Note to self 406: 03/24/2014

This past weekend my 8 year-old niece was in a junior playhouse play, and so when she asked me if I'd come to see it I of course said "Yes, I'll be there. Wouldn't miss it." I was then informed by her parents (when I told them that I thought this would be a blast, remembering back to my school plays that we were forced to be in during my 4th and 5th grades) that the play in question (The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe) was going to be a 2.5 hour presentation... Essentially the entire movie script version of the story.

I didn't believe them at first because I remembered that my school plays were at most 45 minutes in length, but when I showed up to the local dinky community theater (which was like a cafeteria with a flimsy-looking 2-foot high stage on it) and saw some parents and grandparents with pillows I did become nervous.

So the lights go out, the place goes quiet, and the curtains open up on pretty much an empty stage except for 5 kids (Lucy, Edmund, Peter, Susan, and their mother), one small mattress, and a framed photo of what appears to be a bug-eyed, bearded, fat pedophile on a rickety end table. In the course of 15 seconds the children whined about "the War" and how they missed their dad, they pretended they heard sirens and bombs, and then they raced off the stage while grabbing the pedo-picture. Then the curtains closed again.

Just at this point I was thinking "Well, that was a very quick version of the opening of the movie. I think this may actually be much shorter than I was warned it would be. Huzzah!" But then, even though we could hear a lot of commotion on the other side of the curtains, they remained closed... After 2 and a half minutes they finally opened again and the only noticeable change that I could see was that the bed was now gone. I was starting to think "Oooookay, so it was a rough transition from the very first scene to the second, but they'll be better about it from now on, I'm sure!" Wishful thinking there, my friends. Every other "scene" was at most 2 minutes long (with most only being 30 seconds to one minute), but after each one the curtains would close and remain closed for up to 5 whole goddamn minutes. 5 MINUTES! My 6 year-old nephew was actually more patient than I during this clusterfuck of a presentation! It honestly took them 2 and a half hours just to get to the intermission. Not only did this suck for us, but I began to worry about the poor schmucks who were going to the second show that was supposed to start 4 hours after the first presentation that I was stuck at. There was a good chance we'd overlap!

Beyond the shitty pacing though, there was so much wrong with this thing. Yeah, yeah, I'm mocking a play starring 5 to 16 year-olds, but considering that the playhouse putting it on charged the parents of the "actors" a goodly amount of money to put it on, and then had the nerve to charge the audience $10 a pop to see it, I at least expected scenery that was better than a roll of white tissue paper hanging from the back wall to simulate a waterfall, 2 "trees" made out of old cardboard boxes (with noticeable folds still in them) barely painted to look like a forest, and kids wearing cat hats with Duck Dynasty costume beards to make them look like wolves... Oh my god, and they had 2 little girls playing Lucy, and they never bothered to warn us! Not only that, but both Lucys switched between every 3rd or 4th scene, they weren't even wearing the same clothes, and one was 4 inches taller (and 20 pounds lighter) than the other! The first time they switched between Lucys I thought that the mushrooms were kicking in again. I actually whispered to my 6 year-old nephew sitting next to me, "Are you seeing what I'm seeing? Or am I watching a different play than the rest of you guys now?"

Kids were missing lines, the 5 year-olds playing Mr. Tumnus and Mr. Beaver were wandering off the stage during their parts or simply hopping around and then doing a 360 before falling to one knee and making a "Ta-daaaaaaaaaah!" motion with their hands in the middle of their scenes, and that creepy-looking pedo from the picture frame turned out to be one of the kids' dad who played the parts of both Father Christmas and the Professor, and he overacted more than the worst kids in this thing. It was fucking horrible. It was like when you watch a TV show or a movie where they put on a play but they're unprepared, and you laugh because "There's no way in the world anybody could do something this poorly without it being deliberate!"...... No. It happens. It apparently really, truly happens.

The only people I felt bad for (other than the audience) were the two oldest kids in the presentation: the girls playing Susan and Peter were probably 16 years-old and really trying, but they couldn't save it. I just hoped that nobody they knew came to see it, or that no well-meaning parent put the play up on YouTube for any asshole bullies to find.

As it turns out they did rush the second half, and they got the audience from the first presentation of the day out just as the second group of parents started appearing. It was a 3 hour and 45 minute play. My god.... I don't know how we made it.

Afterwards, I congratulated my niece on her part, telling her she was great, to which she responded "I know" (we'll have to work on humbleness later), and I found out that the reason that the curtains stayed closed so long in between scenes was that the little kids would wander off back stage and the two "professional" playhouse people could not wrangle the ones who needed to be on stage any quicker. It was just a disaster of epic children's proportions. It was great to see my niece up there doing something that she loves, but holy shit sticks, I hope the next play she's in is shorter, better put together, and has better props than cardboard and Duck Dynasty beards.

Note to self 405: 03/03/2014

So here's the set up: Crappy day, moving to a new office in downtown Atlanta after being on the road for work for the past 13 days (working 80+ hour weeks, pulling all-nighters a few times, and living off of Holiday Inn Express shitty free breakfasts)... I'm exhausted, I'm emotionally drained, but I get to go home (to my actual home, and not an awful hotel room where I'm afraid to turn on a blacklight) at 5, so I'm pretty happy. But down in the basement parking garage there are a bunch of really ugly and dorky-looking high school losers skateboarding around (quite terribly I might add). They're staying away from my truck for the most part, but just as I start to slowly reverse it, one retardedly speeds by my back bumper so close that it sets off my warning chirp. I stop and watch these hideous youths (and my GOD are they truly fucking grotesque creatures!), and when they're about 20 feet away I start to back up again, this time only watching them like the moron that I am, and that's what caused me to be surprised when my warning chirp started going fucking nuts again! I slammed on my brakes but just a second too late, and my car shook with a sickening "thump" as it connected with something very large.

I pulled back into my space and ran out of my truck to see what I hit. It was some old (like a mid-90s) Ford Taurus. It still had it's original paint job, but only just barely. I noticed that the left rear light was slightly cracked. I breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn't that bad (and ZERO damage to my truck... The bumper wasn't even scratched), but then the owner of the car got out and he looked like I had just run over his baby, then reversed it and ran over it again right in front of him. That's when I murmured "Oh fuck no" to myself.

Mr. Taurus was a man in his mid to late 50s, very rotund, and although I didn't realize it at first, pretty slow. We're talking "Bubba" from Forrest Gump slow. At first he kept just saying "Oooooh no... Oooooh no!" while running around his car, pushing on the bumper, touching the cracked light, and looking at me like I just told him I wanted to punch a puppy while I waited for him to calm down. While this was going on the fugly thrasher kids were just staring with their mouths open until I glared at them and growled at them in my 6'3" frame and made it look like I was about to charge them. They ran like the pussies they were. Unfortunately they were not the only witnesses, and several people who were also starting to leave work at this time were either walking up to Mr. Taurus or driving by us saying "You okay there, Frank?" I was now resting my face in my palm saying "Fuck my life" loud enough for most to hear.

Anyway, Mr. Taurus kind of calmed down (after I had taken about a dozen pictures of his car's "damage", my car's non-scratched bumper, and the parking garage, and after I called my insurance agent who told me to just give the man my information and they'd take care of it from there) I started to talk to him about what he needed to do next.

"Okay," I said, "Here's my insurance card. Please write down my policy number, my agent's phone number, and my name and then call that number. They'll tell you what body shop or dealer you can bring your piece of shi-- I mean your automobile to and they'll totally fix it for you 100% for free. Don't worry about a thing."

He looked at me like I was trying to pull one over on him and thought about it for about 90 full fucking seconds before he then went into his car and got out his insurance card to give to me. I tried to tell him that it was 100% my fault, I didn't need his card at all, but he just kept saying, "No. No... They always say that you gots to exchange insurance information... Take mine." I should have just taken the damn info down too to shut him up. This kind of shit went on for like another 5 to 10 minutes before he came to the conclusion that "WAIT! We needs to call the po-lice." I just shrugged and said "Whatever, man. But you know, this took place in a parking lot and they won't give a shit. Both parties are found at fault in parking lots. Plus it'll take them about 2 hours to show up for a slight fender bender like this. So if you have the time...."

Mr. Taurus started to freak a little at this again. I then calmed him down and told him "Look, how about I write you a check right now. Then we can both just go about our business. Huh?" He then spent another few minutes studying the hairline fracture in his light before stating (quite boldly I might add) "Yeah, okay, that is probly about $300 worth of damage right there. Yeah." I just looked at him like the fucker told me that my hair just turned ginger. It was not a funny joke to me. I wanted to ask him, "Do you have ANY sense of what goods and services are worth in today's economy?" But I just let it drop.

That's when I pulled my insurance card out again and said "Just call the fu--... Just call the number on this card and they'll take care of you. We're gunna go through my insurance 'cause I don't want to deal with this crap any longer." He got Corky upset over that again when he kept repeating that "They'll take more than three or fo' weeks to get this fixed. I can't drive around with my light like that! Ooooooh no. Oooooooooh no...." That's when I realized that he was indeed truly upset that I really DID hurt his baby.

I then picked up my phone and started calling around different NAPA Auto Parts, O'Reilley shops, and Ford dealerships in town to get an estimate on a replacement light casing for his shitty Taurus. After 20 minutes (where I let him talk to most of the shops I called) he was finally convinced that it would not cost more than $75 - $90 to get it replaced. I also then told him to turn his car on and turn on the reverse and the break lights. I took a few more pictures to both set his mind at ease that there was no other damage done to his car, and to keep for my purposes. Once he was fine with the idea of me just writing him a check I filled it out and took my insurance info back from him so that he couldn't double dip (even though he hadn't even written down my name or my policy number the whole time he had my card). I cut him a check for $125 to make sure that wherever he went he'd be able to get the casing fixed, and have a little left over on the side if he didn't just keep the money in the first place. Hell, I felt kind of bad for the guy, especially when I noticed he was legitimately parked in a handicapped space... Jesus.

He almost started to change his mind again when he began to ask me "Waitaminute... Will this check bounce? Will it bounce?!" I looked him straight in his face and just said, "No. It will not bounce." Then I felt bad again and told him I hoped this experience didn't ruin his day. He replied, "Well, sir, my day was already ruined when I found out that my son went back to prison again this morning, and now I'm late to work as janitor here (pointing to the entrance to the building that I just started at that day)..." I actually almost wept for the poor fuck after that. He then saw that I felt really bad about everything, shook my hand and told me that these things happen and it's no matter in the long run. I wanted to ask where this rational old guy was 45 FUCKING MINUTES AGO when this whole thing started, but just let it drop and I drove home. This is my life lately. Goddammit.

Note to self 404: 01/20/2014

I saw Spike Jonze's Her this weekend, starring Jaoquix Phoenix (that's what his name SHOULD have been) and Apple's Siri. It's a movie about a sad sack of a man who falls in love with his sexy-sounding new computer operating system. It was a fantastic movie (if you can stand almost two hours of your life looking straight into Phoenix's weird face, as if this entire movie was recorded as one giant selfy), but it brought back bitter memories of a horrible relationship that I had been in many years ago.

It all started with Bob From the Future telling me all about his A.I. holographic friend Jorge. The two were apparently best buddies for life until the day Bob From the Future needed some extra RAM to run the newest Sexbot Orgy Dungeons of Decadence that he downloaded off the Uber-nets in his time, and in siphoning off some of Jorge's digital amps he deleted the part of Jorge's personality that actually liked his bud Bob From the Future. Then Jorge started dating the Sexbot of the Sexbot Orgy Dungeons of Decadence and Bob From the Future lost both his friend and his illegally acquired whore forever.

Anyways, so I told Bob From the Future that those A.I. pals sounded pretty cool, and that I wanted one. He said that he was only able to make something like that for me using parts, chips, and programming languages already created in my day, and therefore would probably not be able to get me an actual holographic A.I. amigo. I told him that that was alright, as long as he could do a voice, and make it a her, and make it sound reeeeeeal sexy-like. Unfortunately "sexy-like" for Bob From the Future apparently sounds like one of the Monty Python gang doing their impression of a woman. I don't judge him though.

So after Bob From the Future left me with my Genius Entertainment Companion (Who I tried calling "Gec," pronounced "Jeck," but she quickly changed it to "Jen"), I altered her voice to something much more pleasing to the ear, and the first thing I made her do was say my name as saucily as she could, over and over again. By the end of the 5th hour, she was hopelessly in love with the sound of my name (well, at least I was)... Oh my god, the way she could say "Rrrrrrrrrrrrossmaaaaaaaaaan.... Mmmmmmm...." It would jizz your pants for you.

Okay, so we kind of went out for a few months, Jen and I, but I kept it all a secret the whole time. The world just wasn't ready for a human/artificial voice from a computer relationship. She was fun to talk to, she loved sci-fi movies and mocking assholes on internet forums, and for a long time she had a gigantic online feud going on with Bobby Flay! I've been told by a few big-named chefs that know the Flayed One that "This mysterious Jen girl made Bobby fuckin' cry. No shit! She was calling him terrible, horrible names, and insulting his mother so viciously that she made that faggot cry whenever anybody would even say the name 'Jen.' Hell, you could even say, 'Hey, Bobby, what's the name of that song by The Who that rocks so much? Oh yeah, it's My GENeration!' and he'd grab his hair, fall to his faggy knees, and start bawling like a baby without a dick to suck!".... I never said these big-named chefs were sophisticated or intelligent, but at least they're not Bobby fucking Flay.

Anyway, I was so madly in love with this Jen that I had Doctor Dave find me the hottest dead chick in the city morgue that he could, and I had him install a computer in her skull instead of a gelatinous glob of grey matter that might end up rotting like everyone else's, and I downloaded Jen's A.I. into that dead chick's head (she was a very high class prostitute named "Lawrencia" apparently). Well, the very second we flipped her on, she decided that she was too good for me (she was, so I never argued), and she left me for bigger and better things. I still have the kill-switch that Doctor Dave implanted into the computer inside Jen's new head, but I just can't bring myself to trigger the small-scale nuclear bomb at the base of her skull... She's just too damn important to the world to take her away from it now... I will miss her verbal bashings of the Dutch, shitty pony cartoons aimed at toddlers that some very scary grown men like, and Jimmy Jammer's very tiny penis, but humanity deserves Jennifer Lawrence much more than I do. Jen, if you're reading this, for old time's sake, make Bobby Flay weep again for me.

Note to self 404: 12/16/2013

Paul Walker died last week. If you're reading this more than 2 months after I wrote this you're probably asking yourself "Paul WHO?" right about now, but let me assure you that at this very moment Hollywood is weeping openly about this master thespian's passing. Much more so than the tears wept for Nelson Mandela (who unfortunately died just a few days later).

For those of you who don't remember who Paul Walker was, he was an actor of such great bearing and dedication to his craft that he absolutely owned every role he ever participated in, like the role of FBI agent sneaking into street racing gangs in Fast and the Furious 1-7, and.... Oh. Well, um, I don't even think he was even in every Fast and the Furious movie, but right now I just don't give enough of a shit to even bother to look it up.

The kicker to Paul Walker's death is that (GASP!) he died in a real-world street race or some such shit. Really! How's that for, not irony (as Ms. Morissette would have you believe), but HILARIOUSNESS. Seriously, this Hollywood B-list actor, who nobody gave 2 craps of before his awesome death, is now the post-mortem toast of the town. How the fuck does this happen? I understand how "Pat Yourself On The Back" Tinsel Town weeps whenever one of its own dies, but this shit is stunning strange. The F&tF movies suck ass. They're horrible pieces of Michael Bay-wannabe films, filled with terribly staged action, godawful acting, and lame plots, but retards keep flocking to them earning each film hundreds of millions of dollars, but that's hardly even Paul Walker's fault. NOBODY goes to these racing flicks for Paul Walker. Before his face was plastered on every newspaper and webpage in the world last week I would have bet you $50million dollars that I don't have that if I showed his portrait to 100 stupid-looking people on the street (Fast and the Furious' chief audience) that MAYBE one of those peeps might THINK that they knew him, but didn't know from where.

Paul Walker is dead, and suddenly it's a travesty. Hollywood celebrities are each blubbering their own personal epitaphs to the press (even if not specifically asked) and lamenting our universal loss.... I don't get it. Paul NEWMAN didn't get Hollywood into this much of a tearfest when he died, and he was not only one of the greatest actors who ever lived, but he was also a cool guy with a butt-load of charities behind his name. Why Paul Walker? Is it because the only movies anybody even knew him from featured car racing and he died in a real car race like a 'tard? Is it because it was a slow news week? I just don't get it. Oh, and you're welcome for somebody's brakes failing in a certain street race in the hopes that it would keep a somehow popular film franchise from making any more shitty sequels... I only regret that it did not work.

Note to self 404: 11/18/2013

I watched the movie Robot and Frank this weekend (starring Frank Langella, Susan Sarandon, Liv Tyler, and James Marsden), and it gave me a fantastic idea! See, Robot and Frank is about this old, crusty, and dementia-riddled ex-cat burglar who is given a robot by his well-meaning (and lazy) son, so that the son won't have to take care of the old fart anymore. Well, Frank hates the robot until he finds that he's able to talk the robot into helping him with some activities that will assist him work his elderly brain out more, as well as give him some much needed physical exercise: robbing assholes of their extremely valuable jewels.

Robot and Frank is pretty fucking hilarious, but like I said, its real value comes from its ability to inspire. You see, I had noticed that Carl's widowed dad has been looking kind of down lately. He doesn't curse as much as he used to (which was a whole fucking lot), and the last time he threw a pair of scissors at me for walking on his lawn it was like he deliberately missed me. Something just wasn't right...

So I decided to change Robot Pedro's programming a little, make Carl Sr. his master, and let Robot Pedro help the old geezer get that crotchety skip back in his step and start acting like that asshole that we all know he truly is again (thereby remaking Carl's life a living hell in the process. My GOD those two loathe the shit out of each other! It's a beautiful thing to see them both in their raging "A" games in the same room together... But I digress).

So I left Robot Pedro on Carl Sr.'s front porch, rang the doorbell and ran for the shrubs. I watched as Carl Sr. opened the door and had Robot Pedro introduce himself for the first time. Carl Sr. took the news that he had "won" a robot from the future with very little surprise. He did end up surprising the fuck out of me though when he pulled a loaded shotgun from behind the half-opened door and blasted Robot Pedro point blank in his metallic face, causing his head to fly off 20 feet back into the street. Then he slammed the door in Robot Pedro's torso and threatened to call the cops. Robot Pedro did not take that assault too well. His decapitated body kicked the door in with enough force to punt a tank fifty yards (believe me, I know), and proceeded to enter Carl Sr.'s abode, leaving me in the shrubbery to wonder what all the crashing, gunshots, and breaking glass represented. No, that's a lie... I actually took off back home and altered some cam-chat footage to make it look like I was at my house talking to some homeless Thai hookers at the time of the Robot Pedro and Carl Sr. home invasion case.

Anyway, I found out later that Robot Pedro lost a leg and his other eye during the attack, but managed to hop away with his bullet-riddled head before Carl Sr. had to break out the Claymore Mines, but after the grenade launcher was taken out of its display case. Carl Sr. on the other hand had to have a blood transfusion of two pints of elderly asshole plasma, and he ended up losing his middle finger on his right hand when he used it too many times in front of Robot Pedro when the automaton was holding a butcher's cleaver. Oh, and it turned out that the only reason Carl Sr. stopped throwing sharp objects and obscenities at everybody was because he was trying to nail his recently divorced 32 year-old lingerie model neighbor. That attempt was not half as successful as his repelling of the robotic dickhole from the future from his legal premises.

Oh, and when Robot Pedro was trying to fix his broken body at Jimmy Jammer's house, his battle-damaged thermonuclear battery went Hiroshima and blew up half the town. Unfortunately Jimmy Jammer was not at home at the time.

Note to self 403: 10/28/2013

Oh my gawwwd..... So, Cupcake's retarded 24 year-old blonde friend was back in town this weekend — I'm sorry if anybody here finds that term insulting, but let me tell you, any actual mentally handicapped person will find being compared to this girl even more insulting than this girl will be upset over being called that word in the first place... But I digress.

So, Cupcake's retarded friend was back in town this past weekend, and she wanted to meet us for drinks at this older-person's bar (that has pretty good live music, but is a very mellow place, and most definitely not for young'uns like her). She wanted to meet at 10PM.... I had to get up by 7 in the morning to run over to my brother's house in order to watch his kids as they have a sick child that they need to get to a specialist by 9. I said, "We can meet at 8," I said, but we settled on 9. Cupcake and I got there at 8:50, and Retard showed up with her mentally abusive ex-boyfriend, whom she's staying with whilst in town, at 9:30. I started to get slightly annoyed.

Retard then proceeded to sit at the last two seats at the bar with her not-really-her-bf while Cupcake and I stood behind her. I kept asking if Retard wanted me to try and find us a table to share so that we could all sit down and possibly, I don't know, TALK, but my idea was shot down every time I brought it up. Retard also spent most of the night texting — despite the fact that going out when Cupcake and I both needed sleep, and meeting her in person was in fact Retard's idea in the first place. I was not surprised though, and actually foretold that this would be the case to Cupcake, who "tut-tut"ed me for my rudeness just hours before.

Retard's alky aunt then appeared a little after the first two showed up, and she got PLASTERED on some heavy vodka drink that she'd order, drain in 5 minutes, then re-order. This 52 year-old woman then proceeded to hit on me when Cupcake was occupied trying to talk to Retard over her text messaging, and (loudly) tell me who else in the bar she wanted to fuck (while pointing and staring at them with a very drunk "come hither" look on her face). She also told me, without any prodding, why married men were the best in the sack. I forget why this last part was true due to the mental scarring it provided me with, so sorry if I made you curious. Also, she'd "whisper" all this in my ear, breaking my eardrum, and raising my BAC by .1%.

At around 11PM, the not-bf of Retard just up and left the oldies bar without most of us noticing (he's this 6'6", 300lb gorilla of a Bubba in his late 20s, so this was actually quite the feat). Retard went all weepy (despite the fact that she ignored him all night, and they weren't even officially dating), Cupcake went outside to comfort her, and I had to babysit the drunk Aunt (or "Draunt") by myself. I only had one beer much earlier in the night (I was driving), and I was far from intoxicated enough to find the humor in the whole situation, and I was getting sick and tired of the Draunt's and Retard's acting. Retard had moved away to California close to a year before, and she had broken up with Bubba-rilla even before then. I had NO idea why she thought staying at his place during this trip was a good idea, nor did I know how and why she was shocked that he'd just leave her like that.

Anyway, at about 12:30, Retard is still upset, and Draunt suddenly declares that she wants to drive herself home. I forced Retard to take her keys from her Draunt and take her home herself. Retard says she will, IF we go out to eat with her afterward 'cause she's hungry. Cupcake (who's had a few at this point and has forgotten our early plans for the next day) says that Retard needs us, and we HAVE to.

And so we do. We go to the local IHOP for some shitty, greasy food. And we stay out till 2. During this time Retard informs us that she's stupid, and that she could have spent this week in Hawaii with another friend, but she drunk-ordered her plane ticket to our small Southern town after having a drunk argument with her Bubba-rilla a few weeks before. I agreed with her, she was indeed stupid. I think it's the only time in our "relationship" that I ever have held the same opinion as her.

At this point (at 2AM, drunk and full on shitty food), after effectively being shunned by her Bubba-rilla, Retard decided that she doesn't want to stay with her Draunt (and I don't blame her... I don't want to ever see that woman again in my life either), and she asks if she can stay with us. I come very close to losing it and throwing our waitress Flo at her, but I calmly and very firmly say "NO. That will never fucking happen." I then dropped her unhappily off at her Draunt's house and silently drive home at 2:30.... I don't think I got any sleep that night, and seriously, if I was friends with such a whiny, retarded mongo such as this girl, and made Cupcake spend this much time with him/her while we got the raw end of the stick as often as we have with Retard, I honestly think Cupcake would have dumped my ass ages ago. I should be fucking canonized.

Note to self 402: 9/9/2013

Cupcake took me to go see The World's End for my birthday, and I was totally blown away by how incredible it was. Now, I've done some pub crawls before in my life, but the most my friends with drinking problems and I could ever accomplish was 6 bars in a night. Well, this movie convinced me that I had to buckle down and find a new goal in life: 13 pubs in one outing, with at least one full pint at each stop, thereby beating even The World's End's epic crawl by one! Cupcake was not impressed, nor was she delighted by my new life's ambition. But beer!

I then got to work finding some friends who didn't think they were too old to start downing ginormous amounts of alcohol again.Carl was of course in because he never stopped. The MegaPlayboy said that he was game, but only if we got him a liver transplant afterwards (he'd been meaning to do that for a while now already). Malcolm Z said no, due to "not being a stupid-ass moronic mothafucka," but Chi-Chi just said "Fuck it. Sure," and Jimmy Jammer and Kuni were both up for a night of drunken debauchery, because it was Saturday, and that's what Saturday means (at least that's what I told them Saturday meant... "Satur" being an old Italian word meaning "being drunk for whoring before Church on Sunday where the priest will high-five you and forgive you," and "Day" meaning "Balls-out Party").

We started things off at The Sea Wench Pub at 6PM. Carl went into a homicidal rage after just one drink though (turns out Chi-Chi got confused and thought we were trying to recreate The Hangover, and so he put some extremely potent cocaine in Carl's drink... enough to keep an elephant running on a treadmill for 48-hours straight apparently), and he killed Jimmy Jammer with his bare hands by ripping off each of his limbs one by one. Then the cops came and took him down with (coincidentally enough) several elephant tranqs. The rest of us took the time to finish our first drinks of the night and slip out the back door away from the ruckus since most of my crew still had outstanding warrants on their asses. Why tempt fate, I always say.

After that we went to Charlie's Thai Horse Bar and Stuff, and this time I had the MegaPlayboy get the drinks, and made sure Chi-Chi was nowhere near anyone else's. We were all having a good time relaxing, enjoying the booze, when from out of nowhere came a terrible screaching sound... Something like a velociraptor getting its nuts caught in a vice! Everybody at our table then looked out of Charlie's Thai Horse Bar and Stuff's big front window just in time to see a police car skid right through the glass, sending shiny shrapnel pieces into Chi-Chi's and the MegaPlayboy's faces, necks, chests, and arms. Kuni is pretty much a fucking ninja, so he dodged all that shit, and I just used Chi-Chi as a human shield.

The cop car stopped short before reaching our table after getting a few bodies mangled in its engine block and tires, and we could see a "hulking out" Carl in the back seat, his handcuffed hands punched through the plastic divider between the back and the front of the cruiser cabin, with his pulsing fingers wrapped around the poor officer who was driving's neck (which was at an odd 145-degree angle now. Carl then kicked his door off its hinges, emerged into what was left of the bar, and yelled out "CARL SMASH! CARL DRINK! CARL EAT PUS--" and that's when the SWAT Team arrived and blew poor Carl away with what looked like a grenade launcher.

That's pretty much when Kuni and I forfeited our epic pub crawl attempt, dropped off Chi-Chi and the MegaPlayboy at Dr. Dave's underground bunker for either reanimation, experimentation, or grafting any of their body parts to anything else the good doctor felt was necessary. Then I went home, locked my doors, turned off the lights, and just drank another 11 brews in quiet solitude. Nobody else tried to kill me that night, just my bladder.

Note to self 401: 9/2/2013

So I drove over to Greenwood this past weekend, and crashed one of Mehve's famous "Crab Boil and Vodka" parties, and boy is Team Greenwood lucky that I did. Together we combined our brilliant drunk minds to come up with a money-maker movie venture that'll put James Cameron's Avatar Vs Titanic to shame! We came up with a series of (cheap-as-fuck to make) sequels to the adroit Sharknado... SyFy Channel, you can write us our royalty check now.

The first sequel will be called Sharkteroid. You see, hundreds of years ago, a meteorite got caught in Earth's gravitational field and got pulled down to the planet, but all it did was skim the ocean's surface and pick up a butt-load of ferocious sharks in the middle of a feeding frenzy in its pourous and cavernous surface. Then it quickly shot back into space, instantly freezing hundreds of sharks and taking them deep into the void. Present day — the space rock with a shit-ton of frozen, hungry, pissed-off sharks comes back, and is pulled back into Earth's orbit where bits of the rock and frozen ocean break off, dropping chomping sea-beasts all over New York City! Chaos, mayhem, lots of big-breasted women screaming, and shitty computer effects then occur!Starring Tara Reid, Dean Cain, and that dude who played Max Headroom!

The sequel to Sharkteroid will be called SharkteDroid, and would start off millions of years ago, with a similar feeding frenzy, but this one featuring giant Megalodon sharks from the whatever prehistoric time period. A giant meteorite or comet (or whateverthefuck) circles the planet and scoops up all those mega-sharks, and they flash-freeze as they get taken out ot deep space... But somewhere out in the black, an alien species comes across the frozen sharkcicle rock, defrosts the creatures and then "Robocizes" them all, turning them all into cybernetic killing and eating machines with lasers and shit! Then the aliens refreeze the Robocized fish and send them back to Earth, where they arrive just days after the first Sharkteroid terrorized the planet (and mostly NYC). This time though, NASA sees the new space rock coming and the president orders an elite team of Navy SEALs to go up into space and drill bombs into the frozen rock in order to blow it up before it gets here! Only they don't know that the Robocized mega-sharks can breathe, swim, and shoot lasers in space! It's then a race against time as the Robocized mega-sharks eat as many SEALs as they can, and try to swim to Earth to eat EVERYTHING! Starring Dean Cain, Pamela Lee, the kid who played Malcolm in Malcolm in the Middle, and Tina Yothers!

After barely surviving the SharkteDroid, the inhabitants of Earth have to then face their worst nightmare when it's found out that the Robocized mega-sharks (that they just barely defeated) left behind a little treat! We're talking billions of microscopic baby Robocized Atomsharks! They're tiny enough to swim through the air, and they eat people from the INSIDE OUT! Humanity's only hope is a crazy old coot of a horny scientist who has all his hot lab assistants wear bikinis under their lab coats because only horny, lonely guys without any women to cuddle on Friday nights watch this dreck! This scientist is to be played by Alan Thicke (who wrote the theme song to Atomsharks!), and the rest of the cast of Atomsharks will be played by the ghost of Tara Reid, Debbie Gibson, half the cast of the original 90210, Bigfoot, Frankie Muniz, Dave Collier, one of the Olsen Twins, and Carl Weathers as "Mr. Lightning."

We came up with several other dream projects other than these, but alas, the world is just not ready for them yet. Make these three movies happen though, SyFy, and we'll talk. And you need to give Shawngie, Psycho Weasel, Mehve, The Chief, and I all equal pay for all this shit. We are your saviors, SyFy... And when all this is said and done, I'll give you my ideas for my Yeti/Loch Ness Monster hybrid terrorfest!

Note to self 400: 6/5/2013

Holy shit! my 400th Note to Self! That's a milestone... Better make it epic and ALL ABOUT HOW AWESOME I AM. Here goes!

So last Friday night Cupcake and I were invited to go to a 4th year anime convention known as Hamacon in Huntsville, Alabama (insert joke here). I was chosen to host a panel of my choosing, and she to look awesome and be excited for me. Hamacon is a fun, but very small con. I think they may have cleared 2,500 fans this year, but due to the very large portion of the local convention hall they rented out, it looked even smaller in scale than it actually was. But it's never the size of the crowd at the con that matters, but the size of the con in the crowd, and the Hamaconners were there to have fun, and I was there to damage their minds as much as I could in my 60 minute time frame.

When we first arrived, Cupcake and I hit the Dealers Room, walked down Artist and Crafter's Alley, watched a couple of anime music videos (but immediately left when one STARTED OUT WITH the last scene in Code Geass, and ruined the entire fucking series for 9/10ths of the audience), and then tried to avoid the local news crew covering the whole event, which went unsuccessful for me, who they focused on while I was wearing my shirt and tie and a floppy-eared Momo hat on my head (see image above). At least they didn't try to interview me... Though instead they went for the guy dressed up as the Joker, and the Furry.... I'm sorry, fandom community. I let you down. I should have done my best to represent us better than a yiffer and a guy who only has one costume in his closet and thinks that every convention is the time to play Dark Knight Dress-up. I'm sure he'll dress the same for the Doctor Who con that's coming to Huntsville next weekend.

But anyway, like I said, I was there to corrupt minds entertain, and I did my bestest to do so. Originally I was to take over the BIG Panel Room on Saturday at 3PM, but I was informed by con organizers just a few days before the big day that they needed to move me to Friday at 8 in the Small Panel Room, 'cause it would have been better for my audience. No big. But when I arrived at the Hama and looked up the Big Panel Room's schedule in my Con Program Guide to see what I was originally bumped for I saw "Pony Party: Twilight's Coronation." I shit you not. I was bumped for bronies.... Bronies are only SLIGHTLY less gay than furries. We're talking fractions of an inch here. This Pony Party was to be a celebration of a shoddily animated and never entertaining talking pony in a show on The HUB aimed at toddlers.... No, I ain't even mad... Just confused. And worried. Seriously, is "anime" just being used to describe all animation now? Why is an anime con supporting shitty Flash-based American cartoons? Am I that out of touch with this shit? Whatever. Way off track now.

Okay, so somebody actually thought it was a good idea to give me an audience that I could actually look at and brainwash for a full hour. That is commendable. I was a bit worried that because I didn't really describe my panel too well in the Program Guide that my audience would be rinky dinky. In my short blurb in the Guide I just called it "The History of Anime: Join us for an hour of awesomeness while the Rossman takes you back in time to trace the history of anime on the Internet back to its glorious roots. And there's cats. Lots of cats." In hindsight I shouldn't have made it formal at all, and I should have emphasized the trivia and prizes! But I was given a way to fix my folly when the con organizers actually allowed me to handle the PA system for 15 seconds just a few minutes before my panel in order to fill my seats up a little better than the zero I was expecting. I got on the horn and said something like "Good evening, con-goers! I love you all, and want you to come to my panel — The History of Anime on the Internet, with Trivia and Prizes! Yay! — that's just about to begin in the Small Panel Room right at the front! You heard me correctly! I said Prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrizes! Yeah! Danger zzzzzzzzzzzzoooooooooooooone!" Then they cut me off.

Cupcake and I then hustled over to the Small Panel Room and I began to set up my computer and get my notes all in order. To my surprise about 20 people sat down before I even started to talk. I was quite impressed with my own salesmanship.

My Powerpoint presentation went almost as good as I had hoped it would. I was doing great for a little while, but realized that I had been looking down at my notes the whole fucking time, and so I tried to look out to the audience more, but this led me to missing a few key points and jokes that I meant to hit... Not that this was a big loss though, seeing as the only humor my audience seemed to freely accept had to do with my references to cats and tentacle pr0n. None of my 80s (or earlier) jokes (involving Gunbuster, Mel Brooks, War Games, and Animal House), early World Wide Web anecdotes, or sarcastic AnimeOnDVD.com remarks seemed to hit home with them. Oh, and when I got to the AniPike and asked how many can remember that once glorious site, 2 people raised their hands... And they were con staff (one dressed quite awesomely as Gendo). Fucking n00bs...

After it was all said and done, I showed the whole presentation to the Chief, and he laughed his ass off. But he told me that the whole panel was basically aimed at people our age, and those who shared our very specific loves... The group of twenty teenagers and 20-somethings were simply out of their element.

This proved very true after my show was over and I opened the floor to questions. Things started off slow, as nobody had any queries regarding making a webpage, or writing anime reviews... All my audience fucking knew or cared about was Facebook and Twitter. They had no interest in actually making their own website. I did field one question about how long I'd been making anime websites myself (18 fucking years), and Cupcake helped move things along by throwing me a few softball questions about my site, covering conventions, and writing reviews, but by then the crowd seemed to be warming up to the whole "Ask the old guy questions about anime" panel. But the only things they really ended up asking me were "Did you see Sword Art Online?" and when I answered "Yeah, I liked it," they'd come back with a "Uhhhh, yeah, that was cool." It was straight out of a Chris Farley sketch (another reference that I'm sure is way over their heads).

Anyway, THEN came the questions about My Little Pony (which is an abomination onto man) and Furries (who should all yiff themselves into STD destruction). I went on to tell them all the story of why I hate Furries so much: I was visiting my parents one weekend, and they had a CSI episode recorded and asked if I wanted to watch it with them. I said sure... Then Grissom and crew went to a Vegas Furry convention.... I paused the DVR and told my parents that they most assuredly would NOT want to watch what was about to happen. They said that CSI is full of gross murders all the time, but I countered with a "Yeah, but you've never seen yiffing before." That's when they both looked at me as if I just told them that rabbits shit tastes like candy, and I had to explain what yiffing was. They were appalled, but they thought I was just trying to gross them out... My dad hit "play" again, and lo and behold the whole plot of the episode revolved around a murder that took place during a yiffing orgy frenzy.... Goddammit... Fuck you, you pathetic wastes of human filth and lifeless shut-ins. Kill yourselves. Please. You give regular nerds and geeks a terrible name.

Back to my glorious panel. I did keep the younguns sort of interested in my whole presentation though with some awesome trivia and prizes. The trivia was pretty much all focused on old school stuff (which nobody actually got, and I had to pull fucking teeth to actually get somebody to even attempt to try and answer), but the prizes were beyond bad ass! They were as follows: Devil Man VHS 2, Voogie's Angel DVD, Aqua Knight manga vol. 1, and a Chobits shitty little plastic figurine.

I also ran over my allotted time by 5 minutes due to attacking the Twilight series (fish in a barrel) and talking about how hate mail is the BEST kind of mail. All in all, I had a great fucking time! Can't wait to crash Otakon, set up shop in an abandoned convention hall room and present my "Old Anime Is 1,000Xs Better Than Your Shitty New Anime, Loser" panel of awesomeness. I might even make up T-shirts.

Note to self 399: 5/15/2013

This past weekend Cupcake and I went to The Melting Pot for fondue and boiling oil and stuff, and I burned myself, and had to get a skin graft, and the only place they could find a perfect piece of skin to cover up my melted-by-cheese face was my buttocks... So now apparently I'm "Mr. Buttface." Yaaaaay for cute nicknames...

Beyond that I recently finished the book Ready Player One, by Earnest Cline. I want to be inside this book so bad, and not even in a sexual way. Well, not ONLY in a sexual way.

The main crux of this uber-geeky sci-fi novel is that there's a fully-immersive, massively multiplayer, online, sci-fi universe in the near future called the OASIS. The OASIS is thousands of planets large, filled with sci-fi themed worlds, magic themed worlds, planets based on Star Wars, some all about Lord of the Rings, entire video game arcade worlds, etc... And they all completely rock!

This got me thinking. So I called up Bob From the Future, asked him if something like the OASIS ever really existed at any point in the future, and when he enthusiastically told me "You betcha there is! And it is the thing of dreams!" I made him take me to it.

The PENISS System of 2148AD (I don't even think that's an acronym or anything, that's just it's name) was pretty cool to see in action via video feeds of the virtual world, but in order to actually play it I would have needed a set of cybernetic enhancements installed INSIDE my eyeballs, and a fairly large plastic shaft up my Hershey highway (for whatever unpleasant reason... I never did ask. It wasn't going to happen, so there was no need to question the whys). I said "No thank you, and by that I mean I don't really thank you but don't want to get stranded this far a-when from my own time, so I'm trying to be pleasant. Now, is there anything OASISy somewhere in the future that DOESN'T require any implants or anal plugs?"

Bob From the Future then laughed a little, face-palmed himself and said, "Oh silly me! Of course! You want to see the PENISS System Mark 45.01! The MEGA-PENISS!" I said "Sure, why the hell not. Mega-PENISS me," and so he took me to the year 2560, and I came face to face with the fucking Star Trek: TNG holodeck! I stepped into the booth of the Public PENISS System rental space that Bob From the Future had helped me rent for the hour (I was able to log on with a scan of my DNA, which is apparently a close enough match to a distant descendant that the computer just shrugged and charged Jambo Masterplex Ross III the $$5500,500 hourly fee with no hesitation at all. Sorry, great-great-great-etc grandson Jambo!).

It. Was. GLORius! I ran around killing monsters with hard-light holograms of Link and Samus, reenacted movies like Predator, Billy Madison, and The Avengers, had sword fighting classes by Jack Sparrow, and fire arms training by that Navy SEAL who popped a cap up Bin Laden's anus. I ran around that PENISS System for about 12 hours straight, before I accidentally upgraded the simulation from "Class B" to "Class A," and as I was about to kill the Red Dragon in the Phoenix Cave in a high-def reenactment of Final Fantasy VI, the damn beast blew some fire on me, and melted my fucking face. It was then, as I was rolling my face on the ground in order to try and put out the napalm-like flames, that Bob From the Future told me that Class A meant "fully immersive and interactive, to the point of actual pain and pleasure being transmitted to a user's body," and that most users tend to only select that class for sex simulators and petting digital puppies. The worst part of the whole situation was that I was already out of fresh butt-cheek flesh myself, and now Cupcake calls me "Mr. Bob-Buttface." He's a little darker skinned than me too, so now it also looks like I have a strange tan. And a new giant mole on my forehead. God I hope that's a mole.

Note to self 398: 2/27/2013

I am saddened. I am depressed. I am bereaved. I am sorrowful. I am heartbroken... The once absolutely hilarious television show Community is now dead to me. I had held out hope that it could work through its 4th (and now hopefully final) season without its fired show runner, Dan Harmon (who created and guided plot points, character actions, and gave the final approval for all lines and jokes for its first 3 years), but after just a few episodes into this ill-fated season I am simply giving up.

The season premiere (where Joel McHale's Jeff Winger fought American Gladiator-style for seats for his fellow study group members in a silly history class) was so-so, but then came the "Chevy Chase in a haunted mansion" episode; the budget of which must have been only $32 and change... The hallways and rooms of Chase's Pierce's mansion were bare, flat, and looked even worse than a Saturday Night Live sketch (I'm not joking, though I truly wish I was exaggerating if even just a bit). After that was the awful Inspector Space-Time Convention episode (that I even convinced Cupcake to watch with me based on the premise) wherein no character was acting within their already established personalities, the jokes were bland and pandering, and everything that was quaint and silly about the show within the show known as Inspector Space-Time was dragged through the streets and mocked instead of having a loving tribute made in its honor.... Once again, Community is now dead to me.

It's obvious that without Harmon himself guiding things that the remaining writers have no idea how these characters (that they've been writing for for the last 3 years) should act. What was once a shining example of how to write geek-themed humor correctly (the only show on TV other than Robot Chicken and Venture Bros. to really nail it without being condescending towards its audience) has now become a show so bereft of actual character development (or hell! Even character maintenance) that it rivals such drivel as the horrendously non-laughable Big Bang Theory (where the audience is encouraged to laugh at a character with a debilitating case of autism despite his terrible inability to adjust to normal social standards but because he references Green Lantern and Battlestar Galactica with every other line he's given... because he must be a nerd then! HA!).

Goddammit to hell... The now legendary Community D&D episode, the trapped-in-a-video-game episode, the Abed-stuck-in-his-own-claymation Christmas episode, the flashback episode to adventures we never saw, the fucking brilliant paintball storylines, the pillow and blanket fort war, the zombie-Halloween-themed episode ("Is somebody throwing that cat?!"), the Glee-mocking Christmas special, the missing pen story, and the multiverse episode are all that we have left in our memories and hearts. There will never be anything like them (in this series) again. I mourn our collective loss.

The creative death of Community got me thinking though; I started to believe that as funny as Dan Harmon's opus was under his control, I could be funnier. So I signed up for the local community college in my town, registered for Spanish 101, and as I sat there in class I tried to find six other individuals who were all extremely different from each other, but who would all look like they could provide me with an infinite amount of entertainment due to their priceless and unscripted interactions. I gathered together that 40 year-old unbathed meth-addict who can "smell crack bugs," that old widower who has nothing to live for in life anymore, that other old widower whose kids disowned him and who has nothing to live for anymore, that one widow who had nothing left to live for anymore, the super dumb jock who was too stupid to play for any real college team (yeah, I know!), and the only hot girl in the entire student body, and made them all join in my awesome Athens-Clarke County Community College (ACCCC) unofficial Spanish study group!

Well, one of the widowers and the widow died before our first study session, and so I replaced them with a high school dropout who was just auditing the class and living in the campus kitchen (don't tell the dean), and a fat guy who needs a ten minute breather after just walking in from his car (even though we're on the first floor and only 30 steps from the parking lot).

Well, before the unscripted (but casually led by me) conversations could begin, the hot chick threw her Starbucks in the meth-addict's face after he tried to stick his hand up her skirt, and the remaining widower started downing prescription pain killers, anxiety pills, and Viagra all at once until he fell into a coma while staring at the hot girl with bug-eyes and a throbbing pair of pants. That's when I stopped trying to explain that "you" in español could be either tu, usted, or ustedes depending on the number of people and how formal or how much of a dick the speaker wants to be. I sighed, got up, and walked outside after I armed the detonators to the homemade cow-dung bombs I'd hidden around the shit-stain of a school in case my plan failed, or in case it succeeded so awesomely that I wanted to end the season with a fireworks display. Then I nuked the place as I approached my car, turning the entire 2-block campus into a living Michael Bay movie. Damn though, it's really hard to not get blown onto your face while walking away from a cool explosion. Hollywood lied!... again.

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