Cable Remote Video

I have a hard time watching this video without cracking up. The video is shaking because I'm laughing literally the ENTIRE TIME my Dad goes off on this tangent. And this is just a normal interaction between me and my Dad.

My Dad consistently has no idea how to use our TV. There are two remotes: one for cable and one for TV. One of them has an "all on" button, which is the only thing he uses. But when I come home on the holidays, I flip his world UPSIDE DOWN. (Also, I hid one of the remotes to make him lose his mind. Mission accomplished.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTZi4wG7WAg

No. Fucking. Way.

This is hilariously impossible. Straight up PREPOSTEROUS. My mind has been blown to the degree in which I am tripping balls. I am tripping ALL THE BALLS. There is not a single ball left un-tripped. In order to join me on this storytelling journey of unfathomable mind-blowingidness (that's a word now btdubs), you're going to have to reference my previous post FOUND HERE.

That time where someone had farty-times while we were alone in the bathroom? Yeah, that is very much involved in another installment of "Is it possible to get fired for laughing in the bathroom at work?"

This particular story begins as I'm, once again, alone in the bathroom at work. This time I'm sitting in the stall playing games on my phone, as I am wont to do. I hear a guy walk in and go over to one of the urinals. Everything is fairly normalsauce for about 5 seconds. Then, like a recurring nightmare: he blows SEVERE ASS. He must have thought he was alone in the bathroom and decided to let one rip. And it wasn't just a "pffftttt" either. It was one of the foulest varieties of gaseous eruption that I have ever heard. The kind that make angels weep.

My immediate instinct is to laugh. Any potentially mature reaction of being shocked/appalled was completely overwhelmed by the fact that this was the funniest thing that has happened to me all day. There was nothing in the Universe that would prevent me from having a lol session, try as I might. So I laughed. I failed miserably at my attempt to stifle it. It was a full-on 2 to 3 second chuckle-fest. My first thought was "holy shit, that was funny, but WTF! WHY IS THIS HAPPENING AGAIN???" Luckily, I was behind closed doors, and thus would be able to avoid any face-to-face awkwardness that would most definitely occur. The thing is, now I had to wait for him to finish and leave the bathroom before I got out of the stall. Whatever, another round of Angry Birds never killed anyone. So I waited until I heard him flush, and then gave him some buffer time to wash his hands and walk out. Ok, so I was in the bathroom for a crazy long time, because he seriously took his time. He must have been drinking incredible amounts of water. So I waited. It was totally worth it, because I had just gotten away with what should have been an EXTREMELY awkward moment. Or so I thought.

I exit the bathroom stall feeling triumphant, and walk towards the sinks to wash my hands. And what do I see? The same guy who urinal-farted the last time I wanted to die from awkwardness. The same fucking guy. How is this possible? How could fate throw this situation at me? Statistically this is either impossible, or this guy farts EVERY TIME he goes to the urinal. What the hell dude? Are you on a diet purely made up of baked beans and Chipotle? I don't know how I survived the next few moments. Everything I've come to understand about how the world works tells me that I should have immediately died. My HOPE is that I tried to play it cool, but in reality who knows. I kind of blacked out due to the sheer force of palpable awkwardness. He was looking at me. I can't remember what expression he had on his face, because the only thing my brain could focus on was how strange my gait must appear with all of my ass muscles simultaneously clenching under his gaze. I seriously don't even remember the rest because my brain was stroking all over the place. By the time I got to the sink area, he was gone. And so ends my second encounter with the guy that I don't know who works on my floor and farts whenever we're alone in the bathroom.

If anyone has any advice on how to deal with the fact that I will eventually walk by him in the halls, please let me know. The only thing I can think of right now is to shoot myself in the face so that I can avoid that situation. UGH.

Seriously though. Hilarious fart. Top notch.

Trust Me, You Should Be Jealous of my Dreams

Holy crap, I am the greatest at having the best dreams ever. I'm not even exaggerating. If you ever get the opportunity to be in some crazy science experiment to be transplanted into my dreams, even for one day, you should absolutely take advantage of that seemingly insane option. Sure, it might be a trick to steal all your organs or splice your DNA with a turtle so that you can live in a sewer and learn ninja skills from a talking rat so that you can fight crime, but if it's not, mmmm boy: you're in for a treat.

This weekend I had an epic recreation session in Portland, Maine (to make up for a concussion-y, theft-ful ski trip in New Hampshire the other night) with a renegade band of misfits bent on super awesometimes at Maine breweries. I don't know if it was this particular "Cribz-level mansion-esque hotel room that only cost $40," but my dreams were of the highest caliber. I won't be able to do it justice by explaining it, but take my word for it: it was some serious shit. It was literally the funniest dream I've ever had. I laughed so hard in the dream that I actually started rofling really hard in real life. To the point where I woke everyone up in the hotel room, including myself.

And if I'm not having the most lol-ful dreams in the world, I'm having the most epic adventure dreams that have ever been conceived. Trust me: every one of my dreams could be an awesome movie, and you should want to be a part of them (don't ask me how, because I'm pretty sure Inception isn't possible yet). To sate you until that day comes, here are a few more dreams from my freshman year:

3/23/05

My Dad, sister, and I were creeping through an empty, deserted building to stay away from creatures that attack people. It was on a beach somewhere (I don't know why I wrote that. Knowing the setting of this edifice does literally nothing for the plot of the dream). I wanted to play a casino-shark-looking guy in a crazy, made-up card game for some reason, assuming that by playing a guy who is really good at cards, I will win. Logical.

There was also some winter scene dream in which some Tufts friends and I had to escape an ice fortress by sledding down a mountain.

3/24/05

I was setting up for a game of dodgeball. Not many people were there yet: just me, Matt, and some girls whom I went to middle school with. We played a round, then my Tufts friends and I went to a store in Davis Square. I met a guy in the square, who set a date and time for when I was going to die. I later learned that it was the Grim Reaper. I was able to get out of it by hiding in a bush, so he scheduled another place to kill me. When I showed up (I actually showed up to my pre-scheduled meeting for death? That doesn't sound like something I would do), I ran around telling people that he was trying to kill me. He didn't want to do it in front of everyone, so he made another appointment.

Later, I was trying to study prehistoric fish for some test. I went to lunch with a few Muslim students at Tufts. They got mad that I played a violent sport like dodgeball, so they kicked me out of the room. Well THAT was unfriendly of them!

3/26/05

I was dreaming about my housing situation at Tufts, but then had to go out to dinner. I forgot my shoes and realized that there was a party in the room that I left them in, and I needed a toga to get in. Luckily, I had just taken a shower, and had a towel on.

Back at Tufts, no one knew where Arlen was. Suddenly, we were going to war with seven different territories of creatures that looked like they were from the Never Ending Story. We beat three so far. That was it. Man, that looked like it was about to get good.

3/28/05

The dream began with a lot of my friends and some randos at a dinner party. One or two zombies showed up about mid-way through. We tried killing them by bashing their skulls, but it was very difficult. They started turning some of the guests into zombies by biting them. At this point, about half the attendees were zombies. Some girl came up to talk to me and said something really dumb. I was great at detecting who is a zombie (this is a recurring ability of mine in all my zombie dreams. I think it is the most valuable skill set during the zombie apocalypse), and discovered that she was in the process of becoming a zombie. I hit her in the head with a pipe, but she didn't die, and for some reason, this meant that she was clearly a zombie (yikes, I can't believe the "are you a zombie?" test includes smashing somebody in the head, and if it doesn't smash their brains out, they are a zombie. Rough place to live for sure). Some girl named Karen (how do I know her name and why is it relevant? The shit I choose to write down is pretty boggling sometimes) asked me how I could detect zombies. While she asked, one of the zombies started attacking her, but I saved her. I was about to run out the door with her, since almost everyone inside was a zombie by now. I called out to Gary and Jordan (friends from home and Tufts, respectively) to escape with me, but they told me that they couldn't because they were turning into zombies.

Karen and I ran out while the zombies tried to follow. We ran to the top of the Tufts hill. The zombie version of Jimmy (my best friend) came at us, but I talked to him and got through to the last remnants of his human side, and instead of attacking us, he helped us. He showed us a trail to go down the hill secretly, so we were able to get away. Karen was now Lauren (my girlfriend at the time). We walked through Medford, seeing warrants for our arrest as we tried to escape. We stole a car and got away. Then Lauren started singing a song, which turned out to be the song that was playing on my alarm clock, so I woke up.

Dream Journal Number 1: Continued

These are from freshman year, and they are completely blowing my mind. They are so effing ridiculous.

2/12/05

I was collecting a lot of different flavored drinks, like bubble-gum flavored juice and a bunch of other weird ones. That is all I remember. Ok, that one was a dud. What the fuck could I have been dreaming about?

2/13/05

I was about to engage in a foursome with Lauren (my girlfriend at the time) and two other girls, but Hitler forced us to move to another building (whoa, that is an intense start to a dream. Hitler and foursomes? Holy fuck). They played music really loud as we walked to this building. The other two girls we were with turned into Jimmy and Asako (my best friend from home and his girlfriend at the time). The only way to get to the doors was to climb a huge hill that was almost vertical. We tried, but kept slipping back down. When we finally got up, we had to fight a Predator that guarded the house. At this point, there was only me and some animal, and the Predator blew most of the walls down to get to us. Me and the animal ran to the side of a wall and I started shooting with my chain gun. That's all I remember of this dream.

The second dream started with me and some friends from Lewis (my freshman year dorm) wanting to go up to New Hampshire, but we had to work on our AutoCAD project. We trudged through neck-deep snow to get to the engineering building, but when we got there, Kessler (friend from home) was already there. He brought some rich fancy game that could either shock people or be used as a knife. It was weird.

2/18/05

I was on some vacation, but I had to study wave equations for my physics test. I went downstairs to eat and ordered a hamburger from the place in the campus center that grills stuff. They said they were out of beef, so I ordered a chicken burger. While I waited for it to cook, I knocked over some guy's chicken parm. I told him I would pay for it, but when I found out it was $40, I booked it out of there. All the women who worked there had weird hair. Of course, why would their hair be normal? I love how stupid my details are.

In another dream, I was walking around Tufts in a snowstorm and was attacked by some kid with snowballs. He kind of looked like Slippy from Starfox. I wasn't able to balance myself or run in the dream, so I got really pissed off (oh man I seriously hate those dreams). I eventually met him in their dorm, but we were getting ready to go out. I went to their bathroom area, but everyone was naked, so I got weirded out and left.

In a third dream, I got a call from some guy, who in real life I was getting these stupid emails saying "Have a nice day." In the dream, he said on the phone, "stop sending me emails that say 'have a nice day.'" I told him that I was getting those from him, and that I thought it was a virus. Some lady told me that this person was dead after I hung up. Then weird ghost-like shit started happening. Somebody let a cat inside, and once downstairs, he became a demon cat. Then he was eaten by a bigger demon cat (what the fuck is going on here? why am I so bad at dreaming about normal stuff? And why do I sound like a 4-year-old when I write these while I'm still half-asleep?). I eventually had to seek this guy out in a shady, darkly lit building to get rid of the ghosts and demon cats. I was about to go into a dark menacing room when I woke up.

2/21/05

I ate a really enormous bowl of rice soup. I ate it for a really long time. It wasn't an interesting dream; I just kept getting more in my spoon and eating it. BAHAHAHAHAHA I can't believe that is the whole friggn dream!

In another dream, me, Jimmy, and Gary (friend from home who we re-named because there was already a David) were doing all the missions of Goldeneye, but in real life. We got to where we had to fight everybody off in the facility while Gary tried to set a cheat code to finish the mission. We shot SO MANY PEOPLE. We never found the code, but we ended up killing everybody anyway.

2/26/05

Chelsea (friend from home and Tufts) and I went to get ice cream, and she pointed out that they had LEGO ice cream. It was insane and awesome. It was semi-solid so you can build your own ice cream cone. I ate a few Lego cones. That's actually a pretty awesome idea. PATENT PENDING.

3/4/05 Nap

I was in Boston with Lauren, and some of her friends came to visit. I broke one of my T tokens, and when I bent it back into shape, it was elongated (holy crap, I can't believe I forgot that we used to have tokens!). I could hold onto it while I put it in the coin return, so that I never had to actually spend the token. Score. All of us took a semi-tour of Tufts, with one of Lauren's friends claiming she knew her way around. We got into an elevator, but all it did was go up and down: it never stopped at any floor. One of her idiotic friends enjoyed it.

Later on we were in New York and me, Kyle, and Ryan (friends from Tufts) had to kill Raven (my freshman year roommate) because he was actually an evil spy. At first we could turn into dinosaurs. Kyle was a Triceratops, Ryan was a Tyrannosaurus, and I was a Stegosaurus. We messed him up pretty good in a fight. I went to go get my silenced gun to finish him off. It was in my mailbox, but I couldn't get it since other people were watching me. Then some lady questioned me about why I had the mailbox to myself, and where Raven was. We eventually killed both her and Raven.

Later, in another dream, I was happy that I my first dream wasn't real and that I didn't actually kill anyone, because I felt really guilty. Lauren ran off a bridge though, for no reason. A cop came up to me and accused me of pushing her off the bridge. People didn't believe me, until Lauren eventually came back and we played card games. Ah, that's good. All's well that end's well I suppose. "Oh, how was randomly jumping off a bridge and getting me accused of manslaughter? Ok good. Do you have any 8's?"

3/9/05 Most epic nap I've ever taken

Ryan and I were having a nice dinner. I was dressed up in my Eagle Scout uniform since it was a dinner for a scout ceremony. Lauren came and sat with us, but when we looked away, she ran and sat at a table with her BU friends. Ryan and I got up to see the small performance they were showing, but it blew. I saw some people from Tufts: Diana, Oanh, and Jordan. Oanh was naked though. It was strange, because everybody acted like everything was normal.

In another dream, people were being evacuated in a future-looking Boston because some weird disease was spreading. My dream was of a third-person view of some alien looking blob shooting lasers at dumb, ugly looking mutant things (I think my brain is broken). As the blob progressed, he faced more and more difficult creatures, all the while changing into some polygon warrior creature. This creature eventually evolved into a person, and then it became me. (I can't express enough how mind blowing it was to go from third-person to first-person in a dream, after WATCHING some thing evolve into myself. HOW DO I COME UP WITH THIS?) I had to go help Lauren evacuate, so I ran to BU. I was afraid to go in though, because the main lobby had all these evil creatures, so I started to call her. Then I woke up.

When I went back to sleep, I was outside of BU as myself in a similar dream and situation as the first (it was actually a continuation of the other dream from where I left off. How fucked up is that?). I was on the phone with Lauren, telling her to get out since Boston was being evacuated. I ran to try to find a place to get evacuated from, but they all started leaving without us. Kyle, who was working as a medic to treat and sedate the people so they could be evacuated, saw me and helped me. He was good at taking my blood and stuff, and after a bit we were ready to go. All of a sudden, the main doctor attacked me. He had black color pigment around his pupils, meaning he was a zombie (I just knew, ok? Deal with it). I asked Kyle to help, and he turned around. His pupils are huge in real life, so I thought he was a zombie too, which he wasn't. We both started smashing the doctor's head in with pans, but he tried to stab me. I grabbed the blade of his knife to save myself from getting stabbed in the heart, and it hurt a shitload. The doctor died right when I woke up.

In the last dream, I continued the same dream from where I left off (this is ridiculous). I was with Lauren, escaping BU in this epic dream. I killed two zombies in the Warren Towers with the knife. We ran, being chased by zombies, to the line where they put you to get evacuated. They checked our eyes, and we got in. So did Kyle. We were finally on our way to being saved.

That was mind-blowingly intense. A three-part dream about an epic escape from a zombie attack. My past-self impresses me.

Bird People Suck

I was looking through some pictures from my California trip, and they reminded me of a group of people that I absolutely despise: bird-watchers.

Seriously, I would have no problem if every person who describes themselves as a bird-watcher suddenly stopped existing. First off: WHY BIRDS? Shut up, don't even answer that question. Just go to hell.

What is cooler than taking photos of birds? MOST THINGS.

Here's a little anecdote of the moment I realized both the existence of, and my immediate hatred of, bird people:

Rebecca and I were driving through Point Reyes National Seashore near San Francisco. We were having an awesome time checking out the cliffs and beaches, and it was the first time I had ever been in the Pacific Ocean, so I was obviously really pumped. We were driving around on our way to check out the lighthouse, and we saw a group of people on the side of the road all looking at something. We pulled over, thinking "whoa, something awesome must be over there, let's go check it out!" Rebecca said something along the lines of "I think it is a lion or something!" I can't be certain, but it was definitely something about lions. I was flabbergasted to the point of speechlessness. After a few moments of mentally dealing with the fact that my friend just suggested what might be the LEAST POSSIBLE EVENT IN ALL DIMENSIONS AND TIMELINES, we walk towards the group of people to check out whatever it is that they were looking at (after telling Rebecca that there was a 0% chance of it being a lion). We walk up and notice that there are about 25 people, all with cameras more expensive than their equivalent weight in gold, all taking pictures of a little brown friggn bird. It wasn't even doing anything cool. It was just sitting there like some useless bucket of uncooked chicken fingers whose only reason for existence is to piss me off.

I was livid. These people caused me to waste MINUTES of my life by pulling over and walking around as if there was something worthy of my time and effort. I could have cured cancer AND aids in that time they wasted. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's exactly how I would have spent that time. Thanks a lot assholes, I could have cured all the cancer and Super-Aids. Way to go.

So, there you have it. The reason why I hate bird people, and the reason why we, as a society, don't have the cures for cancer or aids.

PS. That is a picture I took of a Raven at Point Reyes. There is nothing wrong with taking pictures of birds as long as you keep your grip on sanity. I took this picture while eating my lunch: I didn't go seek it out, I didn't waste any time that could have been used curing all the cancer. It friggn came over to me looking for food, and after I took a picture, I threw rocks at it until it went away. Like what most normal people would do. I assume.