Like an Upside Down Lawnmower
Scattering the Squirrels
and Scaring the Kids
I'm sorry.
No.
You're a deceptive inventor.
An author of lies.
You can't just serve up some
empty blanket claim
and expect me to bite.
Don't you know that
you're perjuring yourself
with those words?
For God's sakes, you stupid, local restaurant...
your burger is not
"World Famous".
i will never give up writing.
though sometimes i worry it will give up on me.
sometimes it just isn't there.
and i have to remind myself that
it's never there all the time,
for anyone.
sometimes it disappears for months
and then suddenly,
it just shows up,
right when i need it the most.
it's helped me get through so many
harmful evenings,
those nights when i've wanted nothing more than to die.
it's turned me around
and made things better.
but then again, it's also abandoned me to my struggle
and left me to fend for myself.
and boy, those are the hardest times.
when you need it
and it isn't there.
those nights when you can't sleep
and no one answers the phone.
those nights you find your self stuck,
paralyzed in the confines
of a small airplane seat,
or a straight jacket,
locked in place for days,
watching your knees rust shut.
watching everything pass with an absence of meaning.
those are the nights you need it the most.
those are the nights it saves your life.
"That's a good idea," I said, peeling the paper scab off the corner of my bottle,
"buying that church van. The cops will never bother you in that thing."
Red scanned the bar and took another tug of gin, straight,
sipping lightly as if he was attending some royal tea party.
"Yes," he said, "that's what I thought too...
until I was being handcuffed against it."
another thing for granted
what if he said
"you'll never walk again" ?
what would you miss the most?
i would miss
s t r e t c h i n g my legs
after a terrible flight.
i would miss standing over the grill,
catching the heat of my floor furnace,
in the dead of winter.
or picking up a pencil off the floor
with my toes
like a monkey.
but most of all,
i think i would miss
walking.
just walking.
there's always a wrench in the theory
over the course of this week, i noticed that my cat absorbs wifi signals.
when the cat is in the room, the wifi signal is cut in half.
when the cat leaves the room, the wifi signal increases.
i will never claim
to know anything about this universe.
The best sign I've ever seen held by a homeless man said:
"Need fuel for my Learjet."
The fact that the man was covered in COMPLETE AND UTTER FILTH only made it better.
Today, out where The Pacific Coast Highway meets Topanga Canyon I saw my second favorite sign.
It read:
"Smile, Dammit."
[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]
*Sometimes, the only thing between you and the competition
is your underwear.
*- This only applies when your pants are the competition.
I bet girls hate catching their purse straps on doorknobs
as much as I hate catching my beard in old, rusty beard clippers made in 1812.
Sometimes, I think about life and the Universe and
how insignificant we all are
and that makes me feel better about stealing from others.
The secret ingredient in Fancy Ketchup is... shhhh...
regular ketchup.
What happened to the good ol' days when
campfires were something special,
and Friday night at the lake was a fun place to take a date,
and men could make women do anything they wanted,
and I wasn't constantly being convicted of rape and arson?
When I eat out I always make sure to order a DIET coke
with all my cheeseburgers.
Lately, when someone asks me my name
and I genuinely can't remember it,
I just hand the application back and say:
"I'm too drunk to be applying for this job right now."
Back in the Cretaceous era,
I bet DVD players were a lot simpler
and didn't require a remote to navigate the menus.
They probably had all the necessary buttons right there on the unit itself.
I sure wish my pets would die of NATURAL causes
instead of by starvation and dehydration.
If I ever get two dogs, I am going to name the white dog RICE and the brown dog BEANS. If I ever get two children, I'm going to name the smart child THE CHOSEN ONE and the dumb child WHISKERS.
If you ever get pulled over by the police, and an officer approaches your window, a funny response would be: "Officer... I'm in paradise right now. You're lucky I stopped."
Bars should fill their snack bowls with Flintstone Vitamins instead of peanuts. Peanuts have had their spot in the sun and it's time for a change.
Statistics will show that modern consumers DEMAND a combination of nutrition, great taste, and flamboyant color schemes. Today's world is different than the world of yesteryear. Today's bars serve Zima and Red Bull to a rising customer base of supermodels and feminine looking men with boyish facial structures. Some of these men even wear mascara. Simply put, peanuts cannot satisfy the stylish demands of today's sissies. Flintstone Vitamins are healthy, unique, extremely photogenic and unlike peanuts.... bursting with technology.
So, which would you rather eat:
-A- A healthy, colorful, fun-loving caveman?
-B- George Washington Carver's centennial turd?
I choose the vitamins.
The incredible thrill of crushing a miniature human between your teeth is exhilarating. In fact, it's safe to say the feeling can only be matched by chewing a pack of Fruitstripe gum while fucking a mermaid.
So buy some Flintstones and eat them.
Start your day off RIGHT!
And once you do that, you can graduate to bigger and better things.
I personally start my day off by tossing down 4 vicodins
while sucking on a pitcher of long island ice tea.
I then proceed to stare at my reflection in the back of a burned CD and mumble:
"Am I in the music... or is IT IN ME?"
But that's a whole different story. That's MY JOB.
For now, stick to the peanuts.
NO WAIT!
Vitamins.
Stick to the vitamins.
Wait... what was I talking about?
And why the hell are you reading this?
I can't believe you made it this far. You deserve a pat on the butt.
Uh oh.
I'm an adult.
It's true.
I know it sounds weird.
It sounded weird to me at first,
but there's no denying it.
It wasn't
the creases near my eyes,
the thinning hair,
or the birthdate on my driver's license
that gave it away.
It was the fact that i can wear ANYTHING I want...
and mean it.
That's right.
When you're a kid, and you decide to wear something a bit odd,
you're generally interpreted as some rebellious punk with an
attitude problem or an identity crisis.
But when you're a full grown adult...
hell... you can wear a coon skin cap and people will look at you and wonder:
DID HE COME FROM THE FOREST?
IS HE FROM PENNSYLVANIA?
Or more realistically...
DOES HE WORK AT THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON EXHIBIT AT DISNEYLAND?
People will BELIEVE YOU as if you're SERIOUS,
which means in a way, you can actually BE anything you want.
And I love that!! I think it's great!
I love that I can wear scrubs and a doctor's lab coat to a nice restaurant in Dallas
and people will believe it.
I can't count how many times I've heard:
"Help sir! My husband is choking! Doctor! Help!"
Every time this happens, I just have to laugh. I just sit back and laugh and laugh and laugh. And if the guy dies, I stop laughing. I stop laughing and become very serious. Then I lean forward and say:
"Madam, please accept my condolences."
However, if the guy lives, I keep on laughing and eating steak.
Such fun. Such good fun.
When I was a kid the entire thing seemed so silly,
but sadly, it's all true:
Age grants respect to a man.
RESPECT.
Granted, it's only a little respect.
A few decades ago, age granted a lot more respect than it does today.
But there's still a little respect left to grant, so dammit...
let's all take that respect for granted!
Apparently, between now and the last time I bought detergent,
a massive change occurred within the laundry industry.
MASSIVE CHANGE, people.
MASSIVE.
SOOOOOOOO massive.
Im surprised it's not all over the news right now,
smashed right there between the murders, the rape victims,
and the tiny local girl
who won the big horse jumping contest.
Big news indeed, people.
So big.
Like an easter egg full
of gun powder
sitting under a magnifying glass
on the roof of a double decker bus.
(not sure where that came from... it just popped in there)
Yes sir... laundry will never be the same.
All of a sudden,
you can buy a detergent bottle
(any brand, mind you)
with
a
TAP.
Yes. A tap! Now you don't have to lift the bottle anymore.
And you can keep your Franzia next to the Gain and
everything will look
FINE.
Big news people.
So, so, so, so big.
I remember a time in the first grade, when my teacher had the class
draw pictures of what we all wanted to be when we grew up.
Most kids I knew wanted to be sports stars or astronauts.
Not me.
I wanted to be a GARBAGE MAN.
Why did I want to be a garbage man?
Because I wanted to ride on the back of the truck.
Why the fuck ELSE?
I distinctly remember watching the garbage truck drive by, and thinking it was so friggin' cool that a guy would just ride on the back, standing on the bumper the entire time. Everyone else on the road had to ride INSIDE their cars and sit in boring SEATS. The garbage man lived on the edge, balancing on his chariot, and sailing with the wind as he moved from homestead to homestead. Ahhhh yes... it was a romantic sight indeed.
And since I spent most of my spare time
playing in the dirt,
and rooting through dumpsters looking for treasure,
it seemed as though the life of a garbage man
was the perfect life for me.
Well... I had an epiphany tonight.
I am going to ACCOMPLISH my childhood dream.
I am going to apply to be a garbage man, dammit.
Just so I can say that I accomplished all the goals I
set for myself when I was 6 years old.
Beautiful Neighborhood Woman
"My, my... who ARE you?
And how did you get rid of all my unwanted unmentionables?"
Derek
(squinting and speaking with confidence)
"Well ma'am, my name is Derek.
Derek Christopher Doublin.
and I'm in charge of...
WASTE MANAGEMENT."
(Woman swoons, faints, and falls into a pile of leaves.)
(Derek jumps onto bumper of truck and zooms away.)
Sometimes,
I end up sitting next to bitter, old guys at the bar,
that love to play the age card like its going out of style.
I do believe that with age comes education, life perspective,
and often times more intelligent and mature approaches to living.
But I have to say, when I see people act as if they have the market cornered on pain,
simply because of how old they are,
I have to bite my lip.
The age card does not automatically earn my sympathy when used in reference to desolation. And I don't buy it when people claim their torture to be "unique" or "special" because of their age.
Why?
It has been my experience, that age does not set the bar for how much suffering a person has been subjected too.
I have met CHILDREN that have experienced more pain in a single month than many 60 year olds have seen their entire lives. For example, a few years ago, I was substitute teaching at Linder Elementary in Austin, Texas. Just before the morning bell, a kid by the name of Damien walked in and sat down on the floor. He had his turtle neck pulled up over his head and he was acting bizarre and distant, so I decided to pull him aside and ask him what was wrong. It took a little bit of coaxing, but he eventually opened his flood gates, and proceeded to avow that he had just watched his father stab his mother TO DEATH in front of his very own eyes. I was in shock. I abruptly called the principal and in less than an hour, Damien was whisked away by the police. I never saw him again. I found out later that Damien's father had tortured his mother in the kitchen before she died, forcing him to sit in the living room throughout the entire ordeal.
Age does not mean ANYTHING when it comes to suffering,
as one, single swipe of the knife can spill enough blood
to stain a life forever.
So to all the bitter, old men out there,
including the bitter, old men of the future (one of which will probably be me),
never judge pain by age...
judge it by the weight of the eyes.
So... I became a tea drinker this week.
Recently, a very special (and talented) woman
introduced me to some assorted tea.
On Thursday, I drank about 7 cups, each cup double bagged,
and stayed up for 2 days straight with no additional caffeine needed.
Granted, I kept thinking that all the leaves on the road were rats darting in front of my car, which was rather disturbing, but overall I still managed to maintain my limited social skills as well as the majority of my mental faculties.
For most of this week, I've been at The Jimmy Kimmel Show
meeting the producers, the writers, and the field directors
and preparing for a possible directing gig there.
I wasn't sure how I would like it as I'm told the fast paced production schedule
of late night television can be stressful and annoying.
But everyone was extremely gracious and kind,
and being WACKED out on that tea actually helped my social skills
for some reason unbeknownst to me. Really, the entire experience surprised me and I never felt uncomfortable once, even going on 2 days of no sleep.
So, now I'm a tea drinker.
And I can finally lay off all the crack and angel dust. FINALLY.
I was starting to get tired of having illegitimate children and chewing on my arm.
and yet EVEN THEN...
there in the throes of lunacy,
i cannot shake the feeling
that i'll never find the ground under my feet,
because i've never been grounded to begin with.
i have no idea what the ground feels like.
sometimes I wish my mind was less cluttered,
and I was just a big ol'
PAUNCHY SQUIRREL
with only one goal pounding through my being:
COLLECT MOUTH-WATERING ACORNS.
ahhhh, to wake up
wanting ACORNS and ONLY ACORNS
like fat kids
want butter beans.
wait...
scratch that.
not butter beans.
like fat kids want
MARSH MELLOW DINOSAUR EGGS.
ahh yes, to surrender to instinct completely.
the equanimity
of a pitch black mind
following
the bolt pistol.
i suppose even squirrels are
stuck with the mind mess, though.
they don't just think about acorns.
no ma'am.
that's only a romantic cavity we artists
desperately WANT squirrels to FILL.
The harsh reality of the world is:
Squirrels are NOT cartoons.
They are not simple and innocent.
no ma'am.
squirrels attack old people and children
and violently fuck everything they see.
(even dirty, old, grey shoes by the side of the road,
covered in dryer lint).
squirrels zip around like
retards on acid,
constantly reacting
to every jerk of the world.
sadly, they too have hard boiled eyes
and wet-towel-minds,
rigged with springs,
taut with tension,
and filled with triggers, cyphers,
and empty actions
they will never understand.
Screw the world!
I'm a farmer now!
I plowed up my front yard and planted FOOD.
Henceforth, I shall spring LIFE from LAND!!
I shall bring FLORA to what once was VOID!
I shall BURGEON and HARVEST my crop!!
And I shall reap. In the name of Dimitra, GODDESS OF CORN... I SHALL REAP.
I will REAP my organic CHILDREN just as The Great Reaper reaps the SLAIN!
TAKE HEED my fellow enemies,
I AM NOW A FARMER!!!
And I SHALL FEAST!!!
(raising pitchfork in the air while lightning strikes it)
I SHHAALLLLL FFFEEAASSSSTTTTT!!!!!!
Okra Power! Tomatoe Power! Green Beans Power! Carrots Power!
Onions Power! Spinach Power! Squash Power! Peas Power!
White Sweet Corn Power! Strawberry Power! Potato Power!
FARM FEAST POWER, TWO THOUSAND EIGHT!
Three different couples I know just had kids.
All within the past three days.
I was going to order them this as a gift
but I found out it's from a 1953 Popular Mechanics
and not a 2008 Sears catalog.
I guess I'll just give them each a big wooden crate or something.
Might work just them same.
"Enclosed in a wire cage suspended from an apartment window, English children play in the sunlight and fresh air while their mothers are busy with housework. The cage, made of wire netting, is strongly braced and is guarded on the apartment side by a cloth net which prevents children from crawling back into the room where they may attempt to destroy the home. Loaned by an infant welfare center to families with no gardens, the portable balcony is apparently popular with mothers and fathers with little patience. The demand exceeds the supply."
1953 Popular Mechanics
I don't understand high thread count sheets.
Recently, I bought a luxurious high thread count sheet at Target
to see what it was all about.
I thought I was in for the RIDE OF A LIFETIME.
But it wasn't anything close to that.
It was just a stupid sheet.
And it's kind of stiff.
I thought high thread count sheets were supposed to be the softest
customers around.
Well, they're not.
They're not special AT ALL.
They're just expensive
and stiff.
I'm gonna stick to my cotton jersey sheets, washed weekly
in a gallon of fabric softener.
And I'll never vote for high thread count sheets again.
YOU HEAR ME HIGH THREAD COUNT SHEETS???
I'M SICK OF YOUR HIGH FALUTIN' WAYS!!
YOU'RE ALL TALK! ALL TALK AND NO ACTION!
YOU AND I ARE FINISHED!