End of the World

Originally posted on January 13, 2006

The weather today was amazing. It was about fifty degrees in the middle of January.

And people give global warming such a bad rap. I mean, hey, we’re all getting skin cancer and the world is running out of air and stuff, but I’m playing frisbee in the middle of winter, so I’m not going to complain. As far as the icecaps melting – my house will be significantly closer to the coastline.

“Hey Josh, the glaciers just melted.”

“Surf party. My house.”

I think if people knew how easy it would be for some nuke to go off and kill us all tomorrow, they would act a lot differently. Hopefully my professors will think this is a good excuse for why I played capture-the-flag all night instead of studying for finals.

“Hey Josh, did you pass Economics?”

“No, but I got my entire team out of jail.”

This is the point where some poor soul will push the wrong button in a reactor core, the world will explode, and I will die with a smile on my face.

And while I’m on the subject of death, I don’t like it when people use gentle language to describe how someone died. It’s always, “He’s gone to be with his family.” or “He passed.” This makes it sound like they either went home for the weekend or got a D or above on some test. Even worse, if you die in war, they call it a casualty. I see nothing casual about it.

I guarantee that if know I’m going to die, there’s no way I’m not going to try to make it interesting.

“I’m sorry Josh, but you have the plague.”

“Shoot. Where’s my hang glider?”

Because I will be that person jumping off of the Sears Tower dressed in a Peter Pan costume.

“Hey, what happened to Josh? Did he pass away?”

“No man, he f***ing died. He f***ing thought he could fly and f***ing died.”

Mission accomplished.

Tagged: , , ,

Published:
March 13, 2008 – 6:09 pm
Categories:

Texas Ranger

Originally posted on January 3, 2006

If you have ever been to Marshalltown, Iowa, you know it’s not the most exciting place on earth. Unless perhaps you happen to be a middle-aged soybean and racecar enthusiast. However, this is where my grandparents live, so I spent a good part of last week there. And, if you know my grandparents, they are very good at making things exciting in their own particular way.

We were sitting at the dinner table, eating dinner, and I decided to start telling my brother Chuck Norris jokes. If you don’t know what Chuck Norris jokes are, here are a couple of examples.

“Chuck Norris was not born. Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked his way out of his mother’s womb. Shortly thereafter, he grew a beard.”

“In a battle between Batman and Superman, who would win? Chuck Norris.”

My parents didn’t get it. My grandma didn’t get it. My brother and I thought it was hilarious. So we’re laughing our heads off and the rest of the table is giving us blank stares. Finally my mom asks me why in the world I think Chuck Norris jokes are funny and I tell her it’s mostly because Chuck Norris is one of the lamest actors ever.

Now, my grandpa Buck has a slight hearing loss, so he tends to jump in and out of conversation. At this point, he hears half of my sentence and thinks that Chuck Norris is the topic of conversation.

He then launches into a ten-minute tirade about how wonderful the show, Walker: Texas Ranger is and how amazing Chuck Norris’ martial arts skills are. Apparently, my grandfather loves Chuck Norris.

The sheer irony of this was too much for me, so in the middle of my grandpa’s praising Chuck Norris, I started laughing so hard I put my head into a plate of whipped cream-covered Jello. And that is my story.

The next day, my poor mother, trying to fit in, decides that she now understands Chuck Norris jokes. She also decides that she can make up her own. Here is an example of one of her jokes:

“What did Chuck Norris want for Christmas?”

“I don’t know, but he sure likes making movies.”

Oh, but she tries. The sad part is that there are three or four more where that came from.

And then we found out that my dad was an accident.

Well, that’s more than enough about that. Maybe next time I’ll talk about the time I accidentally called my grandmother a whore while bowling. Or not.

Tagged: , ,

Published:
March 13, 2008 – 6:03 pm
Categories:

A Request

Originally posted on December 6, 2005

Please pray for my roommate Corey. He listens to country music.

I think If I hear one more banjo chorus about how wonderful it is to live with your wife and inbred flipper children in a trailer in a Oklahoma cornfield, I will shoot myself.

In the face.

More than once.

 

Also, snowball fights are incredible.

Tagged:

Published:
March 13, 2008 – 5:58 pm
Categories:

Trial and Error

Originally posted on November 21, 2005

So the other day I come out of my room and I see this random middle-aged guy right outside the door. He had his face really close to the glass with one hand on the knob and one hand right above it. Now, these doors periodically lock from the outside. So I decided I would be a great guy and let him in. Turns out he was repairman working on the doorknob and I completely screwed him up.

Good try, Josh, good try.

Then I asked someone why we never get school off for the Fourth of July.

Not one of my best moments.

A piece of advice, people. Be careful listening to John Williams music. I was listening to the Indiana Jones Theme on the way to class on friday when I noticed some girls giving me very odd looks. It was at this point that I realized that I had been marching awkwardly while waving my free hand to the beat of the song.

Strike three. At least it wasn’t the Jaws Theme.

Tagged: ,

Published:
March 13, 2008 – 5:54 pm
Categories:

Girls and Questions

Originally posted on November 21, 2005

Girls, why are you always asking questions that make us look like jerks however we answer them? This happens to me all the time. There are a lot of girls at this school, and it always seems like I manage to say the exact wrong thing. So now when girl corners me about something, I usually answer in the form of a question. This helps avoid a lot of useless stress and guilt. Consider this situation:

“Josh, do you think this dress makes me look fat?”

“No.”

“So you’re saying I already looked fat.”

“No.”

“So you’re saying that it’s not the dress that makes me look fat.”

“No.”

“So it is the dress.”

“I don’t think you’re fat at all. I think you look great.”

“Are you saying that you wouldn’t love me if I was fat?! Guys are just soooo shallow.”

This is no good. Especially for me because I have a tendency to be distracted by something shiny, miss the question, and then they assume the worst. The trick is to always answer a question with another question.

“Josh, do you think this dress makes me look fat?”

“Do you like it better than the red one?”

Everyone wins. Of course, then sometimes they think you’re dodging the question, which, of course, you are. At this point, there are some good things to say and some bad things to say. Again, the question is “Does this dress make me look fat?” and we’re answering in question form.

GOOD: “Do you want me to buy you chocolate?”

BAD: “Do you think you just need a bigger size?”

GOOD: “How did you get so gorgeous?!”

BAD: “You mean Chris Farley funny fat or Rosie O’Donnell gross fat?”

Well, there it is. My apologies to all the girls that I forced into food-eating disorders before I figured this out. Tune in next time for lesson 5: “If You Like Being Right, Don’t Get Married.”

Tagged: ,

Published:
March 13, 2008 – 5:40 pm
Categories:

Heroes and Worms

Originally posted on November 15, 2005

Yesterday was not a good day. Today is a lot better, but I haven’t really slept in two days – so that might be a factor eventually. Sometimes I turn into a complete jerk when I haven’t slept. I hate that. And I never realize how much of a prick I’m being.

“Hey Josh, how are you?”

“If Rosanne Arnold had a child with Michael Jackson, and that child was hit by a semi, I would rather have a picnic with its rotting corpse than talk to you.”

At this point, the person runs off sobbing and I ask myself out loud what I could have possibly said to offend them. However, most of the time, when I haven’t slept, I get really mellow and abstract.

“Josh, I’m sorry, but you have the plague.”

“That’s cool, that’s cool. Hey, who do you think is cooler, Yoda or Boba Fett?”

“Are you high?”

So yes, that is pretty much how I’m feeling right now. No, not high. Just mellow. I don’t do drugs, mostly because I don’t need them – I’m already easily distracted, I forget everything important, I have no sense of direction, I have no motivation for anything productive, and the strangest things amaze me. In other news, pogo sticks are incredible.

It was really rainy today, which usually makes me slightly depressed, but today it was actually a nice change. As I was walking along – I noticed, hey, there’s a poor worm struggling on the sidewalk. And I remembered what a friend had said about saving worms from the rain. It was really cool. So – I thought to myself, I will be a hero. I will dare to care. So, despite the awkward stares of various onlookers, I bent down to save the defenseless creature. A beam of light and the sound of harps shot out of the clouds, illuminating my face as I returned the earthworm to its rightful home. It was at this point that a random guy came from behind me and said “You know earthworms end up on the sidewalks so they don’t drown, right? You’re not helping anything, you probably just drowned a worm.”

I am not a hero. I am a worm-murderer.

How is it that when other people do things, it’s really fantastic, but when I try, I end up killing something. This is why I should probably not have kids.

Tagged: , ,

Published:
March 13, 2008 – 5:35 pm
Categories:

The Economic Fix

Originally posted on October 29, 2005

Now I will save the world.

On Economics

Okay, first of all, why are nickels bigger than dimes? Who decided that more metal would be worth half as much as less metal? I propose that we melt down all our nickels and make dimes. This will net us billions.

Secondly, at last count, we are 7.2 trillion dollars in debt. I suggested making 7.2 trillion more dollars, but I was told that was against the rules or something. So here is Plan B. I will apply for a Wal-Mart credit card. I will then use that credit history to apply for every credit card in existence. I will then make a cash advance on every card, netting me trillions. I will use that money to buy the credit card companies, and then cancel my own debt. After I buy myself a new pair of shoes, I will liquidate my assets and pay off the national debt. Or better yet, I will donate the money to every other country besides the United States. Then those countries can pay off their debt and not be all poverty-stricken and such and we’d have to stop being so greedy.

On that note, how are we even considered the richest country on earth? The last time I checked, seven trillion dollars in debt is not rich. It’s actually quite poor. We should be called “The Poorest Country That Still Has Starbucks”. Well I guess if you think about it, 7.2 trillion dollars is only $24,000 a person. Maybe we should all just sell our cars. And that way it would be harder to crash them and we wouldn’t have to drill Alaska or complain about gas any more.

Of course, I’m pretty sure my opinion on that would be much different if I had a car – or if I hated Alaska.

Tagged: , ,

Published:
March 13, 2008 – 5:30 pm
Categories:

Racquetball

Originally posted on October 7, 2005

So, funny story. Well, not so much funny as one of those mildly amusing you-had-to-be-there stories that you laugh at just to be polite. Yesterday we were playing racquetball at the Rec Center. There were five of us, so somebody (me) had the genius idea that one person should go to one end of the court and try to dodge the racquetball as we hit it at them. This was really fun for a while. Then my roommate got hit in the nuts. That was really funny.

Shut up. No, that’s not the end of the story.

I thought it was really hilarious, but then I got hit in the groin. That was still funny, but my laughing was unusually high-pitched. But wait, there’s more. As everyone’s going “Ha, ha, it hurts guys when they get hit in the genitalia” I (not on purpose, I swear) overhand tennis served the racquetball and nailed my roommate again right where it counts. Have you ever seen a documentary with a Holocaust survivor and the interviewer goes “Was it bad?”. And the survivor gets that look like “Why the hell would you even ask that? You couldn’t possibly understand, you condescending prick”. That was what his face looked like. So we’ve decided that the game would be more aptly named as rack-my-balls. If anyone wants to go play tonight, we’re going at seven.

Tagged: ,

Published:
March 13, 2008 – 5:21 pm
Categories:

Good Reception

Originally posted on October 5, 2005

Now’s it’s time for our new segment:

Things That Sound Like Bad Jokes, But Actually Happened To Me

So today I went to the bathroom, as I sometimes do, and the guy in the stall next to me was talking to himself. I figured, hey, people with psychological problems have to defecate too. I was washing my hands when this guy started saying really loud, “I need to go, I really need to go.” Now a schizophrenic person is easy not to judge, but a constipated schizophrenic person is a little harder. I started laughing pretty hard. This is when the guy in question left his stall. Turns out he was just talking on his cell phone. I had to pretend I was laughing at the faucet fixtures. Ah, hot water knob, you make me chuckle. That guy must get really good reception.

Tagged: ,

Published:
March 13, 2008 – 5:11 pm
Categories:

Birthday

Originally posted September 29, 2005

So tomorrow’s my birthday. I don’t drink, but when people ask me how old I’m going to be, I say “two years from wasted”. That gets some funny responses from my professors. I usually follow that up with “I’m sick of remembering all my weekends”. Good times.

Tagged: ,

Published:
March 13, 2008 – 5:06 pm
Categories:
Pages: Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next