Okay, maybe I should give you a little background here. Somewhere along the way, my brothers and I became addicted to apocalyptic type stories. Any book, movie, or show that dealt with the end of the world resulted in multiple Gooblings consuming said media and analyzing it. Some of it was pure crap (okay, most of it). But the truly brilliant ones, from The Stand to Battlestar Galactica to Jericho, have always sucked us in and thus every time we all three get together during the holidays, we get to talking about our Zombie Plan.

Zombies? What?

So what the hell is a Zombie Plan? Well, quite simply, it’s our plan for when zombies finally rise up and try to take over our planet by eating us alive. Clay has always been a zombie freak and I gotta say, while I’m not too keen on the idea of having to put a bullet between his eyes, I’d totally be cool with it if he was trying to munch on my delicious arm. Okay, so we don’t actually expect zombies to attack, but seeing as how everywhere you turn there’s the threat of nuclear holocaust or some super virus wiping out the population or hell, who knows, maybe aliens invading us – well, the end of the world could come in our lifetime, no? I’m mean, just maybe, right? So why not plan for it?

Now, I’m not about to give away our plan for all the see and study, because the last thing I want is people copying it. I hate to break it to ya, but if the apocalypse DOES come, it’s every family for themselves until things settle down a little. Sure, we want to be neighborly and friendly and civil and blah blah blah, but when there’s only one bag of rice left at the local Wal Mart, I don’t see a neighbor reaching for it, I see an obstacle to my family getting some much needed nourishment. But I don’t want to be put in that position in the first place! That’s for all you unprepared idiots out there to deal with. Thus, the first lesson of our Zombie Plan!

So let’s say the end of the world is here. What are the most important basic human needs? We’re not talking Maslow’s hierarchy of needs here, we’re talking daily survival in a suddenly alien environment. I don’t care if it’s a super virus or invading army, we’re going to need shelter, security, and food. For the most part, shelter is going to be readily available. With the mass extinction of humans, finding a roof to put over your head won’t be that hard. We lump clothing into this category as well, because finding ample clothing (even shoes, despite what Cormac McCarthy might think) are going to be easily gotten for generations to come. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had the same pair of jeans for years now and they still fit perfectly.

Fine, so what do I need?

Security is going to be a little tougher. Guns and ammunition are going to be immediately gobbled up, so you need to make sure you have access to enough to last you for at least a few years. In the meantime, it won’t hurt to brush up on your archery skills during your downtime, because once all the ammunition is spent, that’s going to be the next best option. You know how in real estate, the three rules are location, location, location? Yeah, that’s also the three rules in a zombie infested landscape when talking about security. You want to make sure you have ample locations picked out ahead of time that have easy access to clean water supplies and arable land while also being in moderate climates, defensible positions, and out of nuclear fallout areas. Actually, on second thought, don’t bother researching that stuff, because that means you’ll most likely succumb to it and die, thus making it easier for the Gooblings to survive. We thank you for your kindness and generosity.

Food is going to be the hardest to come by. Don’t expect to be able to leave the food in your local grocery store and just come grab some whenever your stomach rumbles. Food in a store is going to last against nature and animals for a maximum of one year; much less if there are a lot of humans around. You need to be able to get the food to a secure location (ie, your newly created fortress) and get it there fast. But even then, it’s only going to last for some time. If you track how much food you eat in a week, you’d be surprised how much and how quickly you go through it. Some canned food is obviously going to last a while, but even then, you’ve only got a few years at the most. You need to be able to grow your own fruit and vegetables, hunt your own meat, and create your own farm if you want things like dairy and eggs. Far too many people won’t think about this until they’re stomachs are grumbling and these are going to be the most dangerous people of all. Again, this is where the importance of finding a location comes into play. What happens if you need to move due to shifting radiation clouds or inadequate defenses against hungry hoards of ill-prepared people? There’s only so much food you can load up in the family SUV and even then, you’re hoping the roads aren’t clogged and you don’t run into any bandits or government personal who will “procure” your provisions. Plus, you’ll be hard-pressed to move any livestock or plants you’ve got growing, so make damn well sure you’re in the place you want to be before you start buttoning down the hatches!

Beyond securing the three necessities though, what else do you need to keep an eye out for long term survival? Creating a medication supply is obvious, as is a supply of seeds, mechanical parts, tools, etc. The thing is, I don’t know about you, but I’m no doctor. Nor do I have any clue what the hell I’m doing when it comes to repairing simple engines, planting gardens, or figuring out which medicine to take for what symptoms. Thus enters the important area of books. A lot of people are going to overlook this key item at first, but you need to make sure you’re not part of that group. Raid the local library and bookstore for any survivalist, botanist, medical, etc. books. Any field you don’t have an expertise in right now needs to be a book that you acquire. Again, these are things you don’t want to just leave lying around in stores to be taken/destroyed before you!

Hell yeah, I’m set!

So you’ve got your books, your food, your guns, and fully protected in your new house. First, take a minute to congratulate yourself. You’ve survived the initial hoard of man-eating ghouls and managed not to perish in the second wave of deaths fueled by incompetence. Ok, stop patting yourself on the back now, because I’m pretty sure I see some zombies that need sniping. But while you’re off doing that, I’m going to be stealing some valuables from your stash. No, don’t go protecting your family safe, idiot! Money and credit cards aren’t valuable now! Think about it, cash is going to be obsolete for at least a decade and thus, you need to try and predict what will become luxury items on the trading market. I’m talking about booze, coffee, sweets, and salt to name a few. All of them will soon become a booming industry of currency and thus, you’re gonna want to have plenty of each item on hand.

There’s obviously tons more to the Goobling Zombie Plan that you might want to think about. Is your family spread out across the country, if not the globe? If so, how are you going to stay in touch and communicate? Don’t count on e-mail or cell phones. What about transportation? Do you know who you’ll include in your newly formed conclave? Heck, do you even have a BOB ready for the first 24 hours? No? You’re screwed.

Okay, how about I just join you guys?

Not a chance in hell! Well, actually, fine, anybody can come join the Gooblings in our secret hideout. However, you must agree to one simple condition. Once the newly formed nation of Goobtopia (or maybe Shyzeria?) rises from the ashes, you have to agree to vote for me as the first inaugural President. Also, you can’t blame me if my first act as Overlord President is to order you to sacrifice yourself for the good of our proud nation. Hey, somebody’s gotta do it and it sure as hell won’t be me!

Additional Reading

Zombie Hunters – One of the few sites on the net that combines realistic survivalist advise along with humor without all the crazy nutjobs talking about overthrowing the government and building a new nation out in Bumfuck, Idaho. Well worth the read, as is their forums.

Below I’ve compiled a list of current commercials that are so horrible, I want to jab a dull spoon into my eyes whenever I see them come on. If given the option of watching each of these for ten consecutive hours or being dipped in a pit of molten lava, well, go ahead and get my casket ready. The first bunch of commercials are just random ones I hate, with the final three being the Top 3 worst current commercials. I’d say “enjoy” right about now, but I have a feeling that nobody will enjoy suffering through these visual pieces of shit.

And if you haven’t guessed by now, strong language below, mainly because I like to say fuck whenever I get angry and hate something.

Oh, haha. I get it. You took a commercial that everybody hates in the first place and decided to attach your product to it. That makes perfect sense! In fact, why not take it even further? For the next commercial, they should have Hitler and a bunch of his Nazi buddies marching around in their shoes. It’s foolproof.

This doesn’t even make any sense! Were the ad execs on drugs when they approved this stupid thing to air? They’re selling flavored water, so they get some random black chick to start playing music and then have a bunch of lizards dance to it? Actually, when I put it that way, it makes perfect sense! …… No, NO IT DOESN’T!

Huh? What? Oh, sorry, let me get down. I just tried to hang myself with my belt while watching this commercial and was only able to pass out for a few seconds. It was the best five seconds of this commercial, by far.

So let me get this straight. A company came out with a bunch of horrible commercials that made no sense, a TV exec saw them, and then they were turned into a TV show? An actual show? And it didn’t last? WOW, I’M SHOCKED! They cancel shows like Jericho, yet they decide to make a show about a bunch of hairy guys who are cavemen but who don’t actually live in a cave thus making them simply a bunch of hairy guys? Yeah, that’s not really much of a show right there. That’s about as much of a show as somebody following me around with a camera would be. I hope somebody lost their job over this.

Nasty food, ugly actress, retarded voiceover, metaphor that doesn’t even remotely make sense = Goob vomiting.

EDIT: And now the video isn’t even loading. Irony never tasted so delicious. It’s as if the Internet Gods refused to let me spread this horrible piece of shit. Long story short, some chick is walking through the Cici’s buffet line as a voiceover talks about how she’s a precious and fragile flower, then the chick dumps a bunch of food on her plate before her and the voiceover guy suffer a heart attack and dies. Huh, what? The ending doesn’t happen like that? Well it should.

The dialogue should have been “Let’s go, girls!” followed by them driving off a fucking cliff. To make this commercial even more retarded, the final shot of the car driving has the car all wrapped up like a present. GEE, THAT MAKES SENSE! Where’s the followup commercial where everybody involved in the making of this dies in a horrible, flaming car wreck? SOMEBODY GET ON THIS!

Hooray, a commercial that makes us all look like fucking morons! I get it, Americans are so xenophobic that we’re deathly afraid of words that we can’t pronounce or that aren’t clearly English! You’re telling me that there are people out there who know more than one language? BLASPHEMY! Any word that clearly isn’t English needs to be purged from our daily vocabulary. So get the fuck out of here “pizza” and “alcohol” and “coffee.” Yeah, you read that correctly, the word coffee isn’t even English, it’s Arabic. JOKES ON YOU, DUNKIN FATASS DONUTS. That’s it, I’m going to Krispy Kreme, where real donuts are made. In fact, have you ever noticed that there’s never a Dunkin Donuts commercial that actually advertises their shitty donuts? Why the hell do they even bother selling those things anymore?

Ugh. Worst. Song. Ever. Maybe this guy’s credit report is so bad because all he does is sit around and sing smarmy, retarded songs. Although, and I’m not sure how this is even possible, but these commercials are better than the previous FCR.com ones…

Oh, you’re thinking of a number? Is it number two? As in somebody should take a giant dump on this guy’s head? If not, my second guess would be seven million because that’s how many punches to the crotch this guy should receive for pitching a product that’s an obvious scam.

Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!!!! I can’t take this anymore. Whose idea was it to make sure that every third commercial features talking characters that in real life shouldn’t be talking? If I saw a bunch of cookies driving down the road in a convertable, I wouldn’t think about how delicious they looked. Instead, I’d go check myself into a mental institute because I would obviously be fucking crazy, which is exactly what these commercials are slowly doing to me!

On the other hand, though, there are people who shouldn’t be allowed to talk on TV either. Like these idiots.

If somebody in my neighborhood started screaming out of their window like these idiots, I can assure you that long story short, there’d be a murder trial in eight to twelve months and I would be an integral part of it.

Step 4: Run to the doctors to get some ointment for the STD I hope you picked up after getting hammered on a shitty alcoholic beverage that has to be “watered” down and then hooking up with some random hot girl that had no place whatsoever in this commercial!

Yeah, no shit you’ve failed them as a parent. I hate it when people type like that in the first place, but I swear to God – the first time my siblings start talking like this, they’re getting a swift kick in the crotch. You hear that Clay and Juls?! TRY ME!

EDIT: I just found this picture. Click to enlarge.

I hate the entire Freakout campaign, but I have to admit that I secretly enjoy this individual ad simply because I enjoy watching the retarded emo kid freakout. Haha, take that you moron, you’re unable to get your daily dose of shitty food! Why don’t you go sit in the corner and cry about it? As a whole, though, I hate the people in these commercials almost as much as I hate the commercials themselves. Are you telling me that people actually gave a shit that a HAMBURGER was removed from the menu at a fast-food joint? Who are these people? Are they allowed to vote? Procreate? Take part in any sociable activity? If so, we need to hold an emergency town-hall meeting and revoke each and every one of these privileges from them.

But enough of this endless commercial bashing, let’s get to my Top 3 hated commercials.

Let’s see, what just happened here? Turtle says hello, mentions a problem, receives some helpful advice, and then proceeds to verbally abuse the living hell out of his mailman. Doesn’t that just scream high speed internet to you?! I can only hope and pray that there is some hidden footage out there that shows the mailman jumping up and down on this fucking turtle and then cooking him into some delicious soup, because that’s what he deserves. The fucking Slowsky’s can go to hell, I HATE THEM.

NO! THIS IS NOT MY FUCKING COUNTRY! Ugh, I hate this commercial. Hate. It. You know how Doctor Cox has an irrational hatred of Hugh Jackman in Scrubs? Well John Mellancamp is my Hugh Jackman. If I ever see him in real life, so help me God, I will make sure he’s never able to create a horrible song again. But focusing solely on the commercial here, I totally understand the angle they were going for. Ooooh, so the only people who drive trucks are people whose job consists of manual labor. Gotcha. I guess I need to sell my truck then.

Oh man, hahaha, did you see the part where two guys are at a restaurant but it says “this is our chat room?” Get it! They’re not really in a chat room! They’re “chatting” in a “room” in real life. Hahaha, witty! Or did you see the part where it said “this is our wingman” while the guy is hunting with his dog? Yeah, that part was great. That dog is totally gonna help him get laid by a duck or doe or something.

But there’s way more than just that one commercial! There’s a whole series! Like this one, where the awesomeness starts right off the bat. See where it says “this is our birthplace” and it shows a car in a garage? Yeah, that’s where I was born too, because my parents didn’t live within driving distance of a decent medical center either. But wait a minute, a few seconds into this video it shows “this is our focus group!” But in the last video, that same scene was our backbone. WHICH ONE IS IT, CHEVY?! DON’T CONFUSE ME LIKE THIS, I CAN’T HANDLE IT!

Ok, I looked everywhere for this and was unable to find a copy of the commercial. This only further proves that it’s so fucking horrible that nobody could even stomach it for 60 seconds it takes to copy it to their computer and upload to YouTube. I’m sure you all know the commercial though, where a guy proposes to a girl at a restaurant and then people begin saying “he went to Jared” until we finally get to their waiter, who is played by Count Dracula, and he proceeds to run around the fine establishment screaming something about Jared before we finally see him pop up like a jack in the box and burn a pan full of food. Aaaaaaaaand, scene.

I don’t even know where to begin with this commercial. I really wish I had some video evidence of it to prove to you just how bad it is. If you’ve ever enjoyed even half a second of this commercial, please don’t let me know, because I will disavow any knowledge of ever having been your friend. It’s that bad. Ugh, I really wish I had some video clip of this. That’s it, I’m going to find some, because I really want to just be able to post it on here and rip it a new one, a la Creation Science Fair.

Before some time I asked with you after signed photos – but
up to now I could’nt hear from you.
I would be therefore so happy if you could send me handwritten photos of you – you are a very beautiful man with a sympathically face and a great aura. The collecting of signed photos is my greatest hobby – and signed photos of you will get a special place in my collection. I would be happy if you could fulfill my wish. Thanks in advance for your kindness!

Hahaha. In case you don’t remember, I wrote about this crackpot last year and thought that would be the end of him. I assumed a little public humiliation would be just the correct dosage to getting him off my back, but apparently I was mistaken.

Buddy, look, I’m not sending you any signed photos of myself. Give it up. Yeah, I bet I’d hold a special place in your collection. And frankly, I don’t want to even think about what that place might be, especially if it involves you, my photo, and a little “special time.” Add to the fact that identity theft isn’t on my list of things I want for Christmas and I think you can see where I’m coming from.

Although I doubt you can even read any of this, as your English sounds about on par with my dogs. No, scratch that, she can communicate with me a little bit better than that crap you sent me. I bet you still pee on the rug, don’t you?

Hang with me through this post and I promise you’ll be rewarded with extremely tame and bland photos of some random chick!

This is going to seem like an incredibly ironic post once I finally get around to finishing another post I’ve had in the works for a while where I talk about how I’ve almost stolen stuff from the Internet and passed it off as my own. But today, I came across something that I feel like sharing for no other reason than I’m bored.

One of my favorite daily reads is With Leather, which is basically a site where guys sit around making fun of sports and posting pictures of hot chicks. Fun times all around. Today they had a post linking to another website where a Top 20 Hottest Sports Wives list was recently created. Like I said, this isn’t groundbreaking news or reporting we’ve got going on here.

So I’m perusing through the list when I stumble across #9. HOLY CHRIST! It’s visual evidence of Jamie Kotsay! Cool!

Now I’m sure you’re sitting there wondering just what in the hell I’m getting at, so let me cut to the chase. Almost three years ago, I wrote this post mocking how if you write about popular, and albeit stupid, topics then Google and other search engines will reward you with random traffic. And in that post, I wrote about Mark Kotsay’s wife and how everybody on the Internet swore that she was the hottest chick in the world, despite the fact that A) nobody even knew her effing first name and 2) there wasn’t a single picture of her on the net. I hadn’t really given it much thought since I wrote that, but today I was suddenly staring at a few harmless photos of said hot chick. Yeah, ok, I can see it. Cool, whatever.

But then I remembered that out of all the terms I used in that post three years ago, the one about Jamie Kotsay was the only one to get picked up and drive tons of traffic to Shyzer. And I got to wondering if I was even still on the first page of Google for “Mark Kotsay’s Wife.” Turns out I’m not, but clocking in at #4 is a website called Ump Bump and… Wait a minute, the post on their site looks familiar…

Below are two quotes, the first being what I wrote back in January 2005 and the second being what was written on Ump Bump back in May 2007.

Big Foot. The Lock Ness Monster. The Phantom of the Opera. Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Jessica Simpson’s high IQ. None of these are more mysterious or cloaked then the infamous wife of Mark Kotsay. It’s a well-known fact that men who play professional sports tend to have smoking hot wives. It’s a lesser-known fact that Mark Kotsay has the hottest wife of them all. Except there’s a small problem. There ceases to be a single picture of her on the Internet. You see, for every team Mark Kotsay has played for, his wife has joined the team’s corresponding player’s wives association. They do small public services for the community and basically are used as a public relations tool by the team. Now most teams have jumbotrons or huge televisions or something along those lines in their stadiums. At random times during random games, most teams like to tout that they too have a soft and caring side for the community, so they run announcements for some of the public services they offer, which is where Mark Kotsay’s Wife comes in. For every team that Kotsay has played for, his wife has not only joined the association, but has been the main spokeswoman for their jumbotron commercials. Over time, more and more people have had a chance to see Mrs. Kotsay’s commercial and there’s a general consensus among all those who saw her; she is the most gorgeous woman they have ever seen. Message boards have thousand-page threads dedicated solely to her. Websites are repeatedly spammed in search of a single picture of her. She has become a living legend amongst baseball fans and those who have reportedly caught a glimpse of her swear by their lives that she is easily the most breathtaking female they have ever laid eyes on.

And then theirs:

Bigfoot. The Loch Ness Monster. The Yeti. A Devil Rays fan.

Yes, the world is full of myths and legends about shadowy, elusive, one-of-a-kind creatures who may or may not even exist.

But now you can cross Jamie Kotsay off that list, for we here at umpbump can attest to the fact that she does exist and pretty much everything that has been said about her is true.

It has been well documented that many famous athletes, and baseball players in particular, often have scorching hot wives. But what has been harder to prove was the contention that Mark Kotsay just may have the hottest wife of them all…

You see, it all started back in the late 1990s when Mark Kotsay first made it to The Show. At each city Mark played in, fans of that team would begin to report sightings of his incredibly, unbelievably, scorching hot wife. They said her name was “Jamie.” They claimed that this one time, at the fan convention, they caught a brief glimpse of her between a gap in the crowd, but when they got closer she had vanished. Or that this other time, at this one game, in the 6th inning, she flashed briefly on the jumbotron screen to make a public service announcement or something.

And pretty much everyone agreed she was the hottest baseball wife they had ever seen.

But the problem was, try as everyone might, nobody could find a picture of her! The claims could not be corroborated! Soon message boards with thousands of threads grew up around her legend. Search engines were bombarded with her name. Cults grew up around the fervent belief that she really did exist, and that she really was the hottest wife in the game. And still no picture could be found!

But then finally, last summer, this shot appeared on an Athletics blog!

I’m reminded of when I was in the 8th or 9th grade and we were learning about paraphrasing. During the first few assignments, everybody basically sat down with the text we were quoting and a thesaurus. Twenty minutes later, the quote had been changed to “our words,” but it was still in the exact same structure and format and the teacher was shaking her head saying how moronic we were.

But fine, I can overlook that. The sincerest form of flattery is being copied or something like that. No, what pisses me off isn’t that I had something ripped off, it’s these two things:

First, what the fuck?! That’s what you rip off from me? That wasn’t even a good paragraph! That sucked ass! Why would you copy, of all things here on Shyzer, that? Come on guys, copy my hostage standoff post or the one about The Stand or any other number of halfway decent posts I’ve made here on Shyzer. Don’t copy something I slapped together in 20 minutes while half asleep at 3AM one night…

But even more importantly, I’m pissed off that somebody found photos of Mrs. Kotsay, knew that I wanted to see them myself, copied what I’d written about wanting to see them, and then didn’t even send me an anonymous e-mail about where I could find them! What’s up with that?! If you’re going to be a plagiarizer, at least be a polite plagiarizer!

People today; they have no manners!

Of course, momma taught me well, so click the link below if you want to finally see what the hell Jamie Kotsay looks like. And let this be a lesson to everybody out there who puts things they create out there on the Internet. If it’s even remotely comprehendible and carries with it at least one coherent thought, it will be stolen. In fact, I fully expect this very post to be stolen and copied by somebody else within 12 minutes.

Click on the images for a full sized slideshow.

Here’s just a little tip to any of you employed by a company where Internet access is available while on the job. It’s 2007. Anything you do can be traced right back to you. Easily. Come on people, I thought we’d been over this by now. That chapter can be found right between the “don’t pass on chain e-mails” lesson and the “yes, Wikipedia can have false information on it” section. Get with the program.

Teacher 1: You know, this didn’t really work out that well.
Goob: Yeah, I think we royally screwed this one up. Did you freaking hear the screams those three girls made when they all slammed into each other? Christ, I thought somebody had lost an eye or something.

Teacher 2 comes strolling up the nearby hill.

Teacher 2: Well that was a general clusterfuck. Did you see that boy run into the back of that truck?
Goob: What?!
Teacher 2: Yeah, that little boy in the red right there! He was just running around the field, strayed over near the farm, and slammed right into the farmers truck.
Goob: Wow. You know, I think I lost one of my kids
Teacher 1: Eh, we’re in the middle of nowhere, they’ll figure out soon enough we went inside. Let’s get the hell back inside.

A bus horn blares from behind the school building.

Goob: Ah! I just found my last kid.

This is LoveU2Toleda@yahoo.com Your confirmation: #873890 Is a fake I check with WalMart about the $500 gift card, and quest what there is none. Now should I report you to the web and email address companies about you bigmama ? Or should we say Cynthia Gibbson. If you can\’t show me this $500 card by say March 1st,2007. My email should be ringing off the hook. Thanks for listening.

There’s so much to dissect in this short paragraph (and I use that word lightly), that it’s almost overwhelming. But what’s my favorite part? It’s not how guess somehow morphed into quest. Or how I caused her e-mail to “be ringing off the hook.” Or even how I might soon be reported “to the web?”

No, my favorite is that somewhere along the line I, Goob, master of awesomeness, somehow became Big Mama. And that alone totally made this e-mail worth publishing, complete with senders address and all.

Not only did the kids eat it up, but the fellow teachers loved it as well. Thanks Stan!

But the best part has to be spending the majority of the day sitting at my desk and chatting with the actual teacher all day long while the kids sit mere feet away, blissfully unaware of anything going on around them other than “Oh look, there’s a picture of a pink cat!” on the wall. I love it, because it’s such a different change of pace from subbing as you actually get to spend the day with ANOTHER ADULT! How novel of a concept!

And the topics of discussion! They certainly make for some enjoyable stories! Let’s just say after subbing down in the kiddy wing a few times, it made me wonder if my kindergarten teachers had talked about sex toy selling teachers, the escapades of the tramp down the hall, and the events they saw behind the local pub last night while I was coloring my picture of Martin Luther King Jr as well. If only I had had the same interests back then as I do now.

Call me demanding, but I expect my coffee to be pesticide free by default. To me, you’re in bad shape if your favorite local eatery has to go out of their way to let you know there aren’t any added chemicals in your coffee that might cause a third arm to grow out of your chest. Yet there I sat in Uno’s pizzeria, laughing my ass off, and wondering why those family members who were accompanying me did not find this as funny as I did.

NOTE: I recently found an old article I wrote for Circle of Jerks almost two years ago. It’s a bit mean, but then again it was for a site where the domain name proudly proclaims the authors are Jerks I found it funny, I remember it being pretty fun, if not a change in pace, to write and since it’s no longer on-line over on Stan’s site (slacker!), I thought I’d repost it here for any of you who missed it the first time around. Enjoy.

It would be great to say that I waited to write this post until the eve of the release of Star Wars III. It would also be great to say that I then decided to wait until the movie had been out for a week or two before writing this post. Alas, the truth is that Stan mentioned I should write something on this topic, so I decided to pull an Angela and ignore my responsibilities for at least three weeks. In fact, Stan finally got to the point where he no longer expected me to upload this story, so he took me off the “In The Works” list. That’s procrastination at its finest, my friends.

I’ve always viewed myself as a conveyor of information. Any time I’ve ever found something cool or interesting, I like to pass it along to others in an effort to spread around the Great Cup ‘O Knowledge. This is not one of those occasions.

By now, though, you should be saying to yourself, “Goob, just what in the hell are you talking about?” Glad you asked. With the latest release of a Star Wars movie, we’ve all been reminded of one of the most glaring stains on human civilization: the existence of Star Wars nerds, fans, and freaks alike. They come out in droves, shamelessly supporting their idiotic support for a series of movies that they claim “inspire” them to get out of bed every morning. They line up for hours, nay, days before the release of the movie, dressed in full regalia, just so that they can say they saw the first showing in their hometown of Crap Town, USA. They beam as news reporters interview them for their human interest stories on the 6 o’clock news, unwitting to the fact that their interviews remind each and every one of us normal people how lucky we are not to be one of them.

And with the influx of the Internet into our everyday lives, us Normal people are now bombarded with Their websites. You know the types. The ones that carry on twenty page conversations over why Han Solo should have never been able to use a lightsaber in Episode 5. The ones that try to follow Princess Amidala’s wardrobe in an effort to see what kind of “mood” she’s in throughout the movies. Or the ones that try and explain just how a lightsaber works.

I wish I was making this up. However, in the interest of science and making fun of Star Wars Nerds throughout the world, I ventured through the above site and meticulously made fun of it each step of the way. Join me, if you will, in doing the same.

The opening page contains the following introduction: “Chances are that you have seen a lightsaber at one time or another, whether on the evening news or down at the local cantina.” Chances also are that whoever wrote that is still living in his or her – ok, let’s be real here, his – parent’s basement with George Lucas posters on the wall. I spend many a hours at the local cantina and I have seen a drunk 400 pound man eat an entire jar of pickled eggs, a drunk girl make out with four guys at once in the back alley, and this one guy who could swallow a shot glass and regurgitate it with the liquid still in it! Yet I have never seen a lightsaber. Not once.

Buried at the bottom of page 2 is the following: “Lightsabers are only a figment of George Lucas’ imagination, of course. This is an entirely fictional article, based on information in Star Wars movies and books.”

You don’t say! Really!? Nooooooo. I’m shocked, honestly, I am. You mean to tell me they’re not real?! You mean to tell me that hundreds and thousands of thousands of people worldwide devote their time, energy, and lives to studying and writing Internet How Stuff Works Guides about a fictitious movie? I’m flabbergasted. Now if only these people would do the same in realizing that they are wasting their lives and do something productive! I’m sure there are some homeless people down the street that could use some food. Why don’t you people go use The Force and feed them? Or if you want a bigger challenge, I think the continent of Africa could even use some food. Put down that twentieth Twinkie you’re about to eat and airmail it to Rwanda, you loser!

On page three, we are treated to the following image:

Aside from the fact that it looks like the chick is about to be mugged in broad daylight by a Mexican biker, my favorite part of the photo has to his weapon of choice. A tire iron? How does that lady know he was about to mug her? He could have been offering to fix her flat. Stupid whore. Somebody take that fictional lightsaber away from her and banish her from ever appearing on the Internet again. While you do that, I’m gonna go find that Mexican biker because my left rear tire looks a little low on air.

I’m not ever going to talk about the 4th page, which has a detailed picture of the “inner workings” of a lightsaber. I’ll just leave it at this. Somebody, somewhere, actually took the time to not only learn how this made up product “works,” but they also created a photoshop picture of it to share with others. Somebody get this man a Life.

Page 5 greets us with a collection of high tech sounding phrases to make us Normal people feel overwhelmed. Diatium power cells, power vortex rings, crystal energy chambers, arc waves, activation matrixes, virgins who will never be laid, etc. Okay, so maybe I made up that last one, but it should be somewhere on that page, describing those who actually believe in this shit.

Later in the article, I found myself reading that, “A lightsaber completely blows away a can of pepper spray as a deterrent in muggings or robberies.” Really? Because trust me, the next time I go to rob somebody and they pull out a lightsaber to protect them, I’m going to swat away their little PlaySkool toy and get on with my thievery and evilness. A blast of pepper spray might actually put a halt to me trying to steal somebody’s valuables, but a glow-in-the-dark plastic sword is going to only stop me if I fall on the floor laughing at the person.

And humor me here, if you will. Take a look at this picture:

Does this not look exactly like our favorite Mexican Christ Puncher’s member?! This only leads me to believe that he not only felt threatened enough by our overzealous bitch in the first photo to not change her tire, but that he used his tire iron to beat her and steal her lightsaber. Thankfully, he’s putting it to good use trimming hedges and not attacking other would be Good Samaritans, but it makes me wonder. If these lightsabers are so powerful, how come it couldn’t beat an illegal immigrant with a freaking tire iron? Seriously, these Star Wars nerds will spend years pointing out continuity errors in movies, but won’t even take the time to proof read one of their lame articles.

Thankfully, the last page has finally arrived. On it are more “uses” for a lightsaber, but sadly, all I could focus on were the continuity errors they all contained, especially the one where no shadow was displayed on the back wall while the guy heats up his coffee. Oh no – I’ve already started to become one of Them. First off I’m bitching about a poor photoshop job of a lightsaber and the next minute I’ll find myself whining over how Obi-wan Kenobi’s outfit changed from one scene to another in the latest movie. Thankfully, I caught myself in time and can now go back to beating up Star Wars Fans and stealing their lunch money.

They still believe The Force can protect them when in reality, the force from my fist ensures that I’ll be eating this afternoon. On second thought, let’s keep these morons around.

(All words spoken in a heavy, thick drawl.)

Customer #1: Man, I cain’t believe tha’ kids didn’t have school terday. I’s looking forward ter gettin’ ‘em outter tha house ‘gain!
Customer #2: I know whatcha mean! What’s even worse is I had no ideer everythang was closed ’til I got to the post office and saw nobaudy there. I wasted 30 minutes today just because Ford died!
Customer #1: It makes nor sense to me. I know Ford is ‘portant an all, but what makes him and his comp’nay so special? I don’t even see how peoples drive anythang other than a Chevy.
Customer #2: Oh, they’ll find any excuse to not have ter work, them lazy people in Washin’ton. It don’t matter who died. President of Ford. King of Canada. Hell, it don’t matter! They’ll just give ‘em some bullshit medal an’ close everythang for the day.

Both customers quickly turn around to the sound of crashing glass rippling through the building as Goob bashes his head into the front pane in an effort to forget the stupidity he just overheard.

No thanks, CNN

Looks like CNN isn’t having a very good night.

Dear Shyzer,

my English is’nt very well – but I want to write you this mail.

I found your homepage with the photo gallery of you.
The pics of your headshave are great. Your decide for the bald was certainly not easy – but it was a good decide. Your bald ist very beautiful and your face effected with it better.

My greatest hobby is the collecting of signed autograph cards and photos of nice people.

I would be therefore very happy if you could send me handwritten pictures of you (I know my wish is a little bit crazy).
I would be therefore very happy if you could fulfill my wishes. Many thanks in advance for your kindness.

Best wishes and regards send you

Michael

Sweet! I made a good decide! And my face effected it better!

I got that back in May of ’05 or so. I honestly didn’t know what to do besides laugh my ass off for a few minutes, so that’s exactly what I did. I was in the computer lab back in Newcastle and I honestly slumped out of my chair laughing so hard. Finally! It had taken 2 1/2 years, but I had my own Internet Creep! Once I finally regained my composure, I forwarded it to a few people, laughed some more, and promptly forgot all about it. Fast forward to three weeks ago:

Christmas Wishes

My wish is very large,
The space is rather small,
But Merry Marry Christmas,
Happy New Year fells it all!

The best wishes send you from Northern Germany

Michael

I would be therfore very happy if you could send me handwritten photos you – you are a very beautiful man – I’m enthused of you!
My greatest hobby is the collecting of autographs from beautiful people with a great aura.
I would be therefore very happy if you could fullfill my christmas-wish – a signed photo of you. Thanks in advance for your kindness!

And he’s back! And he’s enthused of me!

But this time, he not only included his home address in the e-mail, but two awesome webpages. Look at those amazing sites, complete with strobing images, animated gifs, and text I sure as hell can’t read! But the real treasures lie in the pictures. There’s so many random pictures on them that are unintentionally hilarious, that I’m pretty sure they’re illegal in most states. But that’s what I’m here for, to make sure y’all have something to occupy yourselves with while wasting company time!

Some might think I’m being mean, but to that I respond with A) You certainly don’t know me well if you think this is mean and B) I’m not a huge fan of identity theft. If that’s your cup of tea, by all means go for it, but me? I kinda enjoy there only being one Goob out there who can withdraw money from my checking account or buy loads of Internet porn with my credit card…um…wait…I mean donate loads of money to Columbian orphans and cute puppies. The last thing I want to do is send some guy my signature so that he can “decide” to write a few checks as Ryan Shyzer. Well, he wouldn’t get real far with that since Shyzer isn’t my last name, but you get the picture.

So Michael, best wishes to you and your quest of collecting the signatures of nice, beautiful men with great auras. As you can see, I am a beautiful man with a great aura.

But I’m sure as hell not nice.

The hilarious ad in question was displayed on a page linking to a map of racist hate groups categorized by states. It’s one of those maps you’d expect to see used by a politician or somebody who wanted to push a specific agenda at the sake of accurate facts or valid arguements. I’ll be the first to admit that South Carolina has its share of problems, but if you go by this map, the only states containing more hate groups are Florida and California. And I for one find that hard to believe, even without touching the fact that far too many states are listed as having zero.

It’s these kinds of graphics that are used to sway or invoke some emotion in people without putting all the relevant facts on the table. What defines a hate group? How large does it have to be to be categorized? Do they have to be active? If so, what defines “active?” Even the basic facts of population aren’t factored into the map. For instance, a quick glance shows Georgia with 40 hate groups and Alabama with 21. Yet in 2000, Georgia had a population of 8,186,453 while Alabama only had 4,447,100. Now all of a sudden both states are looking to be on equal footing in terms of hate levels per citizen. Yet I assure you that any number of political candidates could have used this map to further their cause, regardless of its accuracy or reliability.

During the past 6 months, most of us here in America have been bombarded with negative ads through every media outlet and have been greeted with “facts” every time we turn around. Politicians have somehow mastered the art of telling a truthful lie and anybody who wants to know why the majority of people are turned off by or carry an apathetic attitude towards politics should start looking for answers there.

This document I speak of contains 13,794 words and is over 20 pages long with only a few blank lines separating each new topic. Some are only short fragments that I don’t even understand anymore. Other times there are paragraphs or two where I started to write a post and then abruptly stop for one reason or another only to pick it back up at a later date. And finally, sometimes things get a little lost in the shuffle and are rendered obsolete after a few weeks due to their time sensitive nature

This is such a post, which was written sometime in early July:

Dear local and national news networks,

Stop giving us hourly updates on Barbaro. What with WWIII starting in Middle East’s Paris, Type O Dong missiles flying all over the world, and the Mariners still employing one of the worst managers in baseball, I don’t have time to listen about how doctors now feel that Barbaro’s state of mind is solid. It’s a horse. You have no idea what his state of mind is. For all you know, he could simply be sitting there thinking “Brrrrrrrrrr, I’m a horse who likes oats and apples!” It’s wonderful that somebody has the compassion and funds to pay for all these expensive medical costs to keep a horse alive, but that doesn’t mean you have to give us the horse’s condition on CNN, ESPN, and even my damn local news simply because an hour just passed and he didn’t die. So the next time I hear a story about this freaking horse, he better have either A) died B) won a race or C) found a cure to cancer.

Thank you for your time,

Goob

Last week I was working in the office after hours when a phone call came in for one of the other teachers. I put the caller on hold before switching over to the school-wide loudspeaker and paging her to let her know about the call. Seconds later, I saw the line go through and I knew she’d heard me and picked up, so I instantly forgot all about it. A few minutes later though, a teacher came into the office laughing hysterically. It turns out there was a teacher who had been sick recently and not known I was working in the building now. Upon hearing me page the other teacher over the speakers, she stuck her head out of her classroom, looked around, and asked, “Was that God?”

Simple, huh? So hurry up and fill in your brackets, folks!

But just to give you a taste of what this tournament’s gonna be like, I’ll show you the Adam & Eve matchup. One thing I always loved about March Madness was how right before the real tournament began, two shitty teams played each other just for the “opportunity” to enter the tournament as the 64th team and get crushed by 40 points against the likes of Duke. So, I decided to follow tradition and let Adam and Eve battle for the honor today before things got underway here tomorrow.

Adam vs. Eve – The rematch between our two pansy ancestors finally took place as Adam and Eve meet up for the first time since Eve’s fateful afternoon snack. However, the game never really got underway due to the controversy that erupted beforehand when Adam decided this would be the perfect time to come out of the closet. Centuries and centuries worth of pent up anger and blaming every woman he saw for his exile from paradise had left Adam a bit jaded towards dating. That is, until he heard that catchy anti-gay slogan, “It’s Adam & Eve, not Adam & Steve.” Well, as it turns out, it’s actually Adam & Juan, his personal hairstylist and partner of 10 years. And not surprisingly, Adam wasn’t too keen on playing basketball and so Eve got a free ride to face God.

When my mom finally asked what I was working on after ten straight days of me carrying around me old college religion notes, I told her it had something to do with God and Republicans. “Oh, so it’s a political post,” she said. “Dear Christ, no,” I replied, “but he’s in there too, Christ, as well as Darwin and Buddha and Tom Cruise.” This new information seemed to be all she needed to hear, because with that, she quipped, “Ohhhh, so it’s a post which only you’ll find humorous. Gotcha.”

So with that flowing review fresh in your mind, I present to you the 2006 Religion Madness, brought to you by Shyzer.com, United Airlines, Coca Cola, and Captain Morgan.*

The premise of this tournament is simple: 64 of religion’s finest stars converge here on Shyzer for three full weeks of Holy basketball mayhem in an attempt to find out which religion is the best. So sit back, grab a cold one, and take some time to get to you this year’s lucky contestants before the games begin tomorrow. C-ya then.

* = United Airlines, Coca Cola, and Captain Morgan are co-sponsors in the sense that while I was writing this, I was also drinking rum & cokes and listening to my mom and Jeff make fun of me, who both work for United Airlines.

In college, on an average weekday, my mornings usually consisted of A) Sleeping in bed, B) Sleeping on the couch, or C) Sleeping on the kitchen floor. In the rare occasion that I awoke before pre-noon, I usually wrapped myself in a comforter and spread out on the couch to indulge in some West Wing, Price is Right, or if Kelly Ripa was looking especially hot, Regis & Kelly. One such morning as I was making my way to President Bartlett’s second election, I stumbled across a funny comedian on Comedy Central named Demetri Martin. He had a little 30 minute special and after laughing hysterically at the few minutes of it I was able to catch, I was hooked. His comedy was pure gold and when his special ended, I immediately wanted more. I jumped on the Internet to find some clips or to visit his site, but after an hour of constant searching, I was empty handed. Demetri must have been the most reclusive comedian at the time and while it helped enhance his mystique and aura, it pissed me off since I wanted to laugh at him.

I kept a video tape ready to record in the VCR for over a year before I saw him on Comedy Central again. This time, I managed to capture his entire skit and for the next few weeks, I was in heaven. I must have watched that thing 400 times before finally retiring it and after that, I kinda forgot about him.

Then this past December, Jon Stewart handed over an episode to a new Daily Correspondent who had a new segment and for the past few months, Demetri Martin has humored us with bits on wine drinkers and the new XBOX 360, among other things. He mentioned in one segment that he had a Myspace account and within minutes, we were friends. So what trend did Demetri talk about last night? As luck would have it, Myspace, and in case you missed it, go check out the latest addition to the media section, the Demetri Martin Myspace Video.

But you might be saying to yourself, “Goob, I thought you said you were on The Daily Show. Don’t tease us like that.” My bad, folks. I not usually a tease, honest. If you go and watch the video, you’ll see a shot where Demetri shows how many friends he has and the number stands at 9,000.

And guess who is part of that 9,000.

I can feel the celebrity status already going to my head.

But the problem with watching television in the middle of the day is that there isn’t anything on worth watching. Sure, I could watch the 1973 World’s Strongest Man competition on ESPN or maybe one of those trashy dating shows on UPN. And if I’m feeling a little too safe and secure, FOX News is always a good choice to scare me back into submission. But other than that, I’m usually SOL.

So with that in mind, I’m starting a new segment here on Shyzer called: “Things Goob’s Ashamed To Enjoy.” Today’s item? Number 29 on the list – Roseanne.

I have no idea where this sudden appreciation for Rosanne came from, but trust me, it’s there. Any time I’m flipping through the stations and stumble across an episode of Roseanne playing on The Oxygen Network, I stop and watch. I guess Number 30 on this list could be that I actually watch something on The Oxygen Network, the same network that has a 90 year old sex therapist on late a night that makes just about anything remotely related to the topic at hand seem unappealing. But that’s for another post.

The bad part is that I think I’ve got Julianne hooked on the damn show as well. Last week I walked into the play room only to be greeted by the obnoxious laughter only capable of emanating from Roseanne’s mouth and I knew right then and there that I had to put a stop to the Crazy Train. It’s one thing to allow myself to hitch a ride on it, but it’s a whole other story when the children are climbing on the caboose while your not looking.

1. Osama bin Laden’s recent proposal for truce is a direct result of him finding out that Jack Bauer is, in fact, still alive.
2. Jack Bauer has been to Mars. That’s why there’s no life on Mars.
3. In kindergarten, Jack Bauer killed a terrorist for Show and Tell.
4. In 96 hours, Jack Bauer has killed 93 people and saved the world 4 times. What the fuck have you done with your life?
5. Jack Bauer once won a game of Connect 4 in 3 moves.
6. Instead of buzzing, Jack Bauer’s alarm clock screams out “THERE ISN’T ANYMORE TIME!”
7. Jack Bauer once had CTU open a socket to the depths of hell.
8. Jack Bauer only needs one page to solve the Da Vinci Code, not 454.
9. Normal people have trouble killing two birds with one stone. Jack Bauer can kill thirteen birds simultaneously with a dull pencil.
10. When Kim Bauer lost her virginity, Jack Bauer found it and put it back.

Last night, I was performing one of my hourly rituals of transferring laundry from the washer to the dryer. This lucky batch included bed sheets, socks, and a rug Koral had peed on, among other things. Juls was watching television in the next room and Clay was playing on the computer, so the only person upstairs was Colton, who was supposed to be in bed falling asleep. It was right around the point where I was pulling out the rug when I froze dead in my tracks and my heart stopped. The entire house, not just the laundry room, shook with a violent force and my chest literally vibrated for a second. The deep boom that filled the air lingered in my ears for what seemed like minutes and before my brain even had time to compute what was happening, my legs were in Emergency Mode and carrying my body upstairs.

I’ve never moved as quickly in my life as I did during those few seconds.

I was upstairs and in Colton’s room before Clay or Juls were even out of their seats. The rumble was so heavy, so consuming, that I knew it wasn’t just Colton tripping and falling down. Something else far more massive had succumbed to the force of gravity with him and my mind was racing with visions of him trapped under a bulking set of chester drawers or a massive armoire or even a collapsed roof.

You can imagine my surprise when I burst into his room and was greeted by Colton, sitting up in bed with a giant grin spread across his face, and telling my, “WHOA! That was a big explosion! It woke me up!” Clay and Juls spilled into the room moments later and we all stood there for a second looking around before my mind finally caught up with the situation again. I barked out a few orders to the kids and went to look around the rest of the house. Something, somewhere, had to be wrong in the house. The noise had sounded as if it came from upstairs, as if the entire roof was trying it’s hardest to come crashing down upon us.

And yet not a thing was amiss. None of the large object in the house had fallen to create the shudder. A few small things here and there had been knocked over due to the shock, but for the most part, everything was fine. Having made sure the kids were safe and the house wasn’t falling apart on my watch – because I’ll be damned if I’m blamed for it! – I decided to venture outside and see if maybe a car had rammed the house or something. As I stepped outside, I noticed I wasn’t the only one out searching for answers and finally I realized it wasn’t just confined to our house. Just about every single person in the neighborhood was outside, trying to figure out what had just disturbed them as well. We all stood around with a queer look on our face for a while, trying to guess what had happened. Someone thought a plane might have crashed, but I ruled that out because with most plane crashes come fires that light up the nearby night sky. Others thought maybe there had been some explosion at one of the nearby factories, but again, I figured we’d at least see a fire if that had happened. My money was on a gas explosion somewhere and literally right as the words tumbled out of my mouth, Clay got off the phone with his friend and burst with the news.

Clay: “Ryan, a house blew up down by Matt’s! It just….exploded!”
Ryan: “By Matt’s? That’s only two hundred yards away! How come we don’t see a fire?”

Around this time an entire brigade of rescue vehicles came screaming down the road and swerving around the corner. In fact, I had enough time to go get Colton out of bed and over to the window to watch them since the stream of sirens and flashing lights was almost endless. Before long, the vultures started coming in full force and by vultures I mean curious people who are only getting in the fucking way and who should have just stayed home. I can understand slowing down to look at an insane car wreck, but people who go out of their ways just to drive by the car wreck get on my nerves to no end. A cop finally pulled up alongside our house and started turning people around. Clay, Juls, and I sat on the steps listening to what he was telling people and we learned that there had been a gas leak in a nearby house for what must have been house. It built up in the garage and when the father went outside to start up his car, a spark from the engine ignited the entire place. He managed to crawl out of his car and into the street, where he was airlifted to a nearby hospital and luckily, nobody else was home at the time.

Needless to say, Clay and I were glued to the late night evening news and finally, we were able to see some pictures of the destruction. One of the first answers we got was why there was no fire blazing in the night sky – there was nothing to burn. The entire house was virtually vaporized and in its place was a pile of rubble and twigs of lumber that were smoldering with small fires. Debris was actually scattered across a few miles radii and they still won’t let us down there to take a look at it. I wanted to include some pictures along with this post, but the local news in this town makes the Spartanburg Herald Journal look like the New York Times, so I guess I’ll have to wait until they let us down there in a few days.

But don’t ever let me say again that nothing interesting happens up here.

Clay recently bought Grand Theft Auto: San Antonio or whatever the hell it’s called and I’ve been hooked since I picked up the controller. However, since talking about killing hookers isn’t nearly as much fun as actually killing hookers, I won’t bore you with the details. You’ll just have to take my word for it. Either that or go buy the game for yourself and start killing some hookers.

For the past week, I’ve been walking around screaming “I’m in a Flank Two position, everybody!” Clay and Julianne have surprisingly already gone through the stages that occur when I get hooked on something that is annoying to most people but hilarious to me. First, there’s a small window where everybody else finds it funny. Then we quickly enter what I like to call the “Uh oh, is he gonna keep doing this?” stage. Soon afterward comes the, “What do we do? Play along or make him stop?” stage followed by the “Good God, Ryan, if you don’t shut the fuck up, we’re going to strangle you with a dog leash in your sleep” stage. And finally, we arrive at the “…it’s Ryan, the most stubborn man on the planet, he who will not stop at anything if it brings him at least 0.0001% joy – we surrender” stage. That’s where we are right now.

So, in honor of the official return of Jack Bauer, I’ve changed the Title Bar for Shyzer and want to share with y’all a site I recently found. About a year ago, I stumbled across the “Random Vin Diesel Fact” page, which was an absolute goldmine.

That is, until I found the “Random Jack Bauer Fact” page. Out of the top thirty, I think my five favorite would have to be:

1. If Jack Bauer was in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and Nina Meyers, and he had a gun with 2 bullets, he’d shoot Nina twice.
2. Jack Bauer’s favorite color is severe terror alert red. His second favorite color is violet, but just because it sounds like violent.
3. Jack Bauer got Hellen Keller to talk.
4. You walk into a bar and Jack Bauer’s your wingman, you’re probably gonna get laid.
5. Jack Bauer can get McDonald’s breakfast after 10:30.

Okay, I lied, I can’t stop. These are just too damn funny. Let’s make this a top 10 list for good measure.

1. 1.6 billion Chinese are angry with Jack Bauer. Sounds like a fair fight.
2. Upon hearing that he was played by Kiefer Sutherland, Jack Bauer killed Sutherland. Jack Bauer gets played by no man.
3. Jack Bauer once forgot where he put his keys. He then spent the next half-hour torturing himself until he gave up the location of the keys.
4. When life gave Jack Bauer lemons, he used them to kill terrorists. Jack Bauer fucking hates lemonade.
5. Superman wears Jack Bauer pajamas.

And in our final 24 segment of the day, I would like to share with you a letter that was sent to Bill Simmons over at ESPN which is oh-so-true for a frighteningly high number of American citizens.

I think I was actually more upset over the assassination of former President David Palmer on “24″ last night than I would have been if our actual president would have been assassinated. It was like I lost a member of my own family. Maybe I’m just screwed up, but I don’t think so. Here is my question: If you forced every registered voter in America to watch seasons 1-4 on DVD, and convinced Dennis Haysbert to legally change his name to David Palmer, don’t you think he would win in a landslide in 2008? I have bounced this question off several people and Palmer has every vote so far, and most would have voted for him over Bush and Kerry.

Not only would we be electing David Palmer to office, but the guy who gives us those great All State commercials and Pedro Cerrano, the man who had no marbles. Yep, he’s got my vote.

When my mom goes to work, she’s gone for three to five days at a time. Growing up, that meant we had a babysitter come stay with us for those days since my Dad was usually off touring as well. Today, it’s still the same. My mom goes to work, the kids need somebody to watch them, and therefore a babysitter shows up. However, since I moved up here a few months back, I’ve talked my mom more and more into letting me watch them instead. It saves cash, which is always a good thing, and I like it better anyways with just me and the kids.

Colton has a tendency of suddenly spouting off random phrases, sayings, and entire conversations he’s overheard recently out of the blue. It’s hard to pick up on too, because usually half of the words that tumble from his mouth are actually spoken in a as of yet untranslated Native American tongue that sounds something along the lines of, “bicabakatiktaopikadubadubada.” His ramblings honestly sound as if he’s tuning the radio somewhere up in his brain, trying to find that right frequency that will allow him to emit comprehensive consecutive syllables. Therefore, the hard part is not trying to understand the gibberish, but trying to pick up where the radio surfing suddenly turns into real words for a few seconds before racing off into the black void of twaddle and static.

A few weeks back, our mom had left for a trip early in the morning and I had a few errands to run “in town,” so that afternoon I piled the trio into the passenger side of my truck and the adventure soon began. During the drive, Colton demanded we stop talking so that he could tell us a story and off he went channeling the dead, or at least that’s what it sounded like. We had no choice but to sit there and muffle our laughs and nod along with him when finally after a few minutes, he seemed to find the station he was looking for and began issuing orders to us.

Colton: “Guys, it’s time we had a wild party.”
Goob, Juls, & Clay (in unison): “What?”
Colton: “Yep, that’s right, a wild party. Ryan, you’re in charge of the music. Juls, you need to get the disco ball. And Clay, you bring the punch.”
Clay: “Well wait a minute, what’s your job?”
Colton: “Oh me? Um…I’ll take care of Mom!”
Juls: “But Mom already went to work this morning!”
Colton: “Well, looks like my job’s done! See y’all at the party!”

And with that, he was off into his own little world again as the rest of us burst into laughter.

One of these days, I hope we can figure out where he gets half the stuff he comes up with. Until then, I’ll just sit by the radio and see what’s on.

This past summer I wrote about going down to Charleston to spend some time with Fellner and his family at the beach. Some of his fellow relatives in attendance were his aunt, uncle, and four cousins from Kansas City, all of whom were quite fun and enjoyable to spend time with. Fellner’s cousins were especially adorable since they were all below age 9 or so, with the youngest, Gabrielle, clocking in around 4 years old.

So you can imagine the humor aroused when Fellner forwarded this to me:

I had to e-mail this story before I forgot it. At bedtime, when we say our prayers, all the kids get to “bless” whoever they want (God bless Mom, God bless Dad, etc.) The other night, we were saying prayers and it was Gabrielle’s turn to bless someone. We had already blessed all the family members so she was trying to think of someone else. Out of the blue she said “God bless Goob, that Kevin brought to the beach.” It was hilarious – I was surprised that she even remembered him and don’t know what made her think of him.

That’s right folks. You spend a week with me and the impact I have on you is so enormous, you’ll be making sure the Big Man is looking out for me. Which is great for me, since we all know how spotty my church attendance is. But luckily for Gabrielle, I like to return each and every favor I receive, so tonight she’ll be getting a little somethin’ somethin’ in the prayer department.

Hopefully I send it to the correct God, though. I can’t count how many prayers I screwed up on and accidentally sent to that damn Ganesha! An elephant with four arms…what will they think of next?!

And then one day I received a letter addressed to Mr. Delay.

About eight years ago, Atlanta Bread Company opened a small deli in the local mall and it was all the rage. I admit, they made some damn good sandwiches, but for a broke high school kid, they were a little pricey. One night, however, Chong and I were walking out of the movie theater and decided to grab some dinner before heading home. We strolled over to ABC and were about halfway through our meal when I noticed the small rectangle out of the corner of my eye. I have no idea what movie we had just seen, but it must have been a comedy, because I remember being in one of those giddy and punchy moods. You know the one, where everything is funny and God help you if somebody near by says the word “duty.”

Alex ran up to the counter and grabbed a pen and we proceeded to fill out the card with remarks such as “Our pickles were too soggy” and “The music here is gay” and “The checkout lady didn’t smile OR suggestively wink at me when I paid her my money!” At the end, it asked for our name and address. We settled on using “Art Vandelay” as our name, yet for some reason we actually used my real address.

About two weeks later, we were strolling through the hallways in school when one of Chong’s friend ran up to him and punched him in the chest. “What the hell did you do,” she demanded from him. Knowing a pissed off, psychotic girl when I saw one, I decided it was high time I get the hell away from this scene before it turned ugly, so I began to walk off. “Oh no, you’re in this too! You both were sitting there laughing your asses off while filling out that questionnaire!” It finally dawned on me that this was Chong’s friend that worked over at ABC. However, still being truly confused since we doubted our little review could have caused such a reaction, we asked her to elaborate. “We got a freaking 15 cent pay cut because of you guys! And somebody from corporate is coming to inspect us later this week. Whatever you morons wrote on that card pissed somebody off!”

We were stunned. They actually took that thing seriously? We figured the name would be signal enough that it was a joke since everybody and their cousin in that day and age knew “Art Vandelay” was the fictional character from Seinfeld.

Once we got home later that day, Chong came over to my house for a few minutes and we sat chatting in the kitchen as I ruffled through the mail. I remember stopping in mid-sentence and bursting into laughter when I saw who the envelope was addressed to. I ripped it open and looked at the letter just to see if they’d made a mistake on the outside.

Nope. They’d addressed the darn thing to a “Mr. Delay.” The letter went on to explain how they were very sorry and how they’d make sure to investigate into the poor quality of the food, the low level of customer service, and the “inappropriate” music, among many of the other silly things we’d complained about. We must have showed that letter to everybody we knew and beamed proudly when people asked if we were the ABC idiots. I’ve got no idea what happened to it, though, for I can’t remember actually seeing that letter in many years. It’s one of those many things you look back on and think, “Damn, I really wish I had kept that, if for no other reason as a reminder of how retarded and yet how much fun we used to have.”

However, I still don’t consider this issue resolved since I never got my free Oreo dessert. Maybe Mr. Delay needs to write another letter.

Now I just gotta figure out how to heat my mouse up.

I thought about sticking it in the microwave for a few minutes, but that wouldn’t be too feasible since you’d have to reheat it every few minutes. Plus there’s the whole plastic melts when heated factor. Damn chemistry. The other night I lit a few candles and placed them right next to me mouse, which actually worked in keeping the hand / mouse region warm. Yet thankfully I tried this method out first before rushing into mass production of Goob’s Mouse Flames or some other retarded name, because I quickly realized that in order to keep the area warm enough, you had to place the candles so close to your hand that you couldn’t move the mouse without touching them and you couldn’t touch them without suffering from 3rd degree burns. Now I’m all for going to the hospital in search of Hot Nurses, but it’s not nearly as much fun when you can’t use your right hand to…uh…shake their hand when you meet them!

I’m probably gonna buy a pack of those little heated pads that run on electricity next week and see if I can’t take apart my mouse and rig something up. The hardest part will be wiring it into the mouse itself so that it draws power from the computer, but I’m sure Google can help me out there. And then I’ll only have to find a company to produce them, draw a cool logo for the box, and buy a 4 AM infomercial timeslot on Comedy Central before people can start sending me $19.99. BUT WAIT! There’s more! If you act within the next twenty minutes, I’ll throw in this heated keyboard for FREE! That’s a $59.99 retail value for FREE!

Whoa, sorry, I got a little ahead of myself there. Wait a minute, did I just say a heated keyboard? Man, that’d be sweeeeet.

Also, the Wizards of Winter house got shut down. Too bad, seeing as how he spent 10 grand on it.

Blimey, don’t tell me ye scurvy dogs done fergot it be today! I outta throw ye lot into tha bilge fer that or turn ye into grub fer tha fishes!! Tha ship hands here at tha Goob Ship done already raised the Jolly Quarters fer tha day and tha poop deck shall soon be scrubbed handsomely. Me and tha lassies were gonna go watch a movie, but ye couldn’t see it, fer it was rated ARRRRRRRRG.

So belay what ye doing right now, grab some grog and some buckos, and start talkin’ like a pirate before I make ye alls walk tha plank!! Or at tha v’ry least, go buckle ye swash for a cup’ol ‘o minutes! But tis be Cap’n Sealegs Alderman sayin’ farwell. I be off in search of me booty of doubloon and a wench to keep me comp’ny ternight! ARG!

Marriage proposals, what is taking him so long?

So to whomever is out there waiting for me to offer my hand in holy matrimony, send me your picture. If you’re hot, that is.

You see, our number ended in 333. K-Mart’s ended in 666. So at the very minimum, we received two or three calls a week from unsuspecting customers who had dialed the phone without looking and simply misplaced their finger on the keypad. At first, we were polite and understanding:

“No, you’ve got the wrong number.”
“Nope, this is 333, you want 666. ”
“Yeah, this is K-Mart…haha, just kidding…”

That lasted all of 10 days. It soon became custom to sporadically hear throughout the Goob Household perfect impersonations of K-Mart employees; from the initial greeting, to the humming of the classic on-hold music while we “transferred” them to the department they sought, to the eventual part where we insulted / pissed off the caller and laughed after they hung up.

So I figured, why not recreate my two favorite K-Mart Phone Call memories; The Sold-Out Home & Garden Section and The Go Fuck Yourself Shoe Department.

The first one was actually performed by my brother Waynus. I had picked up the phone and been asked to be connected with the Home & Garden section without even so much as a simple “Hello.” This slight oversight by the caller for some reason pissed me off, so as I put her on hold, I told Waynus to pretend he worked in the H&G department and to pretend nothing was in stock. It went a little something like this.

Waynus: “Hello, this is the Home & Garden Department, my name is John, how may I help you?”
Caller: “I bought a fern bush from you just two days ago and it has already died. When will your next shipment be in, because these obviously came from a bad batch.” (notice how she didn’t say hello there either! Bitch!)
Waynus: “Hold on just one second miss, let me check our records….oh I’m so sorry, but we aren’t getting in any more ferns for the rest of the season.”
Caller: “What?! It’s April! What do you mean “the rest of the season?”
Waynus: “I honestly don’t know, I’m just reading what’s here in the logs. Tell ya what, I’ll let you come in and swap that dead fern for any plant you want once our next shipment comes in.”
Caller: “Oh, all right. Well, how about your next shipment of roses. When do they come in?”
Waynus: “Let’s see…Oh darn, we aren’t getting any more of them either.”
Caller: “Are you serious?! How can that be?”
Waynus: “You know how corporate offices can be. Nobody ever understands their reasoning…”
Caller: “Fine…(by this point she’s really getting frustrated)…How about orchids?”
Waynus: “Nope, no more of those either.”
Caller: “WHAT? How about daisies!?”
Waynus: “All out.”
Caller:”Marigolds?”
Waynus: “Nada.”
Caller: “TULIPS!?”
Waynus: “Not a one!”
(This literally went one for a full 60-90 seconds before she finally lost it. The whole time I was on the phone listening on, holding down the mute button, and trying not to burst out laughing.)
Caller: “WELL WHAT THE HELL DO YOU HAVE THEN?! I’VE JUST NAMED EVERY SINGLE DAMN FLOWER IN MY GARDEN!”
Waynus: “Okay, okay, let me go ask my manager……..Okay, he says we are getting in some ferns soon.”
Caller: “FERNS?! THAT’S WHAT THIS WHOLE CONVERSATION IS ABOUT! YOU SAID YOU WEREN’T GETTING ANY MORE IN!”
Waynus: “I did? Oh…um…hold on….yep, we’re not getting any more in!”
Caller: (Then there was this loud scream of anger followed by eight or nine curse words)
Waynus: “Wait, wait, wait, it says here we are getting some daffodils in soon!”
Caller: “WHEN?!”
Waynus: “Um….oh, no. It says we aren’t getting any more daffodils in soon.”
(More curse words followed by me finally losing it and bursting out laughing)

Honestly, I have no idea why she got so upset. She must have been having a bad day before hand or something. I didn’t feel bad though, because she could have avoided it all simply by saying “hello” to me at the start.

My most favorite call, however, needs a little background story. Chong and I were for some unknown reason wandering around Super K-Mart due to massive boredom and…well, boredom. Apparently our loitering, however, was against some asinine policy, because we were soon being followed by an assistant manager named Mark. It was apparent that he thought we were about to shoplift something, which is some pretty sound reasoning and all because every teenager in the world who walks through a store looking at things is obviously up to no good! He finally swooped down upon us with a Rent-A-Cop by his side and told us we either had to purchase something or leave. As we began to protest, he held up his hand and told the Rent-A-Cop to escort us out of the building. What Mark failed to realize was that he had just pissed off two immature teenagers who had the means and the goal to make his life as much a living hell as possible. We finally looked at each other, silently nodded, and proceeded to walk to the front of the store, and grab two shopping carts each, which made the Rent-A-Cop back off and let us be. We filled them all to the brim with as much shit as possible, before taking them to Mark and telling him we changed our minds and didn’t want any of it anymore. As he was screaming about how immature we were, we walked off smiling and feeling that justice had been served.

That was, until thirty minutes later when the phone rang in my kitchen and Chong picked it up since he was closer.

Chong: “Hello?”
Caller: “GET ME THE FUCKING SHOE DEPARTMENT!”
Chong: “One moment please!” (puts the caller on mute) “Dude, there is some chick on the phone who is pissed! Tell her you’re the shoe department and make her think you are Mark! ”
Goob: “You are truly evil….I like it!” (grabs the phone) “Yeah, this is the K-Mart shoe department. What the hell do you want?”
Caller: “I WAN…..wait, what did you just say to me?”
Goob: “I said this is the shoe department, woman, what the hell do you want? We’re a little busy right now and I don’t have time to be chit chatting on the phone with angry customers.”
Caller: “How dare you talk to me like that?! What’s your name, asshole, I’ll have your job for that!”
Goob: “HA! I don’t think so, bitch. My name is Mark and I’m an assistant manager down here. They wouldn’t fire me over your word alone! So why don’t you go try and threaten somebody else!”
Caller: “I have never in my life been treated more disrespectfully from an employee of a store than I am being treated right now! You better believe that I plan to…”
Goob: (I cut her off) “Listen bitch, I don’t care what you plan to do. You can call my boss. You can call the corporate office. You can even come down here and meet me face-to-face. The end result is still going to be the same. Nobody will give a flying fuck. Boo hoo, so you’ll take your business elsewhere. We won’t care! We have millions and millions of customers, you think we’ll cry because you’ve gone to shop at Wal-Mart? Hell, from the sound of your voice, you’re probably fat and ugly, so getting you out of our store will probably make things a little prettier around here!”
Caller: (She had really started going off when I said “fat and ugly”) “FAT AND UGLY!? FAT AND UGLY?! I’LL HAVE YOUR JOB FOR THIS! I’LL….”
Goob: (seeing that my job here was done, I felt it best to interrupt her again and get off the phone) “Blah, blah, blah. Like I said, we’re busy here, slut. So either you can get your whiny ass down here and ask to talk to me face-to-face, or you can shut the hell up and leave me alone. The choice is yours.”

I’m sure nothing ever happened to Mark over all that. I highly doubt he was in the shoe department then and even if he was, I’m pretty sure there would have been some other employee that could vouch for him saying that he never said any of those things on the phone. But I like to think that that lady actually went down to the store and caused Mark a little bit of trouble while he sorted everything out. If there’s anything I truly hate in the world, it’s profiling people just because some of their peers do certain things.

Unfortunately, my phone number no longer ends in a cool miss-dial like that. But it sure is fun to talk about those days with my brothers and sister up here in Virginia. In fact, they have reminded me of heaps of hijinks that we used to pull back in the day, which I had completely forgotten about but which their little brains soaked up richer and fuller than mine. In fact, I think I’ll create a new category called “hijinks” just for little stories like these.

SHE’S MY FREAKING MOM! BACK OFF!

I’ve had to deal with this my whole life. It still doesn’t make it any less gross to think about though =)

Yeah, you could say things are a bit different living back at home again. =)

Remember how I talked about something a week ago called Dial a Jerk? Well, ever since Stan released this feature a week ago, the response has been amazing. Complete and total strangers have called to leave us messages. Daily readers have called to leave us messages. We’ve even had a Telephone Relay Operator (those folks that type stuff out for deaf people) call and read us lyrics from Basket Case.

So, naturally, we all felt the need to call in and leave messages for each other. I called once to complain about Stan’s music selection / volume level while he was on Live Stan Cam one afternoon, so not only did everybody get to hear my voice, we got to watch and view Stan’s reaction when he received my message! Angela also called and left us a brief message, although I have to say, we were completely and utterly shocked. Not by the fact that she called, but by the fact of how her voice sounded. I think it was about 0.001% of what either one of us thought it would sound like. So we asked her, nay, we begged her to call us the next time she became “socially happy” and leave us a message.

As they say, ask and ye shall receive slurred drunken messages from friends!.

Seriously, it’s by far one of the best drunken voicemails I’ve heard, and that’s including my own. I think the best part of the night was the conversation Stan and I were having about it as tears streamed down our faces from laughing so much.

Stan: I like how we are laughing and dissecting her message and she is either upside down in a ditch or getting buck nutty with the boy she met. Hahaha.

Seriously, if you have 40 seconds and you want to laugh, and go and listen. Now.

As we all know, I am a jerk. I’m even in a collective circle of other jerks. The leader of said circle is Stan, a familiar face here on Shyzer. Always the innovator, he devised Stan Cam earlier this year where he set up a webcam to follow his every movement. That’s was cool.

Later, he came up with Jerk TV, where a funny movie would be broadcast on Circle of Jerks for anybody and everybody to watch. That was pimp.

But earlier today, he simply outdid himself. He set up Jerk Voicemail.

It’s quite simple. Whenever you are bored / drunk / angry / stoned / happy / pissed off at El Nino / in jail and needing to make your one phone call / or plain out in a goofy mood, you can call Jerk Voicemail. The message will then be posted on Circle of Jerks for all to hear. The possibilities are endless with this and I for one cannot wait to get smashed and send in a drunken voicemail. But since I don’t see getting drunk in the foreseeable future, I’m just gonna call tomorrow and see what happens. I recommend you all do the same!

The number is 636-578-7220 and your privacy will be protected to the fullest extent. Your number will never be revealed to the public and if you accidentally say something personal in the message, we’ll bleep it out. So what are you waiting for?! Go call right now and leave a message! And if you’re too chicken to do so, head on over to Circle of Jerks and listen to the messages that have already been sent in!

A few days ago I spoke of a movie I was partaking in where the video class on campus filmed three International students more or less making complete asses out of themselves. Of course, the minute I get my copy of that tape, it will be uploaded here on Shyzer for all to laugh at me. But that’s not what I have for you today. You see, at yesterday’s shoot, a free keg was provided. Even though it was only barely after the crack of noon on a Sunday, I’m never one to turn down free refreshments. It’s simply rude. So as I got ready for the first shoot, I snagged a cup, scribbled Goob across it, and filled it to the brim.

The shoot lasted for almost 10 hours.

Needless to say, by the end of it, I was a tad inebriated. When I stumbled off the bus and into the corridor, I made a beeline for my room, but was caught off guard and spotted by a few of my mates here. As luck had it, Hannah was one of said mates and Hannah is the owner of a sweet little digital camera that can also take high quality movies.

I think you can guess what happened next. – I hope you downloaded it while you could, because the video is no longer here!

Ever since the success of the Shyzer Shuffle video, coupled with the fact that I want to start adding weekly videos here on Shyzer if at all possible if I can figure out how to film them, I figured I’d test out Windows Movie Maker and see how it works. In reality, this was more of a time for me to test and make sure I could get the conversions, compressions, and watermarks done corectly and so far, they all seem to work perfectly. So if you want more videos, be sure to let me know in the comments / tagboard and maybe even leave a few requests.

Oh, and one last thing. Tempe is my fan, who I’ve not only named, but who has more of a personality than some actual humans I know. Some made fun of me for loving and caring for Tempe and actually tried to seperate us. He was kidnapped from me last month and held hostage until the criminals (ie. Hannah) finally felt bad and released him. Our reunion was quite tearful.

Aboriginals and Education

As stated in the Title of this post, the Current Groin Grabbingly Count is 1. I hope to hit 5 by the time this is over.

Is there anything more frustrating that an 0-11 slump at the plate? I think not. In fact, I have twice as many stolen bases as I do runs scored this season. And my runs scored total is higher than my hits total. Ouch. At least I can still catch the ball with blinding brilliance.

And finally, now that it is May, the “Four Essays That I Don’t Give A Shit About” countdown has officially begun. Starting around May 10th and lasting until the 20th (I actually have no idea about those dates. I might want to investigate that a little more in depth), I have four essays due in four different classes. But seeing as how I don’t care about them and want to have a little fun with them, I am going to pull what my friends and I call a Psych AP. What is that, you ask?

During my senior year of high school, one of the AP courses I took was Psychology. It was one of the fairly newer AP courses offered and because of that, my high school had yet to adequately filled the teaching position. So, when my classmates and I discovered that we were being taught by someone who had recently graduated with an Interior Designing Degree, I tossed all aspects of being studious outside the proverbial window. Why study and pay attention in class when our teacher was simply reading out of the book to us? I could do that on my own time, and so I dedicated the semester to having fun in the class.

As exam time quickly approached, my teacher openly wondered aloud how I would pass the exam. My test grades consisted of low Bs from which I managed to pull off simply by reading through the chapters 30 minutes before the test, which meant that I was retaining absolutely nothing in my memory bank beyond two hours. But I was not worried, for I was confidant in my abilities to not only wing through something I didn’t care about, but to wing thought it with style. Goob Style.

The day of the AP exam finally had arrived in mid-May and as we filed into the library, I sat down at my alphabetically assigned seat next to my good buddy Fellner and began chatting with him. My lore for having done just an hour of studying was known far and wide by this point and we discussed how in the world I thought I’d be able to pass this baby. I wasn’t worried about the multiple choice section since I knew I could pull that off somehow, but instead it was the essay section where my qualms lied. It was broken down into two essays, with each essay having two possible questions to choose from. It was pure luck of the draw in this section and the house had the advantage.

At the mid-way point, we received a few minutes break while the multiple choice portion was collected and the essays were distributed. I whispered over to Fellner in the next cubicle that now was the time of reckoning as we were about to find out what kind of essays we had to choose from. As the teachers told us to begin, Fellner chuckled and wished me luck as we both tore open our packets.

I scanned over the first two questions and distinctly remember thinking “……………Oh shit.” Deciding that I might have to bullshit the first essay, I decided to skip ahead to the second essay and try to answer that one first. I flipped a few pages, found the next set of questions, and again distinctly remember thinking “Wait….I thought Pavlov was the dog’s name! You mean he was the psychologist? Then what was the dog’s name?!” Apparently, Lady Luck was not smiling down on me that day.

So, seeing as how I had an hour and a half of mandatory silence to write two essays I didn’t even understand the questions to, I did the natural solution. I started whispering to Fellner about how fucked I was. Of course, this didn’t help his predicament any because he was actually trying to answer his questions, but it made me feel better, if only for a few minutes. But I soon found myself not only extremely bored, but receiving the evil eye from the teachers who saw me talking and not writing, which is when I arrived at my glorious decision. I’d just start writing. Not about the questions or even psychology, but about whatever came to mind. And for the next hour and twenty minutes, I wrote more babble than I ever have in my entire life.

I wrote about how retarded my psychology teacher was, about how fun my classmates were since they enjoyed my goofiness, and about how I wanted to know the name of Pavlov’s dog. I wrote about my top five favorite Simpsons episodes and about how Fellner was stifling his giggles over the fact that I was writing about the Simpsons on a Psychology AP exam. I wrote every single funny knock-knock joke that I know (all three of them!) and about how the Mariners were off to a hot start that April (This was in 2001, the year they would go on to win 116 games.) In fact, I filled page after page of random nonsense, right up until the point where the teacher pulled the paper out from under my pen. I’ll never forget the last few sentences I wrote, because I described how the bell had just rung, how the teachers were telling us to stop writing no matter what, how I was being yelled at because I was still writing about how I wasn’t supposed to be writing, and how a teacher started marching over to me to take my essay away from me. The last sentence was something along the lines of “Oh no, here she comes! Damnit, okay, I have to go, but remember, if you didn’t laugh at least once during this essay, your soul is dead! Oh shit, here she is! Nooooooo,” which was followed by a pen streak running all the way down the page since I refused to lift my pen as she pulled the essay away from me.

Needless to say, my friends and I had a great laugh for the next few months about how I had treated the exam. A few people didn’t believe me, but I had Fellner as my witness since I had continually kept giving him a hushed play-by-play as I wrote my babble. In fact, I would to this day give anything to be able to read that essay again. It might be some of the best coherent, balls-to-the-wall writing I have ever compiled. If only there was a way to get my hand on it…

Anyway, I went ahead and made plans to take Psychology during my second semester in college since I had no chance of passing the AP exam. I had taken a few other AP courses that year, and so when the results became available in July, I phoned in to see what I had made. The grading scale was on a system of 1 to 5. Five was perfect, four was good stuff, three was adequate, two and one were failing. So you can imagine my surprise when I heard

…blah, blah, blah…Psychology. Three. Blah, blah, blah…

Wait a minute. Did she just say I made a three? A THREE? I PASSED? WHAT????? To this day, I still have no idea how I passed. I like to think it was because I made the person reading over my essay smile and laugh. I like to think that my essay broke up his monotonous day of reading pointless after pointless essay about emotional development and children’s stress limits and guys named Pavlov who in the great realm of things were talking out of their asses. I like to think that it was my pure randomness and goofiness that let my grader say, “Oh fuck it, I’ll give this kid a three!”

And this, my friends, is pulling a Psych AP. I don’t plan on spending days in the library doing research for a topic I care little to nothing about. I want to have fun with these essays. I want one of the essays to contain “Flanders Sucks!” in each paragraph and also contain the phrase “groin-grabbingly delicious”, a la Homer when he becomes a food critic. I want one essay to contain a scanned drawing of one of the pictures my little sister has drawn me. And of course, I want to have enough facts in my essays to make sure I pass, which shouldn’t be hard enough given that all I need is a 50.

The melding of fun and facts should be an interesting venture. I’m actually kind of looking forward to it.

The Alien Abduction Preventive Device is guaranteed for LIFE. Should you or the holder of the Alien Abduction Preventive Device be abducted 110% of the purchase price will be refunded. You can and must protect yourself and your loved ones from ALIEN ABDUCTION!

Being the ever-so-curious person that I am, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to investigate this site, so I clicked one of the many three links on the site. Upon further inspection, it appeared that the protection device was nothing more than a little pin with a line through a space saucer. Seems effective enough to me. I mean, just because an advanced race can conquer space travel, anal probing, and the mysterious of women (I’m just guessing on that last one. Hopefully somebody can figure them out), then a little copper pin would be more than enough to thwart their plans.

Still not sold? Okay, well then let me furnish you with some of the details of the guarantee.

Details of guarantee furnished with the Device.

See? Isn’t that enough to make you plop down $6.75 of your hard earned cash? And besides, if you do happen to get abducted, remember that you are getting not only a full refund, but an extra 10% back. That’s 52 cents my friends. I’d almost want to be abducted just to get my grubby hands on two quarters and pennies.

Seriously, who in the hell would buy this? Any person who purchases something like this with the realistic hopes of being protected from aliens needs to be rounded up and placed in the desert. That way, if the aliens ever do come down and demand a few heathens to sacrifice, we can point them out west and tell ‘em that we’re one step ahead.

As I was working on the film, I realized something else. Unless you have ever met me in real life, I don’t think Shyzer readers have ever heard my voice. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think I’ve ever uploaded a sound clip of myself talking and therefore, everybody is now able to hear how I talk. I’d like to add that my voice is actually deeper in real life. Anyway, here’s the clip (please right click and “save as”)

If the film doesn’t run on your computer, please let me know and tell me the error it gives you. I know I’m completely jinxing it by saying this, but I think I have it so that anybody should be able to view it. If it gives you a codec error, it means you haven’t been keeping your computer up to date…shame on you!…so you will have to go out and download the newest codec, which is only a Shyzer search away if you use the search function over there. I included a link to the latest codec in a post last month, so go dig that up and have a look.

And please, let me know what you think. If I even get one “hahaha, that was great” comment, there will be plenty more to come.

ONE LAST THING. I call my mom “mother” in the clip. I think the last time I called her that, I was 15 and trying to impersonate a stuck up snob. I have no idea why I called her mother in this clip.

I’m now back home and prepared for my trip. My apartment in Columbia is cleared out and all my stuff is packed up and ready to go. God I’m so nervous / excited. I spent Friday night here at the house with my dad, his girlfriend, and my brother just hanging out and telling old stories of crap we pulled in our younger days that always bring a smile, no matter what. Waynus and I stayed up until 0300 (yes, I’m forcing myself to get in the habit of using military time.) before getting up at 0500 to go to the Flea Market. The only reason I tell you of this is because we managed to shoot some decent footage of ourselves acting like complete assholes / 12-year-olds, so if I can ever figure out how to get my computer to recognize my camcorder, I’ll upload them to Shyzer. Chong happened to be back in town for one final week of training, so of course I went out with him and all his friends from work to Greenville. Much fun was had, even more beer was consumed, and I somehow managed to drive back to his house before crashing on his couch. A very fine sendoff with my bro if I do say so myself.

The Goob Experience also ended this afternoon. In case you’re too lazy to click the link, I’ll let you know how the bidding turned out:

Un-fucking-believable doesn’t even begin to describe that. At the start of the auction, I told many people that if it sold for $10, I’d be happy. Well, right now, I am 11.250 times as happy as I would have been. I called Waynus right before the auction ended today and we watched it go from $50 to $112.50 in a matter of minutes. I wish I had written down some of the quotes from that conversation so that I could add them to the ones below, but rest assured that “Holy fuck” was uttered many times. I had no idea who mighty320 or mystericbidder was, but I knew that I would at least be able to learn the identity of mystericbidder. Oh how very wrong I was. But first, here are some of my favorite quotes that I had enough sense to write down after they were said so that I could put them here on Shyzer

“He only bid $21?! What a pussy! Who the fuck!?” – Fellner, commenting on Boston Matt raising the bid by one dollar at a time.

“I am hoping someone will buy it for valentines day…..for me” – Different Andy, not the one who bid on the experience.

“This guy must have a tiny dick. I mean, if you were that scared to bid against me, we are talking minuscule penis action.” – Fellner, talking about Boston Matt, but before we knew it was him.

“WELL, now we’re really throwing our hat in the game. Now we’re really shaking it up, making it interesting with a big $23.50″ – Fellner, and I bet you can guess who he’s talking about.

“I might have to dip into my savings. My kids won’t be able to go to college because I bid too much on the Goob Experience. I’ll have to get some money wired to me from Switzerland.” – Still Fellner, although this was by far the most sarcastic I’ve ever heard him talk and I was rolling.

“I want to know who the fuck this person is. Now.” – Fellner upon learning he’d lost the bidding war.

“Jesus christ man, $112.50. I’m gonna sell my fucking soul on ebay” – Dave

“That is at least 2 hookers, maybe 3 if you get grungy female extras from the first mad max” – Andy, the one who bid $10.

“I feel like I haven’t earned it. No, I actually feel like I’m being taunted by this person. I want to know who it is!” – Fellner, upon learning the experience had been donated to him.

If you read the caption after that last quote correctly, then you’re probably sitting there going, “Donated to Fellner? Huh?” Well, when I received the e-bay form saying the auction had been sold, alarms immediately went off when I saw the address was 123 Main Street, New York, NY 10108. I quickly contacted the buyer and began drafting an e-mail to e-bay to complain when I got another e-mail. Mystericbidder had already sent the money to my Paypal account. Stunned, I went ahead and transferred the funds to my bank account and within a few minutes, I received an e-mail from the winner. They sent me they AIM name (which was something like Mystery9798750890987647 or whatever) and we began to talk. They asked to remain anonymous and said that they wanted to go ahead and invoke Item #11, which was the potpourri section. I asked what they wanted and they replied with “I would like you to donate every item to that roebuckrunner fellow, except for Item #3 (the pizza breadstick recipe). I’m interested to see what that tastes like.” I asked why they wanted to do this and they told me that it was a reward for his valiant bidding efforts. They said they love e-bay simply for the thrill of the last minute bidding and thought that my auction was so funny, they felt like bidding.

So, as it turns out, Fellner “won” the experience, even if he doesn’t feel like he earned it. In fact, he thinks I’m the one behind this, but I can assure you that I have no role in this whatsoever. I was paid, I had the conversation, and I was asked to make sure they remained anonymous. Craziness if you ask me. So, if you feel inclined to wish me a happy birthday today, please make sure you send the same message to Fellner. His AIM name is USCFellner or if you don’t have IM, you can do so here in the comments. But either way, all Happy Birthday requests need to make their way to him one way or the other!

I am now off to try and get this camcorder to download its files onto my computer, work on Shlyrics, and give the “cast” section a much needed update before heading overseas.

Oh, and Jaime, thank you again. Thank you so, so, so, so, so very much. That was awesome of you.

[edit]Apparantly I made a few phone calls as well last night. To anybody who received one, I’d be very interested in hearing just what in the hell I said to you, so please IM me and let me know. [/edit]

A week or so ago, Waynus and I were forced to share a bed at our aunt and uncle’s house since they were in the process of buying a new spare bed. We didn’t mind at all, but it did lead to the occasional mid-night blanket tug-o-war match for supremacy of the covers. Plus, the Berlin Wall of Pillows we constructed only lasted a few minutes before we both started beating the crap out of each other for attempting to inch it towards the other person, thereby securing more lebensraum for our bodies. However, there were times before our struggles when we both shared the bed peacefully. Every night we’d lie there, me reading my book and him talking on the phone, and not utter a single word to each other. It was bliss. Yet, there was one such occasion where I not only threw down my book in disbelief, but ended up getting out of bed, having a complete meltdown, quizzing a tenth grade girl to the brink of tears, and then yelling at her in rage.

Some of you may remember this post I made last summer about the stupidity of one of Tommy’s friends. Well, he failed to learn that stupid people are, well, stupid and so he continues to associate with this bimbo. As I was just getting to the good part of Fail Safe, I heard the following phrase come out of Waynus’ phone.

So you’re in California? Is that on the other side of the country?

Immediately my brain was livid. I couldn’t believe my ears and yet at the same time, I remembered my previous encounter with South Carolina’s very own Jessica Simpson, and so I knew that this was not out of the norm for her. The minute Waynus heard it, he squeezed his eyes shut knowing I was within earshot. My emotions pleaded to just let it go and continue reading, but I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t.

Goob: Wait a damn minute. What the hell did she just say?
Waynus: Nothing! Nothing! Just let it go!
Goob: Oh hell no, give me that damn phone.

I made a swipe to grab the phone, but Waynus jerked it out of my reach and went into damage control. He claimed it was an honest mistake, one that anybody could have made at 0300. “Okay,” I said, “Let me give her another geography question. Ask her how many states there are.” Waynus looked at me for a second before sighing heavily. He knew the exact same thing I did. The answer would be anything but correct.

Waynus: Um, Catherine, let me ask you a question. How many states are there in the U.S. My brother is just wondering because he doesn’t think you’ll know.
Stupidest Tenth Grader In America: Fifty-one! HA! GOTCHA! I bet he didn’t think I’d know that, so just tell him to back the fuck off!

I went absolutely apeshit. Gotcha? Gotcha? GOTCHA?!?! YOU GOT IT FUCKING WRONG! Waynus almost lost it upon viewing my reaction. I jumped out of bed, grabbed a handful of pillows and tossed them across the room. Our baby cousin was sleeping in the next room and Waynus was trying to muffle a hysterical outburst as I grabbed one of the pillows and screamed into it. I finally looked up and just shook my head.

Waynus: Look, maybe she just doesn’t know geography. Everything you’ve ever asked her had to do with geography. Ask her something else!
Dumb Retard: Ask me about current events! I keep up with the news!
Goob:…….Fine. Let’s see here…. Okay, name either country we’ve invaded in the last three years.
Dumb Retard: Oh geez, this is hard. It’s one of those I countries, right?
Goob: Waynus, I swear to God if I ever meet this girl, I may strangle her on the spot.
Waynus: Give her another question! Those middle eastern countries are easily confused!
Goob: Okay, what just killed a bunch of people in Asia? I’ll give you a hint, it was a natural disater.
Dumb Retard: Hell if I know….
Goob & Waynus: IT WAS A FREAKING TSUNAMI!
Dumb Retard: Oh, that’s like a wave or something, isn’t it! I know that from Johnny Tsunami!

I was speechless. This had to be a horrible joke. How could somebody be this retarded, honestly? I wanted it to end and yet at the same time, curiosity and rage had formed a strange mixture that made me want to see just how stupid she was before making sure she never passed on her genes to a future generation.

Waynus: This has got to stop before you kill somebody.
Fucking Moron: NO! I want to prove to him that I’m not dumb.
Goob: Haha, good luck with that. Okay, how about a few history questions?
Fucking Moron: Yeah, ask me something about history! That’s my second best subject in school!
(Waynus whispering to me): Please, ask her something easy. I don’t want you to kill her.
Goob: Catherine, who fought in WWII. Anybody. Name any damn country that fought in the war and what side they were on.
Fucking Moron: America and somebody…didn’t we fight the Jews?!
Goob & Waynus: WHAT?! DIDN’T WE FIGHT THE JEWS? WHAAAAAAAT?
Fucking Moron: Common guys, this is really hard. Ask me something common.

I felt sick. I’m not joking. Even my stomach, upon hearing her response, threw its hands up in protest over her stupidity and threatened to rebel. My knees suddenly felt weak and my head was spinning. Didn’t we fight the Jews? Yeah, we fought the Jews. It was that Anne Frank bitch who started the whole thing by making bagels in her local banks. Luckily we had our good buddy Hitler around to help us coral them up into nice bed and breakfasts in Germany and Poland. Jesus, my eight-year-old sister even knows that Germany was “the bad guy” in WWII.

Goob: I can’t go on. This is just too much. She’s actually made me sick.
Waynus: Wait, I’m sure she can answer one question, can’t you Catherine? Here, I’ll give you the easiest one I know. Who was the first President of the United States?
Never Needs To Procreate: Um…I’m really tired. I don’t know.
Waynus: Oh Jesus Christ, I can’t talk to you anymore tonight Catherine. You don’t know?! You’re an idiot! Goodnight.

I pray that our bodies never enter the same room in real life. Even though I’ve never tried prison food, I already know I have no desire to eat it for the rest of my life.

Oh, and just in case your computer doesn’t show you the video, you need to install the latest codec for your computer. (And might I add, if this is the case, shame on you! Keep your computer updated!)

As most of you already know, I’m heading to Australia soon to study for a few months. As exciting as this is, it does bring with it certain unwelcome pains in the ass, such as hunting for a new roommate to take over my apartment lease halfway through the school year. The search started in early November and while there was been a few Maybes here and there, nothing real substantial has come to fruition yet.

About a week ago, I received a call from Mike who inquired about the room. He was a recent college grad who had just been accepted into USC’s Graduate program and was looking for a place to stay next semester. I was in the process of giving him all the details when he cut me off and said he’d take it. I was flabbergasted and immediately told him I’d start letting everybody know the place was no longer available. He asked if he could drop by and sign the papers the following Tuesday and we agreed to talk around noon that day so I could give him directions. I couldn’t tell which one of us was more excited. Him for having found such a “sweet-ass, bitchin’” location or me for finally having found a warm, living body to take this $375 rent off my hands every month, including January!

Tuesday rolled around and he called just as scheduled. The conversation went something like this:

Mike: Hey dude, what’s up? I’m leaving my place now, so let me go ahead and like get some directions so that I can come check out this awesome digs of yours!
Goob: Aight, well how do you normally come into town?
Mike: Uh, like from US 20 South.
Goob: US 20 South? Where the hell is that? Okay, well then how do you normally get to I20 or I26?
Mike: Where? I’ve never heard of those. I’ve got to admit I’m new to that area, so we might have to go a little more general here.
Goob: (Confused at this point since Columbia pretty much only has I20 and I26). You’re new to the area? I thought you said you’ve been into town before. You did visit USC at least once before you agreed to go to Grad School here, right? How did you get into Columbia then?
Mike: What the hell are you talking about, dude? I’ve never been to Columbia.
Goob: Oh for the love of God. Okay, what is the nearest heavily populated city you live by? Atlanta? Charlotte? What the hell state are you coming from?!
Mike: Dude, I live in San Francisco.
Goob: (It’s finally dawned on me.) Ahhhh. Okay, well if you still want this apartment, the commute to your USC is gonna be about 5 days or so, depending on how fast you can drive.
Mike: What?!
Goob: I go to the University of South Carolina, you moron. I take it you are going to the University of Southern California? Did you not notice that my craigslist ad was placed under Charlotte? And did you not read the University of South Carolina I have in parenthesis next to USC in my ad?
Mike: Oh, you are shitting me! Dude, I was like so stoked to find a place so cheap right next to campus man! I just figured you screwed up and placed the ad under Charlotte instead of Los Angeles. Damn it, now I have no fucking place to live!
Goob: Yes, because Charlotte and Los Angeles are so commonly confused. Smooth move bud. Good luck finding a place.

And they claim to be the smarter USC.