June 2011 – HappyStinkingJoy

Don’t Mind Me, I’m Just Staring at Your Butt

I was at the YMCA a few weeks ago and something caught my eye. Actually, my eyes were drawn to something. It was a woman’s butt. No, I’m not a pervert… well, most of the time I’m not a pervert… but this lady had on a pair of shorts with writing on the butt. “Surf **something**” was written right there in large letters on the bottom of this woman’s shorts. It wasn’t so much that I was infatuated with the woman’s butt, it was that I couldn’t read what came after “Surf”, and it was driving me nuts. What was this young woman encouraging others to “Surf”? “Surf” on the butt made me think of a band that was had some modest popularity in my younger days, but I figured this gal was probably a little too young to be a Butthole Surfers fan. She was on an elliptical in the front row, and there were several people on ellipticals in the row behind her. I could tell she was self-conscious about the writing on her butt because she kept pulling her t-shirt down over her butt and blocking the words. This made me stare even harder, just waiting her t-shirt to ride up so I could see what came after “Surf”. I wasn’t the only one staring. I noticed two men and a women beside me who all had their eyes locked on that woman’s butt… and none of us ever found out what came after “Surf”. The young woman pulled her t-shirt down one final time, got off the elliptical, and left the circuit room. I was disappointed and a little upset. Why had she left the house with those stupid shorts on if she didn’t want anyone reading what they said.

Ok… I know you’ve seen this: females of all ages, shapes, colors and sizes with writing on their butts. What in the hell are these women thinking? In many cases, what are the parents (especially the fathers) of these girls thinking?!? Do you realize that you are giving every male that you women (or your daughters, for crying out loud) encounter absolute permission to stare at your butt for an inexcusably long time. I mean, seriously. We can’t even really get in trouble for it.
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Wife/Girlfriend: What are you staring at?

Dude: I’m just seeing what it says on the back of her shorts.

Wife/Girlfriend: Quit staring at her ass.

Dude: Seriously, I’m just reading what it says.

Wife/Girlfriend: It says “Juicy”… just like the last five girls whose asses you stared at.
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Dude: They weren’t all “Juicy”. One was a “PINK”.
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Dude: And besides, I’m pretty sure that’s a different font? Isn’t that Old English Text MT? I’m pretty sure the last butt writing was in Algerian. I’m really going to need to take a closer look…

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: guys look at girls butts. No, seriously. I’m not joking. All ages of guys, from the young adolescent just hitting puberty to the old dude with the walker and the glasses so thick you can’t imagine how he can actually see anything, if you are female, will look at your butt. I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m pretty sure even gay guys check out girls’ butts.

I know, I know… it’s hard to believe… but we really do look at butts. We’ve been known to look at boobs as well.
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At least there is an explanation for why we look at boobs.
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We’re dogs, and we look at butts and boobs and we probably should feel ashamed for doing it, but we don’t. It’s just the natural order of things. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re perverts or that we’re thinking naughty thoughts. It’s kind of like when you go on a hike up in the mountains and you see a waterfall cascading into a calm pool below.
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You’re going to look at that waterfall and think, “nice waterfall.” It’s a natural wonder. Female butts are pretty much the same thing; we look and smile and think “nice butt.”
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To be perfectly honest, I believe that these females want guys to look at their butts. Otherwise, why would they wear what they wear?

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I think the women want guys to look at their butts, but I think they only want certain guys to look at their butts. They want guys they are attracted to to look at their butts.
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It’s like a flirting thing. Problem is, once you are out in public, you really don’t have any control over who is looking at your butt. Sorry, that’s just the way it works. You are probably going to have dudes that may or may not be Cuba Gooding, Jr. looking at your butt.
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This seems like it should be common knowledge, but if you are anywhere close to just about any male politician from the United States, you will have your butt looked at.

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Old dudes, teenage boys, ugly, hot… we’re all gonna check out your butt when you are walking around with a billboard on your fanny. Even if you try to dissuade us by putting false advertising on your rear-end, we’re gonna look.
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So, if you don’t want every dude and his dog loking at your hiney, don’t leave the house with writing on your butt. If you don’t mind hundreds of eyes checking out your bunnage, keep doing what you’re doing. As far as teenage girls with the butt writings goes, do you girls have parents? Do you have a dad? I know parents have to pick their battles… but I think this is probably one worth picking. Don’t let your daughters leave the house with clothes on that are going to draw eyes to body parts that you don’t want being the focus of intense scrutiny.

Sometimes, however, the writing on the butt can be helpful. It alerts us to something we may need to know. For example:

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I believe the young lady above is telling us that she just ate Ben Roethlisberger, and she is pointing out where his remains will soon appear.

The Life Cycle of Having Friends…

Remember when you were a kid and you had all kinds of friends? Well, unless you were the kid who accidentally pooped the pants in 3rd grade during math and everyone knew about it; then you maybe didn’t have so many friends. Maybe you were the girl who had her first “Carrie” moment during 6th grade English, and none of the kids understood why you left school early, upset and crying; until someone spotted the evidence of the early dismissal on the seat of your chair… your adolescence may have been a little rough. Or you were the boy who got caught enjoying Baywatch just a little too much when you thought no one watching… you may have had a few rough years. But aside from those few sad instances indicative of the cruelty of other children, many kids have lots of friends. And as you grow from adolescence into high school and up through college, you make more and more friends. By the time you get out of college, you probably have tons of friends… and I’m not just talking acquaintances, but real friends… you know, the kind of people you wouldn’t hesitate to call if you needed a good bailing out of jail.

At this point, we’re set! We have a plethora of friends and a brand-spanking new education just waiting to be developed into a life-long career of happiness! Guess what happens to many of us then. We pack up our belongings and move half-way across the country and start completely fresh in a community where we don’t know a single soul! Sounds exciting, right? Sounds like a true adventure, doesn’t it? Yeah… not really. It sucks, and years later, you will find yourself pretty much friendless as you roll through mid-life.

When I first moved to the panhandle of Nebraska (almost 20 years ago), I figured I would fast make new friends. And right out of the gate, I met a few people my age and we became buddies. Considering that the people in this community are very cliquish (which is something I didn’t discover until later), I was lucky. One of these buddies actually introduced me to the woman who is now my wife. So, yeah, I thought I was on a roll. Now see, where the problem comes into play in my example is the fact that I moved to a community where the young people are anxiously leaving in droves. In the small town of Glasgow, MT where I grew up, all of the kids always talked about how they wanted to get the hell out of Glasgow and actually do something with their lives. Scottsbluff and Gering Nebraska are much the same. Kids see what their parents have accomplished living here, and the kids want nothing to do with it. The kids want to actually find some measure of success in their lives, so they bail on the communities at pretty much the first available opportunity. My problem: I moved in as everyone else my age was trying to get the hell out. I escaped from one community where all the kids and young adults wanted to get away to another community where all the kids and young adults wanted to get away. The destination of my escape was another destination from which to seek escape. Most of those original friends that I made when I moved here have long since found more fruitful paths in other areas of the country. There are still a couple in the area, and I really enjoy hanging out with them, but the second thing to come along and disrupt the friendship cycle is kids, and I’ve got them.

Having children is one of the most rewarding things that a person can do. I don’t want to make it seem otherwise. However, having kids puts a huge crimp in any sort of social life that you may desire. You aren’t able to go out in public nearly as much once you have kids, especially while they are young. You’re at home trying to catch some sort of rest and instill in your kids the basics of being a functioning member of society.

Then the kids hit school, and through school and other extra-curricular activities, you are forced to confront other parent of other kids who are pretty much in the same boat as you. Once again, you start forming some relationships. Maybe you find a church or other civic organization, and you begin attending regularly, and you form some relationships there as well.These relationships, however, are more along the lines of “strong acquaintanceships” than they are the true friendships you had in your youth. In other words, these are people who are fun to hang out with while the kids are off playing and whatnot, but these aren’t people you would feel comfortable calling to bail you out of the joint.

Even these strong acquaintanceships you have developed through the parents of your kids’ friends and through your civic activities (and maybe even co-workers from your job) soon seem to slightly dissipate as your kids grow even older and their activities seem to encapsulate more and more of your free-time.

My wife is from the panhandle. Once she finished college, she really never had a strong desire to leave. However, neither does she have a strong desire to stay. She is constantly telling me that if I can find us a life somewhere outside of the panhandle that would make me less… uh, “grumpy” would be a polite way to put it, I guess… she would be more than happy to make a move. She, however, actually has some of the friends from her past here. Not many (most moved away), but she is occasionally able to have a “girls night out” or get together for coffee with a friend or two. I still have a lot of really good friends, but, for the most part, they are spread out all over the nation. If it weren’t for Facebook, I probably wouldn’t even know where most of them are. They sure in the hell aren’t close enough to bail me out of jail, if the need were to arise.

So, what’s next? You got me. My kids actually have some true friendships, and they are doing well in the local schools (even though the schools tend to piss me off from time to time). I’d hate to disrupt their potential growth in a selfish effort to find some sort of friendship or contentment in my life, so moving isn’t the most attractive option at this point. Doesn’t mean that it won’t happen, just means it’s not the most attractive option. I try to keep in touch with the friends of my youth… at least those on Facebook.

I’m guessing that once my kids have joined the mass exodus of young people who leave the panhandle of Nebraska to better themselves in different areas of the country, the options for the wife and I will increase. We will be free to move wherever on God’s green earth we want to live. We will be short two mouths to feed as our college-educated boys head out into the world to try to figure out how in the hell they are ever going to repay all of those student loans. Of course, our bodies will have deteriorated even further, and God only knows what the status of our health will actually be in 10 or 15 years. I’m guessing that will be the next point in the cycle where new friends are made. We will probably find them at the clinics and doctor’s offices and pharmacies and, later, in the retirement communities. We will all sit around and reminisce about our kids, about the friends of our youth, and about all of the opportunities we probably missed by living in the panhandle of Nebraska.

On Getting Old…

How come when your a kid, all you can think about is growing up, but when you finally grow up, you wish you could be a kid again? I think it’s irony just busting us over the heads. As kids, we want the freedom and responsibility of making all of our own decisions, and we see adulthood offering this to us. Then, when we finally get there, we realize that true freedom was an illusion and that responsibility sucks; but by then, it’s too late to do anything different because we are, after all, adults. And it’s not like we could have done anything about it anyway, right? There has not yet been invented a hormone that slows the aging process to the point that we could all live a perpetual childhood. Besides, I don’t think our parents would want to take care of us forever… and if our parents had access to the magical fountain of youth, we may never had been born. Oh sweet irony… thy true name is growing-up.

I run into people who disagree with my desire to go back to childhood. I feel sorry for them. They didn’t have enjoyable childhoods, and someone needs be held accountable. Childhood is meant to be a magical time in our existence, and anyone who denies us that portion of our life has committed an atrocious affront to not only the children and the adults those children become, but also to everyone who loves children. A child who suffers a horrid childhood leaves a scar on humanity.

So, you may be wondering, why is true freedom an illusion? Are you doing what you want to do, when you want to do it? Do you show up someplace because that is when you want to show up, or because that is the time someone else has arranged for you to show up? Do you only deal with people you find pleasant, or are there times when you have deal with people who are less than pleasant… and are you dealing with them by choice, or because someone else has told you that dealing with these unpleasant people is required of you? What time do you get up in the morning? Are you getting up at that hour because that is when you enjoy waking up, or has someone else set your agenda? We are all really nothing more than indentured servants. Even if you are self-employed, you are answering to someone else (customers, clients, vendors, advertising sales people, employees; whoever is involved with the generation of your income). We live by the rules of someone else in an attempt to gain a sense of real freedom at some point in the future after our servitude (retirement? death?) There is no true freedom as an adult in this life. Here we are, in the “greatest nation” on the face of the planet and we never can even really own our own property. Oh sure, you can pay off your mortgage. Do you really think you own that property after your mortgage is paid off? Really? Well, if you really believe that, try this: after your mortgage is paid off, try not paying property taxes. Really, see what happens. See who really owns that property. It’s not you. Freedom is an illusion.

“Well,” says the gung-ho simpleton who you often see commenting on blogs and articles all over the Internet, “welcome to life! Quit your bitching, grow a pair, suck it up and do what you have to do. No one said life was fair!” I love people who leave comments like this, and by “love” I mean “hate with every ounce of my being”. There are people out there who question the way things are and are looking for a better way, but they don’t fall into the mindless conformity that has become life in the USA: you know, work, die and pay taxes. Because they are looking outside of the box, they are “different”, and they make people uncomfortable, so they just need to shut up and conform. Ahhh… life it too short for that, my brainwashed friends. I’m sure the taxpayer-fed government loves your attitude, but I do not.

Wow… I think my rant just went off on a rant?!? Government sucks, but that isn’t where I meant to head with this post, so let’s try to get it back on track, m’kay?

Becoming an adult leads to more than just the loss of childhood innocence and dreams. Becoming an adult leads to, well, getting old. It’s kind of a strange trade-off; you gain more responsibilities and much more is expected of you, and you have less and less energy to tackle these responsibilities and expectations. It really kind of bites. Adults (especially those with small children) can often be heard complaining, “If I had half as much energy as my kids, maybe I could actually keep up with them…or… think of what I could accomplish!” And everybody laughs at the age-old joke. The sad thing is, the joke is not funny; the joke is reality. Youth really is wasted on the young. Our bodies get weaker and our minds begin to slip. The first memories we start to lose are those from childhood, which is sad, because those memories of our own childhood innocence can help us trudge through our adult lives. First, memories start to get a little fuzzy, kind of like watching an Andy Griffith re-run on a really staticy channel. You kind of know what’s going on, because you’ve seen it before, but there are parts you just can’t catch because the static is too bad, and you feel kind of gypped. The older you get, the more memories turn to bad re-runs, and before you know it, the oldest are lost forever.

Okay, maybe I’m being a little too harsh. Our minds are kind of like computers, and maybe stating that certain memories are “lost forever” is a little melodramatic. Maybe it’s kind of like that thingie you downloaded off the Internet and saved a few years ago and you just can’t remember where on your hard drive you saved it. You know it’s there somewhere, and you search every file and folder where you have saved stuff in the past, you just can’t locate that stupid thingie! Maybe our minds are like that. Maybe we just need to place an occasional call to tech support to help us relocate those memories. But, for the love of Pete, don’t actually call tech support of the company who provides your Internet service! Finding files on your computer that you downloaded from the Internet isn’t even the responsibility of your ISP’s tech support department. The last thing I need is someone accusing me of starting a trend of tech related calls for people with fading memories! “Tech support” is a metaphor, people. I know that explaining this seems silly, but I have taken tech support calls. Don’t ever underestimate the ignorance of your fellow man 🙂

Google Sucks

Stinking Google. I recently wrote a post about stupid Google and how they were giving away free netbooks for people to test their new Chrome OS operating system. Well, I never received my netbook. Apparently I’m not the kind of person that Google felt was right to test their netbook. I am, however, the kind of person that Google feels is right to purchase the new Samsung Chromebook. I believe Google may be mistaken.

I received an email from Google that read as follows:

Be the first to get a Chromebook.

Since we announced the Chrome Notebook Pilot Program back in December, we’ve been humbled by the amount of interest that we’ve received from users like you.

We’re excited about the brand-new Samsung Chromebook that goes on sale on June 15. Fortunately, we’ve managed to get our hands on a few machines a little earlier, and we’d like to make these available to you, our biggest enthusiasts.

When you buy your Chromebook, you’ll also be getting a limited edition, custom-fit Chrome sleeve designed by Rickshaw so you can carry your new Chromebook in style.

Our good friends over at Gilt, the premier invitation-only shopping site, have agreed to put these Chromebooks up for sale — but only for a very limited time.

These will go fast. See you over at Gilt.

Cheers,

The Chrome Team

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A few months back, you asked to be notified about the availability of Chrome OS, which is why we sent you this one-time notice. You will not be emailed again regarding the availability of Chrome OS.

I don’t remember asking to be notified about the availability of Chrome OS. I remember wanting a free netbook. I don’t want to buy anything. Nonetheless, I figured I’d check out Google’s friends over at Gilt to see what’s up. In the back of my mind, I’m thinking a Chromebook may be pretty reasonably priced. After all, I don’t believe the computer is able to run non-web-based software… everything is stored in “the cloud”. You can’t download software to the computer (like an office suite or accounting software or publishing software or anything like that). There’s not even a CD or DVD drive on this sucker, so forget having the kids watch a movie while you’re driving across the Nebraska interstate. Sure, there are some decent free online aps that can be used online, but I like to have a hard copy of some files and applications on my computer so I can access them when I don’t have Internet access or 3G coverage (remember… this is Nebraska). I’m thinking that I should be able to pick up a web-only Chromebook for a couple hundred bucks.

Do you know how much these stinking Chromebooks are selling for? The Samsung Chromebooks were selling for like $500! Seriously!!! I could get a decent real laptop for $500… why in the hell would I buy a web-only Chromebook for that price? I’m thinking Google and Samsung may have a little bit of crack-smoking going on at their corporate offices. Plus, now I’m getting all kinds of stupid spam from Google’s friends at Gilt (notice how close that is to guilt… and jilt?). note to self: unsubscribe from ~~Jilt~~ Gilt…

Of course… who knows… maybe these Chromebooks do some pretty amazing stuff. If they did, I’d be able to go on and on about how great Chromebooks are. But in order to rave about them, I’d actually have to try a Chrome OS machine out… and I’m not going to drop 500 hard-earned bills just to see if a Chromebook is actually worth $500 hard-earned bills (which I highly doubt). If only Google would have sent me my free stinking netbook when I applied for it…