Ask Madden

What up. I am alive, yes, after a brief absence from the world due to becoming a real person overnight, and having bills and many jobs, oh and blogging for a living kind of turns me off to the whole blogging on the side thing anyway. But anyway, how are you? Does everyone still kind of hate me? I hope not. I thought of the OG for many reasons this past week, and here they are:

1) I ran into Elana Yudman on the subway in Brooklyn (random!). We talked about how neither of us have talked to Adam lately, which is sad. I hope he is doing well with air traffic controlling. Also it made me wonder what other, older Rocklanders are up to because, you know, we're all pretty old now.

2) What happened to Mark?

3) I've been receiving AARP emails and I can't figure out why. This seems like a prank from high school.

4) Karen asked me something on Facebook, but I don't ever check or use Facebook. #fail

5) I do use Twitter, and Vincent and Jen Certa are there too! And Nici Paggs, who is in grad school now! We are so old! My twitter name is joefi so it is easy to remember.

6) My mom asked about you.

So there you have it. Hope everyone is doing well. I guess I could call, but I was supposed to call my aunt last week and I never did. I don't even call my mom. Sorry mom. Because, you know, lazy.

Oh and Karen my life is less shady these days. Come visit again and we'll take in a movie, I'll make you dinner, and we'll go to bed before 4 am. I might even take you to a sports bar!

What is everyone else up to? Jen Certa lives in the mountains now? Vincent lives in the south? Remember BV?

yo yo...I think i've blogged about the afterlife before, but listening to the radio this weekend got me thinking about it again...they were discussing how the afterlife just doesn't make sense because there are too many questions that can't have logical answers, some include the following

-are you in the afterlife with cavemen? and people from the reniassance era? and if so how they hell are you supposed to interact with cavemen? does everyone wear period clothing?
-what if you fall in love, get married, your spouse dies, you fall in love again...which is in the afterlife? both? awwwwwkard
-at what age are you in the afterlife? if your grandfather slowly died of lung cancer is he in that deteriorated state in the afterlife? what if you were aborted? died at birth?
-theres billions and billions of people that have died, how they hell is anyone supposed to find anyone? seems like it would get crowded
-if you died naked and in a compromising position are you stuck like that?

someone better give me answers

yo yo...i was listening to o and a recently(which seems to be how most of my posts seem to start) and ant was of course ranting about obama, and opie, who is normally apathetic to politics chimed in for a moment and made a good point...he was very rah rah obama until recently, and he made this analogy as to why...he said its obvious now that its just business as usual, and compared it to if you fired a manager of a mcdonalds and got a new one...it's still the same institution so nothing is going to change
also i was watching cnn and they keep on saying things like "x% of americans feel the recession is ending or x% of americans say the h1n1 is dying down" or some other stupid statistics and then get some expert to comment...what does it matter what the majority of idiots they polled on street think?
while at work i was thinking its weird how every airplane is assigned a speed or altitude and can't change either without atc telling them ok, yet there are busses that just whiz around doing whatever they want probably carrying as many people a day...weird
me and a couple people i work with are doing the san diego marine corp bootcamp challenge this weekend...its a 5k/obstacle course...should be fun
i was thinking about twitter vs facebook and what could be done to both to make both better...each def has its pros and cons

-i think facebook is much more organized and polished looking...especially with media, its easy to find things and store them...on twitter if you wanted to find a past picture you'd just have to search for the awkawrd looking link
-facebook needs to get rid of apps and games, except for useful ones like video and such...i saw someone at work playing mafia wars during break and it was like seeing a car get broken into in real life
-i don't like how on twitter on your page you see what YOU write as opposed to what others wrote, its weird looking
-facebook adding the feature where you can tag people in status updates is dumb...if you were write a status aimed at one person you would WRITE IT ON THEIR WALL
-twitter really is just facebook with just status updates and mobile uploads album, but it does the pics poorly. if facebook just didn't try to do too much they would have it better
- i do think each has their too cool for school mentality. seems people taht use twitter think they're better for not using facebook, and people that use facebook think they're better for not using twitter, althought there are more that use both as opposed to just twitter

blog question of the day....what if anything would you guys do assuming you were thrust back to the end of senior of highschool(college/career wise)

yo yo....on Opie and Anthony recently Patrice O'neal went into a rant about awful sci-fi channel movies and their horrific titles, and how they'll make crappy versions of known action/sci fi movies and give them crappier titles...they offered some movies for him to suggest what the sci fi channel equivalent is...the following ensued

jaws=teeth
close encounters of third kind=
alien notes(he hummed the music)
ironman = steel guy
star wars" = galactic fighting
planet of the apes" = simeons vs humans
mars attacks" = red chaos from beyond
12 monkees" = eek eek
matrix = Cyber chaos
Back To the Future= Time Change


also on shows like Diners Drive Ins and Dives and Man vs Food whenever they try someones food they always compliment the food in a similar way, they take a bite and say "wow you can really taste the (taste) of the (insert ingredient) and the (taste) of the (ingredient), which is of course fine. But its kinda awkward on Man Vs Food when he'll eat a regular meal, no weird ingredients, but its just large...i remember when he ate the giant omelet and he had to come up with little banter about it when it was just a PLAIN omelet
also, when did putting a ribbon of a sauce and a square virtually empty white plate mean the food tastes good?

yo yo...so today i was getting a physical at work and me and the flight doctor got talking about sleep. He taught me some interesting things. He was saying ideal naps are either 15-20 minutes, or 1.5 hours...he was explaining sleep cycles, and that you feel unrested and even more tired when you wake yourself in the middle of cycles, which are usually 1.5 hours...he said the whole 8 hours a night thing doesnt really make sense...he said 6 or 7.5 is better...and he was saying that you can function on 2 groups of 3 hour sleeps per day for several months, but u couldn't on 4 groups of 1.5 hr sleeps because your sleep cycle gets more powerful as it goes into the second one...he was saying how people will say "oh i slept too long i feel awful" have it wrong, that its not that you slept too long, its that you woke up at the wrong time, in the middle of a cycle, it was interesting stuff
i like learning

yo yo....so last few years its been pretty popular in movies and tv to have nerds be main characters and be cool...i like it of course, but there's a trend i've noticed....in all the movies where a nerd somehow ends up with a super hot girl the girl in the beginning, for whatever reason, always chases after him and goes out of her way to float with him, no matter how nerdy he acts... examples of things that just popped into my head...freaks and geeks, adventureland, superbad, the girl next door...i'm sure you all could come up with a lot more examples
also, they have no problem having fat loveable characters, which is again cool. but why not characters who have real bad skin and are loveable? every nerd seems like if you changed his hair and subtracted glasses he'd be james dean
someones laptop exploded in a plane today and there was a fire in the plane

I watched twilight the other nite. i have to admit, it wasn't bad. i actually enjoyed it. i only have two critiques. the two main characters do that thing where people sigh, and it kind of says "i have emotions right now and i don't know how to express them in words"...it was real annoying....also, the father in the movie was the same actor who played a character i saw recently rape a girl in the worst/best rape scene ive ever seen(in a movie).

yo yo...so i went into the leasing office today to ask about dog policy, i did ask about german shepherds and she said how it was a corporate policy and did say she knows there are a few that live here, and said they technically not supposed to, and i asked if there was any way around it and she said well if its on the smaller side or a mix we can probably fudge it, so they really didnt seem to strict on it, especially since she knows there are a few and obviously isn't doing anything about it..also relating to dogs I have an interview in two weeks to be an ASPCA volunteer here...its apparently a big deal
training is going good. the sector im training on isn't all that complicated. its a a feeder section into LAX arrivals...meaning i line up and space out planes and hand them off to the controller who will see them into the airport....there are two feeder sections, one for all arrivals coming from the north and the west(mostly international guys or small guys coming from coastal california) and the other for south and east...its pretty neat, each is on an organized arrival, but you do have to alter speeds and vectors to space everyone up nicely...also, the girl im training with said "mines" as in when i asked whose headset that was she said "i left mines in the control room". i hate her.
steve/chaya/kevin/smoo visited last week. its too far past now to discuss so i'll just pretend it didn't happen. besides they're all lazy and didn't want to do a lot of things.
me and kevin went and shot guns a couple times, the man at the gun store almost sold me a shotgun(well i am gonna get one very soon)...people at gun stores are so nice, he basically taught me everything you could possibly know about shotguns, if i had a question he would take one out of a box to just show me....i asked about the open ended muzzle on this particular shotgun i was looking to get



(note the end of the muzzle)

he said its for if you were to put it against something like a door and shoot, it lets the geat and gas discharge, and said how when you see in cartoons the metal "banana peel" back that it can actually happen, and also said not to mention it looks badass. however when he said put it against something all me and kevin wanted to say was "like a skull?"
also at a gun range another shooter came over and chatted with us, and even gave us one of his targets to use, since it was a cool target that when you shot it it changed colors....ALSO the store had all girls working there, and one of the girls who was our age apparently was on the olympic shooting team and just missed going to athens...she came in 3rd in the national qualifiers and they only take 1...so remember kids, gun =fun

**edit**
also, why is E(of entourage) so damn dumb?

yo yo...this last few days i've been thinking about talent vs hard work. I used to go either way with what was more important, i guess depending on what it is. But in work im in the training lab doing scenarios, paired up with a girl that was in my class in OKC. She sucks. She does such weird things in the problems, messes up a bunch of stuff, forgets things, doesn't catch when the fake pilots do the wrong thing on purpose. But i saw she had this elaborate note sheet written otu with basically everything there is to know about the sector and she had it in front of her. yet still sucked. and when we were in classroom stuff i did my tests almost a full day before her yet she again had all these elaborate note cards and note sheets she made, yet still sucked. i think i just may rock.