The youngest singers on American Idol last night were born in 1991-1992. They were tasked with singing tunes from the '60s, which would be the same as someone my age singing songs from the '40s.
Just in case you didn't have anything that depressed the SHIT out of you today.
Motherfucker, you old.
In college, cleanliness is a relative term. Physically, I mean.
Say, in a totally hypothetical example, that someone were to
toss you a slice of pizza from across the room on a Sunday morning, because
your body is physically incapable of generating foodstuffs on its own and is
also incapable of moving the two and a half feet to the pizza box.
And say, again hypothetically, that the aforementioned pizza
were to overshoot your location and land on the floor nearby. Then say, for example, that within the last
24 hours someone else’s balls had been very near the exact spot on the floor
where the pizza has landed (for reasons that I will not hypothetically go into
here). Or, if you’re making your own
example at home, they could hypothetically have been your own balls.
Point is, in college, the mind does an excellent job of
blocking out the hypothetical facts of nearly any given hypothetical real situation.
And so, you slowly reach for the balls-adjacent slice and
lightly brush it off before shoving it whole into your mouth. Then the orgasming can begin. Such is the importance of a higher
education.
The concept of clean and unclean is rarely even considered
during those formative years. Take
showering, for instance. The idea that,
at any point, one would need to clean one’s washcloth and towel seemed
preposterous. Washcloth even has the
word “wash” right there in it, if you look closely. Your washcloth and towel are constantly getting wet and are often
in the same room as soap particles. A
bathroom is basically a washing machine at a macro level, right? Sure it is.
The fact that I even used a washcloth should represent how
advanced I was compared to the rest of the unwashed masses. An alumni once saw me pick up my washcloth
and let out a disgusted UUUUuurrgggghhh sound. The washcloth tended to dry out and hold the form of whatever it had
landed on when I was done with it.
“How can you use that to wash yourself? That’s disgusting!” he’d naively yelped.
“It’s just really dry in this house,” I remember justifying,
“and besides, have you seen the shower downstairs? This washcloth is the least of my worries.”
It was true. One wall of the shower I used throughout most of my collegiate career was made of stacked stone that had been painted with some kind of mold-compliant whitewash. The perfect storm of filth and damp worked their magic in time and spots of black fungus began to form. Cute little furry Tribbles of fungus at first, there to watch the naked parade. Over time, however, the mold got mixed up in some nasty business with the local toughs and soon the entire wall was a black hole of yeast. It was downright awkward to shower in there, the wall looking at you, trying to sell you crank. It wasn’t so bad that anyone who showered there felt any sort of compulsion to actually clean the wall, but it was quite unsettling nonetheless.
Interesting side effect to the tolerance of the muck,
however. With the questionably edible
food and the black fungus shower and drinking whatever anyone put in a glass in
front of you and putting your penis into whatever vagina someone put in front
of you, one begins to feel relatively invincible against the common germ.
Colds and flus and pneumonias would routinely walk up and
slap me hard in the face with a white glove. I would simply laugh and point to the shower wall, which would then
whisper, “Yo, influennnnzaaahhh, I’m holding, baby. You want jus' a little taste, maybe?”
I continue to harbor residual smugness in the battle with germs. But germs, they have a way of getting back at you. Ways that make you pray for death. Which is the exact situation I found myself at 3:30 in the morning in the Heavenly Bed of my hotel room.
Next: Part Two – This Flounder Is Delicious!
(I was out of town on business last week. Though I had every intention of writing, that intention was co-opted by sleep.)
When I was young and adorable and all parts of me were wrapped tightly in virginity, I was asked by a friend to attend a sleepover "lock-in" party at his church. My parents approved, obviously, as God would be monitoring the situation. Though my friend wasn't Catholic, as I was, he was of a brand of religion known to be even more restrictive and devout, which had the tempered orgasmic blessing of my parents.
By restrictive, I mean that my friend wasn't allowed to get sexual education instruction at our school with the rest of the class. He was made to sit quietly in the library while the rest of us sat stunned in front of a series of movies that made our pants tighten and our stomachs knot. When he'd walk back in the room every day after our sex ed was complete, we'd all give him knowing glances even though we had no idea what the hell we just witnessed. All we knew was that we sure as hell weren't getting within ten feet of a vagina. Turns out, those things bleed, dude. I'll stick to my Star Wars action figures, thankyouverymuch.
By devout, I mean that it was the goal of the flock of my friend's particular religion (and, I suppose, most religions) to spread their word like manure across the countryside. That's not a knock against his religion, it's just that I'm from Iowa and we like to use manure in most of our analogies.
Anyway, there I was, sitting in a chair in front of two adult members of his congregation in the basement of a school or possibly a church or an abandoned mental institution or slaughterhouse (my memory is fuzzy on this point), and they were discussing the finer points of their God (who, I believe it was implied, could totally kick the ass of my God). There seemed to be a distinct emphasis on this being the "locked-in" part of the evening. We'd already been bowling and they'd fed us and given us plenty of sugary drinks. But now, as payment for the bowling and food and drinks, I was going to by-god hear about some salvationing. They read from the Bible and gave me my own copy of the entire Book of John (door prize!) and asked what I thought about the whole wacky God thing. At some point during the conversation, I think I bought a timeshare in the Keys and agreed to finance an Ark of some kind (no money down!).
Point is, they had done a decent job at brainwashing me. I literally drank the Kool-Aid. I began to hang out with my friend more and when I went over to his house one day, we began to talk about music. I knew that there were certain things to which he was not allowed to listen, but I didn't really understand why.
"So what can you listen to? What do you have here in your collection?"
"I have some kind of country and western stuff, I guess you'd call it. Cowboy stuff that my dad used to listen to. Gene Autry. It's good. He sings about life and I can understand what he's saying."
"Yeah, but...like, what about more recent stuff? Do you listen to the radio?"
"Not much. Just a lot of wailing to me."
"But like, there's this new Prince record that's really cool. From his movie? Pretty much every song on it is a hit! You should listen to it. I can bring it over."
This is where the friendship took a decidedly negative turn. Based upon how red his face got and how he began to stammer, you would've thought I just asked him to fellate me during recess the next day.
"Prince is..he's Satan in disguise. His music...it has hidden backward lyrics and it turns people into children of Satan. You shouldn't listen to it. You'll go to...you'll...You're going to Hell."
And there it was. Lost cause.
"Yeah. But uh...I mean. Have you listened to it? Because it's really pretty good. I don't think I'm into Satan now or whatever. I mean, it's got a good beat, ya know? When Dove's Cry? It's good. It's on the radio, so I don't think Satan is on it or whatever."
"Satan is very tricky. Maybe you should go."
I could tell that he needed a very hot shower. Or a bath in holy water. Cleansing needed to be performed, that much was clear.
I was pretty confused, so I did what any decent young Christian person would do in order to get back on the path to righteousness. I sprinted home on my bike and played Purple Rain backward on my parent's record player. I couldn't really make out much, but it turns out that at the end of Darling Nikki, there are backmasked lyrics wherein he says, "Hello, how are you? I'm fine because I know that the lord is coming soon, coming, coming soon. Ha ha ha ha ha." It's definitely freaky and undoubtedly the work of Satan. Also the work of Satan? That stuff that Nikki does with the magazine. Satan is evil, but also extremely sexy.
The reason that this story has jumped to the top of mind recently is that it seems that my musical heroes have to die, reinvent/"sell out" or fade away. I mean, come on, if you would've said that Prince would be playing halftime at the Super Bowl twenty years ago, there would've been rioting in the streets. And the Red Hot Chili Peppers closing the Grammy awards? Twenty years ago, they never would've gotten past security. I can't fault them for shape-shifting to speak to a new generation (because Satan loves the shape-shifting), but it's all-of-the-sudden very bizarre to me. Put more succinctly, I'm fucking old and I'm not happy about it. Fat lot of good it did to devote my life to Satan when I listened to Purple Rain backwards. I never even got my autographed "I (Heart) Satan" t-shirt. Total gyp.
Humanity is so easily cowed, at what point do you suppose that there will be a groundswell for just giving up and turning the whole planet into a goddamn non-stop New Year's orgy of sex and booze and karaoke? Tell me that just this second when you read that, you didn't get a little jolt of Fuck Yes. You did. You did and you liked the way it made you feel. Pervert.
Never in the history of mankind have we been more aware of one another, the world around us, the future and the possibilities for death and destruction. It's awesome in so many ways, and scary in just a few. Eventually people will run from their churches and say, "If there is a God, he better show his face soon and he sure as HELL better be in High Def."
I think I'm fixated on this lately because according to all signs from reality television, people are getting infinitely more delusional. And delusional is the optimistic option. Dumber than a box of knit ties is the pessimistic view. Tomaytoe, tomahtoe.
Ahhhh, I dunno. I just really want to watch the shit fall apart for some reason. I think many of us are coming out of the other side of fear. You live in fear, or the constant bombardment of disaster, and you become fatalistic. It's what happened in the Middle East and Africa long ago. They're the early adopters in the market on fatalism.
Wow, this is a peppy post all of the sudden. Anyway: booze, sex and maybe some drugs and nude teenage cheerleader pyramids. Let's pencil it in for two weeks from this Saturday. BYONTCP.
When I was 8, I was alone at home on New Year's Eve. My parents were celebrating at a neighbor's house and I had the rare privilege of staying up until midnight to watch strangers in a far away place rejoice in saying goodbye and hello simultaneously.
I shut off all the lights, letting the blue glow of the television encircle me as I sat cross-legged, praying to its altar. I counted down quietly along with the announcer, but I didn't really know what to do at midnight. Everyone was so excited. I felt hollow.
It was 1980, my first new decade. As I sat there, I thought about what the next ten years of life would bring. Ten years. Literally a lifetime for me. Waves of sadness slammed against me as I slowly calculated that everyone in my life would be dead or gone in the next ten years. My brother and sister are both more than 5 years older than me. They would be gone away to school or jobs or maybe Mars. Surely my parents wouldn't live past the age of fifty. Even if they did live to be that old, they'd be hooked up to heart-pumping machines and electronic voice boxes by that time, right? Maybe I'd only be able to hug their brain in a fishbowl. I couldn't handle that. Do you have to feed the brain in a bowl? Like with a shaker or something? God, it's too much. I started to cry. It was as close to goth as I ever got, thank Jesus.
Two and a half decades later and nothing is as I imagined. My family is still around and healthy. None of us ever made it to Mars. Disco is dead.
But now I'm at a new age of reflection. Maybe at 35 years old, it's a mid-life crisis. Maybe it's just the constant reminders that this moment is the last that any of us are guaranteed. Or maybe it's this:
My dad turns 70 years old today.
I know you don't know him and you probably don't know me, but trust me, this is weird. My dad is stuck in my mind in a perpetual loop at age 44. Old people are 70, right? My dad's not old. I'm not old. Neither of us are ever going to age.
If you do the math - oh hell, who are we kidding, you don't have enough fingers and toes - I am half the age of my father today. This age, my age, is the age at which he had me. His last child, happy accident and ruiner of dreams.
We're a lot alike my dad and me, but so different too. I wouldn't have my sense of humor without him and I learned his loyalty and work ethic firsthand. At nineteen, he had some crazy, wild times with his buddies in a house they shared in his hometown. At nineteen, I had some wild, crazy times with my buddies in a house we shared in my hometown.
But from there, he went to fight overseas, doing things that he's still not sure if he's allowed to tell us to this day. When he came back, he stayed in that hometown and started a family . He's been there ever since, a rock to which the rest of his family anchors. He is the laughter and the stories and the hope and the encouragement for everyone he meets, every day. Simply, he is the dad that everyone wants.
I know I'm lucky to have him in my life still. Not everyone gets the time they need with their own dad. The moment gets taken away from them too soon or the connection is broken through stubbornness and anger. But dad and I have said the things you are supposed to say to each other as father and son. We say it every time we're together. Even so, it never seems like enough.
So here's what I've learned: We all live for one another, fathers and sons and mothers and daughters and friends and lovers. We live for one another to make moments and share secrets and tell stories, true and false. It's so much easier than we make it.
I love you, dad. Happy Birthday.
I suppose I could resolve to do something.
Time is moving fast. So fast. Faster than the cliche can fly. All I can think is that I don't know what happens now that my arrested development is gaining momentum. Nobody ever says what comes after.
I can't beat time, but I can spend it doing what I want to do. And I want to do this.
The world is a funny place. I'll show you how.
I just got back from voting at Target and the new computerized voting booth was very confusing. I made it through the first three levels of the ballot, but then I got my ass kicked by the ice dragon and my knight got carried to Valhalla on a bare breasted half unicorn/half Eva Longoria and it said I voted to make abortion illegal. I tried tapping down, down, left, right, select to reset my ballot, but it didn't work. So get out there and get your abortions while you can, people.
There are very few things more important to our democracy than the election process. That's why they made it rhyme with "erection". It's THAT important. In fact, there is only one thing that is more important today.
Because today, you see, along with the right to vote, you also have the right...
to rock:
Several thousand of my loyal readers (what? it could happen) have inquired about why I have been so intermittent with posting over the last, let's say, dozen months. There's no one specific reason, but I do have reasons and I maintain that they are valid, no matter what your bitch-ass says.
Basement. Much of my free time as been consumed by working on finishing our basement. Not having access to the basement means I haven't had access to my home office and wired internet. I usually do my writing from my desktop PC, which has been sitting on my kitchen table for several months now. There are many stories contained within the joys of home remodeling, but I'll save them for another time. For now, let's just say that I hope the fine people of Kraftmaid Cabinetry get splinters stuck in a very painful place. The ass. I'm saying in the ass.
Photography. Believe it or not, I fancy myself a bit of a decent photographer. I enjoy photography nearly as much as writing, but it's a time consuming hobby. Toward the end of this year and the start of next, I'll be adding a link to my photography website and make a serious effort to post photographs more consistently.
Video games. God help me, as pathetic as I know it makes me, I am a video game junkie. Ha ha, that's funny right? Guy my age, playing games now and then? No. It's an addiction people. I have spent 206 hours on a game called Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Take a moment to put that math brain of yours to work and consider how long 206 hours is, please. It took over my life. And sadly, I wasn't content to hold my addiction to myself. I got my wife involved. And she may be worse than I am. This is the reason that I never even tried World of Warcraft. I know that if I do, I will seriously consider quitting my job and showering in the sink, if at all.
Work. Oh yeah, work. I do have a job and stuff that I kind of have to do. Daddy can't feed his basement/photography/video game lifestyle on good looks alone.
I didn't leave a light on for trick or treaters this year. Mostly because I don't like children, but also because I don't need to be buying a forty pound bag of Snickers minis and then only hand out two candy bars to the one child who actually does knock at our door. Nobody comes around anymore, probably because I slipped a few Viagra into the candy last year and the FBI jumped all over my ass. Not much for a quality prank, the Feds. Say what you will, an eight year old in an Incredible Hulk costume with an erection is just funny. Especially if you can get him to say, "Don't make me angry - you wouldn't like me when I'm angry."
ANYway, I left the light off this year and I didn't get so much as a knock or a ring. However, I did have to take the dogs outside to sniff grass and just as I got to the front door, I looked out and saw a mom and dad and a little princess standing on our steps. In the dark.
"PUSH THE DOORBELL," the father was stage whispering.
"NooooooooooOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH," the princess whined.
"JUST PRESS IT," he whisper-shouted with disappointment.
"uuuuuuHHHHHHNNNNGGGGG," she replied, convincingly.
I can relate. I've always hated going up to a strange house. Lord only knows what sorts of naked scratching is going on within.
So I opened the door quickly as the dogs signaled the impending END OF LIFE ON EARTH AS WE KNOW IT and I shouted, "Sorry, the dogs are out, I've got to take them out. Please just give me ten minutes. I'm really sorry."
The dad okayed me and said no problem, he understands, they have dogs too. The little girl was in the midst of a whine that only the dogs could hear and they walked away as I shut the door and waited for them to get far enough away to ease the dogs outside.
Truth is, I have no candy. We really didn't buy any. But now, like, I've committed. Why did I say "give me ten minutes"? Was I going to whip up a batch of Butterfinger? Why can't I just say GO AWAY, WE DON'T LIKE CHILDREN HERE while I'm hanging brain in a wife beater? I'm gutless, is why.
So I took the dogs for a walk and the whole time I'm trying to run through what I have in the house that I can give the Princess, like extra bibles or maybe a banana; anything to get her to not come back next year.
I settled on a pack of my Orbitz gum, which I chew as if it were rubberized crank, so I always have plenty on hand. What kid doesn't like sugar free, bubble-free gum?!
I got back in the house as I saw them making their way back up the street. Again, TECHNICALLY, they wouldn't have come back and I would've been fine. But I can't let shit go. So I grab the pack of gum and stand in my hallway for a minute thinking how lame it is. I decide to check the pantry quick on the off chance that there's like a can of chocolate soup or a case of gum balls or something and what do I see on a low shelf toward the back? A full size Snickers.
I grab it and run outside and up the block until I catch the family.
"Princess!" I shout.
Her dad, the King, was cleverly dressed in his outfit as a bekhakied desk jockey.
"Honey, wait, I think this man has something for you..."
The Princess curled around to the backside of her mommy as I approached.
Since she was already scared, I punched her dad and stole his wallet and then gave her mom my business card and told her to call me when she wanted a real man.
Okay, that part didn't happen, but only because I didn't think of it at the time.
I gave the candy bar to her dad because there was no way she was going to come within a half-block of me.
"You came to my door, so you deserve a treat, Princess," I said and walked away.
I think it's a sweet story, so shut up. It's even sweeter if I leave off the part about how the candy bar is four years old and the Princess will probably get the runs because of it.
I gave away a valuable lesson for Halloween this year: Don't take candy from strangers.
The dusty confines of my underground lair contain nearly all of the components required for today’s Modern Evil Genius. I have the customary large screen device, on which I can make demands of world leaders and/or watch nude women on trampolines in high definition. The lair also houses the Destroyer of WorldsTM, a data network that consists of no less than eight non-working and four working personal computers and laptops running at full capacity, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to provide me with tools necessary to topple governments as well as view pornography from around the world.
As you might have gathered, there’s a great deal of masturbation involved in taking over the world. All of my seed is saved in Ziplock baggies, of course, so that it can be used to repopulate the planet with a race of super sexy egotists. But I’ve said too much.
There is one key piece of equipment needed assist me in the plot to dominate humanity that I currently do not have within the lair, however, and that’s a place for me to dispose of my poo-poo and pee-pee.
And so the adventure begins….
An evil lair is a tricky thing. It’s not like you can go to a real estate agent and ask to see the lair listings. So one makes due with what one can afford on an Evil Genius salary. In my case the lair is, let’s be honest, a basement. It’s covered in concrete and pink foam insulation, which is clearly un-evil. Unless you bash someone’s head into the concrete and then rub the insulation on his genitals. Which I have done.
The lair/basement in my current evil manor does not have the evil pipes in place to install an evil toilet. The members of the Construction League tell me that this means it isn’t “stubbed” for a toilet, which always makes me laugh my maniacal laugh.
The best (read: cheapest) option open to me was to invest in a special toilet that I could obtain through my local black market/internet. This toilet is capable of all sorts of evilness, in that it grinds the toilet contents through a motor on the back before shooting the debris off into oblivion. The toilet description actually uses the word “macerate”, which is frankly just the kind of terminology that makes an Evil Genius wet in his nether regions.
Shortly after the macerating device arrived at the lair, it become quite clear that I would need to acquire the services of a licensed and bonded henchman to install it. Obviously I could have done it myself, given my massive IQ, but there was an off chance that I would be dealing with poopy in some way and that kind of thing is more in the realm of Mad Scientist than Evil Genius.
After a very rudimentary phone search for a qualified henchman, I scheduled an appointment with a member of Good Ol’ Boy Plumbing, LLC. A very reputable henching organization, to be sure. Following an estimating and negotiation process, I welcomed him into my lair and explained the penalties for disloyalty and double-crossery. He was clear on my demands and we sealed the deal over a cool glass of baby seal blood followed by mutual maniacal laughter.
Days later, Henchman Jimmy, as he will be known here, arrived wide-eyed and eager to install the macerating device. Though he hadn’t seen such a magnificent machine before, he proclaimed, “A turlet’s a turlet”, to which I had no argumentative reply.
I left Jimmy to his work, as I knew him to be a Master Plumber from his notifying me of the fact nearly a dozen times. I had evilness to undertake, in any case, and hadn’t the time to spend looking over the shoulder of Master James. His arrival at 8:00 am had allowed him to confidently state that he would be out of my hair by noon. This pleased me.
At roughly 11:30, my hand had cramped and forced me to disengage from my evil activities. I decided that I would go check on my henchman, possibly giving him some evil words of encouragement. As I was about to round the corner to the waste removal room, I heard a sudden and alarming, “GOT! Dangit!”
“Problems?” I asked, poking in from around the corner.
“I been a master plumber for 35 years and I ain’t seen nothing like this before,” he stated, sweat darkening the back of his gray t-shirt.
“What do you mean? Is there a problem with the macerating device? Will it still macerate? SPEAK TO ME!” I yelled, vexed.
At this point, Jimmy stated with a snarl, “I think this thing is a piece of crap, is what I think. Junk.”
Well, Jimmy, we are not paying you to think. We are paying you to engage in plumbing and, potentially, some light henching. Thinking is for Evil Geniuses. It’s implicit in the name.
“What exactly is the problem,” I asked, in a menacingly calm fashion.
“Well, is this here some kind of foreign turlet? Cuz none of the clamps that came with it and none of the clamps I got fit it. I can’t tighten them,” he sighed.
“I’m not sure,” I lied, “it may be European.” I can’t trust him with my black market sources.
“And I’m trying real hard not to swear, so I’m sorry about the yelling,” he apologized.
“You swear all you want around this lair, my friend. This is a swear-friendly zone,” I told him with a pat on the air near his back.
I walked upstairs to the Manor House as I heard him sigh and slap the device.
~~~~~
Two hours later, SUCCESS!
Not only had Henchman Jimmy successfully installed the macerating unit, he had finished installing the water spouting apparatus as well.
“Looks like we’re all set,” he exclaimed. “Boy, that clamp was a bear. My boss just told me he had to install one of these once and it took him three days. Kinda wish I’d known that before I started.”
“If wishes were fishes, we’d have an ocean full of dreams, Jimmy.” Totally made that up on the spot. I rakishly adjusted my cape.
“Uh. Yeah. Oh, hey, I forgot about the lid. Let me put that on quick before I leave,” Jimmy gestured to the seat of the macerator.
Picking it up and turning it over in his hands, Jimmy’s eyes began to glaze and then harden.
Something evil was about to transpire.
~~~~~
“You ain’t gonna believe this, but I can’t put this lid on without completely taking the turlet off of the wall again. This is the dumbest design I’ve ever seen in my 35 years as a master plumber,” Jimmy said, incensed.
Is it dumb, Jimmy? Or is it genius? So few can tell the difference.
“Got DANG!”
I decided to leave Jimmy to his work and his thoughts and his rage. In my years of evilness, I’ve found that nothing helps to incubate anger quite like long periods of personal reflection. I would allow his wrath to grow and fester, as that is the best thing for wrath: the festering. And soon, his immortal soul would be mine.
And after two more hours, as I was making myself a lunch feast, it came.
“JEEEEZUS CHRIST!!” came the exasperated, broken scream from the lair below.
Yes. Yeeeeeeees. BETRAY your God. BETRAY HIM!
I rubbed my hands together slowly, face slack, except for a slight upturn at the edges of my mouth. I had practiced the move in the mirror many times, but it felt good to put it to real-world use.
Slowly, slowly, I turned and glided toward the staircase. As I descended the stairs, with a creak and a creak, I wanted to continue rubbing my hands together in a sinister fashion, but decided that I’d better use the railing, as tripping and falling at this moment would really spoil the mood.
I reached the bottom and peered carefully around the corner.
There was Jimmy. Shattered. Possibly dead. Facing away from me, kneeling, slumped in front of the device. He had sacrificed himself at the altar of the macerator.
I cackled in my mind.
I believe I heard whimpering and then a nearly inaudible, “doesn’t make any fucking sense”.
Yes. Let the darkness flow over you Jimmy. EMBRACE IT!
“35 years…” he trailed off.
All for nothing, Jimmy. FEED ON THE HATE!
Then, with a lunge, Jimmy attacked the toilet. Pulling and twisting it.
I walked back up the staircase, assured in my evilness.
~~~~~
An hour later, Jimmy had finished. A shell of a henchman.
“I missed five jobs because of this thing today,” he sighed.
“Yes,” I replied.
“If I ever run across one of these things again, I’m charging three times as much, I’ll tell you that,” he stated.
“Yes,” I laughed.
“I’m serious!” he said, as forcefully as he could.
“Yes, Jimmy. But for today, it is over. A piece of you has died today and for that, we have all benefited. The cause of evil thrives. Hail Satan,” I said, kissing him full on the lips.
“Mail Satum,” Jimmy mumbled, as his sweaty lips pulled away from mine.
Life after 35 is a constant series of unjustified emotional highs and lows. Not all that different from being 15, except that now I don't get a throbbing erection when unattainable girls nod at me politely.
The highs and lows have grown more pathetic during the years, an example of which is two weeks ago when I was driving down a nearby road and I discovered that the construction that has been ongoing for around a year finally opened up to a new road which leads directly to Target.
You would've thought that Jesus Christ himself had come down from Valhalla and granted me three wishes (or whatever the fuck he does). I nearly burst into tears and then almost wrecked my car trying to get my wife on the cell phone.
"Honey! Honey, listen! The road to Target is OPEN! YES! I KNOW!! How AWESOME is this!!? Godammn, this is the best day of my entire year. This is better than the day we got married. I know. I KNOW!! IT'S FANFUCKINGTASTIC!"
My wife has learned to humor me. It's just easier than slogging through divorce papers.
This past weekend, while attempting to mow the lawn, I had what I've patented as a Witteurysm, which is when one blows a part of his brain out of his earhole due to the actions of an inanimate object.
Me: "Motherfuck that lawnmower! Fuck it in the ass!"
Wife: "..."
Me: "I've hated that fucking thing since day fucking one. I'm getting rid of it. Fuck it."
Wife: "Um..."
Me: "First the self-propel mechanism goes out and then it can't handle a little 'long grass' (using my high-pitched condescending voice, so the lawn mower could hear me from the garage)."
Wife: "Ooohhhkaaaay..."
Me: "And fuck if I'm going to sell it. I'm taking that goddamned thing out to the middle of nowhere, throwing it into a ditch and putting a bullet in its head.
Wife: "Honey, tell me how you really feel. Do you like the lawnmower or not?"
Me: "I do not care for the lawnmower, no."
Wife: "Well, okay then.
A little over two weeks ago, terrorists attempted to disrupt my travel to a business meeting in Houston, Texas by plotting to blow up ten airplanes over the Atlantic ocean. I have not yet determined why the terrorists hate me, but I assume it has something to do with how I prefer to fuck my virgins here on Earth so that I can brag to my friends about it later.
The following is the story of my journey that night, over two weeks ago...
~~~~~
I’m sitting slump-shouldered in the Crown Room at the Atlanta airport, Amarula coating the inside of the fifth or sixth glass of the evening. My flight was delayed a couple of hours and given the state of my life, the nation, and the world, I’m hesitant to believe that my mood is going to change any time this decade.
Not to say that "big picture" (air quoted) life is terrible. But you know what I want to do all the time? What I really want to do? I want to write.
Nobody cares, of course. Ooo...do you wanna write? Are you a tortured artist? Do you yearn to be understood?
Who gives a fuck? Surely not the over-served software saleswoman at the bar right now, who has decided to let loose another button on her blouse, hoping the bartender will show her why once you go black you never go back.
These are the ramblings of a drunken traveler. A scream in a sea of screams.
Oh Jesus. How fucking emo have I become?
Okay, this is totally gay, but keep in mind that I'm drunk. Or I’ve been drinking. Hold on, I’m gonna stand up right now.
Seriously.
Yeah, okay, so I’m tipsy. Not drunk. Shit, my plane is probably going to board soon. I’ll write from the plane. It’s a piece of shit commuter, so I may actually have to fly the thing. I’ll let you know.
~~~~~
Goddamn it. I just checked the departing flights screen quick before heading to the gate. My plane was delayed another 45+ minutes. The airlines are turning me into an alcoholic. I wouldn’t be drinking on Thursday night if I was at home. Okay, that's a lie. But you get my point.
So did I mention yet that I came to the airport three hours in advance with basically nothing but a hairbrush and socks? I had deodorant, but they made me throw it out even though everyone knows that terrorists don't use deodorant. So I came here three hours early only to discover that there was absolutely no line at security. Walked up and breezed right through. Never, ever happened to me before at Hartsfield-Jackson airport. I assumed there was a law against it, in fact.
So I had time to kill, coincidentally, given that that's exactly what the terrorists DON'T want me to have time for. I went to the nearest airport bookstore to buy some emergency deodorant, in order to have a mild level of self-respect at the meeting tomorrow morning. And I think we all know that airport bookstores are known for their wide variety of deodorant. Would you like Speed Stick in green or pale green? And we're out of green. The pitiful look and tone of voice in which the clerk at the store addressed me suggested that someone had shit in my carry-on.
But, now, I’ve got time to kill and an open bar here. Bartender made me his “specialty” drink about a half-hour ago that one of the other bar patrons eyed-balled and described as “kind of a white Russian”, to which the bartender said, “Yeah, it’s a white Russian on steroids”. So now I’ve got drug testing to deal with. I've made a mental note to blow out my lats later.
I've been in the airport for four and a half hours.
And I think I just saw lightning outside. Or possibly there's about to be a Kiss concert on the tarmac.
Nope. By the looks of the rain hitting the window now, someone better be figuring out exactly how big a cubit is.
Shit.
~~~~~
Ever since I wrote on this very site about my realization of the fact that I will likely be in the workforce for another 25+ years, I’ve become, um, obsessed with that idea. It is all I can do to keep it from crushing me. I'm going nowhere with this thought, other than to let you know that I'm being crushed under the weight of that which is barely in my control. This is why people turn to Jesus, because hey, why not? Jesus is totally hot for lepers and shit, so he'll LOVE your fucked up psychoses.
Another five fucking minutes just got added to the “scheduled” departure time, by the way. I've been around long enough to know that airlines don't work in five minute increments. Something's up.
I'm heading down to the gate. It's about ten til ten.
~~~~~
Okay, not that this is suspicious at all, but they've bumped our scheduled departure time to 10:15 and it's now 10:45. So now we literally have to go back in time in order to take off, which you KNOW is going to add to the delay. There are some pissed off people in the gate area right now. I'm going to start walking around and spreading some rumors about the captain. Oh wait, here comes the flight attendant to make a gate announcement.
"Ladies and gentlemen, due to mechanical problems with the plane, Flight Blahblahblah to Houston has been canceled, please go to the ticketing counter three gates to my left to re-ticket."
That's it. Maybe spit on my ass before jamming it in next time, okay Delta? Maybe give me a goodbye mix tape or something? Cocksuckers.
~~~~~
At the ticket counter, I have weighed my options. I have to be at a meeting at 9:00 am in Houston. Which means my flight has to arrive no later than about 7:00, given distance from the airport and traffic. Which means I'd have to try to make a 4:30/5:00 am flight tomorrow morning, if such a thing exists. Which means I would have to get up at about 3:00. Which is approximately 4 hours from right now. And it would take an hour and half to get home from here. I explain my math to the kind lady at the ticket counter.
"Well, there's another flight to Houston that leaves at midnight over in the next terminal. You should be able to make that one."
I was really kind of hoping you'd tell me to go home and get some rest and there's just no way I'm getting to Houston, but okay, I'll play your little games.
Terminal B, here I come.
~~~~~
Well, the people here at the midnight flight to Houston do not look pleased. This flight has been delayed as well. And many of the harried freaks from my original flight are also here. Some people are starting to soak rags on sticks in some oil. That can't be a good sign.
My slight buzz is starting to wear off and the real world is creeping in at the edges. Airport smells are starting to become intensely stale. The fried foods have mixed with the leather store smell and pretzel odors have intermingled with dried sweat. It is one o'clock in the morning. I'm going to die here. I can see that now.
The captain has just walked up the gangway from the plane and grabbed the intercom.
"Okay, I'm only going to say this once and then I don't want to hear about it again, am I clear? It's just me and the guy from food service down there and we did our best to clear this plane for takeoff. It's as clean as we can get it between the two of us, so things might not be nice as you're used to, but we're getting this plane to Houston tonight!"
The goddammit is implied.
The crowd has literally burst into cheers and applause.
~~~~~
The plane took off about a half hour or so later, a little after 1:30 in the morning. I had arrived at the Houston airport around 3:00.
When I arrived in Houston, I took a cab to my hotel. My driver had a very rudimentary understanding of both the rules of driving and the laws of physics. I don't believe we actually maintained a position in any particular lane for more than about .3 milliseconds during the nearly hour-long ride. Also, based upon the temperature he was keeping his car, I'm pretty sure he was storing meat and/or a body in the trunk.
I arrived at my hotel around 4:00 and slipped into bed about 4:30. I would get a full two and a half hours of sleep before waking to go to my meeting.
The terrorists don't understand that if they just keep inconveniencing us long enough, we'll just kill ourselves. It's a much cleaner war that way, I assure you.
I was reading an article about Andre Agassi in Sports Illustrated (SI subscription required for link) the other night that gave me a bit of understanding about myself.
Andre Agassi, as you may know, was a major pain in the ass in his younger years. He was beyond brash and more than boorish. He was, simply, the prime example of too much money and too much fame too young.
The article focuses on the shift in Andre today. Devoted father, husband and legitimate humanitarian. The interviewer (acclaimed writer Gary Smith) goes in search of the Andre that was and the Andre that is, in order to find the key to the transformation. The interview, for me, came down to this paragraph (as written from Smith's POV):
You were sitting in front of a fire after dinner, looking around a house without a single trophy, plaque or tennis picture, without a nanny, maid or cook, asking him how he came to see the big picture, how he got it ... and he started shaking his head no, saying that he hadn't got it, that he still couldn't see the big picture. I can't see anything objectively or in context, he said. I wish I could. It drives me crazy. It causes a lot of problems. Show me a drop of water, and I'm fine. I'll learn everything about it. But don't show me the ocean. Don't show me the whole forest. Every time I try to see the big picture, I'm finished, I'm lost....
What struck me first, and always strikes me, is when someone believes that another person "gets it". I've been told on three very memorable occasions, "CW, you get it." Life. Got it figured out.
I've always latched onto that and I think I've discovered something. There's so many people out there looking for the answer. Looking for the one or the one thing or the way. And I do have it figured out. I get the big picture. I see the whole forest and I have perspective on the ocean.
My problem, I've only now come to realize, is that I have the opposite problem from Andre and so many others. I only see the big picture. The fine details are lost to me. I can't see the trees, only the forest. The waves on the ocean are a blur. I only see the vast blue.
It's not that I don't know how to enjoy the moments as they pass - Lord knows I don't have a problem with that - it's more that I have made a habit of ignoring the inside pieces of the puzzle. If I want to see what it looks like, I'll check the front of the box.
I don't even know if this is a bad thing. I see the umbrella covering my life. The enormity of it and the thin fragility. If I spend all of my time focusing on the mechanisms (I have to work for 30 more years and my parents will probably be dead in the next 10 years and the house needs to be painted and friends come and go and...) will I only end up getting wet? Open the umbrella. Get out of the rain.
It's a weight. If I let it be. Is ignorance bliss or denial?
Ugh.
I don't know.
I'm just going to go sit on a beach on Grand Bahama and forget about the world.
I'll see you in a week.
Yesterday, as I was boarding the plane home from Philadelphia, at the exact moment that I walked by the cockpit, I heard a voice alarm blaring from console:
"FIRE IN LEFT ENGINE! FIRE IN LEFT ENGINE! WARNING! FIRE IN LEFT ENGINE!"
I could hear the pilots furiously flipping switches and pressing buttons (probably wondering, "My left or the plane's left?"), trying to shut the voice off. I like to think it was all a part of the pre-flight routine.
"Jimmy, did you test the 'We're All Fucked' button?"
"Roger."
It is a testament to how numbed I've become to traveling that I just walked to my seat and flipped on my iPod to drown out the inevitable screaming and explosions.
The closest location for me to purchase fireworks is a group of people who've set up a makeshift operation outside on a local street corner. In ninety-five degree weather. Fifteen feet from a gas station.
It's hard to believe that Georgia ranks somewhere in the forties in education. Most in Georgia never see that list, of course, because counting past forty is really, really hard.
Freedom is for everyone, including those that are free to be complete dumbasses.
I'm about finished with trying to be nice to people. Especially people in retail.
I was out shopping last weekend, mostly just browsing to check out some of the latest music and gadgets. The sales people were helpful, but I always get embarrassed telling them that I'm only looking. It seems rude. It's like going to someone's house and sniffing her underwear. (Which I hardly ever do. Anymore.)
I wanted to let the sales people know that there was a possibility that I was going to buy something eventually and that I may need their help at some point. I've heard some of the lingo that the kids use on the MTV and I decided to try some of it out on the next salesperson.
"Sir, are you finding everything you need?" the young salesman asked.
"Yes, thank you. I'm just buy-curious right now. But I'll let you know if I need anything," I said with a little wink.
And I'll tell you, he gave me such a disgusted look, that I nearly went to his manager. I'm sorry if I'm not buying anything right now, but that's no reason to give me your prune face, Mister!
I gave the same response to several other employees during my visit and with the exception of one very friendly young man, they all treated me quite rudely. Can't a buy-curious man go to the store without getting harassed?!?
Just a quick post to state that as of today, I am, in fact, pledging allegiance to this blog, on a daily basis, one nation, under Dog, indivisible by five, with profanity and vodka for all.
Man, is that how you spell allegiance? That can't be right. Someone should be in charge of words that just don't look right. I need to lodge a formal complaint. To someone.
Also, I recently participated in this little Double Reverse Survivor thingy at the constant nagging of Scott and then whipped his goth ass in the finals. Okay, whipped is relative. But I won. My understanding is that I've won some kind of...well...nothing. But I've got the respect of a nation on my side and that's more than one man could possibly ask. My final entry kind of blew, but frankly I wrapped the whole thing up on the assignment that forced us to pick television characters, a specific setting and a pre-defined genre for 100 word flash fiction. I selected the nutty kids from Happy Days, in a vacation paradise, in the Romance genre. Here it is, in all its glory:
On the day that I turned 35, my wife called to tell me that her 10-year anniversary ring and her wedding ring had been stolen. I don't want to get into too much detail, other than to say that the cops have been SUPER helpful, in that they couldn't assign a detective to it for three weeks because "the person who assigns cases is out right now". But once a detective was assigned, they got right on it. And then immediately off of it. The rings are gone, our insurance likely won't cover the full cost and no fucking body cares. In the meantime, some asshole has fucked with something that is very important to my wife and I and I'm simply left with an extreme amount of pent-up rage. I hope the son of a bitch gets cancerous herpe-aids. The lingering kind.
Less than a week later, while jumping off of a cliff into a lake (with Sundance), I lost my own wedding ring. Well, I guess "lost" is a subjective term. I know pretty much right where it is, 60 feet below the surface of the water, in some mud and fish shit.
My mood really improved later in the week, when my cousin Toby told me about an email that he sent at work that got him kicked off the project he was on. He told me that when a client tells you that he wants the truth, he is lying. Never, never, never tell the client the truth. He doesn't want the truth. He wants a more realistic lie.
Toby told me that news on the first day of my five day vacation. Things went downhill from there. At pretty much the exact moment that Toby got the news that he was kicked off the project, I got sick and spent almost the entire vacation on the couch, sweating and hacking and blowing.
However, I was determined to not let my broken-down body get the best of me, so I decided to spend some time sitting by the lake. Maybe the fresh air would help. I threw on my swimming suit and grabbed a lounge chair and fishing pole and headed down to the dock.
As I was baiting my fishing line, I felt a bit of a gassy build-up from my banana-strawberry smoothie from breakfast. I looked around and didn't see anyone within a half-mile of the dock. Surely nobody would hear me let out a little toot. I'm just gonna let it squeak out here...
Oop.
Soft-serve chocolate ice cream. In my pants.
Correction. In my swimsuit.
He's 35 years old.
Oh, and now the hook from my fishing line is stuck in my finger. Let me tell you, it's tough to concentrate on removing a hook from your finger when you've got Ben and Jerry making Fudgy-Dockside Surprise in your pants.
For those of you who may not be "In-The-Know", men's swimsuits often come with a mesh lining. Such as I was wearing. So, essentially, I had just created the worst Play-Dough fun-factory ever.
Without going into too much more detail, let me just say that a shower was needed. Let us never speak of it again. Never, ever, ever again.
The next day the doctor told me that I had strep throat. I assume that shitting your swimsuit is a symptom of strep. It is. Fuck you.
I spent the next week on the couch or in bed. Swallowing food became an adventure in cringing.
Last week, I had to go to Boston for work. It was cold and rainy and Bostony. My wife called on Wednesday to tell me that she needs to have a root canal.
Yesterday, just after I'd finished my morning shower in the hotel, I opened the shower curtain and noticed that it directly faced the large mirror above the bathroom sink. There I was, in all my glory, wet and lumpy.
And then the hotel fire alarm went off.
I just stood there. Looking at myself.
This is thirty-fucking-five years old.
I slowly began to dry off, the alarm shrieking on the wall like a howler monkey trying to hit the high note from Vision of Love. I glared at it. It remained unfazed.
Fifteen minutes later I walked through the hotel lobby to the smell of burnt waffles.
Well this is it motherfuckers. I'm back. No more bullshit luck. Things are going to start happening to me now!!
Watch the fuck out.
Nearly 36 years ago, my parents had sex on what one can only assume was a steamy, gin-soaked August afternoon. And all I got was this lousy body.
Today I turn 35 years old.
This is shockingly old for someone who considers himself to be at the maturity level of a 15 year old, at best. One who apparently has begun referring to himself in the third person. CW is not pleased by this.
Realizations are starting to seep in.
Through years of denial and repression, I've managed to block something out. Most of you probably won't want to read the next few sentences, because they apply to you too and you're really better off not letting it get a foothold in your cerebrum. At 35, I still have, in all likelihood, 30 more years in the job market ahead of me. Everything I've known, from kindergarten until now, will be flipped around and spent at a job. Jjjaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhb. Kinda gets caught in my throat, like I'm puking up an Irish Wolfhound.
And that's what nobody tells you. You think people are crazy for having their mid-life crises, but the crisis is that REALITY IS SETTING IN. At 40 and 45, you're thinking, if I work hard for the next ten years, I STILL HAVE TEN YEARS TO GO. I mean, sure, some of us may be able to retire early. That's fantastic. Maybe even five, ten years early. So that means I only have 20 or 25 years left to deal with idiots and assholes. Fanfuckingtastic.
I guess if this was some kind of commencement address on life, at this point I would say, "The key to your life is to not look ahead. Because that's some scary shit, bitches." I really wish that exact line had been uttered at my commencement. That line and ONLY that line. Would've cleared some shit UP.
I wanted to be a published writer and be making seven figures by 35. Those were the only two goals that I set at 30. I've achieved every other goal for every other milestone year that I've ever made. This time around, I'm nowhere close. But I know that's my fault. There's some satisfaction in that. At least there's a tiny little part of me (as I think exists in everyone) that still truly believes in my own potential. I know that if I would actually be disciplined enough to write, I would have something that could be worthy of publication.
But that's the difference between people who are successful and those who are not. Successful people don't talk about potential, they actually go DO IT. I'm getting there, but right now, I'm just a water-boy for success. But I'm at the game. That's a start.
I'm healthier and skinnier now than I've been since before I was 30, I've got new eyes, I've got a little gray hair at the temples, a huge cock and I'm motherfucking hot. And my wife is motherfucking hot.
Almost all of that is true.
Life is good.
At 35.
Just don't make me think about 36 yet.
It's a damned good thing that puppies are made to be freaking adorable or I can confirm that there would be at least one small black blur of teeth and sniffing that would currently be flying out of the sunroof of my car in a burlap bag at about 75 mph. I know you think this is cruel, but not to worry. This dog is made of Jello and rubber bands and would pop his head out of the bag after he rolled for about 300 yards and look around as if to say, "So, which one of you has the BONE!?!?!??!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!"
The training is going fabulously, thanks for asking.
My wife and I have been on a "cleansing" diet for the last two weeks. We can eat fruits and vegetables and very small portions of fish or chicken along with a whole mess of hippie-fortified pills and specialty shakes. The key, of course, is to cut out processed foods entirely. It seems to have worked pretty well, in the sense that I am cleansed of my very will to live.
Dieting is always a dangerous undertaking for me, because if my true form is actually ever uncovered, the resulting sexiness could level the better part of the tri-county area. My body is like a plutonium rod; for the safety of others, it's best if I'm best surrounded by a thick, protective water filled concrete barrier. To my wife's credit, she said that she wanted to lose some weight and asked if I'd like to join her in doing this program. It was an adorable ruse, I know, given that my wife weighs 45 pounds while holding bowling balls in both hands.
You may have noticed in that first paragraph that the whole concept of alcohol is not present. I'm allowed to gnaw the bark off of a goddamned Douglas fir tree, sure, no problem. It's natural. But am I allowed to tipple a wee fifth of vodka for breakfast? Noooooooo. That's would lay some way uncool karma down on Mother Earth, man.
Motherfucker, I'm hungry. But, more important, I'm beginning to sober up. This is completely unacceptable.
The pollen is down slightly in Atlanta now, so I'm again able to breathe without the use of a hepa filter and tank oxygen. Atlanta is a really great place to live for a million different reasons, but nature has thrown in just enough traffic and pollen to make it unbearable every now and then. It's the natural selection of deciding on the place you want to spend your life. Wherever you land may seem great because of the fantastic school system or the weather or its proximity to Bruster's, but there's always something ready to bite you in the ass. You just have to decide how much ass biting you're willing to tolerate. It's like dating someone who's hot - sure, it's fun to have all your friends ogle her, but you'll probably get tired of sticking it in her eventually.
Yeah. It's EXACTLY like dating a hot person.
Last night while on the couch, I became quite alarmed. I heard, off in the distance, that synth-clicking sound that the Predator makes as he's roaming the jungle. And it was sounding as if it was getting closer.
I muted the TV. (Shutting it completely off was too time consuming. If I'm going to die at the hands of our alien overlords, it's going to be with the television on, goddammit.)
I listened again, more intently.
There it was. Bone chilling.
And then again, faster this time.
Uh, yeah.
The sound is coming from MY LUNGS.
I'm sure that's really healthy. So much for being a non-smoker. Fat lot of good that did me.
My professional opinion is that I either have pneumonia or lung cancer. Either way, I've missed out on a lot of menthol goodness for nothing.
After an exhaustive couple of months, we've given up the official search for Macy.
She's a sweet little dog and we hope she found someone to take her in. Both my wife and I came within a few feet of catching her in the last two months, but she was just too scared or having way too much fun to come back to us. The search area grew and grew and the sightings became fewer and fewer. We know for certain that she made it through some cold and rainy weather. But the fact is, she just doesn't want to be caught. Maybe someday we'll get a call about her. I hope so. I hope she's safe.
I wanted this story to have a happy ending and I really thought that it would. I envisioned writing about how we'd found her and how great it was to have her back at home. But after the second time that I saw her and she ran away from me so fast, I began to believe that she would never come back.
There's a million different ways I could try to justify it, but the bottom line is that I lost her and she just couldn't find her way back to us.
Good luck Macy. I hope you're happy, wherever you are.
That said...
There is only one way that I know of to fill a dog-shaped hole in your heart.
It is a happy ending, of sorts.
Sometime around the fourth grade I wanted desperately to have glasses. I also wanted to be Davy Crockett. I don't really remember why I wanted glasses so much, other than that maybe they seemed very "daytime superhero" chic. I do know that I wanted to be Davy Crockett because he had a coonskin cap. But then I found out that it was Daniel Boone who wore a coonskin cap and I died a little more on the inside.
At the painfully awkward old age of 10, my eyesight did, in fact, begin to fail me. I was in the sixth grade and I strongly suspect that my retinas were burned by Jesus Christ at some point during the viewing of our sex ed videos. I say this only because the Baptist kid, Billy Bell, who had to sit out in the hall during sex ed, had perfect vision. The Lord hates vaginas.
I remember every detail of the day I got my glasses. When I walked into the optometrist's office, the receptionist greeted me with that sing-songy, forced excitement "Hellll-ooohhh-ohh!", meaning she knew I was getting my first pair of glasses that day and another long running sex-free social life was about to begin.
It was with some ceremony that the doctor gently placed the glasses on my ears that day. A slow, deliberate movie moment. He bent down to look me in the eyes, making sure the glasses were straight on my head. This was important, because the frames on the glasses were roughly the size of Latino car rims. The weight had to be distributed evenly on each ear or I would list to one side and slam into walls or improperly stowed rakes.
But as soon as I walked from the darkened exam room, the world really did change for me. The carpet in the outer office was a horrid green instead of a horrid gray, as I had initially thought. Everything was a little crisper. And brighter. I guess I had no expectations for what improved eyesight would bring, as I didn't know what the world actually looked like. It was magical. You hardly ever get to have your perception of something changed so drastically, so immediately.
When my mom took me back to school after lunch, I waited for her to drive away and then took my glasses off. I think I wanted to have a huge "reveal" for my classmates (I was years ahead of reality television). I walked into class and sat down in my chair as Mr. Stack continued his discussion on photosynthesis. About five minutes later, the drama building only in my head, I reached into my desk, pulled out the glasses and slid them onto my face.
Somewhere in the distance, a kazoo blows. Ta-da.
The world didn't change, really. I could see things so much more clearly, but I couldn't make anyone else understand that. To them, it was just one more category under which I could be filed.
Several years later, when I got contacts, there was much less drama. It was a huge confidence boost for me, as I had attached more meaning to the glasses than ever existed. They were the only thing that stood between me and wheelbarrows full of ass.
Theoretically. In actual fact, the wheelbarrow that I stored in my locker got no use. I could've hauled the amount of ass that I got around in a Dixie Cup.
Over the last 25 years, I've switched from contacts to glasses for various reasons. There was a time in college when the doctor thought I'd never be able to wear contacts again, due to an infection I got in my eyes from people blowing smoke at me as I dealt blackjack night after night. A few years ago I had to go back to the mall optometrist 13 times to get fitted for my custom contacts until she got the rotation right.
I've never had the luxury of taking my eyesight for granted. I've always been aware that I'm made different because of my eyes. That first day the doctor slipped the glasses onto my ears will be with me forever, because I found out that day what the world could like through normal eyes.
So now, three days after my Lasik surgery, I hope you understand how amazing it is to truly see the world with my own eyes, maybe for the first time ever.
By this time tomorrow, there's a very good chance that I will see better than 20/20 unaided for the first time in over twenty years.
There's also a chance that I will be blinded for life and will turn physically and emotionally abusive toward my friends and family, driving them away forever in a torrent of filthy, hate-filled curse words and racial epithets.
Either way, I'm a winner.
So, on the eve of somebody cutting into my eyeballs with a laser, I will now look back at the top ten things that I've enjoyed seeing in my life:
10. Big Ben. Parliament. (as well as The Mighty Miss. The old Miss. The old man. Deeeeee-eeep River.)
9. The Washington Monument, on my drive into work every day when I lived in D.C.
8. The hidden red sand beach on Maui.
7. The Amalfi Coast.
6. The Guinness Factory in Dublin.
5. The white sand beaches in Seaside, Florida.
4. Saint Mark's Square in Venice, Italy.
3. La Sagrada Famila in Barcelona, Spain.
2. The first time I ever saw my wife.
1. Boobies. I never get sick of them. For a man, it's like seeing
God. If God was RIGHT THERE, standing in front of you, all perky and
jiggly, you'd look. Praise unto him. The great thing about boobies is
that even if I am blinded, I have such an extensive backlog of
booby images in my memory bank, it really won't matter. Plus, even a
blind man can grope and make blblblbbbBBLBLBLBBLBLBBBBLLLL noises (much
to my wife's dismay, I'm sure).
I'll see ya all later.
Or maybe not.
I got my pupils dilated yesterday, as part of a super fun visit to the eye doctor. They used some kind of insanely intense eye drops that I'm pretty sure they brought over illegally from Mexico.
"You will have a sensitivity to light", is what they said. Oh, and also you will have basically no focus on close objects. And also, you will think you can fly and your pants will get increasingly tighter and you may begin to think that you can cure leprosy. And you will freak out considerably.
But, ya know, it's perfectly okay to drive. As long as you can swerve to avoid the FIVE FOOT WIDE FLYING UNICORNS THAT ARE COMING AT YOUR WINDSHIELD! Which I did. Because I'm a very, very good driver. And I have the anti-unicorn protection system built into my vehicle (brought to you by On*Star®)
The eye doctor was about the sweetest woman that I've ever had for a doctor, eye or otherwise. This almost made up for the fact that she had to touch my eye with a poker several times. This is an odd sensation, if you've never had the privilege. You can't really feel it, but, you know, you can kind of SEE IT. Because of the TOUCHING OF THE EYE. The whole thing should've been set to Pink Floyd music, actually. That would've been awesome.
This is all leading up to a "procedure" next Friday morning wherein someone will poke me in the eyes again, only this time with lay-zurs. I have requested that the doctor dress up as Darth Vader and run the laser through a light saber. Right before he begins the cut, he has been instructed to say, "CW...IIIIIIIII am your faaaather." As the laser hits my eyes I'm then going to shout, "NOOOOOOO!!!" and cry like a little bitch.
I have an appointment at the end of the month which requires me to wear my glasses for the next two weeks rather than my contacts. Some of you know what that means.
I know glasses are The New Sexy, but I've worn glasses or contacts since the sixth grade and let me tell you, there has not been a single moment in those twenty-plus years that I've felt sexy in glasses. I don't ever recall anyone calling me four-eyes or anything drastic like that, but there's always this little frame around my view to the world that holds a slightly dusty, smudged picture. When I'm wearing glasses, there's not a second that I'm not aware that I'm wearing them. They slide around. They're ridiculous during a rainstorm. They make me feel tired. I can't wear sunglasses. Ugh. They're just such a 17th century solution to the problem. At least give me a cool Geordi La Forge eye comb-over.
The problem, of course, is that I have freakishly bad eyesight. I blame either Jesus or the time when I was a kid and I got a wood chip stuck in my eye. I guess I can blame both. All I know is that a few years ago, when I told my doctor that I needed to quantify to my friends just how bad my eyesight is (so that I could WIN!), he told me to tell everyone that I'm the Big E. That's right, I can't see the top letter on the eye chart. What is it again? An "E", you say? I was going to guess "A Burnt Marshmallow".
So anyway, I'm wearing my glasses now. Because who doesn't like looking like a homeless pedophile? My current glasses are an alleged hipster-cool style, but are actually what my friend from the Army describes as BCGs. Birth-Control Glasses.
Oh yeah. You want some of this.
I had to interview a man for a position once, a very long time ago, at a totally different company from the one I'm at now, way back in the '90s, when I was younger.
Okay, it was yesterday. Theoretically.
Interviewing someone always amuses me a little, because in the back of my mind I know it’s all a little slice of bullshit. People are mostly telling half-truths at best (on both sides of the table) and everyone is kind of waiting for that moment when someone snaps and tells the unadulterated truth. It almost never happens, but you do catch yourself daydreaming about it occasionally. Everyone is reinterpreting every response.
“My current job is fine, but I don’t find myself to be challenged enough” means “I lock the door to my office and sleep for a good three hours most days.”
“My boss and I have different ideas about my current position” means “My boss is a whore and I'm about three days from bringing firearms to the workplace.”
“My commute is getting more and more difficult” means “This company has sucked the life out of me and it’s all I can do to get out of bed in the morning. Even when I do, I want to drive my car into oncoming traffic.”
Macy ran away on Friday night.
We spent most of the day Saturday going through all of the local neighborhoods and backroads looking for her with the help of some great friends. We posted signs and put flyers in mailboxes.
On Sunday morning, she was seen in the next neighborhood over. My wife literally ran from our house - ran a mile or so to try to find Macy. But Macy runs faster.
We spent all of Sunday in that neighborhood and the neighborhood behind that. She was seen several times and we were always right on her tail. But Macy runs faster.
Last night, we got a call that she was on a golf course nearby. I dropped my wife at the top of the fairway to run down and I drove to the other end to run toward her.
When I pulled the car up to the edge of the 7th Hole, there stood Macy, looking out across the green.
I stopped my car and shouted her name. I ran to her. But Macy runs faster.
She was gone - over a hill and down behind a house as I tried to chase her in my car and then on foot.
Macy doesn't want to be caught right now.
I've been thinking about the worst thing that I've ever done in my life and I'm having a tough time thinking of something worse than being stupid enough to let her off her leash that night. It's eating away at me.
I know she just wants to run. I know she's scared. I hope she'll be okay and find her way back to us soon.
I'm going back out now to run after her.
So now onto the important stuff.
A week ago today, two of our best friends had their first child together. She is just itty-bitty, but appears (thus far) to be filled with sugar, spice and marshmallow fluff. Mmmm. This gorgeous wad of love is named Meghan. EVERYONE SAY HI TO MEGHAN!!
Next, on Monday afternoon this week, my wife's sister and brother in-law had their first boy. Though technically we are only related by marriage, little William has nonetheless inherited my fantastic looks and suspicious outlook on life. And I can't stop singing "Big Bad Billy's sweet William now...". Love him already and haven't even MET him. Which is awesome. Everyone, SAY HI TO WILL!!
And with all of the love going on in the world, we just couldn't resist dealing out a little of our own. Last weekend, we came across a sweet little girl with a broken-down ear and beautiful brown eyes. She was taken from her first home shortly after she had a litter of puppies because she nipped at one of the children in the family. You know that kid had it coming. They sent her to be euthanized, but the shelter called a saint of a woman in our area who runs a rescue and asked if she'd like to take her in. This woman has 31 dogs in her home. She takes care of animals and puts them with families who will love them. After three different meetings, we finally brought her into our home last night.
Ladies and gentlemen, SAY HELLO TO MACY!
Four men and six-plus hours and the tree was gone. It sucks to have to cut it down, but I'd rather cut it down than have it wake me up at 3:00 some morning by, ya know, LANDING ON ME.
Click on the photo to see the whole fiasco.
I'm just now recovering from Saturday, when I drank for 11 straight hours and ended up asking the Virgin Mary to get me a rum and coke from the stripper at the bar while the Easter bunny danced to Kiss by Prince.
And also I saw the 60-something-year-old stripper in the Little Red Riding Hood costume again. She didn't even remember me. Could be because I was dressed like Santa Claus. Could be the senility.
On the upside, I think Blondie might have remembered me, given the hold she put on my "candy cane". Something tells me that I'm not her first. I would've put coal in her stocking, but let's just say there's not a lot of extra room in there.
I would get myself into a 12-step program, but that's SO many steps. No way could I get through that. Don't they make a two step program? One where you can still drink? No?
Okay, I'm inventing my own program then.
Step One: Shut up.
Step Two: Leave me alone.
I know that your life is often filled with pain and disappointment. But that's mostly due to your haircut and personality. There's simply no excuse for me to have anything go wrong in my life. I'm fantastic.
But I've felt the hurt this week. A gut punch. A head shot. A double dose.
I am now put into the position that so many before me have been.
WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME, LORD!!??
In this go-go life, you need someone who can condense the big issues of the day into teeny-tiny bite size nuggets that won’t get lodged in your colon and give you a bowel obstruction that will later cause you to shit a Prius. Even with its impressive fuel efficiency, it’ll still tear the ass right out of you. See right there? I’ve quickly and professionally explained the downside of shitting a hybrid car. That’s real results, people.
