this story is a bushel of laughs

They were selling roasted Hatch chilies near my work.
$13.00 for a half bushel, $22.00 for a whole bushel.
The problem, as I see it, is nobody knows what a damn "bushel" looks like.
I know it's a unit of measurement used in regards to produce...but...how much is it really?
They could be ripping me off!
It's related to the whole rip off tactic where they offer you a sale price at the store 9 for $12.00? right but how much is it PER?
I am going to start negotiating my deals in shekels or rupees or something.
"wait, my payment is $6,000.00 rupees a month?"
"Yeah it's an awesome deal, you'd be stupid not to take it"
Or maybe,
" your payment is only $53.00 every 96 hours "
and the customer is thinking " lets see...96 hours is...four days. 30 days in a month...divide that by 4 that's umm...like 7 times a month? so seven times $53.00 is like...$300 something a month...fuck I don't know!"

Needless to say I did not fall for the bushel bullshit....They agreed to sell them to me 13 chilies for $9.00...I'm no sucker!

Overheard On the Car Lot

"I met a lot of those Italian bitches when I was there...they like to run they mouth....but you know it's a whole different story when they got a gun in their mouth. "oh wait !I got family" and all that shit...

Read It See It Whatever

A friend recently pointed out to me that my favorite expletive, my catch-all-foul-phrase is
"fucking hell"
apparently I'm the only person who uses this verbal construct.
It got me thinking about what I refer to as "verbal tics"*
In the comments section I referred to "Rhymes With" and mentioned the fact that she has the verbal tic of saying "clearly"
it happens usually when someone talks about off the wall behavior or ...I guess I would say your garden variety aberration? such as:
"so the other day I thought it would be a good idea to try and trim the grass by using gasoline and matches..."
"Clearly..."
I have a verbal tic that fills the same space..
I say "like you do"
"I was trimming my toe hairs with a switchblade.."
"like you do"
I stole this construct.... and many others.
It comes from Eddie Izzard's show Dressed To Kill...If you don't know who or what that is....well he's an executive transvestite and he does this amazing monologue in which he talks about history from...sometime around the time of the druids "So you're building a henge are you?"
through Martin Luther "ein minuta bitte!" and the Mayflower arriving in the Americas "who the fuck are these guys?"...all the way up to now...and if it sounds dry in the slightest I assure you it's not.
Anyway, is this something our generation does but not the ones before us?
I can think of a ton of things that we say that are stolen from Seinfeld** , John Hughes movies***and hip hop****
but did the preceding generations do it?
I think a little, but not as much as us. it's got to be media saturation right?

tune in. turn on. drop out.
make love not war.

or even another generation?

loose lips sink ships.

you get my point.
But I doubt the generation before us said " sock it to me baby" nearly as much as we say "yadda yadda yadda?"
But I digress...(inside joke...sorry)
the point is....what is it? oh yeah, I say "fucking hell"
I stole that from Anthony Burgess.
"Who the fuck is that" you say?
(or, considering I have a fairly conservative readership..."who the fudge is that?")
he wrote a book called A Clockwork Orange...which was later developed into a movie called...cleverly enough...A Clockwork Orange..
If you haven't seen it? see it.
but more importantly? If You Haven't Read It?
READ IT.
Get a copy of the book that has a dictionary in the back. he makes up a language in this book that is a sort of hybrid of British and Russian slang. this i love. It's one thing to make up an imaginary world, it's a whole other to completely reinvent the one we already know. alternate reality? I'm in.
the opening line?(I'm quoting this from memory)
"There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim...."
brilliant.
It is basically in the same vein as
"catch 22" and
"kingsblood royal" and
"the wanting seed" and ....
what the hell was that Aldus Huxley novel...? hey I didn't even have to Google it!
"Brave New World"
and Orwell's "1984"...
(oh and I should say...if you have not? read it x 5) (ok if that's too much homework? leave off Kingsblood Royal, and the Wanting Seed.....and you probably already read Huxley and Orwell in school....so just read Clockwork and Catch 22. You'll thank me.)
It is about, in the simplest of terms, the suppression of society over the individual...
at the point in the novel in which they have stripped Alex of his humanity and made him into a drone
(the titular "Clockwork Orange")
and then given his humanity back?
....they are showing him pictures and he is meant to interpret them and he is presented with a picture of a woman holding a basket of eggs and they ask what he would do and he says
" I'd smash them!" and he makes a smashing motion...and because of the fact that his arm is broken and it hurts when he makes this motion he says
"I'd smash them...Fucking Hell!"
so I stole that, I also stole "so that happened"
And "Rhymes With" knows what I mean.
I stole it from a movie by David Mamet. "State And Main"
Mamet is a genius. If you haven't seen it? Do.

When you are confronted with absurdity? you say: So that happened.
see the movie and you'll know.
But what other verbal tics do I have?
what stolen phrases...

don't be that guy
jumped the shark
but that's another Oprah
so I've got that going for me

(when you mention something that is not going well at all, actually. "hey did I tell you I have Kidney stones? so I've got that going for me..." that was from Caddyshack of all things...)
think about it, take inventory.
what are your verbal tics, your conversational crutches?
I have like 5 that I can think of just specific to Turbo.
what to do when a child is so adept at annoying behavior as turbo is?
I would say
"it's not WHAT you're doing...it's WHERE you're doing it."
if you want to hop on one leg and go "mang! mang! mang!"
great! express yourself!...but....
in your room! not in the kitchen where I am...
that got shortened to "where are you doing that?"
"umm...in my room?"
perfecto!
when he would get a little too smart mouthed?
"umm...who are you talking to?"
it goes on...

what's my point?
none really. I just am airing one of my ocd's
I think incessantly about the words we say...
I used to say "very occasionally " to impart the idea of "rarely" but occasionally has no need for a modifier.
Rarely can be modified (very rarely?) to mean rare in the extreme...

think about all the words that leave your lips.
i do.
I think about the words that leave yours and mine....


* this friend said I need to get a flea and tic collar for all of mine...so, they are many and varied?
** double dip, re-gift,yadda yadda yadda, festivus etc..
*** so that's social...demented and sad..but social
**** Yeah Boy!, Aight, Biatch!

Who Peed In Your Cheerios?

I needed to take a shower.
Hopper was playing video games. I told him, "don't do anything"
I jump in the shower.
I get out...no Hopper.
I go around the house calling his name, without response.
Finally I am in the kitchen, "where the hell is that boy?"
A tiny voice comes from behind and above me "I'm up here dad"
He is on top of the refrigerator, eating cookies..naked.
Me: what are you doing up there?!
Hopper: eating cookies.
M: OK...WHY are you on my fridge naked, eating cookies?
H: well I was trying to climb up and my shorts kept catching on the counter...so I took them off...then I got up here and now I can't get down..


It's like living with a frat boy. He eats your food, dresses inappropriately, doesn't contribute monetarily, plays video games for hours on end....

Who peed in your Cheerios?

Turbo and I were in the supermarket.
(due to my obsession with fresh food I have a lot of stories that happen in a supermarket. bear with me)
He was sitting in the cart and his gaze kept going back to a child about his age sitting in a cart the next line over. The poor kid had Hydrocephalus...an enlarged cranium?
Turbo keeps eyeballing this kid and I am praying to all of the Gods combined that the boy keeps his mouth shut...
"hey dad..check out "Mr. Big Brain"!"
Great.
Then less than a minute later? a guy comes strolling through the door.
He is wearing an eye patch. Not a cool leather one, but a gauze one indicating recent eye trauma.
Turbo looks at me and proclaims loudly:
"he should be more careful!"
great.
thanks for the humiliation.
when you get engaged? I will tell the cereal defiling story.
at your wedding this story will feature in my toast.

Taking My Temperature

I was doing that today. Not literally but....taking stock?
looking inward ?
(again? yes and again and again....when will the navel gazing cease?)
Do we ever feel as if we have a handle on things? Christ I am way too old for this kind of solipsism don't you think?
anyway.
When I get like this my insomnia kicks into high gear, my right calf tenses up (weird right? I get stressed out and I walk around with my right calf looking ripped..)
So I have to fight against my own brain...or turn to drugs...the last time I slept all night was the night I took 2 muscle relaxers, 1 vicodin, 100 mg of trazadone and sent that all flooding down with a Katrina style torrent of alcohol....
I slept like a Labrador Retriever on Opium...
but that's not really a thing you can do every night, right?
One of the things I do to self soothe is to try to remember the things Turbo has done...

So, in a new recurring feature?
"Who Peed In Your Cheerios....things Turbo did to me..."


when Turbo was but a toddler,( at this time named Hopper)...
we were potty training...which was fun, I put it right up there with doing your own taxes and dentistry...
It was a very hot summer. Hopper spent most of his time in those cool onesie t-shirts that snap around the crotch and have a weird criss-cross neckline. He could get out of those things like Houdini coming out of a straight-jacket the minute you turn your back. I spent most of that summer Re-dressing the boy.
We were sitting down to breakfast; 2 guys bellying up to a couple of bowls of cereal.
Then the phone rang...at the time we had about 1,600 feet of open space. we lived in a "kinda" loft. It was a bit of a walk to get to the phone...so I jump up and get the phone. As I come back into the "living room" part of this huge open space I see the boy
(BTW, at this point in his life Christina was calling him Mowgli...which is pretty apt at this moment)
he was standing on the table preparing to urinate on my cereal.
(ruminate on that for a second. let the image marinate.)
(Oh and in the boys defence? My bowl was the same color as the basin in which we were encouraging him to pee on a regular basis)
Yeah, he peed on my breakfast and I praised him for it and we made a big ceremony of putting my urine soaked breakfast in the toilet and flushing it "bye-bye"

so if someone asks me "who peed in your Cheerios?"
I say "Turbo"

Public "Art"

There is a piece of "artwork" on the median about a block from the library. I see this thing at least once a week and it bugs the shit out of me.
It's kind of hard to describe abstract sculpture.... but I'll give it a shot.
It's about 9 feet tall and carved out of a kind of flannel gray colored granite.
(not an interesting shade of rock in the slightest I assure you.It's not even polished.)
Just picture one half of the yin/yang symbol, that's it's shape.
Carved into it are a star and some other random shape kind of like a crescent, but they have no relation to each other.
It's not particularly interesting in any way.
But here is the kicker, it has 3 little jets of water squirting onto the sculpture.
It doesn't make an interesting pattern, doesn't bring an interesting color out of the rock and it doesn't run down the face of the sculpture in an interesting way. It's just water squirting onto a slab. It's as interesting as watching your neighbor hose down his driveway.
As far as I can tell there is no reason whatsoever to have water on this thing.
The sculpture is lame and the water is superfluous.
I imagine the water wasn't part of the original plan. The guy makes this piece and the "art committee" from the city counsel shows up to check it out.

bureaucrat 1: hmm I like it, I mean it's sure not going to offend anyone.
B2: that's true, I look at this and I have no feelings at all!
B1: except...
artist: except what? You told me you wanted something that would pass for art yet create no emotion in people as they looked at it.
B2: oh you nailed that.
B1: right....but we were thinking there might be some kind of ...I don't know, water? everybody likes water, right?
A: oh..well sure I could do water...but it would cost more...
B1: oh, don't worry about the price, you can double it if you want.
B2: hell triple it for all we care! Polls show people want inoffensive art all over the city, especially stuff with water.
A: Water...wow, that can quadruple the price sometimes.....give me a couple of weeks guys.

"Artist" goes that day to Home Depot. He buys 8 feet of copper pipe and a pump and installs a few jets of water.
Artist spends the next 2 weeks smoking pot.

B1: awesome! it's got water!....and it shoots at the sculpture in a completely inoffensive way. I have no feeling at all when I look at this!
B2: wow....I am speechless...it's like looking at a blank piece of paper...with water!
A: look..this thing went a little over budget....It's actually 5 times what I originally bid for this job?
B1: whatever dude, the stupid taxpayers are paying for this crap.
B2: Hey, by the way, do you know anybody that could make a couple of more lanes on the freeway?

Why oh why is this fucking piece of shit blighting my median? I would rather have a homeless guy with an interesting sign bugging me for change.

There is a guy in Austin that hangs out by the on-ramp and he has a variety of signs....my favorites?
" Ninjas killed my family...need money for Karate lessons"
or
"one dollar away from making my Porsche payment"

I really would rather have that guy on the median than the piece of crap -flat gray granite -random -uninteresting shaped- no reason for the water to be shooting on it- sculpture.

If somebody were to tell me that the point of the sculpture was to piss off people that actually like art ...I might actually respect that....that's punk rock.

do you know the circumstances under which you were concieved? I do.

My parents went to the drive-in to see Planet Of The Apes and then retired to a motel in Redondo Beach.
That's why I am the way I am?

The home mortgage market has shit the bed, we all know that.
So I am out of equity loans, at this point it's a dry well and I need more action more money.
So I went and got myself a job at the number one Subaru dealership in the country.
Yes, I'm back selling cars.
Anytime you start a new job people are keeping an eye on you to see if you can hack it....but a car dealership? they take it to the next level.
The hazing that a Greenpea can get can be brutal. You have to be able to hold you own in the shit talking department.
(are you worried for my safety?)
I walk into the managers office first day. About 6 people are standing around, 3 managers, 3 or 4 sales people.
I say, holding my messenger back up, "where should I put this?"
manager one says, "I know it's your first day but be careful how you say things, I could have made a couple of choice remarks to that"
to which I said, "hey, I could have said, Chris, where would you like me to put my sack?"
that got a good laugh.
manager two says, " I think you're going to fit in just fine"

The funny thing? That kind of thing gets you fired at a bank.

While we're still in Walmart?

I had no choice, OK? It's the closet store to my work.
I wanted to buy a single bagel and some smoked salmon cream cheese.
Yeah, fat chance brother.
So instead I got some Laughing Cow and a lovely loaf of Asiago bread...but it had to be sliced.
While I'm waiting to have it sliced, I happen to turn my gaze to a rack behind me.
Oh, cream cakes!
Where the fuck did cream cakes come from? Did we grow up on cream cakes? I never saw these things until a couple of years ago...
anyway...
I let my gaze alight and what is the flavor of cream cake I happen to notice?
Cherry.
Hm, sounds nice....but wait it's Jelly Belly Cherry...
and underneath that? Blue Berry Jelly Belly....
so what we have here is a cake that is an imitation of a jelly bean flavor, which is an imitation of a real flavor?
WTF?
then I notice some more delicious flavors of cream cake
( stick with me here).
...Orange Crush..oh neat! An imitation of a soda pop which is an imitation of a real flavor....and then 7up cream cake!
why not?! we've pretty much jumped the shark at this point....
then I see the final abomination.
Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper cream cake.

and we wonder why we are statistically the shortest & fattest country in the industrialized world?

when I'm president king

If a store wants to sell something at a sale price on multiples IE: 10 for $10.00?
It will have to be divisible at a 3rd grade level.
For example, it will be illegal to advertise 4 for $5.00. This isn't necessarily the best example because the intelligent people that read my blog (both of you....sigh) know that it means they are $1.25 each.
But I had the misfortune to be in a Walmart and they had 12 packs of soda ...5 for $8.88....
what the fuck!?
I usually amuse myself by figuring out what the per-unit price is...but that one nearly gave me an aneurysm......
$1.78 per unit? (rounding up on the third decimal place, BTW)...and now I'm bleeding from my hair follicles, thanks!

NO MAS Walmart. President King ain't fuckin' around!

(Ok, I know I used ain't incorrectly here because it technically is the contraction for "am not" and what I meant was "is not"...but "isn't" isn't nearly as colloquially amusing as....
oh never mind.)

Hey, and while I am on the supermarket subject?
no more putting the fucking candy and the canned veggies together in the same isle, same goes for putting the cookies and the breakfast cereal together. How do you morally justify doing that to parents?
" well they're both carbs" Stop.
and the impulse buy shit at the register? it has to appeal to a demographic of 18 and older.

going to the store with the brats is hard enough without all that B.S.

Here I am.... setting off the Gaydar

About three weeks ago I was lifting weights and I felt a little bit of a painful twinge in my neck so I cut the workout short and went home.
The next day my neck was pretty sore. And the day after that? Lets just say anytime something was happening outside of my peripheral vision I had to rotate my whole body to see it. Instead of just, you know, turning my head?

So I head into the Urgent Care.
I tell the girl behind the desk " I hurt my neck lifting weights, thank God "
"thank God you hurt your neck"
"No thank God it's because I was lifting weights"
Here's the thing, isn't it just the worst when you wake up and you slept wrong and now your neck is all twisted out of joint? I mean, how can you fuck that up? Sleeping? Really?
Here's me at the Dr.'s

Dr: what brings you in today?
Me: I hurt my neck, I can hardly move.
Dr: how did you hurt your neck?
Me: well I was sleeping and then...you know, I hurt my neck.
Dr: you hurt your neck sleeping?
Me: yes I'm a very bad sleeper, I got it totally wrong last night.
Dr: but it's sleeping dude. how do you fuck that up?

ok, my Dr. generally doesn't swear or call me dude, but you get the point.
So this time I had an Awesome reason.
Then this quack gives me 3 Valium and 6 Vicodin and a pat on the butt and sends me home.
What the fuck is 3 Valium going to do for me?

2 weeks later it is still annoying me and I head back in.
The guy behind the counter asks "what brings you in today?"
I say "I hurt my neck"
the same girl is there and she says " I remember you. He hurt his neck lifting weights. In fact he was out in the parking lot bench pressing a Volkswagen Beetle"
I say " yep, training for the Worlds Strongest Man you know."
Then I go into my whole bit about the Worlds Strongest Man*
She pipes in with "they're all named Magnus" I come back with the fact that to place in the top 3 you have to be named Magnus.
So when the guy says, "your name?"
I don't hesitate, "Magnus Magnussen"
we're having fun.
I go see the Dr. and make sure to tell him that 3 Valium and a pat on the butt are not going to be acceptable this time.
We get done, I'm out having the girl finish up my paperwork and she says, "can I get personal for a second?"
('cause we're friends now, what with all the riffing and whatnot)
I say "sure" because I love when people preface things like that. **
"Ok, you're a very good looking guy"
I nod my "carry on" nod
but she reads that as my "yes, I know" nod.
"Oh but I'm sure you've heard that before"
"it's come up, sure"
"Ok, I have this single friend I was telling about you. I was saying how good looking and funny you are"
"did you mention intelligent and well dressed as well?"
"Of course. "...then she put on her "there's a 'but' face"
I say "but?" (and I have to be honest, I knew what the answer was going to be but I was hoping she'd say "but she's married" Lets be honest. Historically? I have a low moral threshold for that sort of thing, sue me.)
"Well, my friend is a guy."

Dammit! Erroneously outed again!?

* my bit about the Worlds Strongest Man is that it's ironic that we have these huge muscular guys that are these amazing athletes (and they really are, I swear) and yet the event is organized by a bunch of pot heads. Think about it, there is a room full of guys hitting a 7 foot bong and going:
"wait, wait, wait...ok, check this out, ok, the event is in Africa this year, right? Ok, so why don't we have them carry, like, a 700 lb. rock carved in the shape of Africa as far as they can? Right? That's like irony and shit!"
** if someone says to you, "nothing personal, but..." you know you're about to get insulted. But if you overhear someone say, "with all due respect.." perk up your motherfucking ears because you are about to hear some funny ass shit.

Hipocrites!

Ok, I have had it up to the nips with the fucking republican party.
Seriously.
I am not even going to get into the Bush occupation....um...dictatorship?...whatever...
I am talking about the rank and file. the fucking bottom feeder hypocrites...
I guess Dems like getting BJs and Republicans like giving them.
I have had to suffer through some shit lately.
I think it started with the Rich Gannon crap.
A gay escort lobbing softball questions to the white house and the Fucking dems don't go nuclear in this? Or newkular in GW speak?
Then we had Bob Allen in Florida offering to give an undercover cop in a public restroom a bj for $20 ?
Come to find out he was accused previously of giving a guy a bj while he was sleeping...what do you call that?
hmm...someone was unwittingly subjected to a sex act...dang it...what the fuck do they call that?
Oh I know...rape? homosexual rape, that's it!
Then we have Larry Craig...good lord what an asshole this guy is!
Come on.
I have been simmering on this bullshit for a while and every time I tune in to some kind of cable news BS talking about the case it just gets worse and worse.
Ok, a couple of weeks ago, maybe 3? I happened to read an article on fox's website about the case...throughout the entire article all mention of the fact that he was a republican was expunged.
whatever.
cheap and peurile , but whatever.
then i come across a show in which the whole premise is "you can't call him a hypocrite"
bullshit!
here is a snippet of his voting record

"He has supported a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, telling his colleagues that it was “important for us to stand up now and protect traditional marriage, which is under attack by a few unelected judges and litigious activists.”
In 1996, Craig also voted in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal recognition to same-sex marriages and prevents states from being forced to recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples legally performed in other states"

ok fine.
he is demonstrably a hypocrite.

then I had the misfortune of watching Hanity and Colmes.
I hate these guys. Hannity becuse he's a fucking lying hypocrite right wing nazi.
and Colmes because he's supposed to be the liberal voice but really he's a fucking rolling over , giving up your belly, sell out pussy.
So...the show consisted of hannity screaming about a double standard.
wait, what?
he kept bringing up clinton. the dems get away with murder but one republican tries to give out some cash and a blowjob....
oh...yeah they let Clinton off light..
they only IMPEACHED him for lying about getting a BJ.
Whereas Craig plead GUILTY of solicting sex in a mens room and the senate has yet to take ANY fucking action against the guy
Double standard alright.
Then Hannity has the fucking Juevos to say he is not sure if Craig is gulity or not ' the evidence is flimsy' blah blah blah....
oh hai!
HE PLEAD GUILTY!
what evidence do you need? he said "yes, I did it, I wanted to get some dick suckin' action in that bathroom"
ok not in those words....but...didn't he plead guilty in court?...then walked outside and said "I'm Not gulity!"
WTF?
come on.
you have noooo integrity at this point.
then he resigns from the senate....and 3 days later un-resigns?
come on! if this guy was a dem? he would have been ripped apart like he was wearing a meat suit in michael vicks backyard.
this thing is such a joke on so many levels.


ok...deep breath...lets take a look at the Craig incident for a minute.
He's in the restroom with his patented "wide stance"
( you know it's already off the rails here, right? Under NO circumstance has any mans foot breached the invisible line between stalls innocently. ever. EVER. EVAH!)
so there he is all 'wide stancing' it....then a piece of paper innocently falls to the floor......
and he retrives it?!
nope.
never fucking happen.
the only way I'm picking up a scrap of paper from a bathroom floor?
lets see....
a sliver of the constitution.
a $100 bill...with a hot chicks number written on it...
a slip of paper with the launch codes on it.
a lottery ticket (six digit winner, minimum)
the phone number of nyphomanic, triplet, pot head- gymnists, with a penchant for dirty blond 5 foot 9 smartass bankers..
you get the idea....
Lets be frank...if my fucking wedding ring falls to the floor and skitters into the stall next to me? my first thought is, "oh shit I just lost my ring , she's gonna kill me.."
I have never had a man touch my foot under the stall. I have never had a man swipe his hand repeatedly along the bottom of the stall.
He was up to something, ok?
End Of Story.

but wait...there's more!!
I am not going to claim I remember this when it first aired....but here is a clip of Craig talking about Clintons escapades
(remember He GOT the bj not gave it...and as an aside, as a little nod to honesty...was anyone really shocked that a pot smoking, jazz musician president got a hummer? come on people...)
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/08/28/1999-video-republican-larry-craig-calls-bill-clinton-a-nasty-bad-naughty-boy/

ok that is as faggy as Charles Nelson Riley telling a story about catching Richard Simmons blowing Elton John.

fucking republican hypocrites.