is playful; unabashed;
can surprise me;
can awe me.

shares a parallel feeling of desire; the feeling we’ll reach the speed of light;
is static to the touch;
steals the air.

brightens a day; a smile that lights up the room;
hears my words;
holds my gaze.

confers an unmatched feeling of self-worth; justifies existence;
races my mind;
pushes me.

preoccupies my thoughts; both first and last;
accepts the past;
remembers me.

forms a real connection; the tie that binds;
fuses their soul to mine;
slows time.

believes what they believe; while respecting mine;
shows compassion;
is kind.

feels the same.

Firstly, we see what you did there with “second term”. Clever. And secondly, if we did have an American base on the Moon it would probably be stamped “Made in China”. We don’t make anything anymore.

So, look, I’m sold. Stephen Hawking said:

“Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space.”

And nobody says it better than Aaron Sorkin:

“Because it’s [space] next. Because we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill, and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on the timeline of exploration, and this is what’s next.”

I don’t make it a point to disagree with Aaron Sorkin or people who have made contributions to quantum gravity. We have to get off Earth. If only to escape the next Transformers sequel. But we have to do this together. Americans, Chinese, Russians, Japanese, fuck man, if the Iraqis, Iranians, and Cubans want to help I’d let them.

Two heads are better than one. 24 countries rank better than us in math. 16 countries rank better in science.

What makes Newt think we can do this alone? Because we called ‘shotgun’ on the Moon? It’s pretty well documented that without the help of Nazi German scientists we lose the Space Race.

Newt’s claim reminds me of three things:

1. Promising a soda machine as Class Vice President in 9th grade.
2. The West Wing where Martin Sheen wanted to announce a cure for cancer.
3. JFK in ’61.

These are all inspiring claims. None more so than my dream of (one day) getting a Coke machine inside Holley High School. But this is space, man. It goes back to a question I got in a job interview once, “What’s better: competition or cooperation?” The answer: not blowing each other up before we can colonize another planet, bitches.

But, I haven’t been able to figure out how to declare for the 2012 NFL Draft.

Last year I choose to stay at Microsoft for my Sophomore year. At the time I felt it was the right move for my career. I thought answering emails, creating PowerPoint templates, and producing podcasts was where God wanted me. My co-workers wanted me back and I was looking forward to the opportunity to three-peat as the Best Workplace in Ireland. To walk away from that, with the talented intern class we had coming in would’ve been a shame I thought.

In hindsight, I should’ve went pro. My family needed the money and I almost blew out my wrist with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

So, this year I decided to declare. Only, I can’t quite figure out how. It seems so easy. ESPN would lead you to believe that college athletes just sort of announce it. So, ‘I declare.’ Am I in? Do I need to update my Facebook status or tweet this it? I probably need an agent.

I can’t seem to get a hold of Scott Boras. So, I emailed IMG:

IMG represents like everybody.

If you’re an NFL team and you saw me on SportsCenter, here’s some more FAQs:

Q: What position do you play?
A: Offense AND defense.

Q: No special teams, huh?
A: That’s for practice squad players.

Q: Where did you play college ball?
A: SUNY Brockport. In the quad.

Q: What’s your 40-yard dash time?
A: Really fast. List of people I’ve beat in a race: Mairead O’Callaghan, Eric Peskor, Mike Ciulla, Robert Arevalos*, Clayton Au-Yueng*.

Q: What type of contract demands might you have?
A: A few mil. A Segway for getting around the practice facilities. Weekends off.

*Pending.

It’s probably not too early to begin thinking about drafting me in your fantasy leagues. I’m gonna double what Chris Johnson did all year in my first game. Once the offensive coordinator sees what I can do, every play will probably be “throw it up to P”. That’s what we do it flag football. I run deep.

If you guys know somebody, a GM, a coach, Mel Kiper Jr., let them know I’m eligible. Thursday, April 26th I could be wearing your team’s jersey**.

**I may just end up buying this from Sports Authority.

1. Power walkers
2. Killing that girl who looked like Julia Robers in Patch Adams
3. 100 calorie snack packs

100 calorie snack packs are the biggest scam there is. It reminds me of George from Seinfeld talking about duty free shops at the airport, “Duty free is the biggest sucker deal in retail. Do you know how much duty is? Duty’s nothing.”

If you’re so desperate to to cut calories, don’t eat mini bags of Oreos to begin with.

Or how about this, buy a normal package of Oreos and eat just one. That’s only 50 calories. Not to mention You’re being ripped off as well. Those fancy 100 calorie boxes come with like 10-15 cookies. You could buy a normal package for $3 that has 30 cookies. Admittedly I’m not good at math, but one of those deals seems significantly better.

Again, let me emphasize, if you’re “on a diet” or “watching your weight” or “just trying to eat healthy” you shouldn’t be snacking on Oreos anyway. A 100 calorie Twinkie is still a God damn Twinkie! Buy baby carrots. Eat a banana. Throw up meals in the bathroom if that’s your thing.

Presumably, if you’re buying 100 calorie snack packs you have trouble limiting your portions. So, OK, fair enough. You’re hoping they will force you to eat less of those delicious golden sponge cakes with creamy filling. But it won’t — you’re weak. You’ll eat all six of those packs during one episode of Ellen.

Do you think, because the package says 100 calories, you’re eating something healthy? I could package anything as only 100 calories. McDonald’s could sell you a 100 calorie Big Mac that was 1/6th its size and you’d probably think you were eating well.

“Oh, but they’re great for lunches.”

1. They’re horrible for lunches. It’s empty calories.
2. Die.

They’re just selling you less food for more money. Doesn’t anyone notice this? I FEEL LIKE I’M TAKING CRAZY PILLS!

Anybody can come in. I can help everyone. I’ve watched enough The West Wing that I could get Mitt Romney elected. No question. I have six new slogans for Bud Light in my head at any given time. I could triple Q2 sales of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish with one ad.

Take football for example, the Pittsburgh Steelers sure-as-shit wouldn’t have lost to Tim Tebow and the Broncos had I been consulted on the play-calling. Look at these stats from the game:

It’s simple math, man. I. Redman was averaging 7 yards per carry, you only need 10 yards for a first down, and you have 4 plays to get a first down. I feel like I solved this problem before on a sixth grade math test. Answer: Hand the ball off to I. Redman every play. Even better, A. Brown (whoever he is) had one run for 18 yards. All the Steelers had to do was run this one play over-and-over again. This is how I win on Madden ’10 all the time.

Why would the Steelers ever throw the ball?

I got ideas for movies too:

1. Kill the main character*, early
2. Get more Ryan Gosling
3. Don’t give the whole plot away with the title (e.g. We Bought a Zoo)
4. Double the amount of fog machines you’re using
5. If your entire movie is based around super intelligent apes, surely they must want more than just living in Muir Woods

*Unless it’s Ryan Gosling.

How do you think Stella got her groove back? That was my idea. The producers came to me and this was our conversation:

Producers: Stella lost her groove.
Me: Get it back!
Producers: How?
Me: That’s your story right there.

Cap’n Crunch. Make him a general already. Honey Nut Cheerios. More honey, please. Crushing on a girl? Mix tape. Mix tape. Mix tape. “Buy one get one free”. How about “Buy one get two free”? It’s a game changer!

Trouble with your baseball swing. Swing faster. Need a cool PowerPoint transition. Fly In. Radio jingle for an Amish furniture store. Too ironic — make a sign with crayons. Can’t decide between brioche bread pudding and chocolate butterscotch brownies. Get both. Social media strategy. Retweet at me.

In summary:

I bet the other nouns are jealous some went pro.

If I was a giraffe captured by a pack of lions I would try to start a basketball league so they could see my value.

When people tell me the sky’s the limit, are they patronizing me? I’m capable of going much further. MUCH. FURTHER.

I saw a dog and duck fighting today. OK, I made that up. But I did see a duck today. Well, yesterday.

Instead I barely have 50 followers. It’s bullshit, man. @Lord_Voldemort7 has nearly 2 million followers. Lord Voldemort7. 7! “Lord Voldemort” was taken by at least six other people and he still found 2 million muggles people to follow him. All this account does is make a Harry Potter reference every day.

It blows my mind.

@DaREALSn0wWhite has 1,500 followers with classic tweets like “..Not happy” and “dammn im tryna see the wu tang clan dec. 28″. @HarryPotteries does the same thing the Voldemort account does and has 9,000 followers. I could list these generic, lame accounts forever. Probably forever twice including all the fake Justin Bieber accounts with over 100k followers.

I’ve searched “how to increase my Twitter followers” a few times and it’s all networking bull crap (social media swapping, mass following, tweet @ people). I shouldn’t have to do anything. I’m the talent here. Derek Jeter doesn’t walk up to girls in the bar, girls in the bar walk up to Jeter. Which makes me think: I wonder if celebrities see my name under “Who to follow”? You can RT that.

Will Arnett tweets something dumb like “Crap! I think I left my keys in 2011″ and hundreds of people retweet that. It’s not funny. But he’s Will Arnett, apparently.

The internet/blogger mantra has always been: “Content is King”. But I haven’t found this to be true. I have less people reading my blog than following me on Twitter. I’ve written some funny fucking posts — yet it’s lost in a cauldron of lame Harry Potter jokes. See what I did there? RT that. Or tweet @ me. Something.

I’m funny hilarious and the world needs to take note.

While writing this I just created a new drinking game called “Parm’s Tweets”. Rules:

1. Using your Twitter iPhone app go to @parmele
2. A player chooses a tweet to read
3. If any other player(s) smile/smirk/laugh they have to drink
4. If nobody laughs, the player who read the tweet drinks
5. Pass the app to the next player
6. If a player repeats a previously read tweet, that player has to drink and loses their turn

I can’t imagine ever needing rule #4.

NBC’s decision this week to put Community “on hold” and keep Whitney tells me, collectively, we’re never going to accomplish anything. Curing cancer? Psh, Justin Bieber’s new Christmas album is coming out. We can’t afford to support both causes.

Ryan summed this up on well on Facebook:

i want to beat every american on the snout with a newspaper and make them watch Whitney in front of me. DID YOU DO THIS? DID YOU DO THIS? whitney is like watching a 24 minute version of the 30 second cut-aways in Family Guy where they make fun of sitcoms. whitney is a slow-motion car accident set against a laugh track, and what the f*** is with that laugh track? WHO LAUGHS LIKE THAT? and WHY DO WE NEED TO BE REMINDED TO LAUGH? shouldn’t that be a sign, THAT WE HAVE TO BE TOLD WHEN SOMETHING THEY CONSIDER FUNNY HAS BEEN SAID? i’ve seen a total of 4 minutes of that show and i felt like i was in a goddamn ZOLOFT COMMERCIAL. all i wanted to do was f***ing CRY AGAINST A RAINY WINDOW. i want to punch every last NBC executive in the mouth. DO YOU FEEL THAT? THAT’S WHAT WHITNEY FEELS LIKE. F***.

I don’t know a single person who likes Whitney. I have 350 friends (on Facebook). Ryan has another 350. Add in the staff of La Fonda, that girl grocery bagger at Lucky’s on Sloat, some guys from our flag football team, that girl I was talking to in the bar last night, and none of them like Whitney.

I’d love to know who these people are with the Nielsen boxes — that determine the ratings. I’d describe what I think they’re like, but I don’t know how to do that without being a racist. Community is right up there with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia as one of the best shows on TV. Ironically, they’re both routinely snubbed by the Emmys.

Look, I love Modern Family. Watch it every week. It’s smart writing, but Community is smarter. Perhaps ‘too smart’ for the Mormon high school dropouts in Utah with the Nielsen boxes.

If this is where this country is going — if Whitney is perceived as a better show than Community — let’s just end this. Because I cut the brakes! Wildcard, bitches! Yeeee-ha!

We submitted this picture to the We Love Community tumblr:

Yeah boi, boi. Yeah. It’s 2011. Save Community. Word.

1. Candy
2. Slutty nurses
3. Slutty police women
4. Slutty nuns
5. Etc.

Back in August, myself and Ryan (my roommate, BFF, childhood pal, fierce competitor, Nerf cop partner, funny dude) began brainstorming costume ideas. We knew we wanted to be an internet meme. Last year, Ryan crushed it as Keyboard Cat. Somewhere between trying to determine the correct number of roses (in dozens) to bring on a first date and problems with superstring theory, we decided we wanted to do a real-life rickroll.

Not familiar with rickrolling? Read.

The answer is two by the way. You should always bring two dozen roses on a first date (and you’ll want to give them out one by one every 10 minutes).

So, rickrolling is a pretty simple concept, but we wanted to take it to the next next level. We needed a setup. We needed that one-two punch! We needed a way to play music and that’s where John Cusack’s character from Say Anything comes in. Played by me. I’m the setup, the decoy. The next step is the trick.

Ryan plays the role of Rick Astley, but we needed to disguise him. To do that, we hid him in a giant pig mascot costume which we modded to be tear away with Velcro. On the surface, I was just that dude from Say Anything and he was a funny looking pig.

The idea was to walk up to a large group of people and for me to hold the boombox up like I was Lloyd Dobler. We created an mp3 that played the first five seconds of Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” before abruptly changing to the Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up”. At that moment, the punch — Ryan would jump out of the pig costume singing and dancing exactly like Rick Astley.

Oh, and we had someone video tape it. Watch!

Additional thanks and credit:

1. Ryan’s wallet (and eBay).
2. SuzyQ.
3. Christine and Sophie for filming.
4. Carlos Cabrera for his write-up on Nerve.

Don’t post a photo of you taken from 25 yards away. How do you think this going to help me figure out what you look like? Even if it’s an adventure shot. Great, you climbed Half-Dome. Everybody in the Bay Area has.

When you post group shots it needs to be obvious which one you are. If I can’t figure it out, I have to assume you’re the least attractive one. That “artsy” shot from a weird angle isn’t fooling anyone. You’re not skinny. Why are you trying to disguise this fact? Also, I don’t think Hipstamatic or Instagram on your photos is as clever as you think I do.

Some of my favorites are:

What would possess you to upload a picture of a necklace you made?

Are those sheep? Cows? Giraffes? WTF!

This is the chick’s ONLY photo. A BIKE!

Oh, shoot me already.

I just want to see what you look like.

Secondly, all of your self-summaries read exactly the same. Stop using clichés and be unique. Let me guess…you love your family, your friends, traveling, have your dream job, and are looking for a “partner in crime”. You love nights out but also love nights in on the couch. You work hard and play harder. You’re looking for someone who is serious, but also someone who can make you laugh. Did I nail it?

Well, news flash, you’re 25. You don’t have your “dream job” yet, we don’t want to knock over a 7-Eleven with you, and we couldn’t care less about the person you say you are. We just wanna see the photos, man.

Also, The Law of Large Numbers says if you list all your favorite books, movies, TV shows, music, and food we’re bound to have some in common. So, let’s all just assume we like some of the same pretentious books, foreign movies, critically-acclaimed TV shows, bands you thought only you knew about, and Mexican food.

Maybe use this space to write something interesting about yourself so I don’t have to start my email to you with “OMG you love It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia too? No way!”

8 Simple Rules for Online Dating:

1. Everybody is lying; they’re trying to present their ideal-selves not actual
2. That South American or European city you’ve only visited once can’t be one of your favorite hot spots
3. How “considerate you are” can’t possibly be the first thing someone notices about you (it’s probably, almost always, your boobs so write that)
4. Stop talking about how you can’t believe you’re on an online dating website –- it was always clearly going to come to this
5. If your username is ‘DeathGirl6669′ you should probably think about starting over
6. If you don’t want to meet a person after four emails, stop writing them unless you’re looking for a pen-pal
7. A first date should always be drinks (never commit to a dinner with someone you haven’t met yet)
8. Don’t Facebook them until after the fourth date, maybe even five or six

I’m genuinely worried the movie industry will stop making Fast and the Furious sequels if we don’t find a way more ways to idolize them. Plus, Sean Penn feels like the Japanese earthquake that caused a tsunami totally overshadowed his relief efforts in Haiti and an award show would be the perfect place to let us know that.

So, what I’m thinking is this: The BRAS. An award show to recognize the Best Remakes and Sequels (BRAS). Keeping with the theme, we would hand out bronzed bras as the actual awards. The official sponsor? Victoria’s Secret. The whole thing lends itself to easy marketing. I already have five or six ideas that involve me making out with Gisele.

It’s pretty obvious the new Footloose remake is going straight to DVD and won’t be recognized by the Academy, SAG, Golden Reel, BAFTA, Writers Guild of America, Directors Guild, or even my World of Warcraft guild. As a nation, we need to to commit, by 2015, to making sure we have enough award shows to properly celebrate Transformers 8 5D.

We need to make sure celebrities feel like Gods or at the very least demigods. It gives them more confidence when they drive home drunk from the after after-party because as it turns out Shia LaBeouf’s real car doesn’t drive itself. He shouldn’t be treated like the rest of us. The guy has won MTV Movie Awards and is being considered for The BRAS “Lifetime Achievement in Beating a Dead Horse Award”.