Keeping an umbrella in your bag means that you’re prepared but also a little paranoid. It’s one thing to check the weather report before you leave the house and making a conscious decision to bring an umbrella with you. It’s entirely another thing to have an umbrella take up permanent residence in your backpack, briefcase, or purse at all times. Of course you will feel like it was all worth it if an unexpected storm blows in, but most of the time you’re lugging around an umbrella that you don’t need. There are a lot of things that take up the same amount of space as an umbrella but are more practical to have on a daily basis. Like a bottle of vodka for instance. You will use that way more than you would ever use an umbrella. And a bottle of vodka is more fun to take everywhere with you.
You have a job interview or a date or an important business meeting to go to and you want to look your best. You put on a fancy collared shirt in an attempt to make a good impression. But you made a mistake in buttoning up and your shirt is not aligned correctly. You tried to look nice but you failed. You look like a slob. You look like an incompetent boob that’s incapable of buttoning up your own shirt. And you have to admit that it’s a little bit true. Misbuttoning your shirt is a mistake that we all make at some point or another. It’s the fashion equivalent of having shit in your teeth all day. Hopefully you realize it before you leave the house, but chances are you won’t have any idea until somebody else points it out to you in a condescending manner.
If I’ve learned one thing in life, it’s that you should always take the weather report with a grain of salt. You simply can’t predict the weather. The top meteorologists are wrong half the time. They always say that there will be a big storm on Wednesday, and that you should buy bottled water and cans of food and invest in umbrellas. Then Wednesday rolls around and it’s eighty-five degrees out and you kick yourself for not going to the beach. I will only trust the weather report a few hours in advance. Most of the time I just look out the window. If it looks shitty out, I’ll grab a hoodie. It if looks really shitty out, that’s when I’ll check the weather report online to see if I should bring an umbrella. I don’t need the umbrella more times than not. The weather report is simply a guess, an educated estimate, but nature does whatever it wants to do.
Bumping into a friend unexpectedly is always a good thing. It’s the universe’s way of keeping people in touch. Earlier tonight I jumped on the train and saw a familiar face. It was a friend that I hadn’t seen since summertime. I sat down next to him and we chatted, caught up with each other, and made plans to hang out soon. It was a good train ride. I actually had a face-to-face conversation with somebody instead of staying buried in my phone for the entire trip. Do you know how rare it is to have an actual interaction with another person in this day and age? Take advantage of bumping into a friend. Don’t run away. Don’t cross the street. Say hello and have a conversation. Then you can run away and cross the street.
I ran out of beer earlier today so I decided to skate down to the corner store to pick up some suds. It was cloudy outside and it was gray and gloomy on my skate to the store. I picked up a six-pack of Lagunitas and the universe must have like my decision because the sun broke out from behind the clouds on the way back. The world was suddenly filled with a warm glow. It was a flash of summer in the middle of winter. The sun’s rays instantly rejuvenated me, I felt like I got Vitamin D injected straight into my veins. You see things in a new light when the sun comes out on a cloudy day. That’s not just a pun, it’s profound.
I can tell that it’s going to be a long winter when everybody is sick on public transportation. I live in San Francisco and it’s been raining and cold the last couple of days. That means whenever I get on the bus or train I hear a symphony of coughs, sniffles, and sneezes. There’s no such thing as silence, only sounds of sickness. There’s no escape from the germs and bacteria all around you. You know that it’s just a matter of time before you catch something and get sick too. Hopefully it’s just a cold and not Ebola. Or Swine Flu. Or SARS. Are we still scared of SARS? It’s hard to avoid getting sick when everybody else is, especially on public transportation. All you can do is use hand sanitizer every couple of minutes and try not to get sneezed on.
So I was just pooping (that’s something that I do at least once a day, maybe twice or more) and it dawned on me that no matter what I eat there’s always a peanut in my shit. Granted, I don’t study my stool on a regular basis, but I always notice a peanut when I glance at my bowel movement. Maybe it’s not a peanut, maybe it just looks like one, but I’m not going to go to great lengths to determine if it’s really a peanut or not. I’ll just assume that it’s a peanut so that I can joke about how there’s always a peanut.
Last week I got a pimple. Yeah, I still get the occasional pimple. It’s not like I break out or anything. I usually get a pimple, I pop it, and life goes on. But last week’s pimple was different. It was on my lip. A pimple on your lip is one of the worst type of pimples. It’s in a painful spot and it’s painfully obvious that you have a pimple. But a pimple on your lip doesn’t look like a pimple. It looks like a cold sore. And nobody will believe that it’s just a pimple, and you can’t blame them. If you saw someone with a pimple on their lip, you would assume that it’s a cold sore too. It’s just safer to assume that you need to avoid that person. It’s a survival instinct.
An Orphan Thanksgiving is a thanksgiving without family. It’s not as sad as it sounds. It’s when you celebrate Thanksgiving with friends rather than family. It’s either out of choice or necessity, but it’s never a bad thing. In fact, it’s often more fun than spending the holiday with family. Quality time with family is good, but it’s less responsibility and less hassle dealing with friends. And your family feels obligated to take you in, so you feel more included when someone goes out of their way to invite you to a holiday meal. Family is important, but friendship is too. You get to choose your friends; you don’t get to choose your family. (Don’t get me wrong, I love my family but I love my friends too, and friends deserve a holiday of their own!)
The holidays are coming up, a time where fat Americans get even fatter from all the feasts. That’s when moms and grandmas bust out their greatest family recipes that have been handed down for generations. Your great-grandma learned how to cook from her mom and she passed it on to your grandma. Your grandma passed it onto your mom. And your mom passed it on to nobody, because nobody in our generation knows how to cook anymore. That’s a bit of an overstatement: I know a lot of good cooks my age, I’m only being dramatic to emphasize my point, and my point is that home cooking is becoming a lost art. Most American men under the age of thirty-five only know how to grill. If it doesn’t involve fire, they aren’t interested. Most American women under the age of thirty-five can cook a few dishes, but they don’t have the same culinary prowess as their mothers or grandmothers. That’s not sexist, that’s a fact. My friend Jayde told me that, and she’s a girl, so I know it’s not sexist. Just ask Jayde. She’ll tell you. She’s the one who told me to write about this, so I know she has my back. Enjoy Thanksgiving while you can because it might go extinct.
It seems like every stoner I know goes dry at least once a year. One side effect of smoking marijuana on a regular basis is getting too high and forgetting to get more green before you run out. Dealers aren’t always available and cannabis clubs aren’t always open. That’s when you have to ask a stoner friend if he can spare a nug. You don’t need a gram, you only need enough for a bowl or two. You should offer him five bucks for it as a courtesy. If he’s a good friend he’ll decline your money and just spot you, because he knows that you’ll return the favor somewhere down the road. Giving away weed to a friend in need is an important part of the stoner lifestyle. It’s like buying a round for your friends at the bar. It’s for the good kind of karma.
Marijuana has always been around, but now it’s going mainstream. Medical marijuana and even recreational use has been legalized by several states and decriminalized in others. It’s being accepted by those who used to shun it. Case in point: these three grandmas smoking weed for the first time. The grandmas were always aware of marijuana, but they didn’t try it because they didn’t see a reason to. They said they were too busy smoking cigarettes, drinking cocktails, and raising families to try it. Luckily for us, they did and Cut Video caught it all on camera. It starts with the three old ladies taking turns hitting a bong and encouraging the others to take bigger rips. Then they start discussing how they feel as they experience things while being stoned for the first time. Then they hit a vaporizer. The first one realizes how smooth it is and comments, “This could be dangerously fun!” Then they play Cards Against Humanity while enjoying munchies and trying to figure out the definition of queefing. After a decent amount of reflection, the grandmas explain their newfound feelings of acceptance of the drug. The ladies are dignified and distinguished and I’m glad this video came out before the holidays because I think it will inspire a lot of families to toke up together before the Thanksgiving feast is served. Marijuana is not a bad thing. This video is proof.
Like millions of people, I sometimes grind my teeth at night. Apparently I’ve been doing it for years because my teeth were noticeably worn down. My dentist suggested that I get a night guard. It’s basically a mouthguard similar to what athletes wear, except they are form-fitted to your teeth and you pop it in just before bedtime. It keeps your teeth from making contact when you grind them. It takes a little bit of adjustment before I got used to it, but now I can’t sleep without it. I no longer have to worry about any nocturnal dental trauma. I used to be a little ashamed of wearing it around people, but most people are accepting of it and more than a few have inquired about getting one for themselves. A lot of people grind their teeth and don’t know that there’s a solution for it. Sleep disorders seem to be a taboo subject matter. They don’t have to be.
I work as a server at popular restaurant in a tourist trap location. As a result, there are some days that I can’t even walk five steps without getting stopped to take a picture of some happy couple or a miserable family. It always happens the same way too. I’ll be heading to work with my headphones in and some guy will kind of flail his arm at me, almost as if he was trying to hail a taxi cab. He will lift up his camera, then gesture back towards his girlfriend/wife and family with a half smile on his face, then look back at you and raise the camera again. That’s usually when I cave in and nod, and he approaches me with the camera and points at the camera button. They always end up showing you the camera button. I know how to take a fucking picture. Everyone knows how to take a fucking picture. You aim the camera at whatever you want to shoot and then you press the button. There’s no need to point out the camera button anymore. It’s 2014. We all have it by now.
I was talking with a friend the other day and he said that all twins look alike. I told him that it wasn’t true, that he was just perpetuating a stereotype. He was being blatantly racist towards twins, and I wasn’t going to stand for that. I called him out for being a twigot. That’s when somebody is a bigot towards twins. It might not be a real word, but I think it should be because I came up with it. There’s a lot of hate in this world already, there’s no reason for twigotry on any level. I know a lot of twins and I will defend them. Twins are two people, but a lot of folks forget that they are people too. Stand up for them. Stop twigotry now.
Bearglove is the newest scent from Old Spice and it is a terrible, terrible idea. Let’s start with the basics. I’m a straight male living in San Francisco. I can’t buy a deodorant called Bearglove without people questioning my sexual orientation. If you don’t know what a bear is, try searching for San Francisco bears and see what comes up. It won’t be pictures of Pablo Sandoval. It’s kind of obvious that Old Spice is trying to be like Axe and recapture the youth market, but they don’t know how to do that. You can tell by their marketing that they are clueless. Axe has an ad campaign centered on young males using their products and having women throwing themselves at them. Axe claims that sluts will sleep with you if you use their product. Meanwhile Old Spice chose to call a scent Bearglove, which is awful similar to Bear Love, and it doesn’t help that the label art depicts two bears almost in a 69 position. That’s not appealing to the right demographic they are trying to get. It’s like targeting straight males with a line of anal condoms called SodoMe. It’s not going to happen. Go back to the drawing boards.
Clipping your nails in public is one of the worst things a human being can do. It’s beyond disgusting. That kind of shit should only take place behind closed doors. Hygiene is important, but nobody wants to see you wipe your ass, nobody wants to see you using a Q-tip, and nobody wants to get one of your nail clippings in their eye. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the sound. That unique click-clack clipping sound causes cringes down my spine. I’ve seen old ladies clipping their nails on the bus. I’ve also yelled at old ladies to stop clipping their nails on the bus. I don’t understand how they think it’s ok to do that. I know I’m supposed to respect my elders, but I can’t respect them if they don’t have any sense of decency. It boggles my mind to know that some people can go through life oblivious to other people. It’s called courtesy. I just wish it was more common.
criticallyrated 