On Comedians, Bears and Twerking

I'd like to start this next blog with information regarding one of my gurus, mah man, George Carlin.  I've learned how to see through a lot of bullshit from this guy, a true gift if you're going to make it out of this life laughing.  I think it's time I learned a little about the man himself.

1. George Carlin dropped out of high school in the 9th grade and enlisted in the USAF to get his HS equivalency.  He was discharged not long after and labled "an unproductive airman."  He never went to college.

2. To twerk, according to the indefatigable Urban Dictionary is to perform a hip hop dance move meant for a female (although, boys you don't let anyone tell you how to live) that involves shaking, jerking and twitching her buttocks in a sexually provocative manner.

3. Living in Colorado, it's important that I learn to appreciate the natural habitat and wildlife.  Sometimes, to truly appreciate something, you need to encounter it face to face and then run away from it screaming.

According to some, if you ever actually encounter a Grizzly Bear, like this soothing example nyah, you are truly, and totally fucked.  The death will be brutal, not quick and painless in any way, and probably super gross.  A black bear is far more manageable: upon sight, start acting like a very loud, drunk and crazy son of a bitch.  Scream, wave your hands, make that fucker believe you have a hoard of unholy spirits residing in your accursed soul.

If you have pots and pans, clang them together, like a 5 year old who laughs in the face of the absurd adult concept of peace and quiet.  Rattle the heavens!  Scare the Bear!!

You also have the option of the seemingly rational decision to RUN THE FUCK AWAY.  Do it uphill, at an incline.  Trees are an instant fail.  If you climb a tree you are now a sitting nom.  You can also do it downhill.  The bear is a gigantic, lumbering murder ball and will run much slower than you as it goes down so it doesn't fall on its face like a goon.

You also have the option to play dead, facing the bear. Never EVER turn your back to the guy. This will most certainly get you maimed or killed.

Lastly, if you have to fight it, it's best if you have pepper spray.  Or a gun.  Hopefully you have the wherewithal to know how to aim either of those things.

4. The best 10 cities in the world for street art, according to Art & Leisure, are:

New York (specifically Brooklyn and Manhattan), Berlin, Los Angeles, São Paulo, London, Melbourne, Paris, Buenos Aires, and Bethlehem on the West Bank.

I would like to personally add San Francisco to that list as well.  I lived there for just under a year, but there wasn't a day that went by that I wasn't ensconced by the saturation of public art in that magical, wild place.

More of this goodness here.


5. Praying Mantis will eat anything they can fit into their mouth with their spear-like forelegs.  They've been known to eat lizards, birds, rodents and small scorpions.  This makes them the honey badger of the insect world.

Wataaaaaaah!!!

Rainbow ninja assassins like this are my spirit animal.  Not to be fucked with.

First of Many Five

It occurs to me sometimes when I'm endlessly traversing teh interwebs that computers have almost entirely replaced books in the past 5 years of my life.

Paranoia creeps with this awareness: I was a straight A student with high ambitions!  I got an A+ on a paper about motherfucking Nietzsche!  Am I now, in my late 20s, wasting my life, ignoring my world, becoming a mindless, 120wpm typing, lolz kitteh obsessed, facebook stalking, kitsch sucking, tried-to-overlook-twitter-but-simply-could-not-god-damn-it, cafe haunting hipster zombie potato?

Or is this unceasing barrage of information actually nourishing my life, expanding my world, keeping me connected to people I otherwise would probably never talk to via the phone (puke) or snail mail (pffffffffff), offering me an encyclopedia humanica with everything I could ever hope to know or learn...

Is the internet a bold example of the potential to share a universal consciousness upon this blue and green and white and oh so pretty rock?

Is my new-found obsession with Twitter a sign of my soul's depravity and sickness?  Fuck you, it took me six years to actually start caring.  That puts me in the outer rings of hell away from you inner circle social media junkies.

In an attempt to reclaim my sense of free will and seize my destiny, I've started a blog (-2 integrity) that will catalogue 5 things that I learn from teh interwebs every day I'm on it, which is every day forever.  Actual knowledge, not another fucking insanely cute youtube clip featuring kittens on crack that can render the biggest Broseph of them all into a spirit-finger wielding ninny.

Although the initial purpose of this blog was to congratulate myself on a valiant attempt at "learning," and thus "winning," what's actually going to happen is that I'm going to become a random information encyclopedia that will kick your ass at Trivia Night. Every Night.

Boosh.

Here's what I learned today!!

1. There are more lighthouses in Michigan than any other state in the country.

It is also the country's number one producer of blueberries, tart cherries and pickling cucumbers.  3 things I could eat forever and ever. 

2. There is a mushroom that exists, in real life, called Boletus luridiformis (formally known as Boletus erythropus) that is basically rainbow colored.

You can eat them if you prepare them right and they change color (yellowish green to blue) when you slice through them.
3. Colorado lays above 1,000 meters (3,281 ft) elevation, the only state in the country to do so.

I'm pretty sure we also have the sweetest flag in the country.  In your FACE, America!

4. Transcendentalism formed as a response, one of outrage and disdain, towards the intellectualism at Harvard University.  It encouraged the use of intuition to develop a more perfect spirituality, as opposed to religious doctrine and empirical understanding.

5. Asafoetida, the dried latex gum of a ferula, is used as a digestive aid.  When raw, the spice has a repugnant aroma (giving it the names Devil's Dung and Stinking Gum) but when cooked gives off a gentle flavor of leeks.

 I never would've even heard of that if I hadn't been reading a BOOK! A cerebral titillator by mah girl Ursuala K Le Guin called The Telling.  Get it.

Alrighty.  Entry one.  Cannonballing into riiight into the bleep bloop sea of information that is the internet.  A sea that prospers with ninja kittens, gems of hilarity like hyperbole and a half  and the pandora's box that is stumble upon.

Off we go into the cybergasm that is TEH INTERWEBS!!!!