If you're one of the many mouth-breathing squish-heads that believes this tripe, I have great difficulty apologizing because this is one of the funniest damned things I have ever read. I love you James Randi.

It seems to happen to me about one a year. I get sick of my job, I psyche myself up by reading the classifieds (“I could be vet, right? Oh, they mean war vet….) I sit down to update the ol’ resume, and all hope is dashed to the ground when I discover how woefully unqualified I am to even be holding the job I currently have.

It’s starts wonderfully, with imaginings of being everything from a massage therapist to diesel mechanic. Nurse’s assistant, insurance salesman, construction worker, sous chef, housekeeper, the ubiquitous “customer service specialist,” canvasser for Greenpeace (scratch that one.), marketing, healthcare, food, WHERE DOES IT END?

And this only includes the jobs I can identify. What the hell is a journeyman?

Oh my, Santaland is hiring. I know I’ve already ripped off the entire errant humor thing, shall I be so callous?

The resume is always the worst. Objective: To obtain an entry-level position in an exciting and professional [fill in the blank] firm, group, or organization with real potential for advancement and future career opportunities. What bullshit. I want $14.50 an hour doing anything that doesn’t involve putting my hand into anything alive, and even that is negotiable. Experience: Medical billing. Shoot me now. I may as well have gotten a shitload of experience weighing elephant testicles. Sure, it’s a skill that’s in demand, but there’s a reason no one has ever heard of it. When I moved to Portland I told myself, using these word exactly, “I would rather dig my eyes out with a spork than go back into medical billing.” Three weeks of unemployment was all it took until I was going crazy at my ocular cavities with a plastic spoon/fork. Education: This is about the time I erase everything I’ve already written (using the backspace, character by character, I'm very dramatic that way) and then begin to write a worthless stream-of-consciousness explication of how I'm feeling, fully intending to put it in my blog, knowing full well no one is going to read it. I need a drink.

Okay, I'm back. Ice quietly tinkling in a tumbler of scotch, I realize I’ve already lost my train of thought. Am I really this pathetic? My mind turns to the filthy crab pot that’s sitting in my backyard waiting for a scrubbing, the dvds that have to be returned by midnight of last night (don’t forget honey!), the library book that is literally months overdue (current fines: $16.85, I get email alerts), the myriad of blogs, humor columns, political notations and jokes that lay, incomplete, on computer disks around my office, my god there’s even an article about Darwin in this month’s National Geographic that I haven’t even finished!! What the fuck is wrong with me!

Check it out, fuck is an accepted word in this fucking word processing program! Fucking, shit ain’t that a doozy! Fuck all fuckin’ shit hell damn fuck ass bitch. Shit, they’re all acceptable!

An hour of my life is gone and all I’ve accomplished is a page of text that, in the miniscule chance it graces someone’s computer screen, I deeply hope they will not tell me.
(slurp)

I love scotch. Actually love is not the right word, the word “love” is so abused by pop culture that I will invent a new word, “lurv.”

I lurv scotch.

The worst part is, for something I love so much, I know next to nothing about it, mainly because I could never afford really good scotch. I can’t afford it because I don’t make enough money. I don’t make enough money because I have a shitty job. I have a shitty job because I never finished college. I NEVER FINISHED COLLEGE BECAUSE I WAS TOO BUSY DRINKING SCOTCH!!

My friend Neil is an engineer at Ball Aerospace in Colorado. That’s right, he’s a rocket scientist. My friend Jess is a panty designer for Victoria’s Secret and travels the world extensively, currently residing in Hong Kong. Meghan is a staff graphic designer for a huge metropolitan glossy in Boston. Luke is an accountant with a big firm in New Orleans. Ben is a teacher in L.A. Joe is a brain surgeon. That’s right, a brain surgeon.

I need another drink.

I think I may have identified the problem.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

(slurp).

“Are you in high school?” I was somewhat thrown off by the question. When I think of myself as a high-schooler I picture a wavy, pitch-black mullet and braces on my bottom teeth. Images of the bushy, carefully manicured sideburns (also dyed black) that just barely extended past regulation length. We could go so far as to mention the bright red Converse tennis shoes, at least two sizes too large, but we haven’t the time.

“No, I’m not in high school.” Introspective pause. “Do I look like I should be?” This was a trick question. ”I don't know. It’s just that the only people I know as big as you are either grown-ups or are in high school.” He was six years old, so some slack must be given, but that hurt. I pictured myself floating in the gelatinous void between high school and adulthood. Without a tether of some kind, I would simply sink into the nothingness and be lost to the world forever. No one would notice, after all, who reads this crap? This train of thought, inevitably led to my questioning, not just what the hell I’d been doing for the last few years, but what the hell am I poised to accomplish in the very brief time on planet Earth. The tears were beginning to well at the corners of my eyes.

I could have taken a seat next to the boy, and begun the lengthy explanation about why I decided not to join the Peace Corps, but frankly didn't want to have to explain the unique relationship between the Playstation 2, gin and how an organization's Nazi-like adherence to deadlines can lead down the path of self-destruction and low personal expectations. I was saving that speech for the Scared Straight crowd.

I started imagining this very child, crying and lamenting all the horrible crimes he committed against society. Apologizing for the horrible things he'd said to his mother, admitting to a room full of fellow “troubled youth” that he stole candy from his grandmother’s jar, even after she'd said he'd had enough. In a low, mouse-like voice, he would divulge clandestine activities involving the Iranian government, yellowcake uranium and vast sums of money in diamonds and Venezuelan oil futures. I would sit next to him, lightly touch his shoulder and admonish him for betraying his country and his grandmother, and then forgive him, knowing that my word of repentance and hope were his life line. The hot lozenge of a good deed well done would swell in my chest, and it would feel good.

Shortly after that escapade, had it been allowed to continue, I would have realized that “Scared Straight” speakers are always in prison (or worse) and generally have had to do very bad things to get a gig like that. Fortunately, I was rudely interrupted.

“Don’t you think it's weird that ALL kids want to be grown ups and ALL grown ups want to be kids?” This conversation was going downhill and fast. I was poised to make one of those extremely loud sarcastic responses I give to people at parties like, “Yeah! And why do all children seem to think I want to talk to them?” but thought better of it. All I could muster was, “If high school or adulthood are my only choices, then I'm going to have a drink.” I began thinking about the bottle of Dogfish Head 120-minute Pale Ale I'd had in the fridge for the last year, waiting for just the right occasion to open. Masturbatory depression exacted by a pre-teen seemed just the right occasion.

He looked me directly in the eye,” I'd like to drive a car and have a dog, but I can see why being an adult is not all that great, what with taxes and all.”

Biking downtown, I’m smiling and waving at all the wonderful people I know. Without warning, a drunk, behind the wheel of daddy’s new Bentley tears around the corner and connects. I’m thrown several yards, tattered and bloody, but miraculously I survive. There is no permanent damage, but the injuries will require a lengthy hospital stay. “It’ll be paid leave, of course,” Cal tells me. He and Julie come by almost every day, Julie’s cooking (which has significantly improved) spares me from the hospital cafeteria. The settlement is substantial, on account of all the witnesses. Between the big screen projection television and that laptop I always wanted, my recovery is speedy and I am escorted from the hospital clutching the new great American novel, publisher’s lined around the block, salivating for the rights to my inspiring story.
Julie had been pressuring me to go with her on some sort of vacation. The problem is she can’t think of a single place to go. I suggest Mississippi and receive an interesting look. She suggests Florida. I counter with Mexico. She parries with Canada and I twist, and thrust with London, but she’s on top of that with Amsterdam. We eventually call it a draw and decide on Bangkok because once we were in the grocery store and saw a book of Asian recipes. On the cover was a plate piled with bright red, boiled creatures resembling giant armored, multi-legged telephone receivers. The caption read, “Pepper Crab, Native to Thailand.”
Randall’s uncle Jake runs a pawn shop in Biloxi. We pack into Finn’s nineteen eighty-seven Chevy van, a.k.a. “Van-Halen,” and we drive down, Julie, Randall, Finn and I. Julie was none too happy about my including these two but the only was we were able to afford the trip was to stay Jake’s beach house, which required Randall, and Finn had the van.
Shortly after entering Biloxi, Beachfront Blvd. driving east, one starts to notice a pattern. On your right, the view of the Gulf of Mexico is obstructed by casinos, one after the other, for miles of Mississippi coast. On your left, opposite each casino is one pawn shop and one church, usually Catholic, directly across the street. This situation seems to me to create a sort of win-lose scenario. Or rather a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” mentality. Conceivably, a person could come to Biloxi, lose every dime they have, sulk across the street and pawn the watch, ring, antique armoire, etc. Brimming with new-found wealth, and a the need to “win it all back” so the Mrs. never becomes the wiser, that person could dash all the way back to the Blackjack table before their rum and coke goes flat. After losing it all again (and perhaps repeating the cycle several times over) this person could, head drooping in a free drink haze, enter the house of God and repent it all, fully admonishing themselves of any wrongdoing and beginning life anew with fresh perspective and joy. They could do all this, and never have to travel more than a block.

Oh puh-lease! This is akin to "I'd rather be slapping wife-beaters," or "I'd rather be dismantling puppy-crushing machines." This perfect example of masturbatory expression is what makes me want to slash some tires. Precisely how does one "smash" Imperialism? By writing your ass-hat Congressman? Not on your life, we trust representative democracy as much as we trust Dick Cheney in a Wal-Mart smock! The answer is Organic Gardening!. That's the way to put the power to the Proletariat!
My friend Meghan, when travelling the treacherous streets of Boston, will often spit on the cars of inconsiderate motorists. I was very tempted, but apparently it's become all the rage in France.

“Doc prescribed these pills for the pain, but my stomach is so small now, I can't swallow them”

Joey had his stomach stapled six months before. These days, his stomach can only hold about one ounce of fluid.

“So three times a day, doctor's orders, I drop a pill into a few ounces of Budweiser with one packet of Equal and let it fizz for a minute. Some kind of chemical reaction dissolves the pill it’s pretty neat.”

Joey smiled and drank the concoction. Visible behind him is a photo of he and his brother when they were featured in Discovery magazine six years ago. Joey and Richie are well known in the circle of amateur astronomers since their discovery of a new comet. They named it Mildred, after their mother. In the photo, Joey is perhaps three times the size of his brother, his exaggerated belly nearly touching the floor.

“My wife couldn’t believe the doc prescribed three beers a day, she even called him to make sure I didn't hear that dumb shit from the bartender at the VFW hall.”

Joey fought in the Korean War. He was active duty for twelve days before his platoon was ambushed by Chinese troops. He was shot twice in the abdomen, one bullet grazing his lower spine. The hormone treatment he received in Hawaii after his surgery is what he claims caused him to start gaining weight. He peaked at close to six hundred pounds.

“Then I told her the doc prescribed pussy three times a week, but she wasn’t buying it.”

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I have added a feature to this site wherein you, the unfortunate victim of my literary drivel, can respond with words of icy criticism. At the end of the newer entries in this blog, there are now "comments" links. Simply click on the link, and it will allow you to respond to a specific posting that I have made and you, for some reason, have read.

I look forward to hearing the different ways you all can structure the phrase "unprecedented failure," but I have faith in your collective creativity.

As always, I can be personally ridiculed at mandalore84@msn.com
 

I wish you all a safe, fun and thoughtful Independence Day.

"The arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties being with one mind resolved to die free rather than live slaves."
-Thomas Jefferson, 1775

There would be nights when I would lie in bed staring at the ceiling desperately hoping for something terrible to happen. I would imagine a drunk teenager swerving down the street, left and right, left and right, finally losing control, jumping the curb and plowing into the front of my house. My home, destroyed, the teenager, dead at such a young age, but me having emerged from the rubble miraculously unscathed. Of course my cat would also be unharmed, having been nestled quietly under my bed sheets.
I would then finally take stock and begin anew. I would become the lone force for change in my life, and become the independent person I always knew I could be. Then I usually trail off into becoming a superhero through some strange genetic experiment, or perhaps some stray radiation.

The furniture store where I work basically sucks, but it gives me nights free to write. One of these days, I’m going to start writing. Instead of giving me a raise every year, my boss gives me a case of beer, which I gladly accept, because every year I barely expect that. Low standards and expectations make for a more satisfactory life. When I ask for a raise, I get a keg, so I’m known for having the best parties on the block.

Unfortunately that's not saying much, as my neighborhood is awash with young professionals and stay-at-home moms. Kids three and four years younger than me VP-ing corporate offices whose bathrooms I’m not fit to soil. They’re reasonably good people, as long as you don't catch them between 8 am Monday and 5 pm Friday. Sometimes I think they work so hard simply so they can have the best funeral in town.

I live with two guys, Randall and Inferno. Inferno likes to be called inferno because that’s his handle in some Internet hacking group called GOTHIC. He likes to describe himself as some keyboard jockey, but mainly what he does with the banks of humming machinery in his room is pirate video games to be freely downloaded by pimply teenagers around the world. Randall works at a coffee shop.
Our lives here at 123 Buena Vista circle peak at the mundane. That peak is characterized by the long list of toeheads the three of us keep as companions. None of them really has any sort of allegiance to any one of us, and some of them we can’t even remember who assimilated them into the group. There’s the guy with the curly hair that is obsessed with discovering the secret ingredient in coca-cola and blackmailing the company. Then there’s the girl whose entire wardrobe, including bags, hats, shoes, fingernails and pet bird, are aquamarine. Then there’s the wrestler. As one can see, few of them even have names anymore. Except the wrestler, we all call him “bitch-school.”

My mother moved away years ago, and left me the house. I had to take in roommates to afford keeping it. She married a shoe salesman from Bend, Oregon and they moved to Chicago. I think she still feels guilty about leaving, but guilt was a great talent of hers and she has to do what she can to keep in practice. My father lives with his third wife across town and is currently at the tail end of an incredibly nasty mid-life crisis involving a motorcycle and spray-on hair. He calls about once a week trying to entice me over to his house with the prospect of cheap beer and over-cooked meat. Of course I go every time.

Inferno’s parents came to visit once. They drove all the way from Cleveland in an RV that resembled the international space station. Silver air stream, solar panels, and approximately the size of Montana. They were both retired police officers and had decided to road trip around the country till they both were dead, by the looks of them; they had another couple of hundred years. They showed up on our doorstep at eight AM on a Sunday morning. Unfortunately, we had had a particularly nasty party the night before. The police showed up and knocked on the door responding to noise complaints. When there was no answer, the officer opened the door to discover myself, my roommates and many guests dancing the Macarena in the nude.

I awoke to the knocking in my skull only moments before the space station docked in front of the house, effectively blocking out the sun. Swimming through the beer cans I opened the door. They asked for Finbar. Finbar? I asked. Finbar O’Connell, they said. Any relation to Inferno O’Connell? I asked. One and the same, they said, uncomfortably processing “inferno.”

They didn’t stay long. They took us to breakfast and gave Finbar a check. His mother cried. The meal was uncomfortable because not much was said. Randall and I knew he hadn’t seen his parents since he moved away years before. One got the impression that some things had happened that no one was ever going to hear about.

I work four days a week at “Crazy Cal’s Home Furnishings.” I stain things, both intentionally and not so. The name of the store is not a play on his low, low prices, Crazy Cal is really crazy. He was in ‘Nam, deep in the shit. He drinks like Mickey Rourke in barfly, but at times tends to remind me of Dennis Hopper in blue velvet. It’s really creepy when he goes off on warm beer. He’s a much easier fellow to get along with when he’s drunk, I guess that’s what makes him an alcoholic. He’s come to a few of my parties, but he has to get really tanked to get up the nerve to make social calls, so he’s only there for about an hour before he passes out or gets grabby with aquamarine girl. His daughter runs the store, pretty much, but he still outsells the rest of his own sales team. When he gets into that groove, the man’s a wizard.

Tonight, a stray meteor shower demolishes half of my neighborhood, forcing me to take the role of leader and rallying the statewide effort to rebuild and comfort the families of the tragically lost. This, of course, is abandoned when I realize that the only people in the neighborhood whose names I even know are the Jacksons across the street, and the crazy bird lady down the block. And the only reason I know the Jacksons is they are the ones who constantly call the police about our parties. They also filed a civil suit against Randall when he spelled, “FUCK YOU” in their lawn with weed killer. Of course, there was no evidence he was involved because the only witness was too far away to determine whether was spraying the lawn or just pissing. He did allot of that too.

My cat hates it when I daydream, she knows I’m awake and concentrating on something and it’s not her. She is not a loud animal by any means, just spiteful. Nothing is sacred, no shoe, no article of clothing, no piece of electronic equipment spared from the scratches, vomit or urine. This also makes the conquest of writing quite a challenge. I’m currently working on apiece about an alien technology that’s found buried deep within the earth and the mayhem that ensues when the greedy American government tries to harness its awesome power. I told Finn about it and he accused me of plagiarism. I, of course told home he was fucking retarded. He then forced me to watch the first three episodes of “Robot-Tech,” a Japanese cartoon circa nineteen eighty-five. He was right. So I pissed in his hamper.

Since the three of us had moved in, we had been playing pranks on each other. I think it all started when Randall got totally trashed and ran into my bathroom, took my toothbrush from the cup on the sink and proceeded to scrub his right nipple. In retaliation, I pawned his stereo for the rent money he owed me. Things escalated, as they always do, to the point where shit was beginning to appear on shower curtains, and creamed corn in sock drawers.

“It’s fun until someone loses an eye”

The proverbial eye got lost when Randall, destined to begin the escapade, doomed to end it, was arrested attempting to “borrow” a horse from a ranch outside of town. He told me through the bars at county as fin was getting the bail money together that King Leer, the horse, was to be installed into my Volkswagen Rabbit to be discovered by me the following morning. Randall has hence sworn off tequila in all its forms.

I had only heard about Julie for the first year I worked at Cal’s. She only came in on Friday’s to balance the books, make orders, pass out checks, and make up the schedule. I don’w work on Friday’s and frankly was afraid of the kind of child Crazy Cal woyld raise. After Cal had a minor stroke, she quite her job at the Sizzler to come over full time. I often assumed that the only reason we started dating was that I was the only guy there even remotely her age, other than Gill “The Worst One-Armed Salesman in the Universe” Monahan. I also often assumed that the only reason I accepted her offer for a date was that she was the only girl I knew outside of the menagerie of mouth-breathers that shuffled in and out of our house.

We went to the sizzler on our first date. I was totally broke and hadn’t eaten anything all day; I ate so much that night that I got sick during the movie afterwards. I blame her personally because when I got back from the buffet table, my plate piled high with pieces of various animals; she virtually challenged me to eat it all. So I did. And then another. But it was the combination of Foster’s and obscene amounts of soft-serve that did it. We were asked to leave and we didn’t even get a refund. The movie sucked anyway.

Randall’s brother owns a gas station near downtown. He comes over every couple of weeks to get away from his wife. This guy is the poster boy for the unhappy marriage. One day he was ironing a shirt while watching basketball on the television. She came in and asked him why he was using her iron. He said because she had left his at her friend’s house. She asked him not to use her iron. He yanked the cord from the wall, and the plug ripped off. She then took the cake she had made for him and threw it out the window. It was his birthday. He ended up with us that night. Randall wanted to get him a hooker, but we couldn’t get enough money together, and none of us knew where to find one. Aquamarine girl was not interested, not even for one hundred seventeen dollars and eighty-seven cents. And sixty of it was money we stole from the “new TV fund”

The only television in the house was donated to us via the trash dumpster by the family that used to live in the Jackson’s house. Full of vacuum tubes and about the size of a Buick, it seems more effective as a table than a television. Finn actually scaled the roof one day and spliced the neighbor’s cable and hooked us up to their bill. It only took about three weeks for a guy from the cable company to show up. Strangely enough, it was between the hours of ten AM and five PM. I opened the door in a pair of boxers, clutching a gallon of orange juice. I was alone in the house, and that Demi Moore movie “Striptease” was playing in the back. It was during a particularly lurid scene. He was a young kid, maybe twenty -two. I opened the door and saw him staring at the wire running from the neighbors, straight through the doorway, which stood between us. He started laughing. I started laughing, we laughed together.

I know there are no milkmen anymore, and I also understand that his being a milkman has no significance either way, but that’s just how it’s going to be. A deranged and disgruntled milkman, sick to his core with the likes of two percent, whole, skim, and the unholy of chocolate, sprays machine gun fire into the crowded food court at the mall. One hundred plus are wounded, eighteen dead, but myself, quietly munching on food court pad Thai, beyond all odds am uninjured. Oh, hi kitty.

Julie and I went out again, this time I made sure to eat at some point during the day before we went to dinner. I chose the restaurant this time, an oyster bar on the south side of town. She’d never had oysters before, and after one (with perhaps a bit too much horseradish) she threw it up along with the two beers she had previously. Two for two. We did end up sleeping together, though. The precarious architecture of my house makes for interesting sexual encounters. I have the largest bedroom, on the second floor. Finn has the room next to mine, and Randall lives in the room on the first floor, the one that was added to the house when I was eight and my grandmother came to live with us. She died in that bed, Randall doesn’t know, we’re thinking about waiting till his birthday.

The combination of old wood and the toilet paper that was used to insulate the house, the way Finn told me once was, “Dude, when you fart in there I can hear what you had for dinner.” Instead of muffling the sounds coming from a particular room, the structure of the house actually amplifies the noise. Worst of all, Julie turned out to be a screamer. Don’t get me wrong, I like ‘em loud, but it’s just not something you want to have to explain to the police officer who has already been there three times in the last two months, and has seen you naked before.

My high school English teacher, sophomore year, was a squat, fat Canadian that never could speak enough of the virtues of those worksheets included at the end of each chapter in our “English text book.” The book was about eight hundred pages and included excerpts from what it classified as “the great American novels.” A Farewell to Arms, The Awakening, Moby Dick, and the like. I remember somewhere around chapter four, entitled “American Literature of the Forties and Fifties.” which conveniently left out Ginsberg, Kerouac, Boroughs, and even Kafka, included an assignment. Write your own short story. The book said that the essence of good story telling was to write what you know. That one still baffles me, especially as I sit at the computer screen, drooling quietly as it laughs at me. Fear of a white screen. What did Asimov know about robots? What did Roddenberry know about space travel?

Alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems. I have compiled a list of the worst drinks to ever pass these young lips. Needless to say, the drinks on this list will change as time progresses, but there's nothing more adventurous than a broke high schooler looking for a drink. I hereby present the first five of the bullets I have taken for you all, so that you might not have to suffer.

No. 10... Scotch and Root Beer (dubbed The Beatle) House party, 1995

I know it doesn't sound that bad, in fact legend has it that this was the favorite draught of John, Paul, George and Ringo during their time in Hamburg. I, however, was not on the verge of super-mega-stardom and my standards were certainly much lower. I found myself at one of those house parties where I didn't know anyone, and no one wanted to know me. A sly escape upstairs brought myself and a troupe of fellow rejects to the host's father's study. Perhaps, one would assume that a man that drives a brand new BMW M3, and owns a 3200 sq. foot house would have better taste, but all there was to greet us was Passport brand scotch. If you're not familiar with the brand, go to you local liquor store, find the scotch section, and look around your feet. Perhaps even pony up the $2.99 for the bottle, have a swig, and give the rest to Mr. Smiley that lives next to the dumpster and pees in his hands. You'll get a thumbs up!

No. 9 Margarita Schnapps (brand name Cactus Juice) Mardi Gras party, 1996

This is in fact not a cocktail, but deserves an entry in it's own right. Sure, everyone's got an "oh-my-god-never-ever-again" tequila story justifying why they can't imbibe the stuff. And I'm sure there are lots of you out there that have a few "schnapps" stories to delight, but how many have "tequila schnapps" stories? The substance itself tastes like alum, with an aftertaste of rotten citrus fruit and ass. It comes in strawberry too.

No. 8 Vodka and Metamucil (dubbed Russian Drain-o) Rice festival, 1997

What can I say, pickins were slim. Rice festival is the harvest celebration in my hometown. It was three o'clock in the morning and there was nothing left to drink. This left my pal Mule and myself in somewhat dire straits. After some preliminary searching, we came up with a metal canteen filled with rubbing alcohol that was hiding behind a pound of bacon. This later turned out to be vodka. Unfortunately, the refrigerator gave us no means to tame the demon called Dobra, so we turned to the pantry. The only option I could see was a can of Metamucil. Mule, however, voted to pulverize the bottle of Flintstone vitamins. Which would you have chosen?


No. 7 Plain Old Vodka and Milk. (dubbed the I'm a Friggin' Idiot) Christmas party, 1997

This one would have garnered a higher ranking, but it was not I who drank it. Her name was Erin and she was hosting the party. There was beer and wine abound, but Erin, being the malcontent that she was, wanted a cocktail. She proclaimed to the uninterested room, "I'm going to make a White Russian." In went the vodka, in went the milk, but the Kalhua was nowhere to be found. She puzzled for a moment, "It can't be that bad..." you could almost see the bubbles above her head say.

The suspense was killing me.

One deep gulp was all it took, as all 95 lbs of her were already "nicely irrigated with horizontal lubricant," as they say in the west of Scotland. To this day I am amazed at the retching sound that came from so small a person. She turned red and made a break for the sink, and did one of those things where her legs kicked like she was being eaten by a crocodile.

No. 6 Blackberry Schnapps with a Natural Ice "back." New Year's Eve, 1998.

Once again, this is less a cocktail than it was a wholly unpleasant experience. Those of you not familiar with the concept of "back," it is the phenomenon wherein you have a beer in one hand and a spirit in the other. The idea is to sip the spirit and beer interchangedly, thus saving money by not drinking straight spirits, and saving your liver for better days to come. Essentially, it's "double-fisting" with a unique purpose. At this annual celebration, I found myself in a beggarly state, so was reduced to panhandling for my new year's booze. We were able to wreck ourselves effectively with a 12-pack of "Old Natty" and a bottle of "Black Haus" my pal Thomas produced from the trunk of his car. Having never tasted this substance, the foul stench and sickly-sweet mouthfeel seemed appropriate for what some call "The Schnappster" (ding!) It wasn't until much later, and most of the bottle, that he admitted that he'd found the schnapps on the bottom of a slimy, bubbling green swimming pool in which he had been dared to dive. My favorite euphamism for vomiting is still one that I heard that night from the other side of the bathroom door, technicolor yawn.


No. 5 Tequila Rose (brand name Tequila Rose) There is no date, because this substance deserves no place in history or memory.

I record this fetid concoction only as a warning. The primary ingredients of Tequila Rose are tequila (distilled in the bowels of hell), sweet condensed milk (squeezed from the udders of Pestilence itself) and artificial strawberry flavoring, manufactured, no doubt, somewhere in New Jersey. The initial flavor of this tincture is not unlike the sensation of licking a nine-volt battery, surprising, but not entirely unpleasant. But then, when it's tricked you into swallowing it, it starts to work on your insides like a pork taco purchased on a Mexican boardwalk. When you read the ingredients, the first question you might ask is, "How come the milk doesn't curdle?" The answer is, it does, only it waits until it reaches your digestive system, and then trashes the place like a Dartmouth boy on Rush Week.

Thus concludes my reliving the worst memories of my impressionable youth. Tune in next week, maybe by then I can unlock the secret doors and plumb the information about numbers six to one. The names are there, but the details are fuzzy...

Ask anyone in the know, and they'll tell you I can form my own opinions about things. Normally, I would never do anything like this, but a gentleman here in Portland has nailed modern, angst-ridden, west coast Constitutionalism like he's was getting paid for it (which he's not). I don't agree with everything he says, but no one should ever agreee with everything another person says, right? His name is Link Hoggthrob and he deserves a few minutes of your attention. Let the truth set you free.

Last summer, while hiking in Rocky mountain National Park I found a card laying on the trail. It was a Safeway Club Card. It's one of those anonymous, "if you fill out this card and give us all your very valuable personal information and you can save fifty-five cents on that can of tuna (limit two per customer)" club card. I picked up, thinking it might be useful in the future. As a matter of coincidence, the apartment in which I currently reside is less that three blocks from, you guessed it, a Safeway.

I have been painting the town red (with savings!) using this card for the last six months, thinking myself lucky that Safeway, Inc. hasn't had the opportunity to sell my phone number enabling me to receive eight "we were just in your neighborhood installing FREE satellite dishes..." calls instead of the usual four. Not until today, however, did I notice that every time I use the card to buy my soy milk, deodorant and club soda, the name of it's owner appears on the receipt! It seems, in the eyes of the employees of the Hawthorne Safeway, my name is Mr. Greg Carter.

Greg Carter. It's a strong name. It's subdued, but oozes self-confidence.

After much thought, I have decided that Greg Carter shall be my alter-ego.

Greg Carter is in peak physical condition, the all-American, strong-jawed and soft-eyed. He's got a boyish smile, but he sees the world as a man wise beyond his years. Greg was a great hockey player in high school, and had a shot at the NHL, but decided to use his talents to help others achieve their dreams. He studied the sport with all the great masters in Russia, Czechoslovokia and The Netherlands and came home to Concord, MA to start The Greg Carter European Hockey School and developed The Carter Method.

When the hustle, bustle world of professional sports becomes too stressful, Greg is known to retire to his chalet in the south of France and achieve a level of catharsis though the canvas. Painting, to Greg, is the ultimate expression of emotion. He often quotes Pablo Picasso in saying, "Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.". His influences include the landscapes of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and the still-lifes of Berthe Morisot. Greg's work is currently hung in galleries around Europe and the U.S. and is highly sought after by discriminating collectors.

Greg Carter is a Renaissance Man, but also a man of great modesty.

I can't speak for everyone, but I often lose sleep fretting over what use Kirk Cameron is putting his devlish good looks to these days. Fret no more, The Way of the Master has arrived. And you thought it was a kung-fu website...

If you ever wondered what the worst NES game ever created was, the answer is Athena. The premise of Athena was to guide the title character through the “Land of X” in order to, get this, cure her boredom. Apparently, the best way to cure one’s boredom is to don a ridiculous looking, crane-head shaped helmet and smash miniature giraffes with what looks like a powder blue sand wedge. If you manage to sustain upwards of thirteen minutes of this eight-bit pile of crap, you may find yourself in the third level, where Athena is magically transported to the “Land of Somewhere Else.” Only so much can be chalked up to bad translation. I am hereby announcing a program wherein you can redeem your copy of Athena for a kick in the ass from me.

I was pondering the teeth-grinding half-hour I once spent navigating this game, while attempting to test the functionality of a Nintendo Entertainment System that happened to be at Goodwill a few days ago. The best part about purchasing electronics at Goodwill is the fun game you get to play called “Find the Power Supply.” In this game, you get to dive into a swirling sea of twisted black cords and adapter cubes, surrounded on both sides by people with mutant sized elbows.

When my turn at the one functioning, exposed power outlet came around, I noticed I was being watched. Directly to my right was an eight-year-old boy staring at me like I was a brand new huffy with a porno mag tied to it. Or rather, he was staring at the NES in my arms.

“Can I have that?” he had the gumption to ask. It was perhaps, my older brother conditioning, but as soon as this young boy showed a moment’s weakness, I felt compelled to take full advantage of it, to the tune of an atomic wedgie. It then occurred to me that a twenty-three year old man sticking his hands into an eight-year-old boy’s shorts in a public place is frowned upon in pleasant company.

“No.” was all he got in response.

“Why not?”

There comes a time in a young boy’s life when he must come to the earth-shattering realization that not all people in the world are nice. I was hoping to be that powder blue sand wedge.

To digress for a moment, I want to mention that I was slightly hung over, and with only one cup of Goodwill café coffee in my stomach. I might also mention that my theory was proven correct when I witnessed the helpful, cheerful and incredibly obese woman working in that café straining that coffee through a thick, wooly camping sock. The only reason I was even at Goodwill was because Elise demanded we go so she could buy clothes.

I paused, released a dramatic sigh and proceeded the lay it on. All the animosity, the disappointment, and unbridled, unmitigated reality came pouring out. This child was coated with truth from head to toe. The Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, all bullshit. Elmo’s got a hand up his ass. The original Barney got hit by a bus. Two of the Teletubbies are gay, and are currently dating. Your parents cheat on their taxes. Your grandmother knows what you do at night. Your dog will eat your face off the first chance he gets.

It was this last one when I realized I’d gone too far. His eyes began to grow wider. His chin began to quiver. This, ladies and gentleman, was the face of innocence lost. I quietly put the Nintendo on the floor and walked away, leaving this poor soul to contemplate having just aged twenty years, and still not being able to buy beer.

Is Your Bumper Picking Up the Slack from Your Brain?

Portland, Oregon suffers from "bumper sticker mentality." This means that anyone possessing the lethal combination of a car and an opinion seemingly anoints the back of their Volkswagen as a public forum of information. The most common stickers are relatively benign. Meaningless quotes and worthless musings, most not attributed, are pasted on every thing with wheels here in southeast Portland. Tolkien's "Not All Who Wander Are Lost" is particularly frequent, as is the humorously obvious "Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History." What important historical figure, male or female, can be accurately described as "well-behaved?"

The first inclinations that some of these people might have agendas they don't mind pushing are Ghandi's "An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind," and "Equal Rights are not Special Rights." It also seems that every car that even comes within a twenty mile radius of Portland mysteriously develops the ubiquitous blue sticker proclaiming, "Attack Iraq? NO!" Perhaps the most confusing is the strange, but obviously pointed, "Question Gender." What the hell does that mean? How does one question gender? To what does this questioning lead?

Delving deeper into the fray, the statements get dicier. A personal favorite is "Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?" This guy's obviously not a golfer. I saw a Ford Aspire last week with the intellectually elitist phrase, "If You're Not Outraged, You're Not Paying Attention!" The insinuation there, of course, is that if I don't agree with him, then I'm simply uninformed and need to be re-educated. Does this mentality sound familiar? Oh yeah, I think that I was very successfully employed by such not-so-well-behaved historical figures as Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler!

But I digress.

Since coming to this city, I have been amused, enraged, and experienced odd combinations of the two. Generally, however, I have been able to shrug off most of this intellectual laziness thinly veiled with ideological elitism. (I really love to see the tattered remnants of "Dean for America" stickers having been hastily scraped off the back of the family Volvo.)

This Friday, however, was a different story.

I have succumbed to the habit of reading all the bumper stickers I see, not so much out of curiosity anymore, but mostly because I am a glutton for punishment. On Friday, I was biking to work and saw the holy grail itself pasted to the tail of a ninety-six Honda Civic. I squeezed the brakes on my bike and slowly backtracked a few feet just make sure I read it correctly. I was flabbergasted. The heavens opened and angels harked and a warm fuzzy feeling washed over my body. This was it. This was the Mother of All Bumper-stickers, let us call it the MOAB. The words on this sticker seemed to perfectly condense my difficult opinions on the whole tasteless mess into a bite sized chunk of truth.

It read, "Reality is For Those Who Lack Imagination."

The question remains, however, can mental masturbation make you blind?