Finals Destination: Depression

So it’s that time of year again: finals week. It’s time to buckle up, bunker down, pop some Adderall and get some serious studying done. Or at least that’s what everyone else is doing. I’m a journalism major, and one of the advantages of being a journalism major is that I don’t really have finals. I just have to do a bunch of papers, which is nothing really for me. I just sit down in front of my computer and sporadically type in between dancing in my chair and singing “Like a Virgin” for three hours until the paper has so much bulls**t on it that it attracts flies.

But even when I did have a lot of tests, I’ve never been one of those guys that panics a lot over exams. It’s one of the advantages of being a genius. Or at least thinking you are a genius. Or having severe brain damage. I’m not sure which one applies to me. But there are a lot of people who do stress out over these exams. You can always tell when people are hunkering down and really studying, because they are on Facebook constantly b****ing about it. The week of finals my feed always says something like “Nancy is so stressed out! So much studying to do!” Now I want to tell these people that maybe if they would take all the time that they spent whining on Facebook and applied it to work they probably would have cured cancer by now, but I think it’s much funnier to let them stress out on Facebook and then fail.

To me tests are a stupid thing to worry about. I’ve always been good at taking tests. Of course passing tests is a different story, but man can I take them. For one thing, I finish quickly (on exams, that is). This is mainly because I don’t spend too long on a question. My philosophy is that if I don’t know the answer after six seconds, I’m not going to remember it after thirty seconds. I remember one year I had a 7:30 final with 60 questions on the same night as a Game 7 of the NBA playoffs. I was out of the test and back in the dorm in time for the 8 o’clock tip-off. I would be even faster if I could learn to fill in those stupid bubbles faster. I think instead of giving those darn SAT classes where they try to teach you about the questions, they should have bubble drills, where you learn to fill in bubbles quickly. Plus, I can never stay in the lines.

Anyway, even though I don’t mind tests, I hate finals week. Mainly because I can’t find anyone to party with. You would think that I was trying to get people to murder kittens with me or something. And sure, my GPA may be lower than my BAC on most weekends, but at least I don’t get finalsitis, a disease that wussy little college students made up as a built in excuse for how crappy they feel as they wreck their brains studying for finals. Now I don’t think I’ve ever gotten sick during finals week, because contrary to most students, I get more sleep and less stress during finals week than during the normal school year, because I don’t have to worry about classes anymore.

But there are students that do get sick during finals week, and they are always sitting next to me during the test. You know the people I’m talking about; they are constantly sniffling and rubbing their noses and making wimpy little coughs during their test and sneezing and then everyone says “bless you” and then they say “thank you” and I maybe start to get a little annoyed so I carefully lift up my regulation No. 2 pencil and…

Whoops. Sorry about that, I went off on a bit of a tangent. Now, while I can appreciate all of these kids who think that they can’t miss these finals unless they are openly bleeding from openings they are not supposed to be bleeding from, I should have a say in this. I mean, I’m just days away from my summer vacation, and I certainly don’t want to spend it sick because some over-achieving, all-go, no quit, don’t stop, career woman decided to sneeze on me. If you must come to the final, just don’t sit next to me. I will be easy to spot because I will probably be the only guy not studying and almost certainly the only guy humming Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out.”

Then again, I’m not nearly as excited to be ending class as I normally am. Normally finals mean I am close to leaving this darn state and heading for Hawaii. But this summer I’m stuck up here, where it snowed just a few days ago. That’s right; it snowed less than a week away from summer break. Plus I have to work this summer because my apartment complex has a shotgun pointed directly at my crotch. So frankly I’m going to be bummed when finals end, because at least during finals my misery has company.

A Love Letter To Mother Earth

Dear Mother Earth,

So yesterday was Earth Day, when we get together to celebrate the fact that we somehow haven’t blown you up yet. This day really reminded me that I have been taking you for granted. Sure, you and I have had a sort of up and down relationship. I mean, as I’m writing this it is snowing and storming outside. In April. It takes two to make this relationship work Mother Earth, and right now you are pissing me off. And I haven’t even brought up all the earthquakes and volcanoes yet.

But as much as I sometimes get mad at you, some reader’s poignant comments on my space story really brought me back down to Earth (haha pun, and yes I will continue to point out all of my puns). Anyway, the comment said something about how I am crushing the human spirit and make too many jokes (who makes humor jokes on a humor blog?), but this person also pointed out that at any moment we could get hit by a massive asteroid and have to live on Mars (and by the way, Armageddon was on TV twice last night). This comment truly hit me hard; I don’t want to live on Mars. It’s just full of dirt with no scenery whatsoever. It would be like living on Planet Oklahoma.

So I really want to become more environmentally friendly and turn over a new leaf (haha more puns). Luckily for me, this past Tuesday marked a gathering of 10,000 people who really love the environment. That’s right; it was 4/20, when thousands of people gathered in Boulder to commune with Mother Nature by smoking a whole lot of weed and being completely useless to society. If anybody knows anything about going green, it’s these people (okay I promise if you laugh at them, the puns hurt less). You can tell that these people really care about the world simply by looking at the massive pile of trash that they left on the ground after their gathering.

As I was walking through the crowd to try and get to my class (yes, some people choose to go to class on this day) I got spit on by some stoner who called me a “mindless conformist” that didn’t give a damn about the world. Now at first, I thought this was a stupid statement. Does doing something legal make me a conformist? I guess rapists should yell out to non-rapists that they are also conformists. Also, I felt that as one of the fifty people who wasn't smoking pot, the guy in the group of 15,000 that was smoking pot made me the rebel. But now that I thought about it, he was right. I was enabling “the man.” By not smoking pot, I was able to be productive and go to school and work, which is just what those government bastards wanted. I fell into their trap! How could I be so stupid? Also, I don’t know if it was the second-hand high or what, but I either saw the biggest dog I have ever seen or the smallest bear walking around the library.

Anyway, after that enlightening experience, I am as committed as ever to being environmentally friendly. I feel like I should learn from the cops, who saved tons of paper by not having the balls to ticket these people. I mean, they could probably end this stupid tradition that CU supposedly says they don’t approve of by one year just handing out a bunch of tickets and scaring people, but is writing all those tickets really worth it? I mean I personally love having my school’s reputation being that of “the one were all the people smoke pot.” It looks great on resumes, and prospective students love it too. So just like the cops, I’m going to save paper too by never doing my homework. I mean, do you know how many trees I kill every time I do a seven page paper?

Plus did you see all of the stoners in the fast food restaurants that afternoon? Even more environmental genius. Why? Because fast food places serve burgers. What are burgers made out of? Cows. What do cows do? Fart methane gas. What does methane gas do? It corrodes our atmosphere. So I’m going to eat a burger every day until I die (in a month or so) to help the Earth.

I feel bad though, because there apparently was a huge Earth Day party that I missed last night. I wish I could have gotten wasted in the name of a god cause, as opposed to what I normally do, which is get wasted for no reason at all. And I’m sure that they recycled all of their bottles as opposed to just smashing them over each other’s heads and leaving them on the ground. And I’m also sure that they used compostable cups instead of going through hundreds of those plastic red cups that are sitting in landfills all over the place.

So Mother Earth, I admit I’m not your best child. I don’t do all of the great things for the environment that these stoners do, and I don’t hand out thousands of paper slips telling people how to save trees. But I’ve never said I was anything but a normal guy who tries to turn off the lights when he leaves and tries not to chop down trees. But I promise that I’ll try harder from now on. But this is a two-way relationship, and you need to do something for me. The next time 4/20 rolls around, and the sky is gray, could you just rain and drench all of them? Is that too much to ask?

Love, Mitchell.

Fire and Iceland

While I was chatting with a friend yesterday, she happened to mention that something was happening in Iceland. At the moment I sort of just glossed over her comment, assuming by “something going on,” that it was something I would not care about, like some sort of human rights scandal or the season finale of Iceland Idol. But then I looked it up today and apparently some big volcano is blowing up the entire place.

This emergency called for quick action. First, I had to figure out where the hell Iceland was. I suck at geography. My friend also pointed this out by reminding me that in my senior year of high school I once listed Denmark as a U.S state. Of course, once I found out that Iceland is some island off the coast of Europe and is too far away for the eruption to affect me, I stopped caring. It’s not that I’m not aware of the destructive power of volcanoes. I mean I spent 18 years of my life living on an island made up of volcanoes, one of which is active. It’s more like I don’t care about what happens to Europeans. Of course my high school friend is probably yelling at me as she is reading this, since she is currently in Europe (which come to think of it might be the reason she knew about this way before me).

Anyway this volcano is wrecking havoc on the Icelandic way of life; whatever that may consist of (getting frostbite?). 500 people were evacuated from the area, which surprised me since I was unaware there were even 500 people who live in Iceland. The volcano has also disrupted local Iceland airline flights (another thing I assumed Iceland did not have). Also, they are worried that the volcano eruption might cause flooding. Yes I know that sentence confused me at first too, sort of like the first time I read the sentence “Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet.” But apparently the lava is melting the snow and ice around the volcano, which can cause massive flooding. Also, this volcano is apparently causing something called a “dirty thunderstorm.” I have no idea what that is, but judging by these pictures it is going to kill somebody. I’m no expert, but lightning is not supposed to come out of volcanoes except in Michael Bay movies.

Now as I said earlier, my home state of Hawaii was made by volcanoes, and the island I live on actually has an active volcano, Kilauea. But our volcano acts like a Hawaiian volcano as opposed to these peppy European ones, as in it moves very slowly. “Erupting” is probably too strong a word for what Kilauea does. “Ooze” is probably more appropriate. In fact, rather than evacuate people, we charge tourists money and let them go close to it! It’s part of our plan to make lots of money while hopefully at the same time reducing the population of tourists.

I’m just joking; it’s actually not dangerous at all. That stupid Man vs. Wild guy did an episode where he had to “survive” in Kilauea. He was dropped into the “inhospitable environment” of one of the largest tourist destinations in the U.S. I know, it’s scary. I mean, he was forced to survive in a barren expanse of rock where elderly tourists are often seeing walking around with fanny packs. They probably had to edit out the kindergarteners on a field trip that were standing behind him and waving at the camera. But sometimes you only get three bars on your cell phone, so there are some dangers. Plus if he tripped on the rocks he could really get a bad boo-boo that would need a Band-Aid.

The only real negative from the volcano is the occasional vog, which for you mainlanders out there, is a haze made of up volcanic ash. The vog is irritating because on bad days it makes the sky turn a little gray and it can reduce visibility, especially in my hometown of Kona. I mean, a horrible day in Kona is still better than the best day of the year on the mainland but it can still get kind of irritating. When I was a reporter at the West Hawaii Today it seemed like every other day I was assigned a story on the vog. It tells you something about how easy life in Kona is that the biggest concern to citizens was that it was a little cloudy once in awhile. I also once had to do a story trying to convince people that, believe it or not, it is not a smart idea to try and plug a volcano with concrete or blow it up.

Speaking of stupid ideas, all these people who chose to live in Iceland are really going through some hard times. I feel like as a nation we need to do something to make them feel better. Now that I think of it, apparently there is some big event tomorrow afternoon where we will at least be inhaling as much smoke as them…

NASA: Not Afraid to Spend Agency

So yesterday Barack Obama held a press conference about NASA, where many people expected him to say he was canceling many of NASA’s programs and reducing their budget, because that would be the smart thing to do. Instead he decided to give them $6 billion dollars, which apparently he had lying around under his couch cushions.

Just to get this out of the way, I’m not a big NASA fan. I’ve already expressed my opinion about space on this site. So understandably I’m a little mad about this. I mean $6 billion dollars? Do you know what I could do with that much money? Absolutely nothing is what I would do, unless you count sitting on my butt all day on a beach in Hawaii doing something. But if NASA can do a lot with $6 billion, imagine what actually useful branches of the government could do with that money. We could stop asking people like you and me for money and just buy every kid in Haiti their own mansion already. We could build a thirty-foot tall concrete wall across our Mexican border. Or we could of course start to pay back our multi-trillion dollar debt to China (or nuke China and be debt free!).

I mean NASA is the least efficient government program ever as far as spending, and I am including Ralph Nader’s campaign committee in that statement. The problem is that NASA uses a lot of science, which involves a lot of “theoretical work,” (as in lots of “failing”). They spend a lot of money just testing things. This means that by the time they actually figure something out, they’ve spent half their budget. They then spend more money trying to build this new thing they’ve invented before it inevitably doesn’t work. Then they spend money fixing it over and over again until they finally get it to work, when they send it off into space where it is never heard from again. That’s the main problem with NASA, they never get to reuse anything because they either send it hurtling towards the sun or it crashes in the middle of New Mexico of the Pacific Ocean and breaks into a gajillion little pieces.

So while $6 billion may seem like a lot to you and me, for the people at NASA $6 billion barely covers their coffee budget. And what do we get out of NASA? Oooh pretty pictures of nebulae. Oh wait, I can do that on Microsoft Paint. So they landed a guy on the moon. Big deal, it’s not like we can live there, or on any other planet. So unless we are just going to store junks there or something I don’t really see the point. It’s sort of like sending people to survey North Dakota, except maybe easier because there are no bears on the moon. Luckily Obama has told NASA to stop spending money on missions to the moon, which is smart. We’ve already done that; let some stupider country have a turn, like Australia.

But Obama has some other big plans in store for NASA. First off, he wants to send people to Mars. I’m not sure why; maybe he wants to see how the rest of Lady Gaga’s species are doing. The problem with going to Mars has always been that it takes too long. That means that by the time a normal astronaut gets there and comes back, they no longer have bladder control, much less the ability to conduct any useful research. Also, Obama said he wants to send someone to Mars and back “safely,” which is really not cost efficient. Just sending someone to Mars before letting them die a horrible death somewhere in space is much cheaper. But fear not, as our local rocket scientist I have a solution: we send Justin Bieber to Mars. Think about it. He’s young, so he won’t die on the long trip and we hate him, so we really won’t miss him or care if he somehow dies in space. The only drawback might be that if he somehow does actually get to Mars alive and starts singing to Martians, they might declare war on us.

Obama also for some reason wants to land a crew on an asteroid. I can only deduce from this that he, like me, has been watching way too much Armageddon on TV recently. In fact, I’m assuming that most of the decisions he made yesterday were made because of that movie. He probably got scared that if he reduced NASA’s budget, the next thing you know there’s a giant asteroid headed towards us. The $6 billion was probably to help cover the cost of sending Ben Affleck into space.

Now, I’m not necessarily saying that is a bad thing. Armageddon is one of my favorite movies, with all of its epic action and moving soundtrack and shots of Liv Tyler (by the way, putting her and co-star Steve Buschemi in the same scene may be the biggest gap in attractiveness ever). As for people who nitpick and say that the movie wasn’t good because it wasn’t “scientifically accurate,” so what? By that measure, Gigli was a better movie than Avatar. That’s not to say that there weren’t parts of Armageddon that were hard to believe. Like that a space shuttle could catch up to an asteroid, or that they could walk around on it, or that Bruce Willis can actually die. But to me the most unbelievable part of that movie was that NASA somehow did something right. Even with $6 billion dollars, that’s something that will only happen in the movies.

Driving Me Crazy

Yesterday a friend and I went to Denver to go and see the Denver International Auto Show, which is an event where every car company brings their new car models to show them off, which is good because I’m looking to buy a used car, and so this gave me a look at what I couldn’t afford. The show took place in the Denver Convention Center, which by the way has the most random structure outside that I have ever seen. For some reason they also had a giant squirrel mascot wandering around. Anyway, the place had cars from every company imaginable on display and you could sit in them and just keep smelling that new car smell.

Now, I will admit I’m not a huge car guy. I will listen to other guys talk about cars using a whole lot of numbers that I don’t really understand and sort of just nod. You could pop the hood of a car and I wouldn’t be able to tell you the difference between the engine and a toaster. I especially don’t understand people’s fascination with sports cars. Since the speed limit in Hawaii is 55 miles per hour and I’ve never driven over 80 in my life, I don’t really have any sort of desire to drive very fast (I never want to do anything fast for that matter). I want only three things in a car: comfort, lots of room, and the ability to run over stupid Boulder pedestrians with minimal damage to my car. Sports cars fail in all of these categories.

So the cars that I was looking at yesterday were not the sports cars. What I did enjoy were the Lexus SUVs. Now, I will never own a Lexus unless I find a buyer for my spare organs (assuming they still work) because one costs more than four years of college. But it was so comfortable that I wanted to just sit in there all day and keep rubbing the fake wood on the steering wheel (but the strange stares I was getting made me stop after a few minutes). There were also several windowless vans, which I’m assuming was put on display for any potential kidnappers and rapists in the crowd.

But my dream car is still a Ford F-250 with a Super Crew Cab and the extended bed. Mainly because it is the most American vehicle there is. You never see wussy Europeans driving trucks; you see them driving those stupid little smart cars that look like they could fit in your bathtub. Nothing feels better than rambling down a road in a truck burning enough fuel to keep the entire country of Saudi Arabia in business for the next fifty years, blasting oldies rock on the radio to drown out the sound of animals and bikers and smart car drivers screaming from inside your wheel well. Trucks just make life so much easier. One of my favorite cars is my dad’s 1989 Ford Ranger. Sure, it is older than me and the gas gauge and AC doesn’t work and the door doesn’t always open from the inside and it starts to make a strange sound if it goes over 40 miles an hour and it has about as much chance of passing a safety check as Lindsey Lohan does of passing a drug test. But you could toss whatever you wanted in the bed and not worry about driving it onto the beach and getting into the seats wet and sandy and spilling beer all over it.

But judging by the cars I saw at the show, those days are over. Working these cars now is like working a computer. They all have screens and you push buttons to turn them on and they have mobile phones built in and all kinds of alien gizmos. This is not a trend I particularly like. The thing about technology is that it never works when I want it to. I’m going to use my neighbors Baddie and Midget as examples. They have a Ford Focus with a system that uses voice recognition to work the music system. Unfortunately, the automated voice is a woman and like all women, it doesn’t ever listen. So this is the conversation that follows:

Baddie and Midget: USB.

Car: Please say a command.

Baddie and Midget: USB!

Car: Carrots and Peas. Yes or No?

Baddie and Midget: No! USB goddamit!

Car: Calling Mom.

Normally by the time they get the car to play any music, they’ve already reached their destination, which causes them to be highly volatile (then again with the type of music they listen to even if it does work they arrive highly irritable). But this is what happens when you buy a car mainly because, and I quote, “The cup holder can light up in different colors.” This is proof that you can get women to buy anything if it is really colorful.

Speaking of women, the real highlight of the day actually came when we went to go eat. We went to a restaurant in Denver called Tilted Kilts. It was a pub style place with good food, but more importantly the waitresses dressed like this. Most of you are saying “Well if you want to impress any of them, you should get one of those sports cars.” But the thing about sports cars is you can only fit one person. Whereas with an SUV I can fit all of them. Or if they don’t want to get in, I can always get one of those windowless vans…

Shoes On a Plane

On Wednesday night, my roommate and I were sitting peacefully watching TV when all of a sudden the station broke away to an alert. Apparently some guy tried to light a shoe bomb on a plane that was headed for Denver. Of course as with all news, most of it was completely false (except for the “guy” and “plane” parts). This is what actually happened.

So I’m not saying that this guy is off the hook. This idiot did several things wrong. First off, how stupid do you have to be to try and smoke in an airplane bathroom? That’s like the first thing the lady on the speakers tells you when you get on the plane, right after the part about paying in exact change for alcohol. A 5-year-old child who’s been on a round trip flight could tell you that you aren’t supposed to smoke on planes. Plus, any insensitive a**hole that jokes about a bomb on a plane these days should just be tossed off of the plane in midair.

The only problem with this situation is that this guy is a diplomat from a foreign country, so he has diplomatic immunity, which is bull. I mean, supposedly this guy is from a country from Qatar, which clearly does not exist. Or at least I’ve never heard of it. Besides, why would we even need a diplomat from a country called Qatar? I’m tired of the spoiled arrogant sons of Middle Eastern oil sheiks riding their camels around like they own this country. We need to get rid of diplomatic immunity. I don’t care if you have naked pictures of the president, you stay in our country you play by our rules; it’s called “home-field advantage.” The last thing we need are foreign people who can do whatever they want; the next thing you know the French will be running around punching babies in the face, and we can’t have that. One of the babies might punch back and make the Frenchies cry and then they will declare war on babies around the world (and probably lose).

Of course, this guy was lucky he was just held in custody by the air marshals. After what happened at 9/11, this guy is lucky the passengers didn’t beat the brown off of him. If I were the air marshal, I would have cuffed him and then let each passenger on the plane hit him as hard as they want wherever they wanted (I would also highly encourage children and the elderly to aim for the crotch). At least it would be more entertaining than the in-flight movie. Then when we landed I would simply say that he struggled and we had to “forcefully apprehend him.”

But I’m sure this would-be bomber will get what is coming to him. We need to focus on how this happened. I thought that they made you take off your shoes at the gates so we wouldn’t have this problem? (This is also why I always wear slippers to airports. Have you ever heard of a slipper bomber? I didn’t think so). I know that technically he had nothing that would have set off security, but this is why I am encouraging security workers to engage in ruthless racial profiling. I mean, security officials have no problems being jerks. They sure had no problem trying to kick this girl off of a plane for wearing a revealing outfit. They also have no problem kicking off fat people.

Now, I can understand the fat people one, because planes are crowded enough without some guy overflowing onto your armrests. But the chick? For one thing, anyone who thinks that outfit is any more revealing than what people wear everyday needs to move back to the 18^th century. I’ve seen girls wear more revealing outfits to funerals. Besides, I’m sure they could have found some brave guy who would have tolerated her outfit (by that I mean stared at it the entire flight). And I’ve never been on a Southwest flight, but since when are they a “family friendly airline?” What the hell is a family friendly airline anyway? Do they serve applesauce and show cartoons on the monitors? I would argue that planes are not friendly to anyone, and judging by the amount of screaming babies that are always on my flight, they are definitely not “family friendly.”

But I have a business proposition that, as with all of my business propositions, ignores ethics and safety in the hopes of making me very rich. I will start my own airline company that sells round trip tickets for $1. The great part is that I won’t have security, so anyone can get on the plane and bring whatever they want! That way I’ll get all the rejects and not have to pay security guards to sit around and grope people. Also, I can’t guarantee all of the pilots will necessary know how to fly actual planes, per se. They just have to watch Top Gun a few times. I will call it “Sweet Chariot Airlines,” and our motto will be “Taking You Home” (and just to be clear, I mean “home” in a spiritual sense here). We will even let you smoke and light shoe bombs on the plane! But I can’t guarantee the other passengers will.

Counting in the U.S.A.

In my ongoing efforts to prove I am a model citizen, I followed instructions for once and filled out my Census form yesterday. Of course, the government will probably never get it, because the forms have disappeared in the random pile of junk mail and useless fliers that is our dining table. It’s not like it really matters though, because I have a suspicion that the box that we thought was for outgoing mail is actually a bird feeder.

Regardless of my example, the rest of you should really mail in those forms. The Census takes place only once every ten years, so it is entirely possible that you will be dead before you ever take another one. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you (yes I did), but I think it is really important that you fill out this form. This really is the only way we have of determining how many people we have living in this country. Or if you believe the unstable guy in my journalism class, it’s how the government tracks us so they can send nuclear weapons to kill us. Now, I always figured that if you are using nuclear weapons, you don’t really need to know where exactly a person is. You just sort of need to know which general hemisphere they are in. Anyway, keeping track of the millions of people in the country is a lot harder today than back in the days of cavemen Wog and Oog.

Wog: So with me, let’s see… that’s 40 people.

Oog: Actually, I think you counted illegal immigrants.

Wog: We don’t even have countries; how do we have illegal immigrants?

Oog: I don’t know, but those guys over there sure are good at picking berries.

But why is it so important that we know how many people live here? Mainly so they know what population to put on those stupid signs in little hick towns that say something like "Silver Hills: Home of the First DUI, Population 324." But knowing where people are is also very important for democracy and representation. The U.S government allots a state a certain amount of representatives based on how many people live there, so not filling out your form could cost you on Capitol Hill. For instance, since most of the people living in North Dakota don’t know how to read, a lot of them didn’t fill out their forms. As a result, the U.S government thinks that only seven people live in the entire state, even though everyone knows that number is closer to about 15. This of course means that North Dakota only has one representative in the House, and that representative is actually a moose.

So unless you want your state to miss out on useless million dollar failed projects and National Mothball Museums, you need to fill out those forms. And of course, as with all official forms, I highly encourage you to cheat. For instance, on my form I’ve established that 300,000 people currently live in our two-bedroom apartment. This means that I expect that our apartment will shortly be declared its own Congressional district, and since only my roommate and I actually live here, I’m pretty sure we have a pretty good chance of getting elected.

Of course, we don’t want all of you to do this. Because then we will have some ridiculous population and we’ll have to start drowning baby girls just like the Chinese, and we don’t want that. Besides, being a Congress person is overrated. You have to wear suits all the time and you have to pretend you give a damn about the people who elected you and you have sit through long meetings and everyone keeps track of the hookers you hire. It can be very stressful; do you think all these legislators sex text their aides because they are old perverts? No, they do it because they are so stressed out going about the very democratic process of getting re-elected.

Also, the Census report affects how many electoral votes that a state gets, which is very important if for some reason you care who becomes the president of the United States. I’m especially bitter about this, because I come from Hawaii, a state that doesn’t get many electoral votes. In the 2008 election, CNN declared the election over before the polls in Hawaii even closed. Of course, maybe this is for the better, since a lot of the people I knew back in Hawaii didn’t vote, and in some cases were unaware that an election was going on. For instance, my friend Chris. This is the conversation we had over the phone when CNN called the race.

Me: So did you see the news?

Chris: I’m on the beach right now.

Me: You didn’t vote in the election?

Chris: Was that today?

What killed me was that I was mad at him not because he was taking for granted one of the most basic liberties that our ancestors fought for, but because I wanted to be on the beach too. Instead, I was stuck in the snow where I am now forced to care about things like elections and Census forms because I have nothing better to do. You know what? I’m tired of this. Forget about everything I just said about being patriotic. You should just follow the example set by Boulder and use your Census forms to roll joints. Those stoners probably solve more problems than Congressmen anyway.

Sibling Rivalry

One of the hardest parts of going to college out of state is that I don’t get to see my family often. Ha ha I’m just joking, it’s actually one of the perks. And don’t get all mad at me for saying that; they would tell you the same thing about me. Because family members do crazy s**t like this to each other.

Now I don’t know too many sisters who are around the same age, and for some weird reason all the ones I do know are twins (don’t ask me why that is). So I obviously have no experience with this type of situation. This of course, will not stop me from jumping to unreasonable conclusions. Sisters do not get along as well as brothers mainly because they are women. Men have the advantage of being able to settle arguments by trying to beat the snot out of each other and then be completely fine in the next five minutes. Girls can’t do that though, so they have to resort to childish games and pouts that often last long after either can remember what they are mad at each other for.

This story is a perfect example of this. From all accounts, these two ladies used to be pretty close until they got in a fight over a few hundred dollars, which women blow on shoes they never wear. Then of course there is the matter of the $500,000 in lottery winnings. I find it pretty funny that the sister who is trying to get the money is like “I love my sister,” while the other one is probably thinking “F**k my sister, I’m rich beeyatch.”

Now what really confuses me is why these geriatric geezers are fighting over this money. They’re both over 80 years old. They’re going to die in a few years; how much more money could they need? And what would they spend it on? Metamucil? Tickets to see The Price is Right? Snuggies? If by some miracle I ever reach the age of 80, the only thing I’m going to be buying are diapers and flyswatters (and please don’t make me explain why I need those two items together). I mean, yeah maybe you could say that they want the money for their children or to cover their funeral expenses or whatever. I always thought this was stupid; I’m dead. I don’t need a goddamn gold-plated coffin. I will put it in my will that my family should just dump my body into the ocean or a dumpster or something cheap. Not that I will need to tell them this; in fact, they will probably do this before I’m even dead.

This story is also just another reason why gambling is stupid. I come from Hawaii, where gambling is illegal and we do not have a lottery. This could explain why people in Hawaii always want to gamble. A few years ago, a bunch of us went to visit a friend in Cheney, Washington for spring break. Now before you ask why in the world we would go to a place like Cheney for spring break, you’re missing the point (also, I still don’t know myself). On the trip, my friend Chris was so intrigued by the little scratch games that he spent about $50 in about four days on a bunch of scratch cards. Of course, this could also be because there is absolutely nothing to do in Cheney. In the end, he ended up winning like two bucks.

Anyway, my point is that you never win in gambling. You never hear good stories about lottery and jackpot winners. The only stories you hear are the ones where five years later the winner is divorced, addicted to drugs, homeless and has cancer. You ever notice that every fifth episode of CSI involves people who are dead because they won like $1000 on the slots? Of course, with all that said, there are the ones who win and then get to marry ridiculously hot gold-diggers, like this guy.

So it’s sad that instead of living the rest of their days out in peace watching reruns of Golden Girls together (I like that show by the way), these ladies will most likely spend the rest of their days in court, wasting their winnings on lawyers and splitting their family in half. And I hate it when stories end with lawyers making money.

Now I have a younger sister who for all accounts is a normal, sensible person. Sure she has a tendency to burp in public and is about as coordinated as a cross-eyed fish, but when you were raised around a brother like me that’s probably bound to happen. The important thing is that if she were to ever win a ridiculous amount of money, I’m sure she would split it with me. Or at least she better. I mean I drove her around all the time in high school. She owes me gas money.