Maybe tropical storms should be assigned numbers and not names and other thoughts...

Yes, I am back and it really has been too long but like the jilted lover I return no less wise from the absence to my bizarre bed fellow of a blog. (I type this in a bunk bed by the way which is also an annoyance but a story for another time.)

I'm slightly bothered by the naming of the most recent tropical storm/hurricane/tornadocane, or whatever you want to call it. This is because it was named 'Tropical Storm Fay'. And sadly it's now been responsible for the deaths of five people. That's a serious issue but now I have to worry about what people now think about when they hear my name.

Will they say to themselves, "Oh yeah, Fay, that hilarious quirky, yet devastatingly handsome guy."? Or will they say, "Oh yeah, Fay, that pompous windbag who killed five and flooded my basement."?

It's a worrisome issue and I have proposed a solution to The National Weather Service or whoever decides on the naming of these phenomena. They should use numbers instead of names. 36671-C doesn't strike the same fear of say a Fay but it would save people so blessed with such a great name from the unnecessary hardship.

Just imagine how perfectly serviceable names can be ruined by these things... no one is going to touch Katrina with a one-hundred foot pole now. Unless, of course, they want their child to be a selfish watery shit who doesn't clean up their own messes.

And now on a completely different note, Padraig Harrington once again won a major, the PGA actually and it's his second major in three weeks and third overall. It's quite insane really, I never expected this and I feel as if I have been spoiled on incredible golf. He is now being touted as Tiger's main rival and being a tried and true fan of his for many years I could not be more overjoyed by my favorite athlete's success.

At least Ireland has one great sporting talent... I wish I could say so for the Olympics but alas those women and their ginger hair seem destined to finish last in every single race. Bring on the potato growing and eating contests!

Allow myself to introduce..., myself

Perhaps this is long overdue, at least I think it is. Haven't you all been wondering who the mastermind behind this amazing blog is anyway? The following is a question and answer session administered by myself and answered by myself.

#1: Who are you?
a: I am Steven Phillip Fay, although my middle name should not have had two L's in it, that was he mistake of a foolish hospital matron or whatever you call them.

#2: What are you?
a: First and formost, I am a man, although as I have mentioned earlier, my facial hair would beg to differ. But I am also a writer, a comedian, a critic, a (insult stereotype about angst here) teenager and a redhead with a slight, ahem... acne problem.

#3: Why are you?
a: Well I assume because one night back in 1989 my parents were bored with just my brother and nothing was on TV, but seriously I don't much believe in fate or destiny or anything like that. It would be nice but I think that we have to make the most of ourselves from the opportunities with which we are presented.

#4: What do you want to become?
a: A good question but one that I do not know the answer to. I know that I want to be a writer and I would love to have others read the opinions and ideas or commentaries of me in some fashion. I just want to have my voice heard in some shape or form but if that means being that drunk guy with the untucked flannel shirt who gets on the evening news or being the replacement for Stephen Colbert I don't know. It should be Steven by the way, his name isn't spelled right.

#5: Barbara Walters, Oprah, your wife. You gotta kill one, fuck one, marry one, what do you do?
a: No comment.

I'm a pretty unconventional guy, this is what I have been led to believe as well as what others have told me. I'm not exactly popular but I'm not unpopular either and I would like to believe that it would be hard to pigeonhole me into any sort of stereotype of someone my age (ie., emo, jock, nerd, prep...)

I have a close group of friends but we're by no means close minded. There's Hans, my best friend for 11 years and counting since 2nd grade. He's basically a taller and blonder version of me, sort of. I couldn't imagine my life without him. Then there's Jack, who holds a quiet respect about him but also a very unique and biting humor. I couldn't imagine my life without him either, or without that beard of his... Then there's Abby, who is basically a female version of me, and I mean that in the best possible way and she knows I do. We've only been good friends for a short time but as well as we both get along and have in common, it feels like much longer. Then there's Paige, who I've also known for a short time but we've gotten close quickly. She shares my passion for song as well as dance and is by far the most.... um, physical of my friends. Together, the five of us make the perfect cast for a television sitcom.

And there you have it, that's basically me, barring a whole lot of other pointless and bizarre minutia which you shall hear about soon enough.

Thoughts on the mysterious garage house and Hans

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the 'Garage House' it's quite a sight to behold. Located sort of over by Gatewood Elementary and Glen Lake Golf course it is a giant three car garage that is really like a small house. One time when I was snooping around the place while it was being built I noticed that there were rooms behind the car stalls and even bathrooms and a shower. A real bachelors paradise I assumed.

But there were other theories as well. The garage itself has been so fancy and the lot that it was built on so expansive that I just naturally assumed that a house would be built next to the garage as well. It never materialized and whether or not it has anything to do with finances that fell through or if it had been the intention of whoever it was all along to just build a trumped up garage I had no idea.

Then months later after the construction of the garage house came the strangest news yet. Allegedly a baby had been shaken to death by someone who lived in that house. That's quite disturbing, now not only am I worried about these people because they build really luxurious garages but also because they kill babies. Surely you would never leave a child to someone who had more garage space than home space right?

After that happened there has been relatively little coming out of the place as far as news or updates but when I drive by I occasionally see either a lot of cars parked in front of the place or some over grown man children playing basketball driveway. I don't know a whole lot about the people that inhabit that place but perhaps that is a good thing as maybe we would have nothing to talk about on account of how I have a house that is bigger than my garage and them vice versa.

Hans, a chum of mine recently alleged that he was a robot. His contention being that he is very calculating while I on the other hand am very much a feeling or instinctual guy. Perhaps I am but being the contrarian that I am I challenged his claims and even presented him with a situation to see how his mathematical and calculating brain would handle the situation.

-This is the situation for him now: "You're all alone with this girl, and you like her, you've known her for a couple of weeks but you haven't been physical yet. What do you do?"

Hans then basically told me that he would analyze the situation and then determine of what percent the chances of them 'being physical', my words not his, would be. He concluded to me that he would have to be around 100% certain before he made his decision. But here's the clincher now, basically all of us think this way really. He could try to make it sound more technical by using percents but basically we all have the same thoughts more or less.

While he may use a spreadsheet excel document to chart and categorize all of his music and I don't that's just fine because I can dance and carry a tune better than he can anyway. There's probably video and/or audio evidence to support that claim to that effect somewhere in the possession of either Abby or Paige...

To Hans: I say this because I care... I think. :^) (profile of my face, note the nose)

It'll give us so much extra space in our room to do activities...

I don't think that I have ever been so quickly swayed into the 'awesomeness' of a movie as I have been by Step Brothers. I left the theater dumbfounded as to how a movie could be both so hilarious and so perfectly stupid all at the same time.

This truly could be a life changing experience for me. I have seen first hand what I want to do when I grow up, assuming I do get a job and move out of my house, much like the movie but anyway I can see no other career that I would love more than to write screenplays for films. You can constantly reinvent yourself in a way that isn't possible with journalism which is the other option that I have given myself.

But maybe I shouldn't limit myself to just that. I've always said that when I grew up and got a career it would have something to do with writing but in all honesty, even that could change. I mean I love to write but I also love travel, and talking to and making other people feel better, the whole human condition thing and it's better understanding. I want to be known as someone who did something good and maybe changed the way people thought about something by laughter or otherwise but I still am grappling with the how. Hopefully college will provide some answers. (Yes, amazing as it may seem, I am going to college, and an accredited one at that.)

So yeah, that's quite impressive really. I got quite a lot about my potential future from a movie that features a guy 'tea-bagging' another guys drum set...

I am ehh, happy that I made the puut...

I honestly cannot believe what has just happened. My favorite golfer, now world #3 Padraig Harrington has won the British Open for a second straight year and honestly I could not be more happy for someone else's success. To quite George Costanza from Seinfeld, "I'm busting Jerry, I'm busting!"

I've also been doing a lot of thinking lately about what I would like to name my child(ren), assuming I have one or two which I think I will assuming I find a woman insane enough to want to be with me and I have come up with several options which I consider to be quite good.

#1: Jemaine (no, this is not a typo and I did not mean to type Jermaine, it's a new take on the name and one I rather like)
#2: Seven (yes, I know this is a number but think about how unique my kid would be, it's certainly memorable no?)
#3: some random Irish/Gaelic sounding name that I haven't decided on yet, possibly Liam or Fergal or Fintan (those wouldn't get their asses kicked in school right?)

I used to be really annoyed by those people who pulled out their cellphones and started texting someone but now I'm one of those people. I have truly become everything I have ever hated. No, no, no, but yeah, yeah, yeah...

Also, on the subject of Irishness/Padraigness, I was recently informed by my aunt and my father that it would be possible for me to apply for dual Irish/American citizenship on account of my father hailing from the Emerald Isle. This of course would be amazing and would save me from putting a Canadian maple leaf on the back of my backpack when I travel to Europe. So take that Americans who don't have a mother or father who was born in another country! That is all.

This hasn't gone exactly as planned...

So it's been about, I don't know, a week and a half since I started trying to grow a beard in earnest and it hasn't gone perfectly to plan. The small reddish orange hair sprouts seem localized around my chinular region but the further the follicles travel up either side of my face their frequency becomes considerably less well, frequent.

I suppose I could write it off to not being being fully matured yet but is it wrong that I equate whether or not I can grow a beard as a litmus test for if I am a man or not? Well I suppose I'm not but a good friend of mine can grow a full and hearty beard and he's younger than I am even if he does resemble a certain Iranian president and may have the slightest issue getting past airport security.

I may have even regressed. Recently while driving home one night I found myself wondering, tempted even, by what sort of music happened to be on a radio station that specified in playing about 20-25 songs that all basically sound the same, have the same pounding beat and techno/pop sounds, and basically interchange the words 'bed-set' with 'dance-floor' or some other sort of innuendo that uses dancing as a metaphor for sex.

I really don't know what has been happening to me but what I do know is that the beats are quite intoxicating and as such are quite conducive to dance. This can be with others or even when I am in my car listening to the radio myself. I suppose maybe I have just opened my mind.

Now if I could just open the mind of my body chemistry so that it could listen to the techno/pop music of my brain and dance a beard onto my face.

One of my favorite stories that never saw the light of day: Future Toilet!

I have personally always been intrigued by people who take something, such as an established invention that makes sense and doesn't need improvement, and then make it entirely unnecessary. This can be seen in refrigerators with televisions in them, waffle irons with radios on the handle, or... Japanese toilets that can play music and make you feel better about yourself.

The following is a newspaper article that was written more for my own selfish enjoyment than something that I ever thought that would see print. Behold!


"Future Toilet"

Forgive me if I am nonplussed about the latest development in bowl evacuation technology. Enter stage right the new ‘Intelligence Toilet’ system. Believe me, I’m as shocked as you are but before you have any terrible ideas brewing let me explain.

This wonder toilet does it all, it checks your blood pressure, it gives you advice, and it tells you if you look fat in those pants. I was kidding about the last one but you couldn’t tell. The future is now and that future is pointless household items that do what no one ever asked them to do.

This invention of course is great for me because I’ve been waiting forever for a toilet that I can confide in, mentally not physically of course. Forget about scheduling doctor’s appointments because now you have your $4,000 dollar toilet to keep you healthy. I figure that after one hundred or so visits to the toilet, the thing will pay for itself.

Seems to me that if we have automobiles that can sense stress by how we grip the steering wheel and then put on the air conditioning and play our favorite song and toilets that track our health then robot butlers cannot be that far away.

Only recently my mind has literally been blown by all of the new advancements in bathroom waste receptacle technology. While I was in Europe length of flush toilets came to my attention. Without going into too much detail about anything other than the flushing, one can control how long the flush is by simply pressing the handle down.

Now not only does a toilet save water by controlling the length of the flush but it also saves lives. Surely the headline, “Toilet saves family of five” cannot be that far away with the new technologies that we are now developing.

Why even bother with the paramedics, soon we will have common tables and chairs that will perform transfusions and assist in pregnancies and everything will be fully automated. Of course, we must make certain that these household items are not smarter than we are. We don’t want a human robot war on our hands.

The leader of the invasion would probably be the Intelligent Toilet. This would be because it could get to us when we were at our most vulnerable state regardless or if we were sitting or not. We must constantly be on alert, we must not let the toilet lure us into its trap giving us information about the Panama Canal and the GDP of India and emitting a pleasant scent when suddenly, BAM!, it gets you!

When you are using the toilet or ‘powdering your nose’ you get in and out as quickly as possible. This means no reading material or falling asleep while on the Intelligent Toilet. If you have fallen asleep no worries, you will never wake up.

Hang on a minute here we may have made a wrong turn somewhere. It seems like I was discussing the GDP of India and suddenly the toilet is a cognizant being that is trying to kill us?

If all of our toilets pose potential threats to our lives then maybe we should get rid of toilets altogether. We don’t need to get our blood pressure from a toilet, we have doctors for that. We don’t need advice from a toilet, we have psychiatrists for that. We don’t need toilets, we have holes dug in the ground outdoors for that.

But before you throw your low-flows away and begin naturally composting the outdoors, as I know you will. Wait and take a minute to think about what I have said. Your heart may be beating pretty fast with you processing the information that I have told you so you might want to take a minute or two and check your heart rate with your toilet.