m only kidding. The fans might have gotten hostile and started throwing their plastic wine glasses and empty sushi platters at us if we would have yelled that kind of stuff. We were good representatives of Wisconsin with our heckling, which was both thoughtful and thought provoking, which I feel was unexpected and appreciated by the Giant fans of AT&T Park.

We spent the rest of the afternoon down at Haight and Ashbury, the neighborhood famous for the summer of love back in the 1960’s. We settled into a quaint little hippie coffee shop, where we discussed such timeless topics such as heredity versus environment, the origin of species, and whether we wipe our asses sitting down or standing up. That last one quickly escalated into the age old “wad or fold” debate, which meant it was time to go.

Thank you for the interesting weekend, San Francisco. However, I left my heart back in Green Bay, Wisconsin.


That's the Golden Gate Bridge in the background, however, I found the bridge going into Oakland far more impressive. All they had to do was paint that cocksucker bright yellow or orange and the citizens of San Fran would have had another icon on their hands.


Oh yeah, forgot to mention, Kimmy Gibbler came with us to Game 3. She wasn't as annoying as I thought she'd be.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Brain Litter Sabbatical is Over!

The absence of Brain Litter reign of terror is over. All is well with the Internet again.

Let me explain:

I just got done pulling off an all-campus rager at my place last Thursday (more on that later) so I decided to take it easy Friday night. I had a craving to see the movie Camp Nowhere so I went to Family Video to get it but they don’t even carry it for some reason so I ended watching the entire Band of Brothers mini-series this weekend instead.

I found a lot of similarities between these two masterpieces of cinema. They both deal with the trials and tribulations of a ragtag group of misfits, overcoming insurmountable odds to accomplish an impossible goal. In fact, the leadership qualities and management style of Lt. Dick Winters of Easy Company and that guy that Christopher Lloyd played are strikingly similar. I guess the only real difference between the two is that one was about a bunch of middle schoolers tricking their parents into going to an imaginary summer camp and the other was a true story of 101st Airborne Division surviving nightmarish conditions in WWII, but other than, like I said, the differences are negligible.

I just thought the above analysis would make for some good blog material so there it is.

Now I’m going to steer this ship into a different direction and talk about my wicked awesome birthday party last Thursday.

The thing about birthdays is that they just usually stop getting cooler after about 23. Turning 25 was tough and turning 26 (this Tuesday) is going to be just as bittersweet.

Say, that gives me an idea to pitch to MTV. Instead of My Super Sweet 16th, they should have a show called My Bittersweet 26th. Instead of featuring a bunch of teens in the prime of their youth getting spoiled to the core, it could a feature a bunch of underemployed twenty-somethings lethargically playing beer pong in some dank basement and talking about what went wrong with their lives. Now THAT is compelling television!

I kid; my party was far removed from a depressing state of affairs. I attribute this to six main factors:

1. Tap beer from a barrel is way more conducive to drinking heavily than cans.
2. Taco Dip
3. The climbing rope tied to a tree branch in the back yard
4. Lawn mowed in diagonal pattern instead of usual straight-across pattern
5. Chips
6. Chicks

Most of the items above are self-explanatory (especially if you've seen the movie PCU in the case of items 5 and 6) but I never would have guessed the raving success of the rope tied to a tree. I swear to God, total strangers from two towns over were stopping by just to see “the rope”. It just goes to show that, whenever throwing a drinking party, you can make up any hosting shortcomings by bombarding your guests with as many novelty games of coordination as possible.











The party was really fun and to make a long boring short, I just didn’t have a whole lot to write about over the last month but things are starting to pick up now in a good way. I’m going to San Francisco next week, I’m seeing the US National Soccer Team play Brazil in Chicago in three weeks, and I’m challenging my old roommate to a series of strength and endurance contests to determine once and for all who is the most ultimate between the two of us (date undetermined); all of which should be interesting subjects.

More to come in the months ahead, people…

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Brain Litter Vacation

Hey everyone, I haven't posted in awhile and I don't plan on posting again for another few weeks. I've got a ton of stuff on my plate right now and I just need a little time to regroup and recharge. Thanks for reading, I'll be writing again soon.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Summer Movie Round Up Thus Far

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

This one ain’t bad. All the Harry Potter movies to come out so far (including HP OotP) have been very adequate outings and fairly faithful to the book, however, none of have yet to be spectacular stand alone works of cinema. They act more like supplements to the books, especially in terms of casting, which has been eerily realistic and now the characters are damn near impossible to imagine outside they’re motion picture counterparts.

However, with the release of this film and the final book coming out, I suggest we all celebrate the occasion by doing the following:

1. When dropping your next fart in a public venue, either saying, “Did someone step on a Blast-Ended Skrewt?” or alternatively, “Something wicked this way comes.”

2. Instead of taking shots of your favorite Tequila, Patron, ask your bartender for shots of Patronus. Useful for attempting to pick up chicks as well as warding off dementors.


The casting for Harry Potter has been fantastic with the exception of a noticeable lack of screen presence from Brett Favre. Can someone say Fenrir Greyback?

Transformers

I give this movie a C- for plot but an A+ for robot on robot violence. There was this one part where this huge robot was fighting this other robot, and they were punching and tackling each other, and then the one robot was like, Fuck You!, so he formed this sword out of nowhere and then he stabbed that other stupid robot in the chest, and that robot died and there was circuits and shit everywhere. It was sweet.


I also have to tip my hat to the product placement in this movie, which you knew was coming so you just had to put up with it, but once the main robot transforms into a shiny new Camaro for the first time onscreen, you just had to laugh and smile and think of the Ford marketing executive banging his head on the wall with each passing syllable, “Why-did-I-let-G-M-C- get-this-con-tract-with-Michael-Bay-I’m-so-stupid-stupid-stupid…”

Live Free or Die Hard

This Die Hard was way better than Die Harder but not as good as Die Hard or Die Hard with a Vengeance. Live Free or Die Hard was a very entertaining movie, but it lost a ton of points with me when Die Hard yells Yippee-Ki-Yeh-Mother... *Gunshot Bang* to edit out the F-bomb because of its PG-13 rating. Weak. Have no fear though, I have come up with several Die Hard titles for Die Hard 5 which, coupled with an R rating, should put Detective John McClane back on track:

1. Die Hard or Go Home
2. Eat Shit and Die Hard
3. Only the Good Die Hard
4. Live and Let Die Hard
5. Between a Rock and a Die Hard Place
6. Die Hard 5: Die Hard Kills a Bunch of Bad Guys and Something Else Happens
7. Die Hard 5: Back To Another Building… But Taller
8. Die Hard 5: The Return of Hans Gruber



Do you think when Die Hard first debuted in Germany, that people initially thought it was a porno?

Ocean’s 13

This movie thinks it is sooooooo coooooool. It’s not that cool actually, but better than the suckfest that was Ocean’s 12.

Knocked Up

Hilarious. Anything with Judd Apatow’s name on it is comic gold. Proceed with caution if you bring a date though. You’ll know what I mean if you see it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3

This movie pretty much sucked ass. There was too much convoluted mythology and not enough Captain Sparrow swashbuckling around his ship and saying clever one-liners. I never thought it would be possible to screw up a pirate movie but look no further than this tripe.

28 Weeks Later

This movie is about zombies and by definition, zombie movies rule, so logic dictates that this movie rules. I didn’t make the rules here, people. While not as good as its predecessor, I still think this movie makes a great addition to the genre.

Spiderman 3

By far, the biggest let down of the summer so far. Boooooooooo!

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Apparently I Had Low Self Esteem in Middle School

When going through my Joey Wollin entries, I noticed a couple of gems in my journal that really summed up my middle school experience. And luckily for you, the reader, what I couldn’t describe in prose and narrative, I more than compensated with illustrations and diagrams.

To give a little background, Zak Mott was my best friend at the time of these entries and I guess his approval meant more to me than anything else at that time. Even more so than Kyle Nelson, the most popular kid at Parkview Middle School (In Kyle’s defense, his approval came in at a very close second even though he constantly sabotaged my prospects with Katie Knott…so many times).

I always remembered getting along with Zak growing up and he's a good guy now, but he sounds like a real mean bastard in these journal entries. We used to read each other’s journal too, so maybe I was just trying to reach out to him at the time. In any case, to maximize the impact of reading this post, I recommend listening to The Offspring’s Self Esteem in the background.



I used FAT letters to write the word ‘FAT’ to show that I meant business.

Wow, I really sound like not a man in this journal entry. I remember being kind of chubby in middle school, but, man, I was really hard on myself. Well I guess my raging hormones at the time had to be hard on myself for something besides my high pitched cracking voice, startling new body transformations, and my newfound interest (and crippling fear) in the opposite sex.

I just like, as a side thought for that day, I might as well add an appendix in the margin of who I hated at the time. Well not hated per say, apparently hate was too strong of a word. What’s really funny about that sidebar and amongst the many other angst ridden rants from my adolescence is that many of the people that tormented me throughout puberty became really good buddies with me in the years to follow. In fact, if I had to make a list a definitive list of people I didn’t like in middle school, it would be eerily similar to a list of people that I was roommates with in college.

But wait, there’s more:



Stink Lines! I drew the stink lines to signify that I smelled bad. In case there was any question as to the true meaning of the stink lines, I also labeled the stink lines as “stinky smell”.

Those stink lines are bullshit too. There was nothing wrong with my personal hygiene in middle school. I remember smelling so fresh and so clean clean throughout my youth which is why I didn’t need to use deodorant until my senior year of high school. Even then, I still felt like it was an elective toiletry.

I wish I could say the same about my gigantic elvish chin and my obnoxious laugh but sadly, to this day, they remain both Jay Leno-ish and donkey-like respectively.

I kept the top part of that journal entry, solely for the great The State reference at the end. Who doesn’t love Louie, that lovable Italian who was always dipping his balls into things. My favorite Louie sketch was when Louie crashed the Last Supper and Jesus had to take him aside and calmly explain to him, that although he loved his-dipping-his-balls-into-things shtick, it was interfering with him, you know, giving salvation and eternal life to all mankind. That’s just great comedy, anyway you slice it.

As you can see, puberty and I were not best friends growing up. Luckily my friends discovered my great sense of humor and wry wit later in high school and life has been one great thrill ride ever since. Coincidently, this “discovery” occurred right around the time I turned 16 and got a car before everyone else, the summer before sophomore year. My personality sparkled like a shooting star as I designated drivered my drunk friends home every weekend, yes sir, it did.

Just for kicks, I thought I’d show schematics for that Water Balloon Bazooka I briefly mentioned in a previous post. Not so much anything to do with surviving puberty, but more so because I still really want to build this thing. I can’t explain my fascination with projectile weaponry, but let me tell you, it runs deep.



Who wants to build this with me!? It sounds like a recipe for a pretty fun afternoon at the Home Depot, if you ask me.