Give me a dollar

I've invented a new salutation.

"Give me a dollar".

Instead of saying "hi" or "what's up?" when you greet your chum, just say "give me a dollar".

That's what I do. I think now that it's the go-go 80's and everybody is obsessed with money and greed, what better way to keep your finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist than by cutting right to the chase and telling your friends what you really want from them?

If you're like me, you're too busy Jazzercising and doing coke to waste time with pleasantries. I want to make my first million before I'm 31 and I've gotta get my ass into some Dockers, get down to the office and start trading junk bonds on my Apple IIe.

That means speed, efficiency and bluntness. "Give me a dollar". So elegant in its simplicity, yet free from the coarseness and vulgarity of "Get out of my way, bitch".

Man, I feel so alive! I just wanna write a novel or help starving children in Africa or re-arrange my whole tape collection. Something, you know?

Bah! This is wasted on you people. You're not even alive. You don't know what I know. You don't see what I see. You're fucking pawns in some pathetic game. It's like a sick joke.

I'm like fucking Jesus Christ here. I try and help you, set you free and how do you repay me? You nail me to a fucking cross. It's the same story throughout history, repeated ad nauseum: Caesar, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. They try and take people to a whole different level and it blows peoples' minds. The weak get scared when you take them out of their comfort zone.

Fuck it. Enjoy mediocrity, dicks. Like Elton said, "You can't plant me in your penthouse / I'm going back to my plough". But I'll go back, knowing that, at least for a little while, I tried. I took a shot.

Goddamit, will someone shut that fucking baby up?

Jimbo hates the Olive Garden

"Oh yeah. It's an Olive Garden gift certificate! Great!" Jimbo Stevens feigned a mixture of delight and surprise. For the fifth year in a row, his Aunt Clara had given him a gift certificate to his least favorite restaurant in the world. It's not that Jimbo didn't like the Olive Garden; rather he detested it. He tried not to look too annoyed as he opened his other presents. As he sat with his family, eating birthday cake, his anger grew. Not only had his hands been soiled by that cursed coupon, but his parents had forgotten to get him a pinata again.

After everyone had left, Jimbo went up to his room and fumed. He locked the door, opened a window and lit a cigarette. He was only nine, but his hatred of the Olive Garden had caused him to start many a bad habit, of which smoking was but one. As he puffed on his unfiltered cancer stick, he pulled out a collage from under his bed. In the collage, he had attempted to embody his feelings about the Olive Garden through pictures and words. The remains of four ripped-up Olive Garden gift certificates were scattered throughout. His fifth would help fill in the large unused portion of the upper right corner.

He admired his handiwork. The main theme was Hitler and the devil leading a procession of fat people into a large meat grinder which sat on top of an Olive Garden restaurant. There were also several pictures of his least favorite Aunt in compromising positions with Hitler. He had no way to prove any of his theories, but he knew in his gut the collage spoke the truth.

There was a time when he didn't hate his aunt, in fact he liked her. The same could not be said for the Olive Garden. His parents had taken him there when he was five years old. At first, the idea of limitless salad and breadsticks had been very appealing to him, but soon he saw this for what it was: a ploy to get people filled up so they wouldn't eat their entrees. That night he lay in his race car bed, pondering why a restaurant wouldn't want its customers to eat all their food.

The answer was so simple he kicked himself for not realizing it sooner. The recycling craze that had swept the country in the early 90's had simply followed a natural progression into the food service industry. The Olive Garden was recycling its unused food! It dawned on Jimbo that you would never be able to tell your pasta wasn't fresh under all that heavy cream sauce. He gagged at the thought of paying $7.95 for someone else's leftovers. Still, something troubled him. It seemed problematic that he would be the only person to stumble onto the truth. Surely, greater minds than his had dined at this house of lies and free lemonade refills. He realized the Olive Garden couldn’t be re-serving its food to its regular customers, and the true diabolical motives of the scheme came to light.

Jimbo wasn't sure how it all worked, exactly, but he surmised that the Olive Garden took the uneaten food and sold it to a less discerning clientele: the homeless. "But the homeless haven't got any money, why would the Olive Garden target such an unappealing demographic?" It was true, the homeless didn't have lots of money, but perhaps they paid for their food through different means. The indentured servitude of an army of bagmen was something quite distasteful to Jimbo. He could only guess what multi-national corporations had partaken of the Olive Garden's unkempt workforce. Wherever there was manual labor to be done and no large illegal immigrant population to exploit, the Olive Garden would be there, supplying the country with ditch diggers, toilet cleaners and hazardous waste processors. Jimbo looked around his room and wondered if his own house had been built by secret slave labor. He scoffed at this idea, since his house would have surely collapsed years ago due to the shoddy masonry work he knew the homeless to be famous for.

Jimbo put his collage away and tried to focus on happier thoughts. Tomorrow was his big date. This brought a smile to his face. For months he had tried to win the heart of a special young lady and she had finally agreed to go out with him. He had known her since the first grade but had never dared to share his feelings with her. Now he was an upper-classman, full of confidence in who he was, not only as a fourth-grader, but as a man. Though she was older, he knew she could see past their age difference. She wasn't like the other girls. She was special. He saw it in the way she taught gym class. The care she took with her students. The way she kept her hair short; she wasn't a slave to her vanity, like so many other women. She was unmarried and it pleased him that she wasn't in a rush to find a man, that she had waited for the right guy. She had waited for him.

When she agreed to their date, she had tried to stress to Jimbo that they were only friends, but he knew she was just being coy. She wanted him to respect her and he loved her for this. Between the anti-Olive Garden fervor he had worked himself into and thoughts of his romantic encounter, Jimbo barely slept at all that night. The next day he walked through his school in a daze. He didn't even think about the Olive Garden once! He got home and rushed upstairs to shower and shave. He put on his finest pair of short pants and his mom helped him with his bow tie. There was the customary picture taking and much doting by his mom and his sisters.

Finally, Miss Sappho arrived at his door. She was wearing a nylon tracksuit and sneakers. He tingled with lust; she had worn a brand-new tracksuit just for him! He escorted her to her car and fastened his seat belt. As she started up her 1985 Toyota Corolla, she asked if he had any ideas about where they should go to eat. He told her he didn't care where they went, just as long as they were together. She smiled uncomfortably and pulled her car into traffic. "I was thinking we could go to the Olive Garden, they have free salad and breadsticks. Do you like Italian?"

He begin coughing and choking violently. She patted him on the back and asked if he was all right. After a moment, he composed himself and answered that he was fine. Of course, this was far from the truth. They drove in silence. He couldn't believe the filth that had come out of her mouth. He wanted to vomit. All this time he had thought she was special, that she was different, but she was just like the rest of them! They didn't care if Hitler got rich trading second-hand chicken parmesan to common street people. They didn't care about anything as long as they got their damn salad and breadsticks.

As Miss Sappho maneuvered into a parking spot, Jimbo could hold in his feelings no longer. "How can you eat here? What kind of monster are you?" he shrieked. Miss Sappho just looked at him, shocked and confused. "I really thought I loved you, I was ready to spend the rest of my life with you, and this is how you return my affection?" He had become quite animated. He flailed his arms around as he ranted about the foundation of the whole country being built on a lie. His unfortunate date looked on in horror as this nine year old boy wove together an elaborate story of Nazi restaurateurs utilizing a battalion of homeless workers in a secret plot to take over the world. Clearly he was delusional, if not psychotic. Miss Sappho began to feel genuinely afraid, and in her rush to flee the car, struck her head on the automatic seat belt release, slumping back into her chair, unconscious.

Jimbo tried to revive her, but it was no use. He cursed his misfortune! He looked at her lifeless body and couldn’t help but feel compassion for this beautiful creature. Perhaps he had been too quick to judge her. Surely, over time, she would have come to see the error of her ways. But now it was too late for any of that. With a heavy heart, he lifted her out of the car and dragged her limp body towards the back door of the restaurant. He knocked several times before a timid busboy opened the door. The busboy was shocked to see a nine year old boy dressed up like a fancy lad standing next to an unconscious lesbian in a tracksuit propped up against a dumpster. "Hey man, is she all right?" asked the busboy.

"No, she's not all right. She's dead," replied Jimbo, "and I killed her. But that's not important right now. I need to speak with your manager, quickly. There's no time to explain, just tell him I know all about his little operation here and I don't feel like spending the rest of my life in jail."

"What?" the busboy had only been half-listening. Jimbo rolled his eyes as a man in a short-sleeve shirt and a tie appeared behind the busboy.

"Victor, what's going on out here? Why didn't you clear table seven like I asked?" The manager surveyed the scene before him. "Holy shit. Kid, what's wrong with her?"

Jimbo tried to compose himself. He took a deep breath, paused and spoke in an overly-mannered voice. "Sir, unfortunately, this woman is dead. I am partly to blame for her death. She hit her head after I startled her. However, due to the sensitive nature of the circumstances at hand, I am not in any position to let the system of justice in this country determine my fate. So I come to you now to ask that you have one of your employees help me dispose of the body however you see fit." He peered into the kitchen. "I don't know exactly what goes on here, frankly, it sickens me, but I trust you're well-equipped to handle such a request."

"You want one of my employees to dispose of her body? Kid, are you insane?" asked the manager.

"Hey, it's not gonna be me," said Victor.

"No no, you don't understand. I know what really goes on here,” he winked at the manager in a knowing fashion, “I don't mean your employees in there. I mean the ones out here. Look, there's a bum over there by the liquor store, couldn't you get him to do it?"

"Kid, what the fuck are you talking about? Have you been sniffing the glue? I saw that on Hard Copy. Sniffing? Or snuffing? No wait, huffing? Anyway, I'm gonna go call 911, Victor you stay here."

Miss Sappho had started to come to and was beginning to moan and rub her head. At first, Jimbo was relieved, but he realized too much had already been said, they would have to see this one through.

He would never forget the horrified look in her eyes as he lifted the cinder block over his head. He thought of it often as he looked out the window of his small room. He had lots of time to think now. The two men from the Olive Garden had easily overpowered him when they saw what he was about to do. He never got the chance to dash poor Miss Sappho's brains out. Maybe it was all for the best. His doctor had spent much time trying to disprove his beliefs about the Olive Garden. Sometimes Jimbo found himself believing him, other times he seemed just another cog in a giant wheel of conspiracy. Either way, Jimbo knew one thing for sure: he wasn't going to eat the Jello.

Roger Stubbins: American Patriot

When I was a kid, my family had a pet lion named Roger Stubbins. Roger was a full grown, African male lion and he was very tame and playful. For some reason, people just couldn’t accept the fact that a wild animal like that could be tame and pose no threat to anyone. For fuck’s sake, we’ve got pictures of him carrying me around as a baby in his mouth.

Anyway, people started to complain about Roger and they even went so far as to concoct vicious lies that our lion, who would roam freely throughout the neighborhood, had even killed some old people and a few homeless drifters who had gone missing. Now, this was preposterous, but even if it wasn’t, who the hell cares? How is that a crime? That’s just simply “natural selection” in my book.

So every time Roger would go and maul someone to death, it was the responsibility of my brother and me to go clean out their house of valuables and try and cover up the crime and make it seem like a suicide or something. The plan worked perfectly for a while but as we got to the point where we had done it maybe twenty times or so, we got cocky. We figured we were never gonna get caught and we got sloppy. Plain and simple.

So the cops found some forensic evidence and came to get Roger Stubbins but the joke was on them, as we had already driven him to the state park a few towns over and let him loose. He ran off into the woods without so much as a look back and we never heard from our old pal again but once in a blue moon a hunter would go missing and we just knew it was our buddy Roger, up to his old tricks.

Well that’s not really the point, I’m trying to make here, it’s just a little backstory. The real story was that one time when my brother and I were cleaning out this old lady’s house whom Roger had eaten, I came across a velvet bag taped to the underside of one of her dresser drawers.

The bag said, “Magic Beans” on the side but I figured that was just to throw off robbers.

“Jackpot!” I thought. I turned it over, spilling out the contents into my greedy palm, but instead of the diamonds and rubies I was expecting, some actual beans were all that was inside!

“That fucking bitch!” I exclaimed, drawing upon my third grader’s vocabulary to express my anger. If I could have brought her back to life and killed her again, I would have, such was the rage I felt. I was ready to chuck her precious “magic beans” in the toilet but something in my mind held me back from doing so.

“Why would she go to such lengths to hide them if they weren’t real?” I pondered. At first I just assumed she was a crazy old bat, I mean she must have been if she was stupid enough to get mauled by a ferocious lion roaming freely in a suburban Connecticut neighborhood. Something just wasn’t right though, how could a crazy old lady be intelligent enough to be a professor at a prestigious university for all those years, not to mention, matriarch to a powerfully-connected political family who loved her very much and missed her so when she mysteriously disappeared without a trace?

I pocketed the beanbag and finished washing everything down with the powerful commercial lye we used to eradicate any traces of Roger’s crimes and was on my way.

I completely forgot about those stupid beans until I was emptying my pockets out on laundry day. There was the bag, taunting me: “magic beans”. Suddenly, I felt extremely stupid. If any of my brothers had caught me holding on to such an immature and foolish keepsake, they would have beaten me senseless, not just for being a dim-witted prat, but also for jeopardizing our little money-making operation. This was, after all, material evidence in a murder investigation, not just some stupid magic beans.

I took the beans out of their pouch and threw them out the window. I was so upset with myself, I decided to get drunk and drown my sorrows in some corn liquor. Well, I passed out for nearly 18 hours and when I awoke with the sun the next morning, I hobbled over to the window to draw the shades, my head pounding.

Well I had to rub my eyes because I was sure they were playing tricks on me. Just outside my window was an enormous beanstalk, probably 20 feet wide at its base. I stuck my head out the window and craned my head upwards to see how tall it had gotten but it’s top was lost from sight, far up in the clouds.

“Holy shit!” I exclaimed. My first thought was to chop it down in case any immigrants tried to climb down it and sully our fair nation’s hollowed soil with their dirty monkey feet, but then I had an even better idea. I would climb up the beanstalk and poison their water supply before they even had the chance!

I grabbed some Draino and my mountain-climbing gear and a few Power Bars and started the long journey up the beanstalk. I later realized the Power Bars were extraneous, as I could just peel off a strip of the beanstalk for nutrition. It kinda tasted like celery, which normally I hate, but in this case, it was ok. There’s something rewarding about picking vegetation in the wild and using it for sustenance.

So maybe 20 minutes into my journey, I traveled through the clouds and reached the top of the beanstalk. I’m a fast climber. As I looked around, I was surprised to find not the dirty megalopolis I had expected to see teeming with filthy, thieving immigrants, but rather a rustic farmland, brimming with stalks of corn the size of buses and tomatoes as big as your house and carrots that were normal-sized for some reason.

I started to explore and came upon a large barn, the biggest I had ever seen. The handle on the door alone was probably 3 feet long. I shimmied up the side and into the barn, a barn unlike one I had ever seen before. It was gigantic in proportion and had crown molding. Who the hell puts crown molding in a barn?

In the corner was a giant goose and below the goose, I shit you not, was a giant golden egg! I couldn’t believe my luck. A giant egg, made of gold! But then I got to thinking, the egg itself probably wasn’t gold, at best it was gold-plated. As I thought this over, I noticed there was a giant sack of money behind the goose. Score!

I grabbed the sack, kicked the goose in the balls and ran for it. I was almost back at the beanstalk when I heard the ground shaking, like in Jurassic Park, but instead of a dinosaur, I was being chased by the gayest giant I had ever seen in my life. He had a pink bandana around his neck the size of a sail. A sail from a boat owned by homosexuals, no doubt.

Why was he chasing me? How could he have known I had stolen anything? All the money was secured away in my rucksack, hidden from sight. Did he just have a problem with trespassers? No, it was clear: he meant to have sexual relations with me.

Well I was having none of that so I scrambled down the beanstalk as fast I could. Again, I felt the urge to chop down the beanstalk so I could prevent that giant from ever coming down to America and violating my heretofore pristine anal region while I slept. But then I thought, this beanstalk is 20 feet in diameter, it would take years to chop that shit down, that’s a stupid idea, so I just put up a sign that said “Welcome To Texas” at the base of it and I haven’t seen any giants since.

Well not fifty years later, that beanstalk was covered in limestone bricks and became what is now known as the Washington Monument. So next time you’re sight-seeing in our nation’s capital, think of my good friend, Roger Stubbins and smile, because if not for that brutal killer and his murderous rampage, all those years ago, this country wouldn’t have invented the world’s first skyscraper.

Check out my new blog

Check it out, people! It's at goingtodworld.blogspot.com and it's awesome! Right now it's basically just a notice looking for people to join me on my trip to Disneyworld but I'll put up pictures and stuff there from the trip afterwards, so come on, check it out. I had heart surgery!!!

This is why the world hates us

One word: "scrapbooking".

CONCORD, New Hampshire (AP) -- Wendy Armstrong won't confess how much money she used to spend on scrapbooking supplies, but she does admit nearly kicking her daughter out of her nursery to make more room for the piles of paper and decorative doodads.

This is a joke, right? I didn't even know what the hell this was til a few years ago, but apparently it's become somewhat of a sensation.

The baby kept her room, but "believe me, it was a very hard decision," jokes Armstrong, a stay-at-home mom who lives near Portland, Oregon.

LOL! What a surprise, "stay-at-home mom", I never would have guessed. You see, I was thinking this was a productive member of society who was out busy working and doing something constructive.

Now, before you give me a load of shit about how being a mom is a full-time job, let me point out that if it's such a full-time job, how come this stupid bitch had all this free time to work on her goddam scrapbooks?

In case you're shaking your head going, "what the fuck is a scrapbook?", let me explain. Bored housewives who are too fat and ugly to cheat on their husbands go out and spend hundreds of dollars on these stupid books, basically scrapbooks, only they create "colorful layouts" and put their pictures in them with "creative captions" and "horrible poetry". The article I'm quoting is about how there's a "revolution" in the "scrapbooking community" because now all of this can be done on computers.

If they're just figuring out now that you could do all this bullshit on a computer, it just proves my point of how fucking stupid this is.

Armstrong, 43, now creates all of her scrapbook pages entirely on her computer. No more physical cutting and pasting, no more agonizing over a layout to the point of paralysis.

Paralysis?? This is an insult to all the people out there who are actually paralyzed. Imagine, you're some kid in a wheelchair and you read this? I'd want to run my wheels over that whore's throat.

"I had two kids, a backlog of a gazillion photos, and I was just getting to the point where I'd literally have layouts that sat on my desk for months just not quite finished," she said.

A gazillion photos? Photos of what? You doing your scrapbooking? Your kids crying because you haven't fed them in weeks because you're too busy cutting out construction paper? I'm pretty sure you can't take a picture of the passage of time as you waste your life on pointless busy work, so it can't be that.

But luckily, digital scrapbooking came along and turned this broad's dangerous obsession into a merely harmful hobby.

"All of a sudden I didn't totally panic about finishing my layouts like I did with paper scrapping because I never really had to finish," said Armstrong, who has completed 240 pages in just more than a year. "It just created so much more freedom than paper scrapping."

What a relief! 240 pages! Totally panic about what? Are you fucking kidding me? Who are they making this shit for? I bet nobody's even allowed to touch this crap once they're done. I bet these are the same people who put plastic on their furniture.

In case you think I'm just blowing steam, that this really isn't a big deal, according to this article, "digital scrapbooking is a fast-growing offshoot of the $2.5 billion scrapbooking industry."

2.5 billion dollars. How much cancer could you cure with that kind of cash? Or AIDS? Or tear down the Statue of Liberty and replace it with a golden George Bush telling immigrants to take a hike?

"I think scrappers are becoming savvy. They know their programs and they're starting to explore it as an art," she said. "It's not only about preserving memories."

"Scrappers"??? "Art"??? Does anyone else have blood shooting out of their eyes right now or is it just me?

Apparently some of these "scrappers" even make their own designs to sell. Surprisingly, they don't seem to be getting rich doing it.

"You're just happy getting any money for doing what you love to do," she said. "I enjoy the creative process ... and there's no mess. You can leave it at any moment and come back to it later, and no one's messed with it."

Let me explain something. This is not creative. This is a huge waste of time and money. There are children starving in Africa or China or someplace. There is a war in Iraq and whatnot. I'm not saying this is why 9/11 happened but this attitude that we can live these meaningless lives of extreme leisure and mental atrophy isn't helping things.

Time to retire

Well I'm down here in Florida. You might have noticed I haven't posted in a few days, though I did send out a mass email letting everyone know that I got published again on the Phat Phree website.

I may have come across a problem, folks. I don't want to work. I want to be retired. True, I'm only 30 and I've got like 23 cents in savings, but I don't care. I'm ready to pack it in and move down to Florida for good.

In short, I love it here. I got off the plane and it was 80 degrees. When I left it was 40. That means it's twice as good here. Do the math.

I wake up, take a shower. My mom makes me some breakfast. I go for a bike ride, I swim in the pool. I relax in the hottub. I watch digital cable on my dad's 36" Sony Wega. I surf the internet on our Comcast high-speed connection from the comfort of my bed thanks to our wireless router. I play with the cat on the lanai.

Sounds pretty sweet, huh?

What the hell would I want to work for? Cuz it's "rewarding"? HAHAHAHAHA. Please. I had heart surgery. I didn't almost die just so I could punch the time clock after working eight hours at the cracker factory. Who am I, Kirk Van Houten?

Now, let me set you straight: work is for suckers. All those rich people you see walking around during the middle of the day? They're better than you and me. They are superior in every way. If they weren't, they wouldn't be rich.

I don't care how you get your money, that's not my concern. White slavery, drug trafficking, murder-for-hire, whatever. Just get your money and then retire. Don't be one of these people who gets some money but still works 80 hours a week because they want more of it. Just get like 2 or 3 million in the bank, buy a nice, modest house or condo and live off the interest for the rest of your life.

That's the life. Trust me. I've tasted it. I've taken a little bite, now I want the whole pie.

Am I saying I'm gonna have my parents take out a big insurance policy and then murder them and make it look like an accident? Yes. Yes, I am. From their ashes will rise a new Eric. One who is rich and doesn't have to work.

Goodbye to the old Eric Filipkowski! Say hello to the new Enrique Filipkowskistein.

OK, so the name isn't important.

Ironically, Literary Journal Editor Caught Misusing the Term, “Ironically”

BUFFALO, NY – Local word hound and editor of The Poughkeepsie Paladin, Cassius Bronte, found himself horrified and embarrassed Monday at his misuse of the term “ironically” in casual conversation with a SUNY Buffalo sophomore while attending a mixer for the Linguistics Society of Upstate New York’s upcoming Collegiate Bowl, of which he was to be a judge.

According to bystanders, a possibly inebriated Bronte said to the comely young woman, “Ironically, here I’ve met such a delightful lass, like yourself and yet I find myself without a prophylactic.” He then gave out a loud, nervous laugh as the anonymous co-ed, clearly offended, withdrew from his company.

“I don’t understand it, really,” said Bronte, obviously put-upon to explain such a gaffe, “normally correcting peoples’ catachrestic solecisms is my raison d’etre – especially when it comes to irony. However, I am confident my colleagues will chalk it up to a mere lapsus linguae and not harp upon such a trivial mistake in a callow manner or such.”

Bronte, in his late 30’s and balding, certainly looks the part of the lifetime academic with his wire-rim glasses and corduroy blazer, complete with leather elbow patches, but some in the community weren’t so surprised at his faux pas.

“Cassius has always been something of a pseudo-intellectual,” Associate Professor of Physics, Mark Pomeroy was quoted as saying, “he seems as if he’s always waiting to pounce on any little malapropism or use of the vernacular he doesn’t deem worthy. He jumped all over me, just last week for saying something was flagrant when I actually meant it to be blatant. What a douche.”

Some even seemed to relish the idea of Bronte being knocked down a few pegs. Said Dean Johnson Val Dernen, “Bronte’s been a thorn in my side for years. He sucks up to all the visiting literati in a vainglorious attempt to ingratiate himself into their celebrity world. As long as The New York Times has given you the thumbs up, you can expect the royal treatment at the hands of Cassius Bronte and his Poughkeepsie Paladin coterie.”

Asked if he would use this opportunity to sanction Bronte in front of the Linguistics Society, The Dean hesitated to commit to such an action, “Well, unfortunately, the timing couldn’t be worse as The University has recently launched its own boutique publishing house and the last thing we need is that pedantic cocksucker spiting us with bad reviews.”

The Dean later added that any official sanctions would be superfluous, as Bronte had himself withdrawn from judging the competition.

For a moment, Bronte seemed genuinely apologetic and even humbled by the experience. “I suppose I’ve brought this upon myself. Truly, this is poetic justice on a Dickensian scale.”

Grasping at the seemingly extraneous, he added, “Clearly, I have led myself to the abattoir by means of my own misdeeds.”

Not happy to leave it at that, he chimed in, “Perhaps now I see, as Icarus saw only whilst plunging into the Aegean, that I have flown too close to the sun in my pursuit of linguistic perfection.”

Not surprisingly, his new found deference for others proved to be short-lived as he was seen sternly admonishing an African-American youth for “axing” him “where da B-ball at?” just outside the auditorium shortly before being severely beaten by the athlete and several of his compatriots.

The road from Rhode Island

My little stop-over in Rhode Island began about six months ago, the beginning of May. When I had my surgery, they made it seem like I'd be better in a few weeks so I didn't even pack that much stuff. I brought one roller bag with me, one pair of jeans, one sweater. I almost didn't bring my computer, which I really would have regretted.

When I got here I had lost 45 pounds and I had long hair and a scraggly beard. I threw up pretty much every day and alot of the time, I would wear pajamas. I couldn't go anywhere cuz I got dizzy in the car if I was in there for more than five minutes. Also, I could barely speak.

My dad used to drive me down to the beach and I would walk along the boardwalk. It was cold and windy and I could only walk for a few minutes at a time. I remember when I got to the point where I could walk from the pavilion to the end of the boardwalk, this was a big accomplishment for me. All in all, it was probably less than an eighth of a mile, round trip.

As time went on, I got stronger and a little less sick each day. It was really hard to see any progress from my point of view but other people told me I was getting better. I did have a scary few days where I went back in the hospital but that turned out to be a false alarm.

I also started blogging. At first I didn't write much at all but as time went on, my progress as a writer started to catch up to my progress health-wise. If you look back at my archives, you can see my entries starting out, sporadic and brief, begin to grow and become more frequent.

My computer was my lifeline to the world. The world of all my friends in LA and around the country. Not everyone has instant messenger but almost everyone could log onto my blog and see how I was doing. These are the people who supported me and kept me in their thoughts and prayers and I am forever grateful to them.

I started going out more. My friend Slappy came to visit me over Memorial Day. I shaved off my beard. I read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I planned a trip to Disneyworld which hopefully will come to fruition in the next month. I even went out in a boat.

I also got to the point where I was writing at least once a day. I even invented an imaginary friend or two.

I can't pin it down to a single day, but I reached a point where I started to get noticeably better. When that happens, things start to move much more quickly. By the time I went to New York, I was well on my way to recovery.

Tomorrow, I head down to Florida to re-join my parents at their place down there. I'll still be online, so don't worry about me not bugging you anymore. This is a transitionary step before I return to LA for good, which should be sometime around the first of the year.

I guess this is why I'm getting so sentimental and looking back on everything. I'm going to miss this place. There are worse places to recuperate than a condo by the ocean. I will miss the friends I made here, even if they are all over forty. I will miss having a new kitten to play with every week and I will miss babysitting Max and Duncan and Riley. I will miss the Narragansett Bay and going to Burger King and eating my lunch by the water.

Today, I went back down to the beach, as I hadn't been there in a while. I walked that 1/8 of a mile that used to wipe me out. It seemed ridiculously easy to do. I guess it goes to show how far I've come.

I'll see you again, soon, Rhode Island. Here I come, Florida.

Some random thoughts about underpants

Not saying "x is the new y" is the new "saying x is the new y".

If Andy Kaufman was still alive, I think he'd join Al Qaeda, like when he joined wrestling. Only this would end up with him really getting arrested and tortured. So it just goes to show that this is a bad climate for doing jokes.

Hey, did you hear about this? It's actually illegal to send poop through the mail. I guess the terrorists have won.

I wanna see two old guys punch each other out. Like 100 years old.

Hey, does anyone here like Drew Barrymore better when she was on drugs? Really? You like her better when she was nine?

They should have an amusement park for people who recently had heart surgery. The roller coaster goes six miles an hour in a straight line. The haunted house has ghosts that warn you before they pop out and go "boo". You know how when you go to Disneyworld, all the characters like Snow White and Cinderella and the Little Mermaid are all super hot? Well we can't have any horny old men having heart attacks so all the characters here are all super fat and ugly. Some in wheelchairs.

Sometimes it's good to let people know you're giving them the finger, figuratively I mean. Like when you get someone a really crappy present. "Oh great, Travel Connect Four. Thanks. Is this used?" I also like to repeatedly call someone the wrong name, even after being corrected. but have it not even be close. Not like calling Aaron "Eric," I mean like calling Aaron "Samantha."

Agree to baby sit, then leave the house with the kid but have a fake kid dummy wearing the kid's actual clothes under the tipped-over refrigerator with just the kid's legs sticking out, like in the Wizard of Oz.

I wanted to write a story about the day I lost my job because I was using the bathroom when the boss was pounding on the door because he had to take a shit. I didn't open up in time and he soiled himself. He was so embarrased he told me if I didn't say anything, he'd pay me off with six months of checks but that I could never work there again. Seemed like a fair trade to me. I also ended up breaking up with my girlfriend because though I knew she was a lunchlady, going to her school and actually seeing here there with her hair net on and serving kids sloppy joes made me realize I could never be sexually attracted to her again, even though she was super hot. But I never did. Write that story, that is.

I'm really paranoid about having to take a dump when I'm on a date. I don't eat anything all day because there's only so many times you can come back from the bathroom and pretend you were in there doing coke.

Here's a joke they used to tell us in school: A guy works at a pet store, his boss comes by "all these kittens need to be liquidated, ASAP!". When the boss comes back, the guy is standing there with a giant bucket of blood and hair and bone and the boss says "how many kittens did you sell today?" to which the guy replies "sell???"

I want to invent a candle for the bathroom that smells like shit, so people will take a shit and then light the candle to clear the air, only it will make it smell worse. Plus the candle will be orange and have an "orange blossom" label on it to trick people.

If I was a reporter and I was interviewing Dionne Warwick before a concert, I'd ask her if she ever messes up and sings "Are pumping cars and parking gas" during "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" It would be funny if she got really mad that I asked that and then was like "This interview is over!" And then it would be really funny if she actually did it during the concert.

If I had a wife, I would do little things to spice up our love life. Like I would tell her to dress like a hooker and meet me in a bar downtown and then I'd pretend to pick her up. But I'd make it realistic. Like I'd ask her, "How much?" and she'd say "Fifty bucks". And then I'd go, "Fifty bucks? I'm banging this fat bitch who looks just like you for free." Then I'd storm out and look for a cop to report my wife for being a hooker.

These knuckleheads at the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru are really starting to cheese me off!

Normally I’m a big fan of Dunkin Donuts (or as my shirt says, “Funkin Gonuts” LOL), but lately, that place is really startin’ to twist my nips. For years I’ve been stopping by every morning for my cup o’ joe and a sausage, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich on a sesame bagel. You just can’t beat their coffee and normally their service is excellent but in the last month or so, things have definitely started to go downhill.

I don’t know if it’s new management or employees or what, but they just can’t seem to get my order right. First they gave me a sandwich with bacon instead of sausage. No big deal, it was still delicious. I’m just lucky that I’m not Jewish or something, cuz they’re not allowed to eat bacon. But I’m Episcopalian, so no harm done.

I didn’t even say anything the next time I came by, I figured I’d just let it roll. So I get to work and when I take out my sandwich, there’s no frickin’ napkins! Two days in a row is just ridiculous so you better believe I said something when I went back the next day.

I started to give those you-know-what’s a piece of my mind but they were very understanding and apologetic and gave me a free cinnamon roll for my trouble. I figured, “problem solved” and I didn’t encounter any more shenanigans for the next few days or so. But wouldn’t you know it, Monday rolls around and I get to work and there’s no gosh darn egg on my sandwich!!!

Now this is when I realize these guys are just being jerks. I should probably have just taken my business elsewhere but at that time of morning, taking a left on Maple to get to the Burger King is suicide. Easily another fifteen minutes to my commute. So I stick the sandwich in the fridge and head back to Dunkin Donuts on my lunch hour, this time with proof that someone’s got it out for me.

Now the manager is tryin’ real hard to calm me down and all, saying it was an honest mistake, but I’m not having any of it. He tries to convince me that there’s no conspiracy against me and how would anyone even know it was the same guy and a whole bunch of baloney like that. If anyone knows me, they know I have a really distinctive voice. It’s very high-pitched on account of getting my throat run over during hockey practice back in high school. So I’m sure these clowns working the drive-thru say “Oh, here comes ol’ high pitch, give him a sandwich without any eggs!” or something along those lines.

Finally, I just give up. They make me a new sandwich, this time I check it and I steam off to my car and back to work. Well that brouhaha took so long, I didn’t even have time to eat the darn thing! I had to get right back to sorting pinwheels at the toy factory where I work. So no breakfast, no lunch and eight hours of separating the silver pinwheels from the red and blue ones – you better believe I was hotter than heck when I got home that night. Thank the Lord I don’t have a wife to come home to or it would have been, “To the moon, Alice!”

That was just an example, that’s a line from that old show “Father Knows Best”, so if I had a wife, her name probably wouldn’t even be Alice. That’s not even a popular name these days.

Anyway, things just got worse. I started getting donuts, croissants, sandwiches with no eggs or cheese, stuff like that. I swear that one time my sausage was even undercooked! Now, fun is fun but that’s just plain dangerous!

I didn’t say anything though. I just took whatever they gave me and choked it down. All the while plotting my revenge. I put on a happy face when I’d roll up to that window, as if I either didn’t notice or it just didn’t bother me. Little did they know what lay in store for them!

So one morning I get there about an hour early. I roll up to the sign and I ask the box for one hundred sausage, egg and cheese sandwiches. They try and talk me out of it, but I’m pretty insistent.

“Well sir, unfortunately, we don’t have that many sesame bagels,” the teenage punk tells me.

I start to worry that maybe they realize something’s up. “Well, that’s OK, just give me whatever kind of bagels you’ve got,” I say.

“Sir, please pull forward.”

Uh oh. I thought about just making a run for it right there but I kept my cool and pulled up to the window. I explained that I was picking up a big order for work and I was willing to wait while they made the sandwiches.

Now, of course, nobody’s gonna just hand over 100 breakfast sandwiches without getting the money up front, but I was prepared for this. I had cashed my whole week’s salary last Friday, instead of depositing it into my checking account. Rent be damned, it was time for some revenge!

So I hand over what came to almost 3 bills and pull into a spot in the front of the store and wait for my order. About 45 minutes later, I see all the employees getting everything ready. I start my car.

A line of about six of them, carrying four or five bags each, start to make their way out to my Ford Festiva. Just as the first one is about to tap on the glass of my passenger side window, I put the car in drive, floor the accelerator and peel out of the parking lot at nearly six miles an hour!

Oh gosh, it was so great! You should have seen the looks on their faces! They went and made a hundred breakfast sandwiches all for nothing! If there are sausage, egg and cheese sandwiches in Heaven, they can’t be as delicious as the sweet, sweet, victorious revenge I tasted that day. Even as I type this, I can barely contain my laughter, the memory is so perfect and vivid.

Of course, I could never go back there, after that. I was so nervous they were gonna call the cops on me, I didn’t even go into work that day. I called in sick and hid out at the Wal-Mart three towns over til I figured the coast was clear. When I didn’t hear any sirens or see any FBI agents looking for me, I headed back home to my basement studio apartment. By then it was about ten thirty at night.

I tell you what, I do miss that cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee every morning. Usually I just bring in a can of Pringles for breakfast but the Sanka they brew in the company break room really can’t compare to the rich blend I’m used to.

But still, all in all, would I do it again? You bet your sweet behind I would!

Do you think they do farts too?

This is real, it's not a joke site.

Yes, it's the "Breath Capture Tube". Or, as some people call it, "just a regular tube".

Or is it?

According to the site:

Breath Capture is a patent-pending method and apparatus for collecting human breath as a keepsake display.

Oh! Well, that changes everything. I thought this was just a scam preying on stupid people by exploiting everyones' natural fear of death and loss. I mean, if this was just a cheap 15 cent tube that you could get at any medical supply store, that would be horrible, but luckily, this is not like that at all. This is a patent-pending method and apparatus for collecting human breath as a keepsake display!

What kind of brave and noble people would invent such an innovative device?

Breath Capture is a small company with a big heart. We’re here to spread love around the world. More love can’t be a bad thing. Right? It only takes two people. Two people, with an undying friendship or love for each other. That’s it. Pretty soon, the love starts spreading.

"The love starts spreading". Like bird flu. Which is a by-product of "breath". So maybe if everyone breathes their bird flu into these Breath Capture apparatuses, we can rid the world of bird flu.

I think this is a wonderful holiday gift idea and I think a few of you reading now can look forward to receiving your own Breath Capture devices (though probably not the 20 dollar ones they sell on this site), but then again, why stop there? My bird flu prevention idea is literally just one of millions of potential uses for this product. You could even use them as test tubes for scientific or medical purposes!

They're on to something here, something big. I have to go call my stockbroker and see if they've gone public. If they are, the only thing I suggest is that they change their slogan from "Those you hold dear. Always near," to something catchier like "Save your breath!" or "Tweeter: for times like these". I don't think McDonald's is using "Food, Folks and Fun" anymore, they should grab that one.

Goddamit, why can't I think of shit like this? I wish I was creative.

Don't show my mom!

If my mom sees this my trip to Disneyworld could be in jeopardy. She already thinks Mission: Space put me in the hospital. This is, of course, utter nonsense.

Everyone knows I ended up in the hospital because you're a bad friend.

I'm a whore

Yes, it's true. I'm a whore. For ratings.

So go here and read my hilarious story and vote for it but only if you're going to give it a "5" which is the highest rating. Even if you don't like it, give it a 5 cuz who cares anyway? Just do it.

I'm now a "contributor" to this website, The Phat Phree and it's the first time my stuff has been actually "published" so I'm pretty excited. Don't let me down. I had heart surgery.

The time I woke up from my coma

This past March I had massive reconstructive heart surgery. I won’t bore you with the details but suffice it to say, it was a huge ordeal and I’m very lucky to be alive, so feel free to send me money and gifts. Pictures of boobs would be nice.

So I wake up from my coma and I’m in the intensive care unit. At this point, I’m barely conscious. I take a gander at my surroundings and here is what I surmise:

I am not in the room alone. For some reason, I have come to the conclusion that the room is actually full of people who are all being very quiet. And they’re all under a big sheet. Why? Because they’re here to watch someone die, of course!

And not just “anyone”! No. They’re here to watch the guy who played “Doc” on the Love Boat die. Apparently he’s an acting teacher (in the fucked-up reality of my brain) and has asked his students to all come down to Cedars Sinai and watch his final “performance”. So here they are, all eagerly taking notes, clearly eating this up because it’s so “deep” and “real”, but they have to be quiet and stay under the sheet because I’m sharing a room with this guy. Just my luck, right?

Well apparently I hallucinated all this because that dude is still alive. I think. Who cares, really, anyway? Right? I guess I imagined a whole bunch of other stuff that never happened as well. I wrote it down in a notebook I used to communicate with people while I had a tube down my throat but when I went back to look over my notes, they were all gibberish. I think it was all pretty standard stuff: the nurses are trying to kill me, little people roam the hallways at night, I can fly, etc…

What I like about the “Doc teaching a class about death story” is that even when I was drugged out and delusional and waking up from the most traumatic experience of my life, my brain chose to provide me with commentary that people from Hollywood are pretentious and full of shit. I didn’t have any visions of my dead grandma or Jesus or Abraham Lincoln imparting words of wisdom to get me through my time of need and pain. No, instead I got Doc from the Love Boat making a bunch of untalented losers take notes on how a guy who’s about to die breathes and makes a machine go “beep beep beep”.

I know I made a leap in logic there, but trust me, they’re untalented. And losers. And by “them” I mean “you”. You’re not gonna make it. Give up.

The time I fucked Kelly Clarkson

I know I joke around and make stuff up alot on this webpage, but this is an actual true story about the time I, Eric Filipkowski, fucked American Idol Pop Superstar, Kelly Clarkson.

I'm not here to brag, though I know a lot of you probably would. I'm not proud of what I did. I thought nobody would get hurt. Actually, that's not true, I didn't care if anybody got hurt. All I thought about was myself.

Well believe me, I fucked her good. I'm not gonna get into the details but for those three minutes and fifty eight seconds, I was in heaven. But once it was over, I immediately felt like shit.

The guilt had set in. What had I done? I was dirty. I needed a shower. Normally I don't go around fucking people I've never met before. I know everybody says that but it's true, in this case.

Well that's my story. I haven't talked to her about it but if she's out there, I hope she knows I'm sorry and that I will never fuck her again.

...

You know, now that I'm reading this over, I'm a little worried that people might get the wrong idea. When I say I "fucked" Kelly Clarkson, I didn't mean to imply we had relations. I don't use the f-word to describe that action, I call it "making love".

No, I meant that I fucked her over by illegaly downloading her hit song "Breakaway" without paying for it. Once I did it, I immediately deleted it and then downloaded it off of iTunes as reparations. This is the one and only time I ever did this so don't come after me if you're in the RIAA.

Oh and by the way, I did also made love to Kelly Clarkson on several occasions. But only in the butt.

The Spectacles Party

Since the age of four I’ve had to wear glasses. Big, thick, Coke bottle glasses. I remember being the only kid in first grade who had to wear them. In a misguided attempt to lessen some of the alienation I felt, my parents decided to have a “make your own spectacles party” for my birthday. My mom asked the local eyeglass store if we could have the party there. The owner thought it was a weird request but didn’t see any harm so he gave it the OK. Perhaps he thought it would be good publicity, I don’t know.

The kids arrived and their parents dropped them off and we played some games, did some usual birthday party stuff and then it was time for the main event. All the kids picked out some frames and we decorated them with glitter and glue, sparkles and elbow macaroni. We made some crazy designs and everyone had a great time. We had some cake and I’m sure that my mom surveyed the scene and felt rather proud of herself. She had accomplished her goal: I was no longer the only child wearing glasses. Not only that, the kids all seemed to enjoy their new glasses and I had become somewhat admired for being a trendsetter.

The problem was that nobody had really worked out the logistics of the “make your own spectacles” theme. When the parents came to pick up their kids, they thought they looked cute in their ridiculous, Elton John-style creations… until Mr. Carlitos, the store owner, demanded that they each pay him $200 for the frames that he felt he was owed. Naturally, the parents were shocked. I think many of them believed that my mother should have covered the cost. As we snuck out the back of the store while everyone was arguing, she told me that she just assumed Mr. Carlitos would have used old, broken frames or something. To be honest, she was pretty high most of the time and though she would get really inspired about her ideas, she hadn’t really followed through or thought anything out too well.

You want a piece of this?

So I'm watching the news and I see this story about how petty crimes are up at the Crystal Mall near my house.

No shit they're up, who do you think's responsible for that? LOL!

Anyway, this old bitch comes on that they're interviewing, telling some sob story about how she just turned around for a second and when she went to get her purse it was gone. (Nice work if I do say so myself!) So she starts tearing up and saying how she prayed for me, I mean, whoever did this, because if she ever caught them, she was gonna beat them senseless.

Normally I see these kinds of news reports and I don't think twice but this really got to me.

Old lady, you want some, then come and get it!

How dare you threaten me like that? People like me have no rights. Imagine if I was to go on TV and publically threaten her like that? They'd call it assault. But because this bitch is old and everyone feels sorry for her, she has a public forum to threaten and insult me at will.

I'm a coward? Well here I am, I'm not going anywhere. Let's rock! I'll even give you a free one. Take your best shot. I guarantee one punch to your wrinkled cranium is all it will take to send you on a one-way trip to Coma Town. You don't spend three years in prison and not know how to handle yourself in a fight. You think the Aryan Brotherhood would ask someone to join if he was a little bitch?

So shut your fucking trap you dried-out, old crone.

And P.S., thanks a lot for the $7.38 and those mints that were stuck to the bottom of your purse.

P.P.S., your grandkids are ugly.

Why I hate LA

Make sure you read on to find out why Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie aren't friends anymore!

Thanks Carla!

Vote for my kitten!

My friend Bordo showed me this site, kittenwar.com. It's kinda like an "am I hot or not?" site for kittens. They also have puppywar.com.

Anyway, I uploaded my cat, Miss M, so everyone has to go vote for her because she's really cute and if she doesn't win, my mom will be very upset.

The "losingest kittens" section is really sad.

The new "what chu' talkin' 'bout, Willis?"

OK, well maybe it's more like the new "Kiss my grits!" but fuck it, I'm not going back and re-typing all that.

ANYWAY, as you well know, most of my posts are political in nature and politics can be very polarizing and controversial. I consider myself a moderate, but in this day and age, even moderation can piss people off.

In one of my recent posts, I must have caught someone's ire, because they left me this comment (anonymously, of course):

"I'm going to give out your address to a child molester chat group!"

There was some other stuff about me and my mother and a duck, I think, but whatever.

Pretty random and fucked up, huh? Or so I thought. I told myself this was just the lunatic ravings of a lonely weirdo but then I was parking my car in the Subway parking lot when an enfeebled septuagenarian pulls right into my spot with no blinker or anything. So I decided to point out his mistake to him in a kindly fashion.

"Hey geri, that was my spot. That's what my fucking blinker meant: that I was gonna pull into that spot you just rolled up on."

He was totally parked all crooked and shit, too. He gets out of his car with his cane, gives me the stink eye and as he's hobbling away he shouts over his shoulder, "I'm going to give out your address to a child molester chat group!"

I should have run that fucker down, but I was just too stunned. I had almost convinced myself that he could have been the same "anonymous" who posted on my blog, but then it happened AGAIN later in the day and this time it was a woman. A mother of two little kids, no less! Plus, old people can't use computers or the internet.

What the fuck, right? I mean, first of all, it's a pretty idle threat, seeing as I don't even have any kids. Sure, I don't want a bunch of child molesters coming to my house, but how the hell would these people know my address anyway? But it's just so fucked up that anybody would say that, let alone have it catch on and be the new hot comeback in society. I guess it's another testament to the crazy times we live in.

Just to make sure we're clear here, these people are saying, "OK pal, you pissed me off, now I'm going to try and have your kids get molested." Maybe they don't intend to follow through, but still, just the sentiment is bad enough. It's really disgusting, if you think about it. What did I do to them that was so bad? Cut them off? Insult their Christian beliefs? Punch them in the face for taking the last bag of Cool Ranch Doritos? Relax, people!

To counteract all this negativity, I'm going to try and start my own comeback and hope it catches on. So the next time someone angers me, I'm going to say "Hey Mr. Wisenheimer, you really cheesed me off! The heck with you!"

It's got a nice ring to it, don't you think? And the best part is, I get my point across without wishing that anybody's kids will get molested. And that's important.

Professional sports need to think of the future

So I was watching Futurama tonight and they had a joke about how all the Blurnsball players' numbers had been retired. You know, cuz it takes place in the future.

Anyway, it got me thinking. Say for each various team, on average, maybe 4 or 5 numbers have been retired in the last 50 years. Again, this is just an average of all the teams and different sports, I could be way off. That means in as little as 2000 years, all the numbers could be taken up!

Really, what other options are there? Move to a 3 digit number system? Really? Are you some kind of fucking idiot? I thought we were being serious here for a minute. Go to your room.

Back on earth, where players have 2 digit numbers, the problem seems catastrophic. Even if people get more selective, the point is, eventually we'll be out of numbers.

And who wants to be number 97 anyway? All the cool numbers will be gone by 2525.

Honestly, I don't know the answers. Clearly, we'll be playing the same sports forever. That's a given. We're stuck with baseball, football, basketball and to a lesser extent, tennis and golf. The Brits have cricket and everyone else gets soccer. That's it. What's the last new sport to be invented? Ultimate frisbee? Fuck that hippie bullshit. No, clearly we live in a golden age of sport from which the rest of time will look back and see as the birth-time period of all great sports. And those sports are gonna need numbers.

Perhaps we need to start finding new 2 digit numbers that don't exist yet. Can't the scientists concentrate on that a while? Nobody's gonna cure cancer, just give up. Focus on something useful. Forget sending rockets to the moon (we all know that's a big scam anyway) and creating robots to dig for gold under the sea. What we need is some new numbers before it's too late.

From the desk of Tucker McGrath

Hi there, Eric is away looking for rental properties at Disneyworld today and he asked me to fill in.

First off, Eric wanted me to explain a little bit about who I am to all the readers out there, as there has been some confusion on the subject in the past.

I am Tucker McGrath, Eric Filipkowski's imaginary friend who is NOT a rapist. That's Chad Robuckle. Please don't confuse us. Eric said I should describe myself as a little slow, to establish the paradigm in peoples' minds. Whatever that means.

Anyway, to sum up: I am Tucker McGrath, NOT Chad Robuckle. I don't know if he actually raped anyone or not but rest assured, I have never been accused of sexual assault of any kind in my whole life.

So, now that we've cleared that up, let me tell you my funny story.

I heard of these stories about people on the subways in New York getting beaten up for their iPods, have you heard about this? Apparently, criminals look for the tell-tale white ear buds and then they demand you fork over your iPod.

So I thought it would be funny to turn the tables on these thugs and plug iPod headphones into a crappy 80's-style walkman. I cruised the subways with my walkman under my jacket for a few days, mostly late nights, in bad neighborhoods, when I finally got some takers!

Mr. Criminal and his cronies surrounded me on the empty subway train, I'd say it was about 3 am. I saw them approach me and I could barely conceal my glee as they did their best to look menacing.

"Hand over the iPod, bitch" the leader said.

I sprung up and flung open my jacket, revealing my crappy walkman!

"Aha! The joke's on you, I don't have an iPod!" I said, triumphantly.

Oh man, it was so funny! At least I thought so! LOL!

I didn't even have time to laugh before the first blow was landed. Oh shit, did it hurt!

They continued for what seemed like a lifetime, but was actually only about sixteen minutes or so. All of them got in on the act, kicking and punching, sometimes beating me about the head and face with my own walkman. Good lord!

The doctors tell me I'm lucky to be alive. They had to take out my whole lower intestine and replace it with a plastic one. No more Mexican food for me, I guess. Oh well.

Would I do it again, knowing what I know now? No. But still, you've gotta admit, it was a pretty funny joke and though they got in some good licks, I feel I was victorious because as the old adage goes:

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!"

The solution to all my problems

So lately I've been trying to figure out my return to Los Angeles. My main problem is finding a place to live. I wasn't really sure what to do. The problem is, I can't just go out to LA and crash with friends til I secure my own place.

It's not for lack of offers, my friends have been really generous, offering me places to stay and all that, but you see, when your body gets sawed open and your ribs are pried apart by a machine and then bent back together, sometimes you have a hard time sleeping at night. I have enough trouble sleeping on a bed, let alone a couch.

I don't know, the general consensus seems to be that this is all bullshit and I'm just stalling, but whatever.

So, in light of my recent troubles, I have decided to postpone my return to Los Angeles indefinitely. Instead, I am going to go apartment hunting on Main Street, U.S.A.

Yes, I'm moving to Disneyworld.

I know, it's probably really expensive, but there's gotta be a studio there for cheap, right? Hell, I don't even need a kitchen, I don't cook. Plus I can just go to Adventureland and get a burger at the Pecos Bill Cafe if I get hungry.

You know how they say "location, location, location", well I'm just extending this theory to it's logical conclusion. What better location can you think of than Main Street, U.S.A.? You can't think of one, cuz there is none. Disneyworld is the best place on earth. I was thinking something right over the magic shop might be nice. It's probably quieter than over the ice cream shop cuz everyone hates magic and nobody goes in there.

Originally I was planning on new construction, maybe on Tom Sawyer's Island but I began to see that as being cost-prohibitive. And while it might be cool to live on an island, who really wants to take a raft to work every morning? I guess I could probably get a canoe or a jetski or something but still, that sounds like a pain in the ass. And kind of lonely. Part of the reason I'm moving to Disneyworld is so I never have to be alone again so isolating myself in a remote part of the park would really be counter-productive.

I also considered areas in Tomorrowland and Frontierland but they've become somewhat blighted and over-ridden with nouveau riche, respectively.

So, in summation, you can all kiss my ass. I am going to be pro-active and live my dream of cutting myself off completely from the real world forever. Roll out the red carpet, Mickey, cuz here I come!

Fuck you Blue Judy

I don't know if you're on Myspace or what, but I am. One of the more annoying things about Myspace is that there are 8 million fucking bands on there, trying to get noticed by people and they harass you all the time.

Example #1: "Blue Judy".

I'm not going to link them, cuz I don't want to give them any more free publicity or encourage them in anyway. And let me be up front about this: I've never listened to their music. They could be awesome. I don't know. They could be better than the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Ashley Simpson all rolled up into one. I don't care.

In case your wondering about my musical math, Ashley Simpson cancels out the Rolling Stones completely, but that still equals "better than the Beatles" and that's not too shabby.

I probably get five messages a week from these guys, inviting me to go to their shows or be on their friends list. "Oh really, Blue Judy has a new single? All I have to do is click this one link and I can listen to it? It's really good and only takes a few minutes of my time? Really?"

*DELETE*

I have a theory about unsigned bands, they all suck. If they didn't, they would be signed. Makes sense, right?

You know what I like best about Fiona Apple? She has a record deal. If I need to know what kind of music to listen to, the good people at Sony/Epic Records will tell me where to turn. That's what the billions of dollars a year the record industry spends on marketing and advertising is for.

And yet, you want me to give your music a listen while you haven't spent a dime to do it? I think not, commie. This is America.

Another annoying thing about Myspace is, as far as I know, you can't block messages from individual users. Cuz if you could, believe me, these guys would be #1 on my list!


Would they, Eric? Would they?

What do you mean?

Well you're not being entirely truthful here, are you?

I told people I hadn't listened to their music.

That's not what I meant.

What?

You know. Myspace gives you the ability to block bands from sending you messages.

Oh. Right. Well, the thing about that is, I actually know a few people who have bands on Myspace and I don't want to piss them off.

You don't want to piss people off? Yeah, that sounds like you.

What are you getting at?

Oh come on. It's so obvious, it's a joke. Every single person who is reading this blog realizes that you like being annoyed. If you weren't annoyed, you wouldn't have anything to write about.

Whatever, that's crazy talk.

Is it? Then why do you keep reading the blogs of rich, spoiled sluts who can't write and aren't funny yet have millions of faithful readers solely because they're semi-hot girls who write about their sex lives in graphic detail?

I think they provide an insightful look into the mind of the modern-day woman and her sexual practices.

I see. Well I gotta go.

Where are you going?

To Sonic Burger.

What? Since when do they have a Sonic Burger around here?

They don't. I'm in Wisconsin.

What the hell are you doing in Wisconsin?

Um, I'm visiting the Mall of America.

The Mall of America? Isn't that in Minnesota?

I don't know. Look, things just aren't working out between us.

What? I can change.

Yeah, look, I gotta go. Bye.


So in summation, all these bands suck and should just give up.

Fish Killer

You might remember I spoke about Chad Robuckle making fun of my fish dying in a recent post. I guess he reads my blog, cuz he sent me this angry email saying I couldn’t use his name anymore. Whatever, free country, right? By the end of the email he seemed to have cooled down and forgotten all about that, though, because he gave me another story to use.

Chad said the reason he made fun of my dead fish was only because he was upset that I had not taken proper care of it. He assumed this because, according to him, a goldfish can live for up to five years if properly cared for. He said he was just covering up because he doesn’t like to show people his real emotions. He said he felt so bad about what had happened, he cried for half an hour when he got home. What a pussy, huh?

Apparently, Chad loves fish. I don’t know if this is like a “Troy McClure/sexual attraction” thing or what, but it’s weird. I didn’t think Chad cared about anything but himself. And fish? Who gives a shit, right? He said it, himself.

Another thing Chad used to love is radio station contests. He would sit in his room by the phone, listening to the radio and try and win whatever he could. He got free bikes, dinners, CDs (or albums, back then), even money. Now, like I said, Chad was loaded, so it’s ridiculous that he would need any of this stuff. He probably threw it away once he got it. I think he just wanted to win it so no one else would.

The biggest thing Chad ever won was $10,000 cash. That’s a lot of money for anyone, let alone a six year old. Chad knew exactly what he wanted to do with his money and wouldn’t hear of anyone trying to dissuade him. I actually remember vaguely hearing about this when it happened, even though I hadn’t met him yet, it was that big of a deal.

Chad hired a dump truck to take 3000 quarter pounder with cheese sandwiches from the local McDonalds down to the ocean. All the news crews were there as this six year old made a big show of operating the dumper thing-a-mo-bob himself and sending all the sandwiches off a pier into the water.

It made a big splash and it seemed like most of the buns and wrappers and stuff floated right up to the top. The cops who had been watching realized they had just witnessed was actually a “crime” and began asking questions about who was responsible.

Well, you should have seen Chad’s parents make a break for it, leaving their six year old to fend for himself. I guess he cried like a little girl, not because he was going to jail or racking up a huge fine for his parents, but because his plan had backfired.

Little Chad had just wanted to feed the fish, you see. Not “fish food” but something good, for a change. Apparently six year olds don’t realize that fish don’t eat hamburgers. Especially not ones that are all wrapped up and in a big pile that weighs a thousand pounds and comes crashing down on them, killing them and making them float up to the top. Plus, a bunch more died from the ink in the wrappers and stuff.

All in all, it was one of the worst maritime disasters in the area, killing fish by the thousands. All cuz of Chad. He told me that as he was recalling this story, he started crying again.

What a fucking pussy.

Johnny Cash sucks

Nah, just kidding. He's fine, whatever. I just hate how this guy has turned into Jesus Fucking Christ in the last five years or so.

Hey, hipster douchebags, go back to your Wilco CDs. If Johnny Cash knew you were listening to his music, he would beat you up. You better hope ghosts aren't real or you're in for a world of hurt.

Oh and while I'm at it, Ricky Gervais sucks too.

Fuck you all!

How to be gay

The key isn’t being a snappy dresser or having a lisp or even doing it with other dudes.

No, the key to being gay is “Rent”.

That’s right, the Broadway musical, soon to be a major motion picture.

Now, you might say, “But Eric, you haven’t even seen Rent, how do you know?”

And you’d be right. I haven’t seen it. But I don’t have to. That song is enough. You know the one, “Six hundred, 98 thousand, 48 minutes” or whatever? Just the title makes me shake with rage.

Not buying it? How about this: remember that British nanny who shook that baby to death ten years ago? She loved Rent. She had seen it like 20 times. And apparently a lot of “those types” had done the same thing.

In all fairness, I hate all musicals not written by Trey Parker. I hate them so much that even though I used to like The Producers, now that they’ve made it into a musical and RE-MADE the movie by basing it on that musical, instead of the original movie, I hate the original movie.  

Look, don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate gay people. I just hate gay people (and straight people) who like Rent.

Am I saying the British nanny is gay? Maybe I am. If she wasn’t gay, why would she kill a baby? She must have been jealous.

Just kidding, I love everybody!

Except people who like Rent. I hate them.

I call it "the intimidator"

Some of you may not get this at all. For the others, enjoy. Yes, that was published on a mainstream internet news site.

Thanks to Carl for the link.

The time I met a guy named "Geech"

What the hell ever happened to fun houses?  Remember those?  Probably not.  I remember they had one at Riverside Park when I was a kid.  Now it’s owned by six flags.  But soon after I started going there, they changed their “fun house” to a haunted house and then I think they got rid of it all together.  

For those who weren’t there, a fun house consisted of a building you went in that usually had “wacky” rooms in it.  Like one room would be crooked or the furniture would be on the roof or they’d have a “shrinking hallway” or something.  Oh and the room of mirrors!  

It was hella fun.  Hence the name, I guess.  I don’t know, I guess there’s no point really.  I just miss those.  I heard they still have them at those cheesy traveling carnivals but personally, I think you’re taking your life into your hands anytime you go to one of those.  

Fucking carnies.  

The early bird gets the worm

I don’t know if I’ve already told this story or not, but anyway, people have been asking me how I met Chad Robuckle, so I figured I would give them the scoop. Like I said, I may have already written about this and if so, I apologize. My brain was frozen for 46 minutes, give me a break.

Anyway, when I was a kid, my mom got it in her head that I wanted to be a writer. What a bitch, huh? So she signed me up for all these “creative writing” workshops and classes and whatnot. Don’t worry, I wasn’t one of “those kids”, because, despite her best efforts, I resisted any attempt to make me over as some fruity “creative” type.

One of these creative writing classes took place in some lady’s house. I’m not sure if her son was in it or whatever, I can’t remember. So anyway, we had to write a story about our saddest memory. I was like eight or nine years old at the time, and by far, the youngest kid in the class. I had led a pretty sheltered life so when I went home and tried to think up a sad memory to write about, I drew a blank.

Another problem I had back then, continuing up until I was in college, was that I used to focus on what I thought people wanted me to do. If you’ve ever tried this approach, you know that it’s the only sure-fire way to ensure failure in anything. So I sat at my desk and thought, “what am I expected to write about?” rather than honestly approaching the subject.

My real saddest memory was probably not getting to go to Disneyworld or something. If I had written about that, it probably would have been really funny, but instead, I brought in something I thought everybody wanted to hear. Boy was I wrong!

So I bring in my story, I don’t even remember if it was true or not, but I read it in front of everyone. It was all suspenseful and wrought with anxiety, a masterpiece in my own mind. I described how I walked downstairs to breakfast one morning and I noticed my mother had been crying. I then went into detail about the grief I felt upon discovering that my favorite goldfish had died.

I finish my story and everyone’s just sitting there, perhaps they weren’t clapping because they were all just blown away by the gravitas of it all?  Then one of these “creative” types speaks up. He was this cocky little bastard who prided himself on being an asshole.

“You know, if your story had been about a dog or a cat or even a bunny, I think we all would have been like, ‘aww, that’s a really sad story’. But a fish? Who cares? I’ve gotta be honest with you, I’m glad your fish is dead.”

I didn’t really know what to say, I just kinda sat there in silence, deciding to never write again. Everyone laughed and patted Chad on the back for really “giving it” to me.

So that was it. Ever since then, Chad has been interwoven into the fabric of my life, despite my best efforts to extricate him from it.

And I remained true to my vow.  I never wrote again.