From Taserz to Laserz

Today marks a milestone in my life—all my wildest dreams have come true. After five years of begging, pleading and offering up my first born child for a taser it took accompanying my mom to one of her usually boring work dinners to change her mind about bestowing me with a DEFENSE weapon. A guardian angel in the form of one of the guests informed my mom that he gave his wife, mother and sisters each a stun gun for Christmas as a means of protection against the crazies in this world. Ten minutes and a bourbon-spiked coffee later, my mom hastily scribbles down the address for a stun gun purchase. In the “ghetto” of St. Pete lies a delightful place where one can acquire 6.2 million wat stun gun in fashionable colors like blue, green, purple and pink. One hundred dollars and one stern conversation about what constitutes a “real emergency” and I’m now armed with not only my wits and some sweet tae kwon do moves, but also a chic electrocution device.

You may be saying to yourself why would anyone give this coconut a dangerous weapon? And I understand the reservations one may have regarding someone as mentally unstable as myself carrying around a torture tool, but I assure you, I would much rather keep the taser in the case than wind up in some Thai prison while an angry Asian man pries my fingernails off with sharpened bamboo sticks.

But procuring the weapon secures only half the battle. Now I must somehow get the okay from both Delta and Korean Airlines to bring my new toy with me to Thailand. Surprisingly, I somehow think Delta will be the ones to have an issue with the concealed weapon on the plane situation, what with all of the throwing stars and nuclear weapons Koreans surely conceal within their woven suitcases on a daily basis. For Delta I’ll spin the whole second amendment George Bush crap and for Korea I’ll probably bribe them with some tobacco or American porn. Either way, as long as the pink spark of doom in my checked bag doesn’t serve as catalyst for my indefinite stint in a Cambodian prison, we’ll be golden.

My only aversion to this pink life saver, is the feeling I get in the pit of my stomach every time one of my deranged family members walks by its storage area and momentarily pauses. A brief spark flickers across their face then curious hands reluctantly find their way into the safety of pants pockets, extinguishing the delusional notion that testing the powerful weapon on your kin wouldn't result in tears, possibly some foaming at the mouth and an all expenses paid trip to the psych ward. Especially considering the thing looks more like a lip gloss container than an electrical current strong enough to take down that mongoloid from the Green Mile.

THE MUSIC IS INSIDE ME... no wait that's meth. 

Moving on, what is with this new fad of, I don’t know what to do with my life so I’m going to put on neon sunglasses, frat tanks with unoriginal tag lines and “let the bass take control.” I do not understand you. You mainline hallucinogens, go to music festivals and come back like you just found Jesus. The simple question, how was the concert almost always results in: I can’t even explain to you. It’s an out of body experience, the music just consumes you. You have to be there.

No you donkey sodomizer, the music just plays while the chemicals you’ve just ingested have inebriated relay races in your cerebellum, destroying what little brain cells you started with. Don’t get me wrong, I like techno, house and dubstep, but I’m not going to pretend that when a song comes on my soul is transported to another planet where David Guetta and I are holding hooves with a Unicorn and rolling around pools of Tapioca pudding. I just like the song. It’s less likely the musical magic causes your eyes to roll back in your head while your hands unsuccessfully try to catch laser lights than it is the bunker full of illicit drugs you’ve got back at the campsite. Scrubbing a toilet could be an out of body experience if I included a Mollie/Acid colada and some Skrillex.

I’m not knocking this lifesytle, once again I just do not understand the premise behind getting bat shit crazy and then hoolahooping for twelve straight hours to the beat of some Deadmau5 song. I could’ve funneled some absinthe and called it a day. What ever happened to rolling a joint, shotgunning some beers and lying facedown in the lawn at a DMB concert? I sweat enough as it is without ingesting something that’s going to speed my heart rate up to category Death while I dance out every electrolyte my body’s ever housed. But at least everyone else is less focused on your sweatstache than the neon butterfly painted on your face, which seems to be dancing as violently as the crazy bendy kid that may have no actual skeletal system.

I’ve had to hide people on facebook that feel compelled to post 308742987329 new techno songs to their friends with tags like ‘this will change your life’ or ‘let the beat find you.’ No, graduating college will change your life. That will keep you exactly where you are—50 credits short of being a 22 yr old sophomore and repeating remedial statistics. My issue isn’t with the whole mainstream hallucinogen trend, my issue is that you’ve fried your brain into thinking that the rest of the population 1. Cares and 2. Envies your drug-induced experiences. I could care less that these people drug their way into a break dancing sweatstorm; however, I find it mildly patronizing that these half-wits think that running around barefoot in some desert shouting a tune techno song gives their life some abundant meaning. No one is judging you for doing drugs, considering my future taxes will most likely pay for your vegetable ass to drool all over the craft table in the rubber room. We just want you to shut the hell up about it. 

My Nightmare

For me, irony has always existed as a vehicle for laughter in awkward situations, anticipated unwanted outcomes or to lessen the severity of blows to the ego. In other words, irony is my own little call from the heavens saying ‘take a step back, tilt your head sideways and somewhere in this mess hides laughter opportunity.' Yeah, well, ha, ha, ha. 

For those of you who have read earlier entries of my blog, there’s one entitled “Roachin Around,” where I illustrate my frustration of continually having to crush the hordes of cockroaches that somehow found their way into my apartment. I made light of the fact that people refuse to kill cockroaches because they would rather allow this disgusting insect to procreate throughout their human living quarters than step down from whatever furniture article they’re using as safety step and kill the stupid bastard. Long story short, shoe in hand, I continued to smush these crunchy critters because all others refused. Because of all the roaches I murdered in cold blood, I mentioned (word-for-word) “I figure I have some karma coming from the roach gods considering I’m the one with all the ancestral blood on my hands.” 

Well fuck you irony and your pet roach too.

In the midst of my legal drug induced slumber, in a far off dreamland, I sense a creature crawling on my face, so I bat it off, reflexively combining the insect encounter into my dream's storyline. A little while later, again I sense insect legs caressing the corner of my mouth, actually this time I feel tiny legs scurrying about my face and realize insect tap dancing is not a component of my dream. I frantically flick off this nuisance, picturing a moth or large fly zooming back up ceiling to await another air raid. Moths and flies bother me, but not in the HOLY SHIT IT’S A GIANT MOTH sense, but more in the sense that I expect these winged pests to persistently invade my personal space. Still hazy from my coma, I flick on the light to search for this creature before it can again probe my face with its little bug feelers. That’s when I spot it—a nickel-sized cockroach--crawling on my white sheets. The white sheets I just washed. (So clearly, this time my lack of hygiene and poor disinfecting habits need no be blamed) Shrieking, I swiftly smash the crunchy asshole with a hardcover novel and run to my mom’s room where I burst through the door shouting, ‘you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.’

I explain to her using the most sensible method of half-asleep jargon I can conjure up and minimal stuttering. Then a light bulb explodes in my head when I realize that not only do I have the blood of 30 cockroach predecessors on my hands, I also have dried toothpaste adhered corner of my mouth, where I felt a zit forming. Some brainiac told me once that applying toothpaste kills the bacteria in a zit the way it would kill bacteria in your mouth, drying out the pimple in the process. I mean it makes sense to someone without 15 years of medical school. Yet, even with more common sense than the average bear, I obviously failed to foresee that a little dab of toothpaste in the corner of my mouth would also attract the king beast of the insect family like honey to a bee.

Do me a favor, close your eyes and imagine being startled out of sleep by an effing roach crawling near your mouth. I’m pretty sure that was featured ninety-nine times on Fear Factor and each time wound up with the contestant blubbering his or her way into a post show mental institution. 

By no means did this ironic situation have a comical silver lining. Other than providing my readers with some sick enjoyment in my interactive night trip to the national museum of shitty animals that serve no purpose on this earth. And here’s the kicker: after frantically escaping into my mom’s room post roach smash, I return to dispose of the devil creature, only to find the little fucker attempting to limp to safety nearing the edge of my bed. I mean Jesus Christ roaches aren’t supposed to have nine lives. I smash it again, this time taking care to ensure that each of his appendages detaches from its body. Not only am I convinced that this roach was personally sent to avenge the lives of his roach brothers I murdered, I also believe that RoboRoach somehow sprouted new appendages like the terminator and is currently swimming from the depths of the drain pipes in which I flushed him to continue his mission to completely send me off my rocker. I feel like Will Smith in Men in Black… I didn’t sign up for interstellar cockroaches thank you very much.     

Eau De Jackass

As I mentioned, I’m work in an asshole exercise factory; however one mutant chode in particular has really chapped ass lately. Said anus being a Puerto Rican version of Vin Diesel with a neck-shoulder combo tribal tat, nailsonchalkboard Mee-yah-mee accent and a natural sense of entitlement accompanied by zero sense of work ethic. He’s a member of the sales team (HOLY SHOCKER THERE BATMAN) and more tooley than the hardware section of Lowes. Anyway, my first week I stroll to the corner of my space to fold towels and knock over a blue bag, previously teetering on the edge. Instantly, fumes begin blazing my nostril hairs and I realize a bottle of cologne had fallen out of the open side pocket and smashed against the hard ground. I panic, hoping this bag doesn’t belong to the even larger black manager… who bears a freakishly close resemblance to the African man in Blood Diamond. The scent of asshole must’ve wafted over to Puerto Dicko because he looks over at me, then his soulless eyes fix to the heap of dripping blue glass on the floor.

I tell him I accidentally knocked this over the recklessly placed bag positioned in an unsafe zone causing the cologne to break. He informs me the cologne belongs to him, is Chanel and costs $150. I apologize profusely and he makes what I believe to be a joke about me getting purchasing another one. The next week of work he asks me about the cologne every day—sometimes multiple times a day—using different approaches such as where’s my new cologne, my mom bought that for me, I hate not smelling good at work, I can’t believe you smashed my cologne. I shirk these passive aggressive attempts at a guilt trip for something that wasn’t my fault and I refuse to compensate a man whose main topic of conversation revolves around the amount of money he makes. Eventually, the statements become less passive aggressive and more aggressive-aggressive. These include: look I thought you’d feel bad and buy me new cologne, I’ll even give you a discount, is it money? I can help split the cost I know you don’t make much here. Each statement is more condescending than the next until I want to shout Listen you simpleminded ass pirate, I may be here folding towels but I’d venture a guess you didn’t complete the tenth grade explaining your career selling gym memberships and speaking in LEbonics (This is a particularly horrendous form of Ebonics attempted by someone of the Latin persuasion.) Instead I continue brushing these comments off, until he asks me if I’m having “money problems” and that’s the reason I can’t pay him.

“No, I refuse to pay for something that wasn’t my fault. YOU left your bag there with the side pocket open and a glass bottle inside, also like you leave your phone hanging off the side of the counter and your ‘important binder’ on the floor and yell when you can’t find them. I think you are an ass.”

“I want my cologne.”

“Whatever I’ll get you a damn cologne you f-ing baby.”

At this point, I still have zero intention of giving him anything other than a swift roundhouse to the trachea. I also find myself in a sticky situation because not only is this slimy scumbag a grade A stalker with no shame, he’s also BFF with Manager Blackitron, who is also an exceptionally large bag of douche. Together, their professional conversations range from the amount of slutty girls that buy them drinks on the weekends to the amount of protein in any given meal they’ve just eaten. Pretty intellectually stimulating stuff. I mean, I work at a gym, so I don’t expect heated forensic science debates, but I’d expect some level of professionalism. The next day Papi Chulo storms up to me on a rampage, steaming enough through his large antennae to send me a few steps backward, considering the angry Spaniard has probably got about 5 inches and 100 lbs on me.

“Enough playing. I want my cologne. I want a date when you will have the money to me. You keep saying you’ll pay me. I already gave you a discount, I want the money. I’m not playing games.”

A discount? I didn’t fucking scalp your sub woofer off Craiglist—your cologne broke. How is it my fault you recklessly placed your bag there and happen to use a brand of cologne that homosexual fashionistas wear.

I turn to see the manager and a few others watching this entire debacle, saying nothing. In the professional world, this could and would be considered harassment. In judge Judy’s world, this idiotic man’s claims would hold no weight she would publicly embarrass him. I again tell him he is being ridiculous that it was an accident and I would never FORCE someone to pay. I neglect to add that I would’ve offered to pay if the plaintiff in question wasn’t Satan in Hispanic form.

“I just want my money. I’m DONE playing,” he grits through bared teeth and walks away.  

At that moment, I realize I work with a complete sociopath and will undoubtedly be forced to dole out the money to end this harassment. I also recognize that I am in nearly in tears. And considering my emotional disability causes tears to take seasonal form, it takes a lot to send me overboard—then again I guess this is hurricane season. I call him an asshole, wait until his back is turned, and inform someone I am going to use the restroom, where I immediately erupt into Old Faithful, for no reason other than the fact that I’ve rarely come into contact with humans that have undergone a lobotomy replacing their brains with dark empty holes they strive to fill with money, social acceptance and perceived power. These individuals have low self esteem and project this unfortunate attitude onto others. And I vote to use them as crash test dummies in Smart Cars.

Against the advice of my family and friends, I write the asshole a check for sixty dollhairs because I want this rabid Spanish Spider Monkey off my back. I also entered “WHINING” into the memo line, to at least keep some dignitity. And when he returns from cashing the check ten minutes after handing it over, he begins laughing saying that the teller had made fun of him about the memo line. To my obvious dismay, he cracked up, repeating, “damn, you funny trick.” Call me trick, sweetheart, babe or any other pet name again and I will carefully castrate you with a sharpened barbell. And you can ice your crotch with a protein shake.

This bothered me more than anything. I inform him my intent lain far from good willed humor. I had originally planned on writing “BEING A DOUCHE” in the memo line, but my mother warned that such a stunt could result in termination. So, I decided on something in the middle, but clearly not far enough to the left to get my point across. Which was: you are a fucking baby. I was not trying to be silly or cute, I was being a bitch. And if one thing irritates me, it’s when I attempt to illustrate my bitterness in creative ways and morons neglect to comprehend the underlying connotation of the gesture. So if I text you a flaming pile of shit emoticon after you’re a particularly heinous form of bastard, it is a profound metaphor for you are a flaming pile of shit; not me being a silly kity. Read between the lines, dipshits.