“The only reason we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.”

When you have the option, always drink malt.

Destroy the evidence.

Watch out for Sonic the Hedgehog.

Keep it classy.

Don't steal beer from Sam's Club.

Go to the football games.

Help a brother out.

No, but seriously.

“Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approximately. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later:
The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

10 minutes:
A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

45 minutes:
The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour:
He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition. No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.

The questions raised:

*In a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?

*Do we stop to appreciate it?

*Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made…How many other things are we missing?

“Skills: Strong Work Ethic, Attention to Detail, Team Player, Self Motivated, Attention to Detail”

Pop Quiz

1. Applying for jobs as a college senior is absolutely:

a) terrifying
b) frustrating
c) exhausting
d) crapshoot
e) all of the above

2. Resumes : my actual skills ::

a) Britney Spears : music
b) College : sobriety
c) Papercuts : fun
d) Infomercials : quality programming
e) all of the above

3. Describe in one word why you are a worthwhile human being deserving of employment. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

4th year, contrary to popular belief, is not (solely) for reckless partying and gut classes. Trying to clean up our acts i.e. the path of destruction we have blazed over the last 3 odd years is no small feat. I can’t say I’m an expert – I mean, I don’t have a job post graduation yet – but here are a few do & do not guidelines for the soon to be college graduate’s job search.

-Spellcheck. No one wants to know about your Pubic Policy major. If you ask for a $100K anal salary, then expect shit for pay.

-Remember to put your experience in human, not dog, years. It could happen to you.

-No employer actually cares about your innate need for self expression. Leave your zany shoes and neat-o feather headpiece at home.

-Reference letters from your mother don’t count. Related: if your Mom edited your resume, make sure that you remove her comments/emoticons before forwarding it along.

-Be funny when you can. Topics to stay away from: religion, politics, sexual harassment, what your significant other calls your genitalia.

-Your photo on LinkedIn should only be full body if you are trying to go into modeling, in which case, wtf are you doing on LinkedIn.

-Playing with Knex and jigsaw puzzles as a child does not necessarily mean that you have fantastic Problem Solving and Analytical Skills.

-Confidence is great! Douchebaggery, not so much.

-”This is just like The Office!” is not a great opener.

-There is an inverse relationship between desperation and salary/dignity. Don’t worry, I hear that McDonald’s is hiring.

-Do not include a hobbies section in your resume. Especially if your hobbies include internet porn and/or shuffleboard.

-You’re not perfect for every job that you apply for. Don’t make the interviewer call security.

-Do your research. You don’t want to go up to Altria Client Services, introduce yourself, and say, “So…cigarettes. Really?” Who has two thumbs and has learned from experience?

-Creativity is good. Rapping to demonstrate mid-interview is not.

-When asked what interests you about a given company, I heard you were hiring is not an acceptable answer. Ever. But really.

-Be prepared to answer any and all of these questions.

As a student, my job is to Read things that don’t matter, then write papers saying they do matter, for points that don’t matter, in order to get a job doing something totally unrelated.

“I’ll bet living in a nudist colony takes all the fun out of Halloween.”

Halloween Survival Guide

The following are tips for any character in a horror film. If you do happen to find yourself in a horror film someday, use these tips wisely and you may make it out alive. Until the sequel that is…

Survival Tips:

1. When it seems that you’ve killed the monster, never check to see if it’s really dead.

2. Do not search the basement, especially when the power has just gone out.

3. When you have the benefit of numbers, never pair off or go off alone.

4. If the gang plans a fun midnight party in the town’s old abandoned mansion, don’t tag along. Especially don’t tag along if everyone’s going as couples, except you’re the odd guy/gal out. And if you’re the gang’s jokester, you may as well write up your last will and testament while you’re driving with them to the place.

8. As a general rule, don’t solve puzzles that open portals to Hell.

9. If your car runs out of gas at night, do not go to the nearby deserted-looking house to phone for help.

10. Listen closely to the soundtrack; and pay attention to the audience, since they are usually far more intelligent than you could ever hope to be.

11. Never pick up hitchhikers.

12. If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises in their most revealing underwear.

13. In fact they won’t actually “be right back.”

“Twitter taught me to be too concise. Real life conversations have me thinking, “Jesus, man, that’s ten tweets already. Get to the point.”"

Blogging about microblogging seems a little redundant, but I can’t help myself; perusing Twitter during the occasional boring lecture and procrastination session has opened my world up to a wealth of hilarious Tweeters. I did a run through of about 10 in September, but here are the latest and greatest:

@FakeAPStyleBook: Active verbs should be used frequently, just like your mom.

@FakeAPStyleBook: While it’s tempting to call them “baristi” because of the Italian roots, the plural of “barista” is “journalism majors.”

@Fitzright: No, Gazpacho is a dish best served cold. Revenge is no dish. Moron.

@Fitzright: The exact moment I decided to embrace my inner-asshole my life got much better. Except it sounds gay.

@JasonPermenter: Sighhhh. Another Sunday morning, another handle of Jack.

@JasonPermenter: Getting pretty anxious about the lack of major celebrity deaths in the past couple of weeks.

@ScottSimpson: They’ve got a mall kiosk for everything these days. I just got my prostate checked. For $50. Outside the mall. Inside a van marked “Kiosk.

@ScottSimpson: After 10 years of marriage, I have to find new ways to compliment my wife’s cooking. “The best prison food in the world”: not my best work.

@phyllisstein: No YOU’RE drinking alone and watching Hocus Pocus on YouTube.

@phyllisstein: I guess I’ll bring a wine. What pairs better with macaroni-and-cheese pizza, Thunderbird or Night Train?

@sween: There’s a thin line between wanting a child and wanting a vasectomy. That line is at the Disney Store.

@sween: No one will believe it when Rick Astley dies.

@detweiler: Facebook taught me, I can make any sentence melodramatic by appending “FML”. “Just won the lottery. Going home to bang some strippers. FML”

@detweiler: Drunk by six, or as I like to say, “Sorry I’m late, traffic’s a bitch.”

@texburgher: Pizza for breakfast is delicious, albeit somewhat unconventional. My favorite kind of breakfast pizza is actually just a fifth of bourbon.

@texburgher: My 4th grader’s pride in his homeroom teacher’s Twilight calendar is inversely proportionate to my confidence in her teaching abilities.

@eoporto: In the battle of Too Much Perfume Lady and Short Order Curry Cook, THIS ENTIRE SUBWAY CAR LOSES.

@eoporto: If you think I’m not using today as an excuse to eat cookies for breakfast, you’d be wrong.

@davislove: Sitting in the car with my niece & nephew while the people in the car next to me are smoking. Not cigs. Likely meth. Stay classy Portland.

@davislove: The sign on the door said “WOMEN” but from what I saw in the bathroom, they’re clearly using the term loosely.

“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

Is it possible to get a cup of coffee-flavored coffee anymore in this country? What happened with coffee? Did I miss a meeting? They have every other flavor but coffee-flavored coffee. They have mochaccino, frappaccino, cappuccino, al pacino…Coffee doesn’t need a menu, it needs a cup.
-Denis Leary

“You know, I’ve been looking for a secretary. How good is your dictation? Get it, DICK-tation!?”

Even a couple of weeks after seeing it, I cannot bring myself to write a review of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Yep, that miserable. Where Fool’s Gold was laughably bad, this was a crack addicts equivalent of rock bottom. The only way that it could have been worse is if I had a) paid money to see it and/or b) Jessica Simpson made a cameo.

Why I Hated Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

1) The archetypal chauvinism: The portrayal of women? Nothing cute, nothing new, nothing even hinting at creative. I’m not what you would consider a feminist, but come on. You’ve banged how many women McConaughey? Really? Ya, no one is giving you brownie points. Just STDs and child support papers.

2) The slutty bridesmaids: Think the acting won’t get worse than McConaughey’s douchey smirks and always gratuitous “Alright, alright?” Think again.

3) The cameos: I can only hope that when Michael Douglas, Christina Milian, Camille Guaty, Anne Archer, Lacey Chabert and Emma Sone agreed to do the movie, they read a different version of the script. (Retraction: Christina Milian is all about questionable career decisions). I would question Jennifer Garner’s involvement, but then again, Elektra.

4) The script: Uncle Wayne, played by Michael Douglas, Connor Mead, lived by Matthew McConaughey. just a taster…

Connor Mead: (breaking up with three women simultaneously on a confeProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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nce call) Listen, I’m sincerely pressed for time right now so I’m going to have to do this in bulk. Um, it’s not going to work out for us!

Uncle Wayne: So here’s a couple of tips. When you first meet a girl you give her two compliments above the neck. Yeah, tell her she’s got nice lips, nice eyes, nice hair… she’s intelligent, her moral ethics, whatever crap comes to your mind. Then just when she begins to thinks that you’re another – you know – vanilla nice guy that she can tool around with all night without getting naked…
[hits his hand on bar] you *insult* her! Flip the power dynamic and your let her know that you’re here to play.

Conner Mead: You’ve got to risk love Sandra! I didn’t and look at me, I’m a lonely ghost of a man. It doesn’t mean that you’re never going to get hurt but the pain you feel will never compare to the regret that comes from walking away from love.

Don't expect any McConaughey money shots

5) The lack of nudity: McConaughey never takes his shirt off. I was under the impression that that’s why he gets hired to do movies. If you need any explanation as to why this is a problem…

6) The association with Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol”: Or rather, the association with the myriad of spinoffs. It makes a mockery of the legacy of both Mickey’s Christmas Carol and Muppet Christmas Carol. Way to ruin the classic(s).

7) The runtime: It’s 100 minutes that you’ll never get back. It feels a lot longer. Trust me.

Genre confusion: I fail to see where this was romantic, comedic, or any bizarre combination of the two. Class A Fail.

9) The worst part: The whole movie.

Check out this clip of Stewie ripping into McConaughey

“Halloween: the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.”

Halloween is right around the corner, and it’s nice to know that not everyone is above completely embarrassing themselves for the sake of costume design. I post these pictures in the hopes of inspiring you to look outside the skankalicious dress up box for your Halloween apparel.

Not that I will be.

Really, Legolas?

I honestly don’t know what half of the costumes are, but I’m giving out major points for creativity.

“Piracy, n. Commerce without folly-swaddles, as God made it.”

See a mashup/remix/etc that you love on YouTube and can’t find anywhere else? Use one of these online YouTube Converter websites to convert the file to an MP3 for iTunes.

Power to the people.

“A photographer gets people to pose for him. A yoga instructor gets people to pose for themselves.”

Recently, I have returned to yoga. 2nd year I was a Bikram devotee, believing that the 90 minutes spent in the 105 degree room in 27 wildly & uncomfortably nauseating positions was character building and physically rewarding. After revisiting Bikram this summer and believing with every conviction that I was going to pass out in the middle of class, I shelved yoga until I discovered Ashtanga Yoga this fall. Although I am a far cry from a true yogi, Tucker’s Friday morning class at the AFC has opened me up to yoga in a new way. Yoga doesn’t have to be done in a claustrophobic sweat lodge to be challenging. I am not yet at a point where I can make Downward Dog look passably graceful, but I’m learning. Pushing through Friday morning’s dazed and confused requisite hangover and excreting unfiltered booze via my pores is difficult, but this 10:15 class is one that I have come to love. For those of you who are not up for the challenge of a pre-noon wakeup call on a weekendish morning, I’m sure that somewhere, in someway, you are practicing yoga like form.

For yogi form we should all aspire to, check out this video of Caitryn doing yoga. I made it for mProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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Intro to Documentary Production class with Bill Reifenberger, and think that she absolutely rocked out (the Enya isn’t too shabby either).

I tried yoga once but took off for the mall halfway through class, as I had a sudden craving for a soft pretzel and world peace