Full Metal Jacket

If you've never seen Stanley Kubrick's epic Vietnam War film Full Metal Jacket, I can sum up the only 2 parts you NEED to see. Not HAVE to see, because the rest of the movie is good too. There's a lot of cool parts that would make what I call my "quote realm" (like when the guy is shooting people from the helicopter, and Joker goes "How can you shoot innocent women and children", and he says "Easy. You just don't lead them as much!" or when the black guy is caught in the crossfire and the sniper just keeps shooting him, or anytime they say the name "Animal Mother")...

But the 2 parts of the movie you NEED to see are 1) the first 30 minutes or so when they're all in boot camp, and 2)the part where the prostitute is saying "Me so horny! Me love you long time. Boom boom, fifteen dollah!" The boot camp part ends with Private Pyle blowing his brains all over the back of the toilet, and the prostitute part is right after that.

Soon as that happens, you can really just change the channel unless you feel like really dedicating your time to this movie. It's good. You won't be wasting your time. But you'll say to yourself "You know, it all sort of went downhill after the guy stole that other dudes camera..."

That is all.

Piss Like A Racehorse

Minutes ago, I walked through the office and mentioned to someone that I had to "piss like a racehorse." While I was performing said act, of course my mind started to wander and I started to think about this term. I've seen a few horseraces, and never have I seen them urinating. This must occur prior to the television coverage of these events. It must be an extraordinary event, if it garnered enough attention at some point to make it into everyday common speak. Perhaps the animals pee with such force that it lifts the horse from the ground, possibly damaging the track that it will later run upon. I suppose though that if this were the case, then everyone would know exactly what "pissing like a racehorse" meant, as it would likely make the animal unsuitable for racing in any manner. But if ever there were a horserace and one of the horses was constantly pissing while participating in the race, I bet you'd hear the crowd exclaim a group "OOOOOOH. Oh, so that what that means. Ok. I get it now."


Ok, I suppose that is enough of this.

Don Cheadle, Punnet Squares, and the Best Answer Ever!

Sunday nights are always a bitch for me. I always sleep in on Sunday mornings, thus making Sunday night doubly hard to go to sleep. I just lay there, staring at the red LED glow of my alarm clock; it's beady demonic form laughing at me. As sleep is fleeting, an odd lucidity kind of creeps up on me. It's not peaceful. It's just an uncomfortable state where the mind wanders. It's like I'm right outside the REM sleep bubble, where you can still kind of formulate this dream state but not quite. Last night, three recurring subjects kept swimming around in my head. The actor Don Cheadle. The rapper Q-Tip (from A Tribe Called Quest) and the song "Without You" by Motley Crue. I'm pretty sure that my hell would be me and the both of them in a room cranking that song 24-7. Imagine that for a second.
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Me and Aimee were eating the other night and we were talking about eye color. I remember from one of my Biology classes the art of the Punnet square, the little tic-tac-toe shaped grid that you use to map dominant and recessive genes. We were wondering what color our kids eyes would be. My eyes are brown and hers are blue... I was telling her I believe the male eye color is dominant, as sexist as the gene pool could be. She said "what color were your grandfather's eyes?". I said "Which grandfather?" She said "Your mom's dad." I said "They were red. Like the Terminator's. He would always come into the room and say "COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE!"
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I just thought about this one too, from a dinner me and Aimee were having. She said "What are you thinking about?" and I said "Growing a mustache." I remember noting in my head that I would need to put that in a blog so that the memory of that answer would be forever engraved in something.

Life Is __________

Yesterday I was on my way to NGT to do some inventory crap, etc.. It was about 10am on a regular old Sunday morning. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt with my AC on, kind of finding it hard to believe that 3 days prior I was throwing snowballs in my back yard, but I guess that's about typical for South Loozianne. Anyways, I was behind a jeep on Highland Road, just coming onto campus near the south gates. It had a spare tire mounted on the back of the vehicle, with a tire cover that read "Life Is Good". That got me to thinking.
What if you were a state trooper out responding to a horrible accident, and you came across this jeep stuck in the woods, smashed into a tree with everyone inside of it all mangled and deceased? I could see the trooper looking at the tire cover, seeing the irony.

Life is Good.

Life WAS Good.

What if someone inside of it is all handicapped after the wreck. Then I suppose he'd need one that read "Life USED TO BE good, back when I could walk."
So just think about putting bumper stickers or other presumptuous tags on your car before you do it. You never know when you'll need to amend it, you know?

Love-Opedia!

Wikipedia is an obsession on so many levels. Two things I was wondering about today was:

1. The Death Of Karen Carpenter.
2. Why Peter Cetera loathes Chicago so much.

I didn't find out enough information on either of these subjects. But I did find some interesting nuggets. Peter Cetera is an asshole (which I always kind of suspected), and Karen and Richard Carpenter bought 2 apartment buildings in California and named each after some of their songs. "Only Just Begun" is one and "Close To You" is the other. The weird thing is that the names of the buildings are written on them, and you can still see them with Google Streetview.

Wikipedia searches of the day---> "Karen Carpenter" and "Chicago (Band)". Look them up right now. You'll be glad you did.

Dr. Hale vs. Horseman

My first semester in college at the most esteemed Southeastern Louisiana University, I took a class entitled Criminal Justice 101. It was taught by Dr. Bob Hale, quite an interesting fellow, whom was constantly reminiscing of the fights he would get into with his neighbor in his hometown of Louisville, KY. He never disclosed to us what the guy's first name was. Only that his last name was "Horseman" (pronounced hoarsemin) and how he absolutely wanted to kill this man. He spoke in class one day (of well over 100 people) about how he wanted to beat him to death with a shovel. I'll never forget that. A shovel beating topic in Criminal Justice class, spoken softly and eloquently in a Kentucky southern drawl. On one of the tests Dr. Hale gave, one of the questions was how the best way to kill this man was. Multiple choice...and one of the choices was to bury him up to his head and run over him with a lawnmower.
I never missed this class. It was like a wildcard. You never knew what to expect. One day we might be discussing the importance of Robert Merton or Caesar Lambrusco, the next we'd be talking about how one day Dr. Hale almost picked up an Easton baseball bat and went next door to bludgeon Horseman to death. You know, in hindsight, we probably should have notified the administration but who would want to mess this up? One of the coolest things about him was that he never gave final or midterm exams. He'd say "You know, they tell us here that we HAVE to give a midterm and final. But nobody says anything about you having to TAKE it. So next Friday at 7:30, I'll be here with your exam. But taking it is completely up to you. No extra points will come your way from it, because I'm not going to grade it and it will be thrown away as soon as class is over." I really should have gone to the final just to see what it was about but the thrill of youth and the opportunity to get shitfaced the previous night was likely far too overwhelming.
I took him for 101 and CJ 102 and he was my advisor for my first year in school. Back then, you had to get your schedule request approved before you could schedule. He had an office on the third floor of this building and I went up to talk to him to get approval. His office was probably about 4' X 4' with just a desk, a Pink Floyd poster, and not much else. When I went to speak with him, he had the lights off and just had a little desk lamp illuminating the tiny little room. I introduced myself to him, and told him how much I enjoyed his 101 class. He said "Everybody likes that class."
A few semesters later, people were talking about how fucked up he was getting so I scheduled a 300 level class (only about 20 people, far smaller than the intro level stuff) he taught. The class was entitled "Deviance" so I was thinking this could be one of the most fucked up things I'd ever get to see. I was right. Dr. Hale would teach this like he hated it. He'd just go through the outline and ask people questions, then he'd sit in the desk chair and not say much. We were like "What the fuck is going on with this guy" but sort of accepted that this is what happened as you advanced in the CJ curriculum. One day we went to class and he never showed up. All hour. No Dr. Hale. The next class, we walked in and there was a different guy in there. We all sat down and he explained that Dr. Hale had tried to kill himself and that he'd be gone for a few weeks. I was like "holy fucking shit!" If I remember correctly, class was canceled for about a week and then we came in expecting to see Dr. Hale, but there was this guy who wore a suit and a black wool trenchcoat, all asshole like. He was like "Sit down, everyone. It's time for class." The guy was a retired NOPD detective, which some of the nuts who were in this class thought was the greatest thing ever. I was like "So when is Dr. Hale coming back?" but Dr. Hale wasn't coming back.
I transferred to LSU after my sophomore year. Shortly after the semester began, I'd gotten word that Dr. Hale had killed himself although everyone I'd talked to pretty much expected that from attempt number 1. I called either Mac or Dustin (whom were both still going to school there but i can't remember which) and pleaded with them to bring me a copy of the Lions Roar to see the expose. I felt a little robbed that the world I lived in now lacked Dr. Bob Hale. Ok, that sounds all like he was my mentor or something but he really wasn't. It was just a weird feeling. You don't expect your teachers to commit suicide. That's what students with emo hangups do (cue the bathtub scene in The Rules of Attraction). I remember reading he had an infant son named David when I read the article. That kid has to be about 10 now, and he's probably headed for an insane future. I was sitting at me, Mac, and Dustin's apartment reading it, and if my life was like a tv show, this would be the end of an epidode. I looked up at Dustin and said "Wow. So the guy finally did it. I wonder... I wonder if he got Horseman first."

Dustin laughs.

Roll Credits.

3-2-1 Contact

I wonder what happened to the cat who was in the 3-2-1 Contact intro... He seemed nice. I hope he had a nice life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7S537b7saE

He's at the 0:48 second mark.