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.

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.

The second night we were there, we were puttering around the hotel room brushing teeth and channel surfing, when she said “Hey, is there a gift shop at this hotel?”

Assuming I had been good all day and might have earned a miniature collectible Saturn V rocket replica, I instantly said “Yup, right next to where we checked in.”

“Great. Could you go get me some tampons?”

The word “crestfallen” only applies when you don’t get something you had hoped for. When it is replaced with something you don’t want, you move into a new territory of disappointment. Example:

“Hey little Billy, you know that little puppy you have been begging your parents for since February? Well, you can’t have him.”

Billy would be crestfallen.

“Oh, as a matter of fact, you’re going to get a Barbie playset instead. You can change her clothes and pretend she’s shopping and EVERYTHING.”

Now little Billy has spun off into a different dimension of unhappiness. More of a devastation, to be precise.

I was crevastated by the news I had to buy tampons. That word seems to fit obscenely well and that sentence needs to go on a tee shirt.

So my response was “Sure, but first let me regale you with a few dozen reasons I shouldn’t do this.”

Frankly I didn’t have many reasons aside from not wanting to. When she said “grab a six pack of frosty beer while you’re there”, I pretty much had no reason not to go.

So I get to the gift shop and I’m looking around, feigning interest in a pecan log and wondering if she’d know the difference if I just showed up with one of those. Finally I found the chick corks, behind the counter with all of the other stuff you don’t want to ask for. Like condoms, laxative, KY jelly, ball gags, and so on.

We only stay in the very nicest hotels.

The lady behind the counter asked “Can I help you?”

“Yes, I’d like one box of your finest tampons, please.” As if I was going to take one out of the box and sniff it like a fine cigar.

“I’m sorry. Wha-?”

“Yes, I would like some tampons. I just got married and this seems to be part of the deal.”

Then she did that laugh that you only hear from heavyset (and not heavyset) women (and men) of color. The back of the throat laugh, which much like the constant wearing of the Bluetooth earpiece, will never be understood by honkies like myself due to our lack of rich cultural heritage. It sounds like “kkgghhh kgghhh kkgghhh kkgghhh” and if you’ve heard it before, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

“It is part of the deal, I know that.” She said. “What kind does she need?” she asked, pointing to an array of feminine hygene products that was quite a bit vaster than I would have imagined.

“uhh…(reaching for my phone) Spring Meadow? New car? I really didn’t know they came in…what…flavors…? Colors? I think she likes the Jonas Brothers. Do you have those?”

“Here, honey. Just take these and if they aren’t right, bring them back and we’ll try again. You just got married? Are you here on your honeymoon?”

“Yup. Huntsville honeymoon, and now I’m buying tampons. So far so good.”

“kkgghhh kkgghhh kkgghhh kkgghhh kkggggggggggggh.”

“Do you sell beer here?”

“No. We used to, but we stopped for some reason.”

“Really? [this is] a gift shop, right?”

“It sure is.”

“So someone in management decided that tampons make a better gift than beer? I’d like to meet that guy.”

“kkgghhh kkgghhh kkgghhh kkgghhh kkgghhhhhhhhhhhh. Gggghk.”

Home improvement –

As you may or may not know, I have a condo in Atlanta that I rent out. Every time new renters move in, I have to go in and fix some minor stuff that the old renter broke or whatever. It’s part of being a slumlord.

This month, a newly married couple moved in, and when we were doing the walk through, we noticed a light bulb was burned out and that the shower curtain rod had passed its useful life (which is apparently 5 years).

If I was going to host a program on TLC called “Home Improvement for the sub-70 I.Q.”, the first two episodes would be replacing a light bulb and replacing a shower curtain rod respectively. Those are the two easiest jobs there are. I have finished a basement with my own two hands from the studs to insulation, wiring, drywall, plumbing, tile, and carpet. I’m not new to how shit gets built and fixed.

What I am is a steaming, staggering heap of bad luck.

When I lived in the condo I installed all kinds of interesting features like an innovative toilet paper holder that doesn’t have one of those spring-loaded plastic tubes that launches itself into the toilet, a nice 400 hp garbage disposal, and some cool cantilevered glass shelves behind the toilet that look like they are magically growing out of the wall.

Stuff like this is only cool if you own it and you paid for it. Having paid for it ensures that you try not to break it. Renters don’t really try too hard not to break stuff. My last renter decided the delicate glass shelves would be a great place for his bowling ball collection, and I spent most of a weekend fixing drywall and (ill-advisedly) re-hanging them after they pulled out of the wall.

On the other side of the coin, I can’t stand when landlords replace and fix things as cheaply as possible. With this in mind, I went to Home Depot and picked up the nice light bulbs that last 4000 years and one of those shower curtain rods that you see in hotels that curves out and gives you a little more room to flail in the shower. Another reason I wanted that kind is because it actually SCREWS into the wall instead of having those useless rubber bumpers on the end that hold to the wall through a combination of friction and hope.

Curtain rod – $40
Bulbs – $4
The rest of my day – $ucky.

The first thing I noticed was that in my infinite wisdom and love for mother earth, I had replaced all of the light bulbs in the condo with some kind of space age soy-based compact fluorescent bulbs that actually give birth to a spotted owl when they burn out. I couldn’t really stick this comparatively crappy full spectrum incandescent in there and look at myself in the mirror. So I knew I’d be going back for the right bulbs.

Then I took the shower curtain rod and held it in place. In that small bathroom, the use of that rod meant that the shower curtain would hang into the toilet. Now I have two reasons to go back to Home depot. I also saw a loose piece of moulding under the cabinets in the kitchen, and the under-cabinet lighting was showing, so I added finish nails to my list and headed back out.

I returned the shower rod and got the right light bulbs, and got a straight rod with the stupid crapass bumpers on the end. It was nice, though, a thick hefty brushed nickel piece of work that appeared to be worth all $25.00 I paid for it. Still, I kept looking at it and thinking “It took mankind over a thousand years to figure out that we need to put little wheels on our luggage. How many more generations must pass before someone invents a usable shower curtain rod?”

But I stuck it up there and wedged it in all tight like it was designed to do. Then I headed for the kitchen to fix that moulding and replace the light- “KA-CHUUUH! BING! Smuh.” I heard someone say from the bathroom.

The fucking shower curtain rod had failed in some way and come crashing down, and on the way to the toilet it managed to hit one of those glass shelves, tearing it out of the wall, but mercifully not breaking the glass.

I thought about how insanely hilarious this would be to someone watching, and if that person were standing there helpless with laughter, I might kill them. I finally figured out that the little threaded rod that runs through the center of the curtain rod had detached itself and caused it to telescope back inside itself just enough to fuck up my bathroom/mood. Now I have to get a THIRD replacement curtain rod, drywall filler, anchors, and probably some paint.

Damn it. I’ll just replace the lightbulb. I need to make progress somewhere soon.

Of course the stupid soy pot head earthsaver light bulb was built as shittily as hippies tend to build everything, and the threads separated from the bulb when I unscrewed it and were sitting in the socket mocking me. Plus now there is a baby spotted owl waiting for me to regurgitate partially digested rodentia into its mouth. So I turn off the breaker to avoid more hilarity and spend 15 minutes with a pair of needle nose pliers trying to finesse 4 grams of metal out of a socket, getting evermore creative with my blasphemous epithets. At one point I called it a “filthy dicklicking Eskimo”, and I don’t even dislike Eskimos…much. I mean, you have to admit, they are sort of smug and very opinionated about how to host a party.

I finally got the new bulb in, and turned my rage toward the cabinet. In order to nail it back to the underside of the cabinet, I had to bend backward over the counter and use a small hammer. I won’t go into the description of how my cabinets are built, but one day when you’re bored, take a piece of hardwood moulding about 16 inches long and place it on two wood blocks so the center is not supported. Then bend over backwards, hold it over your head, and try to hammer a finish nail into the middle of it while someone sprinkles sawdust and dead bugs in your eyes. It’s great.

While doing that, I also managed to miss the nail and smash the under cabinet light. So I added more stuff to my Home Depot list – 5 gallons of kerosene and a blowtorch. Screw this place. They call it a “fire policy” for a reason.

So I went to see Rich again. He was working the returns counter and knew me by name. I asked him if there was a section of contractor grade stuff where I might find a shower curtain rod that wasn’t designed by “a damn Swede”. I think that was supposed to be a dig on IKEA, but I was too pissed off to get my slurs right.

I found a rod that had plates that screwed in, and it even came with drywall anchors for a mere $15.00. At least they were getting cheaper. As I was leaving in my car, I stopped to let a lady and her kid cross in front of me from left to right. I was focused on a combination of them crossing the parking lot painfully slowly and bewilderment at how I was 3 hours and $100 into a 30 minute and $20 job…I’d be a fantastic government contractor… So I wasn’t really paying attention to the guy who was about to cross my path from right to left.

Let me set the scene for you. To get an idea how fast I was going, put your car in drive (I don’t drive an automatic transmission because I am heterosexual, but I’ll use one in this example) on a slight incline (that’s UPhill) and take your foot off the brake. Now, however fast you are going when you have moved 36 inches, stomp the brake. The car bounces a little. Now have a friend stand in front of your car far enough away that you can see his feet from your seated position in the driver’s seat. It’s about 6-8 feet from your bumper depending on the air pressure in your tires.

Now have your friend dress up like the retarded hippie that invented the soybean/spotted owl lightbulb. This will require a grey hemp shoulder bag, dirty jeans, and a shirt with a crazy yet meaningless design on it and oversized buttons. Tell him not to bathe or shave for a month and overreact to everything.

The guy did the startled hop, and then threw his hands up in the air indicating that I am a fucking maniac recently escaped from a maximum security institution for the criminally insane.

What he didn’t know was that I was feeling very close to criminally insane at that moment, and it would be in his best interest to run along.

I did the obligatory “I’m sorry” shake of the head and holding up the hands for some reason. Body language that says “you’re right and I’m wrong. My bad. Sorry. Et cetera.”

That wasn’t enough for this guy. He stood there with a completely bewildered look on his face as if he was trying to fathom why I would leave my house today with the sole intention of killing him with my car. He was saying something and standing in front of my car, so I rolled down the window and said very exasperatedly “I’m SORRYYUH. I diddint MEAN TOOH. Please get out of the way-uh.”

He said “you almost HIT me……Man.” Like someone who has watched the big Lebowski a few too many times. “I mean…you could have KILLED someone…I’m just…ahh.” And he did the big dramatic look-around-and-take-a-breath thing.

“Dude…I said I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking…wait…Really? I don’t think you were almost killed or anything. I was barely moving and you were like a light year away. I could see your feet.”

“Yeah, but man… you…I mean you gotta’ watch it…Man…that was…woah.” Arms straight down, fingers splayed, trying to retain his grip on consciousness.

If you know me at all, you know it takes a LOT to make me raise my voice, and if I do, it is the last step before physical violence, which I am not really prone to fits of nor particularly good at. In fact, I doubt anyone I know has ever heard me yell as an adult. I didn’t grow up with yellers, and I’m not a yeller. But this guy was overdue for some verbal abuse.

“CHRIST…MAN. How much more of my day am I going to have to spend listening to you cry about this, you pussy?! I don’t give a runny shit if you are all out of balance about this – you didn’t even come close to getting hurt, and I ran out of apologies after the first two, so fuck off before things change here, okay?”

By now he had backed up between two cars, I guess thinking I was going to get out and chase him, which I was not. He said more stuff, but I couldn’t hear him because I rolled up my window and stopped caring. He also flipped me off as I drove away. It was the total hippie finger too – the one you see in those pictures from the sixties where the skinny little stinkbombs are flipping off the cops – straight arm, hunched shoulders, head lowered as if to direct more fuck off power through their hand. Just before they are mercifully and deservingly clubbed…

I briefly wondered what would happen when I returned my third shower curtain rod of the day.

“Hi Rich. Long time no see. I have to return this one too. It’s all bent and it has bits of hair and blood all over it. In an unrelated story, there is a dead guy in the parking lot.”

Installing the last shower rod was almost as fun as the first two, in that you had to hold it in place to mark the spot where the screws would go. This required a minimum of three hands. I finally got it in the right place with both hands, standing on the edge of the shower, and then realized that my pencil was on the floor. I did that exact same thing 3 times. I had long since resigned myself to the idea that everything I did today would be frustrating.

Finally I had it in place and marked the first screw hole. Then the little plastic plate fell off and bounced neatly into the toilet. As I lowered one end of the rod, the other end slipped from the wall, telescoped out, and fell into the bathtub making a horrible racket and causing me to fall off the tub and skin my knuckle on the countertop.

I know it’s not grown-up to lose one’s cool, but if ever there was a time I could have put my fist through a wall, that was it.

I actually left the condo and walked a block down the street, took a dozen deep breaths, and came back a few minutes later. I was smiling, but not because I was happy. I guess I knew that as soon as the burning fury subsided, I’d have a decent story to write.

I’m going to work out, and then I’m going to have a cold beer and think about how awesome tomorrow is going to be.

As some of you know, I murdered my cat Queasy in June. I was pretty much done with cats after that. Sort of because of the issues with the world being her litter box, and sort of because it sucked so much to watch her die after 13 years.

But I guess it’s like losing a child. You’ll eventually want another one so you can forget the first one. That may be the most insensitive thing I’ve ever typed. I’m getting good at this.

A few weeks before Christmas, I decided that what Sara needed for Christmas was a new cat. I wasn’t sure if she’d throw it at me or appreciate it, but I figured either way I’d be covered as “having made an effort to give a gift”. So I looked around. I liked the Queaser because she was small and quiet and didn’t jump up on tables and break stuff, so I figured I’d try to find another ugly flat faced cat like her. On the internet they call them “Persians”.

Persian cats cost like $300.00. Seriously. That’s almost a year’s salary for a flight instructor. I’d need to find one that was missing a leg or a head or something. So I started calling and visiting animal shelters. About the third place I went, they had a Persian cat in a cage so I asked “What’s the adoption fee for this one?” “It’s $75, but he’s already been adopted.” She replied. “Even though its nose got cut off? I figured there’d be a discount or something. Plus, isn’t being adopted by an animal shelter about the worst luck a cat can have?”

“No, his breed has flat faces and he was adopted by a family who is coming to pick him up this afternoon.”

Well, if you can’t at least laugh at me because you feel sorry for me, then I don’t want your cats anyway, I thought to myself.

The next place I went was one of those places where they keep them indefinitely. They also treat the adoption process with slightly more care than you would expect if you were adopting an actual child.

I filled out three pages of forms, submitted a DNA sample, had a credit check, did the FBI background search, and so on. I finally balked when they said they would be visiting my house unannounced.

“Really? This cat is living in a cage with another cat, you guys have to feed and bathe him, and I am asking you if I can have the privilege of paying you so that I might assume those expenses and someday feel very sad when the time comes to take that last trip to the vet…”

“Yes, but you know, some people are very cruel…”

“And I think that we have more than established that I am not one of those people as long as you don’t read my blog.”

“huh?”

“I said, I think it’s pretty clear that I’m not irresponsible”

“Yeah, but what did you say after that part?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, we need to have you agree to home visits before we can go forward.”

“That’s fine if you call first.”

“No, it has to be unannounced.”
“Yeah, so you can catch me in the middle of the afternoon cat beating session? It’s how I relax and I could never expect you to understand.”

“Ha ha…No, I know, it’s just a formality, but the box has to be checked.”

“I understand, but I’m a bit of a vigilante against stuff that doesn’t make sense, so I’m going to put a sort of fine point on it. In order to get into the parking structure at the building I live in, you have to call me. Then, when you get to the front door, you have to call me to have the door opened. Then you have to register with security, guess which floor I am on, and then figure out which door to knock on.”

“I know. Really we never do it anyway. It’s just one of those things that they won’t let go of.”

“Hmm. Well, if it is a complete non-issue, then neither you nor I should have to be bothered with it. Check and see what can be done about that and I’ll call back tomorrow.”

I don’t do wasted effort and I think it might become my life’s work to ensure that no one else does either.

I left a little demoralized. I really didn’t want to have to go through all of that again at the next place. As I was heading to the airport, I passed another animal shelter, so I went in and asked if they had any smashed-face cats. They said that one had just come in a couple of days before. She was black (we needed to diversify the household anyway), and they found her stray, declawed, spayed, and matted so badly that they had to anesthetize her to get her fur all shaved off.

Sounds like the last time I did this. I brought Queasy home bald, ugly, and abandoned too.

I left my info and a few hours later a lady called and told me about this pathetic creature. Over the next week I filled out a bunch more paperwork, went down and let the cat sniff me or whatever they need you to do, and finally (two days after Christmas, but not for lack of trying), I went to pick her up. The fur they had shaved off of her was in a grocery bag. Weird, but cat people usually are. The fur in the bag weighed 6 pounds. She weighed just under 5 pounds after the haircut. It was gross and is now in a landfill somewhere even though I told them I was going to untangle it and make a blanket and maybe some earmuffs depending on how much was left over.

As for naming, we initially assumed that she would do nothing but sleep, so we went with “Bonkers”. However, she has turned out to be partly to mostly bonkers, so the name was a little too on-the-nose. Right now her working title is “Jukebox Tampon Scott”. Don’t ask.

Needless to say, we are taking suggestions.

She has no idea what a well known cat she will be on the ‘net, nor would she care. She’s a cat, and she cares about food, water, sleeping, and this little toy mouse that has become the center of her universe.

Oh, and she cares quite a bit about the space heater. We have one in the living room that she is terrified of, although it has never made any kind of aggressive move toward her. She sat there staring at it to the point that Sara and I were convinced that the house was haunted.

I tossed a twist-tie at her and it hit her tail. She jumped straight up, hissing and making another weird cat noise, and proved that the laws of physics do not apply to cats. By the time she hit the ground, she was turned 180 degrees from her original heading and running as fast as she could. We have polished concrete floors, so the cat did quite a bit of treadmilling before she picked up any speed. When she got to the rug, the rear claws dug in and she was probably doing 40-60 mph by the time she ran out of rug. Then she had to convert all of that forward energy into a turn, handily dumping most of it into the wall outside the bedroom.

Good start. She also has a bit of a love-hate thing going with Sara. By love-hate, I mean mostly hate. Great christmas present, huh?

Sara will pet her and she’ll be cool with it for a minute and then she’ll get all slappy with her paws and run away. The best one was when she was laying on Sara’s chest and decided to box Sara’s ears. She reared up on her honkers and hit Sara on both sides of her head simultaneously with her paws. Like a retard catching a beachball. It was awesome.

So here’s to whatever her name turns out to be.

So here I am bitching about a vacation I didn’t even deserve in the first place. You wouldn’t expect anything else, would you?

I’m glad I got to go spend time with our friends and see different parts of the world. That being said, I probably wouldn’t get on another cruise ship. Having a predetermined dinnertime, paying $6.50 for a Corona, and spending most of the day looking for a place on the boat that we could hear ourselves think over the noise of children and techno music were the prime influences on our decision to make our own vacations from now on. I know some people love these big party boats, but it just strikes me as the fast food of vacations, except way more expensive. Also, the idea of visiting Rome, Sicily, Athens, Kusadasi (port town in Turkey), and Crete was awesome. The bummer was only getting to spend a few hours at each place. We sprinted up to the Acropolis and stood there with thousands of other sweaty foreigners for the requisite twenty minutes, and then hustled back to the boat because dinner was at 8:30 and lights out was at 10. At least that’s how it felt.

But the Acropolis was a cool thing to see, if only for a little while. Athens was a great city, but most of the other ports were clogged with street vendors trying to shove collectible refrigerator magnets up your ass. You’ve got to figure that when the big boat comes bobbing up to shore, it might as well be a big tub full of cash to Mervik the knockoff purse vendor. And by the way – I don’t mind a little hustle in my street vendors, but don’t fucking touch me. Grabbing my arm to lead me into your store could very likely end up with you bleeding and me in jail. Nobody wants that.

Also, the uneasy feeling you get when you know you’re getting ripped off and you might end up tied to an electrified bed frame while they harvest your organs for a religious ritual doesn’t go a long way in getting me to open my wallet.

So that was about it for the cruise itself. It turns out that Sara and I may not be cut out for cruise vacations. But it was fun overall and we can say we did it.

And they did deliver the towel animals. Sara loved them

In fact, she loved them so much that I started to feel inadequate and decided to try my hand at a towel snake.

I know. It looks like it could slither off at any moment

When we got back to port in Italy on Sunday, we decided we were going to figure out how to get on a train that would take us to Germany. I have some friends there and I used to live there, so I was looking forward to it. We took the train from the port to Rome, and then stood in line to buy our tickets. The nice lady at the counter told us that there was a train that left at 3 pm, but it was oversold. This meant we would be standing up for at least nine hours. We decided on the sleeper train that left at 8 pm. It was now 9 am. So we had 200 pounds of luggage, 11 hours to kill, and nowhere really to go. It was also getting hot.

We found a place in the basement of the station where you could store your bags. An hour in that line and we were at least free to walk around without our stuff. Now it was just a matter of wandering around for the day. By noon we had walked all over the city and we were sweaty and gross since we hadn’t showered since the night before. I wanted to find a nice air-conditioned bar and sit down with a frosty glass of beer for a while.

Italians are a little pushy and loud, but that’s not nearly as big a deal to me as their complete lack of understanding of air-conditioning. And by the way, eat my ass if you think I am being an ugly American who thinks we do everything the only way it should be done. Some things have a right and wrong answer, and this is one of them:

If you have a big freaking sign outside that proudly proclaims “AIR CONDITIONED”, and you are spending the extra money to run said air conditioner full blast, CLOSE YOUR GODDAMN WINDOWS AND DOORS. Nothing like walking into an ‘air conditioned’ restaurant that is about 84 degrees and weirdly clammy because the AC is running like hell in a futile attempt to cool the outside world. It’s simple physics.

Not a single Italian eatery or bar had figured out the big secret, so we decided to wait it out. The train finally showed up, and we had a little cabin with bunk beds and the world’s smallest air conditioner. The train was there an hour before it was scheduled to depart, so I cranked that little bastard to cold and shut the door like a sane person.

I can’t say I was sorry to watch Rome fade into the distance. I know it’s fashionable for stupid people to say that Americans are the loudest, rudest, most un-accomodating bastards in the free world, but in the previous week we had seen more than our share of socially reprehensible behavior from 17 countries. In fact, the only seemingly civilized folks on the boat (aside from the staff) were British, American, and this really cool Indian family we met who lived in Hong Kong. So Xeno that up your phobe, twist it to the left, and break it off.

The train trip was awesome. If you ever have a chance to take a train across Europe, even if it is at night, do it. The sleeper car was tiny, and had a little sink and even a miniature closet where you could hang your clothes. Now on hour 24 without bathing, Sara ran over to the local odds and ends shop and came back with a box of those skin cleaner wipey things. It takes a half dozen wipes for a guy my size to feel like he is barely clean enough to sleep. It was weird and gross and uncomfortable, but we finally were able to settle into the lower bunk and watch a movie on my iPod.

That was one of the best evenings I have ever spent with Sara. We were stinky and hot and could not touch each other for fear that our combined filth would cause some kind of new pathogen to mutate, but we sat there and listened to the sounds of the train and whatever movie we were watching and enjoyed the hell out of it.

We didn’t sleep much. We arrived in Bern, Switzerland at about 6:45 the next morning and had to find the train that would take us to Mannheim. I was lucky to understand enough German to find out where it was.

Side Note – I think one of the main reasons that Americans are perceived as dicks in other countries is the language issue. Our awesome government education system has not deemed it important to actually teach our children other languages, so the first thing most people hear out of our cakeholes is essentially “I don’t have time to mess with your system of pops and clicks, so talk English like a ‘mercan.”

I can understand how that comes across as rude, so if I know a single word of anyone’s language, I will use it. I highly recommend this practice, as it is extremely disarming to whomever you come into contact with. I’m sure I asked the lady at the ticket counter in Rome how many hugs I needed to get a pass on a shoe fairy, but she knew I was making my own retarded effort and was very pleased with it.

Germany is awesome. They have a lot of rules and a very set method for doing most things, but I am a huge fan of any rule or regulation that is born of common sense and practiced in kind. And most rules in Germany are just that. If you want a driver’s license in Germany, it will take at least six months. That is because you have to take a 30 hour classroom course and something like six weeks of road training. It also costs about $4000.00. If you pass the evaluations and tests and you get two traffic tickets, you have to take what they call a “stupid test” and possibly repeat your training before you get the privilege (yes, privilege) of driving again.

This results in far more qualified drivers, fewer accidents, low congestion, and low insurance rates. IT. WORKS. Also, they don’t tie up half of their police force and clog roads giving chicken shit tickets to people who go too fast. Because the drivers actually know how to drive, they don’t have speed limits on many of their roads, and when you get to a stretch of road that does, a camera takes your picture and sends you a ticket if you are too stupid to read the sign. Because the rules are clear, purposeful, and have consequences, THEY. ARE. EFFECTIVE.

We met my buddy Klaus at the train station on Monday morning. He said “what do you guys want to do?” to which I replied “scrape the first five layers of scum off with a garden trowel, then see if a pressure washer can break through the harder stuff, and then take a shower.”

He said that our other buddy Thomas was waiting for us in Heidelberg, so we’d go see him and then maybe get cleaned up. Awesome.

We walked around Heidelberg for a while, had a couple of beers, and then Klaus and Thomas and I went back to the building where we met almost 13 years ago. It’s a student housing building called Curt Sandig Haus in Mannheim. When we lived there, the three of us had some great times. There was a little bar in the basement, and I offered to paint a mural down there in exchange for the hospitality the rest of the residents had shown the 22 year-old out-of his-element Dusty Scott. I painted for weeks and weeks, and got free beer for the rest of my stay because they liked the painting so much. We asked if we could see the bar, and someone opened it up for us. Most of the work had been painted over in a lovely shade of lemon yellow, but the big cityscape was still on the back wall. Klaus and Thomas and I reminisced for a while and took this picture to remind us of the good old days.

Actually, the whole place might as well have been in a time capsule. I went up to the floor I lived on and everything was exactly the same. Three mini-fridges served all 16 people on the floor, the bathroom still had an incomprehensible toilet paper dispenser, and the smell in the kitchen and TV room was eerie.

Finally, at 8 pm, we were on our way to Klaus’s place. Ellerstadt is the kind of place I would love to live. It is a small village west of Mannheim. Since we got there pretty late, he said “Let’s go see if we can find a winefest and you guys can shower when we get back.”

By now I had a visible cloud of green fumes rising off of me that was distorting other objects if you looked through it, like heat rising off of a road in summer. Sara and I looked at each other and decided if we’re going to smell like hobos, we may as well be drunk, so we headed out.

Walking through Ellerstadt, I commented on how old some of the houses looked that surrounded Klaus’s place. “About how long have these houses been here?” I asked. “This one is 800 years old”, he said, pointing to a stout brick home on the corner.

Living in a country that is just over 200 years old, 800 years barely computes for me. It turns out this particular village was settled 1200 years ago. There are now 2400 residents, and 18 wineries. That is a damn fine ratio if you ask me.

And holy crap, the wineries. We walked around his neighborhood (keep in mind it is Monday night at about 9:00), and every block or so, one of the winery owners would be open for business. The entire village was
surrounded by vineyards, and most of the winery owners had a big covered patio or outdoor space where they would serve German food and whatever kind of wine they had bottled.

This is what I travel for when I travel. We were the only foreigners there, the food was as authentic as it gets, and I was attempting to make small talk with the friendliest strangers I had ever met using my shitty broken German. These people know how to live.

We ordered four glasses of wine (Klaus’s pregnant wife Miriam opted wisely to go to bed instead of coming with us), and this kid who couldn’t have been more than 18 years old came up to our table with it on a serving tray. In slow motion I watched the glass closest to him tip back. He moved the tray back in an attempt to catch the rogue goblet, but that tipped all four of the glasses forward in an unrecoverable fashion.

The cascade of red wine began at the end of our long table and is probably still flowing somewhere in Switzerland.
You can’t fully appreciate the volume of wine that four glasses can hold until you have seen the surface area it can cover. The waiter was mortified, of course, as we jumped up and looked at each other.

Klaus’s head was cut off because he is eleventy feet tall

We looked like extras in a slasher film. After the laughter faded, we ordered another round. The waiter sheepishly asked me if we wanted another waiter. I said “No way – you are the only one allowed to touch our drinks, because I bet you’re the most careful waiter in the world right now.”

Definitely the picture to use on our wedding announcement

It was closing in on Tuesday morning. Sara and I had not had a shower since Saturday night, and now we were wearing an entire bottle of wine. I don’t think I have ever had a better time than I did with Sara and my buddies that night in Ellerstadt. We stayed out until the wee hours, got drunk, told stories, staggered home, and finally got a shower.

We spent the next two days riding the streetcars around Mannheim and the neighboring burgs. Germany is just awesome. The weather, the people, the food, the scenery. I’ve been a lot of places in my life, but I don’t know if I’ll ever find a place I like to visit as much as Germany.

Mega-thanks to Zoltar and Shortcake for putting up with us for a week on that boat, To Klaus and Miriam for giving us a much needed shower and a bed, and to Thomas for making the time to hang out with us.

…and you’re welcome for the voodoo I threw down on the grill as Thomas and Miriam did their best to ignore me. First one’s free.

I got to go to a wedding for one of Sara’s friends up in Detroit, and all sorts of cool stuff happened. It is my honor to share it with you.

Before I get started, there will be lots of people reading this (including possibly the bride and groom), who may mistakenly walk away with the impression that I did not enjoy myself while I was there. This could be further from the truth, but not by much. I’ll make that less clear by saying that I do not enjoy weddings as a rule, and if given the choice, I will choose not to attend a wedding because they are generally boring and I am generally selfish. However, it is good to see all of Sara’s friends whom I have grown to have feelings for that range from barest tolerance to real friendship. And in one case, a little bit of a dude-crush.

And no, I won’t explain who falls into which category. They all know who they are and where they stand.

So what I’m saying is that I had a good time and aside from the actual travel, I would choose to do it again if I could. What follows is my account of the parts that are worth retelling, which by definition are the parts that angered me, made me bleed, or otherwise sucked. Have you ever read a blog where the writer just tells you all of the stuff that was great? “This morning we went to brunch and had a delightful quiche. Then we walked in the park while it did not rain and had an uneventful ride home. Tonight we are going to watch our favorite television program while eating a Caesar salad and we will go to bed at 10:30.”

Of course you haven’t.

It all started when I hit the road to Detroit. I took Atlanta’s lousy excuse for public transportation, and was feeling oddly happy. I had my headphones jammed in my earholes, but not plugged into anything. I find this allows me to hear things like approaching cars, but makes me slightly less approachable by bums. Try it in your town. It works.

When I got to the airport, it was a little crowded, but not overly so. I have this insane habit of arriving hours early for flights, and this day was no exception. I had some work to do, so I found my gate and started looking for an electrical outlet (my laptop has a 73 inch monitor and 91 gigaflops of jpeg, so it goes through the battery in about 30 minutes) so I could get stuff done.

This brings me to my first bitchpoint – electrical outlets in airports. Slightly more precious than gold, they are located approximately every 8000 yards and are usually being used to charge someone’s iPod or leaned against by a sleeping traveler. Oh, the airport authority sometimes puts in those “charging stations” here and there, but they fail to account for the absurd number of retarded people in airports. The first such installation I encountered was two gates away from my gate, and had four stations. One was being used as a bunk for a sleeping infant, one had a bunch of backpacks on it, one was being used for its intended purpose, and the fourth one had a couple sitting at it, passionately thrusting their tongues down one another’s throats.

Fantastic. Does anyone understand how awesome it will be when fuel prices make air travel once again too expensive for stupid people?

After walking up and down the concourse a few times, I spotted a rogue outlet at my gate and plugged into it. I got all set up to be productive, and then the announcement came that my flight had been moved to the other end of the concourse. No one seemed to be paying attention (or maybe it was the fact that it was still almost two hours until my flight departed and no one cared), so I packed up and hauled ass to the new gate, knowing that there would be a frigging outlet there. But there wasn’t, so I took my chances with the battery, got on line, and started looking for the info I needed.

Then the gate changed again. Now I had to pack up and go to another concourse. So I got on the tram and finally got to gate C-8921, where there was a nice outlet at a window in a perfect spot where no one would bother me. But no goddamn wireless connection.

“Are you kidding me”, I said aloud to the confusion of those around me. I then packed up my stuff again to go on the hunt for a random connection. Somewhere at the other end of the terminal I found an access point used by the crew lounge below, and then I heard the announcement “All standby passengers on flight 666 to Detroit, please see the agent at gate whatever”. So my brilliant plan of arriving early was effectively shit on by whatever force in the universe wants me to write blogs.

It also brought me to my second bitchpoint – Airline passengers who need to be shot.

I got to the counter and got me boarding pass. There were two planes boarding through the same gate, so a couple hundred people were funneling toward the door. It was not an orderly line, but the sort of thing you see as livestock are herded through an opening in a fence. I was right at the front of the line, but only because I was standing at the ticket counter. I also did not want to walk all the way to the end, so I waited a couple of minutes where I was and then just sort of jumped in line. This was an effort not to look like a dick and get in front of everyone. I figured I got in line at the same spot I would have if I had gone to the end, and all was fair.

However, the retarded lady behind me saw things much differently.

“OH Nonononono you don’t.” I heard behind me. I ignored it, hoping she was talking to herself or someone else.
Then I heard, “You can just cut in line like that, oh no”, and I turned about halfway toward her to see if she was mad at me. She was.

I said “I waited to get in line. I’m not really cutting in…”
“Well, you need to go to the back like everyone else.” she said, waving her finger at me because she wanted me to break it off and stab her in the eye with it.
“Ehh. You know…we all have assigned seating, and the plane isn’t leaving without us…if you look at it logically…so really it’s not a big deal.”
and I was done talking to her. I turned back around and then she grabbed my upper arms with both of her hands, shoved me out of line, and said “YOU. Need to go to the end of the line.”

At this point, much went through my head, but I acted on none of it. I just put both hands in the air, took two steps back and said, “Wow. Uncalled for. I’m not sure what your exact problem is, but…”

Luckily the gate agent saw it and said “Ma’am, come over here please. Sir (looking at me), go ahead and board.” I got an intensely joyful feeling knowing that this dried up old cooze was going to lose her precious place in line. The gate agent said “Ma’am, you do not ever put your hands on another passenger. Ever. If that blah blah and an air marshal had seen it, yaddah yaddah so and so assault and on and on.” It was awesome to see a stupid person being publicly shamed. Even awesomer when she got on the plane dead last.

Another thing I was thinking about as I sat on the plane was this – and I think it is an issue that will become more pronounced as time goes on – This lady was in her mid fifties and tipped the scales at about 105 pounds. I’m not a huge or particularly scary looking guy, but I had about six inches and almost a hundred pounds on her. I know that guys aren’t supposed to hit women, but at what point in time did women come to the conclusion that they can just say and do whatever they want to someone twice their size without fear of consequence? More than once I have had a sixteen year old girl in a car cut me off and/or yell obscenities at me, and I thought “You know, someone with less judgment than I could probably kill you by punching you one time.” I’ve seen it in bars, too – some super angry 5 foot tall chick standing on her tiptoes, pushing and screaming at a guy with complete impunity.

I’m not suggesting that people should start decking each other, but maybe just settle the hell down a little and consider what could happen if you pick on the wrong dude.

I met Sara in Detroit and we were less than delighted to see that our hotel room was originally designed for a submarine. Two beds were crammed into a space so small that you had to stand on the bed to move the chair away from the desk. The bathroom reminded me of being in Europe. You stand in the shower knowing that the only thing a faucet is supposed to do is make water come out of a hole, but you’re staring at mirror with lights glowing through it and what appears to be a bowl of fruit hanging inverted from the ceiling, wondering when you are going to get clean.

This bathroom was completely tiled and had a drain in one corner. The shower head was mounted to the ceiling and the shower itself was just sort of an area near the drain, from what I could tell. The toilet was mounted to the wall with some kind of high-powered air cannon that helped it flush via a button next to the sink, and the sink was the only thing that really looked like what it was.

After a night of partying and drinking with the guys, the girls all went to do whatever girls do before weddings ,and the guys went to breakfast to try and kill a hangover. Afterward, I went back to my room to do some studying and take a nap before the wedding. After an hour of studying airplane stuff, I thought to myself “I do believe I’ll go shoot out a log and then settle in for a nap. It’s gonna be awesome.”

About midway through the dedication of my underwater monument, I performed a courtesy flush for no one in particular. At some point in the past few minutes the bowl had separated from the wall, and the violence that followed was horrifying. First of all, the sound of the flush itself made me think I was going to be castrated, and then about 700 gallons of water shot out from between the toilet and the wall, drenching me and pretty much everything in the bathroom and triggering my fight or flight response.

Not knowing how exactly one would fight a toilet, I chose flight. I took about a dozen extremely small steps toward the door (due to my pants being around my ankles) and threw myself into the bedroom in a soggy frightened heap. I was sort of yelling and laughing, because I knew that if anyone had been in the room when I came pouring out of the bathroom…well, they would have officially seen the most hilarious thing they would ever see.

I was afraid to look into the bathroom – assuming it would look like a monkey cage in there – but apparently the pipe that broke was the incoming water, which is ostensibly clean. Much like a man’s underwear can never be considered clean, neither is any of the water that comes from a toilet. Both of our toothbrushes were wet, hair brushes, my shaving kit, her makeup, towels, and pretty much everything else that was left in there. Then I remembered the bridesmaid dress that was hanging inside the door and thought, “Hmm. If I leave now, I can be back in Atlanta in time to pack and move out before anyone realizes the wedding is screwed up.” Luckily The spray pattern missed the door and spared the dress (as far as they know).

My next big realization was that I was not clean, either. I was also soaking wet and without toilet. I decided the only thing I could do is take a shower, so I did, and then threw away most of our bathroom stuff before calling maintenance. As soon as he showed up, he beelined for the flush button like I was a big liar or something. “Whoa, there. Might not want to do that.” I said. “I gotta see what the problem is” he said. I said, “Look at the bathroom. That stuff on the ceiling is water. You don’t want to push that button, I promise.” He turned down the water pressure and did it anyway. Less violent, but just as much water.

We got a much better room out of it. And they replaced our toothbrushes.

The wedding was a wedding. It was all weddingy and they had a bagpiper and everybody was pretty and all of that stuff. Nothing really wacky happened, so that’s all I can say about that.

The trip home, however, blew goat ass. I fly standby because I am poor and my father used to work for Delta. I decided to take the 11 am flight to Atlanta on Sunday. It was full, so I waited until 1:00. Missed that one as well. And I missed the next seven because they were all full too. Sara was leaving Monday at noon, so I decided to try and make the flight at 6 am on monday. Guess who was now rocking 24 hours in the airport and two days in the same clothes? Sara’s flight left with her on it, and I had more or less resigned myself to at least another day in Detroit.

I wasn’t the only one, either. There were several other chumps like me who had been there almost as long as I had. The problem with getting out of Detroit is that while there are thirty flights a day, you can only go to Atlanta or Cincinnati. Add to that the fact that Detroit is a massive shithole and everyone wants to get the hell out, and you have a bunch of overbooked flights.

At one point, another shining example of douchedom approached the gate agent and said “What do the rest of the flights look like?”
She told him something he didn’t want to hear, and he pounded his fist on the counter, saying “Dammit, I NEED TO GET TO ATLANTA.”

Since I am flying on cheap tickets via a privilege that can easily be revoked, I am not able to do and say everything I would like to do and say, but were the circumstances different, it might have gone like this -

“Really, asshole? You need to get to Atlanta? That’s somewhat unique, because I myself have just been looking forward to an extended camping trip in a fucking airport and really have no interest in getting where this ticket says I am going. Do you really think that you are the most inconvenienced of everybody here? How about you pretend you are an adult and suck it up like the rest of us, you worthless skidmark.”

Watching people along with a bunch of other people who are watching people is a great lesson in nonverbal communication. On about my ninth flight, I was sitting in the gate, and this guy was pacing around with his stupid bluetooth thing, yelling a conversation with somebody. “WELL, MARK, WE CANT…NO. I SPECIFIED THE 5901 PRODUCT AND THEY TOOK DELIVERY OF THE 6302. WHAT I THINK SHOULD HAPPEN IS WE SHOULD CALL THE TRANSPORT COMPANY AND – WAIT, DID YOU TALK TO SUZANNE TODAY? BECAUSE SHE SAID SHE WENT OVER THE FLOW WITH THE PROJECT MANAGER AND…”

And we all exchanged glances like “what is this guy’s problem?” people were trying to sleep, but he was just yelling away. Not angry, just talking way too loud.

“OKAY. HAVE HER CALL ME AT THIS NUMBER: 530-555-9821. OKAY? THATS MY CELL. YEAH, DO THAT AND I’LL FOLLOW UP WITH THAT. NOW DO WE HAVE THE PIECES IN PLACE FOR THE MILLER ACCOUNT? WE SHOULD GET THOSE SMACKFOAM ORDER PLATES RECRANKIFIED…”

And people snickered as I instantly whipped out my phone. The guy next to me said “oh, man. You’re going to call him?” and people began to fidget at gate B19.

I sent him the following text message – “Dear sir, could you kindly lower the volume of your voice? People are trying to do other things. Sincerely, the people at B19.”

Then I turned off my phone in case he called the number back and went insane with rage. I was going to blame it on the punk kid playing his iPod too loud.

“SO SAM AND I MET ABOUT THAT YESTERDAY AND HE SAYS THAT THE LATEST ORDER OF FLIMFLAM IS…OH, HOLD ON. THAT MIGHT BE HIM NOW.”

He looked at his phone, read what I think was my message, looked at 82 people staring back at him from gate B19, and very sheepishly walked down the concourse to finish his conversation. I’m telling you, public shaming is the way to a better society. I know it hurts people’s little precious fragile feelings, and that’s practically against the law in the Pussozoic era in which we presently live, but it is devastatingly effective.

Yeah, it’s a cliche as old as time.

I was leaving the grocery store with a single bag. This bag contained two jalapenos and a half pound of shrimp. Since I bought it at one of those dipshit organic places where retards shop, it also contained a receipt for $87.22. I planned on taking it home and cooking up a spicy little number I like to call “Shrimp and Jalapeno completely expected”, since I don’t believe in surprises. As I was walking to my car, I heard a female voice say “excuse me…?”

My first guess was that it would be a meth addict asking for money. Second, I supposed it could be someone who needed directions. Third and fourth respectively were someone who had lost their child and someone with whom I had drunkenly sired a child four years ago and was going to introduce me to it. What it turned out to be was a chick hitting on me, and that would have been guess number 7,612 – right between being mistaken for the pope and having a mermaid ask to borrow a jar of triangles.

Let me say this to anyone who wonders about what makes chicks dig dudes. They have glands somewhere on their person that can see, smell, taste, and feel confidence. I was still riding the glow of having passed my latest checkride and I’ve been feeling pretty good about life in general since I quit my office job last year. I have also lost 20 pounds since I started purging and cutting myself in March and have a decent tan from being outside more often (I’m not bragging either – at my physical best I look twice as average as the guy standing next to me, so I don’t really bother with it). Luckily, women don’t seem to put as much weight on physical appearance as men do. If they did, I’d be living on an island with Gilbert Gottfried and Tom Petty, and we’d wile away the hours building cathedrals out of matchsticks and dodging the detritus being launched at us from the mainland. The only times I have ever been approached by women is when I felt good. It happens all the time all around us, yet men all over the world are baffled by it.

Just like a woman to only like the stuff we can’t fake.

In any case, I guess I had the swagger and the puffiness of chest or the pheromones or whatever, or maybe it was just gas. After she said “excuse me”, I turned and did the raise of the chin you do when you want to acknowledge someone, but secretly hope they don’t say anything else.

“My friend wants to know what you are doing for the rest of your life.” She said as she and her friend walked toward me.

By this time I was standing next to my car, and not having missed a beat, I did that thing where you have your back to the car and you put a foot flat against the fender so your knee sticks out. I slowly lit a cigarette and took one long drag on it. Then I squinted at them over my sunglasses and said in my most gravelly voice, “Whatever the fuck I want to, sugarbush.” I flicked the cigarette on the ground at her feet, jumped over the door into the bucket seat of my ragtop 68 GTO and roared out of the parking lot, leaving them both in a shuddering heap of desire and natural lubrication.

If you believe I did any of that, stop reading now and go feed your unicorn. For the rest of you, this is how it really happened:

“My friend wants to know what you are doing for the rest of your life.”

I spent a good ten seconds looking around for whomever they were talking to, and then sheepishly pointed at myself because I was the only person in earshot, but I thought maybe one of them had a Bluetooth earpiece in that I couldn’t see and I was about to have half a conversation with someone who didn’t even know I was there.

“Yeah, you. She told me to ask. She’s shy. I’m Blah Blah and this is my friend whatever. She’s curious about the rest of your life.”

“I…mm…got some groceries and now I’m going to pick my cat up at the vet and then I’m going home to make dinner for me and my girlfriend.”

Please note that I made an on-the-fly decision to add the note about my girlfriend. Not because I wanted to be all annoying and “I have a girlfriend”, but more to negate the gayification that came with admitting I have a cat. Also note that in answer to a question about what I was doing the rest of my life, I covered roughly the next half hour. I think that means either I’m a live for the moment rebel badass, or more likely I’m a closet fatalist.

One of them then noticed that I had on a shirt with the name of the place I work on it.

“Falcon Aviation? Is that where you work?”

“Yeah. For now, anyway.”

“Are you a pilot?”

“Yup, but I teach, mostly.”

“What kind of plane do you fly?”

“A blue one. Actually white with blue stripes. And I think a grey stripe.”

I said that to be a smartass, but they both seemed to accept the answer. That was a little weird and I started wondering if I was about to be mugged.

“Listen, I gotta go, but it was nice meeting you both…but uhh…I’m guh PetSmart gedda cat.”

“Okay. I guess if you have a girlfriend then…”

“Yeah. It’s been like three years and I really like her a lot, so…you know. But hey, it’s flattering that you even noticed my 35 year old carcass, so gracias for that.”

“You’re 35?”

“Thirty five and a half, actually.”

I’m sure they started with the “eeeewww, he was all old. GROSSS.” Stuff when they got in their car, but I drove over to the pet store/vet laughing my ass off the whole way about the scenario where I flick my cigarette at them and drive away.

Earlier that day, the Veterinarian called me and said my cat needed some kind of shot or something and it would be $18 and I could pick her up at 4. Alrighty, I said. I went to the office and told them I was there for my cat.

Everybody was rushing around and they told me to wait a minute. I waited 30 minutes and then I asked again. They said they were very sorry, but they had some emergencies come in and they had to deal with those. Then a girl came in with a big golden retriever, and bitchily told them that they had forgotten to clip the dog’s nails. Guess whose canine pedicure took precedence over me getting the hell out of there?

So the dick switch was in the on position, and I asked “Hey, if you could just toss my cat out here or slide her under the door or whatever I’ll get out of your hair. This dog getting its nails done is not an emergency.”

After 45 minutes, they brought the cat out.

They then handed me a bill for $56.

I handed it back and told them that they had done something wrong. The girl went to check with the doctor and came back and explained to me that the shots were $18 each and they had to charge me $15 to “board” the cat for the day.

I decided to try a little reasoning. “Listen, I know you guys are all in a twist right now, but I’ve been waiting out here for very close to an hour, and if you could just drop that boarding charge, I’ll leave here very happy.”

Then I got the most infuriating response you can ever get from a sales clerk, and it is a great indicator that things are about to stop making sense.

“I’m sorry, I CANT. It’s already on the bill and I CAN’T take it off.”

Really, retard? Your $8 an hour worthless ass CAN’T figure out a way to do that? And you also expect me to believe you? You saying you can’t do something is going to cause a lot of problems. Sure you don’t want to change your answer?

“Yes you can.”

“No, really, we can’t take it off. Seriously.”

“Put me behind that computer for 60 seconds and I’ll prove it can be done. If I can’t do it, I’ll give you a cat.”

*sigh* “Just a minute, let me get the doctor.”

The doctor came out and showed me the charges. He also told me that I signed the form where I agreed to pay for boarding if I chose not to wait for them to be finished. This pissed me off because I hate shit that isn’t rational. Normally I wouldn’t waste this much time and effort on $15, but this place has made a hobby out of ripping me off, so they were in for a fight.

“Okay, so you told me to drop the cat off at nine, right? And I had to work at 8, so I dropped it off at 7:30. You then told me I could pick it up at 3, but I couldn’t make it here until 4. Did you expect me to wait in the pet store for seven hours so I could save the boarding fee, or was I supposed to take the day off work?”

(Doctor looks at his watch)

“I know what time it is, because I have been sitting here for an hour waiting for a beagle to get an emergency massage so I could get my stupid cat back, and now I’m asking you to knock $15 off the price because I had no other option but to leave the cat here AND I had to wait, not to mention the amount of money I spent here last month…”

“I understand Mister Scott, but we can’t…”

“Yes you can, and I’m going to prove it. Keep the cat. Make it your mascot or sell it or whatever.”

(Chuckling) “Well, we don’t have anyone here overnight…”

I was halfway to the door when I overheard him say to the girl behind the counter, “He won’t leave the cat.”

The hell I won’t.

I got in my car and drove home, excited at the prospect of cleaning dried cat snot off the ottoman for the last time.

Just as I was pulling into the parking deck, my phone rang.

“Mister Scott? This is so and so from Shamfield Pet Hospital. Dr. Fucknose wanted to let you know that animals that are abandoned will be put up for adoption and if a home isn’t found, they will be given to a shelter and could be destroyed.”

“Fair enough.” *click*

Fifteen seconds later, my phone rang again.

“Mr. Scott? Dr. Colonbrain said he will remove the boarding charge if you will come pick up your cat.”

“Are you sure? Because I was told that there was no way that could be done. You guys must have really pulled some str…”

(interrupting because I was being super mega-patronizing) “He also wanted to let you know that in the future if you leave the ca…”

(The sound of me hanging up on her) Like I want to listen to this bitch bleating about the way a boarding charge works. If Doctor Asshat wants me to know something, he can call and tell me himself.

Fifteen minutes and $38 later, the cat and I left the clinic, never to return.

Sweet merciful baby Jesus and all of the feathers that fall from his brow, did I REALLY have to convince them that I was going to abandon a cat just to make them take a $15 charge off the bill? Why do I feel like one of only a few dozen people left on the planet who recognizes the point where things stop making sense?

So after it was all said and done, I was making Shrimp and Jalapeno completely expected, thinking about how quickly others can influence the way my day goes. I’m sure there is a lesson to be learned there, but hell if I know what it is.

So here are a couple more flying videos. Flying is like sex, except louder. And safer.

Basically my life is as follows (and after you read this, you’ll understand why the creative well has been a bit dry) – Wake up at 6 or 7 am, make breakfast. Eat breakfast. Work out for an hour or two. Study flying stuff. Take a nap (I’m not lazy, nor do I think I have earned said nap. What I do know is that there is not a human alive who can read anything written by the FAA and stay awake longer than 2 hours). Make lunch. Eat lunch. Study some more or borrow an airplane and practice flying around with one engine. Come home. Make dinner. Eat dinner. Go to sleep.

So if the flying thing doesn’t work out, I think I’d make a decent monk. The flying Monk – what with all of the exercise and studying, but with none of that pesky enlightenment. I’d have the robes with the rope around the waist, but I’d have a silk scarf tucked in and I’d constantly wear a pair of ridiculously large Ray Ban aviators; my eyes hidden behind their mirrored surface, scanning the horizon for signs of poppycock, shenanigans, monkeyshines and/or carrying-on. If trouble was a-brewing I’d hop in my De Havilland Chipmonk (if you’re an airplane freak, that was funny. If not, then maybe you should skip your next communist party meeting and start learning about airplanes) and blast off to save the day.

I’ve lost almost 20 pounds, which I think I have to do if I expect myself to continue making fun of fat people in good conscience, and if you have any questions about single or multi-engine piston aircraft, aviation regulations, or what endorsements you need in your logbook for any stage of flight training, I know a guy who can answer them. His name is me.

I’m also broke again for the first time in six or seven years. I’m adapting to it, but for the record it still sucks. The main difference between me and most broke folks – or maybe I should say the difference between being broke and being poor – is that my reaction to dwindling funds is not to shit in the dark, shower using only cold water and try to make my own toothpaste so I can save $7 a month, but to figure out how to make more money. That’s pretty much the delineating factor when it comes to the difference between losers and winners.

If anyone has any ideas as to how I can pull in an extra grand or so a month without doing any work, I’m all ears.

Although my day-to-day may seem like hell, I still have never once gotten up in the morning and said, “Jeez, I wish I could just go sit in a cube and take orders from a retarded manager to complete a project that should never have made it out of his ass.”

Someone sent me a very nice email last week telling me that they had been reading my site for a while and decided to grab life by the taint and own it for a while. I try almost daily not to sound like a cockgobbling homo, but it really did mean a lot to me to know that I had something to do with someone changing their life for the better. To the guy in Australia who is living his dream (and this time it’s not Judd, by the way), you have my respect and admiration for making shit happen instead of letting shit happen.

I’ve been watching the presidential race, too. I really don’t have much of an opinion on it. Most people become more passionate about this stuff as they get older, but I seem to care less and less. With every president I have seen since I was old enough to notice, I have heard the retarded warnings of imminent doom from the retarded worriers across the entire retarded political spectrum, and not once have I seen any of their retarded prophecies come true. I know that 99% of the people in this country have the brains and ability to do what they need to do to keep themselves and their families fed, medicated, and educated. I also know that about 40% choose not to do so and cost the rest of us money and time.

So until a politician runs on the “birth control for the non-motivated” platform and starts dropping chemical sterilization gas bombs into the homes of people who should not be parents, I don’t see myself getting too involved in the process.

Think really hard. Is there a single problem in this (or any) society that could not be solved if morons were prevented from bringing more morons into the world?

I hear the typical “Obama’s church has Muslim ties” and “McCain ate a live kitten on stage” and “Hillary has a vagina” stuff, and my only response is a feeling of apathy that is ironically intense.

I flew a guy up to Knoxville yesterday for a checkride and I was sitting in the little terminal idly commenting on the news with a couple of crusty old guys. Obama was blowing his “Hope prosperity change revolution freedom” number to a large audience, and one of the guys said “That guy…we elect him, and next thing you know the blacks are going to take over.”

Here’s what you do when stupid people say stupid things – ask them to explain it.

“Really?” I asked. “Blacks are going to take over? What do you think that will lead to?”

“It’s right there. All over the place. You just wait. You’ll see. This place is going to hell in a paper sack.”

So if I’m hearing all of this right, the blackening of America is a foregone conclusion that I’m too stupid to understand and soon we’ll all be getting Government issued rims for our cars and crack will become our currency.

Here’s a tip to use any time you form a hypothesis – ask yourself if it makes sense. The dignity you save may be your own.

I listened for a few more minutes and started to feel like I was going to forget how to read if I sat there much longer, so I went outside and watched airplanes land. I am really sort of glad that this guy’s cholesterol was eclipsed only by his blood pressure and he’d only be part of the voting population for a few more months. Not to say Obama is the best candidate, but if you think he is or isn’t, at least come up with a valid reason.

In feline news, I did not have the heart to have my cat put to sleep as punishment for not using the litter box. The Skirt disagrees with me on that one. At times I question it as well. I took her to the vet last week and they told me she had infections in every orifice and charged me $400. Ever since I bought into that $25 a month pet insurance scam, it seems that furry little whore needs something done every week.

“Yes, Mister Scott, your cat has a urinary tract infection and some kind of mung in her ears, and she’s constipated. We’re giving you some drops and some other drops and some oily stuff that you have to give her thrice daily. That’ll be a bazillion dollars.”

“Sweet. Glad I got insurance.”

“Well, the insurance did cover one of the vaccinations and the Swedish massage, but the rest is on you.”

“hmm. So I paid $25 a month for the past year…better known as $300, and it saved me…um…let’s see…carry the four…multiply by one…fifteen dollars?”

“Yes sir.”

“Awesome. How ‘bout you waive the fee and I give you a free cat for your trouble?”

“Haha. No, it doesn’t work that way.”

“Okay. Well, the way I see it, her being constipated just means fewer little piles of tootsie rolls next to the dryer for me to clean up, so keep the laxative and I’ll just buy the ear stuff.”

“Well, come on. If it was you, you’d want to move your bowels”

“Yes, that is true. In fact, I’d like to move them right here and now to express my displeasure. But the difference between my discomfort and hers is that I am human and I have worth.”

“Haha.” (I love how they think I am not serious)

“Whatever. So do I give her an injection or administer all of this stuff rectally?”

“Oh, no. It is all oral.”

“Do you have the other kind? I mean, I’m getting it in the ass, so it seems like…you know…circle of life and all of that.”

They sent me home with a veterinary pharmacy and later that night I gave her the first dose. She was snoring in the corner, so I loaded all of the droppers, pinned her empty head against the wall and gave her a gut full of antibiotics and whatever it is that makes cats shit. It was surprisingly easy.

What I didn’t count on was the cat’s ability to learn and avoid.

The next time I gave her the meds, she was much less cooperative. She gagged and spit and foamed and left 3 cc’s (or $40 worth) of medicine sprayed on the walls and ceiling of my closet. I need to decide if I really hate this cat more than I enjoy the challenge of overpowering her 7 pound frame.

Every time I do it I have to use a new plan, but it always turns out the same. I wrapped her in a towel and held her stupid nose, but she learned to push it out with her tongue. Now she has a yellow oily goatee. It has come to the point where The Skirt has to immobilize her while I shoot it down her esophagus with a super soaker and then hold her under water until she swallows. The only logical next step is to put her in the freezer for a few hours beforehand so she can’t move as fast.

We had a tornado come through town the other night. I know you were collectively fearing for my safety as evidenced by the single email I received from a guy I assume is your spokesperson after what I assume was a 36 hour candlelight vigil and prayer circle.

The Skirt and I were watching a movie and it suddenly went crazy. There were trees and pieces of metal and stuff flying all over the place, everyone was scared, and it was deafening. Then her phone rang and we put Twister on pause and someone told us that a tornado had broken a bunch of stuff about three blocks from our house. We had no idea anything was even going on. It was raining and there was a little hail, but it was far from the worst weather we had seen here. My dad called and I asked him if he knew how to get a stop sign out of my skull. He then told me to call my brother and tell him that I was okay, which I did not do because it was midnight and my brother was asleep. Further, I guessed if he saw the news the next morning he’d assume he would have heard something if I had been killed.

But I also thought it would be kind of funny if I had been killed and my brother didn’t find out for a couple of weeks.

“Sorry we missed you at the funeral.”

“Whazza? Funeral?”

“Yeah. Your brother’s funeral last week. Did you have to work or something?”

So I’m walking down the street the other day and a bum says “What can I do to make your day better, sir?”

“Absolutely nothing; my life is on rails right now, but thanks for asking.”

“You sure you don’t have anything for me?”

“Not a thing, man. Sorry.” (I wanted to do that thing where I reach in my pocket and cleverly pull out my middle finger – “Oh, I guess I do have a little something. Here ya’ go.”, but then I’d have to run away and I didn’t feel like running)

“Come on, brother. I don’t even have a job. Can’t you help me out?”

“Oddly…” (and this was quite liberating to say) “I don’t have a job either. In fact, if you have a couple bucks I can borrow, that’d be stupendous. I’ll pay you back as soon as I get on my feet.”

Now Colonel Rottentaint was confused and just a tad angry. I’m talking to a person who decided to become a government funded philosopher and bother people for table scraps, and how dare I encroach on his dignity in such a manner. Really? I’m not the one who approached you to ask for something I don’t deserve, dickbag – that was you. I don’t know what your public school guidance counselor taught you, but “Refuse Reexamination Engineer” is not a paying job, no matter how good you are at it. So save the indignation for someone who thinks you are worth a shit.

On the rare occasions that I engage a homeless person, I honestly do not have a problem giving them food, clothing, or whatever basic human need they have (within reason – no reacharounds. I’ve been burned one too many times with that one…and the burn doesn’t go away). Although giving anything to anyone without them working for it is the reason that that the homeless population is growing, denying a hungry person food is something even I can’t do. I’m working on it, though.

Another thing I tend to do (that will probably end with my lifeless corpse being found in a gutter) is offer helpful tips when they tell me their problems, which they do without fail or request. Back to our bridge camper and his plight…

We were near the local shelter where they go to get free stuff and get out of the rain. That happens to be about a block from where I live, making it somewhat unpleasant to walk around in my own neighborhood. And yes, it is my neighborhood, not theirs. I help pay for it.

“Man, sheeeeeit. What’s with you? Listen, I tried to get into Peach and Pine (the name of the shelter, I guess) but I didn’t get here in time. Now I have to be outside and it’s cold.”

“You were late?”

“Yeah, they open at 6 and it fills up, and I couldn’t got muh (garbled) foom zop. Gimme money.”

“What the fuck. You just told me you don’t have a job, so I’m going to guess you weren’t in meetings all day. I’m going to tell you one thing you can do that will change your life. You have one single thing to do as long as it is cold outside, and that is to stay warm. Do. That. One. Thing. As soon as you are good at that, pick another thing and do that one thing in addition to the first one, but make sure it is a thing that makes your life better.”

Then he walked away with a dismissive wave of his hand, mumbling something about whitey. Hell no – no time for things like solutions. There are taxpayers to accost and bushes to crap in and hygienic practices to ignore.

So now I’m going to tell you about Carl so my friends can stop asking me to write about it already. I used to walk past the sketchicenter (peach and pine) every day I decided to walk to work instead of riding my bike. I bought the bike because you are less likely to be molested if you are moving faster. Another good trick is to bark at cars as they pass, making the bums think that you are worse off than they. You learned it here.

I had my earbuds jammed in my skull and was looking straight ahead. Just me and my ipod, walking to work in my MBT’s (ugliest shoes known to man, but they keep my back straight, so cram it up your poo hole).

I watched a guy go past me and saw his shadow stop out of the corner of my eye. He turned around and started following me, and I knew he was going to ask me for something. Dammit. All I wanted to do was have a nice walk to work.

When he got up next to me he was saying something and I ignored him, but he wouldn’t take silence for an answer. After a block of this, I removed an earbud and said “What the hell, man? No. I don’t have anything to give you.”

“Hey, those are great shoes. I’m thinking about getting some.”

“No you’re not.”

“You just out walking? Beautiful day.”

“Going to work.” (attempting to put earbud back in ear)

“Whoa, hold up. What’s your name?”

“Rusty” (way to think on your feet, champ)

“Dusty? Nice to meet you, Dusty. I’m Carl.”

“God. Damn. It.”

“Listen, I’m a hard working man and I’m in the job pool and I mean you no harm. What do you know about black history?”

“Uh…(looking around for hidden cameras) probably not enough. “

I waited until the last second and darted across an intersection, but Carl was quick like a bummy.

“You know Harriett Tubman, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King? You know who they are?”

“Yes, Carl.”

“Well, let me share a little something –“

At this point he started “spittin’ mad rhymes” about the aforementioned people. He also improvised the following line – “50 years later, we strollin down Peachtree, me and Dusty. You don’t know, but Dusty can flow I know and I told you so. Ain’t none a you know blah blah blah bro and some other rhyming stuff, yo.” And then he threw to me like I was supposed to pick up where he left off. Mildly amusing, but no.

We stopped at the next light and he asked, “Hey, Dusty? What did you think when you saw me coming to talk to you?”

“Honestly? I thought ‘Christ, I hope this fucker doesn’t want to talk to me.’”

Carl found this hilarious.

“Man, you’re honest, that’s why I’m glad we’re friends.”

I looked back over my shoulder so that I could count the number of blocks you have to walk to become lifetime buddies. Turns out to be 3 and a half.

And he wanted to shake my hand. This guy was a talented rapper, but nothing made me want to shake his hand. Bum hands are worse than kids’ hands because they not only have the feces and disease on them, they are also large and scaly. I passed on the opportunity and he forced the issue. I settled on a knucklebump and am now unable to masturbate because that hand refuses to work.

We walked on a few more blocks and Carl told me that although he is in the labor pool, no jobs are to be found anywhere on god’s green earth because someone stole his ID. So I assume someone out there is in a rough enough spot that they are stealing the credit history of a homeless man. I told him to go to Home Depot and stand in line with the Mexicans. Not an I.D. to be found for miles, but somehow they all find jobs every day. Strange…perhaps this has something to do with their willingness to work? Nah…that’s crazy. He also told me that he had a son, and asked me to guess his age.

“Mm. 4?”

“Not my son’s age, my age.”

“Oh. 7?”

Again, Carl was helpless against my rapier wit. At the next corner, he said “Let me tell you something, Dusty. All these people around here…they look at you and they see a white man. I’m gonna tell you, I look at you and I see a black man, cause you a good man.” (Did the closed fist thump on the chest thing) “You know, I see you as a black man because all of these people around here, they don’t know you can flow. But I’m colorblind.”

He’s colorblind, so he sees me as a black man. Makes perfect sense. Uh…thanks?

“I’m a fat white guy wearing a backpack and orthopedic shoes, Carl. No one sees a brother standing here. There isn’t a speck of flow in me. In fact, the flow of others is inversely proportional to their distance from me.”

By now we had walked well over a mile, and Carl’s leg was bothering him, so he sat down. I sat on his lap and asked him to tell me more about his life. Just kidding. I didn’t even slow down.

“Hold on a minute, Dusty!”

“No can do. I have somewhere to be. Have a good one.”

Another block and Carl was by my side again, and now he wanted a couple bucks for breakfast.

Well, Carl had entertained me for the past 20 minutes despite my best efforts, so I said “Alright. I’ll buy you breakfast, but you have to go on your merry way after that, okay?”

“No problem. I have somewhere to be cuz I gotta’ narg with the blammo and moo gabba ovary mackerel.” When a bum starts explaining how much crap he has going on, it gets a little slurry and nonsensical.

“mmm. Hmmm. There’s a CVS on the next block. I’ll go in there and grab you something, okay?”

“Yeah.”

We got to the door of CVS and Carl’s negotiation skills sort of fell apart. I was planning on getting him a couple of nutri-bars and a jug of water. Carl’s tastes are a bit more refined, however, and he was having none of it.

“Okay, here’s what I need – I ain’t allowed in this store no more, so I can’t go with you. (Carl is banned from CVS, for the record) I need two…no three cokes – the ones in the plastic bottles, one a them gatrorade – the orange gatorade, two big bags of chips, milk duds, hey, you think they got ice cream? And if they ain’t got milk duds, gimme a couple…”

“Whoa, Carl. I’m not stocking your pantry. How about a couple of power bars and some water to hydrate you and keep your skin clear?”

“Man, that power bar stuff tastes like shit. You ever had that stuff? Power bars can eat a dick.” (his words, not mine)

“Okay. I’m not going grocery shopping, but I’ll buy you enough to get you to lunch. You cool with a couple of granola bars?”

“Shit, man, why you playing me like this? I walked all this way with you and wrote you a song.”

“I know my way to work, and I never said I’d buy you breakfast if you wrote me a song. I’ll be back in a second.”

Carl pissed me off. I guess one of the billion life lessons he didn’t learn is the one about people like him being choosers.

I went into CVS and asked the guy behind the counter if there was another way out.

Soon I was shoulder-rolling into the elevator and exiting into the parking deck, walking around the back of the building and the rest of the way to work. I looked behind me pretty often, because I figured Carl would be pissed as soon as he figured out that I ditched him, and he’d expect an explanation.

I have a lot of theories about how most people inadvertently perpetuate their station in life. The guy who drives around for an hour looking for the cheapest gas, the guy who spends the last week of every month looking for ways to save money instead of finding ways to make more, the chick who keeps dating assholes and is baffled by the fact that she has three kids with zero dads, and so on. Some (a lot) of people say that my theories are baseless and grounded in my own self-myopia.

This may be true, but I won’t stop believing these theories until 98% of everything I see proves me wrong. For now I’m going to stick with what I see every day.

I will also set a few that I can’t miss, just so I don’t feel like a douche for failing at everything. These are things like “Gain 10 pounds”, “Stop eating Feces”, and “Poison a hobo”. You’re on your own with these, too.

What I can offer is my set of universal truths; things that every human on the planet can – nay, SHOULD – do to improve the general quality of their lives

1. Stop trying to fool yourself – I am astounded by the number of people who are well into their adulthood and still think they are going to play pro whateverball or that their crappy paintings are going to make them famous. Having a hobby and being good at something is one thing. Pinning your dreams on it at the detriment of things like your family or something that can realistically benefit you is another thing entirely. On a small scale, stuff like setting your clocks ahead so you won’t be late is a sign that you are developmentally disabled. It is your clock. You set it ahead. What part of that makes you think that you will be fooled by that? Help others out with this one; if you look at the clock at your friend’s house and say, “Well, it’s 3:45…” and they say “No, that clock is ten minutes fast…” berate them accordingly. Better yet, wait for them to leave the room and set their clocks to the right time. Do you know the main benefits of having accurate clocks?
- Not having to do extra math eighteen times a day.
- Knowing what time it is.
- The warm, secure feeling that comes with being a functional human being

2. Throw some crap away – You have a box that contains old CD cases, keys that fit no lock currently in existence, those big square “wall wart” style power supplies that charge a phone you threw away , and maybe some smaller boxes that you haven’t opened since you moved out of your crappy apartment two years ago. Gather it up, throw it away, and start a new box – something about 12x12x18” any time you are cleaning up and moving the same shit to a different location and wondering why you have it, put it in the box. When the box is full, tape it closed and keep it for 90 days. If you have no need to open said box in that time, throw it away. Do not open it and don’t pretend that you’re going to go through it and donate it to charity. Just throw it away. And stop keeping the stupid shit that people give you. Sure, if you got a set of silverware shaped like human reproductive organs for Christmas, it would be rude to open it in front of your aunt and immediately throw it away. That is why you say “thank you” and throw it away when you get home. Or give it to charity. There are dozens of children out there who have to eat mayonnaise off a spoon that is not shaped like a scrotum.

3. Turn off your phone whenever you are doing something that could be made less enjoyable (to you or to others) by a phone call. Unless you are an on call doctor, pilot, or cop, there is no reason that a phone call should interrupt dinner or a conversation with your family. Please stop acting like anything is going to change or anyone’s life is going to be affected if you wait until after dinner to tell your secretary where the extra toner is. You are not that important and no one thinks you are because you always walk into the next room with your stupid phone up to your stupid ear. Enjoy the here and now because it will go away and you will miss it.

4. Dump a friend and replace him with a better one– Everybody has at least one friend who either always has been or has become more of a chore than a joy to have around. The one who borrows shit all the time, gets too drunk every time you go out, or otherwise isn’t doing anything to enhance anyone’s life. Get rid of that person. Don’t focus on how you do it, just do it. I have completely removed all such people from my life to the point that I am actually working on the second tier. There are a few people I have known over the years who are negative, disagreeable, self-absorbed down-draggers. These are people I look at and wonder how anyone could be friends with them. Then I talk to my other friends who still hang out with them and they say the same thing, “Yeah, he’s still constantly trying to outdo everyone and lying about his station in life and it’s just a joke. Last month he got arrested and mike and I had to bail his dumb ass out.”

…and I can’t help but wonder how bright he and Mike are for still willingly hanging out with this person. So maybe they have to go too. The adage “you can tell a lot about a person by the decisions they make” should never be far from your mind.

Once you have lightened your load, find someone worthwhile to fill the space. I’d offer my friendship, but no one likes me, either.

5. Be realistic with the things that you hear before you repeat them – In my lifetime I have witnessed the collective retardification of humanity at the hands of things like Monkey Pox, Bird Flu, the “super Bug” bacteria, near earth meteors, global cooling, SARS, gay marriage, the teaching of evolution, the teaching of creationism, global warming, antidepressants, fluoride, organic foods, peanut allergies, vaccinations, anti-bacterial soap, and so on down the retarded line ad infinitum. Has anyone else come to the conclusion that that the very worst of these is barely worthy of a double take, or am I the only one?
Here’s my secret, and the secret that will set you free-

Logic.

I’ll explain it in case it is confusing: Saying that someone got a flu shot and it caused them to get Alzheimer’s is very a very caveman way to think about things. I saw video of an earthquake in San Francisco that happened during a baseball game. That has to mean that baseball causes earthquakes, right? Do you know anyone who won’t go somewhere because they got in an accident when they went there once? That person is an idiot. If you eat at McDonalds every meal every day for a month it will cause bad things to happen to you. Really, Lieutenant Deducteypants? What if you ate four meals a day at a five star French restaurant? Are you dumb enough to think that would turn out any differently?

Look at all of the bullshit that has caused media panic in the past 20 years and think of how many of them resulted in anything. The answer is none. In fact, the only ones that really caused any harm are the ones that genuinely scare people and they usually ignore. Focus on the stuff and the people who can kill you and enjoy the fact that you live in a society that basically has no problems and therefore has the time and resources needed to devote thousands of man hours to a shocking exposé on the dangers of Neoprene.

If someone begins explaining to you that there is a strain of acne going around that is deadly, ask how many people it has killed. When they answer “Katie Couric said that three people died of it last year”, punch them in the nuts and explain that there are 280 million people in the United States and ask them to express their number as a percentage. The problem with an “epidemic” that claims 2 lives is that it is niether epi, nor demic. The problem with reporting it as an epidemic is that stupid people repeat it. The problem with repeating it is that it tells logical people that you are stupid.

Don’t let anyone get away with the slippery slope argument, either. “If we let the fags get married, next thing you know your son will want to marry an air conditioner and your dog will marry a starfish and everything will go to hell and the human race will be extinct.” Yeah, moron. If we hadn’t allowed women to vote, we wouldn’t have this problem with Sharks and rocking chairs clogging up the polling places, would we? Oh wait. That didn’t happen BECAUSE IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE.

If they can’t wrap their tiny minds around that, assume that anything can marry anyone and ask them how they will be affected in their personal life if a cloud marries a pizza.

6. Try something uncomfortable and scary – You will be a better person and more respected by yourself, your friends, and your family if you find something you are afraid of and walk toward it. If you are afraid of snakes and you know that is an unfounded fear (unless the snake can kill you), go to a pet shop and hold a snake. I know it sounds minor, but take whatever is your biggest thing, and fix it. If you sleep late and miss appointments, get your dumb ass out of bed earlier by doing whatever it takes. If you are afraid to fly, book a flight the next time you go somewhere and force yourself onto it. Keep doing it until it is no longer a source of stress.

The comfort zone is a dangerous place. As soon as you have convinced yourself that this is all you are capable of, you have gone as far as you will go. Whatever it is that you have to work around, don’t let it win. Then after you are comfortable flying with a pocket full of snakes, go to the next thing and keep on going.

I just overheard something on the radio about the black caucus. Is that really bigger than the average white caucus, or is that just a myth?