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Let’s see, what’s on the agenda for today? Ah yes, I see I have a full schedule ahead of me. First was getting up at 8 this morning, quickly followed by finishing my rereading of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Check and check.

I have the afternoon and evening blocked off for basking in the glow of my excessive nerdiness and then I wrap things up by punching my way through a crowd of 9 year olds at Barnes & Nobles at 12:01am.

Yep, sounds like a full day to me.

The first of the Duck Armada I wrote about last month has landed on the British coast.

From the looks of it, they’ve already begun with the chemical warfare! You’ll end up spending that $100 prize on medical bills in an effort to cure yourself of whatever disease(s) you contract from touching them.

Dear Aspiring Failed Authors,

Look, let’s just get this out of the way. Tolkien is great and all and I throughly love the land of Middle Earth, but the tradition of creating songs and inserting their words into a book is not only annoying, it’s retarded. Stop copying him. If I don’t know the tune the words should be sung to, then it’s just a poem. And I think it’s an established fact that poems suck. They’re like riddles, but with less fun and more desire to stab yourself with a spoon. He was only able to pull it off because you knew that if you just grunted through it, the next page might have some goblins or trolls or talking trees. Your story most likely has a romantic love triangle and/or a possible clue to who committed the murder in the first chapter. Chances are people are only reading your book because they’re trying to fill the time before the next Harry Potter book comes out. You could have flying space aliens bring back Abraham Lincoln in your story and nobody would really care. They’re just thinking to themselves how in the world is Harry going to get Snape. So please, for the love of all that is Holy, just stop.

And with that, enjoy your 4th of July tomorrow everybody.

While sitting in a Chinese government office this week, I found myself distracted by the Chinese version of CNN being blared at around 900 decibels throughout the building. My BOSE noise canceling headphones work great on jet airplanes at 30,000 feet, but they couldn’t shake the Asian Soledad O’Brien. After conceding defeat, I figured I’d just stare at the screen a while and see what I could learn and the only thing I discovered is that China has a huge hobby for ripping off American commercials. For instance, remember this commercial below?

Click To Play

Yeah, the official Beijing 2008 Olympics Committee totally ripped that off, except they found a way to make an even cheesier and longer version with worse actors and more absurd scenarios, like a little Chinese boy running through the streets chasing his soccer ball only to be saved by an aware driver who slams on the brakes at the last minute. Quick cut to another guy standing on the curb and staring at this little Kodak moment with eyes aglow. Now, call me old fashion, but isn’t that just called being a good driver? Is it common practice in China for drivers to mow down any pedestrian in the street at will? Because otherwise, that little act of kindness was probably executed out of the driver’s desires not to end up like Jack Bauer instead of helping his fellow man.

It got better though, as one of the good deeds was done by a man walking down a crowded street and picking up a recently dropped apple by the woman in front of him, who promptly thanked the good Samaritan and chomped right into the tasty snack. Oh, I left out the part where the apple was dropped IN A PUDDLE ON THE STREET. But hey, China only has 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world. I’m sure it was perfectly healthy.

Halfway through the commercial (it was honestly about 90 seconds long), I asked the guy next to me if he noticed it as well and we spent the next hour dissecting every ad we saw as there were plenty. McDonalds has a campaign that basically rips off The King from Burger King, except it’s not nearly as funny and his face will most certainly haunt my dreams. And even though I have no idea what they were saying, Chinese car commercials looked to be just as annoying as their American counterparts. Glad to see that crappy ads screaming at you to buy a new truck is a global experience.

Eat it, New York Times. You can have your fancy crossword puzzle. I’ll take this weird game that is the bastard child of what I believe to be Sudoku and Saki.

This “game” goes from Super Easy to I Need A Drink in about 5 minutes, so just stick with it.

So what’s the proper solution to knee pains that crop up for absolutely no reason and continue to linger for weeks on end despite no rigorous activity on my part? Because if the answer is to drink heavily every night until the pain subsides, I am all over that.

Good, then take a deep breath and check out this psychedelic photo.

I saw it for the first time the other day while a bit tipsy and I’m pretty sure soon thereafter I was convinced I’d just been teleported into an alternate universe. Then I realized I’d just passed out in the freezer again. Luckily this time my mom didn’t get a chance to take pictures of me, so I count myself as being lucky.

Some might wonder where I’ve vanished off to this past week. What with the first ten days of baseball at hand and tons of teachers taking off early before the start of Spring Break, it’d be easy to write it off as working and watching the Mariners get snowed out three day straight in Cleveland (seriously, who in the hell made the baseball schedule this year? It’s absolutely wretched league wide…)

But no, none of the reasons you can come up with can accurately account for my absence from the known universe. That, my friends, can be blamed on none other than Clayster. A few days ago, he went out and purchased Guitar Hero II for the Xbox360 and saying I’m hooked would be putting it politely.

I’ve missed at least ten consecutive meals because of this game. I see the “chords” to Sweet Child O’ Mine in my sleep. I think I’ve developed arthritis in my fingers in mere days. And yet it’s taking everything in me not to stop typing this post and run over to play Free Bird.

It’s been a good experience for me beyond a pure video gaming nerd aspect though. I’ve discovered some new songs that I otherwise would have never listened to since I’m not that into any hardcore metal or rock. Hell, they’ve got Trogdor on there! Ok, fine, I admit I’m just looking for any angle that’ll give me another excuse to go rock out to some more Foo Fighters.

Like I said earlier, Spring Break starts tomorrow. And now that I think about it, that means I have no work for the next seven days. You know, the prospects on my skin absorbing any direct sunlight soon doesn’t look too great.

I just want it on record that I’m opposed to whoever came up with the concept of giving me beautiful weather one day after such a cold winter, only to snatch it back from me just as quickly. Yesterday it was 70 degrees with clear skies at 6:00 thanks to the new Daylight’s Savings time. 24 hours ago, I’m jumping on the trampoline with the Gooblings, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, listening to the dogs run around beneath us and bark in wonder as they try to grasp the concept of us floating above them.

Tomorrow? I may be pulling out my boats to go shovel the driveway.

I blame El Nino.

I promise when I’m finally on one of your shows, I won’t get up and walk off screen as soon as the interview is over. You can tell a lot about a guest who does that…well, actually, you can only tell that they never watch either of the shows, but that’s all we really need to know about them.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a long post over here on Shyzer, which is part purposefully, part circumstance. It doesn’t take a genius to know that “pithy” is not a word used very often to describe my writing, even when I’m aiming for that short, but sweet type post. I like to think I’m getting better at it though.

On the flip side, whenever I actually have had time to work on something, 9 times out of 10 I gravitate towards a project on Hey, It’s Free! and devote all of my attention there. Today while “teaching,” I made a list of all the projects I’ve got half complete on HIF! and that ultimately led to doing the same here for Shyzer. Who remembers this? I sure as hell do. I remember sitting outside on the deck or trampoline and trying to come write it all. I easily spent 15+ hours working on it - trying to research stuff I could turn into jokes, setting up the best matches possible, writing more then I even ended up publishing here on Shyzer…

And yet I never finished it.

Those last four words don’t even surprise me anymore when I say them. “I never finished it.” Shlyrics. Tens of thousands of words strung out between dozens of potential posts. The Religion Tournament. And this is just on Shyzer. Is it because I’m lazy? Do I enjoy just dabbling my feet in something new before growing bored with it? Do I start them only to realize they are going to suck and thus cut my losses?

I don’t know. I’m too lazy to bother thinking about it.