Big Changes...HUGE, MASSIVE CHANGES

To Whom it May Concern:

Recently two people, Michelle* and Alex* (*their real names) told me, "Last weeks blog entry was positively awful and we like you less after we read it." I can't remember exactly, but it was something close to that.

Understandably, I was crushed. I cried when they weren't around and I even contemplated shutting down the blog all together. But I realized that wouldn't have been fair to the rest of the world just because these two obviously detest me and my random thoughts.

I started the blog because, 1) I was told that I didn't even know how to do it and 2)to post my random thoughts that I have on a daily basis. While I could do this on Facebook, I don't want to come across as one of "those" people that post stupid things on a daily........no, hourly.......basis.(little Johnny just took a big poop!!! Yay Johnny!!!!) Besides, all my stuff is grade A good material and I don't want to waste it on Facebook.

So, after literally minutes and minutes of internal debating(right brain won), I've decided to make a fundamental change to the blog. Of course, I'll always still be right with my viewpoints and you'll most likely be wrong, but I think I'm going to start interviewing other people and post the transcripts on the blog. Luckily, I know a lot of interesting people (such as the bartender from my favorite bar or the rather unattractive lady at the Subway I always stop at in Tomah Wisconsin whenever I travel) and I think that getting their points of view on actual, relevant topics would be interesting.

I'm thinking something like "What does a surgeon really think of Obama's healthcare plan" would go along nicely when paired with, "What does a homeless/un-insured person think of Obama's healthcare plan" I personally think it would be cool to get both viewpoints. Maybe, just maybe, I'll try to recruit a homeless man to have beers with myself and said surgeon at the surgeons rather nice house. I'm sure his wife won't mind a random homeless man sitting on her couch and I only know one surgeon, so I really hope he's up for this or my entire thought process will be blown to hell. Don't let me down, surgeon friend and surgeon friends wife. (side note: I'm actually laughing at the thought of me, some dirty homeless man and my surgeon friend sitting on his living room couch, drinking beers and chatting while his kids run around and his wife is making dinner. Just Priceless!!!)

Another interview that I think would be great is with the only two gay men that I personally know. These two are a riot and, frankly, I'm only really going to interview them to see if they will help me be a better dresser for work. Just kidding.......kinda. I would like to get their views on what it's like being gay in today's society. In my mind, I think that the stereotypes or racism (I have no idea what to call societies thoughts on gay men) are largely broken anymore, but I honestly have no idea and would like to get their perspective on it. As an added bonus, if you are on the fence about coming out of the closet (Ryan) you might find what they have to say useful in your decision. Also, I was shocked to find out that Anderson Cooper from CNN is gay. I really had no idea and was kind of disappointed because I always thought, "that guy has it all together. He's good looking,well spoken and I bet he pulls a lot of hot female ass." I guess the gay community wins this one. The score is now: Straight Community 270,000,000, Gay Community 15,787,674

This is going to take some time to get put together. It's not like there are homeless people just laying around with nothing to do but get interviewed..........what's that you say? Really? Well, I guess there ARE tons of homeless people with nothing to do but be a drain on society (I'm envisioning that line to be the surgeons comment, but we won't know until all three of us sit on his couch together!!!!). Since my girlfriend thinks that it's a good idea to book things for EVERY weekend from now until Thanksgiving, I'm not sure when I can put together one of these interviews. Hopefully in the next couple weeks or so. If anyone has any ideas for a good interview, certainly let me know via commenting here, text, email, Facebook, rented commercial billboard or smoke signals.

In the meantime, sit tight and I won't post anything else about watching TV......my favorite past time....I wouldn't want Michelle and Alex to be more disappointed with me. :-( (thats a frowny face guy representing me when Alex said "you suck" and then hit me with a baseball bat)

I made that last part up.

Toodles,
Travis

I CANT COME UP WITH A GOOD TITLE!!!!!

When I was a kid, I used to watch a lot of TV. I know.......shocker. I'm sure I'm no different than many of you all used to be. I loved the normal TV shows like Dukes of Hazzard, A-Team, Miami Vice (I had the Miami Vice jacket with the rolled up sleeves and, damn it, I was cool as hell). I liked the sitcoms like Alf, Punky Brewster, Facts of Life, Mr. Belvidere, Who's the Boss(Alyssa Milano was perhaps the hottest girl on 80's TV and dont even try to tell me otherwise)......I could go on and on but I'm sure nobody is paying attention anymore because you are all re-living your love of 80's sitcoms right now. I'm not sure if this is cool or sad, but I was pretty much able to name every show on the major TV channels for Monday thru Friday from 7 to 10pm. I know, I'm cooler than you were when I was a kid.

As much as I liked to watch "normal" TV, I LOVED to watch cartoons when I was a kid. I mean, who doesn't watch cartoons when they were a kid, right? Well, maybe all those Chinese kids making my comfortable tennis shoes, but let's not get into that issue right now. I was a big fan of The Flintstones, Scooby Doo, He-Man, The Smurfs and Rainbow Brite (screw you, I'm not afraid to admit it).

I bring all this pointless drivel (drivel means childish, silly, or meaningless talk or thinking nonsense----now you can use it in conversation tomorrow!!!)up because I was watching the Cartoon Network the other day and came away with one thought: THE CARTOONS TODAY SUCK ASS!!!!! Other than Spongebob Squarepants, they are all worthless crap. Seriously, here are some of the names I found on http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/: Generator Rex, Ben 10 Ultimate Alien and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. You know why kids are shooting each other in schools now? Because of this garbage. They are so disappointed in their cartoons, they have nothing better to do but go on shooting rampages*.

*I know, I'm being pretty short sighted (I questioned myself if this was the right adjective so I looked it up and according to dictionary.com short-sighted means: lacking in foresight: a shortsighted plan. Thank you Internet!!!!) looking into the minds of demented little freak kids, but there's got to be some truth to it.......

Anyway, I was actually thinking about some of my old cartoon favorites today in the car on my drive back from beautiful Marshfield WI. The more I thought about cartoons of the early 80's, I kept trying to equate them to todays world and, well, the result isn't pretty. Take, for instance, The Flintstones. In hindsight, it was just a hard working, big strong man with a bad temper who hated his job and boss and was married to an attractive, natural redhead (don't ask me how I know if she was a natural redhead, I just know. wink wink). Today, this kind of couple in a cartoon or TV show would never work anymore. It would be the equivalent of this:

Admit it, you wouldn't want to watch a cartoon or sitcom where John Goodman is married to Marisa Miller either!!!!!

I used to love Scooby Doo (and his wacky friends!!!) too. Back then, I never would have even thought about how much weed Shaggy and Scooby were smoking in the back of that van on a regular basis. Today, it's the only thing I think about when I see Shaggy on TV. Just last week, he was on the Todays Show and.....just kidding, Shaggy on the Todays Show would just be silly!!! The odd thing is that Shaggy was skinny like a beanpole. In todays world, we all know that this would never happen as Shaggy would be 400lbs from eating entire pizzas and whole boxes of twinkies from getting stones to bejesus on an hourly basis. Also, in todays world, there is no way the FCC would let the cartoon executives keep such an obvious lesbian on the air like the character that Velma portrayed. Take a look at this picture and just try to argue against my notion that she liked the ladies:

Completely obvious, right!!!!

And, if kids these days are smart enough to watch some show called, Ben 10 Ultimate Alien, they sure as shit are smart enought to figure out that Fred was TOTALLY hooking up with that slut Daphne. Just look at her with her little mini-skirt, long flowing hair, plump lips and perky breasts.......Yikes, perhaps I need to see a shrink because I just realized I may have had quite a crush on Daphne!!!

Finally, and this is where I might lose some of you due to boredom or the fact that you think I'm a complete moron, but I was a big Smurfs fan. I was actually a Smurf for Halloween one year. I tried to find a picture of how "neat" I looked, but gave up after searching for 3 seconds on Google. Anyway, I've always wondered something about The Smurfs: HOW MANY OF THE MALE SMURFS DID SMURFETTE HOOK UP WITH!?!?!!?!? I mean, there was ONE female smurf for all those males smurfs!!!! She had her pick of the entire village at any given time. This is like being the only hot girl in an office of nerdy engineers or accountants. She just knows she can play them all like a fiddle and get anything she wants. (sorry to any accountant or engineers out there, I'm sure you can all pull mad ass on a regular basis and if you can't, it will be our little secret ;-) ). Anywho, the Smurfs would never make it in todays world. Some crazy, conservative female activist group would NEVER allow a show with all men and only one woman on it. I think this is sad because every smart man knows that Smurfette was really running that place due to being the only one with a nice set of breasts but these women activists groups choose to ignore this fact completely. Just sad.

Ugh, I just re-read that last paragraph and I think I might need some professional help. Oh well.

In closing, it's been a week since my last blog posting due to the long Memorial Day weekend and from the emails/texts and comments I'm getting it would seem like the world was coming to an end!!!! It's nice to know that I make your day!!!