No Child Left Behind

Some horses, whether alive or dead, just need to be beaten repeatedly in order to prove a point. In this case, the horses/points are:

-Facebook sucks.

-Mustaches and beards are awesome¹.

-My wife is maniacal and manipulative but if it’s the drugs I’ve been unwittingly subjected to over the last several years that help me get out of bed every morning to face a day full of people I’d rather not know even exist, then I say keep them coming.

Something else that needs beaten repeatedly is children. I’m just kidding; you all know I would never advocate beating a child. Publicly. Again, kidding. I would never, ever beat a child. A parent, however, who has no control over their child and isn’t fit to raise a chia pet let alone a small human being should be repeatedly beaten with a bamboo cane about their head, neck, and face.

We had some friends in town visiting this weekend so we went to the Adventure Science Center (refer to previous post, The Engineer Strikes Back, for an earlier reference to the Adventure Science Center). Admittedly the ASC is designed and intended for children, generally 12-years and younger, or in other words, people with an attention span of 30 seconds or less. Without any children of our own we went just to check it out and kill a rainy afternoon (no, I did not still have the pedophile mustache; they wouldn’t have allowed my van within a mile of the place if I did).

Obviously I knew to expect there would be a hoard of children there, but nothing could have prepared me for the absolute filth and disgustingness that several hundred children can produce. I was immediately struck by the smell. A smell that can only be described as filthy children. A mixture of dirt, food, vomit and shit. I have no doubt at least eight kids shit their pants within the 30 minutes prior to our arrival for some reason or another. Not only did it smell but you could practically see the bacteria crawling around and every surface in the entire place from 4 feet down had at least one booger per square foot, without exception. It was all disgusting. I spent the entire time walking around with my hands straight out in front of me so there was no possible way I could touch something then accidentally touch my face, eyes, nose, mouth or ears. Latex gloves should be standard issue at the door at a place like that.  

Not only are children disgusting, they're rude and inconsiderate. We'd be interacting with one of the interactive exhibits and some kid would just barge right in and go to town like we weren't even there. I'd look at the dad and he'd just shrug his shoulders like, "What can you do? He's six."

What can I do? BAM! I can punch you right in the goddamn throat for being a worthless father. Why don't you teach your kid some manners? Oh, what now? You're going to choose this moment to teach your kid a lesson by being the bigger man and turning the other cheek? BAM! I just punched you on the other side of your throat. You see Jimmy, you just learned a valuable lesson today - your dad is a raging douchebag. And you're stupid for not knowing where to put the fulcrum under the lever to lift that box.

So not only are children disgusting and inconsiderate but some parents deserve to be beaten for their inability to raise them properly.

I know this sounds like I'm saying all children are categorically bad and no one should have or raise them. That's not true at all. There are plenty of good kids out there and plenty of good parents. It is, however, fair to say that bad kids are raised by bad parents. So what I'm saying is, we need more good parents out there to raise good kids.

I'm also saying that I personally am not fit to raise a child. I know this for a fact. Case in point:

-We recently saw a few friends of ours, one of whom has two very young daughters and who I would consider to be a great father. When asked how the family life is he said, “Insane,” to which another friend who has two older daughters said, “Then you know you’re doing it right...” It was a touching moment to see one confident dad reassuring an inexperienced dad that he’s doing the right thing. It was also a terrifying moment because I presently lead my life in a manner that avoids anything that would be remotely considered insane. For example, the other day at work my boss asked me to cut out little pieces of paper to scale so we could arrange them on a drawing we printed to make sure everything would fit in the room we were designing. I informed him that as a company we have at our disposal thousands of dollars worth of computer software that allows us to draw things to scale then move them around to make sure they fit. But he's pretty old school and insisted, so I started to cut out little pieces of paper to represent a pump and a valve and a storage tank. After about fifteen minutes I was like, "This shit is insane." So I quit and drew it on the computer. Now, had I gone to my boss and said, "This is insane," and had he responded with, "Well, then you know you're doing it right." I would have packed my shit up and walked out the door because I'm not willingly going to sit there and go through something that is insane yet also right.

-Another one of my friends is a new father and he talked about how he can work 8, 10, 12 hour days and hate every second of it, but as soon as he walks in the door and sees his kid's face light up for no reason other than the kid loves the father unconditionally and can not wait to play with him, my friend said that's the best feeling in the world and nothing else matters after that. I believe him. Absolutely I do. But the thing is, I get the same feeling when I come home to my nail gun. I walk in the door, plug it in, it lights up, and we play for hours and hours on end and there's no better feeling in the world for me. Plus, the nail gun doesn't shit, I don't need to feed it, and I've never heard it cry. I would actually encourage anyone who is thinking about having a kid to go out and get a nail gun just in case you're confused and really want a nail gun instead of a kid. The added bonus is, a nail gun will never end up in a juvenile detention facility.

-I’m 30 years old and I still routinely forget to eat meals. After a long day at work I’ll come home and play with my nail gun for a few hours and before I know it, it will be 10 PM and I haven’t eaten. It is not uncommon for me then to have cereal and beer for dinner. I'm fine with that and quite enjoy it. In fact, I'm eating Fruit Loops and drinking a Heineken right now. But if you have a child not only can you not forget to eat, more importantly you can’t forget to make the child eat until it’s like 3 when it can fend for itself. Something tells me the mother of my kid won’t find it cute to come home to see Dad and Jr both eating Cheerios and drinking out of a bottle.   

The point is, some people can deal with insanity and make it work; some people don't own nail guns; some people eat meals regularly and can ensure their child will eat meals regularly. Those people should be parents and should have or adopt children. I should not.

The other point is, for those millions of people out there like the dad at the Adventure Science Center who also are not fit to raise children but don't know it and try to raise children anyway - they should be severely beaten. By me.

1. That's Mr. Awesome to you...

Beating A Dead Horse

Some things need to die. Whether it be a racehorse with a broken leg (R.I.P. Eight Belles), Phil Collins musical career, or the Facebook discussion on this blog, everything must run its course. I was ready to move on, but I can not, and will not, allow myself to idly stand by and let Sara’s misguided comments go unopposed. Her inability to see the big picture, and her affinity for being completely incorrect on this matter makes me worry about one thing, her patients*.

“Hello Mr. Johnson, what are you in for today?”

“My stomach hurts.”

“Well, we are going to have to cut off your arm. Nurse, get Mr. Johnson a scalpel. Mr. Johnson, why don’t you make the first incision while I get online and let my Facebook friends know that I’ll be in surgery for a while. Oh look at this picture, Jimmy sent Peggy flowers. And Molly is at dinner with her grandma. And Billy is about to get on the treadmill. I feel so connected! Mr. Johnson, that incision needs to be made two inches higher. Focus.”

Sara, I’m also worried about what’s going on in your life outside the hospital. Admitting to keeping your husband sedated with medication. You’re turning the Horst household into an episode of Nip/Tuck. And what’s up with the peeping tom activity? “Who doesn’t love to drive around at night and try to peek into other people’s windows.....”. I’ll tell you who DOES love to do that, criminals. I can just picture your Facebook away message after you get thrown in jail for voyeurism and invasion of privacy. “Sara’s getting hazed in the female communal showers.” Good luck having one of your digital friends get you out of that one.

You mention that unlike the rest of our society, John isn’t in the interested in the intricacies of other people’s lives. I think it’s commendable that John doesn’t react like Pavlov’s dog and become immediately interested every time a former supermodel with a drug problem goes onto a reality show. It’s also equally commendable he doesn’t waste his time faking relationships with those he doesn’t want to associate with anymore. After being in a fraternity, or sorority, you are forced to associate with a lot of people you otherwise wouldn’t want to spend a minute of your time with. Speaking from experience, most of the interactions with these people are similar to a conversation with a stranger you sit next to on a plane. Obvious small talk, such as, “Looks like you went with the vegetable lasagna. Good choice.” Or, “Oh, reading the Da Vinci Code. Heard it’s great.” These conversations always end by me putting on my headphones and pretending to sleep. Sure, I don’t have to sleep, but I’ll gladly fake it for two hours to avoid listening to why the douchebag sitting next to me is getting passed over for another promotion. Here’s a guess jackass, it’s probably because your breath smells like Fritos and you keep using cliche corporate catch phrases like “brand management” and “strategic staircase.” Anyway, one the the best parts of graduation is that after you graduate and move away, you can finally control who you do, and do not interact with anymore. There is a very complex filtering out process that includes changing your cell phone number, getting a new email address, and avoiding social networking sites that may bring you back into unwanted conversations about lasagna and staircases. 

Now I cold go on and on and on about the ills of Facebook, but I feel like my point has been made. Just let me play Nostradamus for a minute and tell any Facebook users out there how the future looks for you and your digital friends. Similar to the fate of MySpace, the Adkins Diet, Hootie and the Blowfish, and any other pop culture fad of recent memory, Facebook will soon get old, and it’s users will get bored and move on to the next shiny new thing that catches their attention. Either that, or that strange guy you didn’t really know but accepted a friendship request from ends up killing you and your family. Either way, I’m good. 

Plus, can it really be cool if this guy is doing it:

http://www.fox8.com/wjw-dickgoddardfacebook,0,6572995.story

*Even though she’s on the wrong side of the Facebook discussion, Sara is an excellent physician. I wouldn’t want to jeopardize my free medical advice by insinuating she would really cut off a patients arm when only their stomach hurt. I completely trust her medical opinions, and would trust my first born in her care. Unless she starts drinking on the job. Again.

Why My Husband Hates Facebook

My name is Sara Horst and I have lots of digital friends and this is why my husband has zero:

- John “the Beard” Horst¹ loves to hate everything that could possibly keep him in any kind of social network. By that I mean, let anyone into his life other than people he has specifically chosen to be in his “Beard Society.” He’s like a one man mafia, minus any serious threat of being whacked (he has yet to conclusively deal with the raccoon troop living in our dumpster. I can only assume his order for concrete shoes for raccoon paws hasn’t arrived yet). I have been lucky enough to be part of the chosen few but only because I humor him to his face while keeping him sedated with a powerful cocktail of prescription drugs… I am a doctor you know, and use it to its fullest intended advantages.

-John is one of the few people I know who is truly not interested in most other people. He’s like the individual equivalent of North Korea – completely isolated except for random, unintelligible fits of rage like a failed long-range missile test or something. I mean, growing up in modern US society, you’re almost required to become fascinated by the intricacies of other people’s lives. Look at reality TV, which isn’t really reality, but then again, is Facebook? Who doesn’t love to drive around at night and try to peek in other people’s windows to see what their house looks like or how big their TV is or maybe, just maybe, see them in some awkward and hilarious moment such as talking to a sock puppet or playing Dance Dance Revolution by themselves on their 52” tv. Who wouldn’t pull out their phone, record it, put it on YouTube, and post the link on their Facebook site? Not John; he just truly doesn’t care. He couldn’t care less about Kim Kardashian or America’s next Top Model or Bridezilla or the Girls Next Door or even just the neighbors next door. He is so self absorbed he just doesn’t care.

-Facebook makes SURE that people care about YOU. I mean, you tell people that you are eating at Arby’s and you know that they are aware of it. How else do you get noticed at all in this world? John, on the other hand, doesn’t want anyone to care about him or take notice of him. He just wants them to be scared of him, hence the beard and/or mustache, aka the social repellants (see previous blog posts). If he had it his way, a crowd of people would part like the Red Sea out of shear fear of him, if he were ever ambitious enough to actually go anywhere where a crowd of people would be.

Why it is a good thing that John is not on Facebook:

-He doesn’t know that I am friends with some people that he would “murder” on Facebook if that were a feature, which I think might be an interesting addition. If he knew I kept in contact with certain people who he has perceived as wronging him at some point in their lives, he would have me excommunicated from the planet right along with them.

-He doesn’t know that I have posted multiple pictures of him drunk and in various states of awkwardness, which happens more frequently than he’d like to admit. This I derive great pleasure from.

-He didn’t know that I posted a link to his blog for a few days on my page…so his grandmother, who is my friend, could read it on a daily basis. That was a truly genius moment in my life.

In conclusion, people use Facebook to stay connected because they care about other people’s lives and want them to care about their own. If, however, you prefer to live your life in bearded seclusion like the Unibomber, like my husband and his friend Chris, then perhaps Facebook isn’t for you.

 

1. Actually, now he has inexplicably shaved his beard in favor of a mustache. He looks ridiculous. I feel like I’m married to Tom Selleck, if Magnum PI drove a windowless van in lieu of a Ferrari convertible and patrolled an elementary school playground in lieu of the Hawaiian Islands. 

Face Off

My name is John Horst and I have 0 digital friends. And I’m thinking Arby's.

I agree wholeheartedly with my real life friend Chris’ hatred of Facebook and all it stands for. Oh, believe me, I understand the multiple hypocrisies of our open disdain for social networking online and I’m fine with all of them. For example:

1. How can I claim to hate Facebook when I don’t know anything about it and have never been on the website and have never even seen it? Easy – it’s the same way I hate Nicholas Cage movies. I haven’t seen a Nicholas Cage movie in 15 years but I know they all suck. All except the Rock. The Rock was fucking sweet. But it wasn’t because of Nicholas Cage; it was awesome because of Sean Connery. You could have cast any douchebag in Cage’s role as Stanely Goodspeed and it still would have kicked ass because of Connery. You could have even cast John McCain and I still would have liked it. Although you would have had to rewrite the climactic scene after which Goodspeed had disarmed all the biological missiles on Alcatraz and the F16 fighter jets were swooping in to blow up the Rock only to pull up at the last second at the sight of Goodspeed holding the green flares above his head, you know, because McCain can’t lift his arms above his head, what with the fact that he had them repeatedly broken in a Vietnamese prison during his 5 years of captivity.

2. The very fact that we feel it necessary to speak with such animosity about the cultural phenomenon that is Facebook in itself lends credibility to Facebook and the masses that subscribe to it. Whatever; the masses also subscribed to the Salem witch trials and somehow believed that it made sense to dunk a suspected witch in a barrel of water only to have her innocence proved if she in fact drowned. I mean, whatever dumbass thought of that, what the fuck was he going to do if she didn’t drown? They’d have a soaking wet witch on their hands and she’d be pissed as fuck. The point is, the masses often do things because the masses are doing things regardless of the merits. I don’t give a shit if “Paul is going for a jog.” In fact, if Paul wants me to know what he’s doing he damn well better have the couth to call me up and tell me what he’s doing and if he calls me up just to tell me he’s going for a goddamn jog I’m going to find him, kidnap him, and dump him in barrel of water for wasting my time. Then we’ll see if Facebook is really worth a shit if anyone responds to his status, “Paul is drowning,” to save him.

3. Here we are railing on about the stupidity of a website where people can read every little thought and action you chose to post, on a website where people are reading about every one of our thoughts and actions that we’ve posted. The difference is, if I can be so humble, the blog is humorous/insightful/ironic; Facebook posts are mundane/pointless/uninteresting. “Darren is eating steak” = waste of kilobytes. “The thought of killing him right then and there with the cake knife crossed my mind” = hilarious.

I could come up with thousands of reasons why I hate Facebook but it really just boils down to one thing:

When Marcum and I were freshman in college we were both pledging the same fraternity. When we weren’t sitting in a circle on the floor of the fraternity house bathroom with the rest of the pledges wearing only blindfolds and jock straps, being beaten repeatedly with wooden paddles and pelted with garbage while trying to recite The Order of the Sphinx in the presence of all the brothers, we were forced to go “interview” all the brothers individually in order to learn stupid, meaningless facts about them and their lives in order to “get to know them.” One night all the pledges gathered together to go interview Rich Brown, the scariest motherfucker I have ever met in my life. Rich Brown was once nationally ranked as a NCAA Division I heavy weight wrestler for the University of Louisville. Before he graduated, Rich was banned from wrestling and kicked out of the university for what I can only assume was killing some poor sonofabitch on the wrestling mat because he some how ended up at Ohio Northern University to finish his degree, in what I could only assume was a bachelors of kicking ass because Rich was built like goddamn Mount Rushmore and had the disposition of a death row inmate.

In order for us to “interview” him, Rich required us to bring two handles of Southern Comfort whiskey and drink both of them with him before he would answer any questions. So we all piled into Rich’s off campus apartment, sat Indian style on the floor, passed the bottles of whiskey around, and tried not to shit ourselves.

It was the most fucked up experience of my life. Rich would point to someone and say, “Tell me a funny story,” in a manner that suggested if he didn’t find it funny he would choke the life out of you with his pecs.

After three hours of that shit we finished the whiskey, which did nothing to calm my nerves because of all the questions we were supposed to ask him, there was only one question I needed an answer to, “Is Rich Brown a violent drunk?” and the answer was yes, yes he was. At one point Rich’s little Boston Terrier, Floyd, who hadn’t been taken outside all night couldn’t hold it any longer and took a piss on Rich’s futon. A rational human would recognize that situation as their own fault for not walking the dog. But Rich, who was neither rational nor human, picked the poor dog up with one hand, screamed in its face, then bit it. I’m not making that shit up. He bit the fucking dog. I’m not sure who was more surprised and terrified, me or the dog. It was at that point we all got the hell out of there, having not even conducted the interview.

Suffice it to say, we eventually did finish the interview and we all survived but that’s not the point. The real point to this story is twofold:

1. I’ve lived every day of my life since that day I met Rich Brown with one singular goal: Never come into contact with Rich Brown ever again. It may be laughable to think that someone like Rich Brown would be on a social networking website like Facebook, but if there’s even a fraction of a fraction of a chance that he is, I don’t want to have anything to do with it for the fraction of a fraction of a chance that Rich Brown would ever be able to find me.

2. During the interview we asked Rich Brown if he had a favorite quote. He said, “Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead; Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow; Just walk beside me and be my friend.” That’s the most fucked up thing I’ve ever heard, especially coming from the likes of a giant dog eater but I think about that quote every day of my life and I think modifying it slightly is directly applicable to the subject at hand: “Don’t post stupid shit on your Facebook page, I won’t read it; Don’t put something on my Facebook wall, I don’t give a shit; If you’re really my friend you’ll be there for me when I inevitably run into Rich Brown again and he attempts to remove my gallbladder through my esophagus with his bare hands.” 

The Saddest Party In The World

I hate to deviate from the typically humorous posts that make up this blog, but I have a sad story I want to share. I have a 6 year old cousin, Max. This past week my aunt and uncle, who live about 20 minutes away, asked me if I could pick up Max from a birthday party one of his classmates was having because they were going to be at a dinner party. I was supposed to pick Max up around 6:00, but I arrived about 20 minutes early. This gave me a rare opportunity to see how 6 year olds interact with each other, which turned out to be both eye opening and somewhat troubling.

Max has never been a social butterfly, and I would have never thought of him as a loner,  but I had had yet to see him around his peer group. While everyone seemed to be playing and having fun with each other, Max would keep approaching other kids asking them to be his friend. The kids would just kind of give him a pathetic look and go back to playing. It truly was heartbreaking. Then all of a sudden, Max would announce something, like, “I’m going to the slide!”, or “I’m eating cake!”  Again, all the kids would kind of give him a pitiful look as if to say, “why the hell are you telling me this?”, and resume their previous fun. In a last ditch effort to avoid a day full of friendless solitude, Max would run up to other partygoers and show them pictures of his family’s recent trip to Cancun. Again unimpressed, Max’s pathetic and futile attempts to gain the friendship of others went unrewarded. It was sad for me to watch, and was devastating for him. But then I realized the nightmare that was really taking place right before my eyes. He was headed down the horrific path of becoming a fucking Facebook user!

It was all so clear now. The begging for friendship, the ridiculous announcements of everyday mundane events, the constant sharing of pictures to uninterested “friends”. The thought of killing him right then and there with the cake knife crossed my mind, only to help him avoid the path that leads to joining the army of losers already signed up with  Facebook. I quickly looked for a car battery to throw into the kiddie pool he was playing in, hoping the electrical shock would make him permanently forget all of the woeful tactics he had used at the party to form a “relationship” with others. I considered giving Sprinkles the pony some Red Bull while Max was on for a ride, so she would take him far, far away from any computer or wireless internet connection where he could log on and begin forming superficial relationships with people he hardly even knows. But I acted on my better instincts, and did nothing. I stood there and watched him be a tool for the rest of the day, but when we got in the car after what was in no doubt the worst party of his young life, I was the one who cried.

The premise of Facebook is pathetic. Asking people to be your friend like you’re a lonely 6 year old at a birthday party, and then being forced to carry on small talk with them over the internet. If I want to carry on small talk with someone, I’ll call my cable company and ask the representative how the weather is in her neck of the woods while she’s looking up my account balance. And it’s all done in the name of “staying connected” with your friends. Staying connected is not posting pictures of your boring-ass trip to the Outer Banks, and then having some douchebag in your fraternity that you haven’t seen since graduation write back, “nice sunburn:)”. And these people are not your friends. “Bobby has 112 friends”. No you don’t Bobby. You have 20 good friends you could call up and go out and get a beer with any night of the week, and you have 92 acquaintances, mostly who are a friend of a friend of a friend, who you met once at a party and accepted friendship with just so you can both inflate you “friend” numbers and feel better about yourselves. How about you get in a car or buy a plane ticket and go visit one of your 20 real friends, and not instead spend that time small talking with your other 92 digital friends. I will go on record right now as saying that I would rather have only 1 real friend in life than 1,000 digital friends. In fact, when I die, I want my tombstone to look like this:

Chris Marcum

1979-2079.

Beloved Husband, Father, and Son.

Had 0 Digital Friends.

That is how you know your life was a success.

And why do people on Facebook think that every move they make and every picture they take is so important? Why do they insist on posting what they’re doing every second of the day. “I just woke up.” “Cooking dinner.”  “Going to read at the library.”  Translation: “I just woke up in my parents basement because that’s where I live.” “I’m re-heating leftover Arby’s for my fat-ass husband.” “I’m going to leaf through the Sear’s catalog and hopefully become aroused.” And news flash, no one cares about your trip to Jamaica, or that “funny” picture of you with a parrot on your shoulder. And your poor kids. If they knew the pictures you were taking of them were being sent out all over the internet like the latest Paris Hilton sex tape, they’d probably try to cry during every one just so you wouldn’t have any material to post. Sure, they might look back in 20 years regretting that they have no childhood pictures of them smiling, but deep down they’ll know that sacrifice had to be made just so that one of their dad’s work friends couldn’t see them taking a bath with their sibling.  

Now, I realize some people that read this might also be on Facebook. And I understand you might not agree with my perspective and want to talk negatively about me. And that’s fine if you do, just please do it on Facebook, because I won’t be logging into that fucked up world any time soon. And enjoy your Arby’s.

Sitting on Dubs

In the midst of this current economic crisis there are plenty of things that make me angry - my tax dollars going as bonuses to shitty AIG executives, bailing out failed American auto makers, Bernie Jackoff – but there’s one thing that gets me really pissed off: rims.

I’m talking about the 22-inch or 24-inch slabs of shiny metal that people slap on their wheels so they can drive around town drawing unnecessary attention to themselves.

I won’t lie, 5-10 years ago when rims first started becoming popular I wanted them just as bad as the next guy. I’d sit in class drawing pictures of the custom rims I was going to put on my Ford Escort. Then they came out with the spinners and I thought God had sent an angel from heaven. I remember watching an episode of Cribs on MTV¹ and Nelly had just put a set of 34” rims on his Escalade. 34”! The wheels were literally 99% chrome with like a little ¼” strip of rubber around the outside. It’s like he could only drive the car on a gymnasium floor because the first pebble he ran over would disintegrate the rubber and then his $200,000 dollar rim would be dragging across the pavement shooting sparks everywhere starting forest fires. 

My neighbor from two doors down, the dude with the tatts on his neck and face, just recently pulled into his driveway with new 24" rims on his '72 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. I know they're 24" rims because he has a stencil in his back window that reads, "24 inches." That would be like me showing up one day with 6'-0" tattooed on my forehead. "That's right homies, I just got back from the doctor, the dizoctor, the doc-diddy - I grew a whole nother inch, bitches! You can't step to this. I'm looking right over you. What are you, like 5'-10"? Call me when you grow up."

Where is he driving this car that he sees people who are impressed with his new rims? It’s not like, “Oh man, those are some sweet ass rims!” It’s more like, “You sonofabitch! I’m about to lose my house and you just spent 20-grand to put some goddamn worthless metal on your wheels. I’m going to kick you in the nuts.”

The other day I was driving down the street just as he was getting out of his car. We made eye contact and he gave me a look as if to say, "Yeah, check it out. I'm riding on 24's. See, it says so on my window." I looked back at him as if to say, "Yeah, it may say '24 inches' but it's really saying, 'I'm broke,' or, 'I make bad decisions,' or 'living rent free with my parents is awesome!' Coupled with that tattoo between your eyes it says, ‘I plan on dying before I’m 35 because I have no money and I’ll look like an idiot when I’m 50 with a tattoo on my face.”

I know what’s going to happen though. In 5 years when the rest of us are living in a lawless Barter Town, when the banks have lost all of our money and we’re fighting and killing each other for food and fossil fuel, I’ll see a commercial on tv for Cash 4 Chrome – “It’s easy! All you do is request a free Refiner’s Return Kit, place your unwanted chrome rims in the secure, prepaid envelope, stick it in the mail, and in less than 24 hours you’ll get your Cash 4 Chrome!” – and all I’ll be able to say is, “Damn you with your tattooed face and 24” rims! Damn you!!!”

1. That show seems a little gratuitous now doesn’t it? I imagine their biggest problem when filming a new episode is making sure all the foreclosure signs in the neighborhood don’t make it into the shot. 

Lost in Translation

People are stupid, and by "stupid" I mean "ignorant", and by "ignorant" I mean "stupid." All you need to do is turn on the news, pick up a magazine or one of those antiquated newspapers, or log on to the world wide web to find evidence of this on a daily basis.

I get evidence of it every day at work and this is just the latest example.

With the economic climate of late, my company is like every other company out there looking for ways to cut back and save money. One thing they've done is reduce the budget for the cleaning staff at the office. That means the trash gets taken out less frequently, or the bathrooms get cleaned fewer times each week, or things don’t get dusted like they used to. I accept all of this because while it unfortunately means the cleaning staff has fewer hours or in the worst case, fewer people, it also might just mean the company is saving enough money so I can keep my job or someone else around me can keep theirs.

Well, not everyone shares the same macro-economic view on the matter as I do. In fact, some people are downright pissed about this reduction in cleanliness around the office. So much so that someone has started leaving notes around the office instructing the cleaners what to do, or perhaps more accurately, what they haven't done. One day it will be, "More paper towels!" and the next it will be, "Refill soap!" or, "Take out the trash!" But the fucked up thing is, whoever is leaving the notes is writing them in Spanish. Like, this jackass is just assuming like a stupid, ignorant sonofabitch that the cleaners don't speak or can't read English. Who is that big of a douche? If I was on the cleaning crew and came in to work at 6 PM to find notes written in Spanish telling me what to do, I'd be like, "Stupid gringos. If you're going to tell me what to do then fuck you; I’m not cleaning out the refrigerator in the break room until you figure out how to write, ‘throw away the moldy cheese’ in Spanish and in the meantime I’m going to leave a little message of my own in the form of un deuce en fuego encendido tu escritorio. Douchebag.”

As someone who works with drawings and pictures and abbreviations all day, it would be like me coming to work and finding pictionary notes from my boss telling me what to do because he doesn’t think I can comprehend words. Something like:

"Stop sleeping at your desk."

Or:

"Shave your beard you Neanderthal."

Or:

 "You spend too much time in the bathroom."

I just realized that last one could be mistranslated to, “I will pay you for 15 minutes alone in the bathroom," to which I would reply with a note that said, "X, FU! ... ???" which means, "No, Fuck you! Wait, how much?"

The overall point is, people are stupid and stupid people deserve to come to work and find a big steaming turd in their desk drawer. 

Music City USA? More Like Man City USA

This goes along very nicely with what we've been talking about. One very astute reader sent me this article you may already have seen in the Tennessean, which I'll summarize below:

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090305/NEWS01/90305025

Basically, some company used a set of criteria to figure out that Nashville is the manliest city in the country. Yeah, you read that correctly - Nashville is the manliest city in the United States of America, and really we could probably just extrapolate that to the entire world and basically the universe.

Here is the rest of the top ten:

1. Nashville, Tenn.

2. Charlotte, N.C.

3. Oklahoma City

4. Cincinnati

5. Denver

6. St. Louis

7. Columbus, Ohio

8. Kansas City, Mo.

9. Indianapolis

10. Toledo, Ohio

In case you didn't notice, it's worth noting for the past 7 years I've been living in one of the top 7 manliest cities in the universe. Obviously.

 Whoever conducted the study could have saved a lot of time and money by just calling me, but since they didn't they had to come up with some other criteria. While in no way do I take exception to the results, the criteria is pretty weak:

-Number of professional major league sports teams

-Frequency of monster truck rallies.

-Number of NASCAR enthusiasts

-Popularity of hunting and fishing

-Concentration of barbecue restaurants

-Among others

So basically what they're saying is, the manliest cities in the country are full of big, fat, uneducated rednecks. Now I know it's unfair for me to characterize all NASCAR fans as uneducated because I'm sure some of them have completed remedial levels of elementary education but there isn't a single one of them that would take exception to being called a redneck.

In order to legitimize the study I feel it necessary to offer up some additional criteria of my own:

-Jean Claude Van Damme video rentals: Men like ass-kicking movies and JCVD is the ass-kickingest of them all. Universal Soldier - I’ll take three, thank you very much. Double Impact – What’s better than one JCVD? Two, clearly.

-Beer Sales: I’m not talking about that bullshit bottled, imported shit. I’m talking about the real beer made from all unnatural ingredients that comes in an aluminum can, which a real man can crush between his ass cheeks.

-Pollution: The environment is for sissies. Father Nature knew what he was doing when he walked out on Mother Nature because she was a nagging whore and now she can’t fend for herself. Tough shit.

-Number of arrests for public urination: The world is a man’s urinal. If you have a problem with it, start tying your shoelaces and stop stepping in my puddle.

-Number of Autozones: Yeah, that’s me in my driveway working on my car. What am I doing? I don’t fucking know. But I do know that I’m a man and men work on their cars.

-Number of reported Little League fights: No, not on the diamond; I’m talking about in the stands. If you’re not willing to punch another dude in the face because his kid is throwing high and tight against your kid, you don’t deserve to wear pants to work.

-Gold sales: Silver? Platinum? Diamonds? Gay. Real mean wear gold and lots of it. I have on 4 necklaces and 3 rings right now, two of which are class rings for schools I never went to.

-Beards: This goes without saying but I’ll say it anyway, beards = manly.

-Denny’s Franchises: I’ll have the All American Slam with bacon and sausage and my beard will have the Lumberjack Slam with a double side of bacon. We sure are hungry.

-Axe Body Spray sales: So what if it smells like a sweaty nightclub in New Jersey? Chicks love that shit.

-Number of Concealed Carry Permits per capita: I’m a man so I own a gun. Lots of guns. And I carry them around with me everywhere I go; hidden and out of sight because that’s what a real man does. Why? Why not? You don’t know when you’ll be sitting in Denny’s and someone looks at you cross and next thing you know it’s like the OK Corral all over again.

The moral of the story is, if you plan on coming to Nashville anytime soon, you better be ready to man up, because that’s what we do here. 

Ask Not What You Can Do For Your Beard, But What Your Beard Can Do For You

I think we’ve established that a beard is a great excuse for laziness, gets you out of potential work assignments, may save you from a possible terrorist beheading, and is overall badass. But I also don’t want to over look any of the practical applications a beard can potentially provide. 

For a long period of time, I was on a very strict shaving schedule. And by shaving, I just mean trimming my beard to a shorter length. Once a week, every Thursday morning. It provided me the perfect amount of scruff for the upcoming weekend, and then when Monday rolled around, the beard would start to get a little unkempt again, which completely matched my, “ work sucks, give the project to someone else attitude.” The beard continued to thicken between Monday and Wednesday, my personal interaction decreased inversely, and then Thursday came around again and the cycle re-started. People eventually caught on to this schedule, and they almost began to coordinate their lives with the length of my facial hair. 

“Hey Chris, I see you shaved. That reminds me, I need to Tivo 30 Rock tonight.”

“Wow Chris, you’re starting to look like a lumberjack. Oh, thanks for reminding me, I need to pick up Jimmy from Cub Scouts this evening.”

One could even try to expand the calendar to a monthly cycle. It would take some timing, but if you were comfortable with only shaving every 28 days, ideally the beard could be used in determining a monthly sex schedule. Day 1, she just finishes her period, and your face is as smooth as John Legends voice. You’re looking good, she’s ready to go, and for the next few days your sex life turns into a scene from backstage at a Prince concert. Fast forward a few weeks, you look like Randy “Macho Man” Savage, she’s ovulating, and you avoid sexual contact like you’re a sunni man and she’s a shia woman. After another fortnight, it’s the dreaded, “time of the month” again, and there’s no possibility for sex whatsoever. Which is fine, because now you look like Abe Lincoln, and no normal woman would even want to look at you. A few days pass, you shave, and it’s Purple Rain all over again. 

I’ll give Mayans credit for creating a solid calendar, but I think I’m really onto something here.