All posts in Chimps Entries

It’s amazing the things you can find on the internet. What the heck is this? I’m sure there’s some reasonable context for this image. There has to be some realm where this makes sense or doesn’t seem like the most disturbing image ever. I think what makes it so frightening is that it seems to be out of some children’s book. What lessons does this provide to children?

“Look, Billy…in the real world, if you’re bigger and male, you can throttle those who bother you.”

“Billy, this small elephant is an abstract symbol representing the Republican party. It coming out of the egg means, allegorically, that the Republican party has long been confined within the “shell” of its self-imposed, conservative restrictions, but now it’s beginning to emerge. The elephant is still young and impressionable though, so don’t vote for it. Vote for Nader, Billy.”

“Billy, even roosters know that chickens are delicious. This rooster is killing a tasty comrade because he knows that when he consumes her, he will not only receive important nutrients, he will also enjoy a tasty meal. Eat your chicken, Billy.”

“Billy, elephants come out of eggs. Now put on your tinfoil hat, join the circle, and start chanting.”

It might be a fun game to come up with captions for this picture. If anyone wants to call me up to place bets on who is the first one to suggest something dirty, feel free. Right now there’s even money on Brad, 30-1 odds on my mom. Come on mom! Stevie needs a new pair of shoes!

Oh geez…I’m going to bed.

IcyHot is an interesting concept. It’s a cream that you rub on sore muscles and whatnot that supposedly has icy properties to dull the pain and hot properties to relax said pain away. Ingenious, if you ask me. Why can’t our apartment be like that? It is both icy in the morning and hot for the rest of the day. Instead of dulling my pain and soothing my aches, it, in the course of 24 hours, chills me mercilessly and causes me to stick to my leather office chair.

I guess this all stems from TJ, Greg, and I being cheap. The first couple power bills we got were ungodly in their magnitude so we started a strict regime of power conservation. Basically what that amounts to is removing all temperature regulation and subjecting ourselves to the mercy of the elements. When it’s hot at night, we crank open the doors and put the fans on…consequently, when we wake up, it’s like a meatlocker in here. Usually I just crawl into the fridge to warm up, but now there’s a lot of milk in there and no room.

It’s odd that there are probably several easy things we could do to remedy the problem, but we never will. Undoubtedly some helpful commenter will list 3 to 5 things we should do to make the apartment cozy again. These suggestions will not be heeded. It’s not really a question of ability to solve the problem; it’s really more of an issue of motivation. Besides…if I fixed the few things in life that constantly bothered me, what would I write about on a night when I have writer’s block?

On an unrelated note, we just got a fun notice on our door:

Judging by the reasonable volume we always have our music at, I can only assume that our bass-thumping downstairs neighbors are the real culprits. It’s a sad, sad world when we must suffer the constant thudding bass line of the latest Jay-Z (Jigga what?) album and then also face the penalties of it. Thanks downstairs neighbors! Thanks apartment complex! That’s cold… BING!

Sometimes I’ll be listening to a song, hear a certain portion of the lyrics, and think, “Dang…that’s some fine lyric right there!” These moments of pure joy are few and far between, but here’s some of the lyrics that I consider the graviest of the gravy.

Bruce Springsteen “Born to Run”:

“Just wrap your legs round these velvet rims
and strap your hands ‘cross my engines”

Sure, it lacks what some of us might call “class,” but when was the Boss about those sorts of pretensions. You can’t not feel cool when you sing along with that.

Bon Jovi “Wanted Dead or Alive”:

“I’m a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride”

Similar in theme to Bruce’s contribution, but I always secretly wanted to have a hog and this speaks to my inner biker. I desperately want to have a chopper and refer to it as my “steel horse.”

Dr. Dre (featuring Eminem) “Forgot about Dre”:

“Slim shady hotter then a set of twin babies”

This has some sweet memories attached to it from Greg and I driving home from Vegas. Throw the scat phrase “wikka wikka wikka” out in front of that, screech in a high pitched voice, and you’ve got instant good times.

Elton John “Tiny Dancer”:

“Hold me closer Tiny Dancer”

Ever since I figured out that you can replace “tiny dancer” with “Tony Danza,” few lyrics have held a more special place in my heart. Hold me closer, you big Italian lug. Who’s the boss?

Ben Folds “The Luckiest”:

“Next door
There’s an old man
Who lived to his nineties
And one day
Passed away
In his sleep
And his wife
She stayed for a couple of days
And passed away

I’m sorry I know that’s a
Strange way to tell you that I know
We belong
That I know”

Sure, it’s a little sentimental, but, honest to goodness, the first time I heard that alone, riding in my truck, I cried. You can’t argue with a lyric that makes ya cry on the first go-round.

Charlie Daniel’s Band “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”:

“Cause I told you once, you son of bitch
I’m the best that’s ever been”

Pardon the mild profanity, but hey…he’s talkin’ about the devil. I’m going to have to honestly say, that’s my all time favorite lyric to sing along to. After that part, I swear, I could take on the world. It’s like an enormous wave of cool comes over me.

2pac “Dear Mama”:

“and even as a crack fiend mama,
ya always was a black queen mama”

Sums up crappy life on the streets, and heck, Tupac loved his mom. It’s heartwarming.

Depeche Mode “People are People”:

“People are people
So why should it be
You and I should get along so awfully”

Preach it, Depeche Mode.

Frank Sinatra “That’s Life”:

“I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a king
I’ve been up and down and over and out and I know one thing
Each time I find myself flat on my face
I pick myself up and get back in the race”

The song with the ability to turn the crappiest day into one of the finest. I like these lyrics particularly because of the alliteration…puppet, pauper, pirate, poet, pawn, and then BAM! They change it up with the king. Sweet. Also, fun fact about Steve: I sang this song karaoke style in a moment of passion at an Orlowski family Christmas party.

Billy Joel “Piano Man”:

“Yes, they’re sharing a drink they call loneliness
But it’s better than drinkin’ alone”

Seriously…doesn’t that just capture the sad atmosphere of a dive bar. You know, sorta like bizarro world Cheers? Those lyrics have always struck a bittersweet chord with me. Plus, it’s a great song and no one can disagree. I’ve known old folks who liked that song and I’ve known 15 year old honkeys who only listen to rap who liked that song. Well, maybe Billy Joel disagrees since he’s undoubtedly had to play that song a million times in concert. Still…classic.

Anyway, I could go on like this forever, but it’s late and the bed calls my name.

Undoubtedly, once every month or so, there is a morning where everything seems to go wrong. The expiration date on the milk has been exceeded; you can’t find your left shoe; upon waking up you discover that some part of your body has been in an unnatural position for the last few hours of slumber. All of these things and many more signal that fateful day when everything you do or say will have the faint odor of crap. Today, thus far, has been one of those days.

I guess it all started last night. It’s never a good idea to spend three or four days getting out of your sleeping schedule. When the body’s used to going to bed at 12 and getting up around 7, you shouldn’t throw a monkey wrench into that fine order. Well I did. Consequently, last night, I couldn’t fall asleep. One thirty rolled around and I had still not descended into the comforting bowels of sleepiness. I tried to post, but the internet was down, so I ended up reading PC Gamer until the point of my staying up reached absurdity.

All this came back to haunt me full force when the alarm went off at seven and I uttered a few choice words under my breath. Of course I rolled over and went back to sleep, telling myself that I’d get up when Greg got out of the shower. Oh how I cursed that jerk when he finished up in a mere 15 minutes.

I reluctantly crawled out of bed, feeling somewhere in between roadkill and a boxer who’d been punched in the kidneys a few too many times. I instinctively went for the Frosted Flakes and disgusting fat free milk, not caring that the expiration date had been reached a few days prior (I’ll be sure to post about my ensuing illness). You see, nothing really mattered to me because I was cold. In fact, upon some scientific inquiry, I realized that my nipples’ hardness ranked on the Moh’s scale somewhere north of diamond…and there isn’t anything north of diamond. I’ve always been in the camp of people who insisted that being hot was much worse that being cold; this morning that all changed. I longed to fire up a blow torch and scorch my entire body. I had vivid and soothing fantasies of charging headlong into a raging fire. Oh anything to escape the icy prison that was apartment 235. If only I had known it would get worse.

I wrapped myself in my amazing down comforter (about a 9 on the comfort scale, as long as we’re rating physical qualities today). I was finally getting a little warm, comfortable if you will. I started to entertain the idea that I would ditch my first class today. “Oh man, it would be sweet (SWEET!) if I could miss my first class, go back to bed wrapped my lovely comforter, and sleep the sweet dreams of a satisfied man who is warm.” I got up to check the attendance policy of my first class. What do you know…there are NO absences allowed. I quote, “Any unexcused absence will result in the lowering of the student’s grade by one letter.” What a crock! This is college! Attendance should never be required and even if it is, there should be some leeway. What if I forgot to sign in? Instantly a B because I forget to apply my John Hancock (Herbie Hancock?) to the fascist regime’s namesheet in the back? My indignity faded as I began to accept my fate. Today will suck, I will be cold, I have to go to school.

Dejectedly, I gathered my clothes and marched off to the shower. I turned on the water, let it run to get warm, and then got in. Oh the profanities…I could have sworn ice cubes were being shot onto my unprotected body. There was no warm water. Not a drop. It sucks to be the last guy to take a shower in the morning. I can’t wait until next semester when we have one more roommate.

I got out of the shower, shivering like a shorn chihuahua that’d been tossed into a snow drift. If I were Bruce Banner, at that moment I would have transformed into the Hulk and ripped the toilet out of the floor and perhaps killed a puppy. Yes, I was more than mad. I was PUPPY KILLING mad! The sort of unrighteous anger that clubs baby seals and blows up Disneyland. I was so angry that I swear, I just wanted to make an innocent child cry. I’m not proud of it, but that’s the shameful low a man will reach when his morning routine is so horribly butchered, his day so woefully off to a wrong start, his natural warmth so shamefully robbed from him.

Oh well, I suppose it would be the height of insanity if I didn’t keep all this in perspective. Life is good, the oneplace preview service was incredible last night, and, as Lileks would say, it’s another day on the right side of the dirt. Cheers and huzzah all around.

This morning Greg, Jim, and I went out to breakfast at IHOP. I’m a huge fan of the International House of Pancakes for two major reasons:

1) Pancakes are perhaps my favorite breakfast item of all time. A heaping mound of pancakes can salvage even the shoddiest of breakfasts. Smothered in the proper balance of butter and syrup, I’d probably even eat cardboard, as long as it was cut into the visually friendly, traditional circular shape. Anyway, if you’re like me, you can’t go wrong with a place that has the word pancake in its title (or at least in one of the word constituents of the acronym).

2) No one can dispute the undeniable appeal of the universally known “Rooty, Tooty, Fresh, and Fruity” ad campaign. When I think of IHOP, I think of an ashamed, middle-aged man wearing Groucho Marx-style disguise glasses. In addition to the joy inherent in the absurdity of that image, there is also the reminder of childhood bliss that accompanied seeing that commercial. (Side note: I’ve never actually ordered the Rooty, Tooty, Fresh, and Fruity…its just comforting knowing that its there).

Well, there you have it. IHOP is great. So we went there and I experienced the usual peculiarities of dining out, as well as some new ones. The waitress came up to the table to take our drink orders. I didn’t really want anything except water (well, maybe orange juice, but how can you justify spending that much on a beverage that doesn’t offer unlimited free refills?) and yet my desire to not look like a cheap jerk compelled me to impulsively order a cup of coffee. My perceived need for beverage value of course implores me to drink like fifty cups until I’m so wired that I can’t even function. Also, each cup must be laden with creamer and sugar and that not only is inconvenient when you just want a drink, but it also doesn’t add to the whole healthiness factor.

So anyway, I was going to just order the three pancakes and three eggs, but Jim told me about this country omelet business that comes with three pancakes. It wasn’t much more than the three eggs, so I figured “what the heck”? The omelet turned out to be the size of my thigh, plated on all sides with inch-thick cheese and sour cream armor. The situation further complicated when I realize that I have a big omelet and a large stack of pancakes…both of which get cold ridiculously fast. So there I was, shoveling large amounts of food (half of which I didn’t intend to get) into my mouth, sucking down large amounts of unwanted coffee, and thinking, “What is this crap? How did I end up with all this?” But oh man, were those pancakes good!

I only ate half my omelet. I wanted to take the other half home for a tasty meal later, but when the waitress started walking away with my plate, I couldn’t muster the courage to ask her to return my cold, half-eaten egg-torpedo. It would just be so low class (forgetting of course that I’m in IHOP).

Then of course came the time to pay the bill. Jim got out his wallet to find that he only had two ones and a hundred dollar bill. “Can I get change for a hundred in IHOP?” he asked. I told him probably so if he goes up to the counter. We threw a glance over to the register and a burly, intimidating guy who looked like he hated his job was manning it. I wished Jim luck and we discussed the possibility of the guy handing back a dollar change and when confronted about it, ominously cracking his knuckles and denying the existence of the hundred-dollar bill. Jim went, got his change with no problems, and came back to the table. He told us the guy’s nametag said “Sarah.” Honest to goodness, I checked, and it did. I told him that maybe its pronounced “Suh-RAH.”

I love IHOP.

ASU is an interesting school.

There’s nothing like going to class with interesting people. In my American lit class, there is a hardcore punk person who is, and I quote, “only getting an education to prove that history is bull.” In that same class there’s a woman in her early fifties who is always late and wears clown makeup. Think Mimi from the Drew Carey show.

There’s another guy, same class, who I feel deserves his very own paragraphs. We’ll call him Gus (because I don’t know his real name). Allow me to share some quality anecdotes about Gus:

In one class we were talking about Ben Franklin and his doctrines of self-reliance, discipline, and personal improvement. Somehow we started talking about Franklin’s sordid past (unknown to most people). Apparently he got a lot of girls pregnant, or so our TA told us. Anyway, someone ironically asked how impregnating maidservants fit into Franklin’s scheme of self-improvement. Someone else offered up that sex burns a lot of calories. Gus looked up from his desk, big grin on his face, and said, “like Tai-bone?” Oh, that crazy guy.

Here’s another moment of Gus comic gold. Last week we talked about Emerson and his super-spiritual view of nature. Gus said that Emerson sounded like a big hippie and everyone had a good chuckle. My TA, trying to return the conversation to respectability, told a story about her past. She described how one summer afternoon she was sitting in the back yard of her parents’ house. She was surrounded by beauty, sitting on a bench, sun shining, and then a beautiful butterfly landed next to her. She said that she just stared at it in complete wonder…the butterfly was part of this spiritual creation Emerson talked about. She marveled, “I saw all this and I was just sitting there…sitting in my parents’ back yard.” Gus, always quick with the wits, said, “Were you sitting out there so your parents couldn’t smell the smoke?” HA! Oh Gus…you’re a card.

Anyway, back to the main point. ASU has some cool people floatin’ around. Sure, it’s the home of partying, low academic standards (I only have to maintain a 2.5 GPA to remain in the College of Education…a 2.5 to be a teacher), binge drinking, and crappy publications, but I love it nonetheless. It’s great when you have an environment where you can be who you are and no one cares. You can get by without worrying too much about your grades and still learn a ton. I haven’t learned any less than normal in my last few months of relative slacking off…really…I promise.

I give ASU a lot of guff, but I don’t know where I’d rather be. ASU is an interesting school, indeed.

Well, so much for my goal of posting every single day in the month of November. Old reliable Steve to the rescue. Allow me to share the reason behind my absence.

It’s a three day weekend.

Friday I got a post all ready. I just had to finish up the picture for it (I like posts with visual aides). I then got distracted by the bounty of Battlefield 1942 that arrived at my doorstop courtesy of Fedex. The rest of Friday evening was spent in a combination of playing computer games (while wearing the Fedex package as a makeshift Pope hat) and watching “The Ring.”

I spent Friday night at my parent’s house and left around noon, early so that I could work on my beefy American lit paper (a hefty 30% of my final grade). I had the best intentions, I really did, but when I got back to the apartment, I couldn’t stop watching TJ play Final Fantasy 7. Then Greg came back and we played more Battlefield 1942. The day ended and I had only written the outline and thesis statement for my paper. On top of that, I still hadn’t posted or accomplished anything except killing virtual enemies and refilling my Quicktrip mug.

Sunday I awoke with a purpose. I’d finish that stinkin’ paper if it killed me. I got up at 9, showered, and hunkered down to a fight to the death with my own unwillingness to write. I battled distractions (thundering bass from downstairs, videogame abundance) and my own apathy. Noon came around and I was more than halfway done (it takes me a long time to write something I don’t hate). I went to Quicktrip, ate some lunch and came back. I worked some more and got within sight of the end. I only had the conclusion left to write. After some screwing around, I sat down. Then the bass started again. And the phone rang. Aw jeez. By 8:00 I was done, in glorious triumph. Now I just had a bunch of reading that I had no intention of doing and some posting that I didn’t have the heart to do.

Monday morning I woke up. Traditionally the extra day in a three day weekend is spent in lan-party bliss. For the unaware, lan parties are where a bunch of nerds hook up their computers and play games together for many, many hours. There was no way anything was getting done today. I played games until my head hurt, went to see the Grey Zone with Shannon, and then played some more videogames when I got back. A fine day all around and definitely deserving of a post.

So anyway, I’m back for the week. Oh yeah, I should post the picture I made Friday. I played Hitman 2 on Thursday and Friday and I wanted to put up some screenshots I took, showcasing the immoral fun provided by said game. Have a look.

At the risk of sounding like Jerry Seinfeld, what is the deal with American cheese? I’m hesitant to even call it cheese because the package says “Pasteurized Process Cheese Food.” A couple weeks ago or so, Greg and I ran out of the provolone cheese we’d been eating for months. It was so good, but now it was gone and something needed to be done. Not having the means to go to Costco without crossing town, I opted for some Safeway Lucerne brand American cheese…cheap, plentiful, how could I go wrong? It’s like my every food philosophy epitomized. I was prepared to hate the cheese food when I made a sandwich earlier today. I wanted to hate it. Theoretically, it’s a huge downgrade from provolone and I’M FROM WISCONSIN for crying out loud…the cheese capital of the world (despite what those dirty, subversive Californians would have us believe). Well the “cheese food” was great. Great, I say. I’m looking forward to eating it again, and yet I can’t figure it out. I guess it’s like infomercials…you should never watch them because there has to be something better on, and yet you cannot look away.

I’ll never understand why people clean every week. Well, I can understand cleaning some stuff, like the dishes (it’s just practical to have clean dishes around) or your clothes (chicks don’t dig when you smell like poo or worse), but for the most part it seems ridiculous.

Today I cleaned the bathroom. It never seems like I’m really cleaning, rather it seems that I’m just smearing disgusting germs and filth from one place to another. I don’t really care about the appearance of cleanliness, I just like to know the little microbes and whatnot are dead. I would have the most disgusting bathroom in the world if there were aerosol cans you could hose the room down with and they would kill all the invisible bad things. Anyway, the bathroom just seems to get dirty again and it’s a never-ending cycle of me doing something I don’t want to do. Here’s what makes more sense to me: you have a completely disgusting bathroom, but you only have to go in there to “take care of business.” That seems better than a somewhat disgusting bathroom that you clean every week and have to get down on your hands and knees in to clean invisible fecal particles off the ground. I just want to vomit in there, even though it looks clean.

Not our toilet (I swear)

Back at my old apartment, freshman year, I had my own bathroom and I was the only person who used it. I swear to you, I cleaned that thing twice in the 9 months or so that I lived there. TWICE. I’m still alive and I don’t regret a thing. The only thing that makes me clean now is the social stigma of being a “gross bathroom guy” and the withering stare I get from Greg if I don’t do my pre-onecommunity chores.

It’s all a conspiracy by SC Johnson Wax or the Clorox people. Forget them, I’ll live in my own filth just like people in the middle ages. They did all right, didn’t they? What? They only lived like 30 years tops? Nevermind…

I’m still sick, but I’m in the stage where the world makes sense, where I’m not continually questioning why I’m doing things, if it’s Tuesday, if I remembered to wear a shirt to school, if this is the six or the seventh time I’ve urinated in the past hour.

I followed all the instructions for getting better: plenty of fluids (too much it seems), rest (aside from a shifty Friday night where I got approximately no sleep on the floor), and lots of vitamins/healthy food – well, not so much healthy food unless Fruit Loops really do count for one of my five fruits/vegetables a day. Because I had four bowls of cereal today. Or about half a box.

Ok, so I don’t eat healthy. However, I went out and bought the Flintstones vitamins because as a child, I secretly envied every kid who had them. My parents never could afford Flintstones vitamins for us, but mom would pull out her tools and spray paint sugar cubes and called them, “Funkstones.” This method worked for a while, until I realized that the Flintstones version came with Fred and Dino shaped pills. I asked for those, but my mom insisted that the cubes could take Dino anytime, and she didn’t have the proper tools; I just thought the cubes were hard to swallow.

Regardless, I bought the Flintstones chewables at Safeway a few days ago, and then looked at the back panel: It’s got 10 vitamins in it. Screw the many colors and the chewable form. I’m a growing boy/man, and I need many many vitamins that I can’t pronounce merely because they will probably do something. Also, the thing about “Children 2 years of age and older” doesn’t make me feel right. I swear, these chewables might initiate reverse puberty or something. So, I still take the Flintstones vitamins (merely because they were $6), and I counteract the puberty-enacting Riboflavin with Centrum: Advanced Formula for Old People. Seriously, It has like 600 vitamins in one tablet, including Tin, Nickel, and Iron. It also has Lutein, which is supposed to be good for the eyes. It enhanced my vision so well that I swear every morning when I wake up it looks like Steve is wearing only his underwear.

And I haven’t even started taking the pills yet.