The "Otin Interview" Part 1

Let's suppose that Otin was a famous person and was asked to do an interview for a popular magazine, it would probably go something like this....

Here at ARMCHAIR MAGAZINE we have the pleasure of a rare sit down interview with the man that the world knows as OTIN. In a category with one name icons such as MADONNA,CHER, and PRINCE, Otin has been a recluse these past few years. We sat down with him at his North Carolina home.
AMC: Nice to meet you Otin, shall we call you Otin?
OTIN: You can call me Michael, Otin is just a leftover name I used on the last computer that I had.
AMC: You say that you are not very good with a computer, why is that?
OTIN: In my entire life, I've got about 8 months experience on a computer. I look at other peoples blogs and have no idea how they do some of the things that they do.
AMC: How did you figure out what you've been doing.
OTIN: I just experiment alot and if I get stuck I ask someone, but I'd rather figure it out on my own.
AMC: You grew up in NJ and ended up in NC, yet you say you miss NJ, how did you end up in NC?
OTIN: I was working construction for my Mother and Stepfathers business, and was not being treated well, so I took a trip to NC to visit some relatives and here I am. I needed some seperation at the time, but I now miss my childhood home.
AMC: Construction huh? You seem fairly intelligent, how did you end up in the blue collar world?
OTIN: I was college bound all the way, had the grades, a free ride, but I just got burned out on school, and I thought I knew everything. I was too stubborn to move back home and go to school, I think it was because of my stepfather at the time.
AMC: You've mentioned Stepfathers, your parents were both remarried?
OTIN: My parents have made a mockery of marriage, they have eight between them. My childhood was messed up.
AMC: It has been documented that you are an atheist, is this true?
OTIN: Yea, I never had the ability to believe in a higher power.
AMC: Did your parents introduce you to religion?
OTIN: They tried, I went to sunday school for awhile, but I just never could feel anything for it.
AMC: How do you feel about religious people?
OTIN: I envy people that have faith in something. When I was young I used to like to debate people about religion, but then I grew up and realized that their belief is something special. The only time that I get annoyed is when people feel sorry for me, I can repect their beliefs, they should be able to accept mine.
AMC: So I take it that you are pro abortion?
OTIN: Pro abortion is such a stupid term. No one is happy about aborting children. To an atheist life is precious because that is all there is. It is a sad thing when someone gets an abortion, but I don't think that anyone should be able to tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her own body.
AMC:What do you think about the death penalty?
OTIN: I hate the death penalty! If just one person is wrongly convicted, then its not a penalty, it's state sponsored murder. How can you guarantee that convictions are correct 100% of the time. There was an HBO movie years ago called "Someone's got to shoot the picture", it was very sad.
AMC: On to lighter subjects, what kind of music do you like?
OTIN: I'll listen to anything except rap, to me rap is not music. I lean more towards hard rock, but also love the 60's music. Sometimes, when I drive someplace, I'll listen to heavy metal on the drive there, and I'll listen to classic country on the way home.
AMC: Why do you like blogging?
OTIN: I like meeting interesting people, without really meeting them, if you know what I mean. People are very free and honest with their opinions, there are humor blogs, personal blogs, and informative blogs. I like seeing what other people think about subjects, and I like letting people know what I am thinking. It's like having friends without the baggage.
(end of part 1)

Aloha Friday #3

In Hawaii they tend to take it easy on Friday, so I will take it easy on blogging. To check out more details on Aloha Friday, go to http://islandlife808.com/ .

My question for this week is: Is there any age that you would not want to live past?

My answer is that I want to live as long as my mind is functioning fine, but I am afraid of dying.

Cats

I recently adopted a cat from a shelter, it was only a couple of days away from being put to sleep, so I feel like I saved her. I saw this picture and thought that it was a nice picture for cat lovers!

Working

I am often asked why don't I start my own business, and I have thought about it, but have never persued it. To me, in order to have your own business, you really have got to be on top of everything 24/7, at least, that is how I would be. I see the way people work sometimes and it makes me crazy. I am sort of a work-a-holic in the sense that I give 110% the entire time that I am working, I hate breaks, and find lunch time interrupting to my efficiency. I pretty much make my own rules, can do what I think is best, and never really see my boss. I get alot of fringe benefits, without the headaches of running my own company. I think if I was working alone that I would start something in a heartbeat, but having to rely on others is a problem for me. One thing for sure, though, if I make a mistake, I will own it. If someone tries to blame me for something that I did not do, It will get ugly!

Not your usual Headline

The only thing worse than a broken condom is a bunch of broken condoms!

F**CKING BANKS!

I tried to take advantage of the low interest rates and refinance my house. I am currently at 6 and 3/4 percent. I would save almost 200 dollars a month on my mortgage payment. My credit score is in the upper 700's and I have not paid any bill late in the last 15 years. I went to the same bank that I currently have my mortgage with, and they turned me down because of my income to debt ratio. So the bank that I have made 60 straight payments to, all on time, now thinks that I am a risk, even though my payments would be 200 dollars less. I tried another bank and they flinched at the ratio also.(I'm at 50% and the banks like you at 40%) So let me get this straight, I work, pay taxes that get converted into money to bail out banks, then the banks take that money and buy other banks, so that they can deny a good risk a cheaper payment, while the government works out a way to give all the high risk people a break! It does not pay to be a fucking hard working, responsible person, anymore!

Moral Dilema

Growing up in the north you don't see some of the sights that you see when traveling about the southern states. This is pretty common in places like Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. When I am driving and I see signs like this it makes me laugh. Truckers really have a moral dilema.

Summer

Summer is right around the corner! It's time for boating, swimming, cook outs, and generally a better way of life. Don't get me wrong, I love a good snow storm every once in a while, and I used to do alot of skiing, when I lived near a mountain, but there is nothing better than hooking up the boat on a warm weekend morning and taking it down to the ocean! We fish quite a bit and usually end up catching different varieties of sharks and other oddities, it seems that most of the good fish evade my efforts. At least I have better days at sea than this guy is about to have. I think he needs a bigger boat!

Aloha Friday #2

Taking it easy again on Friday. I am supposed to ask one question for you to answer. For more details go to http://islandlife808.com/ and read all about it. O.K., here is my question:





If you could change one decision that you made in your life, what would you change?





My answer is that I would have continued with school and sought a professional career, instead of thinking that I knew everything. I ended up working twice as hard.

Silly Stuff

It's amazing how little it takes to entertain me sometimes!

Blue Collar Idol

It seems that being a reality TV contestant is kind of like winning the lottery. Take american Idol, for instance, once you've made it into the top 12 on that show, then you will get a shot at a music career. Some of these people have no real life experiences, and yet the public pulls for one of them to basically become rich because they can carry a tune. Some of the singers are 16 or 17 years old, and they say that this is their last shot at a music career, acting like their lives will be over if they get sent home.
I think that we should have a Blue Collar Idol, hundreds of competitions are possible, like seeing which single mothers can keep their kids fed and clothed the best, or which waitress is the friendliest, or who is the most efficient school teacher, anyway, you get the point. I wish society would start rewarding people for things other than carrying a tune or throwing a ball. It takes a disaster for people to honor firefighters!

Urban Legends

Every town that I have lived in always has it's urban legends. The funny thing is that you hear the same stories, told the same way, by someone that knows someone that saw something. Every town has a Chinese restaurant that has been caught serving cat! This is silly if you think about it, I'm sure that chicken would be cheaper and easier to prepare.

Another one that I always hear is about some poor guy that is getting oral sex while driving, gets into a wreck, and they find him and the girl at the accident scene, the woman with the severed penis in her mouth.

Then there is the one about the boy that is getting dizzy while fishing, and it turns out that the worms that he has been using to fish with are actually baby snakes, biting him when he reaches into his can to get one

And, of course there is always a house where someone was murdered and it now is haunted.

How about the people driving around with their lights off waiting for someone to flash their lights at them so they can chase them down and kill them.

Someone always seems to know about someone putting snakeheads in a lake, or flushing an alligator down the toilet so that it ends up in the sewer.

Do you know any? I have actually had people in at least three different areas tell me these stories saying that they knew someone that these things happened to!

Superheroes

Does anyone else like superhero movies? I watch them all, yet I am not satisfied with most of them. The last Superman movie was terrible, they needed to go in a different direction than paying homage to The Christopher Reeve Superman. Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and The last Spiderman movie all had the same basic plot, the hero battles a negative version of themselves. Have we run short of villians? The Dark Knight was not bad, but maybe I was expecting more because of all the hype. Heath Ledger did a good job with the Joker, but I think that crazy is the easiest role to play.(Just ask my mother LMAO!) The best comic movies to me were the Xmen series. They just went wild with creating characters, and I hope the new one is good. I guess I am still a big kid at heart!

OOPS!

I realize that times are tough, but this Taco Bell has really lowered its employment standards.

Going Fishing

I thought this picture was funny! It is getting near that time of year when I am getting ready to start taking the boat out and doing some fishing( If I can afford the Gas), and I joked with one of my friendsw last year that I should name my boat "The Master Baiter", so you can see why I got a kick out of this.

Fine Food

Have you seen the Olive Garden commercial where they say that they send their chefs to this quaint little Tuscan cooking school to train. Yea right! Our local Olive Garden kitchen workers look like the guys that used to work at the Jiffy Lube down the street. All of these chain restaraunts want you to try their special gourmet dishes, well I hate to point it out, but most of the stuff that you are paying $15.00 per person for, is pre-prepared frozen food. You would be better off going to the grocery store and buying frozen Boston Market dinners, at least for the price. Most of these places like Fridays, or Applebees, serve premade, or frozen food that is just thrown into a deep fryer. There is no chef, crafting a scampi in the back. It seems like it is getting harder to find little, indepedent restaraunts anymore, where food is made fresh, and there can be slight variations when you go there. We really have become a heat it and eat it society. New Jersey had some good restaraunts, when I lived there, but North Carolina is more of a land of the chain restaraunts, unless you eat alot of bar-b-que!

Southern Hospitality

Must be fans of the second amendment, I feel so safe living in the south! I am starting to learn to use a pc. I've had 3 months of self training.

Aloha Friday

On Aloha Friday I am supposed to keep it simple and ask a question. So here goes....

If the world was going to end and only 10 people were going to be saved, and you were one of those people, who would you give up your spot to save?(Not counting your kids)

For me, I would like to say I would save my Mother or Brother, but when push came to shove.....I just can't say that I definitely would.

Check out http://islandlife808.com/ for more info on aloha Friday!

Looking a little Empty

I live in a very busy area, we have a population of about 100,000, mainly due to the university, and the Medical center. I have been here for nearly 14 years, and every year this area has grown at a crazy pace. The main drag through town is a nightmare to drive down, because of all the business and restaurant trade, not to mention the traffic lights. I usually avoid this road, but today I just decided to go that way. It shocked me to see how many stores, eateries, and car dealerships, had gone out of business. Kia, Chevrolet, Circuit City, Goodys, Texas Steak House, Starbucks, and many other small businesses. Last year, you could not get a property on that road, now you have your choice. This is still a busy, growing area, I would hate to see what this economy is doing to towns that were already struggling. Hopefully something gives soon, the business that I am in depends on growth.

Figure this out!

Three business men are on a trip, and all the hotels are full. They find one room for $25.00 and decide to share it. Each man gives the cashier $10.00, making the total that they paid $30.00. The cashier gave the men 5 one dollar bills back, and out of that 5, the men gave the bellhop a $2.00 tip. So if each man paid $10.00, and got $1.00 back, that means that each man paid $9.00. 3 times $9.00 is $27.00 plus the two dollars that went to the bellhop makes $29.00. Where did the 30th dollar go?

See the stars for 600 million

I heard on the news that NASA launched a new 600 million dollar telescope into space. I am an outer space kind of guy, I like quality pictures of the galaxy, as well as manned space flight, and I am not suggesting that we give it all up, but talk about expensive! Since I was in 6th grade, the shuttle program has been in existence. Of course, they didn't have a shuttle built at that time, but they were working on it. They keep sending the shuttle up, so that they can repair it in outer space, or so they can add pieces to an international space station that I'm pretty sure we are really footing the bill for. Now, I don't have facts to back that claim up, but It's a bet I'm willing to take. Every time the shuttle lands everyone holds their breath, waiting to see if its going to burn up on reentry. After 30 years and all the money spent, we should be able to do more than take off, loop around the planet and land. If this new telescope spots water on a planet somewhere in the solar system, what good will it do us? They are trying to find origins of life and other facts from places that we can't even imagine going to. I really do love the idea of space exploration, but I think that they need to start keeping the spending down. Until we can actually move fast enough to get to one of these places, lets spend a little of that money here on Earth.

A Few Jokes of the tame sort

1). A young man walks up the steps to go into an old country store. Sitting in a rocking chair is an old man, and there is a dog sitting beside him. The dog starts licking himself, and the young man says,"Boy he's a lucky son of a bitch, I wish I could do the same thing". The old man looks puzzled and replies, "Well if thats what you want to do, go ahead, he don't bite"!

2). A blonde and a brunette are standing on opposite sides of a river, with no apparent way to get across. The brunette shouts to the blonde, "How do I get to the other side"? The blonde replies, "You are on the other side"!

3). Why wasn't Jesus born in the south?

A: They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.

4). A man walks up to his wife, holding a sheep in his arms and says,(keeping it clean) "Here is the pig I've been screwing." His wife says, "You dumb ass, thats a sheep, not a pig"! He says,"I wasn't talking to you!"

5).A Priest and an atheist are golfing on a Sunday. The atheist keeps missing short puts and every time he does, he gets mad and yells,"Goddamn it, I missed." The priest keeps warning him that if he does not stop, God will punish him. The atheist isn't worried, and just shrugs it off. On his next putt, the atheist misses and yells the phrase again. At that moment, the sky gets dark, and a bolt of lightning comes down and kills the priest. A thundering, ominous voice, bellows from the heavens, "Goddamnit, I missed"!

WHO THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE?

I went on Facebook because I was trying to get in touch with one of my best friends, a person that I had not kept in touch with in almost 20 years. It seems like everytime I go onto Facebook, I have a friends request. Being that I don't pay much attention to who I am inviting into my little world, I almost always hit accept, and bam, I have another friend. Today, I was looking at my list of friends, a number around 40, and realized that I don't know, or cannot remember at least 10 of these people. I have a pretty good memory, at least I think I do, yet I don't recognize their faces or names. Then I looked at the ones I did know and realized that at least 10 of these people were not involved with me socially, at all. Some of the ones that I knew, I don't think I said three words to, in my entire life. So, realistically, I have 20 friends, 13 of those being family members, leaving me with seven friends. Not bad for a lifetime of networking! LMAO!

A cruel God

I have pretty much always been an atheist, even as a little child, I never could grasp the whole belief of a God. My parents tried to drill it into my head, but it never really sunk in. When I was younger, I used to push my non-beliefs upon people, even to the point that I would start arguments with religious people, just for the sake of being confrontational. As I grew up, I began to respect others beliefs and tolerate different opinions. A co-worker of mine, recently had a son die of cancer, at the age of two. The boy suffered horribly, for nearly a year. I have heard religious people tell him that God had plans for him, or that he is in a better place. I don't buy that crap for one second, it brings out that confrontational side in me. First of all, why would a God even put this child upon the Earth, if he had better things for him? Why didn't God just avoid the middle man, create a soul, and claim it without having to put a child through torture, not to mention how it has affected his parents. I know that it is comforting to say someone is in a better place, but a box, covered with cold damp earth is hardly Xanadu. Why do people make excuses for God, always saying he has a plan, or it was his will? If you believe in God, then you must accept the fact that your God is a cruel God. This won't be a popular post, but not all life is like a Disney movie.

Things I Hate About Driving

1). When traveling on an interstate, I hate when I am in a pack of cars riding side by side, bumper to bumper, and there is 2 miles of open road in front of us.!

2). I hate when people do not use their directionals.

3). I hate when I am already doing 50 in a 35 and someone behind me is frantically trying to pass me.

4). I hate when someone is doing 35 in a 50!

5). I hate when people nearly lay down while they are driving

6). I hate it when I am the 6th car in line at a red light, and it takes 45 seconds for the 5 cars in front of me to move when the light turns green.

7). I hate it when someone has a map sprawled out on their dashboard while driving.

8). I hate it when people come to a stop in a merging situation.

9). I hate when people use their horn to say hello to other drivers.

10). I hate that someone always needs to pee in the busiest metropolitan area.

11). I hate loud bass, not loud music, just loud bass

12). I hate hog trucks

13). I hate that right before every holiday, they find a reason to raise gas prices

14). I hate being told that I have to wear my seatbelt, even though I would anyway

15). I hate that with all the crime that there is, police find it necessary to hide in bushes and treat speeders like criminals, instead of using their skills elsewhere.

16). I hate anything that is drive through, you never get what you order

17). I hate pumping gas, like I said before it's a Jersey thing!

18). I hate when people don't adjust their driving speeds and distance that they follow, when weather conditions are bad

19). I hate when you drive 1000 miles to visit someone and the first thing that they want to do when you get there is to take you somewhere else.

20). I hate construction!

Well I could probably think of more, let me know if I forgot anything.