two treats for the price of one

good morning, you ghoulish reeds you, and welcome to a special halloween installment of tiny damaged notions!

today's the day where you can eat lots of candy, listen to bauhaus & the misfits (1977-1983 misfits only, obviously), and, i've learned, get away with wearing black nail polish to work.

if any of you spooky individuals need a halloween costume, you should consider going as an ugly, drooling, bald headed ogre:
apparently, down in new zealand, they call this thing "a fish" rather than "the ugliest thing ever." probably a dialectal thing; you know, like how down there, "fanny" is slang for vagina. which explains why fanny packs may have never caught on in new zealand;

or the idiom expressing surprise: "well, slap my fanny with your phallic hand!"

(wait--did i get that right?)

yesterday, i found out that you lovely lads and lad-ettes that i refer to as "reeds" actually enjoy reading this little time-wasting column. this is wonderful news, as i was beginning to wonder whether or not i should even be friends with you all. now i know i should. thank you for that confirmation.

sarah, one of the two aspiring dietitian reeds, stepped up to the challenge of analyzing the "balls of gross" i spoke of yesterday. she informed me, via comment, of another wonderful american invention:

"Baseball's Best Burger," as the Grizzlies call it, will consist of a hamburger topped with cheddar cheese and two slices of bacon — all between a "bun" made of a sliced Krispy Kreme Original Glazed donut.

no, the grizzlies spoken of aren't real bears out to kill humans by clogging our arteries. they're southwest illonois' minor league baseball team the gateway grizzlies,
who offer to make "summer memories" by helping you induce vomiting the way that only a 1000-calorie-and-45-gram-of-fat donut burger can.

yum.

sarah-reed also gave me a mission:

go out for a baseball's best and some coke balls and let me know if these are actually tasty or if these people are just trying to make foods that should only be eaten by starving children in africa for shock value.

sarah: done. while i will not seek out any of these gross food items (road trip to a donut burger anyone?), i shall ingest said snacks if i come across them. although, i must admit that i probably will not find them at all tasty.

matt-reed also commented on the two posts preceding this one, and his words are as funny as they are eloquent. i recommend hitting that little comment button at the bottom of the post and checking them out. one particularly noteworthy sentiment he discusses pertains to the word "reed" itself:

i for one am only reading this until someone picks me out, straps me to some sort of mouthpiece, and blows me until i make music.

well put, good fellow.

that will be all for today. your homework: prevent vandalism throughout the country and world by promoting fun, wholesome activities. my homework: watch horror movies with friends.

in the end, your work will be remembered. trust me.

make sure to ghoul it up on mount ghoul today, everyone.

ghoul, ghoul, ghoul!

no sleep till deep fried!

good morning, reeds. it's 9am and i'm wide awake, at work, and ready to give you another installment of tiny damaged notions--so set your alarms and put on your reading glasses 'cause here comes a barrage of literary goodness!

a special reed named kristen showed me this interesting article yesterday:i know what you're thinking: that's not an article--those look like fuzzy testicles in a plastic cup.

erotic as that may sound, i'm afraid you're wrong in the tastiest way possible:finally someone took the initiative to deep fry coca-cola, put more coca-cola on top, and top that with whipped cream, cinnamon sugar, and a cherry. it's america x 10 + a big cup of kick-ass.

unfortunately, in this case that equation will end with "= vomiting."

the cherry on top almost makes it sound innocent, as if it were 1954 and i were getting my date one of these at the malt shop.

"yeah, and bring us an order of 'balls of gross,' please. with two cherries on top."

they should have just dipped more coca-cola in a deep fryer, and poured grenadine on it. maybe that's why they're premiering it in fairs--so some genius can give the unhealthy bastards who made this item that lovely tip before they mass produce it.

also, check the bottom of that article: you can rate the picture. out of 653 votes, it came up average. this means that the general consensus of yahoo! viewers find deep fried balls of coca-cola a pretty normal thing.

i know there are at least two reeds out there who are aspiring dietitians, so give me your opinion via comment!

that latest ramble may have been at least partially induced by my current drowsy state. going to bed late and waking up early is all a part of "college life" i'm afraid--even though i don't dorm, nor did my current lack-of-sleep have anything to do with academia. however, i'd still like to blame it if possible.

a study done by the naughtily titled daily gamecock,whose logo of a red flaming bird dry-humping a capital "G" in no way dilutes the credentials of the publication, unearthed this little factoid:

Out of the 24 hours in the day, most college students report they only spend six sleeping...Although poor sleep habits are normal among college students, many fear this will be detrimental in the future. Doctors say these habits can lead to depression, poor performance in school, stress or insomnia. College students, on the other hand, say poor sleep habits are just another part of college life.
(the daily gamecock, "http://www.dailygamecock.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&ustory_id=1f0ef1db-404b-4f28-bd14-e7ed9fb081e1")

depression, poor performance, stress, and insomnia? pssshhhh. nothing defines "college life" quite as well as hating yourself for failing your classes after you stayed up all night studying for them. those doctors wouldn't know what college was if it personally bought them all hemp necklaces, dave matthews tickets, and a couple kegs of beer.

college did that for me, and that's why i hate college.

"when 'crash' came on, i was on like my eighth corona so i didn't even realize bret stole my visor and threw it in the middle of the quad!"

that's all for this time, reeds. remember to deep-fry your sleepless sorrow to make it yumtastic!

saving ghouls with comedy

yeah, that's ghouls n' ghosts; and yeah, me and my friend beat it yesterday.

i mean, what group of twenty-something year olds wouldn't keep their x-box on for nearly 24 hours so that their progress in the game would be saved while they slept? then call each other the next day, anxiously ready to get back into it?

yeah. damn right.

good morning, reeds. it's 11am on my mom's birthday (happy birthday, mom!), and welcome to another installment of tiny damaged notions.

last night at 2am, we showed ben franklin what's up by turning our clocks back an hour--putting an end to daylight saving time. that's right, everyone, it's daylight saving time. no "s." even though "learn-a-little saturday" is over, this wikipedia snippet is worth posting:

DST was first mentioned, in 1784, by Benjamin Franklin in a letter to the editors of the Journal of Paris.[1] However, as the article was humorous it is not clear whether Franklin was seriously proposing that the French adopt it, or simply that people should get up and go to bed earlier.
(wikipedia.com, "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time")

go ahead, debate the validity of the information due to it being from wikipedia. sure, it could be someone who just wrote in a bunch of crazy-crap and no one wants to disprove it. but i bring it up for another reason: specifically, if true, that second sentence there.

benjamin franklin is generally thought of as being the father of daylight saving time, and he could have been kidding? i wonder what things would exist in this world if i were as socially acclaimed as he, and my jokes turned into real-life events.

we'd have instituted an extra day after sunday where i don't have to work.
although, in general, i'd probably never have to work.
america would distribute jetpacks and hoverboards to all its citizens.
bagel stores would never be allowed to close, or stop serving egg sandwiches.

look at all those good ideas just waiting to come to fruition!

in other news, i'll be seeing these two funny men perform tonight at irving plaza. this means i'll be driving into manhattan. for those reeds out there who've never had the privilege of doing such, imagine a toy store during christmas time. every aisle is packed, and you're being thrusted around the store in a giant line of people. lots of people are angry, and yelling at one another. others are disrupting the traffic flow and blindly walking in front of you, or just generally stopping for no good reason at all. then, by the time you get to the area where the toy you were looking for is in(for this comparison, that'll be a parking spot), you'll notice that all of them have been taken. you walk around the section waiting for the sales clerk to periodically bring a new box out, but you're never in the right place at the right time, and the supply, once again, runs dry. eventually you get one, check out (that'll be doing whatever the hell you came into manhattan to do), and then leave--stating "i'll never do that again!"

but you do.

see? sounds fun doesn't it? still beats paying $19 for a round-trip train ticket.

that's all for now. i'm off to participate in some sort of birthday-goodness. all you reeds keep it hot on the streets.

learn-a-little saturday!

good morning, reeds, and welcome to another issue, episode, installment, or post (whatever suits your fancy) of tiny damaged notions.

do you know what today is? it's "learn-a-little saturday"!

today, i'm getting a haircut. in reality, that means i'm getting several hairs cut. however "haircut" is a noun which implies this in its meaning. therefore, when people say to you "no, you're getting your hairs cut!" as a joke, you can tell them to grab a dictionary and shut the hell up! "i'm" is a contraction expressing subject & the 1st person singular present indicative of "be." "to get" is the verb, "a" is a cute little indefinite article, and "haircut" is the noun to which the verb applies. it's a perfectly logical sentence. hooray for syntax & semantics working side-by-side! what a kick-ass duo.

tonight i am also attending a halloween party. this means that me & several friends will be pretending we're people or things we're not while we ingest alcohol. i know what you're thinking, and no--i'm not just going to a club.

the similarities are striking, but the differences lie in the fact that i'll actually be enjoying myself around this group of phonies.

that's all for this educational post. this is your pilot of the reed-5000 wishing you all a swell saturday upon exiting.

yahoo! beta, reeds, & more fun

hello readers (i may dub you "reeds" from now on. i hear slang is all the rage with the kids), and welcome to the second installment of TDN.

seeing as though i have given the world 12 whole hours to ingest my first blog, i assume that a number of questions have come up in the minds of the reeds (ooo, that's got a nice ring). i've created an FAQ from inquiries which i assume, had you guys not been too busy to write in, or read the post, would be--well--frequently asked:

Q: "is mike________*__" your real name?
A: almost! i use the underscore & asterisk after my real first name for no apparent reason. it's a nifty moniker, i feel.

Q: what's with the blog's name?
A: back when i was voted "the most popular kid in any high school, ever," i would daydream about being in a sketch comedy troupe. the name i used in my daydream was, you guessed it, "tiny damaged notions"--which i took from a poster i had in my room at the time. now that i have a sketch comedy troupe with a name i equally love ("the square foot"! so nice), i decided to use TDN for this blog.

Q: what's with the lower-case?
A: while typing, i often forget to capitalize words. i'm not against capitalization (you'll notice when i use an acronym, such as TDN, i capitalize for clarity), but i decided since i'd forget more often than i would remember to hit that super-sly shift key, i'd just oust it most of the time.

Q: tell me a little about yourself...
A: no! plus, that's not a question--it's a command (how dare you command something of me!). ultra-plus, that's an improper use of ellipses. here's a quick definition from the ever-so-useful dictionary.com:

The omission of a word or phrase necessary for a complete syntactical construction but not necessary for understanding.
(dictionary.com, "http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ellipses")

eat that biographical tidbit, jerks!

that'll be all for the Q&A portion. if any of you real people have a question, post it in a comment! i'll discuss it with not only you, but with the excessively large audience which my blog has.

speaking of comments, i have a few which pertain to the new yahoo! mail system, "yahoo! mail beta," which i signed up for. check out the layout given to me each time i log in:


the notification that i have no new messages is no more of a shock than yahoo!'s broken-linked advertisement. sad as it may be, we're left to imagine both what my friends may be aching to tell me, and what kind of love is in store for me, only a click away, thanks a specific online dating service (dare i say, TRUE LOVE!!!).

nerd-interjection: that link's as broken as time walk! nyuck, nyuck, nyuck!


now, here's the useful little yahoo!-beta man. he's informing me that i can get news delivered straight to my mailbox--just like in real life! he even offers to show me how it works.

i'm assuming that link is also broken, as i need to look no further than my mail's "home page" setting to get important news updates.


like it or not, i'm forced to read yahoo's news--or at least give it a cursory glance--before i click off the "home page" and onto my inbox. it's sorta like when you go to the doctor: logging into yahoo! mail is like the initial waiting room. once my password is accepted, nurse HTTP walks me into the cold, white room where i wait for New Mail, M.D.--and this extra clicking of my inbox is that uncomfortable wait while you mentally go over the symptoms you're about to give the doctor.

"so, i woke up tuesday with a sore throat, and then my arm started hurting towards the night. can i be tested for herpes?"

apparently iran is expanding their nuke program. hey, speaking of ellipses, check out those ones at the bottom! properly used, and leaving us, as most news attempts to do, in fear of the cliffhanger: "sending a defiant message??!? to whom?!"

my guess is jessica alba, since she appears in the opposite corner:


celebs in my inbox?!?!! yahoo! must have been monitoring my dreams if they know about my fantasy of building a giant mailbox-shaped home where jessica alba and i can raise our children.

oh, and we'd make it nuke-proof too. that way the news can't scare our beautiful offspring.



that's all from this end. thanks, reeds.

it begins!

hello readers (that's you--the friends i've forced to read this), welcome to my exciting blog!

since my life is extremely interesting, i figured that i would create a blog documenting all the wonderful things that exist within it, or that i notice happening around it.

(exciting, extremely, wonderful? with all those word-modifiers this has gotta be good!)

as for now, it is late, and work awaits me in the morning. so i'll make this short.

why am i up this late, you ask?

the movie slither was released this past tuesday, and i watched it with some friends today.

how was it, you ask?

starpulse.com was nice enough to supply an adequate review of the movie, sandwiched between this lovely advertisement of jessica simpson & her winning smile:

and this wonderful notification that i will soon be missing a brand new season of MTV's yo momma.






no, i did not hit play on her ad. her eyes were doing their best to lure me into proactiv solution, but i fought temptation to get this review to you--the reader.

but, advertisements aside, here was starpulse's review:
A rowdy crowd pleaser that more than makes up for its lack of genuine scares and real tension by offering an amusing barrage of gooey, gory thrills that are sure to have even squeamish viewers giggling with queasy delight
(starpulse.com, "http://www.starpulse.com/Movies/Slither/Reviews/")

that's pretty dead on in my book. and my book is bound nicely.

you can't argue with that.

signing off on what is technically friday, october 27, 12:44am--this is mike wishing you all a happy new year, 1993!