Thunder from Downunder

In a few weeks the movie Australia will be in theatres. I don’t know anything about this movie other than it’s a big budget epic adventure film staring Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman and it takes place in Australia. They may be playing themselves or they may actually be acting as some characters from Australia. I don’t know. It’s probably also staring Russell Crowe, Mel Gibson, Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee), Ewan McGregor (he’s actually Scottish, but a Scottish accent is damn near the same thing as Australian), Natalie Portman (I’m just speculating about her because she’s smoking hot and should be in every movie), and Heath Ledger (posthumously as the Joker). The musical score is likely written by the guys from AC-DC and performed by the band, Midnight Oil.

Anyway, what does this movie have to do with anything?

I’ve been feeling a little under the weather lately – down under the weather, if you will (Zing!) – so the wife forced me to take some Nyquil before bed last night, which is a powerful cold and sinus relief medicine and apparently also used as a horse tranquilizer. After I took the shot of medicine I felt like Will Ferrell in Old School when he shoots himself in the jugular with the tranq dart; it was all I could do to stumble to bed before I passed out in the deepest sleep of my life.

Being such a commanding sedative, the Nyquil caused me to have some pretty fucked up dreams, including one about how I was staring in Australia alongside Jackman.

Like I said, I know nothing about the film, but if Baz Luhrman’s version is anything like mine, it will be fucking sweet.

Basically in my version, Hugh Jackman is living in Sydney but he wants to seek a better, more adventurous life as a bushman in the uncharted territory of western Australia. As his best mate, I have no choice but to follow.

Our first stop is a small podunk town where he falls in love with the first girl he sees and tries to marry her. The problem is, she doesn’t love him back, her parents hate him, and she’s as attractive as a wart hog that’s been smashed in the face with a spade. The loyal wingman that I am, I intervene to get the adventure back on track, which ingratiates me to the girl’s mother, who now wants me to marry her daughter. I’m not stupid; I can see she’s ugly. Plus, I’m wearing my Liverpool jersey while she’s wearing her PSV soccer jersey, a rival Dutch team. I can’t be caught dead in a relationship with a PSV fan.

So Hugh and I set out on the adventure again, hitchhiking and jumping steam engine freight trains all across the land, stopping in every small town we come to, getting dunk and fighting in every bar we see like two badass Australian bushmen.

The movie culminates in a riveting scene when we eventually get to the western territory and I realize I do not want to be a bushman in the barren shit hole wasteland of western Australia because I have to finish my kitchen remodel at my house back in Sydney. So I bid Hugh a fond farewell and get the hell out of there.

Presumably, he goes on to meet Nicole Kidman or something.

I smell a blockbuster. 

Here's Johnny

Back in the day, did you ever watch the show Unsolved Mysteries?

In case you're not familiar, Unsolved Mysteries was a gem of a television program that ran from 1987-2002, hosted by actor Robert Stack until his death. The show would employ horribly amateurish actors to reenact robberies, murders, or paranormal activity in terrifying detail that left you completely hanging by basically identifying who or what conducted said act but then ending every segment with, "So-And-So was last seen in Murfreesboro, TN. If you know any information leading to their arrest or capture, please call..."

Believe me, it was some scary stuff and Stack was the prefect host because even in 1987 he already looked dead and he had this dreadfully monotone, deep baritone voice that lent itself only to scaring the shit out of people.

They could make anything sound fucking horrifying. "If you have any information leading to the whereabouts of Jimmy's toothbrush, please call..." You'd be like, "Oh, man, I do not want to look for Jimmy's toothbrush. You have no idea who might have that thing…"

One time they profiled a crime that took place in a small town just outside my hometown. I don't even remember what the story was, but it didn't really matter. Once the novelty of having your hometown featured on national television wears off, you’re just left with the realization the criminals are still at large, probably lurking around the playground at your school.

As a brief aside, the only show that was ever remotely as scary as Unsolved Mysteries was a program on MTV a few years back, aptly titled Fear.

They basically took 5 college kids out to the most haunted places on the planet in the middle of the night where they were guaranteed to run into a bunch of tortured ghosts unable to find their way to the afterlife like abandoned prisons, decrepit mental institutions, or factories that have been closed for 50 years after 300 people were killed in a huge acid spill. One of the episodes actually took place at a campground where they filmed the original Friday the 13^th movie. Fucked. Up.

At the behest of the show's producers, the kids would conduct these ridiculous and terrifying dares throughout the prison or hospital that were recorded by night vision cameras in the facility and one strapped to the kids’ heads. Like, one of them had to go alone into the basement of a hospital and spend an hour inside one of the old corpse coolers in the morgue. Another had to sit in the actual electric chair where dozens of criminals had been fried. Still another had to go to the mess hall and prepare a plate of spaghetti out of ingredients left over in the prison and eat it. Actually, I just made that last one up. Still, there’s no way to describe how messed up this stuff was.

As long as they didn't shit their pants and bail on the dares, they'd win something stupid like $5,000; as if $5k is even close to enough to ever help you sleep in the dark again.

Fear was all the more terrifying for me because at the time it was on the air I was in college but living in Ashland, KY, working a 6-month stint in the Tank Farm Division for the previously mentioned oil company that employed me on the Pipeline. I was living in an apartment building that was converted from an old hotel built back in the 20’s that could very easily have been a body double for the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. Seriously, the place was creepy. The laundry was in the basement where you never really felt you were alone and you wouldn’t be surprised to see some kid riding a tricycle down the hallway muttering shit like, “Redrum…”

I found it online and signed the lease sight unseen because it was the only place in town that would rent month to month. It was such a shit hole I think they would have rented day to day and probably would have accepted crystal meth instead of money. Just to put it in perspective, the year after I was in Kentucky one of my buddies was living there when someone was murdered in the building. That’s no bullshit.

So imagine me staying up late to watch some kid wander around the haunted halls of St. Agnes Hospital for the Chronically Ill on Fear then heading down to the basement to throw in a load of whites. Oh man, I just got the chills. I seriously slept with a baseball bat and the lights on for six months.

Anyway, the only reason I bring any of this up is because we have an unsolved mystery of our own here at the house: Someone or something has been rummaging through our trash container outside our house.

At first I didn’t think much of it; I just noticed when I’d throw out a bag of trash, the trash that was already in the container was all shredded. I figured it was a band of raccoons or something, which would be fitting given my history with small mammals.

Someone else suggested it may be a gaggle of possums. I never though possums had that kind of ambition, but we have actually seen a possum in our driveway before. Holy shit, have you ever seen a possum? It basically looks like a huge rat that’s been thrown in a fire so most if its hair has been burnt off. I think all that stuff about how possums play dead when they’re scared got lost in translation somewhere; possums look dead. Just like Robert Stack. Most predators would be like, “Oh, wow, this thing is disgusting. There is no way I am eating this piece of shit. I’d rather lick my butt than eat this thing. It looks like it’s already rotten but it’s still alive. Gross. Me. Out.”

I even thought it could be a homeless guy. If it was, so what, right? I mean, dude’s just hungry.

Well, that was until the other night when I was awoken by the sound of the container lid slamming shut. The thing is, the container sits right outside our bedroom window (actually, now that I write that, it’s really gross to think the only thing between my sleeping head and a week’s worth of garbage is a pillow and a pane of glass. That’s kind of disgusting). I got scared as my mind ran through all the possibilities of things that could be out there, including like coyotes, bears, aliens. I really had an inclination to just throw open the blinds to solve the mystery, but I knew if I did that and came face to face with Joe the Hobo, I probably would have emptied my bowels onto my comforter. So I left it unsolved.

The next morning, sure thing, all the trash in the container was completely torn up. 

Eventually I’ll get to the bottom of this, but as is often the case with these things, I’ll end up getting into way more than I bargained for before it’s over.

In the meantime, if you have any information regarding the identity or whereabouts of the Springbrook Drive Trash Rummager, please call 615-555-4255. 

Four Kicks

The wife and I went to a concert the other night to see Kings of Leon, a nationally and internationally renowned rock band based out of Nashville. The show was the last on their current tour and obviously a homecoming for them, for which they didn’t disappoint.

The concert was held at the Municipal Auditorium downtown, which was a real shit hole. That kind of goes without saying because the word “municipal” just implies shittiness. Like, if there was a Municipal Mercedes Benz dealership, you can bet most of the cars don’t even have brakes and you just have to hope the floor boards are rusted out enough so you can pull some Flintstones shit to make it stop.

According to the Auditorium’s website, it was built in 1962. If that is true, I can’t see where it’s ever been renovated, let alone cleaned. In actuality though, I think it was really built in the post-Apocalypse, like the Tunderdome in Mad Max, because the place was just scary. I’m pretty sure I saw Tina Turner sitting up in the press box overseeing the proceedings below. Unlike the Tunderdome’s singular rule, “two men entire, one man leaves,” the Municipaldome’s rule seemed to be, “2,000 men enter… uhh… leave if you don't get trampled.” And instead of walking into a faceoff with an oversized, mentally handicapped, bruiser of a man known as Master Blaster, we were facing off with hundreds of drunk-ass frat boys and whored out sorority chicks, all pretty much exhibiting the same brain power as Master Blaster.

Unfamiliar with the venue when I purchased the tickets several months ago, I made the mistake of getting general admission, standing room only tickets, rather than getting actual seats up in the safety of the bowl.  So we basically spent 3 hours getting our asses beat in the middle of a rocked out Greek Formal. An actual fight broke out right next to us. I’m not sure what the cause was, but it was likely a dispute over who drank more Goldschlager before the show.

“No. No. I drank a fifth of Goldschlager.”

“No you didn’t. Nuh-uh. I drank a fifth. Look. Look. I still have the little pieces of gold in my teeth.”

“No. I… I drank more. I’m drunker than you. I’m so drunker than you.”

“What… Whatever man. You’re  a dick.”

“Did you call me a dick?”

“Yeah. I did."

"I’m going to kick your ass.”

“Go ahead. Hit me.”

“No. No. You hit me.”

“No. You hit me.”

That’s pretty much how every fight started in college – a dispute over who would throw the first punch as if the cops would give differential treatment to the kid that got hit first in a fight that started on the dance floor of a bar.

I came away from the concert with two thoughts:

1. You know who’s really hurting in this economy? Barbers. I didn’t see a single dude who’d had a haircut in the past 6-months to a year. In my years I’ve seen a lot of hairstyles come and go: The mullet, the bowl cut, the flat top, long hair, the high-and-tight, the spiky front… At what point did the no-haircut become the style of choice?

2. We’re too old for this shit. I used to be the drunk-ass frat boy slam dancing in the pit at rock concerts. Now I’m so sore I had to go on dialysis for a week until my kidneys recovered from the beating. I’ve been peeing in the dark ever since because I’m too scared to find out that I’m probably pissing blood.  

Thanks for Giving

Sorry for the long delay on the blog; it’s been a busy, rather unfunny week at work. I’ll try to churn out a couple posts to get caught back up.

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You know what I fucking hate? Potlucks. I mean, they're good in theory: a bunch of people contribute some food to a larger feast for the sake of togetherness. But in practice, they're just abysmal.

The thing is, everyone hears "potluck" and they suddenly run home to get their 12-gallon casserole dish so they can bring enough food for 50 people. If 50 people show up and all 50 of them brought food for 50 people, that's enough food for like South Dakota. That's why I don't ever bring anything to a potluck. Of course there will always be those assholes that stare at me and judge me for not bringing anything, but I don't owe them shit. I'm doing them a favor by giving them less crappy cheesy potatoes to take home.

The other problem is, in the absence of proper planning, everyone brings the same shit. It's bad enough I have to pretend to like Mary's green bean casserole, but now I have to pretend to like Ron and Angela's too. I wouldn't even fucking like Emeril or Martha's green bean casserole because green bean casseroles blow.

Even if it is planned well and there's a sign up sheet, for some fucking reason every dish has to have a starch, cheese or sugar base. God forbid someone bring fruit or something organic, like fruit. Then you get the real lazy asshole that just brings the high octane Coke, Dr Pepper and Mt Dew and then he has 43 cans of pop left over at his desk until the next potluck.

Work potlucks are especially terrible because everyone has to lug a crock-pot to work and plug it in under their desk to keep the cocktail wieners warm all morning. Then you set out your dishes, everyone ravishes through the line like there’s an international food shortage, then hustles back to their desk where they eat their potluck shit all by themselves. I actually don’t mind this part because as you can imagine I hate the idea of standing around eating with people I wouldn’t normally eat with talking about how awesome Judy’s potato salad is when really the only reason anyone is eating that shit is because they’re afraid of that bitch’s wraith if they don’t.

The whole lead up to the work potluck sucks because you get that e-mail telling you to sign up to bring something with an implicit “or else…” Every time that e-mail comes out some douchebag jumps right on the list because,  “I make the best Swedish meatballs." Fuck you; no one makes even halfway decent Swedish meatballs because Swedish meatballs taste like ass. The Swedes don’t even make Swedish meatballs and in fact, they’re just laughing at us because we do.

Obviously I’m railing on about this because we have a stupid fucking Thanksgiving Potluck at work tomorrow. Unfortunately it was planned with the efficiency of a Nazi recruitment party because I've been getting an e-mail a day for the past two weeks reminding me to sign up to bring something. By the time I finally did get on the list, some assholes had already signed up to bring the easy shit like paper plates and water. Fucking water! And of course the list was full of cheesy potatoes, relish plates, broccoli and cheese, cheese dips, and Swedish meatballs. My blood boils just thinking about all that disgusting crap.

So I signed up to bring homemade apple sauce - pretty much the one thing I can make - and I’m doing it with all organic ingredients just to thumb my nose at their starch and cheese.

Somewhat out of spite and somewhat just to be a dick, after I signed up on the list I took the liberty of signing one of the other plumbers up too. He’s Polish so I signed him up to bring Polish Kielbasa. I found this to be really only mildly humorous but apparently the office is really fucking excited for some Polish Kielbasa because no fewer than five people have stopped by his desk to ask about it.  That gives me a good deal of pleasure, especially because he doesn’t know it was me. Next time I’m going to sign him up to bring Swedish Balls. We’ll see how that goes over. 

Game Night

We had a few people over Saturday night for some drinks and board games. I can hear some people laughing out there like, "Oh, you guys are so old and married. All you do is sit around sipping wine and playing board games. Lameos!"

Whatever. Clearly you've never been to a Horst Game Night and clearly you don't know how fucking serious our game nights are. People have died as a result and I'm not ashamed to say that I've shanked a man for opening his eyes during his Sensosketch challenge in Cranium. He won’t forget next time now that he only has the use of one arm. You have to follow the rules.

Anyways, no one died at this particular game night as it was all quite friendly. We were just happy to have people over, really for the first time. The house is finally presentable to the public so we didn't want to delay any longer what must be the tardiest house warming party ever.

Never one to miss an opportunity to impress a crowd of people, the cat didn't hesitate to drop a huge steaming deuce in his litter box in front of everyone. As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a number two impression.

He followed that performance up a short while later by puking on the floor. What can I say; he's a real class act.

Things I've Heard At Work

Here are some things I’ve heard at work recently:

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“Miley and Billy Ray Cyrus will be playing an outdoor concert for Good Morning America on the corner of 5^th and Broadway at 8 AM. Please plan your morning commute accordingly.”

In a company-wide e-mail the day before the Country Music Awards. I just found this to be an amusing this-could-only-happen-in-Nashville moment.

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“Now that's freaking hysterical!!!!!!! Lmbo!!!!!!! Too funny!!!!!! lol hahahahaha!!! Too funny!!!”

From one of the administrative assistants in response to a mildly humorous e-mail I sent out. I’ve certainly sent much, much funnier e-mails than the one that garnered this response, but I can’t imagine the funniest thing I’ve ever written ever warranting a reaction like this. I mean, fuck, how many exclamation points can you include in one message? The ratio of punctuation to letters is damn near 1:1.

It made me wonder what this reaction would look like in person. It’s like my joke was the catalyst for inducing an epileptic seizure of hysteria.  

 

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“Yeah – praise our Lord and all the great Surgeons :) Great News! Thank you.”

In an e-mail to 50+ people in our department in response to an e-mail indicating that a woman who had gone in for some elective surgery had made it through without any problems. Far be it from me to be cynical about someone coming through a surgery. I was just surprised to see such an open display of piety at work for the holy trinity of God, Surgery, and I don’t know… Employer paid Health Insurance?

 

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"I work with a real penis."

Overheard from my cubicle. Several really important words were left out of this statement, such as, "I work with someone who is a real penis." But truly it doesn't really matter what you say, no one is listening after you've used the word "penis" in the office. 

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"Oh, I see you took the short one… They other day I was at one that was so tall I had to stand on my tippy-toes so my hands weren't resting in the water."

Heard while standing at the urinal. I took the shorter of the two leaving the taller to a rather vertically challenged individual. I didn’t offer a response to this declaration because there literally is no possible way to respond to a statement like this. 

Omaha '08!

We just spent the weekend in Omaha at a fantastic wedding for some friends of ours. I know exactly what’s going through your head right now, “What the hell is there to do in Omaha? Actually, first off, where the hell is Omaha???”

Omaha is in Nebraska. Where is Nebraska, you ask? I don’t know. Somewhere in the heartland of real America.

Anyways, what is there to do in Omaha? I’ll tell you what.

First of all, Omaha has the highest number of beer taps per capita in the Western hemisphere. I know this as a fact, not because I looked it up on Wikipedia, but because my friends and I used empirical evidence and our livers to figure it out while we did a pub crawl through the Old Market district on Friday starting at noon and ending at 1 AM.

Omaha also has the Spaghetti Feast. That’s actually the name of a meal on the menu at the Spaghetti Works restaurant. Two of our friends went head-to-head in a Spaghetti Feast eating contest, which was simultaneously the most amazing and disgusting thing I’ve seen in a long time. The Spaghetti Feast is 2 pounds of noodles, like 3 or 12 meatballs, and a sausage link. I’m not sure how the sausage link worked its way onto the plate because it just seemed gratuitous, but it was there. Someone else who was questioning the existence of the sausage link was my buddy who lost the Spaghetti Feast eating contest because the sausage link was the only thing left on his plate, taunting him like a bunch of leftover pig guts wrapped in a pig intestine casing. I realize that doesn’t make any sense but if I was made up of a bunch of shit like that I’d be all bitter and vindictive too.

Omaha has soccer watching English dudes. No shit. We went to a bar where I saw a guy wearing a Liverpool track jacket. He saw my Liverpool scarf so we did a bro hug then sang You Will Never Walk Alone. It turns out he grew up outside of Liverpool. On my way out we shared another bro hug and wished each other luck in the match the next day, at which time a second English dude grabbed my scarf and asked why I’d root for a scouser team like Liverpool. No bullshit - there was a second soccer watching English dude in the same bar in Omaha, Nebraska. I scoffed in his face and asked what lesser team he followed.

“Who do I follow!?!” He said indignantly (in an English accent), “I follow my ancestors who are from Chelsea!”

Ooh shit, he invoked his ancestors! What the fuck was I going to say to that? I wanted to be like, “Oh, your ancestors, huh? Did your ancestors defect to Omaha-fucking-Nebraska too, or was that just you, you fucking wanker!?!”

But then he was totally going to be like, “Actually, I just came here to get some life saving medications for my mom who is dying of Hyperhydrotosis back in England.”

Then I’d feel like a dick.

So instead I just said, “Well, good luck with that new winning streak,” and walked away (As you recall from several posts ago, Liverpool ended Chelsea’s 86-game home winning streak the other week, so I pretty much gave him a verbal kick to the nuts). He didn’t appreciate that. Wanker.

Omaha also has awesome weddings. This one was held in the old train station, which was amazing. The cocktail hour was in the lower level of the building, which is now a museum commemorating the history of the American frontier with a specific emphasis on the railroad industry. All that means is, we sat up in the cupola of an old caboose and drank our cocktails, had our picture taken with a taxidermied bison, and hung out in a Native American tepee (which, if you can imagine what you think the inside of a tepee would smell like, that’s what it smelled like). It was badass.

The reception was upstairs in an amazing ballroom where we danced our faces off and in general had a head-to-head contest to see who could make a bigger ass of themselves. It was decidedly a draw.

A highlight was doing the conga train to Quad City DJ’s Come On Ride That Train while playing our wooden train whistles that the couple had handed out as the wedding favors. Brilliant.

Georgie Boy

Ok, I swear this is the last political post...

Vintage 2008

And we’re back. Sorry for the hiatus but you can imagine how happy I was to get the bike and not the divorce last week. This truly is an historic time and I’m so excited to be a part of it. I recognize he’s just one man and the expectations for him are impossibly high, but so are the stakes. I’ve always said that my support for Obama can be boiled down to one thing: Leadership. He represents the right type of leadership in a time when we couldn’t possibly need it more and I’m ready to follow.

But this isn’t a political blog, I’m not a political commentator, and I couldn’t possibly write anything that you couldn’t read in every publication not owned by Rupert Murdoch. Therefore, I’ll leave the political commentary to those that get paid to do it.

Starting after this…

You know who's really pissed about Obama's election? Bush. He's like, "Ah, fuck! I know I've been the worst president in the history of every president of every nation of every planet of the universe but did they really have to follow me up with this guy? Shit! Now he's going to walk across the Reflecting Pool and make me look like a real fucking jackass. Why couldn't it have been some douchebag like Kerry or Edwards? Now I'm going to have to retire to Saudi Arabia!"

It's like if Joe the Plumber goes back to his plumbing job after his 18 minutes only to find that he's been replaced by Jesus. How is he going to compete with that?

Jesus: "Well Mr Smith, you have a real problem here with this clogged toilet. This is going to take me awhile to fix; I'm no miracle worker you know! Hehehe! I'm kidding; actually I am a miracle worker. I mean, I work fucking miracles all the time. It's kind of what I do. But anyway, your shithead kid flushed a My Little Pony down here so it's going to take me some time. While you're waiting why don't you have some of this wine I just whipped up in the toilet bowl here. It's kind of a Merlot - very fruity with a hint of plumb, cherry, and raspberry and just the slightest suggestion of nuttiness. It's very good."

Yes We Can

"A new dawn of American leadership is at hand."

-President Elect, Barack Obama

Yes We Can

So it’s finally almost here. I’m anxious and I’m nervous and I’m excited and I’m scared. It’s almost like Christmas except you’re not quite sure if it’s going to be the Christmas like the time you got that awesome bike you really, really wanted or if it’s going to be the Christmas when your parents got divorced

All you know is, you did all the things you were supposed to – you were good all year long, you ate all your peas and broccoli and you went to bed early, you set out carrots for the reindeer and cookies for Santa (if by cookies you mean lot’s of untraceable $100 donations) and now you can’t wait to wake up tomorrow and see the bike and not the divorce.

And you’re excited for that bike even though you know it’s not going to be a brand new bike but more like the bike those asshole bullies stole from you a few years ago. And even if you do get the bike back now it’s going to be bitter sweet because you know it’s all messed up like it’s missing a wheel and the peddles are all jacked up, which doesn’t matter because the breaks stopped working a long time ago, and instead of a seat it just has an electric cattle prod and it used to be red but now it’s all rusted out with all kinds of tetanus and gangrene all over it and even if you could ride the damn thing it wouldn’t work because it wants to go in two different directions all the time and as a result it’s worth WAY less than when those asshole bullies stole it all those years ago.  

But even with all that you’re excited none-the-less because it’s the bike that you grew up with and always loved and you can’t wait to have it back so you can fix it up and make it work again.

Then again you’re also scared shitless you’re going to wake up in the morning and it’s going to be the divorce because you don’t want to have to pack up all your shit and move to Norway with your dad, even though they have some sweet ass bikes there that actually work. 

It Tastes Like Chicken

You know what cats don’t like? Daylight savings time. That’s why I woke up at 5:30 this morning with the cat standing on my back, wondering why the hell we hadn’t gotten up yet.

The time change had nothing to do with the Midnight Kitty Insect Safari last night though. I woke up to the unmistakable sound of the cat masticating an unfortunate invertebrate intruder. I knew it wasn’t a cockroach because the cat lacked a certain intensity and purpose that you would associate with a game of that size. I figured it was likely a moth, which are pretty common, or a cricket.

I found the conclusive evidence about 15 minutes later when the cat vomited his earlier catch on the comforter in the spare bedroom, something he has never done before (to be clear, he vomits all the time like you or I change our socks; He’s never puked on the bed before though). In the process of cleaning that up I found a little undigested cricket leg.

The cat just stood there watching me clean it all up with this look on his face like, “What? Those legs are all tough and sinewy. I’d be digesting that thing all night.”