I went through the folder I keep all of my aborted entries in. Here are a couple I thought had some promise but just didn’t fit in anywhere. Sort of like me.

6/18/04
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thinking I have a revolutionary idea. I grab the sketchbook I keep by my bed and scribble out some notes, and then excitedly try to go back to sleep, dreaming of the riches soon to follow. In my dreams of riches, I have a cool pickup truck and a small house on the water. Oh, and everything is made of beef jerky.

Some of these ideas have panned out for me, but most of them are a lot like the revelations one has after an evening of slamming Jager bombs and freebasing creamsicles. Super obsessionworthy idea at the time, but not so great in the morning.

Case in point: my idea for a wallet that is shaped like a gun (© 2004 Dusty Scott, all rights reserved, patent pending). My initial thought was that no one would try to mug you if you were obviously packing heat. “Who steals a gun from a guy walking down the street?” ™

Then I remembered that we don’t yet live in a post-apocalyptic hell world where we are violently attacked several times a day. In fact, the gun-shaped wallet would probably get one arrested or killed a few times a week.

“License and registration, please”
“Sure officer, just let me get my walle..”
“FREEZE, SCUMBAG!”
*blam. blam. Bleed. Die.*

I can’t begin to imagine the havoc it would wreak at a bank. Especially if my idea for a pantyhose facial treatment ever gets off the ground.

Now that I think about it, pretty much everywhere you go it is considered bad form to pull out a gun, even if you are just looking for your debit card. I blame the hippies.

Most of my ideas enjoy a similar fate. It doesn’t seem that this one will be met with success either. Of course if people actually think Blue Collar Comedy is funny, anything is possible.

8/22/04
There was a puddle in the parking deck at work that had been sitting there for a while. There are rubber dividers between the concrete slabs on the parking deck, and standing water gives this rubber material the friction coefficient of snot on ice.
The heel of my left foot didn’t even pretend to gain purchase, but instead went flying out in front of me. This sent a message to the rest of my body to flail backwards and bring the right foot under me as soon as possible. As the right foot came swinging in to catch my weight, my size 12 dragged through the puddle at about 45 miles per hour.

In the space of less than a second, my right foot had displaced most of the water in the puddle and deposited it on me. “oomashat” I said quietly in my surprise. I don’t know what that means. I didn’t fall down, but I came pretty close. I first tried to determine if my back had survived, and then was just astonished at how wet I was. I couldn’t have gotten any wetter below the knee if I had been standing in a bathtub. There was water on the back of my shirt, in my hair, on the car I was walking past, and in a spray pattern for about twelve feet in all directions. I was wearing these pants that turn really dark when they get wet, so it looked like I lead a double life as a marine crime fighter but didn’t have time for a costume change after defeating Squidra.

It was then that I noticed the guy behind me who had just seen probably the funniest thing ever. He was clear of the spray, looking at me like “poor bastard. He’s going to be wet for hours.” I said, “It’s okay if you want to laugh. That had to be funny.”

He laughed. Actually laughed a little harder than necessary, if you ask me. That’s what I’m here for.

12/9/04
Last night in the grocery store I was in a really good mood. The kind of good mood where you can’t help but smile. I ran into a former neighbor of mine and she was looking absurdly hot. We talked, and she asked for my phone number so we could get together sometime. The smile grew. As I was rounding the bend to the produce section, I started wondering how many people thought I was smiling because Wham’s hit single “the jitterbug” was playing over the PA. The smile faded slightly to protect my heterosexual image.

I began entertaining myself by walking past the free sample hander outer and taking samples of buffalo chicken without even making eye contact with her. Making a big show of being sneaky, I wondered how many times I could do this before she said something. After my fourth pass, I noticed her counting the samples on the table with her hands. Her hands? Oh fuck. She’s blind. She’s blind and people just saw me taking advantage of her blindness. The smile was gone by now.

I was getting full anyway.

I got home to find my cat sleeping on a half-finished portrait I have been working on for several weeks and need to have completed very soon.

Notice that this in no way resembles a cat bed.

Our relationship instantly went to DEFCON 5. I really had to concentrate on not killing her. I just knew someone would see me trying to hide her broken and bloody body on the way to the dumpster and call an animal rights group on me. From that point it would only be a matter of time before I had several PETA member homicides under my belt. No matter how much that would benefit society, it’s still illegal. Again, I blame the hippies.

I grabbed her in midair and screamed something incoherent in her face. She dropped to the floor and hid under my bed. That cat hasn’t had a pleasurable wakeup experience in several weeks now. Mostly just opening her eyes to raw terror and hauling ass to hide somewhere. She’s probably going to go insane soon.

I checked over the fur-covered portrait for damage. It was smudged in a few places, but I was more worried about the few spots that looked like oil and would cause me to have to start over. Things weren’t looking good for Queasy’s future. Lucky for her I was able to restore the drawing to its former condition.

This morning she actually did wake up to something other than my screams.

Yes, stupid. You can sleep there as long as you want to. Just stay off the fucking artwork or I will end your life.

She lay there purring all morning in the knowledge that she hadn’t gotten her ass kicked yet. I even moved her before I brushed my teeth, where normally I would have just turned on the water to see what happened. I took the picture because yes, I find a cat in a sink quite adorable. I blame the hippies for that, too. Damn hippies.

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