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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