Shiny, Happy People Part 2.

. . . And immediately on the tails of that happy note, a sad and embarrassing one.

So, I spent nearly an hour on the phone with my dad tonight rambling excitedly about my birthday, my birthday plans, and all the things I want for my birthday.  Which would normally be fine, except for that just now (and 3 hours later), it dawned on me that today is HIS birthday.

I am such a douchebag.

Luckily, he lives in Hing Kong, so I could call back to remedy the situation as it is still afternoon there.

Oops. 

(In my defense, his birthday is the 12th, and today was actually the 11th here in the States.  But I forgot I was talking to him on the afternoon of the 12th, Hong Kong time.  Although in all honesty, I had no clue what the date was until I looked at my phone a few minutes ago.  So I really have no excuse other than that I am a gigantic asshole, no matter how unintentional it may be.)

Shiny, Happy People Holding Hands...

It has been brought to my attention that some of you think my blog is a little too negative.  Let me start by saying that yes, the world is full of many lovely things. . .  But for the most part, those lovely things translate into really boring stories.  Nevertheless, I've decided to dedicate an entire blog to things that make me happy.  So here we go. . .

Things that make me happy:

1) Walking into a gas station, needing a lighter, and realizing that, YES, they do in fact have Motley Crue lighters for sale!  (Sorry, Crue fans, can't figure out how to do the umlauts on here)

2) The fact that there are enough people in Pennsylvania who believe that pterodactyls still exist to actually form a club (and write a book about it!)  No kidding.  Look it up.  It's hilarious.

3) Finding a picture of my dad in a cowboy hat.  HAHAHA!!!  If only it weren't so blurry. (P.S. Someday, this will come back to haunt you, dad.  And you can count it being in the very, very near future.)  Lesson learned:  Don't let your wife post pictures of you at a theme party if you have relations on the Lepora side of the family.  It will not end well for you.  : )

4)  In my weekly newsletter from that mountain lion-saving group, it mentioned that Wyoming and Oregon were unable to pass laws against hunting the lions. Of course, I think this was supposed to be sad news. But regardless,  Nikki: 2, People-Eaters, 0.  Good for you, Oregon and Wyoming.

5) Realizing that I live only 30 minutes from a restaurant whose entire menu is a million different kinds of grilled cheese sandwiches.  And to boot, the menus are on the back of vinyl album covers.  How cool is that?!  If there's a heaven, it's not out of the question that it could be located somewhere in the Melt's kitchen. 

So there you have it, people.  5 things that make me happy.  Take it all in, kids, because I'm not going to be making a habit of this.  Oh, and have a nice day.  : )

I'm Melt-ing!!!! I'm Melt-ing!!!

As I was tracking my page views today, I noticed something bizarre:  I have more page views from people using Linux than I do from people using Macintosh.  What the hell?  Who uses Linux?!?  Apparently, 26 of you do.  And who the hell are these people?  I'm getting more and more hits every day, but still only six (ok, four) followers.

Well, I would love to leave you all with more than that, but unfortunately for you, I'm Melt-ing today.  If you don't know what that means, then I just feel sorry for you. 

Misanthropy

"In my life, why do I smile at people who I'd much rather kick in the eye?"  ~Morrissey

As time progresses, I become increasingly less tolerant toward mankind in general.  Seriously.  I think it's becoming a problem.  During the course of a normal day, I have at least 5 interactions where I just want to ask the person's parents if they wish there was a way to undo a birth.  Ironically, it makes me feel even worse when I start comparing myself.  If these people have somehow managed to make it through 20, 30, 50 years of life in a decent spot, I should be the ruler of a small country or something.  However, despite the rumors that you may have heard (and I may have started), I am not. 

At this point, I pretty much only have patience for children, the elderly, and coma victims.  And to be honest, old people kind of creep me out, so I may as well scratch them off the short list of people I can be around without wanting to bash my head into a wall.  As a matter of fact, I'm on the border taking myself off the damn list.  Initially, I thought cloning myself a hundred times would be a solution to my people-hate problem, but the more I thought about it, the more terrible the idea seemed. For starters, I don't know how to clone people.  Secondly,  I'm actually fairly certain that I would violently attack myself after about 2 hours.  It takes a specific kind of person to tolerate me, and I don't think I qualify for the job. 

So my new plan is start my own religion cult.  I can think of a million reasons as to why this is a great idea.

1)  You can make a ton of money off people whose personalities doom them to be blind followers.  I mean, look at that Scientology guy.  If people can be convinced that aliens are god, and that they have to pay to discover this "truth," then they can be talked into just about anything.  And I'm sure I can come up with something better than that.  Aliens? Really???

2) I don't mind people so much when they do what I tell them to.  If I'm the leader of this cult, they really have no choice but to listen to me, right?

3) I am a natural-born leader.  Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time harnessing this skill and molding it into anything useful or lucrative.  I don't like managing because employees generally suck and don't listen, and I just have no patience for that.  But people in cults. . .  These are people who want nothing more than to be lead.  To not think or act for themselves.  This is a group of people that I feel I can definitely work with.

4)  One of my favorite past times is being the absolute center of attention.  I've never actually been worshipped, but I have a feeling that it'd be right up my alley.

5) I really have nothing better to do at the moment.


So there ya go, kids.  If you dislike people, and don't have much in the way of real-world skills, starting a cult might be the way to go for you.

CLE Sports

It's amazing how many phone conversations I have to start with, "I promise this is the last time I'll call."  Not because I'm a creepy stalker, but because I always forget something important.  And by important, I mean not very important at all.  Tonight, I called my sister about a million times in a row, the last of which was because I forget to tell her that the Coliseum (where the A's play) had about 9 people in attendance.  I was tempted to call about 35 seconds after that to ask if it was still called McAfee Coliseum, but since she has finals this week, I decided that it was best to just look it up on the good ol' interweb.  It is not, by the way.  The stadium is now called Overstock.com Coliseum.  Apparently, no one wants their name affiliated with the A's, so the name changes about as often as the weather in Ohio. 

:::Crappy segue:::

Speaking of sports, I'm so sick of all these national sportscasters bashing on the 216 (that's Cleveland's area code for all of you who might be lucky enough to not know that).  Seriously.  And it's not just baseball, it's all of our sports.  It's always, "Wow!  The opponent sure had a terrible game tonight!" or "And Cleveland keeps its lucky steak alive by somehow managing another win!"  Even when the Cavs had LeBron, Charles Barkley was always spewing crap about how "turrible" we were, or how we weren't ever going to win the Finals.  Granted, he was right, but still.  I can't wait until we win something so everyone will shut the hell up.  Or not.  Oh god, I can already see the headlines:  "Entire MLB gives up; paves way for Cleveland to win World Series." 

Oh well.  All I can do is pray that I'm lucky enough to still be alive on the day that a Cleveland sports team finally wins it all.  And hopefully, it won't be the Indians.  Not that I hate baseball, but I'd be lying if I said a little piece of me wouldn't die if the Indians end our drought before the Cavaliers or Browns. 

More on Mountain Lions

First of all, let me tell you that I've decided to capitalize Mountain Lions from now on, just to emphasize their importance in my everyday life.  Much like God (who also capitalizes His name), They are an almighty force. . . one which should be feared and respected.  But mostly just feared.  So on to my story:

Strange things have been happening lately. It all started with some spam I received from a wildlife foundation asking me to donate to “save the big cats.” I, of course, found this hilarious and posted something on Facebook to the tune of, “Clearly these people do not know me.”

...And that's when the second round of emails came flooding in. Daily newsletters on protecting the mountain lions of North America, people thanking me for my passion in regards to preserving nature. What. The. Hell. ???

Earlier this week, it all made sense. I received a rather large envelope from savetheworld.org or whatever the hell this foundation is, and I open it to find that a donation had been made in my name to help protect Mountain Lions. In fact, I got a picture of my very own cougar. The one which I have, apparently, sponsored. He lives in Florida and, since “I” (aka: Jude and Chrissie) paid to help protect him, I've decided to name him Godsmistake. One word. Because that's what all cats are.

So, thanks to my asshole sister and her fiance, somewhere out there, a mountain lion is a little bit safer because of me. God damn it. 

Now, I know I promised you all a picture explaining the whole Top of the Food Chain thing, and here it is:

Once upon a time, someone called me an asshole nature-hater for my views on Mountain Lion hunting.  I am a firm believer in hunting these vicious creatures into extinction.  Or, as an alternative, moving them all to Canada.  And my explanation was simple: TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN.  Lion eats man.  Period.  And of course, I got some hippy response about us encroaching on their territory and blab blah blah.  So to try and edge myself back into the good graces of these animal lovers, I explained that it has nothing to do with animals in general, just the dangerous ones. So I asked, if they velociraptors were still roaming around, would you not be all for getting rid of them?  Because fuck running into a velociraptor.  You just have no chance. Anyway, none of it went over well, and suffice it to say that I offended more than one person.  Which, you know, I'm pretty much used to at this point.

So. . . As you can clearly see in my diagram, velociraptors and Mountain Lions are a threat to man.  You can tell because there are half-eaten humans right next to both of them.  And if that's not a logically sound argument, then I don't know what is.  

Good night.  And if you live in the hills of California, good luck. 

Best (Wo-) Man...

As my sister's maid of honor, I've done pretty much nothing she's asked me to do thus far.  Not because I don't care, but because I feel like I should have a more exciting job than finding out my cousin's street address (Sharon, if you're reading this, please text Chris your address!).  So today, I was offered an opportunity to redeem myself: Designing the "Save the Date" cards.  Finally!  A task worthy of my time and talents!

After many many minutes of hard work, I was promptly fired when my sister received, what I think is, a genius design. See Below.

I would definitely use this card if I were the one getting married,  Except I would be taller, holding a beer, and wearing a Browns shirt.  Because, clearly, I'm much classier than my sister.  Also, I refuse to get all sappy and serious when it comes to weddings.  First of all, it is not your "one special day."  In all likelihood, you will have one or two more "special days" in your lifetime, so don't sweat it if you fuck the first one up a little bit.  Look at it as a rehearsal for wedding number 2. Or 3. Or, if you're Larry King, 9.  Secondly, I really like this card.  For as crude of a drawing as this may be, it actually looks like my sister.  Now that's talent. 

So, after being cruelly fired from this task, I've decided to beat my sister to the printer and send out version 2.howdareyoufireme of my "Save the Date" card. 

And for this, I don't mind finding the addresses of pretty much anyone she's ever known.
Side note: There were a few alternate versions of this card, my favorite of which is one where Chrissie looks like a tiny baby, and a fanged Jude is mauling her, but my drawing skills leave too much to be desired, and I feared that no one would know what it was. Also, I didn't think it was appropriate for a wedding.

(P.S. Love you, Chrissie!!!)

Random babble

Things on my mind right now:

1) My blog has six followers. Two of them are me. That's right... I created two separate blogger accounts so that I could up my followers.  How sad has my life become?  It's probably bad enough that I even "followed" myself once...

2) That being said, my blog has 189 hits this week.  Since I don't track my own viewings, it begs the question: Who is reading this?  Do I have one really awesome stalker, or are most of you too embarrassed to admit publicly that you read this garbage?

3) I might hate Bengals fans these days more than I hate Steelers fans.  For starters, they are sucky, sucky fair weather fans.  The only Browns game I missed this year was the Browns at Bengals game and that's because I was in Cincinnati and the game was blacked out.  And none of my friends (who claim to love their Bengals so much) would go with me.  Also,  Who Dey? Really? Not only did you rip off another team, but you ripped off one of the lamest sports chants ever. It's like copying off the kid who's eating paste. Not that I would expect much from a city that borders Kentucky...*
(*Side note: I actually love the city of Cincinnati. Very, very much. Bengals "fans" just irritate me. But in all fairness, at least they don't bark like we do for our Brownies. Because that's just weird.)

4) After my 15 year love affair with the ellipsis points, it has been pointed out to me that I type it incorrectly.  It is not ...   Its . . .    But I'm far too lazy to type the spaces between the dots.  Also, I know I overuse them. But here's my argument:  The ellipses can be used when it's an unfinished thought, or kind of trailing off into nowhere, and I do that all the time when I speak, so. . .

5) Since we're so technologically advanced, why don't we have a cool Jetson's-type machine that we can walk into and change our eye color?  I really want green eyes for a few days and I can't wear contacts because touching your eyeball is gross.

6) If you've somehow managed to read this whole post, then it should be obvious by now that I'm incredibly sleep deprived. Which brings us to number 6.  Why can't I sleep???? I've watched two movies, and taken 2 allergy/sleeping pills.  Still nothing. I'm going to hate myself tomorrow. . .

Al Gore hates me.

If the weather doesn't warm up soon, I'm going to start investing in cans of aerosol hairspray and driving around for hours wasting gas.  Seriously, Cleveland... You're starting to make me reconsider my stance on global warming. Icecaps be damned, I just want more than three months out of the year where I don't have to wear a coat.

Before you all start yelling at me for being an asshole, I'm not serious.  Not entirely, anyway. I know there are simpler solutions than destroying the environment.  For instance, moving to a place that isn't a frozen, gray, dream graveyard.  But I'm lazy, and it's much easier to fantasize about destroying the ozone layer for the sake of Cleveland than it is to actually move. So there ya go.

Things I Love About Cleveland

Ok, a few of these things are a little outdated now, as I started writing this a few months ago and just finished it now. But whatever.  So, without further ado...

Things I Love about Cleveland

In an effort to try and minimize the soul-sucking despair I feel every time I look out my window and realize that, yes, this is home, I've compiled a list of the things that don't totally suck about Cleveland, Ohio.

So let's just jump right into numero uno: There are no mountain lions here. Seems like I'm reaching, huh? In fact, this is one of the best reasons I can think of to move to North Eastern Ohio – provided, of course, that you don't already live in a nicer, mountain lion-less part of our fair country. So basically, this just includes the deep South and Michigan. But back to my point... Mountain lions. They will eat the fuck out of you. I understand that human fatalities as a result of cougar attacks are insanely low, but still. Why take the chance? My sister, who lives in Berkeley, CA, used to make fun of me all the time. I had no problem roaming around East Oakland, but if we were anywhere near the hills, I didn't get out of the car. Here's my logic, flawed as it may be: There's always a chance that you can reason with a crackhead. But there's no reasoning with a hungry lion.  That's just the way it is.

Which brings us to reason number 2 that Cleveland doesn't totally suck: Lack of sunshine. Now, you may be thinking, wait a minute! This is not a positive! And you're right – it's not. But take me, for example. Not only am I allergic to the sun, but my eyes are extremely sensitive to the light. This means less money spent on sunglasses and umbrellas. So I'm saving at least $50 a year. Of course, once you factor in the lack of jobs, and the low wages, then this is not really a positive at all. But I'm trying here...

Reason #3: It's not Detroit. Simply and unarguably a valid point. I don't think anything else needs to be said here. (In my defense, I'd made this argument way before the brilliant “Hastily made Cleveland tourism video” came out. Ask any Clevelander... “At least we're not Detroit” has been our only retort to “Cleveland sucks” for... well, forever.

Reason #4: Since our Browns, Indians, and Cavaliers have collectively not won a damn thing in over half a century, our tickets to sporting events are more affordable than anywhere outside of Baghdad. For a mere $75, you rock it courtside like Jay-Z. Of course, the rate of broken TVs, burst blood vessels, and sports-related depression are among the highest in the country. But no worries – we have groups for that. They meet regularly at the local sports bars, and can be found drunkenly muttering something about “next year...” But once again, here's where you can factor in that "At least we're not Detroit" logic.  It could be worse, guys. We could be Lions fans. How much would that suck?  Interesting side note:  My cousin's husband is a Lions fan from NE Ohio, and I will never, ever understand it.  I can understand growing up realizing that the Browns suck, and walking away from that heartache at an early age.  BUT... the Lions? You pick the only team worse than the Browns to root for? There are like, 30 other teams you could have picked that will definitely do better than the Browns on any given year, but you pick the only franchise that is legitimately never, ever good. It boggles the mind. Maybe he just likes the way he looks in baby blue. It's the only explanation that makes sense to me.

Reason #5: In a recent story entitled “The United States of Shame,” Ohio actually received one of the least offensive titles: Nerdiest. This was based on the fact Ohio has the highest number of library book check outs per person. Of course, this could be for a plethora of reason other than the idea that we just like to learn. In fact, I suspect that this has more to do with that fact that people here can't afford to buy books than it does with our nerdiness. But even if that translates to “poorest,” I'll take it considering some of the other titles were Highest Rate of Women Brutally Murdered, Arson Deaths and Most Beastiality offences. Poorest? SOLD!

Reason #6: Speaking of sports... We may have some of the worst sports teams in recent history (as I write this, the Cavs are in the middle of a record-breaking 25 losses in a row), but that doesn't stop our fans. The dawg pound still shows up every Sunday, despite the sub-zero temperatures and presumably losing record. Our Indians fans still pour into Progressive Parkway, and our Cavaliers fans want it even more since our local homewrecker traded our loyalty for a romp in the sand with Beach Skank Barbie. That's right Heat fans. I just compared your team to women of loose morals.  Can't wait to see you guys lose to the Celtics! (Side note: Since the ill-advised Perkins trade, I'm not so sure the Celtics are going to the Finals anymore.  What the hell where they thinking??  Somebody better step up and beat Miami, and I'm not confidant that Chicago is experienced enough to do it.)

Reason number 7: Sweetest Day! For those of you who live outside Ohio, Indiana, and Western Pennsylvania, Sweetest Day is pretty much just Valentine's Day's retarded half-birthday. And, as you've probably guessed, it started in Cleveland. As though one Valentine's Day isn't bad enough, every third Saturday in October, people celebrate the whole thing all over again. The good news is that if you aren't single and you somehow managed to fuck up Valentine's Day for your significant other, you can always make up for it in October.

Reason number 8: We've got a great music scene. No, really. I don't even have anything snarky to say here. The Pretenders, the Black Keys, Nine Inch Nails, the Raspberries, Dave Grohl, half of Warrant, Maynard from Tool, etc. All from NE Ohio. Apparently, shitty weather and lack of industry breed some pretty stellar music.  As Ian Hunter said, "Cleveland Rocks!"  Yes sir, it does.  Though if you really listen to the lyrics of that song, it's just blatant Clevelander-bashing.  But that's why I've made it a point to only memorize the chorus.

Reason number 9: Unfortunately, this black pit of despair is home.  Damn you, Cleveland. For all of your flaws, I love you still. And while I may bitch and whine about this place all the time, I'm the first person to proudly say, "I'm from Cleveland!" when I'm far away from home. Mistake on the lake? Oh no you didn't...