Bad News Hughes

DIARY OF INDIGNITIES
Super Crazy Big-Ass Special 2006 Hughes Family Christmas Photo Extravaganza!
…will not be published this year, sorry. Dad had to call off Christmas due to lack of participation. Both brothers were scheduled to work Christmas day (Neil blames “Satan worshipers”), and, evidently, the rest of the gang were leery of being outed as drunken holiday maniacs. Again. Anyway, if you like, you can follow links here to relive all the mayhem from 2004 and 2005. Or you can just go out and get your own damn family. Start a-screwin’!

I was left pretty deflated on learning the festivities were canceled. Getting together with my family is so, so much fun. Also, I know the four people who bother to read this site on purpose, who didn’t stumble on it accidentally while looking for information about the benefits of icing their penis or the world hugly dog, really just tolerate all the crap I throw on here while patiently waiting for the only worthwhile stuff I ever post, i.e., photos of my dad dressed like erotic Batman.

So I put Plan B into effect. Plan B originally involved doing a whole lot of nothing, just taking a week off from work to sit around reading Thor comics and watching Rob and Big and generally enjoy the feeling of my brain slowly turning into a pleasant, flabby mush. Like most everything else I ever do, though, Plan B was entirely disastrous. Without the distractions of work or family boozing, it was pretty much just me alone on the couch having a staring contest with my large and fearsome collection of neuroses. (I lost.)

Oh! Wait! I did accomplish one thing. Check this bad boy out:



Yes, I made significant progress on an expensive, painful and time-consuming project, one that involves getting a giant picture of Godzilla stabbed into my back.

This particular tattoo, like many of my tattoos, unfortunately, was initiated many years ago, and under conditions that were somewhat less than ideal. Namely, a tattooer who didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. (Happily, this tattooer worked very hard over the years, eventually growing into an artist of no small merit, though this would come to pass a decade or so after my back ended up looking like I passed out at the kindergarten next door and pesky kids scrawled all over me with a green crayon.) (Again.)

I have to admit, as gray races bald for dominance of my hair and 40 looms ever closer, getting a giant Godzilla back-tattoo might not have been a super-high priority without that shitty, half-finished outline already hanging around scarring up my back*, but I’m pretty stoked on how it’s turning out. My new tattooer, Sleepy Dave Kotinsley of Anthem Tattoo, put in some real time on that bad sumbitch during my little vacation, including one session that went more than six hours and another going a little more than seven. All the gnarly tattoo dudes at the shop were impressed with my ability to take the pain of the extended sittings, but, really, compared to the Holiday Despair Couch of Severe Mental Illness waiting for me at home, sitting hunched over a chair for the entire day while someone carefully inscribed a colorful scab on my back was downright inviting.

Next up, sometime in the next few months when my BACK STOPS ITCHING OH WHY, Sleepy Dave plans to throw in a couple more shades of green and some watery colors down around my booty crack. Then, a background — Sleepy Dave suggests a dark, purple-y sky. Sounds good to me. So far his artistic intuition has served me well. Here’s a picture of Sleepy Dave:



Doesn’t that just scream “artistic intuition” at you? Like, in a loud, scary voice? Or maybe a voice like what you’d hear on the second Motley Crue album? Though I suppose the two aren't necessarily exclusive.

Here’s another photo of Sleepy Dave:



I stole that one from his Myspace page. He captioned it, “Did I leave the stove on?”

One time, at a party, there was this Slip ‘n’ Slide, and Sleepy Dave rode that thing like a man while giving our friend Hunter a piggy-back ride. Here’s a picture of Hunter:



Awwwwww yeah.

Oh, before starting in on the Godzilla, Sleepy Dave did some other neat tattoos on me too, including this one:



A totally awesome Black Cat fireworks logo with crossed bottle rockets — my own visual love-poem to the joys of mayhem and extended adolescence.

That last one actually covers up the first tattoo I ever got, British comic-book character Judge Dredd:



I can only explain this choice of tattoo as something that happens when an irrevocably nerdy 17-year-old tries to impress a bunch of tough-guy punk rockers and skinheads. “I’ll show them! I’ll get a tattoo of the sternest comic hero in all of my carefully bagged and boarded collection! Golly!” If this ever happens to you, and you don’t feel like a total douche within two or three years, hang around another five or six and see if they don’t make a crap Stallone film out of that sucker.

I’ve got a handful of other tattoos stemming back to the ‘80s, too, but we won’t get into all that. They’re mostly unremarkable, except for this one:



Yes, remarks one might make here include, “Is Godzilla eating a sandwich?”, “Why do you have a dinosaur smoking a cigar on your leg?” and “How many Godzilla tattoos do you need, anyway?”

Two, motherfucker. The answer is two.

Alright, to sum up: with a tattoo, the more huge and ridiculous it is, the better. And having a giant tattoo on your back is way more awesome than paying off your student loans. Also, if you’re a dude, no matter how immature and ridiculous you are, there’s a guy out there on the Internet somewhere who just lapped you. Oh, in a couple of months you should really buy this. That’s all for now.

*This is a lie.

Labels: Diary of Indignities

DIARY OF INDIGNITIES
Play Ball!
Sometimes people forget that the male crotchal region is the source of all the world’s evil. Not me. You see, I have the misfortune of being born with a male crotchal region permanently attached to the terrain between my waist and knees, and as a result am locked in epic struggle with the various devils, haints and malicious vapors always erupting out of my pants to do battle with the forces of light. It’s a lot of responsibility.

I suspect I’ve even been cursed with an especially uhhh... accursed... crotch. Like, one so thick with bad vibes that it actually attracts unholy forces from other man-crotches, coyly winking or waving at them with a special signal, perhaps. Gathering them close. Sucking in the musky, masculine aura and… Hmm. Then again, maybe not.

There is something special going on in my pants, though. Bad special, not good special. Not like the warden letting dad out of solitary for Christmas special, or the Special Olympics. More like special if the Special Olympics had its own Special Olympics, like a little special something set aside for folks with an extra helping of challenges… Like if they had a Special Special Olympics. You know? And it was in my pants.

Anyway, something ain’t right.

In fact, let’s review: first of all, you got your pubic hair, which is scraggly and bristly and difficult to groom. Ugh, pubic hair, I feel a little queasy just typing that out. Then of course there are the blotchy, wrinkly weiner and balls, which – let’s face it – on their own or as a combo are damply comical, at best.

Around the corner, of course, fudge is made. This takes place in the booty crack, which is less a body part than an abomination defying description in the best Lovecraftian tradition, where to gaze into its unspeakably malevolent eye is to risk turning mad, etc. All this stuff is associated with a dizzyingly unpleasant array of poo, pee, steam, boners, fluids, aromas and – really, you know, if I believed in God I’d spend a fair amount of time praying the shit out of some new design suggestions, should He ever decide to roll out Man Crotch 2.0.

I’ve managed to add quite an impressive menagerie of personal afflictions to the aforementioned baseline groin horrors: psoriasis, fissures, a polyp, an itchy patch that might be psoriasis but I suspect is fungus, a few skin tags, ass blood, a giant wart (you’re going to have to buy the book to read about that one), hemorrhoids, the occasional scar and pretty much everything weird or bad you can have down there, except fucking stalagmites.

I don’t know why I can’t just go to the doctor to get all that stuff taken off, like with a laser or sandblaster or something, just grind it all down and hope it grows back with a better attitude. Or maybe even just go through life with the shiny, smooth and debonair crotch of a Ken doll. No, instead I go to the doctor at least once a year when my crotch decides to manifest its evil in the form of something terrifying and potentially embarrassing and deadly, such as last year’s ass blood, or last month’s suspiciously lumpy right ball.

God, you know, having a lump on one of your balls just sucks, even if you’re not inclined toward moping around and imagining up soul-destroying Costanzas like I am. But at this point I’m kind of a seasoned pro at this kind of thing, so after discovering my ball had gone awry and making an appointment with my doctor I settled in for what I assumed would be a month or two of frustration, crippling depression and stupid jokes. And lo, my expectations went not unmet.

The first step involved having the doctor confirm the presence of the lump. I suspected this might turn out to be a little tricky – the potentially troublesome little globule was nestled in a complicated lattice of tubes and wires located at the top of the ball. But once in the office I rolled my ball on its side, gave it a half twist and pointed out the target, and the doc went right to work.

If I had any shame at all, even a scrap of self-esteem, standing around a cold room while a dude with a mustache contemplates and rubs my naked balls would have been an uncomfortable experience. Thankfully, all my scraps have long been washed away in the mighty river of indignities, so the physical exam, at least, I just took in stride. “Your mustache tickles,” was all I said. “Tee hee.”

After the doctor was done romancin’ me, he sat me down to give me his opinion. I was gratified as well as bummed to hear I wasn’t just making this latest condition up and actually had a discernible lump, because I’m crazy and will totally do that kind of thing. “There’s certainly something there, but due to its location on the testicle and general feel I’m almost sure it’s nothing more than a common cyst or epididymal lesion,” he says.

I relax a bit. Cyst or lesion? Why, around these parts a cyst or lesion of any type is practically cause for celebration.

The doctor continues. “Of course, you really do have to assume it’s cancer until proven otherwise.”

“Oh,” I say.

“But I’m pretty sure it isn’t!” he says. “And if it does turn out to be something other than a cyst, you should know that testicle cancer is very treatable, with generally very good patient outcomes. For example, if you look at Lance Armstrong, he… Well, actually Lance Armstrong might not be the best example, because the cancer had aggressively spread from his testicle throughout his entire body by the time it was caught, and if he wasn’t in such top physical condition he probably would have died.”

“Oh,” I say.

“But you probably don’t have cancer. Maybe. Anyway, I’ll have the nurse come in and schedule an ultrasound procedure, and we’ll get it checked out. In the meantime, you’ll have to leave your pants and underwear with me.”

“OK,” I say. The nurse comes in and tells me she’d send over all my ball info to the lab, and that I should call her if the lab doesn’t contact me within a week. Fair enough, I think. I’ve got enough Costanza juice to keep me occupied that long, especially now that I can actually feel the cancer germs in my ball hopping on their Lance Armstrong bicycles and Tour De Francing their way up into my brain.

Next, I go to pay the receptionist, pointing out I had new insurance. She’s all miserable and snarly.

“You should have told us you were under a different policy before checking out,” she says, taking my card and typing the new information into the computer.

“I did,” I point out. “I told you on the phone when I made the appointment.”

“I don’t even know if we’re in this plan,” she says.

“I checked. You’re listed online and in the print catalog as participating.”

She sighs. “There’s still a procedure we have to follow, Mr. Hughes. We have to verify the policy.”

“If you like, I can wait while you verify the policy, and perhaps amuse myself by touching various doorknobs and items in your office with my cancerous poison ball.”

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Hughes. Have a nice day.”

I leave and drive back to the office, where unsurprisingly I spend the rest of the workday replacing my normally awesome productivity with doomy ball thoughts: Will my friends start calling me Lefty? Or Cyclops? Should I look into getting my cancery testicle replaced with something, perhaps a Magic 8-Ball I can use to foretell the future? No, maybe a happy red clown nose, something that squeaks when you squeeze it. Children seem comforted by that sort of thing.

Later that week I go out to the bar, to share my misfortune with everyone and bring everybody down. Plus I was already working on some ball-cancer jokes and wanted to test them out.

“That sucks if you have cancer, dude,” says my friend Jamie.

“It might not be cancer, the doc said. I might have… Cerebral ballsy,” I whisper.

“HA HA HA, HEY EVERYBODY! I HAVE CEREBRAL BALLSY! LOOK AT ME!” Jamie screams, totally ganking my joke. Everybody laughs, ha ha, oh that Jamie, what a riot, so much fun. Cerebral ballsy, that guy’s a genius.

Here’s a photo of Jamie dancing on the bar:



Quite a comedian, eh? Life of the fucking party, that Jamie, with his dancing and his ballsy. Not a care in the world. Hey! Jamie! Blow me. Get your own ball disease next time, funny man.

The rest of the week passes by without much incident, if only because by this point I’m melancholy to the point of partial paralysis, and can’t really get into much trouble. I’m also masturbating a lot, more even than usual, because who knows? Soon my weiner pipes might be as barren and dry as the shifting sands of the Sahara. Better enjoy them while I can. I still haven’t heard from the lab about my ultrasound by this point, though, so I call and leave a message with the nurse.

A few days, a few more messages, and nothing. No call-back from the nurse, no nothing from the ultrasound lab. Then on Saturday I get a letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield, my insurance provider. It’s just a little something to let me know they’ll be expecting me to pay the full bill for my recent doctor visit, as their records show I don’t currently have coverage. It also says I should call the number listed on the letter if I believe this to be incorrect. Fuck yes, this is incorrect! I whip out my phone and go to call … Hmm, there doesn’t actually seem to be a number anywhere on the letter. Are my eyes playing tricks on me, I wonder? Is the ballsy affecting my reading comprehension?

My ball swells with rage as I pore over the letter for several minutes, turning it over and over and scrutinizing it like it’s a treasure map and I’m Long Ball Silver. Nothing. Determined to get to the bottom of all this, I go online to see if I actually do have insurance. The Internet says I do, so I yank my insurance card out of my wallet and call the customer service line listed on it, planning to give those Blue Cross rapscallions a stern dressing-down. Being Saturday, nobody is there, of course. I leave a properly hostile message, but it’s clear I’m going to have to wait until Monday to sort this out, so I cancel all my fabulous weekend appointments and clear the way for a redoubled effort to pack every second of my life with as much sulking and worry as possible.

Monday I call the doctor first thing. The receptionist plays dumb, which I suspect is easy enough, and puts me through to the nurse. I leave yet another message for the nurse, pleading with her to sort out my insurance and help me get my lab appointment. Nobody returns my call, so the next day I call again. I explain things to the receptionist, how I’m concerned that this insurance screw-up is interfering with my ball lab, and she puts me through to the billing department. Finally, a little progress – the billing lady looks things over and says my insurance was never updated.

“Sure it was,” I say. “I sat there and watched the receptionist type the numbers in. Heck, we had a little chat about it.”

“She must have typed it in and forgot to hit the Enter key,” the billing lady says. “It’s happened before. They’re understaffed.”

Yeah, understaffed. Probably have a few people out of the office, out competing in the Special Special Olympics. The smart ones. I give her the new insurance information, hoping she can figure out the proper sequence of keystrokes necessary to ensure I receive the medical care I need. Meanwhile, I can feel the ballsy continue to spread.

A few hours later the billing lady calls me back. “Mr. Hughes, we’re not able to verify your enrollment in this insurance program,” she says. “Can you give me the number again?”

I give her the number, and make another call to Blue Cross. They assure me I do indeed have insurance, and tell me the whole snafu was caused when the doctor sent in my bill under my old policy number.

“You couldn’t just, like, notice? And switch it to the new one?” I ask.

“It was billed under an inactive number,” she replies.

“I understand. But if I can look online in two seconds and see that I’m covered, and you can just look at your records and tell me I’m covered, why did you send out letters to everyone saying I’m not covered?”

“It was billed under an inactive number.”

“Oh.”

Hearing a beep, I use every iota of willpower I can muster to break away from this fascinating discourse and answer my other line. It’s the billing lady, calling to let me know she verified my enrollment.

“It’s strange. You weren’t in the computer, but they verified you over the phone,” she says.

I am too in the computer, I think. I saw myself.

“Anyway, you’re all set, Mr. Hughes. Now you need to call the nurse back and let her know I’ve verified you. You should also call the receptionist and make sure she has your updated policy number.”

“What? Who, me? Why is that my job? And why would the nurse believe me over you?”

“Mr. Hughes, we work for the same doctor, but we’re not in the same office. I’m two buildings over.”

I’m totally confused by all this, being several hundred buildings over myself, but agree to call the receptionist and nurse, if only because by this point I have a severe limp from my ball going septic and leaking its toxic juice into my leg bone and I just want to wrap this shit up. I leave a couple of messages with the nurse and wait for her to call me back. Two days later, she does.

“I’m going to fax your ball information to the lab tonight, Mr. Hughes,” she says, and gives me the number of the lab. “Call them first thing tomorrow to make your appointment.”

“Me? Call them and make the – why is that my – oh, the hell with it.”

I call the lab the next morning. They’ve never heard of me.

“The nurse said she faxed my info to you last night,” I explain.

“What procedure do you need done?”

“My ball,” I say.

“Hold on just a minute, Mr. Hughes… Let’s see… Oh, here it is,” she says. “You’re all set.” What a relief! Yes, that’s what I’d tell myself, if I was still capable of feeling emotions such as relief. “Mr. Hughes, the next earliest appointment we have is in a week and a half. Hmm I see here that you were scheduled to come in for an ultrasound two weeks ago. We were wondering why you didn’t show up.”

You know, I have a rule not to cuss out receptionists and flunkies and customer service flacks – as frustrating as it can be to deal with these types, it’s not like they have any power or can get anything done. They’re just the first line of defense for a bureaucracy, there to protect the fatcats and real shot-callers with a vast, impenetrable and somewhat doughy wall, something free from sharp edges that people like me will throw ourselves into over and over until we’re tired and compliant and willing to go along with whatever bullshit we get fed. Why waste the energy – that’s my philosophy. If you can’t pole-vault this wall with a lawyer, or maybe a gun, and get to the source, it’s better to keep your blood pressure down and just walk away. This time, though, I pretty much just lost my shit.

“You didn’t call me! You didn’t fucking call me! I have a weird ball I need to get checked out, and you fucking morons just let it slide? How many people have you killed with this shit? Do you have any kind of explanation for me, anything at all?”

“Somebody probably tried and couldn’t get through,” she says. She’s totally unimpressed. I get the feeling she hears rants such as mine a lot. “Do you want me to schedule this next available appointment?”

I sigh. “Yes,” I say. I’m no match for the doughy impenetrable wall. And my ball feels funny. I just want them to microwave it in their ultrasound and tell me if I have ballsy or what so I can get on with my life.

A few days later Dad sends me an e-mail, just to check in and say hi. I explain the situation, and he tells me he’s had a benign something-or-other down there for 20 years. I’m like, “Great. Out of all the things I could’ve inherited – good looks, smarts, some sort of moral center – I get the ball lump. Who put that order in? Hmm, I wonder whose lump is bigger? We should have a race.

I spend the rest of the time before my ultrasound almost catatonic. Dad’s message helps a bit, but the power of the Costanza is irresistible. Things do brighten a day or two before the actual procedure, as philosophy sets in. So what if it is cancer, I think. They’ll just snip that sumbitch out of there, and unless Lance Armstrong has spread all up into my brain I’ll just go on with my life. And I’ll probably be better off – when did those things ever do anything but get me in trouble? It’s not like I even use them for anything… Anything important. I should be happy! Happy to see it go! Good day, to you, cancer ball! Good day, and good riddance! Harumph.

The ultrasound itself was mostly unmarked by incident, except for that whole thing where I was lying on a table in a dark room with my pants down around my ankles as a strange man rubbed a magic wand all over my naked balls to see if any cancer was hiding in them. Depends on how you define incident.

Oh, and my phone rang, down there in my pants pocket. I have Two Live Crew’s “Me So Horny” for my ringtone. Amazingly, the ultrasound tech didn’t think this was funny. But then he didn’t seem to think any of it was funny, not the alarming number of small towels he made me use to arrange, display prop up and cover various portions of my weiner and balls, or the pint of clear ultrasound goo he had to smear all over my crotch to facilitate his various explorations. Me, I thought it was all pretty damn hilarious.

The tech was pretty cool when it was over, though. Even though they’re not really supposed to be diagnosing shit, he really helped put my mind at ease.

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about, dude,” he says.

“So it’s a cyst?”

“I don’t think it’s even that. I think you just a normal anatomical variation you haven’t noticed before. Like one of your tubes is just weird. But I didn’t see anything in your actual testicles.”

Shit, that’s good news, I think. Still, if anything I’m more exhausted than relieved.

A few days later, the nurse calls me up to let me know the radiologist looked at my ball innards and confirmed it. No cancer. I just have a naturally weird ball. Once again I am happy and productive and full of sperms. C’mon over, we’ll take my ball out for a test drive. Life is grand, right?

Labels: Diary of Indignities

DIARY OF WHAT THE FUCK, IS THAT AN EXTRA NIPPLE?
Seriously, What the Fuck. Is that an Extra Nipple?
I'm sort of loaded right now. (Full disclosure.) And I've got wrasslin' queued up on the fake TIVO. And I'm eating this Cuban sandwich, and it is so, so good. Oh my god. I'm actually feeling pretty good right now. The only thing that could be better is if I had another one of these sandwiches. I got it from this place called Flaco's.


It wasn't all succulent Flaco's and awesome TV wrasslin' tonight, though. For exaMPLE, I got this big zit on my chest, and it's a really deep one. Like a third nipple. And deep! I tried to pop it before I went out, but the pain was too much. I almost passed out. This is a picture of Becca trying to pop it, outside at the bar. God damn, that shit hurt.


Becca's pretty. I hate her.


Seriously, someone took a picture of it and was showing it to everybody and they all assumed it was a proper nipple instead of a gnarly deep pimple. When Becca was through torturing me, squeezing and milking and molesting it but to no avail, we took another picture, because it was especially swollen and this seemed worth documenting, and we made sure to get one of my real nipples in there for comparison. Shit, I could totally eat another one of these Cuban sandwiches. I... I... I'm sleepy. My chest hurts.

Labels: Diary of Indignities

DIARY OF INDIGNITIES
Kiss Me, You Retard
Oh, I just remembered — one time I made out with this retarded kid in church.

Ah, shit. I, uh... You know, I actually shouldn’t say "retarded." I should say "Down Syndrome."

You see, like your average low-grade racist, homophobe or everyday commonplace hypocrite, I employ a double standard when it comes to certain types of pejorative language. For example, I distinguish between Down Syndrome and retarded.

This is chiefly so I can go around applying the latter term to everything around me with only minor flashes of guilt, instead of an attempt to remain in the good graces of polite society. You want that? Go read Good News Hughes. I think this week he wrote up a story about a lovable puppy. I’m the guy whose retarded friend fried his own poop.

I know from personal experience how few things are as delightful as watching some dickhead squirm his way out of a semantic dead end, so allow me to explain in detail: in my stupid brain, Down Syndrome describes a medical condition. Like other — let’s face it — less than ideal medical conditions, such as having a gross hairy unibrow or being Irish, that’s something only a real creep would mock or deride.

Conversely, retarded, at least to me and my labored justifications, is not a condition but rather something implying choice — deliberate, willful action. Like that time Sean Atwater looked up from his sandwich and said, "Hey, you know what they say? They say if you took your intestines and stretched them from end to end it would reach all the way to the moon."

Ha ha, the moon. He really said that. There were like 11 guys in the room, all sitting around eating food and watching the NFL draft, nodding and going, "Oh, really, I didn’t know that, how interesting," while I sat there dumbfounded for a minute before blurting out, "Motherfuckers, do you know how far away the fucking moon is?!"

You’re in deep shit when I’m the voice of reason.

Anyway, retardation can be activated or exacerbated by outside forces such as marijuana, a license to drive or the Bible, but ultimately the responsibility for that shit lies with… Well, the retard who propagated it.

I’m not saying a guy with Down Syndrome can’t be a retard, just that in my little world the two things aren’t necessarily tied together as cause and effect. Shit, it’d be almost disrespectful to say they can’t — people with Down Syndrome can be just as retarded as anyone else. They can also be just as boring, petty, sheeplike or surly as you or me, and nobody can take that away from them.

Oh, and even though I don’t want to appear insensitive, even though I sort of am, and I swear I got nothing against folks with the Down Syndrome, I’m not afraid of them, either, and I’d totally fight a guy who has Down Syndrome, no problem, unless he’s big and mean or one of those Special Olympics dudes that’s in particularly good physical condition.

You know, I just realized — I don’t want to fight anyone with Down Syndrome. I don’t really hang around anyone with Down Syndrome, but thinking back most of my interactions with people who have the condition have been pretty positive. This is more than I can say for just about any other group out there. And hell, no bullshit rationalization would be complete without an analogue to a Some of My Best Friends Are Black story, so allow me to share an example: two years ago I was in the checkout line at a grocery store, wearing my Four Horsemen T-shirt, a cherished artifact from the bygone days when professional wrestling wasn’t so damn lowbrow.

Anyway, the guy bagging my stuff, a dude who pretty obviously had a touch of the Down Syndrome, glanced over at me and did a brilliant double take before fixating on my shirt, staring at it with unblinking, wide eyes like I had a set of big juicy titties under there.

"The Four Horsemen!" he yelled.

"Yup," I said.

"I love the Four Horsemen!" he said. You could tell he was excited. The cashier looked nervous, and started exchanging looks with the other cashiers and bag boys.

"Me too," I replied. I was getting a little excited as well.

"The original Four Horsemen was Ric Flair, Ole Anderson, Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard!"

"I know," I said.

"But the best Four Horsemen was when they had Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard and Barry Windham!" He was practically yelling.

"I know!" I said. I guess I was kind of yelling too.

"Luger sucked! He was a bad Four Horseman!" he yelled.

"Paul Roma too!" I yelled back. Before he could yell another reply, though, two burly stock guys being commandeered by some douchebag assistant manager with a child-molester mustache each grabbed my new friend under an arm and dragged him away.

I gazed after him, sadly, and maintained eye contact as long as possible. The look he gave me said, "It’s alright. You and me, maybe we’re not made for grocery society. But you can still run — go, save yourself. We dared to soar today, and they can never take that away from us. These stock boys, these petty managers and cashiers — they’ll never quench the fire in our hearts." They got around a big pyramid of soup or some shit and he was gone.

The cashier tilted her head at me in a way that invited punches and said, "We’re sorry about that, sir."

Sorry for what? For dragging away the only guy in the store capable of having an interesting conversation? I doubt it. Reluctantly, I gathered up my grocery bags and left. A better man than me would have beheaded the assistant manager with a clothesline, sprinted to the back of the store, put a couple of piledrivers on those two stock-boy meatheads and freed Four Horsemen guy from the walk-in cooler or wherever they hide people too awesome to conform to their safe little square-ass grocery regulations and then run out of the store with a giant bag of money. And gone on to have adventures.

I think about that guy every time I go to the store and some lame white guy with too much gel in his hair gets all fake-buddy on me while bagging my groceries: "Heyyyyy! Noodles! I’ve been meaning to try some noodles! What do you think of these noodles, sir?!"

"What? Uh, they’re, um, good," I say, while in my head I’m like, "I think you’ve been instructed to say that by some assistant manager, probably the one that took my pal away, and instead of pretending to care about noodles you need to shuck the fut up. I mean fuck the shut... Aw, forget it." God damn it, I get so upset I can’t even mount an effectively snappy comeback in my own fantasy.

Wait, where was I? Oh yeah, the making out. No, I never really got the opportunity to make out with the guy at the grocery store. The make-out session was with the kid in church and — OK, well, technically I didn’t really make out with the kid in church, either. It was more like he made out with me, and I kind of just let him.

Growing up, did you have these weird churches that would get buses to drive around and kidnap kids during the summer, and lure them in with ice cream and stuff so they’d love Jesus? We did.

One of those buses came around one summer day when I was about 11. They were pimping the free ice cream, so I went ahead and hopped on. Plus back then I believed in all that kinda stuff, and even though I knew I was going to have to sit through an hour or two of boring churchy talk before getting a crack at the goodies I felt like it was a healthy way to spend a hot-ass Wednesday afternoon. Mom, of course, being crazy and a lesbian, was always sprucing up the house with Wicca and spells and crystals and the Goddess and shit, so I was on the lookout for opportunities to get a little Jesus infusion and inoculate myself against the hippie paganism that was always hanging around trying to drag me down to Hell.

Sometimes if I was careless about inquiring after denomination during these little bus rides I’d get kidnapped off to a Baptist day camp, where the church ladies and clean-cut regular kids pretty much made you feel like a grain of dirt just by their shiny all-American existence. Plenty of sweet tea at those things, but there’s nothing like hanging around well-adjusted normal people who have all their teeth and wear recently laundered pants and stuff for a few hours to reinforce just exactly what rung of society’s ladder you’re on. Kind of made me uncomfortable.

This time, though, the ice cream landed me the jackpot. I was so excited when the kidnap bus pulled up to the church, because it was this terrifying renegade non-denominational church that had intrigued me for years. At night the church would shine this megawatt giant blacklight on itself, I guess to make it look all holy and impressive and full of magical Jesus, but really it just made it look all haunted and creepy as fuck. Me and my sister would actually bug Mom to drive us by it if we were anywhere near that part of town at night, chanting and calling for the Spooky Light Church like other kids do for Dairy Queen.

It was almost as good in the daytime. An unearthly, eldritch glow didn’t seep out of it or anything, but it was run-down and plenty seedy. I felt right at home.

I don’t really remember what all kinds of heretical made-up stuff they indoctrinated me in for the first part of the day. They would collect kids from all over the city, so like everyone else I was busy sizing up all the unfamiliar faces. Gradually everybody relaxed, though, after we all realized they had only culled from the dirty, poor and weird neighborhoods and no Baptists were going to come along to make us feel inferior.

I shuffled from one classroom to another for a few hours with the other loser kids, listening to various pastors and ministers and cantors and such drone on about how listening to the Beatles was going to send us all to burn in a lake of fire or how we’ll need to know how to field-strip and clean these surplus M1 carbines when the race war comes, blah blah blah. They kept taunting us with that ice cream, promising us cold creamy treats and eternal salvation if we sat through two more filmstrips about how the Bible says it’ll be our duty to someday beat our wives or whatever.

Eventually they rounded us all up and herded us into a large auditorium for a little final brainwash. I got sat in the very front row, right in front of the podium or altar or whatever it was. Next to me was a kid with Down Syndrome.

This kid noticed my fancy digital watch right as the church folks started up their little lecture. Now, these days you couldn’t impress a backwoods Yanomami with that thing (and don’t think I haven’t tried), but at the time its sleek, biscuit-sized, red Light Emitting Diode face was at the cutting edge of new technology. The kid stared at it with interest while I looked straight ahead and acted like I was listening, trying my best to impress God with my ability to pay attention to things that are boring.

I felt a tapping on my watch and looked down. The kid was poking at it, curious. He looked at me with his eyebrows raised, and I guessed he was curious why the watch wasn’t showing the time. I returned my gaze to the front of the room, but, happy to show off a little, quietly pressed the button that activated the display.

Man, that kid broke into a big smile, so I thought I’d really show him something, and slyly pressed the button again to show the date. His eyes got wide. I pushed that bitch again, and the seconds popped up. My new buddy was transfixed, like I had a set of big juicy titties under there. I ran through that sequence of technological marvels for him few times, staring straight ahead all the while, before noticing that the guy up there in front of me giving the sermon was starting to wise up and disapprove.

Not wanting them to make an example out of me and zap me with their eerie nighttime holy ray, I quit fooling around and concentrated my efforts on the business at hand. Something about the glory of becoming a child bride of The Leader, I don’t exactly remember. This didn’t sit well with the kid, though. He wanted more sweet watch action.

He started tapping at the watch and pulling at my sleeve, but I was unmoved. After a couple seconds he figured out the button trick, using it to access the endless amusements of the time, date and electronically ticking seconds. I was confident in my battery’s reserves and happy to let the guy mash away. I was even proud of myself, seeing as how I was the only one there with the foresight to bring along a gadget to occupy the restless Down Syndrome kid.

A few more minutes of preachifyin’ and button mashing went by before I noticed that people were starting to stare at me. Pretty sure of what might be causing that, I glanced over to my left and was startled to see the kid bent over in his seat and kissing my watch. He was really going for it, no tongue or anything, but definitely generating some impressive smacking noises. I sat there frozen — I mean, I was a man of the world and everything, but having a kid with Down Syndrome go nuts and fellate my fancy watch in church was kind of a new experience.

Shock quickly turned to horror as the kid started kissing my wrist. Then, like Pugsley getting bonked on the head and confusing himself with Gomez, he began working his way up my arm, leaving a little trail of drool behind and making a big loud kissy noise each time he planted one on me. I didn’t know what to do. Punching him in the head and screaming presented itself as the first option, but somehow doing that seemed unfair, not to mention the kind of thing you want to avoid in church.

He was up to about my shoulder and my mind was racing. What could I do? Politely ask him to stop? Throw my watch to the other side of the room and hope he chases it? Maybe pray? People were starting to mutter. I didn’t want to make a fuss.

He paused at my shoulder, nuzzled it for a moment, then reared his head up and grinned as I turned to look at him. The entire auditorium paused, waiting to see what would happen. He lunged forward before I could react and kissed me, rather wetly, right on my eyeball.

The pastor or whatever he was roared in anger. The entire place went nuts, completely outraged. Kids pointed and shouted while church ladies fell to their knees in prayer. A couple of adults grabbed the kid, one on each arm and I think one around his neck, and hauled him out of the room.

"Please, everyone, please!" someone yelled. "Stay in your seats! There will be ice cream, ice cream for everyone! We’ll get through this!"

As everyone settled down I just sat there, a little moist, and wondered why this kind of shit always happened to me. Maybe I was too prideful in my LED watch and God wanted to teach me a lesson about folly or something, who knows. Ew, do you think my watch gave him a boner? Until just now I didn’t think to check. I mean the kid with Down Syndrome, not God.

Anyway, the main church guy struggled through the rest of the sermon, but nobody was paying attention. They were all glaring at the back of my neck. I simply went blank, sending my mind far, far away.

They wrapped shit up and marched us out to some courtyard, where we all stood around glumly eating our ice cream. The kid with the Down Syndrome was nowhere to be seen. The deacons and church ladies and stuff rationed me out a tablespoon-sized dollop, treating me with an attitude somewhere between suspicion and faint disgust. All of the other kids stood around in little groups, staring at me with open hatred and refusing to talk to me. But I was pretty much used to all that.

Labels: Diary of Indignities

DIARY OF INDIGNITIES
Douchebaggery Through the Ages — A Life in Stupid Pictures


You'd never guess it, but I actually showed a lot of promise the first few years after I was hatched. For example, you can see from my pudgy Aryan glory here that up until the devil got into me I was mysteriously blonde, healthy and happy. I got me a zippy Speed Racer sort of sweater on, and while I don't really recommend pairing long sleeves with short pants my get-up at least seems free from grime, stains and tears. And that football? Man! Sports! Talk about your wholly misguided parental optimism.


It wasn't long before the real me emerged, though, in all my creepy and possibly homosexual glory. It was right around this time I decided I would devote myself to emulating Paul Lynde. I'll let you know how it works out.


This isn't too bad. The whole vampire cowboy thing could have been pulled off a little better without the Down Syndrome haircut, but you gotta work with what you got.


Here's Dad, contemplating the possibility someone switched out his blonde sporty football kid with an evil gay Paul Lynde homonculous somewhere along the way. I imagine he finds the thought comforting, probably to this day.


"This is the kind of bed the astronaut's sleep in," they'd say. I'd slip into dreamland seconds after hearing the click of the padlock.


When I was a kid, there was a company called Imagineering that did a pretty good job of creating products that more or less mapped out the inside of my head. Here I'm sporting their Melting Man kit, a tie-in with a popular movie from the era that featured a protagonist who goes around eating people and, uh, melting, something I thought was just grand. "Perhaps if the Paul Lynde thing doesn't work out I can be the Melting Man when I grow up," I'd say to myself. Mom made me take off the makeup after a couple of months, though.


I'd carry around the leftover googly eyes and fangs everywhere I went. My idea of a perfect day would be to just ride around in the passenger seat of a car with that shit on and stare at people at stoplights, something I did well into my twenties. Oh, that lady on the left? She hated black people.


I'm still not sure how I didn't end up a serial killer.


Or gay. Look at that robe! I mean, it was for a school play and all, but, frankly, I would've happily just walked around in that thing year-round, oblivious to the heckles and catcalls of society and casting little gay spells in my head all the live-long day.


"Why hello there, sailor. Fancy a game of footsy?"


Because it's how I felt on the inside, damn it.


I lied to Mom about the date for school pictures so I could get 'em taken with my favorite shirt, not hers. Look closely and you can see where the print is damaged, at the top of that first O. I was a little excited that morning and wanted to iron it, so I'd look my best.

Oh, I should point out that I hadn't actually seen Mister Bill at that point, despite wearing his shirt at least four times a week. I knew from reading Rolling Stone that he was a character on Saturday Night Live, a show the magazine assured me had a rebellious, counter-culture rock 'n' roll edge. Plus his clips always ended up with him all mashed and on fire and stuff. That was all pretty much good enough for me.

Oh! And also check out my pinkie. Weird!


So I was going through all these photos at my crazy Mom's house a week or two ago, and at one point I was like, "Mom, holy shit, look at me. I'm gay. Totally gay, all these years, and I never knew it."

"What?! Are you really?! Are you gay?! Please don't tell me you're gay," she said, edging toward hysteria.

"Ma, you can't get upset by that," I said. "You're a lesbian. It's not logical."

"Well, are you or aren't you?" she said. "Because my friends ask me all the time."

Ha ha, we got to pretend she has friends.


A glimpse at the New Wave Years. You can see here how the family continued the tradition of torturing children with terrible outfits. They've got poor Neil tricked out like a fucking Batman villain.


I, uhhh... I... I... Sorry, Dad.

Labels: Diary of Indignities

DIARY OF INDIGNITIES
Hey Look, I Sat in Some Gum!
I have this friend, OK, and I’m going to call him Anatol. Because that’s his name.

Anatol doesn’t drink, or didn’t use to, and for a while lived with all those sober fried-poo guys in Dick House. Anatol’s also, like, a genius. A bona-fide smart guy with a Ph.D. in physics to prove it. For all his fancy book-learnin’, though, Anatol hasn’t always made such wise choices when deciding how to use his penis.

Taken as detail, the Ph.D.-penis dichotomy is a mystery, to be sure, but then Anatol himself is a bit of an enigma. For example, the man is a shambles. He has remarkably shapely calves, but aside from that is just sort of doughy and nondescript in a poorly groomed kind of way. Personal style? He looks like he fell asleep in a pile of someone else’s clothes and left the house that morning just wearing whatever stuck to him. Hair-doo? That same low-maintenance cut they give to small children, people fresh off the boat from China and folks with Down Syndrome. Yet Anatol always dated extremely attractive young women, smart and fit and well dressed to the last, and eventually even married one. Her name’s Jill. I’m still a little pissed off about it. She’s even Asian! Or, uh, half Asian! Or something!

Several years ago I was dog-sitting for this guy who — well, let’s just say the guy was a douche, and the way he conducted himself lent a lot of weight to my friend Kyle’s credo Don’t Trust Anyone Who Uses an Initial in Place of a Proper First Name. (And the first initial followed by full use of the middle name doesn’t exempt anybody. Hell, Kyle’s first name is Buddy, but he just goes by Kyle, not B. Kyle or something equally douchey.)

This guy with the dog and the initial was always getting fucked up on cocaine and testing me, acting all tough and trying to start a fight, even though he was reedy and sallow-chested and any normal well-fed American man could’ve broken him in two with half an ass cheek. I wanted nothing more than to use this fellow to test my theory that punching someone really, really hard on the balls can potentially flip their breaker switch, ideally resetting their personality to something more manageable. Despite this urge, I had to be nice to him, because he was a powerful wizard who kept my soul in an enchanted jar he was an editor at a magazine where I worked and I needed the dough. I liked that dog of his pretty well, too.

One morning D. Ouchebag was out of town, and I was staying at his apartment, passive-aggressively blasting the air conditioning and leaving all the lights on while taking care of that dog. That dog needed a lot of attention, because Editor Boy was in the process of switching his personality from coked-up unconvincing wangsta dude to hippied-up unconvincing deeply spiritual dude without the assistance of a ball-punch, and he insisted on taking the poor beast to this holistic fuckin’ shaman instead of a real veterinarian. This medicine man was all like, “Ooh, look at me, I’m mystical, I think western culture is bad,” and he wouldn’t give the dog antibiotics, even after he performed some kind of ball surgery on him, so of course the dog developed an infection in his ball-sack and would mope around dripping blood and pus out of his balls and dick and I’d have to wipe that shit up and feed the dog, like, a special root. I saved a small vial of that disgusting infected ball juice and if I ever run across that magical quack I’m going to put him in a headlock and make him drink it.

Anyway, it was early in the morning and I fed the dog his phony-ass holistic ball root and took him for his morning walk. I left my glasses behind in the apartment, because I was half asleep and didn’t think about it, and also because I didn’t like seeing all that dog doo in crystalline detail, but while walking along I nevertheless managed to spot an attractive female a few streets away. I could only make out her general shape, but even with poor eyesight I knew she was fine. A minute or two of squinting and I also noticed she was holding hands with some terrible looking blob. “Jesus, look at that fat bastard,” I thought. “How does a heap like him score a girl like that?! What’s his secret? He doesn’t even have a good haircut.”

I walked another block or so toward them, the whole time thinking, “I’m a shambles, but I’m only half the shambles that guy is, and my weiner’s been as dry as the Sahara for months! I should kick his ass, just for having the temerity to date so far above his station, not to mention going all public with it and rubbing it in my face.”

A half block closer and the couple waved and called out my name. It was Anatol and Jill, of course. “Hey guys,” I said, all cheerful. “What’s up!” In my brain, though, I was like, “I should kill him. Or at least get shapely calf implants. Maybe both?”

God, you know, I lived with Anatol for a while, and it was amazing. I swear his room was decorated by a hobo, socks and garbage everywhere. And he didn’t have a cover or sheet or anything on his dirty futon, which subsequently was so covered in skeet marks it looked like someone hid behind it during a doughnut fight. No pillowcase, either, and his one pillow was all threadbare and ratty and dark with head-grease in the indention where your head goes and it smelled like rancid hair from several feet away, ugh. Disgusting! No shortage of slender, bright-eyed young ladies lured in by Anatol’s calves to wallow in all that filth, of course, humping around and making noise while in the next room it was just a 200-pound, wood-paneled VCR from 1978 that runs on steam and a fourth-generation tape of Young Lady Chatterly keeping me and my dusty ol’ dry-ass penis company.

It was during this era that I first witnessed Anatol — remember, a guy with a Ph.D. in physics — do something really fuckin’ stupid with his man-bits.

Many moons ago on this site I mentioned a maneuver called the Minnesota wristwatch in passing, and a lot of people were confused. They had never heard of the Minnesota wristwatch, and were curious about its configuration and purpose. Well, the Minnesota wristwatch is, at its core, simply one of the many things you can do with your penis to make other people deeply unhappy.

Somehow, in my life, and God knows how, really, I’ve become acquainted with a number of these disagreeable exercises. For years, at least in my social circles, it was common on festive occasions for someone at some point in the evening to simply pull their scrotum through their fly and start bellowing, “I SAT IN SOME GUM! I SAT IN SOME GUM!” And lo, the hilarity would never fail to doth commence, I swear.

In my occasional sober moments, though, I wondered about the arrangement of I SAT IN SOME GUM. While certainly funny, it didn’t seem conceptually sound. I mean, I understood that the pink, wrinkly skin of the scrotum symbolized a wad of used chewing gum, of course, but how did it get to the lap area? Was the gum supposed to have been placed on the underside of a desk or table? Was the initiator of I SAT IN SOME GUM using the gum chair in some novel lap-oriented way? Did they encounter a wad so mighty that it smooshed up through the taint area and into the frontal crotch region? I’d mull over this shit for hours.

Years later, I witnessed a more methodical prankster bust out with the move in a way that made it all come together. See, you’re supposed to take out the scrotum while sitting, then — this is key — pin it to the seat of your chair with your thumb. Taking advantage of natural ball-sack elasticity, you then rise to a half crouch and exclaim, “I think I sat in some gum!” Voila! Everyone will look at your awful stretchy balls and be bummed, filling your heart with pure whirling smiles of delight. When I finally saw this feat performed by a qualified professional it resolved years of questioning for me. How this trick degenerated among my friends to simply pulling out your balls and hollering is a mystery, but I’m sure there’s a sad commentary on the state of society in there somewhere.

But the Minnesota wristwatch operates on the same basic premise. First of all, though, Minnesota doesn’t have anything to do with it. It’s just an arbitrary kind of appellation, something to divert the attention of your potential victim. I like the rhythms of “Minnesota” and feel a regional prefix adds zest and hearkens back to a time before the homogenization of American culture, when different areas of the country still had their own distinctive cultural flavors. Some, however, prefer a textile approach, and favor the title “snakeskin wristwatch.” The important thing here is just to distract the section of the brain in the hapless recipient that’s always on the lookout for intrusive penises or balls.

The first step in physically performing the Minnesota wristwatch is to extract the penis through the fly hole with the right hand. Next, firmly grasp the mushroom head between thumb and forefinger while moving the left arm toward the crotch, keeping it low. The left wrist should be held against the body, palm down, as close to the fly as possible. Using the dickhead for guidance, you next wrap the penis, moving from right to left across the back of the left wrist. Performed correctly, the veiny and unpleasant shaft will stretch across the outside of the wrist, presenting a smooth expanse of weiner tissue to any unfortunate onlookers.

To complete the trick, you carefully — very carefully, you’re not going to be too mobile here — sidle up to someone you want to freak out and say, “Hey, have you seen my new Minnesota wristwatch?”

The great thing about this gag is that children enjoy it so it’s difficult to discern the exact nature of the strange, fleshy mass on first glance. Inevitably, the recipient of the Minnesota wristwatch will spend seconds, minutes or even hours staring at it, trying to figure it all out: If it was really a wristwatch it would have a dial, a digital readout… It’s bizarre looking, yet somehow familiar… Perhaps a little too organic… Is that suede? Leather? Say, why is he holding his arms in such a weird way, so low and close to his crotch and aaaaAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH NOOOOOO

The victim, having necessarily stared at the ghastly thing for longer than anyone would want to while working through the clever wristwatch disguise, will have had a good dose of weiner molecules fly right into their eye by the time they figure it out, significantly intensifying their shame and disgust. Self-immolation or seppuku are frequent reactions, and if you love pranks and lively hijinx that’s really about the highest praise you can get.

So one time Anatol and the other roommates were clustered on a couch, watching TV, and I crab-walked in and pulled the Minnesota wristwatch. Everyone was grossed out for about four seconds before getting re-hypnotized by the TV (they were also generally blasé about things most respectable members of society find repellant), except for Anatol. It was his first encounter with the trick.

“It’s amazing,” he said. “How do you do it?”

“Just wrap it, dude,” I said.

“But… How? I don’t think I could do it. You must be very well endowed.”

“Yes, my whole family’s very proud.”

“I have to try this,” Anatol said, and went into the hall. For the next few minutes we could hear him out there, making strange grunting noises.

“I can’t do it!” Anatol yelled.

“Keep trying!” We didn’t want to discourage him.

“It hurts!”

“Stretch it!”

Anatol yelled, obviously in legitimate pain. “It’s not working!”

“I gotta go see what he’s doing,” I thought, and joined Anatol in the hall. Turns out Mr. Ph.D. had overlooked the obvious and was trying to wrap his scrotum and balls around his wrist instead of his penis. Jesus. I wince just thinking about it.

Even that remarkable lapse of good judgment was but a warm-up to Anatol’s grandest achievement. Now, this is something I didn’t personally witness — I’ve just heard second-hand accounts, and am fairly certain that what I’m about to write is not strictly 100% accurate. Frankly, though, I don’t care about the truth, and figure if my take gets repeated often enough it’ll supplant reality and enter public record as the definitive version.

It takes place at an informal wedding reception for my friends Sean and Caryn, something held at an unbelievably dirty and sleazy punk-rock club called the Hardback. The Hardback was much beloved by Gainesville dirtbags and hipsters for years and years, as it hosted many good bands and pretty much let you get away with damn near anything. In return, you occasionally had to pay a small cover charge and brave the club's awful restrooms.

Now, despite sobriety, Anatol encouraged other people’s drinking habits (like they needed it), and around this time was known for his Flaming Dr. Peppers. He carried around a backpack with all the various elixirs and potions you need to make this refreshing drink and would gladly fix you one up upon request, carefully measuring the amounts and calibrating the ratios before delivering the coup de grace — fire! Yes, the last step to making this cocktail was to float some kind of combustible substance on top and set it aflame. Yay!

So Anatol is at the party, making his Flaming Dr. Peppers and giving best wishes to the happy couple, when inspiration strikes. They have those disposable cameras everywhere, like they do at weddings and such, so guests can snap photos. Anatol figures it’d be fun to go into the bathroom with a camera and some of that Flaming Dr. Pepper mix and secretly snap a pic of his penis on fire. Imagine the wonder on Sean’s and Caryn’s faces when they develop their reception photographs and come across this!

Jill, still totally bewitched by the calves, agrees to assist Anatol, and they head to the restroom. Like I said, the Hardback was filthy, but the bathrooms were positively toxic. Really, people would jog a quarter mile to Subway to take a poop rather than get their butt cheeks anywhere near a Hardback toilet. Hell, even when peeing you’d stand as far back as you could from that gaping, demonic maw, lest a germ fly up from the seat and lit upon your ding-dong.

Inside, Jill gets the camera positioned while Anatol drops his pants and douses his penis in Pepper mix. Once alight, Anatol figures the alcohol will burn for a few seconds, giving them plenty of time to take a picture before his weiner becomes seriously endangered. I guess in physics class they don’t teach you about the nature of pubic hair, though, because after everything’s set up and Anatol flicks the lighter his man-bush immediately bursts into a giant fireball, shooting hot flame up into his face.

Anatol screams. Jill screams, and, sensibly, runs out of the restroom. Frantic, Anatol pats out his pubic flames as best as he can without mashing up his balls. A minute or two later, Jill reenters, and finds Anatol standing there, terrified, with his hands covering his crotch.

Anatol turns accusatory. “You left me!” he says.

“I’m sorry,” Jill says. “I was scared.”

“I’m scared too,” he says.

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t know. I’m afraid to look.”

“We have to, baby,” Jill whispers. “If you’re burned, we’re going to have to get you to a hospital.”

Anatol is absolutely mortified. The last thing he wants to consider is serious penis burns. But he has to look. Slowly, ever so slowly, he moves his hands away from his crotch...

Nothing! No burns, no blistering… It seems Anatol has somehow escaped injury. They both breathe a sigh of relief.

Problem is, Anatol’s crotch is still doused in flammable liquid. A second or two after removing his hands, the inrush of oxygen reignites a hidden pube ember, surprising Anatol and Jill with another gigantic fireball.

Anatol screams. This time, though, Jill just laughs, and snaps a picture.

Anatol rushes over to the toilet, splashing the water there onto his crotch to douse the flames. Me, I would’ve opted for the fire, given the choice. Those bathrooms were seriously gross.

Later, Sean and Caryn develop the pictures. Something about the flash on those cameras rendered the flames invisible, so all you see is Anatol’s tiny penis, shriveled in pain from an attack by an unseen enemy.

I wonder how that works, those flames turning invisible in the photo. You reckon a physicist could explain it?

Labels: Diary of Indignities

DIARY OF INDIGNITIES
25 Years of Notably Stupid Conversations
…as well as my personal contributions.

1982: We’re Ninjas
“Let’s meditate at the same time tonight and try to contact each other on the astral plane.”

1983: Bauhaus or the Sex Pistols – Who is True Punk?
“The Sex Pistols started it, but Bauhaus are like the true punks of today.”

1984: No, I'm Not High
“You don't even fucking understand me!”

1985: Who Cares if I Make Bad Grades?!
“We’re all going to die in a nuclear war.”

1986: I’m Going to Get All the Same Tattoos as Henry Rollins
“...As soon as I turn 18.”

1987: A Diploma is Just a Piece of Paper
“I don’t plan to live to see 30 anyway, man.”

1988: Fuck Jazz
“I don’t give a shit about some dude in a Bill Cosby Sweater tootling around on some horn.”

1989: Fuck Affirmative Action
“When you really think about it, it’s just another form of discrimination.”

1990: Fuck College
“Journalism school perpetuates a false notion of objectivity.”

1991: I Think I’m Becoming an Alcoholic
(Quiet weeping)

1992: They’re Rioting in Los Angeles
“...And if I was there you know I’d totally be out there with them!”

1993: Fuck Reggae
“Maybe you just think you like it because you smoke so much pot.”

1994: What Do You Mean That’s Not Chinese?
“I don’t even think you know what a phoneme is.”

1995: Your Poetry is Really Great
“Would it be alright if I kissed you?”

1996: There’s a Revolution Coming
“We need to get into shit like real estate and fucking run this town, yo!”

1997: I’ll Always Love Professional Wrestling
“It’s an underground art form with absolutely no potential for getting co-opted by the mainstream.”

1998: Ian MacKaye Shoots Heroin
“No he doesn’t.”

1999: No, I Appreciate Your Input
“I feel like I learn a lot from your criticism.”

2000: They’re All the Fucking Same to Me
“You think Gore would be any better?”

2001: A Bird is My Spirit Guide
“I really, really don’t want to hear about this.”

2002: No, This Job Means a Lot to Me
“I’m going to incorporate the results of this review into my work processes and bring about some positive changes.”

2003: We’re Currently Efforting On That
“I plan to stay proactive.”

2004: Technology is Evil
“Mom, if it wasn’t for ‘technology’ you would have died toothless and riddled with scurvy before you were 35.”

2005: Gays Don’t Provide Good Family Role Models
“Yeah, not like the straights, ah ha ha hah ha ha!”

2006: A Kilometer is Equivalent to, Like, a Mile and a Half
“I’m sure of it, dude, a kilometer is equivalent to, like, a mile and a half.”

2007: ???
Maybe it’ll be you!

Labels: Diary of Indignities

DIARY OF INDIGNITIES
He Only Killed the One Guy And I Don’t Think Ever Actually Ate the Baby
Despite being unfit for most types of human interaction, I was a champion babysitter.

In fact, in ninth and tenth grade, I was sort of a kickass babysitting mercenary, called in by frantic parents of monster children, people who were desperate for a night out on the town but couldn’t hire a regular sitter at any price because their kids were so horrific. Most sitters in the area were just, like, girls, who might have — at worst — been sexually molested a little by a beloved family member or two but certainly not exposed to the kinds of horrors I had survived, such as the Tribunal of Sapphos or the Moss Man, and weren’t equipped to handle a real Damien or two.

So having been forged in the fires of Webelo I was made of slightly sterner stuff than your average 13-year-old girl, and, yeah, I will brag on that a little, thank you very much (even if I suspect it might no longer be the case). But even more important to my success was the fact horrific monster children loved me. After all, I was one of them. My personal proclivities are were perfectly in line with theirs, and had cash not been involved I would’ve been happy abdicating from any sitter duties to instead encourage horrific monster child activities, which back then typically included setting fires, stabbing a Barbie in the head with a steak knife 317 times, and running around in tight little circles screaming and banging two frying pans together until completely out of breath.

Because the only food Dad allowed me to eat was stuff I bought myself, though, I developed a money-generating babysitting strategy out of pure self-interest. Basically, this was a delicate balancing act where I convinced children I was, in fact, encouraging forbidden monster behavior while simultaneously giving parents the impression their little beloved little hellspawn were in responsible hands, freeing them to go off and smoke up a rock of that good crack down at the Orgy Hut. Or whatever.

We didn’t have roofies back then, so central to my little ruse was a game called “kung fu.” Nanoseconds after hearing the parents’ car leave the driveway, I’d bellow “KUNG FU!!!” at the top of my lungs and me and the kids would commence to lightly kicking each other in the face for an hour or two, until they were either exhausted or unconscious, and I could just chuck ‘em in bed and commence to the good stuff: the sweet spot between beddy-bye and parental return where I made good money gorging on snacks, hunting for the porno stash, and soaking up that sweet, sweet cable TV with no adult oversight.

God damn, what a great scam. It sure beat mowing lawns, which as far as I was concerned was a sucker game for short-bus dudes who were too stupid to not be hot or afraid of bees. On a good night I could get four or five unsupervised hours where I’d just be cramming handfuls of Cheezits into my mouth, drinking gallons of Choco Charm and watching mind-bending shit like Hell of the Living Dead, an Italian zombie flick set in a jungle where genius director Bruno Mattei spliced in anthropological footage of real-life aboriginal funeral rites featuring actual corpses. This life-affirming piece of cinema also features a child zombie that eats his mom before getting his brains blown out, a chick who thinks she needs to whip her boobs out to commune with a wholly unconvincing non-spliced gang of natives, and a climax where a zombie rips out the heroine’s tongue, jams his hand up in her head through her mouth, and pushes her eyes out of their sockets, from the inside.

Oh, and what about Xtro, the delightfully repellent British movie about evil space goblins? It had a murderous midget homunculus, a woman who dies after getting mouth-humped by an alien tentacle and subsequently giving birth to a full-grown man who bites off his own placenta, and Maryam D’Abo’s attention-grabbing and extremely perky hoo-hahs. Or the original Toxic Avenger — not that fake shit they tried to pawn off a few years later, but the real deal, where the kid on the bike gets his head squashed by the evil teen hijinx, and they show it, by gum, not puss out and cut away. Or, jeez, what about just anything on Cinemax after 10? Talk about your hoo-hahs! So many beautiful hoo-hahs on the Cinemax... So many. So, so many.

Yes sir, they knew how to make a damn movie for kids back in those days, something that would really make you think. Made me feel damn glad to be alive, sitting on a couch watching hoo-hahs and grotesqueries while eating a piece of ice-cream cake sandwiched between two Pop Tarts, and not all dead and gooey and eye-sockety, or out there mowing a hot-ass lawn full of fucking bees.

These gigs were made even sweeter because Dad was too cheap to spring for cable — even basic. Babysitting was the only chance I ever had to engage in the preferred ritual of my immediate circle of friends, sitting in front of the TV for six hours hoping MTV plays “Institutionalized.” It came on once when I was sitting the legendarily nefarious Hart brothers and we went totally apeshit and I fell down and twisted my ankle, which made a sickeningly loud pop. First thing in the morning my left foot still sounds like a kitten got caught in your fan belt, 24 goddamn years later. Happy now, Dad? Happy with my crackly ankle?

Man, not only was Dad tight with a penny, but I’m pretty sure he was suspicious of all the hoo-hahs and zombies and general enchantment cable could potentially bring to our lives, and wanted no part of it. Eh, maybe it’s just as well. Cable would end up being just another hoop for me to jump through... I already had to put on a veil and a Herb Alpert record and do the Harem Girl Dance for Dad and his buddies every time I wanted to go in the pool. Who knows what crippling toll he’d demand before loosing the chains of sweet Cinemax?

One time while sitting, after this one kid went to sleep, I hit play on the VCR and there was a dirty tape in there, one featuring a lady hosing out another lady’s cooter with a, uh... Well, a cooter hose, I guess. It was smaller in diameter than your average garden hose and seemed better equipped to reach awkward nooks and crannies. Anyway, Cooter Hose Friday was a glorious day, I tell you what. It really opened up my young mind to a lot of possibilities, and, if you couldn't already tell, I can picture that magical hose like it was yesterday.

The parent was a new client, though, and I guess one with a manageable child, because she balked at my two dollar an hour price, which I swear was the goddamn going rate at the time, and never hired me again. Shit, if I was smart I would have bicycled back over there and renegotiated, cut some sort of deal on the sly where once or twice a week she’d leave that cooter tape in the machine and I’d smack around her stupid kid for free. In the interests of scientific research, of course.

Kids, if you’re reading this and not sure what a VCR is, all you need to know is it was a magical box we used to look at cooters back in the 1980s, years before the Internet became such an efficient medium for delivering your pornography.

Anyway, the kicker to all this babysitter shit comes 20 years later, when I find out that because of me one of the kids I sat turned out to be a serial killer who totally, like, ate a baby!

OK, not really.

Really I only bring all that shit up because babysitting is also responsible for the first time I drove a car, and this was supposed to be the lead-in, but I got carried away.

Really, though, the driving story is a tale for when the gibbous moon hangs yellow and full in the autumn sky and the night wind hints at Old Man Winter’s sharp kiss. Or, ah, maybe next week, we'll see how it pans out.

Labels: Diary of Indignities

DIARY OF INDIGNITIES
We Will Be Good Penisheimers
When I was 12 or so I spent a year as a Webelo, which is the pupal stage of American scouting... Yes, the transitional period between wormy, larval Cub Scout and the splendid, colorful butterfly-dom that is, uh, Boy Scouts and... Jeez, never mind.

If I remember correctly, I think “Webelo” is supposed to be some kind of fuckin’ anagram or euphemism or something for “We will be good Scouts,” although frankly the connection there strikes me as tenuous, at best. And, frankly, I wasn’t really paying a lot of attention, there, back in the day.

Regardless, it’s clear to me that whoever thought that shit up was a fucking dumbass, because in addition to not really doing a very good job of evoking that little “good scouts” mantra, “Webelo” is the most awkward and stupid name for an organization this side of my grandfather’s beloved Penisheimers, a popular American social club that as I’m sure you know was founded by West Coast community leaders in 1887 to oppress the Chinese.

Man, I was a shitty Webelo and... Webelo... Webelo... Weeee-be-looo... Wheee-buh-looow... Wheeee-blow... Ah hah ha ha, “We blow.” I just noticed that.

Anyway, I was a shitty Webelo. Perhaps the shittiest. I had long, greasy hair and had been raised to hate America and not care about the Bible. All the clean-cut churchy dudes that had blossomed into full Boy Scout status and were supposed to be mentoring us Webelos, but they could totally tell I was a degenerate and didn’t even talk to me. My mom was too cheap to spring for a proper uniform, so I had to wear a faded, ancient Webelo get-up scrounged from some garage sale, and it was all fucked-up looking and unstylish and made out of, like, stained pantaloons and ripped lederhosen.

Pretty much the only people in my troop who acknowledged my presence, and really the main reasons why I signed up in the first place, were my buddies Chip Coldwell and Alex Stein. By getting on board with all that Webelo shit we could all go camping together, which was super appealing, since my mom had up and converted to lesbianism by that point and the only camping we did as a family anymore involved the female softball team. Joining the Webelos gave me my only real opportunity to go fool around in the woods without being subjected to shit like Sapphic tribunals tasked with deciding whether me and my 11-year-old weiner should be sequestered away from all the womyn-folk, lest they stray too close to my crotch and get raped by the pre-tumescent man-vibes emanating from my ding-dong, and I swear to god I’m not even making that last part up and if you say I am I’m going to punch you in the brain.

This should come as no big surprise, since I’ve already informed you that they were my friends, but Chip and Alex were almost as socially awkward as I was. Oh, and dirty Jews to boot, so the Bible-y guys and various squad leaders and troop chiefs (or whatever they had, I can’t fuckin’ remember) were more than happy to ignore them, too. The three of us often found ourselves left to our own devices on camping trips, squatting in the leaves discussing the latest episode of Dr. Who while everyone else was running around tying knots and praying and learning CPR and being wholesome.

Well, mostly wholesome. The older scouts occasionally made a stab at bad-kid-ism, but their frame of reference was just too white-bread and they could never pull it off. One trip, I think to the Big-Ass Scout and Webelo Good-Timey Jubilee, saw our troop meet up in the woods with a rival bunch of squares for a planned gang rumble, but everyone just ended up comparing merit badges and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance or selling each other Grit or whatever and shit never threw down. I had a D battery in a sock that I was fixin’ to use to conk somebody on the head, so you can imagine my disappointment.

That same trip I came ‘round a tent near the edges of our site and spooked three or four of the older scouts. Turns out they were all jumpy because they were smoking — get this — dried pine needles in a rolled-up piece of brown paper grocery sack and didn’t want to get busted. They told me I was too young and naïve to cop some of their fine pine-needle buzz and I kind of laughed, because despite my young age I had already smoked several cigarettes made from marijuana at that point. Informing them of this just reinforced my dirtbag rep.

Hey, when you’re a kid, how often are you supposed to get scoliosis tests? Because I just remembered — the head troopie guy was also my middle school P.E. coach, and he administered a damn scoliosis test every other week. Everybody dreaded it — you had to march into his office and close the door, and he’d be sitting there wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses, smiling a tight little smile. Nobody would speak — you knew the drill. Take off your shirt and bend over toward him and he’d kind of feel and press around on your spine and ribs, looking for abnormalities and no doubt enjoying his massive boner. As best as I can remember he never stuck anything up my butt or anything, but those tests were still pretty traumatic, and I wasn’t exactly jumping at the chance to share my tent with the guy on camping trips, you know?

Oh! Man! One Webelo camping trip traumatized me even worse than those scoliosis tests. It was pretty much the second scariest experience of my life, an incident involving a kid named Carsten Vala. Remember the first scariest thing in my life, the time when I was just a little kid and went to go make a pee-pee in the big-boy toilet for the first time and I got up on my tippy-toes and rested my ding-dong on the rim of the seat to make a tinkle and the lid fell and clamped down on my lil’ nubbin like a giant clam on an old-timey diver’s leg? And I stood there screaming in horror until Dad came running to pry me loose? Well, the Carsten Vala episode was just like that, except without nubbin, thankfully.

Hmmm... No, actually, come to think of it, it really wasn’t like the toilet-clamp at all. And, to be totally honest, I don’t know for sure if it was, like, even officially the second scariest thing or not. I haven’t been in the habit of ranking that sort of thing and the more I think about it now the more it seems the scoliosis tests might actually come in at number two. Frankly, though, I kind of don’t give a shit.

But it was scary.

We were camping and doing the traditional thing where you tell scary stories around the fire, and it all seems like good squirmy fun until you hump your ass back to that dark fuckin’ isolated tent and have to lie there for nine hours quivering every time a nearby squirrel bumps into a goddamn acorn, because somehow the removal of that warm fiery glow makes the existence of the Moss Man suddenly seem all too possible and — what the fuck was that?! Shhhh! Shhhhhh!! What the fuck was that rustling sound?!

...And, shit, Carsten? You think a kid named Carsten Vala is going to protect you from the fuckin’ Moss Man? Carsten was Danish or some shit and wore those terrible little Umbro shorts all the time. What the fuck is he going to do? You can’t whoop the Moss Man’s ass in Umbros. You can’t whoop anybody’s ass in Umbros. The best you could hope for with Carsten is that he’d whip out a soccer ball and challenge the Moss Man to a scrimmage. And maybe you could book on out of there while the Moss Man dined on his flesh.

Oh, the Moss Man, yeah. Supposedly he was a crazy murderer that got all bit by dogs and cut up by barbed wire escaping from a local prison. As the story goes, he was on the run through the swamps around the clock for a solid week before finally shaking Smokey and the dogs off his trail and collapsing into a big wad of Spanish moss, where he slept for like four days. When he woke up, he found the moss had taken root and grown into the deep cuts and gashes all over his face and body, and this turned him extra double crazy, and ever since he roamed the Florida woods all hideous and mossy, just killing the fuck out of everybody in a most grisly fashion and — wait, wait, shhh! Did you just hear something?! Oh, fuck this. That better not be no goddamn Moss Man rustling around out there. Shit.

Laugh all you want, sure. We’ll see how hard you laugh the next time you’re out in the dark-ass woods all surrounded by spooky moss and you hear kind of a murder-y noise in the bushes.

Anyway, the older scouts filled us full of campfire dread and then expelled us from warmth and communal protection, sending us on a Bataan Death March through acres of moss back to our tents where we were to cower away the night. I was sharing a tent with Carsten on this trip, and while this was certainly preferable to bunking down with Coach Fondles it didn’t exactly settle my nerves in regards to fighting off forest haints. But we made it there OK and mumbled a few consoling words to each other as got in our sleeping bags and hunkered down, hoping for a few minutes of shuteye before daybreak. Surprisingly, I managed to supress thoughts of the Moss Man and drift off fairly quickly.

At some point, though, I was woken up by a noise. A rustle.

I was in the thick of dreamland and struggling to swim back to consciousness when I heard the noise again. Totally disoriented, I just kind of lay there. Where was I? Why was I all cold and unhappy? And why is that sound significant?

Then I heard it again. And close. And it hit me: Moss Man.

The thought jolted me awake. I lay there in the darkness, still as I could be, still woozy but with all senses on overdrive. And the rustling sounded again, loud.

This time, though, it was accompanied by a frantic, wordless moaning.

Whoah.

The initial shock lasted less than a second, quickly giving way to a handful of dueling lightspeed rationalizations. Raccoon? No, raccoons don’t moan. Wounded raccoon? No, no, too small.

Then it happened again. It was loud. And close. And it was accompanied again by that terrible, desperate moaning.

Cougar, maybe? Cougars don’t moan, unless... Cougar in heat? Bear? Dare I even consider it, like for real? ...Moss Man?

Ah, no — it suddenly hit me. It was probably some of those douchebag older scouts.

When they bothered to notice me at all it was usually to try and pull typical lightweight hazing shit that only fooled their fellow Baptists — sending kids out to go get left-handed steak knives or 30 feet of shoreline, rounding up dupes for a snipe hunt, that kind of thing. Lame. That kind of shit never worked on me, probably because I once read, like, an Encyclopedia Brown book from 1912 or something that wised me up, and I knew they were resentful that I never fell for any of their antics. The noise was probably just them thinking they were going to Moss Man me into some kind of candy-ass frenzy. Well, fuck them. I had survived the fearsome Tribunal of Separatist Lesbos, had I not? I’d show them!

Suddenly the rustling turned into a bona-fide thrashing. And this time it didn’t stop. And that moan started up again, and I realized just how close it was — it wasn’t in the bushes! It was right up against the side of the tent! I could feel it bumping against my leg!

I turned wholly candy-ass and started kicking and squealing. The moan transformed into a terrifying, bestial grunt: NNNGH! NNNGH! NNNNNNNNNGGGGGHHH!! Holy shit, it was loud, and right outside!

No! Wait! It was there — it was in the tent with me! AAAAAGH! I could see something spazzing around on the other side of the tent — it had Carsten! It was... Eating him alive! Or... or... Humping his face! Or something!

Frantic, I grabbed my flashlight. The terrible noise and commotion reached a crescendo, becoming unbearable. Every nerve in my body threatened to shatter as I clicked on the light, fully prepared to come face to face with what I expected to be endless horror, rivers of gore that moments ago were my fellow Webelo Carsten... I could only hope my death would be swift, that the Moss Man’s infernal powers met their limit at the edge of the physical world and I would escape his hellish grasp as my soul escaped the constraints of my earthly body...

The light came on. I trembled. I saw Carsten’s eyes, shining in the beam, but starting to dim as he succumbed to... to... the grasp of... a big wad of nylon? What the hell?

Turns out Carsten’s complicated dental headgear had snagged on his sleeping bag. He rolled over five or six times after sacking out, pulling the bag tight around his shoulders and head. His arms were pinned and he seriously couldn’t breathe.

I got him out of there before he died and we went back to sleep.

...Oh, wait! Shit! Just now I remembered the worst thing!

There, was this movie, right, Dressed to Kill, directed by Brian DePalma. And my mom got together with a pack of lesbians and went to go protest this movie, because it was supposedly misogynistic and promoted violence against women and stuff, though your guess is as good as mine how they figured that out, because I’m pretty sure none of them had actually seen it.

Anyway, Mom knew TV reporters and shit were going to be there, so she made me dress up in my ramshackle Webelo costume and join the protest. I was forced under pain of endless grounding to wave a placard and march around in a circle in front of the movie theater, because Mom thought it leant their stupid thing credibility to have a Boy Scout out there chanting “Hey hey! Ho ho! Bad ol’ movie has got to go!” or whatever with all the commies and killjoys and hateful rug munchers.

So I did. I muttered their dumb rhymes and marched around and carried my sign, and the people waiting in line stared at me like I was a giant douche, and Mom of course made a giant fuss over everything. She got some news dude to come over and interview me, and they had a TV camera and a light on me and asked me why I was out there. “Violence against women is bad,” I mumbled. And it is. I believed it.

In the back of my mind, though, the Moss Man was stabbing them all, the lesbians and the movie people and the TV guys and everyone else, just stabbing and stabbing them over and over and over again. With his penis.

Labels: Diary of Indignities

YE OLDE DIARY OF INDIGNITIES

My original plan was to go with a girl and get a bunch of pics of me and her doing terrible medieval stuff so the comedy would doth ensue. No dice, though. Seems as if the combined prospects of spending the day with me and mingling with faire nerds didn't turn out to be much of a draw. Imagine my surprise.


If the first goddamn thing you see when you walk in isn't some robey Friar Tuck-ass motherfucker gnawing away on a turkey leg, run and get your money back, 'cause you at the wrong place.


So did the Medieval Faire invent big fat bellowy ponytail dudes, or do big fat bellowy ponytail dudes just naturally gravitate there, like spawning salmon?


I stood in front of this for like nine minutes, reading the sign over and over again to make sure it wasn't just a beautiful dream.


"You see, Billy? Keep yourself parked in front of the Xbox instead of going outside once in a while for a football game and you’ll eventually end up on the other side of this rope with Baron von Clownypants and his band of half-assed D'artagnans, instead of out here where the pussy is."


His stylish Oakley Blades hath caused Aerobics Gypsy to yearn for the touch of his robust build, but, alas, his stripey wand longs to caress only ToriAmosKitty771326 at hotmail dot com.


"Sorry, kingly decree sayeth thou must don puffy sleeves before thou canst breach the rope and challenge yon band of scrappy beekeepers."


Ha ha, ye olde rabbit ears. No doubt Crabass Da Vinci’s enormous right shoulder quivered with rage when he saw the tricketh his impish gay brother hath wrought.


Prithee, good shopkeep, but mightst thou stock ye modern wizards and dragons or... Ah, nevermind.


If that thing comes up Maid Marian your dad’s going to leave you here.


Hmmm, methinks the fence sprite hath caused mine loins to sprouteth a boner.


Yeah, there's nothing that'll whirl your imagination back through time like a bored soccer mom dishing you up a greasy slice of pepperoni.


Doth grass stains mar thy breeches? Try a little lemon juice.


The Blueberry Witch emerges from haunted Ersatz Castle to cast a spell on the audience. Now they all like anime.


Sir Rudy Hat realizing he locked his keys in his Acura.


If thou don't getteth thy stupid velour robe out of the way of my camera, I'm telling the Cartoon Network to cancel Naruto.


I'd joust it.


When did all these little plays and shit they do get so creepy and misogynistic? Everything that happened involved some knightly dude choking or swording or spanking a hapless maiden. I saw as many dastardly rogues swat indignant maidens on the ass as I did robey dudes eating giant turkey legs, and you know I saw a lot of those motherfuckers. Anyway, the nerds need to learn a damn social skill or two or get some better clothes or something, because the lack of poontang is twisting their minds and as a result their skits bum me out.


Although to be fair all that working-out-our-fear-of-women stuff doesn't stop the nerd girls from going along with it. Hell, these ones had their own little cheering section, complete with all kinds of preplanned rhymes to heckle their favorite squire or whatever. Listening to them made me feel very cold inside.


Squire Julio spins to engage his nemesis, an actual female, while in the background the Tardy Cossack scrambles to keep his bowl of gruel from getting kicked over.


If you look to the left, you can see how the excitement of furious intergender melee causes Sir Rudy Hat to levitate, slightly.


Squire Blooming Onion’s generous rump doth present a most inviting target indeed!


Something about the desperation in their eyes suggests they think that if they just juggle fast enough they can maybe outrun their fate, maybe trade in their split ends and billowy garb for good grooming and man-pants, and maybe — just maybe — as a result someday feel the naked titty of a normal, fully conscious woman in their hand.

But they can’t.


You know what else I noticed about the fuckin’ Faire? You can’t just joust or swordfight or have a human chess match in a normal, direct way. All the nerds have to fancy everything up in these elaborate storylines where Robin Hood is rivaling King Arthur for Snow White’s hand in marriage and the Princess Bride is secretly in love with Jethro Tull and how am I supposed to keep track of all this shit? You think you’re going to see a couple of knights have a good old-timey duel and the next thing you know two pirates, three clerics, a squire, a dungeon master and the queen disguised as a handmaiden have all run in to labor over some point of exposition and drastically reduce the amount of time the dudes in the armor spend whacking each other with fake swords. Hey, nerds — I’m sorry your community theater production of Our Town isn’t as fulfilling as you want it to be, but I’m totally calling bullshit.


Dude totally jumped off that horse onto that other dude.


Elf boy, what is it that scores you the fair maidens? Is it thy pimp suede vest? Thy magical cloak? Thy very recent trip to Super Cuts?


Yeah, that's what you want to do with a crowd of teenage Insane Clown Posse fans — sell 'em swords. Is anybody regulating this? Can't the government swoop in and round up these little Trenchcoat Mafia proteges before they go ballistic and start carving up the normal kids?


Wait, a black man? At the Medieval Faire? Poor guy must have lost a bet or something.


Oh dear, looks like chinstrap here has been converted from regularity to medieval ways, and will have to trade in his chinos for... Hey, what the fuck is Mae West doing hanging around with a fucking conquistador? Just what time period is this supposed to be, anyway?


Katie loves the Medieval Faire because it's the one weekend of the year anybody talks to her. Anybody at all.


It could be worse. At least he's wearing something.


Holy shit, I'm totally freaking out.


Hey! Grampa! The Dr. Livingston I Presume Faire is next week.


At what hour do