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.

What did my brain just say?

I was in the store the other day and I noticed this young lady in the produce department and my brain said

"She'd be cute if it wasn't for her face"

wait, what?

So now my brain is all backtracking...

"what I meant is she has a cool sense of style as far as her clothes, the haircut is nice, she's got a nice body....but the face? Not so much"



Oh, and while we're in the supermarket?

Have you ever accidentally store-stalked someone? Every time you turn into a different isle that person is there? Then just when you start to feel weird about it you get to lets say the shampoo isle and you think "thank God I don't need shampoo, I can break this pattern of accidental-store-stalking"....and she's skipped the same damn isle and oh here we are together again....
and it's not like you can start talking to this person and explain away the accidental-store-stalking...
"hey looks like we have the same shopping rhythm. heh heh..." that will just confirm her suspicion that she is being followed around the store....
I had this happen to me the other day kind of....actually it was worse. I was at Whole Foods with Turbo (who is dangerously close to being re-nicknamed Slo-Mo)
I was standing 10 feet away from the car looking back waiting for him to get himself together and get out of the car.
On the other side of our car a young lady was loading groceries into her Jeep. I realized she was looking at me all of a sudden.
My first thought, "she has gorgeous hair"
My second thought "oh crap! she thinks I'm staring at her"
so I said "come on turbo lets go"
(a part of me wanted to yell something extremely expository like "come on Turbo, my blond haired son, get out of that blue Miata which is sitting next to the black Jeep")
Then 8 hours later we're at the supermarket by our house. (which is pretty much on the other side of town)
I'm intently trying to find the Perfect red bell pepper or something equally important. I glance up in time to see a woman walking in the door.
My first thought was "she has gorgeous hair"
My second thought was "oh crap! it's the girl from Whole Foods"
I then spent the rest of the shopping trip skulking about the store trying to avoid having this woman catch me.
It was harrowing.

It's a key card Muthafucka!

One of the blogs I routinely read is Defective Yeti. He recently wrote a post about
knives hidden in a keycard .
It got me thinking...that is the ultimate disguised weapon!
Think about other disguised weapons....the pen that shoots a .22 shell?
whatever.
If I'm getting into a beef with some guy and he whips out a pen and points it in my face? I'm all like "get that shit outa my face!" and swatting it to the ground.
The sword inside the cane?
A seemingly healthy guy with a cane? I'm already suspicious of that guy. I really don't want to have to go to the ER because some asshole hit me in the face with a brass duck or something. It would never even get to the point that he could use the sword hidden within.

But a key card? Damn that dude could cut my ass to ribbons!

Who carries key cards? Nerds and corporate drones, that's who.
My sister pointed out that they usually issue you a pair of khakis and a polo shirt with your key card.
Can you picture it? You're in a bar and some guy starts some trouble and you size him up and you notice the key card hanging from the lanyard around his next and you think, "oh I got this"
So you start giving it back, right?
He takes a hold of the key card, points it at you and right as you're about to say something cool like "what are you gonna do buzz me in?"
He SHANKS YA' !
You'd never see it coming!
You'd be in the emergency room babbling " he was like some kind of a Nerd Transformer!"

Nerds With Knives on the next Dateline

Degenerate car dogs

Car-dogs are a degenerate lot.
In the car buisness you don't have the finest collection of men that society has to offer. I was considered a bit of a freak because I ...GASP! ...read things?!
I had a habit of sitting at my desk drinking OJ and eating yoghurt , fruit and granola and perusing the local police log to find out who needed to be bailed out.
That sounds altruistic...almost.
In reality I had a scrapbook that I kept. If you got a DUI? You were in my book brother.
If somebody pulled a no-show-no-call?
First call was to the house, second call? The Jail.
none of them ever really hit the big time ...other than Dave, the kid who got shot in the head over a girl, and Glenn who stole a check for $15k that he was supposed to take to the credit union for a payoff and instead figured out a way to cash it and bet it on a 15-3 horse and lose.
That boy had a gambling problem...which made him a great guy to go to vegas with. Free rooms at the Bellagio and Luxor because your boy has a problem?
Ok.
Whatever. I helped him rake in a pile at our local indian casino, it's not my fault he couldn't stick to black jack and make safe money.
anyway.

Normally if a car-dog got caught up at the jail it was alcohol related.
DUI, bar fight etc.

One kid in particular stands out.
Derrick. He was a 21 year old full blown alcoholic. Raging. He showed up most mornings bleary and reeking of alcohol.
I'll be honest. I miss him. He was the kind of guy who never figured out that he was not nearly smart enough to start some trash talking with me. Consequently I had a lot of fun at his expense.
I really felt as if I should have tipped him on occasion, because of all the fun I had at his expense. He was gullible, if you scared him he would scream like a girl...just lots of fun to have around...

So Derrick somehow managed to hook up with Balloon Girl.
Balloon Girl was this really cute blond chick who was putting herself through college by appearing at events/benefits/parties/etc and twisting up these amazing balloon animals. You name it she could twist it.
I am not making this up. A film crew followed her around for nine months making a documentary about this hot blond that goes to balloon twisting competitions/conferences and oh by the way she is going to medical school...
right?
so Derrick somehow gets this vixen to like him...and he fucks it up by cheating on her with his scag of an ex girlfriend
"hey she gives good BJ's!"
fucking loser.
so he starts drinking harder than before and gets a DUI.
and Then his life goes shitty.
His best friend /roomate OD's.
He feels responsible because he wasn't there.
So now he is on a jag. He shows up trashed at a barbeque we are having. He bails to get some food?
" I don't want no fuckin' house burger!"....
and goes to Jack In The Box...
ok...
he is just sober enough to order...but not enough to pull around.
the crew at Jack's can't rouse him so they walk across the street to the firehouse and get some paramedics.
Three paramedics rocking his car manage to wake him.
He blips down the power window and says
"Is my fucking food ready?!"
to shorten the tale a bit? he refuses medical treatment and instead goes to jail.
(wouldn't have been my choice...)
next day ? no Derrick at work...but an awesome story in the paper.
So, Wally goes down to check on the kid and see if he can't be sprung.
But wait!
Wally himself has a pesky little drunk and disorderly warrant so he gets tossed in with Derrick!
Our manager calls a meeting.
"Who here DOESN'T have any warants?"
Susan, Myself and Steve raise our hands definitively
(our collective age is over 120 years. I am the baby at 31)
the rest of our ragged band either keeps their hands in their lap out of propriety or, tentativly, kinda , sorta raises their hands..

Steve and I take a corporate checkbook and a used Maxima and go bail the chumps out.
Good Times.

Oh how I hate meetings...mostly...

For the last 7 years or so every job I have ever had has had at the minimum a weekly meeting.
(some places liked to double or triple up as they saw fit)

In my current state of salaried indenturedness we have the classic once weekly meeting.
It's always the same every week.
I usually bring a bag of Gardettos or Skittles and indulge in some classic o.c.d. sorting/eating behavior. It keeps me quiet

Last week I had no food and was therefore forced to pay attention.
The training manager was asking us to list five "SEIBEL skills" or "buying signs" or ...something, I don't know. I wasn't really listening.
He was holding his arm up at an angle halfway between the classic Black Power salute straight up and an angle parallel to the floor. It's kind of the "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane!..." angle...
Picture it?
OK so his hand is in a fist and we are supposed to list off 5 things...as we are giving our answers he's ticking them off with his fingers until finally he is holding his hand out flat.
Picture it?
He suddenly is giving the classic "Seig Heil!" Salute!
I wait for him to drop it but he doesn't because this classroom of dumb fucks doesn't know the last answer.
(I would have known the answer had I been listening, right?)
So finally I say "ummm Steve?"
he rotates to me "yes?"
now I am getting the "Seig Heil!" Awesome!
I say "yeah.... maybe you shouldn't hold your hand like that?"

AND ...THE ...CROWD...GOES ..WILD!

this is the New Me disrupting a meeting .
It was fun.

Want to hear a story about the way the Old Me would disrupt a meeting?
(you know you do)

OK. This was back when I was selling Hondas.
Every week we had the exact same fucking meeting.
I worked with a raggedy assed band of complete fuck ups.
World class retards.
(I'm going to tell you how bad they were in the next blog. Hang for it, it's good)
Which was great for me.
It was like I got to go back and play Little League again. I was hitting home runs every at bat and pitching no hitters every time I took the mound.
In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king, right?
So every meeting I would listen while my compatriots got their weekly kick in the balls meeting and I would contentedly eat this heavenly sandwich the bakery around the corner made
(fluffy eggs, Emmentaller cheese, smoked ham on a croissant that had been baked that morning...I do miss those 1,200 calorie breakfasts...sigh)
And then once I finished my sandwich and my latte I would look for a creative way to get thrown out of the meeting.

One morning our boss was imploring us to set appointments with customers on days that we knew would be slow. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday?
OK.
Then he said "I know a lot of people want to make their appointments for Saturday, but please, that's our busiest day, so really try to set it during the week, OK?"
Then he looked around a conference room of hungover blank stares.
"Taylor, please tell me, what the fuck did I just say?"
and Taylor, God bless his "I dropped too much acid & smoked too much weed for the last 20 years" brain says with great enthusiasm
"Yes! Set appointments on Saturdays!"
Jeff, our fearless leader , stands stunned.
I step into the breach and say
"I have a question...how is it fucking possible that you still have all your fingers Taylor?"
He says "huh?"
" How is it possible that at some point in your life you have not at least once said ' hey what's this thingy do? Oww! Mah fingers! My beautiful fingers!'"

AND ...THE ...CROWD ...GOES ...WILD!!

Jeff looks at me, "dude, don't you have a deal to write up or something?"
I get up and leave, mission accomplished.

A couple of years later I'm selling Subarus.
These meetings were even more predictable. I actually got myself into a bit of hot water because I did a 5 minute stand up routine in which I acted out everything that would happen in the upcoming meeting and the general manager happened to hear the whole thing.
whoops.
Anyway. I wasn't top dog at this store; I was number 2 or 3...high enough in the food chain to tune out when the nut-kicking began.
One manger in particular...he deserves his own blog some day for his complete mis-use of the English language...but for the sake of semi-brevity, I'll just say he would ask rhetorical questions and then demand an answer.
"do I look like an ass monkey to you?"
" I asked you a question!"
Oh!...umm, no?
He is going off on this trio of green peas (that's "noob" in car-dog language.)
and he says
"do you think this is fucking Candy Land?!"
pause...
"I asked you a question!"
The poor fucking green peas are stunned...clearly this is a question that needs no answer, right?

Once more unto the breach
" No way! Cause' if this was Candy Land it would be way funner!"

AND ....THE ...CROWD....GOES ....WILD!!

exit stage left.

Clean Snatch!

Get your mind out of the gutter, Hey-soos Christo.
By snatch I meant grab. Sheesh.

So turbo was playing a video game called Destroy All humans 2.
The basic premise is you are a little classic looking "gray" alien named Crypto running around earth trying to ...well destroy humanity.
One of the features of the game
(in addition to being able to pull a humans brain out through their ass with a specialized ray)
is that you can zap them and take over (or "snatch") their body.

In case nobody has hipped you to this, video games have become progressively more freaky as the years have rolled on.

So Turbo is playing his game and I happen to glance up just as he zaps somebody and inhabits his body.
The screen displays in big bold letters

CLEAN SNATCH!

Wow.
here's what followed:

M: clean snatch? that's good?
T: (very enthusiastically) oh yeah, it's the best kind of snatch.
M: so you love the clean snatch then?
T: yeah , you know why?
(I assure you this is what he said)
T: it kind of sounds like "clean snack"
M :clean snack?
T: yeah ...like a donut that hasn't fallen on the floor or anything? Just clean. And you're thinking "I can't wait to eat that."
M: well if you like clean snatch that much then I guess I do too.

Bonding.
Isn't it these moment that we live for as parents?
I know there won't be too many more chances to have conversations like this.

I was on the phone one time and Hopper was just driving me nuts trying to get his way on something. He would not stop trying to argue with me.
I couldn't take it anymore.

M: Listen you can just stop debating this with me; you won't win.
H: I might.
M: no you won't. And I'll tell you why.
H: why daddy?
M: because son, you are no master debater.
H: (furious) I am too a master debater!
M not yet you aren't . One day you will be. But not yet you aren't .
H: (stomps away, enters bedroom) I can't wait to be a master debater! (slams door)

ahhh, good times.

Civil clerks are stupid. Yeah I said it.

Here in the Springs the crime rate is low so the Police Looooove to make traffic stops.
I got a ticket because I didn't have the proper registration card in my car....but originally
I got pulled over because it "sounded like I was going pretty fast".
I tried to have an intelligent discussion about the high-revving nature of four cylinder engines and the impression of speed that may be given off by an engine being wound out to 7,000 rpm.
The cop preferred to talk about how loud my exhaust was.
At any rate I got the ticket.
A week later I got pulled over again. Why? I was following a friend to a club that I was unfamiliar with. He was speeding, I was not.
He got pulled over. I waited for him to get his ticket in a nearby parking lot and the proceeded to follow him to the club again.
The cop circled back and pulled me over.
He went for the damn Twofer!
He comes up to my window and says in an extremely suspicious voice "what are you up to?"
I didn't know how to answer the question without sounding guilty of something so I said
" May I ask why you pulled me over?" In a conspicuously polite manner.
He said "seems like somethings going on. I pull your buddy over and then there you are circling around in your car and then when he pulls out you fall right in line"
All of this was said in the manner of the DA making his closing statements to the jury.
Clearly ladies and gentlemen of the jury the defendant was"up to" something!
So I explained what we were "up to".

Evidently that was too easy so he then pointed out that one of the bulbs in my tail-lights was out.
Fair enough, thanks for the heads up. The whole thing wasn't broken mind you, only one side of my brake light lit up...so I had one light on the left and 2 on the right.
I think it miffed him when his Something Is Up theory didn't pan out so he gave me the ticket.

Fine, whatever. 2 "fix-it tickets". Big deal, go down to the courthouse and get them dismissed.
So I go down and show the clerk my stuff and she says fine it's dismissed. I then ask who do I have check out the tail light to prove it's fixed.
She can't find a fix-it ticket for the taillight and says if it's not in the system by now I'm clear.
Great.
Fast forward a month. I get a message from an officer telling me because I didn't take care of this ticket I have a warrant.
Super Great.
I call the courthouse to get this straightened out.
The clerk informs me that the first time I was at the wrong courthouse. I said "did you guys move or something?"
Turns out you can get a ticket from an officer and they have the discretion to assign it to "City" traffic court or "Municipal" traffic court.
Asinine!
(this will be a big no-no when I'm President King I can assure you)
But here is what pisses me off...the fucking clerk at the first courthouse knew I had just moved here and would therefore have no idea about this 2 court BS. I explicitly asked her about the second ticket. I even made a joke about how it's comforting to live in a city so safe that I could anticipate at least 2 tickets a month. Surely at some point someone has brought in a ticket and waved it in her face only to find out they are in the wrong courthouse. I can't possibly the only person in the history of The Springs to make this mistake, right?
Yet it never occurred to her to say "hey you might want to check with "municipal court"

friggin idiot!

Post Script : On the freeway exit that I take every night if you are third in line you are directly underneath a street lamp that I have noticed randomly turns on and off. Normally my first instinct is to think that the guy behind me has just flipped his lights off or on.
Tonight?
Jesus.
the fucking light comes on and I just about fudged my huggies. My brain screamed "they found me!"

I have to go down to the courthouse tomorrow....

When I'm President King

You will not be allowed to name your kid whatever the fuck you want. There will be no more kids named Kal-El, OK?
Wait, am I being racist? Am i saying that an ethnic, possibly Muslim, name will not be allowed in My America?
Oh no no no.
Kal-El is what Nick Cage named his second child (it was the birth name of Superman)
You want irony? Nick Cage did a sketch on SNL a few years ago...the basic premise is that he and Julia Sweeny are going to have a baby.
(big fucking stretch there, no?)
They are discussing names and every name she comes up with he has a problem with it because the kid will be made fun of....I'm just going to paste the last part of the sketch here...

Wife: Alright. Um.. Nate.
Husband: "The Nate Rockne Story." "Hey, Nate, where's the Gipper?"
Wife: What?
Husband: [ pacing the room ] Na-ate! Na-ate! Do you like that sound? Well, you better get used to it! [ his wife walks across the room ] Hey, where are you going?
Wife: [ leafing through book ] I'm looking at this Baby Name book, I thought it could help us.. [ looking through book ] How about Bjaardker?
Husband: [ intrigued ] Oh?
Wife: Bjaardker. It's Icelandic.
Husband: [ considering ] Yeah.. that's a tough little name to crack. That could be good. [ puts his face up to his Wife's belly ] Hey, Bjaardker, little fellow. You might just have a good childhood, after all. [ Wife laughs ] Talk to you later.
Wife: I love you.
Husband: I love you. [ they kiss, as the doorbell rings ] You sit, honey.
Wife: Alright.
Husband: [ answering the door ] Yes?
Telegram Deliverer: Hi, how you doing? I've got a telegram here for a Mr. & Mrs. Asswipe Johnson. I'm supposed to read it. [ holds telegram ] "Dear Asswipe & Emily: Congratulations on your upcoming blessed event. All our love, Bob & Diane." Here you go, Sir. [ hands him the telegram ]
Husband: Uh.. listen.. that's "Os-wee-pay".
Telegram Deliverer: [ confused ] What?
Husband: Uh.. forget it, forget it.. [ closes the door and sits next to his wife ]
Wife: That was really nice of Bob and Diane.
Husband: [ sighs ] Yeah, but why do they have to mention my name so much?
Wife: Oh, honey..


Sorry, I know in America we have rights and freedoms....but your right to name your kid whatever asinine, fucked up thing you want is completely superseded by the right of your child to not get his ass kicked repeatedly for years to come and to not have to spell his name every single time he/she gives it.
Kal-El Cage? fucking come on.

There will be a simple process. If the name you choose for your child is found in any number of baby naming books readily available at your local bookseller?
Done.
Automatic approval. (even if it's Bjaarkder)
If however the computer rejects the name we go to step 2.
There is an appeal process.
If you can show that the name means something lovely in your native tongue? Or it's a traditional name?
Great. you're in.
If someone in your family had that fucked up name? I'm sorry, but it's in.
If it's a made up, vaguely Afrocentric name? Starquisha? You're in. (sorry, but my 4Th language is Ebonics)
If it's something you took out of the dictionary and it's lovely or poignant? In. stupid and arbitrary? out.
IE: Kestrel (a type of falcon)
Chrysalis (the stage of life representing transformation) or
Chance (which means...um chance?)
all in.
rumor, trouble, steed?
all fucking out.
(I did in fact go to school with a guy named Steed. How cruel.)

As my Lifetime Administration goes on it will become easier and easier.
we will keep a database of rejected, fucked up names so that the approval/denial process will become quicker.
If some asshole tries to name their kid 4Real (as a couple in New Zealand recently tried to do.....they saw the sonogram and realized the kid was "for real" and hence the name)
the name will get automatic rejection the next time.
Another feature of the process will be that as the database grows we will be able to offer alternatives to the retarded names. Someone will try to name a kid Castrateia and the system will say
"I'm sorry Castrateia is not available....if you liked Castrateia you might like Kestrel."

Now this system will completely be hands off in terms of nicknames. I will insure that nobody has too fucked up of a name on paper. However, my Elected-Monarchy will have a definite libertarian slant.
I grew up with a kid named Hot Rod Austin. He was one of the coolest fucking people I have ever met.
(And I grew up in Los Angeles where they spawn cool fuckers as prodigiously as they grow oranges and install saline implants. It's the place where the rest of the country sends their cool fuckers to flourish and thrive.)

If you want to call your kid Koolwhip The Destroyer? That is totally fine with me. Just don't put it in the record.

Give them the option of a normal life.