Note to self 369: 08/12/2010

After 12 years of service (the first few of which were unfortunately marred by over 327 official Ford recalls), Big Red finally bit the dust. Well, she had massive tranny problems (different from my previous "tranny" problems) that would have cost me close to 3 grand for parts and labor — and to that I said "Fuck it." So after he gave me his obscene quote and then left for the day, I snuck back into the mechanic's shop, removed all the proof that I brought my car there from his computers and by burning the place to the ground, and then abandoned Big Red in the ghetto (1/3rd of Athens, GA is "ghetto," so I had room to shop), got all my personal items out of the old girl, took off the license plate, and said goodbye to the Exploder. She was stripped and dismantled before I was two blocks away. She served me well, and even got me a nice juicy insurance check as her last act of generosity.

Then I went car shopping. I looked up internet deals for a total of 12 hours over the past week, and spent more time searching the car ads after I found that the only cheap rental available was a shitty little Corolla that was not built for 6'4" lanky men... Christ, as I was driving that little Jap car away from the Avis store all I could think about was singing Adam Sandler's "Piece of Shit Car" song at the top of my lungs. It was very fitting; there actually was a spring pokin' me in dee balls.

Anyway, so the weekend came, and I thought "Grrrrrrrrreat... Now I get to spend the first of many weekends and evenings browsing car lots, getting my ass licked by desperate dealers, and test driving new cars over and over until I just give up and buy something..." Not that that last bit is not fun (if you like driving, then test driving new cars is actually pretty fun... especially sports cars), just the idea that all my nights and free time would be used up for the foreseeable future bugged me.

So then came my first carless Saturday in years. I got dressed up in business casual attire (which is rule number one when buying something big: Always dress up nicely... Don't be one of those douchebag loser fags who goes house-hunting or car shopping in a wife-beater, flip flops, and 3-day old beard, you'll get treated like the asswipe that you look like and probably are), and went over to the local Ford place to check out the newest Mustangs and trucks they had in. The salesman who approached me was pretty cool, and he let me check out as many cars as I wanted to, rub up against the sexier ones, and he answered every question I threw at him, including "How many mongoloids does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" The answer is "Duuuuuuurh! Dur-duh duuuuh durrrrrr!"

So Salesman Will let me take two Mustangs, three trucks, and one van (that looked like the A-Team van without the sweet red stripe on it) out for some test drives, but I just kept going back to the blue Supercrew F-150. She was like a leaf on the wind, so I called her Serenity... Only to myself of course — it doesn't help get you a lower price if the salesman knows you've already had sex in the car with a 30 year-old Michelle Pfeiffer in your head. I did act all nonchalant about the whole thing though, and followed him back to his office where he looked up as many cash-back offers and model year-end deals as he could to entice me with. The total came to $4,500 off the sticker price right then and there. I still waffled. He tried to pull that "Well, how much can you afford to pay each month?" bullshit on me, but I pulled out my pre approved blank check from Capital One saying, "Already covered. 3.55%, bitch. I just want the best fucking price you got. What can you do for me?... No, put your pants back on, I mean what else can you take off... No, again with the pants..."

After stapling his drawers on for good, Salesman Will took me back to the financing guy in one of the back rooms. Finance Chris hadn't seen the light of day in months it seemed, but after I threatened to walk out twice he threw coffee in his droopy face and promised me a 2.99% loan rate, and to reduce the price an additional $1,000, and take $1,000 off the cost of a 100,000 mile bumper to bumper warranty (which I'm usually against, but Christ! Only $400 out of my pocket [and folded into the loan] for that?!). So I let him continue with his paperwork (mostly 'cause it looked like he was about to slit his wrists if I left). When he was done printing everything out and sorting everything that I had to sign in front of me, I stopped the pen just an inch away from my first John Hancock, turned to Salesman Will and said, "Hey, Will... I reeeeally liked the look of those Rhino Liners that you guys do for truck beds... You think you can do something about that for me?" He looked at me like "Are you serious, mothafucka?!" but I just looked back and put the pen down softly on the table. He ran to "talk to [his] boss." I shot the shit with Finance Chris for about 10 minutes (letting him know that there was a black man in the White House now, and that the Gulf of Mexico was dead thanks to the British). Then Salesman Will came back with a big grin on his face and said, "Happy Birthday! We'll throw that Rhino Liner in for free! Yay!"

I signed, shook, and left. Monday I returned the piece of shit car to Avis, picked up my freshly lined Serenity, and drove that beautiful big bitch home while riding 8 feet off the fucking road. God I love trucks! Then I got home and pulled her into the garage...

She fit by inches. That Styrofoam board from my bookcase on the right kept her 2 inches from the wall to my living room, and the garage door closed exactly 1.34 inches from her rear bumper. Holy fuck. I will never be able to park her inside like this when I'm drunk!

Anyway, I'm still debating what to call her now. Yeah, I like "Serenity," but looking at her in this picture (which is made up of two shots Photoshopped together because you can't get her all in one like this) she looks like a he, and his name looks like it could be "Optimus." Yeah, I was saving Optimus for my first born son, but it might just be too fitting to pass up here. Fuck... Decisions, decisions.

But anyway, a very choice auto. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

Note to self 368: 07/15/2010

It was 20 years in the making, but I finally got my ass back up in a tree to start and complete a ropes/zip-line course. Team Greenwood threw together the expedition, and I figured it was time to get over my silly acrophobia by doing something 60 - 80 feet up in the air with my crotch hooked up to about 50 different harnesses at once. Usually when I get all decked out in that many straps and shackles and bonds there's a "safe word" like "Sgt. Pepper," or "banana split," but out in nature the woodland creatures only mock you when start crying to mommy. Oh, and your friends. They mock you too.

So a few weeks ago Team Greenwood and I drove out to North Bumblefuck, Georgia to the zip-lining place there. We did the whole safety class and all, but then, once we were up our first 40-foot platform we shoved one of the two instructors off the wooden plank and the games began (the second instructor was totally into our whole "Thunderdome in the Trees" battle royale we had planned, and even taught us how to sling our paintball guns over our shoulders while climbing. So we let Cindy live).

We first split off into two teams of four and began to make our preparations for both offensive and defensive maneuvers. Team Rossman got me, the Corster, Mehve, and Tuba Jill. Foxfur, Psycho Weasel, Shawngie, and Bahama Mama were on the other team (Team Not-Rossman).

Paintball in the trees is very different from paintball on the ground, let me tell you. There's only so many "paths" you can take on a zip-line course, and it's usually only in one direction... Though I totally threw off Team Not-Rossman by being able to shimmy back up a zip-line like a lemur with a stomach full of popped cocaine balloons (trust me on this one... they're fast). Things started out alright with Mehve tagging out Foxfur, and then Corster tagging Psycho fifty times in the face, but then somebody on Team Not-Rossman started using live ammunition — seriously, NOT cool — and we had to book it over the swingiest, twitchiest, most shakeable rope bridge I've ever seen. Holy shit... Even with all my safety gear I thought I was going to die. Or piddle my pants.

Yeah... My fear of falling from giant heights had not dissipated any since that summer camp years before. Luckily though Shawngie turned out to be a double agent I planted in Team Not-Rossman, and after he sabotaged the rest of the competition (the sheriff's search team found them all eventually) he joined me at my side and laid down the ground rules to my companions....

 

Well, that's actually a lie. Shawngie did in fact drop Mehve — but it wasn't his fault! Mehve tried to gut Shawngie with a sword after Shawngie pulled him back up after his talking to! Lucky for Shawngie though it was only a toy lightsaber that I convinced Mehve could really eviscerate people after I pulled that joke on him with that neighborhood kid and the pig intestines... Who'd have thought THAT prank would ever pay off!

 

Anyway, as were the rules of Thunderdome in the Trees, only one man was allowed to walk out of the woods alive or not limping, and soon the rest of us turned on each other like a group of guys fighting over who didn't have to take a girl to the newest Twi-fag movie. Hammers, steel-toed boots, and the remainder of the paintballs were all used in that final deathmatch, and the rest of my companions fell that day like little flying squirrels who had their gliding membranes carved off while holding small rocks.

 

It was a day I'll never forget, and apparently now it's an institution at that zip-line course! Sometimes they'll let a group of suicidal freaks like us go out and raise hell all they want (as long as most don't make it out), and sometimes the guides and instructors just institute a "Thunderdome in the Trees" themselves when their tour group proves to be a bunch of namby-pamby whiny city folk who think they're doing Davey Crocket shit by taking the super-safe and un-bear-filled course high above the dangerous ground. If you ever need to get rid of some annoying family members or some shit, take them all out there, then slip instructor Cindy a fifty and whisper to her "Thunderdome Party" just before you make it out to the high part of the course. She'll know what to do.

 

Note to self 366: 06/03/2010

It all started a few weeks ago with one of my "Paint and Drink" classes after work. My friend Candice and I each bought a bottle of red and got busy painting the beach scene that the teacher was demonstrating. That was not the main reason for me being there that night though. Candy had told me that in one class that I didn't attend there was this cute redhead around my age who was unattached. I do NOT pass up cute redheads (of ANY age), so I made sure I went to the next class.

Ivy sat across from me, and we flirted the whole class. She was a bit husky, sure, but a redhead, and very cute. I gave her a mental check mark (that's a good thing). By the time the course was over though I was pretty blitzed (after finishing up my whole bottle by myself, and strangely enough making one of my best paintings too), but I made sure to ask Ivy out on a "for real like true date... With food and stuff. And drinks!" She said yes and I told her I'd call her to set up the specifics.

Well, I was off on vacation the following week meeting Mickey and the gang down in Orlando, and the next week she was in Florida herself helping out a good friend who had just given birth. I liked that — it told me she was compassionate, liked kids, and loyal as fuck to use her vacation time in such a manner. She got another check mark for that.

Our phone calls were pretty short and almost curt, but I've mastered "early dating phone conversations" a loooong time ago, and was able to end calls on a high note as we made our long awaited plans for dinner that upcoming weekend.

I got to the fancy Italian restaurant 15 minutes early (finding that most women I've gone out with show up 5 to 10 minutes early themselves), and although I protested, the maitre' d insisted that I sit down at my reserved table immediately... By myself... In front of a crowded dining room. Normally this doesn't bother me all that much (I eat out by myself enough to be comfortable at a restaurant without a guest), but when you're at a place at 8 at night, at a table for 2, and you're just staring at the menu with a Peroni, drinking and rereading the Soup of the Day for the 20th time by your lonesome, it is kind of blush-worthy... Especially when your date doesn't arrive until 10 after with no apology or excuse. I took away a check mark for that.

I was so grateful when Ivy did indeed show up that I quickly stood, walked her to her seat and sat down again without even seeing what she was wearing. I told her she looked fantastic of course, but was still just too relieved to pay attention to any details at that point. What I DID notice was that she looked pissed. NEVER ask a girl (especially on the first date) if she's mad at something — the answer is always YES, and you never want to know why. Oh, she'll tell you if she wants to, but don't ask about it; I learned this a long time ago and will never forget it thanks to the cleaning bill. So I just let her gruffness go and let the small talk begin.

Me: "So you're a lawyer who works for the city, huh? Are you a defense attorney?"

Ivy: "...................................No...........*Sigh*.... Jeez, no. I'm in the Prosecutor's office."

Me: "Ahhhh, so you're the 'Dan Fielding' of the justice system..."

Ivy: *Staaaaaaaaaaaaare*

Me: "Dan Fielding... From Night Court?.."

Ivy: "I KNOW who Dan Fielding is. I love that show......"

Me: "Did you watch Boston Legal? Denny Crane is my idol."

Ivy: "When the HELL is my drink getting here?!"

That was two check marks off, and two swigs of my pre-dinner pint.

Most of the meal was like that. I'd ask a question, she'd stare at me, I'd say something sort of relevant, she'd answer like a cunt and then turn to the glass of wine or some of her eggplant parmesan. I started to get a little miffed myself near the end of the meal, but then conversation turned to physical fitness. We both apparently worked out at the same gym 3 or so times a week (at different times of day), but she also liked to go rowing with a friend 5 to 6 times a week, in the morning, for an hour! Holy shit, I was impressed! That is quite the physical challenge there. Ivy then started to lighten up a bit with my appreciation to her workout efforts, and by dessert she was finally chatty. I thought to myself, "You know what, Rossman, she could actually be a keeper. Cute smile, good work out ethic, loves kids, worships Joss Whedon... She might be the one!"

The check came and she made no move for it (not a deal breaker at all, I just love to see women at least pretend to want to pay), and then I walked her out to her car. Not one "thank you for the $80 meal you just paid for"... I told her I had a good time and would like to see her again, and she tried her hardest to not roll her eyes as she said "Oh yeaaaah, fun."

I took a step back from her and looked at her. "Seriously?" I asked. "Really? How the hell was this night so horrible for you? You got a free meal, LOTS of wine, and you got to look at a handsome man for 2 hours... Did you REALLY need to be somewhere else so badly tonight? Are you PMSing or are you really just a bitch?" She turned angry then.

"Oh yeah, I went there," I said, my mouth starting to snarl like Two-Face from Batman. "I don't care if you can make my legal life a living hell, you acted like a bitch for most of this night. If you didn't want to go out with me this badly, why did you say 'yes' when I asked you out?"

She furrowed her eyebrows together and just stared at me, trying to make my head go all Scanners I thought.

"*Pssssh* Whatever," I growled as I started to turn away and head over to my car... but then I stopped. I had gotten my first good look at Ivy's full figure... And my GOD was it full. Her ever-so-slightly chubby top-half BALLOONED into the fattest ass I'd seen in person in a long time. She was maybe 5'5", but she must have weighed at least 230. Maybe 240. Honest to Christ, it was like somebody took one of the Clumps' asses and thighs and placed a normal girl's waste and torso on top of it. "What the FUCK!" was all I could manage. "YOU go to the gym 3 times a week, on TOP of 5 or 6 days of rowing on the river?! BULLSHIT! Holy fuck! Do you eat your weight in hay twice a day? Either you're lying, or the other 15 hours a day that you're awake and NOT 'working out' you're normally shoving Ding Dongs into your mouth like a blue whale swimming through krell! Is that why you were so pissed when you first showed up? You hadn't eaten in five minutes?"

That was when the shoes started flying. Jesus they were huge too! One hit me on the head and I thought Iron Mike Tyson caught me with a left hook. Anyway, needless to say nothing came of the evening, and after explaining to Candice about how I don't like FAT fat asses, I got the usual "don't judge a book by its cover" speech that chicks have ready to go when defending their obese friends. Hey women, would you date an enormously FAT fuck because he makes you laugh? No. No you wouldn't. And I doubt you'd date one who hated you on top of that. So shut the fuck up and hit the goddamn treadmill while leaving the Twinkies on the shelf at Kroger.

Note to self 365: 04/01/2010

This past weekend my 3 year-old nephew invented a new game. The game is called "Disappearing Monkey." In it, you play the bad guy and he's the disappearing monkey in question. You chase after him, and when he's cornered he yells out "Disappearing monkey!" You then have to stop while he runs to another location (where he'll usually laugh at you as you're still looking at the place where he just was), and then the chase can begin again. Sometimes he'll "reappear" clutching the wall, claiming that he's crawling up it.

I finally stopped him at one point and asked "What exactly IS this disappearing monkey? Is it a person?"

He then looked at me as if I had just told him that the sky was made of pizza and told me matter of factly, "He Wolverine friend. He blue and have a tail. DISAPPEARING MONKEY!"

I've never been more proud of the little guy.

Note to self 364: 03/25/2010

Last week Karen finally got me off my butt in order to go out and do something different for a change (that didn't involve copious amounts of artistic nudes found on the internet). She had found this "Brush and Bottle" course given at a local winery in which for 3 - 4 hours one night they have an artist teach you how to paint a certain picture while you get blitzed on some fine wines. In all honesty, this is a brilliant idea.

So we got there at about 5:50 for the 6PM class, but the place was already packed from a 5 o'clock wine tasting that the place was also hosting... What a bunch of hoity-toity dicks and twats. I absolutely love it when douchebags think that they're so sophisticated because they're wearing a sweater vest, have their noses pointed up, have a glass of chianti in their pasty hands, and can chortle like a fruity Brit (redundant, I know).

Anyway, Karen dragged me to the upstairs room where the painting was to take place — after I bitchslapped about 5 townies and drank all their booze that they never even sipped but just swirled around in their glasses — and we found some seats in the back corner. That bit of wine was just the right amount to get me in a good mood despite being the only guy there, and one of only three who was under fifty in the class. Upon looking around at my fellow twenty-five other students (all of whom stared at me contemptuously like I must be Karen's gay friend) I then marched right back down to the store and bought a $25 bottle of something off the cheap shelf. I think it was red. Karen and I got two more bottles before the evening was over, but now to get back to the painting.

It had been over a full decade since I last picked up a paintbrush. I have pretty much become nothing but a Photoshop guy in that time, seeing as all my art projects (both work and personal) have only been needed for either magazines or digital distribution. It's a shame really, but the desire to take it up again is what really got me involved in the class that night. That and the alcohol.

Lisa, our instructor, soon came up from the wine tasting herself and introduced us to the seascape picture we were going to paint that evening... after pointing out to the other old bitties — who hadn't yet noticed that I was there — that yes, "there is a (probably gay) man in the class tonight, but don't let that *hic* scare any of you... He probably won't bite... Unless you ask! HA!" To which I responded by walking up to her and explaining that both Karen and I needed more canvasses and LOTS more paint, since I decided to paint Lisa's portrait, but found that the 12" X 16" canvasses that we were already given weren't even close to wide enough — even when combined — and I ran out of flesh color paint after two tubes were used up. She shut up after that and started showing us where to start and how to get the desired sky and water effects that we needed.

I have to admit that my sky and sea were both perfect. Everything I learned from Dana Eber's Color Theory art class in college just flooded back into me (and damn, I can't believe I remembered my instructor's name). But then I made the small (inebriated) mistake of painting my island too close to the viewer, which meant less sailboats in my picture than in everyone else's (unless I wanted to paint the Hyannis Harbor after the Kennedys had a weekend-long kegger and they each tried to cram their boats in the same parking space)... I tried to remember Uncle Bob Ross' famous words though, and simply thought of this goof as a "happy little mistake." Karen made it an even "happier mistake" than that though when she started laughing at my GIANT slanted house on the beach, and spilled a good lot of red wine on my angry sea.

Due to Lisa's overuse of the palette knife (the most evil tool of the artist ever), most everybody's sails and boats looked like crap. Mine turned out okay (kind of), but I thought that a pure white sail was too bland, so I tried to turn the schooner into a Water Tribe boat from Avatar - The Last Airbender, what with some blue stripes and (what I sloshedly thought was) a Northern Water Tribe insignia near the top of the biggest sail. I'm honestly amazed it turned out as well as it did.

Lisa kept *Tsk Tsk*ing my art though, and kept complementing Karen's godawful attempt at adding ants in party hats on the beach in the distance (Karen claims they're "children at a birthday party for a boy they don't really like, but hey! Free trip to the beach and cake and ice-cream!"). After Large Lisa continued to praise even the shittiest works in the room above mine I then decided to see if I could at least make her freak out or visibly piss her off, so I painted the UFO on Fox Mulder's poster ("I want to believe") in the sky above the island. Karen fell over in her chair (wasting half a glass of the good stuff) laughing, and there were audible gasps from the older ladies in the room when I asked if Lisa thought the starcraft should be beaming somebody up off the island, or just leave it up to the viewer's imagination what the aliens were doing there? She just looked at me like I told her I took a dump in her purse.

I'm going back next week for the fruit bowl still life.

Note to self 363: 02/25/2010

This weekend I decided to take Little J and Big D out to an expensive restaurant, and then a movie, in order to thank them for a ton of shit that they've done for me over the past few months. Dinner was great, and they had never seen Avatar, so I took them to a 3D showing of that after we were all stuffed from the meal.

Well, to set up what was about to happen to me, I think I have to back track a bit. See, over the past 6 months stress and weak will power has allowed me to pack on about 10 lbs (don't look at me like I'm Oprah-sized now, dick lick, I'm 6'4"... 10 lbs isn't all that much on me... It's not even a belt size, fatty). I'm not proud of it, and I've been trying to get back on my bare-fridge diet since at least November... But then the holidays hit, then more work stress, and then an Uber-Week... And well, it never came off, and some more came on.

Okay, back to the movie. So there we were, about 15 minutes early for the show, and they started playing that "First Look" commercial crap that they try to pass off as "entertainment" before the feature presentation. Anyway, the second thing they started showing was Kirstie Alley's new Fat Show on A&E, and my GOD, man, that once hot lass has turned into one ginormous fat ASS. Kirstie Alley (who originally gave me fantastic boyhood dreams when she first appeared on Cheers in the mid '80s) is now roughly the size of Tiger Woods' mistresses... I mean ALL 23 of them put together on one scale. As she was talking about how fat she is (yeah, that's the premise of the show: Kirstie Alley's FAAAAAAAT), her neck was splashing around like the sea in the middle of a hurricane. I swear to Christ that at one point she even jumped up and down and the hardwood floor beneath her pleaded for an uncaring god to end its existence... Sitting in my seat in the theater I prayed for the same deity to put out my own eyes, but in hindsight I knew that would have been a bad thing because the last thing I would have remembered seeing for the rest of my life would have been that fat, fat, fatty brontosaurus of a woman causing a 6.5 on the Richter Scale in her own living room.

It was at that point that I had new resolve: I WOULD take off those 10 lbs, and Kirstie would help me. I vowed to start the KIRSTIE ALLEY DIET. Whenever I feel like a little snack in between meals, or another slice of pizza, or one more cookie, I will think of Kirstie Alley's rippling cankles. Whenever I think, "Meh, I can skip the gym today... It's just one day," I will remind myself of Kirstie Alley's fat, fat mouth chowing down on deviled eggs... I must drop these pounds quickly so that I can stop fixating on her... I just might end up scarring myself for life... But at least I'll be skinny I guess.

Note to self 362: 02/17/2010

Call me callous, but I don't understand one specific thing about the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. Yeah, we're getting more snow in the Southern US than they are in the frozen canuck mountains, 100+ miles North of Seattle, but that's not what I don't understand. I find it humorous that some papers published a picture of Pedobear as one of the Olympic mascots of this year's games, but that doesn't really confuse me. I found it really sad (and odd) how lame the Opening Ceremonies were, what with the producers sucking the proverbial Native American dick by making the entire 2 hour show about the fact that there were people in this land before Columbus showed up, but that didn't make me ponder the lameness of it all (I've come to accept that the people who put these things on are PC fags who don't understand what "politically correct" really means [i.e. it means "anybody who tries to be PC is talking out their ass"])... No, what I don't understand beyond EVERYTHING else is how the Olympic Games are being dedicated to an *ahem* "athlete" who sucked so bad at his sport that it KILLED him.

Yes, that Georgian luge participant, Nodar Kumaritashvili — who fucked up every possible way you can while riding on a sled at 90 miles per hour down an ice slide — was a third-rate moron who should NOT have been in the Olympics in the first place. Yes, the media is turning him into a martyr (for ratings), but talk to anybody in the world who's ever ridden the luge before and they'll tell you the same thing that the rest of the Olympic lugers and their coaches are saying today (that nobody is really reporting on because it's not as sensational as it could be): "Nodar fucked up big time because he sucked at the luge. He pushed left when he should have aimed right, then completely screwed up his recovery... He fucked things up so bad that he actually became airborne, and that's when he smashed into that steel pole and died. The course was average (not too fast, and hardly any more dangerous than any other luge course), but he just sucked." And to add insult (to the rest of the REAL Olympians) to injury (to the Georgian), afterwards, the Olympic officials made changes to the track to make it as slow as possible. It's now one of the slowest luge courses in the world... Yeah, that's Olympic right there.

I don't mean to speak ill of the dead... Okay, that's a lie, but here my point is that we shouldn't immortalize this wienie just because his own stupidity turned him into a posterboy for Darwinism. I've known people who've crashed their cars and died because they were too dumb to hang up the phone before putting the keys in the ignition, you don't see them dedicating the Indianapolis 500 to them, do you? Nodar was afraid of the course (no other luger could tell you why); he told his father this just before his practice. He fucked up, he fall down go boom. Yeah, let's dedicate a $1.7BILLION event in his honor. Christ... Well, by that logic, if I die from too much internet pr0n I hope that the World Wide Web can be dedicated in memory to me. I'll start working on it right away!

Note to self 360: 12/16/2009

This has been a holiday season for the ages!... No, not because it's been awesome, but just because I've never before come to the realization that it was the middle of December so cluelessly in the past. On top of that, this entire year has sucked diseased whore twat. No, I'm not just being a whiny-cranky-pants for no good reason — why don't YOU try paying 2 mortgages for 12 fucking months and see how YOU feel. Bastards...

Past the bitching, I actually did try to do something about my grinchiness in order to try and get into the Christmas spirit as it were. Well, technically nature started it first. The town was blanketed in about an inch of snow last weekend, and try as one might, it is nigh impossible to stay in a bitter mood when everything is glistening with such goodness. And it was wet, sticky snow too, just perfect for making rock-core snowballs to hurl at little deviants trying to mess up my perfectly glittery landscape.

I then spent the rest of my Saturday putting up my tree (meaning I just took it out of my closet already decorated and lit) and watching all my seasonal and traditional movies that I drag out every year: Scrooged, Die Hard, Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, Always My Santa, and Sorority Girls With Giant Titties and Firm Asses 5.

Then Sunday came around and I bumped into The Skipper at the Sea Wench Pub... Well, I bumped into him after downing a few too many eggnogs (which got me up on the bar doing some spastic Riverdancing), getting smashed on the head by a thrown bottle, and then toppling onto the gentleman sailor and his table with a sickening "THUD!" Luckily it was The Skipper himself who throw the bottle, so he didn't beat me as much as he could have/would have otherwise; he seemed to understand the reality of "cause and effect" better than say Carl or Hitler would.

After I bought him a few beers I was able to talk the crusty old man into doing some caroling/public urination with me. Things started out well enough (well, relatively), but then Old Lady Barnes had to see us writing our names in the snow and call the coppers on us in a huff. Yes, we were doing it in her yard and on her dog, but it was just a silly prank... Though when The Skipper does pee out something just one molecule away from paint thinner I guess I can see her point, but whatever. At least the cops didn't catch us when we started making yellow snowballs and threatened to throw them at anybody who followed us.

After that we wandered over to Dr. Dave's place, and while still a little sloshed we started demanding that he make us some flying reindeer or some fat, wish-making elves. The good doc said he didn't have time for any of our "shenanigories," but just to "shut [our] pie holes" he did give us a particle-activating top hat that he invented, telling us to "go suck a snowman." Oh man did we ever! I mean, we at least MADE a snowman, and when I put that Abraham Lincoln-looking stove-pipe on his quickly constructed melon our creation did indeed come to life... But because we never put in a snow-brain in the creature's snowskull he didn't wish us a "Happy Birthday!" or anything as jaunty or goofy... Instead he just said "NGAAAAAaaarrrBLTHHHHH! YAAAAAAARRRRP! YAAARRRRRP! BULLTWTHP!!! NGYAAAA! YEEEEEEEAAAAAAARRRrrrrr!" It was ear-piercing and annoying, so The Skipper put him down with a snow shovel to the back of the showhead, and then we used his remains to build ourselves a 6'5" buxomly snow queen who we called Melty Lancer. Boy did she ever!

So in the end I guess I did get a little less Scroogey... At least when the feeling came back into my lil' Rossman. Unfortunately, because he bogarted the snowbabe so much, The Skipper had a pretty bad case of frost bite on his "pirate treasure." Though to be sure, he DID ask her to bite.

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