christmas spirit

Before getting to Christmas, I'd like to say 'whoa'. I went a little bit apeshit over the swimmers not being gay a while ago, and if my words made you break down in tears as you read them I sincerely apologize, oops. I guess that's why there's the 24 hour rule, but I came home from practice with a Mt. McKinley sized pile of homework, 3rd world hunger pains, and a 87 year old achy body, I was a bit frustrated.
On a lighter note, Christmas is approaching. Yes,that magical night that baby Jesus was born of the virgin Mary and Joesph in the little town of Bethlehem. So I ask you this, why do people decorate their houses in 'christmas lights'? If anything is a Christmas light its that star that led all the wise men to the manger, not those annoying as hell to hang stringy lights. So why do we do it? Christmas spirit, the same thing that actually powers all of whoville. We pick one freezing, often raining/sleeting/snowing afternoon to put those lights all over our house and trees, often catching a disease that could make this Christmas our last, but if you're gonna die, I suppose decorating for Christmas would be an acceptable way to go. Anyways, it sort of bugs me when I see houses that have obviously had their lights done professionally. You can easily tell, the lights are in most cases perfect. Big and colorful and generally placed along the roofline that gives the appearance of four helicopters being able to land there simultaneously. But doesn't that defeat the purpose of Chrismas lights? I mean hanging those lights and wrapping all that garland is like a giant detox from the rest of the year. Get all that stressful shit out of you, its time for the holidays. So what happens to people that have some crew do their lights? They literally explode from built up stress.
Another thing. Snowmen. I'll be the first to admit that I was more into snowforts than snowmen, generally because I wasn't strong enough to push the giant snowballs that my ego required for a successful snowman, but that's beside the point. I can definately appreciate a good snowman, and besides candy canes, they are the number 1 symbol of December for me. So it drove me crazy to see this giant blow up snowman in this persons front yard the other day. The house is right by my brother's, and I remeber him saying multiple times that he would love to shoot an arrow through that bastard. This thing is huge, probably about 10 feet tall and extra fat with this stupid smiling face with a pipe or something. But the fact that it's smiling while undulating in the frosty december wind while being inflated by some noisy fan just doesn't do it for me. Give me a real snowman any day.

Ohh, and in case you were wondering what to get me for Christmas, here's a list. I'm registered at Cabelas, Bestbuy, and Bed, Bath, and Beyond:

1. Cabela's Big Game Hunter (xbox360)
2. An ant far, preferably the meanest ants you can find
3. Black Hawk attack helicopter for showing terrorism what's up
4. Mini-fridge for my room
5. Survival knife to show bears and terrorism what's up

Remeber kids, go Griswold or go home this year. Word.

swimming update number 1

For this inaugural swimming update, I decided to write a poem expressing my feelings towards my sport:

Swimming

Ballz to the wallz

Warmup kicks my ass

Chest burns, legs numb, shoulders ache, dizzy

Swimming

I took some poetic licence on this one, and hence spilled milk on myself while eating my 4th "snack" since getting back from practice. I don't know what's up, but I constantly feel like I have been hit by one of those Chinese bullet trains. I mean come on. Today my calf cramped up so badly that I couldn't just swim it off, and I could tell that Rich was pissed at me. Today's was by far the hardest practice of the year which is stupid since this was the fourth practice in 2 days. Your body cannot physically adjust to swimming an extra 4,000 yards a day in 12 hours or however often we have practice. I don't give a shit, I'm at home now.

And I would officially like to call all the people out there that say swimmers are gay "assholes". I shouldn't waste my precious breath addressing this, but that assumption is not at all true. It's like saying black people can't swim, or white people can't dance, or asian people are good at math, it's funny the first time, but then its dumb. In fact annoying as shit. We work just as hard if not HARDER than any other team at this school, as shown in our record. Undefeated in 4 years. What other team can say that? None. And you know what? We work so hard that we actually get in shape in a good way, not baseball shape. Just because we have enormous shoulders and tight abs doesn't make us gay. As for showering, that's not gay either. Chlorine smells bad, worse then when you take a dump without the fan on. Doesn't it make sense that we should shower? And we wear speedos at practice, so is it gay that we don't change into a more 'non banana hammock' wardrobe just to shower? If you are an actual friend of mine you know I'm not gay, and my friends on the swim team are the most straight of any teammates I have ever been lucky enough to compete with. So if you still think we're gay, I don't give a shit. I really don't. We're too busy kicking the shit out of our competition. Word.

italian food

As I climbed out of the way back seat of my brother's Explorer, I could have sworn I had been to this restaraunt before. But then we all walked inside, and it was totally new to me. 'Cafe Cortina' ehhh? I'll give it a shot. The atmosphere was quite nice, lots of candles and other dim lights with leather chairs, 'This might not be too bad' I thought to myself. Someone grabbed my coat and led us to our table. Waiting at our table were two waitors, 'hmmm, must be a slow night or something'. As I circled around the table to my seat one of the waitors pulled my chair out for me 'that was nice of him'. I sat down and said thank you, and he replied with a "gratzi senore" or something like that. 'Shit, these guys speak Italian. Shit, this is gonna be embarassing'. Then the other waitor grabbed my napkin that was folded in front of me and laid it across my nap. 'whoah, back off bro, its a napkin, I got it'. And then a third waitor came up to our table and said, "Senore, senora, may I offer you either purified water, spring water, or common house water?" 'Ohh my god, are you serious? Three kinds of water, you're kidding me.' Mom said she'd take the regular water and I just nodded my head. Im almost positive they only had regular water and just guessed that nobody would ask for the other two kinds, but whatever.

As I looked over the menu which was in all Italian, I tried to find the meal that was not only cheap, but was easy to pronounce. But as I did that, I couldn't help but wonder where the back room was where all the mafia guys are. You know, the no windows one door in one door out room with the big oak desk against the back wall with a portrait of an old fat guy behind the desk. I saw one definately Italian looking guy go through a back hallway and didn't see him come back. I'll let you decide. Besides the back room, I was thinking of all the Italian people I knew that might come through that door. Of course James Gandolfini, and also the painter Titorelli and the mafia from The Simpsons. That's weird, two of three are related to the mafia, and the other was character from a book. Ahh, the mafia. Anyways, it was time to order our entree. I decided not to order and carni, since it was expensive as balls, I went with some pasta. All the pasta sounded the same to me, I mean it all had noodles. But I ordered the Tortelli, because it's easier to say.

Then the dinner came out. I must say that after my salad and 6 pieces of bread, I wasn't as hungry as before, but I was game for some tortelli. It came out and it look pretty good. For all you Italian food nubes tortelli is like a pocket of pasta with something in there, in this case ground lamb meet. I took impaled the little pocket thing with my fork and made sure to get a bunch of that creamy white sauce. As I bit into it I regretted watching the Man vs. Wild episode where Bear is treated to a delicacy of goat testicles by one of the indigenous tribes. Well as I bit into the soft, meaty, white pasta pocket with lots of white sauce on it, I almost couldn't bring myself to swallow it.

We had dessert and what not and then left the restraunt to get in the car, where I froze my ass off until the heat got to the way back. Overall a good night. Word.

turkey day

As in past thanksgivings, the Stover clan came from all over the world to assemble at the farm; the official family meeting grounds. I've come to expect a routine over the past few years. Fry multiple turkeys, watch the Lions loose, shoot some guns, etc.; the same things every family does on the last thursday of November. But this year it really sank in. Possibly because I took some time to really look at the finer things in the farm, such as training grenades, large wooden bull heads, Grover Cleveland presidential election posters, and sunflower seeds containers.

But I obviously didn't spend my whole day talking to relatives and observing the intricacies of the farm, no, I was turkeying. Assisting Mike, I helped supervise the turkey fryer. As the thermometer climbed in the hot peanut oil to over 300 degrees, I couldn't help but feel a bit nervous on the slushy, snowy grass. One small slip while focusing on the 8 inch t.v. showing the lion's game could prove fatal. What a bad way to go, burning to death in hot oil, but I digress. 1:00, 325 degrees, lets fry these bitches. As soon as the turkeys were lowered to their second, more delicious death, the oil grew angry. It bubbled and spilled onto the grass, making the dangerometer go up 300% and beep annoyingly. So I stood freezing my ass of watching the turkey frier bubble and Kitna do nothing worth talking about. The night was quite calm until we began cleaning up after dinner. As you may or may not know, the farm doesn't get too much use, nobody lives there. And its surrounded by woods near the Shiawasse River. I was expecting to see some kind of animal, just not in the kitchen. But then a mouse sprinted across the living room and jumped into the oven. How it wedged itself under the oven, I don't know, but I came prepared. I brought my fishing gear just in case, but I grabbed the net for another reason, and I also grabbed one of the many fire pokers around the house. Cautiously I pried the drawer from the oven off, half suspecting a hundred mouse counter-attack. Inside the space was not only the mouse in the corner, but her five baby mice in a nest of insulation. I must say I was initially disappointed; I wanted to catch this mouse and do something with it, but I wouldn't rip a mother away from it's family. But then something cool happened, the mouse took all it's future pests to a new nest in some other part of the oven. Yes, I suppose I am responsible for the future mice crawling across the floor, but it's thanksgiving, I was feeling generous. Word.

Cryptozoology 101

As many of you may or many not know, Mrs. Locklin drives me crazy to the point of doing a bellysmacker off the platform (10m) into a pool of Marilyn Manson, O.J., and teletubies. So needless to say I was pretty excited to see that we had a sub. Mr. Dobronovich or something like that was pretty cool, making a few cracks at how pointless and often hopeless substitute teaching is, but that was beside the point. I had a research paper to own.

That's right, a full length semi-decent research paper for sociology, a class I really don't care about, which makes this assignment extra spicy. Unless she works for the KGB, I'm quite sure Locklin doesn't know I've taken all honors english classes/have a 112 member fan club on facebook dedicated to Mr. Uberti's and my own 'online artwork'. So I will address the prompt 'Native Americans: Progress and Problems', but it will be so full of metaphors and so hot that the paper actually bursts into the flames of native american ancestor worship. Enough said.

So as Mr. D. led us into the computer lab a whopping 8 steps from the classroom, I felt quite confident that I could research and write my paper in about 40-42 minutes and I still had another 2 weeks before the due date. This left a massive chunk of free time for my next hour and a half, a chunk I intended to fill with Line Rider. As I created jumps, loops, and deathly drops, I couldn't help but feel that something was missing from my day, my cryptozoology fix.

Griffin chose to research crypto. for his paper, and he found one solid source. A chatroom/homesite for the whole crypto. community out there. Needless to say I was quite intrigued, and immediately abandoned Line Rider to sit in awe of the illustrations of these creatures yet unknown to science. Nessie, Sasquatch, Chupacabra, and other 'monsters' were honored and debated all over the place. The best part was the 'members online now' feature, where I saw that 'cryptidcatcher123', 'lissalue', ''C' Man', and 'Grant' were online; my favorite amature crypto.s. Among the pictures on this post: "mysterious red shark in MA" "bizzare rabbit-like creature in Southwestn Oregon" and "Wendingo". You honestly have to see it to believe it. These were all listed under the 'sightings' portion of Cryptozoology.com. Good hunting. I'm quite sure Jelso didn't draw these either, which means there are people just as crazy, if not more so, as him out there. Sleep Tight.

shit's goin down

I'm not sure how far Northville Township news stretches its enticing arms across this great nation, but if this following story is new to you, which if you live in northville/metro detroit/michigan it should not be, let me tell you the story.

On Monday afternoon or sometime this last week a body was found in a new development of Ridge Road. Well that in itself isn't too surprising, bodies are found off Ridge all the time. But this time was different: the body had no head, and it was burned, badly. Strangely enough the residents of the surrounding houses noticed a fire in that deserted field, but I guess they didn't have the common sense to think it was a body on fire, apparently they've never seen CSI/Law and Order. So anyway the NPD was quite pissed about this latest homicide, and launched a medium sized investigation. Within four days that arrested two teenagers in relation to the kidnapping/homicide. Now I've seen Nancy Grace one time, and I happened to notice that she's a bitch, but she taught me that all crimes must have a motive. This was no exception...or was it? No, the perps weren't after crack, chronic, heroin, LSD, angel's dust, perscription drugs, or oral sex; they wanted a high of a different kind, a thrill. That's right, two teenagers killed a twenty-something for no reason. But did they really do it? I'm not so sure...

In other news, a story has shaken this great country to its core. What is America's core made of? Baseball, and more specifically home runs. Yes, America is actually powered by home runs, and after years of hiding their most productive 'plant' from the judicial system's ever vigilant eyes, federal investigators brought charges of pergury and obstruction of justice against Barry Bonds. This whole case dates back to a steroid hearing four years ago in which Bitchy Barry said something to the likes of, "I never knowingly used performance enhancing drugs". Well that's pergury, bitch. So let me ask you, if a case is going nowhere for years, and then the prosecution steps up to the plate, they must have gotten some more evidence. Evidence like a charred, decapitated body. It makes perfect sense, Barry just had a roid rage, flew to Detroit, drove to Northville, and broke a man's head off from an over aggressive noogie and then breathed fire on him. Baseball has been shaken, but not as shaken as the psyches of Northville residents. After living in fear for the last few days, I can now sleep easily knowing that Barry Bonds is officially under investigation.

While writing this I really feel like a Chinese journalist, so I hope I don't get tortured, but I'll be at swim practice during all my free time anyway, and there's no way a potential killer is getting through Rich. Watch your backs Northville, A-Rod is still on the loose (but he'll be staying in N.Y.). Word.

F.Y.I, Carlos Zambrano has been under investigation for years also, but he just has a really good lawyer.

meet me at the pool; its goin down

Yes, its that time of year again. The leaves are falling leaving the trees barren, the days get shorter as night holds increasingly more prevalence, and the wind is consistently picking up to leave you quite uncomfortable. Yes, it's turning into late fall, and that brings early winter, which brings the flu and that dreary, slushy black snow that gets in the streets and causes all sorts of accidents. And what does this all mean? That this year I may feel thoroughly depressed as I catch the flu and collide with another car on the way to swim practice.

Its less than a week away now, and so I have begun praying to God asking for forgiveness for the sins that I made, or will make in hopes that He doesn't use Rich to punish me for them. But besides praying, I have done other things to get ready for the season. The first idea I had, after hearing much bitching about baseball conditioning from Mullen and Maise, was to actually gain weight for swimming. Much like a hibernation for bears, I am about to embark on a journey that will drain all my energy until my immune system is so low that even with bottles of vitamin C I am unable to fight off a lingering cold. So as I came home from school and ate two giant slices, the equivilent to 8 normal slices, of chocolate cake and 10 bagel dogs, it hit me that I could actually gain energy by eating during the season. So since I'm unlike a bear in one way, I must become a bear in another.

As I marched down the stairs into the basement and headed into the back room, I decided which of the muslce groups I wanted to work first. I'm not sure if you've tried before, but unless you actually enjoy weightlifting (smile, smile, Ciric), absolutely no progress is made because if nobodys watching I don't have to prove my strength to anyone, especially not myself. I ended up cranking out some situps and powering through some pushups. That lasted maybe 20 minutes; a solid workout.

But then it hit me: it's only swimming, don't be such a little bitch. So from now on I will not let my panties bunch up, and I will look to the positive side of swimming.

First, predictable but still shocking hair changes through the season, progressing as such: beautiful-frizzy-lacklustre-bleached-pull out able-looking like a diseased dog's hair-no hair. In the middle picture I am in my 'I just got back from practice and swimming under those incandescent lights made me look like a stoned ghost' phase. Second, the showers. This sounds homoerotic, but showering is the best part of practice. Probably because after the hardest workouts of my life nothing feels better than a hot, steamy shower with lots of 'poo and condit'; there just happen to be 30 other guys in there with me. Ohh, and what most people don't know is when you practice you wear a speedo and a drag suit over the speedo, which forms a perfect pocket for holding bottles of poo and condit, that's ingenuity.

Third, the ladies. Haha, just kidding. We're the swim team, the most toned athletes in school, not the football team. We can't compete with the football team.

But anyways, it's hard to flip the optimism switch on something that you have dreaded for so long, but this season definitely has some hidden perks, many of which cannot be discussed outside of the team, but one I can disclose is that I very well may get my own shower, and if I'm lucky, another 'bitch' to take under my wing and show the ropes of the swim team to. In no way hazing, really its just an honorable term granted to some freshman who are cool, and contradictorily, not bitchy. But anyways, the first day will be fun, but after that I will probably forget what fun is, and that would not be fun. But what will be fun is when we kick the shit out of every other team in our conference. That will be fun. Word.