Thursday, December 17, 2009

 

A Beginner’s Guide to Dive Bars

The cruel fact is that there just aren’t enough bars in the world so you can’t always pick and chose where you go for a drink. A dive is generally a place where you’ll probably feel more of a need to wipe your feet as you leave than you did on the way in. You can almost always spot a dive from the outside but if you were fooled by the exterior some sure give-a-ways that you are in a dive are dead animals mounted on the walls, a pool table in worse shape than a hillbilly’s front yard, a jar of pickled eggs on the bar, mullets, black eyes, and lots of “ain’t”s.*

Keep it Simple

Don’t order a martini unless you want a glass of luke-warm rot gut vodka and an olive that looks like it rolled behind the cigarette machine a few months ago and somehow made it into your glass. In fact, avoid drinks that require any sort of fruit or garnish, and ordering wine is just asking for a fight. Even the ice may be suspect depending on the local drinking water. Stick to plain-and-simple domestic beer and whiskey. The good news is that the last time I checked these two staples contain alcohol (Completely overcome with the spirit of investigative journalism, I actually checked out this fact last night).

The Bathrooms

I have been in bathrooms so squalid that I interrupt the stream of my pee so that germs and other critters can’t swim, salmon-like, upstream into my pride and joy. You are a lot safer just doing your business in the parking lot—no one will notice, I promise. On a further anthropological note, some of the best graffiti I have ever read I found in dive bar toilets—sort of ironic when you consider that about the only thing the customers read in these places are arrest warrants and eviction notices.

Se Habla Baseball

Unless you are at the bar in the roll of a Dian Fossey-like researcher, you will want to interact with the local wildlife. A safe lingua franca of dive bars is baseball. Talking about sports is sort of the Esperanto of knuckleheads, a sub-group I claim as one of my own. Just say a few kind words about the team the locals support and you will have friends for life, or until closing time—whichever comes first. Even if I were miles behind enemy lines in a dive bar in the Bronx I think I could find a few good things to say about…gulp (this is difficult for me)…the Yankees.

E Pluribus

My first dive bar was a place called the 101 Club. I guess that stood for Dive Bars 101 and was a required course at my university. It was as crappy as any bar I have ever seen; sort of like a rough Mexican cantina but without the good food. The jukebox had the worst music ever collected in one place. One night I pumped in about five dollars worth of quarters and looked for the worst song I could find. It happened to be Paper Roses by Marie Osmond so I played the B side about thirty times and went back to playing pool. After the miserable little tune had played about six times we looked around to see how this was registering with the other patrons. None of them even seemed to notice the awful music or that it had repeated half a dozen times. I suppose the only point I am trying to make here is that hicks are different from you and me. They are a tougher breed. They fight our wars, install our cable TV, and their children will beat up your kids. Next time you are in a dive, show your appreciation and buy a round of drinks.

*There are dive bars in non-English speaking countries so I should probably amend this to say “bad grammar” except I ain’t smart enough to detect bad grammar in any language besides English.

Labels: Humor

8:50 AM

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Monday, October 26, 2009

 

How to Survive and Prosper during a Summer/Semester/Year in Europe

Travel Light
I’m not talking about losing ten pounds before you leave, although this isn’t a bad idea considering how much more you will be eating and drinking while away. I mean travel with just a backpack, preferably one that fits in the overhead. Here is a simple rule of travel: carry only the amount of baggage that you can carry while outrunning a cop. I won’t say how I came up with this observation but let’s just say that it’s based on a true story. Your sense of adventure will be directly proportional to how light you are. Dragging two clunky suitcases may give you more clothing options but you’ll be too tired to go anywhere.

Keep it Simple
Call it quits with the boyfriend/girlfriend before leaving, that way you won’t have to explain anything when the pictures start making the rounds on Facebook of you lying face down in the gutter in the Amsterdam red light district or giving a lap dance to a Greek goat herder. They always say to keep your story simple and nothing is simpler than saying, “I’m single.”

Se Habla Español
You studied Spanish, French, German, or Italian for a semester or two, now it’s time to start using it. Foreign languages aren’t just a general education requirement, people actually speak them. You probably speak one of these languages better than most Europeans speak English. A simple Buenos Días or Bonjour when entering a bar or shop will go a long way in how people perceive you. Just remember that when you’re talking to someone about how much you like their little country don’t use the word “little.”

When in Rome Eat What the Romans Eat
The late-night, cheap food of choice for drunks almost everywhere in Europe is döner kebab or gyros or shawarma or whatever the hell name they use for a sandwich of pita and meat—either lamb or chicken. Döner kebab is actually Turkish for “It’s not cat, goddammit!”

Adhering to a vegetarian diet while in Europe is more of a hassle than traveling in an iron lung. Take your pick: spend the day in Paris searching for a vegan restaurant or actually see the place. Finding anything to eat in Spain that doesn’t contain pork is all but impossible; even the deserts have bacon bits. If you have religious proscriptions against certain foods I’m pretty sure that Yahweh, God, and Allah will forgive you for trying some jagerschnitzel, they probably won’t even mind if you go back for seconds.

Be Moderate with the Alcohol
Just kidding. For many American university students this is the first time they have been able go to a bar legally. The problem is that the service is so slow in many cafés that getting drunk is logistically impossible. You’ll sit down and wait 15 minutes for a waiter to take your order; 15 minutes after that he’ll deliver the drinks…maybe. It’s possible that the slow service will mean you’re more sober when you get back to the hotel than when you left (wasn’t that an episode of Star Trek?). I’ll shut up now because I’m sure that nobody reading this needs any help from me as far as drinking is concerned.

The New Americans
Believe it or not, people in Europe like Americans, so give them a reason to like you, too. They even respect the U.S. soccer team. Leave your University of Nobody Gives a Shit t-shirts at home and try to comport yourself like you would in a police line-up. And if you do something really bad just say you’re Canadian.

Labels: Humor

2:02 PM

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Monday, September 28, 2009

 

Heavy: My Anti-Thin

Heavy is the opposite of not heavy which is the dream of every American since before Barbies® were invented or before Baby Gap starting making big and tall sizes. Vast swaths of citizens in this great nation have waged a pitched battle against the evil forces of gravity for most of their lives. Heaviness is relentless and unforgiving. Plump never sleeps. Corpulent won’t quit, ever. You can run but you can’t hide, and especially not behind the refrigerator which doesn’t have enough cubic feet to keep you even remotely decent. Try hiding behind the minivan.

The tactics of those out to out-fox fat are inventive, constantly changing, and increasingly more extreme. The most inventive strategy seems to be the purging techniques. The rationale is as follows: We take in calories only through the mouth but we can expel them through a host of orifices, so why not use them all? This will leave the intake of food vastly outnumbered by the forces of expulsion. This makes sense if you think about it, although if you are a normal, well-adjusted person you probably would prefer not to think about it. The plan goes something like this: You eat something and then you eject it out of every hole in your body, sometimes even having new holes surgically implanted. Who among us couldn’t use another blow hole? Quite often this discharge requires assistance—both chemical and mechanical—in the form of diet pills, suppositories, laxatives, enemas, and diuretics. Sometimes all that is required is a good old fashioned finger stuck forcefully down the gullet. With this sort of fire power a Hostess Twinkie doesn’t seem to have a chance.

But gravity never sleeps, it takes no sick days, and it shows up uninvited at all of our major religious holidays—even the pagan festivals. Fat never excuses itself by saying, “Sorry, did I come at a bad time?” It is a pitiless foe preying on the old and infirm as well as the young and the restless. It holds nothing sacred and doesn’t respect age barriers. In the old days it used to leave poor people alone but not anymore. They represent a ballooning new market (other acceptable adjectives for this sentence include “burgeoning,” “mushrooming,” “hefty,” and “sizeable,” to name just a few).

Heavy won’t go away and you can’t kill it off. Heavy is kind of like the Terminator if the Terminator were an ice cream topping or a brand of tortilla chips. It’s coming after me. I can’t slow it down by blocking its path with empty liters of soda or discarded popsicle sticks. I wonder why I’m out of breath and then I remember that I have a Philly cheese stuffed in my mouth, but I shouldn’t be winded just from riding the bus. Heavy gets on at the next stop and asks to sit down next to me. Heavy is reading Chili Fries Digest magazine and eating a box of donuts. He politely offers them to me. Heavy talks the driver into pulling into the drive-thru at the fast food joint on the corner. I order a #3 and move to another seat. I need the room.

We say that the bad guy in a movie is the “heavy.” Heavy is the bad guy and thin is mostly the good guy. Even a thin drug addict is viewed as better than a heavy person. In our society a rail-thin junkie is preferable to an overweight person. Remember those anti-drug commercials with the eggs and the frying pan? Man, those made me so hungry.

I think that there is one thing upon which we can all agree: Fat is not funny…except for Hardy, John Belushi, Chris Farley, Roseanne Barr, John Candy, Ralf Caliendo, Ricky Gervais, Sam Kennison, Jackie Gleason, Lou Costello…OK, so I guess that fat is almost always funny. What isn’t funny is making fun of fat people unless you are one of the fat people mentioned above in which case it is often hilarious.

Labels: Humor

11:01 AM

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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

 

That’s Entertainment?

So you think you can watch paint dry? Really, because this guy over here says he’s pretty good at it. In the spirit of entertainment how about if we have a little competition to see just who can watch paint dry the best? We’ll have our panel of celebrity judges decide the winner. Our gimmick is that one out of the three celebrity judges is dead. On tonight’s panel we have Carol Burnet, Abe Vigoda, and Ted Knight. Surprise! They are all dead. What’s that? Wait a minute, Abe is claiming that he isn’t dead although he isn’t making a very vigorous case for it. We'll give Abe the benefit of the doubt but we're keeping a close eye on him. Isn’t this show exciting!

America’s Next Top Wal-mart Greeter. We can’t all be top models although you’d never know that if you have ever talked to a group of teenagers—either they all are going to be top models or professional athletes or movie stars or just stinking rich.

Here’s an idea for a really dumb show: We have people who really don’t have a lot of talent but mostly look good sing songs we really didn’t like much when the original artist sang them? What? There already is a show like that? Shit, I was just kidding.

Or how about this one: “Celebrities are paired with professionals in a ballroom-dance competition, with one pair typically eliminated each week.” They are kidding, right? This is a real show and people are free to change the channel if they want, or is this show in China and they force everyone to watch it? Actually, Dancing with the Communist Party Chiefs might be fun. By “eliminated” maybe they mean executed. That also might make it fun and it sounds like it’s something they do in China.

OK, I’m just thinking out loud here but what about Celebrities and Housewives Wrestling? I think it would go over well among a certain portion of the viewing audience and it would be very tastefully done, of course.

*I realize that filing this under humor is being a bit generous but I don't know what else to do with it.

Labels: Humor

10:13 AM

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Sunday, July 05, 2009

 

It's not funny, people.

Never Go Limp

This was the subject line in an email I saw as I was deleting everything in the spam folder in my Gmail account. I was almost tempted to open it just because I think those are three words that every man should learn to live by. They make more sense than “Remember the Alamo” or “Live Free or Die.” “Carpe Diem” seems like poor advice if you just aren’t up for seizing a day because you have the flu or a bad hangover. I have three words for “E Pluribus Unum”: WTF. But “Never Go Limp” are words I can support with enthusiasm.

I don’t think that the authors of this adage mean it literally. Even the hucksters who create spam email realize that you can’t always be rock hard. I don’t mean to put words in their mouths or in their annoying emails but I think what they mean to say is that you should “never go limp” when you don’t want to be limp. Consider a situation in which limpness is a bad thing. Now consider the same situation where you are always in a state of non-limpness. I think that we can all agree the lack of limpness in said circumstances is a good thing and infinitely preferably to the dreaded flaccid state. OK, this is getting totally off the subject, and not at all what I was referring to in the last sentence, but if you had to name the limpest state in America what would it be?. Answer: Florida. Get it?

I also don’t think these guys are necessarily always speaking about the male erection; I’m sure they are referring to a more universal sense of standing up and sticking out, or being rigid and unbending, of being…or maybe they are only talking about boners but I must seek out the truth no matter where it takes me. I need to know what they had in mind but I have already deleted the email and can’t get it back.

I just think that it is important in this age of frivolity, of celebrity Twitter and reality TV shows, of gutter press and trashy novels, it is important in our times to seek out the true voices of wisdom and reason.

I know that most of these bogus emails all emanate from the same server hidden somewhere in the deep outreaches of Eastern Europe so all I have to do is wait for another spam to enter my account. Quickly my inbox begins to fill with spam and I choose one with the subject line of “Get Hung Like a Horse Today!” I find the exclamation point to be a bit hyperbolic but the email will serve my purpose of tracking down the sender of “Never Go Limp” and will allow me to answer my existential quandary over their precise meaning.

I tracked the IP address to a site in Kerch, Ukraine. I imagine that these brave souls are unable to write freely in their own country which is why they send out their spam to the rest of the world. No man is a prophet in his own land. They probably live with the constant fear of the secret police raiding their hideaway. They remind me of our own founding fathers but instead of freeing a land from tyranny they are peddling bootleg sexual dysfunction drugs and porn web sites. Struggle on, valiant warriors!

I was able to find an email to which I could send a poignant question or two to the authors of this heady bit of prose. Using an online translator to phrase my inquiry in their language I wrote the following:

Dear Ukrainian Gangsters,
What do you mean by "never go limp?" Is this more of a philosophical, non-literal approach or is it just about the penis?

Their Response: Want big hard cock? We got for you. 100€

OK, not exactly the sort of profound response I was hoping for but it serves as a starting point to extract the true wisdom of the Ukrainian mafia. I search desperately for any possible double entendre in their reticent reply. A person capable of penning such a fiendishly clever quip like “Never Go Limp” has probably cloaked the true meaning in layer upon layer of subterfuge and deceit. The profane and ungrammatical email from the Ukrainian gangsters was a cunning ploy to further bury the true meaning. I feel like Hiram Bingham as he first came upon the overgrown ruins of Machu Picchu. Come to think of it, that mountain at Machu Picchu looks like a big boner if you think about it.

I was convinced that there was a deeper, truer meaning to these words. After weeks of research employing the leading cryptologists from the National Security Agency, numerologists from the CIA, and a fat lady who reads tarot cards in a booth at the mall I came face to face with the reality that “Never Go Limp” means “never go limp” and nothing more. I must admit that I was a bit disappointed but I’m still having it made into my vanity license plate.

Labels: Humor

1:40 AM

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Tuesday, June 09, 2009

 

High Society and Cheap Laughs

We are unable to accept your submission, despite its evident merit. Thank you for allowing us to consider your work.
Best regards,
The Shouts and Murmurs Dept.


It’s not like I’m looking to be on the cover but it has always been one of my dreams to see something that I have written in The New Yorker. Another, less modest dream of mine was to play football for Notre Dame—a dream that came true for me, I’m happy to say. Granted, a video game allowed me to score the winning touchdown for Notre Dame but it is still a memory I will always cherish. In truth, the video game was about professional hockey. Even with my wonderful powers of imagination it would be a stretch to use the same game to virtually publish a piece in a magazine. But let’s be honest here, a video game called Get Published in The New Yorker! would rank well below playing outside for most children and that rates lower than going to school.

I realize that most of the humor essays I write are a little uncultured for The New Yorker. I need to be sure that the article I submit doesn’t contain content that will automatically disqualify it from being considered for publication in that hallowed tome. Just the thought of The New Yorker makes me use words like “hallowed tome” so I’ll make sure that this essay is free of vulgar words and objectionable situations. I must find the high ground in humor that soars above anything distasteful, repulsive, foul, nasty, vile, unpleasant, repugnant, or objectionable. Removing those words from my quiver of humor doesn’t leave me with many arrows. In fact, I am rendered all but defenseless. There is always “irony” but I’ll have to look that up in the dictionary again because I always confuse it with that other not-very-funny word, “satire.”

To get published in the The New Yorker I have to start thinking like a New Yorker writer. A writer for that magazine wouldn’t think that vulgar words are funny, words too childish to even mention here but that rhyme with “botch” and “cart.” Readers of this magazine wouldn’t think that death and permanent injury are topics suitable for humor. There is definitely no room for a gag about a flock of soon-to-be-defrocked priests trying to run down an altar boy who is hobbled by his pants pushed down around his ankles in some sort of twisted, Vatican rodeo. It’s time for me to start writing thoroughly cultured and sophisticated humor. This isn’t going to be easy.

I need to look at the exact opposite of the things that crack up the lower classes which are videos of kids spiking their fathers in the privates with a football. Smart people don’t like sports—at least not the ones I used to beat up in high school—which is why The New Yorker doesn’t have a sports section. So what do their children throw at their fathers’ nether regions? Cellos? I don’t get it. That would be completely lacking in subtlety and sophistication. I’m just going to start writing and improvise.

During the intermission of the Verdi opera Il Porco Capitalista two wealthy industrialists were at the bar enjoying horribly expensive glasses of champagne. If you have to ask how much the champagne costs you probably aren’t even sophisticated enough to enjoy this essay so perhaps you should go pick up a copy of Guns & Pipe Bombs and stop bothering us with your annoying questions. Over their glasses of champagne (Which represent more than a week of your wages—are you still here?) the industrialists were playing an amusing game of one-upmanship over who had out-sourced more jobs to China and India. They called it a draw because although one industrialist had out-sourced more jobs the other had slashed all benefits for his remaining U.S. workers. The opera was about to resume so they both poured the remainder of their sinfully expensive champagne over the head of their hapless immigrant waiter and returned to their box seats.

Did I mention that all proceeds from the opera go to a local charity? This isn’t part of the essay but have you ever noticed that rich people always have to stage incredibly self-congratulatory events whenever they part with a few bucks for charity? They wouldn’t dream of just throwing some coins in a Salvation Army pot. They always have to put on a black tie affair or a golf tournament to cough up for a “good cause.” Whatever it is there has to be an “open bar.” After the event, when we read about it in the society pages, the rest of us are expected to practically faint from gratitude.

This isn’t going very well, is it? I started out by trying to write a classy essay and now I’m about one paragraph away from exhorting the hapless immigrant waiter to rise up with his coworkers against the elite opera patrons. I’ll be the first to admit that trying to make an armed proletarian revolution funny is a pretty tall order, so I’ll back off of that one. Besides, I’ll also admit that without spell check I could never pull off a word like “guillotine” or “bourgeoisie.”

Maybe I’m not seeing the whole picture. Maybe one of the wealthy industrialists patted the immigrant waiter on his champagne-drenched head and pressed a crisp dollar bill into his palm. “Thank you, Urdiboo. Perhaps this will help you with your family back in Urdiboostan.” In Urdiboo’s other palm the industrialists extinguished their lit cigarettes and returned to their seats. Urdiboo shoved his blistered palm into his pocket. He would savor the unfinished cigarettes when he quit working at 4 a.m. Out of gratitude, Urdiboo vowed to use part of the dollar to erect a cathedral in Urdiboostan in honor of his benefactors—a cathedral or a temple or a mosque, whatever they use in Urdiboostan for praying or whatever they call it.

That was almost completely not funny, unless one of the capitalists fell out of their box seat and caused a serious injury to one of the other rich bores sitting 50 feet below them. Ideally he should land on a dowager who watched him fall through her gold-plated opera glasses. Or how about he falls on an old Prussian? A guy falling down and hitting someone—butt first—so forcefully that he coughs up the ex-Kaiser’s monocle isn’t being lowbrow. That’s just old school humor, it’s show business. Even The New Yorker has to understand that.

Labels: Humor

1:37 PM

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Wednesday, May 20, 2009

 

We may be a bunch of stinkers but we make a great softball team!

The New and Improved Me

I’m nothing like I used to be. Do you remember the way I was before? Wasn’t I just awful? I think we can all agree on that, at least everyone who survived my worst moments. The things I used to do! The way I treated people! I can’t believe how mean I was back then. Sorry about your cat. That was the old me, now I’m a completely changed person. The difference in me is like night and day, like Stalin and Gandhi (Stalin was the bad one, right?). I’m a much better in every way. I think everyone would agree and not just because they fear for their lives if they don’t. I should get some sort of award for most improved the human being. Nice kitty.

Not to obfuscate my problem in abstruse technical jargon but before I was what most medical professionals would call a “heel.” I was only looking out for number one and guess who that was? I was clearly número uno and according to the doctors looking out for number one—me—was not making me happy. Sure, I was making a ton of money. It goes without saying that my sex life was completely off the charts and completely illegal anywhere but in the Red Light district of Amsterdam. Even there they told me to “tone it down a few notches” which is hard to say when you are gagged. So what if I could snap my fingers and have my enemies brought to their knees. The doctors told me that I wasn’t happy. I didn’t believe the first few who told me this; I had them disappeared. My insurance company thought this was a novel approach in dealing with escalating medical expenses. They have been seeking my advice now for years.

But deep down inside I think that I always knew that something was missing. My excesses made the early years of rock and roll seem like a Jane Austen novel, one of the really boring ones when you can’t tell if she is alluding to sex or the heroine has some sort of stomach ailment. I should have known that I had gone too far when Michael Jackson brought charges against me, alleging that I groped him when I had him over for a sleep-over at my palace. When MJ says you are a degenerate menace you should probably sit up and take notice. Instead I paid him off and accelerated my decadent lifestyle. I tried to convince myself that at least I was boosting the economy with all the money I was shelling out in payoffs and for lawyers.

As I led my armies across the steppes of Asia, playing polo with the heads of my vanquished enemies, I tried to block out the lamentations of their widows and the cries of their orphaned children—my new 40 gig MP3 player made this a lot easier. Slowly I was becoming dissatisfied with my way of living and I didn’t exactly know why. I once derived so much pleasure from watching a village burn while a Kenny G song played through my headphones. Now I look at the flames rising above the rooftops and I think, “What is the point?” and, “What the hell happened to Kenny and what does the G stand for?” If I was responsible for his demise I’d like to apologize.

I tried to ignore the warning signs of my behavior: high blood pressure, trouble sleeping, lack of communication with loved ones, and war crimes tribunals. I started to take notice of my problems when I narrowly side-stepped a Mossad assassination attempt and later I was forced to flee to Brazil to avoid a firing squad in The Hague. Safe from extradition I carried on with my depraved conduct, but a sense of emptiness continued to gnaw at the heart of my being. I thought I could counter my existential dread by clear cutting a Pennsylvania-sized swath of the Amazon rain forest just for fun. It was fun but I still didn’t feel right. I had a problem, the kind of problem that you can’t fix with a new squadron of F-20 fighter aircraft.

My new doctors, who had witnessed the fate of the last group of my personal physicians, assured me that I was completely normal, so I had them imprisoned. We used “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a euphemism that makes me chuckle even today in my more enlightened state of being. When the doctors finally cracked they told me that my problem was that I was a selfish jerk. I thanked the doctors for their honesty and they said “you’re welcome” and that I could pay their receptionist by check or credit card. I knew they were right and besides, I didn’t want to be deposed like the Shah of Iran, or overthrown like Baby Doc Duvalier, or ignominiously toppled like Saddam Hussein. Nor did I want to keep on going forever at any cost like Saturday Night Live—I was a tyrant but I wasn’t completely heartless. It was time to change and let the healing begin.
I began by ordering an extra ration of gruel for my grandfather who I had thrown in prison some years before. I was told he had passed away but I still felt good about my gesture. I think that he would have been proud of me. Now I’m all about Toys for Tots, Make a Wish, Guardian Angels, and Meals on Wheels. I want to be part of the solution instead of being the entire problem. From now on I want to spend my days Big Brothering, Boy Scouting, Little Leaguing, Sunday schooling, paying it forward, Salvation Army-ing, and youth ministering. In fact, take any do-gooder cause and I’ll make a clumsy verb out of it.

I haven’t actually done anything even remotely compassionate so far. Let’s just say that I’m taking baby steps, making the transition a little at a time. So far I have been atrocity-free for almost two weeks! Genocide-less for one month! Some of my subjects have even been whispering timidly about holding free elections. Let’s not go overboard, people; I’m still getting used to this whole humanity deal. Do me a favor and give this “benevolent dictator” thing a try. You don’t have to worry about death squads, dungeons, complete disregard for human rights, or most of the other horrors of my former ways, but I’ve always been the type of person who likes to keep the options open.

Labels: Humor, Valencia Spain

12:38 PM

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Friday, April 17, 2009

 

Me Versus Them

Well, it’s that time of year again people. It’s time for the annual pledge drive to support my youth ministries around the world. Any donation that you can make will be greatly appreciate by me and the tens of thousands of children in over 40 countries who are a part of my effort to spread the word of our lord, Jesus H. Christ, Jr.

If you want to know why I wrote that load of shit it’s because I just did a Google search of my name and someone with my name is an ordained minister and has something to do with some sort of youth ministries, whatever the fuck that is. I've always thought "youth ministries" sounded funny, funny and sinister. The bad news—for him—is that he shares a name with a guy who writes wise-ass essays on the internet, and my name comes up first on the list. I’m sure he is called on to explain to his brethren that he isn’t the guy penning a bunch of profane and blasphemous articles. Sorry, padre.

Another guy who shares my name is a “wealth adviser.” Once again, whatever the fuck that means. I guess you could also say that I am a wealth adviser because I am constantly advising people to get wealthy, the sooner the better. Unfortunately, few of my friends have bothered to follow this sage advice and I am forced to pay my own bar tab, freaking bunch of unambitious lose-oids. The truth is that I’d much rather be a wealth spender than a wealth adviser. I think I’d be good at that. I think that is my true calling in this life, just going around spending wealth in creative ways, mostly having to do with booze, mild drugs, and prostitution Oh man, is the reverend ever going to get pissed when he has to explain to his followers that he didn’t write this. I almost feel sorry for the guy. Come to think of it, the wealth adviser guy probably will have some explaining to do if any of his clients think that he is responsible for this essay.

Maybe I could get paid by everyone who shares my name by not writing vulgar and blasphemous essays on the internet. I’m sure it would make his eminence’s life a lot easier if he wasn’t constantly being forced to convince his flock that he didn’t write an essay about the Pope being almost dead. Actually, just a brief glance at what I have written lately would be enough for his Excellency to realize that an essay about an almost-dead pope is the least of his worries. And let’s be honest, I don’t care if the guy has a Nobel Prize in economics, any wealth adviser sharing my name has a tough row to hoe with prospective clients if they ever bother to search his name on the web. All that I am suggesting is that these people pay me a monthly fee to stop dragging their good names through the dirt. Names and reputations they have worked hard to cultivate. I don’t think this is blackmail; I’d simply stop doing what I am doing, something that although it may be thoroughly tasteless and vulgar, is nonetheless perfectly legal. Cash only, please.

P.S. I saw a little Spanish girl between 4-5 years old moving a soccer ball down the street by smacking it with her doll which she was gripping by one foot. There's a metaphor or something in that.

Labels: Humor

1:35 PM

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Monday, February 23, 2009

 

Something I wrote a while ago and brushed up considerably.

Eat or Die

I am what you would call an eater. I eat things. I eat bite-sized plants and animals whole. I cut larger plants and animals into smaller, more manageable parts before eating. I eat cute little animals, and I eat ugly fruits and vegetables, and vice versa. If humans have been known ever to have eaten something, I will eat it. I will eat things which no man has eaten before. Raw, blanched, blended, steamed, boiled, stir-fried, poached, scrambled, stewed, simmered, tossed, frozen, thawed, and Buffalo-style are just a few of the ways I will devour a plant or animal. Sometimes I will mix two or three of these techniques together to stuff my face. Variety is the spice of life, as they say. Variety is good but this soup needs more salt. Spice is also the spice of life.

If you don't eat you will die. Try not eating. You will die. Life will throw out your scrawny carcass when you starve to death but death will eat you right up, bones and all. Death has an incredible appetite. I don't want to die so I eat. Death is often only a bagel with cream cheese away from where I am sitting in this coffee shop. Death circles like a vulture…waiting…waiting for me to miss a meal, waiting for me to screw up and starve to death. Death is patient. Death asks to borrow my newspaper. Death reads the box scores. Death sees that my team is in last place. Death smells death and leaves me to finish my bagel. Death instead goes to circle the clubhouse. I sigh with relief but cut it short because I remember that sighing with your mouth full of food is impolite. A near-death experience is no reason to lose your manners.

Death is relentless and so I eat relentlessly. Death never sleeps. It is difficult to eat while you sleep which is why people die in their sleep. My solution is to dream about eating. I'm not dead yet so maybe I'm on to something. Death does not play fair; nod off for a second and death will be all over you like a sweaty undershirt. I nap with a ham sandwich in my hand, an over-sized bag of generic cheese doodles resting on my stomach, a cooking show glowing in front of me. You can't be too careful. Actually you can be too careful, like the time I tried to go to sleep using a chicken drumstick as a pacifier. I woke up choking and had to give myself the Heimlich maneuver by throwing myself against the pizza delivery boy who just happened to be at the door. $10.50 for two sausage and pepperoni pizzas. I gave him $15 and told him to keep the change for knocking the wind out of him.

They say that eating too much can kill you. Lord knows I have tried to kill myself by eating too much, but so far all I have to show for my trouble are a few pairs of pants I can't wear any more. I keep them hanging in the closet just in case, just in case I lose a few pounds. You never know when a cholera epidemic will break out. When it does at least I'll have something nice to wear. Not eating will kill you faster than eating too much. Besides, while you are killing yourself by eating too much you can watch TV. There are worse ways to go—unless you don't have cable in which case I would rather be eaten by sharks.

Sharks gotta eat too. And what about worms? If we don't die what are they supposed to eat? We are trapped in a seriously vicious circle. Just thinking about it makes me hungry. I am hungry all the time so I guess you could say that everything makes me hungry. Go ahead and laugh but I would suggest that my survival instinct is just stronger than yours. About the only thing that doesn't make me hungry is eating. Eating keeps my mind off hunger. At least it does unless I am planning another meal as I eat. Thinking about bacon makes me hungry, even if I'm eating a cheeseburger.

They say that you should never shop when you are hungry but my grocery store has a strict “no outside food” policy. They have also forbidden me to try the free samples of food products they are promoting. They say that I didn't respect the “one sample per customer” rule on the free stuff. They told me not to bother wearing disguises to get free samples. I can't believe they saw through my one-armed Mexican revolutionary costume and the pregnant nun get up. Now I get my groceries delivered. I make my order during lunch. I ask if the delivery person can stop by the Chinese carry-out joint on the way over. I need a little something to tide me over until dinner.

Labels: Humor

12:36 PM

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Sunday, February 08, 2009

 

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?: A Wall Street Cautionary Tale

Companies pricing luxury items "are not selling goods, they are selling an emotion," says Jens Baumgarten, head of financial services at Simon Kucher & Partners, a strategy and marketing consulting firm.
-Forbes Magazine

Is greed an emotion? Shamelessness? Vanity? Hubris?

Back when Ronald Reagan was talking about “welfare queens” he was merely speaking hyperbolically, which is basically lying but with a party stamp of approval. He was referring to the apocryphal recipients of government aid who were driving around in Cadillacs. Welfare queens? I mean, what kind of royalty drives American? Maybe a Hummer that has been converted into a limo, but that's just for when you have too many high-priced escorts to take the Maserati. As far as lavish excesses go, we have a certain panache that those fictitious welfare cheats never dreamed possible.

Our worst fears of socialism are about to come true if we allow government to limit executive pay to $500,000 for companies receiving part of the Obama stimulus package. They can't possibly mean $500,000 a year? Granted, we all voted for candidates who opposed raising the minimum wage, but we didn't mean for us. Don't you remember watching with horror that show So You Want to be a Millionaire? A millionaire? All we could think was, “There but for the grace of God go I.” As terrifying as that program was, now we may be dealing with a federal government that wants us to work two years just to make it to the slumdog millionaire's club.

1) With a range of 3,400 nautical miles at Mach 0.80, the Gulfstream G250 corporate jet has the capability to whisk away you and three of your board members, also under indictment for securities fraud, to the closest country that does not have an extradition treaty with the U.S. which is:

A) Brazil
B) Tunisia
C) Laos
D) California

So what if we all make Marie Antoinette look like some sort of under-paid case worker for social services? We deserve everything we have. Do you think it's easy to install an entire government, from lowly congressmen right up to the president who will systematically lower our tax rates to the point where the rate paid by the richest 400 Americans fell to 17.2 percent through the first six years of the Bush administration?*

2) How many $40 bottles of Bling Water does it take to fill your bath?:

A) 40
B) If you have to ask, you can't afford it.
C) Is that sparkling or without gas?
D) $40 seems like a lot but you get a nickel deposit on the bottle.

How is it even constitutional for them to limit our pay? They should just give us the federal money and let the free market take over from there. Sure, we all support drug testing for welfare recipients and that they show proof that they are working or looking for work, but those are poor people, they can't be trusted. Many of them spend their food stamp money on excesses like ice cream and cookies. They can be so out of touch. We promise to spend tax dollars responsibly, like $87,000 for an area rug for the CEO's office at Merrill Lynch or on a spa holiday for A.I.G. executives.

3) How long can America's richest citizens count on the support of the bottom 80% of wage earners?:

A) Until the presidential election of 2012
B) Until we say so.
C) As long as poor folks keep playing lotto and believing they are one scratch away from being our neighbors.
D) Are we certain that all those guillotines have been destroyed?

Need a lifeline? You can make a call to Czar Nicolas II and family. No answer? Just let it ring. All of this talk is starting to sound like class warfare. That's what we call it when the other side decides to fight back. We prefer things to be like they were before, kind of like the moral equivalent of those glorified petting zoos where rich guys like Dick Cheney "hunt." You know, the places that keep the animals caged up until the great white hunter lumbers by, is given time to calmly finish his glass of single malt scotch, load, fire, have the guides administer first aid to other members of the party, and then fire again. We've made it even easier for the accuracy-impaired by just having them shoot pre-packaged meat right in the butcher aisle at the supermarket, although radical anti-gun hippies have made this illegal in some states.

3) This question was posed to Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street: How many yachts can you water-ski behind?

A) 1
B) More than 1
C) Don't I pay someone to water-ski for me?
D) Find out the record number of yachts someone has water-skied behind and simply add one more yacht. Do we have to do everything for you?

And now for the final question.

2) How much is enough?

A) Can you repeat that, I was busy demeaning my maid.
B) Is this a trick question?
C) A lot, an awful lot.
D) Certainly a lot more than $1 million.

Who wants to be a millionaire? Not us, that's for sure.

*www.Bloomberg.com

Labels: Humor

10:00 AM

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Wednesday, February 04, 2009

 

If you were offended by those other bus signs, how about this one?

Labels: Humor

6:57 PM

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009

 

Sneak Previews of Movies Coming to a Theater Near You

(Not really for my highly-sophisticated readers but something I submitted somewhere else)

3 Men and a Baby's Funeral

Three men of very questionable sexuality are forced to care for an infant with hilarious and ultimately fatal results. Don't try this at home! LOL

The Skinhead in the Striped Pajamas

Finally some justice on the planet when racists are sent to concentration camps. (A little boy wearing a yarmulke with a ferocious German Sheppard at his side pokes the tattooed and muscle-bound skinhead with a stick through a barbed wire fence)

Ladybug Man

The last of the insect-inspired superheroes—we promise. Really.

Hannibal Gump

The first mentally retarded serial killer. “Life is like a bowl of internal organs.” (Gump sitting on a bench wearing a dorky seersucker suit with the Lecter mask)

National Lampoon's Vacation in Hell

Lured by cheap airfares and a rising dollar, the Griswolds decide that this year it's Wally World in Baghdad! Clark desperately tries to escape as jihadists argue over the theme music to add to his youtube beheading video. Jihadist 1, “I think it should be My Heart Will Go On.” Jihadist 2, “We used that on the last video.”

Harry Potter and the Small, Dank Cell

It had to happen sooner or later. He's a magician but he can't make this marijuana arrest disappear completely. Sentence Suspended.

You Drive Miss Daisy, Bi-atch!

Snoop Dog is hired to drive around some old, wrinkled white hag.

Home, Not Alone

Macaulay Culkin and his girlfriend pretend they aren't home when MJ drops by for a visit, flowers and box of chocolates in his hand. (Michael Jackson grabs himself and let's out one of his patented “Yee HEE who”s as the couple cower on the other side of the door)

Bridget Jones's Poorly-Written Suicide Note

We wish. (A post-it note on the refrigerator door next to a coupon for ice cream reads, “By the time you read this I will already be dead and unable to make more movies”)

Honey, Bin Laden Blew Up the Kids

America's favorite bogeyman is back and more terror-licious than ever. Rated G for all audiences.

Some Complete Piece of Crap Starring Some No-Talent from SNL

Does it even matter what the story is about?

Sex and Disease and the City

What's the sound of four tramps clapping? “Another round of martinis and then it's off to the clinic for shots of penicillin.”

Indiana Jones and the Depends® of Doom

At the old folks home a very old Indy hasn't been changed in four days. Now he's in the fight of his life...to breathe!

Indian Jones and the Wrong Flavor Fruit Cup

Indy in his wheel chair with trademark hat and bull whip. “Hey, I wanted peach.”

Indiana Jones and the Email Attachment that He Can't Open

Brideshead Regurgitated

A really lame, really dusty movie about old, rich British people who have probably never had sex and if they have they thought it was icky and shameful.

Sister Act IV

The bloody saga continues. Starring Vin Diesel and directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Labels: Humor

3:11 PM

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Friday, January 09, 2009

 

Shop 'Til You Drop Or “It” Drops On You

Shopaholic spinster found dead under 3 feet of unopened goods

A spinster who obsessively hoarded clothes died in her home after a mountain of suitcases fell on her, burying her alive. The woman, 77, owned 300 scarves as well as thousands of trinkets and valuables.

There's a lesson in this story. Or is it a metaphor? I always get those mixed up. Or am I thinking of a moral? A paradox perhaps? I guess it could be a cautionary tale but I'm pretty sure it's not an analogy. Pretty much any way you slice it, the old gal is with her maker now. That's if there is such a thing as heaven, and my gut feeling tells me that there isn't. I am one hundred percent positive that you can't “take it with you,” as they say. The “it” in this case is all of the crap she had stuffed into her house and garage. Even if there were a heaven, or life after death, or a place where you meet your maker—be it god or Allah or Buddha (is he a god?) or Krisha or whoever you worship—even if there were such a place, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't really need to take your “trinkets” with you, whatever the hell they are. Is there a trinket aisle at Wal-Mart?

So why was this in the paper in the first place? Not in the paper like a newspaper but on a web page, although the web page is from a newspaper, so why? One poor old woman getting buried by her own trinkets doesn't qualify as news, not in my book. She looks a bit like Margaret Thatcher. Now that would be a news story: “Margaret Thatcher, Compulsive Shopper, Buried Under Trinkets!” But it wasn't Margaret Thatcher so it really isn't news unless there is something for readers to gain from it. I suppose that for most people it's just entertainment, like reading about celebrities. You people are really need to find a hobby. The really sad part about this whole story is that if this woman was a compulsive shopper it means she bought all sorts of stuff. I'm thinking that at some time or another she probably bought a shovel which would have come in really handy when all that crap caved in on her. I'm just thinking out loud here but if she did have a shovel but couldn't reach it that would have been really ironic, or malapropos, or apropos (if you can keep those two straight you are smarter than me, or I, I went and opened a whole other can of worms there), or tragic, or whatever. You know what I mean. And it's all kind of like sad but not “boo-hoo” sad. Just the kind of sad you feel for some stranger you read about on the internet. You can't go too overboard on the sadness thing every time you come across a sad story like this.

Come to think of it, there is something to be learned from this. If you are a shopaholic then about every 10th thing you buy—be they trinkets, scarves, or whatever—every once in a while you need to pick up a shovel, you know, just in case. Either that or you need to be equally as obsessive about stacking all of your crap as you are about buying it—maybe more so. Still, I'm not trying to be judgmental about the lady, I'm just saying. I don't think anyone has ever died from being too organized. So there is the lesson for you: Get organized before you find yourself buried under a bunch of suitcases with no shovel.

Labels: Humor

11:51 AM

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Wednesday, December 24, 2008

 

War on Christmas Update

Perhaps you have been hiding out in a cave, or waiting for the rapture in a cabin stocked with guns in the middle of Montana, or holding a candle light vigil at the McCain-Palin headquarters while your petition for a recount is being examined. I have some terrible news for you and I don't know how to tell you so I'm just going to tell you. Folks, there is a war on Christmas.

We have attempted to prove through rational inquiry that Christmas is real. We felt that we could provide more conclusive evidence than the 10,000 letters addressed to Santa Claus that vindicated Saint Nick in Miracle on 34th Street. We felt that only through scientific methods could we coerce retailers into returning to the good old days when clerks could greet shoppers with “Merry Christmas” instead of the hyper politically correct “Happy Holidays” now currently in vogue.
We began with a list of Christmas truisms and exposed them to the cruel scrutiny of scientific investigation.

Does the holiday season promote peace on earth and goodwill?

Sure, why not? Just as long as you aren't standing between me and sale items at Wal-Mart. I myself am not a violent man, but they had Hanes men's briefs on sale, three for $7. You need to give me some room to work here people or someone is going down. Next time Wal-Mart has a stampede of bargain hunters the National Guard should fire off a couple of warning shots to direct the crowd.

Can reindeer fly?

For most of you, apocryphal accounts of flying reindeer and popular ballads of the exploits of Santa’s sleigh drivers are all the proof you need, but we wanted to establish this fact scientifically. We traveled to the Lapland region of Finland to find a herd of reindeer. We transported fifteen of the sturdiest examples of the breed to our testing center at the Space Needle in Seattle. Working closely with a team of aerodynamic engineers from Boeing Aircraft we joyfully launched the reindeer, one by one, from the top of this Seattle icon.

Can reindeer fly? The short answer is “Hell no.” The Boeing people actually said that what they saw was the exact opposite of flying, but many of the test subjects certainly displayed characteristics of a species that desperately wanted to fly, and that is good enough for us. On a side note, reindeer meat is quite flavorful and tender, although the tenderness may have been the result of dropping the animals from 605 feet.

Could Santa Claus slide down a chimney?

For our next experiment we enlisted the help of 65 year old Armando Escovedo. We lowered the retired Seattle fireman into a chimney and waited to see how long it would take him to make it into the living room.

Although paramedics pronounced Mr. Escovedo dead at the scene after spending nearly three hours extracting him from his sooty grave, we feel that our test subject may have had other health issues that contributed to his demise and thus to the failure of our experiment. We are experiencing some difficulty in finding another old, gray-haired, and overweight volunteer for further investigation into this matter.

Can Santa's elves make toys for every child on the planet?

Although they refused to allow us to call them elves, we employed a group of midgets to work under harsh arctic conditions.

The result was a rather resounding Yes! Yes! Yes! We proved, without a doubt, that working a small group of “elves” 20 hours a day, seven days a week our team was able to make a hell of a lot of toys. Granted, the toys were kind of crappy, and thanks to an Amnesty International report we’re not exactly going to win any awards for being employee-friendly. Whether or not we face a human rights violation tribunal in The Hague or not, there can be no denying that it is possible to make a prodigious amount of toys using a well-motivated group of height-challenged workers. The trick is to keep them inspired. Techniques that we found to be successful were constant threats of physical violence, holding workers' family members hostage, and always supplying an open bar at company functions.

Labels: Humor

11:26 AM

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