B!'s Mental Chew Toys

You've Pretty Much Done Everything Wrong

2010-11-10T17:48:00.000-08:00

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.

Global Warming: Women's Fault?

2010-10-13T18:13:00.000-07:00

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!

500 Words A Day--Day 12

2010-09-03T13:48:00.000-07:00

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!

500 Words A Day-Day 11

2010-09-02T17:02:00.001-07:00

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!

500 Words A Day--Day 10

2010-09-01T18:28:00.000-07:00

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!

500 Words A Day--Day 9

2010-08-31T17:43:00.000-07:00

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!

500 Words A Day-Day 8 "The Me-First Generation"

2010-08-30T19:14:00.001-07:00

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!

500 Words A Day-Day 7

2010-08-26T20:19:00.001-07:00

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!

500 Words A Day-Day 6

2010-08-25T16:53:00.000-07:00

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?

500 Words A Day--Day 5

2010-08-24T09:31:00.001-07:00

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!

500 Words A Day--Day 4

2010-08-23T16:28:00.000-07:00

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.

500 Words A Day - Day 3

2010-08-20T14:59:00.000-07:00

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!

500 Words A Day--Day 2

2010-08-19T21:08:00.000-07:00

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!

500 Words A Day--Day 1

2010-08-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

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.

The Peek-A-Boo Kid

2010-06-10T21:00:00.000-07:00

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!

Henceforth I Shall Call You . . .

2010-05-13T19:01:00.000-07:00

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 JV Experience

2010-04-30T20:20:00.000-07:00

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!

My New Hobby

2010-02-08T17:42:00.000-08:00

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.

Stabbing Cracker Barrel

2010-02-02T17:02:00.000-08:00

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.

Whirligigs and Shurikens

2010-01-28T17:31:00.000-08:00

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!

Buttslurpalicious Monday

2010-01-25T17:41:00.001-08:00

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

Grown Folks Clothing

2010-01-20T16:24:00.000-08:00

This year didn't start out well at all on my writing front. So much for New Year’s resolutions involving writing something every day. I only missed my mark by nearly three weeks, I guess, but damn do I need some work on getting creative stuff done.

I blame it on Bejewelled Blitz. I really do. And the worst part of that whole thing is I actually get worse the more I play that game. I don’t know if my brain just stops working because it knows I have wasted far too much time on something that means absolutely nothing, or if my eyes just start to get blurry from looking at stupid jewels that they give up and just start inserting things into the computer screen to entertain themselves.

Apparently, my eyes think leprechauns are pretty entertaining. I feel like I am fighting my way out of a bowl of lucky charms at times on that game. And the worst part about it is that after I have stopped playing the game I still try to move stuff around in my house to create a chain of three that will disappear. I just lined up a bill from the IRS, the cable bill and my car insurance bill in hopes they would blow up and be replaced by jewels of some sort but, unfortunately, no such luck.

It’s not like I don’t have stuff in the works besides my next conquest of Bejewelled. I do. I have several things in the works. The problem with me is that “the works” is inside of my mind and not anywhere near a place that could be considered tangible. Here are a few of my latest ideas (and don’t steal any of this stuff because I will come after you like an IRS agent that doesn’t like the fact you didn’t declare your 401(k) cashout as earned income in 2008 even though they ALREADY taxed it when I pulled it out):

A line of adult t-shirts that take actual children’s T-shirts and just makes them big enough for adult people to wear. I’m going to call my line of clothing "Grown Folks." Nothing says “I’m okay with myself” like a bright blue and green T-shirt that just says “Truck” on it right next to a cartoon picture of a dump truck. Forget all this children’s fashion crap about making kids clothes look like scaled-down versions of adult clothes. Let’s just make the adult clothes look like kids clothes and get rid of the age barriers and bias we have created as a society. Plus, people can have the EXACT same style for their entire life. That would be a first in the modern world. In fact, I am wearing my custom made “My Mommy Loves Me” shirt to the gym tomorrow. And my engineer’s choo choo cap.

I’m writing a cartoon about a group of science nerds who decide to use the scientific method and their knowledge of physics to project the final resting place of a fat kid they push down a hill as their final project in physics. They’re going to forget to take into account the train tracks at the bottom of the hill, the train schedule and the fact the fat kid ate a salad for lunch and is lighter than he would normally be at that time of day and they are all going to end up getting an F on their final project. Too bad. Maybe next year, nerds, when you get out of prison for manslaughter.

As some of you may know, I have been known to dabble in a bit of hip hop during my time here on earth. Since it has been roughly 19 years since I recorded my last album, I think I’m going to make a comeback and I’m going to do a rap album with the following song titles:

I Buy My Bling At The Swap Meet
Your Mom Goes To College
Yes, I Actually Am Hard (Go Ask The Guy I Just Beat Up)
Rippety Rhyme and A-Hippety Hop To The Izzo
Your Nipples Must Be Jealous
Respect The Police
Still Hard (‘Cause I Yelled At Your Grandma)
Tickled At The Thought Of Playing Hide The Pickle
Just Say No To Drugs (But Alcohol Is A-OK!)
30 Second Intervals of Pure Cussing, Volume I
I Can’t Believe Your Parents Named Their One-Legged Girl Eileen
Bleep You, Mother Bleeper (Radio Edit)
Reading Cosmo Doesn’t Make You Smarter
I Cordially Invite You To Leave The Premises
Gila Bend Gangster Stylee
This Town Is Like A Great Big Chicken Just Waiting To Get Plucked (My Ode to Network TV's Version of Scarface)
The Sesame Street Theme Song (Bonus Track)

Now all I have to do is go write them. Maybe after I play Bejewelled Blitz. Yep. That sounds about right.

B!

Yakuza Babies And A Dollar To Shut Up

2009-12-27T19:55:00.000-08:00

I got in the mood today to write something the way I used to write when I was full-on mad at the world. I don’t know that I am that mad anymore, so it is tough for me to pick a target and aim at it with words on a page the way I used to. I would say I had a kind of acerbic wit, but then I would have to look that word up to make sure I used it correctly and I’m just not in the mood for that. Somebody else needs to look that up for me and get back to me.

I feel like picking on my standard targets would be like beating a dead horse, which is something I have never tried so I can’t say with absolute knowledge that it is a waste of time (maybe it’s a real joy, like having a hootenanny or something), but it sure seems like there would be a lot better ways to spend an afternoon. Not that I spend an entire afternoon writing this crap, because I honestly wouldn’t devote more than about 40 minutes to anything as asinine as one of my blogs.

So far, on my other blogs on Myspace, I have attacked children, stupid children, white trash children, people who drive Infinitis, fat people who cut me off to go eat at CiCi’s Pizza (I hate that, and yet it happens more than you would believe), people who can’t decide which yogurt to buy at the grocery store, my dog shitting in my bike seat, the fact that when a horse runs into another horse it is actually called a “horse wreck” (I swear I’m not making that up), people who wear sunglasses inside of Target and people who put loud mufflers on their Japanese sedans. I honestly can’t think of anyone else left to go after.

I may need some help on this one, because I have been feeling some venom that I need to spit at SOMETHING. The bad thing is that so many of my favorite topics have become off limits because of family developments with my friends. I feel bad attacking kids for being stupid when all of my friends have kids. And even though, technically, they are still some of the dumbest human beings alive because they are babies and they can’t even talk, I feel bad for saying that. Obviously not THAT bad because I’m still going to make my comments, but I sort of feel bad about that. So come on you no-talking, poopy-diapered babies, why don’t you engage me in some meaningful conversation already so I can run rings around you and do a little superiority dance right in your baby face? What are you going to do, cry about it?

Rebuttal? Nothing? I thought so. Too busy pooping on yourselves and making my friends have to stay up all night.

It’s not even fun attacking babies anymore, either verbally or in person with my nunchucks. Just kidding, I would never use nunchucks on a kid, unless they had a bo staff and a tattoo of the Yakuza or they had a poopy diaper and they were trying to sit on my lap.

Let that be a lesson to all of you: NEVER sit on my lap if you have poop in your pants unless you want a whack to the dome and a loud KEEYARF right in your ear.

Wow, this blog went downhill REALLY fast, didn’t it?

I guess I should get to the real point, which is that since the Christmas season is over I need something else to do with the dollar bills floating in my pocket from time to time. During the Christmas season I like to “pay a toll” of $1 to the Salvation Army bell ringers every time I walk past them. That means it costs me $2 to go into the grocery store and come out between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And that’s okay, because I just do stupid stuff with my money anyway and I figure anything they do with it would be more productive than anything I do with it. Odds are, my dollar, left to fend for itself on my whims, would probably end up in some stripper’s G-string just before my hat gets marvelously molested by a very athletic and flexible girl with anger management issues and a surprising vendetta against baseball caps.

It’s happened before. It wasn’t pretty. It was pretty F’ing AWESOME! I really felt as if that girl and her crotch hated my hat.

Anyway, after much soul searching and generally being annoyed by idiots in the world, I have decided to spend my money on something much more valuable than the Salvation Army. I am going to pay people $1 not to talk to me.

Here’s how it’s going to go down: Someone is going to approach me and talk to me in an unsolicited conversation. I am going to make a snap judgment based on the intelligence of what the person is talking about, the voice they use to talk to me in, and, just for good measure, what kind of shoes they are wearing. If I disagree with anything the person says, sounds like, or chooses as footwear, I will pull out a crisp one dollar bill, snap it taut a couple of times, dangle the currency right in their stupid face and say, “I will give you one dollar to NEVER talk to me again.”

If they reach for the dollar I will pull it just out of their reach and say, “This is a one-time offer and a binding agreement. If you take this dollar and say another word to me I will spray you in the face with an entire can of mace and take my dollar back. By accepting this dollar you accept the terms I have given and henceforth you will NOT SAY ANOTHER WORD TO ME FOR THE REMAINDER OF YOUR NATURAL LIFE!” Then I will probably add something in Latin like “quid pro quo” or “e pluribus unum” just so they think I know some more lawyer stuff and they will shut their stupid mouth. Forever. At least in my direction.

I’m gonna need a LOT of mace.

B!

P.S.—I feel compelled to give examples of things I am looking to never hear again. So here is a short list of things that will earn you a dollar for your silence (trust me, the list is much, MUCH longer than this but here is something to get you a general idea):

If you complain about the air quality as you light a cigarette
If any part of your voice comes through your nose (unless you are doing an impersonation of that lady from The Nanny, in which case I will just mace you without giving you a dollar)
If you say anything about how your vacation home has lost value in the market
You think I’m lying about the “horse wreck” thing
If your shoes don’t match your belt

Writing In Permanence

2009-12-01T18:18:00.000-08:00

Today I was looking for something (I can’t remember what because I got sidetracked) and I found a big pile of spiral bound notebooks from years past. These notebooks are filled with thoughts, hopes, dreams, song lyrics, notes from various classes, doodles and other such things one might find in a notebook owned by someone who dreams more than he accomplishes.

There is something very magical in going back through things like that. I don’t think many have the same archive of things I do, as my notebooks go back all the way to about almost 1981 or 1982. I have always made a point to not throw away anything I ever write if I can help it. That notebook from 1982 I have is the one where I wrote my first play, a story about my G.I. Joe action figures attacking a secret base for Cobra.

It’s a horrible play, but I was 10 when I wrote it so fuck off. And I spelled almost everything correctly, in ink, and in ACTUAL cursive. The kind of cursive you have to practice in school and get grades on. Part of me wants to scan those pages into the computer and post it for the world to see, but, like almost everything else in my life, I didn’t finish the play because I got tired of writing it and nobody wants to read 14 pages of story setup with no denouement unless you are deeply into Akira Kurosawa films and really obscure references like the one I just used.

Looks like I’ve been doing the same thing for almost 30 years, huh? Starting things and never finishing them. I am 155 pages into a screenplay I have no ending for. I am 65 pages into a different screenplay I don’t like anymore. I am 135 hours into 4 college degrees that I have no money to finish and no job prospects to think of even if I did finish one or all of them.

There are some interesting things in the notebooks, though, finished or not. At one point I was going to buy one every January and keep those notebooks like volumes of my life. But the notebooks started combining years because I never filled all of one in a year, until my latest notebook has covered almost 3 years and still has almost all of it left. I haven’t written a song lyric in a couple of years, probably closer to three years, because I don’t see the point of any of that stuff if I’m never going to finish it. My dreams of being a rapper are long gone anyway. And not even cats in heat want to hear me sing, so why continue writing?

I think the advent of the computer might have led to the downfall of my writing permanence. I still have saved all of the blogs I have ever written in my Word program on my computer, but this computer is getting close to running its course and I am not savvy enough to figure out how to transfer all of the volumes of things I have written onto another computer. I’m sure it is simple and I could figure it out in a few minutes of whacking the keyboard, but there is a whole lot less charm in looking at stuff I have written on a white screen versus looking at journal entries I have written with my own hand.

The part of me that wants to live forever always kind of hoped that when I died someone would find all of these journal entries and want to publish them. But, honestly, who the hell would read the journal entries of someone who halfway finished almost everything in his life? In fact, the only thing I am SURE I will finish in my life is my actual life. And that’s only because I have no choice. I spent almost 25 minutes writing my screenplay today, which is 25 minutes more than I have spent in the last 10 days, but after 25 minutes all I wanted to do was get online to see if anyone had written me an e-mail.

Who knows what brilliance I have lost to the world by sending it over e-mail to friends and family members? Who knows what ignorant crap I have sent over that same electronic Pony Express? Whatever I have written in e-mail form has been lost to the world over the last few years because, unlike my handwritten notebooks, I don’t save ANY e-mails because they are impersonal and they all look the same, no matter how brilliant or stupid the writing in them may be.

There is something special to be said about the way my handwriting looks when I’m drunk. Or the way it looks when I’m pissed off at the world. Or the way it looks after I’ve killed myself in the gym. Or when I’m in love. All of those nuances are lost when I put the keys to motion and throw my thoughts down on a screen. All of that humanity is gone. And yet I don’t want to handwrite things like this because it would definitely take too long to get from my mind to my page. If I type 60 words a minute I can get probably 40 more words per minute to the “page” than I ever could by writing it by hand.

So I lose the ability to genuinely think about what I am writing. I just flow words from my mind to the computer screen and I let that highly impersonal style affect the way I connect with the rest of the world. Should I be sad about that? Should all of us be sad about that?

I think I am.

B!

A Thanksgiving Day Blog

2009-11-26T07:40:00.000-08:00

I promise I am trying not to make everything I write during the next few weeks about the holidays coming up, but since this is probably the first time I am planning on actually writing something on Thanksgiving I might as well write about the holidays again. Don’t worry, I’ll be back to complaining about stupid people with their stupid faces in their stupid cars with their stupid driving habits by the middle of next week. Maybe. You might just end up getting a bunch of sentimental drivel for the next 5 weeks and then a tome about how happy I am going to be when I get wasted on New Year’s Eve.

Speaking of getting wasted, I was reminded last night that Thanksgiving Eve is the busiest bar night in America. That’s something you don’t think about when you don’t hit the bars all the time like I used to do (when did I get so lame and old?) back when I was a young buck with disposable income, lots of free time and a bulletproof liver. To me, Thanksgiving Eve was just another Wednesday night with 2 for 1’s at Mulligan’s, $2 U-Call-It’s at The Depot Cantina and the trailer park’s night out at Club R&R in Flagstaff (that should be quite a walk down memory lane for a few people who used to frequent those establishments). And Thanksgiving Day was just a day where I had to drive back home from Laughlin, Nevada because somehow the 2-4-1’s made me end up in a different state with bars that closed at a time I like to call “never.”

I have already gone into detail in my previous blog about how I have spent more Christmases with other families than my own. Thanksgiving is a whole very similar animal. The last Thanksgiving I can remember spending with my family was in 1992 or 1993. For those of you who are mathematically challenged, it’s been at least 16 years since I hung with the fam on turkey day.

So for the last 16 years I have had to come up with something else to do on what I consider to be the lamest holiday of the year. For those of you who go crazy talking about “oh, but the food” and “the food” and “don’t forget the food,” guess what? I eat food EVERY OTHER DAY OF THE YEAR. And guess what I eat just about every other day of the year? Nope, not candied yams, those things are disgusting and should be against the law. Guess again. Correct, I eat TURKEY.

I eat turkey at least five days a week, and probably closer to six since I don’t eat out as much as I used to. What this means to me is that turkey is just another protein source, not some huge deal where I need to work myself into a frenzy before I eat it like I’m some kind of shark that only eats barnyard animals. As far as I can tell, it is possible to buy and cook a turkey 365 days a year. 366 on leap years. It’s not like the animal is seasonal. It’s not an F’ing watermelon. It’s a turkey. The meanest and dumbest and most delicious bird in the history of the earth. People talk about eating the turkey like it is some mythical creature that only appears when a parade happens in New York City.

Good God don’t get me started on parades. Dammit, you did. I will just say that a parade is something invented when there was no such thing as cable TV. Or electricity, probably. It was something invented when kids used to entertain themselves by running around with a stick trying to keep a hoop rolling down the street. Enough said? I guarantee that if kids had PSP’s and Nintendo DS systems back in the days we would not be watching a Thanksgiving Day Parade. We’d be watching a Thanksgiving Day robot cage match and it would be the most awesome thing ever seen on TV.

So when people ask me if I’m excited for Thanksgiving, I am not. I am excited for a day off of work with football on TV. But there are other days like that in the world. I’m trying to think of what they are. Hmmmm. Oh yeah, now I remember, they are called SUNDAYS. How could I forget? Thanksgiving is just a Sunday in disguise. As far as I’m concerned, Thanksgiving is a Sunday with “The Office” on instead of “The Simpsons.” Oh, and everything is closed but Denny’s, and that works out just fine for me because, like I said, I don’t eat out as much as I used to so Thanksgiving actually saves me money.

Thanks Thanksgiving. You’re a doll. A big dumb stupid delicious doll who is going to make me spend 4 hours a day in the gym to work off the damage I’m going to do to myself this afternoon.

On second thought, F U Thanksgiving. You’re a pain in my ass. I wish Taco Bell was open today. If you were a Sunday, like you pretend to be, I could get my chicken chalupas and lounge in peace. Maybe Taco Bell should work on a turkey chalupa, just for days like today.

Mmmm, chalupas. Then I’d only have to spend 3 hours in the gym to work it off.

Happy Thanksgiving, fuckers.

B!

I'll Be Home For Christmas

2009-11-24T16:21:00.000-08:00

For those who aren’t hip to the whole workings of the retail machine, Black Friday is coming up this Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. If you want more info on what Black Friday is, you can Google that shit. Suffice it to say that the day used to be a little more under the table as far as retailers competing for your dollars, but now it seems like it has come to all-out whoring for your dollars.

It’s kind of nice to see Wal-Mart become such a slut. Though that is kind of overkill, to be honest. It’s like the Yankees begging and pleading for ANOTHER World Series title when they already have like 29 of them or something. Okay, we get it, you rule the world, now stop killing everyone else for a little while and let them have some fun.

And we all know that with all of this “holiday” spirit comes all of the Christmas songs that can either get you in a really great mood (usually only if you are a girl) or completely destroy your day by throwing you into past memories you never really asked to be thrown into. Today I had just such an experience. And since I’m not a girl, you know which of those I was thrown into.

It was the song “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” by any artist who has ever stood in front of a microphone for a Christmas album. I think I heard nine different variations on it today. And nine variations of that song is nine too many, if you ask me. And you didn’t ask me, but you’re reading this and that’s close enough for me.

The chorus got me thinking about where exactly home is. Am I supposed to dream about going home to the first Christmas I ever remember having? The one where I got the most AWESOME army man mountain fort with tanks and 6 levels of army man glory in it? Or am I supposed to dream about the one where I walked around all day in my underwear and my Lone Ranger 6-shooters (stop swooning ladies)? Those Christmases were in a house in Denver, Colorado and no one lives there anymore. At least no one I would go home to. I’m sure lots of other people live there, just not my family.

Should I think of the Christmases I spent in Flagstaff, AZ with my family? The ones where I was old enough to appreciate Christmas as more than just a day when I got a bunch of gifts but as a day where I got to hang around with my family and participate in traditions that the younger kids don’t even know exist? Those were some good Christmases, but once again, no one lives there anymore. That house belongs to someone else now. I haven’t even seen the inside in twelve or thirteen years.

Or should I think of the Christmases I spent with my friends and their parents over the years? In the last 15 years I have spent more Christmases with four COMPLETELY different families than I have with my own. Hell, I haven’t even seen my parents in eight or nine years. It’s been so long since I’ve seen them that I don’t even know what year it was anymore. Is that how I am supposed to think of going home to Christmas? The years I have spent as a Christmas “orphan?”

How do I go home to a Christmas like that? I have lots of fond memories of all of the holidays I have spent with my friends and their families, and I can’t thank those families enough for opening their arms and hearts to the Christmas orphan, but which of those memories am I supposed to go home to in my dreams?

I think this year the Christmas I am going to go home to is the one from 1993. I don’t remember exactly what happened that Christmas, but it couldn’t have been all bad . . . just like all of the rest of them.

B!

The Music Store Of Life

2009-11-18T13:54:00.000-08:00

On my way home from the gym today a song came on my iPod. The song is called “Five O’ Clock World” by a group called The Vogues. I’m not sure of the exact release date of the song, but I’m guessing it comes from somewhere early in the 1960’s. I’m going to say 1962 just because it sounds like the music did before the Beatles came along. I could go look it up but I absolutely don’t feel like doing that so deal with it.

Anyway, the lyrics of the part of the song I want to talk about go like this:

“Up every morning just to keep a job
Got to fight my way through the hustling mob
Sounds of the city pounding in my brain
While another day goes down the drain

But it’s a 5’O Clock World when the whistle blows
No one owns a piece of my time
And there’s a 5’O clock me inside my clothes
Thinking that the world looks fine”

The point I am trying to make is that people have been feeling this way for at least 40-some years. Most likely a lot longer than that, but this song is the first I’ve heard about a guy hating his job and knowing his life doesn’t begin until his work is over.

How many of us feel that way? Is everyone really only working for the weekend? It makes me wonder what people would do if they could just do it. If money was no object, what would you do with yourself?

By the way, I hate that question. “If money was no object . . .” blah blah blah. Guess what? It is an object. It has always been an object. It isn’t the only object, but damn it, it’s a pretty big object. If money really weren’t an object, I can honestly say I would be writing this in a completely different time zone (at the very least) on a completely different computer while wearing completely different clothes.

Money is the object that keeps my life the way it is now. They say when you get rich your personality doesn’t change, you just become more of whatever it was you were in the first place. If you were an asshole before you got rich, you’ll just be a bigger one. If you were a really great person before, you’d just be a bigger really great person.

I can honestly say that the only thing that would change about me would be the fact that you wouldn’t be able to find me. That’s why the internet could be such a brilliant tool for me to use if I ever actually did something with myself and got rich. All I’d have to do is put up my daily bullshit blog and the bored few who actually read them could follow me along my completely uninteresting adventures to nowhere.

Let’s face it, I’ve never actually been headed anywhere in my life. People who have known me for a long time can attest to this. I always worry about the fact that I am not moving forward in my life, but the fact is, even if I am moving forward I am heading nowhere. So I’m just moving further along a tangent line into the ether.

Like the line from The Streets: “If you don’t know where you’re going then any road will take you there.” That pretty much sums up my life to this point. I’ve been blessed with gifts I don’t use, I have no “calling” in life that I know of and I end up wasting hours and hours searching for something that I have never found and probably never will.

Have you ever gone into a music store to browse while you are waiting for something else to happen (your car to get repaired, an appointment somewhere, etc.)? Then when an employee comes up to ask if you need any help you realize that you have just walked around a store for 20 minutes and not known what you were in there for? The standard response (from me at least) is, “Oh, I’m just looking. I’ll know it when I find it.”

That’s pretty much how I live my life. I’ll know it when I find it.

I just hope time doesn’t run out before I figure out which purchase to make.

On a related note, if anyone has found an extra Calling In Life somewhere, can you pass it along to me? I think I need one of those. Wow, you’d never guess my 37th birthday is in two days, would you? Holy shit I’m getting old.

B!

2009-11-09T14:47:00.000-08:00

Today I was driving home from work when the song, “Meet Me Halfway” by the Black Eyed Peas came on the radio for like the 900th time in the last two days. I have gone into depth in previous posts about how much I hate the Black Eyed Peas and how they have pretty much ruined music in the early 2000’s.

I can’t really fault somebody for making shitty music that the masses latch onto. It has happened time and time again over the years. I will freely admit that I was a fan of MC Hammer back in the days when he was absolutely demolishing real rap music with his vapid lyrics and “marbles in the mouth” delivery. The only reason I listened to Hammer was because his beats were SO DAMN GOOD! In fact, they are still good and you know it.

The main thing that separates MC Hammer from the whole horrifying thing that is The Black Eyed Peas is that MC Hammer isn’t a liar like Will.i.am is. When MC Hammer says, “You can’t touch this” it is the absolute truth. Did you ever try to touch it? Were you successful? Of course not, because you couldn’t touch it, just like MC Hammer said.

On the other hand, you have lyrics like these from Will.i.am in the Black Eyed Peas’ song “Meet Me Halfway”:

Girl, I travel round the world and even sail the seven seas
Across the universe I go to other galaxies
Just tell me where to go, just tell me where you wanna to meet
I navigate myself to take me where you be

Now, let me break this down so I can prove that this dude is a liar. First, we will take the line “Girl, I travel round the world and even sail the seven seas.” There is a girl involved, apparently, so this must be a love song. And because this is a love song, there has to be these unreal statements of devotion from the man to the woman because most love songs are full of shit and girls eat that shit up. I believe he would travel around the world, but not for a girl. It would probably because he was on tour and had some concerts scheduled in places that would take him to several different cities around the globe.

As far as him sailing the seven seas? Not a chance. Not a chance in hell. Do you know how much time that would take? Do you know how dangerous that is? I don’t think anyone has ACTUALLY sailed the seven seas in like 150 years. They have engines now that eliminate the need for sails on a boat. Maybe he was so busy flying around in his G-5 airplane that he didn’t realize that. A better lyric would probably be “Girl, I go from place to place in cities around the globe but I try to stay away from places that don’t have 5 star hotels and limo service, and I would probably take a cruise ship from Miami to Jamaica, but I don’t have much more free time in my schedule for that because I have to drive Fergie to an audition to play young Jack Nicholson in the newest Batman movie.”

Now, the lyric “Across the universe I go to other galaxies” has got to be examined closely. Not for any other reason than the fact that if he were actually going to travel across the universe, he is in the wrong business for it. Even that kid from N’Sync got denied his little jaunt into space and that dude was way more popular than the Black Eyed Peas will ever be. The only way for him to get a trip into space would be for him to join the Air Force, become a pilot, work his way through the ranks, get into the astronaut training program, dazzle his superiors and be lucky enough to get assigned onto a space shuttle mission. Unfortunately for him, the space shuttle doesn’t have the capability to go across the universe or even another galaxy, and I’m pretty sure NASA would be pissed if he blew his whole space mission just to meet some girl and hopefully get some ass. Here’s a better lyric: “Across the street to Waffle House I’ll slip you a hotel key.”

The next lyric, “Just tell me where to go, just tell me where you want to meet” is the most realistic lyric in the verse because, as we all know, girls control the when, where and how any booty exchange takes place. Of course, by admitting to the woman that she is in control of where you will go with your life you have just F’ed yourself and you have given her the “hand” in the relationship. If you don’t understand “hand” you should go watch re-runs of Seinfeld until you get a better grasp on the way the universe works. Suffice it to say that if he does actually show up where she wants him to show up, he might get some ass but he will definitely have given her the upper hand in the relationship and she will probably actually send him across the galaxy at some point JUST BECAUSE SHE CAN. Way to go, dumbass! You’ve got to think of these things before singing them to your girl. And stop singing them to other people’s girls because I GUARANTEE there is some idiot girl getting ready to ask her boyfriend, “Would you travel across the universe for me?”

How the hell do you answer that? You can’t tell the truth (“Shoot, I barely like walking across the room for you, do you really want me to answer that?”) so you HAVE to lie. Way to make liars out of everyone, Will.

The last lyric, “I navigate myself to take me where you be” is not only a lie, but it’s an idiotic one because in the line previous he tells her to tell him where to go. If someone tells you which way to go, what does that make them? A navigator, perhaps? So how are you going to navigate yourself if you have to ask someone else where to go? That doesn’t work, unless he is talking about literally driving a Lincoln Navigator to where she wants to meet, but those things would never make it into space to go across the universe, and even if they could, they get horrible gas mileage and there’s no place to fill up. Plus, that thing would sink in the first of the seven seas and it would get crushed under the weight of the ocean.

This guy can barely navigate himself across a music track without making several stupid mistakes. I really hope this girl doesn’t hold her breath in hopes that he really will meet her halfway. She’ll be dead somewhere and he’ll have driven his SUV into a lake. Maybe she’ll be holding her breath halfway across the lake.

Hmm.

Maybe they deserve each other.

B!

A Gray Haired Creep

2009-11-04T15:28:00.000-08:00

I don’t know if it’s just me or if everyone has been experiencing this, but it seems like more and more I am being reminded of exactly how old I am getting. It seems like several times a week I will see something on TV or hear a song on the radio and they will say what year it is from and I will think, “That was how long ago?! Are you kidding me?!”

Sometimes I even say that out loud. I’ll admit it. Luckily I haven’t done it in public. Or maybe I have. Oh my God! Have I done that in public and not even realized it due to my advancing years? Have I crossed over to the sort of advanced age related idiosyncrasies like sneezing SO LOUD that it restarts your heart because it’s so worn out it stops when you sneeze and I haven’t even noticed it because my hearing is so bad?

Just kidding, my hearing is fine. What?

It’s quite a reality check when you realize that a very important event in your life happened over a decade ago. Are you kidding me? Do you know what is supposed to have happened a decade ago? Fifth grade. That’s it. That is the ONLY thing that should have happened that long ago. Everything else in life should have happened within the last 2 years because that’s how young people experience life.

College kids have no concept of the reality of age because everything that happens to them is new and fancy and full of fun and probably the very real threat of an STD. And I can honestly say that there is nothing wrong with that. As far as I’m concerned, everything should be new and fancy and full of fun and I’ll just bring a condom to make sure everything is the way it is supposed to be. Even the STD.

The best part of being young is (or should I say ‘was’) the fact that there are no consequences for most of your actions. Fail a class? “I’ll take it next semester.” Break up with your girlfriend/boyfriend? “I’ll get a new one in a couple of weeks.” Have a shitty summer vacation? “I’ll do something better next year. Maybe Cancun.”

But the next thing you know 12 summers have passed, you’ve never been to Cancun and you’re sitting at home on a Tuesday night, watching “The Biggest Loser” alone while eating a plain chicken breast and broccoli instead of being out at the bars enjoying San Felipe’s Cantina’s ½ price tequila shots on Tequila Tuesdays with bar food, the hot girl that worked there who wanted to do you but you never hooked up because one of you ALWAYS had a girlfriend or a boyfriend when the other was single, and at least 2 of your best friends in the world. Oh yeah, and tequila.

That was a really long sentence that mathematically adds up to this sentence: Why the hell do I even wake up in the mornings anymore? Honestly. What the hell am I doing being this old and this lame? A decade ago I was making more money, drinking a WHOLE lot more and thus having a WHOLE lot more fun, and I had no concept that someday I would wake up and be as old as I am.

I’ll be honest, though. I can’t really say I am depressed by the act of getting older, because mentally I feel just about as dumb as I was when I was 22, give or take some sparkles of age-induced brilliance every now and again (like when I finally figured out what securities trading is. Unfortunately I am getting old and I promptly forgot what I learned so I need to go look it up again just to make sure). Apart from how much it hurts to get out of bed sometimes, it’s really not too bad.

The worst part of it, to me at least, is the fact that I have gray hair creeping up into my facial area. I don’t like that one bit. Not one bit I say! Gray hair is for old people. Not almost 37-year-olds. It’s for like 55-year-olds and above. That stuff just does not fit into my lifestyle.

A couple of years ago I was at a pool party at my friend T-Rock’s house (just an FYI, eventually we are going to be too old for nicknames like that. Eventually Ice Cube is going to HAVE to change his name back to O’Shea Jackson because I don’t think anyone in their 40’s should be named after something you use to reduce swelling) and I was standing on the diving board, getting ready to unleash some mad diving skills upon the pool, when Zoom, a friend of mine whose nickname days are also numbered (can’t wait to see you half-stepping it with a walker and telling some lady at the nursing home, “They call me ZOOM, bitch!”) says to me, “Dude, what the hell is that on your chest?”

I look down, fully expecting an open wound, a tattoo I don’t remember getting or a large piece of barbed wire to be sticking out of my chest. Instead I come face to face with a large patch of gray chest hair where my black chest hair used to be. And the gray hair begins mocking me.

“What the hell is that?” I ask, a bit panicked.
“Is that gray hair?” asks Zoom.
“No, I think I was out in the sun too long and it bleached my chest hair blond,” I lie.
“Ha ha! That’s gray hair! Dude, you’re OLD!”

So I tried to cannonball him but I jackknifed my hip and almost drown because my leg didn’t work. That’ll teach him.

But he was right. It was gray hair. And that gray hair has steadily started the creep up from my chest into my goatee and into the sides of my hair. If I don’t shave for 3 days I can literally add 12 years to my face. That would have been awesome when I was 19, but it’s not so good when I’m already old enough to do anything worth getting old for.

Except maybe joining AARP. I hear they have some good tequila parties. But they probably don’t let anyone dance on the bar anymore. Not without a doctor’s note.

I think there is probably a box or two of Just For Men in my future. I’m lame, I know, but the gray hair belongs on someone else’s face, at least for 13 more years. Then I’ll take it back. Maybe.

B!

Memory On Sabbatical

2009-10-26T16:20:00.000-07:00

There is a trailer that has been playing for the last three or four months at the movie theater I normally go to that talks about the Will Roger’s Institute and how donations from moviegoers has helped finance all kinds of programs used at the institute. According to the trailer, millions and millions of dollars have been donated to the institute. The problem is, I don’t remember ever donating money to them.

But then it hit me: Way back in the mid- to late-1970’s they used to play a Will Roger’s Institute commercial on the screen at the movie theater and then they would stop everything, turn on the lights and pass a couple of buckets around the audience for people to donate money into, kind of like a movie version of the collection plate at church.

The memory I have of this happening is of me sitting next to my dad at some movie I saw with him, the title of which has been lost to the winds of time. I do remember that the walls of the movie theater were brown, but I doubt that helps much. I won’t even attempt to name the film because that memory is absolutely gone. But I do remember several occasions where a film was stopped and a bucket was passed around to collect money for the Will Roger’s Institute.

So I’m not really worried about what happened to the collection bucket because it’s obvious that a bunch of them probably went missing and they had to find a new way to collect money from moviegoers. What worries me is what exactly happened to the rest of my memories of the circumstances surrounding those collection buckets. Where are they? Are they still with me?

Logic would assume that they have to still be with me, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to recall something that hasn’t happened for 30 years. Where has that memory been? Hanging out with a bunch of other random, nearly meaningless memories down at the pub, throwing back pints and waiting to get called up to mess up my mental processes for an afternoon?

The fact that I remember anything kind of leads me to believe that I probably remember everything. If a smell can trigger something specific in my mind (my kindergarten teacher, whose name is a mystery to me, used to smell like a very specific mixture of cigarettes and perfume that other women occasionally have and it hits my nose from time to time and brings me right back to the days of Dick, Jane and Spot), and a song can bring me back to a certain time in my life, should I assume that everything that has ever happened to me is stored somewhere in my memory?

If you think about that in real terms, that should boggle the part of your mind that is prone to that sort of thing. Everything you’ve ever seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched is somewhere inside of you if we subscribe to this theory.

I went so far as to call my dad and ask him if he ever remembered something like that happening. It was obvious that he hadn’t thought of it in probably the same amount of time I had. It’s kind of neat to be on the other end of the phone listening to someone’s light bulbs light up as they slowly recall some otherwise meaningless event that is only a noteworthy experience because it is a shared experience.

At the same time, a friend of mine told me about a time where a few of us TP’ed a guy’s house when we were in high school and I ABSOLUTELY CANNOT remember doing that. I don’t even have the faintest glimmer of a recollection of doing that and it has even gotten to the point where I want to go TP his house just so I can see what it feels like, see if I can’t jog some memories or something.

Where the hell is that memory? Why can I remember some guy standing in a movie theater, begging with a bucket, but I can’t remember something that should be a semi-noteworthy experience in my life?

Alcohol, I blame you.

Man, I could go on and on about this subject, but I don’t think I would get anywhere. What are your thoughts?

B!

Catching The Wind

2009-10-21T15:14:00.000-07:00

On my way home from work today I was behind a green Ford Thunderbird with at least three young adults in it. First off, I know I’m getting old because I can call people in their late teens and early twenties “kids” and “young adults.” I guess that makes me a “medium” adult, because I think the crossover from adult to “old person” is about 53 years old.

Ask me about that “old person” thing when I’m 53 and I’m sure I’ll be able to slide that one up to 70 pretty easily. Don’t ask me anything when I’m 70 because I won’t have time for any stupid foolishness like answering questions about my age and how I feel. I’ll be too busy going to bed at 6:30 at night and enjoying my breakfast at 4AM at Denny’s. And don’t you dare get in between me and my Moons Over My-Hammy. I will kill you. What are they going to do, give me life in prison? It will be worth the 2 years I serve to see the look of shock on your face when I stab you with in the ear with my fork for interrupting my morning date with two eggs and a slab of ham. Fair warning.

Anyway, as I’m rolling behind this Thunderbird, the passenger window rolls down and a hand comes out, trying to catch the wind. At the time I couldn’t tell if the hand belonged to a young person or an old person, boy or girl. All I could see was it trying to catch the wind. Then it did the “swan move” and made itself more aerodynamic, then it started surfing the wind as it blew past, moving up and down as the wind dictated.

Seeing that hand made me happy. It made me think about the first time I ever caught the wind in my hand like that. It made me think about riding in a blue Econoline 150 van with my dad back in the 1970’s. It was equipped with captain’s chairs in the front and no chairs in the back, just a shag rug because it was the ‘70’s and nobody had any concept of style or safety back then. Seat belts? Not so much. Maybe a lap belt for the driver, but everyone else in the car would have been left to bounce off of each other like a huge polyester mosh pit in the event of a crash.

But that passenger window in that van was perfect for catching the wind. My dad used to have an air conditioning system he used to call “the 255 A/C system.” It sounds cool, but all it meant was two windows down and 55 miles an hour. Nothing to do but catch the wind and sweat when you’re in advanced technology like that. Fortunately we lived in Colorado so you could get away with that air conditioning system for most of the summer there. Still, I wonder how much wonderful Colorado scenery I missed while staring at my hand while it caught the wind.

Then I have to wonder if I will ever get too old to be mesmerized by the feel of the wind on my hand as I drive down a road somewhere. I hope not. But you rarely, if ever, see old people driving with the windows down and their hands out the window. Did they just forget about doing that? Or is that something that loses its allure over the years?

I hope I never get too old to feel the wind.

B!

The Dumbest People In America: A Competition

2009-10-06T18:14:00.000-07:00

Unbeknownst to the majority of Americans, I have been conducting a top-secret, ultra-undercover, amazingly scientific survey intended to determine the dumbest people in America.

I could easily bore you with all of the talk of analogous subsets, placebo groupings, double blind ad hoc testes wrestling, and, of course, the Dentyne effect, where no matter how hard you search for five dentists to agree on something, one of those motherfuckers ALWAYS recommends Big Red.

One day that fifth dentist is going to get theirs, I tell you. In spades. Or maybe in his teeth, because I don’t actually know what “in spades” means.

I have decided not to bore you with all of the scientific mumbo jumbo because it is really just a bunch of spreadsheets that would make no sense to anyone but me, and since I never wrote down a key to the meaning in case the spreadsheets fell into the wrong hands, you will just have to take my word for it unless somebody out there gets all fancy crazy and discovers/makes up a Rosetta stone to help translate my findings. You should take my word for it anyway because I literally spent minutes of my life gathering this information and organizing it into something sort of official looking.

And who cares that I got a B in Bio 100 in college and never took the lab because I didn’t feel like standing around in a lab with silly goggles on for 3 hours a week for 1 credit of work. If you ask me, the people who actually wasted their time for that crap have no business passing judgment on the stupid people of the world because somebody would just have to slip a mirror into the little slide on the microscope they spent 3 hours looking into to give them an idea of who the real dummy is. Really? All that work for one credit hour? Are you kidding me?

The real smart people took an astronomy lab because you didn’t have to cut anything open, you just had to look through a telescope, draw dots on paper and label them as stars and galaxies and you got the added bonus of hanging out with a pretty hot girl who, in retrospect, led you on just to copy your homework and who turned out to be kind of a bitch.

Ah, the ignorance of youth. How I miss it. The bliss of not knowing when a girl was using you to get her degree without having to give up the pootie. If I could go back, several women would have either not graduated or spent some time naked in my room, I tell you what.

Anyway, I will now reveal the findings of my survey and list, once and for all, who the dumbest groups of people are in America:

#5: Rich women in luxury cars they didn’t buy themselves. I’m guessing this is kind of a surprise to people, because who has better access to education and all that crap than rich people? But here’s the rub: rich women don’t have to be smart, especially if they are pretty. They can pretty much coast through life and have stuff handed to them without ever having to make an actual rational decision or original thought. All they have to do is look good and stay a few steps behind their rich husbands/fathers and make as few waves as possible.

#4: People who think that writers who resort to using Top 10 lists for humor have hit the bottom of the creative barrel and are using the lists as a cheap way to get a laugh. All I have to say to that is “F U” and please take special note that this is a top 5 list and there are MUCH cheaper ways to get a laugh. Take my fart jokes, please. So I’m only halfway to the bottom of the creative barrel you sons of bitches. There’s much more crap where this came from, trust me. And please, take my fart jokes. Pretty please.

#3: Texas.

#2: People who spell the word “maybe” wrong. Mabey, mabye and mqqqqbe are all spelled wrong. Learn your native tongue you pricks.

#1: Juggalos or whatever the hell the people who consider themselves fans of the Insane Clown Posse call themselves. I would consider them in the same league as Oakland Raider fans, but in reality the Juggalos are SOOOO much dumber that they take the Raider fans completely off the charts since the Raiders fans are at least smart enough to like a football team. There is literally not ONE redeeming quality about anything the ICP does at any point. They had one song that was mildly entertaining, but it wasn’t even good enough for me to know the title of, so that pretty much wraps it up for those guys.

As an added bonus, I will give you the dumbest animals in America at no extra charge: cats. I only have one bit of data to back up my claims, but I think it will suffice. A woman just found her two cats that climbed into a part of the house that was being remodeled THIRTEEN weeks ago. Instead of coming out after spending a couple of minutes snooping around in the remodel, the cats decided to spend the next 3 months trapped inside of the walls of the house.

You know how many times I’ve heard that story about a dog? Zero. You know why? Because dogs aren’t that fucking stupid.

I rest my case.

B!

P.S.—as a special addendum to this blog, I would like to retract anything I ever said about dogs being smarter than cats thanks to an episode I experienced last night where my dog threw up shit. Let me repeat that for those who may have missed it. My dog threw up shit. Out of his mouth. I am not lying about that. You only get one guess as to why there was shit for him to throw up.

So, to any dogs reading this blog (and I know you’re out there) you can send your thank you cards to Foster Charmington for dropping your collective IQ to a VERY unrespectable level. He would like to apologize, but he’s got kind of a potty mouth and I don’t want that kind of stuff going on in this blog.

Get it, potty mouth? Oh, fuck off, that was good and you know it.

The Infinit Ownership Test

2009-10-02T18:26:00.000-07:00

Today, while at the library, I came across a top secret document that the makers of the Infiniti line of automobiles use to weed through all the riffraff as part of their ownership requirements. They don’t want you to know these answers because Infiniti is a luxury brand and they don’t want trailer park scum like yourselves being able to get behind the seat of one of their automobiles.

I say we all take these answers to heart and go to the nearest Infiniti dealership, take the test, pass it, go for a test drive, then go straight over to the nearest Nissan dealership and buy one of their cars because they are the EXACT fucking car only cheaper. Sound good? Now, get out your cheat sheets and prepare to answer the Infiniti Ownership Test. The answers will appear in bold print for your convenience.

Question 1:
When driving on a thoroughfare with a posted speed limit of 45 MPH, what speed should you travel?
a. 45 MPH
b. 47 MPH
c. 52 MPH
d. A posted what? I’ve never heard of such a thing.

Question 2:
When driving on the freeway, what is the proper procedure for changing lanes?
a. Check your mirrors, signal, make sure there is adequate clearance, slowly merge
b. Signal and change lanes, checking your mirrors after you already in the other lane
c. Just go man, just go
d. Drive right up the ass of the guy in front of you until you can see what he ate for lunch, then cross as many lanes of traffic as there are, cutting off as many people as you can, then cross as many lanes back across the freeway as possible to end up one car length in front of where you started.

Question 3:
When encountering a stop sign, how long must you come to a complete stop before proceeding?
a. 1 second
b. 2 seconds
c. As long as it takes to ensure I have the right of way.
d. I bought this car to go, not stop. I acknowledge the stop sign’s presence with a slight nod of my head as I blow through it then contact my attorney to slap an injunction against the Stop Sign Placement Coalition and go on about my day.

Question 4:
Which lane should you be in to make a right hand turn?
a. The right hand lane
b. The center lane
c. The left hand lane
d. Whatever lane I want. My car is better than everyone else’s and they should be happy to share the same road as me.

Question 5:
What kind of person best fits the profile of an Infiniti driver?
a. Someone who knows the rules of the road and always drives defensively
b. Someone who enjoys a car that performs and who knows the rules of the road
c. Someone who cares about the well being of other humans in the world
d. Someone who is a self-important prick who knows nothing about how to drive except that shiny cars look cool.

I know it’s a short test, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t pass it. Happy Infiniti driving, assholes!

B!

A Pothead's Guide To Meaningful Conversation

2009-09-30T16:58:00.000-07:00

I am not a pothead, so don’t let the name of this little essay fool you. I will admit I have smoked marijuana two times in my life: once when I was twelve and once when I was thirty. My rationale for the two trips down High And Stupid lane basically follow the edict that when I was twelve I wasn’t old enough to know any better (even though I did know it was a “bad” thing to do) and when I was thirty I was too old to know any better. My parents are going to kill me when they read this, by the way.

Amazingly, I made my way through several years of high school and college without ever doing the marijuana drug (or any drugs for that matter) again after my indiscretion as a 12-year-old. I also found out something very important about myself when I engaged in the illicit activity of smoking marijuana: It made me a complete fucking idiot. It made me stupid when I was twelve (which is why I didn’t do it again until I was thirty) and it made me EVEN DUMBER when I was thirty because I had 18 more years of experience to pile on to the Dumb Train before driving it off the tracks and into a ravine.

I’m not going to pull any punches here with the weed smoking because I have lived with enough potheads in my lifetime to be able to speak my mind about it. And, let’s face it, anything you smoke that can make a story about a guy with a hotdog in his pocket that he is contemplating throwing at a homeless man the funniest thing you’ve ever heard in your life needs to be called out in a public forum other than an article in High Times.

I take that back, that story is still pretty funny. Just not funny enough to make me or anyone else cry with laughter unless they are high on the ciga-weed. Then, somehow, a man in a tracksuit with a hotdog in his pocket becomes the highest form of comedy ever conceived, leaving things like satire, slapstick and “your mother” jokes choking in the dust. Or the smoke, as it were.

The biggest problem I have had lately with potheads is that they talk about it too fucking much and they like to interject random bullshit factoids to support their use of the drug. You will be engaged in a conversation with a pothead about how the NFL draft went, for example, and they will say something like, “Did you know that Thomas Jefferson smoked a gang of weed all the time? And so did Albert Einstein. Those guys did alright.”

What?

I always want to come back with, “Yeah, and did you know Hitler did amphetamines? Look how much that guy got done in a couple of years. The theory of relativity is for pussies. A real man gets bombed out of his gourd, invades Poland and bitch slaps France before committing suicide in a bunker somewhere after murdering like 8 million people.”

And if you have the audacity to think I’m glorifying Hitler, by the way, you should put down the pipe/apple/bong/gas mask and take a trip into the real world with the rest of us who actually have to deal with reality on a daily basis. I’m just not into the tired rhetoric of potheads. “Dude, George Washington smoked pot and they put his face on the dollar bill.”

Yeah, but, surprisingly, they didn’t put his face on the dollar bill because he smoked pot. I can pretty much guarantee that. Otherwise I’ve had several roommates during my lifetime who belong on currency of some sort. Probably Jamaican, come to think of it. For every one person who did something great with themselves in the 1700’s in spite of smoking pot I can give you at least 30 in the 2000’s who have done nothing but get blazed and play Halo for 16 hours straight.

“Yeah dude, but they play Halo in cooperation mode. That shit’s hard to do when you’re high. Can you order me a pizza? I can’t remember where the phone is.”

You know what else is hard to do? Try putting something in your mouth without lighting it on fire. I can’t tell you how much I struggle with that. Who even thought of that in the first place? If I walked around with a lit candle in my ear would that make me look cooler than I already am? What if I told you it would get you SUPER high and you could see God?

“Dude, it’s herbal. It’s natural. God wants us to smoke it.” Really? Then why do respiratory ailments exist? Is that God’s way of saying, “Gotcha, suckers! Smoke all you want, I’ll still kick your ass.” If you think about it, everything on earth was put here by God (if that’s the route you want to choose in your argument for weed) and we just used our free will to take the periodic table of elements and move some stuff around a little bit here and there and we came up with awesome things like crystal meth, morphine and internet porn (obviously everything isn’t ALL bad about playing with the periodic table). EVERYTHING we use is natural at some point in its existence on earth. Until we start smoking moon rocks or doing lines of Mars at the new Studio 54 I regret to inform all the potheads that the “it’s natural” defense is bullshit.

Do you only eat “organic” food too? That stuff is another huge crock of shit but I will save that for another day, just to save you from having another rant to worry about.

The worst part about the weed smokers is that they all think they are smarter than people who don’t smoke. Let me put this into the proper perspective: People who habitually use a drug that makes their reaction time slower, their conversations more boring and their clothes more smelly actually think they have the ability to pull one over on those who don’t smoke because they think they are smarter than everyone around them.

And they say weed does no harm. I say we already have enough stupid people in the world, what the hell do we need with a drug that makes people dumber than they already are? You are absolutely not fooling anyone when you smoke out and show up in the same room as me. You’re not fooling anyone when you go to your room, close the door and put a towel down on the floor to cover the hole on the bottom. You’re not fooling anyone when you suddenly disappear from a campsite because you “forgot your ice cream” in town (actually, I take that back, you did fool me and I’m still pissed about that). You’re not fooling anyone when you spend days upon days going to your friend’s house to “practice for softball” but come home every night glassy-eyed and still as shitty at softball as you were when you left.

Basically, all I’m saying is that if you want to go smoke weed, go ahead. Smoke away. Get higher than a motha. But don’t try to tell me how awesome it is because you would never use the same tired arguments potheads use for weed in place of ANY other drug or pastime. I won’t try to tell you how awesome playing golf is and have my only argument for playing golf be that President Eisenhower was an avid golfer and the president of the United States and he has his face on the dime. George W. Bush played golf, too, and he smoked weed. And he did cocaine. And he got busted for DUI. When his face gets on some currency we will talk. Until then, SHUT IT!

Thank you.
B!

Cats On Hallucinogens And Foster's Balls

2008-12-03T18:08:00.000-08:00

Monday was a monumental day in my life. It was the day I went and had my dog Foster Charmington’s balls chopped off at the local spay and neuter clinic. Really it was probably more of a monumental day in his life since he is now the one with no balls while mine are still clanging away and getting sat on at inopportune times, but since I had to drive him there and back, it was kind of a big deal for me. The traffic was horrible.

I tried to get an appointment for him at the massage parlor for a full puppy massage with a happy ending but they don’t do that stuff anymore since the police crackdown.

I kid, I kid. They still do that, I just couldn’t afford it.

So anyway, Mr. Charmington lost his balls and I’m not really too sure how I feel about that. On one hand, I’m happy that his balls are gone because then maybe he will stop being so impulsive and shitting everywhere and humping my other dog’s shoulder. On the other hand, the doctor TOOK HIS BALLS.

Where do they put them? In a Ziplock baggie? I want to know.

I take that back, I don’t really want to know. I just kind of want to know, the same way I want to know what they do with amputated feet and people who get kicked off of reality game shows. Do they all go to the same place? Are they ever going to do a “How It’s Made” on that topic?

The thing I really wanted to talk about, though, had less to do with Foster’s balls disappearing into the ether and more to do with what happens to old women that causes them to have cats.

I know there are some cat lovers out there reading this blog, and I don’t know why. Seriously, cats are the worst. The. Worst.

I can say this not only because it is true, but because it is extra special DOUBLE true. Cats are the worst. It’s a scientific fact. Trust me. I wrote the Wikipedia page on it and everything.

Kittens? They’re okay. Cute, furry and playful, they kind of remind me of my own balls. But when they grow up and start spraying piss everywhere and attacking your feet while you sleep and not liking me because I am dating their owner I have to draw the line.

Anyway, I was in a waiting room with 4 older women at the Spay and Neuter clinic, waiting to pick up my dog. Turns out all 4 of these old biddies (I can say that because they most definitely fit the description) were there to pick up their cat. Not that there was one cat being split up between the four of them, there were four cats for four biddies.

There goes another band name, free of charge. Cats For Biddies. Use it wisely.

As I said, I’m in a room with 4 old ladies waiting for their cats. I was subjected to the horror that is old women describing exactly how sassy their cat is, how they like to use the litter box in the kitchen instead of the one in the laundry room, how Miss Muffy (I’m not making that up) stares out the window all day and that is “just the most precious thing” ever, how their cats get along with all of their other cats, how there is a mean orange boy cat that comes around the backyard from time to time and eats her flowers, how her husband doesn’t like the cat (no surprise there) and whatever incredibly boring stories people could ever possibly tell about a cat. I realized I was in my own special version of hell until a lady came out of the back room.

It was the Give Back The Animals lady. Hooray!

So the lady in charge of giving us back our animals that had fewer body parts than we brought them in with has to give everyone a speech about how their animal is going to be behaving for the next 2-5 days. But the BEST part was when she told the ladies, “Just so you know, the cats are all on hallucinogenic drugs right now, so WHATEVER you do, DO NOT try to cuddle them when you get home. They will claw your face off.”

Suddenly the Spay and Neuter clinic has become my favorite place on earth. Cats on hallucinogens? Are you kidding me? Can I come here every day for this? Do you have an internship for that?

The inevitable line of questions from the ladies with diarrhea of the mouth starts to flow (with a special appearance by my own personal thoughts in parenthesis):

Q: Can we cuddle them?
A: No, they will claw your face off. (That’s fucking awesome. Seriously.)

Q: What if she’s been declawed?
A: You can try, but they might bite your face off. (Please can I come to your house with a video camera, just in case? Because I know you’re going to need stitches before the clock strikes midnight.)

Q: Can she play with the other cats I have?
A: No, just put her in the back room alone and let her come off the drugs. (Ha ha, your cat is going to feel like she is at a Phish concert for the next 12 hours.)

Q: But they are friends. What if the other cats are worried?
A: They’re not. Put them in a room by themselves with a litter box and let them recover until tomorrow.

Q: Can we use a shoe box for the litter? (Seriously?)
A: You can use whatever you think will work.

Q: How about a baking pan? (Umm, she just answered that, dumbass)
A: Whatever you think will work.

Q: I think a shoebox will work. (Hooray for thought processes and your ability to separate the useful ones from the not useful ones.)
A: Then use one. Just don’t try to cuddle the cats. (Ha ha, hallucinogens, alliteration, I rule!)

The line of borderline retarded questioning went on for a lot longer than you would think was humanly possible until you realize that most of the old women are so used to talking inanely to their cats that any kind of answer besides a contemptuous swish of the tail and an arrogant blink of the eyelids is such a change of pace they like to keep it going until someone really does claw them in the face or spray piss on their drapes.

Luckily it seemed that the lady in charge was used to that level of questioning and just started bringing animals out so people would stop asking stupid questions and start cooing and making “goo goo” noises at their cats instead of spinning deeper and deeper into the seemingly bottomless pit of stupid questions and comments.

The first woman to get her cat had it in a carrier and held it so the cat’s face was about 2 feet from my face while she filled out her paperwork to leave. Now I don’t have a lot of experience with hallucinogenic drugs and their effects, but it was obvious that the cat in that carrier was FUCKED UP. And I’m not talking Cheech and Chong fucked up. This cat was “Look at all the pretty colors” fucked up.

And then a lady next to me, not knowing just how messed up that cat was, decided to put her finger in front of the cat’s face to give it a little “coochie coo” action. If I were required to put words to the look on the cat’s face, here is what I would have put money on going through that cat’s mind:

WHOA! What the hell is that thing? Get it away from me, it’s freaking HUGE! Why does it move like that? Oh my god the world is closing in all around me. Did the wall just say my name? I think I can hear my hair growing. Where’s Jerry Garcia when you need him?

Just as I was really enjoying getting into that cat’s head, Foster Charmington came running out of the room on his leash, dragging the girl behind him. I had to check to make sure they really took his balls because he seemed way too chipper to have just lost the ability to do the Balls/Johnson dance. Upon further inspection, yes, they took his balls.

“He’s still on some good painkillers right now. They should last about 12 hours.”

So apparently he was too numb and happy to be mad at me, so he ran to me and licked my hand and was generally very glad to be in the hands of someone without a scalpel. I filled out the paperwork and got him in the car, where he immediately fell over in the seat because, yes, the painkillers were some good shit. I drove him home and he spent the next 4 hours alternating between being really alert, running around the house and falling over at random times on the couch as the painkillers did their job on the time release.

The good news is he still likes me. The bad news is I didn’t get any of those ladies’ addresses so I can’t go check to see how bad they all got scratched up.

B!

The Most Comprehensive BA Scale Ever Devised By Man

2008-11-21T16:29:00.001-08:00

Have you ever been out and about when you came across a person who you knew was just a total badass? I'm not talking about a run-of-the-mill badass like the guy who can do seven chin-ups in a row without grunting like a girl or who can run up a wall and do a back flip and land like he's a ninja. Those guys are everywhere.

Nope, I'm talking about a guy who can lift a fire truck to save a kitten too scared to come out from underneath it or a guy who can catch bullets in his teeth while riding a wheelie on his Harley. And not just any Harley, the kind of Harley where the oil spills onto the road behind it and causes Toyotas and any hybrid vehicles to wreck in its wake.

I'm talking about a man's man, basically. Not even a man's man, a Man's man's man. There's got to be some sort of graduated scale for this type of manliness and I'm guessing it will be up to me to create one because no one else is brave or bored enough to do it.

So here is how I like to measure a man.

Wait, I take that back. I don't really like to measure men and as soon as I typed that I knew that was the wrong thing to type. Of course I could always go back and erase that and you would never know it happened, but I am manly enough to leave it there and punch all the naysayers and laughing happy funmakers squarely in the neck with an untrained but probably very painful karate chop. KEEYARF!

My word program is telling me that funmakers is not a word but KEEYARF is. What the hell?
So here is the scale of levels of manliness. And keep in mind that it is possible to span several different levels of manliness but if you cross to a lower level you are stuck there even if you have traits for higher levels.

Level 1 – Guys who wax any part of their body for anything other than a joke or payment of a bet they lost. Engaging in any plastic surgery that is not a form of reconstruction after a grisly accident with industrial machinery (special preference given to augers, tractors or thrashing machines) or a wild animal that can only be found in a zoo. Anyone who has plastic surgery as a result of an attack by a house pet loses man points, and an attack by a kitten will actually result in being forced to play for the women's team at the next family gathering.

Guys who have ever spent more than $15 on a haircut and/or who have an actual hairstyle. Any man who has been to a day spa on purpose. Any guy with a subscription in their name to People, In Touch or Oprah's magazine (reading them while on the crapper is perfectly acceptable as long as there is also a fully dog eared copy of Playboy, FHM or Maxim within easy reach). Any guy who takes a bath when there is a shower available within a 15-mile radius.

EXAMPLES of a level 1 male include the guy from "What Not To Wear," male cosmetologists, dudes who drink Cosmopolitans at keg parties, guys who have stylists that dress them at any point in their life, French Canadians who don’t play professional hockey and Rosie O'Donnell.

Level 2 -- Guys who can't name more than 5 athletes in any one sport. Guys who would rather play video games of a sport than actually going out and playing it. Guys who smoke weed instead of drinking beer. Guys who iron their shorts and t-shirts without a girl telling them to, guys who wear ties that cost more than $29, guys who either don't own hiking boots or only own hiking boots, guys who only eat raw vegetables, guys who don't have at least 7 random receipts in their wallets and guys who can't walk a mile in anyone's shoes, much less their own.

EXAMPLES of a level 2 male include hippies, the guy who brings the guitar camping so he can sing folk songs while eating s'mores, the first guy in line to buy the new version of HALO for XBOX, sightseeing helicopter pilots who didn’t see combat in a war of some sort, Dunkin Donuts managers, The Prince of Wales, Lance Bass and the 85% of the French, including the womenfolk. 14.5% of the French are Level 1’s and .5% are actually level 4’s thanks to the French foreign legion, the guy who invented champagne and a couple of kickboxers they have over there.

Level 3 – These are guys who are middle of the line manly. A man who can fix a garbage disposal without breaking a knuckle or the disposal. A guy who not only knows what a nickel defense is in football but can explain it to a girl so she understands what it is and why it doesn't really have anything to do with US legal tender. Guys who only shave because they have to for their job or they are trying to get girls. Guys who get hurt but still keep doing whatever it is that hurt them. Guys who can chop wood and can start a campfire on the first try. Guys who have the ability to cuss freely when they are with their friends but don't when there are women around. Guys who still wear flannel because it works and not because it's fashionable.

EXAMPLES of Level 3 males include Tim Taylor from Home Improvement, your dad, guys who run the cash register in lumberyards, truck drivers, ACE certified mechanics, the guys in a bowling league and carpet/flooring installers.

As a special note, guys that are 3.5's on the scale are all the really useful blue collar folks who do stuff most Level 3’s aren’t smart enough to do, including plumbers, locksmiths, handymen with their names engraved on their belts, Ned Flanders, HVAC technicians, loggers and bouncers in Irish pubs.

Level 4 – These are men's men. Guys that were Special Forces, Navy SEALs, Green Berets, etc. in the military. Anyone with a legal confirmed kill of a human, a big five game animal with a knife or a bow and arrow, or anything but a fish with a spear. Any guy who isn't a real doctor but still knows how to perform a tracheotomy with a butter knife and will do it without hesitation whether you like it or not. A man who not only has the tools to rebuild an engine but can actually do it without a copy of Chilton's Auto Repair manual or formal training. Jewel and art thieves who don't stoop to the "smash and grab" technique. Guys who write things like the Declaration of Independence. A guy who eats his steak straight off the cow.

Level 4 men usually smell of Old Spice, sweat and either animal blood or motor oil.

EXAMPLES of a Level 4 male include your high school football coach, Bear Grylls, the dude from Survivorman, guys who own junkyards, real cowboys who actually drive cattle and rope horses on the open range, James Bond (the Sean Connery version, not the Pierce Brosnan version), tow truck drivers, your grandfather and MacGuyver if he would get an $8 haircut every once in a while.

Super Level Alpha – This level is reserved for the baddest of the bad. Anyone who has lost an eye in a street fight and just sewed it shut himself and threw on an eye patch instead of going all Sammy Davis Jr. with it. This guy actually changes his own oil and then doesn't wash his hands before eating corn on the cob and 7 pounds of uncooked chicken wings. He doesn't wear a shirt or shoes to Circle K but still gets service. These guys can eat quiche in front of biker gangs and still have people offer to buy him a drink.

EXAMPLES of Super Level Alpha males include guys who wear steel-toed boots to the grocery store, John Rambo (especially in First Blood), Mike Singletary, professional assassins who write poetry in their spare time and any character that Clint Eastwood ever played.

B!

Some Thoughts On The Election

2008-11-05T18:25:00.000-08:00

I spent about 5 hours last night watching the election coverage on CBS, mostly because I was interested in who our next president is going to be but also because I think Katie Couric is TOTALLY do-able even though she’s like 55 years old.

Yeah, I said it. Don’t lie, you want to do her too. It might take a few cocktails, but you know you’d do it. Ladies, I’m talking to you too.

Anyway, I have to preface everything I am about to say with this: I did not vote yesterday. I am registered in Flagstaff but live in Mesa right now and I don’t have the money to drive all the way up there to place a vote I didn’t want to make anyway. There was only one thing on the ballot that I cared enough about to vote (I was hoping to see Proposition 102 get shot down, which called for marriage to be defined as between “One Man and One Woman” by the law—unfortunately it didn’t get shot down, so now only straight people are going to be allowed to fuck up the sanctity of marriage).

Even if I had been in Flagstaff, I’m not sure I would have voted for president anyway. The guy I really wanted never made it out of the primaries, and because I am a registered Republican and the guy I wanted was a Democrat, I couldn’t have helped him out of the primaries anyway.

I don’t really like the way the voting system is set up anyway, but I won’t get into that very much, because I have some other things I would like to talk about regarding the new president of the United States and what I saw on the coverage last night.

The first thing that I noticed, and probably the most telling about the difference between the parties and what they stand for, is the choice of venue chosen for the election parties of each party. The Democrats were stationed in a park in Chicago (Grant Park), which was the site of the famed Democratic national convention in 1968. The Republicans, on the other hand, were stationed at The Biltmore in downtown Phoenix.

For those who don’t know Phoenix, The Arizona Biltmore is a hotel in central Phoenix and it is pretty much the symbol for old money in the Valley. Right now their specials for room rates start at $259 per night for the worst room in the place, to give you some kind of idea of the type of hotel we’re looking at. And as an FYI, the Barry Goldwater suite, where the McCain’s were staying, STARTS at $1,000 per night in the off season, and while I’m sure they got it comped to them, I think that speaks volumes.

So, what I noticed about the election parties was that the Republicans held their party in a very elite, inaccessible place known for it’s “old money” smell while the Democrats held their party in a free park in Chicago. This may not seem like much of an issue to some people, but to me it speaks VOLUMES about what the Republican party has grown to stand for since I registered as one in the 1990’s.

Another thing I noticed was the lack of class many of the Republican backers showed during McCain’s speech when he conceded victory to Obama. At the mention of Obama’s name, a spattering of “boos” erupted from his supporters on more than one occasion. While I thought McCain did a good job of putting an end to that, the fact that he even had to just made his supporters look that much worse in my eyes. There were probably 2-3000 people around when he made that speech, and I would guess at least 100-200 of them booed Obama’s name. I do have to give McCain credit, though, because his speech was classy and I have no doubts he will continue to serve his country to the best of his abilities.

Conversely, at Obama’s victory speech (and I’ve got to interject what a cool dude this guy is, he seems like the kind of guy who could get you to buy into an abstinence program from him while he was in the other room humping your sister) when McCain’s name was mentioned, there were actually cheers from the audience. There were probably 70,000 people there and I heard no “boos” at the mention of McCain’s name. Not to say there weren’t any, but if they did boo, they were not close enough to be heard.

I don’t want this to come across as Republican-bashing, because I’m sure if things would have turned out the other way there would have been some boos from the crowd in Chicago, or possibly even a riot, but those were all low- to middle-class people there (except for Oprah, who not only could have bought a new house for everyone there if she wanted to, but she actually had little flecks of gold in her tears if you look closely at the video. Kind of like Goldschlager, only not as fun to drink before singing karaoke) so that type of thing might be expected. I don’t expect that type of behavior from people who are “in the money” so to speak.

The bottom line is that something big happened last night, whether you like it or not. I got the same kind of feeling I got when the twin towers came down in New York—not necessarily as bad of a feeling, just the feeling that the world was about to change. Only time will tell if that’s good or bad for us as a country. 9/11 seemed like it was good for us in the short run, spiking our patriotism to heights I’d never seen it, but not even 6 months later all of the American flags that people had gone out to buy for their car windows were littering the freeways across Arizona.

Hopefully this doesn’t turn out the same way. Hopefully we can be the great country we are supposed to be.

B!

Ms. Biggie Big Goes To CiCi's

2008-10-16T18:03:00.000-07:00

It’s always a bit of a shock to the system when you get used to driving a certain way because you live someplace small and lovely (like Flagstaff) and you are forced to end up driving around someplace large and shitty (like Mesa).

Especially the part of Mesa where I live, which should change it’s name from Mesa to Baby Mexico or Nogales North or something like that. I’ve never driven in Mexico, and from the way people drive around my neighborhood I don’t think I ever want to because, apparently, they don’t have driving laws down there. Or crosswalks. Or brains.

There has to be some kind of rational thought that would cross a mother’s mind before dressing herself all in black and standing in the middle of a 40 MPH road at 11 O’clock on a Tuesday night with a FUCKING BABY CARRIAGE and a 2-year-old in tow. And I’m not talking about a smart-looking 2-year-old (you know, the kind that carries around books about fractal geometry so they can continue their thesis research at the Laundromat), I’m talking about your average, run-of-the-mill 2-year-old with poop in her diaper and a bright future of walking her own kids across the street at 11PM on a Tuesday night thanks to the brilliant example her mother is setting.

I wish I were kidding about that. I’m not. I’ve seen it on more than one occasion, along with other mind-bending feats of mental prowess ranging from seeing 3 guys carrying a shopping cart full of groceries down the street to the countless numbers of young children (5, 6, 7-year olds) riding their bikes in the middle of the street at all hours of the day. And night. Late night. This is not some small residential street in a sleepy town, it’s what’s known as a major thoroughfare where I’m guessing at least 10,000 cars a day pass through. At speed.

Enough about the people walking and riding their bikes, because if it comes down to a confrontation between someone walking and me driving my Durango, I will always win. And I will win twice on Sundays. My car has already proven itself in mortal combat against a deer. Which reminds me, I should probably find an artist to paint a small deer on my front quarter panel and then put a little red X through it, just to dissuade any other deer from challenging my ride to a game of chicken. Maybe I will even embellish the picture by painting the deer the colors of the Texas flag, star and everything.

Now there’s an idea. I just hope I don’t have to commission the same artist to draw a little picture of a person with a red X through it, mostly because I don’t want to go through the process of finding out what state and/or country that person is from so I could pass that on to the artist.

The bottom line is that stupid people are walking everywhere down here and apart from the emotional turmoil I would experience from running down a family of morons, I would probably have the hardest time filling out the paperwork to nominate them for a Darwin Award at the end of the year. That and having to deal with higher insurance rates.

The thing that is the scariest about living down here in Mini Mexico is the fact that NOBODY knows how to drive. I have been genuinely terrified for my life at least 3 times a week down here just because of the way people drive. They come flying up to the ends of the side streets and slam their brakes on at the last second. They change lanes without signaling or really even needing a reason to. And I thought the drivers in Tucson were bad.

So far, though, I have encountered one driver who was so bad that I felt compelled to write about her. She was driving a red Dodge Avenger. Fast. Really fast. I’m guessing she was listening to ‘N Sync or a Backstreet Boys CD and forgot she was in control of a 3,500 pound battering ram. First she drove about 35 though a 15MPH school zone until she caught up with me (I don’t know why she was after me, but it sure seemed like she had an agenda). Then, she stayed right on my tail until we got to where the turn off where we were both turning left.

I was heading to the gym. She was heading to CiCi’s Pizza. The all-you-can-eat buffet. And I guarantee she was going to eat all she could. But only if she could pry herself out of her car. That girl was big. More than just big. Biggie big.

And before anyone jumps all over me about weight discrimination and all that crap, let me cut you off at the pass. I am a big dude. At my last weigh-in I tipped the scales at 290 pounds. I know what it’s like to be big. I’m just not biggie big, because I have always tempered my trips to the all-you-can-eat buffet with 2-3 hour torture sessions in the gym the next day. I don’t get skinny, because I like to eat, but I GUARANTEE I move better than 95% of the 300 pounders in the country.

If I didn’t do that, I could easily cross the line from being big to being BIGGIE BIG, but as it stands, I don’t, so I will pass my judgments on a 400-pounder who almost ran me off the road to get to her coveted pepperoni and cheese. In retrospect, I think she might have been scared that I was going to get the last slice of Cheesy Supreme and she was going to have to wait 5 extra minutes to get the cheese count in her blood to a satisfactory viscosity level. Either that or she was so big she was driving like a maniac to test the theory that she could be her own airbag in a front-end collision.

Only she knows for sure, but after the gym tomorrow I might stop by CiCi’s Pizza and see if they can include a driving instruction booklet with every 10th piece of pizza taken from the buffet. Maybe if she collects enough of those she might read one during the commercials on Maury while waiting for the paternity tests to come through and the next time I see her I won’t be able to see that she’s singing a Justin Timberlake song by reading her lips in my rearview mirror while I’m traveling 45 MPH.

Maybe.

B!

P.S.—I bet if she cuts herself shaving, syrup pours out. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

It's A Good Thing Whoop Ass Comes In A Can

2008-10-05T22:14:00.000-07:00

This is going to be a sport-related blog, so for those of you who don’t like sports, go ahead on and find something else to do with your time. Go macramé yourself a quilt or milk a goat or do some scrapbooking or whatever the hell it is that people do when they aren’t watching sports or talking about them.

Scrapbooking? I just don’t get it. Sure it’s nice to have a book that you can go to and reference all the good times you’ve had when there just happened to be a camera along with you while you were drunk. But you know what else is fun? Going out and actually having a good time that you might take pictures of and one day put in a scrapbook. Then, on that Sunday afternoon when you were going to go spend the afternoon with 79 sheets of multi-colored paper, a shoebox full of pictures, a Matchbox 20 CD and 19 different types of glue spread out across your bed, you take all that stuff, put it in a drawer and go out and get drunk instead.

Trust me, it will be just as much fun. If not more. Just make sure you bring a camera. And put a Matchbox 20 song on the jukebox, just for fun.

The thing with scrapbooks, and pictures in general, is that the only purpose they seem to serve is giving you a reference to how skinny you used to be or how small your puppy/baby/lawn/beer gut used to be. Who needs that? The only thing I need telling me how cute I USED to be is my own skewed memory, not some piece of hard evidence that could one day be used against me in a court of law.

Which brings me to my point, which is that pretty much everything we do is just a waste of time anyway. Honestly, everything we are doing, or going to do, is just something to pass the time away while we wait to die. Especially scrapbooking.

Is that a downer or what?

That wasn’t really my point. The whole reason I started writing this thing was because I thought of something I thought was really clever last night and I decided that my fragile ego needed to get that thought out into the cyber world.

We watched the EliteXC fights last night on CBS. Kimbo Slice was the main headliner and he got TKO’d in 14 seconds by a guy who used to be the UFC heavyweight champion. No big deal there, because I had been saying he was a fraud all along and I couldn’t wait for him to fight somebody who knew what the hell they were doing instead of some bum off the streets.

Nope, the big news was the Gina Carano fight. I don’t know the name of the girl she fought against, and that’s kind of the point. The only reason I know who Gina Carano is results from the fact that she is hot. Like crazy hot. Like “I wish she would pose in Playboy” hot (you hear me Hef? Get on that, stat!).

In the pre-fight interview, the lady interviewing Gina had a quote along the lines of, “I think you are living proof that girls want to open up a can of Whoop Ass every now and again. You really inspire a lot of girls to go out there and open one up.”

First off, I don’t think that’s very professional for an interviewer to drop the name of a product like that without proper compensation. Second, the only reason a lot of guys EVER watch girl fights is that they really and truly hope that at some point a boob will pop out of a top. Never mind that Gina Carano actually has skills beyond being an American Gladiator and could probably punch the life out of me without even breaking a sweat OR putting her hair in cornrows first.

The reason I watched those fights last night was to see Gina Carano in any way, shape or form (but the most preferable form would have been topless or at least a little bit chilly in her form-fitting shirt) and to see Kimbo Slice get beat by somebody who actually knows what the hell they are doing in the ring.

Last night’s real winner? Me. Hell yeah. Except for the topless part. Curses!

Which brings me to my REAL point in this blog. Isn’t it good that Whoop Ass comes in a can? If it only came in jars, girls wouldn’t be able to open it. They’d have to give it to a man to open for them. Then what would we watch on TV?

Lucky us.

I wonder if Gina Carano will scrapbook the press clippings for her win last night?

B!

Little Kato In The House--A Repost Because I Have A Picture Now

2008-10-03T16:27:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, on a dark and stormy night, call me Ishmael, there was a group of friends wandering the streets of Flagstaff looking for a good time. The group was wandering into a watering hole called Collin's Irish Pub when one of the members saw a poster on the wall next to the door.

"Dude, there's midget wrestling at Flagstaff High School next Wednesday."

"Sweet, lets get tickets. But for now, lets get drunk."

So a week passed and our eager protagonists lined up, excitedly, outside of the Flagstaff High School gymnasium, celebrating something for a friend named Toddler (either a birthday party or bachelor party, alcohol and time have blurred facts in this instance) by boring him to tears with the prospect of midgets beating the crap out of each other. The gates opened and our group of ne'er-do-wells procured themselves some prime seats for the gala.

While the pre-show autograph session was in play, an astute member of the group noticed that Little Kato had taken a liking to a young, 19-year-old friend of the group named Jenne (who would later on become the reason for another friend's bachelor party, interestingly enough). A member of the group, Zoom perhaps, convinced Jenne to tell Little Kato that she would meet him at a bar called Maloney's after the show was over.

Little did Kato know (ha ha, that's kind of punny) that Jenne couldn't even get into the bar and the setup was just part of the groups nefarious plan to buy a midget a beer. Kato was all too eager to meet Jenne after the show. The bait was set.

As soon as Kato's performance was over (he rassled Beautiful Bobby, of that I am sure) the entire group made a bee-line straight to Maloney's and began the process of drinking WAYYY too much beer in the form of 32 ounce mugs of goodness. Most of the group had gone through 2 of these mugs and were working on a third when, lo and behold, LITTLE KATO walked through the door, alone.

A rousing cheer went up from the table, for their bait had worked and a midget was now standing in their favorite bar. Kato gave the group an evil eye and proceeded to walk around the bar, looking for Jenne, who had gone home after the show to do whatever it is 19-year-old people did in those days.

After Kato had looped the bar once, the group yelled to him to come over and have a seat because we LOVED his performance and we wanted to buy him a beer. He looked around, saw no other groups of people offering him a beer, and came to the table.

I immediately pulled up a stool to the table, which is funny because the stool was almost as tall as he was. He climbed up the stool like it was a ladder (or scaffolding, perhaps) and introduced himself. When we offered him a big, man size 32 OZ beer, he shook his little nub fingers in front of his face in fear and decided to go with a pint because it would look the same in his hands as a quart does in our hands.

Long story short, one beer became two, two became four, and all of us became drunk. Kato even managed to buy us a round of beer. THEN, to add glory to an already glorious story, a Budweiser rep came up to the table and asked what we were drinking.

"Coors Light. YAY!!!" was the reply.

"Well, if you drink Budweiser the rest of the night the next round is on me, plus I'll give you all a hat."

"Budweiser. YAY!!!"

So after a round of beer that we probably didn't need, Kato decided he needed to go hang out with the rest of the wrestlers at another bar in Flagstaff. I, being a gentleman and a scholar and a guy who wanted a midget in his car, offered him a ride. He told us that if we gave him a ride he would get us into the new bar by telling them we were part of his ring crew.

We piled into the car and I drove, KJ (all 6'8" of him) rode in the front seat and J-Credible and Zoom sat on either side of Kato who was sitting in the "bitch" seat in the second row of seats in my Durango. KJ had the Kool-Aid-est grin I've ever seen in my life and actually spent the entire ride turned in his seat, staring at Little Kato and laughing. KJ had to go home for some reason so we dropped him off and Little Kato took his place in the front seat. We went to the bar and continued having one of the best nights ever.

Two things have come from this evening: Sitting shotgun is no longer called shotgun in my circle, it is called sitting Little Kato. And, sometimes I am able to remember the vision of a midget sitting next to me in my ride and I laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh . . .

P.S.-if anyone who was there wants to add anything to this, please feel free. I was drink drank drunk that night. And yes I drove and yes I have learned my lesson and I don't do that anymore, so don't give me any shit.

A Lesson In Clumsy Horses

2008-10-02T13:41:00.001-07:00

So, I don’t know how many of you know this or not, but I found out recently that when someone is barrel racing with a horse, rodeo stylee, and the horse falls down or runs into a barrel or throws the rider, it is known as a “horse wreck.”

I’m not kidding. In rodeo-land, horses actually wreck.

I can’t stop giggling about this one.

I have seen plenty of animals fall down in my lifetime. I have personally spent at least 80 hours of my life trying to find a way to trip a dog. I’ve seen ducks fall down, penguins, goats, sheep, dogs, cats, even a bird once. NEVER did I say to myself, “Wow, I just watched a goat wreck.”

Apparently I was watching the wrong animals if I wanted to see a wreck.

And before you start thinking I am making this shit up, I got it from 2 sources (both rodeo barrel riders) in different conversations about what happens when you fall off the horse. You are in a horse wreck, naturally, you silly ass bastard.

So I promised them that I would come up with a better term for them to use the next time their horse is involved in an “incident” because, honestly, the word ‘wreck’ has a connotation that REQUIRES metal to be involved in it as far as I am concerned. Cars wreck, motorcycles wreck, boats wreck, bicycles wreck. Horses DO NOT wreck.

The problem I am running into right now is that I am drawing a blank on what term should be used instead of wreck. I looked up some synonyms but none of them quite do justice to the video in my head of a horse falling down.

I thought I might try to go with a celebrity name, i.e. “I’m in the hospital because my horse Oprah’ed on me and there were limbs twisted everywhere.” Or, “Holy shit, did you see that Rosie at the Kentucky Derby? It was like a 7 horse pileup.”

But I don’t think so. I think this one is going to have to be a completely new, never-before-seen type of word, mostly because I don’t want Oprah suing me and the thought of Rosie O’Donnell kind of makes me want to poop on myself or on people next to me.

So here are some choices I have come up with. Please, help me out and vote for your favorite, or add your own candidate, because I told the barrel racers who keep “wrecking” their horses that I would have a better word for them by this Friday:

dernk brangle gord smalmatation dobble
briange blat chingle trammterfuge boof
charkle stintch carntock mantelflam trink

Oh, and for those who care about tripping a dog, the consensus on this maneuver is that you need to be laying on the floor and the dog has to be running past you and not paying attention to you while you stick both of your arms out, catching both the front and the back legs at EXACTLY the same instant.

Sure it’s kind of mean, but the laughter that results will MORE than make up for any guilt you might have about tripping your dog.

Oh, and cats deserve to be tripped. And so do ducks.

B!

That's Okay Because I Pooped On Myself

2008-10-01T19:32:00.000-07:00

I know I should be writing my book right now, but I don’t feel like it so fuck off and stop trying to control my life. I am going to write this instead because it takes less preparation than book writing and I can feel like I accomplished something today even though we all know this blog is just a bunch of bull puckey. And who knows, this puckey may end up in the book anyway and you can all feel like a bunch of special monkeys for getting a free preview of a small portion of the greatest book ever written.

Lucky F’ers.

Anyway, to get it started, over the past few weeks I have taken notice of a disturbing trend among some people during conversations. It always seems to happen the same way and in the EXACT same phrasing and after I started to notice it, it began to make me want to go pummel a clown. Or even a lion tamer. Basically any circus worker, actually. And since I am kind of jealous of the circus worker’s lifestyle, I don’t want to go around beating them mercilessly in case I end up trying to join their union or something. So let me tell you what I have noticed so you can stop people from doing it around me.

In a conversation with a few people, what happens is that you all take turns telling stories about a certain topic and then that topic morphs into another topic and another topic and so on and so on until someone passes out or starts having sex. Some people completely ruin the flow by starting all of their stories with “That’s okay ‘cause I . . . “

Let’s just say that I have just told a very riveting story about the time we were having a slam-dunk contest at the toy store I used to manage and somebody let the ball roll into the mall where a guy walking by accidentally kicked it and it bounced off of an old woman’s face and right into my hands. Invariably someone in the conversation will follow my story with these words or words very similar to these, “That’s okay ‘cause I tripped over a squirrel once and dropped a box of Nutter Butters.”

There are two things that happen when someone starts off a sentence with, “That’s okay ‘cause I . . . “

#1. I automatically know my story was better because they had to try to discount it by telling me that it was okay. I already know it’s okay because I am not only still here to tell you the story, I’m still here telling a story that is way better than anything you have in your repertoire.

#2. I stop listening to your story because I am wondering where I can find a clown to attack.

I will trump any story that person may have to say because I have not only pooped on myself as an adult but I have been spit on a walrus (unfortunately not at the same time, because that would probably trump even the bible for greatest story ever told). I will NOT, however, tell my story by saying, “That’s okay ‘cause I got spit on a walrus once and now I’m afraid of Wilford Brimley.”

I will tell my story this way, “Your story sucked ass you prick. But that’s okay ‘cause I got spit on by Wilford Brimley once and now I’m afraid of walruses.”

Just kidding.

Oh, and as a side note, I highly recommend that the next time you get a group of people together at a party with some alcohol flowing you should begin the evening with “Adult Poop On Self” stories. It lightens the mood and you can find out that ALL girls are liars because they won’t admit that they ever pooped on themselves as an adult.

It also opens the way for ANY other topic because as soon as someone has a visual of you as an adult with poop running down your leg nothing seems off-limits. You can even talk about politics after the proverbial “poop ice” has been broken.

Just a few party-planning tips from a guy who once spit on Wilford Brimley while riding a walrus that smelled like poop.

But that’s okay, ‘cause I fell down the stairs a couple of weeks ago.

B!

P.S.—I like myself. And Wilford Brimley. But not walruses.

Some People Are Too Stupid To Have Their Self-Esteem Destroyed

2008-10-01T19:14:00.000-07:00

I’ve got to get this off my chest: I HATE the way retarded people look at me.

There, I said it. Done.

Now for the exposition, because I don’t really want people to think I have some kind of issues with developmentally disabled people or anything. I honestly don’t have much of a problem with them. Most of the time they seem to be having a really good time with life in general and I think a lot of Type A personalities could take a few notes out of the developmentally disabled books and spend less time trying to earn money and a little more time drooling on themselves and saying “Hello” 87 times in a row to the person running the cash register at whatever retail establishment they happen to be on a field trip at.

My problem with retarded people looking at me has nothing to do with our developmentally disabled friends. It has more to do with normal-functioning people who just look retarded and in turn take that glazed over, vapid look they possess (it kind of translates into a look where they can’t quite understand why you are standing where you are in relation to their line of sight) and look at me with it. It’s not funny and it needs to stop.

Got it retarded folks? STOP IT! In fact, stop going out into public. I’m tired of you. Stay home and be retarded in your own space. Stop invading mine. Thanks.

Okay, on to the real fabric of this blog, because I hate even thinking about the retarded people looking at me in public.

I was at work today, doing what I do (working, interestingly enough, hence the name) when this shithead of a kid comes up randomly and announces to me that he can count to 100.

Before I go any further, I would just like to point out that EVERY SINGLE white trash kid in the whole world has straight blond stringy greasy hair like the cool kid who smoked and rode a motorcycle from the 70’s version of The Bad News Bears and is always wearing a jean jacket (in winter) or a tank top (in summer) and jeans with holes in the knees. In the spring and fall they wear both—little known fact.

Another fact about white trash kids: I hate when they look at me even more than when retarded people look at me. I hate it even double worse when they talk to me. And I hate it even TRIPLE worse when they talk to me by counting to 100.

After the “I can count to 100” announcement, the first thought that comes into my head is, “Bullshit. You’re too fucking stupid to count to 100. No wonder your mom doesn’t like you. Otherwise she would be supervising you instead of blatantly letting you talk to strangers.”

What actually comes out of my mouth is, “Wow. Ummm, neat. That is really just tremendously super.”

I know how to speak to the kids, what can I say? I speaka da lingety.

So what comes out of the kid’s mouth next? You guessed it: “One, two, three, four, five, six . . .”

I turn and start walking away because if there is anything worse in the world than a kid, it is a kid that feels a need to establish a rapport with me over a linearly numbers-based conversation.

So the kid FOLLOWS me to prove that he can REALLY count to 100.

In my mind, I am having these thoughts, “No really kid, fuck off. I don’t remember ever questioning your ability to count to 100, so there’s really no need to prove it. Stop it. I hate you. I hate your mother. I hate your grandmother. I hate everyone on your mother’s side of the family. I would hate your father’s side of the family but I see he’s not here which means he probably has the same feelings I do about you and your mom’s side of the family.”

“. . . twenty two, twenty three, twenty four, twenty five . . .”

“Arrrrgh. NOBODY LIKES YOU! Everyone pretends to like you and then the second you turn your back they start making fun of your stupid hair and your stupid face and your stupid everything else. When you were born did they shave you and teach you to walk backwards? Were you born or were you hatched you son of a bitch?”

“. . . forty two, forty three, forty four, forty five . . .”

“Hey kid, did you know that no one on EARTH gives a fuck if you can count to 100 or not? I can count to nine hundred and ninety nine trillion, nine hundred and ninety nine billion, nine hundred and ninety nine million, nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine if I wanted to. I could probably count higher than that but, and I’m gonna be honest with you, I don’t know what the next number is after that. Probably something like one quadrillion, but really, what’s the point of counting that high when I can just go home and watch Deal Or No Deal instead?”

“. . . sixty seven, sixty eight, sixty nine . . . ummmmmmmmmm, eighty. Eighty one, eighty two . . .”

“HA! WRONG!!! I knew it! You stupid prick! I fucking rule because I knew the second I saw you how stupid you are. Yeah, I rule. Is there a mirror nearby? I want to look at myself in it so I always have a mental picture of myself in this moment of victory and general me-goodness. I rock in ways you can only dream about you jean-jacket wearing pile of doody.”

“. . . ninety eight, ninety nine, aaaaaannnnnnnnnd ONE HUNDRED!”

Then my real voice comes into play, “Nice work, but you forgot the seventies. You missed a whole decade. Way to go. You’ve got a future as an accountant, I’m sure of it.”

Then the kid gets the retarded look I love so much on his face and looks at me like I’m the one who is retarded.

I now know how hard it is to ruin someone’s self-esteem when they are too stupid to have one of those things.

I really hope that kid doesn’t procreate.

Really.

B!

A Tremendous Waste Of Everything (Originally Posted on Sept. 22, 2005)

2007-07-22T20:45:00.000-07:00

I'm frustrated at the world right now and I really would like to go punt a kitten into a woodchipper. Okay, I take that back, that's a gross visual and way more, ummmm, "animal unfriendly" than I would ever be. Don't take that woodchipper statement to heart, at least not with a kitten. The dumb ass with the loud muffler down the street is another ballgame though. He just might be a little harder to punt into a woodchipper. Kittens have better aerodynamics and less body mass, but probably a larger brain and bigger balls than that idiot.

See what you get when you let me loose on a keyboard with no defined subject matter?

So I went to the gym today even though I really really really REALLY didn't want to go (hooray me, yipee). I did 35 minutes of cardio on the eliptical trainer and came across something quite eye-opening while I was rocking the cardio.

There is a little magazine called Glamour that the ladies seem to read quite a bit at the gym. I judge this on how destroyed the cover was and how dog-eared the pages were. In all fairness, it could be dudes reading it (as I was) to see what kind of crap the ladies like to read. I have only one thought about this magazine aimed at women: What a load of worthless shit. Seriously, it's even worse than my blogs, and that's really saying something.

This magazine was just out of control with "articles" like "99 Ways To Dress Mostly Slutty" and "47 Ways To Say 'Cute' When You See Someone Wearing Shoes You Like" and things of this nature. I have a bunch of ideas for some stories they should put into this 300 page pile of shit.

These are only article titles, mind you, but you can imagine the copy contained within:

Guys Don't Care What Your Shoes Look Like As Long As YOU Are Hot
That Shirt Isn't Cute When You're Standing In Front Of The TV
37 Ways To Say Yes To Sex With The Guy With The Goatee
How To Stay In The Other Room When The Football Game Is On
Don't Worry, He Can't Be Drunk ALL The Time
He's Not Thinking About Anything After Sex--Deal With It
Sometimes The Floor Is Just As Good As A Hamper
For God's Sake Woman, Don't Wear Sandals If Your Feet Are Jacked!
Butthair On The Toilet--A Man's Way Of Marking His Territory
Clean Shower/Dirty Man or Dirty Shower/Clean Man--Take Your Pick
37 More Ways To Say Yes To Sex With The Guy With The Goatee Special Bonus Section

I think I might be ready to start my own magazine. I will fill it with actual useful information instead of the fluff they give out in Glamour and whatever else women read (Cosmo is the exception, sometimes, even though they do spout lots of disinformation that is balanced out by stories of slutty girls. Slutty girls YEAH!). A guy equivalent to those types of magazines would be 85 pages of ads for guns, a 50-word article about how to actually pee INTO the toilet, 43 pages of ads for beer, an article on how to get a mail order bride, 19 pages of ads for porn and mail order brides, an article with accompanying photo about the STD of the Month, 37 pages of ads for penis enlargements and, finally, one picture of boobs inside the back cover.

Wait a minute, that sounds fucking BRILLIANT! Anyone want to back me and get this magazine off the ground? We'll call it HETERO--THE MAG and only accept ads from gun manufacturers, beer companies and companies that sell sleeveless T-shirts.

I am a genius. A suuuuuper genius.

That is all. Go on about your business, I've got a magazine to start.

B!

The New Blog Test

2007-07-21T14:30:00.000-07:00

This is the new place for the blogs. I am typing this more as a test than anything. You can also check out some of my other blogs on www.myspace.com/thebchild

I like myself.

Enjoy, you pricks.

B!