Oh My Lot!

Mouse Guest (part 2)

2008-10-15T13:37:00.010-05:00

I was belly-down, ass-up on the bathroom floor, sliding the Wet-Jet back-and-forth under the sink in my underwear.

“Who… let… the… mouse… in…?”

Wifey needed to know.

“Who… let… –“

Each word had a 10 second pause between it.

“... it… in…?”

He let himself in!

“Not sure. Could have got in anywhere?”

“Are… there… rat… turds… all… over… the… place?”

Oh, my GOD! For the Sweet Snoring Melodies of Sonos… wake up if you’re going to have this conversation with me…

I’m having a conversation with a coma.
“No.”

“No… what?”

“No there aren’t rat turds all over the place.”

“Are… you… sure?”

“No.”

No. I wasn’t sure there weren’t turds all over the place. Not ALL over the place, at least. I hadn't checked for turds, yet. I was still trying to catch the fucking mouse with the Swifter Wet-Jet.

But, if you have to know…, “There is a small stack of them dead center of living room.”

“OHMYGOD!!! Clean it up! Mice are filthy! Their shits carry disease.”

Her house is suddenly dirty... so... now... she’s awake.

Officially.

My house was falling apart. Imploding into convex vortex of micro-mouse-feces that were hilled up on the living room rug.

The dog was no help. My, usually delightful, lady was up in flames over the possible pestilence scattered across the floor. And I had to figure out a way to excise the remnants of my mus musculus from the carpet.

“I'll vacuum them in a second!”

“NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“No?!?”

“Not with the Dyson,” she panicked from deep against her pillow.

“Then with what shall I suck up the shits?”

A straw?!?

“Please, don't use the Dustbuster. I clean the beds with that.”

“Okay…?”

“And , please, don’t use the Swivel Sweeper... please... don't...”

Okay. First of all, why are there this many fucking vacuum cleaners in my house?!?

“You determine which sucking machine I’m supposed to eat these shits up with, meanwhile, please, keep it down. I’m trying to coax this fucking mouse out from under the sink so I can kill it.”

With the Wet-Jet.

Which she didn't know I was using and as long as she didn't, I knew I was going to be okay.

“Kill what,” it was Tiny. All groggy… and awake, "Daddy's killing something."

Great. Now she thinks I kill shit while she's sleeping.

“It's a mouse.”

“A real one?”

No, a fucking robotic mouse. I invent rodents while the rest of you sleep?

“Yes. It’s real, baby. Go back to sleep.”

“Not alone with a mouse running around. No way!” talking all like Shirley Temple before the big dance routine.

“I don’t want him in the house at all,” Wifey echoed.

The girls were clearly bothered that there was this “thing” amok.

Wifey ping-ponged between me and the melatonus mutt on the hypo-allergenic pillow, “Who found him? The dog?”

I unfurled and flicked my index in “the dog’s” direction, “Him?”

No.

Definitely not.

He was R.E.M.ed, dreaming up a snore storm and kicking his sleeping legs like he was running through a field. A field of mice, I hope. You deserve nightmares tonight.

Pussy.

“A mouse? I don’t want a mouse in my room.”

Then Wifey appeared. Bathrobed and agenda’d: “Howdidhegetin?Weneedtocovereverythinginthecabinates.He’sinherebecausetheres
toomuchshitinthedrawers.AndTinyeatsinherroomandtherearecrumbs.
Doyouthinkwehavemoreorisitjusttheone?”

She panicked in no spaces. No periods. Then, finished up in a, “And he’s probably shitting everywhere.”

“Ew…”

Thanks, Tiny.

“And Daddy’s trying to get him with the Wet-Jet.”

And thanks for NOTHING, Tiny.

“Not my Wet-Jet!”

Wifey’s tools are important to her. Way important. Even when they don’t work. She’s a package buyer. If the box says it will work, she’ll buy it. But the truth is, this Swifter Wet-Jet is so shitty, I can’t even whack the mouse with it.

“I can’t find him. I can’t find him.”

“So,” Wifey looked at me for answers, “What are we supposed to do?”

“I dunno. Never caught a mouse before. I’ll do some research and figure out how to get rid of him…”

Him?

Hmm…

Nope.

As it turns out, my research showed if I got one… I got many…

Many…

Many?

“We got more than one, guys.”

“Dad, can I sleep with you guys tonight?”

“Yeah.”

And like the least brave family OF ALL TIME, we huddled together in the pine sleigh bed… with the dog at the foot of it all, protecting us from our feet… because the mice were clearly out of the protection question.

To Be Continued…

Mouse Guest (part 1)

2008-09-22T13:02:00.021-05:00

The girls went to bed early.

10-ish.

So, I was alone in front of the cable with my trusty mutt curled up under the crook of my ass and back-knee. Both us sitting on the couch, pals, enjoying some “man’s bestest” time.

Then, through a hazed glaze of 2 Rolling Rocks and six laps around the cable box, a scurry. A full-on scurry. Behind the Payless shoe box next to the front door.

“Cee,” I nudged the pooch, “Did you just see something over there?”

He just let out a sleepy woof and nuzzled back into my left ass cheek.

Hmm. I think that was a little mouse.

Shit!

Now, I don’t fancy myself much of a siss, but I was certainly uneasy with the whole concept that an outdoor creature was now indoors… in my doors and pooping little mouse craps on my rug. So, I waited, glue-eyed, to the Payless shoe box sitting by the front door.

His little grey head peeked out from the side of the box and gave out a few sniffs. Then a body squash and second scurry under the TV stand.

No questions this time: That was a mouse. Definitely, a little-goddamn-mouse!!

Dammit, we got rodents. Now the house is all inner city. What’s next a gang shoot-out and bus routes through the computer room?

I’ll admit it. When I saw the scurry, I went a little “eek”… wanting to look all like the maid from the Tom and Jerry cartoons, ready to hightail it to a chair holding a broom, wearing a house apron, screaming for “Thomas!”

I peered over to my trusty guard dog who was comfortably resting his drooling chin on the hypo-allergenic pillow I slapped down on the couch for myself.

“Well…?”

He de-lidded one eye.

“It’s your house, too…”

He drew his tongue up over his nose and licked both eyes. It's pretty outstanding that he can clean his peepers like that. But, still, as cool as that talent is for him... it wasn’t helping me.

“Get the mouse?”

Nah. Not him. Protection. It ain’t his bag, man.

The mouse must have whiskered the dog’s fear and braved out from under the TV stand. He stood hind-up in the middle of the living room rug. Just looking at us. His nose in a constant sniff. His little microscopic pink mini-man fingers rolling around each other like a board room movie villain.

I leaned into the dog’s ear and whispered, “Duuuude...”

Both eyes opened in the direction of this rodent dropping pencil-tip #2s on my rug. Then he eyeballed up to me… and… cried.

“You’re crying?!?”

The mouse scampered into the computer room.

Probably going to catch the next bus.

“Come on, man. Get him..."

The poor dog tensed and sandbagged himself to the couch as I tried to shove his ham from the leather cushions. His padded dog meat only bunched and gloved at my knuckles as I buried him further into the Mexican wool blanket that he had himself already wrapped in.

Pussy.

I mean, let me be real here. The dog cries if his bed smells dirty.

He won’t eat if his water dish and his food dish are juxtaposed on his dining mat… and touching.

So, yes, he’s pampered. Soft. Never to keep a protective pack-eye on our homestead. And, frankly, maybe it’s his canid way of scolding us after the Neutering of ‘99: “If you ain’t gonna let me have balls, you ain’t getting balls… you get the mouse, motherfucker.”

Yeah. Me get the mouse.

Ewww!

I had to own up to it, I was on a pansy par with my pooch. But one of us had to dispose of this rat and it clearly wasn’t going to be him.

Since this was my first live rodent (I’ve rubber-gloved plenty of stiffs from the basement), the question was: What to do? I don’t know how to rid a house of mouse.

I didn’t want to poison the thing. That would just leave it dead and stenching in the unknown.

I didn’t have any traps around. And even if I did, using a classic pull-back-and-snap trap couldn’t be an option. Hearing that poor little skintail shrieking squeals of impending mouse death in the middle of the night -

My girls wouldn't dig that.

And what was worse, I'm not a pipe player. Or pipe pyer. I've never pied a pipe. Or whatever-the-Hell-ever.

No, I had to do my next best up from the Hamelinian mindset and catch this little grey wheel-runner with tools. So I grabbed the best that I had: A Swifter Wet-Jet and a dirty bath towel out of the hamper.

Now, armed, I heroed my way, in almost non-motion, towards the computer room.

I turned to my canine crybaby one last time, “You coming?”

He just snored into the hypo-allergenic pillow.

Truly, the dickhead has to know that this is more pathetic than his most pathetic moment to date. 6 years ago, while asleep in a curled-up ball on the big couch, he farted in his own face… barked at his asshole… then moved to the loveseat. Afraid of a thumb-sized rodent was rising quickly above that moment as just plain sad.

I made my way into the computer room – AND THERE HE WAS!!! The mouse. All snug against the baseboard, eating a chocolate jimmie that was floored from a bowl of vanilla Tiny got into trouble for eating on top of the computer - 3 months ago.

Aw, mouse, have you no culinary shame?

So, while he shamelessly dined, I tried to stun him with the flat end of the Swifter Wet-Jet, but a piece of lint dropped from the Wet-Jet and scared him right across the hall into the bathroom.

“Rick?”

Shit! I woke Wifey!

“’sup, babe?”

“What are you doing?”

My answer had to be crafted. Careful. There was no way that she was going to be cool with a mouse running around her home, so, I softly and very cautiously... gingerly said, “…. mouse…”

“WHAT?!? THERE’S A MOUSE RUNNING IN THE HOUSE? FROM WHERE?!? DID YOU LET IT IN?!?”

Dammit. Now I HAVE TO catch him...

... to be continued….

Wild Boys

2008-07-02T12:17:00.010-05:00

Like a month ago, Wifey and I scored some tickets to the Duran Duran concert at Boston University. And when I say scored, I mean, I bought expensive floor seats 6 months ago when I could have bought half-pricers the day-of due to the fact that the year was no longer 1984.

Yeah... it couldn’t have been any clearer that nobody in the State of Massachusetts was any longer hungry like the wolf.

Agganis Arena was empty.

Notoriously empty.

NO-NO-NOTORIOUS. NOTORIOUS. UNGH!!!

The opening band stunk. A rock-n-roll cliché of everything in a black Lucky shirt and Diesel Brand jeans. I got completely bored with them and decided it was time to go all concession to get me and Wifey a brew, a pretzel and a Pepsi.

I ordered the beverages through the hazed odor of deep fried chicken fingers and cheeseburgey sliders, then I got carded.

Carded?!?

By the Ticking Pocket Watch of Cronos, I got carded!!!

Not because I looked less than the big 2-1 - because my grey beard strands and jowl wrinkles made damn certain that THAT wasn’t the case. Nah, I got tagged because this poor B.U. work-study student's point of age reference was off. I mean, way off.

There wasn’t anyone below the age of 38 in this house. And those who were, were clearly only irony-obsessed pre-20 queens with their obligatory hag harems. She probably bell-curved the crowd and I was on the 21 end of it. I guess that's cool.

“I need your I.D., sir.”

First off, by calling me “sir”, you don’t need to see anything. Secondly, I’m plenty old to be buying a shitty light beer from you.

“Here.”

I handed her my Mass State driver’s license and watched her calculate the math in her head.

Borrow 1 from the 9. Make it 18. Subtract from the 9 –

“39.”

“What?”

“I’m 39.”

And thirsty. Can I have my beer?

She went back to it.

“I have to do it myself.”

“You have to do the math yourself?”

She nodded. This chick needed a major major change at ol’ B.U..

Take some basic math, sweetness.

“Still 39.”

But not for much longer. Can we kick the speed up here?

“You're 39, sir.”

“Yes. I know.”

I rolled-out 9 for a brew and a Pepsi, then ran back to my seat because the Double Duran was already playing – one of their new ones.

New ones?!? Come on, guys! At least open with something we know, cuz, ‘mates, we didn’t buy your NEW one. The newest thing we have in our family jukebox is Kid Bopz 10. WE ARE OLD NOW!!! We bought Rio and, barely, Notorious, then we stopped, blokes. WE DIDN’T BUY YOUR RED CARPET MASSACRE!!! So, stop - singing - from - it.

So, yes, the crowd was dead. Death. Stone cold. Nothing.

Except for him –

My age. Our age. 39. 40-ish. His bespectacled eyes closed tight… and dancing. Yuck.

Nope.

And feeling… feeling the sounds of Duran’s new-y: The Valley.

Wait. You KNOW this, dude?!? You know The Valley?!? Yikes to you. YIKES all over you! And Double Yikes for dancing harder than your lady, man. Double double. Yikes. Yikes.

How does he even know this anyway?

See in my books, after a certain passage of time, you can’t new album your audience. This is like if my old man went to Gene Pitney and the prick never once shot the liberty valance.

Stop playing the new stuff.

Double Duran, you’ve gone and hiked well over the “new album” hump. You’re not a real band anymore. You’re a tribute.

After 20 years, if you ain’t rocked a hit and you’re onstage calling the new one a “record”… you have to become your own tribute band. Case closed. Case locked. Now, stop all this bloody foolishness, blokes, and play Ordinary World.

But, the problem was this: I couldn’t say anything. Nothing. Not a word. This dude in front of me was rocking it. Hard. Rocking it to The Valley. All donned out in his first day as a high school sophomore jam shorts, iZod collar-up shirt and a loosened skinny black tie. And all three smelling of moth balls and a 24 year old Bekins Bros. box.

I pitied his gal pal. She was politely rocking back-n-forth to the beat, AS WERE WE ALL, but she was in wind distance of him really doing this. Really, honest to the the rat-tail dangling from the back of his mulleted nut, doing this.

I got all extry mad, not only because I had just frumped 150 bills on some strange tunes sung by some 4 middle-aged men, but this 80’s-alt douche in front of me had caught my attention and, I was obsessed – OBESSED with HIM!

During the The Valley, he slo-mo’d an evangelical, born-again, praising to Jesus thing. That was the dance. His eyes closed in wisped communion. Palms up in Acceptance to The Lord. The Lord Simon LeBon? There was nothing religious here. All these songs were thinly veiled metaphors for getting laid. The Skin Game? Union of the Snake? We’re not that poetically illiterate, ‘mates.

But why slow-motion? WHY NOT TO THE BEAT?!? The Valley doesn’t feel this good, Mr. Knuckles-only Gloves.

But? Wait. Did it? Did it feel this good?

Aw, goddammit. He had me doubting myself and my decent taste. Not good taste. Good taste wouldn’t have led me to this mid-80s Israel in the first place. Decent taste is where I had to draw my line. Was the new stuff good? Good enough for a heavenly ol’ palms up, born-again eye-closer?

I looked around. Hard. There were two Japanese exchange students kind of “into” this. I mean, into the beat and the fun sounding “English” words of it all, but the rest of us knew The Valley sucked and were, patiently, waiting for The Reflex or, at a minimum, something from Arcadia.

Give us, Election Day. Anything but –

“RCM!” He screamed out.

What the ass is RCM? Come on, I’m a boy of the 80’s. I had my Glam Band Rock-do. I Donkey Konged Colecovision. I flipped a videodisk. All that and I never remember roaming through the mullets and moussed-up halls of WHS panting out, “RCM!”

RCM? Was this code for Girls on Film?

No, dink, that would be GOF.

So, what the fucking GOF was –

“RCM!!! Yeah!!! YEAH!!! RCM!!!” My obsession in front of me was on fire. His date? Her head slowly shamed away into her chest.

“RCM!!! RCM!!! RCM!!!”

And with each RCM he bounced comfortably into his second of three moves: Running on a treadmill.

In slow motion!

His head down, watching the invisible rubber tread disappear under each pat-pat of his running worn-out Chuck Taylor High Tops.

Did Tubbs, here, save EVERY article of clothing growing up? Where was his mother? Mine was making me throw out shit when it got old. Some of it because it simply got minorly stained. Why does Sonny Crockett still have a pair of high-top Chucks?

They’re not even running shoes.

Maybe this is why he was going it in slo-mo.

I tried to kick-it up for the sake of the 150 bucks I’d never see again. Genuinely tried. The beat was there. The circa ’87 sound was all over this ditty… but, man, I didn’t know this tune. I found myself fingernailing to the chorus with my lips moving to the lyrics like the mouth of a low-battery Teddy Ruxpin.

I was souless for this New-ran New-ran while my man in front of me was maxing out to the max. I was envious. I could barely stand it and he was RUNNING to it. Running, despite all of the grossly overweight parts of his overall dumpy anatomy. Not everything, though. Just parts. Some of him was normal. He was a Bob Crumb sketch with a jet black Just For Men whiteman’s mullet-‘fro slo-mo’ing it off to, now, Nite Runner… another sucky newster.

I lost my momentum. So did his lady. She, actually, sat… I followed and put myself butt-side-down into the 75 dollar folding chair vibrating to the over-bassed Nite Runner.

I was coming undone. I sat, leaving myself face-to-ass with this Solid Gold dancer and his moth balled scented pant seat directly in my whiff. I just to watched him finish up the final beats of Nite Runner to the move: Blocking Punches from a Boxing Coach.

Again… in slow motion...

His arms up in a 90 degree, covering his face, swaying back-n-forth. He threw out a couple of rabbit punches with his eyes closed. His lady right-hooking me with a headshake of disappointment. I nodded back a shrug.

Then… like a magician yanking it by the long-ears out of a hat… the familiar intro to Hungry Like the Wolf played.

AND VOILA! The crowd awoke.

But, Dancey didn’t jolt his enthusiasm a bit. He was already a constant. His momentum in full-on physics. Slow motion physics, sure, but full. He sweated more. Shiny moth ball sweat, glistening the light show off the back of his pimpled neck. The smell of naphthalene and cardboard box glading the air like a deodorizer plug-in.

His lady tried to break in, but by now his three signature moves were in full recital. Rehearsed separately and now combined into a number: Up for Jesus, treadmill and boxing blocks… it was poetry. I stopped my gaze from Simon and the boys and just watched this majestic slow-motion beast dance. At one with himself and the cloud of syncopation fogged around him. Creatively adding to his dance with pure magic moves directly from the 80s as if each move was packed neatly in that moth balled Bekins Bros. box with the shirt and the Chuck’s.

He tossed-in with the blocking of the punches, a rouster of zombie arms circa Thriller.

Brilliant.

A Morris Day “tree” with the Treadmill.

Pure cadence.

And… wait… was that? YES! YES!!! YES!!! He just threw down a Miyagi and “sanded the floor”. Wax-on! Wax-off! Right there!!! He was Karate Kidding right there in conjunction with his Praise for Christ.

Simply religious!!! Just Divine!!! What a macchio!

Me, too! Me, too!

I mirrored his every dance. First, to mock this whacknut, then because I was –

“What are you doing?”

Wifey was appalled. I have to admit. I did look… well… weird.

But she started to laugh, “What are you doing?”

She stared. I mimic’d his every slow-mo move.

“Mothballs? You’re dancing like mothball-guy?”

A beat went by. Bud Light trickling from the pores in my forehead.

I lowercased and italicized my answer, “… I am…”

Wild boys never lose it!

Adhesive Seal

2008-05-07T12:45:00.017-05:00

“Take her outside. She won't stop moving.”

Wifey said it… but super nicely. I know exactly how she feels. Once in awhile Tiny moves around like a batted-at mosquito where the unpredictability of every motion diapers your brain in such an anarchical chaos that your subconscious has the absolute inability to contain them and your temper leaks all over the place.

“Come on, Tiny. Let’s wait for Mom outside.”

We stepped outside the CVS to wait for Mom and the baggie of sore throat remedies that Tiny needed for us to get through the night in peace.

Or, at least, we tried to get outside.

CLANK. WOBBLE. CLACK.

The automatic-door was catching on something, something at its outside bottom right corner. The both of us trampolined on the rubber-auto-pad to try to auto-force the door to auto-open. But... no luck.

CLANK. CLANK. CLANG-CK!!!

I squashed my nose against the fingerprint stained glass door, and there, just under the Mastercard sticker, the teeniest of an old Italian lady. Just standing there hunched over a Market Basket carriage, looking all the part of smelling like blocks of deli Parmesan and onion-fried garlic... blowing on a greeting card envelope.

I tapped on the glass.

She looked over her bursitisy shoulder, audibly groaned, then waved.

“No. Move your cart!”

I pointed to the carriage. She pointed to her envelope and continued to blow, sending the knot of her tightly bound kerchief tickling over the three fishing line hairs busting from her turkey chin.

“Ma’am. Your cart. Can you move your cart, please?”

She edged it just enough. Then immediatly went back to blowing on the gift card envelope.

Tiny and I walked out, “Thanks.”

I leaned on a big blue mailbox just outside the CVS door and held Tiny close so her mosquito movements didn’t draw deeper under my already crawling skin. I sunk into the box's solid blueness, not giving half-a-shiv of how rotten and stained with black it was. I found my center, my Zen, and, finally, my nerves were at rest. Until I heard -

FFFFFFFFFF!!!

FFFFFFFFFF!!!

Is something leaking?

FFFFFFFFFF!!!

FFFFFFFFFF!!!

Gas?!?

That sounds like gas!!!

A gas leak?!?

MY GOD!!!

Tiny looked up to me, shook her head then slowly glided her index finger left.

FFFFFFFFFFF!!!

FFFFFFFFFFF!!!

And whispered, “It’s her…”

And it was.

The sound of blowing air leaking through the upper gum plate of this old broad's dentures while she blew on that gift card envelope. I could tell that the adhesive seal on her dentures was gone because air was expelling from the mouth cavity, but her upper lip was bladdering up with air with each blow.

FFFFFFFFFFF!!!

Fill.

FFFFFFFFFFF!!!

Fill.

Like a wrinkled, dry balloon.

Disgust pasted over both mine and Tiny’s faces. Staring in wonder at this old woman blowing on a Hallmark envelope and filling her upper lip with the carbon dioxides of zitis and Sunday gravy.

Fanastic.

FFFFFFFFFFF!!!

Fill.

FFFFFFFFFFF!!!

Swallow.

We noticed that each second filling was followed by a gulping swallow, as if she was wadding back a mouthful of recommended vitamins and unaffordable no-name prescriptions.

FFFFFFFFFFF –

In mid-blow she stopped and turned to us.

PAH!

She released the half-air in her lip, “I wetted it too much.”

“Wetted it?”

“A card for my sister and I wetted it too much.”

“Okay.”

“I just kept licking it and licking it and…”

… and enough already. You’re an old lady. I don’t need the visual of you licking anything.

“And now it’s too wetted and I’m afraid of mailing it.”

FFFFFFFFFFF!!!

Fill.

FFFFFFFFFFF!!!

Swallow.

“See. It won’t dry.”

And she showed it to me. Yellow. Yellow verging on brown. The adhesive seal at the flap was tan-ish… and sopping. My Good God, it was loaded with the wettness from this poor old woman’s parmesan'd saliva.

FFFFFFFFFFF!!!

“I can’t get enough air on the glue.”

That’s because you’ve got a gum leak, ma’am.

“Purse your lips more.”

What am I helping with?

“Purse your lips. Concentrate the air.”

CONCENTRATE THE AIR?!?

I fished out my lips in her direction, reasoning that the tightness of the upper lip would, at the very least, throw a temp-seal at the gum plate and I could stop hearing the FFFFFFFFFFF!!!

“Like this – like a monkey...“

I chimped-out my lips again. She held the envelope in my direction.

“I need this dry.”

Yeah.

No.

"Not me. You."

I'm not Boy Scouting this much...

“Like a monkey.”

She pursed.

"Now, blow."

And cinch-off that awful “F” sound you’re making.

She followed my instructions. The air flowed out in silence. Peaceful. Tiny and I leaned back up against the mailbox and just watched her hunched over her shopping cart, wheezing over the envelope.

“There," she huffed, "It won't dry. I just wetted it too much.”

Grams, we’ve been over this.

“Great. Do you need to get in here,” I said pointing to the mailbox.

“I hope it’s still not too wetted.”

Wetted is not a word. It’s not a word. It’s not a word. You've been around long enough to have realized, at some point, that "wetted" is not a word.

“I’m sure you’re fine.”

She forced it my way again.

“What do you think?”

I think it’s yellow and soggy and smells like pepperoni. You should probably get rid of it before the post office sites you a Level 4 Hazmat.

“It's perfect.”

As she dropped it into the mailbox, she moaned, “Oh. It’s still too wetted.”

She dove for the letter, but the door of the mailbox clanged back into place. She stared me, pleading for unspoken help.

I stared back but could only muster-up a, “Um?”

“Um.”

I looked down to Tiny. Tiny just shrugged.

The old woman tightened her kerchief, staring from me to the mailbox, then back again, “What do you think?”

I thought that Wifey should hurry up and get out here so I could walk away, but instead –

“What’s the worst that can happen? If it’s still too wetted, it will just stick to another envelope…”
Nothing.

“… right?”

Then –

“Oh, my! NO!!!!!”

She opened the mailbox door and stared inside.

Wifey emerged from the CVS, "What's the matter with that old lady?"

"Nothing."

Who Says That?!?

2008-03-27T13:33:00.034-05:00

So, the cable went out. What’s new, right? And, like a dope I’m curl-assing it in front of an empty 42” plasma with my pooch wound up under the crook of my quashed cheeks and my back-knee… waiting. Waiting between 7am and 12pm on a Saturday morning for Mr. Cable to show-up.

And, By The Holy Order of Broadbandicus, at 5 minutes to 7 Mr. Cable arrived at my stoop. I opened the door and his eyes magnetted straight down to the floor where the dog was licking a puke stain he laid down at about 6:30 that morning after eating through a porched Hefty Cinch Sack of chicken bones and pizza crusts. Come on, man, that was garbage.

“He was eating garbage this morning..."

Like the cable guy needed to know this.

He said nothing for what seemed like hours, then patted his standing lap like a presumptive pedophile and declared straight to the dog, “Hello, Poopa!!!”

Hello, Poopa?!?

Poopa?!?

What the fuck is Poopa?!?

Did he just Boston accent “pooper?”

Poopa?

Sure, I grew up soaking in a bottomless basin of the New England dialect. Christ on the Charles, I even spread mine on pretty hah-dee (hearty) back in the day. But this... this just sounded… gross.

Poopa?

Dude, not so much as to why you would call my dog "poopa"… but why would you even say something like that?!?

“Aah, Poopa.”

Frankly, I was uncomfortable being in the presence of this tool mule saying the word “poopa”. He was a full grown man...

... in a repairman's moustache...

I tried to remedy by projecting a, “That’s Caesar!” It only made me sound just as retarded as if I had said, “Hey, that’s Poopa!” So, I coughed and repeated, “Caesar" six times because I'm compulsively compulsive. I would have been better off O.C.D'ing my own lick of the stain on the floor.

The cable man ignored me and kept on, “How you, Poopa?”

“How you” isn’t even normal English.

“Aw, Poopa.”

“What choo doin’, poopa?”

“You want to help, Poopa?”

“Gimme them paws, Poopa.”

And it wouldn’t stop.

“You want disconnect the cables, Poopa.”

WHAT?!? Disconnect the cables?!? To the dog?!?

No, man, he wants you to stop calling him “Poopa”.

I tried to interject, “Yeah. Caesar - Caesar just put in an RF splitter downstairs.” Ha ha ha. Hee hee hee. Ho ho ho. SHUT UP!!!

“No, he didn’t… Right, Poopa? You didn’t split nothin’ in the cell-ah? Did ‘ja, Poopa?”

This was getting to be way too much. And it had to stop. Immediately. For whatever its reason, “poopa” was hitting me in the wrong spot on every vertebrae of my spine, and by the looks on Wifey’s face, “poopa” was rattling hers, too.

“He’s a fun dog, huh?”

“He’s a poopa.”

“He’s a pug.”

Now, when did I get so serious?

“He’s a poopa poopa.”

A double “poopa”, great…

Okay, Creepy, can we just get on and fix my DVR.

“Poopa.”

“Aw, Poopa”

“Poo-PAH!”

What was getting worse and burning my ass the most, the little, furry asshole was enjoying being called “poopa”.

Good God, Dog, I looked the other way when you ate a frozen Winter shit lying in the front yard snow. I turned my cheek when you smelled the mid-stream pee of the German Shepherd next door. I even let you kiss me after eating the old yogurt containers out of the neighbor's tipped-over garbage can. But accepting “Poopa” as your new name… Poopa, you’re dead to me.

“Poopa-poopa-poopa.”

“Can I get you a drink,” or anything to occupy your mouth so you’ll stop saying “poopa?”

“Nope. Me and Poopa are fine right here. Aren’t we, Poopa?”

Yeah. Fucking Poopa’s just fine...

Sitting there wagging his tail...

Traitor.

This guy’s got to GET OUT of my house!

“So, how’re we doing,” I sheeped, “Box replacement?”

“I don’t know, let me ask, Poo --"

“Poopa doesn’t know.”

Caesar sensed the alpha tension and went right back to barking at his stain on the carpet. I'm sorry, the dog is wierd.

“Box replacement,” I asked holding my ground because, DAMMIT, I’m the alpha in this pack.

“… yeah… I got to replace the whole box.”

“Good.”

“Shouldn’t be much time.”

“Good.”

“No charges.”

“Great.”

“And you’ll lose your DVR programming.”

“That's fine.”

He walked out to his truck. I don’t know what was taking him so long, but I also didn’t care. I gained dominance over my pooch again. If this were the dog world, I would have bit this son of a bitch of the loose part of his throat meat and hung on until victory.

I am the victor.

However... like a vampire... once you’ve invited the cable man in once, he has invitation to come and go as he pleases throughout the repair interaction. So, no sooner was my back to the window, when he Nosferatu’d his ass back into my home - “POOPA, I’M BACK!!!”

And the little prick turned from licking his puke stain, tongue still hanging and connected it to the leg of the cable guy.

“There ya go, Poopa!”

*photo courtesy of Wifey... I loves me my ol' lady and her camera! CLICK!!!

VCR for Christmas

2007-12-27T13:11:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, Christmas had a different feel to it. Things weren’t necessarily better. Just different... you know what I’m saying?

I always think I’m part of that last generation that remembers the “old ways”. Simple gifts of trains, stiff plastic dolls and little metal cars. The entire family together at one table. Grandparents. Uncles. Aunts. Cousins. Relatives smoking through entire hard-packs at the dining room table during the coffee segment of the meal. Just snuffing-out butt-after-butt in greasy lipstick-stained tea cups and dessert plates of pizzelli and half-eaten anisette cookies.

I think, for me, the "old ways" ended the Christmas we got the VCR.

Man, Christmas 1984 was from the space-age. No shit. The old man must have bonus'd-out himself a couple of bucks from Ma Bell cuz we got a brand-spanking-new VCR from Sears.

Sears, man!!!

Nothing but the best. Nothing but!

And he couldn't wait to show us, either. Christmas Eve and my old man steak-knifed the shit out of that box to behold to us a top-of-the-line, top-loading VCR. Dammit! A top-loader. That Christmas the Crowleys were living in the future!!!

He hooked it up faster than I had ever seen him do anything. I was given the task of turning the TV on. My brother set the TV to Channel 3. My sister just jumped up-and-down in her lace-lined, flannel nightgown.

To this day I still don't quite understand the laced-lined, flannel combination in Wintertime bedwear. Fatty lace and cranberry plaid together - Yikes!

Finally, my old man gave my mother the honor of pressing the enormous block of a power button.

HARK AND BEHOLD ON THIS CHRISTMAS EVE - LIGHT!!!

The green digital display.

It struck 12:00 AM... and then, as a family, we stared at it.

“Okay, so, what do we do with it,” I asked my old man, careful not to be wrapped upside the back end of my head.

“You watch movies with it.”

“What movies?”

“Movie movies!”

WHAT?!? "Movie movies!" We have movie movies in our very own home. HOLY SHIT! We're not from the future... the future is here!!!

The anticipation was ugly. Almost painful. We had fucking movie movies in the house. The four of us waited for him to present his movie movie but, he presented... nothing. NADA!!!! So, we all sat watching the clock blink 12:00 AM.

“Do we have any?”

“Any what?”

“Movie movies?”

“I don’t know where to get them.”

Blink. 12:00 AM. 12:00 AM. 12:00 AM.

“Dad?”

“What?”

“Can we put the TV back on, now?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because this thing wasn’t cheap.”

12:00 AM. 12:00 AM. 12:00 AM.

“Can we tape something from the TV on it?”

“What else would you tape from on it?!?”

What?!?

Grammatically, the old man had nothing to say, but from all the breath-y frustration that came from him... I got the point. He, basically, gave me the go ahead to use the thing but offered no medium in which to perform the taping activity. So, on behalf of the other three, (and against all judgement that I stand for) I had to man-up and ask, “Do we have any tapes for it?”

He paused.

For a long time.

Like, maybe, 8 blinking 12:00 AMs long.

Shit.

I'm doomed.

Then, Mom threw me a raft, “Did you buy any blank tapes for it?”

He wriggled.

He squirmed.

He did buy a blank tape for it. I saw it on the coffee table. And it was big, too. Like an ancient Russian tome. That fucking thing must have cost him a million bucks the way he was so reluctant to reach for it. I wanted so bad to tear the plastic off and record something but, there was no way I was living the rest of my life with the hand that picked it up. And since I had already gone over my question quota, I had to wait.

12:00 AM. 12:00 AM. 12:00 AM.

Fuck... I gotta ask again...

“Dad?”

He popped the top of his head in the direction of the coffee table, “Over there.”

I pointed to my brother to grab and open it in the event that the old man changed his mind. My brother was still young and hadn’t reached his quota for cracks across the ass, yet. I, because of my mouth, had gone way over my ass-beating quota years ago. So, I figured I could donate a few ass-crackings to my brother's cause. Opening that tape amidst the old man changing his mind could have, easily, been one of those donations.

He ravaged it. My brother tore open that package like a lion tearing into the side of a fallen zebra. Plastic and cardboard everywhere.

Panic set in my father's already bulgy eyes, “Hey, hey, hey…”

How much it set him back...

“… that thing was twenty-five bucks!”

Twenty-five bucks, man. Tapes back in ’84 were expensive. EXPENSIVE!!!

"Careful with it. It's a Memorex."

That tape was treated like a centuries old heirloom. Over the course of 2 months we must have recorded a thousand things on that tape at extended speed, quickly learning how to watch things through the grainy-static of an SLP recording.

“Give it to me,” as he gingerly ripped it from my brother’s claws.

In awe we watched him double-finger the eject button. The door rose from the top of the machine. CLEE-CLUNK!!! Opened and ready for that twenty-five dollar tape. My old man slid the tape inside the arm and, with both hands, pressed the door closed.

“You have to press the play and record button at the same time.”

His fingers covered the buttons.

Play.

Record.

And we watched the timer spin: 00001, 00002, 00003 and so on and so forth as we recorded 3/4 of National Lampoon’s Vacation off of HBO.

And when it was over, we rewinded and watched it back on the top-loading VCR until we went to bed at 12:00 AM. Or whatever time it really was.

We never figured out the clock.

AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!!!

Inspiration

2007-12-09T15:00:00.000-05:00

Thursday night I was at the gym "working my chest", benching just enough to feel it, but not enough to truly justify leaving the house. I just didn't have it in me Thursday night. Just didn't, man.

When I feel this way, I look around at all the other sweaty chumps and try to find the cats who want to be here just as much as I don't so I can give them the "I'm with ya, brother" nod. Most of them are easy to find. I know who they are because I've categorized all of the cardio-bangers and circuit-clankers around me. You see, most of these fucks fall into one of three categories:

1) The 'Supdudes: The tanktoppers who live for this fucking place. Greeting each other with a head nod and silent, "'Sup, dude?" Sporting nipple through the sleeves of their sleeveless shirts. Their necks wider than their skulls. Arms that look like legs. "Cuts" in in body parts that don't even have muscles... like their eyes?!?

Dude, put the weights down. You have eye muscles, bro.

2) The Motivaters: The peeps that are only here because they motivated themselves to be here on a tri-weekly basis. You know, here for the health of it. Like me. Me and them hating it for a hour-and-a-half three times a week. Putting in our time like prisoners, then talking incessantly in the car on the way home about "how glad we were that we went".

3) The No-Business Crowd: 'Nuff said. Walking 6 minutes at a 2.5 on the treadmill. Wiping their brow of the sweat they worked up closing the car door on their way in. Rushing out to get home to a fatty oven roast, slice of Wonder with a dab of Country Crock, a side of corn and mashed. See, like I said, this is the No-Business Crowd, cuz these people have absolutley "no business" being here.

Now, here we all were and I had to find one of my own so I could throw him a nod and half-smile. I looked around but everyone primarily fit into Cats 1 and 3. Nobody was motivating it that night. Not a soul. Everyone either wanted to be there or just didn't want to be there. I was the only dick half-assing it Thursday night.

But, then, as I struggled to push a buck-fifty away from my chest, I saw... Him... a new guy... NEW... brand-spanking... Category #4... the man I called: Inspiration!

Inspiration was banging it away on the elliptical. Really going to town. Well, not really going to town, more trying to go to town. The bottom line was this: He had the focus of a Category 1, the energy of a Category 2 and the body of a Category 3.

The body of a 3.

So, where was this prick getting his Cat 1 drive with his Cat 2 energy in the shell of a 3?

I banged out another set of "chest", watching him, trying to figure out how I, a clear case 2, could bump up my focus to Category 1 and really kick-out these workouts.

Nothing seemed unusual in his motion. Nothing seemed particularly different in his speed. Certainly there was nothing about his flabby physique that was feeding his strength. He clearly had none.

So, what was this motherfucker's secret?

I looked him up and down, trying to be mindful of the unwritten guy-rule at the gym of "not staring too long at another fella".

He was dressed, totally, as a Cat 3. Cotton gym shorts circa High School Phys Ed. A vacation purchased tee: Sea World. White. Black short sleeves. Iron-on white racing stripes atop both sleeves. Sans ball cap. The only thing different about this running monkey and his fellow Category 3's were his old-school, over-the-head, headphones.

"YES!!! That shit must be in those headphones," I ah-ha'd in my head.

I wondered what was so fucking inspiring in the vibrations those tiny speakers were delivering to his ears. I started at the pods themselves and followed the left side cord to the cord blend, where the left and right join at the knot.

Down.

Down.

Looking for an MP3.

Looking for his iPod.

But... NO!!!

Inspiration was connected to the video display. This Fat Fuck was watching TELEVISION!!! Inspiration turns out to be the only guy EVER to be connected to the audio from the TV display at the top of the cardio machines.

So...

Now, that he's connected... what's so goddamn inspiring?

What was making him circle his feet next to each other? POOT-PUH-POOT!

I pressed another buck-fifty, readying myself for the greatest workout inspiration of all time.

My eyes floated from the butt of his audio cord to the bottom of the monitor...

His drive... his Inspiration... was coming from...

Mass. Catholic Mass. This dude was watching church.

Now, I've seen the the live show a million times and even in the throws of Catechismic concert, Mass is a snore.

But this Eucharistic ellipticaller was just staring at Father O'Fattery's Thursday night sermon. Sweating with each wave of the telecast incense. Mock-running to the Alter.

I pressed a buck-twenty-five (because the buck-and-a-half was too heavy), looking, staring, a want for his Inspiration. I so truly wanted to be "also with Him".

Lord, hear my prayer.

But, unfortunately, as a well-known Atheist (in my own circle), He, Him, The Almighty was not going to grant me My wish. I had to find Mine from Somewhere else. So, I put the weights down another 25 to a simple 100 and pressed away from the cavity where my Soul ought to be. Maybe if I believed in He, I could go a full set at the buck-and-a-half, maybe He would have provided me with the Strength that He was providing to the Prophet on the Elliptical machine.

CLANK!

My Penance was done so I sat at the machine, looking over to my exercising Moses, the weights still raised. I just watched him running in place. Running to the Promised Land. Running with everything he had. Running with...

Oooh, that fat guy's getting pooped.

His legs started to slow. He wobbled.

The sweat no longer spriting his cheeks, but pouring down his face like the thorn-provided blood cascading down the cheek of Christ. I began to fear that the Lord had let this poor bastard wander the Land of Sweat and Honey alone.

His Sea of Schvitz rained down his forehead and parted at the bridge of his nose. He used the last of his energy to drop his hand down to the volume control of the Mass he was watching to turn up the sound.

HE WAS TURNING UP THE VOLUME!!! THE LORD WASN'T LOUD ENOUGH!!!

Then, it dawned on me, by gum, he wasn't watching Mass for the Inspiration, this fat-ass was watching it for - SALVATION. He thought he wasn't going to make it.

HEH-HEH!

This motherfucker is a Cat 3. Faker. Hope you have a heart attack, you big fat phony!

I clanked down the last of my pyramid workout (lowered the weights because I started to get hungry for dinner, not because I have some muscle build-up plan). I wiped down the remnants of my sweat from the seat (that I earned) and as I walked behind this False Prophet, this Phony Prophet, I whispered, "Dude, if you think it's going to turn out this bad, get off the machine."

Coupons for Christmas

2007-12-09T01:24:00.000-05:00

How in the name of God's Good Boy's birthday do you explain to a hopped-up on Christmas-listed 5-year old that the anorexic Santa on the back of the Chrysler Dually is shilling pizza coupons?

Happy Birthday, Jesus, but COME ON!!!

I was hoping that the light at the intersection where The Regina Pizza was would stay green, but I'm not light lucky and never get the green. I never get the yellow I can roll through. I'm all red, folks, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall red.

Stop.

Dead.

"Hey, Dad," Tiny started because I'm no longer Daddy since Kindergarten began, "Why is that Santa so skinny. He looks sick."

Think quick.

RUDOLPH SPECIAL!!!

"Remember in Rudolph?"

"Eat, Papa, eat?"

"Yup."

"Can you roll down the window so I can tell him?"

"Sure."

No stupid. No! He's shilling pizza coupons.

So, I rolled the window down. All the way.

"50 cents off your first pie," screams Jolly Ol'.

"What did he say, Dad?"

"50 cents off."

"Off what?"

"Pizza."

"What?"

"Pizza. Santa said 50 cents off pizza."

"Why?"

"Because that's what the coupon says that he's holding... probably."

"But why is Santa giving out coupons?"

Yeah. Why IS Santa giving out fucking coupons?

"Because it's Christmas and he's trying to be nice."

"But he's Santa."

"That's why he's giving out coupons."

"But if he was really nice like he's supposed to be, how come he's not giving out free pizza?"

Yeah. Why ISN'T he giving out free pizza?

"You know, babe, I don't know. Maybe he hates Italians."

"And why is he on the back of that truck and not on his sleigh?"

"Jesus Christ, babe, I don't know. Maybe because they're cleaning it for Christmas."

"Who's cleaning it?"

"I don't know. The elves? Forget about it. So, what? Santa is giving out pizza coupons on the back of that truck. Why does that EVEN bother you?"

Silence from the back seat.

"Tiny, why is it bothering you?"

"Because what if I only get coupons for toys and not toys this year?"

Then I thought...

"Behave or you will."

Dialogue from a Pirate Festival

2007-11-28T11:19:00.000-05:00

Scene: The Pirate Festival in St. Pete

I was dressed like a normal person.

Wifey was dressed like a normal person.

Tiny was dressed like a “matey” pirate (as she puts it).

The dude eating chicken and biscuits in a canvas tent was dressed in a gentleman’s coat from 1686, an eye patch and fake scar.

Oh! And, in the spirit of not knowing his name, I’ll refer to him as… let’s say… Fucking Moron.

Me: Dude, you just made my 5 year old “little” girl cry.
Fucking Moron: I’m unsure of this “dude” you speak of, however; how my I assist thee? I be the governor of this great port.

No, you be a redneck in a very smelly rented ruffle with the WORST English accent EVER! Oh! And the St. Pete humidity is melting your spirit gum and scar, you dope.

Me: Yeah, okay, “Gov-nuh”, listen, she’s all freaked out that you offered to send her to jail for piracy when she’s only 5.
Fucking Moron: Piracy knows of no age, Good Gentleman. Off to the gallows with she!

Tiny freaked out. Literally. She was shaking and tearing the Jolly Roger do-rag off her head like it was burning her hair.

Me: Baby, it’s okay.
Tiny: No, it’s not!
Fucking Moron: To the gallows with she!
Me: Dude…? Please…
Wifey: He’s just playing, Sweets.
Fucking Moron: Playing, me Good Lady?
Me: Dude…? Come on…
Tiny: This is creepy. This is fucking creepy.

Now, for a five year old to have to refer to something as “fucking” creepy… yeah, dudes… it’s pretty “fucking” creepy.

Wifey: What is?
Tiny: He’s a grown-up and he’s pretending waaaaay too much.

Then the flip-out took an ugly turn.

TIny: And it’s fucking creepy. This is wrong, mommy. Grown-ups shouldn’t play like this. This is wrong.
Fucking Moron: But I do not play, Young Pirate Lass.
Me: Dude…?
Tiny: I’m not a pirate anymore.

And she threw her $20.00 wooden sword across the field and stomped on the do-rag which had to hit her hard because she REALLY loves being a pirate.

Wifey: Baby, he’s just an actor.
Fucking Moron: ACTOR?!? ACT-TOR?!? Actors are peasants, me Good Lady.

Research, brother. Research. There gotta be other names besides “good lady.” If you’re going to commit at this level… mix it up, ‘Enry ‘Iggins!!!

Fucking Moron: I am no actor. Off with she, too. Pirate conspirator!
Me: Dude…?
Tiny: Mommy! Daddy! Grown-ups shouldn’t be playing dress-up to this level. No way. No waaaaaaay. And… and it’s rude not to ask someone if they want to play first. IT’S RUDE!!!
Me: (to the Guv-nuh) It is rude… Guv-nah.
Fucking Moron: Rude? Rude?!? Off with this pirate and her conspirators!

Tiny, actually, started shivering with fear.

Me: Buddy…
Fucking Moron: Who is this “buddy…?”
Me: Done. You’re done with “your bit”. You have my baby crying. Not cool. Fix it.
Fucking Moron: To the gallows -- !

I stared at this prick right in his patch eye.

Me: Fix it, Guv-nah.

Then, he broke character.

Fucking Moron: Donna, give me a Letter of Marque. Letter of Marque. Right there. And the quill.

He knelt down next to Tiny ready to sign her Letter of Marque with his inky quill.

Fucking Moron: And your name, little lady.
Tiny: You’re fucking creepy.
Fucking Moron: Thyne language, Little Lady.

There was an uncomfortable pause.

Tiny: And rude.

Wifey gave him Tiny’s name and he signed the Letter of Marque. Tiny refused to take it reminding the "guv-nah" that he was still “fucking creepy.”

But, she stopped crying and shaking. That was a good sign. Everything was getting better. And seeing that everything was back to better, I nuzzled up to the “guv-nah’s” ear.

Me: Thanks, dude.
Fucking Moron: And there she has it…!

He declared.

Oh, no, bro. You’re ahead, now. Please, stop.

Fucking Moron: You are no longer a pirate! You are now a Privateer under the King!

A beat went by. Could have driven a ship through the tension. Then –

Tiny: Nooooooo! I still want to be a pirate!!! I don’t want to be private.
Fucking Moron: Then off to the gallows!!!
Tiny: WAH!!!!
Me: Oh, dude…

The Writing's on the Urinal Wall

2007-11-25T12:17:00.000-05:00

Last night I got tanked. Pretty good, too. Downed a pint of Guinness, 2 pints of some Polish brew and, then I washed it down with 2 Myers's on the rocks. Needless to say my little pink keg was needing to be tapped.

I rolled off my rickety bar stool, kissed Wifey (sloppily I might add) on the face somewhere, then hobbled off to the bathroom.

As I pulled the door open I was wafted about the snout with the stenches of sewer piss. I deduced that the Men's Room at The Green Parrot hadn't been mopped since it was fucking built.

I followed my nose to the feces covered urinal and began my work.

Now, after a good hour of boozin', peeing's going to take a wee longer than the normal drop-n-squirt operation. So, I read the wall:

"For a good time (male or female), preferably male, call --" but the name and number was scribbled out. Maybe the dude was no longer in the "Good Time" business and had his number unlisted.

And that was it. Where were all the classics...? Where was, at the very least, the "best of" material:

"Here I sit broken hearted..."

"John wuz here..."

The stock penis drawing with the circles of ameoba'd-shaped semen shooting from it.

Nothing. Just nothing.

Only that a "good time" was offered and rescinded at the scribble.

No good graffiti was to be read and I was already at my tap-n-shake.

What a waste.

Then... I saw it... in almost the same color as the wall paint itself... just faint enough to be read... something so important that its author wanted the whole world (or, at least, the pissers of The Green Parrot) to be aware of it. Here, before me, the most random graffiti of all time:

"Rex Jansen adopted kids and then gave them back."

What the fuck was that?!?

"Rex Jansen adopted kids and then gave them back."

That was the graffiti.

What the fuck?!?

Which Witch Cookie

2007-11-07T14:50:00.000-05:00

I flung the shower curtain across the rod, starting my day with Tiny jumping in front of me like a cat on fire, “Oh my God! I don’t have a special Halloween treat!”

What the fuck is this?!?

I quickly make-shifted a Marcus Aurelius cover-up with the shower curtain to protect Tiny’s eyes - and psyche - from the naked mess that is her father, “What's the problem?”

Wifey handed me a towel, “We forgot to get her a treat for her for her Halloween party in school today. Can you hurry, get dressed and run down to Market Basket and grab some Halloween Oreos?”

Before work… before school... before coffee..?

The urgency of it all made me throw my undershirt on sans Arm-and-Hammer Fresh Scent. But then, I thought, “Um, wait. Did anyone check if there is any such thing as a Halloween Oreo?”

How-fucking-ever, Tiny already heard ‘Halloween Oreos.”

“I want Halloween Oreos!!!”

… and glommed on.

I turned to the panicked child, “Hold on! Do you know if they EVEN make these eff’ing things?”

“I WANT HALLOWEEN OREOS!!!”

“Rick," Wifey rationally entered in, "I really don’t know if they make Halloween Oreos. That was just the snack example the teacher used on the note home... yeah... sorry...”

Nice. Fucking public school strikes again.

I threw on a pair of non-wrinkle Haagars and belted out the door. The race was on. I had 15 minutes of "get-out" and "get-back" or we were going to miss her Halloween party altogether.

Knowing time was of the essence, I by-passed even looking for the Halloween Oreos. I headed straight for the Yum Yum Shoppe (Market Basket’s cute, ‘olde’ fashiony name for its halfway to taste bakery - giving it the extra "e" at the end of "shoppe" because the extra "e" always makes fake traditional seem more "authentic"... doesn't it?).

I planned on grabbing an orange cupcake or Elmo in a bank robber’s mask or some shit that would get me out of there and home in time to get Tiny to school in her Vampiress dress and cape.

I leaned against the counter of the Yum Yum Shoppe, “Excuse me?,” I begged the back of the short, portly woman behind the counter, “Excuse me?”

But nothing.

“Excuse me,” I begged the woman to just glance at me, “Excuse me. Please. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me... ”

20 of those went by until she, finally, said, without even turning around, “I do not help you.”

But “do not” sounded exactly like “doughnut.”

“You doughnut help me,” I asked, not entirely sure that's what she said. Who would be that blatantly unhelpful?

“No. I doughnut help you.”

“Why you doughnut help me,” I accented back at her.

“Because I doughnut speak Inn-glesh.”

You sure? You learned enough to say that you “doughnut” speak "Inn-glesh." You don’t think you have capacity to learn the rest of it? Or most of it? Or, at the very least, "can I set you up with some holiday-themed cookies?"

“You want cake?”

“No. I want cookies.”

“Cookies. Yes. Cookie cake right here?” and she pointed down to the chocolate Halloween cake with orange and black Oreo cookies sticking out of it.

SO THEY DO MAKE THOSE FUCKING HALLOWEEN OREOS!!!

“A cookie cake? No. Just the cookies.”

Then she started to take them from the cake.

“No! Not those. Two of the big cookies. The Halloween ones down there. A bat cookie and a witch cookie.”

Then, I entered vaudeville theatre:

“Witch cookie?”

“Yes. A bat cookie and a witch cookie.”

“Which cookie?”

“Yes. And a bat.”

“Which cookie you want?”

“Which cookie," I was totally getting the confusion, "No. The WITCH cookie… and a bat cookie!”

“Which cookie?”

Holy shit! I've become Lou Costello - HEY, ABB-BOTT!!!!

“This one?”

“No. That’s a pumpkin headed gingerbread man.”

“You want cookie, no?”

How was I suppose to answer this one? "I want cookie?" Yes!!! Yes, I want cookie. But then she tagged the foreigner-speak-a-no-English “NO” onto the end of it. I felt answered for already.

“You want cookie? No.?"

YES!!! I do want a cookie. I want two cookies, in fact!!!

I came up with the best answer I could, “Yes, cookie. I want that one right there. The bat. And that one there. The witch flying across the moon cookie.”

“Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees one?”

OH MY GOD YES!!!!!! THE BAT!!!! YES, GODDAMN IT, THE BAT COOKIE!!!!

This whole thing was taking forever. The portly woman sacked up the bat cookie, then turned to price it out.

“No, wait, AND I want the witch cookie next to it.”

“Not theeeeeeeeees one?”

“Yes. That one.. And the witch. I want two. Two cookies.”

“Two bats?”

Now, I’m going bats.

“One bat and one witch.”

“Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees one?”

“No that’s the gingerbread man with the pumpkin head again. The witch! The witch! I want the witch!!!”

And then she proceeded to point to every fucking cookie on the tray, each one with it’s own personalized, “Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees one?”

I had to wait. Had to. She would be getting to the witch cookie... eventually.

“Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees one? And theeeeeeeeees one? And - ”

BINGO – the witch.

“YES!!! And I do not need anything else.”

“How many?”

How many WHAT?!? I thought we were done here.

I wanted two cookies. And, despite the battle, I got them both. And, now, I was done.

How many WHAT?!?

Why was I being asked this?

"No. I do not need anything more.”

Then I spun it around my head.

Uh-oh...

“I do not need."

“Do not need.”

"Do not."

Aw, fuck!

DOUGHNUT!!!

Shit! Now, she thinks I want fucking donuts.

What should I do? Think fast, Ricky.

“I’ll take 6.”

"Good. Six," and as she slid out the tray of assorted donuts, she asked, “You want theeeeeees one? Or… theeeeeeeeeeees one? Or… theeeeees one…”

Good Grief

2007-10-31T13:31:00.000-05:00

We needed a shower curtain liner.

A shower curtain liner?

Holy Love of Lye this is not an emergency purchase. But, apparently, the shower rod was sporting a Pollack of mildews.

"Babe," wifey requested, "Before we all jump in, would you mind running down to Wal*Mart and grabbing a freshy?"

Now, I'd give my life for wifey, so no biggie running down to El Wal*Martino for a shower curtain liner.

"Yeah, sweetie. No prob. Be back in 20 minnies."

20 minnies? Did I just say 20 minnies?!? What am I "gay"?!?

Jesus!

Well, 20 minnies never happened.

Traffic on the backroads was loaded with finished-up Pop Warners and cops directing the cars around them. Me? I was detoured, way off course, down the road where (dramatic chord goes here) lies the other town cemetary.

The really old one.

This is the town cemetary where the last plot was probably sold back in '76. The roads damaged, not from auto traffic - because who visits the dead once the loved one has been dusted over with a fresh truck-bed of loam - no, the road within had been damaged from beneath. BENEATH!!! The root systems of the dying elms escaping through the pavement like zombie hands out of a Romero movie.

And there I was. Smack in front of it. My car not moving. Sitting. Looking at it. Idle.

I thought of my wife and how I told her I'd be back in 20 (fucking minnies...?) and I didn't want her to worry when it turned into 45. I picked up my cell and called her.

While the phone rang, my eyes caught up with the sole living thing in the cemetary. An older gentleman. Flannel shirt jacket. Baggy jeans. Smoking. Just a sullen dude, talking to the grass below his untied workboots.

His arm gestured. His lips animated. The cigarette being traded from his fingers to his teeth then back again as he told the earth below him his story.

Maybe, because I have just found a renewed love with my own wife, I assumed he was talking to his passed-on sweetheart. Catching his soul mate up on the life of the living. Still smoking because his health wasn't worth it anymore. Savoring each puff of his mentholated 100 so he could catch up to her and, soon, lie next to his one true love for eternity.

He walked around the hedgestone. Laughing. Squatting in front it. Telling tales, puncuating each and every one of his chuckles with pokes to the Heavens with his filtered menthol wand.

"God he must miss her," I thought as I teared-up.

I couldn't imagine being without wifey. Despite our few true downs and because of our many, abundant ups, I just couldn't paint the canvas of my life without her.

Never.

I admired this man's devotion for his wife and the celestial Marlboro they shared together.

A warm sentiment on a cold Autumn day.

Then, the man sighed.

Heavy.

God, this son of a bitch...

Then, he bent over.

Poor bastard...

Then, stubbed his cigarette across the top of her stone and just dragged it over the top. DRAAAAAAAAAAGGED it.

"Oh, dude," I grimaced.

Then, he threw, not dropped, THREW the crushed-out butt atop of her mound and stomped on it. Fucking hard, too. Twisting it into the earth like he was trying to bore it through her casket.

"Oh, dude... "

Then he flipped it the bird, got into his car and drove away.

ASHES TO ASHES, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!

Amen.

My Teeth Were Swimming

2007-10-24T14:54:00.000-05:00

I got to the dentist way earlier than the appointment because I had to pee like a mother. And, on top of that, my dentist always runs a minimum 10 behind. So, as I de-car’d my body, I grabbed my iPod and my full bladder, then locked my thighs together and did my best piss-twister to the door.

But no sooner was the door in a full-swing open, when the receptionist smiled-out a, “He’s ready for you, now. Go right in.”

“Right... now?”

But, dammit, I have to pee.

"Right now," and then she just sat there silently, smiling through her teeth that clearly stated she was getting freebies from the dentist.

Man, there was no way I was going to be pinching bladder on this baby. I had to go really fucking bad. Dammit, that was the reason I brought the iPod with me. I had to pee so bad I was going to sit down to it. Like I was taking shit.

But, DAMMIT, the dentist was ready "right now" and I didn't want to be here all night because I jolted his extremely rare "ahead of schedule".

In the recess of my mind, that weren't preoccupied by my bursting bladder, I thought, maybe, today's journey into my rotted yam was going to be just a quick "look-and-see". A purely clinical “yeah, you fucked up your tooth, see you next week, buddy”.

"So," I thought, "I can hold this one in for another 15."

For the record, the reason why I was dentisting today was this: While face-stuffing a log of fresh seeded Scala bread, a quarter of my molar dropped into the chewed, wet wad that was in my mouth. And not knowing the piece was rolling around this sopping bready mass, I bit down, cracking another one-fourth of the same tooth, leaving me with only half of that tooth, its filling and total pain.

Now, with all my gag reflexes in tow, it was off to Dr. Dendish for a possible drilling and filling. 15 minutes tops.

I can muscle off this piss at the perinium.

“So, I can go in now?”

“Yup."

Pinch off or nothing... this piss has to happen NOW. Tell her, stupid!

But before any of that could drop from my craw, the dental assistant appeared out of nowhere, greeted me, then led me down the hallway. It was like a scene out of Hostel. With each step past each exam room door... victims... dental victims... all of them.

Disturbing.

Just truly disturbing side-glances of spotlit patients. All of them uncomfortably leaned back in the dental chair. Mouths agape. Wet. Eyes begging for help.

But, me, only helplessly, walking by them all thinking, "Jesus Christ, how incredibly far you can stretch an old lady’s jaw."

Simply breathtaking.

Art, really.

The dental assistant presented my exam room to me, then raised the arm rest . As I was bibbed and prepped, I reluctantly slid ass into my chair. NEXT!!!

“Mr. Crowley, Dr. Dendish will be in in a second.”

I'm "Mr. Crowley", now? Nice. What happened to "Rick"? Why so formal... now? What's in store for me NEXT!!!?

But, rather, than speak up in the name of self-preservation, I could only meekish-out an, "Okay..."

"Just a second. Okay?"

But I have to pee still.

“Okay.”

But I have to pee.

Bad.

“I got my iPod.”

And I waved it in the air like she really gave a shit.

"He'll just be a second."

Right. "in a second" in D.D.S. always translate to 10 uncomfortably anticipated minutes bent back in that chair staring at the blue paper bib. But this time --

"Mr. Crowley -"

He was, literally, a second.

Creepy.

"-- how're you doing today… minus the fractured tooth,” ha ha ha ha.

Yeah. Hardy-har. Look, Doc, I have to pee. Fix my mouth.

“I’m good.”

Liar! Liar! Tell him you have to pee!

“Let’s have a look at that tooth.”

“Or what’s left of it…”

My joke went over worse than a drilling on a nerve end.

“Pretty bad stuff. We’re going to have to grind this down today and put on a crown. You okay with that?”

“Uh-huh.”

I had to agree. Had to! But I knew this was going to take time. Now, was the prime time to admit it. To myself. To the dentist. To the the World.

“Um, Doc, I have to pee –“

Really fucking bad.

“Can I go pee?”

Except the meat of his fist was rested on my bottom jaw, his knuckles posted to my top incisors and all I really said was, “Uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh…”

And because champion, blue-ribbon gagger is written all over my charts in black Crayola, bolded and capitalized, nitrous oxide was grappled over my nose and a clamp was in my mouth within a lickity-split.

“Uhng uhng uhng uh...”

“Not too long. About 45 minutes or so…”

No!!! I said, "I have to fucking pee!"

Then the nitrous kicked in. Yeah, baby, break on through to the other side. Woodstock and the Manson house had entered my brain. I was tripping, man, tripping. Spirals and shit!

I closed my eyes to the wonderous sounds of the tooth file: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTT!

Yeah, mama, and the smells of my burning tooth.

Mmm.

I watched the grinded smoke circle from my mouth like smoke from Carroll’s Caterpiller’s pipe.

Yeah…

Yeah, man…

My chair totally spinning in circles.

Peace, man, peace.

Peace.

Pee-ss.

Piss.

Pee.

Aw, fuck, I just peed in my pants!!!

I reached down, stoned, high on laughing gas, tickling around my nuts through my work slacks searching for the wet spot.

“Where is it,” I muttered in my stoned head, all the while fluttering around my balls.

“Are you okay, Mr. Crowley,” asked the assistant.

I poked at my inner thigh.

I peed! I peed!

“Yes, Mr. Crowley, your iPod is still there.”

Aw, shit! I fucking pissed on my iPod. I just fucking pissed on a 300 hundred dollar electronic device that’s near my goddamn balls. SHIT!!!

I was so worked up and high the dentist gently and quite nicely stated the fact that, “Rick, you are biting down with everything you have on my finger and, frankly, it really hurts.”

Instinctually, I released my incisored prisoner.

“Thank you.”

“Ur elcum.”

“What’s the matter, Mr. Crowley?”

My mouth hanging sloop, the left of my lips just dangling from the zilocane, tears and shame in my eyes, “I fink I peed my pands.”

The dentist looked over to my crotch, “Nope.”

“I didn't pee in my pants?”

“Nothing. Dry as a bone. It’s probably the nitrous playing tricks on you. Just lay back and enjoy it.”

“Yeah. I will. I'm sorry.”

I was embarrassed for a moment. Humiliated. Until I realized that I still had to pee. YEAH! Whah-hoo! Still had to pee. That meant I hadn't piss in my pants or on the iPod. Happiness all around...

... for a moment...

... a brief moment.

Because it was in the final seconds of that moment I had realized when I said “Yeah. I will. I'm sorry,” it was relatively clear.

No.

It was was really fucking clear.

Hmm?

Odd.

Why was I talking so clearly?

Was it the gas?

Was the gas making me think that the zilocane had no effect on my "should have been" slurred speech?

Jesus, God, Mary and Joey! Please! Fucking PUH-LEASE let this be the nitrous playing tricks on me... let me and my yam still be zilocaning because that drill is making its way back into my --

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTT!

Holy Fucking - “AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRR--GGGGGGGGGG!!!!”

The zilocane had run its course.

This motherfucker was drilling on the raw nerve of the stub of the 1/2 remains of my tooth.

"Mah-mah-mah-mmmmmmmmm!!!!"

“Can you feel that, Mr. Crowley?”

“… yeah…”

Yeah? Yeah? Oh My God, if I weren't fucking stoned and staring at my feet like it was a goddamn puppet show, I'd fucking run that drill into your eyes - yeah, I can FEEL it!!!

"... I do feel it..."

And as he rammed the foot long zilocane syringe into my gums, he said, “I bet peeing in your pants doesn’t seem so bad, now?”

A big sarcastic "Thanks, Doc."

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!

Aw, Nuts!

2007-10-07T17:21:00.000-05:00

With all of the grace of an Autumn fruit bat figure-eighting across the skies for the last of the season's mosquitoes, the squirrels in my oaks and pines leap from species to species with complete and utter ease.

Never a misstep.

Simply flawless acrobatics from the Celtis Occidentalis to the Coniferous Picea Glauca. And if a slip does occur, there's always that last millisecond of an Indiana Jones escape, never once losing that mouthful of nuts (that I put out for the birds!)

But...

Do squirrels ever take a spill?

Do they ever drop from the trees?

And, hey, come on, what happens when these bitches do miss the next branch?

Well...

Um...

As it turns out...

They sort of die.

Yeah, I was off-keying a little bit of Laurie Berkner's Victor Vito with my little Tiny to take my mind off of the Dunkin Donuts inspired incredi-pee I had to take. Each bump in the road induced a mili-squirt and droplet of moist underpant discomfort.

Man, I just wanted to bang out this drive and get home lickity splits, but we ended up brake-roading slowly down the entirety of our tiny, wooded street. Inch-by-painful-inch, making damn sure not to Firestone over any of our woodland buddies who were shopping for acorns and seeds for a Winter's lockdown in their nests in the soon-to-be balded canopy above our heads.

Thanks for slowing things down, guys.

From the backseat, "Dad?"

"Yeah, babe?"

"Why are there so many chipmunks today?"

"And squirrels, baby. It's getting cold, so they're collecting nuts and seeds and stuff to put in their nests for the Winter."

"Like when we go to Market Basket to collect our food?"

"Exactly."

Except we do it completely out of their way in the sanctity of an enclosed area SO IF THEY HAD TO DRIVE 1200 FEET DOWN THEIR FUCKING STREET THEY COULD PULL INTO THEIR GODDAMN DRIVEWAY BEFORE LOADING THEIR PANTS WITH GALLONS OF THEIR OWN URINE!

I gotta pee, man.

Then...

"DADDY!!! LOOK!!!!"

I SCREECHED to a stop, staining the street with 5 feet of all-seasons radials.

"What, baby?!?"

I looked around.

But not around.

Up.

"Daddy, look up there. That squirrel just ran up that tree and keeps jumping back and forth from the branches."

"Jesus, babe, don't yell like that again."

"But, Daddy, what if he falls."

"He won't. Squirrels don't fall out of the trees."

"But what iiiiiiiiiifffffffffffff?"

"They don't... ever. They never, never fall."

And, "Yeah", I wondered. Why don't squirrels drop from the branches? What makes these fuckers so concise?

And as I though that, pulling into my driveway, I looked back up to the tree and, with a mouthful of stash, that little grey scamper missed the next branch.

RUFFLE - CREAK-AH-REEK!!!

Then he just hung there like an old Scolastics book "I Hate Mondays" poster.

Then...

"Daddy!"

He fell.

PLAPP!!!

Right on the road in front of my house.

"Daddy, is he dead?"

Yeah. He kind of was.

"Yee-yuh... babe... I… I'm... not... sure..."

But I was sure. Very much fucking sure. But, what do you say? How do you explain a tree plummetting death? Where do you start --

Then, a mustard-colored, rusted-out ‘82 El Dorado FWAH-BUP-BUMPED right over that little fucker.

Ugly, man, just ugly.

And, as the last squirts and chunks of squirrel re-hit the road, I felt my, once innocent, 5 year old slow-creak her head and eyes into my direction. My direction!

Then, upward.

“Is he dead, now?”

“Um, yeah, babe,” I looked down, apology all over my mug, “He’s not doing too good.”

A morose beat went by. Then she muttered to herself, "I hope he told someone where he put his nuts."

Yeah, babe, I think they hit the neighbor's mailbox.

Arrival

2007-09-03T16:46:00.000-05:00

Oh, Dearest of Diaries,

Today. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. For today, on my way to The Build-a-Bear Workshop in Salem, NH, I said to my child these horrifying words: "If you DON'T knock it OFF right now..."

Here is comes, folks...

"I'm going to turn this car around and we won't be going anywhere!"

YIKES!

I said it.

I SAID IT!

And I meant it... too.

I went "my old man". A real old school scolding.

"I'm going to turn this car around right now!"

By Wholly Prophets of the Interstate, the turning the car around threat goes back to whoah'ing the good steed and turning the buggy back to the homestead.

And I said it.

But it's a threat.

That’s all. A threat. So, don't let your old man fool ya. It's a goddamn threat. That’s all it’s ever been. That's all it will ever be. And I know this now.

My old man would say it, but wouldn't actually turn the wagon around. He would, while still lead-footing the gas, turn himself around and beat the shit out of us while still muffler-dragging it up I-93 Northbound into Hooksett. Somehow, while still banging it in the D-position of the gear shift, he would de-belt, curl-n-snap it, then go old school welting. OL' TIMEY BEATING! Mostly, we'd get his Wilson's braided jobbie ass-bound because he wanted to go away more than we did and there was no way that car was getting U'ied 45 minutes into the ride to Winnipesaukee. No way.

So, the car would stay right on course while we laid sideways unable to sit on our steaming asses. No cushiony child's seat. Not back in the day. Just the unpadded springy rows of the Volare's naughahide bench.

But, I meant it. I've come further than my ol' man. This was mortgage paycheck and I really didn't have the funds to be dropping on a love-stuffed Cheetah. And, besides, this fuzzy cat was destined to be graveyarded in the Rubbermaid tote that held the menagerie of the Build-A-Bear pig, frog, flamingo and 2 penguins, all stuffed animals and all wearing T-Shirts and shoes. Why do these toys need shoes? They're clearly not going anywhere, they haven't left that tote SINCE WE BOUGHT THEM!!!!

And it continued. This noise. From her mouth the sounds of a 72 Dodge Dart engine unable to turn-over in the dead of Winter. Non-stop.

"ENG-ENG-ENG-ENG..."

"I'm serious, dude. I will turn this car around right now. Stop making that noise."

"Go ahead."

"What?"

"Go ahead. Turn the car around."

"I will. Then no Build-A-Bear."

"Then, go ahead, why don't cha'?"

Yeah. Why don't I? I said I was. I must have meant it.

"I'm going to."

"Go ahead."

She knew I wasn't. I was already out of the house and there was no way I was headed backwards on I-93 only to listen to the ENG-ENG-ENG-ENG turn into a full-on Bellevue-style screaming coming from the rear seat. The kid had my number. I was empty threatening this whole goddamn thing. And then it dawned on me: That's why the ol' man never - that's why NO OLD MAN HAS NEVER - turned the car around. He knew. They ALL knew. If we, the kids, were total assholes on the way up to someplace nice, imagine the douchebags we would have become for the next hour knowing we fucked up vacation and were going to get the living shit beat out of us when we got home.

YES!!!

EUREKA!!!

Damn the History of The Ol' Man!

"Alright."

"Alright what?"

"One more chance."

"You mean, you're really not going to turn the car around?"

"No," I landed firmly, but beaten, "One more chance."

"Thank you, Daddy."

"And you won't make that awful noise anymore?"

"I already said: No, Daddy."

"Promise, Dad."

"Yes, Daddy. I promise I won't make it anymore. I said I wouldn’t."

Thank you.

Silence.

The sounds of Mr. Jagger and his band belting out Satisfaction.

Nice.

Except, Mick, I’ve landed mine. I am totally getting satisfaction.

Peace.

Quiet.

And the assurance of why the “turn this car around right now” is and has always been an empty, fatherly threat.

Satisfaction.

Then --

From the child seat in the back:

"I'M HUNGRY! I'M HUNGRY! I'M HUNGRY! I'M HUNGRY! I'M HUNGRY! I'M HUNGRY! I'M HUNGRY! I'M HUNGRY!"

… and I try… and I try…

Jam Packed Vacation Fun

2007-08-27T01:10:00.000-05:00

I was drag-feeting my way around the Stonewall Kitchen Factory store off of I-95 in Yorkie, Maine. Wifey could see I was near-close to gouging myself with a $65.00 cookie batter spatula. If she wanted to shop in peace, as always, I needed something to do.

“Go get us something sweet and salty we can snack on tonight in the room,” Wifey requested.

She laid on the smart. Not only were starving while feasting on a bag of button C3, vendor machine Combos in the Anchorage Inn last night, night two of our vacation wasn’t going to be spent mucking through another bag of that horse-shit while sharing a warm, sugar-free Red Bull.

We were here now. In the Stonewall Kitchen Factory store. The Mecca of Samples. The Taj Mahal of Jam and Chutney “Try-Me’s”.

After dieting for 8 months – Free Sweets!!! I’ll be busy for hours!

“Sure, babe. Sweet and Salty. Any requests?”

“Whatever you want.”

HEH-HA!!! FEAST!!!

“Rick?”

“Yeah, babe?”

“Please, don’t eat the samples. You don’t know who been eating that shit.”

WHAT?!?

NO!!!

I have to keep busy… plus I’m starving. My red pepper hummus wrap was about as filling as eating a red pepper hummus wrap. Fuck all over this. I’m Try-Me’ing every jar in this goddamn joint.

“You don’t know who’s been eating this shit?!?”

My God, dearest of wifests, look around for Chrissakes. The demographic for this over-priced gourmandic shit-cave is a whore-hole of moneybagging, middle-aged, female, shabby-chic handwashers. I’ll be perfectly fine eating in their wake.

“Okay, babe, I won’t.”

But I was.

I completely was.

I was TOTALLY going to sample.

Are you f'ing kidding me? Right here, before my famished eyes - Jars of stone-wheats and cheddar frosted crackers as far as my famisheds could see. Little tiny spoons sitting sticky on the downside-up lids of their matching pentagonal jars. Stacks of napkin squares adorned with the simple but dignified logo of the Stonewall Kitchen.

“More salty or more sweet?”

“Rick, you judge it. You’re good at picking out that shit. I’m just going over here to look around.”

At soaps and lotions. Right. Make sure you bring 16 more Lemon Verbena and Rosemary hand washes back into the kitchen.

“Okay, babe. Have fun!”

With a squirt of Grapefruit Thyme Diffusion hand softner, Wifey and Tiny had disappeared into the Netherworld of Samples, Try Me’s and Close-outs.

And, then, beholdy: JARS!!!!

Jars O’ Jams. Jellies. Chutneys. Marmalades.

YAY! MARMALADES!!!

“Where to start? Where to start?” bounced around the meaty section of my sweetbread.

Marmalades. I’ll start marmalading immediately.

But as I approached the doilied, slightly stained in shavened citrus jammy tableau, a parade passed me. A family. Each member it’s own slow-moving float: Mom, Dad, the brace-face 13 year-old daughter, classic son – the little pussy missing both front teeth, the Grams, the Gramps and, sporting this cortege’s caboose, the 50-something year-old uncle with a heaping, helping of Down’s Syndrome.

Nothing wrong with this. Nothing wrong at all with sporting a dose of the Downs. Me, personally, I have no beef with Down's Syndrome. My beef is with his pre-procession. His relations. These monkeys were all donned-up and clearly well Banana Republic’d, coifed and do’d… while poor Uncle Downs was still – STILL – in the classic straight bangs haircut and flannel top. Come on, you marching Gap ad, this motherfucker’s is sweating in wool and clichés. Help him out. He’s your blood!

The whole crew passed, marching, as I grabbed an accidental Alpha male eye contact with Uncle Downs.

God!!! Dammit…

I firm-lipped my version of the “Why hello, retarded sir. Yes. I acknowledge that we have just made eye contact, alpha-style, and, yes, I’m slightly uncomfortable and, yes, I’m not sure how to react to you” – smile.

And don’t for a second, don’t think that YOU don’t toss off your “Hi, retarded guy” smile or whatever personal variation you perform thereof.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Uncle Downsy, I got me some sampling to do.

Of course, the well-laid was to sample them all. Not a doubt. Starting at the beginning was my only option. My fingers brayed and swayed above the tiny, sticky spoons. Dangling. Anxious. Afraid to touch. Afraid to... pleasure.

But, wifey’s voice was ringing, right there, in my hungry head: “You don’t know who been eating that shit.”

Dammit, I really don’t! That’s when I thought, “Yeah. Why the fuck are these spoons so goddamn sticky? Who HAS been eating this shit?!?”

GOOD GOD AND MAPLE PECAN CRUNCH!!! How many people have been pawing at this shit? And do they wash their hands when they squirt and shit. DAMN!!!! Dammit all over my brain. I can’t just dig in. I can’t do it.

I looked around. People were sampling. Millions of them. Spooning down into the jars, wiping this delicious shit all over them stone-wheats. Carefully placing them smack-ass right on the tasty buds of their begging tongues. Literally, hundreds of people standing pleasure-eyed in white linen button-downs just pounding face with sticky sweets and salted crackers.

All of my contingency and procedural planning in the business world. It must be of good use here.

Somehow.

I needed a method. A method for some clean sampling.

First: I inventoried the tableau of marmalades.

1) Itty bitty sticky spoons
2) Lids in desperate need of a Whirlpool washing
3) Bell jars of stone-wheats
4) And, YES!!! THE STACK OF TINY NAPKINS! YES!!!

My method for sampling was all falling into hygienic place.

I mapped out a complete end-to-end flowchart in my crazy head.

The steps:
1) Tear off tiny scrappings of a napkin and diaper the end of the spoon.
2) Take the remainder of the napkin and pot-holder the jar.
3) Delve deep into the bottom of the jar – where botulism doesn’t grow? (What the fuck?!?)
4) Shake and drop the jam onto the cracker.
5) Put it all back in place.
6) Carefully eat the cracker.

Jar-to-jar the same method. Table-to-table I will be the epitome of hygienic cuisine. I could eat fucking marmalades ALL DAY!

Wrap. Dig. Scoop. Drop. Eat. Repeat.

Simple as shit.

And so I began…. SAMPLING! Sampling stupid-expensive preserves like the Little Baby Jesus sniffing Nativity myrrhs.

The marmalade table was splayed like a Catholic alter. Sticky sweetened scents rising from their lids like the curling smoke of inscense. The glow of the boiled fruits glistening in my eyes, candling from their jars. The crackers waiting to be laid on my tongue like Communion.

I picked up my first jar.

“Why is this shit only a quarter filled?”

Where was the other 3 quarters of marmalade from this jar?

“Damn. This shit must be a might fucking tasty.”

And despite whatever hepatitis was petri-dishing at the bottom… Wrap. Dig. Scoop. Drop. Eat. Repeat jar #2.

Jar #2? Also. 3 quarters… gone… hmm?

Curious.

I eyed jar #2.

“Why would both these jars be so empty?”

I questioned the taste of jar #1 since I had sampled it and it wasn’t all that good. Tomato and Onion marmalade. Good God and Holy Ass! This fucking jar should be totally filled except for the first missing spoonful and the shouts of the first taster: “I’ve just eaten turd!!!”; therefore, excusing the rest of the samplers from this particular flavor. And, even more; therefore, leaving this jar to the brim with marmalade.

But that wasn't the case and, on top of my palate loaded with shitty preserves, the sampling convoy in front of me creaked to a slow crawl. It was the Banana Republic and Uncle Downs holding up the show. Uncle Downs, and God bless ‘em, was totally holding me up from sampling. Sympathy for the condition, Homes, but lets move it through the shop. I’m hungry.

Sample #2: Wrap. Dig. Scoop. Drop. Eat.

I repeated from jar-to-jar. My process was working. I was tommy gunning spoonfuls of samples across the table. And in good time. Sometimes, more than one sample per flavor.

But... the line in front of me was barely at motion and I’m a “keep the line moving” fella. I could only assume Uncle Downs and the crew must be some savoring for fine jams and jellies motherfuckers, cuz he and them ain’t moving.

Another jar. ¾ empty.

Wrap. Dig. Scoop. Drop. Eat.

Line at a stand still. I was getting antsy.

Another jar. Still. ¾ missing.

“And why is this one almost empty, too?!? What the fuck?”

I had gone through 15 samples already and every single one of them were only ¼ full. None of them all that terribly flavorful. I had to question: Why are all of these jars empty?!?

The line stopped completely.

And –

“What’s the fucking hold-up, now?”

And with my lack of indiscretion, Uncle Downs turned around. We locked Alpha again. This time I submitted and moved my gaze… down… down to his hand… his hand grasping the tiny sticky sampling spoon… dipping it into the jar of jam he was holding… scooping… and feeding himself out of that jar of Strawberry Pecan Fig like a Great Depression hobo eating a bowl of government soup for a New Deal photo opportunity.

Slurp!

YEE-YEE-YUGH-GUH-GUH!

I stood frozen. My White Cheddar cracker crumbing from between the pinch of my pointer and thumb.

Slurp! Slurp! Slurp!

Our eyes locked in Alpha again.

I had a mouthful of jam. My lips pursed in a total puke reversal.

His in a dribble-release, drooling back into the jar.

My mouth dropped open, letting free the Apricot Rum Raisin jam that I had benched in my cheek. It fell to the buckle of my sandal. Shining. SHINING?? SHINING FROM FUCKING WHAT? God, why is my fucking jam so goddamn shiny? What is ON my jam? WHAT THE FUCK IS ON MY JAM?!?

Our Alpha gaze still locked as he finished ¾'s of the jar and reached for another.

I scraped my tongue with a cracker and called for Wifey.

“Babe,” I gagged, “Look!”

I shamelessly pointed to the “special” feaster.

“I’ve been eating after him for like 30 minutes.”

She just shook her head.

“Babe?”

“I told you not to sample.”

But I did.

“I hope you don’t get sick, Rick.”

From Down’s Syndrome? Um, Down's Syndrome isn't catchy.

It isn't?

Right?

It's not.

Good.

“... but... ewwwww..."

And as she walked away, shaking her head, I caught one last Alpha with Uncle Downs. On purpose.

The awkwardness we shared over our first smile had past. I'd have to give in it to him. What was I going to do? Eat up, my retarded friend. You just don't know any better. Enjoy.

I figured, it's only saliva, and this prick's never been laid, "What the Hell. I'll be fine."

I let the corners of my mouth curve upward. I smiled. Then nodded sweetly to him, “How’s it taste, buddy?”

“Good. I have a cold and they told me to eat fruit.”

Then he pointed to his family and full-on sneezed in a 1/4-filled jar of Wild Maine Blueberry.

Sample that!

The 10 Minute Mile

2007-08-22T13:54:00.000-05:00

Lately, I’ve been exercising like a, well, not like a fiend… exercising more like a guy who fucking hates to to get off his TV'd ass but kinda has to because he can feel the touch of his under breast rubbing his belly arch. It’s that exact moment the first bead of wetness forms between my reams of skin that I have to peel ass from the leather sofa and drag it all downstairs to the basement to that motherfucking treadmill.

And I dread it even more now that I have a sucky pair of sneakers down there that I discounted for myself at Wal*Mart. I don’t spin the tread belt enough to justify a Nike or Converse or whatever the cool-ass brand-namer is these days. I’m not hip that way. Sorry. I ain’t. I'm all about cheap. And...

The sneakers are pure white. Pure white. Like if you took a jug of bleach, then bleached the jug of bleach with another jug of bleach. That’s how white these fucking things are. I can only use them on the treadmill in the basement because Wifey is way-way embarrassed to see me out in the World with them tied to my peds.

Sorry.

But, baby, they do the trick.

They stay on my feet.

Let me back up. Before the new shoes:

7 months ago, exercise... cardio was a 12 minute walk.

Walk?

No.

A stroll. A 12 minute stroll. Like a Victorian millionaire in the goddamn park.

So, I plugged back salads and ½ portions of whole foods to lose the walking weight. I downed 30 pounds after a couple of months. And strolled up to a struggled jog.

That’s when I bought the new sneakies.

Pure white.

Virginal.

A new beginning.

The first night I got them, I was like a 6 year old in a new pair of Keds. GONNA MAKE ME RUN FASTER, MOM!!!

Yeah, I wast totally 6’ing the jog.

I slipped them on and tied them up. I was going to run this bitch. Not too fast, though. The treadsy is in the basement. Low ceiling and pushed back right up against the drywall of the new bathroom. One lost breath, one false face wipe with my tanktop and I’m going head up, then crack backwards into the greenboard and shitty framing (I did).

Cuz I’ve backended the wall before… going slow… oh, shame...

So…

Sneaks on!

Treadmill rolling.

Headphones in.

And I belt.

PAT-PAT-PAT.

My feet were pounding on this fucking thing. Whoo-hoo!

PAT-PAT-PAT.

I was a-moving.

And... stop... 24 minutes.

1 mile!

1 mile?!?

What the fuck is this?!? Why 1 goddamn mile? I’m in shape, now! Right?

“I’m in shape, hon… right!?!!”

I yelled up through the cracks of the upstairs sub-floor.

“What,” she screamed back.

Dejected… “Nothing.”

Just nothing.

Dejection dedicated me to 2 months of banging the Jesus out of this treadmill. I was determined to be running miles like a motherfucker. Like a motherfucker!

So, for days I increased my stamina.

For weeks I slid the dial up for speed.

For months I added more muscle.

And, oh baby, I was doing it. Doing this bastard with less and less effort. The Red Hot Chili Peppers in my earbuds and beating the living shit out of that rubber belt.

PAT-PAT-PAT.

CLUMP-CLUMP-CLUMP.

Faster and faster.

The white of my sneakers a blur beneath me. (Because, YES, I could see them now. Gut was gone!)

PAT-PAT-PAT.

CLUMP-CLUMP-CLUMP.

BANG-BANG-BANG.

“Tomorrow I’m timing this…”

“What?!?"

I have to learn to talk softly when my headphones are on. She can't hear me up there.

“I can’t hear you all the way down there?”

See.

“Nothing, baby.”

“What?”

“Nothing!”

“What?!?”

“I said: NOTHING!!!”

That night I showered and went right to bed. RIGHT TO BED!!!! The next day I was getting up bright and chipper, sliding on those pearly new whites canvas jobbies and running a motherfucker of a mile.

And I did. I got up at 8 AM – ON A SATURDAY, MAN! – and put on those shitty white sneakers.

I cranked the treadmill up to 7 and –

PAT-PUT-PAT!!!

CLUMP-PAT-CLUMP!!!

BANG-BANG-PUMP!!!

I was running. RUNNING!!! COOKING IT!!!! I WAS A BEAST!!!!

¼ mile. DONE!

BANG!

Another ¼ mile.

DONE!

POW!

Another 1/4…

“Fuck. I’m getting pooped.”

I looked at the drywall behind me.

“Shit. I don’t want to hit that…”

“What?!?”

“NOTHING!!!”

But it came out "NUH-TAH" because 7 was way too fast for me and these shitty sneakers.

PAT-PAT-TRIP!!!

Fuck, the drywall.

CLUMP-CLUMP-FUCK THIS…

“I can’t…”

I grabbed the bars on the treadmill. And, really, you can’t be doing that. You can’t be grabbing the bars when you’re running anything past 6.8.

“Damn, my under-pit. I just ripped my fucking under-arm!”

"WHAT?!?"

¾ miles... FEH-PUH... done...

pow...

poo...

egh...

I was tired, man, and getting sweatier and sweatier with each PAT-CLUMP-BANG of my shitty, white sneaks. My ears were filling with sweat like a cesspool of piss after a party.

“Oh, I though I was in shape…”

“What?!?”

“Fucking NOTHING!!!”

And THAT came out: "Fuh-kah nah-tuh."

Fuh-kah nah-tah? What the fuh-kah is THAT?!?

My earphones were sopped in sweat and no longer worked. I'm flumping away on this goddamn treadmill to the muffles of Pearl Jam singing… something…

I checked the speed.

“It does say 7. Fuck!"

I checked my laps: 3.91.

"Oh, God, is this mile almost fucking over?"

Uh-gah, ih thih mah ahmust fuh-cah oh-vuh...?

Drool. Drool just dripping onto my sopped tanktop.

And my lungs, my lungs were so wiped out and filled with basement molds, my ribs were trying to break free from my chest skin.

3.92 laps… and…

"Uh-gud! Kuhl muh!"

Kill me, now!

3.94... and... eventual...

4.

And...

DONE!

pow.

I checked the time.

10 minutes. Exactly. Exactly 10 minutes. YAHOO!!!!

YES!!! I am the fucking king of this treadmill!!!! I FINALLY ARRIVED!!! VICTORY!!!

“Baby,” I screamed as I jogged up the stairs, “I just did a mile in 10 minutes!”

“Awesome. How long was it taking you before?”

My dick and balls, actually, cavitied into my body in shame, “35 minutes…”

“But you did in 10 today. That’s great, baby!”

“Yeah. I feel really good right now. Really good.”

“I’m glad, honey. I'm really proud of you. Go wash up and we’ll have some breakfast before Tiny gets up.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

And like a little girl, I skipped to the bathroom.

I smiled at myself in the mirror for a few seconds. Pride. Just pride. Feeling good. Awesome, actually. I was, finally, in shape. The 8 months of struggle had paid off.

I looked down to get a look at my shrunken tummy and was side-tracked to top of the toilet tank.

“A new Men’s Health issue?”

The magazine must of come in the day before. I turned on the shower and flipped through it as the water heated up.

“Ha.”

I love coincidence.

The page I flipped to was an article of determining what kind of shape you’re in. One of the showcased columns was: Running. I, confidently, began to read because, for the first time, I was going to be able to relate to this fucking magazine from a success standpoint rather than a goddman "shame on you, fatso how-to” manual.

Running.

Yes.

Here: The 6 minute mile is the barometer of a good run: You’re in shape.

“Yeah. Blah. Blah. Blah. We all know. 6 minute mile. Good for fucking everyone and their washboards.”

8 minute mile: There’s work to be done.

Work to be done? That's fast. Hey, where is this article headed?

10 minute mile…

Please, say: Congrats, Rick. Job well done, Rick. Or, at least, keep up the good jog, Rick.

10 minute mile: "You are over-weight!"

NO!!!

"Slow. "

HOW DARE YOU?!?

"And OUT OF SHAPE!!!! "

NO!!!!!!!!

CRASH AND BURN.

“Goddammit!!!”

“What?!?”

“Nothing.”

And, as I stood under the hot water in the shower, baptising, cleansing myself of Original Denial, it dawned on me:

"And I'm stuck with those ugly fucking sneakers."

Spaced Out

2007-08-06T14:41:00.000-05:00

The matter inside my head was halo’d somewhere in the supermass of the 3C-191 quasar, orbiting around the Epsilon Eridani in the far reaches of the Eridanus Constellation.

And I was in a bad fucking mood to boot.

I misjudged the distance between my Grand Voyager and the other vehicle. Misjudged. That’s all. I made a mistake. A spatial mistake. A spatial misjudgment for a parking space one space over from the handicapper.

I cut the wheel hard. No skid. No squeal. Nobody broke. No brakes. Nothing.

Then, just as easily, I square-pegged the Voyager in-betwixt the yellows on the asphalt, de-keyed and, with my tiny shopping partner, popped out the side slider of the mini-van.

“Excuse me,” squealed, over the tar of the Market Basket parking lot, the overly, suburbanic-Boston-accented voice of a fairy tale seawitch - and it was angry.

“Excuse me!”

This isn’t for me.

“Excuse me!”

This better not be for me.

“Ex! Cuse! Me!”

Fuck.

Wrong day, captain.

I orbited my body towards the accretive rust deposits of her leoparded Lincoln, “What?”

“Excuse -- me!”

Yes. I fucking heard you. Could you, hurry up, begin and complete whatever construction of a new anus you need to chew into me, please, I have to buy eggs.

“Excuse you, what, ma’am?”

“You cut me RIGHT off. RIGHT off!”

I did cut her off and I'm not too big to apologize when the fuck up is all sacked up in my ownership bag.

“Yes. I’m sorry. I did. I’m a little spaced-out today. I made a mistake. I see you’re okay, though. So, sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

“You’re damn RIGHT you weren’t thinking.”

“Right. Again. I’m sorry. Sorry if my mistake upset you.”

But I’m really holding on here. Really holding on. Holding onto to not beating her fucking Lincoln with sheets of parking lot. Like I said, I’m in one shit-ass of a mood and whatever flies through this fucking Town Car right now isn’t for her. It would, essentially, be therapy for me, putting closure on something else.

“What if I had to slam on my brakes?”

What if?

You didn't.

So, shut up.

“Again. I made a mistake. My apologies.”

For the love of all that's mea culpa, I just want to take my daughter, who, for a grocery shopping venture, is actually behaving herself... and quite nicely. Ms. Faux Wool Wheel-cover, you so are not. And... and your asshole tone is jet-fueling kiddo into an eventual atmospheric tantrum.

“Well, you ought be sorry, you goddamn asshole.”

Me?

A Goddamn?

Asshole?

Why, HEY!!!

One of the vertices of my at-ease, naturally enneagramatic asshole – just tightened, beginning the 9-point puckering process. This cadet is going down the wrong path with me on the very wrongest of days. Please, don’t make the same wrong turn with your fat, lipless craw that I just made with my Voyager. Put the brakes on your lipless horn right now, lady. Now would be a great time for that activity.

“Ma'am, I’ve already apologized to you thrice…”

Thrice? My head is in anti-gravity.

“I made a mistake. You’re not hurt. You’re husband over there is fine. We’re fine here. And again, and finally, my apologies.”

The husband chested himself over the gear shift, which, he should of accidentally slid into the forward "D" position with his shirtless nipples, “But, my friend, we could have been hurt.”

But, my friend, you WEREN’T!

Jesus Christ, have I stepped into some Stephen fucking Hawking Euclidean time experiment. You could have “YES!” but you didn’t and no transference of time and fucking String and Pie Theories are going to change the actuality of this goddman fucking moment RIGHT HERE!!!!

My vertex #2 puckered into position.

“He’s right,” she’s back in, “You could have kilt us."

Kilt's not the right word, stupid.

"You- are – not – a – very – safe – person!”

ME?!? I’m not safe?!? You’re arguing with a mental case stranger!

The lids of my eyes dropped, Chinesing my face. My head deflated through the loose balloon release valve of my lips. My brain had officially de-common-sensed, “So, what do you want me to do?”

“I would like yew –“

Vertex # 3. CRAH-REAK!!!

“— to explain to your little girl there…”

Oh...

Yikes…

Now you’ve made a mistake. You just brought my kid into this and there’s no place for you to park that corrosive carriage of yours.

#4. Taut.

“What? What would you like me to do?”

“I would like for yew…”

#5. Four more to go.

“… to explain to your daughter the importance of safety.”

“Right here?”

“Well, her father wasn’t being very safe, was he,” she sarcasted all over me.

Numbers 6 and 7.

“You want me to explain to my 5 year old the importance of parking lot safety?”

“I think you should.”

“You’re right. I will.”

I turned to Tiny, placing my hands on my lap. Ward Cleavered a bend down and lean, ready to Beave out some advice. The sarcasm was subtle. A subtlety only those who love me know how to read. The smile plastered across Tiny’s cheeks told me she knew we were about to play. This asswipe in the rusty Lincoln had gone too far.

“Ma’am, do you mind sticking around and making sure I hit all the safety points?”

“You bet,” she passed a smirk from her elastic band lips to the teatly-exposed, mustachioed asshole seated next to her, “Someone needs to make sure this little girl understands parking lot safety.”

Anus point #8. The puckering is near complete.

“Thanks, ma’am.”

My smile read: Here we go, Tiny.

I pivoted, bent and began my lesson. The kid, as raised, played along.

“Babe, what Daddy did was unsafe. Daddy was driving a car. A car is big and is made of metal. We must always – ALWAYS – be careful when operating a big, metal piece of equipment… especially, a car –“

“Or a mini-van,” almost as scripted.

“Right! Or a mini-van. We must pay very close attention when driving. There are other people around driving their cars and mini-vans. Other people are walking around. And, most importantly, I have to be safe because my little girl is seated in the backseat. I need to be safe and pay attention all of the time…”

I smiled at the woman in the car. My lips requesting: How am I doing?

She nodded. I was doing well so far; therefore, I continued...

“But you know what else isn’t safe, baby?”

“What, Dad?”

We smile. Tiny knows what is next.

“When a stranger, someone you don’t know at all, makes an unsafe mistake and apologizes three times for it and you continue to press the issue and humiliate that stranger in front of his child. Now, unsafe is not knowing how that stranger will react when you push him over the edge like that. Now, that stranger could have had a horrible couple of days and might be take his anger out on you –“

#9 vertex is now in its puckered place completing the polygon of anus tauticus. I turned to the woman and her husband.

“I’M THAT FUCKING STRANGER, YOU ASSHOLES! NOW, STOP EMBARRASSING ME IN FRONT OF MY KID, PLAY IT GODDAMN SAFE AND MOVE YOUR RUSTED FUCKING CAR!!!”

They sat there… stunned.

“Now, baby, they weren’t very safe, either, were they?”

Tiny grinned ear-to-ear, “Nope.”

Class dismissed.

Josagne

2007-05-24T09:26:00.000-05:00

My little Tiny grad-jee-ated from pre-school yesterday. Just awesome. Simply. And despite the emotional void that bangs around the hollow inside my empty shell, I couldn't help but instinctually befall more than a few tears. My baby's getting all grown.

PUBLIC SCHOOL BEGINS!

As I tried to suppress my tears (because for some ass reason I've been lead to believe that crying is a bad thing), I Roman scrolled down the next 13 years of Tiny's life in the public school arena.

Scrolled way down because other kids suck. Suck big time.

Always looking for the victim.

Always seeking the resting place for judgement.

Christ, just the unadulterated, simple, torturing pleasure of making fun of the name by just rhyming it with something fucking awful.

Would Tiny be: "Tiny the Whiny"? "Spiny Tiny"? "Back of the Liney Tiny"?

I know, for 13 years muddling though P.S., I had to live with: "Rick the Prick". "Crawdaddy". "Crowls".

In retrospect, it wasn't so bad.

GOD, IT WAS!!!!

I was tethered back to the pre-school graduation as I heard her schoolmate, her best friend, Lawrence, toss out the stage whisper, "This is the best day EVER, Tiny!"

Eh. She'll be fine.

So, to ensure that this WOULD BE the best day EVER, I allowed Tiny to pick and choose all the activities for her special day. Of course, Living Hell, Chuck E. Cheese's was in the mix. But I made it clear that no matter how fucking special the day was, we weren't eating at the Chez Cheese's. Even at the salad bar, the healthiest of the options at The Cheese's, the Romaine was spoon-heating "H" as the beets snorted lines of coke off the asses of cherry tomatoes while the cabbage slept in the corner.

We weren't getting sick at Chuck's place. Not on special day.

So, once all of our Chuckie Cash had been Skee Balled and Duck Punched, we headed down to Not Your Average Joes for salads and the beggings to eat the grilled cheese and forget about the ice cream until you do's.

While looking at my baby ready for public school, sipping on Lemonade (and crying for the ice cream instead of the grilled cheese), I started worrying about how the kids would work her name into one of those cruel rhymes.

Until...

I heard this at the table next to us:

OH! And this is verbatim.

Two women:

"They named the baby WHAT?!?"

"Josagne." (pronounced: Hose-ahg-nyah)

"Hosanna? Like Hosanna in the Highest?"

"Josagne."

"WHAT?!?"

"They said it's a combination of Jose and lasagne."

"WHAT?!?"

"Maureen's grandfather's name was Jose."

"Yeah?"

"And Keith, I guess, REALLY likes lasagne."

"I guess."

"Lasagne."

"Josagne."

"They named the baby Josagne."

"That's kind of wierd."

No, lady, that's really wierd. Your friend named their fucking baby AFTER LASAGNE!!!

DAMN!

So, since we didn't name Tiny: Suetator Salad, Lindaroni or Kristaco, I tend to bet, she'll be just fine.

HAPPY GRADUATION!

Oh, and, Josagne, wherever you are... good luck to you, buddy.

Cute Little Bunnies

2007-05-21T14:09:00.000-05:00

Oh, my, God and totally ah-boo-boo, I have the cutest little bunnies living under my back porch. So goddman adorable.

Capital “A” – freaking door - A - ble.

Four of the teeniest hosenfeffer, hip-hip-hoppitting out from behind the tea rose hybrids and followed, HOP!, by their mommy.

Cute as can be. Cute as goddamn, motherfucking can be.

The morning sun warming their fuzzened grey backs and the poo-poo-poof cotton puffy tails accessorizing their domened behinds as I and my family watch them frolic and feed in the dawny dew.

Feed?

Fuck.

Those goddman rodents are eating everything I just planted behind the porch.

My hosta buds nibbled down to the mulch. To the mulch, man! Hosta are expensive. 4 hosta total up to like 60 bucks. These little bunnlettes are eating better than I do.

But, WAIT!!!!

AWWWWWW!!!!

They are just so frigging cute. Their ‘dittle whiskers bouncing up and down while THEY EAT MY TEA HYBRIDS?!? Aw, man, roses aren’t just a “plant and go” operation, Dawn of the Lepus!!! Roses take fertilizer and time.

And time…

Time...

AND FERTILIZER. Ooh! I have fertilizer and pool chemicals in the garage.

Ker-BUNNY!!!

"... shit... I can't blow them up."

"Blow 'what' up?"

Farts! The wife heard me mumble that. Now, I can only scare them -

Tap-tap-SMACK-SMACK-SMACK on the window.

“Daddy, no, you’re scaring them!”

“I - am - tryyyyyying to scare them. They’re eating my hosta.”

Fuzzy fucks only stopped chewing for like a second and lined up, their puffy white chests against the hosta sprouts, Cocoa-Puffing and pissing backside all over my marigold tips… just staring at me through the window.

"Come on, bunnies. Fuck off!"

They stomped their back paws and continued chewing away the hosta.

“Ass all over THIS! Babe, I’m totally going to have to go Farmer McGregor. A total McGregor. I'll be right back."

"From where?"

"The Depot. I'm getting rat poison.”

I paused then...

"?"

It was a face. Nothing was said.

“Hole-E!-Shit! You better not poison those bunnies!!!"

“They are ‘eating’ the hosta?”

“You’re not hurting those bunnies.”

“Seriously? They're fucking wild!"

"Wild, Rick?!? They're bunnies!!!"

"I know they’re bunnies and they're all fucking cute and all, but – MUTH-THER-FUCKER! THEY’RE EATING THE LEMONGRASS. THEY’RE EATING THE GODDAMN LEMONGRASS!!!”

CHA-CHING!

CHA-CHING!

CHA-CHING!

“THAT SHIT WAS LIKE 6 BUCKS FOR A 2 INCH POT!”

“Rick, do NOT touch those rabbits."

Tap-SMACK-BANG-BANG-BANG.

“Come on, you fucking bunnies! Out of my yard!”

Chew. Whisker. Nibble.

Lemongrass.

Gone.

Chew. Whisker. Nibble.

Rosemary.

Gone.

Chew. Whisker. Nibble.

Catnip.

Gone.

“Those herbs were to keep the goddman mosquitoes off the porch this Summer.”

In the 10 years of planting lemongrass, rosemary and catnip in the backyard, lemongrass, rosemary and catnip have NEVER KEPT MOSQUITOS OFF OF THE PORCH!!!

Then…

… a…

… miracle…

Sent from the Heavens, the neighborhood hawk.

HAH! CAW!

He’s back. HE’S BACK!!!!

Last Summer I saw this son of a bitch fall out of a tree, into a pile of leaves, then back into the tree with a squirrel in his beak where he boned the ever-living shit out of it. Left nothing but fur on the Kentucky Blue and a squirrel femur lodge in arm of a Japanese Maple. It was awesome.

“Hawk, the bunnies are under the porch.”

“Rick! Stop!”

“He doesn’t speak English," a grinnly pause, "But he speaks ‘hawk’ HAH-CAW!!! HAH-CAW!!!”

“Rick!”

“Daddy, don’t!”

“HAH-CAW!!! Bunnies! HAH-CAW!!! There!”

I’ve, literally, gone crazy over 2 hosta.

“Hah-Caw!!!”

He circled over the porch.

“Rick…”

“Told you I spoke ‘hawk’”

The wing-span was amazing. Outstretched. Instinct ready to feast on cute little bunnies.

“Karma, you little motherfuckers. Kar-,” then I rolled my ‘r’,”-ma!”

Circle… and… circle…

The bunnies froze. Froze in mid-chew.

“That’s why you’re food chain gravy, bunnies. Might as well swallow what’s in there”

The hawk. One final circle – and – SWOOP!

POOP! That goddman hawk just dropped a hawk shit onto my glass patio table. AND NOW HE’S LEAVING!!!

No!

Don’t go!

You have a clean slate now!!!

And he flew off into the woods.

Later, while Glass Plus’ing a hawk shit off the table, I heard the crinkle of leaves. I looked over to see 4 cute little bunnies popping out from under the porch, immediately, to nibble away at the Peony Blossoms.

Not anymore, my cute little friends.

In a ‘fuck you, bunnies' sort of gesture, I stomped the porch. Hard. Those little fuzzy bastards stomped back. Stomped back dropping turd balls and squirts of bunny piss on the remainder of the hosta… then went right back to chewing.

“Have at them, you little shits, and Happy Spring.”

The F Button

2007-02-28T16:10:00.000-05:00

I have never been cool. In fact, I've always been consistently one full giant step behind the hip.

I am so backstyle, that at 12, I would sit drive-in-like in the front seat of the my old man’s 1980 beige Volare, tossing cassettes into the audio-addendum cassette player that was wood-screwed and glued to the ashtray console, rocking out to Kenny’s Gambler and Manilow’s 1976 This One’s for You. DINK!!!

So, between beatings and tossed 1%'s at my head in the cafetorium, I tried to catch up to coolness; however, I only found myself choking on the dusty wakes of the "with-its", 2 full laps behind the Jordache crowd with cramps and a limp in both legs.

It was the Spring of '87 I go-atted my last attempt at coolness. My senior year of High School, I spun irony and Gale Garnett’s We’ll Sing in the Sunshine on a 45 from a D-cell powered record player out of my locker. I, truthfully, thought the irony would go noticed, storm up a gaggle of coed yucks.

Irony’s cool? No?

No, Richard from 3rd period Calculus, ironically, irony works on young nerds, college stoners and the aboves above them. Not hot-lunching Tears for Fearin’ surbanites. For them and their lacey-gloved, skinny-tied humor... I was just... more "wicked" retarded.

My brand of fun was as cool as it could have been while my gym uniform was under the rinse cycle of 12 group-shower spouts and the over-estimated penises of 8 gym class jocks. (Penises? Peni?)

From that moment, I silently vowed that my kids were going to be hip. My kids were going to be down with it. My kids were going to be catch-phrase kings and queens. My kids would be the eventual me, not the ‘as is’.

20 years later: There’s my Tiny, the 4.5 year old.

I try to throw down the stimuli to her with things that provoke thought for the both us. Real thought. Not this Baby Einstein, Mozart-in-the-Womb, starry-eyed, New Age-y, connect-on-the-level bullshit. This isn’t Nanny 9-goddamn-11. The kid’s got to relate to people in the real world. I never want her to beg for acceptance, especially mine. No way. Not because I was more concerned with her fucking lessons and activities. I want to be involved in her shit. Our shit.

Together.

One afternoon I took her to Newbury Comics. The kind of novelty, funky joint that has that uncomfortable feeling, but is safe. Yeah, man, there’s a bunch of shit in there that ain’t for 4.5 year old visual consumption, but that’s why I have hands that are bigger than her face and I can sometimes… use them as blindfolds… or pseudo-riding crops to tussle her away and past the inappropriates.

Like...

... the wall covered entirely in marijuana home goods. The canibis design molded into every imaginable home device. The weed ice-cube trays. The Mary Jane muffin tins. The toaster that burns the octafrond into your Wonder White. Does anyone really like getting THIS high?

My Tiny did not need the botany lesson. Not today. Not at 4-and-a-half.

My digited riding crops brushed her shoulders, moving her forward faster than the normal stroll.

I took one last look, "Pot leaf toast?"

Then from below I hear: "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!"

"What are you laughing at, baby?"

Oh, no… what IS she laughing at, baby?

"This! Look at this, Dad!"

So, I did.

Nice.

"Look, Dad, these are cat’s buttholes, but you can put your drinks on them!"

Cat Assole Drink Coasters.

Fancy.

"These are hysterical!"

Close-up photographs of Anus Felis molded into glass casings and price-tagged.

"If I can’t get these today, then I’m definitely getting them for my birthday."

"Perfect. It's on my list, baby... "

Now, eyes off the 10 Voo-doobie Dolls I just knocked on the floor.

"Does 'on your list' that mean 'yes'?"

No. It means you won't be wet-ringing your Capri Sun over the patched perineum of Mr. Whiskers and the collective sphinti of his pussy posse.

"It means: Move that way... Go, please."

Like towards the door. Like this retail outing was a definite mistake.

On the rush to the door, she stops, "Cooooooooooooooooool."

I can only imagine.

"Buttons..................."

She can barely read. We can do this. I'll edit as I go.

"What's that one say, Dad?"

"It says: I Have No Eyeballs."

Then it dawns on me. There are 5,000 buttons on the rotator rack. She's going to have me read all of them.

"And this one?"

"I'm An Animal."

"That one?"

"Pirates Rock!"

"No. The red one!"

"That was the red one."

"No, it wasn't!"

"That red one right there says: Pirates Rock!"

I've only done 3. The next 4,997 are going to make me take my shirt off and jump onto this thing back first.

"Can I get Pirates Rock?"

"No."

"What's that one say?"

"That one says a bad word."

"Which one?"

She knows which one. She call spell enough to make out the important words like: Cat, Dog, Mom, Shit, Ass and Fuck.

With all the life in my face as forgotten corpse at the city morgue, "The 'F' one."

"Can I say it?"

"No, you can't say."

"Yes, I can. You just don't want me to say it."

"Don't be a wiseguy."

Then she spits out an, "Aw, Hell!"

"HEY!"

"I didn't say the 'F' word, I said the 'H' one."

See. She knows how to spell ALL the good ones.

"I DON'T WANT YOU SAYING ANY OF THEM!"

Then, we eye each other down.

"Can I get it?"

"The 'F' word button?"

"Yeah."

"No."

"But wouldn't that be hysterical if I had on the 'F' word button and I'm just a little girl."

Yes.

"No."

"Yes, it would."

It totally would.

"No, it wouldn't," kept eke'ing from my lips.

The problem was: It would be funny. It would be HYSTERICAL. But more importantly, my 4 year old gets irony. I love it! Part of me wants to get the 'F' word button in support of her artistic irony. Play Gale Garnett from the rafters! WE'LL ALL SING IN THE SUNSHINE!!!

But...

"Sorry, babe, it wouldn't be very nice for a little girl to wear the 'F' word on her coat."

"Well, I think it would be funny."

Goddamn it, she's right.

"Get another button, baby."

She de-racks a Jack Skellington holding a pumpkin or some boring, unfunny business. Whilst behind me some Johnny Necktie has taken my place at the button rack with his two little fucking darlings. His perfectly pigtailed "things" are asking the same questions mine did, "What does that one say?"

He reads, "That one says: It's Lucky to be a Leprechaun!"

"It IS lucky to be a leprechaun, Daddy!"

Giggles abound.

Oh, goddamn! Where's the 'F' button?

Meanwhile...

Tiny held the Jack Skellington button up to me, "Put it on."

Sarcasm, "Nice manners."

"I mean, please."

I proceeded to put it on the lapel of her coat.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

"What?"

"Not there!"

"Where?"

Behind me I hear the Dr. Spock book club, "It says: I LOVE TATER TOTS! You do! You do love tator tots!"

Yay! Yay for goddamn everyone.

Tiny, "I want it on my shirt."

"No. You're way too squirmy for me to put this on your shirt under your winter coat."

"I want it on my shirt!"

"The button will open up and stick you!"

"I - DON'T - CARE!!!"

At the rack: "Some bunny loves you." Hee hee hee. Giggle-fucking-Disney-goddamn-snort!

"Here! Here! Do you want me to open the pin up NOW and just stick it into your skin so you know that it hurts and I can just put it on the coat where I want it to go in the first place."

"Go ahead!"

By the good Holy Love of the D.S.S., I wish I could.

"Here. Just put it on your goddamn shirt!"

"That's where I want it!"

Johnny "Weekend" Necktie and the Pigtails are staring at me in horror.

"I'm putting it on her shirt, not in her skin."

She screams.

"What?"

"Now I can't see it!"

Through my gritted teeth, "Where do you want this f'ing button?"

"On my sleeve where I can see it."

And there it ended up. On the sleeve where she could see it. Where Johnny and the Pigtails could see it... why... because they were still staring at us.

"Yes," I ask Necktie.

He, actually, had the balls to contribute, "I would have handle that differently, that's all."

"You would have?"

His head bobbed up and down like an arrogant bobblehead dangling from its self-assured spring.

"Good for you."

Then I reached for one of the buttons I passed on reciting to Tiny. I slid it off the rack and gingerly into his hand, "Here. My daughter got a kick out of this one. Have a good one. Thanks for the advice."

"You, too."

And as I walked through the glass doors I thought of the pin I just handed to him. In bold helvetica it simply read: PUSSY

Wear that on your sleeve!

Not Me, Not Myself and Not I

2007-02-22T15:06:00.000-05:00

*names have been changed… you’ll see why…

Me and me old lady know each other pretty good-damn well. We’ve been giggling next to each other in our Queen sled bed together for the number of 15 years, so the secrets are hard to come by these days. But, once in a good while something will drop past my lips that I had wrapped and bowed somewhere in the back of my recent consciousness… so, it usually hasn't been sitting in there too long.

No. I’m not talking bumping balls into a bit o’strange. No bag of fries. No tub of cole slaw. Nothing on the side, if you’re catching me. I’m faithful. I loves me my ol’ lady.

No. Me? My untruths are usually inline with some retard act that I performed that was way dumb and I, personally, just as soon forget.

What could be so embarrassing? Oh, what? Oh, what the fuck did he do now?

This time, in the Lowe’s garden section, I pretended to be… not me.

The year was 2005. I had just been just laid off and was humbling my way home from a meeting with a placement agency and decided to pump around the garden section of Lowe’s to goose up the color in the front of my house. To cheer me up from the lay off. You know, chuck down a mum or astible or two.

So, before I continue with my bitty anecdote, let me itemize: I was unemployed and buying flowers.

Here I go -- !

I might have well been prancing, skipping, she-loves-me-notting all over the annuals, when betwixt the hosta was standing John White. John White from fucking Wilmington High School circa 1987.

Shit. The dink dropped a nickel in the bell of my sax at a Wildcat’s game. Then I got my mitten stuck, caught in the backsides of the valves trying to get it out. I was band-benched the week after for muffling the bass lines of Hot Stuff and Tuxedo Junction during half-time.

John White.

Right there between the hostas.

He was buying a digging shovel. TO DIG! OOMPH! I had my digits wrapped around a pot of Blackeyed Susans.

Then we made eye contact. GUARDS, SHUT DOWN THE CELLBLOCK!

Connection. THAT connection. That warm-gutted eyelocked connection that is unmistakenable: You’ve been… RECOGNIZED.

His mouth corners curled upward.

Shit! He really did recognize me. And, now, he’s moulding up a smile.

GODDAMMIT!

I pulled out my best maturity. My finest. Pure dignity: I looked right through the him and hawkeyed a bag of Scotts 3-in-One.

What am I going to do? Buy a $60 bag of 3-in-One so I don’t have to confront John White and his fucking dropped nickel? I can still hear that echoey, muffled vibration coming from bell during my solo intro to our marching band version of Devo’s Whip It.

“Rick?”

Is he calling me? No. Please.

“Rick? Rick Crowley.”

I don’t want to do this. If I don’t turn around, he’ll assume he’s made a mistake and move the Christ on.

“Rick freaking Crowley!”

Move on, Nickels.

Since I was pretending not to be me, I continued to NOT respond. Not even a little. “I’m a fucking sociopath” is what's going on here.

“I thought you moved to L.A.?”

How the Hell does he know THAT? I turned and gave him the “I don’t know you and you’re too loud” look.

“Rick Crowley…”

Stop saying my name!

“Holy wow. It’s been almost 20 years.”

Here I go.

“Nope.”

“Rick?”

“I’m sorry. Not him”

But I am. I so am.

“It’s me. John. John White. From High School?”

Yeah. I know you. I didn’t like you. You dropped a nickel in my saxophone.

“Melrose High School?”

“Wilmington. Class of 87.”

“Sorry. Melrose High here -”

Add a year. Make it real.

“88.”

“You’re Rick Crowley.”

“Sorry. Not him.”

But I am him! Still.

“Well, goddamn it if you don’t look just like Rick Crowley!!!”

“Sorry, buddy, can’t help you out?”

Buddy? That’s not even something the ‘real” Rick Crowley would say. I’m starting to believe that I’m really not me.

“Wow. Your whole face. It’s older, but it looks exactly the same.”

“This Rick guy must be a really good looking dude, huh? Heh-heh.”

Oh, shut up, Real Rick Crowley.

I was laughing, but, really, more thinking, “Damn, I’m still fucking goofy looking – and old!” Beautiful.

“Hey, good luck finding him – ?”

“John.”

“Right.”

Then I heaved a bag of 3-in-One that I had no intention of buying into my cart. I could've, really, gone for the faggy flowers since I wasn't really me and nothing could be reported back to the 20 year reunion committee.

“You totally ARE Rick Crowley.”

Oh, Johnny-boy, I’m having a real hard time keeping this ruse up.

“Larry.”

“I’m sorry.”

Me, too, because this is getting more devious than I intended, John White. I’ve just fake-named myself.

“Larry Depot.”

No! I didn’t. I couldn’t think of a last name quick enough and since I was at Lowe’s, I A.K.A’d the competition for my alias. Heir to the Home Depot fortune, I suppose. When I repeated it, I Frenched it up a bit so it didn’t seem so obvious.

“Larry DePot. Melrose High. Class of Nineteen-eighty-eight.”

He just nodded. I changed focus away from my new nome.

“John, how’s this 3-in-One? Ever use it? I was going to lime my yard first, but this stuff looked pretty cool –“

“Um… I would throw a bag of lime down first… ”

I exchanged the 3-in-One for a bag of lime.

“… you sure you’re not Rick Crowley?”

I’m in the zone now.

Humiliation chuckle. “Jesus, John, I’m relatively positive I know who I am.”

“Yeah. Sorry. Sorry to have harassed you like that.”

“No problem.”

Then the cashier rings me up, “$42.86”

I paid and walked out of the garden center.

“Good luck finding your friend.”

“Oh! We weren’t friends. It’s just kind of always cool to see someone from the past, you know? Thought I’d say Hi. That guy Rick was kind of a wierdo. He thought he was funny. Have a good one, Larry.”

“Yup.”

Then, as we walked apart, we shared a good laugh at that poor prick Rick’s expense. Fucking wierdo.

Truthfully, I couldn’t be offended really. Couldn’t cake-up any disagreement. John White has no idea how weird that poor prick Rick really is. That poor prick Rick just spent 15 minutes pretending he was Larry Depot, Class of ’88.

NICKEL FOR MY SAX, ANYONE?

… and $42.86 for the lime I just bought while unemployed.

WHIP IT! WHIP IT GOOD!!! OBLIQUE TO THE LEFT!!! BRAMP!!!
_________________________________________________
P.S. So, I told me old lady this story, in the Queen sleigh bed, almost 2 years after it happened. Ashamed and shaking her head, she begs, "After 15 years you can still amaze me with shit like this. Who ARE you?"

Without missing a beat I smiled and said, "I'm Larry Depot."

GOODNIGHT!!!!

Maylay in Chinatown

2007-02-19T12:26:00.000-05:00

Comcast is The Beast. The All Holding Container of Unholy Leftovers.

Broadband.

DVR.

H.D.

My GOD, H.D.!!!

It must be stopped. Exorcised. THE POWER OF SONY COMPELLS YOU!!!

HD is the beginning of All that is Evil. All that is Temptation. With one stare, HD commands thyne eyes to watch anything in its High Def gaze. ANYTHING! ANYTHING IN ITS WONDEROUS 1080i VISION!!!

Comcast HD was the bite of the Apple, then it was all downhill from there.

The Beast presented to me a documentary on Malaysia just recently (and when I say “just recently”, it was last night at 3:30 in the AM… on a work night). She, The Beast, made me watch the Malay, tired, with sacks of redded mangoes ripening under my tired eyes. Her Beelzebubian hypnosis nuzzled me in the sights, the sounds, the smells of this Asian nation’s exotic cuisine funneling through the red, green and blue of my composite cables warming themselves in the heat of the plasma under that plate of glass.

Delish.

Some ricey design wrapped and steamed in a banana leaf package, eaten with a bamboo shard for flatware. Flatware. MMM.

I MUST MAKE THIS DISH MYSELF!

The Beast’s Broadband summoned me to Her Lap. Googling for the Malay cuisine. A simple recipe. Mango. Curry. Rice. Pandan Leaf. I have all of these ingredients or I can get all of them. Except for one.

Pandan Leaf? Also, known as Screwpine. I’ve never heard of it. It should be easy enough to obtain. I would have to go to an Asian market for this one. Then, tonight, we feast like the MALAY!!!!

I work in the city, so Chinatown is a convenient hop, skip and jump from my building. Plus, I don’t mind. I like Chinatown and all of its exotic Asian culture. The ducks with broken necks hanging in the shop window, red heat lamped and dripping with Chinese barbeque sauces. Mobiles of roasted pig snouts glistening from the ceilings of every butcher. Old World Asian men shooting snot directly onto the sidewalk and against the wind.

Magic.

I stopped in front of a sign that said: Asian Herbs.

CHING-A-LING-LING!!!

The bell on the door hinge let the tiny lady behind the counter know that I had arrived.

“Can I help you?”

She was suspicious. Do you blame her? What’s a racoon-eyed, Italian-Irishman, sporting a 38 year old McBelly want in an Hong Kongian Herbalist? I’m, clearly, not the picture of mystical healing and health.

“I’m looking for Pandan Leaf.”

“Pandan Leaf?”

“Screwpine?”

“Screwpine?”

“Yeah. I’m trying to make a recipe I saw on TV last. It’s a Malaysian dish –“

Then -

THUNDER.

LIGHTNING.

THE SNOUTS JUMPED FROM THEIR HOOKS.

THE DUCKS STRAIGHTENED OUT THEIR NECKS.

THE LITTLE WOMAN SQUEALED AN ABACUS ACROSS THE GLASS COUNTER

“Malaysian? Malaysian? Do I look Malaysian?”

“I never said you were Malaysian.”

“Why? What do I look like?”

What does she look like? Well, I was in Chinatown--

“You're Chine-nese?”

“Chinese?!?”

“Yes. Chinese.”

I smiled. She didn’t. Then she moved the abacus further to the side to get a good look at my fat face.

“Chinese?”

“Yes. Chinese. I think you're Chinese.”

“Malaysian?”

Back to Malaysian? I thought "Chinese" was a “gimme”. What the fuck. I just want Screwpine.

“Well, I’m not Malaysian. I’m Chinese.”

"That’s what I said!"

“So, you come into a Chinese shop looking for a Malaysian herb. What’s a matter? We all look the same to you?”

“Holy shit. I NEVER said you looked Malaysian. I said 'Chinese'.”

“We all look the same to you!”

“No. You don't.”

“Oh! So, now, you can tell the difference?”

“What? No. I never really think of it."

“You never think of it, huh?"

"Do you have Pandan leaf?” "

"You are a racist man.”

“What?!? I’m not a racist.”

“You never think of the Chinese people. You are racist.”

“Racist?!? How can I be racist? I’m embracing your culture by trying to cook your foods.”

“But you’re not cooking our foods. You're cooking Malaysian, not Chinese.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No. I’m not fucking kidding you. Get out of my store, you racist man. Fat man.”

As I turn to leave, I realize she never answered my actual question.

“But, do you have Pandan leaf?”

“Racist!”

Dejected and questioning my racial politics, I walked through the chicken-corpse-scented streets of Chinatown. Looking at the buckets of dried shrimp. The sacks of dried fishheads. The mounds of dried – is that a fucking seahorse? Do these people eat seahorses?!? MY GOD!!!

Pandan Leaf? I could only imagine what the fuck Pandan Leaf was. It’s probably not even a leaf. It’s probably the dried skin from a –

“Holy shit!!! I’m not eating freaking Pandan!!! Screwpine? Screw THAT!!!”

So, that night, when I got home, I had... soup.

Soup isn't racist? Is it?

Is That Holiday Spirit I Smell?

2006-12-28T11:09:00.000-05:00

If we hadn’t assaulted our account’s assets enough on vacation, we had to belly-up and hit retail for some cart-filled, holiday cheer.

Dread refluxed in my esophagus as I drove to The Big Three: Target, Wal*Mart and Toys R’ Us. I could feel the symptoms of opulent ulcers in the paunch of my wallet. Bleeding, acidic and, unfortunately, irreversible.

I’ll just lay it down right now: I hate holiday shopping. It ain't my bag, never been my bag. Never will be my bag. I’ve been sacking despise for it since my first sole go in 1975: Christmas shopping at the St. Mary’s church Bazaar. Retail, right there, in the basement of the House of Holy. Stinking like wet boxes, old Mass booze and rectory.

Even in 1975, in the sub of the church, people, with Christ still lodged in their teeth, clawed and scratched for the last of whatever likes were lying on the folded-down banquets. Fighting in the House of He for clothes-pins glued with the felted likeness of reindeer and the Little Baby Jesus, bearded and halo’d.

So, tonight, I was not looking forward to this evening of holiday hypocrised bliss. Especially, since I've been handed the Santa bag that I had to shop alone. Solo. Mano-a-mitten. The kid couldn't see us giving the trunk the load up. Not before she's 9 anyway. Santa's got to be all magical - pixie dust and all that fine bullshit. So, I had to "mall" it alone.

I dropped the two ladies off at The Christmas Tree Shop, which I’m more than grateful that I’m not going into that hateful shitbag of markdowned mediocrity. And just as the car door wrapped-up to its close Shayna exclaimed, “If you see Santa in the Mickey store, don’t forget to tell him that I want that Ariel pillow with the pockets and the dolls in it.”

SLAM!

Then, for me, it was all mall. That multi-entranced warehouse of over-priced mediocrity. This ought to be real motherfucking merry jaunt. HO HO HO!!!

I red-lighted every intersection, giving me moments to run the mental graphite over the shopping list tri-folded by my wife onto my brain. I was fairly certain that 9 of the 10 items on the list were going to be forgotten. 6 of them while driving endlessly around the parking lot trying to look for a space. At the mall the Friday before Christmas? Was I guzzling curled nog before my key clockwised into the ignition?

As I approached the entrance to the Mecca of Mediocrity, I noticed that the traffic light was red. Red like the other 6 red goddman lights I hit on the way over there. Then something wonderful happened. Marley himself must have been watching over me doling out Ebenezer This Night. Old Jacob and the Magic Spirits of Christmas turned the light… GREEN! BWAMP-BWAH-DAT-DAHT!!! TRUMPETS! GABRIEL, BLOW IT, BABY!!!!

I clockwised it into the parking lot and within three left turns, I was parked.

Two spaces from the 'Mall Entrance' door. One' Mall Entrance' door from the Disney Store; my destined destination. HARK THE HERALD ANGELS SING!!!

I de-Camried myself, all the while trying to boldface and underline the list of T-O-Y-S in my head and the gaggle of shitbags shopping in this mall that are going to fuck it up from me getting them.

Boom!

Mall Entrance.

I couldn’t help but feel “off”. I wasn’t entering via flagship store as I oft do, this time I wanted: in-the-mall-then-out-the-mall. I was all business. So, tonight I was all over “Mall Entrance”. And with more gusto than the 2 minute head of draught Guinness, I opened that glass panelled door.

“Here ya go,” a woman’s voice.

What now? We’re starting all-goddamn-ready. Here I go? Fuck you! Here you go!

“I’m holding the door for you. Merry Christmas.”

“What?”

“The door. The door. Merry Christmas.”

Wow.

“No, here. The door for you. I insist.”

“No. I had it first. Merry Christmas.”

“I’m old school. Ladies first.”

Then a man’s voice, “Hey, I’m holding this one for the both of you.”

Laughter abound. Bwa-ha-ha. Bwa-ha-ha. Hee-hee. Ho-ho. Etc.

And, like children playing a game, we all let go of our doors simultaneously and ran for the open doors. Laughing we all shared a final, “Merry Christmas – you, too!”

What is this so far? Am I on a very special Christmas episode of something? Do I get to see Rod Serling in a Santa hat soon smoking a Kent? What about Funt? Is Funt coming out? I'm smiling, Funt!

I had to let go of the good cheer. This holiday cheer bullshit couldn’t last. It can’t last. It shouldn’t last. Some holly-spliced dickweed will piss me off soon enough, then – WHAM-WHACK – some jing-jangling jackass smashed right into me! KISS ME, I'M UNDER THE PESSIMISM!!!

Packages everywhere.

My cell phone down.

“Come on, dude,” I barked at the man in the Eddie Bauer vest.

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, man. Sorry.”

“Truly.”

“Truly. It’s busy in here. Watch the road, dude.”

“I was admiring the holiday lights up there. Reflecting off the Build-a-Bear. Doesn’t it look Christmas-y?”

Christmas-y’s not a word, douchebag.

“Yeah. Well, I dropped my cell phone.”

Slow down, Paco. Why are you so mad at this dude. Why are you… where’s my –

"Where’s your holiday spirit?" Fucking mindreader. Voodoo.

He picked up my cellphone.

“Looks fine,” as he handed it to me.

I took it.

Then he sadly dotted out a meek, “Merry Christmas.”

And as he thumpety-thump-thumped down the mall. And I heard him exclaim as he waved his hand to me, “Look at the lights. It’ll put you in the spirit.”

Yeah. Look at the lights. Man, I’ve become a real fucking piece of work. A real tinseled asshole.

I’m fucking Scrooge. I’m Ebenezer Goddman Finnieas Fucking Scrooge. Could I be the Albert Finney one? At least, that prick got to sing.

I lowered my head and walked towards the Disney Store. Laughter and holiday greeting sugar-plummed around my head. Children excited. A celebrity meet and greet with Santa. Something solid. Validation that desired toys would be delivered in a few days.

Where was my holiday spirit?

I stopped in front of the Disney Store. “Look at the lights,” I could hear in my head. “Look at the lights, you negative bastard!”

I looked up. Glowing. Sparkling. They reflected off of hustle and bustle on the second tier. More lights, the reflections off of the mirrored rails. Off of the oversized ornaments. Off of the Menorah in the window of Hallmark. Cultures and joy blended together… in the Mall.

My trance was broken by the eye contact of Disney’s saleswoman, “Happy Holidays. What wish can I help you with tonight?”

WISH? A smile broke through my barbed lips.

“A wish! Yes! I have a list in my head. A very specific list.”

“Oh… kay…”

“I need Mater, a tractor, Lightning McQueen, an Ariel doll, Ariel socks, a Pirates of the Caribbean shirt for girls, a Minnie Mouse purse, an Ariel expandable facecloth, an Under the Sea Dolphin Chariot and a pillow of The Little Mermaid with dolls and pockets.”

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.

Ha ha. I did it!

And we collected it all. All. All but the pillow.

All but the pillow. The one thing Shayna wanted, Mickey and the crew didn’t have.

“Nothing in the back?”

Disney lady smiled, “I’ll check.”

Five minutes later I heard her voice harken from the backroom, “You’re in luck!”

She found the pillow. WHOOPIE!!!

But when she returned, her arm was covered in blood.

“I grabbed my arm on the shelf while trying to reach it. It was in the back. The way back. But as long as your daughter’s happy Christmas morning, who cares, right?”

Right.

“Thanks.”

Now, that’s some Christmas spirit-y shit, man. That broad snagged herself for someone she didn’t know. And she was happy about it. Why am I such a sour puss? The door was held open. The Merry Christmas guy reminded me about the lights and spirit. And now the sacrifice for the pillow. Christmas is a good time. A great time! And all of a sudden I was all: “Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!”

Find me the biggest goose, boy! The one as big as you are!

All through the mall: “Merry Christmas!”

Holding the doors open for my fellow holiday shoppers: “Happy Holidays!!!”

Out the ‘mall entrance’, the chill of the holiday air snuggling me in her bosom: “Merry Christmas!”

Towards the car. I morphed into George Bailey: “Merry Christmas, Movie House! Merry Christmas, You Wonderful Old Building and Loan! Merry Christmas!”

In the parking lot --

Yes, I smelled it. I smelled the holiday spirit.

I-SMELLED-PINE!!!!

“Happy Holidays!”

Could this be the piney wake of someone’s bulbed and bowed donned wreath for Junior, Betty and Mom?

Yes. Pine.

It got stronger. I sucked gallons of the spirited scent into the cavities at the base of my frozen nose.

Mmm. Pine.

Pine. Yes. Pine.

Hmm? Pine?

Pine-ish. Like Pinesol.

More like Pinesol, not pine. There’s an ammonia element to it.

Pinesol.

Pinesol? Ammonia? Nope.

That’s not the holiday spirit.

That’s pee!

Some holiday shithole just took a leak on the door of my Camry.

Ah, my nose! I shot snot out of my schnoz like a working class grandpa from Chinatown. I just breathed in pee. Christmas pee! A spiked-nogged, buttered brandied, mulled wine fucking pee!!!

OF-GODDAMN-COURSE!!!

Yes, I had found the holiday spirit, but only to be enjoyed and cherished through my lot in life. The constant reminders that life has its balance.

Its good. Its bad.

Its happiness and its puddle of Ruby Tuesday beer piss on the side of my car.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Stalled

2006-12-09T13:46:00.000-05:00

I was playing the wild card after lunch. Sitting in the Men’s room laying down the deuce. Surfing the porcelain bowl, hanging two. And it was nice, man, real nice. I was relaxed, reading someone else’s printout from CNNSI.com that was hanging on the handicap rail. I’m not a big sports fanatic, so I don’t really know what the Hell I was reading , but, boy, was I happy.

Then –

CRAH-ERG-ERGK. Various talk and foyer laughter -

The main door opened.

Company.

I re-adjusted ass, re-marking the circular welt grooved into my cheeks and checked the lock on my stall door for its lock status.

“Okay, I’m cool. It’s locked,” I flipped-pen-up through the check list in my head.

CLIP-CLOP. CLIP-CLUNK. CLOP. CLOP. CLOP.

My company’s footsteps size 10'd it around the urine scented tile, the patent leather pair looking for the reserved seat of its owner.

"Sorry, buddy, it’s all general admission in here. First come – first serve. And I’m serving it right here, right now in the big stall," I mentally pissed around my territory, "Ah! Alone."

CLONK. CLIP. CLONK. CLONK.

The feet stopped right in front of my stall. I knew there wasn't going to be confrontation because I was in there – in body and in feted “spirit”.

I figured this was an occupancy courtesy check. Normally, I would have opportunitied this into a rousing game of: “Identify the Co-Worker By His Shoes”. But I couldn't. I was in the wrap-up of my “act” and coming close to the end of the “show”. I was donning my best final phase shit face. The bones in my head jellified and settling totally and completely into the fattiest of both of my lips. Pursed together like two-folds of loosely pinched clay. Flat. Heavy. The center of my lip gravity lowered my head into a bobbling dangle uploading the ended thoughts of shame of the sins I had just committed.

Then the door started shaking. Rocking. Thrashing. Door movement like the cliche of every ghostly apperition repeating its haunting task of unfinished business before moving on. Giving me a real Billy Sunday on an afternoon prohibition shine bust.

But, I was at calm. I knew I was speakeasy safe, because the stall door was CLEARLY FUCKING LOCKED and only I knew the password.

Then the door popped open. HERE'S JOHNNY! And there, T.J. Maxxing a short sleeved dress shirt fat-knotted with a Jerry Garcia clearance tie... a dude... a dude my Dad's age.

Eye contact.

Me: In final phase shit face.

Him: Just a regular “How ya doin’” face.

Then he offered, “Whoopsie Daisy.”

Whoopsie Daisy? Men don’t say: Whoopsie Daisy. In fact nobody outside a 1930’s Max Fleiser short says “Whoopsie Daisy.” Whoopsie Daisy? How about “nothing” then closing the fucking door.

We stared at each other like two audio-animatrons. Two uncomfortable Pirates of the Caribbean audio-animatrons, blinking like fucking turtles, seated above the water, hovering around a treasure that I was clearly ashamed and embarrassed to be protecting.

Me: With final phase shit face.

Him: Covered in “Whoopsie Daisy”

A minute went by. A whole actual minute that I one-Mississippi’d in my head to avoid the shame and confusion of the moment. Then, Whoosie broke the silence for the both of us, “This is awkward..."

UH, YEAH, NO SHIT, DUDE MY DAD'S AGE!!!

But all I could weak out is "... can you... uh... shut the door please."

"Sure. Yeah. Sorry."

Final phase shit face didn’t paint enough humiliation across my last ounce of dignity, Garcie-tie felt a need to laugh a few pumps as he GINGERLY erg-ergk'd the stall door to its final close.

He took his seat next to me, in the parallel stall, still pumping out giggles.

Final phase shit face had been wiped with a staining layer of FUCKING CREEPY! I had to get out of there. And as I lifted my ass to wipe, the auto-flush went off, spitting, who knows to the Lord Commode, whatever underbowled, single-celled asshole rash had been mulling like spiced cider beneath that rim. An accidental wash. An accidental , filthy wash.

DAMMIT!

I stilled myself like the unwanted playfriend during a rousing round of frontyard Freeze Tag.

A pause…

… then…

"You didn't have to do that for me."

A courtesy flush for you?

“I didn’t.”

“Then, why did you?”

“Because, sir… I’m… done.”

And then he giggled so hard he set the auto-flush off continuously from the time I re-panted, tucked and buckled until I washed my hands. AND SCRAMMED!

Oatmeally Mouthed

2006-11-09T15:24:00.000-05:00

Losing weight without exercise has become a weighty exercise in autobiology for me. I will try any fad from any men’s health magazine if the food looks good and is in abundance. What can I say? I likes me my food! MUNCH!

My latest and greatest is the Abs Diet ala Men’s Health magazine. It’s got to work. The dude on the book is fucking ripped. More than ripped. Donning a six pack, nothing. This beast is an angulared gorilla, banging around a case of fortified microbrew on his gut muscles. I want that. I want that ripple. I want to walk around with my shirt off without feeling stuff touching other stuff that shouldn’t really be touching one another.

Abs Diet says: 6 small meals a day. 6 weeks. 6 pack. Belly fat goes first.

FUCK WOW! Belly fat goes first? Belly fat is all I got, Abs Diet, my good man. I’M IN!!!

Hey, wait! Abs Diet is highlighting it’s 666 meal plan. Why is this diet based on the sign of the devil?

Why? Because these six meals are evil. Small. Barely the lickings of a yogurt’s foil cap. Breakfast: A 12 ounce power smoothie in the morning with a cup of black coffee. This asshole fills me up from the time I start drinking it until the time I’m finished drinking it… then I’m goddamnned STARVING AGAIN!

By the time meal #2 rolls around, I’m at the office. It’s 10am and I’m so hungry I’ve chewed the ass out of 6 pen caps and pissed off 15 co-workers with low blood sugar fits of anger that mimic the foot stompings of a frustrated retarded 46 year old, cardboard box assembling line-worker with a bad roll of tape.

I'm hungry. I need my morning, pre-lunch snack. I need meal #2.

“What is it?” I’m all sorts of excited.

I check the Abs Diet for my tummy-rippling power meal. And --

It’s oatmeal. Plain oatmeal with a dollop of unsweetened, salt-free peanut butter: … fucking yum…

“Oatmeal? I’m starving.”

“What?” I hear from the other side of the cubical wall.

“What?” I respond.

“Did you say something?”

“Huh?”

“Did you say ‘oatmeal’?”

“Not to you.”

“Who’d you say ‘oatmeal’ to?”

“To myself.” Like she’s ridiculous? I’m the one out-louding “oatmeal”.

“Why?”

You’re pressing it, female cubical voice. I’m low-goddamn-blood sugar and my only respite, I’ve been told by Abs Diet and the man with the xylophone stomach on the cover, is this plain fucking oatmeal you’re all concerned about over-listening to.

“Why ‘what’?”

“Why did you say oatmeal?”

“Why do you fucking care?”

Whoops. At work.

Silence.

“What?”

Oh, for the good love of the white-haired-oatmeal-offering-blue-outfitted-Quaker, leave me alone. Stop listening to me. Stop hanging on every one of my hungry words.

“It’s my mid-morning snack. I’m doing the Abs Diet.” I’m going to be RIPPED.

“Is it working?”

WHAT?!? IS IT WORKING?!? LOOK AT ME FOR CHRIST’S SAKE… I’m a fucking washboard.

“No… Not yet.”

“Good luck with it.”

Yeah. Fuck you. Thanks.

“What?”

“I didn’t say anything out loud.”

Holy shit. I got to eat this oatmeal before I kill someone. Eat this oatmeal? Dammit. Maybe I’ll kill myself. BLAGH!

I make tracks for the hot water spigot in the work-supplied shared kitchenette where the microwave consistently stinks like burnt Smartpop, jasmine rice and several film layers of someone’s chicken broth-based shitty leftovers. The sink and its surroundings are covered in bubble water, coffee grounds and fingerprints of someone’s chicken broth-based shitty leftovers. The floor is sticky and crunchy. How is something sticky AND crunchy? If I weren’t near-close to Ethiopian village poor kid hungry, I would easily lose my appetite.

Get me to the hot water spigot!

This whole meal #2 is just stupid. A pre-sized paper packet of Quaker oats, ripped and tipped into a paper coffee cup begging for hot water from the rusted shared water spigot. Yesterday I had leftover meatballs and brachiolis over ziti with a meat sauce covered in parmesan… oh, man.

“That’s why you’re fat and your belt buckle leaves a dent in your over-pube, Fatso. Now. stop thinking about it and prepare your – oatmeal.” My better judgment has a worse low-blood sugar problem than I do. And, frankly, it’s pretty button-pushy and nasty.

I make for the corner to the kitchenette. My finger already crocked, crooked and ready for spigot action.

“Soon, Oatmeal, soon we’ll be together – as one – in my empty stomach.”

The moment I turn the corner, my spigot ready digits run smack up into a peace-sign wave. Someone’s dead face in front of the spigot.

You’re blocking meal #2, motherfucker!

“Hey.”

He doesn’t even look up, “You need THE coffee?”

He’s emphasized the word “THE”? This dude just deified the coffee? “THE” coffee? THEE coffee? THY Coffee? Hey, we all like our joe, chum, but, come on: THEE coffee?

“No. The spigot.”

But because the guy is black, my mind double-thinks the word “spigot”. Fuck. I said “spigot”, so what’s the problem here? I turned my head away from him anyway, because let’s call a fucking word a word here. Spigot DOES sound racist.

“The water spout. I need the hot water spout.”

“You need it now?”

Do I need it now? God, no, dude, I’m just fucking standing here rocking on the balls and heels of my feet with a coffee cup of dried oats while my stomach doubles over in groaning flip-flops for the pure throbbing fun of it, by all means, prick –

“… take your time. No rush. No rush.”

Meaning: Move it along, douche bag. Fill your cup and move to the next activity. But, he takes me literally and reaches himself a paper coffee cup. His fingers hovering above the cup towers like praying mantis legs wriggling and searching for its prey. Slow. Very slow. For the love of the Dixie Corporation, just grab a cup.

“Need help?” I say with a chunk of nervous laughter.

This dude is way serious. His eyes cold. Dead. He shakes his head in a calculated, counted “no”. The kind of “no” that says this dude is only yukking it up at the allerations as can only be provided by local AM radio commentators. And when I get this hungry, my defenses kick-up. My defenses are typically humorous. Typically.

“That’s a big decision, huh?”

He freezes. Dead. His head turning to me like a rotten skull breaking and rolling away from its spine.

He’s Dirty Harry, “You need to get in here. You need the spout?”

“The spigot?” Oh, shit. I said spigot out-loud again. “Sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“For spigot. I meant to say spout.”

Spigot’s not racist, retard.

He looks at me with all the confusion of your mom reading a tech manual, “Spout. Right. Spigot’s probably fine.”

Sure, he can say it.

“Spigot. Right.”

STOP SAYING SPIGOT!

What makes all of this so much worse than it is… spigot’s not even grazing in my normal vocabularic menagerie. It’s not even in the field. And, more importantly: IT’S NOT RACIST!!!

“I’m just about done here.”

“Sure. Take your time. No rush. No rush.”

So, he does again. One spill of caffeinated. One of decaf. A spurt from the spout. And three turns of his spoon. A rip of the bag of sugar. A sprinkle. A rip of Splenda. Half the bag. Turns of the spoon. Bunches up the empty wrappers and leaves them on the counter.

Aw, come on, dude. I’m starving.

Oh, no. My humor’s coming back.

“Got a little experiment going there.”

“Excuse me?”

“Stir and mix. A spurt. –“

He cuts me off, “Well, yes. I don’t like THE coffee very much here.”

THYNE coffee. THEE coffee.

“Yeah. This coffee kind of sucks,” a pause, “At least it’s free, right?”

Right? Who qualifies anything with a “right” in real life. Right? A-whahkka-whahkka! Then, because I couldn’t make him laugh, I opened a bag full of nervous laughter on coffee dude, “EH-HEHG-HEH-HA-HA”

“Are you okay?”

“Me? I’m never okay. EH-HEHG-HEH-HA-HA!!!”

Okay, with the nervous laugh. Calm it. He’s not laughing at your stupid jokes, jackass.

Stir. Spurt. Decaf. Caff-caff. Sprinkle of Swiss Miss. Stir. Spoon shake. Wrappers on the counter.

“Got yourself a little experiment there?”

“You said that.”

“EH-HEHG-HEH-HA-HA.”

“Right.”

Sprinkle. Spoon. Stir. Pour. Splash. Stir. Twirl. Shake. Wrappers on the counter.

Come on, man. I’m starving.

“How’s that experiment coming with THYNE coffee?”

Except the THYNE, THEE, THOU dialogue was completely and totally internal. He wasn’t even close to “in on it” with me. We were NOT in cahoots.

I forced this poor pouring prick into utter seriousness. I was never getting a laugh out of him. Not now. Not ever.

“I’m almost done.”

And as I wrung my hands together and laughed, “MUU-HA-HA! Then you will rule the World.”

Nope. NOW. Now, I’ve gone to far.

“WHAT?”

“You’ve got your little experiment… there?”

Nothing. Zip. We stare at each other. Me with my paper cup of dried oats, him with his coffee/cocoa/sweetener concoction.

He lifts his spoon from his cup, shakes it twice, then throws it on the counter next to his stack of wrappers, “Who do you work for?”

Shut up, Rick. He’s not laughing at your jokes. Shut up.

But I can’t. I need the laugh.

“My leader?”

There’s not even confidence in my sale. My smile is barely one of a fourth grader on picture day whose parents didn’t fork up the extra dime for the photographer provided comb.

“Your leader,” he says. His head shaking, a dog working water pellets and the memory of me from its coat, “Your leader?”

“Forget it. It was a joke.”

“I’m trying to.”

“Good,” I say as I’m waiting for him to move aside and away from the hot water spout. “So, uh, are you done with the spigot?” Dammit! Again!

“Yeah. I’m done.”

Then I turn to his pile of empty wrappers on the counter. Is he going to leave this shit here?

“And your trash?”

He freezes, “I'm 'WHAT'?!?”

Oh, you poor, super-serious dick.

“No. Not 'you’re trash'. Your – Aw, fuck this! I’m eating oatmeal. Isn’t that bad enough?”

Trapped (part 2); Notorious Cheapskate

2006-08-31T15:42:00.000-05:00

Continued from Trapped (Part1):

I'm a notorious cheapskate. Notorious. I can't pay to park in the city. I can't stand the idea of eating out if there's a can of anything in the cabinet. And I, most certainly, MOST CERTAINLY, won't wallet dive for a fix-it around the house.

My dark cloud has set over the garage, and I, alone, will fix it. What's to it? 4 bolts and their corresponding nuts. Turn. Tighten. Lickity-splits. I'm nuts if I'm calling The Garage Barrage, Inc. to come and track-n-roll the door for me. The Garage Barrage can eat me and their $85.00 an hour labor charge sprinkled with a little bit of their 2 hour minimum.

So, there I hulked in front of the garage door, ready for battle. Yeah, I had fixed some shit around the casa before, but let's be honest, this was a garage door with tracks and rollers and shit. This was true fix-'em conflict.

“Honey, I’m fixing the garage. So, please, let me work for about 15 minutes before attempting to bother me!”

15 minutes. A big fat goddamn to 15 minutes. Fucking please. Nothing I touch takes 15 minutes. I’m still missing drywall screws in the bathroom wall I’ve been working on since May 2004. We have to shower twice everyday. Once to organically de-stank and once to wash the drywall dust from our shoulders from the exposed greenboard in the tub.

"Hey, do you have your cell phone?" Wifey chimes.

“My cell phone?”

“In the event you get stuck in the garage.”

“Get stuck?!? I’m fixing it!”

“Take your cell phone, please.”

I wasn't taking my cell phone on a home repair. I downloaded the fix-its off the Web. And the Web is never wrong. WIKIPEDIA IS THE NEW CHRIST!!! RISEN!!! PRAISE BE MOSTLY TRUE INFORMATION ABOUT EVERYTHING!!! PRAISE BE HE!!!

I tried to raise the door manually. It was stuck. Jammed. I crowbarred it with a make shift see-saw of pressure treated decking boards and an empty Mountain Fresh Tide with Bleach jug. As it opened, I caught a glance of Wifey one last time as she loaded herself into the Camry. Dammit.

"Your cell phone? Your daughter is in the house alone and if anything happens --"

I cut her off as I patted one of the 365 pockets of my Old Navy cargo shorts (that I'm wearing because I think they make me look cool... and, sadly, younger). BOTOX WITH POCKETS!!!

"Right here."

It wasn't right anywhere. Why would I need it? I was only going to be 15 minutes. What's going to happen in 15 minutes? Thomas the Train Engine and the gang from PBS Sprout will have Tiny busy for hours. HOURS!

HOURS - 15 MINUTES = PLENTY OF TIME TO FIX THE GHEE-RAHGE!!!

I belly-flopped to the driveway and US Army obstacle-coursed my way into the garage. I stood and dusted the cement shavings and termite wings from my Old Navy Cargo shorts. I surveyed the damaged:

The track hung from 1 bolt and was hanging like a monkey in the Springtime from the ceiling rafters. An enormous spring bounced from a hole in the track. A round thing lied on the floor under it -- Yeah... round thing... Once the word "thing" pops into my head, it's all clear....

"I have no fucking business fixing this door."

But I had to save face. I surveyed the connections and made the best guesstimate that I would need -- bigger bolts. Yeah. Bigger bolts. I wrote it on a scrap piece of 2X4, too, so I wouldn't forget:

4 Bigger bolts and corresponding nuts.

I dragged gut out of the garage as I yelled, "Come on, babe!"

"What, Daddy?"

"Put on your shoes - We're going to Home Depot!" with all the enthusiasm of some asshole sitcom Dad announcing an RV vesseled vacation.

"Yay!"

A 4 year old little girl screaming "Yay" for a trip to Home Depot. It wasn't the trip. It's all in how you sell it, baby. SELL IT!!!

I turned to close the garage door, but brain-snapped to an “ah-ha”.

"I'm better than closing this garage. Once that door’s shut it ain’t going to open and then I’ll be eating into my 15 minutes. It’ll be fine. No one’s crawling in there and throwing grand larceny on my B & D rotary saw. LET'S HIT IT, BABE!!!”

Within 20 minutes we were out, Depot'd and back. AND back with only what I went in for: 4 bigger bolts and their corresponding nuts.

"All right, Tiny, in the house.”

"Why?"

"Daddy's going to fix the garage."

"Mommy said to bring your cell phone in case you get stuck."

My wife using my daughter as a life-sized Post-it note. What the fuck is going on here? Sneaky.

“Yeah. Yeah. I got my cell phone.”

“Let me see it.”

“You don’t need to see it. Get in the house.”

“Mommy said I had to see it if you went into the garage. ‘Case you get stuck in there.”

“I’m not ‘casing getting stuck anywhere.”

“You might.”

“I won’t.”

“You might.”

“Daddy's not getting stuck in the garage. I’m fixing the garage and if the garage door gets closed, I’ll just open the door because, then, it will be fixed.”

“Mommy said you’ll get stuck in there because it will just stay broke like the drawer in the kitchen.”

“Yeah, well, Mommy’s the one who broke the drawer by putting too many spatulas in it.”

This garage has sunk me so low... and, more importantly, why in Cinxia's good name did we get that many spatulas for our wedding?

“I need to see the phone, Daddy?”

“What?!?”

"Mommy said."

"Mommy said...."

I searched through 12 of the 364 pockets of my Old Navy Cargo shorts and drew out the phone. But let's cut this up now: These fucking shorts don't make me look younger. It's all the goddamn exercise I'm getting looking for shit that I put in pockets I forgot about.

“See. I have it. I have the phone… you snitch,” then I mumble, “Post-it Note.”

“That’s a bad word!”

“I said: Post-it Note!”

This is why most parents ignore their kids. It’s the brakes they put on: Lack of Influence. My problem is, I’m too involved. I’ve created a tiny version of myself. And, let’s be honest. I don’t want to argue with myself. I’m a fucking asshole. And now I’m arguing with a miniature fucking asshole who hasn’t learned the concept of argument consequence yet. So, she’s actually better than me.

“Please, go in and watch TV while I fix the garage.”

“Mommy says you might get stuck in there –“

“ALL RIGHT! Enough of what Mommy says!"

We stared at each other for 6 and quarter minutes.

“You’re a yeller.”

And in the house she went.

The sun went down and its wake of darkness tsunami'd over the garage. The only thing blacker than the shadowed driveway was the opening at the bottom of the garage door.

“Dammit. I hope nothing crawled in there while I was at the Depot.”

I chewed a bit at the inside of my cheek.

“Something fucking crawled in there.”

I tried to look through the window on the garage door, but the glass floating in the frames were yellowed-and-frosted more than the hair of a suburban woman trying to cover up a hefty dose of low self-esteem and a bad marriage. I couldn’t see shit.

“Mother-of-rancid-ass. Something goddamn crawled in there. Something motherfucking crawled into this goddamn garage.”

My stomach started to gurgle. My hands started to shake. I didn't want to go in there. It was dark and, more often than not, I’m partially the pussy side of things. The problem was: I was already 45 minutes into my 15 minute job.

"Goddammit, I’m going in."

I slung my gut down onto the driveway, once again, and began scraping my way in under the door by the tips of my fingers.

In my head I heard the Post-it Note, “Mommy said to take your cell phone.”

She was right. Dammit and all Hefty Hell, Wifey was right again. I slid my hand into pocket # 216 of my Old Navy cargo shorts, pulled out my cell phone. I smiled at the stupid cell phone, gave the finger to the shorts, all their fucking pockets and anti-aging abilities, then struggled to re-find pocket # 216 of my Old Navy Cargo shorts to put the phone back.

“Come on!"

I jammed the phone down. Hard. Not into pocket 216, but into the cuff of the shorts leg. Except the cuff isn’t a pocket and it’s nowhere as deep as a pocket. So, as I scraped my way into the garage, the cell phone, like a destined solider, was left behind…

… except I didn't know it and now I was in a pitch black garage.

Alone.

I hoped.

To Be Continued... again...

Trapped (part 1)

2006-07-21T15:26:00.000-05:00

The pool cost me a ton of dough. Tons of self-rising, over yeasted dough. And, now, according to Miriam Webster, I am broke (**see Me).

Me and the wife needed to do all we could to tighten the ol' belt. In fact, tonight for dinner, like poor people from the cartoons, we will all be sharing a kidney bean slivered extremely paper thin.

What really sucked was we were finally catching up from last year's lay-off. Getting comfortable again. So, naturally, as is my lot in life, after the purchase of this 20,000 gallon bucket of water in my backyard, something had to go wrong. Just had to.

But a month went by and the Hammer of Bad Fortunes never swang to square me in the nuts. NEVER! NOT FOR A MONTH! It was, actually, starting to piss me off.

Am I this pessimistic? Do I really have to expect a yin and yang? A good versus evil? A black contrast to white?

It's sad, but... I guess I do. I really fucking do.

Something was waiting in the wings. Something big. Something huge. So, why is my life’s lot waiting a goddamn month to spring this expectedly enormous dark cloud over the pool?!? Why?

Then... it all started to roll into place. AH, SWEET PESSIMISM!!!

It was a Monday. I worked a full day and gridlocked it home through traffic. As I pulled into the driveway, the moss-bottomed of my red garage door jogged my head. Tomorrow is Tuesday: Trash day.

“Whatever. I'll take it out now.”

But when I opened the car door, I was sucker-swiped across the snout by an oven roasted fragrance of refuse. The big, hairy arm of humidity stretched itself under the garage door and hauled out a fust of heated week-old garbage and left it littering the stratosphere just above the driveway... and my nose.

“What in good fuck?”

The temperature outside was 104 Fahrenheit and had, obviously, pre-heated the entire inside of the garage to “Bake”.

Then it's Sha from inside of the air-conditioned house, “Sweetie…”

Sweetie? I already know I’m about to have to do something I don’t want to do.

“Can you take the garbage out. It stinks.”

Of course, I know it stinks. I’m standing square in its thermosphere thinking if I enter the garage without gear and a Level-4 biohazard helmet, I might die.

“I’ll do it later.”

“Not later. Now? The kitchen stinks.”

“Then, close the fucking windows.”

“I’m trying to get air in here.”

“Dude, the air-conditioner is on.”

“I want to get fresh air.”

“But, you’re not getting fresh air, you’re getting garbage.”

“That’s why I want you to take the garbage outside to the curb.”

Beaten… again, “Yeah. I’ll do it…”

The fucking air-conditioner’s on. Why are my windows open? I thought we were trying to save money. Maybe the electric bill will be my anticipated black cloud –

Then, a feather tickle of acridity brought me back to the decomposition of bagged banana peels and chicken bones that lay steaming behind that red fucking door.

I closed my eyes, held my breathe as I wrapped my fist around the handle of that door, then tore it upward with everything I had.

“YEE-YOW! My fucking shoulder!!!”

The door was stuck. Jammed.

“Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. It hurts all the way into my armpit. It hurts all the way into my armpit. Shit. Shit. Shit.”

I turned to house and saw my wife, in the window, in the mesosphere of the air-conditioning, shaking her head.

I kicked the garage door... and hard. BUP-BRUDDA-BRUP!!! The door rolled up and opened. A tightened fist of week-old refuse, ungloved and hooked me right dead on the beak. The redolent bouquet was baked in like orange in an adobe. I felt my nasal cavities caving in the acrid air.

“Okay, garbage, let’s get this over with.”

EERCH!

I froze. That was a wierd noise.

EEK-ERK!

I looked up the garage door. The rollers on the door track were… rolling.

BEEE-EERK!!!

The rollers sped immediatly into full motion. The door was closing. Closing on its own. On it's goddamn own.

SLAMMMMMMMMMMM!!!

The door crashed down onto the cement threshold. I grabbed the handle and pulled. Nothing. The door wouldn’t budge. Caught between emotions I screamed, “Dark cloud, you have arrived!”

I kicked the door. Wiggled it. Yanked it. Nothing.

The garage started getting hot. The garbage was reeking.

“I’m locked in with this shit…," I pressed my face against the window on the door, "HEY! BABE! I’M TRAPPED IN THE GARAGE! BABE, I NEED HELP!!!”

She can't hear me. That fucking, energy-sucking air-conditioner was on full blast. On top of it all, at my own retarded suggestion, she's finally closed the windows.

I was alone.

I shook the door as I looked for another way out. There was no where to turn. I boarded and sided over the back door last Summer figuring we would never use it. And I would "never" use it. Especially right fucking NOW!

I grabbed a nearby piece of treated 2X4 and wedged the door up. I slid a bucket of icing salts under it and rolled myself under to safety.

Covered in dead bugs, leaf dust and cement chippings I stared at the opening between the bottom of the door and the driveway. The opening which was christened: Bigger Vent for Fucking Putrid Garbage Smell.

“Those cans got to come out of there.”

Back on my stomach, I Indiana Jones’d my way back into the garage, tipped the cans on their sides and rolled each of them out. Each can leaving its own personal wake of rotted stank and wet stuff behind it. Gagging, I stood up and swept the remains under the door and out to the driveway.

I was drenched in sweat and embedded foulness. The garbage cans and its trail of felled rubbish was out. I crawled out and dragged those bastards to the curb.

Done.

My lovely wife was still shaking her head in the window, “What’s taking so long?”

“The garage door just fell off the goddamn track.”

“Why? What did you do?”

It’s always: What did I do? What did I do? I just fucking rolled through heated garbage water over hot asphalt so you could keep the windows open with the air-conditioner running! THAT'S WHAT I DID!!!

“I didn’t do anything. I just opened the stupid thing and it closed on its own and now its broken. The track fell off.”

“Did you, at least, get the garbage out of there?”

I pointed to the small opening between the bottom of the door and the driveway, “I had to crawl under there. And now I have to fix the goddamn door…”

Unimpressed, she shrugged and rolled her eyes. I was going to fix the garage door and we both knew nothing good was going to come from it.

To Be Continued….

The Dance

2006-07-20T00:05:00.000-05:00

The abdominal gnarl hit me around 9:30 this morning and thank the Lee-ord. RIGHT ON TIME!

My intestines are clockwork. By body's private Rolex. Timex. The Seiko of turds.

At 9:30 every morning the little brown cuckoo wants to spring forth and announce that it is, in fact, "Koo-koo, kuck-koo", 9:30 ante-goddman-meridiem.

I embrace this time. I revel in it. And, each day, I'm equally impressed by the extended time it can take to produce a truly wonderous anal melon. YIKES! Good Saint Merde of the Holy Logs. It's 9:32 and I'm late.

And my intestines knew it. Oh, they made me hurt. Wringing me with pain. I White Rabbitted down through cubicle row. All the while clinging to my abdomen. My asshole in a Nana-at-the-home-waiting-for-a-kiss pucker, so pursed that my asshole was now an outie.

Run for the good love of Hemmroidious! RUN!!!

Stomp. Stomp. Kiss. Pucker. -pooft-

"No..."

Stomp. Run. Trot. Smooch. Pucker. -pfft-

"God in the holy garden... please..."

The Men's Room. Mere steps in front of me.

I curse myself, "I waited 2 minutes past the deadline. I waited too long. I waited too long --"

I punched the stick man on the Men's Room door with the palms of my fist.

I kicked open the handicap stall with the flat of my foot.

Okay. Wait! Hold the phones. Don't fucking judge me.

Yes. I use the handicap stall. You fucking do to. It's okay.

Last year, after a quick scan of the floor on my first day of hire - No disabilities; therefore, I am clear to use it.

You see, I like the roominess of the handicap when I throw down a duke. We all do. Don't you dare lie.

So, in the meantime, if the company hires someone "not so capable" of walking into the Men's Room on their own... well... fuck 'em. Wheel yourself down the hall. There's another biggy stall down there. I'm planting rotten in this one right now. SENSITIVITY!

Where was I? Oh, yeah, I gotta shee-it! I group-yanked the pants and skivs in a single pull. I was about to push the laser-by-pass flush button on the bowl (gotta have a freshie) when... there she was: A shit stain. And she was floating. Floating like protozoa under a lab tech's slide.

She was beautiful. She was. Meant to be a front bowl skid mark, no doubt, but Fate guided her on a different path today. Today she was not destined to suffer eternity as a mere smear, but as an emancipated stain, floating. Esteban and the cleaning crew would not have the satisfaction of bowl brushing you today, Senora Stain. Not you. Not today. Not hoy.

Her dance was magical. An Esther Williams of a once-porceline side markings. A Bugsby Berkely bowl of marvelous twirls and loops. Graceful. Beautiful. Brown.

My own future stain waited patiently inside of me. Both of us entranced by this enchanted nymph of the Sea of Commode. Dance on, sweet stain. Be free.

But life calls us back to quickly. My bowels reminded me I had to go so bad it hurt. but I didn't have the heart to release atop of this artful Waste Ballet.

I moved next door to the smaller stall to begin my own dance. I could sacrifice for the Arts. Comedy. tragedy. TRAGEDY!!! I cued the orchestra. Yes, played through my own horn section, a wonderful symphony of flatulance.

As I sat down in through my private odiferous mezzanine, I looked to the Swisher deoderizer on the ceiling and thought, "Am I a fucking mental case. I just watched someone else's sliver of shit floating in the handicap toilet."

BRRRAAAMMPP!!! PLOP!!! 9:43 AM.

I’ve Developed Such A Baditude

2006-06-29T14:14:00.000-05:00

Oh, dear, shame on me. What has happened in the past 37 years that has left me so negative and bitter? I have developed a pretty rotten bad attitude. Or, more aptly: A Baditude.

Could it have been exposing the magician’s secret of good ol' showbiz when I attempted my lifelong dream in the World of Entertainment? Could it have been not totally respecting how that illusion was constructed? Or was it that, in addition to, following the false career path that every American, eventually, follows to pay the bills? Or was it all of those things, then realizing that I’m 37 years old and my genetic dust has been blown off the family album and into my medicine cabinet? Whatever it is, I’ve become kind of a prick. An honest to god douchebag. So, today, I put on a pair of rose-coloreds, turn that positively pink UV protection to the awesome world around me and recall one delicious Spring morning:

A beam of golden warmth awoke me that morning. Mmm. I tried to hide from that randy girl Sunshine, but her morning glow worked her way through the Levelors and kissed me ever so gently on the cheek.

“Good God and Holy Christ on a Bench! Is it morning already. Fuck this,” I turned my face into the softness of my pillow.

But that little rascal was persistent that day. For me, and only me, Lady Sunshine melted the frost with her toasty touch and presented it to me: A dewy diamond on each blade of newly sprung grass.

“WHEN IS THIS FUCKING WINTER GONNA END?!?”

The softness of my pillow called me back. My personal cloud missed me even in that moment I sat up to greet my Early Lassy. You see, the bond my pillow and I share for 8 hours a night is an eternity. A delicious eternity that is never satiated. Insatiable. A continuous ringing of Pavlov’s bell. I lowered myself as I pressed my cheek to hers and closed my eyes.

But that Naughty Beam out my window, she was jealous. Poor girl. She didn't want to share me. It was her turn to be with me. The pillow had her turn. Lady Sunshine and I had a date that morning and she wasn’t about to be stood up. She gazed over my closed lids and ever so sweetly asked for my hand as she does most mornings.

“Do I even have to be up? Goddamn it. What day is it?”

My head was cloudy that morning. A fog of dreams that wisp'd away into the morning air as life slowly crystallized.

“It’s fucking Wednesday. And, GODDAMN IT, I left a garbage bag on the porch last night.”

Wearing little more than what evolution provided to me, my bare feet carried me past the sleeping angel I’ve spent the past 14 years of my life with. How sweet. She sleeps as if in her mind she is floating on a whipped cream swirl of subconscious scenarios and chocolate sprinkled delights. A lone eye peeped at me. We met for the first time that day, and, as always… it was magical.

“Where can I find a clean pair of underwear?”

“Downstairs in the dryer.”

God, I love her. My angel slowly ascended back to the Land of Dreams.

Naked, natural, I headed out of the bedroom with a gentle murmur, “She’s probably getting up at 11:30. Must be nice, lady.”

“What did you say, Rick.”

“Nothing. Go back to… stupid sleep.”

“SHH!”

I walked as I tripped my way into the pair of underpants I wore the day before, the Sunshine glowing from the garden window in the kitchen feathered my eye lashes, tickling them, drawing them downward. Downward I could see outside the window and onto the porch. The porch which I constructed with my two able hands. And on that porch, a carpet of the things that once were -

“Garbage everywhere.! That goddamn, motherfucking raccoon.”

That bandit-masked little imp, stole the remains of our nourishment from the day prior. For her family probably. The instinctual responsibility to scavenge a meal for their children. For survival.

To myself in a gentle whisper, “Good. She got into the Electrosol box hope it kills her and all 46 of her little, gray rats.”

It’s about at this point in the dewy, frosty, sunshiny day that turned my glass from half-full to half-empty to why-wasn’t-this-goddamn-glass-filled-to-the-top-in-the-first-place.

“I HOPE EVERY OUNCE OF MY WASTE YOU ATE KILLS YOU AND DISEMBOWELS YOUR RODENT INSIDES!!! Look at this mess. Garbage and rabies all over my porch.”

There was garbage everywhere. And it stunk. Not a rose-colory smell. A stink. A stink of unfinished mac-n-cheese, moldy sink sponges and most of a turkey kielbasa. There I was, in 36 degrees Fahrenheit, in a pair of day-old underpants, in my bare hands, scooping the feted remains of previous enjoyments into a ripped Hefty kitchen garbage bag like I was preparing a giant corn tortilla of rubbish. The texture so awful that my gag reflex kicked up vomit bits of the breakfast I hadn’t even had yet.

“HOO-WHAH!” Gag.

I so much DIDN’T want to be wiping puke of this porch, too.

“HOO-WHAH!”

Please, don’t puke.

“WHAH! WHAH! HOO-GHUNGH!!!”

Then, I saw a baby diaper. A shitty baby diaper glistening with raccoon saliva and a whisker sticking out of the actual shit.

THAT WAS IT! That diaper’s not even ours -

“PUU-LUUUUH-GHUNNNNN-WHAHHHHHHGGGG!!!!”

Puke.

“PUU-LUUUUH-GHUNNNNN-WHAHHHHHHGGGG!!!!”

Oh, God, no more –

“PUU-LUUUUH-GHUNNNNN-WHAHHHHHHGGGG!!!!”

Puke, shit, garbage and a raccoon whisker all over the porch… and me standing like an underwearing island in the middle of it all.

And cold. And real cold.

As I stood there freezing, I looked up that randy Girl that woke me 15 minutes ago. She smiled on me. Warm. I thought: "Yes, shame on me. I’ve become a bit of a prick as I’ve gotten older. At 15, my old man would have had to pick up the garbage. In college, I would have lived amongst it. But, now, at 37, as a homeowner, a husband, a father I’m responsible for the garbage. I’m responsible for picking it up.”

Yup. Alone and in my underwear, accepting it willingly. At least I have my health.

“God, it’s cold out here.”

AH-CHOO!
_______________________________________________
*Raccoon courtesy of: http://badgas.co.uk/animals/others/

Sometimes Change… Eh, Not So Good

2006-06-22T15:22:00.000-05:00

I made the mistake of going downstairs to the building's Sodexho for lunch at, hey fuck me, lunchtime. The line at the sandwich counter bottle-necked at the salad bar's hard boiled egg bucket, then kept going past the ketchups. I ordered my future stomach ache from the grill and, for entertainment, enjoyed the menagerie of the false dieters promenading with their over-dressed salads in the cash-out line. Yeah. The cash-out line. Why isn't that motherfucker moving?

About five minutes went by, I got my burger and swung myself into the cash-out.

A sportcoated sleeve blocked me, “No cuts.”

No cuts? This dude better be 14 years-old. Am I going to have to “One-Potata, Two-Potata” my way into line with Johnny McSportcoat?

“You’re cutting.”

“I am? Sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“Either way, my friend, you did. The line’s back there.”

Still?!? What the Hell is going on here? Why is this line so long? And... wait! "My friend?" What is this guy a Salt Cod vendor from a 3rd World Bazaar? GOOD FISH FOR YOU TODAY, MY FRIEND?

Then I see the cause of this lunchline back-up... it's her… the granny from the Tweety cartoons… and… she’s paying for her lunch in - PENNIES!

Pinching them cent-by-cent in her pointed little bone fingers, “One, two, three…”

You have got be shitting me. She's only on “three”? What is she eating that has to be paid for – IN PENNIES!!!

I itemized.

First up:
A drink. In a waxened cup. The cover crushed and eskewed. The straw's in the cup with the paper still on it. This is what I label "a drink". It has all the classic markings of a no-name-brand fast food beverage and since I'm not entirely sure what’s in the cup… it’s just a “drink.”
Next:
An opened Oreos pack in which was clearly stated to be: “Already ‘frum’ my purse.” every time her eyes caught wind of the cookies. FRUM?
And Last:
A wrap-type sandwich with… could be tuna? Chicken Salad?

Then, she caught me mid-inventory.

“It’s a ham salad sandwich.”

Fantastic. We’ve just hauled ass way back to 19-friggin-57. Could I, also, interest you in some maraschino cherries to garnish your heart-attack? A side of deviled eggs? A sock hop? Who in the Great Wall of The Shondelles is eating ham salad greater than or equal to the year 1957?!? Ham salad? Puh-lease. Equal dosages of ham and mayo --

“Are they giving angios in the big conference room?”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Enjoy the ham and mayo.”

“Oh, yeah. Doesn’t that look gah-reat, “ what is she, Tony the Tiger, “ I had them put mayo on it.”

Mayo ON it? MORE MAYO?!? Holy Blockage! This is like looking at someone moments before their death, thinking, “I made eye contact with that motherfucker right before she went off the side.”

Then back to her pennies.

“Four, five, six cents. Seven --,” she looks at me again.

“Yeah?” The best I could muster.

“I’m trying to get rid of my change.”

“Good for you.”

LADY, THERE’S A GRIDLOCK OF LOW-BLOOD SUGAR BEHIND YOU!!! You couldn’t have taken that change, bought a piggy bank with that change, and, then, 'frum' that moment forward use that piggy bank to get rid of future change?

“Eight. Nine. – How many did I give you?”

The pay-dude wasn’t even close to paying attention. This douche was too fucking high for the good love of Buddah. In fact, the penny-after-penny-after-penny-thing was fascinating the shit out of him.

“I dunno.”

“Was it nine?”

“I dunno.”

“Nine?”

“Dunno.”

Hey, stupid, it’s sitting in the belly of your weed-stained fingers.

I chimed up, “Yes, you gave him nine.”

Then she covered her change purse like I was giving it the gypsy-eye, “I’m not asking you. Ten. Eleven…”

I look behind me. The line has gone around the corner now. Sandwiches have been stolen. Had to have been. Had to. SOMEONE LOJACK THE PASTRAMI!!!

“Nickle makes fifteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.”

She couldn’t have picked another day to relieve herself of the bank roll of pennies in her rubber change purse.

I couldn’t resist with my outstretched jaw, “You got bills in there…”

“Mind your own.”

“I’m hungry, ma'am. Come on.”

“Mind-ja-bizniss," continue, "... Quarter makes -”

Then the calculator light turned-on in her head.

“Sixteen plus one plus one plus one plus one plus one plus –“

“Oh my God! It’s 41! Can I buy your lunch?”

“I can pay my OWN way.”

Then this prick again, “Hey, how’d you get up there? I thought it was clear - ‘no cuts’!”

“I’m just seeing what the hold up is.”

“And?”

I pointed down to Granny Penny.

“Forty-two…”

“She’s getting rid of her change.”

A collective, “Oh, Jesus!” filled the cafeteria. Half of the people put their lunch back. Johnny McSportcoat took two steps to nowhere to hold his place in West No-Cutsville .

“One dollar…”

How expensive can a goddamn ham salad wrap and a drink be? And the Oreos, remember, were 'frum' her purse, so not even the Oreos in on the tally.

“A dollar and a penny. Okay, that’s all my change.”

NOW I CAN EAT, YOU ROTTEN, HAM SALAD EATING COIN PURSE!!!

“And here’s a five.”

She handed him a five.

The pay-dude's like, “Okay. Ham salad and a drink comes to 3.23. Out of six-o-one.”

He looked into the drawer.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t have any ones. Is change okay?”

She nodded. Then held out her bony penny-browned hand as the pay-dude counted back, “3.24. 3.25. 3.50. 3.75. 4.00…”

Chingina (chin-jye-nah)

2006-06-12T15:43:00.000-05:00

I want to shave my chingina. The little, tiny vagina bush that I grew on my chin by accident 6 months ago.

It used to be a full-on goatee. A manly beard. Smart. Debonair. The kind of goatee you'd see on a velvety villain, cross-legged on a settee in Victorian New Amsterdam. You would see it on me... except... a friend started his goatee the same morn that I started sprouting mine.

I went a few tandem-barbened days with it, then it just seemed, well, gayish. The "Hey, you, too." thing that was funny the first day, wasn't that goddamn funny anymore. It was just kind of odd.

So, that night I locked myself in the bathroom ready to remove the entire gnarly beast from my face.

I looked to the haughty, naughty Victorian in the mirror, "Ready to shave, my good man?"

And, although the mirrored Victorian from Old New York had a Cuban accent. He was sadly taken aback by my decision to straight-edge my chin, "Oh, Ricky, my friend, you like the goatee. It is you. Is it? No?"

"Sorry. Someone else is sporting the same one and the situation has gone from funny to uncomfortably homoerotoc in my mental case head."

He bowed his head, "Comprendo."

I foamed-up my brush, picked up the Gillette Fusion and de-moustached my upper lip.

"Daddy?" At the bathroom door.

I always hear "Daddy" at the door when I'm in the bathroom. Always. This room was once the final fortitude of my me-ness. My last place for privacy, however, since the success of potty training , even when I shit, it has to be shot out like a redneck's air-rifle in the final minutes of paintballing.

"What?"

"What are you dooooooooing in there?"

"Shaving."

"You're beard?"

"My beard."

Sniff. "Why?"

"It's getting too -"

"Fluffy?"

"Itchy... and... dammit... wierd..."

Who am I kidding? Wierd? The "You, too. Me, too" was giving the creeps.

"But I like your beard, " as her tears Katrina'd under the bathroom door (Katrina? Too soon? Hmm.... yikes...)

"But babe, my friend and I are getting like a total feeling from everyone we know. It's just wierd. Two guys with the same thing, same color. It's just wierd. It's gotta go."

SCREAMS!!!! Anguish from behind the bathroom door.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. It's got to stay on. I have to keep this goddamn itchy mess. I look down into the sink and there it is. Well, half of it.

MOANS!!!!!

My moustache is lying in the sink. I got to continue with the shave. I've already gone the first mile.

"Daddy... Daddy... Daddy!!!!"

NO!!! THE HORROR!!!!

And there's my moustache. There's that son-of-bitch peppering the basin under my baby-face upper lip brow.

"Daddy, leave it on!"

As I look up from the ground-up corpse of my moustache floating in a sea of Foamy, I see it. It. Right there in the mirror. Connected to the ball of my jaw. A Chingina.

"Oh, glorious FUCK! I have shaved a vagina onto my face." It's got to go.

"What have you done to me, you animal, " said the velvety Cuban in the mirror as he melted away into Chingina. WHAT-A-WORLD-WHAT-A-WORLD!!!

"Daddy, leave on your beard. It's soft!"

I just stare in the mirrror, "Chingina, I'm 37 years old. I can't be walking around with you on my face."

Then wifey bangs on the door, "Why is your daughter in the hallway crying?"

"Daddy's shaving his beard!"

"Why are you shaving your beard? We like the beard."

I fingered my way, sadly, through Chingina, "I have to keep Chingina. I JUST HAVE TO... oh, god, please... please... let me be alone..."

... with Chingina.

I could only stare at myself thinking about Chingina, "I look like I smoke weed for fucking breakfast with this god-ram thing. I can't have a chingina."

"Can you leave some of it on, Daddy."

I only have some it. It's a chingina.

"Daddy, pleeeeeeaaaassseee...."

And that's all I needed to hear: "Daddy, pleeeeeeaaaassseee...."

"Yeah, baby. I'll leave some of it on."

"On your chin?"

The word "chin" stung me. It bit me. Bit me right in Chingina.

"Yes. I'll leave some of it. On my chin. I'll leave it on my chin..."

...gina...

And everytime I've tried to shave it since she loses her everloving mind.

So, Chingina itches, Chingina makes me look like a pothead and Chingina... well, Chingina gives me peace with Tiny. She loves the beard.

And by the way, my friend completely shaved his beard the same night I made my attempt. He's still clean shaven. I could have kept the goatee, but instead I have female genitalia pasted to the ball of my jaw.

SHAVE AND A HAIRCUT... TWO BITS!!!!!!

Bad Words

2006-05-02T12:08:00.000-05:00

Time-ins are the new time-outs in my house. Why? Because time-ins are rapidly becoming less commonplace as my sweet little girl becomes a full-on kid. A kid who, and I quote on being naughty: “I like being naughty. Being naughty is my thing. I like doing my thing. I don't like doing your thing. Your thing stinks. Why can’t I do anything I want?”

So, yes, lately we’ve been doling time-outs out like cavities on Candy Island.

Most recently, after a 10-minuter for kicking the dog in the kidneys, Tiny calls out, “Is it 10 minutes, yet?”

It was only like 7 minutes, but she took the time-out like a champ.

“Yes.”

“Can I come out of my bedroom, now?”

“Yes. You can have your time-in, now. And thank you for taking the time-out. Did you take the time to think why you had a time-out?”

“For kicking the dog…”

“Where?”

“In his kidneys.”

Professional boxers don’t even get away with that one.

She stood demurely in the doorway while I defragged the hard drive of the PC because she left the webcam running in record mode for 4 hours. Then, just slightly, almost a whisper from a ghost, I heard, “… shit…”

“What did you say?”

“Nuffin’”

‘Nuffin’” means ‘nothing’.

“Did you say ‘shit'?”

“I didn’t.”

“I think you said ‘shit’.”

“I didn’t say ‘shit’.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

But she DID say it! She DID!!!! And she’s going to admit it!

“Well, I heard you say ‘shit’”

“But I didn’t say ‘shit’. Because ‘shit’s’ a bad word.”

“But you did.”

I’m so knee-deep in getting her to admit she said it earlier, that I’m not even realizing that she’s saying it NOW.

“I heard you whisper it.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No. No, I didn’t.”

Just admit, you little liar.

“But I didn’t whisper ‘shit’ because I don’t want anymore time-outs because I already had ‘free of them.” ‘Free is how she says “three”.

“Does someone in school whisper ‘shit’?”

“No.”

“Yes, they do.”

“No, they don’t.”

Finally, I’ve had enough. I got ways to make her talk.

“I’ll just play the recording.”

“What recording?”

“The one where you whisper that bad word.”

“What bad word?”

“The one you said.”

“You mean, ‘shit’.”

“HA-HA! You DID say it! Caught ya!!!”

“WHAH!!!!”

Caught her. Red handed. I’m good. I’m really good.

“Time-out. Ten minutes!”

I won! Yes, I won!

Crying, “But I like bad words, Daddy.”

Me, too.

"Time-out!"

Sniff, “I like saying them.”

Me, too.

"Ten minutes!"

Tears, “I like the way they sound.”

Me, tooooooooooooooooo…

"Think about what you said!"

None-the-less, I had to play the hypocrite.

“Ten minutes! And that's that!!!”

I marched her down the hall, into her bedroom and onto the bed.

“Ten minutes! I want you to think about what you said.”

And for the next ten minutes this is what I heard: “… shit… shit…. shit… shit…”

Conference Pen

2006-04-28T19:34:00.000-05:00

I signed up for a conference for my work because the topic seemed interesting... and sometimes you get dumb free stuff.

Except when I got there all I got was a paper weight. A PAPER WEIGHT? That IS dumb! Is a paper weight EVEN valid anymore? Who in the Great Jesus of Jesusville is still using stupid paper weights? Even more. EVEN MORE!!! Was the paper weight EVER a viable office product in the first place? Were people ever that mental to do stacks of paper work outside? Who brings stacks of loose paperwork out in the wind? WHO?!?

I wanted something good. Although I'm as atheist as they come, I prayed a little, you know, just enough to maybe provided a squishy stress thing on my banquet table.

After a free muffin, 3 pineapple slices and Marriott coffee, I made the high-tail for the banquet hall. And there, in the far distance, at my designated table, a stack of notepads and pens. Free. Free for the taking, my friends. Free for me. Free for my work kin.

But when I got to the table -- cheap Marriott notepads and pens. Fuck this. The Marriott gives those to the guests. I can go up to any floor and bang-out stacks of this shit of the maid's cart. I'VE BEEN HAD!!!!

The speakers were good. My boss was fantastic (and I'm not buttock burrowing, he really was!). I enjoyed the entire panel of experts all the whilst chewing the cap of my free plastic quill. Then --

"I would like express my most finest gratitude to our aforementioned speakers thus far, " the hostess began trying her goddmannity-est to sound smart in front of a room full of MDs and PhDs. "Thanks to the speakers" would have worked fine for me... and for her... she wouldn't have sounded - Hmm, what's the word I'm looking for? Oh, yeah. Retarded.

She continued, "Please feel free to visit the vendor tables in the back."

Vendor tables. Holy shit moly. Free stuff.

I'm getting a pen.

I popped up out of my conference room banquet chair and gave the room a Moses. Standing before the promised land with my free Marriott pen as my staff, looking toward the mirage of vendors that lay before me. LET MY PEN-PLE GO!

First: Find the tech vendors. They always got free pens.

Then: Seek out the biggies. A Sun Micro. An IBM. A GE. They'll have the best pens. The fancy ones. The ones with the little rubber inch right before the ballpoint. Mmm... Sinking your pencil lump, the one that we all grow on our writing-rester finger, yeah, sinking that bitch into the soft rubber inch right above the ballpoint. Oh, baby. Oh, Bartleby, baby.

Finally: Pick my mark -- Cisco Systems. Those monkey's have money. They can afford me a pen. I approached the table.

And, yes... pens. BASKETS OF PENS!!! My eyes pleasured a gentle close. Melting onto my face, a smile worthy of a mouthful of chocolate cake. Pens of electric blue with the Cisco logo in a shiny, silver ink. But --

Dammit! Johnny-moutachio'd the Cisco man is giving it the hard sell - then - then you get the pen. I don't want the hard sell for Cisco Healthcare - "I just want a pen." (I whined that in my penless head).

I wanted for one. Staring. Looking. Desiring. The chewed cap of the free Marriott jobber digging into the small of the back of my ear.

"Hey, what can I do for you today," Johnny Moustachio said, slapping me across the eyes with his hollowed salesman grin.

All I could think was, "Yeah. You can help me, brother. I want a pen."

Just the thought of winning one of those bad-asses was making me want. So, I smiled, lovingly, into his empty moustachio'd eyes.

"In the past 20 years..."

Oh, no. What's this? Oh, shit. I lovinglied too long. He's starting the hard sell.... No. I just want a pen.

He continued, "... information technology has revolutionized virtually every facet of our lives. Organizations of all types have long seen that information technology—viewed comprehensively and deployed effectively—can replace old challenges with new possibilities. However, one of the areas of slow evolution is our healthcare system."

In my thoughts, "Dude, I just want a pen."

"In today’s healthcare practices of all types and sizes, information is both a benefit and a challenge for every provider. "

"I want a pen..."

"New information about disease and treatment is saving lives, while a lack of effectively managed data can put this information at risk."

"A pen?"

"More mobile populations make it difficult to transfer medical records to the point of care. Adding to the complexity, most patients are not cared for by a single physician or one organization... "

"Truthfully? I don't give a shit.... not a even a oddly-sized, pre-mature shit... I just want a pen. Can I have a pen?" My sad, sad thoughts overtaking my physical being, just nodding at him with my mortician-glued smile over my cadavered mouth.

"... a collective process that includes nurses, consulting specialists, diagnostic technicians, and administrative staff."

OH MY GOD THIS SPEECH IS KILLING ME... "I JUST WANT A FUCKING PEN!!!!"

"At a time when entire populations in many countries are aging, chronic disease management can increase the burden on healthcare systems."

AAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHHH!!!!!! PEN!!!!!!!!!!!!

"In addition, paper-based record-keeping systems are --"

"Excuse me, " I had to speak up, "Is this on your website?"

"Yes. Yes, it is. Just go to the Healthcare section."

He smiled at me.

I stared at him.

Then silence, so powerful and awkward, that the Marriott shook a little.

"Can I have a pen?"

"What? Oh, yes, sure... please. Take one."

I took two.

Sucker!

Ol' Timey Joke Tellin' Break

2006-04-04T13:47:00.000-05:00

I miss good ol' timey joke tellin'... so... with the best vaudeville try... here goes:

Two cannibals from opposing tribes meet each other in the jungle. Having never tried native flesh before, each offered up his own arm for tasting.

The first cannibal ripped his arm off and handed to the second.

The second cannibal tore his own arm off and handed to the first.

And they feasted.

Once their bellies were full, they thanked one another and were on their way.

Later that evening the two cannibals passed each other in the jungle.

TAH-DAH!!!!

Yikes.

Get it? Get it?

Maybe that's why ol' timey joke tellin' is a rarely done anymore (outside of nursing homes).

Laugh it up, motherfuckers!!!!

La Ragazza Nostra (This Kid of Ours)

2006-03-27T16:35:00.000-05:00

Yeah. I’m like a housewife circa 1956 who needs to “watch her stories” when it comes to Sunday night. Sunday night is all about The Sopranos. It’s like Sunday Sauce and brajol. It’s an almond biscot, a cordial of Anisette and my finest cotton pajamas. This is my time. Family time. For an hour, Tony and his capo regime are “friends of mine.” Mi famiglia. CAPICE?!?

So, why do I gotta have my BAWLS busted by the 3 year-old Don that lives in my house when it comes to setting my eyes and ears on anything that doesn't have the Disney logo fronting it. Me and that fuckin’ Mouse need to have a “sit down”.

No sooner has Tony snapped his Jersey Turnpike ticket from the booth when I hear a little voice boom, “OKAY EVERYBODY!!!”

Oh, no. What is this?

“HELLO, EVERYBODY!!! I GOT AN ANOUNCEMENT TO MAKE!!!”

How cute, right? She’s only going to be 3 once, right? So, why is she busting my nuts, over here?

“Hey, man, come on. I let you watch your shows,” I say to her.

“But this isn’t my show.”

“I know. It’s mine.”

“My show is Chicken Little. Can I watch Chicken Little?”

“I don't care what you do.”

“On the big TV?”

“No. I'm watching the big TV.”

She makes a whining sound. A sound like your car won’t start, but might, but it doesn't. That sound. Then she lams it to her bedroom.

BAH-DAH-BING! Here we go; Tony drives up into his driveway and, yes, yes, entertain me -

BWAAAAAANG!!! BAHT-TAH-DAT-DAH!!!

What in the name of decent imported provelone is THAT?!? Is that an electric guitar? Who the fuck bought her an electric guitar?

“Hey!!!”

“It’s my concert.”

BWAAAAAANG!!!

“Cool it with the guitar.”

BWAAAAAHHH!!!

“DUDE!!!”

One last strum. The “F-You” strum. BWATTT!

She books it into her bedroom.

Bite of the biscotti. Sip of the Anisette. Sight of the Dora the Explorer comforter. Dora the Explorer comforter?!? What the fuck is this kid doing, NOW?

“What are you doing, now?”

“Your show’s on so I’m being quiet.”

“But what are you doing? What's with Boots and the crew?”

She whispers a continuous verbal string of babble. I don’t know what she’s saying. And, frankly, I don’t give a shit. It was something like: Whisper. Whisper. Whisper. Then the word “Tent.” And, honestly, she’s 3 and doesn’t make sense a good quarter of the time. So, tent, right, yeah, tent, sure.. Then her feet went PAT-PAT-PAT down the hall. She was gone.

Then ---

SKKKK-REEE—APE!!! A tiny, pink checkered chair de-enamels the absolute length of the hardwood in my hallway. The noise and destruction continues into my living room; therefore, making me miss something Paulie Walnuts just said. What did he say? What is this episode about? I just want to watch it for the Good Love of the Virgin Mary.

“This chair will be for the back of my tent for this side. Now, I need a back of the tent chair for the other side…”

“What? No. I'm trying to watch my show...”

PAT-PAT-PAT. Down the hall.

SHIT! WHAT THE DID PAULIE WALNUTS SAY?!? I ask the wife.

“Did you hear what he just said?”

“Yeah. Shut up. I’m trying to listen to it.”

“Can I rewind it?”

“No. I’m into it. Shut up, dammit.”

SKKKK-REEE—APE!!! Tiny, pink checkered chair, number 2, removing the rest of the enamel and some splinters of maple from the floor. I can't help but think; This is a goddman shake-down for the big TV.

Dammit!

“Sha?”

“Rick! SHUT!!! UP!!!”

Maybe if I concentrate on the visuals, I’ll be able to – WHY AM I SUDDENLY LOOKING AT DORA AND BOOTS?!? WHY AM I LOOKING AT DORA AND BOOTS?!?

“Tiny! Put down that comforter!”

“I’m making a tent!”

“A tent? Why aren’t you in bed?”

“Because I have no covers on my bed!”

“Where are your covers?”

She points to some circus-carnivale-sideshow shit she’s got slung over the two pink-checkered chairs, a fake kitchen set and the dog. Madonne, that poor fucking dog. But, but, at least, now, she’s laying down and she’s quiet. The Dora and Boots comforter has settled over the chairs and I can see the big TV. But the comforter keeps drooping on her and those little pink chairs... and she's getting annoyed.

Good.

"I can't fix my tent."

So.

"I can't make it stay!"

Sucks to be inconvenienced.

Then, she paused. Oh, no. What is she concocting in that tiny, erecto-set of a brain of hers? I look over and she's tucking the comforter under Sha's arm. Piece-by-thick-comforter-piece. Dora goes under the pit. Then Boots. Isa the Iguana. Benny the Bull - pitted. I watched Sha plummet into an abyss of annoyance. But since the comforter was under my lady's pit not mine, I could absorb the final moments of the episode.

And tuck-after-comforting-tuck-after-annoying-tuck, Sha was missing the crucial last moments before the "next week on The Sopranos." Oh, well. Join the club. Holding onto those last minutes she had the cajones to turn to me and ask, "Can you pause this?"

I just kind of smiled, "Ssh! Not now. I'm into it!"

Eh, I wasn't really, but, hey, a little retribution over here - FUHGEDDABOUTIT!!!

Shopping Listed

2006-03-21T20:26:00.000-05:00

So, I haven't blogged in awhile. Fuck me, okay? I have 3 year old, a job and I'm, partially, lazy. But, because, I love ya's all, here's some shit that happened to me last Winter:

Okay. I have a hairy ass. I'm a satyr. Well, minus the pan flute and cloven hooves. (that's a satyr, right?). I want the hair back there gone... sometimes... not all of the time.. but this time I do.

What I'm saying is: I want the ass-smoothness of a freshly twatted baby without all the razor burn. And, yes, I've shaved the ass before. It itches. It burns. It stubbles. But, I, like any human, love to feel soft. So, I ask, is there no where for a man, a man with the ridiculous desire to do something fucking retarded like shave his very own ass... is there anyplace for THAT asshole to turn to?

Yes, there is, mis amigos. LATE - NIGHT - TV!!!! LATE NIGHT TV AND EPIL-STOP!!!

This beautiful Emmy worthy Infomercial has a man, the Everyman if you will, showcasing the mangrove that hangs from his back. He Epil-Stops, then wipes that monkey back of his - cah-lean!! Like nothing. Like fuckin' "nothing." His back... it's... perfect! These are wonders of modern technology. I can shed the hair pants once and for all. Bless you, Epil-Stop. Bless you, Late Night Marketing Teams. And, Bless you, little, smooth Baby Jesus!!!

See, Walgreens sells all that AS SEEN ON TV shit. So, they must have Epil-Stop all end-capped. I stop into the Walgreens on my way home from Firestone. (Dammit. Had to get the van fixed again. AGAIN!!! HAIRY-ASS!!!)

I pop into the store and grab the AS SEEN ON TV EPIL-STOP for, yes, ONLY $19.99. I, as it happens, need some Mach 3's for some regular old-timey face shaving. I grabs me a 4-pack of those. But... embarrassed about buying the Epil-Stop, I head to the pharmacy register in the back of the store... in the back near all of the damn sex gels and rubbers and creams and... Hmm... my head says... if I smooth the ass and shave the face... my lady can't help but be TURNED ON!!! Correct? Oh, yeah -

OH, YEAH!!!

I grab me a big tube of heated "gel" (in the event that Loving commences) and head for the counter.

Blip. Beep. Boop. The three go through the scanner and I pay. By the way, my own shame makes me sack the shit myself - toot sweet.

The shame of all of it. All of these shameful products. EPIL-STOP, heat gel and Mach 3's? Fuckity-fuck, even those bitches look like I'm knee-deep into some fetish McFetishburg.

In they bag it all goes and I book it for the front door.

Woman who works there, "Are you all set, sir?"

I wave the bag, "Got everything I need."

EVERTHING I NEED?!? HEATED GEL, AS SEEN ON TV HAIR REMOVER AND MACH 3's?!?

"Yeah. I'm all set."

I pass through the security bars and... WHAMP-WHAMP-WHAMP!!! PLEASE, STEP BACK INTO THESTORE!!! THERE IS A QUESTION OF SECURITY!!! PLEASE,HAVE A WALGREENS REPRESENTIVE CHECK YOUR BAGS!!!

... fuck...

"Please, sir, can I check your bags?"

I hear him, but I don't see him.

"Sir?"

Nothing.

"Sir?"

A hairy arm is waving from behind the register. A little person, A DWARF!!!, A dwarf with 5 o'clock shadow, stubby fingers and a Walgreen's smock is waving me down.

And, so far, the itemization goes as follows:
1) AS SEEN ON TV HAIR REMOVER
2) MACH 3's, HEATED GEL
3) SECURITY ALARM
4) A FULL-GROWN MAN DWARF WITH A 5 O'CLOCK SHADOW

... and now he's fishing through my bag with his tiny hand.

With a judgement, a "Hmm..." and a wink, THE DWARF says, "Enjoy it, buddy."

Sad thing: I did.
________________________________________________
**by the way: I don't endorse this shit.

CHEESUS CHRIST! Get Me Out of Here!!!

2006-01-30T14:01:00.000-05:00

I hate Chuckie Cheese’s so much I can’t stop thinking about it. Chuckie Cheese’s consumes my every thought days after I’ve experienced it. I have nightmares about Chuckie and his racial stereotype friends: The curly-moustachio’d Italian pizza man, the dumb, redneck, overall-wearing hound dog, the chicken dressed in a whore’s negligee and Munch the retarded ticket chomping monster. What great role models for the children.

Hey, let’s get our kids hopped up on shitty, undercooked pizza and syrupy Coke, stick them in a room of racial stereotypes… and… for good measure, let’s pepper the place with hidden child molesters eating salad bar salads covered in Bleu Cheese dressing.

What a fine place.

And let’s set up a system where you and your child are stamped with matching numbers on the back of your hands by teenagers, who could give two shits past their free pizza and video games, so nobody walks out with your child.

Let’s let this same system give under-gifted adults the false security of not EVER having to watch their kids while eating salad bar salads covered in French dressing. Tiny got a shake-down from one of these kids.

She went to put a Chuckie token in a driving game and was shoved out of the way from this 4 year old scumbag. When she insisted it was her turn (and it was, man), he grunted for her token. Fuck him! Who's he grunting at? He’s 4. If his parents paid any attention to him he wouldn’t be standing here grunting for my daughter’s Chuckie token. He followed us, too, with his little grunting arm outstretched. “Ungh!”

“Where’s his Daddy?” Tiny asked.

“Who knows… RUN!!!”

And he chased us through Chuckie Cheese’s. “Ungh!”

“Run, Tiny! RUN!!!!”

“Coin! Ooh. Ungh! Coin!”

“Tiny. Go! Past the Toddler Zone.”

“I can’t, Daddy! He’s watching me turn.”

“Ungh! Coin!”

“Into the showroom!”

But there were 3 birthday parties going. We were turned away.

“Coooooiiiiinnn!!!”

Where’s this kid’s mother?

“Ungh!”

“But, Daddy, it wasn’t his turn.”

“I know. I know.”

“Coin!”

“Let’s go home, Tiny.”

“Yeah, Daddy, let’s get out of here!”

We got to the exit. The teen with pizza face, literally, he had pizza sauce all over his chin, stopped us.

"Stop. I gotta check your stamps."

We let him. Tiny, then me.

“Unhgh!” Frankenkid was approaching fast.

What I hadn't realized is that I had, inadvertently, washed my child-molester-diversion-stamp off of my hand. Now, me and Tiny don’t match.

“Can’t let you go,” the teen said.

“But this is my daughter.”

“Sorry.”

And we stood. We stood for a minute.

“I have to go at some point.”

“You’re stamps don’t match.”

“Ungh!!!”

“Well, as much as I appreicate the attempt of procedures here at the Chuckie Cheese’s, you guys got a flaw in them.”

“You’re stamps don’t match.”

“Coin!”

“Daddy, he’s getting closer.”

“This my daughter.”

“How am I supposed to know that. You’re stamps don’t match.”

“Like I said I appreciate that, but I have to go home with her at some point. What’s the contingency plan, here?”

“You have to use the contingency? The bathrooms are over there. But I still can’t let you out. Your stamps don’t match.”

“Where’s your manager?”

“Coin!”

“Daddy!”

“He’s not here. He went to get something to eat.”

Curious... Why doesn’t the manager eat here?

“Coin! Ungh!!!!”

“Daddy?!?”

Think fast.

“Babe, who am I?”

“You’re Daddy.”

“I’m Daddy, dude.”

He stares at me, then down to Tiny.

“Can we go, now?”

“Yeah. If you’re Daddy.”

“I’m Daddy.”

“Go ahead.”

He lifted the stanchion hook and we left. But, before we left, I tossed a Chuckie token on the floor, just because I wanted to ensure this parentless freak didn’t follow us home.

God, Chuckie Cheese’s is the Devil’s playground.

Piggyback

2006-01-24T12:45:00.000-05:00

I’m on the same pee schedule with a guy at the office. It’s not on purpose. Why would it be?

I don’t know this dude. He ain’t a colleague. He ain’t even a peer. He’s just a dude that works at another company that my company shares an office building with… and a bathroom.

Whenever I go in and take a stand at the urinal, he is either already there or I can hear a, “Fancy meeting you again.” and chuckle from behind me. Yikes.
**Note to pee partner: This is NOT appropriate Men’s Room conversation. This type of thing would dole out a healthy heaping of the willies in the Men’s Room at the Back Bay Commuter Rail Station at Midnight. Yes. That’s how creepy, “Fancy meeting you again.” is.

OCD insists that I acknowledge it. I have to provide him with a tight-lipped, “barely-a-smile” smile and a closed-throat, “Um, yeah.”

And, as every time I’m in here, we take our tandem tinkle.

I wish Pee Partner could control himself. Really. Where’s my respect? We, essentially, as accidental as it is, have a built a relationship here. Why does he have to raise his hip and bloot out a quick little flatchie… a toot... he farts. As teenie as the little bloot is, it’s rotten. THIS SOMMABITCH HAS GOT TO – JUST GOT TO – change his diet. PLEEEEEASE!!! What is this motherfucker eating? Kellogg’s Garlic Crunch? Man, oh, fucking, war! I started walking around with a pocket of Lactobacillus-laced hard candies to offer the poor guy to plant in his colon so he can grow a small garden of intestinal flora. QUITE CONTRARY!

Then, to add it all, the stink don’t go away. It puppydogs him. It bridal gowns him. Yes, my friends, Pee Partner is a Piggybacker. That little bloot follows him to the sink (thank Mr. Christ, he’s, at least, washing), it follows him out the door and it follows him down the hall.

And, unfortunately, so do I. I have to. He finishes before me every time. I’m in his wash/walk wake. No matter what I do to avoid the rancor, I’m trapped. The hallways are thin and he’s a big dude. I can’t get around him or that awful remnant of last night’s nourishment. THIS MAN IS EATING DEAD BABIES.

The stink is stinging my nose. It burns. I can barely see as the cubical walls of the hallway close in on me like the garbage chute scene from the first Star Wars.

This Piggybacker’s rank isn’t a dissipater. It feeds off of the natural moisture in the air. Growing. Stinking. My eyebrows cinging. The smell of burnt hair and toasted almonds permeating my nasal cavity. My right arm goes numb. Please, let this all be a stroke and, for once, I can escape the Piggybacker's freaky wreaky wrath.

OH, GOD!

Last week, I peeked into his office to see what goes in his yam. He wasn’t eating. Not even a travel mug of Dunkins’ regular.

BUT! BUT!!!! AT LEAST HE’S IN HIS OFFICE.

I took the opportunity to piss. Alone. Solo. In a pacific solace.

The Men’s Room was freshly Swishered as a delightful deodorant washed over my loneness. I approached the urinal, de-flied and… ahh! Peace. Oneness. PRAISE BE THE SLOAN ROYAL VALVE COMPANY. PRAY YE! AMEN!

Slight shiver, then –

BLEEEEE-OOOOOO-TTTT!!!! (-bramp-)

“Fancy meeting you again.”

“Um, yeah.”

I'll Be Seeing You

2006-01-12T12:05:00.000-05:00

Last Spring in the city, the great city of BOSTON, I saw two blind chicks sword fight with their walking sticks. I DID! I TOTALLY DID! I saw that it was about to happen and I wasn't anywheres near about to stop it. In my ridiculous head I’m like, “What are the chances of seeing something like this play out?” - Zero to RIGHT NOW!

I’ve seen both of these blind broads on the sidewalk at different times of the day on various and sundry days… but never at the same time… and never walking from opposite directions toward one another. I could have warned them. “Could” have. But at the same time, I "couldn't." Know what I'm saying?

My thoughts were in this order:
1) Disabled folk get offended and, sometimes, get downright nasty if you go for the assist. So, can't help you blind people. Sorry. Take it up with your disability community.
2) I have to see if they’ll click each others canes. I HAVE TO! GOT TO!

Closer and closer they approached. Me? I'm standing aside, see, to watch it happen. Goddamn, there’s something soulless about me sometimes.

Closer and closer and – CLICK!

CLICK. CLICK. CLICK. CLINK. CLACK.

GO, GO, GO, SIGHTLESS D’ARTAGNANS!!! EN GUARD!!!

Sword fighting for like a minute. Doesn’t seem like a long duel, but in weirdo shit time, it was like a full on fencing bonanza. Awesome. Neither person mean or viscous, just trying to figure out what the fuck they were clicking. The older broad figured it out first and said, “Sorry.”

The other person, “Yeah. Too.”

And with that, the match was over. On their way they went. I headed toward the Red Line (subway), same as the older, and apparently wiser, broad, then someone recognized her.

“Hey, Debbie!”

“Ralph?”

“Yeah. It’s me Ralph.”

“I know. I could tell by the sound of your ‘Debbie.”

They share a laugh and a discussion. At the end of the discussion, the woman says, “Well, nice seeing you again.”

Ralph, “You, too.”

You, too? What? Ralph, dude, this didn’t blow your mind?

Nice seeing you, again?

Ralphy, not only does this mean she is seeing you now, she’s seen you before; hence the “again.” How long has this charade been going on? As long as she’s known Ralph I would assume. That we know at the very least.

And what about the sword fight. That duel? Can she see? Was she just fucking with the other blind person? And I thought I was soulless for watching.

Nice seeing you again?

She’s probably got a sticker on her car, giving her access to all of those prime, A-1 parking spots. She takes full advantage of it, too, seeing as no one has made the connection, yet. “Let that poor woman park there. She’s blind.” Right! She’s blind, stupid.

Nice seeing you again?

Actually. what should a blind person say at the end of the conversation? What’s appropriate?

“Nice keenly smelling you again.”
“Nice to feel your face again.”
“Nice picking up on the nuance of your speech again.”

It’s not even an issue in this case, because she did say, “Nice to see you again.” Although, I guess, “Nice to see you again” works as good as anything, but this con meant it. She meant it!

I felt so betrayed, swindled as I followed her down into South Station. My mind sending out, “How could you? Shame. Shame. You swindler. Sham!”

Then, she walked into a subway pylon... and the world was right again.

She can keep the parking space.

**... and, yes, I said 'broad'. Relax.

Urgent Care

2006-01-10T14:55:00.000-05:00

You gotta know the rules to everything if you don’t want to be inconvenienced. You gotta play by the rules if you don’t want to be inconvenienced. If the rules ain't your bag, you're gonna be belly deep in inconvenience. And if you choose to wade in the pond of inconvenience, please don’t immerse yourself at Urgent Care at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington.

Yesterday, I was a-crampin'. Big time. One of those crampies when you know something inside you just ain’t right. It hurt to walk. It hurt to talk. It, even, hurt to fart… and, man, if farting ain't making it all better, something is wrong in this here world. Like most Healthcare professionals, you ain’t gonna see them if you ain’t made an appointment several, hundred years in advanceast. So, I headed off to the cattle round-up of Urgent Care. HYAW!!! HYAW!!! MOVE ‘EM IN!!!

Welcome to The Urgent Care Ranch. Let me breakdown doagies of the Urgent Care populous for you:
1) The Sicks. HYAW!!!
2) The Think They’re Sicks. HYEE-HYAW!!!
3) The Sort of Sicks. Otherwise known as, the Don’t Feel Goods. GIT' EM UP!!!

The Sort of Sicks are the real pains in the asses. The folk that make you wish the doctor would come out and say to you, “Mr. Crowley. I’m afraid you have Ebola Rapido. You have only 10 more seconds to live.”

“Fantastic. Would you mind if I breathed on that guy? You know, for the benefit of the others.”

“No, sir, go right ahead.”

Fuck that. I never have anything that good.

Urgent Care starts serving it up at 5:00pm. The written rule is sign-up at 4:30pm. The trick is get there at 4:00pm, get your name way up on the list and begin thumbing through issues of Ebony and Good Housekeeping circa 1987 all-the-while listening to the over-dramatic monologues of the Don’t Feel Goods.

My favorite was the latecomer Don’t Feel Good who declared, “I have a cold.”

Why is she telling me? The only thing I can do is catch her fucking cold.

“I have a cold. Why have they left me here for two hours?”

By the Glory of Jesus, go Vapo-rub your chest.

She dials her cell phone. Each poke of the finger is more painful than the last.

“Hello?” Actually, by now she’s kicked up the fakery to her speech. The “Hello” was now a “hewwo…”

She's got an audiences 50 of us awing at her like the "Star Kids All-Star Pop Revue" show at Six Flags. It’s a bit amateur-y and is a line-in-the-sand train wreck, but it's baseline entertaining in its simplicity. She’s certainly better that the Halle Berry article in Jet I was eyeing my way through.

To the person on the phone,”I’m talking on my cell phone,” fake cough, “And I’m sick.”

Then she started to cry when Arm Rubbing Lady popped up from behind her shredded L.L. Bean catalogue, “Would you shut up. Holy Roly! You’ve whining for the entire 2-hours. Show up on time and you’d get in quicker (New England ‘quickah’). They see you in order (‘aw-dah’) of importance. You ain’t got a broken arm (‘ahm’), your stomach ain’t hurting and you don’t have Alzheimer’s like that old lady of there…”

That was bold. Yikes. Ah, she won't remember anyway.

“You got the goddman sniffles. Sit down, stop your crying and shut-up.”

2-seconds later they called her in. 2 minutes later she was back out, covered in tears. Holy shit. Maybe they gave her the cancer news or the beginnings of Alzheimer’s like that old lady over there.

Through the tears and rubbing her throat, “They said… they said… the doctor… the doctor said… The doctor said it’s something they call ‘swollen glands’. They call it swollen glands and I have it.”

Oh, God. Shut-up. You have a cold.

War of the Rubbish

2006-01-05T16:47:00.000-05:00

I have problems with my local waste disposal service agents, ah, fuck it, I have an ongoing war with my garbage men! And, oh, boy, are these men garbage. GARBAGE!

In the process of buying our home, during our final walk-thru the night before the closing, the basement was loaded, LEEE-OH-DED, with trash, boxes of shit that I didn’t want to be mine at closing and a gigantic, obsolete oil tank (which, by the fuck, the legs are still embedded in the cement of my basement floor).

Real Estate Agent, “So?”

“So? There’s a ton of garbage in the basement.”

“Would you like it removed?”

“Uh, yeah…”

“I’ll have the seller clean things out tonight.”

“He can do it in the morning as long as it’s gone before we sign.”

And he did. He cleaned it that morning and left everything, EV-REE-THING, in the front yard down by the roadside. A Post-Armageddon heap of somebody else's, 50-year old shit. A rotating party light from 1956. A stool with a 1962 pee stain on it. A collection of 1940ish Hawaiian themed ceramic plates – Oh, wait! Those aren't rubbish. Those are cool. Damn it. What else is in here?!? Bachelor pornie mags from the early-1960’s (one was called “The Dude!”)! A Ballentine Ale can opener! A heavy chain! Red things you drive up to change your own oil. Your own oil? Never did it before, BUT NOW I CAN!!! What else? Bachelor pornie mags from the early-1960’s – Oh, I said that. A Jayne Mansfield Playboy and Bachelor pornie mags from the early-1960’s. And what I didn’t haul back to the basement was left for the waste management company to come and get on Tuesday morning.

Tuesday One: Nothing touched expect my regular garbage.
Tuesday Two: Still there. Regular garbage gone, but remnants of refuse.
Tuesday Three: No garbage gone. All there. BUT a note. A note left by the garbage men. It read: Homeowner, Too much trash. Can’t take. Get rid of some of it and we’ll try to take.

GET RID OF SOME IT?!? Isn’t this the exact method for getting rid of all of it?!?

I had to get creative. The next week I re-bagged it all into tinier, white-ier kitchen bags. Those dumb motherfuckers won’t suspect a thing. Hee-fucking-sinister-hee.

Tuesday Four: Some of it taken. I’m winning.
Tuesday Five: All gone! But an orange citation stuck to a 5-Gallon Oil drum filled with old black gold that read: Homeowner, Can’t take. Biohazard.

Where did THAT come from? 5-Gallon oil drum? That’s not mine and, certainly, not half as cool as my issue of The Dude.

My neighbor, “Yeah, Dickie buried that there where you’re standing in 1978. Garbage men wouldn’t take it. So, he dug around it, buried it, forgot about it. Told him not to.”

“Hi, I’m Rick!”

“You’ll never grow grass there now.”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Rick.”

“Rubbish guys didn’t take it then, certainly ain’t taking it now. I’m just tellin’ you.”

“I’m Rick?”

“Take it easy.”

“Yeah. See ya.”

In my heart I understood. A 5-Gallon oil drum of Texas Tea from 1978. I can totally see that being a biohazard. I’m not an enviromental monster. I’m not going to take this on with the waste guys. I had the fire department haul it away.

What I couldn’t fucking believe was the battle with the garbage pricks 8 years later.

We got a new trash can for the kitchen. All shiny and steely. I can see my face in the cover… that is until I step on the little pedal that opens the top. Oh, boy, is it ever nice. We got it at Target, too, so you know it’s quality. So, on that Monday night, garbage night, I proudly walked the old Rubbermaid one down to the roadside. I put a couple of bags of trash in it, as, sort of, a goodbye… and I walked away.

Then, the morning came. Birds chirping. A glisten of sunshine on my window sill. I swear to Christ, Julie Andrews was making me fucking coffee that morning. I had breakfast. I went out to warm up[ the Camry. The garbage cans were empty… even the Rubbermaid one. THE RUBBERMAID ONE!!! What’s that still doing here? The garbage in it is gone. Why didn’t they didn’t take the can? Why...?

The next week I put it out alone. Solo. No garbage in it. It stayed.

The week after that I stuck it in another garbage can. It stayed.

The week after that I stuck on a note. It read: Garbage guys, This garbage can is the garbage.

They didn’t take it. WHAT IN GOD’S GOOD REFUSE IS GOING ON HERE?!? WHY CAN’T I THROW THIS FUCKING GARBAGE CAN AWAY!

The next week I waited. Waited for... them.

“Gentlemen?” Gentlemen? Who the Hell have I become. I used to be a “dude”-guy. Now, I’m in a TJ Maxx-bought Hilfiger tie and naugahide briefcase calling out to garbage men with a “Gentlemen” at the end of my driveway. I’m more 1950’s than that garbage I tried to throw away 8 years ago.

The back-of-the-truck guy pops off the truck and wipes his filthy glove across his nose leaving an oxygen mask of the townfolks’ slime from ear-to-ear (YEE-YUUUUGH-OOOH-YUCK!!!), “'sup, pal?”

“What’s with the, uh, leaving my garbage can? I’ve been trying to throw it away.”

“Can’t take it.”

“You can’t take my garbage can?”

“Nope.”

"Can't take this actual garbage can?"

"Nope."

"But you can take the garbage that was in it?"

"Yup."

“But I don’t want it anymore.”

“Can't take it. It’s a container.”

“A container?”

“Used container. It's a biohazard. Special removal.”

“But you took the fucking trash from inside of it last week.”

“Yeah?”

“Don' they both have the same trashy germs?”

Like I'm reeeee-tarded, “No. One’s trash, the other one is the trash container.”

“You’re fucking serious?”

“No need to get loud, buddy.”

Loud? I wasn’t loud. Why is this guy so sensitive?

I’m trying to be all matter-of-fact, now, “What if I put it in a bag?”

“Buddy, I can’t take a container.”

“Yeah, but it’s in its own bag so, essentially, it’s gone from container to trash.”

“Nope.”

“Okay, then, so, it is my understanding that a garbage can never be considered actual garbage?”
He gave me that tough guy stare which kind of scared me a little… plus he had on those dirty gloves. The left index finger, I swear, had diaper poop on it and the pinky had a tiny piece of cabbage (classic garbage), “Have a good one.”

Defeated, “Yeah, you, too.”

So, in 2005, I dug around it and buried it in the bald patch in my front yard where the grass will never grow. I'M A MONSTER!!! LONG LIVE OIL DRUM DICKIE!!! OLE!

Do the Doo, Caesu

2005-12-24T15:17:00.000-05:00

The poor son-of-a-bitch German Shepherd that lives next door sleeps outside in the cold and is protected, only, by a circled wagon train of his own feces.

Caesar, suffers on a buttery-soft leather sofa, under aged woolen blankets, all the while watching an hour of Lost on ABC's Wednesday nights. His peace is disturbed, only, by the pangs for Frosty Paws ice-cream and, to his canine dismay, the natural urge for urinary and bowel movement relief. And like the USPS, Caesar has to do it in the rain, sleet, snow and hail. Sorry, brother.

In the Good Ol’ Summertime, I’ll slide on a pair of flip-flops and walk my pal Caesar around the yard, absorbing the smells of fresh pine and newly grown grass. During Ol’ Man Winter’s visit, I’m barely cracking the storm door and insisting the prick “move it” before I get a chill. Damn it, bitch, it’s cold! It's New England.

“Come on, let’s go!”

He looks at me, “Boof!” That’s how the prick barks.

“What?”

It's snowing. He doesn't want to get wet. Pussy.

“Are you kidding me?”

“Boof."

He sandbags his body at the threshold. He's not moving and that little shiny lipstick on his underbelly is glistening with future rug piss.

“You son-of-a-bitch. I’ll walk with you out back, out back, but I’m standing on the porch.”

“Boof.”

We go out. Me? No shoes. It's only fair, he doesn't have a pair either. It’s cold, but this piss should only take a second. Caesar runs across the porch and into the snow. He starts sniffing frantically. Dammit! He’s got to shit!

“Hurry up.”

Caesar can’t just shit. He can’t just open the bay, drop the bomb, then get out of the warzone. He’s got to spin. He's got to turn. He's got to go waaaaaaaaay back to prehistoric doggy days and get all instinctual. He's got to be as primal as he can fucking inconvenience me. Spin, Ceasar, spin.

One. Two. Three. Sniff. Not enough snow cleared away. Four. Five. Sniff. Not yet. Six. Seven. Eight. Counterclock-Nine. Ten. Sniff. Squat. Spin. Eleven. Twelve --

"Come on, man!"

Thirteen. Fourteen. Stop. Squat. Smell. Judge. Fifteen. Adjust. Sixteen.

“Hey, Flintstone, the quarry’s clear. Shit, please.”

Seventeen. Eighteen. He’s cleared enough open space. Squat. Tail up! He jimmies himself into position, lowers his asshole and – DAMMIT! He backs up. He’s jimmied himself too close out of the clearing and has lowered his neutered nutsack into a snow bank. He barks at the snow.

“Boof!”

"Come on, man, you don't have any balls."

"Boof!" I've hit a sore spot.

Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Counterclock-Twenty-two. Twenty-two-and-a-half. Tail up! Lower the asshole. Sack back in the bank.

“Boof!”

“Come on!” My feet are numb.

Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Spin. Squat. Sniff. Stare. Spin. Turn. Twenty-five. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. Adjust. Tail up! Lower the asshole. Asshole in the bank.

Man, that looks like it's cold, but my feet are freezing, too. “Caesar, come on. Pee! Shit! Or whatever you got to do.”

I've rocked him, Dammit. He's staring at me, stomping his front paws. He's pissed and now he's got to take it from the top.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Squat. Spin. Sniff. Judge. Sneeze. Seven. Eight. Nine. Squat. Turn. Counterclock. Ten. Eleven. Twelve --

“JUST GO!”

“You could come down here and shovel me a shit path.”

“Did you just speak?”

“Boof!”

Thirteen. F-o-u-r-t-e-e----- TAIL UP! ASSOLE DOWN!!! WE HAVE SHIT!!! WE HAVE SHIT!!! SHIT-LAH-LOO-YAH!!!!!

And, AND, I, especially, love it when the spin ends with his back to me because, without failure, during the act he slowly throws the most humiliated look over his shoulder. We make eye contact, too, and, dammit, I HAVE TO give him his privacy and turn away. It's the same look he gives me when I have to wash his dick during his bath.

He finishes his business and kicks some snow over it. I appreciate the courtesy.

Back up on the porch.

"Come on, buddy!"

"Boof!"

Jolly Ol' St. Prick

2005-12-18T15:37:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again. That sweet time of the year when the networks play all of those peppermint coated Christmas specials of yore. With a jingle-jingle-jangle and a ho-ho-ho, I sit on my leather sofa and smack that magic tube onto ABC Family for the 25 Days of Christmas. They play them all. All-of-them. I sit there with my daughter. She's enjoying them for the first time. Me? I'm cutting them to pieces with my sour, jaded adult eyes. The specials, they're cute, sure. They're sugary, ho-yes-ho. But while watching these as an adult, there's one underlining, common denominator that I never noticed as a kid...

Santa Claus is a prick in each and every one of these Christmas specials. Come down Candy Cane Lane with me for jaunt through the 'asshole' that is Santa Claus:

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
From the very beginning, on Rudolph's birth day. I mean, his 'birth' day, his mother still licking the afterbirth from his fawny body. Santa pops into the Donner Family cave and gives the little baby Ruddie a load of Hell for his poor, shiny birth defect. That's right, Santa is, actually, holding a baby at personal fault for the birth defect. What a fiery, blistery dick! And not to be out-done by his own dickness, he continues to torture poor Rudolph through his entire adolescence that, eventually, the reinteen has to run away into the Artic wilderness with a gay dentist (Brokeback Reindeer?). It's only after his own selfish needs have to be met that Old St. Nick "offers" Rudolph "the opportunity" and "pleasure" to guide his sleigh that night. Nice, Claus, real nice. You ridicule the dude his entire fragile life, essentially breaking him down like a gamy cut of venison, then make him pull a world's worth of toys through a blustering Nor'Easter. Fucking mighty white of you.

Year Without a Santa Claus
Santa gets the sniffles, the sniffles, and, BOOM, cancels Christmas. It's over. Santa's got a little post nasal and, now, it's over, kiddies. Sorry. Can you goddamn believe it? This douchbag works one day out of the year and calls in sick for it... for a runny nose. Holy balls!!!! Hey, granted his day is a tough day. It's a long day... a cold day... but it's still only ONE DAY OF WORK. I've gone to my job in worse condition and I didn't have a billionth of the people counting on me to pull through with the goods. Buy a box of Kleenex, you pussy, and dole out the toys.

Twas the Night Before Christmas
He gets one little letter of critique, from a mouse with buck-teeth none-the-less, and decides, "Screw THAT town. Fuck them!" One letter and he holds the entire community responsible. He's passing them over. DEEEE-OOOOSH-BAG!!!!

The Grinch That Stole Christmas
For no reason at all he lets the poor Whofolk take it straight up the ass while they get totally gift-raped by the Grinch. You could make the argument that he doesn't exist in Whoville lore, but HE'S REFERENCED! Why'd ya leave the Who's dangling, Sandy Claus, why?

Santa Claus is Coming to Town
He's cool in this one, but, then again, this is the ridiculous story of his origins. He hasn't been bitten by the ingratitude of a billion snotty kids, yet. That cold bitterness hasn't set in for the Man in Red. So. what happens between "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and all the other Christmas Specials that turns him into over-sensitive pussy? Maybe it was the Nazi who didn't like toys who wronged him. Or, maybe, just maybe, it was the hot redhead that becomes his wife, then fats up on hot cocoa and peppermint sticks. Who knows. Who holiday knows.

Anyway, thanks to all who've been reading this blog and supporting me. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! HAPPY HANNUKKA!!!! KWANZA!!! SEASONS GREETINGS!!!! AND TO ALL, A GOODNIGHT!!!!

Please, continue reading in the New Year.

-Rick

Wal-Smarts

2005-12-18T02:19:00.000-05:00

I’ll talk to anyone. I’ll, especially, talk to anyone if my payment is they’ll say stupid things to me that I can, in turn, respond to. Which means, I’ll talk to just about anyone in or around Wal-Mart (or, in these, parts – Wall-Maht!!!).

Shayna likes to do crafts. Crafty projects. Glue. Glue everywhere. The like. Her work, for the most part, is good for her age. She thinks it out. She puts time into each project. Being the artsy-type myself I feel the 3-year old needs media. Fresh media. New media. So, amidst the last Saturday for Christmas shopping, I took her to Wal-Mart to buy cool things to glue like beads, feathers and mechanical washers.

While carefully selecting media in the pipe-cleaner aisle, I see the typical middle-aged, suburban New England mother, caked in emotional pain and her denim jacket from high school, yelling at her 12-year old son. Not that I knew he was 12 by looking at him. It was an estimate. I’m not one of those carnie motherfuckers that can guess your shit. I’m making an assumption. Please.

This is the conversation that transpired:

The mother: “A stinkray?!?”

The boy: “They’re cool.”

The mother: “You gotta do a stinkray? Outtah everyone in the class you gotta do a stinkray? Why you? Why does MY son have to do the stinkray?”

The boy: “I like them.”

“Why?!?”

She’s just fucking screaming at this poor prick.

“I told my teacher I was going to make one.”

“Out of WHAT, Donald, out of WHAT?!?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s cuz you don’t never know nothing. You and your father. What is this goddamn, stupid thing anyway?”

“It’s a fish.”

“A fish? What-KIND-of-fish, Donald?”

“A stingray fish, Ma! A STING-RAY fish, Ma!”

At the same time, I’m having this conversation with Shayna:

Me: “What do you want?”

Shayna: “Those spots, there.”

“What spots? Those eyes?”

“No, those spots!”

“The stickers? These stickers? These stickers here?”

“The spots!!! The spots!!!”

Oh, my, God, everything in this crafts aisle could be construed as spots.

Meanwhile...

“I can’t help you, Donald, if you don’t explain what a goddamn stinkray is to me, Donald.”

“What SPOTS are you talking about?”

“It lives in the water, Ma!”

“The spots with the red ones in it!!!”

“All fish live in the water, Donald!!!”

“The felt things that look like spots?”

“They’re like bat fish.”

“I WANT SPOTS!!!!”

“WHY DID YOU TELL YOUR GODDAMN TEACHER YOU’D MAKE A STINKRAY?!?”

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT!!! PIPE CLEANERS?!?”

“STINGRAY!!!!”

“SPOTS!!!”

“WHAT IS A GODDAMN STINKRAY?!?!?!?!”

“BUY YOUR SON SOME FAUX LEATHER OVER THERE, CUT IT INTO THE SHAPE OF A DIAMOND AND STICK SOME GOOGLEY EYES ON IT!!!”

”YOUR DAUGHTER WANTS MINIATURE POM-POMS!!!!”

”THANK YOU!!!!”

“YES. YOU, TOO!!!”

“Pom-poms, Shayna?”

“Yeah. Spots.”

I throw a pack into our cart.

“I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you, too, Shay.”

From behind me I hear:

“God, Ma, you’re sooooooooo stupid. Why didn’t you think of that? Foo leather, Ma.”

“Why didn’t I? Why didn’t you? You’re the one in school.”

“God, I hate you.”

“You’re not easy, either, stupid. What in goddamn is foo leather?”

“It’s fish skin, stupid.”

Yes, it is. Yes, it is.

T.G.I.F You

2005-12-15T11:32:00.000-05:00

At work I started taking the stairs, not for my health, but for the sole reason that I’m disgusted with the path small talk has taken over the years. See, the stairs are great because if the conversation takes a boring turn, which it often does, I can always run up the stairs, run down the stairs or jump from the stairs and kill myself by strategically landing on the crown of my head. Beautiful. But, in the magic “go to different floor” box, I’m trapped. Trapped with that same broad that ends up in my elevator every morning. Her glasses made out of circular cuts of glass from the main tank at the New England Aquarium. She has a scruncii’d bun on her head and it's very unkempt. She’s over-weight (not that that’s any judgment on her personality), but she’s over-weight and wears teenaged girl clothing (now, I can judge the personality). She’s the Partridge Family bus riding the elevator. Bright colors, amorphous patterns, a little too huggy for my visual pleasure. The tightness of her “Come Get Happy” cardigan sleeves have Popeyed at the forearm and I can see this odd Chinese, DaVinci Code, Wicca tat’ right there while she's pushing the 2 button. AH-GEH-GEH-GEH-GEH!!! And she giggles like Popeye. Nervous high-pitched, Popeye giggling. AH-GEH-GEH-GEH-GEH!!! I suppose, YOU ‘YAM, WHAT YOU ‘YAM, BABY!!!!

But whatever she ‘yam, she's got no business even talking to me. Why would she? The morning version of me is not all that inviting. Visually. My general being. Might be a smell or two.

Anyway, if she must talk (and goddammit she must) couldn’t she throw me a conversational bone once in awhile? I long for an “it’s cold outside today” or a “that’s a nice coat.” Olde timey small talk. The classics. The golden oldies of politeness.

No. In Elevator World, small talk has become so droll and lazy. Even Tweenie-Tats embodies all that makes 3 flights in the elevator seem like a trip aboard the Columbia. Or dare I say Challenger? Anyhow, like I said, small talk took a banal turn somewhere. In Elevator World small talk is all about the days of the week and where they fall on the emotional scale. In Elevator World the days of the week are broken down as such:

Monday:
“It’s Monday” “Oh, God, it’s Monday.” “Hey, it’s Monday!”
This bullshit, feigned pain and phony sadness. Poor you and your lack of trust fund.
Tuesday:
“Tuesday? I thought it was Wednesday.” “It’s only Tuesday?”
How do we EVEN do this everyday. We’ll never make it!
Wednesday:
“Humpday.” Or “It’s Humpday. It’s all downhill from here.”
I like the word “Humpday” cuz it sounds kind of dirty. I’m getting a semi-boner just looking at it written.
Thursday:
“At least, it’s Thursday. One day left. Right?”
No. Because now you're stretching the joke that wasn’t funny on “It’s Monday!”
Friday:
“TGIF.”
Thank Jesus, we made it. How awful that people have been working since the dawn of stupid time. How awful that you and your stereogram sweater had to sit and play retarded Freecell all day. Try gathering nuts and berries. Try hunting for food. Your job is so not TGIF. Clicking real fast off the Coach site so your boss doesn’t see you on his way to surfing the ‘net sans doing his own job. Cavemen, Neanderthals, Nomads, those motherfuckers should be TGIFing it. Because it was truly a "Thank God It’s Friday" if they weren’t eaten or diseased by Friday.

TGIF? Fucking stop it! “It’s Monday!”. You’re killing me, here. Throwing these at me daily on a weekly schedule… oh, God, sarcasm can’t express how fucking funny those same fucking jokey small talk bullshit phrases truly, truly are. (Except Humpday because, like I said, it sounds dirty and I always welcome a little wood during the mid-week.)

But today is not Humpday, it’s “It’s only Tuesday” and I get on the elevator.

“Hold it!” sweater-bun calls out.

She struggles in. Why does she have shopping bags every morning? What’s in them?

“What floor?” she asks.

3!!!! THREE!!!! THREE!!!! It’s fucking 3 every morning. It’s always three!!!!!

“3, please.”

Then, the polite tight-lipped, kind-of-work-with-you-and-don’t-know-what-to-say smile. You know what to say. You say it every goddamn Tuesday –

“Oh, well, It’s only Tuesday.”

THERE IT IS!!!

“Yup.” Wow. I am a prick in the morning.

“I thought it was Wednesday.”

Double-whammy today.

“Looks like I gained a day.”

“Yeah. Cool. Good for you.” SHUT UP!!!! SHUT UP!!! SHUT UP!!!! LASER THAT TATOO OFF YOUR FOREARM, POPEYE!!!! GET RID OF THAT COSBY-ASS SWEATER!!!! SEE AN OPTHAMOLOGIST!!!!

-DING!-

“Here’s my floor.”

“Yeah.”

“Have a nice day.”

“Yeah. Sure. You, too.” Sorry, lady, I have an appointment on "Humpday", I’ll see you bright and early on “At least, it’s Thursday, " though.

“Oh, shoot. I forgot my Target bag. Can you hold the elevator for a second?”

Nope.

-DING!- 3rd floor.

I mope to my desk. But as I enter the office itself, I toss out a bright and happy, “Good morning.” The peeps I work with don't deserve the prick that lives inside my head before 10 AM.
*My officemates are the rare bunch of normals that actually “get it”. I enjoy their company. Awesome folk. They can make great conversation… even on rainy “TGIF”. No small talk. No clichés. Nice genuine laughs. Genuine.

But, still, it's time to boot up and sit down. And now that I have, please don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee. I’m a “leaded” guy and an absolute bear without my first cup of caffeine. I'm not a "morning person."

TAH-DAH!

Ah, Goats!

2005-12-11T23:10:00.000-05:00

Why, at this turn of my life, does every greeting at my parents’ house have to start with me asking, “Why do you two have fucking goats?”

Yes. Goats. Real goats. They have little beards and little horns and little, tiny square teeth.

Oh, but I must back up a bit. You see, at any given time I can go to my parents’ house to find out that my Dad has purchased something that has no business being in or at his house:

The Dog.
He got a bred sled-dog. He doesn’t own a sled nor does he have any intention of tripping to the Iditarod nor local-chaptering one of his own. But he bought a sled-dog and the thing is crazy. It can chew through steel fencing and chains… and does. On that day the conversation with my father went like this:

“Why did you buy a Husky?”

“It’s bred to sled.”

“Yes. I know. Why did YOU buy one?”

“The woman down the street breeds them.”

“So, this is part of some neighborhood program that you’re required to buy one from her?”

“What?!?”

“That’s a work dog. If you’re not going to sled it, it’s going to go fucking crazy.”

“It is crazy.”

“Then, get rid of it. He needs to be pulling a sled or logging or whatever else these dogs need to do. It’s not a ‘fetch’ dog.”

“He fetches. In the pond. The pond’s on my property.”

I have lost this discussion.

The Winchester Shotgun.
One day I went over there and my mother was peeling potatoes. It was clear she wasn’t speaking with him. I supposed I had to. This was 'that' conversation with my father:

Behind a Jack and water he says to me, “Wanna see my new gun?”

“What gun?”

“My shotgun. My Winchester.”

“Why did you buy a shotgun that an old cowboy would use?”

“This is not a cowboy gun."

“It's a cowboy gun.”

“It’s not for cowboys," a pause, "It’s for bears.”

“Bears?”

“Shooting bears.”

“What bears?”

“The bears that come into the yard.”

“Have you EVER had a bear come in your yard.”

“There’s bears in the woods over there.”

“Have you had a BEAR come into your YARD… EVER?”

“Those woods are my yard. I got the gun just in case.”

"Drink up, Dad."

The bottom line: My mother didn’t want the gun and after 3 years of never nabbin’ a ‘bar, she made him agree to get rid of it. She didn't care how. It just had to go.

Which brings me to:

The Goats
I look to the top of the hill and out from a Lil' Tykes backyard playhouse walks two black-and-white patched pygmy goats. I could only lick my lips and stare. Does my father have a tin can disposal problem? He’s not a farmer so, clearly, that had to be the only other explanation for seeing two goats in a playhouse in his yard.

“Why do you two have goats?”

From the pool, my poor mother can only wail, “They’re your father’s.”

“Why do you have goats?”

“They were a trade.”

I really don’t want to know what he traded. The dog was still up on the hill trying to “log” the tree his leash was chained to.

“What… did… you… trade?”

“The Winchester.”

“You traded your ‘bearin’ shotgun for two goats? Why do you live in the year 1864? Can you pop yourself into a time machine back here with the rest of us?”

“They’re little goats.”

“They’re goats. Little or not. They’re goats. Do you even know how to take care of goats?”

“You feed them. It tells you how much on the bag.”

“What about e-coli. They're known to carry diseases.”

Like I’m stupid he responds, “Goats are clean.”

“Well, the one with the black face just roll around in his green shit.”

“The other one will eat it off.”

Okay, I’m done. I leave the goats at the top of the hill and don’t associate or even look at them for almost a year.

---

Now, we’re back to today. My Dad bitches and moans that we don’t come around to the new house as much as we did when he lived down the street. I have nicely remind him that the hour and fifteen minute trip into the bowels of the New Hampshire mountains isn’t the same as “when he lived down the street.” But since I promised him I would take Shayna up sledding with her cousins, I load up and make the trek.

My Sicilian Grandma doesn’t cook as much as she’d like to and is bummed about it (being the holidays). So, I tracked down the recipe for Anisette Christmas cookies and baked an amazing batch. The bag of them sat next me the whole trip up. Taunting me. I can’t eat one because my Mom is making dinner. The whole Sunday is going to be an old-timey day. A Sunday dinner like we used to do. I can’t wait. The cookies can.

I pull into the driveway, reach back and unsnap Shayna. She crawls over me and gets out and runs to her Papa (my Dad). I grab the batch of cookies, hear, “N’yahhhhhh!”, then I am side-swiped by a goat. A big goat. The one with the black patch on it’s bony back.

When he first made the trade, Dad told me these were pygmy goats. Little ones. They would always be little, however; these motherfuckers grew. Now, they’re just goats. Goats. Goats with hard spines and big bellies. Goats with horns. Goats with those weird little tails that look like troll doll heads. Tails that are always ornamented with one clinging shit berry.

“She wants the cookies.”

“I can see that. Fuck off, goat.”

This cloven-hoofed nonsense is on me, hugging me with its backwards goat elbows. Its little square teeth are nipping at my grandmother's cookie bag. (Why am I at my parents’ house EVEN in this situation?)

“Come on, goat, they’re anisette cookies. You won’t even like them.”

“N’yahhhhhh!”

Right. This is the one that eats shit off of the other one.

“Get away from my cookies.”

“N’yahhhhhh!”

I make it to the porch, but the sllider's locked. Dammit! Shayna’s already inside with her coat off. Why wasn’t I offered the garage door? The sliding door is locked and both goats are on me now. I mean, they’re on me. I 'm being goat-raped for anisette cookies. Both on their hind legs leaving me eye level with those fucking, little tiny square teeth.

“N’yahhhhhh!”

The cookies are way above my head. I can't get them any higher, so the one with the black face starts climbing me.

“N’yahhhhhh!”

“Get-the-fuck-away-from-my-cookies!”

“N’yahhhhhh!”

“Ma! Open the door!”

She does, “Shoo. Shoo. Don’t let those goats into the house.”

What is this? “Don’t let those goats into the house? Why do you have fucking goats? Take the cookies, Ma.”

“Ooh. Anisettes.”

I push the goat’s face out of the door frame and slide the door shut. The goat puts her mouth against the glass (those fucking square teeth!): “N’yahhhhhh!”

The kids are excited. Sledding. My mother demands that I get pictures of all the grandkids together sledding. I will. Great memories. I love snapping picture.

Everyone’s snowpanted up and out the front door. No sooner are we out the door that my father says, “Be careful of the steps. I salted them but they might still be icy.”

“Yup.”

The kids are down in the snow. Chucking it. Sledding. Lots of laughs. Then I hear:

“N’yahhhhhh!”

I snap over to the shrubs. Those goats. Since they couldn’t get the cookies, they have decided to eat the bulbs off the Christmas lights.

“Dad?”

“What?” Cigarette dangling.

I nod over to the goats.

“Yeah. I see them.”

“They’re eating your Christmas lights.” One-by-one. Meticulously boning the string with those little fucking square teeth. One bulb at a time.

“STOP THEM!”

“They’re your goats.”

He runs over to stop them and I tend to the kids.

My mother yells out the window, “Who’s getting pictures?”

“Dad, watch the kids. I got to go up on the porch and get my camera.”

“The steps are slippery.”

“Yeah.”

I put my digital video camera on the porch because it was VERRRRRRRRRRRRRY expensive and I didn’t want snow nor goats nor any of the kids doing anything to it.

“N’yahhhhhh!”

“That’s right. Didn’t see the camera up here, you pricks!”

“N’yahhhhhh!”

“Goats!”

And with that I put one foot on the stairs and went up and then very down. Down VERY HARD. In the split second I was in the air, I thought: “Save the goddamn camera!”

I did. My left arm was straight up in the air with the camera. But the rest of me was done. Done. I could feel each of the three steps embedded into the different sections of my back, like it was designed for my pain. I was winded. Just pain. Oh, man, just absolute pain in its purest form.

My father’s first reaction: “I told you they were slippery.”

Winded and through my teeth, “Right. Except that doesn’t stop them from actually being slippery.”

"True."

He ran over to me. It was the fastest I’ve been tended to since I was a kid. It was comforting. Sort of. My fucking back!

“Are you OK?”

“No.”

“Can you get up?”

“No.”

He tries to help me up but it hurts too bad.

“Let me just lay here for a second and catch my wind.”

I closed my eyes and just let the pain soak into my back and head. It fucking killed. Really, it did. But my eyes were closed and I could smell the bred sled-dog's favorite pond that’s on my Dad’s property. I could hear the wind rustling through the trees in those bear-filled woods. And the cold snow was making my back feel a little better. I decided to lay still and enjoy the peace of my parent’s home… for once. For once I loved it here.

Then, I felt a tickle on my forehead. And a cold wet something on my cheek. I slowly opened my eyes to a mouthful of little fucking square teeth.

“N’yahhhhhh!”

V-ALPHA-C-A-T-I-O-N

2005-12-08T23:16:00.000-05:00

I understand my father’s face, now. Completely. I understand it because I see it while I’m shaving in the morning. My father’s face is an emotional collage of:

1) Happiness. No doubt. He’s happy. I’m happy. I love being a husband, a dog owner and I am more than overjoyed to be a father. So, there is a colored, transparent wrapping of Happiness over the entire mug.
2) Confusion. Confused, not in a dementia sense, confused in a “why did I just decide to do (or say) what I’ve just done” with or in front of my wife, dog and/or child.
3) Loss. Because, as a dad and a loving husband, you never win. You never will. Fuck you. Get over it.
4) Acceptance. A perpetual nodding of the head, centered at the chin so that the jowels hang beaten.

I, now, live in the iron maiden of my father’s face.

Knowing all of that I still took a 2-day road trip to Florida with the wife, the daughter and the dog. I’m clinically retarded.

No. Not retarded. I just want to be the Alpha of my very own home. I wants to be ‘D’Man’. I wants more than the Alpha of the fucking “clicker” as it’s called in my home. I want the ultimate. I want to accomplish the ascent to the fucking pinnacle, the peak of married, with child MAN-DOM!!! I AM TAKING MY FAMILY ON A ROAD TRIP!!!

I’m clinically retarded.

I wanted to make the trip as painless as possible so I packed a cooler with breakfast, lunch and dinner. A case of water, Capri Suns, some snacks, a DVD player, a satellite radio, toys and a hot water heater that plugs into the cigarette lighter (so we can make our very own coffee and tea). See. I’ve got it all under my big, fat, Alpha control. Happiness.
*see father face emotion #1

Thursday night I packed the Plymouth Voyager with everything and made a little bed out of sleeping bags and pillows in the back for Sha. Not because I’m nice, but because my plan was to leave at 3:00 AM. Sharp goddamn it. I’m pumped. This van is ready for rolling. 3-STUPID-AM. Then, I hear, from the mouth of the person, the very person I made the goddman sleeping bag bed for, “We’re not leaving at 3.”

“What?”

“We’re not leaving at 3 in stupid morning.”

“Yeah, we are.”

“No, we’re not.”

“Yeah, we are.”

“Noone in this house is getting up at 3 AM and driving.”

“Yeah, we are.” Because I’m in control, right?

“Is that a shot glass with Tylenol PM in it?”

I want to lie and say, "No", but there's clearly Tylenol PM in a "Don't Mess with Texas" shot glass.

“In a regular shot glass?”

“Yeah. ”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

In only a taunting husbandly way, “See you at 3, baby, “ I bang it back, “Remember the Alamo! You want one?”

“You’re a total asshole.”

“I made a bed for you in the back of the van.”

She'd rather fold laundry as I stand there wondering what I just did.
**see father’s face emotion #2

We had to get out at 3. 3:15 at the latest. My goal was to bang this whole thing out in one day. MA to FLA (I’m abbreviation old school). This was my goal. I’m in charge here. 3 AM.

We woke up at 4:22. DAMMMMMMIT!!!! We’re not even in the car and we’re already an hour and 22 minutes behind schedule. I am so BETA.

“EVERYBODY UP!!!!”

I take a nice refreshing shower, paying special attention to my “two best buddies” knowing they would take the brunt of the trip. Cramped. Sweaty. Imagine a buck-eighty-two sitting on you all day? Yes, my balls got an extra scrub or two with the oatmeal bar.

A shave. A lotion. Deodorant. Some clothes. Ready to go. Except the rest of these motherfuckers are still in bed. Tiny is upside down, over the side, wearing only a diaper. Sha’s hidden under a pile of laundry. I can hear the dog snoring, but the prick’s physical presence is no where to be found.

“COME ON, FOLKS, LET’S GET UP HERE!!!!”

“Rick!”

“Daddy!”

“It’s 4:30. 4:35. We gotta go.”

“We’re not banging it out.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Come on.”

Sha rolls out of bed, “You’re an asshole.”

“Come on. I'm making a pot of Dunkins' and you can sleep in the back of the van. I made you a bed with sleeping bags.”

“Oh My God with the sleeping bag bed.”

“Wash it up and let’s go.”

"You're making me hate you."

"I'm making coffee."

"I don't want coffee. I want to sleep."

YES!!! HA-HA!!! Everything comes full circle. She wants to sleep perfect because I -

"... and don't even mention that fucking sleeping bag bed."

I make my own coffee because... **see father face emotion #3.

By 5:11 we were ON THE RODE! Chugging and clunking. Sipping coffee.

By 5:20 Shayna peed all over her car seat. CAR SMELLS LIKE PEE.

By 8:00 Caesar tracked dog food all over the front seat. CAR SMELLS LIKE CHILD PEE AND HORSE MEAT. The Voyager smells like a homeless shelter.

By 8:20 we’ve realized we have committed a terrible mistake. Yes. Father face emotion #5 as I just drive down I84, nodding my head.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

Big Girl

2005-12-07T22:25:00.000-05:00

I get a stomach ache every Monday night when I know its time for grocery shopping.

It’s a crapshoot. The 3 1/2-year old may decide to be Daddy’s little helper. She may decide to be whiny. In the carriage. Out of the carriage. Doesn’t want to walk. Wants to ride in the front. Wants to walk again. Wants to sit in the carriage bin. Wants to scream to leave the entire time we are in there. Or just wants a banana… which we ceremoniously steal from the ripened bunch on the bottom of the fruit rack. REBELS!!!

Tonight, she wants to ride in the carriage bin and play with mozzarella cheese sticks.

I’m on a mission. We just got off the plane from Florida. I gained 45 pounds in 4 days. Most of that weight was pork ribs and BBQ sauce. Now, I’m ready to shed the pounds and have to shop for the foods to do that. Low-Fat Vanilla Yogurt. Fat-free Ricotta. Unsweetened Soy Milk. And fresh, sliced deli turkey.

Shayna wants The Incredibles mozzarella sticks and small cartons of orange juice. In the name of peace, she gets them.

I get to the deli counter and it’s packed, man, packed. There’s always one haus frau standing belly tight against the “you’re next” ticket machine. She’s totally not responding to my, “Excuse me,” and my tight-lipped polite smile and gentle point to the machine. I can’t get my ticket because, man, her "too big for her", on backwards polyester blouse is hard pressed right over the ticket hole. I don’t want to poke her because that would mean having to touch her and her outfit… and to be honest, she kind of smelled like Thin-and-Trim Roast Beef.

“I’m, uh, just, uh, got to, uh – ticket?!?” (I’m like way up 3 octaves on ‘ticket’, too. I sound, not gay - stupid.)

I get 11. We’re on Zero-3. And I’m on goddamn borrowed time cuz Shayna’s, actually behaving herself. Slice, motherfuckers, slice!!!!

THEN --

“Daddy, look. That girl’s a big girl.”

“Huh? What?”

“Over ‘dere!”

“Where, honey.”

“Over ‘dere.” She points.

Now, I’m already self-conscience because when Shayna says “girl”, it sounds like “ghoul” and I didn’t want the “big girl” to get her feelings hurt thinking she’s a “Big Ghoul”. That’s just some hurtful shit and Tiny said it pretty goddamn loud. When I turn, she’s not too ghoulish, but she’s not cute either. She’s kind of stuck between your mother’s ugly and so is your Dad, sorry, Fucker. The main problem is: She’s little chunky and she’s obviously sitting in the carriage bin because her legs are way too thick to fit in the kid seat. Regardless I gotta be Super-Daddy and utilize my super abilities to perform the super cover-up for the super stupid things my kid says in public. I can cover this. This one is tit. A little child-like condescension worked-over with some cute Daddy-speak:

“Oh, yeah. She is a big girl. Just like you’re a big girl.”

Nailed it.

A smile and a wave. Acknowledgement nod to my brethren fellow-Daddy. Wink to Shayna. Mutherfucker, I’m good.

“No, Daddy, I’m not a big girl, too, like her…”

WHAT?!?

SHIT!!!

And when Shayna says “her”, it sounds like “whore”. This scenario so going to bad places.

“Her is fat. Her is a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig ghoul.”

And I’m sorry, “her” was.

“Her” totally was.

“Her” was totally a biiiiiiiig ghoul.

And “her” probably shouldn’t have been 2-fisting the comped slices of American the deli-man gives to the kids with his ham-blooded, Cheddar skid-marked latexes on.

“A biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig ghoul.”

Yeah, Fatty looked 8, but, you know how weight ages you? She could have been a newborn. And I was fucking hoping she was. In a 6-to-9 onsie, you can fucking pass off that the kid didn’t get it and slap on a “Coochie-Koo! Ah-boo-boo-boo!”. But in an 8-wide, man, your feelings are going get fucking hurt, dude.

“She huuuUUUUUUUUGE!”

And when Shayna says “huge”, it sounds like “huge”.

What the fuck is happening to me? I just want a pound of thinly-sliced, on-special turkey.

“Big ghoul! Whore’s a big ghoul!”

“Shayna!”

But not “Shayna!” aloud. “shayna!” muffled. “Shayna!” aloud would have only made Fatty cry more than she already was.

Oh, that’s right. Tiny got right in under that fat little skin and made the kid cry. Now, I feel like a total shit. I got to muster up everything I got.

“Fat!”

“shayna!”

It’s one thing to put your foot in your mouth, say something retarded, something you didn’t mean, hurt some feelings and then whip up the pride to “sorry” the whole thing out. Then, there’s:

“Whore’s a big ghoul!”

“shayna!”

The irony of this now bawling girl who, obviously, cannot stop stuffing shit into her mouth, is being taunted by mine who can’t stop stuffing shit out of hers. Think fast, Super Daddy.

“What else do we need, Tiny?”

Not my best, but Tiny’s been diverted.

“Cheese,” she says.

YES! Nailed it.

“I want cheese like that big fat ghoul does have some cheese!”

EFF-YOU-CEE-KAY!!!! I’m more than mortified. I’m like 40’s comedy-short mortified. I’m moid-ified.

“Hey, let’s go get some hot dogs!!!”
*Note: Hot Dogs is said with enough forced gusto that it sounds like “Hey, Tilt-A-Whirl”

… and why goddamn “hot dogs?!?’

“Whore sure is so very super hungry, huh, my Daddy?”

Now, the beat. The pause. Fuck me. Fuck “me”. She’s on a roll. Fuck! The pause. My stomach is turning. It’s, actually, gurgling. I’m wondering why I even let this go on for so long. I don’t need turkey this bad. I just want it. I don’t need it. In fact, really, I don’t even want it. I’m just buying it lose weight. I know by Thursday I will have had a pizza and by Monday I’ll be tossing the whole pound of it in the trash. Why am I waiting here for turkey? I’m in a motherfucking grocery store. It’s endless the things I could bring home to eat. Why am I HERE?!? And I’ve been here so long that she’s frenzied herself into what I call “the string”.

“Fat ghoul –“

“oh-shayna. NO!”

“Whore is a fat ghoul. Fat. Whore is fat. Boobies. My Daddy, look! That little ghoul has boobies. Hi, Little Boobies. Oh, hi, cute Little Boobies. Hi there, Little Boobies. Fat Boobies. Oh, thems are cute. Aw, thems are cute. Daddy, look at that big ghoul’s cute, fat Little Boobies…”, etc.

“Etc.” because this is “the string” and “the string” never stops. If you try to stop “the string”, it only increases its volume. So, “the string” has to play out. I don’t need the turkey. I have to get the fuck out of here, but its too late. Fatty is totally destroyed. She’s curled up and over a box of 1/3 Less Sugar Fruit Loops (which by the way were clearly not working for her) – bawling. BAWLING!!!

“Whore sure is huge.”

I apologetically throw fellow-Daddy a nod. He nods back with the “been-there” head tilt. I nod, sadly, in agreement.

With Fatty crying in the background, Shayna and I turn left into the Fancy Cheese section. Spanish Manchego. Mozzeralla Packed in Water. Brie. BRIE!!! Life is rich. Life is good again. The word “Gorgonzola” puts a smile on my face despite the fact that I have to buy, pre-packaged turkey. I gotta get off the turkey and let it go. Ah, fuck it. I’m away from the deli counter. Peace.

“Hot dogs, Tiny?”

“HEY, WHERE’D THAT FAT GHOUL GO?!? WHERE IS WHORE?!?”

In the distance a cheesed-filled: whah!