Hahaha! Mine Is An Evil Laugh! Now die.

I finally caught the first couple episodes of Firefly last night in an effort to silence the insane drooling fanboy savages who poop their pants and give me twenty minute lectures every time I say I haven't seen it yet. Listen you insane drooling savages, I don't need you or anyone to tell me that a show about chinese old west spaceship pirates is going to be awesome. I invented shows about chinese old west spaceship pirates being awesome.

In a continuing effort to expand my horizons, I also watched the season finale of Nip/Tuck last night, though I had never seen another episode all the way through. You'd think that would take away from the drama, but no. I sweated and paced profusely throughout, and punched myself in the neck repeatedly during commercial breaks just to calm myself down. When crazy eyebrow man was kidnapped by insane confederate flag wielding guy and forced at gunpoint to slice off his transvestite friend/brawl buddy's wang with a box cutter, I actually fell unconscious. And that wasn't even the worst of it! Those that follow the show will know that last night they finally revealed the much hyped secret identity of The Carver, and in a heart stopping twist, it turned out to be none other than: Carl Weathers! Slice someone's cheeks open, remove all her implants, inject her with rotting chicken fat--baby, you got a stew goin!

Beard Watch: Day 5

5 days in, and the Great Schreiber Beard Challenge couldn't be going better. I was walking around the mall this morning with a cup of coffee and people kept throwing change into it. "Merry Christmas," they'd say with pity in their eyes. "Things will look up! Surely they're working on a cure for whatever the hell is wrong with your face." Oh man, that story was so seamless! Go ahead, disprove it.

Yesterday I redefined the meaning of sloth by watching National Treasure, Dogma, Rounders, and two hours of Animation Domination in direct succession. God bless Sundays. The only time my heart rate crept above 3 beats per minute was when Señor Monkeyface delayed Family Guy by almost 20 minutes to tell us absolutely nothing new whatsoever about the war in Iraq. I really thought about raising my fist in the air and shaking it, but then I didn't do it.

The Shaft...

...has been received, and it feels so good. At least I get a refund check from the Ticket Office...by February 17th.

Free Booze!

Haha, now that I have your attention--uh, there really is free booze at my place. And I don't mean like, come over and socialize and you're welcome to enjoy a few drinks--I mean entire bottles of various liquors, free for the taking. The only prerequisite is that you know where I live. It's been accumulating at our place for months as people brought gifts or a personal stash for tailgating or whatever, and now we have 8 or 9 bottles of your various potent potables just taking up space. Ball and I never touch the stuff, so dig in or off to the dumpster it goes.

Ball got two more tickets to the game, putting our current total up to four--YEEEAAAH BOOOYEEEEE! I should find out about mine on Monday, but even if I get the shaft, I think I can probably sneak at least one extra person through in my pants. Mr. Nipples?

And about that Rubber Ducky...I don't have to explain myself to you.

The Great Schreiber Beard Challenge

Shaving stops today! Don't try to talk me out of it, it can only end in heartbreak. I'm growing a "beard" over Christmas break, and no amount of roundhouse kicking can stop it. Partly, it's because I've never grown one; I don't even know if I can. Partly it's so I can take a hilarious series of pictures when I shave it off. Largely, it's because I want to be like Chuck Norris. But yet more largely, it's because someone, at some point, for some reason, uttered the words "Schreiber Beard Challenge." I think it might have been me. I don't know. I'll let you in on a little secret, under the assumption that no one will ever use it against me: you can get me to do pretty much anything by appending the word "challenge" to the end of a sentence. Ten Taco Challenge? Stepan Center Challenge? Fly To The Fiesta Bowl With No Game Tickets Challenge? Consider it done.

Boo-Yeah!

Lord Sweet Pappy Johnson with an erection, it's a Decemberween Miracle! Bring your own Boo-yah! Yeah, I'll shoot the puck anywhere I want, and if that happens to be in your pooper, so be it! This guy knows what I'm talking about!

My Weekend

I randomly took yesterday off. My 3-day weekend included:

• 41 episodes of Arrested Development
• 1 case of Highlife
• The end

As Long As Somebody Gets Wrecked--Even If It Has To Be Me

It started as an offhand remark made by either me or LB, spoken in response to one of the myriad situations in which one or the other of us completely wrecked ourselves in undergrad. It ended as more of a religion. If you've ever seen That 70s Show, you already have a solid understanding of the dynamic between LB and myself, only instead of "BURN!" the active word was "WRECKED!" Typical usage:

"Hey man, you gonna eat the rest of that cake?"
"I'm not, but I am really looking forward to throwing the leftovers in the trash."
"Wrecked!"

God knows how it started. I think it might have been because I used to leave my AIM sounds on all the time while the Box was trying to sleep. "I think I'll leave these AIM sounds on while you try to sleep," I'd say as I left for class, "It will amuse me." That was the other catch phrase, "It will amuse me." It was a justification for everything. Typical:

"I see that your CD is just about finished burning. I believe I'll fling it into the wall like a frisbee to see if it breaks."
"You asshole, why would you do that??"
"It will amuse me."
"Wrecked!"

Haha, that was back when CD burners were the brand new hot technology, and blank discs cost like a buck a piece. We must've burned through $50 of shattered plastic. I think it was around then that the concept of "tenfold" was born. One or the other of us had just watched Robin Hood, and in response to some malicious plan for amusement through wreckage, stated "If you proceed with this wreckage, I shall deliver it back upon you tenfold." Typical:

"I see you've finished with your 15 page term paper. While you're sleeping, I'm going to pepper it with disturbingly graphic sexual scenarios involving you, your professor, and a bull terrier. You'll never catch them all."
"You asshole, why would you do that??"
"It will amuse me."
"I'll tenfold you, I still have that recording of you saying you'd like to knead Crud's ass like warm pizza dough."
"Wrecked!"

After a while it became an arms race. We were hatching elaborate schemes, most of which involved catching each other saying horrible, horrible things on tape. To this day Box pretty much owns my soul because of a certain mp3 file which strongly suggests I may have a thing for Al Roker.

But back to the original point--wreckings eventually became such a prominent source of comedy in our day to day lives that we stopped caring who actually got wrecked, just so long as someone did--even if it had to be ourselves. All throughout undergrad, I used to have a crush on this girl named EEE, which, sitcom style, resulted in a comedy of ludicrous self wreckings. Every party or social event, I'd somehow manage to say or do something so heinously awkward or inappropriate that I was sure she'd never speak to me again. Each time I'd laugh it off and go tell my friends, and each time I'd end with "Well, as long as somebody got wrecked--even if it had to be me." This pattern ultimately inspired the Beer Scoreboard, which--meh, this post is way too long. I'm out!

SNOW DAY!!!

Not the kind where school is cancelled. Unlike some schools--which I've heard rumors are a little vrooom, I'm just saying--ND does not cancel school for a few paltry snowflakes or apocalyptic blizzards. Nope, just a day with lots of snow. When I walked out to my car this morning, I saw a couple girls digging a Ford Excursion out of their parking spot. Oh, mother nature, I'm so scared of you! Please don't hurt me with your piles of crystallized water! Whatever. Mother nature didn't count on the awesome power of the Honda Civic, nor did she count on the awesome size of my genitals, which are, by the way, awesome. Have you ever seen me in mesh shorts? I'm just saying. So I walked past my shovel with nary a glance, I got in the old Silver Bullet, and I rocked. I rocked HARD.

And mother nature gave way.

Then a few feet later I got stuck. But do you know what else mother nature didn't count on? My willingness to totally floor it, spinning my wheels and spewing snow all over the freshly dug Excursion trench as I laughed and laughed and laughed, screaming "110 horses, HOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I drove like a bat out of hell! I drove like a warrior poet--and inch by inch, I won my freedom.

So, did anyone get the vrooom thing? No? Shaving cream on a wooden beam?

DEATH HOOK!

Do you ever feel like your life is filled with insurmountable obstacles? That's because you're a loser. Haha! No, really, you are. But it's also because--wait for it--you don't have a grappling hook. My parents tell me I'm really hard to shop for around Christmas time because I already have everything, but I don't have a grappling hook. Can you picture strolling down the street with a grappling hook casually coiled over your shoulder? Instant respect, baby! Oh, your cat is stuck in a tree? I got this one, Ma'am. No tickets for the big game? No problem! I brought my grappling hook. Say I sit down at a bar, and suddenly some big angry biker man growls "That's my seat, son." I get up, calmly uncoiling my grappling hook, and apologize politely as I lazily swing it in ever increasing arcs. Do you really think he'll want his seat back, knowing that its acquisition will be immediately followed by a face full of speeding grappling hook? And if he gets rough--SPLINK!--I'm swinging away to safety and freedom, and he gets stuck with my tab.

Well, that was a waste. I think I figured out why I was so tired yesterday, and why I'm tired still: I have become a giant lazy sac of crap. There was a time, just short months ago, when I went to the gym 6 times a week, alternating lifting and running. Even on my free day I'd do something, ride my bike around the lakes, blade to campus, at least hit the driving range. I was totally off caffeine, and going home every day to eat something relatively nourishing for lunch. Now suddenly I'm sitting on my ass eating donuts for lunch, popping excederin to stave off the caffeine headaches, and my pants are starting to feel distressingly loose. That's right, chumps, when I stop exercising and eating right, I lose weight! Suck it, world! Anyway, as the days got colder and Kel got busier, we found more and more excuses to skip the gym, and now we don't go at all--hence, giant lazy sac of crap. So from this point forward I'm back on the horse baby! Time to wean myself off the Dew, start eating actual food at breakfast and lunch, and toning up for my triumphant return to Rolfs on that spiffy exercise ball Kel got me. It's oosin' time.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Good God, I am so outrageously tired. I keep catching myself staring blankly at my screen, then realizing with a start that I've been doing it for the past five minutes. I don't know what's up. Delta kept me tied up pretty late last night, but it's not like I was digging trenches or anything. I was just sitting on my ass a few hundred miles south of where I normally sit on my ass. Maybe someone drugged me. Maybe it's the government. When I was pulling out of the airport parking lot last night, I rolled right through a red to make a left turn onto the main road. I'm sure I saw the light, I think my brain just interpreted it as the blinky stop sign kind. Then at ND Avenue I stopped for a green. I'm sure I saw the light, I must have just...totally lost my mind. At least it was icy out.

Wait, my madness started even before that. I totally threw $15 out with my tray at the ATL food court. Son of a bitch! There can be only one explanation. Lizett drugged my breakfast taco so she could beat me at trivial pursuit. It didn't work. I beat her 63 to -700,000.

One piece of parting advice before I collapse into a loose heap and drool on my keyboard for the next three hours. If you ever find yourself sleep deprived and behind the wheel, you must not listen to this song, jammin though it may be. You must trust me implicity in this matter. It randomly came on my iPod as I drove home for lunch and had roughly the same effect as a sodium pentothal injection to the jugular. I blinked and suddenly I was in Homer Simpson Sleepy Land, floating along on a road of pillows with warm inviting beds drifting past me in the other lane. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. I surely would have driven into someone's living room, but a heavenly voice spoke unto me "No, it is not yet your time. You still have too many jokes to make about punch/kicking people in the face/gonads" and praise Allah, I somehow made it home. I sleep now.

Trapped In Hotlanta

As I type this, my original flight home should have just been touching down in South Bend. Sadly, instead of triumphantly deplaning back onto the icy tundra, I'm sitting here like a chump in Concourse C of Atlanta International, eyeing the children's play gym beside me and hoping no actual children notice it. I didn't know this, because I'm an idiot, but ATL is BIG. My flight from Austin rolled in to Concourse B at about 4:50, and my flight out was supposed to leave from Concourse D at 5:10. There's a train that runs between, but I thought, ha! Trains are for bitches, I'll make better time on foot. I did not make better time on foot. I finally got to my gate at about 5:08--just in time to hear the gate operator announce that the flight had been cancelled for undisclosed reasons. I thought, damn, why couldn't I have been a few minutes late? Then the cancellation would have been a wondrous stroke of good fortune, rather than a total punch in the crotch. In fact, you know what? I so got there at 5:12. Thank God my flight was cancelled.

Austin was awesome. I got in around 11 Friday night expecting to meet Lizett at baggage claim or something, only instead there was just a message from her on my cell saying 'BURN!' and--get this--she left me alone at an unfamiliar airport all weekend! Haha! Oh, I had all kinds of crazy adventures, scrounging for food, stalking flight attendants, avoiding the watchful eye of Stanley Tucci. Then everyone left the theater vaguely disappointed.

So she picked me up around 11, we grabbed some beers, and then watched Arrested Development until unconsciousness overtook us. It didn't take long. Par. Ty. Animals.

Saturday was a little more active. I have like 3 more hours in this airport so prepare yourself for some excruciating detail. We went to grab breakfast at a local place famous for being rude to the customers, where we were of course greeted by a friendly staff and given prompt, courteous service by the waitress. Too bad, I had been looking forward to a brawl. I punched Lizett in the eye for good measure and we headed to the Texas State History museum, where I learned, among other things, that the Revolution was some dramatic shit. Seriously, I don't know if it was the soundtrack or what, but by the end of their informational videos I was pounding my chest screaming "ERRRRM! I LOVE YOU TEXAS!" I also got to experience the smell of sulfur up close and personal in their awesome exhibit "Find out what sulfur smells like up close and personal!" It did not smell good. But other than that it was a pretty cool museum with lots of swords and guns and things, so I enjoyed it.

After that it was off to the Drag, which is a long strip with lots of funky little businesses. I was not aware, but apparently Austin loathes any kind of chain, and everything there is local and quirky. They even have little bumper stickers that say "Keep Austin Weird." It was a glorious 80-some degrees out, so we didn't actually go into many stores, preferring just to walk and enjoy the sun. We did hit the Co-Op, the UT book store, which was pretty impressive. ND has some truly ridiculous stuff in our bookstore, but UT definitely takes the cake with the child size Hook'em Horns iron cast bed. Very wow.

We were going to hit a sports bar to catch the second half of the UT game, but we chanced across it on the radio during the drive over only to discover that the score was already 70-3. Suckaaaaaaas! It didn't seem worth it anymore to fight for a parking spot--that's the other thing about Austin, at least downtown. You can't park. At all. Instead of manufacturing thousands upon thousands of regular no parking sings, they could just fly a blimp around that says "No Parking, Bitches!" So anyway, we just headed back to catch the rest of the game at her apartment. We had missed all but some of the 4th quarter, so by the time we flipped it on the coverage consisted almost exclusively of Vince Young dancing around with a rose in his mouth. Oh, Vince!

We went to dinner at a steakhouse called Old San Francisco. Man was that place awesome. Really nice dining atmosphere, extremely good steak, live music, and what is apparently their trademark, the girl on the red velvet swing. Half of their waitresses were wearing old-timey 1800's red dresses, and one of them would periodically go up and get on this enormous swing. Lizett and I had been curious about this fabled swing, so the first time she went up I said 'Oh, baby!' much as I might say 'Oh, baby!' if someone put a bowl of peanuts in front of me. Unfortunately, our table was right by the stage, which was raised maybe 5 feet off the ground, so too late I realized I was basically looking up the skirt of a waitress who could clearly hear everything I was saying, and 'Oh, baby!' may not have been the most prudent choice of words. Oh well. Anyway, the swing was pretty cool. The ropes were maybe 30 feet long, and she just swung up further and further, doing little kicks and such, until finally she got all the way up to the ceiling where she kicked a little bell with her feet. Well...it was much, much more impressive if you saw it.

By the time we got home, I was stuffed with beer and steak and totally dozing off against my best efforts, but Lizett insisted that I absolutely must see 6th street. Lizett is wise. 6th street is totally ridiculous. Traffic is blocked off on the weekends, so there are just hordes of people roving around everywhere in search of booze. Hordes. The whole area was absolutely packed. We just had time to hit 3 of the dozens upon dozens of bars--the first a hangout type place with live music that was pretty cool, the second a sketchy lets-have-sex-on-the-dancefloor club which we fled almost immediately, and the third a huge billiards and darts place where we hung out until closing time. We were both on the verge of vomiting the entire time, not because of alcohol content, but because of the absurdly huge dinner we had eaten, but did we let that slow us down? Yes, a little! But it didn't stop us! We drank and drank and drank some more, and then my spleen exploded. After whooping some shit in darts, 2am rolled around and we headed to the main bar for a last round and watched all the drunkys stumble out. One girl in particular was attempting to descend the stairs and failing miserably as her friends looked upon with mirth, and as we mocked her amateurish behavior the bartender came up to us and said "Yeah, why do girls do that to themselves? What kind of guy finds that attractive? What's she going to do, go home and puke on his wiener?" I had two thoughts, almost simultaneously--first, gross. Really gross. Second, wiener? Seriously, did you just say wiener? She had, and I loved it.

Lots of stuff happened Sunday as well, but I'll just limit my commentary to the most awesome movie theater ever, the Alamo Draft House. You head in, sit at long Debartolo style tables, check off a little menu box, and they bring you a bucket of beer to enjoy with your movie. Glooooorious. We saw 'Just Friends', highly recommend. You read that right. The best part of the place by far was the gigantic bright red "RESTROOMS" sign placed directly outside the theater doors, pointing in the only direction you could go anyway. Man, these guys are really in tune with their clientele.

Lizett had class this morning, so I took the bus over to campus afterward to meet her for a quick bite before heading out, and thus I was introduced to the glory of the "breakfast taco." There isn't much to see in that area of campus, and it was a little nippy outside, so to kill time until the bus came we wandered around the engineering building while I shaved, pretty much explicity so the engineering students could later tell their buddies, 'Hey, I saw some weirdo shaving in the engineering building.' Shut up, it's funny to me.

Took another bus to the airport, said farewell, walked inside...got a call from Lizett. "Hey, I'm right behind you, you took my keys! Aaand there goes the bus." Haha, BURN!

Beaten By An Infant--What Could Be More Humiliating?

Every time I hear Believe by Yellowcard, I end up thinking about how awesome firemen are for like 3 hours. I hope that if I ever have to go out early, it's doing something half as sweet as rushing into a burning building, instead of something lame like falling down an open manhole or getting mauled by a raccoon. To be fair, cops are pretty sweet too, but have you ever heard of a corrupt firefighter? Not me, all I've ever heard of are burly mustachioed beastmen busting shit up with axes before totally saving someone's ass.

There were a bunch of women talking in the office this morning about flowers. "Well, Jimmy took Johnny out to buy Suzy flowers for their big date, and while he was out he got me flowers too! Can you believe it? FLOWERS!!" What's so great about flowers? You can't do anything with them. They die in like 2 days. You know what I got Kel last time I was out and thinking of her? House Season 1 on DVD and some Peeps. Tell me I am not one romantic son of a bitch!

Kel and I met with our first potential wedding photographer last night. Obviously we have nothing to compare to, but we were both pretty happy with his stuff. He's a Notre Dame employee as well and does a ton of Basilica weddings, so it might be nice to have someone who knows his way around.

I mentioned writing about the ridiculous cuteness of my nieces, but a picture is worth 1000 words, so booya--BEHOLD THEIR RADIANCE!

I've never even been around babies before these two, so my head explodes every time I see them. One awesome thing I'm finding out about babies is that everything you do around them is comedic gold. Open your mouth real wide? Hilarious. Peek out from behind a plant? Hilarious! Do a little dance? Total loss of bladder control hilarious!! Or whatever the equivalent is for babies, I guess bladder control isn't really their thing to begin with. Another thing I've learned is that babies are remarkably strong, for babies. Gwen got hold of my hair or my ear a couple times and MAN, she's got a grip. Proportionally, she's probably the strongest being on earth. If she were my size she could crush bowling balls like you or I knead pizza dough. She also clocked me in the face when she was trying to grab my dome necklace, and while I can't claim her swings are as impressively powerful as her grip, it was definitely the cutest punch in the face of all time.

Nicholas Shea

Wow. Having just seen the name Nick Lachey in writing for the first time in Lizett's blog, I am now both amused and slightly proud that all this time I had thought his name was Nicholas Shea. Awesome.

Unscrupulous Confectioners

Heading back to Columbus for Thanksgiving, I hit a really pointless traffic jam--no accident or anything, just construction taking it down to one lane. There were like 4 straight miles of warnings, so if people would have merged during any of that distance--booya, no traffic jam. Instead, virtually everyone waited until the last 5 feet so they could merge at 1 mile per hour, causing about an hour of glorious delay. Of course I did the only thing I could do: I turned up the volume and sang along to The Immaculate Collection until I was hoarse. But about midway through I noticed that the two pickup trucks behind me weren't moving anymore, they were just sitting there in the middle of the interstate--then the one in the right lane finally pulled ahead, juked to the left, and started pacing people who tried to move over into the open area. At first I thought, these guys are geniuses of comedy! Then I realized--they're just plain geniuses! They're trying to fix the traffic jam! They were trying to force people to keep to the right for a long enough distance that everyone could start merging again at normal speed and clear out the bottleneck. Holy crap! What was really amazing is that virtually everyone played along, and the left lane stayed almost totally empty in front of the stopped pickup truck until he was out of my field of vision--and indeed, people in front of me were starting to merge over. It's a Thanksgiving Eve miracle!! There were actually a few people who made it past and sped towards the merge point (SUV's, go figure), but to my extreme delight, when I got up there I saw that no one was letting them over. Suckaaaaas! Being in front of the pickup truck heroes, I don't know whether or not they were ultimately successful, but I'd like to think that they were and have since received their just karmic rewards in the form of champagne baths and sensual massage.

Columbus was a blast as usual. Violent video games, happy puppies, adorable babies, and stuffing my face nonstop. I would write about how ridiculously cute my nieces are, but I'd like to keep this entry under 50,000 words, so onto the football game.

We won. That's all I have to say about that.

Ball, Kel and I booked our flight to Phoenix last night, so if by some freak twist of fate the Irish do not get invited to the Fiesta Bowl, prepare to be punched in the face. Speaking of flights and punches in the face, I'll be heading down to Austin tomorrow to visit Lizett and experience the "glory" of Texas for the first time, where I anticipate making lots of hilarious jokes about cowboy hats and firearms. Hmmmm, hilarious should probably also be in quotes. I hear the temp is going to be up in the 80s, so I also anticipate repeatedly calling Kel and Ball in the middle of the night to mock them for being in the icy tundra.

Speaking of calls in the middle of the night--holy crap I am a master of segues--I got a frantic call at about 3:30 the other night from Kel saying that the police had just come to her door because someone had called 911 from her phone. She was asleep and alone at the time, so my immediate conclusion: the police got the wrong address. Kel's immediate and far more hilarious conclusion: a ghost dialed 911. It turns out we were both wrong--she called SBC, and they told her "Yeah, when there's a problem with the line it's set to automatically dial 911." What? Seriously? I mean, I know when I started having problems with my cell, I immediately called 911, but I'm just crazy that way. "Help!" I screamed to the operator "There's something wrong with my phone service!" Meanwhile an 86 year old man died of a heart attack. Anyway, the important thing is that all evidence continues to point to Kel's condo being ghost-free.

I have to do Christmas shopping soon. What should I get Kel?