Monday, December 27, 2004

Bazow!
I have invented a new kind of courtesy expression: Bazow.

You see, certain people expect to hear "bless you" or "gesundheit" when they sneeze. I have never been too keen on this seemingly arbitrary tradition. This is an issue on which my girlfriend and I do not see eye to eye. She is a bless-you person. I am not. If you sneeze in my presence, you're on your own. I don't go around blessing people every time they cough ... or burp ... or fart ... or hiccup, why should I go out of my way for some dumb courteous gesture because of a stupid sneeze? Come on, it's silly.

Furthermore, when I was a young kid, someone told me once that "some people" (never a good way to start out any statement you mean to have taken seriously) think it's offensive if you say "Bless you" to them. Like you're shoving your religion down their throat or something. Obviously I'm old enough to know now that this is probably not true. I'm probably more annoyed by the amount of religion shoved down my throat by society these days (Christmas anyone?) than Joe or Jane Shmoe on the street and I don't really give a damn when someone says "bless you" to me. If I've ever been annoyed by a strangers "bless you" it's not because of some weird religious grudge, it's just because I don't like people I don't know. Especially when they're basically pretending to take an interest in my life, no matter how fleeting, for no real reason at all. "Thanks for that blessing, random stranger. You can mark this down as your good deed of the day. The promise keepers will be so proud." The point, though, is that bless-you was ruined for me a long time ago when I was a stupid kid and took everything I was told as cold, hard, irrefutable fact.

So, after enduring months and years of my girlfriends sneezes, followed by sarcastic remarks and dirty looks, I've decided to update "gesundheit" for the 21st century. Starting today I am going to make it my lifes mission to transform sneezing into the all purpose, any situation, call and response. You know how in hip-hop there's always the songs with parts like; "When I say Easter, y'all say bunny!" "EASTER!" "BUNNY!" "EASTER!" "BUNNY!" Well I'm going to make sneezing like that. "HACHOO!" "BAZOW!" "HACHOO!" "BAZOW!" It's brilliant. If Snoop Dogg can get everyone to say "Fo shizzle my nizzle" I'm sure I can get people to say "BAZOW!" after sneezes. It'll be especially effective in public since it's always fun to throw complete strangers a curve ball every once in a while. This will be a wide spread social epidemic nearly as brilliant as Free Hi-Five Day.

I don't know how to spell my own middle name
I just had to fill out some weird form for this whole job transfer situation and one of the questions on it was "What is your middle name?" As usual, I wrote down Nathaniel. Before doing this, however, I had to get my wallet out and look at my drivers license to make sure that was correct. It's funny that I would do this, seeing as how I filled out the form to get my drivers license in exactly the same fashion. I just filled out the form and spelled my middle name however I thought made the most sense at the time. Later I found out that my good friend Nate spells his name Nathanael, which seemed weird to me, but made just as much sense as the spelling I had previously concocted out of nowhere. So, in short, I don't really know how my middle name is spelled. I guess I could just look at my birth certificate, but that would require effort.

ok ... I just looked at my birth certificate. I've been spelling it right all along. Disregard all of that last paragraph. I'm just going to leave it there because I think it's funny I took all that time to write that and all I had to do was go into my email and open the message my mom sent me that had it attached. I'm a genius. It took me all of one minute.

Christmas
Same as always. Food, presents, alchohol, jesus, Three Inches of Blood, etc. Went and saw The Life Aquatic. I loved it. I'm a full fledged desciple of Wes Anderson though, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. It's not his best movie, but it has some of the greatest one-liners and non sequiturs ever. "Everybody gets glocs"

What would Jesus do? ... Seek vengeance
As I mentioned 6 sentances ago, on Christmas I went and saw the greatest anachronistic adventure-metal band from Vancouver BC ever to play the Graceland on December 25th, 2004, ever; Three Inches of Blood. That band is so weird. In the space of maybe a year they have replaced every member of the band except the two lead singers and signed to Roadrunner records. That's called "blowing up" and in some circles, like my head, "Selling out." I'm not against bands making money, I'd sell out in a minute, but it still sucks when that kind of stuff happens to bands. It's cool though because my friendly acquintance and sometimes-best-friend-when-he's-been-drinking, Brian Redman, is now their bass player ... so now when they're on Mtv and all the kids in the world are swinging from their nuts I can be like, "I know their bass player. He was in Left With Nothing. He's kicked me in the chest like 56 times." Actually, no one will care. No one respects the bass player. The Kids in the Hall even did a sketch about the plight of the bass player. It's sad. If your band doesn't suck balls, bass players are important. Anyway, 3IOB (as they're called in internet shorthand) is good.

IT'S A TSUNAMI!
Holy crap, this is insane. My good friend, and sometimes contributor to this blog, Sean O'leary stayed in a hotel in Ko Phi Phi about a year or two ago--It's completely gone now. INSANE. 23,000 people died. The tsunamis were caused by the 4th largest earthquake in recorded history. 9 countries were effected. INSANE!!! I really hope I dont live in New York when it gets hit by that tidal wave you hear mentioned from time to time. I'm just going to keep one of those instantly inflating life rafts in my closet from now on ... and one of those deep sea diving outfits that's made of metal and is basically indestructable. You know, like in that movie The Abyss. Maybe that's the wrong movie. Oh well, who cares?