EI Shall Return!

Yes, EI will be back soon, and better than ever.

The Most Important Lie You'll Ever Tell (Part 1)

It's fall, and for seniors in high school that means it's time for the limitless bliss that is the college application, and more specifically, the college essay. Being the charitable person that I am, I have decided to write some example essays to help those of you struggling with your 500-words-or-less exercises in shameless self-aggrandizing. Below is an essay for the venerable Common Application:

Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk, you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.

Thump. Thump. Thump. My heart thundered as I stalked down the silent hallway, wincing at the loudness of my footsteps. Sweat dripped down my nose and I could hear every labored breath I took. The hostile darkness seemed to envelop and consume me, and pretty soon I could see nothing at all. But something kept me going.

I was afraid. I was alone. I realized that this was the first time in my life I was truly terrified. I knew that were it not for my excellent leadership skills I would have been too afraid to continue. On and on I went, each second seeming like a year. Suddenly the darkness ahead of me seemed ot surge forward and I flinched, dropping to my knees and crying out weakly in horror. I quickly realized that it was not some maleviolent apparition but rather the door at the end of the hallway.

I stepped through the door and was immediately assaulted by a torrent of violent snowfall. I trudged out into the blizzard, thankful that I was a well-rounded and well-balanced person with skills in many different subjects, one of which was resistence to windchill. Well, I thought to myself, I guess I'll just have to walk home. And so I did, shivering and stumbling, but strong enough to continue because of determination to pursue my goals in life despite adversity.

As I passed the alleyway in front of my house I noticed a homeless man lying facedown in the snow, apparently unconscious. Despite being myself frozen to the bone and weary beyond belief, I knew what I had to do. I ran to the man and dragged him out of the snow into the relative safety of a nearby overhang. I propped him up against the wall and was immensely relieved that he appeared to still be breathing, although he was showing signs of frostbite from the snow. As I was unbuttoning my coat, he stirred and seemed to be regaining consciousness. I quickly picked up a nearby brick and hit him hard on the side of the head, twice, before finishing stuffing my coat with all of his belongings. Satisfied with what I had done, I continued into my house.

Immediately after I entered the front door, I knew something was wrong. As I stood there and surveyed the room, a small child suddenly lept from behind a curtain and dashed for the back door. I opened fire with my rocket-propelled grenade launcher, stopping the intruder in a spectacular spray of blood and body parts. I closed the door, took off my clothes, flopped onto my bed, and immediately fell asleep.

P.S.: Attached to the back of this sheet you will find a note bearing my favorite U.S. president ever: Benjamin Franklin.

Never Smell of Forgiveness

Kevin and Tyler have a brief but life-changing dialogue about a small but life-changing product...

Kevin: Hello Tyler. Besides your odd choice in pants today, something else is unusual about you. I have a sudden and irrational urge to never forgive you for being alive.

Tyler: I'm glad you like my new cologne. With this new scent, my success rate with women has risen 200%. It's from P'diddy's men's line - that's right, rappers sell cologne now. It has a perfect, unimpeachable name, fitting right in with the new image of...

Kevin: UNFORGIVABLE™! Tyler, you smell utterly UNFORGIVEABLE™ today. But not only that. You smell of a new lifestyle, a new you.

Attractive Female Bystander: Tyler, may I bear your children?

Tyler: Perhaps. I should check my schedule. I might be able to book you in...

P. Diddy: UNFORGIVABLE™ cologne by Sean John is a visceral fragrance that blends chemistry and emotion. It stimulates the senses in ways never imagined and is a rare blend of pure, uncontained, and unrestrained emotion... The UNFORGIVABLE™ man is distinctive with a driving passion. (It really says that)

Tyler: Can you not smell the pure emotion in my cologne?

Kevin: Indeed, both of you smell of such complete, utter, and UNFORGIVABLE™ emotional saturation that I can hardly stifle my admiration for your distinctive, driving passion for living life to the fullest.

Tyler: Yes, well, it's all in the bottle - yours for only $74.99! You too can live life UNFORGIVABLY™.

Kevin: Clearly, being such a fan of Pe Diddee, I can hardly restrain myself from dashing to the nearest Wal-Mart and purchasing this product immediately. But I don't know if I'm ready to be UNFORGIVABLE™ yet. I don't know if I'm ready to leave behind my boring life and become what I've always wanted to be.

Tyler: Kevin, what you talkin' 'bout? Don't you want to be more like p. Dyddy? Why in Jersy would you delay such overwhelming passion?

Kevin: Perhaps because UNFORGIVABLE™ is composed of not one, not two, but three distinct elements: Cool, Fresh, and Sexy.

pDiddi: This could be you:









Tyler: See, you too could get hott sideways makeouts at the New York Stock Exchange! With tongue!

Kevin: Clearly a product that all sane men must have. Thanks Pî Diddy! I think it's time that I, too, began smelling UNFORGIVABLE™.

Aviator sunglasses sold separately.

Dear Canada,

I write to you because in recent years the sheer audacity of your contempt for my way of life has become utterly intolerable. No longer shall I stand idly while you ruthlessly impinge upon all that I love and cherish. Truth, love, democracy, and freedom itself are at stake. Through base deceit you have made many a nation turn a blind eye to your treachery, but I am not so easily hoodwinked.

I know that you are now the second largest nation in the world. I know that you have been supporting your whale population—but are you protecting them for posterity, or training them to attack warships? I know of only one use for your English and French bilingualism—to subvert the communications of your enemies. I know that over 90% of your population is concentrated within two hundred kilometers of your southern border—just waiting for the right moment to strike. I know.

But I am undaunted by the terrible oppression wrought by your mounted police, undaunted by the crushing stickiness of your syrup, undaunted by the overwhelming numbers of your geese, undaunted by the subversive omnipresence of your bacon. No matter how tall your totem poles or excellent your welfare, I shall be steadfast in my stand against your boundless aggression. Just as I turned away the Kaiser's iron fist nearly a century ago, so shall I turn away the iron fist hidden within the maple leaf. I am prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice in the defense of my homeland against the Canadian scourge.

As of now, I hereby disavow recognition of your sovereignty as a nation. All diplomatic ties are dissolved immediately. If you should wish to regain your former standing with me, then you are to cease and desist your vile villainy. If and when you have done so utterly, completely, absolutely, exhaustively, unconditionally, and utterly—and only when you have done so utterly, completely, absolutely, exhaustively, unconditionally, and utterly—you shall stand as a lone bastion of evil. Not even an axis of evil would stoop to accept so deplorable an ally. You stand alone against me and a fair and just world.

Regards,

Kevin

People are Idiots, Part 1

Yes, have you noticed? People are idiots. In commemoration of this marvelous fact of life, I will henceforth bring you a weekly rant about all things idiotic. And by weekly, I of course mean an arbitrary length of time between late and later. But without further ado, in the crosshairs today is the proverbial u-bend under the sink of the internet: MySpace.

One thing that really amuses me about MySpace is the poetry. Seriously, what angsty teen goes home every day and composes poetry about tears and knives and falling leaves? Well, quite a few, apparently. Somewhere out in the ether between the complete inability to actually write a rhyming poem and the utter inanity of the topic must lie the unfortunate brain cells I lost in my endeavor to understand what exactly the point of all of this is.

Here we used to lie
Under the sky
Now I can only cry
And softly sigh
Blood and ash
In my heart a gash

You know how they torture prisoners at Guantanamo Bay? Here's a secret the government doesn't want you to know: all they do is read this poetry to them.

Another thing about MySpace that never ceases to amuse me is the proliferation of chain letters. All of them seem to involve friends or sex. Or in some cases having sex with friends. Some are funny, but most are just dumb. Take this relatively innocuous one below, for example:

THIS IS A TEST TO SEE HOW MANY FRIENDS
YOU HAVE ON THE INTERNET!!!
IT'S JUST A TEST. OK, HERE GOES.
INSTANTLY, WHEN YOU RECEIVE THIS PAGE,
YOU MUST SEND IT TO AT LEAST 10 PEOPLE,
INCLUDING THE PERSON WHO SENT IT TO YOU

*Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug*
*Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug*
*Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug*
*Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug*
*Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug*
*Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug*
*Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug*
*Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug*
*Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug*
*Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug* *Hug*

There are times when no comment is necessary on my part. This is one of them.

But despite all this, MySpace can occasionally—very occasionally—reveal some rather useful information. Let me give you a hypothetical situation. Let’s say you're a girl, and you have a boyfriend. One day, you discover that your boyfriend has a MySpace. You also discover that the background to his MySpace page is a Jack Daniel’s Whiskey label. Posted on the page is a large and prominent Confederate flag, as well as the results of an online IQ test in which your boyfriend scored a whopping 85. (You may want to inform him that the IQ test, unfortunately, is NOT a score out of 100.) You also note a large cartoon featuring a caricature of a penis as the main character, and further down, several racial slurs. (By the way, you aren’t white.) You following this so far? Good. Now let's turn this hypothetical situation into a guessing game. Your next course of action is to:

A. Dump him.
B. Not dump him.

You've got a 50/50 chance of getting it right, but if you really want to, you can use the information above to help you decide. Now wasn't that fun? I only wish MySpace could be this useful all the time. I also wish that what I described above really was no more than a just hypothetical situation, but alas! People are idiots.

The FOX Effect

So you're a television news network executive. You're facing stiff competition from FOX News and other networks resorting to mindless sensationalism to attract more viewers. Your reporters just aren't cutting it, despite your recent special reports featuring a graphic decapitation, two helicopters being shot down by the same missile, and a snake eating an alligator. Even your new reporter, a former prosecutor who never blinks and is in an eternal state of controlled outrage and whose advertising slogan is "I'm Nancy Grace... AND I'M LOCKED AND LOADED!" just isn't pulling it off.

Fine. Your solution, then, is to hire a formerly drug-addicted, disc-jockeying Mormon, make him get a haircut, and put him on the air as the "new and refreshing" voice in your network. Instruct him to laugh at all of his own jokes and confine his interviews exclusively to sexy blonde women under the age of thirty and angry bald men working for political organizations. The more inane each exchange, the better. You want interviews - say, one about illegal immigration - to sound like this one:

BECK: Since you're authorized to speak for all Mexicans, let me ask you this.
ARELLANO: Sure.
BECK: The Virgin of Guadalupe.
ARELLANO: Yes.
BECK: What's the need to display her on everything from T-shirts to bumper stickers? I mean, she's not Dora the Explorer.
ARELLANO: No, she's our beloved mother. You know, the empress of the Americas. And, you know, Mexican Catholicism is different from, I guess, American Catholicism in that we treat the sacred and the profane the same way. So we could have the Virgin of Guadalupe in our churches, but we'll also have her on hub cups. And I've even seen her in guacamole, too.
BECK: Chipotle sauce.
ARELLANO: Chipotle sauce.

Now that, my friend, is quality television. Don't forget to quietly phase out your network's old motto: "the most trusted name in news."

But really now, can you believe they cancelled shows like CNN Crossfire for this nonsense? For those of you unfamiliar with Crossfire, it was the greatest show ever. The entire show consisted of two Democrats and two Republicans, who would sit across a table from each other. The room was painted blue on the Democrat side and red on the Republican side, and in the background it had a large picture of a donkey and elephant squaring off. Following some pretty lights and 3-D animated introductions, a bell would sound and the show would start. The two sides would then proceed to point and call each other names until the bell sounded again. An enthusiastic live studio audience of college students would cheer them on. Television at its finest.

Why, CNN? Why?

Religion for Dummies

Well hello again, and welcome back to the rest of your life. It's been a while since my last post, so let's get this ball rolling again, shall we?

So I found an incredible book at a rummage sale. Seriously, incredible. It's titled You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth and is brought to us by everyone's favorite religious group, the Jehovah's Witnesses. This book is fantastic! It answers all of life's great questions with cookbook-style simplicity and pretty pictures that resemble something out of a drugged San Francisco hobo's canvas. With chapter titles such as "Wicked Spirits are Powerful" and "The End of the World is at Hand!" and "What You Must Do to Live Forever," this book is a real gem. (click to enlarge pictures, or you'll burn in eternal burningnage)

On evolution versus creation:

"When you are in your house, ask yourself: Did my desk, lamp, bed, chair, table, walls, or even the house itself, evolve? Of did they need a maker? Of course intelligent persons had to make them!"

On women:

"As the Bible says, the woman was made as a helper to her husband... when wives push ahead, trying to take over headship, their action is almost sure to cause trouble... By fulfilling her Bible-assigned role as 'helper and complement' to her husband, she makes it easy for her husband to love her."

On books:

Burn them.






On heaven:

Apparently, Heaven involves picking lots of apples. And conspicuously multi-ethnic people picking said apples. Notice the boy hugging the lion. Yep, that's right, kids. Join our church and you'll get a PET LION!


Heaven also has a bearded guy with a golden crown sitting on a really pimpin' shiny throne that is visible in the sky at night. Maybe he makes appearances at discos.




People in Heaven have really awesome hair.






My favorite part of this book is about the return of Christ. The writers of this book made careful calculations from the Bible and came to the indisputable conclusion that - get this - Christ returned to earth on October 1, 1914. That's right, 1914. And not only that, but he also founded a new country that year and is currently ruling it as a monarch. Unfortunately, the book does not specify exactly which country this is, although it does note that it is intentionally hard to find. Maybe it's some small middle eastern autocracy? Or a tiny island nation in the Pacific? Funny choices for our King of Kings, but I'm not going to be the one caught doubting the word of God when the victorious armies of Kuwait claim the world for His heavenly kingdom. No sir.

This book was totally worth the dollar I paid for it. I highly recommend it to anyone.

Democracy and Health Insurance Join Forces!

The sample special election ballots for the Congress seat formly held by our illustrious Randy "Duke" Cunningham arrived in my mailbox today. For those of you unfamiliar with San Diego politics, Mr. Cunningham was our glorious, honorable congressman who, being understandably human, unfortunately accepted a few bribes. Just a few. Around $2,400,000 to be exact, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, the race to replace him is concluding with this ballot. It looks ordinary enough on the outside, with the standard set of basic directions and conspicuously patriotic color scheme.

When I opened the ballot, however, I was surprised to discover that most of the ballot was occupied not by the ballot, but rather by advertisements and dieting advice. That's right - there are advertisements in the ballot. Your tax dollars are at work here, clearly.

(Click to enlarge - yes, these are actually in the ballot. I have trouble believing it too.) God bless America.

Travel Guide: Washington, Part Two

Alas, it was sad to depart from the lovely little town of patrol helicopters and roadblocks, but all good things must come to an end. After an uneventful flight home, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the contents of my baggage had been ransacked by unknown hands. It was okay though, because clearly whoever had furiously marauded through my belongings and left the fragile gift items damaged beyond repair had done so only with the best of intentions. Tucked away in a corner I discovered this (top left; click to enlarge unless you hate democracy) heartfelt apology for the melee that had transpired in my suitcase.


The "screening" of my bag most certainly must have gotten "physical." I am very sorry that the screeners were "forced" to break my items in order to fight terrorism. Damn you, terrorists! Forcing airport security to break my stuff! You will never break the resolve of our great nation!

I noticed that the note left in my bag was rather large and had been printed on thick cardstock. This must have cost our glorious, illustrious government extra money to print. Being the concerned citizen that I am, I propose that they shorten the message on the note to save their money for more important things, like munitions and tax cuts. Here is my simplified version of the note (bottom left). God bless America.

Travel Guide: Washington, Center of the Universe

The first thing to know about Washington is that, unlike southern California, it actually has weather. Yeah, the stuff you see on TV and read about in books. Like rain, which is the common name for the phenomenon when water falls from the sky! I know, it sounds really scary. Even more bizarre is this strange white substance that coats the ground during the night. The locals call this material "snow" and it supposedly falls from the sky as well. Surreal, I know. This just comes to reinforce the fact that everything east of California, with the exception of Las Vegas, is actually just a giant hologram illusion run by the government to make us believe that the world is not flat.

Here are three items that are very common in Washington.








I can tell you from experience: if you see a large steel barricade (quite abundant, too) like this one with lots of not-so-happy-looking policemen standing by it, don't go near it, especially if your skin color does not match theirs.

Don't eat lunch in the Supreme Court Food Court (who came up with that name?). It sucks. Now I understand why O'Connor retired early. And after getting sick from the Supreme Court food, certainly don't get lost in the Senate building and stumble upon John Kerry's office. Unless you want to sneak a photo of it and the snobby male secretaries.


After finally getting out of that god-forsaken Senate building, should you see something that resembles this thing, do NOT be carrying anything that resembles food. They are tiny robots programmed by the government to attack and kill without remorse. If they do happen to see you, scream and run like hell.

More later.