cough syrup.

so i have had a shit ton of cough syrup and a couple beers and i feel fucking fantastic. nip/tuck has once again blown me away with another phenomenal episode. watching sean and christian twist along another crazy plot line got me in a tizzy, boy i tells ya. it doesn’t hurt to have a body high.

the ingredient in cough syrup that gives this high is dextromethorphan. the body high is part of the dissociative hallucinations that occur when taken at high doses. this chemical holds the high honor of having its structure tattooed on the back of a patient’s neck I had seen a few months ago. not kidding, he had this tattooed:

addiction, here i come. ha. just kidding.

DAMN YOU BEAR GRYLLS!

As I have completely given up on trying to make my own category tags, I have decided I will only write things that can be related to the existing tags. Thus I have started this entry which is related to trees. And urine.

I had been a huge fan of the TV show “Man vs. Wild” on Discover, a reality-type survival TV show which featured one man, Bear Grylls, dropped into the middle of nowhere with only a knife, flint, and water bottle. His goal in each episode was to (a) not die and (b) make it back to civilization. It was a show during which a man could scratch his balls, sniff the pungent yet slightly arousing ball sweat off of his fingernails, drink a beer, and imagine that he, too, was drinking his own urine in a rare hypermasculine scenario when drinking one’s own urine was somehow acceptable.

One day I had some spare time and tried to find any upcoming episodes of the program when my TiVo told me “There are no episodes currently scheduled”. Fearing something had happened to the fearless host, thus knocking his hit show out of syndication, I turned to the premiere source for up-to-date information – Wikipedia.

Like a ton of bricks, I read the first damning statement: “After a series of exposés by the Daily Mail, the show was put on hiatus while Discovery reviewed claims that it deceived viewers.”

My heart fell, in the gut-wrenching, tear-jerking fashion it did when Santa Claus turned out to be an impostor.

“One of the allegations is that while Grylls claimed to be sleeping outdoors, he was allegedly sleeping in hotels….British television’s Channel 4 has acknowledged that in at least two instances Bear has stayed in hotels during filming.”

Hotels? WHAT A FUCKING PUSSY. True, it’s gotta be rough out there, but hotels? I might somehow understand having a tent brought in on a really tough night – but fucking come ON. Your name is BEAR for Christsake!

And the embarrassments keep on comin’. Flotation devices. A prefabricated raft dropped off along his route. Domesticated horses brought in and passed off as wild. Smoke machines brought in to simulate poisonous sulfur dioxide smoke over lava. Being hoisted into a tree wearing a parachute to imitate landing in the tree. Even HIRING A MAN IN A FUCKING BEAR SUIT TO “TERRORIZE” HIS CAMP.

At this point it’s beyond the Santa Claus comparison. It’s more akin to walking in on Daddy in the shower to find he’s only packing roast beef between his thighs. Not only does it ruin one’s image of him from that point on, it taints every memory. So, that time I crunched potato chips along with you crunching into a raw wild bird’s egg, Bear? Ruined. That time in my living room I took my shirt off, peed on it, and wrapped it on my head like you did to keep yourself cool in the desert, just to try to be as cool as you? Ruined. That time I brought home a bag of scorpions and cobras, let them loose in the house, and slept on a bed of pine needles to simulate the risk I thought you put yourself in just for the sake of my entertainment? Not worth the $15 cab ride to the ER, dick. Thanks for nothing, you weak-ass pile of shit. So what if you were in the British Special Forces and almost died from a broken back while serving. So what if you were the youngest Brit to summit Everest. So what if you took a paraglider over that same peak, beating the previous altitude record by nearly 10,000 feet? How can I respect you as a man’s man when you bunk up in a Ritz-Carlton overnight while I’m lying on my couch watching, fully convinced you’re shivering your ass off in a hand-dug snow cave? Thanks for the good times, Bear, but fuck you for ruining them. Fuck you for ruining US.

hella ghetto

I’m cool, you know..? People like me. I’m hella easy going and totally chill. Whatever, man – that’s cool. I’ve got a few nice pairs of jeans, but these ones are my favorites. Whatever. I work for a major cell phone company in the call center. It hella sucks, I take vacation time by the hour and leave whenever I want to. They’re pretty chill about that. I need to work and just make hella money, but whatever. It’s summer time. Dude, you commin’ out drinkin’ with us? That’s cool. I outsmart cops. Yeah, I just moved into this new place, right across from campus; it’s pretty chill; nice view. Just kickin’ it. Yeah, I think my new neighbor, Andy, hates me. He’s such a bitch. It’s like dude, is it cool if I just kick it in your lawn chairs? And he’s like, Yeah, I don’t care. Whatever, he fuckin’ hates me. He’s such a bitch. I’m totally chill and hella cool. Maybe Andy should watch a little more TRL, pop his collar and be a little more hella chill and cool, like me.

welcome

By answering the following questions, which a reader of this weblog may or may not find him or herself asking, my intention with this introductory entry is to provide a bit of clarity as to what might go on here, and why.

Why is the url for this weblog northgarden.wordpress.com?

The three contributors to this weblog – Andy, Bryan, and myself, Matt – all happen to live in the same run-down apartment complex on a street named North Garden. I set this site up and really had no idea what the web address should be. Selecting a url representing the geographical commonality shared by the three of us seemed appropriate enough and relatively unrestricting.

Why doesn’t this weblog have a title? And furthermore, why not even a descriptive heading?

I couldn’t think of a title, so we don’t have one. And we’re okay with that. As far as a descriptive heading is concerned, I tried incorporating one, but with the limitations of the WordPress template being what they are such a tagline would have to overlay our header image. And we’re not okay with that.

Speaking of header images, why is yours of a child crying?

We like the image. We were aiming for something between offensive and endearing and I think we struck that balance. We also thought that such a picture accurately represented what the content of this weblog might end up becoming – whiny and/or offensive enough to, we hope, cause children to cry. We’ll see how we end up doing. We reserve the right to change our header image as often as we like, to images as ridiculous as we desire, simply because we might find doing so to be amusing.

Why do you keep using the word weblog? Don’t you realize that using that word so many times in this entry is repetitive?

I happen to have a pretty strong aversion to the sound and shape of many words, most of which contain the letter o. The abbreviated form of the word weblog – the b word – is one that strikes me as particularly ugly. It is also a word that carries a lot of implications with it, most of which I hope will not characterize the content of this particular webpage. And yes, I realize my overuse of the word weblog in this entry is repetitive. Thank you for noticing.

Okay, so what is your little “weblog” going to be about?

Well, we’ll see, I suppose. I intend on posting recommendations for books and records that I am enjoying, and the like. Andy will probably contribute his own opinions on art and culture, in addition to making fun of those less fortunate than himself. Bryan is less predictable, given his capricious nature. He’ll probably write at least one entry on beer, and at least a few on mental illnesses.

Who are you guys?

I’m Matt. Andy is my apartmentmate. Bryan is our neighbor.

When are we going to hear from those two?

Soon, I hope. Look forward to it.