Stereotypes

I don't know why, but I love stereotypes. Not so much stereotyping others, I consider myself pretty good about avoiding stereotyping other people because of their race/gender/high-level-of-nerdiness. However, I love embracing as many stereotypical things as I can for myself. I mean, what's not to love? Here's some examples:

As a guy I don't need to shower every day. As an engineer, I don't need to shower every week. As a combination of the two, it turns out I don't have to shower every month. Which saves me all sorts of time, is environmentally responsible, and just plain awesome.

No matter how much I may seem to be aimlessly wandering, I'm a guy so I'm never lost and don't have to ask directions.

Since I'm a guy, I can fix anything. It doesn't matter that I have no prior experience fixing cars or whatever, I can just open it up, start banging away, and viola, fixed. No actual technical/mechanical knowledge necessary.

I wrote (drew) a screen play for a great and manly movie. Average working man (played by the Rock) leaves his home one day to go to his average office job. As he does, it blows up. He goes to the tool shed and pulls out a few pistols, automatic rifles, and a grenade launcher. He fights terrorists, ninja assassins and barbarian hordes in the middle of the jungle. He finds a secret lair and fights the bad guy in his robot contraption that is loaded with guns. And, of course, it ends after the 40 minute fight scene with no explanation as to why his house blew up or who the bad guys were. Now that's what I call a pretty sweet movie.

As an engineer, I am not expected to have social skills, so it is expected of me to commit at least one social faux pas a day, if not seven or eight.

As an engineer, my vocabulary sucks, and I don't even know what faux pas means.

As an older brother I am expected to tease my younger sisters. Not only do I embrace the stereotype, I go above and beyond the call of duty on this one. My sisters are extremely lucky to have such a good older brother.

I'm pretty sure there are a lot more, but, as a guy, I'm lazy and like to think as little as possible, so I'm not going to bother trying to come up with anything else.

Breakfast

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and meals are the most important thing in my life, so how have I not blogged about breakfast yet? The time has come to fix that.

When I was young, I didn't really understand breakfast. I remember thinking things like Cookie Crisp and Reese's cereal were great. I still remember the commercials for Reese's, where the kid would at some point think: "Wait, Reese's for breakfast?". That commercial should have clued me into some truths that I didn't learn until much later. Now, as a mature grad student, I have a much more sophisticated approach to breakfast. Gone are the days of Cookie Crisps and Reese's cereal. In are the days of cookies and Reese's. And fudge, and peeps, and brownies, and just about anything that tastes good to me, and is, therefore, good for me. These foods are spectacular for breakfast. If I knew a more spectacular word than spectacular, I'd use that. If I had the choice between starting my day by finding a hundred dollar bill on the ground, or having brownies for breakfast, it'd be brownies in a heartbeat.

Here's a picture of recommended breakfast foods. And I swear, if anyone so much has hints at a dislike for any of these foods...in particular the Peeps... (Yes, that is a menacing trailing off, in case the "..." didn't tip you off)

Now, a word of warning: Not all foods are breakfast foods. And I'm not just talking about cold pizza (seriously people, warm it up. Cold is weird.) I'm warning you against things that are much worse. Foods that would make you want to move your bed into your closet so that you could hide in your closet, under your bed. That bad. Top on that list (and really, the only thing on the list) is a Mexican candy called Pulparindo. My roommate did a piñata for his birthday a while back, and acquired some Mexican candy for it. He had left overs that were just sitting on the table. The bright yellow wrapper of the Pulparindo caught my eye as I was eating breakfast. Knowing that candy makes an excellent side for any breakfast, I thought I'd give it a try. First off, it didn't taste good. The second problem was that it didn't taste good and it was pretty spicy. My third problem with it was that it really did taste horrible, and it didn't get better the longer you chewed it...in fact it got worse (not originally thought possible, but found to actually be true). It was like I was eating death flavored horribleness, covered in a thick layer of torturous agony. Seriously, not a good breakfast food.

Absolutely, positively, not good for breakfast. You may make all the disparaging comments about Pulparindo you want.

Hair

I realized I'm doing this blog thing all wrong. My blog is supposed to be me, I should be using this to talk all about me! I thought I'd give it a try for this post. I'll spare you a post about my obvious manliness, awesomeness, toughness, wonderfulness, and manliness, since most of you are well aware of those traits (I was, after all, voted alpha male unanimously in 2009 by all those who participated in said voting). Instead I'll talk about my hair and it's ever increasing length.

For much of my life, I have fought against the semi-curliness of my hair by keeping it short enough that there was no room to curl. Whenever my hair would get long enough to begin to curl, I would attack it with a vigor that can only be compared in ferocity to that of a battle between a great white and a crocodile, the two most feared animals on the planet. So most may assume that the new hairstyle stems from me either being too lazy to cut my hair, or from my being an engineering grad student, so it's only natural that I throw all personal hygiene out the window. Both are pretty much right.

Scary, I know. This picture probably shouldn't be shown to small children, or those with weak hearts, Actually, this picture probably shouldn't be shown to anyone, and I apologize to all those who will suffer from severe nightmares now.

At first I held off cutting my hair because I had received vaguely positive comments about it ("I like your hair longer, it hides your face more" and "Your hair isn't looking completely horrible anymore.") Fueled by friends and enemies alike (you know which you are) commenting that they thought my hair looked good longer, I've held off on cutting it...though I've come close a few times... But recently I came up with an even better reason to grow my hair out. With it just a little bit longer, I'll be able to combine the three most awesome and influential hair styles ever known to man. I am, of course, talking about the fro, the mullet and the mohawk. Just imagine, fro on the sides, mullet in the back and mohawk to top it all off. Actually, I did a Paint mock up of what it would look like, so you don't have to imagine. I'm pretty excited now, and for the first time in my life, I wish my hair would grow faster.

Behold, it all it's glory, the frollet hawk!