Girls and social network pictures

I have been realizing something over the last few months... girls tend to change their Twitter picture a lot more often than guys do. In fact, there are a handful of girls that I notice have a different picture on there every week. So why do they do this?

Some girls tell me that they don't need explanation for what they do... that most of what women do is unexplainable and not worth trying to figure out. I agree with that in some aspects, but I'm stepping out of the ignorant circle for this question, because I have a few ideas of how to answer this question.

My first answer involves girls and their natural self-consciousness. Girls have a really weird relationship with pictures of themselves. They see the picture different than anybody else in the world. There are so many ways for a self-picture to be bad, and so few ways for a self-picture to be good. It's like a puzzle... if the smallest piece is in the wrong place, the whole thing looks like shit. Knowing this, it's obvious how serious a big of an ordeal it must be for a girl to arrive at the picture of herself that she wants to use for her twitter picture, which the entire world will undoubtably see. Said girl's entire being will be judged on this picture, so she has to get it exactly right. That doesn't really answer the original question though... I'm just assuming that all girls arrive at a picture that they like, so why do they change it so quick?

Well my answer for that specific question is more complicated... and by complicated I mean probably wrong. I think girls get sick of looking at the same picture of themselves. It's like a really talented 6th graders painting. It looks good and impressive at first, but the more you look at it the more problems you see and the uglier it gets. That's a horrible comparison, but I hadn't had a comparison in the first three paragraphs so I had to throw a desperation one in there. It's just a fact, girls are so particular about appearance, things that only they can possible notice about themselves, that they can't stand to look at the same picture of themselves for more than a week or so. Humans get uglier as they age... it's the truth, but pictures don't. Do girls not realize that? Pictures don't age... especially now that it's 2012 and pictures are digital mainly. Those things can't get torn or fade. They'll be the same forever, you don't get uglier on a screen.

Most of my traffic on this blog comes from males, so I shouldn't have too much resistance coming from my inaccurate reasoning, but if you are a girl and you disagree with me... you can approach me kindly about it, I respond well to politeness.

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Spillin It

So I haven't been on here for a couple weeks, mainly because of the new blog venture I started up called The Pittsburgh Pierogi, but I'm back on here at least for tonight, because I have some real shit to say.

This post probably won't be very funny, but that's okay because contrary to what I actually believe, not everything in life should be something you can laugh at. I have a pretty effed up view of things anyways.

Let me also tell you that blogspot is so much simpler and faster than wordpress. Let's learn a lesson from Wordpress. If you try to complicate everything and add the best features to everything, you're going to end up with a shitty, slow, annoying product. Keep your life simple, let people do their own thing, and try to keep stuff running smoothly and quickly.

My first topic is once again about relationships. When you're in high school or college, you learn that the majority of the relationships that are around you are going to eventually fail. Why is that? See, I had an answer for it last week when I thought about writing this paragraph, but I didn't do it and now I've kind of forgotten what I had to say. Basically I just think it's because of the natural selfishness of humans, and the natural desire for quick satisfaction.

To me, I define a "bad thing" as something that makes you feel good in the short-term and bad in the long-term. The opposite is also true. A "good thing" is something that makes you feel bad (well, uncomfortable is a better word) in the short-term, and good in the long-term. Just think about it.

You know the easiest way to keep yourself from missing something? Just make sure you never have it. These last two paragraphs have been pointing at something without identifying it, it's up to you to identify it. If you know me or are intelligent, I'm sure you know what it is.

The next topic at hand is something that my tennis coach and I talked about today. He described it really well in two words and I knew I should have written it down, but I didn't, and now I don't remember what the hell he said. Always write stuff down. Especially if you have a horrible memory like me. Hard drugs give you a really bad memory. Those are separate thoughts, I don't do drugs. Punctuation and paragraph structure are critical.

Anyways, in worse words than the wise words of Ronald Christman, I'm talking about additional contribution. Lots of people can do a basic job, but not everyone can do a basic job and add significantly onto that basic job to make it better. Anyone can get through school and have a good GPA, but not everyone can get through school, have a good GPA, and do something else completely separate that makes them more attractive as a contributing person. A lot of what I'm saying is natural and involves personality and intelligence, which not anybody can just add in a year or two. I'm not here to tell people to work hard and go the extra mile, because those aren't things I've done in my lifetime. I'm not the brightest computer scientist in the bunch, but I know how to deal with people and I've spent enough time reading and learning about people to understand what it takes to get what I want. Do that. Don't be some robot that can do a job, be an untypical person that can do a job while adding other benefits for the people you're doing the job for.

This blog post has been brought to you by Jack Daniels and Coca-Cola. I am 22 years old. Peace.

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The Five Types of Tweets

I've been on Twitter for a few years now, and far too much of my brain power goes into it. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know how frustrated and worked up I can get with the way people use Twitter. The fact is that not everyone acts how I want them to, which isn't wrong. In fact, the world is probably better that way. Not probably, definitely.

Anyways, in this post I will attempt to classify all types of tweets into FIVE TWEET TYPES (TT's). It's up to you to determine if that's a boob reference.

TT #1 - Status Updates: These are probably the most common types of tweets. Anything from "it's so cold in my bedroom" to "going out for the night to forget about how sucky my life is" to the classic and incredibly frustrating "#sadtweet" or #happytweet". These less than 1-140 character gems basically come from a lack of creativity, or a lack of having anything else to say. People like to tweet, but most of the time they don't have anything interesting to say, so they just go ahead and pretend that they're a celebrity which would mean that everyone cares about their current mood or what they're doing. While sometimes interesting and sometimes helpful, the vast majority of TT #1's are a simple waste of Mike Twitter's server space.

TT #2 - Attention Tweets: I've boiled this down into two subtypes. Subtype #1 involves the complaining and ranting tweets. That's the kind when something bad happens so the person decides that their problem is everyone else's problem and goes on a rant about how they're right and the other party is wrong, or how it's not fair that someone else got selected for cheerleading captain instead of them. Any twitcomplaint you see about hating being in class will fall into this subtype. Basically any time someone does something that the given person would have done differently, we are all subject to that person tweeting incessantly about it, all the while exaggerating every part of said story and trying to justify their completely unnecessary complaining. Subtype #2 is more refined complaining, this time more about not being able to get something that a person wants. Most of the time this deals with relationships. When a boy likes a girl but the girl doesn't like him because his whole life is comprised in these first two types of TT's. It can also have to do with grades, jobs, and many other things. These tweeters are somehow convinced that tweeting about not getting want they want will somehow make that thing they want become achievable, while it almost always does quite the opposite.

TT #3 - Family/Friend/Pet/Food/Drink Tweets: These tweets come when a given tweeter is excited about seeing a family member, a friend, or a pet that they haven't seen in a long time... or when they are excited to ingest a certain food or drink. Almost all of those tweets contain a tag to someone else's Twitter account, or an Instagram photo, or both. The lovey tweets about a romantic partner are contained in this subtype. A lot of times the intention of these tweets is to convince another person that you are really happy to see them, even though it may not be true. These tweets are almost always well-intentioned, although tweeting pictures of a premium grilled chicken salad and a vodka-cranberry isn't exactly why Mr. Nicephore Niepce invented photography way back in 1822. Although I can't say that for sure, I never did manage to meet the guy. Pretty sure he didn't speak English anyways.

TT #4 - Quotes: From song lyrics to movie quotes to Bible verses, these tweets are a large part of what you see on Twitter. While it's a shame that people can't be more inventive themselves, you certainly can't fault a person for letting someone else's work influence their life. There's nothing wrong with these types of tweets, provided you indulge in them very lightly. Nobody wants to follow the girl who's gonna clog your timeline up with a different Taylor Swift song lyric every half hour. This is also grounds for people to prove their intelligence. A simple Aristotle quote pushed to Twitter can take your online intelligence level up an entire point; you didn't already know that? Proceed to TT #4 at your own pace, but please just don't spell anything wrong. That is disrespectful, and also I hate it.

TT #5 - Obvious and Dry Analysis and Updates about Sports, News, or Politics: While there are certain people who offer interesting and insightful opinions about the above things, most non-professional tweeters really screw this one up. It's like the "THE STEELERS ARE KICKING ASS" or the "OBAMA IS RUINING AMERICA, HE'S WORSE THAN BUSH" or the "CAN'T BELIEVE HURRICANE SANDY FORCED HOSTESS INTO BANKRUPTCY"... alright that last one was my own doing. These normally come from people who believe that they know something about current events and they want to get their opinion in to let people see that they're paying attention.

So there you have it Internet, the five types of tweets, as thought of by Jon Anderson. Humor wasn't a type, but most funny tweets fit into one of the types anyways. Funny tweets that don't conform are the best kind, so I didn't want to include good tweets in with a condescending list. If you comprise a tweet that legitimately does not fit into any of these five tweet types, you can consider it a successful tweet and you should treat yourself to a favorite of your own tweet. It feels good, I promise.

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We Can All Learn From Grinnell College

Last night a division three basketball player named Jack Taylor scored 138 points in a single basketball game. That sounds impressive. It sounds impressive because it is impressive - but maybe not quite as impressive as you may think.

If you saw that headline and thought this wasn't a planned thing for even half a second, you should see a doctor. The whole system was designed to get this kid as many points as possible and make the news. It's not even the first time this school has done it apparently. They were fouling the other team on purpose and playing four man defense to let them score quickly, just so they could get Taylor as many shots as possible (he took 108 of them at the end of the night, which wasn't even an impressive shooting percentage).

A lot of sports analysts are appalled by this and saying that it shouldn't be news because Grinnell is basically ruining the integrity of the game just to get some play in the media.

I think it's brilliant. I would even go as far as to say that every other D-III school should be ashamed of itself for not attempting similar shenanigans. Grinnell College realizes how irrelevant they are in the scope of NCAA athletics. They don't play to win, they don't play to further the integrity of their athletes, they don't play for honest competition, they play to make a name for themselves in an absolutely ridiculous way. And if you can't get your name out there legitimately, what excuse do you have to not try ridiculous things to accomplish it? Waynesburg University is doing basketball wrong. Every D-III basketball program not named Grinnell is doing it wrong. Jack Taylor scored more points in a single game than any other basketball player in history ever did. And he's probably not even that much better than I am at basketball. This kid has no future. I mean just look at him:

Yeah, exactly. I'm confident that I could take this kid in one-on-one. But is my name on Sportscenter? Well yeah... actually it is... but that has nothing to do with anything I've ever done.

Sometimes in life you have to realize that you aren't all that special. But guess what, that's okay. You don't have to be famous or attractive or good at something to have a successful and happy life. Jack Taylor will be able to tell his kids that at one point he was mentioned in the same sentence as some of the greatest basketball players ever mentioned. Then he'll go off to his job at a gas station and his kids will head to school and probably get bullied because they're tiny and have no confidence.

Accomplishment doesn't have to be legitimate - it just has to be accomplishment. I encourage you all to accomplish something in the most loop-holey and pathetic way possible.

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No Topic Tuesday... on a Wednesday

Apparently it's not Tuesday anymore.

Most of my daily frustration comes from people's tweets - namely people with whom I attend college with. I have an honest question: has complaining about something in your life on Twitter ever made the bad situation anything but worse? It honestly bothers me when all I see from people is how much they like some girl/guy and they don't like them back, or how they want to do something but they can't, or just general talk about all the bad things in their life. I understand venting, but is social media really the place for it? Chances are if I have ever seen you complaining about your life on social media, I don't feel bad for you and I don't have any extra desire to try and help you out, I just kind of think that you're pathetic. I have problems too you know, but the only people that know anything about them are people that are my actual friends and actually want to help me out. Twitter is public. You wouldn't go out in the middle of Pittsburgh with a sign detailing why you can't get the girl you want because you curly hair or you aren't in good enough shape. I'm not going to say that nobody cares... but ... yeah nobody cares.

Twitter has made me like way more people less than it has made me like people more, because it seems that there is just a general lack of personality among my generation. That's too bad. Although it's probably good for us people that have some personality, because we stand out a lot more than them. If everything was perfect, there wouldn't even be a point of being perfect. That's a hard-hitting sentence.

You know that saying that 'quitters never win'? I've been questioning that lately. Watching football brought that to light. The other night the Bears were just getting stomped by the 49ers. They were down like 27-0 in the second half. The game was over. They kept trying to score and stuff and eventually did make the score a little bit more respectable, but they got a number of their players hurt in the process. Jason Campbell needs like 4 new body parts this week. Now I have a question for all my readers who play for the Chicago Bears: was it worth it? Was getting that touchdown really worth pushing a number of your players closer to retirement? A loss is a loss no matter how bad it was, but a leg can stop being a leg if you break it too many times. They should have just walked off the field in the 3rd quarter and taken the loss. Sure, the organization would have lost an incredible amount of respect, ticket sales would plummet, and their players, coaches, and owners would be criticized relentlessly for years, but they'd still be allowed to play the next week - and chances are they'd be in better shape to win that next game.

Quitting isn't a bad thing guys, sometimes it's a good thing. If you have no chance to get anything positive out of something, get the hell out. Losing is worse than not winning. You can always say that you would have won if it wasn't in your best interest to quit, and you'll never be able to be proven wrong. Sorry to crush the spirits of all the tweenagers who have been told never to give up, but this is real life - and quitting can be a big advantage in real life.

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No Topic Tuesday

I've been itching to write in here again, but no big topic has come to mind in recent days, so I just now decided to create "No Topic Tuesday", in which I write blog posts that have no theme, point, meaning, or really any positive qualities whatsoever. Seriously I just thought of this after I opened the new post. I had a couple sentences written down which were total garbage then this brilliant sub-par idea came into my head.

What's been frustrating me lately is how people can't spell. The problem with spelling these days is that everything is digital. I haven't written on paper in months. You know what that means? When I see a misspelling, it's mostly on a computer or a phone. That means the person that wrote it didn't really write it, they typed it. You know what that means? It means that I don't know if they spelled it wrong or just typed it wrong. I do know for a fact that Bob Pompeani knows full well how to spell "Pittsburgh", but he still manages to screw it up on Twitter all the time. He recently went with "Pitrsburgh", which is unreal to me. I understand, you're a middle aged man who came up actually like using pen and pencil to write. Guess what? That doesn't give you an excuse to spell shit wrong on your twitter account, which like 6,000 people follow. LOOK AT ME I'M 50 YEARS OLD SO I DON'T HAVE TO SPELL THINGS CORRECTLY ON DIGITAL MEDIA BECAUSE I WAS TAUGHT TO READ ON PAPER AND NOT ON A COMPUTER SCREEN. Go away dude.

That was a bold faced complain paragraph, and I feel bad about it.

Holiday breaks are coming up and I just bought an iPhone 5, which means I'm dead broke and I'm gonna feel horrible about myself when I go to Yankee Candle and spend $50 on seasonally scented candles to make my room more appealing to all the girls that will never be in it. But bring on the freakin' McDonald chili sauce and nuggets, no regrets.

Kansas is playing tonight. In basketball. Which means that I'm happy about sports again. I've always said that my love for sport is rooted in the fact that sports can't leave you or disappoint you, they'll always be there and they'll always be entertaining. This last Pirates season challenged that belief to be honest, but almost two months have past since that tragedy ended and I'm starting to feel better about sports. The Pirate and the Jayhawks make me happy, you know why? Because nobody I grew up with really likes them as much as I do. Humans have this natural desire to be important and to be individualistic. We want to be defined by something that doesn't define anyone else. I'm a happy guy due to the fact that I was born with 6 toes on each foot. It's true. I have two more toes than you. My psychiatrist told me to never tell anybody that, but I'm tired of living this damn lie.

Some people take sports way too seriously. A lot of people hate LeBron James. But do a lot of people know LeBron James? No. How would you feel if somebody somewhere watched you do what you're best at and started hating you for no good reason. That doesn't seem fair, right? It's probably more fair to LeBron since he has a quadrillion dollars, but the point stands. Don't hate an athlete until you know them. Or just think whatever the hell you want, I'm not here to tell you how to live.

Fact check: I actually am here to tell you how to live. Having 12 toes is really hard guys, don't ever grow two extra toes.

I did one of those full body twitches in class the other day. You know the kind when you're so bored and disinterested in class that your body just tries to fall asleep? Except the problem is that there isn't anything to rest your head on, and you aren't a good enough sleeper to be able to do it without a headrest? So your head starts bobbing and you get that feeling of weightlessness, so everything else inside of you like has a one second spasm? The resulting occurence is you looking like a total dumbass in front of 8 other college students. That happened three times yesterday. Dammit.

Good news is that I'm a bad ass and established my credibility amongst my peers in the third week of class by making fun of the professor to his face. Which did really bad things to my grade. If you ask me if I regret that decision, I would say yes.

Anyways, I've got nothing constructive to say from here on out, which I probably could have said at the beginning of this post and it still would have held true. Peace out jagaloons.

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Senior Year Seminar

Eyes... ears... testicles... lungs... senior years.

What are "things you only get two of for 800, Alex".

So that was sort of opposite Jeopardy I guess...

Anyways, senior year is like 3/8ths over and I realized that I haven't even offered my horribly destructive advice on the subject yet.

Senior year is like the moonlanding. Freakin' Neil Armstrong went crazy his senior year. I heard that Armstrong got so drunk at a party that he tried to jump off his house's roof to the moon. He got pretty close too. After he woke up from the coma he was in, he bought a spacesuit off Amazon and actually went to the moon. Dude was crazy. His professors were jealous and failed him. Then he screwed the Dean's wife and got straight A's, which absolutely doesn't make any sense.

Anyways, senior year is all about happy endings. High school senior year, literally nothing matters. By the time you're a senior, you already have the resume you need to get into whatever college you're going to get into. Either that or you're already destined for manual labor. Anyways, have as much fun as you possibly can senior year. If you don't have detention a few times you did it wrong. Back talk teachers, pull really bad pranks, and get into physical fights with guys way bigger than you. Seriously before you turn 18 you can do whatever the hell you want. You're a kid, which means you pretty much don't exist. Just have fun senior year, and be nice to your parents. You need your parents to like you. They'll be paying for your college and giving you a car. Do what they say, or just become a really bad liar.

High school senior year was like four years ago, so now we'll get into my real expertise.

Your first goal of senior year is to find a really cheap way to do everything. If you're into drinking, you should do that while saving as much money as possible. By the time you're a senior you're 21 years old and you can legally drink; it's ridiculous to think that someone would drink under the age of 21. What I've recently discovered is that because the legal drinking age is 21, as soon as you turn 22 you can't go to bars anymore. Walked into this bar on my 22nd birthday and the lady was like "hey are you 21?", I'm like ... nope ... so she kicked me out. So take advantage of the 356 days you have to drink. If you're lucky they'll be a leap day between your birthdays and you'll get that extra day.

Senior year classes are important.

hahahh.

The truth is you don't want to lose your mind. You need some brain cells for after college life when you have to be good enough at bullshitting to convince somebody that you can actually help their business. Life's really all about convincing somebody that you're worth their time anyways. Even if you are worth their time, you still have to convince them of it. No resume will ever convince someone of your worth. How do you get that accented 'e' on here anyways. Dammit. è. Oh hell yeah there it goes. I've written about this in the past anyways, read the college tips post for more information.

Make as many jokes as possible senior year. Piss off as many professors as possible, as long as they aren't professors that can get you jobs. You're gonna get crappy grades, but in 2 years you'll realize that your grades didn't really matter. Graduate on time with a GPA over 2.75 and become a good communicator. That is your only goal.

I have a lot more advice to give, but we'll save that for part 2 in the series. Just keep refreshing this page until that one appears.

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People Pleasing

Hurricane Sandy was a real bitch. Not only did she drown Atlantic City and knock over the Empire State Building, she screwed up all the emotions of people all around me.

So everyone keeps telling me that it might not have been the rain that has been screwing with all of us as much as its been just the ups and downs of life and the confusion of youth and the changes of life. It's been a lot easier for me to just blame everything on the hurricane though.

There's a life lesson for you kids. Scape goats. Whenever you have a problem or do something wrong, you'd better have something to blame it on that you had nothing to do with. You failed a test and got kicked out of your school's nursing program? Not your fault. How were you supposed to keep up with your school work when you were so constantly distracted by all the politics ads and mudslinging going on all around you? I read a stat today that says 18-25 year old Americans see an average of 18 hours of political bullshit per day, and that's not even me swearing that was just the quote of the stat. How are you supposed to know about STDs when Mitt Romney won't stop screaming at you? It's not your fault.

Always have an excuse. Never take responsibility for your actions. For me, I just designate one of my friends every month to blame everything on.

I do think that a lot of human unhappiness comes from trying to please someone, or everyone. It's not possible to please everyone. I've always said that if nobody is hating on you, you aren't doing life right. The only people that don't have anybody talking bad about them are people who don't talk or do much of anything with their lives - and that's not who you want to be.

In terms of relationships, I think a lot of displeasure comes from when you get into a relationship with someone and feel the need to constantly make them happy. If you being yourself doesn't make them happy, then is it really a good relationship? If you have to go out of your way and not be yourself to satisfy the person, is it worth it? Relationships can change people, and I don't think that's necessarily right. Granted, I don't know anything about relationships. Unless it's a relationship in Microsoft Access, I'm pretty good at those. Thanks Doctor Wang.
Obviously you have to work to please people to some extent. You can't just go through life doing what you want to do and not worrying about how it affects other people. Relationships require work and the best things in life are hard, but you get my point.

I hate writing more than like two or three serious sentences in a row.

China really sucks. I have this idea about dropping a bomb of amnesia powder on the Chinese government to make them forget about all the money we owe them. I doubt Obama is reading this post right now since he's probably pre-occupied with getting reelected, but when you do read this, you're welcome for the idea 'Rack, you can claim that bitch as your own I don't even care about the credit anymore.

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Gonna Try to Write A Paragraph with Boxing Gloves On

hgm , klc s ;xsfsgxs;n nkjh lo vikmbgjk bglki dx wow screw that I don't know how boxers do anything

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Election Week and Sandusky is Still Here

For every day that passes I get one day closer to leaving Waynesburg and embarking on the next chapter of my life. You can say the same thing for Jerry Sandusky, except that creep's next chapter is death. So that sucks. As you can tell it's taking me a little bit of time to get over the whole Sandusky thing.

It's taking me even a longer time to get over the fact that like 2% of people in life are entertaining and relaxed about things. We're in college, where nothing really matters all that much and yet people are still up tight and scared of fun. What is going to happen to life when we're in the real world and things are actually serious? Jobs, mortgages, families, that's real stuff that even I'm going to take seriously. If people are up tight and no fun right now, what are they going to be like for the rest of my life? It's scary.

Today in class I wrote the word "pube" real big on Nate's doodle sheet. Then Nate said that he thought he was having a stroke. Two different people were offended by these things. The one kid said his uncle had a stroke, so we shouldn't joke about strokes. I don't want to be rude to this kid who is clearly having a tough time with his uncle or whatever, but joking about stuff doesn't make the subject of the joke any more dangerous. Sure, sometimes you can evoke memories that aren't pleasant, but people need to stop making everything about themselves. Deal with life, and let us make whatever jokes we want.

Maybe that was harsh. It definitely was, but guess what, I didn't erase it. I promise not to say the word "stroke" in front of that kid ever again. As for the "pube" thing, I don't see why anyone would be offended by such a word and I solemnly promise to say that word at least a dozen more times this week in front of as many people as I can.

To be honest I'm just a bit frustrated with humanity today. There are just so many awkward, not entertaining, no fun, up tight people around. God made everybody for a reason and I shouldn't be bashing His creation, but why do I have such a problem with my generation? Maybe it's because I like myself too much. That definitely has a lot to do with it. I respect a person that can make a joke and not taking anything too personally.

This has probably been the least funny post I've written so far. It's legitimately just me bitching... sorry.

The election is tomorrow. All I really want from the election is for the price of pistachio's to come down. Whichever candidate can make that happen is fine with me.

If you read all of this I'm really sorry. Come see me and express your displeasure and I'll give you a free face touch or something.

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No Shaving and Breast Awareness

This post is about No Shave November and Breast Cancer Awareness, but the title had you thinking of other things, didn't it?

"No Shave November" pisses me off. There are two reasons for that. Number one is that I once knew this kid who could grow hair like nobody's business, like this dude had hair coming out of his eyeballs - and this was all the time, not even just during months where he elected not to shave. So anyways, no shave November comes around and by Thanksgiving this kid didn't have a face. He was like that tangela pokemon from ... well ... pokemon.


For real this kid had so much hair everywhere and it was really gross. That's reason number one why I don't like No Shave November.

Reason number two is because I have a donteverhitpubertyalarial disease and I've never been able to grow any good facial hair. For real I couldn't even grow a goatee until like a year ago. I was 19 years old and I had never shaved before in my life because I never grew facial hair. So when No Shave November rolled around all my big hairy friends would be like YO JON WHY DID YOU SHAVE IT'S NO SHAVE NOVEMBER. I'm like well guys... I'm actually so good at No Shave November that I took it to a completely different level, I made it a no-shave century.

Part two of this post is about breast cancer awareness. I'm not going to make breast jokes either because I'm way too mature for that.

So tomorrow we're ...

Sorry one of my housemates just came in and screamed something completely nonsensical and I lost my thought train... that kid is strange.

So tomorrow we're supposed to wear purple for breast cancer awareness. Actually I'm not even all that sure that it's breast cancer awareness, but it's some sort of awareness. (This is the part of the post where I toe the line of offending people) (-)(-) I just don't understand how wearing purple helps anybody. Is some rich guy gonna walk around and see everyone wearing purple and then be like "hey I'm gonna give a million dollars to cancer research because these kids are wearing purple"? I mean it's worth a shot I guess, it doesn't hurt anybody to wear purple, I just don't think that stuff actually does anything. Wouldn't we be better off asking everyone to give a dollar? Money talks guys.

Awareness doesn't cure disease, cash money cures disease. Hell it doesn't even have to be cash money, it could be credit money or paypal money or whatever. So I encourage everyone reading to wear every color that isn't purple tomorrow and give a dollar to somebody with breast cancer. That's how we change the world.

If you were offended by this post, I'm sorry. I'm just flustered. I survived Sandy and I thought I was out of the woods, but then someone threw an usk in the middle of that word and there's a child molester in Waynesburg. Bro-ham Sandusky is rotting in prison just 3.5 miles away from me. You know how scary that is for a guy that can't grow facial hair?

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Presidential Problems

I had a few sentences written here AND THEN I JUST ERASED EM. Let's get to the POINT.

So much of presidential elections is determined by which candidate speaks better. They do all these debates and campaigning and everything that shows off how good they are at public speaking.

But why does a president have to be a good public speaker? F'real. Being a president is mainly about having good judgement, having good morals and ethics, and having good hair. Just because you aren't good at saying what you want to say doesn't mean that you can't put what you want to do into action and help your country, right?

Sure, the people need to know what's going down, but there are more ways to do that then have the president himself deliver it. Just get one of his buds to do it. There'll be an offical presidential spokesperson. I'M CREATING JOBS HERE WHAT UP BARACK.

That's really all I have to say. I'm pretty sure I should have been capitalizing the word "president" in this post, but again this blog ain't about being right, it's about being so wrong that I might fool someone into thinking I'm right.

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One Fight is Two Fights

I'm not a fighter. I'm also not much of a lover. If there's a third option in that expression, that's probably what I'm looking at.

I don't love Hurricane Sandy. I also sure as hell don't wanna fight Hurricane Sandy. Momma told me not to fight nature when I was a kid. She also told me not to talk to strangers, touch the hot stove, or constantly wet the bet after I turn 14 years old. I've done a great job at all but one of those... I'll leave it at that. But if anybody has some extra bed sheets let me know.

Back to the original point of the post.

This one's about fighting. In my eyes there are two types of fighting, physical and verbal... verbal also meaning like Internet now too. We need a new word that means verbal and textual together. It's probably out there somewhere. Anyways, I like to think that I'm a bit cunning and witty, which makes me a pretty good verbal fighter. I can think on my feet and use words well. So if you wanna go toe-to-toe with me on Twitter or Facebook, you're gonna have my toe prints all over your grill when it's all over. The freakin' FDA would be pissed about that too because there's a lot of nasty on the feet that would make your grillin burgers and dogs all dirty and shit.

The thing is that when we start a verbal fight, the loser of the verbal fight often wants to back up their verbal fighting with physical fighting. That's always bugged me. It's bugged me because I'm a small dude with no aggression whatsoever, so I'd lose in 95% of the physical fights I would ever enter. But despite that I think I have a point. Why are the two types of fights connected? Are they the same thing at all? Mental and physical are completely different, they rarely cross paths in life (except chess boxing which is sweet). If you wanna get into physical fights, just leave the words completely out of it. Your words don't say anything about what kind of shape you're in, and the shape you're in doesn't say anything about how smart you are or if you're right or wrong in an intellectual argument.

It's real annoying when you're arguing about sports or something and then the other dude brings out the "oh you're a pussy anyways I'll beat your ass", which basically ends the entire argument because there are just no standards there anymore.

Physical fighting is like against the law to some extent anyways, if you just go and beat someone up that's assault and your ass can end up behind bars. I guess there's all that "cyber bullying" crap now too, which has actually sent some people to jail as well, but that's still not as big as a deal as assault... unless it is... again I never claimed to know anything about what I talk about here.

If you wanna come beat me up, fine, do it. Just don't be mad when I run away crying.

But next time I'm jockin on you via social media, keep the physical fighting out of it. It's only fair.

p.s. RIP BOB ROSS

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Splurge

I'm just gonna send a bunch of stuff your way here and see what happens. It's been awhile since I've dumped my problems off on somebody... because nobody will listen to my problems... also I don't really have many problems to dump. Also one time I dumped in a no dumping zone and got fined... so I'm always careful with my dumps now.

Let me also tell you this. That girl to my right is incredibly good looking.

I tweeted this one earlier, but it's amazing what throwing a "haha" at the end of a text message can do for you. It's wild. You can say the rudest thing and have it be totally cool as long there's a "haha" at the end that shows that you're just being playful. You can't always tell connotation through text, so we just result to adding more non-words onto the messages to show what we're going for here. But most of the time when I throw a controversy-avoiding "haha" at the end, I'm actually being serious and trying to tell the person something; I just really don't like to fight. This is probably the worst job I've done of punctuation in years. "YOU'RE UGLY AND STUPID HAHA" or "YOU'RE UGLY AND STUPID"... see how much better the first one sounds? The point still got across though.

Apparently it's not okay to tweet subliminally about people, even if you don't use their names. I kind of thought that the whole point of Twitter was to say stuff you want to say without suffering consequences for it. Except that Minnesota radio dude just got fired for tweeting something about Desmond Howard. The problem is that you used his name bro, if you would just make up a nickname for him everything would be straight.

I don't really have anything else to say, I'm losing hard today.

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How to Dress Up for Halloween without Dressing Up for Halloween

Halloween weekend is upon us. This year Halloween is on a Wednesday, so in a way that gives you two Halloween weekends. I'd like to give you a brief synopsis of the holiday, however at the same time I would really not like to do that.

When you're a kid, you dress up for Halloween and go trick-or-treating, which is really messed up. What kind of trick can a 7 year old play on a 45 year old man who owns his own house? If you're giving me the option of tricking me against me giving you candy, I'm not really going to buy that the first option is very feasible. The thing about life is not everything is a competition, especially when you're talking about a 7 year old against a 45 year old, so maybe we should take this at the surface for once.

Anyways, I personally never went trick-or-treating. Not once. Never even had a Halloween costume until my senior year in high school, when I went as Dan Rote. Three years have past and I haven't worn another Halloween costume since. This year, however, I am somewhat required to do it.

Now my goal for college was to get without exerting any real effort. I'm taking this philosophy into Halloweekend too, so here's a few ways to dress up for Halloween, without actually dressing up for Halloween.

• Go as the previous day's version of yourself. For example, the party I'm going to is on Saturday. One of my options was to go as "Friday Jon", which entails just wearing the same clothes on Saturday as you did on Friday. Now most of the people at the party won't be smart enough to catch on and they'll think you're just some gross dude with no sense of hygiene, so maybe make a sign to wear on your chest that says what you are, or just announce your costume aloud as soon as you walk through the door.
  
  
• Be somebody else being you. This is a really good one that doesn't require you to make girls think that you're gross. This one also requires you to wear a sign of announce your costume loudly. What I was going to do was wear a sign on my chest that says "I'm LeBron James going to a Halloween party as Jon Anderson". Nobody will understand how LeBron did such a perfect job of replicating your likeness, but half of life is about keeping people guessing anyways.
  
  
• Tell everyone that you just got out of the hospital and didn't have time to get a costume. What you say you were in the hospital for is up to you, just don't go too far with it or you'll end up ruining everybody's fun. The best part about this one is the sympathy points that come with it.
  
  
• Go as "your next boyfriend". This one's easy, just get a 3x5 notecard and write "your next boyfriend" in stencil on it. When chicks ask you why you didn't dress up, just say you did... and show them the sign. You'll also help any girls that dressed up as a Lady Bug, because their face will blush so hard it'll match the color of their costume.
  
  
• Go as a pantless version of yourself. Don't wear pants.
  
  
• Bring a tennis racket and say that you're Mardy Fish. Let's be honest, nobody knows who Mardy Fish is, so just tell everyone you already look just like him.

So there you have it, six fool-proof ways to get away with not dressing up for a Halloween party. Life's all about the words you say.

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Going with the Flow

Can I get something off my chest? It took me until I was like 13 years old to figure out how blinds worked. You know how if you pull the strings to the left, it unlocks them so you can adjust the height, but if you pull them straight down it just pulls them up locks where you stop? Yeah, I just thought that it was completely random when they'd lock. Then one day in my room I figured it out... now I have a blog. The rest is history.

Also, I tried to buy Swagger at the body wash store today and they told me that I was already over the legal limit. Jokes on the real.

But seriously that joke wasn't on the real, it was on the fake... there's no such thing as a body wash store, assholes.

So I've been thinking about life today. Thinking about things and people and situations and feelings change all the time. Without getting into too many words, people just need to stop going to life and start letting life come to them. They say GRAB LIFE BY THE HORNS... well that's a truck company slogan... but they say it. You know what I say? I say let the horns grab you and hope that it doesn't hurt.

Most things in life are out of your control. Haters will hate, hoes will be hoes, and the government is gonna take a percentage of your paycheck... in most states at least. You can't control hoes... unless you're a skilled farmer, and that was a poor joke. Life's not about action, it's about reaction. Learn to be versatile. Learn to handle unforeseen situations. Probably just learn a few marginally sized words and say them in tough situations.

What I'm trying to say is that life is gonna flow on you. You can't stop the flow. So you have to learn to go with it. If you don't get that, maybe just try kayaking or something.

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We All Still Write in Print

This blog is only five posts old, and I've probably given enough horrible life advice to feed like fifty posts, but this one is going to have some good shit in it, I swear. Don't get me wrong, there's gonna be some detrimental suggestions too, because no True Life with Jon Anderson post would be complete without something that could really screw up someone's life.

My parents and teachers always told me that if I work really hard, get involved, and stay busy, I would be successful in life. You know what else my parents and teachers always told me? That I would have to write in cursive in the real world.



See kids, you don't have to work hard to be successful. You just have to be able to get people to think you're cool. NOTE: You don't have to actually be cool, sometimes that's not possible. You just have to trick people into thinking that you are cool. That could entail one of dozens of things, but we won't get into that right now.

Person A and Person B apply for the same job. Person A has a 4.0 GPA in college and was President of the young overachieving suckups of America group. Person A is also socially awkward and not very attractive. Person B has a 3.25 GPA and was dope at beer pong. Everyone likes Person B because he's funny and considerate, and he's an excellent communicator. Who's getting that job? Well truthfully, I don't know, I'm not the boss, but since it's my blog, we're giving that gig to Person B.

Isn't that wild? Person A worked his (or her) ... (we here at jaonthereal.blogspot.com condemn sexism) ... tooshy off for 8 years in school and lost a job to someone who tried only half as hard as he (or she) did. Person B had a ton of fun in college and never had a dull weekend, while Person A had a cot in the library and might as well have just slept there every night because he (or she) sure as hell wasn't ever gonna have any girls (or guys) over to their room.

Person B is me... except for the getting a job part.

What I'm trying to say is that being personable and socially intelligent beats having good marks on paper any day of the week... unless it's a day of the week that happens to include an academic awards ceremony. Granted, being personable and socially intelligent aren't really things you can teach, some people are just screwed. My advice to you, study hard. Life's not fair, motherhumpers, but here are some tips to help:

• Fake a lot of important phone calls around people of authority. Just talk about large sums of money in them and make sure you refer to the use of e-mails and attachments a lot.
• If you were the captain of your high school football team, you automatically look better. Not everybody was the captain of their high school football team... but everybody has the ability to make a fake t-shirt that says otherwise.
• Don't talk about yourself, and certainly don't brag about yourself. Make people ask you about yourself. Don't ask me how to do that though, because there are some things in life that I haven't mastered yet... giving life advice is one of those.
• But seriously, my life advice is really freakin good.
• Smile a lot. But not some smile that says "I'm happy with my life right now", give me a smile that says "I know something that you don't know, also, I'm happy with my life right now".
• You definitely have to wear hoodies and basketball shorts in public. Not like shorts with patterns and different colors or anything like that. Just get a pair of classy looking straight black basketball shorts. They'll do perfectly.
• Always pick up the tab at restaurants. It's a lot easier to read when you lift it up a few inches.

If that gem of a blog post doesn't get you all six-digit jobs straight out of college, I don't know what will.

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I Wanna Be in a History Book

The title suggests that this is going to be me talking about how I want to be great and be known for doing something big... that'd be cool and all, but not what I'm going for here.

Have you ever heard the story of the Boston Massacre? 'Course you have. Remember how it all started with those dudes throwing snowballs at the British soldiers? That's inspiring to me. These guys were just regular guys without enough courage or social standing to fight in the war, but that didn't stop them from doing something big. They were real pissed off at the britdouches that refused to mind their own business so they decided to bring snow to a gun fight (these guys weren't real smart either, but that's probably because their high school advisor's scheduled too many study halls for them). A snowball or two later and a couple Americans were killed, which seems bad... it seems bad because it is bad... but it ended up working out in the end, right? This isn't a history lesson. I'm a math guy... and by math I mean badmitton.

Anyways, do you think that the great great great grandkids of the snowball crew brag to their classmates about being related to the nameless Boston Massacre snowball jag-offs? Probably. Do you think that anybody disbelieves them? Probably not. If you were gonna make up being related to somebody famous, why wouldn't you pick someone with... I don't know... a name? I want my offspring to brag about me and have nobody question them because of how close to irrelevancy I really was.

I want to do something on some random ass day that's so dumb that it ends up screwing something up so badly that something great turns out of it.

And that's how you set goals for yourself, ladies and gentlemen.

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Lowering the Bar

Got a tweet from one of my favorite Waynesburg University goers, Kyle Oland this morning that inspired this very blog post:


Where you place "the bar" has a huge impact on your day-to-day contentment. Example. If you go into a test fully expecting to get an 'A', and you get a 'B', it's a disappointment. If you go into the same test expecting to get a 'C', and you get that same 'B', you did better than you expected and you'll feel much about better about it. You see, we can trick our brains into being happy. Maybe there's a difference between real happiness and fake happiness and stuff, but even fake happiness is worth something - don't think it's not.

This goes beyond studying. Say you're taking a girl out for the first time. Don't overdo it. Don't sell the farm on her (seriously, if you have a farm you gotta keep that shit, it's time to buy not sell), set the bar low. Take her somewhere cheap and don't try too hard to impress her, because if it works, guess what she's expecting next time? You're screwed. See, life isn't about everybody being on a certain level. Life is about putting yourself on a level low enough so you can take the up elevator for awhile. Don't be a hero. Heroes can't improve.

Let's take you back 4 years. That's right, wayyy back into the 2008-2009 timeframe. I was doing the damn thing in high school. I was getting good grades, I had good friends, and I had a lot of fun. One thing I didn't have was an impressive wardrobe. I didn't receive one vote in the yearbook for best dressed. I thought about fixing that up a bit when I went into college, but I decided to set the bar low.

For the first year and a half of college, I wore a lot of basketball shorts and sweatpants. Don't get me wrong, I matched and was clean and everything, but I just didn't have a lot of nice clothes. Guess what? People still liked me. I had a bunch of friends and was making more all the time, because I have a good personality. People will still hang out with the sweatpants kid. Christmas break of sophomore year came and I decided it was time to start raising the bar. I bought some pants, some nice shorts, long sleeve shorts, sweaters, etcetera etcetera. I showed up spring semester looking fresh like three days out of the week (I never overdo anything), and you wouldn't believe the reactions. Girls who were already my friends because they thought I was funny or whatever were like woah look at Jon over there looking good for once. All of my friends liked me more, instantly. Now what about the kids that dressed nicely from day one? Well they set the bar high and everybody expected them to look nice. They could only go down from there. People would like them for their looks and for their personality, but then if they would start dressing less nice, their friends would like them less. It's the truth guys - don't think you're better than this.

Another unrelated note is that my dad continually buys the cheapest possible toilet paper. I came home yesterday for a mid-week mini-weekend and was rudely awakened by the half-ply lifestyle we have here. Pops will spend $2600 on a computer and buy the most expensive whiskey, but the man can't spend 50 cents more to give our bottom sides a smoother ride. Doesn't make sense.

In conclusion, keep those bars low and those toilet papers double-plied.

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Life Tips: College

I'm the kind of guy that think he has everything figured out all the time. Nobody has ever shown me concrete evidence that I don't have everything figured out, so I'm just going to keep chugging along until that happens. My guess is that it's not going to happen by the time I can finish typing this blog post, so here's some college tips for you higher level education-ees out there.

• Honestly my biggest beef with how college kids go about their business is that they go at it with the wrong amount of seriousness. More often than not my issue is with the crowd that takes it too seriously. The ones that study all night for a english 101 exam and get their papers proofread a dozen times before eventually throwing it out and writing a new one. Failing classes isn't a great option, I would even go as far as to say that a C average isn't a great option either, but for the most parts good grades are overrated. Try a little bit, write your papers once, and turn them in. Your main goal should be to get a decent grade while exerting as little effort as possible. Companies don't hire people based on GPA (granted, there are those students that need to get into grad school and need straight A's to do that and shit, so if that's the case for you maybe you should read some other blog). I'm just saying that when you look back at your college life in 20 years, you're going to realize that you didn't need to get an A+ in US HISTORY PRIOR TO 1865, you just needed to pass it, and you'll regret skipping out on that game of red rover to re-read the chapter about the Revolutionary War. In regards to the students that don't try enough, I'm not in the business of parenthood here. If you're too lazy to pass classes, go to the gym and start lifting because manual labor requires a lot of strength and endurance.
• A lot of students like to suck up to professors. I'm not going to say that that's a bad idea, because a lot of the times it's a real good idea. The sad truth is that grades AREN'T ALWAYS ACTUALLY EARNED, sometimes they are truly GIVEN. Sucking up can help. Also, having female private parts helps a lot of times too, but that's not something that's really up to us. I'd advise you to be careful about sucking up though, because a lot of professors get wise to that job. I had a Bible class one time, and like the second week I went in like a minute early and asked the dude for help interpreting some Bible verse. I really didn't need to do it, but I did it anyways just because I knew that would make the dude like me. Sure enough, he was pumped at the chance to "really help one of his students", and I proceeded to skip as much as I wanted the rest of the semester. Guess what grade I got? It starts with an 'A'. Point is - if you want to suck up, do it. My personal goal is to try and get professors to suck up to me. I've even succeeded a few times. If you can convince a professor that you are the most successful, funny, and most personable person in the class, you probably already have an A on lock. You'd be surprised by what you can get away with.
• This post has already gotten pretty long so I'm going rapid fire
• Don't wear the lanyard they give you around your neck. You look like a tourist.
• Keep the damn high school letterman jacket at home.
• The first time you make your professor laugh mid-lecture, you add at least 5 percentage points to your final grade.
• Keep those Facebook status relationships hidden. I won't say why.
• Do stuff. College is probably the first and last time you'll be completely free to do what you want, so don't waste it in your dorm room. Facebook will be there when you graduate, just go out and do stuff. If you don't have a couple of run ins with the cops by diploma time, you didn't do it quite right.
• If you're too dumb to control yourself with the alcohol scene, just avoid it entirely. Although the hardest part of that one is realizing when you're dumb. Dumb people don't know they're dumb. So this a moot bullet point.

I feel like I'm trying to hard now, so I'm going to quit. More life tips will surely be coming.

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Freedom From Baseball

So I've been doing this blogging thing for a few years now. If we were going to put a number to it we would pick the number four and a half. Fifty-four months of blogging for me has led to 1,766 posts... and they've all been about baseball, namely the Pittsburgh Pirates. I certainly don't regret any of those posts, because they collectively have placed me in a pretty good spot as I plan the rest of my life out. There's still a lot of work left to do to get to where I want to be, but starting The "Mc" Effect was undoubtably one of the best decisions I have ever made.

But if you look around this webpage you'll quickly realize that this isn't a baseball blog. This one is a personal blog. One where I, Jon Anderson, can write whatever I want and not give a shit what my reader's think about it. I can also swear and make grammar mistakes and not fix them, like I did in that last sentence.

Why, you ask? Because frankly I have a lot of stuff to say. 90% of it isn't worth much but a few passing laughs. Every once in awhile I'm stumble across something relatively profound, but more often than not I ruin it with my extreme sarcasm. See I live this life with a pretty carefree attitude. If you've ever talked to me extensively you already know that. And that's what this blog is going to be. A bunch of BS stories and thoughts that I have. Sometimes there will be serious posts... well that depends on what your definition of seriousness is. I don't know where this is going to go and neither do you. It might be over by next week or it might get a bajillion views a month. Only time will tell.

Time tells a lot of things doesn't it? Well, we'll save that for another post. Until next time.

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