Backstops

Adults used to ask me what my favorite subject in school was. I would say “Recess!” with a big smile on my face. This was cute until I was in college and it was my advisor asking me this question. But really, what was better than recess? You could play football with a soccer ball because they didn’t allow footballs, you could watch a kid get pushed off a slide then see a helicopter lift him off to the hospital, and you could break your own leg imitating the American Gladiators. My favorite thing about recess through all of the horrors was finding something new. The best place to do it, the baseball backstop.

 

 

(I don’t think my elementary school playground had nearly this much grass. Must have been salted over during war)

 

The baseball backstop was located as far away from authority as possible. I don’t remember when I started hanging out there a lot during recess. Sometime around when I realized I was too slow for things like hop scotch or sitting on the swings. Luckily my friends enjoyed hanging out there too. If we knew what drugs were we would have been doing them. But we didn’t know what drugs were. We’d have to make do with talking to the dog that lived on the other side of the fence. Someone named him “Doggy” and it stuck. It was simple enough to remember. Doggy’s probably long dead now. I like to think he still haunts the playground and occasionally eats a kid.

 

One game we’d play back there was called “Bench Wars.” At least that’s what I call it now. It involved standing on the tiny wooden, splinters poking out like Vietcong bamboo spikes, bench alongside the field. If you sat on the bench it could fit maybe 5 asses. Easily a safety hazard. The most memorable game of Bench Wars took place when I helped my friend Rob (I’m just going to name you from now on so you become some sort of underground legend here) win by hitting him. His opponent, our friend Matt, was twice his size. I knew Rob would lose due to the size difference and his incredible ability to never win a thing in his life. To this day he’s kept it up. I couldn’t be more ashamed. Anyway, my hitting Matt got him disqualified. That meant that Rob won. We paraded around the baseball field chanting “Rob is the Champion” to the tune of “We are the Champions.” This got Matt very angry. He started to whine saying it wasn’t fair. We had cheated. Matt calmed down then showed us how he could take kicks to the nuts without feeling any pain. I bet he’s gotten a few free drinks out of that.

 

 

(Matt is a multiple winner on America’s Funniest Home Videos. Golf club to the nads version 781-9783 was him)

 

One of the strangest things I have ever seen was the inside of a mouse. I was at my babysitter’s and a kid cut a dead mouse open with a stick. Even stranger than that was when I was at the backstop and saw the insides of an animal all sprawled out. Organs were everywhere. One of my nerdy friends said that a cat cut open a rabbit and put them there. I am still shocked how he could have come up with such a logical statement about dead animal parts on the grass while I was standing there thinking it was food. Being curious and hoping to impress girls by being as sadistic as possible, I picked up a large rock and dropped it on what was either the heart or stomach. I was hoping for a huge explosion. Instead it kind of fizzled out the way an air mattress is properly deflated. I would have to live another day to show girls that I could destroy things with rocks.

 

My favorite find ever at the backstop was a beer can. Like every fifth grader would do, I picked it up. I knew this would make me popular, at least for the day. I decided that I wanted to see something explode. Not having access to dynamite or large rocks above rabbit stomachs, I started to shake the beer can. Stealing the idea from the April Fool’s episode of The Simpsons, I would cause a massive beer can explosion. I shook and shook and wondered what the aides on duty thought I was doing. Finally time came. I opened the beer can slightly then tossed it up into the air. I made a run for it to clear ground zero of the explosion. The beer can hit the ground and shot beer out all over the place. It was epic. If you were a grasshopper, it would have been like it was raining Budweiser. Since were merely boys, it was just kind of cool. My hands smelt like beer and I cleaned them out in a puddle of water. This made them smell really bad, but at least I didn’t smell like beer. A classmate came up to me and said “that was cool.” Finally I was popular for a moment.

 

 

(The Holy Grail of backstop finds. I don’t think it was a Pabst either. Teenagers in my town were not quite sophisticated for a beer which has earned the right to call itself Blue Ribbon worthy)

 

The last time I went to the backstop was around 3 years ago. I was bored one night so Rob and I went there. I had heard that an Indian kid we went to school with went there a few months earlier and peed on the slide. I did no peeing. Instead we joined in on one last lap around the baseball field chanting about how he was the champion. I drove him back to the Retarded Person Daycare he lives at. He thanked me and I told the doctor to kill him afterwards. I know wherever he is (probably reading this) he’s wondering why I killed him off and made him retarded. Needed a closer, that’s why.

Gummy Bastards

Imagine this opening paragraph appearing like the opening text to Star Wars. You know, that yellow slanted moving font that was impossible to read. Anyway, long ago in a town about 35 miles away, there was a family that lived next door to me. No. Not that family. The other side. The ones that were actually a family and not a woman who liked to cut down trees and sleep with men who drove dirty trucks. The ones on the right if you’re looking at my old house are the ones I’m talking about. This was a family who declared war on mine. Things never got out of hand, but they were entertaining enough for me to write about. Okay, that was not as epic as I had thought it would be. Kind of like the entire Star Wars franchise.

(Sorry, but I like the Ewok movies better. They got oozies!)

The family in question consisted of a mom, a dad, a daughter, and a son. The ideal for any family who is not Chinese. Their ideal family would be a son, a son, a son, and a robot. This family was nothing close to ideal. They were wretched. Being mean and aggressive was the way they chose to live their lives. And that brought out the demons in us all.

Mainly battles between our two clans took place over cat poop. They insisted that our cats were pooping on their property. I would argue today that the banks own property and that they should take it up with them, but back then I still had hope that Democracy was real. I’m sure our cats really were pooping on the lawn and I can see how that might be annoying. Even more annoying was when they would put the cat poop in a bag and leave it near our mailbox. No stamp was ever placed on the bag so it wasn’t like they were trying to send it anywhere. It would be ridiculous if they placed the stamp on the actual poop. How’s the mailman supposed to see that? Eventually things toned down and I’m sure there was a lot of yelling between parents that I never paid attention to. Our cats died and a few times we still had cat poop arrive at our mailbox. I think one time I threw it onto their roof. I don’t remember for sure. I do remember once when they were out at a soccer game I accidentally dropped a stink bomb and before it could fully shatter I broke it on their front door. They arrived home to a horrendous smell. A wonderful victory at my own hands.

(Holy shit! That finger print on the lens looks like a ghost cat. Children with large unibrows covering their eyes attract ghost cats too)

Another issue between us was that of balls traveling through the yards. We had an unwritten policy about returning balls to each other if we found them in our yards. Until they didn’t return one of my balls. Then it was fair game. My first dog Baylee popped a blow up ball of theirs. Another time, good o’le McGwire grabbed it and took it up to our deck. I remember sitting on the back deck while the kids next door were outside. At this point I was scary looking and fat. They weren’t about to ask me for their ball back so they just stood there hoping I could read minds. I can’t. So the ball sat on our deck until it slowly deflated itself. A perfectly good ball ruined because they were bitches.

(Who am I kidding? My backyard never had nearly this much grass. Only my family gets this)

I only remember going into their house one time. Their backyard, a few times, but actually inside once. I had returned home from school and neither of my parents were home. It was probably St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, or a work day when “mommy and daddy need a drink to help them with stress.” The neighbors let me hang at their house for about a half hour. All I remember doing was hiding under a blanket with the girl who lived there. Nothing happened. I didn’t want it to because I already knew their dirty secret. They were gummy bastards.

What is a gummy bastard? A gummy bastard is a next door neighbor of mine. More specifically, the family who had these strange things on the tops of each of their heads. The dad had it, the daughter had it, and the ginger son had it. I must have been playing a game of lice check with the daughter when I first noticed it. A big red deformity poking out of the top of her head. I poked at it because that seemed like the only thing to do. It felt like a gummy bear. But we certainly couldn’t call the family the Gummy Bears. They were not bears. They were bastards. Hence the name, the Gummy Bastards.

(I’d be a bastard too if my head contained delicious snacks I could not lick)

I’m not exactly sure why we really hated each other. I guess that’s just what neighbors do. You find things to be disgusted about one another. It’s natural though. When you are forced to see the same ugly faces everyday only feet away from where you rest your head at night, you’re going to grow to hate them. They were everything my family wasn’t. They were social, had family friends, athletic kids, their father smoked cigars instead of cigarettes like mine, the mom jogged while mine watched Dawson’s Creek, the daughter’s nickname was Cookie for some diabetic reason while my sister’s nickname was bear for reasons that made sense at the time, and their son was a Ginger while I had the hair color of champions, dirty blondish brown. All that separated us was a damn fruit snack on top of the head. Could it have been the source of their bastardness? The hair to their Samson. The genitals to their Ron Jeremy. The being married to the executive of E! to their Chelsea Handler. I can only speculate what it was. What I do know is that they were animal hating bastards. I hope a loud black family moved into our house you gummy bastards.

Big Announcements

Whenever someone tells me that they have a big announcement I am always nervous. I worry the girl I am secretly still in love with is getting married and will forever not be mine. Then my mind plays more games. I worry that she’s getting a sex change and that I will forever be in love with a married in-sexual-limbo creature. My big announcement today is I have no big announcement. See? I told you big announcements were always disappointing.

(Do not let this sweet fragile face fool you. She was a bad girl this year. That’s why instead of a birthday cake she gets canned spinach)

The best way to make a big announcement is at a holiday dinner. The family will gossip about rival families. If you’re Catholic you’ll probably get into a fist fight or two. The proper way to get attention is to grab an eating utensil and tap it 2-3 times onto a glass. Not very hard of course. Enough to make a springing sound. Like when your uncle taps on his glass eye to freak you out. The family will turn to you and then you can give them the big announcement. But what qualifies exactly as a big announcement? You don’t want to announce openly how you found a red crayon on the ground. You need to save these moments for very special occasions.

One big announcement is that you’re gay. Coming out of the closet on Thanksgiving is the stereotypical thing to do. Why Thanksgiving? Because you don’t miss out on presents. Worst case scenario, your mother takes away your food. But you’re gay anyway. You eat half slices and only eat carbs post-workout. You probably won’t care. Your family has a month to accept your lifestyle change and by the time Christmas rolls around your dad will have a new opinion on “those sinning queers.” He’ll have bought you something useful like a rubber fist or a pink shirt. Something he thinks gay people worship. But hey, he’s trying.

(Your dad will buy you this shirt for your job at the ass-less chaps factory)

As I mentioned in the opener of this, weddings are big announcements. I like calling weddings “the prologues to divorce.” Most people get a divorce at some point in their life. This wouldn’t be a problem if murder was legal. But where do you draw the line when it comes to murder? We can’t say that you can only murder someone you’re married to. Then people will be getting married only to murder enemies. It’s also not fair to gay people. They should be allowed to push someone off a building too! With technology now you don’t really have to announce your wedding. Most people find out about it via Facebook, Twitter, or Craigslist. I don’t recommend posting about your wedding on Craigslist. Prostitutes and guys selling dumbbells tend to show up.

Pregnancies are another huge announcement. This one you can’t wait too long. Otherwise people will start to think you’re fat and unfriend you. Or is it defriend? I’d ask a friend but none of them seem to answer their phones anymore. Except the one time I called from a pay phone. My buddy heard my voice and hung up immediately. Sucks for him. I had a great time at that amusement park alone. People are usually happier when you get pregnant than when you get married. Marriage makes someone a wimp. Having a kid makes someone hypnotized. Married people will complain about their spouses. Parents will talk nonstop about how great their children are. I never had that in my life though. As soon as I was born my parents cut out their own tongues. I guess they had some great intuition into how I would turn out.

In today’s only slightly worse economy but the media likes to run with the story that we’re going to need to go back to the gold standard world, getting a job can be huge. I remember when I first got my job. I ran around the office high-fiving everyone I could. I drove around town telling every stranger I spotted about it. The mailman, the convenience store clerk, the Nazi crossing guard all congratulated me. The thing about most jobs is after a while you start to hope the person you replaced enters one afternoon with a gun ready for revenge. A bullet pierces your lower back, paralyzing you for years. You collect a huge bonus and don’t have to work anymore. You can sit back with your feet up in the air (because lowering them could cause a hemorrhage) and enjoy life.

(Blonde hair, feet at attention, making the black child walk in the back. Clearly a Nazi. Even more freaky I found this picture from Google images off the page of someone who follows me when searching “Nazi crossing guard.” Weird but thank you Five Second Rules)

Other smaller moments in life can be big announcements. Achieving your dreams, buying a new house, poisoning a neighbor’s dog and successfully making it look like it was hit by a car are all noteworthy. I never have very many big announcements. I get happy enough at a poop taking less than 3 wipes. The problem is you can’t really show a picture to a friend of this achievement. It’s easy to doctor that moment.

(Doctored like the moon landing. I’m not sure how this proves Apollo 11 took place in Nevada. It only shows how much people hate happy Americans)

Maybe someday I will have a big announcement. You’ll all eagerly lean forward in anticipation. You’ll congratulate me on my achievements. Say things like “Way to go!” and “I always knew you could do it!” I’ll gloat with my chest out and go along with your fake sincerity. Then we’ll all find out that I was mistaken. I really didn’t succeed. My big announcement turns into a gigantic dud. You’ll laugh at my expense and I’ll go back to being a loser with nothing important to brag about. Unless you too love clean poops. Then bragging I shall do.

Closers

I doubt many people reading this are avid sports fans. Most of you wouldn’t know the difference between a hockey stick and a cricket wand. They do call those paddles wands, right? I would like to today focus on a select group of people in the baseball world. The ones with the most unusual personalities of all. The closers. They’re pitchers who come into the game late to essentially “close out” the game. If you’ve ever heard of a baseball player being a complete creep, chances are he was a closer.

(Vern Schillinger is smaller than Kevin Bacon’s wife?)

The “save” is a statistic in baseball the closer values. It happens when he successfully comes into the game and “saves” it by “closing” it out. See how simple baseball is? Things are very literal. Except the new statistic “Value Over Replacement Player” but that was invented by Moneyball idiots. The save became officially sometime in the 1960s to combat the Russians. Two of the first closers were Goose Gossage of the New York Yankees and Rollie Fingers of the Oakland Athletics. Goose had a blonde porn star mustache and Rollie had a curly Captain Hook one. I think these two made it ideal that your closer be a nutcase. They were two of the first successful ones at it. Like if the first person you ever had sex with cried, you’d expect everyone to cry. Or maybe a more accurate comparison that I cannot think of at this moment. But I’m taking things from my own experiences here.

(This mustache is why athletes never used to be trusted making a million dollars)

The current all-time saves leader is Mariano Rivera. You may have heard about him recently. He hurt his knee shagging fly balls during batting practice. What a dope! I read an article in a magazine saying he always responds to fan letters. I sent him a letter around 1999. Asshole never responded. My dad always likes to point out that “Moe” has been in the country for 20 years and still barely speaks English. I remind him how he can’t type an email without 9 typos and he shuts up. Rivera has been the closer for the Yankees since around 1997. He’s a staple of their team and now his career may end because he got hurt actually doing something athletic, running. I hate the Yankees so I am beaming with joy. Next I’m hoping Alex Rodriguez finds a breast lump.

(Mariano Rivera suffers from “Ricky Ricardo Syndrome.” The only symptom he does not have is getting turned on by beating up a redheaded woman with his fist)

My team, the Philadelphia Phillies, have had some strange closers of the years. In the 1970s and early 1980s they had Tug McGraw. Country singer Tim McGraw’s mom got boned by Tug and never knew him growing up. He’s dead now and nobody cares how much of a womanizer he was. He helped close out the first World Series win in a horrible franchise’s history. During my baseball peak the team had a guy named Jose Mesa. He’d do commercials with his son saying how his name translates to “Joe Table.” Then he’d go out, walk the bases loaded, and barely escape the game with a save. They also had Brett Myers who once beat his wife in public. What kind of millionaire beats his wife in public? He must have a giant house away from neighbor earshot. Do it there!

(Here’s a picture of Tim McGraw for the women who have been bored reading this. I also included Faith Hill wearing a cursed ancient Egyptian medallion for the enjoyment)

Not all closers are abusive toward their wives. Former Mets closer Francisco Rodriguez strangled his father-in-law in the locker room last season. He was promptly released and now plays for the Milwaukee Brewers. If your team name praises alcoholism, breaking tracheas is not frowned upon. Brian Wilson was only ever abusive toward my brain. He’s the guy nicknamed “the bearded one” who hangs around with Charlie Sheen. He was only good maybe two years ever. In the 6,000 years that the earth has been around, only two season was Brian Wilson any good. I’m pretty sure he’s on a video game cover too. Who puts a guy who pitches 60 innings a season on the cover of a game? He’s out this year with Tommy John surgery. I guarantee Charlie Sheen and slamming down beers had something to do with that elbow injury.

(You have a loud personality. We get it!)

I wanted to make a mention of Eric Gagne only so I could put his picture here. He was another closer who dominated for a year or two then faded away. That’s kind of the game of the closer. You give it your all and burn out quickly. Neil Young would be proud. He said it’s “better to burn out then to fade away.” This coming from a guy who must be in his 70s and still plays music. Burn out Neil! Live up to your song! Gagne’s trademark look was his goatee and goggle wear. Because wearing normal glasses would have totally made him look like a jerk.

(He looks like any chubby guitar player of a band only girls like)

Possibly still the most mainstream closer of all-time is John Rocker. Clearly the inspiration for Kenny Powers from Eastbound and Down, John Rocker was the ultimate heel athlete. You may remember in 2000 how he basically declared war on New York City. He said stuff about single mothers, homosexuals, immigrants, and other easy targets. This got under a lot of people’s skin as many members of the media live in New York City and only care about themselves. I doubt most single mothers, homosexuals, or immigrants even knew who John Rocker was.  I had a chance to meet him in 2005. Only 5 years later and Rocker was playing independent baseball. That is, a league of players making less money than I do a year hoping at one last chance to make the majors again. He couldn’t have been nicer too. I called out to him and he came right over. He sells real estate now. Here is his life summed up in under 2 minutes by a bunch of comedians nobody cares about and a few other pop culture duds.

Discounts

Like every other red, white, and blue blooded American, I love a bargain. I hate paying full price for anything. Maybe that doesn’t so much make me American as it does cheap. When the United States spends as much money as we did to build all those nukes only to never use them, cheap isn’t a word to describe us. All that money spent on warheads could have been used to feed starving children in other countries. We would even give them those sour Warhead candies so they know the sacrifice as a nation we made for them.

(We took away much of our defense so that naked Third World children could make sour puss faces)

When I grocery shop I always hunt for the bargains. Prices of food don’t influence me all that much at the store. I know what I like and I’m not going to fall for their witchcraft into convincing me that I like frozen peas just because they’re 2 for $3. If something I buy is on sale though I will stock up on it. That also doesn’t influence my eating habits very much. All that happens is I eat a little too much and by the end of the week I’m naked in front of the mirror swearing that I only eat things that are “unprocessed” from now on.

Here’s a light question for you. How long before you frequent a place do you think a discount should be given? I went to the same Subway 3-4 days a week for 4 years and never once got a discount. They’re friendly there, but never did I get charged a smaller price. Instead they raised prices. Probably knowing that I’d still pay 50 cents more. There was another Subway that I went to and my second trip there I was given a discount. The girl, we’ll call her Amber because I fell in love with her and learned her name because she was really hot and would talk to me, gave me this discount. She said “I remember you from last week!” She was an adorable little blonde covered in piercings. The last time I went there was Halloween 2009. I said to her “Maybe sometime I’ll eat my sandwich here and keep you company!” Pulling out my dick and threatening to urinate on her would have received a better reaction. Oh well. I saved a dollar 2 weeks in a row.

My problem with discounts is that I am not a good haggler. I had a science teacher who claimed to haggle down the price of an Eyewitness News jacket at the mall. He said he went in there every day for a month until they gave it to him half price. Where the fuck do you go to get an Eyewitness News jacket? What horrendous store sells this crap? And who buys it? The teacher was as Jewish as a person could be. He’d drop Yiddish words out of nowhere to describe the biology of different species. He even carried around a bag full of buttons claiming they were his friends. I didn’t get this until much later on in life. At first I thought it was a sick Holocaust joke. Turns out, he was crazy.

(If the Nazis turned prisoners into these buttons we’d probably like them a bit more)

Each time I get my oil changed the man there without teeth tells the man there with one eyebrow to give me $10 off. Normally this would be a good discount. Then I get my bill and it’s somehow $40 more than I was expecting. I never trust a discount when it comes to cars. Car insurance really should cover these car repairs. At least the ones that aren’t our own faults. Like you should get four free oil changes a year. If they find something wrong and it wasn’t your fault, it gets repaired for free. I’ve already declared that if by the time I’m 70 I haven’t gotten in a car wreck that I will go on a vehicular manslaughter spree. You know, to make the $1200+ dollars I’ve spent on insurance a year worth something.

“But because I like you, I’ll give it to you for–” add in the amount the criminal sleazebag is willing to chop the price down to. Nobody has ever told me that they liked me so much that I would get a lower price. I’ve had to buy a Sunday paper and search through the coupon section to get mine. I don’t think anybody has ever started any sentence by saying that they liked me before the first punctuation. Most people giving out these amazing deals are such con-artists anyway. If you can give it to me for so cheap, why wasn’t it that way in the first place? I always think of that part in A Christmas Story when the Christmas tree salesman and the dad haggle. It ends up with the Christmas tree salesman having to tie the tree to the roof of the car. The whole scene cements my feelings on people who are able to give bargains. They’re cunning and other things words that start with the letters C-U-N. Most people like that movie because it reminds them of Christmas. I like it because it reminds me not to trust anyone.

(Especially not Schwartz and his triple dog dares)

Is there any place you frequently get a discount at? Remember, it doesn’t count if you put a dead bug in your own food.

Deliveries

I’ve been seeing a lot of transsexuals lately. No matter where I am; the subway, the store, the meat-packing district, I’m bound to find a 6’2 man with a tucked in wiener ready to call me daddy. For the right price of course. Today was different though. I didn’t see any trannies. I did see two delivery men. The unsung heroes of our laziness. Today, I pay a tribute to you.

(Lady Gaga, well-known tranny who I guess you could say works delivering poison to our eyes and ears)

I have a lot of respect for people who work delivery jobs. They’re tough. You have to move objects from one place to another. When did Star Trek take place? Wasn’t it like 2013? And we’re not really even close to developing teleportation. What a filthy liar of a show. The thing most people have delivered is food. The two guys I saw today were delivering the most common foods for delivery, pizza and Chinese. I didn’t bother to ask what they were “hauling.” That’s more of a question for truckers. Delivery men aren’t usually much for talking. They’re only in their cars for a 10 mile radius at most and don’t get as lonely for small talk as a trucker would. I still said hello to the portly Dominoes man who called me dude. He was a very large man. I have a feeling my neighbors received a half eaten pizza.

Where I currently live, I’ve had two things delivered. One was my furniture. The other was Chinese food by a, get this, Spanish guy! I mean full-blown Spanish. One of them Spanish people you see in Robert Rodriguez films. When I brought me my food I called him a race traitor then threw his tip on the ground. My furniture was much more fun to have arrive. I spent two weeks sleeping on a couch and using an overturned book shelf as a dinner table. My days were spent doing Sudoku puzzles and evenings spent watching my grandchildren. You can tell someone is depressed when they buy a book of Sudoku puzzles and complete half of it. A white guy and a black guy delivered my furniture. They set up my bed and everything. It was cool to have a team of ebony and ivory in my home. I felt like I was living Lethal Weapon 3.

(Riggs looks pissed. The new commissioner must be a Jew, woman, or anything not-white)

Back in the olden days when baseball players drank more beer to get bigger muscles, other things were delivered to the home. Milk probably being the strangest of these deliveries. If there was a milk man I would definitely use him. I drink a lot of milk. I’m pretty sure I have Madcow disease because of it. Newspapers were also delivered to homes. I guess they still are, but who really reads a newspaper? There’s a little something called Good Morning America that can give you news faster than any newspaper. Did you know Matt Lauer has a light peanut allergy? You never would have known that if you were some geezer who still reads the newspaper.

You could consider taxi drivers as deliverers of people. But if you do that you also have to consider bounty hunters delivery men. I bet bounty hunters get a chubby in the front of their pants every time they see the letters “DOA” on a wanted sign. They can be more careless with their work. Crazy people are sometimes delivered places. Outpatient programs will come to homes then bring the manically nuts to their lair for crafts and group talks. Don’t ask me how I know a lot about outpatients programs. Let’s just say my lack of athleticism isn’t the only genetic shit storm I have cooking up in my DNA.

(Boba Fett proves you don’t need a mullet to be a lawman)

Way before Netflix I had an idea for movies to be delivered to your home via car. I figured my parents and older sister could be drivers, my younger sister could answer the phones, and I could sit back and do boss things like sitting back in my chair wasting space. Like all my ideas, this was brilliant with obvious flaws. A caller would call in and say “What do you got?” and I’d have to name everything from Abba: Live in Concert to Zorro: The Gay Blade. It would take so long that they’d die of exhaustion and never actually be able to place their order. Luckily I was 12 when this idea came around and could use the excuse of hormones as to why I was so dumb.

Best Buy or as I will call it from now on, Best Buy It Somewhere Else If You Want A Decent Price, has that thing the Geek Squad now. I don’t know how much they deliver things. I guess delivering your own nerdy skills could be considered. Geek Squad members are probably the safest to be around. I know women are not allowed to deliver pizzas as some places due to fear of rape. Firstly nobody would ever rape a Geek Squad member. Secondly no poor old woman with a busted alarm clock would ever need to be worried about being raped by the Geek Squad member. He’s too nervous to put the moves on his best friend he’s known all his life. There’s no way he’ll be able to de-robe her in time before her husband returns from his afternoon duck feeding session.

(He better not be doing the “hole at the bottom of the popcorn bag” trick)

I hope you always show respect toward those hardworking delivery people. You should always tip. Even if it’s you joking and saying “Hey buddy, here’s a tip for ya!” then tell them about other job opportunities. There are so many things that are delivered nowadays that I barely tapped into it. Of course the most famous delivery men of all-time, the mailmen. They come there every day. Their motto is such that they will brave any element to bring you your bills. So the next time you see someone delivering to a lazy bastard send them a salute. They’ve cut off three cars and ran over a cat to get you your hot wings on time. It’s the least you could do in return.

Petitions

It has been said by me right now in this sentence that petitions are like Santa Claus, only children and the mentally handicapped believe in their power. The power of a petition is to cause change. To undue wrongs. Santa Claus doesn’t really have any powers. He can shrink to fit down chimneys, but that’s about it. Giving Santa Claus powers is kind of pointless anyway. He’s no super hero. And what’s he need x-ray vision for? He’s already in your home. If he wants to look down your pants he can yank them down while you dream of sugarplum fairies.

(Sugarplums or Barney the Dinosaur terds?)

Once in my life I participated in a petition. I started the whole thing and everything. All of the Philadelphia sports games were broadcast on a channel called Comcast. Problem was, a cable company by the name of Cablevision had a monopoly on my area. This was before Fios and all of those other ways around this problem. I think this was legal because they said if you don’t want Cablevision you can go fuck yourself. So with that logic you had other options.

I knew I was not alone in my desire to bring Comcast Network to my town. I had learned in school about guys like Gandhi who took down entire empires by not eating. It was chicken patty day twice that week. I wasn’t about to go missing out on those for what I truly believed in. Instead I chose to gain support through a petition, sort of. I’ve always had a fear of clipboards as the clips on those boards remind me of bear traps. I would have to instead rely on word of mouth. The most reliable source of all. How else do you think everybody heard about films like The Hunger Games or The Avengers? Advertisements? The Internet? You’re fooling yourself. We all know those movies exist because we overheard an 18-year-old girl talking about it with frozen yogurt on her lip.

(Christ, she’s in here enjoying her Froyo while everyone else is trying to get in and escape the zombies)

Art supplies were never lacking in my home. My mom always wanted me to be artistic. She bought me countless books on how to draw. One time I successfully traced the Road Runner off of a cup. Since then it’s been kind of downhill. I had construction paper with colors from all of the Philadelphia teams. Red for the Phillies and 76ers. Green for the Eagles. Orange for the Flyers. I made little notes on these pieces of construction paper with messages about voting “Yes for Comcast” and other things that I’m sure I misspelled. My book bag was filled with them. It was time to spread them out to the rest of the fourth grade class.

I think this was the same year that Mmm Bop was a single because I remember the same guy who reminded me of the Hanson kids sitting next to me on the bus that morning. I had a great pitch. I asked him if he liked each of the teams, one by one. He liked them all. Until he got to my Phillies. He agreed that he liked their colors though and would support my cause. Once at school I had similar success. Students ran up to me from all grades wanting to know what the fat kid was handing out. I remember bullies coming up to me asking for more construction paper notes to make into paper airplanes then throw into the eyes of nerds. It wasn’t my original intention, but the message was at least getting out there. Even if it was being used as detention evidence.

(Never trust a kid who bases his life decisions on enjoyment of the color red)

Being a kid I figured I would be successfully. Close to 50 kids in my elementary school knew my cause! If they all tell each of their parents and they all had no dead parents that would be 150 people who knew! Then their parents would tell all of their friends and I’d finally be able to watch every single sporting event that I wanted! If only life was that simple.

A commercial aired a few months later. Much later than the voting ended. It was one of those crappy local commercials where a stagehand walks by in the background with a donut. The ones where local businessmen come in screaming and by the end of the commercial they’re whispering. This particular commercial featured an old guy in a suit. He stood behind two stacks of “votes.” Am I that old where they actually used to keep paper votes? One stack was much higher than the other. Like way higher. Imagine the tallest building you know. Now imagine a dog’s penis. That was the scale between the two. The old guy explained how Comcast would not be coming to our local cable provider. The people had spoken. If I remember correctly, only around 400 voted “Yes.” It was over 10,000 who gave it the “No.” Fuck. All that construction paper wasted for nothing.

(This picture to brought to you by the Morgan Elementary School Class of 1999. I only remember that was the year because I graduated 5th grade the same year as Columbine)

It took a few years, but Comcast finally come to my area. Most people voted “No” because it would be an extra $5 a month or something like that. I don’t blame them now for voting the way they did. This was during the peak of when the New York Yankees were all taking steroids. Nobody cared about Philadelphia. Especially not their loser teams. Even more importantly I learned that you can’t count on children for anything. That’s why whenever I see a school bus hanging off a ledge I continue on. No use in helping them. They’ll just help disappoint me.

Calamities

One day the world will end. No matter what you believe in this is fact. Something 6,000 years old, like earth, cannot possibly last too much longer. Armageddon is nearing. A homeless guy with a sign told me so. He believes that the end is nigh so badly that he was willing to take the door off his home and write about it in his own feces to warn others. Of course the door to his home is a cardboard sign. I think it used to be a Cap’n Crunch box. What he couldn’t tell me was how everything would come to an end. That’s my mission today. To scare paranoid people.

The most obvious way the world will end is like that movie The Happening. Flowers and trees will convince people to commit suicide. I don’t get how a patch of grass could ever control somebody’s survival instincts. What a bad movie. M. Night shouldn’t be allowed to make movies without ghosts. And Bruce Willis has to get shot by a naked guy in the bathroom in the opening scene to all of these. It’s the perfect formula to a memorable movie.

(From the film The Sixth Sense when Patrick Swayze suffocates himself with the palm of his own hand)

Actually, I think the most plausible way for the world to end would be a meteor. It happened before. Millions of years ago. It crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula which is located right next to Mexico. Darn! Poor meteor travels all this way to take out Mexico and it just misses. We’re probably due for a meteor to crash into us. Occasionally they do smash into earth and cause inconvenience. I know there was a bad one in Russia around 100 years ago. It burned down a forest. So a meteor’s impact is about as powerful as a man chucking a cigarette out the window into a pile of leaves. When did the power of a meteor decline so badly? You used to kill dinosaurs and The Flinstones. Get your act together meteorites! You’re an embarrassment to all things catastrophic.

Floods, fires, diseases, and volcanic eruptions are the boring ways for us all to die. Floods sound too thirst quenching. Fires can be prevented by stop, dropping, and rolling. Catching a deadly disease means you need to stop shaking so many hands. And the only volcanic eruption we need to worry about is the one in Yosemite. Supposedly that entire National Park is something called a super volcano. Don’t let the word super fool you. Usually super means good. Like Superman or Super Fresh. A super volcano does not rescue orphans or offer great weekly deals. It explodes then causes a chain reaction of other calamities. My knowledge of Yosemite may or may not come from the movie 2012. Best part of that movie, nothing bad happened to Africa. That’s where they say that they were going to head off to. I’m sure those Warlords will be thrilled to see John Cusack show up with the wealthiest white people in the world.

(The African Welcoming Committee, headed by Joseph Francis Kony)

More recently it has been thought that computers may kill us all. If anything the computers will make us all sterile. We’re more likely to have a Children of Men on our hands than a Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Can’t we always defeat them by throwing water or coffee onto the robots? I can’t even sweat onto a keyboard without it giving me problems. Some believe that it will not necessarily be big giant cyborgs attacking us. The more likely scenario would be that every electronic device breaks. We’ll be scrambling around to find solar-powered toasters. Probably start eating each other out of our lack of crispy morning treats. Pillsbury will be out of business. I guess we won’t care too much. The only way they’d be able to advertise at that point is via billboard. We’ll all be too busy unwrapping television cords from around our children’s necks to take notice of the latest marketing scheme.

There are more science fiction-type ways for the world to come to a conclusion. Things like alien invasions or nuclear holocausts. It would be kind of funny if we use our nukes to kill the aliens but it kills us all at the same time. Funny probably isn‘t the correct word but I‘m running out of steam here. The likely hood of aliens invading seems to me like it would have already happened by now. Aliens never procrastinate. A nuclear holocaust is very likely. I would place a bet that this is how the world will eventually come to an end. Is it wrong to gamble on the extinction of the human race? I’m over 21 so it’s probably legal.

(Say what you want, this is a gorgeous way for us to all die)

How do you hope the world ends? I’d mark out for a zombie uprising. The way you kill zombies always tips everyone off on how creative of a person you are.

Bush Beaters

Fighting rules. I don’t care what anybody says. Seeing two men slug it out with their firsts, a couple arguing at a restaurant with their words, or a schizophrenic smashing his own head into a tree while his second personality dukes it out with his ninth is awesome. As cool as fighting is we’re told that it’s bad. We get suspended from school and asked to clean out our desks by the end of the afternoon when we do it. When two people can’t fight and get their rage out on each other something so terrible happens. They begin a war of passive aggressiveness. Going back and forth with snide comments, not being completely truthful about the problem at hand, and overall acting like children.

I don’t remember hearing the term passive aggressive until the last few years. The only thing I could relate it to would be the phrase “beat around the bush.” This doesn’t mean slugging ex-presidents in the face or bitch slapping a hairy vagina. The phrase conjures up the image of a man hitting a bush, as in shrub, with a long black stick. What it means is that you’re not being straightforward. You’re beating around the bush instead of doing the normal thing and jabbing the stick straight into the center of the bush to kill the squirrel. Beating around the bush and being passive aggressive solves nothing. All you’re left with is a bush missing its little green things. I refuse to call what a bush has leaves. If you can’t easily rake it into a pile and urinate on top knowing a child will later jump in, it’s not a true leaf.

(Guarantee one of these kids ends up having a tossed into the air cat turd land in their face)

Mostly the passive aggressive people I encounter are children. Not all of these “children” lack pubic hair and wear Donald Duck underpants still. A member of the children population to me is anyone who behaves the way you’d expect someone who still thinks you must pee inside of a woman’s butt to impregnate her would. Activities such as tattling, wearing shoes untied, and mistaking freckles for shit stains on their hands join in with being passive aggressiveness. These children will be angry at someone else. Instead of saying “That makes me angry because–” they’ll leave little hints about their displeasure because someone didn’t go to their dead parent’s funeral. My rule, if you never met the person then there’s no need to go to the funeral. I would hate it if people I didn’t like went to my death celebration. The only thing worse would be people I never even met. I swear, if someone I don’t know shows up at mine, I’m haunting them.

Every high school and college girl I know/have known is extremely passive aggressive. And like with the definition of children, my definition of girl is different from yours. A girl is anyone whose ass I could easily kick. My fighting style is mostly squirming and quick foot work. I can shuffle my feet with the best of them. Humans who lose to me in a fight have to be the outer shells of ovaries. I think girls this age are passive aggressive because they still have hope that one day everyone will like them. At a certain age, women stop giving a shit if they’re liked or not. They are no longer passive aggressive, as much. When someone pisses them off they’ll tell that person how angry they are. Then they get put in a nursing home and the rest of the family lives burden free. Kind of sad, but at least now you understand why so many young women can be cruel.

(Joan Rivers is 211 years old and isn’t afraid to tell you that she does not like you. All she fears is losing her heavenly voice)

Facebook is the home to a lot of passive aggressiveness. Instead of telling your ex how much you hope they die, people will post song lyrics. Songs about being hurt but how you’re a stronger person without them around. I hate songs like this. I don’t need to be reminded that Sting has relationship trouble. What’s that say for my future when he has thoughts of failure? He’s fucking Sting! He has a wrestler named after him. Muhammed Ali would frequently mention his name during taunting interviews explaining his abilities. A more sane thing to do to get back at someone is not publicly post about how much of a wimp you are. Why are people online so obsessed with letting everyone know about their emotions? This is why art sucks so much. We pass up on creating something beautiful and use our anger to complain or post frowny faces. The only time you should post a frowny face is when you want to let people know you’ve just had a stroke.

The best thing to do when people are being passive aggressive is to tell them to cut it out. Let them know they you get it, they’re mad. The problem is we’re so afraid of failure. Our own fears of failure mean we assume others will hate that failure. We’re nice enough that we don’t actually tell that person how much they suck. So we do it in a passive aggressive way. That ends up helping nothing. Next time someone screws up and does something that makes you angry, get angry. Passive aggressiveness is an oxymoron. You’re being aggressive yet passive about it all. What’s the keyword in oxymoron anyway? It’s moron. And that’s what you are. A moron with the social skills of an ox.

(Hey look, even an ox takes on their problems head-on. What’s your excuse?)

Streaks

Sorry if you read the title and thought this said “Steaks” instead of “Streaks.” I guess though if you have some debilitating disease where that’s the problem you also thought the first word of this post was “Soy.” Now you’re especially hungry. Nothing is more delicious than soy. Killing and eating animals is natural. We’ve been doing it since the beginning of bread. If you don’t eat meat you’re being a jerk to the local bread companies. You asshole. Enjoy your soy and tofu in hell you socialists.

(I eat steak because I love my country. Go to one of them vegan countries like Greenland if you got a problem with my national pride)

Streaks come in many different forms. Like dead people, they’re everywhere. The most common form of the word streak comes from sports. I like sports streaks. Some of them are so incredibly legendary and never to be broken. Joe Dimaggio once got a hit in 56 straight games. I’m sure Marilyn Monroe was happy that he was taking his slugging elsewhere for two months as she lowered herself onto her knees for the Kennedy Brothers. I know Brett Favre also has some amazing games played streak. Nothing compared to that of Cal Ripken Jr. I don’t know enough about football or Brett Favre to really be sure. I do know that he has a tiny unphotogenic cock. I’m sure there’s some streak there he has going. Sending the most dick pictures to sideline reporters? Hey, it’s something to add to the resume.

If you’re unlucky you’ve probably at some point in your life looked at your tighty whities and seen a streak. This is caused by improper wiping of your anus. My dad was guilty of this. We’d call his brown streaks “black beauty.” You know, like the graceful horse. I don’t know what it is but at one point in my life I too had a struggle with streaks. I would get yelled at by my mom each time she’d find underwear that looked like Holocaust pajamas. I’d go to great lengths for her not to find my shit stained underwear. I’d hide them in a shoebox under my bed and wait until she did laundry then toss them in. I think this is why teenage boys are bought boxer shorts. After 13 years of looking at their little boy’s poop, moms have had enough.

(Is that a shit stain on the back of your boxers? No it’s Mario’s mustache! Is that a mushroom poking out of the front of your boxers? No it’s the end of my–)

You can add “er” to the word streak and you get streaker. These are daring individuals who either have some strange fetish or have lost a college bet. I would never go streaking. I have a tad bit of dignity left and I want to cradle that close and in clothing. I’ve never seen a streaker in person either. I’ve seen woman flash their breasts, but never someone ran by with their dong flapping by. Why do people on TV always find streakers amusing? I’d be so fucking annoyed. If I was at my staining his underwear with shit son’s football game and some stoner decided to streak across the field I would pull him down by the neck hair for wasting my time with his awful display of physical comedy. Streakers have to be careful these days. I think if you streak in front of a kid you are arrested for making a child grow up too fast. They ask their parents hard questions like “Where do babies comes from?”, “What’s that thing called?”, and “Should I be feeling as aroused right now as I do?” Here’s a tip. If a child uses the word aroused, they don’t need much explaining.

Objects can streak. Cars streak across the road and into a guard rail. Comets streak across the sky and into earth killing all of life. Animals have things on them sometimes that look like streaks. These are called stripes. Since animals don’t wear clothes, they’re always streaking so this is relevant fodder. The most popular of striped animals is the zebra. Nobody’s favorite animal is the zebra though. They’re very forgettable. Nobody really kills a zebra for anything is probably why. Elephants give us pianos. Deer give us trophies for our walls. Snakes give us belts/joke dildos. You wouldn’t kill a zebra and use the flesh as a striped shirt. I mean, it would make things easier on people but that’s so cruel. We already kill alligators for footwear and handbags. Women are evil.

(Quit smiling and get ready for my foot up your ass)

I hope you learned a lot about streaks today. Maybe I have inspired you to get your own streak going. Remember, there’s a difference between a record and a streak. A streak takes consistency and stamina. Yeah, that’s not you, is it? Perhaps instead I have reminded you of why your asshole is itching so badly. Cha-Cha-Cha over to a piece of Charmin and clean that butt mister! Your mom will thank you. For the more daring of those reading this, you’ll probably go out and run around naked. Kudos to you! I hope you get hit by a car and die that way. Finally there are those who have learned about the horrors of how we treat animals. You’ll probably start a petition to help save the whales, the clumsy fat girl of the animal kingdom. You will not succeed. Nobody cares about the whales. Why would we? What have they ever done for us other than throw their piss water in our faces?