Shyzer.com

What day is it? Saturday night? Perfect, then that means it’s time to copy Angela and do a Thirteen Thursday. Apparently this week’s topic is 13 things that annoy me off, which is great because I can easily think of 13 things that fall into said category.

1. When I look through my inbox and see starred e-mails from a month ago that I never responded to.
2. When I download a video file only to be told none of the previous 832,316 codec files I’ve downloaded will play the clip.
3. When people ask me if I’ve seen a video or joke on the Internet that I saw back in 1998.
4. When the ending to a great book sucks ass.
5. Not being able to finish a New York Times crossword puzzle. Watching Wordplay didn’t help any, it only made me want to fly to their yearly convention and punch somebody in the face.
6. When I climb under the covers, get snug in my bed, and then realize that the remote control is on the other side of the room.
7. Getting pwned in Starcraft over and over by Koreans who do nothing but play the game all day.
8. When I see my favorite song on somebody else’s playlist. That’s my song, dammit. How dare they!
9. Paying my student loan and looking that the cost of graduate school.
10. Hearing my cell phone ring. And yet I would kill your mom for an iPhone. Go figure.
11. Being asked why I didn’t shave this morning. I don’t ask you why you used a lawnmower on your hair or if your blind preschool daughter dressed you, so don’t imply that I’m a bum simply because I don’t find the act of dragging a razor blade against my skin pleasurable.
12. Spending an hour and a half cooking a meal just for 20 minutes of enjoyment.
13. How much luck is involved in everything.

Maybe one day I’ll actually do this on the proper day. Yeah, probably not.

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.

Apparently I was tagged by the awesome Angela in what I think is the first time ever in the 4 1/2 years I’ve been running this place. That either means I don’t have enough Internet friends or the ones I have just suck.

Anyways, the tagged topic is simply one question: Why do I blog? Well, that’s actually pretty. Besides all the obvious benefits, like the throngs of adoring fan girls who follow me around everywhere and the massive bankroll I pull in every month thanks to all those ads under the “Sponsors” section, I blog for one additional reason. Because I get bored.

Seriously, that’s about the only reason I keep this site running day in and day out. It clearly doesn’t have a focal purpose, as opposed to Hey, It’s Free! Back when I first started it, I just wanted a place where I could put down any random thoughts that I wanted to share with people and I thought if others might comment and respond to them, then all the better. Half of the enjoyment comes in trolling through the archives when I’m bored and reading all of the random crap that I posted forever ago and promptly forgot about. Seriously, give it a shot sometime. You’ll be surprised at how much I’ve written on here and some of it isn’t even that crappy

So I guess this is the part where I have to tag people? Man, I always sucked at Tag whenever I was it. I tended to just go watch TV and leave all the people hiding in the trees and behind trash cans, but I guess for now I’ll just pass this along to Ally and leave it at that.

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.

Digg.com has seen a bunch of quizzes pop up lately where people seem to take pleasure in finding out how little they know. Name the 50 US States. Name all the African countries. Name all the countries in the world.

Well fine, if people enjoy feeling stupid, then they can take my Goob’s Thought Quiz and find out just how futile it is for them to try and follow my train of thought! For best results, just don’t answer at all and read the “solutions” from start to finish.

You bend over to pick up a book and singe off an inch as it accidentally falls into the candle on your nightstand.

Maybe it’s time to pull out the bald look again.

I’m still debating over this photo I recently found via English Russia. The obvious observation is that it’s portraying some Cold War Soviet propaganda about the Evil, Bastard Americans and their damn nukes that are going to destroy the world.

But then on the other hand, if you look closer, you can clearly make out two butt cheeks on the sides of Russia. And in the middle are a few suspicious looking phallic figures…

So which is it, Russia? Do you think we’re trying to kill you or just get in your pants? Just let me know either way, because I’m kinda confused as to why I’m evil after looking at this photo.

The “word” pwned has grown quite the following here in the Goob household amongst the Gooblings. We tend to have a history of taking odd sounding words and running them straight into the ground by our repeated usage of them, but this one still appears to have some life in it despite the last few months. We say it any time we punch each other and given the fact that we tend the beat the crap out of our nearest sibling somewhere in the vicinity of 19 times a day, you can imagine how Goobrent Mom has grown annoyed with the word already.

But today, Goobrent Mom left for work and thus pwned was broken out once again. On the way home from school, in the post office, even in the kitchen as it was screeched from a streaking brother as he ran down the hallway, fleeing the scene of a recent dual Wet Willie / Wedgie attack. (I’ll give you a hint. I can run really fast.)

But here’s a little word of caution. If you’re sitting in the waiting area of your local barbershop and the other patrons are giving you weird looks as your seven year old brother says over and over, “I’m gonna pwn you,” it might be because that sounds awful similar to “I’m gonna bone you.” And that, my friends, is illegal in all states, pending the approval of a new law in Alabama.