Pop Quiz

So there I was, pleasantly squished in the backseat of a puny little Mazda 6. The car was black, the sky was about 13 shades of grey, and I was thirsty. I suggested that we stop for an ice-cold refreshment since we'd be spending the next 2 hours crammed inside an oddly-shaped box on wheels, and I, for one, didn't want to venture that far from home without caffeine.

The nice lady behind the counter at the inconveniently placed convenient store was friendly enough. I couldn't understand much of what she said as I hustled and bustled and scrambled to find a soda that could handle a Jones the size of a small snow leopard. Thinking solely of my fellow travelers' needs by this point, I decided to don my thinking cap and hurriedly conjure up some ideas of what the kid trying to be too cool might call roadtrip snackage. I might be that kid.

Me: "Do you have any roadtrip snackage?"

Her: "What the $&% is that, honey?" (She really called me this! No, not really.)

Me: "Hmmm, how about Mike & Ike's? Or Hot Tamales? Everyone likes those."

Her: "Yeah, we have a s$$$-pile of those somewhere!" (This she really said.)

Me, giving her an awkward, you-just-offended-me glance: "......"

Her: "Sorry, uhh, crap-pile..."

Me, awkward glance turned into an awkward long-lasting glance: "Where?"

We find both crap-piles of candy-box-shaped gummi candies. Back at the register, the awkwardness ensues.

Her, signaling to my flannel purple: "That's a pretty (and forgive me for using this word) awesome shirt. I've seen a belt in the mall that would match it perfectly.

Me, lifting my shirt to show my belt: Really?! See, this is the belt I have on.

At this point, as she's looking at my belt and probably my belt buckle (since it's a nintendo paddle), it dawns on me that my fly is down. Pop quiz, hotshot: do I a) nonchalantly turn around and zip up, hoping it will go unnoticed, or b) over react, like I am wont to do, the same way a dog freaks out when Novocain is applied to its tongue, and say "Whoops! Sorry about that!" while simultaneously whipping around and zipping up?

If you guessed (a), you are blatantly and 100% perfectly wrong and you don't know me at all, in which case you should probably make an effort to get to know me better. If you guessed (b), I still think you should get to know me better. What you failed to realize is that there was a 3rd option: c) I made this whole story up. If you happened to guess (c), you're still wrong. The correct answer is (b).

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Powerfully Mustached

Do you hear that? It's the new sound Macs make when they wake up. Apple has finally done away with the (please forgive me, Apple!) annoying naneeeeeenuuuuuuu! and replaced it with (what's my favorite word, friends?) cathartic silence. Those of you with MacBooks or MacBook Pros will, nay, shall know what I mean.

And a quick note. Out of the n people that read Resplendent, I only like n - 1 of you. Sorry, nth-guy.

Now, on to the good stuff. It was one of those rare occasions the other day when I put my mind to some use and thought about stuff. Life, as it were, made its precarious way into my superior brain waves. More specifically, life with a mustache.

To be frank, it's beyond amazing. In a word, as you (but not the nth you) knew would come into play due to the title: power. You ladies are probably saying by now, "Ewwww, the author of our most favorite interweb blog is a card-carrying mustachioed. " I know how you think, and I am in accord. See, I've come to the conclusion that no woman, whatever magical era of the world's existence in which she has lived, has ever truthfully said, "I just wish my man had a mustache," or "I feel like the world's problems would be solved if the President of the United States would grow a mustache." Actually, I don't know if any person, male or female, has said either one of these sentences and meant it.

Which brings me to my point. There are many reasons men, and, in some cases, women, grow a mustache.

1) She's just really unlucky, and should get it waxed or LASERed, and quick!

2) Probably most importantly, a mustache empowers the males of our species. With a mustache, a man can do anything, be anyone, go anywhere, and speak Italian, as shown here:

2) Family Guy really isn't the most appropriate show in the whole wide world or even on the world wide web. But it's a satire, and name a satire that is wholly appropriate, nth guy.

3) Although cartoons are deemed children's shows here in the States, this couldn't be more wrong. Children shouldn't be watching shows like Family Guy. Anime is another type of cartoon not generally directed towards kids. This has been an example of how uneducated we are in America.

I could go on and on about some cool anime cartoons until the n + 1th guy gets blue in the face, but I only like him slightly better than the nth guy.

See? I successfully distracted you. You are now thinking about cartoons and Family Guy and some of you may even be offended and are no longer thinking of mine, or anyone else's, mustache. That's true power, my n - 1 friends, derived only from sporting our not-so-favorite, nose-tickling, drink-filtering, velcro-like something. Can you even imaging having something velcroed to your mustache? No. Now go away.

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The Gaussians

I'm not very good at articulating. I don't presume to be grasping at straws when I say that I have a sturdy hold on the English language. Strong vocabulary: check. Strong grammar: check. Spelling: dubble check. Never mind all of that when I'm speaking: I get choked up, stuck finding a word, making silly mistakes such as ending a sentence with an unavoidable preposition, confusing you're and your and too and two and to and there and they're and their and doing and doing. Sometimes I have to take a deep breath. Sometimes I have to get that ringing out of my ear.

But then I realize, the ringing isn't coming from within my ear. It's purely external: the sound of a bell. I look around and see no one; there's that awful feeling of utter vacancy: the feeling you get when you're alone and yet sense a presence there; its eyes candidly watching, waiting to catch you unawares; the stale air wisps under your nostrils at the sudden whoosh of your head returning to it's standard position: obediently straight forward, with the attitude of mindless labor; your own two eyes staring noiselessly and endlessly at the clock which reads 2:30; the computer screen flickering its seamless, digital image relentlessly at your face, displaying the products of a certain urban outfitter; your right birdie finger emulating the movement of a carefully swung oar during the championship Moloka‘i Outrigger Canoe race, enabling the screen to shuffle aimlessly through pages and pages and your mind to capture the visible digitalization of myriad pairs of jeans tight enough to make your mother blush; your wallet curiously appears onto your otherwise empty cubicle desk; credit card facetiously slides out of its multifaceted holster upon receiving a secret push from an unknown source; 2:45.

You hear the bell ringing. No. The bells. Many bells.

To your right you see the apparition of what appears to be something bell-shaped. Your mind wanders back to the days when the general consensus was the Earth to be bell-shaped; those days when followers of Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss ruled the planet; you remember Pop-Pop recounting old tales of the mysterious disappearance of many Gaussians in the late 1700s. An extermination, he had proclaimed it. He was just trying to scare you, wasn't he? One day, the Gaussians will return.....A day when bells are no longer seen a symbol of One, of the whole, of purity.......

You realize that the bells are not alone; footsteps now accompany the heartless, ostinatonous chiming of the bells. Could it be them?

The apparition of the bell-shaped figure becomes more solid than an ancient stone that has been safely guarded within the Nutty Putty caves of western Utah Lake since the prehistoric era; a time long before said caves were formed. You realize you've seen the bell-shaped shape before: a Christmas decoration that hangs ever-gleamingly at your drab cubicle. It looks mysteriously like the one on your right; you dangerously continue staring, attempting at a conclusion of a previous encounter. It dawns on you, as across the bell-shaped apparition read the words Merry Christmas!: the bell has lost its symbolism. You feel sudden doom; imminent and insatiable death; despair seeps in exactly the way a banana cannot pierce the side of a T-1 Jayhawk.

The footsteps grow louder. The bells' ringing becoming an increasing nuisance as each chime causes a slight shudder in your heart. The word tintinnabulation grows ever weary in your mind, your conscious mind. You see the image of one great Poe flash before your eyes. Presently you wonder if the subconscious realm is playing what is known in 1990 vernacular as a mean joke. In your imaginations, the improbability that you will be completely able to come up with a perfect end to this blog post maxes out at one. You recall that one equals one hundred percent. It all makes sense.

Bell-shaped shapes. One. The Gaussians. All illusions. An awful way to describe the feelings of utter vacancy that exude from the cube-shaped work-area you call your desk between the times 2:30 and 2:45, when the rest of your world is at break.

I hesitantly turn back to the international super web; back to electronic commerce; dreaming. Cue the eerie feeling of being watched; cue the candid's eyes.

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Thing(s)

Thing(s) I don't like today (or ever):

• Auto-start music on blogs

Thing(s) I do like today (or always):

• Turkey

This post makes no sense. Please disregard. Except for the part about not liking auto-start music on blogs. If you are involved in this, please stop.

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Looky What I Can Do!

Please, check this out. A real post coming soon, I promise.

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Free

For those of you with an iPhone/iPod Touch, check this out. You can get a free game from this company every day from now (or rather the 1st...I just found out about it myself) until the 24th. And it's like one of those calendars you open during December. Who doesn't like those?

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