Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

So I made a joke earlier this week about making t-shirts and a bunch of you actually seemed interested in this so I learned how to use the Internets and created a very scientific poll at the top right of your screen for you to vote on your favorites among those discussed in the comments. I may try to force Matt to design some of the more popular ideas. I'll try to bribe him with cheesecake. AND GOOD COMPANY. You can select multiple answers, so please take a second and do that.

I have been asking so much of you lately!

And now, your Pictures & Distractions:

How I spent my Valentine weekend. Hashtag mud mask. Hashtag loneliness. Hashtag nudity. Hashtag NSFW. Hashtag NSFL. 

A Terrorist Plot

First of all, I want to thank all of you for your amazing support of Strangerville, the podcast Jolyn and I kicked off last week. Within the first few days thousands of you downloaded and shared our first episode and we were so blown away by this response. We have much more content coming your way, so please stay tuned. And please subscribe to us on the iTunes if you haven't already. I think you can do that by clicking here. Or just search for Strangerville.

Seriously. Go do it right now. I'll wait. I promise. I won't say another word until you come back from doing that. I'll even close my eyes and meditate so you can rest assured that you won't miss anything.

. . .

Ok. Thank you so much for doing that. I have a confession. I didn't meditate. I just watched a cat gif for 3 straight hours while you were gone. THIS cat gif.

Haterz Gonna Hate

Matt: You should make t-shirts.

Eli: Like, for my job?

Matt: For Stranger.

Eli: Oh. Well I did that once but then I stopped.

Matt: Why did you stop?

Eli: Because lazy.

Matt: Because lazy is why you do a lot of things.

Eli: Well, it's why I don't do a lot of things.

Matt: But I could help you and we could probably do it pretty simply.

Eli: What kind of shirts did you have in mind?

Episode 1: The World of Love

Jolyn and I are ecstatic to make the biggest announcement on Stranger since Tami.

No, we aren't getting married. We don't think the world is ready to come to an end.

Jolyn and I decided that 2016 was going to be the year we finally did something we've been wanting to do for a while. We've started a podcast. And we are super thrilled with it.

Let me be clear: I, Eli Winterberrymille McCann, have no business using Internets or technology. But y'all, I have spent eleventy hundred hours in the last two months learning how to use recording equipment, sound editing software, and learning about things that I didn't even know existed. And let me just tell you, podcasting is the most complicated thing I have ever tried to undertake. AND I FREAKING WENT TO LAW SCHOOL.

And so, with excitement so big you can see it from space, we bring you:

Courtesy of Matt Broome

Workaholics Anonymous

Hashtag Selfie

I am sick. So so sick. My voice is exactly 20 octaves below normal. I coughed so violently this morning that I actually caused Earthquakes in Burma. But the cough simultaneously stopped crime across the world so there's reason to believe it was actually a good thing and you can stop judging me.

I think I'm so sick because I've been working exactly 2 billion hours every day. And I know what you're thinking. "But Eli, there aren't 2 billion hours in a day. What you're saying is impossible. All you ever do is lie to us. We aren't even surprised that you have the kind of name in which the letters can be rearranged to spell 'lie.' Your hair is a national treasure and whenever anyone sings The Star Spangled Banner we secretly think the part about 'gallantly streaming' is talking about how it looks when you wake up."

Stealing

I don't know exactly where or when I picked up this habit but some time ago I started eating unpurchased food in grocery stores.

Look. It's not stealing. It's not like I eat it, hide the wrappers, and then leave. I intend on paying for it. But I like to have a little snack while I'm grocery shopping because grocery shopping is the world's worst thing. 

It's worse than war. It's worse than all war. I will not apologize for saying that because I absolutely mean it. War is the second worst thing in the world. Grocery shopping is the first worst. Glee in syndication is third. But occasionally I move it up the list depending on how much I love America that day.

So I need a snack in order to survive the task. And it isn't stealing. I mean, maybe it's kind of like stealing but then apologizing and offering to make up for it at the checkout line. And that's totally ok to do because I had to do that once with Bob and Cathie when I stole a jawbreaker from Reams Grocery Store when I was six and Cathie drove me all the way back and made me talk to the store manager about it.

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

Matt thinks he has Ebola and I've been very insensitive about it each and every time he calls or texts to provide me unsolicited updates. I've been working exactly double the amount of hours every day that even exist in a normal Earth day and so I've become extremely run down and now I think I have contracted the Ebola from Matt and I'm very upset by this. I just called him to yell at him for spreading disease to innocent people. But somehow I ended up instead just telling him I'm coming over to cuddle with Mr. Pants if I can ever get out of my office.

I think the southern accent throws me. It pulls manners out of me I didn't even know I had. Bob and Cathie really should have tried using southern accents on me when I was a child.

And now, your Pictures & Distractions:

Mr. Pants and Mr. Scraps picked me up at the airport last week and it was amazing and we all peed a little. 

The New Locker Room Locks

I usually go to the gym sometime in the middle of the afternoon. The gym is a two-minute walk from my office so it's nice and convenient and I've found that mid afternoon is the best time to go because it isn't crowded and the chance of seeing any of my coworkers naked in the locker room is at its lowest and the most important thing to me in the entire world is that I never under any circumstances see any of my coworkers naked. Cross my heart, scout's honor, with liberty and justice for all, amen.

Recently the gym changed the lock devices on the lockers. They were this relatively simple battery-operated lock system but now, for reasons unknown to me, they decided to switch to something archaic and exceedingly stressful.

Basically you have to move all of these numbers around and then lock the thing and then scatter the numbers and theoretically if you put the numbers back in the position they were in before you locked it, it will unlock it. Theoretically.

I don't trust anything ever except for Paul Simon and anyone who has ever touched him so each time I use this newfangled device, I feel an excessive amount of stress. I always look like I'm trying to break into a safe to steal the Heart of the Ocean before rich people can enter the room.

Visiting Sam

I'm visiting Sam in Boulder this weekend. Well, that's a lie. He lives in a place called "Broomfield." I don't know why I put quotation marks around that word. It looks like I don't trust that that's what it's really called. Which, maybe I shouldn't trust that that's what it's really called because I haven't seen any signs so I really am just putting my life in Sam's hands. And I don't know how much I can trust him.

He swears this never happened but when we were ten years old I was at his house after school playing some game we made up in his basement, which game is one of many we will take to our graves to ensure we are able to have friends during our lives. Well I noticed it was 5:00 and Bob and Cathie had said I needed to be home by then for dinner because I guess we were old people in Florida. And if there's one thing I knew about Bob and Cathie it was that there was a decent chance that if you were late to something they would have replaced you with another child and changed the locks by the time you got home. Not that any of us were allowed keys to the house.

We really left our entire fates in Bob and Cathie's hands.

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distraction

So you may have noticed that the banner on the top of Stranger has changed. And if you haven't noticed, you should probably get some sleep. Because it's very different. And we're worried about you.

Before you start screaming at me about change and how that's not what Strangers are good at, let me be clear: I am not responsible for this. If you want to yell at someone, you can yell at Matt. Go ahead and try it. Look into those seductive, hypnotizing, mysterious, smizing, dreamy green eyes and try to tell him you disagree with what he has done.

How did that go? Not so well? Now you can understand why I have been manipulated into going to Home Depot with him exactly five times a week, every week, for two years despite HATING going to Home Depot.

And now that you forgot what you were initially mad about, your Pictures & Distractions: