LOL Stick
The 3rd Brother
Last night was fairly entertaining. Evan and Gourlay came over and we had some beers and were playing Ping Pong while watching football. Evan left at halftime and the 3 amigos decided to go to the bar. We started off at McFadden’s which was more crowded than I would have guessed. They had dollar Bud Lights on “College Night” which was a nice surprise for the city. I thought that crowd was pretty good but we thought it was a good idea to change the scenery which probably wasn’t the best idea. An interesting thing about where we live is that it’s surrounded by the devil.
On our walk we decided that stopping by Delilah’s was a good idea. It was but it wasn’t. I’m not even sure exactly how much money I started the night with but I know I finished it with 0. Delilah’s is actually a really good strip club from my point of view. The girls are all smoking which is nice. They are however very aggressive and it’s easy blow your wad in a hurry. Nevertheless it was a fun time.
Gourlay has deemed the title “the 5th Stortz” which I have no problem with. I’m not necessarily sure he’s as unusual as he thinks he is but I find him amusing and a good person to hang out with. You’d think me being 28 and him being 21 would make a difference but it really doesn’t. The only thing I worry about is him spending his hard earned money on a Thursday night hanging out with me. I’m probably not the best influence. Hanging out with people though is how you build friendships which I believe the cheesy poem says are the best kind of ships. Just another night in the books.
India’s First Astronaut
FIRST INDIAN ASTRONAUT RETURNS TO EARTH
Some of you may have heard the news that India has entered into the ‘Space Race’.
This is the picture of their first returned Indian astronaut.
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Just landed.
The Ant and the Grasshopper
OLD VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long,
building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE OLD STORY:
Be responsible for yourself!
MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long,
building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.
CCN, TV1,2 & 3, M-Net and Carte Blanche show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
The country is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Rian with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Black..’
The ANCYL stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, We shall overcome.
Then Rev. Desmond Tutu has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper’s sake.
President Zooooma condemns the ant and blames President de Klerk, President PW Botha, HF Verwoerd and Apartheid for the grasshopper’s plight.
Julius Malema exclaims in an interview with TV News that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the Government drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of black bugs (BBE)
and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated
under the Government Land Repo Act and given to the grasshopper.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it.
The ant has disappeared to Australia, never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a Drugs related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of Nigerian spiders who terrorize and ramshackle, the once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.
The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of Africa with it.
MORAL OF THE MODERN STORY:
Be careful how you vote in 2012
A personal fitness center
For probably the very first time in my entire life I had an entire fitness facility to myself. If it took me 28 years to finally experience this I have to imagine that most of you probably haven’t had the pleasure. Our condo building supposedly has 125 or so condos/lofts filled with people. However at 10pm tonight there was absolutely nobody.
I started off doing some lifting on there various machines. I even did the ones I never do because I have no idea how to do them. With no one else around to make fun of you when you look like an idiot trying to learn it, I took the time to do so. After some lifting I ran 3 miles at 17:03 on the treadmill. Then I took the jump rope and actually jumped around the entire track which is 1/3 of a mile long. I would never attempt this with other people there but I had the urge by myself. I got about 3/4 of the way around before I started tiring and then messing up.
The experience was actually pretty enjoyable. I got a good work out in. No one slowed me down and I got to try basically every machine. This post came out way better in my head.
Football Update
I haven’t been posting much about my fantasy results and that’s because it’s been lackluster for the first 4 weeks. I’m running my standard 4 leagues and have records of 1-3 x2 and 2-2 x2. Everyone knows though that in fantasy football the goal of the regular season is to make the playoffs so it’s a never say die attitude. It’s hard to say exactly what the problem is but I’ve been getting no help from my non-scoring positions (K, Def, and TE) and my big names just aren’t the big names who are putting up major points. I didn’t play Hartline in 2 leagues last week and instead played Alshon Jeffrey which has me pretty pissed off. I suppose it’s good at least I have him.
On the betting front, I obviously wouldn’t post if I was down tons of money but I had a nice turn around this week. In week 2 I deposited a 100 bucks and lost it within 3 bets. This week I started off by putting 100 bucks on the Eagles which won 83. I then put the 83 (bankroll mgmt) on the Bears last night which netted 66. Finally I had 20 on Brandon Marshall having more receiving yards than Miles which proved correct as well. This puts me up a bit over 50 bucks for the season. This blog is a good way to document how much I win or lose during the season.
Technology Frustration
I rely on technology to keep me up to date on just about everything. There is nothing worse than when your phone or web browser freezes. You just sit there like a dipshit waiting for something to happen. Combine this with the problem that all mobile technology runs off of a battery which constantly requires your attention to not let it die. Plus hardware breaks after a certain amount of time which is super annoying. My right click button on my mouse only works when I press it down with herculean strength. We are slaves to these devices. Our parents never had to worry about this nonsense. They lived a much simpler, less stressful, happier life. Today is full of up to minute communication which is more of a headache when you have to rely on these piece of shit computer hard and software. No point of this post other than to express my frustration when NFL.com and its multitude of ads crash Mozilla.
I never clog the toilet
One of the most embarrassing thing that can happen to a person is clogging the toilet in a public place. You drop a deuce, you wipe, and then when you flush you get a sudden sense of terror when your poop isn’t swooshing down the drain. One could possibly blame the lack of water pressure but most likely it’s not considering that this event can happen. Myself, I don’t ever let this happen. First things first, I rarely take dumps in public because it’s uncomfortable and gross. However, if I really have no choice, I just the most obvious thing, I multiple flush. After you finish up it’s usually an ideal time to flush. Paper has to be the #1 toilet clogger so you just want to make sure the shit goes down to avoid any issues. I think 3-4 wipes of paper is probably as much as I’ll ever challenge the toilet with. It’s pretty rare that you get wipes that start heading into the double digits so an absolute max of 3 flushes seems about right. Yes you might be looked at as odd for flushing so many times but this is far superior than being that guy who just clogged the shitter. I just wanted to pass on this wisdom.
Ahead of the Life Curve
My life has been really great lately and is only going to continue to improve. After just returning from a productive sales trip, our internet business has been taking off. These two things aren’t exactly correlated but both are positive in their respective ways. I’m heading to the Pittsburgh area this weekend to meet with an influential player in our trade and also attend a conference where I will pick up a wealth of information on slate and sheet metal roofing. Football is this Sunday which is another awesome thing to look forward to. I also booked a trip to Chicago with Jeff to attend a sheet metal conference which will obviously be a fun time. I finally intend to book a trip to Lauderdale to hang out with the Rock which is long overdue. Not to mention that the new apartment is working wonders for my schedule. There is also a gym in the building which I basically have to myself and I’ve been putting in hours lifting and jumping rope which is turning me into an absolute beast. I feel like I’ve finally hit a nice stride in my life where I’m looking forward to all sorts of things.
After that little review of what I have going on, I’m going to take a little minute and sit right down and tell you how I came to arrive at my life philosophy. This doesn’t apply to everyone, only me. Everyone has there own way of viewing how they are going to live their life. Mine entails becoming a productive, healthy, motivated individual who can get anything accomplished. Working out is important to me because I want to be strong and healthy physically. I want to be personable and sociable and make people want to be around me because they like me and I mean that in a non-superficial way. As in, I’m being me, you’re being you, and we want to hang out because. I want to be constantly learning and becoming more skilled in everything I do. I don’t want to look back at my life and say I wish I would have done that. I need to stop getting too wasted on the weekends where it effects how people perceive me and then furthermore, how shitty it makes me feel on the days after. I need to find a female who not only would find these above traits attractive but also the minor things that interest me such as Twin Peaks and A Silent Film. I feel like I’m in the prime of my life where I’ve matured past youth and am now ready to make my foothold in the universe. Or at least Philadelphia. It’s just staying positive and focused.
If you’ve read this far I want to write something that I know not everyone agrees on but I’m going to present my opinion because it’s my blog. There is no afterlife. There is no god. My comparison to our universe would be consider us all ants. We are all essentially ants but just in human form. Do you think ants think they get reincarnated? Do they think that they are working for a higher power? Humans are just ants except we have the ability to think which is how God got created by humans. People need the idea of a god to stay on a positive path. I’m perfectly receptive to this idea as long as it makes you a better person. My philosophy is that I don’t need god to be a better person. I don’t need God to let me enter the afterlife. I am who I am with absolutely no divine intervention. I’m the one who forms my own path. The only person I need is me. You get an average of 80 years on this Earth and then you take a dirt nap. I can’t fathom laying in the ground as nothingness either. There isn’t one single person who can explain what happens after you die. I do think though that if you are true to yourself, do the right thing, and help people out, that whether you believe in god or not should be an indicator of what happens to your soul. Whether I feel this way 50 years from now when I’m on the cusp of life is probably a different story but from my limited experience on this Earth, this is what I’m bringing to the table. Keep an open mind.
Ahead of the Music Curve
So you can see my tweet in the upper right which is the basis of this post. Here’s the validation of my opinion on the band A Silent Film. I’m saying that I have impeccable taste in music and deserve the credit for pointing out good songs before they become mainstream. Now this is a skill that virtually everyone thinks they have but mostly don’t. By the time the song hits the radio it is already mainstream. To really prove this skill you have to buy the CD (or spotify) the first day it comes out, listen to it all the way through, and then give an opinion of songs on the album. For this particular example, I technically said every song on the album was great which is cheating a bit but I’m still counting it. I’ve also listened to the Killers album, Battleborn, about 7 times or so and think that more than half the songs have potential of hitting the airwaves. Once again not saying much by pointing good songs out. To actually prove this talent, you should download spotify and follow my list “alt nation” to hear my recommended songs. If you aren’t using spotify to listen to music you are so far behind the curve that you don’t deserve to know my music. Use this post as your starting point. Find me, follow my music, and then share your taste in music with me. It can be a game. I can jam your playlist while Jeff and I play ping pong and you can jam mine while you are doing whatever it is you do.
I wrote a post about being the first of your friends to hear a song and then declaring this “your song” and anyone else who knows about it after you is listening to old music. After thinking about this I’ve taken the stance that you actually want everyone to hear your song. It’s better when top notch material is heard by everyone. You should feel happy when other people discover songs that you knew were worth listening to. Sharing is caring.
I’m going to make one last plea for you to listen to spotify which absolutely blows away Pandora. It has newer music and you can choose your music and share your music. This is a similar backing I’ve done with Sirius for all these years and can’t understand how so many people still put up with AM/FM. It can’t seriously be about monthly fee? You spend your life in your car listening to commercials. WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!!!! I can’t comment on their rap or Country stations but I know their rock music is far superior than any Philly bs you are listening to. Never listen to a commercial again. Download Spotify immediately and share your music with me. I’ll be sure to mention great new songs by great new people who share.