Cooking for the Ladies

If there’s one thing that I can almost guarantee everyone who reads this blog can guess about me, it’s the fact that I know absolutely nothing about women.  Maybe a lot about pixelated women, but nothing about the real flesh and blood type, the ones you can interact with in real life without a virtual reality helmet (oh Oculus Rift I can’t wait for you to be mine!).  However, by the grace of God I managed to land myself a very attractive female mate.  I had several tools at my disposal, my sense of humor tempered by years of being fat and having to develop a personality instead of being an empty shell, my puppy dog like dedication to all things nerdy and intellectual (somehow she was attracted to this) and also, my skills in the kitchen.  I didn’t even really think I had it in me, but after just throwing myself into the kitchen and coming up with recipes on my own, I’ve realized that I actually have a little bit of a knack for the culinary arts.  I still fail royally every so often, like the time I thought it would be a great idea to crumble up pieces of leftover stale whole wheat bread into goat cheese bruschetta, but for the most part I’m pretty successful.  So today, I’m here to provide a recipe for you all that will make women swoon…probably not, but it might help your sorry ass.  And men, feel free to use this on other men if you swing that way, cause we all know the quickest way to a man’s heart is through his penis…I mean stomach.  And ladies, this will be a great tool for you too.

Let’s make pasta bitch!

 

Ok, so here’s what you’re gonna need to cook the sexiest dish you’ve ever made in your whole life.  (I’m not good with exact measurements, and you shouldn’t be too concerned with that either.  As long as you use ingredients that you didn’t pull out of the dumpster behind your local Wal-Mart, this shit will taste good even if you’re not too exact).

1. Some fucking chicken breast: 1 package of chicken breast tenderloins should do the trick.

2. Some mothafuckin bow tie pasta (AKA farfalle.  Here’s another tip, if you’re not Italian, or even if you are but you don’t have an Italian accent, don’t be like Giada de Laurentiis and pronounce every slightly Italian sounding word with a super exaggerated accent. Just fucking say spaghetti, not a-spa-GIYETTI): You’re only gonna need one box of this, just eyeball how much to use.  Does your lady love carbs?  Toss in some more!

3. Provo-god damn-lone cheese (adhere to the same pronunciation rule mentioned above): A nice block from your local store’s fresh cut cheese section will do.  Don’t go for the cheap shit, cheap provolone has flavor like my love for Fast and the Furious movies, non-existent.

4. White button fuckin mushrooms: One package of the pre-sliced kind will do.

5. Some real ass butter: You probably already have this in your house unless you’re some annoying health freak, if not, you probably shouldn’t be reading this anyway.

6. Mrs. Dash Italian seasoning, bitch: I don’t have time to invent my own spice blend to put on chicken, and neither do you. Get this shit and put it on everything you cook, it’s delicious.

7. Fancy ass shallots: Shallots are like the Rolls Royce of onions; they rule.  Make sure to mention that you used them in this dish, cause then you’re gonna sound like a pro.

8. Fresh to death garlic: Probably like 4 cloves, but don’t be an idiot and buy the pre sliced ones.  Practice your ginsu knife skills and use the real shit.

9. Fuckin dried parsley: The dried parsley is fine for this dish, it’s just gonna be a garnish at the end.

10. Extra virgin (just like you) olive oil: Buy a bottle and keep this shit in your place, if you start cooking after this divine experience you’re gonna use it a lot.

11. Juice of the lemon: Either a fresh one or the juice that comes pre-bottled, whatever you want dude.

12. Sun dried tomatoes: If you’re a maniac, dry some tomatoes outside on the sidewalk.  If you’re normal, buy the julienned kind at the store.

and the best ingredient of all…

13. White wine you drunk bitch!: You don’t even need a whole bottle, but I would buy two.  One to drink while you’re cooking, because let’s be honest, we’re all adults here right?  If you’re a 25 year old male like me, you’re probably an alcoholic.

Let’s cook up some romance, generic white guy!

Ok, here goes pal, you can do this.  Step 1:

Put water into a pot, and get that shit boiling.  Put a little bit of salt in the water, and then throw in your pasta.  If you can handle that it’s pretty much as involved as all the other steps, so you’re off to a fantastic start.

STEP 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wash the chicken, cut it up into about 1 inch cubes (I’ve literally never measured that shit in my life, just dice the chicken up).  Season them chickens with salt, pepper, and that delicious Mrs. Dash.  Peel that shallot (Google how to do that if you can’t figure it out on your own, same with the garlic.  I can’t hold your hand through everything) and dice it up, as well as four cloves of that delicious smelling garlic.  Coat your pan in olive oil, turn the heat up to medium, and when the oil is hot toss in the shallots.  Cook them until you can tell something is going on in there (every other recipe you read will say cook them until they turn translucent, guess what, no one knows what the fuck that means) and then toss in the chicken and the garlic.  You’re gonna leave that in there for awhile, until the chicken browns.  Since you cut it up into small pieces, that shit is gonna cook pretty quickly.  Keep an eye on your pasta while this is going on.  When the chicken is totally browned and delicious take that shit out of the pan and put it to the side for the moment.

THIRD STEP!!!!!

Your pasta is probably almost done by now.  Since you’re such a noob and probably don’t know what done pasta should taste like, take some pasta out of the pot with a spoon (not your fingers idiot) and put it in your mouth.  It should be a little chewy but not hard. If you really have to work on chewing it, let those guys keep going.  If it happens to be done, strain that shit, toss a little butter into it, and let it sit.

STEP 4 OF I’M NOT REALLY SURE BECAUSE I’VE NEVER COUNTED BEFORE!!!!

Ok, here comes the part that’s really going to make you look like the fucking man.  Crack open a bottle of wine (who are we kidding, use the one you’ve been drinking from) and with the pan you cooked the chicken in rocking some low-medium heat, dump some in.  Don’t go crazy, maybe about 3/4 of an inch deep, depending how drunk you are and how much you care.  Toss in a nice cube of butter, some salt and pepper, and then let that bastard simmer.  Stay close to the pan and keep smelling it, first off because it smells amazing, second because you need to smell the alcohol cooking out.  Once it starts to smell less like a wino’s bathroom and more like deliciousness, squeeze in some lemon juice (make it up man) and throw in those pre-sliced mushrooms.  They cook fast, so keep an eye on them, you don’t want them too mushy.

STEP 5 DUDE YOUR’E SO CLOSE TO GETTING LAID

Now, once those mushrooms are a little soft and the wine has reduced down (a very chef-y term, use it all the time) you’re really gonna bring this mother home.  This is the part where you can involve the person you’re trying to fornicate with and really hit a home run.  Make sure you have a cheese grater before you do this part, or else you’re gonna look like a moron.  Put the cooked chicken, pasta, and a nice handful of those sun dried tomatoes right into that pan with your wonderful white wine sauce.  Toss everything around and while you’re tossing, have your future sex mate grate in cheese.  Do this until you find the dish sufficiently cheesy (pro tip: the more cheese, the more delicious.  The less cheese, the more chance you have of getting laid in the same evening.  Choose wisely).  When you find the cheese ratio to your liking, you’re good to go! Plate that shit up, sprinkle some parsley on top, and eat the fuck out of it.

I’ll do this to you after I digest all this dairy.

 

So there you have it culinary hopefuls!  I hope my incredibly long winded and confusing recipe helps you get a girl to touch your penis tonight.  If not, at least you read something today, so this wasn’t a complete waste of your time.

 

 

 

How to be an Insufferable Asshat at the Gym

So…it’s been a long time eh?  Almost an entire year, judging from the date at the top of my last post down there.  Poor Kharjo…anyway.  I’ve decided after a long hiatus, that it is time to jump back in to the blogging game.  And the topic that I’m choosing to discuss today is one that I never thought I would be taking part in, let alone writing about on my nerdy, shitty, blog that mostly revolves around video games.

GOING TO THE GYYYYYMMM RAWWWWR.

In the last year, I’ve been going to the gym pretty much on the reg.  I try to go 3 times a week, (doesn’t always happen) and when I’m done at the gym I really do feel better about myself, although over the course of the past year I haven’t really lost as much weight as I thought I would spending all this time there.  It might be because every time I come home from the gym I eat a chicken salad sandwich the size of my fucking skull.

This is recovery food…right?

Now, one thing about myself that the gym has really made me come to terms with (besides my complete lack of motivation and indestructible beer belly) is the fact that I judge people.  A lot.  Literally everyone who walks by me in the gym is a complete tool in my eyes.  But here’s the thing, I don’t think I’m being that unreasonable.  And here’s why.

First off, when I’m at the gym, I’m in an incredibly vulnerable state.  For the most part, I have absolutely no fucking inkling of an idea what I’m doing.  You can catch me doing things like trying to read the instructions on the machines without looking like I’m reading the instructions on the machines (the shoelace tie and the stretch session are two of my signature moves for that activity), ambling by the free weight area to see if there are any meatheads using it, or staring off into space thinking about what I’m going to eat when I get home.  What I’m not doing is waiting for some roid freak with shitty cliche tattoos to walk up to me and ask me if I need help in a condescending tone, like I’m a lost Asian tourist in the middle of Times Square.  I know the basic fundamentals (you pick things up and put them down) and if I wanted your expertise, mister tribal tat on the shoulder #47, I would have come up to you in between grunts and fucking asked you for it.  So leave me alone, let me figure shit out, and I’ll ask you for help if I want it.

Fuck off dude, I’ve got this

Another thing that really pisses me off are people who are at the gym fucking all the time.  I understand that fitness is a lifestyle, you love working out, blah blah blah.  But to be completely honest, if you’re at the gym all day, every day, you need to get your fucking priorities straight.  How is it that some of these guys are at the gym literally every time I go there?  What the fuck else do you do with your life, do you even have a job?  Or is your job wearing a headband and making loud noises while you feebly try to show off in front of gym rat chicks.  I mean, I just don’t fucking get it man.  They all have no personality, have the same tattoo that everyone else in the gym has (this is another recurring theme of my gym judgement, however shitty tattoos deserve an entire article all their own, so I won’t go into detail on that here) and sometimes they just stand on a treadmill for hours doing fucking nothing.  It’s becoming painfully obvious that I’m incredibly insecure about myself here, but I don’t think I’m out of line when I say that everyone hates you.  I wish I could just go up to these guys and shake them and scream,

“Go read a fucking book!”

“Go meet a girl instead of jacking off to yourself in the mirror all day!”

“Go play Chrono Trigger cause it’s the best fucking video game ever!”

“Go dress your cat up in weird clothes and dance with her like she’s a French maid!,”

however, every single one of those phrases would get me a swift punch to the face, which has never happened to me before, and I’m fucking terrified of it.  So I let the anger stew inside my brain and I take it out on the weights.  That’s a lie, I take it out on pizza.

This is what you should be doing instead of bench lifting bar weights, losers.

On the complete opposite end of the gym spectrum, the last thing that I really can’t stand are people who have less of an idea of what they’re doing than I do, because that’s almost fucking impossible.  If you’re more uninitiated with how the gym works then I am, than you might also have trouble breathing on your own, dressing yourself every morning, or walking to your own bathroom without shitting your pants.  There’s this one kid who comes to my gym all the time with his dad (who is fat and out of shape, doesn’t do any cardio, and just works his arms every day, seems legit) and who will sit on a bike the entire time he’s there, and play his Nintendo DS.  Now don’t misunderstand me, I love video games, which is obvious.  But if you’re at the gym you should probably be engaging in activities you can’t complete at home, which would justify your payment of 20 dollars every month.  You can play your DS sitting on your couch at home slob, if you’re going to come to the gym, you should at least try to break a sweat while you’re there.  Sometimes when I’m running on the treadmill behind him, listening to No Diggity on repeat for 40 minutes, I try to shine him thoughts that will motivate him, but it never works.  Also he doesn’t even play cool shit, he plays fucking Phoenix Wright games all the time.

Break a sweat fatty and maybe you can see these tits!

So I guess this entry really turned into a bitchfest about how I hate everyone at my gym, rather than a guide to being a dickhead at any gym, but if you follow what these people do, you’re sure to be hated by everyone around you…or at least me.

The Ballad of Kharjo

So…that awkward moment when you haven’t written a blog post in a few months and you decide to jump right back in.  I’ve been really busy, have had kind of writers block, and generally have just been feeling even more unmotivated than usual.  In reality, I moved, have been working a lot, and have been playing a lot of Skyrim.  Which I guess leads me to this post.  Its a tale of lost love, friendship, adventure, and despair.  It is a story of how I lost one of my dearest friends.  I call it, “The Ballad of Kharjo.”:

A little explanation before I begin.

If some of you out there live in caves and are completely unaware of any pop culture events, I’m here to fill you in.  Skyrim is somewhat of a phenomena out there.  Spawning internet memes, broken relationships, and complete social decline, Skyrim is an open world game of epic proportions.  It is incredibly free form and open ended, allowing you to follow a sprawling journey involving ancient dragons or to just walk around the countryside putting buckets on people’s heads and catching butterflies.

Are you pickpocketing me? Ah…fuck it.

One of the key features of Skyrim is the addition of companion characters.  By interacting with and helping certain people, you can obtain them as partners for your quest.  They will follow you around, fight with you, and generally involve themselves in complete skullfuckery.  The AI in this game is worse than in Mass Effect, and when your faithful companion runs right in front of you while you’re slinging around fireballs, it can make it pretty difficult to care about them, let alone even want to have them around.

Up until my newest playthrough of the game, the only follower I had tried out was Lydia, the one you get automatically through the main quest of the game.  And she’s terrible.  She’s so blindly in love with you, spouting off bland lines like “Yes, my thane,” or “whatever you wish Thane,” I couldn’t stomach her for another second.  So on my second playthrough, playing as a stealthy wood elf, I took her back to my house, hid in a corner, and pelted her with arrows until she lay dead before me.

Yes m’lord, turkey and mayonaise.

Much later in my adventures, I came across a caravan of Khajit plodding around outside of the town of Dawnstar.  The Khajit are a race of humanoid felines and they’re the fucking shit.  They have cool exotic accents, are great thieves and just look really damn awesome.  I stopped to talk to them and discovered that one of them, Kharjo, had lost his family heirloom in a cave somewhere nearby, but didn’t have time to go back and retrieve it.  Hell, I had some time off between trying to assassinate the emperor and destroying a revived undead dragon bent on eating the world, so I figured I would help the poor fellow out and go get it back for him.  Upon returning with his beloved amulet, Kharjo was so ecstatic about the situation that he decided to give up protecting his caravan to travel with me across the land.  At first I thought, “poor catman idiot, if you only knew the ways I am going to murder you.”  However, after accepting his fellowship, the first line he spoke to me won my heart immediately.

“If someone sneaks up behind us, I will smell them coming…Or I might not, we’ll see.”

What?  A sense of humor coming from one of these dimwitted sacs of programming?  I decided to let Kharjo live.  I outfitted him with a sweet bow, a huge warhammer, and some new threads, and he became my most trusted companion.  When I would sneak around an ancient Nord burial tomb, he would stay behind me, watching my back and never walking out in front of me.  When I would draw my weapon and get ready to charge, he would unsheathe his massive warhammer and plant it in some skulls.  Sure, sometimes he had a hard time navigating a particularly stairy set of stairs, but I mean, who doesn’t?

So…after we kill these zombies, wanna grab some brewskies?

We were an inseperable team.  Every pithy comment from Kharjo brought a smile to my face and I actually finally understood the importance of followers in Skyrim.  When you find one you like, they can greatly enhance the experience.  One humdrum afternoon, after clearing a dungeon (and being asked by Kharjo if I was going to take him somewhere warm) I noticed a dragon perched on a Word Wall, sleeping soundly.  I had never snuck up on a dragon before, so I decided to give it a shot.  After getting within range, I shot him with an arrow, triggering him to come and fuck on Kharjo and I pretty hard.  He put a damn good fight, but we dropped the beast, with barely any health left to spare.  Instead of taking the time to heal Kharjo and myself before carrying on, I walked over to the Word Wall to check out the shout contained there and to loot the inevitable treasure chest.  Much to my horror, my brain completely forgot what else was waiting for me at this particular dragon roost.  A coffin, which I had not noticed leaning up against the wall, popped open and a Dragon Priest (one of the toughest enemies in Skyrim) popped out.  This particular one was one of the nine boss Dragon Priests, which means he was extra ready to fuck me up.  I ran away quickly, slowing down time with a dragon shout and then pelting him with arrows.  Kharjo, seemingly knowing that if I took one magic skeleton fireball I was toasted, decided to charge straight in and distract the bastard.  I kept slinging arrows in an attempt to whittle down the fucker’s health.  Kharjo was readying his hammer for a massive blow when the Dragon Priest hit him square in the chest with a fireball flinging him backwards…directly into the path of an arrow I just fired.  I watched, in absolute horror, as my arrow stuck between his shoulder blades, and a second fireball struck Kharjo’s already dead body, sending him flying off the mountainside.  I flew into a blind rage, consuming every health potion and strength buff I had in my inventory, and ran at Kharjo’s murderer in a cloud of tears, obscenities, and sorrow.

I want to ruin everything you love.

After Krosis lay dead before me, I pick up his body and threw it off the mountain (after looting it, I’m not totally crazy).  I then realized I couldn’t let Kharjo’s body just lay out in the wilderness.  He had been my friend, my trusted companion, and I needed to do something in his memory.  So I traipsed down the side of the mountain, found his corpse…and dragged it all the way to Solitude.  I wanted to take him inside and put his corpse inside of my home, but you can’t walk into cities while holding a body.  And I knew that if I used my apprentice level animate dead spell his body would turn to ash afterwards…So now, Kharjo rests on the upper floor of the Solitude stables, surrounded by deathbell flowers.  As I walked away from my memorial, the thought occured to me to just reload a save to before he died, but to me that would somehow cheapen the experience.  His death would have meant nothing.  However…another thought occured to me, with a quote from Kharjo ringing softly in my ears.  I was on track to becoming a necromancer…and one of the highest level skills for that path allows you to permanently raise a dead body to fight for you…If I could reach that level and keep Kharjo’s body safe until then…he could once again become my friend.  Sure, he would be uttering grunts and moans instead of his usual sarcastic banter, but still, I would have my partner back.

“Khajiit will follow.”

Mass Effect: The Ups and Downs

Bioware’s Mass Effect series promised a lot of things.  Ethical choices that would make the common gamer squirm away in fear.  Brutal combat involving force-like powers, tons of explosions, and several tactical options.  A sweeping space opera that would rival Star Wars, but would still represent hard sci-fi in a genre increasingly filled with fantastical stories, and more.  I would say it didn’t fully deliver on any of these things.  HOWEVER, I still consider it a massive milestone in the gaming industry and one of my favorite series to boot.  With all the drama swirling around the internet about the ending of Mass Effect 3, I thought I would throw my gloves in the ring and weigh in on this one.  Cause I’m fucking important, you know?

 

Mass Effect, as a whole series, suffers from some pretty serious flaws.  The combat is clunky and sometimes completely unfair.  Your team-mates are almost completely fucking useless unless you tell them exactly what to do.  I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve watched Garrus march his dumb ass directly into oncoming enemy fire and then just stand there and get bukaked by missles. Thank God in the Mass Effect universe you can revive people from far away with glowing arm computers, or else there would be a lot more dead people.

However, the ease with which team members die in battle made it a little harder for me to stomach their permanent deaths throughout the series.  Never once is it established that when they drop during battle they are merely fainting, Pokemon style.  For all I know, every time Tali’s hot ass (don’t act like you don’t feel the same way) takes a Geth sniper round to the face mask, she’s been killed.  How then am I supposed to believe that Wrex taking a point blank shot from Ashley kills him permanently? Or Legion eating one in the robot mouth during ME:2’s suicide mission leaves him destroyed forever? (That one involves another plot hole entirely, which i’ll get to shortly.) The poorness of the AI makes it a little difficult to care very deeply about these characters, because they’re fucking morons.

Shepherd, I've made some calibrations to my AI and...nope. Nevermind, I'm still a fucking idiot.

Yet, despite the obvious shortcomings in my squad-mates’ intelligence, despite the fact that my logical brain should be telling me to stop fucking caring about these computerized people, I can’t.  This is a testament to Mass Effect’s story-telling ability, and also where the end of Mass Effect 3 got slightly lost.

The world created by Bioware is one full of diverse, well-rounded, and complex characters.  Sure, there’s a couple who are a little black and white.  Jack starts off as a hardened, psychologically ravaged sociopath and only after fucking Commander Shepherd’s brains out is she humanized (which is completely sexist, but I’ve looked past it).  However, most of the characters, especially ones present throughout the entire trilogy, have character arcs that really show them growing and changing.  Garrus for instance starts as a by the books C-Sec officer, but by the end of the third game he is completely changed.  Using whatever means necessary to accomplish the greater good is not outside of his tactical spectrum, and he has even developed a world weary sense of humor that was not present in the first chapter of the trilogy.  If you happened to experience one of the private cutscenes on the Citadel during Mass Effect 3, I was nearly brought to tears by the earnesty and obvious love apparent in Garrus and Shepherd’s exchange.  These two have been to Hell and back together and it shows.  This is Mass Effect’s greatest achievement, creating emotional responses in the player.  There are other examples of this throughout the trilogy.  Liara changing from the naive and “head in the clouds researcher” to a broker of intelligence and pariah for her people.  Tali coming to terms with but never completely accepting her people’s hand in the Geth’s present state.  It’s pretty heavy stuff for a video game.

All of these smaller, intertwining stories are the core of Mass Effect’s success.  However, when time came to end it all and bring closure to the series, Bioware dropped the ball a little bit.  Contrary to most people out there, I say only a little bit, and I’ll tell you why.

Shoot me with that gun again and I'll talk to you in condescending allegory and turn your people into mush and shit.

 

Video gamers are a fickle bunch.  They haven’t really learned the art of leaving some to the imagination and maybe some of that is justified.  As a gamer you are expected to take on the role of your avatar; they are your representative within the world they inhabit and therefore there should be no disconnect between what they know and what you know.  Mass Effect has smudged this relationship slightly.  If you romance Tali, she obviously takes off her mask, but the player doesn’t get to see it.  Did Shepherd close his eyes? Was he too afraid of what might actually lurk underneath that slender, smooth, body and that purple face-mask? Doubt it, as a man I know that there exists an inherent desire to see everyone and everything naked.  HOWEVER, what if the character didn’t have the ability to know these things, should we still be privy to the information?

MOTHAFUCKING SPOILER ALERT.

At the end of Mass Effect 3, a whole of deus ex machina is thrown in to try and explain what the fuck is going on.

The Bioware writers hired me to drop in using my gravity boots and explain what the hell is actually going on here.

 

The ending of Mass Effect 3 attempts to jam all of the brilliant gameplay and storytelling into a few final moments.  The game has no literal boss fight, a point which many fans are outraged about.  I, however, believe there was a boss fight, just in a different sense.  Let’s all face it, the combat in Mass Effect isn’t incredible.  But the ability to converse and argue with other characters is one of it’s strongest assets.  Then, wouldn’t the most poignant, original, and tense outcome to be engaged in a bloody battle of words? I think so, and that’s exactly what takes place.  The final conversation between Andersen (how he got on the ship I have no idea, but guess what? Not that important), Shepherd, and The Illusive Man is one of magnanimous weight.  The Illusive Man, the propagator of human advancement and one of the most brilliant and unforgiving minds in the galaxy, is indoctrinated by the Reapers.  He is speaking their agenda, but it definitely shadows his own.  To overcome the Reapers, control them, and use them for the good of mankind.  Andersen, on the other hand, has learned humanity’s place within the Galaxy.  Humans have finally reached a place of equality among their peers and do not have the right to wipe them out.  They must stand against this threat with their allies and protect them.  Shepherd is the cipher here.  He has battled with both of these viewpoints, himself being a product of the Illusive Man’s research, and must decide who to side with.  I went with Andersen, shot The Illusive Man (incredibly voiced by Martin Sheen) right in the fucking face, and was treated to a scene between a dying Andersen and Shepherd that literally brought me to tears.  I was hoping somehow things would end here, on such a beautifully poetic moment, but things go slightly downhill from here.

My main gripe is that I wish the godly presence inserted to explain the Reapers was not involved at all.  To be honest, I don’t give a shit where the Reapers came from.  As a matter of fact, it’s even more terrifying to not know.  To believe that they are a constant in the galaxy, a force that has been in existence for countless ages with no beginning and no end in sight is absolutely terrifying.  This being cheapens them.  Their cold, calculating methods of harvesting and destruction were what made them such imposing figures to me.  Making them the pet of some grander existence gives them motive, not just uncaring routine.  Had Shepherd been brought to make his decisions regarding the fate of the universe through some other means, I would have been more involved.  However, I still think the ending sequences are great. The only plot hole I feel should have been resolved is the one involving the Prothean beacon being hidden by the Asari.  That is a major development and deserves to be resolved at some point.  All the others DO NOT need to be explicitly detailed.  What happened with the Krogans? Depending on how you handled the situation, these things are alluded to.  The outcome would not become apparent for centuries anyway, and several cutscenes or cheap text would be needed to explain the situation.  The same goes for siding with the Quarians or Geth, or uniting the two.  These things are inferred from the interactions before the end of the game.  Stop needing everything hand fed to you and learn to extrapolate and use your imagination a little bit.  Also, my version of the ending was perfect for me.  Joker and Edi, a relationship I nurtured throughout the course of the game, standing peacefully before a beautiful sunset could not exemplify the ending I chose more perfectly.

If Bioware decides to completely change the ending of Mass Effect 3, I will in fact be a little sad.  In my opinion, with a few shortcomings, it’s mature, satisfying, and worthwhile.  Bowing down to the needs of over entitled fans is a sign of artistic weakness and I think they should stick to their guns…I’ll obviously play it, but I hope it doesn’t happen.

90’s Toy Makers and Marketers: Totally Insane

I’m a product of the 90’s and I’m pretty damn proud of that.  My fledgling years were a time when not everyone had a cell phone, the internet was a weird thing that was just getting started and wrestling was still pretty fucking cool.  I played outside a lot because video games weren’t as awesome as they are now, but I also watched a lot of TV.  TGIF was the fucking shit and Topanga from Boy Meets World was probably my first love (second only to Winnie Cooper, those Savage boys know how to pick em’).  In the process of watching a lot of TV I also watched a lot of commercials.  And let me tell you something man, some of the commercials back in the 90’s were absolutely batshit crazy.  Especially ones for toys.

 

1) Mr. Bucket

Now…when you’re a kid, some shit just goes right over your head.  Because face it, kids are morons.  But listen to the lyrics of this song as an adult.

I’m Mr. Bucket, toss your balls in my top

I’m Mr. Bucket, out of my mouth they will pop

I’m Mr. Bucket!

We’re all gonna run!

I’m Mr. Bucket! Buckets of fun!

Did no one on the marketing team for this toy catch the fact that this song has lyrics revolving around kids, balls, mouths, and running?  It doesn’t matter the context, if those four things are mentioned in the same description, horrifying pedophilia is the only conclusion that can be reached.  The worst thing?  I wanted the fuck out of Mr. Bucket when I was a kid.  I wanted to run and have my balls pop out of his mouth and I saw nothing wrong with that.  Maybe the Mr. Bucket creative team was really just trying to teach us all a lesson on the value of adolescent innocence…or maybe they’re a bunch of sick fucks.

 

2) Don’t Wake Daddy

I’m an English Major.  Needless to say, I spent four years of my life looking into things way too closely.  With that said, I’m pretty sure I’m not digging too deep when I say that there’s some dark shit going on behind the scenes here.  The first question I have looming over my head here would be the issue of the mother in this situation.  Maybe they’re divorced.  That would be a clean cut answer to this solution.  However, this was the 90’s; things on public TV were supposed to be VERY politically correct.  And there’s no evidence that leads to this.  The only answer I can reasonably come to is murder (which I’m realizing is a conclusion I reach a lot in the case of a missing parent). Maybe one night she was a little thirsty at three in the morning.  Maybe someone left the night light unplugged in the kitchen.  Maybe she woke daddy.  And maybe daddy slipped some cyanide into her morning coffee.  We’ll never know.

I guess my other question kind of ties into the previous answer; but why the fuck are these kids so afraid of waking their dad?  I mean, going back to bed when you’re that young sucks.  I took part in my fair share of sleepovers (sleepovers, not slumber parties, I’m a man god damnit) and there is something slightly terrifying about waking up your parents in the dead of night.  But look at the kids in that commercial man.  They are PANTS SHITTINGLY HORRIFIED.  That’s it for them, they’ve never faced a worse future than the waking of their white ass father.  It’s like Cthulu rising from the depths of Ry’leh; there’s a presence in that house that’s not right and those kids know something that everyone else doesn’t.

3) Teddy Ruxpin

This scene starts off innocently enough.  Some pussy ass kid brings in a teddy bear for show and tell.  Some kid yawns about it, cause he knows this guy is a bitch for playing with teddy bears.  Yawnee is straight up Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, none of this pansy ass Teddy Ruxpin shit.  Everything seems normal until the idiot kid tries to spell Teddy Ruxpin and Satan decides to take over.  When that bear starts to talk, all hell breaks loose.

I'M GONNA TELL MY MOM ABOUT THIS DEMON SHIT YOU'RE TEACHING ME

Teddy then goes on to put all of the children into a completely zombified hypnotic state and is promptly cut off before he can state his true intentions.  Probably because Satan thought it would be better sport to enslave the youth of the nation one by one, rather than taking the easy way out by using television.  Also, I know this toy was more popular in the late 80’s than in the 90’s, but I don’t really care.

 

Pokemon: An Analysis

Pokemon is crack cocaine for children.  There is something about this universe that seeps into their core being so fundamentally that it can never be destroyed.  Like all addicts, even if they stop using forever, that itch is always still somewhere within their soul, quietly hidden but always remembered.  How do I know so much about this?  Because Pokemon completely consumed my soul when I was but a child.

The franchise is based on a simple premise; collect monsters, make monsters stronger, kill other monsters.  There really isn’t much plot at all to contend with, it’s an easy system to master, and it’s got a hook that all children can identify with.  “Gotta Catch’em All” is a phrase that children of the 90’s know as a mantra.  Kids love the shit out of collecting things.  Mix that with a way for them to pit their collection against their friends and you’ve got a full blown epidemic on your hands.

Recently, some friends of mine and I were reminiscing about our days playing Pokemon.  We were talking about the cards, the TV show, the games, how if you say Mewtwo is your favorite you’re an idiot, and how Arcanine is the baddest motherfucker this side of Kanto.  As our conversation kept going on, I started to realize some things about Pokemon that my overloaded child’s brain did not.  I decided to compile them here.

1) Pokemon Battles are Glorified Cock Fights

The first real life Pokemon Master

In the world of Pokemon, people (mainly children) travel around the countryside, capturing animals inside of small balls and using them to battle other people’s animals.  All Pokemon have strengths and weaknesses, some are stronger than others, but they all have one thing in common.  They are ripped from their homelands, forced to fight against their will and beaten senseless until they pass out.  When I was a kid, there was nothing apparently wrong about this situation.  My Charizard just fainted.  Well no shit he fainted, he just took a 10,000 watt lightning bolt right to the face.

But the more I started to think about it, the more insidious Pokemon battles started to seem to me.  There is always a reward to be won at the end of the battle; whether it’s money, items, or bragging rights, there is some kind of clear cut advantage to take part in these situations.  They are not for survival; they are for gain.  Also, the Pokemon that are entered into the battles can be knocked out so hard, that they require medical attention in order to be revived.  This isn’t an “I wrestled for awhile and I’m kind of sleepy” kind of fainting, this is the “I just got the shit walloped out of me by a 600 pound tortoise with water cannons on its back” kind of fainting.  There is even an entire crime syndicate unique to each game that is in the business of stealing and dealing certain Pokemon on the black market.

2) The Kids Don’t Go to School

I’ve played a bunch of Pokemon games in my time and watched quite a bit of the show when I was younger.  One of the things that immediately drew me in about this universe is that all of the kids just don’t fucking go to school.  They walk around the world, knocking out animals and using them for their own selfish motives, but never once do they set foot inside a math class or worry about writing a book report for the next day.

This is the number I can count to!

How the fuck do the people in this world get along with their lives, when they’re raising generations of money and fame hungry pricks.  It’s a complete miracle that Ash Ketchum can even get dressed in the morning, let alone raise an entire army of monsters ready to kick ass for him.  I mean, don’t the parents in this world have a fucking problem with this?

Ash: Mom, I’m going to leave home at age 11 and travel the world (searching far and wide) to collect Pokemon! Fuck school and societal contribution, I’m gonna have an adventure!

Ash’s Mom: Oh honey, you’re just like your father! I mean…you’ve never had a dad and he’s never mentioned at all in the entire history of our family…but good luck! I love you! Don’t forget your 200 dollar allowance and this map of the world!

Me: Mom, I’m going to leave home at age 11 and travel the world (to be the very best) to collect Pokemon! Fuc-

My Mom: WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?? SHUTUP AND DO YOU’RE HOMEWORK I’M SICK OF HEARING ABOUT THESE POKEMANS!

Instead of learning algebra, spelling, or history, their kids are out learning that electric is strong against water but ineffective against ground and that flying Pokemon can’t get hurt by Earthquake.  This shit creates a totally closed loop; the children never learn any real world problem solving skills so the only thing they can do is battle monsters, and the only things to do out in this world is battle monsters so it makes learning real world problem solving completely useless.  Holy shit, Pokemon might be a fucking paradox.

3) This

 

I've got nothing.

 

4)Ash Never Has a Father

Honestly, this could really be construed as a positive thing.   Children without a father figure in their lives could take solace in the fact that even though Ash doesn’t have a dad, he’s still out there doing great things and making a name of himself.  But it’s really the darker implication of the whole series of games that makes this a point worth mentioning.  At this point, there have been several iterations of the Pokemon gaming franchise.  And not ONE of it’s protagonists has had a father.  It is always a young boy growing up in a house with just his mother.  And if you take the time to explore this house, which would take literally all of 4 seconds, you will notice the mother has no bedroom.  The upstairs is always reserved for the protagonist’s room, the downstairs a studio apartment esque area.

Thought about more rationally, a pretty obvious situation comes to mind.  The protagonist of every Pokemon game has committed patricide and enslaved his mother.  Why else would she not give a fuck that her 11 year old child is going off to wander the world completely unchaperoned?  Because it means freedom from his domineering clutches.  But listen, Mrs. Red, it’s gonna be worse when he gets back with a posse of bloodthirsty animals, always watching your back, making sure you do things correctly.  Just doing the dishes?  Hear that noise over in the corner? He’s watching you.  Pikachu is always watching you.

 

Crying about it won't bring him back Mom. Now get back home and cook dinner...before Pikachu gets angry.

5) Blatant Racism

 

Don't look at my left breast...but DEFINITELY look at my lips.

Maybe the Japanese are just a little culturally ignorant to the long history of oppression and racism we have here in the States…but c’mon.  That thing is OBVIOUSLY wearing black-face.  The eyes, the lips, the black paint all over her face, there’s really no way to deny it.  Black-face was an act used during vaudeville shows back when racism was totally acceptable and considered humorous.  However, by the time the 90’s rolled around and Pokemon was released, the world kind of got over that.  Jynx should be ashamed of herself.  She needs to be shown some proper entertainment techniques, by someone who really knows that they’re doing.

I'm miming my hand slapping your face for being a racist.

 

One last quick point before I go, not big enough to deserve its own category.  Why the fuck are there humanoid Pokemon? Mr. Mime, Hitmonchan, Hitmonlee, Machamp…there’s a whole bunch.  What the fuck went on there?  Is that what happens if you put a person inside a Pokeball?!?!?

Star Wars Reboot

I fucking love Star Wars.  Like, really love it.  I would give up a whole lot for Star Wars to become real life, so I could don the dark Sith robes and start slicing up Jedi (good guys suck).  My girlfriend also knows that I have a totally healthy and not at all super geeky obsession with the far, far away galaxy and every once in awhile she takes the time to humor me.  A couple weeks ago, sitting at my kitchen table drinking beer, we started talking about what it would be like if Star Wars were remade today.  The first decision made was that George Lucas should in no way be allowed to work on this project.

This smug smile just screams "I will steal your money by exploiting your nostalgia."

I decided that it would be fun to try to recast some pivotal characters from the original trilogy with some modern actors, so, here goes.

1) Michael Caine as Obi-Wan Kenobi

To start, Michael Caine just looks like his real name should be Ben.  He’s such a cuddly, sweet old man.  So filling the role of Ben Kenobi is already one step closer to who he should actually be in real life.  Also, Caine has the knack for playing the stand in father figure/mentor role.

Now don't grow up to be a pussy like that whiny Luke Skywalker kid.

He’s also got some bad-assery hidden underneath that old man exterior, so maybe he wouldn’t just fade away like a bitch when Darth Vader takes a swipe at him.  I mean, let’s be honest, Obi-Wan didn’t even try to dodge that shit.  Vader can barely move in that suit he’s wearing, Kenobi had ample time to riposte.  Just sayin.

2) Ryan Gosling as Luke Skywalker

So what, I kissed my sister. I'm so hot, I've kissed EVERYONE'S sister. I don't discriminate.

Face it, Mark Hamill is a bitch.  He whines and cries his way through the whole trilogy while Han Solo does all the cool shit AND gets the girl.  Sure, Luke getting the girl would have involved a whole shitload of incest, but come on, he didn’t even try with anyone else.  You can lift shit up with your mind, fly a badass space ship, AND your dad cut of your hand.  That’s the perfect mixture of damaged and cool that any girl would fall for.  Star Wars needs a lead with a little more edge.  Luke’s dad killed an entire camp of Sand People (THE WOMEN! AND THE CHILDREN!), there has to be a little bit of hardness to his kid.  And we know Ryan Gosling can show compassion from his performance in The Notebook (which I’ve…..never seen) and The Driver showed that he can kick ass as well.  Plus, he’s a lot better looking than Mark Hamill (who found fame after Star Wars doing voice-over work, go figure) and we all know audiences love a studly man as their lead.

3) Michael Clarke Duncan as Darth Vader

THIS SHIT WOULD BE NUTS.  Michael Clarke Duncan is HUGE.  So now, not only could Darth Vader lift you up above his head and choke you to death with the force of his mind, he could even do it with one hand if he didn’t feel like using his force powers that day, bitch.

I will fucking eat you.

And as a nice retort to Lucas’s incredible amount of prickishness from the original films, Darth Vader could be voiced and acted by the same person! Clarke’s voice is deep and scary enough to carry Vader’s menace.  And now he would have an equally scary physique to back that up.  Vader could not give less of a fuck to begin with, and now literally no one in the Star Wars universe, save a fucking Rancor, could mess him up.

4) That fat guy from Lost as Jabba the Hutt

This picture is literally the whole joke.

5) Scarlett Johansson as Princess Leia

She's just got such a huge...acting skill set.

Ok…so maybe this one is a bit of a fantasy.  But tell me every heterosexual male who saw Leia in that slave outfit hasn’t had a fantasy about someone else wearing that at some point.  I mean…ScarJo would fill out the role so well.  She’s also got some action chops, kicking some ass in Iron-Man 2, so maybe she could lend a little bit more in your face-ness to Leia’s role.  Leia does a lot of bitching and a lot of barking orders, but aside from shooting a blaster a couple times, she really doesn’t do that much fighting herself.  I’d like to see ScarJo taking on a squadron of Stormtroopers singlehandedly.

And last but not least…

6) Harrison Ford as Han Solo

Suck it Lucas!

 

No one else could possibly play Han Solo better than Harrison Ford.  I know he’s getting old and doesn’t look the age for the part anymore, but I don’t care.  Maybe they can pull that trick they did on Jeff Bridges in Tron: Legacy and make him look young again, but it really doesn’t matter.  No one else has the same mix of charm, wit, and sarcasm that Ford brought to this role.  You know you’ve got a good actor on your hands when his character, the one without the sweet light-beam sword and insane telepathic powers, becomes more famous and likeable than the lead.  Han constantly steals the show, and probably even has a better character arc than Luke, changing from someone who cares more about making a quick buck to someone with love for friends and the world he inhabits.  Sorry…that got a little deep.  Anyway, Harrison Ford is the fucking man, and he’s really the only person I could ever see in this role.

 

 

How To Be An Insufferable Asshat While Grocery Shopping

I work at a grocery store.  I won’t say which one, for fear of getting myself fired, but needless to say it happens to be a store frequented by a very special clientele.  It’s a new agey kind of place, full of organic food and easy to prepare gourmet frozen foods (an oxymoron if I ever saw one), and because of this the customers are very needy.  Over the years, I have witnessed all sorts of impressive douchebaggery, and have compiled a guideline of sorts for those of you who wish to join the ranks of the grocery store asshats.

1) Ask tons of questions at inopportune moments

Listen, I know my job isn’t THAT important.  I work at a grocery store, the most important thing I could be doing at any moment is searching in a shithole back room for a product to stock on a shelf.  However, that doesn’t mean I don’t have shit to get done before my 8 hour shift is over.  And for the most part, I’m not as huge of a shithead as I make myself out to be on this blog.  I don’t mind helping people.  But when I’m running around the store like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to locate a package of organic pea shoots for the guy over there in the trench coat that smells like chinese food, don’t jump in front of me and burden me with your question too.

Be worried you can't see his crotch.

There’s a customer who comes into my store who I affectionately refer to as “broccoli guy.”  He’s an older gent, wears khakis that make him look like he’s constantly shitting his pants, and in order to stop that must eat about thirteen full heads of broccoli a day.  He must single-handedly keep all the broccoli growers on the eastern seaboard in business.  You would think this broccoli fetish would be his main character flaw, but it is not.

Found this under the "Amateur/Raw" section of broccoli-tits.com

My main gripe with broccoli guy is that, instead of asking someone while he’s shopping to go see if we have any more broccoli, he waits until he’s checking out.  It’s not like the six angry people behind him have anywhere to go, right?  It’s insanely inconsiderate, but also, it’s just fucking stupid.  Are you just trying to waste your own time? I mean, if your entire life revolves around broccoli, then maybe you don’t have much to go home to, but still, give the rest of us a break man.  Ask for your greens while you’re walking around shopping, not while you’re standing at the register not doing anything.  Which brings me to my next point.

2) Never Bag Your Own Groceries

This one is key to being an asshole at the grocery store.  On most days, the store where I work is pretty busy.  People want their all natural frozen dinners and they want them bad.  For most normal people (read: everyone who doesn’t shop at my store), grocery shopping is kind of a chore.  You buy a bunch of shit you think is healthy that you probably won’t eat, and then you buy a lot of chips and frozen pizzas, and you go home and bask in self loathing.  End of story.  But for some people, getting out of the house is their only escape from their miserable lives, and they seek to prolong the process by all means available.

To Do List: Be a bitch, check! Give less shits about my kids, check! Text the whole time the cashier is bagging my stuff, next on the list.

There’s nothing quite as infuriating as watching a three hundred dollar order pile up on the end of a register, with some asshole just standing there staring into space.  WAKE THE FUCK UP.  This is when passive aggression is the best weapon I have.  Slamming stacks of bags on the register, making eye contact with them and then looking at the massive heap of shit that they’re buying, or sighing loudly and “struggling” to find space to fit their groceries on the counter are all tactics I regularly employ.  If you don’t pick up on any of these social cues, then you’re fucking hopeless, and have succeeded in being a complete asshat.  Speaking of ignoring social cues…

3) Talk On Your Phone, Specifically Your Bluetooth, the Whole Time You Shop

This is probably the most important one on the list.  Grocery shopping is not an impressive task.  It doesn’t show that you have a ton of money like going to a BMW dealership, it doesn’t show that maybe you’re not a complete idiot like going to a bookstore, and it doesn’t have the indie hipster quality of shopping at Urban Outfitters.  What it does qualify you as is merely a human being who needs to eat, like every other schmuck out there.  But in order to be a complete asshole while grocery shopping, you need to make yourself seem as important as possible.  And there’s no better way to do that than to talk on a cell phone the entire fucking length of your shopping trip.  Make it a bluetooth for asshat brownie points.

I literally have no penis.

The whole bluetooth thing really makes no sense to me.  My parents got me one for my birthday last year and I asked them if they forgot who I was.  There is literally nothing else in the world that can make you look like more of an over compensating moron.  Even better are people who wear them constantly, even when they’re not talking on them.  Are you so fucking disconnected from the real world that you need that shit in your ear all the time?  The best is when people come up to the register actively talking on it.  I can’t tell if they’re talking to me or not at first, but once I realize they’re talking to some idiot on the other end of that shit, the real fun sets in.  Every word they say to the person they’re talking to, I respond to as if they’re talking to me.

Idiot-“Yeah yeah, I’m just checking out at the grocery store, I’m gonna be a little late to the butthole pleasures convention tonight.”

Me-” I love the Butthole Surfers! Pepper totally sums up my life man.”

Idiot-” Uh, sorry, I’m on the phone.”

Me-” Uh, no you’re not.  Phones are actual physical devices you need to hold up to your ear, that you should only use when someone isn’t actively providing a service to you that requires your input and attention.”

Idiot- Points to cybernetic implant sticking out of right ear.

Me-“I’m not a racist, but we’ve got a strict no cyborg/asshole rule, get the fuck out of my store.”

And then I promptly snap their freak robot neck and then snap right out of my fantasy world where I get to murder customers who piss me off.  In reality I just completely ignore them or say things really loudly like I’m talking to someone who doesn’t understand English.

 

So those are the main behaviors to engage in if you’d like to be totally annoying and disrespectful while visiting your local grocery store.  I greatly enjoyed the catharsis writing this article gave to me, so as I encounter more cock stains that come into my store, I’ll probably keep writing these.  Good Day.

Christmas Season Recap / Workout?

Working out is probably what I should be doing right now instead of writing this blog, given all the ziti, chicken parm, pecan pie, prosciutto, etc. i’ve eaten in the last week, but hell, I just can’t stay away from web based self loathing.  Christmas went too quick and was filled with grandma avoiding maneuvers, potential dog emergencies, “don’t crack  my cheesecake,” and general stress.  I’m gonna skip right to Christmas day here, because Christmas Eve was, well…normal.  I spent it with my sane girlfriend and her sane mother, and we had a very nice night.  Christmas Day was much different.

Christmas started off with a bit of stress.  Why the fuck isn’t Shoprite open on Christmas?  We wanted poinsettias, why wasn’t there a Jew or two around to sell me them?

Ah, so you're the schmuck who forgot poinsetias on Christmas? Don't get your hosiery in a bunch, I've got ya covered.

Arrival at my parents’ house was met with general neuroses.  My mother was flitting to and fro around the house, not really doing anything of importance, but making herself look nervous and overwhelmed.  You could call that her specialty, along with making others feel guilty about things that don’t need to get done anyway.

Soon after, disaster struck.  My parents’ home is also the residence of Abbie.  Abbie, is a small, overweight, invalid, toy poodle.  She’s been a part of my life for about 8 years now, and surpassed me long ago in terms of familial importance.  Abbie gets dinner first, Abbie gets a bigger stocking above the fireplace, and has more toys than I ever had growing up.  She’s a spoiled little bitch and I love her to pieces anyway.

So pathetic, so cute. Oh by the way, she's got no front teeth either.

 

Abbie’s frail little poodle body decided to let the shit hit the fan on Christmas Eve.  Or more accurately, her body let the shit hit the floor.  Apparently, her furry little self made figure eights around the house, trailing diarrhea and vomit wherever she went.  On Christmas she refused to eat or drink all day, and this led to my mom freaking out, and my father following suit.  They brought her to the emergency animal hospital (they’re open, and Shoprite isn’t?) leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves amidst eighteen plates of Italian appetizers.  I made the remark to my aunt that if Abbie were to finally kick the bucket, on this day, Christmas would be over forever.  My mom would arrange it so that no more Christmas would be had for the rest of time.  Someone would shoot Santa, Rudolph would get rabies, and children would weep the world over.  But their tears would only equal half that of my mother’s.

Luckily, Abbie was brought back home after getting a few shots, feeling nice and dapper, and survived, allowing Christmas to carry on.  75 glasses of wine later, consumed predominately by my girlfriend and myself, Christmas was over, and we went home to play Demon’s Souls (a gift from my girlfriend) and to forget my crazy family really exists.

Remember that workout thing I started doing? I think it’s somewhere in my fridge, behind the huge tray of baked ziti that’s calling my name.

I sweat strategically over my right nipple and belly button.

 

Seriously though, it’s going great.  I can barely get out of cars and can’t put my jacket on without help, but I just feel better about myself.  My girlfriend tells me my arms and neck are looking swole, so that makes me feel like a boss.  I’m slowly upping the numbers of the exercises I can complete in each set.  Although I usually wind up laying on the floor in a pool of my own sweat and drool, after each workout I’m in a great mood and kind of look forward to doing it the next day…kind of.  I look forward to the feeling I get from it more than actually doing it.  And the hot chicks checking out my slightly smaller man tits.

 

So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! I have some pregaming to do before heading out to get free beers from a buddy, so see everybody next time!

 

 

I’m Too Sexy For This Workout

That title is a lie, I’m not exactly sexy yet, but I have successfully completed the first week of my grueling workout. It was pretty rough. My arms are still killing me, every time I sneeze pain shoots through my abdomen, and I feel like a little girly man. But that makes me feel good. My body is reacting to the workout, I already feel like I have more energy, and I’m actually much more motivated than I was at the beginning of this excursion.
I had to halfass a few of the workouts, some of the pushup variants that Dana has me doing are Gunnery Sgt. Hartman worthy. And although I’m not quite as dejected as Private Pyle, I still felt a little discouraged during some of the activities. Lucky, Dana is really encouraging, and hasn’t forced me to blow my head off with a shotgun in the barracks bathroom….yet.
The only amusing anecdote I have so far from this workout series is the fact that while working at my fun grocery store job, I attempted to pick up a case of lettuce bags, that probably weighs about one pound in total, and my weak little girl arms could barely even manage it.

So, tomorrow starts week 2, where I actually plan on getting a scale and giving some quantifiable statistics for my weight loss/weight gain/weight no change. Hopefully it’s the former!