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I’ve been trying to teach myself Spanish by watching TV with the SAP setting on. I’ve got no damn idea what they’re saying, but I figure after ten or twenty years of this, I’ll be able to follow along.

48-3.

Forty-eight to three.

We had a real nail biter, folks!

It was the worst loss by the Packers since 1980. It was the biggest win by the Ravens. Ever. Before this game, the Packers’ biggest loss this year was only by 14 points. In fact, they’ve lost 4 games by a combined 9 points and even though they were 3-10, they’d outscored their season opponents thanks to a 52-3 victory earlier this season. Coming into this game, the Packers had the #1 pass defense in the league and yet somehow they made Kyle Boller look like Peyton Manning. I could go on and on with game analysis, such as how I don’t think the Packers managed to cover the Ravens’ TE once or how Favre made one hell of a horrible throw straight to Deion Sanders, but you don’t need me for that when there’s ESPN.com’s recap of the game.

Instead, I’ll talk about what really mattered - the kickass time Waynus, Clay, and myself had throughout the entire night. It all began with us getting lost after only 10 minutes on the road. I’ll be completely honest and say I’ve never had any major complications navigating my way anywhere. Large cities with only one-way streets, empty back road, foreign countries, even places where I don’t speak the language - you name it, I can navigate it. Give me a destination (and if you’re kind, a map, but even that’s not required) and I’ll get you there directly and quickly.

And then I came to Northern Virginia.

Jesus CHRIST I hate driving up here. The main problem is that we are so close to both Maryland and West Virginia that even if you’re going some place that’s in Virginia, it’s still quicker to leave the state and then renter it elsewhere. But the problem with that is the name of roads and highways are constantly changing. You’ll be on Virginia Route 255 and then it will become West Virginia Scenic Road 36 and you’ll see signs pointing you to Maryland or further into West Virginia and you have no fucking idea which one takes you back to Virginia so that you can get on Virginia Piddly Ass Route Number Who The Hell Knows. To make matters worse, both Mapquest and now Yahoo Maps are horrible at giving directions up here. I’ve heard plenty of complaints from people saying Mapquest gave them wrong directions, but I never believed them until two years ago when it told Clay and I to take a highway that didn’t exist. Ever since that little incident, I’d been wary of Mapquest and thus when it came to getting directions for this trip, I turned to Yahoo Maps. Well, as we got on the road, I handed the directions to Tommy and he soon began mumbling under his breath. I asked him what was up and he finally voiced his concern.

Waynus: Uh, Goob, I don’t think these directions are right.
Goob: Why? What’s wrong?
Waynus: Well, um, they kinda tell us to go in two different directions.
Goob: What the hell are you talking about?
Waynus: Well like right here, it says to take 360 South for 25 miles. Then the very next step is to make two left turns and take 360 North for 23 miles.
Goob: Oh you’ve got to be shitting me…Give me those.

I pulled over, looked at them, and decided it was time to cut our losses early since we wanted to go EAST! I pulled out a map from the back of my truck, thrust it into his lap, and told him to guide me. We made a few turns, got even further lost, and I finally decided if we wanted to get there on time, I was gonna have to swallow my pride and ask for directions. I pulled into a trucker stop and went to ask the attendant where the hell Baltimore was. She gave me one of those blank looks, that kind which scream, “I’m an inbred retard whose lived here my entire life and I ain’t never heard of no Balt Two More you taulkin’ ’bout” and that’s when a trucker behind me heard I was asking for directions and began talking. See, that’s what I love about truckers; they are so damn friendly and helpful, especially to those lost souls like myself who are just wandering the streets trying to get to the damn Packers game. Five minutes later we were back on the road and headed in the right direction. An hour later I finally let out a string of expletives as I realized his directions were only taking us into Pennsylvania and I believe that’s when I uttered the now infamous saying of “I’m sick of these mother fucking hillbilly back roads. Get me to a blue line, Tommy.” A blue line means Interstate for those of you who’ve never looked at a map and luckily the shit ass town we were in was relatively close to one. We found it, let it take us out of redneck country, and were pulling into a parking space an hour and a half later.

We arrived just in time to see Baltimore score. Then they scored again pretty quickly. I think we got ourselves a field goal after that and then there was a flurry of Raven celebrations and people leaving the stadium. Some points of highlight, however:

• I don’t think I’ve ever been as cold as I was that night. Before the game, weather.com had the wind chill at 19 degrees and like I said, that was three hours before the game. Who knows how much colder it got while we drove there. Factor in the facts that our seats were in the upper deck, where there was more wind, and that I was wearing ONLY a Favre jersey, a sweatshirt, jeans, and tennis shoes and you can see why I was cold. I literally lost feeling in all my limbs. Waynus and Clay didn’t fare much better.
• The guys behind were hilarious. Hil-ar-io-us. By the second quarter they were busting out the Mike Sherman jokes and by the end of the game, I had tears frozen to my face from all the laughter.
• We got to see Sam Gado tear his MCL, which means the we are now on our SIXTH STRING running back. With all the injuries we’ve had this year, we felt privileged to have been able to witness at least one of them.
• Favre made one hell of a pass for about 35 yards to Chatman that was classic, vintage Favre. He also threaded a tight one to Donald Driver right up the middle. Driver managed to catch it, hold on to it for the first down, and take a hit in mid air and from behind from one of the safeties. Two very sweet ass plays.
• The Ravens’ scoreboard clips were by far the worst of any professional sports team I’ve seen to date. They only have one clip for first down and since the Ravens were getting them so often, it played over and over and over. By the end of the game, we knew it by heart and were even making the few remaining people around us burst into laughter every time we mocked it.
• When the Ravens scored their 41st point, I believe, I turned to Waynus and Clay and screamed, “Well kids, I hope you enjoyed your Christmas presents!” Then, as their kicked booted the extra point, I screamed, “And your birthday presents, too!” Laughter quickly ensued.

After the game, we went back to the car to thaw for 20 minutes or so before making the drive home (which, I’m proud to report, I made in only 105 minutes. No more maps for me on getting to Baltimore, thank God). Of course it sucked watching our favorite team get pounded like that, but I think Waynus summed it up best when he said, “In twenty years I’m not gonna remember who the hell won this game. But I will remember that I got to see Favre play once in person and that’s all that matters.”

And he’s right. Whether Favre retires after this season, or next, or beyond, I just wanted to make sure my brothers were able to watch him play once. It’s not everyday that you have an opportunity to watch the best QB of our generation play. But even more importantly, we had a blast during the evening and hopefully won’t forget it for years to come.

I dont care about King Kong. Stop fucking showing commercials for it. Stop using an excellent song like “Fix You” by Coldplay to promote it. Stop telling me that the director of those crappy ass Lord of the Ring movies directed this one as well. (yes, those movies blew. I sat down one afternoon to watch all three in a row and write a long ass post about what was so terrible with them. 20 minutes later I stopped to save my sanity.) King Kong was a revolutionary movie back in the 1930s…LEAVE IT THERE! Stop rehashing and remaking old movies and get some new fucking ideas and scenarios into the business.

In other movie news, I hear Good Evening and Good Luck and Syriana are excellent movies. Hopefully I can catch them both within the next week, if nothing more than to see Clooneys sweet beard in the latter.

I don’t really have a damn thing to post right now, but I’m leaving town for three days tomorrow, so I figured I better make a post now. But seeing as how my brain is completely empty, I’m just gonna sit here and write. Let’s see what we come up with.

My mom is an stewardess or airline attendant or air goddess as she prefers to be called. That’s no big surprise to anyone who reads this blog. Because of this, I get to fly basically for 90% off a retail plane ticket price. That is awesome. However, I have to fly standby and can sometimes be stranded in Denver, San Fran, or Kalamazoo (which have all happened before). That is not awesome. Every few months, my mom is given tickets which allow her or any of her family members to fly for not just 90% off, but 100% off. That is kick ass. However, these tickets expire within a few months of her obtaining them. That is non kick ass.

Since domestic ticket prices have fallen, we’ve tried not to use these passes on anything other than International tickets since they can still run a few grand. That’s how I’ve been to all the places I’ve been and how I was basically able to just up and go to Australia this past October for a month. The kicker about this whole gig is that that I completely lose the ability to fly under my mom’s passes the day I turn 25. I guess this has something to do with United being in the shitter financially and not wanting to pay to schlep me around the world. I find that to be a bit selfish on their part. So in essence, I have 26 months left to fly for peanuts and wouldn’t you know, but my mom has one of those free passes expiring later this month. Since I’m a firm believer in never passing up something free and I absolutely love to travel, I convinced my mom to trade out of her scheduled trip and pick up a trip to Zurich just so I could tag along.

I wanted to go to Zurich for a few reasons. A) I’ve never been. B) I love going places I’ve never been. C) I’ve yet to go there. Now before you get all jealous and wish you could live the high life that is Goob, there are a few drawbacks to tagging along with my mom on a flight. First off, I said I was gonna be gone three days, right? Well the first day is spent getting there and the third day is spent getting home Throw in the time zone changes and the few hours it takes for customs / showing up early before our flight home so she can prep for it and basically you’re looking at about 22 hours, some of which people like my mom enjoy using to sleep. But for me, 22 hours is enough. I can usually cram in a few historical points of interest, grab two meals at some authentic restaurants, enjoy some local adult beverages, and be home in time to catch the next new episode of Lost - that is, if it wasn’t on Christmas hiatus. Fucking networks and them making me wait another month to see what happens….

Anyways, back to my point. This is how I’ve traveled for the most part. Go to a place, hit up everything you can in the short time span you have, move on. It’s actually pretty fun, because I find that if I travel to a place for, let’s say a week, then I just lie around the hotel saying I’m vacationing and I never get out and do anything. If I travel with my mom (or by myself a few times in the past), then I know I only have a day or two or three tops before I gotta come home. So, all this means that I am the least lazy when I am on vacation. While at home, I always say I’ve got time or I’ll do it tomorrow. But when I go somewhere, shit gets done. Go figure.

Okay, let’s switch gears here. I was about to type up a little poll, but I think I’ll save that for a post next week. There’s also the beer vs. mixed drinks post coming when I get back. Oh, and I just started typing about my brother Colton, but I think he’ll get his own post too. Hmmm….oh, how about this. Remember the Goob Experience (of course you do, so I’m not linking to it.) Well, what you may not remember is that in it, the winner was to have a guest authorship here on Shyzer for a month. Now, Fellner apparently is too fucking lazy to make use of that, so I’m going to start something new here. If anybody out there thinks they would make a good guest author, then let me know. We’re gonna have our first one on here real soon hopefully (at least, he agreed to be one…I hope he was serious or else I’m looking like an idiot right about now) Shoot me an e-mail if you’re interested. We’re not talking about you posting every day, more like once or twice a year. Even once a month if you wanted to make that commitment. I figure getting 10 or so people to make some not-so-regular posts peppered throughout the year would help pump some life back into this hallow shell of a site.

just as l0ng as u dont typ3 l1k3 dis then ul B fine!!!111oneoneone

Now, before I go, I want to mention something. This post actually turned out to be a bit long in Microsoft Word (over 3 freaking pages), so I cut off the final story and programmed it to post while I’m in Zurich. If you remember, this function didn’t work with MoveableType, but I’m assured it actually works with Wordpress. Yeah…we’ll fucking see. Until then!

I know it seems like the last trillion words I’ve posted here on Shyzer have been recapping trips I’ve been making, but this past weekend I flew down to Columbia for the Carolina-Clemson game and to see Fellner and The Fellas. This trip was actually mandatory for me. Some of you may remember a little thing called “The Goob Experience” which Fellner “won.” Well, for his potpourri option, he had stipulated that I must attend one Carolina football game this year and seeing as how I’d yet to go to one and this was the last game of the season (minus our kickass bowl bid that we’ll get thanks to our surprising record!), I figured I should fulfill my duties. Fellner actually used this as his wish in an attempt to make sure I came home from Australia, since he was worried I might have stayed there past my allotted four months my first time around. Looks like he was onto something there.

I didn’t come home until Monday afternoon and was supposed to be flying right back down to South Carolina today for Thanksgiving, but the flights were full and there was no way I was cramming Clay, Julianne, Colton, and myself in a two seat pickup truck for an 8 hour drive over the Thanksgiving holidays. So looks like the four of us will be spending Thanksgiving here in Virginia together.

But all these flights I’ve taken lately remind me of something. So far in 2005, I’ve taken 11 plane trips, with a few more planned in December as well. As I’ve boarded each plane, but especially during the four trans-Pacific flights I took, the same exact thought has run through my head.

Let’s see here…if we were to crash like on LOST, I wonder if this group of yahoos would make it…

Let’s just say each time I’ve been less than thrilled with our chances. First off, there aren’t enough hot chicks on the planes, plain and simple. How am I supposed to survive without a Kate or Sun or dear God, even without a Claire to help me through my recent trauma? I travel with extra jars of peanut butter in my luggage just in case there’s a Claire on board. But hell, there aren’t even enough young people on the planes these days. It seems like each time the ratio of people under the age of 25 is about 5%. I’m not gonna be able to defeat the Others single handedly here, folks, especially if the rest of my crash mates are geriatrics or lying on the beach because lifting anything heavier than a coconut tires them out.

But what about jobs? I’m no doctor, so I can’t be Jack. I’ve got no hunting skills beyond the fact that I can point a gun and shoot fairly accurately, so Locke’s out of the question. I haven’t been in the army before and I can’t repair electronics unless I have Google to walk me through it, so sayonara Sayid. I’m not a con artist, I’m not a lady’s man, I can’t play a guitar and sweep an Aussie chick off her feet, I’m not worth $140 million dollars, and I can speak English. So Sawyer, Charlie, Hurley, and Jin are crossed out. Oh, and I’m not black, so I can’t be the token black guy. That leaves Boone…great, I get to be the one sacrificed to the island. Son of a bitch…

But what about my crash mates? Maybe they can help me pick up the slack, right? Well, in recent flights I’ve sat next to a businessman, a preacher, a businessman, a guy who drooled while he slept the whole way, a businessman, a guy who had the Federal Marshal come up and threaten to arrest him if he didn’t stop bitching about not having a cold beer on board, and another businessman. Seriously, are companies still doing meetings and crap like this nowadays to where so many businessmen have to fly around? Haven’t they ever heard of conference calls and the Internet and VOIP and the high prices of traveling? I don’t think I want to be stranded with some pencil pusher who just sits around in meetings all day and tries to sell Xerox machines or dog food packaging or whatever the hell it is these guys are actually doing.

See, this is how my brain works folks. I don’t worry about crashing and dieing instantly in a giant fireball. I don’t worry about being stranded alone on an island like Tom Hanks in Castaway. I worry about crashing on a deserted island and being stranded for an indefinite period of time with a group of idiots whom I don’t like.

So to recap. We need more hot, young, females who can take care of me by hunting food and fixing my wounds and all that jazz to start flying more often. Preferably the flights from Washington DC to South Carolina and Sydney, since that’s what I fly most often. Yeah, I’m liking the sound of this plane wreck the more I think about it…

Would it surprise any of you to learn that I am currently typing this post on Keeley’s computer while Hannah stumbles around behind me trying to throw some rubbish in the bin. I didn’t think so.

Caitlin nailed it on the head - I came back to Australia for a few weeks on a surprise visit. Updates might be sporadic at best for the rest of the month, but is that any different from how I normally post back home? Exactly. Aight, time to run to Bar on the Hill for Beer o’clock. Adios folks.

And Hannah just farted. Wow. This is foul.

The steroids I was put on are truly amazing. In 24 hours, my body stopped swelling and doubling in size exponentially. My eyes finally cleared up enough to where I can put contacts in them again and see well enough to drive and my arms are peeling as if I was sunburned, which is always fun to peel and scratch away. The blisters and open soars all healed by Tuesday and in fact, it’s just now that I’m finally breaking out in a classic poison ivy rash all over my body and honestly, that’s perfectly fine. My torso and legs are all red and itchy, but that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the crap I had going on last week. So, just to reiterate, drugs = good.

I’ve been spending my free time recently working on things around the house, getting Hey, It’s Free ready for the big advertising campaign I’m about to start, and watching all the playoff baseball I can get. Other than that, life has been pretty dull in the world of Goob.

Actually, I got a shot in the butt today, but it doesn’t really feel any different from being shot in the butt.

When the doctor walked in, she looked down at my arms, looked up at my face, then looked down at my arms again. After 10 seconds of not-so-surprising silence, she finally looked back up at me and asked, “What in the world took you so long? You should have been in here days ago.” After looking over my body, making the obligatory concealed marks on my chart, and scolding me again for waiting so long, she gave me some anti-itch pills and steroids. Just in time for baseball playoffs. How kind of her.

So yeah, I’m all loopy on meds right now. Some people will swear by NyQuil, but that stuff fucks me up. Each and every time I’ve taken it in the past, I’ve spent the entire night in one of those semi-dream, semi-conscious states where you feel as if you’re hallucinating and in the morning, you feel as if you got no sleep. But Benadryl…oh, sweet, sweet, Benadryl. Two pills, 15 minutes, and WHAM, I’m lights out. And I just took two pills about ten minutes ago

Growing up, my siblings and I used to wait and perfect games before lending a permanent name it. One such game we eventually came up with was a variation of tag, which we dubbed Manhunt. I’ll add it to the list of homemade games later on today, but basically it’s a little bit of tag, capture the flag, and jail-break…in the dark.

Last Friday, Clay had a few friends spending the night and Jules was down the road playing with some of her mates. I knew the question was going to be proposed sooner or later and sure enough, around 2200, Clay came up to me with the brilliant idea of playing Manhunt. I mulled it over for a minute, called Jules, and told Clay I was game.

The only time during the night I was hiding alone was during the first round. In all the subsequent rounds, I had Jules with me wherever I hid. Well, logically, since I am covered in poison ivy rashes and blisters and neither she, nor Clay, nor any other of the hooligans we played with that night have old socks with holes cut into them to make gloves on their arms, it’s safe to say that my hiding spot during that first round was right in the bed of my favorite plant.

According to WebMD (I know, huge mistake. There’s nothing worse than trying to diagnose yourself via a search engine. I once had a little bump on my arm and after spending an hour on WebMD, I’d convinced myself I either had Lyme Disease or Hepatitis. Turned out it was only a mosquito bite.), the rashes and blisters last for 10-25 days. This = Not Good. I’m supposed to be somewhere in 8 days. I’m supposed to be somewhere else in 14 days. My first rash cropped up four days ago and they’re still coming in. Within the past few hours, my neck has finally succumbed to the evil bastards and I’m literally watching it spread on my chest from no blisters this morning to seven right now. I can’t wait to see how many I have when I wake up. But seriously, what the hell am I supposed to do in 8 days? I can’t go outside the house looking like this!

Luckily, it’s not made its way down to…you know…and I’m praying that it doesn’t. They say you can only get it from actual contact with the oil from the plant, but I find that to be utter bullshit. I can guarantee you I didn’t take my shirt or sweatshirt off while playing Manhunt and yet it’s all over my chest now. How do you answer that WebMD? Although, to be fair, it’s extremely bad in the spots where my shirts didn’t cover me (hands, wrists, neck, face, waist, possibly scalp)…let’s just hope the three layers I had covering Private Goob were protective enough or I’ll go absolutely nuts here, no pun intended.

During the last 48 hours, I’ve developed a massive outbreak of poison ivy. I can hardly move without itching like crazy and I know damn well where I contracted it too, which means tomorrow I’m going outside with a blowtorch and taking down half an acre of woodland and woodland creatures if necessary.

Of course, photos of the cool looking blisters and the story on how I managed to brush my entire body up against a poison ivy branch will be forthcoming. But for now, the true miracle is happening. I’m going to bed at only 0300 in order to try and get away from the itching sensation that has enveloped my body.