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Category: Podcast

My First Rave

I nodded when my co-worker Jason asked me if I was into partying. “Well, a rave is pretty much the same thing, except with more house music and none of that trendy shit you hear everywhere else,” he explained to me while waiting for his noodles to cool down. Jason was one of the only other high school kids at my job, so we’d become good friends by default. I nodded again to indicate my agreement. “Tony and I are going to one this Saturday night. You should come,” he suggested as he twirled a string of noodles around his plastic fork. I finished my vending machine granola bar and said I was in.

An Uncomfortable Haircut

I’ve always hated getting my hair cut. I blame this on every guy in 1996 that decided they would look good with hair that was faded on the sides and had spikes on top. When you have a long face with a large forehead, you want something that hides these features, not showcases them. This fashion phenomenon seemed to spawn a new breed of incompetent barbers that were essentially one trick ponies. “Keep it fairly even all the way around, just a light trim,” I would instruct before I sat in the padded swivel chair. They would smile and nod as I could hear the ominous sound of the electric razor buzzing next to my ear. I eventually learned it was a pointless argument which I was sure to lose. They seemed to know no other way to cut hair, kind of like in that episode of The Simpsons where the family visits the land down under and Marge tries to order a non-alcoholic beverage from an Australian pub.

K.H.

Her name was Kelly Hensler, but we called her K.H. My progress over the years with her could be described as dismal at best. In first grade, I threw powdered chalk in her best friend’s eyes. K.H. turned to me and shouted “What did you do that for!?” then followed her friend into the bathroom. In second grade, I asked her if she wanted to see me make my face turn red. I breathed heavily for a minute, then let out all the air in my lungs. I put my arms around my neck and strained all the muscles in my body as hard as I could. I think this made me pass out because when I got up from the floor, she was in a casual conversation with a friend and it seemed like a considerable amount of time had passed. In 3rd grade, I stood right behind her in the ragtag choir our class had assembled for the annual school play. In rehearsal I thought it was funny to sing not just the boys part, but also the girls, with a much higher pitch voice. She turned around and glared at me when I did this.

Vote Luke for Supreme Leader

It was that time of year again at Simi Valley High School to prove who was the most popular and well liked. Student body elections. I do not think there is a need to go into great detail of how this process works as it has been done by almost every teenage TV show and it has definitely been done by “Saved by the Bell” at least five times, including the “college years” period of that influential TV show. In brief, these elections allow the student body to elect fellow students to facilitate as puppets and spies for the faculty so the proletariat (students) do not start thinking they have no control over their schooling. To be president does not give you any power other than saying you are president and you can put it on your university applications. This time of year irritated me and something had to be done to illustrate the ridiculousness of it all. So I concocted a plan.

Hired Assasin

How far are you willing to go to make a little extra cash? I have already talked about the very talented Thai girls who seem to be OK with (or are forced) to make some serious social and moral adjustments. I struggle to imagine the sums of money that would be needed for me to join those entertainers. But I am sure we can all think of some time when we have done something that we know we shouldn’t have done but since we had enough money pushed in our face, we went against our best judgement. I would love to hear your examples of doing just this but for now, it is my turn. This is the story of how I killed my best friends hamster for $5.

English and their Weather

If you plan on sharing a conversation with anyone in England, you better be prepared to discuss the weather. Without fail, it will be the second thing talked about regardless of the encounter you find yourself in. For example:

“You alright?” (Equivalent to ‘how are you doing’ often said without the ‘You’.)

“Ya, excellent|lovely|not bad.” (excellent is heavily used here and on par with ‘like’)

“So how ’bout that weather?|What crap weather.|Beautiful day we are having.|Absolutely pissing down.|…” (many more but all roughly the same)

The other person will usually take a long hard look into the sky, and then agree with the given conclusion.

Last night, apparently there was one of the most visible meteor showers of the year in the northern hemisphere. I was meandering down a very dark lane blasting my iPod to “The great gig in the sky” and gazing upwards into the lightly misting rain wishing the cloud cover would move. It got me thinking…

Some Questions we Need to Make Socially Acceptable

I find that being extremely inquisitive is one of the most rewarding things about being a person. By taking on this attribute, you can learn until your brain explodes. You are only limited by the vastness of your creativity which is the key to extract the information you are thirsting for. Sometimes, I have found, inquis-i-tivity can be very disconcerting for certain people around you as you dive deeper and deeper into subjects that might make someone uncomfortable. For myself, however, I am just enjoying the lesson I am receiving by watching that person squirm. Some times people will think I am challenging them and ‘taking the piss’ but almost always I am very genuine. I will say that I am observant of someone who is bothered by my questions and I do enjoy testing the limits. So moving on to the point… for various reasons, I do not have too many fat friends and I would like to play out half of one of these conversations that might make someone squirm. I think many of these questions are for the extremely large people that need to live life a little differantly than the rest due to their condition.

Dustin’s 18th Birthday Present

For good or ill, gift giving amongst my male friends is not very good for birthdays, X-mas, anniversaries, halloween, or any other occasion that normally requires a gift to be given. As far as I am concerned this works out just fine as long as everybody agrees to not give gifts. The moment one guy decides to give a gift to someone then they have broken the unspoken agreement and we are all pretty much confused as to what to do the next time. This story is about my effort to try and confuse the hell out of all my guy friends by giving my good friend Dustin an 18th birthday gift.

Haircut Bets

I have always had this desire to have a flowing mane of hair. Unfortunately with my genetics, that is becoming less likely with each passing day. I have heard that a males hair gene comes from the mothers father. In which case I am going to have a nice shiny head with a ring of hair wrapping the back and sides with outragesouly bushy eye brows. Interestingly, in the last few months I have had a random hair growing from my left eyebrow that is exceedingly long and a different color from the rest of my eyebrow hairs. If I pull it out, it grows back really quick so I choose to leave it in and tug on it in front of people to freak them out. But I digress… the following three part story is about my effort to force myself to grow really long hair.