Short Buses

You probably call them tart carts. I don’t. I’ll explain why later. Those short little buses where certain students ride on always capture our attention. They stand out despite looking more like a normal vehicle instead of a large stupid yellow bus. These automobiles are a strange thing. It’s wrong to call them tart carts. It’s one of the few things that offend me. Why? Because I rode on that bus.

To clarify, I only rode on the bus for about 2 months. I had broken my leg and my parents didn’t love me enough to drive me to school. A girl with cerebral palsy lived up the street from me, so it wasn’t that inconvenient to pick me up too. I was about to embark on a strange journey. A journey that few able minded children ever do. I was taking a ride on the short bus.

The first thing I learned about riding the short bus was that you shouldn’t look anyone in the eye. Those kids didn’t like that. They’d curse at me if I did. Here I was, sitting in a wheel chair, them having to sit on a sticky seat that matched their sticky hands. Put two sticky things together and you’re not going anywhere anytime soon.

I don’t remember what the schedule was, but I do know that at some point I was the only one on the bus that went to my school. The rest went to a nicer school that had air conditioning. Maybe that’s why they didn’t want me looking at them. The sweat from my eyes might tamper with their 68 degree room temperature flesh. The kids that went to the other school were really mean. They didn’t bother me much, but they were not comrades. Not like the short bus riders that went to my school.

I liked the kids that went to the same school as me. They all knew each other. They had their little niche group. You think kids without autism are cliquey? Try riding a short bus with them. I had to remain silent for a month before they would accept me. It was terrible hazing. If you ask them, they’d say it was gentle ribbing. I knew better.

My most memorable thing about this clique was that they didn’t call each other by their names. They called each other by their street names. It took me a while to realize this too. I thought it was cool to meet a boy named Wolfgang, only to discover that his street matched his name. The short buses pull right up to your house so they all know exactly where you live. Maybe that’s why they all got along. If you pissed someone off, they’d take some goons and throw crayons at your bedroom window.

The day I belonged was the day that Fleetwood called me Overton. I was no longer Tim. I could throw away my slave name and go by my street name. My street name that matched the black guy from the UPN sitcom “Living Single.” Finally I belonged.

 

(Actor John Henton, whose character Overton was immortalized after the mayor of my town named a street after him, which I grew up on)

My leg eventually healed and I had to say goodbye to my new friends. The friendship was over before it began. Occasionally in the hallways I would still see Wolfgang, Fleetwood, Flock, MICHAEL CARGILL!!! ,Maple, and Route 33. They’d be going to their classes to learn and I’d be going to mine. I may have looked different now, no longer wheelchair bound, but to them I was still Overton. And always will be.

I wish I remembered more about my days on the short bus. It was brief and really for some reason has faded out of my head. Maybe it wasn’t as interesting as I remember it being. 10 minutes of everyday, trapped on the same vehicle as these other students might not be enough time to really develop into a great story.

Oh and for the record, I don’t care if you call it a tart cart. Coming from me, a tart cart alumni, I feel that my endorsement of the word makes it political correct to say. So go ahead and use it freely. We know we are. We’re whatever street we currently live on. You can’t take that way from us.

Facebook Deletions

I’m sitting in a chair that does not support my back well staring at my Facebook home page. Not right now. I’m told that writing in the present tense helps make the reader feel more like they are there. Feeling like you’re in my shoes for this story is essential. For that sake, lets pretend this is all happening live. I’m staring at the screen (still) and looking at all of the statuses popping up. Jerry crashed his shitty car that he always takes pictures of himself with. Erica misses her long faced boyfriend. Max is grounded–again, parents can be so unfair. Janet has a song that she thinks all 873 of her friends might like. Only 2 of them do. One of them is her. I have to delete this shit.

I’ve thought about deleting my Facebook many times. I have enough time navigating it trying to figure out how to get a picture up there that I’m sure Mark Zuckerberg would make me walk barefoot through hell to delete my account. It’s pointless to have one really. I talk to five people and they all have my phone number. At least in a text message I don’t have to see your stupid picture of you on vacation. Or see you quote bad songs that I didn’t know existed. Why do I have to conform and have a Facebook page?

I don’t remember why I got one in the first place. Myspace was different. I made one because my sister had one and so did one other person I knew. I jumped on the bandwagon before a lot of people I knew. Due to self-shame, it took me a while to put up a real picture of myself. A Puerto Rican girl I liked told me that I was cute so I was no longer camera-shy. We hugged once and she showed me her butt. She has a kid now, but you could have gathered that from me saying that she was a Puerto Rican.

Myspace was great at first. I remember how exciting it was to find someone new to add to my friends list. Then I had a fan club made for me. It had about 60 members, nothing to sneeze about. Unless you’re allergic to being popular, like I was. Even a few celebrities joined. Comedians Rich Vos and John Heffron who had been on the most recent season of Last Comic Standing joined. Dat Phan was promptly banned. I remember how excited it was that you could actually talk to celebrities on that website in the early days. Comedians were my favorite to talk to, as it was around then that I began my dead-end journey to becoming the greatest standup comedian of all-time. Gregg Rogell wished me luck before my first show and Super High Me star Doug Benson told me that he was going to delete me because I posted too many bulletins. I said I would stop and we remained buddies. It’s hard to believe that this was only about 6 or 7 years ago. Shit, that’s like a third of my life. What the fuck? I wasted too much time on Myspace. Posting bulletins. Commenting on pictures. I needed something new. That’s when I moved over to Facebook.

My first Facebook I made was a fake account. You used to not be able to have one unless you had a college e-mail address. I went to a community college and they didn’t know what the Internet was, hence, no e-mail address. A friend of mine who I thought was a homosexual in 3-5^th grade, then again 7^th-12^th, asked me if I could make an account and befriend a girl for him. I did and then he told me that it was okay. Waste of time motherfucker. Eventually for some reason I made a real account. Nobody was posting on my Myspace anymore. Celebrities wouldn’t talk to me. They were out there to promote themselves. Every hot girl I knew had a private profile. What’s the point? I figured, Facebook might be different.

I had a Facebook for a while then stopped going on it when I got really depressed. Social networking will do that to you. People post a lot of cool things that they do. You’d think they never cried or had to spend a cold night alone. I had my account deleted temporarily for a wee bit, until a black friend of mine told me that it was the best way to remain in contact with girls now. I only mention that he was a black friend so you know that I’m not racist. He’s the best black friend I have ever had and that a boy could ask for. I haven’t talked to him in a long time, but I know we could catch up in no time as we rarely spoke much about our personal lives. I never knew his real name either. That was the brilliance of him. He admitted offhandedly that I was one of his best friends and still refused to tell me what his first name was. I loved that guy!

With my Facebook account back in action, not much changed. They had a special announcement that they would be giving you your own Facebook URLs. For example, Facebook.com/MrTimBoyle is my URL, incase you’re interested in sending crude messages and seeing just how few friends I have. My boss at the comedy club I was working at the time, wanted both his name in a URL as well as another thing that he thought would get a lot of hits. Facebook blocked making any new accounts for that week so he couldn’t make a new one. He gave me a nice $100 bill to buy the rights to my Facebook page in order to get his name before any of the other 8 people with the same name as him that have Facebook accounts. I bought shoes with that $100 as well as a few other items. My shoes lasted me 2 and a half years, he hasn’t been on that Facebook account since.

I sort of had to start over with friends. I had been working at yet another comedy club a few months earlier (you’d think I’d have some awesome connections or something) and created the Facebook account for that place. I worked at the club for about a month and a half and the guy that ran it annoyed me. He was trying to get me to take a comedy class he was teaching and didn’t pay me after working 6 hours the day after Thanksgiving. I knew it was going to turn out with me getting screwed more and more so I quit and turned that Facebook page into my own. I kept some of the same friends, ones that I knew in real life and a few hot girls. Starting over wasn’t a problem because I had 60 friends beforehand. Today, over 2 years later, I have 160, give or take. I know most of them personally and don’t mind them, so I guess it’s not that bad, is it?

That’s the history of my Facebook. That’s not even what I wanted to tell you about. But I’m sitting here, one in the morning typing this up as my dog begs to go outside. He needs to learn to hold in his shit while I type. Something that bothers me about Facebook now are the people who I knew from school who add me and then don’t say anything. Why add me and not say a thing? Not even a “Hey, how are things? I’m glad to see you’re alive.” Not a one from anybody. There are 4 people I can think of that I went to school with who added me randomly, out of the blue, and have not said a word to me on there. Some of them were good friends too. I know I could say something, but I’m not the one that added you. It’s juvenile to care and it doesn’t keep me awake at night. It’s more of a crappy thing that I don’t understand. There’s no reason to be Facebook friends with somebody you’re not going to talk to. You’ve just made me a number and nothing more. What are you, the government?

I rarely see something posted on Facebook that intrigues me. Sometimes I’ll laugh at a post. I have a lot of friends who are comedians, so most of them are just depressed, not shit heads like most other human beings. Nobody posts on my page except for my friend and girlfriend. Even they don’t post often and why would they? I don’t go on more than 5 minutes a day and that’s just to see if my high school crush has added me. I bet she doesn’t even know my name. Stupid big titted cunt. I still think you’re hot even if I know you have a weird face. I like weird faces. Reminds me of the circus, another thing I like.

Not deleting my Facebook has come down to a few things:

1) An occasional message from two old friends. They message me about 3 times a year just to check up. They live too far away to ever really visit or hangout with. It’s nice to hear from them. They’ve probably forgotten how irritating I can be.

2) The possibility of networking. I know I’ll need to network seriously at some point. Having a Facebook makes it easier than phone numbers or e-mails. I mine as well keep it around until the moment comes where someone wants to raise my hopes only to shatter them via Facebook message.

3) I own a camera and have nowhere else to put the pictures. I guess I could put them on my blog now, but I hate photographers and their bad mustaches. I don’t want to become that. Some people don’t want to grow up to be their parents. I don’t want to grow up to be your friends.

And that’s about it. My three reasons that I will not delete my Facebook. It annoys me now that they don’t sound out e-mails whenever something new happens. It means that I have to log all the way in to see that nobody likes me. Maybe someday people will like me. They’ll add me and demand nude photographs. Until that day, my Facebook will remain pretty much dormant. Where the only thing I post are updates to my blog. I don’t care what anybody says, The Social Network couldn’t possibly be a good movie.

Jesse Eisenberg + Trent Reznor + Facebook = Me Watching Something Else Instead

Devolutions

People still go to Britney Spears concerts. I know, shocking. Britney Spears first fell onto my radar in 4^th grade. A boy who was obsessed with Tara Lipinski said that if he could have a threesome it would be with both of them. I saw his dad chase him with a lawn mower one time. I don’t know how his life turned out. He moved the next year. I like to think that he has grown out of loving Britney Spears like the rest of us should.

It’s strange that lip-synchers who were popular 10-15 years ago can still be popular today. Didn’t 9/11 teach us anything? We need to move forward and not dwell on the past. I mean, I love old music. New music blows. But Britney Spears? She was never good. Hot, yes. In her prime there was no one better. Then she turned 18 and yuck. She’s a crazy mess.

As much as I enjoy old music, I wouldn’t go see an old band in concert. Fans who still go to see the Rolling Stones aren’t going for their new duds. They go for the old hits. The relive the memories. That’s fine. At least they really do sing and actually play their instruments. Britney Spears is a dancer who got fat. How does a dancer get fat? By not doing their job well enough. I don’t dance much, but when I do, I sweat. I sweat so much that nobody wants to dance with me. I ruin the vibe and the club shuts down due to poor business. Really, I would never dance at a club. I might look fine until one Spanish guy shows up and can roll his tongue and shake his hips to the beat. I also don’t like fedoras. I think it’s because I was ripped off by a paper boy in a past life.

(Asshole)

I hope that one day I can be famous and talented for two years. Then I want to have a nervous breakdown and get really fat and gross looking. After some rehab, I’d like to come back and do the same shit that I used to do. I want everyone to be able to admit that I suck and will never be as good as I used to be. Fans will flock to see me anyway. Evolution takes millions of years. 15 down, 999,985 to go before people stop paying attention to washed up pop singers.

“Crack that whip!” – Devo and Sojourner Truth’s cruel master

Bad Laughs

A man stands a few feet behind me. I’m familiar with this man. I see him often. I don’t know much about him. One thing I do know is that his laugh is horrible. Worse than that, it’s often. He’s talking to someone. Crap. He’s almost done his sentence. Here it comes!

GUFFAW GUFFAW GUFFAW

What a horrendous laugh. I hate people with bad laughs. I mean really hate them. Remember when Osama Bin Laden was killed and everyone was happy about it? I feel the same way when people with bad laughs are shot by Navy Seals. They’re useless. They should never have a good day. That’s why they have bad laughs. It’s natures way of telling us that we should treat them like shit.

Other than this guy, there are others I have encountered with equally bad laughs. Let me do my best to fill you in on them. Maybe you’ll get some laughs out of reading this. Then you’ll have a LIFE LESS BORING!!!

Self-Laugher –

This is where I would classify my current laugher into. He laughs at the end of every sentence. It doesn’t even have to be funny. It’s a snorty laugh too. It sounds like he’s clearing out the back of his nose. Laughing at yourself rarely means that what you said was funny. More often than not it means that you’re awkward and to feel less awkward you laugh to make the poor victim you’re talking to feel more relaxed. It doesn’t make us feel more relaxed. It makes us feel tense. It makes us want to hit you. Why laugh at the end of your sentence? You can just think it and laugh to yourself. At least then people know that you’re crazy.

Snorter –

I mentioned this slightly already, but snorting is very common with laughers. We’ve probably all snorted at sometime while laughing. It’s embarrassing and usually makes everybody else laugh at our misfortunate. That’s okay. What’s not okay is always snorting when you laugh. That’s what we call gross. Especially when you look like a pig. A friend of mine had a girlfriend who looked like a pig. She still does and I know this from Facebook stalking. I can’t feel bad for a fat girl who snorts when she laughs. It’s too perfect. Normally I enjoy when people have animal qualities. Not when they both look like a pig and laugh like one. That’s what we call too much of a good thing.

Spitter –

I had another friend who would spit when he’d laugh. His laugh was a very quiet “hehehehehe” that never seemed to end. The spit that came out of his mouth was odd. It seemed to come from the bottom and shoot up. It hit me before and I guess technically it means I’ve kissed a boy. I arrived late to lunch that day, but could still tell that he had chicken nuggets thanks to his spit hitting my lips. Spitters are never good in any context. It’s impolite to spit. Remember that girls, nobody likes a spitter.

Silent Machine Gun –

Sometimes my laugh is a bit of a silent machine gun laugh. It’s not uproarious, but still has that rapid fire approach to it. The Don Rickles of laughing. At times, I use this as a courtesy laugh. I try to get as many quick laughs in as short of a time as possible. That last sentence was lazy writing. I used the worst “time” twice. Just wanted to point it out how awfully unoriginal I am.

Loud Machine Gun –

The exact same thing as the silent machine gun, except loud. Loud machine guns are really obnoxious. Everything loud is obnoxious. Think of the last time you heard someone screaming for help. I know, what a jerk. The loud machine gun serves the same purpose except it can be used more as a defense. I’m convinced all machine gun laughs are out of courtesy. There’s no reason to throw so many quick laughs into five seconds at any offhanded comment.

Vomitter –

Sitting next to the spitter at my 7^th grade lunch table was a kid who would poke his head out and look as if he was about to vomit. It was a sincere laugh. The strange thing is I remember him doing it forever. Up through high school he still did his little head-forward, fake vomiting action. It was never annoying as it rarely made a sound. If anything, it was convenient. You’d know you said something really funny when he couldn’t keep his mouth shut and really would vomit at a joke. That’s when you knew you were cool.

Ricky Gervais –

Nobody laughs like Ricky Gervais. I can’t even categorize this laugh. How can you not enjoy listening to him get his funny bone tickled? And coming from such a funny guy, you know whatever has gotten him to make such an awful sound must be great.

Three Stooges –

Nyut! Nyut! Nyut! That’s how I write out how the Three Stooges laugh. Nobody really laughs like that, do they? I knew a girl with Down Syndrome who did. Her laugh was a dead on Larry and her haircut was a dead on Moe. The only thing curly about her was when she would try to draw a straight line and end up making numerous violent circles. But that’s the beauty about laughter. Even somebody with so many problems can enjoy a good one. Even if it does remind me of three dead slapstick comedians.

Holy Lands

“A religion is only as good as its holy land is fertile.” – John P. Higgins, Philosopher/Homeless Man

Okay, John P. Higgins is a made up name. I thought the name sounded reputable. John usually makes us think of someone boring. The P. in the middle shows that he’s scholarly and possibly shares the same name with someone else in his field. The Higgins part of the name was chosen because it’s obscure enough, yet sounds very much like that of a WASP. You’d have to be an idiot to make up a name like that!

The Philosopher/Homeless Man part was just my way of saying that they are no different. Homeless Men really are the greatest modern-day philosophers. They have all day to pontificate and do other things that they don’t know the meaning of or how to spell.

I am not homeless. That still does not mean that I cannot come up with new ideas. I have the time. Today’s idea isn’t so much an idea as much as it is a SIMPLE OBSERVATION!!! It’s about Holy Lands and what they mean in modern times.

The most famous Holy Lands are in the Middle East. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, are three of the biggest. There are those other little religions that pop up all over the place. The Sunnis, the Sh’ites (really?), and a few others that I have heard about but know nothing about. This isn’t about those counterculture religious rebels so forget about them for now.

A lot of these Holy Lands are in that central location because that’s where humanity began. Some of the first civilizations were built there and from them came our earliest religions. I’m not an expert on this topic so I will stop trying to name facts. My knowledge of that time period really starts with how the Sumerians invented irrigations and how Fred Flinstone’s boss was Mr. Slate. Early history bores me. It’s all “well we don’t really know, but taking into account blah blah blah.” They don’t even know how the pyramids were built. Why bother learning about it? All they can say is “here are some giant stone buildings that we don’t really know the purpose of or how they were built” then gaze at the students awkwardly.

(In the 1950’s all villains and bad people wore glasses)

The problem with having so many Holy Lands in the same space is that it causes a lot of problems. So many of the wars that go on in the Middle East is over territory for ownership of the property where something may or may not have happened. I don’t know why you need to stick a flag pole wherever it was that your deity died at. Isn’t your God so much bigger than one town? Isn’t he with you always? Does he not control the universe? And once you get that land, what do you do with it? Open up a theme park? Lots of people died for ownership of the Holy Land in the Middle East. There were about a dozen Crusades or something. All of those knights on the European side and all of the Muslims on the defensive side died because they thought that two different versions of the same story happened on the same fucking blades of grass. It’s insane! I used to think that knights were so awesome. Then I found out that all they were doing was slaughtering other human beings for a fucking mug that Jesus drank out of. Fuck you and your holy grail Lancelot. No wonder you shits had to make up dragons to seem more daring.

The Holy Lands of the Middle East are by far the most violent. It’s because the biggest and most influential religions claim ownership of that territory. Then there are a few more Holy Lands that are a lot less appealing. Take the Amish for instance. Their Holy Land is in Lancaster Pennsylvania. Nobody wants to take over this landmass. You have to take a Septa train to get there and they’re always on strike anyway. I applaud the Amish for choosing such an uninteresting location to call home. They never have to fear an invasion from an enemy religion. It’d be so easy to take over too. The Jews should just give up on defending Israel from their surrounding enemies and make their location to Lancaster. Once night hits, the Amish are fucked.

Mormons are the other silly religion whose Holy Land lies in America. They call their home in a big useless state called Utah. It’s where D.B. Cooper buried his money, according to Prison Break. This was another great choice of a location to set up. Utah is too far away from California for anyone to even notice it exists. They have one giant lake in it, but it’s filled with salt. Woopie! What a lousy state that is. Their capital is named after that crap lake. That’s when you know nobody great has ever been born there. When you name your capital after a giant mass of water that is undrinkable. The only thing worse would be if it was filled with Seltzer. God, I hate that stuff.

(I hate Seltzer so much that instead of putting a picture of that, here’s a picture of Brian Setzer. It’s Jump-Jivin!)

Finally there are the rest of the religions around the world. Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, all of them. They don’t get a bad wrap for being violent because nobody else wants their Holy Land. If all of a sudden all the Cajuns who believe in Voodoo discover that their origins lie in Beijing, shit is going to get violent. It’s not fair to judge a religion on how violent it is. They’re all violent really. You may think Buddhists are peaceful, but wait until their land gets taken from them. We’ll see how passive those bald hippies really are.

Tips

I don’t go out to eat much, but when I do, I’m not sure how much to tip. The standard is 15%. But then sometimes I hear 18%. I usually aim for 20% and round down. Or up. It depends on my mood and how much cleave my waiter or waitress is showing.

A lot of people are bad tippers. It’s not even one type of person that suck at tipping. We can’t profile who will and who will not be a bad tipper like we honestly probably could with who and who will not blow up an airplane. If you’re with a baby, you’re not blowing up a 747. That still might not be as bad as when your children cries and you don’t discipline it. I’ll take falling thousands of miles to my death than hearing a child whine. Not disciplining your child on a plane really is an act of terrorism.

That’s why a mandatory guide is needed to help those who do not know how to properly tip. Seeing as I am the closest thing this universe will ever see to a Supreme Overlord, my recommendations should be taken into account immediately.

0% – There are few instances where a tip of nothing is needed. If the waiter craps on your sandwich, punches your wife, then signs your children up for the army, then yes, don’t give them a tip. Otherwise, leave something. Even when you do a crappy job at work you get paid. They deserve the same type of respect for their incompetence. Plus, they’ll know that you didn’t just forget. It’s like mouthing “fuck you” instead of actually saying it. Has a different effect.

5% – This is a real message tip. It’s saying that you didn’t forget to tip, you’re not bad at math, and the server plain-old-sucked. I still think it’s a little low on what you should tip, even for a crappy server. That’s about a buck on a $20 tab. However, a 5% tip is completely allowed if the server doesn’t smile at you the whole time and pokes your stomach while asking you if you would like dessert. It’s rude of them to do that. And the same reason why I don’t go back to Ruby Tuesdays.

10% – This would be what I’d give a server who was very bad. Maybe less even. It takes a lot for a server to piss me off. They always seem stressed even when restaurants aren’t crowded. I don’t know if that’s a hiring policy for the places I eat at or not. They always seem to be sighing and then stand with their friends and joke around while my food gets cold. I’ve never worked a service job so it’s hard for me to relate. A 10% tip is very justified if your food is late, the server isn’t very apologetic, or they continually make mistakes. Most restaurants don’t have fancy menus. I find it hard to confuse “no onions” for “extra sour cream.”

15% – I guess this would be the poor-man’s average tip. It’s still about 10% more than any European would ever tip, which is good. If you’re a 15% tipper than you should talk with a French accent the whole time. The server will be pleased and their self-esteem will raise. In France, 15 means 100. That’s why they are 85% less efficient than the rest of the world. They still eat snails over there. Yuck! I should probably stop talking about the French and instead talk about 15% tips, but I got nothing.

20% – As I mentioned earlier, this is what I generally tip. When the service is exactly what I expected, that’s what they get from me. I’m never a bother when I go out to eat. I’m way too passive in fact. I never give an attitude to a server, unless it’s a hot girl. I’m hoping that I can piss off a cute waitress enough that she’ll spit in my food. That way it’s like we kissed through a proxy sandwich. (I literally caught that I typed “killed” instead of “kissed” right before posting this. My mind is in a dangerous place)

21% or more – This is for those high rollers. I don’t think I would ever tip this much, unless I got some sort of special deal. Anybody would be welcome to tip this much. I would never tell someone not to put money out into the world. When should you tip this much? Simply, whenever you wish to. It feels good to give a nice tip to someone. Unless they’re hotter than you are. Then it feels like they get every break in the world possible.

Abs

I wrote a whole big thing trying to justify how stupid people with great abs are. It came off as too much of an anti-muscle magazine feature. It was entirely too long to say one simple thing. Trying to obtain abs is a waste of time.

Most people are genetically not supposed to have abs. It’s probably healthier that way too. You have more cushion (possibly for the pushin’) to protect your organs. You never hear of news stories where people with great stomachs survive cataclysmic events. Fat guys are the ones that always survive traumatic falls and point-blank gunshots to the abdomen. Survival of the fittest? It’s really survival of the fattest. Until you get to a certain age. Then you get hypertension, diabetes, and a whole slew of other problems. Plus you’ve probably had depression and a low self-worth from being a fat slob your entire life. Maybe that bullet should have gone into your stomach a little deeper and put you out of your misery.

I exercise and usually watch what I eat. At this point I could really care less about having great abs. All that would mean is that I’d have to buy belly shirts and shave my stomach. It’ll take so long that I won’t have time to train my stomach and will end up getting fat again anyway. How do these chiseled human beings do it? Great genetics, strict diets (starving themselves), and doing boring exercises like planking. Have you ever done the planking exercise? After 10 seconds I think “What the fuck am I doing?” Then I go into the kitchen and get something to eat.

We all have abs, that’s kind of common knowledge now. The people with the visible abs though, are just hungry. That’s all it is. You need such a low body fat percentage to have abs that you miss out on other things like family dinners, Christmas parties, and other things you try to find an excuse not to go to. I don’t know about you, but I’m fine with just not being fat. Nobody sees abs anyway. I hate the beach so it’s not like I’d even be able to go there to show them off. The only opportunity I can see is maybe if I happen to reach for something on the top shelf and my shirt pulls up a little bit. Even then, who’s going to see it? Some stock boy? Doing crunches is a waste of time for me.

The main reason why most people want the abs (I sound like an uncle there) is to attract other people. People with abs are sexy. I can attest to that. Their faces are usually kind of weird-looking, what from all the steroids and not eating normal foods, but that little section in the middle of them is gorgeous. If you never have abs, you may NEVERSHAGAGREEK!!! but is that the end all be all in life? People from Athens usually look funny.

Abdominals, the scientific and politically correct term, is hard to say. I screw it up a lot and it reminds me of the abominable snowman. He doesn’t have abs and he is not a man made of snow. False advertisement! Yet another reason to hate abs and people with them.

I think abs are kind of going out of style a bit. You can be a sex symbol and have a pot belly, at least for men. Even women who 10 years ago would have been seen as fat get some time as being sexy ladies. I think the confusion comes in with fat because in school, people are either fat or skinny. Ten year olds are never in shape. They’re either shaped like sticks or giant balls. It’s hard for me to find a really thin girl attractive. It looks gross. I don’t want to see your clavicle. Eat something. You shouldn’t have that many veins poking out. You look like a gay man’s forearm.

Most people would rather be able to go out once a week and get pizza than to date someone with abs who has to get down on the ground and do some sort of trunk twist every ten minutes. Truth is, for both sexes I believe, abs don’t really matter. They don’t make you a better person. They don’t make you more charming. They most certainly don’t make you better at sex. What makes sex good is cock thickness and pussy tightness. If you don’t eat and have abs, your cock might get thinner from all the lack of nutrients. Okay, that isn’t true at all. But girls without abs, that have been overlooked by others probably have had as much sex. That means they’re tighter than the other girls, the ones with the abs. That must be awful. To have a tighter stomach than a vagina. I can’t imagine either.

The next time you see a hot couple with perfect bodies, more importantly abs, jogging along, laugh at them for the lousy sex they probably have. Yell “needle dick” and “loose lips” out at them if it’ll make you happier. What can they do? Sit-up you to death?

This, all coming from a guy who is convinced that his stomach looks like Mr. Moneybags from the Monopoly Game.

(My stomach looks like this man’s face)

Pirate Paths

Out of all of the violent groups of people, pirates are the only ones I can think of without a faith-based mission. Terrorists have a faith. Vikings have a faith. Conquistadors have a faith. Even Nazis had something that they believed in with their dastardly mission. Not pirates. They’re not even out there to FIGHT UNITY!!! They have no real direction. They’re just greedy.

I think everyone goes through a pirate phase in their life. Mine was when I got something stuck in my eye and had to wear an eye patch. I figured, why not go all out? Knowing my hand would grow back, I cut it off and for the next month carried around a hook. I was the life of the party. Then Johnny Depp made pirates gay and I started getting shoved back into lockers again.

The main goal of a pirate is to capture as much money as possible. They then use that money to buy liquor, sex, and swords so that they can get more money for liquor, sex, and more swords to get more money for–wow, pirates are in an endless cycle. I wonder if at any point a pirate thought to himself “Why shouldn’t I just become a bartender? I can get free liquor, there’s bound to be some woman there to have sex with me, and a sword is completely unnecessary so now I only have two things to worry about. Liquor and sex.” Maybe scurvy makes reasonable thoughts impossible. I’m not sure. I get lots of Vitamin C. Don’t get me a pack of Vitamin C drops. I’ll frantically eat through the whole thing in a day. That can’t possibly be healthy.

Anyone with a mission in life gets my respect. Some of our missions are to find that mission. Not pirates. They’re just a bunch of angry British guys who take over rum transporting ships for their own alcoholic needs. It’s silly really. All of that trouble for liquor. They all clearly had a problem handling their liquor. Becoming a pirate is the ultimate cry for help. It’s hitting rock bottom. That Thanksgiving when you’re sitting around with your family and you come out that you’re becoming a pirate must be heart breaking. It’s telling your beloved family that you have given up on direction. You’re going to spend the rest of your days digging for gold and wearing bandanas. Gold and bandanas. Sounds like the Latin Kings.

Modern day pirates are a bit different from the swashbucklers of yesteryear. There are the goofy Somali pirates who kidnap millionaires. It never bothers me when a Somalia pirate kidnaps a yacht. Couldn’t you have bought a large house with all your money? When bad things happen to rich people, it’s hard to feel bad. Especially when they’re stupid enough to get kidnapped by pirates in this century.

(The above is from a picture of a short lived reality show. It was so bad, one of the contestants killed themselves while it aired. True story)

The other pirates of today do have a mission. The ones that pirate music, movies, women’s purses, gay men’s purses (if you’re a man and you have a purse, you’re gay), watches, and any other item. Their mission is a profit. Pirates, like the mafia, have become businessmen. They may not have offices, but that’s what they are. A bunch of guys trying to get some gold. This time it’s not buried under ground or found on a map, it’s in our pockets. I don’t think it’s wrong for pirates to exist. I know it “hurts the little guy” in the end, but putting out so many shit products is what creates piracy. I’m not going to pay $50 for Season 2 of Modern Family no matter how much I enjoyed the first season. There are enough pirates out there that can get it to me for cheaper or even free. Now if the producers were to contact me, ask to read my spec script I wrote of the show, I’ll fucking buy everyone I know a copy of the second season. You have to do more than entertain me for 24 episodes to get me to pay that much. At least do episode commentaries.

I wish pirates were more like the way they used to be. Flying their Jolly Roger flags up above their boats, it’s classic. New wave pirates (pirates who enjoy Devo and INXS) do not have a symbol. The only mention they ever get is that bright red FBI warning before a film. It’s not intimidating because why would you mess with a pirate? They’ve got hooks and wise cracking parrots. What are you going to do, take their leg? It’s already made of wood. Tie a TV dinner tray to their hip and it’s no different.

(Speaking of suicide, the singer from this band died jerking off with a noose around his neck. How’s that for a new sensation?)

I believe this is why people like pirates so much. It’s not the sexy British accents, the rough attitude, or the gross teeth. They have no real direction in life and that’s how we all feel. It takes us forever to find out calling and once we do, it seems as if it was so simple. Like it was an X on a map. Then we count our paces and head to that buried treasure only to discover that we’re on the wrong island. Fuck. And we were so close to finding happiness.

Doctors

I’m not a fan of doctors. I’ve never had posters of them on my walls. I’ve never purchased a pack of doctor trading cards either. They’re not people who I generally enjoy being around.

Of course, if you’re near a doctor, chances are you’re already sick. But I’m not even talking about that. Instead it’s the personality of these over sung heroes that I would like to discuss in today’s edition of Shitheads I Encounter in Life. It’s not a new edition or anything. More of a summary of my entire life. I meet lots of Shitheads. Doctors always make the list.

My first doctor memory is me lying on a cold metal table, my family all surrounding me looking down, as an older man plays with my nads. I know it didn’t happen that way. In my memory, my family was looking down at me like aliens look at abductees. I’ve read that sometimes people suppress alien abductions and have thought that maybe this was one. But why grab my testicles? Aliens are gross.

My childhood pediatricians were a Jewish couple with their own practice. My mom hated them and I’m not sure why. She would encourage us to pretend to do a drive-by shooting whenever we would pass by them. She especially liked when I used an invisible flame thrower to kill our Jewish doctors. Grenades were my favorite to pretend to throw at them. We all had a RAGE LAUGH!!! about this.

All I remember about the office was that all of the nurses smoked and toads lived in the nearby woods. All nurses smoke apparently. That’s like a stereotype. I usually think nurses are pretty cute. They’re always tuckered out from working 12 hour shifts. Their work uniform looks like my pajamas. It’s adorable! All they need are teddy bears instead of cigarette packets and I’d be all in on nurses. Yellow teeth scare me so that’s why nurses are on me Not-To-Do List.

My Jewish doctors got a divorce at some point. I’m not sure what the divorce was about. Maybe testicular exams lasting too long and the other got jealous. We left there and I got a new doctor, an Indian whose son went to my school. I never really liked him that much. He blamed everything on me being too fat. I hurt my leg during gym class and he asked me how much weight I had gained recently. He’d always end our meetings by saying “I think you vill do very vell” saying v’s instead of w’s. I guess I did turn out okay, so in hindsight he was a smart man. No thanks to him though. Telling a 10-year-old not to eat salty foods isn’t a solution. Especially when he just got a giant container of salty snacks for his birthday. My favorite gift ever of all time still is and always will be a giant container of cheese balls. It had to be 10 pounds of round cheese doodles. If I was to give up salty snacks then I would have to turn down my nice gift. That’s rude. I don’t know how they celebrate Christmas in India, but here in the USA we accept all gifts. Not like those Canadians who have a holiday the next day where they return everything. Pessimistic bastards.

My only other complaint about the Indian man was that he grabbed my testicles too hard. He reached down my tighty-whities and didn’t so much check for testicle tumors, but instead tried to crush my nuts. It really hurt and I wanted to say something. I think he also got some curry in my pee hole because it started to burn. I stopped going to him when he told me I was his oldest patient by 5 years. We said goodbye and I got a lollipop and a picture book before leaving. I got into my car and drove away from my pediatrician. It was time to grow up.

I don’t have health insurance like you Canadians. Healthy bastards. I still guess I have a doctor though. I’ve gone to him twice and I know a lot of people who go to him. He’s never asked to grab my testicles so I guess I like him. He’s also very quick and I remember there was a fat nurse there that was really nice to me. Too bad it would cost me a week’s pay to get headache medicine. Otherwise I’d go there more often.

There are still more doctors that I’ve encountered in my life as I have had a multitude of problems. I had a leg doctor when I broke my leg in back-to-back years. He always had one of those Home Alone 2 devices where he would record whatever it was that he said. He’d end his statements by saying “period” and I always thought that was funny. He was really saying everything the way it should be typed, punctuation and all. There was another Indian man who worked there that would sing “Fill Me Up Buttercup”, the song from There’s Something About Mary. I liked that place. There were pictures of athletes that they had treated on the walls and it made me feel like a real sports star when I went in there after breaking my leg playing baseball. A man in his 30s scared me by saying that if I was his age my leg would never heal. That place was a good place and I’m thinking my subconscious told me to break my leg often in order to go there. They also didn’t make fun of me too much when I didn’t know how to use crutches properly. I assumed you were supposed to walk normally until you got too tired and could use the crutches to lean on for a rest. I’d like to blame that on a mental injury, but I can only blame it on being a dumb kid with no way of understanding physics. I should have had my neck broken to put society out of its misery.

Out of all of the doctors I have had, my favorite was my allergist. He had a lot of pictures of sinuses which always makes my eyes water, but other than that he was great. He was a friendly older man and his nurse said she liked me arms because they had meat on them. Everyone that worked there was always really nice. I was like the cool kid that would come in to give them a break from all the geezers who couldn’t handle being around their cats. I went there for years, getting two shots in each arm every week for my allergies. Eventually my allergies got a bit better and the doctor moved to Florida, as all older people do. His replacement was a young Indian woman, and out of fear of her handling my testicles without a delicate touch, I retired from having allergy shots. I didn’t call a press conference or do any other showboating move. My retirement was quiet and I think the people who worked there that knew me figured that I had died from sniffing pollen.

Doctors are a weird thing. I could never be one. I could never even imagine wanting to be one. They really are a special breed of person. What do failed doctors do though? To be a doctor, you have to be really smart. I’ll probably never know someone who grew up to become a doctor. That’s pretty amazing and shows you how stupid the rest of us are. Such a necessary job is so difficult to learn to do. They make a lot of money and I think they deserve it all. The vacations, not so much. Ease up on the travels buddy, maybe it’s you bringing back mosquitoes that’s getting everyone so sick.

Maybe it’s not doctors that I dislike. It’s the people who want to become doctors that I want to kick in the face. The careers that we all dream of are the ones that usually have effected us personally. Wannabe psychiatrists usually have had rough childhoods. Real special. Like we don’t all have it rough. Wannabe filmmakers usually are nerds who enjoy watching movies alone. Just because you like something doesn’t mean you’ll be good at it, stupid. Medical doctors are people who should want to do the job to help people. Not to make up for a past mistake like not being able to help a sick grandmother, they should do it for all of humankind. Not just their stupid family illnesses. But, who am I to stop someone from becoming something good like a doctor instead of a professional skateboarder? We need doctors. Even if they’re assholes sometimes, take too many vacations, or don’t know how to properly handle little boy scrotum beans, we need them. Unless you believe in Voodoo. Then all you need is a doll, a sewing needle, and a potion that’s 95% shampoo. People still believe that shit! And they drive cars, fly on airplanes, and cry at sad movies. A doll doesn’t control your destiny, a doctor’s competence does.

“Is there a doctor in the house? Yes there is, my son Mort.” – Proud Jewish Mother

Writers

I went to a writing workshop recently. There was no writing that happened. Well, there was some. I wrote down a few websites that I think I spelled incorrectly. A few other people there wrote down notes verbatim and I saw one guy drawing pictures of hairy asses. I think he caught me because then he added my face next to the hairy ass and poop coming out onto my face. I turned away out of fear what cartoon me might do next.

The workshop was called “The Nuts & Bolts of Writing a Book.” The three authors there made sure to use that phrase several times when speaking. I guess it was a plug of sorts or a reminder to the fat woman in the back that she was attending the wrong seminar.

And that’s what I want to talk about. How terribly ugly all of these writers there were. I mean, Christ. I have never seen this many messes assembled in one room. None of them even came close to comparing to the great looks of TALKER96!!! The three real authors there were all average looking human beings. They looked like they had families, successful sex lives, and charm. Here they were, three rubes who were convinced to talk to us ugly writers in a New Jersey library on a Saturday afternoon. I e-mailed one of the writers and his wife responded back that he hung himself immediately after the seminar. Nah, that didn’t really happen. Ugly people don’t have that much power in the world.

This is off of memory, so excuse me if you happened to be there and I forget to mention your ugly face. I’ll try to get to each of you in some facet. The room contained about 20-25 people, some worse than others.

Starting with the front row on the left, there was an overweight woman without any confidence, a chubby guy with a ponytail, and a small chubby woman who had apparently already seen the same exact seminar earlier in the day. Their combined weight was probably close to 800 pounds. That’s the same as if me, a lion, and a track star had been sitting there. None of them were particularly good-looking either. They all had bad hair and glasses. These people would be perfect to draw with all of the little details. I could completely see them on The Simpsons if not for the fact that they were incredibly boring.

The front row on the right contained three women. The one in the middle left after 20 minutes of the 2 hour session and the other two uglies remained. The first one looked the way a lunch lady should look. She had grey pubic hair on her head, atop her round body. See where this theme is going? Writers are very fat. On the other side of her was one of the few thin women in the room. What she lacked in fatness she made up in ugliness. She had a very animalistic face. I don’t know what a wombat looks like, but it should look like her. She asked a lot of bad questions too. Questions that writers should know. “What do you mean by a character’s voice?” The collective sound of eyes rolling in the room could be heard by all. She also proposed a really bad theory that I have since blocked out. I could tell one of the authors wanted to tell her that she was stupid then throw one of his joke mugs at her toad face.

Second row on the left was a black man who I thought was a homeless man who wandered in. It wasn’t that he was black that made me think he was homeless. The fact that he had a giant garbage bag made me think it. He also left early. Next to him was a blonde woman who was probably about 40. She seemed normal and was probably one of the few non-hideous or retarded human beings between those walls. Next to her thought was an older gentleman. I knew he was old because of his grey hair and not remembering where his seat was after a visit to the bathroom. During the Q&A session, he was the first to ask a question. It was very detailed and had to do with publishing. The professional authors there speaking were kind enough to give him a full answer. Then he had a follow-up. I never like follow-up questions. They are always created out of anticipating the answer to the original question. I wonder what his follow-up would have been if the authors told him to go fuck himself in his “touch of grey” dyed hair. That only works for guys in their 40s, ass. You don’t look like you have experience but enough energy to get around. You just look like a Jay Leno wannabe.

The second row on the right contained this one really cool guy. Everyone looked at him with awe during the entire session. They handed him money and offered him their attractive friends for sex. That was me, of course. Next to me was another woman who seemed normal enough. She crossed and uncrossed her legs a lot. She wasn’t wearing a skirt either so it wasn’t some sexy Sharon Stone thing. She just has legs that fall asleep easily. On the other side of her was a woman who bragged about having a popular blog and a published book. Shut up. If you knew what you were doing, you wouldn’t be in the same room as me. She looked like she could have been good-looking if her face wasn’t so bad. That doesn’t make sense unless you’ve seen her. I also don’t like that she writes about cooking. She basically writes for housewives that means and I am not too fond on housewives. I’m jealous of them. They get to stay at home and clean their countertops and vaginas all day long. Replace vagina with a taint and I’m so interested in that job. Being a housewife also doesn’t count as a job. My mom, all of my friends moms, and most of my enemy’s moms worked jobs and managed to raise kids. Being a housewife isn’t an excuse not to get another job. Sure, raising kids is tough, but women with more strength than you also manage to bring in some money. Get over yourself. This isn’t the 1950s. So fuck that woman and her cook books. You’re a detriment to the economy by not telling everyone to go out to eat.

Back to the left side of things. The only guy there was a buff guy with a ponytail. What the fuck? I see two guys with ponytails in one day? In the same room? Sitting on the same side of the room? Five feet apart? Shit. I need to buy a hair tie. He had also apparently been to the earlier seminar where they said the same exact information. I guess Saturdays are slow days for him. All of his ponytail friends are busy at work stacking boxes.

Behind me on the right side were two people. The first, directly behind me, was a man who had a face that looked like a mechanic’s hands. It was rough and had a mustache. I knew that at some point in his life, a blind woman has mistaken his face for a large rock. He told us all about how he has written a children’s Christmas book and everywhere he turns they want money for him to publish it. To be fair, I respect that such a creep can manage to write a children’s book. I’m sure there are a lot of innuendos and pictures of naked boys in the book, but at least he has it finished which is more than I can say about any book I’ve ever tried writing. Next to him was a woman who at first glance was pretty cute. Then I looked again and we made eye contact. I think she smiled. I’m positive that I cringed. I turned back around and wondered if my eyes deceived me. Maybe she was hot. I turned back again and she definitely was 20 years older than me. Yuck. She laughed at every joke told by anyone. It was a very bad laugh too. Like a slow machine gun. I think I only thought she was attractive because she was the only woman in the room under 150 pounds that didn’t have gigantic lips. Big lips are fine, but you shouldn’t be able to take off an entire ice cream cone with one touch.

Now is the tricky part. The rest of the people came in kind of late and I didn’t get that great of a look at them. One was a large black man. He seemed nice enough from where I saw him. Seeing him in a different situation with fewer people around might have been different though. I forget what his book was about. Something that caught me off guard though. Hockey? There was another black woman back there too. She said what her book was about and I had no clue what she meant. The authors apparently did know what she meant because they answered her question. They started talking about screenplays and I perked up. Then the nicely told her that her idea was dumb or at least thought it.

A few more people were scattered in the back of the room, but I don’t remember what they looked like. A few were fat white women in their 50s. I guess things look good for me. Nobody looked even remotely like me. I was easily the youngest by 20 years which made me feel good after going to the Flyers game that night and finding out that they have a defenseman 6 years younger than I am. I might be getting older, but at least I’m never going to be a fat white woman without a single writing credit. Unless I lose my penis in a car accident. Then shit, I’m pretty fucking close to it.

The last person in the room that I will mention was the last person to arrive. The funny thing about her was that she was on crutches. Not on the “Yo I have Cerebral Palsy” crutches. That would be cruel to make fun of. She had the kind that you have if your ankle is sprained. I didn’t notice what her injury was as it would only cause me to probably injure it more. That’s how much she bothered me. I don’t want to spend all of my time on her fat marionette face. She had really small eyes. Or really big ones. I couldn’t really tell. All I do know is that they weren’t the correct size that eyes should be. She wore a giant grey hoodie with her University’s name on it. Ohhh a college girl. I’m impressed. That degree didn’t help you when you tripped on that ice now did it? She asked a question about formatting her novel. She has this idea that her poetry would work well as a book and then have stories about her life in it. I don’t think that’s a bad idea. It’s actually kind of original. The great thing is that the authors agreed on that too. Where we all disagreed on her was that she thought it was essential that the stories in it be specifically about her life. Little (actually kinda big) Ms. Sprained College Leg thinks that her life is so amazing that strangers would want to read about it. The authors didn’t want to say it, but they led her into the path of saying “Nobody wants to read about your lousy life, focus on the poetry part.” She argued a bit then mentioned how she’s been through a lot. She said her life is full of tragedy and that she wants to write this book about her life and then her poetry added in then go on a tour of women’s shelters and high schools. I know she means well, but who the fuck is she? You couldn’t even get to this seminar on time. That’s what we all have to face. Nobody wants to read about our lives until we’ve done something else. I would never buy a book about the life of some guy that isn’t famous for something else. One of the authors told her to maybe make the story less biographical and more fictional. She still tried a little more arguing, trying to show off her passion for this and then mentioning more awful things that have happened to her. She didn’t get specific, but unless it involves alien anal probes, your story isn’t too original.

I went to this event hoping to maybe learn something and possibly make a friend. I left with disgust at how there aren’t any hot female writers in my area that aren’t busy at 2 o’clock on a Saturday. I was foolish to ever think that there could be one. Hot girls aren’t creative. Even in the bedroom they have the reputation for being lame. Maybe I should have taken Wombat-Fact, Cook Book Blog, or Crutches the Abusive Victim home. They might be lousy individuals, but together maybe we can create some amazing penetration.