two visionaries visualizing.

After Joe and I revamped the site’s layout, I decided to make a few personal changes to my writing. One of those changes was that I was going to stop theorizing. I figured I had gotten as much comic mileage out of making theories and observations from a crazy person’s perspective as possible. But fuck that. Here’s another theory. 

My theory on modern communication. 

I used to be a little texting fiend. The kind of guy that was in a relationship with his cellphone. Everywhere I went I had to have it on me, and I had to be doing something with it. Most importantly, I had to be texting someone. 

That phase kind of ended and then I went into an entirely different phase where I didn’t want to text anyone at all. All of my text conversations were short, my responses trite and delivered with no real urgency. Send me a text message in the afternoon to ask how my day was going and you’d probably get a response sometime that evening. There was no such thing as texting me just to shoot the breeze. It was all business all the time. I’ve always promptly responded to time-sensitive material, but that aside - I don’t know, I just wasn’t interested. 

Today, I’ve reached a sort of happy medium - more than a small part due to my smart phone breaking last fall. Being without it for about three weeks broke me free of my cellphone addiction cold turkey. And it also allowed me to greater appreciate all of its functions and to know when it is wise to use them and when it is unnecessary. 

This newfound happy medium has me enjoying texting and using my phone’s features, but I’m also able and just as content to be apart from my phone. Through this, I’ve come up with a theory on modern cellphone use that I feel applies to everyone, but probably particularly to people like me. 

WHEN YOUR PHONE IS ON YOU, YOU WILL NOT NEED IT.

No one will need to contact you. No one will want to talk to you. You won’t get any emails or texts, and you certainly will not get any phone calls. 

A cellphone addict will be largely unaffected by this. People with this addiction will seek out people to talk to after their phone has not vibrated for more than fifteen minutes. 

But to someone like me, I tend to notice it. When I find that my phone is just sort of sitting there without me needing to contact anyone and no one attempting to contact me, then I will feel inclined to just leave it somewhere. In my room, or somewhere in my house. Maybe I’ll switch it off and start charging it. But as soon as I do this, everyone wants to contact me. Which leads to our next rule. 

WHEN YOUR PHONE IS NOT IMMEDIATELY ACCESSIBLE, YOU WILL BE NEEDED.

I don’t mean all of a sudden Eleanor will want to text you to ask how your pet dog is doing. No, I mean, people will NEED TO SPEAK WITH YOU URGENTLY. Your doctor will call and leave a message about some “abnormalities” found in your “X-rays”. Your mother will leave frantic voicemails about your father driving the family car into a pole. The really cute girl you met shopping for drum pads will text you about “meeting up.” But this will only happen when you’re positive that you don’t need your phone!

This is one of my general laws of modern communication. And it does not fail. 

-Justin M.

I love the place. It’s the cheapest place I know of to get a couple beers and something to munch on after 10.

That being said, no one, and I mean NO ONE is going to make me go back there for at least the next two weeks. 

I’ve spent enough time there over the past month to be considered a part time employee. I know member of the wait staff by name. If I eat there one more time, I’m going to start growing half-priced apps out of my neck.

I never wanted it to get to this point. 

There was a time where I would absolutely refuse to go. Point blank. The end. That was before I turned 21. Now with my newfound ability to legally buy alcoholic beverages, the appeal of a place like Applebee’s has increased tenfold. 

But even my unabashed enthusiasm for beer and terrible stinginess won’t convince me to make a return trip for the next couple of weeks. It’s getting to the point where I might start growing chicken quesadillas in my intestines. 

Which I guess isn’t bad. If I could find a way to secrete fully prepared chicken quesadillas, I would probably be worth a lot of money. But that hasn’t happened yet. So please, please, if you love me, or even kind of like me a little, don’t ask me to go there for a little while.

On second thought, their three-cheese chicken penne is very good.

No. Please. I can’t. No more ‘Bee’s until further notice. 

Oh, and by the way - anyone know where I can get good two-fers in the meantime?

Thanks.

JJM.

Today, I did what I do best. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I don’t get an opportunity to do nothing often, especially not recently. I’ve learned that doing nothing is a difficult task for me. 

More often than not, I find myself doing something. And when I’m not doing something, I tried endlessly to find something to do. I go up and down my Mental Checklist to find something to do until I come up with that something. 

So even when I have nothing to do, I keep myself from doing nothing. 

But today, I wanted to do nothing. In fact, I made nothing the something that I would do. 

I don’t like laziness, so typically I find doing nothing unfulfilling. In the ever expanding list of things I need to do in my life, whenever I do find myself with nothings to do, I end up filling the nothings with somethings. 

But, timeout. Perhaps nothing really is something?

Actually, nothing definitely is something. Today I did something, and that something was nothing.

Laying down and doing nothing might actually be laying down and doing something. Except that something is really nothing. The something I did was nothing, which is something. 

The bottom line is, I should never try to find more things to do when I could just do nothing sometimes. I do enough things all the time to justify doing nothing as something. 

Right?

JJM

I grew up listening to Smooth Jazz or Contemporary Jazz. My parents would say I liked it. I would say I liked it because it was all I knew up until age five. 

Today I hate it. Despise it. Listening to it is like drinking a glass of pollen. 

When they’re recording this nonsense, do they realize how bad it sounds? Are they purposefully trying to make music that is lifeless and uninteresting? I feel like the only explanation is that somewhere there exists a rule book for make a smooth jazz song and it goes something like this:

• Come up with a melody. A simple melody. Very simple. If it’s any more complex than Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, then rewrite it. Maybe take half the notes out.
• If you’re having trouble dumbing down your melody, why not just do a cover of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?
• Find a saxophone player with a name that sounds like it’s supposed to be cool. The main idea is for the name to roll off of the tongue of an adult contemporary radio announcer with ease. Take Boney James for example. Or Dave Koz. Or Richard Elliot. It doesn’t matter if this person can play the saxophone or not. That’s what post-production is for. 
• The said saxophonist need not worry about their ability at the said instrument. If they’ve played in a high school jazz band at any point in their lives, they’re good to go. Just look at Kenny G!
• Find instrumental backdrop. Avoid real instruments at all costs. Instead, opt for pre-programmed replications of real instruments. 
• If you notice the instrumental is danceable or fun, stop immediately. Rhythmic complexity is strictly forbidden. 
• During at least one point in this song, the sax player should hold out one note for a very long time. No one knows what the purpose of this is, but Kenny G does it. So it must be good. 

What really kills me is that it’s classified as jazz. How can you classify something like this in the same category as this? I don’t understand. 

Smooth jazz would be okay with me if it had a totally different name. Like Instrumental Adult Contemporary. Or Muzak Sounding Shit. But to say that it’s the modern equivalent of the music pioneered by guys like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and other inventive and creative musical innovators? What? The fuck.

Hey, man. Terrorism is terrible. If I learned anything from George W. Bush, it’s that you should have a color coded terrorism threat level alert scale. This way you know when to be scared, when to be extra scared and when to be just slightly anxious. 

If I learned anything from Mary Poppins, it’s to always be ready for anything. I’m not sure how Mary Poppins taught me this. But I feel a strong correlation between Mary Poppins and any sort of emergency kit. 

Here is what I think we should all have at our disposal in the event of an Earth shattering catastrophe. Like a nuclear meltdown, the apocalypse or a really scary thunderstorm. 

1. A Cement Mixer. Ideally, you’d want a in-transit concrete mixer like those big crazy looking trucks. I don’t know, use Google to find out what it looks like. In the event that shit hits the fan, I think it’s important to be able to create cement. That way, you can build things with the cement.
2. Stool Softener. All this talk of cement reminded me of the last time I was really constipated. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, you’re fucked. Bring a stool softener along so you don’t have to worry. 
3. Red Bull. If things are really bad, you don’t have time to fuck around. You can’t want to go to sleep. You don’t have the luxury of sitting down or watching Dr. Phil. You have to keep moving. A case of Red Bull will do the trick. 
4. Dr. Phil. You might need someone to talk you though your relationship issues. Again, no time to fuck around. You and your girlfriend need to be on the same page if the world is populated with demons and fire and crack addicts and shit.
5. Condoms. I know, I know. But, come on! What else can you do with your downtime after downing all those Red Bull? You want to make Dr. Phil feel like he did you guys some good. But you want to wait until after the shit is done hitting the fan before rearing children. 
6. A tent. Why not?
7. Water purifier. The Red Bull won’t last forever. So use this to dilute it with clean, safe, drinking water so you can stretch the last few cans of caffeinated goodness out.
8. A few rashers of bacon. You might find yourself without an open McDonalds’ for a while. This can really mess you up if you aren’t ready for it. It’s possible you have to eat things like wild vegetation. Coat it in some bacon fat to make it tasty. It’s kind of like weening yourself off of the stuff you usually clog your arteries with. 
9. A few cans of Steel Reserve. Oh, God. You’re going to die man, face it. You’re done. The cheap cost and high alcohol content of this will make the fat lady’s singing more palatable. 
10. A machine gun. Hey, fuck that shit! You’re not dying! And if you are, you’re going to kill a lot of demons and crack addicts along the way. Sober up and load that gun, buddy. Or maybe, stay a little drunk. Things might get kind of rough. 

 - Justin M.

I’ve been really meaning to apologize to a lot of people lately. Including whoever is reading this post. 

You see, I’m naturally a sort of indecisive person when it comes to certain things. The last thing you want to do is leave something petty up to me. It takes me about twenty minutes to decide what kind of beer I want to drink, or what type of creamer I want in my coffee. 

So the last thing you want to do is to leave something of any significance up to me. It’s a simple proportion. The more important the decision is, the more time I will take to mull it over before reaching a conclusion. 

You see, recently I’ve had people asking me to hit them up. Not really because I’m popular, but because I’m awesome. They say to me, “Yeah, Justin, hit me up and we’ll do something!” And of course, being the social butterfly that I am, I say yes. 

But if you really want to hang out, then you already messed up. Because by saying that, you’ve already been put on my mental waiting list. 

My mental to-do list. By not giving me a time or place or a specific activity, I automatically file it under “Shit I Need To Figure Out.” Now, I need to figure out what we can do. And then I have to figure out where and when. That’s a lot of figuring out for a guy that takes twenty minutes to choose between two flavors of ice cream. 

And then there are things like doctor appointments and oil changes. Sometimes I have too many other things to cope with, so they just get sent to my mental waiting list. Eventually, they will be tended to. It’s just a matter if it’s before I need to be airlifted to a hospital or not. Or before my car explodes. 

Sometimes, I’ll say to myself, “Damn, I should hit Ethyl up because I told her this and that and the other last week.”  But then I could always just lay down and watch TV. Or go to sleep. Those things are so much easier than dealing with the responsibility of doing something someone told me I should do. 

“Justin, can you do me a favor and do X, Y and Z?” Sure, I say. But you just have to be willing to wait a couple of months. That’s how the mental waiting list works, folks. And this blog is no different. Writing this has been on my mental waiting list for about a year now. 

Justin

car·cis·sism - the unhealthy obsession and admiration of one’s vehicle.

I coined this term while driving home today. I’ve come to the realization that some people are more fascinated with their cars than the more important things life has to offer. Like romantic comedies, Andy Rooney, or those chicken nuggets made of chicken paste.

Carcissism can be seen cars themselves, and the people who drive them. Here are a few signs that will aid in your awareness of this obnoxious vehicular boasting epidemic:

Noticing an individual verbally harmonizing with a vehicle’s unlock chime.

A luxury car with a custom license plate stating (in one way or another) that it’s a luxury car.

             ex. ‘BNZLV’ / ‘LKATMYAUDI’

A dead giveaway, many carcissists have their car posted on Facebook as their profile picture. “This is my car. I’m waiting for you to Like it, comment on it, or at least respect my photography skills”

Don’t be fooled if there is a large vehicle manufacturer’s logo on the back windshield, this is not so much attributed to carcissism, but rather some sort of confusion. (If it’s a Honda logo, it’s definitely confusion)

The root of the problem comes directly from the manufacturers. You can see a great example of this by watching TV at any given time. There’s nothing I love more than the spokes-guy for Lexus. Nothing. Especially during Christmastime when there is a rare abundance of oversized red bows in the atmosphere. Also, tha Hundai guy’s voice isn’be beautiful because he takes pride in owning a Hundai.

If you notice a friend frequently trying to preserve a new car scent, this is known as Denial Carcissism. 

If you see a Prius with two or more clean pass initiative stickers slapped on every side of the bumper, the owner is likely a suffering Green Carcissist. If they are in fact traveling in the HOV lane, then they are an Egotistic Green Carcissist. (Greenarcissict for short). It is widely believed that Greenarcissists suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder.

Carcissistic beings would rather hand-wash their cars, and spend their paychecks buying useless accessories, like:

Fender Vents

Bumper Lips (this is understandable in the most severe cases)

Fog Lights

Fog Machines (used to accompany fog lights)