Happy Valentine’s Day everyone. I really mean that. I hope you all feel loved today. Tomorrow you can go back to being hated by everyone if you want, but today should be special. I’m talking to you, guy who proposed the new freedom of speech policy.

Personally, true love wasn’t in the cards for me this year, though, so I’m going to have to settle for a different kind of love: stripper love.

Any guy who has never been to a strip club will think this is stupid, and every girl will think it’s stupid regardless. All I have to say to those people is this: You don’t know what you’re talking about, but T-Pain does. Stripper love is very real.

I have fallen in love with a stripper on several occasions, and I’m not ashamed of it. You have to understand, the world doesn’t operate the same way inside a strip club as it does in the real world. You are talking to beautiful women who are paid (very, very well) to make you think they are interested in you. Imagine any girl who has ever buttered you up so you would buy her a drink, and then multiply that by a thousand. You can laugh about how ridiculous it is when you’re sitting around getting ready to go out, but once you get there and you’ve got a professional gaming you up, all bets are off.

It starts off innocently enough. You’re not naive enough to actually think you’re going to get some action at the strip club. You’re not looking to fall in love. You just want to go get drunk and see some skin. You watch the girls dance but one of them stands out for some reason. Maybe she’s not even the hottest one there, but she tickles your fancy. She can tell immediately, of course, because she is a pro. You’re a seal and she’s a shark that smells blood. That’s how it starts.

You fend off the other girls that want you to buy dances from them. Some of them are nasty, others are cute and fun to flirt with… but you’re distracted. You stall for time until your girl makes her rounds.

“What’s your name?” she asks when she finally approaches you. She totally wants you.

She thinks you have a sexy name and she also apparently thinks that she should sit on your lap. Okay, I know it sounds dumb, but seriously dude, this girl is into you. She doesn’t just say that to everybody.

Even so, you’ve got to play it cool because you know her game is tight. She’s not some drunken party girl.

You have already become naive enough to think you might actually get some action at a strip club and you’re not even finished your second beer.When she starts dancing again she’s only dancing for you. Also she’s dancing a little bit for that fat guy at the other end of the bar and kind of for your friend sitting next to you, but you know it’s mostly for you. She blushes when she catches eyes with you. After her dance she comes straight back to your lap; you’re so in. Next thing you know, you’ve bought her three drinks and you’re halfway through a $40 lapdance. You don’t get her number, but she tells you to come back and see her again. That’s basically the same thing. You’ll wonder for a good two days afterwards whether there was a real connection. After that, your dopamine levels return to normal and reality sets in: what the hell were you thinking?

It’s got all the elements of a real romance: nudity, regret, and a hefty price tag. See, who needs a girlfriend?

I just turned 21 last month, and despite what people say, it’s just a number…. a number that will turn you into an alcoholic.

My older brother took me out at midnight on my birthday with some of his friends, because none of mine are old enough yet. We went to Federal Hill and I had my initiation at a bar called Ropewalk. The group hooked me up all night. It was awesome. I must have tried a “slut” of every hair color imaginable. Also I had a lot of drinks.

Compared to the stories I’ve heard of other 21st birthday celebrations, mine was pretty tame. No one got into a fight, no one got arrested and everyone made it to a bed or couch before passing out. I got about as drunk as I can get without getting sick, and that was enough for me. There was no rush. I knew there would be plenty of debauchery in the coming months.

It’s been roughly three weeks since, and I have been drinking any chance I can get. Obviously there are the weekends and the parties, but things are getting ridiculous fast. The freedom is addicting. Every liquor store becomes fair game, and swinging by one on the way home is impossible to resist. A lot of the time I’m not even drinking to get drunk anymore; I’m just drinking because “Nip/Tuck” is on, it didn’t rain, or I’m making Tuna Helper. Those are all acceptable reasons now.

Take Monday night as an example. I got a text message from a friend I haven’t seen in a while asking what I was up to. After a little back and forth, I suggested we meet up for a beer later at Rec Room. It still tickles me that I can “meet up for a beer” anytime I want. I felt like a real grown up for the first time in my life. A few hours later we were sitting at the bar with a couple of brews, catching up on old times. We played foosball, we ate wings, we laughed, we cried. It was really mellow and relaxing.

It wasn’t long, though, until our freshly-turned-21-college-kid-side came out. I sort of forgot to take into account beforehand that my friend is an aggressive drinker and that I am easily goaded into drinking more than I want to. Pretty soon “a beer” turned into three beers, which turned into a lot of crazy shots, which turned into me running up a $30 bar tab on a Monday night.

That type of thing probably wouldn’t happen just sitting around the house, but with the power to go to bars comes the responsibility of not drinking yourself into oblivion, or bankruptcy, every night. I’m willing to tiptoe that line. My only real goal is to not end up on “True Life: I’m An Alcoholic,” “Intervention” or “Cops.”

I can honestly say that my 21st birthday was really the only birthday that changed my daily life. When I turned 18 I didn’t start buying tons of porn and cigarettes. Well, at least not the cigarettes. I guess 16 was pretty good because I was able to drive, but somehow I see being able to buy beer as more monumental.

As a side note, I have considered the fact that now I have no birthdays to really look forward to and perhaps my life will become a slow downward spiral towards senility, but those thoughts are easily drowned in legally obtained vodka.

So, I’m kicking off my newest blog project today, and it’s called Read This During Class.

You can think of it as an introduction to the blogging scene for people who don’t know much about it. There is so much good writing and creativity on the internet that never makes it to the audience it deserves. Getting published is tough, but everyone can write for free on the internet and there are a lot of talented people out there.

What I’m trying to do with this website is direct people to things that they can read during class or at work or whenever they’re bored and looking for something interesting. I’ll be talking about some of my favorite blogs, especially the lesser known ones, funny news stories, hilarious internet scandals that never make it to the mainstream media, and anything else that might entertain you.

My first post is up today, and I’ll probably be posting about once a day. So, please check it out, tell you friends, enjoy it, let me know what you think. Thanks,

Ev
Read This During Class

Everyone is doing it; there’s no use skirting around the issue. Of course, I’m talking about the only “it” worth talking about; sex. Although I think the media (especially in Hollywood) grossly overestimates how much sex is happening in college, there’s still a lot of it. And why not? We’re not in the 1940’s anymore; kids should be allowed to enjoy themselves.

The abstinence movement has failed miserably. Whenever I drive on 83 now, I see that sign that says “Sex can wait, your future can’t,” and I just laugh. Okay, Grandma, I think it’s past your bedtime.

I guess one thing about sex that sucks is buying condoms. I know in my head that it shouldn’t be embarrassing because it’s a common thing and no one really cares, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking all sorts of crazy thoughts every time I have to do it.

For instance, every single time I buy condoms, the checkout line is always 40 people long with some old woman holding things up by trying to use three year old coupons. Then I’m standing there for 20 minutes in the middle of a crowd just holding them; half trying to conceal them so that maybe people will just think its a disposable camera. I also have this ridiculous notion that I can’t buy JUST condoms. I always feel like I have to buy something else, as if the cashier will somehow get sidetracked and I can slip them through unnoticed. Usually the only other thing I can think of to buy is a Snickers or something. Condoms and a Snickers bar, because who doesn’t enjoy a post-coital snack?

Another absurd idea I have is that the cashier is going to judge me based on what type of condom I’m buying. I feel as though I’ll be pigeonholed as a freak if I buy anything other than your standard lubricated Trojan.

Sometimes the condoms are behind the counter, and when that’s the case I immediately throw in the towel. I’ll be damned if I’m going to ask a 63 year old woman to hand me “the big box of ultra-ribbed.” I’d rather just have a kid.

I like to be able to take my time and select the ones I want. Usually they are at the end of an aisle in the back of the store, which is pretty ideal. The only exception is when there is someone shopping for yeast infection cream two feet down from the condom section, and they are reeeeeeally taking their time. I can only do so many pointless laps around the store before I start getting impatient. Usually I just give up and go for it, realizing that the other person is probably just as embarrassed and uncomfortable as I am.

Despite all of the nonsense that runs through my head, I suck it up and buy them just like everyone else. The only other alternative is to use the old ones I have laying around. I still have condoms in my room that I bought in high school, but at this point using them would probably be a bad idea. The funny thing about that is that they have roughly the same shelf life as Twinkies, which is forever. From the day you buy them, you have about four or five years to use them. When you’re pushing the expiration date on condoms, that’s how you know you really need to get laid.

Recently I’ve been fascinated by how Facebook has been owning MySpace in every way. It used to be a pretty tight race, but now I’m pretty sure the people that run MySpace have given up on life. You can say what you want about Facebook, but at the end of the day they are making changes and improvements, and no matter what you say I know you are checking it constantly. MySpace is the same as it was five years ago. Facebook is green fields and fresh meadows. MySpace is a desolate wasteland covered in scum.

You might not agree with me, and that’s fine. But the one thing you can’t deny is that a large percentage of MySpace profiles don’t belong to real people. Like… a really large percentage. I’m not a huge user, and my profile is pretty bare-bones, but I still get about a friend request every two days or so. I can’t remember the last time one of them was legit.

At first they were all the same, back in the primitive early days of the webcam girl profile. Gorgeous girls in skimpy clothes with stripper names like “CrYStal<3″. A few pictures to get you enticed, and usually a flirty paragraph that helped you “get to know” the girl. Then once you were roped in, you stumbled onto the link to “see the webcam.” I would get these every once in a while.

Not anymore. That is the old way of doing things. The mom and pop way. We live in a Wal-Mart world. Quantity over quality, mass marketing. Now the webcam girls are all I ever see on MySpace… but these aren’t you grandpa’s webcam girls. The profiles have been stripped down to the essentials. They get right down to business. No pictures, no flirty paragraph, just a sentence and a link. “MySpace made me take my pictures down. See them HERE.” And the Crystal<3 we came to know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Her and her hot friends have been replaced by Average Jane’s. When you see these friend requests, you’re duped into thinking that it’s a real person because there’s no cleavage and no whale-tail.

Today I got such a friend request… and I was completely blown away. I was SURE it wasn’t going to be a webcam girl because the girl in the picture was, well, ugly. She was huge and pimply and greasy and her name was Hulda. I swear to God. Yet her profile looked just like so many I had seen before. Sorry, Hulda, but I don’t want to see any pictures of you here or anywhere. How is that good marketing?

This got me thinking, though, that they must be stealing profile pictures and screen names from unsuspecting MySpace users en mass and copying them over to a skeleton profile. Pretty clever. But then THAT got me thinking… what if, somewhere, somehow, I have my own webcam guy profile??? And THAT got me thinking, “On second thought, that is pretty good marketing.”

I worked tonight from 5 o’clock to around 11. It was my last day delivering pizzas before Christmas, and the holiday spirit was inescapable. Light 101FM filled the shop with festive tunes, Christmas cookies were popping up out of nowhere, and “have a good night” was replaced with “Happy Holidays!” when addressing customers. I guess you’re not allowed to wish people Merry Christmas unless you are completely sure of their denomination. The last thing you want to do is offend a Jewish person before they decide how much to tip you.

Despite all of the holiday cheer, it was turning out to be a shitty night. It was raining, nobody was tipping, and I wasn’t in a mansion having sex with a model on top of a pile of cash. Things were looking glum.

I made a run to one house that was covered with decorations. I’ve found that if I’m not sure which house I’m looking for on the street, it’s probably the one with the most lights. Holiday nuts love pizza. It was certainly the case for this house. A bubbly middle aged woman answered the door in a holiday sweater and, after completing the transaction, offered me a Christmas treat to take with me. She handed me a festively wrapped apple covered in chocolate and caramel and sent me on my way with a Merry Christmas.

The night suddenly wasn’t so bad.

The last delivery of the night was somewhat of a landmark for me. I had heard talk about a mysterious regular customer… a customer who would order every week…. a customer who would order enough food to last him several days at a time. Not just pizza, but desserts and drinks and everything but the kitchen sink. They called him “Charlie Manson.”

A huge order popped up on the screen; three pizzas, two subs, a couple of two liters, some brownies, a cannoli. The total came out to be around $55.00. My boss asked me if I had ever been to Charlie Manson’s house before, and I told him that I hadn’t.

“So, is his name Charlie Manson or does he just look like him?” I asked.

“He looks just like him. A younger Charles Manson,” he replied.

Charles Manson has always kind of fascinated me. The way people talk about his hypnotic presence, the fact that he is one of the most famous serial killers in the history of the world, and his frightening appearance… he sounds like a scary guy.

As I drove to his house with his humongous order sliding around in my trunk, I was anxious to see this guy. I flicked on my overhead light and took a glance down at his address; he lived at the very end of his street.

The street was dark as I turned onto it and it only got darker as I neared the last block. I finally spotted his house in the shadows on my right. The ticket said to use the side door. There were no lights on in his house. I grabbed his food and made my way towards the entrance. The yard between his house and the next was, again, dark. The wind funneled through the make-shift alley and kicked around what was left of the rain.

His door had leaves around the entrance, a few cobwebs, and a black trash bag covering a torn screen. I’m not gonna lie, I was pretty creeped out. I knocked on the door and took a step back as my heart pounded.

I heard some faint footsteps and a cough before I saw the knob start to turn. It flew open and right in front of me, lurking beneath a pale hallway light, was Charles fucking Manson. I almost jumped when I saw. He looked EXACTLY like him; disheveled beard, raggedy flanel shirt, psychotic eyes, and all. There were mysterious bags full of God knows what strewn about his entrance way and the place gave off a funky smell.

He was actually a really nice, mild mannered guy though. But the entire time I dealt with him I couldn’t shake the idea that I was talking to the real Charles Manson.

After I got off of work, it was pretty late and I decided to hit up a drive through for dinner. Taco Bell had a thousand people waiting so I went to McDonalds.

As I waited in line the kid in the passenger seat of the car in front of me stretched his arm across the back of the drivers seat. I followed the line of his arm with my eyes and ended up at his hand… which was giving me the finger.

What?

“There’s no way that was meant for me,” I thought. Maybe I had misinterpreted what I saw. That’s when I saw him look back at me. That motherfucker looked me right in the eyes, flicked his head as if to say “what are you gonna do about it?”, and then he gave me the finger again!

I didn’t know what to do. He kept sneaking me the finger and then looking back to see my reaction. I just stared at him in disbelief, shaking my head occasionally in disappointment. It crossed my mind that he might be with a big brother or someone who would kick my ass if I retaliated in any way.

Their car pulled forward a bit, and I saw that he was with his mom. At the time I thought this eliminated any chance of me being able to say or do anything, so I didn’t. Now that I think about it, I should have just walked up to the car, knocked on the window, and said politely “I would appreciate it if you would please stop giving me the middle finger. Thank you” without even looking at the mom, and then walked away.

That kid would have gotten his ass beat so badly when he got home.

Again, from Yahoo! News:

BERLIN - A man nearly died from alcohol poisoning after quaffing (chugging) two pints of vodka at an airport security check instead of handing it over to comply with new rules about carrying liquids aboard a plane, police said Wednesday.

For those of you who are American… which is probably all of you… that’s like chugging a 32 oz Big Gulp full of vodka. Insane.

How old do you think this guy was?

Not even close.

He’s 64. I hope I’m like that when I’m his age.

From Yahoo! News:

A Starbucks customer buys coffee for the car behind her, starting a two-hour chain reaction of goodwill.

A lady in Greensburgh, Pennsylvania went through the drive-through at Starbucks and, in an effort to spread holiday cheer, paid for the order of the car behind her. The car behind her, in turn, did the same. This went on for roughly two hours.

Immediately, my first thought was “Why didn’t they interview the guy who broke the chain?” That would have been priceless.

They were able, however, to obtain this photo via security footage before he drove away.

What a douche.

Finals week is here, seemingly coming out of nowhere to catch everyone off guard. This is probably my last post of the semester, which is an important landmark, I know. I know none of you have the internet at home and it will be virtually impossible for you to access the site until late January. In all seriousness though, I won’t be running the site the same way next semester. I’ll be going on with the Towerlight and getting an official weekly column (or at least thats the plan at the moment), so I’ll probably cut back my writing to just that. I’ll still post the articles here, and of course they’ll run in the Towerlight. With the extra time, I want to “pursue other projects.” I’m brainstorming on ideas for a site similar to this, but with a more global appeal. Let’s face it, no one outside of Towson students or people that know me personally has any reason to read this. I want to write about something bigger, but I don’t know what yet.

In honor of this manufactured occasion, I want to clean out the site and start fresh. What I mean by that is that I am going to post some of the drafts and dead end articles that I’ve started over the last couple of months. These are all things that, for whatever reason, I wasn’t able to do anything with. I started with what I thought was a good idea, wrote a funny sentence or two, and then completely submarined. Without further ado, here are some of my favorite dead ends, raw, unedited, and unfinished:

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“If I’m old enough to go to war, I should be old enough to drink!”

You’ve heard it/said it/agreed with it before. It’s a pretty heated debate, with people under 21 arguing their side passionately while people over 21 read the paper and drink coffee or whatever it is that they do.

I had a similar argument in a class of mine. My group was discussing whether you should have to be 18 or 21 to be a police officer. Then there’s strip clubs, where you have to be 18 to strip, 18 to spectate, 21 to drink, and over 40 to get any attention.

All of this made me wonder, what are the differences between an 18 year old and a 21 year old? Are there any? Who would win in a fight?

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Almost everyone I know is a self-identified procrastinator. No one will ever tell you that they are very prompt and deliberate.

Most people who claim to be procrastinators are, in fact, lying. The most diligent people I know will be the ones freaking out about an exam they have in two weeks, that they’ve “put off studying for.” Please, I’ve never even heard of studying for an exam more than two days in advance, and I count the day of the exam as a day.

Procrastination is both a vice and a virtue. It can screw you badly if you’re not careful, but it has some perks that no one seems to ever talk about.

The pressure of an approaching deadline will light a fire under your ass like nothing else. Screw outlines and proofreading, toss aside the flashcards, and just wing it. You sort of become possessed, and by the time you’re done with the assignment you can’t remember anything. You have no idea what your paper says because you only read it once, and you can’t remember any of the questions from the test… let alone how you answered them. When you get the graded copy back it’s like Christmas. You get to see your grade, yeah, but you will also be amazed at how much you knew at 4am the day you turned it in.

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If you keep up with my site, you’ll probably find that the one aspect of being a college student I don’t touch on very often is going to class. That’s because going to class is boring. I mean, sure, I could write up some sarcastic bulleted list of ways to make class more fun. Off the top of my head, though, I can’t think of anything that won’t get you thrown out of the classroom or cause you to fail out of college. While I have, in previous entries, advocated underage drinking, binge drinking, assault and battery, Vicodin, insurance fraud, and evading the law, I can’t in good conscience promote poor study habits. I can’t even bring myself to joke about it.

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In one of my classes this week we are doing individual presentations. It doesn’t matter what class it is, but the rubric for the presentation specifically says “3-5 minutes.” I went the first day and kept my presentation within the time limit, and you know what? I got an A. Everyone after me happened to choose a topic that apparently moves them to tears, and proceeded to ramble on for 15 minutes extra about irrelevant nonsense. So today I went to that class for the sole purpose of listening to these presentations. We should have gotten through everyone and been let out of class early, but because people are inconsiderate, we stayed the whole time and will end up running over a day or two. I know this isn’t an isolated incident or a problem of mine alone.

One of my favorite Facebook groups is “Keep Your Fucking Hand Down in Lecture and Shut Up, No One Cares.” This really doesn’t require any elaboration because I’m sure just reading that sentence has enraged most of you. I know I am already starting to get angry. People who ask questions, repeat shit just to clarify, request elaboration, or tell stupid anecdotes in class are just part of one subset of annoying ass people in class. There are other people who deserve groups dedicated to hating them, too.

People Who Nod in Agreement: The occasional “oh, I get it,” nod is acceptable but some people take the reasonable nod and just shit all over it. Your professor doesn’t need you to advertise your agreement while he’s telling the class about how he got stuck in traffic. He’s probably not even looking at you because he knows eye contact will lead to you asking a question. Here’s a hint for people who do this: Every time you feel the urge to nod in class, shove a thumbtack in your eye instead. If you still want to nod after that then go ahead.

People Who Bring Laptops to Class and DON’T Use Them to Play Games: God damnit. I hate it when I look over at someone on a laptop and the only application open is a plain old Word document. I’ll often scan the task bar to see if Minesweeper is hiding out in the background somewhere. If it isn’t, then that person sucks. Look, asshole, if you’re going to distract me with your technology, at least make it interesting. Play solitaire, read the news, hell throw some porn up there. You wouldn’t like it if I brought an old-style typewriter to class to take notes with. That would be annoying as shit. And not the least bit entertaining.

People Who “Make an Entrance”: Dramatically removing your sunglasses, rapping along with your iPod, and talking loudly on your cell phone should all qualify you for immediate removal from class and possibly the human race.

People Who Are “The Unofficial Tech Guy”: There’s always that one kid in class who thinks he is MacGyver, and when the VCR won’t work properly he steps up to the plate to fix it. I mean, hey, if you know what you’re doing then by all means fix it. But 9 times out of 10 this person doesn’t fix a damn thing.

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Good luck on your finals. I’ll still be writing over winter break, but for formalities sake, see you next semester.

We’ve all done them. We’ve all hated them.

My three least favorite words to hear in the classroom are “write a paper,” provided they aren’t followed by a clear explanation. My second least favorite words to hear in the classroom are “get into groups.” It doesn’t matter what follows that; there is nothing good at the end of that sentence. But that’s really neither here not there.

I can write a paper if you give me… I don’t know… a topic. I’ll even take some rough guidelines, or a sample subject. Opening up an entire semester’s worth of discussion and readings and telling me to “form a thesis” is the least helpful thing a teacher can do.

The question and answer sessions following these assignments are always hysterical. It’s obvious to everyone but the teacher that no one has any idea what to do. To the professor, though, it couldn’t be more clear. I think these discussions might be more helpful if that one kid didn’t always finish half of his paper the day it was assigned. He’ll put his hand up in the middle of a “what the fuck” question and ask the teacher to critique his thesis and if he should focus more on the 17th century Irish literature as a separate entity or if he should examine its impact on modern authors, particularly in regards to the early women’s movement and first wave feminism.

Great, now everyone else looks retarded. Thanks. I’m still trying to figure out if the pages have to be numbered and you’re already looking for proofreaders. Don’t look at me. I hate you.

The best is when you turn the paper in, get a sub-par grade, and are offered the chance to rewrite it. This is especially awesome when you STILL don’t know what you’re supposed to be writing about. The comments never help. Circling random sentences in red ink and adding a question mark, putting tiny check marks next to words that seem to please you, and scribbling illegible notes in your microscopic handwriting doesn’t help me make revisions. I shouldn’t need The Rosetta Stone to understand where I went wrong.

I’m tempted to sit and crank out papers on random topics all day long; eventually one of them is going to be satisfactory. Or I could get an infinite number of monkeys to bang indiscriminately on typewriters, and in 7 billion years I’ll have a masterpiece. It’s minus 10 points per day it’s late, so that’s…. the end of my college career as I know it.