My bricks have fossils and dead languages and junk etched into them.

For the first time in what seems like forever, it’s storming outside. I love it. Interesting shit, right? You read the title right, it’s time for another installment in the bizarre alliteration bastard I forget creating – Wild ‘n’ Woolly Web Wednesday! I’m working to beat the buzzer to get this up on Wednesday – yes, that’s what she said – so I will be brief in my intro. As you’re breathing that sigh of relief, let’s watch the first video!

Patton Oswalt technically wrote my alternate title for this particular post, and it came to you (or me) by way of his excellent album, My Weakness is Strong. Listen to it if you want to laugh, or don’t – I don’t give a shit.

Next up, a clip of one of my favorite scenes from the excellent FX series LOUIE. It’s in the middle of season 2 right now, this particular scene is from season one. How bad would it be if you were old friends with your doctor? Turns out, pretty bad…

If there is one thing this video exemplifies, it’s that surprises are fun, and it’s always funny to see a tiny hat fly off someone’s head. Also, kitten.

If it makes you more able to enjoy seeing Scout Jr. get bitch-slapped, It turns out the large cat was his mom. And you can cleanse your palate with the commercial they were trying to shoot before going back for more kitten slaps:

Next in line, a musical interlude. Me First and the Gimme Gimmes – best cover band on the planet – belt out an old favorite, live style:

I hope you enjoyed the music, baby… it’s about to get slappy up in here again (P.S.- Jesus Christ, Steve McQueen – harsh!):

Just in case I’m losing you, here’s a video of what it looks like to be on cocaine or a cocaine derivative, according to science:

This seems safe and effective, and if you ever wanted to wear something creepy when you murdered people, well shoot – it’s got that covered too:

Speaking of informercials, let’s close out big with a top ten worst list:

I doubt you really watched all of these and I am ashamed of you. Not really. Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon with real words – happy Thursday and junk!

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Nothing issss on sssssale!

The first clap of the mostly-frozen bricks makes a satisfying THUNK on his head. At first, he just looks confused. After the third clap, the sounds are a bit more wet, and his confusion has switched to surprised realization, and it’s about to …

WHAP

… change back to confusion. He begins to slide to the floor, and his attacker is on him like a dervish, the right hand – the one containing the CHOCOLATE – already cocked back to rain the first of many blows on the collapsed man’s face. Minutes later, grunting as he pulls his arm back yet again to continue his endeavor, the attacker notices again the patch of psoriasis on the fallen man’s upper lip, like large reptile scales, clearly visible through a wispy growth of mustache. His lip curls, and he hesitates mid-swing. The weapon is ice cream, one and three quarters of a quart of chocolate. The same-sized carton of vanilla used to help start the assault lays five feet away, heavily dented and leaking a tiny puddle of off-white. In the attacker’s hesitation, scale-lip sputters something out, spraying tiny flecks of brown on his assailant’s face.

“What did you just say?”

The fallen man repeats it again, but this time his voice is too clear, too… uninjured.

“I said, can I take it off for you?”

His voice snaps me back to reality, remnants of my brief foray into brutal ice cream beating fantasies scattering like smoke in a fan. I frown at him as I consider what it is he means by “taking it off,” as I do with most men who pop this question on me. This man in particular is an employee at the grocery store down the road from me. He truly does have some kind of dermatological horror show lurking behind that pathetic excuse for a mustache. He is about 43, paunchy, graying blond hair – heavily receded. He is smirking as he explains what he means. He’s been smirking the entire time I’ve been interacting with him.

A little background. In order for me to explain what I needed context on, I think I need to give you context about what I’m talking about as a whole. It all started late Saturday night (technically Sunday morning, as it was about 1:40am, but I think we can all agree it’s never really the next day until you go to bed and wake up again… unless you’re a clock, calendar, or place of business, which you are not) when I wanted one thing. ONE thing, and I was sure it would make my stupid ass happy… mostly because I’m easy to please. I wanted a milkshake. I didn’t want any milkshake, though – I wanted one I made. So, I had to go buy ice cream. Fortunately, the store down the road from me is open 24 hours. Perfect schedule for someone with fickle desires for horrible diabeetus-giving treats. Because I’m a human being and I’m still awake, it’s Saturday night for me. Because Meijer is a grocery store (and so much more!), it is Sunday morning, 1:40am. This is evidenced by the shelf stockers toiling away to set up new displays and appropriately add signs to all items that went on sale as the clock struck 12am on Sunday. I make my selection based on a new sale – Country Fresh ice cream – 2 for 6. Because I’m just the kind of sheep Meijer wants shopping at their store, I revise my order for just chocolate and decide to throw vanilla’s honky ass in there as well.

I get to the checkout, which is one of those dreadful U Scan affairs. Listen up, America – you might like those things, but the stores are trying to trick us into being their employee for free. Their presence has not at all contributed to any kind of lower prices at the checkout, and you are a cashier and bagger every time you shop. Don’t even get me started on being behind an old person at one of those… or worse yet, an old person with LOOSE PRODUCE! Sample of my internal thought process when faced with that situation:

It’s on the fucking STICKER ESTHER… FOUR NUMBERS ARE ON THE STICKER. TYPE THEM IN. NO, ON THE SCREEN. YES WITH YOUR FINGER.

Or something like that. The one person they do have staffed is always in the middle of 4 or more of those self-scans, so at least some people still get to have jobs there. I approach mine, and it’s right next to this paunchy 40-something guy with a wispy mustache, he’s in charge of my cluster of lanes this evening. I scan my first carton of ice cream, expecting – if my 2 for 6 math is correct – 3.00. What I see is 4.99. All hope is not lost though, I decide that perhaps it’s some sneaky deal where you really have to get both to get the price. I scan the second carton, and I am greeted with… 4.99. How lucky is it that I have the store employee right there, right?

“Excuse me,” I say, lifting the carton up slightly. He doesn’t respond.

“Heyyyy,” I half-shout. He looks up. I notice something that looks like scales through his dreadful teenage mustache.

“What,” he replies. Pretty good, I bet that’s one from the training videos. Straight and to the point.

“This ice cream is supposed to be on sale, 2 for 6?”

He smirks and leans in conspiratorially.

“This is going to sound crazy to you…” he begins. I raise my eyebrows to let him know I am all fucking ears.

“… but actually, uh, nothing is on sale right now.”

I’m looking at him the way I would look at my mother if she told me she was going to tour the country as a professional dogshit eater. If you don’t know my mom, she’s not like yours. That would be BANANAS for her to say. Scale-lip sees my look and nods once. Yes, you really heard me.

“Well, you’re right, that does sound crazy, because this is on sale. There is a sign on the shelf in the freezer that says so.”

He continues to smirk as he explains that the sales in the store don’t begin until 6am, and it’s really just tough titty that I saw a sign. I’m paraphrasing, but that was pretty much it. It’s right around the time that he tells me I am welcome to go put my ice cream back and look for something that is on sale that I really begin to feel the rage setting in.

“I’m not totally sure how that would work, because you just told me nothing in the store is on sale.”

It’s during his backpedaling and attempt to answer my latest question that I zone out and begin imagining beating him savagely with my bricks of frozen awesomeness.

“I can take it off for you,” he repeats, snapping me out of my murderous reverie.

“Take what off? Take off the amount of money I am being overcharged for this sale item?”

Scale-lip sighs and chooses his next words carefully, as though speaking to a child.

“No, I can take it completely off if you don’t want to pay full price for it.”

Being that the ice cream is literally all I am buying, it would be a wasted trip to just abandon ship. I tell him no, I will continue with my order, and he should really be available to not help the next person to ring themselves up. He still persists in throwing out offers of voiding my ice cream. I regard him cooly, debit card poised.

“You and I are actually done speaking for the night,” I say, swiping my card. “I’ll be talking to somebody about this tomorrow and getting my money back.”

I didn’t actually speak to anybody the next day. Who really ever does? I did make a bomb-ass chocolate shake when I got home, and wouldn’t you know it – it did make my stupid ass happy, if only for a few moments.

Country Fresh: Just one "ree" sound too many to be a discontinued Massengil product.

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Depend on Garfield for unfunny relevance to bring order to your life

Apologies in advance, I have no idea what I’m writing tonight. I’m starting with a weekend recap, which is always boring, but I may spit some freestyle- who knows! What I’m saying is that what you are about to wade through maaaaay be unreadable, disjointed nonsense. Like, more than usual – I’ll add that caveat in case you’re a dick. Speaking of dicks, below is a song I was first introduced to through one of the Jackass movies. It’s totally not safe to play at work unless you work at a place where rappers boasting about their dicks and ridiculing yours is embraced – if you do, I salute you and that gnarled nub you are packing!

I have to say, I love this goddamn song. I like to play it in my head when I look at some of the moderately crazy text messages I received from an ATV enthusiast on Friday (true story, but not worth telling any further). I had my love rekindled for the dick ditty when the staff played it after last call at a bar I was at on Saturday. I promptly decided to make it my personal anthem, because it’s all true. Ladies, take note. Fellas, sorry about your dick getting touched by your uncle. A coworker’s band was playing at the bar in question, and they were good. I stayed until close. I ate half a frozen pizza when I got home. (I baked it first.) I then fell asleep without drinking any water. (Critical error.)

The dreams are always the same. Thirst! Intense, deep, soulful fucking thirst. It consumes me, I would cry if I had the moisture for tears. But wait! Like a haggard, sun poisoned madman stumbling through a vast desert, I see it. A water source, right in front of me! This part of the dream may vary – I have had the water source be a stream (holy shit, bacteria be damned, right?), a drinking fountain, the Brita filter in my refrigerator, a water tap from the soda machine at the weird Target cafeteria thing (no lie, I straight up decided to forgo containers and put my stupid face right under the machine in that one), a garden hose… you get the idea. The sources may differ, but two things remain consistent about all of them:

* They are providing me the most pure, most delicious water that is as cold as it can be without giving me an ice cream headache for being so greedy.

* They only make me more and more thirsty the more I drink from them.

It’s pretty much the equivalent to the end of an episode of The Twilight Zone, with a camera spiraling upward as I scream some kind of lament up at the sky and pull my hair.

My thoughts are racing, all cylinders firing, buzzing one question through my dehydrated, shrunken brain: WHY WON’T I STOP BEING THIRSTY?

This is my kick, à la Inception. I sit bolt upright in bed, gasping, mouth feeling like I went down on some sand last night. Welcome to my hangover dream, faithful readers! It’s been waking me up from semi-irresponsible nights since I was 17-ish. The rest of the day was uneventful, as most mildly hung over Sundays tend to be. I drank water, I watched bad TV, I ate shitty food, I felt better.

I bought a blender over the weekend, at some point in between getting ridiculous text messages and going to the bar. I bought it with one goal in mind: to put someone’s face in it. Wait, that’s not right. Oh yeah, I bought it to make smoothies. I looked forward to starting my Monday workday with a delicious, nutritious, fruit-tastic beverage. I suppose it would be apt to call the Monday smoothie plan to be the light at the beginning of my tunnel. I had it all down to a ballet of precise timing before work, my strawberry/blueberry smoothie was all blended and ready to pour in my cup… and then I would be out the door and on my way! But it was Monday. If there is one thing I have come to believe, it’s that Monday will always find a way to fuck you. If there’s one thing I’ve come to learn, it’s that my blender’s glass blending cup has a removable bottom for easy cleaning. If I’ve learned another thing, it’s that it’s a good idea to make sure that bottom is tightly secured before you make a goddamn smoothie:

The sound I just made is how the rest of your day will go, fucko. Slorrrp!

So yeah, that was how I kicked off my day. My “ballet of precise timing” meant that I had just about enough time still budgeted to say “motherfucker” and some variants, take a picture, and leave for work. I didn’t even have time to clean it up. The slorrrp noise my smoothie made as it rapidly exited my blending cup and onto the base and my counter really was pretty much how the rest of the day went. Today was better, and I am holding out hope that Wednesday will be better yet. Believe me when I say I think I deserve it. My dick: need no introduction. Your dick: don’t even function. Yup. Happy Wednesday, and may it be accident and awkwardness free for all.

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Do you want me on your junk?

Life is complex. Sometimes it’s more complex than it needs to be. Have you ever wanted something so bad you get a little obsessed, your waking thoughts and energy devoted to achieving this goal? Worse yet, perhaps you’re so consumed in your waking life, you even start dreaming about it? Those are the worst kinds of dreams… where you finally get… something… you want so bad, and everything is right in your world. You feel complete, and nothing can take that away from you. Then your alarm clock startles you back to the cold reality: that was a dream, what you wanted is still out of grasp, and you have to get ready for work. Sigh. I suppose the solution is to want less, but I assure you – without revealing what it is that I want, know that there is a certain nobility to it. Emotions are involved, strong ones. I’m not just being selfish, I promise.

Let’s take a moment to discuss something I can be far less vague about! Staying with the theme of things that are complex, let’s talk about something I recently got reintroduced to: button fly jeans. I just picked up a pair – they were both the right size and the correct color of faded blue. On the subject of color, why are all men’s jeans so dark nowadays? I have no interest in rocking midnight blue denim with a white belt while I listen to whatever wailing indie music is considered under the radar enough to be cool this week. Just give me some beat-up looking faded blue and music that doesn’t make me worry about whether or not I’m about to get my first period, thanks! What I’m trying to say is I’m a simple man. So simple, the act of peeing while wearing the aforementioned button fly jeans borderline infuriates me each time. With a traditional zipper, it’s just a simple drop, flip, and splash. The only wacky variable you are faced with is taking care not to mangle your root when you zip back up. With a button fly, coupled with a belt? It’s a whole different game. Finding a hole and burying your finger (two fingers if you’re nasty) into the denim folds, trying to find purchase so you can pop one – realistically more than one if you want to not be constricted – button(s) open, doing your business… now the challenge begins. The button fly is like a dress shirt for your dick and balls. I personally have to yank the fly up toward me and hunch down (not a savory sight for someone just entering a public restroom and lacking context) in order to match each removed button up with its corresponding hole. This is where my shirt comparison comes into play – matching the wrong button with the wrong hole leaves a twisted mess on your lap that is sort of reminiscent of a vortex of sadness that resides directly over your twig and berries, swallowing any and everything that dares to come near it. No wonder I’m single.

To be fair, zippers are not all sunshine and puppies all the time, either. My first horrible zipper encounter came to be when I was a toddler, and I used to wear footie pajamas. Little vinyl pads on the feet, full body suit of soft fleece… and a terrible monster of a zipper running from gizzard to gullet. Long story short, I found out the hard way how important it was to rock a pair of Underoos under that thing. It wasn’t quite like There’s Something About Mary, but it almost was. There was… an extraction process. I get chills and nausea just thinking about it today. More recently than that (we’re talking 3 or less years ago) I zipped up some of the skin around the underside of my unit. I panicked and decided the only resolution was to unzip again. It left a mark. That bled. Jesus, now that I’m waxing nostalgic about zipper accidents, button fly jeans don’t sound all that bad…

“All I know is that I don’t know nothing”

– Knowledge, by Operation Ivy

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I want YOU to have my myriad of brain babies

It’s true, earwigs are a problem for me, psychologically. I’m not afraid of them… through the passage of time I’m only repulsed by them. You can bet your sweet ass (you’re welcome) I used to be afraid of them, though. You would totally get to keep your denim dumplings in that particular wager – I blame my dad. Well, my dad coupled with the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Remember it? See it when you were young, did you? Did the thought of space bugs burrowing in your ear and eating your brain make you stay awake at night and shit blood? Ugh, sorry. I take back the blood shitting thing. Let me back up. So I see this movie, and it’s got these eels (fuck you Star Trek, those things are bugs) that burrow in through your ear, and eat your brain slowly, or some equally terrifying thing for a 6 year old to see. A few days later, my dad and I see an earwig on the deck of our pool. I’m of course repulsed (butt pincers, come on) but not yet terrified. I ask my dad what it is, and he tells it to me straight:

“That’s an earwig. Know why they’re called that?”

He goes on to tell me that they crawl in people’s ears. He asks if I remember Star Trek and when I slowly nod in horror, the pieces falling into place, he tells me it’s a lot like that. To his credit, he assures me these are so small that they can’t kill you. All they do is lay eggs that later hatch and scurry out of your ear by the hundreds. A comforting thought, for sure. I wonder to myself if dying would be better as my dad gets up to go back in the house, chuckling to himself.

I found out the truth soon after, I think from my grandma. I kept that thought all bottled up in me for a week or more, and finally caved like a murderer getting interrogated when I visited her. I spilled the earwig beans to her, and she fired up a Pall Mall and assured me my dad was completely full of shit. Her words, not mine.

Let’s fast forward to present day. I have earwigs on my patio. Like, everywhere. It’s as if someone threw an earwig grenade on the pavement. They’re not all adults, some are little baby earwigs that are more red than black and far easier to squish. I can literally stand out on the patio and if I have even brushed a wall, I have an earwig on me. Ok, it’s not that bad, but I have had it happen twice. Earwigs are supposed to crawl out of rotting wood when you disturb it, not slither around on your shirt when you’re trying to grill some food. In a perfect world, right?

The only things that give me a primal-revulsion-knee-jerk-recoil more than earwigs? Those hairy, multi-legged abominations that have a horrifying habit of suddenly emerging from drains in bathrooms right when you’re looking, silverfish, and Sarah Jessica Parker.

“I hope some animal never bores a hole in my head and lays its eggs in my brain, because later you might think you’re having a good idea, but it’s just eggs hatching.” – Jack Handey

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BuhGAWK II: The BuhGAWKening

As I was sitting here, contemplating the mysteries of life and the universe, a thought I can actually wrap my head around occurred to me: I have a tag in my arsenal that is called “Wild ‘n’ Woolly Web Wednesday.” You can see it over to the right there, it’s one in smaller typeset – I only have one (soon to be two, if I can work through this) post tagged with it, circa February of 2006. I was clearly not sober when I dreamed this category up. I totally get into alliteration when I’m on the sauce. I’m not on that right now, but I feel obliged to continue with this transgression. Make with the links I shall.

First up, a word on hamburger condiments. I’m strictly ketchup and yeller mustard. Don’t try to give me any of that catsup nonsense. Do the people who manufacture ketchup and call it catsup realize that it doesn’t even pass a spell check when you spell it with a cat?

Don’t even get me started on the people who think they’re either being unique or knowing some secret correct way to pronounce it and actually say cat-sup out loud.

Mr. Burns once had a huge dilemma at the supermarket, and this is the best video I could find of it (it cuts off a good line at the end, but c’est la vie):

Next, courtesy of shrewlia – she beat a billion other people, places, and things to share this with me – and did it to mock me – what can I say – she’s a shrewwwww – the crazy eHarmony cat girl:

Yes, she is just an actress playing a goof. If she were real, I would be doggedly pursuing her for an exclusive interview.

This is old news, topic-wise, and if you are already a fan of Bill Burr, it’s double old. An alternative perspective on the thing with Mel Gibson and the lady he screamed scary shit over the phone to:

Since we’re on stuff that’s old, remember the Honey Badger video? Well, here it is again:

Honey Badger don’t give a shit, it just takes what it wants.

Lastly, a list filled with things you knew and do not actually remember.

Before I stop writing, a WWWW tip: Never trust anyone who chooses to go by initials instead of a name. For they are total douches. Good night.

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Okely dokely

As some of you (who are you people, anyway) may have heard or read, I just moved into a new townhome at the end of May. It was a long time coming, and due to the fact that I’m silly and immature, this is the first time I have lived anywhere without roommates. It’s just as awesome as everyone has told me. About a month later, being able to do… everything… naked if I so choose (I’ll leave it up to you how much naked time I have clocked in) is starting to lose its appeal. There’s only so much fun you can have when you’re a man that’s alone and naked. And it usually ends with a shame nap.

This past weekend was an odd one at my new solo abode. At the very least Saturday was, and it all started with me being alone – fully clothed – and deciding to magically turn some raw, shapeless beef into discs of grilled beef, colloquially known as HAMBURGERS. It used to blow my mind when I was young that ground beef had no ham in it. So then why the fuck is it called hamburger, little Danny’s mind raced with anxiety as he thought. True story. I also once shoved an antenna from a toy truck so far up my nose it bled, and was genuinely surprised that little gush of red was the result of my effort. Kids are dumb, it wasn’t just me. Back to the grilling, sorry: It was beautiful outside on Saturday, and I was feeling bored and lonely. What better way to feel less bored and lonely than by making enough food to feed three people and shoving all or most of it down my throat, like some crazy hermit pelican? I’m sure there are better ways out there, but this is the one I opted for, with everyone I know being out of town, otherwise occupied, or not fit to be in public. So, as I’m laying my hamburger patties down on my grill, the neighbor from the adjacent unit comes out from behind his privacy fence and shouts over “there’s no grilling here!” Even though I heard him perfectly, I reply back “I’m sorry, WHAT,” just because I wanted to take a moment to process whether or not he was joking. He takes this as an invitation to come on over to my patio. When he arrives, his earlier warning and my question of what the fuck he had said has been all but forgotten. He takes an interest in what I am cooking, and it quickly becomes clear to me that my new friend and neighbor is drunk enough to wonder if going in and laying down may be a better bet for him than playing Fire Marshall with me. He does finally get back on track about the moratorium on grilling when I steer him that way. As it turns out, he thinks this is an honest to goodness fact. When I inquire about the 10 to 12 grills within eyesight from my patio (my place looks out into the courtyard), he shrugs and says something in half-English about how someone in a non-specific drunk gesture direction will “call the fire department” if they see me light a grill. I proclaim this to be fine, if they so choose to alert the fire department, the men dispatched will probably be pretty bummed when they show up and I’m grilling in a grill that is 100% acceptable according to my lease. The blatant facts in the statement are all but ignored by my drunk neighbor, as he has taken to shuffling over to my sliding door and peeking in at my living room.

“What size TV is that,” he slurs out.

I tell him, and he lets me know that I probably should have gotten a bigger one. I thank him for the insight, and he asks his next question:

“Do you have any weapons in the house? Guns, rifles, pistols, anything?”

I raise an eyebrow and half-jokingly ask if he is casing my place out to rob me. And no, I don’t have guns. But I do have a baseball bat to put someone down on their ass and a good amount of razor-sharp knives to make them think hard about standing up again. Factor in me maybe being naked when they break in, and you have yourself one regretful home invader.

My neighbor tells me his name is Jason*, and invites me over to his patio. I have a timer going on my Droid to let me know approximately when to flip the burgers, so I agree. His patio is littered with about 9 or 10 empty beer bottles, and sure as shit there is a rusty grill standing next to his fence.

“That’s a fire hazard,” I joke, pointing at the sad little grill. He makes a noise I can’t quite place as human and asks me if I would like some Jagermeister. I turn my head, and he has a mostly-gone pint of Jager inches away from my face. I try to refrain from curling my upper lip up and politely decline. I’m genuinely interested in whether or not my stereo has been too loud since I moved in, so I ask. As far as I can tell from the outside, I say, it really looks like a good portion of my living room is adjacent to their bedroom. He tells me it has not been a problem. In response to my speculation of their room placement vs. mine, he insists that I come in for a full tour. Upon entering, he takes me back to the living room, where his very sober and very angry-looking (now add in surprise for seeing some weird tall stranger in her living room unannounced) girlfriend sits. I sheepishly introduce myself as Dan, her new neighbor. She doesn’t say a word. Jason then takes me through the rest, including their bedroom, despite my telling him that the layout once inside is identical, only in reverse.

I tell Jason that I have to go flip my burgers, to which he responds with a plea for me to come back over after I do. I say sure, because I see no harm in it, and he decides to make it weird. He says,

“Do you promise?”

I groan inwardly and tell him yes, I promise. As I’m tending to the patties, he shuffles over again.

“I thought you were coming back over,” he says, accusation ringing in his voice. I laugh and explain that I said I would come over when my grill duties were done. He takes a long pull on his new beer.

“Am I annoying you or something?”

YES, every fiber of my being screams out, and “of course not, man. I told you I would come back after I did this,” is what comes out of my mouth. Jason then begins to tell me how sorry he is that I don’t have any firearms in my home, and lets me in on a secret: he has an assault rifle in his basement! With, as he described it, enough ammo to “fire it continuously for 30 hours.” Not alarming news at all, right? He tells me he wants me to see it later. I don’t tell him I want him to move out tomorrow. My burgers are just about done, so I tell Jason I will be retreating into the comfort of my air conditioning to eat once they come off the grill. He asks me if my air was broken when I first moved in. Surprised, I tell him it was, in fact. He says something about how the “Jews” at our management company are telling him his dog chewed through the wiring to both AC units, and won’t fix theirs unless they pay 200.00 in damages. I’m interested in this story, as well as his problem with “Jews,” but my burgers are perfect now. I tell him I’m going to go back in to eat.

“Aw, just bring em over to my place and eat!”

“No, I want to sit in that AC I have in there.”

“Will you come back over when you’re done?”

Fuck.

“Sure, man!”

“Do you promise?”

Ho. Ly. Shit. What kind of man sounds this needy when he asks another man to come over to hang out with him? Not once, but twice? I hope this is just the double-digit beers and liquor talking.

“Yeah, sure. I promise.”

Once inside, I draw the blinds closed on my patio door and lock everything securely. I fix my plate, the burger is looking like something from a photograph from an advertisement, and I had cut some Idaho potatoes into small wedges and fried them in peanut oil in my fantastic new cast iron skillet. Steak fries. Everything looks amazing. I bring the feast to the living room, dial up something interesting on the television, and take my first glorious bite of the best burger I have had in ages. Literally, as I am chewing this first bite, my doorbell rings. I swallow and walk over, swinging the door open to find… Jason.

“I thought you said you were coming over?”

I choose my words carefully.

“Yes, I did, man. I said I was doing that after I ate. I Juuuust started.”

“Am I annoying you?”

“No, you’re not annoying me. I really have to eat, though.”

“Come over when you’re done?”

I begin to regret not having a pistol in there with me, after all.

“Sure.”

“Do you promise?”

Again with this word. This is the third time. If words were strikes, this guy is decidedly out.

“Yes.”

I finish my meal in peace. As promised, I make my way back over to Jason’s patio afterward. I am a man of honor. We resume talking about the air conditioning. He’s explaining again about how the management company won’t fix their AC due to them blaming his dog for breaking it in the first place. We both have central air, and large gray boxes sit on the corner between both of our units. This is where some unnamed animal chewed through wiring.

“I mean, look at my dog, does he look like he would do something like that?”

I glance over my shoulder and see his hound on the kitchen floor by the sliding door leading to the patio. The dog has some kind of area rug gathered into a big pile at his paws, and is presently pulling on a large hunk of it that he has in his mouth with all of his might. I mean, he is really straining at it. I laugh and lie that no, I really couldn’t see that ever happening.

As I turn back to Jason, I see that he has the pint of Jager inches from my face, once again.

“Jager,” he says, as though it would help me in some way.

“No thank you, I don’t want any liquor.” I’m already a couple beers deep due to grilling (you kind of have to, right?) and the last thing I want to do when I have no plans and no friends around for the rest of the evening is get liquor drunk.

“I’m going to have to insist,” he says, a slight edge to his voice.

“And I’m still going to have to decline, because I’m a 34 year old man,” is my response back.

Just then, his angry girlfriend comes out with the dog. She is clearly less happy than the last time I saw her, and gets a dig in about him being pretty capable of letting the dog out when all he is doing is sitting outside drinking.

“It’s his fault,” he says back, pointing at me. I try to lock eyes with the girl long enough to try to get her to understand I want no part in this. I think she gets it. Jason starts to demand that she bring the dog closer, so I can meet him. The dog has other plans, he wants to run around in the courtyard lawn. Jason somehow sees the dogs unwillingness to come over to me as his girlfriend failing to obey his instructions, and a really awkward argument ensues. In the end, Jason lets the love of his life know that the dog wanted him to tell her to go fuck herself. As I try to to remember the last person I knew who had a dog that told them things, his girlfriend storms back inside. As she is closing the patio door, she angrily spits out a warning:

“This door locks at night, so I hope you have somewhere to stay when it does.”

Clearly, I need to get the fug out. Now.

Once she is back inside, Jason confides in me that I am welcome to fuck his girlfriend any time I want. I respectfully decline. Any more red flags and we would be at… um… a red flag factory, people. I sit and talk to him for a few minutes more, and he is telling me about a unit across the courtyard to us that just had its entire roof redone. I have a friend that lives a few rows back from us where almost all the roofs are looking pretty ragged. I tell Jason that it’s pretty bad over that way.

“Why, are there a bunch of blacks and Mexicans,” he questions, as his eyes narrow. And he didn’t say “blacks,” either. That’s just the word I choose to say in this case. If you need hints, the word I’m not typing means the same thing, but it’s exponentially more filled with hate. I’m almost speechless for a second.

“No man, the roofs. The roofing is bad over there. You were JUST talking about roofs.”

I take this as my moment to leave, making up a lie about how I’m due to meet some friends out later. Jason tells me that any time I want, any time I am bored, I am welcome to come knock on his door. I thank him for the offer… and don’t reciprocate. At home, I am at a loss for what to do now. I end up taking a small nap, like most 34 year old dudes with 3 or 4 beers and 2 hamburgers in them yearn to do. I haven’t heard from Jason again since that night, and I’m not completely sure that’s a bad thing. Can assault rifles penetrate drywall?

*Not his real name.

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Weekends are fleeting, even if you start one by calling in sick to work on Friday. I’m kind of an expert, since that’s how I kicked mine off – granted, I spent the better part of my waking hours Friday (of which there were few) taking turns sweating buckets and shivering from cold… hence why I’m only “kind of” an expert. I literally napped for 7 hours during the day on Friday. I also literally ended up feeling better by midnight, and decided to be the animal that I am and unpack and inventory (scanning fucking barcodes into my Android phone, nerdcred alert) my entire DVD and Blu-Ray collection – this took me until roughly 3 am. Not because the app is slow or my collection is all that impressive or huge, but because I was technically still sick, and therefore a fucking moron. In short, I had trouble remembering what stacks I had scanned and which ones I hadn’t. I may have scanned some movies four times, but god damn if I didn’t finish that job. I think I am still missing a box of DVDs somewhere. I also still laugh when people use the word “box” in sentences. I will be 35 in September.


“Is it OK if I throw this trash in your box,” the girl shouts over the music in the kitchen.

“That’s my line,” I fire back instantly, laughing.


She is my good friend’s girlfriend (don’t tell him that!), and she is a sweet girl, but perhaps way too overly drunk. Her name and the friend’s name will, of course, remain undisclosed – we do a lot of things here on dan pelton dot com, but one of them is not naming names. Except for Dan Pelton. He’s cool. Where were we? Ah, yes – my horrific middle school Box Joke Opportunity (which I should point out I am smirking about still as I type) and the girl. The boxes were near my garbage in the kitchen – you may remember me mentioning removing some DVDs from them? Yeah.

“What,” she shouts back, tossing the garbage in the box. I try in vain to explain the witticism I thought I had just made (I’m willing to concede and use the word thought in that, sure evidence of my maturity), but it falls on deaf ears. My friend, standing by me at the counter prepping vegetables for the grill also takes a stab at it, but sighs and resumes chopping when the girl uses this as a segue to begin talking too loudly again about what a piece of shit her sister’s boyfriend is. I try my best to convince her that she’s swayed me, but it also falls on the aforementioned deaf ears. Finally, she takes a moment to change the subject and ask me a question:

“A woman is at her mother’s funeral and very broken up over it. She then meets this good looking guy, complete stranger, and it’s love at first sight. Despite her mother’s death she is quite cheerful now. They talk for hours, but after the funeral he disappears and she never hears from him again. Two weeks later, she kills her sister. Why?”

I’m puzzled by it – I like brain teasers – but this seems like it has no possible solution, it’s just nonsense. In the end, I say that she kills her sister because she discovers that sis and this Mr. Right were actually lovers and had conspired to kill her mother. Always the hacky fucking writer at heart. It turns out that there is no “real” answer to it, but anyone who decides she killed her sister in the hopes to see this man again at the new funeral may want to eat your liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Eventually the talk turned back to the girl’s sister (the drunk girl in my kitchen, not the made-up one in the sociopath test) and her sister’s piece of shit boyfriend. The drunk girl voices a thought that makes me grin – she hopes the piece of shit boyfriend will hit her sister so… well, it’s not clear what her next step is after that. But the third one is probably “profit.” All crazy plans end with that. It just doesn’t register at all with her when I happily point out she is being the person who killed her sister to see the man again in this wish she just voiced. My friend totally agrees, she doesn’t. I’m going to blame the booze. She really is a great girl. After they had departed (she, crashing into my stove after the meal, declaring that they were going “out”) my friend managed to get her back to his place (about 3 rows of buildings down in the same complex) and she fell asleep. Thankfully. I could not see them “going out” ending with anything but a “tummy full of charcoal” and a “tube down her esophagus.”

Sunday, I did what Sundays are probably good for – I went and said hello to my sister and brother in law, hugged one of my two nephews (one was too busy on the computer, which I can respect), said hello again to their two awesome Labs, then drove out to Williamston to eat some food with my parents and marvel at how absolutely fucking cute their two new kittens are, and tried to devise a way to write a run-on sentence with too many commas in it, and all I came up with, unfortunately, was this. Hope you liked it. How was your weekend, whoever the hell other than Russian spambots is reading this?

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Ugh, I was like THIS close to calling in to work today. You can’t see me pinching my fingers together, but they are crazy close. My head feels like a brick. I had this awful zombie apocalypse dream early this morning where my family and I were at some nameless giant hotel, and everywhere we went to try to get to safety, a huge mob of people would start to panic and run to another wing in this monolithic building.

Eventually we made it outside, but I got separated from my family. I found myself on a playground for no good reason, as dreams are prone to do when it comes to changing locales. I scaled to the top of one of those dome-like things made of bars you can climb on to try to get a better vantage and maybe see someone I knew. As I scanned the area, this homeless-looking zombie (I think all zombies are homeless, but I digress) roughly yanked my left forearm toward it and just savaged it with his horrible teeth.

It bears mentioning that even when I was still in this nameless giant hotel, I knew I was having a dream and that I was not enjoying it, and it was going to get worse. I just couldn’t wake up. I finally did wake up post nasty-teeth bite, post-running away from people who saw my bite and wanted to kill me. I laid down in the dirt in what seemed to be a big forest, thinking to myself that I might be different – I might not change. Then I thought, what if I do? Should I just kill myself now? Then I woke up, all sweaty and annoyed. I’m not kidding when I tell you the spot I got bitten in the dream hurt for about 5 minutes.

I watched True Grit last night with some friends, a first time view for me. It was crazy super good. Bridges was phenomenal as always. One of the outlaw fellas in the movie had nasty, gnarled, brown teeth. So at least I know where the zombie who bit me’s mouth came from. Ew.

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Happy belated President’s Day, beautiful babies and gentlemen. I have some festive words for you to ponder: We hold these truths to be self-evident! When Thomas Jefferson committed these eight words to paper* (Parchment? Stone?) in 1776, who is to say what he intended them to mean? Historians? People that read books? Not being a “historian” or a “person that paid attention in school” myself, I don’t know. I speculate it was something about how rad it was to wear a wig, or how dead-sexy a good pair of knickerbockers and a puffy pirate shirt looked together. If I were to take those words under my wing and explain to you what they mean to me, what “truths” would I hold to be “self-evident?” They are as follows:

1. Crab meat could only smell more repulsive to me if it were served inside a full Diaper Genie. It may even smell the same in this setting! I’ve never tried this serving style as I am horrified by the thought of eating the heated insides of giant mutant bugs that smell like your grandmother’s farts.
2. All people named Ethel are currently dead or dying, if only on the inside.
3. “Taco cat” is one of the coolest palindromes, because I like both tacos and cats, and it also seems to mean something to do with the hoo haw.
4. Monkeys and apes are scary.

In the spirit of ham-fisted segues, let’s explore that last point. It’s true! Monkeys/apes are not only scary, but dirty, wily, sneaky, angry, and wholly unpredictable. Case in point: one time at the local zoo (against my better judgment) I stopped to look at the spider monkeys. They were in an outdoor habitat, not one of those dreadful indoor affairs, and the floor of their publicly-displayed prison was hard-packed dirt. As I looked upon them, my lip unconsciously curling in disgust twinged with terror, I noticed one looking at me. I mean, this thing was looking RIGHT AT ME. Never breaking its baleful gaze, it appeared to be whiling away its time by dragging its pale, wormlike penis around on the soil with one of its horrible paws. It wasn’t a half-assed drag, either – this little dude was really “going to town” as they say, grinding his dirty monkey dong into the heat-baked dirt. I fought a surge of rising bile and tried to take my eyes away from his. Finally I did! Had I not broken its gaze, who is to say what would have happened? Forcing its way through the cage and ripping a hole in my throat (with its unoccupied paw)? Maybe. Probably. Moral of the story is never make wishes on monkey paws because when still attached to monkeys they are mostly used to push their junk into the dirt and move poop around. As a result, your wishes may come true, but there will be a horrible twist!

Exhibit B in the “Monkeys/apes are scary” testimony? Consider this article published on CNN dot com today:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/17/chimp.attack/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

I get all of my current monkey attack news from the Cable News Network for 2 reasons: my work’s firewall doesn’t block the site, and they have commercials voiced by Darth fucking Vader. Represent.

For those folks too wrapped up in reading this or too lazy to leave the page to read yet more words, allow me to summarize: a chimpanzee totally went apeshit (you’re welcome, pun haters) on a woman, “and began biting and mauling her, causing serious injuries to her face, neck and hands” and had to be stabbed, beat with a fucking shovel, and finally shot before its awful train wreck of carnage could be stopped. Since when are chimps like Jason Voorhees, anyway? Since FOREVER. Learn this and be safe.

One thing I was particularly amazed at in this CNN article was the following older item they mentioned almost casually:

“In 2005, a different chimp escaped from California’s Animal Haven Ranch and chewed off a man’s nose and genitals.”

No further reference was made to any details of this event, and correct me if I’m wrong here, but a chimpanzee CHEWING OFF A MAN’S GENITALS seems like some pretty extreme shit. This is like the X Games/Mountain Dew commercial of monkey attacks. Perplexed, and fearful for my junk, I researched to find the details of this ball-biting incident.

It turns out that the chimp did not bite off the man’s genitals. Before you finish exhaling that sigh of relief, allow me to clarify: the chimp TORE off the fellow’s testicles. Like, with its monkey paws. Tore. In addition to that, it did in fact eat his nose and most of one of his ears. And gouged one of his eyes out. It also ate most of the man’s wife’s thumb. Bedtime for Bonzo this ain’t.

In closing, I leave you with some mostly not safe for work words on the monkey topic from none other than Dave Chappelle:

*Don’t be a knob and correct me about who wrote that line on the declaration, or I will edit Wikipedia to make you wrong and me right. Fact.

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