Non-Valentine's Day Cards

Ah, Valentine's Day. The day each year that reminds me it's way better to be a desired, yet eternally unobtainable bachelor, receiving tons of Spongebob Squarepants Valentine's day cards from girls I lead on into thinking they have a chance with me instead of falling in love with just one person for the rest of my life and having to actually spend money and buy something for them.

And I'm serious; I get a lot of Valentine's Day cards, people. I hang a gunny sack outside of my front door on VT Day with just a picture of my charming face on it, and by 2 p.m., I have to grab that bag bursting at its burlapiness and dump out all the cards in there or else all those new V-tine cards that couldn't fit will start piling up outside of my house like the used condoms I never wear. (Shh...that's because I don't ever have sex). Did that sentence make it sound like I never wear "used condoms" though? Oh well, it was worth the punchline. Don't agonize over it or anything.

Besides, I take birth control pills anyway just in case that special moment ever does happen. I know what you're thinking: "Moron, birth control pills aren't going to have any preventative effect if a guy takes them." True, but if I'm taking the pills too, then the girl can't complain about it. "See baby, I'm going through it too. We're going through this together." It's a fool-proof plan. And by "fool-proof," I mean it will only work on a girl that is a fool. So pretty much any girl that is smart is going to think I'm an idiot and my eternal bachelor status will no longer be in jeopardy, if it ever really was in the first place.

Unlike most of you, I don't hate Valentine's Day or think it's funny or clever to act like I'm too goddamn cool for true love. Oh, you're all just too good for ol' V-Day and the concept of love, but St. Patrick's Day comes around, and everybody's ready to pretend they're Irish and drink and act like they know what the celebration is even about. Which just goes to show that for most, Alcohol > Love.

And that's another thing, Patrick still gets mentioned with his "St." prefix, but apparently Valentine's miracle of writing letters to a blind girl to try to get one last "conjugal visit" before he was killed and ironically having his plan backfire when the miracle of his love letter cured her blindness and she saw just how decrepit he had become from his time in jail isn't a good enough miracle for you guys to throw "Saint" in front of his name for Valentine's Day very often.

But back to the V-Teezy Day haters. I'm not like the rest of you Bitters who get all Scroogey about a holiday about love. Instead, I'm that rare kind of person who is willing to listen and try to see things from your perspective. I wanted to put myself in the shoes of you gals and guys who hate Valentine's Day and try to see what it would be like to have nobody who loves me, what it would be like to not have Valentine cards pouring from the sack I won at the Irvine Annual Sack Hop Race three years in a row with, and what it would be like to not have so many cards to read each year that a reverse St. Valentine's miracle happens and I go temporarily blind from trying to read them all (Good lord, all the Jennifer's and Jessica's and Jason's just start to run together and look like sexy squiggles).

So, like somebody that says they're going to consider your views and try to understand where you're coming from, I thought about why you guys feel the way you do about Valentine's Day for about 10 seconds, decided you were all idiots and wrong, but figured I should try to make some funny jokes or memes about it.

And that's when it hit me in my slack-jawed face: I'll make some Non-Valentine's Day Cards. And better yet, I'll use a few of my favorite shows that would never get their own real Valentine's Day card packs to make these cards.

So without further glorious sentence of the year candidates (can you believe that mini-rant about having "St." in front of names was just one roller coaster of a sentence that vacillated between giving you great "air time," then hitting you with maximum G-forces, before finishing you off with a double helix before pulling back into the station?), here are some Non-Valentine's Day Cards for your loveless 2017 year:

1. Mr. Robot

Like all of my favorite musical acts and Justin Bieber last night at the Grammy's, this card isn't going to win any awards. It's a simple statement for people that want to express the feeling that Valentine's Day and the concept of love mean nothing to them. Instead, with this card, you only seek to very apathetically express your friendship to another person.

However, this card can also be seen as a clever satire on the concept of the commercialization of holidays. Mr. Robot focuses on the actions of a group of individuals trying to take down a massive corporation that clandestinely controls people's lives, and the main character Elliot, is so incredibly emotionally withdrawn, whether as a defense mechanism or just because he is jaded, that he is practically a robot in that he is devoid of human emotion. So this card can also be for the person that thinks Valentine's Day is nothing more than a Hallmark Holiday, manufactured by mega-corporations to turn people into mimetic puppets—monkey see, monkey do—buying cards with prefabricated words to express the most complex and beautiful of emotions one can feel for another person in the most hollow and empty way possible: trying to tell somebody they are special to you by giving them a card that thousands of other people have given to their "special" person.

This "Hello, Friend" Non-Valentine's Day card puts that indifferent and artificial display of compassion right in your face.

Other people this card is for: Friends, people as miserable as you regarding Valentine's Day, figments of your imagination, that girl you kissed but forgot was actually your sister and now you're trying to patch things over, Bernie Sanders.

 2. Westworld

This card is for those of you that hate Valentine's Day, but like me, are so frickin' handsome or gorgeous that you're going to be getting a lot Disney Princess Valentine cards from suitors, but don't know how to let those desperate stalkers know you're not interested. After receiving their proclamation of love, present to them this beauty that simultaneously says you don't care about their card and hits 'em with a twist that will blow their fucking minds (bonus points if you spoil a portion of Westworld for them).

Cue up this card when that creepy guy from your office that comes up behind you and rubs your back while you're looking at pictures of cute animals instead of responding to that e-mail from your boss is on his way over to your desk with the "balloon and stuffed teddy bear" set he got from the grocery store this morning to finally ask you out on a formal date. Or for when that girl that had been snapping you really suggestive pictures, but recently has started snapping you pictures of her with the 2 year-old son you didn't know she had finally asks you to come over for a Valentine's Day date and to meet little Tyler.

This card is my personal favorite, and one I may use in the future if I ever decide it's time to stop giving false hope to girls that, y'know, "like me, like me." But hey, better false hope than no hope at all, right?

Unfortunately, this card is playful and cute enough that at best it could lead to the person wanting to tell you about their two-bit Westworld theories for the second season and at worst, will lead to them thinking they can be the Teddy to your Dolores, or vice-versa, and that you two have been programmed to be together and will always have intertwining storylines. Use with caution.

Other people this card is for: Friends that you suspect are really Hosts, people that hate spoilers, that one guy that's brave enough to actually write out his own original feelings for you but still sucks, grown women that are still giving out Valentine's Day cards like it's cute or something.

3. Game of Thrones

"All the women, who are independent, pull your shirts up at me." This one's for all the ladies out there that deserve respect. Respect for saying I don't need another person leeching off of my life, or who have at least convinced themselves of that ex post facto.

This is the Non-Valentine you give to yourself, or you pin to your shirt and wear around on Valentine's Day to let people know you probably have a list of men and women you are hoping the Faceless Man will off by the end of 2017 that's longer than Arya's hit list and Taylor Swift's list of exes combined.

I gotta say, this is a tricky valentine though. In Game of Thrones, Arya's constant declaration that "a girl has no name," while rendering her invisible for the purposes of perhaps carrying out assassinations, also eradicates her identity and makes her an unseen and unheard woman. Not to mention, the command reinforced in her of "a girl has no name" was at the direction of a Faceless Man. (the two girls who actually read this far into my blog without saying fuck this guy at the birth control joke are probably having mini panic attacks now recognizing some modern similarities here). But in the end, Arya leaves this faceless guild and re-asserts her identity as Arya Stark.

So does that mean, a girl should have a Valentine? I don't fucking know. I suppose that's up to each girl to make her decision if she has a valentine or not.

But if you don't want to have a Valentine, then this is the Non-Valentine's Day card for you. Unless of course Ryan Gosling or your perfect man hits you up to be his valentine after you assert you have no valentine. Then by all means, retract this stupid card now, girl. Don't be an idiot. Who wants to be independent when you can have all of that?

Other people this card is for: Waifs, guys like me who are comfortable enough in their own skin to self-refer as a girl, a woman who wants to give the perception that she hates all men by posting about it on social media but gets that extra happy feeling when a guy she digs "likes" one of her posts, people that have been brainwashed into thinking it's super awesome to reject Valentine's Day.

4. Key & Peele

Alright, I'll be honest here. I think this is a joke better suited to a longer form than a meme, but I included it because who offers a Non-Valentine's Day card set with only 3 cards? Well, not me.

People this card is for: Danny Reyes, your parent that takes you to a Mexican restaurant and proceeds to pronounce all the Spanish words incorrectly, substitute teachers used to teaching in the inner city.

If you wanna see all the cards that were too hot for this blog, send me a private message and I'll let you see EVERYthing. Standard rate of .99 per message applies.

Petition of the Petition

Haven't blogged in awhile. Whatever. I don't owe you people anything. If I found a genie lamp, my first two wishes would be to have as many of you killed as possible. Contingent on the numbers of you dead from the first two wishes, my third might be the same. Either that, or to become a professional wrestler and win the Royal Rumble without having to do any training or have any other matches whatsoever (this may explain how Batista won this year).

But you people do one thing really well that I'd like to borrow from you for the purposes of this blog. Petitioning.

People I hate are the masters of petitions. Why are they so good at petitions? I have no idea. Probably because the majority of them lack the intelligence to voice their opinion in any kind of clear and rational way and find it easier to just use the idea of one semi-intelligent person.

Joining a petition is like "liking" something on Facebook. It's for people who like to give minimal effort or thought to the things they do, because they probably feel their time is better spent catching up on a show they originally had no interest in watching just so they can all agree with everybody else who watched about how it's the best show ever. I guess basically, another example of letting someone else's opinion form their own.

But the only thing I hate more than people are governments. Which brings me to my point. If there were ever a sign this whole democracy and US government thing needs to just be burned down, turned into scrap, and restarted so a single fucking thing of importance can get done, this is it.

Over 100,000 people signed a petition to deport Justin Bieber and the White House is "weighing" the petition. Here's the official language of the petition.

"We the people of the United States feel that we are being wrongly represented in the world of pop culture. We would like to see the dangerous, reckless, destructive and drug-abusing Justin Bieber deported...He is not only threatening the safety of our people but he is also a terrible influence on our nation's youth. We the people would like to remove Justin Bieber from our society."

Well said, guy who's life I'm sure is going really well.

Personally, I have no problem with this petition. I don't care for the Biebs either way ever since he stole my girl, Selena Gomez, and then tried to be more effeminate than me. Look, I'm the most effeminate man in the good ol' US of A, not you, and that's how it's gonna stay. I mean, I had to dress up as Catwoman for one night around Halloween last year. And then, just to stay ahead of Bieber (he went as Polly Pocket), I had to go as the only Batman character more feminine than Catwoman...Robin. Wasn't there something with Bieber taking a picture of some leaked new Batman screenplay with Robin in it and people thought he was cast as Robin? That dude really needs to step off this steeze. Get your own life man. I was stealing Usher's dance moves at 7th grade dances in gymnasiums while you were in Pampers getting diaper rash, son.

I digress. A petition to have the more-beautiful-than-Taylor Swift's-horse-face, smooth-skinned, post-pubescent boy, J to tha Biebs sent back to Canada doesn't make me angry. But it made me realize, here's 100,000 people that hate Justin Bieber and they have a chance to get rid of him.

Why can't I start my own petition and make the government get rid of the people I hate?

All I need is 100,000 of you absent-minded, obese, jobless Americans to to basically click "like" on something I write. I'm guessing 90% of you won't even read the whole thing. 70% of you probably can't even read.

I have a lot of ideas for people I'd want the US government to get rid of. People who are better than me at video games. People who are better than me at board games. People who are better than me at sports. Major League Baseball fans. But I want to set my sights low for a first petition. Keep it simple.

So I am officially creating the: Petition to Have the People who Signed the Petition to Deport Justin Bieber Deported.

"Me, the people of this United Blog, and any other idiot who signs my petition, feel that we are being wrongly represented in the world of culture by having over 100,000 people seriously sign a petition to deport Justin Bieber when any infinite amount of things to petition would reflect better on America as a whole. Seriously, any other country who looks at our governmental system allowing these 100,000 morons to determine that deporting Justin Bieber as a governmental matter is just as important as issues such as NSA surveillance, legalization of marijuana, immigration, will continue to think poorly about this godforsaken Gomorrah of a nation. They are not only threatening the great and sterling image of the USA in the eyes of all other foreign nations, but they are terrible influences on our nation's youth, in suggesting that if 100,000 people all agree to get rid of someone the government should seriously consider it. I think Nazi Germany is calling and would like their idea back.

We would like to see every single one of the hive-minded persons who signed the Petition to Deport Justin Bieber, whether they were doing it to be funny or worse, honestly think it's something of serious concern to the United States, deported. We understand that deportation of legal American citizens has no precedent, so in the alternative (and going on the record here, I personally would prefer this option), we would like to see every single one of these people killed by individual drone strike (also going on the record here in saying that if these drone strikes accidentally take out a few innocents, there is precedent in the US government killing innocents via the legal system, police enforcement, probably drone strikes, and for being witches, so we are willing to lose a few of the good ones in return for getting rid of these mouth breathers). At the very least, we ask that these people lose their right to vote, procreate, and breathe. Okay, so that last one would just have you kill them again, but we can deal with just two out of those three if we have to.

We the people would like to remove these Petitioners from our society, and preferably from this earthly realm."

/s Matt Pellegrini

I look forward to seeing the signatures come in. I'm sure many of you illiterates will actually be repeat signers, having signed the Bieber Petition and this one, and I want to thank you now for acknowledging your utter uselessness and doing the right thing in petitioning to have yourself obliterated.

Finally, if this blog post was too dark, don't worry, I'm planning on going back to back and pumping out another one tomorrow. It will probably be about the Super Bowl and less objectionable. Yay sports!

Do Surgery Patients Dream of Anesthetic Sheep?

Surgery. It's a miracle worker. It's the Anne Sullivan to your Helen Keller. If you ever have some kind of life threatening issue or just woke up one day, looked in the mirror and felt ugly, surgery can save you from your life-threatening or social life-threatening problems. Aside from living a healthy life and exercising, surgery is really the only chance you have against a premature death and/or obesity. And who's got time for that shit?

Plus, plastic surgery really is the only hope to fix ugly people. Being admired for your looks is something that landing your awesome, high-paying dream job, having respect and admiration in your community, or having those meaningful and fulfilling friendships and relationships can never substitute for. Just look at what happened to Frankenstein's Monster.

Tomorrow morning, at approximately 10/9 central, I will be "dropping" high levels of anesthesia and letting a man I've never met take a sharp object and carve me up like a jack-o-lantern.

A surgeon is pretty much the only stranger that almost everybody will trust to handle sharp objects around them. Well, a surgeon and that random cosmetology student who assures you she knows what Adam Levine's haircut looks like and then proceeds to give you a "Blake Shelton" because she only saw The Voice once and didn't realize who was who.

My procedure tomorrow has a 1 in 15,000 mortality rate. And to be honest, I really don't like those odds, since my Mom has always told me I'm special and being 1 out of 15,000 seems way more special than 14,999 out of 15,000. I'd feel a lot better if the mortality rate was like 300 out of 15,000. Because those 300 people would probably just be stupid hipsters who died just to be weird and different. Good riddance.

If you couldn't guess the procedure I'm having done just by the mortality rate odds, then you're probably too stupid to be reading my blog anyway, but I'll just go ahead and tell you. Tomorrow morning, I'm getting a Tonsillectomy and finally getting my big, fat, Greek tonsils out (They're not Greek, for the record). And you know what they say about people with big tonsils...they suck at playing Chubby Bunny.

I've always had the wrong idea of what tonsils actually look like, because the first time I heard about them was in Little Giants when Junior is telling Ice Box about how his cousin and her boyfriend use their tongues to kiss and he throws out the phrase "tonsil hockey." I will forever imagine tonsils as skinny little hockey sticks, rather than the big globs of lymphoid tissue they really are.

Even if I survive this procedure though, there are still a lot of unknowns. Am I gonna be able to hit Christina Aguilera-type pitches? I'm talking full vibrato and everything. Will I be able to do that cool, sexy, put a whole popsicle on a stick in your mouth, and then pull out the bare, popsicle-less stick? Will I finally actually sound like Morgan Freeman when I do my Morgan Freeman impression? I already think I pretty much have the best white person impression of Morgan Freeman out there, but people have told me it's awful, so whatever, maybe this will help.

I'm hopeful that everything will go well (and that having my tonsils removed will finally get me down to my target weight for my beach body this Summer). But as I think about this looming Mexican stand-off with death, I feel it is important that I leave my last blog and testament, so that, If I don't make it, my final wishes be fulfilled.

I, being of sound mind and sexy body, do hereby say any legal jargon necessary to make this blog effective. Just throw it in there like a madlib or something:

If I end up in a vegetative state,

[1] My wish is that they will remake Weekend at Bernie's using my body as the "Bernie" character. It should not be a direct remake. But it should essentially be Animal House meets Weekend at Bernie's. My body will play the role of a fraternity president, and the only good apple in a house full of partiers and date-rapists. Our fraternity will be come under Panhellenic review (you can tell I have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to Greek life), because of all these allegations, with the chance of losing our Greekdom. The character I play will accidentally die at a raging party when he finally lets loose just before the "Big (Feta) Cheese" comes to do the review of the fraternity. Being the only responsible one, I agreed to meet with him and show him why we shouldn't lose our life-sized John Stamos bronze statue to those dicks from Sigma Chi and should not be dis-Greeked from Greek life. And that's when you just do Weekend at Bernie's shit with my body.

[2] It is also my wish that if I become a vegetable, I am never to be used in a "Harlem Shake" video, unless upon the sudden cut where all the weird stuff happens, somebody is desecrating my body in the foreground. Like a stripper just dry humping my vegetable body in bed. And I should also be dressed up in a vegetable costume for some witty social commentary. Preferably a carrot or broccoli.

[3] If it is possible, I would like some of my still good sperm to be jarred and saved and used to create a baby, so that somebody can tell a kid his father was a vegetable. I would then be able to consider myself the literal inspiration for Onion Dad. "Just a single father with BO, trying to find love and raise his family. Onion Dad, coming this fall to network television." #OnionDad

[4] I would like my veggie body to be visible in a porno. And I would also like to be credited by my porn name, either Baby Carrots or Rigor Mortis, depending if I'm brain dead or just plain dead.

[5] Because I am a vegetable, it is also my wish that a vegetarian will be forced to eat some of me. Please Youtube the results so future generations can see how big of pussies vegetarians are.

If I die,

[1] I would like to be half buried and half cremated. I don't really care which halves.

[2] Regardless of whether these are actually my final words or not, I would like my last words to be something climactic, like "I said it once, and I'll say it again . . . ." Dead. So everybody's wondering what I was going to say. That way, I can have like, a thousand different final words all based on interpretation.

[3] I want my funeral to have a choreographed dance number akin to My Chemical Romance's music video for Helena. I'm serious, if you can't fucking dance or learn dance moves, do NOT come to my funeral.

[4] I will leave $1000 of student loan money to the first person that spits on my grave. $2000 to the person that knocks that motherfucker out. Do not come up with some scheme where, oh I'll hit you sort of hard to make it believable and then we split the money. I will know, and I will haunt you forever. Which reminds me, I would like to be a ghost for a few years. So I need some like unfinished business here on Earth for my spirit to need closure on before I can pass on to the other side. If somebody can really wrong me in the next 24 hours so that I can not forgive them and have that be my thing, that'd be fantastic.

[5] And I would like everybody I know invited to an event where all of my personal belongings are raffled off lottery-style to them. A winner will be chosen for each item, and then the items will be burned right in front of their faces. These are my things. Not yours. And if I can't have them, nobody will.

I'm pretty sure that's it, but I wanted to let you all know something important in case anything really does happen tomorrow. I hate every single one of you.

Rankled by Rankings

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.

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.

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.

Low-Tech Day: Part III

The Home Stretch

The day was going pretty well so far. I was able to occupy myself through all the daylight hours. Wait...what's that? Well my, my, my. The little bug that thought he could escape is back. I grab my flip flops. I try a few more casual drops and a couple land what seem to be damaging blows to the insect. He's not jumping as well. But no more fucking around. I take a flip flop and smash it down into the carpet, but he's still moving pretty well. Just then...he makes a fatal mistake. The bug gets close to my roller chair. He's inches away from one of the wheels. The perfect accident. The perfect crime. I push myself and my chair a few inches over and CRUSH! Got 'em. Like Zero Dark Thirty, after so long, I finally got my man. Make a movie out of this. Do it.

It's now just about 7:00. Only 5 more hours to go. I've used the sink once to wash my hands, walked to Carl's Jr., which had a TV, and now that the Carl's Jr. has made it's way through my body, I have used and flushed the toilet once. Which also flushed the bug that I tossed in there earlier. Good riddance, bug.

Inside Matt's Mind

Submitted for your approval. You're traveling through another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. You've just crossed over into . . . Matt's Mind.

Meet, Matt Pellegrini. A young, good looking man that any sane girl or guy would definitely want to bang, who has decided that for 24 hours he will sever himself off from modern technology. So far, he has been successful. But for the next few hours, he has decided to let his mind wander to the furthest reaches of thought and idea. And as we all know, sometimes, not all ideas are good ones.

It's a little after 7:00 now, and I'm bored and am gonna just let my mind wander. What else can I do until midnight? I look outside and see airplanes. I could pretend that airplanes in the night skies are like shooting stars. Nah. I could make a list. I'm renowned for my detailed and completely unnecessary lists.

Like when I was looking at colleges to go to for undergrad and decided that each of the 50 states had to have at least one school start in my considering list. Funny how I ended up only applying to 3 schools then. One of which I had zero interest in going to. Yeah, I'm talking about you University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.

Or how about that list of roller coasters I made in an excel spreadsheet. Because the website I got ally my info from just didn't have it exactly how I wanted to organize it. By the way, have you heard about the new coaster Cedar Point is getting in 2013? I can't remember the name, but that shit is long. I think it's some kind of side-inverted coaster. Like, where the seats extend out off-rail. And then it loops and inverts through the Cedar Point entrance block things. I can't believe I've only been to Cedar Point once for how much it seems like I know or have been on all their rides. Gemini 'til I die, bitches.

That took 8 goddamn minutes. It's 7:08 now. At least I know I'm not a habitual tech user. I haven't once reached for my phone or remote and had to stop myself. That's pretty good.

So...how about that Kimye baby? You know, if Kim wanted to abort that baby, there'd by no way people would let her. Even pro-choice people. "No way! We fuckin' need this baby Kim. I don't care that you'd rather keep doing your whatever show rather than be the next Snooki and JWoww show." Does Jwoww have one or two "w's?" Who cares.

This is almost harder than not masturbating for a week right now. Oh, and I just turned on one light. To read and write this sack of shit blog. Maybe I should take my clothes off and try to name and label all the muscles and bones on my body while looking in a mirror. That...could be something.

I wonder how many frat guys laid chicks to Summer Girls by LFO back in the day?

I feel like there wasn't even dance music back in the 90s. Like, when girls went out to clubs, what the fuck did they dance to? Some Blues Traveler and Hootie? Weird. Wait? When did DJs like really start existing? Were there a lot of DJs in the 90s? I guess so now that I think about it. But they played full songs from like, I don't know, not computers and laptops. Big clunky systems. YMCA. Chicken Dance. Electric Slide. Goo Goo Dolls. Some people like DJs, I get it, you all have ADD, but when a song I like comes on, I wanna hear the whole god damn thing. Besides, songs like Call Me Maybe are bad enough without some Asian B-boy putting his own dope spin on the song by interlacing samples and pieces of other songs.

I wonder if people have always dreamed? I mean, the answer is obviously yes, but holy shit, what was it like to be the first person that dreamed? He or she had to think it was real.

Animal life spans are weird to me. Hearing that an animal has lived for like 40-50 years always catches me off-guard, unless it's some old ass tortoise. Because the only animals that people talk about when those animals dies are pets, and their max life span is around 20 years. I have no idea how long lions or bears or squirrels live on average. Or snakes...ewww! But if somebody made me guess for money, I would always guess near the pet range, even though maybe these things live for way longer. Not WAY longer, but like a decade or two.

And then trees...I don't even know how they die. I pretty much assume they'd live forever until someone cuts them down. But the oldest trees aren't like tens of thousands of years old, I don't think.

This awful blog just turned into a what I think is weird series. What else do I think is weird? Empty space...obviously. Clouds. Pubic Hair...how has that not evolved away yet? I don't understand. Is it serving a purpose? Is it like a hairy armor that protects my genital just a little bit more from whatever might hurt them? I would assume humans started just as hairy everywhere else on their bodies as down there, but there's not nearly as much hair on my arms or legs. What's up with that?

Video...there's no such thing. How it's just like a million little still images or pictures every second to give the illusion as if things are moving in real life. Like the most advance flip books. That blows my mind. 8:00 p.m.

I'm trying to telepathically communicate to my friend right now, who asked if I wanted to go to Kogi, this Mexican-Korean food truck at 9:30, to say "YES! Get here at 9:00 and entertain me until 11:50 when you can promptly take me home, so I may resume my normal life." Sad, normal life is just us staring at screens full of pixels. Things that have no feel to them. No taste. No smell. No sound. But only give off light, and that is our world.

Weird how everything emits light just the same as a screen. I can't really smell or hear my wall. I can sort of taste it and touch it, but what makes a wall so much more real than a screen? Or even a screen of a wall?

Are people really pretty? Or is the light they emit more attractive or more something to certain people? I mean, if you took two seemingly identical looking people, would everybody pick the same one as prettier, or do we react to the light they give off differently?

Sports are...kind of weird. But sports fans...now them's is weird. I guess I get having pride in where you're from or some place you associate with. It seems weird that people hate on fans of the best team...sometimes bandwagon fans. That happens much less, if ever, for musicians or writers or actors. People appreciate and naturally like those that are the best at what they do. It's probably stranger to stay attached to teams, musicians, writers, that are bad. There's no logic there, only stubbornness. Now, I won't be one to condemn stubbornness, because I have all too much of that trait in situations. But people that stay with their hometown team their whole life are just static. If I had to hypothesize the results of an experiment that asked random people if they grew up cheering for their hometown team or a non-hometown team, the results would probably show that more often, people that grew up being hometown team fans also more often continued living nearby and didn't move away to other parts of the country.

8:17. Pleeeeeeeaaaasssseee come get me for Kogi. I'm just a damsel in distress waiting for my Prince Charming.

Shoelaces. Were there so many people that couldn't buy the right sized shoe that we needed to make shoelaces? I guess it's so you don't have to fight with your shoe to put it on every time. Easier to slip it on and then tighten it so it's a good fit. Whatever.

Do you think Disney will do a movie about a fat princess? You can be white, black, asian, native american, a book nerd, a bitch, a literal fox, a mermaid, but a princess CAN'T be fat. Duh, fatties...you ain't never gonna be good at nothing.

When did people who like coffee become more annoying than people who like weed? Alllll they talk about is coffee this, latte that, caffeine me please; can't function until I has my brown. Fuck, I get it, you like coffee. I don't post statuses about how much I love my alarm clock and a good balanced breakfast to get me going in the morning.

Man, the appendix...doesn't he just put the dix in dickshit. What have we ever done to it? We don't take it out like wisdom teeth simply because it's unnecessary and literally does nothing, but then he has the dix and balls to rupture and hurt us after we were like, oh we'll just let you be? That's redixulous.

Every time I hear the words "gun control," I replace it in my mind with "fun patrol," so I won't hate you, and I'll think you're talking about something fun instead.

Is the U.S. really gonna get all up in my face about my student loan debt? How about, when the U.S. pays off aaaaaaaany reasonable portion of the national debt, I'll pay off mine. Besides, I'm not spending my money on dumb shit.

Why is it called body "building?" Everybody already has one. You ain't buildin' nothin'. You're enhancing, increasing, enlarging...ballooning. There we go! You keep the alliteration, and it's more accurate. Bodyballooning. That's what I'm gonna call it from now on.

If God exists, does he even care about us? I mean, after he created the first man and woman, why would he care about much after that? Do your great-great-great-grandparents care about you? No, they're dead. But if they were still alive, do you think they'd really care that far down the line? God's just a creator like Ke$ha. Do you think she cares that much about the remix of the dubstep remix of the remix of the song she wrote? She can't even remember half the songs she wrote.

8:49. Please come over in the next 15 minutes. I can't come up with three more hours of ludicrous thoughts and ideas.

Here's a riddle. What has no feelings, can't think or choose, has no morality, but can still be bad? Give up? Apparently, the answer is words. Yes, people believe words are "bad."