Writing for Extra Money Rocks

Sooooooo, as some of you know, I write blogs on the side for a bit of extra dough. I've made it a goal this year to pull in about 400 extra bones each month by ghost writing SEO blogs. If you have never heard of this type of work, it basically amounts to me writing about a topic based around something someone might search for on the internet. For example, if you wanted pizza in New Brunswick, you might search for "pizza new brunswick." Well in order for the search to link you to a delicious pizza in real life, the internet must magically grab content dealing with digital, internet pizza that have those words in it and then put that website in front of your face. Well my blogs help that happen for people. I don't do any of the dirty work, I just write blogs and they pay me money unless they suck (the blogs). 

Well I was watching Psych tonight and then tried to write a blog about "self storage units" when all of a sudden I just wanted to channel Shawn Spencer. I don't have anywhere else to put this, so I decided to put it here. Enjoy.  Oh yeah, I kind of end it abruptly because I realized that I still have like 7 blogs to write to hit my $400 goal this month. Busy busy busy. 

Why Self Storage Units? You. Have. Too. Much. Crap. 

Most people take advantage of a storage unit when they just don't have room to store all their possessions in one central location. Some typical stored items include old Beanie Baby collections, inherited trinkets that you don't dare throw away because you fear they may have captured the essence and soul of a deceased loved one, old mattresses that you have to hide from the FBI because you tore the tag off of them, and possibly some old furniture, among other things. While these are all fantastic ways to use a 10 x 10 cinderblock-enclosed space, here are three far more creative uses for self storage units.

The Eternal Bachelor

Perhaps the most obvious use of a self storage unit is hidden in the name itself: self storage. A storage unit can make a lovely studio apartment, provided you pick a unit that has an electrical outlet where you can plug in the free hot plate you won at RC Willey last year. The other plug will of course be reserved for your pre-paid cell phone, from which you can earn your rent money by scamming old ladies into thinking they've won a $20 gift card to Walmart, then of course you steal their social security checks. After all, when you're self-employed, you can work from anywhere. But if you feel the need to have air conditioning, carpet, and sex every once in a while though, perhaps the next use for a storage unit is more your style.

The Bar Fight that Got Out of Hand

So you've gotten yourself into a bit of a pickle and ended up with a dead guy in your trunk. No judging here, stuff like this happens. Now of course the first place the police are going to look is in the river, but you are one step ahead. A small storage unit is the perfect place for a quick body dump. Make sure you use a fake name though, you'd be surprised how many rookies make that mistake. And pay the deposit and first month in cash. If you are lucky, this will have gone down in late November, giving you a good three months before things warm up and the raccoons start getting interested. This is ample time to do one of three things:

• Fake your own death
• Leave the country
• Become a professional athlete (those dudes are always getting away with stuff)

If none of those options are feasible, get as many payday loans as you can and live it up for a while.

Patio Project

Sorry I haven't posted in forever, but I finally have something worth posting.  When we moved into our house, the yard was a little lacking.  They had just torn up the water main so there was a huge pile of dirt and rocks in the front, I fixed that. A wind storm had just come in and knocked over two trees, I fixed that.  There was a giant dead tree trunk in the back, I fixed that.  And don't forget about the abandoned chicken coop equipped with an overgrown sandbox.  I fixed that too.  Then I put in a garden, planted some stuff, tried to get my grass looking nice, all at different levels of success.  My latest project though was a bit more ambitious.  I had this space of nothingness to work with.

This was even after I cleaned it up a bit

Different angle

So I had an eye sore on my hands.  I didn't like the chain link fence or the terrible rock garden I had in the corner of the house.  I also didn't have a decent place to put my grill that my brother had bought me as a house warming gift.  That little nook-type corner of the house was essentially unusable.  The houses on our street were all built in the late '40s and so all of them had this same terrible L design with an unfinished corner.  Many of the houses have blown out the two walls and finished the corner, but I didn't have the skills or the money to tackle that project.  So I decided to build a patio and a pergola.

The first question I got when I explained my idea was this: what is a pergola?  Understandable, but once you see one you know exactly what it is, you just may not have known that those wooden structures have a name.

Generic pergola

When you search Google images, this is the first picture that comes up for "pergola".  It is a simple outdoor wood covering.  It can over a deck, a patio, or anything else really.  It gives a good deal of shade and a great place to have a meal outside.  And I wanted it!

So I got it.

And here it is.

Finished project

Notice the fancy solar lights

 This project was a beast, but I am very happy with the result.  I'm excited for next summer when we will get to really use it.  So what do you think?  Did I improve the space, or would you have preferred an overgrown rock garden?

Disney Princesses

Special thanks to Kenny, Bethany, and Diana for the content.

Disney princesses. Little girls try to dress like them and little boys think they’re gross. Teenage boys are creepily attracted to them. But some Disney princesses really aren’t princesses at all. They are mainly just peasants or wannabes in strange circumstances, circumstances that often lead to mental instability.

Belle is normal for about the first 20 seconds of Beauty and the Beast, but then the townspeople let you know she’s pretty much a loon. She reads a book to some sheep, talks to dishes, then falls for a hairy, talking bison/lion/gargoyle. It’s no wonder she’s crazy, look at her dad!

Mulan has a gender complex (also not a princess, and never becomes one either).

Ariel is almost a princess, but she is also a fish, which kind of disqualifies her.

Snow White is like 16, lives with 7 old tiny men, and kisses them all every night.

Cinderella commands an army of mice and has an abusive family. If the prince were to visit her home in the modern world, it would most likely be to arrest her for a triple homicide.

Rapunzel is great, but she just wouldn’t be able to function after years of solitary confinement, and her hair would have more junk living in it than David Bowie’s pants in The Labyrinth.  

But there is one princess that stands above the rest as legitimate royalty. I will give you a hint—she has a PET TIGER. That’s right, Jasmine is our winner. Even if Aladdin is the “princess” type character in that movie, Jasmine is still widely considered a Disney princess, and rightly so. She lives in a palace, has a sweet blue pendant headband, and did I mention she has a PET TIGER! She isn’t sent away by an evil step mother, captured by a witch, or taken by some crazy old woman, she runs away because she wants to run away. Jasmine knows her subjects and is aware of their dire situations, tries to help them, and even falls in love with a “street rat”. She is witty, intelligent, wealthy, compassionate, and let’s admit, she is pretty sexy for an animated character.

Even though Jasmine is a great princess, she is an exception to the rule. Almost every other classic Disney princess (not including the Frog Prince girl because I never saw it) is not a princess at all, and you know what, I think that’s just fine. It’s so much cooler to see a strange, poor, eccentric, or even non-human creature succeed rather than a princess. Princesses are great, but who wants to see a princess’ life get any better than it already is? They’ve already got it all. So thanks Disney for letting little girls all over the world know that even if they’re a crazy, deranged, psychotic child, they can one day be considered a beautiful princess. 

Cleaning the Keister

As many people know, bidets are popular bathroom accessories all around the world, but it seems that the proud people of the United States can’t quite seem to wrap their heads around the concept. Every time I tell someone about the awesomeness that is the bidet, I get a blank, grossed-out stare. My go-to illustration for bum-fountain bliss is dog poop on your shoe: which do you use to clean it off, the hose, or toilet paper? The choice is pretty easy, and almost everyone chooses the hose. For most people, something immediately clicks in their mind, and they realize that a bidet is superior, but they can’t admit it yet. Others come up with a list of exceptions for why toilet paper is still better. “Yeah, but…” No buts about it, mister.  Instead of admitting how rational that dog poop logic is, they put up even bigger mental barriers because they know they’re wrong.

Talk about chafing

What is the big deal with shooting a fountain of water at your poo-covered butt hole? Ok, admittedly that sounds strange, but I feel like we are living in the Stone Age with toilet paper! We seem to have been stuck in a butt-rut for the past two thousand years, using everything from corncobs to animal fur to wipe our precious tooshies. Greeks used rocks to clean their bottoms, and the Romans cleaned off with sponges soaked in saltwater. In China as early at the 6^th century, people were using rudimentary forms of toilet paper, and by the 1300s they were manufacturing huge amounts of the stuff. That’s all well and fine for them, but it’s all gross to me, and it seems incredibly obvious that we should have come up with something better by now.

With a bidet, all you have to do is spray some water to get everything off. You don’t get your hands dirty, you can get everything off, and you will never have to buy toilet paper again. Whatever you might think, it is much more hygienic and healthy. And people who think it’s weird to wipe with a rag, how do you dry off your derriere when you get out of the shower?

If we clean something as gross as poo off with just paper, why don’t we clean everything off with it? I can just imagine coming home sweaty after a tough workout and my wife says, “Aren’t you going to shower?” and I respond, “No, I’m just going to mop up with some dry tissue paper.” Of course, this is disgusting, but that’s exactly what we do when we wipe with Charmin. We may not want to face the facts, but we are far behind a lot of the industrialized world in butthole hygiene.

By the way, never touch anyone’s left hand if you go to the Philippines...

Ancient Writings

We have learned a ton about old cultures and societies from their writings. The Rosetta Stone was probably one of the greatest anthropological finds in history. It unlocked the secrets of the writings of ancient peoples, allowing us to study them and learn more about them. I can only imagine what societies of the future will study about us. I just really hope they don’t find ancient files of YouTube video comments and take them as viable archaic writings.

I can just imagine two highly evolved humanoids discussing what “Fake and GAY!!!!111!” meant to the ancient Americans. Then they would run a special on their version of Nat Geo about our primitive nature: that we enjoyed watching people fall on their faces, rack their scrota, and jumble their words after strong anesthesia. And then the one person who makes poignant, political comments would have all their writings turned into a religion.

Just missing the Dew

Then the History Channel would investigate the origins of “The Internet Troll.” Was there just one troll? Was there an entire secret society of trolls? Or was it just an entity that spammed the internet simply by willing it to happen? It would be kind of like us trying to find out who Jack the Ripper was 200 years after the fact. Middle-aged men who drank copious amounts of Mountain Dew and still lived in their parents’ basement would get the most attention.

Then they would probably find old episodes of Jersey Shore, that would really throw them for a loop.