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Someone once told me “Life is like a box of chocolates… you never know what you’re going to get”.

Although this was Tom Hanks and he wasn’t really talking to me, I was moved. This experience has ever since made me realize that there are many events in life that tend to get me down and I won’t ever really know when they are coming, but I can definitely spit them out if don’t enjoy their gooey centers.

This lesson in life’s spontaneity, has helped me accept the fact my plans can be altered with the flutter of an eyelash, a half blink of an eye, or over the course of unloading a hamper full of clean laundry from my car.

Okay, so first of all, I had only been gone for 3 minutes… I know this because I checked my radio when I left the car, and I also checked my microwave clock in my apartment when I left; which are synchronized for reasons you really don’t need to know why or how. Prior to the decision to park slightly into the yellow zone marked for a fire hydrant to unload my laundry from my car, I had been driving around for 30 minutes waiting for the bozo parked in the 15-minute loading/unloading area (there is only one spot) to move his car (which no one was to be found loading or unloading and might I note, I had noticed him parked there when I left 5 hours ago). Now, I know I was driving for 30 minutes because OPB was on when I turned onto my street and “In House” had just reached its 2nd hour mark as was noted by Jeremy Petersen. After circling around and finally parking with hazards flashing so as to indicate that I would be right back, the 1 hour mark had shifted to a final half hour mark.

The diligence of Portland Parking Officers is amazing. To ticket a person within 3 minutes and be nowhere to be seen is incredible! But, alas! What an injustice as I had made a parking violation for 3 minutes whilest our nemesis, Mr. White Jeep Grand Cherokee, has violated the law for over 5 hours (who by the way, was STILL parked there a good 3 hours after I got home) and gets off ticket-free! And might I add, he has no parking permit, meaning he should not be parked on this “Parking By Permit Only” street in the first place and really is inhumanely rude to take away the usage of the 15-minute loading/unloading spot. It is because he violated this space that I got ticketed in the first place.

Now really, what can I do to get out of paying a ridiculous parking fine? I can contest in writing but in all honesty, I am totally guilty. I parked in a yellowish area next to a fire hydrant with my hazards on, in lieu of walking 2 blocks in heels carrying a hamper, the size of me, full of clothes.

So what does this have to do with Tom Hanks and chocolate and spitting out the gooey centers that I don’t quite agree with? Well, life takes some unfortunate twists and turns which can result in uber frustration with the law, parking officers, and Mr. Jeep Grand Cherokee. So with a grain of salt, sometimes, I just need to embrace these little happenings and take into account some lesson learned.

But as a side note and with really no relevance to anything at all: it did feel good to sit out on my balcony, in my pajamas, popcorn in hand after calling a tow truck at 2am to watch Mr. Jeep Grand Cherokee finally move from the 15-minute loading zone.

The 21st century has divided America. We have become a staunch bipartisan country, with people on the left and people on the right, but relatively no middle. Our ideals and beliefs have put us at polar opposites, each group fighting respectively for their side, doing whatever it takes to see their followings succeed, and their opposition fail. We have seen each side reach a majoritarian power, but where do we stand now? It has been awhile since public discourse has revisited this pressing issue, and at the beginning of 2008, I think it is time to check in.

Who is more popular, Pirates or Ninjas?

I don’t pretend to know the answer. But here are some internet facts and statistics.

A quick search on Google Trends will show that Pirates is a more popular search term than pirates.

But is that pirate fans, or the many millions of ninja fans trying to find the pirates to hunt them down and destroy them? I don’t know.

A global search of Facebook groups tells a different story. As you will see the largest groups of pirate/ninja affiliation puts Ninjas squarely in the lead…

Advancement of People who Want to be Ninjas: 4,507
Addicted to Pirates of the Caribbean: 4,324

If you Ask a Ninja, he would probably support his group.

The “Pirates of the Caribbean” trilogy grossed over a billion dollars at the domestic box office. “Surf Ninjas” and the four “3 Ninja” movies grossed less than forty-six million dollars combined.

Where does America’s allegiance lie? What does the future hold for these groups’ popularity?

In 2007, people spent 23.4 billion dollars in DVDs. Based on my calculations, I contributed somewhere between $200-$300 to that.

I did so, buying such noteworthy and cinematic and television classics like:

I used to be rather proud of my DVD collection. It wasn’t always my favorite movies (in fact, I don’t own any of my top three movies: “Shawshank Redemption”, “Fight Club” and “Happy Gilmore”), but movies I felt, that at anytime, on any day, I wouldn’t mind watching.

Somewhere along the way, though, I lost that. I got caught up in Black Friday sales at Circuit City (explains season one of “My Name is Earl”), $5 DVD specials at Best Buy, and the biggest offender 3 for $20 previously viewed DVDs from Blockbuster.

What it amounts to is a twice a week habit of staring at my DVD bookshelf thinking I will find something I will want to watch, and resulting in a begrudging and reluctant grab for “Saved By the Bell, Season 3 and 4” episodes. Which I watch for about 10 minutes, only to nearly give up on life and decide I would rather lie in bed and force myself to sleep, then torment myself with this attack on my brain.

Don’t get me wrong, I love “Saved by the Bell”. I owe much of my life experience and knowledge to its educational, yet entertaining character studies of high school students, but, at this point, it isn’t meant for on-going viewing.

Electronics, including DVDs, are probably my largest vice when it comes to spending money. I spend, waste a lot on the latest gadgets. My room is consistently 10-15 degrees warmer than the rest of the house because of all the heat my purchases generate.

Every time, I think I don’t need anything else, I find something else. At some point, I will need to stop. Or I will end up with more copies of “Elizabethtown” and “The Matador”, or other movies I hadn’t seen prior to purchasing, on my hands.

What are your spending vices?

The Beatles. The Monkeys. The Smiths. The Shins.

The article,”the” was once a popular choice of inclusion when selecting band names. But lately, it seems as though “the” has gone out of style. With bands like Of Montreal, You Me & Iowa, and A Tribe Called Quest coming into fame, this definite article seems to be waning, suggesting a loss of hipness.

I for one, am a huge fan of articles. Being a Speech Language Pathology Masters-hopeful, has nothing to do with it. Leisurely, whenever possible, I enjoy adding a definite or indefinite article to any noun. I feel this addition gives a higher importance to nouns and can even highlight upon its mightiness. Much like a handlebar mustache does for one’s morality.

For example, you may call me by name, “Cherie,” or you can call me “The Cherie.” And although the latter has been dubbed before in a phenomena we like to use to explain the concentration of a flatus, it still rings with much more authority than its former counterpart.

So why not add this empowering ring to your name if given the opportunity? “Stars” can become “The Stars”, “LCD Soundsystem”, “The LCD Soundsystem”. And what if by chance you came up with a cool band name like our friends, “Limozine” and some other band thinks it’s a cool name and adds an article to be “The Limozine”? You just might be stuck having the latter band fooling everyone into thinking they were the original name-makers and are thusly cooler than just “Limozine.”

That would be a shame and a really bad day for everyone.

I’ve just finished voting by taking a little metal peg and punching a hole in a thick piece of paper.

Seriously.

Are we still in kindergarten? Did I miss something? The 20th century called and they want their voting procedures back.

How is it that I can get a credit card and a bank account, enroll in college, pay virtually every bill I have, and complete 90% of my everyday tasks online, but to vote in any sort of government election I still have to take time out of my day to trek over to some dilapidated church or bingo hall or the like and poke holes in paper cards like an uninterested school child.

Don’t tell me it’s because computers aren’t secure. People aren’t secure. On the list of things I don’t trust, there are a lot more people than machines, mostly because the majority of mistakes machines make are due to human error.

Don’t tell me it’s because of costs, either. You know who the majority of poll workers are? State employees. I had a friend who had a job with the state one time, and he did about an hours worth of work per day but got paid for 8 hours at more than $15 per hour. Now multiply that by however many employees at each polling place (let’s say 5, for the sake of argument) and the numbers start to add up quick. Plus, I’m sure the state governments pay at least something to use the various polling locations. You can’t tell me that creating a computer system that would make all of that obsolete for the foreseeable future would not be cost effective.

And don’t tell me it’s because it’s less efficient. Obviously, the most efficient way to do this would be via the internet, but people don’t think the internet is safe or secure enough to transmit that information (although apparently Democrats do). I think that’s hogwash, and with the right measures in place it wouldn’t be an issue, but even so, we can do it without using this crazy world wide web and still be more efficient.

First of all, voting consumes endless amounts of paper, and even if it’s all recycled (which I doubt), the government is still endorsing using huge amounts of energy to manufacture all of this paper. Then there’s the extra time and money spent counting the ballots, whereas a computer would record them electronically. And of course, there’s that sneaky human error factor again, which might accidentally drop a few votes here or there. Or there might even be the faux “human error” factor: the biased employee who “accidentally” drops a lot of votes off of one or another candidate. Computers eliminate all of these issues.

So how ‘bout it, Uncle Sam? I know I’m not alone in asking this: can we finally graduate kindergarten?

I go to the gym frequently/sporadically/rarely. To discourage the monotony of running on the treadmill, they have numerous televisions hanging from the ceiling, with various programs and channels on. On one end, the TV is always tuned to ESPN, no matter what sport is on, on the other end, Lifetime “Television for Women”, and in the middle, it’s typically CNN Headline News. When the gym is crowded, you are at the mercy of the next person who decided to get off their treadmill as to what you are going to be watching.

For me, this usually ends up being Lifetime. Go figure. But on occasion, I’ll be in front of CNN. I am not sure I would use the word “improvement” in describing it compared to Lifetime, but it is something different. So, that, at least, is nice.

But, what’s interesting, is what is consider to be “Headline News”. More often than not, the latest status on Britney Spears is their leading story. What Britney Spears is doing, according to CNN Headline News, is the most important thing that happened in the entire world that day. Something about that doesn’t seem right.

I understand sensationalism, and I understand that these celebrity meltdown cases write themselves and their headlines, or rather, write a type of headline, that for some reason, people find interesting.

Why is this? Why have things gotten so bad that it is no longer adequate for entertainers to just entertain us while they are doing their craft, but also, to do so when they are just out being themselves? Why has it gotten so bad that you have outcries like this?

I offer up a couple reasons. Some stated before, and one, I like to think, is all my own.

1. Vicarious-ism.
Probably the most used argument for this. It is the same reason we dig TVs and Movies and Pornography. For the most part, these things play out situations that we ourselves will never be in. Both the incredible highs and the incredible lows. I will probably never wipe my ass with hundred dollar bills, or be walked in on in a bathroom stall in the hottest club in town with the Olsen Twins snorting coke out of one either (Which is not to imply the Olsen Twins do drugs…). Following the escapades of most celebrities will let me see this go down first hand, from a third-person perspective, of course.

2. Train Wreck-titude
There is nothing we like better than a good old fashion train wreck. It’s why we rubberneck. It’s why we always enthusiastically take a whiff when our friend says, “Smell this, it smells awful” (Side note: this is probably the stupidest thing, as humans, that we knowingly and actively decide to do). We love us the drama, and will do anything to catch a glimpse. As bad as we feel for people, we get jollies from watching them go down in a blaze of glory.

3. Emotional Scapegoating
Stemming directly from train wreck-titude, it is our ability to watch the Titanic go down, and say “at least it didn’t happen to me”. Celebrities offer us perspective. Sure, we got problems and issues, but nothing we go through is as bad as having our vagina plastered across the internet (Side note: the fact that this has occurred here and here to name a few, makes me think these are more than just accidents. Links Not safe for work or faint of heart).

4. Jealousy
I hate that people justify their swarm tendencies on the argument “if they didn’t want all of the attention, they shouldn’t have become celebrities…”. That’s like saying “if you didn’t want herpes, you shouldn’t have had paid for the sex with the hooker”, which is to imply, when worded the other way, “you wanted herpes so you paid for the sex with the hooker”. Sure, some people got into it for the attention. Some people managed to get all the attention without doing anything. We are okay with people getting up in their grill constantly, because if they weren’t annoyed, at least a little bit, their life would be TOO perfect.

5. Nipple Slips
This is my reason. The only justifiable reason to trail any celebrity 24-hours a day, is for the off-chance of catching a nipple slip. Some celebs are better at protecting the “tv dials” better than others, but if you follow them long enough, and you take enough photos at all the right angles, surely, eventually, you are going to catch some goodness.

I haven’t decided yet, if all the trouble is worth it…

Every morning when I wake up early, in that fuzzy region between consciousness and actual wakefulness, I like to spend a moment or two of my time imagining what life would be like if I could return to slumber rather than set out to do whatever it is I have to do at such an unholy hour. I also like to ponder what the consequences might be if I were to skip whatever it is I need to do and opt to sleep-in instead. And on those rare, special occasions, I come to the fantastic epiphany that the world will not end if I stay in bed a couple extra minutes. I’m not going to discover the cure for cancer or end world famine today. Heck, let’s be honest, I probably won’t even recycle. Might the world would be better off without me for the next couple of hours?

It’s at this point that I shake myself, scoff (audibly), and think, “How absurd a notion! The world is never better off without me.”

We at Misusing Big Words always support and encourage reader participation. Due to some interest via online social networking sites (i.e. Facebook) regarding a previously posted post, James, Mark and Cherie thought to share an article discussion… Our first comes from Subscriber Nick Clark.

Nick writes:

I just read your “Farts” story. I disagree. I think many of those gases except perhaps the sulfides would diffuse through the alveolar membrane of the lungs into the blood of the pulmonary capillaries. The reason I think this is because they are all fairly small and/or non polar molecules and there is a relatively low concentration of many of those molecules in the blood, so the gases would diffuse through by means of passive transport through the alveolar membrane of the lungs. Are you or anyone interested in trying and testing out our respective theories? I think it would be a very interesting experiment.

Or did I just miss the meaning of this whole website, to not take this so seriously? Shit I always do that!

A response:

Dear Mr. Clark,

Thank you for subscribing to “Misusing Big Words” and for your outputting of sorts! I appreciate it tremendously.

You may be right. I have not conducted much research on the topic, and the theory presented is a personal hypothesis.

The reason your flatus has such a unique essence, however, is because of the presence of sulfides. The other gases (in which you say will diffuse through the membrane of our lungs) are essentially odorless. Thus, highlighting upon my concluding paragraph about concentrating your stank.

I present the following equation:

Presence of Sulfides + O2 + CO2 + N2 + CH4 + H2 —> Presence of Sulfides

Where “—>” is lung absorption of O2, CO2, N2, CH4, H2.

As you can imagine the volume of the gas has shrunk, leaving only the olfactory components of the flatus present.

I like to call this phenomena “The Cherie”.

Sincerely,
Cherie.

An afterthought and very misused P.S.:

After further consideration, I believe you are right about the additional investigation of this topic. I haven’t the time being in graduate school, but perhaps a couple of research partners and yourself may want to consider testing this hypothesis.

I am not sure about the exchange of gases part. I forgot to take into consideration the exchange of O2 for CO2. I’m not sure if the same volume of gases absorbed by our lungs is exchanged for an equal amount of CO2… The equation should then look something like this:

Presence of Sulfides + O2 + CO2 + N2 + CH4 + H2 —> Presence of Sulfides + (unknown coefficient) CO2

Therefore, the amount of sulfides present in our flatus may not necessarily be as concentrated as I previously thought.

If that is the case, we may just be filtering out the flammable components of our flatus, making the world a little safer; not to mention more ozone layer-friendly.

You may even want to further this study to that of the flatus of cows and the efficiency of human lungs to eliminate its component harmful ozone-deteriorating gases.

Should there be any other discussion regarding our forum (which we highly encourage and support) it will be posted here at Misusing Big Words with your approval.

Thank you to Mr. Clark for his contribution to our site and we look forward to hearing from all of you!

I am currently reading “Love is a Mix Tape” by Rob Sheffield. It’s a memoir about Rob’s relationship with his wife from the time they met until her relatively abrupt and untimely death (you find this out in the first two pages, so hold the anger on the spoiler alert). Rob is music critic for various publications, and having shared a common bond of music with his wife, strings the story together with the memories and situations behind a series of mix tapes Rob and his wife made for each other throughout their relationship.

It’s some real touching shit.

Mix tapes are incredible. Though, if someone were to give me one now, I probably wouldn’t play it. Not because I didn’t want to, but its the 21st century and cassette decks are somewhat hard to come by. In all practicality, they would more than likely be giving a mix CD, maybe even an iTunes playlist (though, the later lacks substantiation since it isn’t exactly tangible, and you cannot design mean cover art for the mix).

Purists would argue that a mix CD doesn’t compare to a mix tape. On a CD, you can jump around, skip the songs that don’t ring true for you, whereas on a tape, for better or for worse, you have to follow the story of songs as it was laid out for you. That might be true, but I don’t think that is enough to discount the value of a mix CD. The thought and emotion (and the RIAA-lawsuit risk undergone in obtaining the songs) is still represented and still comes through, no matter the medium it is delivered on.

I still remember the Love Jams, Volume 4 CD I made junior year of high school. It was preceded by volumes one, two and three, and followed by volumes 5 through 7. Number four was the pinnacle, the perfect mix of better known Bryan Adams and Boys II Men songs, mixed with the gems that lacked notoriety, but carried in their lyrics and music, the feelings I, at the time, thought I was feeling. Nothing ran truer than All 4 One’s “I Swear” directly followed by Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love to You”, read together “I Swear I’ll Make Love to You”. That is a pretty solid message…

I wouldn’t say I am great at it, but push comes to shove, I make a pretty good mix.

I admit that I dig mix tapes.

But, I know a lot of haters, especially nowadays, and I think I can understand their argument. A mix tape is a pretty cornball thing to make and give someone, especially in the courting stages of the relationship. It is sort of like say, “I want to tell you how I feel, but I am too chicken, so please let Richard Marx tell you how he feels instead, and hopefully you will figure out, that, like Richard, I, too, feel that way about you.” It’s a total copout, and should not be used….until, at least, date four or five.

Once you are in a relationship, though, I don’t think it is any worse than giving your significant other a pet name (Honey Bunch, Sugar Britches, Blubber Buns (a favorite)), or writing her a love letter or a poem, or shaving her name into your back hair, or whatever. People in relationships do a lot of cheesy stuff, and to outsiders that is exactly what it looks like, cheesy, corny-ass stuff. But, to the people in the relationship, oh, they love it. It’s a good thing it’s cheese and they are not lactose intolerant because they just eat it up. It’s sentimental and it makes them feel special, despite its recognizable corniness.

I would like to see mix tapes/CDs/playlists back in the limelight. Really, they work in any situation. Make one for Granny and call it the ‘Bust a Hip Mix’, or a party mix, a road trip mix, a break-up mix, a taken-a-dump mix (nothing inspires movement, bowel movement that is, then “My Humps”, which on a take-a-dump mix brings new meaning to junk in the trunk)… They are versatile, and they deserve more credit, even if they are enormously corny.

If for no other reason, you have the opportunity to do this: