Have you ever come across somebody who is just so completely jacked up that you can only hope they have a good personality? Like someone who has literally NOTHING going for them in any capacity that someone could possibly have something going for them?
We’ve all seen the people who are almost completely jacked up but have at least something positive going for them:
“Well, she’s a total bitch and she doesn’t just have cankles she has thighkles (that’s pronounced “thigh-culls” for those who don’t know how to pronounce shit I just made up), but at least she has a pretty face and can juggle chainsaws, so she’s not all bad.”
“That guy is a douchebag, he sucks at sports, he smells like the inside of a skunk’s pee hole and he has herpes on his lips, but that F’er makes a good apple turnover. To die for. Just don’t sit next to him while you’re eating it because you really might die.”
“That son of a bitch has a real bitch for a mother. That’s why I call him that. But at least he can do 26 pushups and does walk-a-thons for charity.”
The reason I ask is because I just ran across a lady at the gym a couple of days ago and she was so completely jacked up I was literally at a loss for words inside my own mind. That’s really saying something, because my mind is where I store ALL the words I know, so when I can’t even find one to describe her I know something is major wrong with the universe.
Let me paint a little picture with the words I have at my disposal now, two days after the incident. She was close to 6’ 4” tall. Probably in the neighborhood of 350 lbs. She had a military style buzz cut with a dye job that actually was wasted money because she was balding in several patches around her head, quite possibly because of the shitty dye job. Her makeup could probably be described as being caked on, but I would actually go one step further and say she ladled her makeup onto her face then stuck her face into her microwave and spent 12 seconds on the “soften” setting. It was bad. Probably the worst I’ve ever seen, which is saying something because I’ve worked around some ghetto-ass hoochie-mamas in my time in the mall in Mesa. You know what I’m talking about.
She was wearing a lime green v-neck shirt with a not-matching purple set of cotton athletic shorts. Her shoes and socks were both white, so I guess she had that going for her. I won’t get into the cottage cheese around her ENTIRE legs because that borders on being downright mean and I don’t want to go there. Plus I like cottage cheese in small doses. When I buy it at the grocery store. Not when it’s dripping out of someone’s shorts.
Anyway, for all intents and purposes this lady was COMPLETELY jacked up in every facet of her looks. She literally had nothing going for her in that department. My first instinct was to be kind of sad for her. I know it isn’t possible for everyone to be beautiful, because then how would we tell each other apart and then we’d have to have a subset of ugly beautiful people and the whole universe would probably collapse upon itself in one giant Tommy Hilfiger ad. Oh the horror.
So I’m busy being sad for this woman, because everyone should feel beautiful at least once in their life and, for really reals, the only way this woman could ever look beautiful would be if everyone on earth closed their eyes at the same time and imagined her as a completely different person. I find myself hoping against hope she has a good personality. Like a REALLY good personality. Like maybe the best personality on earth. The kind of personality that makes nuns and Peace Corps volunteers punch themselves in their own necks when they stand and reflect on how bad their personality is in relation to hers. The kind of personality that makes people give her awards and keys to the city and stuff like that.
Then I hear her talk. And she’s a bitch. She’s Shrek without the heart of gold. She’s Shrek if Benito Mussolini did the voice in the animated feature instead of Mike Myers. She’s rude and stupid. She insults a worker for doing her job. She barrels an old woman out of her way as she walks through the foyer of the gym.
She kicks a puppy, burns a bible and eats a small child on her way out of the gym. In the parking lot she farts on a Smart Car and it bursts into flames. She does a Hulk Smash on a Toyota Prius parked next to her, reducing it to dust. Then she gets into a huge, lifted truck with a sticker of Calvin peeing on a picture of sugar and spice and everything nice. Then she puts it in 4 wheel drive low and backs over a group of people on their way to donate blood before peeling out and wasting gas while throwing litter out of her driver’s side window.
All of which just goes to prove that, thanks to that lifted truck, on top of everything else, she has a small penis too.
So she goes from being devastatingly ugly to being devastatingly ugly with a shitty personality and a small penis. “Maybe she’s really smart,” I think to myself. Then I remember that she owns a lifted truck in metropolitan Phoenix. Strike three.
I hope she has a sister who’s even worse. Then maybe she’ll have something going for her.
B!
P.S.—parts of this blog were made up. It is up to you to decide. Good luck and Godspeed to you.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Global Warming: Women's Fault?
I work with 95% women. This should go over well.
I very recently put myself in charge of a fact-finding team designed to provide the government with all the answers it could possibly need for reducing our carbon footprint and eliminating global warming. The team consisted of me, Wikipedia, and a half a bottle of Ten High Whiskey. Unfortunately for everyone involved I had no Coke to mix the Ten High with and there was a Ghost Adventures marathon on the Travel Channel and I just got the NFL RedZone channel so I found myself with MUCH more important things to do than find out a bunch of stupid facts. These developments pretty much put an end to any fact-finding missions and should serve as a lesson to myself to avoid putting me in charge of anything during football season.
I did manage to put some deep thought in during halftime of the Sunday night game this past weekend while I was sitting on the throne having a constitutional the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since my days of drinking Michelob Dark straight from the keg. The moment of epiphany happened when I tried to return to the game and I realized that there was no toilet paper handy and I was, for all intents and purposes, stranded on the toilet.
The epiphany was this: somehow this is probably a woman’s fault. And if a woman could perpetrate this evil on my world, what are they doing to the rest of the world? It’s gotta be big.
Before anyone gets mad at me, you need to look at the one fact I did look up: women can’t even blow their nose without using half a roll of toilet paper. Have you ever seen a woman sit there and roll off a bunch of TP around their hand when they have a runny nose? I’m always like, “What are you doing, building yourself some mittens? Are you going out to the Arctic Circle to get in a boxing match with a walrus?” and the girl ALWAYS says, “No, I’m blowing my nose, smart ass.” (Interesting side note, my ass is not smart at all, though it does have a level of intelligence that should make a lot of people jealous, especially people who pronounce the word “nuclear” as nuke-u-lar and who say things like “supposubly” and “ath-a-lete”)
After whipping off half a roll of TP the girl will give a little half-hearted blow that sounds like something an asthmatic might come up with after running a mile through a forest fire at 10,000 feet and then throw the wad of paper into the toilet and clog it. She will flush the toilet at least 5 times before coming to the conclusion she is going to need the plunger. Then she will say something like, “Ugh, I have to blow my nose again,” and use the rest of your Ultra Charmin Megapak so you have to make another trip to Costco just so you can enjoy your morning constitutional the next day.
Toilet paper, made in a factory, global warming. Using 5 gallons of water to flush her booger mittens down the commode . . . just plain wasteful and probably linked to global warming somehow.
If men have a runny nose they will use two sheets of toilet paper and then blow so hard they not only blow a hole through the toilet paper but sometimes they lose a finger. No worries, right guys? Modern science can re-attach a finger and have you back playing “Chopsticks” on the piano in a long weekend nowadays. Hell, guys know that snot washes off on a good, old-fashioned shirt sleeve. There’s no need for a 4-inch buffer zone made up of toilet paper between your fingers and your snot. Women treat snot like it’s something that requires a Hazmat team and a neighborhood quarantine. I came home from work the other day and I thought the government had discovered E.T. in my neighborhood. It turns out the lady next door just had a slightly runny nose.
Which brings us to another reason women are destroying the earth. Men will use a bar of Lava soap and a four-second burst of water to clean up. Not familiar with Lava soap? It’s basically like washing your hands with a volcanic rock, which makes it DOUBLY awesome because volcanoes probably killed all the dinosaurs and now they are a party to getting all the nose goo off your hands and cleaning out that wound where your finger used to be. Volcanoes are also good for making sure no one goes to Iceland, which is also good for the environment because we save on jet fuel and then Bjork doesn’t kill any more fake geese to make dresses out of if no one is there to watch her. Seriously, if you ignore her she will just go away. So will Iceland. I’m trying to get that on a ballot somewhere just as soon as I can talk Rosie O’Donnell into going over there first.
Women, on the other hand, need to immediately run to the bathroom and squirt about 18 pumps of anti-bacterial soap from a plastic bottle into their hands before washing them under the running tap water for 6 minutes and then deciding they need to take a shower anyway. Anti-bacterial soap, made in a factory, global warming. Plastic bottle, made in a factory, global warming.
So this now brings us to the shower routines of the sexes. A man could clean his whole body with one Q-tip and a piece of tree bark if he needed to. Women can’t even clean their ears without using a minimum of 17 Q-tips, 4 rolls of toilet paper and a Shop-Vac.
If we get into the electricity usage for hair care, we REALLY step into a world of women destroying the earth. My own personal hair care routine calls for exactly 5 minutes of electricity usage every month while I shave my head (if you don’t count the electricity used to power the lightbulbs in my bathroom, which I don’t because I don’t think bathroom lights use any electricity, they work on magic). I like it close and tight and I eventually might invest in some head blades so I reduce my electricity use to zero. The only POSSIBLE way a man would use electricity would be if he blow dries his hair, but if your man blow dries his hair you’ve got more things to worry about than how he is destroying the earth through global warming. You might also want to know what kind of panties he wears when you’re not home and where he keeps his copies of Teen Bop where the pages of Justin Bieber’s photo layouts are stuck together.
Ewww. Gross. Exactly. Just like men blow-drying their hair. Sort it out fellas. That ended in the 1970’s when the Hardy Boys got canceled.
I can also tell you an indirect way women destroy the earth. Date night. If we get rid of date nights we can get rid of 437 million billion cubic metric tons of ozone depleting, um, stuff. How?
What happens is a dude asks a girl out and they decide on a time. “What time?” she asks. “I’ll pick you up at 8,” is his reply.
So, 8 o’clock rolls around and the guy, being the type of person who doesn’t hate the environment, shows up at about 7:58 PM. He knocks on the door, she answers the door wearing three towels. One on her head, one covering her body and one wrapped around her shoulders for NO REASON. “I’ll just be a second,” she says, “Just watch some TV and I’ll be right out.” Three towels to wash later. Global warming.
Boom, the TV goes on. Electricity usage. Global warming. In the bathroom the sounds of getting ready waft into the TV room. Blow dryer. Curling iron. Blowing the nose. Plunging the toilet. Global warming x 4. She tries on 6 outfits. Doesn’t like any of them, but throws them all in the hamper to be washed because for some reason if a piece of fabric touches the female skin it accrues an otherworldly filth and must be disinfected in the washing machine using all-temperature Tide detergent in hot water before it can even be looked at again.
Finally, at 8:37 she emerges, ready to go. But there’s a kink in the plans because now the guy is 37 minutes into “The First 48” and there’s NO WAY he’s leaving until he finds out if Pookie and BoBo really shot that dude and which one of them is going to cry first in the interrogation room. More electricity usage. This time used by the man, but can be directly attributed to the woman not being ready on time so we get to blame that on her, too. Also, it’s quite possible that the TV show “The First 48” also works on magic, just like the lights in the bathroom. It is a scientific fact, however, that the show “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” does not work on magic and it actually takes twice as much electricity to run because listening to rich people argue about whether or not they are going to get Lasik surgery causes the television to suffer convulsions and creates a power drain at the electric company. At least that's what I thought I read on the website.
Then, at 8:58, when Pookie finally breaks down and blames it all on BoBo, they leave. The girl complains that she is hungry and they need to get to the restaurant faster, so the man punches the gas and speeds to the restaurant. Wasting of a finite resource + CO2 emissions, global warming. I won’t even get into the differences in what the people order and how that affects the environment. Mostly because I don’t feel like it, but partly because I think I have probably pissed enough people off and caused enough problems for myself for one night and it’s almost time for Ghost Hunters.
See ya.
B!
I very recently put myself in charge of a fact-finding team designed to provide the government with all the answers it could possibly need for reducing our carbon footprint and eliminating global warming. The team consisted of me, Wikipedia, and a half a bottle of Ten High Whiskey. Unfortunately for everyone involved I had no Coke to mix the Ten High with and there was a Ghost Adventures marathon on the Travel Channel and I just got the NFL RedZone channel so I found myself with MUCH more important things to do than find out a bunch of stupid facts. These developments pretty much put an end to any fact-finding missions and should serve as a lesson to myself to avoid putting me in charge of anything during football season.
I did manage to put some deep thought in during halftime of the Sunday night game this past weekend while I was sitting on the throne having a constitutional the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since my days of drinking Michelob Dark straight from the keg. The moment of epiphany happened when I tried to return to the game and I realized that there was no toilet paper handy and I was, for all intents and purposes, stranded on the toilet.
The epiphany was this: somehow this is probably a woman’s fault. And if a woman could perpetrate this evil on my world, what are they doing to the rest of the world? It’s gotta be big.
Before anyone gets mad at me, you need to look at the one fact I did look up: women can’t even blow their nose without using half a roll of toilet paper. Have you ever seen a woman sit there and roll off a bunch of TP around their hand when they have a runny nose? I’m always like, “What are you doing, building yourself some mittens? Are you going out to the Arctic Circle to get in a boxing match with a walrus?” and the girl ALWAYS says, “No, I’m blowing my nose, smart ass.” (Interesting side note, my ass is not smart at all, though it does have a level of intelligence that should make a lot of people jealous, especially people who pronounce the word “nuclear” as nuke-u-lar and who say things like “supposubly” and “ath-a-lete”)
After whipping off half a roll of TP the girl will give a little half-hearted blow that sounds like something an asthmatic might come up with after running a mile through a forest fire at 10,000 feet and then throw the wad of paper into the toilet and clog it. She will flush the toilet at least 5 times before coming to the conclusion she is going to need the plunger. Then she will say something like, “Ugh, I have to blow my nose again,” and use the rest of your Ultra Charmin Megapak so you have to make another trip to Costco just so you can enjoy your morning constitutional the next day.
Toilet paper, made in a factory, global warming. Using 5 gallons of water to flush her booger mittens down the commode . . . just plain wasteful and probably linked to global warming somehow.
If men have a runny nose they will use two sheets of toilet paper and then blow so hard they not only blow a hole through the toilet paper but sometimes they lose a finger. No worries, right guys? Modern science can re-attach a finger and have you back playing “Chopsticks” on the piano in a long weekend nowadays. Hell, guys know that snot washes off on a good, old-fashioned shirt sleeve. There’s no need for a 4-inch buffer zone made up of toilet paper between your fingers and your snot. Women treat snot like it’s something that requires a Hazmat team and a neighborhood quarantine. I came home from work the other day and I thought the government had discovered E.T. in my neighborhood. It turns out the lady next door just had a slightly runny nose.
Which brings us to another reason women are destroying the earth. Men will use a bar of Lava soap and a four-second burst of water to clean up. Not familiar with Lava soap? It’s basically like washing your hands with a volcanic rock, which makes it DOUBLY awesome because volcanoes probably killed all the dinosaurs and now they are a party to getting all the nose goo off your hands and cleaning out that wound where your finger used to be. Volcanoes are also good for making sure no one goes to Iceland, which is also good for the environment because we save on jet fuel and then Bjork doesn’t kill any more fake geese to make dresses out of if no one is there to watch her. Seriously, if you ignore her she will just go away. So will Iceland. I’m trying to get that on a ballot somewhere just as soon as I can talk Rosie O’Donnell into going over there first.
Women, on the other hand, need to immediately run to the bathroom and squirt about 18 pumps of anti-bacterial soap from a plastic bottle into their hands before washing them under the running tap water for 6 minutes and then deciding they need to take a shower anyway. Anti-bacterial soap, made in a factory, global warming. Plastic bottle, made in a factory, global warming.
So this now brings us to the shower routines of the sexes. A man could clean his whole body with one Q-tip and a piece of tree bark if he needed to. Women can’t even clean their ears without using a minimum of 17 Q-tips, 4 rolls of toilet paper and a Shop-Vac.
If we get into the electricity usage for hair care, we REALLY step into a world of women destroying the earth. My own personal hair care routine calls for exactly 5 minutes of electricity usage every month while I shave my head (if you don’t count the electricity used to power the lightbulbs in my bathroom, which I don’t because I don’t think bathroom lights use any electricity, they work on magic). I like it close and tight and I eventually might invest in some head blades so I reduce my electricity use to zero. The only POSSIBLE way a man would use electricity would be if he blow dries his hair, but if your man blow dries his hair you’ve got more things to worry about than how he is destroying the earth through global warming. You might also want to know what kind of panties he wears when you’re not home and where he keeps his copies of Teen Bop where the pages of Justin Bieber’s photo layouts are stuck together.
Ewww. Gross. Exactly. Just like men blow-drying their hair. Sort it out fellas. That ended in the 1970’s when the Hardy Boys got canceled.
I can also tell you an indirect way women destroy the earth. Date night. If we get rid of date nights we can get rid of 437 million billion cubic metric tons of ozone depleting, um, stuff. How?
What happens is a dude asks a girl out and they decide on a time. “What time?” she asks. “I’ll pick you up at 8,” is his reply.
So, 8 o’clock rolls around and the guy, being the type of person who doesn’t hate the environment, shows up at about 7:58 PM. He knocks on the door, she answers the door wearing three towels. One on her head, one covering her body and one wrapped around her shoulders for NO REASON. “I’ll just be a second,” she says, “Just watch some TV and I’ll be right out.” Three towels to wash later. Global warming.
Boom, the TV goes on. Electricity usage. Global warming. In the bathroom the sounds of getting ready waft into the TV room. Blow dryer. Curling iron. Blowing the nose. Plunging the toilet. Global warming x 4. She tries on 6 outfits. Doesn’t like any of them, but throws them all in the hamper to be washed because for some reason if a piece of fabric touches the female skin it accrues an otherworldly filth and must be disinfected in the washing machine using all-temperature Tide detergent in hot water before it can even be looked at again.
Finally, at 8:37 she emerges, ready to go. But there’s a kink in the plans because now the guy is 37 minutes into “The First 48” and there’s NO WAY he’s leaving until he finds out if Pookie and BoBo really shot that dude and which one of them is going to cry first in the interrogation room. More electricity usage. This time used by the man, but can be directly attributed to the woman not being ready on time so we get to blame that on her, too. Also, it’s quite possible that the TV show “The First 48” also works on magic, just like the lights in the bathroom. It is a scientific fact, however, that the show “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” does not work on magic and it actually takes twice as much electricity to run because listening to rich people argue about whether or not they are going to get Lasik surgery causes the television to suffer convulsions and creates a power drain at the electric company. At least that's what I thought I read on the website.
Then, at 8:58, when Pookie finally breaks down and blames it all on BoBo, they leave. The girl complains that she is hungry and they need to get to the restaurant faster, so the man punches the gas and speeds to the restaurant. Wasting of a finite resource + CO2 emissions, global warming. I won’t even get into the differences in what the people order and how that affects the environment. Mostly because I don’t feel like it, but partly because I think I have probably pissed enough people off and caused enough problems for myself for one night and it’s almost time for Ghost Hunters.
See ya.
B!
Friday, September 3, 2010
500 Words A Day--Day 12
I was going to disclose the full episode I experienced a couple of days ago with Foster Charmington throwing up on my foot, but I think I will save that one for another day when I can’t think of anything to write. What’s on my mind right now is STILL those pictures of the girl I had the major crush on back in high school.
I know, I know, let it go. I can’t. It’s not something in my genetic makeup. I can not really let it bother me, but I do have to think about it because that’s just the way I process things. I don’t think I really analyze things too much, but I do think about them until I run them into the ground and, hopefully, bury them. It may not be the best way to do things, but it definitely gets the job done.
I’m going to be in trouble if a flash flood ever comes and washes away all the dirt and grime in my mind that covers all of the stuff I have run into the ground.
So . . . the pictures. I don’t even want to say this girl’s name because that seems to give her some power over me that I haven’t had to deal with in close to 20 years. Let’s just call her Lady X. Lady X had a picture of her and her family sitting around the dinner table on Christmas or Thanksgiving or one of those other holidays where everyone sits around the dinner table and wears sweater vests and eats with like 6 different forks.
Everyone at the table is smiling with their veneered teeth and their fancy clothes and their tucked in shirts and, you guessed it, bright red matching sweater vests because red is the color of the holiday season. It’s all just so Norman Rockwell I want to check to make sure everyone isn’t a robot and this isn’t some kind of Stepford Wives type deal. Even the little kids were wearing sweater vests. It would have been disgusting if Lady X wasn’t still so smoking hot.
I’ve been having the most trouble with that one thing, so I’m going to tackle the sweater vests, because the only other thing I feel like taking on is the fact that Lady X’s kitchen looks like something you would find in a magazine or in some show on HGTV where the designer walks in and says, “You don’t need to change a thing in here, let’s go fix your neighbor’s house so your property value can rise even higher.”
Back to sweater vests, because seriously WTF? Those things might be the worst things ever to come out of men’s fashion since V-necks were invented.
As a sidebar here, if you wear a V-neck anything you are either a douchebag or gay. There is NO other explanation. And there is NOTHING wrong with being gay. Douchebag is a choice. Think about that the next time you are planning on donning one of those and hitting the clubs. It’s a perfectly okay wardrobe choice if you plan on taking one up the old highway later on that night, but if that’s not on your agenda you might want to re-think your choice. I’m only trying to help.
Dammit, I keep getting sidetracked by all of this other stuff. Suffice it to say that you will catch me in a V-neck before you ever catch me in a sweater vest. My torso NEVER gets colder than my arms. What a worthless piece of equipment. I understand the sleeveless T-shirt for those hot days when you really just want to make sure everyone can see your armpits, but why layer a long sleeve shirt with a sweater that only covers the part of you that doesn’t really get as cold as the rest of you? That’s fucking stupid.
You know when you’ll catch me wearing a sweater vest? In a time and place called Never. Even if I was sponsored by Polo and they wanted me to represent their sweater vest collection for the year I would only agree to do it if they made some alterations to the sweater vest, like adding sleeves and changing the material from sweater material to some kind of fabric like UnderArmor or Nike Sport Tech gear so I could go play sports in it.
Somebody go work that out for me. Fucking sweater vests . . .
B!
I know, I know, let it go. I can’t. It’s not something in my genetic makeup. I can not really let it bother me, but I do have to think about it because that’s just the way I process things. I don’t think I really analyze things too much, but I do think about them until I run them into the ground and, hopefully, bury them. It may not be the best way to do things, but it definitely gets the job done.
I’m going to be in trouble if a flash flood ever comes and washes away all the dirt and grime in my mind that covers all of the stuff I have run into the ground.
So . . . the pictures. I don’t even want to say this girl’s name because that seems to give her some power over me that I haven’t had to deal with in close to 20 years. Let’s just call her Lady X. Lady X had a picture of her and her family sitting around the dinner table on Christmas or Thanksgiving or one of those other holidays where everyone sits around the dinner table and wears sweater vests and eats with like 6 different forks.
Everyone at the table is smiling with their veneered teeth and their fancy clothes and their tucked in shirts and, you guessed it, bright red matching sweater vests because red is the color of the holiday season. It’s all just so Norman Rockwell I want to check to make sure everyone isn’t a robot and this isn’t some kind of Stepford Wives type deal. Even the little kids were wearing sweater vests. It would have been disgusting if Lady X wasn’t still so smoking hot.
I’ve been having the most trouble with that one thing, so I’m going to tackle the sweater vests, because the only other thing I feel like taking on is the fact that Lady X’s kitchen looks like something you would find in a magazine or in some show on HGTV where the designer walks in and says, “You don’t need to change a thing in here, let’s go fix your neighbor’s house so your property value can rise even higher.”
Back to sweater vests, because seriously WTF? Those things might be the worst things ever to come out of men’s fashion since V-necks were invented.
As a sidebar here, if you wear a V-neck anything you are either a douchebag or gay. There is NO other explanation. And there is NOTHING wrong with being gay. Douchebag is a choice. Think about that the next time you are planning on donning one of those and hitting the clubs. It’s a perfectly okay wardrobe choice if you plan on taking one up the old highway later on that night, but if that’s not on your agenda you might want to re-think your choice. I’m only trying to help.
Dammit, I keep getting sidetracked by all of this other stuff. Suffice it to say that you will catch me in a V-neck before you ever catch me in a sweater vest. My torso NEVER gets colder than my arms. What a worthless piece of equipment. I understand the sleeveless T-shirt for those hot days when you really just want to make sure everyone can see your armpits, but why layer a long sleeve shirt with a sweater that only covers the part of you that doesn’t really get as cold as the rest of you? That’s fucking stupid.
You know when you’ll catch me wearing a sweater vest? In a time and place called Never. Even if I was sponsored by Polo and they wanted me to represent their sweater vest collection for the year I would only agree to do it if they made some alterations to the sweater vest, like adding sleeves and changing the material from sweater material to some kind of fabric like UnderArmor or Nike Sport Tech gear so I could go play sports in it.
Somebody go work that out for me. Fucking sweater vests . . .
B!
Thursday, September 2, 2010
500 Words A Day-Day 11
Yesteryear Revisited
Today I came home from work and put on my “Go To” music selection: Counting Crows album “August And Everything After.” This album was the soundtrack to the year I came alive and finally figured out what it meant to be alive. 1994.
I like to tell people that I learned more about myself during my first semester at U of A as a freshman than I did in the entire 18 years prior to that. That’s the truth. But I learned more about EVERYTHING ELSE in 1994. To this day it is the year I would most like to live over.
In 1994 I moved out of the dorms and got my first apartment (with roommates, of course). I bought my first car and got to live under the pressure of having a car payment and insurance premiums to pay. I got my first credit card. I got my first utility bill in my name and my name in the phone book for the first time. I always think of the movie “The Jerk” when I think about that.
1994 was the year I got my first glimpse of what having a job meant. Prior to that it was just something I did to keep some change in my pockets, but when I got that car and the car payment and the rent to pay I realized that working was something I needed to do to keep myself afloat and out of my parent’s house (which, for whatever reason, is ALL I ever wanted to do when I was growing up). I started my “career” with KB Toys in 1994. I also got my first serious girlfriend that I actually liked that year. I found out the importance of finding your alcohol on sale that year, too. At that point one of the most important things I ever found out in my life, to be honest. Even more important than having the girlfriend I liked, unfortunately.
I also found heartbreak that year. I found what it was like to be truly alone in the world. I found out what it is like to REALLY want to be a part of a group and not be able to be a part of it. I found a well of creativity that year that didn’t exist before that. I wrote, and wrote and wrote that year. Good things, bad things. Heartache. Loneliness. Everything had a way of making it onto paper. So many pages of writings in my backlog come from that year.
And this CD playing right now (well, not actually a CD, it’s on my iTunes) embodies nearly everything that was important to me that year. As soon as I put it in I am right back to where I was the first time I heard it. I’m sitting in my room on a mattress on the floor on the second story of University West Apartments in Flagstaff, looking out the window on a June afternoon, soaking it all in.
“And every time she sneezes I believe it’s love and oh Lord I’m not ready for this sort of thing. She’s talking in her sleep, it’s keeping me awake and Anna begins to toss and turn. And every word is nonsense but I understand and oh Lord I’m not ready for this sort of thing.”—Anna Begins
Turns out I really wasn’t ready for any of that sort of thing. But damn if it wasn’t a good time. I’d go back in a second. In a SECOND!
I really wish I could feel like that about my life now.
B!
Today I came home from work and put on my “Go To” music selection: Counting Crows album “August And Everything After.” This album was the soundtrack to the year I came alive and finally figured out what it meant to be alive. 1994.
I like to tell people that I learned more about myself during my first semester at U of A as a freshman than I did in the entire 18 years prior to that. That’s the truth. But I learned more about EVERYTHING ELSE in 1994. To this day it is the year I would most like to live over.
In 1994 I moved out of the dorms and got my first apartment (with roommates, of course). I bought my first car and got to live under the pressure of having a car payment and insurance premiums to pay. I got my first credit card. I got my first utility bill in my name and my name in the phone book for the first time. I always think of the movie “The Jerk” when I think about that.
1994 was the year I got my first glimpse of what having a job meant. Prior to that it was just something I did to keep some change in my pockets, but when I got that car and the car payment and the rent to pay I realized that working was something I needed to do to keep myself afloat and out of my parent’s house (which, for whatever reason, is ALL I ever wanted to do when I was growing up). I started my “career” with KB Toys in 1994. I also got my first serious girlfriend that I actually liked that year. I found out the importance of finding your alcohol on sale that year, too. At that point one of the most important things I ever found out in my life, to be honest. Even more important than having the girlfriend I liked, unfortunately.
I also found heartbreak that year. I found what it was like to be truly alone in the world. I found out what it is like to REALLY want to be a part of a group and not be able to be a part of it. I found a well of creativity that year that didn’t exist before that. I wrote, and wrote and wrote that year. Good things, bad things. Heartache. Loneliness. Everything had a way of making it onto paper. So many pages of writings in my backlog come from that year.
And this CD playing right now (well, not actually a CD, it’s on my iTunes) embodies nearly everything that was important to me that year. As soon as I put it in I am right back to where I was the first time I heard it. I’m sitting in my room on a mattress on the floor on the second story of University West Apartments in Flagstaff, looking out the window on a June afternoon, soaking it all in.
“And every time she sneezes I believe it’s love and oh Lord I’m not ready for this sort of thing. She’s talking in her sleep, it’s keeping me awake and Anna begins to toss and turn. And every word is nonsense but I understand and oh Lord I’m not ready for this sort of thing.”—Anna Begins
Turns out I really wasn’t ready for any of that sort of thing. But damn if it wasn’t a good time. I’d go back in a second. In a SECOND!
I really wish I could feel like that about my life now.
B!
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
500 Words A Day--Day 10
How Facebook F’d Me Up
Yesterday I ended up having a bit of a walk down memory lane that got into my head so much I spent most of my day today just thinking about it. And I have Facebook to blame for it.
It started out innocently enough: one of my “friends” had some pictures posted from one of his vacations with him and his fraternity brothers. I have the word friends in quotes because this is a guy I went to high school with who I literally haven’t talked to since probably 1995. He was dating one of my girlfriend’s sorority sisters back then so we kind of went in the same circles but we always seemed to be at different events and whatnot. He was always super cool to me in high school (he definitely ran with the more popular crowd) so I never thought twice about adding him as a friend when he requested it.
So when I saw he had pictures of his trip up, I went ahead and checked them out. Kind of a way to peek into someone else’s life for a second or two. As I was checking his photos out, a picture popped up from the profile of the girl I had a major crush on in high school. Not just a major crush, but a MAJOR CRUSH. Like I wrote songs for and about this girl, I wrote poetry about her, I even wrote a movie loosely based on my experiences with (or, more accurately, without) her, etc. This was the girl that defined what my high school experience was.
So I see these pictures of her and her family (she is married with four kids now) and it is a full-blown mind fuck for me. I can’t even convey exactly how important this girl was in my development as a human person type being, and this is literally a girl I NEVER talked to in four years of school. Actually I take that back, I never talked to her in more than five years of school. She was literally the first girl I ever saw in Flagstaff as she was there at Flagstaff Junior High the day I signed up for school in 8th grade.
She was a cheerleader, a track star, the school photographer, daughter of a famous surgeon, in AP everything, etc. She had the best set of legs I have EVER seen on a woman, hands down. And she never said a fucking word to me in school and I never said a word to her. Yet somehow I have found a way to base my entire high school experience on the fact that just seeing her in the halls would absolutely make my day in a way that I don’t think I have ever experienced since then even with girls I have been in actual love with.
It’s borderline pathetic, to be honest. It may be across the border, actually.
Anyway, as I’m looking through the pictures of this woman’s life I slowly come to the realization that I have NOTHING that would even come close to satisfying her on any level except a physical one. As much “pain” as I was in with the unrequited love in high school it took this long to dawn on me that I had absolutely nothing of interest to her. That probably explains why we never said a word to each other. Girls don’t want poets, they want guys who can provide for them, ESPECIALLY girls who have doctors for fathers (I learned this one the hard way by dating a girl with a dentist for a father for close to three years—once again, when it came down to it, I had NOTHING to give her but myself and that wasn’t enough. I did, however, write some of my best stuff ever after we broke up, so I guess I can thank her for that).
What she did for me was define which girls I would find attractive for the rest of my life, though. I know part of this is just a manifestation of an Oedipus complex, but I know that the women who I have been REALLY attracted to have all been smart, driven, athletic, successful and they all have a really good set of wheels connecting their hips to their shoes.
I remember the first time my mom saw her. We were at a video store (remember those?) and my crush walked in. I just about lost my mind. I pointed her out to my mom and she just said, “That’s the girl you like? She doesn’t look very special to me.” Of course my response was, “Mom, you don’t UNDERSTAND!”
Truth is, though, she was right. That girl is just like every other girl who doesn’t talk to me now . . . only she still has a killer set of wheels. I wish her the best from afar, which is exactly how I wished her anything when we were in high school together. And both of our worlds will keep spinning just fine, just like they always have.
B!
Yesterday I ended up having a bit of a walk down memory lane that got into my head so much I spent most of my day today just thinking about it. And I have Facebook to blame for it.
It started out innocently enough: one of my “friends” had some pictures posted from one of his vacations with him and his fraternity brothers. I have the word friends in quotes because this is a guy I went to high school with who I literally haven’t talked to since probably 1995. He was dating one of my girlfriend’s sorority sisters back then so we kind of went in the same circles but we always seemed to be at different events and whatnot. He was always super cool to me in high school (he definitely ran with the more popular crowd) so I never thought twice about adding him as a friend when he requested it.
So when I saw he had pictures of his trip up, I went ahead and checked them out. Kind of a way to peek into someone else’s life for a second or two. As I was checking his photos out, a picture popped up from the profile of the girl I had a major crush on in high school. Not just a major crush, but a MAJOR CRUSH. Like I wrote songs for and about this girl, I wrote poetry about her, I even wrote a movie loosely based on my experiences with (or, more accurately, without) her, etc. This was the girl that defined what my high school experience was.
So I see these pictures of her and her family (she is married with four kids now) and it is a full-blown mind fuck for me. I can’t even convey exactly how important this girl was in my development as a human person type being, and this is literally a girl I NEVER talked to in four years of school. Actually I take that back, I never talked to her in more than five years of school. She was literally the first girl I ever saw in Flagstaff as she was there at Flagstaff Junior High the day I signed up for school in 8th grade.
She was a cheerleader, a track star, the school photographer, daughter of a famous surgeon, in AP everything, etc. She had the best set of legs I have EVER seen on a woman, hands down. And she never said a fucking word to me in school and I never said a word to her. Yet somehow I have found a way to base my entire high school experience on the fact that just seeing her in the halls would absolutely make my day in a way that I don’t think I have ever experienced since then even with girls I have been in actual love with.
It’s borderline pathetic, to be honest. It may be across the border, actually.
Anyway, as I’m looking through the pictures of this woman’s life I slowly come to the realization that I have NOTHING that would even come close to satisfying her on any level except a physical one. As much “pain” as I was in with the unrequited love in high school it took this long to dawn on me that I had absolutely nothing of interest to her. That probably explains why we never said a word to each other. Girls don’t want poets, they want guys who can provide for them, ESPECIALLY girls who have doctors for fathers (I learned this one the hard way by dating a girl with a dentist for a father for close to three years—once again, when it came down to it, I had NOTHING to give her but myself and that wasn’t enough. I did, however, write some of my best stuff ever after we broke up, so I guess I can thank her for that).
What she did for me was define which girls I would find attractive for the rest of my life, though. I know part of this is just a manifestation of an Oedipus complex, but I know that the women who I have been REALLY attracted to have all been smart, driven, athletic, successful and they all have a really good set of wheels connecting their hips to their shoes.
I remember the first time my mom saw her. We were at a video store (remember those?) and my crush walked in. I just about lost my mind. I pointed her out to my mom and she just said, “That’s the girl you like? She doesn’t look very special to me.” Of course my response was, “Mom, you don’t UNDERSTAND!”
Truth is, though, she was right. That girl is just like every other girl who doesn’t talk to me now . . . only she still has a killer set of wheels. I wish her the best from afar, which is exactly how I wished her anything when we were in high school together. And both of our worlds will keep spinning just fine, just like they always have.
B!
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
500 Words A Day--Day 9
Looking At The Front Door
A long time ago there was a song by a group called Main Source called “Looking At The Front Door.” It’s a rap song about a guy who keeps fighting with his girlfriend and he keeps looking out the front door and wondering if he had the guts “to evacuate” would things be any better for him.
That song came out probably when I was a senior in high school, so around 1991. I always thought it was a pretty decent song, nothing great, just a good beat and whatever it was that got me amped on hip-hop at that time. Now it means something completely different to me. I like how that happens. How a song that I literally haven’t thought of in AT LEAST 8 years suddenly pops into my head and has an immediate meaning to me in my life even though it never meant anything to me back when it was released.
I love music for just that reason.
I just looked up the lyrics and they are not really that brilliant and really they don’t have that much to do with my current situation. They are passable, but nothing earth shattering except for the imagery of the guy looking at the front door and figuratively wondering what is on the other side of it. I do that all the time. I have said many times before that my absolute FAVORITE thing in the world to do is leave. I love leaving. I usually don’t even care where I’m going as long as I get to leave.
Walking out the front door is the beginning of something. Anything. But it is the beginning. Every time you open the front door you have January 1st and the opportunity to start over. You never know what is on the other side of that door. Usually it is work and normal, everyday bullshit and stuff that you can’t really change, but some days you actually get something new and unusual and something worth the effort of turning that door handle.
I often wonder what it would be like to have every day be something different and new. Maybe that would take away the allure of getting to leave only on special occasions. But that mixture of excitement and the unknown really has an effect on me right down to my soul. I sometimes think I should have become a truck driver so I could constantly be leaving somewhere, but I haven’t come into contact with too many truck drivers that I would want to hang out with so that always kept me from pursuing that line of work. But if I could find a job where all I got to do was walk out the front door I would be the happiest little camper in the world.
Anybody ever heard of a job like that? Because it seems as though all I do anymore is look at the front door and wonder what kind of things I could accomplish on the other side instead of actually walking out that front door and doing something with myself. Maybe those guys will come up with a sequel that tells what they found on the other side of that door so I can put my mind at ease.
Or maybe I can just walk out that front door and find out for myself.
B!
A long time ago there was a song by a group called Main Source called “Looking At The Front Door.” It’s a rap song about a guy who keeps fighting with his girlfriend and he keeps looking out the front door and wondering if he had the guts “to evacuate” would things be any better for him.
That song came out probably when I was a senior in high school, so around 1991. I always thought it was a pretty decent song, nothing great, just a good beat and whatever it was that got me amped on hip-hop at that time. Now it means something completely different to me. I like how that happens. How a song that I literally haven’t thought of in AT LEAST 8 years suddenly pops into my head and has an immediate meaning to me in my life even though it never meant anything to me back when it was released.
I love music for just that reason.
I just looked up the lyrics and they are not really that brilliant and really they don’t have that much to do with my current situation. They are passable, but nothing earth shattering except for the imagery of the guy looking at the front door and figuratively wondering what is on the other side of it. I do that all the time. I have said many times before that my absolute FAVORITE thing in the world to do is leave. I love leaving. I usually don’t even care where I’m going as long as I get to leave.
Walking out the front door is the beginning of something. Anything. But it is the beginning. Every time you open the front door you have January 1st and the opportunity to start over. You never know what is on the other side of that door. Usually it is work and normal, everyday bullshit and stuff that you can’t really change, but some days you actually get something new and unusual and something worth the effort of turning that door handle.
I often wonder what it would be like to have every day be something different and new. Maybe that would take away the allure of getting to leave only on special occasions. But that mixture of excitement and the unknown really has an effect on me right down to my soul. I sometimes think I should have become a truck driver so I could constantly be leaving somewhere, but I haven’t come into contact with too many truck drivers that I would want to hang out with so that always kept me from pursuing that line of work. But if I could find a job where all I got to do was walk out the front door I would be the happiest little camper in the world.
Anybody ever heard of a job like that? Because it seems as though all I do anymore is look at the front door and wonder what kind of things I could accomplish on the other side instead of actually walking out that front door and doing something with myself. Maybe those guys will come up with a sequel that tells what they found on the other side of that door so I can put my mind at ease.
Or maybe I can just walk out that front door and find out for myself.
B!
Monday, August 30, 2010
500 Words A Day-Day 8 "The Me-First Generation"
It’s funny how stuff works out. I wonder sometimes if everything we do is some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy or if fate just happens to jump up right at the exact moment we were wondering if there was such a thing.
Today I was contemplating what my topic was going to be for this essay since it seems that all I do is complain about how I am not where I want to be in pretty much any facet of my life. Then on my drive home I came across so many assholes on the road that I started to think about how it seems like everyone has a “me first” mentality these days. I know that I shouldn’t base my assumptions on the entire human race on the people I come across on my daily commute, but those are the people I have to deal with the most so I feel like they constitute EVERYONE even though, deep down, I know they don’t.
What I consistently notice is that the drivers in this area don’t give a shit about anyone else they come into contact with. All they do is try to get to their destination as fast as possible even if it means breaking laws and breaking common rules of decency. I will admit that I try to be as low-key as possible behind the wheel. If you haven’t acted like a dick I will let you into my lane as long as you signal. I will wave you through if we are waiting somewhere and you need to get in, etc.
But then I come across these fucking douchebags who change lanes in school zones, speed through the school zones, pass buses, change lanes without signaling, don’t come to complete stops at lights or stop signs, etc. Fuck them. They are EVERYWHERE and I’m tired of it. The lights are on a timer people. If you do the correct speed they will always be green for you and you won’t have to slam on the gas to get up to 60 MPH in a 45 zone and then slam on your brakes because the light changed color. Guess what dickhead, I was doing 42 the whole time and if it wasn’t for you and your lane changing, brake slamming assface I wouldn’t have to touch my brakes at all during my 12 mile commute. But I always end up hitting my brakes because these people have to cut me off to get one car length ahead of me.
I have grown to accept that I will face this EVERY time I leave my house, but today on my way home from the gym I came across a guy who very nearly made me lose my laid back façade and go fucking APE SHIT on him. I pulled up to the gate in my complex (I live in a gated community right smack dab in the shittiest part of Mesa) and entered my code. A guy pulled in behind me and as I was entering my code he pulled up next to me so when the gate opened he got in the gate first, causing me to hit my brakes to let him in.
Seriously?! Now, my first instinct was to ram his car. I came about a foot from doing that. Remember, I am on my way home from the gym so I am already a little jacked up on testosterone so I am closer than I normally would be to losing it already. Normally I turn left when I go into the complex but this fucker turned right so I followed him. He knew I was following him so he sped up and flew around the corner. I came around the corner too and he parked, jumped out of his car and started running into his house. I slammed my car into park in the middle of the road and jumped out, screaming, “What the fuck is your problem dude?!” He just kept running to his house. I screamed, “I fucking DARE you to try that shit again with me man! I will FUCK YOU UP!”
It literally took EVERY bit of self control I had not go chase him down to his house and leave him lying in a pool of his own blood and piss. Man, I’m too old for shit like that to have that much of an impact on me. If I was a “me first” kind of person he would be severely injured and I would probably be in jail right now.
I guess it’s a good thing I still have some self-control. But if that fucker ever does that again . . .
B!
Today I was contemplating what my topic was going to be for this essay since it seems that all I do is complain about how I am not where I want to be in pretty much any facet of my life. Then on my drive home I came across so many assholes on the road that I started to think about how it seems like everyone has a “me first” mentality these days. I know that I shouldn’t base my assumptions on the entire human race on the people I come across on my daily commute, but those are the people I have to deal with the most so I feel like they constitute EVERYONE even though, deep down, I know they don’t.
What I consistently notice is that the drivers in this area don’t give a shit about anyone else they come into contact with. All they do is try to get to their destination as fast as possible even if it means breaking laws and breaking common rules of decency. I will admit that I try to be as low-key as possible behind the wheel. If you haven’t acted like a dick I will let you into my lane as long as you signal. I will wave you through if we are waiting somewhere and you need to get in, etc.
But then I come across these fucking douchebags who change lanes in school zones, speed through the school zones, pass buses, change lanes without signaling, don’t come to complete stops at lights or stop signs, etc. Fuck them. They are EVERYWHERE and I’m tired of it. The lights are on a timer people. If you do the correct speed they will always be green for you and you won’t have to slam on the gas to get up to 60 MPH in a 45 zone and then slam on your brakes because the light changed color. Guess what dickhead, I was doing 42 the whole time and if it wasn’t for you and your lane changing, brake slamming assface I wouldn’t have to touch my brakes at all during my 12 mile commute. But I always end up hitting my brakes because these people have to cut me off to get one car length ahead of me.
I have grown to accept that I will face this EVERY time I leave my house, but today on my way home from the gym I came across a guy who very nearly made me lose my laid back façade and go fucking APE SHIT on him. I pulled up to the gate in my complex (I live in a gated community right smack dab in the shittiest part of Mesa) and entered my code. A guy pulled in behind me and as I was entering my code he pulled up next to me so when the gate opened he got in the gate first, causing me to hit my brakes to let him in.
Seriously?! Now, my first instinct was to ram his car. I came about a foot from doing that. Remember, I am on my way home from the gym so I am already a little jacked up on testosterone so I am closer than I normally would be to losing it already. Normally I turn left when I go into the complex but this fucker turned right so I followed him. He knew I was following him so he sped up and flew around the corner. I came around the corner too and he parked, jumped out of his car and started running into his house. I slammed my car into park in the middle of the road and jumped out, screaming, “What the fuck is your problem dude?!” He just kept running to his house. I screamed, “I fucking DARE you to try that shit again with me man! I will FUCK YOU UP!”
It literally took EVERY bit of self control I had not go chase him down to his house and leave him lying in a pool of his own blood and piss. Man, I’m too old for shit like that to have that much of an impact on me. If I was a “me first” kind of person he would be severely injured and I would probably be in jail right now.
I guess it’s a good thing I still have some self-control. But if that fucker ever does that again . . .
B!
Thursday, August 26, 2010
500 Words A Day-Day 7
Ugh, I just feel “off” today. Not necessarily sick or anything, just not quite at full strength. I’ve had a bit of a chest cold going on I think. It took me a few days to realize that I was having trouble breathing and that it really doesn’t feel like asthma. I keep waking up with spilkus in my ganecktagazoink and I find that I can’t really take a deep breath unless I really concentrate on it. I even skipped the gym today so I could come home and take a nap.
It was a good nap though, let me tell you.
So I am still working on finding a way to actually have a point to all of this writing. I did put some words down on my screenplay yesterday (about a page worth) so I think I might slowly be moving out of my block. I just feel like something major is missing right now. I feel like I need to be on a road trip or something. I have the next three days off and it is severely depressing that I don’t have something major planned for those days. There was a time in my life when I would ALREADY be sitting at Loser’s Lounge with my 4th beer of the night in hand already. Now I’m just glad for a nap and some pretty good preseason football (the Packers are playing the Colts and the Packers look pretty F’ing good). Maybe I will take the dogs for a walk tomorrow or something.
I was thinking today about how I have flashes of brilliance as far as comedy writing goes but then I go through really long stretches where I have absolutely nothing. I wonder how guys who do that stuff for a living get around those blocks. I was also thinking about how I have literally NEVER put all of myself into anything in my life. I have always done things halfway. I talked to a guy about it when I was busy failing my chemistry class in high school (both of us were “smart” kids who were getting our asses kicked by that class so we both kind of just shut down) and he said that we were both afraid of failure so it is much easier to not try than it is to put forth effort and fail.
Truer words have never been spoken.
So what would happen if I ever put everything I had into a goal? Would I surprise myself or would I revert back to my old standby of not trying at all so when the inevitable failure occurred I could always say, “Well, I didn’t REALLY try that hard now, did I?”
I am getting to the part of life where I am too old to do some things and too young to think that way. Does that make sense? I see people who get paid to write for comedy shows and they just seem to have the best work I could possibly think of. Does that mean that comedy writers have my dream job? I can’t think of a better job than being able to write for a comedy show like “The Office” or “Parks and Recreation” or some of the other NBC comedy shows. Of course, I have only written 4 pages of a cold open for an episode of “The Office” and, true to form, I never finished it because I was worried it would suck and no one would ever read it anyway. I really wish I had the balls to put all of myself into something, just once, to see what kind of damage I could do.
B!
It was a good nap though, let me tell you.
So I am still working on finding a way to actually have a point to all of this writing. I did put some words down on my screenplay yesterday (about a page worth) so I think I might slowly be moving out of my block. I just feel like something major is missing right now. I feel like I need to be on a road trip or something. I have the next three days off and it is severely depressing that I don’t have something major planned for those days. There was a time in my life when I would ALREADY be sitting at Loser’s Lounge with my 4th beer of the night in hand already. Now I’m just glad for a nap and some pretty good preseason football (the Packers are playing the Colts and the Packers look pretty F’ing good). Maybe I will take the dogs for a walk tomorrow or something.
I was thinking today about how I have flashes of brilliance as far as comedy writing goes but then I go through really long stretches where I have absolutely nothing. I wonder how guys who do that stuff for a living get around those blocks. I was also thinking about how I have literally NEVER put all of myself into anything in my life. I have always done things halfway. I talked to a guy about it when I was busy failing my chemistry class in high school (both of us were “smart” kids who were getting our asses kicked by that class so we both kind of just shut down) and he said that we were both afraid of failure so it is much easier to not try than it is to put forth effort and fail.
Truer words have never been spoken.
So what would happen if I ever put everything I had into a goal? Would I surprise myself or would I revert back to my old standby of not trying at all so when the inevitable failure occurred I could always say, “Well, I didn’t REALLY try that hard now, did I?”
I am getting to the part of life where I am too old to do some things and too young to think that way. Does that make sense? I see people who get paid to write for comedy shows and they just seem to have the best work I could possibly think of. Does that mean that comedy writers have my dream job? I can’t think of a better job than being able to write for a comedy show like “The Office” or “Parks and Recreation” or some of the other NBC comedy shows. Of course, I have only written 4 pages of a cold open for an episode of “The Office” and, true to form, I never finished it because I was worried it would suck and no one would ever read it anyway. I really wish I had the balls to put all of myself into something, just once, to see what kind of damage I could do.
B!
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
500 Words A Day-Day 6
I’ve been working on a screenplay for about 5 or 6 months now about an alcoholic who gets diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, his brother dies and he sells his business all in a span of about a week. As a result of all of that turmoil he decides to go to Arizona and see the Grand Canyon with his brother’s ashes in tow because he’s “never seen anything worth forgetting.” On his way to the Grand Canyon, through a strange twist of fate, he ends up stranded in Flagstaff with no car and he decides to walk to the Grand Canyon to complete the journey with his brother’s ashes.
I am stuck, writer’s block style, in writing this screenplay as my protagonist is currently about 15 miles north of Flagstaff on highway 180. I have a love interest for the guy who has come up with a pretty cool way to keep the spark ignited (at least I think so, and I should since I wrote it): every day she puts her bike in the car, drives a few miles past him on 180 as he walks to the Canyon and she rides her bike back to where he is and she walks with him, pushing her bike, until she gets back to her car. Then she goes home and he walks. And he walks some more to the canyon, camping at night along the way.
So this bit of writer’s block has got me thinking that the only way to get through it is to actually attempt the walk that my protagonist is undertaking. I would consider myself a “method writer” in that I have to be in the mood of the person talking in order for it to come out right. I’m sure I make some CRAZY faces while I’m writing because I basically act everything out in my head as I write it. I have trouble writing about things I don’t really know about, though I am pretty decent at doing research for characters I have no way of using my prior experiences to write (for example, the other script I am writing is about a bunch of Navy SEALs who form a barbershop quartet and I have never done either of those things).
I tried out being an alcoholic once when I was about 24 years old (I forced myself to drink until I was drunk for 31 days in a row just to see what it felt like) and I think that has helped me get into the mind of the alcoholic. Believe me, being an alcoholic is a lot less fun than I thought it would be. The good news about that whole experiment is that I now know I DON’T want to be an alcoholic so I have not become one. Hey, sometimes you have to try stuff out just to find out what you don’t want to do, right?
Anyway, the whole point of this is that sometime either in the next 4 weeks or next May I am going to make the walk from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon, just to see what it feels like. It’s a little less than 76 miles and I am confident I can do that in 4 days barring any injuries or accidents. The smart move will be to do some training and do this walk next May, though that kind of defeats the purpose of the walk, which is to see what it is like to do it on the spur of the moment. Still, I will most likely do the walk next May when the temps aren’t too hot during the day or too cold at night.
Anybody feel like taking a stroll with me?
I am stuck, writer’s block style, in writing this screenplay as my protagonist is currently about 15 miles north of Flagstaff on highway 180. I have a love interest for the guy who has come up with a pretty cool way to keep the spark ignited (at least I think so, and I should since I wrote it): every day she puts her bike in the car, drives a few miles past him on 180 as he walks to the Canyon and she rides her bike back to where he is and she walks with him, pushing her bike, until she gets back to her car. Then she goes home and he walks. And he walks some more to the canyon, camping at night along the way.
So this bit of writer’s block has got me thinking that the only way to get through it is to actually attempt the walk that my protagonist is undertaking. I would consider myself a “method writer” in that I have to be in the mood of the person talking in order for it to come out right. I’m sure I make some CRAZY faces while I’m writing because I basically act everything out in my head as I write it. I have trouble writing about things I don’t really know about, though I am pretty decent at doing research for characters I have no way of using my prior experiences to write (for example, the other script I am writing is about a bunch of Navy SEALs who form a barbershop quartet and I have never done either of those things).
I tried out being an alcoholic once when I was about 24 years old (I forced myself to drink until I was drunk for 31 days in a row just to see what it felt like) and I think that has helped me get into the mind of the alcoholic. Believe me, being an alcoholic is a lot less fun than I thought it would be. The good news about that whole experiment is that I now know I DON’T want to be an alcoholic so I have not become one. Hey, sometimes you have to try stuff out just to find out what you don’t want to do, right?
Anyway, the whole point of this is that sometime either in the next 4 weeks or next May I am going to make the walk from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon, just to see what it feels like. It’s a little less than 76 miles and I am confident I can do that in 4 days barring any injuries or accidents. The smart move will be to do some training and do this walk next May, though that kind of defeats the purpose of the walk, which is to see what it is like to do it on the spur of the moment. Still, I will most likely do the walk next May when the temps aren’t too hot during the day or too cold at night.
Anybody feel like taking a stroll with me?
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
500 Words A Day--Day 5
As I write this it is 9:04 AM on a Tuesday morning. Today is my day off and I’m pretty excited about that. I worked the last 6 days straight and for some reason I am more tired than I should be after working that stretch. It is NOWHERE near my all-time record of 31 days in a row back when I worked for KB Toys, but I feel pretty much just as excited about this day off as the one at the end of my 31-day stretch back in the days.
I took the dogs for a walk today at McQueen Park in Mesa. It’s kind of a shame that I have to drive almost 2 ½ miles to find a place for my dogs to walk without fear of being attacked by a pitbull, but those are the side effects of the choices we make in life. Still, I should count myself fortunate that there is a place that close. It could definitely be worse.
I will admit that I really love walking my dogs. I know that it sometimes is a huge pain in the ass to get the whole thing orchestrated (got to get their collars and harnesses on them, put poop bags in the backpack, get water for them and me, a bowl for them to drink out of, get myself ready to go, then take the gauntlet of a walk from my front door to the car), but it’s pretty much like any other road trip I take—once the rubber hits the road it is a journey and the journey is most of the fun no matter where the destination. I guess taking my dogs for a walk is kind of like a road trip on my Nikes.
Izzy Poo-Poo is an angel on the walks as long as she doesn’t see another living thing. As soon as another heartbeat is within range she goes into kill mode (or at least chase mode) and it takes a strong pimp hand to calm her down. But she is SUCH a good walking companion because she gets into the right frame of mind very easily and she will stay right at my side with very little pulling (only when kill/chase mode is activated does she stray from my side) unless she is being a quitter and diving for shade in the Arizona heat.
Foster Charmington can either be hit or miss as far as how he walks on a given day. Some days he is a perfect walking companion and all he wants to do is sniff and walk and maybe run a little bit. Other days he is a COMPLETE psychopath and he does flips, rolls, dives, dodges and any other maneuver he can think of to try to get out of his head lead to go do whatever it is he wants to do. Usually what he wants to do is NOT be on the head lead but still walk right next to you, but I am a stickler for keeping my dogs on a leash because I HATE when I see other people walking their dogs without a leash. I don’t care how well-trained the other dog is, my dog Izzy will eat its face if it comes near us. She LOVES eating other dogs faces.
Anyway, absolutely nothing of major interest happened to us on our walk today, which is JUST the way I like it. Foster flipped out once because a dog barked on the other side of a wall or something and it made him go ape shit, but I dominated him really quickly and he calmed down and we continued on our merry, sweaty little way. It was 94 degrees out there with probably 60% humidity so I got nice and sweaty and they got pretty warm. We actually only walked about 2 miles when I would normally have gone for at least 4, but it was just too hot today. I can’t wait for the weather to cool down a bit so I can really work these guys (and myself). I just made a pretty big decision in my life and I will announce it soon, but working with these guys in cooler weather is definitely going to help me with my finishing of the project I am going to start.
I promise these will eventually get more exciting to read. Right now I’m just trying to get into the swing of things. Eventually something creative will start to spill out of me, just have to prime the pump. Okay kids, off to see what movie I’m going to watch today. Later.
B!
I took the dogs for a walk today at McQueen Park in Mesa. It’s kind of a shame that I have to drive almost 2 ½ miles to find a place for my dogs to walk without fear of being attacked by a pitbull, but those are the side effects of the choices we make in life. Still, I should count myself fortunate that there is a place that close. It could definitely be worse.
I will admit that I really love walking my dogs. I know that it sometimes is a huge pain in the ass to get the whole thing orchestrated (got to get their collars and harnesses on them, put poop bags in the backpack, get water for them and me, a bowl for them to drink out of, get myself ready to go, then take the gauntlet of a walk from my front door to the car), but it’s pretty much like any other road trip I take—once the rubber hits the road it is a journey and the journey is most of the fun no matter where the destination. I guess taking my dogs for a walk is kind of like a road trip on my Nikes.
Izzy Poo-Poo is an angel on the walks as long as she doesn’t see another living thing. As soon as another heartbeat is within range she goes into kill mode (or at least chase mode) and it takes a strong pimp hand to calm her down. But she is SUCH a good walking companion because she gets into the right frame of mind very easily and she will stay right at my side with very little pulling (only when kill/chase mode is activated does she stray from my side) unless she is being a quitter and diving for shade in the Arizona heat.
Foster Charmington can either be hit or miss as far as how he walks on a given day. Some days he is a perfect walking companion and all he wants to do is sniff and walk and maybe run a little bit. Other days he is a COMPLETE psychopath and he does flips, rolls, dives, dodges and any other maneuver he can think of to try to get out of his head lead to go do whatever it is he wants to do. Usually what he wants to do is NOT be on the head lead but still walk right next to you, but I am a stickler for keeping my dogs on a leash because I HATE when I see other people walking their dogs without a leash. I don’t care how well-trained the other dog is, my dog Izzy will eat its face if it comes near us. She LOVES eating other dogs faces.
Anyway, absolutely nothing of major interest happened to us on our walk today, which is JUST the way I like it. Foster flipped out once because a dog barked on the other side of a wall or something and it made him go ape shit, but I dominated him really quickly and he calmed down and we continued on our merry, sweaty little way. It was 94 degrees out there with probably 60% humidity so I got nice and sweaty and they got pretty warm. We actually only walked about 2 miles when I would normally have gone for at least 4, but it was just too hot today. I can’t wait for the weather to cool down a bit so I can really work these guys (and myself). I just made a pretty big decision in my life and I will announce it soon, but working with these guys in cooler weather is definitely going to help me with my finishing of the project I am going to start.
I promise these will eventually get more exciting to read. Right now I’m just trying to get into the swing of things. Eventually something creative will start to spill out of me, just have to prime the pump. Okay kids, off to see what movie I’m going to watch today. Later.
B!
Monday, August 23, 2010
500 Words A Day--Day 4
I’m hungry, I’m tired and I’m pissed off today. I can’t even say that this should be a fun little exercise because I have a feeling it will just turn into rants about all the shit that happened today. I never wanted this writing exercise to turn into a daily journal where I just come on here and complain about stuff, so I will censor myself and try to think of something else to talk about. Suffice it to say that today was one of those days where it seemed like everywhere I turned someone needed help with something that they should have been able to handle themselves. Frustrating, my friends, frustrating.
I just wolfed down a bowl of chicken and pasta and I feel much better. I know sometimes my mood is severely effected by my hunger and part of today’s frustration was being asked to start projects JUST as I was heading off to my break or my lunch. I guess I’m just a prick who only wants to take breaks on my own terms and not based around someone else’s schedule.
Just another part of my awesomeness.
If you’re paying attention, you will notice that I missed two days of writing. This was not by choice. I am, unfortunately, probably not going to be able to write as much as I would like on the weekends. And, of course, by “as much as I’d like” I really mean “there’s no way I am going to be able to write on the weekends unless I get a laptop and go walk to the far ends of the earth. Too much stuff going on in the household on the weekends, unfortunately.
Speaking of laptops, I guess it is fair for me to tell the whole world that if I had a laptop and a motorcycle I would find a way to make money with that and I would be GONE forever. No joke. Luckily for the people who like me in life I have neither of those and every time I think I have the money put together to get one or the other the world gets in the way and I end up back at home, dreaming of the open road. I believe that if the stars align and everything falls into place for me to have both of those at the same time it will also be a sign that it is time for me to go.
I have always thought about “going.” I have a wanderlust unlike anyone I have ever met. I’m not saying that no one else has a wanderlust like mine, but if they do they have already hit the road and they are living the dream in a way I could only hope to live it. I feel like I am standing on the sidelines of my life sometimes because of that. I feel like I am SUPPOSED to be out there on the road, like I am built for it both mentally and emotionally.
I have a disconnect with EVERYTHING that makes it easy for me to move on. There is only one thing in life that I have truly held on to and no one will ever know who or what that is. Maybe when I hit the road I will find it. Maybe the stars will align one day. Maybe.
I just wolfed down a bowl of chicken and pasta and I feel much better. I know sometimes my mood is severely effected by my hunger and part of today’s frustration was being asked to start projects JUST as I was heading off to my break or my lunch. I guess I’m just a prick who only wants to take breaks on my own terms and not based around someone else’s schedule.
Just another part of my awesomeness.
If you’re paying attention, you will notice that I missed two days of writing. This was not by choice. I am, unfortunately, probably not going to be able to write as much as I would like on the weekends. And, of course, by “as much as I’d like” I really mean “there’s no way I am going to be able to write on the weekends unless I get a laptop and go walk to the far ends of the earth. Too much stuff going on in the household on the weekends, unfortunately.
Speaking of laptops, I guess it is fair for me to tell the whole world that if I had a laptop and a motorcycle I would find a way to make money with that and I would be GONE forever. No joke. Luckily for the people who like me in life I have neither of those and every time I think I have the money put together to get one or the other the world gets in the way and I end up back at home, dreaming of the open road. I believe that if the stars align and everything falls into place for me to have both of those at the same time it will also be a sign that it is time for me to go.
I have always thought about “going.” I have a wanderlust unlike anyone I have ever met. I’m not saying that no one else has a wanderlust like mine, but if they do they have already hit the road and they are living the dream in a way I could only hope to live it. I feel like I am standing on the sidelines of my life sometimes because of that. I feel like I am SUPPOSED to be out there on the road, like I am built for it both mentally and emotionally.
I have a disconnect with EVERYTHING that makes it easy for me to move on. There is only one thing in life that I have truly held on to and no one will ever know who or what that is. Maybe when I hit the road I will find it. Maybe the stars will align one day. Maybe.
Friday, August 20, 2010
500 Words A Day - Day 3
As I sit here listening to Matchbox 20’s CD “Yourself Or Someone Like You” I am reminded how music can transport us places without us even knowing it. This CD reminds me of being in my house on Lewis Dr. in Flagstaff back in 1997/1998. I don’t know exactly when this album came out, but I know that I listened the HELL out of it during the time period when I broke up with one long-term girlfriend and was just beginning a relationship with another girl.
Just hearing the song “3 AM” takes me back to sitting on my bed with the “new” girl, listening to the music channels on the satellite receiver in my bedroom. It seemed like every morning at 3 AM they would play that song. It became almost a running joke. We were in the part of the relationship where everything was new and all we did was stay up all night talking. You hear that mom and dad? Talking. Just talking. Maybe making out a little bit, but mostly talking. Those are such good memories. Back when life was fun. Or maybe it just seemed like it was fun because I didn’t have much else to base fun on.
That takes me to the music I listen to today and I wonder if I am ever going to look fondly on the time I am living and think, “Those were some good times.” I don’t think these are necessarily bad times to be perfectly honest. There are some things I would definitely change, but I don’t sit around miserable or anything. What gets me is I do know that I have had WAY better times in my life. I hate to sit around and pine for my youth, especially since in hindsight I pretty much wasted it all on being wasted.
Perhaps that’s what youth is for.
I heard a song today at work that had lyrics along the lines of “sometimes you need to leave to understand what home feels like.” Good God that is brilliant. There’s a part of me that hopes I made that up and I just think I heard it today (I’ve been up since 4AM, and the mind does play some serious games when you’re working on 5 hours sleep), but I’m 99.9% positive I just heard that in a song and I am not as brilliant as I want to be.
The world is actually pretty lucky I’m not as brilliant as I want to be. You’d all be in serious trouble if I were. There literally wouldn’t be enough light to shine on anyone but me. Fortunately for everyone I am a total underachiever.
So, back to my topic, which was how that lyric makes me think about home and how it relates to music. I have several distinct periods of my life where I either loved them or hated them. 1996, for instance, sucked ass except for 2 weeks in the beginning of the year and about 6 random days between June and August when I decided to move back to Flagstaff and go back to school instead of live someplace I hated with people I didn’t particularly like at that time in my life (we’ve since come to the realization that as long as we don’t live together we get along famously). I didn’t actually know how much it sucked, though, until I got into 1997 and realized it was way better.
So I guess leaving the “home” of 1996 and living in 1997 was my cue to see how shitty 1996 was. Man, I really hope that 2011 isn’t much worse. I’d hate to leave the home of this year to find out the grass isn’t any greener in 2011.
Oh, and I’ve moved more than 20 times since I turned 18 and I am perfectly aware that the grass is NEVER greener someplace else . . . but sometimes it sure is nice to play on a different home field, you know?
B!
Just hearing the song “3 AM” takes me back to sitting on my bed with the “new” girl, listening to the music channels on the satellite receiver in my bedroom. It seemed like every morning at 3 AM they would play that song. It became almost a running joke. We were in the part of the relationship where everything was new and all we did was stay up all night talking. You hear that mom and dad? Talking. Just talking. Maybe making out a little bit, but mostly talking. Those are such good memories. Back when life was fun. Or maybe it just seemed like it was fun because I didn’t have much else to base fun on.
That takes me to the music I listen to today and I wonder if I am ever going to look fondly on the time I am living and think, “Those were some good times.” I don’t think these are necessarily bad times to be perfectly honest. There are some things I would definitely change, but I don’t sit around miserable or anything. What gets me is I do know that I have had WAY better times in my life. I hate to sit around and pine for my youth, especially since in hindsight I pretty much wasted it all on being wasted.
Perhaps that’s what youth is for.
I heard a song today at work that had lyrics along the lines of “sometimes you need to leave to understand what home feels like.” Good God that is brilliant. There’s a part of me that hopes I made that up and I just think I heard it today (I’ve been up since 4AM, and the mind does play some serious games when you’re working on 5 hours sleep), but I’m 99.9% positive I just heard that in a song and I am not as brilliant as I want to be.
The world is actually pretty lucky I’m not as brilliant as I want to be. You’d all be in serious trouble if I were. There literally wouldn’t be enough light to shine on anyone but me. Fortunately for everyone I am a total underachiever.
So, back to my topic, which was how that lyric makes me think about home and how it relates to music. I have several distinct periods of my life where I either loved them or hated them. 1996, for instance, sucked ass except for 2 weeks in the beginning of the year and about 6 random days between June and August when I decided to move back to Flagstaff and go back to school instead of live someplace I hated with people I didn’t particularly like at that time in my life (we’ve since come to the realization that as long as we don’t live together we get along famously). I didn’t actually know how much it sucked, though, until I got into 1997 and realized it was way better.
So I guess leaving the “home” of 1996 and living in 1997 was my cue to see how shitty 1996 was. Man, I really hope that 2011 isn’t much worse. I’d hate to leave the home of this year to find out the grass isn’t any greener in 2011.
Oh, and I’ve moved more than 20 times since I turned 18 and I am perfectly aware that the grass is NEVER greener someplace else . . . but sometimes it sure is nice to play on a different home field, you know?
B!
Thursday, August 19, 2010
500 Words A Day--Day 2
Ugh! It’s only day two of this exercise and I already want to quit. I must be on to something good, otherwise this would be easy, right? Isn’t that the maxim? Is it a maxim? What is a maxim, exactly? Let me look it up:
Maxim-noun : a concisely expressed principle or rule of conduct or a statement of a general truth.
Sweet. I got it right. I wouldn’t have changed it even if I got it wrong, just so you know. I’m not afraid to put my stupidity right out there for everyone to see.
So I’ve been trying to think about a topic to write about all day and I realize that the thing that is pissing me off the most today is how ignorant Americans are. Big news, right? It’s really this whole thing about the mosque being built near Ground Zero in New York and how this is a polarizing subject. It has become so polarizing, in fact, that suddenly 18% of Americans now think that President Obama IS a Muslim because he had the audacity to say that the Muslims are free to practice their religion when and where they so choose.
Freedom of religion, huh? That’s a new one. Where have I heard that before? Man, I just can’t remember.
But these idiots that think that Obama is a Muslim just because he would freely allow Muslims to practice their religion in a legal place is borderline asinine. It absolutely proves that Americans aren’t smart enough to put ANYONE in office, much less complain about the person they put in there. I saw a stat on CNN this afternoon that said 5% of the American public had “actually seen a monster in their closet” at some point in their life, too.
Really? You really want to trust these people with their outrage? I’m not saying that the 18% who think Obama is a Muslim are made up of the 5% who have seen a monster in their closet, but I’m guessing there is quite a bit of monster seers in the Obama Muslim crowd. Just a guess.
And what if Obama is a Muslim? So what. He’s the president. There was a point when it was HUGE news that Kennedy was a Catholic. Is this really something we need to be caring about at this point in the presidency?
But back to the mosque at Ground Zero. What the hell are the Muslims going to do so close to Ground Zero that they couldn’t do anywhere else in New York? Are we REALLY going to hold an entire religion responsible for the actions of a few of them?
Has anyone ever heard of the crusades? The Spanish Inquisition? Any of that crap? We’re all fucking nuts as far as religion goes. People don’t like gangs in their neighborhood, but what the hell do you think a church is? It’s just a gang with God’s blessing. I read a quote yesterday that said, “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian the same way that standing in a garage doesn’t make you a car” or words to that effect. Yet it’s these people hiding behind their religion instead of their racism in opposing the mosque.
No doubt that putting that mosque where they want to put it is probably pretty inflammatory, but only to the families and friends of those killed in the 9/11 attacks. But at the end of the day those people were killed by terrorists who happen to be Muslims, not the other way around.
Get a grip folks. Put that mosque anywhere you want. Maybe we should have a zone set up for all the churches and mosques and synagogues and things like that and they could all be in one zone together so we would always know where the religious zealots are congregating, huh? And maybe we could make everyone wear a patch that denoted their religion so everyone else could see what religion they are. Then maybe we could invade Poland and make France our bitch.
Get it?
B!
Maxim-noun : a concisely expressed principle or rule of conduct or a statement of a general truth.
Sweet. I got it right. I wouldn’t have changed it even if I got it wrong, just so you know. I’m not afraid to put my stupidity right out there for everyone to see.
So I’ve been trying to think about a topic to write about all day and I realize that the thing that is pissing me off the most today is how ignorant Americans are. Big news, right? It’s really this whole thing about the mosque being built near Ground Zero in New York and how this is a polarizing subject. It has become so polarizing, in fact, that suddenly 18% of Americans now think that President Obama IS a Muslim because he had the audacity to say that the Muslims are free to practice their religion when and where they so choose.
Freedom of religion, huh? That’s a new one. Where have I heard that before? Man, I just can’t remember.
But these idiots that think that Obama is a Muslim just because he would freely allow Muslims to practice their religion in a legal place is borderline asinine. It absolutely proves that Americans aren’t smart enough to put ANYONE in office, much less complain about the person they put in there. I saw a stat on CNN this afternoon that said 5% of the American public had “actually seen a monster in their closet” at some point in their life, too.
Really? You really want to trust these people with their outrage? I’m not saying that the 18% who think Obama is a Muslim are made up of the 5% who have seen a monster in their closet, but I’m guessing there is quite a bit of monster seers in the Obama Muslim crowd. Just a guess.
And what if Obama is a Muslim? So what. He’s the president. There was a point when it was HUGE news that Kennedy was a Catholic. Is this really something we need to be caring about at this point in the presidency?
But back to the mosque at Ground Zero. What the hell are the Muslims going to do so close to Ground Zero that they couldn’t do anywhere else in New York? Are we REALLY going to hold an entire religion responsible for the actions of a few of them?
Has anyone ever heard of the crusades? The Spanish Inquisition? Any of that crap? We’re all fucking nuts as far as religion goes. People don’t like gangs in their neighborhood, but what the hell do you think a church is? It’s just a gang with God’s blessing. I read a quote yesterday that said, “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian the same way that standing in a garage doesn’t make you a car” or words to that effect. Yet it’s these people hiding behind their religion instead of their racism in opposing the mosque.
No doubt that putting that mosque where they want to put it is probably pretty inflammatory, but only to the families and friends of those killed in the 9/11 attacks. But at the end of the day those people were killed by terrorists who happen to be Muslims, not the other way around.
Get a grip folks. Put that mosque anywhere you want. Maybe we should have a zone set up for all the churches and mosques and synagogues and things like that and they could all be in one zone together so we would always know where the religious zealots are congregating, huh? And maybe we could make everyone wear a patch that denoted their religion so everyone else could see what religion they are. Then maybe we could invade Poland and make France our bitch.
Get it?
B!
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
500 Words A Day--Day 1
To give you some sort of idea of what this whole journey is going to be like, I originally planned on titling this little effort “1000 Words A Day” but I got tired just thinking about that much writing so I have decided to shoot for 500 or so words. That’s not to say that some days I won’t end up with diarrhea of the keyboard and throw down 2500 words if I really get on a roll, but there will be PLENTY of other days where I don’t feel like writing anything so forcing myself to drop even 500 words will be a chore. So there.
“So what’s the point of doing this silly thing and writing 500 words every day?” you may ask. Well, you can ask it all you want but that doesn’t mean I am going to come up with a good answer for you. I am notorious for starting stuff that I never finish (for example, just in the time it took me to write the sentence you are reading up to the beginning of the parenthesis I took a long drink of water, scratched my head, looked at my “1000 Places To See Before You Die” calendar, decided I don’t really have any desire to go to Borneo even if the Mengkabong River flows peacefully through the shadow of Mount Kinabalu National Park, ripped the page off the calendar, threw it away, pet my dog and ate like six bites of tuna and pasta). NOTORIOUS I said. I know that was a long sentence if you include all of the crap I did while writing it, so I will forgive you if you need to backtrack and re-read it.
Yesterday I hit rock bottom as far as getting nothing done with my life. I know, I know, I’ve done nothing with my life up until yesterday already, so what was one more day, right? Well, one more day is one more day I have wasted. During my lifetime I have wanted to be (in no particular order): a fireman, the Lone Ranger, a television director for the David Letterman Show, a rapper, a music producer, the owner of a record label, a screenwriter, a radio personality, a bar owner, a restaurant owner, a chef (yeah right, you should smell this tuna and pasta mixture, it literally smells like death), an author, a stuntman, etc. In fact, I could probably take care of all of today’s 500 words just by listing stuff I have wanted to be at some point in my life.
Now, for what I have done with my life: I work in retail. That’s it. NOT EVEN CLOSE!
So, since I think the most rational thing I could possibly choose to be besides the Lone Ranger (that’s easy, just grab a sweet mask, a couple of six-shooters and a dope light blue cowboy outfit and I’m set to go solve some crimes and confuse people on who I am) is an author. Now what I author will be up for debate because I will mostly be working on screenplays since I have like 6 of them in different states of development and none of them has gone any further that one sentence in the last 3 months (thanks to my staggering output of ONE SENTECE yesterday).
They say if you want to write, write. So I’m writing. 500 words a day. We’ll see how this one goes.
“So what’s the point of doing this silly thing and writing 500 words every day?” you may ask. Well, you can ask it all you want but that doesn’t mean I am going to come up with a good answer for you. I am notorious for starting stuff that I never finish (for example, just in the time it took me to write the sentence you are reading up to the beginning of the parenthesis I took a long drink of water, scratched my head, looked at my “1000 Places To See Before You Die” calendar, decided I don’t really have any desire to go to Borneo even if the Mengkabong River flows peacefully through the shadow of Mount Kinabalu National Park, ripped the page off the calendar, threw it away, pet my dog and ate like six bites of tuna and pasta). NOTORIOUS I said. I know that was a long sentence if you include all of the crap I did while writing it, so I will forgive you if you need to backtrack and re-read it.
Yesterday I hit rock bottom as far as getting nothing done with my life. I know, I know, I’ve done nothing with my life up until yesterday already, so what was one more day, right? Well, one more day is one more day I have wasted. During my lifetime I have wanted to be (in no particular order): a fireman, the Lone Ranger, a television director for the David Letterman Show, a rapper, a music producer, the owner of a record label, a screenwriter, a radio personality, a bar owner, a restaurant owner, a chef (yeah right, you should smell this tuna and pasta mixture, it literally smells like death), an author, a stuntman, etc. In fact, I could probably take care of all of today’s 500 words just by listing stuff I have wanted to be at some point in my life.
Now, for what I have done with my life: I work in retail. That’s it. NOT EVEN CLOSE!
So, since I think the most rational thing I could possibly choose to be besides the Lone Ranger (that’s easy, just grab a sweet mask, a couple of six-shooters and a dope light blue cowboy outfit and I’m set to go solve some crimes and confuse people on who I am) is an author. Now what I author will be up for debate because I will mostly be working on screenplays since I have like 6 of them in different states of development and none of them has gone any further that one sentence in the last 3 months (thanks to my staggering output of ONE SENTECE yesterday).
They say if you want to write, write. So I’m writing. 500 words a day. We’ll see how this one goes.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
The Peek-A-Boo Kid
Today I had the unfortunate experience of having a 4-year-old kid try and play a game of “peek-a-boo” with me. He may not have actually been 4 years old, I didn’t check his ID or anything, but he looked to be in that range given my expertise of more than a decade of those type of bastards screwing up my toy store while their idiot parents looked on adoringly and completely oblivious to what a complete kneebiter their little bundle of joy has turned out to be. Sometimes it was harder to tell who was dumber, the parent or the kid. Just kidding, it was almost always the kid. Almost.
Anyway, the experience was unfortunate on several levels, but the most important level is that a kid actually looked at me as someone he would like to spend some quality time with. What a moron. I wish kids could sense the SOS signal going off in my head when one of them comes near me. It’s not really an SOS signal, per se, but more of a “get the hell away from me you prick” signal that I have tried to master over the years. Either I failed miserably at sending that signal or that kid was too damn stupid to pick it up.
The second level of the unfortunate experience has to be that “peek-a-boo” is NOT actually a game. It is something that people with less than optimal brain function use to entertain themselves when they have picked all of the boogers their nose is willing to give up and there are still 23 hours and 45 minutes left in the day.
Whoever invented peek-a-boo needs two swift kicks to the gonads if you ask me. I have decided not to put quotation marks around the words because it’s a pain in the ass and, more importantly, my left and right pinkie fingers. I will take a second to let you put your fingers on the keyboard and imagine what it is involved in hitting the quotation mark key on your board. Now imagine having to hit that key TWICE for the beginning quotes and the end quotes. Don’t forget to put your fingers on home row. That’s right fuckers, I type from home row like a champ. Sixty words per minute, sixty-five if I’m doing nothing but cuss words. Sixty-seven if I’m insulting a minor. I know some of you type faster than I do, but I also know that I insult minors way better than you do so I win. I also sometimes insult miners, but not very often because I secretly really like coal energy and I don't want it to stop coming my way because of my sharp tongue. And a miner who is under 18? Forget about it!
The concept behind peek-a-boo is bordering on complete insanity. Not just the kind of insanity that makes your friends like to hang out with you when you’ve had a few beers and there are sorority girls around. I’m talking about the type of insanity that gets you locked up in a place that Ghost Hunters will eventually walk around in during the middle of the night long after you are dead as they have an EMF detector pointed in your general direction while they ask you why your spirit hasn’t left the place that got shut down by the government when someone even crazier than you shoved a “Psychology Today” textbook up your old highway with little or no lube while you were sitting in the corner playing peek-a-boo with your pet sparrow or your imaginary friend Cecil.
I don’t need to tell you the concept of the game because EVERYONE has “played” the game at some point and I am willing to bet that you were annoyed with the game within 25 seconds of the beginning of it. It’s a lot like a WNBA basketball game in that respect.
I would also be willing to bet you figured out the secret to the game within that first 25 seconds, too. This is not a game that takes a lifetime to master. It is the exact opposite of chess or, to a lesser extent, EVERY other game that takes functioning synapses to play. I have a puppy that figured that game out before he knew it wasn’t okay to poop in the house (or in my car, or in my bike seat, or on his sister, etc.). This is the same puppy that is surprised to see me if I leave the room for 15 seconds and come back in with a different shirt on. If I try to play “peek-a-boo” with him he looks at me like I’m an asshole and continues writing whatever research paper he is currently working on for his doctorate at the University of Phoenix.
So when a kid who CLEARLY should have been bored with the game 3 years and 25 seconds ago decides he wants to engage a total stranger in a game that involves him hiding behind his own hands and saying “peek-a-boo” to me (I started adding the quotes again because I had a protein bar and I need to burn the extra calories as well as build the muscle in my pinkies so I can “hang loose” ambidextrous-style like a true local if I ever make it to Hawaii) I think something might be MAJORLY wrong with him. I just wanted to tell him, “Hey asshole, your stupid face might be hidden but I can still see the rest of your crappy person and I will only be happy when you learn to play ‘peek-a-boo’ in a way that makes your whole body disappear forever. If you could do that I would play with you once. Once.”
The smartest thing he did was play the game with me while I was at work. In retrospect, the kid really may not be as dumb as I think he is because heaven knows that if we were just randomly on the street and he started playing that game I would have pushed him into traffic or down a flight of stairs (provided traffic or a flight of stairs was handy at the moment) the first time he covered his eyes in my presence. Someone needs to teach that kid that hiding from strangers is something that involves your whole body, not just your eyes.
Amazingly, just because you can’t see me doesn’t mean I can’t see you. What it does mean is that you will NEVER see the two hands that are going to push you into traffic where you can see that the nameplate on the front end of a Dodge truck is more than just a shiny representation of a clever name, it’s a way to extend your life.
Sigh, I’m just kidding, I’d never push a kid into traffic. Down a flight of stairs maybe, if they had carpet on them and a pile of laundry at the bottom. And the kid was wearing a helmet and perhaps a bear-proof suit. Or if they were playing “peek-a-boo” with me in pretty much any other garb.
Yeah, I said garb. What a stupid word. Wanna make something of it?
B!
Anyway, the experience was unfortunate on several levels, but the most important level is that a kid actually looked at me as someone he would like to spend some quality time with. What a moron. I wish kids could sense the SOS signal going off in my head when one of them comes near me. It’s not really an SOS signal, per se, but more of a “get the hell away from me you prick” signal that I have tried to master over the years. Either I failed miserably at sending that signal or that kid was too damn stupid to pick it up.
The second level of the unfortunate experience has to be that “peek-a-boo” is NOT actually a game. It is something that people with less than optimal brain function use to entertain themselves when they have picked all of the boogers their nose is willing to give up and there are still 23 hours and 45 minutes left in the day.
Whoever invented peek-a-boo needs two swift kicks to the gonads if you ask me. I have decided not to put quotation marks around the words because it’s a pain in the ass and, more importantly, my left and right pinkie fingers. I will take a second to let you put your fingers on the keyboard and imagine what it is involved in hitting the quotation mark key on your board. Now imagine having to hit that key TWICE for the beginning quotes and the end quotes. Don’t forget to put your fingers on home row. That’s right fuckers, I type from home row like a champ. Sixty words per minute, sixty-five if I’m doing nothing but cuss words. Sixty-seven if I’m insulting a minor. I know some of you type faster than I do, but I also know that I insult minors way better than you do so I win. I also sometimes insult miners, but not very often because I secretly really like coal energy and I don't want it to stop coming my way because of my sharp tongue. And a miner who is under 18? Forget about it!
The concept behind peek-a-boo is bordering on complete insanity. Not just the kind of insanity that makes your friends like to hang out with you when you’ve had a few beers and there are sorority girls around. I’m talking about the type of insanity that gets you locked up in a place that Ghost Hunters will eventually walk around in during the middle of the night long after you are dead as they have an EMF detector pointed in your general direction while they ask you why your spirit hasn’t left the place that got shut down by the government when someone even crazier than you shoved a “Psychology Today” textbook up your old highway with little or no lube while you were sitting in the corner playing peek-a-boo with your pet sparrow or your imaginary friend Cecil.
I don’t need to tell you the concept of the game because EVERYONE has “played” the game at some point and I am willing to bet that you were annoyed with the game within 25 seconds of the beginning of it. It’s a lot like a WNBA basketball game in that respect.
I would also be willing to bet you figured out the secret to the game within that first 25 seconds, too. This is not a game that takes a lifetime to master. It is the exact opposite of chess or, to a lesser extent, EVERY other game that takes functioning synapses to play. I have a puppy that figured that game out before he knew it wasn’t okay to poop in the house (or in my car, or in my bike seat, or on his sister, etc.). This is the same puppy that is surprised to see me if I leave the room for 15 seconds and come back in with a different shirt on. If I try to play “peek-a-boo” with him he looks at me like I’m an asshole and continues writing whatever research paper he is currently working on for his doctorate at the University of Phoenix.
So when a kid who CLEARLY should have been bored with the game 3 years and 25 seconds ago decides he wants to engage a total stranger in a game that involves him hiding behind his own hands and saying “peek-a-boo” to me (I started adding the quotes again because I had a protein bar and I need to burn the extra calories as well as build the muscle in my pinkies so I can “hang loose” ambidextrous-style like a true local if I ever make it to Hawaii) I think something might be MAJORLY wrong with him. I just wanted to tell him, “Hey asshole, your stupid face might be hidden but I can still see the rest of your crappy person and I will only be happy when you learn to play ‘peek-a-boo’ in a way that makes your whole body disappear forever. If you could do that I would play with you once. Once.”
The smartest thing he did was play the game with me while I was at work. In retrospect, the kid really may not be as dumb as I think he is because heaven knows that if we were just randomly on the street and he started playing that game I would have pushed him into traffic or down a flight of stairs (provided traffic or a flight of stairs was handy at the moment) the first time he covered his eyes in my presence. Someone needs to teach that kid that hiding from strangers is something that involves your whole body, not just your eyes.
Amazingly, just because you can’t see me doesn’t mean I can’t see you. What it does mean is that you will NEVER see the two hands that are going to push you into traffic where you can see that the nameplate on the front end of a Dodge truck is more than just a shiny representation of a clever name, it’s a way to extend your life.
Sigh, I’m just kidding, I’d never push a kid into traffic. Down a flight of stairs maybe, if they had carpet on them and a pile of laundry at the bottom. And the kid was wearing a helmet and perhaps a bear-proof suit. Or if they were playing “peek-a-boo” with me in pretty much any other garb.
Yeah, I said garb. What a stupid word. Wanna make something of it?
B!
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Henceforth I Shall Call You . . .
I’m on an endorphin high from the gym, you’ll have to bear with me. Odds are I will have an inordinate amount of cusswords in this little entry. Why? Because I fucking can, okay? I can write without using cusswords any time I want, but I already did that shit in high school and college and look where that got me. Perhaps cussing will get me that coveted spot on the Time Magazine editorial staff. Perhaps not. Perhaps if I keep using words like "perhaps" they will see that I’m not all cussing and poop jokes and give me a chance. Or maybe I can get a job with the Des Moines Register or Cat Fancy magazine.
The point is, SOMEBODY needs to pay me for my brilliance. Cusswords or not, I’m awesome!
Okay then, back to my story. I was listening to John Denver today while I was at the gym, kicking the crap out of myself. And YES, fuckers, I listen to John Denver while I’m at the gym from time to time AND I bench press more than you AND I lift pretty much everything heavier than you do. I probably don’t squat as much as you do, but that’s okay because I’m better at sex than you are and that makes it all even.
It does, I looked it up. Math is cool.
So anyway, this song came on from John Denver and it was the live version of the song and before the song started he went on about how the song was written about his Uncle Dean (which is kind of funny because the name of the song is “Matthew,” not Dean, but it kicks ass because it has a banjo in it and if you don’t appreciate a good banjo in a song then something is wrong with you. “Who plays a banjo?” you might ask. Well, does the name Kermit the Fucking Frog* mean anything to you?! That little green bastard played the S-word out of the banjo and you ate that shit up when you were a kid, don’t try to tell me you’re too good for that stuff now, no one likes a hypocrite) and all I could think of was, “Dean, what an unfortunate name.”
I’ve only known one person named Dean my whole life and that guy was a complete tool. It really is an unfortunate name. And that got me thinking about how cool it would be to have the power to nickname people to relieve them of their stupid, parent-given names that I don’t approve of. Only the catch would be that I would give people nicknames that had NOTHING to do with anything about them.
I already have a gift for bestowing nicknames that stand the test of time based on the fact they sort of make sense, so now I think I would like to test the waters on giving people nicknames that they don’t want, don’t like and, hopefully, don’t understand.
“Dean, I don’t know much about you except I hate your name. But you seem to be really well spoken and a pretty nice fella, so henceforth I shall call you Slapdick. You’re welcome.”
“But I—“
“No need to thank me Slapdick. Just go on about your life with the warm, comforting fact that no one will ever call you Dean again. What a stupid fucking name. Do me a favor and slap your parents the next time you see them for me. And slap your grandma too. No reason, just for practice. You’ve gotta keep your pimp hand strong, you know?”
I could go on and on about unfortunate names, but I won’t because I don’t want to offend anyone who might come across this by insulting their name (for instance, if your name is Michaela it just means your parents really wanted a boy and they got stuck with you and were too stupid to come up with a real girl’s name. It also means you pick your boogers and eat them. I base this on the fact that I’ve only known three girls names Michaela my whole life and one of them picked her nose and ate it in front of my first grade class while she was doing “Show and Tell.” I was never in a first grade class with the other two, but the first one ruined that name for me and everyone else for the rest of existence, and that’s why henceforth I shall call anyone named Michaela “Buxton” as a nickname.) I will, however, leave you all with a list of ten nicknames and you can pick and choose them and bestow them on unsuspecting people at your own whimsy:
Plank
Mudbucket
Trunkforge
Bill Clinton
Captain Shits-a-ton
Public Speaker Jones
Headfoot and Buttcrotch (only to be used on twins or people who look alike)
Pong Cocker
Zip Zap Rip Rap Smacky Wacky Ho
Pissblanket (an oldie but still a classic)
Oh, and remember, you MUST use the new nickname in conjunction with this verbiage: Henceforth I shall call you . . .
Rules are rules, bitches.
B!
P.S.—I don’t really condone slapping grandmas, so don’t do it, not even if they’re into that sort of thing. If they are into that sort of thing, don’t encourage them, it will all end in tears and that’s JUST WHAT THEY WANT.
P.P.S.—Endorphin highs are AWESOME!
* not his real name. The “Fucking” was added later and without permission thanks to the letter F, the true sponsor of this blog.
The point is, SOMEBODY needs to pay me for my brilliance. Cusswords or not, I’m awesome!
Okay then, back to my story. I was listening to John Denver today while I was at the gym, kicking the crap out of myself. And YES, fuckers, I listen to John Denver while I’m at the gym from time to time AND I bench press more than you AND I lift pretty much everything heavier than you do. I probably don’t squat as much as you do, but that’s okay because I’m better at sex than you are and that makes it all even.
It does, I looked it up. Math is cool.
So anyway, this song came on from John Denver and it was the live version of the song and before the song started he went on about how the song was written about his Uncle Dean (which is kind of funny because the name of the song is “Matthew,” not Dean, but it kicks ass because it has a banjo in it and if you don’t appreciate a good banjo in a song then something is wrong with you. “Who plays a banjo?” you might ask. Well, does the name Kermit the Fucking Frog* mean anything to you?! That little green bastard played the S-word out of the banjo and you ate that shit up when you were a kid, don’t try to tell me you’re too good for that stuff now, no one likes a hypocrite) and all I could think of was, “Dean, what an unfortunate name.”
I’ve only known one person named Dean my whole life and that guy was a complete tool. It really is an unfortunate name. And that got me thinking about how cool it would be to have the power to nickname people to relieve them of their stupid, parent-given names that I don’t approve of. Only the catch would be that I would give people nicknames that had NOTHING to do with anything about them.
I already have a gift for bestowing nicknames that stand the test of time based on the fact they sort of make sense, so now I think I would like to test the waters on giving people nicknames that they don’t want, don’t like and, hopefully, don’t understand.
“Dean, I don’t know much about you except I hate your name. But you seem to be really well spoken and a pretty nice fella, so henceforth I shall call you Slapdick. You’re welcome.”
“But I—“
“No need to thank me Slapdick. Just go on about your life with the warm, comforting fact that no one will ever call you Dean again. What a stupid fucking name. Do me a favor and slap your parents the next time you see them for me. And slap your grandma too. No reason, just for practice. You’ve gotta keep your pimp hand strong, you know?”
I could go on and on about unfortunate names, but I won’t because I don’t want to offend anyone who might come across this by insulting their name (for instance, if your name is Michaela it just means your parents really wanted a boy and they got stuck with you and were too stupid to come up with a real girl’s name. It also means you pick your boogers and eat them. I base this on the fact that I’ve only known three girls names Michaela my whole life and one of them picked her nose and ate it in front of my first grade class while she was doing “Show and Tell.” I was never in a first grade class with the other two, but the first one ruined that name for me and everyone else for the rest of existence, and that’s why henceforth I shall call anyone named Michaela “Buxton” as a nickname.) I will, however, leave you all with a list of ten nicknames and you can pick and choose them and bestow them on unsuspecting people at your own whimsy:
Plank
Mudbucket
Trunkforge
Bill Clinton
Captain Shits-a-ton
Public Speaker Jones
Headfoot and Buttcrotch (only to be used on twins or people who look alike)
Pong Cocker
Zip Zap Rip Rap Smacky Wacky Ho
Pissblanket (an oldie but still a classic)
Oh, and remember, you MUST use the new nickname in conjunction with this verbiage: Henceforth I shall call you . . .
Rules are rules, bitches.
B!
P.S.—I don’t really condone slapping grandmas, so don’t do it, not even if they’re into that sort of thing. If they are into that sort of thing, don’t encourage them, it will all end in tears and that’s JUST WHAT THEY WANT.
P.P.S.—Endorphin highs are AWESOME!
* not his real name. The “Fucking” was added later and without permission thanks to the letter F, the true sponsor of this blog.
Friday, April 30, 2010
The JV Experience
I have been MIA for quite a while as far as writing goes, and I have friends who will attest to the fact that I haven’t even written them e-mails in the past few weeks and they probably hate me by now. But things have happened in my life lately that have kept me from my duties of writing fart jokes and joking about poo and all the normal topics of discussion I usually decide to post for all the world to see on my blog.
I sincerely apologize for my disappearing act, but my plate has been quite full since March 15th of this year, as I have been assistant coaching JV softball at ******* High School on top of working my regular job. Basically I have been leaving my house at 6AM every morning and coming home at 7 or 8 PM every night except for weekends—and even on weekends I was busy as we had a doubleheader against **** that somehow managed to last nearly 8 hours. It’s been quite a ride. I haven’t even been to the zoo or anything! I wonder if the animals miss me.
We finished the season with the stellar record of 3 wins, 11 losses and 2 ties. Believe me, it was much rougher than that record portrays. I don’t want to bash the girls on the team, but we had 15 girls on the team and I would say that 2 of them are what one would consider “athletes” by any stretch of the imagination. Not to say the other girls didn’t try, but there is a very distinct difference between an athlete and someone who attempts athletic endeavors while worrying about her hair and if she looks fat in her sliders.
Anyway, after so many long days and so many losing games and so many practices where I just got the feeling that most of the girls just didn’t give a care if we won or not, I was really ready for the season to be over. We had our last game on Wednesday, and I was excited to put the season behind me. It was my first time coaching athletics and I really didn’t know what to expect, but I definitely expected more dedication from people who willingly came out to play the game. I didn’t necessarily expect fanaticism, but I expected a lot more than I got. The only thing that ever seemed to get the girls riled up was a discussion about what kind of pants they were going to have to wear to school with their game day jerseys—I had NO IDEA that jeans could be such a horrible thing to wear with a jersey . . . I think most of the girls would have rather spent a winter in a Russian gulag than to have to wear jeans on an 80-degree day. Then they could wear their Ugg boots and a cute sweater and a hair tie or whatever fashion statement a Scottsdale girl needs to make while in a labor camp in the tundra of Siberia.
So I showed up for the last game fully expecting to take my normal spot along the first base line as the first base coach/official scorekeeper/outfield coach. Instead I got the keys to the field thrown to me by the head coach as he had to attend to a regional track meet at the request of the district athletic director.
“Good luck, head coach,” he said as he tossed me the keys. “It’s all yours today.”
And so I HEAD coached my first softball game. And I will let you in on a secret: I don’t know shit about coaching softball.
Sure, I can teach someone to catch and throw a ball, and I can teach someone to hit, especially if they don’t already have a clue as to what they are doing. I know how to run and I know how to throw and I have a rudimentary knowledge of the game that I learned from coaching first base (which, for those unfamiliar with the game, is basically just telling girls to “run through” if they need to try to beat a throw to first or telling a girl to “go two” if they can safely advance to second base). I was saddled with the scorekeeping book for the whole season on top of coaching first, so for most of the game I was busy trying to keep track of balls and strikes and runs scored and whether or not the girl on second base got there because of an error, a passed ball, a wild pitch, a single and a stolen base, or a double. There is a LOT going on in that game, let me tell you.
So there I was, standing on the third base line, responsible for calling signals (bunt, pullback bunt, delay bunt, swing away, etc.) to fifteen girls, lining up the outfield to cover a hitter’s tendencies, keeping the girls on second so they didn’t steal without my signal, and trying to keep the girls in the dugout from saying something insanely inappropriate to the umpire and getting themselves kicked out of the game. It was a little overwhelming, I will admit.
I finally called the girls together after the second inning and told them I was NOT going to be giving them signals to bunt or anything else. I wanted all of them to go up to the plate with a little swagger and swing away and make something happen because at this point we were already down 9-0 (remember what I said about how my cup runneth over with athletes on the team). The first girl up after that speech proceeds to step one foot into the batter’s box and then look down the line at me for the sign. I made no attempt to disguise our sign for “swing away,” which she promptly did and got out thanks to a POWERFUL hit that dribbled to the pitcher in slow motion. The next girl came up and did the same thing, only this time she swung and missed three times.
“Are you kidding me?” I thought to myself. “What part of “I’m not going to give you a signal so just swing away” do these girls not understand?” I gave another swing away sign. The same thing happened with the next girl, and the next. About the 4th inning I finally realized that they had ACTUALLY learned something during the season and they were going to continue looking down the line to get the sign whether I wanted them to or not. Just doing what they'd been told for the last 15 games, finally.
And that’s when I relaxed. I figured we were already out of the game at this point and we were going to get 10-run ruled in the 5th inning anyway, so as the girls came up to bat, I decided to get a little stupid with my signs. I started doing the “rubber-baby-buggy-bumpers” sign (patting yourself on the top of the head with one hand while rubbing your belly with the other hand) before giving the swing sign. I did a little bit of Madonna’s “Vogue” hand movements before the swing away sign. I did every sign we have in succession before giving the indicator for the swing. I did everything I could think of to just keep it lighthearted and fun out there.
So THAT’S when the girls finally started hitting the ball. We actually started a little rally there in the bottom of the 4th inning. One girl told me that if I did a Michael Jackson dance she would hit me a home run. When she stepped into the box I gave her a little leg kick and an MJ point before giving the swing sign. She laughed so hard and got her first ACTUAL hit of the season (before that she was our designated bunter and only reached on bunts or errors for the season), which was as good as a home run in my book, and probably hers, too. She was SO happy over on first base, celebrating her first REAL hit she almost forgot to run when the next girl came up and ripped a shot into left field.
Of course, it all had to end, it was too little too late and we still ended up getting 10-run ruled in the sixth inning. But at one point we were having so much fun out there none of that mattered. The umpire actually came up to me after the end of the 5th inning and said, “Do those girls know they’re losing this game? I’ve never seen a losing team having this much fun before.”
I told him that the girls haven’t known a score of a game for the WHOLE season so why start now? I took his remark as a compliment though (he did say it very good-naturedly, more in amazement than anything) because I think that JV softball SHOULD be fun for the girls. Winning is nice, but the fact that the girls improved over the course of the year (for instance, we had 17 errors in our first game and only 3 in our last one) and learned little things like what “there’s two outs so run on anything,” means. Even if it did take them 16 games to understand the concept of running on a pop fly ON PURPOSE and not just because they don’t understand what “tag up” means.
After the game the girls started running pulls like they normally do. A pull is where all the girls line up on the third base line and run in the outfield a distance equal to the distance between the bases. I watched them run 4 pulls before one of the girls kind of hesitated and said, “I want to hear Sir Patrick (my nickname to the girls, for some reason) tell us to run.”
I said, “I wasn’t even going to make you ladies run, but since you started I wanted to see how far you’d go before you started complaining about it. Looks like I got four out of you.” They all laughed and came running in around me and took a knee and looked up at me and begged for a speech. I just told them, “Thank you for allowing me to be your coach this year, it was an honor and a privilege and I hope you girls really had some fun this year. If you want me back next year, I will definitely be back.” One girl stood up and took her headband off and gave it to me. The girls all wanted me to put it on so I put it on over the top of my hat to the applause of the girls.
It was such a heartwarming moment that is HAD to be followed up with one of them jumping up and saying, “Let’s get Sir Patrick with a Gatorade bath!” As I found out during the course of the season, the girls could say the sweetest things one minute and follow it up 30 seconds later with a statement equivalent to pure evil. Such is the mind state of a 15-year-old girl, I guess. All of the girls ran to the dugout and grabbed the cooler full of ice water (they grabbed the wrong cooler) and came running at me with it. Unfortunately for them a cooler full of ice water weighs probably 80 or 90 pounds so it took three of them to lift it high enough to pour it on me, which was unfortunate for them because all I had to do was grab the front of the cooler and push it back and it DRENCHED all three of the girls who decided to try to lift it while getting my left leg slightly damp.
That just goes to show you that being bad at softball also equates to being a poor tactician in the art of dumping water on people. Just another thing for them to work on next year, I guess. But I hope they work on hitting first.
B!
I sincerely apologize for my disappearing act, but my plate has been quite full since March 15th of this year, as I have been assistant coaching JV softball at ******* High School on top of working my regular job. Basically I have been leaving my house at 6AM every morning and coming home at 7 or 8 PM every night except for weekends—and even on weekends I was busy as we had a doubleheader against **** that somehow managed to last nearly 8 hours. It’s been quite a ride. I haven’t even been to the zoo or anything! I wonder if the animals miss me.
We finished the season with the stellar record of 3 wins, 11 losses and 2 ties. Believe me, it was much rougher than that record portrays. I don’t want to bash the girls on the team, but we had 15 girls on the team and I would say that 2 of them are what one would consider “athletes” by any stretch of the imagination. Not to say the other girls didn’t try, but there is a very distinct difference between an athlete and someone who attempts athletic endeavors while worrying about her hair and if she looks fat in her sliders.
Anyway, after so many long days and so many losing games and so many practices where I just got the feeling that most of the girls just didn’t give a care if we won or not, I was really ready for the season to be over. We had our last game on Wednesday, and I was excited to put the season behind me. It was my first time coaching athletics and I really didn’t know what to expect, but I definitely expected more dedication from people who willingly came out to play the game. I didn’t necessarily expect fanaticism, but I expected a lot more than I got. The only thing that ever seemed to get the girls riled up was a discussion about what kind of pants they were going to have to wear to school with their game day jerseys—I had NO IDEA that jeans could be such a horrible thing to wear with a jersey . . . I think most of the girls would have rather spent a winter in a Russian gulag than to have to wear jeans on an 80-degree day. Then they could wear their Ugg boots and a cute sweater and a hair tie or whatever fashion statement a Scottsdale girl needs to make while in a labor camp in the tundra of Siberia.
So I showed up for the last game fully expecting to take my normal spot along the first base line as the first base coach/official scorekeeper/outfield coach. Instead I got the keys to the field thrown to me by the head coach as he had to attend to a regional track meet at the request of the district athletic director.
“Good luck, head coach,” he said as he tossed me the keys. “It’s all yours today.”
And so I HEAD coached my first softball game. And I will let you in on a secret: I don’t know shit about coaching softball.
Sure, I can teach someone to catch and throw a ball, and I can teach someone to hit, especially if they don’t already have a clue as to what they are doing. I know how to run and I know how to throw and I have a rudimentary knowledge of the game that I learned from coaching first base (which, for those unfamiliar with the game, is basically just telling girls to “run through” if they need to try to beat a throw to first or telling a girl to “go two” if they can safely advance to second base). I was saddled with the scorekeeping book for the whole season on top of coaching first, so for most of the game I was busy trying to keep track of balls and strikes and runs scored and whether or not the girl on second base got there because of an error, a passed ball, a wild pitch, a single and a stolen base, or a double. There is a LOT going on in that game, let me tell you.
So there I was, standing on the third base line, responsible for calling signals (bunt, pullback bunt, delay bunt, swing away, etc.) to fifteen girls, lining up the outfield to cover a hitter’s tendencies, keeping the girls on second so they didn’t steal without my signal, and trying to keep the girls in the dugout from saying something insanely inappropriate to the umpire and getting themselves kicked out of the game. It was a little overwhelming, I will admit.
I finally called the girls together after the second inning and told them I was NOT going to be giving them signals to bunt or anything else. I wanted all of them to go up to the plate with a little swagger and swing away and make something happen because at this point we were already down 9-0 (remember what I said about how my cup runneth over with athletes on the team). The first girl up after that speech proceeds to step one foot into the batter’s box and then look down the line at me for the sign. I made no attempt to disguise our sign for “swing away,” which she promptly did and got out thanks to a POWERFUL hit that dribbled to the pitcher in slow motion. The next girl came up and did the same thing, only this time she swung and missed three times.
“Are you kidding me?” I thought to myself. “What part of “I’m not going to give you a signal so just swing away” do these girls not understand?” I gave another swing away sign. The same thing happened with the next girl, and the next. About the 4th inning I finally realized that they had ACTUALLY learned something during the season and they were going to continue looking down the line to get the sign whether I wanted them to or not. Just doing what they'd been told for the last 15 games, finally.
And that’s when I relaxed. I figured we were already out of the game at this point and we were going to get 10-run ruled in the 5th inning anyway, so as the girls came up to bat, I decided to get a little stupid with my signs. I started doing the “rubber-baby-buggy-bumpers” sign (patting yourself on the top of the head with one hand while rubbing your belly with the other hand) before giving the swing sign. I did a little bit of Madonna’s “Vogue” hand movements before the swing away sign. I did every sign we have in succession before giving the indicator for the swing. I did everything I could think of to just keep it lighthearted and fun out there.
So THAT’S when the girls finally started hitting the ball. We actually started a little rally there in the bottom of the 4th inning. One girl told me that if I did a Michael Jackson dance she would hit me a home run. When she stepped into the box I gave her a little leg kick and an MJ point before giving the swing sign. She laughed so hard and got her first ACTUAL hit of the season (before that she was our designated bunter and only reached on bunts or errors for the season), which was as good as a home run in my book, and probably hers, too. She was SO happy over on first base, celebrating her first REAL hit she almost forgot to run when the next girl came up and ripped a shot into left field.
Of course, it all had to end, it was too little too late and we still ended up getting 10-run ruled in the sixth inning. But at one point we were having so much fun out there none of that mattered. The umpire actually came up to me after the end of the 5th inning and said, “Do those girls know they’re losing this game? I’ve never seen a losing team having this much fun before.”
I told him that the girls haven’t known a score of a game for the WHOLE season so why start now? I took his remark as a compliment though (he did say it very good-naturedly, more in amazement than anything) because I think that JV softball SHOULD be fun for the girls. Winning is nice, but the fact that the girls improved over the course of the year (for instance, we had 17 errors in our first game and only 3 in our last one) and learned little things like what “there’s two outs so run on anything,” means. Even if it did take them 16 games to understand the concept of running on a pop fly ON PURPOSE and not just because they don’t understand what “tag up” means.
After the game the girls started running pulls like they normally do. A pull is where all the girls line up on the third base line and run in the outfield a distance equal to the distance between the bases. I watched them run 4 pulls before one of the girls kind of hesitated and said, “I want to hear Sir Patrick (my nickname to the girls, for some reason) tell us to run.”
I said, “I wasn’t even going to make you ladies run, but since you started I wanted to see how far you’d go before you started complaining about it. Looks like I got four out of you.” They all laughed and came running in around me and took a knee and looked up at me and begged for a speech. I just told them, “Thank you for allowing me to be your coach this year, it was an honor and a privilege and I hope you girls really had some fun this year. If you want me back next year, I will definitely be back.” One girl stood up and took her headband off and gave it to me. The girls all wanted me to put it on so I put it on over the top of my hat to the applause of the girls.
It was such a heartwarming moment that is HAD to be followed up with one of them jumping up and saying, “Let’s get Sir Patrick with a Gatorade bath!” As I found out during the course of the season, the girls could say the sweetest things one minute and follow it up 30 seconds later with a statement equivalent to pure evil. Such is the mind state of a 15-year-old girl, I guess. All of the girls ran to the dugout and grabbed the cooler full of ice water (they grabbed the wrong cooler) and came running at me with it. Unfortunately for them a cooler full of ice water weighs probably 80 or 90 pounds so it took three of them to lift it high enough to pour it on me, which was unfortunate for them because all I had to do was grab the front of the cooler and push it back and it DRENCHED all three of the girls who decided to try to lift it while getting my left leg slightly damp.
That just goes to show you that being bad at softball also equates to being a poor tactician in the art of dumping water on people. Just another thing for them to work on next year, I guess. But I hope they work on hitting first.
B!
Monday, February 8, 2010
My New Hobby
Hello kids. I am in kind of a good mood today because I think I just invented the best hobby ever created. I’m kind of excited about it because I think it might just take the world by storm and I like to think of myself as kind of a trendsetter (those of you who used to read my Myspace blogs will already be familiar with my trend setting skills through my invention of the word “pissblanket” and my universally accepted “Cro-Magnon Introduction Method To Meeting New People”—and those of you who haven’t read those blogs, maybe if you are really nice I will post a retro blog one day a week to remind you of my seemingly bottomless pit of brilliance. All you have to do is ask. Oh, and send money).
So here is the concept of my new hobby. Whenever I get bored, I am just going to open up a Word document and write someone a really tasty piece of hate mail that is completely baseless and most likely borderline insane. My targets will be chosen completely at random, except in very severe circumstances where someone I can actually identify has pissed me off in some way. Here is an example of my first bit of hate mail (I’m new at this, so if this sucks, tough shit):
2/8/10
From: the Desk of B!
To: The Governor Of Texas
Dear Sir or Madam,
Good morning, or afternoon, or evening, as the case may be. You will recognize by the salutation that I don’t know who you are. You will also recognize by the signature below that you don’t know who I am. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?
I have not bothered to look up who you are because I don’t think it is right to introduce yourself to a person who clearly has no interest in you. Since this feeling is probably quite mutual, I think we can dispense with the formalities and get on with the business at hand, which is this: Your state is a festering pile of crap.
I wasn’t a math major, but I would like to school you on some of the properties of math to let you understand just what kind of a moron you are for purposefully seeking the title of Governor of Texas. The first property I would like to introduce you to is the transitive property of math, which is stated as:
If a = b and b = c, then a = c
To put this property in proper perspective, let’s add names to the variables, shall we?
If (a) can be taken to stand for Texas and (b) can be taken to stand for the word “is” and (c) stands for a festering pile of crap, then we can assume:
Texas is. (a = b) Is a festering pile of crap (b = c) then Texas is equal to a festering pile of crap (a = c). It is also humid there, so that makes the crap even worse, but I don’t have a property accounting for humidity and ambient air temperature so you’ll just have to take my word on that one.
Your state of Texas is a festering pile of crap. Right there, mathematically proven, in your face, so don’t try to argue with me. Oh, and as a postulate: you’re a moron. I just added that last part in because it’s true. I don’t have a mathematical proof at hand for that one, but I’m sure I could muster one up if you would like me to. In lieu of the mathematical proof, I will just provide data that would convince any jury of what a moron you are:
Anyone who would willfully and intentionally govern a state with such places as Dalhart, (a city with so much cattle flatulence in the air you can literally see it from six miles away) and Houston, which, in spite of NASA being located there, has amassed a population so stupid that the collective IQ of that city isn’t even a real number as far as I can find in the math books both real and imagined. And Galveston? Are you kidding me? Did you even LOOK at the state you were trying to run or were you just so entranced with all of the murals of Tom Landry and all the other old Dallas Cowboys on the walls of your local Outback Steakhouse that you wanted to assume control of a state with such artistic, if stupid, tendencies.
Have you ever heard the phrase “the wonderful state of Texas?” Of course you haven’t, because such a phrase doesn’t even make sense. I spent 9 months in Texas and I don’t even look at it as a state as much as I look at it as something that I stepped in that was so disgusting I had to throw my shoes away.
So not only are you a moron, you owe me a pair of shoes, jerkface.
Would you like more examples of how horrible you and your state are? Of course you would, because you haven’t BEGUN to understand how stupid your state is. For this next example, I will use the symmetric property, which is stated as:
If a = b then b = a
In this case, as always, the letter a stands for you, the governor of Texas, and the letter b stands for big pile of asscrap (yeah, I just made that word up, what are you going to do about it, you pissblanket?) called Texas, then you and a pile of asscrap, governor, are one and the same.
Congratulations on running the 2nd worst state in the union. You can thank God for Mississippi, the only state in the Union that is more fun to spell than it is to visit. But at least it doesn’t have to count El Paso as one of its GOOD cities.
Fuck off. Sincerely, fuck off.
B!
I’m pretty psyched about my new hobby. My next target is the guy who kept cutting off those GoDaddy commercials before they actually did something worth watching in that crappy game yesterday.
I like me some Danica Patrick. And not just because her last name kicks ass.
So here is the concept of my new hobby. Whenever I get bored, I am just going to open up a Word document and write someone a really tasty piece of hate mail that is completely baseless and most likely borderline insane. My targets will be chosen completely at random, except in very severe circumstances where someone I can actually identify has pissed me off in some way. Here is an example of my first bit of hate mail (I’m new at this, so if this sucks, tough shit):
2/8/10
From: the Desk of B!
To: The Governor Of Texas
Dear Sir or Madam,
Good morning, or afternoon, or evening, as the case may be. You will recognize by the salutation that I don’t know who you are. You will also recognize by the signature below that you don’t know who I am. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?
I have not bothered to look up who you are because I don’t think it is right to introduce yourself to a person who clearly has no interest in you. Since this feeling is probably quite mutual, I think we can dispense with the formalities and get on with the business at hand, which is this: Your state is a festering pile of crap.
I wasn’t a math major, but I would like to school you on some of the properties of math to let you understand just what kind of a moron you are for purposefully seeking the title of Governor of Texas. The first property I would like to introduce you to is the transitive property of math, which is stated as:
If a = b and b = c, then a = c
To put this property in proper perspective, let’s add names to the variables, shall we?
If (a) can be taken to stand for Texas and (b) can be taken to stand for the word “is” and (c) stands for a festering pile of crap, then we can assume:
Texas is. (a = b) Is a festering pile of crap (b = c) then Texas is equal to a festering pile of crap (a = c). It is also humid there, so that makes the crap even worse, but I don’t have a property accounting for humidity and ambient air temperature so you’ll just have to take my word on that one.
Your state of Texas is a festering pile of crap. Right there, mathematically proven, in your face, so don’t try to argue with me. Oh, and as a postulate: you’re a moron. I just added that last part in because it’s true. I don’t have a mathematical proof at hand for that one, but I’m sure I could muster one up if you would like me to. In lieu of the mathematical proof, I will just provide data that would convince any jury of what a moron you are:
Anyone who would willfully and intentionally govern a state with such places as Dalhart, (a city with so much cattle flatulence in the air you can literally see it from six miles away) and Houston, which, in spite of NASA being located there, has amassed a population so stupid that the collective IQ of that city isn’t even a real number as far as I can find in the math books both real and imagined. And Galveston? Are you kidding me? Did you even LOOK at the state you were trying to run or were you just so entranced with all of the murals of Tom Landry and all the other old Dallas Cowboys on the walls of your local Outback Steakhouse that you wanted to assume control of a state with such artistic, if stupid, tendencies.
Have you ever heard the phrase “the wonderful state of Texas?” Of course you haven’t, because such a phrase doesn’t even make sense. I spent 9 months in Texas and I don’t even look at it as a state as much as I look at it as something that I stepped in that was so disgusting I had to throw my shoes away.
So not only are you a moron, you owe me a pair of shoes, jerkface.
Would you like more examples of how horrible you and your state are? Of course you would, because you haven’t BEGUN to understand how stupid your state is. For this next example, I will use the symmetric property, which is stated as:
If a = b then b = a
In this case, as always, the letter a stands for you, the governor of Texas, and the letter b stands for big pile of asscrap (yeah, I just made that word up, what are you going to do about it, you pissblanket?) called Texas, then you and a pile of asscrap, governor, are one and the same.
Congratulations on running the 2nd worst state in the union. You can thank God for Mississippi, the only state in the Union that is more fun to spell than it is to visit. But at least it doesn’t have to count El Paso as one of its GOOD cities.
Fuck off. Sincerely, fuck off.
B!
I’m pretty psyched about my new hobby. My next target is the guy who kept cutting off those GoDaddy commercials before they actually did something worth watching in that crappy game yesterday.
I like me some Danica Patrick. And not just because her last name kicks ass.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Stabbing Cracker Barrel
Ahem. I am going to stab the Cracker Barrel right in their stupid heads, I promise you that.
I like to start off each one of my little entries here with some sort of a seemingly random quote that will grab the reader’s attention and let them know that, hey, I mean business. And business, in my case, involves stabbing corporations right in their stupid heads. I know it is only pro bono work at this point, but I’m hoping if I stab enough corporations on my own dime I will latch on to some bigger corporation stabbers in some sort of paid internship or something.
Granted, I don’t actually know if Cracker Barrel is incorporated, it may be an LLC or it may be part of a larger conglomerate that is run by lower primates. I will leave finding those answers up to somebody who didn’t just get rejected by them for an interview based on some sort of screening process that was obviously devised by a chimpanzee. I’m still going to stab them.
For those of you who have never been to Cracker Barrel, I congratulate you, for you have successfully dodged one of the worst dining experiences known to man. Here is what it’s like to engage in a dining experience there: As you make your way past a seemingly endless row of “handmade” rocking chairs priced at $149 on the porch, you see a menu describing the daily special written in chalk on the side of the building next to the door. You can NEVER read that because it has been the same special for 13 years and they ran out of chalk 12 years ago. The management has never gone through the rigorous process of going to Wal-Mart to buy more chalk because they are so engrossed in figuring out how to put on their suspenders they have little time for anything else.
Inside you will be forced to walk through a retail store that has somehow managed to cram so much stuff into the space that it looks like an episode of “Hoarders” is getting ready to film there if they could just figure out how to get the camera inside the door. In between Christmas ornaments of Elvis and cassette tapes of Kenny Roger’s Greatest Hits you will find cool things like . . . ummmm, nothing. There is nothing cool there. Unless you count the little tub full of those awesome dinner mints that melt in your mouth, but that little 8 ounce tub costs $7 so if you do count that, you should be eating at a much better restaurant than Cracker Barrel. You should be at the Red Lobster, moneybags. There’s more flavor in those cheesy biscuits than in a whole table full of crap from Cracker Barrel.
If you manage to find a path through all of the piles and piles of shit that makes a Grandma’s knees quiver in dry-crotched joy, you will finally find a hostess who is genuinely unhappy to see you. If she wasn’t so busy fielding special requests from people making ABSOLUTELY SURE there is no spice on any of the food, she would actually spit in your face before taking you to a table right next to either a table of pure-blood white trash or a table full of the bingo club from the church or, better yet, both.
At this point, the dining experience is completely unremarkable unless you happen to catch some of the conversation from the pure-blood white trash table, where you will hear genuine, straight-faced statements like, “I don’t care what you say, I will park my Camaro anywhere in the yard I feel like,” and “Does this tank top make my rebel flag tattoo look bitchen or what?”
Just eat your “food” and get the hell out of there as fast as you can. And on the way home, don’t forget to stop off at ANY OTHER RESTAURANT to make sure you get some good food in your belly before you get to your front door.
Okay, so back to why I am going to stab these F-worders, they have an ad up in Flagstaff looking for a manager to run their retail side of the restaurant. I applied to the ad and was given a link to their screening process. From what I could tell from the “screening process,” the only question was this:
Do you have at least 2 years of retail management experience?
My answer was, “Yes.” (I have almost 15 years of management experience, for those who were wondering if I was lying about the whole “yes” thing right there)
My final score: 0
What the fuck?! I can say that word because I am over 18, in good physical health, have never been convicted of a crime (or even accused of one, for that matter), and have seen “Scarface” more than 57 times in my life.
I know I am probably not the best employee in the world. But I am as close as you will ever get without having to deal with someone who says things like, “Buck up, camper, things are getting better” and “What a fantastic day! It just makes you want to whistle a happy tune, doesn’t it?” early in the morning before you’ve had your coffee or pushed a midget down the stairs yet.
Somehow I have become fundamentally unemployable over the last 2 years without even trying. That’s the best part. I am the same guy who ran $2+ million volumes with little or no effort (just kidding, I worked my ass off, I just made it look easy). I am the same guy that managed to keep all of the various races and tribes from killing each other on their lunch breaks up at Savers in Flagstaff while SIMULTANEOUSLY lowering my golf handicap by 8 strokes.
Let’s face it, I rock. So why do I score a big fat 0 on the screening process for stupid Cracker Barrel? I don’t even want to work for Cracker Barrel. Their food tastes like it was designed by a chef who wanted the food to taste “as close to air” as possible, the people wear stupid outfits, I can never figure out that damn pyramid game with the golf tees in it before my food arrives and all of the people who work there look like they’d rather be in the back taking the jawbone of an ass to their manager, bible style.
What I want from Cracker Barrel is an interview so I can tell them to fuck off and quit calling me. I already know how awesome I am and I am WAY too good to be working in a shithole like that. But how can I tell them that if they won’t even give me an interview?
Somebody get on that for me, will you?
B!
P.S.--I don't care what you think about it, that "dry crotch" comment made me laugh, and that's all that matters, even if it is kind of sick and twisted.
I like to start off each one of my little entries here with some sort of a seemingly random quote that will grab the reader’s attention and let them know that, hey, I mean business. And business, in my case, involves stabbing corporations right in their stupid heads. I know it is only pro bono work at this point, but I’m hoping if I stab enough corporations on my own dime I will latch on to some bigger corporation stabbers in some sort of paid internship or something.
Granted, I don’t actually know if Cracker Barrel is incorporated, it may be an LLC or it may be part of a larger conglomerate that is run by lower primates. I will leave finding those answers up to somebody who didn’t just get rejected by them for an interview based on some sort of screening process that was obviously devised by a chimpanzee. I’m still going to stab them.
For those of you who have never been to Cracker Barrel, I congratulate you, for you have successfully dodged one of the worst dining experiences known to man. Here is what it’s like to engage in a dining experience there: As you make your way past a seemingly endless row of “handmade” rocking chairs priced at $149 on the porch, you see a menu describing the daily special written in chalk on the side of the building next to the door. You can NEVER read that because it has been the same special for 13 years and they ran out of chalk 12 years ago. The management has never gone through the rigorous process of going to Wal-Mart to buy more chalk because they are so engrossed in figuring out how to put on their suspenders they have little time for anything else.
Inside you will be forced to walk through a retail store that has somehow managed to cram so much stuff into the space that it looks like an episode of “Hoarders” is getting ready to film there if they could just figure out how to get the camera inside the door. In between Christmas ornaments of Elvis and cassette tapes of Kenny Roger’s Greatest Hits you will find cool things like . . . ummmm, nothing. There is nothing cool there. Unless you count the little tub full of those awesome dinner mints that melt in your mouth, but that little 8 ounce tub costs $7 so if you do count that, you should be eating at a much better restaurant than Cracker Barrel. You should be at the Red Lobster, moneybags. There’s more flavor in those cheesy biscuits than in a whole table full of crap from Cracker Barrel.
If you manage to find a path through all of the piles and piles of shit that makes a Grandma’s knees quiver in dry-crotched joy, you will finally find a hostess who is genuinely unhappy to see you. If she wasn’t so busy fielding special requests from people making ABSOLUTELY SURE there is no spice on any of the food, she would actually spit in your face before taking you to a table right next to either a table of pure-blood white trash or a table full of the bingo club from the church or, better yet, both.
At this point, the dining experience is completely unremarkable unless you happen to catch some of the conversation from the pure-blood white trash table, where you will hear genuine, straight-faced statements like, “I don’t care what you say, I will park my Camaro anywhere in the yard I feel like,” and “Does this tank top make my rebel flag tattoo look bitchen or what?”
Just eat your “food” and get the hell out of there as fast as you can. And on the way home, don’t forget to stop off at ANY OTHER RESTAURANT to make sure you get some good food in your belly before you get to your front door.
Okay, so back to why I am going to stab these F-worders, they have an ad up in Flagstaff looking for a manager to run their retail side of the restaurant. I applied to the ad and was given a link to their screening process. From what I could tell from the “screening process,” the only question was this:
Do you have at least 2 years of retail management experience?
My answer was, “Yes.” (I have almost 15 years of management experience, for those who were wondering if I was lying about the whole “yes” thing right there)
My final score: 0
What the fuck?! I can say that word because I am over 18, in good physical health, have never been convicted of a crime (or even accused of one, for that matter), and have seen “Scarface” more than 57 times in my life.
I know I am probably not the best employee in the world. But I am as close as you will ever get without having to deal with someone who says things like, “Buck up, camper, things are getting better” and “What a fantastic day! It just makes you want to whistle a happy tune, doesn’t it?” early in the morning before you’ve had your coffee or pushed a midget down the stairs yet.
Somehow I have become fundamentally unemployable over the last 2 years without even trying. That’s the best part. I am the same guy who ran $2+ million volumes with little or no effort (just kidding, I worked my ass off, I just made it look easy). I am the same guy that managed to keep all of the various races and tribes from killing each other on their lunch breaks up at Savers in Flagstaff while SIMULTANEOUSLY lowering my golf handicap by 8 strokes.
Let’s face it, I rock. So why do I score a big fat 0 on the screening process for stupid Cracker Barrel? I don’t even want to work for Cracker Barrel. Their food tastes like it was designed by a chef who wanted the food to taste “as close to air” as possible, the people wear stupid outfits, I can never figure out that damn pyramid game with the golf tees in it before my food arrives and all of the people who work there look like they’d rather be in the back taking the jawbone of an ass to their manager, bible style.
What I want from Cracker Barrel is an interview so I can tell them to fuck off and quit calling me. I already know how awesome I am and I am WAY too good to be working in a shithole like that. But how can I tell them that if they won’t even give me an interview?
Somebody get on that for me, will you?
B!
P.S.--I don't care what you think about it, that "dry crotch" comment made me laugh, and that's all that matters, even if it is kind of sick and twisted.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Whirligigs and Shurikens
Let’s face it, my last blog was a bit of a downer. It’s okay, you can admit it, and more importantly, so can I. It was a downer because yesterday was a downer of a day and I will punch your lips through the back of your head if you disagree with me.
I say that because today is more of a rager. I don’t care that “rager” isn’t technically a word. I will keep using it anyway because that’s what I do. Whereas yesterday I was blah and bummed out and whatever, today I am actively seeking fights with people just because I want to see how far I can push people. I almost made an idiot wreck his car today trying to get in front of me because I wanted to see how much of an asshole he would be in an effort to get one car length ahead of me.
Turns out his bootie sphincter has an enormous capacity for growth. It would probably have even more capacity if he would just relax. At least that’s what Frankie Goes To Hollywood says. It turns out that if I push the right person’s buttons, they will actually drive 60 MPH through a school zone in an effort to get ahead of me. Don’t worry, I went 15 through that school zone because I know how the lights are timed on that road and I ended up right next to the guy anyway. And then I stared at him until the light changed. He loved that. He may have peed on himself. Perhaps he was wearing Depends and was going to do that anyway. I like to think I helped the process though.
The funny thing about people driving like assholes is that most of them know they are doing it so when they get called on it, they realize how shitty they are as members of a modern society and they sit in their cockpits and pee themselves a bit when a guy much bigger and angrier than them stares down at them while they pray for the light to change.
One of these days I will probably get shot doing something like that. And I will deserve it, but just know that if I turn up dead in some kind of road rage incident, whoever shot me was being a complete dick and all I was doing was making sure his day was as shitty as possible by making him stay in his own lane. Turns out my day probably ended up shittier if I got shot, but at least I’m not a dick.
Man, that’s weird talking about your death in the future/past tense. I think there are probably some grammar rules that I broke because of that, but they are rules that I made up anyway just for that scenario so if they are broken it is only because I said they are. Plus, I was living in the future and the past at the same time, so what did you expect?
But I digress, because what I really wanted to talk about today was how women put men through the most horrific torture known to modern man: shopping with women.
Seriously, it might be the worst thing ever invented with a couple of special exceptions, including, but not limited to, Texas and Rosie O’Donnell. I’ve never been stuck in a whirligig or put in stocks in the town square, but I have been shoe shopping at Charlotte Russe and I swear it is the same thing. Maybe watching an episode of Rosie’s show taped in Texas while sitting in the stocks inside of a whirligig could be worse, but just barely.
I don’t want to turn this into a big war of the sexes or anything, but women shop like animals. ANIMALS! Don’t believe me? Just go to any department store on a weekend and look at the return rack for the fitting rooms. Women have crap everywhere. Everywhere! There are ill-fitting pants hanging from ceiling fans, a ball of hangers the size of Donald Trump’s ego on the floor, and piles of loose thread and yarn that used to be garments of clothing stacked up on the back of the register. If you stick around the selling floor long enough, you will actually see women throw things that don’t fit them like they are cloth shurikens, creating airborne clothing designs that look like the girl from Ally McBeal is doing flying cartwheels through the dressing rooms.
A shuriken is a Chinese throwing star, for those of you who are not hip to Bruce Lee and everything else that is cool in the world. And the Ally McBeal chick is the really skinny girl who looks like an alien and was the inspiration for the 4th Indiana Jones movie, for those of you not hip to stuff I just made up.
Do you know what men throw? They throw out their back at the thought of having to go shopping with a woman and be subjected to the horror. A man would rather fake an injury than be forced to spend an afternoon with his best girl at the mall.
Yeah, I said best girl. What else do you want? I definitely wouldn’t hit up the mall with my worst girl either, unless she just wanted to go to Best Buy and perhaps The Sports Authority and NOWHERE ELSE. If that were the case, I would instantly turn her into my best girl and STILL avoid the mall with her because all of that, “Let’s go to Best Buy” is just a way of buttonhooking you into ending up at Charlotte Russe with her and wishing your heart would explode so you would have a legitimate excuse to leave the building without pissing her off.
Ah, who am I kidding, she’d still be pissed off. But at least she’d come out of there with 7 pairs of shoes for $100 so she’d have something to model for me while I was laid up in the hospital waiting for the doctors to work some “Six Million Dollar Man” magic on my ticker to get me back in the game stronger, faster, smarter and genetically engineered to withstand the rigors of watching a woman try to decide if blue or black shoes would match a piece of clothing they haven’t even bought yet.
Nothing like a captive audience to show your shoes to, right ladies?
B!
I say that because today is more of a rager. I don’t care that “rager” isn’t technically a word. I will keep using it anyway because that’s what I do. Whereas yesterday I was blah and bummed out and whatever, today I am actively seeking fights with people just because I want to see how far I can push people. I almost made an idiot wreck his car today trying to get in front of me because I wanted to see how much of an asshole he would be in an effort to get one car length ahead of me.
Turns out his bootie sphincter has an enormous capacity for growth. It would probably have even more capacity if he would just relax. At least that’s what Frankie Goes To Hollywood says. It turns out that if I push the right person’s buttons, they will actually drive 60 MPH through a school zone in an effort to get ahead of me. Don’t worry, I went 15 through that school zone because I know how the lights are timed on that road and I ended up right next to the guy anyway. And then I stared at him until the light changed. He loved that. He may have peed on himself. Perhaps he was wearing Depends and was going to do that anyway. I like to think I helped the process though.
The funny thing about people driving like assholes is that most of them know they are doing it so when they get called on it, they realize how shitty they are as members of a modern society and they sit in their cockpits and pee themselves a bit when a guy much bigger and angrier than them stares down at them while they pray for the light to change.
One of these days I will probably get shot doing something like that. And I will deserve it, but just know that if I turn up dead in some kind of road rage incident, whoever shot me was being a complete dick and all I was doing was making sure his day was as shitty as possible by making him stay in his own lane. Turns out my day probably ended up shittier if I got shot, but at least I’m not a dick.
Man, that’s weird talking about your death in the future/past tense. I think there are probably some grammar rules that I broke because of that, but they are rules that I made up anyway just for that scenario so if they are broken it is only because I said they are. Plus, I was living in the future and the past at the same time, so what did you expect?
But I digress, because what I really wanted to talk about today was how women put men through the most horrific torture known to modern man: shopping with women.
Seriously, it might be the worst thing ever invented with a couple of special exceptions, including, but not limited to, Texas and Rosie O’Donnell. I’ve never been stuck in a whirligig or put in stocks in the town square, but I have been shoe shopping at Charlotte Russe and I swear it is the same thing. Maybe watching an episode of Rosie’s show taped in Texas while sitting in the stocks inside of a whirligig could be worse, but just barely.
I don’t want to turn this into a big war of the sexes or anything, but women shop like animals. ANIMALS! Don’t believe me? Just go to any department store on a weekend and look at the return rack for the fitting rooms. Women have crap everywhere. Everywhere! There are ill-fitting pants hanging from ceiling fans, a ball of hangers the size of Donald Trump’s ego on the floor, and piles of loose thread and yarn that used to be garments of clothing stacked up on the back of the register. If you stick around the selling floor long enough, you will actually see women throw things that don’t fit them like they are cloth shurikens, creating airborne clothing designs that look like the girl from Ally McBeal is doing flying cartwheels through the dressing rooms.
A shuriken is a Chinese throwing star, for those of you who are not hip to Bruce Lee and everything else that is cool in the world. And the Ally McBeal chick is the really skinny girl who looks like an alien and was the inspiration for the 4th Indiana Jones movie, for those of you not hip to stuff I just made up.
Do you know what men throw? They throw out their back at the thought of having to go shopping with a woman and be subjected to the horror. A man would rather fake an injury than be forced to spend an afternoon with his best girl at the mall.
Yeah, I said best girl. What else do you want? I definitely wouldn’t hit up the mall with my worst girl either, unless she just wanted to go to Best Buy and perhaps The Sports Authority and NOWHERE ELSE. If that were the case, I would instantly turn her into my best girl and STILL avoid the mall with her because all of that, “Let’s go to Best Buy” is just a way of buttonhooking you into ending up at Charlotte Russe with her and wishing your heart would explode so you would have a legitimate excuse to leave the building without pissing her off.
Ah, who am I kidding, she’d still be pissed off. But at least she’d come out of there with 7 pairs of shoes for $100 so she’d have something to model for me while I was laid up in the hospital waiting for the doctors to work some “Six Million Dollar Man” magic on my ticker to get me back in the game stronger, faster, smarter and genetically engineered to withstand the rigors of watching a woman try to decide if blue or black shoes would match a piece of clothing they haven’t even bought yet.
Nothing like a captive audience to show your shoes to, right ladies?
B!
Monday, January 25, 2010
Buttslurpalicious Monday
Did you ever have one of those moments in your life where you realized, in no uncertain terms, that you had just wasted an entire year of your life with absolutely no gain? I got that today. And today sucks bootie because of that. With a straw. A curly straw that someone didn’t rinse out after drinking whole milk. Gross.
I guess I shouldn’t say I haven’t gotten anywhere in the past year, but I’m about as close to going nowhere as you can be without actually falling backwards. Luckily for me and my psyche, I fell backwards the year before last, so my lack of upward mobility in the past year is a HUGE improvement over the loss of $40,000 a year in salary I managed to throw down the year before last.
I could easily fall down into a depression that would make Eeyore look like an old dancing boy in comparison, but I’ve worked too hard at the gym and enjoyed way too much of an endorphin high today to drop into something like that. But it lurks. I promise you it does. And if it rears its ugly head I will hit it squarely in the grill with a bottle of something that Irish people use just before they car bomb something.
I know that won’t help, but if doing 2 hours of straight cardio isn’t going to help either, I might as well defile myself a bit in another direction, just for good measure.
So, in honor of the fact that my life is going nowhere, I have compiled a list of things that you can use in your life to help you lose your money, your cool condo by the golf course and the national forest in Flagstaff, your ability to golf every weekend and anything else you might generally like about your life.
#1. Tell your regional vice-president that he is wasting your time by spending a whole day in your store doing something that could have been done over e-mail. Apparently, VP’s like it when you kiss their ass, not when you point out how much his existence costs the company in travel fees, free lunches and complete bullshit. Let that be a lesson to all of you.
#2. Work for a company for 12 years that is going bankrupt. Yeah, that’s a bad move, I don’t care who you are. Because when it really comes down to it and they want to “trim the fat” so to speak, the first people they are going to come after are the ones that make the most money. And for those who wonder who makes the most money, it’s people who have worked there for 12 years, apparently. On the plus side, you will have a very valid reason for doing a victory dance when you read that they finally filed full-on bankruptcy and none of the bastards who pushed you out have jobs either. That will give you exactly 17 minutes of happiness before you realize that they probably got WAY better severance packages than you did.
#3. Drop out of college because the company that is going to go bankrupt offers you more money than any of your friends who have Master’s degrees. In the short run it seems like a really good idea to make more money than someone with an MBA, but in the long run your company will go bankrupt and they will still have Master’s degrees and you will work part-time somewhere with no opportunity for advancement, wondering what happened to the last 15 years of your life.
#4. Change your major from Communications to Business Administration because there is more money in business even though the communications classes are the only classes that you ACTUALLY enjoy in college. When they say, “Do what you love” they are NOT kidding. No one has ever given advice anyone thought was sage when they said, “Take the first job that comes along and run it into the ground, then flounder for the next 6 years, hoping for something better.” Oh wait, somehow I found that to be the best advice to take.
#5. Whatever you do, DON’T get good grades in high school and earn scholarships to college. The best thing to do is score in the 98th percentile on every standardized test you have ever taken, get a 31 on the ACT, reject all the scholarship offers to schools in stupid states like Georgia and Iowa, and go to the U of A for one semester before transferring back to NAU because the girls in Tucson won’t talk to you because you’re not in a fraternity. It is much, MUCH cooler to be $48,000 in student loan debt with no degree than it is to go to a real school for free and actually graduate doing something you love to do. Remember, only stupid people do smart things with their life.
I hope everyone is more stupid than I am. But I think it’s that kind of thought process that got me where I am today.
Like I said, today is buttslurpalicious.
B
I guess I shouldn’t say I haven’t gotten anywhere in the past year, but I’m about as close to going nowhere as you can be without actually falling backwards. Luckily for me and my psyche, I fell backwards the year before last, so my lack of upward mobility in the past year is a HUGE improvement over the loss of $40,000 a year in salary I managed to throw down the year before last.
I could easily fall down into a depression that would make Eeyore look like an old dancing boy in comparison, but I’ve worked too hard at the gym and enjoyed way too much of an endorphin high today to drop into something like that. But it lurks. I promise you it does. And if it rears its ugly head I will hit it squarely in the grill with a bottle of something that Irish people use just before they car bomb something.
I know that won’t help, but if doing 2 hours of straight cardio isn’t going to help either, I might as well defile myself a bit in another direction, just for good measure.
So, in honor of the fact that my life is going nowhere, I have compiled a list of things that you can use in your life to help you lose your money, your cool condo by the golf course and the national forest in Flagstaff, your ability to golf every weekend and anything else you might generally like about your life.
#1. Tell your regional vice-president that he is wasting your time by spending a whole day in your store doing something that could have been done over e-mail. Apparently, VP’s like it when you kiss their ass, not when you point out how much his existence costs the company in travel fees, free lunches and complete bullshit. Let that be a lesson to all of you.
#2. Work for a company for 12 years that is going bankrupt. Yeah, that’s a bad move, I don’t care who you are. Because when it really comes down to it and they want to “trim the fat” so to speak, the first people they are going to come after are the ones that make the most money. And for those who wonder who makes the most money, it’s people who have worked there for 12 years, apparently. On the plus side, you will have a very valid reason for doing a victory dance when you read that they finally filed full-on bankruptcy and none of the bastards who pushed you out have jobs either. That will give you exactly 17 minutes of happiness before you realize that they probably got WAY better severance packages than you did.
#3. Drop out of college because the company that is going to go bankrupt offers you more money than any of your friends who have Master’s degrees. In the short run it seems like a really good idea to make more money than someone with an MBA, but in the long run your company will go bankrupt and they will still have Master’s degrees and you will work part-time somewhere with no opportunity for advancement, wondering what happened to the last 15 years of your life.
#4. Change your major from Communications to Business Administration because there is more money in business even though the communications classes are the only classes that you ACTUALLY enjoy in college. When they say, “Do what you love” they are NOT kidding. No one has ever given advice anyone thought was sage when they said, “Take the first job that comes along and run it into the ground, then flounder for the next 6 years, hoping for something better.” Oh wait, somehow I found that to be the best advice to take.
#5. Whatever you do, DON’T get good grades in high school and earn scholarships to college. The best thing to do is score in the 98th percentile on every standardized test you have ever taken, get a 31 on the ACT, reject all the scholarship offers to schools in stupid states like Georgia and Iowa, and go to the U of A for one semester before transferring back to NAU because the girls in Tucson won’t talk to you because you’re not in a fraternity. It is much, MUCH cooler to be $48,000 in student loan debt with no degree than it is to go to a real school for free and actually graduate doing something you love to do. Remember, only stupid people do smart things with their life.
I hope everyone is more stupid than I am. But I think it’s that kind of thought process that got me where I am today.
Like I said, today is buttslurpalicious.
B
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