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.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Sunday, November 26, 2006
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.
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.
Friday, November 24, 2006
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.
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.
Monday, November 20, 2006
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.
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.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
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.”
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.”
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
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
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
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
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.
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.
Monday, November 13, 2006
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.
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.
Friday, November 10, 2006
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?
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?
Thursday, November 09, 2006
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
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 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.”
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
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.
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.
Monday, November 06, 2006
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…”
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…”
Sunday, November 05, 2006
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.
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.
Saturday, November 04, 2006
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.
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.
Friday, November 03, 2006
Fun with Roadside Explosives
The thing about having a bomb go off next to your vehicle is that it makes it hard to ignore that someone’s trying really hard to kill you. Allow me to explain. I was in the Army, in Iraq, and my platoon had to run security for convoys that would run from our post to a resupply post about fifteen miles away. Now, I know fifteen miles doesn’t sound like a long way, but you have to consider that this particular road was either the second or third most dangerous road in the country, depending on what had blown up in Baghdad that day. Anyway, we’re tooling along one day, headed for the resupply post, when an IED, which means Improvised Explosive Device, goes off, honest to god, about seven feet from the truck. I’m driving a Humm-V, which has quite a bit of armor on it, thank god. If you ever have to run through an explosion, try to be in one of these babies. They are not fucking around when they throw this armor on there, really.
Anyway, bomb goes off, and I can’t see anything, as there’s dust everywhere, inside and outside. As I recall, my exact thought at that moment was a very cogent, “AHHHHHHHHH! Holy Shit! AHHHHHHHHHHH! I’m gonna DIE!” Not very constructive, perhaps, but I think it was a wholly reasonable response. Since I can’t see where I’m going, the Humm-V kinda drifts itself into the median of the road, and when I can see again, I stop the truck. I shouldn’t have, we should have gotten the fuck out of there, since the truck was fine to run, but again: just been blown up, not really thinking straight. The truck comes to a stop, and I’m just together enough to remember our lieutenant saying that if you stop, you have to get out and set up security. So I grab my M-4, my weapon, and jump out of the truck. And it is HOT. It’s February, but in Iraq, that just means at midday it only gets up to 105 degrees, instead of 120, and I’m wearing my helmet and my body armor, so I’m basically wearing a portable kiln. I jump out, and as soon as I get clear of the truck, the truck starts to roll away.
Y’see, in my haste to do exactly the wrong thing, I had forgotten to both put on the parking brake, and to take the truck out of gear. So I get out, ready to G.I. Joe it up, and the truck starts rolling. I hear Sgt. Simmons, who was in the passenger seat, yell, and “Get the god damn truck!”
So now, mere moments after being bombed, for Christ sake, wearing body armor and a helmet, and carrying my M-4, I am running down a street in Iraq, in 105 degree heat, trying to catch a runaway Humm-V. Apparently, it had decided, ‘Fuck this shit, I’m going to Syria.’ And I recall, very clearly, thinking, “This is not what I pictured happening, when I joined the Army.” I doubt it's what the army pictured, either. In my defense, I did manage to catch up and jump back in pretty quickly. We then left, with a quickness.
My truck had a medium machine gun on the roof, and when I talked to the gunner later, he said that when the truck stopped, and then just started rolling slowly, he thought, “Well, Lee’s dead.” Then he saw me running alongside the slow moving truck, and started to laugh his ass off.
I almost shit myself, when the bomb first went off. I have no problem admitting that, whatsoever. Luckily, I was apparently scared shitless. I think that if you have a bomb go off near you, and you aren’t scared, you got problems. You do not fully understand what has just occurred. I had a friend try to say that he wouldn’t have been freaked out, had he been in my shoes. And I asked him what, in his vast record store clerk experience, would have caused him to be so nonchalant. He said, “I just don’t get stressed, a'right?” And I was forced to respond, “You're full of crap. I know you. If a bomb went of right now, not only would you shit yourself, and not only would you shit a brick, you would, in fact, shoot out a fully formed, fifty pound, solid brass cinderblock, and you would eject it at a velocity that would allow it to kill a fully grown, charging wildebeest. That, you would do. No doubt at all.”
And he said, “Whatever.”
Anyway, bomb goes off, and I can’t see anything, as there’s dust everywhere, inside and outside. As I recall, my exact thought at that moment was a very cogent, “AHHHHHHHHH! Holy Shit! AHHHHHHHHHHH! I’m gonna DIE!” Not very constructive, perhaps, but I think it was a wholly reasonable response. Since I can’t see where I’m going, the Humm-V kinda drifts itself into the median of the road, and when I can see again, I stop the truck. I shouldn’t have, we should have gotten the fuck out of there, since the truck was fine to run, but again: just been blown up, not really thinking straight. The truck comes to a stop, and I’m just together enough to remember our lieutenant saying that if you stop, you have to get out and set up security. So I grab my M-4, my weapon, and jump out of the truck. And it is HOT. It’s February, but in Iraq, that just means at midday it only gets up to 105 degrees, instead of 120, and I’m wearing my helmet and my body armor, so I’m basically wearing a portable kiln. I jump out, and as soon as I get clear of the truck, the truck starts to roll away.
Y’see, in my haste to do exactly the wrong thing, I had forgotten to both put on the parking brake, and to take the truck out of gear. So I get out, ready to G.I. Joe it up, and the truck starts rolling. I hear Sgt. Simmons, who was in the passenger seat, yell, and “Get the god damn truck!”
So now, mere moments after being bombed, for Christ sake, wearing body armor and a helmet, and carrying my M-4, I am running down a street in Iraq, in 105 degree heat, trying to catch a runaway Humm-V. Apparently, it had decided, ‘Fuck this shit, I’m going to Syria.’ And I recall, very clearly, thinking, “This is not what I pictured happening, when I joined the Army.” I doubt it's what the army pictured, either. In my defense, I did manage to catch up and jump back in pretty quickly. We then left, with a quickness.
My truck had a medium machine gun on the roof, and when I talked to the gunner later, he said that when the truck stopped, and then just started rolling slowly, he thought, “Well, Lee’s dead.” Then he saw me running alongside the slow moving truck, and started to laugh his ass off.
I almost shit myself, when the bomb first went off. I have no problem admitting that, whatsoever. Luckily, I was apparently scared shitless. I think that if you have a bomb go off near you, and you aren’t scared, you got problems. You do not fully understand what has just occurred. I had a friend try to say that he wouldn’t have been freaked out, had he been in my shoes. And I asked him what, in his vast record store clerk experience, would have caused him to be so nonchalant. He said, “I just don’t get stressed, a'right?” And I was forced to respond, “You're full of crap. I know you. If a bomb went of right now, not only would you shit yourself, and not only would you shit a brick, you would, in fact, shoot out a fully formed, fifty pound, solid brass cinderblock, and you would eject it at a velocity that would allow it to kill a fully grown, charging wildebeest. That, you would do. No doubt at all.”
And he said, “Whatever.”
Thursday, November 02, 2006
George, John, and Adolph
I had an odd experience last week. I’ve just moved to Denver, and I spent the first couple of days here just wandering around at random. No plan, just a few days of driving around, turning left and right pretty much at random. And I came upon one of the weirdest things I’ve ever just randomly tripped across. Somewhere around the 16th St. Mall, I spotted this art gallery that had a very large painting in the window. The thing was about five feet tall and a couple of feet wide, and it was a portrait of George Washington. He’s in full federalist-era get up, with the knee breeches and powdered wig and everything. George also had a halo, which was colored blue, and was the seal of the president of the U.S. But where it gets interesting, and a little weird, is that in one hand, George was holding the severed head of Adolph Hitler, and in the other, the head of Josef Stalin. I’m pretty sure it was Stalin. Could have been Saddam Hussein, because it had a big mustache, and the two guys look a little bit alike.
I was amazed, and thrilled, and a little bit hungry, but I think that was just because I hadn’t had lunch yet, not because random human heads make me hungry. It was just such a freaking weird thing to come upon out of the blue, y’know? And I didn’t go in and ask the people inside what was up with it. Which I’m sad about, because now I can’t find the place. It has vanished, poof, gone. I spent an hour last week wandering around the area I think it was, and saw nothing that even slightly resembled it. The only thing I have to prove it wasn’t some kind of fever dream is a bad picture I took with my phone. That is a very odd thing to say out loud. Can you imagine saying that to someone from even five years ago? “I took a picture with my phone!” “I don’t think you understand how a phone works…”
What would have made the painting even neater, for me, is if George had been a zombie. That would have been great! Zombie Washington, rising from the grave to dig up the noggins of various enemies of America, and eat them! What’s cooler than that? My dad used to tell us that story every President's Day.
“Errr, Zombie Washington savored the delicate bouquet of Hitler’s braaaaaain! Zombie Washington is going to take Stalin’s head to the zombie poker game he has every Tuesday with Zombie Lincoln, Zombie Coolidge, and Zombie Nixon. Zombie Nixon’s a cheater! A fucking cheeeeeeeeater! Zombie Washington can’t wait ‘til the reanimated corpse of Clinton joins the game, because maybe then we’ll get some chicks! It’s been a zombie sausage party for too long! Tooooooooo looooooooong! Raaaaaaaaahrrrrrrrrr!”
Sometimes I worry about my brain.
I was a little worried about talking about this here, because this is supposed to be a family show, but then I remembered that mucking about with severed heads is actually quite biblical. Anybody know the story of John the Baptist? If you don’t know the story, Salome danced so well that King Herod gave her the head of John the Baptist. So, basically, John’s head was first prize in a dance contest. Which makes me wonder if Salome knew that was the prize before she started. Was she rubbing her hands, thinking, ‘I’m gonna get me a human noggin to take home tonight! Oh, yeah…” Or was it like, “Well done, young lady, and here’s your prize!” “Oh! How…nice. Really. Wonderful.” Granted, the head did come on a sliver platter, which is a bit disturbing in itself, but that means they didn’t just toss it her, at least. “Think fast!”
What could she have done with it? I mean, this was back in the day, in the Middle East, when you couldn’t even preserve the stuff you wanted to eat, and, suddenly, here’s ten pounds of random cranium. Sure, today you could do something with it, maybe freeze dry it, possibly encase it in Lucite, and put it on the mantel. Maybe Salome took it home and invented bowling. Who knows?
I was amazed, and thrilled, and a little bit hungry, but I think that was just because I hadn’t had lunch yet, not because random human heads make me hungry. It was just such a freaking weird thing to come upon out of the blue, y’know? And I didn’t go in and ask the people inside what was up with it. Which I’m sad about, because now I can’t find the place. It has vanished, poof, gone. I spent an hour last week wandering around the area I think it was, and saw nothing that even slightly resembled it. The only thing I have to prove it wasn’t some kind of fever dream is a bad picture I took with my phone. That is a very odd thing to say out loud. Can you imagine saying that to someone from even five years ago? “I took a picture with my phone!” “I don’t think you understand how a phone works…”
What would have made the painting even neater, for me, is if George had been a zombie. That would have been great! Zombie Washington, rising from the grave to dig up the noggins of various enemies of America, and eat them! What’s cooler than that? My dad used to tell us that story every President's Day.
“Errr, Zombie Washington savored the delicate bouquet of Hitler’s braaaaaain! Zombie Washington is going to take Stalin’s head to the zombie poker game he has every Tuesday with Zombie Lincoln, Zombie Coolidge, and Zombie Nixon. Zombie Nixon’s a cheater! A fucking cheeeeeeeeater! Zombie Washington can’t wait ‘til the reanimated corpse of Clinton joins the game, because maybe then we’ll get some chicks! It’s been a zombie sausage party for too long! Tooooooooo looooooooong! Raaaaaaaaahrrrrrrrrr!”
Sometimes I worry about my brain.
I was a little worried about talking about this here, because this is supposed to be a family show, but then I remembered that mucking about with severed heads is actually quite biblical. Anybody know the story of John the Baptist? If you don’t know the story, Salome danced so well that King Herod gave her the head of John the Baptist. So, basically, John’s head was first prize in a dance contest. Which makes me wonder if Salome knew that was the prize before she started. Was she rubbing her hands, thinking, ‘I’m gonna get me a human noggin to take home tonight! Oh, yeah…” Or was it like, “Well done, young lady, and here’s your prize!” “Oh! How…nice. Really. Wonderful.” Granted, the head did come on a sliver platter, which is a bit disturbing in itself, but that means they didn’t just toss it her, at least. “Think fast!”
What could she have done with it? I mean, this was back in the day, in the Middle East, when you couldn’t even preserve the stuff you wanted to eat, and, suddenly, here’s ten pounds of random cranium. Sure, today you could do something with it, maybe freeze dry it, possibly encase it in Lucite, and put it on the mantel. Maybe Salome took it home and invented bowling. Who knows?
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