Water You Thinking?!?

February 8, 2010 by hawaiianpun

Hey you. Yes, you. At the drink dispenser. Filling your Styrofoam cup with water and capping it with a plastic lid. You who I see doing this every day. You who gets up from your desk. Walks to the cafeteria. Grabs a brand new cup from the stack and sets it on the drain shelf. Fills it with water — water! not even a fragrant, tinted beverage like juice or soda, but clear, odorless water – and then snaps the lid into place and returns to your desk. Yes, YOU.

Stop. Stop doing this. Just stop. It doesn’t make sense. Why do you need a new Styrofoam cup — which doesn’t biodegrade and is recycled almost nowhere — every day of the week? Doesn’t this seem a bit excessive to you? Have you never heard of the three Rs? Or the Three Tenors? (They’re delightful.)

Listen. I’m not asking you to invest $10 in a BPA-free Nalgene or Klean Kanteen. This is not an unreasonable thing for me to ask, of course — you should, in fact, do this — but this is not what I am asking you. What I am asking you — what I am calmly, patiently, handsomely, nakedly (ahem) asking you — is to use your 12 ounces of cylindrically shaped extruded polystyrene foam two bloody days in a row.

This is what I am asking you, because this is literally the least you can do. Okay, not literally literally, but close enough. So can you do this for me? Use the same cup two days in a row? I wouldn’t ask you to do this with your underwear, or your mouthwash, or your labradoodle [Editor's note: WTF?], but this I feel comfortable asking.

Please don’t make me beg. Because I don’t beg. I weg. There’s a difference. Now make a difference.

Once You Go Black…

February 4, 2010 by hawaiianpun

Contrary to popular belief, recent studies have revealed that a small percentage of individuals, upon engaging in sexual congress for the first time with a man or woman with a higher-than-average concentration of epidermal melanin, do — on rare occasions — return to having intercourse with less melanin-rich partners.

The more you know!

The Prank Story

February 2, 2010 by hawaiianpun

I have added a new page to the “Permanently Pertinent” section in my sidebar, which I have ingeniously titled “The Prank Story.” I have titled it this because it is a story about a prank. I briefly considered calling it “A Story about a Prank,” but, in the end, chose not to, because brevity is the soul of wit, and I am nothing if not very, very, extremely — some might say preponderously — witty, not to mention brief.

Speaking of brevity, I should note that this post is also being filed under the “Long Form Flobbityjoop” category, and for good reason: The attached story is more than 17,000 words — i.e. approximately 17 times longer than anything I’ve ever posted before. As such, the FDA recommends breaking up your consumption of this tale into discrete units of time, such as seconds, minutes, or days. Longer breaks — e.g., years, decades, or centuries — are explicitly not recommended because you will probably lose the thread of the narration and/or die.

To save you from having to move your mouse four inches to the right, the contents of the aforementioned page have been lovingly reproduced below. Read it now, thank me later.

***

Once upon a time, I was a high school student. Like many of my adolescent brethren, I began life as a freshman, then — approximately four years later, as it turned out — miraculously discovered that I was a senior. As we all know, one of the primary responsibilities of any self-respecting high school senior is to plan and execute the most bodacious senior prank in the history of history.

This we did.

This is our story.

What’s more, to save you the trouble of moving your mouse approximately four inches to the right, I have lovingly reproduced the contents of said page below.

Graph-ic Content

January 29, 2010 by hawaiianpun

If you’ve never been to GraphJam.com — a humble member of the grammatically suspect Cheezburger family — it’s a reliably humorous way to wile away a few minutes here and there with arty, charty depictions of various truths about the human condition. Best of all, if you’re suddenly impregnated with your own brilliant idea, you can birth it right there on the site and share it with the keenly interested masses within seconds. (Don’t forget to throw away the placenta though. It’s only polite.)

I bet you can see where this is going.

No? Try taking off your sunglasses.

There you go! So since you’ve already guessed that I, too, have succumbed to this crass, populist procrastination tool, why not check out my most recent foray into graph laughs by clicking on the thumbnail below? And don’t forget to award me five cheezburgers after you do. (Not because I’m desperate. Because I’m hungry. For approval. From people I’ve never met. Desperately hungry…)

An Academic Polemic (o, Un Polemico Academico!)

January 28, 2010 by hawaiianpun

The twenty-first installment of my abandoned Granadino memoir, Flawed Abroad: Useless editorializing from an ignorant, close-minded American on his semester overseas.

Miercoles, 9 Feb. ‘05, 14.15 (Wednesday, February 9, 2005, 2:15 pm)

I noticed a dark-complexioned gentleman walking down the street today.  Just for fun, I played a little game where I tried to guess his ancestral heritage. Regrettably, I was too distracted by the giant platinum pendant of Africa that he wore around his neck to ever figure it out.

Jueves, 10 Feb. ‘05, 19.45 (Thursday, February 10, 2005, 7:45 pm)

I’ve been in Spain for just over a month now, and in that time I can honestly say that not once have I accidentally killed a stripper with a codfish.  (Sorry.  If you were looking for a little spiritual introspection and personal growth, may I recommend Are You There God?  It’s me, Margaret?)  Actually, it’s definitely been—to put it bluntly—a kick ass 32 days so far, possibly the most enjoyable contiguous stretch of my post-elementary school existence.  Admittedly, if push came to shove, I’d rather be catching frogs, building forts in the woods, and watching cartoons, but raising hell in Granada, Spain, with my new expatriate pals is a close second.

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