Things I Now Know

Being a super genius can be hard at times. Sure hot women throw themselves at you just by the thought of possibly gaining some obscure knowledge via osmosis. But it isn’t all just sushi and sake bombs being a super genius, you have a lot of responsibilities that come with the territory. These responsibilities include, but are not limited to: having to fend off all the hot women, needing to always be in the know and dutifully correcting incorrect people. This list, however, did not include the most important responsibility, being able to admit when you did not know something.

Now, this doesn’t happen all that often, but I was recently asked a question to which I, admittedly, did not know the answer. (Damn that dogs name!) This reminded me of a few of the other things I’ve recently learned and as such…now know.

Gym Showers

I spend a good amount of time in the gym every week. Seeing as a least half of these trips are in the middle of the work day, I am forced to spend time in the men’s locker room and showers. Now for any guy who has ever had to change in a gym locker room, you know that it is a very unpleasant place. First off there are naked dudes everywhere, which is bad enough, but 90% of said people are either extremely old or extremely fat. This is not to say that I want to see any guy naked (besides myself), but I’d especially rather not look at old man balls or someone’s back that waves like a lava lamp every time they move.

Now, fortunately for me, and all other straight guys out there, the men’s showers are almost always sectioned off. That is you get your own shower space where you aren’t exposed to the rest of the locker room. Ever since the first time I set foot in a gym shower, I’ve been under the assumption that the female locker room showers were similar…

Enter pornography.

I’ve since learned that the woman’s showers are just basically one giant gigantic shower with multiple shower heads (many of which have detachable heads) around the room. Also, I’ve learned that woman really do care about making sure that they are 100% clean. Thus, they request the help of other women to help scrub them, especially for those hard to reach spots, like the small of your back. If there are more than 2 women who need to shower, they all just kind of wash each other off. This has basically become an unspoken rule of the showers for women. It’s very sporting of women to help each other out like that, because that shit would NOT fly in a men’s shower…cause that would be just gross.

Lesson learned? I need to start showering in the woman’s locker room

Alcohol

Almost everyone I know has gone through a D.A.R.E. program of some sort or another as a kid. For those of you who do not know, D.A.R.E. is a program where a police officer comes into your classroom and talks to you, for about an hour, about the evils of drugs and alcohol. Even if you have not been through a D.A.R.E. program, I’m sure you’ve heard the following quote at some point in your life:

“Alcohol doesn’t fix your problems.”

This was always a saying in which I held a lot of stock. However, in a moment of clarity I realized just how dumb of a quote that really is. Saying that, ‘alcohol doesn’t fix your problems,’ is like saying ‘a great white shark can kill you.’ It’s just a blanket statement that brings nothing to the table. Sure alcohol can’t fix my problems but then again neither can grape juice. I can’t remember the last time Dr. Pepper ever fixed anything for me.

To prove my point, I decided to hold a little experiment. A friend of mine was going through a rough time trying to get over his recent break-up. So I asked him if he would help me with my experiment. He obliged. So on Friday night I blind folded him and fed him 8 glasses of jack & coke. Then on Saturday night I, once again, blind folded him but this time fed him 8 glasses of milk. On Monday I asked him to explain how he felt after each one. Well the long and the short of it was that he had a great time on Friday night…was in the bathroom vomiting all night on Saturday…and felt awful all day on Sunday. I said that I had all the evidence that I needed, he said something about lactose-intolerance or some other long word that I didn’t really care to ask the meaning of…

Lesson learned? Alcohol solves all problems better than milk.

Babies

Life is sexually transmitted. With this in mind, it is important to remember that those who are ‘transmitting’ life are not always the most aesthetically pleasing people. This leads to the astonishing conclusion…not all babies are cute. I was always under the impression that not all babies are cute, so this conclusion is not news to me. However, I would guess that it is news to most women.

I don’t understand where the trend came from, or why, but for whatever reason women believe that ALL kids are incredibly cute…and feel the need to vocalize this with a high pitched, “AWWWW!” whenever they see one. I understand that a girl will always tell a mom that their kid is cute, but that is to make the mom feel better about her offspring. It works kind of like when girls tell other girls how cute they look in their new outfit (even if the outfit is a moo-moo). However, what does not make any sense is why girls must lie about the ‘cuteness’ of a kid whose mom/dad is not even within earshot.

Lesson Learned? Girls can’t see well.

Sleep-Overs

One of the best ways for any kid to spend his/her weekend is to have a sleep over at their friend’s house or have their friend sleep over at their house. I used to have these all the time and they normally ended up the same way. We would stay up real late playing Nintendo or some board game. The games would end up getting really competitive and one person would blame the other person for cheating. Then we would start wrestling, which turned into us fighting, which turned into someone getting hurt, which turned into us finding something else to do. Rinse and repeat until the parents woke up and told us to stop fighting and go to bed.

Having a twin sister provided me with great opportunities to see, first hand, what girls do at sleep-overs. However, they were no where near as interesting. Normally the girls would start off the night doing each others make-up…followed by a feeble attempt convince me to let them ‘do my makeup.’ They would then retreat to my sister’s room, where the girls would just gossip and giggle, until they were tired and went to sleep. Lame.

Well as grown ups (or at least feigning as much) things have changed a bit. Guy’s don’t really plan sleep-overs any more. A sleep-over is, more so, determined by one person saying, “yes,” to the following question: “Dude can I crash at your place tonight?” 99% of the time this is said in expectation of going out and getting really drunk that night. Once guys get back from a night of drinking (and the sleep-over part begins), they do one or more of the following: 1) drink more (usually the case); 2) watch TV; 3) call girls for a booty call (also a regular) 4) drink more.

I regret to say that I have not had the opportunity to observe what it is that grown up girls do when they have sleep-overs. Sure I’ve tried once before, but that ended in me figuring out how loud girls can actually scream, when they find someone in their closet, and a restraining order…but we won’t get into that. Despite my failure on that front, I had back up!

Once again, porn to the rescue.

The answer was so simple. I can’t believe I didn’t figure this out for myself. Clearly, the only logical thing for two or more girls to do together at night while at home is to undress down to their bra and panties and have a massive pillow fight. Eventually, someone ends up getting hurt and that’s when all the girls stop the fight and start tending to the injured. This process can possibly contain any of the following (possibly more): hugging, massaging, kissing the injured spot or holding one another.

Lesson Learned? Girls are mean for not video taping their sleep-overs.

Homework

Class isn’t too bad. I don’t know many people who actually mind going to class while in college. The biggest gripe about going to school is the massive amount of homework that students must complete. However, little do students realize, all of the homework is a blessing in disguise. Having a lot of work to do helps to teach the greatest lesson of college: time management. That is to say, when do I need to stop having fun and get down to business?

Throughout grade school and high school, I always thought that any mistakes made in time management were my fault. Boy was I wrong. The question of when it’s time to start homework is answered by one person alone, and that person will change depending on the circumstances. The decision maker is the person, in your group of friends, who is the most fucked. If your friend has more work to do than you do and still is going to do something other than study, then you, too, still have time before you must start working. Still don’t understand, perhaps an example will help guide you to enlightenment:

Guy 1: “Yo dude, you gonna drink tonight?”

Guy 2: “Naw I’ve got to write this 5 page paper, then do 20 calculus problems and read a 15 page chapter in my history book.”

Guy 1: “What?! That’s not even that much, I’ve got a 10 pager due tomorrow, plus I need to read the entire book of Fahrenheit 451. After that I need to put together a full power point for my group project in ISQM. Then I have to do our History reading and I’m still gonna go out! Look we’ll only go out till like 1 or 2 then we’ll come back and get this shit taken care of.”

Guy 2: “Wow I never thought of it that way, so what’re we drinkin’ tonight?”

Lesson Learned: I hate my friends.

The Waiting Game

I am not a very patient person. That is not to say that I am unable to be patient, but I just don’t idle well. I always need to be doing something. I need to be actively using some part of my body (whether it is physically or mentally). I can’t just sit. As such, I’m about as good at waiting as Paris Hilton is at practicing abstinence

This impatientness (is that even a word, if it isn’t…I just made it one) is not a new thing. For as long as I can remember, I’ve not been able to just sit around. For Gods sake, I didn’t even listen to 95% of my college graduation. What did I do instead? Save the world from evil on my Game Boy. That’s right I played a video game during my college graduation. In my defense I may have actually listened to the commencement speech had LMU not gotten THE icon for modern education, Goldie Hawn. During my high school award ceremony, the one where they give out scholarships and honor those who are graduating cum laude (that’s right, cum laude, I’m a fucking genius), I had to be called twice to go up because I was listening to a basketball game on my cell phone, while not paying attention. Yes it is what you think; I had my friend put his phone by the TV so I could hear what going on during a Lakers Game...ohh come on, give me a break, it was the playoffs.

I don’t say all this in an effort to get you to think that I don’t pay attention to important things. That is from the truth. Rather, it is portray my dislike for waiting around. As such, I’d like to take you on a tour of my least favorite places I find myself miserably wasting away as I wait.

Traffic

I’m a good driver. This is a fact. Some people may consider the predictable speeding and quick lane changes to be hazardous, but what do they know. It is very unfortunate that I rarely get to utilize my driving abilities. Los Angeles has some of the worst traffic I’ve ever seen in my life. If you are driving any where in LA between the hours of…ohh I don’t know I’ll just take a guess…5AM and 10 PM, you can pretty well take it to the bank that you are going to be sitting in bumper to bumper traffic. Not like bumper to bumper where you are going 10 MPH while riding the car in front of you the whole way. We are talking bumper to bumper like a 3rd party parking lot out side of a major sporting event. Cars pulled so close to you, it would be impossible to get out of your car…if, for whatever reason, you so desired to do so. Cars pointed the wrong way. People eerily standing right by your car.

Sitting in LA traffic is like sitting at cubicle but crappier. You are in a confined space, with people on all sides of you, making noise, and the smell of the air is less than pleasant. However, at least in a cubicle you can do pretty much what you please. In a cubicle I could read up about the history of Bahrain if I so desired, I could play video games on my cell phone, I could do a crossword puzzle, I could STAND UP. Pretty much, it boils down to being able to doing anything but just sitting. Can you do all this while driving? Well I’m sure you could, but then you would be that asshole who is causing all the traffic for me.

Airport

Let me just clarify, when I say airport I mean anything that has to do with airports, including, but not limited to: airport security lines, airplanes and airport terminals. Although, I have always disliked airports it was just recently that I was reminded of this fact. A friend of mine was sitting at a JFK terminal because her flight was delayed. This reminded me of what I hate most about flying…

Planes are never fucking on time. I don’t understand how it’s possible that such a developed industry can be so disorganized. We can pin point the exact cell, of the millions in the body, that is making someone sick; we can build weapons that can decimate an entire city; we can create computers that can think like a human; but for some reason we can’t figure out, with any kind of precision or accuracy, when an airplane is going to arrive at point B after leaving point A and when it will be leaving point B to go to point C. Perhaps a prerequisite to being a flight coordinator is failing a math test composed solely of, ‘If a train leaves New York at 5:30 and is traveling at 65 miles per hour…’ questions.

It would be great to have a pilot’s job. You can be late to work everyday and it is thought to be normal or expected. You can do you job slowly and be behind schedule for everything you do, and it is perfectly fine with your employer. You get to make lame jokes and they will be heard because people are forced to listen. Man I wish I could charge 200 people $150/hour, just to do a crappy job and then KNOW that they’ll come back to my company. Where do I sign up?

It wouldn’t be so bad waiting in the terminal for your plane to arrive if there were anything worth doing in an airport. Sure, you could always go to the bar at the terminal; however, if a Big Mac costs $6.50, at the airport, guess how much a Jack and Coke is going to cost. So even if I were to spend my time in the airport bar, I would end up spending more on my bar tab than I would a set of hip, platinum teeth.

This brings me to actually waiting in the terminal. I’m not sure whose idea it was, but someone that works for the airport decided that sheet metal bent into the shape of a chair would be a comfortable substitute for a cushioned seat. Those things couldn’t possibly be more uncomfortable. Well I suppose they could hire someone to stand behind you and poke you in the head with a stick…that might be more uncomfortable…but I digress. The chairs in the airport terminal look and feel like they were designed during a blackout. The armrests are either way to high or way to low. All the chairs touch so when one person moves in their seat, everyone moves with them. Ohh yeah, did I mention they are as hard as bedrock.

Ok so you’ve made it out of the terminal, I hope you are prepared for the best part of flying...actually flying in a plane. There is nothing better than being packed into seats that have about as much wiggle room as the back seat of a Porsche Boxter, while being forced to listen to idiotic jokes made by the pilot all while you are completely unable to do anything about your situation for the duration of your flight. Sitting in a plane seat, is a lot like being stuck with a hot iron. Both…umm…suck.

Ohh the memories I have of a stiff neck, empty stomach, blood shot eyes and popped ears. I can’t wait for the next time I hop on a plane!


DMV

Waiting at the DMV wouldn’t be so bad, if you didn’t spend most of the time wondering why it is you are waiting there in the first place. How is it that the rest of the world is online, and the DMV isn’t? Last time I was there, I had to get a replacement I.D. Am I crazy for thinking that this is something I should be able to do online? Jump to DMV.com, click on order new license, fill in my name, address, social security number etc., click the box that says use same picture as before, click the box that says I agree to their terms of service, fill out a form for my credit card number and click Send. Seems simple enough. But no. They force me to enter the gates of Hades instead.

Ok, fine I can deal with having to actually go into the DMV, but for God’s sake, why does it take so long to do anything there. If you don’t have an appointment (lets face it…who really makes an appointment for the DMV), you are in for, at least, a 45 minute wait. I understand that work has to be done, but I can only assume that people are there for similar reasons as I. I have NEVER spent more than 5 minutes at the same window at the DMV. Yet, somehow everyone else there needs 30 minutes worth of attention, as if they don’t get enough at home.

The DMV does have one upside though…people watching. The trends in the DMV are very unique. For instance, no one smiles, ever. I’m not certain why, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one smile cracked, whether looking at a worker or a patron. It probably has something to do with how unpleasant the place is…but that’s just a shot in the dark.

There is always at least one person, normally bearing very thick glasses, who is sitting in the seat closest to the eye exam (you know, where you have to read off the letters from 5 feet away), trying to memorize each line. This always provides at least 5 minutes of entertainment. If you are close enough to them you should be able to see them look up, mouth the letters of a line to themselves, then look back down with eyes closed as they try to recite the correct order to themselves. This is the perfect time to flip open your phone and pretend to talk on it, just loud enough so the memorizer can you hear you. When he lowers his head and begins to recite the letters, quickly throw a letter, that is up on the board, into your ‘conversation,’ then watch as he mouths the letter you mentioned, realizes his mistake, opens his eyes and swears at himself for messing up.

After my most recent birthday, I had to renew my license (something that should be able to be done online damnit), part of this process was taking the aforementioned eye exam. That day I learned that the employees, of the DMV, are not found of jokes and take this test very seriously. Normally, you would read off the letters as you saw them. Instead of listing them, “F-L-P-R-E,” I responded by saying it phonetically, “flip-re.” The lady who was conducting the test gave me a look similar to the look your girlfriend gives you when you just said something to piss her off. She then told me that I would fail the test if I didn’t do it correctly…what you can’t take a joke?

Something else I can’t quite put my finger on is why, whenever I go to the DMV, I am the only customer there who speaks English. Makes me wonder why the workers there are mostly English speakers. I’ve heard Spanish, French, Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese etc. they all sound the exact same), German, Swahili, something that sounded like a person with Downs Syndrome trying speak Russian, and something that sounded like a mix between Arabic and Hawaiian. Yet, I’ve never heard English…ever. It’s as if the DMV is the meeting place for all of the surrounding cities ethnic groups.