Things That Inspire Me

I'm too tired to come up with a witty introduction paragraph right now (it's WAY past my bedtime), so we'll just jump right into the list.

Funny People
Funny people inspire me to be funny as well. However, I don't always agree with people on what actually is funny. For instance:




Inspirational



Almost as funny as
a terminal illness

I don't care how much you guys love Shrek. It's retarded.

Awesome People
I'll just use Brian Carey as an example here, because he'll probably never read my blog. He's awesome, funny, great musician, great leader, chick magnet, and best of all, not a total loser. As much as it inspires me when awesome people like that get ahead in life, it makes me just as angry when total jerks get all the chicks. Enjoy it while you can - but I see your future.




"Get to McMinimum Waging!"

Genious Cleverness
The above phrase probably didn't make sense to anyone, so I'll try to explain it. Ever seen something (a video, a picture, a comeback) that just makes you want to explode with awesomeness? So cool that you wish everyone you know could know about it and appreciate it's sheer intestine-obliterating coolness? That's what I'm talking about. I strive to create those types of moments.

Dating
Dating has inspired me to keep things more clean. For instance, after feeling mildly embarrassed about carting my group for Homecoming around in my ridiculously messy car for the day date, I decided to spend a couple of hours and really clean it. Now that it's clean, I'll be keeping it that way. If only this wisdom had affected my motivation to keep my room clean as well. You know, just in case something like this happened. (click to enlarge)





Not pictured: Underwear anywhere
in sight (thankfully). Yeah, I'll go to
Sadies with you.

That about wraps it up for today's show. Until next time, keep your room clean!

Three Rules for Better Writing

I was assigned in my english class (taught by everyone's favorite teacher, Gardner) a literary analysis on a novel we just finished. Now, I thought I had a pretty good grasp on the concepts behind a really good paper (thank you, Woolsey), but that day I learned a thing or two. We were given time to begin work on our rough draft in the writing lab, which translates approximately to "edit Wikipedia so it says that Ted Nugent was born in Highland" in my somewhat more developed dialect of English. I looked over for a moment, and noticed that my friend (uneducated in Andrewese, so obviously misunderstanding Garder's instructions) had started his paper with an impressive title. Earlier that period, we had been urged to choose a more interesting title for our paper, and his example really demonstrated good writing techniques. So, without further ado, I present three rules for better writing.

#1. The Thesaurus Makes You Look Smarter
Any teacher who ever told you that this was a dangerous tool, due to the possibility of using words in the wrong context, was obviously a quack. The thesaurus transforms a boring, cookie cutter title such as






into something MUCH more eye-popping.






Much better! If you're unfortunate enough not to have Microsoft Word on your computer, please proceed to catch up with the rest of the world. Go on, nobody's waiting.

#2. A Thesis is Optional

I know all your teachers probably never shut up about how important your thesis statement is. But this thesis-based system of organization is really starting to get outdated. A much more modern idea on how to organize your paper is known simply as "Utter Chaos." If you want to be original with your paper and avoid sounding like everyone else in your class, check out the details here. As a matter of fact, this "Utter Chaos" principle can be applied in a myriad of ways. For example, this girl demonstrates its fantastic effects when organizing notes in a piece of music.

#3. Don't Bore Your Readers

A paper should really be no longer than one page. Think of the Gettysburg Address - written on a train ride to the place where Abraham Lincoln was to deliver it. This paper is still nationally renowned today! The Declaration of Independence?




One page.






Also, the Constitution.


These great documents are perfect examples of being concise. But you would be hard-pressed to find any longer articles that have really made a difference in the world.

So until next time, remember these three golden rules and watch your papers get A's (and sometimes these little upside-down L's with an extra dash that I can only assume are better than an A) left and write! (Pun may or may not have been 100% intentional).

Chuck Norris: More Man than a Keg of Testosterone

For those of you unfamiliar with my Chuck Norris obsession/addiction/fetish/unhealthy adoration, I have a Chuck Norris obsession/addiction/fetish/unhealthy adoration. It started in 8th grade. My young, innocent, carefree self was sitting in Geometry (taught by none other than Dolores Umbridge herself), when I heard the name "Chuck Norris" slip out casually from a friend somebody sitting next to me. (At that point in my life, I was too socially inept to have what others called "friends.") Needless to say, I perked up immediately. Was this the same Chuck Norris that I had seen portrayed as Walker, Texas Ranger countless times on Hallmark Channel? It had to be.




Director: Chuck Norris. Starring: Chuck Norris. Producer:
Chuck Norris. Stunt Double: Preposterous!

My suspicions were only confirmed when, shortly thereafter, I heard a reference to his world famous Roundhouse Kick. With this kick, Walker (and therefore Chuck Norris) had downed, nay, slain numberless concourses of cookie-cutter foes. One could go so far as to call it his trademark, although experts argue that his beard fits the same description.

That day, my love for Chuck Norris jokes was born. I've read every single one that's ever been written on the internet, and been reduced to making up my own. But for those of you who haven't yet experienced the magic, a google search of "Chuck Norris Jokes" will steer you in the right direction. Be warned, not all Chuck Norris jokes are G-rated. To put it in another way, if there are words in a joke that you don't understand, a Google Image Search would NOT be an ideal next step.

So what makes up this legend of a man? Well let's break it down and find out.

History: Chuck Norris was born before his parents were, so the date is currently disputed. He has been alive for many centuries. In fact, he should have died by now, but Death hasn't gotten up the nerve to tell him yet. His first role in a big movie was to get the crap beat out of him by Bruce Lee. Although, if you want to be technical, he never actually appeared in the film. A stunt double was used for the scene in question, so as to avoid breaking Bruce Lee's toes, foot, leg, and vertebrae. This is one of two times Chuck Norris uses stunt doubles, the other being for crying scenes. Chuck Norris doesn't cry, which is a shame, because his tears are the only known cure for cancer, AIDS, and aging.




The high point in this young
stunt-double's career


Martial Arts Training: Taking a break from his successful acting career, Norris inexplicably decided to study Martial Arts. Although entirely unnecessary (Japan gave Chuck Norris a black belt in every martial art form in existence shortly after they became a country), this endeavor gave birth to one of the most, if not THE most famous aspect of Chuck Norrism: the Roundhouse Kick. The Chuck Norris Roundhouse Kick (composed entirely from the element Chuckitanium) is the most powerful entity known to man thus far. When Chuck Norris misses you with a Roundhouse Kick, you still die, as does everyone else in the room. Similarly, if you have dream about Chuck Norris Roundhouse Kicking you, you die. Perhaps the most impressive feature of his Roundhouse Kick, however, is the fact that it can be seen from space.




"In other news, it appears Chuck Norris
has decided to stand in off the coast
of Florida and Roundhouse kick
a dolphin."

Franchising: Eventually, people realized that there was a lot of money to be made on Chuck Norris paraphernalia. Already thriving on the money he earns from selling his urine as "Red Bull," Norris felt it was his chance to contribute to the world economy. The selection of Chuck Norris merchandise grows every day, and I'm proud to say I've contributed to the market by purchasing one of my very own T-shirts.




A much improved version
of the popular "I do all
my own stunts"
T-shirt

So I want to try something new. In the comments, write whatever you want to about how awesome Chuck Norris is, and THEN submit a joke of your own invention! The winner will get the worldwide notoriety of being publicly recognized in my blog next time I do a post. Also, don't try to slip in jokes that someone else wrote, or that you found on the internet. I promise you I've heard it before. And when somebody inevitably thinks I can't have read all the Chuck Norris jokes and submits one anyway, they will be publicly shamed on my blog, which is akin to being publicly shamed in the Olympics in terms of the audience that will see it.

Until next time, happy Chuck Norris day! (and tomorrow, and the next day...)

23 Returns

So since about 1% of you know what this blog is going to be about from the title, I'll give a little explanation. And since I feel like it, it will be in biblical form.

1 And it came to pass that in the days of the king Hill there came a boy unto the Student Council.
2 And lo, this boy was a nerd, therefore he was the tech support officer.
3 And it came to pass that Schmidtty did speak for all the people of the land when he did say that video announcements sucked and were boring, for behold, nobody watched them.
4 And thus it was that Schmidtty told the boy (his name being Andrew of Broekhuijsen) to make video announcements interesting to watch.
5 And Andrew and his friends labored much in the land, and behold, 23 was born. And there was much rejoicing, for everybody throughout the land thought it owned all.
6 But alas, during the filming of the finale, the retarded camera battery waxed weak, as a 7th grader. And thus it was that the film captured really crappily and became un-editable.
7 And because of this, the finale did fail to become aired. And there was weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth, for behold, there was much sorrow and lamentation throughout the land.
8 And it came to pass that Andrew couldn't get his friends schedules to work out well enough to go back and film it. And thus did the 2006th and 2007th year pass away.

So finally, two years after it was supposed to come out, people have time to film. The finale is in production and I'll post a promo up here as soon as I get one done.

And since I'm so nice, I'll embed the ones we did finish and air back in 9th grade here. #1 got deleted somehow but it was pretty insignificant anyway, so yeah.

Episodes 2-6 (in order) follow. Notice the ridiculously long disclaimer at the beginning of episode 4. This was because the librarian got all PO'd at us after episode 3. Also notice the evolution of the titles as I got less and less lazy with my movie making:














And the special 23/Pokémon music video! Yeah, I'm that cool.



So now that you've all had that profound cinema experience, you can be excited for the finale. I'll keep everyone posted.

These Shoes RULE!

So as all of you know, due to your feverish stalking of me after reading my first few blog posts, I've been wanting a pair of bowling shoes for quite some time now. Not because I'm the next Danny Wiseman,




I didn't know who he was prior to this post either.


but because I wanted to wear them as a fashion statement. Unfortunately, I didn't know how intensely hard it was to get ahold of such a pair of shoes. Initially, I thought a quick phone call to the bowling alley would solve it. Here's the actual transcript of the phone call, because I take transcripts of all my phone calls:

Me: Hello, do you guys sell your rental shoes?
Jack & Jill's: No, kid, you'll shoot your eye out!
Me: For shame.

Apparently it's illegal to sell bowling rental shoes to a minor to regular civilians because if you enter an alley, people could think they were stolen. I understand the rationale behind that, because I can't think of anything I would rather steal from a bowling alley than shoes that have been worn by 150 people other than myself. Except maybe some used kleenexes out of the trash can.

So after this minor setback, I stumbled upon the bowling black market.




The bowling black market is a little-known,
yet extremely lucrative business. Note the
expensive suits worn by these crime lords.


Long story short, I got my shoes any way I had to. There's a little site out there for those who are willing to look to find it called illegalbowlingshoes.com. They charged only $30 for the shoes, shipped it free (albeit from an unknown location), and didn't mess up my order. Little did I know that they had a trick up their sleeves. The first thing I noticed when I opened my shoes was this:




That's English for "illegal."

Yes, they say "rental" on them in big, obvious letters. I guess that's the price I pay for style.

Now there are benefits to having these shoes. Contrary to what you might think, I was not immediately tased on the streets and arrested by the fuzz the minute I walked outdoors. In fact, I wore these shoes bowling on Saturday, and didn't have to rent any. They're already paying for themselves! Another bonus is they really seem to focus my bowling skills. I bowled a 264 that night* thanks to these shoes.

*May or may not be a shameless lie

Finally, last but not least, these shoes are perfect for moonwalking on almost any surface. Those of you who have been bowling have probably noticed the lack of traction on the bottom of these shoes. This is on purpose, presumably to both promote hilarious slips and falls on the lanes, and probably to help you bowl better or something, too. But Michael Jackson would be proud of the use I've put these beauties to.





Disclaimer: these shoes do not grant
the wearer the ability to moonwalk.

Essentials of EFY

Before I begin, I'll just inform you all that due to the large nature of these pictures, and the unable-to-handle-large-pictures nature of this blog, I've linked all of the pics to their larger counterparts. To blow a pic up, just click on it.

So I actually went to EFY in the third week of June, but I figured I might as well write a post about it. After all, I didn't even have a blog when I went so it's not like I had my chance and blew it. The following things are the neccesary ingredients in any successful EFY. Trust me, I'm an expert. I've been one whole time.

1. Counselors

Your counselors have to be awesome and zany. Yes, I just used the word "zany." If they are boring like some of the other companies' counselors, then your EFY experience is doomed to fail. Bad counselors at EFY are like snakes on a plane: neither of them make any sense.

Prime example: My counselor, Tyrell. When we guys first saw the note on our dorm door introducing our counselor as Tyrell, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who pictured a huge black dude.





Not Tyrell

When he actually entered the room, the impression I got was... not quite what I expected.





Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica!


Yeah. Seriously. Coolest counselor since sliced bread.

2. Hot Babes

No EFY is complete without them. Don't really need to put a lot more text in the section because the following picture pretty much speaks for itself.





Pictured: Virtue

3. Sizzling Man-Hunks of Future Missionaries

Again, the picture basically speaks for itself.




"Hey baby, wanna hold the Priesthood?"

4. Foreigners

No, I'm not talking about the band (although that would make a pretty sick EFY too, I'm sure). But we had a kid from London, who we referred to as "London," and two kids from Australia, who we referred to as "the Aussies." Funny stuff that we as Americans can laugh at: they called napkins "serviettes," they had never had chocolate milk or corn dogs, and the Aussies liked something they called Vegemite.* Haha!




*May or may not cause violent hemorrhaging

5. Food

Ok so we ate like pigs at EFY. Wednesday night was pizza night and we ordered two 23" pizzas. And ate almost all of it. Nine guys.




That guy is 6'6"

But it seems like a shame not to mention how much soda we drank on Wednesday.




*burp*

So that pretty much sums up everything you need to make your EFY rock beyond belief. Until next time, keep pretending your EFY was anywhere near as cool as mine.

Things that REALLY Bother Me

Some call them pet peeves. But mine are just too numerous to refer to them as that, so I just call them things that REALLY bother me. Here we go:

5. Ridiculously melodramatic MySpace girls




"OMG he doesnt even kno i exist!!!11!1shift+111!!eleven"


Ok, so who do they think they're kidding? Sometimes I wonder if they know that they're being annoying and immature or if they honestly believe what they're saying. They say 94% of all emos are just posing for attention, and that most of them aren't really all depressed or anything.* If I could give one message to all of these type of girls it would be: You're annoying. Stop being so annoying. And nobody likes your black and white pic.

*Fact may or may not be made up.

4. When my little brother thinks he won the argument and outwit me, but really he didn't and he's just being an idiot, and I'm just gearing up to kick his trash, but then my parents get home, and I can't do anything to him or he'll start crying to get me busted

Yeah this one doesn't need a lot of explanation. I think the title pretty much captures it there.

3. People mispronouncing words

Don't get me wrong here. It wouldn't bother me so much if after I corrected them they would just accept it and move on with their day. But when they insist that their incorrect pronunciation is, in fact, the right way to say it, THAT'S what kills me. Specific examples of words that are terrible:

Caramel. Pronounced CAR-mull, NOT CARE-uh-MELL
SoBe. Pronounced SOH-bee or SOH-bay, but NOT SOBE
Pillow. Pronounced PILL-oh, NOT PELL-oh
Drown. Not "Drownd." What are you, 4 years old?

Also related to this is when people correct me when I'm the one that's correct.

2. Losers (primarily online) who argue about the most homosexual things to argue about

I don't know how many times I've seen these huge flame wars under YouTube videos about the gayest things imagineable. A person gets one little fact wrong in a comment, or maybe they don't, but some obnoxious tool is certain that they must save all the YouTubers from these heinous lies, nay, this heresy. The two argue about it in a series of comments that goes down to the bottom of the page and beyond, usually starting as a legitimate (however pointless) argument, but degrading into each person making ridiculous assumptions about the other's character, age, and mother. Shortly thereafter, the entire infrastructure of the conversation collapses into a fit of calling each other "fag."

Related to these arguments is people bragging online. Somebody could put up this freakin' awesome guitar solo (for example) on YouTube, but it won't be up for 10 minutes before some deck comes along and leaves a comment about how much better he is at guitar than the person featured in the video, or pointing out all the video's miniscule technical mistakes.

1. Picky people at the restaurant where I work

Yeah, so apparently some people think they deserve special treatment when it comes to fast food. When I'm working the grill at Iceberg and I get a burger on screen that has some special orders, (no cheese, etc.) that's fine, if slightly annoying. Some poeple don't like cheese. But when I put the order out, and it gets SENT BACK without me having made any mistakes, that really makes me want to spit in their food (not that I would ever do that - employees are on camera 100% of the time). Here's an example of something that actually happened to me recently:

Some lady orders a combo with fries. I make her burger, put some fries in the little cardboard things that hold them, send it out and someone in front calls her number for her to pick it up. These were perfectly good fries. They had been out of the deep fryer and under the heat lamp for maybe five minutes max. But 10 minutes later, the twit comes back up complaining that her fries "aren't fresh enough." Now I'm no fry connoisseur, but I'm pretty sure you can't tell the difference between 1-minute-old fries and 5-minute-old fries.







If you can see a difference, please never come to Iceberg

That wraps it up for today. If any of you have similar things that really bother you, feel free to post a comment.