Around this time of year, there's very little that's more annoying than seeing butthurt students catch feelings about the latest school rankings. I mean, there's people talking about spring training baseball, but really, anything to do with baseball is pretty much a given as the worst thing to have to read about. And you are reading my blog, so you managed to find at least one thing that's more annoying than both.
Baseball is a lot like pregnancy. It's 9 months of an overly long process that everybody gets really excited about for the first few weeks because of all the unknowns—Will the winner of the NL Central be Red or Blue? Boy or Girl?—which then becomes a non-stop fake, forced interest during the next 8 months because, well, you have to pretend like you care about baseball/your friend's future child all year long, even though the Cubs were mathematically eliminated before All-Star break and the parents are either going to name their kid Mark if it's a boy or Grace if it's a girl to honor 1B Mark Grace, who has almost as many DUIs as Gold Gloves. And finally, after 9 months of hard work, weight gain caused by little bundles of joy (A Child or PEDs), and more water breaking than a Brian Wilson dugout tantrum, the culmination of the season ends with only two parties actually caring about what happens in the end.
Honestly, as a male, I would choose 3 trimesters of child bearing over 3 innings of watching Clayton Kershaw struggle to control the location of his four-seam fastball, resulting in a 30 pitch 2nd.
But enough about people who have little baby testicles. I too, am very butthurt right now. Does that qualify me to write about school rankings? Yes, because I am Matt Pellegrini, which means I'm way better than pretty much everybody at everything and consistently more interesting than all of you. But I don't wanna write about school rankings, because I'm not a butthurt Student. I'm a butthurt Bachelor.
Season 17 of The Bachelor just wrapped up Monday night, with super hunk Sean Lowe giving the Final Rose to Catherine. If that elephant ride didn't just melt your heart.... But now that Sean and Catherine will pretend to stay together for a few months before having a tabloid breakup because Sean cheated on her with his Dancing with the Stars partner, there's a vacancy and longing deep in the loins of lonely women everywhere for a strapping and handsome new Bachelor. Cue my theme song.
Many people that I have randomly overheard have said (not necessarily "to" me), "You would make a great 'The Bachelor.'" Of course I would. And I figured I would pretty much at least be ensured finalist type consideration. That is, until US News and Scamports' "Best Eligible Bachelor States" Rankings came out the other night.
The state of Illinois dropped from its 8th place rank all the way to 19th in State with the Best Eligible Bachelors. Once again, Illinois has screwed me. And all they had to offer was excuses, excuses.
Oh, the criteria and scoring changed for this year, they said. They put more weight on States that produced Bachelors that became married and stayed married. What the fuck is that about? These are Bachelor rankings, who's trying to get married here?
I knew when I chose the state of Illinois to be born in that I wasn't going to be one of the top tier Bachelors that are steeped in old money, tradition, cotillion balls, and fruit trees of the hyper-romantic Postbellum South. Those guys are pretty much guaranteed the best Bachelor spots on those factors alone, even if they are Quasimodo's, I get that. But being from a small town in rural Illinois, I was told I might not be able to get the best single women pretending to look for love so they can actually advance their modeling and acting careers, but I would pretty much at least be guaranteed some of the better gold-digging fame whores.
And what does Illinois do? They go and kill my dreams by not playing the numbers right. And instead of solutions, just give excuses and justifications. Personally, I blame Chicago.
I mean, I look in the mirror and see a handsome small-town boy from Illinois, who has tight, lean muscles from all the years of pitchin' hay bales and ropin' dogies, with dimples the size of canyons and eyelashes like gorgeous butterfly wings, and who has an amazing blog for God's sake. And all that is going to be undone because Illinois can't keep a decent Bachelor rank. Because of this shitty ranking, nobody's going to look at me anymore and see a charming and virile Renaissance man with a devilishly tantalizing smirk...they're just going to see my big, crooked, Cyrano de Bergerac-esque nose and that I'm from Illinois...only the 19th best state at producing Bachelors.
Look, I've never actually auditioned or applied or tried to get on The Bachelor. But they're supposed to just come find me. My fame and fortune is just supposed to happen through no work of my own, but based solely on random factors that are given a good score. Like the millions of other men that are Bachelors around the world, I should be able to get by solely on my Midwestern heritage and status as a single, eligible, very heterosexual male. Why is it so hard for them to see that I'm such a unique, one of a kind person?
It just sucks that everybody that's supposed to make this work for me can only give me excuses when they blow it. When will they stand up and take some responsibility for their failures and lack of success? They only have themselves to blame for my failures. Dick heads.
Clearly you people complaining about your school rankings are bitching over spilled milk. You don't have to deal with Bachelor Rankings like me. At least going to school will get you a good job. I mean, just check out those employment numbers of graduates. You guys have it easy. Going to school eventually turns into a paying career, but being a Bachelor that gets married doesn't pay...unless you're a woman.
And a lot of people have said, well, just go for your backup plan. Now's as good a time as ever to try to become the next Pope. Then I saw where the United States was in US News' Best Catholic Countries Rankings. 126th. I didn't even know there were that many countries. African countries are apparently better Catholic places. Hhmm...how about give a little more credit for being the colonial rapacious conquistadors who forced those people to become good Catholics. I mean, where would those people be without my ancestors? Not at the conclave right now, that's for damn sure.
So I guess I'm just stuck wondering when something good will happen for me. Because I'm getting really bored just waiting around for that day to come.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
40 Days and 40 Nights or: How I Learned that the Catholic Church Lied to Me About Lent
For those of you who don't know yet (everybody), this Lent, I am once again attempting to recreate the classic Josh Hartnett movie 40 Days and 40 Nights.
A movie in which a character named Matt (like me), who is a stud of a Casanova of a man (not like me) and has a mole on his neck (like me) attempts to give up all kinds of sexual contact for Lent, meets some punky-haired, pixie-faced girl at a laundromat after sharing his secret stash of detergent with her, goes on a date with that girl in which they ride on a bus and I'm pretty sure they make fun of the homeless and retarded people on it, gives this chick he now "really" likes an orgasm by like blowing a feather around on her and blowing on her navel since he can't touch her (I can personally confirm that giving girls a no-touch orgasm is possible), has a betting ring start up around him to predict on what day he'll finally blow it (so to speak), is eventually pretty much raped by his ex-girlfriend just before Lent ends (always has been a personal fantasy of mine), and almost loses the girl he met at the laundromat, but ends up with her in the end and presumably they bang on Easter Sunday or something in the confessional. I'm a little rusty on some of the details. But so far, very little of that has actually happened to me. Now that all of you know though, I'm kind of hoping for at least the semi-consensual rape one, if any.
This is not the first time I've tried to recreate a Josh Hartnett classic. I was trying to find a cheap ticket to Barrow, Alaska to recreate 30 Days of Night, a terrifying vampire movie, which I saw in theaters with two girls, and I was easily the most scared of three, but that just never panned out since I have no idea what actually happened in that movie. I can definitely tell you what that movie sounded like and what the people sitting around me looked like, but I can barely remember anything visual from the movie, because I was using my classic "look like you're not scared even though you really are scared as shit during a scary movie move."
What you do is, you wear a hat to the movie. For instance, I wore my Toronto Maple Leafs hat. You tip it pretty low and during the movie when the scary parts come, you tilt your own head down a bit. Then looking up towards the screen, the top half of the movie is pretty much obscured by the bill of your hat and you can keep tabs on the bottom third, quarter, eighth, okay, inch or so of the screen if it's really scary to know when it's safe to look up again. You're welcome.
But back to 40 Days and 40 Nights. So this Lent, for the past 21 days so far, I have abstained from having sexual contact with any other person AND from having sexual contact with myself. I really miss my morning mirror kisses. Let me make a quick note here, I am pretty sure I've had one or two O-Town Liquid Dreams, if you know what I mean, since I woke up to some kind of wetness in my bed, and my psychiatrist told me he figured I was cured for good of my bedwetting problems a few years back. Hey, it's not the worst thing that could happen to you while you're in bed. You could always fall down a sinkhole and die.
Now, had this been the same amount of time into Lent as any of the other years I have tried, there would be no reason to write this, because I am absolutely positive I have never made it this far. The fact of the matter is, it is a biological fact that any time a man feels any emotion whatsoever, he instinctively has to reach down into his pants to remind himself that he has a penis and should not be having any feelings whatsoever. That's science. And I'm a fucking manly man. I mean, I went into In-N-Out today, and I ordered a chocolate milkshake...Animal Style. So you know my hand-to-pant ratio is much higher than the average man. And once it's down there, it's just so hard to say no. For girls, it would be like not feeding your dog or cat human food. You know you shouldn't, but it's just impossible not to. I don't judge you for that, so get off my case about body's natural hand-warmer.
Of course, after 21 days, I thought, well I made it halfway. Only 19 more to go. I can do this. Then I checked my Handy Dandy Notebook replica from Blue's Clues (Yes, I know the Handy Dandy Notebook is not a planner or a calendar and that it's a blank spiral pad. Just appreciate the fuckin' reference and move on). Easter is on the 31st. Today is the 6th. That's 25 more days. From Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday isn't 40 days, it's 46 days. Bum, bum, BUUUUUMMMMM!!
How can this be? Is this another Catholic Church conspiracy/cover up? Is this what Dan Brown's new novel is gonna be about? Somebody get Robert Langdon on the phone right now to investigate this.
Look, I expect the Church to look the other way and cover up some of the minor stuff like molestations, drug rings, and all that, but lying about the number of days Lent is...that's major. For all these years, I've been giving up Mountain Dew, candy, IcyHot, writing in cursive, and all that other stuff for more than 40 days.
Now, for those of you that don't know why people that observe Lent give up something for 40 days, it's because Jesus fasted for 40 days in the desert and overcame three separate temptations by the devil. But you know what Jesus did on the 41st day? He took a 24 oz. Ribeye, used a miracle to turn it into 50 steaks and put away at least three dozen of them and a handful of loaded baked potatoes. That's in one of the Gospel of Matthew's Lost Verses. It's not in the regular Bible.
So 40 days is good enough for Jesus, but I gotta do 46? That hardly seems fair. I think Jesus Christ has a little bit more of an advantage than I do, considering he's both human and divine. And I'm willing to let it slide for all the other stuff, but no sexual stuff for over 40 days? Nuh uh, I'm drawing the line.
Jesus may have been the son of God, but while he was down here on Earth, he was also a man. And dollars to donuts, Jesus fudging Christ glazed the desert a time or two during those 40 days with his creme filling. Look, nature calls. And for a man that presumably never married and never had sex, a 40 day crank down session out in the desert where no one would see him or find out about it sounds like a pretty nickel slick idea.
But apparently, after doing just a tiny bit of research, the discrepancy in days is accounted for by most church denominations by not counting the Sundays in Lent as part of the 40 days. And then Lent ends on Holy Thursday instead of Easter Sunday or something and that all accounts for the 6 extra days in some form of fashion.
Oh, I'm sorry, so when Jesus was starving his ass off in the desert, when a Sunday came around, was he just like, oh this day doesn't count? I can eat today, but we'll still keep count like it's been consecutive days. I don't think so. That's not in any of the Gospels or the Gospels' Lost Verses, so don't even try.
No, I'm not buying this explanation for why Lent is 46 days long of giving something up when Jesus only did 40. And you know what, I'm gonna go for all 46.
And if I pull this off, then I just one-upped Jesus Christ.
A movie in which a character named Matt (like me), who is a stud of a Casanova of a man (not like me) and has a mole on his neck (like me) attempts to give up all kinds of sexual contact for Lent, meets some punky-haired, pixie-faced girl at a laundromat after sharing his secret stash of detergent with her, goes on a date with that girl in which they ride on a bus and I'm pretty sure they make fun of the homeless and retarded people on it, gives this chick he now "really" likes an orgasm by like blowing a feather around on her and blowing on her navel since he can't touch her (I can personally confirm that giving girls a no-touch orgasm is possible), has a betting ring start up around him to predict on what day he'll finally blow it (so to speak), is eventually pretty much raped by his ex-girlfriend just before Lent ends (always has been a personal fantasy of mine), and almost loses the girl he met at the laundromat, but ends up with her in the end and presumably they bang on Easter Sunday or something in the confessional. I'm a little rusty on some of the details. But so far, very little of that has actually happened to me. Now that all of you know though, I'm kind of hoping for at least the semi-consensual rape one, if any.
This is not the first time I've tried to recreate a Josh Hartnett classic. I was trying to find a cheap ticket to Barrow, Alaska to recreate 30 Days of Night, a terrifying vampire movie, which I saw in theaters with two girls, and I was easily the most scared of three, but that just never panned out since I have no idea what actually happened in that movie. I can definitely tell you what that movie sounded like and what the people sitting around me looked like, but I can barely remember anything visual from the movie, because I was using my classic "look like you're not scared even though you really are scared as shit during a scary movie move."
What you do is, you wear a hat to the movie. For instance, I wore my Toronto Maple Leafs hat. You tip it pretty low and during the movie when the scary parts come, you tilt your own head down a bit. Then looking up towards the screen, the top half of the movie is pretty much obscured by the bill of your hat and you can keep tabs on the bottom third, quarter, eighth, okay, inch or so of the screen if it's really scary to know when it's safe to look up again. You're welcome.
But back to 40 Days and 40 Nights. So this Lent, for the past 21 days so far, I have abstained from having sexual contact with any other person AND from having sexual contact with myself. I really miss my morning mirror kisses. Let me make a quick note here, I am pretty sure I've had one or two O-Town Liquid Dreams, if you know what I mean, since I woke up to some kind of wetness in my bed, and my psychiatrist told me he figured I was cured for good of my bedwetting problems a few years back. Hey, it's not the worst thing that could happen to you while you're in bed. You could always fall down a sinkhole and die.
Now, had this been the same amount of time into Lent as any of the other years I have tried, there would be no reason to write this, because I am absolutely positive I have never made it this far. The fact of the matter is, it is a biological fact that any time a man feels any emotion whatsoever, he instinctively has to reach down into his pants to remind himself that he has a penis and should not be having any feelings whatsoever. That's science. And I'm a fucking manly man. I mean, I went into In-N-Out today, and I ordered a chocolate milkshake...Animal Style. So you know my hand-to-pant ratio is much higher than the average man. And once it's down there, it's just so hard to say no. For girls, it would be like not feeding your dog or cat human food. You know you shouldn't, but it's just impossible not to. I don't judge you for that, so get off my case about body's natural hand-warmer.
Of course, after 21 days, I thought, well I made it halfway. Only 19 more to go. I can do this. Then I checked my Handy Dandy Notebook replica from Blue's Clues (Yes, I know the Handy Dandy Notebook is not a planner or a calendar and that it's a blank spiral pad. Just appreciate the fuckin' reference and move on). Easter is on the 31st. Today is the 6th. That's 25 more days. From Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday isn't 40 days, it's 46 days. Bum, bum, BUUUUUMMMMM!!
How can this be? Is this another Catholic Church conspiracy/cover up? Is this what Dan Brown's new novel is gonna be about? Somebody get Robert Langdon on the phone right now to investigate this.
Look, I expect the Church to look the other way and cover up some of the minor stuff like molestations, drug rings, and all that, but lying about the number of days Lent is...that's major. For all these years, I've been giving up Mountain Dew, candy, IcyHot, writing in cursive, and all that other stuff for more than 40 days.
Now, for those of you that don't know why people that observe Lent give up something for 40 days, it's because Jesus fasted for 40 days in the desert and overcame three separate temptations by the devil. But you know what Jesus did on the 41st day? He took a 24 oz. Ribeye, used a miracle to turn it into 50 steaks and put away at least three dozen of them and a handful of loaded baked potatoes. That's in one of the Gospel of Matthew's Lost Verses. It's not in the regular Bible.
So 40 days is good enough for Jesus, but I gotta do 46? That hardly seems fair. I think Jesus Christ has a little bit more of an advantage than I do, considering he's both human and divine. And I'm willing to let it slide for all the other stuff, but no sexual stuff for over 40 days? Nuh uh, I'm drawing the line.
Jesus may have been the son of God, but while he was down here on Earth, he was also a man. And dollars to donuts, Jesus fudging Christ glazed the desert a time or two during those 40 days with his creme filling. Look, nature calls. And for a man that presumably never married and never had sex, a 40 day crank down session out in the desert where no one would see him or find out about it sounds like a pretty nickel slick idea.
But apparently, after doing just a tiny bit of research, the discrepancy in days is accounted for by most church denominations by not counting the Sundays in Lent as part of the 40 days. And then Lent ends on Holy Thursday instead of Easter Sunday or something and that all accounts for the 6 extra days in some form of fashion.
Oh, I'm sorry, so when Jesus was starving his ass off in the desert, when a Sunday came around, was he just like, oh this day doesn't count? I can eat today, but we'll still keep count like it's been consecutive days. I don't think so. That's not in any of the Gospels or the Gospels' Lost Verses, so don't even try.
No, I'm not buying this explanation for why Lent is 46 days long of giving something up when Jesus only did 40. And you know what, I'm gonna go for all 46.
And if I pull this off, then I just one-upped Jesus Christ.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Low-Tech Day: Part IV
It seems I need to apologize for never posting the thrilling
conclusion to Low Tech Day. I mean, did I cave and watch the latest
awkward exploits of Hannah Horvath on Girls? Was my craving for totally
gorgeballs pictures of jewelry and baked goods on Pinterest just too
much to withstand for the last three hours? Well let me tell you, people
wanted to know what happened at the end of Low Tech Day. How many
people? Doesn't really matter.
So briefly, here's the climactic...and then anticlimactic conclusion to Low Tech Day.
There's a knock at the door. I perk up and shout "Yay." I can't believe my telepathic message to the friend that was thinking of going to Kogi worked. This last three hours are gonna be cake now. I bounce downstairs to get to the door. Weird, why is my roommate already downstairs about to answer the door? Probably took me a couple seconds to put down my pen and he was like, well I better get the door if no one else is. He turns and gives me a look like, why are you coming down here? He opens the door.
It's not for me. It's for him. I explain the current experiment to our guest and within the next ten minutes or so, we're all engaging in house board game night. We played Ticket to Ride. I had never heard of it before, but let's just say, in the game, I played a beast train baron and everybody else played failed train tycoons, weeping as I monopolized America's Iron Horses.
I also spun a dreidel for awhile after we were done with the board game. Pretty sure my roommate's got a loaded dreidel, because I never once rolled the Jimmy Gimel. But, come on, what do you really expect from a gambling game that Jews play?
That's about all I did until 11:30 or so. Then, I decided to wrap up my thoughts on Low Tech Day.
Look, 24 hours without a lot of tech stuff is not that bad. I highly doubt when I turn on my laptop, phone, check my emails, that there will be anything so time sensitive that I missed out on. Like, what are we thinking that we need to constantly have multiple lines of communication open to us all at the same time? That if we don't respond to our friends immediately, they'll hate us and think we don't care.
I know I'm probably speaking for a minority. There's probably not that many people always on their phone and computer and checking to see if they have a new message, email, or notification every few minutes. If you're not one of those people, good. I'd recommend staying that way. Maybe I'm a tech addict. And everybody knows the first step to overcoming addiction...participating in a "low-something" day. Duh!
Tech addiction can be bad. But a few checks throughout the day doesn't hurt either. There was definitely some down time I could have filled with the use of technology. Saying "Hi" to somebody in a text. Looking up something I was curious about. Like how long is the track at the park I run at? Or seeing if something worthwhile was on TV. But otherwise, writing all of this was way more rewarding.
11:47. I think I'll wrap up on that note and think the next 13 minutes away. And then tomorrow, I'll go on my computer and type this all up.
So briefly, here's the climactic...and then anticlimactic conclusion to Low Tech Day.
There's a knock at the door. I perk up and shout "Yay." I can't believe my telepathic message to the friend that was thinking of going to Kogi worked. This last three hours are gonna be cake now. I bounce downstairs to get to the door. Weird, why is my roommate already downstairs about to answer the door? Probably took me a couple seconds to put down my pen and he was like, well I better get the door if no one else is. He turns and gives me a look like, why are you coming down here? He opens the door.
It's not for me. It's for him. I explain the current experiment to our guest and within the next ten minutes or so, we're all engaging in house board game night. We played Ticket to Ride. I had never heard of it before, but let's just say, in the game, I played a beast train baron and everybody else played failed train tycoons, weeping as I monopolized America's Iron Horses.
I also spun a dreidel for awhile after we were done with the board game. Pretty sure my roommate's got a loaded dreidel, because I never once rolled the Jimmy Gimel. But, come on, what do you really expect from a gambling game that Jews play?
That's about all I did until 11:30 or so. Then, I decided to wrap up my thoughts on Low Tech Day.
Look, 24 hours without a lot of tech stuff is not that bad. I highly doubt when I turn on my laptop, phone, check my emails, that there will be anything so time sensitive that I missed out on. Like, what are we thinking that we need to constantly have multiple lines of communication open to us all at the same time? That if we don't respond to our friends immediately, they'll hate us and think we don't care.
I know I'm probably speaking for a minority. There's probably not that many people always on their phone and computer and checking to see if they have a new message, email, or notification every few minutes. If you're not one of those people, good. I'd recommend staying that way. Maybe I'm a tech addict. And everybody knows the first step to overcoming addiction...participating in a "low-something" day. Duh!
Tech addiction can be bad. But a few checks throughout the day doesn't hurt either. There was definitely some down time I could have filled with the use of technology. Saying "Hi" to somebody in a text. Looking up something I was curious about. Like how long is the track at the park I run at? Or seeing if something worthwhile was on TV. But otherwise, writing all of this was way more rewarding.
11:47. I think I'll wrap up on that note and think the next 13 minutes away. And then tomorrow, I'll go on my computer and type this all up.
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