01/27/2008
As I typed my Sunday missive on church, I was sitting in the Brew Ha Ha in Trolley Square (a.k.a. “Yuppieville, U.S.A.”), drinking a Chai tea, and eating a sausage, egg, and cheese croissant. It was packed, which wasn’t a surprise, but as I walked in, I saw two beautiful golden retrievers tied to the front railing. I figured, Oh… someone took their dogs for a walk and went inside to get a coffee.
Normal assumption, huh?
Yeah… 40 minutes later, I heard the dogs barking outside and it struck me that the piece of shit who owned those dogs, parked them out front, came inside for something to eat/drink, and sat the fuck down while their dogs were outside in barely-above-freezing temperatures.
I hate people. I really hate people.
When the dogs started barking, the douchebag who owned them (wearing a very stylish “GrayGoose” hat, no doubt given to him by the pretentious assholes at the wine shop next door – overpriced, but allowed to be because they have a spot in “The Square”) had the balls to go outside and raise his voice to the dogs. He left them outside on cold concrete in 35 degree weather while he was inside, sipping on his half-caf, double-vente, uber-latteo-chino, in a relatively warm room.
Fuck that.
It was a tough battle of wills, but maybe because I went to church, the angel on my shoulder won out over the devil who wanted me to snap the bastard’s neck.
Maybe it was because, even though I usually loathe people who sit and sip coffee, acting high-and-mighty, there weren’t many yuppie-bastards here today. I dunno. In any case, I’m not going to prison this weekend… but there’s still 12 and a half hours left in the weekend. Best be good…
First, I understand that’s it has been about a week since I wrote about anything at all, but it’s been over 9 months since I added an entry to “The Catholic Chronicles.” The reason for the first is simple: I was busy and had nothing really pressing to say. The reason for the second is even simpler: I broke my resolution for 2007 and stopped going to church.
As with any broken resolution, it started with just one time. Whether you’re a recovering drug-addict or a recovering alcoholic or a recovering Catholic: that first time you do what you’re not supposed to do (in my case, it was skip church), the easier it becomes to do it a second time… and a third… and a fourth… and a hundredth. I can’t remember why I skipped church in April, after Easter, but I did. Then I started realizing it was nice to sleep in. Then I started to think it was fun to watch movies on TNT or TBS while laying in bed on Sunday mornings. After that, it was pretty much all downhill. I will say that I might have only missed one or two nights all last year where I didn’t pray before I went to sleep, but I missed a hell of a lot of Sundays when I should have been sitting in a church, praying, and listening to The Word of God.
So, today – Sunday, January 27th, 2008, I am going to try and locate not only a church that I want to attend regularly, but a mass-time that works for me too. See, those things have to go hand-in-hand. It’s easy to find a place, and it’s easy to find a time, but it might not be the simplest thing in the world to mesh the two.
This morning, I went to St. Ann’s Parish on Union Street for their 9:30am mass. I used to attend St. Ann’s pretty regularly when I first moved into my house back in 2000, but, again, I found lame excuses as to why I didn’t show every week. Actually… I did have 1 good excuse: I didn’t like one of the priests there. I mean, he may have been a wonderful human being, but I hated his homilies (the talks after the gospel reading). Still, that shouldn’t be the “end-all, be-all” excuse to stop attending. No matter the past, I was there today… and I found a brand-new reason to not go to the 9:30 mass on Sundays at St. Ann’s: WAY too many kids!
As I’ve said before, I have no problem with kids. I have little problem with the behavior of the little ones in regards to them behaving. My problem lays with the parents of those children. They bring their kids to church with the equivalent of a toy chest, let them bang around, and talk loudly, but never stop them. It is a symptom of a much larger problem in our society: The “it’s someone else’s problem” problem. The fact about that is that people will look at someone like me, label me a “child-hater,” and then tell me to lighten up. Um… no. Anyone who’s seen me with children know that “child-hater” is a phrase not applicable to me! What bothers me with the kids or even the adults who go and talk the entire time, is that they are a distraction to those of us who want to be there and want to pay attention.
Keeping that in mind, I’ve struck 9:30am masses at St. Ann’s out of my weekly mass schedule. I did, however, do a little research this morning and found several churches in the area that I will “test out” over the next few months. I think I’ve attended all of them but 2 for Sunday masses at some point (I did attend 1 of them for a Christening, however), so it should be a little interesting to determine what the “best” church is and the best time for me.
Whew… who would have thought that planning an hour of adoration would be this much work?! Ah well… it’s my BLOG and I’ll do whatever I can to keep it rolling. I know I said this last year, but I really hope that I can keep it going this time!
01/15/2008
Last night I got a bunch of stuff back from the dry-cleaners and I said to myself, Self, you are good to go for clothes! These shirts and pants are purdy! I loaded them in my car, went home, and hung out with my beautiful girl. This morning, I got up, put on freshly returned clothing, and drove to work. About 10 minutes into my 15 minute commute, I thought my car was being invaded by a dual-rotor helicopter!! I heard this loud whump-whump-whump going on and I turned the stereo down, and listened. No helicopter, but I did start to realize that it was probably my car. I looked in the mirrors and didn’t see anything, so I pulled over into the breakdown lane of Interstate 95.
Oh yeah… I had a big-ass blowout:
Seriously? I had never seen a tire look like that on any car I’ve ever driven. Usually, I’ll hear that familiar “whump-whump” when the tire took on a nail or a screw, but never when it looked like that! Anyway, I pulled over and started to change the tire. In that time, my friend Drew drove past and called me to make sure I was okay (he would have stopped, but I was in the right breakdown lane, and he was zooming by – presumably at a safe and legal 55 mph – in the left lane). Shortly after that, Brittany’s mom called her to check on me because she too drove past. On top of that, 2 State Police stopped to make sure I was okay.
The changing of the tire only took 15 minutes (and, I managed to stay completely grease-free – a miracle upon modern miracles), but I’m sitting here now, an hour later, kinda happy because, even though I have to leave work early today and buy a new tire, I am pretty touched that so many people gave a shit about someone on the side of the road. It makes me feel good that, if my mother or sister or girlfriend were in the same position, someone would do the same thing.
To close, allow me a quick public-service announcement:
Before you take your next car trip (be it to the mall, work, school, or California), do the following:
- Pop the trunk, and locate the following items:
- Lug-wrench
- Vehicle jack
- Spare tire
- Pop the hood, and check the following things:
- Windshield washer fluid
- Oil
- Transmission fluid
- Condition of your belts
- Verify that your headlamps work in both normal and high
- Verify that your brake-lights all work
- Verify that your turn signals all work
I know it sounds like basic defensive driving, but, when you’re on the side of the road looking at a busted tire, you are so gonna wish you had at least done #1 on that list! True story: My very first girlfriend (yes, longtime friends, this is Betty) got a flat on the way to the movies with me and 2 friends in the car. I said “No problem! I can fix this very quickly.” I walked the the hatch-back, opened it up, and said “Um… where’s the jack?” Turns out that she took out her jack and lug-wrench because she needed more room for her “bumpin’ boombox.” Luckily, a friend of mine from school drove past and had a jack we borrowed.
Let that be a lesson to you, folks! The car manufacturers put that stuff in there for a reason, you may never need it, but if you do, you’ll be very glad you have it!
01/10/2008
Ugh…
It’s been a long time since I’ve consistently woken up prior to sunrise. Over the last 2 years, I usually woke up about 7:30 (at the earliest). I was scheduled to work late on Tuesdays & Thursdays for a while, so I usually woke up about 8, worked out, and went to work. NOW, I get into work at 7:30, so I’m up about 6:30 this week, and the sun is still trying to wake up itself.
Next week will be really fun as I attempt to get up EARLIER and work out before work. See, I like going to the “Y” early because there aren’t a lot of people there to bother me. It’s not that they actively come up and disturb me, but that early in the morning, anyone who breathes bothers me. I want to walk in, climb on an elliptical machine, crank my iPod up, and just go hard until I’m done. I don’t want magazines or books, newspapers or television to distract me; mind, machine, and music is all I need, people!
This morning I woke up a little earlier so I could go get me some Chai tea (my new favorite drink) at a local coffee establishment where my girlfriend works. I go in, she’s already got my Chai cup ready to go, and I hang out for about 30 seconds waiting for it to be done. I’d love to stop and chat, but the yuppie assholes in Trolley Square are too focused on getting their tall, half-caf, uber-grande, soy-milk lattes. God… I fucking hate yuppies. Seriously, I walk into that place, and they can smell that I’m not one of theirs. I don’t buy the whole “I need caffeine to be nice” bullshit. They’re just jackasses 24 hours a day.
Oh… that whole paragraph was MY observation; Brittany didn’t contribute at all. She’s what they call “tolerant” of people. Me? Not so much. I pull in to the parking lot in my dinged-up Mazda, and they screech in with their jet-black BMWs, thinking they are the envy of the neighborhood, when they are parking between 2 identical models. Eesh. Money does make people stupid.
In any case, I’m just about to the point where I’m used to getting up a little earlier than last year, so next week will be the real test. If I can survive and not fall asleep while teaching, I will count it as a victory.
01/08/2008
Any male from the age of 25 through 40 remembers American Gladiators, a show that started in 1989 and ran through, apparently, 1996. It featured 4 competitors each week (2 men, 2 women) taking on “Gladiators” in games of skill and strength. The gladiators were usually incredibly athletic individuals (again, both men and women) with names like “Nitro,” “Gemini,” “Zap,” and “Sunny.” Mike Adamle, Larry Czonka, and Joe Theisman were some of the hosts that brought these competitions to us week after week. Events like a huge maze where gladiators would wait and pummel someone unlucky enough to make a wrong turn, Assault, where the contestants would fire foam projectiles at a huge target while a gladiator was firing tennis balls at them from a cannon, and Hang Tough, where a contestant would try to swing their way across a huge chasm on rings while trying to avoid the gladiator coming at them from the other direction.
It was a great show which was basically all the pomp and circumstance of professional wrestling, without the fantasy aspect. It was real people doing real things against real competitors. In the wide world of television, everything old is new again…
Just this past week, NBC unveiled “American Gladiators” for 2008. It’s hosted by Terry “Hulk Hogan” Bollea & Layla Ali and it features the same blend of athletics as well as some new events. Unfortunately, the rapists… I mean… producers in charge of this incarnation seemed to have ramped up the idea of professional wrestling, giving the gladiators personae to go with their monikers. Not only that, but I’m guessing they have given the contestants canned responses when questioned by both Hogan and Ali. The strength in this revision of the original comes in the idea that things are faster and flashier, but still remain as hardcore as always… athletically. Unfortunately, the weakness is that Hulk Hogan is not a great interviewer and there is only 1 “play-by-play” announcer in Van Earl Wright. The fun of the last show was listening to Adamle and Czonka go back and forth! Getting past that, the stupid comments by the gladiators and the contestants seem to be grating on more than one level. One can almost hear the crowd groan when a man named “Wolf” actually howls to signify his readiness for the challenge. The gladiators are no longer mysterious, muscle-bound men & women; these gladiators are walking, talking action-figures. No good!
Well… there is one good thing:
Yeah… That’s “Crush” and I hate to do it, but I gotta be cheesy and say that I do have a crush on her. Don’t get me wrong: I have a wonderful and gorgeous girlfriend who I love and adore, but I know she’s got her own thing for Tom Colicchio:
I think I came off the winner there 
In any case, Crush is definitely a reason to tune in on Monday nights at 8pm on NBC.
Anyway, if you get ESPN Classic, I highly recommend you fill up on the old American Gladiators if you can. The show was much better and much more “real” than it’s current counterpart. I enjoyed watching the athletics of the current show, but I’m not completely sold on whether or not NBC will keep it around more than this season. If they do bring it back, I really hope the play-by-play is a team effort and they cease cartooning up the gladiators and let them just kick some ass.
This is sort of a rant that I’ve touched on from time to time, but I don’t believe I have ever really delved into it wholesale. Actually, this is something I’ve come to believe over the course of many years (and to the extreme delight of my friend Mark), so it is gonna flow pretty nicely.
It’s election time. Unfortunately that means, for the next 11 months, we will be hearing nothing but Obama v. Hillary and why Huckabee is hiding religious messages in his campaign ads. It also means that, when the nominees are decided, we will be getting a shitload of negative commercials telling us why one candidate is better than the other because the other candidate eats babies and flosses with stem cells or some such crap.
Guess what though… that’s not why I’m pissed. For better or worse, that is how politics goes in today’s day and age. I doubt it will change in my lifetime, but hopefully my kids will be able to clean things up a bit. No, the reason why I’m upset is because of the college culture of politics. As I said before, my friend Mark will be happy because he kinda started me down this road. I’ll admit, I’m not as hardcore as he is, but I still believe one, true idea:
You shouldn’t be allowed to vote until you move out of mommy & daddy’s house.
Allow me to add a little explanation here so as not to offend everyone… I fully realize that, due to varying circumstances, people may have to stay with or move back in with their parents at points during their life. I am not referring to these people. These people usually have jobs, but can’t afford to be in an apartment or house. These people usually have experience living life and understand what the world is like, but they are just stuck with mom & dad for a variety of reasons. Those people have opinions and experiences that kids who have never left or never fended for themselves will never understand.
No, I’m talking about the age-range of 18 – 22 year olds in college who think they know everything about everything. Why can I say that with authority? I was one of them; we ALL were one of them. It’s because I was there in my past that I can say with absolute certainty that these idiots should NOT be able to cast a ballot. Mark also said another thing which I agree with in spirit, but not absolutely verbatim:
When you’re young, and you’re not a Democrat, you have no heart. When you’re older, and you’re not a Republican, you have no brain.
I agree in the respect that we tend to look at things in terms of black and white, and make our decisions using our heart a lot when we are teenagers and college-age. As a Republican, Mark loved that saying. Believe it or not, I consider myself a Democrat (sorry Mark… I had you until this point, didn’t I?), but I’m definitely not making my decisions based solely on my emotions any longer. I actually consider myself a Conservative Liberal (or a Liberal Conservative, if that makes you feel better) because I’m pretty much squarely in the middle of the road. I think Bush is an idiot, Cheney is evil, and the furor over religion guiding medical research and such is a bunch of bullshit. However… I think that illegal immigration needs to be stopped (not “curbed,” not “stemmed,” but cut the fuck out), people need to take responsibility for their own actions and quit blaming “the establishment,” and the ACLU needs to be abolished, killed, and their remains tossed into a vat of white-hot, molten steel (that is how to kill evil robots, right?). I could care less who is gay or who is doing what to which hole… but I believe that anyone who commits a terrorist act within the borders of this country becomes expendable. I’m definitely somewhere in the middle.
The reason why I’m going off on this is because my home paper, The News Journal, had a front-page story on the college campaign. Smartly, candidates are focusing their energies on the youth of America, and that age group is happy someone is noticing them, so they are casting votes. However… they are casting votes the wrong way (and not “Democrat” or “Republican” here… I’m saying, again, casting with their hearts). Think back to when you were that age… you believed what you believed and no one could tell you otherwise. You had arguments with your parents because they were just “so old-fashioned” about things. Now, I find myself agreeing with my parents more often than not.
I think it all has to do with really experiencing the real world. Get a full-time job, not one that requires you to sell CDs to stoners in college. See those taxes get sucked out. Save up to buy a house and worry about property values because the types of people who live around you are relying more on others than their own work ethic. Lay in bed every night and get woken up by loud mufflers and screaming sirens blasting past your window.
In short, grow up a bit, THEN make a decision.
Don’t get me wrong… the college experience is invaluable: It shows me that I’ve matured since the right of idiocy I went through from 1993 – 1997. Hell, I’ll even be more fair than that: I’ve matured from my whole upbringing until about 2000. Once I hit 25 and had been in my house for about a year, I learned a lot about how the world works. That’s why I can say that, until a child moves out of their parents’ house, gets a real job, and starts becoming one with the world, well… they don’t know shit.
By the way: I’m laying it out there now. I really wanted Biden to win. Not because he’s from Delaware, but because he’s a good man AND he’s probably the most intelligent candidate out there. Unfortunately, he couldn’t overcome shitty campaign support and coming from the 2nd smallest state in the Union. I throw my support firmly behind John McCain now.
Honestly… I don’t know why it took so long for me to get around to BLOGging again. I mean, it’s not like my break was boring, but, every time I sat down, clicked on my link, and started to type, something just felt “off.” It wasn’t that I couldn’t think of anything to say, I guess… it was as if everything I was saying was just not good enough for me. I dunno…
In any case, where was I?
I haven’t written in almost a month! So let’s recap: I spent the last couple of days of the last semester just waiting for the break as 98% of the students had already gone home and stayed home. We had some Christmas parties and I moved a lot of my stuff into my new cubicle (which is now furnished). I realized that I am a very lucky guy to have the colleagues that I have!
Christmas was great; Brittany got me a TomTom GPS Navigation system which I love. We have already used it to get back and forth to a wedding in Pennsylvania, so it’s definitely worth every penny she spent. My parents overdid it as usual… Even though I was so excited about getting THEM a new computer, my mom & dad turned around and ordered ME a laptop (which, by the specs, is pretty much the best machine I’ve ever owned). We had a lot of good times with the family and Britt’s family, so that was great. Oh yeah! Brittany got us a Wii! Did I mention that before? If not, she did. I’m pretty jazzed, actually. I know that I said I don’t do videogames any longer (and I stick by that), but, for some reason, the Wii doesn’t feel like videogaming! Anyway, that’s great.
I battled a nasty cold / flu over the Christmas break: lime-green snot and everything. I am just now starting to be back to “normal” (or as normal as I ever am). It’s not a strange thing to be sick right now as (almost literally) everyone I’ve come into contact with is sniffling. Luckily (depending on your point of view) I was sick over break, so I didn’t have to take any sick days. I did get a LOT of sleep, so that helped out tremendously.
New Year’s Eve was fun; we did Fondue with my best friend, his wife, and their baby girl. I even dance-danced on their Dance-Dance Revolution. Was I any good? No… I took a “Riverdance” approach to it, and you could tell just how bad I was. I planted my left foot straight down like a stake, and moved my right-foot around to hit the arrows. I learned one, very important thing: There’s a reason I don’t dance!
I guess that’s all from a personal standpoint! Kinda lame, huh? Maybe that’s why I didn’t BLOG all that much: nothing to say! So now we’re back to school (the semester starts next week), and I’m all settled in. It’s an amazing feeling being where I am. Now… if I could only get a trash can and some office supplies!
