I shot a man in Reno

"just to watch him die..."

OK, I try to keep my blog fun-loving and entertaining, but especially with elections coming up, I'm probably going to get a little political now and then. Bear with me. There are 3 things in politics that are pissing me off to no end right now, so this will probably be part 1 in a 3-part series.

If there's one thing I believe, it's "The ends justifies the means." I really don't care how the the end is acheived, as long as it is.

A good example was when I was a counselor at Boys State over the summer. My delegates were getting a bit out of control, so I lined them up and reemed them out for disrespecting other counselors. Did I go a bit overboard? Oh definately, and I apologized many times for it. However, I didn't have a problem with any of them for the rest of the 7 days. So all told, I feel that the message was conveyed successfully.

A good portion of this comes thought comes from being from Youngstown. James Traficant was as great a congressman as you could ask for. His tireless emotion was a rallying point for the entire Mahoning Valley. He accomplished so much for Youngstown in his 18 years. We have a huge new highway that FINALLY allows me to get on I-80 East without having to get off of the highway, not to mention that I can get to our sister city--Warren--in about half the time as opposed to before it was built. And did I forget to mention the brand new arena that is downtown. Yeah, little old Youngstown has a decent arena, that is home to a hockey team and an AF2 team.

So now... if he did so much good, why do I keep referring in the past tense. Did his constituents turn their back on him, and not vote him in? No, they didn't. But his own Democratic Party did, as did the entire Government. So he may have done some money laundering and stuff... I DONT CARE. He did so much good for Youngstown, that he could have shot a guy and I would have voted for him again!

My good friend Corey Spring alerted me to another congressional scandal developing. Apparently Matt Foley, a Representative from Florida, was sending inappropriate messages to boys under the age of 18. Let me prestate this by saying, do I find that wrong and sick? Yes.

Now let's begin some philisophical debate. It is well known that I have many gay/lesbian friends. You do not choose your sexual orientation. Most people are born to like the opposite sex. However, some aren't. Some are wired to prefer their own sex. With the way our society has and still chastises gay people, why would someone choose that as a lifestyle? That's just asking to become an outcast. Very few sane people would choose to be gay.

It's the same thing with Mr. Foley, and all "sexual predators." If there's one thing that is more chastised than gay people, it's people who like minors. WHY WOULD ANYONE... IN THEIR RIGHT MIND... CHOOSE TO PREFER SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH MINORS. They wouldn't. The only conceivable reason is because that is unfortuantely what they are attracted to.

Most of them know that, because it IS wrong, they know they cannot act on these urges. If they fantasize, or talk to them, fine. They're probably sitting in their room, on their computer jacking themselves. THEY ARENT DOING HARM TO ANYONE. We shouldn't outcast these people, they already are outcasted and living in a personal hell.

If they ever ACT on these urges, then yes, lock them up and throw away the key. However, if they are being harmless like Mr. Foley, and contributing to the greater good of society, then let them keep doing contributing, because we unfortunately don't have enough people doing that.

Oh ya, Free Jim!

"I hang my head and cry..."

This might be our only chance

"When we built these dreams on sand, how they all slipped through our hands..."

Time for a little tribute to Brandon. I've known the kid a year, and what a year it has been.

It all starts late last August when OSU Housing sends us e-mails saying that we are roommates. So of course, I look him up on facebook, and he has his senior picture as his picture. He did the senior hand pose, and it looked like his fuckin hand was melded to his face, giving him the look of a deformed human, slightly resembling Sloth...

So then one day he IMs me... at 6AM. Hysterically, we are both awake. He had just came home from partying, and his mom was yelling at him, and I was winding down after a 5-hour poker session. We talk about how he's from Ashland, and how there's nothing to do there, so all they do is drink and party. I'm pretty sure I ask him if he's emo because of his picture.

Fast forward to move in. I don't see him at all on move in day, because I'm working most of it. The next day, I meet some guys from the Club Ultimate team at OSU, and they invite to a party at their house that night. Brandon comes along, and somehow it was actually a decent party, although both of us expected it to suck pretty badly. It was a glorious first walk of many to be had down 17th back towards the tower. However, he brings along 2 friends who I'm pretty sure were emo...

Things were a bit rocky in the beginning however, when he would set 4 or 5 alarms to wake up for his 8:30 classes, and forget to turn one of them off on a consistent basis, which would then wake me up on the one day I got to sleep in to 11:30. Let's just say that those old fashioned manual wind-up alarm clocks are really hard to turn off when you don't know how and you're really tired. Actually, let's just say that alarm clock never rang again...

There were all of the zany times... the toliet papering the elevator shafts... the duct taping the RAs door on her birthday... using duct tape to lock the rotc douchebags in their rooms... the putting fruit in the rotc guys mailboxes... the staying up late enough so that we could go eat breakfast before we went to bed for the entirety of winter quarter... the time at waffle house... the hour long conversation with somebody and everybody... the showering at the same time at 3am so we could sing.

Oh the singing... the music never ended, yet that isn't a bad thing. Especially since I didn't have to choose the music. The laying in bed just sitting there talking about ridiculous shit like the movie Ready to Rumbe, or scheming ways to mail Chris a tuba.

And oh the singing. Never before Brandon have I ever spontaneously bust into singing the chorus of "Why do you build me up buttercup?" doing the background vocals while he would do the standard lyrics... To this day, neither of us are sure how that happened.

So here's to you Brandon, the best roommate evar!... There's a full bottle of vodka here with our name on it. And Morgan and Andy are going home Friday night. Let's have a bash, just for the hell of it. Call Caitlin... but don't invite Doug, LOL!

Hope last weekend's birthday was as good as you hoped, and you know I'm already looking forward to topping it next year.

"The time that we kill keeps us alive."

Whistle While You Twerk

"Go head and start..."

Amazon.com... The icon of e-commerce. If you've ever bought anything online, chances are you've bought something from Amazon.com. Personally, if you can name it, I've bought it. Required Reading for high school which ranges from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Douglas Adams to Chinua Achebe; not to mention a bunch of AP test study guides. I've bought presents for my Mom, quite specifically the entire 'The Dark Tower' series in hardback (that's ~7 Stephen King books). Oh, and of course books for myself as well, numerous Poker books.

So I have quite an aclectic buying history from Amazon.com. Every couple months or so, they'll send me an e-mail saying,

HEY ANDY! You previously bought books by [RANDOM AUTHOR] from us! Here are some recommendations for other books you might enjoy!

Obviously, with my history, I get the most outlandish results, with way to many books about Willy Loman as part of the recommendations.

However, nothing can top the e-mail I received tonight...

From: Amazon.com
To: Andy Pokrivnak
Subject: Amazon recommends ACME HIGHEST GRADE METAL WHISTLES, THUNDERER and more

I think everyone knows what vocal chords I uttered...

I'm quite confused wondering what kind of book this is, but then I scroll down the e-mail and I'm presented with this:


Click here for larger view.

Apparently, I bought a lanyard from Amazon at some time? I remember looking for one when my one from HOBY broke, but as far as I remember, I bought a black one at Old Navy, and then my current OSU one when I moved down here last fall...

BUT STILL... IF I did buy a lanyard from Amazon, it would have been over 2 years ago, probably closer to 3. Why now.... NOW... are you recommending that I purchase... a... WHISTLE???

"Now she wonder where it went..."

Can I top my shit again?

"First line, should it be about the hoes or the ice?"

Alright stop, collaborate and listen, school is in session which means I'm on a mission. Time to blog regularly again, yay. I'm like one of those weird periodicals that publishes like 35 times a year. 10 weeks in a row, then a 3 week break, then 20 weeks in a row. Then every third week until the end of the year.

Well, a short one to start us off. In fact, it's mainly an addendum to a previous blog. I found more more entertaining signs and decided to post them.

We'll start with these poles that are well-known site on college campuses...


Looks fine, but if you look closer, you see this...


I'm all for helping blind people by adding braile... BUT HOW ARE THEY GOING TO KNOW WHERE AN EMERGENCY POLE IS... plus even if they did know where one is, I can fucking assume that they know the purpose of them without using braile to figure out that it says HELP! next to the button...

Anyway... on to a couple shitty pics that came out bad...

This is a truck with a license plate that read solely "666":


And this... is You Drink and Drive... YOU LOSE... it should read... "You Drink and Drive... YOU LOSE if and only if you get caught, typically you will just have had a damn good night and then realize the next day, 'Shit, why did I drive home?'"


This one is from Starbucks in the GOasis in Ashland. (Irrelevant side note is that Brandon lives there.) The GOasis is a topic of a completely seperate blog, but as far as the Starbucks goes... look at this sign


Now, I'm all about pimping websites and buying things online. Hell, 2 of my purchases from eBay include wire clothes hangers and rechargable batteries. BUT this is starbucks. I come into Starbucks to get a delicious frozen coffee drink, preferably a mint mocha chip frappuchino. You are NOT "Always Open" at Starbucks.com. Until you can magically get me a frap via the internet, I want that taken off.

And last is this wonderful speciman from Chili's....

Click here for full size picture.

Yeah... I really want them to do that like it was one of those crazy Japanese game shows.

That wraps it up. In other news, andysite.net might be down for a day or so in the upcoming week as I transfer web hosting. If none of the pictures are working, that's why.

Oh and apparently Paul had 5 bags of bulk candy at the moment, which probably means he has bought around 10 pounds of bulk candy and already eaten 4 of it.

"Cmon homie, We major? We Major!"