Blade Runner, Starring Wesley Snipes

I was riding the shuttle after work yesterday evening with about 6 other people. As we were crossing the Cumberland River from downtown to the parking lot at LP field, one of the guys remarked to another, "Check out the fog hanging around the buildings."

The other responded with, "Yeah, that's cool how the lights are all eerie. It looks like something from Blade Runner."

"Yeah, totally," the first responded back, and I could tell they were both sharing a dude moment as they were thinking about the awesomeness of Blade Runner and how sweet it would be if it were 2019 in Nashville.

Now, I've mentioned before how the shuttle is perhaps the most depressing place on earth. I'm imagining Disney World after the bubonic plague swept through the Magic Kingdom would be comparable, with the bloated carcasses of Pluto and six of the Seven Dwarfs haphazardly laying in the gutter along Main Street USA. On the way into work the shuttle ride is the last thing between the employee and another shitty day. In the evening, it's the last thing keeping the employee from getting in their car and going to order 8 Krystal burgers, get wasted, or hire an ambiguous hooker. Most of the time it's either dead silent or a competition to see who can talk on their cell phone the loudest. Rarely you’ll get some loudmouth on the shuttle who will say something to break the silence so you’ll either see looks of death from people like me who’d rather not hear it, or you’ll get the people who are just dying to jump in on a pointless conversation just to hear themselves talk.

In this case, a young 20-something year-old girl saw the window of opportunity for the latter and threw her hat in the ring. "Blade Runner! Ha!" she laughed with an unnecessary amount of gusto, "I was forced to go see that movie in the theater!"

Her comment was unfortunately retarded for two reasons and one of the guys jumped at the opportunity to ream her for the first reason.

"Forced!" He exclaimed in mock horror, "Blade Runner is one of the best movies ever made."

"Oh, right, sorry!" She said, "I mean, I loved it," again, pouring on the gusto.

Her original comment was unfortunate because it started the typical revolving door conversation among dudes and chicks about the merits of dude movies vs chick movies, which is basically like the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. It can’t be resolved.

"Harrison Ford was amazing in Blade Runner. I mean, it was directed by Ridley Scott before Ridley Scott was Ridley Scott and it was based on this futuristic sci-fi novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?..."

I just sat there looking at the guy thinking to myself, "Man, this is painful. You can't even have a meaningless conversation with a chick without sounding like a complete douche-wad. Screw preaching abstinence, just get the nation's teenage boys a lifetime subscription to Sci-Fi weekly."

The second reason her comment was so retarded was a bit more subtle, but the other dude picked up on it pretty quickly.

"You saw Blade Runner in the theater? When???"

You see, Blade Runner was released in 1982, round about the time the girl was likely being conceived by her parents in a mop closet at the local Kmart.

"Uh, I don't know," she said, realizing she may have made a mistake, "isn't that the one about the vampires?"

No, no it's not.

They all three got a good laugh, "No, you're thinking of Blade, the one with Wesley Snipes! Yeah, that movie did suck! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"

And that's when I about punched that sawed off sonofabitch in the goddamn throat. Yeah, Blade Runner is an awesome movie, and yeah, Harrison Ford was justifiably awesome in it but Blade is a badass movie and Wesley Snipes is a badass motherfucker so where the fuck do you get off saying it sucks???

He's so goddamn lucky I didn't cut him from his bellybutton to his adam's apple with a pocket shiv and do a riverdance in his entrails right there on the goddamn shuttle.

First of all, just listen to the plot: While Wesley Snipes was still an unborn fetus, his mom was attacked by a vampire. She was rushed to a hospital but it was too late, she was DOA. Miraculously though, the doctors were able to save little baby Blade, who unbeknownst to anyone at the time, was born into the world as a hybrid human/vampire with all the benefits that come with being a vampire - immortality, super-human strength, fangs - PLUS all the benefits that come with being a human - the ability to exist in direct sunlight¹ - with just one itsy-bitsy drawback: an insatiable thirst for human blood. He went into foster care but that didn’t last long. I mean, who wants a baby sucking the blood of all the other babies?² So the foster home dumped him on the street where he was fortunately found by an old man named Whistler, played by the naturally greasy dirt ball, Kris Kristofferson. Whistler raised Blade and trained him in the ways of kicking ass and turned him into a one-man army to take down the whole society of vampires living among us who are casually feeding on our blood and turning us into vampires.

I mean, if you come to me in 1998 with that plot in hand, I shit my pants then I cut you a check for $100 million to make the most badass movie I’ve ever heard of. Then you sign up Wesley Snipes, I shit my pants again then cut you a check for another $50 mil.

And listen, I haven’t even talked about the whole trilogy because I don’t need to. It ranks up there with the likes of the original Star Wars, the first three Indiana Jones movies, and the Bourne series.

I’m done with this post; Blade is being shown on TBS right now.

 

1. Let's face it - in the vampire vs human equation, the only advantage to the humans is walking in sunlight. Pretty much every other advantage goes to the vampires, hands down. I mean, you can't even be like, "Well, silver bullets kill vampires!" So what. Bullet-bullets kill humans, as do STDs, smoking, peanut butter, and just about everything else.

2. Clearly this is a rhetorical question. If I knew that my first son would be a blood-sucking human/vampire, I’d be rushing to the fertility clinic right now. I'd name him Johnny Awesome. "Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy? Yes he is. Yes he is. Whoa! Hehehe! Careful with those fangs young one. You'll learn to use those soon enough. Yes you will. Yes. You. Will..." 

House

At work today I had to print several sets of drawings to send to a building department for their review. For those not familiar with the architecture and engineering world, when I refer to drawings I'm talking about 34" x 44" sheets of paper, so imagine dozens of these stacked together to make up a set. It can get cumbersome. So I was in the print room absent-mindedly collating the drawings into their various sets when I noticed something odd drawn in the corner of the last drawing on the last set. I scratched my noggin and took a closer look. "What is that? It looks like... Ho-ly-shit! It's the floor plan of my house!"

You see, I'm like any architect or engineer working for an architecture or engineering firm with access to Computer Aided Design software, a penchant for home remodeling and time to kill - I drew up the floor plan for my house so I'd have it to reference for future DIY projects. It just so happens that one day when I should have been working on actual work, instead I was drawing up my house, completely dimensioned and noted.

Standing in the print room admiring my work, I remembered back when I drew it several weeks ago. I did it within the working file of an actual project so I could take advantage of all the standard details for doors, windows, toilets, and whatnot. I know for a fact that I did a "save as" to save the drawing to my hard drive and not the network drive, but apparently not before the software did an auto-save and stored my house layout on the drawing that was about to get packaged up and sent to the Kentucky State Plumbing Department.

Normally it wouldn't have been a big deal except I had printed 7 goddamn sets of 34” x 44” drawings and collated every one of them already. I had a fleeting thought that I’d just leave it there because no one would ever really know, but then I had this horrifying yet hilarious vision of visiting the site one day and seeing an exact replica of my house sitting next to the 50,000 square foot medical office building.

Oh well. No one saw it and now I have seven full-size drawings of my house at a scale of 1/8 inch to 1 foot in case I ever need them.

Rock of Love

Last night while watching the Family Guy, the wife and I flipped over to watch Rock of Love Bus on VH1 during the commercials. For those not familiar with the show, it follows the same model as every show on VH1 since they canceled Behind the Music and Pop Up Videos - they select an emotionally unstable, surgically enhance, former celebrity and provide him or her with 16 or so emotionally unstable, surgically enhanced, and scantily dressed celebrity wannabes in an effort to help the former celebrity find true love, provided the true love doesn't even last until the reunion show just so they can do it all over again, and again, and again.

Rock of Love Bus is the third installment for the celebrity of choice, Bret Michaels. As everyone knows, Bret is the lead singer of the band Poison, which was huge in the late 80's for about 30 days, then again in the early 90's for about 10. Oh, I hear you out there trying to tell me that Poison still is and always has been huge and believe me, I didn't learn how to play "Something To Believe In" on the piano by accident when I was 12 ("I tried all night not to break down and cry/as the tears rolled down my face/I felt so cold and empty/like a lost soul out of place..." Genius, Bret!), but truthfully you'll have to give me the name of at least one of their album's that doesn't have "Greatest Hits" in the title to make me accept that they were ever relevant to the musical world.

The success of the Rock of Love franchise, if I can even call it a franchise, seems to be grounded in the fact that the majority of the girls on the show really do want to be with Bret Michaels, or at least the thought of Bret Michaels. This is in contrast to other shows, like Flavor of Love, where even the audience isn’t stupid enough to think that anyone could love the weasel-esque/tourettes-prone Flavor Flav.

Anyway, since the winners of the first two seasons of Rock of Love didn't actually love Bret Michaels or his bandana/hair piece and have instead gone onto successful careers as groupies for Ratt and White Snake, respectively, VH1 decided to switch things up this time and bring the girls on the road with Bret to see who can hang with his rock star/dirt bag lifestyle while he tours in support of his solo album to various cities like Reno, Panama City, and Youngstown.

This crop of girls appears to be particularly good, and by "good" I mean "insane" and by "insane" I mean "slutty". The only reason I even bring any of this up is because in the 4-minutes of the show that we watched last night - in two, 2-minute increments - we saw one of the girls kiss Bret's drummer¹ and another girl get so wasted that she threw up on the bus then said through pukey tears, "Wha.. whatever. It doesn't mat- *hiccup* -matter if I puked. People... people puke and people shit their pants all the time..."

After that, I didn't need to see any more of the show or any more of the season for that matter because that was kind of the pinnacle of television for me. I'm not really sure where entertainment can go from there but wherever it goes, it'll be down.

 

1. I know what she was thinking when she kissed the drummer - she was wasted and looking to score with anyone that had anything to do with a band - but what the hell was he thinking? He's the drummer for Bret Michaels solo project for God's sake. If he pisses Bret off and gets fired from that gig, what the hell is he going to do? Who wants a drummer whose last entry on his resume is "Bret Michaels Rock My World US Tour: Sept. '08 - Sept. '08"

Interoffice Space

Something that's really been getting my goat lately is interoffice mail; you know, the manila envelopes that mysteriously show up at your desk that are sent to you from someone else in the company that would rather send something un-anonymously to you than see your face and hand you whatever it is they had to send.

In my lifetime I've used the interoffice mail three times; all to send someone something lewd and inappropriate from someone else. ("Jill, why the hell did you send me this decapitated Barbie doll through the interoffice mail?")

Don't get me wrong, I understand the utility of the interoffice mail system, especially for very large companies with different divisions where it's just not practical to hand deliver something. And believe me, if I could avoid human interaction all day at work, I would. But interoffice mail is the equivalent of the modern day Pony Express. You hand someone a package (probably your administrative assistant); they hand it off to someone else (probably the mail room); they then deliver it to yet another person (the recipient's administrative assistant); then it finally gets delivered if it hasn't been intercepted by a tribe of angry, displaced Iroquois. The probability that it gets misplaced somewhere in one of those transactions is damn near 100%. Plus if you're like me, you never get interoffice mail when you're sitting at your desk; it only materializes when you're away. If I were to piss once during the day, I'd come back to find a piece of interoffice mail sitting at my desk (and six voicemails) like the admin. spends her day lurking in the bushes around my cubical like a revolutionary guerrilla fighter waiting for the opportune time to strike.

Clearly I'm mad as a hornet about this because I’m constantly getting shit through the interoffice mail. In fact, I got a goddamn birthday card from HR through the interoffice mail. Like, they were all sitting around and someone said:

“Hey, does anybody know who the hell this guy is? I’ve never even heard of him before; like I’m not even sure he actually works here.”

“I’ve never heard of him. Just send him the card through the interoffice mail. If he doesn’t work here it’ll just disappear. Oh, and can you just sign my name for me?”

“Yeah, me too. Just sign my name with a little flower above the “i” instead of a dot to make it look like I actually care.”

Just today I got a pretty important document through the mail with a handwritten note on it from the sender. Are you shitting me? It took you longer to write the goddamn note and sign it with a fucking smiley face than it would have for your to walk down two flights of stairs and hand it to me with an actual smile. As much as I want this to be a condemnation of the sender, in reality it's a condemnation of me. As if I am so repulsive/intimidating/hideous/terrifying that they consciously decided to put more effort into not seeing me than actually seeing me. Like I said, I would be fine not interacting with another human for the entire workday, but as I'm still relatively new, I'm actually putting effort into looking approachable as opposed to my typical rabid dog look. So for someone to choose to send me something through interoffice mail just fires me right up.

I imagine one of my buddies back in Ohio is getting a lot of interoffice mail these days, though he couldn’t be happier about it. He’s currently in the midst of the longest lazy-beard of his life as described below:

“As for the beard, some are now calling me "grizzly" at work. My apathetic attitude towards my personal hygiene at work is reaching unprecedented levels. The beard, un-tucked shirts, and jeans (w/ holes) 3 out of 5 days are commonplace. My lunches are stretched from 60 to 75 minutes, and I'm consistently 3-5 minutes late every morning. Not late enough to be reprimanded, but just tardy enough to annoy everyone else. I feel someone wants to speak to me about my downward spiral at work, but the beard keeps them from doing so. It's like a force field for those in a position of authority. They don't want to fuck with me because of the beard. They know the beard means business.”

You have no idea how much I envy him.

And one last thing – does anyone know why the interoffice mail envelopes have holes punched through them? I’m sure there’s a logical explanation but I can't look at them without thinking their air holes, as if someone is tempting me to send a living creature to someone else at work through the interoffice mail.

“Hey there, New Guy, looks like you got something in the interoffice mail. What is it?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never gotten anything in the interoffice mail before. Let me just see what it is… Oh my god! It’s a reptile! Oh my god, I just shit my pants! Is that a… I think it’s a… Is this a newt? I think it’s a newt! Someone sent me a live goddamn newt through the interoffice mail! Where the hell do you find a newt? I’ve never even seen one before. And who would do something like this? It’s a fucking newt and now it’s on my keyboard. Oh, this is the worst day ever!”

Things I’ve Heard At Work Recently

Old Guy: “I think my wife got it for me at Macy’s.”

New Guy: “I’m sorry, what’s that?”

Old Guy: “The shirt; My wife got it at Macy’s.”

New Guy: “Uh… okay. That’s cool, but why are you telling me this?”

Old Guy: “You asked where I got he shirt.”

New Guy: “I did?”

Old Guy: “Yeah, you just sent me an e-mail.”

New Guy: “I did?”

Old Guy: “Yeah, just like 5 minutes ago you sent me an e-mail.”

New Guy: “No I didn’t. I haven’t sent you an e-mail all day.”

Old Guy: “Yes you did, I just got it. Come here and look at it.”

Old Guy and New Guy shuffle over to Old Guy’s cubicle.

Old Guy: “See.”

New Guy: “Huh. I mean, it looks like it’s from me, but I didn’t send it.”

Old Guy: “If you didn’t send it, how did I get it?”

New Guy: “I don’t know. Let’s go look at my computer.”

Old Guy and New Guy shuffle over to New Guy’s cubicle.

New Guy: “See. There’s nothing in my “Sent” folder.”

Old Guy: “Well this is strange…”

In the ensuing awkwardness and confusion, neither of them thought to stop and ask the obvious question: Is someone in this office a big enough dick to send a rogue e-mail from someone else’s computer then delete all traces of it from their “Sent” folder. Had they done so they would have found a pretty simple answer: Yes. Yes, someone is that big of a dick and that someone is me.

Five minutes prior, the New Guy had gotten up to go the bathroom but failed to lock his computer, so I sat down and sent an e-mail from him to the Old Guy that said, “That’s a really cool shirt you’re wearing. Do you mind me asking where you got it?”

As the Old Guy and New Guy were going back and forth and the New Guy insisted he didn’t send the e-mail, he awkwardly painted himself into a corner and was forced to say something to the effect of: “I mean, don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying it’s not a cool shirt, I’m just saying I didn’t send the e-mail…”

Just wait until next time when I send an e-mail from the New Guy to the Old Guy asking if the Old Guy’s daughter has a date to the prom yet. 

King of the Wild Frontier

As I've documented before, my mind is usually a hyper-vigilant state of samurai-readiness combined with a sort of Neo-esque sixth-sense for danger that typically makes it difficult for me to fall asleep at night as I lay awake constantly planning escape strategies for when the bad guys show up all while solving difficult mathematical problems to ensure my mind remains sharp like a switch blade or the talons of an eagle. For whatever reason though, the world was at peace last night and I was able to drift off into a nice, silent sleep shortly after my head hit the pillow.

Right up until I heard the lid of our trash can slam shut outside.

At first I wasn't sure if I'd actually heard it or just dreamt it, so I remained still and silent, like a shadow; holding my breath to be certain I could clearly hear it again.

*SLAM*

The lid closed again and I was out of the bed in an instant, peering through the blinds of the west-facing window in our bedroom. The wife was awake too, albeit considerably slower than me. She was poised at the south-facing window, both of us with our eyes locked on the trashcan sitting at the southwest corner of the house.

"Wife," I whispered, almost inaudibly, "Can you see anything?"

"I don't have my contacts in…"

"Shit, woman! Get some new eyes!"

So there I was, peering through the west-facing window, eyes trained on the lid of the trashcan with the wife, several feet away at the south-facing window, peering into the nothingness of night-blindness.

Just then it happened… the lid opened and I finally saw it – my nemesis: a 500 pound black bear!

Actually, that’s not true; that would just be insane. In reality it was simply the biggest fucking raccoon I've ever seen. I couldn't believe it; he wasn’t a bear, but he was literally the size of a bear cub.

He looked left; he looked right; then he dropped down and waddled off into the darkness of the night having just gorged himself on a 7 course meal of pizza crust, moldy bread, 2-week old pasta, some cheese from 2007 that somehow made the move from Columbus to Nashville with us then hid out in the refrigerator for the last six months, a few stale Cheerios, a celery stalk, and half a can of cat food that had been giving Ed the runs.

I must have laughed for two straight minutes at the sonofabitch.

When I told the wife it was a raccoon her only comment was, "That's it; I'm never taking the trash out again!" I found that humorous as I recalled the episode of Family Guy when Chris witnesses a robbery, picks the criminal out of a line-up and sends him to jail, then the criminal escapes and the Griffins are forced to move to the "Deep South" as part of the witness protection program. Peter keeps having a run-in with an angry raccoon that jumps out of his tv, the refrigerator, Louis's shirt, and the barrel of a shotgun to scratch the shit out of his face. At one point Peter is using the outhouse when a bird knocks the whole thing over and you hear Peter on the inside saying, "Oh! Oh, it's everywhere. It's absolutely everywhere. It's getting in my raccoon wounds!" It's also in this episode that Peter and Chris go to see a local civil war re-enactment in which Robert E Lee takes down a drunk Ulysses S Grant and the South wins the war.

Anyway, I went back to bed after that but was entirely unable to fall asleep. A few minutes later I heard the lid of the trashcan slam again and I thought, "That greedy sonofabitch; coming back for seconds." But then several minutes went by and it occurred to me: Holy deuce! There were two raccoons in the trashcan! The first slam of the lid was the first coon getting in; the second slam was the second coon; when I was at the window I saw the first coon get out; then the second one got out when I went back to bed. 

Two goddamn raccoons!

We'll just have to see how this develops.

I'm relieved to know that the critter eating me trash, and likely the cat's shit, is in fact a raccoon and not some homeless guy living in a tree stump in my backyard. Still, I regret that my samurai sword was still at the dry cleaner after the last blood bath and therefore unavailable for me to procure my very own authentic coon skin cap.

01.20.09

Enjoy the inauguration today and all the festivities associated with this historic time, even if you’re stuck at work or somewhere else.

The wife tipped me off to this passage from Albert Einstein on the NPR website as part of their This I Believe program that I think is pretty appropriate for today and what Obama stands for:

“It is my belief that there is only one way to eliminate these evils, namely, the establishment of a planned economy coupled with an education geared toward social goals. Alongside the development of individual abilities, the education of the individual aspires to revive an ideal that is geared toward the service of our fellow man, and that needs to take the place of the glorification of power and outer success.”

I’m also reminded of a quote from Chris Rock from his recent HBO special, Kill the Messenger:

“Are we really ready for a black president? We might as well be; we just had a retarded one…”

Where Everyone Knows Your Name

We went out last night to a local pub with my soccer watching buddy to catch a replay of the Manchester United game from yesterday. We were the only ones watching the game so we were secluded in the corner with a tv all to ourselves and really enjoying it right up until the channel lost its feed and went blank. My buddy is a big Man U fan so I thought she was going to shank the waiter if he didn’t fix the tv. Well, he never did fix the tv but he had a laughable self-depreciating demeanor so she let him live.

So after we were done not watching the futbol game, we went to our favorite bar around the corner from us. Now, Sara and I have been frequenting this place ever since we moved here, and by “frequenting” I mean we go there damn near once a week. Since moving to a new city I have been dead set on establishing myself at numerous local restaurants, bars, and shops, in an effort to be known everywhere I go. I want to walk into a bar and say, “How’s it going Jimmy? I’ll have the usual,” and Jimmy will serve it to me in a golden goblet with my name engraved on it then feed me grapes and fan me with palm leaves.

This isn’t just some Cheers pipe dream or something; I just believe good service is hard to come by so the best way to get good service is to get to know those doing the serving. And this isn’t just some pompous statement that people should be waiting on me hand and foot, at least not until I have enough money someday to drive a Bentley with platinum interiors¹, rather it’s just nice to be known at the places you go.

It’s worth noting that my plan has failed miserably to date. The only place where I’m even remotely known around town is the bank, and that doesn’t help me for shit because it’s not like you can deposit a check any faster when the teller knows your name nor do you occasionally find free money showing up in your bank account because you tip really well.

So anyway, I haven’t tried harder to become a local at any place more than our local bar around the corner, but to date it’s proven to be damn near impossible because they have like 38 bartenders on staff. Literally, we would go there once a week or once every other week and every time we went there was a different goddamn bartender. It was like that movie Groundhog’s Day because we were doing the same damn thing over and over but no one else was any wiser for it. We would take all of our friends there and I’d be like, “This is our local bar where we hang out all the time,” then I’d walk in, order a Fat Tire, and the bartender would be like, “Sure, can I see you ID?” Sonsabitches! I’m a local here!

So it didn’t surprise me last night when we walked in to find a brand new bartender. We sat down and ordered our drinks, which I sipped with a certain amount of spite for another night spent not being a local.

Shortly after we settled in though, I felt someone tugging my Liverpool scarf and looked up to see the new, young bartender. I was about to deck him in the face when he said, “You’re a Liverpool fan?”

“Does a dog like to lick his balls?” I replied.

So he showed me he had the Liverpool emblem on the background of his iPhone and we looked into each other’s eyes and sang You Will Never Walk Alone. That’s not entirely true, but it’s not too far off.

“Are you new here?” I asked, “I’ve never seen you before,” as if I was the local at the bar.

“No,” he said, “I own the place…”

You should have seen my face – like Scarlet Johansen just jumped out of my birthday cake or something. The only thing better than meeting the owner of a bar is meeting the owner and bonding over an unapologetic man-crush on Fernando Torres, the star Spanish striker. The only thing better than that is meeting the owner and having him say, “Hey, why don’t we just cut out the middle man here? Come on back and stick your face under this tap; I’ll just pour the beer right down your throat. How would you like that?”

So he came over and sat with us for a beer while we talked like long lost lovers. Turns out, the kid is only 26, just bought the bar a few months ago, has traveled the world, spent some time in England, fell in love with the team, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Did you hear what I said? I met the fucking owner of my local bar and now we’re boys! He even invited us over to his house to watch soccer matches! I even gave him advice on a clogged toilet problem they’ve been having at the bar. I’m not making this up! All my hard work drinking beer at this place once a week for the past 6 months has finally paid off!

Oddly, I drank a lot of beer there on Saturday night then had to pay for it all even after getting to know the owner, but as they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day nor did Caesar get free beer the first time he walked into a bar. Actually, he probably did but that’s because he had a huge posse of armor-clad, sword wielding Roman soldiers with him. Maybe that’s all I’m missing.

 

1. That’s right, I want to own a car with seats made out of platinum.

“Wow, this is a really nice car but I have to say, these seats are really uncomfortable. They’re all cold and hard. Are they made out of metal?”

“Yes, they are. Cold, hard, and uncomfortable – constant reminders of how obscenely wealthy I am.” 

Southern Comfort

It's snowing in Nashville right now. Are you smurfing me? I didn't come here for this. If I wanted a healthy dose of southern comfort AND bullshit northern exposure, I would have just moved to Kentucky instead.  

If the South is truly going to rise again, it needs to get off its ass and start pumping out the carbon emissions to get the ball rolling on this global warming thing because I am not joining a secessionist movement in the middle of the goddamn winter while it's snowing. 

Pineapple Express

Enough about Jack White; I'm over him.

On to more worldly and relevant things: my cat's shit. I haven’t talked about his shit in awhile but don't think he hasn't been shitting. Oh, he's been shitting.

The other night when our friends were here he took a HUGE smelly shit right before we went to bed. Just after I cleaned that up he waltzed right back into the litter box and took a HUGER smellier more liquefied shit. Welcome to Nashville, friends!

Perhaps the most un-eco-friendly thing we do is scoop his litter into a plastic bag to throw it away. While it grants a second use to the bag, it's still not good for the environment. Plus, we're lazy sonsabitches so when it's late at night we'll just throw the bag out onto the porch until we can migrate it to the dumpster in the morning. Well, not only do we have some devilish varmint resembling a pile of sawdust going through our garbage can, I can only assume the same varmint likes to eat Ed's shit that gets thrown out on the porch. This happens more frequently than I'd like to admit because I continue to throw the bags of shit on the porch each night, but that's not the point. The point is, there is a creature in this world that eats our garbage and our cat's shit. If I can somehow capture this beast, I will solve the planet's global warming crisis.

The shit thing isn't all that bad and I tolerate it because at least since we've moved here the cat has stopped humping his mouse. In Columbus he had a mouse on a string attached to a stick that was the Rupert to his Stewie. He loved that thing so much he would just hump the shit out of it. We would hear him drag the mouse on the string on the stick all over the house, banging it into all kinds of shit, until he would settle on the right spot where he'd just go to town. We'd wake up in the middle of the night and he'd be on the goddamn bed just humping away or he'd do it when we had guests over like it was the most natural thing in the world. It's one thing if you've got a horny, hyperactive dog trying to hump your leg or something; that's annoying but somewhat humorous. It's another thing entirely to have a cat in the corner just humping the shit out of something. That's just weird. It's like the difference between seeing a baby's bare ass and a 40 year-old man's bare ass. And all the time he'd do it he'd just have this look on his face like, "What? You've never seen a cat humping before you goddamn prude?"

Now he just has a kitty doobie, a gift from our friends. It really looks like a large blunt filled with catnip and I’m telling you, it’s the Pineapple Express of cat toys. He just licks the shit out the thing. Lick, lick, lick, lick, lick, lick, lick. I’ll come home and he’ll be sprawled out on the floor with this glossy look on his face and the kitty doobie laying on the floor next to him in a pool of saliva after what had to have been a stellar high. Sometimes I’ll find the damn thing under the bed like’s he’s been down there clam baking with the catnip.

Whatever. I don’t care that my cat is a strung out stoner because at least he’s not humping all the time now. If you have a cat, you should get the doobie. They’ll love you forever.

Rich Kid Blues

So I came to work today telling everyone who would listen that I had lunch with Jack White on Saturday (in the same restaurant, 6 tables away) until some girl was like, "Oh yeah, I see him all the time. One time he was standing next to me in line at the movie theater and complimented my tattoos." Oh man, I was so furious! One time I see a celebrity and have a story to tell about it (we shared a glance for god's sake!) and someone comes along and trumps my shit with a story of their own and all because I don't have any tattoos for Jack fucking White to admire. Hogwash!

 

Ironically my friends who were visiting just so happened to bring a whole collection of Ed Hardy temporary tatts for us but we didn't put them on until later in the day. I went with a pair of identical tatts, one on the inside of each forearm, of an angry mustang with a mane of fire. You know, the kind of mustang Lucifer himself would ride. One said "Dead" and the other said "Alive" (badass!). Why, oh why, did I not put those fake tatts on earlier in the day to walk into the café, bare guns ablaze, showing off my enraged mustangs for the whole world and Jack White to see? What could have been…

 

Oh well. A friend pointed out today that while we were gallivanting around Nashville stalking celebrities, there's no telling how many people were following me around like, "Oh my gosh! That's the guy from Heroes!"

 

Shit – Jack White probably thought that too. He's just lucky he didn't compliment my eyebrows, otherwise he would have gotten a Seven Nation Army to his face. 

 

The fake tatt of Lucifer's Mustang has faded a bit, but you can still get the point, especially on the backdrop of Lucifer's Enabler, also known as my forearm: