I just got done LOLing at kyle’s post of that funny photo thing. If you missed it, here it is. http://dumpedimage.com/uploads/1/man_suit.jpg

Oh, SNAPS! I’m back. And it took me long enough, really. I know, Tom, sorry I’ve been away for so long, but I’ve been a busy bee as of late. I’m going to try to catch you up on it.

New job. I’m working at a local community college. I started the job 3 weeks ago and I have grown to hate it. The people are nice enough, but the work is lame. I’m a robot that files and collates and I want to kill myself when the day is done. Sometimes I feel like I should have stayed at the Boys and Girls Club and continued to force help upon kids who don’t want it. Really, what’s more depressing? Working a job with absolutely no substance, or working a job where you try to force substance into the lives of others? Substance is a funny word because it means so many things.

New place. I’m shacked up in my grandmother’s old house with my buddy, Lenny, and soon with Max. It’s going well enough so far, except for the fact that I started working mid way through the last week of the pay period. I’ll spare you the details of this debauchery and just cut to the chase: I’m broke as a joke.

A couple solid things in my life that keep going right now: friends, family, and Smash Brothers.

My girlfriend, Steph, won SERIOUS points when she bought me Smash Brothers because I couldn’t afford it. On the off nights when she can’t be here and I can’t be there, the warm glow of the television and the sweet sounds of Nintendo keep my mind at ease.

I’ve been lucky enough to have people over and have some good times. If it wasn’t for the amazing people I have as friends, my money and health woes would be getting me down for sure.

Oh, I didn’t mention that before. The health thing. One of my wisdom teeth is growing in sideways or something I think. Headache city, population me.

Anyway, expect way more posts and way more good times now that my internetz and together again. Also, I have cable for the first time, so get ready for some reviews of TV shows and Channels.

You just got served, via server.

also max told me about an awesome band. It’s made up of 5 14/15 year old British kids who are amazing. Everything i love about music is present and accounted for. It’s like they figured out how to take all the best parts of what I think are the best bands and mixed them together in the perfect combination.

and to top all of this awesome off, for dinner tonight I get pizza pretzels we got from whole foods.

speaking of which, I have decided to start a hydroponics organic farm in a warehouse or something. It’s going to be awesome. And to start so I can perfect everything for a larger scale joe and lenny and max agreed to let me use garage space to set up a small vegetable farm. I’m thinking tomatoes and cucumber, I’m nut sure yet. but whichever vegetables I choose I’ll be starting a huge step towards what I want to do and I’ll get to see some of my best friends more often then I do now. Win, win, win.

and as a parting gift as I leave you tonight, here is a funny post from 4chan.

http://dumpedimage.com/uploads/1/man_suit.jpg

I’ve played it at Kyle’s. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that game. I have yet to play anything beyond the basic brawling of 4 characters on the screen, but there isn’t much more that I need to see. Everything I hoped for has become real and that makes me so happy. Even characters I thought were going to be a waste of space (Diddy Kong) are fun to use. The whole game is amazing.

Even the worst character EVER, Wario, is fun to use on some level. I mean, he’s annoying to even see on the screen, and he moves around like a tank over choppy water, but it works some how, on some strange level, this blemish is beautiful, like Cindy’s mole or the librarian’s bun.

I’ve been trying to work out my budget over the next few months, but due to about a million road blocks and torturous menacing turns of events, I am on a very tight budget until May. I’m moving into a new house and I’m changing jobs at just the right moment to miss a pay period almost entirely. That means I’m on a budget of about $150 a month to pay for food and fun as well as other stuff for my girlfriend and good times with friends.

Basically, I need to wait for my tax return to get Smash Brothers. I figure I’ll buy that and a PS3. Why not a 360? Let me sum it up in two words for you, Failure Rate. Oh and HD-DVD is dead. There’s another reason.

But I digress. Day 4 is coming to an end, and if I can just hold on until next month, I might be able to get the game. Pray for me.

You just got served, via server.

I just paid my bills and I have $150 to my name as of today. Now, I don’t know if I’m supposed to pay my grandmother in advance for the first month’s rent, or if I’m going to get saved by the kindness of her heart or what, but whatever happens, I’m definitely screwed during the move in.

I know what you might be thinking, Tom. You’re thinking, why is it that I said i was only going to talk about video games, and now i’m talking about money and moving. Well, it’s simple really. On top of the whole rent and moving expenses, i need to worry about getting my hands on a copy of Super Smash Brothers Brawl.

The game comes out this weekend and it’s all kyle and I have been talking about…kinda, and we’re bother super stoked to get our hands on it. The problem today is that I have no idea if i have or don’t have the money to get it. My girlfriend said she’d loan me money if I needed it…but I don’t want to be that boyfriend. But then again, it is Brawl, and I hardly ever treat myself.

The bottom line is thus: I need to get that game. I need to. So, I guess I’m going to…even if I have to kill a man.   Here are a list of people I might kill to get this game:

Miss America

Mr. Universe

The bank

Mostly, I’m looking forward to playing as Pitt and Bowser. I’ll be pwning with pitt.

Too bad I can’t play as hannah montana. I’m hurtin’ for hannah.

You just got served, via server.

Mother Nature is a bitch mistress who wants nothing more than to assimilate us into her plot for world domination…but I think I’m getting ahead of myself, so let me go back.

What doesn’t kill you will not make you stronger. It will make you weaker and chances of surviving that very same thing that didn’t kill you a second time is slim to none. Say I was attacked by a dog and lost my left hand fighting him off. Am I stronger? Hell no. That dog comes back for seconds and he’s going to get an all you can eat buffet. The same goes for diseases.

Diseases mess you up. AIDS, Cancer, Leukemia, it’s all out to get you. And if you happen to get one of these diseases, don’t think it’s going to make you stronger. It’s going to make you weaker and weaker until you die, unless treated properly…in which case it’ll make you weaker and weaker and your body will become a battle field between man and nature, where science is our weapon of choice.

Now, I understand that we need to die. If too many people are living at once, we all die. But my real grip with Mother Nature is that all she’s doing is making us weaker. If there are diseases that kill us, why can’t there be diseases that make us stronger? Why do all diseases have to be horrible? Why is it that I can’t go out and catch a bad case of xray vision, or get a rash that results not in my vomiting, but instead it allows me to fly? I don’t think it’s too much to ask. I really really don’t.

Now, I’m not a doctor, but let me explain this in the most technical terms I can. An illness is something that enters your body and starts working you over. And when I say working you over, I mean it. Like baseball bats and sharpened pencils. But what if that virus wasn’t out to get you. What if, instead of ingesting common street thugs, you ingest nuns. Nuns that love you and want nothing more than to make you run at the speed of light. Or what if they wanted to pray for you and give you amazing luck? Why the hell can’t this happen? Why can’t illnesses be more like nuns?

I’ll tell you why. Mother Nature, that’s why. She wants to kill us and let her plants grow all over the place. She wants us to get back in line, walk like an animal, and stop living in nice houses. Well, I say never.

The only way I think we can stop this is if we start making our own diseases that do what we want. Diseases that make us stronger and faster and better at backgammon. This is the only way we can fight off Mother Nature.

And if anyone is reading this and knows anything about bioengineering, I want to be Spider-Man.

You just got dressed, via dresser.

(blog censored)

The rest of the alerts were missed calls and a voice mail from my boss, and a phone call from a guy named Hal. Hal left a voicemail too, and I listened. He was asking if we had a meeting today. The message was at 8. My boss’s voicemail was asking why Hal was sitting outside work.

Now, this is a big deal. Hal is a part of the Rotary Club, and they donate A LOT of money to a specific program at my work, namely, the College Bound Program, the program I work for. So, if I piss this guy off, which I doubt I’d do, because he’s seriously, one of the nicest old people I’ve ever met, then we could lose tons of money…maybe like a million…a million money. This said, I still didn’t want to push it. I called Hal, but I only had his home number. His wife sounded pissed, and I found out why. I guess Hal had been sitting out there for like two hours. She gave me his cell number, but his phone was turned off.

So I raced to work to see if I could catch Hal and let him know what was going, and I called my boss on the way. I got to work and no one was there. I guess Hal went home. I need to call him back. I really don’t want to though because I’m afraid he might be as upset as his wife was.

Anyway, it was a pretty rockstar morning. I woke up to an angry woman,______, and urgent messages from my work.

You just got piledrived, via piledriver.

So, in order to work as a teacher in the state of California, one has to swear to the Oath of Allegiance It goes a little something like this…and I quizote:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend

the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of

the State of California against all enemies, foreign and

domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the

Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the

State of California; that I take this obligation freely, without

any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will

well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about

to enter. 

Lame. First of all, I DO have mental reservations to signing this, and I don’t take it freely. They’re making me sign this to work as a teacher. MAKING ME, so it’s not like I’m doing it freely at all.

What’s the big deal? Well, the part that really gets me is the whole “I will..defend the constitution…against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” I’m not going to defend shit. They make officers of the military say this oath. I’m not taking up arms against anyone, ever. Not only do I not agree with any of the wars we’ve fought in since World War II, but I’d probably kill myself before I killed anyone else.

It’s pretty insane that they make teachers say this oath. They even make UC graduate students say this to get aid from the government, from what I can understand. Totally weird, lame, and bullshit.

I basically was faced with a choice: I could not sign it, feel good about myself and never become a teacher, or I could sign it, rub some dirt on my morals a bit, and just hope it never comes up again. I’ve wanted to be a teacher most my life, and recently I decided to hold off on that for a while, but I was still trying to get a job working for the Torrance district, maybe doing some networking. I didn’t want to have to throw it all away because of some oath.

When I went to turn in my insane amount of paperwork, and the man at the window found that I hadn’t signed the oath, I asked him if I really had to. He said yeah. So I added a bunch of stuff under the oath in a blank space, saying that my duties are limited to that of a teacher, I’m never taking up arms for an country and am not expected to by signing the paper, and that the signature and the paper and everything becomes null and void when I leave the job for whatever reason.

I’m not sure how legal what I did is, nor am I too sure what people are going to do when they see that. Maybe the government will put me on a black list, thinking I’m a communist or something. Maybe the school board will deny me later in life. Hell, maybe a couple guys in suits will be waiting for me when I go to get my TB test. I mean, this is part of the Homeland Security bullshit that we’re all paying so much for.

Whatever happens, at least I spoke my peace.

You’ve just been spooned, via spooner.