INTERNET BIRTHDAY

AMAZING STATISTICS

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 17:31:00 -0700

Watch out, David Blaine is in the building.

Currently, the wealth of the top 400 Americans is estimated to be somewhere around 1.27 trillion dollars (by veteran cookie eater Michael Moore), and the total net worth of the bottom 50% of America is somewhere around 1.22 billion (also from milkshake aficionado Michael Moore).

Pretty crazy right? Well get this - if you look at the thickness of each of those dollars (about 0.043 inches), and do some fancy calculations, it turns out that the richest 400 people could stack their money one at a time to create a tower ten times the height of Mt. Everest. And also, all of their money could cover the entire surface of the earth.

But there is good news, it turns out that the bottom 50% of Americans make enough money to be able to eat 66 tacos from Del Taco a day (~24,000 tacos a year), assuming that they purchase their tacos on Tuesday only. So nobody is starving.

Maybe we should just stop fussing. Everyone is doing fiiiiiiiiine.

Yelp decided to filter my review, probably because I...

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:42:00 -0700

Yelp decided to filter my review, probably because I didn’t mention how serious I am about food. http://brunchboxsf.com/

Why you need Facebook.

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 18:35:55 -0700

“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god. “

~ Aristotle

“So every time I meet a chick, they always ask me for my Facebook and when they find out I don’t have Facebook they start to question why. And I’m wondering they probably think [sic] something like ‘damn, does this guy not have a Facebook cause he is socially retarded or he’s got no friends?’”

~ Baurman*

I’ve always been a big proponent of social media. In high school, I had a Livejournal account (cleverly titled ‘imonlivejournal’ - god I’m clever), and made the leap to Facebook once I arrived in college. I have Twitter, Foursquare, Fivesquare, and Tweeter* accounts. I even invented Google Plus.

But at the same time, I’ve realized that there is a certain je ne sais quoi about it all - I mean, why do I need to message my random long-distance acquaintance about the Tuesday night that I’m spending in Los Angeles on my way to La Farmacia (that Hydrocodone isn’t going to take itself!)? There’s just something about it that makes the whole thing seem uneasy, in the same way that Scientology makes me uneasy***. I needed to get away.

So I decided to deactivate. It was definitely a tough decision - what would I do without those show invitations and Mother Jones reposts? I had no idea what to expect, and to be honest with you guys, for the first time in my life I felt Father Fear touch me with his Wand of Scary Things. Good thing I had a cache of Bennies in my closet.

To my surprise, I felt really great about it (and the speed, but you know). I’d freed myself from Big Brother. I was an anchor floating in a sea of self-sufficiency while the SS Establishment went off to run into an iceberg. Unfortunately, I forgot that anchors sink.

At first, I started getting really confused at those gaps between productive periods. I’d find a really great article on something really interesting****, and would feel this urge to just… post it somewhere, so people could see the cool thing that I’d spent the last 20 minutes discovering when I should have been editing video or sending an e-mail about how I would send an e-mail later. I tried using Twitter as a methadone for a while, but the thing about Twitter is that nobody goes on there to read random Tweets. They don’t look at the Twitter feed in the same way that they do the Facebook feed. And furthermore, most of my friends don’t even know the fuck Twitter is. I felt fucking hopeless.

This all seems like a silly thing, I know, but it gets worse. I found out that people generally don’t think about inviting people to things in any other method besides a Facebook invitation. The amount of things that I have done in the past month, while off Facebook, has decreased drastically, sans the weekend that I holed up in a JJ North’s Grand Buffet in an attempt to find a wife. On a more serious note, never take more antidepressants than prescribed by a licensed professional.

Needless to say, this was a weird month.

My conclusion, based on my meager qualitative evidence and complete lack of quantitative analysis, is that the haters are wrong. They are IN THE WRONG. People need to have their Facebook, their sweet baby Jesus Facebook Christ, so that they can understand what every single person that they care about (or don’t care about, you know, whatever) is doing with their lives. Sure, I may be an “outlier,” in that I’m a fairly neurotic, semi-lonely man with a penchant for eating Doritos in bed and watching Youtube videos on karma, but surely everyone experiences a pinch of the Isolation Blues now and again. It’s perfectly natural to look at an acquaintance’s European vacation photos and think to yourself, “I want that life.”

So look guys, stay with me here. We need to just get off our high horse bionaturalist butts and fess up. Yes, we do enjoy facebook. It does make us feel special for a few minutes out of the day. It is in fact the only way that we can truly feel connected to others around us, and it definitely is the only place we go for news about politics and science.*****

Oh god. Wait, we need to make an amendment here. This still doesn’t feel quite right. Maybe we can enjoy Facebook, but we can also try and have a few rough “guidelines” in terms of how to maintain a healthy social media diet. Here’s some to start.

Awesome Facebook Tips for Better Living, by Mike age 24:

1.) One night, sit down at your desk with a fifth of Maker’s Mark, a plate of super nachos, and your laptop, and delete all of the people that you don’t like or know. It will be easier to accomplish this once you’re good and drunk and start remembering all of times that people wronged you and made you feel like less of a man. With any luck, you’ll be down to 8-10 friends in no time! Don’t forget to eat the nachos after you’re done.

2.) Always, always, always have a mission objective when you go on Facebook, and stick to it. Think of it like the ultimate video game. ”Your quest, if you are willing, is to go and figure out if you actually find <insert random beezy> attractive,” while douchey, is a whole lot less douchey than going on to find out if she is attractive, and then compare her to her friends and, god forbid, family members (Curse you, global Facebook!).

3.) Don’t forget about the rest of the Internet, everybody. There are a whole lot of great places that you can visit and learn about interesting things, which you can then relay to your friends when you meet them in person (after scheduling an event on Facebook, of course). Try Googling “interesting things” and see what you come up with. There’s bound to be enough facts to get you through the next social outing without seeming like a complete Mark Corrigan.

Footnotes:

* See http://forum.bodybuilding.com/archive/index.php/t-125920613.html

** If you are a coder and have a lot of free time for whatever reason, please contact me. Basically, I want to know if it’s possible develop a Twitter interface, but have everything spelled incorrectly and look really bizarre and awful, and have it redirect from Tweeter.com.

*** Speaking of scientology, this one time I went into the Los Angeles Scientology Headquarters just so I could say I used their bathroom. It ended with me running back to my friends car as multiple scary dudes wearing suits chased after me. Weird place! Also, sup Scientology SEO goons?

**** I can’t remember what it was, unfortunately.

***** This isn’t at all related to anything here, but how many asterisks is acceptable for footnotes? Do I switch to a + or something?

I'm still kind of dormant.

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 14:32:00 -0700

Work makes it tough for me to have the time to write thoughtful, supremely absurd blog entries, and for that I apologize. But in the meantime, here are some fun facts:

- I deactivated my Facebook because I was tired of having Indonesian gay men add me.

- That’s really about it.

Well, that’s not true. I recently had an older e-mail account hacked, and it’s been sending my current account great ways to stay home and make money online. (I keep accidentally deleting the messages though, shoot!) Anyway, I looked in that hacked e-mail account, and found out that it has been sending all sorts of messages to people.

One in particular stood out:

fromMichael Vattuone mindasmachine@gmail.com
tofastfeedback@nbc11.com

“RON PAUL/ LAROUCHE 08

EVERYONE JUST NEEDS TO SMOKE WEED AND LOWER TAXES MANNNNNN

THATS HOW YOU GET THE MIDDLE WEST TO CHILL OUT MOTA DUDES MOTA

GOD BLESS YOU I AM A MOTHER OF THREE AND I WORK AT A DENNY’S OFF THE
FREEWAY GOD BLESS YOU AND AMERICA AND THE MIDDLE EASTERN REGOIN

EXCUSE MY SPELLING I AM ILLITIRITE

-LAVONNE JACKSON AGE 16 I LOVE UR SHOW”

The e-mail makes me proud to be an American. It’s like, somebody knew exactly how I felt about the government and thought, “Gee, Mike sure is busy. I’m going to do him a favor and get his name out there in the local news circuit. You could call me his personal brander”

I love ur show too, Lavonne. You were always the prettiest Golden Girl.

Photo

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 19:44:10 -0800

Created by friends Alex Gair and Michael Pimentel. Who knew...

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 19:40:16 -0800

Created by friends Alex Gair and Michael Pimentel. Who knew Destroyer could be so SMOOTH.

Mike Harris has made a pilot for this show. He wants to make...

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 13:57:51 -0800

Mike Harris has made a pilot for this show. He wants to make more. If you want to see this, like or reblog this please. It’s going to be AMAZING. Tommy Wiseau’s hilarity is endless.

List of funny things that i can refer back to when i need inspiration

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 02:37:22 -0800

random barfing

poop jokes

yelling

dads being dads

That’s it, nothing else is funny.

The Media apologizes for ruining everything; promises to provide only real content from now on.

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 12:00:07 -0800

The Media has apparently issued a statement of apology for what it calls “distorting factual evidence to create ratings.”

According to sources, The Media “is very sorry for not relaying practical and informative stories to everyone, and for blowing things way out of proportion.”

Many experts are quite shocked by this. Ron Taugher, a professor of Media Studies at the University of Texas - Austin, didn’t realize that this was a problem. ”Honestly, I really thought that it was important that we all sit down together and really discuss what it means to place gun targets on a campaign poster and how it relates to a shooting in Arizona, with The Media there to facilitate the discussion and guide us into making informed decisions. Because it’s no coincidence that Palin placed a target on Giffords, right? That’s what The Media says, anyway.”

Joe Wulper, a janitor in the building where Hallfred works, was saddened by the news, “Wait, now I have to form my own opinions based on a set of actual events. I have to choose my own identity? Ah crap!”

The Media claims that “all news networks will now provide only news. We will not have debates or try to offer opinions on things. Only news that is actually beneficial for people to know will be reported. Oh, and The Daily Show’s fine, because they’re satire. At least they’re supposed to be.”

In a related story, Choose Your Own Adventure books have had record sales since the announcement. Many claim that they are using them for practice.

This is funny but not in a ha-ha way

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 21:42:18 -0800

Why is it that a person who doesn’t have a lot of money to begin with is charged more money by a bank for not having enough money, even though the bank is the one who has all the money anyway and thus is essentially taking money from you for not having any money?

No, I didn’t overdraft, but I have before and I just can’t stop thinking about how ridiculous the concept of paying fees for not having enough money is. I’m so sorry you’re poor, but here, I need to take more money out of your account because, well…?

Like, sorry if I’m being a wild-eyed idealist or ignorant, but that just doesn’t make sense to me and I think that if things don’t make sense then they need to be challenged and disobeyed and observed in a rationale light to say, “Hey, should this be how it is? Does this benefit the human race?”

Because yeah, I do believe in morality, and I think that it is intrinsically related to evolution and biology, in that we should do things that make our species survive and thrive. Allowing old rich dudes in suits to acquire most of the world’s wealth while the young and unborn do not profit is not keeping the species alive. It is transferring “survival of the fittest” from those who are actually fit to live (i.e. physically healthy, young, etc) to those who have an artificial construct (namely money).

I mean, I guess we could say that ‘because those who are wealthy must be incredibly clever and brilliant, they should live’ is a possible counter-argument, but I don’t really think that most of the wealthiest people alive are actually that clever or intelligent. I think most of them are sociopathic and have a lack of empathy, and that is the secret to their success. But that does not at all constitute a suitable candidate for ensuring survival of the human race. In fact, I would argue that these fucks will be the downfall. I don’t know, look at how fucked up European monarchy was (and maybe still is, I don’t know. I just think about how those fucks just keep imbreeding and getting awful genetic disorders like hemophilia and ugly-person-syndrome).

The most brilliant people are typically those who actually have a skill that they use to help others - scientists, doctors, teachers, etc. - and they have a really diverse range of salaries that range from high to piss. I know some teachers who do Americorps, and they make 20,000 a year. These are people who are trying to make all humans equal and do well and be successful members of society. Can someone explain to me why they don’t get to waive overdraft fees or something?

I’ll end this thought with a hypothetical to better convey my point. Imagine if dogs had money. Wouldn’t it be fucking tragic if toy poodles and pugs were the only dogs that could afford dog food and pitbulls and retrievers and beautiful awesome dogs had to starve as a result? Yes it would and no don’t tell me that toy poodles and pugs are awesome dogs because you are wrong. Pugs aren’t even meant to be alive, the poor fucks.

Okay, back to fart jokes and pictures of fat people farting on ducks. E-mail me or something if you want to chat about this.

Photo

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 16:51:30 -0800

A very ungrammatical and manic website pitch made by a 19-year old Rastafarian-wannabe from Orange County.

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 16:24:16 -0800

Okay so bear with me this idea is fresh off the brain press but maybe like we can make a website where people who just want to hang out all the time and smoke weed but aren’t like right next to each other can go online and find people who like to smoke weed and they can chat real time like SKYPE you know what i mean man? and like also they can like buy cheap weed and exchange it but totally secret so cops won’t find out and double trouble also they can listen to streaming reggae and share music and stuff and take pictures and edit them with like pot leaves and rasta hats and stuff we could call it bongspace i just need like 1000 dollars to get this started

Tyte.

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:47:49 -0800

Tyte.

I thought I’d share a video that Mike Harris made a...

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 12:09:23 -0800

I thought I’d share a video that Mike Harris made a while back. It’s comedy gold.

College student discovers roommate is a barrel.

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 16:52:02 -0800

Los Angeles, CA - Brian Plouth, UCLA economics student, just recently made the realization that his roommate of 4 months, Chris Wilkins, is actually a wooden barrel.

“It was weird, man. I was hanging out with my buddy Rich [Kleinpfell], and he made some joke about Chris being a ‘barrel of laughter.’ That’s when we both kind of realized that we were hanging out with a wooden barrel. It was like Donnie Darko or some shit.”

Plouth says he should have known when Wilkins would ignore all requests to pay rent, do dishes, go out, or do really anything at all. “I’m pretty sure I was really drunk when I met Chr- uh, the barrel. I told him that my previous roommate had fallen out a window and I needed someone to sublet until the end of the term. I guess it was wishful thinking?”

Friends of Plouth just assumed that he was “going through some dissociative phase, and that he’d come to his senses eventually.” Still, others, like Kleinpfell, were convinced that Wilkins was an actual person. “He just always listened to what you had to say,” the business major said, “Like, I went through a really rough breakup, and he was such a good listener; he never interrupted, or had any objections to what I had to say. It was perfect.”

Wilkins was approached for comment, but seeing as he is a barrel and thus inanimate, he obviously did not say anything.

First dream of the New Year might also be best dream of the New Year.

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 13:40:30 -0800

It started normal enough; I was hungover at a TGI Fridays type place called Baligans. This place had comically large chairs and coffee tables. I was the only person there besides a very large Asian family. I was hungover and just wanted some coffee. They were taking a really long time, as some Open Mic had just started, and dozens of people flocked into the restaurant to perform their songs. I got tired of waiting and took off.

Next thing I know, I’m in the Dominican Republic with my family (note: the family I was with was not my family, nor were they real people I think.) We walked around a bit, and it kind of looked like a port town. I remember being really hungry, but apparently there were no open restaurants or anything.

Eventually, I reach my hostel, which is this weird two story hovel made out of grass or something. I was really pissed off, because I was staying with a bunch of kids, and also because there was no kitchen or graveyard, which had been promised in the Craigslist ad for the place. My dad (not my real dad) was the one who had agreed to stay there; I remembered that I’d been there on a field trip in Jr. High and had stayed at the very same hostel. Deja vu in a dream is really weird.

The Dominican Republic was apparently just a small island (with a population of 300-400) and under severe martial law or something. No one could go anywhere without security clearances and documentation (how we got to go to the Dominican Republic is beyond me). Some people I was staying with were planning on forging said documentation to try and stay and start a rebellion against the regime. I wasn’t really down to do this at all. Frustrated, I went next door (which was connected to the house I was staying in by a long wooden plank), where there were a bunch of little kids.

I don’t know why, but I felt compelled to punch one of the kids in the face. So I did. Everything suddenly devolved into Playstation graphics, and proceeded to enter turn-based combat. It was me vs. 5 or 6 little kids, armed with nothing more than my fists. I had some special move that allowed me to kick more than one at a time that I kept using. Ultimately, I prevailed; graphics became normal again.

I warped back to my house, and someone started crying and thanking me for saving her children, who apparently had been brainwashed by a corrupt general of the regime. Someone staying at my house happened to be a very important diplomat or something, and was able to persuade the general to not enter the house to try and find me. Unfortunately, I was told that basically everyone in the Dominican Republic minus the people at my house now wanted me dead.

As a result I was told to leave the country or be killed. This was tricky, because there was apparently no airport or boats or anything, so I was going to have to swim to Haiti (because apparently they are separate islands). Also, I had packed a lot of things, like a refrigerator (I seem to recall having a conversation with someone in the dream about how the Dominican Republic doesn’t have a lot of stuff, so one is forced to pack all the amenities they may need if they travel there). I offered the divider parts of the fridge to someone, as a gift, because I didn’t like the color.

At this point the dream got really weird and devolved into nothing in particular. I sure hope I made it out alive.

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Thu, 30 Dec 2010 13:47:24 -0800

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Thu, 30 Dec 2010 13:20:46 -0800

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Thu, 30 Dec 2010 13:20:22 -0800

Could you guys help me with my personal statement for grad school?

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 12:03:00 -0800

Thanks a lot; any suggestions you could offer would be really appreciated. I’m really stressed about it. Here goes:

Dear Princeton Admissions board,

I am delighted to inform you that I am interested in applying to your Geosciences Program for Graduate School, beginning in the Fall of 2011. I know, I know, stop all the presses, bring out the champagne - everything is going to work out. Big Poppa is coming home, and he’s saved a lot of money on his car insurance.

You might be asking yourself, “But Michael, you’re far too qualified to be enrolling at our mediocre institution.” Well, you thought wrong. Dead wrong. More wrong than two rights, or something like that. I am extremely qualified, true, but when it comes to studying rocks and stuff like that, there’s no place I’d rather be than in New Jersey, the capital of rocks and stuff like that.

So, even though I could probably skip this step and still get into to your Preschool of academia (ha ha), I still feel as though I should act like everybody else and write some essay that designates why I should be going to your school and shit. So here goes:

I come from a land that was, until recently, untouched by time. The Amazon is a dangerous place for a white boy of California descent to grow up, but sometimes you just have to pull up your South American bootstraps (read: we all wear moccasins there) and man up. Hiawatha did it, and so did Mowgli, so fucking a Princeton, so can I. And I did. I worked in a chimney factory for years, sprucing up Victorian era Brazilians homes so that they could have a warm fire during the harsh Southern Hemisphere winters, and by God (Allah? Too PC?) did I make their winters ever-so-warm. We shared hot chocolate, telling stories about the good old days, like when Jesus was still considered a Jew, and bombs were still circular and black with fuses on the top. Those days were easier.

My first explorations outside of the South American jungle took me to the land of Compton, where I became deeply involved in the study of rocks. Rocks in Compton were special: they were white, easy to break, and got you high as shit. I probably smoked ten to twenty rocks a day. It was special, and I learned a lot of valuable life skills. I learned that sometimes you can find receipts in trash cans, and if you’re not too wasted, you can go to the place where that receipt was issued and make a big fuss until they give you some sort of refund. Also, I learned that being good with your tongue is really important when you don’t have a lot of money and need a lot of favors.

I figure that my intense interest in rocks would be nothing short of a serious motherfucking benefit to your institution. While at Princeton, I hope to spend most of my days finding places to acquire new rocks to study, share rocks with wide-eyed Princeton freshmen, and of course, research better ways of understanding the full potential of rocks (hint: the uretha). I hope to maybe expand the science of rocks to children in low socio-economic standings, to help them realize that there is a way out of poverty. Because we all know that when you’ve got enough rocks in you, nothing really matters.

So despite the fact that I do not have a college degree nor a permanent home address, I would hope that you would consider having me attend your somewhat lackluster institution. I eagerly await my acceptance letter.

Sincerely,

Michael Vattuone

Rock Enthusiast