Tick/Tock

Before I begin, I would like to make it clear that I love my mother very much. She reads my writing, so I wouldn’t want her to get the wrong idea about anything I post online.

That being said, the woman has the most skewed concept of time in the world. All of the clocks in our house (with the exception of the ones in my bedroom) are set to be approximately five minutes ahead of the actual time. Her reasoning is understandable: she never wants to be late.

Therefore, one would assume that it is easy to be able to know the correct time while looking at any clock in my house. All you would really have to do is subtract five minutes from the time which is upon the clock,. However, like many of life’s false promises, this protocol is full of flaws due to the fact that absolutely none of the clocks in the Peterson household are set to the same time.

Take, for example, a sample reading of a few of the house’s timepieces:
* The clock on the wall in the dining room (that is taped together with scotch tape because I accidentally made it fall one time) reads 10:48.
* There lies a small desktop clock atop the wine rack in the dining room that reads 10:31.
* In the living room, there’s a clock that chimes every 15 minutes. It reads 10:46.
* On the wall in the living room, there is a nifty cuckoo clock that reads 10:47.
* There also sits a cheap grandfather clock in the dining room that my brother got for my mother for her birthday or something a few years ago. It reads 3:50, but I’m pretty sure the reason for that inaccuracy can be attributed to a lack of consistent winding. Anyhow, it still contributes to the point at hand.
* The actual time, according to “The Man”:http://www.time.gov/, is 10:43.

The success of my mother’s goal of punctuality, therefore, is wholly dependent on which room you’re in before you leave. Me? I’ll just sit at my computer and be five minutes late to every place I go.

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Coming soon to a country club near you!

We Petersons have a sad and sorry history when it comes to the game of golf. My father brought a new level of amateurism to the sport when he started way back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth and has since passed along the torch of suckiness to his two sons.

Yesterday, in an attempt to feel rich, my brother and I traveled out to a local course. We qualified it as such: he’s soon to be a lawyer, and lawyers need to golf. Anyhow, we teed off on the first hole with positive attitudes and optimistic outlooks. By the 18th green, however, our hopes and dreams were cut at the seams.

Ian and I started this par 53 course with boxes and boxes of shiny new golf balls. We finished the course with (very lenient) scores of 85 and 99, respectively, and one golf ball.

One ball.

By the 18th tee, we had managed to lose upwards of 20 balls and were forced to play the hole separately. I used the remaining ball to finalize my already miserable stroke count and then brought it back to the tee so that my brother could finish up the course. That, my friends, is Peterson golf at its finest.

Perhaps we should just stick to video games.

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Since sliced bread

I am fully aware of the fact that there cannot possibly exist more than, say, four people in the entire world that share my opinions on this matter. However, because the Internet is an outlet for my (always correct) thoughts on a variety of subjects, I’m just going to go ahead and say this because it needs to be said.

Up until a week ago, I wouldn’t watch MTV if my life depended on it. I felt that it would make my brain rot into a casserole of knowledge that once was. However, as an ordinary teenager in the United States, I have learned to embrace the inanity of it all and settle for a mediocre intellectual existence.

That said, brace yourself for the opinion that may encourage you to close your browser and never read my ramblings again:

The “Andy Milonakis Show”:http://www.mtv.com/onair/andy_milonakis/ on MTV is the best show on basic cable today.

I know – it’s a radical view. But this guy throws the best random and in-your-face humor fight at you and you are forced to keep up with his outrageous antics or get left behind in the dust of pure genius. Unfortunately, a majority of the world is so closed minded that the art behind the scripting of the Andy Milonakis Show is lost behind immature cries for more mind numbing filth like “Date My Mom”:http://www.mtv.com/onair/dyn/date_my_mom/series.jhtml or “Room Raiders”:http://www.mtv.com/onair/dyn/room_raiders/series.jhtml and is therefore destined to die a pretty quick death.

Those ignorant fools.

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It's how you play the game

If you’ve never played The Penis Game, you are either above the age of 20 or a total loser. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the sport, here’s a quick 411:

One person says the word “penis” in a public place. Another person, having accepted Player One’s challenge, then says “penis” at a higher decibel. In variations of the game, another person is generally the unofficial judge and confirms whether or not Player Two’s exclamation was louder. The two players each repeat their turns and the loser is the person who lacks the confidence to continue shouting the sullied word.

Now, my family is a unique bunch. We’ve been playing for years, and my mother is almost always our competition. She never misses a good round of The Penis Game.

Yesterday, the family was in the state capitol, and when we entered the solemn sanctuary known as the Florida Supreme Court, I couldn’t help myself. I nudged my mom and the contest was on.

Though the game was very short lived (as my mother was far too embarrassed to play in such a setting), it was very exciting. Needless to say, after all was said and done, I was the champion. Yes, folks, that’s right – I was the victor in the highest court in the State of Florida.

That’s one down, 49 to go.

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Cheesed off

When I was a little kid, I was always wary of eating salad. If it was green and was not covered with melted cheddar cheese, there was never usually a good chance that such an item would come within a foot of my mouth.

In my old age, though, I’ve matured a little bit. If I am eating at a restaurant and my dinner comes with a salad, I can manage to swallow it while washing it down with a nice vinaigrette.

However, I cannot bring myself to eat garden salads. My ideal salad is basically a bowl of lettuce with croûtons and a sufficiently fattening dressing. I have nothing against garden salads in regards to their content except for one item.

When the chef takes those little strips of carrots and showers my salad with them, my basic instinct (or wishful thinking, whichever you prefer) says, “Oooh! Cheese!”

Oh no, my friends. It’s just carrot. Yuck.

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Cut it out

This past week as I was making myself a turkey sandwich, I thought to myself, “Gee, self: you should write a blog entry concerning the merits of the diagonal sandwich cut as opposed to the horizontal.”

Days have since passed, and I have not yet mustered (no pun intended) up the energy to preach from my digital soapbox against the sins of boring sandwich cutting. There’s what summer will do to a kid.

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