There's a Joke About Love Bugs I Failed to Make. Oh Well.

So, maybe my imagination is a little more out of control than it should be, but here's how the story goes.

Alright, I'm driving down the highway, right? And I'm doing a good 90. I'm bookin' it. I'm fairly focused on the road, not really paying attention to anything other than weaving in and out of the "oversized loads" and that idiot who doesn't understand staying in the right lane when he isn't going fast enough to pass anybody, when suddenly something catches my eye. Some poor wasp managed to fly his little buggy self right in front of me. Too bad for him, right? It gets worse.

His little insect head managed to slide into the space between the hood of the car and the side. What I see is his silly stingy butt flopping around in the wind as he gets helplessly dragged along for a ride. For as sucky as that must have been, the only thing I could think was "you know, this reminds me a lot of relationships."

He made this face, no doubt.

Yeah, you heard me, that's what I said.

Let me break it down for you.

So you got this girl. She, like most girls, is "crazy, outgoing, funny, awesome, ditsy, and hyper." (Question: how many girls you know would describe themselves like this? Probably like, all of them.) She's just doing what girls do; going a billion miles an hour and not paying attention (lulz). Now before you ladies get mad at me for making fun of your tendency to not always pay attention, let me make fun of guys first in an attempt to cater to your desire for equality in sarcastic stereotype jokes.

Now you have me, the guy. I'm a dumb insect flying across the highway like a retard. (I know a few people who'll enjoy that image too much.) Some Mustang Sally comes cruising down the road and smacks me in my stupid wasp face. Bam, I'm trapped under your hood, arms flailing wildly in the 90 MPH winds, probably dead.

Relationships, right?

The guy'll be just minding his own business, flying around the highway, maybe looking for some sexy windshield to splat on, if that's what he's into, when Miss Ladyface swings along and picks him up. "Cool!" He might think. Cool indeed, dumb bug. But then the trip gets cut short when she hits a bump and you get knocked out of your cozy hood-noose-thing and go plummeting to your sad, sad demise/get decapitated.

Well, that's what happened to the bug anyways.

So there you have it. Cars and insects = relationships.

Honestly, it sounds like a hunting manual to me.

In my life there have been more than one but less than a few things that have completely confounded me; things that after looking into almost every option possible I still sit and obsess of what the mystery truly is. Not even the great enigma that is woman have I allowed to consume too large a portion of my time (although it has indeed, and a portion larger than I'm willing to admit). I probably wont ever fully understand them, and honestly, I'm okay with that. I love all my friends, male and female, equally (exceptions being my besties, whom I love more than average.)


I even found the elusive Kyle.


But this thing... this book that I've been assigned to read in my Christianity in Literature class (or as my poor teacher unwittingly puts on our absentee sheets, C. Lit) has been mentioned throughout my life, and I'm sensing some sort of government conspiracy. I remember distinctly three different occasions that I've inquired "what is this book about?" and for every time I asked, there's a huge blank spot in my memory.


What is this great riddle, you ask? This is truly the single most unsolvable thing since someone asked "why are these people so amazing!?" about Mumford and Sons. This conundrum is none other than the higly acclaimed book To Kill a Mockingbird.

I read the back of the book, trying to get a general idea of what this "great literary piece" was about. "The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy, Southern town and the crisis of conscious that rocked it." Wait, the crisis rocked the childhood or the sleepy town? And the story is about a childhood? I probably couldn't write two interesting paragraphs about my childhood.

"Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill a Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and creulty, love and hatred, humor and pathos." I thought this was about some kid, not a philosopher. Here, this part really gets me. "Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story." A love story... a kid love story? Maybe it's about a philosophical child's first crush. How cute!

I asked a couple of my friends what the book was about, and most of the replies went something along these lines. "It's a really interesting book. It's not about just one thing though. It's about like... everything. You know? It's an everything book. You'll just have to read it yourself."

I still was unsatisfied.

Turning to the ever-trustworthy Wikipedia, I found myself incredibly... not informed at all on a plot. "The story takes place during three years of the Great Depression  in the fictional "tired old town" of Maycomb, Alabama. The narrator, six-year-old Scout Finch, lives with her older brother Jem and their widowed father Atticus, a middle-aged lawyer. Jem and Scout befriend a boy named Dill who visits Maycomb to stay with his aunt for the summer." Sounds riveting. "The three children are terrified of, and fascinated by, their neighbor, the reclusive "Boo" Radley. The adults of Maycomb are hesitant to talk about Boo and, for many years, few have seen him." Hey, wait a minute, we could be getting somewhere here. Maybe a scary ghost story, or some mystery about the house? "The children feed each other's imagination with rumors about his appearance and reasons for remaining hidden, and they fantasize about how to get him out of his house. Following two summers of friendship with Dill, Scout and Jem find that someone is leaving them small gifts in a tree outside the Radley place. Several times, the mysterious Boo makes gestures of affection to the children, but, to their disappointment, never appears in person." Yup yup! I'm feelin' a juicy suspense scene where the kids break into the house to try to learn some secrets about this guy named Boo. He's even got a ghost name! BoooOOoOooooOooo Raaaaaadleeeeey.

"Atticus is appointed by the court to defend Tom Robinson, a black man who has been accused of raping a young white woman, Mayella Ewell. Although many of Maycomb's citizens disapprove, Atticus agrees to defend Tom to the best of his ability. Other children taunt Jem and Scout for Atticus' actions, calling him a "nigger-lover". Scout is tempted to stand up for her father's honor by fighting, even though he has told her not to. For his part, Atticus faces a group of men intent on lynching Tom. This danger is averted when Scout, Jem, and Dill shame the mob into dispersing by forcing them to view the situation from Atticus' and Tom's points of view." Oh, wait... what? There wasn't even a transition between these. Did they forget about the creepy guy named Boo? He's way more interesting than the judicial system! I don't know, maybe it's just me who thinks that...

Man, I just can't seem to find one steady plot for this book! I know there has to be one. My literature teacher always told me that you have to have a plot to make a good story, among other things like character development. Surely this "great American classic" has some sort of awesome plot. I must just be missing it.

Hark! What light through yonder window breaks! Finally, after hours of searching, I've found a wonderful explanation of the plot. You see, it is about Boo Radley! He's actually a pirate, who needs the assistance of the children to kill a giant robotic mockingbird. And there are pirates, and bears, and other such literary devices! I really can't stay to explain it to you, because I'm so jubilant about getting to read this book that I think I'm going to go and start it right now! Here's the full explanation of the book for you guys. As a matter of fact, if you don't feel like reading it, I bet this is in-depth enough that you can just watch it and not have to worry about reading it at all.

I'm here to talk about body parts! (viewer discretion blah blah blah)

Just a heads up, if you're easily offended by the truth, you should probably head over to some other funny blog post about kittens and world peace. Oh, and this is probably one of my more explicit and audacious entries, so yeah, you've been forewarned about yon content. Tread carefully.

So let's be honest here. I really like women. They're great. I like their hair. I like their clothes. I like their curves. I reeeeealy like their curves. I like aaaallll their curves...

And I'm here to talk about them. Let me stop real quick like though and point something out. I, being a straight person of the male persuasion, have made myself very open to an attack on my character. "Oh mai gawd, this guy is such a pig. All he cares about in a woman is like, a nice body and a pretty face" could very well be what a female reader is saying to herself, or her galfriends, or a very whipped man at this very moment. As a matter of fact, I've actually been told a similar phrase to my face. "All men care about is a nice body and a pretty face."

Women... women women women. Don't assume stuff. You know what you do when you assume stuff? You make an ASS- out of -U- and -ME (see what I did there?). So let me break this down for you all in terms that most people should be able to understand.

This is what we call a graph. It shows percentages of stuff. You can plainly see that if you take away either the personality or the body, what you're left with is 50% of a girl, and nobody wants that.

Okay, another scenario: the other day I was hanging with one of my female friends and she got a text from a guy asking if she knew of any good chicks for him to go out on a date with, then he included in parenthesis "not fat or flat."

"Ugh, this guy is such a douche."

Uhm... excuse me? He's a douche for asking for what are pretty much the two most basic conformities when it comes to rating attractiveness? I don't know if you know this, women, but the reason why women are rated on this scale to see how attractive they are is because that's what we find attractive (from a general populous standpoint, of course).

Imagine yourself out on a blind date (in a more literal sense, if you will). You spend the whole evening talking to a man who has a hilarious, attractive personality and you'd love to get to know him more. However, you haven't been able to look at him this whole time. At the end of the night, you see this mystery stud and to your horror, you stand there looking at a smelly obese man with a mullet and a pedo-stache. Starting to rethink that second date stuff yet?

If we were all blind, the world would be just dandy. The purpose of that metaphysical awful first date is to show you that personality isn't everything, nor are looks. Even for women.

And that "not flat or fat thing?" There's even science behind this. During the pubescent years of female development, large amounts of estrogen are produced by the body and used to increase the mass of certain areas of your body, most notably your ba-donk-a-donk and your ta-tas, and more importantly, your hips.

Have you ever noticed that the hips of women are larger than those of men? That's because women need larger hips to support the weight of a baby during pregnancy. So let me reiterate: larger breasts and wider hips mean better for bearin' babies, which from an evolutionary standpoint is pretty much the only purpose for living. Like, seriously, for what I've heard, they just want their genes to keep on getting passed down. That's cool I guess...

Weight is more of a preference though. And also, there are three subgroups under the "body" section from the graph; starting from the bottom you got guys who are more focused on legs, then moving upwards to your glutes, then finally your hooters.

There's a lot of people who may get offended by my audacity, but lets be honest here, the world needs these body parts to keep on keeping on. America and Europe are very different in cinematography in the sense that they understand that sensuality is like, existent, while in America we'd rather just show someone (or lots of someones) getting blown up. Girls need legs to walk,  and men love them. Girls need buns, 'cause they're one of the bigger and stronger muscles in your body,  and men love them too. Boobs (I'm running out of clever synonyms, so forgive my bluntness) are a key factor in breast feeding, and men love them.

And you, haughty woman, need to get off your high horse of hypocrisy. Chicks dig muscles. Nice abs, big strong arms... other random muscles that girls like...

Anyways, the point is, don't be that annoying girl who acts like she knows everything because she's dated SO MANY BOYS (two) and ALL (two) OF THEM have only been interested in your body. Yeah, I like your body, but if I don't like your personality I'm not going to stick around very long.

Also, after talking about body parts for so long, I couldn't restrain putting up this classic piece of musical gold.

Notice the name of the magazine in that video? Cosmopygian? They're making a play on words from the famous magazine Cosmopolitan and the word callipygian, which means "having shapely buttocks." (Yay for booty etymology!)

Musical trolls all up in your endocrine system!

Every decade has its own stereotype for music. In the 60's you had classic rock, 70's was the golden age for rock, 80's were the beginning of electric synth and disco (even though I'm convinced that even people in the 80's didn't like disco all that much), 90's had some of the best rap produced ever (and I say that because it was people actually using their voices, and not auto tune goodness) along with other beginnings of indie pop, and 2000+ was the hip hop/pop scene. Every decade has people who are essentially zealots that worship this era. For instance, you can click on literally any Sugar Ray music video and find a treasure trove of people saying things like (and these are actual quotes):

"Listening to this takes me back to my childhood. Before Lady Gaga. Before shitty music was played repeatedly over the airwaves. Before Jersey Shore, when MTV actually played music. When the most competitive we ever got was over a game of horse in Tony hawk's pro skater. When Nickelodeon played actually funny, enjoyable cartoons. When kids got fresh air and played basketball or baseball in the park for fun, instead of being cramped up in a basement playing cod. Man, I miss the 90's." 

"amen to that hell kids todayare a bunch of lazy tards who think they know real msic" (I really wish this guy would have been kvetching about grammar and spelling, because I love myself some good irony).

"I cried when I watched this video because it reminds me of how much "now" sucks, and how great "then" was."

This one was on Billy Joel's music video for We Didn't Start the Fire:

"1st of March is Justin Bieber's birthday. He's been infecting the whole world. Because of him, the world of rock is going extinct

So on his birthday, we all will go to his "Baby" official video and push the 'dislike' button so that the 'dislike' bar becomes 10 times bigger than the 'like' bar.

If you are a rock fan, join with me and thumbs up me, copy-paste this message to all rock videos. We have six months to unite and fight against this little cockroach."

Sweet Jesus, man, are you starting a religion or something? Look, I'm not a big Bieber fan (because I'm not a 14 year old female, mostly) but I'll admit that he has at least some talent. I can't sing and play guitar at the same time worth crap. Little cockroach? That's harsh man. 

Look, the point is that on some level, every person is a big fat depraved, barbarous fiend and/or troll. Kids in my generation who listen to pop and hip-hop, and those only, are a little more passive aggressive about it, but it still kind of ticks me off when someone just flat out says that they don't listen to old music.

But all that stuff I can stand, because I'm perfect, and I can find aesthetic value in pretty much any of the multiple manifestations of music. If you really want to perk up some ears, though, just tell people you don't like music at all. This isn't a joke, either. I know at least two people who have said this to me. Seriously? What is wrong with you people? There's even science behind the awesomeness of music. I can confidently say that if you don't find any pleasure in listening to music,  there is something psychologically wrong with you. Then again, the two people who have said this to me are the types of guys who are on the robotics team and spend the night at teachers houses because they were working on a project (true story) and who not only still play Runescape, but get so excited about the wildy coming back, along with free enterprise, that they post it as their Facebook status and tell everyone at school (also a true story. And ashamedly, I knew exactly what he was talking about...).

Oh, and while I'm talking about hormones, here's this video that Matt and I made for an Anatomy project. Because hey, who doesn't want to learn about the endocrine system from two high-schoolers with a video camera?

 

Edit 2/20: I just found this on a video of Jump Around by House of Pain. "Ok listen you all kids who were born yesterday and think 2Pac and BIG are gods:You are eminem and 50Cent generation,you are Jersey Shores and Jackass generation,you know nothing,and it's ironic that me,a person who does not cares about rap,knows the whole history of the genre and you pseudo-rappers keep worshipping 2 CRIMINALS who distorted the whole rap purpose.Until you kow exactly who Public Enemy,Big Daddy Kane,Grandmaster Flash,Digable Planets,De La Soul,are,shut up." (and even worse, it was the highest rated comment on the video).

This primarily pissed me off because he says that we, the Eminem generation, don't know anything. I love Eminem. I'm just gonna put that out there. And his song Stan (feat. Dido) has named the greatest rap song ever (by me), reaching no. 1 on the charts in six different countries. It came in 3rd during a survey for the best rap song ever produced by Q magazine. It placed 290 on the Rolling Stones Magazine's list of the top 500 songs ever made. Here, let me say that again. The Rolling Stones Magazine (yes, the famous one) declared this song to be in the top 300 songs ever made in the history of everything ever made ever. Do you know how many songs have been made? The answer is higher than I can count. My best guess about this guys problem is that he's not black. Racists. Haha.

*due to formatting issues, one of the quotes (the one about Justin Bieber killing music) was cut off. It's fixed now, and what I say after it makes way more sense now. Haha.