Institutionalized

Whenever life gets me down, I just turn to this video and remind myself that things could be much, much worse. You should probably watch this:



You see, it only takes one viewing of that video (that is if I can mentally prepare myself to watch the entire thing) to remind me that whatever my problems might be, they can in no way compare to those of Mike Muir of Suicidal Tendencies. What a burden it must be to have parents who are genuinely interested and concerned in the mental well-being of their son; they even go so far as to commit the heinous act of letting Mr. Muir know that they are there for him if he needs to discuss his feelings. The breaking point, as you have no doubt seen through your tears, comes as Mike's mother cruelly informs him that she will not wait on him hand and foot. Truly a punk classic!

Everything In Moderation

At work the other day I made a moustachioed man a protein smoothie. While I cleaned the pitcher, spatula, and other implements used to make the drink, the man departed the smoothie bar to pay the cashier four dollars. As I scrubbed away the stubbornly caked-on protein powder, I saw the man return out of the corner of my eye.

"I don't know if you're the manager on duty or what," the man said, "but you need to start implementing some cross-training at this gym, because I just had to wait for this guy at the front desk to figure out what kind of smoothie I'm buying and what I had to pay for it. This is BULLSHIT!"

I stared at the man without responding. Less than a minute had passed from the time he left the smoothie bar to the time when he began his rant. He stormed off.

This sort of thing happens almost every day where I work. I don't like seeing things like this on the news.

Just Remember

It was all better before you were born

Is Steve Wozniak My Hero?

THA WOZ is riding around on Segways and doing local car ads that seriously bite Auto Connection's shit.

Can someone from VH1 or Bravo please, please convince him to do an Eccentric Rich Boomer reality show with Richard Branson? Would it really take that much convincing? Wozniak already did Dancing With the Stars and Branson is no stranger to MTV, seeing as how he showed us his island that he rents out to Mariah on Cribs. This seems like the next logical step. And you KNOW that together they could figure out how to fly to the moon and make it affordable for at least the lower rungs of the super rich; this would of course be a reality show in itself. Nicole Richie and the son of the Executive Vice President of Brookstone dealing with the effects of zero gravity and a liquid diet? S'il vous plait!

Make that check out to cash if you could, Brian Graden.

Ernie Pyle

This man was awesome

Immediately above the fires the sky was red and angry, and overhead, making a ceiling in the vast heavens, there was a cloud of smoke all in pink. Up in that pink shrouding there were tiny, brilliant specks of flashing light – anti-aircraft shells bursting. After the flash you could hear the sound.

Up there, too, the barrage balloons were standing out as clearly as if it were daytime, but now they were pink instead of silver. And now and then through a hole in that pink shroud there twinkled incongruously a permanent, genuine star – the old-fashioned kind that has always been there.

Ordinary Hood Shit

Today I saw a toddler walk face-first into a glass window. His mother crouched down to pick him up, attempting to comfort the child while at the same time not letting him see that she was laughing.

"Is he okay?" I asked.

"This has really never happened before," she responded.

His older brother, who was not too far advanced from toddlerhood himself, looked me straight in the eye and flashed me a knowing smile.

July 4:

NJ

My family vacations here sometimes