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

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

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

On with the story at hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3 awesome coffee table chairs – $61

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Forget I said that. It’s rented now.

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

Also, I’ve found that saying you are writing a book sounds about as douchey as any sentence ever uttered. It’s like when someone has the title singer/songwriter and they just mean to say that they have big dreams but are largely talent-free. Every retard with a laptop is writing a screenplay or something. So I’m not trying to be a douche.

But I will take the time to share a few things I have noticed recently that make little to no sense to me. I call them “Absurvations”. But then I call a lot of things a lot of things that aren’t real words.

If there were a gauge that measured things on levels of absurdity from green (everything makes sense and this item is useful and good, like breasts, the ipod, and the internal combustion engine) to red (should not exist in this or any other universe; like cilantro, Kanye West, and the instructions on how to leave a voicemail that play every time you call someone) these things would be in the yellow area (looks like it was legislated into existence; like warning labels on soda bottles and people wearing safety goggles on television while hanging a picture).

My phone has a particularly infuriating feature when you are writing a text message. But before we get to that, let’s examine predictive text on cell phones. That’s a feature that you can either use, or you can’t. It’s a fun game where the phone tries to guess what you are typing based on the keys you hit. I don’t have a full keyboard and mouse on my phone like the rest of you fancy boys. Mine’s the standard 12 button deal. Just upgraded from a rotary phone.

Anyway, they do a decent job of guessing words, except for the part where half of the words aren’t actually words, and no thought was given to context. Do you want to help of bury the body? Of? I know that the two choices the phone has when I hit the 6 and the 3 key are either “me” or “of”, but could we throw some kind of context sensitivity in there? Also, just so you know, “bikermo” is not a word in any language I know of, but an “aileron” is an oft-referred to part of an airplane. However, the phone’s vocabulary does not include fishing, aviation, or swearing.

In any case, I’m sure my boss will be glad to know that the left bikermo has a loose control jimlage.

And seriously, they couldn’t add words like shit and fuck to the phone’s vocabulary? Really? Nah. Teenagers and adults don’t use words like that. Nope, instead I either have to add a word to the phone’s library or be happy telling my friend that the weather is shivvy and the traffic is ducking bananas. Duck that shiv.

I swear to Christ I can’t believe I get emails asking me to write more. Reading this stuff is like when my cat gets a shoelace caught on her tooth (about once a month while idly playing with shoelaces) and enables the warp thrusters in any and all directions because there is a crazy sneaker bouncing along next to her head no matter what elusive maneuvers she attempts. No one knows where it is going. But it is always hilarious. So maybe there is a redeeming quality.

Back to the original point I was going to make. My phone’s strangest feature.

Sometimes I’ll be halfway through writing a text message and I’ll hit the little red square instead of the backspace button, and it will completely abandon me. The screen says “saved to drafts” and then it kicks me all the way back to the menu screen. That part is bad enough, but midway through trying to find the “drafts” folder, I started to wonder exactly why the hell anyone who designed a cell phone would think that there needed to be a drafts folder. Do people really write a draft of a text message and think better of sending it in the heat of the moment, or is there a lot more to text messages than I think there is?

“Yeah, I’m just re-writing this text message. It still has some rough spots in the introductory paragraph. I’m still not sure if LOL or LMAO is a more appropriate sentiment in this case, and I don’t know if I have an emoticon for cancer. Might have my editor look it over later.”

Has anyone in history ever submitted their doctoral thesis in 164 character portions?

On my way to work today I made another absurvation in the elevator. There are two buttons clearly marked “door close” and “door open”. You can push either of those buttons as hard and frequently as you want, but nothing happens. If I want to open the door while the elevator is moving so I can see if there really are dinosaurs walking on treadmills that control the elevators like my wife says, why can’t I? I just want the buttons to do what they say they do.

If I had to choose one of those buttons to keep and have the other one outlawed, I’d keep the “door close” button. Maybe that makes me a pessimist. Whatever. I just think it would be cool to slam the elevator door in my loud neighbor’s face when she comes running to catch it. Even better, to crush her leg in the door and have it eaten by dinosaurs as we head to the lobby.

Then as I was walking through the lobby, I saw I sign on a door that said “KEEP DOOR CLOSED AT ALL TIMES”.

So why would you put a door there if it is never to be opened? It’s probably where they keep the dinosaurs, but it still seems like a better idea just to not have a ducking door there in the first place.

I have been getting a lot of emails axing me to write more. And I desperately need to if I want to salvage what is left of my sanity. Making the money I make (which would be on the poverty side of the scale) for the job I do (which has considerable inherent responsibility and risk involved at times) does strange things to the inner workings of my mind. But you can help.

No, I’m not asking for money
unless you will give me a dollar a day if I post pictures of myself with flies all over my face. I just applied for a part time job washing cars, so don’t think I won’t sink lower. I’ll do it.

Send me questions, comments, ideas, thoughts, philosophy, or anything you think would be worth hearing me bitch or pontificate on. You don’t have to, and it may be a bit presumptuous of me to assume that anyone cares what I think about anything, but you guys all know me pretty well if you’ve been reading for any length of time, and I have to admit I’m curious for feedback. Even if you write to tell me something you hate about me, I’ll be respectful if I decide to write about it. I know that’s tough to believe, but I’m serious.

My next entry (saved securely in the drafts folder of my cellphone) is going to cover things that fall on the red end of the absurvations spectrum, including (but not limited to) the repopularization and growing acceptance of the douchebag in polite society, cultural differences in electronic communication, and why married people become retarded. If you have anything to add, feel free. And if I don’t post another entry within 10 days of today – November 13 2009 – please send me an email and scold me as you see fit.

I got married to Sara a few weeks ago in St Croix. We had 48 of our closest friends and family there with us (don’t have a wedding anywhere far away and exotic and use the logic that it will be a small simple wedding because no one will want to use the vacation time and cash it takes to show up. They will.) I do have to say, however, that I had the best ten days of my life on that trip. And it was due almost entirely to the fact that those people were there. So here’s how it went
if this doesn’t bore you to death, I’ll send you a link to the 2000 or so pictures we had taken while we were there and you can thumb through those.

We left on Wednesday the sixth, and we had about 30 of the 48 expected guests on the same airplane departing at 9 am. Said airplane’s flight crew was not warned of the load of functioning alcoholics that would be traveling that day, and they were out of beer by the time the wheels left the ground. That was sort of a bummer. And by “bummer” I mean “time to switch to liquor”. 4 hours later we were in St. Croix, and we all went to the hotel and unloaded our bags into our rooms. I was leaping over the balcony to the beach when Sara reminded me that we were getting married in two days and that “the ruined part of my life starts now.”

We had about fourteen tons of crap to do before the actual wedding, so I had to hang up my spiderman swimtrunks, matching fins and crimefighting snorkel so we could go take care of bidness. For the next two and a half days we ran around town picking stuff up, meeting with all of the wedding people, signing papers, and so on. Small price to pay, considering the wedding coordinator and her crew had already done the hard stuff.

Seriously, If I had spent the past year debating the merits of white napkins instead of off-white, I would be living in my old condo by myself right now. Of course, I never would have married someone who would want to have that discussion


The hardest part was walking along the beach being shown where we’d be standing, who would do what, and so on while my bestest jackass friends were screwing around getting drunk 10 yards away. I’m so good at screwing around and getting drunk
I mean
it’s really my best quality. The wedding was Friday at 5, and I felt a little bit guilty for wanting to get it over with. So whenever I had that feeling, I’d look around me and breathe in the fact that my life was absolutely perfect at that moment. And it was. Almost everybody I cared about in the world was there with us, they were having a good time, and I needed to take it in and savor it like good heroin.

The night before the big day, some friends of ours who live on the island offered to throw a party for everyone, so we all piled into random rental cars and headed up the hill. After we’d been there a while, our friend Chris (formerly known as Jamiroquai if you’ve been reading this blog for a while) said he had something for us. We sat down to a video he had made called “Sara and Dusty – How it all Began”. It was almost 30 minutes long, and he had somehow (without either of our knowledge) gathered hundreds of pictures of us as kids and pictures we have taken together for the past four years. For the next half hour, everyone was glued to the television, alternately laughing, crying, admiring my creamy white thighs in a bikini, and in my case thinking “holy crap this must have taken over 300 hours to put together.

I’m not trying to play favorites or anything, but I don’t think anyone will fault me for saying that that was the most meaningful gift we received.

Most of the day of the wedding was spent anticipating the event. I was out on the beach while she was getting her hair did, and they were setting up the wedding area with chairs and flowers and seashells and pig blood and everything.

I kept looking over at the setup, wondering why I was so nervous. It wasn’t the idea of getting married – I have been at peace with that idea since long before we got engaged. And it definitely was not the group of people who were there – I mean, more than half of them have seen me naked, and the other half probably did in the next few days.

I guess I wish it was more of a “you guys will be over here getting hitched and your friends can watch from the bar if they want to” thing than a “okay at five after the hour you will be here and your bride will be lowered from the heavens on a unicorn and everyone in the world will be staring at you while you forget what to do or say, vomit on your shoes, and finally look out in the crowd and see tears welling up in your proud parents’ eyes and you’ll cry like a little bitch. No, not just choked up, my friend, you will lose control of your diaphragm and be completely unable to speak. Then, if you ever make it to the part where you kiss her, your faces will part to reveal a nice snotcord connecting her upper lip to your nostril. Enjoy.”

Crying for me is a slippery slope. I am an emotional guy when it comes to babies and family and friends and machine guns and ninjas and stuff that matters to me, and this was like all of those things had been diced, pan seared, deglazed with white wine, and reduced until thickened. I knew that if I saw my mom or dad getting all watery around the orbital sockets, I’d be a heap in a matter of seconds.

Sara and I talked about it for a while and decided that we should practice our vows a few times before the actual wedding so we could just get through it without blubbering.

So for a few days we stood in our condo and got through about two sentences each before we both teared up, and then decided we’d try harder tomorrow. We finally gave up and made a pact that we’d only look at each other during the vows. If you don’t cry, I won’t.

And it worked. I realized something as I squeaked and choked my way through the vows. Right at that moment we were depending on one another to get through something (albeit something quick and painless), and it really was a pretty awesome example of why we are making this commitment. The best statement I ever heard in favor of marriage was that you will never have to face anything alone again.

True.

In a short 20 minutes, we were Mr. and Mrs. Dusty Scott. And I was Mr. relieved. Then we went around the resort property and took more pictures. I’m going to go ahead and retract almost everything I said about the photography being too expensive while I’m at it. I still can’t logically fathom why the pictures cost so much when you break it down to time, effort, and materials used, but sweet mother Mary and all of the pixels that fall from her brow did we ever get some good shots. Here are a few –

Needless to say, the liver punishment started in earnest when we got to the reception. Little did I know my speech at dinner would be at least as hard to get through as the actual wedding was. For those who were there but couldn’t understand me through the involuntary regression to puberty I seemed to be going through, here’s what I said–

“Those of you who know me well know that I am really only comfortable expressing myself through the majesty of dance, but I’ll do my best here
(polite “get on with it, funny guy” laughter)
and I also wanted to let you know that I was only able to get through that ceremony by picturing you in your underwear (I heard laughter, but I think it was one of those laugh tracks they use on sitcoms. So thanks to DJ Bootz for having my back)
by the way, Chris, you need to start wearing underwear to these things.”

“First, Sara and I can’t thank all of you enough for taking the time and effort it took to come all this way, so if I say it over and over, forgive me, but it means the world to both of us to have you all here. I’ve had a lot of time to think lately, being barely employed and all, but I have been thinking about what it means to be successful, since it obviously has nothing to do with having a job. Looking around me now, I really hope success can be measured by the quality of people you surround yourself with, because I could not imagine having a finer group of people than we have right here.

“And to an even greater extent, I believe that the truest and most undeniable measure of success over the course of a lifetime can only be shown by what your children think of you. So Mom, Dad, Sara’s mom (dunno if she wants her name in this blog), all I can say is ‘well done’. I can’t imagine better parents, and thank you for giving us all something to aspire to.”

And then I sat down because I was having to clear my throat every fifth word. My brother then got up and did his speech, which contained more beatboxing than I expected, but it made water come out of my eyes. The boy can bust a poignant rhythm. He had a speech written down, but ended up talking about standing next to us at the wedding and how much he was touched by the simple sincerity of it all. Sweet toddler Jesus with a ring on a tiny pillow, I am lucky to have the family I have.

Once that was over, I thought I was going to fall asleep with my face in my plate like I did when I was a kid. The stress was gone and I still had a week to party my ass off with all of these great people. And holy spirits, did we ever party.

As the party started in earnest, I realized that if the most important expenditure at a wedding is photography, the second best place to spend money is on booze. I say that as not only a semi-pro drinker, but as a friend and an American patriot. Everyone who felt the urge got lit up like Air France flight 447 (too soon?) and we had to pile the asses in the parking lot as everyone danced them off.

At the end of the night, the DJ played that song by Rusted Root that (if you are old enough) was played at the end of every party you went to in college. “Send Me On My Way”. By now the dancing had become largely interpretive, and we were looking to my niece and nephew for new dance moves. At one point, someone asked Savannah (my niece) how she came up with such great moves. “I just go crazy.” Was her sage response. My nephew’s exlplanation was “I dunno, just dance and have fun.” So everybody somehow ended up in a big sweaty circle doing this strange kicking thing with the music loud enough to make a fat guy dance, and I looked around and thought,

“This is actually the happiest I have been in my entire life”

So far.

Hell, as long as I’m broke and all of my students keep canceling flights, I might as well sit in front of my typewriter in a blazer with elbow patches and sip coffee as I create my opus. Well, that’s how I always pictured it, but really it’s been more of a hangover/bedhead/in my underwear sort of creating.

Funny thing about the job – The flight school’s business is slowing down due to myriad factors, but we’re operating and keeping the doors open. No danger of the unthinkable, but as a result, I and other guys aren’t getting as much flight time as we’d like.

“Well, it’s the economy, Dusty.” Is what everyone says. However, all I hear is “Dusty, you need to meet more people with airplanes.” So I printed out a dozen resumes and spent 3 hours walking around the airport in my pilot costume talking to people. Overall it was a depressing experience. Most were firing pilots and/or selling their airplanes. So I told them I’d fly for free. They were willing to take my card at that point, and I’ve flown a couple hours I wouldn’t have otherwise.

So working for free seems stupid, and according to my bank and my mortgage company it really is, but if you think about the Kenny Chesneys, Billy Crystals, Oprahs, and anyone else you know who has “made it” in whatever way they chose, every single one of them spent some time doing it for free. You could say they got paid retroactively, and according to the forecasts in the aviation industry, pilots have 2-4 years before we get paid like mob lawyers for working 6 days a month. A mere 40 years after that I will have possibly paid back all of the people and companies who have loaned me money and I can enjoy my smug self-satisfaction for the 15 minutes I have remaining to live.

I love shitting on my own point like that. What I’m saying is I have chosen this field and I will stay with it until I either cross the hump or have to start pumping gas.

Meanwhile, almost everybody I know is busy blaming the economy. I’m not a fucking genius, I’m not a better pilot than the other guys, and I’m certainly not better looking or more charismatic than anyone else. What I am is what one of you once called “negatively optimistic”. I hope that means I see everything as a seasoned cynic, but I look for a better way. If it doesn’t, please explain.

What am I getting at? The premise of this book I am writing and how I hope some of you can help me write it. Obviously I can’t pay you right away, but I’m not asking for much. The idea behind this book is to illustrate and hopefully do a small part in reviving optimism. It’s written pretty much like my blog (which means I’ll probably have to self-publish), and it attempts flailingly to examine causes of optimism and pessimism and how creativity, common sense, comfort zones, and other factors play in.

That description might suck, but the whole thing is based around stories like the ones I put in my blog. It’s definitely not a self-help book – hopefully it will be a chance to present some of the stuff I have written in a more meaningful way.

Since I wouldn’t have had much of this material or a decent idea without this blog, and I wouldn’t have this blog if it weren’t for you people, I think it’d be rad if anyone felt like sharing any stories they might have that they think could find a place in the book. I also think it would be rad if we all used the word “rad” a little more.

So send me an email if you need me to be less confusing about what I’m looking for.

Remember when I turned thirty and everyone I talked to acted like I had just been told I had cancer? “oooh. You’re turning thirty this year?” (inhale through clenched teeth) “Are you okay?” I didn’t understand that, and I don’t understand why everyone is acting like I should be all in a twist about my wedding. Which is four weeks away. Holy crap.

“So
are you and Sara doing okay with the wedding planning?”
“Huh? Yeah. It’s all pretty much ready. Really all we had to do was send what felt like an oil tanker full of money to St Croix and then we have to show up at a certain time.”
“DUDE. A destination wedding? You’re a dick making everybody travel and get a hotel and stuff.”
“Actually, I’m not. No one has to come if they don’t want to or don’t have the funds. Shit, I wish I had that option for most of the weddings I’ve been to.”
“Yeah, but what about all of the invitations and stuff? Isn’t that a pain?”
“It took us a weekend to make and mail them all. Probably would have paid someone else to do that if I was going to do it over, but it wasn’t a big deal.”
“Is she freaking out about the color of the napkins and stuff?”
“No. I would never marry a retard.”

I’ve seen the TV shows about insane brides, and I see it like I see the guy who got killed trying to skateboard down the St. Louis Arch. You’re sort of putting these things in motion yourself. See if you want complete control of every detail of everything, you’re bound to overload and have lots of problems.

Oh, we’ve had moments where we both sort of looked at each other and said “dude. That is something to address”. It started the day I gave her the ring. We said “Let’s come back here and have a wedding on the beach by ourselves, hire a videographer, and go back and have a party.” Groom’s dream – no responsibility at all. Second only to driving to the courthouse.

Awesome idea, but it’s a lot like saying “We just won’t invite our friends and family to our wedding.” See, my mom will not believe I am getting married until she sees it, and most of my friends won’t believe Sara agreed to marry me until they see it.

Plus, we started thinking that we’d get a little bored all by ourselves. So we’ll just invite our parents. Okay. And our brothers and sisters. And their kids.

It literally took 12 minutes for the guest list to reach almost a hundred. Then we had to decide on how to pull it off, assuming 15-20 people would actually show up. We decided to get one of those wedding packages that are designed for a certain number of people. After a day or two of looking at the options, it was pretty much good to go.

Then we found out that we were going to have closer to 50 people show up. So start over on that one, but we are harvesting organs for our guests because this is going to be the best party they will ever see, and replacement livers are going in the gift bags.

She has only asked my opinion on a few things because she knows that if it doesn’t matter, I’m not burning calories. What kind of frosting on the cake? White? Fine with me. What kind of cake? Don’t care as long as it is in the shape of boobs and has at least one endangered species in it. Just keep it classy.

I have heard stories of people paying thousands of dollars for flowers that go on tables, lights strung across the room, and other stuff. Really we haven’t encountered anything that I thought was totally insane except the photographer. Sara is keeping me away from her because “she can’t be in therapy for our wedding.” Wedding photography is a massive racket, but when you go 1600 miles offshore, they can really make with the dry rape. Charge whatever you want because there are only four people with cameras on the island.

So it’s some insane number of dollars to hire the photographer. But wait. That’s only for two hours. What about the drunken debauchery to follow? Another twelventy thousand million to have her there for that. But the thing that sends my monkey ass into orbit was that you have to pay MORE for the actual pictures. I’m sorry- help me understand. So I just paid you enough to buy all new equipment and you’re going to take pictures for four hours, but what do I get out of this again? Pictures? No? Those are extra? Even though you work digitally and it takes zero to one minute to “develop” the images?

So just when I think the photography is crazier than a rabbit’s ass, I see that we have an option to have said pictures put into a nice album. And the album costs even more. A hard cover book of printed images we already paid for once would be a price that made me suck my office chair halfway into my anus.

But wait. It gets better. There was also a stipulation that no one else is allowed to take photos while the photographer is working. This is where I got vocal. I agree that if she lights a shot just so and someone comes in and tries to capitalize on her work so we can get a free picture, fine. Not cool. I wouldn’t let someone do that. But if she thinks she’s going to tell my parents that they can’t take pictures while we’re getting married, there will be a lot of camera equipment at the bottom of the ocean tied to one overpriced photographer.

Basically I spend a lot of time asking myself why no one else is outraged about things that outrage me. I think the only way to get a cop to come take a report of your car being broken into would be to park it at an expired meter for thirty seconds. I see someone leave their grocery cart in the parking lot and I want to throw it through their windshield. I hear an employee at a company tell me that it is “not possible” to get something shipped overnight, and I wish I could fire them myself. Paying a photographer a price to show up and then paying more for the photos makes me crazy. Stuff like that.

I don’t know if it is the scenario itself that makes me mad, or the fact that almost everybody I know has an attitude of “that’s just how it is” and rolls over like a pussy. I’ll admit that things are the way they are, but for some reason I refuse to believe that things must remain that way. I think that is a kind of optimism, and ironically I deal with it by being negative. I think. Is it really negative to call someone out for doing something stupid or refusing to understand a simple concept?

No. It’s not. It’s what needs to happen more often. You’re not necessarily a special snowflake and you are not necessarily capable of anything you put your mind to. You will be a better person if you give it a shot, though. I do know that much.

Well, the election is over. Nice work, but it does more or less solidify my opinion that our society is making too many important decisions based on what feels good instead of thinking ahead. Of course, I don’t know any better than anyone else what will actually happen, but I do have an abundance of common sense, and my common sense is telling me stuff that makes me nervous.

That being said, I am a positive person, and will henceforth concentrate on what good can and should come of this change. If the last eight years have taught me anything, it is that the people who spent the most time parroting anti-Bush slogans are pretty useless individuals and really came across as little whiny bitches. Plus, he is the president of this country, and I love this place, so I’m going to pull for us regardless of my opinion of his politics. The race is over and the winner is Obama. Now is the part where I figure out how to win.

Let’s see. I guess international opinion of the United States is bound to change somewhat and hopefully for the better. In reality, we are better off being respected than liked, so I’m still unclear why everyone thinks that we need to be liked around the world, but hey, good juju is good juju. If you think that our being liked will stop crazy people from wanting to blow us up, you are as incorrect as you can be, though. In any case, maybe we’ll finally start to get some other nations on board with a few plans to stop burning coal and otherwise wrecking the earth. While we’re at it, maybe we’ll get our own asses in gear and build a few nuclear plants like we should have 35 years ago.

I’m not an environmentalist for the sake of the trees and the ice caps and stuff, but more a pragmatic environmentalist. If we keep putting garbage in piles in the ground, we will eventually run out of places to put it and raw materials to make more stuff that we can turn into garbage. I recycle out of the “don’t be an asshole” philosophy. Unfortunately, somewhere between 70 and 90% of what we recycle locally ends up in landfills anyway (they apparently don’t have the facilities or manpower to clean and recycle much of it).

This doesn’t really bother me much either, and here’s why – in WWII, Americans were encouraged to save bacon grease and various kinds of metal for use in munitions. Most (if not all) of it was dumped into landfills or used for other things, but it was an effective campaign to get the general public on board and give them a feeling that they were helping. I think that getting people in the habit and building a sense of awareness and urgency will go a long way to cleaning stuff up when we finally have the infrastructure to do so.

A big part of why we are falling behind in the world economy is that we have to pay absurd wages to our workers and adhere to all of the standards that make sure we aren’t puking toxins into the sky. All of this drives our costs up. Other countries say “feh” to that and are able to run factories that are fueled by whales and spotted owls. Maybe they’ll listen to the new president and start trying to behave like adults. I don’t think anything will change as long as money exists, but it’s a theory.

If the “rich” are going to be taxed more heavily, there will definitely be a market for offshore accounts and other ways to shelter income. Real estate in places like St. Croix will go through the roof, so if you have some bucks to invest, I’d be looking for what these people are going to be doing to avoid a tax increase and figure out how to get on board.

History has shown us over and over (yet we never seem to learn) that corporations and people with money do not pay taxes. They are smarter than that. That’s how they got rich. If you make it more expensive for them to run their company, they will pay employees less, increase the price of what they are selling, and/or look to other countries for less expensive labor. The very last thing to be cut will be their bottom line.

Now instead of bitching about how you will be negatively affected, how about you realize that anywhere someone loses; someone lost an opportunity to win. Find that opportunity and stop whining. If product x is going to cost more due to these factors, now might be a good time to invest in product x. Oversimplified theory, I know, but you get the point.

Socialized whatever – I’m against it, of course. Maybe it works in other countries, but I have seen what our government can and cannot do, and it comes down to this – When you need something from them, they are an archaic system of telegraphs and nasty grammar school educated spacktards who need you to fill things out in triplicate and deliver them in person between the hours of 4 and 4:13 on an odd numbered Thursday. However, when they can get money from you, they suddenly become a streamlined high-tech model of efficiency. Our government is very effective at taking money from its citizens and spending that money. Not so good at creating institutions that benefit us.

Public schools? Awesome – at a mere 15% illiteracy rate, our graduates will soon be bright enough to read their welfare checks. Postal System? Super great – the price goes up monthly, and they’ll get it there when they can (if they aren’t closed for a government holiday). Public safety? Not enough manpower to fix potholes or catch drug dealers and rapists, but more than enough to ticket every single car that sits at an expired parking meter. You’ll get a ticket if you don’t wear your seatbelt (because you need the government to treat you like a child to keep you safe), but please pay no attention to the big yellow bus full of children with not a seatbelt in sight. Is it for our safety, or is it that you can’t ticket a third-grader? Department of motor vehicles? There’s a great one. The list is endless.

Can’t we just put the government in charge of our infrastructure and our military and let private industry do the rest? You want to see a real tax cut? Let’s move toward that system. It has been proven over and over that private industry is infinitely better at most things. Private shipping companies, Private emergency services in states like Florida, Canada’s privatized air traffic control system, all have delivered far superior products and services to anything the government can do. Could you imagine a bunch of private DMV’s that were competing for your business? You think you’d ever get any attitude or wait in line for a driver’s license? Not if they wanted to stay in business.

So I look at what our government can and can’t do and I think, “Do I really want them in charge of my healthcare?” Not really. I know our system is broken, but I hate the idea of looking to the government as the solution to everything.

Again, if that measure does pass, there will be winners. I’m sure the enterprising spirit and a desire to pay off student loans for medical school will drive someone to a solution that will far outperform anything the government can do. And it’s not a matter of whether regulations will allow it, either. Remember when wages got too high for companies to pay? People have a way of figuring out solutions to their problems. Jobs went overseas and now everybody is crying about that. Maybe we should have listened to the smart people when all of this was being debated. History does tend to repeat itself.

Another good thing about this election’s outcome – PLEASE. And I’m begging here. Can we finally stop with the whole “This nation is horribly racist and minorities can’t succeed” bullshit? OUR PRESIDENT IS BLACK AND WAS ELECTED BY A VERY DECIDED MAJORITY. As a matter of fact, the richest, most powerful woman in the nation is also black. And a woman. So you are cordially invited to shut the hell up if you think that you can’t be successful in spite of your racial lineage or chromosomal package. Here’s the rub, though – it takes work and lots of mental exercise to do well.

That’s where most people fall flat. You mean I have to make little or no money for a period of my life before I can reap the rewards that the capitalist system has to offer? You mean I might be stuck with basic cable and a crappy cell phone package for a few years? YES. Now start busting your hump before someone beats you to it.

And don’t give me any of that “But with Obama in office, it’ll be even harder to succeed on your own merits – he wants to give your money away to the blah blah and make everyone all brave new world socialized yackety smackety” crap, either. You have a brain. You can figure out a way to succeed. If you can’t succeed here, you’d starve anywhere else.

Lastly, if you were not on the side of Obama in this election, please try to refrain from the conspiracy theories that retarded people used during the Bush election. “Obama had his grandmother killed before the election so she wouldn’t tell the truth about his nationality” “He is planning a military takeover of the citizens”, SHUT UP. People go retarded every time a new president gets into office, and the only thing that remains consistent is that those people sound stupid and none of the theories are ever substantiated. Take that energy and use it to make your life better. Trust me – nothing is as exhausting as hating something 24 hours a day.

So here’s to Obama – Although not my first choice (Nor was McCain, by the way), as long as he’s president, he’s my president. He’s yours too, so make it work.
Enough.

On to more important things. Like fishing and drinking beer.

Fishing and drinking beer – This weekend some friends of mine and I are going down to Apalachicola for my bachelor party. Zoltar has a nice big house on the water, and we’re going to drink and fish until we can’t stand it anymore. A few friends were flummoxed when I specifically requested no strippers. Why, you ask? Simple. I have been to bachelor parties with strippers, and I have been to a strip club. Not since Rosie O’Donnell’s uterus has something so pointless been invented.

Some chick that no one knows shows up in big heels with a douchebag guy who assumes he can kick the shit out of the other nine guys in the room if things get out of hand. This guy is delusional because he thinks a) he’s going to make it as a DJ one day b) by “protecting” this girl, he might have a chance at banging her on the couch in his mom’s basement, and c) he’d have a prayer if the guys in the room went all rapey.

Now they bust out a mix CD with the typical stripper songs on it. The girl starts into her deadpan spiel about whatever Party City costume she is wearing “hey, I heard someone here needs a checkup”, or “we had a noise complaint and I’m here to investigate in my unbuttoned cop shirt and government issue leather miniskirt” or “Did someone order a tit pizza?” Whatever. Get to the naked, sweetheart.

So then she’s all naked with her scars and bruises up in your face, but you can’t touch her. Oh no. You have to give her your money, but hands off, mister. Worst part is (at bachelor parties, anyway), they try to get the guy in his skivvies for some reason. I can’t imagine a time I would be more flaccid than being mostly naked in front of my friends. This goes on for an hour, and then she uses one of your hand towels to wipe the banana bits off of her lady business, gets dressed, and goes back to her abusive dad’s trailer.

So here’s the breakdown – A chick that smells like a guinea pig cage rubs her junk on and around you and ruins a perfectly good towel. You then give her money that should have been spent on beer and she goes home. You wasted an hour and $100.

Maybe when I was 22 I would have enjoyed that. I’m 36 and have seen plenty of naked girls. Some of them were even in person. And of those, a surprising number were alive and conscious. So yeah, I’d rather just drink the beer and catch the fish.

Funny Story about a bachelor party my brother and I hosted a few years ago – these two chicks showed up to do the dancer thing, and I made the mistake of asking one why she brought her mom. Neither of them had much to say to me after that. The two reportedly did coke in our bathroom and we had to burn and bury all of our towels. They smelled like boiled eggs and no one wanted to know why.
At one point, the girls were pouring booze on their hoohas and making some idiot drink it. Apparently, alcohol burns open sores, and one of them asked if she could get some water to clean up with because her junk was on fire. I ran to the kitchen and returned with a turkey baster full of milk.

Of course, the guys in the room nearly lost their mud with laughter, but Sinnamon and Secretia were quite offended.

When I get back I’m sure I’ll have lots of pictures and stories to tell. If you’re out there this weekend and want to toast to the memory of my singlehood, feel free. I think I’ll miss it, but I also think I outgrew it a couple of years ago.

Today was one of those days. Nay, I say it was two of those days. I had a marathon past two weeks, not getting anything that resembled a full night’s sleep in anything that resembled my bed with anything that resembled my girlfriend (or fiancĂ©e, for that matter). I awoke with a start at about four o’clock this morning, realizing that I have not had much chance to keep up with my pathetic bank account, and was thus probably overdrawn to the point that I would have to change my political affiliation.

I checked on line, and found that I was okay. I then noticed that this month’s rent check had not cleared, and I had not nearly enough money to cover it. I needed $500 cash by the time the bank opened. I began laying my brain map for the day. It involved the following –

1. Go get money from anyone who owes me money
2. Convert said money to cash and deposit it so it posts immediately
3. Go fly an airplane to Nashville and pick up a passenger and bring her to Atlanta by 8 pm

I checked my phone to make sure I still had the number of the guy who owed me money, and noticed that the battery was close to dead. Now, where is my charger
?

4. Go to Radio Slack or something and get a charger, because I have been in 42 locations in the past week and have no idea where I left that damned charger. This should be more interesting with no money.

Chances are, I will get the money in the form of a check, and this check will come from Smacky’s Bank. I need to find the nearest location so I can get it cashed and take it to my bank. My GPS was sitting right there, so I consulted
what? Battery is dying on that one, too. The charger for that has been screwed up for a while, so I added

5. Go find whatever retarded miniature ceramic bullshit fuse Garmin decided to use in the charger and then fire it out of a rifle at the asshole who decided to use the world’s most unusual fuse in the design of that charger.

My day was starting to stack up

I left the house at 8 am and got my check without incident. Now I just had to find the bank it came from. Garmin was almost dead, so I decided to call them. Phone was now flashing the “LOW BATT” signal, and I thought to myself “Isn’t it scary how completely my life is falling apart at the hands of my two most valued electronic gadgets?” Think about it. How in the hell did we used to get anywhere or do anything? I don’t remember either.

Luckily I vaguely remembered a Smacky’s Bank branch on Piedmont. It was still there and they only charged me $5 to cash a check since I didn’t have an account there. I now agree that there is something of a conspiracy to keep poor people poor, and I secretly hoped that this bank would go the way of WAMU and all the others.

My bank happily accepted my deposit, and with the major fire now out, I decided I could go look for chargers and fuses and stuff. I started my car and noticed that the console display that shows all of the stereo information and climate control stuff had crapped out. I checked the fuses and did the normal troubleshooting stuff, and finally gave up and did that thing you do when a little too much shit is awry at one time – I put my hand out palms up, looked skyward and sarcastically said “really?” to a god that clearly does not exist.

6. Take car in to see what can be done about the stereo situation
7. While I’m there, see about some new rear tires, as the driver’s side tire had recently been punctured and was running with a full can of Fix-A-Flat inside it

As long as I was right next door to a Radio Slack, I went in to get a phone charger and possibly a new fuse for my Garmin charger. Phone charger worked like a charm, and at $15.00 was a bargain at twice the price. I had also found a fuse that was the same size and rating as the one that came out of it. After finally installing the new fuse in my Garmin charger, I plugged it in expecting to see the happy green light. No such luck. It refused to be fixed. I took it apart three more times expecting to see the problem staring me in the face.

I won’t go into how childish I acted in response to its refusal to cooperate, but if anyone is looking for a slightly used Garmin car charger, it can be found in the Ansley Mall parking lot outside the Radio Shack. It has been run over twice, but may still be salvaged for parts.

Now it was time to focus on getting the car fixed. The radio seems like a part that the dealership would know about, so I’ll go there. The dealership had bad news and good news. The bad news was that the part I needed would cost $1300.00 to replace. The good news is that it was covered by warranty.

Sweet.

So I’m leaving the Honda Place feeling pretty good, tooling down Peachtree Industrial Boulevard when I hear the unmistakable sound of a blown tire. I moved the side view mirror to see flappy bits of rubber coming off my rear tire.

Now is the part where my hands involuntarily become fists and I want nothing more than to beat them on the steering wheel and scream “fuck” over and over.

Life is a series of challenges. How you choose to deal with these challenges determines your worth as a human being. That is my #1 mantra, and I refused to allow myself a loss of control. As if in answer to my choice, I looked up and saw a big burly sign that said “Kaufmann Tire” on it. I had just enough speed to coast to a stop right in front of their front door. I silently thanked the god that I previously denied the existence of for a) putting my blowout right in front of a tire store, and b) not letting it happen at 70 miles per hour while I was drunk with a bunch of coke and dead hookers in the trunk.

The part that sucked is that 17” tires cost a billion more dollars each than 16” tires. Especially when they see you drive up on a rim. $318.00 later I had two new tires. Now I had to hustle to the airport to get this whole flying thing going.

Did I really want to fly considering the way my day had gone so far? Turns out I didn’t.

The plane had just come out of maintenance, so we did a very thorough preflight and run up. We ran the engine up and studied the instruments for anything sucky. We did this for a full minute longer than we needed to.

“789 Marco Polo (that isn’t the real tail number, so don’t try to look it up), cleared for departure Runway 9.” Ground control chirped.

“Cleared for departure blah blah blah” I responed in kind.

We rolled out, lifted off, and at about 400 feet, I noticed the oil pressure was at 28 psi, rather than its usual 40-45, and fluctuating as low as 2 psi. At this point I had had enough. I made fists and began beating them on the instrument panel, screaming “fuck” over and over into the radio.

Kidding. Brian (the guy I was flying with) saw the problem at the same time I did, and since he has much more experience in this plane than I do, I said “Your airplane. I have the radios” and called the airport.

“So-and-so tower, this is 789 marco polo. We have a low oil pressure indication and need to land on 27.”

“789 marco polo, clear to land 27. Let us know if we can help.”(the controllers are very accommodating when they think something is wrong with your airplane)

The engine was still making lots of noise and we were still in control, so I felt no need to fill the cockpit with liquid feces. We just made a tight turn and landed where we came from. We taxied to the maintenance hangar and told them what happened. Much like trying to tell a computer engineer what is wrong with your computer, and airplane will not behave the same in the presence of a qualified mechanic as it will when you are flying it. Still not sure they believe us.

I gave up on today. The good thing about a particularly bad day is the knowledge that the following day, even if it is slightly below average, will seem wicked awesome by comparison. Just now, I looked in the refrigerator and found a forgotten beer in the veggie drawer. It has been in there for about nine months, because the expiration date is today.

Things are looking better already.

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.

As usually happens with my best ideas, the Skirt spent a lot of time trying to make me think like an adult. “Dusty, stop telling everyone we meet that you are hunting pirate treasure. They think you are serious and therefore insane. The waiter stopped refilling our water because he’s scared of you now.” For the record, I was both serious and insane.

So I snorkeled out there and followed the line from the buoy to the bottom of the bay and then followed a chain out into deeper water until I realized that I would not be able to hold my breath long enough to dig it up. By the time we left the island I vowed to return with a research vessel, ROV, and full complement of scuba equipment.

Fast forward to May 10th…I had done enough research to realize that things like research vessels are very expensive. It is difficult to discourage a retarded person, so the second day we were there I donned the snorkel, mask, and fins and told the Skirt that I was headed out for the treasure. She laughed and said “Have fun, and bring me a beer when you come back.”

She doesn’t know that pirate beer goes skunky after a few years at the bottom of the ocean.

I went out and flapped around, following the chain on the bottom as far as I could. She sat on the beach taking blurry pictures of me splashing around. After a while, I returned victorious. I came staggering up the beach with a red mark around my face from the mask, doing that one-foot hop you do when you are taking a flipper off of your foot with both hands but you are on some kind of a schedule that prevents you from stopping to do so.

With chest out and chin up, I proudly told little miss naysayer that I had found the treasure.

“Whoa. You have a snot problem.”

In fact, I did have a line of clear phlegm that went from my nose to my right wrist, back to my nipple, and then to my chin. I did the same move I do when I walk through a spider web – basically starting at my face and wiping/flailing until the offending gunk is off. I am the embodiment of sexiness.

“Yeah, whatever. I found the treasure so shut up.”

“Ooh, let me see it.”

I pulled a drippy green box out of my pocket and handed it to her. She opened it up and found an urchin shell in it.

“Good job, buddy.” she said unimpressedly.

And then she took the shell out of the box, revealing the fancy blingified engagement ring I had been silently obsessing over since we left Atlanta.

She wasn’t expecting it any more than you were.

“So, you wanna get married?”

“Yes…wait. To you?”

And the tears flowed and the hugs happened and I knew she had recovered when she said “Did you get me that beer? Get yourself one, too. You earned it.”

“Will do. And for the record, that thing is your problem now. I was about to go nuts worrying about losing it or dropping it or having to sell it to pay for a hooker.”

One can only surmise that women the world over are donating their reproductive organs to science now that I am off the market for good and they have no use for their vaginovarial junk. I gave them all a chance, but they had to play all coy and act like they could have someone who is tall and good looking and has a job. Whatever.

Buying the ring wasn’t nearly as stressful as carrying it around with me. When we got to the airport and went through security, I had one carry-on bag that contained my computer, GPS, phone, cameras, pilot stuff, engagement ring, and basically everything else that was not to leave my sight.

When I got my shoes off and was waiting to send the bag through the xray belt, I was holding it until it was my turn to go through the metal detector. As usual, I was in line behind a robot. First, he went through with his watch and belt on, and then he went through three or four more times, and the line behind me was piling up. Finally, someone at the end of the line pushed the bags forward and my bag disappeared into the tunnel.

Now I’m sitting here all sock-footed and vulnerable, imagining the herd of government employed morons feverishly rifling through my bag, and the idiot running the metal detector is having a hard time wrapping her eighth grade brain around the fact that the guy in front of me had a bowl of buckshot for breakfast.

Finally I got to my shoes and belt and stuff. I was dying to just reach in and check the status of the ring, but the Skirt was there waiting for me. I grabbed the bag and we went to the gate. Finally I had a chance to make sure it was still there. I reached to the bottom of my bag and blindly groped for the box. I opened the clasp and the box and ran my finger along the little cushion thing they put the ring in, and it was not there.

“Holy great fucking mother of fuck, I am going to systematically kill everyone in this county.”

“Whadja’ say, hon?”

“Err…nahthing.”

“What’s wrong?”

“NUUUH-THING-GUH.”

And mercifully my fingers finally closed around the ring, which had apparently fallen out of the box when I opened it. I jammed it back in the box and steadfastly refused to put my bag under the plane when they asked me to do so.

When we got to St. Croix, we had this super nice safe in the room, and guess what I couldn’t put in there because a certain Skirt was running the show when it came to putting stuff in the safe when we left the room. Taking a page from my time in prison, I just stuck it up my ass. At least I would know where it was.

When I had finally decided to go “find the treasure”, I stuck the ring – box and all – in my pocket and waded out into the water to put on my fins and stuff. As I was putting on my mask, a little green box went floating by and I promptly freaked out and jammed it back in my pocket. If it had sunk, I would still be there digging in the sand.

I wanted to put it in a shell or something, so I dorkled around until I spotted a conch on the bottom. I picked it up, and although it was not the greatest looking shell, I held onto it in case I didn’t find anything better.
As it turns out, rather large crabs can live in conch shells, and they are anti-marriage. the middle finger of my right hand was in considerable pain as I yelled “aghhh hutherhucker” through my snorkel and flung him halfway to Boston.

I finally settled on a small urchin shell after confirming that it didn’t have anything mean living in it.

I continued to swim around in the bay and was suddenly nervous. I wasn’t afraid she’d shut me down or anything. It really just seemed like the natural progression of things, and I’ve never doubted that I wanted to marry this broad. In fact, I’ve never even entertained the idea of marrying anyone. The thing that made me nervous was the sheer magnitude of what I was about to do.

I was walking up the beach toward her, laughing to myself, thinking “she has no idea how frigging nervous I am right now. I hope I don’t get the anxiety snots.”

So that’s it. This time next year I’ll be married to The Skirt. I guess I can go ahead and call her Sara now.

But you can call her “The luckiest girl in the whole entire condo”.

Well, that analogy has much less to do with the point I was trying to make than it did when I first started writing it. What I am trying to illustrate is the idea of pushing past your comfort zone, and how when you are a kid that kind of thing comes a little more naturally than it does when you are all grown up and cynical.

If I look around at all of the irritating behavior I see in myself and others, most of it revolves around someone’s comfort zone or whatever excuse fort they have built around themselves to avoid doing stuff that requires effort or uncertainty. On the other hand, the people I admire most lately are the ones who have forced themselves out of their comfort zone. My friend Judd started writing a blog a few years ago, met a chick via emails and flirty IM’s, and went down to Australia to visit her. He lived in Colorado at the time. He came back and told me and a bunch of other people that he was going to quit his job and move to Australia to marry this broad and I promptly assigned the crazy label to Judd. Judd is now happily married to the girl and they have a kid.

Click here to read about Judd

But really? I mean, if someone is not an inherently reckless person and they decide to make the changes necessary to attain whatever goal it is, do I think they are crazy, or am I just a little bit jealous because they want it more than I do?

I’m a lot jealous – There are lots of things I sit around and wish I was doing. What if I had the time to just draw and paint or write jokes or whatever? How is it that people around me can just take things on and make it work for them and I can’t or won’t? On the other hand, I look at people who pass up opportunities for idiotic reasons (I know that’s my dream job, but I’d have to get up at 7, and I’m just not into that), and I think, “Just grab your sack and rally, douchebag – suck it up and be a man
oh
yeah
I’ve been doing pretty much the same thing for four years, so maybe I should rally a bit myself.”
Basically I think that whatever small effort it takes for anyone to force themselves out of their comfort zone will probably get them the highest return of any effort they put forth in their entire lives. I’ve seen it happen.

So I’ve been increasingly feeling like a passenger on the life bus. Spending my career and what I hope are the second best years of my life sitting in a cube under fluorescent lighting, at least for me, is not what I had in mind. It’s not a bad job – the pay is decent, I work with some of my best friends, and it’s 2 miles from home. It’s also not a good job (for me) – I’m not being creative from day to day, I rarely find myself erect or even tumescent over the next big project, there is little to no time off, and there’s the nature of the corporate beast that exists in most of these kinds of jobs. So why am I letting it override what I really enjoy? Because it pays the bills and it’s comfortable in that way.

A few months ago I had a conversation with my cousin as he was helping us move in to our new place. He asked how work was, I answered with “eh. You know. It’s work or whatever.”

Side rant- why do so many people do a job they hate and act like that’s how life is supposed to work? I’m not saying that no one can be happy working in a cubicle; in fact I have enjoyed quite a bit of my cube career and I know a lot of people who genuinely love what they do. It’s the “work sucks, but everybody hates their job” philosophy that makes me weep for humanity. Sure you’ll have jobs you hate. That’s why they make better jobs and the baby Jesus gave us each the desire to better ourselves. It’s just discouraging to see how many people seem to give up – they give up on their jobs, who they marry, raising their kids and whatever just because it is easier. I’m going to write another longer thesis about this as soon as I have time to think about it a little more.

He said “Dude, why don’t you finish up your ratings and be a pilot? The pay is basically zero, but at least your office has windows and lots of buttons and goes really fast. Everybody’s hiring like mad – it’s not like it was when you started flying.”

Back story on Jason – he was in pretty much the same situation I have been in. He had a job he was good at and pulled a decent amount of bucks, wanted to learn to fly, and was working up the courage to leave his comfort zone. One day they decided to downsize him right out of his comfort zone and he was on his way to flight school. He moved in with my parents and worked harder than I have ever seen anyone work on anything. In about three months he was a commercially rated multiengine pilot, and a month after that he was an instructor. A little over a year later he is flying for a regional airline and loving the hell out of it.

The proverbial seed was planted. Since that day in June I have been scraping up every penny I can, waking up at 5 am to drive down to the airport to fly for a couple of hours before work, and basically planning for what has so far been the biggest decision of my life. I still feel like everyone around me who has taken this kind of chance has done so with a sense of confidence and supreme ability to handle anything, but I’ll go ahead and tell the world that I have spent countless nights pacing the living room in a blind panic asking myself just what the fuck I think I am doing voluntarily taking a 75% pay cut just so I can have a cooler job. Seriously? Am I insane? “Ooh, chase your dreams, how romantic
” More like, “Ooh, have the nervous shits three times a week because you’re going to have to find a way to pay a mortgage and rent and insurance and food and those hookers you just can’t give up. How romantic.”

Screw riding along on the life bus; I want to drive for a while. I could have waited another week or another year or never done it at all, but I handed in my notice at work today and now I’m officially falling into whatever I land in. I hope it’s made of airplanes.

For the next three years I’m going to have to go back to being poor. I’m going to wake up in the middle of the night and freak out about money and schedules and check rides. There will be lots of days I wish I was just pushing 15 on the elevator and sitting at my desk until 5 o’clock. There will be many paychecks that will make me want to vomit if not for the fact that food costs money. For that reason I made the following picture that I will hang in my room and keep in my wallet:

So if you’re in to keeping fingers crossed or praying or sending good juju in whatever way you do it, save it for the entry where I tell you I have leprosy. Unless you have extra vibes lying around, in which case I’ll take it.

So I guess that’s it. On November 2, I will run from the building with my arms outspread, making airplane noises. Just like every day, but louder.

The guy sitting across from me at work is physically incapable of chewing with his mouth closed. What’s worse is that he is always snacking on something, and it makes me want to punch him. I fail to understand why it is so damn hard to put your lips together when you chew. The dude loves foods like dried banana chips, granola, and bagels slathered with cream cheese. It sounds like someone just on the other side of the cube wall has a bucket of oatmeal and is stirring it with a shovel. I have tried to tell him to act like an adult, I have threatened to physically harm him, (in response to which he told me to put on headphones so I couldn’t hear it), and finally I have resigned myself to the fact that I have to go to the conference room and work while he eats. The real bitch about it is that he is a cool guy aside from his bovine way of eating. As a passive aggressive response, I get Thai food once a week. He hates the smell, and bitches for an hour while I slowly consume my lunch. I keep telling him that if he can just develop the most basic of table manners, I’ll switch to Chicken wings or something.

Today I read a girl’s diary entry that quoted my new banner ad “Happiness is like wetting your pants- everyone can see it, but only you can feel the warmth.” She had many cool points until she described me as a middle-aged pilot, which I wasn’t sure how to take. Is thirty middle aged? I guess if I only live to be sixty
 She also said my stuff was interesting, so I guess she’s alright. Her writing is pretty good, and not nearly as boring as 90% of the crap on this site.

I have been spending a lot of time studying flying stuff lately, and realized that I am not a big studymonger. I guess I do pretty well at it once I get all sat down with the book open to the right page, but getting to that point is like pulling toenails. The ridiculous thing is that I considered looking for guidebooks on how to study, until I realized that I would have to study that in order to learn how to study. I’m not the sort of guy who can go to a public place and learn anything. I’m like a monkey; every noise, movement, or shiny object causes me to scamper off to investigate. Then I fling my own poo at it and screech. Okay, not that much like a monkey.

This girl I work with wants me to go get sushi with her at lunch. We talk a lot about relationships [read: blind leading the blind] and stuff, and I think we learn from each other, but I’m not sure about sushi. She’s really hip and knows all of the cool places around town, lives in the stylish area, refers to her friends as “thirtysomethings”, and a bunch of other stuff that I am not. Not that I dislike those people or anything, but I find the sushi issue a good metaphor for my attitude about that whole scene. I have had sushi several times- everything from the all you can eat sushi bar to the $36.65 a plate variety that everyone raves about in the underground periodicals. I liked some of it and tried everything that anyone suggested, and I think I ate a lot of it, but I still went home jonesing for a dozen wings. Still, once in a while, sushi calls-

S- Hey Dusty, whatcha’ doing later?

D- Uhh
probably studying a book about how to study, or applying to the department of redundancy department.

S- Wouldn’t you like to come over and try me one more time?

D- I don’t know, the gooey, uncooked texture and the fact that I can’t even pronounce your name sometimes makes me feel oogy and dumb.

S- That’s okay. Just think, though- if you just try me a couple of more times, you’ll know some of the names and stuff, and you can impress all of those midtown women who think they’re better than you


D- You’re so full of shit, sushi. If a woman thinks she’s better than I am, I don’t feel any need to impress her. I’m a good guy and I know it.

S- Who’s full of shit now?

D- Dammit, sushi. I hate when you do this. The frosted side of me wants to live life as the guy I am now- wearing a flannel shirt, a beat up baseball cap with “Ass” emblazoned on it, and eating jerky for lunch. The whole wheat side wants to be in your world, schmoozing it up, meeting important people and pretending I can stand to be around them. I don’t want that life or the friends it brings, but I am morbidly curious based on what I have seen so far.

S- Shut up. You know plenty of those people and you feel sorry for them. They envy you for your ability to wear a shirt with a picture of a ninja on it, and sit at a stop light singing “King of Pain” at the top of your lungs with the windows rolled down. Just come get a little sushi. You’re not sure you don’t like it. You just said it yourself.

D- Alright. Can I wear my shirt with the nipples glued to the outside?

S- no.

So it is a harmless yet conflicted relationship between me and sushi/hip thirtysomething scene. I don’t have to be anyone but myself, and if that means I direct art during the day, fly airplanes at night, build models on the weekends, draw pictures of faces, wear clothes with stupid sayings on them, and eat sushi, then I guess I just don’t fall into a category. I’d love to end this with a quote about how all of the funniest, smartest, and prettiest people in history were just like me, but I have to work on my chopstickery.