Jason’s Life

So the next time you’re having a really bad day or you’re really upset, here’s my tip for stress relief. Go to your local grocery store and pickup one of those precooked rotisserie chicken’s. The kind that are nice and tender with a lot of flavor, usually runs around $5.00. Anyways, grab one of those and then take it home, and take the top off to let it start cooling. Next step is to start exercising, anything physical will do here but the point is to tire yourself out and to work up a big appetite for food. Use you’re frustration to really push you through your workout.

After you have worked out and you’ve managed to work up a big appetite, go wash your hands and then head to the kitchen where you have this warm delicious bird waiting for you. Now this is the actual stress relief part, you are going to eat this chicken with your bare hands. That’s right, I suggest starting with the wings, just grab on and rip the bugger off, the bird can’t fly anymore anyways. Once you’re finished with the two wings, just start digging into the thing, rip off chunks of meat and start chewing on them. It’s sooo good and there’s just something primal and therapeutic about eating a chicken with your bare hands.

(For extra effect, throw the chicken in the fridge overnight and eat it cold. It’ll seem like it’s more raw and thus more primal, hehe).

I think there’s three things that are important to a successfully relationship — The body, the mind, and the spirit. If you can find each of these things in your relationship I think you’re well on your way to having a strong relationship. If any one of these particular elements is missing, that doesn’t mean you’re doomed to fail obviously, you just need the other two to make up for the missing element.

The Body

The body has to do with all the physical aspects of a relationship. At the beginning this would refer to the physical attraction you have with the person you’re interested in and as the relationship progresses, this will also refer to the other physical things that happen. How good the kissing is, how compatible you are sexually, and if all your physical wants and needs are being satisfied. In most relationships, this is the first thing that people use to gauge if a relationship is going to work out.

The Mind

The mind deals with all the mental and emotional aspects of your partnership. The mental aspect basically refers to how much you enjoy communicating with the other person on a day to day basis. This doesn’t strictly mean the intelligence level of your partner, although that would definitely be a factor, this is more about the way they approach problems and conversations. The emotional side refers to if the significant other falls within your own personal “boundaries” — Are they too needy? Too shy? Too uncaring? To fragile… Basically this all boils down to if you’re attracted to someone’s personality. I figure this is the second part that people look for in a long-term partner.

The Spirit

Of the three different ideals I’m trying to outline here, this is definitely the most difficult to explain. The best way that I can explain it is that most people need to be with someone that have the same sort of beliefs and life-outlook that you do (or lack of beliefs as the case might be). I don’t mean this strictly in the what-religion-are-you sense, but more as a combination of the religious, supernatural, spiritual, and fate beliefs of person you are seeing. For example, I don’t think it’s necessary for all the Catholics to find themselves another nice Catholic, but I think it is important that if you do believe in the existence of God, or reincarnation, or nothingness, that you find someone who feels along the same lines. And of course, of the three, this is the last thing that people generally look for.

The interesting thing is each of these does a very good job of complimenting the other. If you love someone’s personality you’ll find yourself more attracted to the person’s physical appearance, and if you can totally “get” a person and agree with their perspective on life you will realise that a lot of their possibly annoying habits just aren’t really that big of a deal. If you have your own thoughts on what it takes for a successful relationship, please share . A popular saying I’ve heard over and over again is “Never go to bed angry,” and I think that’s probably pretty important.

So a friend of mine sent me this link to a flash movie that’s about your civil rights to privacy. The advertisement is basically attempting to show you how a pizza place could “invade” your privacy if all your personal history was available on the internet. Ironically, I think the advertisement had the opposite effect on me. The day that a pizza delivery service will actually take the initiative to try and prevent people from having heart attacks might actually be a good day.

I mean let’s face it, unfortunately we live in a society where everyone isn’t capable of making conscience healthy decisions, so I think some motivation on the part of the restaurants might be exactly what we need.

Three — For as long as I can remember it’s been my favorite number. I’m not exactly sure why but its always just sort of made sense to me. Not too much, not too little, a prime number, a significant number, and in general it tends to be the right amount needed to get the job done. It even has a nice saying about it that goes something like “Third time’s the charm.”

I have recently entered into the third serious relationship of my life with an amazing woman named Amanda. As all my relationships do, it certainly didn’t start without its share of drama and intrigues thanks to someone else liking her and hating me, but that’s an issue for another blog. The beginning was difficult and filled with a lot of emotional stress but after spending almost an entire weekend with her after a month into our relationship, I’m beginning to feel that happy comfortableness you feel around someone that you can trust.

I know that logic dictates that it’s much too soon to think along truly serious lines (I think the general consensus is that most relationships “mature” around the six month stage), so for now I’m just going to continue hoping. But what I will say is that never before have I met a girl who seems to be the perfect mixture of everything I could ever want. She has a very pure and natural beauty about her; She’s very intelligent and smart but not the least bit arrogant; She’s a sweetheart and very gentle but nothing of a push-over; And she’s a very down-to-earth grounded woman and yet can be goofy and fun at the same time.

Well, I could certainly fill up pages and pages about how wonderful this girl is but I try not to gloat when there’s people around me less fortunate so I’ll stop there and just say that never before have a I wanted something to work out as much as I do this relationship. I don’t believe in fate the same way that most people would describe it since I refuse to believe that I’m not in control of my own destiny, but I do believe that I get gentle nudges in certain directions. So with that said I don’t think it’s any accident that I’ve met Amanda and I cannot wait to see what the future holds for us.

So it’s been quite awhile since I’ve written anything for my blog. It’s not because stuff hasn’t been happening, in fact, my life has been quite exciting. It’s just difficult because I always feel like I have to write something very clever, or something really good to my blog. The majority of my life would probably be somewhat boring to someone not me. But anyways, I figured I would use this post to just list a bunch of random things to keep those of you who might be interested somewhat up-to-date.

Coupling: Coupling is an excellent show that was first aired on BBC in December of 2000. My best explanation of the show is that it’s a guy version of “Sex in the City” meets “Friends”. The show is revolves around three guys and three girls and their different views on the world of sex and dating. The first couple of seasons are extremely humorous and I definitely recommend this show to anyone looking for a good series.

Buying a Car: Buying a car has turned out to be a much larger ordeal than I could have ever imagine. As some of you may know, I’m a pretty picky guy and it turns out that this type of approach to buying a car only leads to hassle after hassle. Expect a much longer blog from me about this in the next week :-/.

The ups and downs of Luck: It turns out that ones luck can actually run out. I don’t really consider myself a superstitious person, but I do believe in fate and I do believe in some sort of higher power. Neither of these have a direct correlation to luck, but I thought I would share an interesting tidbit with you. I’ve been playing poker on average of at least once a week for the past 9 months now. In general I would say that I end up down at the end of the night more than I do up. However, almost two months ago when the previous girl I was dating and I broke it off, I suddenly started winning a consistent $50 a week. Then, roughly three weeks ago I start dating the most amazing woman I’ve ever met in my life. Since I started dating her, my luck in poker has disappeared and I haven’t been up since. Makes ya wonder if luck truly does exist, not that I’m complaining mind you because I would give up anything for this girl to like me as much as I like her, hehe.

Chameleon Club: I live in upstate New York in a town called Johnson City. The only town of any recognition near by is Binghamton (which some apparently refer to as Bingo). This town is, to put it bluntly, droll and boring. However, about two weeks ago, some friends took me to a bar call the Chameleon. This place is actually pretty cool, it’s a Jazz club type scenario with couches and comfortable chairs everywhere. One of the very few places in the entire area that I would consider somewhat cool. Unfortunately, they don’t have a single draft beer which does admittedly detract from the experience a tiny bit :-p.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything up to my blog. Well actually that’s not exactly true, I’ve written a few things in here, but they’re marked as private so only I can see them. It turns out that blogging can be a little tricky because I want to use this blog as sort of a journal, but the problem is that some of the stuff I want to write about is private and I don’t exactly want the world to see. I also tend keep certain parts of my private life, well, private. Not so much because I don’t want people to know about it as much as I feel if I were to just post it up here, it would somehow lessen the experience of it.

So anyways I’m seeing someone new and things have been going great. She’s sweet, cute, beautiful, smart, and basically everything you could ever hope for in a girl. So in an effort to express how great this girl is I planned a romantic evening. It was actually a lot of fun and it was the first time I had ever put as much effort into it as I did. I’m not going to go into details because I don’t want to cheapen it all down to simple words, but I thought I would share a cute little story from one of the days leading up to it that would hopefully cheer you up.

A couple days before the afore mentioned evening I was at the mall to get my hair cut. That in itself was actually quite the experience since I’m convinced the girl cutting my hair was high on some sort of drugs. In the short course of a haircut she had managed to tell me just about everything that had happened to her in the past few months and I mean everything. Her boyfriends, her x-boyfriends, how they cheated on her, the fights she had gotten into, heck, she even started telling me about her sex life (talk about TMI). But anyways, after that I headed over to Bath and Body Works to pickup a few small gifts.

I wasn’t there for very long before one of the girls working there tried to help me out. I explained that I was interested in the aroma therapy products and wanted something soothing. She took me over to an entire rack of products and gave me a quick description of the basics. I thanked her for her help and then took my time looking over everything. I was somewhat disappointed because they all seemed to smell very pungent which was the opposite of what I was expecting. I guess the stuff isn’t actually supposed to smell all that great and instead the point is how the smell makes you feel. Well I wasn’t buying it (pun intended) because I just couldn’t understand how it was going to relax you if it didn’t smell all that great, so I continued wandering around the store looking for other things.

Eventually the girl came back to help me since I must have had a somewhat bewildered expression on my face. This time I asked her if she had anything that smelled nice regardless of the feeling that it was supposed to invoke. I also happened to know that the girl I was getting this for likes the color green so for some reason watermelon popped into my head. So she took me over to show me their entire line of cucumber melon products (which smelled a lot nicer BTW).

So I grabbed a couple of things and then asked about bath salts. She walked me over to another area and started to explain to me about these great dead sea salts. I stopped her right there for I had to ask, “Ummm… since when is salt ever actually alive? It’s a mineral.” She got a really confused look on her face for a second before she busted out laughing. She then politely explained to me. “It’s called dead sea salt because it’s from the Dead Sea.”

“Oh”

So it’s a typical night and I’m sitting on the couch with my attention firmly attached to the laptop in front of me trying to get some work done. I notice something zip across the room in my peripheral vision but pay no attention to it at first. In fact, it was sort of a strange experience because it was only after a few minutes had passed that I realised I don’t have any pets and I shouldn’t be expecting anything moving around. I stand up and take a glance around the room, nothing seems to be amiss so I do a quick check around the lights to see if maybe a moth came in… no luck.

I chalk it up to me being overly tired and return to the work at hand. About ten minutes later I have the same sensation that there’s something running across my floor. So I get up and take another glance around the apartment, everything appears to be fine so I sit back down on the coach and happen to glance directly accross the room. What do I find? But a little grey field mouse just sitting there staring at me from atop by subwoofer.

So after assessing what utensils I have available to me, I decide that my weapon of choice would be a disposable leftover container. Now I must admit at this point that I have never really had to catch a mouse before, and certainly not within the confines of my apartment here. I won’t bore you with the specifics but after a few failed attempt at trying to trap the little feller, he finally runs behind the couch and heads toward the bedroom area. This of course causes a wave of concern over me as I am certain the doors are open to both the rooms. I go tearing around the hallway to close the doors and with a little luck is on my side, I manage to scare the mouse into the bathroom. I quickly close the door and manage to trap the mouse inside the container and put a magazine on top to keep him there (which turned out to be a bad idea).

I head back into the kitchen to grab a lid for the container and poke some holes into it so the mouse doesn’t suffocate. Unfortunately, when I go back to the bathroom it turns out the that the little Houdini had escaped. Ugh. Of course me in my infinite wisdom had completely forgotten to close the bedroom doors after I had trapped him the first time, so now the guy could be absolutely anywhere. I did a quick look around the rooms and decided I was just going to have to wait for him to surface again. So I head back to the couch and plop down only to see my new furry friend sitting upon the television laughing at me! Trust me, if a mouse could laugh, he was doing it.

So this time I meant to get serious, I closed the bedroom doors, grabbed a second leftovers container and went after this mouse kung-fu style. Let me just take a second to paint this wonderful portrait, I’m chasing a mouse around my apartment in a pair of sweat pants with a tupperware container in each hand. I’m sure it would have been a very amusing site to anyone that may have been present. Eventually after chasing this guy around the television and my subwoofer a few times, I finally managed to trap him within a plastic prison.

The night came to a close with a quick few knocks to see if any of the neighbors were missing a pet mouse or some food for their snake. Turns out they didn’t so I gave the guy some carrots and set him lose in the field outside. So now the question remains, how in the world did he get inside my apartment since I live on the second floor?

So I grab my keys and hop out the door because I’m already running late for another Bad Movie Night at my friend’s place. This particular one just happened to be on the fourth which is the same day that my rent is due. Being the last minute kind of guy I am, I figured I now would be a good time to drop off that rent check that’s been sitting on the counter for the past few days. I drive the SUV up to the office and happen to notice a deer politely grazing on the grass…

Before I continue, let me give you a little background about where I live. My apartment complex is on the edge of Finch Hollow Nature Preserve, so the entire area around the complex is completely safe from the intrusions of hunters. Apparently this gives the animals a sense of security, which I’ll explain in a moment.

I park my SUV and step out onto the parking lot, I realise there’s actually a couple deer over by the entrance along with two more up on the edge of the office. I really not that worried because I figured as soon as I start walking towards the entrance to the office they’ll take off. This turned out to be a very incorrect assumption. As I approach the deer are obviously wary of me, since they are all looking at me, but none of them take off as I expected too. I managed to get within 10 ft of them before I actually started to worry that things were going very wrong.

Now I realise that deer aren’t blood thirsty animals, but you have to understand that I had have just recently seen The Ring Two, not even a week ago, and there’s this frightening seen where a herd of deer attempt to kill the main characters. On top of that, I’ve heard stories where people have been kicked by deer and apparently sometimes they just go crazy.

Well, I’m running late and I didn’t have time to attempt a stare competition with the deer, so I figure the right thing to do in this situation is to start making noise. I’ve heard that if you run into a bear in the woods, the most important thing to do is to stand up and start yelling and screaming. Apparently this doesn’t work on deer, or deer can’t hear, because they just sat there staring at me. Finally I work up the courage to continue approaching and after I get within five feet, they finally decided to hop off. Feeling victorious I drop my rent check off in the slot and turn around to find that all four deer have formed a circle around my truck.

I must say that I was impressed, this was a well thought out play on behalf of the deer and so I had no choice but to applaud their effort. But, as luck would have it, I found their kryptonite. That’s right folks, clapping is something that deer do not like. So after discovering this amazing power I continued to approach and clap as loud as I could. They hesitated for a moment and then bolted off into the woods. Success at last!

PS - Don’t worry, my “wild” animal stories don’t end here. Next week I’ll tell you about my run in with a mouse.

PPS - I swear this story is entirely true! This really did happen!

My officemate’s wife recently signed up for a Holleywood Video - Movie Video Pass. The idea behind the plan is that you pay a monthly fee and then can rent up to X movies at a time for one monthly cost (very similar to online video rentals places such as “Netflix”:http://www.netflix.com). What’s interesting about this sort of setup is that you suddenly don’t have to worry about picking an “iffy” movie since it’s not going to cost you anything extra. Of course taking this sort of risk will eventually end with you watching a very horrible movie, but, as it turns out that’s actually not such a bad thing. In fact this can be downright fun and as a result it has become almost a weekly get together now. I’m going to spend the rest of this blog explaining why these not-so-rare movies are an enjoyment, what makes a movie “bad”, and few easy steps on you too can pick out a bad movie.

The great thing about bad movies is that they don’t suck you in. Instead they seem to invite socializing amongst the people watching. Since the plot is so painfully unidirectional, you really don’t have to worry about not following along. The other advantage of course if the Mystery Science Theater aspect (which is slowly becoming a podcasting hit). While you shouldn’t expect anyone in your group to be the next Chris Rock, I’m sure there will be at least a few times your snorting beer or milk out your nose :-p.

So how do you spot a good bad movie? It’s not as easy as you might think but here’s a few tips to get you started. Check the box to see if there’s any reviews, from anything. If you don’t see any thumbs up or rave reviews, the movie has passed the first test. The second check is to see if the plot can be explained in one sentence, or even better, just a few words. Next you have to check for any actors or actresses that you might recognize, if you recognize them, put the movie back. The very last and most important thing is the title; If the title sounds like it could be the name of the pornographic movie, then you have a winner! Here’s a few examples: “Deep Impact”, “The Thing From Below”, “Megaladon” (add a g to the end of that last one ). It’s also recommended that you try for something action orientated, otherwise you’ll find yourself quickly getting bored (which is why we had to abort on “Paranoia”).

Lastly, I’m going to briefly cover what you can expect from a very bad movie. First and for most, the movie will almost always contain a heroin with a very large bust and one or two men that spend more time in the gym than anywhere else. Typically you will find that almost everyone in a bad movie dies (so don’t get too attached to the characters). Often the bad guy in the movie will turn out to be an alien, having to do with space, or a long lost predator that was suddenly rediscovered.

So I think that about covers it, I strongly urge you all to have your very own “Bad Movie Night” and I encourage everyone to reply with some really good bad movies, because they can actually be harder to find than you might expect.