Yesterday I found this ad online:

First off, why does everyone look very nice and neat and my job has the crazy hair. Then, everyone else is wearing a collar, but I seem to be wearing some type of weird, bright, athletic shirt. I mean for God's sake, even the bounty hunter is wearing a pantsuit!

What is going on here, people?! When did my job become the Rodney Dangerfield of online degree jobs?!

Yesterday Byron and I met up with Jessica, who was having a bit of a rough day.

While walking down the street Jessica asked me, "Don't you ever just...just have one of those days where you wake up and you're like, 'Okay! Today things are going to change! Today I'm going to get out of my rut and turn things around, and today is going to be different!'" She turned to me, excited and hopeful. "You know what I mean, Josh?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Actually, I'm already pretty awesome. So...not really, no."

One of the longest run on sentences I've ever read, from page 168 of the spring 2008 issue of Antenna magazine, where the editors are evidently blind or sleeping:

"The only two things that beer doesn't go well with are contentious funerals filled with grief-stricken finger-pointers and Ajax footie matches versus Feyenoord FC, where FFC's drunken supporters, Het Legion, attempt to brain opposing fans with broken chunks of cement from Rotterdam's infamous train bridges while the travelers wait on train platforms, huddled like newborn turtles on the beach of some crummy, rat-infested South Pacific island, willing the11:04 to arrive early and get them back into Amsterdam where it is, believe it or not, safer."

The other day, wandering around Facebook, I was repeatedly asked to fill out Captcha prompts. You know, those things that look like this:

While filling out the prompts some odd combination of words would occasionally pop up. Here, some of best combinations that could be turned into a movie, and what that movie would be about:

Mr. Brooklyn - When Brooklyn butcher Tony Congelio gets his arm caught in a meat grinder he thinks his life is over. But after his reconstructive surgery leaves his arm stronger and more powerful than ever, he's recruited by the New York Mets as their star pitcher. Congelio takes the Mets all the way to the World Series, and along the way he lifts spirits, inspires a team to believe, and earns the nickname Mr. Brooklyn.

The Formed - When a meteor crash landed in the backwoods of North Carolina, no one could have ever imagined what horrors it would be holding. Now, one farmer may be our last chance, before life as we know it is gone forever.

Be Downtown - The year: 1963. Bobby Warner, a nightclub owner in Detroit, plans a three day outdoor concert/protest to fight the city building a freeway right through one of the city's oldest black neighborhoods. Featuring performances by some of todays hottest stars as the legendary singers of Motown, Be Downtown will leave you clapping your hands and buying the soundtrack.

Code Duress - Operation Hangdog is a U.S. Military operation so secretive, only three men officially know about its existence. Early Sunday morning, one of those men, General Mercer, turned up dead. Now, with no where to run and no one to trust, the two remaining men must figure out the real reason behind Mercer's death before one of them is next!

Jury Unlikely - It's assumed that the jury in the case of Mahoney v. Roscoe County can be bought, and local millionaire Reginald F. Mahoney can walk free for the vehicular manslaughter of his half-brother, Jeb. But what Mahoney wasn't counting on was one juror who wasn't afraid to stick up for what he believes in, money be damned.

Paris Sources - Jon Albright, an American freelance writer living in Paris, is hot on the trail of of one of the biggest scoops of his career. The only hitch? He's in love with one of his informants, a beautiful Parisian woman named Isabella. Can Jon write the article of his life and get the girl?

In this episode of Other People's Bookshelves I talk with UR Chicago publisher and DJ, Chess Hubbard. And her dog, I guess.

Yesterday Drea and I began developing a vocabulary game. In the game each player will pick 10 words out of a dictionary, and the opposing player will have see how many synonyms and antonyms they can come up with for each of the 10 words. For bonus points a player can try naming the lexical category (or categories, if the word allows) that each word falls into (example: the word "fall" could be both a noun, a verb and an adjective). Excitement! We also made the ground rules that 1) No foreign words allowed, and 2) No technical jargon from either of our industries (important when the two players involved are a web developer and a metallurgist). Of course the rules can be adapted depending on the players.

"Maybe we should market this game for snotty intellectuals, along with your other game, Expatriots," Drea suggested. I agreed, and we quickly realized that we could make even more money if, instead of marketing towards adults, we created "educational" games for small children. Insecure parents eat that shit up.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we created Professor Snootarium's Crazy Vocabularium!!!

Last night I discovered Neurotics Anonymous.

"All the more reason for my laughter program, called," Drea struggles, searching for a name. "Jubilanics." "I don't know about that name," I say. "It sounds like you're talking about the Jews."

Drea agrees, and says I should probably take over the program development anyway. "And all I'll ask for is 10% of the profits." "10%?" I ask, "I'll give you 3%." Drea is insistent on 10%.

Me: Listen, I've got an awesome lawyer and I'm not above taking you to court to see that you only get 3%.
Drea: What? I'll take you to court.
Me: You can't take me to court. I've already taken you to court.
Drea: Well my lawyer is just that good.
Me: Oh yeah? Well my lawyer is so good, he'll invite your lawyer out to lunch, and then he just won't show up to lunch, and then when your lawyer calls my lawyer my lawyer will be all, "Psych!"
Drea: Yeah, well my lawyer will invite your lawyer out to lunch and then at the end of the meal my lawyer will get up to go to the bathroom and just never come back.

Drea and I clearly have a very involved understanding of the American legal system.

Here's my attempt to sum up this video in a sentence: I sing a bit and shred a book. Tada!

Oy!Chicago just published part two in a series on young Jews who are running their own businesses and doing their own things, and it turns out I'm featured (click here to read the whole deal).

I actually share the article with Danielle Schultz, a boutique owner whom I've know for years but haven't talked to in forever. A few days after Danielle was interviewed she sent me an email saying, "It was the funniest thing! She was interviewing me for an article about young Jewish entrepreneurs. I asked her who else she was interviewing and she mentioned this web designer who quit his day job and started up with a partner. And I said, 'Are you talking about Josh Eisenberg?'"

Evidently I'm the Jew to know in the Chicago web design community. And now that I've been interviewed by a Jewish magazine I'm sure my mother can die a happy woman.

...Though it still couldn't hurt to marry a nice Jewish doctor.

This morning at the gym I got the hiccups while working out. For whatever reason I felt the need to share this via text.

Me: There's nothing more embarrassing than getting hiccups at the gym.
Drea: What about the other day when you started to tear up on the elliptical machine while you were watching Oprah and that thing about hurricane Katrina came on?

For certain people getting drunk means calling an ex and making a fool of themselves. For others it means eating an extra large pizza alone. For me getting drunk means remaking a Robert Palmer music video.

I'm posting this at 2am, so you can probably draw your own conclusions.

For letter E in the Alphabetical Book Review list I recommend Strunk & White's The Elements of Style. I also have a conversation with a semicolon and reminisce about the old 70's buddy cop show Strunk & White. Why does no one else remember that show?

This morning I show up my local coffee shop. Byron is already there, chatting with the woman behind the counter and paying for his coffee. As Byron takes his change he struggles to put slip it in his pocket and the woman says, "That's why I don't wear tight pants."

"Well," she goes on, "that and it says no tight pants in our handbook."

At first I assume she means the handbook for the coffee shop we're at, but she adds, "It's listed right after the part about Jeeps and bulldogs." And that's when I realize she's not referring to the coffee shop handbook, but rather the lesbian handbook.

"Jeeps?" I ask. "I always thought it was pickup trucks." She shakes her head. "It was pickup trucks in the 90's. We've updated since then."

At least they're staying current.

Frou Frou Cocktail or Sexual Act?

1. Blow Fizz
2. Piledriver
3. Creampie
4. Frothy Walrus
5. Bluebird
6. Drain Cleaner
7. Butterfinger
8. Creamy Screwdriver
9. Leapfrog
10. Fuzzy Banana
11. Shocker
12. Bukkake
13. Donkey Punch
14. Long Slow Comfortable Screw Against the Wall
15. Pink Pillow
16. Unicorn

A few weeks ago I went out to the 'burbs and talked to a some high school English classes about what it's like to be writer.

Christy: Yeah, how did that go?
Me: It went well.
Christy: What'd you end up talking to them about?
Me: Just writing stuff. My process, and getting jobs, and blah blah blah.
Christy: I always equate talking to classes about what you do as being a Very Adult Thing
Me: Well if I had a Very Adult Job then it would be, but I just sit around all day.
Christy: But you didn't tell them you sit around all day. (pause) Right?
Me: Well...
Christy: And it's not like you went wearing a hoodie.
(silence)
Christy: You told them you sit around all day?
Me: Um...
Christy: You wore a hoodie!?

It's not as though I was going to fool any of them into thinking I was an adult anyway. I mean, c'mon.