Grace says some pretty intriguing stuff.

Some of it is funny. Some of it is serious. Some of it is bat-shit crazy.

Most of it is in song…because she thinks life is one gigantic musical.

Anyway, tonight we were talking about our upcoming anniversary—it’s this Saturday, November 7th, for those of you in the present buying business—and more importantly we were discussing our plan to not buy each other gifts.

We’ve decided instead to pool our money to buy some things we both want for around the apartment and a soon-to-be-blogged-about remodeling(ish) of our spare room. As such, we’re making our first-ever trek to IKEA next week, wait, I’m getting off topic…

…anyway, Grace doesn’t believe that I haven’t gotten her a gift.

In fact, she has blatantly accused me of getting her a gift and she is annoyed because she is worried she’ll have to run out last minute and try to find me a gift.

Anyway, that’s all the back-story you need, here’s the little ditty that brought it all home:

“This always happens! We say we’re not going to get each other anything and then you go out and get me an SUV and I get you a picture frame and I look like an ass!!”

…and there you have it, my Faithful Readers, your moment with Grace.

I’m not much for emotion.

That might sound a bit terse, but it is accurate.

I can probably count the number of times I’ve cried on one hand—maybe two hands if we’re counting times I got hit in the stones—and I really don’t go the other direction and get ragingly angry all that often either.

Does this mean I’m a bubbling cauldron waiting to explode in a multi-state killing spree that leaves dozens of innocent people dead in my wake?

Maybe, anything is possible, I guess.

For the most part, I think it just means that I’ve learned how to deal with my anger and/or sadness in other ways.

Today we’re going to focus on my anger-management skills.

You see, Faithful Readers, there was a time back in my youth when I didn’t have any anger-management skills.

When I got mad, I turned into a punk-ass little beeyotch.

I’d throw things, I’d break things, I’d curse, I’d scream, I’d beat the ever-living dog-piss out of my little brother (we’re all good now) and when I was done with all that the anger was gone.

As I got older—and received a plethora of well-deserved ass-kickings—I learned that there were probably better ways to deal with my anger. So I quit breaking things and quit beating the crap out of my brother and moved on to many other things.

There was running, baseball practice, writing, sleeping (an odd reaction if ever there was one), running again, baseball practice again (I thought I had a mighty fine fastball at one point), running yet again and eventually when I got to college drinking.

Drinking probably wasn’t the best option, because when you’re full of rage, half-a-dozen Bud tall boys ain’t going to do anything to calm you down.

So after a short period of drunken, ill-advised decisions to punch holes in things (NEVER a wise move)…I replaced that with my current anger suppressant – eating.

Well, eating meat, to be more specific.

When I’m all pissed off about something there is nothing more likely to calm me down than a perfectly cooked (read: medium) bacon cheeseburger with all the fixins.

Today for instance, I had an insatiable urge to bludgeon a co-worker to death with a crowbar before dragging his/her bloody remains over to the Charles River, where I would then give him/her a proper Viking funeral by using one of the MIT sailing club dinghies and a few homemade Molotov Cocktails courtesy of the fine folks at The Muddy Charles Pub.

Instead I huffed and puffed a few times and wandered over to Fresco’s and snagged myself one of the aforementioned rage-sapping bacon cheeseburgers.

To make things even better they gave me a free side of coleslaw—which I can only assume was rapidly approaching an expiration date—and the fine musical-stylings of Journey came blaring over the radio.

By the time I left Fresco’s, I was out of rage and full of meat. As such, said co-worker survived the day and most-likely he/she will survive for many more days.

Clearly my “eating to devour rage” game plan is working and working well.

My only worry is that if things like this keep happening, I’m going to be one very angry fatty!

I got my hair chopped on Monday.

As such, I’m in the “transition period” that always seems to follow a new haircut.

You see, my Faithful Readers, I generally let my hair grow and grow and grow for months on end until it’s turned into some sort of weird bowl-cut/mullet hybrid that I lovingly refer to as the bowllet (pronounced: bullet).

When my hair is in the bowllet stage, I generally require a lot of shampoo. Like we’re talking a big ole handful here—and I’ve got really big hands—you see, despite the fact that it’s rapidly thinning, it still takes a lot of shampoo to penetrate the thicket that adorns my scalp.

So when I get it shorn down to its current, Tom Hanks in Philadelphia level, I require a teeny-tiny drop of shampoo.

This transition always seems to take at least a week or so to stick.

During the transition, I find myself pouring enough shampoo for eight of my now-dang-near-bald noggins into my hand and I end up wasting a whole big bunch of it and we’re talking about the gloriousness that is AXE Shampoo, folks…the good stuff!!

The worst-part is that I find myself over-thinking my gratuitous shampoo-usage when finishing up the rest of my morning preparations.

As a result, I use drastically less AXE body-spray—which Grace appreciates—and I use drastically less toothpaste—which Grace does not appreciate—and this is quite frustrating.

I’m wasting shampoo. I don’t have my usual odiferous scent-of-douchebag and my breath smells more like Frosted Mini Wheats and Red Bull than Crest.

History has proven that in time these things will all balance themselves out, and I’ll get back to using too much AXE and just the right amounts of toothpaste and shampoo, but this week I’m one big stinky mess.

Gross.

Faithful Readers, I’ve come to here today to let you know that I’ve recently made a decision to expand my sports writing…well, sort of.

Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean I’ll be going into in-depth coverage of Tom Brady and the Patriots or Kevin Garnett and the Celtics.

I really couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the NBA if I tried and the NFL only serves as a buffer between the last out of the World Series and the first day of Spring Training.

Rather, I’ve taken to writing about—WAIT FOR IT—professional wrestling.

Now, I realize that to most people—myself included—professional wrestling isn’t a real sport. It is essentially a gigantic testosterone-fueled soap opera infused with gratuitous violence.

If anyone is in the mood to comment and tell me that it’s all scripted, that’s okay…I’m already well-aware, but thanks for thinking of me.

If anyone is in the mood to comment and tell me that it’s all fake, that’s—well—wrong. They do really hit each other and there’s really no way to fake getting dropped on your back, it is all pre-planned, but it certainly isn’t fake.

That, however, isn’t what this is about. That debate has raged on for years and will probably rage on until the end of time or Vince McMahon’s death, whichever comes first.

There are a few major reasons why I’ve made this decision and they are as follows:

1) During baseball’s offseason, the amount of content to write about dips pretty precipitously until the Winter Meetings in early December and then again until Spring Training in February. As such, in order to keep myself busy and active over at BleacherReport.com, wrestling seemed like a pretty easy topic to dive into.

2) I was a HUGE wrestling fan as a kid. Anyone who has seen my collection of luchadore masks or seen my head pasted on the bodies of the Ultimate Warrior or “Macho Man” Randy Savage a dozen or so times on Facebook can attest to that.

3) If a dude wants to be a writer someday, it can’t hurt to have a diverse background of writing samples. Plus, some wrestling writers make decent coin and I’ve already heard back from two different wrestling editors complimenting my writing.

4) This may sound conceited—and that’s because it is—but most other wrestling writers are awful. Like Carrot Top bad. Like Carrot Top and Paris Hilton make a baby bad. Yeah, that bad.

5) This is the big one: it’s for my brother, Eric.

For those of you who are avid readers, you’ve heard me talk about Eric plenty here at “Blank Stares and Blank Pages.” Often times in reference to his many accomplishments at the Special Olympics.

Well, Eric is a huge wrestling fan. He watches the show every week and once a month my parents order the pay-per-view events for him to watch. He has followed it since he was a kid and has never given up on it.

As such, I’ve never given up on it, either. Wrestling is something that has always connected us, much like baseball has always connected with my Pappy, and that’s why I’ve refused to let it go.

I’m one of only a few people who really talk with Eric about wrestling and that’s a bond I’ve never wanted to lose. So ever since I went to college and quit watching it with Eric on a regular basis, I’ve spent a lot of time researching what’s going on in the wrestling world and I’ve learned a lot about it: the lingo, the behind-the-scenes action and everything else.

Every time I talk to Eric we spend at least half of our time chit-chatting about wrestling, so I figure since I’m essentially doing the research anyway and I have no intentions of stopping anytime soon, why not write about it.

So there you have it, Faithful Readers…if you see pitchers of half-naked dudes popping up on my sports blog, now you know why.

Unless it’s Joe Mauer or Chase Utley…that’s probably just man-crush related.

They’re at it again.

For the second time in less than a week, some of Iowa’s finest representatives have managed to make national news.

Earlier this week, I wrote about my embarrassment regarding the “Iowa Zombie Attack” that made headlines last weekend.

This time around, a couple of young men in good ole Carroll, Iowa, decided it’d be a good idea to go out and try their hands at burglary.

Being that they live in small-town Iowa, they were spotted in their attempt and reported—by what I can only assume is some angry old lady who hands out toothbrushes or oranges for Halloween—and they drove off in hopes of evading the fuzz.

These dudes didn’t make it very far, however, and we’re pulled over by the police soon after fleeing the scene.

Apparently they completely forgot that in a town like Carroll, everyone knows everyone and they also know what everyone else drives.

So these idiots didn’t stand much of a chance when it came right down to it.

They were pulled over and arrested, at gunpoint nonetheless—mostly because cops in Iowa rarely have an excuse to draw their firearms—and that’s when it was discovered that both men were in “disguise.”

Now, when I say disguise, what I really mean is that they’d drawn on their faces with black permanent marker.

Yep, that’s right…rather than going out and purchasing some masks—which are pretty easy to come by this time of year—or even just pulling a pair of their mama’s pantyhose over their heads, these knuckleheads chose to take a Sharpie and just go to town.

Joey Miller, 20 (left) and Matthew McNeely, 23 (right)

Bravo, boys…bravo, indeed.

You cats—along with the zombie-punching-dumbass—have done plenty to keep Iowa in the news this past week.

Thanks a ton, douchebags!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I come to you today with a very important message about candy corn. Candy corn is bad, very bad. This time of year candy companies world-wide release bag after bag of this addictive—yet disgusting—menace upon an unsuspecting population.

As a result, hordes of people become afflicted with candy corn addiction every fall. This addiction is very serious and—although it wanes over the winter and through the spring and summer—it returns every fall with vengeance.

If you or someone you know suffers from candy corn addiction, please seek help.

For more information on Candy Corn Addiction please continue reading:

Description:

Candy corn addiction is a phenomenon experienced by more than 250,000 individuals each year who enter treatment for their proclaimed addiction to candy corn.

Candy corn addiction is characterized as compulsive, often uncontrollable candy corn craving, seeking, and use, even when the individual knows that candy corn use is not in his best interest.

Candy corn addiction could be defined as chronically making the firm decision not to use candy corn followed shortly by a relapse due to experiencing overwhelming compulsive urges to use candy corn. This contradiction is characteristic of an addiction problem.

Symptoms of Candy Corn Addiction:

• Candy Corn tolerance:

Either need for markedly increased amounts of candy corn to achieve intoxication, or markedly diminished effect with continued use of the same amount of candy corn.

• Greater use of candy corn than intended:

Candy corn taken in larger amounts or over a longer period than was intended.

• Unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control candy corn use.

• A great deal of time spent in using candy corn

• Candy corn use causing a reduction in social, occupational or recreational activities.

• Continued candy corn use despite knowing it will cause significant problems.

Effects of Candy Corn Addiction:

Candy corn is both emotionally and mentally addictive. Once an individual becomes addicted to candy corn it develops into part of who they believe themselves to be. Avoiding their friends who do not use, the addict will gravitate to others that do.

Candy corn is a topic that is always on their mind, whether it be thinking about the next time they will be able to get a sugar-high or where they’re going to get their next $1.99 value-size baggie.

When someone is addicted to candy corn eventually their friends and the people close to them only know how they act when they’re sugar-stoned because they no longer do anything without first snacking. Their constant abuse is due to the misconception that candy corn is what they need to solve their problems. Sometimes addicts will take their stash with them wherever they go, just in case an opportunity arises and they are able to down a quick handful or two. They may even go through several dealers in order to make sure they always have a constant supply of candy corn.

The cost of candy corn addiction to the individual who allows their addiction to escalate may suffer health and social consequences, memory and learning problems, problems at work or even result in losing a job because—well let’s be honest—people on a sugar-high are no good for business.

Those who isolate themselves from friends and family often put a heavy strain on relationships with loved ones. There is a vicious cycle to candy corn addiction in which these problems are often used as a rational to eat even more of those delectable little candy nubbins. Candy corn addiction is a no-win situation that many—maybe even you—unintentionally fall into every year.

If you feel that your candy corn use is out of your control and interfering with your personal goals and happiness and you would like to stop but can’t seek help from addiction treatment professional.

Candy Corn Facts:

• All of the Candy Corn in the world was made in the late 16th century, by the Devil and Carrot Top. Hungry now?

• A Foxnews world report showed documented proof that Candy Corn was involved in the September 11th attacks.

• It turns out that Candy Corn is the leading cause of the H1N1 virus.

• It is scientifically proven that eating Candy Corn significantly increases your chances of being roundhouse kicked in the face by Chuck Norris.

• New studies have shown that 9 out of 10 dentists agree…anyone who eats Candy Corn is secretly hiding a Miley Cyrus CD somewhere in their home and they will deny it until their dying day.

• If you step on a crack you, in turn, break your mother’s back. However, if you eat Candy Corn your mother, in turn, is forced to spend a romantic evening on the town with the reincarnated remains of pitchman extraordinaire, Billy Mays.

• A recent memoir discovered in Adolf Hitler’s childhood home shows that he held no ill-will against the Jewish until a small child named Timmy Goldberg came by his place selling Candy Corn door-to-door.

• Candy Corn has been clinically proven to induce not only cancer, AIDS and the aforementioned H1N1, but wicked-bad farts too. No one wants wicked-bad farts.

• Carrot Top credits candy corn for his success and comedic skills. Need I say more?

• A recent survey of high schoolers showed that nearly 1 in every 5 teenagers was abusing Candy Corn. A second study showed that 4 out of every 5 teenagers knows someone who has used Candy Corn in the past thirty days. What does all of this mean? We are wasting money on Candy Corn research…Candy Corn strikes again!!

Before and After Photos of Candy Corn Abusers:

As any avid reader of my blog knows, I’m a big baseball fan. As such, I’ve been watching the Major League playoffs pretty much nonstop for the past couple of weeks or so.

During that time I’ve come to loathe numerous things, largely in part because the playoffs have been completely inundated with the same seven-or-so commercials playing ad infinitum each and every game.

At this point, I abso-F’n-lutely hate George Lopez. No one in their right mind is going to tune into TBS for a late-night talk show hosted by this ass-clown.

He’s not funny, despite being a comedian—something that in most professions gets you fired—and his show is on freakin’ TBS. Who thinks TBS when they think late-night talk shows?!

Conan and Letterman are going to destroy your ass and this abomination will get canceled in the first month, meaning I sat through 8 million commercials for your new show for no reason.

This will not be forgotten, Lopez.

Anyway, this isn’t about George Lopez. This isn’t about Hass Avocados, Avis car rentals, Charles Schwab or any of the other commercials that I’ve seen so many times the people at Guantanamo Bay would feel inclined to say “come on dude, that’s enough.”

No, no…this is about the new Ask.com commercials.

For anyone who has yet to witness this atrocity, I’m warning you now. It hurts. It hurts physically and it hurts emotionally.

The scariest part is that there is definitely the potential that the dreadful jingle could get stuck in your head and I don’t want that to happen to any of you, my Faithful Readers.

Now that you’ve officially been warned, here it is for your viewing displeasure…

Okay, if you’re still reading that means you didn’t destroy your desktop, laptop or mobile device with a hammer and for that, I thank you.

I don’t know how ads like these get approved, let alone created. Like seriously, can you imagine the pitch meeting in the marketing department at Ask.com:

Idiot #1: “Hey y’all, we need a new commercial…something that will REALLY get people talking.”
Idiot #2: “Man, I’ve got nothing.”
Idiot #3: “You know what would rock, a commercial that is both visually unappealing AND completely grating on the ears!!”
Idiot #2: “Wouldn’t people hate that?!”
Idiot #3: “Oh yeah, but it’ll get ‘em talking…”
Idiot #1: “What was that? I wasn’t paying any attention, I was reading the latest installment at “Blank Stares and Blank Pages” on my iPhone, you guys just do whatever. Just make sure it gets people talking. I’ve got to go to some high-powered lunch or whatever rich people like me do…”

And yeah, that’s pretty much how I envision that this monstrosity came to be.

It’s hard to imagine that there was a time when Ask.com was associated with Jeeves, the butler and not a bunch of dancing douchebags, with blatantly limited vocabularies.

You know what’s even worse, whilst doing a little investigating to write this mini-rant, I stumbled upon the actual Askdeals.com section of Ask.com that this commercial advertising abortion is pimping and found a fate worse than death.

The site plays this freakin’ song on a never-ending loop with videos featuring real people—all of whom I can only assume have serious, serious mental deficiencies—singing and dancing along.

If that wasn’t enough, the website managed to crash my computer.

So to the folks in Ask.com’s marketing department, I want you to listen and listen real good…I’m coming for you jerks.

You won’t know when. You won’t know where. But trust me, I’m going to find y’all and make you pay for unleashing this plague upon the entire baseball-loving population.

I saw a headline today that included the words “Iowa” and “zombie.”

Awesome, right?!

Wrong.

As it turns out, the story is drastically tamer than I’d hoped. Apparently, Iowa is not (yet) serving as ground zero for the early stages of the impending Zombie Apocalypse.

No, no…according to the story from the fine folks at the Associated Press, Iowa was the scene of something far more common and far less bad-ass.

It seems that some drunk dude was at a restaurant sometime around bar close most-likely in search of some pancakes and bacon—an Iowa staple to stave off hangovers and/or allow us to drive our pickup trucks/tractors/Trans-Ams/horses/lawn-mowers home—when he saw some other dude meander into the same restaurant and decided to go say hi to him.

This seems innocent enough, right?! Sure.

Except that the drunk dude wandered up to the other guy and slugged him in the face, twice. Apparently he thought the other guy was zombie.

I’m not going to lie this makes me just a little bit ashamed to admit I’m from Iowa.

I mean come on, some drunk guy goes and punches another dude in the face because he thinks he’s a zombie?!

That’s just ridiculous…and here’s why:

• There is no “thinking” someone is a zombie. Anyone with aspirations of killing hordes of zombies, and potentially surviving the aforementioned Zombie Apocalypse, has to KNOW a zombie when they see ‘em. Accidentally killing non-zombies is a waste of valuable ammunition and leaves you prone to attack by real zombies.

• He punched the non-zombie in the face?! Come on, Dude…that’s just bush league. Everyone knows that you don’t try to f’n punch zombies. You destroy the brain. Sure, sure you can try to slow or disable a zombie and a well-placed kick to the knee will definitely do that, but a punch to the face?! Zombies do their worst damage when they bite, so why in the blue-hell would you want to purposely put your fist in his craw?! It’s just poor-planning, Hillbilly!

• He scampered off out the back door of the restaurant, leaving the non-zombie not only alive, but alert and really pissed off. If he thought it was a real zombie he should have stuck around to make sure the mofo was dead—or is it more undead?!—rather than high-tail it outta there at the first sign of trouble. Plus come on, who in their right mind wants to piss off a zombie and then just leave him/her layin’ there to stew about it.

Now normally, I’ll defend Iowa to the hilt, but today it’s tough.

Which is a shame. I mean come on, folks…we’re a pretty bad-ass state.

We’ve got one of the top-ranked college football teams in the country, we’re ahead of the curve on gay marriage, we have a Taco John’s nearly once every 20-30 miles in every direction and—most importantly—they filmed “Field of Dreams” (a quasi-zombie movie) on our turf. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Despite that bevy of pros (and lack of cons), defending my wonderful, corn-laden homeland feels tough after reading about this drunken jackass.

Someone explain to me how one piss-poor zombie-hunter-wannabe, like this dude, is what gets Iowa into the news. We’re freakin’ awesome!! I mean…for frick’s sake…Taco John’s…

…’tis a damned shame.

My Faithful Readers, I come to you today with a heavy heart.

Today I have to announce the end of an era.

I recently learned that the MIT Libraries will be discontinuing the storied tradition of overnight shifts during finals week, starting with this semester.

According to the website’s hours listings, we’ll only be staying open until 2am, rather than all-night.

Technically, nothing has been “officially” announced yet, but if it’s made it to the website already…it’s pretty much a done-deal.

This is unfortunate for many reasons.

First and foremost, I used the finals week overnight shifts as a serious cash cow.

You see, in this job were aren’t blessed with Christmas bonuses or anything like that and given the “trying times” substantial raises are a little hard to come by. As such, working an extra 20+ hours per week in the middle of night is a good way to pad the paycheck a little, especially right before the holidays.

Additionally, I’m going to miss the incredible fodder for delirious, sleep-deprived blogging that overnights provided.

As any avid reader of my blog is aware, the “Dear Diary” series was born as a result of the nocturnal activities of MIT nerd population.

It is a shame that—unless I’m in the mood to begin hanging out in trees outside the dorms—I’ve lost my window into the world of sleepless supernerds.

With the knowledge that “Dear Diary” and my twice-a-year cash windfall are no more, I recommend all y’all spend a minute of silence in memory and then—as we do in Iowa—pour a forty on the curb for those who couldn’t be here.

…’tis a gosh-darn shame!!

Although I’m sure most of you had it marked on your calendars anyway, I figured I’d send a little shout-out to myself today on this, my fourth blogiversary.

That’s right ladies and gentlemen, it was on a fateful (read: intoxicated and bored) evening back in 2005 when I finally gave into the lure of blogging, this game on the heels of an equally intoxicated and bored evening where I fell into the life-sucking trap that is Facebook.

Needless to say, it was two pretty big days for me.

Last year, I took a look back at my previous three years worth of random, spastic blogging only to find that I was pretty much a failure at the whole thing.

In three years I’d mustered roughly 50 posts here at “Blank Stares and Blank Pages” and another 30 or so on my sports blog, “Cheap Seat Chronicles.”

In the year since I’ve done slightly better, and by slightly, I mean light-years better.

Not only have the posts gone up significantly—here at BSBP I’ve written 241 different posts in the last year and over at CSC I’ve written 50 posts—but I’ve also hit the 10,000 and 20,000 readers mark, I’ve been offered a quasi-job (read: unpaid), my sports blogs have instigated Major League trade rumors and potentially one actual trade that came to fruition, tons of readership and interaction from strangers all across the country and even a few slaps on the hand from my employer.

All-in-all, I’d call that a pretty solid year, wouldn’t you?!

I got into a real groove after a trip to the Midwest last October and it never really slowed down until this summer when my attentions were drawn largely to my sports blogging after receiving “An Offer I Couldn’t Refuse” from the sports blogging site “BleacherReport.com.”

Since August, however, I’ve fallen into a serious rut thanks to a big ole batch of writer’s block and a very busy social calendar.

As you’re reading this, my blog is rapidly approaching the 25,000 reader mark—a fact I’m quite proud of, especially given the total lack of worthwhile content in recent months.

My hope is to really get going both here and at CSC again very soon.

I just took a much-needed trip home and got to relax and just chill out with my family and friends (and gobble up some Taco John’s) and I can’t help but feel more refreshed and ready to get back into the swing of things.

Lastly, but certainly not least, I want to thank all y’all who continue to frequent my blogs and read my mindless, ass-ramblings. It makes it all feel worthwhile when I get a string of replies or at least a big ole spike on the traffic stats.

Here’s to hoping the next year is even better than the last one.