My Sincerest Apologies

So I haven't updated in a while. Sue me. For some reason last night I overhauled the entire site, wasting the whole evening screwing around with HTML code when I should have been packing. See I'm moving. Like out of my parents basement. I keep meaning to write about it in greater detail, but keep getting caught up with other things that are clearly less important than documenting my life in electronic form.

Like for instance I've been cleaning. For instance my room. To say it's a mess would be quite an understatement. More like 23 years of dedicated disorganization. I'm trying to put things in boxes, while realizing that the majority of the junk contained in my room has no real purpose but to decompose in some landfill that will become a golf course in 10 years. For instance I threw out all the commencement bulletins and booklets from college graduation. A bunch of pointless stapled paper packets listing a bunch of meaningless awards that that weren't given to me. My name is somewhere in there among 1000's of other students in small fine print, I presume. And in 10 years as someone tees off on the 7th hole of a city owned golf course, with my commencement packets 40 feet below, It will be just another worthless piece of junk rotting under the ground.

I found all kinds of stuff in my room.

Cards from birthdays past, blue jeans that should have been discarded years ago with holey knees, snapshots of old girlfriends, friends, acquaintances that have since disapeared from my social circles, loose pocket change, metal hangers that are bent out of shape and unable of performing their original purpose, shoe boxes full of cassette tapes of music i'd rather not admit to listening to, paper weights bearing various emblems and symbols, A green pencil reading "Isn't it pretty to think so?," business cards, notes, and papers from failed and often depressing job searches, parking tickets, stuffed animals from canceled cartoon series, useless trinkets from tourist traps, ticket stubs from concerts, plays, movies and other random nonsense, a drinking ticket that reads, "unlawful consumption of alcohol by a minor, he being a person under the age of twenty one(18 years old) knowingly consumed alcoholic beverages, to wit, Old Style beers," and loads of other treasures that will soon find themselves on the curb in a grey plastic drawstring bag.

What I think

I think if you live in the Midwest and you're not going to Summerfest sometime in the next two weeks than you are out of your mind.

I think I'm ready to find Michael Moore's movie "Farenheit 9/11" to be full of overedited, incorrect, misleading, and contradictory footage. I have removed the link I had to his site because of this. Although I still plan on enjoying the movie, I can't in my right mind back something controversial without at least seeing it first, looking at the facts and making an opinion on it.

I think that even though I'm not happy with George Bush, I will probably vote for him again because I haven't found John Kerry to be any great shakes either. In fact, bad shakes kind of like when you're trying to get ketchup out of those glass Heinz bottles at a restaurant.

I think that if John McCain were running for president I would actually care about the election.

I think alot of people are going to be voting for John Kerry just because he's not George Bush.

I think people should vote for John Kerry because he can snowboard.

I think I like when people associate me with my hobbies rather than what I do to pay my bills.

I think I'm going to lose it if I drive into that pothole on Biesterfield road even one more time.

I think the new Wilco album "A Ghost is Born" is interesting but could never have the effect that "Yankee Foxtrot Hotel" had on me two summers ago when I'd come back from happy hour after days working in downtown Chicago gazing at the Marina Towers while listening to "I am trying to break your heart."

I think that cheap instant coffee is my savior

I think living in my parent's basement has gotten a little old.

I think that situation is about to change.

I think I purposely signed a lease on an apartment soley based on the beer prices at the nearby bars.

I think I'm kidding

18th Street

18th street is not a through street
18th street is involved in many types of criminal activities
18th street is a privately held company
18th street is 2 miles south of downtown chicago
18th street is an essential
18th street is heavily populated with illegal immigrants
18th street is an ideal nest and incubator
18th street is a one way street running from the south to the north
18th street is needed
18th street is open to the elements
18th street is open only to pedestrians
18th street is a handsome Siamese cross of approximately 5 years old
18th street is really a great cat but he will require help with his coat
18th street is no longer needed for the initial purpose
18th street is scheduled for the future
18th street is 20 times the size of the region's typical gang
18th street is the natural choice
18th street is still under construction
18th street is one of several gangs in El Salvador with roots in Los Angeles
18th street is already generating an unusual response
18th street is in need of a substantial immediate repair
18th street is a recording project that began in June of 1999
18th street is an upbeat
18th street is scheduled to be upgraded and widened
18th street is three stories of dimly lit bar
18th street is a three unit building presently being used as a two
18th street is also obstructed
18th street is too old and too small to accommodate
18th street is no more
18th street is designed to do the trick
18th street is the world's largest bookstore
18th street is protected by flood gates
18th street is going to be noisy
18th street is lined with discount stores
18th street is small and has a nice atmosphere but is a touch too noisy to be a good listening room.

culled from Googlism

G-Strings and G-Mail

At 2am the strippers came. You know about strippers right? The girls with the fake boobs, tired drugged out faces, and the tatoos. I'm not sure why we like strippers so much or maybe most of us don't but just won't say it.

One of my buddies the next morning said, "I really don't like strippers." And I was like "yeah strippers are pretty much one of the trashiest breeds of people alive, but you have to admit there's something comical about 20 guys all circled around two girls pleasuring themselves using a Black and Decker power drill with a phallic attachment at 2:30 in the morning." Or maybe that's just disturbing. But such is your typical bachelor party.

So there really isn't much more to write about that. yadda yadda, blah, blah, blah, I woke up with a horrible hangover, the end.

I'm giving away 3 G-Mail Accounts to readers of Positively 18th Street

If you aren't familiar with G-mail it is the soon to be free e-mail service started by Google. In the last couple months a very limited amount of invitations were given out to select people, and I was lucky enough to receive one. People have been selling these accounts on ebay for upwards of $100 dollars a pop. Recently I was given three additional invitations by Google and instead of selling them I've decided to give them away free to my readers. The accounts have 1gig of space so you will never fill your mailbox like with hotmail or yahoo.

People are dying to get there hands on one of these accounts, click here to see.

6pm: all Gmail accounts have been given away, thanks for the stripper stories

The Bachelor Party

My mom is very Catholic. And she gets pissed off when I don't go to church. So whenever I leave town for the weekend and come stumbling in on Sunday afternoon, hungover as hell, I'm always welcomed by a stern Middle aged woman standing at the door with her arms crossed. No, "Hi, how was your weekend." or "How are you doing," the first thing out of her mouth is always "did you go to Church today?"

She asked me that very question yesterday and I answered back, "no, but I did go watch a couple strippers."

You see, on Saturday I went to my first Bachelor party. Now, I won't get into how scary the idea is that one of my friends is getting married because that one is for another day, but I will talk about those strippers.

The night started out at a bar in downtown Chicago, where we were given a bright green t-shirt by the best man that said, "If you can't remember it never happened" so we all could be positively identified as the 25 animals that were going to drink the bar clean.

The best man set up a $20 all you can drink deal at this bar, which usually ends up being a scam cause they typically have one bartender in a fully packed bar serving watered down drinks, but not at this place. Everything in the bar including shots were free. People were lining up shot after shot of southern comfort, rumplemintz, tequila..... all while pounding gin and tonics made with top shelf booze. That was great and all but what I really wanted was either a Gin and Fresca, or a Rum and Tab and they didn't have either of those, so I was kind of disapointed, but I digress.

25 guys were just drinking everything they could get their hands on with a 5 minute break every 20 drinks to puke, yak, or partake in reverse peristalsis (if you want to get all medical about it) in the bar's bathroom.

There probably is no rational reason for drinking like that, but hey, my buddy is getting married so sometimes a little irrational behavior is neccesary.

After stumbling out of the bar and leaving the groom to be in charge of leading us to his recently purchased condo, we find ourselves almost 2 miles away from his place and completely lost.

check back tommorrow for the rest of the story

A Couple Comments

Nothing better than writing a post about how nice the weather is, and then waking up the next morning and watching it rain for the duration of the day therefore making your post completely irrelevant.

I think a new apartment has been found. And soon I may be moving. Yikes

Welcome to the Real World

I'm entering my first summer of full time employment and boy it stings.

Yeah I've worked summers in an "internship" or other "college jobs", but that's completely different because there's a foreseeable end. You know that you're going back to school. After you've entered the real world you look off into the future and you don't know what's coming next. It's a roll of the dice. It's a shake of one of those 8 balls that give you nothing but vague answers.

Last year I was working full-time downtown but I knew the whole time that by September I'd be back to filling pointless circles in with a #2 pencil that had no real effect on anything.

And it's the warm sunny days that really piss you off. You're sitting cramped up in your desk space with a fucking winter jacket on because they've got the air conditioning cranked up to full blast, while you're unemployed buddies are out in the sun playing a round of golf, or sitting on the beach sipping from umbrella drinks that girls in grass skirts are serving them.

And you're friends that actually have jobs are sending you text messages on your cell saying things such as "I want to hang myself," or "This air conditioning is fucking hideous."

And you're violently sipping at your mug of coffee trying to fight off that hangover, cursing yourself over and again, why did I go out last night?

And all there is to say is, "Welcome to the Real World."

And you say to yourself, "that show on MTV is nothing like this." Where's the token gay roomate? or the comedic black guy? or the slutty white chick? and why am I updating this excel spreadsheet for the umpteenth time?

Old Time Hockey

It's midnight

I just got back from playing hockey. Good Old Fashioned hockey like Eddie Shore and Toe Blake.

It was hot as hell in Chicago tonight, and the air conditioning in the rink was broken. It was kind of like skating on a pond, an unfrozen pond.

But you know the whole ordeal, the skating, the stickhandling, icings, power play, penalty kill, offsides, all that kind of bullshit.

Then I went to a bar called Potato Creek Johnny's with a couple wingers and a goalie. I'm a defenseman in case you were wondering.

Apparently it was karaoke night, which of course I wasn't informed of before I agreed to go. So we drank cheap pitchers and watched chicks with tatoos sing watered down Def Leppard covers, if such a thing exists, and talked about hockey related things that would probably be of no interest to you, like who scored what goal and who punched who in the face.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we won.

Goodnight

The Return of the College ID

I graduated from college more than a year ago yet for some reason I still think that it's perfectly acceptable to use my college id everywhere.

As long as I don't lose my old college ID, I could potentially be getting student discounts for the rest of my life.

18 holes of Golf for $30, i think not. not with my student discount.

6 dollars to get into the "Innovative Farm Tools of the 18th Century" exhibit? Not bloody likely. When I'm pretending to be a college student, I'm checking out groundbreaking hand shovels from 1832 for only $2.

College night at Joe's Booze Hut, 2 for 1 beers w/ college id? If anyone asks I'm a Neurobiology major with a minor in mechanical engineering.

$18 to go to the movies? Fuck that. If I bring a girl to the movies, it's "hey honey do you by chance have your old college id?" and in seconds I'm up to the ticket window saying, "I'll have two student tickets for Bloody Army War Guns 2, please."

It's all part of my instructional manual for life called, " A Beginners Guide to being Cheap, Immature and Permanently Single."

Peoria, IL

I've lived in Illinois for many years, but never've really been anywhere outside the greater Chicagoland area except for a few occasions. Does anyone know what goes on in southern, Illinois? I always imagined people smoking from corn cob pipes and drinking brands of cheap beer that I'd never heard of before.

Yesterday I was talked into going to Peoria, IL. Its not even close to being Southern Illinois, yet it's still 3 hours south of Chicago. No one was smoking corn cob pipes and it actually appeared to be a city with semi tall buildings. I found this to be peculiar as I looked at Peoria's skyline and watched my AT&T cell phone switch to "Roam" mode. Nationwide plan my ass.

What followed was alot of drinking, house partying, driving around in the back of pick up trucks, late night burrito joints, color coded plastic cups with beer in them, Bryan Adams songs and sleeping on an apartment floor with a backpack for a pillow.

Not bad for a Saturday night I presume, as long as you don't include the part about the Bryan Adams songs.

Backwoods Bar Part II

So I'm in this bar out in the middle of the woods, clenching my 44 ounce cup of beer just in awe of everything going on around me.

When you go to these bars in the sticks you really have to be careful how you dress. If you dress nice in anyway shape or form, they'll think you're from Chicago and you'll be walking out of the bar at the end of the night all bloodied up with wounds requiring stitches. When looking through my wardrobe for the most Wisconsin friendly shirt I stumbled upon a shirt that said, "Pour Beer in Mouth" with an arrow pointing up. This turned out to be a clutch choice and may have been a reason that I walked out of the bar unscathed.

I mean, you don't want to fuck with the guys at these bars. This place in particular was notorious for being a little rough around the edges so we actually had to bring a local with us to make sure that we weren't pummeled senseless by some northwoodsers.

That was good because there wasn't going to be a Chicago frat boy wearing a silk shirt holding a Michelob Ultra taking swings at us. There was going to be a 250 pound Indian right off the reservation, and a guy with a mullet wearing Artic Cat gear kicking my teeth in outside the bar.

These are the guys that invented barfights.

Everytime one of us would go and dance with one of the mediocre to hideous looking girls in the bar, these guys would stop whatever they were doing and come from the opposite side of the bar to cut in, in order to further show their dominance of the bar and the people within it.

But that was fine with me, cause there was something seriously wrong with some of these chicks. The floors of this place were covered in a thick coating of mud, and these girls were were just rolling around in it. I've never seen anything like this. They have this dance, it must be a Northwoods thing where they get on the ground and roll around, like ..well pigs for instance. And the best part about it, was all this was going on the the sounds of AC/DC and Quiet Riot.

Furthermore, we'd go up to some of these girls and try talking to them by starting off with the traditional introduction question, "Where did you go to school." and almost unanimously these girls would say, School?

I was informed later in the evening that they aren't into things like education around there, which I don't neccesarily have a problem with, if that's your style. But is there any reason to roll around in mud?

That was my weekend. Enjoy yours.

Saturday Night Backwoods Bars

On Saturday we ventured up into the Northwoods to a friend's cottage. Despite the fact that the weather was absolutely miserable and that there were maybe 20 minutes in 3 days when there wasn't a downpour of rain, I actually managed to have a great time. When you're holed up in a cottage in the woods and it's raining theres only one thing you can do, though. drink.

I could just ramble on and tell you a bunch of random crap that you could care less about, but instead I'll just cut to the chase.

Whenever I go up north to Wisconsin, these guys always try their hardest to find the most awesomely horrible watering hole to bring me to, so that I'll get a taste of the "authentic north woods culture."

I thought I'd been to some awful bars in the past but the place these guys found me on Saturday definitely wins the award for the worst bar of all time(or greatest depending on who you ask)

At around Midnight we pulled up to this bar way out in the woods creatively called "The Drawbridge." One look at the dirt parking lot with the hundreds of pickup trucks circling the place, I knew this was going to be a hell of a drinking establishment.

As we walked up to the entrance I soon found out why they called it "The Drawbridge." The owners had put a sheet of wood on the ground in front of the door and attached chains to it. I would tell you that I thought that was really clever, but then I'd be lying.

I walked down the "drawbridge" and the next thing I know, I find myself in one of the most ridiculous places I have ever encountered. The bar is packed with tons of big boned women, roughneck guys you wouldn't want to fuck with and everyone is drinking beer out of what appear to be those 44 ounce big gulp cups from 7 eleven. After twenty minutes of waiting at the bar, I ask the bartender for a G&T, and he says what is that? So I say it's a gin and tonic, can I have one buddy? and he says sure but then comes back with a glass of sprite and tonic water.

After giving the glass to a handful of people, to confirm this fact, I tracked down the bartender again, who then informed me that he didn't actually know what a gin and tonic was. So i sighed and said, well can I just have one of those big gulp cups?

Oshkosh Aquatic House Party

There are not many things as great or greater than going up North for a weekend of debauchery with the good ole' boys from Freedom, WI.

Some of my friends go to University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, so Friday night I made the 3 hour trek to go up to drink like a fish and make an ass out of myself. It always feels really weird when you're 23 years old, and return to a college town to party like your 19 again.

As is college weekend tradition I went to one of those good old fashioned basement parties where you're jammed into some dark basement. With all the classic components: exposed heating vents, an old beat up furnace, a coin operated washer and dryer, a keg tucked in the back corner and girls in tube tops with those tattoos in the middle of their back that one of my buddies calls "slut stamps".

I've been to many of these parties in my years as a college student, but nothing can compete with this party I was at on Friday. The students in Oshkosh are on a whole nother level than anyone at Marquette or any college for that matter.

This house was one of your classic run down college houses, which really is nothing new, but with one major difference.....

The night before the basement of the house completely flooded.

Most sane people would say, "that sucks that the basement is flooded, now we're not going to be able to have a party." But not in Oshkosh.

I'm still not sure how I got talked into going to this party but next thing I know I was being handed a red plastic cup and venturing into some random underage kid's basement. The second I walked down the first step I looked down at the scene going on and was dumbfounded.

The entire basement was flooded with about 4 inches of water, yet people were still rocking out like everything was perfectly normal and somehow appeared to be enjoying the ridiculousness of the whole thing.

The guys who lived in the house really put a lot of thought into throwing this party too and I really have to hand it to them. They put a few wooden boards in at the entrance of the basement to kind of ease you into the fact that in seconds you would be up to your ankles in rank, run down college house, flood water. It was kind of like the story of Noah's Ark but without the ark. Just a bunch of animals drinking while submerged in water.

You'd look off in a corner and see some couple making out against a wall while splashing each other. Then you look at the other side of the basement and see the idiot running the keg kicking water at everyone in line trying to get a beer. Girls dancing to "Get Low" by Lil' John and the Eastside boys while wearing water wings.

To the window to the wall, there was water everywhere. It was hideous.

Congratulations Oshkosh. You are something else.

Paid Holidays and Self Proclaimed Laziness

So yesterday was my first official paid vacation day from work.(or PTO day if you want to get all human resourcey about it.)

It's one of the best feelings, because you go through the whole day cocking around, doing absolutely nothing productive and you're getting paid for it.

I spent the day thinking of great things I could do on my companies dime. It was a great feeling knowing that I was getting paid to watch horrible monday afternoon network television, because i've always thought you should be paid for having to watch that crap.

and I'd be drinking a beer and say to myself, "this is great I am getting paid to drink this beer."

Now if you really want to get technical about it I spent 4 of my usual 8 hour work day, driving back home from the Northwoods in Wisconsin.

Some things happened this weekend.

Let me tell you.

Well actually I'm not going to tell you, because I really don't feel like typing it all right now.

But what I will say is that my liver is less than thrilled with some of this weekend's decisions made on my part.

I feel like there was probably a way to get across the last sentence's point in about 3 words.