A few years ago… maybe in 2004 or so… my niece Jill told me that she communicated with her friends primarily through instant messaging. She would sit at her computer for hours just typing away to other teenagers out there in internetland somewhere. I thought it seemed weird. Why wouldn’t they just talk on the phone like normal people?

Then a couple months later, my pal Ev told me about his blog. He and his friends were posting personal stories and whatnot on some random website every day for complete strangers to read. Super odd. Why would anyone want to share their personal shit with the world? And who cared enough to read about it?

And around that same time in my life, I had one email account that I checked maybe once a week. If someone needed to reach me, it would be more efficient to drive to my house and knock on my door than to email me. They’d get a faster response anyway.

I really don’t know what changed, but it happened very quickly. I joined Ev’s blog, then another, then started my own. I set up separate email accounts for my various websites. I tested the waters with a few different instant messaging systems. Blah blah blah.

Now I’m fucking addicted. I have a cell phone that buzzes every time I receive an email to any one of my 5 email accounts. I have profiles on who knows how many social networking sites (MySpace is the only one I pay any attention to). I communicate via IM every chance I get. I far prefer it over the phone. In fact, my entire relationship with my fiancee Lulu was forged via IM. And even when I do use my phone, I almost always send a text message instead of calling.

I have a few friends that are like me in this sense. Web addicted. And there are others who still check their email maybe once a week or don’t necessarily respond to emails when they read them. Somehow I’ve lost that ability. If I get an email, I usually respond within minutes.

I really had no idea where I was going with all of this rambling… but I just thought of a good way to wrap this all up: If you are my friend and I don’t call you as often as I probably should, maybe try sending me an email or a text. Or look for me on Google chat. Or hit me up on MySpace. Or leave a comment on my blog. I’ll respond.

Dearest heathens,

I have news to share with you. The body shop called with an estimate to repair the damage caused by a recent hit and run accident. Drum roll….. $6500 and it’ll be done by January 7.

Insurance will cover it, but I’ll have to pay the deductible and I’m sure my rates will go up.

One final note about this ordeal - Check out the picture below. Notice how cautiously and carefully I folded in the driver’s side mirror. I take this preventative measure every single day. In this case, it didn’t help.

Yours in hatefulness and spite,
JJ

Now that I’m the victim of a hit and run, a few of my friends have asked if I think it’s payback in the form of car karma (or in this case: “car-ma”). My answer? Yeah - that might have something to do with it.

This is what I saw today as I was heading out to band practice. Apparently, someone crashed into my car last night and drove off. You can see they lost a headlight in the accident, and there’s some blue paint on my bumper.

But here’s the thing - I’m not even really all that mad. Remember how pissed off I was when someone broke into my old Subaru? That felt like a personal attack. This is completely different.

I assume the driver was drunk. I guess it’s possible they simply lost control, but it wasn’t snowing or raining. Also - I assume they aren’t wealthy. The headlight that was left behind looks like it’s from a real piece of shit. And my girl and I don’t exactly live in the ritziest neighborhood. My car was parked outside our apartment. Here’s our block:

So if this was a drunk driver, they probably felt like they couldn’t deal with the cops. And if they don’t have money (maybe they don’t even have insurance), perhaps they couldn’t afford to pay for the damage to my car.

That’s rational JJ talking. The other side of the coin is this: I’ve got to pay at least $500 for the repairs (I’m assuming insurance pays for the rest), my insurance rates will likely go up, I’ve been sitting here waiting three hours for the cops to show up so I can file a police report, I missed band practice, I’ll be without a car for at least a week, I’ll have to deal with the hassle of getting the car to the shop and picking it up, and the value of my car just plummeted because now it’s been in an accident.

Ahh fuck ‘em. Whoever did this deserves a blanket party. Who wants to help?

People,

I am making progress in my plans to permanently scar my body using a painful process of injecting ink under the layers of the skin on my back. In other words, I have prepared the basis for my tattoo design.

It began with a few images of The Churning of the Milky Ocean, a bas-relief scuplture found on a wall at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. I chopped and rotated and combined and accentuated the images to make a single whole image. You can check out the initial structure here. My tattoo artist is using this as a basis for her black/gray ink drawing. I hope to see a first draft of her drawing on Saturday.

I’ll let you know if I get any of the actual tattoo done this weekend. No matter what happens, I know it will never be even half as cool as the best tattoo ever.

Best regards to you and yours,
JJ

Dearest readers,

I am seriously considering getting a giant tattoo across my back. The design is in progress. It will be an interpretation of The Churning of the Milky Ocean, a bas-relief sculpture found at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The drawing will be black ink only. I will post pictures once it is done.

Is this a good idea or am I losing my mind?

Best regards,
JJ

Here’s a story from JJ’s ancient past.

You know that shitty Ted Nugent Song Cat Scratch Fever? Yeah, I had that shit.

And by “shit”, I mean shit.

I was maybe 13 or 14. My cat scratched me and I got this disgusting infection. My lymph modes swelled up and I started puking. It was like I had two rock hard golf balls inserted into my neck.

The doctor told me that when a cat takes a shit and buries those turds in the litter box, the little fucker collects shit molecules on it’s claws. Then when it scratches you, the shit gets in your blood. Hence, cat scratch fever. I had cat shit running through my veins. Wango tango!

I think I bruised a rib.

And for a couple of days earlier this week, I thought I had broken a bone in my hand… or at least sprained something. Now it’s just a disgusting scab peeling away on my knuckle.

I am a giant pussy. Seriously. You could accidentally step on my toe and I’d end up with five broken bones.

I should buy a giant foam suit to wear when I’m drinking as a preventative measure. Notice I didn’t say that I should stop drinking to the point where I stumble and fall. I’d rather wear the foam suit.

Who knew the first 20 would be so easy?!

What am I doing?

-green tea extract

-water only for liquid. lots of it. (occasional beer, c’mon man. but a lot less of it)

-30 minutes running and walking daily

-30 minutes yoga daily

-organic food diet (thank you Amy whoever you are)

 The beer thing always fucks with my fluctuation (two pounds here and there), but the scary thing is that I like this diet and still enjoy eating. 175 is just around the corner.

 Hooray for me!!!

Run to Iron Maiden albums!!!

-Jim

This is a true story written by Momo with a few minor edits. Let me preface it by saying we live in sort of a sketchy part of Philly.

So at around 10:30 last night, JJ and I were reading in bed. We heard some footsteps on our roof deck, but figured it was just our neighbor. Then we heard a helicopter outside. Now, we have heard helicopters outside before and have seen them shining lights in our neighborhood looking for people. But we started to see random lights starting to shine into our bedroom through the skylights. First, not so often; then over and over again. So we get out of bed and look out our window to see our neighbors on the street and a couple of cops.

I went downstairs to check it out and opened our door to ask Julie (neighbor) what was happening. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear anything because of the loud helicopter. But then I noticed that there were about 5 cops on our street, shining their flashlights towards the roof of our house and our neighbor’s houses. The helicopter finally left and one of the cops asked if we had heard footsteps on our roof, and we said yes. So they asked if they could come up to our roof deck and check things out, to which we said yes again. Two cops came up and checked things out, but found nothing. On their way down, I asked one of them what was happening, and he told me this:

Apparently a guy broke into a pharmacy a half a block away and when the cops arrived, the guy somehow escaped onto the roof and was trying to get away from the cops by running across the roofs of all the houses on our block.

Well, they didn’t see him anywhere from our roof deck, so they quickly gave up and told us to call if we saw a thin black male in a white dingy t-shirt. At this point, we were all on the street with our neighbors, kind of freaked out. The cops left, and a minute later our next door neighbor (whose house is at the end of the string of roofs) came out and says that he just saw the guy on his roof. So JJ ran down the street to alert the cops still positioned at 20th, and Julie called 911 to tell them to come back.

Also at this point, our neighbor Marcel decided that it would be funny and smart to grab his camera to document this event on Webster Street.

The cops came running back toward our house and some of our other neighbors who were on their own roof decks across the street yelled down to the police that they could see the guy running across the roofs. At this point, the helicopter showed up again and there were 2 bicycle cops, 2 cops cars, a cop van, and about 4 other cops on our street looking for this guy again. Four of them ran back up to our roof deck and spent the next 30 minutes up there trying to get this guy. But they never got him – 10 cops against 1 burglar.

When the cops were coming down the stairs the second time, a couple of them noticed our keg-o-rator and were asking JJ about it. When the cops finally left our street, one of them drove by and stopped where JJ and I were standing and said to JJ, “hey buddy, if you are ever looking for a roommate, give me a call”.

(Last week)

(This week)

Yeah I got my hairs cut - all one hundred forty thousand of them.

Also, I should mention that I do not wear blue contact lenses. My eyes just happen to look bluer in sunlight than in the light of the flickering office fluorescents.

My little friend JD had a rough night last night. I figured you’d be interested, since I’ve mentioned him here before. He’s a little Italian Greyhound.

Momo and I let him out on our street last night while we played drunken four square with the rowdy neighbors. (Or maybe Momo and I are the rowdy ones?) Anyway, we were guzzling Philly Pale Ale and enjoyed some other “medication” before the four square session really started heating up. It might sound ridiculous, but four square is insanely fun after you can barely walk.

JD always stays close to us when we’re hanging out on our street. It’s in South Philly, on a small side street where few cars ever pass. He walked over to the empty lot next door to take a piss, but a couple of minutes went by and he hadn’t come back. Momo went to look for him and found him walking back toward the house from maybe half a block away. He was bleeding from all four legs and was shaking.

He had some dirt and black marks on his side. We’re thinking he got hit by a car, but we didn’t actually see it happen.

Momo took him inside and cleaned him up. Then our amazing neighbor Julie offered to take us to the vet hospital, because she was still sober.

Soon it was 7am and the sun was up. The vet finished the examination and told us she agreed that it looked like he was hit by a car. But luckily, he did not have any broken bones and no apparent internal injuries. She gave him some pain meds and antibiotics and sent us home.

Now the poor lil’ fella is resting on the couch all groggy. I’m just happy he wasn’t hurt even worse. I would have lost my mind.

In case you missed out on previous JD related stories:
The Elevator Incident
Snow Boots
Stinky Pillow

This is turning into a recurring theme here.

I’m reliving my teenage years. My life is filled with things I was into at age 17 or 18.

• Skateboarding
• Playing in a rock band
• Participating in make-out parties
• Staying up until 4am on weekends
• Drinking beer daily
• Smoking cigarettes
• Growing my hair long
• Wearing skate shoes
• Calling my friends “dude” or “man”

Am I too young for a mid-life crisis? Reminds me of the Weezer song “The Good Life”:
(more…)

So, today was a major “D” day for me.  My wife of 5 years and I filled out and completed our Seperation Agreement. 

It isn’t anyone’s fault, it just seems we’ve grown apart.  The strange thing is we’re still best friends, and get along great.

I’m confused as fuck because I don’t know what that means.  Neither does she, really.  And after talking over lunch, we’re both open to fixing our marriage, but we both agree we want at least some time apart to work through things. 

The hardest part was finally admitting to myself that maybe she was right and I was simply no longer attracted to her anymore.  And I couldn’t feel like a bigger bastard.

Will it work out?  Who knows.

I want to go get a tattoo, get drunk and get high.

So, a certain family member of mine has recently come up with a realization - he no longer feels it necessary or right for a man to hold a door open for another man. He has no problem holding it for a lady, but if he sees a man coming up behind him, he makes sure to let it swing. Also, if a man is standing at the door holding it for him, he politely declines.

Now, I don’t know how to feel about this. I think I at least got to him with the issue that a swinging door is even worse than a closed door. He makes sure to slam it entirely so nobody is burdened with stopping a swinging door.

He also expressed that he wished to start a movement of this behavior, but he doesn’t see anyone following suit - they’ve actually tried to get him to accept their door-holding offer.

I think it’s crazy. Am I the only one? I mean, it totally makes my day when a random stranger holds the door for me and I think it’s rude when I’m right behind and they don’t hold it behind them for me to at least grab it. BUT I’m a female so I can’t entirely see that side of the issue. Why do I even care? I’m like obsessing over it. Help me out here.

Edit: I forgot to mention. Here are some anti-Chuck Norris arguments which really cause one to question his strength.