Note to self 379: 05/04/2011

This has been an in-fucking-sane week. It all started last Wednesday with a monster storm that dumped record amounts of rain on us for a 12 hour period, and also set a record for the use of our town's tornado sirens which ran from 9AM to 9PM (and a record of number of tornadoes in a 24-hour period). The sky was a dark green-grey all day, and from 7PM to 9 the lighting was so frequent it looked like Zeus and Thor were having a disco party just above the clouds.

Anyway, the shit really hit the industrial-sized fan at 4:30 that afternoon. That's when the power went out. Not for our office, not for our street, not for our town, but for half the goddamn state. As we heard from scattered radio reports as we braved the 60+ mph winds, hail, and dropped lakes on us as my coworkers and I each tried to make our ways to the relative safety of our houses, a main power station was either hit by lightning or by one of the hundreds of tornadoes that was spawned from this uber-storm from Hell... You think I'm over exaggerating, don't you... No, we had 5 tornadoes within 10 miles of my house (and over 340 total in this storm), giant antebellum, pre-Civil War mansions were turned into empty lots, an entire town just off of GA-75 was wiped off the map, and Tuscaloosa, AL, home of the Crimson Tide, was hit by an F-4 that lasted for over 25 miles, touching ground the entire way. As some redneck schlump named Daniel Berry was quoted in the paper the next day while looking at the rubble of his destroyed home, "I don't know what the crap came through here, but it was evil."

So I stayed up to about 10PM that night reading my Fables collections by candle light and checking my ceiling for any signs of leakage. I woke up the next morning to the most beautiful blue sky I'd ever seen, got word that the office was closed that day and the next — seeing as the power plant that was hit didn't have any replacement parts for what was broken in stock — and it would take 3-5 days to fix, along with apparently around 50 or so giant steel towers carrying power cables around the state. Then I heard on the radio that just 15 miles North of me the power never went out, and that they had food and gas to spare. Huzzah! (I only had one sleeve of crackers, two spoonfuls of peanut butter, and two Diet Cokes left to my name.... Hey, when the snow and ice season was over I ate all my emergency supplies. Fuck you, Mr. "I Plan Ahead Douche".)

So I packed up my truck with my computer, 20 DVDs, 15 books, and all the clothes I'd need for a week, and planned to head North, get gas, and then just keep driving to the next big city where I'd get a cheapo hotel room and just wait for the call from my boss that work was back open. Before I drove off though I did tag my garage door with a huge gang graffiti sign to make it look like I was already hit by looters.

I got caught in some heavy traffic about 10 miles up the highway, but then started taking side roads and country lanes until I finally came across a little hick town in the middle of nowhere with two working gas stations. There were only about 4 cars in line for each pump! Long story short, I chuckled directly into the faces of all the local yokels who were flabbergasted at the amount of people overrunning their Mayberry-like gas stations and grocery stores (the Piggly Wiggly's parking lot was a THIRD FULL!), and it was just as I was getting to the highway that I got a call from my parents inviting me to their house to sit this outage out. I weighed the options in my head: sit in a human-bodily-fluid-stained hotel room watching The Wire, Red Dwarf, and a ton of anime and action movies on my 21-inch computer monitor, or head on over to my parents' house, get warm home-cooked meals, free room, and see some old friends. It was a lot longer drive (about 5 hours), but fuck it, my truck was full and I could make the whole trip on one tank of gas — and back again probably. So I cut across 3 lanes, a grassy median and two hitchhikers, and high-tailed it over to my parents' place.

A good time was had by all. I watched reruns of the royal wedding with my mom while she commented about fancy dresses and high British protocol, I met my dad for lunch that Friday, went out to eat with friends and family all weekend, rented The Social Network with my parents (never realized the Napster douchebag had such a big part in Facebook's founding... Hmmm, that means I still have a shot at billions of Ruples myself!), went shopping for candles, bottled water, canned foods, and other non-perishables to last me the rest of the storm season, and then just chilled-out as best I could.

That Saturday night though I began to get a little nervous about the state of things in my neighborhood. For some reason I started believing that a mini-ecosystem based on The Road Warrior had spontaneously erupted around my part of town amid the still electricity-void emergency, so I started trying to contact my neighbors to see if all was still well... Goddamn cell phones! HALF the people on my street do not have land lines anymore apparently (even the people next door who claim they have a security system... which REQUIRES one), but by using spokeo, whitepages.com, and a ton of other intelligence gathering sites I was able to find 6 neighbor numbers. Of those, only one was home. That phone call went like this, almost verbatim:

Me: "Hello, is this the Kettlebury residence? Is Martin Kettlebury there?"

Elderly woman: "Hello?"

Me: "HELLO, IS THIS THE KETTLEBURY RESIDENCE? Is MARTIN KETTLEBURY there?"

Elderly woman: "This isn't Martin........"

Me: "Ummmmm. Hi, Mrs. Kettlebury? I, uh, my name is—"

Elderly woman: "I'm Martin's mother. I'm Jezebel."

Me: "Faaaaaaaaaaaaantactic. Okay, Jezebel, I'm your neighbor. I live across the street from you. I was wondering if the neighborhood had power yet. Do you know? Can you see any lights that don't have already deceased family members in them goading you to join them?"

Elderly woman: "Hello?"

Me: ".....Oh my God..... Hello, mother? Hi, it's me, Martin. Do you have lights on at our place?"

Elderly woman: "Martin?"

Me: "Yes, mother. Are the lights back on yet?"

Elderly woman: "Martin's just down the hall. I can hear him.... Who is this? Is this a rapist?"

Me: "I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU IF YOU DON'T TELL ME IF YOU HAVE LIGHTS ON OR NOT!!!!"

Elderly woman: "Martin? Is that you?"

I gave up at that point, but swore to TP the Kettlebury yard when I got back into town. And set it on fire. Maybe put a dead hooker on the hood of their car and call the cops.

Sunday came and I was told that the office was back online, and that work would be business as usual on Monday, so I packed up all my stuff and hit the road again pretty early in the afternoon, only to be stopped in bumper to bumper traffic for about 6 miles (and 54 minutes) by the STUPIDEST fucking waterheads who ever got licenses to drive, at the GA-75 exit 348, where the trees and town were splintered or blown away to Oz (the magical land, not the prison TV show). I swear to Satan that half the morons rubbernecking at the damage had pulled out cameras and were taking pictures or video of the destruction... They slowed down to a crawl on a 3 lane highway to take pictures of something that wasn't there. Okay, ONE of the hotels at that exit was still partially standing, but that's it. They risked a major accident to take a picture of that. Christ, if they want firsthand photos of death and destruction and dismay so badly I'll send them to Tripoli or Baghdad if they want. One way.

So I eventually got back to my house (still dark), inspected it for any damage other than the pretend forced entry that I did to it to make people think it was already ransacked, and then unpacked everything. It wasn't until I walked by my darkened fridge that I remembered that I had forgotten to empty it out before the giant Exodus that previous Thursday. It took me a few minutes to gather up my courage and brace myself for opening the door... It wasn't enough. The ground chuck I had in my freezer was oozing red juices upon my unfrozen Healthy Choice fish dinner. All my other frozen foods (including, most regrettably, my 8 cartons of ice-cream [everybody has a weakness, mine just tastes much better than your skanky on-again/off-again whore named Janice]) were done for too. What a goddamn waste. And what an odor! It made my neighbor's little yap dog howl in smelly pain! Granted that fucker was actually locked in the freezer with it, but ugh, I felt bad for him. I then spent the rest of my evening bleaching the shit out of my freezer (the regular fridge wasn't too bad) and bemoaning the criminal destruction of all my fucking Breyer's... Then I made myself a PB&J, read some more by candle light, and when my home was filled with a light haze of candle smoke and carbon monoxide, I quietly closed my eyes and went to sleep.

Since then my daily schedule has been to get up, eat a handful of Raisin Nut Crunch, take the quickest, coldest shower in the universe, dress by flashlight, go to work, go home, pray for death to take me, read a book, go to bed, etc. Despite them sending over power plant people from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Minnesota, they STILL haven't gotten my part of town up and running yet. (I'm getting this update to you by using an unlocked Wi-Fi signal while parked in front of Old Man Jenkins' place over on the rich side of town... Then I plan to download a shit-ton of music and porn, and make a threat to the life of a certain high politician through a new Hotmail account by way of Jenkins' ISP.) My neighborhood has a small airport nearby too! Isn't that kind of an important thing that they need to keep running? Without those crop dusters our farmers then get screwed, and pass the savings on to us, the consumers. Fuck the average consumer! Get the richies' power up first! They need their jacuzzis and hooker electric swings NOW!... I want a hooker electric swing too...

Christ in a bucket, sometimes I just hate modern conveniences (when they completely break down and FAIL). I still have no power and NO ICE-CREAM. Oh, but I do have 25 Arm and Hammer baking soda boxes opened in my freezer.

And thanks to my out-of-the-loopness, I just found out that Obama got shot in the face by our Navy SEALs this weekend!..... Wait, Jenkins is yelling at me that OSAMA got killed this Sunday by our super soldiers.... Oh, that isn't quite as newsworthy, but much cooler.

Note to self 378: 04/20/2011

This past Saturday night I took a lovely woman out to a decently fancy restaurant. Little did I realize that it was also Prom Night, and we would be the only two patrons in the place who were over 18. Not that this was terrible or anything, seeing as the easily eavesdropped conversations that we listened in on were absolutely hilarious and juvenile — what with boys and girls being so damn nervous that they didn't know whether they should help a girl with her chair, use a new fork with every course, or not make fart jokes at the table at their waitress' expense (the answer to this last one is NEVER make jokes at the expense of the person who handles your food). The only people I really had to feel sorry for was the wait staff themselves. They were going to get Jewed that night, there was no doubt about it.

So Amanda and I had a lovely meal, but just as she got up to powder her nose near the end, I heard one of the high school guys at the table for twenty just behind me say, "Oh geez, Melanie, you are such a goddamn slut! Fuck yeah you are!" Then he snortled.

That's when I sighed, got up and walked over to the group of dorky-looking guys in ill-fitting tuxes, and cute girls in bright, poofy, never-gonna-wear-them-again sparkly dresses, and put my hand on Thomas' shoulder (I knew it was Thomas who said that last comment, just like I knew all of their names, what positions they played in football, who was on the dance team as opposed to the cheerleading squad, and who slept with Mr. Rosenburg for an 'A' in Algebra II... because I'd been listening to them TALK VERY LOUDLY for two hours, and no topic was apparently off limits).

"Thomas," I said, "that is no way to talk to a lady." Thomas looked like I just shoved a knife in his face, so backed off a bit, pulled my chair over, made the frightened wienie and his date (one blonde Leslie) scoot apart for me, and I gave them all a much needed lecture.

"Okay, all you guys. Pay attention," I began. "Yeah, Prom Night is fun and all that crazy shit, but really, calm the fuck down. Yeah, a good portion of you are probably going to pop your cherries tonight, but Thomas, you're here with Leslie, so stop flirting pathetically with Melanie by calling her a slut. You're not in kindergarten anymore, and name calling is only how toddlers express their crushes." Both Melanie and Thomas turned bright red at this. "Seriously, don't be dicks, guys. You're only young once, and you can never redo anything in life, like ever. So make it count the first time." They all looked really nervous, so I sighed, leaned back, and put my arms around Thomas' and Leslie's shoulders before continuing.

"And all you ladies, look, your dates here are really going all out and spending a shitload on you tonight. Really, the cheapest thing on the menu is $25 (and I see YOU got the lobster, Brandi), and that doesn't include your appetizer, dessert, flowers, limo, tux rental—" That's when Chip chimed in that he just borrowed his brother's (white) tuxedo, and I told him to shut up and stop ruining his own cause.

"Anyway, ladies, what I'm trying to say is you need to put out some tonight." There were some gasps, and some giggles. I continued. "Senior Prom is a once in a lifetime opportunity — unless you're like that retard Matt Kew who repeated the 12th grade three times — so don't blow it. Really, just going to the dance and then to a lame after-party hosted by Julie's parents while they stand guard over the bedrooms just isn't enough. Now I know that both Tylor and Rod have older brothers who said they could get you all beer and shit if you needed it... Take them up on that." I started making eye contact with them all to drive home the importance of this and my next bit of necessary advice. "And I know that Stephanie's parents are out of town, and her house has at least 4 beds... That spells 'Awesome' to me, amigos. Seriously, it's like your stars are all aligning tonight, guys, you just need to make the effort! And those of you who want a private party, well hell, the Red Light Hotel over on Jefferson doesn't ID anyone, and they love to take cash. No questions. And ever since Mayor Brisbee was caught there with his whore on Christmas Eve he's made sure that all the security cameras in the vicinity got taken down. No evidence at all. You're safe as log in a broken toilet there."

My unsolicited advice went on for another 20 minutes, and got two standing ovations (for my ideas on never mixing alcohol and the most impressive sexual position for beginners — which would be the never-gets-old "Rear Admiral") before I remembered to see if my date had returned yet. Well, she had apparently gotten back some time before, judging how rigidly she was sitting at our table, how locked her open mouth was in a pantomime of a gasp, and how completely dry her unblinking eyes that were staring at me were. I think I said something like "Ruh-ro..." before getting up to apologize and ultimately getting hit in the face with a strawberry daiquiri.

I paid the bill and gave the taxi driver a twenty to take my date home, but then I ran into the gaggle of high schoolers that I had just schooled as they were walking to their waiting limos on the far side of the parking lot.

I told them all "See, you're never too old to learn, champs," but before I could walk away Thomas grabbed my arm, pointed to the new girl whose hand he was holding (that would be Melanie), and whispered in my ear, "Yo, man, Melanie's date just ditched, so like I'm with her, and, you know, LESLIE's now single..."

I guess I was wrong. You CAN do Senior Prom again, and man was everybody impressed at Stephanie's house when Leslie and I pulled off the most absolutely perfect Rear Admiral all around the living room without even bumping into the coffee table. Good times.

Note to self 377: 04/13/2011

This past Friday Carl and I went movie hopping from the child-spy-killer-thriller Hanna to the Natalie Portman starring Your Majesty. Your Majesty was kind of sucky, but Hanna really made me think. It made me think just how fucking cool it would be to have my own genetically altered super-soldier teenage girl to boss around and get to kill people who annoy me! So with that thought in my head Carl and I ran over to the shady Dr. Dave's secret lab (after a few drinks at the Sea Wench Pub first... It was "Pink Panty Pull-down Friday" after all).

Dr. Dave told us that he could do what I wanted, but he'd first need a live fetus and the genetic traits I'd most want to see in my lil' assassin to be. I came up with a list (featuring words such as "some of my DNA for inherited awesomeness, patience, quick, smart, loyal, loving to her father, but emotionally distant to everything and everybody else, especially cats... Make her want to kick all cats she ever sees"), and I gave it to Carl to give to the doc before I headed out to the abortion clinic right around the corner (in order to find some chick who would love a fiver in exchange for her unborn kid not being scraped out of her with a coat hanger, and instead being made into a super soldier assassin). I had to throw in a hot meal and a week's worth of high-grade heroin, but I was able to get that (relatively) high-class whore who works 5th and Side Saddle Street to agree to let Dr. Dave work his medical mojo on her happy little mistake.

The good news is that Dr. Dave was successfully able to mutate the fetus into my special order, and even place her into one of his patented chrono-tanks to fast forward her development and education time in order to get her to at least 13 years-old (mentally and physically) by Monday evening, and the REALLY good news is that Crackwhore Lucy died before even leaving the lab (exploding uterus... that's all you need to know), and I got my five dollars back and never had to buy her that kilo of heroin for her promised week's supply. Is that a lot? I don't know, nor do I care. She's dead. Fuck 'er.

When Monday evening rolled around I found out that there was some kind of bad news to go along with our up till then rosy experiment... It seems that after I gave Carl my list of genetic special features that I wanted in my HannaRoss daughter/assassin, he thought he'd add a few "bonus items" in order to spice shit up. Well, he spiced alright, like a fiery curry right through an ulcer patient. When I went to pick up my HannaRoss I found that Dr. Dave's lab was in even more disarray than usual. I mean, typically he has wires, syringes, bed pans, and lab animals just laying or wandering around, but I've never seen that many severed human limbs and disembodied heads on the floor, on counter tops, and sticking out of ceiling panels. It was obvious to a natural observer like me that some bad mojo was going down.

So there I was, tip-toeing around the body parts of dead policemen and CIA agents (trust me, you'd be able to identify 'em as such if you've seen them as often as I have), quietly calling out for Dr. Dave. I finally found the old codger working on some 3 foot-long tapeworm specimen in a back lab room. I asked him what the hell was going on, but he simply responded that he was looking for the the perfect diet product for a high-paying, rich client in Hollywood who reeeeeally liked to eat, but who had to fit into a size zero dress by next Thursday. I told him I didn't care about the tapeworm, but instead was curious as to why over thirty dead law enforcement officers and intelligence agents were strewn around his underground lab/bunker.

"Oh that," he said, looking around like a toddler staring at a surprise present under a Christmas tree. "Yeah, your genengineered daughter woke up thinking she was a ninja on the Illuminati's hit list, went fucking apeshit, slaughtered my dog with a popsicle stick, set off the fire alarm, and when the authorities arrived they first tried to shoot her — big mistake on their part — and then the G-men tried to recruit her. If she didn't only speak her own made-up language that your insultingly retarded friend Carl replaced her basic language skills with, I'm sure she would have taken them up on their offer of killing at least 1 third-world dictator a week for $1.2million per hit, but alas all she could apparently understand was that a handshake meant 'I will rape your poophole with a cattleprod.' I am of course just guessing — based solely on her reaction — seeing as Carl is dead too and he never told me what precisely he programmed into her head as her primary language.... Would you like to see him? Maybe kick his amputated head around for a while for being such an imbecile? I will if you won't. Oh, and you owe me for my dog. If you find any extra parts out there in the alleys and whatnot, while you search for your homicidal daughter, bag 'em for me. Thanks." Then he went right back to work on his worm.

So after spending a whole 15 minutes looking for HannaRoss on the streets of Athens, GA that night I decided that the fates did not will us to unite (as father and daughter to RULE them all), and I went home and watched a new Mythbusters episode I had recorded instead. So, be careful out there, guys. And if you see a cutie-pie 13 year-old girl who looks confused, wandering around, dressed like a lil' princess in need of a bath, and probably carrying a pink assault rifle, don't try and shake her hand. I hear she somehow acquired a cattle prod all her own.

Note to self 376: 03/09/2011

This was a movie weekend for the ages! Carl, the MegaPlayboy, and I started our theatrical marathon on Friday night by watching All-Star Superman, Blu-Ray FLCL, and Batman/Superman: Apocalypse. We crashed early Saturday morning, but woke up in time to catch Matt Damon's newest Twilight Zone-esque flick The Adjustment Bureau, and then movie hop over to Gore Verbinshi's Rango for a double matinee before going back to my place to see the British dramafest Never Let Me Go, and the South Korean American-wannabe action film The Man From Nowhere. All in all a pretty damn good collection of eclectic flicks, but all that variety caused Car's brain to snap like a twig between Oprah's thighs when she walks, and he began to think that he was one of those crazy guys in the fedoras in The Adjustment Bureau who could teleport through doors and force people to do things they may not want to do for "the greater good."

And so, the MegaPlayboy and I humored him in order to have a good laugh at someone else's expense.

We gave Carl a gay little hipster fedora of his own, and then convinced him that the iPad with the psychedelic screen saver on it was his instructions on how to correct things in the world that were now "not part of the plan" anymore. He took to the streets with gusto.

Then the MegaPlayboy and I ran to Dr. Dave's shady lab, and somehow convinced him (with a couple of dead hookers for experimenting on) to transform our hats (my black UGA baseball cap and the MegaPlayboy's army helmet) into interdimensional portal keys that can indeed turn any doorway into an entrance or exit to any other door. Then we used our new powers to spy on Carl while at his new Adjustment job.

I was pretty impressed with Carl's tenacity. He somehow came to the conclusion that the kaleidoscope color wheel on the iPad was telling him that his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend was wrong for her, and that their relationship (if allowed to continue) would cause the Old Ones to rise from the oceans and rape all the men into submission while the women all made their new overlords pie. The MegaPlayboy and I observed him using a hunting knife to puncture his ex's new man's tires in her driveway, peeping in on his ex's bedroom, calling his ex's home number and using his Optimus Prime voice changer to threaten both their lives, and ordering 20 pizzas and knocking the delivery boy unconscious and stealing them before the poor schmuck even got to the door. This last thing didn't appear to be anything that the iPad was telling him to do; I think it was just because it was Saturday.

Anyway, the MegaPlayboy and I didn't act until Carl punched out his ex's dog (when it finally came sniffing around from the backyard), hoisted the German Shepherd above his head at her front door, and filled with more rage than I ever remember seeing displayed on his face screamed as loud as he could that he would rip the beast in half with his bare hands if they didn't stop "banging like dickless apes on Mars!" Nobody threatens a dog while I'm on duty. Unless it's a Chihuahua. (God I just want to step on those shaking little rats with my football cleats on.) So the MegaPlayboy and I tackled his ass flat onto the frozen ground, made sure the dog got away, and then hit him with a brick to give us a couple of seconds to make a run for it before Carl killed us both.

During the commotion that then erupted (when the police sirens began sounding from down the street, a neighbor started shooting a shotgun into the air, and the dog came back and started trying to hump anything that moved), the MegaPlayboy made a run for it by using his army helmet to open Carl's ex's front door into some dark hallway, and then he quickly slammed it shut behind him. I then ran for Carl's car with the immediate idea of using it to run him over, but just as I opened the door I found that I was in The Kitty Kat nudie bar! I took a precious few seconds to realize that it was my magic hat making this possible, and by that time Carl had knocked me down from behind as he came through the portal too.

Thankfully, Carl then started giving in to his Blind Canadian Rage and began bellowing monosyllabic words like a retarded Hulk. "CARL SMASH!" "CARL EAT YOUR FACE!" "CARL SHIT IN YOUR MOUTH!" That last one made me jump to my feet and find a new door to jump through. Carl followed, and kept such a close tail on me that I never had the chance to shut any door behind me as I passed through.

After about an hour of running (through brothels, more nudie bars, some massage parlors, and an Angelina Jolie film festival... Really, that hat must really have been able to read my mind, or Dr. Dave is an enormous pervert. Or both) I somehow found myself at the top of a skyscraper in New York City (turns out they were doing a Victoria's Secret model shoot there), cornered, with Carl blocking the only door around... The one we had just come out of.

He shut the heavy door behind him, and just as he raised his hands up in a strangling motion and started moving towards me, the door busted open behind him, knocking his ass out of the way and over the side of the building. His "CARL JUST WANT TO SMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!" could be heard as it echoed around for a good ten seconds before a single car alarm went off on the street below. That's when the MegaPlayboy and I looked over the unsafely short balcony and then at each other.

I thanked him for showing up in time, but asked him why he was in a dress, and why he had some titties on him now. He told me that he had run to Dr. Dave's immediately after the scene at Carl's ex's house, and had the good doc perform a special operation on him so that he could hide from Carl's wrath forever, and maybe start a new job letting men touch his chest for money. He said he thought the door he was running through was an entrance to Beirut (which would have been 10Xs safer for him than being in the same country as Carl after interrupting one of his Vengeance Moodswings©®). It sounded like a good plan to me, so I didn't mock it. It would have come in handy if he hadn't accidentally killed Carl himself, making the point moot. God, I could use a sandwich.

Note to self 375: 01/12/2011

I told you! I told all of you! I said that 2011 was going to suck, and here we are, in week 2, and already it's sucked more than 2010 as a whole! Last Sunday night it started: snow and ice and record-breaking, cold temperatures — the likes of which the South hasn't seen since The Blizzard of '93 (I still have my "I Survived the Blizzard of '93" sweatshirt from Blockbuster Video from when I had to go into work that week when everything in fucking town was closed!). And back then, it was really only 6 - 7 inches of snow, and within 2 days it was all gone. Christ, as of this writing it's Tuesday night and my neighborhood streets are still covered in the same 9 inches of snow that fell, and everything's topped with a nice half-inch laminate of pure ice. Still though, this doesn't compare to winters in St. Louis and Michigan, where we'd have school even if it snowed 2 feet; they'd just pile it all up into giant hills in the parking lots and we'd play on them during recess... But that's neither here nor there.

Well, I hadn't been anywhere (other than walks through the frozen streets) since Saturday afternoon, and I was going a wee bit stir crazy. I've had to work from home for these past two days too, and let me tell you, that sucks. Home is my refuge from the real world. Home is where I relax, play video games, watch movies, look up pr0n online, read books, chat with friends, look up pr0n online, and all in all just chill out. The FEEL of home is soothing... To sully that tone with stress and actual results always hurts.

So that's why just a little while ago I took my truck out and just went hog wild! I picked up Chi-Chi and we 4X4'd it over the unplowed and empty streets to the Sea Wench Pub for a little drinky drinky. It was open of course (the owner, Mr. Batshitiggins [not his real name], lives in the back room with the rats and Kuni [whenever he disappoints his father and must live "with the refuse of society to learn why straight A's are important, and why we must not feel our sisters up at the dinner table!"]), and Chi-Chi, Kuni, and I got faced as quickly as we could. Then we came up with the great idea of packaging all of the snow that we could, and saving it for summer, so that we could something, something, snowball, recreate famous Christmas movie scenes, something or another.

It was a great idea in theory, and it was just AWESOME in application too! When the owner went to sleep/passed out from one of Chi-Chi's reserve roofies, we emptied out all of the Sea Wench Pub's industrial freezer (they keep about a dozen cow carcasses back there for some reason, even though they stopped serving burgers back in the Clinton administration), and then we cleaned out all the beer and wine from the basement just to be safe (you'd be impressed by how much my truck can hold). We then started packing up cardboard boxes with as much snow as we could, and stacked them up in the freezer. In the end we pretty much crammed the whole thing as full as we could, but I then came up with the crazy-brilliant idea that we could fill in all the spaces between the boxes with snow for even more awesomeness. So we set up a vacuum cleaner to suck in snow from the outside and blow it all into the freezer with some nifty hose adjustments. Then, for some reason that seemed like a good idea at the time, we used an outside hose and hosed down the whole freezer before shutting the door and cranking the temp in there down to -60 degrees F. Then we ate all the bar nuts and pretzels (in case the power went out, we didn't want them to go bad), and then we did a couple of donuts in the town square before heading back to Chi-Chi's place (so that if the cops come after us for some reason they'll follow the only tracks on the streets to Chi-Chi's place instead of mine!...... Wait. Shit. I'm still at Chi-Chi's place. And if I leave.... Goddammit, it's 2011! Where are our flying fucking cars?!).

Well, the drunkness is starting to wear off now, and I'm going to have to go into work tomorrow (I'm actually reeeeeally looking forward to it). And just think, in the summer, when Global Warming raises its pesky head like it does every summer, we'll have snow to spare! Nobody has EVER thought of this befo-....Wait..... Oh goddammit! Chi-Chi! You motherfucker! You didn't come up with this! This was a goddamn Calvin and Hobbes cartoon! We just destroyed a man's livelihood, stole all his beer, and murdered his sister all for nothing! Damn is my face red....

Note to self 373: 12/01/2010

So Thanksgiving occurred, and in some respects it was a rousing success, but in others it sucked Steve Spurrier's hairy ballsack. Things all started out with an Uber-Week wherein I had the PS3 game Eternal Sonata to play amidst shit-tons of garbage food to pig out on (mozzarella sticks, buffalo wings, mini triple chocolate cakes, ice-cream, pizza, muddy buddies, M&Ms, and some mini fillet mignons Hors D'Oeuvres). I also got in a ton of movies in from a pretty good Blu-ray sale at Amazon the very Friday that everything began, so when I realized that Eternal Sonata was nothing but a boring piece of crap puke after about 15 hours in, I switched to watching all of HBO's The Pacific mini series, Hot Tub Time Machine, and Back to the Future. And when I finished those I started playing Metroid: Other M — which when combined with the Red Bull and all that food led to some funky dreams where I was fighting the Japs on Iwo Jima, and then Marty McFly and Doc Brown showed up and started yelling at me that I had to go back with them to save Chopin from dying and having a shitty RPG made about his life, but instead we found ourselves in a wrecked space ship overrun by tons of strange creatures and I had to dress up in some eye-bleedingly bold-colored armor and shoot missiles at everything until the hot tub with John Cusack in it blew up. Maybe it was just too many buffalo wings.

Anyway, so that was all going well, and a good time was had by me, but then I had to drive in to my parents' house for the big food and family holiday itself (before I had even completed Metroid even). Not really something to complain about (I like my parents), I just hate the drive. But I still got there before my siblings, and got to hang out with the people who brought me into this world for a few days all by myself. We partied, met the UGA mascots (Uga VIII and Hairy Dawg), got the house ready for the rest of the family, and I even broke my finger in my truck's heavy as fuck door after helping my mom shop for food for the turkey day. It was quite a sight: there was blood everywhere, the pain was excruciating as my finger was still wedged in the door as I almost passed out and fell to my knees, and after I unthinkingly yanked my flattened finger out (instead of reopening the door first) another blast of even more intense pain rippled through my arm straight into my brain and I let loose the loudest "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" I have ever shrieked — even louder and more tormented than the one I screamed after getting that paintball pellet in me left teste that one time. Then I kicked my truck, and while hyperventilating I still found the strength to push that fucking supermarket cart back up to the store so that it wasn't left in the middle of the parking lot. It wasn't till I got back to the truck and climbed in that I remembered my dear little mother was still there... Horrified by the blood, my shallow breathing, and apparently my profanity (which as I looked around I could still see women and children staring at me in disbelief and shock). I just cradled my hand to my chest like I was an embarrassed mentally handicapped child who pooped his pants on the playground, and then I actually managed to drive us back to the house without passing out, killing anybody (including myself and my mother), or yelling out any more naughty words.

What pissed me off about the injury even more than the horrendous crack in my finger bone itself was the fact that it might cause me to miss seeing the new Harry Potter movie with Tammi With An "i" and Whorey Lori. Well, I just iced that fucking digit up, wrapped enough gauze on it to make King Tut jealous, and just told Tammi With An "i" that it was just a Cruciatus curse gone horribly wrong. Good movie, by the way... Well, what I saw of it in between passing out from the pain and the blood loss. I think I caught about 50 to 60% of the whole thing. And that was after accidentally sitting through two showings.

When I got back to the house though, that's when I got the bad news... My brother's kids either had lice or 103-degree fevers. They would still come, but it meant that Thanksgiving would be postponed by two days... But I'd like to think that I've grown a little since a few years ago when hearing that my favorite holiday of the year (outside of my own Uber-Weeks) was going to be pushed back... I only went out to my truck and imitated Fry's scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off when he's upset that he knows he'll go and pick up Ferris and do everything that he asks him to despite the fact that he's dying (i.e. bashing my head on my steering wheel, honking the horn, and screaming "AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!" as loud as I could). No dead orphans this time.

Anyway, so everybody eventually gathered, family pictures were taken, head lice was shared, and a 26 pound turkey was pretty much devoured. THEN... it happened. My father, brother, his two oldest, and I went to the UGA/GT game. Yeah, UGA's had the shittiest season they've had in a lifetime this year, but whenever offered, I always go to a game to support my Bulldogs. And my GOD, was that a night I'll never forget. No, we still sucked a big, hairy, canine dick that night, but Georgia Tech sucked more. We eventually won, and I was able to watch all the Techies trudge out of the stadium in absolute disgrace... It was so worth the freezing temps (the coldest I remember that game being since the '96 Georgia Ice Bowl). I didn't even feel bad for peeing on them from the balcony over the exit this time (they were such loud and obnoxious dicks this year... I even loved when that one douchebag in full body paint started screaming "It's in my eye!!"). They should have thanked me. They are the gold and black bumblebees... I just gave them a free golden shower.

Anyway, after very little sleep after that late-late game, I got up, packed up, shaved my head to keep from bringing any lice home with me, got back in Serenity and drove the long ass way home... Getting stuck in the absolute worse traffic jam of all time in the middle of the journey too, in which I moved 6 miles in an hour and a half.

It's all right though... Once I got back to work it was like I never even had an extended vacation, and the 7AM - 9PM work schedule just fell back into place like a soupy pile of diarrhea into a heart-shaped bucket. Now to start planning for Christmas. I have to convince my family that I'm dead long enough to have a week to myself to recover from Thanksgiving. That should be no problem. I've been storing 6 gallons of deer blood for just such an occasion for the past half year.

Oh, and no ambidextrous solo shenanigans for a while either... At least until my finger melds the two bone fragments back together and I'm sure it can take some major jostling.

Note to self 372: 10/06/2010

therossman69: I killed another hobo today :-(
It was a accident this time
He was washing my windshield and I was just trying to throw my coffee on him from my driver's side window, and I must have gotten excited and hit the accelerator .

PsychoWeasel: I havnt killed any hobos lately
I should get on that

therossman69: Dude, we have to keep the population down
They're like deer or armadillos

PsychoWeasel: yeah, where do you get the permits, and when does the season start?

therossman69: They're such a problem that the gov't doesn't care. And you don't need a gun to do it, so like even a 10 year old with a shovel can help

(This PSA has been brought to you by therossman.com. Knowing is half the battle.)

Note to self 371: 09/30/2010

Okay, this Daily is going to make the ladies wonder what the big deal is, and it'll make all the guys groan in pain, but hey, sometimes you just have to see the doctor about male stuff. And since this was a delicate male stuff issue, I chose to see a real doctor, and not my friend Dr. Dave (whose answer to anything male stuff related is "castration").

So it all began about two weeks ago when I started feeling a dull pain in my man-berries that felt like a 2-day old aftershock of getting kneed in the jewels. I began icing myself down at night and taking Tylenol to ease the pain. I then looked up WebMD and read that it was most likely an "almost torsion" (a "full torsion" being the twisting of the testes around each other, like Dean Venture had happen in that one episode of The Venture Brothers), and that it would take a week to heal on its own. Had it been a full-blown, 4-alarm torsion, well, I'd be doubled over in pain, unable to walk, and vomiting myself till I passed out (and probably vomiting past that).

Stupidly, I then let it go another 5 days past that "one week" web diagnosis (that "almost torsion" lasts on average) before I went to see a real doctor (even though one never gets used to a constant throbbing in the testiculars, I just hate seeing doctors about anything if I can help it... They're always way too touchy and feely about everything). The pain was getting a bit much for me by then (and I've been sat upon by a 500 pound woman before... I KNOW pain), and although I might have been imagining it, Unicron (my right testicle, for those of you out of the know) was starting to feel a little puffy. Yeah, I cringed just remembering and writing that. Optimus Prime (old lefty) was still just a little sore. Anyway, the doctor started with some questions, telling me to answer as honestly as I could in order to get the care that I needed. He then began asking me tons of shit that made it clear he thought it was something I picked up in Tijuana.

Things like, "Have you visited a third world country — or maybe met a woman from one who charged you for a 'special handshake' — in the past 3 months?"

I stopped him there. "Trust me, doctor, it can't possibly be the clap," I told him.

"Why not?" he asked.

"I pull out."

"Ummmmmmmm..."

"And besides," I continued, "You can't get Gonorrhea from hookers."

Then he asked if I felt any burning when I urinated. Nope. Then he braced himself and asked if I'd ejaculated since this pain began.

"Oooooooh yeah," I responded. "All over her face."

"And?" he continued. "Did it hurt?"

"I don't know. I didn't ask."

After the Q&A session we moved on to the dating portion of the event. I dropped trou while the good doctor went to town. He didn't get my Fletch reference though when he started poking around with my plumbing, and I said "Wow! I didn't even have to buy you dinner first!" But after prodding and groping for a bit without any satisfactory results on his part (meaning he was looking for PAIN in me) he finally found the sweet spot. I yelped and came THIS CLOSE to slugging him on a purely instinctual manner.

"Ahhhhh," he said. "More than likely it's your epididymis."

"What? Really?" I asked. "Like that little fox-guy from Labyrinth? Sir Epididymis?"

He ignored me like a tool, and made me pee in a cup. He then kicked me out after signing me up for a 10 day prescription for a heavy antibiotic for the Epididymitis that they don't make a generic for. Christ, that hurt my wallet almost as much as my testes hurt me. But I paid, and started taking them magic pills immediately. I then postponed the ultrasound that the doctor set up for me at the local Imaging Center (to look for possible torsion as a precaution for me, and a possible lawsuit against him) because I remembered the last time I had to get one for what may have been either a gall stone or a left-behind pair of forceps; even with insurance with all the trimmings it cost me over $500 out of my own pocket.... Plus the hot nurse who works at the imaging center (who would be rubbing the lubricant over my junk) would get a quite impressive (yet out of place) reaction out of me, and I'd rather introduce her to the boys under my own terms.

Well, after another full weekend of discomfort I finally gave in and went back to the Imaging Center for an ultrasound on Monday. I just didn't care anymore. Needless to say, yes, it was the hot nurse who was to give me my examination, but she at least put me at ease and made it all worth while (I can't be sure, but I don't think they're really supposed to grease you up with that jelly stuff for ten minutes before scanning you). And at one point she said (I swear to Christ), "Hmmmm, yes, this may be the problem.... See, look at the monitor, it looks like your right testicle is possibly swollen bigger than...... Oh, no. Sorry they're both big."

I just smiled and said, "Ooooooooh yeah. Like coconuts."

Long story short, she proved that it was Epididymitis too (apparently caused by some bacteria from my intestines or somesuch something. Seriously, I didn't know my scrotum and intestines were seeing each other, let alone getting it on), and my real doctor then set me up for another 10 days of antibiotics while chastising me for being an idiot for letting it get this bad before seeing him.

Anyway, my only point here is, guys, if your melons are swellin', see a doctor, or you'll be feelin' like a felon (who was just told his mouth is "purty" by the 6'7" prison queen).

Note to self 370: 09/16/2010

The past few weeks (hell, the past full month, actually) have been some of the most grueling, mentally draining, and all together soul crushing days that I think I've ever experienced since getting dumped by Just Kidding last decade... Jesus, will I ever get over that? Anyway, it all started one day in mid August at the prophylactic factory that I work at. My boss, the VP for Advertising, told me, "Ross, we have a big presentation to show our Japanese investors in 4 weeks. We need a new ad campaign to wow their tiny little dicks off and make them want to buy millions of our rubbers... You have two weeks to come up with something SPECTACULAR! I'm off to the whore house now."

Well, in all honesty, that was the easy part. It took me lots of overtime to say what I wanted to say in our new print campaign, but I have to be honest with you, "HappyCock©®! We'll Block Your Stock From Ever Entering Her Dock!" is the greatest thing I ever came up with. Look for that ad in Good Housekeeping starting next month! Oh, and our mascot is a smiling rooster, so it all makes sense.

Anyway, my boss loved it, though he did not love the overtime I put in to make that gem of a slogan (KA-Ching! on my part). But the day after I turned it in he kicked open my door and started blathering like a crazy person had just shoved a rubber rooster up his a-hole about ten minutes before. I apologized for shoving the rubber chicken up his Hershey highway, but he told me that wasn't what he was upset about. He then told me that the product testers for the newest double-lined, glow-in-the-dark, ruffled, feather-trimmed, HappyCock prototypes (that we were to debut to our investors) called a strike and refused to run the newest dick guards through the proverbial wringer unless they got to test them in REAL women. Real HOT women. Well, our board members immediately voted "YES!" on that expenditure (as long as they got to try them out next), but by then it was too late and all the striking testees died of AIDS. Thusly my boss came bursting into my office.

Within 30 minutes I found myself in a sterile white room with one-thousand HappyCock Condoms, and 12 absolutely gorgeous women who all looked like Phoebe Cates from Fast Times At Ridgemont High... One of our Human Resources guys has a weird crush/fetish.

So I gave it my all. I tested the SHIT out of those new glow-in-the-dark ticklers for days on end. WEEKS on end. Well, two weeks this past Monday really, but let me tell you, after non-stop shagging a room full of hot chicks for more than a week, 24/7, with my only break times being 20 minute cat naps every 6 hours and 10 minutes every 2 hours to provide notes to the rubber developers, things kinda started to get a little crazy, monotonous, twitchy, dry, chafey, and sore after about 5 days... But I had to keep on going, being fed nothing but Cheetos and Gatorade through a hole in the door. Oh, everybody in that room took showers 12 times a day, so it wasn't rank or anything, but shit got fairly psychedelic after Phoebe 3 bit Phoebe 7 in the neck, and I swear I saw Baby Jesus fly out of the hole in her throat and giggle at me as he ascended into Heaven, and then spiders started crawling up my legs and out of Phoebe 11's juice-box. That was before I found out that the secret ingredient in the new glow-in-the-dark HappyCock was indeed a giant dose of LSD, with minor traces of elephant tranqs to let the man last longer/rub his dick bloody on the inside of a used-up, desert-like vadge for hours on end.

So my point was after 2 weeks of this shit the next thing I know is that I'm running around the Board Room screaming my lungs out in made-up German, throwing packets of condoms in the air while jumping up on the chairs and apparently fucking one of the Japanese investor's daughters on the conference table in front of all the major power players in the business. Needless to say we made the $55Million deal, and soon the whole room erupted into a bukkake party the likes of which I hadn't seen in 2 years. I then went home and took a nap, and woke up just 30 minutes ago. My dick looks like a partially shredded mozzarella cheese stick.

Enough babbling about work; now to talk about some weird shit. It's Dream Time again (or it was 4 weeks ago when I originally had this nocturnal fantasy), and this time it was a birthday dream of sorts. The whole conjured scenario began with me going back to my old high school, and finding that they were able to recreate (with the help of some insanely awesome, perfect holograms) any day that ever occurred within the walls of the building before. Several people from my class were there for the unveiling of this new technology, and strangely enough, an old girlfriend showed up and looked identical in comparison to her old hologram self. Which reminds me, Alyssa, call me!

I spent the rest of my time there trying to remember yet another old girlfriend's schedule so that I could hunt her down and choke a bitch in between classes. That was one of the most fulfilling sequences I've ever dreamed that did not involve a 20 year-old Angelina Jolie and $240 worth of pudding.

Then I was unfortunately awoken from my strangely serene slumber (in the middle of full neck throttling) at 7AM on that Sunday by my home phone ringing. I slipped and caved my chest in on my granite kitchen counter as I ran to and picked up the receiver, hoping it wasn't a family emergency. "What?! Who the f--.. Who is it? What's wrong?" I snarled.

"Uh, is John Ramier there?" came the absolutely pathetic voice on the other end.

"............... Do you have ANY goddamn idea what time it is?! Why the fuck... You.... I HATE you! Why did you call me this early!?" was all I was able to scream out, still trying to keep all the memories of my most glorious dream I was in the middle of just minutes before.

"Well," he replied in a voice that resembled a confused Don Knotts, "I THOUGHT I was calling John Ramier!"

"Well I thought FUCK YOU and your warrhgarble!!!! FlayprehgyaFUCK!" then I slammed the phone back down and ripped the cord from the wall. Fuck. Though in all honesty I was glad I did wake up at that moment, since if I had kept on sleeping I wouldn't have remembered half as much as I did about that dream, and the incredible sensations I experienced in it. So I begrudgingly thank Don for waking me up. Oh, and Just Kidding, if you're reading this, send me an email so we can meet up and I can reenact my dream in person! It'd be a great birthday present, and it'd mean a ton to me!

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