From Cheeseburgers to Triathlons

“I acknowledge that a triathlon is an extreme test of a person’s physical and mental limits and carries with it potential for death, serious injury, and property loss.”

- Insurance waiver form
(Milton Triathlon – Subaru Triathlon Series)

Nine months ago I lost my mind; that is to say I made the impulsive decision to try the impossible and compete in the first athletic event since university (and that was a long fucking time ago, believe me!). And when I say “athletic” I mean something besides participating in frat house drinking games of Herculean scope. Since then just about every waking moment of my week and weekends have been about training for this goal.

At last, I decided I was going to try and make the last great leap from cheeseburgers to triathlons. And as of today, I have completed that summer’s goal of competing in (and surviving) three Sprint-length triathlons. The fact that I am only writing about it now three weeks later while reclining in a lawn chair at a bluegrass festival in a field somewhere in Oak hill, NY is testament that it has literally taken me this long to regain the basic use of my body. Hell, up until yesterday I had placed myself in voluntary traction on my couch waiting for the pain and aching to subside in my legs.

It has been since October of last year that I adopted the masochistic routine of someone on a serious mission to kill himself. Look at what this all means: “Tri” – meaning “three” – and “athlon” meaning, “prepare to have your sorry ass annihilated”. Before now, the only important things that I ever did in threes were toasted BLT’s and the number of daily trips to MacDonald’s. Never mind the whole swim, bike, and run thing.

Needless to say, I was to multi-sport what belt sanders are to nipples. Had somebody told me then that I would be up at the crack of dawn to swim laps at the local pool or start forgoing late Friday nights in front of the boob tube so that I could get up for an early 80k bike ride the next morning I would have responded in much the same manner as someone who has been confronted with a man riding an ostrich. And the chances of running into such a spectacle seemed much more probable then my ever-surviving one of these events.

Since then it’s been all about living the life of a crazed fitness junkie; I’ve spent the equivalent of the Gross National Income of a small developing country on sports socks; came home smelling of stinky rotting organic canal matter; purchased stocks in Bodyglide (you don’t wanna know); indulged in vegetarianism; shaved questionable body parts; and learned new and exciting ways to torture myself that would have the guards at Abu Ghraib prison green with envy. Most importantly, I adjusted to a lifestyle spent largely in a state of ever moistness.

Was it fun you ask?

Shit, no!

In fact it outright sucked. It was a total cul-de-sac of misery actually. At times, it was as if God himself were giving me the finger. But it was exciting. My feet were sore, my legs ached, my lungs burned and it made my heart beat faster than a Spider monkey jacked up on Mountain Dew. Any more excitement and I would have been a literal ‘spewnami’ of triathlete guts all over the pavement. My race stats would have been a smear at the 7.6k mark.

Yes, I have turned myself into quite a triathlete wannabe and have developed all the traits of someone totally blinded by their obsession. How else would you describe somebody who willingly volunteers for something known as “Fartlek” training? You just know this crazy bastard has got some fucking wires crossed somewhere. A year ago when I started had somebody asked me if I wanted to participate in anything with the word ‘fart’ in it they would have been immediately greeted with a judo chop to the throat!

I know now that Fartlek training doesn’t involve anything to do with bowel movements at all and, instead, is a mere reference for a form of aerobic training devised in the 1930s by Swedish coach Gosta Holmer as a means of enhancing an athlete’s continuous performance. It was originally developed for the Swedish Olympic cross-country team who had then been getting mightily pissed off at having been thrashed by the Finns throughout the 1920’s. The shame of which, simply goes without saying

Godless Sodomites.

At this point I have subscribed to all the popular Triathlete magazines and kept myself abreast of all the new lines of equipment that I would never be able to afford without taking up robbing banks. Seriously, these magazines are similar to porn in that I don’t always know what they’re talking about but I sure know I wants me some.

For example, I submit to you Exhibit A:

“Hyper-organized Type A triathlete will love the Zoot Tri Bag – this unit has more pockets than any other bag in review.”

So is it a bag or is it a unit? A hyper-whatsitnow? What the hell is a Type A triathlete exactly? I’m confused but I’m aroused. And, oh boy…pockets!

But seriously, big fucking deal.

Forget the pockets. For $89.00 how about a working defibrillator?

Or how about Exhibit B:

“The new SH-WRT51 is Shimano’s newest breakthrough in triathlon apparel. It delivers exceptional performance and consists of a rigid lightweight carbon fiber composite sole for efficient energy transfer. On this platform, Shimano adds a ventilation synthetic upper for warm weather riding and a wide single strap closure for easy entry and fast transitions. The SH-WRT51 has a seamless interior increase comfort during long races, while the attractive mint green color scheme looks good with this season’s latest tri fashions.”

Mint green? And at the modest cost of $390 – you better give me two.

What in the fuck are they even talking about?

These magazines will print page after page of full spread pictorials of “aerodynamic gel enhanced” bicycle seats that resemble splayed vaginas. Honestly, I didn’t know if I was supposed to sit on them or fuck them. The same goes for the endless editorials and in-depth exposes on running shoes, wetsuits, aero bars, hydration systems - you fucking name it - triathletes are the Batman of the athletic world. And all these articles managed to evoke a feeling in my loins not unlike the one I experienced on Prom night when I found my date passed out under the bleachers with her dress pulled up around her head.

Through this experience I have learned a lot about myself a lot about the sport. It has been a whirlwind of activity and emotion since this whole crazy train left the station. I’ve learned that Ibuprofen could be considered a vital food group. I’ve learned that pissing yourself isn’t something that triathletes necessarily frown upon. I’ve learned that there is life before 6:00am. I’ve learned that “pacing” isn’t something that just pertains to ‘All You Can Eat’ buffets. I’ve learned that Electrolytes aren’t citizens of Electrolia. I’ve learned that “carbo-loading” doesn’t have anything to do with loading cars or moving furniture. I’ve learned that “transitioning” is not some new Internet porn fetish. It's been a long strange journey indeed.

When I thought about getting into the sport I certainly wasn’t 100 per cent prepared, or even aware of the physical demand that the training would take on my mind and body. The truth is, I based my decision almost entirely after a drunken afternoon of watching these lanky skinny-assed aerodynamic Neoprene-clad motherfuckers cross the finish line at the Beijing Olympics*. They looked so slick and poised as they pistoned their way across the finish line to glory.

Shit, I could do that! How hard could it be anyway?

What I wasn’t particularly aware of then was the 10-11 months of running my sweaty gluttonous ass off on a treadmill during the winter, or sawing my bollocks back and forth on a stationary bicycle for hours at a time. There have definitely been much more glamorous moments in my life where I didn’t have snot and sweat dripping down my face and a tortured expression resembling that of a constipated orangutan. But it was all means to an end…and hopefully, not my end. It’s a very arduous (and moist) journey to the medal podium indeed!

So, dressed in an old ripped polyester track suit and equipped with a copy of the ‘Triathlon for Dummies’ book I began to plan out my next big athletic endeavor. I mean, my first athletic endeavor. However you want to look at it.

After consulting the ‘Triathlon for Dummies’ training bible I learned that it was going to be a little more difficult that jumping in the deep end and splashing out a few hundred lengths of the pool like an arthritic sea cow. The bible hinted that I would have to work on my stroking technique.

Hey, no problem there! I’ve been masturbating for years now. When it comes to stroking I am a natural athlete. If stroking were an Olympic sport I’d already be a world champion.

This was going to be easy - too easy.

Or so I thought…

Instead, it meant hours in the pool at the beckon call of my war lord swim coach early on Sunday mornings learning how to keep my head down, tuck my chin, raise my hips, bend at the elbow, loosen my wrists, extend my arm, “find the catch”, breath out of the side of my mouth, and, wait, what the fuck was I doing again?

Oh yeah, drowning.

There was a point during the winter where I thought I might be developing webbed feet given the amount of time I was spending in the pool doing laps. Don’t even get me going about the ever-present chapped lips! You couldn’t guess how hard it is to get a date with lips that looked like they belonged to a Chernobyl survivor. Yet, twice a week, I found myself enduring just these kinds of punishing drills and timed sets in some sort of self-initiated water torture. There were mornings I can remember where even Aquaman could have thrown in the towel!

In hindsight though, if I could train all over again I might consider doing things a bit differently.

To better prepare myself for the actual sensation of racing dozens (if not, hundreds) of combatants into the water to complete a kilometer or more swim I’d definitely spend less time in the pool at the YMCA. Instead, I’d just wrap myself in a rolled carpet and harness myself to an outboard motorboat and then have it drag me around while I try to swim in the opposite direction and friends are continuously punching and kicking me in the face and stomach for a half hour or so. This would be more representative of the early stages of the first triathlon leg. For added realism I could have one of those friends pour the occasion pint of canal water into my mouth through a funnel.

Enter the bicycle.

If the experience of swimming with flailing aqua warriors (not to mention the run to the bike afterwards) isn’t too much for you to handle, you will then need to immediately move on to completing a 30-55k bike ride.

Now, I had a bicycle growing up. What kid didn’t? Mine was a shiny metallic- orange Schwinn Stingray. You know the one with a 20-inch banana seat and ape hanger handlebars. And let’s not forget about those rad electrified spokes!

Yep, this sweet ride was the original Huggy Bear of pimped out bicycles. I remember going for joyrides around the block and risking life and limb to pop wheelies off the curb or jump my neighbors rose bush. I loved that ugly orange piece of chrome shit. But those childhood ambles around the ‘ol neighborhood couldn’t have been more removed from the bicycle rides that I was about to begin taking on early weekend mornings once spring arrived.

I was really looking forward to bicycle riding again. I had prepared all winter by sitting in weekly spin classes and even survived a weekly Brick workout that involved both indoor spinning and running together. Basically, it was just another way my coach was able to creatively take out all his pent up frustration in life on us hapless triathlete wannabe’s. I swear he must have lain awake at night trying to conjure up the perfect torture to unleash on our sorry asses - you could just see it in his eyes. His classes were absolutely diabolical in Machiavellian scope. Yet, endure them I did…willingly even.

There was no stopping this crazy train now!

But by the time the weather was finally nice enough that I could start cycling outside I only just then realized: I haven’t been on a bike since that Schwinn Stingray and that was nearly 25 years ago! So it was with extreme trepidation that I pedaled my way out to Starbucks at 7:00am to join a group of experienced riders on the first group ride of the season.

What the fuck had I gotten myself into?

I worked on learning to shift my gears effectively; how to keep a cadence; how to get low and aero over the bars; how to pull up on my pedals as well as pushing down; how to spin in circular motions, how to relax my shoulders and release my “death grip” on the handlebars; how to corner safely, and, ah fuck it…I learned how to go fast.

Who could have known? After all, to look at this body one would immediately assume it was originally designed with comfort in mind – not speed.

But it turns out that my new spinning legs were quite adept at making my road bicycle rocket down the tarmac at light speeds. After months of sitting on a stationary bike at the gym it was like passing through Dr. Who’s time tunnel. I enjoyed the whole process of pouring myself into my cycling shorts, clipping into my pedals and plugging into my headset before heading out for a three-hour bike ride across town.

I’ve also realized also that one can really get into their own self when they are out bicycling on their own. I’ve often been asked what goes through my mind when I’m out cycling. Am I thinking about tasks I have to complete at the office tomorrow or do I work out my grocery bill for the week? Truthfully, I don’t think much at all**. I have, however, learned that the only thing that ever goes through my head while I’m cycling is the lyrics to ZZ Top’s ‘Just Got Paid’. I don’t know why really - it’s my ‘Eye of the Tiger’ I guess. I suppose the bitchin’ melt-your-face guitar choruses just keep my legs a-goin’.

And, just for the record, my list of other favorite notable cycling tunes would also include:

· It’s a Long Way to the Top If You Want To Rock n Roll – AC/DC
· One Way Out – Allman Brothers
· Who Do You Love? – George Thurogood
· Yin & Yang and the Flower Pot Man – Love & Rockets
· Right Place, Wrong Time – Dr. John
· Move On Up – Curtis Mayfield
· Light Up Or Leave Me Alone – Traffic
· Born to Be Wild – Steppenwolf
· 30 Days In the Hole – Humble Pie
· Breaking Into Heaven – The Stone Roses

Of course, it wasn’t as if the coach was going to allow us much time to enjoy the sensation of making ourselves move smoothly and just appreciate the sunshine on our shoulders as the countryside whizzing by at 30kph as the wind passes through our helmets making that distinct sound of rushing air, no sir! Before you could whistle the first few bars of ‘Daisy, Daisy’ we were all pumping down rolling country roads and pedaling up hills with degrees of incline similar to those on the Pyramids at Giza. There were hills where I had expected to see men in tight lederhosen trumpeting on enormous flugelhorns to signal my arrival at the summit.

But still, it was infinitely more fun than reeking of chlorine and dealing with pruny skin.

If I was to ever - in any way –enhance my bike training at this point in preparation for Race Day I would set up a stationary bike in a closed garage and hook it up to a gas powered engine and crank it up. Next, I would place huge industrial fans on all sides (or perhaps just in front an engine for a Boeing 747) and power them babies up. Then I’d just pull the pin on the stationary bike’s back wheel and see how long I could remain vertical.

Enter the run. Oh hellacious misery.

Of all the triathlon disciplines running is my least favorite. There is little I would prefer running over. I’d rather pour hot lava down my shorts. I’d rather stick my dick into an angry beehive some days than drag my sorry carcass all over God’s creation in an exercise of complete sadomasochism. For me, the last running leg is the Bataan Death March before you get to cross the finish line. There is little to be enjoyed about the experience. The bible however, would have you believe that running is a “fun and pleasurable pastime that can be enjoyed by everyone”.

Get fucked.

Here’s where the ‘Triathlon Training for Dummies’ book and I part ways. Where the bible argues that there is an incredible “runners high” to be had from participating in running, I would say that you need to be loaded to the tits and high already before you could experience anything remotely enjoyable while running. The bible even goes on to say: “If you can get past that first mile and learn how to let your body relax and run naturally, you can experience the confidence, happiness, and feeling as if you can run forever.”

Are you fucking kidding me?

Whoever said that must clearly take me for a much larger dummy than this book’s intended market. Trying to explain to me how the task of running is “fun and pleasurable” would be like explaining String Theory to a mackerel. After already having accomplished a kilometer swim and a 30k bike ride running is akin to trying to pole vault with your penis - its nearly as impossible and you’re definitely sure to injure something.

You know what I enjoy about running? Stopping. And I have to still endure 5-10k of it before the end, or, I end up as a sticky puddle of prostatic secretion somewhere along the route. I’m not what you would call “graceful” when it comes to running. On the other two disciplines I can feign something as capable, but when I run I must look like John Merrick chasing after loose change.

If I were going to try and prepare any better I would set up a treadmill in the gym sauna and run for an entire week. Then I would strap a grenade to my chest, pull the pin and see how long I could carry on before it exploded.

Oh wait, that’s what it feels like already!

And lets not forget the all-important “fourth discipline” of triathlon – the transition.

The “transition” is the brief stage between the different individual legs where you move from your swim onto the bike and from your bike into the run. It’s the triathletes’ closet area so to speak. This doesn’t sound like much effort of course, until you’ve actually tried to wriggle out of a wetsuit and get into a pair of cycling shoes with unfiltered brain leakage coming out your ears moments after emerging from icy water.

Let me inform you: I can barely remember my name much less in what order to put on my helmet, gloves and sun glasses before launching into a hard 60-plus-minute cycle ride.

The transition area is cool though because it’s like window-shopping as you browse over all the thousands of dollars worth of tri equipment that belongs to everyone else. I’ve seen bicycles worth more than my student loans!

There’s computers, GPS systems, aero bars, tri shoes, wetsuits, hydration systems, power bars, power gels and other assorted goos, energy drinks, swim goggles, cycle helmets, tri bags, ad infinitum, ad absurdum, ad nauseum. Triathletes are almost bacchanalian in nature when it comes to their fancy equipment. And all of it is inevitably spread out and proudly displayed over a torn and stained hand towel laid out on the ground beside their NASA designed and custom-built tri-bike.

Fitting.

Personally, I think it’s all as useless as a bucket of armpits. Sure it’s fun and look, like, really fucking cool, but the true piece of equipment is the triathletes’ body. Without it, all the rest of that tri shit isn’t worth the bubble wrap it came in. Shit, my bicycle is so old that it remembers when Antonio Ricci delivered flyers on foot***. But it allows me to get from point A to point B relatively quickly and it does that marvelously. And there is nothing so rewarding in triathlon I have found than passing somebody who has the equivalent of Fort Knox in equipment on their person.

* I had also been watching the last 10 minutes of Ultimate Fighter so I was more than a little amped and ready to kick some ass.

** No real surprise there, eh?

*** Most obscure reference EVER!

Monkey Shines

Well, it seemed that the world has still not heeded my warning about taking the super-smart chimpanzee threat seriously. Oh, no! It’s still all “look how cute they are”, and “my, but aren’t they clever!”

That’s just what the little simian fuckers want you to believe.

The latest case in point occurred in Stamford, Connecticut recently where Travis, a 14-year old 200lb chimpanzee went all ape shit – literally –mauling a 55-year-old Carla Nash, ripping apart her face and biting off both her hands.

Why don’t you ask Carla how cute she thinks chimpanzees are? Mind you, she may have some difficulty, what with not having any lips anymore.

Travis, a veteran of Old Navy and Coca-Cola* commercials has been raised by 70-year-old Sandra Herold from the time he was 3 months old and treated like a legitimate member of the Herold family. He was toilet trained and able to feed and cloth himself. He dined on steak and lobster and sipped wine from long stemmed glasses. To pass the time, he enjoyed surfing the web, going for long car drives, watching television using the remote control, and regularly brushing his teeth with a Water Pik.

Isn’t that just perfect!

Let me tell you, the world needs itself another domesticated chimpanzee like it needs another white Ford Bronco chase. We should have bombed those Senegalese monkeys back to the Stone Age when we had a chance. Now they’re multiplying, biding their time before they unleash a full-blown Armageddon on mankind.

For all we know, Travis attacked Nash because he needed her face and limbs for a recipe he had Googled up on the Internet that morning. Who knows? Need I remind you that these are some pretty crafty sons of bitches?

All the signs are there.

Apparently, Travis had appeared somewhat “rambunctious” early that day when he stole keys from the kitchen table, unlocked the door and let himself out into the backyard. All attempts to lure him back inside failed, even after Herod slipped him some Xanax - an anti-anxiety drug used for pets and humans alike - in a cup of tea. Isn't that nice?

Great plan, let’s give the hyper-agitated tea-totaling monkey drugs. Of course, what Herod didn’t realize is that Xanax actually causes an increase in anxiety in animals before they adjust to it. So, really, she just handed the monkey the loaded weapon he was looking for with that cup of spiked tea. Shit, why don't we just give them all the launch codes now?

Enter poor Carla Nash.

Carla had driven over to assist Herod in rounding up Travis from the backyard. But as soon as she stepped out of the car at 3:40pm, Travis went at her with the full force of a runaway train, ripping at her face and biting off her hands.

Stamford Police Chief Capt. Richard Conklin indicated t the press that it was not clear what prompted Travis’ assault and surmised that it might have been Nash’s new hairstyle that confused ‘ol Travis. Yeah, that’s it. The chimp must have been offended by Nash’s sense of style after watching too many makeover Reality TV shows. Certainly it had nothing to do with the fact that it was a wild, primitive animal loaded to the tits on mind altering drugs.

Good show!

Herod, in an attempt to save her victimized friend tried to pull her chimp off, but as Conklin noted, “Sandra is 70-years-old, and a 200lb chimpanzee is much, much stronger than a 200lb human being”. In other words, Herod had a better chance of lasting 3 rounds with a cage fighter than she did in defending her friend against an enraged chimpanzee.

Instead, Herod called police for help, grabbed a butcher knife and proceeded to stab her beloved hopped up Travis several times in the back, to little effect. She also tried hitting him with a shovel; but the monkey only stopped once police arrived and started pumping him full of lead after he had knocked off rear view mirrors and ripped off the door to a police cruiser in an attempt to get an officer.

“It was horrific what happened and I had to do what I had to do, but still, I’ll miss him for the rest of my life, “ Herod commented to authorities. “He couldn’t have been more like my son if I’d given birth to him,” she said. “Monkey’s are the closest thing to us. We can give them blood transfusions, they can give us one. We share DNA. How many people go crazy and kill other people?”

Apparently, Herod does not watch the news or read blogs belonging to yours truly.

She described the attack as a “freak thing” and said Travis might have mistaken her friend as an intruder and was just trying to protect her.

Yeah, right! Again – that’s just what the monkey wanted her to think. I believe that Travis was just bidding his time, surfing porn on the Intranet, and waiting for the right opportunity to run amok and picking Nash cleaner than Pavarotti’s chicken bones.

Well, I’m not buying it and I refuse to let my guard down. The writing was on the wall with those Senegalese chimps last year, and now this! How much before we accept that chimps are the new Taliban? Forget dressing them up in cute little hats and teaching them to use the Internet and Water Pik’s…hunt the furry fuckers down and snuff them out before it’s too late.

If we wait much longer it’ll be too late and they’ll have built themselves a nuclear arsenal in their own Manhattan Project and will be threatening to nuke us out of existence.

For the love of God, people – act now!

* In this case, it would seem that Travis finally lost his taste for the ‘Real Thing’ and instead acquired a taste for human flesh.

The Vegetarian Challenge

Life is crazy. I’m absolutely convinced.

I have to otherwise I also have to admit by default that I am, in fact, crazy. And I’m not ready to admit that about myself yet; at least not now. So let’s just go with life itself is crazy, shall we?

In the meantime I’m going to attempt the impossible. No, I’m not going to take up being more politically correct or something lame ass thing like that*. I’m going to try and give up meat and go the way of vegetarian.

That’s right! The neighborhood squirrels are safe once again.

I must be out of my fucking mind. I haven’t gone off the deep end so much as I dove in myself headfirst shackled to a big rock. The day I ever included eggplant on my weekly grocery list, or ever planned to eat – much less, prepare – anything called “Pasta E Fagoli” is the day I wedged my toe into the trigger of a 20. Caliber shotgun. I mean, eating anything that has the word “fag” in it is just asking for trouble if you ask me. I think I’m already faggy enough as it is doing downward dog poses to Judge Judy and polishing my spin shoes before bedtime. What next? Going for a Brazilian ass waxing so I can look good in my new Speedo’s? Before you know it I’m buying yoga pants off a guy named ‘Chas’ down at the local Spiritual Healing Center.

God, just shoot me now!

The idea is to try and drop another 10-15 lbs without mercilessly killing myself on a treadmill or drowning at the bottom of the deep end. Whoever would have suspected that I would ever get this far? My “training”, as I liken to call it, has literally consumed me at this point. And triathlon training is no easy business let me tell you! In fact, it goes very similar to something like this: swim, pedal, run, lift, sweat, hydrate, eat, shit, sleep, repeat.

But what else do I have to do with my days exactly? I have the social life of a fruit fly. And I don’t know about any of you dear readers but, if you let your guard down for even moment you’re likely to end up seated in front of Jerry Springer with a pint of ice cream and a hot dog. So keeping busy is definitely a positive.

But anyhoo!

Now, it’s already well documented about my feelings and opinions on the subjects of vegetarianism, vegans, and especially my beloved meat. And here I am just a mere broccoli floret away from becoming one myself. It will be interesting to learn how long I’ll be able to go before I go totally berserk and end up stabbing someone with a spork; or how long before cats and dogs suddenly turn into little pork chops in collars running through the streets; or worse yet, how long before an enormous crater is all that remains of my city block after I erupt with an atomic-sized fart after eating too much spicy Indian Red Bean & Chick Pea Casserole.

If I was dangerous before I’m absolutely lethal now!

Mind you, the plan is to last for only a TWO WEEK period before I decide to commit to any further lifestyle changes. So, no, I haven’t completely turned by back on the Brotherhood of Meat Eaters. It’s not so much of a radical change in diet so much as it is a hit-and-run attack on vegetarianism itself. Think of me like an undercover carnivorous ninja sent to infiltrate the enemy compound and gather as much intelligence as I can and get the fuck out again. And if a few innocent vegan lettuceheads end up with their throats slit in the shadows – oh well.

It’s strictly business you understand.

Yeah, that sounds much cooler.

But really, what’s the worse that can happen? I could stand to lose a few more pounds anyway. It’s not like my muscles are going to completely wither way and die…Popeye ate spinach after all, right? And I know Olive Oil wasn’t much to look at but at least Popeye was getting laid; and that’s more than I can currently say! I know carnivorous chicks haven’t exactly been too cooperative with me, so maybe if I'm lucky enough there's a chance then that the vegetarian babes will be a little more, shall we say, accommodating? Perhaps the lack of complex animal proteins in their fragile hippy systems will makes them more susceptible to freaky monkey sex. Well, I can keep my fingers crossed anyway.

After all ninja’s have needs too**.

It’s not my place in the universe to criticize the miraculous mysteries of nature and the very evolution of mankind. Hey, if a minute, insignificant lack of a particular amino acid, or super complex Beta vitamin, or something strange like that should result in lower inhibitions among New Age single women between the ages of, say, 24 and 40…then good for Terry!

I’ll be on that water chestnut like cheese on a low-sodium Triscuit.

It’s good to be a vegetarian! Hallelujah!

* Don’t worry, folks, there will be lots of Downs Syndrome porno and Polish crack baby jokes to come in the near future!

** It’s ironic thought that I may actually have to seek out a vegetarian to actually gargle my beef stick…but hey, as I said before: life is crazy.

"On the Twelf Day of Christmas my true love gave to me Indigestion and a Colondectomy..."

If there is one thing I am thankful for during this special time of year it’s for the opportunity to feast with reckless abandon at all the Holiday parties. After training hard straight through the summer and fall seasons I am finally going to be able to cut loose and gorge myself at the potluck table. My goal this Christmas is to have a little of absolutely everything that’s plopped down in front of my face; then go back for seconds.

Empty calories – here I come!

In fact, with this focus in mind, I’ve done my research and laid out a strict holiday regiment to make sure I achieve Maximum Density. Below are the particular rules I plan on observing this year in order to make sure I reap 100% of the rewards of said goal. If you’re wise, I’d advise you structure yourself a similar feasting plan to maximize your enjoyment this Holiday Season.

1. Avoid carrot sticks, celery sticks, raw cauliflower and broccoli. In fact, avoid vegetable and fruit trays altogether. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing about the spirit of giving. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately! Go next door to another neighbor’s party, where they're probably serving rum balls and leave the rabbits to their cornucopia of chow.

2. Drink as much eggnog as you can…and quickly! It's rare after all. You cannot find it any other time of year but now. So drink up! Who cares that it has 10,000 calories in every sip? It's not as if you're going to turn into an eggnog-alcoholic or something. It's a treat. Enjoy it. Have one for me. Have two. Attach it to an IV drip and spike it into your veins. It's Christmas!

3. a) If something comes with gravy, use it. That's the whole point of gravy. Gravy does not stand alone. Pour it on. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy. Eat the volcano. Repeat. Mound up a huge plate and roll around in it. Become one with the mashed potato.

3. b) As for the mashed potatoes, always ask if they're made with skim milk or whole milk. If it's skim, pass. Why bother? It's like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission. Anyone who makes mashed potatoes with skim milk is clearly not your friend. I like my mashed potatoes with the risk of triple by-pass surgery, thank you very much. Ho! Ho! Ho!

4. Do not have a snack – repeat: DO NOT snack - before going to any office parties or holiday functions in an effort to control your eating. The whole point of going to a Christmas party is to eat other people's food for free. Lots of it! Hello? And another thing, if they aren’t asking to call you an ambulance by the parties end, scratch them off your list for next year – the cheap bastards.

5. Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Year's. Doctors orders! You can do that in January when you have nothing else to do. So eat your fill of pudding now as there will inevitably be lots of time to burn it off again come January 2nd. This is the time for long naps, which you'll need after circling the buffet table while carrying a 10-pound plate of food and that vat of eggnog. If you’re feeling guilty, combat those feelings by putting on a Richard Simmons ‘Sweatin’ to the Oldies’ video and help yourself to another slice of chocolate cake. Work through the pain.

6. If you come across something really good at a buffet table, like frosted Christmas cookies in the shape of Santa or an elaborately crafted Gingerbread house, position yourself near it and don't budge. Have as many as you can before becoming the center of attention. If you notice you are being watched, step away briefly from the table until attention is averted elsewhere (hopefully, somebody else helping themselves to the rum balls by the fistful) and then sneak back for more. And so the dance continues.

7. Same for pies. Apple, Cherry, Pumpkin, Chocolate, Lemon, Mincemeat, whatever. Have a slice of each. Or if you don't like mincemeat, have two apples and one pumpkin. Always have at least three slices. When else do you get to have more than just one dessert without feeling guilty? Christmas comes but only once a year! It’s Baby Jesus’ birthday for Pete’s sake. You’re celebrating! Are you going to turn down pie at Jesus’ birthday? I think not.

8. What’s that? Did someone mention fruitcake? Granted, it's loaded with the celebratory calories, but avoid at all cost. It’s just fruit masquerading as dessert. I mean have some standards. Unless, of course, you like eating on the toilet; but considering I don’t like to eat on the crapper, it’s just lost time if you ask me. If it will potentially keep me from my continuous feasting then I would avoid it like the plague. And when it comes to fruitcake it’s just too risky.

9. Invest in a pair of stretchy pliable party pants. Add this to your Christmas wish list for Santa if you need to. Like competing in any professional sport or performing any specific labor-intensive duty, you need the right tools and equipment to get the job done properly! Gorging is no different. Think of the valuable feasting time wasted or lost altogether because the waistband on your new Dockers is too restricting. Better yet, I suggest fashioning a crude toga out of your shower curtain and simply readjusting it each time you happen to add another couple of pounds.

10. One final tip: If you don't feel terrible when you leave the party or feel the irresistible urge to unbuckle your pants when you get up from the table, you haven't been paying attention. Re-read tips 1-9; start over, but hurry, January is just around the corner.

5 Things You May Not Want to Know About Me

1. I like to be complimented – a lot!

That’s right, I like hearing about the things that others like or admire in me. But who doesn’t, right? Perhaps if we gave each other more compliments and not just consistently looking to give our “constructive criticism” every chance we get, the world would be a happier, less judgmental place and not everyone would be so reliant on their Prozac prescriptions. Tell me that you like my hair, or that I have a nice ass, or just about anything that could be considered as flattering and I’ll be your friend forever.

2. I’m vain.

Yep. I sneak peeks at my passing profile in store windows and check my hair in the rear view mirror of my car; I flex my biceps in the shower so I can poke approvingly at my muscles; and I even give myself the Full Monty from time to time whenever I happen to be changing in front of a full length mirror. Hey, if nobody is going to compliment me then I’ll find excuses to compliment myself, dammit!

3. I like the smell of my own farts.

In fact, I even rank them regularly on a scale of 1-10 in respect to their overall richness, meaty texture, as well as the degree of audible resonation they create. I take pride in my farts the way any craftsman takes pride in their handiwork. When it comes to emitting gaseous clouds of sulphury toxins I’m a regular Rembrandt, where the very air around us becomes my own personal canvas to paint upon …so to speak.

4. I love my crap television.

What can I say? Whether it’s Judge Judy, Myth Busters, any Reality Show, or even just a repeat of The Golden Girls, I just love watching my crap television shows. I don’t watch television to “learn stuff”. I want to feel some sort of penitence for wasting my time sitting on the couch staring mindlessly at the boob tube. Hell, if it’s informational or could be considered as educational in any way I’ll inevitably flip the channel quicker than a closet Conservative. I work hard enough as it is during the day that I don’t want to come home to watch any detailed episodes of CSI, House, or any of the tired Home Renovation bullshit that may require me to think. They’re too stressful and too thought-provoking. By the time I get home I just want to relax and let my brain switch off until it literally oozes out my ear.

5. I like country music.

Now let’s be very clear here: I don’t approve of that jangly cosmopolitan New Country nonsense you hear nowadays; I’m talking about the good ‘ol fashioned rhythmic twing-twang of Old Country. You know, back when country singers didn’t necessarily have to wear ten gallon hats to advertise themselves as a country-western star or feel the impulse to marry a struggling B-list actress. I’m talking about the good ‘ol days when country stars sung songs strictly about whiskey, loose women and the natural love that exists between a man and his horse. There was no Achy-Breaky Heart, no Boot Scootin’ Boogie’s, and especially no Cotton-Eyed Joe’s of any kind. Any country singer worth his chewing tobacco will have a serious drinking problem, been divorced about a dozen times and have at least one semi-autobiographical song about being in jail. Anyone missing any one of these criteria is just a country and western poser in my opinion.

Electoral Nightmare

I’ve decided that I don’t like Election Day. In fact, I hate the whole voting thing altogether.

Now before you begin sharpening up your pitchforks and pre-lighting your pyres, it’s not the democratic system that I have the problem with it’s the whole elaborately detailed electoral process we are forced to go through in order to cast our votes.

C’mon, this isn’t Pakistan – this is Canada!

The whole “voters anxiety” thing begins for me the moment I walk into the public school auditorium where my local polling station is situated. Maybe it’s a reaction to some long forgotten memory of being gang-wedgied in the change room in Grade Four, or the harsh memory of having forgotten my lines in the Christmas play and pissing myself right there in that very auditorium. Whatever the case, the moment I pass through those front wooden doors of the auditorium I begin sweating like the pig that knows he’s dinner.

It’s like I’m walking through the revolving doors of some Old West saloon ready to confront trigger-happy banditos. Except as I enter, it’s pairs of gray-haired seniors wrapped in checkered shawls protectively hunched over their polling cards and suspiciously eying you in case you ever attempted to sneak at peak at anyone else’s ballot. Do not underestimate these harmless looking polling clerks; they’re part electoral officer, part ninja. They may look like residents at some retirement village but they’d sooner throw themselves on a grenade than ever risk exposing your vote to prying eyes.

And they take voting very seriously boy!

Don’t ever try to make small talk with them or attempt anything guised as humor. You can just tell by the way they look you up and down as you approach their polling booth that they’re sizing you up for potential weaknesses lest you should be thinking of committing some heinous act of terrorism. They’d puncture your juggler with their ballpoint and have you booked on the next flight back to Moscow before you hit the floor.

You’re here to vote, motherfucker…and don’t you forget it.

Then it gets a bit confusing.

After taking what seems like ages to locate your name on their polling list they hand you a card, a pencil, and shoo you away again over to another polling booth in the distance to cast your vote.

I, however, made the mistake of just trying to cast my vote right there at the table in front of them and judging by their reactions, this was akin to dousing myself in kerosene and setting myself on fire. Both polling officers recoiled in terror at almost having witnessed where I placed my ‘X’. One of them actually reached out quickly and snatched the pencil from my hand before my offending vote could ever be cast, oh the horror!

“You must cast your ballot behind that wall over there”, he explained. “We can’t ever be allowed to see your vote”.

Oh?

What would happen exactly if they somehow accidentally saw for whom you voted? Would they shrivel up and turn into dust like a vampire exposed to the sun? Would they be hauled away by government officials and sent to some remote electoral gulag in northern Greenland? Whatever, they seemed to be very animate that I must cast my vote behind a two-foot wall set up on a smaller table another 10 ft. away in the corner.

I ambled over behind the wall and without hesitation cast my vote. But not before attempting to engage the election officers in a quick game of peek-a-boo from behind my two-foot voting barricade…to no avail of course. I folded up my ballot as best I could and headed back to the polling station again feeling rather proud of myself* when I was informed that I had folded the ballot wrong.

Uh-oh.

Everything started to go all ‘Orange Alert’ very quickly. I started to panic and expected the storm troopers to begin rappelling in through the auditorium windows at any moment. Surely this was the last thing I would ever do as a member of the free world before being shipped off to Guantanamo.

Instead, the electoral officer gingerly took my ballot and unfolded it slowly and carefully with her head turned in the opposite direction the entire time. You’d think that there was a good chance that the ballot was going to blow up in her face if she happened to cast eyes on it. She then delicately refolded it and handed it back to me with a notable sigh of relief.

You’d think she’d just defused a bomb or something.

Look, lady…do you want my vote or an origami swan?

Anyway, I tucked it neatly into the ballot box where it disappeared for good much to the satisfaction of my electoral officers. As I left the premises I couldn’t help but feel that the whole process had seemed rather exaggerated and too shrouded in mystery. I think the election process should be simplified somewhat.

Forget all the secret ballot hocus-pocus let’s get more interactive. You could have all your riding candidates for each party lined up on stage and we, the voters, are invited to walk up and kick our chosen candidate square in the quiones where it’s recorded for all posterity by an electoral officer.

Why such a harsh voting method you ask? Well, two reasons actually. One: casting a vote by kicking your candidate in the Charlie Brown’s would serve as a warning and pertinent reminder to keep their campaign promises once elected. And two: anybody willing to be repetitively nailed in the junk really wants to be in politics, and not because it’ll help booster more t-shirts sales at the next clan rally.

It may be a tad medieval, but I believe it would work. It would certainly help get me out to the polling stations!

And who did I vote after all you ask?

Green. That’s who.

I figure that even if they only manage to save a few trees or preserve some a few extra acres of prime snowy owl habitat they may be just become the first party in recent Canadian Election history to ever keep one of their campaign promises.

* I almost flashed them my ballot just to see their reaction but I thought better of it.

Trunkspotting

First it was chimps with sharpened sticks; then we taught them how to control robotic limbs. Combine this with the fact that we’ve also taught rats to use rakes and you’ll see that we’ve practically signed our own death warrants.

But just in case you need any further proof that the animal kingdom is clearly making a serious bid to dethrone mankind from the top of the food chain, consider these two late-breaking news stories:

“Black bears munchies lead to Utah grow-op”

Well, ho-lee shit!

Never mind Smokey the Bear, that’s all we need but some pothead bear wandering around the wilderness looking to score. It’s bad enough we have to put up with them at the city dump and raiding our camp sites n’ all but now we also have to worry about having them smoking our precious weed too.

At least Smokey the Bear had a purpose: to put out forest fires. I doubt very much that any stoner bear is going to lend much hand in preventing anything other than, maybe, glaucoma.

Investigators say a large black bear raided a clandestine marijuana growing operation so often that it chased the grower(s) away. Deputies found food containers ripped open and strewn about al over, along with claw marks and bear prints everywhere. All that was really missing from the scene was a water bong and a Nintendo Wii and you’d have the apartment of any respectable University drop out.

Point is; bears should not smoke the ganja. Despite the fact that it may make them too lazy to give chase or too lethargic to actually give a shit about anything at all, I still don’t support the giving of anything that might also lead to the enhancing of their appetites.

Bumping into a black bear is bad enough; never mind a black bear with the munchies! You’re just a walking Ding-Dong at that point. And that’s never going to end up well is it?

Before you know it the entire pyramid of earth’s inhabitants will be upset and we’ll have bears begging for loose change outside bus stations to support their habits.

But then again, maybe the problem of bears partaking has been around for much longer than we realize. After all, look at Yogi and Boo Boo.

Here are two of your classic stoner stereotypes: hungry, clumsy, forgetful, and then there’s that dopey slang in which they talk to each other, “isn’t that right, Boo Boo?” Yeah, sounds like hippy to me. Let’s not forget the fact that they are also so driven by the monkey on their back that they are reduced to stealing helpless camper’s picnic baskets.

We should have been taking notes all along.

What next you ask?

“Rehab stint cures elephant’s heroin addiction”

Yep, that’s right! You guessed it.

Apparently it’s true; marijuana is also a gateway drug for animals to move towards harder, more consequential drug use. One minute you’re raiding picnic baskets to satisfy your munchies and the next thing you know you’re a four ton elephant turning tricks in some Beijing alleyway in order to afford your next fix of smack.

Cue the Iggy Pop as it’s a Dumbo-turned-Trainspotting kind of plotline, when Xiguang, a four-year-old male Asian elephant, became addicted after he was captured by smugglers along the Chinese-Myanmar border in March 2005 who used heroin-laced bananas as a means of controlling him. Xiguang was found suffering from withdrawal after being released by the smugglers. When the poor beast was discovered, he was wearing a worn skirt and fuck-me boots while offering trunk jobs to passing tourists.

Much longer and he probably would have also had a #1 hit album a well.

So for the past three years, Xiguang has been given his daily methadone injections in doses five times larger than those given to us human junkies and now he’s a s clean as the new-fallen snow.

That’s awesome!

Picture the morning roll call at the next “Promises” celebrity rehab center: Brittany, Lindsay, Amy Winehouse, and a four ton Chinese elephant.

Boy, I’d love to be a fly-on-the-wall for that meeting.

Why do we tempt fate like this? First we give them weapons, then we teach them to use gardening implements, then we give them access to drugs.

Not smart!

We may as well just sign ourselves over as the supreme rulers of planet earth now. We’re just never going to learn are we?

And the animal apocolypse draws closer...

Getting the Goods on Gustov

Just in case you’ve been spending this holiday weekend under a rock you know that it’s once again that wonderful magical time of season. That’s right, it’s...

...Hurricane Season!

It’s baaaaaaaaack.

This time the latest weather threat comes from Hurricane Gustov who was poised to slam into the Gulf Coast states on this fine Labor Day long weekend. Gustov has been tracked from day one on its path across the Gulf of Mexico and is currently ranked as a Category 3 hurricane by meteorologists and storm enthusiasts alike with the possibility of turning into a Category 4 or 5 hurricane later.

Oh yeah, baby!

What’s a Labor Day weekend without your 24 hour levee watch?

So it’s going to be nothing but swirling meteorological diagrams and wind swept beach lines on the boob tube for the next few days at ‘ol Chez Tigerrabbit. It’s become somewhat of a Labor Day tradition around my place over the last few years since Hurricane Katrina. There’s been Hurricane Ernesto, Dean, Felix, Humberto, Bertha, Dolly and most recently Charley. And of course there’s Hurricane Hanna and Ike still on the way yet.

I just loves me my late-breaking Labor Day hurricane updates

Yep. Labor Day without regular CNN hurricane updates is like Christmas without presents, Easter without colored eggs, or Halloween without tooth decay. Next to white socks and picnics, hurricanes are the very essence of Labor Day. In fact, Hurricane Reports have replaced the Jerry Lewis Telethon as the primary television broadcast of the holiday long weekend*.

And where’s Anderson Cooper you ask?

Why “Mr. 360” has already situated himself at ground zero in downtown New Orleans fighting the winds and the rain on the corner of Bourbon Street in order to bring his viewers an actual first hand experience of what it’s like to get blown around in 110 mph winds and soaked with torrential downpour.

Thanks for keeping it real, Anderson.

So with two days to go until landfall one has to wonder: has the good State of Louisiana done something specific to piss off Mother Nature? Did she get served a funky order of crawdad’s or something because she sure seems to have a serious hate on for these New Orleans folk like God has a hate on for the Boy Scouts.

The difference is that Hurricane Gustov, after all the hype it received from Thursday onward, came and went with all the fury of a wet fart. As far as hurricanes go – Gustov was a complete flop. Only the odd leaky levee and battered tree branch resulted after the storm hit landfall - hardly the stuff that decent disasters are made from.

But that didn’t stop FEMA from taking serious preemptive action in saving the good people of New Orleans from possible harm. It seems that FEMA has learned its lesson after Katrina in 2005.

PROTECT THE LEVIS AND DIAPERS AT ALL COST!

That’s right! Where New Orleans mayor Ray Nagrin encouraged people to flee the city last time, he all but kicked their asses out this time. Furthermore, he made it clear – to the people of the St. Bernard Parish in particular – that anyone caught looting in the streets this time would be automatically shipped to Angola State Penitentiary for immediate processing.

"You will not get a pass this time...you will go directly to Angola Prison and God bless you if you go there", Nagrin said matter-of-factly.

So the message that unless you like the idea of becoming the prison bitch for some guy named ‘Bubba’ in Cell Block D you’ll get your butt on one of those evacuation buses out of town.

Atta boy, Ray! Way to get in there, lay it down and kick some ass.

A world without Levi’s and Pampers is not a world worth living in.

But honestly, who is their right mind would ever be intimidated by anyone or anything named Gustov? Is this the best name they could come up with? If they really wanted to motivate people to leave the city and heed the danger warnings seriously they would have called it something like Hurricane Adolph, or Hurricane Bin Laden or something a little more mellow dramatic and threatening.

As it is, Hurricane Gustov sounds like some harmless migrant worker whose come to visit for the weekend.

* Although it is debatable over who blows more – Jerry Lewis or Hurricane Gustov.

Random Ponderisms

It’s been a rather boring day today and so I have been passing the time browsing the Internet in search of some of the weirder, more bizarre factoids about life in general. After all, you never know when you might need to drop one of these informational tidbits at your next poker game gathering or around the water cooler at work.

Here is a selection of some of the more interesting ones I discovered.

1) A pig’s orgasm can last up to 30 minutes.

Wow, lucky swine! So apart from being extremely tasty with a honey-glaze and served with a side-order of home fries, pigs just may be the luckiest animal on the planet. I know if you give me half hour orgasms I would totally accept the risk of ending up as someone’s Easter feast.

2) The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket

This particular discovery eventually later led to the ever popular opening line: “Hey, is that a melted chocolate bar in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?”

3) The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by the early Egyptians in 2000 B.C.

Well, duh? Who’d ever want to jump in the sack with someone with crocodile crap smeared on their schwantz? Very effect indeed, I’d say.

4) 5% of Canadians don’t know the first seven words of the Canadian national anthem, but know the first nine words of the American national anthem.

Why is this a statistic and why hasn’t anybody done anything about this yet? Deport these unpatriotic dipshits! If they love the American national anthem so much why don’t they go live there? Forbid them to eat back bacon or drink Molson products or something as some sort of punishment. At the very least, to take advantage of our free health care, a person should be made to recite the entire Canadian national anthem before receiving any medical treatment whatsoever.

5) A Saudi Arabian woman can divorce her husband if he doesn’t give her coffee.

How does that make any sense? Just imagine the repercussion here in North America if we ever bestowed our women the same kind of privilege. Men would practically become professional baristas upon marriage. Never mind marriage counseling, we’d instead be enrolled in night classes at Starbucks. First it’d be coffee; then maybe a Danish; eventually we’d be turned into subservient errand boys for our dominant females. Now I’ll do just about anything for sex but fetching coffee for the rest of my life doesn’t sound very enticing either.

6) Honeybees have hair on their eyes.

Just imagine how long it takes the female honeybee to get out of the bathroom before going out?

7) “Kemo Sabe” means “soggy shrub” in Navajo.

Makes you rethink what kind of relationship the Lone Ranger had with Tonto, doesn’t it?

8) The Sanskrit word for “war” means “desire for more cows”.

That also means then that Black Sabbath’s infamous rock anthem roughly translates to “Desire for More Cow Pigs”…not nearly as hardcore if you ask me.

9) When you’re born you you’re born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206.

Where do they go exactly? Is this another example of alien abductions or something? Very creepy!

10) Ambergris is the most expensive substance traded on the world market and is commonly used in the production of most expensive brands of perfume.

Just for the record: ambergris is the biliary secretion of a sperm whale. Consider that next time you drop a fortune on a bottle of ‘Eud d’ Whale Puke’ for your sweetheart next Valentine’s Day.

11) In Texas, it's against the law for anyone to have a pair of pliers in his or her possession.

Why? That’s pretty funny considering it’s perfectly legal for someone to carry a firearm instead. Personally, the pliers sound like the lesser of two evils. After all, what cashier is going to be intimidated by being held up with a pair of pliers? What’s the robber going to do – threaten to loosen all the bolts holding the counter together if they don’t immediately turn over all the money?

12) Sherlock Holmes NEVER said, "Elementary, my dear Watson."

More than likely, bing the A type personality he was, Holmes would have said something more along the lines of “get your head out of your ass, dipshit!” Conversely, Watson ever reply with, “No shit, Sherlock!”

13) Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.

Ah, damages the suits or the astronauts? Because I can’t imagine spending a few days or a week enclosed in any air-tight zero gravity compartment with another gassy astronaut. How torturous would that be? Then again, given my current over-active metabolism I wouldn’t be able to eat – period! Just a single serving of broccoli would be enough o launch myself into orbit without the aid of a rocket. So I guess those childhood dreams of blasting off into outer space have been dashed once and for all.

14) It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the "honeymoon".

How awesome is that? Marriage would suddenly become a whole lot more inviting to me if the father-in-law were required to keep me drunk for a month afterwards. Of course, there would be no guarantee of what kind of performance I would give on my wedding night.

15) To "testify" was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.

Imagine that. Here’s a practice we need to get back to! I’d say we’d have a better time trying hardened criminals if they knew they were liable to have their bollocks lopped off should they ever be found to be lying.

Phelp This!

In the wake of Michael Phelps 8 gold medals in Beijing, the world public is now engaged in debate regarding the validity of this young swimming phenom’s recent Olympic success. How exactly does a 23-year-old man adapt himself so efficiently to the water and single-handedly smash so many world records? Does he have a legitimate gift for swimming or is he just some sort of genetic freak?

Either way, I’m just plum sick of hearing about it. I’d rather stick my dick into an angry beehive than deal with it anymore.

The media accounts goes on forever about his abnormally long torso, which, like the hull of a boat allows him to ride high on the water propelled by abnormally long, flexible arms and shoulders. Then there are his short, double-jointed knees and pliable ankles attached to monster size 14 feet which help him undulate like a marine mammal. And don’t even get me started on about his freakish wingspan which is about 3 inches longer than his 6-4 height.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but can he balance a ball on his nose or jump through a hoop?

Honestly, are we talking about an Olympic caliber athlete here or some mutant half-man, half-fish hybrid for fuck sakes? Geez, throw in webbed toes and gills and you have yourself a prime candidate for someone you’d expect to find behind the red curtain at any carnival freak show. After watching all the ESPN bio coverage of the Olympic pool events in the Beijing Water Cube complex, it’s enough to make your head spin*.

Okay, so it’s a given that Michael Phelps may just be the love child between Aquaman and a bottlenose dolphin in a cooler, more streamlined swimsuit, but what really irks me is that people are also now attributing his success to the fact that he was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 9-years-old, and so, has more energy to burn than other average athletes.

What sense does that make?

Since when did being hyper disqualify someone from winning a gold medal? Even still, the whole “turning a potential tragedy into victory” is just too much to stomach.

It’s Lance’s balls all over again.

Shit, if Lance Armstrong is a super human then Michael Phelps must be a direct descendent of Atlantis or something. But at least Phelps hasn’t started any new rubber bracelet trends – yet.

But anyway, to his defense, the fact that little Michael couldn’t focus his attention long enough to last an entire episode of Scooby Doo without tossing the family cat into the microwave is kind of irrelevant now isn’t it? I say ‘Bravo!’ for his mother Deborah for getting him involved in something constructive in order to help focus his attention, but do we have to continually hear about it?

If I were given the choice of spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid in my lap or weathering another report about Michael Phelps athletic anomalies I’d take the hydrochloric acid as that would be less painful.

Shit, I was a bit hyper as a child too but it didn’t automatically qualify me as an Olympic champion. Then again, the true physical prowess and extreme athleticism of chronic masturbating was never fully appreciated by the Olympic Committee.

Oh well, “C’est la vie!”

I could’ve been a contender too!

But this is only where the whole Michael Phelps ball of wax begins. There is also the whole business aspect to consider as well. Fish Boy is now on target to being the biggest and most popular Olympic athlete ever as far as advertisement and endorsement deals go. He stands to rival America’s leotard-clad sweetheart Mary Lou Retton for future celebrity status. And ‘ol Mary Lou only won one Olympic gold medal in her 1984 Olympic outing – not eight!

Big businesses are already lined up to literally hand over the cash – and pizza - to America’s new superstar. Phelps has received top endorsements from companies like Visa, Speedo, Omega, Hilton, and AT&T. On Facebook, more than 795,000 people have officially declared themselves fans of Michael Phelps – that’s nearly a cult status if you ask me. From there, he’s only a short dolphin kick away from being the next idiot to jump up and down on Oprah’s couch and oh, by the way, don’t forget to have some of the purple Kool-Aid.

There are entire websites dedicated to debating over whether Michael Phelps has a girlfriend or not. Huh? Who cares? Well even if he doesn’t, after the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games he’ll inevitably have more girlfriends than MacDonald’s will serve customers.

In fact, Phelps’ business agent Peter Carlisle estimates that Michael could expect to make anywhere between $3 million and $5 million this year and then doubling with each subsequent gold medal. All in all he be worth as much as 100 million dollars over the course of his lifetime in product endorsements alone.

Not bad for a hyperactive aquatic mutant from Baltimore.

Kellogg’s is also planning on putting Michael onto there boxes of Frosted Flakes and Corn Flakes. I wonder how Tony the Tiger feels about this development. Suddenly Tony isn’t good enough for the legions of young American Olympic hopefuls? Who decided exactly that a long-armed, simian-fish mutant of a man is going to sell breakfast cereal?

That’d turn me onto oatmeal faster than you could say “There’re great!”

Yep, Michael can do no wrong these days. He could create an alternative fuel out of puppies and the world would line-up into 2012 for a chance to purchase some.

Well, not this guy! I’m too busy perving over the women’s beach volleyball to give a second consideration to the whole Phelps juggernaut. He can take his free pizza and shove it up his ass for all I care.

* Except of course, that fish can’t turn their heads - take that Fish Boy!

Seven More Deadly Sins

Way back in the 6th century, Pope Gregory handed down a list of "seven cardinal vices” from his lofty Vatican throne. These vices would then live on throughout Christendom as the infamous “Seven Deadly Sins”. The Church would continue to utilize this list in order to properly outline a strict classification system of vices to better educate and instruct early Christian followers on the fallen man's tendency to sin.

Yeah, yeah, whatever; it also meant the end of anything that could ever be considered “fun” for Catholics everywhere.

Any pious Catholic - not to mention any respectable Kung Fu aficionado - knows this list by heart already. But for those of you without a soul here’s a little refresher:

Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride.

Remember those old chestnuts?

Shit, throw in ‘Resisting Arrest’ and ‘Defecating In A Public Fountain’ and that’s my average Saturday night!

For whatever reasons these original Granddaddy’s of Evil remained pretty much intact and unedited by the Vatican for nearly 1400 years. That’s pretty impressive actually. Of course, they were originally stolen anyway from the Greek monastic Evagrius of Pontus who listed eight offences and wicked human passions in an order of increasing seriousness, but who hasn’t stolen from the Greeks at one point or another am I right?

So on with the story; fast forward to 2008:

The Vatican has once again reissued their list of Seven Deadly Sins with one notably difference: there are now FOURTEEN deadly sins.

Rwoh-oh!

That can’t be good.

It seems that the Vatican has now decided to unveil a list of new and improved deadly sins for our modern 21st century world, or “New Sins for a New Century”, as they so eloquently put it. Now, apart from the fact that it’s only a mere eight years too late as it is, why fuck up a perfectly good list now?

Why fuck with tradition - particularly God’s tradition?

That some serious tradition! It even makes things like running with the bulls in Spain, slipping a whoopee cushion under someone’s ass in early April, or even the Olympics themselves every four years seem like random pissing contests.

This is fucking sin we’re talking about here.

So listen up people!

I’m about to once again save your poor, pathetic excuse for an existence from ending up roasting alive in Purgatory for evermore once fate decides its time to shuffle off this mortal coil once and for all.

Lets take a look our revamped list of new millennium no-nos, shall we?

Now, besides the original seven, in order to be admitted beyond the Pearly Gates of St. Peter you must also abide by these additional holy nuggets sent forth to address to the "decreasing sense of sin" in our modern world: genetic modification, human experimentation, polluting the environment, social injustice, creating poverty, excessive wealth, and taking or selling drugs.

I guess I’m currently riding first class on the express train to Satansville - how about you?

First of all, I’m guessing that means no more growing cocks on the back of mere cats in hidden genetic laboratories. Which also means that my dreams of one day farming a monster 13’ schlong to be surgically grafted to my groinal area has also been dashed forever.

Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, the Vatican's number-two official for sins and penance – known as the ‘Apostolic Penitentiary’ - told L'Osservatore Romano that he saw bioethics as posing the greatest risks for the human soul.

By “bioethics”, Girotti means birth control. You’d think that after centuries of plight and plague - not to mention the world’s growing hunger problem - that the Church would have loosened up on it’s whole anti-condom stance…but I digress.

"(Within bioethics) there are areas where we absolutely must denounce some violations of the fundamental rights of human nature through experiments and genetic manipulation whose outcome is difficult to predict and control," he told the Vatican's official newspaper on Sunday.

The Roman Catholic Church has of course spoken out in the past about it’s hate on* for stem cell research as they believe that all conception can only result in the sloppy ending of a good rodgering.

Call them old fashioned.

So much for curing cancer or genetic birth defects, all biogeneticists are going to Hell in a collective hand basket. Now, I love ‘The Nature of Things’ as much as the next guy, but who in their right mind would ever want to spend eternity with David Suzuki?

And what’s with the human experimentation? Did somebody leave the Space Channel on at the Vatican or something? But then again what’s life without a little ritual dissection amongst friends, right?

I suppose we’ll always have Gillett to fall back on. It may just be the grinding out of lit cigarettes into the eyeballs of innocent baby bunnies but I’ll take whatever fun I can get in this mad, cruel world.

Also interesting to note, is that the Church has also started to target lending assistance to the “widening divide between rich and poor”, as well as personally striving to achieve excessive wealth.

Umm, I hate to be the naysayer here but isn’t the Vatican itself worth an estimated 50 billion dollars? I’d really be interested in knowing what they deem to be “excessive” then.

Isn’t that like the pot calling the kettle just a bit black?

The Church has not only the power to significantly aid world poverty but to actually kick world poverty’s ass once and for all! But yet, I’m going straight to Hell if I don’t immediately drop my change in the ‘Take A Penny, Leave A Penny’ jar on store counters.

Maybe if the Church were to melt down some holy relics in order to finance the rebuilding of Banda Ache or to construct badly needed irrigation systems in Central Ethiopia and I might just give this ridiculous notion a second thought.

Until then, I’m keeping my pennies.

Surprisingly, the Vatican continues on with its “Go Green” platform in its new list by declaring the polluting of the environment to be a sin.

Boy, I’d hate to be the CEO of Tim Horton’s Inc. right now. That son of a bitch is going to burn for sure!

But I can get behind and support this new pollution sin for sure. I already wish sudden death on those people I see tossing Burger King wrappers or smoldering cigarette butts out their windows while driving down the Interstate. It’s about time we waged holy Jihad on these ass baskets. Pitching one crumpled up burger wrapper or empty coffee cup anywhere but in a waste can, should be equitable to hard time in some Old Testament style penitence.

And never mind being tossed into a pit of snakes, boiled alive in oil, smothered in brimstone, being dismembered, broken on any wheel, or being forced to eat rats and toads, or any of the other traditional old school penitence cures. I’m talking about introducing some new school beat downs. Something even more ghastly than anything your typical harsh Biblical mind could conjure up. Something like being forced to watch ‘Golden Girl’ reruns, or having your genitalia lashed to the bumper of a Humvee.

And as far as the drug abuse part goes, well, considering the kind of world I’d be living in, given the avoidance of all these dangerous new social sins, I’ll just have to take a Mulligan on this one.

The real funny part is that the Vatican has only now re-released this list in response to a survey that shows that 60 per cent less Catholics in Italy go to confession regularly. Too boot, Archbishop Girotti also complained about the increasing numbers of people in the secularized West were “making do without God”.

Hey, no offence there bud, but given that just about everything I do from the time I step outside my front door is somehow going to have me immediately teleported directly into the seventh level of Dante’s Inferno, why wouldn’t I want to check out what the fat, bald dude is laughing about?

“Know what I mean there, Vern?”

I’m just a simple guy. I like my steaks bloody, my movies full of explosions and gratuitous sex, and I like to hit the pipe like an OG Gangsta before I settle down to watch me some Discovery Channel. After all, life can’t be all stain-released and wrinkle-resistant can it?

Shit no!

A world without weed, genetic cock farms, or human experimentation is a world I don’t want to live in!

* As they do for most things.

The Curse of the Boy Scouts Renews

(This post was made against the good advise of my girlfriend. But I'm posting it anyway. I just have to believe that out there somewhere there is at least one person who has thought along similar lines. So this one is for you - you poor, sick bastard you.)

Coming in the wake of a particularly violent season of severe storms and irregular freak weather, a veritable meteorological coup-de-tat of tragedy befell the small town of Little Sioux, Iowa last week. If God had a hate-on for the Boy Scouts before, he sure as shit has one now! What he didn’t finish back in June 2005 he made up for three years later in 2008.

Add four more to the count. That's God nine; Boy Scouts zilch

On Wednesday, June 14^th at 6:30pm CST, a tornado touched ground in the Little Sioux Scout Camp where 120 people, including 93 kids aged 13-16 were participating in a special Leadership camp. Four scouts were killed and dozens more injured.

The approaching storm cell was just about completely hidden away from the unsuspecting scouts by the surrounding hills and it is doubtful that any real advance notice was given at all. Although two warnings were issued minutes before the tornado struck they were probably drowned out by vigorous rounds of Kumbaya. All in all, nearly 1,800 acres of property was virtually destroyed by the deadly tornado, including a few cabins and most of the tents and trees.

Pretty horrific, eh?

So am I going to have fun, anyway?

You bet your sweet bippy.

The CNN ghouls, lead by Anderson Cooper of course, could barely contain their glee as they repeatedly described all the horrific details of the calamity for the media cameras. At first, they weren’t certain that the storm was in fact an actual tornado and so instead described it as a “Big Wind Event”.

Nice.

A “Big Wind Event” sounds like the perfect name for an Olympic style farting competition if you ask me.

They would then later go on to describe 2008 so far as the most “tornadic” year ever”.

WTF?

What the hell does that mean? Is that even a word? While we’re at it, why not start dropping other such hip vernacular chestnuts as ‘tornadoful’, ‘tornadoriffic’, or even ‘tornadolicious’? How cool does that make tornados sound? Almost makes me want to pack up my flimsy nylon tent and head off for Tornado Alley.

Almost…except I have my merit badge in ‘Common Sense’ that is.

So pardon me for asking, but where exactly in the Scouting Handbook does it say that it’s okay to go tent camping in the height of tornado season? In fact, lets just leave all communication instruments behind and gaily jaunt off into a dangerous storm cell with our Colemans.

Good thinking.

Officials were saying that they didn’t really have way of knowing if there were other people in the park and so they were going to continue treating the situation as a search-and-rescue operation. Scouts must have been literally sticking out of tree trunks after they impacted with them headfirst at 300 m/ph. Some kids took refuge in ditches, and some others were buried underneath a collapsed chimney in one of the cabins.

“It ripped all the doors open and my ears popped a couple of times and then all of a sudden the next thing I know the walls and the roof are just totally gone and the chimney and the building fell over on top of some kids and sent one table flying which hit me on the back”, said 15 year-old staff member Rob Logsdon.

He also tells “we were sitting there watching lightning…and we saw it [the tornado] come around the end of a bluff toward the entrance to the camp”.

So much for “Always Be Prepared”.

As God’s bullet zeroed in on the helpless Boy Scouts, an adult leader ordered everyone to get under the picnic tables.

Good job, dipshit. Get under a few painted planks of 2 x 4’s.

But then again, a few square feet of mere canvas tarp stretched between four thin, aluminum tenting-poles doesn’t offer much protection from the super-powerful winds either, does it?

These kids were screwed right from the start.

Yep, I’d sure think twice about venturing out for camps of any sort if I were a Boy Scout. If it’s not lightning or stupidity, there’s also a good chance that a sneaky killer tornado is going to you.

Shit, I’d rather become a Girl Guide!

Not many severe storm warnings, or tragedies for that matter, are registered on people’s front porches while peddling confection cookies. Seems a lot less risky to me.

The same storm cell that spawned the ‘Scout Buster’ in Iowa also struck other locations in the Midwest causing severe flooding and literally leveling several other communities. It terrorized the Kansas State University’s campus damaging several engineering and science buildings including a wind erosion lab*, as well as tore the roof off a fraternity house in Manhattan…and not in the good way either!

That’s a pretty big-ass storm, eh?

'Ol God must really must have wanted to finish it off this time; leaving no fabricated building or dwelling unturned in his effort.

* How’s that for ironic?

Breakfast At Lucifer's

I had the unfortunate experience this morning of having a bowl of Alpen cereal and let me tell you: YUCK!

I had originally settled on this particular brand of breakfast cereal as it advertised itself on the shelf as a “naturally delicious Swiss style cereal”. Who doesn’t love the Swiss, right? But as it turns out, the only thing “naturally delicious” about this Alpen cereal was the box it came in. I understand that the Swiss are already notorious world round for their yummy chocolate, buxom swimsuit models, reliable time pieces, handy utility knives, and tax evasion, but what a surprise to learn that the Swiss also renown for eating pure evil for breakfast too.

I was originally lured in to this lie by the promise of whole grain, high fiber, low fat, no preservatives and no added salt. What can I say? It must have been all the vegetables in my system that was making me act all naïve and impulsive. But whoever knew this was also the same formula for spoiled ass?

Seriously, this “Original Alpen” breakfast cereal tastes like shit. I guess that’s just the price you pay in Switzerland for being blonde, beautiful, and neutral. Even more intriguing was 'The Whole Grain Story' printed on the back of the box. Surely, given the nastiness contained within, ‘Revelations’ might have been more appropriate.

But I digress.

The story begins: “Recent scientific studies have confirmed what our ancestors already know generations ago: diets rich in whole grains play a major role in helping us to stay healthy.”

Sadly, what those same scientific studies didn’t tell you was that whole grains, to eat, are about as enjoyable as eating day old cat vomit. After about two spoonfuls my mouth was about as dry as a popcorn fart. You’d think that our ancestors existing all those generations ago might also have remembered to pass along that useful tidbit of information wouldn’t you?

I’m really beginning to distrust these neutral bastards!

But our whole grain story continues: “Over time, the mass manufacture and refining of cereals meant that only one or two parts of the grain might be present in the final cereal product even though it is the presence of each part of the grain – bran, germ, and endosperm – working together that provides the greatest health benefits.”

I have no idea what any of that means exactly, but did they just say ‘sperm’? Now if that doesn’t put you off your Alpen in the morning I don’t know what fucking will! Personally, I don’t want to eat anything that has sperm - anything – in it and I don’t care what health benefits are in it for me. It could give me super human powers and I still wouldn’t touch the shit!

HELL, NO!

I’m really starting to wonder about the Swiss. I’m even beginning to rethink this whole chocolate thing as well. I mean, ‘what if’?

But back to my box of ass.

‘The Whole Grain Story’ wraps up by telling us “the benefits of whole grain products and their role in the prevention of heart disease, certain cancers, obesity, and Type II diabetes. Expert dietary sources such as Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating recommend 5-12 servings of grain products daily. We hope that you will continue to enjoy the health benefits of Alpen as well as its great taste and traditional old-fashioned goodness”.

Holy shit!

I could barely manage two small mouthfuls and now I learn I’m supposed to have 5-12 servings of this crap?

Fuck that!

Who needs healthy that badly?

The good news in all this is that each ½ cup worth of this vile foulness is only 170 calories – the same exact number of calories you’d burn racing to the bathroom in order to yak up your Alpen.

Yay.

The Gym Commandments

So now that I've become a self-professed gym snob I thought I'd tackle the ultimate taboo topic: the unspoken laws of the gym.

I've come along way since squeaking out mistimed farts way back in the days of yore. But since then I've watched; I've listened; I've learned. I think I've managed to get a pretty firm grasp on this whole social gym etiquette thing. While it's perfectly acceptable to sweat, grunt, and make animal-like faces - it's no reason to forget your manners. After all, you cram groups of sweaty, smelly people together in confined places equipped with pieces of blunt iron and you're bound to have problems sooner or later!

Of course, there are the mandatory ‘Do's and Don'ts’ notices posted everywhere around the gym; but honestly, who fucking reads these things? It's the 'Law of the Jungle', baby. It's mostly an unwritten Code of Conduct amongst us dedicated gym-goers in my opinion. All violators to the accepted norm are subject to scorn and ridicule until they either fucking learn, or meet their demise in a good 'ol fashioned cell block-style beat down.

Consider these your basic gym-goers Commandments.

1) The mirror belongs to the person in it!

Personally, I love watching a little hot me-on-me action while I work out. Cutting between a lifter and their mirror is like coming between a mother Grizzly Bear and her cub. Anyone stupid or inconsiderate enough to stroll in front of my mirror while I'm basking in my own maleness is liable to end up with a dumb bell wedged in their ear.

"Hey Maverick, how about doing your fly’s in someone else's No Fly Zone? I'm here to look at myself thank you, not your sweaty ass."

2) Farts happen...deal with it.

It's just the way it is. Just think of it as an occupational hazard. Considering the considerable pressures that you're exerting on your body - often in awkward and unusual positions - the odd eruption is going to emit itself eventually. And your ass is as good an orifice as any.

That is not free reign however to drop bombs willy-nilly for the whole duration of your workout. The general fart rule of thumb goes thusly: laugh, shrug your shoulders, smile sheepishly, and get back to work you poor, sick, demented bastard. Just accept our temporary disapproving glances for the time being. Yep, just stand there and take it like a Frenchman. Shortly, some other inconsiderate halfwit will let one rip and then you can join us in scowling at him/her. And then all will be forgiven. And contrary to some of the uncouth gasbags you hear working out, it is not acceptable to rear back a cheek and squeak out a second. That's un-fucking-forgivable. You should be plugged with the business end of a barbell before you euphemize the rest of us.

3) The right to grunt and growl is directly proportional to the weight being lifted.

It's basic algebra for the weight room. There are strict conditions for grunting: a) when lifting weights more than your own body weight, b) a lift close to your breaking point, or c) the last rep of your set. Otherwise, you are not Maria Sharapova, dipshit! You are not practicing for a hog calling contest - so shut the fuck up and train!

4) The person who wants your advice is the one who asks for it.

This rule exists largely because its usually the people who shouldn’t be giving work out tips in the first place that feel compelled to share their opinions. At least they flock to me like moths to a blue light. I view these people in much the same light as I do about fat people offering me dieting advice, or single people who offer relationship counseling. Seriously, you put some people in gym shorts and suddenly their Lou Ferigno. Why would I ever accept leg exercise tips from a guy who looks like Nicole Ritchie running away from a cheese steak while jogging on the treadmill?

“Keep it to yourself, doughboy!”

I keep myself to myself while I’m at the gym. I’m there for me and me alone and if I have to learn things the hard way sometimes – so be it. You don’t tell me how to do my work out and I won’t crush your head between two 50 lb plates. Capeesh?

5) Thou shalt not disturb your neighbor.

Once someone is in motion during their work out do not, under any circumstances, pester them with “how many sets you got left?” When I’m still working myself through my set I’m not thinking about anything else but what’s about to rip out of it’s socket. A person needs to focus and concentrate when they’re working out and they can’t do that with some tool in a sweaty ‘Foreigner’ t-shirt bugging them with stupid-ass questions. You know when I’m done? When I either return my weights to the rack or when I embed them in your skull – that’s when!

These types of questions should never be answered verbally. I usually just cast an ‘I’m going to kick your ass’ glare at them and continue on with what I’m doing…only slower.

6) Mark your territory.

Leaving a water bottle and a towel bench is as good as pissing on it to mark your territory. Without a water bottle, a towel or a bench you don’t have a recognizable work out station. If it fails the three-point check with even one element missing it’s fair game. Plunder away!

7) Clean up after yourself.

In any other bastion of civilized society when you drop your bodily fluids - you wipe! The gym is no different. People who fail to wipe up their sweat from a bench when they’re finished piss me off particularly. I am instantly driven to play ‘Heart and Soul’ on their spinal column with a pair of dumb bells.

How fucking gross is that? There is nothing worse than sitting down in a warm pool of someone else’s fluvia thank you very much! I’d rather lick the floor tiles at Swiss Chalet.

8 i) Lycra: it’s a privilege not a right!

There should be qualifying guidelines for wearing spandex, Lycra, or any other stretchy, huggy work out clothing. Maybe a stand up ‘You Must Be This Fit’ sign like the kinds you see at carnival rides.

Nothing puts you off your work out quicker than your classic Lycra train wreck. The way their pink flesh spills out from the gaps in their Lycra bodysuit makes them look like some kind of walking Playdoh Fun Factory. Now, in all fairness, to say that I’m fashionable would be an insult to bowling shoes everywhere, but honestly – look in the fucking mirror people!

8 ii) Never exceed the three-hole limit on your t-shirt.

If theres more than three holes, it’s not a t-shirt anymore – it’s a rag. Use it to buff your car no to work out in. I don’t go to the gym to witness patches of weird bodily hair peeking out from the multiple holes in your muscle shirt, thanks. Throw it out!

If it’s really such a valuable family heirloom that you can’t bring yourself dispose of, wear it in the comforts and privacy of your won home along with your secret pair of high heels and lace panties, there, princess. Oh yeah, and absolutely no headbands! The 80’s are over, Kareem. Deal with it.

9) If you’re huge enough to press it, you’re huge enough to put it away.

This is my ultimate pet peeve at the gym. There’s nothing worse than having my work out evolve into a scavenger hunt because some grobulous knob is too fucking lazy to put their weights back when they’re finished. These morons deserve to be kicked in the jewels.

“Hey, dipshits! Know why you go to the gym in the first place? EXERCISE!”

It absolutely amazes me that people who think nothing of pressing the equivalent of a minibus is also too fucking pussy to return his weights to the rack only 5 ft. away. Consider it like an added bonus work out, numb nuts.

10) Similar to Rule #3, keep it down!

I know it’s not a library or anything but do people really have to make all these slamming and crashing noises? It’s a tad bit attention seeking if you ask me. If you’re also too pussy to lower your weights slowly to the ground after your set you’re too pussy to lift weights.

"Go home to your Richard Simmons videos, you Judy!"

What goes through these guy’s heads? Usually a sudden loud racket means the same as it does everywhere else: you’ve fucked up. Thanks for advertising it.

11) Leave your cell at home or in the locker.

Why in the hell would you ever want to bring a world of distraction into your exercise routine? Kind of defeats the whole point of being there doesn’t it? There is noting worse than working out beside someone discussing flavors of toothpaste, or making kissy noises to his girlfriend over his cell phone. These morons should be banned altogether or be subject to ‘Judgment by Thunderdome’ from the rest of us.

12) The water fountain is not for tossing your gum.

Likewise, there is nothing worse than dying of thirst while waiting for some moolyak to fill their huge keg-sized water bottle, particularly if there’s a mountain of pink gum wads there waiting for you.

13) Just because you have the bodily girth of a polar bear doesn’t automatically give you the right to monopolize all the machines.

And while we’re on the topic of monopolizing the machines don’t conduct your social hour between your sets with everyone that walks by either. Some of us are waiting to use those machines today at some point, Hulk.

Instead, let someone work in with you to speed the routine up for everyone, or at least hold your conversation to a minute or two between your sets. This is not Happy Hour you know. It totally sucks having your muscles melt away to paste while some idiot cheerfully discusses his plans for a Wednesday night with someone he hasn’t seen or spoken to in 12 years.

“Hey, I’m happy you managed to get reacquainted with someone whom obviously completes you so fully, but some of us want to work out here! Can you conduct your debriefing and social calendar somewhere else?”

14) Keep your eyes to yourself, pervo!

Staring blatantly at some honey on the treadmill is like staring at the sun – you can look but only in short bursts or you’ll be blind to the beefy boyfriend beside you preparing to bludgeon you to death with his dumb bell.

15) Lastly, while changing in the locker room, the space you take is proportional to the width of your locker (not your ego) – particularly when it’s busy.

I mean how much friggin’ space do you need to dry your ass and put on a clean pair of clothes? You will see people who spread themselves over the entire changing area as if they were getting prepared for a picnic. Why do they need so much space?

But there’s an important addendum to this final commandment as well. If there is adequate room available in the change room it is not recommended you use the locker immediately next to the only guy in there changing…unless you’re a total fag that is.

This behavior is just so strange. Are they so obsessive compulsive that they just have to use one particular locker even if it means wedging themselves in between two other wet, naked dudes when there are, like, another hundred or so empty available lockers around…with space to spare!

Whatever the case, such an unnecessary and unwelcome infringement on one’s territorial boundaries deserves a vicious towel snapping in return.

Crazy Is As Crazy Does

Just in case you have just about given up on yourself altogether and have considered ending it all, consider this first: Kansas City authorities were called out to the home of a 37-year-old Kory McFarren to - get this – have his girlfriend, 35-year-old Pam Babcock removed from his bathroom, where she had apparently spent the last two years!

I guess Mr. McFadden finely got tired of waiting to use his can, huh?

And rightly-fucking-so! I begin to get pissy when my girlfriend spends more than 10 minutes in there doing whatever it is that girls do in there – but two fucking years? That’s just bloody ridiculous! I’d say after being denied the right to use his own bathroom for 24 straight months*, Mr. McFadden had demonstrated patience and self-control far beyond that of any reasonable limit.

First of all, as far as boyfriends go this guy is a saint! Secondly; he must have been pretty fucking desperate to waited so long that the skin of his cock tease girlfriend had actually grown around the toilet seat itself. Babcock had sat for so long that open sores developed and caused her to become attached to the seat. Is that some sexy shit or what? Authorities spent nearly two hours prying the toilet seat off with a pry bar before she was taken to the local hospital – with the seat still stuck to her ass no less.

Fuck me!

That’s pretty goddamn desperate if you’re willing to wait 17,520 hours to fuck a chick with a toilet seat fused to her ass don't you think?. I’d rather work as a shark moil than fuck some crazy bitch with a toilet seat attached to her ass. Somebody get this poor bastard a prostitute already.
McFadden regularly took her water and meals and repeatedly asked her to come out, to which Babcock would reply: “maybe tomorrow”.

Still thinking of ending it all are ya? At least you haven’t spent the last two years on the hopper!
The real tragedy in all this is that Mr. McFadden is now being charged by the Ness County District Court. For what…blue balls?!

The 36-year-old antique store dealer insists that the odd arrangement simply evolved over time and it got to the point where he no longer thought of it as strange.

Okay, I too find this a little hard to believe and so loose a little respect for this pathetic schmutz. Getting down on your knees and howling at the full moon is a “little strange”; the artist-formerly-known-as-Prince is a "little strange”; Elvis impersonators are a “little strange”; the ending to Contact was more than a “little strange”; but sitting, eating, bathing, and sleeping in your shitter for two years is just fucking nuts, pal!

This crazy bitch has spent more time in bathrooms than George Michael.

Wake up already.

“It just kind of happened one day; she went in and had been in there a little while, the next time it was just a little longer. Then she got it in her head she was going to stay – like it was a safe place for her“, Mc. Fadden offered as his only defense.

The woman was reported to have had a traumatic childhood after her mother died when she was still a little girl. A neighbor recalls she was always kept inside her home and was always rarely allowed to go outside. So clearly the girl was already a runaway freight train to Crazytown as it was. But still, the local sheriff plans to charge McFadden with mistreatment of a dependant adult.

Although Babcock is now in fair condition in a Wichita hospital, the nerve damage in her legs may now leave her crippled in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. McFadden maintains “she is an adult; she made her own decision. I should have gotten help for her sooner; I’ll admit that. But after a while, you kind of get used to it”.

Once again, dude; one gets used to Latin music, shitty weather, or Ethiopian cuisine – not a girlfriend living in your bathroom for two full calendar years! The only thing McFadden is guilty of is being stupid. This guy makes Gary Busey look well adjusted.

The court offered authorities have offered that “neither of the duo appears to be in their right mind, and it all might be that its just an unfortunate arrangement among two people with diminished capabilities”.

Duh. Do ya think?

These two are about as sharp as wet mice. But what’s the point of charging McFadden exactly? Is he stupid? Absolutely! Horny? Fuck yes. So take him out; let him have a nice, long, undisturbed dump in privacy, get him laid, then turn him loose for the helpless moron he is.

There. Aren’t you glad I stopped you from feeling like a total loser?

You’re welcome.

* Which leads one to wonder where exactly Mr. McFadden did go to the bathroom?

Academy Award Post-thoughts:

So, it’s only been - what - three weeks since the whole Academy Awards ceremony? And I am only finding out about them now. How did I manage to miss that little cultural tidbit while living under my rock?

I guess the fact that I’ve only seen three movies all year suggests that I’m just a little out of sync with this year’s popular cinema (and I doubt that Cloverfield will be up for any Academy’s either).

Now, bear in mind that I have seen absolutely none of these movies and in some cases, never even heard of them, but let’s take a look at the crop of Oscar-worthy hopefuls this year:

Atonement – I didn’t realize that this movie had made it out to theaters yet. I do know that my girlfriend has been reading this on the treadmill at the gym lately, and judging by the cover of the book I’m not sure it’s the kind of movie I’d enjoy. Looks pretty “girly” if you ask me. The movie revolves around sister’s Briany and Cecilia Tallis and their house keepers son, Robbie. See what I mean? Pussy!

Now I don’t suspect that there is any hot three-way action where the Tallis sisters use poor Robbie like an Olympic pummel horse, so I’m not so sure I’m too terribly interested in this flick. I can already feel my Charlie Brown’s shriveling just imaging this movie.

This world needs another losing of innocence movie like it needs another White Ford Bronco chase.

Michael Clayton – This flick is in my ‘never heard of it’ category this year. But if I’ve learned anything, it’s never trust a movie titled after it’s central character: Bridget Jones Diary, Norbert, umm, Dr. Doolittle…see what I mean?

Okay, okay, I know that there are also great films like Bull Durham, Jerry McGwire, Bob Jones, Rob Roy, and Rocky that were also named after their central characters. But this movie was made by the same guy who did Tootsie…need I say more?

It’s a movie about lawyers starring George Clooney as this Michael Clayton asshole. C’mon, you just know this is going to suck. We’ve seen this all before: scrupleless lawyers squabbling and scheming over multi-billion dollar contracts. It’s mergers, conflicts, screwjobs, and bullshit legal mumbo-jumbo galore! Somebody just stab me already.

I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a broken pool cue than watch this crap.

No Country for Old Men – Okay, this one has some promise. From the former Academy Award-winning team of brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, this corpse-strewn flick revolves around Llewellyn Moss and her flight from pursuing psychopath Anton Chisurh. It’s Oh, Brother! With a fucking attitude!

One part artsy bluegrass epic and one part Dirty Harry. Now this sounds like a good movie to me. I have always enjoyed the Coen brothers movies, and I always enjoy a good, senseless bloodbath.

This sounds like it could be more up my alley.

Juno – A smart, outspoken 16-year-old gets pregnant and decides to give the child up for adoption. Now I know what you’re thinking: “Christ, it sounds like a Molly Ringwald movie!”, right? Well, consider that this unique coming-of-age movie was directed by the son of Ivan Reitman, stars cute Canadian actress Ellen Page as Juno, and was also written by a tattooed ex-stripper and phone sex worker Diablo Cody.

Now, doesn’t that sound fucking cool? Certainly peeks your interest somewhat, eh?

The movie also stars Michael Cera and Jason Bateman from the under-appreciated TV series Arrested Development. Oh yeah, and J. K. Simmons from Oz. Yeah, that’s right! The same guy who plays the sodomizing sociopath white supremacist Schilinger also plays Juno’s reluctant father. I’d see this movie for this fact alone. Well, that and for the possibility of seeing me some hot underage sex without having to risk my credit card information over the Internet.

There Will Be Blood – Another of from the ‘never heard of it’ category. At first guess, you’d probably think that this movie was some low-budget zombie flick or something. Instead, this movie stars Daniel Day-Lewis as misanthropic oilman Daniel Plainview who tricks a local farmer in his ruthless pursuit of wealth. Throw something in there about Plainview turning on his handicapped son and you have the perfect recipe for a Hollywood snoozefest.

Personally, after watching My Left Foot I have sworn off Daniel Day-Lewis movies for good. If there’s going to be blood – I hope it’s his. That alone may encourage me to spend the four bucks once it is released to video.

Cold Wind and Snow

Okay, it’s cold out!

Never mind freezing the balls off a brass monkey, it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off Frosty the Snowman himself! So cold in fact, that several GTA school bus companies – not to mention the schools themselves – decided to close for the day.

WTF?

Because it’s COLD?

And in the middle of February too. Imagine that!

Last night, you see, the temperature dropped down to a bone chilling –17 degrees (-34 with the wind chill). That’s pretty fucking cold I agree. But to prevent the children from going to school this morning - you enough, to learn stuff – that’s just ridiculous!

Never mind the kiddies just manning up to walk to the bus stops, but to think that the bus drivers, teachers, and school principals were too pussy to roll out of their nice warm beds? What kind of example are they setting for the youth of tomorrow?

It’s making my eye twitch.

I was never NOT allowed to go to school. Come hell or high water; come rain, sleet, snow, or shine, the student must get through. The issue of temperature was never even considered as a plausible variable for the cancellation of the school learning process.

Hell, my mother would send me out in weather that a Yeti wouldn’t wander out in. She practically planted a foot into my chest as she grabbed a hold of the door frame with both hands and shoved me out into the wintry No Mans Land. No way was I going to interfere with mommy’s Bob Barker time on the account of it being cold.

There were times I nearly lost limbs to frost bite or had my core temperature drop below that of a frozen carp before the bus actually arrived.

And if the bus didn’t arrive for some god-forsaken reason she’d send me packing on foot. Sometimes I felt like Hillary Scott mushing through the forbidding Arctic landscape. Well, by “mushing” I really mean my struggling through mountains of unplowed snowdrifts wafting in the city streets. Seriously, you could have hidden a mammoth in someone’s front yard where it’s wouldn’t be found until spring thaw.

I’m a survivor of the Blizzard of ’77 remember. You know? The one they called “WHITE DEATH”! So I’m no stranger to snow or the cold.

Too young to remember or ignorant to know about the White Death?

Here, let me log your memory:


That was no winter wonderland let me tell you! And do you know how much school they canceled?

NONE!

We WALKED our sorry primary asses to school in those days. I remember my cheeks literally melting off my face and my lips freezing together on some of my walks to school in February. I suffered through the early stages of hypothermia at my desk until lunch. By then my feet had thawed out and I cold walk again. But it was unthinkable to close the school and prevent the shaping of young minds.

Too cold?

“TOO FUCKING BAD! Get your near frozen ass to school and learn something.”

Why do we continue to coddle our children as we do? What are we protecting them from exactly? I understand that times were much harder in the past, but we turned out okay didn’t we? In fact, it’s the reason I’m filled with such a healthy dose of angry vigor today.

For good and for bad*, it made me who I am.

Besides, there should be a little toil in kid’s lives. Particularly when it comes to school. What do they say: ‘No pain no gain’?

And sure winter sucks but deal with it already! It’s not like my current employer would ever accept “because it’s chilly out” as an excuse for my not coming into work. My toasty ass would be out on the street by mid-morning coffee break. Consider it conditioning for being a responsible adult.

It’s teaching children the meaning of commitment. Plus, it’ll help prevent them from having their sorry asses pulverized into a pink paste by the bullies in high school later on.

I mean, honestly, what’s next? Canceling school due to a sever chance of heavy showers?

C’mon.

* Mostly bad.

The Yogurt Monologues (Part V)

Hello again, health nuts and vegheads.

It has been awhile since I’ve updated you with my progress on this crazy train we call “Healthy Living”, so I thought I’d take the time this afternoon between my Pilates class and Saturday night water polo to keep you abreast* of my current bodily status.

I’m sure by now you’re just salivating at the notion of once again hearing about all my aches and pains; not to mention all my meaty bowel movements and other various spent liquids. Life is all about the little details after all.

I love the feeling of being healthy (or at least, the healthiest I’ve ever managed to be). I am lifting weights, my squash game has improved drastically, I can now pull 5000 meters on the ergometer in just under twenty minutes, and I can make with the bouts of freaky monkey sex for periods longer than the equivalent time it takes to order a pizza. Yep, I have definitely come a long way from that long ago time in my life when the only notion I had of eating healthy was once having cut up a banana into my Grape Nuts.

Am I stud or what?

Yes, I’ve become quite the aficionado of Fitness First. I easily work out a total of four times a week, including swimming, squash, rowing, biking, and weight lifting**. I can now curl approximately a quarter of my own body weight and can press the equivalent of a small circus midget. Prior to getting my YMCA membership, the most I ever curled was the random double-double or the odd KFC drumstick to my lips.

Recently though, I have more become fascinated by the actual gym culture; the whole sordid cesspool of physical exercise that I willingly wade into every other weekday. I can honestly say that each visit I make to the gym I walk around as grossed out as I do spent from actual training. You see, you tend to witness a lot of weird things at your average, local gym or body shop. It’s hard not to notice.

There are some real schmutz’s at the gym. Total asshats.

For example, I watched a guy yesterday in the change room while he toweled off his ass for, like, twenty minutes. This guy didn’t so much as dry himself off with his towel as he made love to it. He worked his towel into crevices that would make any proctologist shudder. And yet, I couldn’t tear my eyes off this train wreck despite the fact I feared the very real possibility that I may, in fact, be going gay without actually realizing it.

Here was a grown man literally violating himself with a bleached linen gym towel. How much moisture did he think he absorbed in the steam room anyway? Was he a sponge or something? Honestly, by watching him compulsively towel-dry his ass for a full twenty minutes you’d think he was a walking inground pool.

Granted, he wasn't trimming his nutsack on the couch but he still couldn’t have been any more brazen in his blasphemy if you ask me.

And as I stared at him fixedly flossing himself with his towel like some topless dancer the full impact of the larger picture hit me: HE WAS USING THE SAME PROVIDED GYM TOWELS THAT I USE!

Eek!

Shit, that meant that the same towel that I was currently wrapped in and had used to dry off might have been wedged up this idiot’s ass too.

Oh, goodie!

I was suddenly hit with a wave of nausea the likes of which I haven’t experienced since the Season Premier of ‘Stacked’. I wanted to set myself on fire in order to purify myself of any possible remaining fecal matter of his that may have been transmitted from his ass through the recycled linen towels.

But as I figure it now, it’s just one of the risks you take every day you walk into the gym. Where’s there’s naked men about there’s bound to be some transmitted fecal matter. It’s just like how the International Food Distribution Association (IFDA) has their set allowable quantity of rat hair per food product which we, in turn, eat. It’s as much Russian Roulette with the gym towels as it is with the mysterious ingredients found bubbling away in the steaming germ cauldron they call a hot tub.

You just try to put such things out of your mind and attempt to enjoy your visit. Otherwise, given the amount of spilt fluvia that occurs at the gym, I’d never even make it past the check-in desk without recoiling in terror.

There is another particular personality at my gym that has me scratching my head in astonished wonderment. Someone whom I have not so affectionately nicknamed “the Bear”.

Everyone has someone that they like to pick on. Even you holier-than-thou types inevitably have someone in this world for whom you take an evil pleasure in spying on. For most people, this is why they read ‘People’ and ‘Star’ magazines. This is why the calluses on Katie Holmes high-heeled tootsies makes the headline news. We have a sick interest in reveling in the misfortunes of others and usually there’s one person in particular.

For me, it’s the Bear***.

The Bear often works out at the gym around the same times as I do. Or rather, he is present around the same times I work out. The fact over whether he actually “works out” is still in question.

You see, the Bear just is. He’s just there. Why is another matter altogether.

To first time observers, the Bear must seem like your normal gym heavyweight wannabe. He has Tupperware tubs of cooked chicken, his workout notebook, his multiple bottles of formulas and protein drinks, and not to mention his huge-ass Santa's bag of assorted weightlifting gloves, braces, harnesses, and other formidable looking things that would make even the Marquis de Sade more than a little nervous.

And yet, if anyone were to actually watch him for such length of time (as I so obviously have) they’d nothing he does little more than sit there on his bench and look fatigued. His whole gym routine seems to be: stop, pause, rest, take a drink, stop, pause, rest, eat some chicken, write in his notebook, pause, rest, repeat.

Where’s the work out? Shit, where’s the 'work'? He sure seems to have the ‘out’ part down pat.

He never lifts a thing and yet he gives off the air of someone who is there to inflict some serious damage on his body. He even goes so far to psyche himself up over a machine that he’s set up with menacing looking weights, but then never actually does anything.

Who’s this fucking guy kidding?

I originally nicknamed him ‘the Bear’ due to his tendency to lean on his machine and push himself off it like he was stretching after completing a vigorous session of reps. When I see him do this it reminds me of a bear lazily bouncing himself off a tree to revitalize his limbs after months of hibernation. It’s hardly what you would call strenuous activity.

What really interests me is what he’s recording in his notebook exactly. He does nothing. Let me repeat: HE DOES NOTHING! And yet, there he is meticulously recording something in his notebook. Maybe he comes to the gym to be inspired to write poetry or nothing because he sure can’t be charting any physical progress during his workout routines.

Well, you now what? I kept my own journal of his daily progress:

Day 1:

Sit - 25 mins
Flex in front mirror – 5 mins
Ogle the ladies in the Aquafit class – 15 mins
Eat some chicken – 5 mins
Sit some more – 35 mins
Drink protein shake – 10 mins
Rummage in bag – 15 mins
Sit again – 20 mins
Stretch – 5 mins
Nap on bench – 10 mins
Rummage in bag again – 5 more mins

It’s fucking ridiculous. An invalid works out more than this asshat. Hell, Christopher Reeve burns more calories in a single day than this guy does in an entire workout.

Clearly, here is a guy in desperate need of a good ‘ol fashioned Biblical-style beat down. Something, or somebody, to really motivate his ass into high gear and stimulate some muscle growth.

Somebody hand me a flail - I’m just the man for the job!

What possesses someone to go through all the lengths of giving off the appearance of being healthy but then never actually making the honest effort to do it? I just don’t understand. He pays a regular monthly membership fee to do – what – splash water on his shirt and pretend to be the next Vasily Alexeyev?

I still get shivers when I remember the time the Bear finally decided to approach me for the sole purpose of making small talk.

Now let’s get one thing straight and I’ve said it before; I’m not there to chitchat, socialize, or make friends by any means. I subscribe to the notion that you plug into your MP3 player and keep your grunts, snorts, and other verbal fluctuations to yourself.

When I work out, it’s all hands on deck. "No Girls Need Apply!"

I don’t feel the need to share any of my clever musings with anybody at the gym. I’m there to sweat, hurt, and quietly stare at the other fitness freaks exhaustingly staring back at me. It’s just the law of the iron jungle.

So when the Bear approached me to ask: “if you could spend your money on one thing, would you visit the former sites of Olympic weight lifting competitions or get Lasik surgery?”

Pardon? Do I have “Disturb Me,” written across my sweaty forehead? Has the sweat from my own work out somehow managed to mark my shirt so that it reads “I Love Talking to Idiots” across my chest or something? I wanted to bend my barbell around his head until it popped.

Why do these morons always seek me out in a crowd?

Anyway, I managed to mutely shrug and shake my head in that telltale “I Don’t Understand English, Dipshit” way until he casually wandered off in search of someone else to offer their pearls of wisdom on this most unusual financial conundrum.

I just couldn’t bring myself to engage him in conversation, stupid or otherwise. And now I have to avert my eyes whenever he’s around to thwart off any other opportunities of contact he may chance****.

But then again, like the inevitably shitty gym towel, these guys are one of the hazards you chance yourself with every time you go to the gym. For me, in a completely odd way, it’s also these random observations and encounters that make going to the gym and keeping healthy and active possible.

It makes the trips, shall we say, interesting?

Now I know this isn’t exactly what you were expecting as far as a Yogurt Monologues update is concerned, but hey, what’s the point of being fit and healthy if you also can’t look down on and make fun of others?

I’m sure that the really uber-fit gym freaks that parade around the gym in their leotards is having secret fun at my expense, so why shouldn’t I have my fun too?

It’s the order of the universe.

I didn’t endure months of being bent over a Swiss exercise ball for the obvious amusement of others for nothing!


* And I don’t mean the finger-licking kind either.

** Not to mention scoping out all the spandex-clad gym bunnies as they parade past the various mirrors and one-way windows.

*** Not to mention Tom Cruise, Anderson Cooper, Sharon Stone, Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, The Canadian Tire guy, St. Patrick, Paris Hilton, Nicole Ritchie, Martha Stewart, people who drive Minivans, and the guy at Blockbuster to name just a few others.

**** I have also learned to say “eat shit” in a dozen different languages.

The Philosophy of Bullying

I was involved in idle conversation today at the gym with a student of Sport Philosophy.

After my initial bouts of laughter* I actually got around to discussing this philosophy of sport. I got the impression immediately that he’s had to justify his chosen major of study several times by now. After all, surely I couldn’t be the only one who thinks that Sport Philosophy sounds like total horseshit?

I thought that History of Film was a complete bird course but this is ridiculous!

Anyway, once we got into it a little I was intrigued to learn that there are two popular trains of thought in Sport Philosophy. One dictates that most games we played back in elementary school, such as dodgeball, handball, floor hockey, and the like, are actually detrimental to a child’s psychological growth. The other train of thought just says “suck it up, buttercup!” It’s survival of the fittest as a means of natural development...the way it was; the way it was; and the way it’s always going to be.

Fuckin-A!

Now I know what you’re asking yourself: why have they forsaken classic kid’s games such as dodgeball in the first place, right? Because they promote social segregation, that’s why; namely, the stronger and quicker kid’s on one side versus the slower, weaker kids on the other…just as God intended it.

Call me old-fashioned.

How else are these pathetic, fat kids ever going to get themselves motivated? Nothing says “try harder” than the possibility of a gang wedgie in the shower after gym class. It’s practically Biblical! The weak and the downtrodden have been beaten mercilessly throughout the ages until they somehow are properly inspired to rise above it all and onto bigger and better things…or, they just die off all together.

Either way, it’s the natural order of the universe.

Look at Moses leading his people out of Egypt. Only after years of being enslaved and mistreated the Israelite losers were finally afforded the opportunity to stand up and do something about it once Moses arrived on the scene. Sure they managed to unleash the Ten Plagues on their Egyptian masters and escape via the parted Red Sea. But what did they get for their troubles? Forty years of wandering the desert in exile, that’s what!

But that’s a whole other story, or is that just another case of the strong bullying the weak? After all, God pretty much did stick it to the Hebrews for all those years after helping them escape. Even Moses himself was denied entrance into the Promised Land when he failed to carry out the simple task of bringing forth water from a rock. I mean, how fucking hard is that?

And so God layeth the smack down on ‘ol Moses. And if that’s not a case of classic schoolyard bullying I don’t know what is.

Bruce Hornsby said it best: “that’s just the way it is.”

Deal.

Is it the winner’s fault that the losers suck so much? Or make themselves easy targets? If little Chubby Charlie wants to not be the first man out in Mrs. Walker’s grade three dodgeball game every day he better learn to substitute those bags of Oreo’s for carrot sticks and practice harder.

Not that I’m speaking from experience.

Bullies, as much as they are frowned upon, are actually very important in shaping a child’s mind. They are a vital part of any delicate elementary schoolyard ecosystem. Without them, nothing is ever going to encourage them to improve their physical skills?

Donkey Kong does nothing to improve one’s prowess in dodgeball.

Picture a world with no definite winners and losers, just one big, happy, complacent herd of under achievers. The world would be filled with the type of people who use lint rollers and list ‘World of Warcraft’ in the Hobbies section of their resumes. And then there are always those people who work in customer service.

It would be like living in a world of little Brennan Hawkins'? Remember him? Tell me kids like this don't need an honest days ass-kicking.

That’s sure no world I want to live in!

Sure I got picked on in grade school and it sucked at the time. But it sure inspired me to move my ass occasionally allowing me to burn off some extra calories while conditioning my young, developing “flight” muscles. Being closely pursued by a mod of older bullies from the next grade will do that to you.

Gym class was no different. By the time I graduated grade eight I had learned to dodge with the best of them. And by the end of my schooling altogether I was picking off Chubby Charlie’s on my own and thereby completing one of the most important cycles of life.

And so it goes…


* Three of them in total. Approximately a whole 15 minutes worth each.

Further Tales of the Mad Scientologist

Well it’s finally happened.

Tom Cruise has boarded the Mother Ship. In fact, he didn’t so much as just board it as he did pack up all his earthly shit, book first class passage and willingly goose-step up the loading plank with Katie and baby in tow.

You just knew it was going to be something tasty to draw me out of near posting retirement didn’t you?

And Chief Dipshit #1, Tom Cruise, is as good a reason as any.

Sure he dented Oprah’s couch and has quarreled with inquisitive journalists, but how the fuck does one get themselves banned from Germany? Holy shit! You know you’re a real asshole when the Motherland of Evil itself decides to distance itself from you.

But it’s true. The Deutschland has made the conscious decision to put its leather-booted foot down hard on ‘ol Tommy and his Scientology ways by prohibiting the makers of his latest film from using German military sites to film.

Take that, Maverick! One minute you’re tonguing Kelly Gillis and the next minute it’s “Nein!”

In the film that centers on a conspiracy to kill Adolph Hitler, Cruise plays the role of head conspirator Colonel Claus van Stauffenberg. Harald Kammembauer, spokesman for the German military, has stated that it is very important to be done correctly. Kammembauer said the military, “has a special interest in the serious and authentic portrayal of the events of July 20, 1944 and Stauffenberg’s person.”

And the reasoning you ask? Because no loony tune Scientologist should ever be allowed to play a Nazi – that’s why! According to the German defense ministry, he has “publicly professed to being a member of the Scientology cult.”

For once I applaud the Germans. Way to go, you evil Kraut bastards!

In Germany Scientology is not acknowledged and the government believes that the group hides under the guise of being a religion as a way to sponge up money from gullible half wits - like Tom Cruise.

And you know what the Germans are like when they get the least bit suspicious. Your average German makes most coke dealers look relaxed. Lets just put it this way, if the Germans were allowed to have their ovens back Scientologists would be the first on the cookie sheets.

And it doesn’t stop there. Not only is the German military pissed at Cruise, but it has also offended Stauffenberg’s own family…actual Nazi’s!

Now that’s some claim to fame when real Nazi’s disapprove of you. Berhold Stauffenberg, the colonel’s son, was not happy with Tom Cruise being cast as his father because of his Scientology beliefs. He told a local newspaper, Seuddeutsche Zeitung: “He should keeps his hands off my fazzer.”

You tell him, Belloq.

So, how did I ever get on this whole Scientology crazy train anyway? Not that Scientology, or Tom Cruise for that matter, haven’t been begging for it for years. I know this whole Nazi’s vs. Cruise thing is old news by now, but as luck would have it a video of Tom Cruise discussing Scientology also briefly surfaced on YouTube before being deleted. So on top of being banned by Nazi’s, it turns out that Tom Cruise also can’t keep a video on YouTube either.

YouTube only has about a zillion videos of dogs licking peanut butter or dudes getting corked in the nut sack, but apparently Tom’s bullshit Scientology hocus pocus just doesn’t cut it. How sad it that?

The video, which showed Cruise accepting a 2005 ‘Freedom Medal of Valor’ from the Church of Scientology, was alleged pulled from YouTube at the urging of the Church of Scientology itself for copyright violations.

Yeah, whatever!

In the video, Tom says that he thinks, “it’s a privilege to call yourself a Scientologist, and its something you have to earn.” Well, if earning yourself a banning by Nazi’s and YouTube and becoming the butt of everyone’s jokes are what you were trying to earn than mission accomplished, dipshit.

Bravo.

He goes on to say that a Scientologist has the ability to “create new and better realities and improved conditions”…whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean. Sounds like bullshit Scientology hocus pocus to me. For a religion that practices a strict abstinence from drugs and medication they sure sound like they exhibit the same symptoms as those who do. Do they really expect me to believe that people who pride themselves on creating “better realities” doesn’t take the odd hit or dose of something? Surely, they must toke the odd reefer at the very least.

The video continues on for about 10 minutes in much this same manner – with Cruise talking and laughing about being a Scientologist, the fact that Scientologists should do and be involved, and the idea that Scientologists can help the world.

It’s a literal Scientologists wet dream of hocus pocus.

Clearly Scientologists were the intended audience and therefore the video was not intended as a recruiting tool for non-believers. Rather it speaks to Scientologists about their duties and his own personal experiences. Cruise went on to talk about how he sees his role to KSW, or “Keep Scientology Working” – the phrase coined by Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard*. He also talks about SP’s (Suppressive Peoples) and PT’s (Potential Trouble Source). Boy, Scientology really digs its acronyms. I guess they feel it makes them seem more, well, science-like. Honestly, they have more acronyms than any ER episode.

Personally, I think it’s rather like reading the script to a Michael Crichton flick and I think I'd rather rub my nut sack over sandpaper.

He also talks about the areas in which Scientologists are the world’s authorities. According to Cruise, Scientologists are the leading experts in getting people off of drugs, the mind, improving conditions, criminal rehabilitation, uniting cultures, and bringing peace – just to name a few.

Clever monkeys these Scientologists. Too bad they’re hated by Nazi’s and YouTube, and apparently have welcomed a moron as one of their prominent figureheads.

Sure he energetically signs autographs, poses for cell phone cameras, and shakes every hand thrust in his face, but behind that otherwise happy façade lays a total asshat through and through. Forget jumping on Oprah’s couch like a spastic chimpanzee or those weird high-heel demands he made on Nicole, let’s look at the recent notable highlights from this video:

1) Cruise refers to ‘spectators’ in the video and says he has no time for such people. Apparently you’re either on this crazy train for the long haul or you’re not – that’s it – there’s no middle ground. You’re either on the shortbus or you’re off the shortbus. I guess this also means that you can’t take a little time to test the water first and make sure this whole Scientology thing is really the right belief system for you. I don’t know about you, but I like to read the menu first before committing myself to dinner. And if that qualifies me as a ‘spectator’ than so be it!

Besides, isn’t this an odd thing to say considering his given acting profession? Where would he be exactly without ‘spectators’? Living in a cardboard box and eating cat food in the Hollywood hills – that’s where! I bought a ticket way back to see ‘Mission Impossible’, so I deserve some thanks. See if I ever spectate one of your movies again, you ungrateful prick!

2) Cruise also makes it very clear in the video that he is doing all he can do to make a difference and he wants to do more. Pardon? What the fuck does Cruise do that’s making such an impact on the world? What has he done lately that’s realigned the world’s axis back on even keel? I haven’t seen him building any schools in poverty-stricken countries, adopting a Third World crack baby, or even physically assisting to raise money for any reputable causes**? He’s no fucking Bono or Bob Geldof is he? Shit, he’s not even a Sean Penn or Rosie O’Donnell for that matter either.

Oh wait, maybe he was referring to his founding and donation-raising for Downtown Medical to provide 9/11 rescue workers detoxification therapy based upon the works of Chief Numbnut himself, L. Ron Hubbard.

Oh goodie! No strings attached there, eh?

Medical professionals and firefighters were in an uproar. Who knew religious-based medical treatments would be met with such skepticism? Maybe if he were to throw in a complimentary ‘Engram Cleansing’, or half-off any regular ‘Aura Waxing’ he might have had himself more takers.

3) Cruise says he is “fighting the good fight” but never really mentions what it is he’s fighting. The War of Terror? The War on Drugs? The Cola Wars? War of the Worlds? What exactly are we fighting here? Is there a battle going on somewhere I don’t know about? Should I be bottling water or is this just more bullshit Scientology hocus pocus?

4) At one point Cruise enters into a tirade on how he wants to go on vacations to explore the world but he doesn’t because of what he “knows”. Umm, hello? It looks like his whole fucking fairy-book life has been a vacation to me. But let me get this straight; when he’s not filming in exotic locations, dining in extravagant restaurants, or visiting trendy “It” spots in all the worlds cosmopolitan metropolis’, he’s locked away in his hotel room for fear of what he “knows”?

I call shenanigans!

5) Apparently, when he’s not in front of the camera or making an ass out of himself he’s pulling people from burning wrecks and rescuing kittens from trees. He said so himself – he can’t help it – he just has to do ‘something’ when he sees these things.

He’s like fucking Superman! I want whatever reality it is that this guy is creating for himself please.

6) What the fuck is up with that laugh? It doesn’t seem genuinely all knowing and blissfully happy to me – it borders on a ‘scary mental institution’ persona that makes him seem like some half-ass Batman villain***. It’s a creepy laugh! It’s the kind of laugh that one makes before they carve up a freshly killed corpse if you ask me. My instincts upon seeing this video were not “Oh, cool! Run towards enlightenment”, it’s “Oh, fuck! Run for your life!”

In the end, I am left with one burning question: What the hell does he know (or thinks he knows) that the rest of us don’t? He makes constant reference in the video about the things he “knows”.

Do Scientologists ever really tell us anything though? They claim to “know” lots of shit about lots of shit – experts in fact. Well you know what? I wanna see some credentials! Show me some kind of approved certificate, medical diploma, merit badge, or anything other than just giving me your word on what you know!

Whatever it is, I say – keep it to yourself – I’m not ready to travel to wherever it is you’re heading, crazy man!

This might be why the video was pulled in the first place because the Church of Scientology didn’t exactly want Cruise becoming the poster child for their religion . What it comes down to is that Cruise seems to be teetering on the brink of several different realities.

Much of the video is unclear. But none of this hides the fact that ‘ol Tommy has gone completely loony tunes.

The bitch is back. Spread the word.

* Who, is it also interesting to note, was originally a pulp and science fiction writer in the 40’s and 50’s. You may feel free to insert your own punch line here.

** How about him hosting an annual ‘Luau for Lupus’ maybe?

*** ‘Retardo’ maybe.

Canadian Psycho

It’s official. I’m on edge.

In fact, I’m beyond edgy. At this point I make Gary Busey seem, well, ordinary I guess. But surely you get the idea.

What can I say? Things haven’t been going exactly smoothly as of late. I feel like the dude that Graham Nash warbled on about in the old Hollies song ‘King Midas in Reverse’.

“He’s not the one to hold your trust
Everything around him turns to dust
In his hand
Nothing he can do is right
He’d even like to sleep at night
But he can’t”

It’s true. Everything I touch lately turns to shit quicker than Brittany Spears professional reputation.

I’m lower than caterpillar shit. Where do I start?

My professional life is about as enjoyable as going to work to be kicked in the nuts all day. Actually, being kicked in the nuts all day sounds more inviting than my job. Financially I’m so broke that Ed McMahon sends me collection notices saying that I owe him $10,000.

Socially, I’m about as active as Wilfred Brimley’s bowels. Seriously, there are single celled bacteria that exist around the rim of my toilet with better social lives than I have. To say that I haven’t been laid in a long time is an insult to chronic masterbater’s everywhere!

And most disturbingly, my squash game is starting to be affected as well. And to me, that’s some serious shit I don’t want to fuck with right there!

Give me herpes. Give me two heads. Tie me to a rock and have my liver torn out by a hungry eagle every morning at daybreak – give me whatever in this miserable life – just don’t fuck with my squash game! Unfortunately, life has no mercy. Even the Squash Gods have forsaken me and look down and laugh. Lately I can’t hit a cow in the ass with a snow shovel. I play with all the focused intensity of a hungry senior citizen attacking their Cream of Wheat.

Yes. Life blows. And it blows hard. It blows like a Hawaiian volcano. It blows like a $20 hooker. It blows like September in the Gulf of Mexico – whatever. It sucks. And needless to say I am a bit anxious about it.

Now I know what you’re thinking besides “Wow! This guy has some issues”: “what is keeping this guy out of the clock tower”, right? How do I manage to keep myself all cool and composed and continually resist the urge to go all ape shit and off myself in a final blaze of glory?

To this I say that imagination is a wonderful thing. In my head, I can act accordingly the way I should be allowed to react when faced with complete idiocy*. I can therefore quietly lash out and let loose all my aggression without having consequential jail time. By now, I must have murdered off everyone I know at least twice.

What can I say? It keeps me sane - in a weird, insane kind of way.

And I’m not just talking about simply wishing hem dead and then moving on again. Oh no! I’m talking about the playing out of an entire, elaborate, grizzly death scene in my mind - something worthy of a Rob Zombie video.

Little do people know that under this seemingly calm façade I’m actually a raging sociopath of Michael Meyers-like proportions. There’s just something instantly soothing and therapeutic about imagining a gruesome, horrible death on somebody who pisses you off and getting it out of your system before going on with the rest of your day - simple.

It alleviates all that pent-up “NGGGAHHH, MUTHERFUCKERS!” rage inside you.

Listed for you below are ten of my more memorable and creative deaths I’ve wished on various family and friends of mine whenever they’ve had the misfortune of being insensitive or inattentive to my own needs like the rat bastards they are.

1) Swallowed whole by 20’ long python.

This one I recommend to reserve for people whom you don’t really want to kill outright, but slowly torture through extremely uncomfortable means instead. Somebody for whom the though of turning into 3 lbs. of python turd left at the bottom of a glass tank is a welcome one; like the woman who holds up lines by checking through more than a dozen items at the ‘Express Check Out’.

2) Trampled by stampeding cattle.

I find this wished death best left for times when you are outside or in the open where you can envision acres of the marauding beasts coming up over the horizon and towards your target. Some times it’s fun to imagine the cattle suddenly crashing through the walls of the office place and wrecking havoc in the aisles overtaking the source of your annoyance in a flurry of horns and hooves.

3) Crushed under a falling piano.

C’mon. Who didn’t chuckle to themselves when Sylvester the Cat got himself flattened by a grand piano? How cool would that be to see in real life? What I wouldn’t give to see a piano fall from out of nowhere onto any sicko at work who doesn’t feel the automatic need to thoroughly rinse their hands after taking a leak.

4) Choked on a hot dog.

I call this one the “Mama Cass Special”. It’s a rather simplistic way to die, I agree. But what it lacks for in creativity it more than makes up for with graphic possibilities. Anyone who’s ever seen somebody choking before knows that this is a rather unpleasant experience - making it all the better an end result for stupidity.

The real beauty of this wished death is that you can substitute any random food item that you might happen to be feasting on at the time. If somebody really ticks you off and you therefore want to spice things up a little bit, try lodging a watermelon in someone’s esophagus. That uppity douchebag next door with all the really expensive power tools in his garage and who insists on running them all on Sunday mornings for no apparent reason other than to wake the dead.

5) Drowned in battery acid.

This one came to me after watching Jack Nicholson take a swan dive into a vat of simmering green goo in Batman. I added my own little twist for the sake of artistic expression. Sometimes during my mental slayings my target will emerge afterwards with purple hair and perma-smile. Upon which I am suddenly donned in a rubberized body suit and proceed to whoop me some idiot ass in the name of revenge. Of course, the old melting flesh and high pitching screaming is nice too.

6) Mauled by syphillic mountain gorillas.

Here’s a real favorite of mine that came to me in a series of dreams where I must have been visited by my Spirit Psychoguide or something. . You just don’t randomly come up with little gems like this on the spot. In hindsight, it might have had something to do with eating some undercooked drumsticks one evening and passing out in front of ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ on the television. Again, I take creative license with the syphilis. But it was these visions in particular that lead me onto this homicidal coup de tat. This beauty comes from a higher - or lower - place.

I save this wished upon death for those really, obnoxious retards you want to physically harm if only they weren’t bigger, cooler, and better looking than you. Like those morons at the gym who stack, like, a thousand pounds on their bench and then walk away.

7) Boiled in molten lava.

The classics never go out of style. Pass the poi.

8) Injected with Ebola virus.

Here’s a doozy. All you need to do is Google ‘Ebola Virus’ and you’ll find enough gnarly images to keep you awake for the rest of your life. You’d have to be some kind of completely annoying asshat to ever have this wished upon you. The “Movie Guy” at Blockbuster comes to mind. Shit, any Blockbuster employee for that matter.

9) Assassinated by ninja’s.

This one is just cool to envision. I can keep myself blissfully occupied for hours while the shit hits the fan picturing this ensuing battle as stealthy, black-clad ninja’s proceed to dissect my nemesis to pieces with their swords and throwing stars. Entertaining as it is effective.

And lastly…

10) Fucked to death by horny bull elephants.

I recommend using this one sparingly. I also recommend not really trying to envision it too much when you play it out in your mind. Needless to say that I save this one for special occasions. I don’t just hand this one out to anybody. You have to really earn this fate, baby. Let me spare you the image altogether by saying I’d rather stick my manhood into a wood chipper than suffer the fate of being fornicated by one promiscuous African elephant - never mind an entire herd.

Do you know the average weight of your average bull elephant’s penis? Fortunately for everybody I do. Would you believe 59.5 lbs.! Each elephant testicle alone weights in at just 4.4 lbs.! That’s over 60 lbs. of furious, hard fucking bull elephant cock slamming into you with reckless abandon. Now that’s gonna leave a mark emotionally!

So whether it be images of some poor bastard having a train being run on him by Jumbo and all his buddies in some after hours circus tent, or some schmuck having his body being used as a drum kit by diseased primates - dealing with stress in this manner keeps me from acting out.

And, yes, I do take a sick, evil pride in having conjured up these frightful scenarios on my very own. It took real creativity, dammit! I’m like the artist who paints with oils, or the sculptor who molds in clay. I can weave my macabre tapestry of imaginary slayings in a way that I could just as easily be adding crisp, yet delicate brush strokes to a rolling meadow on any canvass. When it comes to creating horrific ways to die – I am a Rembrandt.

Besides, it is delightfully calming and usually cheers me up right away.

Like yoga. Only more violent and bloody.

Or maybe I really am just two short steps away from over-obsessing about body lotions and business cards and developing an interest in home chemistry.

Who really knows?

* We have ridiculous, asinine things known as laws that prevent us civilized patrons of planet Earth from dealing with matters in a fashion completely deserving of complete assholes.

Fuck Facebook!

I hate Facebook. I hate it like I hate Raymond.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “But Terry, EVERYBODY loves Raymond!” But it’s not true. I don’t like Raymond. In fact, I think “Terry Hates Raymond” would have made for a much better television show. And, so, by default I absolutely hate Facebook.

Unfortunately for me, the entire fucking world has gone Facebook crazy in an explosion of “Super Fun Walls” and “Likeness Quizzes”.

How did all this Facebook madness get started anyway?

It started off all simply enough. I registered an account and was instantly located by old friends and acquaintances from high school and overseas; all of which I have reinitiated lines of communication. It was pretty cool actually.

But what started originally as a convenient and fun way to reestablish a connection with lost friends soon morphed itself into a cyber circus of ridiculous applications and features so confusing it gives Bill Gates nightmares. Before I knew it, I had been sucked up into the very demonic vortex of this Internet whirlwind known as Facebook.

Boozemail, Bathroom Wall, Honesty Box, Porn Star Names, Top Friends, Hawaiian Luau’s, Growing Gifts, Hatching Gifts, Chalkboards, Pet Monkey’s, Aquariums, Magic 8-Ball’s, marauding vampires and werewolves, zombie armies, hell, you just fucking name something completely arbitrary and stupid and there’ll probably be about a dozen applications just for you!

“Hey, So-and-so likes using and has added ‘The Spanking Tree’ application to their Facebook profile and thinks you should to. To accept please click on the…”

“Spanking Tree? No thanks, MJ.”

IGNORE.

Who uses all this shit anyway?

Some of these invitations sound downright disgusting. For the record: if I were ever to involve myself in something known as a “Super Poke”, I would insist on seeing some recent blood work results and then, maybe, meet for coffee first. There will be no super-poking until I am comfortable and have at least had a chance to limber up first.

There’s even a Catbook and Dogbook for your furry four-legged friends. Isn’t that cute?

Sure, it all seems fine and dandy at first, but just think what deep sociological damage is being done to the one person who finds themselves with the awkward realization that their cat or dog has more friends than they do.

Here’s a person who’ll be racing to the nearest clock tower with their deer rifle.

On the flip side of the coin, how annoying is it to have your inbox invaded by thousands of emails inviting you to join their various events and outings, add new friends or features, or add more bullshit applications to your account?

I’ve had people with whom I’m fairly certain I’ve never even met in my life request to have me add them to my list of friends. That’s weird, right? You just know it’s only a short step from here to being baited by some Internet predator in a chat room and agreeing to meet up in some public bathroom at the park.

But for some people it’s definitely Quantity over Quality when it comes to their Facebook. I have seen people with over 700 people in their Friend’s list. How do they know so many people? They must have to employ a personal secretary just to keep up with all the incoming and outgoing instant messages from friends and family. Nobody is that fucking popular!

So why do they all want to be my friend so bad?

Likewise, how about those people who obviously sit awake all night thinking up ways to improve your quality of life? They must lay awake conjuring up idiotic features and applications to add to your Facebook account that would add significant value to your miserable existence. I want to bury a meat clever into the frontal lobes of these people.

Honestly.

Are these applications a true indication of how your friends feel about you? Judging by all the invitations I get to receive alcoholic beverages and naughty gifts, it’s safe to assume that my friends think that I’m some kind of alcoholic whore.

Or are these just subliminal nudges in a particular direction?

I wonder if these cute and seemingly harmless applications have ever resulted in something more sinister than intended? Take the infamous Food Fight application that had everybody throwing everything from cream pies to sheep at one another. I wonder if someone ever took having a sheep lobbed at him or her a little too seriously and responded by stuffing a Molotov cocktail up the exhaust pipe of their nemesis’ Subaru.

“Thrown a sheep at me will you fuck face?”

Don’t laugh. It could happen.

I can foresee a time in the not-so-distant future where an entire war will be waged over the Internet by these legions of sociable techno geeks. Sure, it starts with innocent kissy face profile pictures and maybe a harmless Internet vampire bite between strangers intended in good fun, but soon enough, little Johnny will return to wage holy hell on all those hapless people in his friend’s list who turned against him.

There’s a perfectly good reason why I don’t stay in touch with some people. Because they’re fuckin’ nuts! Suddenly, all these happily forgotten people from my past are hunting me down one by one. No doubt to exact their revenge.

I feel so exposed.

Now that same annoying, useless, lazy subletter that sat on the couch and hoarded my bagels back in University has located me once again and has not only requested to be my friend, but has also invited me to participate as an Ensign in his growing zombie army. Fuck me! That’s a complete 360-degree turn from my past that would make Anderson Cooper toss his cookies!

Suddenly, this whole Facebook thing seems about as good an idea as dropping Jim Morrison into a meth lab.

Grooving With the Fuhr

Almost a year ago, the world discovered exactly what an aficionado Adolph Hitler was for the arts when 21 watercolors of his own doing were auctioned off at a London auction house for a cool $220,000 smackers. Now another find from Hitler’s past has surfaced in a Moscow attic belonging to ex-Soviet Intelligence officer Lev Besymenski.

You can just hear the collective sound of palms being rubbed together with furious anticipation by the world’s WWII history buffs and music appreciators alike.

Like his artworks, this recent discovery is of particular interest since it helps shed further light on the man behind he monster. In fact, you couldn’t ask for a more significant discovery had you found an old shoebox of schizer videos in his bunker footlocker. What is this amazing discovery you ask? Why his record collection of course!

How juicy is that?

Finally, we can answer the age-old question: what does one listen to after a long day of warmongering and exterminating undesirables? What, exactly, did Hitler like to chill out to back at his Chancellery pad?

We’d all like to automatically assume, knowing the man as we do, that he’d totally be into his Marilyn Manson, or Neil Diamond nowadays. But given that these loud, demonic, heavy metal bands weren’t even the faintest drunken glimmer in their grandfathers eye yet…what did the great Fuhr listen to that pushed him over the edge? What was the equivalent of your typical Metallica album back around the turn of the century?

You can almost hear it now: "Hey baby. How would you like to come back to my bunker and listen to some records?"

But first, let’s recap how this unusual WWII artifact was discovered in the first place.

Our saga begins on a warm mid-May afternoon in 1945 war-ravaged Berlin. Lev Besymenski, the captain of the military intelligence service of the First Belarusian Front, is given a mission: Together with two other officers, he is to inspect the Reich Chancellery -- stormed just a few days before -- including the underground bunker where Hitler stayed during the war and eventually committed suicide.

He has meticulously searched the headquarters of the Nazi regime for several hours. Suddenly the Soviet commander responsible for the building asks him what souvenir he would like to take with him.

His comrades have already helped themselves to cutlery engraved with the initials “A. H.” in a shopping spree the likes of which hadn’t been seen since Goering walked the streets of Paris only a few years earlier; a little looting game of “tit for tat” if you will. They selected leather cases containing medals and other trinkets, furniture, and tapestries. But Besymenski thinks of something else. He asks the officer to open several large iron doors for him that had been secured with special locks.

“We were faced with a strange sight,” he would write decades later: “Several rows of sturdy wooden boxes stood in each room, numbered and packed closely together.” German service staff said the boxes were packed for shipment to the Berghof, Hitler's residence in Bavaria, but the trip never took place, according to Besymenski. The boxes were filled with crockery and various household effects*.

Besymenski fills a box with souvenirs for himself and later takes it back to Moscow on a special train. Forty-six years will go by before his daughter Alexandra discovers the booty by chance.

Flash to August 1991, a pleasant summer day in the dacha settlement Nikolina-Gora close to Moscow, where the Besymenski family owns a house. The family has visitors, and steaming blinis are placed on the veranda table at lunchtime. Then it's time to relax over some borsch and caviar from the neighborhood ‘Das Dollarmart’. Besymenski sends his daughter into the attic to get badminton rackets where - what does she bump her shin into - but a box of old albums labeled “Führerhauptquartier”.

And, low and behold, we have the Fuhr’s record collection. And so onto the big question: what the fuck did histories most brutal dictator listen to in order to drown out all the evil voices going on in his head?

Well, as it turns out, where there can no doubt of the intensity for his hate-on towards the Russians and Jews; he sure loved their music.

Yep. Hitler sure loved him some Jew music all right.

It is well know that next to architecture and shitty watercolors, music was Hitler’s big passion in life…well, aside from the whole racial cleansing thing that is. So among the expected finds of classical European orchestral music were Wager’s “The Flying Dutchman,” performed by the Orchestra of the ‘Bayreuth Festspielhaus’ with Heinz Tietjen conducting, and Beethoven’s ‘Piano Sonatas No. 24 in F-sharp major’ and ‘No. 27 in E-minor’. However, stashed away in the collection were also albums by Russian composers like Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, as well as many albums of popular Jewish pianists, violinists, etc. of the time.

Far out, maaaan.

But wait! How can this be? The Nazi’s considered these people “sub-humans” didn’t they?

Seems like kind of a moot point now though.

“I feel this is a sheer mockery of the millions of Slavs and Jews who had to die because of the racial ideology of the Nazis,” a stirred-up Alexandra Besymenskaya (now 53) remarks today.

Hey. That’s a bit of a harsh thing to say about someone’s record collection isn’t it? I mean, I have the odd Public Enemy hidden away in my record collection but that hardly qualifies me as an OG gangster, now does it?

So the closest thing to the Anti-Christ we’ve see in modern history liked to beat off to a little Jewish fiddle music – so what? It turned out all right in the end, didn’t it?

What really makes this discovery really interesting in my mind is recognizing that these albums are probably what Hitler used to hide under the bed to keep them secret from his mother. You know - like that stealthily concealed Robert Plant album that you prayed your mother wouldn’t find while you were off at school. Well, that was in my house anyway.

You can almost hear her now:

“ADOLPH! What is that devil Jew musik I hear coming from your room!”

To which, little Adolph would reply:

“What Jew musik, mama? I’m listenink to my Beethoven like a guter junge .”

Or…

“ADOLPH! Turn off that Jew musik right this instant, junger mann !”

“But, mama. All the kids are listening to Jew music these days. It’s the am kühlsten ! Don’t be such a quadrat .”

* Among the random household artifacts included a Swastika-shaped jelly mold, and curiously enough, a recipe for Baklava.

Jail House Frock

Okay. So who else is getting sick to death of hearing about notorious Bimbostein, Paris-dumbfuck-Hilton?

It’s been nearly three weeks now of this continued nonsense and STILL we are condemned to hearing about her every movement to and from LA’s Century Regional Detention Facility located in Lynwood, California.

The news is run amok with gossip. She’s depressed; she’s bored; she’s crying all the time. God, make it all stop! It’s enough to make you throw yourself in front of a moving bus.

Never mind what car bombs are blowing up innocents where or whatever the latest breaking news is on our on-going War-Against-Whatever-It-Is-We’re-Fighting-These-Days – some blonde rich bitch has run into trouble with the law! Suddenly, the entire planet’s attention has been temporarily diverted to the whole debacle that is Paris Hilton going to jail.

The whole story began little over three weeks ago when Paris turned herself into the LA Men’s Correctional Fascility at approximately 10:30PM after attending a ritzy MTV Movie Awards party beforehand.

She was then escorted to the all-women's facility in Lynwood, where she was booked, fingerprinted, photographed, medically screened and issued an unfashionably orange prison uniform. Although to my horny mind, I prefer to envision her booking process as more of the messy love scene from the movie Backbeat.

Her mug shot portrayed her in what appeared to be a designer V-neck shirt, eye makeup and lip-gloss that highlighted the faintest hint of a flirty smile. Her long blond hair was draped over one shoulder a la Sports Illustrated. For all purposes, it looked like just another ordinary prima donna photograph from one of her recent modeling shoots. The kind of look she might make when she's deciding on which color of nail polish to purchase.

All seemed to be going considerably well under the circumstances for the world’s favorite Celebutante. “I am trying to be strong right now,” Paris said of her jail time set to begin that Tuesday. “I'm really scared but I'm ready to face my sentence.”

Brave words. But from there the floodgates opened up.

The Hollywood rumor mill began to fly almost immediately that Paris was not going to be able to handle her 45-day jail sentence.

My first thought was “only 45 days”? Shit, David Blaine spent seven days submerged inside a fish bowl for Pete’s sake! And after only one day inside a 12-by-8-foot jail cell, cut off from the spoils of her high society lifestyle, poor Paris is already sniveling like a redheaded stepchild.

News reports and gossip columnists began reporting that Paris was not eating or sleeping and spending much of her days crying in her cell or on her phone. As a result, the Sheriff’s department later released her under house arrest instead due to a “mysterious medical condition”.

But lets back up for a moment…

Not eating or sleeping? Am I supposed to take this seriously? The girl weighs about 100 lbs. soaking wet. It looks like she exists on a Skittle-a-day as it is. Clearly, here is a chick that hasn’t had many steak dinners as it is – at least not ones she’s keeping down anyway. She has the same body build of a detained Prisoner of War.

A little cereal, bread, and juice would do Paris some good!

And for the not sleeping part – isn’t she a notorious fixture of the LA nightclub scene? When Paris goes clubbing we’re not talking about baby seals here.

Hardly a tabloid ever hits the news stands these days without a snapshot of a gussied up Ms. Hilton whooping it up at all hours of the night and throwing around her trademark pouty smile for the legions of cameramen.

So I’m hardly worried now that suddenly she isn’t getting a decent night’s sleep.

It was also mentioned that she complained incessantly about her jail cell being too bright and too cold.

Cold? Well, duh! She’s the equivalent in weight to that of an anorexic gerbil.

Hey, here’s an idea: FUCKING EAT SOMETHING! Put some meat on those bones! Have a cupcake or something, sweetheart. A few extra calories at this point might just improve your core temperature by a few degrees. As it is now, this detained debutante would complain about being cold on the surface of the sun!

Now, for the “being too bright” part.

Okay. I may be able to sympathize with her on this point. Hey, what with all that lucrative night clubbing and late night soirees, the sudden increase in light intensity has probably fucked up all her rods and cones permanently. After all, she probably hasn’t seen the light of day since she hit puberty. Her world is one of darkened dance clubs and underground hotel room porno shoots – not bright florescent lighting.

So throw her a satin sleepers mask and be done with it!

No sooner had Paris began the first few days into her sentence for driving with a suspended license then she was released by the Sheriff’s department on the urging of her psychologist who claimed that poor Paris was suffering from an undisclosed medical condition only 24 short hours later.

Umm, when did being s-t-u-p-i-d constitute as a “medical condition”?

Honestly. Sign me up. I’m ready for the Bar Exam right now.

Whatever the case, Paris was released back to her LA mansion under house arrest where she immediately ordered VIP service from the “Tan Van” in celebration of her release from the Big House.

Now, how is this justice exactly? Because being waited on hand and foot in a luxury mansion that makes Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory seem like a cushion fort by comparison, just doesn’t sound like punishment to me.

Shit, if that’s the punishment for drinking while impaired – “Bring me another double, garcon! And warm up the Limo. Daddy’s going for a drive.”

Also, as part of the terms for her house arrest, Paris was required to wear a GPS tracking system on her ankle.

GASP!

Won’t somebody puh-lease think of the tans lines here?!

Yeah, and that’s going to be very effective tracking her whereabouts around a Hollywood Hills mansion. What’s the point? The chick is so skinny it’ll probably just drop off the second she leaves the squad car anyway.

In the meantime, Paris’ neighbors have taken up the campaign to have her evicted from the neighborhood. Leaflets - distributed by Christopher Hauck and Anne Goursaud - read: “Since the arrival of Paris Hilton to our neighborhood, we have seen our quality of life deteriorate.” The pamphlets urge members of the immediate community to contact the police and councilmen to seek for her removal from the Hollywood Hills area.

It seems the neighbors have been complaining about the sound of overhead helicopters since the whole situation began. Even Cameron Diaz who lives in the area stated:

“She just has to get plastered all over the world. There were 10 helicopters above her house, which I live not too far from. I was like, 'Could you please keep it down.

“We all suffer when Paris suffers.”

I’m like, okay, Cameron. Thanks for downplaying the whole situation.

It must really suck to have your poolside Guatemalan Spa treatment continually interrupted by the paparazzi.

But the house arrest was not to be. Paris was later dragged back to the Twin Towers mental fascility kicking and screaming in the back of a Sheriff’s car once again only to be returned to Lynwood. I’d be lying if I said the images of Paris sobbing in the back seat of a police car wouldn’t fuel many future fantasy’s to come I assure you!

It seems that some judge was royally pissed that the Sheriff’s department would release the ‘Simply Life’ star only two days into her sentence. So the handcuffed heiress was mandated to serve out the rest of her 45-day sentence and a warrant was issued for her retrieval.

So much for “severe medical problems”. Just force-feed her meds down her throat like you were packing a goose with pate and be done with it. Problem solved.

Just be sure to check her care packages of Beluga caviar for nail files.

On the positive side, things have seemingly gone well for other jail detainees since Paris has returned however. Recently released Rosemary Gibbons, 35, told the New York Daily News: “Since she was here last week, they started giving us double bologna, double apple juices. Two blankets instead of one - and a sheet, too! Everyone has cookies coming out of their pockets.

“Now we feel like we are in the Hilton Hotel.”

Atta girl, Rosemary. Onward and upward!

Womb Raiders

How do I get me one of those adopted Third World babies?

Just about anyone who’s who is getting themselves one. They’re all the rage in Hollywood it seems.

Nicole Kidman has one; Sharon Stone has one; Meg Ryan has one; Calista Flockhart* has one; Angelina Jolie has three, and now Madonna has one too. And, you know if it’s good enough for the Material Girl, then it’s good enough for me!

I imagine if I could get my hands on one of these nappy-haired less-than-fortunate orphan babies, my street cred around town would skyrocket dramatically.

And that’s a bet even Pete Rose couldn’t pass up!

It must be pretty easy to do by the looks of it. Just get yourself a return ticket to any Third World shantytown and pluck up any random child splashing around in a disease-ridden puddle and, VIOLA! - Instant parenthood. And without all the regular preliminary bullshit, like child birthing and dating n’ stuff.

And I know what you’re all thinking: making me responsible for the well-being of any small child is about as good an idea as having R. Kelly coach girls volleyball. And I agree wholeheartedly! I would probably drop the poor thing like 3rd period French at least three times before we even boarded the plane. I don’t have the good sense that God gave a goose.

But, how then, do all these Hollywood celebrities get their mitts on these disadvantaged foreign children? Surely, the members of Hollywood’s A-List aren’t really being thought of as anything resembling a stable, supportive family role model - are they? Shit, Drew Barrymore was shot gunning beers and doing lines of coke off her nannies ass when she was seven years old for Pete’s sake.

But, still, it seems that adopted children have become the new fashionable accessory. Soon, all the top designers will be peddling starving orphans in all the schmultzy boutiques along Rodeo Drive.

“Oh, Paris! That Nepalese crack baby really brings out the rhinestones in your Gucci shoulder bag.”

But really – what’s the big deal?

The Queen of Pop, recently returned to Malawi to meet her adoptive son’s father as well as to check on some aid work she is involved with. On her last trip last year, Madonna stirred up controversy after being accused of using her celebrity status to circumvent laid down rules about foreigners adopting Malawian children. Yohane Banda, the father of little David Banda, Madonna’s adopted son, claims that he did not understand the conditions of Madonna’s interim custody order when the child was taken from him. He claimed that his child had been stolen from him.

“One minute we talking about all going for ice cream, and the next thing I know, I’m left standing there holding a goat”, says Mr. Banda on what he remembers about Madonna’s adoptive process.

So her return visit to Malawi to temporarily reunite the child with his father could be viewed as nothing more than a strategically planned daycare damage control.

And not to be outdone, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt adopted a 3-½ year old boy from Vietnam named Pax Thien. That’s the third adopted child into Angelina’s growing brood. She already has Maddox, 5 (Cambodia), Zahara, 12 (Ethiopia), and little Shiloh, 10 months. The tabloids have even claimed recently that when it comes to her United Colors of Benetton family of children, it’s little Shiloh, her own flesh and blood that often goes without Mommy’s love.

I guess Angelina doesn’t dig white meat.

But, whatever, the two are gripped in this whole game of adoptive “One Up-man-ship” in the media lately. Many are concerned that this recent Third World baby boom among celebrities casts a shadow somehow over the whole foreign child adoptive process.

Shadow? What shadow? Shit, if Angelina Jolie or Madonna were ever to decide that they wanted to adopt a single, white, male idiot in his mid-thirties, I’ll gratefully leap into that dog pit with a nice, big, fat, juicy pork chop tied around my neck. No fucking problem!

Some people are saying that these women are selling out their celebrity status to satisfy their motherly whims.

Yeah. And?

Not that I’m one to jump to celebrities defense or anything, but who fucking cares? Madonna would sell out for the cool side of a pillow, so why is everybody shocked that she would use her celebrity super powers to sidestep the odd law in getting herself a fashionable Third World baby? Heaven’s forbid the child should ever later regret being taken away from his mud puddle and delivered into wealth and opportunity. Isn’t that every orphan’s dream?

I should know, my sister watched ‘Little Orphan Annie’ every day for a solid year as a child!

Shit, I’m 34 years old and have parents and I get disappointed when I don’t wake up in some four-poster bed in some lavish Irish castle.

Stupidlousybrokeparents…

If I were Madonna and had, like, a zillion dollars – I’d adopt too. Lord knows it’s to her advantage. Over the years, Madonna’s squish mitten has been worked over so much that you could hold a field practice for the whole Denver Bronco’s football team in there.

Why wouldn’t she give herself the break and just adopt instead?

No muss – no fuss.

To retaliate, Angelina Jolie is set to announce that she plans to adopt each and every surviving student at Virginia Tech. That’ll really show them who means business when it comes to global charity!

If I had a little bit better of an income, I’d be interested in getting me a Third World baby too.

Something in a, oh, I don’t know…something in a Malaysian AIDS orphan maybe, or an orphaned war casualty from Sierra Leone. You know - something hip and now.

Unfortunately, things have been a little tight since they have assigned a security guard to the wishing well at the local mall, so the best I could do would be for an abandoned street kid from the New Jersey projects.

Not exactly the exotic accessory en vogue these days.

* Apparently, Calista’s arms are so thin and weak that she cannot actually hold or support the child, but instead, hired a team of around-the-clock Sherpa nannies to look after the child on trips out.

April Tool's

So far; so good.

It’s been three whole days since April Fool’s, and yet, somehow, I’ve managed to refrain from kicking anybody in the jewels, setting anything on fire, or dropped any heavy objects from highway overpasses.

Yay me.

April Fool’s Day, you see, is the Holy Grail holiday for assholes. The one day of the year where every retard on the planet suddenly decides he’s Jerry Lewis.

Even the most cantankerous, humorless, and spiteful sourpuss can dust off his rubber chicken and be an instant comedic god. How did such a noble concept for a nationally recognized holiday go so wrong? From the moment you leave the house you are constantly confronted by these unfunny moolyaks who are attempting to yuck it up as if they were a regular Robin Williams on meth.

Only one fucking problem – they’re not.

But I think this year it’s safe to say that April Fool’s Day has successfully passed without incident or violent injury.

Like every other holiday, I hate April Fool’s Day. When exactly did our culture go tits up and resort to celebrating holidays involving fake vomit, whoopee cushions, and plastic piles of dog shit? Or do they just make up these asinine holidays on the spot?

How then did all this madness get started anyway?

Well, although still open to debate, it’s most commonly accepted that April Fool’s Day originated back in 1582, when Pope Gregory XII ordered a new calendar (The Gregorian Calendar) created to replace the old Julian Calendar in use at the time.

First off, how fucking cool is that to wake up one morning and decide: “you know, I feel like a new calendar today”? Now THAT’S a power trip, baby!

But, anyway, the man in the funny hat wants a new calendar. Up until that time, most ancient cultures celebrated their New Year’s Day on or around April 1st, which closely follows the vernal equinox on March 20th or 21st.

Why? Who knows? It was good enough for the Romans and it was good enough for the Hindu’s, but apparently it wasn’t good enough for Pope Gregory. No, sir! Pope Gregory wanted his New Years Day on January 1st – and so, SHAZAM! We had the new calendar year that we have now.

France adopted the new calendar almost immediately. No real surprise there, right? The thing is, and as explanation has it, many people either refused to accept the new date, or did not learn about it, and continued to celebrate New Years Day on the original April 1st despite what the Pope was peddling at the time.

Here’s another prime example of ancient cultures being completely asleep at the wheel. Imagine being so ignorant to the times in which you live that you somehow fail to hear, or understand, that New Year’s Day had officially been moved four months early.

Definitely to your advantage to write that shit down, don’t ya think?

Other people began to make fun of these traditionalists, or “bumpkins”, as I prefer to call them, and attempted to send them on “fool’s errands” or trying to trick them into believing something false. So, in essence, it’s a holiday dedicated primarily to teasing stupid people.

How fucking beautiful is that?

An entire holiday completely revolving around the tormenting of poor, unfortunate retards everywhere. Funny, then, how the French were so quick to adapt this practice. You’d think that what with such a large canvass to cover as it was, they might frown upon inciting public pranking riots in the streets by it’s general populace. But what do I know?

Eventually, the practice is said to have spread throughout the rest of Europe. There’s only one problem with this whole scenario is that England did not adopt the new Gregorian calendar until 1752, and yet, the April Fool’s Day tradition was well established before then.

Uh-oh!

Another explanation was then put forward by Joseph Boskin, a professor of history at Boston University. He explained that the practice began during the reign of Constantine, when a group of court jesters and fools told the Roman emperor that they could do a better job at running the empire.

Pardon? They told who what?

I don’t know about anyone else, but if I were Emperor Constantine, I’d have castrated the little fuckers for daring to openly criticize my total and absolute authority. In fact, I’d hunt down courts jesters and fools everywhere and have them roasted alive. So much so, that comedians today would be born with third degree burns.

Instead, we’d be celebrating ‘Roast An Idiot’ Day on April 1st. I wouldn’t exactly have made him king for a day or anything!

But Constantine, however, was amused, and did just that. He allowed a jester named Kugel to be made king for a day. Kugel passed an edict calling for absurdity on that day, and the custom became an annual event.

Yeah. Like I’d ever let that happen.

Unfortunately, though, Boskin himself was full of April Fool’s bullshit. So the chances of this actually happening were slim to none.

It is worth noting, however, that many different cultures have had days of foolishness around the start of April, give or take a couple of weeks. The Romans had a festival named Hilaria on March 25th, rejoicing in the resurrection of Attis – and you can just well imagine what kinds of kinky shit the Romans got up to then! The Hindu calendar has Hopi, and the Jewish calendar has Purim. Perhaps it’s something about that time of year, with its turn from winter to spring that brings out the complete and utter jackass in everyone.

Everyone but this complete and utter jackass, that is.

April Fool’s Day is just another excuse to barricade myself indoors, safely stowed away to weather the storm.

It’s a good thing we Canadians are not allowed to arm ourselves in public, otherwise I’d be going all ‘Walker: Texas Ranger’ on every dipshit, moron, and rhubarb that should ever make the fatal mistake of shocking me with a joy buzzer, or asking me to pull their finger.

POW!

“Aprils Fools to you too, motherfucker!”

The War on Chimps

Some headlines are funny; some headlines are sad, and some just plain, perfunctory and boring. Some, however, portent the end of the world with a vividness rivaled only by the ‘Book of Revelation’. A recent headline from last Friday’s Washington Post, may just fall into that last category:

“For First Time, Chimps Seen Making Weapons for Hunting”.

Rowh-oh! That’s not good. Not good at all!

Reports are that researchers in Senegal have witnessed chimpanzees making spears from sticks. Apparently, they use their hands and teeth to peel the bark from sticks. Then they sharpen the ends with their teeth. Then they jab them into the hollows of trees where the bush babies are sleeping. In one case, a chimp was even seen to take a stabbed animal out of a tree and eat it.

Now is that scary or what?

Of course, chimps have been seen using crude tools for many centuries, but this spear-making is the first time people have witnessed them going through a multi-step process to create something that they seem to use for a specific purpose; namely, the impaling of unsuspecting sleeping animals from tree trunks.

Lets look at the big picture here. Today it’s jabbing a bush baby with a crudely fashioned spear, tomorrow the Statue of Liberty is buried up to her jubblies in sand, humans are in cages, and a half-naked Charleston Heston is making sweet love to a monkey.

How long before these super-smart chimps evolve and develop their own sophisticated arsenal of monkey weaponry, and pose a more serious threat to the human race? If we let these chimps go unchecked, they’ll soon be driving around in Beamer’s and buying stock over their cells. And from there it’s only a short hop, skip, and a jump from buying nuclear weapons on the Black Market.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t share the same enthusiasm for this evolutionary event as the naturalists and zoologists. It’s not the cute or interesting, scientifically or otherwise. This is a serious threat to my mind. I’ve taken solace in the fact that I am not the stupidest creature on the face of the earth. To me, this represents a significant challenge for my already unstable position on the evolutionary ladder.

Forget Osama bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or any other popular globally vilified evil-doer, I say we move on these terrorist monkey motherfuckers now and wipe them out with a full on ‘Shock and Awe’ assault.

Rain down sweet explosive justice! Really give these l’il chimp bastards what for!

Think about it people. Think about it.

Act now and save ourselves the future worry of having to fight another unpopular ‘War on Terror’. And just imagine the indignity of having to fight a ‘War on Chimps’. There’ll be anarchy running amok in the streets and our society will be eventually overthrown. Before you know it, we’ll all be made into their monkey bitches.

The proverbial shit will be flung in all directions and it’ll be a bad moon rising on that day, my friends.

And that’s not a life worth living.

Probing St. Patrick

Well, a few days has passed since that whole St. Patty’s train came rolling through and so I’ve been set to thinking: who the fuck was this St. Patrick fella and what did he do to inspire all this holiday horseshit anyway?

So I did me some research.

It turns out that St. Patrick wasn’t some little faggy-looking hobbit sporting a shamrock and pot of gold at all. Go figure!

You mean we were lied too? First the Easter Bunny, then Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. And now St. Patrick too? Hard to believe I know.

In a nutshell, Patrick was a Christian priest whose job it was to convert the population of Ireland to Christianity. Sounds easy enough, right? The Druids, however, stood in his way.

The Druids, as it turns out, were very important people in Ireland at this time, and their symbol happened to be the ‘Snake of Wisdom’. And you already know what a hard-on the Christian Church has for snakes - right? They have a total “Anti-Snake” kind of philosophy going on.

Druids could be priests of the old religion of Ireland, but they were also much more. The Druids, you see, were histories original “multi-taskers”. And, sadly, they didn’t exactly look like the wizard-types you see in children’s Harry Potter books either.

One part of the Druid class were the “Bards”, whose job it was to remember all of the history of the people, as well as to record current events. Because, being the back wood bumpkins they were, the Irish Celts did not rely on a written language, everything had to be memorized. So Bards became poets and musicians, and, in essence, drunken barfly’s. This also explains why the Irish tend to get strangely poetic when they’re toasted I suppose.

They used their music and poetry to help them remember their history, and consequently, they went very hungry as a result.

Despite all this the Bards were highly respected members of the Irish society, as the Irish believed that remembering the past helped you plan for the future. Funny then, how they still didn’t feel the need to write anything fucking down – but I digress. I suppose that’s why the Irish are not known globally as the brightest bulb in the box. And also, perhaps, why Celtic music in general tends to twist my testicles in a knot.

Another part of the Druidic class were the “Brehons”. Brehons were the Judges and the Keepers of the Laws. The Celtic people had a slightly complicated society, and with it, a highly complicated set of laws. Brehons trained for many years to learn the laws of the people so that they could be relied upon to make peace in the event of the disputes.

Again with the no writing shit down! Not too bright these ancient Micks.

Because they served to protect the rights of every man, woman, and child, they were also held in high regard. Picture Judge Joe Brown in animal skins and you’d be getting the idea.

And, of course, there were the Druidic Priests. This branch of the Druid set were the keepers of the knowledge of Earth and Spirits. You just know that made for one hell of a campfire song!

It was their responsibility to learn the Spirit World, in order to keep people and Earth in harmony. Priests performed marriages, and “baptisms”, they were healers, and psychiatrists. The Priests were the wise grandfathers to whom you could go with a problem and climb into their lap for council. Later, maybe, they made you dig deep into their pockets for “candy”.

So, into this crazy Enya album of ancient Irish culture enters a highly energetic and devoted Christian, to who had just been assigned the task of “saving” the people.

Specifically, he had come to kick him some serious pagan ass!

The Irish people at that time were very happy and doing quite well – as do most people before Christianity’s ugly head rears itself – but Patrick was persistent if nothing. He recognized that the Druids were the real who’s who of Irish society, and so set about trying to convert them to his Christianity.

The Druids, of course, were none too excited about giving up their way of life. And who could fucking blame them? They only spent their entire lives learning the ways of the people and committing it to memory, and now they were being asked to simply forget it all and go with another plan? “That’s the thanks we get? Fat-fucking-chance!”

And so the stereotypical of the testy, scrappy Irishman is born I guess. In fact, saying that the Druids were reluctant is like saying that Christ’s last day on Earth was a just little aggravating.

And although Patrick was not willing to abandon his vision of a Christian Ireland, he was getting desperate. He knew that because the strength of the people rested with the Druids, he did the only decent, moral, Christian thing he could think of – he set about systematically wiping them from the face of the earth.

Patrick began to undermine the influence of the Druids by destroying the sacred sites of the people and building churches and monasteries where the Druids had once lived and taught. To put it simply, he literally cockblocked the Druids out of the very society they had helped to preserve and preside over for hundreds of years.

In the end, the Druidic class was broken by a bitter campaign of attrition. Instead of hearing the teachings and advice of the Druids, the people began to hear the teachings of Rome. Because the Druids were the only ones who were taught to remember the history, with the Druids dead and their influence broken, the history was forgotten. And so Christianity throws the towel over another of the worlds cultural birdcages.

See where not writing shit down gets you?

Patrick had finally won. By killing off the teachers and wise ones his own religion could be taught instead.

And it’s another moral victory for Jesus!

For his mass conversion of a culture to Christianity, and for the killing of thousands of innocent people, Patrick was made a Saint by his church. Sure. Why not?

Now, forgive me for saying so, but this Patrick fella sounds like a wee bit of an asshole. So why then is everybody so psyched to celebrate someone who’s claim to fame is having once bitch-slapped an entire learned and highly sophisticated culture back to the Jurassic Period?

Maybe this is why we are just naturally drawn to pick on and tease the Irish.

Today the story is told that Patrick is the patron Saint of Ireland because he “drove the snakes out”. We now know that the “snakes” were the old Druids.

That’s kinda like kicking the shit out of Steven Hawking if you ask me.

Some tough guy Patron Saint he was.

St. Patrick's Day Shenanigans (Redux)

('St. Patrick's Day' was originally posted on 03/08/05. It has therefore been reedited, reworked, reworded, and then reconsidered before being reposted here today.)

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everybody!

I hope everybody has been enjoying their holiday libations this weekend…or rather, that you’re faithfully sitting at home right now in front of your laptops with a bottle of Guinness and appropriately positioned water bong, reading yours truly.

And, for that - I thank you. Screw all those other guys who are still out drinking green beer right now, betting on the “footy”, or beating each other with shillelaghs after a heated political debate, or whatever the Irish traditionally do on the 17th of March.

Did you ever notice how on St. Patrick’s Day that everybody seems to suddenly develop an Irish accent? Why is that? Just because you’re drunk and dressed in a ridiculous plastic green bowler hat doesn’t automatically qualify you as someone who can obnoxiously brag about being from the “Motherland”.

And for the record, Ireland is officially known as “The Emerald Isle”…not the “Motherland”, comrade.

You know these types of morons I’m talking about. They flock to the bars every March 17th in droves. I know – I bartended for 18 years. I’ve got green vomit stories that will make your worst dorm room Pukefest seem like a day at the spa by comparison. We’re talking total Alien Regurgitorium here!

And I got news for you – in Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day has real meaning, or something resembling an actual tradition of ceremonial significance anyway.

But, here in North America? Why do we care exactly? So they’re green and hide crap at the end of rainbows. I can see where that’d be pretty interesting if you were, say, Kermit the Frog.

What’s the big whoop exactly?

What have the Irish ever done for us? Sure St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland…but what’s he done for us lately? So what else have the Irish really done us to warrant all this needless hoopla?

Let’s see. They raided Canadian townships along the Niagara River and burned farmer’s fields’ back in the Fenian raids of 1870. Not exactly the kind of thing that I’d want to drink to. So lets keep digging.

What else? They gave us Dexy’s Midnight Runners and Boyzone. But that’s more of a reason to hunt down Irishmen with clubs than celebrate with drink if you ask me.

Even in the science world, the Irish have nothing of significance to celebrate. Francis Rynd is credited with developing the first hypodermic needle, and in turn, inventing more than just a few medical phobias in small children, not to mention a few adults. In essence, this guy is every living child’s medical Boogey Man.

“Now, Billy! You’d better eat your vegetables or Francis Rynd will inject you with his super sharp, hollow pointed hypodermic needle!” Yeah…a real hero. Thanks.

Then there’s George Francis FitzGerald, noted theoretical physicist. What the hell is a ‘theoretical physicist’? Somebody who imagines what might happen if you were to drop an aardvark from an orange tree on the surface of one of the moons orbiting Jupiter? Hey, it could happen…that’s all I’m sayin’. If that’s not a science born to drink I don’t know what is. I imagine that after a few glasses of Jameson’s just about anything is possible. But still, there’s no great triumph here worthy of a holiday either.

What else have they got?

Some enchanted Blarney Stone, where it is reputed, that by kissing it you somehow acquire the “gift of eloquence”. Yeah, that and Herpes’s Simplex-B, moron. How eloquent is it to kiss a strange, dangerously situated rock anyway? That’s about as eloquent as a beer fart in a banquet hall if you ask me. Do you know how many strangers have dangled themselves by their feet over the castle wall to kiss this stupid thing? You’d be lucky if your lips didn’t fall off three days later thanks to some strange flesh-eating bacteria.

You go, Seamus.

Other than that, the rest is all just leprechauns, four leaf clovers, boiled cabbage, and boxes of Lucky Charms. That’s all they got! So what’s everybody celebrating exactly? Because I think that on the whole global contribution scale, the Irish are ranking right up there with, maybe, Botswana and Lithuania. So why not a St. Mpumalanga’s Day too? It’s just as arbitrary.

I hate St. Patrick’s Day – and even more so, I hate people who celebrate St. Patrick’s Day!

Just having to witness anybody participating in some stupid St. Patrick's Day shenanigans makes me more irritable than a Minotaur with a toothache. I want to club them all with a sack of pennies, kick them in the shamrocks, and shove their penny whistles up their wee arses.

From the moment I walk out my front door – it’s like I'm stepping into some bizarre mutant Kermit the Frog family reunion picnic. It’s just infuriating! The first person that mistakenly pinches me because “that’s what you get when you don’t wear green” is inevitably going to be greeted with a knuckle sandwich that would make George Foreman throw in the towel.

I just don’t get it. Green is ugly. It's the color of mold, weeds, swamp creatures, and alien blood cells. It was not intended to be worn in public with such bold frankness. The color green signals that a rotted body limb may soon need to be sawn off, or that someone has left out food stuffs that have gone a little bit funky. I'd be a little leery of celebrating any culture or nationality that embraces this color as part of its national identity.

I particularly don’t understand the phenomena of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in the office place. It’s bad enough that I have stay away from all bars, restaurants, clubs, cafes, and other social public establishments in order to avoid the drunken mobs of accented moolyaks sloshing their green beverages on my hushpuppies and taking leaks on my parked car – but now I have to find a way to deal with the schmucks in the ‘Social Committee’ at work as well.

Where some of these people come up with their deluded expressions of “Irishness” I’ll never know. One co-worker even showed up in a neon orange shirt with green shamrock suspenders, beads, hat, and heeled shoes. How is that being Irish exactly? I’ve never met an Irishman who would ever even consider leaving the house looking like a gay pumpkin.

If I were Irish – I’d fucking dread St. Patrick’s Day!

I’d probably board myself up inside my apartment with a sack full of spuds and keg of Guinness for an entire 24-hour period until the madness had passed away completely.

Honestly, our blatant blasphemous mockery of the entire Irish culture would be enough to have St. Patrick drive all the snakes back into Ireland!

“Top o’ the morning to ya’s, ya fookin’ eejit’s!”

Winter Terror

The three stranded climbers have been found and rescued from Oregon’s Mt. Hood yesterday.

Thank Christ!

Now, finally, perhaps we can get back to the real important news such as crazy astronauts in diapers and dead celebrity paternity suits. The stories that really matter.

This particular story has had Anderson Cooper licking his chops since Friday as 6 people have been killed over the weekend in 3 different avalanches. Forget about tsunami’s, hurricanes, leaky levees, or any insignificant on-going ‘War on Terror’, evil has a new face of terror – a white, fluffy face of terror, but a face of terror nonetheless - Avalanches! And lately, the state of Oregon has been the new Ground Zero as 3 climbers and a black lab named Velvet had recently been behind some rocks after falling into a snowy canyon.

Was I the only one who thought we should have just let these dumbfucks freeze?

After all, who goes climbing in avalanche-warning areas, in near blizzard-like conditions? Only 35 climbers have died on this mountain in the last 25 years! That's better than one person killed per year. Not exactly the kind of odds that I'd feel too comfortable with in choosing my leisure activities. I’d say this was the very essence of Darwinism in action.

What kind of dipshit actually enjoys winter climbing anyway? Why not just take up something less dangerous, like, swimming with hungry tiger sharks. Winter climbing; there's a fun activity for the whole family. Pack up the kids, grab the dog, lets all trek up the side of a mountain in 70mph winds and sub zero temperatures! Yaaaaaaay!

The three who fell were part of an eight-person party that set out on Saturday, camped on the mountain that night, and then began to come back down on Sunday when they ran into bad weather, officials said. As they were descending, the three slipped off a ledge and fell about 100 feet. Someone in the party placed an emergency call to authorities.

The three had gotten into their sleeping bags to stay warm and cuddled up with their dog for warmth. Unfortunately, Velvet will now have to undergo severe psychological counseling.

Wow. That’s totally Cliffhanger for sure! I can almost see 'ol Sly's muscles rippling now.

I just hope that when the search party members from the Portland Mountain Rescue Patrol reached the trapped climbers, they greeted them with a warm, open-handed judo chop to the Adam’s Apple for wasting valuable public resources and time. As well as endangering the lives of the many rescuers who attempted repeatedly to reach them in the dangerous zero visibility conditions.

These climbers should have their status as card-carrying members of the 'Upright Citizens Brigade' revoked permanently! Time to take up a newer, lesser "rad", or "gnarly" hobby, like, say, lawn bowling fellas.

As could be expected, the media ‘Terror Machine’ kicked into overdrive and milked this tragedy like a Guernsey cow. For days, while the search continued for the climbers, we were treated to such compelling informational segments as “How Avalanches Work” *, and the late-breaking “Winter Terror” updates. CNN won’t be happy until we’re all screaming in the streets and clawing at each other in line at the airport for one-way tickets to Acapulco whenever it next begins to flurry.

I have even been encouraged to check out www.avalanche.org daily to find all the updated information on pending avalanche conditions in my own neighborhood. And if I’m not mistaken, the snowdrift that’s been accumulating on the awing above my kitchen window has been upgraded to an ‘Orange Level’ alert.

I won’t be able to leave the house now - for days!

When did we become so paranoid of snow anyway? Winter is supposed to be fun, dammit! We're supposed to be dashing through mounds of the white shit joyfully on thins sticks strapped to our feet, not risking being buried on remote mountain passes! That's just fucking stupid.

But, oh no! Blame the snow. The evil, evil snow.

I remember tobogganing off highway overpasses and skating alone on remote frozen ponds without the slightest concern. Those were the carefree days of my youth. Now, thanks to CNN’s whole ‘Culture of Fear’ doom and gloom prophesies; I wouldn’t be surprised if kids nowadays were terrified to build a snowman. They’d probably have to have their snowmen legally registered with City Hall as potential sex offenders in their neighborhood…because you just never know.

Suddenly, winter doesn’t seem so, so, crisp and pure. Does it?

Hell, who has time to enjoy their Winter Wonderland when there’s the risk of an avalanche barreling down the street on top of you as you make your way to your car? Before you know it, parents won’t even let their children build snow forts in their backyards without a mountain locator unit.

* Yeah. Snow gets heavy at the top and rolls down the mountain. I get it now. Thanks, Einstein!

The Week In Weirdness

Well, it became very clear this week that Florida is the very vortex from which all things fucked up emanate throughout the rest of the universe. All you had to do was turn on CNN for a brief second to verify this fact.

Let’s see. Where should we start?

Oh, I know! How about, with one crazy, love-scorned astronaut and a box of adult diapers. That’s as good a place to start as any I figure.

This whole bizarre astronaut love triangle began strangely enough in Houston, TX, where Lisa Nowak, a married, mother of three and successful NASA astronaut slipped on a pair of “maximum absorbency garments” and drove non-stop 14 hours to Orlando, FL, to confront the romantic rival of fellow astronaut, Bill Oefelein. Nowak then confronted, pepper-sprayed and scared the literal bejesus * out of fellow astronaut Colleen Shipman at Orlando International Airport.

Imagine Shipman’s reaction when she first saw Nowak in her soiled diapers coming at her in the parking lot with the pepper-spray? Is that some scary shit or what? You probably could have smelled her coming long before she actually arrived. I don’t know about you, Bill, but I think this chick demonstrates a little too much of ‘The Wrong Stuff’, if you know what I mean.

So I must have heard the word ‘diaper’ on the news only about a zillion times these past few days. I bet stocks in Huggies just about quadrupled thanks to all the added free publicity. ‘Diaper’ has now officially joined ‘WMD’, ‘Shock & Awe’, ‘tsunami’, ‘levees’, and ‘feeding tube’ on the list of popular culture’s new millennium lexicon.

The bail, originally set at $15,500 was later denied as Orlando police added a last minute charge of attempted first degree murder to the already existing charges of battery, attempted kidnapping, and attempted vehicle burglary with battery.

Man! Lesson learned: NEVER get involved with an astronaut because them astronaut chicks are fucking crazy!

But then again, I can see where this could be considered as pretty kinda sexy too. I have no idea what astronauts get up to in those airlock chambers, but I’d sure like to be a fly on the wall. But whatever it is that goes on behind closed shuttle doors, it must be worth 14 hours of sitting in your own shit and piss. You just know it’s love when a girl is willing to put on a pair of man Pampers and drive cross country to try and kidnap someone you smiled at the other day.

You can bet your ass she’s probably into your stash of German schizer videos too.

When Shipman landed in Orlando, she immediately noticed a woman in a tan trench coat following her. Well, duh! Who in their right mind who wants to appear inconspicuous would wear a tan trench coat in 90-degree weather? If you didn’t want to be noticed why the fuck would you wear a trench coat? You know who wears tan trench coats? Cold War spies, perverts, and suicide bombers, that’s who! She may as well have held up a banner that read: “Don't notice me!”

Shipman quickly jumped into her car and heard “running footsteps” behind her, she told police. Nowak then proceeded to gain entry into the car with Shipman, but resorted to pepper-spraying the car through a 2-inch space in the window. Her eyes burning, Shipman drove to a tollbooth and reported the incident.

When officers found Nowak at a bus stop still wearing her trench coat (see where wearing a trench coat gets you?), officers observed her putting items into a trash can. Officers later retrieved a wig and BB gun from the trash can. Nowak allowed officers to search her car where they also found the diapers, 6 pairs of latex gloves **, a steel mallet, a retractable folding knife with 4-inch blade, 3-4 ft of rubber tubing, large garbage bags, directions to Orlando from Houston, personal emails from Shipman to Oefelin, a love letter from Nowak to Oefelin, handwritten directions to Shipman’s Orange County home, and $600 in cash.

It sure sounds like one hell of a chick fight was a-brewin’.

Needless to say, that the media has attacked this story like a pack of starving silverbacks fighting over a banana. Each trying to outdo the other news networks in identifying the probably cause for such a bizarre turn of events. It is the first time a NASA astronaut has ever been convicted of felony charges.

No one is defending the fact that she’s a total nut bar, but what actually triggered Nowak’s launch code? The media critics are therefore speculating that astronauts may be particularly subject to suffering from the extreme stresses that are regularly made on them, both physically and emotionally. So Nowak only reached her breaking point and snapped as a result of her “pressure cooker” training regiment with NASA.

Huh? Isn’t that really grasping at straws?

Nobody is disputing Nowak’s intelligence. She’s one smart cookie for sure. She has been an astronaut since 1999, and has flown as a mission specialist aboard the space shuttle Discovery back in July. If she was “cracking under pressure”, wouldn’t it have happened back then? Why now almost a year later?

I’m stressed at work too and haven’t been laid yet this millennium, but I don’t feel the urge to drive cross-country in a pair of adult diapers.

I think it’s safe to say that she was just bonkers all along. Why does “crazy” also have to imply “stupid”? Hasn’t anybody ever seen ‘Rainman’, or ‘My Left Foot’ for that matter? They won Academy Awards for fuck sakes! Hasn’t anybody ever heard the old adage “crazy like a fox”? Foxes are not known to be stupid animals.

I say she was a brilliant ticking timebomb from the very beginning and it was only a matter of time before this astronut went into orbit. Somewhere between complex electrical logarithms and slapping on a diaper, Nowak’s fate was sealed.

“Houston. We have liftoff.”

But the weirdness doesn’t stop there. Oh no!

Only mere hours later, Reality TV star, Playboy Playmate, and former Guess jeans model, Anna Nicole Smith turned tits up in a South Florida hotel room.

Reality star? Pu-lease! She did for the world of entertainment what the ‘Etch-a-Sketch’ did for art.

The media reports her sudden departure from this crazy merry-go-round we call life, as a “tragedy”. Even stranger is that they are also making parallels to other infamous Hollywood goldbricker Marilyn Monroe.

That’s just going too far. I can understand the whole dim-witted blonde connection, but at least Marilyn had something resembling talent. Well, that, and she was banging cool guys like Joe DiMaggio, Arthur Miller, and John F. Kennedy…not old men on respirators. You know what Anna Nicole is good at? Seducing old men and inheriting their estates.

Let’s face it, if it wasn’t for Howard Marshall II, Anna Nicole would still be performing in donkey shows for pocket change somewhere in Buzzardfuck, Texas. She’d probably suck dick for a Diet Coke.

Like the Nowak case, the media is trying to find all these new angles to intrigue the American public with. They have already made the allegation that Anna Nicole’s collapse was the result of an addiction to diet pills as a means to deal with her growing depression after the death of her son almost a year ago.

Umm, has anybody ever considered that she was just taking diet pills because she was fat? Honestly, she had an ass that looked like she was trying to smuggle throw pillows.

All the recent shots of her public sluggishness and glazed stares as a means of proving her deteriorating mental health are just ridiculous. Anna Nicole has been sluggish and glazed since birth. Who are they kidding? You’d get a better interview out a guinea pig!

The girl was about as clever as a retarded chimp. She was certainly no rocket scientist, or crazy astronaut for that matter – albeit, she probably wasn’t far from the whole wearing diapers thing. In fact, the only reason she became a topless dancer in the first place was because it was the only job where she wouldn’t be required to make change for a dollar.

And this story isn’t going to end soon either. We still have an autopsy and weeks of speculation for her sudden collapse to look forward to. On top of that, there is still the pending paternity dispute of her daughter Danielynn Hope. The late celebrity's half-sister now tells the New York Daily News that Smith may have used the frozen sperm of her late husband to get pregnant and not recent lawyer-slash-boyfriend Howard K. Stern.

At least five (and counting) other men have also said they may be the father, including the husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, Prince Frederic von Anhalt.

Now there’s a job I wouldn’t want. Even Maury Povich wouldn’t slap on the latex gloves to get to the bottom of this quagmire of deceit. It sounds like there's just gallons of spuzz just sloshing around inside that dead celebrity poonach.

So, now with the untimely and unfortunate death of Anna Nicole Smith, there are now a number of legal questions that are entwined in this sorry saga:

How did Smith die and does the cause of that death impact the ultimate lawsuit over the millions?

Who is the real father of Danielynn?

Should the Estate of Smith now win the lawsuit, who will receive the almost five hundred million dollars?

Who will ultimately have legal custody of Danielynn?

It might be years before the truth becomes unraveled and we might discover others claiming paternity of Danielynn. Still, for a story line of a girl who married a man decades her elder and a now Prince (married to a former actress married eight times and who is almost 30 years her minor) claiming paternity, with almost one-half billion hanging in the balance, I for one can’t wait until the Hollywood version of this whole clusterfuck comes out.

But, still, a “tragedy”?

I don’t know. When push came to shove regarding this story, the announcement of Anna Nicole Smith death impacted me about as much as the plight of the three-toed sloth.

And I realize I’m being just a tad bit bitter here, it’s just that I’m annoyed that I’m not doing so well in this year’s office Dead Pool.

But at least I know now to avoid the state of Florida for a little while until the bad juju goes away.

* Because everybody knows that the best way to convince someone to “talk with them” is to show up reeking of shit and piss and pepper-spray them while they get into their car. Good plan there, Ziggy Stardust.

** For which I don’t even want to contemplate what they may have been used for.

Limping Into 2007

Well, somehow I managed to limp into year 2007 - literally.

Overall, 2006 wasn’t exactly a raging Duke lacrosse party for me but somehow still left me feeling like one abused exotic dancer. It was a rough one indeed. And trying to recall it in all its halloed crappiness is nearly impossible at the moment as I have a head full of Benylin and a chest full of Bronchitis.

To top it all off, my wits are about as foggy these days as Willie Nelson’s tour bus.

And, sadly, the biggest victim of all is you, dear readers, what with having to go without your regular doses ‘ol Crazytigerrabbitman lovin’. At least for the past few months anyway. So lets back this train ‘o fun up a little bit and let me try and put some perspective on the past few months for you.

I am alive and I am well. But as I mentioned before – I’m sicker than bejesus*.

The entire latter half of 2006, as a matter of fact, I’ve been a physical and emotional wreck. At the moment, my nose is running like a diuretic gerbil, it feels like somebody is blowing glass in my chest, and my lips are so chapped that I look like Linda Blair in ‘The Exorcist’. The Benylin cough medicine I’m currently taking has my brain doing summersaults so that I can barely recall what I had for breakfast, much less what’s been transpiring over the last few months. And I’m afraid that if I slip into any more of a medicated state I’ll completely lose grip with reality altogether and next thing you know I’m walking around with Emmanuelle Lewis on my shoulders and dangling babies from hotel balconies.

But Benylin isn’t completely without its charms. For example, I spent last night in a medicated stupor trying to sync up Frank Zappa’s ‘Joe’s Garage’ with ‘Agnes of God’. Not exactly Nobel Prize worthy research, I agree, but in comparison to the rest of my past two months, it was a regular Jerry Bruckheimer movie.

Before I got myself hooked on this miracle syrup, I tried that NeoCitran crap**. What can I say? A picture of some happy, smiling woman wrapped up in an afghan and sipping on a nice, steaming cup of lemony goodness suckered me in. As it turns out, drinking NeoCitran is about as warm and comforting as drinking the Devil’s piss. It doesn’t even taste lemony so much as it tastes like evil! Besides, after investigating the ingredients on the box, I discovered that NeoCitran contains the decongestant ‘Analgesic’.

Now, I have no idea what Analgesic is or what healing properties it has, but it sure explains to me why NeoCitran tastes like complete ass! I don’t want to taste, smell, touch, see, or even come within 15 ft of anything with the first four letters ANAL in it. You don’t have to be a David Livingstone to figure that out.

Lets back it up even further.

For the past few months, I have been dealing with the pain of having developed flat feet. I know, I know...arn't feet supposed to be flat? How else would you balance on them? There have been times when my brain has practically imploded trying to figure that one out. But whatever, it’s like walking around on two bruises. There have been times when I get home from the gym that this constant nagging pain has had me ready to solve the problem by hacking off my feet at the ankles, replacing them with wooden pegs and changing my name to Sinbad. But somebody usually talks me out of it at the last moment (usually the cashier at Home Depot).

Instead, I reluctantly ventured back into the ‘Lair of the She Beast’. That is, I booked an appointment with my family doctor’s receptionist.

For those of you long running fans that have somehow managed to prevent your brains from wasting away over the past three years of reading this little piece of Blogosphere lovingly referred to as the ‘Den of the Crazytigerrabbitman’, you will hopefully remember the original post that started it all: Terror of All Terror’s.

Back then, it was in regards to a bad case of heat rash on my Charlie Brown’s. Mostly, I have blocked the incident from my mind completely, but lately I had to revisit the scene of the crime. I was immediately flashed with images of me standing there with my pants down around my ankles and my doctor crouching down to check out my boys like some kind of monster squirrel inspecting his acorns. I remember feeling extremely vulnerable and like that was the start of something unexpected, like I might next find myself zipping across the Mediterranean in a boat towards Mekenos wearing a pair of assless chaps. I remember sweating like Ryan Seacrest at a screening of ‘Brokeback Mountain’.

So it was very unnerving to now have to walk back into the office again after only three years. There was one other patient in the lobby wheezing like an asthmatic giraffe. She sounded like a bag of party favors in a windstorm. Yep. This was the place.

As was custom, I coldly greeted by Receptionzilla. I was startled to note that she looked even more terrifying than I had remembered. The years had not been kind to her. Her face had contorted itself into a permanent scowling expression and she had more lines on her face than a compact mirror left on the back of a Studio 54 toilet. Her fingernails were the color of school buses and her hands had twisted into two talon-like claws. I had to take a moment to compose myself and quickly check to see that I had not wet myself before taking a seat in the lobby.

Receptionzilla didn’t even look up from her spellbook. It seemed like I was home free.

“MR. NASH! EXAMINING ROOM B!” she bellowed suddenly while extending one boney finger in the direction of the same examining room where I had been defiled three years ago.

The sweats returned instantly and my Joey’s clinched up in my under shorts like drying grapes on a vine.

Thankfully, this examination wasn’t much to speak of and was over before I could even my shoes off***. Instead, the doctor forwarded me to another “holistic” practitioner that happened to reside in the same building.

I was in; I was out.

Okay, this was a seemingly happy and welcome development. After all, "Holistic Medicine" by definition implies the care for the mental and spiritual aspects of life as opposed to just the physical. It includes such menacing practices as aromatherapy, massage, Thai Chi, yoga, herbology, homeopathy, and Medical cannabis.

Shit, you mean I might get high? Sign me the fuck up!

It’s always seemed a bit fluffy and limp-wristed to me anyway (particularly the homeopathy part), so I wasn’t really nervous – rather, I was eager - about making another appointment with the new doctor.

Or so I thought.

In comparison, the receptionist was lovely and cheerful and yet her name was not ‘Star’ or ‘Moonflower’ or something equally hippy-dippy.

The office was bright and welcoming. This was not the Nazi torture chamber that my normal doctor has. There were current magazines, sunlight cascading through the blinds in the window, and flowers in vases. I’d vacation at a place like this! So that was an instant bonus to this whole holistic medicine thing. Unfortunately, this is also where the experience started to go south.

I immediately noticed that there were no people in this Shangri-La of a lobby. That was either due to the fact that everybody was either healthy or, well, lets just say I didn’t finish the thought since I wasn’t given the opportunity to linger on it for very long. The pretty receptionist immediately upon checking me in escorted me to a standard medical examining room to await the doctor.

Now, first, I have a few questions for doctors.

Question #1: why do you insist on making us wait in those examining rooms by ourselves?

That’s pretty damn unsettling.

And considering the rather cold nature of the environment already, I’d think that’s totally defeating the point. I mean, I’m already anxious about even being in the office, but I can deal with that in the reception area with the assistance of some bright lighting and National Geographic’s. Searching out tit among the ragged pages of old National Geographics helps me keep my shit together. Why then do receptionists lead us into those cold, sterile, holding cells? Particularly when the doctor is even ready to see us yet! If he were really ready for me he’d be already there in the room waiting for me patiently.

Instead I'm plopped into an examining room, unceremoniously told to strip, and left to contemplate my fate in hushed silence. Don’t get me started on why I had to get naked when I was just there to see about my sore feet. Doesn’t anybody even read those medical files?

Which leads me to Question #2 for doctors: why all the model body parts and medical posters?

Let me tell you, when you’re naked and sitting on a metal examining table, the last thing you want to see are the skeletal and muscle charts on the wall.

The worst part was that the chart in this particular examining room was also life sized and happened to feature a penis the size of a Himalayan yak. So on top of feeling pretty anxious about the whole being vulnerable and everything, I’m developing feelings of inadequacy thanks to a medical poster. Great.

And what’s with the model parts?

I know you’re a doctor and this is an examining room but I have never seen you refer to them in any manner. No doctor has ever picked up one of these models, or made me stand in front of a muscle chart for that matter, and used to it explain some medical predicament or other. But yet there they are. Hearts, lungs, spinal columns, ears, livers, pancreases, pee-pees, hoo-hoos, and what-fucking-have-you. It’s like sitting in Jeffrey Dalhmer’s trophy room.

Are you trying to creep me out on purpose?

At least in the lobby I had sunlight, puzzles, displays of custom Orthotics, a receptionists ass to stare at (God help me if I’m ever so lucky to see her file away ‘Edgar VanWilhelm’ again), and maybe a shot of some African tit in one of the National Geographic’s. Instead, I’m alone feeling like the new fish at some maximum-security prison. I swear, if that doctor had come into that examining room wearing a little hat cocked on the side of his head I would have started crying like a little school girl.

Question #3: how many diplomas are required to be a doctor exactly?

I know doctors are very proud of their accomplishments and they have every right to be. They also go through great lengths to displays these laurels on their examining room walls – apparently to prove that they are indeed qualified to do the kind of things to you that would have you otherwise filing charges in any other circumstance.

So is there a minimum number of certificates required? Does a doctor with two walls of diplomas have a better chance of healing me than a doctor who has only one wall of diplomas? Would any doctor with less than, say eight diplomas on their wall be a complete quack?

I think one certification would be enough to say that the bearer is certified to aid you.

“THIS DIPLOMA IS TO HEREBY CERTIFY THAT ONE, DR. TERRY NASH, WILL NOT FUCK YOU UP WORSE THAN YOU ALREADY ARE”.

Does anyone ever read these certificates and diplomas? I know I don’t give a shit.

Besides, they’re all written in scrawling official-looking penmanship that you can’t fucking read or make any sense out of. It could be congratulating the certificate bearer of being a total shit-sucking fuck weasel and few people would never know. As long as it was made out in the doctors name in flowery illegible calligraphy, set in gold leaf, and put behind glass we’ll take it as proof that the doctor isn’t a complete fuckwit. And so we act impressed.

Anyway, on with the story.

The doctor eventually arrived and immediately set about to seeing to my feet. I meant to ask him what the point of stripping me down was all about, but then thought better of it since he had so many certificates and diplomas hanging on his wall ‘n all.

Within 30 seconds of small talk, the doctor began to wind wires through my toes and attached electrodes to the end soles of my feet. The other end of the wires he hooks up to this machine called the ‘PES 1000’ that looked like a cross between a 70’s BOSE amplifier and a car battery. I was pretty sure that this machine would not be dispensing any fruity flavored candies anytime soon, that’s for sure!

Then he breaks out a set of small pin-like needles.

Holy shit! I’ve seen something like this before in the movies and if I remember correctly, it didn’t turn out too well for poor Rambo, did it? I thought this was supposed to be sissy painless ‘holistic medicine’?

This was becoming all too Orwellian for me. What’s next - the ‘Helmet of Rats’?

After I had finished hyperventilating, the doctor began to describe (in no particular detail - he may as well as been reading his grocery list or the instructions for baking lemon loaf ) the advantages of acupuncture. As best as I could recall, I hadn’t agreed to let feet to be jabbed with pins. Had I unwittingly signed away my human rights or something? But this didn’t seem to deter Dr. Jekyll in the slightest.

Next, he did the strangest thing. He proceeded to go around the room closing the blinds blocking out what little sunlight was coming into the room anyway and turned the overhead lights down low. The sweats really began again in earnest when he lit some incense. Was this guy going to treat my feet or fuck me?

Let’s stop the story here for a moment. I had never previously considered acupuncture in the past, and had pretty much assuming it was something that was not likely to enjoy. Yet, here I was about to allow myself to be used as a human pincushion.

Also, if he was going to begin inserting sharp instruments into my feet you'd think he'd want as much light as possible to see what he was doing. Shit, turn the lights on! Open the damn windows! Roll in an entire airport spotlight for fuck sakes! Lets make it totally visible.

Now to address those of you who could only swoon and tell me “acupuncture is so relaxing, eh?”**** when I informed you about the treatments i was undergoing. What, are you like complete sadists or something? They’re sticking needles into my body. How in any way can that be considered as “relaxing”? I want to dropkick these people in the head.

Once the doctor had me all wired in and had his needles all arranged for sticking, he reached for the power switch on the blinking car battery thingee and says in a perfectly monotone voice: “Are you ready?”

Ready? GOOD FUCKING CHRIST, NO!

Talk to me here Goose! How about a little preparation first, huh? A little pep talk maybe? How about a nice reach-around before we get started. If I was feeling vulnerable in the examining room before, I felt downright violated now. But it was too late to turn back.

And with that, he flicked on the switch.

In all honesty, it wasn’t that bad. That is to say I didn't die.

I wouldn’t say it was “relaxing” or as “comforting” as everybody claims it is. A shot whiskey and a leather strap to bite down on might have made the experience a little more bearable. But I can’t deny that after a few sessions the pain in my feet began to recede.

And so the appointments have continued three times a week for the past month and a half.

I know this adventure really has nothing to do with the fact that I haven’t been faithfully upkeeping this blogspace as often as I’d like. As a trade off for walking without constant soreness, my stress levels are through the roof and thereby limited my creative time in front of the computer. That’s what constantly being jabbed with needles does to you I suspect – or at least to me anyway.

Instead, I'm now more prone to sit around the house in the fetal position staring out the window when I'm not at work, the gym, or in the doctor's examining room. I've been traumatized.

My name is Luka
I live on the second floor
I live upstairs from you
Yes I think you've seen me before

As a result, you bumpkins are now having to go without your regular fixes of my usual bullshit. But don’t wait for me faithful readers, go out and continue to grab yourself a big handful from this bowl of cherries we call ‘life’. I’m not dead yet – I’m just temporarily taking a breather and getting more ornery by the minute.

Rests assured that I’ll be back in 2007 sooner than later and proceed to lay a total smackdown on anybody or anything daring to defy basic logic and reason. Or at the very least, manages to piss me off.

Which I am assuming, if 2006 was anything to go on, will be often.

* Yes, it’s a word. Because I said so and going forth in 2007, I will make it my mission to reincarnate this word from the graveyard of dead vernacular.

** And when I say ‘crap’, I mean it in every stinky, sticky, peanut encrusted sense of the word.

*** Which is funny, seeing as how I was there to have my feet checked out n’ all.

**** I’m Canadian remember.

The Wasabi Kid

I have recently developed a liking for Japanese food.

Considering now that the thought of eating raw fish had never crossed my mind only three short months ago, this then is quite the advancement for me in this whole lifestyle change. First it was asparagus, then spinach, then avocados, then bok choy, then tofu of all fucking things, and now it’s sushi. What lies next I can only freaking imagine! Before you know it I’ll be living primarily on homegrown funguses and curd.

I never figured that Japanese food would ever be something that I would ever subscribe to. From watching late night episodes of ‘Iron Chef’, I already knew that the Japanese will eat things that would make a billy goat puke. I’ve had bowel movements that were more enticing than some Japanese entrees I’ve witnessed being created. I think that most Japanese chefs could whip up a nice fluffy soufflé out of dog crap, so it’s with some shock that I find myself enjoying some of those things now.

I have found then, that to better enhance the whole otherwise unappealing experience of Japanese dining, one should abide by some very basic rules. Without first setting the necessary groundwork for the whole dining experience, eating Japanese food can otherwise take on a rather less enjoyable, more intimidating ‘Fear Factor’ quality to it instead.

1) Never ask what something is made of specifically.

This is the whole trick to enjoying Japanese food. Having explained to you what has gone into preparing your meal is likely to induce violent bowel contractions. When it comes to finding out that your chosen entrée was pulled out of a sea cucumbers ass and lightly fried with fermented cabbage and pickled pig’s piss – I say ignorance is bliss.

But that’s just me.

You see; NOTHING ever sounds particularly appetizing on a Japanese menu. How inviting does seaweed sound? Or how about eating something called Yakitori? That sounds more like something you’d do after having swallowed too much gasoline. I’m positively scared to ponder what the fuck Shabu-Shabu is - I always wondered what they did with those killer whales when they died at the aquariums. I’ve only just recently began to take small forays towards the getting over of my tofu phobia so I’m pretty sure that I’m not ready to delve into the likes of something called Yudofu just yet. Baby steps, man! And I just won’t eat Red Snapper out of principle alone.

But it all tastes nice enough I assure you!

Having a waitress describe your basic Japanese fare is like having a child describe bird vomit. Therefore, I would recommend not reading the menu too closely or even consider your menu options too deeply. Just blindly point at the menu and let fate decide for you.

2) Even after you’ve eaten and enjoyed your meal – STILL do not ask what it is.

No matter how delectable your food was - do not fall for the temptation to inquire what exactly it was that you just finished eating. The fact that its still fresh in your memory means that it is still fresh in your belly as well and will more than likely rush back up again just as soon as its mysterious ingredients have been revealed from your waitresses lips. Funnily enough though, it will probably also resemble something that someone else is enjoying at another table.

Just enjoy it and let it be. Enjoy it for what it was, not what it is – so to speak.

There are other things however that I also enjoy about the whole Japanese dining experience. For example, the whole eating with chopsticks dealie. How fucking cool is that?

There is a degree of skill necessary to eat Japanese cuisine; you’re like an artisan rather than just some ordinary hungry schmuck with fork. You’re a skilled craftsman dissecting and devouring his meal; not some common, blue collared, Sloppy Joe sucking schlep off the street. If you want to eat it – you have to earn it by getting it to your mouth first. It’s like playing the arcade claw game at the carnival.

Originally, I had thought that using chopsticks would make me feel a rung lower on the ‘ol Evolutionary Ladder; on par with the chimpanzees poking termite mounds with sticks. Surely we have evolved beyond using basic stick tools to eat our food. After all, this is 2006 for fuck sakes!

But I was mistaken. Eating with chopsticks has a certain not-all-together unpleasant Old World charm to it. There is also the comfortable notion that if something should ever manage to leap off your plate you are already conveniently armed with something with which to spear it down again and pin it back to your plate.

I like the mixing of soy sauce with the wasabi like some junkie stirring together his assorted toxins in preparation for his next fix. I enjoy preparing the ingredients into which I will later dip my food. It makes me feel like I am in control in some way. I have learned to go easy on the wasabi since the last time I added too much of the green booger-like mulch and I ended up sweating for the next three days. I looked like Ryan Seacrest during a screening of Brokeback Mountain.

The thing I most enjoy about eating at Japanese restaurants really has nothing to do with the actual food at all.

The best thing about the whole Japanese ‘Amour Fou’ * is that being an otherwise normal-sized Anglo-Saxon male, I inevitably feel like a giant among the other shorter Japanese guests eating and around . I feel like Gulliver dining with the Lilliputians.

This is always self-reassuring and ultimately enhances the whole dining experience.

Sometimes I fantasize about the fact that I must be the largest endowed in comparison to the other poor Oriental bastards in the restaurant. After a particularly invigorating meal, I am sometimes induced to imagining unleashing Cockzilla from my trousers and having it run amok through the restaurant; completely leveling the sushi bar in the process.

If I had to bitch about something (and I always do), it would be about the usual selection of mind-numbing music that Japanese restaurants seem to play as background music. It’s enough to lure a hyperactive ADS child into a coma. Even a continuous playing ‘Algonquin Suite’ solitude CD is more exciting than your average Japanese restaurant muzac. The tinking of chimes and the plucking of harps make the whole Japanese dining experience feel like you’re dining inside a Loreena McKennitt video. It does little to stir your appetite. I'm not asking for any "Arigato, Mr. Roboto" here, I'm just saying ENOUGH with the freaking fairy music already!

I was also disappointed with the trend of our local Japanese restaurants to be brightly-lit pools of burning fluorescence. Why do they have to be so damn bright? I don’t know how it is on the streets of Tokyo but I pictured dark, claustrophobic settings. You know - something out of ‘Bladerunner’. The place I ate at tonight was brighter than the surface of the sun. I swear I could actually see through my food when it arrived on my table.

I had also imagined the serving staff to be more gray, wispy-bearded Mr. Miagi types wandering around in colorful kimonos and catching flies with chopsticks; or perhaps instructing on the art of sculpting Bonsai trees at my table while I'm waiting for my food - something traditional like that.

So why not go all “Japanese Makeover” then? Go from being totally chink to totally chic.

I want someplace where I can experience the typical Japanese culture that goes along with the typical Japanese cuisine. I want Geisha’s serving the food and an after hour Opium den off the back alley. There will be Samurai bathroom attendants to protect you from ninja attacks and nobody will ever leave the building without being told to “Wax On, Wax off” at least once. And from the time that you place your order to the time that it finally arrives at your table, you will sit there quietly and feel shame…

That’s more like it.

Now, who wants to kareoke?

* Meaning: “Crazy Love”. Haven’t you ever seen the Soprano’s?

A Manly Man's Guide to Music Appreciation

"I walked 47 miles on barbed-wire,
I wear a cobra-snake for a necktie.
I built a house by the roadside,
Made of rattlesnake hide."
- Bo Diddley

Not every man has musical taste. He may think he does - but he doesn't.

You’ve seen those types of guys before; driving the streets with their windows rolled down, blasting Eminem on his car stereo while flipping himself gang signs in the rearview mirror as he raps along like a real, live, OG Gangster. Except that the guy is 33, wearing a collared shirt with an alligator emblazoned on the breast, and is about as white Christmas snow. Middle-aged, Anglo-Saxon momma’s boys shouldn’t be listening to ghetto music while out cruising in daddy’s Escort. That’s just not how they roll.

Or, how about the poor bastard at the your local bar who knows all the lyrics to the latest Justin Timberlake song? Somebody, please do this guy a favor and take him out back and put him out of his misery. Real men do not know the lyrics to ‘Rock Your Body’; much less sing them out loud. That's about as masculine as an Annie Lennox video.

And then, of course, there’s guys like my idiot landlord. The late night drunken, stubborn, cultural vacuums and sole harbingers of AM radio’s fading light. Because of these guys, we have a rebirth of cheesy 80's music every six or seven months - or so it seems.

They all make me so mad I could punch babies.

Fortunately for you poor, pathetic, nancy-ass, bebopping, girly-men, I happen to be a manly man’s music aficionado. And I am here to help you. So just as I did with the Domestic Arts, I’m going to detail for all you helpless schmo’s out there, how to man up your music catalogue as well as attempt to etch upon that grey lump of oatmeal that you call a brain the making of a real manly man’s appreciation for the musical arts.

So put away your Beyonce albums, sissybitch; I’m going to get you in touch with your musical manliness.

Music is the soundtrack to your life. And as such, it should as closely as possible, reflect your inner stud at all times. Whether you’re doing housework, out playing pool with friends, or entertaining lured sluts at home after the bar, your manliness is on display - don’t fuck it up by playing the Spice Girls! Nobody really gives a flying shit what you want, what you really, really want; you wanna, you wanna, you wanna, you wanna, you wanna really, really, really, wanna zigazig ha - you Judy.

After all, would you want your friends and family to associate their last memories of you with Cyndi Lauper’s ‘True Colors’ after you stupidly requested it to be the final song played at your funeral? That’s not very manly; that’s exposing your ‘True Faggot’ too matter of factly I'd say. A real man’s man would have requested Led Zeppelin’s ‘Your Time Is Gonna Come’, or anything off Tom Wait’s ‘Closing Time’ album. Something sad; but with balls. Not some orange-haired circus clown crooning in ripped lingerie and stilettos.

Okay - you have to start somewhere. So here is a quick list of ten readably available albums you can seek out that are an absolute must in any real man’s music collection:

1. Miles Davis – Bitches Brew
2. Johnny Cash – Live at San Quentin
3. Pink Floyd – Dark Side the Moon
4. The Clash – London Calling
5. AC/DC – Back in Black
6. The Allman Brothers – Eat a Peach
7. Black Sabbath – Master of Reality
8. Tom Waits – Bone Machine
9. Cream – Disreali Gears
10. Jimi Hendrix – Electric Ladyland

The above albums are the necessary “base core” from which you can build any great music collection; a manly man’s ‘Desert Island’ picks so to speak. Already, you have the appropriate manly man's tunes to which you can drink, work out, barbecue steak, engage in auto repair, seduce young honeys, or just do the dishes. Whatever the situation, there is a suitable select of tunes in this list to accomodate it.

Firstly, notice that there is no Cyndi Lauper or Sarah McLaughlin on that list; in fact, there are no chicks on it at all. Now that’s not to say there are no acceptable female leads in a manly man’s music collection. Some possible strong female inclusions in a manly man’s music collection may be either Janis Joplin or Patti Smith. However, a traditionalist like myself would still never expose my inner Martha Brady by allowing any such tainted AM “Clit Rock” to pollute his base core albums.

Also notice that there is no “whooping” or “whooting” of any kind, anywhere!

Of course, with only ten albums to listen to you’re bound to get bored eventually and therefore unwittingly subject yourself to listening to more Top 40 bubble gum crap on the radio. So as such, here’s a list of other off-the-beaten-track albums that would serve to beef up your manly music collection:

1) Yo La Tengo – The Sounds of the Sounds of Science

Yes, you read that right. Firstly, let me state for the record: if you do not know who Yo La Tengo are or already appreciate what they do for music, you should stab yourself in the eye immediately. You don’t deserve music.

The Sounds of the Sounds of Science features 78 minutes of instrumental landscapes by Yo La Tengo. The CD contains the entire score written and performed by the band to accompany eight legendary but rarely seen undersea documentary shorts by influential French avant-garde filmmaker Jean Painleve. Does that sound like the sound of being fucking cool or what?

To fully appreciate the music, one really should see the accompanying films of octopus fucking, sea horses in labor, and sea urchins doing…well, sea urchin stuff. But even if you don’t have the chance, the album itself is pretty hauntingly surreal. Not that octopuses fucking isn’t already hauntingly surreal enough.

Here’s an album you can pull out to wow all your more artsy-fartsy of friends and give the illusion that you somehow also have your finger on the pulse of the underground art scene. If that doesn’t work magic on drunken flaky yoga chicks – I don’t know what will.

2) Dr. John, the Night Tripper – Gris-Gris

By now, I’m sure everyone recognizes the fedoraed New Orleans piano player; but back in 1968, this guy was about as out there as the moons of Jupiter on a cold Decembers night. At only 33-minutes in length, this recording of weird spatial sound effects will make the hairs on the back of your neck rise up and take a bow.

The blend of druggy deep blues, incantational background vocals, exotic mandolin and banjo trills, ritualistic percussion, interjections of free jazz, and Dr. John's own seductive-yet-menacing growl was like a psychedelic voodoo ceremony invading your living room. The opening track's title, "Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya Ya", was itself an indication of the record's homage to New Orleans eclecticism: the gris-gris voodoo, the gumbo, and "Ya Ya", the title of one of the biggest hits to ever come out of the city (by Lee Dorsey). From the albums opening line “they call me Dr. John, known as the Night Tripper”, the album progresses to get spookier and spookier.

The first time I heard the snaky rhythms, soulful backup choruses, and ghostly echoing percussion of this album I was passing out in a drug stupor in my dorm room back in University. It set an eerie tone that evening and ended up with me waking up in cold sweats after a vivid nightmare of being boiled alive by natives sporting bones through their noses - always a sign of good music, and a good trip.

3) Alexander “Skip” Spence - OAR

Alexander Lee "Skip" Spence was a former member of the Jefferson Airplane (back when they were cool and the whole Starship fiasco) and founder of the goopy 60’s psychedelic juggernaught known as Moby Grape. The man was also notoriously nuttier than squirrel shit.

During the recording of "Wow," Spence, who was by now injecting massive doses of speed to bolster his confidence, snapped in New York, and tried to attack bandmate (Don) Stevenson with a fire ax ("I thought he was possessed by Satan and I had to save him," Spence said later). He landed in Bellevue Mental Hospital, and was out of the Grape.

Like Nick Drake or Syd Barrett, Spence was still able to corral enough of his feeble mental instability to produce semi-coherent, but profound music. If you had hooked up Spence’s brain to an EKG during the time of this album’s recording, the resulting mess of lines on the printout would lend credence to the term “f-u-c-k-e-d up.”

There’s no Omaha on this record, sure, but it still stands on its own as a unique insight into the mind of a burnt out hippie folkster. It sank like a stone upon release and quickly assumed a quiet position on the shelves of cult fame.

Spence never lived to see the albums release. For the last 30 years, he was indigent and drifted in and out of institutions, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who basically disappeared from society. He passed away in Santa Cruz, California in 1999. Spence had been suffering from lung cancer, congestive heart failure and pneumonia. He was about to celebrate his 53rd birthday.

4) Preservation Hall Jazz Band – Shake that Thing

If you don’t know who, or what, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band are – you don’t deserve music. Basically, it’s a rotating group of senile old farts playing traditional Dixieland Jazz on dented, tarnished instruments. Throw in a busty, handkerchiefed serving wench and you have the perfect drinking companion.

5) Critters Buggin’ – Stampede

Imagine the scene:

It’s about 300 degrees in the shade and you’ve been corralled into a broom closet-sized room at the bottom of a steep flight of rickety stairs. You’re peaking balls on LSD consumed earlier in the evening and you currently don’t know your ass from your elbow so the ebb of gathering crowd crammed into a space intended for twelve, maybe, is beginning to fuck with your equilibrium – big time. You’re getting paranoid and uncomfortable. Every time someone strikes a match (it’s Texas – so that’s every one sixteenth of a second) you’d swear that it was the last sound you’d hear before the final *whompf* of flames igniting hit this tinderbox deathtrap. And just when you think you’ve managed to harness enough brainpower to order your drink, the band comes on with a deafening irritating racket that immediately begins to burrow under your skin. It contorts the muscles in your scrotum. It sounds like a herd of giant insects stampeding through the streets of downtown Austin, Texas.

In actually, it is the opening track from Critters Buggin’ last album, ‘Stampede’, being performed by the band itself – only 10 ft away – at a decibel level on par with most International airports. This was jazz? It was like being clubbed between the eyes with an invisible mallet. My first instinct was to just start blindly kicking people in the jewels in a blind panic to get out of the room.

Some call it improvisational jazz; others call it ‘Avant Crap’. I call it organized sonic chaos. Whatever your definition, this album is unlike anything you’ve ever heard before, or will ever likely hear again.

It still makes my scrotum retreat into my chest when I play it.

6) Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Murder Ballads

Now here’s a work of art. With a body count on par with any Arnold Schwarzenegger flick, this 9th release from the master of macabre is a fascinating concept album that uses the narrative ballad form of the English folk tradition to tell of murder: random deaths, passion crimes, and killing sprees, all in one package.

From the opening chords of ‘Song of Joy’, Cave croons on and on endlessly about murdered families, brutal bar room slaughters, serial killers, and victimized lovers. The lyrics read like most pulp fiction novels.

Where this album isn’t likely to woo the pants of any young honeys, it sure provides the perfect way to unwind after a particularly stressful day at the office over a glass of neat whiskey.

7) Townes Van Zandt – Pancho & Lefty

Let’s not forget country. And I’m talking about the good kind of “alternative country” here – not the ridiculous new pretty country that features mulleted “cowboys” water-skiing in their ten-gallon hats on the CMT Channel. The kind of good-ol-boy music that drives you straight to drink.

Originally, Van Zandt was being groomed for Texas governorship, but he dropped out of college in the 1960s after being inspired by singer-songwriters and deciding to pursue a singing career. Following in the tradition of his hero, Lightning Hopkins, he preferred to perform only before small audiences where he could better weave song and story together for unforgettably intimate performances. Van Zandt would inspire a whole host of other newer more recognized alternative country stars such as Steve Earle, Willie Nelson, and Lyle Lovett.

Van Zandt was of MENSA intelligence and was diagnosed manic-depressive in his early twenties. He was treated with insulin shock therapy, which erased much of his long-term memory. His lack of memory and his mental condition contributed to both the passion and sense of isolation evident in his songs.

For much of the 1970s, he lived a reclusive life in a cabin in Tennessee, with no indoor plumbing or phone, appearing only occasionally to play shows.

He also struggled with alcoholism his whole life in true Texan form, and ultimately died with a flask of vodka in his hand.

The moral of the story: misery breeds good music.

I wouldn’t, however, recommend playing this album on repeat, as it’s likely to induce an unconscious suicidal impulse to drown your liver in gasoline.

8) Wilco – Summerteeth

What do you say about one of our generation's most defining albums when no one has ever heard of it? The music, lyrics, and that undefinable edge to this album ranks it as an all time classic, but few critics would rank this in their top picks. The reason is simple: Wilco's success has always been limited to intelligent discerning individuals looking for great music - not the next big thing.

Summerteeth is a miasma of rock, pop, and country music swirled into an amazing tapestry of sound. The songs evoke hard and true feelings: bitter anguish and bubbling euphoria – like your Prom Night. Like all truly great albums by truly great bands, they defy description and they work together.

Here is an album to impress your friends. You’re not likely to hear any of the tunes on the radio, but that’s what makes this album so fucking cool.

9) Daniel Johnston – Yip/Jump Music

Every manly man should have a sense of humor – at least that’s what the majority of chicks say anyway. And so should this humor be evident in his music collection too. As such, I recommend adding just about any Daniel Johnston album to your collection. I chose ‘Yip/Jump Music’ solely because it happens to be my favorite. But favorite Daniel Johnston albums are certainly specific to each and every fan. Maybe you like the regaling tale of having seen the country by moped or, perhaps a happy biographical ditty about Casper the Ghost.

Johnston’s unique style of stuttering folk ignited the hot, new Austin MTV scene in the early 80’s almost immediately. Over the last twenty years or so, Johnston exposed his heartrending tales of unrequited love, cosmic mishaps, and existential torment to an ever-growing international cult audience. Unfortunately for Johnston (fortunately for us), his music was inspired and fueled by his deep manic-depressive tendencies. In short, Daniel Johnston made Brian Wilson look like Carl Jung.

Some hail him as the ‘Greatest Thing That Should Never Have Been’; others hail him as an American original in the style of bluesman Robert Johnson and country legend Hank Williams. Undeniably, his songs have since been covered by other cool, manly bands such as the Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, Dead Milkmen, Yo La Tengo, and Beck.

10) Robert Johnson – King of the Delta Blues Singers

What manly man hasn’t fantasized about making a deal with the Devil at some desolate crossroads somewhere? Anyone who’s ever air-guitared has had this dream at some point. And this is the original bluesman extraordinaire from which the legend was given birth.

Eleven 78 rpm records were issued during Johnson's lifetime and one posthumously. They were just "race" records then - another casual attempt at trying to capitalize on the blues. Needless to say, they were enough to establish his identity wherever he went and afford him a degree of fame and fortune for the short time he lived after their release.

Including the material that never saw issuance on 78's, there are 29 compositions and alternate versions of nearly half of them. Including the recent discovery of a previously unknown alternate take of one of Johnson's recordings, a total of 42 recordings remain to this day - the only recordings of one of the true geniuses of American music.

This album also happens to lend itself very nicely to dusting.

Honorable mentions:

• Pink Floyd - Umma Gumma
• Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street
• Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
• Frank Zappa - Joe's Garage
• Tenacious D
• Van Halen - OU812
  
• Who - Quadrophenia
• ZZ Top - Tres Hombres
  

From this point you can branch out and assume your own unique sense of manness. Rock out with your cock out, so to speak, and be proud!

As there are base fundamentals to building a decent manly man’s music collection, there are also pitfalls along the way disguised as good music. When was the last time you actually inventoried your current collection? I mean really looking at and cleaning out all those crappy, dusty, impulse buys you never listen to anymore. Do you still have Barbara Streisand located directly next to Styx in your collection? Are all your jazz albums mixed up with your country & western? Do you even have any order at all? You’re not out of the clear yet.

Sometimes it’s just best practice to slash and burn it all and start from scratch all over again. I have done this once in my lifetime and the experience was completely cathartic. It felt therapeutic to finally weed all the old crappy Brit Pop singles I had been hanging onto and replace them with good ‘ol fashioned ground breaking classic rock power albums – the kind that’s rife with character, substance, and structured guitar solos.

Shit, I’m well beyond now of putting on any of my Morrissey albums and crying myself to sleep with a bag of Oreo’s. They were great and served their purpose back in the day – but at age 34, I know enough to take more Vitamin C supplements to prevent those occasional bouts of “nobody loves me.” Besides, it’s just not as cool to hide in your room with the lights off and write sad poetry after the age of 30 anyway*.

There are a few basic rules that you should continue to apply to your new manly musical lifestyle in order to help avoid allowing your collection to slip back into total Pussydom.

1) Enya is evil.

As there are groups or artists for whom you just can’t go wrong in adding to your collection, there are also groups/artists that are the kiss of death to any manly man’s music collection. At all costs, for the love of God, avoid any album by Enya. It has been scientifically proven that prolonged exposure to Enya’s twittering voice will result in your Joey’s shriveling up and turning into ovaries. So that also means no Celtic chanting, no step dancing, and no Orinoco-nothing. You may as well do the same for Loreena McKennitt, The Corrs, Sandy Denny, Sinead O’Conner, or anything featuring Kiki Dee on backing vocals. That sappy crap bleeds the sperm right out of you.

If you do feel the need to add some sort of uteral softness to your collection, opt for some Chrissy Hyde, Etta James, or Nina Simone instead. Something floofy that still emanates balls.

2) Setting the mood.

Sooner or later, you may find yourself in need of finding some music with which to better schmooze your way into some nubile young ladies drawers. And as macho as AC/DC’s ‘Who Made Who’ is at top volume, its not exactly what you would call good “mood music”. Not unless you're dating, say, the Women's World Weightlifting Champion.

This is indeed dangerous territory. Most men would rely on their old romantic standbys learned in University dorms such as Sade, or Joni Mitchell. Believe me, most girls are onto your tactics, you smooth operator, you. They're not banging you because they think you're a sensitive stud; they're doing you because they think you're a pathetic imbecile in need of some quick pity sex. Putting on a Sade album, besides being a complete breach of manly worthiness, only signals to the waiting honeys what’s really going on in your head. You may as well just ask her what flavor of roofie she’d like in her nightcap.

Instead, why not choose something a little more testosterone-based, yet still mood enhancing? What girl could ever resist the sexy guttural urging of James Brown, or the infectious funky groove of Curtis Mayfield or Herbie Hancock? These guys will have you spanking super models in no time!

And, of course, there’s always the old tried-and-true sex classic; Led Zeppelin's 'IV'. No girl can ever resist its charms. It's like girls are immediately hypnotized by its magnificence. This album has encouraged more girls to shed their knickers than Tom Jones. In the successful manly men's music circles, it's been nicknamed the 'Virgin Crusher'.

3) Beware the unsk!

Unless you fancy yourself as one of those sweaty bare-chested dipshits in sparkly gloves and sucking on a pacifier – avoid all that Trance, Electro, Techno, Ambient, Dub, Break Beat, House, Acid House, Drum & Bass, Hip-Hop, Trip-Hop, Doo-Wop, Be-Bop, Scoodily-Wop-Bop, and Big Bam Boom bullshit.

Just take some Extra-Strength Nyquil and beat box into a running fan. It’ll achieve the same effect and leave your collection untainted. Set a chimp down at a DJ’s control consul and it’d likely pump out something repetitive and rave worthy given long enough. It is not music anymore than Ms. Pacman is an Olympic sport.

4) Classical music is for pussies. Period.

If there is any justice at all, our befallen rock heroes are up in heaven kicking the living bejesus out of histories classical composers. I hope Jim Morrison is wedgying Beethoven off his piano stool right now.

"Time to break on through, Ludwig."

Unless you're either gay or dress like the Monopoly guy, stay away from classical music altogether. Go put on some Talk Talk, or Yes, or something, and salvage what you have left of your dignity.

* It is, however, acceptable to hide in your room with the lights off and write bad poetry to the Moody Blues instead.

Ramadan Throwdown

Last week, a young couple were caught having sex in a Kenyan mosque during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and have been sentenced to 18 months jail for what the judge called an "abominable affront to religion” – which is the judges way of saying: “You fucked up huge, nigga”.

The rules of conduct are very specific during the months of Ramadan in regards to fasting and abstinence: No food, no drink, no banging of pussy during the daylight hours – particularly in fundamentalist Kenyan mosques. The rules are very clear. You may as well just burp the call to prayer and wipe your ass with the kiswa.

In actuality, this conviction could have very well ended up with the couple being fed to rabid jackals. Eighteen months is nothing. Had this incident happened in Saudi Arabia, you'd be able to bid on tickets to the public execution on Ebay right now. They'd go all Maximum Overdrive on their sinful asses. Eighteen months in a Kenyan jail is a picnic!

Ramadan is universally recognized as a time of worship and contemplation. A time to strengthen family and community ties. Hey, what better way to strengthen the family and community ties by fornicating in public places? What could be more holy than that? I’d say that banging in a temple of worship like William Hung at a Karaoke Festival would most definitely be considered as strengthening the community ties.

It’s a total ‘Say Anything’ moment.

What’s really amazing to me is that such a careless indiscretion would result in such a harsh sentence, when the same act in our own Western Civilization would inevitably end up with a newly recognized definition on Wikipedia and a line of fetish videos *. Something that the accused couple will no doubt be contemplating for the better part of the next two years.

In California, the couple would be performing in clubs by now.

It was claimed that a worshipper heading for evening prayers found the horny couple having sex after investigating what the prosecution described as strange noises emanating from a dark corner of the mosque.

I like how there is always that suggested element of shock and complete surprise that goes hand in hand with just about every hapless witness story. C’mon people. “Strange noises”? What else could screams of “That’s it - do me, monkey man!” mean? This isn’t CSI.

Just once I would like a “victim” to tell the God’s honest truth for a change: “I heard somebody moaning from the direction of the mihrab and I got so turned on that I hid behind the Dakka. I then observed the couple in a variety of multiple positions; I proceeded to pound one out before running off to tell the Imam about the abominable affront.”

Not bloody likely.

Peter Kimani and Jennifer Wairimu pleaded guilty to the charge of bumping uglies in a place of worship at the Abubakar mosque in Gilgil, about 60 miles north of Nairobi. They both pleaded for clemency at this past Monday's hearing, saying they were too drunk to know where they were. Kimani told the court he thought he was actually in a lodging house.

Pardon?

No matter how drunk one gets, how does one mistake a rural Kenyan mosque for a lodging house? Nice try, monkey man.

Not a very pretty picture of standards for Kenyan Muslims and their mosques, now is it? You can just read the travel brochure now:

“Come for the prayer. Stay for the hot drunken sex!”

* I’d like to put forth “Kenyan Muslims Gone Wild!”

The Yogurt Monologues (Part IV)

I guess it’s about time to weight in again on the subject of my ongoing “lifestyle change”. Which, I’m proud to announce, is still going strong like the Buffalo (well, more like the Buffalo used to do in the old days before white men and trains. Now they just tend to sit there and eat grass – but you get the point). The regular routine of eating healthy and working out has seemingly stuck with me and I’m quickly becoming quite the little gym snob.

Am I kicking fats ass now or what? Yay me.

Things are starting to seriously click for me now health wise. I’ve gotten over my fear of tofu and other snot-textured meat alternatives *, committed and broken every social gym faux-pas known to polite mankind, begun to acquire muscle mass in areas of my body that I didn’t even know existed, and somewhere down the line, even discovered that I have an ass.

Once again: yay me.

My diet has evolved into this weird radical obsession. Two cups of fruit, three cups of vegetables, 2 proteins, 1 starch, 2 fat, 1 dairy, etc, etc. Basically all the stuff I snoozed through back in Mrs. Ray’s Home Economics class in high school over two decades ago.

Oops.

But what can I say? If it wasn’t directly to do with Rita Scarfoni’s heaving pre-pubescent breasts, I wasn’t much interested back then.

What it comes down to is this: whenever I’m not sleeping, showering or shitting, I’m fixing food. And believe me, there are times when I’m even tempted to chop vegetables while I’m taking a dump just to maximize my “preparation time” **.

Apparently there is a life after McDonalds. Who knew?

My whole life now revolves around the preparation of my meals. In the morning just after I wake up I have my breakfast and immediately begin preparing my snacks and lunch to bring to work with me that day. Afterwards, after getting out of the shower I set to making basic preparations for dinner when I get home. When I get home, only a mere 10 hours later, I have a snack while I finish preparing my evenings dinner and then another snack for after my workout. Once I’m finished eating my dinner ***, I begin getting things ready for my breakfast again the next morning; and so on and so forth.

Whew.

My living room and bathroom has been littered over with mountains of cookbooks and healthy eating magazines. My bathroom in particular has turned into some dieters Think Tank for all the healthy recipe books I have in there. I’ve just become obsessed with hunting out new healthy low-fat menu entrees to prepare. I’m like Suzanne Powter with a dick. If it’s low fat and tasty - I’m on it like free Levi’s on a hurricane survivor.

Coupled with this incessant need for healthy food I am also now consuming pineapple juice by the bucket load. If it were at all possible to have an ongoing pineapple drip going intravenously throughout the day – I probably would. At this rate my junk is going to taste so sweet that it’ll give you diabetes just thinking about it.

What I am really proud about the most are my regular every-other-day workouts at the gym. After sneaking into the ‘Members Plus’ change room to see how the other half lived, I upgraded my own membership in about 15 microseconds. And to think I have been using the lowly peons change room all this time.

So long screaming kids and cold tile - hello private lockers and carpeted flooring.

It’s a luxury I have never afforded myself in the past so I am currently indulging like a starving man at a Chinese Buffet. Besides the soft lighting and scented air fresheners; there is a reading lounge, television, sauna, steam room, hot tub, courtesy telephone, and an abundance of clean towels. I feel like a fucking Roman. All that’s missing are complimentary olive oil massages and young boys in fig leaves serving chilled grapes on silver service trays.

The only discernable drawback to the whole ‘Members Plus’ gym experience is the abnormally high quota of shriveled up old man dick. Everybody - and I mean everybody - goes around naked in the change room. Now, I’m not ashamed or insecure about my body to walk around nude in front of other males – but it seems to me that some guys – old guys in particular - are just too eager to let it all hang out. I’m just not a nude kind of guy. There should be some kind of “anti-nude” policy in the change room to a certain degree, as I tend to view male nudity in much the same way that ball players view rain. I have called off more than one soak in the hot tub on account of shriveled up old man dick.

These guys have no shame. They shower naked; shave naked, sit in the sauna or steam room naked, shit, I be they’d workout naked too if the city’s Board of Health allowed it. What is it about old men and nudity anyway? Maybe when you’re young and buff and have something to be proud about I could understand it – but why when you’re old, wrinkly, and your genitals look like spoiled fruit would you suddenly feel the urge to flaunt it for all to see? That’s weird to me. It’s also weird to me that these guys enjoy sitting around together in the sauna and steam room naked. Personally, my jewels came with a warning sticker to always wear proper protective clothing when entering any hot closed environment. The last thing I want is scorch marks on my Johnson after coming into contact with a hot cedar board in the sauna. Likewise, who can really enjoy themselves whilst staring directly into another man’s hairy, sweaty fruit bowl? I may never be able to eat again.

But, primarily, I go to the gym to punish myself (and I don’t just mean physically). Working out is not a particularly pretty thing to witness. Sure you feel great afterwards, but it’s hardly a pleasant thing to watch during. I don’t know how many times I’ve slipped out the odd fart while doing abdominal crunches bent over a plastic Swiss exercise ball ****. I must look like a guinea pig humping a cue ball. But hey, I’m a big guy and I live mostly on green vegetables these days – the odd body flatulent is just going to be an inevitable occupational hazard of working out. I know that I would immediately escalate myself to an ‘Orange Alert’ status if I ever walked in on something like that.

What’s the big deal anyway?

The gym is a literal breeding ground of weird bodily noises. I once thought I’d overheard someone fart through their nose while pushing themselves through a particularly grueling workout. All you have to do is just stand for a moment and listen to the sounds going on around you while you workout to know this. There are people making strange noises similar to that of hissing cats, growling bears, angry squirrels, and what have you. There’s even a guy who makes a noise that could only be described as to what a wildebeest in heat must sound like. At times, it would seem like you’re at an alien petting zoo of some kind. This is why everybody listens to music on their mini mp3 players and iPods. Who wants to listen to some dude wheezing and grunting his way through his reps like a constipated sea lion?

A fart? Child’s play!

Besides, I’ve become so accustomed to my own bodily expunges lately that the odd mistimed fart is just not that big a deal anymore. Christ, I could probably blow mucus out my ears if I really wanted to and pushed myself hard enough. How’s that for a party trick?

My routine, although rather unimpressive by most gym-goers standards, is pretty intensive for a guy like me. I haven’t lifted anything heavier than a stack of pancakes in years. So I have to first work all these underused, deflated pustules of fat on my body before I can begin to acquire any real muscle mass. At the moment, I feel like that scrawny guy in the comic book adverts who has his sand castle kicked in his face by some gorilla with laughing broads hanging off both arms. I’m no Charles Atlas by any means.

I’m more like a deflated Michelin Man.

I will admit that there are times when I do feel a little inferior to the other dumb bells at the gym (and I’m not talking about the equipment here) and sometimes feel like hanging myself in the Bow-Flex machine. But I understand that even though I would love to just jump on any weight-training machine and immediately begin pumping like Ginger Lynn at a casting audition, my puny body would crumple like aluminum can. And that just can’t be sexy to witness.

However, no matter how unappealing I think I am, I can consul myself in knowing that at least I am not the strange Rainman guy who shuffles around in a housecoat and slippers

Hey, it’s the YMCA - not Gold’s Gym.

* Had I know even three short months ago that I would take to eating tofu I probably would have wedged my toe into the trigger of a 12-gauge shotgun then and there. This may be the most significant breakthrough to date.

** Tossing my salad is simply a given.

*** Usually set to the 5:30PM airing of ‘Judge Judy’ on television.

**** This is my least favorite part of my workout. Not because of the difficulty it presents physically, but because of the difficulty of seeing myself in front of a full mirror spread-eagled on brightly-colored beach ball. It’s not very manly.

Fingerpainting With the Fuhrer

Good news, art lovers: 21 watercolors and sketches attributed to everyone’s favorite frustrated artist, Adolph Hitler, were auctioned off in the U.K. this past Tuesday for a grand total of $220,000 – more than double the auctioneer's pre-sale estimate

Not too shabby for an evil dictator. Even Genghis Khan's collection of macaroni art wouldn't fetch that kind of dollar. No, sir! Everybody else has sold out, why not evil dictators? Time for the past monsters of history to get themselves a little piece of the action too. Shit, soon you should be able to buy woven baskets by Edi Amin on the shelf at the local Wal-mart.

"Why indeed yes it is, Thad, dear boy. That is, in fact, an original Milosevic hanging over the mantelpiece. And right over here, next to my Mussolini Popsicle House is my Pol Pot ashtray..."

The works were created while he was on break from the front lines where he served as a soldier in the First World War. They’re mostly of landscapes and buildings, and apparently, considered to be, well, (hold onto your beer steins) quite fucking shitty really. I know – what a shocker, huh? Well, as it turns out, Hitler was a better evil mastermind and world domineer than he ever was a painter.

But there’s an auction I would have loved to attend. I wonder how much Hitler’s still life portrait of ‘Jewish Pig with Fruit’ went for?

“Some people would consider the sale somewhat controversial, but the pieces were executed so long ago - nearly 100 years ago - that they now just represent something of the past," spokesman Chris Walton said. "The paintings are of historical interest rather than artistic merit."

Dealing with Hitler's work and other items related to the Nazi regime has always been a thorny issue.

In many European countries, including Germany, it is illegal to buy, own or sell Nazi memorabilia. A German auction house in 2001 withdrew a Hitler painting following public protests.

That’s seems pretty funny to me. Since when have the Germans ever been the purveyors of moral standard in the art world? Aren’t these the same people for which grainy videos of other people shitting on one another is considered valid cinema? Take a crap in some blondes mouth and, hey, the worlds your oyster – but dare to purchase or sell a piece of shitty art by some past madman and suddenly everybody has ethics.

The Center of Military History in Washington, D.C., has hundreds of Nazi-related pieces - including four Hitler paintings - but they are locked in vaults and not on display. Rumor has it that Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, spends a lot of time wandering around the vaults in a spiked helmet masturbating to ‘The Smokestacks at Auschwitz’ and ‘Burn, Jew Bastard, Burn!’

I think it’s more interesting to think about what might have transpired if only Hitler had decided to instead pursue his deep-rooted love of shitty art? Just think, besides avoiding the whole Holocaust thing, as well as preventing the total destruction and displacement of mainland Europe, we would all now have been enjoying slightly better-than-shitty art hanging all over the place!

Golf clap!

patpatpatpatpatpatpatpatpatpat…

Imagine a world where Hitler’s art is everywhere. It could have happened. You walk into your local Applebee’s, and there hanging above the salad bar, a Hitler print of ‘The Burning of Preux-au-Bois’. Or waiting in your doctor’s office and passing the time by staring into the chipper ‘Tanks Crushing Slow-Moving Mothers’.

What a cheery world it might have been.

What’s the big deal about shitty art anyway? If some dipshit wants to pay $50,000 for a shitty artwork to hang beside his Dalmer in the bathroom – so be it. Obviously, either he’s a complete raving sociopath who’s already planning to carve Swastika’s into your forehead, or he just has an interest in paintings of creepy clowns and burning bodies. In other words; he just likes his shitty art.

Just don't invite him to your next backyard BBQ and you'll be fine.

The Week It Was

It’s a crazy world people.

For example, we have old women in wheelchairs going all Punisher by laying down sweet street justice on the streets of NYC. Does that nerve anyone else?

Sure the guy she shot was trying to mug her at the time, but honestly, what’s a 56-year old crippled woman doing wheeling around Harlem with a .357 pistol anyway? Shit, in my neighborhood, she would have been easy pickings – as nature had intended it.

None of the old fogies in my neighborhood are packing heat I can tell you!

Margaret Johnson said she was in Manhattan's Harlem neighborhood on her way to a shooting range when the man, identified by police as 45-year-old Deron Johnson, came up from behind and went for the chain.

"There's not much to it," she said in a brief interview. "Somebody tried to mug me, and I shot him."

She continued on by saying: “I got that chain fo’ fity cents at the corner sto’, an’ no no-good junkie muthafucka gonna take it from me now, bitch! I’ll pop a cap in his ass!”

You fucking bring it, Margie!

Elsewhere, a Dallas school board member, Ron Price, has fucking had it with baggy pants that overexpose, so he is petitioning the City Council to look into a ban on “rocking” the oversized trousers that often slip so low as to show underwear.

"I think it's disrespectful, it's dishonorable and it's disgusting," said Price, who made the recommendation to City Council last week. "I have no problem with the top of your Hanes label being shown. My problem is when grown men walk about the city with pants below their buttocks."

"I just feel that it's so disrespectful to our senior citizens, especially to women...," he said.

Yeah, the seniors, of course - seniors. Whatever you say, Ron.

Clearly, here is a tortured man who is simply just getting tired of seeing so much exposed man ass. However the spin he wants to put on it, it still amounts to exactly the same thing:

Just Say No to Exposed Man Ass!

And who can blame him? I think the whole world is getting pretty tired of immediately knowing what brand of gitch everybody is wearing. It’s just a matter of time before it drives somebody up into a bell tower with a hunting rifle it’s so ridiculous. Underwear is just one of those things that’s best left to our imaginations.

It’s one of the cardinal fashion faux pas:

1) Girls - never wear white stretchy pants (anytime) (anywhere).
2) Men - clamdiggers are for homos - unless you're really digging clams.
3) Corn rows on white people is just fucking sketchy.
4) Baggy pants and exposed underwear is for plumbers, homeless men, and maybe Mark Walhberg. No exceptions.

Now I understand all the difficulties in passing such a law in that who will regulate exactly how baggy is baggy pants, but is this something we really need to eradicate? It’s not Communism or anything. Besides, what’s offensive and what’s not? Are police also now expected to be the brutal enforcers of fashion as well?

“Forget the terrorist plot, we have baggy jeans and exposed man ass to deal with!”

But just chill, homeslices; fashion trends are already beginning to turn towards super skinny pants again for men and women in coming seasons. In fact, rumor has it, that the whole baggy pants look has been “played out”. Kendall Beck, 26, of Dallas, who was wearing low pants, but with his shirt was also long and tucked in, stated: “Yo, you nigga’s look stoopid.”

And so you have it - another rebirth for popular fashion. Carson Kressley – eat your fuckin’ heart out, Queer boy.

But the madness does not just stop there. It continues on even in my own humble den of sanity.

Thanks to my new diet and regular gi-normous T-Rex turds, the plumbing in my apartment burst and rained down a sweet holy terror on my landlords living room downstairs *.

For the past five days I have been without running water. Meaning that I can’t cook, shit, shower, or shave without first drawing up an emergency action plan. Of course, there’s a small amount in pride in all this as well, but mostly it’s a huge inconvenience.

It seems that I am eating so healthy that the trees outside have stretched their roots into our home’s sewer pipes in order to get to my uber-fertile tour de turd. I thought that I had noticed a particularly healthy glean to all the neighboring trees lately.

Next, I expect the squirrels to start glowing at night.

While my apartment (and my landlords) is still under construction to repair the extensive flood damage, we did have the good fortune to snake our own drains. Oh goodie! You just haven’t living until you’ve been elbows deep in shit that would make ordinary shit seem like chocolate pudding. The good news is that after the five days of not being able to shit regularly **, I’ve scarfed down an entire mountain of Imodium that will now prevent me from ever shitting again until the year 2017. At which time, I expect to be in a lot of pain and giving birth to a sack of bowling balls.

But you do what you have to do in order to survive.

As a result of all the flooring construction, bathroom plumbing and what have you, I also ended up breaking my pinky toe after a late night encounter with exposed toilet guts. And there was no “wee-wee-wee” that night, I assure you!

So now I’m also hobbling around like Dr. Frankenstein’s gopher boy to boot. It’s hard to rock my new muscles when I’m walking like a drunken orangutan – know what I’m sayin’?

Thank God that the week is over!

It’s no wonder why I used to smoke pot like an unemployed History teacher.

* Now, if you ever want to test the collective composure of your landlord in times of extreme duress, pour gallons of shit-filled water into his ceiling tile so that it spills out and collapses all over his leather couches and Casio keyboards.

** And believe me when I say, that I’m now accustomed to being as regular as an atomic clock when it comes to my bowel movements.

Tropical Fart

How bad is it that we’re so disappointed and bored in waiting for another mega-hurricane to rape the Gulf Coast that we now have to have special “Remembering Katrina” programs on television too?

Each time you channel flip, you’re bound to stumble across some historical retelling of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy and how some po' black folks got fucked - royally. If you’re lucky, there’ll be some rehashed footage of the many New Orleans victims broadcasts, or even a few meaty ‘Hurricane Crisis’ reports to boot!

Man, I miss that shit! It’s true, you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone. Who knew that the heavy metal hair band Cinderella could ever be so poignant?

Sure, sure, sure, Hurricane Ernesto is coming.

Big whoop.

It caused some flooding and damage in some remote pissant Caribbean islands…but who gives a flying fuck about people in thatched huts anyway? I sure don’t! Its not like we currently have any shortage of over-priced baseball players right now, do we? So by the time ‘ol Ernesto has wrecked a little more of its tropical havoc on a few more Cuban villages this week with its meek 40mph winds, it’ll just inevitably be a lowly Tropical Sneeze by the time it hits North American shores.

What a rip!

By all accounts so far, in comparison to last years Hurricane Katrina, Ernesto is about as frightening as a naked farm boy running through the countryside. Basically, it’s going to come and go with all the foul windy fury of Rosie O’Donnell after an ‘All-U-Can-Eat’ broccoli stir-fry.

Florida residents, following the media’s normal Doomsday proclamations, rushed to fill their prescriptions and stood in long lines for gasoline, food and other supplies Monday as state officials warned people not to wait for Tropical Storm…*giggle*…Ernesto to become a hurricane again before taking necessary precautions. Department stores and neighborhood shops are securing their windows and removing their reserves of blue jeans from the shelves and locking them safely away from prying eyes.

"Make sure you have the supplies for the 72 hours after the storm," Gov. Jeb Bush warned people in Tallahassee, a day after declaring a state of emergency for all Florida. "A hurricane's a hurricane, and it has a devastation we've already seen. All you have to do is rewind to last year and see." He further went on record by saying: "New Orleans taught us so much. No no-good starving looter bastard is going to get their mitts on our blue jeans!”

Weather forecasters said Ernesto could grow back into a hurricane in the warm waters off Cuba and come ashore in South Florida as early as Tuesday night, exactly one year after Hurricane Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast. I can already sense the coming headlines:

“Get ready for ‘Hurricane Katrina II: The Beast Returns’”.

It would only be the first hurricane to hit the United States this year. That’s significantly less than the amount of storms that global naysayers have been predicting this year, huh? Where’s all our promised storm carnage?

Dammit! I DEMAND major flooding - and cars in trees while we’re at it - immediately!

Shit, even Al Gore threatened us all with stronger storms each year in his Eco-dramatic documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. Maybe we should rethink this whole ‘Global Warming Theory’ thingee for a moment. It sounds to me like CNN has led us up the Primrose Path to Armageddon once again and then failed to deliver on the goods.

Anderson Cooper – you fuck.

Forecaster Richard Knabb at the hurricane center in Miami even urged people not to become complacent. "Just because the system is not a hurricane now, doesn't mean it can't be a hurricane later," he said.

He may as well have just stated: “Run, you crazy fuckers! Run!”

Besides, what kind of name is Ernesto? That hardly strikes fear into the hearts of men. Not that Katrina was any more vicious-sounding, but at least female names can be made to sound all bitchy. When you imagine Hurricane Ernesto in that frame of reference, you immediately picture some flaming transvestite dude in black nylons and a feather boa shaking his ass for drug money.

But not everybody is panicking. James Krie, 44, a Key West resident and general contractor, seemed unconcerned about the brewing storm. He acknowledged that outsiders might not understand.

"I feel like they look at us and say, `You dummies live down there,'" he said.

Fucking right we do, Jimmy. Without seeing your stupid ass flying through the air at 180 mph and embedding itself headfirst into a lamp pole, my summer TV viewing just isn’t complete!

The Yogurt Monologues (Part III)

It has officially been a month since I began this whole “lifestyle change” madness. I guess that means it’s about high time for another ‘Yogurt Monologues’ update then, huh? Another whole month worth of dieting gripes, bodily observations, and personal discoveries galore. So grab a hold of your stretchy pants and weight scales and lets delve into the wild world of healthy living, shall we?

To date, since beginning this personal journey, I have managed to successfully loose a whopping 20lbs of body fat - and I’m still focused, dedicated, and going strong *. Already I feel like one of those skinny ass motherfuckers that I normally scowl at when they pass by. I’ve managed to conquer my fear of spinach, discovered 101 things to do with avocados, fit more comfortably in theater seats, and am still dropping turds with gigantic Smithsonian proportions.

I’m losing weight so quickly in fact, that I now have to lather myself with Cocoa butter every morning in order to combat stretch marks. Hey, another purpose for Cocoa Butter! Who knew?

Freaky monkey sex here I come!

And speaking of freaky monkey sex, it was mentioned to me the other day that men who eat healthy also have better tasting sperm **. I’m not sure why that stuck with me as it did. Maybe because considering all the fruits and vegetables I’ve been eating lately, I might just have the tastiest junk on the planet. They sure omitted that little factoid from my high school Health class! There’s a claim to fame. I’d have that engraved on my headstone:

"Here lies Terry.
Tastes great, less filling.
R.I.P.”

I do know that this lifestyle change is working however, and not just because I can now see my toes without the use of a box periscope, but because I have become so conscious of what I put into my body. Even more telling is that I am equally aware of what other people are putting into theirs. It’s a delicate mental balance to say the least. On the one hand, I crave and subconsciously fantasize about all the hoagies, donuts, and bags of Doritos that I see other people ingesting, but there is also another part of me that recoils in disgust knowing the effect it is having on their body. Honestly - there have been nights I have woken up in cold sweats and an erection after having strange disturbing dreams of being smothered alive under mountains of cheesy slices of pepperoni pizza.

The latest development since my last diet update is the fact that I have now joined the gym. Yep! This poor fat bastard has strayed into the Land of the Fit and Beautiful; or what I like to call – ‘No Hams Land’.

I still enjoy my power walking trips in the evenings and I have even increased them in intensity. These walks now make the ‘March of the Penguins’ seem like leisurely strolls through the woods to Grandma’s house. But I needed something more, more…invigorating. Besides, my feet are now so badly callused that they more closely resemble hooves.

It’s quite an interesting place actually this YMCA gym. It’s not at all what I expected from listening to Village People records. Initially, I thought that by just stepping through the front doors meant you would automatically take to wearing leather and Indian headdresses and start offering to give olive oil massages in the showers. But it’s not like that at all. It’s no est Campo Homo. In fact, nobody gives a shit that you’re there at all – which is fine by me. I’m not there to give massages.

The people at the gym are strangely oblivious to all that is going on around them. And nobody ever smiles. Hey, if you’re going to stare at my unsightly belly bulge, the least you can do is return a smile when we exchange eye contact.

But I digress. I understand that it’s not supposed to be Happy Hour or anything.

Each person is instead, plugged into their headsets and goes about their sweaty business like muscled zombies. And it’s no wonder; should one choose to go without that music blasting in their ear, they would inevitably be serenaded with the sounds of grunts, groans, and the odd ill-timed squeaked out fart. Not exactly a soundtrack to motivate your workout! It sounds like a milking factory. This also means then that I have also rediscovered a new appreciation for jam music - Phish, moe, Disco Biscuits, Widespread Panic, et al. There’s just something about bloobidy-bloobidy-bloobidy-bloobidy for 20 minutes at a time that really puts a spring in my step and gets my heart racing. Maybe it has something to do with the increased levels of granola in my system.

I’m not just busting out farts – I’m busting out the phat jams, brah!

And so my workouts are becoming very emotional and intense. I just don’t saddle up to an exercise bike and go for a leisurely spin; I attack it like a crazed Viking. One of these times in the heat of battle, when my adrenaline is soaring higher than Floyd Landis’ testosterone count, I’m going to grab the machine, hurl it through the window, beat my chest like a gorilla and grab the nearest female before climbing to the roof to await the fighter jets. After one really intense workout, I was even brought to tears the likes of which haven’t been seen with me since Andrew Ridgeway left Wham!

I have pains now in my body that most Cold War Interrogation experts haven’t even discovered yet. I’m currently lurching around the office like Frankenstein. It hurts to fucking blink! I am on the verge of becoming a complete A535 junkie. Even worse, is that I have to now put up with everyone continually telling me “no pain, no gain”. I swear, the next person who feels the need to share this tidbit of wisdom with me, I’m going to kick squarely in the schiznits.

“How’s that pain for ya? Gain on that, motherfucker!”

I must be some kind of masochist to put myself through this. Just keep thinking about the freaky monkey sex.

It’s also a good thing that I have become accustomed to fluvia. There are more spent bodily fluids at the gym than Robin Williams’s locker towel. You can’t go 3 ft without tripping over a spray bottle and sweat cloth used to wipe down the exercise machines post workout. And here I thought they were for the encore presentations of the ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’. But I’ve realized that truly inspired people don’t sweat – saline leaves their body heartbroken that the body no longer needs it.

Initially I was really nervous about going to the gym and being surrounded by. But I am happy to announce that I have a bigger penis than at least three of the muscle-bound gorillas I have seen at the gym. So, there must really be something to this whole natural living thing as opposed to muscle enhancers, special protein shakes, and steroids. Sure, I may still have an ass that looks like a bag of oranges, but at least my penis can be seen without the aid of a microscope. No wonder these buffoons still wear their underwear in the shower.

* I think the fact that I also haven’t killed anyone yet is rather telling as well.

** Definitely not a study I would ever want to be part of. I’ll stick to the Pepsi Challenge, thank you!

Lubed and Dangerous

Anyone who still watches the news will already realize that our national security alert has been changing colors lately more times than a manic depressive chameleon.

In the wake of the Lebanese-Israeli conflict and the recent foiled terrorist plot to kill thousands of airline passengers on the Trans-Atlantic route between the UK and the US, International air travel has once again been reduced to absolute chaos. Soon we won’t be able to fly anywhere unless we’re stripped naked and shackled to our seats with full body restraints.

The Transportation Security Administration changed its security screening procedures at all U.S. airports, banning all liquids and gels at security checkpoints and aboard flights. In addition, airport security is all but performing body cavity searches on its passengers making them more irritable than Simon Cowell with a bad case of Herpes. You can’t so much as pass gas without setting off some sort of security alert.

Personally, with all these new security measures, I’d rather crawl over broken glass to my destination rather than deal with all this screening bullshit. It’s like being processed into a German concentration camp. All that’s missing is the searchlight and patrolling guard dogs.

“Ve have vays of making you talk.”

Toothpaste and all liquids and gels - including shampoo, lip-gloss, perfume, hair gel, suntan lotion, creams, balms, beverages bought in the boarding area and all other items with similar consistency. Boy, it sure must be hell to be Tammy Faye Baker travelling these days!

My God! Whatever would I do on vacation without my Cocoa butter?

This all comes after London Metropolitan Police discovered stores of Acetone Peroxide, the same explosive used in the past July terrorist attacks on the London transport system. Otherwise known as ‘Mother of Satan’, acetone peroxide is a highly explosive crystalline powder with a distinctive acrid smell. Basically, it resembles something that Robert Downey Jr. would put up his nose.

Since then, airline security has been more than just a little on edge.

So much so, that they are pulling over planes now left, right and center. In Boston, a plane was escorted by a fighter jet and grounded at Logan International Airport when a “suspicious” passenger was spotted with Vaseline, a screwdriver, and matches. Shit, that sounds what McGuyver would pack on an ordinary singles getaway. I would have loved to have heard the actual distress call issued from the pilot to the Logan air control tower at the time:

“Logan, we have a suspicious passenger on board. We suspect that he may be lube and dangerous. We request immediate backup.”

What was he going to do exactly that was so suspicious? Unjam a stuck bathroom door? Make someone’s glasses really, really wobbly? Fix the fold-down table on the seat in front of him? I don’t get it. I have all those things in my apartment. It may raise the odd eyebrow from people who check out my medicine cabinet, but it doesn’t make me a terrorist.

Another plane flying from Gatwick Airport in London to Hurghada, Egypt was diverted to Brindisi in southern Italy after it was mysteriously suspected that a bomb was onboard. No bomb was ever found, nor could any worthy explanation be given over how this came to be suspect exactly. And it doesn’t end there! A 59-year-old woman caused a security scare when she allegedly passed notes to crew members, urinated on the floor and made comments the crew believed were references to al Qaeda and the September 11 attacks on a London-to-Washington flight this past Wednesday. Honestly, when did a little piss hurt anybody? What was she going to do – threaten national security by giving the pilot a Golden Shower? And a West Virginia airport terminal was evacuated this past Thursday after two bottles of liquid found in a woman's carryon luggage twice tested positive for explosives residue. The bottles were moved by robot to the to a remote area of the airport where officials attempted to detonate them. They did not however go - BOOM! Chemical tests later in the day instead turned up no explosive, and the airport was reopened after nearly 10 hours.

Congratulations, retards. You detonated breast milk.

Has the world gone mad? It seems that we’re now stuck in this quagmire of paranoia and sinking ever deeper. Lets look at where this may have started to go wrong.

• First we banned Cat Stevens to Britain by the American Homeland Security because his activities “could be linked to terrorism”.
• Next, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) issued the brilliant security measure to ban all raw and lightly cooked hamburger airports and onboard aircraft – along with other such diabolical instruments of terror as lighters, knitting and darning needles, metal pointed umbrellas, plastic butter knives, and box cutters.

Personally, I’m more worried about the guy with the belly full of raw hamburger and a set of knitting needles. Ever witness the effects of hamburger in someone’s colon at 35,000 ft? To me, THAT’S the bigger threat. Not some dipshit with a tube of lube and a Phillips screwdriver!

We fucked up the moment we banned the Cat. That alone was enough bad kharma to last us a lifetime.

The Movie Guy

I met an individual today who must be the most annoying individual on the face of the earth. Someone so aggravating that merely just writing about him is making my blood boil *. I’d be more inclined to discuss Middle Eastern politics with someone throwing puppies into a wood chipper than this moron.

I dread going into ‘Blockbuster Entertainment’. I’m convinced it is the epicenter from which all stupidity on this God-forsaken rock we call a home radiates. You don’t have to be a Sam Rothstein.to figure out the odds of bumping into some poor dipshit, with the IQ of a hood ornament, is pretty fucking good. But unfortunately, it’s the only video rental store in the entire area that carries anything more than the latest Adam Sandler train wreck.

For the past year or so that I’ve been visiting this particular ‘Blockbuster Entertainment’, I’ve avoided one particular clerk like I would avoid steeping road kill. The contemptible ‘Movie Guy’.

I’m convinced that every video store has one of these dipshits lurking in its aisles ready to jump out at you to make a recommendation, or browbeat you with a detailed cinematic breakdown of the latest foreign film release.

These type of movie know-it-all’s bother really me.

True – I’m no Gene Siskel, but I like to think I still know the basics to making any good video rental choice. Adam Sandler is evil, the third installment in any movie series is bound to be absolutely unwatchable (even sequels have a 60/40 chance of being complete shit); and anything with Gary Busey or Brian Dennehy is likely to induce seizures. I’m confident that I am capable of finding something that won’t wilt my brain. But every now and again, I space out on the titles of the actual movies I want to see. It’s an old Frosh Week injury.

And so it happened today.

And, uh-oh, there was you-know-who laying in wait behind the counter grinning like a retarded chimpanzee.

I almost (and should have) walked out right there. But in the second it took to contemplate my options, Movie Guy locked onto my position. Either he smelled my fear, or recognized the confusion in my eye…but like a shark zeroing in on the scent of blood, he began to race towards me.

Now I know how a wounded and crippled porpoise feels.

“Hey. What’cha looking for?” he called out.

I know now that I should have lied. But, being the outwardly mindless simpleton that I am, I instead replied: “I can’t remember.”

“Was it ‘Crash’? ‘Cause that’s a totally awesome movie! If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should! The cinematograph…”

“No, it’s not ‘Crash’”, I interrupted desperately. I last thing I wanted to do was engage Moviezilla here in a deep artsy discussion on cinema-anything.

“Do you have a movie guide I could use by chance?” I asked hopefully. Maybe if there was a written store guide of some sort, I stood a chance of shaking Movie Guy loose.

But, of course, it was to no avail. Movie Guy wasn’t going to let me get away so easily. He had his teeth squarely in my ass.

“Who stars in it?” he continued.

Oh God. Here we go.

“Umm, that guy – the brother; not the brother with the funny nose, or any of the Baldwins brothers or Wayans. You know, the pouty one whose brother went tits up in his condominium earlier this year.” It was the best I could come up with.

“Sean Penn?” he smirked.

“Yeah, that’s him. The movie was named after some valley, or mountain pass, or body of water, or something” I added.

“Mystic River!” Movie Guy responded triumphantly. He looked as if he had just laid down a victorious trump euchre hand in his high school cafeteria.

“That’s the one. Than…” I begrudgingly answered.

He immediately cut me off… he was on a roll now.

“It’s in the Drama section, third row over, second from the top. It’s got a blue cover with a bunch of guys standing upside-down on it. Directed by Clint Eastwood, it was up for Academy Awards in 2006 for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay…” he continued cockily.

Christ, make him stop already!

I ashamedly walked off towards the drama section to retrieve my film – but Movie Guy just stuck with me in hot pursuit rambling off his informational tidbits about the movie. Other customers in the store gawked at me sympathetically as they quickly rounded corners to avoid coming between me and Rainman here.

“It's a great murder story involving three interconnected central characters and an investigation that will dig up the neighborhood's scarred history,” Movie Guy happily chirped three feet behind me as I retrieved my flick from the third row, second from the top.

“If you like that then you’ll like ‘The Usual Suspects’. Have you seen ‘The Usual Suspects’? Now that’s an awesome movie! If you haven’t seen that yet, I’d recommend renting that instead.”

This clown wasn’t going to give up.

“Yeah, thanks”, I mumbled under my breath and began trudging back to the counter to check out my evenings movie de jour.

“How about ‘Requiem for a Dream’? Have you seen that? Now THAT’S a kick ass movie! I’d get that for sure! Whatabout ‘Forgiven’, huh? Clint Eastwood directed that movie too and it’s way better than ‘Mystic River’. Can I get that for you? It’s another two rows over, half way down, bottom shelf.”

I was ready to paralyze this guy with a flying head scissors right there in the middle of the store. Instead, I just mumbled “No. Thanks for the help.”

And here was the big moment; the moment he’d clearly been waiting for since the moment I first walked into the store:

“That’s, okay. That’s what I do…(wait for it)…I’m “The Movie Guy”. His face beamed like an Alter boy at a strip parlor.

I almost lost it.

That fact that this guy exists is the biggest travesty of injustice against mankind since Eddie Murphy was cast as Dr. Doolittle. Does this genetic grab bag of party favors really think I give two shits about his movie trivia skills? He’s lucky I didn’t leave him with a Schiavo-style feeding tube the moment he forced himself on me like a newly released sex offender.

“The Movie Guy”? Yeah, and I’m Batman - whatever jerk face.

So what is he so proud of anyway? That he’s wasted eons of his life in front of the boob tube watching movie, after movie, after movie, until his brain is overloaded with important movie information? He’s a walking, talking movie reference guide. That’s sure some bastion of achievement. It’s a good thing he saw that ad in the paper that they were hiring a minimum wage position at ‘Blockbuster Entertainment’, otherwise his gift to the world may have gone unrecognized! And that’s not a world I think any of us can imagine living in. How would we ever choose what movie to watch on Friday nights, or find out the title of the latest Pauly Shore straight-to-video release?

Imagine the chaos.

He can probably rhyme off the complete supporting cast to ‘The Bridges of Madison County”, but for all other aspects of life, this guy couldn’t outsmart a gardening tool.

Brav-fucking-o, douchebag!

After I had returned, he scuttled around behind the counter again to check out my movie for me. My chances of making a quiet getaway were lost for good.

“So, do you rent movies often? ‘Cause I can recommend lots of movies. I’m the Movie Guy you know”, he continued.

“No. Almost never”, I lied. If I didn’t get out of the store immediately I was going to go all Kaiser Soze on his ass.

“That’s funny. I thought I’ve seen you in here before”, he prodded.

I just looked up at him blankly, picked up my video and put it under my arm, and paused to bid him my fond adieu. The one-liners hurtled through my brain:

“Maybe. I pick them up for somebody else. I think movies are for pussies.”
“Nah, this is my first one. Real men watch porn.”
“Hey, do you date the Tooth Fairy?”

Instead, I said:

“Those guys on the cover aren’t standing upside down. That’s supposed to be their reflections cast in the river to mirror the shadowy duality of their characters. Everybody knows that. That’s what I do…”

And then the coup de tat:

“I’m the Asshole Guy.”

And I finally walked out.

* Given the hot temperatures outside these days, this is no major feat I agree. But consider that I’m currently sitting in a nice air-conditioned apartment with two fans running, it’s still pretty impressive.

The Yogurt Monologues (Part II)

It has been two weeks already into my diet.

Okay, it’s been less than two weeks; but I’m home now with a ligament injury and the combination of bran and red plums in my system are doing funny things to my head. However long it has been – it’s still going strong.

Being home today has given me a chance to really absorb* all that I have learned about this beast dieting. I am beginning to understand the mechanics of my own body and bodily functions better and how it all ticks. Most suprisingly is that it is completely possible for the human body to function without Haagen-Dazs, cheeseburgers, or Tim Horton’s double-doubles. Who knew? In fact, I am learning together all too much about my body and its functions.

For instance, since I have been eating more raw natural foods as opposed to fast food, I am now beginning to drop more regular solid turds. And I’m not talking about all those usual 2-second greasy Hershey squirts I normally pass I’m talking about enormous spires of earthy-colored crap here. Turds to make circus elephants proud. Every time I go to the bathroom now I have to clear my entire afternoon schedule. Bring a book, enroll in a college correspondence course, whatever, I’m not coming out for a while. It’s like I’m admitting myself into a Maternity Ward each time I feel my stomach rumble.

“Congratulations, Mr. Nash. It’s a turd.”

Besides this, I am also more conscious of the color of my urine. Yes, you read that correctly.

Usually, this is an aspect of my life that I would prefer to remain oblivious to. I figure I’m not alone in thinking this otherwise they wouldn’t put those flyers above the urinals at bars and restaurants. I’d just about prefer to look at anything besides my own stream of piss. Now, since learning that your urine’s clarity indicates the effectiveness of your body to clean itself out, I am fixated on noticing on how well I am flushing myself of ingested toxins. Not that dropping elephant turds isn’t enough. But now because I am consuming enough daily liquids to make any Bande Ache survivor more than a little anxious, I also have to piss like a racehorse every 10-15 minutes. This I don’t really mind this so much as any chance I get to fondle myself during the normal workday is an enjoyable experience. But I digress…

Unfortunately, by the time this whole new healthy lifestyle of mine completely takes over I will be able to detect over a dozen of different shades and hues of yellow. I’ll make any Interior Decorator seem almost colorblind.

But then again, considering the condition I return home in after my evening walk means that I am growing very accustom to fluvia. After 60 minutes of Nazi death marching around town in my stretchy fat pants, I’m sweating like the pig that knows he’s dinner. In fact, in a complete 24-hour period, my body now produces enough fluvia to top off any landfill. I live in a perpetually moist state. Aquaman isn’t as moist as I am these days.

Yep. Shit, piss, sweat, snot, what have you - so my day goes.

But even better than all this heady bodily goodness, the real fun in dieting comes, as usual, from other idiots who like to offer advise. Just like with being single, every moron with an opinion likes to chime in with his or her two cents on the subject. It’s enough to drive you to murder. I even had a guy that was easily three times my size tell me about his guaranteed formula for quick fat burning.

Yeah, I can see where that program is really working wonders for you, there, Shamu.

Why does everyone automatically assume that they are fitness experts? People with asses that look like they are shoplifting throw pillows are even drawn to offer me their pearls of dieting wisdom. From diet pills and prescriptions **, to grapefruit, to soup, to oolong tea – I’ve heard it all recently. My two personal favorites of such informational dieting tidbits are “eat smaller potions”, and “make sure to treat yourself regularly”.

Pardon?

Apart from the obvious, what kind of stupid advice is that? Isn’t that how I got in this fucking condition in the first place? I mean, maybe, just maybe, if I hadn’t been “treating” myself so much or helping myself to smaller portions all along I may not have had to put myself on this fucking diet in the first place! But thanks for the advice, dipshit.

One aspect of dieting I am still trying to get a handle on is that of making healthier decisions when it comes to eating. So far, I am doing well. No fast food, no carbonated soda pop, no overly fatty foods, etc. But lately, I have also been developing these random unusual cravings for stuff like…asparagus!

Good, God! It’s like I’ve been possessed.

It’s not a natural instinct to choose green beans and avocados over cheeseburgers. Where’s the dignity in that? I’m supposed to be a man, for fuck sakes! Men are supposed to eat red meat…not salad. You know who eats salad? Wilford Brimley…that’s who! And you just know Wilford Brimley isn’t banging any young hotties these days.

(to be con’d…)

* Not to mention healthy doses of garlic humus.

** Including Dexatrim, Thermatrim, Ubertrim, Advantatrim, Dietrine, Ephedra, Ma Huang, and a whole host of other funny sounding vitamin supplements, carb blockers, and fat burners, whatever - its speed. Two or three of these little babies and I’d be running around the office place naked and babbling like a madman. But some people are attracted to these miracle diet prescriptions like hippies to their phat jams.

The Yogurt Monologues (Part I)

Something finally snapped. After years of contemplating, failed planning, abandoned attempts, bitching, whining - and don’t forget the all-important moaning – I have finally begun to diet in earnest.

For the past week, I have started eating more vegetables and less Quarter Pounders, forgone second helpings, snubbed my nose at desserts, made healthier decisions, and started a strict exercise regiment of power walking in the evenings. Seven-whole-fucking-days...and I haven't strayed from the plan, or stabbed myself in the forehead with a grapefruit knife.

Yep, it’s ‘Yogurt Time’.

People have already started to ask me why I’ve only now decided to attempt to loose some weight. They offer me all the usual explanation synopses that they may have had get healthier, feel better about myself, wanting to live longer, etc. But honestly, my reasoning is a little more self-indulgent and pointed.

I want to get laid *.

Now, lets get one thing straight – I CAN have sex. But for once in my life, I want the good freaky monkey kind of sex. Not the labored, slapping, pathetic kind of sex that fat people have. You know - the kind of sex that resembles two hippos butting heads on the African Plains. Lord knows I’ve shed enough tears in my life that I shouldn’t have to cry during sex either. When I next get around to doing the deed, I want the body and energy of a Russian circus acrobat so that I can really enjoy me some hot bendy sex.

But whatever my reasoning, my diet is not without it’s price.

At the moment, my body makes me feel like the Six Million-Dollar Man before the surgery. I can picture my dietician standing over my bloated and broken body: “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology”. But soon it will be different. I will be better than I was before. Better, Stronger, Faster. Able to boink with the focused longevity of any porn star. It may not exactly be Romantic poetry, but it’s the truth. I already have blisters the size of silver dollars on my heels to prove the seriousness of my efforts.

The real amazement in dieting for me is that eating more vegetables give you gas. Who knew? Now as I walk down the street in the evenings I’m constantly ripping farts like an old man at a prune stand. Some evenings, I’m sure my neighbors don’t know if it’s just me in the distance, or a flock of ducks coming down the street as they enjoy their coffees on the front porch.

But who said that loosing weight was ever going to be pretty? It’s just going to have to be the cross that I will have to bear.

I’m a victim here after all. Not just a victim of mass marketing and fast food consumerism, but of the new “Fat Gene” theory those Nutritionists are now proposing. I knew there was something unholy about my constant cravings for cheeseburgers. And like most victims, I’m just going to have to find a way of incriminating society for my suffering and demand federal assistance. Or, I can try to rise above it all, or at least off the couch, and do something constructive about it.

Scientists are now theorizing that obesity is a developed genetic disorder that wills people to eat extensively. We are literally powerless against the natural drive to consume food. This definitely shakes up the common notion that fat people are lazy, gluttonous, and weak willed.

No, sir! We’re helpless victims.

Researchers suggest that this gene, known as ‘lipin’, may be inherited and makes us more susceptible to the threat of high-calorie, high-variety, super-tasty convenience foods that have come to dominate the landscape. Yeah, another reason to be upset with your parents.

"I didn’t really want eat that third slice of pie, my parents genes made me do it!"

Whatever.

Making healthier decisions is tricky business though. Produce stands are definitely less inviting than any Golden Arches that may dot the horizon like Neon monoliths. But I need to do this. I need to sweat; I need to suffer; I need to eat more greens and be miserable for it. I need to loose some fucking weight.

Nothing will keep me from my freaky monkey sex.

And so begins my journey.

(to be con'd...)

* Being able to see my penis will be a bonus as well.

Another Loser's Lament

(This post was conceived while in a completely selfish mindset. I understand that the sentiments expressed below are in extremely poor taste and borderline on being “assholish”. However, that’s how the male mind works from time to time – or at least mine does anyway. To come to terms with the situation, I have attempted to confront and work through these negative feelings in this fashion to better understand the situation as a whole. Worse comes to worse – I’m just being the dick I was born to be, or in this case, the dick I should have been all along.)

Once, back in University, I started spending a lot of time with this girl named Sandra. We did practically everything together – apart from the usual “fun” stuff that most good amoral boy/girl friendships normally engage in.

That is to say, I wasn't gettin’ any.

I lacked that ability to lead the relationship into the next level. Of course, I mean the fabled “first base” that men so lovingly like to refer to it as. I was Darryl Strawberry stalled at first base waiting for the chance to take off for second. But, shit, I never even left home plate!

Apart from being beautiful, Sandra was extremely self-reliant and very assured of herself. She didn’t even so much as like to have a door held open for her. So, for a schmoopy ass old fashioned barf-o-matic such as myself, this meant that initiating those “tender” moments (such as kissing, petting, stroking, and hot anal action in back alleyways *) was never an easy thing to accomplish. I decided back then that I would have to figure out a way of kick-starting this whole process. So I set in motion a cunning plan to drive her into my arms.

I decided then to take her to a viewing of the just released ‘Schindler’s List’. It was perfect! She’d get all emotional and weepy-eyed, like chicks are apt to do, over the ensuing plight of the Jews that she would soon be seeking comfort in my strong masculine shoulders.

But to no avail - Sandra just sat there for three hours completely stonefaced. In fact, looking back at it now, I think she may actually have been cheering for the Nazi’s. I seem to remember seeing the faintest glimpse of a curled Grinch-like sneer, work its way across her face. The plan was beginning to spiral out of control.

To make matters worse, it was I who turned into the blubbering bag of mush as tears streamed from my eyes. I viewed most of the movie through a blurry veil of tears while Sandra sat there motionless planning her next strike on Whoville. Obviously my plan was failing me. Not only did we not hook up that evening, but I also had to over up with some weak line about having popcorn salt in my eye.

After that, Sandra and I didn’t see so much of one another. I lost myself in the usual male ritual of drug-induced inebriation while Sandra went off and joined a militant White Supremacist group.

Advance thirteen years to present day.

Now, I have been spending similar time with another female companion. As with Sandra, we have a, so far, clearly established plutonic relationship. Although, like every other blind optimist, I have always maintained in the back of my head that we would still make a great couple should we ever choose to go down that avenue.

As with Sandra, this situation has never come about.

But not through any misgivings on my behalf mind you. After thirteen years of romancing bottles of Cocoa butter, I’d happily date a syphilitic donkey. She, however, has always had a reason or two on why our relationship works best on a stringent “friends only” basis. Either I wasn’t “geeky” enough, or handsome enough, or responsible enough, or fun enough, or that I smoke too much pot. Whatever – there was always something about me that just didn’t register as potential boyfriend material with her. Fair enough.

Apparently, though, I just wasn’t Lesbian enough.

How’s that for a blow to my fragile male ego? Not exactly the encouragement I need to give up my precious marijuana now is it? Christ, I need it now more than ever!

Perhaps I should first explain things a bit further.

This current female friend of mine, during our time together, has become very important to me. For all intensive purposes we’ve been living out the boyfriend-girlfriend camaraderie thing for over a year now, only without the obvious fleshy benefits. Bosom buddies as it were. Pretty much par for the course where I’m concerned. Apart from the cleaning lady at work, she’s the only dose of femininity that I experience on a day-to-day basis.

As such, I often use her as the benchmark with which to base all my other prospective dates against **. I know she didn’t ask for that responsibility, but I think that that old adage that a “man looks for somebody resembling his mother” is just fucking creepy. Lets get one thing straight here – I have never, now or ever, wanted to bang my mother. And anyone who suggests that I do, regardless of what the Ph.D. diploma on his or her wall may suggest, can just bite me.

Likewise, I don’t want to bone my cleaning lady either.

So here is a girl for whom, despite being a good friend, is someone who in the back of my mind would be a great potential life partner. That’s not such a terrible notion is it? So why then isn’t she capable of feeling the same way about me?

Yesterday, I noticed a hickey on her neck. Oh fuck.

She proceeded to explain to me that the hickey on her neck had in fact been left by another woman during some hot lesbo weekend tryst. Oh fuckity fuck.

My precious machismo imploded in on itself like a ceramic vase at 200 fathoms. All my ugly insecurities rushed to the surface like an erupting volcano. What am I doing so wrong that even my close female confidants don’t even view me as a viable mate?

Am I that big a risk? I seem to literally repel women like opposite poles of a magnet.

What do I have to do exactly to convince girls that I am, in fact, all man? I do all the regular manly stuff. I scratch all the appropriate places, watch the mandatory amount of sporting broadcasts, I can fart on cue, I can grill a steak during a Category Five hurricane, and the center of my universe revolves around my Charlie Brown’s. What am I doing so wrong?

Likewise, I also have that oh-so-important touch of quiet feminine sensitivity that women seem to crave. After thirteen-fucking-years I have become a regular Martha-fucking-Stewart! Shit, I can cook, clean, knit, sew, and have been known to cry during sad movies – so put that in your Crockpot and smoke it! If I were in any more touch with my feminine side I would have grown ovaries by now.

By all standards - at least those that I’ve managed to recognize by reading Cosmo in line at the Supermarket - I have it all. I make myself available, I care, I empathize, I communicate, I try to understand her needs, I try to remember to lift the toilet seat before peeing, and I know more than just your basic missionary sex position ***. Aside from my ever-expanding ass lately, I feel as if I’ve got my datable bases covered.

And yet, she still seeks out another woman with which to satisfy her womanly desires. It’s every man’s nightmare come true.

This friend has tried to explain to me previously that it’s a simple case of our relationship lacking “chemistry”. Now I’m no Henry Cavendish, so am I alone here in wondering what this whole chemistry thing is all about? Or is this just lesbian code or something? I thought we were trying to appreciate and understand one another, not discovering new isotopes.

Now, I realize how stupid this all sounds. And, given the required time to get over it, I will continue to be happy and support her no matter what should transpire. I may be an asshole, but I’m a loyal open kinda asshole. But there’s still that little nagging voice in the back of my head that demands satisfaction – namely, what the fuck do women want exactly?

At the rate my understanding of women is developing, by the time I talk my way into someone’s bed my penis will have rusted off completely and be of little to no use to me anyway.

For the time being, I have to consul myself over the fact that even my best friend would rather munch bush than consider me as a viable dating option. And at the moment, that’s a bitter pill for my poor bruised ego to swallow. Not that there was ever any swallowing going on in the first place.

I guess there’s nothing I can really do but suck it up, get over myself, and carry on bid’ness as usual; carrying my wilted pride before me like a drum major’s baton.

Onward sissy soldiers…or something like that.

What else is there to do? It’s only a short step away from totally giving up on the whole dating thing altogether and shutting myself in with my $39.99 mail order ‘Penis Pump’ for good.

But, hey, at least the door has now been opened for the possibility of a little hot three-way action. At the very least, perhaps I could convince the girls to yodel 'The Lonely Goatherd' outside the bathroom door while I masturbate by myself with the Cocoa butter.

Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo ...

* Hey, I was 19 years old and a whole lot more gregarious in nature. I could achieve wood in nanoseconds. I had all your normal budding male sexuality fantasies. Now, I’d consider a simple hand job during commercial breaks to be kinky.

** Exactly zero in over four years. I’m really tearing up the dating scene.

*** Okay - busted. I saw them in a porno movie once, okay?

Nightmare at Sea

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful tip. That started from this Florida port, aboard this luxury ship. The crew were mighty sailin' men, the captain sober and sure. Three thousand one hundred passengers set sail that day, for a three thousand-dollar tour, a three thousand-dollar tour…

With interests beginning to lag in the current Middle East bombings, this is what the media is left to work with. This is what constitutes as the new “developing crisis” for many of the bored news correspondents. It’s no bloodied townsfolk picking limbs out of a pile of rubble – but it’ll have to do.

The new Crown Princess luxury ocean liner built in 2006, and christened by one, Martha Stewart, last month in New York, rolled on it’s side 15 degrees during it’s fourth voyage of the season. That’s what you get when you let a convicted felon christen a luxury ocean liner.

I say they were fucked from the very beginning.

A supposed failure in the liner’s steering system caused the ship to lilt on its port side before righting itself again less than a minute later. Apparently, this caused almost unspeakable devastation for those onboard. Several of the upper decks were flooded and the elevators were inoperable. Gym equipment flipped over, TVs fell off their shelves and shattered glass was strewn across the deck.

This is a “near disaster”? Whoopee-fucking-shit! This is barely news worthy.

Vacationers complained that sliding plastic deck chairs had disturbed their sun tanning and that numerous shuffleboard games had been interrupted. One lady regaled the media with the horrific account of her margarita glass sliding across the table and smashing on the ground before she could finish.

“Oh, the horror….the horror...”

Tom Daus, 32, was sunbathing on the ship's upper deck when the ship began to list.

"It became very disastrous because … tables, glasses, lounge chairs went flying," he told The Associated Press in a cell phone interview. "I was just holding on for dear life onto the banister of the ship. As a result, I got more of a truckers tan on my one grasping arm instead of the all over tan I was going for."

"The water came gushing out of the pool like a mini-tsunami," he said. "It was really scary. People who were in the pool were shoved out."

Oh, for fuck sakes, get a grip dipshit! That’s not over-dramatizing things any is it? This guy has been watching one too many Anderson Cooper 360 updates.

Heaven’s forbid your snobby-assed cruise trip should ever be inconvenienced by a tragic twist of simple geometry. I know of about 125,000 people that are currently stranded along the Lebanese coast that would storm your luxury liner and throw your pontsy ass overboard into shark infested waters in a heartbeat given the opportunity. They’d make ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ look like a bunch of Mary Martin wannabe’s.

The real criticism comes from the Coast Guard who claims that the first warning to authorities that the Crown Princess cruise ship had tilted came not from the captain, but from a passenger on a cell phone. Well, maybe, that’s because the captain, the seasoned seaman he is, realized that a mere 15-fucking-degrees isn’t something to really get your panties in a twist over.

Instead, he participated in the onboard surfing contest with a dining room bus tray.

“I haven’t had this much fun since I used to ride that old washing machine down the hill in my backyard as a child”, the captain responded after he was contacted.

Princess Cruises, owners of the Crown Princess, says the captain, Andrew Proctor, was not on the bridge at the time the ship rolled slightly. The company says it doesn't know who called the Coast Guard first, but said its standard procedure is for the captain to contact authorities.

They did, however, mention that the caller sounded like a frightened little sissy girl who may, or may not have, wet themselves during the actual call.

The Days of Miracle and Blunder

Is anyone else bored to death with the whole Israeli/Hezbollah conflict thing yet? It has been a week already since the Israeli’s first decided to strike back by bitch-slapping Lebanon in retaliation for abducting two of their soldier’s.

It’s been all exploding bombs and dusty debris ever since.

But even the bombing updates get boring after awhile, don’t they? Even the news correspondents - you can tell - are all beginning to get anxious and are really secretly hoping for something different to report on. Maybe a nice beheading, or kidnapping, or how about a good ‘ol fashioned gang rape at some local orphanage? You know – something juicy.

Anything but more bombs!

*yawn*

Maybe if the Israeli army and Hezbollah were to agree to duke it out with swords and throwing stars, I’d be more inclined to give a shit. But as it is now, I haven’t been this bored since ‘I ::heart:: Huckabees’

Even hurricane reports sound more inviting right about now.

But you know what really pisses me off about the whole current escalating Middle East conflict? That the entire story now seems to have shifted to the pending rescue operations of thousands of North American vacationers stupid enough to be caught in the crossfire. And by all accounts, those suddenly needing to be up and rescued are not happy with the responses from their home governments in the face of disaster.

This is old news, you dipshits! Now tell us something we didn’t know.

Even if you were of Middle Easter decent, why would you ever go to Lebanon of all places? Can’t you just go to a travel agency and experience the majesty of the Holy Land by leafing through all the free travel brochures? Even if you have family still living there – ever heard of a little something called EMAIL, you idiots?

Haven’t these asshats even heard the first track on Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’?

“It was a slow day
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road
There was a bright light
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio”

C’mon people! Open your goddamn eyes already!

Now there is a tsunami of incoming complaints from those victimized travelers of mass disorder, a lack of necessary provisions provided - ie. water, food, and clean underwear* – as well as no definite plan of action for their immediate extraction. Stranded families have been waiting in airport lobbies and on marina docks for days waiting to be rescued. Shit, you’d think they still thought they were still on vacation and bitching about shitty room service!

Serves them right. What a bunch of whiney pricks!

Who the fuck goes off on vacation to Lebanon or Beirut in the first place? Honestly! Perhaps if they had tuned their television sets into something else besides ‘American Idol’ for even two minutes before they left on their trip to the epicenter of an ongoing war zone, they might have been a little smarter. Who needs a suntan that fucking badly that they would risk a surprise mortar attack to do so? How did that family vacation-planning all come about exactly?

"Hey dear, let's get away from it all for a while. Let's go to Lebanon."

Sounds pretty fucking stupid to me.

The moral of the story seems to be: if you stop to rescue retarded vacationers from the middle of a dangerous war zone, they are just going to bitch about it. No matter what!

Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper even detoured his own private jet leaving from a Paris airport to the island of Cyprus in order to pick up over a hundred stranded Canadians and return them back to safety on native soil. And they still fucking bitched that he didn’t do enough! What, is he supposed to piggyback them on and off the plane too? Maybe don a nice little French Maid outfit and serve drinks mid-flight as well?

Ungrateful sons of bitches.

He could have left your ass in the blazing sun to be used for target practice. The least you can do is acknowledge his efforts.

* One such staging area just outside Beirut has become affectionately known as 'Brown Town'.

HEA 101 - An Introduction to Practical Office Hygiene

Imagine the scene:

A male employee walks into the Men’s washroom and walks up to the urinal, where, after unzipping himself and fumbling around for a moment, he sighs in relief as he begins to piss. After a few moments, he shakes himself off, unzips his pants back up as he turns around and walks back to the sink. He already knows that this workplace of ours, being the sterile and sanitary place it is, demands that he wash his hands before returning to work. He begins to run the tap and, ever so delicately - like a kitten pawing at a leaky faucet - dabs his fingertips into the trickling water.

Okay, my first note of concern: “JUST YOUR FINGERTIPS?!” Who are you kidding, dude? I don’t know about you, but either this guy has a chopstick for a penis or he’s damn well short changing everyone else on not thoroughly washing his hands. I’m concerned either way.

Fingertips?

Look needle dick, I don’t care how nimble your finger dexterity is in retrieving your Johnson from your pants - wash your fucking hands! Dig? Every time I finish pissing I’m like a fucking ER doctor in there scrubbing up before surgery. I’m practically elbows-deep in the sink and working up a good lather with sterilizing soap.

What can I say? Some say I’ve been blessed.

But the scene continues:

While he wiggles his fingers underneath the dribbling tap, he begins to check himself out in the mirror. I can see it register in his eyes: “My God! You are a sexy bitch, aren’t you?” Then his eyes lock onto something in his reflection, and before you know it, he brings his fingers up and begins to preen himself. A real Cinderella getting ready for the Ball. The process quickly culminates into his running his other wet fingertips through his hair for that, oh, so fashionable “wet look”.

Good God - I’m going to puke.

I’m practically agape by this time over watching this guy run his pissy hands through his hair.

Is he so blind to that dipshit he sees in the mirror that he doesn’t mind foregoing basic sanitary practices? This guy obviously has the personal hygiene of a Tijuana donkey show fluffer. I almost think I can hear his thoughts: “You know what would make me look even more hip n’ cool? Running some pissy fingers through my hair to give it that added just-got-pissed-on sheen.”

Do us all the favor, buddy, and just do what you failed to do when you first walked in here to take a piss – get a grip!

Somebody turn this guy over to the ‘Health & Safety’ department as a walking contamination site. Here’s the proof that we have to resort ourselves to posting ‘Please Remember to Wash Your Hands!’ signs everywhere.

Way to go work yourself up that Evolutionary Ladder, piss boy.

Oy.

Notes From the Ground Zero at Corporate Hell (Part VII 1/2)

It’s been a long time since I let you readers into the masochist playground of Corporate Hell. But new responsibilities in my current position also demand an unfounded sense of discretion as well. Sure there have been little blogbits on the odd Satanist, or two, that I have encountered along the way, but nothing too meaty – until now.

In recent months, I have assumed a position of leadership at my workplace. Yes, yes, I know…I’ve become one of those clueless Gestapo managerial types I used to rave on endlessly about back back in the da. But what can I say? The old paycheck just wasn’t keeping my fat ass in the high-caloried lifestyle that I was growing into. Besides, it’d be fun to see it from the other side for a change.

At best, I can boss people around from time to time and use the refrigerator in the manager’s private cafeteria.

And so, at times, I am often sought out by my work peers to offer some insightful council on rather sticky workplace topics. One such particular topic matter now that it’s summer once again is that regarding the female dress code.

I know, I know, for any other red-blooded civilized man, this is a non-topic. Let them wear whatever the hell they want, the skimpier and more revealing the better. Who am I to frown in the face of such magnificent fleshy beauty? It is the nicer weather outside after all!

But those who reign supreme in the workplace seldom see it that way. It always comes down to the issue of “professionalism”. An over-exposing of breasts and skin is considered to be an office place faux pas. Well, if boobs were to be properly presented in a particular arranged appealing sort of way, I’d consider that to be pretty professional in itself. Not like those tragic trailer park uggo’s who wear tacky tube tops that allow their healthy truck stop cleavage to spill out like loaves of over-baked bread. It takes skill to look good.

Let's face it, men like tits...they like big tits better. Unless they're fags in which case they say stupid things like "anything more than a handful is a waste". Whatever, Rock, you obviously like little boys.

But what do I know? I’m just a single horny male coping in this hot sea of fleshy wonders. It's all I can do but prevent my heart from exploding in my chest every time a good looking girl walks by. And it's hard enough concealing my erection for 7.4 hours worth of my workday as it is.

So recently, a fellow colleague of mine who was looking for some empathy in what she was wearing brought me into such a situation. It seems that she had just been slapped with “corrective action” from her team manager in regards to her chosen outfit that day.

Her first words, as she stood up before me, threw out her arms, and opened herself up invitingly for observation, will ring out in my ears for years to come:

“Look at me. What do you think?”

I restrained myself from checking her out. My eyes continued their contact directly with hers and all but bore holes into the back of her skull; sweat droplets began to bead on my forehead. It felt like blood vessels were rupturing in my brain with the intense concentration required to not let my eyes sneak downward for a quick peak at her supple womanly features.

Must…stay….focused….

Here is a girl, and a beautiful one at that, inviting herself to be scoped out like a buffet menu item, and I can’t even allow myself to indulge her. Normally, situations such as this would set me back a few bucks. But not today - ohhh, no! Today it’s just being given away free for the taking. It’s tits on tap! And I have to be “professional”.

It’s a cruel world, dear reader.

This is not right! Inside, I turned into that slobbery Wolf from that ‘Red Hot Riding Hood’ cartoon of my childhood – howling, licking my chops, and pounding the counter with my fist. “Fly away with me to the Riviera and it will be a beautiful thing. I will get you diamonds, pearls-everything!” Externally, of course, I must have made a great impression of a kettle about to boil over. But still my eyes did not waver.

Oh boy.

My body then made a sudden ackward movement as if it was trying to run in several directions at once. Panic began to set in. My eyes began to burn as I struggled to prevent myself from crumbling like a stale Saltine. I would rather have been standing on the face of the sun than right there powerless in front of this angry girl just then.

Somewhere along the line, I have been relieved of my manliness. Since assuming my new position, I have trained myself to avoid such womanly temptations and maintain proper eye level contact with everyone, female and male co-workers alike. All I see at the workplace now are floating heads *; bodiless persons bobbing through the work aisles and in the cafeteria. Somebody could be wearing a purple thong made of chinchilla pelts and gold nipple tassels and I wouldn’t have the foggiest notion.

BLASTPHEMY!

Damn you Corporate American for robbing me of my natural machismo!

Things should be simpler. If I had my way, one of my duties would be to stand at the front doors and inspect each female associate that enters the building from head to toe. Those found to be wearing too much clothing or not conducting themselves in an otherwise titillating way, would be sent home immediately to strip down before returning to work.

It would be Hell, of course, but somebody has to do it.

Instead, I nodded and smiled like a retarded chimpanzee as the girl pleaded me her case. That is to say, I empathized my ass off and quickly walked away thinking unsexy thoughts.

"My nana in the shower...my nana in the shower…my nana in the shower…"

The real tragedy in this whole proper dress code debate is that I have to wear dress shirts, slacks and a tie every day. Shit, as it is, I'd rather come to work wearing a skimpy low cut fuck me dress too. I sure as shit would be much more relaxed - not to mention comfortable! But I'm sure there's some stipulation in the halloed Human Resource employee's guide that would forbid the exposing of any sweaty man boobs as well.

And who could blame them.

* Which, when you stop to think about it, is rather creepy.

A Brief History of Horseshit

Look who’s suddenly become all Mr. Mack Daddy – Steven Hawking!

Hawking, arguably one of the most brilliant minds on the planet, or indeed mankind, showed up in Hong Kong this past week to address a sold-out audience at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

But before we delve into the whole nitty-gritty of the Hawking Hong Kong to-do, lets first look at the bigger picture – is that his newly installed Swedish scalp massage, or is Steven actually getting lucky there?

This does nothing to encourage my poor bruised male ego. I can walk, talk, open doors, and generally just do more than sit there and grin like a retarded chimpanzee, yet I’m lucky to find a date on Friday nights, and R2-fucking-D2 here looks like he gets more pussy than Warren Jeffs! And we’re not talking about girls with faces put together like ransom notes either – we’re talking about super hot blondes with primo sets of meat balloons! Now, either he, unbeknownst to the world, is hung like a mutant bull or somebody has some “discretionary charges” made to their Black Card.

Sure, he’s super smart and all, but how sexy do you think it really gets in the bedroom come luvin’ time?

“Th-ats…it, ba-by, tou-ch…me… the-re. Fa-ster. Oh…ye-ah. Who-z…your…dad-dy?”

I image feeding old people would be more sexually stimulating. Not really your typical Big Bang theory.

Anyway, according to the muppet in the motorcart, the survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth. Oh goodie.

"We won't find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system," added Hawking.

Snap!

Just like that.

Is he really implying that we need to colonize outer space in order to save the species? Yikes! I can barely step outside my front door some days and this dude wants me to try my luck in some whole other star system? Sure, sure, Stevie. Whatever you say. Just make sure you remember to pack lots of Haagen-Daas and cancel the 'Penthouse Letters' subscription.

He said that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth.

"It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of."

Pretty cheery fucking guy, huh? Or maybe he’s just post coital.

One of the best-known theoretical physicists of his generation, Hawking has done groundbreaking research on black holes and the origins of the universe, proposing that space and time have no beginning and no end. Of course, you need half a dozen hits of strong LSD to understand any of it. This recent public declaration, however, shows a more radical departure from his past researches, and is reminiscent of the work of American astrophysicist Carl Sagan, who was a believer in the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Sounds like the typical bullshit people talk about in their dorm rooms when they get high if you ask me. What’s so impressive about that? Lord knows I choked back more than my fair share of bucket bongs and came up with some pretty wacky far out theories – but you don’t see me acting all smart n’ shit.

What is “theoretical physics” anyway? I think theoretical shit up all the time and nobody pays me any attention, much less hands me a PhD. Of course I don’t have any fancy motorized wheelchair or travel with a hot blonde fluffer, but at least I know that the ‘ol Agent Mulder routine is passe, dude.

Who wants to colonize the Moon, or Mars? I’ve seen plenty of pictures of the Moon’s surface and it doesn’t exactly look like a kickin’ place. Likewise, all I know about Mars is what I learned in Schwarzenegger’s ‘Total Recall’. And although the thought of being serviced by chicks with three tits is not altogether unappealing; creepy taxi drives with insect arms are not. I think I’ll stick it out here.

Besides, for the billions of kajillions of dollars it’ll take to make any of this science fiction space colonization mumbo-jumbo possible, why not just invest it instead into fixing the place up? Eliminate fossil fuels and implement cleaner and more economical sources of renewable power maybe? Hello? Repair the Earth’s ozone, perhaps? Anyone? Replant those rainforests? You know - return it the way it was in the first fucking place!

And this guys some kind of genius?

In other dipshit genius news, Hawking also announced his intention to write a children’s book about the universe aimed at the same age group as the Harry Potter books. Does anybody else smell ‘Contact 2’?

Way to jump on the bandwagon, R2.

F-uck…o-vv.

Taepo Jelly Dong-2

As Americans celebrated their Fourth of July holiday with the usual prerequisite of colorful explosives and kegs of light beer, North Korea shot off some of their own fireworks by test-firing four short-range missiles.

The ‘Taepo Dong-2’ rocket, that flies no one knows where, no one knows what for, and can fall onto anyone’s head, represents practically the entire North Korean political behavior— impetuous, unpredictable, defiantly juxtaposed to the rest of the world, and thus certainly dangerous. Of course, the choice of names for their latest military effort, however, exudes all the perpetrated fear of an old man performing Tai chi in the park.

Sure it is the largest ever North Korean ballistic missile exercise to date, and potentially represents a serious security threat from foreign soil – but ‘Taepo Dong-2’? Shit, it sounds like the prototype for some adult novelty toy.

Why not just call it the ‘Long Fat Wang’ instead? Doesn’t exactly strike fear in the hearts of men, does it? Well, not real manly men anyway. But then again, the United States had their ‘Fat Man and Little Boy’ back in the 40’s. So what do we know?

Is it a rule that all phallic-shaped weapons of mass destruction be given phallic-sounding names? Is this written into the Geneva Convention or something?

North Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) conducted a series of ballistic missile tests, launching a total of six missiles during the early hours of 5 July to apparently restrict foreign intelligence-gathering capabilities as well as achieve some element of surprise. Initial reports indicate that these six systems consisted of one ‘Taepo Dong 2’ and five 'Scud'-class missiles. Another seventh, as yet unidentified missile was also fired at 0822 (GMT).

While the ‘Taepo Dong 2’ failed shortly after lift-off, it is likely to still have provided the North Koreans with valuable experience and some limited data collection. Both of these will obviously be funneled into future developments of the system. Additionally, the successful launching of six 'Scud'-class missiles demonstrates that Korean People's Army missile units have achieved a significant level of operational readiness and that the missile systems are developmentally mature.

"The Taepo Dong-2 in a two-stage ballistic missile configuration could deliver a several-hundred-kg payload up to 10,000 km – sufficient to strike Alaska, Hawaii, and parts of the continental United States with a light payload, namely California. If the North uses a third stage similar to the one used on the Taepo Dong-1 in 1998 in a ballistic missile configuration, then the Taepo Dong-2 could deliver a several-hundred-kg payload up to 15,000 km – sufficient to strike all of North America."

In its two-stage configuration, the ‘Taepo Dong-2’ missile is believed to use four ‘No Dong’ engines - *giggle* - clustered together as the first stage and a single ‘No Dong’ - *giggle* - as the second stage. Not only is such a missile at least five-times more likely to fail than a single-stage ‘No Dong’ missile (itself far from reliable) - *giggle* - but also sounds more like something Wil E. Coyote would think up in his ever futile quest to catch the Roadrunner. The fact that the ‘Taepo Dong-2’ missile test fired by the North Koreans failed 35 seconds after being launched seems to confirm its Wil E. Coyote status.

Does anyone still think we’re talking about missiles here?

Besides, offering a preverbal face slap to ‘ol Dubya on the world stage, I think the whole notion that North Korea intends to flex its military might on the States is preposterous. Besides, even if they really wanted to attack the US mainland and their ‘Taepo Dong-2’ missile still didn’t work, they could just wrap it in blue lyrca and California would just inevitably come to them.

In the past, the United States has deterred the likes of Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Mao Zedong. So they are no strangers to dealing with mutinous numbnuts with strange names. None of those leaders seriously contemplated attacking the United States. And the reason for their restraint was quite simple: they knew that such an attack would mean certain retaliation resulting in their own annihilation. So why would an erratic and unpredictable leader such as North Korea's Kim Jong-Il * not be similarly deterred? It cannot be because he is any more brutal than America's previous adversaries. Khrushchev and Brezhnev were thuggish, and Mao and Stalin were genocidal monsters. Likewise, a credible case cannot be made that Kim Jong-Il is more erratic and unpredictable than the tyrants the United States deterred in the past. Stalin epitomized paranoia, and Mao was the architect of China's utterly bizarre Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s – at the very time that China was acquiring a nuclear-weapons capability.

He’s just another dude with a bad haircut, over-sized sunglasses, a severe Napoleon complex and an inept sense of name. And is it just me, or does anybody else picture Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles whenever they see his picture in the news?

“Ohhh...no more yanky my wanky, the Donger need food!"

Go on…picture it. I’m right, aren’t I?

Like the other members of the Axis of Evil, the threat posed by North Korea is overrated. The U.S. economy is more than 600 times larger than North Korea's, and North Korean defense spending is less than 2 percent of current U.S. defense expenditures. Basically, North Korean spends as much on its entire military campaign as the United States military spends on powdered eggs. Moreover, the U.S. military is far and away the most modern and technologically advanced in the world. For example, the U.S. Air Force's F-15 Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon are considered the world's premier fighter aircraft, despite their designs dating back to the 1970s. Similarly, the U.S. Army's Abrams tank does not have an equal. No other country in the world has a Navy with large-deck aircraft carriers. And the U.S. military has a virtual monopoly on precision-guided or "smart" weapons, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS)-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition or JDAM. By comparison, North Korea has to make do with older weapons purchased from either the former Soviet Union or China. As a result, the United States possesses bone-crushing military dominance, so it is hard to imagine why a country like North Korea would cause a superpower to shake in its boots. That’d be like General Patton being intimidated by a one-legged rickshaw driver.

If I’m going to be made to live in fear, it’s not going to be over some stocky, rice-sucking dipshit. So lets deal with this appropriately. Let's just send a telegram threatening to kick the living kimchi out of him if he attempts to launch anything more than a beer fart into the atmospshere.

If that doesn't work - nuke the slanty-eyed bitch.

* The original predecessor to cool, hip vernacular, Kim Jong-Il has sparked other noted world leaders to change their names to something more proactive as well. For example, George Bush has contemplated renaming himself George Phat-Bush, and Tony Blair as Tony Blair-Sick.

The Month in Review

It’s Canada Day already?

Man, oh man! Was that really a month that just went by since my last post, or has the usual smell of bullshit just started to dissipate around here? Heaven’s forbid it should be the latter. So I guess that means a whole month has indeed gone by and mankind wasn't obliterated in the fiery funaces of Hell.

Wow.

Trying to explain my absence from these pages by somehow articulating what’s been going on here in ‘ol Crazytigerland would be like trying to explain Shoestring Theory to a guinea pig. Let’s just say that between work, weddings, birthdays, more work, and everything else, my precious bitching time has been broken up worse than Barbaro’s hind leg.

But, thankfully, I have a few minutes now that I can once again embrace my inner jackass, and try and to squeeze in a whole month’s worth of madness in this one post. Or, you can save yourself the reading time altogether and simply go outside and rub dirt in your eyes for about the same effect…only more fun.

But, first things first, what the hell is Canada Day exactly? There has to be more to it than beer, BBQ, and lighting off fireworks. Originally, on June 20, 1868, a proclamation was signed by the then Governor General, Lord Monck, calling upon all of:

“Her Majesty's loving subjects throughout Canada, to join in the celebration of the anniversary of the formation of the union of the British North America provinces in a federation under the name of Canada on July 1st”.

Only then, they called it Dominion Day. *

Since then, there has been no real record of organized Canada Day ceremonies after this first anniversary. On the 50th anniversary of the Confederation, in 1917 the new Center Block of the Parliament Buildings, under construction at the time, was dedicated as a memorial to the Fathers of Confederation and to the valor of Canadians fighting in the First World War in Europe.

“Paaaaaaaarrr-tay!” Pass the Cheese Doodles.

Since then, we Canadians have basically stuck to getting as drunk as all hell and blowing shit up. Whether it be out in the backwoods of Algonquin Park, the concert grounds at some community park, or just some backyard family BBQ, you can bet your Labatts that there will be booze and live rounds involved. And apart from an inevitable bad case of gas afterwards, we pretty much enjoy it that way.

And so here I am, with cold brewskie in hand, and some time to kill before the big ceremonious blowing of shit up. Where does one even begin in contemplating the last month?

Even though we all somehow managed to wake up the morning after the much feared 666 Apocalypse, early in the month, June was not particularly kind to many in the celebrity world. This month alone has marked more sudden deaths than the Stanley Cup finals.

Just consider some of the people on this list:

Vince Welnick (former keyboardist for the Grateful Dead)
Billy Preston (best known for his work with the Beatles)
John H. Oates **
Peter Greenwell (British composer)
Sheik Abd-Al-Rahman (spiritual advisor to Al-Quida)
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (leader of Al-Quida in Iraq)
Bill Lamb (public television executive)
Claydes Charles Smith (of ‘Kool & the Gang’ fame)
Moose, (Eddie the dog, from televisions ‘Frasier’)
Charles Barrow (former justice of the Texas Supreme Court)
Roberta Weston (claimed to be world’s oldest woman at 118)
Harriot (the infamous Galápagos tortoise believed to be the oldest animal in the world and allegedly owned by Charles Darwin himself)
Melvin Watson (American Baptist minister)
Richard Stahl (actor)
Charles Older (Los Angeles Superior Court judge)
Nijiro Tokuda (oldest man in Japan, 111)
Jeffrey Harbors (Microsoft executive)
Three Guatanamo inmates (suspected terrorists and rally-er’s for Global Anarchy)

None, however, had quite the impact in the media as Aaron Spelling, the renowned larger-than-life Hollywood producer whose recipe for success was modeled on his “sun, fun, blonding and bonding” philosophy. Throughout his Guinness World Record holding career (for having over 3000 produced lifetime shows), the man was responsible for more pubescent boners before 9:00PM than both Daisy Duke’s short-shorts, and Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction combined.

Best remembered for his work with ‘Beverly Hills 90210’, not to mention helping spawn that weird gap between daughter Tori’s breasts, Spelling has resided in his Bel Air mansion with an extravagant lifestyle to make Robin Leach suffer heart palpitations. His huge estate of 123 wrap-around rooms includes a bowling alley, gym, swimming pool, tennis court, screening room, and not one, but TWO, “Gift Wrapping Rooms” for his wife. A man accustomed to being served on silver trays by a personal butler, Spelling was diagnosed with oral cancer in 2001 and has seen his health steadily declining up until his recent stroke on June 18th. For years, the man hasn’t been strong enough to crack walnuts, but he wipes his ass with thousand dollar bills.

Not bad for a former cheerleader, eh?

Personally, I’m not so upset with this turn of events. In his later years, Spelling has remade many of my childhood favorites, including Charlie’s Angels, The Love Boat, Dynasty, the Mod Squad, Starsky & Hutch, T. J. Hooker, Melrose Place, Models Inc, and Fantasy Island. More recently, he assisted in having many of these television classics butchered for the big screen. Single-handedly, Spelling has been directly responsible for murdering more of my childhood memories than my bucket bong in University.

Nevertheless, Spelling will be remembered as Hollywood’s true alchemist; turning shit into gold for over 30 years.

Meanwhile, head honcho evil doer, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man behind the kidnappings, beheadings, and assassinations, lays at the bottom of a pile of rocks after a US air strike in Baghdad. Funny how allied forces couldn’t find hide nor hair of him while he was alive and kicking, but they can locate and identify his dead carcass in a pile of rubble from orbit.

C’est la vie…

Thankfully, however, a terrorist plot was foiled and co-conspirators were arrested in Toronto, only 100 short kilometers from my own front door. Seventeen would-be Islamic terrorists have been accused of planning an attack on the downtown headquarters of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), as well as other targets such as the CN Tower and the Toronto Stock Exchange. Police allege that three tons of ammonium nitrate was to be used for the creation of massive bombs.

The suspects regularly undertook weapons training at a rural property 150 kilometers north of Toronto. While "foreign-looking" individuals seldom raise eyebrows in cosmopolitan Toronto, the presence of a large group of Arab and African men in camouflage uniforms running through backwoods Ontario with assault rifles inevitably aroused the suspicion of local residents who soon informed the police. The terrorists-in-training, or TIT’s for short, should have definitely considered a more ‘Queer Eye for the Terrorist Guy’ approach to their training compound. The camp was quickly put under surveillance, including over-flights by police helicopters. The investigation of the group began two years ago through CSIS monitoring of jihadi websites and was later joined by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

The group appears to have been rather inept, continuing their operations even after it should have been evident that they were under surveillance. A more professional terrorist would have been aware that large orders of ammonium nitrate are routinely reported to police. The three tons of fertilizer was a ridiculous amount that filled three pallets—only one ton was needed to carry out the devastating 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Police switched the fertilizer with a harmless substance in a "controlled delivery," otherwise known as “the ‘ol Switcheroo” to be all technically precise for a moment, similar to the procedure used in narcotics investigations.

And thus we Canadians have narrowly avoided an ugly world calamity once again. But then again, a blind and retarded chimpanzee could have busted these guys.

In lesser significant world news, a black bear wandered into a West Milford, New Jersey, back yard, was confronted by a 15-pound (7-kilogram) tabby cat …and fled up a neighbor's tree. It seems, Jack, the clawless cat, was apparently upset at having his turf invaded by this pussy of a bear. So much so, that when the bear finally came down to bid a hasty retreat, with one hiss and what must have been one helluva “don’t fuck with me” look, Jack forced the bear up yet another tree.

Somewhere there is one humiliated mother bear shaking her head in shame. Clearly, here is an animal for which becoming a rug will be a step up. The bear, weighing in around 200-pounds by comparison, should have his bear license revoked immediately. It is well documented that bears will kill and eat just about anything. There is enough information available for people on how to avoid bears and to survive bear attacks – I’ve even been given the rundown once myself – but if this bear is anything to go by, we really have nothing to worry about all along.

Lucky for the bear however, the incident didn’t occur in Oklahoma. Signed by Gov. Brad Henry, Oklahoma became the fifth state this month to approve legislature that condones harsh justice for repeat sex offenders. Under the measure, anyone convicted twice for rape, sodomy or lewd molestation involving children under 14 can face the death penalty.

Despite the opposing concerns for this new state legislature – I would like to say BRAV-fucking-O! I personally subscribe to the old proverb: “If thou boinketh little children, thou shall be subject to being sodomized with a chainsaw.” Naysayers to this anti-child molesting bill should just shut-the-fuck up and consider themselves lucky that Sharon Stone isn’t their state governor, otherwise Oklahoma might have had to change it’s state motto to: “Cum and Enjoy our Minors”. Then Oklahoma City would have inevitably become known as the Blowjob Capital of the US.

How can you oppose legislature designed to protect minors from such heinous sexual atrocities anyway? Protesting against this bill must make you about as popular in your neighborhood as Oprah Winfrey at a rap concert for fuck sakes! What possible reason could you possibly have to justify a lesser harsh penalty for repeat, say that again – repeat – child molesters? I wonder how these insensitive moolyaks would feel on the topic after some tattooed Arians have made a playground out of their ass and come back for seconds?

June was also rocked with the mega-news that long running television sitcom, Will & Grace, was finally being cancelled from regular Prime Time syndication after eight seasons.

Oh, no! (Insert gasp of despair here)

Whatever are the gays to do now?

Personally, I would rather bait crocodiles with my manhood than tune into an episode of this Magnus Homo Opus, but many people are devastated with the show’s cancellation. So, the big question is what, or who, is going to fill the gay void on television now?

Inevitably, the much anticipated 'Will & Grace' Season Finale is bound to create a huge homosexual vacuum in Hollywood as all the big time TV producers are now scrambling to find the next big gay thing. All the world knows that television sitcom junkies love themselves a flaming queen, so I predict it’s only a matter of time before their girlish squeals of mercy are heard. Then we will once again be blessed with a new Prime Time syndicated program with the mandated over-exaggerated stereotypical homosexual flamer that either lives next door, or just shows up periodically in tight pants.

Aaron Spelling, eat your gay heart out.

Fortunately, fruit lovers everywhere will be able to consul one another at the upcoming release of Superman Returns in theaters everywhere. Yes, there will be enough male frottage going on in the darkened aisles to spark forest fires.

Internet communities and the popular media have all been abuzz throughout the month of June with the continued debate over whether Superman is, in fact, to be the next big gay icon. After the recent commercial success of ‘Brokeback Mountain’, and having extensively marketed itself primarily to young men as its target audience, the question has now erupted over the superhero’s sexuality faster than a speeding bullet. Movie producers now find themselves dodging more punches than Naomi Campbell’s personal assistant.

But, c’mon - really!

The man wears a tight blue leotard and flies around in a red cape, for Christ Sake! He sports a package that looks like a Norwegian Spruce wrapped in lyrca. What else could he be? Sure, fashion savant Carson Kressley will throw a hissy fit over his matching blue and red outfit, but Superman is about as gay as Richard Simmons with a free ticket to the Feast of Saturnalia. But then again, superheroes have always been gay.

Lets look at the facts.

1) Like most gay kids, superheroes have to keep their “difference” a secret.
2) Comic books = soap operas.
3) Superheroes—let’s face it—are totally hot.

Res Ipsa Loquitor. ***

It’s time to take the bull dyke by the horns and recognize superheroes for who, and what, they really are – costumed hopefuls for amateur gay fetish videos. Let’s face it, real “heroes” smoke, drink, wears sunglasses at night, has a marriage on the rocks, and loves it when a plan comes together.

‘Nuff said.

In other news, the heterosexual superchild Shiloh Jolie-Pitt was finally dropped from Angelina’s uterus in the celebrity birth of the century. The whole delivery, taken place in the small African country of Namibia, was more mysterious than the Priory of Sion. Just after we all started to breathe a little easier after the whole ‘Birthapalooza’ surrounding Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, the media hounds are at it again.

This time, the paparazzi were shut out, not by tricky hospital security, but by the Namibian government at the border by punishment of being fed to hungry jackals. Boy, the Namibians sure love them their Brangelina, huh?

Personally, I couldn’t give two shits.

Of course, there was some good that took place this month as well. Warren Buffett, billionaire investor and founder of Berkshire Hathaway, has announced he is donating much of his fortune to charity. Over time, most of Buffett's $44 billion in stock holdings will be given to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The gesture constitutes the world’s largest charitable donation. In the form of Berkshire Hathaway shares, Buffett signed papers that give $31 billion of his fortune to fund the Gates Foundation's work in fighting infectious diseases and reforming education.

You can almost feel the heat friction in the air being generated from thousands of greasy palms rubbing together in eager anticipation. Never has it been so good to be so badly off. Shit, it finally pays to be a Sudanese orphan with AIDS. Those bitches have it made!

For the kind of money we’re talking about – I expect results by the end of the year. I expect to see newly planted rainforests, a solution to Global Warming, a cure for prostate cancer, herpes, leukemia, hepatitis, lupus, MS, ADS, AIDS, and SARS. World hunger will finally be eradicated in Third World countries, and a crystal chandelier will be hanging in every dilapidated shack, hovel, shanty, mud hut, and cardboard box the world over!

I expect results, damn it! No more excuses. For $31 billion, at least build a huge glass dome to protect us healthy, law-abiding citizens from the outbreak of any infectious diseases.

Yes, it’s been quite the ‘Monate Mirabilis’, hasn’t it?

June has gone on longer than Cher's last Farewell Tour. No wonder I found it difficult to put fingers to keyboard – this month has been nuttier than a box of squirrels. It’s a good thing that I’m not some bored, over-worked and under-appreciated schlep leaning on the kill switch at the local NORAD Missile Base, because I would have done us all the favor and turned us into space dust by now.

Thankfully, it’s now July. And with it comes a whole new clean slate with which to soil and complain about.

Stay tuned…

* Nowadays, there are other popular proactive movements lobbying in favor of renaming July 1st as ‘It’s a Free Day Off Day, eh?’, ‘Screw America Day’, and ‘Just Give Us Our Fireworks and Fuck off Day’

** Thankfully, upon reading the obituary, I learned that this particular John Oates was the Professor Emeritus of Ancient History and Classics at Duke University and one of America's leading papyrologists and not the famed 80’s quaffed rockstar.

*** That means, “the thing speaks for itself”, for all you monolingual rhubarbs.

It's the End of the World As We Know It

“That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an airplane; and Lenny Bruce is not afraid.”
- R.E.M.

Well, the end is nigh my friends. Its here at last – Devil’s Day – June 6th, 2006. 6-6-6…cue the rivers of blood and plumes of brimstone.

As Armageddonists, prophecy theorists, members of specific Doomsday cults, as well as anyone who subscribes to News of the World is already keenly aware of, the world is slated to end today in a great fiery belch of sulfur. Satan is supposed to return from beyond the pale to reclaim mankind and make us all his eternal bitches and sinners have been sweating like Ryan Seacrest during a screening of Brokeback Mountain all day.

Are you spooked yet?

Just like the similar fear and paranoia that surrounds Friday the 13th, today, June 6th, 2006, harbors a lot of nervous anxiety for people world round. It’s to no one’s surprise then that today would also present a prime marketing opportunity, with 20th Century’s Fox releasing their much-awaited remake of The Omen, as well as Ann Coulter’s new book “Godless: The Church of Liberalism”. But where does this whole irrational anxiety about the number 666 come from anyway?

To understand man’s obsession with 666 and its close affinity to the fabled end of the world you first have to start with it’s beginning. For since mankind has scratched his head in wonderment over how he got to be here on this giant rock floating out in space, not to mention how long he has been here, he has also wondered about the nature of his possible demise.

The Christian God is said to have created this world paradise in six days and on the seventh day, he relaxed, cracked open a beer, and tuned into Jerry Springer. On the sixth day was the creation of man.

"And God went on to say: 'Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and the domestic animals and all the earth and every moving animal that is moving upon the earth.' And God proceeded to create the man in his image, in God's image he created him; male and female he created them."
- Genesis 1:26, 27.

Through this analogy we have come to associate the number six with the number of man. In connection, the idea of the Triple God has also existed well before the beginnings of Christianity. The Christian God also holds the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost/Spirit, mirroring a religious aspect that dates well into the beginnings of solidified Pantheons. Likewise, the Devil is labeled through history as being the “God of Flesh”, or something very similar depending on which nut you choose to listen to. The God of Flesh is therefore also the God of Man, not of Christian man but of every other man. I know, I know - sounds pretty faggy so far, huh? But hang in there. Because the Devil is a "God" himself, his number holds the same Trinity aspect as well, being the Trinity God of Man, and Man's number being 6... the Devil's number becomes 666!

Isn’t Numerology great? You can use it to practically explain away just about any half-cracked theory based on seemingly random information. Most recently, the number 11 has been used to signify earthly incarnations of evil after the whole 9/11 World Trade Center tragedy.

9 + 1 + 1 = 11

However, I’m more inclined to accept the parallel theory that George Bush is actually the earthly incarnation of evil.

After all, G-E-O-R-G-E-W-B-U-S-H = 11.

But let’s get back on track here. Over time, propaganda has been built around 666 and it is now said to be an evil omen or some other ridiculous hocus-pocus prognostication. In any case, whether you believe it is evil or not... this is how the Number of the Beast, or the Anti-Christ, first originated and thus ushering in the popular belief in it signifying the end of the world. By Biblical times, 666 was enough to make the most pious peasant person shit their tunic.

"He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666."
- Revelations 13:16-18

Of course, this was the whole eerie premise of Richard Donner’s 1976 film ‘The Omen’ when Gregory Peck discovers the Mark of the Beast on young Damien’s neck.

But don’t get too prepared to march off into Purgatory just yet. Among many coincidences that occur with numbers, life itself is based partly on these three: Carbon atoms, key to life as we know it, have six protons, six neutrons, and six electrons in their most common form.

Wait, does that mean we were all fucked from the very beginning then? So what do we care come midnight tonight?

Shit, if I have 666 embedded in my genetic makeup already anyway, I’m just going to break out the puppy porno, or maybe Season Eight of Full House on DVD, and instead welcome the Beast with open arms. Maybe do a few lines of Clorox off the ass of a 17-year old crack whore before he gets on with harvesting my soul for eternal damnation.

You know, instead of the usual weeping and begging for mercy, make a whole to-do about it.

It sure beats being found slumped over a computer keyboard with my face in a bowl of guacamole dip after suffering a massive coronary during a late night session of baiting minors on the Internet.

Although, more realistically, the only plumes of sulfur that are going to occur tonight come Witching Hour, will be from the bacon and egg burritos I had for dinner this evening.