I am the reaper

As some of may know, I volunteer at coconut island helping with pelagic research. I went up Monday to help John catch stingrays in the bay. Instead of the troll nets we've been using up to this point, he talks about pulling in some long lines. For those of you unfamiliar with them, long lines are basically several hundred feet of rope with hooks attached at specific intervals which lay along the seabed.

Anyways, the whole time we're doing this, I couldn't help but wonder how he planned on getting the hooks out of their mouths without getting a finger chomped on. When asking about his specific goals, he's telling me about analyzing their stomach contents and sampling their spines for age... Sampling their spines? I only a few ways of "sampling" spines from critters and I don't believe any of them would be considered non-invasive.

So we're going out to murder stingrays today!? Now I don't have any qualms about killing creatures but they typically have to meet one of two criteria. They must either be: 1. tasty like a fish or 2. I must find their existence offensive like roaches or small children. Since the stingray falls into neither of these two categories, I can't say that I was particularly pleased about what was going to transpire.

After hauling two on board and the rest of the line, it's time to do the deed... Did you know that the stingray’s eyes bulge out when you sever their spines? Not to mention all the blood covering your feet and the deck. Ugh. I can't say that I find being a marine biologist to be pleasing right now.

Quartely Update

Looks like I'm back after a disasterous attempt to migrate my blog over to Myspace. It ended up being more of a serious and slightly introspective, in other words: it sucked. I was probably a dashboard confessional song away from wearing eye-liner and combing my hair over my left eye. So after much prodding from my fans (both of them) I've decided to put forth a slightly more effort in updating this thingy. I have a few things sitting on here as drafts. Hopefully they'll get published once I can add some non four-letter words to my vocabulary.

But trust me readers, you'll be in awe and amazement once I get this puppy up and running; but that's mainly because, if you're actually reading this thing, you have rather low expectations to begin with.

Let the shameless abuse of punctuation begin!

Just in time for my monthly post

The saddest part about having no life is when you try to blog it and find out that you don't have enough content to post monthly. You'd have thought that with my ankle injury (BTW, I injured my ankle) I'd have more loafing time in front of the computer to post something. Well, it's more of a "lack of content" issue than a time constraint.

Since it's finals week and I got to get my learn on (because they somehow expect me to remember stuff from 3 months ago) I'll present you with my current favorite time waster. The Kingdom of Loathing. Yes, it's a game but it's a game involving stick figures and rather humerous content. It's an excellent way to burn up a half-hour at work.

I am my father's son.

Because I am also seemingly incapable of learning my lesson. I strained my back during a tennis competition and I refused to stop playing, I was actually winning! (They may have beginners but don't try and diminish my victory). So, after a lovely morning of smiting my enemies, I returned home to freshen up and prepare for a hard day of oogling my incredibly hot spanish teacher only to find that my spine no longer functioned properly in any position other than 'completely vertical'. The victory shower ended up being strictly subpar, not to mention the drying phase -stand strait up and swing your arms in a circle, that's pretty much all that happened in there. How I long for the day when midget labor is no longer strictly the realm of the uber-trashrich.

Fast forward 24 hours. Feeling much much better, decide to go ahead and do some more activity related stuff since I'm on the fast track to recovery.

Fast forward another 24 hours. Back to step one: Wishing for midgets. Given that I normally relish any excuse to remain completely sedentary I can't imagine what possessed me do otherwise.. Let's see what the next 24 hours brings me, besides more shame.

To all my peoples

I use to actually wonder about this myself.

Home page is up

Nothing special here folks, I just put together a little home page to direct potential roommates to. If anyone has any comments shoot me an email or leave me a comment here.

linky

Results from the 3 hour

For all my friends who still rub two sticks together to light their cigarettes. Here’s the south park episode which caused all the controversy, already google-ated for you.



Also, here's the link for the #1 British pop song which was brought up during our pancake eating study session.

Chico - Its Chico Time

And I would ask dear abby why?

Well, If you've been hiding under a rock since late 2005, it's probably safe to say that you've been hiding from ninjas, or eating grubs, or both. I suppose if you were doing one, the other follows naturally, but that may just be me.

Either way, if you were doing one or more of the actions listed above, you may have missed this Q&A column and I feel it's my duty as an -irresponsible, bimonthly posting, with a base readship of exactly negative two people*- blogger up keep you up to date (albeit poorly) with the not-quite-current internet fads.

BTW, the link is the big picture thingy on the right.

Sometimes I feel like a sociopathic bear.

Smartest woman in the middle east

I fear for her life. link

Working hard for the man

I picked up my W-2 form today and saw how much I made for 2005. After I finished crying, I decided to scale my productivity in order to match my current income. That said, I present the fruition of an 8 hour shift: The best of google video.

• Gray whale and a 1/2 ton of dynamite - This is why men are allowed to rule the world, we rock!
  
• Red hot Riding hood - If your old enought to remember this, you too old to watch cartoons. I love it
  
• Bouncy Ninja Boys - making me slightly embarassed when i struggle to get off the toilet
• Men being
• Redneck reunions
• Just plain cool - Can't explain, just gotta watch
• Smashy smashy - Rally cross beats NASCAR on all levels, including breed of fan
• I'm somewhere in the background
  
• Further proof that women are simply objects for our entertainment.
• Random funny
• Cats being cats
• YEAH!

Well, that should be enough for one day, enjoy

Public Service Announcement

I can't spell... But more importantly: Guess what's back from the dead in their all new direct to DVD movie? No, not the olsen twins. Rather, everyone's favorite 31st century slap-stick comedy. You heard it here folks, I'm like freakin' ABC news over here. And not just because I make up stories, involving me not being a virgin, and especially not wetting myself in public. Because that never happened

Battle of the Heavyweights

Penn & Teller vs. the Bible Who will will? Who cares, I <3 bible bashing, and I hope you do too.

Love this site

Rate a Beer

Typically I would be elated at finding a site like this. Armed with the knowledge of a thousand opinionated assholes I could march into the local liquor store and confidently purchase a regional ale that Darkelf187 says that will, "R00kzorz joo".

Actually given my current financial situation (destitute), I think I'll stick to my typical strategy: Buy Bud Light by the 20 rack since it's less than a dollar a beer (i.e. cheaper than vending machine Pespi) while occasionally snagging a brew or two from my roommates stash of Corona *shudder*

Tis the season

If Calvin's snowmen aren't traditional holiday fare by now, then xmas is dead to me. Also, if you don't know or appreciate Calvin & Hobbes then you're dead to me, because I will murder you.

Stinky Linky

And she's a college student!?

I think that I may have just caught sight of the winner of the next Darwin award. Here I am, diligently working at Sinclair library making sure no one steals the printer paper when I decide to make a brief trip to the lavatory. On my way there I pass by the elevators only to see a rather husky lady wrestling with the elevators doors and I don't mean sticking her arm in between the doors so they'll reopen. I mean this lady was physically forcing the doors open. Like I was suddenly transported into a Bruce Willis action flick, with the grunting, the wedging of various body parts in various positions so she could keep any advantage she gains in her epic struggle. Of course, I stop to watch, it's not this often I see a chubby person work this hard for anything, except maybe the last Ho-Ho. Well, after 10-15 seconds (which seems short but is, in fact, an eternity when one's making an ass of themselves) she manages to sqeeze all her rolls into the elevator. Curious as to how much effort she's managed to save herself altogether (afterall, I'd do the same if the other option is hike 20 flights of stairs) I decide to do some stairmastering of my own and ascend to the uppermost uppermost of our library. All the way to the third floor.

Of course, the story doesn't end there. I wanted a good look at this person, mainly because it's funnier when you also have a face to laugh at. Problem.. I don't know where she went! There's only two floors she could have gone to so where is she? Upon closer inspection, I notice that there's no evalating noises coming from the elevator. So I waddle on down to the bottom floor only to see her forcing her way back out of the elevator! Man, sometimes this job just rocks

Drama in the Connor-Balsis household

Not to hyphenate our last names as if we're some sort of modern lesbian couple but revelations of this magnitude affects everyone who has ever stepped under our roof. It would seem that someone has lived their entire life under a false premise. A horrible facade which could very well destroy the household harmony which we have very carefully fostered these past 2 months. Drama of "General Hospital" proportions.

And that secret is? ... It would seem that our cat is really... A MAN BABY!! Just when you thought you knew someone, something comes up and turns your whole world upside-down. Actually it all makes perfect sense in hindsight. I always thought "the cat" was a guy. After all, "he" was such an aggressive prick, what other gender could it be? However, all the females thought "she" was one of their own kind, since "she" was so attractive and cute. Well, I plan on taking some steps to ensure that no one will confuse my cat's gender ever again... Meet cat 2.0: Completely masculine.

Too busy to write

but not too busy to shamelessly rip off an entire post off of Jay Barnes all for you, the viewing audience. And possibly due to my apathy towards plagurism.

Eat Thy Corn

When I was in high school, my friends and I didn't have a whole lot to do. One night, we were in a supermarket for some reason. While waiting at the checkout counter I spotted a solitary ear of unhusked corn lying next to conveyer belt. To impress my friends, I decided to buy it. I like people to think of me as the kind of guy who just randomly buys corn for no reason. I'm going places, man. There are a lot of ingredients that go into this mixing bowl we call life, and unhusked corn from PathMark is the one that's going in today, NO ARGUMENTS.

Anyway, as we made our way outside we began discussing what the fate of the corn might be:

"Hey, we could cook it! Then we could eat the sweet sweet corn."

Boring.

"Hey! LETS SMASH IT! SMASH! SMASH the corn! HAHA Smash! Smash?"

Pedestrian.

"How about we THROW IT AT SOMEBODY! Or how about a DRIVE-BY CORNING!"

And so it was.

While we drove around, I came up with the idea that when the corn was thrown, it was necessary to yell "EAT THY CORN! FISHMONGER!" in a British accent at the victim.

This would serve 4 purposes:

1. The person who the corn was hurled at would know what was thrown at them.

2. The person who the corn was thrown at would be especially offended because it was thrown by British people.

3. The person who the corn was thrown at would be especially confused since the said British person is insulting them as if they were in the seventeenth century -- and let's be honest, nobody wants that.

4. If said person was so offended by the corn-hurling that they felt it necessary to notify the authorities, they would be looking for a car full of vegetable-wielding british people from the seventeenth century.

Or something like that. The purposes didn't have to make sense, they just had to be funny. So fuck you.

I also decided that we should not husk the corn, because it's especially offensive to be hit by unhusked corn as opposed to husked corn. We were so badass we weren't even going to go through the trouble of husking the corn. That's how badass we were. Bad. Ass.

We drove around for a while and finally happened upon a man walking his dog. As planned, I exclaimed "EAT THY CORN, FISHMONGER!" as I released the corn, missing him by a rather large margin -- kind of on purpose. I really didn't have the heart to hit some random innocent guy or his dog with corn. Let me tell you, though; It's not easy to aim corn at someone walking at a normal pace from a fast moving vehicle anyway. And don't go saying I never taught you nothin'.

Another day we repeated the same process, but with a Belgian endive. My thinking there was that it's one thing to hit by corn, but it's entirely another to be hit by a rogue expensive vegetable from Belgium. Plus, you probably don't even know what it is. Then, you can't even get satisfaction out of exclaiming:

"Oh no! I've been hit by corn! You hooligans!"

Instead you'd have to say something like

"Oh no! I've been hit by vegetable matter and I don't even know what it is! Boy am I stupid."

Which is much, much worse.

Story and web site (c) jay barnes.
Go Back to the Main Site

Because it's the pirates who are ruining the universe

Well it would seem that $ony BMG has managed to botch things up again. For all my readers (both of you) who may not know what this article refers to let me break it down to you in verse, old school style with sentence fragments and mono-syllabic words, like the boring uneducated white person that I am.

A "root-kit" basically means that it run deeper in the OS than would normally be given access to (It won't show up using the "Ctrl-Alt-Del" and viewing your running processes) so you can't just kill the $ony process and copy away. It'll take a whole 2 steps of intecepting the music and recording it before you can pirate away. Now virus writers are using this progam to stuff all them thar' viruses in the same spot since most programs have the same amount of access to that area as we do. way. to. go. 'tards.

Officaly less cool

Just when you thought it wasn't possible for me to be any less cool than I already am, and I mean for reasons other than the obvious spelling errors in the title.

I was recently "un-friended" if on myspace, this seems especially bad to me considering the only purpose of myspace to begin with is to see how many friends you can amass. This pretty much means that you're willing to be publicly associated with people who pose shirtless with a bottle of jack in one hand and a bong in the other while using background and text colors that are so similar you can't read it without having to highlight the text but not me? Ouch.

Never too early for a bah humbug

I propose that there is nothing more demotivating than spending 200 cell phone minutes with Micro$oft customer support and still not having your problem solved. Now I don't even feel like drinking, thanks a lot Bill. Weak.

While they promise unlimited free phone support, there is no mention of word 'competent' anywhere to be seen. Uninstalling then reinstalling the program?! Wow, that was worth not being able to talk to anyone on my phone for the rest of the month. They're just lucky technology hasn't advanced to the point where I can deliver an electronic punch to the throat.

Petite, Blonde, and Naughty

Doesn't this sound simply divine? Well, it's not the Jenna Jameson in the bed / Martha Stewart in the kitchen combination I was hoping for but rather the new kitten that has taken up residence in my house. Here she is doing what she does best, attacking one of the four things I own that I didn't find abandoned on the curb the night before trash pickup.

I may have to see if the fighting hamster idea can be cross implimented to include other furry creatures < 5 lbs.

Now the most popular site on the web!

Well, I noticed that the page views for this page has skyrocketed from 0 to 2. It would seem that the page hits have gone up such by such magnitude that it can no longer be calculated by something as limited as math.

There we have it, empirical proof that while I may currently be sitting in my pjs at 2 pm on a Saturday harassing my cat, which I've imprisoned in a empty Pepsi box, my internet popularity knows no bounds.

Applied creative problem solving

I sat here for about 10 minutes trying to think up some sort of amusing anecdote to go along with this poster but anything that I could possibly come up with would only dilute the funny.

But it is a really good incentive to visit the pet store.

One

I'd just like to drop by to congratulate myself on starting my own blog, henceforth known as "An electronic testament to my boundless ego". After all, who wouldn't want to spend 5 minutes checking in on me and my quasi-daily rants? This allows everyone to keep up date with all schwillis related events without actually having to talk to me; a win-win if you ask me. Now all I need are friends to refer here... hmm... I seem to have hit a snag already.