Sit Com Idea!

Wanted to pitch a quick idea I had for a hilarious Three's Company type sit com to appeal to some college kids:

There is a 3rd year College Student who's just been kicked out of his dorm on campus because of academic probation, who now needs a place to live. The only problem is, the vacancy rate in the city is pretty much 0% and without any good references, he has very few options...until he comes across an ad at the University Centre which says roommate wanted to share a house with 3 girls. Only problem is, only females can apply!

Our main character decides to go for it and goes in drag to the interview for the apartment and ends up fooling the landlord and the other girl's parents enough that they all approve and he gets to move in. Upon moving in, the other 3 girls (who will be hot), figure out the hoax, but not being as uptight as their parents and landlord embrace the idea of living with this guy. However, just like Jack Tripper having to pretend he is gay whenever Mr. Furley/Roper were around, this guy has to try to pull off being a chick when other people are around. This leads to lots of awkwardly hilarious moments in this guys life and all sorts of hijinx.

Now for someone to steal this idea on me! Leave good ideas for a title in the comments section!

Beer While You BBQ?

Why do men feel the need to drink a beer while barbequing? You wouldn’t be drinking that beer if someone else was cooking for you instead. You’d be off doing something else. And men always drink ONE beer while BBQing. No more, no less.

Don’t spout off bullshit like “well I’f I’m BBQing, it’s nice out so I got to have a beer.”

I am fully supportive of a beer on a nice, hot, sunny day.  But men bbq in bad weather, and still drink a beer.

What the fuck is up with that man? It’s just to try to be cool in front of your friends while you BBQ.

And what’s that? Keith is outside now, by himself, having a beer and bbqing. So it isn’t to be cool either…because you MEN have done this 1 beer while BBQing thing so often now that it has become HABIT for you and you do it even when BBQing alone!

That, my friends, is a sign of alcoholism.

-Guest blog by Kara Barrett

Berry Pickin'

Whenever I drive across the province lately I notice a trend. There are always people parked on the side of the road selling some form of berries. The Bakeapple being very popular around this time of year. People sit in their car all day, homemade signs placed on the side of the road and their mason jar full of berries laid out on the hood of their car just hoping someone will come by and give them $10 for a bottle. A few things about this make me scratch my head and bother me. The first is how many people are doing this. When I drove to St. John's last Friday I saw at least 7 people between Clarenville and Whitbourne  selling berries. Why is there so much competition in this "business"? Don't these people have better things to do? That's the second thing that boggles my mind. How do these people sit in a car all day on a (normally) hot day and just wait for people to come by? Do they spend all this time listening to the radio? Do they drain their batteries doing so? These are questions I want answered.

Another thing that bothers me is these people are cheating some sort of government system for sure, whether it be the Employment Insurance system or the Social Assistance program. I assume most of these people are getting some sort of government subsidy, and if they are on EI I guarantee they are not reporting their cash only income to the government. If they're on "welfare" or workers compensation, I damn well guarantee they are cheating those systems too because there is an awkwardly large amount of effort needed to climb through the woods and bogs to pick a lot of berries. If they're capable of doing this, they're capable of doing some form of labour intensive work.

Before I end the rant, just wanted to tell you what started this. When I was passing by Norris Arm I saw a straggly man and woman just standing on the road with a white bucket full of berries. No sign, no mason jar, nothing, just an open bucket showing off the berries to passing by cars in hopes someone would stop and want to by them. Why would anyone stop? For all I know there could be cigarette butts mixed in with those berries or anything at all. Why would someone think this approach would work? It just boggled my mind.

I know this was all over the place but yeah I'm not down with the berry picking community.

Urinal Etiquette

Not sure if this is relevant to any of my readers, hopefully they are aware of the protocol, but obviously some people aren't and they have no urinal etiquette.

There aren't a lot of rules for going to the bathroom. If you're at a party, leave the seat down when you leave, always change the toilet paper roll if it runs out while you're in there, and don't pee on the floor. When you're in a single gendered public bathroom, there are even fewer rules, but you need to respect the urinal etiquette, and really there are only two things you need to know.

The first is, conversation is NOT necessary. When you're standing next to another dude and you're just peeing, there is no need to talk to each other. Especially if it is something dumb like "nice day today". No need to force an awkward conversation in this situation. I'm not there to socialize, I'm there to empty the bladder, give it a few shakes, wash my hands and leave again. If someone makes conversation, what do you do? Do you turn your head to make eye contact? Do you just keep looking forward? I take the looking forward option when it happens, but its just socially wrong either way.

The second is more crucial to follow. You ALWAYS leave at least one urinal in between you and the other guy peeing when possible. Yes in some scenarios the bathroom is busy and you have to stand next to each other, for those scenarios you hope the urinals have a divider between them, but nothing is worse than when there is an opportunity for distance between you and the other guy, but he opts to go in the urinal right next to you! Well its worse when he does that AND talks to you, but you get my point. You need to leave that buffer zone! Then of course there is always the really awkward guy who sees a line of 3 urinals, all vacant and opts to go in the middle one, leaving you no choice but to stand next to him. Obviously the guy either wants to see some bird or he has issues and needs to be close to somebody at all times.

Also, what's the deal with drunk guys? I'm sure all us dudes have been to a bar or a trough at a concert at some point and noticed that some of the drunk guys just like to stare at your junk while you're peeing. It's really unsettling, but it happens!

So if you read this and do not have urinal etiquette, please start exercising some. If you do have good pee manners, keep up the good work and spread the word so one day we can finally rid ourselves of this problem!

Listen to the Cone

This is NOT a picture of my cone or hand

I decided to treat myself to some soft serve tonight, and it made me think way more than any dairy based food is supposed to make you think. The conclusion I came to is that all the little decisions we make in the run of a day really define who we are as people, and if you really want to know someone for who they truly are, you need to pay attention to the small and sometimes stupid things.

For example, whenever I go get soft serve, if the option is available I always get a twist, or zebra as I used to call it growing up. The chocolate and vanilla swirl. While eating this cone I began thinking, why do I always get the twist? Most of the time when I'm eating it the taste of the vanilla is far superior to the chocolate, yet I never get just the vanilla. Because I'm in Grand Falls-Windsor and bored, I let me mind jump deeper into the issue and looked within me to see what the ice cream was telling me. What I figured out was a couple of things. When I listened to the cone I discovered that me always getting the twist can mean that maybe I like equality. I like to give each flavour a fair chance and I'm not opposed to compromise. Another possibility is that I'm very selfish. I could just have one falvour, but why settle for one flavour when I can have two? Or perhaps I'm very indecisive. Even when making a decision about what flavour ice cream to get I can't come to a solid conclusion because of my fear or apprehension about making the wrong choice and regretting it later.

Maybe this ice cream cone was a microcosm of my life, or maybe I'm just looking for things that aren't there because I'm bored and its actually just an ice cream cone. Either way I'm gonna start trying to pay attention to the little things from now on and seeing what I can detect, until someone tells me its annoying the bejesus out of them anyway!