Real Capitalism

People say our capitalist society is evil, and to prove them right, I am putting my vote up for sale. If I get particularly industrious about this (unlikely), I may even post it on craigslist. Because, my friends and countrymen, and I am more than willing to sell my country out.

I was inspired by a discussion last night in which a couple of my friends explained that one of their drunken coworkers promised to pay them $200 to vote for a certain candidate. It made me realize what an idiot I would be for voting for free. Why should I not get paid for wasting my vote when someone could pay me to waste it? This idea, while fundamentally opposed to the values of our constitution, is utterly brilliant and without flaw.

I realize that with our secret ballot system, I could ostensibly sell my vote and still vote for whoever I want. But I will freely tell you that I would not vote if I was not paid to vote. Voting is inconvenient, confusing, and all the old people at the voting places talk really slow. So unless I can make a profit, I'm not going to deal with it.

Better yet, if you're too young to vote, a convicted felon, or just feel like voting twice, I'd be willing to lend you a copy of my ID and a pair of glasses that look like mine (they're actually my roommate's) so you can vote in my place! This one comes with an extra charge, though, as all involved would probably get arrested.

To be honest, I would be willing to sell my vote for a McDonald's hamburger. My vote is worth at least that. Come on, McCain and Obama campaigns, you can at least take me out for a hamburger.

Cold

Well, August is almost over, and winter has finally returned in Minnesota. Though the temperatures still tend to peak in the 70s, do not be deceived. Winter is upon us, and it's time to look forward to another 18 straight months of dirty-carpet-colored skies and squirrels freezing to death in our roof. I know I'm excited.

You skeptics out there probably think I'm overreacting. But don't try and tell me this is just autumn. I know winter when I see it. We definitely missed autumn this year, so we'll have to catch next time around. Stop arguing with me and lay out the plastic yard covers before the snow hits.

I'm glad we got a good four months of spring and summer, but I'm ready to get back into the good ol' Minnesota winter groove. Shoveling and de-icing the sidewalk, wearing three layers of jackets, shielding yourself from the bitter wind, not leaving the house for weeks, developing several paranoid fantasies about the neighbors trying to steal the buried treasure, eating raw deer carcass--those are the things that Minnesota is all about.


Who's ready for a swim?

New Phone

I got a new phone yesterday. Thankfully I didn't have to pay for it. Because, while this is definitely a good phone, it's lacking a few important things. I should say too that I'm not very high maintenance when it comes to phones--I don't need a camera, the internets, music, or holograms. There are, however, a couple things that I expect every phone to have, and this phone does not have them.

Most conspicuously missing is a jet propulsion system. I can't stand having to lift my phone to my ear and keeping it in my pocket. Pretty much the only way I'll use a phone is if it hovers by my ear and jets around behind me so I don't have to carry it. How can you even call a cell phone convenient if it doesn't float around? Having to hold it and everything is really more of a nuisance than it's worth.

Also, I'm extremely disappointed that it doesn't have lasers. I can understand why you wouldn't put lasers on a phone that doesn't have a jet propulsion system cuz they kind of go together, but then why don't you just install both? I mean, a phone without jet propulsion is bad enough, but a phone without lasers is just plain unsafe. What if I'm about to be crushed by a meteor? Looks like I'd be out of luck cuz my phone doesn't have lasers.

Dress-up

I lament that people do not wear suits more often. Suits are cool, as demonstrated above, but following the end of the Cold War, they seem to have earned a reputation for being worn by heartless arms dealers and coke fiends. This reputation is undoubtedly entirely deserved.

The poor people of this nation must redress this issue and make suits cool again. The problem is that suits are not cheap and that we, the poor people, cannot afford them. Rich people keep being uncool, keep making money, keep buying suits, keep wearing their suits while being uncool, and keep kicking us poor people in our low-quality pants. I have no solution to propose to this issue; I'm just commenting on how much it sucks.

I look forward to the day when suits are cheap. For once suits are cheap, regular poor people like us would be able to buy them, and we'd be able to beat the rich people at their own game: polo.

I Know a Ninja

One of my roommates may or may not be going to Japan to become a certified ninja. He has already gone through some extensive ninja training, and this is a very exciting prospect for his ninja development.

I must say, though, that I am now deathly afraid of living in my house. I haven't slept in days in fear that my ninja roommate would sneak into my bedroom while I was sleeping and turn all my stuff upside down. There is little that scares me more than waking up in the middle of the night to discover all my stuff turned upside down with Mark's ninja head detached from his body and floating in my room like a balloon.

I've started being really careful to check around corners before I walk into a room to make sure Mark doesn't leap out at me and slice my arms off with a ninja sword. But if he really wanted to do that, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to see him from around the corner. I think he's practiced extra hard on his invisibility. I, however, have practiced embarrassingly little at keeping my arms attached to my body.

I really hope he does make it to Japan, though. His skills are wasted on soon-to-be-armless patsies like me. He needs a true test, something that only Japan can offer. Gamera.

Put a Bag on Your Head

About a week ago, a friend and I caught this movie called Baghead, which I won't comment seriously on, but is a movie about a serial killer who wears a bag over his head. And it's good. More importantly, it made me wonder, when is it OK to wear a bag on your head? So I came up with the following list at about 3AM last night.

Situations where it's OK to wear a bag on your head
-At the Baghead premiere
-When you're going to the paper bag parade
-At any official meeting of the Green Party
-If you're planning on traveling back in time
-When you're in Utah

Situations where it's NOT OK to wear a bag on your head
-When you're eating a hot dog (or a hamburger)
-When you're cashing a check at the bank
-While swimming
-When all your friends are dressed like robots and you don't want to feel left out
-If someone you know is lighting paper bags on fire

Situations where I don't really care if you wear a bag on your head or not
-In your math and science classes
-If you don't have any better ideas for a Halloween costume
-If you want to mess with your pets
-To reduce wind resistance while riding your bike
-If you think it will give you superpowers

Scruffy

I haven't shaved in about five days now. That's kind of a lot for me. It's not that I've gotten too lazy to shave, or even that I decided to grow a beard. It's that I discovered that I like it when I look sruffy. Kind of like a terrier.


Next time you see me, you'll remember this picture, and you'll think to yourself, "Hmm...Ben really does look kind of like a terrier now that he stopped shaving. Maybe I should get a terrier, but not because it would remind me of Ben. It would be very strange to own a dog that reminds me of Ben, especially when it's licking my face to wake me up in the morning, or when it's peeing on a tree in my backyard." And since I can read your thoughts, I would be disgusted.

I have a feeling, though, that if I keep up this not-shaving business past this week, I'd end up leaving Scruffy Town for Beard City, and no one would like that. Then I'd look less like a terrier and more like some loser with a beard.

Adventures in Napping, Part 4

I'm not sure naps are cutting it anymore. I think I'd rather just sleep forever. In that spirit, allow me to recount the most recent napsite I visited.

Nap #4: Abraham Lincoln's top hat


The first thing I'd like to note about napping with Abe Lincoln's hat is that you have two napping locales to choose from. One, inside the hat, and two, on top of the hat. Both offer excellent napping accomodations, and of course inside the hat is better for those who prefer not to be rained on.

For my first nap, I opted for the top of the hat. The only negative thing was that I was shaken awake when Abe wrestled an alligator into submission. The bonus for that was, after Abe snapped the alligator's neck and roasted it on a campfire, he shared the bountiful meal with me. I have a feeling that if I had been napping inside the hat during all that, I wouldn't have woken up.

This experience was so life-changing for me that I've decided to buy a large hat and rent it out to a bed & breakfast.

Overall rating: 9/10 (lost a point for my assumption that I would not have been fed alligator had I been inside the hat)

Adventures in Napping, Part 3

I'm almost feeling a little over-napped at this point, having recently enjoyed a doze in a cup of coffee and a video game, but I must press on.

Nap #3: a woolly mammoth


After my previous two napping experience, I really felt like napping with a blanket, but I didn't really want to drag a blanket around with me. How could I possibly have the warmth and comfort of a blanket without actually having a blanket? Of course the only option was to find me a woolly mammoth in which to nap.

The problem with woolly mammoths is that they look a lot more comfortable than they feel. The biggest problem was the mammoth's skeleton. I got wrapped up in its fur (or would you call it hair?), but its spine was like a dozen diamond foosball men digging into my back. Not to mention that its hair was greasy and smelled like Utah's garbage.

But words cannot express how great it felt to sleep in its fur. It almost made me forget feeling like I was resting on a foosball table that stank of rotting fish. It was heaven with tusks.

Overall rating: 5/10 (minus two points for the tusks)

Adventures in Napping, Part 2

Though I'm not as tired as I was after napping in the Lemmings video game, I must press on in my napping odyssey. Which brings us to yet another wonderful nap zone.

Nap #2: a cup of coffee


As you may expect, this was not so conducive to napping. First of all, I could not breathe as easily as would need to breathe in order to nap because my lungs kept filling with coffee. Thankfully the coffee had been sitting out for about twenty minutes, so it wasn't scaldingly hot, but it still wasn't comfortable. I still prefer it to taking a nap in salt water.

Secondly, there were other things living in this cup of coffee, which made the experience unpleasant in every way. Right when I thought I could settle into a napping groove, some ugly monster-shaped creature would show up and asked if I wanted to join him for lunch. When I politely declined, another one showed up a few minutes later and asked me the same thing. Can't I just be left alone to nap in my cup of coffee?

If it wasn't for the caffeine, I wouldn't have gotten any sleep at all.

Overall rating: 3/10

Adventures in Napping, Part 1

I'm pretty tired today. To those who know me well, that may not seem unusual. OK. But it's still true that I'm tired and I'm going to blog about it.

Since I'm tired, I figured, what topic better to blog about than napping? So I decided to go on a napping adventure, napping in several different places and times (yes, there will be time travel). After I've napped in them, I'll tell you about them. And we'll all have a splendid Friday.

Nap #1: Lemmings the video game


I know it would have made sense to take my first nap in my office, in a field of flowers, or in the world's most comfortable chair, but we all know what those are like. When I really got to thinking about what relaxes me, the first thing that came to my head is the music from Lemmings. It goes like this: dada da dum, da dada dada dada dada, dada da dum, da dada dada dada dada, dada da dum, da dada dada dada dada, dada da dum, da dada dada dada dada, dada dum da da dum da da da da da da da dum. Remember?

How does one take a nap in a video game, you wonder? Relatively comfortably. Aside from all the lemmings pacing back and forth, bashing at the walls, and digging out the floors, everything's pretty peaceful. The ground is really comfortable, except in those Greek-themed levels where it's all rock. Sometimes the sound of their building woke me up, but only when they only had three bricks before they ran out. Other than that they were perfectly quiet.

Overall rating: 7/10

Political Editorial

A lot of people are making a fuss about how old John McCain is and how he still refers to Russia as the Soviet Union. Come on, people. He can't help that he's 80 years old, and I too am nostalgic for the hockey rivalry we had with the great Communist empire. Maybe we shouldn't make such a big deal out of that stuff.

So let's take a look at a few geographically competent people who are actually older than John McCain. And let's learn about ourselves and the elderly people who fill our grocery stores.

An Old Ecuadoran Woman
Age: presumably mid- to late-80s, but no one knows for sure
Life Accomplishments: trained circus monkeys, authored one of the most significant South American peace accords in modern history, briefly married to several well-known revolutionaries no United Statesian has ever heard of
What People Are Saying: "She looks like my grandma, if my grandma was Hispanic." -Brad Pitt.
"If I knew how to speak Spanish, I bet I could learn a lot from this lady. I'm not joking. That's not a joke." -Al Franken
Why is it better to be older than McCain? Because she still refers to Russia as Russia (though she means Czarist Russia, which is more anachronistic). Also, she's at that old age where old is cute, not ugly. People want a cute president (note: I can think of no exceptions to this statement).



An Old Man Who Spends All His Time Feeding Pigeons at the Park
Age: at least 90, so younger than he looks
Life Accomplishments: knows every state capital, tried to talk Lee Harvey Oswald out of moving to Dallas
What People Are Saying: "I see that guy all the time. I always thought he'd be cool to talk to, but I'd never go up to him. I think I'm afraid of old people." -my dog
"One time when I was walking through the park, I saw him feeding the pigeons, and I thought, Geez man, you're just drawing a giant crowd of pigeons. Get the heck out of here and let us walk through the dang park. I was gonna start kicking pigeons around, I was so pissed." -Oprah Winfrey
Why is it better to be older than McCain? Because people like dudes with canes (i.e. Fred Astaire in all those movies where he danced with a cane) as well as dudes who can't walk (i.e. FDR, who won more elections than any other presidential candidate ever).

Yoda
Age: 900?
Life Accomplishments: failed to save Old Republic, green, dead
What People Are Saying: "Was that guy even born? I think he just leapt out of a giant blue orb. And he was already old when that happened." -Emperor Palpatine
"This guy didn't just get old by sitting around like a lump of cheese. He's like accelerated-the-passage-of-time old. That's some serious old. I mean, look at that face! You don't get ears like that by sitting around like cheese." -Katie Couric
"Hey, why am I not on this list? I'm like 200 or something." -Emperor Palpatine again
Why is it better to be older than McCain? Because being president doesn't matter when you're 900. Not that you can't be president when you're that old--you'd be practically unstoppable in any fair election--but once you get that old, you pretty much have every Guinness World Record there could be, so being president kind of loses its appeal. Also, cane bonus applies again.

The Big Secret

So in my travels abroad over the past two weeks (which I did not, in fact, spend with bears), I met a former employee of a certain clothing establishment. Because I don't want to cause too much of a scandal, I won't name it. But he let me in on some of their hiring practices, and one of them is shocking.

This place only hires gila monsters disguised as people.

I bet now you can guess which one it is. But in case you can't, it's Abercrombie. Thankfully this guy I met wasn't actually a gila monster, which is why he no longer works there. So next time you find somebody's mostly-devoured corpse in the middle of an Abercrombie store, you'll who ate them. The gila monster employees wearing human skin.


I've always been suspicious of gila monsters. And now that my suspicions are justified, you can't say I'm crazy and try to get me committed anymore.

My Absence

It's been about two weeks since any of you have heard from me, and perhaps you're wondering what happened and where I've been. Perhaps you've been worried that The Mustache actually succeeded in stealing 1983, and I ceased to exist. Or perhaps you've wondered if I decided to finally sell all my stuff and go live with the bears. Or maybe you're more creative in your disappearance explanations and thought that I was kidnapped by a gang of hot air balloon pilots and decided to join them in their international hijinx.

If you were thinking any of that, you're all wrong. But the last one is the closest.

Actually, sorry, I forgot for a second. I did go and live with the bears. Here's a picture of me with one of them.


I know that doesn't look like me, but I never look like I really do in pictures. Especially in pictures with bears, I assume. My theory is that the blackness of the bears makes my hair look gray in comparison.

So yeah, I've been with bears for the past two weeks. Mystery solved. Thanks for all the good times, bears!