Photoshopping in beauty magazines has gone too far.

Many of you already know this story, but I haven’t documented it here before. You know those inflatable boxing rings? I know them. I know them well. There’s a story there.

My sophomore year of college had just started, so there was the usual reconnecting with old friends and meeting new ones. For some reason (I can’t remember exactly why), they had a bunch of inflatable carnival games on the main lawn one evening, so some friends and I decided to go check them out. They had the usual bouncy castles and bungee runs, but what immediately caught our eyes was the inflatable boxing ring. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s like a bouncy castle where you put on giant, inflatable boxing gloves and punch the crap out of each other. This is the sort of thing college was all about.

My friend Kyle and I immediately decided this was something we had to do. Kyle and I were famous not only for being hippies, but also for an unusually large repertoire of Your Mom jokes. (My favorite: Your mom is so fat she was recently overthrown by a small militia group and is now known as the Republic of Your Mom.) So, of course, the boxing ring inspired both of us to pull out our best Your Mom jokes, and accentuate them with some good, old-fashioned threats as well. By the time we got to the front of the line, there was an awful lot of pride riding on this match.

“Okay, climb in the ring and put your gloves on,” the ref said. (I like to call him a ref, even though he was just a minimum-wage junior carnie.)

Kyle walked around to the far side to climb in the ring. This was my first chance to come through on all of those slanderous statements I had made, so I had to make an entrance—a good one. I grabbed the ropes surrounding the ring, mustered all of my strength and agility, and flipped over the rope and into the ring. BOOM! I’m a little hazy on the details, but apparently, my feet hit the bouncy ground and bounced back while the rest of me kept going, causing my right knee to connect hard with my jaw. (I would later discover I had teeth marks on my knee.)

So Kyle climbs into the ring, and I’m on the floor, bleeding profusely from the mouth and basically being incoherent. (Again, I’m a little hazy on the details here.) I found out the next day upon a doctor visit that I had managed to give myself a concussion whilst climbing into an inflatable boxing ring.

I mentioned I was hazy on the details. Here’s why: I had total amnesia for about fifteen minutes. Apparently, I never actually lost consciousness, but there’s a span of about five minutes that I don’t remember, and a span of about ten minutes that I remember not remembering anything. The first thing I remember is holding a flavorless snow cone to my lip while a guy mopped up blood behind me. I had another classic Brandon reaction. Here’s my thought process upon regaining my senses:

Where am I? Am I eating a snow cone? Why doesn’t this snow cone have any flavor? Wait a second, who am I? What have I lived up to this point? Do I have amnesia? How utterly fascinating!

I found out later that week that I had met a number of people for the first time while I had amnesia. While I certainly made quite the first impression, I had to explain to them later that I didn’t actually remember meeting them.

It wasn’t long before I decided to go back to my room to recover. When you get a concussion, you get really, really, really tired afterwards, so all I wanted to do was go to sleep. That’s when I remembered my Calculus homework. Calculus was the bane of my existence that semester, and it all really started with this. Calculus homework is hard. Calculus homework with a concussion is impossible.

As I mentioned, I went to the doctor the next day because my head was still pounding. That’s when I found out I had a concussion. That’s also when I found out that if you go to sleep right after you get a concussion, you can slip into a coma! So, while I was angry about the Calculus homework, I actually owe it my life, as I would most certainly be a vegetable today had I not completed it.

So the next time you hear a teenager complain that Calculus won’t ever do them any good, you tell them: Calculus saved Brandon’s life!

To this day, I still have a large mass of scar tissue on the inside of my lower lip, which serves as a constant reminder of the hidden dangers of inflatable boxing.

Why do the French get so many good video game-related pranks? First Pac-Man, now this?

It pays to keep tabs on your old projects.

One of my employer’s internal, lead-generation sites had fallen into disuse. We basically weren’t doing anything to send traffic there anymore, so we’d kind of forgotten about it. On the site was a toll-free number that you could call to help you search for a school. Well, when we stopped using the site, we stopped using the phone number as well.

Of course, the site was registered for a number of years, so it didn’t just go away; but the phone number… Well, when we stopped paying for that, it went back on the market. And someone else snatched it up. Now, the phone number (which was, until today, still posted on the website) is a gay sex chat line. So people in California looking for schools got quite a shock when they called looking for help in continuing their education.

So I think a new slogan is in order. Here are some suggestions:

• When we say we’re a full-service ad agency, we mean we are a FULL-SERVICE ad agency
• We bend over backwards to service you
• A full-service ad agency—with benefits
• Gaying up the Internet since 1989

It’s been a while since my last blog post. Even though I’m a day late, I thought some Christmas lore would be fun to share with you.

Everyone has bad days at work, and Santa is no exception. The Christmas of 1890 had a record number of lit fireplaces that made gift-delivering exceptionally hard. But nothing beats the Christmas of 1972. There was no one disaster that made this a bad Christmas for Santa, but rather a multitude of smaller but serious problems everywhere.

Half of Santa’s elves got sick with a double-whammy of mono and whooping cough. Temp elves were brought in, but temp elves are not skilled in toy production, which meant double-overtime to meet toy deadlines. Three of the reindeer were on maternity leave, and one had been sent away to a clinic to deal with an undisclosed addiction. The sleigh had begun to show signs of stress over the years, but finally gave in and required some repairs just a few days before Christmas. A loaner sleigh was granted Santa, but it was an older model without heating.

In the midst of all of this, Mrs. Claus announced that her family would be coming up for a visit. They’d never seen eye-to-eye. Let’s just say they didn’t approve of his career choice.

Christmas Eve came and poor Santa had reached his limit. He poured a cup of coffee and reached for the whiskey only to find the liquor cabinet empty and surrounded by hoofprints. In his frustration, he dropped the coffeepot, which broke into a hundred tiny shards and stained his favorite carpet. When he went to fetch the broom, he found that mice had eaten the straw, rendering it useless.

Just then, the doorbell rang. Santa drudged over to the door, letting lose a string of most un-merry obscenities. When he opened it, he didn’t see anyone. He almost shut the door, when he heard a petite-sounding little cough close to the ground. He looked down at the ground and saw the tiniest little angel carrying with it a great big Christmas tree.

The angel gazed up at Santa, smiling warmly. Finally, Santa exclaimed, “Well, what do you want?”

The angel replied, in the most pleasant voice, “Oh, Santa, the merriest of Christmases to you! I hope I’ve caught you at a good time. I have a beautiful tree for you. Isn’t this just the loveliest tree? Where would you like me to stick it?”

And that is why the angel sits atop the Christmas tree.

The best way to jailbreak an iPod Touch.

Here’s a helpful post I made on Yahoo Answers on how to jailbreak an iPod Touch:

How to Jailbreak my iPod Touch 2G with iOS4?

Check out Janelle’s post on the best birthday cake ever. (It was my birthday cake.) If you sampled the cake, make sure to leave a review!

I’m addicted to Yahoo Answers. I get on, and I realize, All of these people need my advice! I am determined to help all of them, no matter how banal or stupid they may be. Here are some of my latest exploits on Yahoo Answers:

“Riddle please help me solve it ”
“What is this glass ceiling feminists talk about?”
“Christians: is this a sign?”
“Super difficult riddle. I can’t handle it.”
“When someone shouts out, ‘that’s what she said,’ who is she and why has she got so much to say?”
“In old legends, what are some of the things werewolves hated the most other than silver and vampires?”

So, as you can see, I’m helping people left and right. I’m almost a level two answerer, which means I’ll soon be able to cast magic missile. (I think. I’m a little unsure on what that actually does.)

I just checked my e-mail for Dogs on Skateboards, my joke site. I got three e-mails asking for advice on what equipment to use (pretty standard), one e-mail asking me to post of video of their dog (at least expected), and then a real gem that is quite possibly the best e-mail I have ever received. Rather than explain the e-mail, here it is in its entirety:

Hi Curtis,

Sorry to email out of the blue… I work for Talkbackthames on ITV1′s hit entertainment show ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, which is now back for a forth series. The show gives people and animals the opportunity to showcase their talents in front of a panel of three judges (Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and Amanda Holden). The last series was watched by nearly 20 million viewers and is hailed as one of the most successful talent shows
of this century.

The show is open to absolutely anyone – any talent, any age – and over the past three years we’ve had a huge variety of acts. This year we are really keen to showcase gifted animals… there is always space for animal acts on the show, which the judges and audience love to see. I came across your skateboarding dogs website online and would really like to get in contact with some dogs who skateboard in the UK. I would really appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction and put me in contact with any skateboarding dogs you know of in Britain?

Over the last three years we have had a singer, dancer and dance group win and although they were extremely talented there may be more unusual talent in Britain that could benefit from the opportunities they have, namely a grand prize of £100,000 and the chance to perform at The Royal Variety show in front of Her Majesty the Queen.

We are auditioning up and down the country over the next couple of months and wouldn’t want you them to miss the opportunity. You can contact me on this email or call – XXXX XXX XXXX.

Many thanks and I look forward to hearing from you.

Louise Major
Researcher
Britain’s Got Talent 4

Unfortunately, the e-mail was sent back in October, otherwise I would respond to it. I don’t know what I’d do if they mentioned the site on the air—it’s not like there’s much to do there.

So that’s my latest brush with fame. Visit the site and share it with friends!