The Swindlers

I have come to realize today that I am easily swindled by my teachers.  I could have been complaining for days, weeks, months, entire semesters about a certain assignment, a certain teaching style, or a certain entire class.  There are those teachers who admit they are wrong, or admit that the class or assignment is not very well suited for you, the other students, or the purpose of the class... and then... there are the car-sales-men teachers.  The way they talk, insist on certain points so confidently, forcefully, relentlessly, and politely, makes it awkward for you to say no.

And after about 4 minutes of you getting to get about 6 words in edgewise, you leave the room happy and beaming, thinking your concerns have been solved only to realize about fifteen seconds after that teacher has left your sight, that nothing was solved, changed, more understood, or explained.

You've been swindled.

Follow Up

With the popularity 'the budget' has had with those of you who read my blog, I've decided it's actually a great idea. I've thought a few times of actually pitching this idea to Taco Bell, I like to think of this dream of some sort of revelation for me to make something of myself. Think about it, Taco Bell starts referring to the meat as 'budget'. Who wants to be caught dead buying 'budget' meat? "Certainly not me, I'm not poor!" They say, so what do they do? They buy steak, which of course means higher profits for taco bell. You gotta stimulate that demand

the what?

I feel some sort of obligation to explain the reason behind the name of this blog. Well, it all starts somewhere in the neighborhood of a month ago. Laura and I are laying in my bed, dead asleep about 2:30 a.m. on a friday night. I am awoken to Laura saying, "What?" and I realize I'm laughing to myself saying, "the budget."
Just then I remembered what was so funny, in my dream I was best friends with brian and stewie from Family Guy (if that isnt sad enough). I was waiting in the drive thru at taco bell ordering myself a delicious meal, turns out brian is the voice helping me at the drive thru. I order the usual, the #6 with 2 baja gorditas, to which he responds "would that be steak... or the budget?" (budget in this case meaning the mystery meat they refer to as ground beef.) Apparently, in an attempt to stimulate the sale of more steak, they started referring to ground beef as the 'budget' meat. As if going to taco bell isnt 'budget' in every sense of the word in the first place. The odd thing about this situation is that, while I was in the drive thru ordering, there was a studio audience laughter after the punchline, which caused me to laugh out loud in my sleep. As an experiment I went to taco bell last week and ordered the budget, they had no idea what the hell I was talking about.

Sweet Ride

Just got back from test driving an 08 Scion xb, I'm sold on it. If you can get over what many people refer to as, "The Toaster" look and embrace it's edgy look, it is a great car to buy for your hard earned dollar. You can buy a brand new one fully loaded for 17k, thats pretty sweet considering everything else similar costs alot more and doesnt include bells and whistles. The one we test drove was all decked out with GPS and dvd screens in the back of the passenger seats it was like 27k and obviously I cant justify owning either of those two features. I'm just basically writing here for someone to be the devils advocate and tell me things I may not have thought of. We looked at 06 and 05 models but even those used with 50,000 miles were still asking 13000 and I thought I might as well buy a brand new one for only a few grand more, plus I get tires for life and free car washes (i know car washes arent worth thousands but tires could be if they hold up on that promise) maybe I'm naive in dealing with a dealership for the first time but 17,000 didnt seem to steep.

This hog gets 28 miles to the gallon and seems to hold up well. Please someone give me a few things to consider before I pull the trigger.

Into the Wild? Into the Sucks Butt.

beowulf 1.5 hrs
Into the wild 2+ hrs
A total of at least 3.5 hrs I wish I could have back this year, damn you hollywood!

Into the wild...
There are times that movies are recommended to us, and we are more than willing and eager to rent them, watch them, and usually enjoy them to some extent. I have never felt the value of a dollar so much as to when I lost it at red box. About thirty minutes we were both hoping he was going to die within the next five... maybe the movie would have a point by then.

Why do people think it is cool to pretend to be deep? The kind of deep where you talk about it, "make a radical change in your lifestyle (a literal quote from the movie)," and for some reason, smoking weed is always an important part of this ironically hypocritical regime. Walk around in fancy shoes, talking about "parties," four wheelin in the "slammin" outdoors, and ethnic restaurants. Knock religion for being preachy, yet you preach your life of "simplicity" and living free to others. Believe and do what you want, just dont tell me why I should be doing it.

By the end of the movie, when the inevitable finally occurs... all I could say was, "It is about time." Why would you go out into the "wild" to be happy to find an abandoned bus, only to realize happiness is only real when shared.

When you finally are "free" aka "homeless bum" you die of starvation, alone, sad, cold and ugly. Sweet.

I have never really been an outdoorsmen and have never have claimed to be. Something living without electricity or running water, or a toilet doesnt really appeal to me. I dont need to be dropping a deuce in a hand dug hole to connect with my inner self. I believe this evolution to living in houses, using cars, electricity, heat, shoes, money, etc occurred for a reason. I'll just take your word for it supertramp, the grass isn't really greener