Embarrassing Stories - Inappropriate Tick Bites

Ticks plague me. It seems that no matter where I go, what I do, or what changes, ticks are a constant. I grew up living surrounded by a pretty thick wooded area, several of my friends growing up lived near woods or near a field, and now I live in the Ozarks. I have tick experience. I should put that on my resume.

Not only am I constantly surrounded by ticks, but when I am on a hike with friends, I am usually the only one to get them. And I get a ton. I must be some kind of delicacy to them. One year in high school (and this is pretty nerdy) I decided to count how many ticks I found on my that summer; I stopped counting when I hit 70. With all of those ticks, some are bound to have some inappropriate voyages, and that's what I'm going to talk about today.

Just as a warning, today's post may be a bit graphic. Luckily, I won't be providing pictures.

When I was about 12 one of my best friends lived only a few houses down from me. He had a trampoline so we would often hang out over at his place. Unfortunately, the trampoline was right next to the woods and had trees towering over it. Side note: ticks live in trees. So I was jumping around, having a good time, and I remember hitting one of the leafy branches with my head, but not thinking anything of it. Several seconds later, I notice I am covered in tiny, tiny little moving dots, and they seemed to be spreading all over me. Shocked at first, I simply looked at the dots on their conquest. When I finally realized they were itty bitty ticks, I started stripping off ALL of my clothes and running home to shower. I remember looking down at the water running into the drain and thinking it looked like someone pouring small coffee grounds down the drain. 

I've had many a-trifle with ticks around the waistline, but sometimes they like to take things to the next level. Get a little more intimate. To be blunt, sometimes ticks bite your balls. Now, ever since I can remember I've taken a shower every day, so it's not even a matter of hygiene. They hide somehow, like the tiniest ninjas. That's why I was so surprised when, in middle school, my crotch got extremely itchy. No amount of scratching provided relief. So I checked my drawers and, much to my surprise, found 3 ticks embedded in my scrote! I think they like the soft, warm wrinkles or something. I had a similar experience with a mole I noticed on my ass. It just so happens, the mole had eight legs and was sucking my blood.

That was traumatizing, but by far the worst tick experience I've had happened when I must have been about 5 or 6. Being so young, I had no shame so I was pissing in the garden. I noticed a very strange feeling when it started though, as though I had an extra flap of skin right on the tip... I looked down and saw something that could have been straight from the SAW movies: a tick was attached right to my urethra. Yep, right on the ol' pee hole. I won't go into details, but the extraction of that little guy was careful and precise, and don't even get me started on the itching I had the following couple weeks. I don't recommend it.

Those are definitely my most interesting encounters with the little vampires, and I do apologize for any mental imagery I may have caused. If it makes you feel any better, writing this post made me extremely itchy.

Some Thoughts While Driving

While driving without a CD player while driving between three states, there's not much to do but think and hit the "Scan" button on the radio. Although you can sometimes find some gems using the scan method, driving from Kansas to Arkansas yields very few gems and very much crap. Evangelical crap.

I have a slight astigmatism, and even though I wear glasses it can be difficult to read street signs from too far away. So when I'm driving somewhere I am unfamiliar with or am looking for a certain street, I almost always squint my eyes and lean forward like two feet, thinking that the extra couple feet will allow me to read the street signs quicker. That way I won't have to slam on my brakes once I see the street I'm looking for. Makes sense, right?

Well during the thinking portion of my last Kansas/Arkansas drive I realized that leaning forward makes absolutely negligible difference. Say you are going 60 mph and leaning two feet. That means you are going 5280 ft/min, or 88 ft/sec. Each foot you travel takes roughly 11 milliseconds, So by leaning two feet you are saving a measly 23 milliseconds.  If I'm driving slowly to look more carefully at 20 mph, I'm still only saving about 68 milliseconds. According to this quite-unofficial study, the average visual reaction time for a person is 215 milliseconds so leaning forward really isn't saving me anything.

Sorry for all that nerdiness, but I had to convince myself that the lean is a sham. Unfortunately, I doubt I'll quit and will continue looking like a leanin' fool whenever I'm lost.

In other news, the Scan feature actually found something kind of interesting on the drive. A religious program called "Unshackled." The show basically takes "true" stories and gets crappy voice actors to dramatize them, likely trying to convert the listeners. That was entertaining enough for me, but during the commercial and station ID, they were promoting their show by saying how many Middle Eastern listeners they had. Here is what the guy said, verbatim (to the best of my memory):

"Here's a letter from a listener in Kuwait: 'I really love your show and have now accepted Jesus as my savior but my husband is Islamic. I know if I tell him he will either murder or divorce me. I really need prayer.' And here is another from [So-and-so] in Saudi Arabia: 'my son loved your show and has found Christianity thanks to you and was proud of it. He was recently beat to death due to his beliefs. He now lives in Heaven.' So if you'd like to get Unshackled in Arabic in your area, please write to [blah-blah-blah]"

I wish I was making that up. After giving two examples of how you can be murdered for listening to their show, they ask if you'd like to listen to their show. "Gee, murder?? Where do I sign!?"

No thanks.

Add Me - My Phone Takes Funny Pictures!

I got a new phone recently, the Samsung Galaxy S, which is the Samsung Fascinate for me. Soon after getting it I was taking pictures and was going through the options expecting the same old ho-hum features like sepia or negative art. To my pleasant surprise I found that my phone's camera has some exceptional modes: a panorama mode where it takes awesome wide pictures, a mode where it will only take the picture if everyone in the picture is smiling, and, my favorite, a feature called "Add Me." At first I was confused about what Add Me does. It certainly isn't very intuitive, so I started messing around with it, and realized it is meant to be used to add someone to the shot who was not originally there.

That's the INTENDED usage. Here's a picture of a kid using the Add Me feature to shoot his twin brother, and that's actually the only picture of Add Me I could find after scouring the internet for minutes. Pretty lackluster performance. But I have found a much better usage for this fine feature, as I will describe in this loving  article.

Instead of creating a virtual twin, or adding in people who were too late to the photo shoot, I much prefer to splice together people's faces. Instead of going through the lengthy process of oiling up the bone saw, The Add Me function does all that work for me! Here is an example:

Hubba hubba!

Can you guess who this fine fellow is composed of? That's right, it's the two most obvious celebrities, Gary Busey and Arnold Schwarzenegger! This picture, along with all the celebrity mashups in this article, are taken right off my computer monitor so the quality is slightly questionable. But just roll with it. 

Here's how to make your very own creeper face, sans Photoshop. First, simply select "Add me" from the options:

Whoa, a pic of a phone cam with a phone cam... That's so Inception, dude

Your phone's display will be split down the middle, where you will put half of a face on each side. I like to split the face right on the bridge of the nose. The key to getting the pictures right is matching the faces up right, and getting a very similar-looking background.

We see a transparent Busey in the top half. That is what you will use to match up the faces. Then just take the picture and the program will take care of the rest! Pretty simple, and way cooler than the intended usage. I've taken the pictures of other celebrity duos as well, as seen in the gallery below.

Gary Busey and Helen Hunt. 

Margaret Thatcher and Jim Carrey - yummy ;)

Emiril Lagasse and a guy named Jesus

You can also split the faces vertically (or "hotdog style," if you are in elementary school) but it is a bit tougher to make them match properly.

The best-of-friends, Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck

Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Together, they make Mad Eye Moody!

As an added bonus, I'm also providing some Face-Off pictures a friend and I did a couple weeks ago. As you can probably imagine, it is much easier to get the faces to match up when using real people and not pictures from the internet. Note: These may be more entertaining to people to actually know me and/or said friend.

That is one ugly family.

So there you have it. Hopefully this guide will be an inspiration to millions and I'll start seeing these Add Me pictures pop up. Which seems unlikely considering Photoshop is probably way easier.

Stupid Things I Was Scared of As A Child!

Kids are stupid. (EDIT: Except for this kid)

That said, I was once a kid, and therefore was once stupid. It's not necessarily their fault, they just haven't had enough life experiences to tell them that what they're doing/thinking is retarded mentally defective ("retarded" didn't seem very PC so the thesaurus told me to put that instead. Then again, it also suggested "retardo").

I grew up with a morbid fascination with horror movies. My parents weren't super excited about this, so I usually had to wait until they went to sleep or go to the neighbor's house to give myself nightmares. I also frequently checked out Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, whose illustrations were always scarier than the actual stories. So let's see, I was a stupid little kid and my brain was full of cheesy horror plots... Needless to say, I had a lot of irrational fears as a kid, and the evidence shows that horror movies were a big contributing factor.

My parents had some friends they hung out with fairly regularly and I would always tag along as I was only about 3 or 4 at the time. There are three things I vividly remember about going to their house. For one, their ceiling was popcorn-textured, but it was sparkly! It had glitter in it or something; it was absolutely incredible. Here is an example of this glittery wonder. I remember just laying on the couch and staring up at the ceiling, and considering glitter popcorn it was popular in the 70's I imagine that was its intended purpose. Really, if you've never seen this stuff, I recommend you do.

Another thing I remember from those visits is that they had lots of good toys. Their son had a Nintendo Entertainment System with Excite Bike! And let me tell you, that game did make me excite. He was a lot older than I was and I would always beg him to hook up the NES so I could play it. If he were smart he would have just left it plugged in all the time. They also had these stupid little puzzles in a box where you would have to get the balls to go into their respective locations. They had tons of them.

My labyrinthine childhood

The thing I remember the most from going over there is their supreme television viewing options. They had a satellite dish, so they had all the channels I normally didn't get to watch. I remember watching lots of MTV over there, back before they changed their name to MTV. I remember one day they all went outside on the porch and they let me stay inside and watch the TV. I browsed until I found Child's Play. I vividly remember a scene where Chucky came out of the wall, jumped on some guy's back, and sliced his throat. I searched and searched on Google and YouTube to try and find this scene, but I can't find it at all. Considering I was a stupid little kid it probably doesn't even exist, I probably just made it up or something. But even still, every night before I'd go to bed I was SURE Chucky was going to come out of the wall and slice my throat, and I was ready for it every night for many many years after that fateful day. 

So that sucked.

I used to sleep on the top bunk of a bunk bed, and the room I was in had a vaulted ceiling with a ceiling fan at the top and every night my dad would turn on the fan before lights out. It was not very balanced and so it would kind of sway from side to side and make a ting-ting-ting noise as I slept. Well, for a long time I was afraid that fan was going to fall down on me and chop me up into pieces. An irrational thought, I know, but need I remind you I was but a wee stupid child? I knew that ceiling fans could chop people up because, again, I saw it in a horror movie. And, again, I cannot think of what movie it was, but in the movie the fan may or may not have had sharp blades attached to the fan blades. While trying to search for the movie, I stumbled upon someone else who is scared of the exact same thing! You have no idea what a relief it is to not be the only crazy person out there.

As a kid, urban myths were very popular. The quiet kid who sat in the back would say at recess, "Guys... my cousin flushed his lizard down the toilet and a few years later he went to the sewer and he grew into an alligator." And being stupid kids, we all believed it. One of my personal favorites was Bloody Mary, where if you go to a mirror and say "Bloody Mary" 13 times, the murderous Mary would appear in the mirror and kill you. Some friends and I would always play the "game" and we would sometimes get all the way up to 12 iterations and ALWAYS get too scared to continue. 

Well in the movie Candyman, if you said "Candyman" in the mirror 5 times you would summon a black guy who is made out of bees.

Clearly an original story. So one day I decided to try to summon Candyman, and this time I would NOT chicken out. I was too small to see the mirror over the sink, so I had to either stand on the tub or jump to see my own reflection. Well, I got to 5 iterations of "Candyman" but much to my surprise I didn't see him! Why I was trying to summon an otherworldly murder, I do not know. Anyway, I tried jumping up to get a better look and holy shit! "I saw him, Dad, I swear I saw him, I saw Candyman!" Turns out, I only saw my own reflection as I jumped up to see. Man, I was dumb.

Lastly, and perhaps the most irrational, was my fear of a robot on one wheel. I have no idea where this fear came from as I don't remember any scary movie about a robot on one wheel, other than maybe Rosie from the Jetsons. No, what I was scared of looked more like this:

Some scary shit

The one I was afraid of was about 1.5 feet tall and yellow. Again, no idea where this stemmed from, but I refused to let any of my limbs hang off the bed for fear that the stupid robot was going to cut them off. If I woke up and my hand was over the bed, I quickly pulled it back in and cursed myself, "HOW can you be so careless! You KNOW that thing will get you! You're lucky... THIS time." Clearly, the smartest option would be to move to the top bunk where I would be safe, so I did just that (remember the falling fan...?). That worked. For a while. 

There was a yellow ladder that went up to the top bunk which I considered as the only means of access to my helpless, sleeping body (this was before I was aware that Chucky busted through walls like the Kool Aid man). I was certain that the robot could switch out its wheel to one that could grip onto the ladder and wheel itself up and "get me." So then I started pulling the ladder up with me when I went to sleep. Up until embarrassingly recently, I didn't sleep with my hands or feet over the edge of the bed. 

While other kids had the Boogeyman under their beds, I had the tiny unbalanced robot under mine. Pretty sure I've never told anyone about the robot. Once again, you're welcome, Internet.

Random/Strange/Cool Pictures From My Old Phone!

My friend Lisa gave this site a pretty good plug, so here's likewise: Lisa's blog about random stuff and music. Apparently she'll do arts and crafts for you if you are no good at it yourself. I think I'm going to request a pair of knitted gloves with "LOVE" and "HATE" on the knuckles. And after I just Googled that, I'm a little sad that it is not an original idea. However, I'm pretty sure I could have some Love and Hate gloves that are way cooler that the examples I found.

Actually, heck with that. I think I'm just going to start knitting myself (sorry, LiLu). Why not? There is apparently a decent number to dudes who knit, as can be seen from this site: Men Who Knit. But still... after browsing the gallery, I'm mostly seeing baby socks and standard sweaters and stuff. My new hobby is going to be way manlier; I'm going to knit a grizzly bear, a beer cozy, and a can of WD-40. All while watching Wheel of Fortune with your Grandma.

Another nifty idea would be to make my own knitted Halloween costume. It would fit right in with my last few years' costumes of Quail Man, skin tight Gold Suit Man, and my homemade dog costume. And I know what you're probably saying, "Pics or it didn't happen." Well. That's true. And that may be a post for another day, but this is not the right time for internet humiliation. I normally have to work myself up to that.

No. In this episode I'm simply going to show you guys some pictures I took with my old phone and comment on them. Pretty standard material.

I don't know if it's legal to show some random person's license plate all willy nilly on the internet like this, and I'm too lazy to find out. But this is the baddest ass plate I've ever seen, and I'm not even a Satanist. I saw this while I was driving around town when I was going to school. You're probably thinking it is a vanity plate, but no, Friend, you are wrong; this is what the Kansas vanity plates look like. 

After the initial wave of awesomeness hits me like opening a hot oven, I notice that this is on a green, 90's Saturn. Not to be stereotypical, but I really like to think that the person who owns this is either an old lady, or just someone who wants nothing to do with a "666 BAD" license plate. "What do you mean I can't trade in my plate for a new one? Can't I trade with that guy? But I volunteered to drive on the church field trip!" 

The Engineering Library at KU is dedicated to this guy:

He was pretty freakin' smart, but damn... When I was completely slap-happy from being up super late studying, this guy's picture did not do me any favors. 

During my senior year a buddy and I watched a few episodes of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. He makes painting look so easy, so I got it into my head that I could be a master painter right away. I got online and ordered a Bob Ross paint kit so I could start bringing in the cash. The kit came with one episode of his show, which a friend and I followed along with. This was my first painting.

A happy little mountain

Apologies for my drunky face. A few weeks after my painting debut the sky near my parents' house got really pretty right before dusk, so I took a picture of that so I could paint it.

I never painted it.

I like to try new things, mostly with food. So when I heard about Mcdonad's McGangBang, I didn't need much persuasion. What's that? You've never heard of a McGangBang? Well, friends, let me explain how you can get your very own McGangBang. The sandwich consists of a Double Cheeseburger, with a McChicken patty split between the two patties of the burger. When ordering at McDonald's, simply ask for it by name; they will probably know what you're talking about. I know it sounds like a practical joke, but I swear it worked for me. This is what I got:

I ate it, too. It was awful.

I worked at a grocery store, Price Chopper, after I graduated while I was looking for a job more suited to the schooling I just put myself 10 years in debt for. The job search took a while, and Price Chopper wasn't ultra fun or anything, but it was easy, plus I liked my coworkers. Besides, if I hadn't worked at Price Chopper I never would have found this gem:

I'm not sure how this picture, of all the pictures of cats on the planet, got chosen to represent Always Save's cat food. Considering the bag costs a whopping $2.39, there are a few possible scenarios: 

1) They took the honest approach. 

Marketing Guy: "No, guys, you don't get it. Our cover cat needs to represent the feel for the cat food! Let's just snap a reaction shot of one of the taste-tester cats after he takes his first bite!"

Cat: *Eats bite, looks up* "You fuckers." 

2) They got lazy.

Marketing Guy: "Ok, so the boss needs a shot of the new cat food. He says it's not a big deal cuz the stuff is only like 2 bucks a bag and kind of people who will buy it aren't buying it for the artwork."

Marketing Girl: "Well, my grandma has a stuffed cat."

Marketing Guy: "Perfect."

3) It was all they could afford.

Marketing Guy: "Scott, put all the potential cover cats on that table so we can pick the best one."

Scott: "Well, here are the cats that showed up to the shoot..."

Marketing Guy: "......"

Marketing Girl: "My grandma has a stuffed cat."

Marketing Guy: "Perfect."