Motivational Posters

Readership, something has come to my attention recently that has troubled me greatly. Allow me to explain.

I'm sure that all of you have heard of and seen the amazing gift God has given to the world, called "De-Motivational Posters." If not, a couple examples can be found here and here. A Google Image Search of "demotivational posters" would yield countless more beautiful examples.

These "De-Motivational Posters" have enriched the lives of many people since the genius who invented them introduced them to the world. Personally, I've been on the verge of tears, seen a De-Motivational Poster, and my frown was turned instantly upside-down as I laughed uncontrollably. They are hilarious, timeless, and most of all, fuckin' AWESOME.

But! Something eluded my perception. In the very naming of this funnybone-ticklery as a "DE-Motivational Poster," it follows logically that there must be a NON-de-Motivational Poster, or as the more grammatically inclined of us would say, a regular ol' Motivational Poster.

I did a quick Google Search.

And I was appalled.

What the fuck is this bullshit? Or this?

Does anybody honestly ever get motivated by this sorta shit? And then I did a little more digging, and found out that these posters are put up mostly in corporate-style office buildings.

What the fuck!?

I'm going to come to this same BULLSHIT dead-end job five days a week - maybe six! - for every week from now until my 65th birthday, at which point I'll most likely retire and due to the absolute shambles that Social Security is in currently, have to find another job to keep my house and keep food in my belly - BUT THANK GOD that there's that poster on the wall, telling me that persistence will help, and that aspiring to climb as high as I can dream is something I should be doing! Without that, I might just throw my ergonomic chair out my twelfth-story office window and then jump out after it!

Fuck!

This cognitive psych class is definitely not helping my good nature and sunny fucking disposition.

Wooo-sah. Wooo-sah.

Stay classy

Paying to get Laid - Financially Sound?

Readership, I was talking to the ever-lovely Jordan today, and the subject of getting pussy came up.

Oh yeah.

But yeah. She related to me a highly philosophical debate she'd played party to in her days as a bartender. The debate stemmed from the question of "to pay, or not to pay for pussy." While this question was being debated, it was discovered that even if you don't directly pay for it, if you go through conventional channels (i.e. not rape), you will end up paying for pussy, even if it is highly indirectly. An explanation? Of course.

There are two ways to go about getting laid if you're a guy. One, is to hire a prostitute/go to a brothel/etc. This means you pay directly to get pussy. Is it dirty? Probably. Is it good? Probably not. But it's pussy. So you get laid.

The other way is to be a player about it. This is a blanket term for actually talking to a girl and taking her out to dinner and whatnot, and for going to the club and macking, etc.

If you're a broke ass dude, which is the easier of the two for your small budget? Most would say that it would be cheaper to actually mack and be a gent about it, but I'm going to disagree. Why?

How much money did you spend on the outfit you're wearing? Unless you're buying from the bargain bin, a good outfit with name brands is going to run you about $100-$120, then another $100 or so for some fly kicks. The watch, even if it's fake, will run you from $30-$50, and the chain another $50. That right there is $280 minimum. Add taking her to dinner ($40) and a movie ($30), and you're over $370. And factor in gas, and you're over $400.

Let's pause here. This is one date. In the preparation (clothes and transportation) and the actual date, you're spending over $400. And statistically speaking, you're not even likely to get any pussy from her that night.

Looking in your local newspaper at the escort classifieds, you can get a classy escort to come to your house and smash for around $200, depending on where you are.

In summation. While I don't personally prefer going after escorts to looking for a meaningful relationship (which I have now), speaking strictly financially, it is preferable.

Who'da thunk it.

Stay classy

Barbershops

Readership, since my hair grows like a vociferous weed on plant-steroids, I've had to have several haircuts while I've been away at college in Queens. I had two last school year, and today, my second of this school year. There were three barbershops around St. John's. There were the Jewish guys, the black guys, and the Dominican guys. The black guys, much to my dismay, closed down at some point last year, second semester. I went to each barbershop once each, with the exception of the Dominican barbershop because of the aforementioned closing.

Anyway.

Each place was an experience, and since classes start tomorrow and I'm trying to be a good boy and get good grades - and thus won't have much free time to blog/bitch during the first week of classes - I thought I'd drop those experiences on ya. Let's do this (LEEEEROYYYYY JENKINSSSS).

The first place I ever went to get my hair cut was the black barbershop. Now, this was my first time ever setting foot inside a black barbershop, but I HAD seen the Ice Cube movie "Barbershop," so I had an idea of what to expect. I opened the door, stepped in, and instantly realized that the movie "Barbershop" was almost a carbon copy of the actual barbershop (minus Cedric the Entertainer) - right down to the one "Eminem" white guy in there cutting hair.

Suddenly, from around my left elbow, came a low, surly voice.

"Yo. You wanna get CUT?"

And I was like "WHOA WHAT THE FUCK NO!" and I sorta freaked out a bit. But he gave me a look that said, quite plainly, "dumbass cracka" and said "Nah b, your HAIR." And I was like "oh fo sho."

About an HOUR AND A HALF LATER, I'm still in the chair. I'm legally blind (duh) so I can't see my reflection too clearly, but from what I can see, he's just about done (cuz I'm lookin' good). Suddenly, he stops with the clipper, spins me around SUPER FAST to face him, and says, "yo . . . you want me to go get muh blade?"

"WHOA WHAT THE FUCK NO!" He shot me the same "dumbass cracka" look, went out to his car, and came back with a butterfly-knife (which worried me even more). He grabbed a spray bottle full of (what I thought was) water, and told me, and I quote, "put your head back." Something told me "CLOSE YO EYES BITCH" and I did, just in time - because it wasn't water.

It was rubbing alcohol.

The Jewish guys were, again, an experience. There were like six of them, but only two of them were cutting hair. The other four were watching the door, like they expected half of Palestine to suddenly flood through the door and try and take over. The two cutting hair were polar opposites. One was old and wise, the other young and trendy. The young guy cut my hair, and kept asking me questions about how I wanted my hair cut, like I was a retard. "Do you want it . . . like mine? Or . . . like his?" And I was sitting there like "are you fuckin' serious bro?"

As an aside, they were the only barbershop I visited with a cash register.

Lastly, and most recently, was the Dominican barbershop. I've been twice, and both times I was highly satisfied with the results. When I went the first time, I got the chill, older guy (out of the three barbers there; the other two were a little older than me and crazy).

I'm gonna pause here for a second to drop a little knowledge. I'm Puerto Rican. Obviously, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans both speak Spanish. Most people will tell you that Puerto Ricans speak quickly, regardless of what language they're speaking, and they'd be right. However, when it comes to speaking Spanish at a rapid pace, there is no race better than the Dominicans.

So, I'm sitting there in the chair, and these guys are rapid-firing Spanish at each other, and from the little bit that I actually catch, I come to understand that they're debating amongst themselves. The topic? My ethnicity. Finally, the chill guy cutting my hair stops and says to me, "What are you man?" So I told him. He smiled and laughed, because he won the argument.

The first thing the crazy younger guy says when I sit in the chair? He starts arguing with the chill guy about my ethnicity again. The chill guy goes "boriquen" which is Spanish slang for "Puerto Rican," and the crazy guy goes "No. Wrong. What are you buddy?" He was pissed when I told him I was Puerto Rican.

So yeah. Three different barbershops. Three very different flavors.

Completely unrelated to the above: I don't wanna go to class tomorrow.

Stay classy

Art

Readership, there's been something that's been bothering me for quite some. It's a bit . . . semantic. Allow me to explain.

Due to the natural progression of a society, certain words and phrases will go in and out of style, or change meanings. Usually it's a pretty drastic change - for example, in the twenties, a "pussy" was a normal thing to call a cat. Now it's slang for "vagina" or someone who fits the description of "scared to do anything" or a "bitch."

There's one word that has managed to change its definition so drastically that the original definition has been lost to the ages. What word is it?

Art.

Back in the Renaissance, art was a word that was reserved for something visual that stirred the soul - you looked up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or saw the Mona Lisa, or the Statue of David, and you KNEW it was art. There was no doubt in your mind that what you were looking at was something that transcended the very lives of the men who created them, and would be considered almost sacred centuries after their deaths.

Nowadays, art has as much of a set-in-stone, concrete definition as the word "thingamagig," or better yet, "jount." It's ridiculous. There are people who spend LOTS OF MONEY on "paintings" that were made, to be perfectly honest, by someone just throwing paint at a blank canvas until they felt they were done. There are these large, plastic "statues" (for lack of a better word) around Yale and Downtown New Haven that are just abominations. They're shapeless, mindless, and pointless. But it's "art." And I'm sure the guy that the City of New Haven contracted to create these "works of art" made a fucking killing.

Basically, it seems like anything can be art, and since the definition is so subjective, nobody could say that what you said was art, wasn't actually art. Technically, my shoe is art. So is my shower. That broken window? Art. That cardboard box, with one side ripped off? Art. The computer on which I'm typing this Observation? Art. The letter N? Art.

When I get back to St. John's, I think I might just go up to my old art teacher and take a shit right there on the floor in the middle of the classroom.

And call it art.

Stay classy

Jury Duty Can Suck My Civic Balls

Readership, once you turn 18, your name goes on a couple lists (at least in America). If you don't have a job, it goes on the State Unemployment list. If you have your license, it goes on the State DMV license registry. If you register to vote in your state, it goes on the State Registered Voters list. If you filed taxes in your state last tax season, you go on the Paying Taxes to *whatever state* list.

From these four lists, names are drawn randomly by computer, and if yours comes up, you're in for a treat. A treat dripping in as much sarcasm as the previous sentence.

Yup, you guessed it. Jury duty.

Jury duty, as the video they show you explains, is an honor. It is your civic duty as a proud citizen of your state to be selected to a jury of your fellow state residents so you can uphold another fellow citizen's Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial by a jury of his or her peers.

Fuck jury duty.

I woke up at around 7 this morning so I could be ready to leave by 7:45. I got to the courthouse at 8, still half-asleep. After going through a metal detector and up an elevator to the top floor, myself and about fifty other people were confined to what looked like a fucked up lecture hall with chairs in rows that didn't separate. There was a 32-inch television on one of those elementary-school-esque carts against the back wall, next to the podium, and it was perpetually tuned to CNN.

We're going to stop here for a moment. There was recently a REALLY bad earthquake in Haiti. Like REALLY REALLY bad. There have been a lot of deaths, and there are thousands of people still unaccounted for, even now at the moment that I'm typing this. CNN was reporting on the earthquake all day. So as if it wasn't bad enough that I was stuck in this fucking room with a bunch of strangers (and not a few creepy old guys), I was smacked in the face with a tragedy that genuinely saddened me, because my roommate and good friend Waldy has family down there, that when I last asked him, hadn't been accounted for.

To top it all off, some dickhead with a SmartBoard came on the screen, and used it to tell the viewers that 47% of Haiti's citizens lived in Port-au-Prince (which was the earthquake's epicenter), and also that Haiti had a 53% literacy rate.

Why the fuck was that important? I wondered, did he perhaps think that the earthquake had given the Haitian people an ultimatum before it struck - "READ ROMEO AND JULIET OR I'LL CRUSH YOU!" - and thus this statistic was relevant? Somehow I think not.

I digress.

All of this depressing and makin'-me-mad shit ceased for about five minutes, when this late-fifties Hispanic guy got on the podium. He had a sexy Telemundo voice, but spoke English (obviously), and spoke like a pilot. Everything was enunciated and pronounced super clearly and the cadence was fake as hell and I wanted to shoot him. I couldn't even pay attention to what he was saying because his voice pissed me off so damn much.

When he stopped, we got a "coffee break." The coffee was completely gone after everybody had some. And it wasn't even good coffee.

After the "coffee break," at around 10, they sat us back in the auditorium/lecture hall/torture chamber.

And we sat.

And we sat.

And I listened to Aesop Rock.

And we sat.

And this creepy lady dressed all in black who seemed to have went to Goku's stylist to get her hair done stood up against a pillar twenty feet behind me and stared at me for an hour or so.

And we sat.

Finally, at around noon, an announcement came over hidden speakers saying that we were free to go.

I SPENT FOUR FUCKING HOURS OF MY MORNING SITTING WATCHING DEPRESSING CNN AND DRINKING BAD COFFEE WHILE BEING STARED AT BY CREEPY MEN AND WOMEN.

And I got paid something to the tune of 10 bucks.

Fuck jury duty.

Stay classy

Cows

Readership, I was having a deeply philosophical discussion with Mistah Welch tonight, and he brought up a very interesting point. How did the milking of cows come about?

Yeah. I said "hmmm" too.

The way I see it, there are three possible ways that milking a cow was "discovered." I'll outline them for you in order from least probable to most probable, below.

First off, we have what I'm going to call the "Genius Theory." In the Genius Theory, some know-it-all young dick (picture Einstein in his twenties with short hair) decided that since his momma's boobies gave him milk, that every animal's momma's boobies had to do the same thing. Actually, since according to this site, cows were first domesticated between eight and ten thousand years ago in the Near East (which is just fancy archaeologist-speak for what us normal bastards call the Middle East, minus a few countries), he probably had filthy long hair.

I digress.

This know-it-all young dick probably tried a few animals out first, but was frustrated by their distinct lack of boobies.

And then he saw the cow. Its udder was in plain sight. No need to search for boobies or nips. There it was.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Ancient history, actually.

The second theory, which I'll call the "Clean Accident Theory," follows a similar tact as the previous theory, except there was no intelligence involved. A regular ol' guy, same as you and me (except somewhere in 6000 BC Iraq), tripped over a rock towards a cow, and, flailing his hands out to try and grab something that would save him from his terrible tumble, his fingers fastened securely around the plump, full udders of a cow, squirting the delicious "Moo Juice" (as my father calls it) onto the ground.

He was then most likely kicked in the head by said cow, permanently fucking his brain up. It would be several years before anybody put two and two together and discovered that it had been the sudden and surprise milking that had pissed the cow off enough to strike back.

As an aside, this was also the first documented case of the whole "No means no" thing.

Lastly, and I believe, most likely, is what I'll call the "Dirty Accident Theory." In this theory, there was some sick-in-the-head, perverted Ancient Iraqi, who saw those plump udders and couldn't help himself. He had to have them. And he did.

Over. And over.

Stay classy

Married Chicks

Readership, married chicks at bars piss me off. Why, you ask? Lemme lay it out flat for you.

First off, every single chick at a bar that's a "chick at a bar" (as opposed to someone sitting at a bar who just happens to have a vagina - and there IS a difference) is dressed sexy. That's the bottom line. They are dressed to sexify your night. Short skirts, belly shirts and plunging necklines - and then the hair and perfume, and whew. There goes your mind.

So, naturally, being a man, you approach these ladies and drop your best lines, and then you get THIS bullshit:

"Uh . . . I'm married."

Uh . . . the fuck? You say you're married? So, uh . . . where the hell's your husband? Does he know you're dressed like a hooker trolling bars every night?

Or is this whole thing bullshit? Did you just hit up a toy store and toss a quarter into a machine, crank the crank and get a fake ass ring to wear, so you can be dressed like a filthy whore and then lure unsuspecting saps into your web of lies, only to be a snarky bitch and shoot them down to make yourself feel better?

Readership, YOU be the judge.

And please, whatever you do.

Stay classy

What the Hell, Pokemon

Readership, I'm going to open up the new decade with a Pokemon Observation. Let's hope that this doesn't come back and bite me in the ass. If this year is a bad year, I'm gonna blame this post.

Anyway.

Pokemon, as any idiot knows, originated in Japan. I'm gonna climb out on a limb of the Asshole Tree and say that Japanese people are immediately identifiable because of their squinted eyes (among other things). However, in the Pokemon animated series, there was only one person who had squinted eyes (well, technically like seven, but they're all related and only one of them is around for more than one episode). His name is Brock Harrison.

And he's black.

What the fuck. The ONLY character with "Asian" features in this show is a BLACK GUY?

Insert "blackanese" joke here.

Welcome to 2010, folks.

Stay classy