I am still on the fence as to whether I would throw the hardware through the window and smear my feces on the door, or take it inside and set it on the counter and shit on it. And then set it on fire. Or eat every piece of Comcast equipment I have and mail them my shit.

Anyway, this will be a tour-de-force; an epic tale of the culmination of a needlessly expensive product, horrible website usability, inept customer service, and the Scotts – A family who does not like wasting time trying to fix shit we are paying for on a monthly basis.

As such, I’m sure it will draw at least a few readers who think I am overstating, overreacting, or not being fair to Comcast. To those people I would like to make one thing clear-

Fuck you.

I mean, feel free to tell me that I am an asshole, but also be prepared for an immense amount of humiliation at the hands of my keyboard. Trust me – I am better at this than you are. If after reading this you think that I am not justified in my anger, you are wrong. It is that simple.

I guess I shouldn’t oversell it. On with the statement…

It is a fairly well established fact that we are in an economic recession. People are hurting for money. With that in mind, think about a free-market economy where price and service drive sales. Basically if you want a job, you are going to have to provide better service at a lower cost because if you don’t someone else will. I love that about this country. I’m not going to go into the lack of competition in cable television because while I know it is complicit in the problem I am having, I want to keep this relatively simple.

With the present state of the economy, I am constantly amazed that companies refuse to work with paying customers to retain their customership. A friend of mine was signing a rental agreement at Alexan360 (a huge new apartment complex in Atlanta) and they pulled the bait and switch on him – making him pay for the credit check, and then informing him that his rent was almost $100 more per month than they had initially agreed to. He basically said “Listen. That is not what I was told. We agreed on this price (pointing to the shiny brochure it was written on), and if you are going to change that, I will need my $150 credit check fee back.”

Here’s how that conversation should have gone –
“Let me check with a supervisor (if necessary)”
“Okay sir, we will honor that price.”

Or maybe –

“Let me check with my supervisor.”
“Okay sir, we have very strict guidelines on pricing, and I have no idea why you were told that price, but we will be able to offer you a free storage unit for a year/ upgrade an appliance/subsidize your drinking habit/give you free internet access/sing you to sleep at night and fellate you awake every morning. Anything to ensure that $1000 a month does not walk out that door and have its friend mention us in a popular blog with a link to our shitty apartments.”

Good deal. No one walks away pissed, they get their $1000 a month, he gets a place to live, and their anemic 30% capacity is now 30.18%. If they couldn’t honor the price, they should do something else.

Instead, they called him back and essentially said “take it or leave it.”

He left it.

Case in point – Comcast. My wife and I have been customers for several years at $100 a month for Cable, Phone, and Internet. A couple of months ago Comcast sent us a package that would “allow us to continue enjoying television programming on any channel higher than channel twenty”. Hm. I thought that was what the hundy a month was for.

Inside the box were two black boxes about the size of Pandora’s. They each had a power cable and a remote control. The instructions said “These stupid boxes must be plugged into any television you own that does not currently have a digital set top box attached to it. Now you have two more fucking remotes to keep track of. By the way, if you have a DVR plugged into any of these televisions, take it apart and plant flowers in it because it will not work with this little gem – but you’ll still have to pay Tivo $12 a month. Also, it will now take 30 seconds to change the channel and you will see several random channels during this delay that will confuse you and cause you to keep trying to change the channel. We call this ‘The Comcast Customer Suicide Assistance Game’. By the way, if you would like to get rid of these stupid little boxes, we invite you to pay $199 a piece for additional digital set-top boxes that will allow you to watch all of your favorite shows in standard definition. And also an additional $10 a month per box. And a good dry anal fisting, as that what we at Comcast think our customers need.”

So yeah. Eat a dick, Comcast. The fun hasn’t even started yet.

The search for a new provider started the next day. First, let’s scope out the competitive landscape. Fast forward 2 hours and basically no matter what I do if I want to be able to watch television and view pornography on my computer while talking to my dad on the phone, it is $100 a month. Lots of offers for “$39 a month, but that changes to $90 a month after 12 months and then to $900 a month after that, and you have to sign a contract in which you agree to willingly be raped for at least two years, after which we will probably make you pay to return your used equipment or something. We haven’t thought that far ahead.”

To start with, I’d like to suggest to all of these companies to change your strategy to something other than “Piss off your customers – the more loyal they are, the more we charge them.”

Now I need to look at my Comcast bill and see what we are currently enrolled in. Would anyone like to point out where I log in?

Click for full size

Didn’t think so. Pay my bill? Well, I want to look at a bill, so maybe…okay, now I’m logging in. username soandso…klackity smackety….password…clickeroo…

And I get this screen.

Click for full size

Let’s take a look at this. My goddamn CAT knows that if you ask for something on a web page, you’d better offer someplace for the input. The only option is to make a payment. “Yeah. We got nothing for you because of another in a long line of new federal regulations (by the way, does anyone actually think this is a good direction for this country?), but we’d love for you to pay us!”

Diabolically, I was forced to click the pay now button. At this point, they amazingly don’t give a shit about the security they are working so hard to protect. I was taken to a page where I could choose from any of fifty ways to give them money, but no way could I see my bill.

Assuming I ever find a place to input my PIN, I should probably know what my PIN is. Since Sara set it up, I asked her, and she said she couldn’t log in either so she went the route of the helpful online chat agent.

Suffice it to say the Customer Service [sic] agent informed Sara that Comcast had assigned her a user name without telling her. They had also assigned a PIN that they emailed us four years ago and had never been needed prior to today. She needed to verify the PIN, but could not do so unless Sara left work and came home, stopping to buy a telephone that plugs into the wall, plugged it into the wall, and then had Comcast call her on a number that we don’t even know because we only use the land line for the security system. By the way, they can call between 10 am and 7 pm.

The alternative? Mail it to us. Apparently the most foolproof, high security way to transmit information is to write it on a piece of paper and then have it transported across country via a series of trucks, vans, and ex-cons in blue uniforms who hopefully put it in a 20 Gauge aluminum box with no lock at the end of your driveway. I bet you thought it would be “over a secure internet connection”, didn’t you?

A week later, we get the holy goddamn grail of numbers, our security PIN. It is 8515, in case you were wondering. Please log into our account and do whatever you want if we still have an account by the time I post this. Change our subscription, call support, whatever you want. If it wastes Comcast’s time and money, please go sick.

So now that I have the number, all is good to go. Simply log in and…

click it.

Here is what the SmartZone Communication toolbar enables these power users to do –
Attach cute smileyfaces to stupid emails about your cats.
Create a custom signature in a green script font with a bible verse in it and an animated butterfly with glitter spraying out of its ass.
Store and organize your photos because you are unaware of the existence of DVDs or the hard drive in your computer
Make a stupid photo album with a Jack Johnson song in the background (be sure and set transitions to “random” in case you have any friends left who don’t want to kick your ass).
Keep track of the list of “friends” you can forward shit to daily.
And many other things that will erase any doubt that you are retarded.

Anyway, where do I go from here. Maybe “account and bill” has a place I can update my account information.
Kuh-lik.

I posted this one really small to make it difficult. JUST KIDDING! CLICK IT!

White hot rage is all I can feel. I am left with but one choice –

“Thank you for calling Comcast. Our menu options have changed, so please listen to all options before dispensing turkey baster full of ammonia into your pee hole just to distract you from what will be an agonizing phone call.”

Existing customers press 1.
-boop-
Please enter the phone number on the account
-beepboopbopboopbeepboopbip-
“we’re sorry, that number is not associated with an account. Please enter the phone number we secretly assigned you when we installed that shitty modem. The number you have never used.”
(me hitting the pound key a bunch of times as if it is my cellphone’s fault)
“main menu – existing customers press one, if you do not experience enough daily rage and would like to join Comcast, press 2. Por favor espanol pinata, marzipam numero tres. All other questions, press 4.
-4-
For trouble with your ser-
-beep-
Please make a valid entry to continue. For trouble with your service, press 1. For
-1-
I’m sorry. I am a digital cunt without a brain. You must make a valid entry to continue. For trouble with your service, press 1. For sales, press 2
okay…-2-
I’m sorry, you must make a valid entry. Goodbye.

The white hot rage changed to something else. I mean something at a genetic level – a man who never thought he would be was now capable of taking another’s life. Hell, if I had a person to blame, it’d be easier in a way, but no, companies like Comcast have created this accountability-free behemoth and the only person I can unload on is some poor college fuck who didn’t sign up for a dose of me this early in the morning.

With my last fiber of self control, I dialed 1.800.COMCAST once again. Using a few tricks I learned from friends who worked at customer support, I circumvented the automated whore and got to a sales guy.

“Thank you for choosing Comcast. This is Andy. How can I help you?”
“Well, Andy, let me start by saying that I am about as pissed off right now as a human can get without being hospitalized. I know you did not cause this problem yourself, so I will try my best to maintain with you, but be assured that I am very close to losing my shit completely and for good.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir, hopefully we can fix this problem. Can I get your phone number?”
“No. I entered it in the website 5 times and it doesn’t like it.”
“hmm…what about the login information?”
“Username God of Thunder (all one word) password I will rape your mouth if you don’t get this fixed (all one word, no apostrophe)”
-klikketyklik-
“okay sir, for security purposes can I verify your address?”
“123 Asskick Avenue, Atlanta, Ga 30308”
“Alrighty – our records show you are a customer in good standing, and you attempted to log on this morning. Was it problems with the website?”
“Yes, oh god yes, Andy. Like you said, we pay you guys what I consider absurd money every month, and in your defense, the cable and phone service has not had many issues, but now we want to simply view our bill to see what we are paying for and it is impossible. I mean, I have four goddamned cable boxes that are about to become a smoking pile of melted plastic on the-”
“Sir, please don’t use profanity.”
“Andy?”
“Yes, Mr. Scott?”
“Now is not the best time to tell me what to do. I am the angriest person you have ever spoken to, and I’m really doing my very best not to physically explode into some kind of supernova, but if you can’t take this level of intensity, please escalate this case to your boss.”
“Please hold, sir”

“Yes, Mr. Scott? This is Mark. Can I help you?” came a booming voice wrongly under the impression that I would be intimidated by its boomyness.
“I sure hope so, Mark. I want to look at my bill.”
“Are you currently at a computer?”
“Yes, but if I log in and see the dead end screen again I fear for my health and the health of others. How about you do it.”
So Mark tries and gets the same screen. No to be derailed, he says “Oh. You went to Comcast.com instead of Comcast.net.”
“I’m sorry – can I interject something real quick? Look at that screen. How are you not getting millions of calls about that?”
“Haha, oh we are – we’ve had sev-”
“Okay, is it really cheaper to pay an army of support staff to answer the same question or to just create an input field on that page? That was rhetorical, of course, but surely you see my point.”
“Yes, sir, I do. But if you go to Comcast.net…”

Click

“Okay. I’m there. As long as we’re on the subject, comcast.net has precisely zero comcast branding on it and does not look anything like a part of your horrible organization. It is just a collection of headlines for stupid people who give a damn about lady Gaga’s Bikini. If I saw this page I would not be quick to enter any kind of personal information. In fact, this page is probably what terrorists look at if they start to forget why they hate America.”

“Well, that’s what we have right now. To get to your account information…if you go over to the right about ¼ of the way down, you’ll see an icon that says ‘email’. Just below that is a tiny link that says ‘account links’. Click on that and in the second column of the menu is another link that says SmartManager. Click that and it will take you to your account.”
“Really Mark? This is the website of the world’s largest ISP? I think if you made the link pop out from under the period after ‘all rights reserved’ if you clicked three times and named it something in Cuneiform it might be more difficult to find. You guys need an interface guy. This is really the wors- Holy fucking mother of fuck, I am going to burst into a fountain of boiling blood.”

you know what to do.

“Mr. Scott, we do not allow cursing on these calls. If…”
“ARE YOU SERIOUS? I WANT TO SEE MY BILL. IS COMCAST TELLING ME I HAVE TO UPGRADE MY SERVICE TO DO THIS? BECAUSE IF THEY ARE, OOOOHhhh dear sweet baby jesus give me your baby strength…”
“No, sir…no. You have high speed already. Just log in using your password -”

Yes, this one too.

“MOTHERFAARRGGGHH! ITS THE SAME FUCKING PIN SCREEN WITH NO INPUT AREA FOR THE PIN. DO NOT TELL ME TO STOP CURSING, EITHER. IT IS HOW I EXPRESS MYSELF. YOU AND MY MOM CAN GET TOGETHER AND DISAPPROVE AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE.”
“Please calm down, sir. I-”
“Listen Mark. My anger is only directed at you because you happen to be the one on the other end of the line. I’m mad at Comcast, and this is as calm as I’m getting until this is resolved. I have an account in good standing and I want to see a copy of my bill. I am going to hang up now and I want an email TODAY with either a Copy of my bill and an explanation of what I am currently paying for, or the necessary account login information so I can get it myself. When I have that, I will be calling back to close this account and doing whatever I can to keep others from signing up.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I understand your frustration and I will do my best to get this resolved. Please remember that the survey you will be asked to take at the end of this call is in reference to my service and not the Comcast company in general.”
“I know. You have been professional. I guess your job is like being Muhammad Ali’s jump rope trainer. Thanks for your help all the same.”

Comcast, you need to get your shit together like Mexico needs to get its shit together. Yes it is that bad.

My wife and I have collectively spent more than 2 days over the past week trying to view a bill. Not trying to order equipment, not trying to build a custom channel lineup consisting only of The History Channel, National Geographic, The Military Channel, The Food Network, and a live feed from the Hubble telescope (although if you offered that I would reconsider my stance). What we are trying to do is very very simple and it has become the loss of at least one customer as well as many future customers as this blog is read and I personally spread the word about how they are better off with any other company.

Still waiting on that email.

I need to take a few minutes and be honest about my self-image. Oh boy, Dusty is going to write about himself – woohoo. Unusual.

Listen, I’d write about you, but I don’t know you so I’d have to make everything up and no matter how complimentary I tried to be I would eventually offend you. Let’s face it; this whole thing would be boring if I didn’t offend someone. I have to admit the radio show has been fun because I get to split up the responsibility of finding something to say. We’ve had some callers, but I’d like to have more. As a favor to me – those of you who have enjoyed or tolerated my writing for 8 years now and learned pretty much everything you don’t want to know about me (and my neighbors), do me a solid and call the show sometime. I bet you’re more interesting than I am anyway.

Now, here’s how that is sort of related to my latest struggle (the fact that I will ask folks to do something and no one will). Which isn’t really a struggle as it seems to be a lifelong affliction. By the way, I am thinking about selling advertising on this blog, and if this entry doesn’t chase away any hope I had of selling ads, I’ll be a-fucking-mazed.

It may come as a shock to you that I am fairly opinionated. I’ll wait for you to get back in the chair out of which you no doubt just fell. For instance, as I type, Openoffice Writer has defaulted to Times New Roman 12 point. I do not like serif fonts, and 10 point is plenty. I like Openoffice.org because it is free. I donated $50 to them because they saved me $200 over Microsoft word. I will donate more if and when I have it.

What you may not know is that I consider my opinions to be my opinions and nothing more. I do believe that there are actual black and white facts in this world as well. For instance, food cooked on charcoal tastes better than food cooked on propane. That single fact is the only one I need to know. I cook food so that it will taste good, ergo I use natural lump charcoal and no lighter fluid. My grill has a small Coleman propane canister that lights the coals; I can have it at 400 degrees in 6 minutes and hold it within 10 degrees of any temperature all damn day.

People always tell me that they would cook with charcoal, but it takes too long and is “too messy”. Propane is more convenient. People also say Atlanta has horrible traffic. Atlanta’s horrible traffic is really only experienced by the throngs who commute into and out of the city every day. If you live in the city, you’ll find traffic is better than almost any suburb seven days a week. I don’t think people who grill with gas are wrong or stupid or unfit for the art or anything else. They probably just haven’t cooked with coals very much. My final point about grilling is that if you are going for convenience, why exactly are you cooking on a grill at all? Use the microwave. Hell, I don’t really give a shit how you cook your food. I cook mine to taste good.

Watch the world champion grilling or barbecue competitions. You see any propane? ‘Nuff said.

I have a similar debate with my friends about cars. I have the perfect car for me – a Honda Accord V6 6-speed The only fault it has is that it is front wheel drive and handles very oddly when accelerating hard around corners. It’s called oversteer or torque steer or something. When I bought it, several friends said “Why did you get the coupe? Are you a single girl? Men drive 4-door cars.”

The coupe is Lighter (fact)
Lighter means faster (fact)
The 6-speed coupe gets better mileage (fact)
The coupe looks better (opinion)
I do not like driving people around or helping people move(fact)
I can get an absurd amount of cargo in it by folding the seats down (opinion based on my definition of absurd… and cargo.)
The coupe costs less (fact, except for the part where the manual transmission is nearly impossible to find and made it cost more)

So in my mind, why would I want the sedan? Anyway, this led to our next point of contention, the manual transmission. It is a fact that if you like (and know how) to drive, and you want your car to perform the way it was designed to perform, you had better be shifting by hand. Manual transmissions also last longer and get better mileage (I know, your uncle had a manual transmission that he had to replace every three weeks. There are exceptions to everything). Again, I don’t think people who drive automatic transmissions are stupid. However, if you buy a sports car with 250-300hp and have an automatic transmission, we are back to the same mindset that made me wonder why you are grilling if you are after convenience. It’s like saying “I am driving from Atlanta to Washington DC in my dad’s Porsche because I will get there faster.” if speed is the basis of your decision, might I suggest an airplane? Probably cheaper too.

So yes, I am opinionated. I like to think that these opinions are based on careful consideration, observation, and a collection of facts. That does not mean you need to share my opinion, but my opinions do have some credibility, like it or not.

My dislike of Cilantro notwithstanding, I suppose. I just think it tastes bad and is way overused.

When a trustworthy person knows more about a subject than I do, I listen to that person; if my dad said that wearing a certain brand of pants would make me grease every landing and never screw up a radio call in an airplane, I’d buy the pants. Even if it doesn’t make sense that pants could effect my flying ability, my dad has spent more hours in airplanes than in cars, so I’d spend $60 and check it out. Worst case scenario – I have a new pair of pants.

This is where I get to the part about something being wrong with how people perceive me…or the way I communicate…or something. I once had a guy send me an email saying that my art website had inspired him to start drawing again. He asked what materials I use, and I told him in a very long detailed email. He wrote back a few days later and sent me a picture of his stash.

Nothing like what I said. Nothing particularly wrong with it, but I asked “Did they not carry the Pitt oil based Pencils? Design Ebony is good (I used them for years), but very soft and filled with grains and stuff. Canson does make better paper, but it is harder to find than Strathmore.”

“Yeah, they had all of it, but the lady who worked there said Ebony was better.”
“Is the lady an artist?”
“No, Her husband owns the place and he is a painter.”

So he took the advice of the wife of a guy who doesn’t even use pencils over the advice of a guy who goes through hundreds of them a year. Yes, I do take it personally – I don’t think the guy is a dick for not listening to me – this scenario happens to me all the damn time and I am always bewildered. Shortly after I bought my first house I had a friend tell me he was about to buy and asked if I knew a good realtor. I recommended Justin Seeby – probably the most knowledgeable realtor in the city of Atlanta and a friend of mine for years. I made a personal introduction and the guy used another realtor. He ended up buying a place that had roof problems that eventually cost him over $6,000.00. Problems that Justin knew about before he bought it.

Dubbleyou tee eff? I don’t claim to know everything, but I’m not offering my help to try and screw anyone, either. What really pissed me off about that case was when I overheard that friend telling a group of people “Dusty wants everybody to buy houses from his buddy…probably gets a kickback or something.”

Fuck. You. That part was a knee to the nuts – do my friends really think I am that sleazy? I used to think I was the most cynical person on earth, but do people not even trust their friends anymore?

To date, I have never been paid to endorse anything, including what I am about to tell you. I say these things because I like the product and I think you will enjoy it. Also, to my friends who are reading this – this is not a slam against you. I’m not mad at any of you for not doing something on my suggestion. Most of you who didn’t listen would have been better off if you did, and I am trying to figure out what it is about me that makes people insist on doing the opposite of what I suggest.

I bought a Mangrate for my dad for father’s day. Partly because he is impossible to buy for, and partly because I know he likes to cook outside. Mangrate is a cast-iron grate that goes on top of (or replaces) the crappy thin steel or powdercoated grate that comes with your grill. Most grills cook by shooting hot air past your steak, which is fine, but not the best way to get a juicy tasty steak. Using a huge hunk of hot cast-iron like the Mangrate ensures that the meat is being cooked by the heat from the metal. This ensures you get more of those caramelized char marks that make meat delicious and also helps prevent drying out and flare ups. I have used it and it works. They have also sold tens of thousands of them, so that has to count for something.

Mangrate then sent me an offer – “Send your friends this link and if they order one, we’ll send you one for free.” I sent the offer to my friends and said I would pay for half of their order if they used the link. That way we each get one for half price. That’s $30 each. Just do me a favor. I want one, I cook 5 meals a day on the grill, you (should) know I know what I am talking about, and the very worst that happens is your food tastes better and you have a conversation piece.

I know it’s not the $30. My friends all have jobs and love gadgets. And I am totally absolutely fine with it if they just don’t want one. I just figured out of 20 people I know who love to grill and love toys, at least one would think it was a good deal. The only conclusion I can arrive at is that either they think I am full of shit or I am involved in some kind of marketing scheme. Both of these scenarios make me think that my friends have a low opinion of me, so I have to believe that it is something about me.

It’s not just about this example, either. Mangrate just happens to be the latest in a long, long line…

Fishing
“I’ve never fished before and you have fished more often than you have peed. What should I use, Dusty?”

“On this lake this time of year, use a popper or something else on the top – bright colors. My tacklebox is your tacklebox.”

(blur pan to dudeman running a hook through a chicken McNugget and throwing it straight to the bottom of the lake)

“My grampa said this was the best way to catch catfish.”

“Why would you want to catch a catfi- wait, there aren’t any catfish in this lake…and the regulations are artificial bait only…nevermind. I hope you get a ticket.”

Flying
“Hey Dusty – what kind of fuel does this plane take?”

“We’re doing ground school tomorrow. Jet-A. It’s written next to the gas cap.”

(Spin zoom, Batman style – fuel truck pulls up with “100LL” written on the side. Wrong kind of fuel if you want the airplane to stay in the sky where it belongs. I come running out to my student waving my arms like a maniac.)

“100LL? what are you doing?”

“The guy in the office said it takes avgas.”

“Really? The guy who has never seen this airplane in his life? That guy? The guy who is not your flight instructor?”

Design
“I really like the fluffy logo for our new widget line. What do you think, designer named Dusty that I am paying to understand this stuff and advise me?”

“That is definitely one of my top five.”

“Well, You’re the designer, so tell me which one you like.”

(fade to musical montage set to the Go West hit “King of Wishful Thinking” where I am giving a ten page dissertaion, pointing to white boards with equations, marketing research, font analysis, color study, blah blah blah, ending with me saying, “And that is why the script logo is the best choice”)

“Okay. We’re going with the fluffy logo.”

*crestfallen bewilderment*

So for the next two weeks I’m doing all of the artwork using the fluffy logo because at the end of the day I am not really a designer, but merely an interface between graphic design software and those who do not know how to use it.

And then the phone call (happened just yesterday) – Hey Dusty, the board submitted your logo ideas to the marketing firm they have on retainer and they picked a different logo. They decided on the script one.

Smash cut – dance sequence – Gloating my ass off to the Karate Kid hit “You’re the Best Around” Cracking open a cold beer, walking around pumping my fist, and laughing to myself every time I see the logo on my screen, knowing that the next logo design will go exactly as this one did and piss me off just as much.

All true stories, with no sign of slowing down.

Screw this pity party shit. I usually don’t beat myself up over this stuff, but it just happens way too often for me not to ask myself if I need to change something.

Go buy a Mangrate if you want one. I don’t get one for free. I don’t get any money. It is just a good product. www.mangrate.com

The other day the exterminator came over to kill our bugs. This house was empty for a year or so before we moved in and we have dozens of squatters, mostly in the basement. One is a huge black widow that lives next to Sara’s car. She has to be killed. And then we’ll get to the spider problem AHAHAHAAHAHAHA hh… lol? roflmosa?

Anyway, Mr Terminix came by. His first name was Vermon. No lie – I have his bidness card on the fridge. I didn’t make a joke because I was sure he had heard all of them. Plus he had three gallons of nerve agent strapped to his back. He asked where the biggest problem was. I pointed to the cat. He laughed a little harder than necessary. Me and Vermon got along fine.

So Vermon is in the basement spritzing things, and I am working dilgently on facial tissue package design, when suddenly I had the kind of bathroom attack you may be familiar with if you are not a regular coffee drinker and you have, say, two and a half cups.

My fortress of soliturd is the basement bathroom. Low traffic, cool temperatures, good fartfan, no one can hear you scream, etc. Since the basement was currently occupied I scampered up to my second choice – the guest bathroom – and unleashed hell. Predictably there were 3 inches of toilet paper left on the roll. No biggie, I work for a toilet paper company and we have tons of it. Right under here-

Fury.

The cabinet had been filled with hundreds of bottles of whatever the fuck girls use to make themselves soft and fragrant. Keep in mind that the master bathroom has two sinks, each with a cabinet beneath them, and both are also filled with products like “silkwood extract microbead exfoliating taintscrub” and “Jasmine vanilla toasted sugar brownie souffle with a brandy cream reduction kneepit moisturizer” it was so full that three bottles actually came rolling out on the floor, just like my eyes were about to due to the increase in blood pressure. No toilet paper in the bathroom. Even more agonizing was the fact that the last place I recalled seeing it was the laundry room. I have half a mind to shit in the washing machine, but it is a front loader.

Before I go on, I need to illustrate a concept. The concept of the temporal window. As you are approaching a traffic signal, you know based on your speed and road conditions when would be the worst time for the light to turn yellow. Anxiety builds as you approach the hot zone, and leaves as you get close enough that you can make it through.

Pulling my pants up was not an option for reasons I would rather not describe. I had to walk down the hallway to the laundry room, pants on ankles, grab the toilet paper, and hobble back. There is a stranger in my house, and I’m not sure where he is at this point.

Enter the temporal window concept. If he starts coming up the stairs at a certain point, I will have a lot of decisions to make and not much time or agility. Luckily he didn’t come up the stairs and I was fine. The end.

Of course not. Could anything be that simple? Exactly at the time I was furthest away from a bathroom, grabbing a roll from the shelf in the laundry room (actually a closet that faces the top of the stairs), I hear him coming up the stairs. Not starting at the bottom, either. He was halfway up and had stopped presumably to spray something. He was about three steps away from turning the corner on unimaginable horror.

“Cockfaggot jewskimo”, I said under my breath and lunged toward the bedroom. My belt got caught under the door to the laundry room, and gravity made me its bitch. It all went into slow motion – the roll of toilet paper flew from my hand, hit the corner of the bed, and unrolled its way into the master bathroom. I landed like a bag of sand, mostly inside the door, and my extensive breakdance training instinctively took over. With your ankles tied together, sometimes the fastest way from point a to point b is the inchworm.

“Mr. Scott?” Vermon said, “Are you okay?”
I didn’t even look back. I was using every ounce of my being to move somewhere with a door. All I could see was carpet, tile, sink. Carpet, tile, sink…Come on, Dbag, remember what Grand Master Sugarpop told you… “Forget you have bones in your body and feces probably running down your thigh. Focus…”

I got into the bathroom and shut the door just as I saw his head poke into the room. “Are you up here?”

“Uhh yeah – I’m…ahhh…out in a second.”

And then realized I hadn’t flushed the toilet down the hall. Pretty sure that’s a real delight to behold. There was also still some toilet paper on the floor outside the door where I had inchwormed over it.

“Make sure you get the closet in the corner – I think I saw a wolverine in there.”

Good thinking, D. Bought some time. Now get cleaned up and flush the toilet.

I came out of the bathroom clearly winded and relieved, so I can only guess what conclusion he came to. He will never know how hard I worked to protect him.

I know he’s too cool to take the time to honk his own horn about his accomplishment. In fact, he’s always been the one that has kept me from reaching escape douchelocity – quietly reminding me that if I ever make Captain I probably shouldn’t have four bars embroidered on the shoulders of every shirt I own… And yes, in the macro scale of things (if you are captain of the space shuttle or whatever) you might see his first upgrade as minor, but I know how many thousands of hours of studying, frustration, nervous checkrides, “holy shit what was that?” moments, and tiny paychecks it has taken for me just to reach my pathetic place in flydom. Trust me, it is no small feat to stick with it as long as he has, and I’m proud of him.

So way to go to the latest in a line of Captain Scotts. I’m looking forward to being your FO sometime.

Second, I want to thank everybody who listened and participated in the radio show last week. The turnout was impressive (to me). It seems that (too) many people have a story like my neighbor does, and I’ll see if he wants to come on the show again as the situation develops so we can all dig into his personal life…wow. I wonder if he knew what he was getting into when we met and eventually figured out, “Oh yeah – a friend of mine sent me your blog about three years ago. That’s funny stuff.”

On with the story at hand.

I pretty much can’t/don’t want to do anything unless it is making me money or making me laugh. The lawnmower and I need to have a conversation about its sense of humor, because no one around here is paying me for shit.

I also have a condo I used to live in and have been renting it out for the past few years. It doesn’t make me money. It doesn’t cost me money, but it also doesn’t make me laugh. Especially when I go to fix something (something difficult, like changing the filter on the HVAC) and find that the occupants have a damn dog. That’s why I keep antifreeze in my trunk. Kidney failure – now that is hilarious. Most of the renters have been awesome, though. The latest ones have a dog (one that they told me about in advance and I agreed to), and I found two things out – Rats live everywhere, and their favorite food is dog food.

God bless the tenants for their handling of the situation, though. They didn’t get all demandy and threaten to sue me for unlivable conditions as I have read horror stories about. They just said “We’re staying at my parents’ house for the weekend. Is there any way you can get in there and take care of it”

Reasonable, calm requests are met with very timely responses. A freakout and threatened lawsuit may have been met with more rats. Lab rats with no hair and human body parts growing out of their backs.

I was there within the hour doing a preemptive strike with traps, expandable foam, a saw, and a bunch of scrap hardwood. I patched everything I could find, beat the shit out of a few with pieces of wood, and scheduled an exterminator to come the next day. Exterminators are weird and they have to carry guns by law. This one showed me where they were getting in and put some kind of super foam in the hole. He said the stuff I was putting in there is like candy to them and his stuff dried super hard and tasted bad to the rats. Then he told me a story about treating a girl’s house and having a big dildo fall out of the suspended ceiling and land on his head.

He also put these bait traps around that rats love. I asked him roughly how many dead rats I would be exhuming from the interior walls of my condo before this fun game was over. Here’s where it gets awesome. The bait dehydrates the rats and they go looking for a water source. Then they die outside 99% of the time. Yay for animal cruelty.

No, I don’t feel sorry for the fucking rats. I don’t go into their house and leave little plague-ridden turds and muddy footprints all over the joint. If I did, I’d expect to die of thirst.

Two weeks later at the follow up visit, the rats had chewed right through his nasty black foam and were happily chowing down on Alpo. So we put wire mesh
over the hole and the place has been rat free for over a month.

What did I learn? No dogs in the condo. It is now quite clear in the craigslist ad. The place is available in August. Rent it.*

Speaking of Craigslist, Sara and I are trying to get rid of a bunch of stuff. The only way I can motivate myself to post ads is to write interesting (if untrue) stories about my items. To date I have sold a Television that once belonged to Jesus’s brother Steve Christ, a bunch of watercolor supplies and paint colors that included Ox ass orange, arson brown, and Ghanarrhea (named for the country, not the disease). A couple of years ago I sold two bar stools under the premise that one of them was haunted by the spirit of a fish I had that jumped out of its little tank and expired on the leg of the bar stool. It must suck being an animal that can just stick to any surface it touches and eventually glue itself there. Being unable to scream for help is just another kick in the guppy nuts from God.

One interested buyer asked if I could confirm it was haunted, and how. I told her that with no moving parts or creepy areas, a bar stool is completely unable to manifest its hauntedness. She wrote back and asked me if I wanted to go out to dinner with her.

“I’d love to go to dinner with you, but my girlfriend [Sara] isn’t too fond of the idea. She says I can still sell you the bar stools, though.”

Who the hell is Ocho Cinco? I just heard the name on TV and I have to say that is the worst nickname in history. Eight Five? That’s your nickname? I’m assuming he’s an athlete, as they tend to be narcissistic enough to coin their own nicknames while at the same time not being super bright in a creative sense.
Another thing I can’t quite grasp is the prices on craigslist. The only place you can get shit cheaper is a garage sale. But it still seems like everybody wants to save a dollar. And I mean literally a single dollar.

Maybe it’s me who is wrong about this. I see the value in refinancing your house to save $50 or $200 a month. I see the value in buying 40 chicken breasts at a time to save $15. For some reason I just think if I am buying some guy’s old vacuum for $20, I don’t see the point in asking for a discount. I think it is because in my lifetime I have bought 2 vacuums and I may buy 1 more before Obama makes everything perfect and no one even has to do their own housework anymore.
So a lifetime savings of $12 is not worth the calories burned.

A couple of years ago I stood and watched a lady at a garage sale doing her damnedest to get the very best deal possible on a Sony Walkman. The old yellow ones that are about the size and weight of a bible, play cassette tapes AND have an FM radio. It was marked at $3, which falls squarely in the realm of “Free”.

The lady said, “what is the very very cheapest price I can possibly get on this?” My instinct was to shake her by the shoulders and scream “THREE DOLLARS” in her face, but it wasn’t my sale.

The seller says “are you the one who wrote me the email about it?”

I’ll give you a minute to think about that one.

I’ve said before that most of the people who constantly find themselves strapped are that way because they don’t value their time. Driving to nine different gas stations to save 7 cents a gallon is not a sound decision. This lady sat down at a computer and wrote an email, and then drove from point a to point b. Even if she didn’t have a job, her time has to be worth a few bucks an hour.

Yeah, I know, I’m a dick because I don’t understand that some people are poor (although you’d be shocked to know how well I do understand that). “Maybe she really can’t afford $3, you jerk.” I’d agree with you if she was bartering over food, medicine, or something else that is not a portable music device.
So as my cragslistery matures and grows, this is the latest � and ad for three chairs we are trying to sell. Please buy them.

3 awesome coffee table chairs – $61

So for 2/3 the price of what we paid for one of these chairs, you can have three of them. And don’t ask if you can get them for $55. If $6.00 is the difference between having awesome black spinny chairs and not having awesome black spinny chairs, you need to take a good long look in the mirror. I’m also not going to sell you one or two of them. They have been through a lot together and it’s not right to separate them. Nor am I going to deliver them – not because I’m being difficult, either – most of the time when someone asks me to deliver something they live somewhere like Conyers or Woodstock or Fargo, and those places are really far away. Plus the chairs won’t fit in my Honda.

Okay. If you live really close by and you need me to take them to you because you’d feel weird lugging them onto the MARTA train, we’ll work something out.
Nevermind. In the time it took me to copy and paste that, they sold. Boom. $60. I gave her a dollar off for following instructions and not bartering or asking me to deliver them. She and her husband are also now looking at a house down the street because they like me and want to be my neighbor (or maybe they just like the neighborhood and the pretty houses – but we’re splitting hairs here); I feel entitled to a piece of that sale as well…

My condo is for rent on craigslist as well. I love how they always publish “Don’t be a racist” crap all over the place when you post. Apparently at the risk of $99 kabazillionty per offense you are not allowed to post such hateful things as “Christian neighborhood”, “Black owned”, “mostly young professionals”, or “all you damn Eskimos stay the hell up out my house”. Raise your hand if you would be offended by any of those statements (except the Eskimo one). If your hand is raised…yes, that’s right… I’m going to need you to shit in it and punch yourself in the face.

I have to ask who this is helping, exactly. I have had it hammered into my skull by my liberal friends that humans are inherently evil and without the government there to stop us, we would be eating our young and killing one another based on ethnicity within the hour. Somehow I just don’t buy it. In fact, if I thought everyone was a murderous asshole and I just happened to be part of the only group evolved (arrogant) enough to understand that, I’d probably kill myself. Just a suggestion…

If I was looking at a place to rent, and the guy wrote “I hate every last iota of a cracker” on his ad, (quote taken from one of our enlightened black panther friends on the news), I would know that he is a landlord I do not want. By making it illegal for him to post that, it endangers me and my whole cracker family when we move in unaware that he wants to “kill some of our babies” (another quote from the same guy). Yay free speech! You help us identify and avoid crazy people!

And even as a honky if I saw an ad that said “whites only” and it was perfectly legal to post said ad, I would never respond except maybe to pose as a black guy who is “really good at acting white” just for the entertainment. No one would ever rent from that guy BECAUSE CONTRARY TO WHAT WE ARE TOLD, PEOPLE DO HAVE COMON SENSE.

So what if someone did rent from that guy because they shared his views? At least all of the stupid people would eventually end up in one place and we’d know where to experiment with new pesticides.

All of the racism guidelines are a moot point anyway; you can tell more about a person from their email address than by looking at them. I know, we cannot judge. We are physically unable to judge. We all had our judgment glands removed at birth. Whatever helps you sleep at night. Just for the hell of it, let’s see what you would say if hypodermically I had a needle full of drano pointed at your taint and showed you the following email addresses (all were found in my gmail account and I have received emails from every one of them), what race/gender/sexual orientation/etc would you say they were? If you get it right, you don’t get dranotaint.

Srfrgirl
Discoboi69
Thuglyfe
Drkcocoa
Juanpedro
SupaVIP
Daddyzgrl
Donlovesjulie
Nopi4life
Xhengxi
Hugefuckingtranny
Rabbijoe

If you answered, in the following order –
Dipshit blond hippie chick
High maintenance gay guy with a sense of “style” that no one understands
African American male lookin’ like a fool with his pants on the ground
Sassy, powerful woman of color
Mexican dude named Juan Pedro
“singer/songwriter” who thinks that by acting famous they will become famous
Spoiled white bitch with a convertible BMW 3 series
Guy who secretly hates his wife
Douchebag (knows no racial bounds)
Engineering student
Nightmare from Blackskyradio.com
And a rabbi named Joe,

Your taint would remain safe and supple for others to enjoy.

I also love that if you have an email address like rabbijoe but you are actually a Japanese Buddhist, it is still okay for people to say upon meeting you “oh, you aren’t Jewish? Your email address…”, which, if you think about it in the retarded way that society insists we think about things, is no different than saying “Oh, but you left a crappy tip. I just assumed you were Mormon.” I mean…it’s as if people are (gasp) using the information in front of them to arrive at conclusions.

I guess we need another useless public service announcement for this. They’re probably busy warning us of the dangers of raisin allergies or turbulence on airplanes, so I’ll write one for them.

�Hi, this is Tiffany Amber Theissen from Saved by the Bell. Reminding you that @judice is wrong. You may think someone is fat because their email address is hugefattyfatsomcfattington@fatmail.fat, it does not mean they are. Beauty comes from the inside. Even if you see a fat person, they may not be fat on the inside. Nothing is as a lifetime of experiences has taught you. A mean dog won’t necessarily bite you, something that is glowing red and smoking may not be hot, and Juan Pedro may be the name of a Caucasian Muslim whose parents simply embrace the rich, deep cultural heritage of our neighbors to the south. As a former celebrity with a DUI**, my job is to say stuff that everyone knows is absolute horseshit and pretend everyone should believe it. Thank you.

*Forget I said that. It’s rented now.

**I do not know if she has a DUI, nor do I care. I just assume they do PSA’s as community service for some infraction.

It seems every neighborhood has that guy/gal; In my old place I was on the HOA board and we had a guy who apparently spent all of his free time writing bitchy emails to me and others complaining about shit. I don’t mean “the fire escape ladder is rusted shut and the front stairs are collapsing” stuff, either. I mean “There is a stain on my wall behind my microwave where it shorted out and burned the paint and somehow I think that is the homeowners association’s responsibility” and “The light bulb outside my door is burned out and I have to fumble for my keys when I come home at night”. My suggestion that he fumble around for 40 cents to buy a light bulb was met with some hostility and discomfort from the very people who were talking much shit about this guy before he showed up. Why does everyone work so hard to protect the guy who is clearly in the wrong? In a room full of people who were all in agreement ten minutes earlier that this guy and his history proved that he was off his rocker, I walked alone in trying to bring it to his attention. Sometimes I wonder if we are all doomed.

I just wish people would use common sense. Does it take more time and effort to sit down and write an email, or replace a fucking light bulb? Which one solves the problem more quickly? I’ll be happy to give you a new light bulb from the HOA stash. Why don’t people’s brains work?

Back to the story at hand. We became really good friends with the neighbors that live next to our new crib. Fellow gun-toting “conservatives” (in the living in the big city way, not the compound in the woods way. The kind of conservative that doesn’t give a damn what color you are or if you’d rather marry a boy or a girl, but has the common sense to know the difference between reality and philosophy), we had a lot in common from the start. He’s a bitingly sarcastic handyman, cook and observer of life’s oddities, she’s a runner/biker/triathloner like my wife. So we got to the point where we were hanging out together for dinner at least once a week. How lucky are we? Very lucky. We became about as close to them as you can in the space of a few months.

Anyway, the stuff I am about to write took a lot of forethought, so if it seems vague it is because I don’t want anything to be unfair. Just my observations as someone who is involved by proxy. I felt the need to share it because some of it is quite profound. At least to me. For now I’ll say his name is David and hers is Lisa.

One day while Lisa’s parents were in town, David called me and said “Hey man, can I come over for a minute?” Not knowing much about his relationship with his in laws, I figured he just wanted a break and maybe a cold beer.

When I saw him I figured there was something else afoot. He didn’t look right. He looked like he had just seen a pterodactyl fly away with one of his dogs. Bewildered or something.

“Lisa just told me she wants a divorce.”

Not often am I caught speechless, but this was one of the times. I’m looking at a 39 year-old veteran of the Gulf War who thought until 15 minutes ago that everything was wonderful. Now he’s standing there with tears in his eyes, destroyed, and I was a little amazed to find how incredibly sad I was for him. Or for them. I had no idea what to say or how to say it, of course. Did you see it coming? Did she say why? What are you going to do? Holy great fucking mother of fuck?

Those are all questions I could ask my brother or my dad or someone I had known for more than four months, but I didn’t want to pry. Basically it completely blindsided him and it was something she had been considering for quite a while.

To me (and this is merely my opinion, but one to which I am entitled), holding a decision like that to yourself and not telling your spouse that you want to end the marriage is about the most immature and selfish thing I can imagine. But that is based on what I know, which is very little. None of us know what goes on in other people’s houses, no matter how well you think you know them. David said, “I know I’m not perfect – we have fights now and then like anybody else, but I didn’t know any of it was a marriage ender. Jesus – two days ago she asked me if I wanted to go on vacation this summer. I feel like I just watched my best friend die.”

I’m telling you, this was intensely heartbreaking. My mind was racing for the right thing to say, and I’m sure his was racing 100 times faster. He was sweating from the stress, sort of staggering, and basically just blown away. I almost couldn’t talk, but I felt like I needed to say something – anything to help. But there is nothing to say. Horrible. Just stand there and nurse your beer and count yourself lucky, I guess…

Here’s a weird thing I have noticed about myself and my personality – People never listen to me. If I recommend a realtor, a brand of power tool, anything to anyone – close friend or not, you can bet a dollar they will not do whatever I recommended. If there was a fork in the road and my friends and I were standing there wondering which way to go, and the left fork led off of a cliff, I would have to jump off the cliff because if I took the other fork all of my friends would fall to their death rather than follow me.

If there is a name for the opposite of leadership skills, that is what I have. Now for the weird part- There is something that draws people to me when they are in trouble of whatever kind. I have been in countless conversations (that I will never disclose) with people I barely knew where they confided some deep, deep stuff in me. I don’t think I’ve ever really helped or even had much of anything meaningful to say, but for whatever reason they feel okay telling me about it.

So go figure that one. I can’t .

So the question was “What should David do?” and I hammered that one deeply into my subconscious and slept fitfully that night asking myself what I would do.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that I would say, “It’s over? The hell it is – Not until I agree it’s over. You don’t get to do this by yourself.” I figure that there are only two things that I personally would not forgive – physical abuse and infidelity. Some people can see their way past them, but both of those things when done by either partner indicate to me that that person is fucked up on a fundamental level that I have no interest in being a part of, much less attempting to fix. I have a temper – I get pissed and break shit, and if I ever went off of the deep end and turned it on anyone in my family, I would deserve everything I got. We are all responsible for our actions. Likewise, we are all adults and should be capable of keeping our penii and vaginuses in our pants out of respect for ourselves and the one to whom we made a lifetime commitment.

So I told him that I don’t know or care if either of those things had gone on, but my reaction would be to say “Not so fast – there are two of us here, not just you”. And shockingly, I think he did just that.

Over the next few weeks David and I talked for about a billion hours about the situation and the various ways it developed as more details were uncovered. He was looking for a divorce support group and came up with a brilliant idea – in his search he found that there were basically two kinds of groups: come meet up and bitch about your spouse, and come meet up and bitch about everything else. Nothing was ever based on how to save your marriage. He said “Why not start a group? A no bullshit group?” Everybody wants to blame the other person, but what about support for people who are willing to look at whatever culpability they had in the situation and make an effort to fix it?”

Spot on, David. Spot on.

Seeing that kind of attitude in the face of so much crap is what makes me think there is still hope for society. In a land of parasites and hangers-on, there is still a segment of people willing to buck up and do what is necessary to fix their own situation whether it is their fault or not. The simple fact is that at many points during your lifetime you will be faced with situations that are not completely your fault or possibly not your fault at all, but you are still the only one who can make things change. Your decisions at that time determine if you are worth a shit or not.

It sort of relates to a very popular “conservative” metaphor about the sheep and the sheepdog That is, the sheep are the majority – not really hurting anything, but using resources, doing no harm other than what can be caused by apathy, informed enough to know the difference between good and bad, yet not super willing to do anything about it as long as they know the sheepdogs will protect them from the wolves and alligators and stuff. In this metaphor, the idea is that if everyone gets lulled into being a sheep or if there is no incentive to be a sheepdog, no one will be there to protect you from the wolves and alligators who have been quietly herding you into a corner.

I consider myself a sheepdog, though probably not worthy of the title, and I like all of the sheep and have huge respect for other sheepdogs. It makes me warm and happy inside when I see people acting positively in response to negative stuff. David did this, and that’s all I’m saying.

A better metaphor is this – take a typical “not your fault but your problem” situation. Your car breaks down, for instance. You didn’t sabotage your car. Maybe I did. Maybe you called me “Crusty Dusty underwear” in fourth grade and I never forgot it because it made everyone in the whole classroom laugh hysterically, including Tina, who was the apple of my nine year old eye and now it’s all in the shitter because she has preconceptions of the condition of my underwear. You are now stuck on the side of the road with a kit full of tools you never learned how to use in a car you never learned how to fix. There are people who would sit in the drivers seat and cry (those people will be put in my father’s blender and turned into a filler-slurry for dog food when I am president), people who would call a tow truck (sheep), and people who would figure something out. I want to be the one who figures something out (knowing how your car works and how to use the tools goes a long way).

I mean really, are you, as a human adult, going to wring your hands and scream about life being unfair or take the opportunity to handle something in a way you can be proud of? Take five damn seconds to ask and answer that question and shit will start changing for you. Sorry. I’m writing a book about optimism and this is a subject that makes me go on…

I have told David this a number of times – regardless of what he did or didn’t do to cause this situation, based on the way he has handled himself so far I honestly have to wonder if I would be able to do half as well as he has. I have not heard the word “fair” come out of his mouth one time, or “why me” or any of that stuff. He has never said one negative thing about his wife, either. I’m sure he has had moments alone when he has sobbed like a nine year old, but we’re all entitled to that. It might even be necessary. It isn’t about showing weakness or being perceived as weak, it is about scroting up and taking care of yourself in the long run.

It has been a morbidly fascinating thing for Sara and I to experience, too. After we heard about everything we had some long discussions about how much it must suck, and what we need to do to keep the same thing from happening to us. Apparently it happens all the time – one partner silently moves away from the other and harbors intense animosity for something the other one is doing, but never says a word until it is too late. It goes back to the communication cliché, I guess. Sara and I have already learned with each other that if something really bothers us, we need to say so, but more importantly make sure the other person understands how serious you are (or aren’t).

“Dusty, you really need to do something about the dead hookers in the crawlspace” does not have the same motivational power as “Dusty, listen. We have talked about this a hundred times – if you do not do something with the dead hookers in the crawlspace, I will leave you.” Smash cut to me digging deeper holes and selling my chainsaw to buy more lye.

I know, guys are complicated. We actually need to hear the words that mean what you are saying. We’d do the same for you, ladies. I really can’t speak from a woman’s perspective because I am only a woman late at night on weekends for a few hours at a time. What I can say is in general we as men do want nothing more than for you to be proud of us, and we want to do things worth being proud of.

As human beings we will not always make perfect choices, but neither will you.

One semi-humorous part about the whole deal was that within a day or two of this whole shitstorm coming to our attention, Sara and I were on our best behavior. I was looking up books on how to load the dishwasher (something I have been told I am horrible at) and taking my shoes off in the house, and she was putting away her clothes and going through the 40 cubic yards of old magazines that I have threatened to burn. It was a good wake-up call, although I wish it hadn’t happened to a couple we like so much. Sara and I have only been married a year, but we’ve been together for about five years now, and it can be easy for complacency to creep in and fuck everything up.

I’m sure you’re all salivating to know the gritty details, but I’m a boundary freak and I don’t feel right giving any more detail than I have. In fact, this will be one of only two blogs that I have allowed someone to proof read before I posted it.

Now here is the good news – I asked David if he would be okay with the idea of going on Blackskyradio.com and talking about as much or as little of it as he wants to. He said “You’re on a radio show?”

My parents say the same thing, so I’m not offended.

Then he said “Sure. I’m pretty much an open book. Do any ladies listen? I mean, I’m sort of single now, so…but I guess it’s a little soon. Wait. It’s been months. How long do you have to wait?”
“Hell if I know. What time can you be on?”
“Uhh…I work on Thursdays when you’re on, so maybe later or another day. Do you still have my Bosch Sawzall?”
“Let’s stick to the subject. What time and day?”
“Lemme check my schedule tomorrow.”

And we did that for a few days and now I am happy to say that I, David, and the usual radio crew will be bringing all (or some…probably most. Okay, a generous portion, but I’m leaving it up to him) of the rest of the story to Blackskyradio.com at 3:30 Eastern time this Thursday. Call in and voice your opinion, share advice, or give us your story. Or just be passive and listen. It’ll be more fun if you have something to say, though. Yes, you. Smartly dressed in the hunter-green pantsuit reading this on your HP 17″ CRT monitor when you really should be updating that Powerpoint deck for your boss. You especially.

Don’t mention his Sawzall. I still have some projects that might require the sawing of all.

Real quick background on my dad and his blender. He got one of those blenders that can pulverize a laptop, and he puts everything in it. Among my brother and sister and I, we know it is a foregone conclusion that one day we will be drinking a delicious smoothie with more hair in it than usual and suddenly realize that we haven’t seen mom in a while. Dad will be like “Hmm? Oh. Ah – she’s at her wacky ladies club making cookies shaped like cute things.” Just to throw us off. Then we’ll hear him mutter under his breath while staring at his cup, “Shoulda’ stopped nagging me about pressure washing the deck. See what happens?”

And then there would be a super violent peristaltic orgy of stomach contents mixing in midair between shouts of “what the HELL, Dad? What is WRONG with you?” And he’ll probably just smile and finish his smoothie, wiping the last bit off of his mustache while saying “Got mom?” and laughing maniacally.

At least that’s the kind of thing I see happening when people get 5 horsepower blenders.

While I’m off the subject, is the correct measure of power for something like a blender really a horse? I can see horsepower for cars; they used to be powered by horses. In days of yore, I think blenders were mostly powered by heavyset women of color. Wouldn’t it make more sense if the blender was rated at 3.5 Ida power? For that matter, forklifts could be measured in Pacopower, calculators in Takahashipower, and so on.

Oh yeah – the post-surgery smoothie. It had everything in the kitchen in it. “Do I taste celery?” I asked. “Yeah, I think there was some in the fridge or an onion or an egg or something. I’m old and I don’t know.” Anyway, it didn’t taste particularly good, but whatever vitamins and radical oxidants or whatever hippie shit was in it was something I needed, so it basically went down like a runaway at a truck stop. Good stuff, that.

Do I have a point? No. Since when has any of this been about a point? Oh yeah – wait. I do. I actually forgot what I was typing about. Doing something with the kind of passion that comes from a void in your soul. I have found that home improvement projects are my true calling. At least for now. Since February I have been working from home, and to keep myself occupied between panicked requests about packaging graphics for toilet paper (yes, that is what my talents are being used for at present), I am looking for ways to over engineer the simplest projects.

The first thing that I will do as president? No, not fix healthcare, the budget, take drivers licenses away from everyone over 70 and under 22, or even start building a huge elevator on a truck so we can save pilots and passengers of troubled aircraft. None of that. The first thing I will do is to repeal any state law that keeps people from buying alcohol at any time or day of the week. The makers and supporters of said law will be moved to Florida as punishment (florida will be fenced in and cut free from the United states; this will reduce the crime rate by half). But the SECOND thing I will do is go to every factory that produces these shelves –

And burn them all to the fucking ground. I will then piss on the ashes, put them in my dad’s blender and feed them to pedophiles, bouncers, and meter maids as punishment for their crimes/douchbaggery.

All existing wire shelves will be gathered together in piles like some kind of holocaust era powder coated bone heap. People found with these shelves in their houses will be given a period of time to surrender their wire shelves, after which they will be jailed and forced to work repairing massive holes in drywall left across the nation by the removal of these abominations. Anyone heard saying “Yeah, they suck, but I just bought another shelf and put it on top of the wire…it works okay” will be psychologically retrained to think like a human. You don’t buy a shelf to put on a shelf to fix a shelf.

The shelves will be melted down and used to build an aircraft carrier. I bet you thought I was going to say “a prison for all of the people who played a part in the design and production of said shelves.” But you don’t imprison retarded people. You euthanize them.

Needless to say, this nice home that we bought was filled with these stupid shelves. Closets, pantries, laundry room, everything. Just so you don’t get the idea that my improvements are merely lipstick on the proverbial pig, here is a picture of the ceiling.

About 10 miles of molding was used just to decorate the ceiling in the living room. I’m not trying to be a douchebag and all “look at how awesome my house is”. I’m showing this picture so that you will understand that at some point in the construction of this house someone gave a damn about craftsmanship and quality. As a builder of things and a solver of problems, all I really care about is the quality of the job. So my uncontrollable rage when I found those shitty shelves everywhere was not without reason. It feels like a Ferrari with vinyl upholstery.

Before we even unpacked boxes, I had pulled all of the shelves out of the closets and was busily designing something that would a) work as a functional shelving system, and b) not look like the result of someone giving up on life. I did my closet first – I measured it all out and for some reason I decided to base the design on the golden ratio. You’ve seen it before in DaVinci drawings – the magic number is 1.61803something, and it is some magical proportion that almost everything in nature and most decent architecture has some basis in. Why did I decide to take so much time and trouble with something that will be in a closet? Because I am insane.

This is what I came up with –

And as long as I am overdoing things, why not find some kind of crazy wood to build it out of? After some searching, I found a place in Atlanta that sells exotic wood and I bought about 40 board feet of curly maple. It was only a dollar more than Pine per foot, so I packed it into the Honda and was on my way. I soon found out what “rough cut” means. I also found that on the universal scale of hardness (measured in HolmesPower), maple is just below diamond and titanium. Especially when all you have is hand tools. I had to cut the bark off, true up the edges, plane it to the right thickness, edge join, sand, polish, sand again, wet sand, and varnish every single piece. There are about 60 pieces, each with at least 3 finished sides. If you are ever considering this kind of project, that is something you need to keep in mind.

As a rule when it comes to wood, I hate stain. If the wood isn’t good enough without stain, use a different kind of wood. I’m also generally against glossy varnish, but I used it here just for longevity’s sake. In any case, it gives me much pleasure to see the result.

Of course, this masterpiece is hidden in my closet where no one can see it, but Sara’s is a little easier to see. I’d show it to you but I’m not sure she would like that very much. Lots of clothes and shoes and girl stuff. And a pony. A very terrified, skinny pony. This is the layout – she had a bunch of these canvas storage containers, so I designed around those It now looks like this, but with the pony.

Unfortunately I had to stain hers. She wanted dark wood, but I used aspen because there was no way she was going to wait another month for me to sand and plane a bunch of walnut or whatever. The other day we heard a huge crash come from upstairs, followed by a very startled cat stumbling down the stairs. I grabbed the cat (if it was something she did, I wanted to be able to snap her neck without having to go looking for her), and headed upstairs to find the shower curtain rod had fallen down in the guest bathroom. Not the cat’s fault, so I let her scamper away. Why did it fall? Because my wife uses it as a place to hang her clothes. I came back downstairs and told her what had happened. She said “did you fix it?”.

Count to five…

“Yes, I fixed it by building you a closet to put your clothes in, bunnybutt. It has 24 feet of hand varnished wooden dowel to hang clothes on, and because I built it, you could hang a dump truck from it.”

“Shut up. I’m working on it. Some of us have to spend 8 hours a day in an office, you know.”

To her credit, she is and she does.

What else…I had my neighbor over to help hang a television, but that is another entry. I also built a workbench in the garage before I even started on the closets. You can always tell the sexual orientation of the previous owner of a house by checking to see if there is a workbench or not.

Then with the leftover plywood, I decided to put some artwork up in the kitchen. I painted it with gesso and drew a fork and a spoon. I think it’s cool. There is another joke about sexual orientation in there somewhere too…

Future projects include finishing the landscaping. This is a work in progress, but it is seriously about 200 degrees outside and swinging a pickaxe takes like 10 Juanpower. Unfortunately the ground is so hard, that is the only way to dig a hole. I swung that pickaxe for about an hour in the heat and then called my parents to thank them for making me go to college.

I am also going to rip the stupid wire shelves out of our pantry before I lose my goddamned mind. There is nothing you can buy at a grocery store that will stand up on wire shelves. As a result, our pantry looks like comething that was dropped out of a C-130 onto a crowd of starving Haitians. In an effort to complicate it, I am running wiring from the back wall to a contact switch in the door frame that will turn on the lights when the door is open, and turn them off when it is closed. Why all closets aren’t wired that way is a mystery to me.

I also drew up plans for this bed.

We don’t have a bed. Well, we do, but it is straight out of a college dorm. Just a mattress on a bed frame. What with all of the handiness that is oozing out of my pores, I figure I have no excuse…

Now here’s what happens just as soon as I get this house dialed in the way we want it. One of us gets a job in Oregon or something. Or they tell us what we have suspected all along – there was a mixup and we don’t really live here. This neighborhood shouldn’t allow people like us.

Oh, and as long as I’m here, let me remind you all that Blackskyradio.com is still having me call in regularly on Thursdays at 4:30 Eastern. You should really listen – surprisingly it has been fun and I think pretty entertaining. It is for me, anyway. Nightmare and Jenna try to follow along as I ramble on, not making a bit of sense. Call in and ask questions or tell me you hate me. I’m not scared of you.

It all started in late December when my right leg started hurting more than usual. Then just for fun the left one joined in to a lesser degree. By the New Year I knew what I was in for. I told Sara I was going to have to have a pretty big surgery. She either didn’t believe me or didn’t care. Probably both, but that’s why I married her. I don’t like the guilt that comes when my not feeling well makes someone else not feel well. That’s why I am such an asshole to everyone I know. That way they are happy when I am suffering and I can do so in peace.

Anyway, By mid January I was in the kind of pain that can make one travel through time. In doing so I was only able to travel forward and thus was unable to prevent the birth of any Kardashians or kill the creator of Two and a Half Men before he had a chance to set situational comedy back 25 years. I can, however, tell you that 2014 is going to be a big year for the leaf blower industry. That’s all I can say.

When I’m miserable I try not to bitch too much (this blog notwithstanding), choosing instead to make jokes about it. Plus if you’ve ever had the pleasure of a ruptured disc you know it does for pain tolerance what college does for alcohol tolerance. I closed the side of my index finger in the hinge side of my tool chest yesterday and just pulled it out without reopening it. Left about the first 22 layers of skin and nerve just hanging there grossly and I realized I had become a monster.

As my back was deteriorating I was seeing doctors and spending absurd amounts of time and money on MRIs, various 3d x-rays, and other crap so my doctor could figure out what to do. When we moved into our new house I was crawling around on the floor (my preferred ambulatory method) taping the baseboards so our friends could paint the walls for us and at one point I realized I couldn’t physically stand up because my right leg just wasn’t participating and my left one was just sort of like “fuck you, man.” I did that elbowey Army crawl that is way cooler when soldiers do it and made it to the door and managed to shut myself in while I figured out what to do. I thought I was crying but it was actually sweat dripping off my nose and I could taste that taste you get when your adrenal system produces life-saving amounts of whatever chemical it takes to keep you conscious. That. Is messed up.

Eventually I was able to get it together enough to ooze down the hallway and slide down the stairs on my ass, in a way that used to be fun when I was younger and less handicapped. I got to the recliner and halfway passed out; glad no one had to see any of that.

Finally I went in to see Dr. Edwards, who is the best back surgeon in the universe and actually bottles his own brand of spinal fluid. I also learned that I would be having surgery at Atlanta Medical Center, which by all accounts is a pilot program for Obamacare. Most of the people there don’t even know they work in the medical field and the rest actually want to kill you.

So I’m getting the most skilled surgeon at the worst hospital in Georgia. It was like having Air Force One fly you to a Somali prison for rape week.

Having had an operation at the same hospital ten years ago, they pretty much had to promise me that the facility’s staff was now retard-free. It wasn’t. More on that later.

Dr. Edwards looked at my MRI and x-rays and pointed stuff out to me. Usually I just sit and say “oh yeah, I can see that” even though it really just looks like a pile of oysters to me. This time it was pretty obvious what was wrong.

“If you look between the Portuguese Man O’ War and the flame thrower, you can see the ruptured discs.” He said. Because these are the same two discs I had trouble with before, he said he’d check it out in surgery but that I’d probably come out with some extra titanium.

Fast forward to February 23 or so. I was in the pre-op room at the Atlanta Center for Medical outcasts and the criminally insane. They give you a gown, a plastic bag with red socks in it, a bag to put your clothes and belongings in, and a three page brochure advertising tombstones. I put the gown on and when I opened the sock bag I found three socks. If you are a man, you know there was absolutely no hesitation when it came to finding a home for the third sock.

Ten minutes later I was about to bitchslap the nurse who was violently digging an 8 gauge needle into the back of my right hand in a vein attempt. Finally I said “I know you really want to get this thing right, but I’m about to run out of here screaming and I’m not wearing anything under this gown except a sock.”

“They didn’t give you two?” she asked, pulling the sheet up to reveal my feet.
“Nope, they gave me three.”

She looked at me for a couple of seconds, went back to stabbing me in the hand, and finally said “Oh…what..you? Crazy. No you di’int.”

I smiled and drifted off into a drug induced coma. Seriously, whatever they give you before surgery is what we need to be dropping on the mountains of Afghanistan. In fact, any society that considers religion more important than education could use a lethal dose or two.

One of the weirdest things about anesthesia is the part where you wake up having basically been skinned and gutted and remember none of it. Sort of like the girls my brother dates, your insides are sore, you’re not sure where you are, and you’re about to get a huge bill in the mail. And there is tiny part of you that knows you could have AIDS.

In the recovery room I was told that the two discs were actually fragmented and part of my L4 vertebrae called the Pars Interarticularis was cracked. What can I say? If you’re the kind of guy who does shit right, you make no exceptions. The doc had put a couple of plates that spanned from my tailbone to the second vertebrae and fastened them in with screws.

Let’s talk about the screws for a second. I think of the spine as a pretty robust yet delicate collection of bones and nerves and jelly and woodland creatures. I had this image in my mind of two screws about an inch and a half long each, neatly plugged into the appropriate places in my vertebrae. The X-ray showed a cartoonishly exaggerated version of that image. Each verte-brah had two screws in it and the screws were exactly the length and thickness of my pinky finger. A few weeks later I also found out that they cost $2400.00 each so holy shit on that too.

Now the good part – Recovering from surgery at Atlanta Medical Center. Like I said, I had an operation there 10 years ago and was assured by all of the surgeon’s staff that management had changed and it was a whole new place now, so I was giving it the benefit of the doubt. The benefit faded when the sun began to set on my first day there and Sara and I tried to figure out how to turn the lights on.

Of course there is a big goddamn light switch on the wall, but that switch turns on 4000 watts of tanning bed lights. There are lights mounted above the bed that are designed for reading and watching TV. We also couldn’t figure out how to turn on the television without walking over to it and standing on a chair, which I was not able to do.

So we waited patiently for a nurse [sic] to come in. “Ma’am? We can’t figure out how to turn on the reading light. Is there a remote or something that controls the reading light and the Television and stuff?”

The nurse [sic] turns on the 4000 watt light and looks at us like we’re stupid. I took that opportunity to hit myself with a dose of morphine so no one would get hurt.

“Yeah, we were able to find the light switch, but how do you work the other light?”
“I guess that’s the only one there is.”

I was thinking “Don’t you fucking WORK here? And isn’t every room essentially identical? How about thinking about the question before you try to answer it, you moron?”

“mmm. Okay, what about the TV?”
“Isn’t there a remote?”
“No, we haven’t seen one.”
“I guess it’s gone. Let me know if you need anything else.”

Eventually we found a control panel between the mattress and the bed frame that controlled the lights and sort of controlled the television (it had one button – that button turned it on and changed the channel). I asked Sara what she thinks it costs to stay in a nice room at the St Regis Hotel. “About a thousand a night or so. And that comes with a touch screen climate control, a television in the bathroom mirror, heated toilet seat, 430 cable channels, and a guy driving a Bentley that will take you anywhere you want to go. Why does this room cost more than that?”

That was the first of several dozen times we looked at each other in bewilderment. There are a billion examples, so I’ll choose the best ones.

I can’t count how many times I requested a new bed. Nothing is comfortable about having a nine inch gash in your back, especially when you are not able to elevate your legs or head if you want to. The buttons on the bed were for entertainment purposes only. Sure, there was a diagram and the buttons were shaped like arrows indicating what you would get, but if you pushed the “legs up” button, your legs would go down. Push it again and your head would be elevated. A third push made the toilet flush. It was bizarre. But even more bizarre, EVERY SINGLE NURSE [SIC] that came in had less idea how to operate the bed than I did. They’d fumble with the buttons and ask something ingenious like “Did you try pushing the buttons?” “No, fuckwipe, I just screamed at them and then I got a crayon stuck in my nose and forgot what I was doing.”

I started to wonder what it takes to pass the nurse exam. Candidate sits at a table across from the examiner, who asks “What do you want to be?” “NUUUUUHHHSSSE” the candidate honks. Then the examiner says “Okay. There is a stack of three blocks on the table. I’m going to go type up your certificate and I want you to try not to knock them over while I’m gone. If you do, it’s okay, but try your hardest. Congratulations.”

Another gem was the Hemogeyser. When you have a big wound that is all stitched up, they install a perforated tube next to the incision. This tube is attached to another tube that empties into a small container called a Hemovac. The Hemovac’s job is to suck all of the blood and guts out of there as they build up so you don’t explode. About once a day it fills up and some unlucky nurse gets to empty it. They do it by unhooking it from me, carefully popping the cap off, and pouring it onto an English muffin so the patients can have pizza the next day.

Anyway, one of our fine healthcare professionals came in to empty it while my parents were there. She disconnected it, and then pushed down on the top of the flexible container with the heel of her hand while she pulled on the cap. Imagine kneeling on a squeeze bottle of your favorite condiment and simultaneously opening the top. My dad and I had just enough time to exchange knowing glances before the cap gave way and about 12 ounces of liquid horror went spraying into the air. It was on my pillow, the nurse, the sheets, me, and pretty much everything within three feet. She got cleaned up and brought me a new blanket, but left everything else. I got to sleep in a biohazard until the lady came that night to change the sheets. I still have the blue foam pillow they gave me for my legs, and yes, it still has evidence of the mishap on it.

At one point a therapist came in to help me walk a little and tell me what I could and couldn’t do. One of the things she said was no sex for six weeks. I looked at Sara and said “Oh, I don’t know if she can wait that long for all of this.” I was standing at my walker wearing a hospital gown and red socks. I hadn’t shaved or bathed in almost three days, and hanging from the walker was a small bag of blood and a large bag of my urine. I pouted my lips at Sara and gave a weak but suggestive pelvic thrust for effect. The nurse thought it was funny.

The next day a few things had to happen – they had to take me off of the morphine drip, they had to remove the Hemovac, and they had to remove the catheter that had been installed (thankfully) while I was unconscious.

Fist thing in the morning they said “okay, we’re going to take the happy juice away and switch you over to percocet for the pain. We’ll bring two ever blah blah or one every yaddah and we’ll start in a couple of hours” Fine. All clear on that one. So the Morphine was gone at about 7 am.

Then the catheter had to come out.
Having never had a catheter I decided to take a peek at my junk out of morbid curiosity. I shouldn’t have. It was the stuff of nightmares. That tube is of a far larger diameter than it needs to be, and my wang was apparently recoiling in protest and trying to hide inside my body cavity. It looked like a pathetic stack of buttons with a pencil sticking out of it. How the nurse kept from laughing when she took it out I do not know. The actual removal was not as painful as it was astonishing – apparently it is about fourteen feet from your pee hole to your bladder (and that’s not an attempt to brag about my manhood) and every inch is lined with nerve endings.

By about noon I was in agony. Why? Because no matter how many times I asked, no one could come up with a percocet. I got a lot of “Oh, okay. Yeah, I’ll be right back”, but nothing ever came. I continued to writhe and not sleep until about 8 pm when one of the few nurses worthy of the title came in and said it was time to take the Hemovac out. She said it wouldn’t hurt as much as it might feel “weird”. So she starts pulling this thing out and at first it felt weird. Then weird gave way to “Holy shit is she rubbing a lemon zester across my spinal cord right now?” and I began to protest loudly.

She said “usually these things are only about four inches long” and showed me a good nine inches of plastic that could be used to grate cheese. I said “Sweet baby Jesus swaddled in gauze, that hurt like hell.”
“Are you in pain?”
“Yes. Mind-bending, skull hammering pain. But I think I’m part of a Nazi experiment right now because no one will do anything about it.”
Looking at my chart (which I think was a drawing of a puppy based on how little information it seemed to be communicating), she said “When did you last have a percocet?”
“Hmm…I think around November of ’08 or so. Hey Sara, do you remember when I had that root canal?”
“Wait. When did they take you off morphine?” (Turning the chart to the page with the unicorn)
“13 hours ago.”
“Oh. Wow. Yeah. I’ll be right back.”
And finally, some fucking hustle out of one of these people. I made sure to write down Brandy’s name as she was the first nurse I had talked to who knew where she was.

By the time I was discharged from the hospital I and my mom and wife were spending most of our time trying to convince my dad that firebombing the nurse’s station was not going to improve the quality of my care. He and my mom were pissed like only parents can be, and I remembered how lucky I am even at 37 years old to have a family that cares about me.

Recovery alternately sucks and is boring, but the good news is Physical therapy has provided lots of stories and I’ve had time to build lots of stuff around the house…which, if you’ve been paying attention, is always a gold mine.

But I also try to explain to people that the traffic in Atlanta is not as bad as everyone says. The traffic going THROUGH Atlanta on the 73 lane superconnector sucks hard and often, but in the city itself I can count on three fingers how many times I have been slowed down by congestion. Two. The third finger is silent.

No one believes me anyway. And as far as the redneck thing goes, once in a while some of them will slip past the security fence and wander around the big city pointing at all a’ them queers and negroes, saying things like “Man, I just dunno how anybody could live here.”

Funny, I say the same thing about your neighborhood, but I don’t find myself lost in it nearly as often.

At the grocery store several weeks ago, I pulled into a parking space, not knowing that the guy I just passed was trying to back into that very space. He honked, but I didn’t know or care what he was honking at because I was sure I had nothing to do with it. Plus, physics dictates that you cannot honk at someone behind you. When I got into the store, I heard from behind me “You better pay better attention, faggot.”

…and turned to see Eric. A Carhartt™ clad fellow with a camouflaged hat on. I knew his name was Eric because it was on his shirt. I also knew he had a shitty job because only shitty jobs make you wear nametags. What I didn’t know was why he was calling me a faggot.

“I’m sorry, whoa. Whatza?” I asked
“I said you better watch where you’re going.”
“And the last part? Faggot? My name is Dusty, actually, but I can see how you’d be confused. I get that all the time. (He was catching on to my patronizing tone, so I stopped before he started punching me). What’s the problem?”
The long and short of it was that he was “fixin’” to back into that space and I ruined his plan.

Believe me, I will tear someone’s face off if they try to zip into my parking space before me, but this guy was at a dead stop for a good 15 seconds in a parking deck taking up all kinds of room, not indicating that he was fixin to do anything. Plus he’s a white guy and we all know that only black people back into their parking spaces. What’s next, he was wearing a Bluetooth earpiece?

I’ve realized lately that I have burned a lot of calories being pissed off at people, and this was an opportunity to try something less stressful.

“Dude, that sucks of me. I’ll go move my car. Man, I hate when people do that to me.” And I took my keys out of my pocket. I was really going to walk back out there and park wherever he wanted me to.
“That ain’t the thing of it – you just need to learn to watch out.”

That ain’t the thing of it. Sometimes I wonder if not knowing a lot of words would be easier in some ways, or if the inability to express yourself just causes the kind of frustration that keeps stupid people angry.

“Will do. You sure you don’t want me to move my car?”
“Man, I already told you, you just need to pay attention, how hard is that?”
“Okay, so you don’t want me to move my car? (people were sort of watching now and I was getting embarrassed, and I was starting to get mad in spite of myself) And we’re just going over whatever it is you need to teach me right now? I understand and I’m sorry for doing that. Are we done?”

He gave me a dismissive wave of his hand and started walking away.

“Eric?” I said
He was confused by my knowing his name and probably by the fact that I could read.
“If you think of anything else I can do to make it up to you, I’ll be in frozen foods or produce.”

Luckily I didn’t get knocked out while shopping.

Not a week later, after Alabama won a football championship, I had yet another awesome redneck encounter, this time on the 73 lane superconnector I spoke of earlier.

Minding my own business while driving home from work, I notice a big red SUV in the lane to the right of me. I noticed it because it had every kind of Alabama University football magnet you can buy stuck to it somewhere, as well as not one, but two of those little flags that stick up above the doors and start falling apart at speeds over 60 mph.

I feel a little bit like a dick saying this because I have friends who do it, but if you are no longer in college and have more than 2 pieces of flare in support of the school you went to, you lose IQ points. If it is a school you never went to, you lose 3. If it is a school you never went to and you never went to college, you should switch to NASCAR.

If I had to guess, this truck was full of recent graduates or current students. They were in their 20s and 30s, wearing the fratboy uniform – golf shirts and khaki pants. I couldn’t see their pants, but I’d bet my health they were khaki.

I went to Auburn, which is the arch rival of Alabama, but I assure you I barely cared when I was in school and I care even less now what school you went to. So go ahead and hit me with jokes about how Auburn has fat chicks and people who graduate from Auburn are stupid. I’m not a product or a reflection of the college I went to.

As long as I’m avoiding telling the actual story I came to tell, I’ll wax on about my baseless opinion of a college education. It is at once the most valuable and worthless thing you will every pay $65,000 for. How do I know this? Look at almost any job that requires a college degree to attain or advance in. Now look at how grammatically incorrect that last sentence was and how I know enough to understand that it isn’t right, but not enough to fix it. Now go back to the job thing. Let’s say you are trying to get a promotion or a job and they say, “You need a degree to get this job.” You say “Okay, what kind of degree?” They say “A bachelor’s degree.” You say “No shit. I meant in what discipline?” They say “Oh, we don’t give a fuck. Just get a degree.”

On the other hand, I know a lot of folks (myself included) that did 90% of their growing up and becoming an adult in college. It’s a perfect balance of being on your own and still having some buffer from the stupid mistakes you will make. One of my favorite quotes is from David Gardner –

“We learn simply by the exposure of living. Much that passes for education is not education at all but ritual. The fact is that we are being educated when we know it least.”

That alone should tell you that the degree itself is irrelevant. And there are lots of jobs that will tell you just that. Driving airplanes is one of them. You need a college degree to be considered to fly for an airline. So two of my friends are going to college in addition to working as flight instructors – one is majoring in French and the other in Norse Mythology. The guy who is majoring in French grew up in France, and the other guy is actually the god of seafaring and crop fertilization. I know because I asked when we carpooled to work and he picked me up on a giant armor clad polar bear.

ANYWAYS. I hate when people put an “s” on the word “anyway”, Traffic was stop and go, and I passed the Alabama SUV a couple of times. They were having a good time because Alabama won the college champion supergame. Finally I saw the driver’s window roll down. I assumed the guy was going to ask if he could pull in ahead of me so I chambered my patented “Yeah, man, go ahead” hand wave/head nod combo.

Instead, he screamed “ROLL TIDE!” and the guy in the back seat rolled down his window and screamed something about a Yellow hammer and tried to rhyme it with Alabama. Then he violently shook his water bottle all over my car. Re. Tards.

It didn’t really make me mad as much as confuse me. Why did they choose to direct their dipshit rays at my car? I rolled up the window and drove the rest of the way home, wondering “why me?”

When I got out of my car and looked on the back window to make sure it was water he splashed on me and not urine, I saw my license plate frame. I bought it about 15 years ago when I was a sophomore at Auburn. It says “Auburn University”.

So I went inside and got a screwdriver and took it off. I was going to throw it away, but instead I autographed it and will put it on Ebay. Someone will buy it because I autographed it as someone famous. No, not anyone in particular. I just wrote the words “Someone Famous” in fancy script on the back. I’ll post it tonight and there’s no reserve price, so hurry – supplies are limited.

I didn’t take it off because I am ashamed of the school I went to. I took it off because I don’t want to be associated in any way with college sports fans. Particularly SEC sports fans. I’ve been to a few events with the wife that centered around her school’s conference, which is the Big 11. They call it the big 10, but there are eleven schools in it, so I’m doing my part to take the dipshitticy out of college sports.

Big 10 fans seem to have a better grasp on reality than the SEC fans do. You know…it’s really just a game, meant for entertainment, it is possible for your team to make a bad play (and it’s not your responsibility to deny reality and argue the opposite), the ref is not in the pocket of the other team’s coach, there is no need to start a fight with someone who calls the quarterback of your team a homo, and so on.

Oh yeah, blackskyradio.com at 4:30 Eastern on Thursday. Call in and hit us with your favorite college joke. Make me cry. Or call in and tell me I’m stupid. Or tell Nightmare he’s smart. Or ask Jenna what she’s wearing.

And yes, to be perfectly clear, it is the responsibility of the INDIVIDUAL not to get himself/herself into a bad loan. The banks offered some crazy loan products back in the days of the housing bubble when money was free. I know because when I bought my last house I saw loans that were nuts. They approved me for over $300,000 on my $45,000 a year income because they could magically adjust the payments so I’d have a low payment for three years and then the small issue of a $20,000 payment at one time (never touching the principle, of course).

So the banks aren’t without fault by any means. But the individual is really the one who willingly signed the papers. I set my price at half of what I was approved for and used a realistic loan when I bought my condo, and luckily I still have it. Was the loan problem a result of deregulation? Partly, but I’d much rather see legislation that would force people to do some required reading than legislation that lowers the standard to the most retarded common denominator.

So now we have to prove that we didn’t open a line of credit to come up with a down payment, sign everything five times, move closing dates, and pay absolutely insane fees to even more people. And if one or both of use lose our jobs, it’s all in the toilet anyway. So what has been improved? Nothing. Stupid people can now continue to avoid learning a damn thing secure in the knowledge that Uncle Sam will protect them.

Anyway, we’re dancing in the condo in anticipation of moving into the house. Every time we hear our seemingly epileptic neighbors fling themselves against the wall in what I can only assume is an effort to ask their caretakers for more pudding, we say “5 more days” and do a chest bump. We are the only couple I know who celebrates small victories like a perfectly cooked filet with an end zone dance.

And then I silently visualize the small hole a rocket propelled grenade would put in the wall before it turned the neighbors into pizza toppings. I bet I could even patch it and paint it before the cops showed up. Trust me, I’d be doing the world a favor by keeping them from spawning.

What makes married people turn retarded?

I noticed before I got married that most married people exhibited some absurd couple-based behavior. I’d hear people tell me about being up all night chasing a bug that their wife thought they saw in the bathroom, not speaking to one another because they had a fight the day before, not being allowed to hang out with certain friends, and on and on.

Out of pure self-doubt, I chalked it up to my not being married and not knowing or having any desire to know the nuances of such a terrible institution. I have since learned that marriage, in fact, makes 60% of people combine their own insanity with that of their partner. The result is something that is greater than the sum of its parts. So I’m going to espouse my opinion on this stuff, as I am wont to do at (all) times.

Combining Email addresses/facebook pages.
God forbid I have to continue thinking of the two of you as individuals. I mean, once you get married you can’t possibly have your own identities, because your combined persona is going to be way more interesting than you were before. I understand combining bank accounts (especially since mine is empty at the moment and hers isn’t) – it’s just easier practically to manage finances when both parties know what is going on.

But I needled an acquaintance of mine who we will call JasonlovesJulie about why they combined their facebook accounts. It started when I suggested that they list their college as Clemford Univecnical Institollege and their hobbies as Scrapcollecting and Rundeogaming.

I love when people try to explain something that doesn’t make any sense. All you have to do is listen and occasionally mutter something like “hmm…I see” and as they hear themselves speak you can detect a change in tone as they realize that they are not making any sense. Sometimes they’ll just trail off and change the subject, and sometimes they’ll just say “Hell, I don’t know. We just do it that way to avoid another fight.”

So JasonlovesJulie said that the biggest reason they combined all of their electronic communications was “just to avoid any weirdness”.

“So you don’t trust her, or she doesn’t trust you?”
“Haha, no it’s not her, it’s the guys who hit on her.”
For the record, JasonlovesJulie has quite a hot wife. But I’m not supposed to say that because marriage exists. More on that in a minute.
“What? So what if guys hit on her? Is she banging any of them?”
“No, but I got an email from a girl and she found it and we had a huge fight and blah blah blah combined email addresses and gave up our individual identities…”
“Did you bang the girl?”
“No, man. She’s just a girl I went to highschool with who is looking for a job.”
“So are you clinically insecure, or is your wife?”
“Dude. Why are you busting my balls? What would you do if Sara was talking to another guy on facebook?”
“She probably is. Shit, last week she went to dinner with her former intern when she was in Chicago.”
“A Dude?!”
“Yes.”
“No fucking WAY. Not a chance I’d be cool with that.”
“It helps if you think about it this way – She married me. She didn’t marry me for my money or my looks, that is for damn sure, but I’m sure she has her reasons. I married her. I married her for her money and her looks. Just kidding. I married her because she is right for me. If she or your wife or anyone else decides they want to go elsewhere for some affection, there is not one single thing on this earth you will ever be able to do to stop her. Except killing her, which I do not advise.”
“You had to be a little jealous, though. You aren’t perfect.”
“Absolutely not perfect. If something mechanical doesn’t work, I will hit it with a hammer and run it over with my car and basically go bananas. I’m sure I’ll hurt myself or someone else eventually if I don’t get that under control. Jealousy is not one of my flaws.”
“I just can’t think that way. I’m always wondering.”
“Okay, dig on this vibe, my main man (I’m trying to bring back the language from the 70s as long as the haircuts and economy are headed that way) – what do women find more attractive than money, muscles, cars, or anything else?”
“Girth?”
“Exactly. Confidence, jackass. Now think back to when you were 19 and blind with jealousy. How much energy did you waste worrying about a chick who ended up with another guy anyway? I personally wasted enough energy to form a tropical depression that eventually became a hurricane. You may have heard of Hurricane Grace? Not a big one, but considering it came entirely from the power of my jealousy…”
“Hold on. I have another call.”

Ironically, the hold music was “Take it on the Run” by REO Speedwagon.

“Yeah. Okay. I’m back. Do you have a point?”
“Shut up and learn. In theory she married you because there is no one on earth better than you in her eyes. Just be that guy. If she goes to a bar without you, do you REALLY have such a low opinion of her or yourself that you think she’ll be able to find someone better than you in a waist-deep doucheswamp?”
“Well, you have to…”
“Not finished. Have you ever once looked at another chick and thought ‘Yeah, I’d risk the five years I’ve been with Julie for a chance to angrily pump one out in the stairwell with that broad.’?”
“No way. But I do see chicks I think are hot all the time.”
“Everyone does. They didn’t go extinct after you got married.”
“But see, she gets pissed if I say another chick is hot.”
“That’s because she is crazy.”
“Huh? Wait…Dick. She’s not crazy. Well, if she is, I married crazy.”
“I dunno. Maybe crazy is the wrong word. Control freak life-ruining whore?”
“Ass. You barely know her.”
“Seriously I don’t know if there is a solution to it – I doubt it’ll ever be fixed, honestly. I’m just saying jealousy is a younger man’s game and you two are wasting your time worrying about it.”

So they still have one email account and JasonstilllovesJulie and everything, but seriously, what is with married folks?

Don’t call my wife hot.
I was at a party last year and was talking to a girl named Kim. Amazingly Sara was off talking to someone else and not trying to gouge my eyes out for conversing with a girl who was not her. At some point I mentioned to someone else, “Kim is really pretty” in the same way you’d say “That’s a red car” or “I bet that nun looks weird naked”. It is implied that I have no interest in having relations with the car or the nun. Or so I thought.

I was instantly met with “She’s MARRIED.” In a rather accusatory tone. I replied “So am I. Are other girls not allowed to be pretty, or am I just not allowed to be observant?”

I even remember once a long time ago when I complimented a chick on her coat, which was made out of old pairs of pants. Before thanking me for the compliment she informed me that she was married, which sort of pissed me off. “I wasn’t asking you out, I was just going to see if you knew where I could buy one for my grandmother.”

Bitch.

Not everyone who is married acts like that, but I’d say a solid 5 of ten do. I’d be almost as amazed if it was 2 out of ten. Exactly as amazed if it was 2 out of 4.

I was discussing this very subject with Nightmare and Jenna on Blackskyradio.com CLICK IT, FUCKER. And Nightmare offhandedly called my wife hot. I went insane with rage and had to be sedated. Or maybe I said, “Hells yes, she is. Her need for glasses and better judgment definitely worked in my favor”

By the way, Black Sky Radio on Thursdays at 4:30 EST. Be there. Every Thursday. Don’t be like everyone else in my life who says “Oh, you were on that show again? I would listen, but I never know when it is on.”

4:30 PM ON THURSDAYS. EVERY THURSDAY. AT 4:30 PM EASTERN. IF YOU LIVE IN OKLAHOMA IT WILL BE 3:30 PM and so on…

Having children also makes people retarded.

After learning that it was not I that was wrong when it comes to marriage making people do stupid things, I started thinking, “What about all of those mental cases who have kids and start doing weird things?” Again, I do not have kids myself, nor do I claim to know how to raise a child. I was a child once, however, and I also happen to have plenty of common sense.

“She won’t eat dinner unless the giggles are on TV”
One of you is the one who bought the TV and pays the cable bill and made the dinner, and the other one of you weighs 22 pounds and shits her pants. If you want her to eat without the television on, turn it off. I’ve done this and seen it work. Kids can’t use the remote, especially if you hide it. They also don’t know there are other ways to control the television. The response I got was “Turn the TV back on!” to which I responded “Santa isn’t real and your dog got hit by a car. Eat your eggs and I’ll turn the TV back on.” Plates were clean in 2 minutes. Of course, that was with my niece and nephew who have been raised to understand that the biggest person in the room makes the rules.

“He only eats ravioli for breakfast. He won’t eat cereal”
Again. One of you is a grown up, and one is a child. I’m not saying he has to like eggs benedict, but it would seem (from a purely common sense perspective) that teaching a person that all they have to do is refuse to do something in order to get things the way they want it is setting them up for a lifetime of bitter disappointment. My brother had cold peas for breakfast more than once when we were kids because he wouldn’t eat them for dinner. He hated it, but guess who got pretty good at eating what mom fed him?

“I was going to go to the store and grab some beer before you came over, but she doesn’t like when I leave her with mom lately. She was freaking out.”
This looks like a great opportunity to prove to her that you will be back in ten minutes. It also seems like a great opportunity to teach her that she doesn’t make those decisions unless she does so by avenues other than screaming.

I have a friend who has three of the smartest kids I know, and I attribute their maturity and problem solving skills largely to the way they are parented. They do not believe that the world revolves around them, nor do they believe that they are inherently awesome just because they are on this earth. They have never been taught that they will get anything without working for it, but they have been taught to come to their parents not to report a problem, but with potential solutions. They have been taught to think, not just react. It really is a contrast to some of the other little bastards I have been around.

Of course, Sara and I might have huge differences in parenting philosophy, but we don’t know yet because if we talk about kids she will become pregnant. It’s science. Look it up.

I could get started on the scientifically baseless panic that surrounds vaccinations too. If I ever have kids, they will get vaccinated. Know why? Because vaccinations keep people from getting really bad diseases. Yes, a small percentage also have developed big problems, but there are two things to consider (forgive me, this is just logic and reason here) – 1. Since the 1960s when a bunch of kids got a bad vaccine, there has not been one case of autism, downs syndrome, club feet, bad attitude, or peanut allergies that can be scientifically linked to a vaccine. Scientifically linked. I feel I need to repeat that. 2. Let’s just say that one in 10,000 kids died from a vaccine. I’d also estimate that one in 10,000 automobile accident fatalities were caused by a seatbelt. So if you are freaked out about vaccinating your kids, keep them away from those dangerous seatbelts too.

Use your brain, not your emotions.

Oh yeah. Black Sky Radio at 4:30 eastern on Thursday. Call in if you want.

Dammt, my ii key just went zngng off my keyboard. i will now try to fx t and not erase any of my handywork.

Iiiiii8oiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii8iiiiiiii9iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiio

I think it is fixed now, but I have to be careful.

Basically swine flu symptoms can be divided into two categories- stuff that sucks about it and stuff that does not suck about it. Yes, there are advantages to being infected with a virus that wants to kill you. Or at least there are to me.

Stuff that sucks about Swine flu – First, it’s really like any other flu, but maybe another flu that drank a couple of Red Bulls and went shopping for a new outfit that made it feel fierce. It’s super contagious, which is both good and bad (more on that later), and it can kill old people and kids.

I’m not really a “woe is me” kind of guy when I get sick. I’m also not the kind of person who refuses to go to the doctor and insists on going to work to make everybody else sick. If I feel shitty, I’m staying home and sleeping until I feel better. I’m also going to go to the doctor because doctors went to medical school and can make me feel better with their crazy science.

This particular illness comes with a high fever, which is my kryptonite. If I have a 2 degree fever, I am out of commission – it makes my skin hurt and I’m only comfortable completely naked suspended from the ceiling in a sex swing. Best wedding gift ever. Thanks Grandma.

Monday morning I woke up and took my temperature with a thermometer that I did not know we had. Sara’s still a little mad because apparently it goes in your mouth but maybe the retards that made it should have put that information on the box. The number that showed up on the little digital readout looked like it should have said “Playing all the hits all the time” after it.

“Hey honey? How high of a fever can you have before it causes brain damage?”
”I’m almost ready. I want to get there by 6.”
“huh?”
“You’re taking me to the airport, right?”
“Yeah. I have a pretty high fever and I don’t know…”
“Okay buddy. You can take care of that when you get back from the airport.”

She really loves me and cares about me. If she got all dotey and tried to baby me when I got sick or hurt I’d get annoyed quickly. I’m glad she is who she is.

So I dropped her off and came back and flopped into bed like a bag of wet towels. I went to sleep the night before at 6:30 because I felt shitty. It was now 7 am and I already had 12 hours of sleep under my belt, but I was as tired as Mike Tyson after a spelling bee. I slept until 11 am and only got up then because I had to pee. While standing at the toilet making peepee I started coughing. Holy shit. I coughed twice, and I thought my eyes were going to pop out of their sockets. Every cough felt like someone was hitting me in the head with a hammer, and the desire to stop coughing was only overridden by the fact that I was now choking on some kind of salty lung mung. The pain and exertion of it all made me realize that I was about to pass out. Pass out and be found covered in pee and holding my wang. Just like I always envisioned it.

It was at that point that I realized that it was going to be a rough day. I was right.

Luckily there was no puking involved. I’ve heard that it can come with lots of that, and I’m glad it didn’t in my case. The fever and accompanying headache have been miserable, though. As I type this, I have the lights off in the room and my laptop monitor dimmed to its lowest setting. There is a scented candle on the end table wafting lovely notes of jasmine and chamomile and my shirt is unbuttoned to my navel, exposing my chest hair and skin glistening with…wait. What?

My eyes felt like they were being cooked. They were all red and constantly pouring water. Especially when I coughed- the tears would just stream down my face after I coughed. I was flipping through the channels between naps and stopped on a talk show where women were yammering and crying about losing weight. I thought how funny it would be if my wife or brother or anyone else I know came in the house and saw me lying on the couch crying my eyes out about a bunch of fat chicks on TV. I laughed to myself, which made me cough, which made me cry.

So that pretty much sums up the sucky parts. High fever, painful headache, oh, and every time I got up to do anything I felt like I had just run a marathon with a field-dressed elk strapped to my back. Those symptoms lasted about three days. But they brought about some cool side effects, too.

The best parts about swine flu –

One of the things I had forgotten about a 103 degree fever is that as parts of your brain die you are treated to some fantastic hallucinations. Especially when I was in that weird state between awake and asleep – usually when I’m in that state, I’ll write. I’ll write because my brain does a strange thing if the conditions are right- I’ll see something that looks sort of like a comic strip and the words will appear in text form scrolling across the top. Usually nonsense, but sometimes stuff I will write down. I also get a lot of solutions to nagging problems at that time, so I look forward to it.

The fever changed things a bit – lots more lights flashing and shapes moving around. The one I remember most vividly was these oblong shiny red objects like popsicle sticks. They had symbols embossed in them and they were turning and kind of moving back and forth. Sort of reminded me of watching microorganisms amble to and fro under a microscope. Each of the three objects had a bubble attached to it that would grow and shrink – more like a loop of string than a 3 dimensional bubble. I found that I could control the size and to some degree the shape of the loop by thinking certain things. One was controlled by a number. They say that the part of your brain that recognizes characters like numbers and letters is turned off while you sleep. That is why I always dream about trying to dial a phone and having a really hard time with it.

Anyway, the number I had to think of looked like 12000, but it was blurry and kept changing. One of the other two loops was controlled by a color, but it was a really specific bright blue color that I could only get right by concentrating on it. Of course when I did that, the number would get all dicked up and that loop would start twisting up. The third loop was controlled by something much more ambiguous – it was sort of a cross between a mood and a shape. Yeah. Weird. The object of this insane game was to get my brain to work on all three with total focus but completely independent of one another. When they got in sync, I’d hear a noise that I cannot even begin to describe and a white glow would start to appear.

Don’t know if I won the game or not. Just a psychotic hallucination.

I’ve been very interested in dreams for as long as I can remember, and the more I learn, the more I believe that dreaming (or semi-conscious dreaming) is a way to access parts of our brain that we don’t normally get to use. I don’t think I need to use the part that made the popsicle stick loopy things, but it’s good to know its there.

Another dream I had when I was fully asleep was one where I was going somewhere with a friend of mine I have not seen in about 20 years. We were going to pick me up from the train station. I’ve been reading this book (read it twice so far and listened to the audiobook at least four times) called Psycho-Cybernetics and the book is largely about recognizing and maximizing your potential through alterations of your self-image.

Usually I dream about people in an abstract way – they’ll look vaguely like one person I know, but act completely different and have a different name. I’ve never dreamt about myself from a third person viewpoint, so this was a new one, and I think it came from all of this self-image thinking I have been involved with lately. I was sort of nervous to see what I looked like and how I acted because I figured I’d be not nearly as awesome as I wanted to be.

Talk about digging up some buried insecurity…

So we picked me up, and the first thing I said to him was “damn, you are a fine looking sack of man” (even though he looked exactly like the blazingly average guy I see when I look in the mirror). The interesting thing was how he (I) reacted. It was exactly like I would react if someone I didn’t know came up and was a little too enthusiastic with me. My bullshit radar goes off and I begin studying that person and not really engaging them unless it is to try and figure out what they are really after. So the alter-me was standoffish, but I was excited to talk to me, so I kept trying to get him to open up. Then he got sick of me and hit me with a bitingly sarcastic reply to something I asked. I don’t remember what I asked or how he (I) replied, but it was pretty harsh and funny. Enough so that I was a little jealous that I hadn’t thought of it first.

For some reason we were now surrounded by some other people, and the alter-me got more and more dickish with his responses, much to the delight of onlookers. Eventually I thought I might have to kick my ass. Not sure what lead to the end of the dream, but it ended up with us having a beer and telling each other jokes at the train station and him heading off to somewhere I had never heard of with no intentions of returning.

I remember feeling a distinct finality about seeing me leave, too. So maybe something has changed…or maybe I need to lay off the Nyquil. Probably the latter, but if anyone out there is a dream expert, I’d love to know what the hell that was all about.

The other good thing about the flu was the same thing that is good about any illness – the first time you get a real nap and your appetite comes back. I remember waking up with one arm and one leg hanging off the couch, Chainsaw the cat staring at me as if she expected something from me, and feeling like a million bucks in small unmarked bills. It was now Thanksgiving day and Sara and I had long since given up the idea of going anywhere for Thanksgiving. We got under the quilt and watched movies and listened to the rain.

Aside from not getting to spend time with my family, I wasn’t too bummed about missing thanksgiving. I’ve never been a big fan of Turkey – I don’t care if it’s fried, baked, boiled, stuffed with four other birds and a marsupial, or whatever. The very best turkey is not nearly as good as an average wild mushroom stuffed ravioli, steak au poivre, or even a good bowl of cereal. Sweet potato casserole can suck it too. And that purple jelly chunder that is the shape of the can it came out of? Take that crap, anything with jello and a bunch of canned fruit in it, and “stuffing” (always tastes like cornmeal and onions no matter how you make it), and use it as a decorative garbage can filling. That’s my suggestion.

Of course, just like when I tell people that I don’t think one person’s children are any cuter than the next, they have an uncontrollable urge to say “Oh, you need to see MY kids.” Or “You haven’t tasted MY turkey or my grandmother’s stuffing.”

Yeah. Don’t need to. Your kids are as cute as all kids, and stuffing is stuffing. Not liking turkey is like not liking cilantro. It is wonderfully universal. When I was a kid I hated meatloaf. It still ranks up there with thanksgiving turkey on my apathy scale, but when I was younger my mom loved making meatloaf. She also thought I was dumb, because whenever she made it I’d say I didn’t like it, and she’d say “this is the kind you like” as if I had forgotten the one time I loved eating meatloaf.

In other news, I seem to have conned the good folks at Black Sky Radio into letting me call in on Thursdays and talk about stuff with them. So far it has been fun. Thankfully they are funny energetic people and it is much easier to have an entertaining spontaneous conversation with those kinds of folks. So they may soon regret it, but they have encouraged me to call in regularly. I will until they stop answering the phone.

So listen to Black Sky Radio on Thursday at 3 pm central (actually go ahead and start listening now and enjoy the only media outlet that doesn’t relentlessly play Lady GooGoo’s latest overproduced computer garbage) and I’ll just be an endless fountain of profound statements when I come on. Or mundane crap. Or maybe we’ll exchange meatloaf recipes.

Imagine you were reading the above paragraph to a sentient being who had no knowledge of humanity or our culture. Then tell him or her to guess which one is making the public go monkeyfuck insane with paranoia. The regular flu is clearly killing 7 times more people in one country than the swine flu is worldwide.

Now imagine trying to explain the stupidity factor that makes the public afraid of everything on the news. Agonizing. Now here’s the other thing- next year there will be a disease called donkeytoe or something that will incite panic in the tiny minds of tiny minded people around the world, and once again nothing will happen, and then the next year when a strain of Jellyfish aids kills a dozen elderly patients in Korea everyone will freak out yet again, and so on ad infinitum.

I don’t know if it is a recent development, but it seems that we as a society (worldwide) really enjoy this exercise of pointless hand-wringing. On a small scale, take Georgia – everyone got their panties twisted last year when we had the drought. Then it rained all fall and winter and we were back to normal. And then it happened again this year the exact same way. And it has been this way for at least the 20 years I have lived here, yet the level of anxiety is still at a fever pitch. Every. Single. Year.

On a larger scale, take something like government aid to the impoverished – be it in a local community or an impoverished country. here’s a great idea – let’s just give them money. That’ll solve the problem because they won’t be poor by definition anymore. But it doesn’t solve anything. And without education, cultural changes, and lots of birth control, the problem gets worse. But we keep doing the same damn thing and expecting a different result. What about in the 70s when everybody was battening down the hatches for the coming of the next ice age? Remember that? I’m barely old enough to recall bits and pieces of it, but by all accounts it was the same amount of “indisputable scientific proof that no reputable scientist can deny without fear of lynching” as we are hearing today about global warming.

Fine. If we need to invent a reason to make people waste less and conserve more, I’m all for it. I just wish it wasn’t a world where people had to be threatened with disaster to make simple changes. And yes I have seen Inconvenient Truth and Fahrenheit 911 and several other movies that “really make you think”. They did make me think. They made me realize that people are becoming incapable of objectivity. I’m not a meteorologist or a conspiracy theorist or a left wing right wing whatever. Just someone using logic and common sense.

If history has taught me anything, it’s that we never learn anything from history.

So I probably don’t have the swine flu, but at 11:32 last night I felt that weird congesty tightness in my chest, and I coughed. And it hurt a little. So I went to bed and woke up at 3 am thinking I was going to freeze to death. I’m like a blast furnace when I sleep, so waking up cold is extremely unusual for me. This morning I got out of bed and my hair hurt, which is my self-diagnosis for a fever. So I’m sick. Ironic as it would be if it did turn out to be the swine flu, I may merely turn out to be number 5001 to die of it, and that is neither pan, nor demic.

On with the content. I use the term “douchebag” so much I am starting to wish I had a better word. But it is so universally descriptive that it just continues to work. Maybe I’m getting old, but there are a few abnormally douchey trends rearing their douchey heads lately and they show no signs of stopping. Much like the health and environmental scares of the past and present, we could learn from the crappy trends throughout history and avoid them if we just took the time to remember how much the 70′s sucked.

Insect sunglasses –moronic glasses that start at your hairline and end at your nipples. Are we that frightened of the sun, or did I miss the forecast that called for arc welding and magnesium fires? These glasses are starting to ooze into men’s eyewear, too. I really wouldn’t give a damn about any of it but when want to buy some normal human sunglasses my choices are limited to satellite dishes coated with a pseudo-shiny purple tinted polymer coating from the future. Everywhere I turn it looks like people are dressed up for mosquito night at the retard factory.

Jeans for dudes who need more zippers, rhinestones, and beatings – these dumb jeans with embroidery and metal studs all over them are becoming standard issue for edgy wanna-be rockabilly douchebags everywhere. It looks like they swept the floor of the clothing factory that no one loved, threw it in a blender, and cut a roughly pant-like shape out of it. Maybe I’m mistaken – the guy needs three random buckles hanging off of his belt loops and a flap over his front pocket with a caribbeaner to hold it closed. Oh, and the random splatter pattern sewn into the left leg is aerodynamic. Seriously. Does everything have to be a statement? And by the way, if those pants are held up by a studded, bedazzled, or otherwise shiny belt, keep in mind that belts can be used to hang oneself. Just a suggestion.

Chokers on men – stunningly unattractive on women, I am more frequently seeing dudes trying to look like a cross between an inuit shaman and an asshole. Look at this hemp string around my neck with a tribally insignificant symbol hanging from it. When I go hiking I wear a claw that I found in the trash outside a gift shop at the Denver airport, but could have come from an eagle or a bear. I sit under trees and play my guitar and write songs about being a mariner, going on safari, and other things I haven’t done. I’m awesome. Yes, that is a picture of the Survivor host guy. I couldn’t find a better one.

Weird twisty hair helmets – Hairstyles typically cycle between long and short, but the current iteration of long hair is a joke. Again, it looked stupid when the Partridge Family did it, and it looks stupid now. I was talking to a guy last week in a coffee shop about his book idea (shocker), and he was rocking the twist hair. Every three to five seconds, he’d run his fingers across his brow to get the hair out of his eyes. It got so fucking annoying that I finally said “Dude. Get a headband or a haircut. That thing you keep doing is making me insane.” He was all “What? What thing?” Really? You are not aware that you are making the hand swipe move at least 500 times a day? Stupid people have stupid haircuts.

Finally, one that my brother brought to my attention – “hey, my shirt looks like a tattoo. I can bench press your face.” Fuck you, tool. You spent $100 on a tee shirt that you will laugh at in a year.

I’d really like to breach the subject of marriage making people retarded, but during the course of writing this entry my fever seems to have gotten worse and I think I am sweating gravy. Also the marriage part of this installment is still a little chewy in the center. I’ll flesh it out this week and put something up next weekend. Everybody have a good turkeyday or whatever godless holiday you crazy wiccans celebrate when you aren’t boiling newts and flicking one another’s beans.

Oh, and keep the suggestions coming. I’ve gotten some good stuff.

Wait. I want to tell you about the last time I threw up, because I feel like that subject might be coming up again. This is an excerpt from an email I wrote to a reader about it. Her name is Kelly.

I woke up with a raging headache, possibly from the wine I had last night, but I’m a professional drinker and usually pretty good at knowing when to say when. I was also quite nauseated. Not nauseous, as so many ill-informed people say, but nauseated. See “nauseous” is a word that is defined as “something that nauseates or causes nausea”. So spoiled meat is nauseous and makes you nauseated. And when you go to http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Nauseous and look it up, please do so with the understanding that dictionaries have gone the way of American public schools. That is to say that they lowered their standards to suit the laziest and dumbest among us.

It started with “ain’t”. As soon as all of the rednecks found out that ain’t was in the dictionary, they felt empowered in their ignorance because “Ain’t IS a word and I cn’ prove it. Lookit up in that thar wordybook, ya dirty knowitall yankee.” Because so many people use the wrong form of nauseous, someone at the top of the retard pyramid decided it would be easier to change the definition than to try and show people the error of their ways. So when you look up the word nauseous, one of the definitions will probably be the incorrect one. Now that we’re clear on that…

After lying in bed for some time listening to my head pound, I started to get a wave of pukitude washing over me like a warm wet blanket. Warm and wet with cat urine. I started thinking “I’m going to barf…huh. That is something I cannot remember doing in at least two years. I wonder if I’m still any good at it.”

Barfing is something one must practice to maintain proficiency. I hate throwing up, which is like saying “I hate abcesses on my taint” I’m sure you are on my side with that one, Kelly, as most people are. Unless you have an eating disorder and vomit to stay thin and attractive to our discriminating society. In which case I say go forth and vomit, you thin beautiful woman. Kelly can be a dude’s name too, but your handwriting isn’t giving me any clues to that. So forgive me if I made the wrong assumption (guys look pretty and thin when they puke, too).

The anticipation is probably the worst part, because you keep feeling worse and worse and then your salivary glands start going bonkers and you know this is about to be really gross and sort of painful. “But you’ll feel so much better when it’s over” they say. Yes. And if I beat you with a toilet plunger for ten minutes it would feel great when that stopped too.

I had that strange moment where you have to figure out how to stand, sit, or kneel to get the most out of it. There is a comfort factor to it, where you don’t want to be kneeling on a tile floor in your underwear, a stability factor – if I slip and fall or pass out, am I going to land with my face in the toilet, or slump off to the side? and a grossness factor – you may not know or care how clean your toilet is until you have to put your face right in it. I opted for the Crouching Lotus position, with one hand on the side of the toilet seat and the other on the side of the tub, sort of taking a knee like I’m about to get a pep talk from coach Wilson.

Anyway, I sprayed forth and was actually sort of amused to see that I got some on my hand and a little on the floor. I’m thinking “Is this the first time I’ve ever done this? I mean, how big is the toilet in relation to your mouth, stupid?” I was also finding that my stomach muscles were contracting in ways that nature did not intend. Then I got a cramp in my side that forced me to stand up and have a million dollar idea – the stand-up vomitorium. A catch basin at chin level with handles fastened to the wall and a small garbage disposal. It would remain retracted into the wall when not in use, being refrigerated so it is nice and soothing when you rest your head on the patented forehead nook. That’d be a worthwhile invention if people barfed several times a day.

I think it would really catch on with alcoholics and girls with daddy issues or visible tattoos (both of which indicate an imminent eating disorder. Well documented science. Look it up.)

Being forced to do anything other than barf while barfing is really sort of impossible. As I stood up, the last of whatever it was came out and hit the toilet backstop. Great. Now I feel like shit, my hand looks like I just mixed pancake batter with it, and I have to clean this mess up before I can do anything else. I finally found a washcloth and wiped everything down, got in the shower, and stood there for a good 40 minutes. I still don’t feel very good, but it has been fun writing to you about it.

I’m going to take a nap.