The Continuing Plight of Saddam Hussein

I have been reading reports from British newspapers lately that are being printed regarding the conditions of Saddam Hussein’s confinement and general psychological state of mind.  By all accounts, it sounds like he is toiling in Shangri-la.  Not exactly the “hard time” I was expecting after the ferocity of the Iraqi invasion itself and the intensity leading up to his capture…the poor murderous bastard.

The newspapers report that Saddam is currently tending a garden of small shrubs, bushes, and small palm tree circled with white stones on his allotted three-hour daily exercise period like any of your average 67 year old Florida retiree.  Although he is denied access to newspapers, a radio and television, he has been given access to over 140 different novels and travel books provided by the Red Cross, and also regularly reads select passages from the Qu’ran *.  It is also reported that Saddam is writing poetry, one of which he has even dedicated to Geroge Bush himself (although it is not for certain yet which George Bush he is referring to since both the junior and the senior have both had the distinct honor of kicking his evil Dictator ass).  Isn’t that charming?  How could anybody not love the guy?  I would like to wager a guess at how this poet laureate’s tribute poem may have gone:

            Iraqi blood is red,
            George Bush’s eyes are blue.
            Once this whole trial ordeal is over,
            I’ll see your Imperialist corpse basting in a cloud of mustard
               gas if it’s the last thing I do.

Saddam, as well as the other detainees, receives a MRE (“Meal Ready to Eat”) breakfast and hot food twice a day, complete with dessert of an orange, apple, pear, or plum…although he much more prefers American muffins and cookies.  In total, Saddam has lost 11 lbs due to the fact he refuses any fatty foods.  What the fuck?  It sounds like he’s willingly participating in some Jenny Craig vacation getaway and not wasting away in some prison cell.  There are people here in our own free Land of Opportunity and Freedom that are eating cat food out of back alley dumpsters…and he’s REFUSING fatty food?  That's being a little overly picky considering the situation, ain't it?

Saddam’s prison cell measures 3 meters wide by 4 meters long, and contains a fold-up bed, a table and a single light bulb.  So basically, he toiling away in a cell equal to that of any University student’s single room flat, except that he has fucking air-conditioning!  I should have been so lucky back in my scholastic years when I was sweating out pure Crisco in my dorm room while cranking out my overdue term papers.

All things considered, it is reported that he is “in good health and being kept in good conditions, but he appears demoralized and dejected”.  Well, no shit Sherlock!  Maybe this has something to do with having his kingdom taken from him, having his extreme wealth and status drained away, and suffering his two sons being killed and broadcast on International television by invading forces, and no so much a result of his rather luxurious confinement!  Christ, these conditions are sure as camel shit better than those that he endured for 6 months sealed up in a subterranean “Spiderhole” while evading capture from Coalition Forces.

Personally, I think we are being far too lenient and overtly humanitarian regarding the captured Saddam Hussein.  For retribution for all those human rights violations and otherwise general nastiness, we should instead be subjecting him to his own approved methods of torture…none of this namby-pamby “trial in front of his peers” bullshit.  Let’s put his balls in a vice clamp and beat him with rubber hoses until he finally gives up the goods regarding those hidden Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Fuck letting him tend a garden…threaten to fertilize that garden with his decaying corpse unless he provides us with what we want to know immediately.  Fuck it, let’s hand him over to a Sicilian crime family syndicate for proper old school interrogation.  They’ll have him hooked up to a medieval looking contraption constructed out of rusty nails and piano wire and will have him singing like a canary on ecstasy quicker than you can say “Pass the Fusilli”.
 
Problem solved.

 *  No doubt to prepare a suitable defense before God in order to save his wretched ass from being roasted on Mohammed's barbeque pit.

Ten Pet Peeves

Truth be told, I like to consider myself a down-to-earth happy-go-lucky guy, but I can’t deny the fact that I have a list of things that piss me off which is about as long as the list of Cher’s ex-boyfriends. To create individual blog entries on each of these issues would require me burning the midnight oil for about an entire year straight, and at the ever-increasing price of oil these days, I’d have to be fucking Donald Trump in order to afford it all. Instead, I have decided to address them all in one foul swoop of pure unadulterated bitchiness.

1) Why does everybody insist that I look at the “Big Picture”? Is there a clearer reception or something? Am I missing something by just looking at the “Little Picture”? If the Big Picture is so much better, then why do the Japanese insist on making all their video equipment so small? It’s kinda hard to see the Big Picture on a teeny television screen built into your wristwatch, small enough to insert up a squirrels ass. To me, the Little Picture would be where I’d find all the important detailed and unbiased information in the first place. Why would I want to rely on the same ‘ol Big Picture that everybody else is tuned into and relies upon? I already prefer to think outside the box as it is, so I’m not sure I could tolerate relying on only the Big Picture to keep me abreast of all life’s little twists and turns. Call me old fashioned, but ignorance is bliss. I think I will remain on the outside staring in at the warm familiar glow of the less popular Little Picture, thank you very much!

2) “Old Navy”. God, the very sound of this brand name makes my nuts retract into my chest like a prairie dog escaping a preying eagle. What exactly is “Old Navy” anyways? I instantly have images of old shriveled up Captain Highliner types with eye patches, peg legs, tattoos of naked women on their chests all swigging %150 proof rum from ceramic jugs, and whose only offensive weapon would be the stench of their own breath…certainly nothing you’ve ever want to send into active duty. As well, I highly doubt that Neon would ever be considered the standard uniform color. I find it hard to believe that Admiral Nelson wore a day glow orange pullover hoody while sailing into the Battle of Trafalgar.

3) I simply can't stand people who put the model of their vehicle in their special personalized license plates, like: "BEAMER", or "COOL CHEVY". Why do they feel they have to further point out what kind of car they are driving? Do they think the rest of us are so totally stupid and oblivious to the goings on around us that we couldn't work it out for ourselves what they are driving just by witnessing them driving it? Do they think we actually give two shits what they're driving? Anyone who does puts the model of their vehicle on their license plate should be tied to the bumper of their own car and be dragged across a field of broken glass until they can come up with something more imaginative and a little less insulting to the rest of us.

4) The Osbournes. It’s about as it's about as entertaining as having mutant earwigs crawl up into your ear canal and proceed to eat out your brain. It seems to have developed into a television show about a day in the life of two spoiled rotten idiot children with bad hair whose most significant accomplishment, had their father not been Ozzy Osbourne, would have been being made 'Employee of the Month' at Taco Bell.

5) Why do people say that it's “okay to talk to yourself, but it's a sign of mental illness if you answer yourself” What the fuck? Why would even talk to yourself if you weren’t looking to generate some kind of beneficial answer from deep within in the first place? You may as well be talking to a brick wall in that case for all the helpful conclusions you’d arrive at. Personally, I would be more concerned with my own sanity if I DIDN'T get an answer from myself because then I would know that no one actually cared about me, including my own conscience. Now THAT would suck!

6) People who mow their lawns on the weekend before 9:00AM. They should just be shot and left to rot on their precious lawns as fertilizer for disrupting the beauty sleep of every other normal lazy person with a life that lives in the same neighborhood. Couldn’t they occupy themselves during the early morning hours with something a little more acceptably quiet than running an obnoxious gas-powered engine? Something like needlepoint?

7) Men wearing mesh shirts. There should be a law prohibiting men from wearing any shirts made of mesh or any see-through “peek-a-boo” material of any kind. The sight of another man’s nipples, unless they are at the beach or fighting inside a squared circle, is just plain disturbing. Considering they are a functionless body part like the hubcaps on a ’57 Chevy, any man openly flaunting his nipples in a see through mesh shirt should have alligator clips hooked up to those exposed nipples and have 1200 volts of electricity run through them until they are left like strips of bacon sizzling under mosquito netting.

8) Is it mandatory for Fast Food Restaurants to have only gay men work the Drive-Thru Window? I’ve seen many girls, but each time I have my order taken by a male employee he is inevitably as flaming as the ‘BK Broiler’ I am ordering. I am guessing that only a gay man would be able to tolerate the fast paced detailed service standards of the Drive-Thru Window, as all the other straight heterosexual males would be content to work back in the kitchen cooking meat over an open flame and satisfying their primal ingrained warm-blooded male instincts. I wonder if there’s a special training class for the men in order to “gay up” their feminine qualities by over-pronouncing their vowels, walking with a swagger, and giggling like school girls whenever anyone orders “extra pickle”?

9) Why do people leave long-winded answering machine messages requesting the caller to leave only “a brief message after the ‘beep’”? The majority of the time, the left outgoing message on their machine is longer than the inevitable two second message I am going to leave requesting that they return my call. Sometimes, an entire generation will have passed before the message is complete and I will be old and gray, retired, and have forgotten why the fuck I was calling in the first place. How can I be “brief” when you request me to leave my name, phone number, time I called, blood type, my pets name, any plans I may have for the weekend, my view on the Global Warming situation, my life’s ambitions, hopes, dreams, etc.? Why do you need all this unnecessary information for a “brief message”? Just give me a return call when you get home for Christ sake, you asshole! What ever happened to: “Hi. We’re not home right now. Leave a message after the ‘beep’”?

10) Ants. There is no creature on earth as vile and contemptible as ants * . Not those little teeny-weeny ants that you see on the sidewalks, but those big, black, menacing motherfuckers that will saddle your cat and bronco bust him around the apartment when you’re not home. Nothing will kill them or successfully ward them off. Your typical ant trap seems only to serve as summer vacation homes. In fact, I am sure that I saw little patio umbrellas open inside and little ant waitresses taking drink orders from other ants reclined in lawn chairs. At times, I’m afraid of being enslaved by these mutant ants and being forced to serve as their giant cabana boy. Even the “Antex” poison has little to no effect on them, and I suspect that they actually love it and bring it back to serve to their Queen on hot summer afternoons with a little grenadine and cut lime wedges stolen from my refrigerator.

* Well, maybe Carrot Top.

Getting Ahead in Terrorism

After watching CNN, it has become aware to me that hostage taking, and beheadings in particular, have become all the popular rage among fashionable terrorist organizations. It seems that everybody in the Middle East either belongs to a particular underground organization, Revolutionary Front, or People’s Liberation Army. Hell, even little Habib’s Islamic High School Youth Marching Band is probably in on the whole trendy Jihad action as well and is out feverishly kidnapping truck drivers, journalists, and independent businessmen and threatening to lop off their heads in front of a television camera. You just can’t consider yourself a true-blue hip anarchist of the times unless you’ve carved through an innocent persons neck with a dull Bowie knife. Until then, you’re considered just another hack *.

It would seem that threatening to behead unfortunate innocent hostages is the commonly accepted way to convince the resigning powers-that-be to relinquish their stranglehold on the just and simply cave into whatever list of demands that that particular organization has presented it with, whether it be the withdrawal of military forces from occupied territories, the denouncement of religious leaders, or simply the delivering of a double cheese Deluxe Pizza with pepperoni and anchovies. It’s just how successful negotiations are conducted in this ever-changing fast-paced terrorist world.

Pretty soon if things continue as they are, we’ll have people taking hostages for the most mundane situations like boycotting the clear-cutting of tropical rainforest, the rapid destruction of nesting habitat for the Great-Horned Hoot Owl, or the return of the 'Barbeque McRib Sandwich' to the regular menu at McDonald’s. Picture a grainy film stock on the evening news depicting your average blue-collar schlup claiming to be a member of ‘Bobby Joe’s Crusade for Homeland Justice’ with a McDonald’s paper bag over his head threatening to behead Mayor McCheese unless his list of demands are adhered to immediately.

How long before the rest of the world simply grows bored of this exteme method of protest and simply turns a deaf ear to the situations altogether? "Oh, that's just crazy 'ol Mohammed El-Azir bitching about the Shi-ite occupation of his homeland again. Just ignore him, and he'll behead a toursist and be done with it."

There are so many popular active terrorist organizations now that you can’t even swing a dead martyr around without smacking a revolutionary upside the head. I wonder if there is an official World Terrorist registry that each organization must register with in order to be considered a legitimate Terrorist Organization? Most of these recognized terrorist organizations sound more like contagious diseases than they do the perpetrators of evil: Fatah Tanzim, Harakat ul-Faqra, Al-Ummah, Abu Sayyaf...not to mention more “Fronts” than the Italian mafia. Why can’t they come up with a name that would be a little more easily recognizable, not to mention pronounceable, instead of using this seemingly standard cookie-cutter formula for naming their Terrorist Organizations? I think I am more likely to take heed of threats issued by a terrorist group that I can both pronounce and relate to like: ‘Bob’s Revolutionary People’s Army’, 'Jimmy and the Jihad Boys', or ‘New Kidnappers on the Block’.

* No tasteless pun intended.

Lowering the Bar at Supermarket Checkout's

I was unfortunate enough yesterday to bare witness to one of the more bizarre of the human social rituals yesterday in the checkout at the local supermarket while attempting to simply purchase some bagels and spread. This simple common everyday ritual is performed a zillion times a day without anyone so much as raising an eyebrow. It’s an integral action we conduct time and time again and is as socially courteous as lining up orderly to use the ATM at the bank, or excusing yourself after ripping a fart in a public theater.

All civilized human beings of the Western World * unconsciously use the little provided dividing bar to separate their groceries on the miniature conveyor belt at the local supermarket checkout. This is a socially accepted fact, one actually proven by the laws of science I’m sure. It’s every bit as a truism as is the definite law stipulating that the lesser number of items you have for purchase, the proportionately longer wait you will have to wait in line to purchase them. It’s the dividing line between order and chaos (and may also serve to explain why your Checkout Cashier has all the warm humor of a disgruntled union worker at the local CAW Hall). It’s what separates cultured man from cultureless beast just as it separates my bagels and processed cheese slices from the tines of creamed corn and frozen dinners belonging to the rube standing behind me in the checkout aisle.

Heaven’s forbid that your groceries should ever be caught indiscreetly intermingling with another complete strangers groceries; that would be just inappropriate! What would the checkout cashier think? I wouldn’t dare tarnish the good pristine reputation of my poor innocent naïve grocery items by simply allowing them to carouse with the wrong crowd. I wouldn’t want them to pick up any bad habits or infectious diseases from the uncultured tubs of margarine and bags of salted chips belonging to someone else as I couldn’t very well vouch for their good virtue of character (not to mention their choices for healthy eating and lifestyle).

Before you can say “Price check in Aisle Five”, there would be rampant ethic mixing of Dairy, Deli, and Bakery classes. Canned goods will be crossbreeding with Frozen foods, fresh Produce will be fraternizing with Bulk Bin food stuffs…it’ll be ANARCHY! There will be little bastard grocery babies everywhere. How do you think we ever ended up with such abominations against nature as ‘Cheese In a Can’?

For the grocery items, that little checkout dividing bar is like a miniature Berlin Wall, dividing neighboring territories as well as raising the bar ** on ethnic cultural standards for groceries everywhere.

Heaven have mercy on any grocery item that may attempt to climb over, pole-vault, or tunnel under that checkout divider bar in a hasty misguided bid for the forbidden lands of Mrs. Manjoula’s grocery items.

* I seriously doubt that such lesser-civilized locations in the Eastern and Third World nations like in Kabul, Afghanistan or Banjul, Gambia would have a sense for or such a need for such customary practices. I highly doubt that old lady Manjoula is throwing a temper tantrum right now in the checkout aisle of ‘Mohammad’s Halal Shop’ in rural Rawalpindi, Pakistan because little Haji forgot to place down the divider bar between his pilaf and her loaves of chappati bread.

** Or laying it down, as the situation calls for.

Notes from the Ground Zero at Corporate Hell (Part I)

This post has been a long time in coming as I have some workplace beefs that have been weighing down on me like a two ton Philly Cheese Steak, and if I don’t get the opportunity to vent some of these legitimate pentup workplace grievances I’m going to be in need of an emergency angioplasty to survive another work week. Unfortunately, there are particular confidentiality issues surrounding the nature of my employment that prohibit me from being openly specific about the job I currently slave at and the environment in which I slave. But what the hell, fuck it. If you’re one of my work peers or just happen to be a regular visitor to my little realm of insanity here, then you’re in for a rare treat. If you happen to be one of my managers reading this, then I’ll be waiting tomorrow morning in the Human Resource office with my pants down around my ankles and a lit cigar eagerly awaiting my “Oral” * corrective action like a man.

Determining which workplace gripe I’d like to bitch about first is like trying to decide which wall of a burning building I’d like to nail my penis to. Inevitably, it’s going to hurt and ultimately, I'm going to get burned as the end result. For the past two years, I have stared at a blank wall with a huge projection screen on it displaying the current dialing pools in which we are laboring.

Each day, I keep waiting for expressionless researchers in white lab coats to prop open my eyelids with surgical clamps and record my reactions on clipboards as part of some mad ‘Clockwork Orange’ socio-experiment. All that is missing from this corporate wasteland is a daily flogging and anal probe by my Operations Managers to complete the day. Honestly, the place has all the warm and inviting charm of a Radiation clinic. Sometimes I get lost in my own misery and imagine Team Leaders goose-stepping up and down the aisles behind me, urging me on with a riding crop as a wretched bald man in a fur loincloth bangs out a cadence on a drum in the corner to work to.

Conditions have gotten marginally better since those not-so-long-ago days. I wonder if the management powers-that-be consulted a corporate feng shui specialist before considering these new floor plans? “Yes, the disgruntled single mother must always face east, and anyone with less than 85 percent work efficiency should have their cubicles aligned directly with the planet Mars.” Now, I am located near a window with see-through shade blinds that give the kind of impression of being in a Peep Show when they are drawn up and down throughout the day. All I can do sometimes is to resist the urge to seek out a coin slot in the wall somewhere to pump in my loonies like a manic-depressive feverishly popping his Prozac pills after a screening of ‘Remains of the Day’ each time a female walks by in the hopes that she will instantly begin performing some lewd and exotic Lambada dance of seduction a la ‘9 ½ Weeks’...but I digress.

In actuality, I have a view of a parking lot and the dumpster behind ‘Boston Pizza’ so that I can keep close tabs on the indigenous varieties of local fauna that frequent the back of the restaurant for their regular feedings and to hump like rabbits in heat. By the time I end my current employment, I expect to have completed a Masters Degree thesis paper on the “Effects of Urbanization on the Feeding and Mating Habits of Indigenous Vermin”. Marlon Perkins will be green with envy.

Also while I’m on the topic of corporate decor, the wall near me now is tastefully decorated with motivational posters proudly displaying such positive power words as “Optimism”, “Improvise”, “Believe & Succeed”, and one that mysteriously looks like an Impressionist depiction of a set of breasts. What its particular message is happens to elude me each time I look at it. I think it’s ironic that these posters are portraying phrases that are the least indicative to that of the corporate call center Hell in which I work. Other such posters like “Performance” ** and “Endurance” would have been more appropriate on the lobby walls of a Mazda dealership.

Of course, there are other aspects of my workplace ambiance that serve to further grind me down like a 10 cent butter knife. For example, the basic lowbrow rube that is normally hired by our astute management usually leaves much to be desired. Least of my worries is the kindly older gentleman that regularly sits beside me and works with all the generated enthusiasm of a sloth on Quaaludes. Sometimes, it’s all I can do to keep myself from falling asleep each time he leaves an answering machine message. It’s like working beside Snuffeluffagus. Either that, or my unconsciousness is triggered into an automatic acid flashback each time he speaks and makes my day feel like I’m working inside some weird David Lynch movie; that is, until he hawks up another phlegm lugie the size of a basketball and brings the whole dream-state crashing down back to reality like a house of cards. All that is missing is some droning industrial band playing in the background and a midget in a top hat reciting poetry backwards. As if this environment wasn’t surreal enough!

But this place, like any other of it's kind, has it’s usual quota of freaks and misfits to adhere to as per very specific governmental guidelines regarding the hiring of psychotic menaces. At the rate we hire and fire these social undesirables, I wonder how long it is before we have to begin bussing them in from the surrounding big cities so that the company can maintain their precious quota of employed schitzo’s, weirdo’s, and wackjob’s. Once, I worked in a cubicle that was located near a fellow employee whose personal resemblance and mannerisms were not so unlike that of psychotic master criminal Charlie Manson; same greasy hair, same evil helter-skelter look in his eyes. I sincerely believed that he was a powder keg ready to blow at any moment and that one day I would find myself staring down the barrel of an AK-47 attack rifle because somebody had dared suggest that he "have a nice day" ***. Albeit it was a bit exciting to find oneself working in a possible "Kill Zone", I would certainly have taken an immediate Sick Day if Charlie had ever arrived at work with a Swastika drawn on his forehead or an inverted Pentagram carved into the palm of his hand, as no doubt I would have been in the direct line of fire and among the first victims he'd take out with the initial volley's of rifle fire.

But such is the nature of the Corporate Beast as all us non-professional, basic-skilled schlups line up and obediently leap into the corporate meat-grinder with a complacent smile on our face and a non-responsive look in our eyes like cows to the slaughter; "All in all you're just another brick in the wall". They could probably wallpaper the entire cafeteria with the wasted University degrees of all the employees currently slaving away mindlessly in their cubicles.

Given these particular employee profiles, I suggest we go one step further and just initiate a work release program with the local penitentiary where inmates can serve out portions of their sentences chained to a cubicle desk to make collection calls. Besides fulfilling the corporate requirements of employed psychotics, I believe this will have a two-fold effect for the company. 1) This would no doubt immediately increase the total dollars collected, as inevitably the collection techniques employed by the work release inmates will generate an immediate fear and response in the average delinquent deadbeat on the other end of the headset: “Hello, Ms. Soukabong? My name is “Chains” Johnson, how are you today madam? Good. I’m calling in regards to your outstanding account balance of $34.69 and I’m calling to assist you with payment by debit card, credit card, or check so I don’t kill you, rape your dog, or burn down your house. How would like to make that payment today?” And, 2) the performance statistics of the other employees is bound to improve when working around the inmate’s as they will be more focused and concentrating on their jobs. How can my idle time NOT improve when all I have to chat to between calls is someone who is likely to to stab me to death with a plastic cafeteria fork if they happen to disagree with my sentiments regarding the previous evenings episode of ‘The Bachelor’. Likewise, any and all Human Resource issues, personal disputes, or disagreements between co-workers at the workplace will likely decline to a minimum due to the fact that they could now make us eligible to receive a good ‘ol fashioned cell block beat down. Imagine if poor disgruntled 57 year old Esmerelda Gonzalez gets pissed off that part-time blue-haired student Johnny Rottencrotch keeps moving her kitten calendar and doodles in her ‘Jumbo Crosswords’ book and hires inmate co-workers Vinnie and Spider to pay him a friendly visit after work and they in turn introduce Johnny’s legs to a woodchipper. How about if overly competitive Henry Gooch decides he wants to make a serious bid for being on the collections “Power Team” and arranges through the inmate employees to have the Team’s current star collector mysteriously disappear one day only to turn tits up in Henley Pond weeks later. The plus side of all this is that everyone would be practically guaranteed 100 per cent Quality scores on their calls for fear that they will end up in pieces stashed in Glad Bags in the dumpster behind KFC.

Why don’t we just hire homeless people and pay them in ‘Kibbles n’ Bits’ and use the saved revenue to purchase air fresheners to prevent the rest of us from being gassed to death on the overwhelming stench of body odor?

To be continued…

* And just in case this post alone isn’t enough to instigate an oral warning from a specialized team of Human Resource fluffers, then perhaps I will drop a few un-PC racial epitaphs on poor immigrant worker Manjoula Manjahar that works in the cubicle beside me to kick start the whole process. "Hey Manjoula, how many Packi's does it take to change a light bulb?"

** Which also includes in smaller script at the bottom: “Unless you’re riding on top of the wave, you’ll be left riding underneath it”. Philosophical redundancy aside, considering some of the tedious the days I am prone to have at work from time to time, this actually doesn’t sound like too bad an option. Neither does a syringe of battery acid.

*** I think what ultimately tipped me off to the whole possible mass murderer scenario was the creepy black squiggle drawings of clown-like figures he proudly displayed at his desk. Didn't John Wayne Gacy have a clown fetish?

Kevin Bacon Pants Party

I decided today that I would wear a sarong into work in an effort to keep cool and comfortable on an otherwise hot summer’s afternoon. Where I expected the odd giggles and stares from passersby and fellow co-workers, I didn’t expect to be fully beamed directly into the Twilight Zone. I half expected Rod Sterling to sit down beside me in the next cubicle and begin his monologue: “You unlock this cubicle with an ID swipe card with no imagination. Beyond it is another Dimension - a dimension of Memo’s, a dimension of conformity, a dimension of mindlessness. You're moving into a call center of both shadow and substance, of ridiculous things and non-ideas. You've just crossed over into the Corporate Twilight Zone.”

It’s amusing to me to see the looks of bewilderment on the faces of those around me as they try and comprehend what would possess a grown man to wear a skirt. Usually they explain it away by assuming that I am wearing a sarong simply for the shock value of my peers working around me. If this was the case, I’d sooner be wearing fishnet stockings and have an entire towel-rack attached to my face. I have just taken to telling people that I am just observing my own religious beliefs and adhering to the fated 11th Commandment*: “Thou Shalt Not Wear Pants on Weekends”.

I can assure everyone that despite the fact that I choose to wear a loose fitting wrap-around skirt on hot summer days, that I am ALL man! I still burp and fart openly and I still stop to ogle construction in progress when passing by. Except that now when I do it, I am not as constricted by the regular trappings of tight-crotched pants and I am free and unencumbered as my nuts are swinging footloose and fancy free. It’s a literal Kevin Bacon dance party under my sarong**. All my short n' curlies line up in celebration behind my cock and balls and dance in unison to obnoxious Kenny Loggins songs. In essence, it’s just more comfortable and it doesn’t make my ass look fat either.

When it comes down to it, how could millions of thousands of Polynesian, Asian, Indian and African men be wrong? In fact, just about the majority of the major world’s religions regularly incorporate sarongs into their daily dress apparel; Buddhists, Taoists, Lamas, Hindus, and Islamic peoples of all varieties; not to mention David Beckham. Do you think Buddha would be sitting there smiling so genuinely if his fat ass was imploding in on itself like a neutron star with the chafing caused by wearing tight binding pants? NO! He achieved his level of ultimate spiritual awareness because he was ultimately comfortable with his own conscious being due to the fact he was wearing a loose easy fitting sarong. You just can’t become one with the universe when your balls are all crammed up like two dried walnuts in an onion sack.

Just think how thousands of years of religious history may have been altered if these current humble, jolly, peace-loving deities had been more accustomed to wearing uncomfortably tight britches instead of a sarong in their wet humid environments. Buddhists would be an aggressive war-cult Hell bent on bludgeoning all other religious contenders within an inch of their spiritual oneness with their alms bowls. Vishnu would have taken up machetes in each of his several arms instead of ploughshares and began hacking and stabbing at anything in direct difference to his own beliefs. The Lama’s would be crusading against the Taoists over incense fragrances…it would be anarchy!

I wonder if the reason most other males take such a strong attitude against other men wearing sarongs is that they are helplessly insecure with their own sexualities and are ultimately afraid that they might develop forbidden homosexual feelings or something? That they are suddenly, upon laying eyes on another man in a printed wraparound cloth, going to go against their very natural heterosexual instincts that they’ve developed and observed their whole lives and start hanging out at public bathhouses, watching ‘Will & Grace’ reruns, drill glory holes in their bathroom walls at home and develop a strange inexplicable fondness for George Michael songs? Maybe the sarong will drive them to highlight their hair and sign up for a fashion design course at the local community college. Poor, ignorant, simpleton, bound up bastards.

Besides, like I was EVER going to seriously take the criticisms of somebody who is so creatively inept that they have to purchase what all their friends and everybody around them is wearing just so that they can feel like part of the common collective. Personally, I would prefer the fishnet stockings and towel rack piercings over the oversized MC Hammer shorts and sporting jerseys with upside down sun visors or crooked ball caps that just inevitably make them look like plastic OG Milk Jugs.

* One of the lost Commandments that wouldn’t have been broken had Moses not tripped on one of his loose sandal straps while climbing on Mt. Sinai and thereby breaking all but the existing ten.

** Yes, I still wear boxer shorts when wearing a sarong. My last name is not MacGregor, and I understand that other men usually feel the strong desire to whip down anything that does not have a belt supporting it so that the poor embarrassed “prankee” finds his jewels shamelessly on display for the immediate mockery of his peers.

Candyspotting

I have been gorging myself on “Gobstoppers” all day today and reliving old indulgences of my misspent cavity-laden youth and I think that in the process I stumbled upon the newest addiction in my already bad habit rich life. Yes, it looks like the already longtime settled monkeys on my back are going to be getting another sugary, delicious, Technicolor little brother. Who knew that the dynamic combination of Dextrose, Glucose Syrup, Maltodextrin, Malic Acid, Artificial Flavor, Caranuba Wax, and Tartrazine would produce such a delectably sweet result? Either that, or it’s actually the secret Alchemists formula devised by Sir Thomas Aquinas to turn lead into gold.

I wonder if it’s possible that one could innocently grow helplessly hooked on Caranuba Wax and would begin to severely jones like Judd Nelson at a Bristol-Meyers company picnic if they were ever denied their regular fix. First, it would simply start as an innocent one Gobstopper every couple of hours habit "just for kicks", then an entire box a day. Before you know it you’re cutting up Popeye Cigarette’s with a credit card on the coffee table and snorting it up through empty Pixisticks. Gobstoppers could totally be considered a “gateway candy” for harder more serious candies!

Sooner than later, you’d have to resort to a seedy lifestyle of breaking into neighbor’s homes and local convenience stores to support your candy habit and may even end up whoring out your own grandmother on street corners for Pop-Rocks. You could even end up shamelessly working as a mule by smuggling illegal Jube-Jubes back and forth across the border.

Already, given my well-known addictive personality, I can envision myself banging on the door of my dealer in the wee hours of the morning desperately hoping to secure “just a little taste” of my sweet, sweet, Caranuba Wax to see me through until the next big score. Even sadder would be the inevitable sugar crash after that big score fails to materialize and I am reduced to withdrawl symptoms and spent my days curled up under my cot at the Candy Rehab Center with the shakes and breaking out with the cold sweat that begins to ooze out of my pours with drops the size of Oomp-Loompa’s, and creepy-crawly Pez candies begin to work their way under my skin.

Sad indeed.

Living the High Life at the Local Pharmacy

It is vacation season and once again I am sadly watching all my fortunate friends and workmates pack up their swim trunks and tubes of UV sun block into their Blazers and head off to their cabins, cottages, summer homes, and clusters of islands with more zeroes in the name than the New York daily Jackpot while I am left behind to water the houseplants and baby-sit their cats. This is becoming totally unacceptable to me. Why don’t I ever seem to get to take part in that time honored tradition of “Summer Holidays”? But alas, life is seldom fair.

But I think I may have stumbled upon the perfect poor man’s vacation destination that combines all the leisurely attributes of a successful vacation getaway with an easily affordable rate; the local Pharmacy!

Everything I could possibly ever need or desire on a relaxing summer vacation is provided for immediately at an arms reach in the aisles of the neighborhood Drug Store. Plus, the temperature is always at a beautifully refreshing cool temperature to combat the summer heat so that even your goose bumps will be rejoicing over little fruit daiquiris. I could even send all my friends and family around the corner postcards from the POV impulse racks of my luxurious getaway from the conveniently located Post Office at the back of the store to prove what a fantastic time I am having. No money, no problem! There’s even an accessible ATM machine to cover my purchasing needs.

I could lounge around all day in one of those cheap fold-up patio chairs in the storefront display and soak up the rays permeating through the shop window. I would never get bored what with all the provided literature* available at the expansive magazine racks by the checkout. I could satisfy my munchies instantly on bags of discounted Cheeto’s and wash it all down with flavored seltzer water from the cooler. If I ever got bored, I could give liven thing up a little and give myself an extreme makeover with all the lipsticks, blushes, and hair dyes available in the Cosmetics Department.

Each day would be an adventure as inevitably I would need to spend an hour deciding which of the hundreds of varieties of deodorant and toothpaste best exemplifies my particular tastes and whimsies that day. I would no doubt become somewhat of a connoisseur of toiletry products and would immediately be able to recognize any brand by sniff or taste alone like a World Class wine taster. I’d be walking around in my bathrobe with a spit bucket trying to ascertain which mouthwash best accessorizes my choice of flavored floss.

Of course for those REALLY special holiday moments there is an over-the-counter buffet of strong stimulants and relaxants available through the pharmacist to amuse both my mind and body all at the governments expense as part of my current Health Plan. As well, if I ever got too lazy as a result of my pharmaceutical cocktails to drag myself up out of my fold-up patio chair in the Cookie and Biscuit aisle there will those bulk boxes of Pampers in aisle four. I would be like a more cultured Hunter S. Thompson on a tour through the Proctor & Gamble factory.

* Like the scoop behind the current demise of Mary-Kate Olsen and the most recent sighting of the infamously evasive “Bat Boy”.

The Cell Phone That Ate Chicago

I was amazed today to overhear some of my work peers clucking on about this new super improved, high-powered cell phone that has just recently been released on the consumer market with all the enthusiasm of a another “Roll up the Rim to Win” campaign at Tim Horton’s. When did men begin to discuss cell phones over car engines in a lame attempt to assert their fragile male machismos? Instead of gathering around the open hood of a supped up hotrod in the parking lot of Tim Horton’s with their cups of double-doubles, they now swoon over and compare their cell phone features like a bunch of yuppie pansy-asses. In a nutshell, to hear them speak about this freak of telecommunications sounds like they are describing some gargantuan beast that would otherwise be running roughshod through the streets of some major city and trampling everything in it’s path in some cheesy B-movie horror film!

However, I have to admit that the conversation sounded strangely intriguing in the same way that one finds the details of a crime scene gruesomely fascinating. As they listed through the specific details of the new ‘Motorola V220’* cell phone, it occurred to me that these design features sounded more like the design layout for the most recent NASA Space Shuttle. And for only a mere drop in the bucket at $319.99, I’d expect it to perform as such.

The features included on this particular state-of-the-art cell phone Frankenstein included Mobile Internet access, two-way text messaging**, video clip playback, 22 KHz polyphonic speaker to play both MP3 and WAV files, 1.8 MB of built in flash memory, hands free speakerphone, phone book capable of storing up to 500 entries and picture caller ID. Shit, if it came with a built in pair of nail clippers and a toothpick the entire Swiss Army would go green with envy.

Also, the new ‘Motorola V220’ even comes with fancy entertainment features like 22 embedded*** ring tones and the option to download even more, a motomixer which enables your keypad to double as a mini-DJ booth in order to remix your ring tones with more bass or echo (no doubt that could instantly shatter the windows of store fronts and parked cars within a quarter mile radius), and three embedded games including ‘Billiards’, ‘Skipping Stones’, and ‘Submarines’. Christ! It’s a self-contained fraternity keg party that fits into the palm of your hand. With one of these little marvels of telecommunications everybody can be just like Moby scratching out the break beats to their downloaded ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ ring tone MP3 file while plotting out strategic Naval strikes on Imperial fleets in International waters.

I could go further into the real technical specs of this wonderment of technical wizardry but you’d have to be fucking Bill Gates to understand any of it. Surely, this is the gizmo that would have even James Bond creaming in his tuxedo pants. Basically it seems, that it would be entirely possible for one to be dropped into the middle of the Sahara- fucking-Dessert with only the hi- tech ‘Motorola V220’ cell phone and be able to survive comfortably for weeks on end, all the while playing 9-Ball Billiards with a camel and watching reruns of the Golden Girls on the video playback. In fact, with the enhanced digital VGA camera (ONLY with four different zoom lenses!) installed and high resolution messaging and ‘FutoFunPack 2 Photoshop” equipped in the phone, you could have an entire Penthouse photo shoot with the camel as well as any wandering Bedouins that may be caravanning by at the time to be stored as your own digital photo scrapbook for when you decide to return to civilization by relaying a satellite signal of your exact location to the MIR Space Station through your cell phone to organize your extraction by Naval Rescue Helicopter.

* Which more sounds like something that would have bucket seats and be a serious contender to take the checkered flag at the Indianapolis 500.

** This baffles me. Why would one need Internet text messaging access when they have a friggin’ phone to call?

*** I don’t think this term is a very effective marketing phrase unless you're either a hip gangsta rapper like Snoop-Dogg, as you're trying to instantly bring images to impressionable anglo-saxon prospective buyers about being roughly bludgeoned and resulting in having things unwelcomely planted in their foreheads.

Straight Guy for the Queer Eye

Okay, enough is enough! I’ve had it up to the eyeballs with Reality Television so that I’m about ready to gouge out my own eyes with a soupspoon lest I should suffer through anymore of this broadcast nonsense. How insulting and condescending has this form of television broadcasting become? Pretty soon we’re not going to be able to take a shit by ourselves unless we’ve thoroughly researched the proper way to unbuckle our pants, shopped and accessorized for the perfect scented toilet-paper and have considered all the necessary fashionable etiquettes required in order to stylishly wipe our ass. I’m definitely NOT catching on to the whole “self-improvement” phenomenon popular on most educational channels.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for improving and enhancing ones outward and inward appearances in this lifetime, but if five gay guys ever barged into my beloved humble abode and began critiquing my ragamuffin wardrobe and unkempt grooming style and proceeded to pick through all my acquired belongs an clutter with discouraging looks of disgust, I wouldn’t be so eager to simply laugh along agreeably like a mindless schmuck. No, I would be more apt to grab myself a shotgun and immediately begin bagging myself some big game homosexuals as if I were safari hunting on the set of ‘Sweatin’ to the Oldies Vol.5’. It would very quickly transform into the new Season Premiere of “Reality Mass Murder”, or perhaps “Reality Hate Crimes”. You get the point. This is not to suggest that I solely feel this way about gay fashion consultants, it's just that they seem to own the monopoly on this particular trend of television. I am just as apt to begin embedding things in the self-righteous foreheads of Swedish bikini models if they too ever started over-scrutinizing my handicapped sense of style.

There’s simply NO WAY that I would subject myself to the bitchy critical musings of anyone claiming to be part of any group calling themselves “The Fab Five”, particularly if their name is Carson, Kyan*, Jai, Thom, or Ted. Each one of these self-proclaimed “Queer Eye” consultants has a particular specialty or gay superpower** that he uses to enhance and improve the targeted heterosexual straight guy with. There’s the “Fashion Savant”, the “Food and Wine Connoisseur”, the “Grooming Guru”, the “Design Doctor”, and lastly, the “Culture Vulture”.

Pardon? What the fuck is a “Culture Vulture”? Since when did getting picked last in gym class designate you worthy of being a noted consultant for self-improvement? When exactly did culture become a particular legitimate area of study and expertise anyways? How does one go about becoming an authoritative expert on culture? Is there some kind of gay Bachelor of Arts degree that you can get by taking correspondence courses through the Rock Hudson University of Culture & Design? I predict that this particular faggy fashion expert was on par with the annoying little brother whose mother always insisted that he be allowed to tag along with the older homosexual fashion consultants.

Consider this, Adolph Hitler once considered himself an authority on culture too, and look what fiasco resulted from that! Can you imagine if Hitler were alive and well today and part of the self-improvement Reality Television craze? We’d all be trendy psycho killers with little mustaches, Swastika flags hanging on our Rec Room walls and blasting Wagner on our stereos. Besides, who decided that gay men were the these gifted elite bastions of popular culture anyways? Sure, fashion, interior design, food and drink, and maybe even the personal grooming*** I can understand; but culture? NEVER! I wouldn’t consider wearing skin-tight leather shorts and dog collars, sucking on Lollipops****, frolicking with Albino tigers, knowing all the lyrics to Abba’s ‘Fernando’, and lodging small rodents up your ass as being on the cutting edge of culture! I would rather be slathered in honey and staked out on an anthill while being forced to listen to Liberace perform all my favorite Led Zeppelin tunes than subject myself to that kind of “culture”.

I think in all fairness, there should be an alternate self-improvement reality based television show called “Straight Guy for the Queer Eye”. In this program, five burley trucker-type guys would ambush one lucky flamingly flamboyant gay male and give him a complete image makeover! In and among random gay-bashing commentary, they would systematically slob him up a bit by dribbling Buffalo Wing sauce down the front of his new wife-beater tank top, replace his “European Carry-all” with a weather-beaten leather man’s wallet, get rid of the blonde highlights and slick his spikey hair back with motor oil, add a fashionable ‘John Deer’ ball cap with the brim bent at a perfect right angle in lieu of his lopsided sun visor, liberally apply duct tape and random engine parts throughout their apartment, replace all the ‘Mens Health’ magazines on the coffee table with old issues of ‘Auto Trader’ and ‘Penthouse Letters’, and help prepare a gourmet plate of Kraft macaroni and hot dogs for dinner.

That’ll teach those tragically hip Nancy boys what’s “fashionable”!

* Is that even a REAL name?

** Much like each hero member in “The Fantastic Four”…only gayer.

*** You’d really have to be some kind of lower level primate on the Evolutionary Scale to require a “Grooming Guru” to teach you how to trim your nose hairs and to clean the fecal matter from underneath your nails…but I am willing to give the benefit of doubt.

**** Unless you’re Kojak, of course.

Outback Yak

In lieu of my regular ‘Survivor’ cheese hour of television, I have developed an unholy addiction to the newest train wreck of reality broadcasting, ‘Outback Jack’. What can I say? I need my regular fix of crappy television programming to keep me regular as well as to alleviate those normal stresses of working in my office place and the constant plotting and backstabbing among my fellow coworkers by kicking back and relaxing on the couch with a bowl of Frito’s and watching other people stress out during their own plotting and conniving schemes as they manipulate and backstab one another in order to get one step further towards winning a million dollars. In some small capacity, it‘s like I never left work at all, except that there is no million dollars at the end of the day and no half naked exotic jungle boobies to ogle...unless you count the Eastern European girl that sometimes sits in the cubicle across from me. But I digress.

In ‘Outback Jack’, a dozen bleached blonde bikinied babe's whose only experience at “roughing it” would be that they once attended a catered luncheon in Central Park, and whom have the combined intellect of a discounted waffle iron, all vie for the attention and affection of one lucky single Crocodile Dundee type man in the middle of the Australian Outback. Yep, there’s nothing like uptown store-bought daddy’s princesses all bitching, whining and moaning about bugs, weather, their rural setting, their nails, their split ends, camel spit and of course, each other, to satisfy an hours worth of mindless television viewing. It’s everybody’s Porky’s fantasy come true! I feel like Pee-Wee getting a sneak peek into the girls locker room after high school gym class.

What really cracks me up is that this Aussie Casanova for whom this debacle of a television is being played out for is constantly complaining about how difficult it is to have to eliminate these girls one at a time and how awful it is to make these hard decisions based on “real connections” he has made during the course of this caveman dating game. Yeah, that must be REAL tough watching a group of uber-babes all completing to be your bitch and having to decide each week, which one you’d least like to bone, and send her packing. Poor fuckin’ baby! Suck back another Fosters mate, and deal with it Jacko!

Any other single red blooded male on this planet would swim the entire Great Barrier Reef with hunks of raw seal flesh hanging out of their swim trunks, or allow themselves to be sodomized by a giant sawfish in order to have the opportunity to have hot models in fuck-me dresses compete with one another to catch and prepare them a fish dinner and the privilege of being their undivided sex slave till death do them part. Shit, I’m tickled fuckin’ pink if anyone so much as winks at me on their way to the staff bathroom on their way to pinch a loaf after consuming their KFC “Value Meal” at lunchtime.

If I were the studly ‘Outback Jack’, I would be relishing every juicy, fleshy moment. Not cranking on about having to eliminate one of the girls from the competition each week! I’d be all laid back in a hammock come elimination time, chowing down on a quarter pound Kangaroo burger served on a silver platter by Aborigines servants as my platoon of buxom bimbo’s duke it out in thong bikini’s in bouts of Foxy Boxing inside a swamp laden with killer crocodiles, or wrestling one another inside a ring filled with vegemite. Now, THAT’S entertainment!

The victorious Sheila would be rewarded with the honor of cleaning up my plates and silverware afterwards, fetching me another frosty Fosters out of the cooler, and giving me a handjob while I finish watching the rest of the Cricket match on the tele. Our “alone time” later in the evening would entail her to perform a strip tease and lap dance for me to old INXS tunes while I spank her with a boomerang.

Fashionable Poker

After surfing the last night airwaves the other night, I was dumbstruck with the realization that there was really nothing of interest on save the latest broadcast of ‘Celebrity Poker’. Here was Coolio dealing cards against Tom Green, Jenny Garth, David Schwimmer, Travis Tritt, Sean Astin as well as a whole host of other noted celebrities. When did this hallowed game of chance become such a novelty act worthy of Prime Time television? When did this beloved card game evolve beyond a group of guys dressed in ruffled sleeves and concealed pistols in their boots gathered around a bar table drinking whiskey while bouncing lacey dancing girls on their knees?

Of course, the game was bound to change somewhat over time and those original sly Frontier Gamblers were replaced with five dorm mates crowded around a fold-out table on a Saturday night betting with bite-size Ritz Crackers. And if some articles of clothing were lost in the process ~ all the better! This is the traditional old-fashioned variety of Poker that I came to know and love. Certainly not this nancy-assed trendy game before me on the television screen involving Hollywood Hasbeen’s.

I was even shocked to find that the actual game itself has developed more fancy varieties that read more like a list of perversions at your local brothel. I have accumalated some of the different variations of Poker below for your consideration.

Texas Hold’Um ~ Apart from the grave illiterate injustice of the name itself, this sounds like something that would land you a minimum sentence of 25 years to life doing hard time in a maximum security prison.

Omaha Poker ~ Either this varity of Poker was invented by Marlon Perkins, or a pipe bomb is placed under one of the contestants chair set to detonate upon any losing hand at any given time.

Pai Gow Poker ~ This sounds like something you’d order to compliment your Sweet and Sour Pork Balls as part of your take out deliver order from ‘Mamasan’s Restaurant and Cigar Lounge’.

Carribbean Poker ~ Wasn’t this a ride at Disneyland or something?

Indian Poker ~ In this variety of the game, no matter what your dealt hand is your opponent takes everything you own, shoots your livestock, and leaves you with only a string of cheap ass beads.

English Stud ~ Defintiely NOT the game for me! I’m sure the English Stud is more than charming, but I’m more of a Spanish Harlot kinda guy. I suppose that the loser is probably required to don white gloves and a bowtie and serve tea and cucumber sandwiches to the winner for a week.

Jacks or Better Draw ~ Sounds like a fraternity hazing stunt to be commited over a pizza by guys with craniums you could show home movies on than it does a game of Poker.

Deuce to Seven Lowball ~ Sounds more like an uber-kinky activity enjoyed in the Gay District of San Francisco. Nothing personal, but I don’t want to end up having a gerbil lodged up my colon because my opponent was able to beat my Full House.

You know, I think I will stick to the ordinary boring ‘ol varity of Poker that I learned in my youth sitting around in my garndfather’s bar. The type that is best enjoyed when played with sketchy looking individuals who happen to have the same first name as a North American city and whom you wouldn’t trust as far as you could throw them.

Zen and the Male Art of Barbequing

Tis the holiday weekend and like any other red blooded carnivore on the North American continent, I’ve got the patio grill fired up, I’m cranking the Steve Miller tunes, drinking various bottled alcohole beverages and otherwise relishing in all things Barbeque (NOT to be confused of course with "barb au que" which roughly translates in French as 'Beard of Ass'...and that's a whole other addiction!). However, I’d be misleading you if I said that this is something that is best enjoyed on the long holiday weekends. In truth, I’ve been suffering from Barbequitis for the past month or so and loving every juicy, flame grilled moment of it.

Real men cook meat. That’s just the way nature intended it from the earliest times of primitive Neolithic man. You don’t think that poor uni-browed ‘Ugh’ the Caveman settled for meatless tofu patties when he came home empty-handed from a hard day of wrestling brontosaurs on the prehistoric plains do you? Of course not! Any types of non-barbequing girly men, particularly those with their eyebrows still immaculately intact*, can keep their Spinach Salads in their own backyards because no tofu-whachafuckits are ever going to be placed on MY barbeque grill! They are definitely among the wretched soulless vegetarian pychopaths that evolution has singled out to inevitably wear dresses and perform ‘Hello Dolly’ showtunes by moonlight in city parks and are certainly not welcome at my patio parties! I just don’t trust the anti-meat non-barbequing types. They are basically one step from making clothing out of other peoples skin, tucking their penises between their legs while dancing seductively in front of full length mirrors and threatening to hose somebody down if they don’t put their lotion on.

I think the instinct to cook meat over an open flame is embedded into the DNA makeup of every male on the planet**. If it used to breathe air, chew grass, or has ever had growth hormones coursing through it’s veins then I want it’s butchered carcass laid out and sizzling on my grill. Even my cat knows to immediately run for his life and hide when he hears that tell-tale “WHOMPF!” of the barbeque being lit for fear that he may be viewed as a link of sausages in my eyes and end up roasting on the grill himself. Hell, I’m even tossing inanimate objects and household appliances on the grill just to see how quickly they melt and see what kind of buzz I can get from inhaling the generated toxic fumes. It’s safe to say, that I love my barbeque! I have even fantasized about having sexual relations with it and I have more than once ended up sporting a chubby after having indecent thoughts involving the barbeque’s igniter hole.

It’s just that I find every aspect to barbequing to be an absoutely orgasmic experience. Ideally, as I digest my buffet of roasted flesh, I’d like to relax with a cigar and smoking jacket afterwards while recieving a handjob from a young supple barbeque groupie as I watch bikini clad girls jumping on trampolines. Many a Saturday afternoon before I owned my first barbeque I’d spent just sitting in my parked car outside the local Deli wacking off to Rush tunes on the radio and thinking about the cuts of meat on display in the front window of the shop. Hey, it’s what I would then recognize as my “Erogenous Zone”. What can I say?

If barbequing were an Olympic event, then I’d be Jesse-fuckin-Owens! I approach the art of barbequing like a professional boxer would approach a championship fight. In the heat of battle, I’m likely to take quick breathers between rounds of flame broiling to sit on a small tool in the corner while I’m sponged down by a team of trainers. “I can’t see the beef anymore. Cut me, Mick!” Even weather is no deterant for this dedicated grillsman. I’ll be outside trying to light the barby in the middle of a hurricane before I ever try and cook my stuffed Pork Loin in the oven. Witches could be flying by on broomsticks and I wouldn’t care as long as they didn’t try and pilfer one of my beloved Lamb Chops.

* The scorched loss, or partial loss of ones eyebrows is considered a badge of honor among seasoned grillsmen.

** Along with the worshipping of female breasts and the need to engage in home rennovations.

In Praise of all Things "Nerd"

Everything sacred and important in this life, you can learn from watching the Holy Grail of poignant cinema, the Crown Jewel of 'tell-it-like-it-is' real life drama: "Revenge of the Nerds".

This masterpiece of American theater should be mandatory viewing in all junior high school classes. It's the 'Citizen Kane' of the hip modern generation, the uber-cool cult classic that defied all social, racial, sexual, and ethical boundaries and set the new president for cinematic exellence.

In this classic tale about the timeless epic battle between Geeks and Jocks*, ultimate nerdiness triumphs in the face of extreme adversity. The important moral being: You have to stand up for yourself and protect your unique individual beliefs and value system, particularly when under seige from a less than tolerable ignorant party.

It would have been too easy to simply relocate the new Lambda-Lambda-Lambda Fraternity House to the opposite side of the college campus from the Jock frathouse and thereby have prevented the aggressive party animals at the Alpha-Beta House from needlessly breaking all their gizmo's and gadget's while on a destructive drunken bender after the latest weekend kegger. But NO! Our Nerd heroes instead decide to defend their proud honor and Nerd integrity by meeting the enemy headon in pitched battle and stand their ground armed with only their superior intellects and their plastic pocket protectors. When in formation, the Nerd legions appeared almost menacing in their uniforms of matching belts and socks, and checkered floodpants.

This teaches you discipline, self-respect, and moral character. All these are important foundations to be laid as a young adults currently ekking their way through this fast paced confusing rollercoaster we call "life", as is developing vital mad skills in the ancient art of drunken tricycle racing.

"Revenge of the Nerds" also provides other such important valuable life lessons as:

1) When the going gets tough, the tough go on a panty raid.
2) Anyone named Lamar is bound to be gay and wear pink leg warmers.
3) Belching will always be funny.
4) Boogers are a good source of protein.
5) Cheeerleaders are horny mindless whores who will fuck anything or anyone just as long as they are popular, or are wearing a halloween mask to conceal their identities.
6) 'Three-quels' are the kiss of death.

LONG LIVE THE NERDS!!

* which, I suspect began eons ago when Socrates was wedgied in the Forum shower by the gladiators and had his toga stolen from his locker.

Angels on Vacation?

I have a little theological inquiry that I would like to open up for further debate. Where exactly do you think angels go when need a vacation? What exactly would appeal to your average overworked and underappreciated mystical deity when they feel the sudden urge to take a break from their regular blue-collar grind working as the Holy Honcho's for the Big Guy?

I suppose that this is assuming of course that your average Heaven's angel is a true hard working entity, slaving away for all eternity, as the official Ambassador of Heaven, and as the Guardian and Protector of the human spirit. With all the praying for peace, brotherly love, and pet pony's at Christmas time, it can't be easy keeping up with the demands placed upon them Nor can it be any less exhausting making all those Virgin Mary statues weep bloody tears during Sunday mass, or creating all those faces in the likeness of Jesus on all those roadside billboards and corn chips. I don't suppose it's easy work giving the occasional stigmata's to innocent orphan's in the remote mountain ranges of Peru.

To make matters worse, the conditions that they ALREADY work in at Paradise wouldn't be any less stressful as those mortal officeplaces here on Earth. I think it must really suck royally since they'd never really be able to play hooky from work when they are employed by an all-knowing omnipotent boss, and particularly since their workplace would be completely void of any illnesses from which to call in sick from! There is no doubt in my mind that they need to take a little breather every now and again. So where exactly do you think someone like St. Peter would go when they ultimately need to get away from it all for a spell?

Do they book rooms at the 7th Level of Dante's Inferno for the hot tropical weather and sunbath by the pool in their chic heavenly banana-hammocks, sipping on their Mai-Tai's and lathering on the UBV Factor sunblock? Maybe they organize wild Paintball Wars in among the various planets and moons of our solar system, or take sightseeing cruises down the River Styx and ogle the indigenous wildlife of condemned souls roaming the river banks. Or maybe they just close up the Heavenly Gates altogether for business and get all sloppy drunk and throw the Virgin Mother of all parties...it's not like they are going to suffer hangovers the next morning in PARADISE, am I right?

The Epitome of Coolness

You know you've done it. You may even still be doing it. You know for sure that everybody else is doing it ~ racing to the back of the bus to lay claim to one of those four highly-esteemed throne positions at the back of the public bus.

Endless battles are waged and fought by the tragically hip of your neighborhood at the local bus stops and in the bus doorways themselves as these fashionable image-conscious people madly clamor to be the first to successfully board and make it swiftly and safely to the back of the bus to claim their prize. Heaven's forbid they should have to lose face in the eyes of their peers and relinquish any of their valuable "street cred" by being caught riding in a lesser cool seat on the bus like the rest of us regular schlups.

The fact is, riding at the back of the bus is one of the oldest and most time-honored trends that is still very much alive and prevalent in today's society. It's one of the last great bastions of societal classing still in effect today. Your father has done it. Even his grandfather before him has done it. Hell, even your great-great-grandfather has probably hitched a ride or two into town on the back of a horsedrawn carriage at some point in his life.

Do you think that Socrates would tolerate being seen riding at the FRONT of the trolley on his way to the Forum? Do you think Napoleon rushed to the FRONT of the l'Orient while leading his naval fleet into Waterloo? No, of course not!

It's simply a given; you can't be all cool when you're reduced to riding at the front of the bus with the dweebie handicapped kid drooling into his Snowcone and the blue-haired elderly lady en route to her afternoon session of Bingo. SHIT NO! You can't be all cool bouncing up and down everywhere over the wheels in the middle of the bus. SHIT NO! You gotta be able to kick it back all cool and aloof-like where you can spread out your legs, crank up the Eminem tunes on your Sony discman for everybody else to hear and slouch your way back into the graffittied seat cushion* and cast those desparaging glances down the length at the bus to the back of everyone else's head. Also, this way you can stare down the new riders getting on the bas as they work their way down the aisle towards you and immediately let 'em know who in fact "RULZ DA JOINT, YO!"

This timeless tradition will no doubt carry on for centuries as it has cemented itself into the very fabric of mankind, predating even the known recorded 'History of Cool'. Long after buses have stopped being used and we all instead ride on huge rocketships across the galaxy, there will always be those continuing to wage the timeless battle to claim the golden jewel of the City Transit System: the back seat of the bus!

* which I suspect may be one possible reason for the recent incline of spinal difficulties in young adults today.