Therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowe(eene)d it.

Happy Halloween everybody. This year Halloween falls on a Sunday. This could be good or bad. If you have the unusual tradition of celebrating this decadent pagan holiday with a delicious dinner from chick-fil-a then your plans are kind of ruined this year. But if you're a church-going youth with a lust for carbohydrates then you may be excited at the prospect of getting communion wafers and candy all in the same day. Either way, I hope you all have a happy Halloween.

I Wish One Of My Eyes Was Queer.

I’m completely in favor of gay rights. Let them get married. Not wanting gays to get married makes almost as little sense as not wanting me to smoke cannabis in the privacy of my own living room. The least sensible of all the anti-gay marriage arguments is the idea that if gay marriage is allowed it will open the floodgates for polygamist and bestiality marriages. What a lack of creativity. It’s as if conservatives just copied and pasted their weed argument onto the gay rights issue. “How did we convince everyone marijuana was dangerous? Oh yea, it’s a gateway drug. Well, then…uh… homosexuality is…uh…it’s a gateway sexuality. One moment you've got a perfectly healthy and fulfilling relationship with a member of the same sex and next thing you know you've got 10 partners, at least one of which has hooves.”

Gays don’t deserve to be ostracized any more than African Americans because being gay, like race, is not a choice. I wish it was a choice. I’m a heterosexual but I would have chosen “gay” without question. If I were gay I bet I’d be 10 times happier than I am now. I’m lonely as a heterosexual because in the heterosexual system all of the burden is on males to go approach girls and talk to them. I have anxiety about talking to women, so I pretty much don’t.  But, Gay Ryan would have a great self esteem and love life because I've been hit on by way more gay men than straight women in my life. Whenever this happens I always think, “Man, what a waste? If only I were gay?” Some of you may be thinking to yourselves, “Well, Ryan, if you have these thoughts then maybe you actually are gay?” Believe me, I’m irreversibly straight. And this is my whole point. If I were gay I wouldn't be here writing this blog post complaining about how I’m not. I’d be out dancing with some shirtless dudes, drinking for free and having a great fucking time. Instead I’m sitting here, a lonely heterosexual male pecking away at his keyboard.

Some people are out there actually running camps that claim to turn gay kids straight. They are rounding up these poor adolescents and telling them that their natural inclinations are morally wrong. Which is really just what a pre-teen needs, isn’t it? A little more self doubt and uncertainty about one’s identity? And, like many horrific acts throughout history, all of this deeply disturbing psychological abuse is being done in the name of good ol’ Jesus Christ. I just wonder why camps don’t exist to have the opposite effect. What if I want my son to grow up with a great fashion sensibility and a voice for the theatre and I’m worried by his heterosexual tendencies? Where can I send him to have someone keep a queer eye on him and gently encourage regular viewings of sex and the city? Or maybe I have a daughter and I’m banking on a rugby scholarship for her college education. Sure, I could give her the proper hair cut and force her to lift heavy weights while listening to K.D. Lang, but that would only carry her so far. The chances of her developing those on-field skills would be much greater if a summer camp existed to mold her sexual identity into something completely contrary to her natural desires. Perhaps one day the evil forces that drive the creation of these “straight camps” will be harnessed by the gay community and I’ll have my way. Until then, I can only dream.

Living the High Life

Watch this:



Then watch this:

Media Barrage

The majority of my generation is stupid. I’m speaking as one of them and all of this applies to me. We’re dumb because we don’t learn things anymore. We don’t REALLY learn things from interacting with the world around us. That’s not to say my head’s completely empty. I do have some random trivia jangling around up in there but it’s not real information. It’s just little snippets of pop culture I’ve picked up over the course of my life like a lint roller. Having real experiences is a thing of the past. I live my life vicariously through a barrage of media. Do you have any idea how much shit there is for me to do to entertain myself? We’re still struggling to get HIV under control but my generation has cured boredom.

Any emotion I want to feel, I can evoke by consuming some kind of media. I can download a podcast, read a blog, read tweets, download a tv show, listen to a song, watch a music video, watch a movie, watch a movie in 3D, watch the jersey shore, play a video game on my computer. I can play one on my xbox or play one on my phone. I can watch a wide variety of people have sex in an even wider variety of ways.

Now that’s all just the shit I can do ALONE. Those are all single-person activities and there are probably even some I forgot to list. If you bring another human being into the equation and there are two of you little media fiends interacting then the list of options for cramming audio visual information into your brain expands even further. You can call people, text people, picture message people, skype people, email people, face time people, facebook people. And even within facebook there are statuses, wall writings, messages, picture comments, events, pokes, and Farmville requests.

I can’t believe the generations that came before mine had to learn about the world by actually experiencing it. It sounds exhausting. It must suck to have to attain scuba diving knowledge from actually going scuba diving, not just watching a discovery channel special on it and then feeling like an expert. I’ll prove my point. You may be aware of the fact that SCUBA stands for “Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus,” but were you on a boat when you learned that shit? You weren’t! You were probably sitting on your couch or in an office chair looking at a computer screen or maybe you read about it in a book, if you’re old school.

Books could actually be my saving grace and the one thing that could lend me some real intelligence because I actually read quite a bit. Unfortunately the act of reading doesn’t make you smarter. Simply looking at text with your eyes has no effect. The content of what you’re reading is a major factor. I read some books but I’m not “book smart” because I undermine all of that reading with 10 times more reading done on random blogs and wikipedia. I’m “internet smart”. “Internet smart” is like the “book smart” of my generation. Internet smart is way dumber and less useful. Someone who’s book smart might know how to change a flat tire. Someone who’s internet smart knows how to ghost ride the whip.

How to Pay for College

When I was in high school I had a mentor. I won't reveal his name here in writing, but I will share an anecdote about a time when I was wondering just what I was going to do with my life. Upon seeking the advice of my mentor I was told to go to college and get a degree no matter what it took. Pay for it by any means necessary. Beg, Borrow, Steal. The experiences I would have in college, I was told, would be worth it. So, I left that conversation with a singular goal. Find a way to pay for college. I had been given 3 simple but cryptic steps. Beg. Borrow. Steal.
I hatched a plan. It began, as my mentor suggested, with begging. I begged my cousin Alfred for a ride downtown to a shady area late one Friday night. The places where prostitutes offer their services to seedy characters stalking the night. He obliged me and quickly dropped me off at the intersection I requested and sped off, hastily returning to safer streets.
With step one complete I was ready to change gears. It was time to borrow. I chose to borrow a page out of Julia Robert's "Pretty Woman" play book. I walked those streets until I encountered a wealthy businessman. At this point I relinquished the tactics of the down-on-her-luck hollywood prostitute. Now, it was time for the stealing.
I stole the businessman's heart, like Vivian Ward. Except in a much more literal sense. It fetched a fair sum on the black market that paid for an excellent college education. So, I suppose I added my own 4th step. The step of "Selling".

Beg. Borrow. Steal. Sell.
B² S²


Paying for a college education is just that simple. When using this template to create your own fundraising strategy for college you may stumble at first. You may find yourself wondering, "Who do I beg and borrow from?" or "Who exactly can I steal from and sell to?" Some of you may be hung up on the ethical implications of selling a man's heart on the black market. Things can get confusing. If you're wondering who to involve in your begging, borrowing, theft and sales just remember the following rule. The B's are benign and the S's are sinister. Beg and Borrow from those you do not wish to harm in any way. Steal from people you have no care for or who are your rivals/enemies. And as far as selling goes, you can really do that to whoever's got the cash, but keep in mind it's usually still kind of sinister because in a lot of these sorts of plots you'll be selling damaged goods or some really sketchy stuff. Whatever it is, it's been stolen. The buyer may not know this. Do NOT under any circumstances think that the B's are bad and the S's are safe. Also be careful not to let your imagination run wild and get tricked into think that the B's are bawdy and the S's are sorrowful. Rookie mistake.