My Aunt Is Hot

I went on a date Saturday night with a girl I met a year ago in my Journalism class. She’s intelligent, unshy, and the anti-christ.

It started while I was trying to date her last year. I’d go over her house, we’d watch a movie or something, and I kept getting weird vibes from her roomates … who were boys. It was as if they were “Team Cock Blocking”. It was always this one guy, his brother, and their friend. For whatever reason, they were on the offensive. And as much as I like to think I’m a good cock blocker, cock blocking 3 guys, in their own place, is difficult even for the best of blockers.

After several of these dates (Read: Battle Royales) I knew something was just not right. It was this same week that this girl revealed to me that she was indeed living with her ex-boyfriend. I was relatively upset. I’d been squaring off with these douchers as if they were just “guys”. Had I known it was the ex, I would have walked in there cock out and guns blazing. Or, simply brought her over my place.

A few months later, despite her live in ex-boyfriend, we casually continued to talk. One day after class she suggests we go listen to music in her car. So, to set the scene, it’s dark and slightly cold. The kind of night where it’s the temperature that’s just above where no mattery how hard you try, you can’t see your breath. It was the kind of night that inspires one to jam hands into sweatshirt pockets. We were listening to “Sublime” and engaging in some existential conversation. Whilst diving into one of these notions, she takes her seat and drops it like it’s hot. I don’t think that I had any other choice but to follow suite.

Sitting there reclined in the calm night air, we started playing stealthy eye games. The kind of games where you only move your eyes whilst your blinking. The kind of game where you want to get caught, but don’t want to catch the other person. Finally, we locked eyes, and I went to kiss her. As I made this move, I found myself moving extroadinarily far. I found myself face to face with her. We were so close, I felt her exhaling over my top lip. She wasn’t going to kiss me. I made one last stand, kind of puppy dogging my eyes at her. Still no joy.

So, I shrunk back into my reclined seat very confused. I was ready to get the hell out of there. Quickly. She started rambling about she was in a “crazy place” and how this and that. Everything from dehydrated to pre-occupied with a test. She kept reiterating to me that she didn’t want to send “mixed signals”. I made a hasty exit out of the car, like it was on fire. She followed me, noting how she was late for class. She followed me all the way to my car. I said, “Bye, talk to you later.” She said, “Bye. Give me a hug!” I promptly informed her that I did not want to send mixed signals. Her last words to me were, “Screw you Josh!”

Fast forward one year. We start talking again under the rouse of “How have you been?!”. One thing leads to another, and we setup a date for coffee. We agreed on a place and time. I even show up EARLY. She shows up… at the wrong place. Finally, I meet up with her. We exchange pleasantries, I get some coffee and sit down. As I’m sitting down, I notice she’s reading a piece of paper. I keep talking to her, and she’s clearly paying no attention to me. I notice that it’s not just some piece of paper, it’s a letter. One of many. She was reading her mother fucking mail. I was shocked, even taken aback. This was so offensive, I wasn’t sure what to say. So I went with my gut, “REALLY!?? You’re reading your mail?” She said that yes, she was. That she’s been busy. I managed to take a picture  of her doing this whilst interrogating her. I thought without proof, no one would believe this. Normally, I take someone reading mail as a correlative to the fact that I’m boring. So I told her, “Read your mail later, let’s talk.”

What would you do?

Some people make a living off of speculating on the future. Futurists I believe they’re called. Anyhow, they really can never be wrong, and because they have some letters behind their name, it entitles them to wildly speculate about the future. I think maybe I want to be one of these guys.

Below are my predictions for 2008-2009.

• AXE Bodyspray …. Laundry detergent. AxeL they’ll call it. Short for Axe Laundry detergent. (Also look for a Febreze-like product like “FabrAxe” …Axe for fabrics.)
• A female president…. as much as I hate to say it, I think McCain will win the election and be so happy that he’ll have a heart attack, leaving Sarah Palin in charge. She’s helping McCain big time: People love to vote for a great pair of tits. Look at American Idol, Kelly Clarkson … Ruben Studdard. Gender doesn’t even matter!
• Microsoft will buy a moderately successful internet company to prevent google from getting a strangle hold on the new “internet search real estate”. Though they tried to buy Yahoo! I think they’ll lower their standards like a slutty chick after a few beers.
• Cell Phone Viruses. Though computer viruses existed, and even cell phone viruses exist, they never gained any glamour until things like the “Melissa Virus” or “Code Red” took hold. I think we’ll see a virus along those lines hitting our mobile devices on a HUGE scale this year. M^2 …McAfee Mobile … secretly awaits it’s launch.
• LED’s. I think we’ll see LED’s replacing the majority of our lights in 2008. There could be a breakthrough that allows them to give more natural light. Inexpensive and long lasting, the free market will embrace them.

(This Post is #1 of my 10 part series: How to Cock Block.)

The Jim Halpert is one of my favorite methods of cock blocking. It’s funny, it’s easy, and it’s really effective. Communicology (The study of human communication) finds that given two contradictory messages, people will believe body language over verbal cues. It makes sense: Think about a little kid lying about writing on the wall. They’re antsy with their hands, and they’re looking around. You know they’re lying.

The concept of the “Jim Halpert” is to capitalize on that phenomenon. One of my golden rules of cock blocking is never say anything bad about someone else. It’s dirty playing, and can backfire really bad. However, if you don’t say anything, and the person happens to infer your opinon via your facial expressions, that’s fair game.

Let’s say you’re in a triplet, another guy and one girl. You can listen to the guy inevitably yammering away about something that will probably try to make him sound cool to the girl. If he wasn’t, you wouldn’t need to cock block right? So, as he is saying things you need to do two things: Make eye contact with the girl, and critique things he says with your face. The third optional thing is to make sure the guy doesn’t see you. However, most people aren’t going to say anything because you sound a

little insane saying, “Are you making faces?” Especially when the answer “Constantly… don’t you?” comes flying back.

This method earned the name “Jim Halpert” after a character on the american television show: The Office. Jim is a very animated guy, and you can practically read him like a book by his face. Since the setting is an office, it wouldn’t be appropriate to ask or say things like, “Really?!”, “You’re kidding right?”, and “Holy shit”. Instead, Jim uses body language to communicate to his coworkers his opinion.

I need one minute of your time. Consider the image above. It was given as an example in my communication class of how “Perception Precedes Understanding”, a concept I’m familiar with.

So, the professor starts going around the room asking people what they see in the picture. As to what other people think about it, well … I’m third generation don’t give a fuck. However, as I’ve learned is the key to getting A’s in college: You just have to sit there and put up with others’ stupidity. If you can do that, you absolutely cannot fail.

About two or three people in to the interrogation, this girl says, “I see Jesus”. For better or for worse, my first thought was “Jesus fuck (As a swear word). Jesus?! (As a name) I can’t escape these people”. Then, a couple people later, Jesus again. There were three answers for Mr. Christ before the teacher asked me.

When he said, “Mr. Ziering, What do you see?” I clutched my heart like I was having a heart attack and I gasped, “I think I see the mother virgin Mary!!” Essentially, calling into question the legitimacy of the claim that people saw Jesus. Mocking isn’t neccesarily the word I would use, because if I was, I would have said, I see Jesus … staring deeply into another man’s eyes … and I think he’s wearing a wedding dress.

Anyhow, we finish going around the room and a few more people concur with the Christ concept. At which point the teacher asks, “Do you guys want to know what it is?”

“It’s an artists rendition of Jesus.”

In disbelief, I asked, “So wait, it actually was Jesus?!”. He nodded and said, “Yes, it was Jesus” with what I thought to be a slight inflection on the word “was”. Perhaps this inflection was meant to replace the “you fuck-stick” I’m sure he tacked on to the end of his sentence in his head.

Because I rarely reference song lyrics, I have to quote a Brand New song that came to mind, “Jesus Christ” –

“Well, Jesus Christ, I’m alone again
So what did you do those three days you were dead?
Because this problem’s gonna last
More than the weekend“

While at the gas station yesterday there was a girl in line before me wearing a shirt that said: I <3 girls. The heart was filled in with a rainbow. For my thick, or older readers: she was a lesbian.

Anyhow, the clerk couldn’t stop raving about this girls shirt as he made an unsuccessful attempt to hit on her.

When she left, he asked me, “did you see her?” and I replied “yep. Did you sell her some cherry chapstick?” making reference to this “I kissed a girl” song that has been polluting the air waves and my mind.

His answer was, “no, why would I do that?”

Sometimes, I think I expect everyone to be as lame as me.

Time slows, two find

each other, eye to eye.

the whole room lost to a gaze.

We played tag,

you’re it.

And I found my glances much like legs:

unable to run that fast.

It was denial of everything else,

the kind of thing a wave would ruin;

or perhaps an embrace,

in that old adage.

My fingers went to to pick up my drink,

afraid to be unsupervised.

when I looked back up for my friend,

and her playful eyes,

I found the room again.

I found myself at a party after the bars closed on Saturday night. I wasn’t doing anything special or imparticular, hell, the only real reason I was there was to bring support for my homies. I consider myself the Robin Hood of cock blocking, and I found myself busy that night.

While sitting on the floor in a circle of people and talking, I managed to spill my beer. As luck would have it, no one saw. Not wanting to get “called out”, I quickly patted it into the carpet. It was like a bounty commercial: a couple of pats and it sucked it right up. At first I was really happy with how smart I was, but then I felt bad that my cunning was at the expense of being something of an asshole.

In an effort to prevent further spillage, I went ahead and plugged my beer with my ring finger. It certainly had no trouble going in. (That’s what she said.) However, a minute later, when I went to scratch my face, I found myself with a new appendage: a bottle of Corona. Starting to panic, I gently tried to pull it off my finger…. no such luck. Now in full panic mode, I started twisting and rotating trying to get this fucking bottle of my ring finger. I certainly didn’t want people thinking I had some kind of sick beer bottle wedding ring/chastity ring. (Are beers given feminine pronouns like cars and planes?)

As I was about to give up hope, and stick a bottle on the other hand so at least I’d have some symmetry, this girl busts open the door. She was gorgeous. Since I was unintentionally making something of a spectacle of myself, she noticed my predicament.

“Oh my god. Don’t do that, you’ll dislocate it!.” she chirped.

Like she was unscrewing a really hot light bulb, she tried to remove my finger from the bottle. It just wouldn’t budge. Finally, she goes, “I know!” No sooner than she said this did she start going to town on my finger. She was licking like there was a prize inside. I’ve never seen anything like it. I was kind of bewildered to tell the truth. With just a second of her tongue talent, my finger popped right out. I thanked her profusely. She said, “No problem. I’ll help your special self out of bottles anytime” very condescendingly and bounced out of the room.

The answer was clear as day to me. So, I unzipped my pants. I inserted the beer bottle in said pants, and I walked outside:

“Sweetheart, You’re never gonna believe this….”

In a very deep conversation with a friend the other night about the meaning of life and all that jazz, I made a small boo boo…

Her: “Yeah, but say we were in a relationship or something”

Me: “Ok. Hypothetically, we’re in a relationship”

Her: “And something terrible happened to me, and I died. Where does that leave you!?”

<beat>

Me: “Single again?”

The recent record setting hot weather has me thinking about a summer favorite that doesn’t get enough attention: The Ice Cream Cone. They are super versatile little pieces of edible engineering. They have those criss-cross shit at the bottom, and are cylindrical, but also at the top spherical.

In many ways, they’re like a delicious 3D waffle. How many other foods do you eat which have words printed on them? Or pictures of little kids? The ice cream cone stands alone in the world of delightfully decorated deserts.

Let me set the stage. It’s very late. Or very early. Depending on how you think about the hours after midnight. Your stomach rumbles. Is it really weird to think, “Ice cream cone. Yeah… I’m gonna snack on one of those bastards.” ?

I think the ice cream cone is interesting in that it’s been under utilized for the last 100 years. It’s shape lends itself to so much more than frozen stuff. I mean, why can you put some jelly(s) in a bowl and get your dip on? Would it be a crime to get some Fluff (Marshmallow creme), Crushed up oreos, and and peanut butter in that bad boy? For that matter, imagine the excitement of a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich that had a crunch to it.

Bystander: “What’s that?”

Me: “Oh, It’s a PB&J Cone”

Of course, all of this is just a distraction to the fact that I’d eat cones by themselves. So help me in making 2008 the year that we liberate cones from it’s cold, smothering master.

Is anyone else ridiculously attracted to the girl from the new Death Cab For Cutie video? I’d marriage her ass.

I have such random weaknesses.

And here is the video where she treks around the world all hot like: