Time-Waster of the Gods

I’ve fallen in love with Wikipedia.

I always liked encyclopedias, the huge mass of knowledge they represented. We had a set of Britannica when I was a kid, and it’s mass dominated the lowest shelves of a bookshelf in my Dad’s study. But the size was a bit daunting, too. It didn’t lend itself to browsing. I’ve spent some good hours glancing through various Almanacs, just flipping back and forth, reading the thumbnail biographies of the American presidents, the lists of Olympians and Nobel Laureates. Often I was stoned, but that wasn’t necessary. It’s just kinda fun.

Wikipedia’s just like an Almanac, in that I can just flip through, using the random article button. Page after page can fly by, showing, at the very least, the amount of information that exists that I don’t give a rat’s ass about. Ganden Monastery. Xie Shengwu. James Budd. James Madison College. Stropping. Collectables Records. Absalom, Absalom! Okay, I’d actually like to know more about that last one, as I’ve heard good things about Faulkner. But next up come the Cleuh, who are a Berber ethnic group. And that entry says almost nothing else about them, which is fine by me.

But there are also the masses of information that I do actually want to know something about. And usually, there’s more information than I really want. And it’s all indexed, so that you can consult other, related subjects, without all that annoying page turning.

So, if I want to spend a couple of hours working my way through a list of British comedians, or the history and tenets of Scientology, there it all is. If I want, as I did a couple of days ago, read about the connections between the band KLF and Discordianism, and follow the links to read about Manichaeism, I can with ease. I can read all about the history of the X-Men, or Warren Ellis’ Planetary, the death of Yukio Mishima, quotes from the sitcom Scrubs, whatever.

The fact that it Wikipedia can be edited by just about anyone doesn’t bother me at all. Most of the people who craft entries seem to keep a pretty close eye on them, to ensure that the entry does reflect the truth, and not truthiness. It leads to some interesting oddities, too. I like the fact that the entry for Lindze Letherman, who plays Georgie Jones on General Hospital, said, at the bottom of the entry, “Lindze Letherman is cool, but complains a lot” the first time I read it, and it doesn’t now.

Why I was reading about actors and characters on General Hospital is beside the point.

Basically, I’m just saying that Wikipedia lets me spend hours reading online, instead of looking for a job or a new place to live, with slightly better odds of the information being on the up and up than most webpages, and with less searching. And I like that.

Ah, the Good Die Young...

Man.

In the space of two days, we lost James Brown AND Gerald Ford.

Good Lord.

Who's next? Yukio Mishima?

What?

Yukio Mishima died in 1970?

GOD DAMN IT!

Why was I not informed?

Too Much of a Good Thing

I love odd little bits of information. Strange little facts that you can pop out at random moments, covering a bit of esoteric knowledge. It takes the place of actually knowing anything substantial quite nicely.

For instance, did you know that the Boston’s North End was once hit by a flood of molasses? On Jan. 15th, 1919, a fifty foot tall container of blackstrap, holding about 2.5 million gallons, collapsed catastrophically. A wall of sticky sludge, estimated at between 8 and 15 feet in height, moving at about 35 MPH, spread out in all directions, smashing houses, destroying a section of elevated train track mere seconds after a train had passed, and killing 21 people. One of the deceased wasn’t found for 11 days; he was a delivery man who had been washed into the harbor, along with his truck. The container that collapsed had been built in 1915, overseen by a man who couldn’t even read the blueprints, and, upon the discovery of copious and continuous leaks, wasn’t repaired, just painted brown, so that the leaking molasses was harder to spot. They say the North End smelled of molasses for years. Far from admitting any culpability, the company that owned the defective container claimed that ‘Italian Anarchists’ had planted a bomb in it. But the judge didn’t buy it, and the company was forced to pay $600,000 in damages, which comes to just about $6.6 million in today’s dollars.

One well-armed deer

We were doing a field exercise in Basic Training. While four or five guys would run the lane to practice our spanking new Infantry skills, the other guys in the platoon would be doing what was called ‘concurrent training’. This was where you’d rehearse the more sedentary aspects of soldiering: running a radio, getting into your gas attack gear, basic medic skills and suchlike.

I was helping to set up the concurrent training spot with the other guys who weren’t going to be running the practice lane for a few hours. I’d leaned my rifle up against a tree to help one of the guys, and, of course, as soon as I was out of arms reach, one of the Drill Sergeants appeared. I seem to recall that he appeared in a puff of smoke and a corresponding stench of sulfur, but that might just be my memory playing tricks. In any case, I heard my name called, and turned to find the Drill standing next to my rifle. He looked me in the eye, looked at my rifle, then back at me.

“Private Lee, is your weapon supposed to be leaning against this tree?”

“No, Drill Sergeant.”

“What is the maximum distance you should be from your weapon, Private Lee?”

“No more than arm’s length at any time, Drill Sergeant.”

“Why is that, do you think, Private Lee? Why should you never get more than arm’s length away from you weapon?”

“Because that’s how Private's lose their weapons, Drill Sergeant.” I was at attention, just waiting to be ordered into some sweat-causing physical activity as punishment for my transgression. This was known as ‘getting smoked’, and it was never a favorite activity of mine.

“That’s right, Private Lee. That is how Private's lose their weapons. They lose their weapons by leaning them against trees, and forgetting them." He was still looking me in the eye, with his hands behind his back and eyes shaded from the Smokey-the-Bear hat he was wearing. Then, I swear to god, his eyes twinkled, just a little. "Or, sometimes they lose their weapons by being surprised by a deer in the woods, throwing the weapon at the deer, and having the deer run off with the weapon.”

And the Drill proceeded to tell us about how, two or three training cycles before ours, Delta Company had spent three days in the wood looking for a weapon lost in just those circumstances. Seems a Private had been startled by a buck while taking a dump, and had indeed just hucked his M-16 at the beast. The weapon’s sling had become entangled in the buck’s antlers, and Bambi’s Dad had gone running off into the underbrush, taking the no doubt aghast Private’s weapon along with it. By the time the Drill was done. The other guys and I were in tears.

“Drill Sergeant, did the guy’s weapon at least have a bayonet on it?” I asked when I could breathe again. “I mean, did he at least think he was gonna spear it to death?”

“No, he didn’t have a bayonet. And they never did find the weapon.” The Drill picked up my M-16 and handed it to me. “Be a little more careful than he was, Private Lee.”

It's just so goddamn weird...

Ya know what movie I love? Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. It’s just such a balls out freaky movie. If you’ve never seen it, well, in a way I envy you. At some point in the future, you might be blessed to sit down and watch this unholy mess of a movie, this steaming pile of greatlessness, the ne plus ultra of misguided genius. Directed by the singular Russ Meyer, scripted by Roger ‘I never would have guessed he was such a freak’ Ebert, BVD is a movie that starts out immersed in out-of-control bizarreness, and rides the crazy train far past the point where the wheels come off.

If this were a movie review, instead of a misguided paean, I’d be forced at this point to try and describe the plot, or ‘plot’, to you. Thankfully, this isn’t and I don’t. Actually, I’ll give it a try: All-girl band goes to L.A., and hijinks ensue. Want more? Ok, there’s a lot of lip-synching, a chick with no rhythm pounding spastically on drums, wild parties, references to a wading pool full of mayonnaise, inferences that L.A. can be likened to a jungle, a plethora of large-breasted women, a freaky looking old lady in an orange wig, sex in a Bentley, Martin Bormann, eye-bleedingly bright set design and costumes, horny movie stars, a nefarious lawyer, a heavyweight boxing champ who never wears a shirt, lots of drug use, blood that looks like Sherwin-Williams paint, a beheading, and a guy with tits. My god, just thinking about it fills me with emotions I can’t adequately describe.

Don’t ask question. Don’t think about it. Just buy it, rent it, stab your sainted aunt in the leg to get it. Whatever. Just see it. Or don’t. I don’t actually care.

We have lost

We’ve lost Iraq.

We lost the minute we walked into the country. We lost, because there was no way to ‘win’. It’ll take 2 to 5 years for anyone in a position of power to admit this, because we don’t lose, in America. It’s not in our interest, as the last Superpower, to lose, so it’ll be later, rather than sooner, before we can admit that we’ve lost. And then we’ll face the long task of trying to find meaning in the deaths of our sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters, and fathers and mothers. There will be claims by some that if we’d just followed this course, or that one, that we’d have somehow succeeded, but the dead soldiers, and their families, and the damaged survivors, will know the truth.

We were lied to by our leaders. And it would be nice to say that it was entirely their fault, but we, the people, listened to their lies through a haze of fear. We, the people, listened with the small, evil places inside us, and we said nothing. And some had the courage to look with clear eyes and see that we were headed down a dangerous path, and we, the people, didn’t care. We, the people, decided it didn’t matter if their weren’t Weapons Of Mass Destruction in Iraq, that it was actually better that there were none, because Hussein was an evil man, and if the WMD’s didn’t actually exist, that just made it easier for our boys to take him and his whole damn country. And we marched for 21 day, and watched the little man, in front of his huge ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner, chatter about how well we’d done, and we found Hussein in his little hole.

And not one of the dead or wounded was worth any of it.

And we condoned ‘torture-lite’. And we let the little man’s Secretary of War make his cold, soulless little speeches. And we watched as a little more of the promise of our fine country was destroyed, as more of our national soul was corrupted, as the next generation of those who despise and will work to damage us was created.

We watch, as the reports of battles, and the rising death toll, move farther and farther away from the headlines. We accept it as this small nasty war becomes part of the status quo. And still, those who putatively control the situation lead us deeper into the quicksand.

We brought this on ourselves. We were frightened, it’s true. We were angry, and wanted nothing more than to seek revenge for thousands of the dead, for the horror that came from a clear blue sky. But fear and anger mean nothing to the dead, be they American or Iraqi. The tin-eared rhetoric of the small man in the Oval Office means even less. And it’s the dead that we’ll have to answer to. It’s the names that will go on the inevitable monument to this nasty little war that will shame us. It’s the memories of the surviving enemy that will bring the true price home to us. And it will be brought home to us, to we, the people, not the little man in the shadow of his father. The little man will look back in pride. After all, he finally got to play soldier, and no one can say he ran away, this time.

We’ve lost Iraq.

And not one of the dead or wounded was worth any of it.

One Fine Morning

It’s odd, what you find when coming down from an acid trip.

I’d taken the acid one night at the Big Apple Circus. It was during the Lincoln Center run, and I had taken both acid and some ecstasy with my current girlfriend. She’d passed out, but I was still running pretty strong when the sun came up. New York has a great feel in the morning, when the city’s just starting to get rolling. I’d had an odd, unexpected conversation with the show’s general manager, Guillaume, about starting pay for workers on the House and Concession crews. It was unexpected because I had no idea Guillaume knew who I was, and odd because he seemed to actually be listening. Once that was done, I headed out into the street.

Lincoln Center, where the show was set up, is on the West Side, between 62nd and 65th street, and a couple of blocks away from Central Park. I headed south on a whim, wandering through the crowds of people just starting their day.

At the south-western corner of Central Park, at Columbus Circle, there’s a huge monument to the USS Maine, the sinking of which started the Spanish-American War. It’s 44 feet tall, and has, on the top, a woman in a chariot, pulled by three horses, with a shield on one arm and the other raised. The whole ensemble, woman, chariot, and horses, are a bright, almost golden bronze, apparently made from the recovered guns of the Maine itself. I knew none of this at the time.

That morning, the sun was obscured by lingering clouds, or the monument wouldn’t have been nearly as beautiful. As it was, the hidden sun lit up the gold statuary at the top of the monument, making it seem as though the golden lady was lit up from the inside. Combined, the still bright green foliage of the south end of the park, the lovely, triumphant lady, and the bright but hidden sun made for a heart-stopping combination. I stood, looking east down 59th Street for almost ten minutes, trying to burn the image into my memory. Then, feeling incredibly lucky to be alive, I headed further downtown.

I drifted down Fifth Avenue, probably thinking of seeing the statue of Atlas at Rockefeller Center, hoping it would be similarly ennobled by the magic of the early morning. I actually ended up finding something that moved me even more.

I’d passed Rockefeller Center any number of times, hurried through it a few more than that, but this was the first time I’d noticed the stone in front of the sunken skating rink. It’s no doubt old hat to most people who have even a passing knowledge of the city, but I’d never heard of it, or seen it mentioned anywhere. But I swear to god, I’m going to teach my children from this stone. It has carved into it:

I Believe

I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master.
I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

I believe that thrift is essential to well ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.

I believe that truth and justice are fundamental to an enduring social order.

I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his bond; that character -- not wealth or power or position -- is of supreme worth.

I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.

I believe in an all-wise and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individual's highest fulfillment, greatest happiness, and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will.

I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. spoke those words in 1941, on behalf of the USO and the National War Fund. And in 1962, during the last peaceful time in that turbulent decade, they were set in stone. And I found them in late 1999, wandering in the hazy end of a drug trip, while working at the circus.

Each time I read them, I’m struck by their beauty, and their honesty. I don’t know much about John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and I’m sure that there are any number of people who could tell me stories that would make his statement of principles seem, at the very least, disingenuous, but I don’t particularly care. These ten statements contain singular truth, and that is all that matters. It is a Decalogue that is worth believing in, and following.

It’s odd, what you find when coming down from an acid trip.

Chip off the old block

The lady followed the kid around the curtain, and smacked him on the side of the head, right behind the ear.

This is at the Big Apple Circus, during the New York run. For three months of the year, from October to right after New Year’s, the show would set up in Lincoln Center, in the section where the hold outdoor concerts in nice weather. That’s a pretty sweet three months, being paid to live right in the middle of Manhattan, no heavy lifting, and good city drugs readily available.

It helped that I’d met a nice Chinese girl who was temping for the show. She was, and is, one of the sweetest people I know, and we got on like a house afire. Then, when we were traveling again, I lost my fucking mind and broke up with her. But that’s another story.

Unlike the usual lot set-up, in New York the concession area was under a tent, which connected to the big top through two short tunnels, one for each side of the grandstand. The tunnels were kind of cool; the acoustics were such that I could shout ‘Don’t Run!’ at unruly kids and have the sound waves hit them right in the back of the head.

And New York was the world capitol of unruly kids. We threw out more families in the first two weeks in Manhattan than we had to for the rest of the tour combined. Loud kids, kids who wanted to run around the aisles at breakneck speed, kids who wanted to throw handfuls of popcorn around with the abandon of a demented Johnny Appleseed. Little Johnny Popcornseed’s, joyfully ruining the show, and life in general, for everyone around them. And, of course, their slack-jawed, bewildered parents, who always said the same thing. “What’s the problem? What do you want me to do about it?” We should have been allowed to poison them.

So the kid comes around the curtain at the base of my ramp, which had been pulled closed in preparation for the start of the second half of the show. The woman, his mother I assume, followed close behind him and gave him a nice, solid smack. Her hand hit with a meaty thud, knocking his head forward and putting him off balance for a step or two.

“You’re just like your goddamn father!” she said, just before the lights went down.

Jesus, lady, if he’s not just like his dad now, he will be pretty soon.

Pay me more than I'm worth, please

I don’t do well at job interviews, especially those that involve a job with some kind responsibility. I don’t have the right clothes. I rarely want the job itself, just the good paycheck. I sweat a lot. And I seem to give off the vibe that I could care less about getting the job. This is invariably true.

I’ve been out of a job for a couple of months, enjoying the splendor of unemployment insurance. I’m actually getting bored with just hanging out. I think a lot of it has to do with not having enough money to do what I want. If I won the lottery, I’d loaf around ‘til my heart exploded from the massive amount of sitting around and eating to my heart’s content I’d do. As it is, I have just enough to get by, which isn’t bad, but doesn’t bode well for my future, specifically the part of the future where I’m too old to work and survive by eating cat food. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some cat food, but as a regular diet it makes me a bit gassy.

So I really do want to get a decent gig this time. I’ve spent far too long working the dead end, ‘What, me take responsibility?’ jobs. I’m thinking something with health insurance, maybe a 401(k) I can invest in. I had that at my last job, but there was a little too much getting shot at for me to want to make a permanent thing out of it.

34’s probably a little late to start shopping around for a career, but that’s where I am. I don’t see them offering any passes to go back and start over again, so I might as well stop procrastinating. I’ve come to grips with my lack of inspiration, the absence of a driving passion within me, so it isn’t a good idea for me to keep running under the assumption that the hand of God’s gonna come down and gift me with it.

It’s a tangential thought, but it’s a good idea to sometimes state your beliefs out loud. Often, you’ll suddenly be brought up against the raw stupidity of something you’ve held as true for too long. The idea that I’d receive inspiration via a Newtonesque smack upon the head by an apple was something I’d never said to anyone, just something I believed implicitly. Once I said it aloud, I felt like an idiot, with some justification, I think.

So now I want a real job, and find myself woefully unprepared to get one. Hi, my name’s Carter Lee. Will you hire me in spite of all the obvious reasons not to?

Idiots and Defecation

One of the worst things about the post on which I was stationed in Iraq was that there really were no basic amenities. For the first three months, we had to truck in fresh water in huge rubber containers, and there was nothing so advanced as a flush toilet. Everyday, some poor bastard in one of the platoons that wasn’t working in the city had to pull out the steel tubs that were filled with shit, and burn the stuff until it was a fine ash. Since my platoon was running convoys every day, I got to miss out on that neat little aspect of camp life. ‘Course, I still got to experience the thrill of crapping through a hole into a steel tub, which smelled delightful in the 90-115 degree heat.

Being in my platoon was a blessing, lemme tell you. We got to head to posts with more advanced latrines, and showers, and mess halls, and PX’s, pretty much every day. And there was a certain amount of hatred focused on us by the guys who hadn’t had showers in three weeks, and had run out of cigarettes last week.

Sometimes, you’d just have to crap on our post, though, which exposed me to one of the weirder aspects of Army life. In a situation like that, where you’re doing your business in an outside latrine, with other crappers on both sides and separated by a relatively thin slice of plywood, there was always some cat who’d take the next stall and want to chat. It never failed. You’d get settled, and through the wall would come some idiot’s voice, “Hey, who is that? Lee? What’s up man? How you doing?” What the hell kind of idiot question is that? I’m sitting in an outhouse in a foreign country, trying to lose a little weight, and being pestered by some moron.

So, all in all, I could have been doing better.

Calling Uncle Crazy

I’ve been looking for a new place to live, as the house I’m renting is being sold sometime soon. Given my druthers, I’d do without the roommates. Not because I don’t like living with people. It’s just easier living alone. I can walk around naked without hearing people say, “Eww!” for instance.

So I’m looking for a cheap studio or one bedroom place. It’s not going as well as I’d like. I saw a place today that brought back memories, though, because the place was Brooklyn sketchy. Locked gate in front of the door, two doors down from the ‘Jesus Saves’ homeless mission, made me think I was back on Atlantic and Flatbush. Nice guys inside, and a cool funky layout, but I might be a little old to be hanging in a spot like that.

I thought I had a good lead this evening, and called to set up a time to check it out, and had an odd conversation with a cat I’m always gonna think of as Uncle Crazy. I called at about 7 pm, and the fella started out by asking what the hell I was doing calling him so early in the morning, then spent the rest of the call snorting back what sounded to me like heavy post-cocaine binge nasal drip. ‘Course, if that was the case, he wouldn’t have been sleeping, but that is what it sounded like. At a certain point, after feigning sanity for almost two solid minutes, Uncle Crazy suddenly burst out with, “THIS ISN’T THE PLACE TO BE BRINGING A GIRL! THIS ISN’T A PLACE THAT WILL IMPRESS THEM! If you want that, YOU’LL HAVE TO RENT A HOTEL ROOM! OKAY?” It was impressive, in a freaky way. Zero to bat-shit crazy without breaking stride.

It took a couple of minutes to calm him down. I’d just about succeeded, when he got all riled up again, this time over my calling him ‘sir’. That’s a habit I picked up at the circus; namely always act like psychos deserve your respect. There’s less of a chance of some nutbar getting physical if you sound like you’re talking to a senator. I don’t usually use that tactic on the phone, as the distance gives me a chance to be as rude as I think the person deserves, but Uncle Crazy sounded like he was gonna come right through the phone. If he had, I think I could have taken him, but his shouting was coming close to blowing out the speaker on my phone.

I considered just hanging up, but it occurred to me that Uncle Crazy might just take it into his head to *69 me. Then I’d have to wade through 187 voicemails about how rude I was, and how the Gummint was putting worms in his head to poison his vital essence. So I waded on, and actually made an appointment to see the place tomorrow. Just before I hung up, Uncle Crazy told me he’d be swearing out a warrant if I didn’t show up.

Do I need to say that there’s no way in hell I’m keeping that appointment? Hell, I’m considering changing my phone number. The only thing that could have made this five minute exchange any freakier was if he’d said that he’d meet me at the spot, and I’d know him by the fact that he’d be the 62 year old naked guy on the porch.

A Squirrel...that is a Zombie...uhh...

From zombiesquirrels.blogspot:
1.Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.


Information
Tourist Offices
The Puerto Rico Tourism Company (PRTC; 800-223-6530, 787-721-2400, http://www.prtourism.com/) Is the official mechanism for distributing information to island visitors and has a number of easy-to-find locations in San Juan.

Bad Good Friday

I used to love smoking weed. One of the best things about living in New York, to my young and dopey mind, was the relative ease with which buds could be secured. For a while, right after I moved to the city, I’d usually pick up from ‘street vendors’ around Washington Square Park and in Greenwich Village. Then I got arrested on Good Friday.

I’d just done the handshake with a guy who’d kindly offered to sate my jones. As I walked away, I heard a loud voice tell me to turn around. Lo and behold, there was one of New York’s finest holding a gun on the pharmacist I’d just handed money to. And, y’know, the mere sight of the firearm convinced me to do whatever my friend the cop wanted, and to do it in a timely and non-threatening a manner possible.

I got loaded into a police van with about a half-dozen other people, all black, except for one dude. None of the others seemed concerned over being in custody, especially not the cat who gave his name as Donald Duck when the presiding officer requested it. It was actually a pretty boisterous ride over to the precinct house.

Once we hit the cop shop, I got split off from the others, along with another guy. Maybe we got separated because we were buyers and not dealers. ‘Course, it could have just as easily been because we were white. Either way, I wasn’t complaining. I got issued a summons for a court date about a month later, and was sent off with a stern admonition against buying smoke on the street. Not against smoking it, just against buying on the public thoroughfares.

All in all, I thought I was having a pretty bad night. Twenty bucks down, with no weed to show for it, and arrested to boot. Not a happy trifecta, that. Then, the cop who’d arrested me came over, and started talking to the other white dude, saying that he, the cop, was gonna have to call the guy’s father. The guy pleaded with the cop not to, promising that never again would he be brought into this cop’s precinct house. After a couple of tense moments, the cop agreed, and headed back to his coply duties.

The guy caught my questioning look, and said, “Yeah, my dad was a cop, used to work with these guys.”

Damned if I didn’t feel a little better.

Ah, senseless ramblings, how I love thee...

It gives me no end of pleasure to announce that I have been hired to write my own comic book. It’s the culmination of a life long dream, and I know you all wish me well in my new endeavor.

My creative genius was recognized by the fine people at Smogtrouser Comics. My magnum opus will center on the heroic doings of The Spork, and his trusty sidekick Johnny the Wonder Something-or-Other. I plan on having a large supporting cast, to include other heroes, such as the Polydactyl Cat, Mr. Macramé, and Eddie December, Somnambulist Detective, as well as normal people, like Nancy Blastula, Utembe Fischbein, and Old Glad-Handin’ Jebus, respectively the girlfriend, co-worker, and personal savior of The Spork’s secret identity, Hobart K. Sporcman, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Much like Superman’s identity being disguised by a simple pair of glasses, no one believes that His Archbishopness and The Spork are the same person because Sporcman spells his name with a c, and The Spork with a k. Look for the first issue, ‘Ferris Wheel of Baffling Ennui’, in which The Spork and Johnny the Wonder Something-or-Other* face off with The Spork’s arch-nemesis, Crab-Meat-Salad Man, and his gang, The Condiments of Lyle MacIntyre, to hit the stands sometime around 10:30 tomorrow morning. Art rendered by former Vice-President of the United States Dan Quayle, lettering by a Norwegian Bandy-Legged Macaque named Simon.

Buy a dozen copies for everyone you’ve ever met, won’t you? As we say here at Smogtrouser, “Onward To Lunch, Preferably Something Light, That Won’t Interfere With The Taste Of My Pint Of Gin!” You heard it here first, true believers!
















*Tragically, Johnny the Wonder Something-or-Other will choke to death on a corn-dog bone at whatever point it becomes necessary to raise sales by killing a main character. Probably sometime around issue #3. So don’t get too, y’know, attached. I’m just saying, is all.

Second Time Go Boom

The second time I got hit by an IED in Iraq was exactly one week after the first time, and one of my first thoughts was ‘GODDAMN IT!’ But not for the obvious reason.

Standard procedure, after a close call with things that go boom, was for everyone who was in the truck to get checked out at the aid station, just in case someone had a wound that hadn’t been noticed in the confusion. Believe it or not, this happens a lot. All hell breaks loose and everybody’s adrenalin gets flowing, and its ten minutes later before a guy wonders why his side hurts, only to find a wound or bit of shrapnel. When things go bad, you get a bit of tunnel vision.

So, at the aid station, both my gunner, Pettit, and I get the once over from the medics, and they find that both of us have slight damage to the eardrums. They also notice that my blood pressure is elevated, which gets written off as a side effect of just-almost-got-blow’d-upness, though it turns out later that it’s actually because of the hundred doughnuts I’m carrying around as subcutaneous fat. But that’s neither here nor there. At the medic’s suggestion, both Pettit and I are pulled off of driving duty for a week, and end up doing approximately 350 hours of guard duty. Six days of six hours on/six hours off shifts, sitting in little towers, watching a lot of nothing, bored out of our freakin’ minds. One guy, a particularly useless cook named Lang, had gotten pulled off of guard duty permanently for shooting cats, which struck me as quite stupid, until I was on guard myself. Granted, in a war zone, boredom is preferable to excitement, but by the end of the week, it had gotten to be a little much. Both Pettit and I were happy to be going back to running the road again.

So part of my mind was dreading a return to guard duty. Granted, it was a small part of my mind, the rest being occupied with ‘Am I dead? I don’t feel dead. That’s good right? If I’m feeling stuff, I’m probably not dead, and that’s good…’ type thoughts.

This time, instead of stopping and taking a jog, as I had the after the last explosion, I did the right thing. I jammed the pedal to the floor, and we got the hell out of there. I remember Sgt. Simmons yelling up to Pettit, the gunner, and asking him if something was wrong with the radio antenna, because he couldn’t get any response on the air, and Pettit yelling back that the antenna was gone.

What none of us realized until we got onto the post we were headed for was that most of the back of the truck on the driver’s side was gone. The IED had gone off just after we had passed it, and spent most of it’s fury on the rear of the truck. The trunk lid was gone, and the guys in the truck behind us later said it had gone about a hundred feet into the air, higher that the dust cloud from the explosion. The rear driver’s side door had been bent in spite of the armor on it, and the door’s window, made of double-paned, inch-thick safety glass, had come close to being blown into the truck. The entire driver’s side behind the rear seat was just as gone, exposing the wheel to the air, and everything in the trunk had been forcibly ejected, including a box of Kellogg’s cereal cups we had for snacks. There had been a brief storm of Frosted Flakes and Coco Puffs for the following truck to drive through, apparently.

That was the part that hurt the most. We really liked them cereal cups.

So Pettit and I got checked out again, and again, there was a bit of damage to both of our eardrums. A small pain in the ass there, as the ringing from the last IED had faded away just the day before, and now both of us could expect at least another week of trying to sleep with a constant hum that no one else could hear.

Sgt. Simmons consulted with the medics, and then came out to talk to me and Pettit.

“Well, the doc recommends…” He started, only to be cut off by Pettit.

“I’m not doing any more goddamn guard duty, Sergeant. No fucking way!”

Sgt. Simmons looked at me.

“I’m with Pettit, Sgt. Fuck that.”

Thank god Sgt. Simmons agreed. Apparently, our replacements the previous week had rubbed him the wrong way.

Then the mechanics took out truck away, as it was too damaged for safe driving, and Sgt. Simmons, Pettit, and I had to cadge open seats in other trucks for the ride back to our post. We also spent a lot of the day sitting around the staging area, waiting for the other trucks to finish whatever they had to do, so we could get under some cover.

Getting under cover was important, as that particular day was the only on during my entire year in Iraq when it was 40 degrees outside, with mixed rain and hail.

Good times.

An Honest Sex Story

I've read some crazy letters in Penthouse and online. I never thought anything like that would happen to me...

So far, I've been right.

A Few Thoughts...

Let me start this by saying I believe in God. It’s probably not the same God you believe in, as I’ve never run into a religion that saw god the same way I do. And I think the reason for that is that most Gods are too small for me.

I’ve never read about, or heard of, a God that seems capable of encompassing the size, brilliance, and wonder of the world I know. I’ve never read about, or heard of, a religion that even tried to take existence at face value. There is no religion, from the Judeo-Christian-Islamic triad to Buddhism to Scientology and Zermatism, or even my beloved Church of the Subgenius, that is more concerned with What Is, rather than What Should Be.

The God represented by most religions asks a man to ignore what he sees, and what he has learned, in favor of the reality presented by whatever tract is currently being referred to as ‘The Word of God’. It ask that man only push his intellect so far and no further, lest man commit heresy by questioning The Word, and thereby be cast out and damned. It tells you that your senses cannot be trusted, as they might see evidence that disproves The Word.

This is what confuses me. If you believe that man was designed by God, that every feature and aspect was placed within man for a reason, what possible reason could there be for not exercising each gift to the fullest possible extent? Why would man be designed with the capacity to build machines and structures of thought that allowed him to divine reality, from the smallest particle to the structure of the universe that contains us, if he weren’t meant to do so? What about our continued search for provable truth could frighten God, to the point where a line must be drawn, a point past which we aren’t allowed to go?

The answer is, of course, nothing. God, the creator of all, has nothing to fear from us, no need to shackle our marginal brilliance. Each new discovery, each instance of his creation’s ability to explore and discover more about the wonderfully complex and magnificent structure of which we are a part, has to please him, her, it. After all, doesn’t each new step, whether it takes us further out or farther down into the jewel of existence prove how much greater and more amazing the creator must be? Doesn’t each new wonder display the mind-boggling creativity of the maker to better effect? How can the demonstration of the endless complexity of the watch not reflect the greatness of the watchmaker?

To me, the obvious answer lies not in the mind of God, but in the hearts of man. God doesn’t fear our creativity, but men do. In some cases this is justified, for all too often the creativity of man is turned to perverse and destructive ends. But this misuse isn’t the basis of concern for those among us who would fetter the mind of man. The use of any creativity, of any non-sanctioned thought, is their bedrock worry. The mind that wanders into uncharted territory, to ponder a new idea, has begun to move itself past the point where it can accept lessons by rote. The mind that thinks, thinks about everything, and that is dangerous.

The men who run the religions of the world are threatened by the progress of mankind’s thought. It isn’t God, but ‘God’s Men on Earth’ who are afraid of what we might find if we continue to move intellectually. As the leaders of world religion, they are proponents of a view that is static, that not only doesn’t change, but cannot. God created the World, and laid down these Laws, and you shall follow them forever and ever, amen. God doesn’t want you to think, he wants you to toe the line and secure your place in the afterlife, where you will sing his praises eternally, or burn eternally. No middle ground, no ‘what-ifs’, no exceptions. And the deepest circles of hell are reserved for those who, having The Word given to them, chose to deny it.

The problem with all of this, for me, is that we have nothing but man’s word that this is God’s Word. There is nothing, other than tradition and the belief of millions, to lend credence to the teachings of the Bible, the Qu’ran, and the Torah. It is asked that you to take it on faith. But what are you asked to put you faith into? A single, omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, transcendent God. A god who has planned out the existence of the universe in every degree, but who can somehow be driven into a rage by a man kissing another man, or having it’s name taken in vain. A God who loves you, and will unhesitatingly condemn you to hell for the smallest transgression. A God who, while omnipotent, becomes incensed when his earthly minions are questioned, and responds with widespread destruction of the believing and unbelieving alike in New York and New Orleans. It would be just as logical to think that he doesn’t like places with the word ‘new’ in their title. Look out, New South Wales.

Using my God-given powers of reason, I am unable to place my faith in such paradoxical demiurges. I derive more comfort from my picture of a God who isn’t watching every sparrow fall. A God that seems capable of creating the world I live in, and is too great to be concerned with each and every one of us. A God who is hugely beyond my limited ability to comprehend, and who is concerned about the whole lawn, but not each individual stalk.

The Circus

The Circus was a pretty fun place.

I had been working for the Hair Club for Men in New York, pestering bald guys over the phone. The company had decided to move the call center I worked at from New York to Florida, and I’d been let go with a pretty good severance package. I then spent a number of months riding out unemployment. One day in August, I found that I was out of cash, and had no real job prospects. In the process of looking for a job, I’d seen a listing for something called ‘Tent Crew’ for the Big Apple Circus. But the interview was up in Walden, New York, which I had no way of getting to. Sigh. The very next week, though, something called ‘House Crew’ was listed, and the interview for that was in the city.

I met a tiny woman named Ellie, who was the Assistant Head of the House Crew, which was responsible for running the house during shows: seating people, dealing with customer problems, cleaning the seats between and after shows. House Crew also helped to put up and take down the tent upon arriving at and leaving the show lots. Ellie did her best to paint a bad picture, talking about maybe having to work for twenty straight hours or more, living in trailers and eating in a converted semi, but when she asked me if I wanted to work for her, I didn’t hesitate at all. I needed a job, I was tired of New York, and it was the circus, for chrissake!

Six days later, I took a train up to Walden, and took a van full of other new hires onto the between-tour home of the Big Apple Circus. I got assigned a room, with a guy named Vlad, and experienced my first instance of loathing on sight. I also met a guy named Ole, who is still the only cat I know with throat tattoos, three of them, one over his adams-apple. He also had ‘your’ tattooed onto the knuckles of his right hand, and ‘ruin’ on the knuckles of the left. But that was later. Ole was cleaning out the room, which was a stack of three beds and some storage drawers in an area the size of a small walk in closet, tacked onto the ass end of a very old trailer, which had four other ‘rooms’.

Over the next week and a half, I learned the basics of the job. How to read the tickets and seat people properly, what each section of the house was called, how much shit to take from a patron before handing them off to the Ramp Boss, or to Ellie. I helped take down the tent for the first time, which was called a ‘load-out’, on a night that I recall lasting somewhere around 250 years. Later, a friend of mine came to work at the BAC, and I recall watching her doggedly keeping up on her first load-out, looking like she’d made a huge mistake. But she did keep up, and after the first time, a load-out, while not easy, wasn’t as hard. Later, she had told me that she had made a silent promise to herself not to quit before a particular temp did. She’d chosen that particular guy because he only had one arm. And he didn’t quit. Which was at least part of her dismay that night.

Load-outs, where we took down the tent, and load-ins, where we put up the tent, got to be, well, not easy, but predictable. You got to know how far along you were, and about how much time was left until the job was done. Like washing dishes, after a while, you didn’t have to think much, just let your body do the work. The worst part was actually during the last show before the load-out started. We’d do two shows, and then tear down. And half way through the second half of the second show, I’d always get this sick feeling, knowing that when the show was over we still had eight to twelve hours of hard labor to go. But then, once the load-out started, I was fine. It was the anticipation of hard work that sucked, not the work itself.

Ellie, who’d worked as an acrobat at quite a few circus’, would talk about working at the Circus Knie in Europe, and how their crew, with a show that was twice our size and included a menagerie, for gods sake, would load-out in two hours, and load-in in four. Of course, they had a crew of Turkish guys who didn’t do anything else at all, and handed down the job from father to son, and we had a crew of freaks and weirdo’s who were all trying to avoid something, but still, two hours is pretty impressive. The fastest load-out I’d taken part in was six hours, start to finish.

Loading out and in was the crucible which decided who was going to make it at the show. It didn’t matter what kind of an idiot you were at other times, for the most part, as long as you pulled your weight when it was required. Didn’t matter how much somebody hated you, they had at least a little respect for you, if you could pull your weight. Vlad, the roommate who disliked me almost as much as I did him, was a perfect example. We’d jumped from Walden down to Reston, VA for the first leg of the tour. Vlad and another guy had been told to set up safety gates at the top of the grandstand. Some short time afterward, Jesus, who was in charge of us, popped up and asked if anyone’d seen Vlad, because only about half of the gates were up. I looked at the gates that were set up, and said, “Okay, here’s my guess. You told him to set up the gates that were piled over there, and when he got done with those, he wandered off, and now he’s scratching his balls somewhere.” And both Jesus and I looked across the still-unfinished tent, to see Vlad, staring open-mouthed at the guys spreading sawdust in the ring, with one hand thrust deep into the crotch of his sweat pants. Really going to town on himself, too. Jesus and I looked at each other and started to laugh. “Geez, man, how’d you know?” Jesus said, wiping away tears. Vlad did make it through to the Lincoln Center load-in, but quit less than a week into the three month engagement, partly because Ellie answered one of his complaints by telling him that he was an idiot, and nobody liked him.

I did my share of stupid stuff, I must admit. I was promoted to Ramp Boss, in charge of half of the House Crew during show times. It got to be a regular thing where I’d get pissed at someone during a load-out, for being lazy, for not doing the right thing or disappearing into their rooms while the rest of us were working, and I’d lose my shit at them. It got to be an expected thing, part of the checklist of the load-out. Take down the grandstand, load the risers, take apart the center ring, and listen to Carter scream insults at a co-worker. I’m not particularly proud of it, and the only thing I can say in my defense is that it was always some jackass who was already close to being fired, but that’s the best I can say. I still feel like an idiot remembering it.

Then there was the time I fell asleep on the floor of my room on the first day of the load-in for Boston. I woke up when someone opened the door, and said, “I think he’s dead, man.” The worst part of that was the ‘not-angry-just-very-disappointed’ dressing down I got from Felipe, the tent-master. Not even my Mom’s ever made me feel that bad.

Meditations on Past Stupidity

It seems pretty obvious to me that, up until about four years ago, I was completely insane. Really. I look at the choices I made back then, and it’s clear that I was mentally impaired in some way. And I’d love to go back and beat some sense into myself.

I spent more than seven years living in New York, from about 1995 to the very beginning of 2004. My express purpose in moving to the quintessential Big City was to study acting, at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. What an incredibly original idea, no? But New York is the place to be for getting a start in the performing arts, in truth, second only to Los Angeles or London. So how much acting did I do? Not much. Almost none that wasn’t required for school or the classes I took after leaving school. Why? Because it was a lot more fun to hang out and smoke weed. I exemplified, and continue to exemplify, wasted potential. I could have spent seven years working hard and building some kind of career. I would like to go back to my 23-year-old self, and try to explain the enormous opportunity that ranged in front of my former self, and maybe smack the joint out of my hand.

I spent a year traveling with the Big Apple Circus around the northeast. It was a good year, filled with hard work and odd people, and more weed. In the second or third month, when the show was set up in Lincoln Center, a temp came to work on the Usher Crew. She and I hit it off incredibly well, started dating, and were pretty much inseparable for the three months of the Lincoln Center run. But she came from a very close knit Chinese family, and her mother would have none of her going off to travel the country with strangers. So I rolled out with the show, and she stayed in the city. And somewhere along the way, out on the road, I lost my fucking mind, and broke up with her. It’s been more than six years now, and I still have a sense of loss that feels like it’s here to stay. I don’t think I’m letting my imagination run away with me, as pretty much everyone who knew the both of us agrees that breaking up with her was the stupidest of a number of stupid things they’ve been privileged to see me do. Of course, my thinking at the time was that I’d end up breaking her heart, and that she could do better, which, observing the man I am now, still seems true.

But I’d still like to explain to my former self that I wasn’t gonna do any better.

Thanksgiving and Singleness

I usually like to spend Thanksgiving alone, watching movies and drinking whiskey. I do drink Wild Turkey, so I’m at least somewhat in the holiday spirit, but that’s usually my only concession. But my current roommates, who don’t suck and can cook, whipped up enough food for about thirty people, and had a crowd over. A good time was had by all, with lots of wine and tryptophan-laden turkey being ingested and keeping the mellowness intact. Even a cutthroat game of Trivial Pursuit ended amicably. It did kinda suck that the one cute woman was one of my roommates’ lesbian friends, but as they are lesbians themselves, it wasn’t much of a surprise.

Not that it would have mattered. For the most part, the last couple of years have helped me to shed quite a few fears, but the stark terror of talking to a woman who interests me remains. It’s sad really, the way I immediately turn into the Squeaky-Voiced Teen from the Simpsons upon entering the presence of an attractive female, but there it is. It’s actually something of a relief when the lady in question is a lesbian, as I don’t even have to worry about blowing it with them. The situation comes pre-blown, as it were, and it’s quite freeing to know that I could be as cool as Cary Grant, and my chances would still be non-existent. Knowing you have no chance is actually preferable to just suspecting it.

As with my health, I’ve given up on worrying about falling in love with someone. I used to spend an inordinate amount of time wondering about why I hadn’t hooked up. Then, after actually finding someone, I figured out that I’m too much of a selfish bastard to be a good boyfriend/significant other. I rarely give a rat’s ass about what anyone other than me wants, and that tends to annoy everyone, not just women. It’s infinitely easier to ignore the whole thing, and enjoy the fine pornography our country produces, when I do need to ‘get something out’. That way, neither I nor my highly theoretical soul mate are bothered much.

Most people I’ve mentioned this to are taken aback at the very idea that I’m perfectly willing to spend my life as a large crowd of one. They insist that I just haven’t met the right person, which I agree with, except that I’ve begun to assume that the right person doesn’t exist. Don’t get me wrong, if I could find a girl who loved me, and who didn’t annoy me too much, I’d hook up in a heart beat. But I don’t have any particular urge to go searching for a ‘special someone’. Every once in a while, I do think about trying online personals, but about halfway through the sign-up process, I get bored and decide even that is too much work.

Of course, maybe the fact that I wanted to throw food at the happy couple that was sitting a few tables away from me at the Village Inn last night means that I’m not being completely honest with myself.

Oh, well. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Some Things I've Noticed

There are few things more embarrassing, in my experience, than having to wake up your upstairs neighbor in order to see if the bullet you just accidentally fired through your ceiling has killed them.

As a rule, Army First Sergeants aren’t thrilled to have overweight guys assigned to their company.

Grade school kids have no appreciation for peers who possess ‘interesting’ personalities.

Gimme enough whiskey and a running start, and there isn’t much I can’t fuck up.

Military school only makes crazy kids crazier.

English, as a language, doesn’t have a lot of logic to it.

Food always tastes better when someone else pays.

Sex is like fast food, in that you trade quality for convenience with both.

When you’re not sufficiently drunk, strip clubs are depressing.

Most drugs are fun, until they’re not. Then everything sucks, not just the drugs.

If she’s into me, I’ll realize it somewhere between six months and five years after the last time I see her.

Being caught having sex on your roommate’s bed is embarrassing, but not embarrassing enough to stop. You can deal with them later.

Getting shot at clears the mind beautifully. Unfortunately, the mind then becomes filled with screaming terror.

Some part of me always wants to go back in time and bitch-slap younger versions of me.

When people say, ‘be honest’, they only want you to be honest if you are the topic of discussion. If they are, they just want a more convincing lie. Oblige them.

Being caught masturbating, by anyone, is always embarrassing. Who catches you only makes a difference in the degree of embarrassment.

Act like a loser, and they’ll take you at your word. Act like a winner, and they always have a lingering feeling that you’re lying.

However your mother described you, good or bad, she was pretty much lying.

Hitting the Barrel

Sgt. Jo was supposed to be awake. That he wasn’t is understandable, though. It was one in the morning, and the section of the road between Baghdad and TQ that we and the rest of the convoy were on had been clear of violence for a couple of weeks. For security reasons, though, the convoy had to leave Baghdad after ten PM, which meant that everyone had been up all day waiting around for roll-out time to come. The convoy wouldn’t even be getting to Junction City for almost two more hours. So Sgt. Jo, who was the TC, or truck commander, of the LMTV we were in had racked out in the passenger seat. And that was why we hit the 55-gallon drum that was sitting in the middle of the road.

Sgt. Josephson was a sergeant-first-class with the mortar platoon, and was about as laid back as a person can be in a war zone. As an SFC, Sgt. Jo was pretty much golden, being one of the most senior NCOs in our battalion. Only the company First Sergeant and battalion Sergeant-Major out-ranked him. And Sgt. Jo wasn’t about being hoo-ah all the time. On our little post, when the day was over it wasn’t odd to see him walking around in flip-flops, shorts, and a civilian t-shirt. On a lot of post’s in Iraq, that wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary, but we were a short stretch of road outside a very bad town, on a post about the size of two football fields. Everybody was in DCUs all the time for most of the year, except Sgt. Jo, who looked like he was just about to go out to the backyard and fire up the grill. At the same time, he was one of the best NCOs around, only worried about the things that were worth worrying about, and he was almost worshipped by the mortar platoon he led. I have no idea why he was on this particular run, which was an unimportant resupply jump. Hell, he might’ve just wanted to get to a place where they had a PX, a movie theatre, a swimming pool, and decent chow for a couple of days.

So he was assigned to the LMTV I was driving, which was just fine with me. I could have just as easily been trapped with some knucklehead, with whom we were a bit top-heavy on that run. Worse, I could have gotten Lieutenant Nielsson, my platoon leader, who seemed hell-bent on being all of the worst stories about new officers come to life. But I got Sgt. Jo, who only cared that we got to our post in one piece. Which we did, barring a bit of excitement along the way.

Standard procedure was that we were running about a hundred meters behind the vehicle in front of us. That particular night, for reasons that escape me, the convoy was running with headlights on, instead of using night-vision goggles, and I couldn’t really see the vehicle ahead of us very well. The other units in the convoy had obviously avoided the barrel we were coming up on, and no doubt a radio message was passed back that there was an obstruction ahead. Problem with that being that the portable radio in my vehicle was between Sgt. Jo’s feet, and the mic was in his ear, not mine. And, as we were booking along at about fifty MPH, the barrel hove into view only a few seconds before we made contact.

That is actually plenty of time to swerve and avoid something ahead of you, even on a two lane road and in a 17,000 pound truck that steers like a cow. Had it not been for the oncoming car in the second lane, and the ditch, and tree, on the other side, I would have. My reflexes aren’t the best in the world, but vivid stories of explosive-filled drums just like the one ahead of us, left by those up to no good, had been a prominent part of the training for our time in country, along with pictures of the unfortunate vehicles, and their even more unfortunate inhabitants, after hitting such things. This had driven the need for caution and quick thinking home. But at that moment, facing a choice between hitting the barrel, hitting the car, or driving into a deep ditch at high speed, I did the only thing that made sense. I screamed as loud as I could.

Sgt. Jo woke up, quickly figured out what was going on, and joined me in a good, healthy yell. We both braced for impact.

The barrel didn’t explode, and we didn’t die, because the thing had just fallen off the back of a truck, and hadn’t been placed by ne’er-do-wells intent on destruction and mayhem. It did, however, become lodged under the front of the vehicle. Sgt. Jo and I took about a hundred and fifty meters to get ourselves back together, while the drum, stuck fast, scraped along the tarmac, throwing off sparks and a festive orange glow.

“Okay, Lee, okay, okay,” Said Sgt. Jo in an ‘I-coulda-died-but-didn’t’ voice. “Okay, what we gotta do is pull over and, y’know, get the thing out from underneath. Okay? Let’s do that.”

So I pulled over into a conveniently situated lot. We stopped, I threw the truck into reverse, and the barrel reappeared, slightly crumpled, slightly red, and slightly smoking from the friction. Sgt. Jo and I stared at it for a minute. Then, startlingly loud, the radio mic in Sgt. Jo’s hand burst into life. He listened for a moment, the started to giggle.

“Apparently, there’s a barrel in the road.” Sgt. Jo said. “They say we should avoid it.”

Truer Words Were Never Spoken

My father gave me the single best piece of advice that I’ve ever heard. He popped it out about 12, maybe 13 years ago, when I was still living near my parents. I’d come over to do some laundry, and get a free meal, and we started talking about this girl I worked with, who I was kinda into. She was weird. Not legendary weird, no cutting herself to prove her love, or choosing kids names the second time we hung out, but definitely odd. So, I was going on about Weird Girl, when Dad stopped me and, in a world-weary tone, said, “Carter, just keep in mind: They never get less crazy.”

I almost fell over. Damned if I can remember the name of the girl I was talking about, or any other part of the conversation that evening, but those words burned themselves right into my forebrain. They also made me laugh my ass off, but that was just the shock of having raw truth spoken out loud. And from my Dad, no less. To be fair, my father is a really bright, well-read cat, but it was still a trifle unexpected.

Every schoolboy should be given these words, as protection. When the girls get sent to watch the film on their menstrual cycle, the boys should get a lecture with They Never Get Less Crazy as the theme. I might just have a statue made, of my father, with those words inscribed in it.

Because it is absolutely true. However crazy a woman is when you first meet her, that is the best it’s gonna get. Be ready. If a woman tells you, on the first date, that she talks to fairy’s, be prepared to hear a lot about what the fairy’s say for the duration of your relationship. Be prepared to hear their opinions about how both you and she look, where you should go and what you should do there. Get ready to deal with the fact that she’s gonna lend more credence to their opinion than yours. After all, she’s known them longer. And get yourself into the mental space to deal with the repercussions of the fairy’s telling her that they like her better when she doesn’t bathe, and she starts to cover herself in Patchouli Oil, because they like that smell a lot. Otherwise, one day you’re going to wake up next to a ball of human stench, composed of toxic levels of unwashed body funk, not covered but increased by liberal amounts of old and new Patchouli. It’s a smell I used to run across when mingling with Lower East Side ‘artists’ in New York and it cuts into your brain like an ice-pick.

The only thing I’ve ever encountered that was worse was being exposed to CS Gas in Basic Training.

I forgot my father’s advice once. I started dating an ex-crackhead. This was while I was working for the circus, and do I need to explain that I was really horny? Anyway, for some reason, I thought the ‘ex’ part of the phrase ‘ex-crackhead’ was the important part. See, I thought she’d BEEN crazy, and was now OK. Whereas the truth was that she just WAS crazy, and now needed a new expression for it, crack being passé and all. And this new expression emerged in her making out with a mutual friend named Brian. I actually caught them at it. But, being the clever bastard that I am, I decided to not do the soap-opera thing, so I didn’t just leap out and yell, “AHA! J’accuse!” No, I caught her about an hour later and gave her a kiss. Then I looked at her funny, and said, “You taste like Brian!” To which she asked, quite correctly, “How do you know what Brian tastes like?”

Things went downhill from there.

Now, I have to admit, I’ve been the crazy one on occasion. One time in particular, I was walking a girl home from what had been a very nice first date, when she suggested that we do something together the next day. I responded enthusiastically, telling her to meet me by the schoolyard a couple of blocks from her building, at about 1:30pm the next day.

“The schoolyard?” she asked, wrinkling her nose in mock disgust. “Are you a pederast?”

“Of course not,” I was shocked, shocked I say, at the very thought. “That’s just the time of day when the little kids get out for recess.”

“Oh, you like to watch children play?” She was visibly delighted at the thought, perhaps thinking denoted a person of deep sensitivity.

“No, don’t be stupid. I like to watch little kids run around, lose control, and fall over!”

She seemed a bit taken aback, so I tried to explain the pure joy of little kids hitting the ground. I explained how young kids are built like peanuts characters, with their heads being about a quarter of their body weight, and how, when running, their comparatively massive noggins would often get too far ahead of the rest of them. I told her about how you could spot the difference between a child who was just running, and one who was desperately trying to get control of it’s wayward head. I waxed poetic about seeing them hit the dirt like a drunk falling down a flight of stairs, all ass over teakettle, and how sometimes, times I called ‘the jackpot’, one would run into a fence, or a tree, or, best of all, another group of oblivious kids, taking them all down like a wrecking ball into the side of a house.

And she just walked into her building, and wouldn’t speak to me again.

Now I save that for the second date

What's in a Name?

I did a google search on my name today, because I was bored, and narcissistic, and I found out that I’m a lumber company. Yep, Carter Lee Lumber Inc. Either that or I’m being drafted out of Northwestern University to play hockey for the San Jose Sharks. Which is cool, because I didn’t think there was much room in the NHL for a desperately out of shape 34-year-old non-Canadian who can’t skate. At least, that’s what I was told the last time I tried out for the San Jose Sharks. Apparently, they’ve changed their minds.

I told one of my friends about the hockey-playing Carter Lee, and some thoughts I had about cashing in on whatever fame he might earn by signing our mutual name onto things, when she piped up with, “Maybe you should change your name!” To which I responded, “Maybe you should get rid of that giant mustache!” And then she punched me. But that’s beside the point.

I actually thought about it for a minute, after the bleeding stopped, but I couldn’t think of another name I’d really want. I couldn’t think of one that sounded right to me. I mean, there’s always Rock Hardman, but I’m saving that as my porn name, just in case. Nothing else quite worked, Rick, Jimmy, Will, Chauncey, they just didn’t fit. For a couple of minutes, I liked Lance Torso. Y’know, Lance Torso, man of action, ladies man, man’s man’s man, like that. But then it started to sound stupid.

Carter’s my name; it’s what I’m used to. If I suddenly started to call myself Sherman or Doug, I’d forget in a couple of minutes and wonder why everyone was shouting some else’ name at me. Besides, Carter has some history to it. For those who don’t know, Carter is an old English name, and it means ‘A guy who carts things’. It’s a hard name to live up to, if you’re not a truck driver.

A lot of people seem to have trouble with it though. Most people, when I say my name is Carter, hear Curt, and one guy spent a year thinking my name was ‘Curt Early’, instead of ‘Carter Lee’. When I introduce myself as Carter Lee, some people come back with, “Shouldn’t that be Lee Carter?” To which I respond, “Shouldn’t your name be ‘shut your pie-hole’?”

Another thing is, my dad named me Carter. Granted, his is Robert E. Lee, so I could make an argument that he was tired of being the only one in the family with a dopey name, but I prefer to give him more credit than that. My dad’s a good guy, not at all the type to get amusement from mocking a small child, especially his son.

Of course, this all leads to the question of whether or not I’m gonna do the same thing to the kids I might have. What do I name my son? Percy? Judas? Spanky? And with a last name like Lee, all kinds of possibilities open up. Major Lee. Minor Lee. Injudicious Lee. Helpful Lee.

One thing’s for certain, though. Whatever name I do curse my child with, that kid is going to hate my ass.

Happy RamaHanuKwanzaaMas, Suckers

I always felt kind of sad for Santa Claus. Every year, he’s got to visit all the kids in the world, except the godless heathens who will burn in hell, of course, and at each house, Santa was confronted with the same thing. A glass of milk, and a plate of cookies, at every house. Millions of them. Even if he only took one bite, and one sip, that’s still a couple hundred pounds of cookies and gallons of milk. By the end of the night, he can’t be that jolly. The last million or so houses have to be freaking torture for him. Old St. Nick looks like he’s well past the age where lactose intolerance sets in, which means he’s got to be blowing farts that could stun a mule. I bet even the reindeer are bitching about the smell, and you have to be putting out some serious scent to beat reindeer stank. And as for the cookies, well, let’s just say I’m always surprised that some of the bad kids don’t find their stockings filled with something softer and more fragrant than coal, if you get my drift.

Those last half million houses, he’s just got to be grimly slogging through, ticking of how many he has to go in his head, watching the finish line come slowly closer and closer. God help the kid who’s stayed up, and is in the last hundred thousand. One stupid question, and it’s, “Look, just take the goddamn present, kid, or I swear to god I will shove it down your throat. I’m 73,258 houses from being able to go home, I’m holding in a crap that’s twice your size, and I don’t need twenty friggin’ questions, okay?”

The prophet Elijah has to go through something similar. Every year, on Passover, he’s got to visit every Jewish house and share some wine at the Seder. So, some Jews have to be confronted by the sight of a hugely drunk biblical prophet stumbling into their house. Not too steady on his feet, knocking things over, probably still pissed over something someone said 10,000 houses ago, Elijah’s got to be quite the sight. “Yeah, I’m the prophet Elijah, gimme my freakin’ wine. You got a bathroom I can projectile vomit into when I’m done with this glass? People keep putting out this cheap Beaujolais, not proper Passover wine, no…Oh, Jehovah; it’s coming up, out of THE WAY… Bleaaargh…” It can’t be pretty, although I imagine both the children and the more atheistic attendees would get a kick out of it.

The only real question is which one of these thoughts is going to get me sent to hell.

Krazy Kolors!

My Mom sent me a birthday gift, and for the sake of this story, my birthday was, let’s call it, oh, last week. It was a nice pullover fleece, from some hippy company my Mom had found. It was a nice piece of clothing, good cut, maybe a little small, but of course Mom had chosen a shade of blue so gay that Siegfried and Roy would have looked at it and said, “Eh, it’s a little gay.” But that’s not the point.

The point is that, along with the lovely metrosexual garment my mother had chosen, there was included a catalog from the company. Again, nice enough clothes, but the company was one of these places where they can’t just call a red shirt red. It’s gotta be brick, or rust, or blush, or some other goddamn thing. There was one shirt that wasn’t light brown, it was ‘dirt’. Dirt! That is not a descriptive that makes me want to buy a $28 dollar shirt. If I wanted a shirt that would be ‘dirt-colored’, I’d buy a white shirt, and bury it in the back yard for a while. I can understand wanting to appear different, and wanting to captivate the imagination with cool new color names, but you also have to use your freaking heads. The idea here is to come up with new color names that are BETTER than the run of the mill names, right?

I have the feeling that these people were taken in by some nefarious consultant, who just opened a thesaurus and chose synonyms at random. Which I’d love to do, if the chance ever presented itself.

Imagine being in the boardroom with these people, and selling them on the most insane color descriptions you could think of. “Now this bright red here, it’s lovely, we’ve brainstormed, and what really captures the brightness, and redness? ‘Arterial Spray’! And this darker red, it’s for the ladies, so we were thinking ‘Menstrual Flow’ would be perfect! Don’t you just love it?

“Now, for this green, we’re a little torn. It could be ‘Mold’, but then ‘Gangrene’ works equally well. You all kick it around, and let us know, ‘kay? For the two black colors, well, this shiny black can only be ‘Oil Slick’, and this matte black, ‘Frostbite’! Because it’s the same exact shade that people’s fingers and toes and noses turn when they’ve become trapped on Mt. Everest! Really, compare this shirt with these pictures from National Geographic.

“Lastly, this lovely gray-blue color, we were thinking of ‘Dead Baby in a Plastic Bag’! Isn’t that a fabulous?”

It’s been suggested to me that I might have gone a bit far with the last color. Would it make it funnier if I said the dead baby was wearing a clown suit?

So Very, Very Unhealthy

At this point, I’ve just about given up on health, at least as far as worrying about mine. I can be described, in all honesty, as a rather rotund fellow. That’s the source of my street name, ‘Johnny Rotund’. I prefer it to my other street name, ‘Vanilla Pudding’, which I earned because I’m very white, rather sweet, and have an embarrassing tendency to jiggle when I move. Odd thing is, though, I have noticed that many people’s first comment to me after a while out of my presence is that I look like I’ve lost weight. I’ve come to the conclusion that this is because I expand in people’s memories in proportion to the time that has passed since they last saw me. I was out of the country for about 18 months, by which point most people remembered me as being about the size of Marlon Brando.

And I am expanding, but not quite that quickly. Give me another ten years, and I’ll probably be up into Fat Joe territory. Then I’ll die of heart failure, and they’ll burn my body, covering the city with the delicious smell of BBQ. So at least I’ll give something back, in the end. I won’t so much commit suicide as sofa-cide, inflating ‘til I’m at a one ass-cheek to one sofa cushion ratio. Achieving cheek-to-cushion parity, as it were.

I was a big guy before joining the Army, and am a big guy now, but I also managed to be large and in charge during my time of service, which annoyed the hell out of my First Sergeant. I admit it doesn’t make much sense, being overweight in a job where you basically get paid to work out every morning. It takes some effort, I gotta admit. You have to be down at Denny’s every day, finishing off that double cheeseburger and fries, having a slice or two of cheesecake, whether you want to or not. It’s true that choosing to piss off an NCO rather than tending to my long term health might not have been the best choice, but I stand by it. The First Sergeant turned such a charming shade of maroon when he got angry, y’see.

Anyway, I’m done. To hell with it. Every time I run, small children laugh at me, and I cough up something that looks like escargot. So I’m gonna enjoy myself. My new meal plan calls for just one meal a day. When I first started it, the meal was a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, usually New York Super Fudge Chunk, or Chocolate Fudge Brownie. I like fudge a lot. But that proved not quite enough, so now I fry up about a pound of bacon, which I then chop fine and then mix with the ice cream. And just recently, I’ve started deep frying the whole mixture. It’s immense, I tells ya. I can usually get through with the whole thing in two, sometimes three, heart attacks. You should try it.

Giant Milk and Mimes

Work is a necessary evil. I don’t want much out of a job. Just something that will let me pay most of my bills, have a little spending money, and occasionally indulge in various drugs. I’d like a job I can be stoned at, that requires minimal human contact, and even less physical and mental exertion. Basically, the kind of job that they’d give to a chimp, if they could keep it from flinging its own shit around the office. It says something about me that even with such modest expectations, I fail quite badly.

The only consolation is that I’ve actually done worse than I’m doing now. When I was 29, I was living in New York, and working as a delivery boy. Just about 30 and my job title had the word ‘boy’ in it. That it was appropriate is beside the point. Best of all, when there wasn’t anything to be delivered at the shop, they’d send me out to hand out flyers. And a soul-destroying little errand it was, too. There’s nothing like getting the fish-eye from a couple hundred people coming out of a subway to really let you know what an inflamed boil on the buttocks of life you are. Daily, I would ask myself, ‘What is happening in my life that I’m a delivery boy at my age?’ Then I’d remember that nothing was happening in my life, and that’s why I was a delivery boy. Silly me, I kept forgetting.

One day, as I was wallowing in such thoughts while out on a delivery, some celestial power decided to show me how much worse it could be.

I was up on 23rd by the Flatiron Bldg. when I saw three guys. Each was handing out flyers for a bank, and each was on a different corner of the intersection. Thing was, one of the guys was dressed up as a giant carton of milk, another was a huge box of Chinese food complete with chopsticks, and the third was the worlds most Grande Latte. Suddenly, my job wasn’t that bad. Don’t get me wrong, humping papers all over lower Manhattan sucked royally, I got paid shit an hour, and I’d been forced to hand out flyers myself, but at least all of this could be done while dressed in my own clothes, and not tarted up as a random foodstuff.

What really drove it home, though, was running into yet another guy in a dignity-sapping costume not half a block beyond where the Trio of Mighty Foods was plying their trade. This guy was surrounded by five or six people dressed in khakis and blue button down shirts, which made his get-up even more odd. Apparently, all of them were working for some kind of nasal spray company, as the cat in question was kitted out as a giant nose. Huge pink-skinned nose, with feet in flesh colored tights coming out the nostrils, and a little mesh view window at about eye level.

The sun came out from behind the clouds, I remembered it was payday, and I walked through the rest of my shift with a spring in my step and a delighted glint in my eye.

I told the people at the shop what I’d seen, and Mike, a pal o’ mine, said he’d run into the Demented Comestible Triad himself a few days before, and had almost started a fight with the milk carton. Mike said Mr. Milk wouldn’t get out of his way unless he accepted a bank flyer. So Mike had poked the guy a couple of times, and Milk had yelled, “Hey, man! Don’t touch the costume!” Now, Mike was an angry young man, and not at all accustomed to taking shit from dairy products, however outsized, so he was more than ready to get into it. Not that smacking this guy around would have been that hard. He was in a giant milk carton, for god’s sake. You’d just have to knock him onto his back like a turtle, and the kick away to your heart’s content.

Anyway, Mike claimed that at this point, Sr. Leche had backed off. Personally, I think the Chinese Food and the Grande Latte had moved in to back up their embattled compadre, and Mike had faded into the crowd. Which I can understand, because this all took place outside Penn Station, and I think you can safely assume that any food hanging about on that block have gone bad. I mean, Milk gets nasty when it goes off, and Chinese is even worse. The Grande Latte is really the weak sister of the three, but all of them together could do you some real damage, you know?

I can understand how the Bad Food Group would be angry. That has to be a crappy day, running around like that. The one I really worry about is the nose, though. That guy must have drunk himself into a coma every night. I can see him, sitting in the crappy apartment his meager wages afforded, sitting on the edge of a nasty unmade bed, still wearing the flesh colored tights and cradling a bottle of cheap gin, glassy eyed, whispering over and over again, “I didn’t go to mime school for this, I didn’t go to mime school for this, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be…”

I have no doubt he shot himself. Just climbed all the way into the giant nose, curled up into a fetal ball with the muzzle tucked under his chin, giving a little squeeze and making it all go away. The cops would have found him a couple of weeks later, when the neighbors complained of the smell. They’d have made a couple of bloody nose jokes, then sent the headless body out to a lonely grave in a potter’s field, to be buried under a stone reading, ‘Here Lies a Failed Mime.’ Yes, I know it’s redundant, but what the hell, the guy’s dead.

The nasal spray company would have gotten there costume back, and would have scraped out all the little bits of brain, and sewed up the little hole the bullet made, and then stuff some other hopeless loser into it. And the cat running the show must have turned to his assistant and said, “Don’t let ‘em take home the costume anymore. Finding a fresh mime is easy, but these cleaning bills are killing the profit margin.”

The Philosophy of Least Resistance

My philosophy is simple: Never run when you can walk. Never walk when you can stand. Never stand when you can sit. Never sit when you can lie down. Never be awake when you can be asleep. Never be alive when you can be dead. I think of it as ‘The Philosophy of Least Resistance.’ It’s a philosophy designed for people who have no real ambition, and don’t want to work very hard.

Now, I have had people say that I’m a hypocrite because I say, ‘Never be alive when you can be dead’, and yet here I am, still walking to and fro upon the earth. I’ve been told that if I was serious, I would go ahead and kill myself. But these people don’t really understand the central concept of my philosophy. Everyone’s going to die. It’s a given. This being true, why would I go out of my way to make sure I’ll die at a particular time? Why deprive myself of the surprise party aspect of having death spring out at me on its own? And killing yourself is a lot of work, compared to simply waiting for death. You have to decide how you’re going to go about it, you have to prepare, you have to choose a time and place, you have to write a letter (because killing yourself without any explanation is just rude), and you have to work up the intestinal fortitude to actually go through with it, which is a lot harder than people think. It’s like working really hard to get a cake today, when you know full well you’re going to get a cake for free tomorrow. Believe me, the last thing I need is more cake.

Most people form their personal philosophy by thinking about who they’d like to be, and then thinking up guidelines that will lead them in that direction. I took a long, hard look at myself, and set rules that went with my natural proclivities. I am, first and foremost, a lazy, lazy man. I’ve lived the life of a man who really doesn’t want to get about bed. I do possess an amount of natural intelligence, a certain sense of humor, some insight, and a bit of charm. I lack, completely, the will and desire to make anything at all of these gifts. I’ve been told I’m wasting myself, but I’m simply following my true nature. I’m no genius, no Nicola Tesla, I’m not burning with the fires of artistic creation, there’s no Leonardo DaVinci inside me waiting to burst forth at the proper stimulus. I am the human equivalent of a worker drone. I want to get by with a minimum of personal discomfort. And there are no classical philosophies for a guy like me.

Most philosophies try to be blueprints whereby the dedicated follower can achieve some kind of transcendence. I believe that most people simply don’t have the mental and spiritual reserves necessary to follow through with most of these creeds. Joe Six-Pack on the C-train doesn’t want to spend his life in a monastery searching for Nirvana. He wants to have a beer and watch the game in peace. So why don’t we have a doctrine that will help this guy be the best slob he can be? Why isn’t there a set of beliefs that will teach him to not just drink his beer, but to drink the hell out of it? And teach him to watch the game with all of his being?

I’ve had a lot of time to consider the various aspects of my philosophy, to ponder the various ramifications of it. That is, I spend a lot of my time alone. I travel in a large crowd of one. I am my own most frequent dining and sexual companion, and I spend a lot of time in my room, thinking. To an outsider, this time of deep contemplation would appear to just be me playing Dead Rising on my X-Box, but they would be mistaken. It’s deep, deep thought. The X-Box is just a way of disconnecting my everyday mind, so as to allow my inner being to commune with eternity. Never underestimate the metaphysical uses of an X-Box.

One of the most important aspects of ‘The Philosophy of Least Resistance’ is that of low expectations. Again, most people will tell you that you need to have high expectations, that you need to reach ever further for true fulfillment. And that’s a good idea, if you’re going somewhere. If you’re like me, and you’re on a long boat ride to nowhere, that will end only in death, expecting a lot is just setting yourself up for a fall. It’s said that you get nothing out of expecting very little, that you’re disappointing yourself in advance of actual events. I say that the positive returns are two-fold.

One, when you don’t expect a lot, it’s very hard to be disappointed. Doesn’t mean that life won’t disappoint, just that it has to work a lot harder to do so. Bad stuff will happen, and you’re not surprised, because you weren’t expecting anything else. If I’d been in the World Trade Center that fateful Tuesday, and I’d seen the plane headed for my tower, I’d have thought, “Isn’t that always the way? Get a good job in a major financial center, and here comes a plane.”

Conversely, low expectations mean that when things do go right, you are thrilled. It’s more than you expected, which is almost the definition of happiness. It’s really easy to be happy, because everything is better than you thought. A good pot of Ramen noodles can send you into transports of joy. You’re in ecstasy when the train comes on time. Orgasms take on a whole new dimension of good. Being able to pay your bills on time, just making rent, becomes transcendental bliss.

This is why I feel that ‘The Philosophy of Least Resistance’ is truly the best path for me. It allows me to continue being who I am, and still be able to have joy. Under any other school of thought, I’d have to hate myself. I’d have to be trying to eat better and lose weight, to get a better job, find a soul mate, or at least get laid. I’d have to search life for deeper meaning. In short, I’d be expected to be everything I’m not. I couldn’t sit happily in my underwear and eat chicken wings. I couldn’t be happy in my apartment, which is so messy that, even though it’s on the third storey of my building, it has a dirt floor. I’d want a better haircut and new clothes. I’d have to want contact with other people. I’d have to care about things I’d rather not give a rat’s ass about. All of which is stuff I’ve spent my entire life avoiding. I want to be high and goofy most of the time. And I want not to care.

Sure, I know what you’re thinking. I’m gonna die old and aloe. I’ll probably be covered in my own filth when it happens. I’ll wallow in a richly deserved obscurity in life, and be quickly forgotten in death. My life won’t have had much meaning, even to me, and I’ll have added very little to the store of human knowledge and experience. Hell, I might have even managed to subtract a little from it. I’ll have lived a bad life. But I will have managed to find a modicum of personal happiness, and, most importantly, I won’t have worked hard to do it.

Johnny Magic Pants and the Crabs of Doom

I was on the internet last night, looking for porn, I’m not gonna lie. I was on Yahoo, ‘cause the porn’s free there, which is important to me. Yes, I like porn, and I’m cheap…Laaaadies! I found a group called ‘Big Tits and High Heels’, and I figured, ‘great, I can roll with that’, so I tried to sign up. But I noticed something weird. Well, two weird things, actually. The first was that the moderator's screen name was ‘Johnny Magic Pants’. Johnny…Magic Pants. On the one hand, I kinda had to give him credit for confidence, y’know, throwing his best trait right out there, but on the other hand…What? Johnny Magic Pants? Really? It’s hard to take a guy called Johnny Magic Pants seriously. If you want to be taken seriously, you gotta be called something like…Doctor Magic Pants. Professor Magic Pants. Maybe Captain Magic Pants. Monsignor Magic Pants would fit right in with today's modern church.

Then I thought how cool it would be if that were his real name. Like he was the only son of Mr. & Mrs. Bert Magic Pants, of Wichita. “The Magic Pants name goes back a long way here in Kansas. They used to have a family business, gave Levi’s quite a run for their money, back in the day. They had a saying, ‘They’re not real pants if they’re not Magic Pants.’, and ‘You can’t go wrong with a pair of Magic Pants.’” Or maybe it’s a title, like he won the ‘Johnny Magic Pants 2006’ contest. In which case, good on him, ‘cause really, guys, who amongst us hasn’t dreamed of being Johnny Magic Pants? What guy would turn that down? I’d take that, no doubt. Carter ‘Johnny Magic Pants’ Lee. That would look great on business cards.

It could work as a set of children’s stories, too. ‘Johnny Magic Pants and the Land of the Golden Vibrator.’; ‘Johnny Magic Pants Races the Devil, into the Crack of a Young Girls Ass.’; ‘Johnny Magic Pants goes Round the World, and gets Syphilis.’ It’d be glorious.

But what annoyed me was that Mr. Magic Pants, in his capacity as moderator of Yahoo club ‘Big Tits and High Heels’, had seen fit to make joining his little club contingent upon my writing an essay of not more than two hundred words explaining, and I quote, ‘Why you want to join the ‘Big Tits and High Heels’ community, and what would make you a valued member of said community.” To which I again responded, “What? Seriously?” The group’s called ‘Big Tits and High Heels’! I’m joining to discuss the various nominees for the post of Belgian Economic Minister, obviously. No, wait, it’s because you have free porn! And what’s all this about being a member of a community? Unless it’s a woman, who has big tits and is wearing high heels, I have no interest in meeting anyone else who frequents this site. If you’re looking for ‘community’, you know what you do? You go outside! And the very idea that Johnny Magic Pants feels like he’s setting a little online mutual support group, using the common ground of enjoying large breasted women in stilettos, makes me afraid. And a little sad. And I know sad. I mean, I'm pretty sad myself. Sad, sad, sad.

I’m joking, of course. Women love me. C’mon, I wear crappy clothes, I got a gut, a double chin, glasses, and, best of all, thinning and receding hair; so what’s not to like? I have to beat women off with a stick. Mostly because they won’t let me touch them with my hands. It takes a strong wrist, and good hand to eye coordination, believe you me. “Hold on…hold on…almost…there, no wait…I’m trying! You could help a little, you know. Spread that apart, at least. There! See how easy it is when we work together? Right, sorry, no talking now…”

Dumb Guys in the Army

I recently left the Army, after serving for a couple of years as an Infantryman. I was looking into staying enlisted, doing something other than being in the Infantry, but was told that the Army didn’t really need rodeo clowns. Whatever, their loss.

I have a lot of good memories of the Army. Most of them involve the fine people I was honored to serve with, and the sense of joy that accompanied special moments ranging from my graduation from Basic Training, to enjoying steaks cooked by Sgt. Gibbs during long summer evenings in Iraq, to the indescribable feeling of returning home with all of my limbs and most of my sanity intact. I wouldn’t trade any of these memories, not for anything man can offer.

And mixed in are a couple of stories about some profoundly stupid people. These are the three dopiest cats I recall from my time in service. They all occurred after we’d returned to the States, and all names have been changed.

Our first subject is a young man named Maki. Maki was pulled over at one of the entrance gates to our post, for the simple reason that he was drunk, and driving a car. After the MP’s gave him the sobriety tests, to confirm that Maki was actually drunk, and hadn’t simply been bathing in gin earlier that evening, they took a look into his car, and found that he was in possession of a loaded .45 automatic. When Maki was asked why he was trying to bring a large, unlicensed hogleg on post, he replied, “I’m gonna go and clean out the barracks.” He was promptly arrested, which, I hear, surprised him a bit. Not being the swiftest monkey in the jungle, it hadn’t occurred to Maki that being quite drunk, carrying an illegal firearm, and confessing an intent to commit multiple homicide were things that the MP’s might take an interest in. He was wrong.

Second out of the gate, we have Private Dyke. Dyke, having already screwed up in a manner unknown to me, had been moved from his barracks room into the ‘fuck-up room’, where various and sundry idiots were placed so as to be under the bored eye of the sergeant who had the daily Charge of Quarters. One day, Sgt. Burr, who was on CQ, stepped into the hallway between the CQ lounge and the ‘fuck-up room’ to find Dyke coming the other way.

“Hey, Sergeant,” Dyke said, stopping Sgt. Burr, then glancing around in a manner most shifty, “We cool?”

“Sure, Dyke, we cool”, replied the sergeant.

“Good, man, good.” At this, Dyke pulled out a plastic pen, broke it open, and proceeded to stuff in, and light, a rock of crack.

Sgt. Burr, while discussing this incident later, had confessed to being so shocked by the sight of Dyke’s action that he’d actually experienced the same feeling of unreality that had overcome him just after being shot in the leg in Iraq.

Last, I bring to your attention to Pfc. Milo. Milo, who had had his weapon taken away while in Iraq, after accidentally firing three rounds from said weapon into a fire that his squad was sitting around one evening, wasn’t actually stupid. His head just... wasn’t hooked up quite right. He’d come close to clear thinking, and then just get lost. Sometimes very, very lost.

Just before going to jail, he described to me and our mutual friend Houser what had gotten him into trouble. Apparently, he and a young lady of his acquaintance had spent a nice evening together. They had seen a movie, had dinner, and then gone back to her apartment, where they had ended up in bed together. It had gone wrong when Milo, and I swear I am quoting this verbatim, “started fingering her down there, and then she woke up and got all pissed off.” Yeah, Milo, bitches'll do that.

My word.

Getting old

My parents came out from Florida to visit me a little while ago, and a good time was had by all, but my Mom did something that got me thinking. My Dad is 72 years old, and my Mom saw fit to give him some shit about what he’d ordered in a restaurant one night. Y’know, “Bob, you don’t need any red meat!”, that kinda thing. I don’t think I’m gonna live that long, but if I make it to my seventies, I figure all bets are off. No more worries about trying to live longer, because by that age, every time you get into a car, you have to be seeing the Grim Reaper in the back seat, twiddling his bony thumbs, sharpening his scythe, just waiting. “Yes, you have time to go into Wal-Mart, but I shouldn’t dawdle, if I were you.”

At that age, ther should be no more worrying about consequences. At 70, I’m gonna be living on fried chicken skin, and cigars, and Mad Dog 20/20, y’know? I might even pick up a soothing heroin habit, just for the hell of it. And, assuming I haven’t been blindsided by Alzheimer’s, I am gonna mess with everyone! I'll do and say whatever I want to anyone. Anytime I catch a kid playing in my yard, I’m not gonna yell, I’m just gonna run out and hit him in the head with a shovel. And when the cops ask me why, I’m just gonna say, “I thought he was a squirrel.”

I’m gonna go to a store and call over people to help me, and when they come, I'll say, “This isn’t my underwear!”

“Sir, this is a Blockbuster’s, so…we’re not really, well, set up to help you find your, y’know, underwear.”

“But I told you, this isn’t my underwear!”

“Well, how can I help you with that, sir?”

“I want you to admit that this isn’t my underwear!”

“You’re absolutely right, sir. That isn’t your underwear.”

“Thank you…” and then I’ll just wander off, muttering quietly. And the guy will spend the rest of the day going, “You ain’t gonna believe what this old guy did today…”

I’m also gonna take a couple of Viagra and wander around the mall, smiling at all the ladies. “Hello, young woman! Isn’t a lovely day? Makes me feel 65 again!” I’m gonna hand out little tubes of Preparation H at Halloween, and call the cops to complain that my neighbors tree is dropping leaves in my yard, and drive 30 in the fast lane with my left turn signal on, and pull my pants up to my nipples. I’m gonna sit on my front porch, drinking and reading ‘Juggs’ in an undershirt at 10:30 in the morning. If I can work it, I’m gonna live with one of my kids, and corrupt a grandchild. “Quick, kid, while you mother’s busy, take a sip of this Rye. It’ll make a man out of you. What’s your name again? Sally? What the hell kinda fag name is that for a boy?”

Even when this stuff catches up to me, and I get put away, the fun will continue. “Nurse, my diaper seems to have reached capacity. Could you clean me please?” Of course, it’ll end with one of the nurses smothering me with a pillow after I grab her ass for the 500th time, but it’ll be worth it. Yes, it will.