Tuesday, March 11, 2008

UIP

Three little letters, similar to DUI, but a victimless crime unless you're a parking lot. I admit guilt. I am the wrongdoer, along with dozens of other nightly cohorts. I peed. I peed in the alleyway. The alley already smelled like pee and the fresh stains showed that I was not nearly the first that night.

According to the officer, I was the 4th person he had busted in 20 minutes. I was a bit drunk to recall that it's not illegal to have no identification on you. My alias, Bernard Henson, Bernie. Here's my gripe though. If I'm the 4th person (TO BE CAUGHT) in 20 minutes... doesn't that say something about the central issue? "Why don't you just put up some public restrooms?" I asked the person in administration over the phone. "We did, but they got vandalized," she said. So I guess the SLO City Council would rather have dozens of urinals in their alley and parking lots than a broken toilet seat, or a dirty limerick.

The crushing aspect of it all is that to pee in public in SLO costs an individual $350. That's a pricey fine for something that most people have to do several times a day, exponentially more if they've been drinking. Basically, SLO can go fuck themselves. Urinating in public is my right as a human being and the only thing that a $350 fine does for me, is tell me that at that rate, I might as well have pissed on the cop too. I'll still piss in your fucking city. In fact, I'll make it my mission every time I drive through, but now I'll just be faster and stealthier about it.

Monday, March 3, 2008

HBO Sit-Coms

I'm finally getting this idea off the ground. It's simple, but let me tell you what I'm all about. I'm all about complaining, pointing out the obvious that's just not-so-obvious. While in New Zealand with 2 of my friends, we ran into this stereo problem. The problem was that it didn't work and so of course, we ranted and raved about non-sensical shit for hours at a time while in our struggling car. Often our conversations would enter into a dialogue, infused with a Larry David style, and then resort to hypotheticals that could make the raunchiest of men drop their jaws. Usually we just asked each other what theme song you would choose between if you had to sing it yourself in certain situations. The best one being your choice between "Money" by Pink Floyd every time you made a transaction, or "Eye of the Tiger" each time you took stairs, an escalator or elevator. No one ever chooses Money though. It's sad.

Anyway, I've got some gripe with the world and the people living in it. Like all bloggers, I'm just here for you to waste your time at work. So, take another coffee break, flip off your boss behind his or her back, and keep the NY Times homepage on tab just in case you get crept up on from behind.

My gripe this week is simple. Why do we have different names for countries than the country has for itself? I wondered this question in Korea when I asked my friends why Korea refers to their country as "Han-gook" and we say Korea. What the fuck is up with that? They call The USA "Mi-gook," which means, "beautiful country." I ask you why? Why should we create a new name for a country that calls itself something else? Is it like a nickname? I like to be called Alex, you can call me by any of my given names, I don't give a shit. But if you start calling me nickname, there's like a reason for it. Though if you started calling me Steven, I'd probably think you're just an asshole who a) can't remember my name b) thinks I look like a Steven (which by the way is fucking idiotic) or c) wants me to replace an old friend named Steven.

There's really no reason why we can't as a global community take it upon ourselves to call each other by our real names. Italy might be a close call since we could consider it a nickname for Italia, but Deutschland and Germany are just two different names and makes us look like we can't pronounce 5 consonants in a row (which holds true for most states below the Mason Dixon line). So I propose that before we try and solve the metric problem that even NASA engineers screw up often enough to ruin a space mission every 50 years and causes me trouble every time I need a socket wrench, we should start referring to each other by our given names.