Rebel Flag

I was flipping channels Saturday morning when I landed on VH1 where they were talking about the Dukes of Hazzard movie with Jessica Simpson. She may not appear to be very bright, but she's very nice to the eyes.

Anyways, one guy was talking about how the "Christians" were complaining about how lewd her dancing was. Maybe I just hang out with different Christians because of all the ones that I personally know, they don't seem to really care at all. Anyways, he also mentioned how the same "Christians" didn't say anything about the "racist flag."

Growing up in the South, I can say that most Southerners that I know don't believe that the Rebel flag means the same thing today as it did in the past. I've spoken to several people and although they know that the rebel flag symbolized slavery in the past, they feel that today, it's more of a symbol of southern pride. One person also said that it represents States' rights.

I started to realize that you can't assume people's motives for carrying or displaying certain symbols. To automatically assume that anyone who carries a rebel flag is racist is to judge that person before you even know what it is they really believe. Don't believe me? What if I were to say that I know someone who wears the swastika. What do you automatically think of this person? Nazi? What if I told you that it was used by many cultures to represent good things. It wasn't until the Nazi's took it for their own that it developed the reputation it does today. That person that I know wears it because to him, it's a Buddhist symbol.

So, I'm curious to know what the statistics are. Where are you from and what do you think of when you see the Confederate flag?

The Motherload

My buddy Corin is 1/4 Japanese. He learned to speak Japanese from watching hours and hours and HOURS of Japanese anime.

The funny thing is that he didn't really watch any of that stuff until I introduced it to him. He, in turn introduced me to sushi, sake, and Japanese beer. Our favorite sushi restaurant, Nippon, was just a couple blocks from the dorms. We would order several pieces of sushi and either sake or the 16oz. Kirin Ichiban beer for 5 bucks a piece. We tried other beers there, but Kirin Ichiban was our favorite of all the Japanese beers.

We had just finished midterms when Corin decided to make a trip out for some celebration beverages. He drove out in the middle of "Redneck-ville", Texas and found a Specs liquor warehouse. He walked around for awhile and saw cases of Kirin Ichiban beer. He looked to see how much the beer was selling for but couldn't find a price. A manager walked by and Corin asked him how much the Kirin Ichiban was selling for.

"How much is that beer?"

"Tell ya what. Mah customers don't drink this beer here so I'll make you an offer if you'll just take this off mah hands."

"Ok."

"6 cases for $25."

Corin had to resist the urge to fall to the ground on his hands and knees and kiss the manager's foot while praising to Almighty God, Buddha, and all the heavens.

"How much for all of it?"

"All 12 cases?"

"Yeah."

"$40?"

"Deal."

There were 24 cans of beer for each case. We now had 12 cases. That's 288 cans of beer for $40. We normally paid $5 for one 16 oz. bottle. We had struck gold. Corin drove back to the dorms like he was bringing home a brand new baby. He pulled to the front of the dorms and called me for help saying that he had a surprise. Then, he ran back to his car and stood guard.

I walked out and he popped open his trunk. My eyes lit up like the Griswald's house on Christmas eve. We took turns running upstairs to my dorm room while the other one stood guard at the car. When we finally finished unloading his car, we ran back up to my dorm room and just looked at our prize. I'm telling you, we both looked like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, "My precioussssssss." Needless to say, we held a huge party that weekend. Ahhhhh, Good times...good times.

Texas skeeters

My buddy Mason called me up the other night to go fishing in Freeport. When I got to where he was, we loaded my stuff into his boat and we set out. We didn't go very far from the boat launch. It was around 11:00 p.m. when I started fishing.

When I first got to Freeport, I knew the mosquitos would be bad. I popped open the trunk from the inside of my mosquito fortress (car). Then, I opened the door and ran to the trunk. I was flailing my arms and stomping my feet while I opened my tackle box and grabbed my Extra strength Deep Woods Off for Sportsmen and started spraying. I swear I wasn't exposed for more than ten seconds and was already bitten seven times in the ankle alone. I was spraying myself like a mad man.

Once on the boat, I didn't stop spraying. It's a little difficult getting certain parts of your back when you're spraying yourself. Damn things found the one part of my back that I missed and bit me through my shirt. Mason took the bottle and sprayed the area I couldn't reach. I was finally covered from head to toe.

You'd think that extra strength stuff would keep them at a distance. All night, I could hear those little bastards make kamikaze runs. They would fly up and nose dive right to my ear and bounce off. Each time that happened, I had to spray my entire head a little more. When our hands would get wet, a little bit of the repellent would wash off just enough for them to make a suicide feeding attempt.

Now, when Mason and I fish, we drink beer. Lots and lots of beer. When you drink beer, you naturally have to urinate frequently. So when I had to go, I had to go. I unzipped my zipper and whipped it out and started relieving myself when I realized that although I sprayed my shorts, I didn't exactly spray the most important part. When the first mosquito landed, I instinctively swatted at it. Hard. I struck the Emporer and his 2 best friends.

"OOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!!!"

"What?!"

"I hurt.....myself."

"What did you do?"

"I was peeing and a mosquito landed on my dick and I swatted it."

"hahahahahahahhahaha"

"The pain" set in, but I was determined to not have any bloodsuckers suck...well, you know. After that session, I sprayed down the front of my shorts heavily. That kept them away and kept me from getting bit.

We didn't see anything

Alright, enough depressing posts like the last one.

After dorm life, it was time for me to get my own apartment. I moved in with Benton and Mike. Benton and I shared a room while Mike had his own. One day, a big storm blew through Houston. I came home from work and Benton was on the couch watching TV. Mike was still at work. I sat down on the couch and asked Benton, "What's on?" He said, "Nothing." He was flipping channels looking for something to watch. While flipping channels, the TV makes a clicking sound. Benton then landed on a channel that was blank which was probably due to the huge storm that was over Houston.

While on this blank channel, there was no sound coming from the TV. We heard what sounded like a washing machine off in the distance. It was just barely loud enough for us to hear as long as there was no sound coming from the TV. We looked at each other strangely because we were on the third floor and a good distance from the complex's washers and dryers. We shouldn't be able to hear anything.

We got up and realized that the sound was coming from Mike's room. We knew Mike was still at work so we opened the door to his room and flipped on the lights. There was water everywhere. We saw a small crack right above the ceiling fan where water was pouring out of. The ceiling fan was on so that when the water hits the blades of the fan, it was spread everywhere in his room.

Benton and I looked at each other and said, "What do we do?"

Were we good roommates to actually stop everything and make the report to maintenance and start cleaning up? Hell no. We started to chuckle as we turned off his lights, closed his door, and walked back into the living room where we sat back onto the couch and watched TV.

When Mike came home, he opened the door and did the usual, "What's up?" Benton and I with the most blank look on our face said, "Nothing." As he walked back to his room, we turned down the volume to the TV.

"OH FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"

Acting surprised, we ran back to his room asking him what was going on.

"Holy shit Mike. I guess you better call maintenance."

Lee

It's been several years since I found out that one of my friends from years ago died. I used to go to my cousin's house quite a bit back in Jr. High and High school to play basketball. He lived in the Northwest corner of Houston. We would meet up with several of his friends to find some pickup games on different courts. I remember Lee and his brother Troy would occasionally come with us to find some competition. As time flew by, I started to see less and less of Lee.

By the time I moved into downtown Houston for college, we started playing paintball more than basketball. At one of our practice sessions (we had a team going into tournament competitions), I saw Lee again. He had shaved his head and wore extremely baggy clothes. He wasn't as talkative as he was before. One of our other friends asked him, "Hey Lee, when's your court date?" Lee answered, "Tuesday". I asked him what he was going to court for thinking that it was over a traffic ticket or something.

"Cap...urd..."

"What?"

"Capital Murder"

My eyes widened as I realized that this once innocent basketball friend of mine had turned to a different direction in life. I talked to him a little bit more that day simply because I didn't want him to think that I was against him in any way. Probably not too smart to confront a person being charged with capital murder. So, I just pretended like it never happened.

That was the last time I saw Lee alive. Years later, I was riding in my cousin's car. I don't remember why, but he told me.

"Oh, you don't know about Lee do you?"

I answered, "Did he get convicted and is in jail?"

"No. he's dead."

"What? What happened?!"

"Bad drug deal. One of his drug 'friends' decided that he wanted the drugs AND the money. Shot him right in the head. Guess to show you that there are no such things as friends in the drug world."

I don't know what happened to cause someone like Lee to choose that kind of life. His family wasn't wealthy, but none of our families were. It just doesn't make sense. I'm not really depressed about his death. I wasn't at the time I found out. He chose that life for himself. It's a shame he chose that direction.

Here's a Treet

I went to see a comedian once who described college kids as broke, hungry, and happy. At that moment I was reminded of one night in particular. My roommate and I were both hungry and we had no money to make a quick run to McDonalds or whatever. We didn't even have enough for a single taco at Taco Bell.

I remembered that when I first moved into the dorms, my mom gave me a couple cans of preserved mystery meat for emergencies. It wasn't Spam, it was Treet. That's right. It was an imitation of imitation meat.

We were so desparately hungry so we opened it, held it upside down, and watched as this cube of "meat" slowly slid out of the can and landed on the paper plate. We then cut slices out of this "meat". Needless to say, it didn't look too appetizing. We decided that we should probably get something to disguise the taste a little. We looked in our little refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of mustard and proceeded to completely cover our snack. Then came the moment of truth. We took out forks and took a bite.

You know that face you make when you catch the scent of something really nasty? Well, the sense of smell and taste are highly associated so we both had that same look on our faces.

Rather than taking another bite, we decided to let our stomachs eat themselves. Just before we threw the rest of it away, another one of our friends came into the room and said, "Hey, I'm soooo hungry. Do y'all have anything to eat?" Thinking that we'd play a good joke on him, we handed him the paper plate. The boy started chowing down on it as if it were a 12 oz. tenderloin. He kept saying just how good it was. You remember that face we made earlier? Yeah, we it showed again. Can you believe he asked for more? I guess he was just a tad bit more hungry than we were.

Stole this from a friend

Penis Raise

I, the penis, hereby request a raise in salary for the following reasons:

* I do physical labor
* I work at great depths
* I am always using my head first
* I do not get RDO's, weekends off or public holidays
* I work in a damp environment
* I don't get paid overtime or shift penalties
* I work in a dark workplace that has poor ventilation
* I work in high temperatures
* My work exposes me to contagious diseases

Response from Human Resources



After assessing your request, and considering the arguments you have raised, the administration rejects your request for the following reasons:

* You do not work 8 hours straight
* You fall asleep on the job after brief work periods
* You do not always follow the orders of the management team
* You do not stay in your assigned position, and often visit other areas
* You take a lot of non-rostered breaks
* You do not take initiative - you need to be pressured and stimulated in order to start working
* You leave the workplace rather messy at the end of your shift
* You don't always observe OH&S measures, such as wearing the correct protective outfits
* You don't like working double shifts
* You sometimes leave your assigned position before you have completed your work
* And if that were not all, you have been seen constantly entering and leaving the work place carrying 2 suspicious looking bags!

Have you ever had the temptation to say something so ridiculously insulting that it was funny? I'm really lucky to have a wife who understands my sense of humor. I'm really glad she doesn't take what I say seriously and can see the humor in it. A few of our conversations this weekend:

"Woman, please!"

"Don't call me 'woman'!"

"I'm sorry. Bitch, please!"

Zelda fakes a look of horror as we both started cracking up.

We were checking out at Sam's Club which is sort of like a giant Walmart but sells things in bulk. Anyways, I paid and she started pushing the cart to the car. I couldn't help it.

"Mush, woman!"

I busted out laughing as she punched me right in the arm. Yeah, she was laughing too.

"You realize that I can't push the cart after you said that."

"Yeah, but it was funny huh?"

I don't know what made me think about posting some of this stuff. I guess I was reading Zelda's profile when she described herself as "one of the guys." I thought to myself that that was true. I really could kid around her as if I was out with the guys and talkin' trash. Best part is that there are additional "benefits" too (wink, wink). Yep, I am a lucky man.

You want us to do what?!

Part of the main lesson in Microbiology class was that bacteria is everywhere. After lectures, we had labs. Most of it involved culturing various bacteria, identifying samples, and laboratory techniques. You're supposed to read the description of the lab the night before so that you can get a good idea as to what to expect the next day.

One of our more memorable labs was saved for the last day. We got several sterile cotton swabs and were allowed to pick any surface to swipe and see what grows. Of course some of the more disgusting surfaces contained lots of bacteria like toilets. But, you'd be surprised just how many different types of bacteria inhabit surfaces like water fountains. However, that wasn't the end of it.

We were given one last sterile swab. Dr. Friesen instructed, "Go into a bathroom stall and get a sample inside your rectum." Everyone in class had the same expression on their face. You can imagine.

We all lined up in the bathrooms waiting for each of 3 the stalls to clear up and take our "turn". One of the guys in my class named Chris walked into the stall, locked it, and started laughing. Then he says, "Okay boys, here goes!" Just then, you could hear this little yelp come from his stall. Then, you hear, "Hey! What do you do if you clenched too tightly and all of the cotton comes off?!" We all started laughing. "I'm serious! What do I do?"

After we were able to catch our breaths from laughing so hard, we told him that he probably has bacterial samples on the stem of the swab. So, he wouldn't have to do it again.

As hilarious as this incident was, there was an important lesson to learn. Read ahead and call in sick when labs like this are assigned.