JayarJackson

1.                  Forget the “Middle Child” complex.  The oldest and youngest children of families have reason to worry that they were the “accident.”

I’m the youngest of a family of 5 children.  While growing up, there were no typical characteristics that haunted the middle child of the family, so I don’t know how that is such a prominent character of family life.  What does this middle child have to be so weird about?  They have no worry in the world…they can be sure that they were not the possible accident child of the family!  The two children that get the most secure characteristics as the “oldest” and the “youngest” actually have the most to question as they get older and see the world differently. 

The oldest child can wonder, “Was I conceived in the back seat of a 1975 Cutlass?  Was I the reason Mom and Dad got married…so that he would make a respectable lady out of her?”  Did Grandpa tell him, “You got her pregnant, now you’re going to marry my Little Girl!” 

On the other hand, the youngest can seriously consider that their parents were happy with the number of kids they had, but had one more irresponsible night while on vacation and the other kids were finally old enough to stay in other rooms.  Maybe they can wonder, “Was I a vacation baby?  Did the brochures filled with crystal waters and exquisite views spark a flame that my parents hadn’t felt in a while?  Oh, so THAT’S why Dad told me never to use Lifestyles…those things don’t work when you need them to!” 

You middle children have it easy, there’s the safety and security of older and younger siblings surrounding you like airbags and bumpers on a family minivan. 

 

2.                  When did the cars on "The Price Is Right" stop being the best prize??

Starting at age 5 when driving was such a distant reality, watching the Price Is Right still had you hoping for Rod Roddy to scream “A NEW CAR!!” as the double doors slid open, imagining that you could play the game right and win a car of your own.  As I sit as a grown ass man watching Drew Carey and some sane-looking announcer giving away cash and prizes, I realized that the irrational thought of winning something on The Price Is Right has transitioned from those ugly, base-model cars to vacations and living room sets.  I don’t even hope for the showcase to include TWO cars the way it did about once/year.  What the hell am I going to do with two cars?  “Pass that showcase and hope for the spa, HDTV, full kitchen, and vacation to the Netherlands!”

So as I sit on my used, worn couch that my ex-girlfriend’s punk ass cats scratched holes into, those packages of couches, loveseats, and televisions become much more valuable.  I wish Drew Carey would let me win that; I’m not going to spend all that money on a new living room set…I just bought this expensive car!!  Who needs a green base model Ford Mustang with cloth seats, slower engine, and no rear spoiler, I didn’t pick that out!

 

--JJJ

1.                  I realize this is morbid, but in preparation for an unexpected and sudden death, shouldn’t people make sure their house and surroundings are clean so that everyone’s last impression of them won’t be remembered as dirty? 

Fine, I watch too much A&E, too much real life murder drama like The First 48 and Forensic Files, and drug and alcohol disaster documentaries like Intervention.  Still, every time the homicide detectives walk into an apartment to find a person that has been murdered or even passed away of seemingly natural causes, their surroundings are immediately searched and analyzed, THOROUGHLY!  In the house of a person that lives alone, it is obvious that their comfort level is immense, possibly leaving some of the mess of life scattered a bit longer than a person with roommates or family around. 

Maybe it was a stressful and busy week at work, maybe they just had a get together and they hadn’t had sufficient time to pick up everything before their untimely death interrupted the cleaning process.  No one will ever know now that they can’t say to unexpected company, “I’m sorry for the mess, I’m really not this disorganized.”  You even get the opportunity to invite friends over again to a clean and Pine Sol-fragranced abode.

Your mother always told you to wear clean underwear, since you’ll never know if you may end up in the hospital with embarrassing streak marks due to unintended circumstances.  This is just a more extreme and gruesome warning: Sweetheart, just in case you ever catch a burglar in your house and you happen to lose the fight in the struggle for your life, wash your toilet, vacuum your floors, and clean your sheets, REGULARLY!  You don’t want your friends and family to think you were a nasty ass, there’s no coming back from that eternal judgment. 

 

2.                  When people sing love songs, (or hate songs) by the opposite sex, they have to replace the “he” with “she” or vice versa.

I like to relate to some of the songs that I enjoy listening to.  Sure, when slow jams come on and the deep voiced DJ on the radio won’t stop talking between every song using uncomfortable terms like, “Baby Making Music” I get in the mood to (badly) sing.  So when a good song comes on that makes me say, “This is my jam” every now and then it happens to have been made by a woman…singing about a man. 

Yeah, the song sounds great and has some great vocals that I’m singing along with, but once she gets to singing about how “HE draws me in, making ME powerless,” it’s time to modify those inaccurate lyrics on the fly.  So without missing a beat, the lyrics change to “I draw her in, SHE’S powerless.”  Ain’t nobody gonna be thinking I’m singing about some dude making me powerless!!! 

Think this is just a pigheaded man thing?  Naw, I’ve heard women from my sisters to Blu Cantrell changing lyrics to fit their gender and sexual orientation.  When Usher sang, “You remind me of a girl that I once knew,” Blu’s verse had to go the opposite. 

Sometimes even the masters of music and songwriting need a little editing applied to their lyrics when the most accurate words to come out of my mouth are on the line.  Think about it, you’ve done it, too! 

--JJJ

1.                  Guys are so irrationally freaky when it comes to their fantasies; we don’t realize that some of what we dream about making a reality is simply INCEST!

 Girls Gone Wild, a couple of female college roommates making out for the first time, Katy Perry’s song, “I Kissed a Girl.”  We fellas have an obsession with women hooking up for reasons beyond my understanding.  Although few like to admit it, most of us are illogically drawn to these displays of exhibitionism simply because we think that eventually, the girls will soon invite us in on the action.  Now, if these women are actually the lesbians that men drool over and are actually into each other, why would they want to invite a guy in on their intimacy?  When we’re hooking up with a girl we’re interested in, do our minds begin to think, “Hmm, this would be much better if another guy was nibbling on my ear.”  Despite the rare cases that this fantasy becomes a reality, we double our bet and think, “Wouldn’t it be even hotter if I hooked up with twins?” 

To that increasingly idiotic thought I realized that if this were to come true, we’d be witnessing and contributing to incest, or in this case, “twincest!”    

Why is it so hot to imagine jumping in the middle of a couple of Asian twins, but so nasty to think about a brother and sister hooking up?  Because the majority of my fellow man are helpless imbeciles, that’s why.  So before you try to talk a cute set of Swedish twins into illicit behavior, imagine kissing your twin brother. 

 

2.                  Looking for a roommate feels like an even more uncomfortable personal ad, trying to attract someone through cyber space. 

Living in the expensive city of Los Angeles almost always requires having a roommate unless you’ve hit the ground running with enough money to foot the bill yourself or you’re highly successful at an early age.  With so much relocating throughout the city amongst us young folks, roommates come and go with great regularity.  Now that my last roommate is moving out, I’ve found myself searching for a new roommate the random way.  While there are plenty of search tools like roommates.com and craigslist.org, the information we put out there about ourselves is probably very similar to something people put on match.com. 

As I wrote about my situation and what kind of place I’m offering to share, I couldn’t help but to try to sell myself as a great person, an excellent roommate that is positive, fun-loving, and sociable.  With the competition writing witty phrases about how they should be chosen, I felt obligated to convince all those strangers that I’m the best pick out of the thousands they might come across.  Pictures seem to help but so many questions arise: “Should I even include a picture?  And if I do, why am I including a picture?  What are they looking for when they see me?  Why am I even checking out what my potential new roommate looks like?  Wait, why is HE including a picture of himself?  As I stare at this dude online at work, do my co-workers think I’m perusing men online?  When I look at a picture of a potential female roommate, what am I looking for?  Cute, but not my style?  Maybe ugly so that if she drops her towel as I’m heading to the bathroom, there won’t be any awkwardness. 

Oh forget it, I’ll just pay the whole rent and not eat, I hear having the liberty of walking around in the nude is exhilarating! 



--JJJ

1.                  We’ve all heard of Beer Goggles, so do self beer goggles exist?

All of us adults know and understand the not-so-amazing phenomenon of beer goggles.  If you drink enough alcohol while out at a bar, the unattractive look decent and in some cases, hot!  The guys having a drought nab some woman to hook up with and women that have chosen their drought status give themselves enough of an excuse to end it.  Sure, it works for the objects of our affection, but don’t we take a look in the mirror every once in a while or at the end of nights out on the town?  Don’t we look a little extra sexy when we take a glance at ourselves in the middle of firmly placing beer goggles to distort our actual judgment in the cruel world? 

Try it the next time you’re out, party kids.  Your disheveled, unkempt look at the end of the evening just might look better than your sober preparation just a few hours before. 


2.                  Those Viagra commercials are so ethical; they always make a note to show that the couple is married.

I watch a lot of ESPN and therefore, see more Viagra and Cialis commercials than I can count.  Hmm, I wonder who their target audience is.  Anyway, I noticed that in every Viagra commercial I can think of, they blatantly sneak in a shot of a wedding ring on the woman’s hand, or a theme based on their marriage.  Does this help their image amongst men, 50 years old and up?  Without the proof that their catering to married men having trouble in the sack, their sales just might take a dive.  I don’t think we’ll be seeing one of these commercials showing a gray haired man taking off his wedding ring as he heads in to a bar to the tune of…”Viva Viagra!!”