Exit Wounds

I will miss you Tallahassee. 

Yesterday, I exercised my right to complete manly household tasks in the absence of a penis or Rosie O’Donnell. With one day left in my apartment, I had to finally paint over the metallic blue wall in my bedroom that my dad has picassoed two years ago. Due to the fact that I live in an apartment complex run by the cheapest family since the Jacksons, I was told the original color of the walls could only be purchased from them, at $60 a gallon. As an alternative to enabling the continuation of this paint monopoly, I opted to liberate a can from their personal stash in the unlocked repair shed. Stealing is wrong, but so is exploiting poor college kids. If anything, I’ll leave an apology letter for handyman Henry who pedals around in his black do-rag and Steelers shirt fixing the shitty apartments the Cheapenstein Bros constructed. Not to mention he’s snaked my shower drain five different times, each occasion taking a brief moment to glance at my freakishly long locks, roll his eyes and shake his head. That’s handyman sign language for cut yo damn hair you dumb white bitch so I don’t have to fist your drain every muthaeffin day.

I bought a five-dollar painting kit from Wally World and figured that because my father owned a painting company I’d be naturally inclined to painting greatness. Wide left with that assumption. My first hurdle arose when Tarzan here realized that to release the paint from the sealed can I’d need some sort of tool. Considering the only tools I own are scissors and a wine opener, the fact that I pried it open without sawing off my thumb deserves some sort of National MacGyver Home Depot Scholarship Grant. Subsequently, I discovered the difference between duct tape and painter’s tape. That difference being that there’s a difference. Finally, I learned that recklessly placing the tray of paint below the stepladder undoubtedly results in paint covered grocery feet. Regardless, I finished the solo job with merely a few spots that appear as if some epileptic monkey decided to finger paint… and an unintended huffing high from the fumes.

Today at the bus depot, on my way to the restroom a random old bus driver asked when my last day was. Tomorrow, I reply, which prompts an aggressive bear hug followed by an, I’m really going to miss you. I’m wasn’t aware I’d actually made a compadre here, other than the bald mechanic that shouts “it’s the movie star”—because of my obligatory appearance in the bus commercials—from behind dumpsters, in the break room, in my office, when I’m walking to my car, etc. He’s like the Ryan Seacrest of the bus depot… 100% annoying and 100% unavoidable. But not even my autistic bald stalker surprised me around a dark corner with a goodbye card and a cupcake. Instead, they just told me to drive around and super glue Braille signs on the bus stops in the rain. So basically my goodbye party consisted of super-gluing my fingers to a slippery pole. If I had a nickel… (kidding)  

It still hasn’t hit me that after tomorrow Tallahassee will no longer be my home. I’ll no longer have to dodge packs of random gang riots in the middle of Tennessee Street or travel to the gas station past 7 pm packin heat in case I need to referee bum fight. It will no longer be acceptable to wear a toddler’s unicorn costume, a mustache or Magic School Bus costume put together from Goodwill to the bar in celebration of a birthday… or just because it’s awkward shirt Saturday. Bystanders will frown upon dousing the sober pledge ride with beer because he arrived at 2:05. Instead of putting customers to shame by getting exponentially drunker than anyone there and performing strip teases on the bar, bartenders will merely pour overpriced drinks with too much ice and not enough roofie. Nightlife will crawl with middle-aged self-loathers trying to relive their glory daze while awkwardly hitting on their children’s friends. I will never again get into a taxi cab and be able to say: You’re the cab driver that tickled my mom’s feet! And receive the response, Aw yeah, how she doin? When I exit the bar, there won't be a real-life scene from You Got Served occurring adjacent to "Reid the Hot Dog Man," a semi-nice man who makes a mean weiner and once Facebook messaged my friend to return her wallet that a bum had discovered. 

No more poppin’ tops at 8am on autumn Saturdays or beer funneling in random parking lots because the excuse: IT’S GAMEDAY BITCH doesn’t work as well on moms or cops not mounted on livestock. Wearing a St. Patrick’s Day t-shirt that reads “kiss me I’m SHITFACED” may be considered offensive or misconstrued to insinuate that you have fecal matter on your face. And as one lies on the couch nursing an epic hangover, the unspoken rule of no loud noises til advil, no responsibilities til tomorrow and only greasy food won’t exist and parents will rapid fire stupid questions like, why are you hung over, why did you drink so much, will you put the dishes away, can you help your brother with his math homework, did you know that binge drinking is bad for your liver? So post meal liver failure is a valid excuse from dish duty. That’s all I really needed to know.   

My 1, 2 and 3 Cents

Look guys, I'm a huge slut! Just kidding... it means I ride the bus! 

I’m down to three workdays left at the good ole bus depot. After ten months of what should’ve been a six-month internship, I’m finally leaving. I imagined my last day consisting of a Diddy-style after party with champagne showers, a life-sized cake replica of yours truly in either the astronaut suit or Bob the Builder costume, midget break dancing wars and me dressed in the ringleader costume from B.Spears’s Circus Vid. Sadly, I don’t think bus depot will have the funds for this lavish farewell event with the millions invested this shitty new system, so I’ll have to settle for filling Twitchy’s office with kerosene-dipped candles and tossing in a lit match as I skip out of the building. I’m hoping they at least get me a cookie or something. I mean jeez, throughout the course of 10 months, I was forced to: hang out with meth addict bus riders, dress up in embarrassing outfits, spend hours outside being filmed while crossing intersections in 100-degree heat, attend 35 hippie events during “Earth Month” wearing a shirt depicting a cartoon bus and the inscription “I Get Around,” pretend that I don’t have hourly murderous thoughts about Captain Twitch and inadvertently train for a future strong man contest by schlepping 50lb boxes from the dusty warehouse two flights up in mechanic area.

I first began this blog because I felt it was my duty to document the ridiculous happenings that occur on a daily basis in this “office.” In all honesty, I’m astounded that my coworkers never discovered this little treasure and held a full-scale mutiny resulting in an awkward “soooo, I look like a rodent and you want to ‘sell me to an Iranian organ harvester’” conversation with Twitchsta followed by my imminent termination. Despite the risk, I continued to provide daily entertainment for others with recounts of the antics, 90% of which were written in the office on my work computer. And other than the realizations that I will never choose to work in public transit and I have a high threshold for idiocy, I’ve also learned a few things throughout this journey that I’d like to share.

25 (+1) Tips for Making It(seem like you’re useful) & Little Discoveries In Between

1. There should be a special font for sarcasm.
2. You can find humor in any awkward, uncomfortable or miserable situation. And where you can’t find humor, you can find irony.
3. Productivity is in the eye of the beholder. You think I’m writing an important document about methane gas emissions. In reality, I’m documenting the fact that you’ve worn the same pants every day this week.
4. If you chill by the fax machine with one headphone in the hidden ear, you can jam undisturbed for nearly twenty minutes.
5. Don’t just assume the butch ex-Marine woman with the crew cut is homosexual. But don’t shout “I AM SHOCKED!” when she mentions her partner, either.
6. If your boss asks you to sit at her desk and take messages when the phone rings, turning the ringer volume to 0 is the same as not having any messages.
7. Xeroxing copies of your appendages then laminating them is completely appropriate until the old man from the front desk sees.
8. When you ask the old guy at the front “how are you?” and he responds with “I’m old and fat,” he expects you to laugh—not awkwardly agree.
9. As much as you want to drop kick the person reading over your shoulder, the office is no place for MMA. Wait until 5pm in the parking lot… HIIIYAAAHHH
10. Baseball is not America’s favorite pastime. Exaggeration is.
11. Bring a notebook to every meeting. That way you’re prepared to doodle a cartoon illustration of the Executive Director eating a Snack Pack.
12. Don’t try and fax prescriptions to your doctor from the communal office fax machine. Especially if it’s a prescription for your ADD medicine, which reads AMPHETAMINE- CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE in bold across the paper. Apparently fax machines will spit out a copy 20 minutes after you sent it.
13. Eavesdropping is the national sport of Cubicle-land.
14. When I’m walking I hate cars, when I’m driving I hate pedestrians. When I’m on the bus I hate the bus. But everyone hates the guy on the bicycle.
15. Alcohol is just a band-aid for big kids. 
16. One occasion, being hung over at work can result in your boss assuming illness and sending you home early. Twice and everybody knows the only disease you suffer from is “Sorry-I-tapped-an-entire-keg-last-night-itis.”
17. If someone asks where you work, and you happen to work at a bus station, it’s completely acceptable to tell him or her you “work for the city” rather than explaining that you didn’t complete 4 years of college to operate buses.
18. It’s always Monday when your coffee maker breaks.
19. Googling “adorable baby animals” can cure even the most shit-filled days.
20. You’re undoubtedly going to work with people you dislike; others that you loathe; and a few that you may not choose to strike with a heavy object.
21. If you can’t beat ‘em and you won’t join ‘em, create a world where they’re jointly beaten by a group of angry Middle Eastern protesters.
22. Your day can be a prison, a fantasy or a triathlon depending on the shoes you’re wearing.
23. “Success isn’t permanent and failure isn’t fatal.” – But there’s something pretty impressive about pulling off a successfully permanent failure.  
24. Some people lead seemingly ordinary lives… that they find completely extraordinary. Don’t try and change their minds, you’re the delusional one.  
25. If you can make something mildly interesting, subtly beautiful or nonsensically funny from nothing, then it won’t ever matter where you are, what you’re doing or whom you’re with.
26. And finally, if enough people tell you that if you weren’t a girl they would punch you the face, they’re probably not kidding. 

Is Illiterate Nation the New Alliteration?

Disclaimer: this post is not mean, mocking, sarcastic or humorous. It’s honest. And if you don’t like it, go eat a hedgehog because I don’t care.

As a kid, I remember my nightly bed routine beginning with a chosen storybook from the shelf to be read aloud by my mom. For that half hour before I was forced into the world of sleep, I lived in a world of dreams, closing my eyes and imagining running through the woods Where the Wild Things Are. For me, books have always been an escape from reality. I dive into the pages and experience adventures alongside my favorite characters. I travel with Alice down the rabbit hole, fight racial prejudices with Atticus Finch and delve into the irrationally rational minds of the insane with Randle McMurphy. My favorite characters in novels aren’t mirages or HD images of people I see in weekly gossip magazines. They are friends to call upon whenever I need them. They disappear for a while, but I always know where to find them. Between yellowing pages of my favorite novels, exists a vibrant world that comes alive when I add colorful touches of my own. The author describes the characters, yet the reader gives them a face. In a sense, the reader is like a painter’s assistant, adding touches of blue where grey once lived.

So what happens when pages morph to an LED screen and the only sensation emitted is the heat from the battery? Ever walk into a bookstore and immediately grab a novel whose cover came to you like the lyrics to that song you finally remembered? What if books had no covers? And the intoxicating smell of yellowing pages and decaying binds became as obsolete as the newspaper that used to rest on your doorstep. Try watching a movie without checking your iPhone twenty times. Or without updating your social networking statuses halfway through to read: “watching a great movie with my friends.” If it’s so great, why aren’t you engrossed in the story projecting from the screen? Because you’re sitting on the sidelines of that story. You are merely a spectator of someone else’s adventure. Now pick up a book, its wrinkled pages displaying creases where one reader marked their stopping place—but you refuse to bunny ear. You just can’t bring yourself to end the adventure. You reach the acknowledgements and look up through strained eyes at the blur of reality. There it is. That feeling of bewilderment when you realize you’ve actually just spent the entire day in a comfty bookstore chair and not battling deatheaters with Harry, Ron and Hermoine at Hogwarts. For a second, your heart sinks with the realization that the adventure ended, but you know you'll always find another grand adventure waiting on a dusty shelf somewhere.

Last Friday, I spent a rainy afternoon huddled in a forgotten corner of Borders bookstore and lived vicariously through the world of a precocious little boy in the novel Room. Five hours later, I awoke from my book world to recognize that I’d been so engrossed within the pages of this book, I’d forgotten to eat, drink or that I was sitting on the floor of a public forum. Then a middle-aged man walked up to me and asks: “do you always smile when you read?” Initially I took the comment as utterly creepy and just shrugged. But the more I thought about it, I realized that I was the creepy girl huddled in the corner of a bookstore smiling to myself...and that I didn’t care. That bizarre chick sniffing the pages of old books in Goodwill, yeah that’s me. There’s always a book on my bedside table and the television I got for Christmas collects dust on my dresser. But today—less than a week later—I wake up to the headline “Borders to shut down remaining 400 stores. Liquidate products. Lay off 10,000 employees.” My Disneyland, a place I can escape into the printed worlds of characters fictional or real, is gone and who knows how long until the remaining bookstores meet their demise at the hands of a technological revolution. I imagine my 8-year-old brother holding his iTouch and playing his Wii while the written adventures on thousands of pages of hundreds of books remain untouched. I picture a world where parents tuck their children in at night and instead of grabbing the tattered copy of Goodnight Moon off of the shelf, dad pulls it up on his iPad and sweeps through the pages with the quick brush of a fingertip. A world in which moronic one-dimensional reality TV personalities replace the characters in beloved novels— characters that unfold and develop with each turn of a page. A sad existence in which scarcely a person can recognize the name Jay Gatsby, but everyone knows what Kim Kardashian ate for lunch.

This time ten years ago, kids would be going into Borders and tearing through the “Summer Reading” tables to acquire their copy before the store would be forced to reorder the next shipment. Today, the summer reading table overflows with unused copies that have been replaced by Sparknotes, Ebooks or the movie version. My fear is the day that reading is replaced by skimming the electronic pages of the iPad stationed on each student’s desk. Pretty soon electronic books are going to spew out the story through headphones and speakers and people can lump reading into the mushy pile of electronic multitasking. We’ve been dubbed the “laziest generation” and we are only living up to the name. The most we’ll read is the 140 characters on Twitter and we’d like everything to fit onto one page. But life doesn’t fit on one page. And that’s why we need books—not computer mouses. I will continue to “waste” money on actual books and one day I will fill an entire room with the contents of hundreds of different adventures, worlds and people. And I will hide in there when robots eventually take over mankind.

We live in a “I’ll wait until the movie comes out” society. But a reader knows: the book is always better than the movie. The characters are always more beautiful, imperfections more perfect and colors more vibrant in the mind of the reader. A new flatscreen and plastic glasses can make TV characters 3-D but a reader’s mind makes the characters take life. To read is to believe in the unseen—a religion of faith in syntax and diction.

If I wanted a useless pet, I'd clone you.

As I shielded my face from the fifty-third “adopt a mangled animal” commercial/ depressing Sarah McLachlan music video, I began pondering the world of domesticated animals. I myself have seen more than my fair share of pets come and go through my household over the years. When people inform me that they’ve had “the same dog since they were five” I stare in astonishment that they’ve kept an animal for such a lengthy duration of time. In my family, the norm was to purchase cute little fluffy canines (with steep pet store price tags) then give them away to cleaning ladies, the old guy next door, farms, friends, friends of friends, that lady down the street that may or may not practice Witchcraft, etc. My mom has a nasty habit of purchasing animals because she finds them utterly adorable, then realizing our family is terrible at training anything with fur, she hands it off a more “deserving family” like a game of hot potato—but with pets. I’m fairly certain she’s on the most wanted list for PETA and the Humane Society… but on PetCo’s VIP list.

In my twenty-five years of life I estimate that we’ve owned about 15-20 dogs. And for the incredulous of the bunch, I will list (the ones I can recall):

Greyhound (kept escaping and running laps around the neighborhood), Greyhound (bit my brother), golden retriever, bishon, poodle, poodle, poodle, teacup poodle (clearly this is the hideous old people dogs phase), boxer (only peed on window coverings), English bulldog (he lasted15 years but this was my dad’s dog so it doesn’t count… I just include him because a week before he was scheduled for Euthanasia, my step-mom ran over his head #irony) American bulldog (used his massive under bite to chew through drywall), yorkie (mom gave to old man next door for no reason, then months later told me to ‘go get her back’), teacup yorkie (died after a week – intestinal parasite), Pomeranian (mom brought it home, we called it ugly, mom returned it), beagle (would only poop on the kitchen table), mini greyhound (we found it, kept it for a few days, owner showed up),  cockapoo (we still have him because he’s basically sedated 24/7) and the newest edition, a pointer/lab mix nicknamed “the beast” courtesy of my idiot brother (I give this one a year). Fortunately, mom declined to renew her “Puppy of the Month” membership, so we haven’t hosted an animal garage sale in quite some time.

Captain WetBeard, Straight Chilin

I won’t even discuss people that hoard felines like hurricane supplies, dress them in sweaters and insist upon showing others mobile photos of the cats lying on a plastic-covered couch. Poking fun at these people is far too easy, especially since they are already aware that their existence is as nauseating as the I LOVE MY KITTY bumper sticker on their VW Bug.  

On the other side of the spectrum away from people who purchase puppies like handbags are those that procure completely worthless animals and stick them in cages to stare at. When we were kids, three of my brothers went through a reptile phase—and not the Big Tymers kind with Gata Boots and Pimped out Gucci Suits—a phase where they housed cages of reptilian creatures in their BEDROOM. A phase I like to call the Dark n Scaly Ages. Because of their creepy crawly fetish, the family was forced to frequent a lovely establishment called “Glades Herp.” Now, I’m not sure what a “herp” is outside the sphere of STDs I’d rather not contract, but this joint resembles like a giant flesh eating disease, so I guess the name fits. It’s basically a shack in the middle of nowhere painted green and filled with monstrous beasts that have no business being taken out of whatever uninhibited jungle they once lived in. Beyond the doorway, The Herp is a far cry from PetCo’s semi-clean floors and everything in its rightful cage where the only irksome factor is the scent of feces and dead beta fish and the fact that any human with arms is permitted to hold the animals. The Herp was like walking through a portal into the depths of a Peruvian rain forest—even the muggy air was a thick mist, riddled with the uncertainty of which creature will sink its fangs, talons or teeth into my ankle. Random creatures scurried about, unbound by the glass confinement that should’ve existed between that 4-foot iguana and the human population. Regardless of my uneasiness, I was forced to accompany the goon squad to this reptilian hell on numerous occasions that I’ve managed to lock in the vault of contaminated memories only to be unveiled when I meet Oprah, Dr. Phil or Maury Povich. As I walked through the narrow aisles lined with scaly creatures in a fashion as to not accidentally brush up against anything dirty, diseased or potentially fatal, Numbnutses 1-3 would tear through the place like wild banshees, deciding which useless pet purchase to make next.

I once suggested the tiny hairless mice so delicately huddled together in a tank near the counter and the charming bald man with holes in his ears the size of my cranium and a python wrapped around his neck informed me that those little critters were food for his serpent friend, not meant for pet purchase. During this time, our home served as a habitat for: three “house” geckoes, two leopard geckoes, one water lizard, one chameleon, and MY personal favorite: three SCORPIONS. Who in their right mind sees a scorpion and says: “you know what, that Prehistoric looking creature with the terrifying stinger on it’s tail would make a GREAT pet.” Although, they did glow neon green beneath a black light, which was pretty cool/ entertaining for half a minute. These “pets” served no purpose, died when their feedings were forgotten and a few eventually wound up hiding in the cereal cabinet until one morning when one decided to fly at my stepmom’s face like a rabid spider monkey. My brother once convinced me to “hold” his pet leopard gecko and the slithering Satan lock-jawed on my index finger until the force of my frantically waving hand propelled it against a wall. There I stood, finger bleeding, watching as my brother and two of MY friends rush to the rescue of the scaly shit that bit me, while I tried to recall the last Hepatitis shot I received. Thankfully, my disgusting siblings grew out of the reptile fixation with age and replaced lizards with other green things from nature.

Most children fall victim to this pointless pet phase, some more than others. I used to liberate turtles crossing the road, then turn around and incarcerate them in a circular fenced area, name them all “Jake the Dirtmonster” and forget about them until they would escape. Or dad would let them go and lie to me. I also made the drastic mistake of purchasing the foul rodent they call hamster. I thought the little balls of fur were cute and imagined them running around the house in one of those little plastic balls. Instead, those shitbrains bit my finger every time I tried to touch them, only ran on the wheel past 10pm and attempted to chew their way out of two different cages. I grew to loathe these little beasts, as their nightly chomping at the bars of the metal cage kept me wide-eyed until the wee hours of the morn. I once placed a sheet over the cage, thinking that the darkness would prompt the little shits to sleep. they merely chewed through a good third of the bedsheet and shredded the rest onto my carpet. I can’t recall whether I released them into the wild, euthanized them or gave them to a cripple kid. Regardless, my children will never enter a pet store unless they are applying for employment. 

Bus it Wide Open

In other news, Mickey Rourke's brother just came into the office stating that he qualifies for reduced-fare because of his reading condition. Maybe your eye doctor just needs to increase the prescription of those glasses, chief.

Yes those are the glasses druggies wear to Techno concerts

This week we rolled out the "new system" that the bus depot has been working on for the past two years. I guess I didn't really pay attention to the implications of the change because I would rather take up piggybacking than ride public transit. But this week, I has my first public transit experience on a bus ride downtown. The ride wasn't very long, but I still opted to put my headphones in and other than the unnecessarily sweaty gentleman that kept poking me to ask for free stuff, it wasn't too terrible. 

But downtown at the "plaza"--the place where all the buses used to come through--the attitude was completely different. People were in sheer panic about the new system, confused on which bus to take where and at what time. After being reamed out by twelve different people, I realized that these people are prisoners of public transportation. They need it to get to work, home, school, doctors appointments, the grocery store. I immediately became aware of how much I take my life for granted each day. I can hop in my car and leave for work five minutes before I'm supposed to be there and know that I'll be there on time. One kid around my age was waiting for a bus to work, THREE hours before he was scheduled to be there, just to be sure he made it on time. 

I had a twenty minute conversation with a PREGNANT woman trying to explain north, south, east and west to her to. The old routes were labeled inbound and outbound, but the new ones are labeled by direction in which they travel. 

"You need to take the eastbound route ma'am."

     "So east is like the direction of my house?"

"It depends if your house is in the eastern direction."

      "East like MACdonalds?"

"Depends on which McDonalds ma'am."

    ...she walks away. 

AND she's back.

"So east is like south." 

     "No ma'am those are two different directions."

Frustration poured over me as I explained a simple 2nd grade lesson to this woman, then I realized that if I was frustrated explaining something I understood, this woman must be even more frustrated not being able to comprehend it. Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to have been born (by chance) into a family where I had the opportunity to go to college. To be born into a life where finishing middle and high school wasn’t even a question. And to be born with the mental capacity to understand things that seem simple to me, but may seem more complicated than building an atomic bomb to someone else.

This is a male.

But for every well-meaning underprivileged developmentally challenged person, there was an angry bra-less Precious understudy wearing a shower cap and calling me an idiot for “messin wit her bus” while her chubby gay friend in skinny jeans chimes in “yee-ah,” feeding fuel to her incoherently angry rant. One African American gentleman told me he “need a white girl” because we don’t play games, won’t “beat” him and won’t steal all his money. He then told me he would put a $2,000 ring on my finger and "show me how it done." (I told myself he was talking about gardening or board games) I politely declined, told him white girls are equally as insane and to watch an episode of the Bachelorette. Sadly, my proposal was cut short as he scurried onto the bus to get to his job at the local Sam’s Club on time.

An Ode to Yours Truly

I've been a bit lacking on my posts lately, so I thought I'd share the creativity of someone else for a change. But mostly just because it's a poem about me. And not the creepy "my love for you is a deep pool of emotion and my knees go weak at the sight of your smile" type poem from guys with a bit too many feelings for their own good. Nope, this is just a poem my talented best friend since 6th grade wrote about me for a class. And if that entire class didn't want to befriend me (or actively avoid me at all costs) after this puppy, you can bet they at least appreciate the fact that SOMEONE has been able to deal with my unorthodox (and often downright disturbing) life practices for nearly a decade.

And other than the clearly narcissistic motive of sharing literature with ME as the topic, I'd also like to showcase what a dynamo poet this gal is. And don't feel bad, I had to look up the word "axiom" too.

Who Says I Didn’t Bring The Moustaches?

for my favorite friend

by Sara

She runs around rapping Gangster’s Paradise anytime 

some fool hands her a microphone and constantly lectures 

me on the steps to take in life to remain a figure of authority. 

She’ll tell me that everyone looks more capable with glasses, 

never mind whether or not they are prescription. 

Never talk to the guy in the office wearing a beard 

and trench coat, and absolutely under no circumstances 

should I enter his cubicle to see pictures of his cats. 

When I go for drinks with coworkers, she advises me 

to change into scrubs, tell them that you moonlight 

as a neurosurgeon. When my hot boss asks to 

“stay and work late,” steer clear of the copy machine. 

Whenever possible, cradle a highball of single malt scotch 

whilst sucking a Sherlock Holmes pipe, quoting Tennyson 

to fool others into thinking I’m dignified. 

Throw Toy Story themed birthday parties and always 

recklessly cannonball into the shallow end of the pool. 

Scare those Hotty Toddy Mississippi snot head debutants crooked 

by showing up to their Halloween party dressed up

as Dog The Bounty Hunter; mullet, beard, chest hair and all. 

Then make out with their boyfriends.

She’s got a cannon of axioms and theories, 

like wearing shoes in Alabama is like bringing hand sanitizer 

into a brothel and something about obtaining a go-go gadget arm 

so that she doesn’t have to go inside the gas station for snacks. 

The worst smell on the planet, aside from fresh rain detergent,

is sweaty recess kids and there are everyday debacles with technology 

and humans, like her uncanny ability to get locked out of cars 

in footie pajamas or nothing, or accidentally accepting Jesus

at Easter Mass when she thought everyone was raising their hands

for snacks and free t-shirts. She connects with the higher powers

by emailing Blackberry to complain about their lack 

of smiley faces to effectively depict her moods.

But no matter if she’s testing her Taekwondo moves

on innocent victims at the bar, sitting in her front yard 

pointing a hair dryer at passing cars to see if they slow down,

or distracting truck drivers on road trips with her happy meal toys,

she’s always there to reassure me in high-stress situations:

don’t worry guys, I’ve got the moustaches.

So Planking Kewl

Uh Oh.. Girls are already doing it.. 

As I was browsing the intranet the past few weeks, I noticed a new idiotic trend sweeping the nation’s mindless stool pigeons. This trend serves as yet another indication of human stupidity and the simplicity of a puppeteer tying a dollar to a string make the muppets dance. Apparently the mindnumbing premise of this new idiocy display is to lie face down with your hands on your sides and “plank” on inanimate objects. Then some disabled kid you paid to be your friend takes a picture and posts it on various social media outlets. And a few idiots laugh. Then you think you’re cool. Then you do it again, this time in front of MORE people and you receive more laughs. Pretty soon you think it’s funny, cute, cool, [insert other delusional adjective] and you start getting your friends to do it. It’s like the pee pants scene from Billy Madison. Logically, urinating on your Levis is not cool—it’s uncomfortable and will probably result in a rash—but because one clever idiot brainwashed a mass of less clever idiots the end result was piss-stained garments that would make you look like a fool to anyone outside the realm of other handicapped goats.

These brainless crazes usually incite at the hands of a bored male searching for something to do because he can only spend so many hours at the gym pretending to work out. These crazes have no point and are consumed by other donuts with no individual decision making skills… i.e. icing. If you ask a man why these fads begin with the sweatier testosterone-driven specie, he will declare that men are pioneers of all things dealing with comedy. If you ask a women, she will say it’s because men are the only swamp donkeys dim enough to lay face down in a tree so someone can mobile upload a blurry picture that looks like a branch wearing Nikes. For me, “icing” took the cake (no put intended) as the dumbest game since chutes and ladders—yet the easily amused male population (particularly members of the male population in their 8^th year as an affiliate of ‘the greatest fraternity on campus’)—found it to be the most exhilarating thing since kneeing each other in the balls. The object of this particular game is for half-brained twits to pretend they are part of a SWAT Team sting operation as they stealthily conceal a Smirnoff ice in random places in the hopes that another unlucky half-brained twit will stumble upon the semi-alcoholic beverage. Then not only will this unfortunate bastard be forced to drink something that looks like diluted sperm, but he has to chug this piss colada on one knee. For guys, it was the ultimate emasculation—drinking something with .05% alcohol content, one of which gets 15-year old girls WAAAAASTEDDDD enough to kiss each other at high school house parties.

The icing craze was all fine and dandy until “bros” got bored icing each other and decided they needed some estrogen in the idiot tank. The first time I was iced, I stared at the bottle of Smirnoff and traveled down memory lane back to a time when I wore Hollister jean skirts, hemp necklaces and my internet took 2 years to dial up. Then some jackhole shouts, “get down on one knee and chug.” I tell him to kick rocks. Another baboon tells me I have to do it. I’m not playing your preschool mind games, now go back to farting in each other’s pillows and sodomizing stray dogs you inbred fools. I refused to play by the “rules” of a game that some celibate Halo-addict with no social skills developed in a ruse to make some fratty friends but wasn’t intelligent enough to take the Mark Zuckerburg route and create something useful/bordering-on-privacy-invasion. The demise of this trend occurred the moment chicks started icing chicks in an unsuccessful attempt to make guys think they have a sense of humor or that they’re “one of the guys.” Girls can also be seen doing this while watching basketball and squealing for every ‘touchdown’ made. And with that, icing became more obsolete than morals and guys went back to lighting each other on fire and experimenting with fashion. If I had known the sight of a female commandeering your idiotic game would be the catalyst for it’s destruction, I would’ve launched a keg of that shit into a taping of the Ellen DeGeneres Show, causing a feminist uproar and thereby killing two birds with one Smirnoff. For guys, when girls attempt to seize an idea or practice that they view as “theirs,” they no longer want it, which is pretty much how I feel when I see you wearing jeans my size and printed scarves.

These crazes usually emerge in the later months of the summer when the only thing on ESPN is women’s basketball and soccer and it’s too hot outside to run around pretending to be sporty. So this summer the fratastic—or just pain hopeless—male population of America has once again sent the stupidity scale off the charts with this planking thing. The only time a plank looks “cool” is when the planker carries out this feat in an interesting location like on a pyramid in Egypt or in the Louvre. Even then you still look like an idiot, although a cracked skull would make for a lovely travel mupload. Why can’t you guys just start a useful trend? Like doing my laundry and cooking me dinner while I drink a beer on the couch and shout at you not to burn the casserole. The submissive male laundry trend has my full support and I’ll even cut a check to endorse the advertisement. Sadly, I’m under the impression that for one of this crazes to stick, it has to be as pointless as its precedents. I’d thoroughly enjoy creating a trend where I can go around smacking people with hamburger patties. I’ll call it beefing and it will even have a scoring system. Two points for a body shot, five for a head shot and ten if you can wrestle up some condiment or slice of cheese to make it stick. Everyone will carry beef patties around with them (tofurkey if you’re a tree-hugging trend follower) and smack betches upside. There’s even an element of danger involved… try walking around with a purse/pocket full of ground chuck without a pack of rabid raccoons or your ghetto next door neighbor’s pit bull gnawing off your arm to get to the beefy scent wafting off of your person. You go ahead and lay face down on a park bench—that merely puts you in an extra vulnerable position for a sling shot full of hamburger to the back of yo head. Idiot.