Htown, and just because...

Over the holidays, we all experience different levels of stress. Sometimes these stresses take over, and folks end up drowning themselves in egg nog and driving off a bridge somewhere. My stresses do not afford me such luxurious physical response. Oh no. I get jacked-up dreams instead. Awful dreams…

But before I get to that, a couple of things on the holidays in H-town:

1) I fucking LOVE seeing all my friends. Even if coordinating a meeting between us requires me to sell my goddamn soul to the devil. Every year it is the same nightmare of social organization. Regardless of the effort, it was fantastic to see everyone. J-J., Snail, Skot, The Collins, Hairy Fingers, Brutha Nick, Bai-Wei-Ke, CBSmooove, Dungster, Mr. Bill, Mike, Williard, Huard, Lambchops, Weezer, Boner, Baret and K-T, Tommy-Tom, Neil & his ladyfriend, Skater Bri, Rockets Tom, Big Binh and Shannanagins, Jenn and that girl who I told I would buy a gin & tonic but then didn’t because I was too busy toasting my repeated success at avoiding a well-earned explosive death, and the Atown contingency too: Rivas, Lex and Tam-Tam, Two Ts, Our Land and The Rambler, and of course: my precious Avasaurus.

2) Boner gives advice: the most common mistake in getting a DUI is violating the law in a more simple way. Such as… running a red light or speeding. So that’s the best way around that (besides pounding ginger ales and becoming a cross-caressing Baptist). Fuck me sideways.

3) Sugar Land is fucking far from Houston. Screw you daily-gypsies who make that rush-hour trek and claim it isn’t far. It is fucking far. Buy a map, check your watch, and measure your gas tank. I am right about this, it is god-awful far from anything. For the love of God.

4) White Christmas in Houston. That’s all. Just had to type it with a serious tone, as it has never been mentioned by me without thick sarcasm. Now it will be peppered with disbelief instead. Silliness is what that was. If there is a God, it does indeed have a sense of humor.

5) George Carlin for Christmas: sometimes, he isn’t that funny. He’s just angry. An old, sick, and bent-up angry man on stage with spotlights upon his cranky-assed oldness. I give him credit for turning a buck on it though. I would trade spittle-dotted rants for money any day. Big ups, and I wish him the best in rehab. This really has nothing to do with Houston, but I listened to one of his latest CDs on the way home (great gift mammasita!), and it has been bothering me ever since.

On to the dream that killed my 3pm wake-up time (as scheduled by booze) this past Saturday.

In the dream, Flava was getting married to some bisexual dude whose identity morphed every ten dream-minutes, so I couldn’t nail it down. I knew a couple of his names, and he was always rather portly. That part was strange, because Flava has never gravitated to the portly variety (myself exempt), but that’s the body-type my mind picked for the part. The bisexual aspect of his personality is also unexpected. Flava loves the gay men. She’s no half-stepper when it comes to sexual preference. No dabblers for her.

She invites me to the wedding. I can’t believe she would be inviting me to the wedding, I mean, we’re still living together (the dream is occurring in real time). All of our friends are flabbergasted when I tell them that I am absolutely against going to the wedding. “What, just because she’s marrying him?”, they would all ask. “Well, yes. And no,” I would reply, over-and-fucking-over, to their crinkled-brow faces, “well, I should have said something to her, I guess,” I would add, all half-stepping it. But I as thinking in my head, “man, I can’t believe she did this shit to me. Why him? Why now? What the hell did I do wrong here?”

I end up at the wedding, and it is raining and nasty outside (think: November Rain). I am trying to leave before the ceremony starts, but as I am trying to duck out a back door, the procession scoops me up and I am marching with the bride and groom down the aisle. I was absolutely beside myself, staggering to explain that I did not want to be there but could not bring myself to confront her about the whole mess. I mean, she planned to continue living with me? After marrying this guy? Wha………?

In the beginning, I was just confused. I could not figure out the timeline. It was Christmas, I just dropped her off at the airport to go see her fam… when the hell did this dude propose? Did I nap for a goddamn year? RumpleCraigskin? Oh, wait, that's Rip Van Winkle. No, I cannot spell that shit. Whatever, like I was saying: And worse yet, was there any “courting” at my crib? Did they dance the forbidden dance? In the shower I cleaned up earlier that week? Did I scrub up some of that sexually ambiguous orca-dude’s man-lava from the base tiles? Sweet Jesus, the disturbing revelations started a roll call, and they were ready to burn some shit DOWN. Son of a… I was still confused, but starting my rabid march to anger.

But I got cut off by sentimentality.

I should have told her everything first. I should have let her know.

“Let her know what?”

Well, whatever we needed to say. You know, all that which is making us feel so stupid for avoiding.

“But I haven’t gotten any of that sorted out yet. It would have been half-baked, and potentially dangerous. Bacon is fantastic, but raw pork can kill.”

What does breakfast have to do with any of this?

“Oh, shit, I smell egg and sausage.”

What? We’re in deep emotional trouble here. Our woman just left us for a hefty gay guy. That should take precedence over morning proteins.

“But we can just wake up, and she’s ours again. Trust me.”

But, but… it’s only 9 in the morning. We just went to sleep like, four hours ago.

“Bacon. Now get up and call your girl, but remember not to blame her for any of this ridiculousness.”

Fuck. Tired. Mmmmm… bacon… Let’s ditch this shitty wedding.

Damn you bad-Flava dreams!

Seasonal ramble and the thing. You know? Yes.

Instead of being boring with a bunch hoo-ha about blah-blah-blah and whatever, I will be barfing out some prose. This is a mind dump, and it will serve no one in any good capacity. It will be seasonal though, as I am in my last hour of do-nothing at work, before I make like Sonny Bono and "head out" of this piece.

Merry merry, jolly jolly, and happy happy... to you and yours. Hopefully I will see you this weekend, so that we can kick it and be Christmas coo'. Word.

Jingle Bells, tell me a goddamn joke.
You see that there's no Santa, right Billy?
I got you a gift, it floats, it is a turd.
I like Dave Chapelle, but I don't like your version.
Bring me more mead, in a lead mug please.
My Chauffer is definitely not the best movie I've ever seen.
Sand makes a really bad replacement for toothpaste.
Santa is bringing me a steaming bowl of allergies this Deathmas.
Dashing through the rain, with a one eyed hooker named Pete...
Is this thing on? Tap-tap. Hello?
All I want for Christmas is your two front teeth.
All I want for Christmas is some hash-marked briefs. Some hash-marked briefs...
I'm sorry, I'm poor this year, so I'm giving out STDs as gifts.
Unwrap your herpes before it dries up. Faster.
Most forget, but Trading Places is a Christmas movie.
Dan Aykroyd is the best Santa one could ask for.
I bet he inspired this piece of shit.
What were they thinking with that?
Santa * drunk + lame fat kid / midget + HOTT chick = Seasonal hillarity?
No shit? Pass the crack on down here then, 'cause I missed that math class.
I like the idea of a black santa. Call it white guilt. Sue me.
I think a new oven makes a great gift.
Preferrably: one that self-starts.
Pilot lights are for suicidals and pseudo chefs.
And gas purists, I guess. Ho ho ho.
I hope Santa didn't see this little dance with words
because it might come off as insensitive.
Or this silly slice of verbage pie
which might be viewed as bigoted, if not fucking brilliant.
And I hope he never ran across this little piece of ass-scattery
just because it's kinda fucked up, and proves that I'm slow.
Screw it. I'll just wear my stocking as a sock.
Or as a ball-warmer. Whatever's clever. The left ball.
Holiday tag line: "Holidays. Maybe. Next Year"
Holiday tag line again: "Buy. Better. Shit."
For those you love to love.
Seriously, if Santa reads any of this trash, I swear...
I'll make diamonds out of that shit, so help me god.
Jingle Bells, I'm still waiting for my goddamned joke. Hello?

No, I am not almost 30. What a ridiculous question. And no, that is not my truck parked on your lawn. Your back lawn... I see. Behind the crushed trampoline, right? Nope. I haven't a clue about such a sad situation. Now leave me alone, I need to figure out this bus schedule...

Happy holidays to you and yours! Be safe, warm, and love the ones you love!

Damn you egg nog!

Me and my combos.

So I'm sitting here at work, dodging the company-wide Christmas charade-parade (complete with singing choir, watered-down koolaid, and sugar-coated dogfood cookies. Replete with muted madness, and slightly resembling a rest-home celebration for Deathmas). Bored, and wishing to be left alone... I started a list of word parings, which I have feelings for.

I love these, and I feel it should be obvious:

1. Dr. and Dre (so whatchu wanme ta do...do...do...)
2. Mandarin and Tonic (keep them coming)
3. Open and Bar (mercy me, please include #2)
4. Breakfast and Buffet (plate over plate of bacon)
5. Long and Weekend (side of extra hangover, thank you)
6. Hot and Shower (perq of the first world)
7. Coffee and Cigarettes (my closest of friends)
8. New and Car (fucking windshield is about to be OUT)
9. Curious and George (who don't love them monkies?)
10. Fuck and A (yep)

I resent these, and they need no explanation:

1. Magic and Wand (wizards are tard, and fairies are corky)
2. Cell and Mate (welcome to OZ, bitch)
3. Gin and Anything (Black the fuck out)
4. Crank and Yankers (Adam whateverhisnameis should shut the fuck up sometimes)
5. Sales and Man (the "value added" takes from my soul)
6. Overflowing and Toilet (shit, shit, shit)
7. Easter and Bunny (Pastels suck, and Cadbury Eggs are filled with goat cum)
8. Politically and Correct (Nobody gets it, so lay off me already)
9. Flat and Tires (I'm gonna die on this freeway shoulder)
10. Fuck and U (yep)

These cause me mind-numbing confusion, so I will elaborate a tad:

1. Family and Values: I estimate the values to equal 0.00. Why is this an issue?
2. Jesus and Saves: Saves what? Time, for simpletons who aren't capable of reason I suppose.
3. Pro and Life: Who really rallies behind Death?
4. Bill and O’Reilly: Is he a robot? Forged from two-dimensional views of steel and the loudest tanning cream available?
5. Contemporary and Furniture: If it is here now, is not Contemporary?
6. Girl and Talk: This is a given. I believe that the two invented each other.
7. Free and Markets: There is nothing “Free” about them.
8. Self and Discipline: You have got to be kidding me. Do those words mesh to you?
9. Social and Hierarchy: Seems to me that the only way to establish yourself at the top of one of those is to kill everyone below you. That’s a loser’s game if I’ve ever heard of one.
10. Tomb and Raider: Worst. Movie. Ever. Her ta-tas weren’t even real. Damnit.

Failed responses and creepy Christmas jingles

Couple of things here. Work reputation + Christmas music weirdness.

To begin, I do not have the most fantastic reputation at my place of business. I am seen as “that yellow-eyed booze hound of a guy who I think DJs or does professional keg-stands or something, but definitely smells like Vodka in the cafeteria line.” Not that this is completely untrue, but I do believe there has been some undue embellishment (of my nightlife), swirling about the water cooler at my work-joint.

That being understood by me, I try to be on my best behavior when making “small talk” with people at an adjacent urinal, or when passing through the pack of smokers that surround the main entrance. They all look at me with a knowing eye, fully aware that they have some “information” on me. And I don’t even know their names. I’m cool with them feeling somewhat superior in this regard, as long as two things occur: 1) they are never able to use any mis”information” on me as a weapon against me, and 2) I maintain my ability to be somewhat aloof, jovial, and even mildly entertaining during times when we do interract. That last one requires that all “small talk” be very courteous, confident, and sprinkled with witty banter. Most important of all: no one can begin to assemble the absolutely awful idea that Craig is some sort of booze-infused moron who thinks he’s better than all the married-with-kidlets folks that occupy every other cubicle in this piece. That would be both untrue, and disastrous for all those whom I owe wheelbarrows of money.

With that as a long-winded background, I must confess the possible beginning of the end of my previously perfect “sure he has a crazy reputation, but he seems like such a nice chap when I greet him in the halls” persona.

I was leaving work yesterday in a huff, racing against the dropping sun, in order to get a quick run before the moon took over. Waiting for the elevator, I was preoccupied with how dehydrated I was, and how friggin’ cold it was going to be while I ran in my mesh shorts along the lake. This is a real concern, as the cold weather pushes my legs to cramp, and with nothing but Amstel Light running through my system to stem said cramps, they will be victorious, and I will fold like the French. And I will have to crawl the wooded trails of the lake like an invalid. Crying like a wet kitten and peeing myself to keep from freezing to death.

But I regress.

So, the elevator arrived and I jumped in. There was a nice fellow in there who knows my name, and has used it to greet me on a number of occasions. I have no idea who he is, what department he works for, or his potential status as a possible leader of a Taliban splinter cell here in Texas. I don’t know this dude from Adam. And he knows my name. I don’t know what else he may know of me, and I don’t really care. I just wanted to maintain my cheery work persona. So, fella is all, “you look concentrated Craig, you got something going on after work?” To which I replied, all smiles, “Yup, I’m gonna try and squeeze my jog in before the sun calls it quits.”

Here is where the trap was set.

He quickly responds with, “well, you’re a better man than me! Heh-heh-heh!”

Now this sounds innocuous enough, doesn’t it? Just a harmless, self-effacing compliment extended to a coworker. There is an almost unlimited number of possible responses on my part, which accept this compliment and in an appropriate act of reciprocated kindness, also reverse his self-effacement.

My response?

“Yep….” Done. A half-assed affirmative reply.

And then blanket silence as my eyes trailed to the industrial carpet, followed by his obligatory “don’t you know it! Heh-heh-heh!” Which, by the way, was obviously loaded and ready to fire back at me, AFTER I had thrown up a witty reply for him aim it at. I failed to give him a decent target.

“Yep”? Is that it? What the fuck? Someone says to you: “you are looking really good these days! And I’m just a fat slug with the sex life of Big Bird: all fiction no friction!” and you respond with an affirmative “hell yes I am looking tight and fine, and you are indeed a fat fuck with no chance in hell of even convincing yourself to fuck you without the aide of date-rape drugs!”… Not good at all. Not. Good. At all.

I realized this, and was trying to hurdle over my self pity for being so dehydrated, making an effort to quickly construct a comeback, such as:

The easy-going: “Yeah, but I NEED to run, you look good without it!”

Or

Senseless praise: “I’m just trying to appease the gods of health, but you? You’re golden man, GOLDEN.”

Even

Name dropping wit: “That’s like Jenna Jameson commending Jeanine Garofalo for taking blow-job classes. Patting my back is totally beneath you man!”

But my mind tripped, went sideways on itself, and resulted in little more than heavier breathing as the elevator stopped at dude’s parking floor. He exited with little fanfare. Not even a “take it easy”, a “good luck on the trails” or even “I hope you get eaten by machete-wielding bears out there you pompous prick.” Nothing but crickets. I think my cover here is blown. Fuck it. The jig is up, and that was bound to happen sooner rather than later. We had a good run, the job and I. We really did…

On to the second note. At my work, Christmas tunes blare out of the sound system in the bathroom, so I get to crap to sounds of Nat King Cole and all seventy-three renditions of Frosty the (pedophile) Snowman. Needless to say, it is doing wonders to speed up my pooing process this holiday season.

Two Christmas songs that get to me:

Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer

For those of you who swear by this song, you obviously aren’t listening to it. To begin, the song is little more than a step-by-step about how his drunken grandmother, who forgot to take her pills, trudges out into the snow and is mauled by the North American equivalent of a wildebeest, and they find her dead body on Christmas Day. If that weren’t fucked up enough, he then goes on to hypothesize that it was one of Santa’s reindeer, and that his Grandmother’s untimely death by way of an unidentified cloven-hoofed animal is proof that St. Nick exists, and that Christmas really is all good and full of merry love.

Okay. This is jacked up on so many levels, but the obvious ones are: 1) reindeer are real. It could have been any one of the thousands of non-flying variety of reindeer that kicked his grandmother’s ass. If Santa’s sleigh were pulled by a team of goddamn pegasuses (that word just DOES NOT look right to me), and he had some sort of proof that they tramped his granny (feathers AND hooves perhaps? Fairy dust at the scene?), then he might have a hot lead on the existence of Santa. Just because some woodsy creature killed your bourbon-bent grandmother is proof of nothing beyond a potential that you are genetically predisposed to the same fate. 2) If this were indeed the work of Santa and his sleigh-bearers, then good ol’ St. Nick would be wanted for some weird-ass version of vehicular manslaughter. He would probably be convicted in absentia, and now be classified as a Class C Felon by Federal court (considered a “habitual offender” given the multitude of burglaries, attempted burglaries, operation of a toy factory without proper documentation, and failure to declare and pay property/duty taxes on goods imported into the US). Now that’s just downright wrong to put Santa into such a twisted and sick plot to kill old ladies, or sell records, whichever is sicker.

But it has a catchy melody, and the idea of some bumpkin’s granny getting trampled by Bambi’s distant cousin is somehow entertaining (but on a “Faces of Death” level-type sickness).

Baby It’s Cold Outside

This has to be the creepiest date-rape song ever written. And it's a Christmas tune? Whaaaa?

Some lady is dropping in on a fellow during some bad weather, he's all horn-doggin', she’s playing hard-to-get, and the dude is having none of it. This dude is totally going to ball this chick, with the aide of alcohol and possibly Rohypnol, and they made it into a Christmas song. I bet a more modern version will come out during my lifetime that will end with her getting reamed and the dude being a basketball star from “early in the millennium”. Jesus Christ. The things that will pass for holiday cheer almost astound me. What happened to mistletoe? Am I just old fashioned here? Fuck it.

My all your reamings be merry this season.

Damn you pegasuseseseses!

This might make me a sensitive, yet lazy putz.

I’m not saying that I don’t like a good razzing from workmates. I’m not saying I have any issues with getting booed while public speaking. I don’t even REALLY care about the fact that a chimpanzee may be running my country whilst donning a man-mask: taking my tax dollars for the new crusade and better banana technology. I really don't have THAT many hot-buttons.

I might not be as sensitive as some portray me as being.

But I do hate the fucking meandering, ever-changing, varicose-looking crack-set that is spreading itself into my field of vision by way of dendritic expansion across my goddamn windshield. Now I have to Benzwenger because it is really starting to cramp my style.

Having been raised in Houston, there is much importance placed upon the automobile. Not just the value of the thing, but the care that has been put into the outward appearance of your bucket. You can own an ’86 Ford Tempo that has not seen new oil in 8,000 miles that will be more than acceptable if you wash it daily, keep the crazy-ass Japanese air freshener swapped out, Armor All EVERYTHING (including windshield wiper blades), and buff that waxed finish until you can see the future in the reflection.

So that’s where I am coming from, and I while I have not done my part to retain the “ghetto fabulousness” of my ride by practically living at the carwash, I do take issue with a white-trash banner-of-a-crack crisscrossing its way across my front glass. Back in the day (as it still is on an ’86 Ford Tempo), before the glory of nose-crushing airbags, these cracks were caused by the booze-inspired connection between the interior glass and the foreheads of those in the front seat. Simple logic flow: Sixteen Mandarin & Tonics  swerve in auto  meet a freeway pylon  forehead meets windshield  your trashy ass doesn’t mind dealing with the splintered front-view so the crack becomes part of the “rustic ambiance” that pervades that piece of shit you drive to the feed lot.

But my crack has more humble beginnings. I was driving down Congress Ave on a Sunday afternoon. The sidewalks were sardine-canned with pointless wanderers and droves of kidlets menacing the downtown wildlife (pigeons, squirrels, bums). Apparently there is an abundance of lazy-ass rocks, just laying about on the sidewalks, begging to be moved across the avenue. And a couple of monkey-children, with the help of their dumbass apathetic parents, were doing everything in their power to help the dreams of those stones come true.

So there they were: a couple of eight-year olds slinging rocks across the street, over the waiting-for-the-next-green-light traffic that I was sitting in. Then the inevitable happened. One sad little stone’s dream of migrating to the southbound side of Congress was ruined, as was the pristine glasswork of my windshield, by the ill-aimed pitch of one young hoodlum. It started out as a little star-chip, but eventually bled out a crack when the weather dipped the temp down last winter. It gave my glass a real unappealing cut that moved across the passenger side. Having other priorities, I let it slide, intending to get it fixed whenever my budget gave me the green light to do so.

But then, that sinister ass-crack got restless and branched off, heading to the driver’s side, and now it is threatening my view. At night, when drivers are heading toward me, the refracted headlights within the crack beam out in laser-like bolts, like I’m driving into a goddamn disco ball.

And the worst part is that with each irritating inch that I see the crack expanding, I feel deeper and deeper hatred for that little boy and his shitty throwing arm. Little fucker.

I re-read this post. And I realize that I’m just crying like a refugee because I was too lazy to get the chip repaired, and now I’m too lazy to get the window replaced. That’s what this really boils down to. Craig is being a lazy turd, and he wants to lay the blame for that on some typical 8 year-old who did nothing beyond the standard activity of unattended 8-year-olds: break Craig’s shit. I can’t blame them.

Besides, that’s just my kickass Karma [deep, deep deficit] coming back to haunt me. I mean, shit, at least they weren’t shooting at me. I would hate to get capped by an third grader on a random Sunday. You know, with it being the “Lord ’s Day” and all. Just seems goddamn wrong to me.

Damn you lazy rocks!

That... Blasted Furnace... Nottafinga!

I got a tree. And that bad-boy has lights, some bead-string-thingies, and an Ole St. Nick topper. Yup. No Grinch up in this bitch, fo sho. I REALLY hope my lady likes it. I picked it out by my lonesome, but she was my inspiration. She has the most kickass ornaments too. Mine look real tired, trite, and dude-ish in comparison. So, I am excited for her to put the finishing touches on the thing when she gets back this weekend. Word.

Home Depot was littered with real winners for trees. I mean, some of those things just needed a good shake to be needle-free. Good thing there’s no smoking allowed in the garden section, or I might have burned that piece to the ground (with the aid of some xmas-tree kindling, and the common indecency of a smoker to always treat the world as his/her ashtray). I also noticed that many of this year’s trees are remarkably fat instead of whispy-thin as they have been in years past. Are these “Houston-fatass” trees? Round-bottomed merry-bushes designed and trimmed to match the rotund wrecking-ball proportions of their holiday-making owners? Regardless, it better not be a trend because “Decking the Christmas Bush” not only sounds really uninviting, but also could be grounds for treason under the current administration.

Moving on. My allergies, while breaking me into little snotty pieces, are being made worse by my own hand. I went running yesterday, around the (apparently) cedar-lined lake (freezing my jiggling ass off) and then went drinking with V-dog. Of course, drinking invited its best friend: smoking, and when those two get together – good lord, the pack of smokes combined with all that cedar pollen to completely destroy any chance of decent sleep. Plus, it was hovering around 20 goddamn degrees last night, and my heater decided that it was a lost cause to try and battle the icicles forming on my snotty nose. So I could see my breath when I got up this morning. I cursed it like Ralphie’s dad in A Christmas Story. “It’s aaaaa cliiiinnnnkkkerrrrr-er!” Mundang-noodle furnace. Killing me over here.

So, a pound of cedar pollen + pack o’ smokes + more booze than a Tuesday warrants + frozen tundra for bedsheets = Craig sleeps in two hour intervals, broken by shivering fits and peppered with marathon coughing extravaganzas.

I have survived worse though. One night, in Toronto for New Year’s Eve, while staying at a Youth Hostile (kinda hostile, really, and there weren’t many “youths” about the place) I ended up blasting some dumbass Austrian douche bags who decided that it was okay to turn on the lights and begin chattering their most awful-sounding language at roughly six in the morning. The room was approximately as big as the four bunk beds that were in it, and those crazy third-reichers might as well have been using bull-horns to discuss WHATEVER they were discussing. I had just put my head-cold to bed a couple of drunken hours earlier, and thanks to the bottle of Nyquil, was happily coughing myself through dreamland when Heinrich and Adolf decided to hit the lights and begin barking without using their “inside voices”. Pricks. So, I apparently sat up in my multi-drugged condition and told them to “shut the fucking hell up or I am going to suffocate you both with a dirty sock full of my own warm feces” or some such tasteless phrase. Well, maybe not the sock part, but it was something along those lines. One of my traveling buddies told me of this the next morning, as I was obliterated and did not realize what I had said. It was all very knee-jerk, and completely appropriate.

Ending note, related to above story: All you “early-risers” out there need to understand something: if you insist on getting up before a reasonable hour (before 9am), then go ahead and do so. Get up, and go out into the world where the rest of the “early rising” population is. DO NOT hang around the sleeping quarters of the rest of us while doing “awake” things such as: practicing your drumming techniques, playing with fireworks, or yelling at other early-risers in a language that was obviously invented by human-hating robots. We night-owls do not go into your sleeping spaces after midnight and do those things to you. And that is why you are threatened with death when you act like such an insensitive dick at six in the AM.

I am soooooo glad we got that out of the way, aren’t you? I knew you would be. Now go to sleep, or I will be forced to fill a sock…

Damn you dry cough!

Does anyone care that I have not posted a Drink Story in a while? If not, I will continue my break from them. Word to words.

My mind is utter mush

My ears channels hurt today. And I have to pee every ten minutes. This "cedar fever" thing is destroying my sense of personality. Not that I was the most animate or jovial person before, but between the drugs, the no-sleep, and the fits of snot, I am worried that I will no longer be able to feel anything beyond sleepy irritation.

I could not sleep last night, so I did what every man-of-men would do. I ate two bowls of Raisin Bran, drank half a bottle of Nyquil, and watched Sex and The City episodes until I passed out. Approximately 3am. This is an unacceptable lifestyle, and it is absolutely killing me. It is worse than my recent attempts at lifelong alcoholism (which left me nothing less than exhausted, broke, and bereft of anyone's respect). At least the boozing helped me entertain myself, and gave the illusion of a progressing personality. But this whole TV-bran-drugs thing is a COMPLETE waste of time.

I have never wanted a cough to produce some swallowable material in my life. Fucking killing me over here.

But, I must soldier on, acting as if I am overcoming some huge obstacle in my life, in order to give my day's activities a heightened level of meaning. As in: buying a Christmas Tree, all by my lonesome, is a monumental task if I am to it under the TV-bran-drugs condition. Somehow, I will convince myself that accomplishing even the most mundane tasks (which I would not have bothered with otherwise - because they are tedious, and do not fill me with any feelings of accomplishment under normal conditions), are amazing feats of bravery when executed from behind a blinding curtain of attacking pollen. Yes...

And of course, no one else will see it that way. The Christmas Tree guy will call me a pussy, and potentially queer for buying a Christmas Tree all by myself. And the guys at Home Depot will ask me to stop wheezing and snot-drooling like I'm Jerry's favorite kid, while asking them questions about the mechanics behind a "hissing" toilet (it keeps me up at night, okay? All that incessant hissing might be the culprit behind the canceling out of the wondrous effects of Nyquil).

Until I accomplish these brave, brave tasks under the iron-fist of allergies gone wild... I will simply be a zombie at work, downing yet another cup of coffee, just to stay lucid enough to avoid being handed a cardboard box by security. Utter. Mush. Today. My Mind. Is.

Done.

Damn you boning Cedar trees!

Hypothetically speaking, this would not be good.

I’m not saying this happened to me or anything, but it would be both supremely disturbing AND frustrating if it did. Let’s put you into a “situation” for a spell.

Let’s say you’re really hungover. And I don’t mean that weak-ass “I think I got a little heady-ache here, and I feel a bit more tired than normal” type of hungover. I mean you’re bro-ken. Drunk-when-you-woke-up style. Broken. Busted up in all the wrong places. Your pounding kidneys have morphed into what would best be described as “pain tissue” that lights up and burns like a mutha whenever you so much as think, your butter-yellow eyes are both dried up AND bulging out of your skull (you are constantly trying to reconcile this impossibility with physics and the human body as you understand it), you have a confusing limp in your left leg which you are convinced is caused by vodka poisoning, and the sound of your office’s air conditioner is nothing less than atomic-bomb-deafening. THAT is how hungover you are. Fuck you, you are really hungover goddamnit. Jesus H Christ… and it sucks donkey nards to be at work in such a condition.

But the best part about your hangover is where this hypothetical “situation” is trying to meander. Apparently, in your drunken stupor the night before, you ate a slice of pizza from, let’s say, a hell-spawn street-pizza vendor named Hoek’s outside of a raccoon infested pool hall ironically named “The Ritz”. [again, regardless of how detailed this description may get, it is all in fact: hypothetical, and it is YOU we are talking about here, anyway] And that slice of devil pie was topped with nothing other than yellowish sticks of oily broccoli, limp-dick mushrooms, vulcanized post-mozzarella product, and probably some dirt for good measure. You chewed that in the same mouth you kiss your mother with, and then dropped it into that vat of sloshing beer-booze you call your stomach. Then you went home and slept while that concoction marinated.

It has grown strong in the night. It has gained a most foul odor, and has the power to move cubic feet of air in painful bursts. Now it wants out of you, and plans to kill the host in a sea of misery and discomfort in the process.

You figure that a trip to the bathroom is not only warranted, but will be a nice rest from the 800,000-decibel air conditioner. On your staggering walk down the hall to the restroom you note two things: 1) the air conditioner in the hallway is jacked up too, and 2) that vodka-broccoli broth is not fucking around anymore, it’s about to make a gangbuster’s appearance if you don’t get to a controlled environment quick.

Your only hope is the fourth-floor restroom, as there is no time to choose another floor if you deem those receptacles unsavory. Your prior knowledge of this particular restroom does not leave you with any real feelings of hope. There are only two toilets in that restroom, one of which is enclosed with a stall door that both opens inward (why do they fucking design them that way? I mean, in order to enter/exit the damn thing you have to practically climb onto the damn toilet to give the stupid door room to swing) and has a forever-busted lock. The other toilet has asthmatic water pressure, so unless you’re about to unleash a flurry of water soluble feathers, you better be prepared to hear about how “something really awful must have happened to someone in the 4th floor men’s room” while riding the elevator later in the day. Along with the “commode situation”, you are also pretty familiar with the “schedule” of your floor’s restroom: 8am-9am: two familiar managers shoes can be seen under the stall with the annoying broken handle. Never drop the kids off at the pool while he is in there, it might come up during your next review. 9am-10am: that one strange guy who is always wandering the hallway, aimlessly, takes the time out of his busy wandering-schedule to make chocolate babies. You don’t know what exactly makes up his diet, but you would guess that the breakfast he ingests to produce such a malodorous shit-storm includes: one gallon of milk, four bananas, a pound of steaming asphalt, and approximately one bail of raw wheat. There is no point in considering the rest of the day’s “schedule”, as it is almost 11am, and the job must be completed immediately.

Probability says that shit-storming wanderer-guy has already darkened one commode option. You are really sweating this unfortunate reality as your stagger picks up some speed, racing against the alien that is now moshing in your bowels. You are trying to keep your composure while passing people in the halls, trying to NOT to look like some hungover, profusely sweating, limp-legged idiot who is about to crap his own pants.

You resign yourself to the possibility that your dragging left leg may cause you to trip, just slightly, throwing you off just enough to trigger the opening of your butt-cheek blockade, causing a nasty crapped-pants-in-public situation. If this does indeed occur, you reason with yourself, then it will be acceptable to simply sit down on the floor and cry like a mother of two would cry if she just learned that she got herpes from her young lover, who just so happens to be her cousin (and she just found out about that too).

Happily, you see the restroom sign, huff it a little faster, and make it before anything stupid happens. You bust into the bathroom, already disassembling your belt… assembly. You turn the tile-walled corner to face those two menacing stalls. The one on the right is the one that lacks the ability to flush air (for god’s fucking sake), and the one on the left has the door issues. You figure that Shit-Storm MUST be aware of the problems with the right-side toilet, so he must have destroyed the one with the jacked-up door. With your pants halfway down your crack, you kick open the right-side door, take one shuffle forward, and are almost immediately brought to the verge of blasting out both ends of your body. Shit Storm has definitely visited the right stall. Man-oh-man, he must have doubled-up on that asphalt this morning. And there it was, in all of its glory, unflushed, nay: unflushable (by any toilet, let alone the one that isn’t even capable of cycling a whole bowl’s worth of water when you flush it), mocking you. Yes, it is laughing at you and your sweaty, forlorn and crinkled brow, as you kick into reverse, step over, and push open the left hand stall.

And there you witness the reason that Shit Storm decided to brave hearing about his turd from strangers on the elevator. It appears that someone emptied approximately 300 ounces of Yoohoo, mixed with what looks like cooked beef, onto the rim-side-back of the toilet/seat, and a goodly amount has been splayed on the floor and wall to your right. Normally, this type of situation would prompt you to simply back up, pull that stupid door shut, wonder what kind of truck-stop you work at, and go crap in the sink. But you are halfway into the stall already, fully committed to dropping your bomb in the next five seconds. You must conquer the Yoohoo meat sauce.

The one thing you have going for you as your pants are thrust to the one clean patch on the tiled floor, is that the water is relatively fresh. That means two things: 1) this fucking toilet can still flush and 2) it fucking did flush because there is no Yoohoo INSIDE it that would no doubt: splash up onto your pink ass when you released the hounds of hell. You count both of these lucky stars, sad as they may be, as you brace yourself to hover above the crime scene. Right arm: against stall wall, propped up on the toilet paper holder. Left arm: against other stall wall, but pointed up, reaching to the top of the wall to avoid touching any of the Yoohoo that is spattered below. Right foot: tending the pants that are practically balled up on the 12x12 island of clean tile in front of you. Left foot: forward, against that goddamned broken-lock, worthless excuse for an inward-swinging stall door of idiocy to keep anyone else from barging in and possibly crapping in your lap or peeing in your face.

And then it begins. What a mighty, mighty relief you feel. The rank smell, the awful sounds, the dripping sweat… all fade from your consciousness as you purge, hovering above the toilet from Trainspotting. A smile graces your face as you complete the mission. Then you delicately place your left foot back into your trousers, release your death grips from the stall walls, re-clothe, and pull open the door to depart.

While washing your hands, you look in the mirror and see that the sweating has stopped, and there is more color in your complexion than there was this morning. You marvel at how much better you feel, and then the door opens. It is your boss. He is apparently tardy for his 9am “meeting with John” but stops briefly to greet you anyway. “You look refreshed! Big night out last night?” You respond, calmly, as you start to realize he is headed for the left stall, “yeah, kind of. Kicked it with some friends, played some pool…” He interrupts, “well that sounds like fun. You still gonna be around for that 4 o’clock meeting with Bloomberg?” You towel your hands dry and head for the door. “Wouldn’t miss it for anything!” You push the door open, and jettison from the inevitable discomfort of witnessing his discovery.

You want to run like an escaped slave, far-far-far away, when you cannot remember flushing that damn toilet….

Again, this is a hypothetical situation, and we’re talking about you. Not me. Not me in any sense. But I do feel much better. Thanks for asking. I look forward to hearing about this, hypothetically, at my next review.

Defending the middle. Finger? Sometimes.

Kudos to those who gave a witness on the ta-ta bar thing. Has anyone else noticed that ever since I brought this up a couple of weeks back, the topic has popped up all over the place (popular media, parental conversations, bar talk, etc…)? Maybe it is just me, or I simply never noticed how often titty bars are discussed in public. Whatever. Thanks for the discourse. That is all I will say on that, for it is a tired subject.

I have a concern that I want to voice. This issue requires much more space than I am willing to dedicate to here, but I feel compelled to throw it out there.

I am concerned about the way those of us who occupy the nation’s political DMZ are being treated. Suddenly, I feel as if the rational middle-ground has been chipped away to the point of minority. The far left, and far right are hogging the entire goddamn scene, and neither are bothering to consider the entire picture. Those of us remaining in the middle become the enemy of both. Very similar to the way that all religious faiths, while happily duking it out between each other, always seem to find a quiet moment together where they can unanimously hate those “vile atheists” for not having the moral wherewithal to choose the least ignorant side of the faith-debate. If atheists were the majority, as the political middle-ground was four years ago on US political scene, this would not be a cause for alarm for atheists. But, atheists have never been the majority and have always lived with harsh ridicule. Now that same lack of temperance is being leveled on those of us who refuse to hate (at least) one side of the political spectrum. I believe this to be utter bullshit, and here’s why.

In the aftermath of a highly opinionated election, there will always be irrational elements who refuse to give up their ridiculous ghosts. These are the same people who get into fist-fights AFTER baseball games. Those of you out there who are still crying about the results of this shitty election (oh the environment will die! Oh, the French will hate us! Oh, we just sound like such a stupid country!), or won’t shut your frothing maw from spewing “man, my boy Bush KILLED those commie liberals sonsabitches! Let’s go shoot at towel-heads and count them tax breaks, YEEEE-HAAAWWW!”… you need to let it go. You need to stop yapping about things which have NOTHING to do with you, your understanding of politics, or your ability to grasp what is actually happening around you. Most of all, you need to shut the fuck up about why some of us are not picking a goddamned side on ANY of the issues based on your crappy half-assed partisan party platform nonsense. Only an ignorant ASS would follow the rhetoric of a political party by the numbers. Politics is a game, and if you aren’t aware of that FACT, and you are “participating”, then you need to be comfortable with being a PAWN, MARK, PROP, HOST, or whatever other unpleasant comparison fits you best.

Meanwhile, there still exists a rational middle-ground where the previous majority used to hang their considerate hats. In the middle, we waffle between parties based on the context of the issues posed to us. Some questions clearly require conservative responses, while others display a need for a more liberal touch. The result is a workable balance which is thoughtfully minded by the middle-majority. We are able to manage this by not buying into any utopian leftist rhetoric or any theologically driven right-wing evangelism. We base our decisions on the information available, and forge our opinions based on our modest beliefs in right and wrong which were molded by our own experiences on this planet. We don’t reach for the stars, and we don’t reach for the heavens. We do our best to moderate all you fucking loon-balls on the fringe without resorting to slitting all your bat-shit nutso throats. This system of middle-moderation worked like a charm (with some minor bumps) for a couple of centuries.

But something went wrong in this past year. The middle bench cleared when the fringes started a brawl on the political playing field. Somehow, the previously even-tempered judgment of the middle got tainted, and it swayed deep left or right. Those of us left to man the middle-ship found ourselves short-handed. On top of that, we are now seen as heretics with no moral fiber, no desire to “do what is right”, or any sense of political responsibility. We are viewed as inferior because we “refuse to take a stand” on the “issues”. Well. I must call bullshit on that opinion. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Without us in the middle, you knuckleheads on the edges would have wiped each other out many moons ago. We insulate you from your own ignorance, and when all is said and done, after you’ve burned everything down and complained about it the entire time, we will return to clean up your mess. The lefties will return to their hemp/windchime construction, the righties will head back to their temple of choice, and the middle majority, freshly reunited, will rebuild what you loon-balls so frivolously destroy.

So go ahead and post your anti-Bush stickers. Go ahead and blast your worthless AM radio kook-talk. Wear a Bill Mahr mask, or don a Limbaugh suit. But you must stop all the heckling of those of us who don’t harbor your hatred. If you wipe us out, you wipe out rational consideration. Without rational consideration, this country will continue the downward spiral the fringes have sent us into. Without the return of the moderate middle, there will be no “reconstruction”. There will be no saving of this lamb. America will suffocate itself, wallowing and mired in its own self-loathing. By forcing us all to “pick a side” when neither side is rational, we are pressing the dagger deeper and deeper into our own back.

***Besides, there are much bigger fish to fry in the world, far beyond each other. We are on the verge of a massive economic eclipse by China. The effects of this will make Bush’s regretful Foreign Policy an easily forgotten footnote in the voluminous annals of “When American Decisions Go Bad.” We’ll be knee deep in petty sibling rivalry when one morning we wake up and no one on the planet cares about us anymore. This will happen in your lifetime, just as it happened to England and France in my Grandfather’s lifetime.***

So let me and my middle-of-the-road ways alone. I do not wish to hate anyone, least of all: you.

I got $20 on it. You?

So. Apparently, titty bars are a rather popular subject of thought amongst us. And, I must say, a pretty good source of debate and strong opinion. I am curious as to WHY others go? And what others believe to be the reason WHY others go.

I shall start with my own reasons for going.

To begin, the “Gentlemen’s Club” is a place of tradition. Much like twice-a-year Catholics to church, I visit them periodically, whenever the tradition calls. Bachelor parties are the most common reason to go. This is done in order to send off the bachelor in the most debaucherous environment allowed by law. It is more ceremonial than it is a necessity, but that is what the tradition calls for, so that is what we bachelors deliver. As the Best Man for a couple of weddings, I am familiar with the inner-workings of these places in reference to bachelor parties, and I can assure you that there is much more ceremony than there is anything else.

Other traditions include:
1) getting fired from a job
2) getting hired for a job
3) getting dumped by a broad
4) friend getting dumped by a broad
5) won the lotto
6) someone else won the lotto next to you in line at HEB
7) becoming a “Made” man in the local mafia
8) Grand opening of your own titty bar

This is just a short list. There are many other traditional reasons to bother with the cash-hungry coke-heads, naked “on stage two”.

Beyond tradition, there is the comfort level a man can attain while there. Only in a boob-joint is it completely acceptable to do all things “manish”. Scratch whatever you want, whenever you want. Fart as much as you please (the girls do too, see previous post), as the baby-powder all over the place covers up any stench. You can stare at a naked woman, in comfort, with the eyes of a deranged psychopath without fearing the authorities… your entry-fee covered your right to covet such sights. All the chairs are plush and inviting. The waitresses bring you more liquor BEFORE your current cup runeth empty. There is some funny dude in the bathroom that will do anything from shine your shoes to change your fucking oil while you pee, and he always tells witty jokes. Last but not least, the food really is not that bad, and it is usually dirt cheap.

So. To sum up my intentions when entering a boob-vendor:

1) Tradition, happily compels me
2) I can do no wrong while there.
3) Everything is designed to comfort my manhood.

Purposes I HAVE NEVER HAD when entering a ta-ta dispenser:

1) Talk to strippers about their lives
2) Have strippers ask me about my life
3) Have strippers act like they enjoy “the real me”
4) Find a girlfriend
5) Find a wife
6) Find a fuck
7) Find a fucking girlfriend that wants to be my wife
8) Score some good drugs
9) Get rid of that pesky $1000 that won’t go away

Now, WHAT are YOUR reasons for going? Or, WHY do you think OTHER people bother going? Hit me up.

Embarrassed BY professionals? Maybe.

Just as a side note on the embarrassment post made two posts earlier:

Yes, I really did fart on that guy’s neck. It was the back of his neck. He was sitting down at the head of a large table, in a small room, and I had to squeeze by between him and a large wooden buffet/hutch. The room was empty when I had first passed through it to get to the restroom, but when I exited the toilet, a fraternity had arrived for some sort of (Klan?) meeting or beer event. The room was full, but it was my only path to get out from the restrooms. I decided to face the hutch while passing him, thereby rubbing my bum along the back of his chair. The tight space between caused me to pull in breath, and as a result my inner air-pressure spiked up and released itself by way of my ass. On to the back of the guy’s neck. It was audible, and it certainly was relieving, but I initially fancied that the frat bro did not register the hit. There was a-lot of noise in that room, so I assumed that my blast would have been muffled by all the talk of date-rape trials and gay-bashing plans. But my friend was trailing me, and just as he passed through my fumes, he yelped “damn man, did you just fart on that dude!?”

At which point, I began to haul ass down the stairs, busted out the front door, and hit the parking lot at a high huff. There was a-lot of yelling involved. Maybe even some searchlights and a gauntlet of barbed wire. It was like a jailbreak. But they would have skipped the prison time and gone straight for a hangin’ I reckon. I got away clean, but that dude’s red neck did not.

Speaking of passing gas in public, I am reminded of one of my myriad of reasons for not liking “gentlemen clubs”. It will take me a minute to come full-circle on that transition (how “gas” and “gentlemen clubs” are related), so sit tight.

Ta-ta bars are a complete waste of money. Sure, some dudes swear by them, and just as I see religion: not my thing, but that’s fine by me (clubs are comparable to church in most respects: costs money, creates family rifts, can ruin a good weekend, the music sucks, and there is a-lot of sitting involved). They are also highly misunderstood by those who do not go. It is easy to assume that within those windowless walls there is free sex in every nook, and it is a big ol’ orgy for high-powered salesmen and square-jawed politicians. But this is not so. In fact, the idea that there is sex everywhere is just plain stupid. It is the “promise” of sex that sells. NOT the sex itself.

Here’s why there is no sex, by example: two guys walk into a strip club, both with $400. Guy 1 sits down and immediately starts having sex with strange women. Guy 2 sits down nearby and for 30 minutes, no one pays a single bit of goddamn attention to him, but there are provocatively dressed women parading themselves past him in a teasing fashion. After thirty minutes is up, a woman walks over to Guy 2 and asks if he “would like some company”. Guy 2 is practically frothing at the mouth, and desperate for some kind of attention, so he says “sure, that’d be great”. She sits down and immediately orders herself a drink. She makes small talk, and then asks Guy 2 some questions to ensure that he has cash. He does, and he practically tells her how much he has. Now she decides how she must spend her time. At $20 every 4-minute song, she calculates that his cash will last him about an hour and a half. She plans to bleed him dry, and force all her drinks on to his tab, which will have to be settled by his credit card. Are you feeling the sex for Guy 2 yet? No? No surprise. Guy 2, drawn in by the “promise” of some sort of experience blinks his eyes, and an hour and a half has passed. She stands up immediately after the end of some shitty Motley Crue song, puts her gear back on, and says “okay sugar, I need to take care of things. I had a really great time with you tonight, but I gotta go.” She then slyly gives Guy 2 a verbal tab of $400 for 1.5 hours worth of “work”, half of which was spent just sitting on his lap talking about her three-year old boy or her plans to attend med school. Guy 1 got his rocks off within the first 5 minutes, would have paid the going rate for such activities (less than $100 I would guess) and split, leaving a mess for someone to clean and a chick that will need some clinic work done on a regular basis (overhead for owner of club).

Which do you think has a bar tab in excess of $200? Who do you think left broke? Who do you think had an enormous case of blue ball, but will not remember that part of the experience when he considers dropping into the establishment in the future? Are you getting it yet? Do you understand now? Is it not completely fucking obvious where the real business is? Can we just go ahead and say that men going to strip clubs is as useless and pointless as women getting a full makeover now? That is to say: expensive, harmless, time-consuming, extravagant, and completely unnecessary.

Enough rant, on to gas story.

So, back in my hazier years, I was at a little strip club in Round Rock called Joy’s. It was a crap hole that had a dick-dancer joint next door called Bad Boys. We knew some of the girls who worked there, so we went every now and again for kicks. One night, while there, I went up to get a dollar dance. For those who do not know, there are two types of dances offered in most strip clubs: The lap/table dance: $20 per song, and the dollar/stage dance: $1 for 15 seconds of devoted attention from on-stage dancer to dudes standing along the edge of the stage. So, I was standing at the edge of the stage, drunk off my ass, waiting for the girl to wander over to me for my 15 seconds. She wandered over, smiled, turned around and got on all fours. Sounds hot, right? Wrong. Keep in mind, while on the stage she is a good three-feet above you. That makes her ass at eye level. You see nothing but butt. No female form really, no curves and supple breasts. No “come hither” stare or gymnastics. Just ass. As if you were hiding in a toilet, just to see butt or something. In all cultures, this is considered foul mockery, and quite rude. Basically, she mooned me, at VERY close range, for 15 seconds. We called this the “damned-ass dance”, and it really sucked to get one, even for a measly dollar. To top off the d.a.d.: while she was thrusting her pimply g-stringed butt in my face, I heard her squeeze a few poots out, in rhythm with the C+C Music Factory bullshit that was playing. Yes, she mooned me, farted in my face, and then had the nerve to request payment with her back still to me, by pulling up the string on her g-string for me to slide the bill underneath.

That must have been karma getting me back for that frat dude’s neck.

Damn you baby powder!

Jibber-Jabber, para tu?

When I jog in the evenings along Town Lake here in Austin, people tend to make eye contact with me. I never had a problem with this, until I realized that they are staring at me because I am wheezing like an asthmatic, and sweating like a coal miner as I pound the trails. So, to help “train” these strangers to stop staring at me, I have started to stick my tongue out at them. Whenever I meet eyes with anyone, I make a silly facial expression. So far, the slobbering, heaving joggers have avoided responding to this training. Fuck. Them. Sideways.

I have a neighbor, somewhere along my street, who will shriek in the middle of the night, for no known reason. I am aware of this banshee because I step out to smoke on my driveway, and my nic session gets nipped and dabbed with the sound of someone performing self-flatulence. It might be a crazy Catholic, shedding their sins in a nightly, medieval routine, but I doubt it. It is probably some crazy woman who can only successfully avoid stabbing her man in the head by going outside to yell at nothing. I wish she would just stab the guy though.

Someone keeps stealing my outdoor lighting. I have these lights that line my driveway, like a runway, which are solar powered. Some of my cretin neighbors have discovered my use of modern technology, and have also discovered that solar powered means: no pesky cords to mess with during theft. Yet they insist on taking them ONE BY ONE. Fuckers. They keep jacking with my driveway symmetry, and it is seriously grinding at my OCD tendencies.

You ever killed a man? You understand what it is like to take the life of another human being? To see the last gasps of animation seep from the vessel of one human’s entire experience? I bet you haven’t. Can you even fathom the theatre of it all? The shaking, the blood, the insistence of life? The way the body appears to refuse being parted from its soul? Yeah, me neither. And it sounds like a pretty shitty thing to experience too.

I really enjoy Raisin Bran. For those “in the know”, you know the joy of stability it brings. I can set a clock to the rhythm it affords my daily schedule. I love you Raisin Bran, even the knock-off versions you have spawned.

I chew my nails a-lot. Sometimes, I will gnaw my little stubs to the quick, without even noticing it. I’ll be working, and periodically lifting my bloody hand to my mouth for a chomping session. Whenever I wash my hair with Head and Shoulders, the chemicals feel weird on my scarred finger-tips. Kinda like they were being boiled, or crushed under a hot car tire. Don’t pretend you can relate to that kind of sensation. You cannot, unless you allow me to chew your fingers to open wounds, and then sauce them in Nizoral until they poof up like five kolaches attached to a human palm. Then we’ll talk.

I do not like pants that fit. For men, pants should be comfortable, and leave a-lot to the female imagination. Women have great imaginations, and we men should not hamper their intellectual strength by handing them the concept on a platter. Besides, guys look like they’re either a redneck, or a sad fellow who has to borrow his little brother’s duds when the pants fit too tight. Hipsters just need to loosen up a bit.

I like Caucasian jokes. I think it is funny to make fun of honkies. I think it is even funnier to make fun of coloreds. And Messican’ts. Those are funny jokes. You know the ones, involving too many people in a car or something like that? Those are funny. Tell me some of those if you have any. I forget how they go. You know what? Never mind. I always forget how they go because I just remembered that I think those jokes are pretty unoriginal and shitty. Keep them to yourself. Hater.

This post has become its own being. I must abandon it before it bleeds me dry. Damn blogger monster. I must be dehydrated. Happy hour should cure that little problem.

Embarrassment is best left to professionals

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine about embarrassment, and that I generally feel resistant to it. Feel free to read my Drink Stories if you disagree.

So I got to thinking on the subject, and decided that without the feeling of embarrassment, an individual shows more potential to be a psychopath. This scared me a bit, so I thought long and hard about times that I have honestly been embarrassed. Luckily, I found a few. Well, four. But that’s a good start along the road to recovery from potential psycopathdom! Don’t you think? Yes.

Things that I have done where I have actually felt some level of embarrassment:

1. Farted on the back of a frat-guy’s neck while “squeezing” by his chair, upstairs at Boar’s Head (now Opal Divine’s). I ran out of that mutha like it was an AIDs factory. I don’t approve of fraternities, but that gives me no right to blow dirt on a man’s jugular. Even if it was an accident. I am not completely sure whom I feel most embarrassed for…

2. Carried out an aerobics routine in the 5th grade, in front of the whole elementary school and faculty.
Those of us in the advanced classes, or Super Outstanding Students (S.O.S – lord help the retards) as we were called, somehow got charged with the duty of entertaining the school by showing off our physical abilities. Even though it was supposed to be our brains which set us apart from the rabid masses of pre-pubescents, the powers-that-be wanted us to showcase a workout routine. We were to set an example for the rest of the school because, just like the youth of today, no self-respecting kid willingly did exercise. We were expected to turn that tide, and convince everyone through a brilliant show of art and physique that staying fit was somehow cool.
Yes, a stage full of sweaty nerds should do just that, neatly. Marketing genius, I tell you. Genius. Why they chose the geeks to do this, I will never understand.
Jane Fonda had some tapes at the time, so we set out to copy her technique, stretch for fucking stretch. Being poor, my family did not have the cheddar to toss at workout clothing, so I had to use my summer cut-offs. In order to ensure maximum flexibility for the rather challenging sets a-la Fonda, those cut-offs had to be cut higher, and higher. Eventually, the cloth pockets could be seen, tongueing out from underneath the frayed denim edge. If my balls had any hair at that time, it would have been seen by all. They were entirely too short for a boy, and it was entirely beyond disappointing that they were my only pair. The end result was beyond gay, totally unnecessary, and the fitness craze did not “catch on” the way our instructors hoped. Face it, nerds DO NOT influence anyone by showcasing talent. They do it by exacting revenge on the population that ignored them throughout their miss-treated lives. Not by sweating and prancing around on stage in daisy-dukes. Fucking irreversible embarrassment.

3. When I was in third grade I used to get chased by this crazy 6th grader at daycare. This fucker was nuts. He ate the sewage-mud on the playground (H-town reprezent with the filth!) and made shanks for fun.
One fine afternoon, he was chasing me around the playground, threatening to puncture my vital organs with a sharpened tree branch, when I saw my mother walk out on to the cement landing by the door. She started up a conversation with the feather-haired Dokken-lover we had for a “counselor”, as I continued to dodge my mud-frothed pursuer. I managed to work the chase around to where my mother was, and hid behind her. As soon as the stick-wielding lunatic closed in on us, I began pointing up at my mom, from under her shadow, yelling “you have to stop chasing me now, my mommy is here and she will protect me!” Me: smiling triumphantly as the future inmate slowed up a bit, reluctantly looking up at my mother. The loon-ball: darting his eyes up and down, between my mother’s face and my own, his grin starting to reappear. My Mother: completely oblivious to her son standing next to her, in her shadow. She continued to talk about absolutely NOTHING while the murderer-in-training reached in, yanked me from my mother’s side, dragged me over to a tree in the corner of the playground, and beat me against the trunk like a rolled-up carpet. I was not afraid of the beating, or his penitentiary knives (they never penetrated the skin anyway, he always picked low-quality sticks). I was embarrassed for my mother when I finally broke free, and the raging bag of hormones she was gabbing with was the first to ask me my reason for crying, while my mother simply asked where I had been “this whole time.” I would have sold my mum for $2, Canadian, right then, to the nearest band of Gypsies. I mean, even the head-banger chick asked... The shame runs deep.

4. Seventh grade, Phys Ed, dodge-ball, in the boys’ locker room. We were split up evenly between guys and girls to make it fair. There was no way, however, to use the same method of “fairness” along the age-line. We had some old-ass 7th graders, with full-beards and kids of their own in the neighboring elementary school. Well, maybe not any children in the neighboring school. Their kids probably went to school wherever their baby’s momma’s grandparents lived. Bygones… Coach passed out balls for the beginning volley, and I caught one! It was yellow, previously recognizable as a Nerf product that had since been chewed to a lumpy-fuzziness, and smelled the way you would expect a hippo of similar size to smell. It was a biohazard, but it was mine. Until the potentially 32-year old classmate next to me decided that my happiness was just too much to take. He started by asking for the ball, which was met by my proud denial. I mean, would he resort to violence, right here in front of the whole class? Over a funky-ass post-Nerf product? Yes. He would. And he did. It came in the form of a right cross that caught me over the mouth. I say “over” because his fist seemed to eclipse half of my face. The impact caused three unfortunate events: 1- I fell backward off the bench, 2- I dropped my stinky ball, and 3- I started to tear-up and looked across the way to see the most popular cheerleader staring right at me, shaking her pony-tailed head. Fuck me. Why couldn’t one of the seemingly endless army of mongoloid half-wits occupying the distant ends of her bench witness my fleecing instead? I never figured out what she was shaking her head at. Embarrassing, either way.

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head.

What about YOU and YOUR embarrassing moments? Whatchu got?

Damn you previously-Nerf products!

Saturday: Gettin' my BOO on!

Party Saturday. Costume thing. Booze, pool, music, peeps off the streets, and disguises for to hide them identities. I LOVE throwing house parties. So much more relaxed than your standard bar or stuffy-assed club. One can really let loose at a house party. It is inviting by design: everyone has something in common with everyone else there, and you’ll more than likely see the same people in the near future. So nothing about it is Strangers-in-a-Hotel-Bar-ish, and no one there is truly able to lie their ass off about anything (a mutual friend will call them on it). Besides, the booze and debauchery are always free at our parties. Un-fucking-beatable.

I really enjoy Djing at parties too. Maybe I enjoy adding to an atmosphere of fun. Perhaps I aim to help people “let go” for a bit. Maybe it is just because I want to control the music. Maybe it is because when I DJ, I avoid drinking/smoking/passing out too much. Maybe it is the power over an environment. Maybe it is the fact that I have been doing it for almost fourteen years and it makes as much sense to me as breathing.

Who knows.

But while I really do enjoy spinning at parties, there are some drawbacks to consider. It is not all fun, some things which routinely occur are downright morale killing (“dude, this music totally sucks. And so do you.”) while other occurrences are simply obnoxious. I’ll let you in on some of what I consider irritating behavior perpetrated against the DJ at your average house party, Anytown, USA.

People fucking with the DJ’s records. People have NO idea what records cost. They think: “oh, that Milli Vanilli is soooooo gay, and you can like, get it off the Interweb for like, free and shit. So, why is such a big deal if I walk up and just start scratching on it?” Errr… because they DON’T MELT THAT WAX ANYMORE. They made X copies back in 1988 and then shut down the press. So, unlike the great digital universe of shitty-sounding MP3s, there is a FIXED number of older vinyl in existence. No more. EVER AGAIN. So, any that are available are valuable to whoever might want them. What one person hears as kitsch, a DJ/collector will properly recognize as a brilliant rarity, which should be cared for and protected. For fucks sake.

Requests for current top-40 music. Yeeeeaaaaaah… turn on the radio if you simply must hear that new Blue 7 Maroon Novemberbox 20 song. Why would a DJ buy it when it is played for free, on seven different stations, all the damn time? Request that caca in ten years, when it will be interesting and nostalgic to hear. Today, it is obnoxious and you know it.

Requests for slow or depressing songs. Sure, everybody enjoys a little Morrissey every now and again. We all have our dark moments. But when you approach the DJ at a party, and give the DJ your pitch: “hey man, did you bring ‘Everybody Hurts’? Or anything Nick Drake,” you are basically saying: “hey DJ, I hate everyone here who is enjoying themselves and I want them to suffer and suck like I do, are you with me?”

People who use the DJ's turntables as their personal tabletop. At every party I have Djed, invariably someone during the course of the night decides that their drink must be set down on one of the turntables. Not usually while it is in use, mind you, but during a break in the mix, when I am absent. Someone simply decides that the trashcan (five feet away) is just too distant a depository for their booze vessel. So, a solo cup of backwash, foam, and perhaps some semi-rotting fruit ends up perched atop my wheels o’ steel. Thanks.

People asking the DJ really vague-ass questions. I believe they do this in an effort to start a rapport with the DJ, trying to be friendly, but failing miserably. They want to ask a meaningful, insightful question, but it just ends up sounding dickish. “You got any good music?” No fucker, I only brought the absolute garbage you’ve been hearing for the past hour and a half. “Is this the only kind of music you brought?” What the hell does that mean? “Kind” of music… eh? “Man”-kind of music? Are they looking for a visual “kind” of music? Here’s a nickel, buy a clue. And my favorite: “You have anything cool to play? I want to hear some cool music.” Don’t we all, you dumbass. Don’t we all.

Oooooohhh… after my little tirade here, this might be the last time I am ever invited to DJ. OH NO!

Anybody want to buy some Technics 1200s, 3-way mixer, and a bunch of extra needles and such? I just might have some for sale…

Damn you Milli Vanilli!

Not ALL dogs go to heaven

But if there is a heaven, then this furry dude gets VIP treatment. (Jesus's Champagne room? Wha?)

THIS IS THE MOST AWESOME DOG. EVER.

And he looks almost exactly like my friend Carol's dog: Indiana (an awesome dog in his own right).

Just wanted to highlight the pooch. He rocks like granite.

Word.

She has arrived, and I am in vent-mode

Here is a good start for this post.

Don’t get me wrong, I am indeed excited that my girlfriend has arrived, and is living with me now. But there are some elements of cohabitation which require some getting used to. I’ve never shared the EXACT same space with any of my previous girlfriends. Sure, we would stay over at each other’s place and co-mingle some items. A special pillow here, a second toothbrush there, some dishware swapping… but nothing too invasive. When neither person has ANYWHERE else to hide from the other, and NOWHERE else readily available to stash their “other” crap, then you have the true article. Then you have something beyond periodic-spending-the-night-with-respite-in-between, or that quasi-couple roommate-ish type of arrangement that young pairs mistakenly label “living together”. If a man and woman have alternate places to live (two rents, abodes, whatever), then they do not “live together”. Rather, they “kick-it at one-another’s crib”. Big difference.

On top of this distinction, I want to make it clear that I believe those couples who moved into a new place together (bought a new house, rented a bigger shared apartment, whatever) will have only a veneer comprehension of my current situation. The versions of compromise are for all intents and purposes: incomparably different. Let me try to explain.

Before my wonderful girlfriend (for those who know her, she IS truly wonderful) moved in (a whole two days ago), I had the run of my place. I called the shots. I owned the thing, and that was that. I decided what went where, and whether or not changes of any sort were in order. I was comfortable with that arrangement (made with myself). And in a very real way, I still am. I wish there was a way to make a woman comfortable in her man’s place without disturbing the relative calm of organization and the peace of arrangement/color therein. But alas, I am fully aware that a guy’s place is just that: his place. As soon as she arrives, it needs to change into: their place. And that requires her to exert as much influence in design/arrangement as would be necessary to make it: her place. This push and pull is not as prevalent when a couple parachutes into a brand new environment together (the majority of compromise and precedent setting will occur at the outset of the move by verbal negotiation, not as a result of turf-war or passive-aggressive maneuvers of the unilateral variety).

So here I am. In the process of making an honest effort to provide an environment in which my girlfriend will feel “at home”, as this is her only place to label as such. And I truly want her to be comfortable, not just to have a “feeling” of comfort. I do not want her feeling like an encroaching visitor, because that is the furthest thing from what she actually is. I invited her into OUR home, and I want that welcome to remain.

That being the case, there are some things that need to be understood. And perhaps in my effort to understand, I can help others who are (will be) in a similar situation. The main part, as it currently stands, is for me to be able to clearly define what matters to me and what matters to her. Healthy compromise can occur after that.

List time. Just a general tacking of things, to help me get the topography of the thing. I’ll make this general, and not necessarily aimed at my girlfriend (although it will all be inspired by her). I refuse to say anything against my lovely lady, but I can vent in a general sort of way. If she ever reads this, she will know what may apply to our situation.

1. The bathroom is hers, and there is no ambiguity about it. If you are allowed to store your own grooming accessories there, then you are “afforded” some slight space. That means: you and your five hygiene necessities are an organizational afterthought, not a pillar of consideration.

2. She wants to repaint the bedroom, and there is no ambiguity about it. If you left the paint the same color it was when you moved in, then this is a given. She is much more sensitive to such things, and will require color enhancement. If you painted it, well then… that’s the problem right there. Get out the brushes and head to Home Depot to color match something.

3. Her couch is better, and there is no ambiguity about it. This is more than likely true. Your couch is somewhat comfortable, sure. But hers has an academic aesthetic to it that yours never had (even when yours was new). Hers has a “style” that is referred to in architectural books. Your couch’s only redeeming qualities are: it reclines; the color hides dirt; it was free. Hers is comfortable AND attractive. Besides, you’ve probably let your stankin’ drunk buddies pass out on yours, and she knows it. Cuddling in the same divot where your sweaty friend passed gas and puked into a trashcan before lulling into a piss-staining coma, simply won’t do for her. Can you blame her? I am tired of typing that there “is no ambiguity about it,” because there NEVER is. Even when things appear negotiable, it should be understood that the fact that they are being discussed means that a decision to the contrary of yours has already been reached (in which case, there is an easy way… and a hard way to deal with any “ambiguity”).

4. She prefers all the dinnerware be both matching and “cute”. Hers happens to be both, while yours is questionable at best. Aside: you will be smart never to question what qualifies as “cute”. Because this is a term of cruel vaguery, chucked in your direction in hopes that you will nibble the bait and become justly informed that everything “hers” is unquestionably “cute”. Your trip to the hospital resulting from an unexpected aneurysm will be your only mulligan for bothering to question the “cuteness” of her things. They are all “cute”, they all match (yours: neither), and they should all be in regular kitchen use. Leave it be before you become a neurological statistic.

5. Your clothes can live outside of the closet. Get used to this, or prepare to inhabit a hall closet (or perhaps a ramshackle construct in the corner of some secret room you have successfully hidden from her). Just pile them in a quiet corner somewhere and move on. Soon, she’ll be picking all that crap for you anyway (and she’ll find a good home for the stuff she buys you). A note concerning clothing bought for you by your woman: all other women will comment at how nice it looks, and will immediately pick up on some strange pheromone signal that your woman stitched into the fabric, warning them to “dig elsewhere, this one is taken. See how he wears whatever I throw at him?”

6. I bet you never knew there were so many contraptions designed to help ease the burden of owning 6,000 pairs of shoes. Oh yeah, that’s a real problem for today’s active ladies. The sorting, indexing, referencing, and locating of a single pair of ivory, bow-tied, strappy-medium-heels can be an arduous task, requiring specialized equipment and database technology. There’s torture-device looking bracket-things that drill on to the back of a door. Some are hangar-based, with crazy tic-tac-toe pockets over every square inch, or the cubby-holed variety so she can view them in their natural pose (upright). Or she’ll just jenga-stack them in the closet with some sort of number-method to catalog their location, perhaps using Polaroid photos of them in “cute” positions (or even ON her feet) to give a visual aid in future shoe-searches, presented in a flip-ready binder.

But you know what? As I type and read what I am typing, it all sounds like a big ol’ load of bullshit from a territorial dude who simply wishes that his woman would approach things with the same level of logic that he does. Of course, that idiot is flawed in several ways. The two main ones being 1) his “logic” is only logical to him and 2) he would no doubt be less interested in a woman who thought about things the way he does.

So this list ends with me deciding to stop being such a baby about the whole thing, and promising myself to make a better effort at seeing the forest for the trees. There is a bigger picture here, and it (luckily) will not be affected by her shoe mongering or the fact that we now have a (“cute”) serving tray, yet no table to serve anything to. These things make her comfortable, and that is what I want more than anything else (even more than a better corner to stack my underwear, or cleaner space behind the toilet to stash my deodorant and razors… kidding! Kind of.).

Damn you “cute” dishware!

I need to make a list...

Of things that I should reference back to, six months from now.

I always have an ever-changing, constantly rotating list of issues, tasks, and goals, churning over and over in my brain. And, just like any other job or project, the items on this list need to have a scheduled time-for-completion. For example: if you want to actually run a marathon, you will need to schedule this "life dream", and do so as soon as possible. It will never be convenient to run a marathon, and it will be next to impossible if "finally get around to it" after your retirement at age 83. So get to scheduling it, if you plan on seeing it happen.

This post is about my own fucking list. I curse the list because it is the purpose, and simultaneously the bane of my existence. It is what drives me. It is what fuels my ambition, and gives reason for my regret. It is the ever-present proof that I am both extremely capable, and fascinatingly lazy. It is the measuring stick I will use when on my death bed, to decide whether or not my life added up to what I wanted it to. It oscillates between prized trophy and "time's up" buzzer. My yin & yang of productive capacity.

On to the goddamn list, as it stands today. No particular order here. Just a simple listing of what needs to happen, with associated completion requirements.

1) make a fucking list that doesn't include crazy shit like: write a novel. What the fuck does that mean? You can't "schedule" that shit, can you? I mean, that's like "scheduling" a painting. You only do that for commissioned pieces for fuck's sake.

2) make a list that DOES NOT include crazy-ass places to vacation to. This just leads to frustration in that you have yet to honestly control all the variables involved in carting yourself (and Ava) around the globe. Too many goddamn variables. Schedule the control of those variables first.

3) Stop making these useless lists, and learn to ignore the need to perpetually rate your current-self against less-wise previous selves. You might live longer that way.

4) Ignore number three, as it is unreasonable to assume that comparison will not lead to some kind of enlightenment concerning oneself.

5) Get a more gas efficient vehicle before the end of May 2005.

Carry on then.

Today: Worst Gas Ever

You don't have to read this. I am just typing it out so that I will have it to laugh at later. When I'm feeling blue... Awww...

So, this past weekend took a serious toll on me. It broke me down. Turned me inside out. Bad food, bad drink, bad sleep, bad smoke, bad brain. I think it has something to do with a subconscious effort on my part, to purge myself before Ava gets here. Well, she mentioned that as a possible reason for my lack of discipline this past weekend, and I thought it a convenient explanation. I fly to get her this Saturday, so it stands to reason that I might blow my shit on my last weekend by my lonesome.

Regardless of the reason(s), Self-Destructo has left my internal system of tubes and shoots for the processing and disposal of food-stuffs all jacked up. I feel like an over-filled balloon in the hands of a rabid eight-year-old boy, who just lets out the air in small-violent-bursts, rapidly flapping the lips of the opening together like a shit-bag wind instrument. Only this balloon has been filled with Agent Orange.

When I break myself into pieces (as I did last weekend), my system pretty much shuts itself down for a few days. Some sort of protest I guess. No budge. So I picked up some bran on the way to work today, because I am a HUGE fan of regularity, and drank two cups of coffee to help speed up the process. The result, is little more than a cattle-prod to that balloon gatekeeper of an eight-year-old: so he's just letting more out, more often than he normally would.

Now there's nothing unfamiliar, within the cubicle world, about the scent of someone else's biscuits cooking. We're all crammed into this egg-crate, one on-top of another, and we all have our own special unpleasantries. One gets used to their neighbors' more unseemly habits (flagrant nose-picking guy, incessant toe-tapping woman, that insipid walrus-looking tart who insists on using her "outdoor" voice when blabbing to her best friend back in Missouri -company phone:company bill- about getting laid the weekend before, the dude who vomits into a trashcan after hearing the walrus gloat, etc...). Being the youngest male in the department, I have gained a reputation for raising hell on school nights. Raising hell, is above all other things, hell on the intestinal tract.

So, my most heinous infraction of the rules of common courtesy is to show up after a long night and immediate blast the whole department with processed booze-humidity. Sometimes, I swear I can actually hear the air conditioner kick up a notch on Monday mornings. They probably change the filters every weekend, just to prepare.

Bygones.

But today is a Tuesday. The cannon was curiously silent on Monday, yesterday... Mt. St. Helens style... and now, the fury that built up during (yet) another practically sleepless night of bloated-belly-rumbling is being exacted upon an unsuspecting department populace. Tuesday is their usual day for rest. But the quivering bowels were gonna have none o' that restin' business. The assault began this morning, thirty minutes after my serving of bran and midway through my second cup o' joe. No formal declaration of war, no warning shots. The thunderous attack started with impressive strength, and it has been a virtual chemical fire in this joint ever since. I have had to get up and walk around the halls, just to create some sort of directed air-flow to pull the stuff away from where I sit. Otherwise, ground zero would be EASY to locate.

Those things will follow you for a good quarter mile. Just so you know.

I've been trekking to different floors, to use other departments' bathrooms, just to give my workmates some sort of respite. But as soon as I return, the relentless assault resumes.

Now I wish I had an air-conditioned chair. Man, the heat is really making my workday unpleasant. Something with an air-cooling system which ran through the seat. Something powered by natural gas perhaps. Better yet: by my own methane. That way it would only cool down when needed.

That should brighten my mood, anytime I feel like I'm sick of this shit. A cooling chair, powered (and necessitated) by my ass dirt is funny. I should continue to laugh at that. When that is no longer funny, then I am too old to find humor in anything.

Bygones.

Mental Inventory: Release...

So, what the hell are we going to tell her? I mean, is there, in all that exists, the design or method to tell your woman what exactly went down? Is there a way to explain the situation so that it does not sound so absolutely idiotic? The truth will never make do here. It was too far beyond ridiculous to bother making the tell-back a petty laundry list of disjointed events, infused with booze, ending with you sleeping in the yard. That would never cut it. So, what the hell are we going to tell her?

She has been through way too much with you already. You have dragged her through the proverbial relationship bog-mud on more occasions than a normal human could possibly stand. Remember that bachelor party where you ended up in Toronto, at five in the morning, three days AFTER the party began, dressed up like the Green Lantern? You were never even a fan of comic books. How the hell did that happen? Your only saving grace was that, unlike the groom: Ben (where did you know him from anyway?), at least your character was male. The outfit was tailored for your physique. It is worth noting though, that outside of the ball-hair protruding from his frontal panty line, Ben looked pretty smart in his get-up (but: did Little Bo Peep wear a t-back?). If only you had intended to land in Toronto, maybe she would never had to come and get you. All the way from Houston.

Who knew the Green Lantern had no pockets within which to properly store identification and cash reserves? How did HE pull it off then? Did he have a knapsack or something? A Super Hero fanny pack perhaps? You do not know, because you never were a fan of comic books. Your mistake, obviously.

But she came and got your silly ass: at the airport, detained for suspicion of terrorism, dressed in green tights, a half empty bottle of absinthe, and a really sad looking hat. She really considered leaving you to the errant judicial process of the Mounties. It was obvious from that look in her eye, which has been a staple of communication between the two of you throughout your relationship’s term (used most frequently when discussing your less-than-adult activities which only seem to occur when you manage your way out of her sight). It is no wonder that you two have a monthly breakup. If there is any wonder at all, it is that she willingly takes you and your antics back. That would have to be the only grand mystery here, the only real mystery beyond what appears to be your persistent ability to 1) place yourself in or 2) invent: the most ridiculous situations which force her to swing in like Tarzan, at the last possible second, to rescue you from your own absurdity (just to drop you off into another situation which you will most assuredly muck-up beyond recognition or comprehension).

Remember when she came and got you from the hospital after you managed to burn three theatre seats to a crisp? When you called to tell her that you were in the hospital, you curiously omitted the part about your ass being burnt to a crisp too. You also took two weeks to explain that you were trying to make yourself laugh by lighting a fart during the previews before watching The Matrix for the third time (that day). You were sitting alone. This was a solitary act. In the back row of a moderately-filled theatre. Much to the dismay of the paramedics, your lighter was leaking butane, and your pants were those oily ones you used to do your weekly “maintenance” on the piece of shit you call an automobile. Without the cautionary aide of strangers (who undoubtedly would have recommended you not light the methane emitting from your anus in public), and without the mental fortitude to refrain from wearing little more than a malatav cocktail rag… you now have permanent, and ever fire-pulsing hemorrhoids.

And as always: she simply gave you that look, brought a blanket to the hospital, and read you the latest issues of Cosmo, People, and Urb magazine while you kept clicking the morphine into your spine. Your arrival home was marked by a tub of Tux medicated pads on the bathroom counter, which you promptly loaded into your bunghole like Tux-shrapnel into your swollen anal-canal-cannon. She watched, and calmly abetted, without judgment. That love must run deep.

But this time will probably be different. The innocence of an ass-bomb gone awry is no match for the depths you sank this time.

Well, maybe you have set a similar precedent. She did not take too well to that whole disaster involving the car battery and your own nephew at your Uncle’s funeral. If it had been a funeral within her family, or it had been your nine year-old nephew who was gripping the leads first, to see who could hold on the longest, the relationship might have ended immediately after she drop kicked you off the parking block in order to break your idiot-induced circuit-of-death. Looking back, your only self-serving immediate concern was that your nephew got out of it without having to beat your time. A bet was a bet, and you felt you took it like a trouper while he just cried like a wet kitten once the blood started coming from your ears. She refused to allow the bet to be completed.

The nervous ticks you still seem to have, which make peeing in public near impossible, can be attributed to that lost bet. For reasons unknown, she is even forgiving of that. She never seems to mind driving you all the way back home between dinner and a movie, just so you can drain your tickled weasel. Christ, what a case you are.

On the subject of peeing… oh the saga… the lore…

a bit before your battle and subsequent loss to the Diehard foe, you managed to pee in her parents’ pool. Three times. Once, from on top of the slide (because you thought no one would be coming outside for a minute, forgetting: 1) that it takes you over a minute to finish 2) the slide faces the back door, and 3) her father was cooking some white fish on the grill which had to be basted and turned really fucking often). The pump for the hose which normally wets the slide surface was dead, and in a moment of idiot-ingenuity, you figured: your urine, the most accessible liquid available from the top rung of the slide ladder, would be as good as any other liquid to wet it down. If you were four instead of twenty four at the time, you may have gotten away with it. But when he walked out that door and saw you standing at the top of the slide, peeing a stream of neon over its sun-chapped surface… anger is too short a word to describe his mood-transformation. If that baster had been a cleaver, you would be a eunuch.

The second time, not but two months later, was a miscalculation involving a highly competitive game of water volleyball, far too much lemonade, and that evil chemical indicator which turns the water purple after contact with human urine (her father powdered the warning system into the standard chemicals after your fountain event on the slide, which had scared his grand children into going to summer camp instead of Grammy and Grampy’s house the following June). You kept playing volleyball long after everyone was well aware that you had tainted the pool. That vicious grape mass was following you like bad karma. Her grandmother was underwater at the time, and had accidentally passed through your cloud while swimming her afternoon laps. “She should have been playing the game anyhow, she kept getting in the way of my returns” you reasoned. You didn’t even help to pull her gasping, limp frame from the pool. Your shoulder shrugging in response to this most obvious faux pas has never been accepted as proper.

Your third urination, being set up exactly the same as the second one (another mere year later), is seen by you as more their mistake than yours. You had shown a propensity to leak when in their pool, and you believe(d) that the indicator chemical should have been done away with as it would never serve as a deterrent to you, but would guarantee that everyone’s afternoon of games in the pool would come to a rather angry end. (It takes up to six hours for that purple haze to completely filter out the system, apparently. Who would have thought?) It was dark by the time the water returned to crystal blue. Chemistry sucks.

But you know what? There are worse things you have done. Truly hurtful things. Activities which transcend your amazing ability for crass indifference to other peoples’ feelings (mainly hers). Like the time, in the heat of an argument over your refusal to have the disposal professionally fixed led to a massive sewage leak in the kitchen, you claimed her father was openly gay. You are the only one capable of seeing this as an acceptable defense for your laziness. True, he did have an extended embrace with that other man at their reunion. But it was a veterans’ reunion, and that stranger saved her father’s life in Viet Nam. And the wet, open-mouthed kiss that you claimed made the whole thing gay in an “open” way was completely fabricated. A lie you stick to, even to this day, as you believe that it made your argument for not getting a licensed plumber to fix the sink: perfectly reasonable in comparison to her father’s (completely fabricated) homo-relations (“right in front of your mom, too!”). Somehow, she sees beyond the callous crap that builds your person.

So here you are. Halfway on the curb, halfway in the flower bed, begging the morning sun to pull back the cool duvet of night. Your wallet has probably been missing long enough for you to have new debt that will eclipse the size of your school loans (damn that pesky fraud protection charge, should’ve kept paying it). She’ll love that. Especially since you’ve been unemployed for the past three months, living off her meager income as a real estate agent. “Keep selling honey! You’re the champ! I’m just going to grab a beer with the fellas.” Your brilliance-void is unparalleled. And you proved that last night when you smashed the glass on the jukebox because you were convinced that they had given the C103 code you thought was for the Rolling Stones to some John Fogerty garbage, only to remember that you had selected both. Unfortunately, you only remembered your fatal selection after the owner and two simian-esque men man-handled you into the back parking lot (don’t worry, lots of folks eat with less than a full set of teeth). You could hear your precious Stones singing “you can’t always get – what you want” as you napped on the concrete… shards of jukebox glass transferred, effortlessly digging their way into your forehead, from your right hand. The dumpster juice puddle you were flattened in will surely help those wounds garner you a first-class third-world infection. You just can’t win, can you?

I know what you’re thinking: “well, if it weren’t for that one cowboy who kept buying rounds of whiskey, I wouldn’t have been so bent. I wouldn’t have been eating pavement in the parking lot, and I wouldn’t have been passed out in the bathroom to see that Mexican fellow break the urinal like a crazed baboon.” But, it is only fair to point out that the cowboy never bought you any shots. You stole them, technically, although you did offer a fair toast to his bride-to-be, and he thought that was funny since he was not getting married. Quite the contrary. He was there to celebrate his “coming out” with close friends and relatives. You were nothing more than a thieving, slobbering, (but entertaining) drunk. And it was YOU who knocked the urinal off the wall after repeatedly kicking it for a flush, ignoring that it was equipped with a motion sensor device. The Mexican fellow was desperately trying to stop the geyser you kicked into existence. He even picked you up out of the two inches of water you were gurgling in so that you wouldn’t drown. They blamed it on the day laborer, and he had yet to gather a strong enough command of the English language to defend himself. An honorable man would have defended him, as he had the common courtesy to save you from drowning in urinal water. But there was no respite for him, falling from your guilty lips. You best hope to never see him again.

But even those errors in judgment, while they are supreme in nature, do not compare to your display of gallactically immense callousness toward your lady today. You don’t remember how you ended up on this curb, do you? That’s a good thing. It might be better to wait until your hangover-induced suicidal episode subsides. Luckily, you have yet to regain full use of your limbs, otherwise you might find something really tall to jump from. Like, say, a slide leading into an empty pool? How about her parents’ empty pool? How about: it isn’t empty anymore due to the rather whiskey-pungent puddle of your piss, which is blemishing the newly refurbished surface as we lay here? That, and the damp, dissolved chemical coating that was supposed to help seal the plaster around the bottom drain. That won’t be working too well now, will it? Neutralized that base real quick, didn’t you?

Yes, the cabby should have taken you to jail right then and there, when halfway to her parent’s house, you told him that you only had $7 to your name. The fare was already at $12, and you were lying about the measly $2 you actually had in your front pocket. You should have noted the missing wallet then. But no, not the belligerent urinator. He could have ended your night of misery right then and there by bringing you to the proper authorities where she would know to come find you in the morning. But no. After he heaved and pulled you out of his cab, threw you into a brick mailbox, and rummaged through the pants on your motionless body… he definitely got that $2, and he must have taken that tuft of hair from the back of your head to settle the remainder of the fare. I don’t recall any other occasion that would have led to a surrender by scalping. He didn’t look Apache. But then again, the Apaches never really scalped by the handfuls. By some accounts, they never scalped at all. But by all accounts here, you received the bad end of a mini-scalping at some point during your bender. Bet it was Masjid who did it.

No, the tears on your left pant leg and the blood caked to your knee were not sustained from the juke box, or the well-within-his-right-to-uproot-your-follicles cabby. Those came courtesy of her parents’ neighbor’s miniature Schnauzer (after you came-to from your sad loss to the brick mailbox, you took a meandering short-cut through the neighborhood on your trek to her parents’ pool: meandering over numerous fences, flower beds, and adjoining back yards. Hell, you almost peed in two other pools, thinking you had found your target (only to realize that there was no slide to make a positive identification). You didn’t even notice the little pant-gnawing bugger until you found it extremely difficult to lift your left leg up into the birdbath, which you thought made a perfect step ladder for hiking the fence. If you hadn’t tipped the bowl of that bath the way you did, your fall might not have been broken by the dog. We’ll let that one slide, as that pooch was excessively noisy, a really shitty guard dog (you got all the way through their yard with it attached to your Dockers), and in reality, every war has collateral damage. Even the wars we wage on ourselves. Christmas will suck a little extra for those strangers as a result.

And that brings us to the here and now. Outside her parents’ home, at the bottom of the driveway, using the curb as a pillow. Yes, that is the early morning sun, punching you in the eyes. You better start walking before you are caught in such close proximity to the string of idiotic misdemeanors from last night. That’s it, groan yourself to a standing position and start… Wait up. Holy shit. Look who is coming our way now. You can’t see straight yet, but that’s her dad coming down the driveway. He looks like he’s in one of his “moods” too. Don’t tell him about the piss, or he’ll go get the baster and reenact a lost episode of OZ.

Okay, here he is… Keep it together.

“Chad. You have to stop doing this to yourself, to us. Three months is enough.”

Tell him to fuck off. He doesn’t understand what it’s like. He doesn’t know how it feels to be so goddamned lost. Tell him to fix this. Tell him to correct the broken justice of it all. Tell him this is all his goddamn fault! Tell him NOW!

“I know Mr. Jameson, I know. It’s just that…”

What!!? No apologies goddamnit! What are you doing to yourself here? You’re crumbling! Everything we’ve worked for is thinning at the seams! Grip this thing and clear it. She is all that makes sense to you, and he is standing between you and your sanity. HE is the one who is locking it all in, not YOU. HE is coveting your precious answers. HE must come correct with an explanation. HE is the…

“She’s gone kid. Forever. Now get up. She’ll never come back, to any of us.”

Jesus. Well, there it is then. The hole that is you, clearly painted in the darkest of hues. Don’t bother holding back now. We’re cocked and chambered. Pull it. Pull it! PULL! IT!

“I still love her so much…”

“I know son, I know. Me too.”

We’ve done enough shouldering. Release… Release… Release…

That’s it. Let it all out. We can grieve now.