Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic

ro·man·tic \rō-ˈman-tik, rə-\ adjective: impractical in conception or plan

I am all too sober right now and listening to Toto's "Africa." I could be out drinking like a fish and/or flossing a stripper's thong with my hard-earned dollar bills, but I chose to do laundry and think about things that slosh around in my skull. I actually needed the laundry more than the lame down time, but hey, it's been about a bigillion years since I've written anything.

Plus, strip clubs kind of creep me out.

So, I've been doing some thinking about the next year which is pretty surprising since I don't exactly know what I'll be doing next week. Hell, I don't even know what I'm doing for lunch... today. Nevertheless, I will be moving, doing a shit ton of studying, a crap load of partying, and some traveling in the next year. All this stuff should put me in a good spot to complete my New Year's resolution which basically boils down to "suck less this year."

However, one small thing got left off January's pipe dream list. Maybe it wasn't that important at the time, and maybe it won't be imperative for a few months from now, but dating seems to be like Chik-fil-A on a Sunday - an F+ for timing.

And with all this running around and doing cool stuff in the next year I'm not going to have time to start dating again. I mean, I really want to, but I really REALLY want to move to Korea by Christmas next year and learn to play the ukulele. The situation is compounded due to the fact that women smell great (95.3% of the time), look way better than dudes, and a lot of them are pretty damn cool.

Maybe I should wait it out. My priorities can change. I'm sure I'll get bored with not having little arguments and having "the talk." Surely, doing whatever I want whenever I want will get on my nerves, right? I should be able to make time to take ladies to dinner since I already eat dinner on a regular basis (just do it in tandem?).

Yeah, it'll happen. No need to worry about being that old guy with way too many pets and bath robes....yet.

Besides, once I master the ukulele and start my ukulele rock cover band, the ladies should come running like coke fiends to...well...coke.

Thanks for reading this far.

My Christmas Story ..reposted for the 2009

I have to admit Christmas isn't my favorite holiday. It seems that the real meaning is lost in the hustle and bustle of whatever it is the stores wants us to believe....and I hate hustling and bustling... and stores.

It's like we've never heard the real story of Christmas, or we've forgotten it somewhere down the road.

So I post this thing every year to remind myself why the end of December is important. Maybe it'll remind you, too. If my interpretation seems too whimsical, you might need a little dose of Christmas spirit. Relax. Pour yourself a drink...and listen to this story:




...in a land far far away... a child was born...

... in a manger in Bethlehem.

But this was no ordinary baby. He was so awesome that righteous men

... before him predicted his birth.

Isa:7:14: 'Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.'

Isa:9:6: 'For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.


So 'away in a manger no crib for a bed the little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head...'

But the story has a dark side. King Herod of Judea was well aware of the coming of the 'King of Kings' and wasn't too keen on the idea.

So he dispatched three wisemen...

...to find this Prince of Peace so he could pay his 'respects'. Unfortunately, the King Herod's definition of respect was 'to kill in a timely fashion.'

So the three Magi followed the star....

(Isa:60:6: 'The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall shew forth the praises of the LORD.')

...and they found the Christ child and offered him gifts.

...but in those days the best they had was gold, frankincense and myrrh...

Fortunately, they were warned in a dream about King Herod's evil plan to kill Jesus... So they 86-ed the plan to report back to him thus allowing Jesus to go forth and inspire millions upon millions to follow in his footsteps.

Some people like to point out that Jesus may not have been born on December 25th. Some may even point out that Christmas has been over commercialized and has lost its true meaning.

But I'd much rather spend my time hanging out with friends and family.

...Because despite our differences in doctrines, opinions, and location...




Despite your views on Santa Clause...

...eggnog

Despite all of that stuff...
Just don't forget that...


THIS...


IS...

CHRISTMAS! Happy Birthday, Jesus!


Oh...and Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish brothers and sisters around the world...

...and Happy Holidays to the rest of the you guys!

Peace on Earth...Good will towards men!

DIEt!

OK, there was one last doughnut in the break room. It just happen to be a New York cheesecake doughnut which is basically made of angel wings and all things that are right with the world.

I had to eat it. That puffy cloud of goodness was put there specifically for me to eat, and who am I to fuck with fate? That thing was exactly what I expected - fuckin' outstanding.

Now I'm not a health food Nazi by any means, but I usually stay away from doughnuts on a regular basis. Besides being made from fried dough and sugar those things provide as much calories as two meals. In this case, the New York cheesecake train wreck came in at 340 delicious calories. Fuck a duck, dude!



But hey, I workout and run five days a week. I can have a doughnut every now and then - no big whoop.

All was good until a pair of Subway white macadamia nut cookies fell into my lap at the end of the day. I mean, I try and help my fellow man in a time of need, and she REALLY needed to get rid of those cookies. After 440 calories of Cookie Monster madness (Om Nom nom nom!), I got to thinking about how much activity it would take to burn off a total of 780 calories of fat-ass weakness.

According to my sources, I would have to run 6 mph for about an hour and four minutes to burn off 780 calories, but what if I hated running? If I were a weirdo douchebag or a circus performer, I would have to unicycle for about 130 minutes to justify cramming my cakehole with all that junk. If I really hated myself, I would have to go ice fishing for about 326 minutes to burn off 2 cookies and a doughnut - over five hours of freezing my ass off just to burn off three food items!

But I'm not going to go to fly off the handle and go on a diet. Most diets are dumb and disregard the history of food consumption. This world wasn't built by people who were afraid of meat, bread, and sugar. Any sort of meal plan that runs contrary to the old school, sensible food pyramid plan is retarded and has failure written all over it. Besides, doughnuts and steak are just too damn tasty, right?

So what's a schmuck to do after inhaling close to a quarter of his daily, caloric intake in about 10 minutes?

1. Stay calm. Life is long. Eating habits aren't defined by one day of treats. Just make sure most of your days aren't spent eating things closely related to fried Snicker bars and French fries. You can tell when you're in trouble when your hand resembles a plate of sausages...and you still want to eat them...or at least give them a nibble.

2. Allow yourself to enjoy some kind of treat occasionally because candy and fried mozzarella sticks are the shit!

3. You need to realize food equals calories which should be proportional to the energy you need for your level of activity. Overeating is sort of like trying to fill your car's gas tank two gallons over its capacity and pumping another half a gallon onto the dashboard. Sounds absurd, right?

But it's just as absurd as consuming the amount of calories needed by a world class athlete just to sit at a desk all day and sit on the couch all night.

4. I need to buy a unicycle and a stop watch...and maybe review my insurance policy.

The Complications of Wading

I love it when intelligent people describe their own personal life as "complicated." These are the same folks that can wrap their minds around space/time physics or are in charge of some very big things.

I used to be one of those people (minus the space/time physics and in charge stuff...so basically...I'm was nothing like them?), but one day my brain crapped out, and and since then my mind refuses to believe that life is as complicated as people make it.

For example, I was chatting with a friend fairly recently and inquired about her boyfriend since the the event we happen to be attending usually has the daters bringing a date and the single folks looking for dates or the bar. She told me that she and her boyfriend aren't seeing each other and that it was complicated.

But how complicated is it really? Now I'm not naive enough to think life is all black and white, but it's not all grey either. The way I see it - you're either with someone or... you're not.

But whatever. It's all relative. Everything looks a lot different when your wading in your own crap.

And as I smile and flippantly drink a beer from the safety of the shore I ask myself,

"Why in the hell would a rational person slosh around in their own muck?"



Figuratively or not - it doesn't make much sense.

So as the night wore on, the daters did the dating thing, and the single folks did their thing, and I did the only thing that made sense that night - I found the bar. It was pretty easy to find and not complicated at all.

Mazal tov!

A Day in the Life of a Bridesman

An actual IM chat



Mitchell says:
were you a bridesmaid in the wedding you were just at?

Mike Agagas says:
yeah

Mitchell says:
WHY?????????

Mike Agagas says:
she's my friend, fag.

Mitchell says:
i hope you got into a fight afterwards to let your balls drop back to there original place




Mike Agagas says:
maybe you need to grow bigger ones

Mitchell says:
just messin with ya.....where was it?

Mike Agagas says:
Breckenridge, CO

Mitchell says:
ahhh nice

Mitchell says:
snow?

Mike Agagas says:
a little

Mike Agagas says:
hey...can you repost your original question?

Mitchell says:
why

Mike Agagas says:
it's just funny

Mitchell says:
Mitchell says:
were you a bridesmaid in the wedding you were just at?

Mike Agagas says:
cool...thanks

Mike Agagas says:
fucker

Mitchell says:
hate you more

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

The older I get the more I get older music, and Bob Dylan is proving to be a badass sage.

I'm a creature of habit. I like predictability. I live in a place where permanence and green rarely go on vacation. It's always flip flop season in my world.

But the times are a-changin'

For some reason I'm yearning for some change. This wedding season came like a kick in the nuts, and while I was down for the count things started to look differently.

I need to travel more. Cold, snow, and changing leaves are not just for postcards and textbook covers, and now I have good friends in those far off places. These are the kind of friends that make you forget that you're freezing your ass off. Paradise sucks ass without those kind of friends.

The single life is starting to lose its luster, too. I won't elaborate too much on this since I'm not really sure wtfuck this means, but I've been thinking way too much about this crap lately. If bigger schmucks can pull off this dating thing, maybe it's a good time to test the waters again.

I have grown pretty complacent over the last few years. For some reason I'm looking for a new challenge - a new struggle, and the new struggle is more than learning how play kick-ass covers on the ukulele or marathon training.


And as I drove out to the beach this morning and felt the unfamiliar chill of autumn, I'm reminded that change can happen even in the safety of paradise.

And as I turned up the heater and cranked up the radio, Bob Dylan once again hijacked my thoughts. This place will never be enough to keep me satisfied.

Change is inevitable.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

last american slacker: The Interview part deux

So I was totally off about this living will thing! It's actually directions I determine about my health care in the event that I can't yell them out.

And I was all worried about the death part. This shit storm is on a totally different level!





Think about it: you're having a sandwich and maybe some chips at the park, and a boulder falls on you which crushes the part of your brain that controls speech and movement. You can't even yell out, "Fuck, get this damn boulder off my chips!" So your head hurts, you have a small cut on your thigh from car keys in you pocket being crushed into your leg, and you're pissed about the chips still.

To the world you look like some comatose shmuck just laying there pissing all over yourself, but deep inside you can still see, feel, and think. Your head is throbbing like the hangover from Spring Break 2001, but other than that and the gross smell of hospitals everything is as peachy as it can get.

Now I'm just the type of dude that likes to close down the bar. I like partying until is just me, the host, two other people, and what's left of the keg. I can sleep 14 hours, wake up, eat a sandwich, brush my teeth, and go back to sleep. It suffices to say I like to stick around for the long haul. I think I know where I want to go with this living will shit.

So here it is:

Mike's Living Will

1. Do not keep me alive if my body can't sustain everyday processes like filtering crap out of my blood, digesting pizza, processing air, responding to basic stimuli, etc. If I can do all these things, just make sure my cell phone bill doesn't go unpaid, and I don't grow facial hair. Both of those things are worse than death.

2. Pain in its many forms is totally acceptable. There are millions of people that deal with constant pain on a daily basis. Some deal with it in a dignified manner. Some bitch and moan, but let me deal with it. If I start crying bloody murder, point out that I'm actually crying, kick me in the nuts, and make we watch "Rocky". That should shut me up.

And don't give me pain meds. They make me feel weird, and they make me feel sick to my stomach. Bliss accompanied by vomiting sucks ass.

3. Treat me like I'm normal. Keep sending me emails. Comment on my stupid pics. Kick my ass at video games. Bitch about how I never reply back to your texts (I never did). It'll be hilarious and pretty damn nice of you. I'm thanking you ahead of time...just in case.

If for some reason emotion causes whoever is in charge of making these decisions for me to disregard the above three stipulations, I will haunt the fuck out of them. So help me God.

I want to stick around until the Notorious G.O.D. sends for me. I don't want any funny business and crying and crap. Life is good. Death could be a vacation, but we'll get there in good time.

That's it.

The End.