Jamaican Me Crazy

IT'S OFFICIAL!! I'M GOIN TO JAMAICA in 2 weeks!!

Jamaican Me Crazy will take on a whole new meaning from now on, and I'll have a blast telling the natives about the volcano they're supposed to have.

My buddy AJ called me up, said his new girlfriend bailed and since he already paid for the resort, all I had to do was get a plane ticket and voilla...5 days in the fun and sun, burnin one down, looking for the perfect rasta hat, and Buffalo Soldierin around a tropical paradise. Keep your fingers crossed for a hurricane free adventure. I'm sure I'll have a hard enough time keepin' myself from gettin dead off the all you can drink Red Stripe and off-resort trips.

I WIN!!!!

Being John Mangovich

I'm sure this happens to a lot of other people, but I find it particularly amusing in my own experiences: almost every morning I wake up with a completely random song in my head. This song will follow me through my morning routine (while my brain is still on autopilot) and then, much like even the best dreams of rubbing bellies with 'Genie in a Bottle'-era Christina Aguilera, the song fades away by the time I get to work.

I think these random songs must have some sort of correlation to my inner psyche and hence, by sharing them whenever I can remember them, I hope to provide some sort of excursion on The Brain of Brian; the ride.

This morning was actually one of the more normal songs of late, but the lyrics suddenly struck me as particularly apropos of current events, and it made me question exactly how random the early morning jukebox that is my brain really is.

The scene: Beaumont, TX, 1998-1999, I'm cruising around town in my maroon, 4-door, 105 horsepower Toyota Camry with a butt-cut. I'm probably wearing khakis and a white picque polo; as that was my Catholic high school uniform option of choice. The weather's nice, so I'm bumping some good mood music - Reel Big Fish - Turn the Radio Off album. The song: All I Want Is More.

Here's an audio clip.

In my mind, this song is totally for fun and takes me back to the good-old days of senior year when all I had to do was party balls and not be late for curfew or get caught by Mom and Dad. The line that made me think a little harder into what the song's actually about is: "someday, maybe she'll come back to me and I'll say, 'why don't you go fuck yourself!'" Is the inner Brian trying to give me hints at how to handle the 'K' situation? Interesting. Let's see what pops up tomorrow. From now on out, the Subconcious Jukebox Song of the Day will pop up on the blog if I can keep it in my head long enough to remember.

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Here's a fun one for the day. Apparently guys like us are reincarnated as pelicans.
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EDIT: Shruti found this link explaning the whole 'song stuck in your head' phenomenon. They're called earworms.

Return of the Mack, er, Mango

"So, I'm back up in the game
Running things like half my swang
Lettin' all the people know
That I'm back to run the show
'Cause what they didn't know was wrong
And all the nasty things you've done
So, baby, listen carefully
While I sing my comeback song"
-- Mark Morrison

That's right, children, Mango's back. For the sake of continuity I'll pull from a familiar reference and hope that unlike the 'Return of Chef' to South Park (finally watched it last night), this return will be longer lived and not involve my untimely death at the hands of wild animals or more importantly, pedophiles in safari gear.

So why the old school R&B reference? Well, besides the obvious theme of a 'return', the almost laughable drama series that is my relationship with my 'K' is on an indefinite hiatus for irreconciliable differences, and so the underlying theme of a old-school mack daddy burned by love but still a playa of the game is just too perfect to pass up. Plus, I wish I was black.

So what else has been new in la vida Mango since I last posted? Sadly, not a whole lot. I blame Tivo for that. The daily grind of work has become just that: the project I'm on now is the Kryptonite to my Superman and so in an effort to impart the wisdom of my years onto the junior readers of this blog: never leave UT. Friends, women, parties, and women...trust me, that whole "best years of your life" line is not cliche, it's wisdom.

I was reminded of the difference between my working life and life in school during my 3-day visit, nay, bender to Austin this weekend.

1) Partying in Austin vs. 'going out' in Houston is analagous to one of those travel guides touting living in some random tropical country for $4 a day. Drinking 15 beers, playing pool and foosball, and picking the music you get to hear--all of which are staples of a good time-- total cost at the house: a few bucks out of your monthly dues and some juice from your iPod battery. Same experience in Houston? $60-80 bucks for the beer, plus $1 per game and $2 for 3 songs at the jukebox. Not to mention the lofty costs and negative life imacts in general of a DWI, which would likely follow if you drank 15 beers and had any farther to go than upstairs.

2) Like shooting ducks in a barrel: Women. The bar scene is a crapshoot when it comes to pulling (British for 'meeting women' or 'getting laid'). You never know who's a quality, fun, putter-outer, and who's a psycho hose beast, or old-money snob, or the VD female equivalent of Dice. (p.s. no offense Dice, I'm sure that herps will be cool again one day). At the house, all you've gotta do is drink until she's gotta go to the bathroom and then you win. (for more details, consult Dellach) Ok, sure, so this really doesn't contrast the previously named pitfalls of pulling at a bar, but we're willing to trade quality for a certain degree of 'moral casualness'. For the love of Pete, Marshall used to pull at the house.

3) Logistics: In school, it's just good times all the time. Sure, there's those pesky classes and books and studying to deal with, but you're essentially on the blocks and ready for the sprint to debauchery all the time. As Toonces, Tito, and I have found, it takes planning, permission, and lots of highway mileage just to arrange the proper proximities for mutual beer drinking, Mario Kart, and other assorted Chi Phi pasttimes that used to be available in a short hop across the courtyard. We're also unable to enjoy the economies of scale that can be reached once keg levels of beer consumption are achieved.

4) No Worms. Perhaps this one is a bit specific to my own interests, but dammit, I miss playing Worms on a Pentium II computer with a 14-inch CRT screen. I miss hearing Tito talking smack to both me AND Dellach, Bud Light 8 of 11 in hand. Even on Toonces' massive plasma, Worms 3D can not fill the Worms World Party-shaped hole in my gaming soul.

Can I get an Amen?

I'll get off my soapbox for now and try to spend the next 3 hours doing what I should have been doing for the last 6.

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Oh yeah, on a more positive note: the penguin game is back: http://www.stuffucanuse.com/online_game/penguin/Bloody-penguin.html

My high score is well over 1000...who wants suma-dis?