I’m goin’ old school with this one… time to rip a page out of my everyday life and see how ridiculous life can be sometimes.

So I’m checking my mail a few weeks ago on a Monday night at the mailboxes outside my complex. As I’m doing so, a fellow resident approaches.

“Checkin’ your mail, huh?” he inquires.

“Yep,” I simply respond. There’s a silence of about 10 seconds as he does the same. Suddenly, he turns to me and issues the following statement:

“You know I’ve lived here 15 years.” This is the moment where I am forced to treat one of my fellow residents like many of us may have treated that one really disturbed or drunk homeless person you encounter on the street. I keep my head down, proceed about my business and refuse to engage/acknowledge. Kid Zippy proceeds to detail how much he likes it here and thinks it’s a good, clean place to live.

Before you go off on me for my arguably callous negligence of this man, let me offer you the following nugget to digest: Every time I have met this guy, he has told me the exact same thing. Typically of his volition, rarely provoked. In fact, just scroll up and reread that transaction. Notice the pause between the exchanges.

I wasn’t even attempting to make conversation with this man and he still felt compelled to give me his life story.

This event, coupled with my past dealings with life in the average condo complex has led me to conclude that such an environment is the perfect sampling of the American psyche. Seriously, if it takes all types, then you’ll find ‘em in an apartment complex for sure.

Here’s another example of life in the Twilight Zone: this past spring, I ordered some promotional shirts for my company. Somehow they were delivered to my home rather than my office. I didn’t even know I had a package until I got a letter from the resident in Unit 24 telling me he had a package waiting for me. Several trips to his apartment left me at a loss as there was no response despite the noise of a TV inside. A note asking him to leave the package at my door also went unaddressed. I thought little of it since it wasn’t a huge issue for the office, but then it happened again a few months later.

This time it was more personal.

See, this package happened to be for a friend of mine who had just become a daddy for the first time. So I got him and his wife a baby monitor set from Babies R' Us. Once again, the package never made it to me. It was once again accepted by the mysterious Samaritan in Unit 24.

After I found out about this through a series of twists and turns, I thoroughly chewed out UPS, then once again ventured to the eternally locked door of Unit 24. I wasn't too shy about keeping quiet with my knock. From within, I heard some kind of a grunt from someone telling me to "hold on."

When the door opened, there was a dead ringer for Samuel L. Jackson in last year's feelgood cinematic opus, Black Snake Moan. In a towel. That's right, the culprit in Unit 24 not only resembled the main character from an unforgivably bad movie, but was also in the process of cleansing himself.

I can't begin to tell you the immediate humor I saw in this.

I queried Black Snake about my packages, only giving him my unit number. He immediately nodded and took me out to the hallway, unlocking a storage room rife with untold treasures... and my packages.

Oh yeah, he went in and put on his briefs before giving me my property.

What's the point of this?

I'm not even sure, but I swear, sometimes life is a ride that throws these amazing characters at you, and you can't help but laugh. Honestly, an apartment complex is the perfect gathering point for all of them. Heck, in my building alone I live across from and above two functioning alcoholics. Then there's Kid Zippy the proud tenant, Black Snake, and I'm sure there are even more where those cats came from. I've been half-tempted to go on some sort of a safari through the inner workings of my building to see what other unique indigenous organisms I can find.

At the end of the day, I'm just here for the show. I'm putting my feet up and feasting on popcorn and soda. Encore, baby.

Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

I have a favor to ask people... I know that Super Tuesday is upon us, and after that, the big 2008 Presidential Election. I know it's an interesting landscape that's growing more curious by the microsecond. With that said, I'm well aware that many of you fervent party members are doing your best to promote your team and see to it that we're all aware of the facts.

That said, please do me a favor: count me out.

I've had my mind made up for a while. I won't tell you what my thoughts are on the matter, because I don't have the time/energy to debate and engage right now like I did when I was 23. At least not at this stage in the game.

But I'm going to ask you as kindly as I possibly can... please spare me the forwards, the long chain letters, the endless laundry lists of bulletpoints as to why I should vote for Candidate X.

My mind is made up, I'm not a swing voter, and there is not a damn thing you can do to change it.

I think my school of thought regarding politics right now is really this: if you're unaware of what's going on, then I'm willing to share with you my feelings. If you have your mind made up, then God bless you an may the best party win.

I really no longer believe in the militant, shove-it-down-their-throats guerrilla campaigns that have become all the rage by the hardcore pundits. I respect passion to no end, but with that said, such zealousness can really be a turn-off.

I remember during the 2000 election, there was an intense Green Party presence at Skidmore College. So intense in fact, I felt like I was being force fed information at a rate quicker than I could digest. The group was so in-your-face, it led to a substantial backlash from the swing voters on campus. Myself included. It was my first presidential election as a potential voter, and not only did I not vote, I didn't even register.

You can chalk that one up to ignorance if you please, but before you judge, be sure to remember that there is a significant sample of the population who will withdraw due to frustration or disgust rather than stick it out and choose a "lesser of all evils." Case in point: my own mother didn't vote in the 2004 election for the first time in her life as a U.S. citizen. Chew on that, dear reader.

Besides, not only will you turn off people to your party, you may just turn them off to you. No one likes a hard ass.

So please think twice before you click send on that e-mail, kids. Keep thy policies to thyself.

Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Well this shouldn't come as a surprise.

With the Mitchell Report out, perhaps the worst kept secret in professional sports has been aired for the world to see. Nearly 90 players have been named, and again there's nothing shocking. Upon reading the list of offenders, your mind either screams, "Well that was obvious," or, "Didn't cross my mind, but it makes sense."

I guess the glory days of old when the only thing baseball players would abuse was a bottle of hooch at the end of a double header. At least then, their legend status still couldn't be questioned. Regardless of how many shots Mickey Mantle put away after a game, you could not deny his talent on the diamond. Steroids, performance enhances and HGH do not allow for such wiggle room. In fact, the question has to be (and likely will) be asked about what is to become of the records set by the guilty.

Hell, some of them have been questioned from the onset.

I guess the question now is, why state the obvious? It takes a quick peak at Barry Bonds' rookie card to realize that 20 years later, something is drastically different. Even ten years ago, I knew something was up with Mark Maguire, having watched him from the time I was a kid. It's ridiculous for some players to assert otherwise, and when Roger Clemens, the 40-plus-phenom of pitching refutes such allegations, it looks silly and petulant.

Another question is how to clean it up. That's up for baseball's governing bodies to decide, and they'd better decide quick. It's not gonna be pretty… there will be a painful transitional period and there are probably going to be several suspensions before things begin turning around. Given the buzz surrounding steroids this year between Barry Bonds, Chris Benoit and the WWE's inconsistent Wellness Policy, you can expect Congress to take action sooner rather than later.

But I think the looming question in the back of everyone's mind is, "How did this happen?" How did America's favorite pastime become synonymous with synthetic testosterone?

Ultimately, no one is going to hold a gun to someone's head to make them take drugs. They will do it of their own volition. However, one question has to be why so many are making that choice. And the follow-up question should be, "Is it due to excessive pressure?"

Professional sports have changed, and many would argue not for the better. Expectations are far higher than they were years ago. You'll note that three of those names on the list were big names for the Yankees. Given the fact that Big Stein fired Joe Torre for not getting the Yanks into the World Series this year (in spite of 5 titles during his 12-year tenure in New York), can you imagine the type of pressure that has to have been coming down on the players?

Is it any wonder?

Baseball has been drawing lower ratings than ever before. Even this year, the fact that the Red Sox won seemed predestined as the World Series drew it's second lowest rating ever. Despite being well attended and beloved by purists, baseball is in a slump. You have to figure that the heat is on a lot of players to perform and produce results. With some players getting astronomical "A-Rod Salaries," you'd best believe that they are getting pressure from all angles to be worth that paycheck. This can only lead to mounting strain, and in many cases, anabolic therapy.

Now I know I recently joked about steroids in comedy with my tragic run-in with Carrot Top, but seriously, there's no joke when it comes to these drugs. This stuff is bad medicine, sometimes even at therapeutic levels.

Pro wrestler Kevin Nash was recently interviewed online following the Chris Benoit tragedy earlier this year. Obviously the topic of steroids came up, and Nash mentioned that after tearing his quad in a match, he was prescribed a low-level form of synthetic testosterone to help rebuild the muscles internally. At 6'10" and typically tipping the scales and about 320 lbs. naturally, he notes that he swelled to over 400 lbs. of muscle while still maintaining a "safe" testosterone ratio.

Now imagine overuse in any athlete.

What honestly frightens me is the potential usage in professional football (American style, not soccer). Those players are under what I think would be even greater amounts of pressure to produce results, and compete in a far more aggressive competitive landscape. Despite the shorter season, the physical rigors are infinitely more intense, and the size of many NFL players dwarfs even the most obvious users in baseball.

Being America's most watched sport doesn't help either. I find the psychological aspects of sports fascinating, and I really feel that intense media exposure coupled with the millions of dollars poured into just a single game run a risk to the competitors' lifestyles.

Now this is not to say that coaches and owners are outwardly approaching their players and encouraging them to dope. Rather, they are left looking for a way to make it happen. The demands placed on them by the culture threatens to amplify the expectations they set for themselves as perfectionists. That's when people start looking for back doors.

Sure, there are other factors at hand. Ego, the yearning to make more money, the thrill of competition, striving to set records, and probably on a deep level, the desire to play as long as possible for fear of what one's life will bring after they "break out of Shawshank" and are forced to survive in the real world. But I think more than anything else, the culture of these sports really needs to be thoroughly examined as a supplement to penalties and regulation.

Look at combat sports like MMA and boxing. You hear very rarely about steroid charges and suspensions in those sports. That is not only because they are so heavily regulated, but also because fighters have more time to recover between fights -- as much as 2 months between battles. This in comparison to the harsh schedule of football and the endless season of baseball. There's something to be said for the body's natural ability to mend itself.

One thing is certain: drug culture in sports is at least in part due to the sporting culture itself. If MLB wants to repair its reputation and not suffer even steeper declines in their ratings due to this all-pivotal "D-Day," an inquest of some sort had better be done fast into correcting the problem at the foundation rather than beefing up reactionary discipline.

Not only that, but as a fan, part of me would still like to believe that the Rocket I beheld so dearly during his early days in the Boston Red Sox really is an "all-natural" miracle man that can still get it done on the mound.

Goodnight and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Henry Rollins recently released a commentary via his TV show regarding freedom and how the truth in the nation and how it is being obscured, manipulated and thoughtlessly perverted. However, in spite of such injustices, there is a tool, a venue, if you will (and I will) to “out” the truth.

”That’s right, the Internet. Perhaps responsible for the most substantial shift in our culture in decades. There’s so much freedom and potential on the World Wide Web that one is barely able to get one’s head around it.”

Right, wrong or indifferent, Rollins does bring up one very essential point: the Internet is a remarkable outlet for the intellectual masses to clamor and voice their opinions and insights, in turn influencing the undecided and uninitiated.

Perhaps that’s why I’m so wary about the fact that we seem to be squandering it.

Look, I’m not gonna sugarcoat things. I like the Internet. I’m a card-carrying member of Generation Y. I check MySpace, Facebook and YouTube pretty much daily. Being that I don’t have cable (revolutionary, I know), the Internet serves as my primary source of entertainment, news and enlightenment. And for my personal reasons, it has served as the nominal venue for me to express my opinions vis-à-vis my comfy home on the blogosphere.

That said, yes, the Internet offers endless opportunities for people from all walks of life to express themselves. But like most good things, it seems to go overboard at times. You know that happens when the two rocket scientists renowned for mixing Diet Coke and Mentos are showing up on Leno. You know something’s up when the term “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” is absorbed into the contemporary lexicon. And you know something’s really twisted when Law & Order is doing an episode inspired by “lonelygirl15.”

(Even scarier when you read an article that the aforementioned webisode series became so popular that it featured Katherine McPhee from American Idol. Want more head-scratching minutiae? It also garnered sponsorship from Neutrogena, leading to the legendary “sell-out” method of product placement and a new character who works for the company. The product life cycle seems to have petered out with the show jumping the shark due to its titular star being killed off. This was of course because the actress playing her now has a film career and her contract requires her full attention. This shit is utterly fascinating to me… how a viral webisode could be victim to all the standard pratfalls of standard network television… replete with a spin-off, of course. For serious.)

Is this the new medium? Is this the influential entity imparted upon us? You have to wonder.

I can’t lie; for every off-color cultural meme that circulates the world’s web browser, there are a handful I dig. I find the humor behind “Ask A Ninja” to be vastly amusing, not unlike classic “Strong Bad” e-mails. And every once in a while there’s something sobering and thought-provoking like Noah Kalina’s photography project. I’ll even fess up to being a fan of Mahir’s page back in college.

But for the most part, these amusing little time-killers and viral elements don’t appear to carry much weight in the long run. From the moment the hit counters start climbing, the clock reaches 14:59:59 and seems to move at a lightning pace. These web icons seem to vanish as quickly as they appeared, yet all having left an indelible mark on culture.

No lie, I was at a Greek event recently and the DJ played the “Numa Numa” song. Dead serious, folks. Someone went to the trouble of getting this CD because of… well, this.

Pretty incredible, huh?

So why am I writing about this now, so late in the game? Why didn’t this begin to bother me during the heyday of Star Wars Kid? I’ll tell you why.

Meet the Internet’s newest phenomenon: Chris Crocker.

Chris’s sob-laden rant about Britney Spears, whether real or fabricated, has unleashed a sea of coverage, commentaries, and of course, parodies. Within days, a similar vlog was uploaded featuring a (terrible) George W. Bush impersonator demanding that we all “leave General Petraues alone!”

This is where I begin to draw lines in the sand… when Internet memes go from confounding to outright annoying. I’m going to say this once: can we please avoid giving this guy the attention he’s clearly craving? We’ve had enough pop cultural trainwrecks in the 21st century to last us a whole millennium. I, for one, do not intend to add to the downward trending of our collective IQ. Mr. Crocker’s “star” already seems to be on the decline as most folks I’ve talked to now regard him as completely abrasive rather than amusing. This is compounded by viewings of his prior work… I would personally rather stab my eardrum with a red hot poker than be subjected to such a half-assed form of “self-expression.”

I guess the entire Catch-22 of the Internet and freedom of speech in general is that it gives anyone the ability to voice their opinions. It’s what makes this nation great and what also makes it pretty goddamned ridiculous at times.

Which is why I will stay on my personal mission to use the Internet to inflict truth as Mr. Rollins so aptly addresses. I understand that these bizarre moments will come and go… sometimes they’ll draw my attention, other times they’ll leave me completely befuddled. With that said, I’ll keep my method of personal persuasion limited to the written word, as it is the primary draw for me to absorb information to begin with. Regardless of whether it’s on paper or on a screen.

And when all else fails, I can still remember the glory days of "Napster, Bad!" Now that's comedy.

Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

It’s no secret that the topic of steroids in sports has become scalding hot in the media these last two months. Between Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron’s homerun record and Chris Benoit’s savage double murder/suicide, there is clearly a lot of debate. People want answers and are going so far as congressional hearings to get them. Rightfully so. Steroids in professional sports or even sports entertainment is a dire matter for the athletes and the impression they leave.

It’s also a pretty dire matter in the realm of standup comedy.

I wish I were joking.

Let me set the stage for you. This past Saturday night, after a fun evening of antics and high jinks, I felt compelled to pop in on my local gas station, not to fill up, but to grab an impulse purchase snack to satiate those early AM munchies. Grabbing a Snickers bar, I waited in line at the register. Idly turning around in observance of my surroundings, I happened to notice this man.

I’m not making this up. Carrot Top was in my local gas station convenience store. My first thought?

Jesus H. tittyfucking Christ, what have we done? What hell hath the Lord wrought on us all? Is there even a God that could create such a monstrosity as this?

It should be duly noted that Carrot Top was wearing a top not of the carrot variety, but of the tank family. As in the type that doesn’t have any sleeves.

In short, I was a few spools of cotton away from this image.

Dude, steroids are bad in professional sports, but they’re even more devastating in comedy. If Shaun White is the “Flying Tomato,” then Carrot Top is the “Juicy Tomato.” As in, he be juicing. And I know, carrots are vegetables and tomatoes are fruits, but his material onstage is fruity enough as it is. So he qualifies.

He could also qualify for Mr. Olympia. He’s bigger than me. Bigger than the picture I just offered. I don’t know how else I can get across how terrifying it was to see this man in person. He wasn’t right to begin with. But now… egads.

Steroids are evil. Just like prop comedy. Carrot Top is immersed in both. He is the lord of all that is unholy and wrong.

I need someone to hold me. Please tell me everything will be OK.

Goodnight and have a pleasant tomorrow. Maybe.