lord i was born a ramblin man

I am currently on a train to Boston, using my new work-issued blackberry to write this. The nice thing about train travel is you can use communication devices, like thism The bad thing about train travel is you can use communication devices, like the guy behind me who won't turn off his (very loud) ringer. Or the girl with the totally awesome Green Day ringtone.

I feel like there is no travel etiquette anymore. This is evidenced by the guy directly behind me, who apparently is powerless to stand up on his own and must use my seat for assistance. This has happened 6 times so far. I have also been side-swiped by 2 purses (whatever happened to the normal size purse, anyway? Why are they so large now?), a bloomingdales bag, and a crate and barrel bag.

Most wonderful time of the year indeed!

oh the weather outside is frightful

Dear CVS checkout guy,

Yes, it truly is a good idea to place the Christmas card I got for my parents below the 2 liter bottle of Ginger Ale I also purchased. Not that paper or thin cardboard is prone to bending under stress or weight or anything.
You truly give me hope for the future.

I would normally never write about music

Were it not for the fact that I am in posession of an advance copy of the Rivers Cuomo solo album, and in the mid 90s while others had Steven Jenkins and "those little red panties they pass the test" I had "I've got Kitty Pryde/Nightcrawler too/waiting there for me/yes I do"

I never said I wasn't at the age where you look back at who you were and at the same time look ahead and wonder who the hell you're becoming.

I still envy any couple who has "Only In Dreams" play at their wedding.


I also think someone needs to throw down the Gauntlet and challenge the entire Pitchfork writing team to write and record a song. Just one song. That is all that is needed. Nothing more. I think after that happens I will be able to take them seriously. I think most music fans would agree with me.

No one's gonna be really free until nerd persecution ends

I like to think I had a great sex education when I was younger. Not that I was ever getting laid back then, but goddamn was I learning. While others my age were awkwardly attempting to cop a feel from their new girlfriend, I was online, looking for tutorials on how to properly perform oral on a girl. I watched a crapload of porn, mainly because I didn't have much else to do.
This was back in the days of real media and downloading mpegs, so that should give you an idea...I pushed that dial up modem to its limits, and it delivered -- in the form of very fuzzy 15-30 second clips

That is why my favorite on-screen sex scene comes from Revenge of the Nerds, when Lewis says, "Nerds only think about sex."
This is very true. If you ever want to get adventurous in bed, date a nerd. Decades of D&D, Magic the Gathering, and Star Wars conventions have conditioned them to think outside the norm. Plus they are REALLY into pleasing the woman they are with, because they will always remember being spurned back in the day. This may be TMI for anyone who reads this who knows me IRL, but the first time I went down on a girl I was very proud, but not surprised, that I made her come (proper spelling thank you very much). I had learned what I needed to, and I got my Merit Badge.
That is why I continue to have a sizable porn collection. Not so much for the obvious, but because I like to learn new things. Regular sex can get boring, it'd be nice to bring a few new moves to the table. A football team is constantly learning new plays, or in nerdspeak a Magic the Gathering player is constantly revising his deck. Why should sex not be any different? There should be a class on what you can do with your fingers/hands while going down, or one on what else you can do with your appendages and body while fucking (be it missionary, doggy, or hot karl).
Why is there no late night infomercial selling videos like this? Put me in that sparkly suit with the dollar signs and I'll do it!

There should also be one on how to detect and prevent bacterial vaginosis. Because if anyone else is discovering that, it's not going to be pretty. And by not pretty I mean really smelly.
I will talk about that at a later date, though.

there was a time you had me going on

I do not do well dating in the modern world. I go on many dates, almost all turn out to be fruitless endeavors that last about 3 weeks. It almost winds up being 'polite' dating. You aren't really sure if you like the person, so you give it a few dates/weeks and then when you have made up your mind you can end it. Kind of like a 30-day money back policy. Except if I end it or she ends it, I'm not getting any money back. Which kind of sucks, but that isn't the point.

That is why when 'How I Met Your Mother' (a surprisingly hilarious show I was introduced this fall) aired an episode where one of the characters decided to create a Lemon Law for dates: if, within 5 minutes of the start of the date, he was not happy with the date, he could end it and neither party would have bad feelings. He did this to a couple girls, and they were kind of peeved and had no idea what was going on. But then a girl did it to him, and it was amazing because it was actually catching on.
I am all for the lemon law. If your supposed friends set you (for the sake of argument the "you" in this story is a very fast walker) up with someone who needs to sit down after walking 6 blocks (the short ones!), that is a good time to enact the lemon law. Or in my case, the "I promised my friend I would go babysit for her."
Thankfully I have a friend who I can call at anytime and will vouch to this babysitting story, even though I really don't do well with babies.
And what are friends for if not to get you out of awful situations your other friends got you into?

Pay by the Pound

I used to love going to a certain movie theater near where I grew up. Not because I loved the movies (which I do), but because they had one of those assorted bins of candy where you could pour it all in the bag and pay by the pound.

To this day, I love paying for things by the weight.. You know exactly what you are getting. If you want more, you pay more. You want less, you pay less.
While this is very predominant in grocery stores, delis, and drug deals, I think it should apply to people. If you are completely blown out of proportion comparative to your height, you should have to pay an inconvenience fee.
For example, on the subway, a 260 lb. 5'4 woman should pay $4 for being twice as large as the average person (who, by the way, has steadily been increasing in weight for the past 30 years). This woman is taking up twice the space of an average person, why should they not pay for two people? The same thing with airline seats. How many times have you been stuck next to some huge, sweaty hunk of lard barely passable as a person and the flab from their arms is rolling over onto you and you have nowhere to escape to for the next 4 hours (more if you are stuck on the runway waiting for the 57 planes in front of you to take off).

Or maybe instead of each service, there could be a flat fee? Like a Fat Tax. Every year you go to the doctor, they evaluate your health, and you have to pay taxes based on how unhealthy you are. If you are healthy, you wind up getting more money back.
Not only would this bring in money by unhealthy/fat people having to pay, by encouraging them to live healthier lives they would also (in all likelihood) not have as many health issues as they would otherwise, which means lower medical bills and less required medicare/medicaid assistance.

This alone is enough for a presidential platform.

Step as lightly as a feather let yourself go

I don't think Irving Berlin realizes it, but when I see people I once knew who have let themselves go, they definitely do not step as lightly as a feather. No, in fact, their double chin reverberates with every earthquake-causing step they take, while their fake velour (felour?) Wal-Mart sweatsuit clings to the folds of their folds.

I feel like as soon as there is a ring on the finger, too many people stop caring about their personal apperance. Not that I am one to get all fancied-up all the time, but if I was ever 'large and so not in charge,' I would want to be told so I could step on the treadmill and do something about it.

This is basically the reason I am on Facebook and MySpace -- so I can look up everyone I knew in high school and see their photos and what they are now doing (or not doing, in some cases).
In fact, their presence on these sites is so prevalent that it changed my mind about going to my high school reunion. There are certain events people do not wish to relive, and for me that would be ages 7-18.