Who do I still think I am??

This one's about a big day that's better than yours.

30DBC PROMPT: "Create a ridiculous holiday to celebrate. You can use your holiday to rant about holidays in general, or go the opposite direction and create a silly holiday for something that you can't live without."

Happy weekend y'all! I wasn't even gonna write today...for many reasons. For starters, I totally had intentions of creating a new entry last night...but I didn't. That's generally how things tend to not end up working around here. The real story is that I allowed myself to get sucked into reading/reviewing some of the newbies on WDC, and came across a few items I really enjoyed. And today...today was a complete waste of time. I was fine when I woke up, and then I got these weird pains in my back, which made doing anything (go ahead...let your imaginations loose on that visual) damn near impossible. Couldn't walk, couldn't lay down, and couldn't do all of the things people do that fall under the category of "in-between". And I know what's gonna happen...my mom and some of my close friends will probably read this and message me about whether or not I've made that doctor's appointment I've been putting off for so long, which sounded like a really smart idea while I was wondering if I should go to the emergency room and how long I'd be in the hospital for if they told me I was leaving minus a kidney. And ya know what else is gonna happen? Come Monday when the doctor's office opens, I'll be feeling fine and will have completely forgotten that I spent most of this afternoon writhing and pacing in pain. That's life.

But enough about me...let's talk more about me, shall we? In the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS" , the challengers have been tasked with, well, y'all can read the prompt up there. I italicized it and everything. And when I see prompts that include the words "ridiculous" and "rant", I get a little excited. It's like the prompt War Chest has my name engraved on it or something.

Now, where do I begin?

Well, I thought about reacting to how much this entire story absolutely sickens me: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/sapp-claims-incognito-called-n-word-g.... No matter how uncontrollable I can be at times, or no matter how much I occasionally make the wrong joke at an inappropriate time, there's something absolutely wrong with a white guy using the "n-word". And there's something just as wrong with anyone, but especially, black men calling a white man an "honorary (n-word)". So I'm saying that for me to insinuate that we celebrate an "Honorary Black History Month For White People" is insensitive and line-crossing, even for my tastes.

Moving on then...

This prompt is harder than it looks, because you can't really escape the fact that there's pretty much a day that celebrates everything in some capacity. National Hot Dog Day. National Take Your Kid To Work Day. The <insert your nationality here> Pride Parade. Hockey has its own day even. There's no WDC emoticon, so you'd probably never know, but yup, "Hockey Day In America" is a real thing. You're more than capable of looking that up on your own. I hear Google's a good place to start.

So what's left for me to make a scene of celebrate? Tacos are out, because damn near every restaurant that isn't named Taco Bell that sells tacos has a "Taco Tuesday". I'm not egotistical enough to think my birthday should be some kind of national cause of rampant glee and overindulgence (although in my mid- to late-twenties, you'd never have known that). I can't live without my radio (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdkamS5axHQ), my Adidas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xXhPAud1io), or livin' if it's without you (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1_ZukxEpfs), but none of that's exactly holiday-worthy.

What's a guy to do? No pants day? That exists. National Punch Day? Apparently, no one's been brave enough to admit that this is something people partake in, be it of the juice or fisticuffs variety. Even National Nothing Day is a thing. We could just have an entire month where we don't officially celebrate anything...oh wait, that's August.

I've got it. National Turtleneck And Chain Day! We all dress up like weird-looking hipsters wearing turtlenecks and cheap gold chains, singing this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAYL5H46QnQ and randomly throwing things just to see them break. Happy Birthday to the ground! You can't trust the system!

Book it. I expect a Hallmark card for whenever this day is made a into a money-grubbing full-fledged day of acting upon the notions of how awesome life is.

BCF PROMPT: "How do you handle the conversation topper? You know the person that has always done what you have but it is always more, like you've been to Paris for a weekend, she or he has been there for a week. The person may have endearing qualities but.... "

And, this is why I hate having conversations with people in real life. Not because of this person, but because I don't wanna come off sounding like that person. I've done some pretty crazy things and had some amazing experiences, but you don't need some guy blogging from his bed in the middle of Nowhere, NY telling you that you don't want to be engaging someone who: 1) can do something better than you; 2) has a friend that knows more than you; or 3) is bat-shit insane enough to physically prove #1 and/or #2. Trust me...I've got the scars as evidence.

Navigating conversation with these gifted individuals is tricky. Normally, with a personal of reasonable character you can subtly redirect the topic. But the one-upper? Not so much. If at all possible, you have to cause a diversion that doesn't make you look like the ass bad guy. This works best in parties, crowded rooms, or anywhere else you might be where you can excuse yourself and pass this problem child off to someone else exit the scene. If you're on the phone with them, I'll bet you within sixty seconds you can find no less than five ways to mimic a disturbance that requires immediate attention, ensuring you'll call that person back as soon as you can (which is about long enough for you to forget they're a topper)...you probably couldn't name five ways in an hour if I asked you, but I swear there's a sixth sense that everyone has that starts going off in your head when you're in this situation. "I'll call you back, friend...my eyes are on fire!" "Can you hold on a minute, mate...I think Miley Cyrus is having a seizure." (No wait, don't use that one...I think the kids call that "twerking" these days.) "I hate to cut you short, jerk off, but clearly you're at a Bullshit Party and didn't care to include me until now, which is obviously very last-minute of you and in poor taste. TTYL!" See how easy that was?

But ducking out of the in-person, one-on-one scenario is one of those things where it's hard to master, but all the more gratifying. It's probably the best situation I can think of that it pays to be tactful the most. I suggest feigning an injury. I worked in a sporting goods store once where we would amuse ourselves during downtime with acts of foolishness attention-diverting behavior we used to call "A Slippery". Pretending to read something while walking into a bench and tripping? Knocking down an entire display of boxed basketballs, ensuring at least another half-hour's worth of work just to restack them away from a chatterbox? Standing on a ladder trying to hang a sign and falling into a few racks of ski jackets (unharmed, of course)? These are all valuable and proven techniques of knocking the idiot who won't shut up off their pathetic little soap box.

Feel free to take notes on this and adapt them to your own personal life's situations. You'll thank me for it later.

MUSICAL BREAK!!

On this very day in history, Wu-Tang Clan's Enter The 36 Chambers came out 20 years ago. There's a fascinating article about the members on Grantland: http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/92046/enter-the-wu-.... An oral history with a behind-the-scenes look at what was going on during the making of that album can also be found here: http://www.spin.com/articles/wu-tang-clan-enter-the-wu-tang-36-chambers-oral-his.... It may not be the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band of my generation, but I'd be lying if I said this cd didn't have some affect on me.

THE DAILY BOX SCORE:

Raise your hand if you've ever heard me complain about trying to write a blog entry from Blackberry Central and how much of a pain in the ass that was. Lucky you! Well, it seems I've stumbled on the one thing that could possibly be worse than that (speaking in context)...doing this without a mouse. The batteries in my wireless mouse died yesterday, and I'd forgotten to stock up on AAA's, because you never really plan for things like that to happen when everything's working (see my opening paragraph today about not feeling well as an example). Then I remembered I had a pair of AAA's from an old voice recorder of mine I came across that were unused...sealed nicely in the plastic they came in inside the unit's box. They didn't work when I popped them in, because I got the damn voice recorder somewhere between 12 and 15 years ago.... Go me. And for some reason, everything else I own that takes batteries requires AA, not AAA...so I couldn't just scrounge around and pirate them from another device. So I'm doing this mouseless. And it sucks because of my absolute hatred for touch-anything when it comes to electronics, including the ones laptops have. I've probably reached over twenty times while typing this for a mouse that's not working, like I'm trying to scratch an itch with a phantom limb or something. And going to the store for replacements isn't in the budget until next weekend, and seeing how tired my wrist is already from weird copy/paste movements it's not used to, I'll probably have one arm that looks like Popeye's by then. Which reminds me...

I've fallen into this trap with my personal (non-WDC) email where if I have more than a certain amount of messages, I give up as if I can't control them anymore and refuse to even try going over to Hotmail to check them. I'm not sure what the actual threshold is, and my spam filter is excellent, but there's just too many. Maybe if I disable the live Outlook tile on Windows 8 I'll know there's not over 100 new messages, and I'll go back to systematically checking them more frequently. I bring this up because sometimes I get emails from CVS offering me $3 off most items, and that would come in handy with a purchase of new batteries. I swear I'm not lazy as much as I'm unmotivated.

Another reason for not feeling like writing today? There's a Notre Dame game that started...oh...45 minutes ago. I knew I'd be taking awhile to toss this entry up, but I didn't think I'd miss this much of the game. Looks like I need to speed this thing up.

Or shut it down completely. Sounds like a plan. Besides, I'm gettin' kinda hungry finally as well. Peace, I did that once too, only...GOODNIGHT NOW!!