October 15, 2013

"hey Alex!"


I am full of frightening facts and statistics. They flood my mind and overflow into the ears of my friends and acquaintances, often ruining the mood and appalling those around me.  My poor roommate Alex, for example, will be in his room at night and has to suffer through me popping in every ten to fifteen minutes, delivering an upsetting remark, then leaving, only to return again and upset his evening further with another fact.




“Hey Alex! I just thought you should know that 1 in 6 people have an STD.”

“Yo, Alex! Someone just died somewhere.”

“Do you know that the leading cause of divorce is marriage?”

“Hey man, I thought you might be interested to know that in the last year 835,000 men were assaulted by their intimate partners.”

“Hey buddy, what are you up to? Did you know that 42% of people admit to peeing in the shower? The other 58% are liars.”

“AAAAAALEX! Nine million children under the age of five die every year from treatable illnesses and diseases like pneumonia and diarrhea.”

“Dude! Did you know that there are between 35 and 50 active serial killers living in the U.S. at any given moment?”

“Hey friend! Breast cancer kills 300 men every year. Just thought you should know, maybe cop a feel on yourself every once in a while.”



“Sooo… one in seven married women are raped… by their husbands…”

“Hello. There are approximately 45 murders a day in the U.S. That’s about 1-2 murders every hour. So while you just watched that episode of Supernatural, two people probably died a horrible gruesome death. How does that OctoberFest taste?”

“Did you know that the average cost for a modern-day slave is only 90$!? Yeah, they sill have those… want to go halfsies?”

“Alex, Alex, ALEX! The average person emits flatulence fourteen times a day. Yeah, I just heard that through the wall.”



The list of atrocities goes on and on, but you get the gist. I haven’t a clue why I continue to spew these unmitigated facts at my poor friends, and living with me means Alex in particular has to endure far more than the average person subjected to my company. Thanks pal! You are a real sport. 

October 14, 2013

#15 create a list of 100 literary classics to read


I have compiled the list of one hundred literary classics that I will read/ re-read for my thirty-by-thirty list. As of today I have 704 days to complete this. Many of these I have already read, but time passes quickly and I have forgotten much of the details. A handful of these books have been read over and over with great love, while there are a few that I really did not care for, but hope to gain more appreciation with a second perusal. Some of my choices may not be deemed “classics” by others, or perhaps there are some great books I may have missed. I would love more suggestions or feedback! With a limit of one hundred I was unable to include everything I might have otherwise selected for a more thorough list. Luckily I already own all but twelve of these wonderful titles. I will return to this post and check them off as I progress.


  1. Wuthering Heights by: Emily Bronte
  2. The Old Man and the Sea by: Ernest Hemingway
  3. The Stranger by: Albert Camus
  4. The End of the Affair by: Graham Greene
  5. The Sun Also Rises by: Ernest Hemingway
  6. A Farewell to Arms by: Ernest Hemingway
  7. Men Without Women by: Ernest Hemingway
  8. One Hundred Years of Solitude by: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  9. Love in the Time of Cholera by: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  10. Chronicle of a Death Foretold by: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  11. Memories of my Melancholy Whores by: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  12. Catch-22 by: Joseph Heller
  13. A Clockwork Orange by: Anthony Burgess
  14. Slaughter-House-Five by: Kurt Vonnegut
  15. Fahrenheit 451 by: Ray Bradbury
  16. Brave New World by: Aldous Huxley
  17. Island by: Aldous Huxley
  18. A Separate Peace by: John Knowles
  19. East of Eden by: John Steinbeck
  20. The Grapes of Wrath by: John Steinbeck
  21. In Dubious Battle by: John Steinbeck
  22. Of Mice and Men by: John Steinbeck
  23. The Pearl by: John Steinbeck
  24. Light in August by: William Faulkner
  25. As I Lay Dying by: William Faulkner
  26. The Sound and the Fury by: William Faulkner
  27. The Catcher in the Rye by: J.D. Salinger
  28. Last of the Mohicans by: James Fenimore Cooper
  29. The Deerslayer by: James Fenimore Cooper
  30. The Great Gatsby by: F. Scott Fitzgerald
  31. Tender is the Night by: F. Scott Fitzgerald
  32. 1984 by: George Orwell
  33. Animal Farm by: George Orwell
  34. The Giver by: Lois Lowery
  35. Night by: Elie Wiesel
  36. Lord of the Flies by: William Golding
  37. Around the World in Eighty Days by: Jules Verne
  38. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by: Jules Verne
  39. The Lost World by: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  40. The Time Machine by: H.G. Wells
  41. In the Days of the Comet by: H.G. Wells
  42. The War of the Worlds by: H.G. Wells
  43. The Count of Monte Cristo by: Alexandre Dumas
  44. The Three Musketeers by: Alexandre Dumas
  45. The Awakening by: Kate Chopin
  46. The Scarlet Letter by: Nathaniel Hawthorne
  47. The Bell Jar by: Sylvia Plath
  48. Great Expectations by: Charles Dickens
  49. Dracula by: Bram Stoker
  50. Herland by: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
  51. The Quiet American by: Graham Greene
  52. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by: Muriel Spark
  53. Heart of Darkness by: Joseph Conrad
  54. The Fountainhead by: Ayn Rand
  55. The Communist Manifesto by: Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
  56. The Metamorphosis by: Franz Kafka
  57. Doctor Zhivago by: Boris Pasternak
  58. The English Patient by: Michael Ondaatje
  59. McTeague by: Frank Norris
  60. The Cider House Rules by: John Irving
  61. The Woman in White by: Wilkie Collins
  62. The Jungle by: Upton Sinclair
  63. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by: Ken Kesey
  64. Utopia by: Sir Thomas More
  65. The Inferno by: Dante Alighieri
  66. The Picture of Dorian Gray by: Oscar Wilde
  67. Anna Karenina by: Leo Tolstoy
  68. War and Peace by: Leo Tolstoy
  69. Vanity Fair by: William Makepeace Thackeray
  70. The Odyssey by: Homer
  71. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by: Lewis Carroll
  72. Beloved by: Toni Morrison
  73. Native Son by: Richard Wright
  74. Their Eyes Were Watching God by: Zora Neale Hurston
  75. Invisible Man by: Ralph Ellison
  76. Ceremony by: Leslie Marmon Silko
  77. Mary Barton by: Elizabeth Gaskell
  78. Rebecca by: Daphne Du Maurier
  79. The Good Earth by: Pearl S. Buck
  80. My Antonia by: Willa Cather
  81. Cry, the Beloved Country by: Alan Paton
  82. Of Human Bondage by: W. Somerset Maugham
  83. Middlemarch by: George Eliot
  84. Lolita by: Vladimir Nabokov
  85. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by: Harriet Beecher Stowe
  86. To Kill a Mockingbird by: Harper Lee
  87. Three Men in a Boat by: Jerome K. Jerome
  88. Deliverance by: James Dickey
  89. Man Without a Country by: Edward Everett Hale
  90. All Quiet on the Western Front by: Erich Maria Remarque
  91. The Red Badge of Courage by: Stephen Crane
  92. Wild Animals I Have Known by: Ernest Thompson Seton
  93. The Prince by: Antoine de Saint-Exupery
  94. The Call of the Wild by: Jack London
  95. Little Women by: Louisa May Alcott
  96. A Passage to India by: E.M. Forster
  97. On the Road by: Jack Kerouac
  98. The Secret Garden by: Frances Hodgson Burnett
  99. Robinson Crusoe by: Daniel Defoe
  100. The Wind in the Willows by: Kenneth Grahame  

October 11, 2013

you know what really chaps my ass...


We all do vastly irritating things. I am just as guilty of this as anyone. This is intended to be a lively entertaining satire. That is not to say that what I am describing here is not true, just that it should be taken lightly and with an air of buffoonery in mind.



1. Eating Beef Jerky in a Car

Seriously! What kind of asshole subjects a carload of captive passengers to that hellacious meaty raunchfest? Beef jerky is delicious and is often purchased at gas stations, especially on long road trips, but it stinks. Jerky possesses a particularly potent aroma that invades the olfactory glands with more vehemence than the Maltese citizens defending their city at the Siege of Malta. This unpleasant bouquet of bovine meat-balm induces biliousness that lasts for hours. I can recollect a particular road trip with my family where I spent three hours sitting next to my brother after he went to town on a fistful of spicy peppered jerky sticks. It only took him about twenty minutes to savor the jerky, then he spent a while picking the residual muscle fibers from his teeth, then the caustic burping began. The ride ended with me tossing my cookies in a parking lot.


2. Novelty Mustache Kitsch

Yes, mustaches are great… when they are on a man’s face. The mouthbrow is a symbol of virile masculinity, and I have a particular fondness for genuine machismo. Fake mustaches are fun too, especially the valiantly tacky porn ‘stache, or an adorable little toothbrush moustache sharpied onto your pet’s unwitting, innocent face. This is where the line should be drawn. Your glittery pink iPhone case speckled with cute little handlebar mustaches is dumb. You look really dumb with that phone pressed against your face as you discuss foreign policy with the unlucky recipient of your trivial chatter. You cannot grow a mustache, and you probably don’t date men with mustaches; why do you think this is cute, or fun, or quirky, or whatever it is you are aiming for with that ridiculous thing? There are a multitude of other silly novelty items being produced: mustache t-shirts, mustache key chains, mustaches on champagne flutes, mustache jewelry, the mustache on a stick, and whatever else the marketing professionals can pull out of their hineys to get you to spend your money. And bless your little heart with that mustache on the grill of your car.



3. Wedge Sneakers

This is a new trend that I just cannot get on board with. The purpose of wedges and heels is to dress up an outfit. Tennis shoes are for athletic activities or perhaps casually running errands. Why in the name of Christmas would you combine these two very different things? The formal sneaker with all of the Velcro straps and leather accents is just plain ugly. These shoes do not make your sloppy casual outfit look more put-together or fashionable, and why do you care so much about making comfort fashionable? If you want to be comfortable and casual embrace it. Put on some ballet flats or moccasins or something that is charming and actually comfortable.

4. Oversensitivity to Bodily Functions

I am going to talk turkey about this one. There is a distinct difference between unabashedly letting a badger loose in your date’s face, and accidentally letting a fart slip after a meal. If you do happen to let out a quack, politely excuse yourself and let it go. Do not continue to over-analyze how disgusted the other person must be with you and apologize repeatedly, if you let it go they will likely do the same. The same goes for bowel movements. Everyone does this. I will never understand the person that cannot use a public toilet and has to hold it until they can get home to use their own commode; it is both unhealthy and painful. There is obviously no need to discuss defecating with your friends and colleagues or advertise your trip to drop the kids off at the pool, but you shouldn’t be ashamed either. All of our bodies essentially work in the same way and it is really nothing to burn a mule over… except for me, I obviously don’t do that, I pray and Jesus takes the food from my belly.



5. Using a Filter to Make Things ‘Deep’

That rotting apple you found on the ground in the park, then ran through a Kelvin filter on Instagram, is not a metaphor for the transient nature of life. It is a decomposing half-eaten apple. You are not Nietzsche; you are likely a twenty-something with a degree in English Lit or Sociology sloughing your way through the marshy swamp of life. The banality of your next Instagram post #natureisdeep #prettydecomposition #litteringsuxx #globalwarmingiskillingmotherearth, does not make up for your lack of ambition or desire to do something about it. Snark, snark, snark.