A wiseman once wrote something really cool and wise; I wrote this:

Remember when you were 3 years old and you wanted to know why everything is the way it is? Even better - remember the last time you hung out with a 3 year old, and they were asking the same damn questions?

Does it seem like the older we get the more we accept the answer "That's the way it is"? I feel that we stop asking "Why?"

A long long time ago my parents bought me and my bro a pair of cowboy boots. For some reason, I kept wearing them on the wrong feet, and when my little bro asked, "Hey, don't they just feel wrong?" I asked myself "What's so wrong about the feeling of wearing your shoes on the wrong feet?" It's not like bells go off in your brain that tell you "This crap is messed up!" It's not like the feeling you would get if you drowned a litter of kittens or something. So why couldn't I wear the my boots on the wrong feet?

I also remember the time my dad was teaching me about the value of nickels, dimes, pennies, quarters, and half dollars. My little bro picked it up really quick. My question was "Who says this piece of metal is worth more than this piece of metal?" They're all just round pieces of metal. I finally gave my pops the answers that he was looking for just so I wouldn't get my ass whooped for being a dumbass.

So I learned that playing along and giving the accepted answers will get you out of a lot of trouble. After awhile, it becomes habit, but for some reason, I'm starting to question things again. This time though the answers aren't so clear.

Like "Does Spring Break end at college graduation?" For some reason Spring Break seems to happen on every other day off. I still listen to club mixes of songs in the car and yell like crazy sometimes - all while I drive around doing errands. I still plan to spike a watermelon with vodka once a month but never get around to it, but I still plan anyway. I go to the beach before work.



"Can I be a Republican and still hate war?" The real question is "Who actually LIKES war?" I'm not naive enough to think that everything can be fixed with negotiation. Some sides are driven to commit horrible atrocities where negotiations would just mean a few more to add to the body count, but I don't like the reality of war. The Dems want to paint a picture of Republicans as war fanatics, and the Republicans want to say that the Dems lack steadfastness and courage. Deep down inside I know we all wish we weren't in this situation to begin with. Now if we can all agree on that maybe there is some hope for "One nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all."

Next question: "How much wood can a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" I'm pretty sure the answer is "all of it." It's a little known fact that woodchucks lack the lzY gene. This is the gene that causes laziness. In fact, the scientists that discovered this gene in chimpanzees were so lazy themselves that they left out the "a" in the gene's name because that meant another letter to bother writing down. So with no laziness to hamper a woodchuck and no time limit, all of the wood would be chucked. (This gene fact is so "little known" that you can consider it "not known" or just "made up" by a "drunken writer".)

Last question: "Why can't I have a beer for breakfast?" and the alternate question: "Why can't I have a beer with breakfast and go on my usual morning jog?" The answer will hit you like a semi-truck full of stupid at around 10:27 in the morning if you even attempt this tragic lapse of common sense.

The weird part of this last question is the fact that the answer is something I've heard as a kid.

"Stop being stupid. Shut up, and finish your oatmeal." If only I had listened...

A Reason to Live

I wouldn't call it the bane of my existence, but it does suck sometimes. Words. Everywhere. Most of them are half full. A good measure of them are just empty banter - fluff for the most part, but for some reason my mind can't tune them out. Every word has to have a meaning or purpose, and my brain will mull them around for days and even years to squeeze an ounce of understanding from them.

The other day someone presented me with a pretty easy request. "Give me a reason to live."

WTFuck? Does someone really need a reason to live? Isn't being alive a miracle in itself - something that doesn't really need a reason to exist?

The dude had to be joking, right? And if he was joking, why can't I just let the question fade away with last week's minor details? Maybe I'm an optimistic shmuck, but I don't have to think too hard about why I want to keep existing.

For one, there are way too many people around the world I want to drink beer with to expire anytime soon. Some of those people I'm actually waiting to be of drinking age. Family and friends has to be one of the top reasons to keep on keepin' on. The possibility of making new friends and starting my own family is also an attractive incentive to not crap out in the near future. I see my buddies getting married and having kids and stuff, and it looks cool enough to try sometime.

It sounds all grand sometimes, but even the little things are worth sticking around for. (Yeah, I know. I ended a sentence in a preposition. So what?)

Days off, good coffee, unexpected presents, the smell of your favorite food, eating the aforementioned favorite food, nice weather, naps, YouTubing the crap out of stupid stuff, sending those YouTube links to unsuspecting victims, Post-Its, pay day, hearing a song you haven't heard in a 14 bizillion years, having a friend nearby to sing that song horribly with you, lazy Sundays, play-offs, overtime, triple overtime, stupid jokes like the following:

Q: How do you keep a dog from humping your leg?




A: Suck its dick, silly!


(I'll wait til you get settled again......Ready? OK, let's get back to my list.)

...vacations, holidays, dates, graduation, hooking-up, making-up, coming-out, Spring Break, that point around 3 am where you're delirious and everything is hilarious, actually finishing everything on your to-do list, barbecue, movies that are coming out this year, movies that are coming out in the future, old school rap, the beach, etc.

I could have come up with this list in 5 seconds, but I type like an amputee.

There's a helluvalot more things to live for. Hell, there's also tons of things to die for, but I'm not going tell to this dude about that.

Maybe he's convinced his team will never win the championship, but if he dies, he'll never know. Maybe his personally life is a steaming chasm of shit, but if he dies, he'll never know that there are people that will help him dig his way out.

I guess it's all the maybe's that makes me want to stick around. Maybe I just want to stick around to try to figure it all out.

But maybe he was just bullshitting, and I'm insane.

But maybe I'm just taking my sweet time planning my funeral. That event is gonna be epic! Bagpipe players, a pig roast, a petting zoo for the kids, and maybe even sweet T-shirts.

I just have to live an awesome life to get to that point.



I hope you guys can make it.

Until then, stick around. Trust me. The world is so much cooler with us in it.

Ode to Sub-Zero

Sub-Zero - what is NOT cool about this guy? First off, he's a damn ninja. Ninjas have always and will always be awesome. Anything contrary to this fact is wrong. Devil's advocates may point out that pirates are just as cool or better than ninjas. Even if you ignore the fact that most pirates are alcoholics, loud as hell, shitty when it comes to deadlines, prone to mutiny, have awful hygiene, hard to understand, and have criminal records as long Rip Van Winkle's dingleberries you will be hard pressed to find someone who would pay for their services let alone trust them.



Secondly, he can shoot ice out of his hands!



He can freeze your juice pops in no time flat, but he might end up uppercutting the shit out of them rendering them pretty much useless, but that would still be pretty damn cool...literally.



Go freeze something by shooting ice from your hands and tell me sex partners don't instantly line up like nerds at the premiere of Star Wars 6.



You're probably asking yourselves, "What about Batman, Godzilla, Hulk Hogan, Yoda, Ryu, General Patton, your mom, etc?"



Screw Batman.



In fact, screw the whole Batman franchise.



And just for questioning his ass-kicking abilities, Sub-Zero will beat the crap out of Superman, too. Sub- Zero hates clowns and people that wear capes.

If they have an ass and/or can freeze, Sub-Zero will win every time. In fact, the only time Chuck Norris was out with a cold was after he went drinking with Sub-Zero.


(Note: Sub-Zero has voted for Clint Eastwood for President in every election and will continue until Clint Eastwood actually runs for President. Sub-Zero doesn't even have tear ducts. The only thing Obama can take from Sub-Zero is a beatdown.)


If you still have any doubts, just look at him. Damn! He's the very definition of badass.




Glowing blue hands, scary white eye-balls, blue ninja uniform - he actually rewrites one of the most sacred of lyrics. "Wu Tang Clan [and Sub-Zero] ain't nothin' to fuck with!"


And fire? "What about fire?" you ask. Yoga flame would totally beat Icy Freeze, right? On a good day, fire is an even tie with ice, but after getting hit with a Teleport to Icy Counter combo it's impossible to get your ass un-kicked.



Oh and let's not forget about the ice sword! He wields a Conan The Barbarian-sized sword made of ice! WTF?!!! FTW!



Back, forward, down, forward, #2. Last time I tried that move it was highly embarrassing, gross, and required a mop.


When Sub-Zero goes back, forward, down, forward, #2, a shit-ton of awesomeness occurs in the most entertaining ways.



God bless you, Sub-Zero. God bless.

A Letter From the Valley of the Death

There are few things as humbling as puking your guts out at at three in the afternoon. You are re-introduced to reality, and reality is a bitch you've been dating for way too long.

She (or he) reminds you you're not as cool, strong, or funny as you think.

You are not Captain Awesome. You have limits, and today's limit is four big glasses of some orange juice-based cocktail... and a beer somewhere in the middle of all that.

Lesson No.7492: The saying "Liquor before beer - You're in the clear" is total crap! I've known this for some time now, but I'm a man of science. I'm always gathering new data and calibrating. Today's data still supports the failure of the cute rhyme, but it also reveals the following new questions:

1. Have I ever been able to consume more than four classes of orange juice in one drinking session? Let's ignore the fact there were other things mixed in - namely booze from Satan's teat. I have never realized the acidity of four glasses of OJ until today.

Check this out:

Orange juice has a pH of 3.30 - 4.15. That data doesn't really mean much until you compare it to ...say... stomach acid which has a pH range of 1-3. Holy crap! I'm a moron!

I had an unfamiliar burning in my chest and some kind of uneasiness in my throat. WebMD.com says these symptoms can be associated with heartburn. Whatever it is sucks goat nuts.

2. How much weight can you lose in 24 hrs? I'm not a world class athlete. I don't have televised weigh-ins. My body fat percentage is like the plight of the Tasmanian Devil - good to know but not enough to get all concerned. All in all I don't have weight issues, but I lost about 4 pounds in about a day. That's like cutting off a forearm which should kill you in most instances, because - let's not kid ourselves -when you're tore up from the floor up your body is basically dying. You're drifting in and out of consciousness, ingesting food is not happening, you're hot and you're cold (...you're yes and you're no...you're in and you're out...you're up and you're down), you have sweaty alcoholic sweat (yeah, even your sweat is sweating), and even water is hard to keep down. Basically, you're whole being is pissed off at you.

And I haven't even started on the massive amounts of puking that occurs while you hover around the valley of death. At first, you have the usual suspects exiting your system. Then, comes the scary stuff you can't even begin to identify. If it's glowing yellow, it's bile (or you were drinking antifreeze and/or the contents of a glow stick...if this is the case, all this crap is totally what you get). The stuff will be taste bitter and may be accompanied by an evil heaving welling from your soul.

3. Time/space warping occurs during your "down time"? You can close your eyes for a second and miss 20 minutes of "Pulp Fiction," and you have to be pretty trashed if you can fall asleep during all that messed-up shenanigans. When you do finally go down like the five dollar hooker you are you can sleep a whole day away, but that 12-24 nap challenges the classic definition of space and time.

Normally, you require a certain amount of space to move around and live. During this nap all you need is about a five square feet of space to die. You can spend a better part of a weekend on a couch or the bathroom floor (which has a soothing coolness that you've overlooked until now).



4. Does everyone but me swear off drinking or some other nonsense that has nothing to do with the root of the issue?

Here's the root of my issue: I'm a thirsty dude. I require lots of hydration, and sometimes I just happen to be at a bar. Don't get me wrong. I do love me some beer, but I also love milkshakes, juice, milk, Kool-Aid, green tea, sweet tea, grape soda, grape drink, slushies, etc.

I like drinking. It's refreshing and vital for me to stay alive. This isn't a rationalization of why my dumb ass is in the fetal position admiring my buddy's bathroom ceiling (You should check it out some time...when you for some strange reason are in his bathroom...in Pensacola, Florida...and you swear your gall bladder just shot out of your mouth and into toilet. It's a hardwood ceiling - very nice workmanship.)

Although I can't stop drinking, I can stop drinking liquor immediately after running a 5K.

See? That's realistic, specific, and logical. There's no weird "Ewww, I don't do Cuervo anymore" situations. Tequila is just a potent liquid. A shot of it has no evil spirit in it plotting your downfall. It was just that you mishandled your capacity to guzzle it down.. and the Cuervo? It won't miss you at all.

And the folks that transform into blathering, flailing idiots after drinking a certain form of booze are crazy deep down inside already. It's not the whiskey's fault. Firm, consistent use of a Tazer can resolve this behavioral aberration. Kicking and choking could be used if a Tazer is not available.

All in all - me getting drunk happens maybe 5.7 times a year. Me getting totally shitfaced happens even less than that, but me learning a lesson happens all the time.

Hopefully, I learn this pretty simple lesson.

I guess there's a reason Gatorade and gin are on different aisles.

He's Not That Into You Because He's Me

So, he hasn't called yet? No date plans discussed for this weekend? Does he always invite a buddy of his along on your little outings?

Yeah, he's probably shy, lazy, fickle, and as neurotic as you are. Basically, he's me but way cooler. Hell, you're a pretty hot piece of ass. I know I am. If he hasn't called, he's definitely gay, which is why you'll never find a boyfriend like him because he already has a boyfriend that he calls because he likes him, but you - you are a beautiful woman sitting by yourself on a Wednesday night reading a book called "He's Just Not That into You." That's sort of like trying to learn how to speed read by reading a 200-page book called "Speed Reading for Slow Readers: the Special Olympic Edition"

And what if he's not gay? In that case, he's me - too tired from writing crazy shit like this all night, can't really remember what a real date actually feels like, growing out his hair because he doesn't really care about the ugly phase anymore since the dating slump is nearing record numbers. He's probably more excited about buying a new pair of running shoes than actually asking somebody - anybody? - out, and it's a bad sign when a straight dude gets excited about shoes for ANY reason.

And it's not that he hasn't noticed you. Oh, he's noticed! It's just he's dated models and hung-out with models, and it usually follows the same old patterns of booze, cocaine, jungle love, booze, jungle love, accidentally burning the bed sheets with some crazy new bong contraption, heroine, eating cold mac-n-cheese at three in the morning on the kitchen floor while the other is passed out on the bear skin rug, more sex, rehab, and the break-up (in its many dramatic forms). So, it's not you. You're just as hot or hotter that all those models. He just doesn't want to be the one that watches you do all those horrible things to yourself while he tries take his team all the way on Madden 2008. Yeah, he doesn't smoke or drink much, says "no" to drugs, hates to have his clothes thrown into the pool when he pisses you off, and knows that fights are a normal part of a healthy relationship (minus having "ashole" carved into his car, which wouldn't be as bad if it wasn't misspelled), BUT he loves your smokin' body, girl!



So there you have it! He's not that into you...because he's me, and I'm retarded. And you? You're normal - normally crazier than a sack of rabid weasels.

The End.

Thieves and Shaving

To seek out and actively acquire things already taken is the business of thieves and swindlers. Unfortunately, I'm neither of those.

Upholding a handful of principles vexes me a times, but at least it allows me to honestly look at myself in the mirror in the morning without the slightest trepidation. This comes in handy when shaving.

And I say to myself, "What a Wonderful Turd!"

Who am I? What am I doing? Where am I going? Where do I want to go? How am I going to get there? What the hell am I going to do when I do get there?

Will they have beer there?

A co-worker asked me when I'll get to work on my writing career a few days ago. MY WRITING CAREER?! Here's a dude that just recently came across some of my old columns from my college days, and he thinks it merits a career!

Where did my faith in my words go? The more I read the news out there the more I realize I'm starting to believe what the media is dishing out. Main stream media has convinced us life is a shit sandwich, and we're required to eat it.

Here's the deal, dude: Fuck that. Don't believe that. Actually, fuck what I just said. Believe whatever you want, but decide for yourself. Hopefully, you think life is short and sweet like a chocolate-covered midget. Maybe you think the opposite - life is long as shit; so take it easy. Either way life is awesome. Maybe my writing career should be to remind you things aren't that bad.

Despite the economy, the break-ups, the wars, the 8 o'clock classes, the bird shitting on your car seconds after you finally get around to washing it, the rain storm that comes after you clean off the bird shit, the scandals, and the food poisonings, life overall doesn't suck that bad.


I mean, if this guy can find some kind of joy in life, life can't be all that bad, right? I personally hate karaoke, but this cracks my shit up. The economic downturn kind of melts away for a few minutes when I watch this:



Who am I trying to kid? I'm kind of a dick, but I give credit where credit is due, and this lady right here proves that one's failure can provide viewing pleasure for millions. I cease to think about MY failures with love and life in general when I see this:



But I don't rely solely on others' failures for my pleasure. Feats of awesome randomness are just as good. I especially like my own past accomplishments. Check me out when I was just a wee lad:



OK OK OK, that wasn't me, but it was still awesome, and if anybody believed me for a minute and 49 seconds, thanks! Lying kind of makes me happy, too.

So screw all the bad news. There's just too much of it to go around. I'm gonna get working on this writing career. You just keep reading, and it wouldn't hurt to keep laughing since there really is no sense in worrying too much about life.

Nobody is getting out of this thing alive anyways.

No Beer in Gym

First off, I need to apologize to the lady running on the treadmill next to me. I had no business being in the gym after four beers. Hell, the four coffees, bagel, and Philly cheese steak didn't help either, but I don't regret actually making it to the gym since the gym was the first responsible thing I did that day.

But the burps were out of hand unless you like the combined smell of onion, garlic, stomach acid, and beer. It was pretty rank, and with every stride I knew it wasn't long before I actually would see the source of the stench.

So, I stopped running. It was the only decent thing to do.

Disaster averted...until I decided to actually workout. (Yeah, the treadmill was a warm-up for the stupidity that would ensue. You never want to cramp up in the middle of doing something dumb. Cramping gets in the way of disappearing from the scene of the crime.)

Long story short - I'm an idiot.



Short story long - here are the following exercises to avoid when you're full of the aforementioned food and drink:

1. Situps - Anything that causes the crap in your gullet to slosh around should be avoided. The crunch movement is the last thing you want to attempt especially the decline situp. In fact, any body positioning that places your head below your feet is retarded.

2. Standing dumb bell exercises - After consuming beers in quick succession, standing kind of sucks. Any lifting of weights should be done sitting. Any lifting of weights over your head is just a bad idea - a very bad idea. Plus, the fact that one dumb bell can independently do whatever it wants is pretty hazardous. Factor in the other dumb bell and you have every ounce of bad karma lining up to kill you. That's what you get for making fun of the pee kid in first grade, asshole.

3. Barbell exercises - While much safer than dumb bells, most of my barbell exercises use a shit-ton more weight than dumb bell stuff, and a shit-ton of anything is a shitload of shit (especially when the possibility of that shit falling on your head and chest is involved).

4. Any exercise that involves your head moving too much - This rules out pushups, pullups, and dips. Unless you want to transform into a puke sprinkler, avoid this stuff. Trust me.


So if you avoid running on a treadmill, barb bell exercises, dumb bell exercises, situps, and anything that involves head movement, you'll have a "great" time at the gym.

But here's a better idea:

1. Don't drink and go to the gym.

2. Eat a well balanced breakfast.

3. Don't go to the beach under red flag conditions with a six pack of Miller Lite.

4. Don't drink and go to the gym, moron.