In Review: My First Pedicure

Today, I got my first pedicure.

I went up to Greeley to help my mom clean the rain gutters on her roof, and she informed me that she also had to go get a pedicure, and since that's where she was going, I ended up going too.

Normally, I think of men who get pedicures as either super rich and privileged, or... you know... of an alternative lifestyle. I know I shouldn't make assumptions about huge groups of people that way, but there you have it.

So I go in there and I am instructed to sit down on this big massaging chair thing with this huge remote control attached to it. With the remote, you control the angle at which the chair sits, how far or near the chair sits to the pool of water, and how it massages your back. I went through a bunch of the options before I settled on a gentle lower back loosening program (some of them were “programs”, some just manual settings). In front of this chair, as I mentioned, is some water. It's like a little jacuzzi for your feet. The water was piping hot, and there were little jets that massaged my little toes while I sat there and waited for the next employee to finish with a customer and move over to my feet. I was, needless to say, the only guy there.

My mother sat in the seat next to me and she appeared very relaxed. I was terrified. I was terrified of two things: being tickled (I have very ticklish feet) and being hurt when they sliced chunks of dead skin off the area surrounding my toe nails. I voiced my concern to my mother several times, but she just seemed like she wanted me to shut up and let her relax.

So anyway, the girl gets over to my feet promptly and starts the process. It was very involved, and she seemed very professional. There was no chit chat like at the barber-shop, but I am willing to bet that that is because the employee didn't know much of my native tongue.

Was it rude to take this picture

of the girl working on my feet?

She used some kind of cuticle pushing thing to push my cuticles back (go figure). Then she used some kind of mean looking cutting device to start clipping all that cuticle stuff and extra skin away. I was fascinated at how quickly she did it without hurting me even once. I was certain that at some point I would feel some kind of pinch at least, but I didn't. I kept laughing awkwardly and looking over at my mom, who was in a trance. Mom looked like she had had lost a few rounds with a bottle of morphine. The person working on her feet was a kung fu guy of some kind. I think I saw him in “Ninja Assassin” (if you want to see a stupid movie, try Ninja Assassin).

After she was done clipping all that gross stuff off my toes, she put some kind of yellow stuff that looked like olive oil on them. Then she got this porous bar thing and put some special grainy lotion on it and grabbed my foot and started scrubbing it. Not really hard (not as hard as I had anticipated) but hard enough to make me almost reflexively kick this lady in the face because it tickled so much. She kept laughing and giggling at me 'cause I was so ticklish. I hope she understands that only manly men get tickled when they get a pedicure. I'm not a pussy.

So she scrubbed my feet down and then rinsed them all off and then came the leg and foot massage (with lotion). I didn't know that this was part of it. It was a very gentle massage, but the way this lady was massaging my feet was alarmingly erotic. I felt like telling her “hey hey... I have a girlfriend, so settle down”, but I had seen her massaging the last person's feet in the same way so I knew that she wasn't trying to pull anything crazy. She did this little downward snapping thing on my toenails, which I saw the kung fu master do on my mom's toes too. It felt cool, but I wanted to inquire about it's purpose. Alas, there was the language barrier.

Anyway, when all was said and done, my feet felt AWESOME and they still do several hours later. I would say that I would definitely return to this establishment for another pedicure, if I ever come into money or... an “alternative lifestyle”. Or if I ever help my mom spray out the rain gutters again.

A couple more things to note: I saw them using a type of razor blade tool to scrape payloads of dead callus skin off another individual's soggy feet. This was really gross to me, but I couldn't help but feel jealous in a way. I wished I had some calluses for them to shave off. That was really gross. And I am wondering why they wear little surgeon's masks while they do their job? I imagine that sometimes calluses are so bad that they have to use and industrial belt sander to get through the first couple of inches, and maybe that toxic foot dust is not the kind of thing you want in your mouth. Or maybe they had SARS.

One more thing: why is this a job that (seemingly) only Asian people do? I find that cultural dynamic fascinating and baffling.

The place (I think) was “Natural Nails” ‎at 2146 35th Avenue in Greeley. It's right next to Eileen's Cookies (the best cookie shop ever). If you need a foot treatment, I would advise starting here.

Thanks, Mom. Anyone else out there have experience with pedicures or kung fu assassins?

Grass-Fed Beef

Do you shop at Whole Foods?

Do you buy their "grass-fed" beef?

Do you think you are doing the world a favor by doing so?

Do you regularly become sexually aroused by your own reflection in the mirror?  

Do you buy this shit from the Whole Food's website?:

"There was a time when you could walk into your local butcher's shop and find a perfect, beautiful porterhouse, cut that very morning with you in mind because the butcher (who knows you by name) figured you'd be in looking for something like that for dinner tonight.

Think this scene is pure nostalgia?"

Of course, they then go on to say that this isn't just nostalgia at Whole Foods.  They proceed to rant about not putting hormones or anti-biotics in their meat, and that the cattle they buy are grass-fed for at least 2/3 of their life. 

Do you salivate just thinking about how up your own ass, smug and arrogant you will be able to sound once you start buying meat exclusively at Whole Foods?

Here's a stat for you, you fuck:

"...producing one kilogram of the grass-fed beef so revered by organic devotees and high-end restaurants causes the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as driving a small car 70.4 miles.... for beef raised less luxuriously (fed by grain on industrial farms) the figure is... forty-five miles."

~From: Denialism, by Michael Specter 

Good job fucking up the environment, ass-nugget.

Did you know that, to sustain the world on organic food, we'd have to plow thousands of miles of rain forest in order to create enough farmland to raise food that inefficiently?  Did you know that?  That it takes, in many cases, twice the farmland to produce comparable amounts of "organic" food compared to regular food?

Did you know that you have been sold a false image of yourself?  That you believe that you are something you aren't, and that a massive corporation called "Whole Foods" has sold you that sense of self?  Did you know what you are a shell of a person, suckling self-esteem from the teat of another soul-less company that would tell you any lie it could come up with to get you to keep buying their over priced shit?  That you have no value?  That your "image" of being socially conscious and organically minded would ensure the starvation of millions if it were adopted world wide?  

Did you know that you are a self-righteous prick?

I hope you bankrupt yourself buying that overpriced shit.  I hope that subsequently, you have to eat government food-stamp food and I hope you choke on it.

To anyone who doesn't buy their meat at Whole Foods: please disregard the preceding.

In Review: My Worst Nightmare

So it's been a rough week...

I have joined the ranks of the unemployed, not by my own choice.  I have spent most of the week writing here and there, although I have felt very little motivation to blog.  I've been on a couple of fun bike rides.  Read some.  But otherwise, I've just been going out of my mind with sheer panic and paranoia.  I'm trying my hardest to let go and enjoy my time.  Trying to stay centered.  Trying not to think about money.

Or I was trying to stay centered... until this fuckin' shit happened:

Again:

That's right, ladies and gentlemen.  My phone has a crack in the screen.  

Words cannot begin to describe how angry I am about this shit.  I LOVE this phone.  It's been through some shit before, and it was just fine.  A bit scratched, to be sure, and the silver trim around the side was starting to lift a little bit from the white plastic portion of the phone, but it was holding up relatively well.  I haven't even had this god damn piece of monkey shit for a year yet.  Let me describe to you how this happened.

Yesterday I was driving around shit town (aka Boulder Colorado), and I dropped o' girl off at her class on the "Hill" (a congregating place for people who's life dream it is to give Al Gore a blow-job while Ralph Nader plays the pan flute in the same room for mood music).  I looked at the phone.  It was fine.  So I drove off to somewhere where I could possibly get a coffee.  I pull up to a Starbucks and I go to unplug the phone from the car stereo and, low and behold: there's a huge goddamn crack in the screen!  Nothing even HAPPENED!  FUCK!  The only explanation I can think of is that the sun heated the screen up just enough that it expanded slightly causing it to crack.  I hate the sun enough already.  It's hotter than shit out.  But now this fuckin' floating ball of gas, this giant goddamn natural fusion reactor has broken my phone.

I loved this phone.  I feel heartbroken.  I can think of few scenarios that could have been worse than this.  Perhaps a relapse into active drug addiction.  The outbreak of World War III.  NPR going bankrupt....  but aside from things on that order of shittiness, this pretty much tops it.

Unemployment was bad.  Unemployment plus a cracked iPhone screen makes me want to choke a kitten.  

I just don't know what to do.  I was going to call FEMA, since this does constitute a major disaster, but I figure that they will just try to put me into one of their concentration camps. (I'm kidding... I like conspiracy theories, but anyone who believes the FEMA camps are concentration camps is an idiot.  It's common knowledge that Obama and his cohorts are housing the enslaved whites in an underground base hidden somewhere near Albequerque, just like Bush housed many notable non-Christians down there a few years earlier.)

The phone would cost $500 dollars or some ridiculous amount to replace outright.  It's horse-shit.  This phone is not worth that much.  AT&T has us all by the nuts.  And Steve Jobs has signed off on all of my pain and misery.  Buddhist my ass.  Jobs is a sadist at best.

Anyway, the phone still funtions perfectly.  It just has this fuckin' crack in it that is quickly driving a crack into the shell of whatever sanity I had left.  If you care to donate to the "Charles Emerson Unemployment and iPhone Relief Fund", shoot me an e-mail.  I'll take a check or cash.  Whatever.

Amazing Gusher of a Coincidence

I opened this pack of fruit "Gushers" the other day...

There are like four or five colors that these bad boys are supposed to come in.

So I opened this pack and found this astounding coincidence:

That's right.  All one fucking color.

I haven't calculated the odds on this, but I know that it is like goddamn near impossible.  So I took a photo.  And now I'm sharing it with you.  This is what happens when you get unemployed.  Be warned

A Serious Problem, A Serious Solution

Dear reader,

It has come to my attention that America is teeming with terrible, terrible people with all kinds of social malfunctions and intellectual failures the likes of which have rarely been seen in Earth's short history. (See the official “Twilight Fan Site” for examples).

Now as some of you may already know, I subscribe to a very tolerant world view. But the problem with the youth in America (or what is left of them after MTV is allowed to warp their minds inside out for three hours per day, with Fox finishing the job in the evening for another full three hours) is really starting to get under my skin here. Luckily, I don't have to interact with too many people who are younger than me, and the ones I do interact with seem to be able to keep their human-spirit in working order despite the constant efforts of the dark media machine. This is no simple task, as the machine drills forward into the American psyche faster and faster these days, slowed down by nothing, and remorseful of no amount of damage. "American Idol" and "So You Think You Can Dance" symbolize optimally the rapid decline of everything decent in the world, and by all accounts, a lot of people are watching.

I applaud any kid who, in this frightening time, can still put together reasonable sentences and is still capable of rudimentary critical thinking.

*golf clap for smart kids who don't watch too much tv*

The situation is, I believe, reaching a critical mass here. Something needs to be done before the world governing bodies are allowed to enter end-game, during which they will be able to brainwash nearly 100% of the population into believing any single thing they say, without what could even be considered minimal effort. The secretive totalitarian agenda that serves as the foundation of both the left and right sides of the political aisle in America has a singular goal of first turning our minds into infantile goo and then infusing that goo with propaganda and rhetoric allowing them to ride on our backs while we motivate them into their own personal utopia of both socialistic government mind control and fascist religious military-imperialism.

Make no mistake: Viacom and companies like it have been designed from the ground up to control the minds of our children and to drain the world of any “culture” that it may once have had. Take a look at the list of companies under Viacom control here. This company and others like it are the mouth piece for what is best described (albeit still not accurately) as the Illuminati, and they control almost all the media that people consume today. This wasn't a problem when people's media consumption was limited, but in the age of the internet and satellite TV, there are a LOT of people ready to sit in front of a screen for hours and hours on end, day after day, buying every bit of poison being shoved down their throat.

The world is theirs, as of late. The highest levels of government here in the US and around the world are all moving in (goose-)step with the largest media conglomerates towards the formation of a single-world-government apparatus who's inherent ends will entail some sort of horrible human farm, a la the first Matrix movie (in my opinion, the ONLY Matrix movie, as a side note).

I am here to offer a solution. The solution is three part, and will help to immediately cripple the powers that be which stand poised to consume the world in ignorance and pain. The solution is as follows:

Part One:

Organize a free concert tour headlined by The Jonas Brothers and Lady GaGa that will play shows in all the major cities in the United States.

Distribute the tickets online from the MTV homepage, from http://news.yahoo.com/ (where idiots get their daily “news”) and at Twilight book signings. Over-distribute tickets so that concert venues are packed beyond capacity, and at the door, screen the people entering the venue for IQ's over “70”. Per 10,000 ticket holders, there will be approximately four or five who have an IQ over 70, and it stands to reason that those people will have been coerced or otherwise alternately-motivated to attend the show. These people must be sent home.

Part Two:

We blanket the crowds at these shows with Agent Orange. According to some, the government is still sitting on stockpiles of Agent Orange, the toxic, carcinogenic herbicide used to de-forrest Vietnam during that conflict (See the Wikipedia article on Agent Orange here, but be warned, there are gruesome pictures in this article.) Now I know what some of you are thinking: “Agent Orange?! That is a bit harsh. Aside from the long-term environmental damage that the chemical could cause, the possible fallout from multiple sprayings in large American urban centers could indeed be catastrophic. And it goes without mentioning that Agent Orange is a terrible, evil chemical that, rather than causing immediate death, frequently causes a long period of agony and suffering, and can affect generations to come! Isn't there some easier way to deal with the sub-literate in our nation?!”

My answer to those who are thinking this is: “No,” and “that's the cost of doing business, so man up you pussy.”

The Agent Orange will put a stop to the biggest and most brain-damaged portion of what would inevitably become the foot soldiers for the Illuminati. The ramifications will indeed be grisly, but I have determined after literally MINUTES of research that this will be the best way to deal with this genetic backwash. This will buy our civilization enough time to enact Part Three of the plan.

Part Three:

To instill a little self-respect, decency, and cultural weight in what little portion of the population remains after the first concert series, we will organize a second concert series. Headlining the second free concert series will be none other than Tom Petty. My greatest epiphany was when I realized that the only thing that could possibly heal this broken world is the music of one Mr. Petty and his buddy's, the Heartbreakers.

I know. The whole plan seems severe, but if you look at the world around you, doesn't it seem as equally severe? Are you tired of feeling like just because you know how to read, you are an outsider? Are you sick of wondering what the hell happened to good TV and movies? This, ladies and gentlemen, is a grave issue. This is the fact that a generation before we had “The Godfather”, and today we are subjected to an endless slew of superhero movies written by third graders and “2012”. This is why earlier generations enjoyed “Lolita”, when now people are reading “New Moon” by the millions. This is the most serious of issues. KRS-One vs Eminem. The choice is clear. The idiots have almost given the world away to the governing bodies. Please, stand strong and find some way to help enact my three-part plan for a better tomorrow.

Thank you.

Results of Our Bike Ride

Here are a few photos from our bike ride in Longmont....

Me by a Body of Water:



Some Baby Geeses We Saw:



An Angry (and Trippy) Goose Statue:



My Girlfriend's Body By a Body of Water:

True Abraham

“Don't you want to go on the slides?”

“No, mother. I told you that it wasn't necessary for us to walk all the way down here.”

“But... you love the park...”

“This doesn't matter anymore, mom. I apologize.”

She was ready to pull her hair out. His had turned white about a week prior. Her boy had had the most beautiful brown hair, and now it was a sterile white shade. She had taken him to the doctor. The doctor was confounded, but had said that it might be the result of some kind of trauma.

The boy's blood type had changed though. And that had truly confounded the doctor. They ran the blood tests several times.

“Rupert is in good health, physically speaking. There is no way that his blood type could have changed. It just means that mistakes were made previously. There is no other explanation. I'm going to give you the name of a psychiatrist that practices up the street. Make an appointment,” the doctor had insisted.

It was a warm day in June, and the city park hummed with the normal bustlings. A foreign car with darkly tinted windows rolled by the park and the electronic sound of hip hop drum and bass rolled across the park and through the trees. The background noise of children laughing and screaming, and mothers and fathers talking, filled their ears. They sat on a bench near the playground. They watched the kids that he usually enjoyed spending time with.

“Rupert, please tell me what is going on.”

“My name is Abraham, now. If I told you what is happening, you wouldn't understand.”

All she had done for the last week was cry. She had woken her son up one morning and his hair had turned white and his green eyes had turned a pale blue. It was unexplainable. She was on a stretch of panic that couldn't last much longer.

“Damnit, Rupert, stop saying that!” she said as her eyes began to water again.

A team of small birds took to the crystal clear blue sky from a nearby tree.

“Mother, this will all be over soon. You won't be here tomorrow night. It has been seen on the imprint of time.”

She just couldn't take it anymore. The child next to her sat upright and still, with his hands folded neatly in his lap. His face had no expression. He stared forward into the playground, but his eyes were glazed over and she knew he wasn't looking at the playground.

“Just tell me what is going on, please!”

The psychiatrist had taken interest in the case, and was scheduled to see the child again the following day.

“He has clearly experienced some kind of trauma. There is no sign of molestation, though, or anything of the sort. He believes that his name is Abraham, and he is the most articulate seven year old I've ever dealt with. I'd like to see him again on Thursday, and I'd like to schedule a CT scan for him. He appears healthy, for the most part, aside from his delusion. As for the hair, there doesn't seem to be any explanation that I can see.”

The psychiatrist's words did nothing to assuage her panic. Her son wouldn't talk to her anymore, and when he did, it was in cryptic words. Eloquent, and biblical, he had begun talking in a way that she had never heard from a seven year old before.

The boy sighed, as if he was the mother and he was exasperated by his own nagging child.

“I am here now, and tomorrow I will be gone. Things have advanced farther than I had thought, and it is time for my work here to commence. I am the new Abraham, and I am here to lead everyone out of their own doom and into the light of peace. I don't have enough time to explain everything.”

“What do you mean you will be gone, though? What has advanced? I feel like I don't even know you...” the tears were beginning to roll down her face and drip down onto her white t-shirt.

She couldn't believe that she was having this surreal conversation with her own small child.

“Mama, I'm still your son. Be proud that your son is about to do what he will. I am your son and I am called Abraham and now that all the programs have failed these people, it is my turn. Earth is an anomaly. We don't know why the spark of free will came so early for you, but it has shattered everything. Not once has the Christ program ever failed before. Not once has the Buddha program failed. Never, in millions of years, has the Muhammed program failed. Even the hybrids and the prototypes have failed. I am here to right that which cannot be made right on it's own. And my message, unlike the ones before mine, will not be perversified and turned into hate or decay. I am your son, but now that I am awake, I have something to do.”

It had been like this for a couple of days now and she couldn't take it anymore.

What is he talking about? Where did he get this? She thought.

“Did you see this on TV?” she asked, hopefully.

She had asked him this before... hopefully.

“No.”

She decided to just humor the delusion.

“What are you going to do?”

“I am the angel of order. I am the balance to an endlessly imbalanced equation. I am here to turn the followers into leaders and to turn the leaders into dirt. I am here to burn the structures of ignorance and apathy that have marred what could have and should have been. I am here to twist this selfish gene in and around and over itself until it can be made to see the truth. Some believe that it cannot be done. Some believe that the anomaly should be allowed to destroy itself. But there are things here worth saving.” He spoke deliberately and slowly, saying each word crisp and clear.

His gaze briefly left the playground and centered alternatively on the sky.

She shook and cried.

“Why did your eyes change?! Why did your hair change!? What happened to you?! Who DID THIS TO YOU!?” she had raised her voice to a scream and was pounding her fist on her knees in front of her hard and fast.

She wasn't so much screaming at him but at herself. Now she broke down crying, and a few of the other mothers and children around looked over at her to see what the noise had been.

“Mom, please calm yourself. This will be over soon. It was written into the fabric of time. My hair has changed and will change again. I am the quantum machine. I am your son, yet not your son. I am Abraham, and I love you, and I must go soon.”

She knew that he was being serious. In that moment, she knew that no doctor would help and that her son was telling her the real truth.

“A world of half-evolved men are committing mass suicide here, over the greatest things that had been offered to them. It is not their fault. The ability to think came to you before the ability to know and to feel. Your blood tells the story. It was improbable, but the enlightenment of thought and logic came to these people a full fifteen thousand years too early. And now you kill each other with guns and you kill yourselves with television, and poison and you deny the inner-spirit at every turn. You deny the inward voice, and the connection to all of life. A genetic mistake, to be sure, but it can be righted.”

“I can't take this anymore...” she whispered through short, quiet sobs.

“You don't have to. Tomorrow, you will wash your hands of it. The seers foretold it. You will wash your hands of this realm.”

And then she knew. Her son would leave her that evening, marching out to fix some great problem she couldn't see, as impossible as that seemed, and the next day, she would take her life. Her husband had already passed. She did not want to be without the boy.

They sat there and she quieted down and the air smelled good. The smell of fresh cut grass and of dirt being kicked into the air in the playground, and the little hint of exhaust from the vehicles driving by. The perfect smell of that city park. They sat there, and Abraham grabbed the hand of the woman who had bore him into the world. He knew that she would die the next day. He knew that she would return to the life of the universe and that she would recycle into the stars. He knew that and was happy for her. He had a lot of things to do.

“Mom, I was supposed to grow up with you. I just want you to know that that was the plan. But things here are too close to ending for me to wait. If I do not go tonight, there's a good chance I wouldn't ever live to be a man anyway. Take heart. I am Abraham. I am the quantum machine. The balance. When this universe collapses in on itself and starts again, we will see each other again, in this very spot, and part of you will remember me, and part of me you, and this will get more comfortable. The universe is young and the world is younger still. When it has elapsed itself many times over, this will all become more comfortable.”

She sniffled and wiped her tears. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. It was insane, but it was coming from a seven year old's mouth. Some how, with it being her son, it had just enough gravity to be true. She knew it.

“I love you... Abraham,” she said, understanding that he was at once her son, and not.

“I love you, Julie,” he said, like an aged and learned man. At once, her son.

Chipping Away at the Self

Friday, and no work. My employer insisted that I take a day off because there is just not enough to do around the shop.

I suspect many things. I suspect that he may have sold the shop and is phasing employees out. I suspect that he is going to fire me. I suspect that he is going to fire my manager. I suspect that he is going to request that I work four day weeks for a while until things pick up and I suspect that any of these things could drastically change the quality of life that I have right now.

So I'm freaking out a little bit.

This inflated self that beats the war-drum that marches my mind toward chaos inside is, frankly, killing me. I guess i should just calm down and realize that "whatever happens, happens" but it's been really difficult in a lot of ways lately.

It's so goddamn hard to pin life down to a spot where it's "good". The constant balancing act is not one that I am very good at performing, and the way the scales tilt wildly is starting to make me sick just watching it.

If it's not one thing it's another.

What I would really like is to retreat into the mountains to live alone in a cabin for a while with only the bare essentials. My computer to write. Some light food. Water. My iPod. The very basic things are all I would need. This is similar to the feeling I sometimes get that I ought to deliberately commit some crimes so that I could get put into county lockup where I could just read and do nothing else. Just lay there and read and not worry about anything else. My times in jail have usually been ruined by the fact that I knew that I was getting out right away anyway, so I couldn't really relax enough to enjoy the fact that I had NO responsibility in there. If my stay was longer... maybe three months or so... I think I could really relax and take advantage of that fact.

If life has felt this way always to me... if it has always been something I wanted to run from, even through the vast variety of circumstances I have seen, then it stands to reason that the single thing that has been causing my pain this entire time is me. The self. The ego.

The fact that I think I know when I certainly do not.

I constantly return to the big questions in my life. They all point to that buddhist principle of the "loss of self". I hold on to things around me originally because I want them and think that they will complete me. Drugs. Women. Places. Food. Booze. I hold on to them so tight that it begins to push me to the very outside edge of sanity and reason and I begin to slip into madness (that's usually when the handcuffs and jail come in). But I hold on to them so tight and use them so hard to "complete me" that eventually I trick my psyche into absorbing these these things into it. Into accepting that they are a part of it. And then, in a way, the drugs DO become part of me. They fail to complete me, but they become a part of me. The woman fails to complete me but becomes a part of me. The Taco John's fails to complete me, but becomes a part of me. They become new appetites. Raging appetites. And suddenly, I'm farther away from chipping away the outer shelf of the self than I was before I started.

The things that bring me bodily mental or happiness become things that are stacked over the very thing that could bring me spiritual fulfillment (I presume).

Not only do I have to break the bonds of natural want (the inherent greeds and desires that the human body comes with) but I consistently create new greeds and desires through which I always find myself having to break back through. I feel as though I'm running backwards sometimes.

I want to lose myself. I guess we just exist in a culture that piles so much over the self that it can't even be seen, let alone broken down into it's fundamental parts.

I am working on a going forward basis. The book is almost done, depending on the kind of feed back I get from the folks reading it over for me. I live with the girl I want to be with when I'm old and decrepit, and even though it has been trying, I am still grateful for that. If I lose my job, I will file unemployment for the first time in my life, and I guess that will be okay. My cat is healthy. I don't have a compulsion to get high. There is food in the fridge. I have a family that inspires me with their love every day. I have these basic things. I can move forward and, for one day, I can take something off of the pile of meaningless crap that sits on what's deep inside of me, instead of putting more onto the pile.

I only have to do it today.

The Times, They are a Changin'

Brothers and sisters, we stand here on the cusp of a new era. The dawn of a novel age. We stand close to the brink of enlightenment and, perhaps, we stand close to the very thing that has eluded humankind for so long: lasting spiritual fulfillment.

Doctor King shouted for us, from his rightful place at that podium in our nation's great capitol so many years ago, to “let freedom ring”.

Freedom is ringing, friends. It is ringing loud and its reverberations are shaking the foundation of all of the old ways. The old stigmas that bind us and hold us down. To old attitudes and bugaboos that pin us to a ground filled with the clay of prejudice and ignorance. Closed-mindedness, self centeredness and fear.

We STAND on the very edge of a cliff from which we can, nay, MUST dive. As a human race, we will take that leap of faith into everything that we can become. We will step forth into the next evolution of life and God herself will usher us into a paradise here in this realm.

“How?” the discerning contemporary mind asks. In a world so full of agony and bigotry.

“How can it be that we stand on this edge when it feels as though the fabric of our collective existance is being worn down into a dirty nest of thin fibers every single day by the wheels of some kind of monolithic karmic joke machine? What evidence can this “Charles” have of this? He is no prophet!”

You are right. I am no prophet. But we require a prophet if we are to be led out of this desert landscape. The baren nightmare. This pseudo hell. We need a prophet. My faith in the future is based not on science and not on dogma. My faith in the future is based on this simple thing: we have been given our prophet.

Behold: Anonymous.



After sending me a link to his photo earlier this week via a comment thread on an earlier blog-post, I was dumbfounded to find that one of our readers is very clearly THE thinker of our time, and THE most spiritually progressive symbol of humanity that we have ever seen.

I didn't come to this conclusion lightly. At first glance, you may just be thinking “oh, great! One of Charles' readers is a transvestite.”

That is what I thought.

But I had a dream. Yes, brothers and sisters, I HAVE a dream. In my dream, I was compelled to direct the inner eye to the deepest genetic memory within. My eye was pointed to something within the very construct of my body at the smallest sub-atomic scale, and I saw written there on every inch of this prescient genomic tablature a story of a human race that would suffer for a time, but would be led into the light of the spirit out of chaos by a man wearing... you guessed it... a short plaid skirt and black and white striped knee-high socks.

I saw little else, and my mind grasped at knowing but found none. There was only feeling. The feeling of warmth and safety. The feeling of being home.

When I awoke the morning after the dream, I went immediately back to the link that “Anonymous” posted and I was amazed at how clearly his photo matched the imprint left on my cerebellum by the dream. I knew, then, but ignorant like a child, I had to be sure.

I blew the photo up to inspect it more carefully, and ladies and gentlemen, I was amazed to find this:



Scrawled in some kind of glorious, ancient tattoo, on Anonymous' chest was this beautiful message! The message of HOPE.

This confounded me.

It could only be one thing. A sign from the universe. A sign from the symmetry that wraps us all and binds us together as the living vibrations of time itself. He is here to show us freedom. To let it RING!

The radical heart and soul that exist within a man are so daring. I could see clearly in my dream-journey that indeed, I would be there to personally bear witness to the greatest man that our civilization will ever know. He is the end product of the next four trillion years of evolution. Some kind of wonderful time travelling bringer of light and peace. And he has chosen to reveal himself here on this blog, to you, my readers. This may in fact be our greatest honor. The beacon that will spread light from this day on forward into the remainder of our beautiful lives.

This IS, brothers and sisters, the dawn of the new age.

Mr.Anonymous will, in due time, show us prosperity and splendor the likes of which we have never seen. I can only hope that, being the first one to bring you the good word of our new prophet, the brave and daring freethinking man who wears girls' clothes and a black rubber tooth protector, that he will find it in his heart to smile upon me. May he grace this blog with his presence one thousand times over. And when the earthly realm is transformed into an eden, as hate and fury fall away into the solar winds being whisked forever into oblivion, I am ever hopeful that Anonymous will indeed be there to personally show me the way to a better life.

My friends... we are:

“Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

A Time To Poop

Greetings!

Today we have a very important topic to discuss. This is a topic that I hold near and dear to my heart. Some of you may be “grossed out”, or may not want to read this blog because it's “asinine that anyone would write about such a thing and it proves that Charles is a degenerate and suffers from the same de-evolutionary symptoms that he rails against time and time again in public discourse”. But please, just hear me out.

Sometimes, we poop our pants.

Am I right? I mean... sometimes it just HAPPENS people. None of us are perfect, and sometimes we accidentally mistake a runny bowel movement for a little flatulence, and we wind up with muddy shorts.

Trouser Chili, to be specific.

Sometimes we wind up with an adobe smear between our cheeks as if they were bricks being put together by some archaic master of masonry.

This happens. I know several people to whom it has happened in their adult life, and I am willing to bet that even the people who say “that never happens to ME” are lying.

This is a story about a time when I deuced myself.

Let me preface this story with two other stories. First off, some background on why I have had a propensity to deuce myself perhaps more often than others might. I'm not saying that I DO splatter my pants more often than others. I am merely saying that (in the past) there was a definite cause to my lack of control that caused the particular situation at hand.

I am a bulimic. I am recovering, slowly, just as I am recovering from about three dozen other raging character defects which have consistently caused me misery and strife over the years. Wikipedia (I love Wikipedia) notes in their article on bulimia that it can be diagnosed as (among other things):

Purging type bulimics: self-induce vomiting (usually by triggering the gag reflex or ingesting emetics such as syrup of ipecac) to rapidly remove food from the body before it can be digested, or use laxatives, diuretics, or enemas.

Did you pay attention to that part about the use of laxatives? I had that. I would, off and on for several years, use laxatives of a couple different varieties as a method of weight control. It is a very ineffective mechanism by which to control your weight, as your body is still absorbing almost all of the nutrients and fat in the offending food. But the disease is one of compulsion, and I acted on this behavior as such.

The second “pre-story” is just to explain to you that at one time I found myself living in Greeley, Colorado with a girl who was plain faced and generally unremarkable in every way except that she had the foulest breath I may have ever smelled, and she was obsessed with “World of Warcraft”. I saw this chick play twelve hour stretches of this game, talking to her imaginary friends through a cheap headset on her computer, and getting really upset when one of her “raids” (or whatever the hell they are) didn't go well.

I have nothing against gaming or gamers. I love video games. But some of these World of Warcraft fans have taken this addiction thing to a new level. It's strange and foreign to me. I have never peed in a bottle so that I wouldn't have to get up from my computer, interrupting a video game for two minutes. I know a couple of WOW players who have. That's all I'm saying.

So me and “Gertrude” (her fictional name here) had nothing in common. She would ramble on about her video game in words painted with a mysteriously horrible odor from her mouth over dinner, and my eyes would glaze over as I looked around the room to find anything to distract me. A TV. A bar fight. An old person. Whatever. Anything was better than listening to her talk about leveling up with her freakin' night elf character.

We found ourselves in this situation as we sat at Point A on the map of Greeley (See Below). Point A is the Armadillo, My favorite restaurant in the world. It is awesome, and I highly recommend the “Chili Con Queso” cheese dip. It is heavenly.



I believe, although I am not certain, that I may have ingested some Exlax in order to lose enough weight to become physically appealing to... well... anyone besides Gertrude. We ate dinner, and as we got up to leave the restaurant, I had the passing thought that I ought to blast a dook there before we left. But I figured: “we're going right home anyway. I can hold it.”

So we got in this girl's Lexus (she had some rich grandparents who had bought her a Lexus which got shitty gas mileage, cost hundreds upon hundreds of dollars to service, and was insanely expensive to insure. Good move, gramps, you moron). We were driving along the blue line indicated on the map, back to Point C (my apartment). We got a couple of blocks (to Point D), and I realized that I absolutely should have used the facilities back at Point A.

“Hey, I have to use the restroom, like, RIGHT now,” I said.

“Oh no. Can you wait 'til we get home?”

I moaned. I knew I was seconds away from a blow-out of British Petroleum proportions.

“No. Take me to a gas station.” I would have screamed it, but I felt if I made any sudden or strong action, I would lose it.

I regretted leaving Point A. I wanted so bad for the toilet in Point C (a cheap “American Standard” knock-off, but I would have crapped in ANYTHING at the moment).

I moaned some more.

“Drive FASTER,” I said, directing her to Point B, a Conoco gas station ran by a nice Oriental gentleman and his (presumably) wife.

She seemed agitated, and drove faster.

“Almost there,” she said.

We pulled into the gas station on the east side of the building, near the side door. The bathroom was twenty feet away from me. A mere fifteen seconds. I opened the car door, but realized that I could NOT stand up. I had that intense feeling that if I moved at all, even one iota, I would surely fill my drawers up.

I sat there and Gertrude looked at me with fear, concern, and bewilderment.

“Are you... ok?”

I thought about it, and then moved a half an inch up out of the seat to test my fortitude. My stomach gurgled and I sat immediately back down, knowing that I couldn't move.

“I dont think so,” I muttered. I waited. I was in tremendous pain and I waited for the wave of pressure in my colon to subside so that I could stand up. But the pressure just got stronger. And stronger. And stronger still until I knew that whether or not it caused me to “let go”, I would HAVE to stand up and move towards the bathroom.

It was a calculated risk... I knew I didn't have very good odds.

I stood up maybe three inches off of my seat this time and the release came. My shorts ballooned up with a warm feeling, and I felt instant relief, such that I just sat back down in Gertrudes car, mushing the offending “matter” all over my shorts and down the back of my thighs a little way.

I got a little smear of it on the very edge of the front of her seat.

“Can you go back home and get me some new shorts?” I asked, looking over at her with embarrassment.

“Yes. Are you ok?!” she said.

“I'm fine.”

The smell was awful. I stood up and wandered into Point B while Gertrude drove back to Point C to get me some clean shorts. I felt the ooze running down the back of my legs. This was terrible.

Below is an accurate depiction of me at that moment, waddling into to the Conoco.



When I left that bathroom at Point B, it probably looked like a cow had exploded in there. Paper towels and toilet paper everywhere. My shorts, smelling like dead kittens and rotten milk, sat in the corner, slung over the side of a trash can. It took a solid half an hour for me to get everything cleaned up. I donned the new shorts that had been delivered to me, and exited the bathroom feeling confident and refreshed.

Ready to take on the world.

“That's REALLY gross,” said Gertrude.

And that, my friends, is the story about when I POOPED in a girl's LEXUS.

P.S. The relationship with Gertrude collapsed soon thereafter because of World of Warcraft, stinky breath, and a number of other factors. I don't know where that girl ended up.

If you're out there, Gertrude, can you tell me: is there a stain on your passenger's seat that reminds you of me every day?

To anyone else out there: has this ever happened to any of you? Any part of this? I need someone else to share my pain with, and I'm actively looking for a “Pants-Shitter's Anonymous” twelve step program to join. Anyone? Anyone?

In Review: Men Wearing Girl Clothes

Here's somethin' I've been meaning to get off my chest for a while.

Keeping in mind that the individual in the following picture is a “male” (arguably), I just have to say: what the fuck is this?



Wait for it.

Wait for it......

Just WHAT IN FUCK'S NAME IS THIS!?!?!?

Ok. Hopefully you have the gist of my beef here.

Now, please understand that I'm a rational man. I am very socially liberal and I think that it's a wonderful thing that people can express themselves through any means they choose, be it a pink mohawk, a Prince Albert, or a goddamn “If You're Going To Ride My Ass, At Least Pull My Hair” bumper sticker stuck on the back of their faded 1993 Ford F-150. You know. The one in which they will conceive all five of their little white monkeys to the tune of a mix tape containing only the Insane Clown Posse and Toby Keith. But please, for the sake of all that is holy (which is precious little in this world), can someone explain to me the PANTS these kids are wearing today?

Damnit this shit is CRAZY. I guess I could let the neon colors go for a while. I even said little about the return of those horrible graphic posterized prints from the 80's on oversized t-shirts. I went so far as to accept the whole tight pants thing when it was just the “Emo” kids doing it (see next illustration).



Speaking of which, I still don't know what “emo” is except to know that it is some kind of club for kids who were sexually abused by their grandmothers...

Now, though, that a LOT of kids who don't exhibit the normal “Emo” characteristics of severe and outwardly apparent mental handicaps, having vaginas despite identifying as men, and generally making me we want to hit them with a baseball bat, are now wearing these skinny pants! I can tell them apart because emo kids make me think of baseball bats, and these little fairies who aren't emo but still wear skinny pants make me think of poison-tipped-porcupine-catapults.

Where are these dudes' parents?! If my kid tried to dress like that, believe me, he would get beating worse than he would for sneaking into my secret magazine box OR for stealing my car without asking. Granted, my children are in for a lot of beatings anyway (it's how I was raised, and I turned out FINE!) But let me lay the scenario out to you. Imagine my boy coming home from a shopping trip with his friends on a Saturday afternoon. I'm sittin on the couch enjoying a good movie, and I say “Hi son!” while turning me head to see the boy.

“Hi dad!” he would reply.

Then I would notice the pants. I'd give him the benefit of the doubt.

“So are you dressing up like a girl for some school activity?”

To which he would reply: “No dad, whatever do you mean?!”

Still giving him the benefit, I say: “Well you must be in some kind of comedy show or something to be wearing women's' pants around like that...?”

I would start to get nervous when he replied: “No dad. This is the cool way to wear pants now.”

I would glance at the other boys, his friends, and see them also wearing pants that were certainly destroying their chance of ever procreating successfully.

“Bull shit! Ha Ha. You guys are too funny! But really... what's it for? Did you guys lose a bet?”

They would just stare at me. I would stare at them. Then quietly, I would stand up, grab the rubber hose off it's mounting spot on the wall behind the couch, and lunge towards the boy, catching him real good across the face in that first swing.

“OW. DAD PLEASE! NO!” the little bastard would yell, but I would be relentless with my blows, slapping him black and blue all over. He would be incapable of running or self defense because of his girl pants.

“RUN! SAVE YOURSELVES!” he would valiantly cry out to his friends. As they abandoned him there on the floor, hearing only the slaps of rubber against back-skin in the distance behind them, I would be screaming: “WHY SON!? WHY!? I SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN A GOLDEN RETRIEVER LIKE YOUR MOM SUGGESTED INSTEAD OF YOU!!!”

Wow. Hopefully that sums that up. The point is this: I don't want to see the tiny little genital bulge than any of these little queens might have to show with these ri-goddamn-diculous pants. I am not a bigot and I am generally very tolerant, but this shit is over the line. I mean... maybe you girls out there need to start putting out a little more in high school so that these boys don't resort to... whatever they are doing that makes it necessary to wear these pants.

The only “statement” in this fashion is this: “I am a bitch and I want Charles to beat me severely. I don't even know who David Bowie is, so I can't possibly understand that he was the only person who could have possibly pulled this type of thing off in the history of man. I would be better off wearing a freakin gunny sack with holes cut out for my head and arms. I am on a mission to drain this world out of all that is useful, cool or happy. These pants, like nothing else, indicate my non-existant “wang-chung” and my non existant cerebral cortex.”

This has got to be some kind of Orwellian 1984 scheme anyway. It's the systematic de-evolution of sexuality and style as we know them perpetrated purposefully on the American people by a super nova of a federal government, hungry for power at all costs, spanning both sides of the aisle and many decades. Soon we will all be unnattracted to each other so that the government can tell us who to mate with and when. “American Idol” and “So You Think You Can Dance” are prototype mind control programs which, once perfected, will zap you into perfect idiocy in mere moments, instead of over the course of three or four episodes. Viacom is the mouth piece of the Illuminati, Obama and Bush are the same person before and after the first successfully race transplant surgery and skinny pants on guys is the goddamn first sign of the end times!!!

Please, God, give us another Jim Morrison and another Chuck Bukowski! Please SAVE US!!

If you wear these skinny pants, and you're a guy: fuck your pants.

The Week

Have y'all ever eaten asparagus? Like a bunch of it? And then noticed that your pee smells really cool almost immediately after eating it?

I LOVE that. I have that RIGHT now. But that is not the point of this post.

Just wanted to jot a quick something up here to let you all know where I'm at. Felt like I haven't had as much time to write lately, which is frustrating. When I don't write I feel like I just ate a huge meal, i.e. thanksgiving or Easter dinner at my mom's, and I really have to toss a slop but it's just not to that point yet and I'm just tired of being so full...

Incredibly uncomfortable. I guess that's possibly linked in with the whole bulimia thing.

I had a relatively good week otherwise. I feel content, despite various financial woes and the tedium of work. I feel optimistic today that I have a measure of control over these things which is significant, albeit not total. I have felt connected to the “higher power” (or whatever kept me clean today), but I have felt simultaneously disconnected from the 12 step fellowship of which I am a part. This can be a dangerous spot for me, so I will make it my goal this week to make sure I am making daily phone calls (to my sponsor and other recovering addicts) and to get some serious step writing done.

To some of you, you probably know about step work. To others though, you're probably like: “what the fuck is this guy jabbering about?” Briefly, I'll just say that the 12 step program requires more than just reading the steps in succession off of a poster posted in a meeting place. It involves quite a bit of writing, and much of the writing is deeply introspective and can be, at times, challenging to actually crystallize on paper.

The biggest challenge for me is the leap of faith that it takes for me to accept that I need to do the step work in order to stay clean in the first place. Even though I feel okay right now and have no desire to go to Greeley and get a ball and a handle of schnapps and start myself into that frightening goddamn grind again, I know that if I don't do the necessary work, that that will eventually become my reality. It's so strange to me, the whole 12 step thing. I consider myself normally a man of logic, and I know that, frequently, that logic is skewed or even drastically warped by selfishness or self-obsession. Nevertheless, I believe in logic and I think that my blind belief in logic is as dangerous to me on a deep level as some people's blind faith in religion.

I just know that the only way I've ever felt any real level of relief, and the only way I've ever experienced real self-improving growth, was through working the steps in the past with a sponsor. And even then, it's proved incredibly difficult.

That said, I'm really grateful that I have a choice today. I can choose to do the right thing and move forward into a life of joy and plenty (plenty in the psychological or emotional sense). So tomorrow, I will get some step writing done. If I don't, any one of you is welcome to find where I live (some of you already know), and you are welcome to come rearrange my kneecaps with a tire iron.

Speaking of rearranged kneecaps.... I was at my parents' house for mother's day today (which was awesome by the way, what with my sister's fantastic cooking and the unbeatable company of my family), and I was helping my dad run some tubing through a hole in the wall behind his dresser in his room. In usual form, I was rushing around and not enjoying the moment, and I happened to bust my god damned knee super fuckin hard on the corner post of my parents' bed.

Allow me to describe: the corner posts of this bed are essentially four inch by four inch wooden posts and they are located directly at knee level. They are, for all intents and purposes, square and sharp. The bitch of this horrible situation is this, though: the bed spread my mom uses covers the posts, and at times the way the bed spread lays, you can barely discern the outline of the post from the rest of the bed. So a combination of this and my being in a hurry caused me to destroy my knee on the corner of this thing at like three million miles per hour.

My mom said “I think the whole neighborhood learned the F-word...”

I screamed pretty loud. (Sorry mom.)

And now my knee hurts and I am limping around like a freaking hunchback.

Anyway... it was all worthwhile in the end 'cause my dad gave me a hand-me-down external hard drive and my sister's dinner was AWESOME and we did a few crossword puzzles all together (my girlfriend has recently learned that she is very good at them) and then we watched Iron Chef America and ended the evening without having to scream “fuck” anymore.

Oh and I'm still thrilled about the smell of my urine.

I look forward to blogging more this coming week. Do one of you wanna hit me with a topic? I'll talk about the damn dolphins getting hurt by the oil in the gulf. That really sucks, especially after having viewed “The Cove” which was a terribly sad documentary about a Japanese town that makes a lot of money off of fuckin' up dolphins in terrible ways. I'll talk about my views on holocaust denialism. Or I can just tell you about the time I crapped my pants while in a Lexus that belonged to my girlfriend at the time (bonus: you'll learn about how gross this chick's breath was)

Whatever you want. Leave a comment. Love to you all.

A Mi Mama

This one goes out to my Mother. I don't know that she pays much attention to my blog, and I don't know that it would be a bad thing if she didn't, but hopefully, Mom, you'll find your way to reading this one.

For any of you out there who have no familiarity with my Mother, let me just introduce her. Her name is Stephanie and she is the most patient and steadfast woman I have ever known. Anyone that knows me would know that, since I was about fifteen years old (maybe even before that) I have been probably one of the hardest burdens that any Mother could ever have to bear.

Unfortunately, it only STARTED at fifteen. My Mom has had to pick me up from jail more times than any Mother should have to do that kind of thing. She has spent hundreds upon hundreds of near sleepless nights worrying about me and my well-being, because my well-being for years was something that I was constantly putting in jeopardy. I have been the antithesis of a good son in many many ways.

Around Mother's Day, I usually feel a lot of guilt and a lot of powerlessness when I look back at it all. I always wonder: what am I supposed to get her? A card? Flowers? What would anything I got my Mother matter when compared to the unbelievable strife that I put her though?

I know most people probably look back and think: “Wow, I put my parents through a lot of shit,” but brothers and sisters, I didn't just pierce my nose or run away from home or hang out with a “bad crowd” for a couple of years right near the end of high-school. Whatever I used to define as “sheer sociopathy” has over the years changed to become more and more drastic and more and more horrible because I kept raising the proverbial bar in my life for so long. So how would a card do anything? How would flowers do ANYTHING?

What I wish I could give my Mom is her time back. I wish I could give this great woman back all those nights she stayed awake wondering about me. I wish I could give her back all those tears that she shed when she watched me coming down off of God-knows-what, wondering whether or not she should take me to the hospital at 3 AM. I wish I could give her back all the energy and money and sweat she has expended being my Mother.

I can't give those things back (although, if you all buy fifty copies apiece of my book when I finish and publish it, I might be able to give SOME of the money back).

I can't give those things back... and there is little I can do...

...except to promise my Mom this:
I will stay clean for the rest of today.
I will smile today.
I will not hurt anyone today.
I will not be in jail tonight.
I will not be in a hospital bed tonight.
I will look to God for strength today.
I will honor your effort in my life in all that I do in my life.
I will never EVER forget all that you have poured into my cup.
I will be here for you until you don't need me anymore, in whatever capacity is deemed necessary. On your terms, not mine.

Mom: you have bought my shoulder for the rest of my life. It is yours. Cry on it. Lean on it. Punch it as hard as you can. Use it to lift anything that you can't lift on your own. Hang the baggage on it. Or watch while I use my other shoulder to support another. But know that the shoulder on my right is yours, for Mothers Day and forever. You have paid for it one thousand times over.

You have taught me how to stand strong in the face of overwhelming adversity and you have taught me how to let someone else's head rest on my frame, quiet and peaceful, even when supporting their head takes a piece out of me.

You have taught me that it is not “okay” but rather IMPERATIVE that I keep smiling and keep moving forward.

Thank you for everything you have taught me. I consider you one of the smartest and wisest people I have ever met, and will never forget that you imparted to me everything you knew about life at no cost. As long as there is a breath in my body, your name and your compassion will be held in the highest esteem for all who hear of it. You have defined for me many words.

You define:
Confidant.
Counselor.
Woman.
Friend.
Mom.

And the Winner Is.... (2)

We had some fantastic entries for the contest this week. To refresh for everyone, the contest was basically to create a list of three "tips for female motorists" that would make me laugh, or to unload on me about the plight of the modern American woman and about how women still don't get a fair shake...

It would appear as though we have some smart readers, because none of you tried to run the whole "plight of the woman" thing. It would seem we have all accepted the fact that women do indeed have, and always had, it better then men. I mean... I don't see too many chicks working on that show "Dirtiest Jobs". I don't see any female police officers (I know some of them identify as females, but come on... really? You may be pre-op but you can call yourself a man, we won't fault you for it.) And then there's the war thing. I didn't notice a lot of ladies runnin' up on Normandy beach in Saving Private Ryan. Must be nice to be guaranteed not to have your hand blown off by a grenade.

I digress eternally....

Anyway.... the winner is.... *makes drum roll noise with his mouth*

Margo! her entry read:

#1. Drive real fast, and get irritated when someone is driving at speed limit or lower.
#2. If someone is trying to pass you, speed up and do not let them in. You belong in front.
#3. If someone seems to think YOU are driving too slow and rides too close, quickly swerve into the other lane (after checking if clear, of course), and then quickly swerve back behind the other vehicle and return the favor.

Again, I must say that I pretty much enjoyed all of the posts today. You are ALL winners! I particularly enjoyed "The Original Cracker's" number 1 and 3, as well as the unfolding rivalry between Jera and her mysterious antagonist.

In regards to the sixth entry: John.... I'll make you a sammich...

Now I know I promised a baBILLION dollar cash prize... but here's the deal on that:

My Wallet:



The Contents of my Wallet



So Margo... I'm just going to have to owe you ok? And lay off with the buggin me for the money before it even starts. I can hear it now.

"Charles, can I get that money?"
"Charles where's my baBILLION dollars?"
"Hey how about that money you owe me?"

Damnit! You SPONGE! You are sucking the LIFE out of me!!!! There's nothing LEFT of me!

Shit!

Women Drivers: A Contest

Howdy, loyal readers.

(Disloyal readers: you are jerks.)

I found this brochure at the alignment shop near the body shop I work at:



Lol. REALLY!?

I laughed.

I laughed some more.

I showed my girlfriend and she said: "Why do they have that?" Half of me thought the same thing; "Women are people too! Statistically speaking, they are less of a liability than men on the road... isn't this brochure a throw back to the days of yore when stupid white men ruled the world and screwed it up regularly?! What kind of sick backwards ignorant bigot would commission the creation of such marketing material?" I thought.

The other half of me remembered nostalgically, but with great respect, what my dad taught me as a young lad. He said to me: "Son, we screwed up worse than we ever had before when we started letting them vote."

So I decided to post this blog to clear the air in my head.

So here's the CONTEST: Give me your top three "tips" that you would print on the inside of this brochure, OR a little self-righteous rant about women's equality in our society (please don't forget the Ani DiFranco quotations, and I expect the song and album to be cited properly), and I will choose a winner by Saturday morning. I will choose based on the random firing of neurons in my head some people like to call "free will". No other criteria are necessary. The winner will receive fourteen baBILLION dollars in cash, and an honorable mention on "In Review". Remember that to qualify for the prize, you must include your name with the entry.

P.S. I love Ani DiFranco. For real.

Dinosaurs

Here is a beautiful piece of artwork done by our one and only (so far) guest blogger: Jera!



I think I would call it: "Dinosaurs are Scary"

Jera calls it: "RAAAWWR. I'm A Dinosaur"


Oh well.... tomato... tomahto. Still worthy of the Louvre. Or our refrigerator. Whichever is nearest. I'll check on that.

Boulder Buffoonery

I caught this post on the Libertarian Party of Colorado blog.

I found it relevant, considering the angry guest blog we recently had here in which our guest had this to say regarding the parking in Boulder:

"Or maybe they should’ve just told me to come into the Parking and Services building bent over backwards with my pants down."

These are strong words for such a timid young lady. I can understand the pain emoted here. It's the same pain I feel every time I'm in that shit-hole town. There are two good things about that town:

#1: The cops are really nice, and their jail and city funded detox facility are both top rate facilities. I REALLY felt cared for on the multiple occasions I found myself interacting with any of these fine folks (unlike the dick heads in Greeley who tazered me for no damn reason).

#2: You can get all your hippie products there. Various herbal teas that are delicious. Sage you can burn to ward off the haunting spirit of the Republican Party. A variety of natural oils extracted from natural plants that will naturally cure your herpes that you naturally got ten years ago when you were a freshman at the college and you naturally got drunk and gang banged by the football team. All kinds of stupid ass shit. I hear they have nine tenths of of the world's supply of granola buried in a stockpile bunker underneath the university. I think they are planning on using it to stop the 2012 incident.

Back to the point: these morons in Boulder, in the months of January and February of this year, made $316,000 off of parking ticket revenue. I can smell the pungent saliva frothing out of the mouths of this raging bureaucracy. $316,000, and their new "goal" of 900 tickets per month per officer is not about MONEY!? Government programs line your pockets, don't they?! You amoral blood sucking VERMIN!

HA! What a JOKE!

So this bastard Kurt Matthews, the Director of Parking Services, and also part-time donkey fellator, has the nerve to say THIS shit to someone with a notepad and pen working for the Daily Camera:

"It's not for revenue production, it's not for punishment, it's not for meeting numbers," he said. "It is to manage the parking and the limited resource that we have downtown, primarily."

I park down there all the goddamn time you jerk! Resources?!?!?! What are you TALKING about?! I can ALWAYS find a spot.

By the way, I NEVER pay. By all means, please come find my Ford Escort downtown and strap a stack of tickets on my windshield. I will wipe my ass with them and mail them directly to your house. Or do you live in a teepee?! You should, you green freak.

Here's the deal, Boulder. You have the social issues right for the most part. Hooray for gay, pro-choice, don't bomb brown people, etc etc. Common sense begs all of that, though, so you aren't special. Just halfway educated by an oasis of government funded fancy fucking schools. Now please, for the love of god, pull your fiscal head out of your ass!

And while you are at it, realize that since you don't believe in god but rather some fruity "gaia" mother earth concept of reality, then you definitely are NOT god. So don't talk like you are omniscient. Don't give parking tickets as if you were the almighty. And do NOT bump into me while I am walking down Pearl Street trying to find a decent bagel sandwich.

I have noticed that each and every one of you mother fuckers in that town seem to think that the sidewalk is yours and that, just because my name is Charles and I don't jerk off to pictures of Marx, you wont get the hell out of my way when I'm walking. Normally, the courteous thing to do is at least split the difference and we can both move a little bit to alternate directions and not plow into each other. But you elitist pricks with your stupid scarves and berets and those hideous boots you chicks wear with black tights and your re-useable grocery bags won't even BUDGE. Like I'm not even human to you! I don't even KNOW you and you are ready to just slam into me at full stride! What the fuck!? Next time I am pushing your organic ass in front of moving traffic and praying that it's your precious "public transport". A HUGE bus.

Boulder is worse than hell. When asked for comment, Satan had this to say:

"900 tickets per month?! Holy shit! That's sadistic! Man, maybe I need to hire that Matthews guy to come work down here." He paused to chuckle to himself. "But seriously, no, we don't really have a quota. We really only issue parking tickets to people that park on the sidewalk or in front hydrants..."

In Review: Traffic and Idiots

We are introducing a new segment here at "In Review". This will be our first guest blog. It is written by the lovely and brilliantly talented Jera Dobroth. (see picture below)



Jera is my lady friend and she is studying Dance at CU Boulder. She enjoys things that pertain to the 80's, Star Wars, and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. But she has a problem with traffic and idiots... so without further ado... here is her guest blog.


A Guest Blog By Jera Dobroth

First of all, I would like say “thank you” to Charles for allowing me as a guest on his booming blog here. Today, I will be talking to you all (yes, every single one of you, especially YOU) how much I am so easily outraged by other people while I’m in my car.

Usually, I am a nice person and understanding of humanity, and somewhat tolerable of other’s behaviors. But from the very second I get into my car, everyone else on the road is the epitome of de-evolution at its best. These people seem to not even comprehend what a god damn gas pedal is used for, and most don’t even know that when they wasted half their life’s earnings on this piece of aluminum shit in which they loco-mote themselves around in, it came fully equipped with turn signals and a steering wheel.

Every single time I am out driving around, I wonder to myself: what do people in America have to do in order to receive their driver’s license these days? I think all they really need is a body of some sort to house whatever internal mechanisms that could possibly resemble a brain, and a name to go along with it. I mean, I myself belong to the growing “youth of America” as a college student in my early twenties, and I do recall having no trouble at all getting my permit and license from answering approximately 25 ridiculously easy questions that almost no one should have a problem with as long as they’re still alive and have some common sense in them. So I understand that you honestly have to be a registered mentally handicapped individual in order to not have the permission of getting behind a wheel, but it just seems to me that a lot of people are out there breaking the rules somehow.

Honest to God, Mary, Joseph, and the little baby Jesus himself. Who are these mother fucking cock-sucking sperm-dumping air-headed insignificant mongoloid pieces of donkey-ass SHIT who don’t know how to read signs, such as Speed Limit 65, and Right Lane Except to Pass?!!? And why don’t these dim-witted idiotic assholes realize that it’s just NOT COOL to pull out directly in front of me within the last 4 seconds before I’m about to pass their elementary-level educated ass? Puh-leese. Can’t they see that I’m in a tremendous hurry already and that I drive in the most efficient way possible and therefore do not want their ridiculously slow ass wasting my time in front of me? They are thieves. Robbing me of time, money, and gas. And respect for mankind.

This asinine country. I wouldn’t have quite as much of a problem with all this if I wasn’t in my car for multiple hours every day trying to get from home to school to home and all that jazz. But unfortunately, every breathing moment I spend in my car just ruins my entire day. This is why I’m so stressed and pissed off so often. Because of YOU retarded infantile pea-brains who shouldn’t even be allowed to WALK let alone drive.

This brings me to my next point: Parking [in Boulder]. Let me first express to you how I feel about Boulder in general. This is the place that spawns all these brainless freaks identified as “humans.” Now I know that probably half the “people” in Boulder choose other varieties of transportation, such as bicycle, bus, and bare feet, but they all still have the same yuppie fuck attitude and no mind of their own. Anyway, Boulder, and everything that is included within it, will have to be saved for a separate blog entry. I have a lot to say about that particular entity.
Note: I have met some fantastic people in Boulder since attending school there.

So. Parking. In Boulder. Let me first start by saying: HA...HA...HA. Because parking (free of charge) in Boulder does not exist. Period. Since moving to Longmont and having to drive to campus every day for classes in the last two weeks, I have already received three, count ‘em: one, two, THREE parking tickets thus far. One of them I was luckily able to contest. But they still raped me of $40 that I would never in my life want to give up to that pathetic city. I may as well have given it to some dirty hippie making cool rock towers on the corner of 28th and Baseline to go ice himself with. Or maybe they should’ve just told me to come into the Parking and Services building bent over backwards with my pants down. At least I’d know what to expect then. And I’ll assure you, THAT of all things will ensure that I never get another ticket of any kind in those parts again. In fact, I just called the city today inquiring about their commuter permits that they “so generously give out.” (There’s one left in the particular neighborhood division that would accommodate my needs. But you pay quarterly, every 3 months, “so there’s bound to be a few opening up.”) Oh, and it’s not even guaranteed parking. HA!

But seriously, every single street within a 5-mile radius of that behemoth of a school is around $10 by the hour. So good luck if you ever want to visit! Plan ahead and be prepared to lose every last penny that was recently occupying your bank account, because parking isn’t the only outrageously over-priced expense in that town. Also, look out for the dirty hippies standing on the corner of 28th and Baseline making a cool rock tower. They’re perfectly harmless....just look out. I would also advise you to stay off the roads. Here’s my number in case you are wondering what times of day I will be in my car as well, and you can make sure you don’t get in my way: (303) GET-FUCKT.

Thanks for reading! I’ll be looking out for you on the road to see who was actually listening. Maybe I’ll quiz you later...

In Review: The Running Man

(spoiler alert)

Last night was my second viewing of the 1987 film “The Running Man”, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. I guess this was the second viewing because I was only a wee one when I saw it the first time, and had forgotten how truly terrible it was.

Set in the terribly cliched post-apocalyptic Los Angeles circa 2017 (or some goddamn random year they pulled out of their asses to represent the “not so distant future”), the movie basically follows the story of Arnold (who had some other name, but we'll just call him Arnold, because that's the only role I've ever seen him play anyway), who was like, some futuristic Marine, until the government decided to pin a mass murder on him and put him in the slam. Or something.

Arnold orchestrates an escape from the prison in which he is confined, and the action sequences are absolutely HILARIOUS. I mean, really, it's nearly impossible to describe. The camera cuts are short and it causes the fighting to appear wildly disjointed and not at all realistic. I guess the cuts are so short because all of the actors involved were bums off of the street who would work for nothing, because most certainly the studio had to spend nine tenths of the budget on Arnold's superb acting.

The costumes were hilarious, and the women had these fuck-tarded 80's hair do's that can only be described as hair DON'TS. Wait. Scratch that. Hair do's that could only be described as goddamn asinine as fuck, and almost impossible to look at without laughing.

Anyway, worst comes to worst and Arnold ends up on this reality TV show called “The Running Man”. The premise of the show is that convicted criminals get a chance to fight for their freedom in a hellish dungeon where these pro-wrestlers with chain saws try to cut them into a million pieces. The show advertises that previous contestants have won their freedom, but it is later revealed that the contestants died in the dungeon like every-goddamn-one else. I guess.

The pro-wrestlers are a ridiculous crew. One of them even sings opera (I shit you not) while he tries to electrocute Arnold and his buddies. Big surprise: Arnold kills them all.

The best part of the whole damn movie is the little one liners Arnold delivers, like a twelve year old putting on a play at school. For example, after cutting one of the pro-wrestlers in half with the dude's own chainsaw, Arnold indicates that the guy “had to split”. I almost SPLIT my side.

Also, there's this black dude with a flame thrower. Arnold cuts the gas line to the flame thrower, so this guy is basically a leaking propane tank (speaking of which, I'm glad everyone in New York is safe) waiting for a spark to blow him up. In walks Arnold with a lit signal flare. Just before blowing the African American gentleman into fiery dust, Arnold says: “how 'bout a light?”

That REALLY lit me up. In a humorous way.

Couldn't stop laughing.

Subsequently, a whole bunch of other shit happened and Arnold got to kiss some Brazilian swimsuit model in the end. I briefly imagined them having sex, and realized that even if she were reinforced with some kind of titanium exo-skeletal-suit, that there would be no way she could survive a romp in bed with this steroid drinking freak monster without sustaining terrible terrible injuries that would surely leave her wheelchair-bound for the rest of her life.

I give this movie an A+. I'm thinking of reading the book on which it was based. I'm willing to bet that I'll walk away from it a changed man. Enlightened. Satisfied. At peace with myself.

Anyone else out there seen this? Have you read the book? Let me know so we can have witty banter about how hilarious it was.

Please?

I'm so lonely.