Action Hero Auditions in the Zombie Apocalypse

[ Chapter 2 is below – if you want to read chapter 1 first, click HERE]

We made our way back out through the lobby past the plastic trees and hostess stand.  My bike had a busted shifter and only one gear of the original 10 still working.  Earl was on what they used to call beach cruiser.  There weren’t any flesh biters close by, so it wasn’t too tough to get up and moving, even with all the scavenged stuff we were carrying.  I learned from experience it aint easy to build up pedaling momentum on a one-speed if a Junior or a Sally Mae is grabbing at you.

Gas was still around if you looked hard enough and didn’t mind getting a mouthful of it every so often from siphoning.  Keeping enough unleaded in your car ain’t the only challenge though.  People just keeled over dead and abandoned things in the worst possible places.  Tryin’ to steer around a big old SUV parked all cattywampus dead in the middle of a back road could land you in a ditch with hungry visitors coming out of the weeds.

Earl had a 250 cc Yamaha for a while, but he switched over to the beach cruiser ’cause a Brenda.  She musta got bumped off of one of ’em back in high school with some boyfriend.  She raised hell with Earl about how dangerous they were.  The whole thing struck me funnier’n hell, since he was using it to avoid zombies.  Earl seems to think Brenda’s more dangerous than some old zombie –  ‘more I see of her, he might be right.

Earl told me his wife Velma left early in the game. She ended up accidentally providing dinner for one of her friends from the supermarket.  She had told Earl she was worried about this girl from the deli department who lived alone. Velma brought her over a casserole but no one answered the door. She musta pushed the door open and poked her head in.  Earl was waitin’ in the car and he saw her get yanked into the place.  Time he got up to the porch, he already knew he was too late.  He swore he’da helped her if he wasn’t out numbered so bad – she mighta lived alone, but that deli girl had no shortage of company when she died.  Earl said the living room was packed so full of zombies he could only see Velma’s one foot sticking out and twitching.  He just got back in his car and tore ass.  Anyway, that’s in the past.

I tend to believe Earl’s stories. He strikes me as the sort who doesn’t have the creative energy to tell too many lies.  Velma likely ran the show, and he was used to taking orders to keep things civil.  I know it aint right to speak poorly of the dead  -‘specially the dead you aint even met- but there’s only so many living folks around to talk crap about.

Earl and me met a ways back, long after the shit had hit the fan. People were getting sick and dying, then they were rising up and eatin’ the ones who weren’t dead or lucky.  The folks in charge were talking a lot, blaming each other like they do.  The military came rolling in, but then they left all a sudden like maybe they knew something we didn’t.  We aint seen em since, less you count the ones who show up looking to take a bite of you.  Right before the cavalry disappeared, the power went off for good.

Seemed like once there was no juice, people really lost their damn minds. No TV or internet, no smart phones or Nintendos and no more people in camo keeping the peace.  Some of these folks looked like they was tryin’ to get killed. Out there fightin’ zombies like they were action heroes.  Sure, them zombies aint too bright and don’t flinch when you swing, but if there’s enough of them, you’re gonna feed em eventually.

I was in a neighborhood looking for food when I seen two of these Schwarzenegger wannabees out in the street taking on too many zombies for their own good.  They didn’t have no business being out there, and helping them was out of the question.  I saw something move outta the corner of my eye and got my ugly stick up.  I relaxed a bit when I seen it was this big guy squatting down behind a recycling can joining me in the audience for the show out on the cul de sac.  You could spot another health nut.  We did things like squat and hide.  Zombies don’t waste energy hiding from anyone, they just stagger non-stop till they get some flesh of the living.

“Hey, I’m Earl” he whispered, “Can’t believe these mo-rons fightin zombies in the street – they sure not gone win”

Earl likely heard some cartoon character say morons that way, and it musta made quite an impression on him, because he said it plenty.  After the first fifty times, it wasn’t so funny.  Still, having a wingman aint a bad thing to help cover your back.  Compared to the two bozos out in the street, he seemed like a good candidate for the job.

Earl was wearing a Bass Boss baseball cap that had once been camo-green, but now was the color of phlegm. His pants were riding low and that plumber’s crack coulda had its own zip code.  I was a little jealous to see that he’d found a six pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon and three cans of dog food.  Zombies were staggering out of driveways and backyards for a taste of the two Rambo’s.  It wouldn’t be long.

I had found some dried beans and an aluminum little league bat earlier – this neighborhood was already picked pretty clean.  My original ugly stick was an old wooden one, with a couple of landscaping spikes through the end.  I wasn’t gonna retire it, but a smaller one could come in handy.

Earl said if I helped him carry his stuff, he’d get us out of there.  He put the beer on the ground next to the cans of horse meat and ducked around the side of the house.  I was considering taking the dog food and beating feet when I heard the Yamaha start up.  He come rolling around to where I was and said get on.  A few of the stumble-bums out in the street heard the bike too, so I didn’t squabble.

I quick put everything in my backpack, keeping a grip on the old ugly stick just in case.  Earl wasn’t too gentle with the clutch, and I damn near fell off the back right as a Junior and a couple of Francines started lurching up the driveway towards us.  We juked the Junior and tore ass across the lawn. One of the Francinces was close enough to smell so I swatted her one as we roared past.  We hit the sidewalk and got the hell outta Dodge.  We been teamed up ever since.

Holiday Greetings From The Zombie Apocalypse

In the spirit of full disclosure, I first posted this in December of 2012 – zombies were all the rage and life was simpler.  I have written several more installments because I liked Bobby, Earl and the zombies.  These have yet to be published, but will be in the days/weeks to come – I promise.   

I wouldn’t want to imply that The Olive Garden uses dried black eyed peas from Goya, but it seemed more appropriate than most of the junk in my stock of pics.

We were looking for some food in the kitchen of an Olive Garden outside of what was once Durham, North Carolina.  It was supposedly December 25th – at least that’s what Earl said.  The calendar was pretty much useless by that point.  Days and nights were spent fighting the undead as they lurched and hissed all around us.  The sound of their clicking teeth took the place of sleigh bells and Bing Crosby.

I tightened the grip on my ugly stick and glanced at a zombie that was inching closer.  This one looked like she had been an obese woman in her late fifties when she turned.  Stalking the planet for the brains of the living might’ve been the one diet and exercise program which had actually worked for her.  Her clothes hung loosely on her now, she had lost one of her scuffy slippers and the remaining one was barely hanging on.  A couple of curlers hung comically from her foul, matted hair.  She wasn’t one of the fast ones.  I stole a glance at Earl.

“You telling me it’s freakin Christmas today?”

“I think so, Bobby.  I might be a day or two off, though” he replied.  “Feels cold enough to be December, don’t it?”

I shrugged my agreement to him and turned my attention back to Francine.  Earl and me took to naming them a while back.  It made things a little less tedious and could actually help if things got a little too crowded.  Housewife-looking zombies, and there seemed to be quite a few of ‘em, were usually called Francine or Edna.  Younger ones were named Junior or Sally Mae, depending on their gender.  I tried to give foreign-looking ones a name that would match up with their likely country of origin.  Earl’s not all that creative so he names all the foreign ones Saddam, whether they look Middle Eastern, Asian or whatever.  A young zombie of Asian descent would be “Saddam Junior” according to Earl’s rule book.  Naming the young zombies is real important, since they tend to move faster’n the older ones.  I know that this aint politically correct, but when you’re about to take a Lousiville slugger with spikes in the end of it across their chops, you don’t waste much time worrying about pissing off Miss Manners.  I’m pretty sure Miss Manners got herself chewed up a long ways back anyway – likely ’cause she hadda hold her pinky out when she was swingin’ her lacrosse stick at the undead.

Francine was edging closer.  She’d slowed down when she paused to look at some shiny, swollen cans of crushed tomatoes on the floor near her feet.  These zombies aint exactly like the pretend ones we used to see on TV.  They’re hungry alright, but they can be distractable.  Shiny stuff, brightly colored stuff – they’re drawn to it like lake carp.  Eventually their appetites get the better of ‘em though, and they start back on their quest for the flesh of the living.  Francine had lost her interest in the puckered cans and was heading back my way.

The beautiful thing about zombies is they got none of what you call protective reflexes.  They don’t flinch or duck or nothin’.  They’ll walk right up to you no matter what position you’re in.  I was standing there looking like a major league slugger at the plate with the bases loaded and here comes Francine.  Her head was a far sight bigger’n a softball and moving slow.  Her arms were up though, so I switched from my Sammy Sosa stance over to a modified Paul Bunyan.  I swung like I was piecing out a sequoia and one hit was all it took.

“When you’re done dancin’ around with Edna over there, gimme a hand with this stuff and let’s get back to camp” Earl called.  ”The girls’ll wonder where the hell we are.  You know how they worry”

“Her name’s Francine, Earl, and I don’t dance.”

I stepped around her, noticing for no particular reason that her second slipper had finally fallen apart.  I found a couple of cartons of dried spaghetti without too many mouse turds in them.  Things were looking up for Christmas dinner.

 

 

My Word Souffle Fell Flat

Exhibit 1: Colored pencil illustration for my entry in the “Lust” chapter in K8edid’s Seven Deadly Sins competition. The post, thought by me to be the best one I’d done in the contest, didn’t even make it to the finals. The drawing scored yawns from readers.  If you decide to click the links at the end, you may want to go back to the gluttony one first and read them in order.

I thought my last post was pretty good.  It had lots of great ingredients including a bubble-headed newscaster, Lady Gaga, Academy Awards and racial slurs.  In my book, that’s a can’t-lose recipe.  I tossed that crap in my handy WordPress Lazy Blogger Crock Pot®, set the timer and toddled off to work.  Eight hours later, I’d open the front door and be greeted by the savory aroma of delicious comments and a bountiful platter of steaming “likes”.  I knew better than to hope for any Freshly Pressed action – this post was discomfort food, not French-Asian fusion cuisine featuring fair-trade organic lemongrass and sustainable free-range snails [Food analogies inserted to whet the readers’ appetites and make blog writing seem as effortless for me as slow cooking.  Analogy of Freshly Pressed as some sort of trendy, politically-correct restaurant is due to my being a bitter man who can’t get a reservation]

In some people’s eyes, these are nothing but miniature cabbages, but in the hands of a master chef, they can be steamed over herbed rice wine, garnished with a chiffonade of Thai basil and served in groups of 3 for $17.

I followed the instructions to the letter, adding a little extra salt and a pinch of cayenne, then left for my day of toiling making the world a better place for special-needs youngsters [Shameless self-promotion inserted to make people feel crappy for not reading my last post]

Shameless self-promotional shot of me helping my post-stroke, ass-paralyzed dog. Disclaimer: I am not a licensed dog physical therapist and may have only done this to keep the pooch from crapping in the house. Good news, she’s recovered the use of her ass end, and is back to annoying the daylights out of me.

I trudged through the door that night and rushed to turn on the laptop.  I was greeted with a mere four likes and a handful of comments from a few of my more ardent supporters.  Four likes?!  A fifth like showed up later, but it was clearly a “sympathy like” at best.  I responded to each and every comment, and waited patiently for the momentum to pick back up.  I jiggled the cord to make sure it was plugged in and touched the side to see if it had warmed up [Appliance malfunction analogy inserted to hint at my disappointment and grumbling stomach.  Grumbling stomach analogy inserted into aside to imply that I’ll starve without positive reinforcement.  Rushing to my laptop involved ignoring the greetings of both my long-suffering wife and gimpy-but-faithful dog]

It’s been too long now, there may be more likes trickling in and possibly a comment or two, but by this point, the post is buried and the expiration date on the topics has come and gone.  My post before that one was over at The Nudge Wink Report.  It had just a few words and was mostly comprised of cut-n-paste images of Kim Kardashian and her ample tushy being put in a bunch of silly places.  It was far from my best work and I was fully prepared to be accused of having “smart-phoned it in”.  Despite my doubts about the quality, the post got a butt-load of likes and a bumper crop of comments!  Mrs. Kanye West’s ass pasted onto my dog’s nose is apparently blog gold. [Kim and Kanye reference inserted to allow me to put them in my tags for this post with a clear conscience – thus increasing my hits exponentially.  Choice of using the words “butt load” and “bumper crop” in reference to ass-themed post responses was entirely intentional]

Kim’s keister perched on a snifter of imperial stout? Is this what it takes to get blog hits?

My first instinct, as a born pleaser, was to try to figure out what I’d done wrong.  Surely there were errors in my less successful post and some sort of mysterious appeal to the more popular one.  This is far from the first time I’d wondered what I’d done to displease the masses. [Self-reflection reference inserted to paint the author as being a little deeper than someone with an apparent fascination with Kim’s sizeable fanny might otherwise appear]

The bigger question eventually rises to the surface and sits there waiting to be acknowledged, like a turd in the punch bowl which can’t be ignored any longer.  Here it is; Who exactly am I writing for? [Rhetorical question inserted in hopes of eliciting cries of “Me, Dave! You’re writing for me – I simply can’t get enough of your snarky brilliance!”.  Turd in the punch bowl analogy inserted because, you know…poop humor]

I’ll be the first to admit that most of my blog posts are not exactly the stuff of literary artistry.  I have written a handful of serious posts and some marginally humorous fiction in the past, but my blog identity is largely that of a smart-ass commenting on the news and/or the idiocy of the world.  I enjoy making people laugh or even just smile.  I like the thought of being the sarcastic voice of people who are annoyed or amused by the goofiness of our world. [As if to imply that most folk simply can’t read news stories and shake their heads in amazement without checking for my two cents first.  You really should be insulted]

Insert photo of braying donkey here. Great teeth, you jack-ass!

If I’ve learned nothing else from drawing and writing, it’s that people are going to like what they like, and not necessarily what I find appealing.  The differing tastes and opinions of people is part of what makes the world go ’round. [Reference to my occasional drawing inserted to portray myself as something of a renaissance man, albeit one who had to try three times before finally spelling “renaissance” correctly.  Reference to “making the world go ’round” is a bold-faced lie – we all know damn well that people with poor taste should not be tolerated, and couldn’t have less to do with the rotation of a planet]

Bet you thought I was going to put the picture of the pig in the dress in here again, didn’t you? I’m not just a one trick pony, you know.  On a side note, I noticed some awful issues with this drawing, so I’ll probably never use it again.

Please don’t think this is some kind of a “Read my blog or I’m gonna quit” threat-fest. [Actually, that’s exactly what this is – you damn people better start coddling me a little or I’m going to take my mad writing skills over to the “Rants and Raves” section of the local Craigslist and hang out with the illiterate crowd.  They’ll appreciate me even less, but there’s no like button there, so I won’t know]

Here are a few links to some of the posts I mentioned – no obligation, I’m just happy you actually got to the end of the post:

K8edid

Deadly Sins #1 Gluttony

DS #2 Envy

DS #3 Sloth

DS #4 Lust

Gaga-boo Music

Nudge Wink Kardashian cut-n-paste post

 

 

 

Bruce Jenner’s Bucket List

I look for blog topics everywhere I go.  A case in point, while looking through a trash can near the Santa Monica pier for half eaten burritos and/or aluminum cans, a wadded up piece of paper from a yellow legal tablet caught my eye.

If you get a big enough bucket, you can fit quite a few things in it (and on it). Officially the most fun I’ve had with my new smart phone. (Collage by the author)

I unwrinkled and smoothed it out as much as I could.  After reading it over a few times, I’m convinced that this random piece of trash may in fact be Bruce Jenner’s Bucket List.  Give it the once over and decide for yourself  (I took the liberty of adding a few pictures – the original only had some doodles of hearts, unicorns and Olympic rings in the margins).

 

1. Win Olympic Gold Medal – Done 1976

2. Grace the cover of the Wheaties box – Done (Twice, but who’s counting?)

3. Get involved with a zany family – Done – Married Kris Kardashian 1991

4. Become a reality TV star – Done – After various attempts, finally hit the big time with “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” in 2007

5. Give Kim all the relationship advice I can – I’ve tried, Lord knows I’ve tried.  She’s Kanye’s problem now!

6. Get safely past the menopause years before changing my gender – As a 65 year old gal, I’ll avoid hot flashes and qualify for an AARP discount at The Fashion Hutt!  Since I technically still have my boy parts, I can’t cross this one off the list just yet!

These walker-heels will be a smash for the early-bird special down at the clubhouse. Remember Bruce, black balls for formal occasions and of course, no high-optic green tennis balls after Labor Day! (Image from hollowtreeventures dot com)

7. Become a woman just in time to take advantage of the Bea Arthur estate sale – I haven’t seen any flyers posted down at the community center, I hope I didn’t miss it!

8. Find the most sure-fire way possible to get back on the front of the tabloids – Done!  Those rags are gobbling this story up! The only celebrities who have weirder stories than me are Michael Jackson and Elvis, and they’re both (supposedly) dead.

Elvis ate fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches?! Big Deal!! Try keeping a straight face while Khloe talks about the meaning of life! (Photo by the author while in the checkout line)

9. Piss off the Wheaties people by going both gluten free and penis free – Almost done.  I assume I’m close to  achieving this, their people haven’t returned my people’s calls in a few years

10. Get on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” – Done!

11. Get on “I’m A Celebrity – Get Me Out Of Here!” – Done!!

12. Get on “My Strange Addiction” – They haven’t called yet, but I’m thinking they will

13. Talk to Kim about how to get some junk in my trunk – Maybe when she’s done breaking the interweb and naming her kids after directions on a compass, she can give me some booty pointers

Octogenarians agree, that’s a decent rack for an old broad, but he needs more booty on the back porch if he’s considering twerking in the day room to Tommy James and the Shondels Greatest Hits (Image from splashnewsonline dot com)

14. Play Pebble Beach from the ladies tees.  Soon, baby…Soon!

15. If I’m going to throw the javelin, I need to learn to throw it like a girl (and not one of those East German chicks from back in my Olympic days).  I saw on that Super Bowl commercial that it’s not politically correct to talk about “throwing like a girl”, but if I’ve learned one thing from this “journey” it’s that just growing my hair long and smearing some Mary Kay foundation over my 5 o’clock shadow doesn’t make me a woman.

16. Learn how to walk in heels – I won the Olympic decathlon, for crying out loud!  How hard can a nice pair of pumps be?!

The white socks with blue stripes give these shoes a snappy, patriotic look!!  FYI;  bunions and athlete’s foot is one hellish combination. (Image from english dot cntv dot cn)

17. Make America proud – Done!  That gold medal in ’76 certainly did the trick

18. Make America throw up in its mouth a little – Working on it every day.  I can do this, I know I can!

19. Take advantage of these incredible cheekbones! – This rouge is tricky stuff.  If I don’t get the hang of it, I’m going to end up looking like Leona Helmsley

Leona’s rare Wheaties box cover. (E-Collage by yours truly)

20. Start peeing sitting down – This one should be easy, after teetering around in those heels, I’ll take any chance I can get to get off my feet!

Don’t Put That In Your Sister’s EZ Bake Oven!

Now that kids all over the country have had a chance to dig into their new toys, manufacturers are dealing with the occasional fall-out from products which offer less (or more) than parents bargained for.

It seems the good folks at Hasbro have just such a pubic relations issue with their new Play Doh cake decorator extruder-thingy.  Rather than describe the issue, I’ll just post a little pic of it below and see if you can guess the problem.

Take a look at the picture and see if you can figure out the problem people are having with it.  If you guessed that it’s made in China of inferior grade plastic, you might want to look again.

You couldn’t see what the issue with the toy is?  Me either!  I did an online search and found some customer complaints, maybe looking at them will shed some light on the problem.

• “Why did Santa bring this?  Mom already has one in her sock drawer” –  Becky K. – Joplin, Missouri
• “Tell your sister she has to share, Johnnie! You both get to play with the extruder-thingy”  – Nancy R. – Medford, Oregon
• “Don’t bother looking at the directions kids, Daddy knows how to use that thing”  – Brad H. – Toledo, Ohio
• “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!”  – Department store Santa – Jacksonville, Florida
• “Dad! I can’t find the cake extruder-thingy and Mom won’t come out of the bedroom to help me look for it”  – Jimmy P. – Des Moines, Iowa
• “Mom! Timmy wants to fill it with lemonade and try to write his name in the snow!” – Brittany M. – Grand Rapids, Michigan
• “Mommy, why did you think this toy needs batteries?” – Filbert H. – Baton Rouge, Louisiana
• “Daddy, why did my new Play Doh cake decorating set come with Anthony Weiner campaign literature?” – Giselle T. Brooklyn, New York

I’m sure that Hasbro doesn’t see a problem either, but you know, the customer is always right.  Parents need to accept that even without a cake decorator extruder, that’s one of the first things a lot of kids are going to make out of Play Doh anyway.

Right In The Old Bread Basket

I’m no stranger to the dinner table.  In fact, I’ve got over five decades of anecdotes of my over-eating.  There’s the time I gobbled so much food at my grandmother’s Thanksgiving table that I fell asleep with my face in the plate.  Were it not for the tryptophan, I might have eaten myself to death that fateful turkey day.  In college, the local Mexican joint suffered mightily during my attendance at their all-you-can eat taco night.  The same thing went for the place in Colorado with the all-you-can-eat steak dinners.  A note on that last one, swimming isn’t the only thing you should avoid doing immediately after eating; driving a truck loaded with all your possessions in the dark of night while the majority of your blood flow is busy trying to digest the better part of a cow is also to be avoided.

Given my rich history of gluttony, I couldn’t help but be impressed with the recent news story of the woman who was found by customs inspectors in the Dominican Republic to be smuggling seventy thousand dollars in her stomach.  She had another sixty-nine thousand found hidden in her suitcase.  I’m guessing they found the suitcase loot first, and then noticed her bloated belly.  Typically, airline passengers have a tough time filling up too much on the palm sized portions of pretzels they give out these days.  Even if she bought one of the sixteen buck turkey sandwiches and washed it down with with a couple of splits of champagne, her tummy would still have appeared relatively normal.

Of course the news outlet which carried the story helped to make it all the more amazing by using an illustration featuring a file photo of stacks of crisp hundreds bound with red rubber bands.  The size of a stack of hundreds is rather substantial when juxtaposed with the opening  of a standard pie hole.  I whipped out several number two pencils and some scratch paper and did a little math.  After a half hour of cyphering, I can say with a degree of confidence that she would have had to swallow seven hundred of those c-notes to come up to the total listed in the story.

I’d think the corners of those stacks would be especially tough to swallow. Not to mention the fact that money is dirty, many one of those bills could have been touched by politicians. (Image from picsbox dot biz)

I didn’t have a hundred dollar bill laying around, but if memory serves, they’re pretty much the same size as a twenty, which I did (miraculously) have handy.  I folded it as small and tight as I could, then took a pic of it next to one my allergy pills.  Since these pills have no effect whatsoever on the molds, stink bug droppings and various other things which make autumn as fun as spring for me, it’s nice to finally have a use for them.

Since snapping this pic, I’ve squandered the twenty smackers on a cup of coffee and a handful of magic beans. My wife scolded me about the beans and threw them out the window. On an unrelated note, it occurs to me that swallowing a human thumb would be even more difficult than a rolled up bill – hats off to you cannibals!

I suppose that someone will point out that she could have gulped down a mere seventy one-thousand dollar bills or the tiny paper currency of the island nation of Tonga* to minimize the gut bulk.  Even so, seventy thousand clams adds up to a whole lot of swallowing.  Perhaps she dipped them in butter or possibly apple sauce to help get them down.

I’m no expert in human physiology, but the “harvesting” of the cash poses a few lovely options.  Perhaps her colleagues had planned on an ipecac syrup cocktail and a few reruns of “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” with a well placed bucket.  Another choice would have been the colonoscopy prep approach, which would have run the risk of partially digested c-notes and a new high bar setting for the term “dirty money”.  Lastly, there was the possibility of some motel room surgery, which is usually performed for more cosmetic purposes, such as silicone-caulk buttock enhancement.

If motel surgery was really an option, then the smugglers might have considered hiding the “wampum in dee bumbum” in the first place.  Though eagle-eyed customs inspectors who are twerking aficionados might spot tell-tale cash-stack lumps amid the curvy splendor of the booty.   (Image from thegreatfitnessexperiment dot com and/or dudelol dot com)

 

Irrespective of how the money was to be rescued from this woman’s digestive system, swallowing that much money is pretty impressive  If I have more than five bills in my wallet, my sitting posture gets all catty-wampus and I end up having to spend that cash on chiropractic adjustments.  How ironic is that?  I recently took a short flight to Florida and spent the entire two hours squirming around like a meth addict with ADHD.  Every time the seat belt light came on, I surrendered any fleeting hopes of comfort.  I can’t help but wonder how anyone could sit in one of those seats with seventy large in their breadbasket.  Maybe on the way to the airport, she decided to treat herself and burped up enough cash to upgrade to first class.

* A quick Google search revealed that the people of Tonga do not actually use paper money at all, and in fact used to pay for everything with plastic.  Sadly, the huge amount of plastic which washes ashore there on a daily basis nearly ruined their fragile economy.  They have addressed the problem by changing their monetary system back to the original forms of currency which consisted of puka shells and human teeth.  An online calculator estimated that seventy thousand US dollars would convert to roughly 1237 pounds of shells and enough bicuspids to outfit every player in the NHL with a flawless smile.

One Man’s Cave is Another Man’s Rumpus Room

I know it’s not Tartan Plaid. Stop splitting hairs – it’s not a very manly thing to do! (Image from shopcurated dot com)

Three things have struck me during my recent viewing of entirely too many real-estate themed reality shows.  First, why hasn’t anyone coined the phrase “realty reality TV” or “reality realty TV”?  Seems like a natural.  Second, why does everyone on these shows say “price point” when they really just mean “price”?  Finally, why is it so important for many of these guys to have a “man cave” in their home?

If these shows are any indication, a man’s home is not his castle after all.  The most guys can hope for is a finished space just off the laundry room where they can burp, scratch themselves and generally be men without fear of being judged – they call this space a man cave.  Historians of the male experience will point out that in bygone eras, the place where a man could act this way was called “anywhere he damn-well pleased“.

Those historians may be a little bitter.  They might also be tempted to dismiss the man cave as nothing more than the modern equivalent of the mid-century phenomenon known as the rumpus room.

Since we’re talking guy stuff, it’s inevitable that things will end up getting competitive.  Bragging rights are at stake, so I’m daring to ask the question; Which one’s better, your neighbor’s man cave, or my Uncle Walt’s rumpus room?  We’ll look at several key components to any architectural space and put the rumpus room head to head with the man cave and see which wins.

Decor

 

Rumpus – Tartan plaid polyester-blend upholstery

vs.

Cave – Neutral microfiber with tasteful accent pillows

Winner – Cave: That plaid upholstery wasn’t comfortable when it was new, and the passage of time has done little to change that.

–

Rumpus – Console stereo complete with record changer and Scandinavian wood cabinetry

vs.

Cave – MP3 Dock with wireless speakers and sub-woofer

Winner – Cave: The retro appeal of a stereo which is larger than a casket on legs is all well and good, but my Iron Butterfly and Strawberry Alarm Clock albums are hopelessly scratched.

–

Rumpus – Shag carpeting

vs.

Cave – Pastel tile left over from the kitchen remodel

Winner – Rumpus: That tile might pass muster in your wife’s fancy kitchen, but it doesn’t work for a cave.  Any leftover scraps of shag can be used to give that minivan a make-over

–

Rumpus -Set of three Vargas girls carefully cut out of old Playboy magazines and framed

vs.

Cave – Digital picture frame from Radio Shack uploaded with several images of Kate Upton

Winner – Cave: Vargas girls are impossibly leggy and really classy, but cutting them out of a magazine is not exactly high brow.

(Image from foodtruckfestivalsofne dot com)

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Accessories/Entertainment

 

Rumpus – Pocket billiard table

vs.

Cave – video game system

Winner – Rumpus: Your kids will tire of billiards within a few weeks, but they’ll own the video game system.  They’ll beat your ass in any game you choose and claim the room as theirs.  If you don’t have kids, your man cave is located in the master bedroom.  Go breed, Tarzan – we can revisit the rumpus room topic once you’ve got some crumb-snatchers to escape from.

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Rumpus – Antique Barber Shop Pole

vs.

Cave – Stripper Pole

Winner – Rumpus: Stop pouting, there’s a logical reason for this.  A barber shop pole is kind of decorative.  A stripper pole is only a chrome pipe, unless there’s a stripper on it.  Whose absence would be more noticeable, Luigi from The Clip Joint, or Kandii Krush from the Playtime Lounge out by the airport?

Maybe if you had a long enough barber’s pole, Kandii could come spin on it. (Image from Etsy dot com)

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Rumpus – Dart board

vs.

Cave – Beer pong table

Winner – Rumpus: I realize you may have spent years perfecting the art of throwing ping pong balls into cups of flat beer, but essentially, this is a drinking game popular with young guys who shave once a week whether they need it or not.  Darts is a time honored game for grown-assed men, involving sharp flying objects and a bit of math.  If you’re old enough to have a rumpus room or man cave, you’re old enough to risk losing an eye.

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Rumpus – Statue of drunk against lamp post which plays “How Dry I Am”

vs.

Cave –   “Parking Reserved For (Insert Local NFL Team Here) Fans” street sign

Winner – Rumpus: The statue of the drunk is a collectible piece of kitsch.  I wouldn’t be surprised if some Fancy Dan on “The Antiques Roadshow” got himself in a lather over one of them and told the owner it was worth $300 or something.

Few things speak to the essence of maleness more than drunk statuary with music boxes inside. (Image from ebay dot com)

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Refreshments

 

Rumpus – Wet bar with tufted leatherette front, butcher block top with assorted beer labels and a few coins sealed beneath 10 coats of polyurethane

vs.

Cave – Wet bar with brushed stainless front and granite top purchased at discount during the kitchen remodeling project

Winner – Rumpus: Tufted leatherette just screams “Manly steakhouse!”  Also, watching guys try to pick up the coins never gets old.

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Rumpus – 1958 Kelvinator refrigerator in Bel Aire Blue finish retrofitted into early keg-a-rator complete with partial keg of Rheingold Extra Dry

vs.

Cave – Frigidaire refrigerator in Almond finish, left over from kitchen remodel, stocked with several varieties of micro brews, each with edgy names and artsy labels, plus bottles of mineral water, peach wine coolers and Coors Light

Winner – Cave: That Kelvinator has always had a smell to it and the sheet metal work to convert it into a draft beer dispenser is not exactly shop grade.  Even though that Rheingold is likely flat by now, this one was still close, largely due to the presence of water, wine coolers and beer flavored water in the Frigidaire

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Rumpus – Six bottles, including blended scotch, bourbon, Canadian whiskey, gin, vodka, and white creme de menthe

vs.

Cave – Multiple varieties of single malt scotches, boutique bourbons, and triple-filtered ice-distilled vodkas in frosted glass bottles

Winner – Cave: Standard issue booze might’ve been okay for those lushes on Mad Men, but this is 2014.  Spending three times more for spirits aged in French oak and distilled by virgins is worth every penny.  Besides, using the leftover tiles from the kitchen and the old fridge freed up some serious cash

Gimme a Sidecar, a Gibson, a Dirty Mohican with extra capers, and a Rusty Nail for the lady in red. (Image from fiveoclockcocktails dot com)

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For those of you keeping score (probably the dart players), Rumpus Room has squeezed out a one point victory.  Please stay tuned for more of this exciting hair-splitting in upcoming posts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sarcasm Workout

In my defense, there were still some patches of snow around when I started writing this post, but I got distracted. Please forgive me. (image from wikimedia dot org)

It looks like spring might finally be here.  There are buds on the trees and migratory bird-shit on the pollen on the snow.  Spring means one thing; it’s time to shape up.  Even though my abs look like I’m 5 months pregnant and the places where my arm muscles used to be look about as well-defined as sausages, I’m not talking about the traditional pumping of iron.

I need to get some tone where it counts – on my sarcasm muscles.  The past 17 months of winter have done wonders for my cynicism, and I’ve got a personal best for reps of bitterness, but my sarcasm is as flabby as Rush Limbaugh’s third neck wattle – that’s right, I said the third one!  Any flabbier and Obamacare would cover me for a wattle-ectomy (obviously my irony still has a pulse).

Wattles two through five are kind of merged together into one mega-wattle in this pic, but you get the idea. (Image from wikimedia dot commons)

The logical place to turn was the myriad of gyms which sprout up constantly in my area, usually in under-performing strip malls.  They promise all sorts of workouts and low introductory rates.  Surely one of these sweat shops could help me.  I checked in at the one just down the highway which was sandwiched between a vacant supermarket and a space which had a sign in the window promising that a pet grooming business was “Comming Soon“.  Clearly the spelling portion of the pet grooming curriculum is not as critical as “Advanced Schnauzer Trimming” or graduate level offerings such as “Persian Cats and the Dingleberry Dilemma.”

I was set up to chat with a personal trainer.  He seemed like a nice enough guy and had one hell of a handshake, but I wasn’t sure he was going to be able to help me.

“I need to tone up my sarcasm” I told him.  There was no need to beat around the bush, and I wanted to avoid having him start focusing on my absent abs or gelatinous gluts.

He looked a little confused for a second, but then he nodded his head.  “Sure!” he said.  “I can see that you know your anatomy.”  He started going into some discussion about which machines would focus on which muscle groups and after a minute or two, it was clear that he’d confused the sarcasm muscle with the one called the “sartorius”.

The sartorius is the green one, and this is a right leg. If the sartorius on your left leg runs in this direction, or if you have an erection lasting more than four hours, see your healthcare professional right away. (Image from kenhub dot com)

I left the gym without signing anything and trudged across the nearly empty parking lot with the added burden of knowing that my sartorius muscles were withered.  I tried not to think about how horrific I’d look in a bathing suit, with neither well-defined muscles nor the defense of sarcasm I’d need to deal with the disapproving stares of fellow beach goers.

I tried another gym.  Since sarcasm resides in the very center of my being, I foolishly assumed that working on my core strength would address it.  After one Pilates session, I realized that I was very much mistaken, and now my tummy hurts when I laugh.  Fortunately, nothing is that funny these days.  Hot yoga also turned out to be a bust from a sarcasm-building standpoint, but I did discover that after enough limbering up, I am physically capable of kicking myself in the ass.

Having struck out in gyms, I decided to take a break from the quest to rebuild my diminished sarcasm.  I turned to my trusted friend the internet.  After brief forays into Dutch Toe-porn and checking the Facebook status of that girl who sat behind me in 3rd grade and allegedly ate paste, I surfed over to the news.  There were tons of stories from the world of entertainment, sports and politics.

It seems Subway, among others, has long been using an ingredient in their breads which is also found in yoga mats.  The company has been so concerned that they are nearly done phasing it out of the recipe.  This begs the questions as to whether your sandwich tastes like a yoga mat, or if your yoga mat tastes like a sandwich (or in some cases, both).  For the record, toasting ones yoga mat will make hot yoga even hotter.

Stephen Colbert has been attacked via Twitter for upsetting some group.  Calls for his firing were attached to a hashtag.  He’s been such a target of onslaught that he’s been awarded the single most prestigious job in TV, replacing a retiring David Letterman.  There’s rumor of a new Twitter option which essentially says #GoAheadAndGetMeFiredBecauseIveAlreadyGotABetterJobLinedUp.

Back in January, an Ohio man was buried straddling his beloved Harley in a custom plexiglass casket.  A team of morticians (and/or taxidermists) labored to insert rods into his back and take the necessary steps to keep him upright on the Electra Glide for all eternity.  This is a perfect example of the kind of human interest stories which got buried*  due to all the media hype about stray dogs at the Sochi Winter Olympic Games.

* Pun not originally intended, but left in as an attempt at appearing clever.

If the sight of a dead guy on a motorcycle in a big plastic box offends you, then avert your eyes from the picture above. If you already looked, just pretend you didn’t see it. (Image from the Dayton daily news dot com)

With each word I read, I can feel the sarcasm rising within me like a crocus shoot breaking through the permafrost.  It seems the answer to my problem has been right at my fingertips all along.  With my sarcasm back on track to potency, maybe I’ll find the time to work on those saggy sartorius muscles after all.

 

 

 

I Failed My Personality Quiz

There’s a cool thing all over Facebook.  The program asks you a bunch of questions about yourself, and in return tells you which character you’d be in “Game of Thrones”, or “Star Wars”, or “To Catch A Predator.”  As if finding out which character you’d be in a make-believe TV show or movie isn’t enough fun, you can also choose to use your initials to find out what your dragon name would be, if you were, you know, a dragon.

Original image from totalfilm dot com . Text added by one bad-assed mutha.

Even though I’m almost positive that Facebook is selling my personality quiz answers to the marketing expert with the deepest pockets, I went ahead and took every one of these tests I could find, for the sake of my art (Plus, I didn’t have much else to write about since the polar vortex is pretty well spent as a subject).  Here now, in no particular order, are the results:

Which “Star Wars” Character Are You?: You’re competitive and incredibly loyal.  Your strong spiritual beliefs guide you through this land and will serve you well in faraway galaxies.  You are Ghan-Ghan, R2-D2’s pet electric can opener from “Star Wars XVII – Escape From Popularity”

Which “Star Trek” Character Are You?: You are self-reliant and very independent.  Ever an opportunist, you’re always on the look out for an advantage.  You put no stock in organized religion or coed team sports.  You are Phylleus, warrior of the Wo-Ran dynasty from “Star Trek – When Epics Fail; The Auroras Bore Me, Alice”.  Your character can be seen for roughly 23 seconds in the 43rd minute of the movie.

Which “Disney” Character Are You?: You have an insatiable hunger for cheese.  Your habit of scurrying along baseboards and wearing four-fingered white gloves does not go unnoticed.  Those ears of yours are rather prominent.  You are “Flounder” the blue and yellow fish who is any species other than flounder from The Little Mermaid.  Click here for special values on great Disney products and promotions reserved for “Flounder” types like you!

Ooh! I hope I’m one of the cool ones from one of the cool places on this cool map, and I hope no one chops my head off. (IMage from chartgeek dot com)

Which “Game of Thrones” Character Are You?:  Your trait of having never really paid attention to the names of characters is obvious from the answers to the personality test.  There is a deep and complex story being told here – Game of Thrones is more than just topless medieval chicks and people beheaded with single swipes of broadswords.  Your character is Paal-Gor from the Hidden Valley of Theon.  If you want to see who he is, try watching an entire season and paying attention.

Which “The Big Bang Theory” Character Are You?: You are clearly not a genius, and as such you do not qualify to be one of the main characters.  In addition, you are not an attractive female, so you cannot be Penny either.  You are Zumwalt the kindhearted dishwasher at The Cheesecake Factory where Penny works.  Zumwalt has no lines, but he scrubs a mean pot.

Your inquisitive nature, wholesome character and love of a jaunty hat could make you any one of these three. (Image from flickr dot com)

Which “Gilligan’s Island” Character Are You?:  Your lack of responses to quiz questions 3, 7 and 14 – 22 eliminate you from consideration for any main role.  You are Thurston Howell III’s croquet mallet.

What Is Your Dragon Name?:  Your dragon name is Fiery Diarrhea.  You fly through the barren mountain passes in the mythical land of Haben-Aero.

What Is Your Rap Name?:  Your rap name is Scratchy Smooth.  Your def lyrics are interspersed with the rhythmic scratching of your chronic eczema.

What Is Your California Prison ID Number?:  Your number is 0098329904-K.  You are currently incarcerated for insurance fraud.  Your cellmate is in for assault, attempted murder and animal cruelty.  You have no gang affiliations yet, and shower day is Tuesday.  It is recommended that you start fashioning a shiv from an old toothbrush and learn to make wine in a stainless steel toilet.

The nose of this pinot noir is assertive, with subtle berry notes and urine undertones. (Image from flovac dot com)

What Career Should You Actually Have: According to our personality test, you should be the curb man on a trash truck in suburban Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Your ability to jump on and off slow moving vehicles and tolerate foul smells will serve you well.  In addition, your embracing the idea of one man’s trash being another man’s treasure may result in an early retirement.

“You wear zee mask, no? Eez keenkee! Let us play games, my sweet.” – You are a raccoon, but Pepe Le Pew thinks you’re a skunk who’s into playing dress up.(Image from en dot wikipedia dot org)

What Animal You Would Be If You Weren’t Already A Human Animal?:  You personality test reveals that you would be an indecisive raccoon on the side of a busy interstate.  You might not be one for long though.  Looks like there’s a break in the traffic right here, you should go…Now!…No! Wait!…No No – Go!  Oops.

Which “Sopranos” Character Are You?:  The results show that you’re already in Jersey and a little overweight.  You are Freddy “Pine Nuts” DiDomenico.  You may or may not currently be in the witness relocation program, and we really can’t give any more details than that.

As we learned from my answers in the “Which ‘Welcome Back Kotter’ Character Are You?” quiz, I’m exceedingly generous.  In that spirit, if you tell me one or two things about yourself in the comments section, I will tell you which character in my many blogs or in my personal life best matches your unique personality.  If you give me no traits, I’ll just randomly assign one to you, and we’ll all have a hearty laugh at your expense.

Tattoo Or Not To Tattoo?

Math class is sooo boring!  Is that bell ever gonna ring? (Image from 6 abc dot com)

I saw this guy’s mug shot in the news a few months back.  He looked familiar to me.  I couldn’t imagine that I could have met a guy with all those tatts and not recalled him.  I figured that perhaps I knew him long ago, and tried to picture him sans artwork.  Even then, I couldn’t place him.  I gave up on trying to figure it out and resumed my humdrum life of working for a living and writing blog posts for the amusement of my seventeen loyal followers.

A few days ago, my wife and I were trying to clean some junk out of the basement.  After fifteen minutes though, we were hopelessly frozen in our pursuits, as we had each become stuck looking at crap artifacts from our past.  Throwing stuff away is tough when there’s even a glimmer of emotional attachment.  I pulled out a spiral bound notebook of one of my grown children from what might have been 5th or 6th grade.  I didn’t bother flipping it open to see the scribbled notes, but stared instead at the mural of doodles on the cover.

In a flash, it hit me.  The tattooed mugshot was not of anyone I knew, but his artwork bore a striking similarity to the notebook covers of middle-schoolers everywhere.  Old timers like me may also find a certain resemblance to the walls adjacent to payphones in college dorms of the late 70’s and early 80’s.

As I just admitted, I’m no spring chicken.  Back in the halcyon days of my youth, tattoos were for guys in the Navy and Hell’s Angels.  I suppose prison inmates had them too, but I lead a sheltered life back then, which limited my exposure to only the tattoos of sailors and bikers.

Obviously times have changed.  The future has arrived, and it’s not entirely pretty.  We have wristwatch phones and cars that park themselves.  We also have morbidly obese exhibitionists twerking on YouTube and scores of people who flaunt their God-given right to cover themselves with as many tattoos as they desire.

That’s either Darth Vader or a very poor representation of a black pug in a rose bush.  By the way fella, you’re rockin’ that beard.  (Image from geekology dot com)

Back in my college days, I had an acquaintance who was going to get a tattoo of a lightning bolt on his hip. At the time, he was a freshman who played attack on the lacrosse team, and the image had a degree of legitimacy.  Of course, now he’s likely a pudgy investment banker in his mid-fifties, and the bolt may be over-shadowed by a nearby hip replacement scar.  Before going for the ink, he tried to get many of his teammates to join him.  I recalled considering it for a few seconds.  At that time in my life, I was lucky to be able to scrape together enough loose change for a six pack, so paying for a tattoo was out of the question.  Still, I considered what image I’d choose.  I politely declined, but the thought of the Zig Zag Man on my arm did stick in my head.

That’s not a zit; Zig Zag Man’s spliff is all sparked up. (Image from hellnbak at deviantart dot com)

A few years later, I put my fine arts degree to use tending bar.  One of my fellow mixologists was a Jewish kid from Cherry Hill, NJ.  I was under the impression that tattoos were against his religion, but he was crazy about inking himself up.  He had a bunch of body art and was constantly looking ahead to the next one.  Like the lacrosse player, he was always trying to convince people to join him.  Newly married to a woman who abhorred tattoos, I didn’t consider it for more than a fraction of a second.  I did think about what image I’d pick though, and briefly recalled the one I’d considered in college.  I shuddered at how horrible my former choice was, and said a silent prayer of thanks that I had avoided going through with it.

So I was in a tough place emotionally, you know? I was frustrated with my inability to move up the corporate ladder and finally get out of the mailroom. I just said, you know, what the hell, I’ll spend my rent money on getting a picture of a big penis tattooed on the side of my face.  Then, to give it that special zing, I’ll pierce my cheek. So Monday I show up to work and the supervisor tells me I don’t have a job anymore. I’ve put some resumes out, but I can’t seem to get past the first interview. I wonder if I need some breath mints of something. (Image from moosiemoose dot tumblr dot com)

The cycle has repeated itself every so often throughout my life, where I think of what tattoo I would get and where I would put it, but each time, I recall the images I’d considered the previous times and realize how awful and obsolete they’d look on my body in the present day.

I have tons of friends and colleagues now who have tattoos.  For the most part, their choices of tattoos strike me as somehow appropriate for each of them .  I don’t shake my head and wonder what they were thinking when they chose what they chose.  In my defense, I don’t have any friends with tattoos of Mickey Mouse, Captain Kirk or bedazzled shlongs on their faces.

Like most people, I tend to be far more critical of my own decisions than those of others.  Lord knows I’ve done my share of things which I realized were mistakes.  The prospect of living with my bad decisions is a fact of life, I don’t need illustrations.