Durham or Bust!

In less than 32 hours, I will be on my way to the Great State of North Carolina, more specifically the Great City of Durham. Why, you ask? Well, it seems a former college roommate of mine happens to be attending law school in Durham...some small, unknown school actually...I think it's called Dune University, or maybe Duve University (sounds French)...who knows (between you and me, I was just happy he got in somewhere!)...oh...oh wait...I'll be right back...

[...10 minutes later...]

So, it seems that Duke University, "founded in 1924 in honor of Washington Duke and his family", is the home of the famed Blue Devils, and is actually one of the most prestigious universities in the nation. I stand corrected. By the way, how much do you think tuition was at Duke University around 1924? Here are the choices:

A) $20-$30 per academic year
B) $80-$90 per academic year
C)$200-$300 per academic year
D)$500-$550 per academic year

So, what do you think? I'll give you some more time...............ok, that's enough. If you said 'A', 'C', or 'D', well, you're just a moron. The correct answer was 'B', $80 to $90 for a full academic year. Amazing, considering how that is approximately $950 in today's economy, which is NOT ANYWHERE near the actual cost of tuition today.

Anyway, I have a list of about 20 different things I need to accomplish tomorrow to prepare for this trip. Here are just a few...

(1) Give my car an Extreme Makeover: Vehicle Edition. This includes the interior (cleaning out the car, vacuuming, spraying that wonderful bottle of 'new car smell' - which I believe is linked to causing cancer, and also makes cops that pull me over think I am huffing in the car - that I love oh so much, etc.), and the exterior (wash & wax, fill up the tires, check fluids, etc.).

[NOTE: Obvioulsy, I will be driving my car to Durham (if this comes as a surprise to you at this point in the post, you need to return to the 5th grade and hone your contextual reading skills). I'm not flying because I'm actually terrified of flying (which I really hate, hate being terrified that is), taking the train not only costs $160 but will add 4 hours to the trip, buses apparently break down more often than not, cycling just didn't seem feasible, roller blading was just laughable, walking was suicide, and crawling would probably result in death or at least severe knee and hand trauma. For 8 hours, it's just me, my 97 Chevy Cavalier, and a trusted AAA Mid-Atlantic Plus Membership.]

(2) Get out my summer clothes. That's right, it's going to be around 80 degrees in North Carolina and I CAN'T BE MORE EXCITED!

(3) Go to the bank for change. 8 Hours of Driving + Tolls = Don't Forget Coins!

(4) Finally, I must prepare myself for the ways of North Carolina, a southern state of this great USA. Now, of course I realize that the area around Duke University is not going to be a genuine southern experience, as the students are from all over the country and probably mostly from non-southern areas. However, I'm pretty sure some aspects of southern life are simply demanded by the laws of the state. For instance, I'm almost certain that North Carolina law states that at least 5% of the population must be performing one of the following tasks at all times: 1) loading hay onto a red, paint-faded truck with a large fork; 2) sitting in a rocking chair while wearing "thermal leggings" that have a buttoned flap on the person's behind; or 3) calling a person outside of North Carolina to persuade them that the Duke men's basketball team is the greatest team ever (this is a specific statute handed down from the Durham City Council). Luckily, I will be surrounded by some of the brightest future legal scholars of the state, so I shouldn't have a problem with any of these regional statutes.

I'd give you the rest of the list, but I just don't have the time if I actually want to get some sleep and an early start tomorrow. I must say, I am very excited to spend a little time away from New Jersey and visit somewhere, anywhere, else (even though I'll miss my AMAZING girlfriend, Andrea, and wish she could come too...yeah, I know, it's only a couple of days...you don't get it, I miss her when I have to go to work!).

Also, in case you were wondering, Duke does INDEED have the best men's basketball team, so deal with it...SEE, you'd think I was in Durham already!

The People of Twin-Pine-Oaks-Valley-Shady-Meadows Should Be Ashamed

It's time for people to stop pretending that daytime soap operas and romance novels are not one step away from pornography. Sure, that one step is a major one that includes a visual depiction of people with a lot less clothing, but in all other respects it's porn: ridiculous plots, horrible acting/dialogue, endorsed by Bill O'Reilly. If you find yourself watching soap operas about love triangles, coma fantasies, or brides being buried alive, OR can't stop reading romance novels that involve tightly clothed postal workers, pool technicians, or vending machine workers (I don't actually know of any romance novels that include a vending machine working as a sexual character, but it just seems possible), you need to do the following: go to your local gun store (Walmart, for many of you Midwesterners), purchase a simple firearm and pack of bullets, return to your home, make a list of all persons carrying the same DNA structure as yourself, kill all those on that list, repeat for yourself. The world will thank you.

A Softer Side of The Da Vinci Code

For all those extremely cheap bastards that refused to buy a book that has been consistently atop the bestseller list for the past two years, The Da Vinci Code is FINALLY available in paperback (find it at BN.com for $11.21 in the larger paperback version or $7.99 for the smaller mass market version). Do yourself a favor and go buy this amazing book before you officially become the last person on Earth that hasn't read it.

AND, as an added bonus, you will be preparing yourself for the highly anticipated movie version of The Da Vinci Code, starring Tom Hanks and directed by Ron Howard (can you say "movie GOLD"!?). The movie version continues to stir up various controversial questions, the main one of which remains: is Tom Hanks indeed God, or is he simply just the best entertainer of our generation?

Hell-on-Wheels

Working at Shmarnes and Woble has provided great insight into the behaviors of the general public (see previous post for further discussion). By far, one of the most incredible patterns I have witnessed comes not from the adults I dread helping find the newest book by Larry the Cable Guy, but rather from their children.

Apparently, various shoe manufacturers have decided that attaching wheels to the bottom of children's shoes was the next logical step in footwear development. And we all know how successfully inventive this industry has been in the future: shoes with lights that blink as you walk...BRILLIANT! If you thought little Suzy's red blinking shoes were great BEFORE, well, NOW you get to see them blinking as the little girl zooms by you at 15 miles an hour in the middle of a store! I've always said we need to teach our children to act more wildly when in public, because today's kids are just way too well-mannered (it's obvious that all the great parenting that takes place each Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday while dining at McDonald's is really paying off).

Chandler Bing of Friends said it best, while deciding on an advertising slogan for, yep you guessed it, children's shoes with wheels attached to them: "Kids, kids! Roll your way to childhood obesity!"

P.S.

If you agree with the greatness that is Real Time with Bill Maher, you must go out and buy the book New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer by Bill Maher, which is basically a collection of all the greatest 'New Rules' from the show's first couple of seasons (it's available at BN.com for $19.96, as is totally worth every penny). Here's a small taste of the genius:

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New Rule: Forget Paris

Talentless teenagers who exist to amuse us must keep up in the battle to be the dippiest twit. First Paris Hilton's topless cell phone pictures ended up on the Internet; isn't it about time Britney Spears did something trashy? Come on, honey, use your imagination. I don't know - let the wind blow your pants off, or have a miscarriage in a liquor store, or get a de-vorce from Butthead. The ball's in your trailer court.
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Pure genius. Buy it today!

New Rule: I Love 'Real Time with Bill Maher'

For those of you not currently watching Real Time with Bill Maher, you're missing a great show. For liberals, it's a show that will make you go "Finally, someone is saying what I've been thinking!". For conservatives, it's a show that will make you go "wait, so when do they swap wives?". Regardless, you don't want to miss this show...

This past week, the panel of guests were actor Jason Alexander, theologian Reza Aslan, and Georgian Representative Jack Kingston. Jason Alexander was good at filling the token entertainer role on the panel (greatest moment of the show: Rep. Kingston, responding to Jason Alexander's comments, said "Well, George...I mean Jason. Oh, I'm sorry about that."); Reza Aslan was very good at raising the intellectual level of the discussions; and Rep. Kingston was so successful at toeing the Republican party line, he ended up just speaking in loud elephant sounds rather than words...

By far, the most amazing part of the show (and one of the most sincere, moving speeches I've seen Bill Maher make) came in his final 'New Rule':

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And finally, New Rule: Nobody can use the phrase "our greatest problem" anymore unless you're talking about global warming. President Bush has been saying we're in a war on terror, and now I get it. He's not saying "terror," he's saying "terra" as in "terra firma," as in the Earth. George Bush is an alien sent here to destroy the Earth! I know it sounds crazy, but it made perfect sense when Tom Cruise explained it to me last week.

Now, last week on "60 Minutes," James Hansen, who is NASA's leading expert on the science of climate delivered the world's most important message. He said, "We have to, in the next ten years, begin to decrease the rate of carbon dioxide emissions and then flatten it out. If that doesn't happen in ten years, we're going to be passing certain tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You can't tie a rope around an ice sheet." Although I know a certain cowboy from Crawford who might think you could.

And that cowboy and his corporate goons at the White House tried to censor Mr. Hansen from delivering that message, claiming such warnings were speculative. This from the crowd that rushed into a war based on an article in the Weekly Standard. This - this from the guy who thinks Kyoto is that Japanese emperor dude his dad threw up on.

Global warming is not speculative. It threatens us enough so that it should be considered a national security issue. Failing to warn the citizens of a looming weapon of mass destruction - and that's what global warming is - in order to protect oil company profits, well, that fits, for me, the definition of treason. And codified treason.

[To audience] Please, wait a second. The guy in the White House who made the edits was Phil Cooney, who had been an oil industry lobbyist before given this job as head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. That's the office that is supposed to be watching out for us. But that's where Phil busied himself crossing stuff out in scientists' reports, because apparently in Phil's mind, he hadn't switched jobs. He was just doing his old job - oil industry lobbyist - from a different office. You know, in the "people's house."

Republicans have succeeded in making the environment about some tie-dyed dude from Seattle who lives in a solar-powered yurt and eats twigs. It's not. This issue should be driven by something conservatives are much more familiar with: utter selfishness. That's my motivation. I don't want to live my golden years having to put on a hazmat suit just to go down and get the mail. Those are my Viagra years. When I'll be thinking about having children.

But I wouldn't know what to tell a kid about our world in 20 years. "Dad, tell me about the birds and bees." "They're all gone. Now, eat your Soylent Green." We are letting dying men kill our planet for cash, and they're counting on us being too greedy or distracted, or just plain lazy, to stop them.

So, on this day, the 17th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, let us pause to consider how close we are to making ourselves fossils from the fossil fuels we extract. In the next 20 years, almost a billion Chinese people will be trading in their bicycles for the automobile. Folks, we either get our shit together on this quickly, or we're going to have to go to Plan B: inventing a car that runs on Chinese people.
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Next week, the guest list includes actor/comedian Robert Wuhl, actor Seth Green, and author Erica Jong. Tune in...

Thank You For Shopping at Shmarnes & Woble

While I wish I were spending more time substitute teaching (since it pays $10 an hour, and is basically glorified babysitting), unfortunately I tend to work at my other job 4 to 5 days a week. At this job, I work as a bookseller for a major bookstore, and to protect myself from any legal ramifications, I won't name the bookstore. I'll simply refer to it as Shmarnes and Woble Bookstore...just rolls of the tongue. Anyway, to appreciate the horrors of this job, it is necessary to describe the customers I serve on a daily basis. And so, without further ado, I present the first installment of The Shmarnes and Woble Bookstore Customer Appreciation Blog Post!

[DISCLAIMER: While they may seem to defy all models of rational human behavior, the follower descriptions are in no way exaggerations of the truth. Judge these people at will.]

• Type of Customer: "Bad Parent, Bad Student"
• Typical Age/Sex: Parent is 30 to 40 years old, always the mother; child is 10 to 15 years old, always the son.
• Description: The "Bad Parent, Bad Student" is a common one, especially around this time of year. It's what happens when you have a student who saves their book report, science project, biography assignment etc. to the very last minute. This one is particularly tricky, simply because you're not only dealing with an adult that insists on yelling at their child while you're trying to help them, but attempting to extract information about the project from the young person usually results in blank stares and statements like "i have to go pee pee".
  
• Solution: Stay away from this one if you can, as it's almost guaranteed you'll have to order a book to let little Bobby do his report on George Washington Carver's peanut butter. But, if you happen to get sucked into this interaction, just pawn the agitated mother off to the worker in the Kids section.
  
• Not to be confused with: The "Adult Student", namely the 42 year old man in the gray sweatpants and t-shirt that reads "Your Religion Sucks", browsing the store with his Aunt Patty, desperate to find an SAT book that he believes will turn his life around. I've got news for you: your shipped sailed about 25 years ago, my friend, so just stand up, wipe the sweat off your brow, and pick up a Shmarnes and Woble application at the customer service desk.
  

• Type of Customer: "Keep the Books Coming"
• Typical Age/Sex: Either sex, 20 years old and up.
• Description: The "Keep the Books Coming" customer represents approximately 90% of Shmarnes and Woble shoppers. To fall into this category, you have to do one simple thing: go to any section of the store, remove 10 to 15 books on one or various topics, bring them to the cafe or reading chairs section, insert a small stick of dynamite into the stack of books, detonate, walk out of the store. Unlike other customers that choose to read 1 or 2 books on their topic of interest, the "Keep the Books Coming" crowd finds that you can not fully appreciate the complexities of JAVA computer language without reading at least some part of each of the seventeen, 5-pound books they have gathered while drinking their iced coffeelatefrapamochadiarrheashakeupventi drink.
  
• Solution: Unfortunately, there is no real solution to this problem as it is Shmarnes and Woble's policy to allow customers to read any and all books at our store. The best way to cope while serving this special crowd is to constantly badger them with "Are you done reading about Dungeons and Dragons Level 4 Warlocks yet?" questions, and quietly cursing at them as you pass by.
  
• Not to be confused with: The "Life's Too Short to Close Books" customer. This customer's experience begins simply by seeing a book of interest over on the "Gardening Time" table. They open the book, turn the pages, reading ever so smoothly, when SUDDENLY... life has become too important! There is just no time to close the book as there are other pressing issues to attend to, such as rounding up the four children they let wander the store for the past 50 minutes, or answering the cell phone currently ringing to the tune of "If You Believe In Magic". Ultimately, the 2.15 seconds saved by just leaving the book spread open on the table will add up in the long run, giving these customers much more time to watch Dr. Phil, eat at Mc Donalds, and plan their next trip to Disney World.

• Type of Customer: "Cell Phone Arguer"
• Typical Age/Sex: Most likely a male in his late 30's-early 40's; could also be a woman anywhere from 20 to 50 years old.
• Description: The "Cell Phone Arguer" is pretty self explanatory: a customer has decided to carry on a very private, yet thunderous argument with a person on a cellular telephone while shopping for books. This customer is under the following assumptions: they are currently the only human in the store; shouting is the most effective way to get your point across to someone on a telephone; public locations are the ideal setting for important family arguments. This customer, usually wearing a Members Only jacket (if male) or an entire outfit made of jean material (if female), feels they are serving the greater good of humanity by letting all other customers and employees know how "their brother was always treated better by mommy".
  
• Solution: This customer tends to be elusive, not realizing that while they have shouted at their husband for 35 minutes because he spends to much time with "that whore Dana" they have paced through every section of the store 3 times. Best option: take cover until the storm blows over.
  
• Not to be confused with: "The Cell Phone Check Out", basically the same customer at a different point of their shopping experience (usually involves much less arguing and much more "how was I supposed to know he was the father" type discussions). Amazingly, this customer finds that no communication of any kind, verbal or non-verbal, is necessary to present, pay for, and leave with the books of their purchase. NOTE: Cashiers can attempt to brighten their working experience by taking advantage of "The Cell Phone Check Out" customer; for instance, instead of saying "And here is your bag and your change, thanks!", you can say "And I just wiped your books on my genitals and killed your daughter, thanks!".
  

So, there you have it. Be sure to tune in next time when I discuss the many more types of customers that constitute the horror that is working at Shmarnes and Woble Bookstore!

AND, coming soon: the 1st Annual Pick Your Favorite Shmarnes and Woble Customer Contest!!! FIRST PRIZE---> a $10.00 Gift Certificate to Shmarnes and Woble Bookstores!

Welcome to the Fun

Here it is, my first blog post ever. Quite an achievement. I've finally decided to jump on the "blogging bandwagon", or "bb" for short (I just made that up, by the way....get used to it because I enjoy making things up) and it's quite exciting. Ok, my first apology, I will never use the term "bandwagon" again. What exactly is a bandwagon and from what era of human history was it ever cool to use? No more...

So, looking around the blog here you may see some interesting things. First, the title: "funny because it's true". I like it, do you? Quite honestly, I think it's funny...funny because it's true. Also, I plan to use this blog mostly to discuss the humorous stories of my day, so the title fits.

Next, the small title below the title...I call it the "smitle" (made up, once again). My smitle is "expect anything", yet another double entendre (what a crazy phrase, double entendre...say it five times fast and you end up sounding like Dustin Hoffman's character in Rain Man...good times). First, expect anything literally refers to how any and all topics are fair game: politics, movies, slipper etiquette, door knob installation, sports...well, not too much on sports because I really only get involved at the end of every sports season (go duke!). Secondly, expect anything has become a personal motto of mine, a way to justify the insanity that is the world around us (this will get a post of it's own soon, so stay tuned).

Finally, you may notice, as one young legal scholar Adam Cooper (who can be found at "bloggin with Mr. Cooper" right over there -------->) realized, that I am posting under the name CJ. There is good reason for this, I promise. These are the initials of my first and middle name, so technically this can be my name. Second, I have secretly dreamed that others would call me CJ because it just seems so much cooler than Chris. Think about this: if ever I was in a situation where it became necessary for someone to dramatically scream out my name, which just sounds better...."CHRIS!" or "CJ!" (go ahead, try it out...but I warn you, doing this may attract anyone near you with the name "Chris", "CJ", or "Seejay" if you hold the C and J sounds for a long time). See, doesn't CJ just sound cooler? Ok, well whether you agree or not, CJ is the blog name and that's that.

Ok, well, I'm happy with this first post, and I'd like to close by pointing out the importance of fact checking...

band·wag·on ( P ) Pronunciation Key (bndwgn)
n.

1. An elaborately decorated wagon used to transport musicians in a parade.
2. Informal. A cause or party that attracts increasing numbers of adherents: young voters climbing aboard the party's bandwagon.
3. Informal. A current trend: “Even brand-name [drug] companies... have jumped on the generics bandwagon” (Beth Howard).

So, there you go. Now, tell Seejay to leave your room because you weren't calling him, and come back to my blog soon for more posting insanity.