Busy as Hell

December has been insane. And it continues with 900 miles on the road to Florida tomorrow... regular blogging to resume after the New Year. Happy Holidays to all!

Towel or Tape?

For the past three plus months since moving in, I had been quite impressed with how quiet and generally respectable my apartment complex tends to be despite the young median age of the tenants. Actually, I had also been kind of disappointed about this.

So I had a nice little chuckle when I walked in this Sunday around noon and heard loud hip-hop blasting from the apartment adjacent to the front entrance and was greeted by some heavy-duty smoke pouring out from under their door. You know, the good kind of smoke. My inner fun guy said "hell yeah... that's more like it!"

But then I wondered why they would so blatantly allow for the smoke to pass through the large space between their front door and the floor. This brought back a great memory of life in Cumberland Hall on the Maryland campus.

Every dumbass kid in the dorms thinks they have a great solution to the smoke-escaping-into-the-hall problem. Some set up fans in windows to suck out exhaust. Some exhale though spent toilet rolls stuffed with dryer sheets. Some try to come up with a cover odor such as freshly popped popcorn. Most try a towel under the door. None of these truly work. And the toilet roll specifically makes the person exhaling look like a moron. But one evening, I was witness to what seemed to be the ultimate concealment plan.

There were about seven of us crammed into this one guy's room. After we were all in, he whips out a roll of duct tape... why try to mask the smell or merely slow its escape when you can actually put a weapons of mass destruction-proof seal on the door? So he used like half a roll while totally sealing the door shut. I joke "what if someone has to take a leak?" to which he says "I've got bottles in the closet." He was not kidding.

The problem here is that in addition to the reason for the duct tape, there was also some drinking going on. And in fact, a couple of the guys were already quite blitzed. After the pipe made a couple rounds, one of those guys gets "the look" on his face. Suddenly Mr. Duct Tape realized his severe error in judgement and knew that there was not enough time for a solution. The soon-to-be-puker ran for the door and pathetically banged, kicked, and pulled on it, but on this night, even Rambo would've needed two or three minutes to get through.

So this guy then tries to get back through the crowded and cluttered room -- and at this point everyone else in the room except for Mr. Duct Tape is already howling with laughter -- towards the window. He makes it just in time. Except that it has a screen on it which he fails to notice.

Let me tell you, the only thing funnier than a guy puking out of a dorm room window is a guy THINKING he's going to puke out the window and instead getting rebound chunder right back at him.

So perhaps my downstairs neighbors were actually wise to just let the smoke flow and to not take extreme concealment measures.

Saddam

Normally, whitehouse.org is a little too much for me, but I really liked the take on the Saddam capture. It summed up a lot of feelings I had yesterday, in pretty funny style. Sure, the guy is one of the 20th century's biggest evil jerks and its great for Iraq that he's gone. But for Americans, how much celebrating over this is really called for?

A) What did Saddam or Iraq have to do with 9/11?
and
B) After we killed over 3,000 civilians this spring didn't we basically create a couple thousand families worth of potential terrorist recruits?

I mean- If another country blew up Mary or my parents or sister and then the hypothetical local Shadyside terror recruiter dude came by my place on Walnut Street, I might be mental enough at that point to actually give him a few minutes of my time.

So basically, I feel a lot less safe right now than I did 12 months ago. But at least we got Osama and Mullah Omar and we found all those weapons of mass destr... oh wait... that's the "to do" list.

Hilarious

Perhaps it rotates too often for others to see this before it changes... but I definitely got a kick out of the Blogspot.com banner ad at the top of the page when it was advertising Pizza Hut today. If you don't understand why this is funny, be sure to read my entry below.

I guess that's what I get for saying the words "Pizza Hut" in the text of my blog (the text must help determine who they sell specific banner space to). Just for good measure, maybe I'll say it one more time... Pizza Hut.

finals in progress... perhaps i'll blog something after this week

A most thoughtful and touching gift for that special someone

Amidst the white noise of the holiday shopping marketing blitz that is currently bombarding all of our senses, this little nugget somehow stood out for me.

During this holiday season, I would rather have my balls crushed by planets than get this gift card.

I admit that if you stick almost ANY pizza under my nose, the result will be me eating it. I'll even tear that pie up if the box bears a surgeon general's warning stating that what's inside is likely to cause violent illness followed by a slow and generally awful death. But one must draw a line somewhere. For me, that line divides all pizza into two camps: "edible" and "Pizza Hut."

And even if someone can actually tolerate the Hut, the basic idea of giving pizza as a holiday gift still blows my mind. I'm just trying to picture the Christmas-morning scene as the family gathers around the tree to open presents. Little Billy gets his first baseball bat, little Sally gets a Barbie Doll, and then not-so-little Bobby gets... a Pizza Hut gift card. How precious.