2) In the event that I haven’t told you yet, if you rside in any of the following places: Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Ithaca, Philadelphia, Toronto, Tennessee, Chicago, Maryland, Delaware, or will be there in May/June/July, keep your eyes peeled. Because I will be too. More on that coming soon.
3) In the event that you read my post about Christmas in March, and you have yet to receive anything from me in the mail, don’t be dissapointed (or if you were me, feel like you’re off the hook), I just sent out some packages, and have a bundle of a few more to send out early next week.
Tonight I learned a very valuable lesson. You can not live your life regretting actions you took in the past. Obviously I can’t say this as some global principal that everyone should live by, since I’ve never killed anyone (who didn’t deserve it) or anything like that where I might find living life with an ever-present regret a reasonable way to live life. But for the most part, we can’t regret what we did, or in this case, what we didn’t.
Tonight I learned that I’ve been living a lie. Our story begins when I was just a wee little tot back in the red brick house off of Springfield Avenue in Essex County New Jersey. It was the same hood that Lauryn Hill and Queen Latifah called home just a decade or two before I. It was the first time I lived in the Continental United States, my first residency in any of the 50 states, and it was a year or two before my life really jumped off (in which I rode the crazy train to Tokyo). It was also the home in which my brother and I received our first video game console.
A shared Christmas present sponsored by a consortium/joint-venture between Mr. and Mrs. Baumer and Mr. and Mrs. Claus, a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was bestowed upon us. It was more than just the best present we had ever gotten (and ever would get), it would set the tone for what would be the rest of my life. I write you now, nearly twenty years later, a proud owner of both an Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. That NES helped sculpt me into the fine citizen that I am today (fuck all of you ‘video games make children violent’ idiots, I’ll kill you and steal your car).
At the time, that console was bundled with a game cartridge that had both the original Super Mario Bros. on it as well as the Duck Hunt shooting game (with light pistol included). Also not to beat a dead anti-video game horse while it’s down, but to this day I’ve never eaten mushrooms that have made me feel larger than myself, nor have I indulged in ever firing a gun. I have lived in countries where both are perfectly legal, and am regularly handed coupons to firing ranges here in Hawaii. So there’s Exhibit your an Asshole. But that’s besides the point. The point is, many many many hours were spent on that NES machine with my brother.
We played Duck Hunt quite a bit. Each waiting our turn to hunt those purple and blue faced ducks out of the single hue blue sky in hopes of seeing the giggle puppy come up full-handed and sans his giggles. Never, never, never, did it occur to us that the game was two players. Tonight, while quickly catching up on some bookmarked threads in some forums that I frequent, I see a quick note about how Duck Hunt was in fact two players and my brain left my head (by way of my ears).
Destroyer Of Worlds
That’s right folks. You could control the fucking ducks. I hope your mind is blown as much as mine was. So there/here I stood (I was actually sitting), uncertain of how I should react. Should I pine for those years back in which me and my brother could have taken the helm and directed the ducks out of each others scopes which would have resulted in us both being much better shooters? Would that extra challenge have laid the foundation to make my brother an even better Buck Hunter than he grew up to be? (That’s right it says: “Baumer is one of the most lethal shots on the East Side”). Had we known, could that have been ‘the most lethal shots on all of Manhattan’ or perhaps ‘the world’?
We’ll never know. And I’m fine with that. Well maybe not tonight, but tomorrow I’ll be fine with that. Well maybe not tomorrow either, but someday soon I’m sure I’ll be fine with the fact that I never knew until almost twenty-six years of age that Duck Hunt was two players and that you could control the ducks. Today I learned that one day I’ll let go of the past. Until then, I’ll just let go of the pants.
Becky: is it economic times that keep you from posting on sans your pants???
I wish I could pawn this one off on the economy, alas I can’t. There have been no budget cuts, no layoffs, no greedy fat cats keeping their large slice of the pie here at sansyourpants. The only thing I’m guilty of is mismanagement of time. Without a Board to keep my priorities straight for me, I’m just a wandering pantsless man.
That being said, I have a few posts coming down the pike/pipeline that you can get excited about. I can’t give you too many details since the competition is fierce in my line of work, and because I haven’t thought of the posts yet so any details would be both a lie and would lock me into what I’ll be writing about. Hopefully you have all been too busy and unemployed to pay your internet bills to be able to read this anyways.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to see a man about a horse.
It’s 2009 for those of you who haven’t been keeping track of time, and I am in Hawaii for those of you who haven’t been keeping track of space. After a few days of reflecting on what my first post of the new year should be about, I found it only appropriate that the post be centered around what it is that moved me to first begin this blog 81 posts ago. In the last few weeks, I’ve been up to a quite a lot, and it doesn’t look like things are going to change anytime in the near future. I’ve gotten to hop over to Maui twice, both times to visit some of the oldest (in terms of how long I’ve known them, not their ages) friends that I still keep in touch with. My brother came out for a visit, and left last night to head back to the misery that is winter time in Manhattan. My cousin came out for a visit, and left today to head back to her South Carolinian college experience. Great times were had by all.
What is just as exciting as all of that, is what is yet to come (some of which will be happening, or is already happening, in 2009). Just a taste:
It’s kind of amazing that so much good is happening at a time where life for so many is so shitty. I am certain you can chalk it up to ambition and perseverance. None of these things are going to just happen to these people, and none of these people are just sitting back watching these things happen to them. My friends get shit done, and my friends care about what shit they get done. That is why they are my friends. It is what draws me to them, and I’m guessing, them to me. So what do I have to offer them in 2009? It’s yet to be determined, but stay tuned, and stay pants-less.
P.S. If I forgot anything that any of you would like to share, or to have on my blogdar (borrowed from the gays and modified for the ‘blog’ frequency), please share in the comments. (I can say this with confidence because I know you wont).
I upgraded the Wordpress platform that SYP runs on to the latest version 2.7 (from 2.6.5). What that means to me, is a shiney new backend interface, and an integrated upgrading tool for future point and point point releases. What that means to you, is that the song name no longer shows up in the audio player. Maybe one day I’ll figure out how to fix it so that you can see the song names again. In the mean time, the artist/song are ususally the last two Tags in the list of Tags at the conclusion of each post. In the mean time, somebody tell this guy to eat his pants.
SB: dude – pull your pants up
SB: to date
SB: by which
SB: i mean
SB: catch up on your blogging
SB: snotface
SYP: haha
SYP: ugh
SYP: i will
SYP: i have nothing to write about
SYP: my mind has been blank for a while
SYP: like
SYP: i just sleep all day
SYP: do work
SYP: and eat a lot
SYP: inspire me
SYP: maybe i’ll start posting your posts
SB: maybe you should do a post on love
SB: that’s what i’m working on now
SB: fucking love
SYP: really?
SYP: i dont wanna post on love
SYP: i am the absence of love
SYP: my very essence is defined by its non-existence in my life
SB: absence of love?
SB: you are like the nexus of love
SB: you’re just too stupid to admit it
SYP: you are like the Lexus of love
SYP: a smooth ride
SYP: but overpriced
On Saturday, I hadn’t spoken to Matt in over a week, which given the thousands of miles between us and our vastly different lives, was no surprise. Up until November 10 (Saturday), our most recent conversation had been the exchange of 3 text messages on October 28 at 2:54PM, which went a little something (actually exactly) like this:
Me: Saw Juliette in my new hood, and Dog in my old.
Matt: OMG bone both.
Me: Slowly but surely. Don’t call me Shirley.
The Juliette refers to the character in LOST, and Dog refers to the bounty hunter. A pretty normal exchange of texts for Matt and I, short but sweet. Just enough to say “We may be separated by an ocean, but we still share common loves: chicks from awesome television shows and old white-trash racists with long hair” that and “I’m still an idiot, are you?”
Matt’s a pretty funny guy, and me, I’m hilarious. On November 8, 2008 at 1:31PM I received this text from him, which to date is the most amazing text message he has ever sent me.
Matt: My grandmother just ate dinner sitting in your ball sweat desk chair.
To any random reader, that may sound disgusting. Let me assure you, it is. But that’s okay, because it’s Green.
You see, the desk chair that Matt is referring to has been in his possession ever since my graduation from the institution of higher education known as Ithaca College, in the spring of 2005. At the time, there were four of us living in an off-campus apartment complex. When we all left, we packed up our cars with whatever could fit, to make our respective journeys home. For me, multiple trips was somewhat out of the question since it was a four-hour drive, and most of my stuff could fit in just one ride. What this meant, was that there would be sacrifices, and that the last one to move out had the option to take any of the remaining items he wanted. One of which was my infamous desk chair.
Anyone who knows me, knows that I spend large portions of the day (read: the entire day) in my desk chair. Many of my days consist of moving from my bed, to my chair (by way of the toilet), and then back to my bed (a few trips to the kitchen/toilet sprinkled in…I use the word toilet because it’s the only part of the bathroom that these visits include). Over time, like any fine wine or sharp cheese that has been aged to perfection, my desk chair (especially ones furnished with some sort of cloth material) evolves into a sweaty desk chair.
Since I spend so much time in my desk chair, they are usually very comfortable and somewhat expensive. Of the items remaining in the house after my departure, I daresay it was the nicest freebie to be found. Matt cleverly found a way to Febreze the shit out of the chair to de-Simonize it, and make it a suitable piece of furniture for his room at home. Then three years later, his grandmother ate dinner sitting in that very chair.
There you have it, what didn’t make the material possessions cut in my life was gladly accepted and utilized by another. Like today I spent two hours working on repairing an old lawnmower that my new neighbor picked up off the curb a few months ago. I didn’t really think we’d get it running, but sure enough, we did. Now someone else’s trash will save me one or two hundred bucks, and Shiraki has one less piece of junk on his property. Take off your pants and give them away, reduce, reuse, de-pants.
Many of you found the first installation of my War On Junk Mail interesting, and have already begun deploying your CCO return troops. I wish you the best of luck, and look forward to reports of your progress (slow but steady wins the race). I had a long, step-by-step Part 2 planned out for you in my mind grapes, but after a quick conversation with my friend Becky, I learned that such a post would be moot.
The focus of Part 2 is Catalogs. Yes, people still order from them. No you don’t, because you are reading this on the Internet, which is the best catalog ever invented. I saw a woman celebrating her 104th birthday tonight, and I’m fairly certain she gets at least 3 catalogs in the mail every day (she was born before paper was invented). You don’t want to be 104 with 3 catalogs in your mailbox every day, so you are gonna act now, and take a stance against this injustice. You are gonna save ink, and trees, and companies money that they are wasting. It’s gonna feel good. It’s gonna feel so good that when you are done, you are going to sign-up to receive all the catalogs in the world, so you get to purge all over again.
My old (and proven to work) method involved tearing off the cover/back-cover of every catalog that you got in the mail (that you did not want to receive) so that you had the area where your name/address was printed on it. You let this stack gather over a week or so, and then bring them all into work with you on a Friday (because let’s be honest, who gets anything useful done on Friday’s anyway). You then spend an hour or so of your Friday at work, visiting the websites of each of those catalogs, and finding their e-mail address for their mailing or customer service departments and pasting your cookie-cutter “This is my name, address, and the funky alphanumeric codes that appear on the catalogs you send me. Please remove me from your mailing list AS WELL AS any lists you share with other companies.” They would then write you back in a day or three saying “We have removed you from our future mailings, please allow 6-8 weeks for the mail to stop coming because our labels are printed light-years in advance.”
Time-consuming, yes. Rewarding, yes. Sometimes a bit of a pain when companies hide their email addresses, yes. But luckily, I have an easier solution for you: Catalog Choice. It’s such a good idea, you would have an easy time convincing me that I came up with it. Since my success came form the good-old-fashioned method, I can’t speak to it’s efficacy, but if their numbers are true, and Becky wasn’t lying to me, this site will do wonders in helping you maintain your catalog diet.
A new you, a you sans credit card offers, a you sans catalogs, and a you sans pants.
First of all the only numbers that should be included in a Top # list are 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100. Call me old fashioned (or just not a moron) but anything other then those numbers only contributes to invalidate your claim that they are the ‘top’ in their given field.
Second of all, finding every single reason, or application, or ridiculous announcer you can possibly think of and then including them on your ‘top’ list is stupid. It just makes it an ‘exhaustive’ list, not a ‘top’ list (as no one was left off). A list of the Top 100 U.S. Senators (currently seated) would list every single Senator. How helpful would that be? It’s a rhetorical question, it’s not helpful at all.
Third of all, you’re an idiot. I know you are trying to be helpful so when some Internet reader is thinking to themselves “oh man, I really need a list of The Top 98 Ways To Order A Pizza” they will find your little nugget of a list and thus finally be at peace, but you are not helping. Everyone knows there is only one way to order a pizza. Everyone also knows that there is no need to regain your dignity when caught with your pants down, so take your 7 ways and shove ‘em.
Craigslist is always a comedy goldmine. If you don’t regularly check out your local Craigslist personals section, I guarantee you you’ll have some serious laughs in under 5 minutes. If for some reason your local area does not deliver, then check out the Hawaii personals. Since I’m a maths guy, one recent post that really created a cackle was this:
You Can Never Have Too Many Friends
Take note of both her age (in the title of the post), and how long she has been out of ‘the dating scene’. Unless she considers breast feeding with her mother part of the ‘dating scene’, then clearly she didn’t proofread her post. If she did proofread her post, and she counts that action, then she’s posting in the wrong section of the personals anyway (that’s what w4w is for hun).
Another place that never fails to deliver some joy is the infamous Facebook ads. Unlike a Craigslist personal ad, these cost money, so you’d think some proofreading would go into it, especially when the ad only has twenty-five words in it.
The IRS can due what ever they want!
And finally, this ad, for this shirt was right up my no pants alley:
