Monday, April 19, 2010

Running From April

To whichever April I pissed off, I'm sorry for whatever I did to you, I truly am. I don't know what I could have done to cause you to act this harshly, but I'd greatly appreciate it if you left me, and particularly my face alone.

Love,
Tyler

***

I've had one hell of an month, and it's not even over so let's get right to it.

A week ago, I was perfectly happy with how my face looked. Around that same time, Mike Tisdale didn't. He didn't like it so much that he decided to take matters into his own elbows and give my face a little rearranging to his own liking. Introducing Dr. Mike Tisdale, top notch face rearranger, specializing with elbows.

Me and Mike are pretty good friends, he even took me to his house one time where he showed off his hunting gear and weapons. What he didn't show me was his bows. I was formally introduced last Monday.

Playing defense against Tisdale is like being on the defensive in a boxing match. Standing there, quick feet, bouncing around, head swinging but instead dodging an array of jabs and hay-makers, I'm dodging swinging elbows that can pack a punch ten times harder. (pun intended)

After my nose job, I met with my lawyers about the situation. I should have known by all the deer heads mounted on the wall at his house that it was only a matter of time before a misfire happened. I've decided to bring a lawsuit against Mr. Tisdale for assault with a lethal weapon. Them bows are deadly and I'm lucky to be alive. Pray for me when me and him are living together next year.

Just one short year ago, another unfortunate incident occurred, in the month of April, and coincidentally(not ironically) to one of my facial features. A long story short I fractured my jaw in early April, and had no idea till late April it was actually broken. (Almost 2 weeks went by with me not noticing a broken jaw in my face. I actually ate steak the night it happened and still didn't know...ouch) It took a regularly scheduled dentist appointment, despite much detest from my mother (because I was missing school at the time), to notice something was off. Dentist appointment was at 8am in the morning, he took one look at me and sent me to the Ortho by 10am. There they took some quick X-rays and I was at the REAL facial surgeon (sorry Tizzy) by 2pm. My mom met me there and quickly and unsympathetically apologized for the grief she was showing me just 6 hours earlier for missing school. I guess school is more important than living the last 2 weeks of my life with a broken bone in my face. By 4pm this same day, I woke up with 8 screws in my mouth and 4 wires going between them. My last meal was a single french fry from White Castle...I miss White Castle.

This is why I really don't like April. Do you know what happens in April/May for a high school senior? Graduation parties, prom, and graduation itself. Let's play the numbers game real fast,

Number of weeks wired shut - 6 weeks
Number of graduation parties where my meal was a smoothie - 13
Total net worth of gift cards I once owned from planet smoothie and cold stone - $125.00
Grams of liquid protein consumed - >10,000g
Amount of weight lost in first three days - 15lbs
Number of broken noses I’d get before I had to break my jaw again - 8
My meal at prom - mashed potatoes (not math, just thought you'd like to know)
Number of smiles I cracked during this memorable time in my life - negative


April once brought with her visions of pretty blossoming flowers and bright, sunny weather. Now that crazy b*t*ch won’t leave me alone.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Don't Call Me I'll Call You

Thomas Jefferson was one cool dude. Along with being one of the founding fathers of the greatest country in the world, he was also our 3rd president, the principle author of the Declaration of Independence, and our country's 1st Secretary of State. Pretty impressive, right ladies? Yeah I thought so too.

Well it turns out the ladies were even impressed back then and aside from being all those important professions mentioned above, Thomas Jefferson was indeed a ladies' man, and apparently a prominent one at that. In the wake of the recent Tiger Woods debacle, I was left wondering how the most famous athlete on the planet, one that's worth over a billion dollars, can get away with having multiple mistresses without being seen once by a fan, reporter, anyone who recognized him standing next to a woman that's not his wife. Regardless of who he had working with him, or who he paid off, that's an incredible feat in today's world.

Long ago, if Thomas Jefferson wanted to "holla" at one of his "shorties" (sorry my teammates everyday dialect is rubbing off on me) he would have had to send a very racy, and privately worded, telegram, or walk up to her and (gasp!) engage in conversation himself.

Today, Tiger could have communicated with his "bitties" (damn teammates) in multiple ways without leaving a trace of evidence or being suspected in anyway.

My point is in today's world, privacy is way undervalued and under-appreciated. Try this on for size...any of you familiar with the movie, "He's Just Not That Into You"? If so you'll recognize this quote, "I had this guy leave me a voice mail at work, so I called him at home, and then he e-mailed me to my Blackberry, so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies."

Now I'm not trying to be like Tiger, but in my personal opinion social networking and means of communication has gotten way out of hand, but still I cannot seem to stop. Wanna chat? Get ready. If you can't reach me at home try calling...or texting my cell, I always have it with me. Hell, if you want we can sext...I'm a sexting virgin, but I'm always looking for something new. If you can't do that, leave a voice mail, I'll get it eventually. If I know you professionally (professors), e-mail me. Of course I do have a personal e-mail account as well, multiple actually, but those are for signing up for the other social networking sites because they are required. Are you just a friend? Did I go to school with you? Do we know each other casually? Request to add me as a friend on facebook. I'll get it. Or Twitter. I tweet a lot, you can follow me and I can follow you. It'll be a blast. My latest tweet, "To the guy that discovered milk...what the hell was he doing with that cow?" Not into those things like twitter or facebook? (seriously who doesn't have a facebook)We can Skype. I just got a web cam, we can video chat, it's actually pretty cool once you figure it out and oh yeah I completely forgot...snail mail. I have a place called home, its got an address, just send me a letter...I love letters.

You can take a deep breath now.

And the funny thing is, with me being a college student, and pretty savvy with technology, if you "hit me up" (my teammates again, sorry) on any of these but the regular mail and my house phone, they come directly to my cell phone. All those means of communication, trapped into one device, that my Dad would say, "is constantly attached to my hip."

Cyberspace is an ever growing community. World Wide Web really does mean worldwide, and just not including ours. There's a whole universe out there of a different dimension that I bet all of you reading this are a part of. (Don't try to lie because I mean, you are reading this blog in some form of web browser.)

My only question is when will it end? The answer....probably never.

***

I guess I will take the time to give a shout out to all the managers of the basketball team this year. They help me make sense out of this world and I appreciate that...oh yea and they also rebounded a ton of shots of mine...thanks guys.

I also want to take this time to have a moment of silence for Chris Althoff's finger. Because as far as we can tell, his finger will never be the same.

He did this while helping me set up the shooting machine we have in the gym. This is a picture of it today, but it happened like two months ago. Sorry Chris!