Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten Cop

I work at a digital printing company. My responsibilities include the release and scheduling of the majority of our work, as well as being the point person on our second largest client. However, my friends and family seem to think that all day long I'm secretly hoping one of them will give me a "fun project" to spend my endless amounts of free time on.

Since I will likely never escape this rigmarole, I might as well drop some basic file knowledge on you, for both of our sakes.

Screen resolution: DPI stands for Dots Per Inch. Almost any image you are looking at on your computer screen is 72 DPI. 72 DPI is known as "screen resolution" and it's used because it looks good on a screen. If you go any bigger than that your file will become unnecessarily large and not load quickly. When you upload a picture into the "GiRlS NiGhT OuT!!1" album on Facebook, even though your camera has taken a high-resolution picture, Facebook will downsample your image to 72 DPI. They do this to save space and load pages faster. Plus they'd have to buy more Internet Tubes if they wanted to keep all those images at their original size.

Printing resolution: Printers require a much higher image resolution. We recommend all of our clients send us at least 300 DPI images. You can go higher than that but once you get past 600 DPI you won't see any noticeable differences.

If you ask me to print you some huge collage and you send me a picture from Facebook, I will bury you alive. Send me the original picture or it will print blurry.

Designing for Print: since this is a 101 post, we'll be brief. Computer monitors output colors in RGB (red, green, blue). Printers lay down ink in CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). Any design program worth its salt will have options that allow you to change your color mode to CMYK. Unless you seriously tweak your monitor, you will never be looking at actual representations of how colors will print, but you will at least be closer to the real thing. And when you send me your file, it will already be in CMYK. When printers interpret files that are in RGB, they say "F you, RGB!" and they just convert it into CMYK anyway.

There's plenty more to cover but since I have endless free time I'll just come back and add more later.

Horses Hate Facebook. They Love Skype.

We've all been there. You're enjoying a nice horse ride atop the Grand Canyon or some other cliff or mountain. The ride is going great when suddenly your cell phone starts buzzing. You've been invited to a Facebook event! It's to a reverse happy hour next Tuesday from 10 to midnight in a city 800 miles away from a "friend" that you no longer remember how you know. While you're preparing your witty post to make on the page wall and start to look up plane ticket prices, you suddenly notice that something has gone awry. You are 25 feet from the edge of the cliff! The horse notices this, too, and totally freaks the F out! The horse comes to a screeching halt and you are bucked off, flying directly toward the edge. By the time you get your bearings you have slid over the edge, but using your fifth, or maybe even your sixth sense, you somehow manage to grab the ledge. So there you are, hanging there, and the clock is ticking.

Will you be able to pull yourself up to safety? Or will a tombstone maker be carving "Here Lies Queeny McWeakLats, Who Was Unable to Save Their Own Life By Lifting Their Bodyweight."

Maybe that freakish adrenaline rush that happens when mothers see a car falling on their baby will kick in. Superhuman strength rulez!! I hope it does, because that might do the trick. But what if it doesn't?

So let's talk about the most feared word in exercise: pull-ups (honorable mention to squats and lunges). Pull-ups are to back development as Grey Poupon is to dijon mustard. The bee's knees, naw mean?

I know pull-ups are hard. Especially for the ladies. Testosterone allows dudes to build muscle in ways girls just can't match. But that's not to say you can't work toward doing a single pull-up. The benefits of a strong, healthy back and arms are worth the hard work.

For dudes, pull-ups are one of (if not the) best ways to work on your v-shaped torso. Studies have shown that this is a universally attractive look. Shoot for your waist to be 75% of the size of your shoulder width, and the greater you can increase that margin the better off you will be (meaning 60% would be better).

If you aren't anywhere close to pull-up readiness, I recommend you do the following:

-Understand how much muscle is actually on your back and that you should be working it as hard as your chest, abs and arms

-Work on strict lat pulldown form, rows, and any number of bicep exercises

-If your gym has one of the assisted pull-up machines, learn how to use it and then start using it

Before you know it, you'll have one sexy back. Oh I like that song. So catchy.

How to be Good at Photoshop While Actually Being Terrible at Photoshop

(pictured (top) Using the Manimal Jeff Long to promote the upcoming Fantasy Softball Season. (middle) Mike "All Day" Schwakopf lookin' fierce in Vikings purple. (bottom) Chris McGrath and Brian "Beeker" Pollack show the rich tradition and history of our softball team)

I get a lot of credit for being "good" at Photoshop. In reality, I'm actually pretty terrible at Photoshop. Most people who have spent as much time as I have in a serious design program tend to pick up skills that translate into cool jobs that actually make money. Overachieving losers, amirite?!

The one thing that I can do pretty well inside of this marvelous Adobe product is put people's faces in situations that are nonsensical or ironic. Just classic Humor 101 stuff, really.

I could teach you the methods that I use to make this happen, like using a quick mask or the extract feature, but that's pretty boring. There are thousands of free tutorials online that do the same thing. There's some pretty funny vids out there from a site called "You Suck at Photoshop" that you should look up if you're interested.

What I've found to be much more important than the actual execution of merging two unlike pictures is the driving force behind the idea. You need to have a clear concept in your head of what you're going to do and why you're going to do it.

Now, I can't teach you to be funny. If I could, maybe I'd actually enjoy reading your status updates on Facebook. But what I can do is encourage you to try. You don't actually need Photoshop to tweak images. You can use Microsoft Paint which will produce jagged edges and a third-grade look for your final product. That can be hilarious. Sometimes the worse the final product looks the better.

So here's to all the people out there who've been using Microsoft Word for 20 years and can't do a mail merge, Microsoft Excel for 10 years and can't write a formula, and Adobe Photoshop but think layers are what you take apart to eat a Nutty Bar.

Batwings are not the key to single-person flight

If I had to pick one question that I get asked a lot by girls, it'd have to be, "How could you have watched so many seasons of American Idol and not be gay?"

If I had to pick the second most common question it would be, "How do I tighten up the back of my arms?"

These are both fair questions, but in this post, we'll address the latter. It's been rumored that $100 million of bailout money will be spent on sleeveless outfits for the first lady to wear to showcase her arms. This will not only stimulate the economy from the sale of sleeveless power-suits, it will also improve our foreign relations somehow.

To prevent working on your own pair of batwings, there's a few things we need to cover.

Although there are several muscles around the area of the wing, the most specific one is the long head of the Triceratops, err, triceps. You can look up some muscular anatomy pictures or just trust me.

The best way to reduce or tighten this area is to lower your body fat. You cannot spot-reduce body fat. Pause for the sink-in effect. You cannot spot-reduce body fat. It will come off uniformly, in the way it wants, or the one place you don't want to lose it first (cough, chest, cough). This is just how it works.

So how do you lower your body fat? Through ridiculous fad diets of course. Then after you realize that those don't work, you should try eating cleaner and exercising. We'll dive into more specifics in other posts, but here's three things to think about:

1) Make sure you're not drinking hundreds of calories in sugar a day. Drink more water.
2) Understand what interval-based cardio means.
3) Look up the best exercises to develop your upper arms and shoulders.

To be fair, there have never been any gay contestants on American Idol. What's that? Who? Ohhhh, I guess I can see it now.

How to Make Friends, Influence People, and Retire by the Age of 45.

If you guessed that this was going to be a post about Super Mario Kart for the Super Nintendo, you were right. You also happen to be borderline bazonkers (like me) and probably make for a fun guest at dinner parties.

First things first, we are talking about the Super Nintendo version, not the Nintendo 64 version that corrupted something so pure with magical shells that could somehow hit the person in first place and would allow you to catch up regardless of how poor you had raced up to that point. Super Nintendo is a great system for many reasons, but I think the most important one is that it seems to be the last system that girls can be somewhat competitive with the guys in certain games. Sorry gals, just callin' it how I see it.

This was the first game I remember that utilized several of the beloved characters from the Nintendo franchise into a fun, challenging multi-player game. So now, let's meet the characters, in the stylings of Elimidate:

-Mario! "'Sup bitches! I'm your standard "jack of all trades, master of none" which means that I'm not really a good selection to choose for this game, but I'll clean out those rusty pipes if you know what I mean! Wink, wink."

-Luigi! "Wut up wit it. I'm awkwardly tall and skinny with the same skill set as my brother, but may appeal to people who were the less-favored child in a big family or were too tall too early in middle school."

-Princess! "Heeyy-eeeyy! Represent ladies, amirite?! I have really fast acceleration but have a low top speed. I'm a great choice for a beginning racer, but that don't mean I don't have sass! *Snaps right, left, and right again*"

-Yoshi! "Ahhh-Ahhhhhh! That's a roar, mofos! I'm like the princess when it comes to racing, but I've got a better top speed in bed, oh snap!"

-Bowser! "*Bowser puts you in a headlock and gives you a noogie* Ha ha! You like that! I just messed up your hair! Naw I'm just playin', go clean yourself up you crazy bastard. So it goes like this, I start off pretty slow but once I get movin' it's like tryin' to stop a Coors Light Train that just busted through your house. Not easy. Mmmmm, Coors Light."

-Donkey Kong! "That Bowser is a total poser, tryin' to claim similar driving skills but living in his grandmama's basement. Get a job, you hobo! In the meantime, I'll donkey-punch your sister and take first place."

-Koopa Troopa! "Hi there. I'm also a turtle but like 1/4 the size of Bowser and don't have any spikes. I'm not mad about my inferior genetics, cause I have a sparkling personality. I also start pretty quick, have moderate top speed and have the best handling. So put that in your fireball and smoke it."

-Toad! "OMG what time is it right now? AM or PM? Oh hey, didn't see you there. I was bah-litzed last night. It's hard when your head is made of a giant mushroom. Avatar was siiick in 3-D though. I'm kinda like Koopa Troopa but not such a nerd."

So let's talk about the major aspects of this game you need to master:

-Character selection: you need to pick a character set that matches your racing style. Yoshi/Princess are great for beginners because you're going to hit walls, slow down, and need quick acceleration. Mario/Luigi are a decent hybrid but they have the second worst acceleration and bad handling, choose them with caution. Many good racers I have seen use a Koopa/Toad combo. These guys will keep you flying through the turns and you will be able to maintain a good top speed. Bowser/DK are the hardest to use because of their slow starts, but if you can master turning without hitting anything, you can really fly around tracks.

-Turning: Although you don't get the "turning 'E'" bonus thing like you do in the Nintendo 64 version of the game, I prefer to jump into most of my turns. It more quickly turns the car and is especially useful in making tighter corners. I never use the brake button when racing, so knowing how to manage speed going into a turn is essential.

-Weapons/Speed bumps: you should be able to hit a moving target with a green shell at least 2/3 of the time. That should be a goal of yours. You can also throw the banana peels ahead of you while pressing "up" while you release. Mushrooms should always be used before speed ramps or to take a shortcut. Practice taking the "feather" shortcut on Ghost Valley by mushrooming into the speed bump that is before it. This is a classic move that will get "ooh's" and "ah's" from the audience watching.

-Confidence: This is the final ingredient in the recipe for Super Mario Kart dominance. Talk a little smack. Get inside your opponent's head. Throw a "yo momma" joke at'em. Remember that "Yo Momma!" show on MTV? Yeah, me neither.

I don't know if playing this game will make you friends or help you negotiate better, but it will certainly make retirement more fun, assuming you made enough money to retire by 45.

My neighbor's friend's cat did a PX90 and got ript abz! Should I do it, too?

Short answer: Sure.

Short answer from a Californian: Sure, brah.

But to really answer a question like this, we must first establish if you are cat-like enough to get similar results.

-If something threatening entered a room, could you sprint out of the room in under .8 seconds?

-Do you mind sleeping on people's faces?

-Can you lick the back of your own shoulder?

-If you only had toenails and no fingernails, would you instinctively use your legs to downkick an assailant/someone who tried to rub your tum tum?

For all intensive/intents and purposes, 2 out of 4 "yes" answers will suffice, and you are deemed cat-like enough to do a 90XP.

"Cool, brah, how does the X90P work? Do I crunch on floor or do a twister lunge?"

Great question. P90X (which stands for Power Series 90 Extreme) is a series of 12 DVD workouts that you can do in the comfort (which can actually feel quite awkward) of your own home. It involves a mix of bodyweight exercises (push-ups, pull-ups, dips) with some weight lifting and cardio routines.

The host is an annoyingly quotable brah by the name of Tony Horton. You will hate him, then love him, then hate him, and then come to accept him. I may or may not have stolen this principle from the grieving process.

The reason it works is because it's a 90 day program. That's like how long summer break from school should be. Damn school systems and their "No Child Left Behind" nonsense trying to shorten the summer. But I'll save that for another post! It's based on something called "muscle confusion," but if I tried to explain that to you you'd get confused. Oh snap, a Catch 22!

It will work for you if you stick with it. It will not work for you if you do not stick with it. Damn, that's some good writing.

Before you do it, borrow the first three discs from your neighbor's friend and try it out. And that's cool cause like you probably don't even have to give them back cause you never see that guy. The only time you actually do see him is at the Brooksider at 2:00 AM on random weekends. What are you doing at the Brooksider at that time of night? What are you, 19? Don't you know that nothing good ever happens at the Brooksider at that time of night?

No cats were harmed during the writing of this post. Although I think I may have strained something while testing out the difficulty of licking the back of my shoulder.

Food Goes in Mouth.

For a variety of reasons, figuring out what to eat these days has become increasingly retarded. With something so important to daily life, you would think there would be better information available. There is, but it involves reading books, which we all know is only for nerds and people who still have Myspace pages.

Here's the nuts and bolts: Eat like a caveman.

Here's a few more sentences that help prove the point I have likely plagiarized from authors who have cooler blogs and/or books.

First, let's talk about the benefits of being a caveman. You'll walk tall and erect, use cool tools like stones and sticks, and your brain is smaller which means that your head is smaller, too. This means you'll be able to wear all sorts of fun hats including bowlers and fez'z'z.

You'll never see a fat caveman in any National Geographic pictures. You might instead find yourself staring at the topless African women, but that's natural. I mean, what are they doing, just standing there, topless? But I digest. The reason there are no fat cavemen is because there were no Olive Gardens. *Hey pal, I like Olive Garden.* I'll be using Olive Garden as what I like to call a "metaphor"; it's my understanding that whatever I say now cannot be disputed because we are "inside the metaphor".

If you've ever people-watched at Olive Garden, you'll see a lot of braided belts stretched to capacity and jolly white people sauntering in thinking about breadsticks. Mmmm, breadsticks. The entire business plan is built around making you fat. "Here you go, power up with a few hundred carbs before we serve you a portion of pasta that would feed a small family in Haiti." Ideally you'll be there for dinner, so everything you inhale will be nice and settled right as you climb into bed to watch the local news in a Slanket (should have ponied up and got the Snuggie, cheapo). As I'm sure they say in some kind of business, "that's the business plan, fatso." The rumor that I have never taken a business class has not yet been proven.

Olive Garden is the antithesis (thank you, word-of-the-day calendar) of what a caveman would eat. Refined sugars and grains cooked in gallons of oil and served up to you with words like "endless" and "bottomless". Those words should be reserved for black holes and something else that's creative-sounding and deep.

Cavemen eat hardcore ish like woolly mammoths and sabretooth tigers. Maybe a few berries or a potato or something if they're feeling metro. Then they'd make a kickass necklace out of a tiger canine and go mack on chicks at Shark Bar. Not many people know that "Affliction" means "tiger tooth" in Latin.

Eating like a caveman is really about getting back to the basics. Lean meat. Whole grains. Fruits and vegetables. Cavemen would totally be into CSA's and farmer's markets. Not only are they packed full of real, locally-grown foods, they're a great, non-threatening place to hit on cavewomen. "Oh I just love this trail mix made of sticks and wheatgrass. It's my go-to snack before I bike-ride to the cavechildren's shelter where I volunteer." As you can see, pick-up lines haven't really evolved much in 10,000 years.

So go grab a big stick and threaten an elephant. But don't touch or provoke the elephant because they will remember you. They remember everything. Then go grab some real food and start maximizing your cave-like physique.

OMG this page is the cat's meow. Awww, cats. Meowing. Okay I kind of wish they would stop that now, I'm trying to watch Judge Mathis.

If blogging is like keeping a journal, then I don't wanna be right. Wait, no, then I don't wanna be straight.

This is a blog. There we go. Nailed it.

I'm gonna write about things that I know about. I'll try to make the posts slightly more interesting than an encyclopedia but leave you feeling just as depressed as when you finished reading "Tuesdays with Morrie."