ChickenLadyLovesLife

obviously the product of too much booze, coke, and resultant self-confidence

And that's exactly how Toto got the gig doing the soundtrack for the 1984 version of Dune.

sare-en-get-EEEEEEEE

A radio station where I grew up (Cleveland) switched formats to alternative/grunge/whatever in 1990 or 1991 and they kicked this off by playing that song over and over for three straight days. It was a surreal experience to hear it on the radio every time I went to drive anywhere. For me, this was the real moment the '90s began (the other contenders being the premiers on MTV of "Groove is in the Heart" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit").

Apparently many stations all over the country switched formats the same way, by playing "End of the World as We Know It" over and over again.

My town had a bowling ball factory and on winter nights when the river was frozen we would steal reject balls and throw them off the bridge downtown. They made a truly incredible noise when they hit the ice.

Fuck, I don't even like changing tires on my bicycles.

Yeah, I really want to buy one of these things, but there's no place around that could do any kind of work on them. I also wouldn't mind a gas-powered scooter, but the nearest shops that sell them are over 25 miles away and they don't work on any scooters that they didn't sell you -- and their cheapest scooters cost even more than the Aventura-X.

I had a friend whose mom was a severe gambling addict. We visited them in Lake Charles and we got to stay in a free suite and ate for free at the buffet every night, thanks to the mom's status at the casinos. My friend told me that her mom had lost approximately $500,000 in total, and this was a woman that made $25 an hour as a nurse. That's about 10 years of career earnings totally pissed away.

Could have been, I don't remember. I tried to find a news article about it but this was from too long ago - mid 1980s.

We wouldn't have the phrase "cunt punt" without the greek system.

Where I went to college, one of the frats just the year before I started had gotten kicked off campus because at a party at the frat house, some of the members beat up a pledge and kicked him down the basement stairs and he broke his neck and died. His corpse wasn't discovered until late the next day. Nobody was punished criminally because they couldn't identify who had actually done it, so the expulsion of the frat was the only penalty. The frat house got turned into a dorm for international students, and every few weeks members of the fraternity (which still existed but off-campus) would run through the building and trash the public spaces and harass any international students they encountered. These students were in a constant state of fear because of this.

To my great surprise, this college a couple of decades later banned all greek organizations entirely. It was a pretty wild decision because when I went there, 90% of the students were in fraternities or sororities. Good riddance.

$50 from Minneapolis to Chicago isn't cheap?

you must have a job or you will die in the street

And here's the punchline: no more jobs!