Once again its time for another post in my continuing series of how the states got their shapes. I have been reading a book recently called “How the States Got Their Shapes” and I have been posting in alphabetical order about how some of them got their shapes. You can go back and read the post from December 8th to see how states from Alabama to Georgia and December 16th to see how Hawaii to Maryland got their shapes.  So without further ado, here is the next 10, continuing with the great of………..

• Massachusetts- If Massachusetts kinda looks like a the drunk guy who passed out and fell at a party, its because it got its shape from a chalk outline of Billy Massachusetts when he passed out drunk at a party. No truth to the rumor that it was give the “Delaware Treatment” in which the victim is violated by Delaware’s long, thick shaft.
• Michigan- People wonder why Michigan is split in half and is surrounded by water. It got that way because Congress was trying to keep those crazy motherfuckers secluded and away from the rest of the country so that they can’t fuck it up the same way they fucked up their own state.
• Minnesota- The shape of Minnesota was heavily influenced by the fact that people from Canada are so dimwitted that they didn’t want to bother to learn how to swim across all those fuckin lakes. That is the primary reason why Minnesota now looks like the tall creepy kid from school who is leering at all the freshmen chicks with his over sized nose peeking out.
• Mississippi- Everything was going great for Mississippi until Louisiana showed up and punched Mississippi in the junk. Now its forced to look like Alabama’s deformed, reverse evil twin, which is sorta fitting what with all the inbreeding in Alabama.
• Missouri- Congress got so sick of the fucking corn in Iowa that they decided to piss Iowa off and give more land to help form Missouri. Ever since then, Missouri has been the worthless state that has to have everything shown to them instead of letting them figure shit out for themselves. If Illinois wasn’t around to bribe Missouri to shut the fuck up, then it would have no economy at all.
• Montana- Although it kinda looks like a sideways Minnesota all hopped up on steroids, Montana got its shape because we wanted to give the paranoid backwoods fucks that live there as much room as possible so that they wouldn’t get cabin fever and start blowing everything the fuck up. The problem is that it didn’t work.
• Nebraska- The only reason why Nebraska got its shape was to bore the fuck out of anybody who came within 3 states of it. 
• Nevada- Ever the showman, Nevada wanted a sleek, sexy shape to help promote its prostitution business, but yet leave a jagged point as if to stab you in the back like a Vegas casino.
• New Hampshire- The shape of of New Hampshire isn’t a mistake, it really is supposed to look like its doin 69 with Vermont.
• New Jersey- Just because New Jersey looks like something that New York shit out after a really rough bowel movement, doesn’t mean you should feel sorry for it.

So last night I posted a look back at 2008. So tonight, its a look ahead at 2009. I couldn’t predict many of the things that happened in 2008, although honestly, I could see the Cubs not winning the World Series from a mile away. So what is going to happen this year? I’m always looking for predictions or goals. Here are a few predictions for 2009:

I know everybody else always does their end of the year bullshit in the middle of December, but I have never been like everybody else. After all, the middle of December still leaves a good 2-3 weeks left of the year. Last year I did a summary of each month with a different post in December. This year I’m just going to sum up the year in my life with one post.

2008 was an extreme year for me filled with historic highs and devastating lows and not much in between. It was a year that truly had opposites occur a lot. In March I kind of lost one of my oldest friends when we had a conversation online about my homosexuality. It was a devastating blow. That same month I came very close to losing my job for reasons I don’t agree with, do understand and would do again without thinking twice.

In April I went to the Cubs opener for the first time since 2004. The Cubs season would be like no other Cubs season I could remember, except that it had the same stupid fucking result at the end. Those fuckers. I missed a chance to witness history when I decided not to go to Cubs-Astros game in Milwaukee, only to miss out on Carlos Zambrano’s no hitter. I told myself then I would not pass up a chance at history again. Later in the year, I proved my point.

In May, for the second year in a row,  I took part in a charity poker tournament for make benefit the American Cancer Society. Much like the first year, I lost but had fun doing it. It was part of a rough gambling month of May for me.

In late June and early July, I spent a fortune replacing my roof. It was a long time coming, honestly the roof had so much damage that its amazing the whole damn house didn’t come down.

August was by far and away not only the craziest month of the year, but also maybe the craziest one of my life. It started with my sister winding up in the hospital, the very same day I started my vacation. After she was out, I was able to take my vacation and drive a similar drive that my dad had taken with 2 friends back in 1948. I drove through Oklahoma, to Dallas, through Louisiana and up to Tunica, Mississippi before heading home, passing through 7 states along the way. I did this all by myself, which was very different. On August 13th, just a day after my vacation ended and I had gone back to work, I received a phone call from one of my best friends telling me that his parents had died. It was a shocking, sobering reality about life that rocked my world and shook me to the very core of my being.

In September the hits just kept on coming. A friend of mine revealed a startling revelation that took me by complete surprise.

Remember when I said I would not pass up another chance at history? Well, I was given a chance to witness history so big that it made Zambrano’s no hitter look like wasted croutons. I was in Chicago’s Grant Park when Barack Obama was elected the nations 44th president and was within site distance of him when he gave his beautiful speech. It was a night I will never forget and one of the highlights of my life.

Sometimes life goes in full circle. I started the year not friends with my former best friend, Jt. By the end of the year, we were good friends again. The seed was planted when for whatever reason, we started talking just briefly with small talk at a party we were both at back in February. Maybe it was the massive amounts of alcohol we consumed, but an olive branch was sent at that time. We were little more then causal friends up until the day that changed everything, August 13th, when our very good friend lost his parents. With that, our friendship was fully rekindled, making it the silver lining on a very dark and bleak cloud. My year ended with him inviting me to dinner on New Year’s eve with his girlfriend and her mom. We later rang in the new year at a friends house surrounded with people who had seen the trial, tribulations, joys and heartaches of our now 15 year friendship. Such a moment was never thought of as being possible when the year started, yet was ever so welcomed as the year ended.

Our friendship has really been through so much and everybody certainly would have understood if we had not reconciled. Still, its a testament to friendship, forgiveness and two open minded people that such a reconciliation could be attained. That for me, was the best thing to come out of this dismal year, something to be grateful for about 2008.

Its been a busy few days and therefore I have not been able to update anything about New Years. So, here is a brief recap of the past few days.

Tuesday night I went over to Jt’s to help him move a rather large and heavy fish tank. Not much to say about it, but I wanted to post about it so that it shows that I’m strong enough to move a fish tank that was nearly empty. Arrrrghhhh, me strong!

As for New Year’s eve, my friends and I spent the better part of a week going back and forth as to what we wanted to do. Nobody could make a damn decision. Should we go out and hang out at somebody’s house? It got to the point where 3pm on the afternoon of the 31st, we still did not know what we were doing. We had an invite to go over to the Johnson’s house so I told people that was what I was going to do. About 6ish I got a text message from Jt inviting me to dinner with his him and his girlfriend Corlee and her mom. We wound up at a place I’ve always wanted to eat at called Houlihans. Of course the place was packed and we had to wait 45 minutes for a table. I had not eaten since noon so I was plenty hungry. The food was ok, actually the steak was a tad bit disappointing to be honest.

Jt, Corlee and I made it to the Johnsons at about 10:30ish, plenty of time to ring in the new year with everybody. And by everybody, it wound up being about 10 of us, plus a few kids who were struggling to stay awake watching a kids movie upstairs. Midnight came and went and with that, we said a fond “fuck you” to 2008.

Shortly after midnight we decided to play a few games. We started with the always fun Scattergories. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this game, you are given a list of 10 catergories and a letter is chosen for you to come up with something for each of those catergories starting with that later. Geez, does that ever sound confusing. Just play the damn game so you know what the fuck I’m talking about. Nevertheless, one of the catergories was name a tool starting with the letter F. Kris and Corlee came up with French tickler, which besides being very funny, set off a spirited debate as to if a French Tickler was indeed a tool. I think we all voted that it wasn’t but, I though it could be considered a tool. After all, its work to use it, causes moaning and groaning and is used to achieve a goal, all of which holds true for all tools.

After that, we played Taboo which is always fun. The time really went by fast because next thing we know we look at the time and it was 4:45 in the am. What was even a bigger surprise was that everybody stood until then, nobody left early.

Yesterday I decided to have a guys day here at my house for the start of the NFL playoffs. It wound up being me, Mark, John, Scooty, Jt, Keith and Mason. Not a lot of guys, but still enough to have fun and create chaos. Now for those of you who don’t know, I’ve got a rather large family room with a 56 inch screen tv. Midway through the second playoff game (and through 2 1/2 cases of beer) I don’t quite know how it got started, but somebody started to bounce a little rubber ball back and forth to somebody else. Next thing we know, we are bouncing this ball all over the room to each one of us knocking shit over and whatnot. John then had this idea of turning on the ceiling fan and bouncing the ball into the fan to see where it would go. Honestly, I wish I had a video camera so that I could put it on YouTube for you to see. It was quite funny, yet entirely stupid at the same time. We were laughing our asses off  and then got a couple of more rubber balls and started bouncing them around too. The fan was shooting the balls in all sorts of directions, which was a concern for me because I was worried it would hit the tv. At one point, Scooty bounced a ball that knocked over Keith’s beer. He also bounced a ball to Keith that he was not expecting and he quickly put his hands in front of his face and bent his glasses. Think that was enough? Nope. Jt had the brilliant idea of playing a game of 500, in which you bounce the ball and whoever catches the ball gets points and yadda yadda yadda, first one to 500 wins. We must have gone on with this ball bouncing thing for the entire second half of the Indy-San Diego game. In spite the ball bouncing everywhere and  of John’s……………..er……………excessive jumping and moving nothing wound up broke, although we did manage to knock down or over just about every picture I had in the room. My guess is that we won’t soon be playing this game again, however it was fun as hell while it lasted.