The walk

Dear readers,

With the freak warm weather comes the inevitable sight of people shedding the layers. One thing I have noticed through my years of clothing myself is that when taking a stroll, it is very nice just to walk around with your hands in your hoodie pocket; it's a nice warm place to put your hands, and more importantly, it makes certain that your arms aren't swinging in an awkward fashion.

With this warm weather, and the aforementioned shedding of layers, I had the delight of seeing how far people go to make their arms not swing awkwardly. I took today to take notice to the little things people do to make themselves not look funny, yet in the process they fail epically. Lets look at a few examples I noticed today:

1) The Pocket research rocket:When a person places only one hand in the pocket with the attention of drawing ones attention away to his/her annoying other arm that is swinging aimlessly in the wind. See fig. 1(irght)



2) The Backback Rocket Attack: When a person (usually the most awesome person in sight) wears his backpack on one shoulder. This person is almost always walking with confidence like no other; his chin is up and his opposite is flapping back and forth like he was waving to every person who thinks he's awesome. See fig. 2(left)


3) The Straight arm smoke alarm: We have all experienced this one...A man/woman is walking with his/her arms pointed straight to the ground trying not to direct ANY attention to his insecurities. I don't have an image for this one, but Fig.3 is a guy who I'm 99.1% sure demonstrates this on an everyday basis.

To me, all of these are easily avoidable. Listen readers, the best way to walk is to do so next to a person who demonstrates at least one of these qualities. Just act cooler than him/her and watch as everyone walking past is focusing on how "Julian" is walking, and then looks at you and thinks you are the coolest person ever. It is fool proof. If you happen to be the "Julian" in this story, just think about what you are doing wrong and change. If, for some reason, this BLOG isn't enough for you, just wait until you see me walking across campus; My strut is enough to not only get people talking, but to set standards high enough for you to join in. Please do society a favor and stop being so damn awkward. That's my lesson for the week.

New Nips

Hello readers,

For those of you who just met me this year, I'll give you a quick breakdown about my mom. She's basically been through hell and back the last 4 years. She had a stroke, and then had some crappy breast cancer. She made a full recovery from both after a long time, but she had to have a bunch of reconstructive surgeries to repair the damage done to her breasts and so on.

Today is the last phase of the surgeries. Nipple reconstruction. Yep, I said it. Nipple reconstruction. She's got the new boobs and all that jazz, but they needed to get this last phase completed. It is kind of weird how they are making her nipple too...I guess for fun I'll try to explain it to the best of my ability. They are going to take a slab of meat from her thigh and make them look like nipples.

Here (courtesy of: Mayo Foundation) is a picture of how it will transform:

Wooooooah weeeeeirrrrd. I'm thankful for my all natural chocolate chip nips.

As I was typing this, I was texting my dad to get updates on how everything was going. This was his exact response word-for word:
"They put on Pigs nipples and had a hard time catching the pig. They caught it so it wont be long now. We got scared because the doctor was going to use a cows nipple if they couldnt catch it...those wouldve been some big nipples"

In all seriousness, the surgery went well. Mom will be home by 6pm with her new and improved Nips. Thanks for bearing through this one.

Oh you live here? $.50 please.

:NOTE: This is a re-post from my former BLOG...It is a good one so I thought I should put it in this. The original air date was sometime last April :END NOTE:

Hello readers! I want to tell you a story. Over the gorgeous weekend, me and this lucky gal ;-) went over to Canada just for kicks. I parked my car on the American side because I didn't want to get my car deported, denied, or searched. We walked across the Rainbow Bridge, pausing for a second to jump back and forth between the boundary line (tradition my friends), and stepped into the customs room. While walking across the bridge, Ashley let me know that she had her prescription pain medication on her; she forgot to leave it in the car. So we were running the risk of Canada thinking we were drug traffickers(something I avoided by leaving my car in America...waaadduppp). So we walked into the building, I handed the man my passport, he looked at the picture and glanced at me. "Where are you going today," he said. "Just staying here in Ontario, sight seeing," I said with boasting confidence. After that 25 seconds, he let me pass and onto Canada we were. I need to take this time to tell you my tradition. I've been doing it since I could remember. Every time I enter Canada, I sing the Canadian National Anthem even if there are a million people around me. Don't ask me why, I just always do it. (I guess it would be a little funnier if I sang the American National Anthem in Canada...hmm something to ponder over some Ice Hockey and a slice of PizzaPizza, all washed down with a shot of Maple syrup)

After about 2 hours of wandering aimlessly throughout Clifton Hill, and me actually seriously pondering getting a tattoo :-O, we decided we should go back and walk around in our native country. I mean if we were to stay any longer, we might have ingested a lethal dose of SARS, so it was probably best if we left. On our way back we crossed over the bridge, I danced a few more times on the border line, and we walked into the American Customs building. We walked up to the ridiculously grumpy officer and handed him our passports. He scanned them, looked at us, and let us go without any question. All seemed to be fine; we had a fun day, we passed both Customs inspections and we were in America again.

But readers, I warn you, my day took a sick and twisted emotional 180. After passing through Customs, we walked into this tunnel-like room, and there sitting in the way of our homeland were 3 turnstiles. That is when it hit me like a piece of debris falling from the burning Twin Towers (ehhh...sorry...too soon?): It costs 50 cents to get back into the country I was born in! What the hell is wrong with that picture?! Mind you...America showed a bit of compassion. Even though the American quarter is worth sooooo much more than the Canadian quarter, the turnstiles gave you the option of using either currency for "Our convenience". But never the less, we were forced to put in $.50 per person to get back into our country. Only in America, right Mr. Benedetti?

All of this begs one question....What if you had no quarters on you? Ahh, America thinks of everything; The machine next to the turnstiles provided the opportunity to put in a $1, or $5 bill for quarters, but it wouldn't allow for anything more than $5. So what if I only had a $20 bill on me with no change at all in my pocket? Would I not be allowed back into the country? Would I have to sit in that 6x12 room until someone was kind enough to pay my way in?(yeah, never mind, America doesn't think of everything). I checked, and the door you walked through to get into that jail cell of a room locks right behind you. Although, if it didn't, I'm sure one of those really nice, outgoing, and generous customs officers would be more than happy to loan you $.50 of their "hard earned" money.

Good day my faithful readers
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