I have a naked ring finger right now, and it shudders for the future. It has been free all of its short life, and it knows. Yes, it knows that a shackle is waiting. The white gold shackle that will haunt much of the rest of its fingerprint worthy life. Alas, it’s a good thing I’m not left handed, or my ring finger might pull an Addams Family ‘Thing’ move and run away.

I could join my ring finger with that sense of impending doom, except I will reap many more benefits from getting married than it will. Or at least, that’s the rosy colored letter I have pinned to my chest. Truth be told, I’ve never had a problem with being married, it was always getting married that bugged me. The whole dramatic production value of the ceremony and reception, and how most weddings are the same. Tack on how all of the different vendors involved make a killing off of 5 to 6 hours of real work, and you can suddenly give great bearing to my normally disregarded skepticism. So what’s a groom to do?

Most men take the co-pilot role when it comes to weddings, like your buddy on a road trip in your college days— either leaning back and sleeping, or putting their feet out the window while the tunes blare. It could be easy to not drive and just cruise along for the ride, while the bride and her posse shape the Old West.

But no, not me. I’m questioning the map, I’m negating the short cut… because I like to drive. Not literally since I take the train every day to work, but I like to have a hand in anything involving me stepping into any kind of attention spotlight. Of course, I knew in my slightly blackened heart that all this wasn’t my style to be part of a Broadway production. After the engagement, I was immediately ready to head for a tropical beach in a silk shirt and tuxedo shorts, and get hitched by a rastafarian priest while bare foot, and then drink pina coladas with my girl until she sees me as a some grand cross pollination of Brad Pitt, Ah-nuld in his prime, and the Vibrating Rabbit. Let the honeymoon begin.

Ah, to fantasize… *insert dream sequence harp followed by champagne cork popping* Sweet fruit tree of elopement, cast me a sampling of your juicy gifts so I can gorge myself on your simplicity, your swift delivery, your freedom from all that reeks of cliche. I wish this wish as fish will swim and iPods will multiply and donkeys & elephants spank each other. The universe shall be perfect with such fruit and I shall have it! Hooooooooo!!! (That’s a Ho like Thundercats, not your brother’s ex-girlfriend, mind you.)

And then the dream I dream remained in the brain, a backburner that the handyman forgot to reconnect the wire to. Because the truth is, the wedding day is really about the bride. All of the bridal dreams and rituals that have been pounded into her head by the silly camaraderie amongst most of womanhood. And she says to me, like Gandalf pounding his magic staff on the stone bridge, “You shall not elope!” Of course, when the bridge collapses under me, I did not have a fiery whip to catch on her feet. Pity.

So I managed to talk the officer down to a no seat belt ticket and… oh wait, I managed to agree with my fiancé on a dual ceremony/reception hall, and the planning got underway and things got booked, and deposited, and quarterly payments and follow-ups, and now I am knee deep in the production with about three and a half months to go.

I look back since the engagement and have to laugh. Not because purple singing monkeys are tangoing on my cubicle desk (which would be funny), but at the sake of my former self. You see, I’ve learned that this whole process either shows why you love the woman you plan on marrying, or it puts a subconscious timebomb in your brain for why you’ll be getting divorced in 3-5 years. But damn the sap, I love my girl and the wedding planning has gone pretty well, and I’m not stressed about it.

So while I still pine to save several grand on production values, I can take heart in knowing that the grand purpose is probably that your wedding is the one time all of your family, friends and acquaintances from many walks of life will be together in one place. Which has a good philosophical value to me. And you can’t have that if you elope. But to each their own choice of union.

In the end, I still have many things to be paranoid about going wrong on the big day. But as long as my ring finger gets its shackle, it should all be laughable.

Over the past three and a half months, I have been working on establishing MagicJunk.com, expanding my portfolio of paintings, creating more Acrylitures, and starting work on my 2nd novel.

But amongst it all, I’ve been doing a fair amount of blogging. Mostly here on Blogimus Prime (or its various former versions), because I wanted to have a forum where I could leave updates about the site, my creations, and so on. But I also joined a site called BlogCritics where hundreds post entries in the categories of music, books, video, culture and politics. It’s quite expansive and almost every kind of news story gets coverage.

While I am by no means a connoisseur of current events or really even have any aspirations at all to be a reporter or editor, I nevertheless tried my hand at contributing my two cents where I could in terms of group participation. You can read my entries and recent comments here. I started out a little rough, and have had some clunkers in terms of getting comments, but I always had two goals going in: Get my name recognized as a writer, and (a no brainer) practice my first person writing since that’s the perspective of my 2nd novel.

At this point, I’m at 21 posts, 152 comments. While I have enjoyed the cerebral action and reaction that BlogCritics has given me, I’ve always got to recognize that I have loftier goals for the near future, and BC takes a lot of time that I should be focusing on other things, mainly novel writing and painting among other activities.

So I am contemplating an expiration date for myself in participating on BlogCritics. Much in the same way that I have managed to slowly rid myself of television, I wonder if this is another step in less distraction. I mean, you get one life— when you look back, wouldn’t you like to have as little regret as possible? Exactly. But the only way to control that is to focus on the present, and don’t wait until it’s too late. However, the blog is a form of documentation, a history of what I was thinking and feeling at that moment.

Naturally, I could stop blog critiquing today if I so chose, but I decided instead to set myself some goals to solidify my participation. If I cannot find a specific area to focus my writings, then I will stop at 30 posts or 300 comments, whichever comes first. Although I’d like to reach both, I’m modest as always. Nevertheless, if I can manage to balance it all, then I shall continue. So it is said. I’m always trying new things and I imagine this was a step in helping my writing voice and style, and for that, it’s a good thing. But where the future lies is unknown.

I usually like to boast of how I rarely suffer from writer’s block. That, no matter what, I can always churn out something creative. While I still believe this is true, I have found that if I am writing for the very specific purpose of an external suggestion instead of just to write something from my thoughts, I get caught about 2/3 of the way through and struggle to bring it to completion. Though rare, this has been happening to me very recently.

This past week, I have started several blog entries before this one, but either could not come to a conclusion or was unsatisified with what I had written. Most times, I’d rather post nothing instead of post an entry where I am not believing what I wrote. The way I see it is that if I don’t believe the words, why should anyone else?

To attack this problem, I know the problem exists within. Over the last month, I have been questioning my creative endeavors, or more so whether the spare time I do have should be spent on writing instead of painting, drawing, graphic or web design. I have many loves in the creative realm, but never enough focus or success in any single one to convince myself to pursue that by itself. I’m one person where success would greatly simplify my life. As my luck would have it, success has been elusive for me as it is for most. So it goes.

But I’m not one to dwell on it. I keep writing, painting, and the rest for as long as I have the energy to be multifaceted. Despite my vast skepticism in most systems in our society, I still cling to the tiny belief that if I continue to work hard, something will hit it big for me. In the meantime, hopefully the conclusions to all of the unfinished entries will present themselves soon.

Yes oh yes, the pop culture crackle, come drop a cartoon anvil on my chest. I want to make the same artificial crunch sound produced by a guy with a slide whistle in a backroom studio. I’d love to cave in just like the cleverly placed leaves over the empty grave trap. That’s the pop culture snap, to make me just like the people plugged into my head from the TV signal. I cancelled my cable and they are still getting through. How full of fate!

The giggling cartoon devil is standing on my monitor, and he gets that signal too. His feet are secured with Velcro so he does not fall over if he laughs too hard. Every time that I put my head in my hands to try and forget my momentary frustration, I rest my elbows on the slab of pulped pseudo-wood that passes for a cubicle desk. Those elbows vibrate the slab, shockwaves rock the boogie, and the devil gets down with a disco dancing head jiggle. Are you getting the fever of the flavor?

That devil, he’s working the giggle just for me… just for this pop culture influenced pipe dream I invested my college tuition in. You know the one— where I believed that I could make a difference, that I could add to American society, that even if I didn’t learn physics or algebra very well in school I might just run along something groundbreaking to help save a dying friend or relative from catastrophe. Just like in the movies! All this noise that I call life keeps reminding me that I must certainly not be insignificant amongst the masses. And yet, the devil continues to giggle. He must know something.

That giggle, it’s therapeutic somedays, so much so that I rest my elbows on purpose just to watch. While the devil never tells me anything amongst his snickers, today he decided to toss me some questions.

He asked, “Do you enjoy standing at the face of a dead end? If you don’t, what obstacle will you have to run through to avoid going backwards to escape? A haunted forest? Someone’s new TLC funded dream backyard? A cliff on the side of a mountain? Tell me young man, are you prepared to fall to your death for what you believe in?”

I wasn’t sure what he meant, since I didn’t believe in anything, certainly not him or his equal and opposite reaction on the cosmic scale. Well, maybe I believed once, when I didn’t know any better. But those days are a cancelled Saturday morning cartoon, nothing but colorful memories to sprout roots to. I know that the dead end keeps moving in front of me, no matter which way I turn.

So, I lifted my elbows from the slab, and grabbed the devil’s head by the horns and bent it back. It was then that I saw a finely tuned metal spring underneath his head. There never had been a giggle. It was all a pop culture lie, a juicy cherry pie to dip my metaphoric phallus of hope into. It was truth, if there is such a thing.

As I bent the spring out of shape and the devil’s head swung around his body like a lost tetherball, I knew the questions could only have come from myself. And if that was the case, then know that I’m as close as I’ve ever been to making the jump into the deep blue sea.

DISCLAIMER: There are no hidden messages in this dark comedy/satire. No humans, toys, or religious stereotypes were harmed in the making of this blog.

…While others will learn to despise it. But I’d estimate that most people fall in the middle, loving some parts and despising others. It’s the summary of the human struggle.

The so-called experts on life say that your attitude is key in how you comprehend the environment around you… that a man can be happy in a room full of excrement if he simply believes he is happy. You know, mind over matter, like believing an invisible man in the sky governs your fate even if you’ve never seen or met him.

But is a positive attitude just fodder for the self-help feel-good lifestyle so many try to preach to the downtrodden? Is it just another way of getting someone to believe something that isn’t true just so they feel better about themselves? If I believe that working in a cubicle for 40 hours a week is really a pleasant experience, does that make me no brighter than the buzzing fluorescent light that hovers above me?

Don’t fall in love with life. Learn a healthy respect for it, and go after the things that you believe really matter to you. Go after them with a vengeance.

Without any caffeine yet at 7:45am to transform my decayed form into Mark-Ra the ever-living, I usually find myself drifting into slumberland on my morning train into Manhattan. Throw on some lounge jazz on the iPod and adios muchacos, I’m a Z producing factory. Of course, so often the train exists as an antithesis of a good nap, and many a factor can keep me from that seemingly vital 25 minute burst of unconsciousness. This morning, that factor was a spider.

Had it been a spider on the train seat or floor, then it could have kissed its web spinning ass goodbye. Unless I was feeling a wee bit humanitarian and then I might have just given it a swift sweep kick to the other side of the car. But no. This spider decided to be sitting at the top of a woman’s ponytail sitting directly in front of me. Somehow, the little bugger must have taken a bad leap from a tree, and now it’s stuck here. This is like Arachnophobia, when the country spider makes an accidental trip to the city. Hooray for coincidence. Now, back to me being paranoid.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. It was bright green, about 3/4″ with legs, and was light enough that it could crawl all over her ponytail without being noticed yet big enough that I could not just squash it between my fingers with a speedy Karate Kid chopstick pinch. I was confounded what to do.

I wanted to say, “Hey Lady, you got a spider in your hair,” and be done with it. But then, what if she was a serious spiderphobe and went ballistic? Next. So I entertained the light shoulder tap from behind, with the warning of “Stay verrrry verrrry still,” while I tried to get the spider. But this is New York, she might think I have a weapon and mace me. Next. So I thought of just flicking it. But what if it lands on someone else? Aargh.

Then comes the apathy bug. I thought, why should I care? I don’t know this lady. I’m not her guardian angel. I have nothing against spiders, but if I close my eyes, it could be one of those jumping spiders that leaps onto me next. And that would suck. Nothing worse than waking up to a spider crawling on your ear. Bet that made you just itch your ear, eh?

Alas, this is not like those moments when a stranger has a huge booger hanging from their nose, and you do a quick nod, raise your brows in worry and motion to wipe their nose. No, this is way beyond my sleepless capacity for rational thought. This was one of those moments when you look around at a dozen people right around you, and of course, everyone was either sleeping or reading the Times or Wall Street Journal. Damn it, this was my burden it seemed.

So I decide to settle on the pinch route without any warning. Just reach in and squash it. But wait, what if it really is poisonous and bites me before dying? Nah, dude, you’re in New York, not Nicaragua. Wait, it could have tagged along on a freighter, or maybe this bright green spider is a by-product of some toxic spillage deep in the sphincter of Westchester County. (Which, by the way, if Peter Parker really did get bitten by a radioactive spider, he would have broken out in hives, swelled up and died. So I’m not expecting super powers here.)

Just as I wait for a moment to go for it, the spider starts crawling towards her forehead. Oh shit, do I say something? Why won’t it just jump off? I look around. Still no one sees it but me. This is like the Twilight Zone episode where Will Shatner sees the gremlin on the plane wing. I hear the conductor at the end of the car checking tickets. By the time he gets here, he’ll see it on her and shoo the bug off before it gets to her face.

Suddenly, the spider starts coming back. It makes its way down the whole ponytail and is nearly onto the edge of the vinyl seat, which makes it open game. I take out my weapon of choice. Fly swatter? Machete? 12 gauge auto loader with laser sighting? No, no, no. My train pass, and I reckon I can get it to crawl on my pass, then drop it to the floor, and say hello Mr. Rockport Size 10 sole.

The bug touches vinyl and I make my move. I move the pass in, and it jumps back on the pony tail! Shit! I quickly swipe at the tuft of hair the arachnid stands upon, and knock it to the vinyl. A second swipe knocks it to the floor. It jumps once upon landing, but right into the path of the oncoming stomp of the casual dress shoe.

I got it! Ha ha ha! Got it! Victory is mine! (Please note: Celebration dramatized for literary value.) Again, even in all five seconds of this action, no one was watching to take in my glory. Not even the woman noticed that I had done anything. Was it real? Was all this a sleep deprived delusion? I checked the bottom my shoe. Yup. Green smush. Very appetizing.

Nevertheless, I finally get to sleep. Except now, I seem to have this strange itchy feeling. Most ironic, eh?

After using its massive capital to employ the best brain specialists around, Google Inc. has succeeded in using its web crawling technology to search through the brain of a human subject.

The braincrawling took place on July 4, 2005 and took approximately two hours and nine minutes. The subject, Paul Genigeti, received a small incision at the base of his skull for the cranial access. Genigeti received ten stitches afterwards and was cognizant within an hour. No apparent side effects were detected.

Google had been previously unsuccessful acquiring any results from crawling the brains of laboratory rats or monkeys, as all of the results were a series of ‘screech’ sounding gibberish. While Google executives were prepared to scrap the project, further studies suggested that the gibberish all followed distinct patterns. Paul, a lab intern from local Cal Tech University, then volunteered to be the first human subject.

Results from Paul’s braincrawl included detailed descriptions of his winning a blueberry pie eating contest, getting pummeled by grade school bullies, and catching his college girlfriend ‘entertaining‘ two fraternity brothers.

The results also included a snapshot of Paul’s subconscious, which ranged from a fetish for fruity mixed drinks and women’s feet, to having one-third of a mystery novel composed, to still being confused how Michael Jackson was able to avoid jail time.

Google plans to market their braincrawling technology to the general public by Fall 2006. The braincrawl plan will be priced around $5,000.00, and include all of your memories on a single DVD, or formatted into text and displayed on their blog service for public consumption. Patents pending.

“The end is near, my little friend. I shall unscrew the cable from your brain and send you back to your bloated master.”

These are the words I might speak tonight to the last cable box in my apartment when it gets disconnected and returned to Cablevision. No, this is not a pitch that I am not switching to satellite instead. I am getting rid of the multitude of choices on cable altogether. To be more specific, I asked my fiancé that we eliminate the Family package of our cable service (aka 400 channels of never-ending channel surfing), and have only the Basic version (all of the channel a normal TV used to pick up, but with clear reception).

For my area in New York, here are the costs:
- Family Cable $45.00
- Broadcast Basic $9.00
In the grand scheme of things, saving $36 a month (or $432 a year) is nice on the budget, but honestly that’s not why I wanted to get rid of the Family package.

The main reason is that when I’m older and I look back on the portfolio of my life, I don’t want to say that a healthy percentage was spent watching programs which benefit me only in the short term. Be honest with yourself—other than momentary entertainment, what greater good has television done for you? Could you not have been doing something more productive?

Basically, up to this point, I have concluded two things:
(A) My girl and I only watch two shows each week (24 and Alias), both on basic.
(B) Every other time we turn on the TV is just for pure vegetative state. We turn it on, and because there are 900 options to choose from, we’re bound to find something moderately interesting to waste our lives to. It took me some time to convince her of this, but eventually she decided the logic was true.

This decision was not without debate. Cable has always been such a vast tool of endless entertainment… movies, sitcoms, self-help shows, news, sports, cartoons, and on and on. When I was younger, I didn’t get Cable until I was in high school, so I remember how great it was to visit my buddy’s house and watch MTV and HBO and Cinemax. Of course, then I was naive, and believed in the system to be pure and concurrent with the ways of American life.

While I still recognize that Cable TV, and its’ evil clone Satellite TV, have become a vital artery of American culture, I have chosen to resist it. Does that make me less patriotic to not be a daily vegetable? I hope not. But then, I know I am in a tiny minority with this choice. Most people could not give up cable if they tried.

But I hope more people do resist cable… there’s way too much in life that our scattered years could not even begin to explore. You sure won’t get there by watching reruns of I Love The 80′s every week.

Nothing like waking up thirty minutes before your alarm to a loud cracking noise, and seeing that the AC has gone off and all of the clocks in your bedroom are blank. However, that was the pleasant Monday surprise this morning. The thing that sucks the worse is that you’re immediately filled with anxiety that in this sleepy haze, you could fall back asleep and not have an alarm to wake you. Of course, I also learned that the battery in my clock not only maintains the time memory during blackouts but it keeps the alarm too, even though the display was out. A purchase I recommend finding if you’re a 9-to-5 drone.

Anyway, it made me glad that I don’t run my websites on a server in my house, which while it would be nice to save on all of the ridiculous fees I have to pay, I know I don’t have the luxury to stay home and see if everything reloads alright after the power is restored. Maybe if the day ever comes that I can be an artist or writer from home, I could… but I won’t hold my breath. There’s not a lot of oxygen in that smoke cloud. But so it goes. Keep at it.

So the Live-8 concerts have come and gone, and the final day of the G8 summit is upon us. In light of the events in London this week, I sincerely hope all of the publicity of political leaders gathering together for singular efforts is not just one big puff of smoke blown up the world’s ass. But to be honest, politics and international affairs aren’t my cup of Earl Grey, so whatever happens, happens, and I accept that as things I cannot change.

Nevertheless, since it’s not healthy to be serious 24-7, I wanted to offer all of you hard-core political aficionados out there the following light hearted image for your amusement:

As the summit winds down each year, the representatives of the participating countries (France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Russia) sneak away from the media, security and their translators to an underground room. It is there that they try to transcend the serious overtone that always overshadows their endeavors.

It is there that the 8 leaders dress up as pop culture icons and celebrate their collective wealth and power. Previous years’ themes have included dressing up as rainforest animals, ozone molecules, or the Village People. This year, the theme is vegetables. And what better representative of 8 vegetables than that wacky American beverage known as V-8?

So, like the similarly styled costumes of the Fruit of the Loom guys, the 8 world leaders don the costumes of the tomato, beet, celery, carrot, lettuce, parsley, watercress, and spinach. Then they join hands, dance in a circle for a little bit, toast a chilled shot of vodka, exchange high-fives, and depart for their home countries.

If things like this actually happened, the world may just be a better place than I think.

When my alarm went off this morning at 6:45am, the radio newsman was talking about the late breaking news from London and how bombs had gone off in their subway and on a double-decker bus. I’m sure that the blogosphere has been flooded with posts this morning on this topic, so I will resist posting the usual “how can those mean people do this?” entry. I accept the fact that hatred and murder are prevalent elements in our world, and will never go away no matter how hard we try.

While I feel bad that the citizens of London have to go through such events just like New Yorkers did 4 years ago, I feel infinitely disconnected from them. Of course, I maintain a certain level of disconnection from everything in the universe, but this is much larger. I mean, is there anything real I can do to help? Nope. In a perfect world, I’d love to think my vote or my dollar could really go to some great cause that makes everything right, but that is all imaginary.

For some reason, I recalled the part in Star Wars: A New Hope when Luke tells Obi-Wan that he can’t go fight the Empire because he has work to do back at the moisture farm. In the story though, Luke goes anyway because the farm gets toasted by Stormtroopers. But in reality, such circumstances are missing from any global solutions. But that is the way it goes.

I received an envelope in the mail yesterday from the NCAA, also known as the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Being seven years removed from college, I was curious to what it could be.

Naturally, it was a survey asking for my participation. I laughed and was about to tear it in half and send it on it way to the junk mail dumpster, when my fiancée grabbed it and started reading the questions. Turns out they wanted to know how athletics had affected my college education and subsequently impacted the working drone reality I presently reside in. I decided to take a second look.

For reference, from 1994 to 1996, I was part of a Division I collegiate wrestling team and I received nearly a three-quarter scholarship for it. After having achieved many accolades in high school wrestling, the college experience made me quite jaded to the sport that I had been a part of since 4th grade. The difference was that all semblance of fun and camaraderie that I had previously enjoyed about the sport were gone.

In college, the sport became a job. Practices twice a day, and highly exhausting ones at that. A good deal of traveling to other states during the season, although involvement was year round. Most participants were out for themselves because of the competitive environment that it was. I eventually had to quit because I had an injury that required surgery in order to continue. I opted for rehab instead and voluntarily surrendered my scholarship.

Back to the survey though, I found it quite ironic that the NCAA was looking to see if the aspects of collegiate athletics had an effect on how I viewed full-time employment. The similarities were uncanny, but not in a positive way.

Participating in a collegiate sport reflected many of the negative politics and of the work world that human resources like to sugar coat over. Think getting downsized is tough at work? Imagine being an 18 year old kid trying to get an education when the coach of your team gets forced to resign, and the new coach that’s brought in subsequently tries to get every athlete that arrived before his tenure to quit.

That was my reality in college. As a teen, I learned the hard way of what to expect in the work world. Sadly, I wasn’t disappointed. I understand it even better now, it’s “just business, nothing personal” as the cliché goes, since money does run our world. Would I have preferred to learn these lessons at work? Sure. It sucks to look back on my collegiate career and have the lemon that was athletics sour the experience as a whole. Alas, these things happens, but I did graduate which was my original (and primary) goal.

So I will send back my survey and hope that such lessons might reach high school athletes so they better understand what it is they are getting into. I can only hope that the NCAA doesn’t sugar coat the reality like a human resources department does.

“That iPod will be the death of you, young man.” Not the words you’d ever expect to hear from your mother, but it could have been for a young man this past weekend in Brooklyn. Read about it in USA Today here.

I’m sure the Apple spin doctors are hard pressing to point out that the kid probably would have met such a fate had he been carrying an iPod or a Nomad Jukebox, but I digress. Does the media really have nothing better to blame? Was the murderous motivation purely derived on that little white box that holds thousands of songs? Would he have lived had he handed it over?

The obvious trend is getting mugged for your iPod— a premise I’ve mentioned before. But you might recall the story of a kid fumbling with his iPod before he skated into a moving car. Although the original newslink went dead, it’s still an example of blaming the iPod when it was the kid’s absent minded behavior that got him killed.

Seeing how far people will go for electronic gadgets is surreal, and something the media loves to cash in on. Things like this recent murder or a story from a couple years ago where a girl dropped her cell phone into the NYC Subway tracks and had the genius-thought to jump in and get it with a train coming— they just defy all logic.

So, in light of all this, I have taken a few moments to compose some hypothetical future scenarios that we might endure involving the media’s obsession with personifying the iPod as a cause for calamity. While these scenarios don’t Nostrodamisize the day when all of the iPods rebel against their masters via the touch wheel transforming into a sawblade to slice off any fingers trying to find that old Pearl Jam b-side— it does invoke some realm of possibility.

Scenario #1: A man cashes in on his AppleCare policy so many times that holding his new iPod causes him to spontaneously combust.

Scenario #2: A baby boomer’s iPod is playing Kenny G’s greatest hits on a merry stroll down the boulevard. However, the annoying frequencies that escape the headphones drive a passing herd of wild dogs insane with bloodlust and the person becomes a chew toy.

Scenario #3: A tourist accidentally drops her iPod off of the observation deck at the Empire State Building. Upon impact, it crushes a man selling double-decker bus tours below.

Scenario #4: After growing a thick black beard during the winter time, a man takes a trip to Miami to catch some rays. However, he forgets to remove his iPod from his pocket liner, and is promptly mistaken by a first week inspector as a terrorist with a bomb and tazered to death.

Scenario #5: A woman listening to her iPod is waiting on a curb to cross a city street. She does not hear the screams of people around her, and the mirror of a speeding bus extending over the sidewalk takes her head off.

Scenario #6: A teen downloads a song to his iPod that illegally samples the Smurfs theme and hundreds of little blue men come out from under his desk and eat the teen alive.

Scenario #7: A man listens to Stairway to Heaven twice in a row on his iPod, and the earth below parts and swallows him.

Scenario #8: Microsoft buys Apple, and all iPods begin running a Windows OS. The iPod then surgically attaches itself to all users. Resistance is futile.

Scenario #9: A grad student learns the actual cost of what it takes Apple to produce an iPod and chokes on his dinner of lukewarm Ramen Noodles.

DISCLAIMER: This is satire. I do hope society learns from the real people who died in some of the news stories at the beginning of this post, but I don’t in any way mock their deaths. The mantra we all should remember is: Love thy iPod. But not to death.

The folks at Magic Junk extend a warm welcome to S. Rodriguez and her launch of Toqueme Cards, a creative venture into custom greetings. One of Toqueme’s primary goals is to create customizable greetings that transcend the typical piece of cardstock with a center fold.

The first series of Toqueme Cards is the Majestic Wish, a beautifully hand-made card that has the look and feel of a regal invitation or classic love letter. A semi-gloss metallic cover stock card wrapped in velvet paper that can make your “majestic wish” come true.

Why give your friend or loved one an average card when you could give them a Toqueme Card? Check it out by clicking the Cards tab above. Thanks!