Mother Nature is a real see you next Tuesday

It rained a lot last weekend. So much so that the ceiling in my living room was leaking pretty badly. In my first floor apartment. Yeah. Fuck.

Then on Sunday the completely saturated parts started to sag. In order to prevent further damage or the whole thing collapsing, I did what I had to do:

As much as I'd like to say I MacGyver'd this shit together, I'm a realist, and this is clearly some redneck engineering. I wanted to add "at its finest" to the prior sentence but this was the first configuration that eventually fell in a horrible crash while I was trying to adjust the space heater at the summit. The second configuration was knocked over by my asshole cat while I was in the shower. The third configuration still stands tall and proud.

Now most cosmopolitan young urbanites such as myself (look at those stylish window treatments!) would never stoop as low as to associate with anything redneck. I won't hide my roots, well not exactly roots. I wasn't brought up on some hog farm or anything like that, but I do have family members who love being country boys. And it would be safe to say they love all the things mentioned in the Zac Brown Band song about liking fried chicken and shit like that.

2010 Academy Awards: In Review

I feel Fantastic Mr. Fox was robbed. I enjoyed it much more than Up. And what was up with having one of the Monstars accept the Oscar?

And I'm not even going to lie, my friend Brian and I definitely rocked this all day when we used to play ball in his driveway.

Sadly, we are no longer friends. The Monstars' loss had nothing to do with that though.

Won't somebody please think of the children!?

The other night I was at my local public library for the first time in probably 10 years. Now I've been in a library in the last decade, just not this one. And instead of describing the minutiae of my visit, I'm going to let this photo sum it up:

This is why I love living in Massachusetts. In other states, people were losing their minds that a movie poster had the word 'porno' in it. My local library has a copy on Blu-Ray (very high tech) that you can borrow for a buck a week.

*I modified the library name because I don't want to give anyone with an agenda some ammo. In fact, I'm sick of all these people who use protecting the children as their excuse to push their social agendas (Maine's voting down of gay marriage) and attempt to limit free speech. How about instead of trampling all over everyone's rights, why don't you be a responsible parent and educate your children about the real world out there that contains scary things like atheists, homosexuals, liberals, and S-E-X? They're going to learn about it sooner or later. So to borrow one of your favorite phrases...

White Boys Can Dance Last-Minute Halloween Tips '09

Halloween is hands down my favorite holiday of the year. I don't think I really need to use that many words to justify why I feel this way, so I'll use these: parties, candy, slutty costumes, fiery gourds, and all things spooktacular (a criminally underused word).

So to help out some of the other single gentlemen of the world to better enjoy their festivities this weekend, I'm going to dole out a couple of costume-related tips.

If you're trying to meet the ladies, don't wear one of the stupid sexually suggestive costumes that your buddies snicker at in iParty.

"Who has two thumbs and is a douche?"

That is unless you're looking for a girl who doesn't wear underpants to church (a whore); they eat that shit right up. In fact, I've devised a whole theory of clothing. Here's the quick 'n dirty: I think you dress yourself not necessarily in a style that you like, you dress in said style to attract a certain type of person. If that's too mind numbing here's an example: if you want to attract some Jersey trash, then wear an Affliction shirt. And here's me using a colon in a third consecutive sentence: there it is. And now that I typed it out it seems so obvious that I should delete it, buuuuuut I don't want to delete my shot at Affliction shirts because seriously, look at them. Moving on.

This one is better because it's not inviting anyone to fellate you, but I feel it still comes off as you having a high opinion of yourself. I would equate this to wearing a t-shirt that says "Italian Stallion" or "Everyone Loves a Greek Boy". However, it's a great costume for a fat guy because irony is always funny (for awhile at least).

If you're looking for a real chick magnet get yourself one of these:

Now you may think Mr. Jackson's deceased status or questionable record when it comes to children would be a turn-off. You would be wrong. I wore my Thriller jacket to a party last evening and by the end of the night it had more breasts in it than the poultry section of your local grocers. That might be a bit much in the information department, but it actually serves a purpose. That that type of playful interaction leads to conversation, and if you play your cards right, phone numbers. You're welcome.

Oh and one final tip. Don't get blackout drunk in a bar party or pictures may end up on Facebook of you licking some random shirtless guy's nipples on the sidewalk for no discernible reason -- at least that's what I heard from my friend in Canada.

The Almost-Erotic Travels of Jon: Chapter One

Back in the spring, my then current-girlfriend and I visited some of my friends living in London. Their flat was pretty central to everything that tourists would want to see, so we spent a considerable amount of travel time on foot. I had been to London before so I wasn't really down for the touristy stuff, but she had not. And not to toot my own horn, but because I was an awesome boyfriend I let her dictate most of our destinations.

It turns out that days of non-stop walking around the city takes a toll on your legs and feet after shutting them down for the winter and not waking them up for spring. And for me, fashion comes before function, so I paid a few extra pence to the collector (my sneakers did a better job looking good than cushioning my feet). So one evening after scouring the Soho district we came across a massage parlour and I decided a massage was in order. She didn't really want to spend the money, but with how my lower extremities were feeling, I wouldn't accept no as an answer.

We enter the office (I'm calling it an office because there was a tall Asian man in a doctor's coat, so I will assume that he's had some medical training, right? And I'm going to call him Doctor C. because I'm pretty sure he was also Chinese. Assumptions abound!) and I inquire as to the cost of a massage. We spend a few minutes working out the details and are asked to sit down. As we are sitting there two women start to fill pans of water with what looks like an office water cooler without the bottle on top. They are there for a couple minutes and seem to be having difficulties, so they give up and head downstairs. After a minute or two Doctor C. tells us we can head downstairs. After passing a still-boxed LCD TV in the tight hallway -- I've noticed that there always seems to be boxed electronics out in the open in Asian businesses, just saying -- we descend down a metal spiral staircase to a questionable basement.

The women direct us to separate rooms. While discussing treatment upstairs, I was under the assumption that we would be in the same room, but these rooms did not have the capacity to allow it. That and I didn't really understand half the stuff Doctor C. was saying, so I could have made that up in my mind. We go into our separate rooms and now this turns into a singular narrative. I remove my socks and shoes and hang out for the masseuse to enter the room. She enters with a pan of water with some flowers in it. She asks me to place my feet in the pan and I oblige. As I plunge my feet into the pan she apologizes for the water not being warm. I guess the water cooler thing upstairs was the only means of heating water in the office because the sink they got this water from clearly did not have hot as an option. She leaves the room.

So now I'm sitting in a dark room with my feet in a pan of cold water for a couple minutes. She returns and has me lie down on the table. She places a towel over my lap and grabs a jar of Vaseline. What? The? Fuck? So as the reader you must be thinking something sketchy is about to go down, right?

Nope. She goes to town massaging the shit out of my feet. It was one of the most amazing massages I've ever received in my life. The days of abuse just melt away with each stroke and clutch of her hands. Thirty or so minutes later the massage is over -- now this is where is gets sketchy. I lie there for a few minutes beyond relaxed and she just hangs out at the end of the table just sort of staring at me. She doesn't put anything away. She doesn't turn up the lights. She doesn't open the door. She doesn't say anything. She just stands there but makes sure I'm aware of her presence.

I could hear that the girlfriend was done and had already headed upstairs. Now I'm at a crossroads. Do I get my things together and join her upstairs, or have the masseuse make sex acts on me? I do have a thing for Asians and she was smoking hot; and not in that 3 Fast 3 Furious race-scenester-sort-of-look, but more of a classic beauty. But as I mentioned earlier, I was an awesome boyfriend, and not a cheater so I gather my things and head upstairs after giving her a tip -- just not that tip.

Now I know by now you're saying that Asians are smart and knew that were were together, so there's no way she would be in contact with my special area, but I discussed some of the quirks of the experience with the girlfriend to which she informed me of a vastly different experience for her. Plus they gave her the ugly one. Check and mate.