Why I Blog

Blogosphere custom dictates that bloggers explain why they blog. Here’s what I’ve got so far.

I blog because:

1. I want to find “my voice.” I don’t know where it might be or what it might sound like, but I am determined to find it. I’ve even been putting out ‘missed connections’ in the Chicago Reader. “You: sound like me but have no body. Me: guy who enjoys Keith Sweat jokes. Nooo-baaaaah-dee.”


2. It's therapeutic. Between the death of auto-tune and finding out that Gucci don’t love me, it’s been a rough year. Blogging about the start of my nonprofit escort service and informing the public that children control our minds helps me in these times of despair.


3. Something about self-reflection. Vampires can’t see their reflection—and I’m not a vampire.

There it is. Three good reasons why I blog. If you don’t blog, you should. It would be a shame if I accidentally shanked you in the heart with a sharp piece of wood.

Become a Warrior

For the past 3 months, I’ve been training for the Warrior Dash, a 6K obstacle course which will have me swimming through mud pits, scrambling over mangled cars, and leaping over fire. But training to become a warrior has required more than just preparing to complete dangerously awesome physical feats. I've also been living by the Warrior Code of Honor. Here is a list of things you can do if you hope to one day become a warrior like me:

• Crawl up hills. If it’s one you’ve crawled before, try to beat your previous time. If for some reason you can’t crawl up the hill (like if you’re on your way to a job interview where you need to be especially clean), you should at least predict how fast you could crawl up it.


• Visualize often. Like a lot. Suck at visualization? No prob. Visualize about visualizing (also known as meta-visualization).


• Take risks when you play softball. Run fast and slide hard. A 9-inning game should result in at least 3 bloody wounds on your own body.


• Climb ropes. Ropes are like hills, except it’s more difficult to run up a rope. Be careful to use proper hand protection if sliding down a rope. Rope burn is embarrassing (but on the plus slide, it allows you to make up badass stories about how you beat up a tiger shark after it repeatedly made passes at a lady who wasn’t interested).


• Get a Mohawk. Having one is the equivalent of sliding into every base just because you can. True warriors give themselves Mohawks by lining their heads with medical tape so they don’t shave the wrong parts.


• Eat salmon for breakfast and yogurt at least twice a day. On the warrior diet, three veggie dogs equal one serving.


• Train like your ancestors. Warriors don’t life weights at the gym—they use playgrounds to build natural upper body strength.


• Blog. Great warriors keep the warrior spirit alive by blogging about warrior tradition and lifestyle. They also name their blogs after things that 6-year-old girls like.

The Family Deception--aka The Truth

Kids. Wow. They're really coming out this summer. Seems like more now than ever. But while kids may look cute, these pint-sized people are not all toys and stickers. Kids need to be fed and taken care of. They are like really expensive pets--but that's nothing compared to their true deceptive nature.

Let me lay it out for you. With kids usually come parents, and that's were the problem begins. Overcrowded roads. Overcrowded schools. An overcrowded planet. These are all the result of people imitating what they see on the Discovery Channel.

Do you know who's behind the Discovery Channel? The Family Party--the original political machine. The Family Party controls all the major media outlets in the world. They even control the New World Order. Don't believe me? Check the Internet. The facts don't lie--and somebody's been lying.

Do you think it's a coincidence that families get all these breaks? Tax breaks. Cheaper admission to theme parks. Access to special locker rooms. Do you know what goes on in family locker rooms? Secret meetings. Secret meetings that only families can attend. And the real trip is that the parents are not the ones in charge. The parents are just the foot soldiers and spokespeople for the Family Party. The rulers of the Family Party are the kids. The younger the kid, the higher their power and status in the Original World Order.

If you see a toddler, you do what I do--run. If you see an infant, pretend it's a bear and play dead. The less physical mobility a kid has, the more powerful their mental magic and mind control.

Wake up! You didn't vote for Obama--you voted for his kids.

A History of the Future of Oral Communication

For the past two years, I taught public speaking to college freshman. The official number for the course was COMS 100, but I always referred to it as COMS 1000.

Why COMS 1000? Simply put, this course could not be contained to three place values. Solid speaking requires critical thought, the ability to relate to others, and a mastering of the present. You may be brilliant, but if you can't effectively communicate your ideas, you're finished. On the flip side, if you can communicate effectively, you can help the person with stale ideas and poor communication skills make way more money than you.

Calling the course COMS 1000 communicated significance, value, and a multidimensional theme that allowed me to work in lesson plans on the crucial issues facing young people today. Issues like time travel, reptilian humanoid invasion, the banana crisis, and the controversial hierarchy of Wu-Tang Clan membership.

COMS 1000 was different like that. Other instructors used famous speeches as examples. I used Snuggie infomercials. Other instructors played Barak Obama audio clips. I performed DMX impersonations. Other instructors had their students practice debate. I tried to hypnotize my class.

Though my hypnosis demonstrations always failed, along with my invisibility and levitation attempts, they are moments that I will always keep in my heart. Sometimes, I sit down with a cup of hot tea and reflect on my days as an educator.

Two Thursdays ago, I thought about the time when I wanted to tell my class that an audience is a living organism. Instead, I said, "An audience is a living orgasm." I played this off by telling them, "No, really. Your audience is like an orgasm. You want to keep them really engaged and excited throughout your speech."

Then I thought about the time when I held up three fingers and asked my students to tell me the three criteria for evaluating the credibility of a source. When they answered "authorship," I put my ring finger down. When they answered "sponsorship," I put my index finger down. When this left me giving my class the finger, I attempted to save face by saying, "At least this isn't as bad as my orgasm."

Teaching COMS 1000 was full of rewards. I can't imagine what would have happened if I had to wake up twice a week to teach a class that had only two zeros in its name.