My roommate says a lot of just... bizarre shit. Honestly, it's like he channels dead retarded people. So I figure once in a while I'll list out some of the stranger shit that's come forth from his albino-like face.
Here's the latest sampling, and before you ask, no, I'm not making this shit up:
-"So, is it bad if I stick a Q-Tip into my ear far enough, it makes me cough?"
-(upon wandering into my room and speaking to my back) "Hey, wouldn't it be cool to be like, back in the day, like a pirate? ...I bet you'd be one of those good pirates, huh?"
-"Dude, I'm getting an anaconda. And when you're sleeping, I'm going to send him into your room to do recon missions....
-"Dude, these cigarettes are like, a delicious breakfast."
-"Flashing... lights! ...Flashing... lights! Doo-ta-doo-ta-ta-doo-ta-ta-doo-ta-ta, Flashing...lights!"
-"If you get a puppy, like one of those hotdog-dogs, I'm going to put it in a box with my pet anaconda and I'm going to put my feet up and watch them fight. No wait, I'm not gonna put them in a box, I'm going to make the anaconda hunt the puppy."
-"I just want to find a girlfriend that I can actually take out."
-"What? So I shave my pubes, what?"
-"Ever watch a midget play soccer, bro? It's the funniest shit ever! That and watching them climb stairs!"
-(while playing the Hole game, crying foul on a called Look): "That's bullshit, ...that's a balk."
-(A few moments ago): Me: Ryan, say one of those crazy things you say...
RM: Why? Wait, what crazy things I say?
Me: You know, like the crazy shit you say...
RM: Why?
Me: Cuz I'm writing this article about the crazy shit you say and I need a good one to go out on...
RM: I DON'T SAY CRAZY SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK!? ...Dude I can't wait to get back to the apartment to play GTA...
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Sunday, April 27, 2008
On The Road: The Blackberry Chronicles
No one wants to hear about being in love. It makes for shitty story-telling... People like tragedy... Murder... Heart ache. This explains the nightly news.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
On The Road: The Blackberry Chronicles
I'm at this clinic on the outer hook.... I'm waiting next to forever for this sawbones to tap my arm for a blood sample. Overall... The place is slightly classier than a blood bank in Harlem at the same time they were making "Taxi Driver."
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
New Short Fiction: The Lies We Tell, Part 1
Ceramic is not metal and this is a good thing.
It’s a good thing- because the knife in my pocket is made of ceramic, which is just as sharp as stainless steel, and it won’t set off a metal detector.
Though I still am under the scrutiny of security guards who want to frisk me. I give them that look that says ‘another man’s hands will not be on me, or else that man will lose an eye,” and they get the picture.
It’s a crowded club on a Saturday night; bodies pressed tightly together squirming to muffled techno-electronic beats pumping at over 300 BPM. There’s that certain electricity that surges in a place like this. It’s either the booze or the meth or the coke, but there’s a tingle, and it’s almost tangible.
Weaving through the place though is an entirely different beast though, as you can’t take a step without stepping on someone or being stepped on. So much for the nice shoes I wore tonight. It’s ok though, the money I’m making by being here will let me buy all the shoes I want.
Two days before all this, I was sitting in the living room to my little apartment just outside of Boston. I had the game on, laptop in my lap, Blackberry on the coffee table amongst the newspapers and magazines I subscribe to. I hear her in the other room, bopping around to some music on her iPod that’s docked in the Bose speakers I got her as a gift. She’s singing along under her breath, and she’s only wearing a pair of my old running shorts and a t shirt. She brought her own clothes but for whatever it’s worth she likes to wear my stuff.
Stuff I would soon use as gun polishing rags than wear it again, but whatever.
I can smell her baking something, brownies or a cake or something and I let myself grin a little bit. And besides, it’s a cool summer night, the Sox are up by four in the bottom of the 7th, over the hated Yankees from New York. There’s only one thing that can ruin it.
And as if on queue, the Blackberry whirls to life on the glass coffee table and then, after two pulses on vibrate, it chimes and glows and shakes and shimmies across the table top. I set my laptop aside on the couch and key the text messaging screen.
You have one hour to be at….
The text says. It gives me a location not very far from my apartment. I sigh with resignation and stuff the phone into my jeans and make my way sheepishly into the kitchen.
Her hair is crude spilled over a desert, it shimmers under the track lighting in the kitchen and the music is a dance song. Her (my) shorts are lose around her trim little waist and my t shirt hangs off her shoulders as it would a wire hanger in my closet. I look at her back as she dances, oblivious to me standing there with the rain cloud over my head and the heavy heart in my chest.
“Hey,” I start, my throat dry. It’s never easy to say what I have to say next because she knows how it’s going to be. I do this all the time to her, and she never argues or gets mad or asks me to leave it all behind. She just accepts it; she accepts the possibility that this little moment with her baking brownies toasting in my oven and her donned in my old work out clothes could be our last. She could be looking at me for the last time in my fashionably tattered jeans and tennis shoes, my shaggy black hair barely touching the collar of my white linen button down shirt. My hands stuffed way down deep into my pockets, as if down in there there’s an excuse for all of this.
“I gotta go, again, for a uh, thing.” She knows what it’s all about. Her face drops a little, but by now she’s adapted to the bad news and she controls her reactions. What was once involuntary is now voluntary. She leans against the counter top by the mixing bowl and egg carton and blows a wild strand of hair out of her face. Inappropriately, the dance song keeps thumping along.
“How long this time?” She asks. I close the distance between her and I and I pin her against the counter top. I smell chocolate and my stomach growls.
“Not long, maybe a day or two or three. I’ll be home by the weekend,” I say to her. She brightens that this and looks up at me. Her hazel eyes glint under the lights like her hair, and for a second she looks like something out of a comic book: the wet eyes, the upward hopeful glance, the tiny smile at the corners of her mouth.
“Good, cuz you promised me, we got that thing this weekend…” That’s right, her cousin, or… friend of a cousin, or cousin’s friend’s aunt’s wedding. It was like as if once a month (at least) someone in her family was getting married or having a fucking kid.
That’s what I get for messing around with an Italian chick.
I glance at the bowl again, over her shoulder and she catches my gaze.
“Did you think I wouldn’t save the bowl?”
“It just smells good, that’s all…”
“You want some?”
“I think you know what I want…” And she blushes and turns away a little. I kiss her cheek and neck and eyes and nose and lips and mouth and neck again, and soon we go into the bedroom.
With all that, I’m still on time to meet my handler. He’s a new guy to me, so I trust him as much as I would trust anyone else that hires people to kill other people at the behest of other people who wish not to get directly involved in the dealings of killers. In other words, this agent, this procurer of death and destruction is about as trustworthy as the business end of a ninety-dollar pistol.
We meet at a park bench not very far from my apartment, roughly six blocks and change. He’s wearing a black raincoat due to the mist that’s hovering over the New England night this evening, and carrying an umbrella. If I were to guess he would be forty something, maybe a retired pro, or just happens to know someone in the business. He’s balding and wears thick-rimmed eyeglasses, acts like he gives a damn about me.
I’ve only met him one other time, and that’s when I had found out my other handler was no longer working my cases anymore. They like to shift around a lot. I went through a seven month stretch with four different handlers, and this new guy , Something-Casing is his name, this new guy is my eleventh over all since I started working for this particular agency two years ago.
“How’s it going Jimmy?” He asks and extends his hand. I keep my hands tucked into my letterman’s jacket and say nothing. He lets his hand stay extended for another beat and drops it. “I guess we’ll get right down to business then, will you have a seat?” And I glance down at the park bench and hesitate before sitting. He- Casing- is already seated and pulling a manilla envelope out from under his coat, as a secret agent would. He even goes so far as to glance around before handing it to me.
I exhale and a little steam comes from my mouth, snatching the package away and tearing open the top. I cross my tennis shoes at the ankles as I read through the file and memorize the picture that came with it.
“So this is it? They’re giving me six days for this guy?” I lift the photo for Casing’s benefit and he glances around wildly again, pushing my hand down so people can’t see what I’m holding.
What I’m holding is an 8x10 photo of some skinny eastern European piece of jet trash, complete with the Adidas old-school-style warm up jacket. In the picture he’s sitting in a night club with a bunch of doped up white slaves.
“That’s just the thing though,” Casing starts in, “he’s already had multiple attempts at his life already and he’s beefed up his security considerably.” I flip through the file reading more about my target, trying to get a feel for him and trying to figure out why he’s A) such a hard target, and B) what makes him so special in the first place.
The file reads like something from a doctor’s office: Name: Igor Raqsven, born in Iceland in 1982, he moved to the outskirts of Moscow in the summer of 1994 after his mother died of Leukemia that same year. Father was a known human trafficker and an Interpol target of interest until his untimely death in a car bombing outside of Prague in 1997.
From there, Igor fell under the wing of his uncle, a Voy by the name of Yankovavic, who apparently skilled him in the arts of drug and human trade.
In 2001 Igor was sentenced to three years in a Siberian prison camp where he was nearly killed twice by the Voys over some sort of discrepancy. He killed two men in the showers there, but it was determined that it was in self defense and he was released ahead of schedule.
The file was phone book-thick and I kept flipping and skimming, as a light mist seemed to fall in around us. A few more pages deep and I was given the break down on the last few attempts on Raqsven’s life: In the fall of 2006, someone tried to do Raqsven in like they did his old man, only they got Raqsven’s kid brother in the blast and not the target in chief, due to the fact that he was inside and sent his brother out to start the car. The following summer, a man broke into Raqsven’s Moscow penthouse and attacked him in the middle of the night. Raqsven fought him off and managed to toss his attacker/assassin out of an eighth story window. After that, he hired personal body guards to look after his well being.
“Was that the same guy who planted the bomb in the car?” I say as I tap the file.
“We don’t know, it’s all stuff that gets passed on, and some information gets lost in the shuffle Jim, if it makes you sleep at night, yes, it was the same guy,” Casing says, clearly agitated that I’m taking so long reading through the file out in the open.
“Well if it was, he was a fucking amateur, that’s for sure. What’s the score on this?”
“Eighty,” he says, his throat tight. I glance up at him from over my sunglasses, and then glance back down.
“Ok, so tell me why this guy’s gotta go so bad, save me all the reading” and I set the file down in my lap. Casing looks at me and then the file and then out across the park. Just then my Blackberry buzzes and chirps in my pocket. I reach in and click the button that makes it go directly to voice mail.
“You gotta take that?” Casing asks, assuming that I’m going to answer it when I reach into my pocket.
“No, go on.”
“Raqsven is expanding into drugs. The Moscow outfit does not want to see him in the drug trade. They’re happy with him pushing flesh, and he’s become very profitable in that respect. But they feel if he starts to feed the meth-starved Moscow market, their going to have too big of a titan on their hands, so he needs to go.” I nodded at this simple explanation and packed up the stuff in my lap.
“Ok, I’m on board.”
“I’ll send you his location tonight,” and we parted ways.
Like I said, the club was packed, which is good and bad. It’s hard for me to move around and there’s a lot of witnesses and people who can get in my way, all of which are bad things. What’s good for me is that all these people provide cover; I can virtually be right on top of this guy and he wouldn’t even know it.
I’m inside with my ceramic knife for less than half an hour when I see him, wearing a tight black screen print t shirt, tight tattered jeans and a gawdy belt buckle that rodeo riders win instead of trophies. He’s dancing on the bar with some big-titted prostitute and I wind my way through the crowd, sliding my short thin porcelain stiletto out from my waist. I clutch it down by my side, blade up in my fist so that I can ram it through his thorax no problem and walk away. I’m closing in, less than ten feet, my eyes not looking at him directly, but mostly focused on his midsection, where I plan on sticking him. In my head I see it painted with an old school red and white target. His solar-plexus is my bulls eye. I take one long deep breath, inhaling all the sweat and steam in the room, the bodies pressing tighter against me, my legs pumping along with the music.
He climbs down from the bar, and I’m almost within arms reach, he’s looking at me, or through me, I can’t tell because of the whirring lights and shadows. Another step and Raqsven is done with and I’m 80 grand richer, and on my way home to her. I adjust my grip one last time and reach out towards Raqsven with my non-killing hand. We lock eyes for a moment and his mouth twists as if he’s got something to say.
And just then, as my upper right arm flexes and my grip around the grooved twist in the handle of my blade tightens, a large black paw swats down on Raqsven’s shoulder, literally lifts him up off the floor and sucks him back away from me to the other side of the club. Our eyes are still locked and I’m stopped dead in my tracks as I watch him float backwards towards a rear exit.
One of Raqsven’s body guards intercepted him and his literally dragging him out of the club through a service exit behind the bar. I do my best to try to keep up, because losing the target here would cost me another day of trying to track him down in the very least.
It takes me a full two agonizing minutes to get through to the service door and when I inch it open I’m watching Raqsven argue with the big black monolith in his hire in a narrow back alley. I can’t understand what’s being said, but from the looks of things, the Russian/Icelandian/whatever is pissed about something and his body guard is just standing there taking it. They’re standing next to a blacked out Land Rover with local plates. There’s two more big black body-builder types hovering near the car, each strapped with a TMP assault pistol hanging loosely on sling around their necks and shoulders.
With my Blackberry out and crouched behind a dumpster I enter the license plate to the SUV into the local DMV website and get the owner’s information. The vehicle is listed under some generic company name, so it’s probably a rental of some sort. This only leaves me with the option of tailing the car, only I left my ride parked over a block away, with all my guns in it.
Finally, after much yelling (to the point his voice got horse) Raqsven climbs into his ride and slams the rear driver’s side door. Two of the three linebackers with machine guns climb in with him, neither takes the driver’s seat. The last of the hired protection walks towards me, undoing his fly, mumbling about the chastising he’d just received.
“Fucking punk-ass skinny, mutha-fuckin junkie-ass…” he says under his breath, producing his dick in his hand. I wait until his committed to pissing before I leap out and slice his throat.
The air becomes scented with urine and blood as I search the guard’s body for anything useful. I find the keys to the truck which I toss into the dumpster. I pocket his cell phone and a roll of cash that looks to be about four hundred dollars in different bills.
“He must’ve left his gun in the car,” I say to myself as I crouch back down and slink towards the truck. Any minute now the other guards are going to wonder what’s taking this guy so long to take his piss. As I approach the vehicle I can hear the voices inside the truck. I can’t hear Raqsven but I can hear the two blacks talk to each other. It’s a lot of “naws” and “yos.” Then I hear something to the effect of “yo, I’m-a call this nigga and see what’s up,” and shortly after that, my pocket buzzes.
I pull out the stolen phone and the display reads DONDRELL, and I keep letting it ring, staying low and in the blindspot of the big SUV. My knife blade is slick as the blood has worked its way down to the grip, and I shift my weight from leg to leg in order to keep one from falling asleep.
“Yo, go check on his ass,” one says to another inside the truck. I stay poised planning out what to do in my head should what door open. I flex all my muscles ready to pounce when the passenger side door opens and a big barrel chested ex-football player steps out. He’s wearing an ear piece for his cell phone and sunglasses. He has on a black fitted UnderArmor polo shirt on and tan pants. He looks like a private security contractor. He’s clutching the TMP in his right hand and looking down the back alley at the lump that was his associate,
“Oh shi-“ and I take his life too, springing up from the rear quarter panel and slicing hard across the behemoth’s tree-trunk like neck, spraying blood all over the car. He stumbles back and tries to level his gun at me. I strike again, jamming the blade into his eyeball, which produces a short yelp from his gurgling throat.
At the same time, the remaining body guard and Raqsven are alerted to my presence. The guard in the car leans across the seat and starts to fire his TMP, the sounds of machine gun fire clatter off the narrow high buildings. I dodge out of the way, putting the truck’s engine block between me and the left over gunner. I wait for the fire to cease and reach down and drag the other TMP over towards me.
I struggle with getting the sling off the dead guard since he weighs about 300 lbs and he’s dead, laying on the back of the sling. The remainder sees (or senses) my struggle and exits the car with the gun up pointed across the hood. I duck down just in time to avoid getting my head blown off.
I succeed in getting the weapon loose by simply cutting the strap with the bloodied knife. Just as the giant is coming around the corner of the car to do me in, I hammer down on the trigger and feel the gun buzz in my hands. With the range I’m at I don’t even have to aim in order to kill my adversary.
I’m up on my feet and moving towards the rear of the Land Rover when the windows from the inside blows out. I feel the rush of air whiff by my head as a bullet came this close to killing me. Fucking window tints.
I fire back into the car, pumping 9mm rounds into the door and window where I saw Raqsven enter a few moments before. He must’ve gotten the spare TMP out from the driver’s seat, I think to myself as I stay crouched down by the engine block, hovering over the dead body of the third body guard. I raise my weapon again and empty the rest of the magazine into the door and rear driver’s side area and the make a big production of tossing away the weapon in order to help lure out my prey, as I pick up the gun of the recently departed and check the mag and chamber.
I wait a few more seconds knowing that someone must’ve reported the gun shots by now and time is of the essence. I fire a few more short bursts into the car and then get up with the gun in front of me, leading me along the sides. Through the blown out window I can see Raqsven covered in blood, gasping and looking up at me.
I duck back down because I can’t clearly see the gun he had, but when I pop back up I can see that it’s on the floor by his hand, but not in his grasp. He’s bleeding out, his shirt has a slick black sheen to it and his face is covered in blood that’s running free from his mouth. He’s been hit numerous times and likely won’t last much longer. I pause before spraying him with what’s left in my stolen gun.
It isn’t until I get to a 24-hour Quizno’s that I realize I’m soaking in blood.
I was about to enter the sandwich shop, which was seemingly occupied by no one, not even a counter person, when I caught my own reflection in the door and stopped dead in my tracks. My face, shirt, neck, hands, arms, everything from the waist up was blood-soaked. It was going to be an eventful ride home unless I could find some clothes to change into.
My car was less than a block away but between here and there were well lit corners, upscale bistros that may or may not still be open, plus a bar or two, probably crowded with people. And then there’s the off hand chance that I come across a cop who’s just out on patrol.
I end up taking a few different back alleys, I jump over a high fence that separates a pay-on-your-own parking lot and a store of some sort. In less than ten minutes I find my car and start to strip outside of it in a shadow cast by an awkwardly placed street light.
I get naked, completely naked, and use my trousers to wipe the blood off my face and arms, because the shirt I was wearing is completely soaked through. I toss the bloodied clothing, which for some reason smells like stale bologna, into a dumpster and reach in and cover it with some trash. I then, completely naked, get into my car and drive home.
I’m back at my place and I’m in the shower washing up. Beneath my feet the water is pink, as I wash blood out of my hair. My chest is streaked with the stuff and I do my best not to fuck up the bar of soap as I wash myself.
“Babe?” I hear her call into the bathroom with a tired voice. I freeze for a second, tensing, my body becoming like a coiled spring.
It’s a good thing- because the knife in my pocket is made of ceramic, which is just as sharp as stainless steel, and it won’t set off a metal detector.
Though I still am under the scrutiny of security guards who want to frisk me. I give them that look that says ‘another man’s hands will not be on me, or else that man will lose an eye,” and they get the picture.
It’s a crowded club on a Saturday night; bodies pressed tightly together squirming to muffled techno-electronic beats pumping at over 300 BPM. There’s that certain electricity that surges in a place like this. It’s either the booze or the meth or the coke, but there’s a tingle, and it’s almost tangible.
Weaving through the place though is an entirely different beast though, as you can’t take a step without stepping on someone or being stepped on. So much for the nice shoes I wore tonight. It’s ok though, the money I’m making by being here will let me buy all the shoes I want.
Two days before all this, I was sitting in the living room to my little apartment just outside of Boston. I had the game on, laptop in my lap, Blackberry on the coffee table amongst the newspapers and magazines I subscribe to. I hear her in the other room, bopping around to some music on her iPod that’s docked in the Bose speakers I got her as a gift. She’s singing along under her breath, and she’s only wearing a pair of my old running shorts and a t shirt. She brought her own clothes but for whatever it’s worth she likes to wear my stuff.
Stuff I would soon use as gun polishing rags than wear it again, but whatever.
I can smell her baking something, brownies or a cake or something and I let myself grin a little bit. And besides, it’s a cool summer night, the Sox are up by four in the bottom of the 7th, over the hated Yankees from New York. There’s only one thing that can ruin it.
And as if on queue, the Blackberry whirls to life on the glass coffee table and then, after two pulses on vibrate, it chimes and glows and shakes and shimmies across the table top. I set my laptop aside on the couch and key the text messaging screen.
You have one hour to be at….
The text says. It gives me a location not very far from my apartment. I sigh with resignation and stuff the phone into my jeans and make my way sheepishly into the kitchen.
Her hair is crude spilled over a desert, it shimmers under the track lighting in the kitchen and the music is a dance song. Her (my) shorts are lose around her trim little waist and my t shirt hangs off her shoulders as it would a wire hanger in my closet. I look at her back as she dances, oblivious to me standing there with the rain cloud over my head and the heavy heart in my chest.
“Hey,” I start, my throat dry. It’s never easy to say what I have to say next because she knows how it’s going to be. I do this all the time to her, and she never argues or gets mad or asks me to leave it all behind. She just accepts it; she accepts the possibility that this little moment with her baking brownies toasting in my oven and her donned in my old work out clothes could be our last. She could be looking at me for the last time in my fashionably tattered jeans and tennis shoes, my shaggy black hair barely touching the collar of my white linen button down shirt. My hands stuffed way down deep into my pockets, as if down in there there’s an excuse for all of this.
“I gotta go, again, for a uh, thing.” She knows what it’s all about. Her face drops a little, but by now she’s adapted to the bad news and she controls her reactions. What was once involuntary is now voluntary. She leans against the counter top by the mixing bowl and egg carton and blows a wild strand of hair out of her face. Inappropriately, the dance song keeps thumping along.
“How long this time?” She asks. I close the distance between her and I and I pin her against the counter top. I smell chocolate and my stomach growls.
“Not long, maybe a day or two or three. I’ll be home by the weekend,” I say to her. She brightens that this and looks up at me. Her hazel eyes glint under the lights like her hair, and for a second she looks like something out of a comic book: the wet eyes, the upward hopeful glance, the tiny smile at the corners of her mouth.
“Good, cuz you promised me, we got that thing this weekend…” That’s right, her cousin, or… friend of a cousin, or cousin’s friend’s aunt’s wedding. It was like as if once a month (at least) someone in her family was getting married or having a fucking kid.
That’s what I get for messing around with an Italian chick.
I glance at the bowl again, over her shoulder and she catches my gaze.
“Did you think I wouldn’t save the bowl?”
“It just smells good, that’s all…”
“You want some?”
“I think you know what I want…” And she blushes and turns away a little. I kiss her cheek and neck and eyes and nose and lips and mouth and neck again, and soon we go into the bedroom.
With all that, I’m still on time to meet my handler. He’s a new guy to me, so I trust him as much as I would trust anyone else that hires people to kill other people at the behest of other people who wish not to get directly involved in the dealings of killers. In other words, this agent, this procurer of death and destruction is about as trustworthy as the business end of a ninety-dollar pistol.
We meet at a park bench not very far from my apartment, roughly six blocks and change. He’s wearing a black raincoat due to the mist that’s hovering over the New England night this evening, and carrying an umbrella. If I were to guess he would be forty something, maybe a retired pro, or just happens to know someone in the business. He’s balding and wears thick-rimmed eyeglasses, acts like he gives a damn about me.
I’ve only met him one other time, and that’s when I had found out my other handler was no longer working my cases anymore. They like to shift around a lot. I went through a seven month stretch with four different handlers, and this new guy , Something-Casing is his name, this new guy is my eleventh over all since I started working for this particular agency two years ago.
“How’s it going Jimmy?” He asks and extends his hand. I keep my hands tucked into my letterman’s jacket and say nothing. He lets his hand stay extended for another beat and drops it. “I guess we’ll get right down to business then, will you have a seat?” And I glance down at the park bench and hesitate before sitting. He- Casing- is already seated and pulling a manilla envelope out from under his coat, as a secret agent would. He even goes so far as to glance around before handing it to me.
I exhale and a little steam comes from my mouth, snatching the package away and tearing open the top. I cross my tennis shoes at the ankles as I read through the file and memorize the picture that came with it.
“So this is it? They’re giving me six days for this guy?” I lift the photo for Casing’s benefit and he glances around wildly again, pushing my hand down so people can’t see what I’m holding.
What I’m holding is an 8x10 photo of some skinny eastern European piece of jet trash, complete with the Adidas old-school-style warm up jacket. In the picture he’s sitting in a night club with a bunch of doped up white slaves.
“That’s just the thing though,” Casing starts in, “he’s already had multiple attempts at his life already and he’s beefed up his security considerably.” I flip through the file reading more about my target, trying to get a feel for him and trying to figure out why he’s A) such a hard target, and B) what makes him so special in the first place.
The file reads like something from a doctor’s office: Name: Igor Raqsven, born in Iceland in 1982, he moved to the outskirts of Moscow in the summer of 1994 after his mother died of Leukemia that same year. Father was a known human trafficker and an Interpol target of interest until his untimely death in a car bombing outside of Prague in 1997.
From there, Igor fell under the wing of his uncle, a Voy by the name of Yankovavic, who apparently skilled him in the arts of drug and human trade.
In 2001 Igor was sentenced to three years in a Siberian prison camp where he was nearly killed twice by the Voys over some sort of discrepancy. He killed two men in the showers there, but it was determined that it was in self defense and he was released ahead of schedule.
The file was phone book-thick and I kept flipping and skimming, as a light mist seemed to fall in around us. A few more pages deep and I was given the break down on the last few attempts on Raqsven’s life: In the fall of 2006, someone tried to do Raqsven in like they did his old man, only they got Raqsven’s kid brother in the blast and not the target in chief, due to the fact that he was inside and sent his brother out to start the car. The following summer, a man broke into Raqsven’s Moscow penthouse and attacked him in the middle of the night. Raqsven fought him off and managed to toss his attacker/assassin out of an eighth story window. After that, he hired personal body guards to look after his well being.
“Was that the same guy who planted the bomb in the car?” I say as I tap the file.
“We don’t know, it’s all stuff that gets passed on, and some information gets lost in the shuffle Jim, if it makes you sleep at night, yes, it was the same guy,” Casing says, clearly agitated that I’m taking so long reading through the file out in the open.
“Well if it was, he was a fucking amateur, that’s for sure. What’s the score on this?”
“Eighty,” he says, his throat tight. I glance up at him from over my sunglasses, and then glance back down.
“Ok, so tell me why this guy’s gotta go so bad, save me all the reading” and I set the file down in my lap. Casing looks at me and then the file and then out across the park. Just then my Blackberry buzzes and chirps in my pocket. I reach in and click the button that makes it go directly to voice mail.
“You gotta take that?” Casing asks, assuming that I’m going to answer it when I reach into my pocket.
“No, go on.”
“Raqsven is expanding into drugs. The Moscow outfit does not want to see him in the drug trade. They’re happy with him pushing flesh, and he’s become very profitable in that respect. But they feel if he starts to feed the meth-starved Moscow market, their going to have too big of a titan on their hands, so he needs to go.” I nodded at this simple explanation and packed up the stuff in my lap.
“Ok, I’m on board.”
“I’ll send you his location tonight,” and we parted ways.
Like I said, the club was packed, which is good and bad. It’s hard for me to move around and there’s a lot of witnesses and people who can get in my way, all of which are bad things. What’s good for me is that all these people provide cover; I can virtually be right on top of this guy and he wouldn’t even know it.
I’m inside with my ceramic knife for less than half an hour when I see him, wearing a tight black screen print t shirt, tight tattered jeans and a gawdy belt buckle that rodeo riders win instead of trophies. He’s dancing on the bar with some big-titted prostitute and I wind my way through the crowd, sliding my short thin porcelain stiletto out from my waist. I clutch it down by my side, blade up in my fist so that I can ram it through his thorax no problem and walk away. I’m closing in, less than ten feet, my eyes not looking at him directly, but mostly focused on his midsection, where I plan on sticking him. In my head I see it painted with an old school red and white target. His solar-plexus is my bulls eye. I take one long deep breath, inhaling all the sweat and steam in the room, the bodies pressing tighter against me, my legs pumping along with the music.
He climbs down from the bar, and I’m almost within arms reach, he’s looking at me, or through me, I can’t tell because of the whirring lights and shadows. Another step and Raqsven is done with and I’m 80 grand richer, and on my way home to her. I adjust my grip one last time and reach out towards Raqsven with my non-killing hand. We lock eyes for a moment and his mouth twists as if he’s got something to say.
And just then, as my upper right arm flexes and my grip around the grooved twist in the handle of my blade tightens, a large black paw swats down on Raqsven’s shoulder, literally lifts him up off the floor and sucks him back away from me to the other side of the club. Our eyes are still locked and I’m stopped dead in my tracks as I watch him float backwards towards a rear exit.
One of Raqsven’s body guards intercepted him and his literally dragging him out of the club through a service exit behind the bar. I do my best to try to keep up, because losing the target here would cost me another day of trying to track him down in the very least.
It takes me a full two agonizing minutes to get through to the service door and when I inch it open I’m watching Raqsven argue with the big black monolith in his hire in a narrow back alley. I can’t understand what’s being said, but from the looks of things, the Russian/Icelandian/whatever is pissed about something and his body guard is just standing there taking it. They’re standing next to a blacked out Land Rover with local plates. There’s two more big black body-builder types hovering near the car, each strapped with a TMP assault pistol hanging loosely on sling around their necks and shoulders.
With my Blackberry out and crouched behind a dumpster I enter the license plate to the SUV into the local DMV website and get the owner’s information. The vehicle is listed under some generic company name, so it’s probably a rental of some sort. This only leaves me with the option of tailing the car, only I left my ride parked over a block away, with all my guns in it.
Finally, after much yelling (to the point his voice got horse) Raqsven climbs into his ride and slams the rear driver’s side door. Two of the three linebackers with machine guns climb in with him, neither takes the driver’s seat. The last of the hired protection walks towards me, undoing his fly, mumbling about the chastising he’d just received.
“Fucking punk-ass skinny, mutha-fuckin junkie-ass…” he says under his breath, producing his dick in his hand. I wait until his committed to pissing before I leap out and slice his throat.
The air becomes scented with urine and blood as I search the guard’s body for anything useful. I find the keys to the truck which I toss into the dumpster. I pocket his cell phone and a roll of cash that looks to be about four hundred dollars in different bills.
“He must’ve left his gun in the car,” I say to myself as I crouch back down and slink towards the truck. Any minute now the other guards are going to wonder what’s taking this guy so long to take his piss. As I approach the vehicle I can hear the voices inside the truck. I can’t hear Raqsven but I can hear the two blacks talk to each other. It’s a lot of “naws” and “yos.” Then I hear something to the effect of “yo, I’m-a call this nigga and see what’s up,” and shortly after that, my pocket buzzes.
I pull out the stolen phone and the display reads DONDRELL, and I keep letting it ring, staying low and in the blindspot of the big SUV. My knife blade is slick as the blood has worked its way down to the grip, and I shift my weight from leg to leg in order to keep one from falling asleep.
“Yo, go check on his ass,” one says to another inside the truck. I stay poised planning out what to do in my head should what door open. I flex all my muscles ready to pounce when the passenger side door opens and a big barrel chested ex-football player steps out. He’s wearing an ear piece for his cell phone and sunglasses. He has on a black fitted UnderArmor polo shirt on and tan pants. He looks like a private security contractor. He’s clutching the TMP in his right hand and looking down the back alley at the lump that was his associate,
“Oh shi-“ and I take his life too, springing up from the rear quarter panel and slicing hard across the behemoth’s tree-trunk like neck, spraying blood all over the car. He stumbles back and tries to level his gun at me. I strike again, jamming the blade into his eyeball, which produces a short yelp from his gurgling throat.
At the same time, the remaining body guard and Raqsven are alerted to my presence. The guard in the car leans across the seat and starts to fire his TMP, the sounds of machine gun fire clatter off the narrow high buildings. I dodge out of the way, putting the truck’s engine block between me and the left over gunner. I wait for the fire to cease and reach down and drag the other TMP over towards me.
I struggle with getting the sling off the dead guard since he weighs about 300 lbs and he’s dead, laying on the back of the sling. The remainder sees (or senses) my struggle and exits the car with the gun up pointed across the hood. I duck down just in time to avoid getting my head blown off.
I succeed in getting the weapon loose by simply cutting the strap with the bloodied knife. Just as the giant is coming around the corner of the car to do me in, I hammer down on the trigger and feel the gun buzz in my hands. With the range I’m at I don’t even have to aim in order to kill my adversary.
I’m up on my feet and moving towards the rear of the Land Rover when the windows from the inside blows out. I feel the rush of air whiff by my head as a bullet came this close to killing me. Fucking window tints.
I fire back into the car, pumping 9mm rounds into the door and window where I saw Raqsven enter a few moments before. He must’ve gotten the spare TMP out from the driver’s seat, I think to myself as I stay crouched down by the engine block, hovering over the dead body of the third body guard. I raise my weapon again and empty the rest of the magazine into the door and rear driver’s side area and the make a big production of tossing away the weapon in order to help lure out my prey, as I pick up the gun of the recently departed and check the mag and chamber.
I wait a few more seconds knowing that someone must’ve reported the gun shots by now and time is of the essence. I fire a few more short bursts into the car and then get up with the gun in front of me, leading me along the sides. Through the blown out window I can see Raqsven covered in blood, gasping and looking up at me.
I duck back down because I can’t clearly see the gun he had, but when I pop back up I can see that it’s on the floor by his hand, but not in his grasp. He’s bleeding out, his shirt has a slick black sheen to it and his face is covered in blood that’s running free from his mouth. He’s been hit numerous times and likely won’t last much longer. I pause before spraying him with what’s left in my stolen gun.
It isn’t until I get to a 24-hour Quizno’s that I realize I’m soaking in blood.
I was about to enter the sandwich shop, which was seemingly occupied by no one, not even a counter person, when I caught my own reflection in the door and stopped dead in my tracks. My face, shirt, neck, hands, arms, everything from the waist up was blood-soaked. It was going to be an eventful ride home unless I could find some clothes to change into.
My car was less than a block away but between here and there were well lit corners, upscale bistros that may or may not still be open, plus a bar or two, probably crowded with people. And then there’s the off hand chance that I come across a cop who’s just out on patrol.
I end up taking a few different back alleys, I jump over a high fence that separates a pay-on-your-own parking lot and a store of some sort. In less than ten minutes I find my car and start to strip outside of it in a shadow cast by an awkwardly placed street light.
I get naked, completely naked, and use my trousers to wipe the blood off my face and arms, because the shirt I was wearing is completely soaked through. I toss the bloodied clothing, which for some reason smells like stale bologna, into a dumpster and reach in and cover it with some trash. I then, completely naked, get into my car and drive home.
I’m back at my place and I’m in the shower washing up. Beneath my feet the water is pink, as I wash blood out of my hair. My chest is streaked with the stuff and I do my best not to fuck up the bar of soap as I wash myself.
“Babe?” I hear her call into the bathroom with a tired voice. I freeze for a second, tensing, my body becoming like a coiled spring.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
On The Road: The Blackberry Chronicles
The Russians are coming!
....As well as the Czechs, Albanians, Slaves, and I think I saw one Turk working at Dunkin' Donuts this morning.
Brace yourselves.
....As well as the Czechs, Albanians, Slaves, and I think I saw one Turk working at Dunkin' Donuts this morning.
Brace yourselves.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
On The Road: The Blackberry Chronicles
So in typical fashion I arrive at my destination well ahead of everyone else in my motorcycle class. Its not a bad thing .... I'd sooner be too early than too late... But I just hate sitting here looking like a doof when the rest of the class gets here and sees my Maine license plates and inevitably ask "gee what time did you leave from Maine this morning?".
Oh well..... I look like a total bad ass with my black long sleeve, boots, jeans and leather jacket.
Oh well..... I look like a total bad ass with my black long sleeve, boots, jeans and leather jacket.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
My Mom and Her Self Defense Class, Part 2, Plus Other Happenings in the Last 24 Hours
So imagine to my surprise when I get this email on my Blackberry yesterday:
"Jim,
I broke my wrist Saturday during the practical excerise [sic] :( I'm home from work for a few days. Call me.
Love,
Mom"
So, the partially chewed cracker spills from my mouth-ajar and I call her instantly. I put her on speaker phone because I'm a massively lazy dick.
"What the hell happened!" I say into the phone. There's a pause on the other end.
"Hello?" Jesus.
"Mom? What happened!"
"Don't yell at me!" She says.
"I'm not yelling, you're just on speaker, mum"
"Why am I on speaker?"
"Because I'm lazy, now tell me what happened to you on Saturday..." There's another long pause followed by a slow drawn out sigh.
"Well we were doing the practical and... you know they're really good, right? Well, they were putting us through all these scenarios... whether we were being cornered at a bar or at an ATM or whatever. And I was so nervous James. On the video, I'm standing there in line, waiting for my turn, swinging my arms and...
...so anyway, I get up and we're dressed in all this stuff, like hockey gloves and catcher's masks and so on, and well, I hit this guy in the face. And when I hit him he went down and was like 'whoooaaa' but at the same time I felt my wrist kinda ... pop. It didn't start bothering me until I got back from the ice capades and my wrist was all swollen."
Leave it to my mother, to go from whooping some dude's ass to the ice capades. Awesome.
In other news the roommate and I went to go see "Street Kings" last night. We sat in a virtually empty theatre rows and seats apart. We decided that we really didn't need to sit right next to each other because well... that'd be kinda gay, even though everyone at the station, including The Lady, thinks we're gay for each other.
What else, what else. I can't really concentrate right now because The Lady is over here, on my bed wearing an ironic Transformer's t shirt and yoga pants. Upon her entry into my apt I commented:
"Cool shirt, but I was more of a Megatron fan growing up. Actually cancel that - I was a Sound Wave fan, because I liked how we talked... all synthesizer-y." She comments back that she actually hates the Transformers. I don't hold it against her, considering she's a chick and... probably played with Barbies while I was playing with a tractor trailer truck that would morph into a red and blue robot with a few quick snaps of plastic.
At the mall today, again the roommate mentioned he was still in some sort of limited contact with his whale of a lay from a week or so ago. He's been ignoring everyone's advice to sever ties, and though he claims he directly called her "fat" via a text message, she still talks to him.
"Dude, she's a stalker with dependency issues, you need to full-out stop talking to her, she's dangerous," I say as I'm browsing for a plain brown belt at Pacific Sunwear (they only make belts for skinny hipster kids, apparently, size 34? c'mon...)
"I can't... what if I stop talking to her and like a month from now she comes back at me with 'oh hey, I'm pregnant...'" He says with a hint of anxiety. I roll my eyes. He's been playing out this scenario of the last two weeks it would seem.
"That's beyond likely, because you wore a condom, right?"
"Yeah."
"So why are you stressing out over stupid shit like that?"
"Dude, I dunno, it's just like, I don't want it to happen..."
"Then why do you still talk to her. If that's what you're worried about, getting the hell away from her would seem the likely thing to do. If a little while goes by and she's like 'oh I'm pregnant' and you've still been in touch with her, she's going to stick you with a baby that may or may not be yours, oppose to if you cut ties with her, and a year from now she comes back at you with some screaming hellspawn, you can be like 'bitch I don't even know who you are, we've never met.'" It doesn't exactly sink in.
"But, what if she IS pregnant!"
"What makes you think she is? And a bitch saying she's pregnant is likely trying to get you to stick around, when she's not even knocked up! It's the same thing with the hundred dollar Lacoste cologne she bought you. She's setting a trap. You don't owe that bitch anything, so why are you acting like you do? You know what," and this is where I start to get angry. "I'm actually going to order you to stop talking to her. That's a serious order."
He looks at me blankly.
"You can't do that," he says.
"The fuck I can! I out rank you by one grade. You take orders from me. And you're now ordered not to speak to that fat bitch." He looks at me for a long time and says nothing. "This mall needs an Orange Julius," I say after a prolonged silence.
We're on our way out the door to the truck when I spot this hot little number walking into the Marshal's.
"Go talk to her, go get her, catch up to her," I nudge my roommate. He half steps.
"You go get her," he comes back with.
"I can't. I'm kinda... you know, caught up in something. Just go up to her, say 'hey, I saw you from back there, I don't know who you are, and you don't know who I am, but I want to change that. Give me your number and let me take you out to dinner this weekend'. Just be fucking direct. Girls love a guy with balls who'll just ask them out. If she says she has a boyfriend, tell her you don't care, it's just dinner. If she says 'no thank you' tell you won't take no for an answer. Don't come across aggressive or... fucking... crazy, just be your sweet self, be assertive, take control. Who's in control here?"
"...I dunno, bro..." His posture starts to melt.
"WHO'S IN CONTROL HERE!" I yell. People are now staring at us. I look around and make direct eye contact with a few of the weird goths out in the midday sun at the mall. "Fuck it, you lost her, massive fail." She's no longer in eye sight and I start for the door.
"I'm sorry, bro" he says from behind me.
Yeah, me too.
"Jim,
I broke my wrist Saturday during the practical excerise [sic] :( I'm home from work for a few days. Call me.
Love,
Mom"
So, the partially chewed cracker spills from my mouth-ajar and I call her instantly. I put her on speaker phone because I'm a massively lazy dick.
"What the hell happened!" I say into the phone. There's a pause on the other end.
"Hello?" Jesus.
"Mom? What happened!"
"Don't yell at me!" She says.
"I'm not yelling, you're just on speaker, mum"
"Why am I on speaker?"
"Because I'm lazy, now tell me what happened to you on Saturday..." There's another long pause followed by a slow drawn out sigh.
"Well we were doing the practical and... you know they're really good, right? Well, they were putting us through all these scenarios... whether we were being cornered at a bar or at an ATM or whatever. And I was so nervous James. On the video, I'm standing there in line, waiting for my turn, swinging my arms and...
...so anyway, I get up and we're dressed in all this stuff, like hockey gloves and catcher's masks and so on, and well, I hit this guy in the face. And when I hit him he went down and was like 'whoooaaa' but at the same time I felt my wrist kinda ... pop. It didn't start bothering me until I got back from the ice capades and my wrist was all swollen."
Leave it to my mother, to go from whooping some dude's ass to the ice capades. Awesome.
In other news the roommate and I went to go see "Street Kings" last night. We sat in a virtually empty theatre rows and seats apart. We decided that we really didn't need to sit right next to each other because well... that'd be kinda gay, even though everyone at the station, including The Lady, thinks we're gay for each other.
What else, what else. I can't really concentrate right now because The Lady is over here, on my bed wearing an ironic Transformer's t shirt and yoga pants. Upon her entry into my apt I commented:
"Cool shirt, but I was more of a Megatron fan growing up. Actually cancel that - I was a Sound Wave fan, because I liked how we talked... all synthesizer-y." She comments back that she actually hates the Transformers. I don't hold it against her, considering she's a chick and... probably played with Barbies while I was playing with a tractor trailer truck that would morph into a red and blue robot with a few quick snaps of plastic.
At the mall today, again the roommate mentioned he was still in some sort of limited contact with his whale of a lay from a week or so ago. He's been ignoring everyone's advice to sever ties, and though he claims he directly called her "fat" via a text message, she still talks to him.
"Dude, she's a stalker with dependency issues, you need to full-out stop talking to her, she's dangerous," I say as I'm browsing for a plain brown belt at Pacific Sunwear (they only make belts for skinny hipster kids, apparently, size 34? c'mon...)
"I can't... what if I stop talking to her and like a month from now she comes back at me with 'oh hey, I'm pregnant...'" He says with a hint of anxiety. I roll my eyes. He's been playing out this scenario of the last two weeks it would seem.
"That's beyond likely, because you wore a condom, right?"
"Yeah."
"So why are you stressing out over stupid shit like that?"
"Dude, I dunno, it's just like, I don't want it to happen..."
"Then why do you still talk to her. If that's what you're worried about, getting the hell away from her would seem the likely thing to do. If a little while goes by and she's like 'oh I'm pregnant' and you've still been in touch with her, she's going to stick you with a baby that may or may not be yours, oppose to if you cut ties with her, and a year from now she comes back at you with some screaming hellspawn, you can be like 'bitch I don't even know who you are, we've never met.'" It doesn't exactly sink in.
"But, what if she IS pregnant!"
"What makes you think she is? And a bitch saying she's pregnant is likely trying to get you to stick around, when she's not even knocked up! It's the same thing with the hundred dollar Lacoste cologne she bought you. She's setting a trap. You don't owe that bitch anything, so why are you acting like you do? You know what," and this is where I start to get angry. "I'm actually going to order you to stop talking to her. That's a serious order."
He looks at me blankly.
"You can't do that," he says.
"The fuck I can! I out rank you by one grade. You take orders from me. And you're now ordered not to speak to that fat bitch." He looks at me for a long time and says nothing. "This mall needs an Orange Julius," I say after a prolonged silence.
We're on our way out the door to the truck when I spot this hot little number walking into the Marshal's.
"Go talk to her, go get her, catch up to her," I nudge my roommate. He half steps.
"You go get her," he comes back with.
"I can't. I'm kinda... you know, caught up in something. Just go up to her, say 'hey, I saw you from back there, I don't know who you are, and you don't know who I am, but I want to change that. Give me your number and let me take you out to dinner this weekend'. Just be fucking direct. Girls love a guy with balls who'll just ask them out. If she says she has a boyfriend, tell her you don't care, it's just dinner. If she says 'no thank you' tell you won't take no for an answer. Don't come across aggressive or... fucking... crazy, just be your sweet self, be assertive, take control. Who's in control here?"
"...I dunno, bro..." His posture starts to melt.
"WHO'S IN CONTROL HERE!" I yell. People are now staring at us. I look around and make direct eye contact with a few of the weird goths out in the midday sun at the mall. "Fuck it, you lost her, massive fail." She's no longer in eye sight and I start for the door.
"I'm sorry, bro" he says from behind me.
Yeah, me too.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
My Mom and Her Self-Defense Class
I got an email from my mom a few days ago letting me know she enrolled in a Women's Self-Defense Course being offered through Portland PD. She gets to take it for free since her ... blah blah blah... insurance or work-related-thing... covers it.
I find this very interesting because my mother is probably the least confrontational person I've ever met in my life, aside from Hokie. For years (and personal reasons) I've been pushing her to get a pistol permit so she can carry a firearm in her bag or in her car or something, and she's deflected that whole idea. So I went and got her a can of pepper spray after she was acosted by some random dickhole in the Hannafords in Biddeford a while back, but when I showed her how to use it, she seemed hardly interested.
So I give her a call at the house tonight just to touch base (because, according to the email, we hadn't "spoken in days!!!!!" ...for the record, it was like, four days...) and see what this whole class is about. Here's a fairly accurate paraphrasing of the conversation.
Me: So tell me about this ... uh, self defense class you're taking...
Mom: Oh! Oh Jim, it's such a work out, me and a few girls from the office, we get out of work and head over, you know, as a little group, and the class is about 15 women, and I think I'm the oldest. And it's taught by this female policewoman (she seriously said that) who's a very good instructor and she's very cute and very single. I told her all about you and what you do and what you went through with the whole "police-thing" and she said she totally understands what you've been going through and how it's all screwed up that Portland PD has to get rid of 15 officers for budget cuts and-
Me: Mom, get back to the class...
Mom: Oh, well, anyway, I told her you were single and that if she was interested I'd give her your number.
Me: Mom! Don't.... fucking pimp me out to ... lady cops, Jesus...
Mom:...Anyway, so they teach us all these moves and the reasons behind them: Like how to get out of when someone grabs your wrists or tries to choke you from behind or grabs your bag, or something like that. We're all so.... scared, you know? But the instructors are really great and take their time teaching and critiqing our techniques. They even video tape us and we get to watch it afterwards to see how we look.
Me: So I mean, mom, would you have a problem, and I'm being serious, grabbing some guy's dick and trying to rip it off?
Mom: GASP! James Charles Nason! Don't you speak to your mother like that!
Me: I'm being serious! ...cuz that's what it's going to take. That's the cold reality of it. Because no one's going to want to rape you with their penis barely hanging on to their body, you know?
Mom: ...yes... and that was brought up in the class too. But it's more than just...grabbing a man... down there. There's a lot more.
Me: Like eye gouging and knee thrusts and throat punches, right?
Mom: Yes. I don't like the throat punches though.
Me: Why not?
Mom: Because... you have to like, push your... fingers, like two fingers there, push them down into their... throat. Ew, it's gross just thinking about it.
Me: It's not gross, it's survival; everything you're being taught is considered "less than lethal," for that reason. Jabbing your fingers down into a guy's throat isn't going to kill him, just back him off. These techniques are designed so that you can utilize them when the times comes and not feel hesitant that you're going to kill the poor son of a bitch. No man's ever died, that I know of, from getting kicked in the groin, you know? Or eyes gouged or whatever.
Mom: Yeah.
Me: I mean... if you WANT to learn how to kill someone with your bare hands, I can show you a thing or two...
Mom: No, no, that's... uh ok, I'm fine with that.
Me: You sure?
Mom: Yes James.
Me: .... Fine. Is dad around?
So yeah hear this criminals: if you're stalking around Portland or Biddeford or anywhere in between, you better watch out... my fifty-something year old mother will fuck up your whole day.
I find this very interesting because my mother is probably the least confrontational person I've ever met in my life, aside from Hokie. For years (and personal reasons) I've been pushing her to get a pistol permit so she can carry a firearm in her bag or in her car or something, and she's deflected that whole idea. So I went and got her a can of pepper spray after she was acosted by some random dickhole in the Hannafords in Biddeford a while back, but when I showed her how to use it, she seemed hardly interested.
So I give her a call at the house tonight just to touch base (because, according to the email, we hadn't "spoken in days!!!!!" ...for the record, it was like, four days...) and see what this whole class is about. Here's a fairly accurate paraphrasing of the conversation.
Me: So tell me about this ... uh, self defense class you're taking...
Mom: Oh! Oh Jim, it's such a work out, me and a few girls from the office, we get out of work and head over, you know, as a little group, and the class is about 15 women, and I think I'm the oldest. And it's taught by this female policewoman (she seriously said that) who's a very good instructor and she's very cute and very single. I told her all about you and what you do and what you went through with the whole "police-thing" and she said she totally understands what you've been going through and how it's all screwed up that Portland PD has to get rid of 15 officers for budget cuts and-
Me: Mom, get back to the class...
Mom: Oh, well, anyway, I told her you were single and that if she was interested I'd give her your number.
Me: Mom! Don't.... fucking pimp me out to ... lady cops, Jesus...
Mom:...Anyway, so they teach us all these moves and the reasons behind them: Like how to get out of when someone grabs your wrists or tries to choke you from behind or grabs your bag, or something like that. We're all so.... scared, you know? But the instructors are really great and take their time teaching and critiqing our techniques. They even video tape us and we get to watch it afterwards to see how we look.
Me: So I mean, mom, would you have a problem, and I'm being serious, grabbing some guy's dick and trying to rip it off?
Mom: GASP! James Charles Nason! Don't you speak to your mother like that!
Me: I'm being serious! ...cuz that's what it's going to take. That's the cold reality of it. Because no one's going to want to rape you with their penis barely hanging on to their body, you know?
Mom: ...yes... and that was brought up in the class too. But it's more than just...grabbing a man... down there. There's a lot more.
Me: Like eye gouging and knee thrusts and throat punches, right?
Mom: Yes. I don't like the throat punches though.
Me: Why not?
Mom: Because... you have to like, push your... fingers, like two fingers there, push them down into their... throat. Ew, it's gross just thinking about it.
Me: It's not gross, it's survival; everything you're being taught is considered "less than lethal," for that reason. Jabbing your fingers down into a guy's throat isn't going to kill him, just back him off. These techniques are designed so that you can utilize them when the times comes and not feel hesitant that you're going to kill the poor son of a bitch. No man's ever died, that I know of, from getting kicked in the groin, you know? Or eyes gouged or whatever.
Mom: Yeah.
Me: I mean... if you WANT to learn how to kill someone with your bare hands, I can show you a thing or two...
Mom: No, no, that's... uh ok, I'm fine with that.
Me: You sure?
Mom: Yes James.
Me: .... Fine. Is dad around?
So yeah hear this criminals: if you're stalking around Portland or Biddeford or anywhere in between, you better watch out... my fifty-something year old mother will fuck up your whole day.
Oh Man, French Toast Sounds Awesome Right Now
I'm on watch and it's just after 1 am. It's this time of night when I'm most vunerable to nodding off in my chair in front of the computer, radios and monitors. It's the balls; it's rough - the harder I try to study my materials for the boats and such, the heavier my eyes tend to get.
I try to stave it off by switching from study materials to something on the internet. I might browse a few stories on the Times website, or redsox.com, or The Onion, what-have-you. I might look up and price out different new cars I've had my eye on... and if it get really bad - and I mean to the point where I actually do nod off for like, ten seconds, I pop out of my chair and get down on the ground and push out as many push-ups I can do before my arms shake.
I'm up to about 100.
Anyway, so I'm sitting back with my manual in front of me for the 47' MLB, my note pad next to that, the Netflix home page in front of me on the screen, when suddenly I catch this odd whiff of something very nostalgia-inducing.
That ever happen to you? You're sitting some place, whether it be on a bus or at the mall or a friend's house and suddenly your memory is jerked by some smell? You just catch a hint of roasting potatoes or something and suddenly you're ten years old eating dinner at your grandmother's house, or you're at a movie theatre and suddenly you get a sniff of camp fire and you remember that one summer you spent two weeks with your best friend at his family's cabin in the woods.
I caught a whiff, just a few moments ago, of my mom's french toast.
I'm a breakfast guy; huge into breakfast, love breakfast foods, I cook a mean-fucking-breakfast, man. But nothing, not IHOP, not Denny's, not McDonald's, nothing, no one, can top my mom's french toast. I remember being as little as four or five and being woken up to the smells of cinnamon-y egg-battered bread frying on a griddle. A fat dab of butter on top of each slice of bread stacked up on a plate and then soaked in a drum of maple syrup. Jesus Horatio Christ, how awesome would it be right now to have a short stack of my mom's french toast?
Wash it down with a tall cold glass of whole milk. Fuck yes.
It's hard to get the point across about how good this french toast is, but I'll try: Imagine you're best orgasm, like I'm talking about the very first time you came. When it happened you had no idea what your body just went through; you were shocked, scared, out of breath, leaking, probably thought you either just A) killed yourself, or B) did something you weren't supposed to do to yourself or C) saw the face of God. Either way, that pulsing sense of euphoria that coursed it's way through your veins from your privates to your brain and back down your spine to your feet was the heaviest and best narcotic you've ever encountered and will ever encounter. The very hint of the sensation of that first bodily explosion is something you will literally spend your life chasing, and it forever eluding you.
That's how fucking good my mom's french toast is.
In other words, I would not hesitate for one second to put a bullet in your face if it ment getting one fucking forkful of my mom's french toast into my mouth.
If it meant climbing to the top of Mount Everest naked to get a bite of that eggy, syrup-sogged bread, I would.
I would sell my soul at KMart prices to the devil himself, for a hot plate of mom's breakfast delicacy.
I would sit through all three "Fast and The Furious" films. Bet your ass I would.
I try to stave it off by switching from study materials to something on the internet. I might browse a few stories on the Times website, or redsox.com, or The Onion, what-have-you. I might look up and price out different new cars I've had my eye on... and if it get really bad - and I mean to the point where I actually do nod off for like, ten seconds, I pop out of my chair and get down on the ground and push out as many push-ups I can do before my arms shake.
I'm up to about 100.
Anyway, so I'm sitting back with my manual in front of me for the 47' MLB, my note pad next to that, the Netflix home page in front of me on the screen, when suddenly I catch this odd whiff of something very nostalgia-inducing.
That ever happen to you? You're sitting some place, whether it be on a bus or at the mall or a friend's house and suddenly your memory is jerked by some smell? You just catch a hint of roasting potatoes or something and suddenly you're ten years old eating dinner at your grandmother's house, or you're at a movie theatre and suddenly you get a sniff of camp fire and you remember that one summer you spent two weeks with your best friend at his family's cabin in the woods.
I caught a whiff, just a few moments ago, of my mom's french toast.
I'm a breakfast guy; huge into breakfast, love breakfast foods, I cook a mean-fucking-breakfast, man. But nothing, not IHOP, not Denny's, not McDonald's, nothing, no one, can top my mom's french toast. I remember being as little as four or five and being woken up to the smells of cinnamon-y egg-battered bread frying on a griddle. A fat dab of butter on top of each slice of bread stacked up on a plate and then soaked in a drum of maple syrup. Jesus Horatio Christ, how awesome would it be right now to have a short stack of my mom's french toast?
Wash it down with a tall cold glass of whole milk. Fuck yes.
It's hard to get the point across about how good this french toast is, but I'll try: Imagine you're best orgasm, like I'm talking about the very first time you came. When it happened you had no idea what your body just went through; you were shocked, scared, out of breath, leaking, probably thought you either just A) killed yourself, or B) did something you weren't supposed to do to yourself or C) saw the face of God. Either way, that pulsing sense of euphoria that coursed it's way through your veins from your privates to your brain and back down your spine to your feet was the heaviest and best narcotic you've ever encountered and will ever encounter. The very hint of the sensation of that first bodily explosion is something you will literally spend your life chasing, and it forever eluding you.
That's how fucking good my mom's french toast is.
In other words, I would not hesitate for one second to put a bullet in your face if it ment getting one fucking forkful of my mom's french toast into my mouth.
If it meant climbing to the top of Mount Everest naked to get a bite of that eggy, syrup-sogged bread, I would.
I would sell my soul at KMart prices to the devil himself, for a hot plate of mom's breakfast delicacy.
I would sit through all three "Fast and The Furious" films. Bet your ass I would.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Fear and Loathing at The Poker Table
Last night I went to my first actual Poker Night in like, a while. Probably since I left Maine.
First off, let me say I'm not exactly God's Gift to poker. I can hold my own, I know some basics, I know the rules, I know what beats what and what hands to hold and what hands to fold, and considering the majority of the five people crowded around a tiny back-bar in Big Country's duplex last night had no clue how to play good poker, you'd think I would be in line to bring home the winnings.
I was not.
Let me break down the night for you: Around 8ish me and the roommate took off for the local supermarket to buy a 12 back of Miller High Lifes and hit up an ATM for the 20 dollar buy-in. Thing is about The Cape that no super market or convenience store sells alcohol, which is something that a Mainer would have to get used to. We first pull into the local Shaw's (cringe...) and wander around, up and down the aisles for a full ten minutes before tracking down a semi-retarded stock boy.
"Hey, do you guys even sell beer here?" I ask. He, the retarded stock boy, is walking directly at me. Have you ever had someone you weren't completely sure was retarded making a bee-line for you? The whole time you're thinking if this guy is retarded, he might not alter his course, but if I get out of his way and he turns out NOT to be retarded, then he's going to think that I THINK he IS retarded, and might resent that, and withhold valuable beer-purchasing information....
About three feet in front of us he stops, suddenly, and kinda stares through us.
"No. There's a store around the way though..." and this 'around the way' business is very helpful. We then spend another few minutes trying to figure out if this Shaw's has an ATM in it to get out our buy-in money. It doesn't (the one's in Maine do, however. Add this to my growing list of why Maine is superior to Massachusetts.)
We then try an Irving gas station down the road a little bit when we're hassled by hoodlum youths huddled hooded in the shadows of the rear of the building. Before me and the roommate are even half way out of my truck, I hear a voice trying too hard to be hard call out "hey man,"
The roommate turns half way around and I post up at the front driver's side quarter panel to my truck which would provide me with superior cover should a gun fight ensue. "Hey man," the voice says again, and a four-foot-tall Puerto Rican who dresses with the same sense of fashionable flair as my roommate emerges. "Do you think you could go inside and buy me some blunt wraps, yo?"
"Blunt wraps?" I chuckle through as I turn back to the store.
"I'm sorry bro, I'm not 18," my roommate says as he turns away. There's nothing more said from the diminutive Hyannis thug.
I found my roommate's response ironic and humorous; at the Station we tease him all the time about how young he looks. When we all got pulled over a few weeks ago, and the undercover officer wanted to see his ID, even he said that the roommate looked "like 13." So for him to use his youthful appearance to get out of buying "blunt wraps" for some juvenile delinquent got a chuckle out of me.
There's no beer at the Irving either, but there was an ATM. I took out my twenty dollars and did my best to keep an eye on my truck through the window, lest one of the street urchins outside should decide that my GPS must be worth something at the local pawn brokery.
When we get outside and back into the truck, I lean back to get my seatbelt when a yellow light catches my eye. I glance over at it and realize that it's a "discount liquor" store right directly across from us on Iyannough. I curse under my breath and pull the truck into it's tiny parking lot.
Once inside, by myself, I have a helluva time trying to find where the 'regular fucking beer' is. I put that in semi quotes because that's what I kept saying as I wandered around endless wine racks in this Portuguese-owned liquor purchasing establishment.
I finally find the "cheap beer" section, pick up a 12 pack of MHLs for 13-something dollars.
"Discount Liquors," pfft.
We're on the road, finally, to go play cards.
Big Country, who is the Marlboro Man animated - 21 years old, 6'2, skinny, dresses as if a damn rodeo is going to break out at any second, wears Ray-Ban Wayfarers 24/7, has been waiting for us over an hour, even going so far to call my phone twice while we've been driving. He lives in Orleans which is about a 20 minute drive from Hyannis, and since we had to make about forty stops between the apartment and his place out in the middle of no where, he was getting agitated.
We arrive and make ready the poker set. E-Money and his petite girlfriend is there as well. Money is my boss's boss at the Station, 25 years old, sharp dresser, very much like me in sarcastic-ness and competitiveness. I'm somewhat irked that he brought his girlfriend along, and even more so irked that they're splitting a buy-in.
Seriously, you brought not only a female, but your girlfriend to a poker night? Dude, really?
I take everyone's cash and make a pot of a hundred dollars and secure it in my poker set case. I divvy up the chips and deal out the first hand, announcing the game is Texas Hold'em. To this I get a lot of blank stares.
I look around the small bar which we're all seated around, stacks of multi-colored chips in front of us like siege towers before an epic medieval battle.
"What...?" I ask everyone.
"How... do you play?" Comes from E-Money. My jaw actually makes a noise when it unhinges.
I'm not a professional poker player by any means. I 'sorta' fell into that whole "Hold'em Craze" from back in like 2004, but to say that you have no idea how to play cards, especially hold'em, when for the last semi-odd years it's gotten more national coverage than Al Gore trying to save the planet, is baffling.
What baffles me more is that my roommate is from LAS FUCKING VEGAS and he needed me to draft up a cheat sheet which broke down the hands. I even labeled what was junk and what you'd want to stay with.
We play a few hands, small bets and pots are being made and I'm drinking beers faster and faster. Big Country hands me a fifth of Wild Turkey and I take a few pulls off of that, cursing in my mind that I'm getting total bullshit hands.
We play for about an hour and the roommate is betting somewhat recklessly, which makes it increasingly difficult to get a read on him. It doesn't help matters when he's betting before me each hand.
Big Country is fiddling with his laptop, which is strange to watch considering he's very anti-technology. Watching him select music on his iTunes is like watching two middle school kids slow dance for the first time. It's adorably awkward.
E-Money and his girlfriend are the easiest to read at the table. He's spending too much time before he bets glancing at his hole cards and the cards on the table. She's doing the same thing plus touching her face when he's got semi-good cards. I'm doing my best to fuck with him psychologically knowing that, like me, his ego is everything. To be called 'cheap' in any form would automatically cause him to overly compensate for it to disprove the claim.
"I'm starting to think we should raise the minimum bet," I say aloud as soon as he places one black chip (worth twenty-five cents) in the pot. He instantly increases his bet by two-fold.
After about an hour, Big Country has a commanding chips lead, and E-Money has been crushed out, his girlfriend is hanging on by a thread only because I wanted to be a gentleman and not put her all in, leaving her a dollar and twenty-five cents in her stacks. My roommate is also short stacking. I have the second most chips.
Fifteen minutes pass and E-Money and his girlfriend leave us amidst hanging Marlboro smoke, defeated. Money's bitching, obviously sore that he's the first to be taken out when I look at him in the eyes and tell him that he knew what he was getting into before we started playing.
"Don't be sore, you know what this," I say. He harumphs and leaves with his girlfriend, who was gracious and pleasant as she closed the door behind them.
My next objective is to smoke my roommate's short stack. I get dealt pocket kings and the table's showing a Five of Diamonds, Jack of Diamonds, Nine of Clubs, Three of Spades, and Ten of Diamonds. Still betting recklessly, my roommate bets high and I figure he's bluffing/has no idea what he's doing. This gets Big Country, who since extinguishing The E-Moneys has been playing tight, to fold. I raise roommate's bet and put him all in, leaving my stacks small, but thinking there's no way he can beat my cowboys.
He flips over an Ace and Two of Diamonds. He fucking flushed me out. Son of a bitch. It feels like I took a front kick square to my solar-plexus. And I'm suddenly very sober.
I'm now in panic mode, only having about four dollars left in front of me, mostly in small chips, watching my roommate stack up roughly half of the chips from the set in front of himself. With the blinds being raised to double what they were when we started with five people, I know I'm on the endangered species list.
It isn't long before Big Country puts me all in and I'm stuck with off-suit Eight of Clubs and Seven of Hearts. I manage to pull out a pair of Sevens from the table, but it's not enough to beat the pair of Jacks Country had. I resign myself to being permanent dealer.
The game goes on for another few minutes where it starts to look like a stalemate. I realize that the whole time Big Country was sizing everyone up and playing very quiet, good poker. He levels my roommate an ultimatum.
"What do you wanna do here? We can split the pot," he offers. That'd be about 50 bucks a piece. I glance at my naive roommate who's playing with his chips dumbly.
"I just want my 20 bucks back if that's ok with you," he says half distractedly. I explode.
"Are you kidding me, you're going to just give him thirty bucks! What the fuck!" He shrugs, and before I can convince him otherwise, Big Country agrees and the money is split up.
We leave the duplex and I'm cold staring my roommate the entire walk to the truck.
"Dude, all I wanted was my money back..." he tries to explain.
"You could've given me the thirty bucks if you didn't want it," I say back. I fumble for my keys and manage to get myself into the truck and start my GPS.
"You good to drive?" He asks. I do my finger test and barely pass it.
"You know how to drive stick?" I ask, already knowing the answer.
"No,"
"Then we'll be fine," and I back down the twisting sloping driveway in utter darkness.
(Editor's Note: We're all very proud of Jim for getting this article into us the next morning, despite being overly hungover and unresponsive to pokes in the side from a sharp stick we keep around the office. Kudos, and nice work Jim!)
First off, let me say I'm not exactly God's Gift to poker. I can hold my own, I know some basics, I know the rules, I know what beats what and what hands to hold and what hands to fold, and considering the majority of the five people crowded around a tiny back-bar in Big Country's duplex last night had no clue how to play good poker, you'd think I would be in line to bring home the winnings.
I was not.
Let me break down the night for you: Around 8ish me and the roommate took off for the local supermarket to buy a 12 back of Miller High Lifes and hit up an ATM for the 20 dollar buy-in. Thing is about The Cape that no super market or convenience store sells alcohol, which is something that a Mainer would have to get used to. We first pull into the local Shaw's (cringe...) and wander around, up and down the aisles for a full ten minutes before tracking down a semi-retarded stock boy.
"Hey, do you guys even sell beer here?" I ask. He, the retarded stock boy, is walking directly at me. Have you ever had someone you weren't completely sure was retarded making a bee-line for you? The whole time you're thinking if this guy is retarded, he might not alter his course, but if I get out of his way and he turns out NOT to be retarded, then he's going to think that I THINK he IS retarded, and might resent that, and withhold valuable beer-purchasing information....
About three feet in front of us he stops, suddenly, and kinda stares through us.
"No. There's a store around the way though..." and this 'around the way' business is very helpful. We then spend another few minutes trying to figure out if this Shaw's has an ATM in it to get out our buy-in money. It doesn't (the one's in Maine do, however. Add this to my growing list of why Maine is superior to Massachusetts.)
We then try an Irving gas station down the road a little bit when we're hassled by hoodlum youths huddled hooded in the shadows of the rear of the building. Before me and the roommate are even half way out of my truck, I hear a voice trying too hard to be hard call out "hey man,"
The roommate turns half way around and I post up at the front driver's side quarter panel to my truck which would provide me with superior cover should a gun fight ensue. "Hey man," the voice says again, and a four-foot-tall Puerto Rican who dresses with the same sense of fashionable flair as my roommate emerges. "Do you think you could go inside and buy me some blunt wraps, yo?"
"Blunt wraps?" I chuckle through as I turn back to the store.
"I'm sorry bro, I'm not 18," my roommate says as he turns away. There's nothing more said from the diminutive Hyannis thug.
I found my roommate's response ironic and humorous; at the Station we tease him all the time about how young he looks. When we all got pulled over a few weeks ago, and the undercover officer wanted to see his ID, even he said that the roommate looked "like 13." So for him to use his youthful appearance to get out of buying "blunt wraps" for some juvenile delinquent got a chuckle out of me.
There's no beer at the Irving either, but there was an ATM. I took out my twenty dollars and did my best to keep an eye on my truck through the window, lest one of the street urchins outside should decide that my GPS must be worth something at the local pawn brokery.
When we get outside and back into the truck, I lean back to get my seatbelt when a yellow light catches my eye. I glance over at it and realize that it's a "discount liquor" store right directly across from us on Iyannough. I curse under my breath and pull the truck into it's tiny parking lot.
Once inside, by myself, I have a helluva time trying to find where the 'regular fucking beer' is. I put that in semi quotes because that's what I kept saying as I wandered around endless wine racks in this Portuguese-owned liquor purchasing establishment.
I finally find the "cheap beer" section, pick up a 12 pack of MHLs for 13-something dollars.
"Discount Liquors," pfft.
We're on the road, finally, to go play cards.
Big Country, who is the Marlboro Man animated - 21 years old, 6'2, skinny, dresses as if a damn rodeo is going to break out at any second, wears Ray-Ban Wayfarers 24/7, has been waiting for us over an hour, even going so far to call my phone twice while we've been driving. He lives in Orleans which is about a 20 minute drive from Hyannis, and since we had to make about forty stops between the apartment and his place out in the middle of no where, he was getting agitated.
We arrive and make ready the poker set. E-Money and his petite girlfriend is there as well. Money is my boss's boss at the Station, 25 years old, sharp dresser, very much like me in sarcastic-ness and competitiveness. I'm somewhat irked that he brought his girlfriend along, and even more so irked that they're splitting a buy-in.
Seriously, you brought not only a female, but your girlfriend to a poker night? Dude, really?
I take everyone's cash and make a pot of a hundred dollars and secure it in my poker set case. I divvy up the chips and deal out the first hand, announcing the game is Texas Hold'em. To this I get a lot of blank stares.
I look around the small bar which we're all seated around, stacks of multi-colored chips in front of us like siege towers before an epic medieval battle.
"What...?" I ask everyone.
"How... do you play?" Comes from E-Money. My jaw actually makes a noise when it unhinges.
I'm not a professional poker player by any means. I 'sorta' fell into that whole "Hold'em Craze" from back in like 2004, but to say that you have no idea how to play cards, especially hold'em, when for the last semi-odd years it's gotten more national coverage than Al Gore trying to save the planet, is baffling.
What baffles me more is that my roommate is from LAS FUCKING VEGAS and he needed me to draft up a cheat sheet which broke down the hands. I even labeled what was junk and what you'd want to stay with.
We play a few hands, small bets and pots are being made and I'm drinking beers faster and faster. Big Country hands me a fifth of Wild Turkey and I take a few pulls off of that, cursing in my mind that I'm getting total bullshit hands.
We play for about an hour and the roommate is betting somewhat recklessly, which makes it increasingly difficult to get a read on him. It doesn't help matters when he's betting before me each hand.
Big Country is fiddling with his laptop, which is strange to watch considering he's very anti-technology. Watching him select music on his iTunes is like watching two middle school kids slow dance for the first time. It's adorably awkward.
E-Money and his girlfriend are the easiest to read at the table. He's spending too much time before he bets glancing at his hole cards and the cards on the table. She's doing the same thing plus touching her face when he's got semi-good cards. I'm doing my best to fuck with him psychologically knowing that, like me, his ego is everything. To be called 'cheap' in any form would automatically cause him to overly compensate for it to disprove the claim.
"I'm starting to think we should raise the minimum bet," I say aloud as soon as he places one black chip (worth twenty-five cents) in the pot. He instantly increases his bet by two-fold.
After about an hour, Big Country has a commanding chips lead, and E-Money has been crushed out, his girlfriend is hanging on by a thread only because I wanted to be a gentleman and not put her all in, leaving her a dollar and twenty-five cents in her stacks. My roommate is also short stacking. I have the second most chips.
Fifteen minutes pass and E-Money and his girlfriend leave us amidst hanging Marlboro smoke, defeated. Money's bitching, obviously sore that he's the first to be taken out when I look at him in the eyes and tell him that he knew what he was getting into before we started playing.
"Don't be sore, you know what this," I say. He harumphs and leaves with his girlfriend, who was gracious and pleasant as she closed the door behind them.
My next objective is to smoke my roommate's short stack. I get dealt pocket kings and the table's showing a Five of Diamonds, Jack of Diamonds, Nine of Clubs, Three of Spades, and Ten of Diamonds. Still betting recklessly, my roommate bets high and I figure he's bluffing/has no idea what he's doing. This gets Big Country, who since extinguishing The E-Moneys has been playing tight, to fold. I raise roommate's bet and put him all in, leaving my stacks small, but thinking there's no way he can beat my cowboys.
He flips over an Ace and Two of Diamonds. He fucking flushed me out. Son of a bitch. It feels like I took a front kick square to my solar-plexus. And I'm suddenly very sober.
I'm now in panic mode, only having about four dollars left in front of me, mostly in small chips, watching my roommate stack up roughly half of the chips from the set in front of himself. With the blinds being raised to double what they were when we started with five people, I know I'm on the endangered species list.
It isn't long before Big Country puts me all in and I'm stuck with off-suit Eight of Clubs and Seven of Hearts. I manage to pull out a pair of Sevens from the table, but it's not enough to beat the pair of Jacks Country had. I resign myself to being permanent dealer.
The game goes on for another few minutes where it starts to look like a stalemate. I realize that the whole time Big Country was sizing everyone up and playing very quiet, good poker. He levels my roommate an ultimatum.
"What do you wanna do here? We can split the pot," he offers. That'd be about 50 bucks a piece. I glance at my naive roommate who's playing with his chips dumbly.
"I just want my 20 bucks back if that's ok with you," he says half distractedly. I explode.
"Are you kidding me, you're going to just give him thirty bucks! What the fuck!" He shrugs, and before I can convince him otherwise, Big Country agrees and the money is split up.
We leave the duplex and I'm cold staring my roommate the entire walk to the truck.
"Dude, all I wanted was my money back..." he tries to explain.
"You could've given me the thirty bucks if you didn't want it," I say back. I fumble for my keys and manage to get myself into the truck and start my GPS.
"You good to drive?" He asks. I do my finger test and barely pass it.
"You know how to drive stick?" I ask, already knowing the answer.
"No,"
"Then we'll be fine," and I back down the twisting sloping driveway in utter darkness.
(Editor's Note: We're all very proud of Jim for getting this article into us the next morning, despite being overly hungover and unresponsive to pokes in the side from a sharp stick we keep around the office. Kudos, and nice work Jim!)
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
If You're A Hack and You Know It, Clap Your Hands...
This article basically started as a comment on a friend's blog about her (fucking) hatred of doctors. And instead of just going hog wild on her comment page, I said to myself "hey Jim, you know what? You have an hour to kill on watch, plus your own blog to write on. Don't steal someone else's thunder." And boosh, here we are.
My friend, who shall remain nameless, has a medical history that reads like something out of a Discovery Health documentary: Kidney infections, rhuematoid arthritis, fibriomaligia, and so on, plus she's a recovering addict, all at the age of 23. Needless to say she spends a lot of time with doctors to get her shit sorted out.
She's a swell girl, extremely intelligent and cuttingly witty, charming, a touch daft but in a good way, not to mention great knockers. There's no reason why her tiny, 110lbs frame has to endure what it does, nor her fragile mentality have to deal with the likes of a total douchington in a white lab coat taking guesses at what's ailing her or how to treat it.
Face the facts: Doctors don't do shit except drive Porsches and play golf. Sure, they'll cut you open and stuff a fucking camera on a stick inside of you for the price of a small jet or in-ground swimming pool, but more often than not, it's the nurses who are doing all the heavy lifting. The doc just shows up, blabbers on about whatever he THINKS is wrong with you, will advise to get tests, etc...
The nameless subject above mentioned explained her latest run in with her doctor and it went something like this:
"So I found out today that I can't walk. The arthritis in my knees was so bad that they swelled up to the size of grapefruits. I went to the doctors and asked if there was anything they can do for me, and he said he'd write me a 'script for Percocets... mother fucker, I can't have that, it's a narcotic!"
And if the doctor had spent as much time reading through her medical file as he did trying to figure out this morning's Soduku in the paper, he probably would've caught that.
So she spent two days in bed before the doctor could see her again to drain the puss out of her knees, which is easily the hottest thought I've had since Saturday night.
Next case: My mother was on her death bed this past fall right before I left for boot camp. To say she was "sick" would be like me saying that a fatal car accident was a "fender bender." My mother was seriously fucking deathly ill, so my dad finally drags her to the ER where they make her wait forever, and when they do see her, the doctor takes all of two and a half minutes to suggest she take some tylenol to break her fever. My mother insisted that it was beyond the normal flu-like symptoms and the doctor just waved it off.
So fast forward two weeks and my mom is basically a dust cloud and I'm seriously having to conisder exiting basic to come home because my dad thinks "this is it." She goes to the ER one more time and the SAME FUCKING INFECTED UREATHRA OF A DOCTOR tells her there's nothing they can do. A nurse then suggests that they take a blood sample to the lab, where, ta-da, they discover she has a rare strain of the measels. So rare they actually had to call in the CDC to identify which strain it was. At 52 year old, my mother has contracted the fucking measels... the polio of the latter half of the 20th century... for the third time in her life. They treat it, and within a week, mom was back at work, filing deeds.
Then you have my case, when I was in college. I was suffering from a rough case of the flu. I was shitting and puking my brains out for a week solid, doing everything I could just to keep something inside of my body, because it sure as hell wasn't wanting to stay in... I go to the local ER where a doctor FLIPS THROUGH A FUCKING MEDICAL REFERENCE BOOK and comes up with "oh you have gastro-intestinal infection, let me give you some antibiotics and it should clear up in a few days," and I take the script to the pharmacist and get it filled.
Turns out I'm allergic to just about every known form of anti-biotics. Awesome.
So now I'm sick AND poisioned, and drag my corpse of a body back to the ER, where the doc, oops! states that his first diagnosis was wrong and I just seem to be suffering from the flu.
Thanks doc...
Listen, I know that doctors are humans and make mistakes, but for what we pay in health insurance (if you're lucky enough to have it at all) is ridiculous compared to the level of care we receive. There's literally people who will die in the hospital without even seeing a board certified physician. What outrages me more is that nothing can be done to change the situation, because doctors sort've have a monopoly on the whole "getting sick" thing.
Bastards.
My friend, who shall remain nameless, has a medical history that reads like something out of a Discovery Health documentary: Kidney infections, rhuematoid arthritis, fibriomaligia, and so on, plus she's a recovering addict, all at the age of 23. Needless to say she spends a lot of time with doctors to get her shit sorted out.
She's a swell girl, extremely intelligent and cuttingly witty, charming, a touch daft but in a good way, not to mention great knockers. There's no reason why her tiny, 110lbs frame has to endure what it does, nor her fragile mentality have to deal with the likes of a total douchington in a white lab coat taking guesses at what's ailing her or how to treat it.
Face the facts: Doctors don't do shit except drive Porsches and play golf. Sure, they'll cut you open and stuff a fucking camera on a stick inside of you for the price of a small jet or in-ground swimming pool, but more often than not, it's the nurses who are doing all the heavy lifting. The doc just shows up, blabbers on about whatever he THINKS is wrong with you, will advise to get tests, etc...
The nameless subject above mentioned explained her latest run in with her doctor and it went something like this:
"So I found out today that I can't walk. The arthritis in my knees was so bad that they swelled up to the size of grapefruits. I went to the doctors and asked if there was anything they can do for me, and he said he'd write me a 'script for Percocets... mother fucker, I can't have that, it's a narcotic!"
And if the doctor had spent as much time reading through her medical file as he did trying to figure out this morning's Soduku in the paper, he probably would've caught that.
So she spent two days in bed before the doctor could see her again to drain the puss out of her knees, which is easily the hottest thought I've had since Saturday night.
Next case: My mother was on her death bed this past fall right before I left for boot camp. To say she was "sick" would be like me saying that a fatal car accident was a "fender bender." My mother was seriously fucking deathly ill, so my dad finally drags her to the ER where they make her wait forever, and when they do see her, the doctor takes all of two and a half minutes to suggest she take some tylenol to break her fever. My mother insisted that it was beyond the normal flu-like symptoms and the doctor just waved it off.
So fast forward two weeks and my mom is basically a dust cloud and I'm seriously having to conisder exiting basic to come home because my dad thinks "this is it." She goes to the ER one more time and the SAME FUCKING INFECTED UREATHRA OF A DOCTOR tells her there's nothing they can do. A nurse then suggests that they take a blood sample to the lab, where, ta-da, they discover she has a rare strain of the measels. So rare they actually had to call in the CDC to identify which strain it was. At 52 year old, my mother has contracted the fucking measels... the polio of the latter half of the 20th century... for the third time in her life. They treat it, and within a week, mom was back at work, filing deeds.
Then you have my case, when I was in college. I was suffering from a rough case of the flu. I was shitting and puking my brains out for a week solid, doing everything I could just to keep something inside of my body, because it sure as hell wasn't wanting to stay in... I go to the local ER where a doctor FLIPS THROUGH A FUCKING MEDICAL REFERENCE BOOK and comes up with "oh you have gastro-intestinal infection, let me give you some antibiotics and it should clear up in a few days," and I take the script to the pharmacist and get it filled.
Turns out I'm allergic to just about every known form of anti-biotics. Awesome.
So now I'm sick AND poisioned, and drag my corpse of a body back to the ER, where the doc, oops! states that his first diagnosis was wrong and I just seem to be suffering from the flu.
Thanks doc...
Listen, I know that doctors are humans and make mistakes, but for what we pay in health insurance (if you're lucky enough to have it at all) is ridiculous compared to the level of care we receive. There's literally people who will die in the hospital without even seeing a board certified physician. What outrages me more is that nothing can be done to change the situation, because doctors sort've have a monopoly on the whole "getting sick" thing.
Bastards.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
On The Road: The Blackberry Chronicles
"Introducing new Bud Light with Lime!"
..... Sooo you've basically invented Corona with the lime already in it.... Congratulations.
..... Sooo you've basically invented Corona with the lime already in it.... Congratulations.
Etiquette Enforcement: Shotgun.
The term "shotgun" or "calling shotgun" derives from the days of cowboys and stagecoaches. The man riding "shotgun" actually rode up front with the driver and carried a double-barreled 12 gauage "coach gun" that was used to defend the passengers of the coach from indians and highwaymen, etc.
Now-a-days, "Shotgun" means the guy who gets to ride up front with the driver, and all the status that's implied with said seating. To ride "shotgun" tells other people that, aside from the driver of the vehicle, you're in control; you have all the powers that the driver does except for driving the vehicle. Nay, some could even argue that you're more powerful than the driver because he has to remain focused on the road, while you get to fiddle with the radio, your phone, your iPod, your computer, etc. You also get the best view, and people tend to think you're more important than the poor sons of bitches in the back seats, forced to look at the back of your skulls for the duration of the trip.
But there has to be rules to calling "shotgun", lest you engage in an actual "arms race" with your fellow passengers.
Yes, we all know the "can't call it before you see it" rule, which implies you have to actually see the vehicle in question before calling it. And of course you have to respect the first person to make the call, even if they've been calling it all day like a total dick.
But there are other, often over looked rules to "shotgun" that fall to the way side. How about "deferring to seniority" meaning that a good car mate should give the eldest rider at least a chance to call "shotgun" while walking across a mall parking lot, well within the sights of the vehicle? To this I would suggest that if you're practically on top of the vehicle and they still haven't called it, then it'd be acceptable to nonchalantly "call it." Calling it excitedly makes it sound like you were chomping at the bit the entire time we were walking and not paying attention to my story about the Victoria's Secret sales lady hitting on me.
How about the "door handle" rule, where, if you call "shotgun" and my hand's on the door handle to the front passenger seat, all bets are off. You dare call "shotgun" when my hands on the handle, or even - Jesus, the door's open, I'll probably shoot you in the stomach, and we can reinact the scene from "Resevior Dogs" where Mr. Orange is bleeding to death in the back seat.
In the back seat.
And then there's the two rules which negate calling every time: The "my shit's in the front seat" rule, and the more precident "this is a two-door coup and I'm being dropped off first" rule. The latter is self explainitory, however the former seems to get over looked all the time. Listen, if my shit's in the front seat, whether it's my iPod, or purchased items, or a sweater, fucking leave it there and let me take my seat. The only way this rule can be vetoed is if by some chance, you can prove I left my shit in the front seat on purpose to act as a place holder.
Which I invite you to try, Balls Mahoney.
I'd also like to dicuss some of the over looked responsibilties of the co-pilot riding "shotgun:" When stopped to get gas, the shotgunner should get out and clean the windows. If you think you're slick enough to jump my seat while I'm out of the car, cleaning it, then god help you when I get back into the car. I'll be sitting behind you, making your life a miserable Dante-esque-9th-Ring-Hell.
Other responsibilities include: when pulling up to a toll booth and the driver doesn't have an E-Z Pass, they fish for the change or pay the toll out of their own pocket. Also they clean up all front seat trash accrued through the trip.
And of course, should the vehicle be overrun by blood thirsty savages, they lay down a heavy barrage of gunfire to cover the escape.
Now-a-days, "Shotgun" means the guy who gets to ride up front with the driver, and all the status that's implied with said seating. To ride "shotgun" tells other people that, aside from the driver of the vehicle, you're in control; you have all the powers that the driver does except for driving the vehicle. Nay, some could even argue that you're more powerful than the driver because he has to remain focused on the road, while you get to fiddle with the radio, your phone, your iPod, your computer, etc. You also get the best view, and people tend to think you're more important than the poor sons of bitches in the back seats, forced to look at the back of your skulls for the duration of the trip.
But there has to be rules to calling "shotgun", lest you engage in an actual "arms race" with your fellow passengers.
Yes, we all know the "can't call it before you see it" rule, which implies you have to actually see the vehicle in question before calling it. And of course you have to respect the first person to make the call, even if they've been calling it all day like a total dick.
But there are other, often over looked rules to "shotgun" that fall to the way side. How about "deferring to seniority" meaning that a good car mate should give the eldest rider at least a chance to call "shotgun" while walking across a mall parking lot, well within the sights of the vehicle? To this I would suggest that if you're practically on top of the vehicle and they still haven't called it, then it'd be acceptable to nonchalantly "call it." Calling it excitedly makes it sound like you were chomping at the bit the entire time we were walking and not paying attention to my story about the Victoria's Secret sales lady hitting on me.
How about the "door handle" rule, where, if you call "shotgun" and my hand's on the door handle to the front passenger seat, all bets are off. You dare call "shotgun" when my hands on the handle, or even - Jesus, the door's open, I'll probably shoot you in the stomach, and we can reinact the scene from "Resevior Dogs" where Mr. Orange is bleeding to death in the back seat.
In the back seat.
And then there's the two rules which negate calling every time: The "my shit's in the front seat" rule, and the more precident "this is a two-door coup and I'm being dropped off first" rule. The latter is self explainitory, however the former seems to get over looked all the time. Listen, if my shit's in the front seat, whether it's my iPod, or purchased items, or a sweater, fucking leave it there and let me take my seat. The only way this rule can be vetoed is if by some chance, you can prove I left my shit in the front seat on purpose to act as a place holder.
Which I invite you to try, Balls Mahoney.
I'd also like to dicuss some of the over looked responsibilties of the co-pilot riding "shotgun:" When stopped to get gas, the shotgunner should get out and clean the windows. If you think you're slick enough to jump my seat while I'm out of the car, cleaning it, then god help you when I get back into the car. I'll be sitting behind you, making your life a miserable Dante-esque-9th-Ring-Hell.
Other responsibilities include: when pulling up to a toll booth and the driver doesn't have an E-Z Pass, they fish for the change or pay the toll out of their own pocket. Also they clean up all front seat trash accrued through the trip.
And of course, should the vehicle be overrun by blood thirsty savages, they lay down a heavy barrage of gunfire to cover the escape.
Our Country's Love of Stupid Shit
If there was one thing I enjoyed immidiately following 9/11 was that the nation took this somber tone. No one cared about scandals; cheating politicians, murderous husbands, what-who-was-putting-up-their-nose, etc. People focused again on what mattered most in life, which was community.
But almost seven years later, we've pretty much reverted back to our pre-September of 2001 ways. You can't turn on a television without seeing some celebrity leaving rehab, or watching Britnay Spears self destruct or whatever. We've folded back into the days about caring about stupid shit.
I understand that we, collectively, need a distraction from the mundane aspects of our lives. And hey, I'll browse through the entertainment section on Huffingtonpost.com once a day myself, but as a whole, we are so unbelievably fucking consumed with high amounts of talentless ridiculousness that we're practically begging Al Qaeda to blow up one of our shopping malls.
Americans love stupid shit, and it's been showing for years, and by "years" I mean since about 1971, when hippies stopped caring about the world, and started caring about cocaine. Since then, we as a nation have been inandated with such excessive bullshit that we willingly swallow it piecemeal and grin happily as we chew.
And this is how we ended up in Iraq.
Why do we give such a big shit about little shit like some hick climbing his way up the steep slope that is "American Idol?" How come everytime Lindsay Lohan leaves a Rodeo Drive couture, there's a fucking helicopter following her? ...America, we need to refocus.
There was this ad campagne when "The Sopranos" were just wrapping up; it was called "The Family vs. Your Family" as was largely featured in print ads as well as in commericals on HBO. The ad went like this: On one page you were first presented with a list of three questions pretaining to the HBO hit drama, such as "Who Shot Tony" and "What's the name of Adrianna's Club?" and so on. You'd flip the page and there'd be one question: "What's your grandfather's middle name?"
I knew more about the intricacies of a fictional crime family than I did about my own, and I think that's what the ad was getting at in a round-about way. I was stunned, as I sat on the toilet trying to think of grandfather's first name, let alone middle. I too was a victim of caring about stupid shit.
I'm not saying we should totally boycott TMZ.com or People Magazine, but we don't need the "text2phone" updates every time Paris Hilton puts on oversized sunglasses or blows some douchebag. I'm just saying that for once in this country's history, could we possibly start focusing on the important things in our lives before we're reminded about it later by the next bridge collapse or terrorist attack?
But almost seven years later, we've pretty much reverted back to our pre-September of 2001 ways. You can't turn on a television without seeing some celebrity leaving rehab, or watching Britnay Spears self destruct or whatever. We've folded back into the days about caring about stupid shit.
I understand that we, collectively, need a distraction from the mundane aspects of our lives. And hey, I'll browse through the entertainment section on Huffingtonpost.com once a day myself, but as a whole, we are so unbelievably fucking consumed with high amounts of talentless ridiculousness that we're practically begging Al Qaeda to blow up one of our shopping malls.
Americans love stupid shit, and it's been showing for years, and by "years" I mean since about 1971, when hippies stopped caring about the world, and started caring about cocaine. Since then, we as a nation have been inandated with such excessive bullshit that we willingly swallow it piecemeal and grin happily as we chew.
And this is how we ended up in Iraq.
Why do we give such a big shit about little shit like some hick climbing his way up the steep slope that is "American Idol?" How come everytime Lindsay Lohan leaves a Rodeo Drive couture, there's a fucking helicopter following her? ...America, we need to refocus.
There was this ad campagne when "The Sopranos" were just wrapping up; it was called "The Family vs. Your Family" as was largely featured in print ads as well as in commericals on HBO. The ad went like this: On one page you were first presented with a list of three questions pretaining to the HBO hit drama, such as "Who Shot Tony" and "What's the name of Adrianna's Club?" and so on. You'd flip the page and there'd be one question: "What's your grandfather's middle name?"
I knew more about the intricacies of a fictional crime family than I did about my own, and I think that's what the ad was getting at in a round-about way. I was stunned, as I sat on the toilet trying to think of grandfather's first name, let alone middle. I too was a victim of caring about stupid shit.
I'm not saying we should totally boycott TMZ.com or People Magazine, but we don't need the "text2phone" updates every time Paris Hilton puts on oversized sunglasses or blows some douchebag. I'm just saying that for once in this country's history, could we possibly start focusing on the important things in our lives before we're reminded about it later by the next bridge collapse or terrorist attack?
Sunday, April 6, 2008
On The Road: The Blackberry Chronicles
I'm sitting in Panera Bread in "recovery mode" thinking that I'm living the The American Dream. I'm the 21st Century's Gatsby. I'm everything Fitzgerald wote about.
Also... Panera Bread is delicious.
Also... Panera Bread is delicious.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
For Once, A Post Not About My Roommate
Yesterday I was at the mall, by myself.
I like going to the mall by myself because when I do go by myself, I'm like a special forces soldier; I know my objective, I know the location of the target, I'm in, I'm out, and no one's the wiser. It's like I was never there, no bullshitting around, no staring at the cute chick that works at the hair salon, ... I just do what I got to do, all the while skirting the ridiculous grunge-emo kids in black parachute pants and Insane Clown Posse hockey jerseys and the sexual predator-esque T-Mobile kiosk salesman.
No, I'm not going to "just buy" that over priced fucking Blackberry wannabe, to return it tomorrow... and everyone knows T-Mobile is the shittiest of the big-three networks. I mean, I have AT&T, so I would know all about shitty phone networks, bro.
Anyway, so I'm in the mall looking for a birthday present for a, uh, friend, and a copy of Capote's "Breakfast At Tiffany's" for the roommate to hopefully inject some culture into his Volcom covered skull (granted I said I wasn't going to post anything about the roommate, but... well fuck it, there it is.).
So I make my purchases at Barnes and Noble, and then cruise over to Best Buy to browse cds and dvds, make a few selections (first season of [adult swim]'s "Frisky Dingo" which is probably the most genius show that network has ever made) and then head to the register. What was interesting about all of this was that for the first time since I can remember I had actual paper money in my wallet.
My roommate paid his portion of the bills in plain old-school-ass cash. So here I had like, 100 bucks in my wallet in various denominations: 20s, 10s, 5s... I felt as if I was playing Monopoly.
The point I'm trying to make is that, in order for me to cash out from Best Buy, all I would have to do is simply hand the correct amount of bills to the overweight blue-clad cashier and be about the business of getting an Orange Julius.
But what was hampering me was the fact that some dude, someone's dad I presume, was trying to purchase a Nintendo Wii with his credit card, and could not maneuver the little card-swipey thingie at the register.
C'mon man, I know you're old, but shit, those little machines have been around since like, 1998, if not before that. You mean to tell me, that in the last ten or more years you haven't had to fucking navigate one of these things often enough to understand that you swipe your card as indicated by the little fucking picture of the card on the top of the slide, and then when prompted, enter whatever information they want - WITH THE FUCKING PEN, YOU JAGOFF - not your fat fucking finger or ... coke nail or whatever you're jabbing at the screen with, and then sign.
I mean, even my dad... my pot-smoking, anti-technological, hippie father can figure out e-Bay. Seriously.
This ... Mayor of Doucheberg... swiped his card about eleven-hundred times before realizing it wasn't being read. Then he flipped it a few times, tried it that way, so on, until he got the right combination. Then when asked to enter is PIN or whatever, he just started punching the screen with his finger, over and over again, while giving plaintive glances to the non-pulsed cashier who clearly was only thinking of his upcoming 15 minute break so he could stand in line in front of me at the fucking Orange Julius. After struggling to enter whatever had to be entered, the cashier, still off in Oz forgot to click something on his end of things, ... fuck people, you do this shit all day everyday! Get your head in the fucking game, Kevin!
Or... Hank! Or... whatever!
So now this guy, who's created a line longer than that of which one would have to stand in to get Hannah Montana tix is told by the cashier to sign in the box.
"What box?"
"The box on the screen," says the helpful cashier.
"What screen?" And the man paws at the bag which contains his fucking Wii. The cashier leans over and touches the box. "Oh, what do I sign it with?"
HOLY FUCK DUDE! Are you serious?! Are you kidding me! ...
By now I'm sighing like Al Gore debating G-Dub back in 2000; my eyes can't roll harder. I look back at the people behind me in line, and no one seems to have a problem standing there, being held up by someone else's ineptitude.
Fucking cattle.
Finally the guy realizes there's a little electronic pen tethered to the box. Audibly expresses his discovery, and scribbles. He scurries away, not realizing he came *this close* to getting his spinal chord removed like I'm Scorpion from Mortal Kombat.
I reach the front of the line, pull out the cash that my roommate gave me for his share of the bills, and it should be mentioned that since it was the first time I've paid actual cash for an item in a while, I did fuck it up. The total came out to $41.98, so I gave the guy $41 even, and just stood there, looking at him. Conversely, he stared there looking at me, waiting for the extra dollar. When I asked him what was wrong, he kinda just looked at me like I was full on retarded and just lifted the wad of bills for me to see and count.
My thing is that, unlike an XBox 360, I'm not backwards compatible. I'm always moving forward.
Like a shark. A Special Forces Shark.
I like going to the mall by myself because when I do go by myself, I'm like a special forces soldier; I know my objective, I know the location of the target, I'm in, I'm out, and no one's the wiser. It's like I was never there, no bullshitting around, no staring at the cute chick that works at the hair salon, ... I just do what I got to do, all the while skirting the ridiculous grunge-emo kids in black parachute pants and Insane Clown Posse hockey jerseys and the sexual predator-esque T-Mobile kiosk salesman.
No, I'm not going to "just buy" that over priced fucking Blackberry wannabe, to return it tomorrow... and everyone knows T-Mobile is the shittiest of the big-three networks. I mean, I have AT&T, so I would know all about shitty phone networks, bro.
Anyway, so I'm in the mall looking for a birthday present for a, uh, friend, and a copy of Capote's "Breakfast At Tiffany's" for the roommate to hopefully inject some culture into his Volcom covered skull (granted I said I wasn't going to post anything about the roommate, but... well fuck it, there it is.).
So I make my purchases at Barnes and Noble, and then cruise over to Best Buy to browse cds and dvds, make a few selections (first season of [adult swim]'s "Frisky Dingo" which is probably the most genius show that network has ever made) and then head to the register. What was interesting about all of this was that for the first time since I can remember I had actual paper money in my wallet.
My roommate paid his portion of the bills in plain old-school-ass cash. So here I had like, 100 bucks in my wallet in various denominations: 20s, 10s, 5s... I felt as if I was playing Monopoly.
The point I'm trying to make is that, in order for me to cash out from Best Buy, all I would have to do is simply hand the correct amount of bills to the overweight blue-clad cashier and be about the business of getting an Orange Julius.
But what was hampering me was the fact that some dude, someone's dad I presume, was trying to purchase a Nintendo Wii with his credit card, and could not maneuver the little card-swipey thingie at the register.
C'mon man, I know you're old, but shit, those little machines have been around since like, 1998, if not before that. You mean to tell me, that in the last ten or more years you haven't had to fucking navigate one of these things often enough to understand that you swipe your card as indicated by the little fucking picture of the card on the top of the slide, and then when prompted, enter whatever information they want - WITH THE FUCKING PEN, YOU JAGOFF - not your fat fucking finger or ... coke nail or whatever you're jabbing at the screen with, and then sign.
I mean, even my dad... my pot-smoking, anti-technological, hippie father can figure out e-Bay. Seriously.
This ... Mayor of Doucheberg... swiped his card about eleven-hundred times before realizing it wasn't being read. Then he flipped it a few times, tried it that way, so on, until he got the right combination. Then when asked to enter is PIN or whatever, he just started punching the screen with his finger, over and over again, while giving plaintive glances to the non-pulsed cashier who clearly was only thinking of his upcoming 15 minute break so he could stand in line in front of me at the fucking Orange Julius. After struggling to enter whatever had to be entered, the cashier, still off in Oz forgot to click something on his end of things, ... fuck people, you do this shit all day everyday! Get your head in the fucking game, Kevin!
Or... Hank! Or... whatever!
So now this guy, who's created a line longer than that of which one would have to stand in to get Hannah Montana tix is told by the cashier to sign in the box.
"What box?"
"The box on the screen," says the helpful cashier.
"What screen?" And the man paws at the bag which contains his fucking Wii. The cashier leans over and touches the box. "Oh, what do I sign it with?"
HOLY FUCK DUDE! Are you serious?! Are you kidding me! ...
By now I'm sighing like Al Gore debating G-Dub back in 2000; my eyes can't roll harder. I look back at the people behind me in line, and no one seems to have a problem standing there, being held up by someone else's ineptitude.
Fucking cattle.
Finally the guy realizes there's a little electronic pen tethered to the box. Audibly expresses his discovery, and scribbles. He scurries away, not realizing he came *this close* to getting his spinal chord removed like I'm Scorpion from Mortal Kombat.
I reach the front of the line, pull out the cash that my roommate gave me for his share of the bills, and it should be mentioned that since it was the first time I've paid actual cash for an item in a while, I did fuck it up. The total came out to $41.98, so I gave the guy $41 even, and just stood there, looking at him. Conversely, he stared there looking at me, waiting for the extra dollar. When I asked him what was wrong, he kinda just looked at me like I was full on retarded and just lifted the wad of bills for me to see and count.
My thing is that, unlike an XBox 360, I'm not backwards compatible. I'm always moving forward.
Like a shark. A Special Forces Shark.
Friday, April 4, 2008
On The Road: The Blackberry Chronicles
Since my roommate apparently still lives in the 20th Century he paid his share of all the bills with straight cash.
This marks the first time since 2003 that I have more than 20 dollars in cash on my person.
This marks the first time since 2003 that I have more than 20 dollars in cash on my person.
That's Gross.
When asked, I couldn't tell you why I seem to write so extensively about my roommate's social/sex life. Maybe it's because I like to live vicariously through him, or probably it's because I don't think my social/sex life is all that interesting.
Or maybe I just think that its none of your fucking business. Not to mention my stalker tends to read my posts (on that, thanks for sending me that kitten's head in the mail the other day, appriciate it.).
Anyway, the roommate was scoring some trim the other night. How do I know this? Because I could hear him achieve orgasm through the bedroom walls. The only downside to all of this is that the young lady in question moonlighted as a stunt whale at SeaWorld.
But it's whatever. Every guy's had at least one nasty lay that they're not proud of. I know I have, shit, I have a few. Actually, I have a whole stable of unsavory sexual encounters that I would love to forget if it weren't for the warts.
..Joke....
Anyway, so this story starts off where again, innocent me is padding his way out to the rest of the apartment, in my robe and slippers to fashion some sort of chinese food-left over-breakfast. I enter the kitchen, make myself something to eat and then go into the living room to watch the news or the Weather Channel, or whatever it is that white people watch with their morning meal, when before me lays this little crumple of black on the floor in front of the tv.
I set down my bowl of food and take a long stare at this bit of black fabric and curiously wonder, slightly under my breath as to what it is. I walk towards it, bend, and with two fingers pluck it up from the rug. What unfolds before me was as horrific as the events that took place on the morning of 9/11.
It was my roommate's date's lacey little black panties. However, there was nothing 'little' about them.
I gagged and dropped them back to the floor. They were likely size 11 or greater and smelled like sweatsocks. I chuckled a little and then picked them back up, daintily, and flung them on to my roommate's still sleeping head (teaches him a lesson about A-not picking up after himself, and B- not closing his door.).
What irks me so much about this whole situation is that it's just plain disrespectful for this she-beast to leave her things literally laying around our apartment. She left early in the morning, but after the sun was up and shining through our picture window. You don't think she would've remembered that 'oh yeah, hey, those are my underwear,' and retrieved them?
I mean, not to mention she ... probably wasn't wearing a set?
Obviously she meant to leave them there, and I would suspect that she probably even went so far as to plant them there on purpose. I mean, in front ... center front at that... of the big LCD display television?
She wanted them to be found, and she was - in a round about way - ensuring that my roommate would have to see her again to return said property. Bitch, there's other ways of getting a second date; leaving your filthy, used under-things behind as a souvenier does no one a favor.
And it's very disrespectful, in case I haven't already mentioned that.
Regardless, upon waking an hour or so later and discovering what was placed on his head, the roommate quickly put the evidence into the rubbish, exclaiming "that's gross!"
"So... how did it go?" I ask from over my cup of coffee. He grins like an adolescent: childishly, yet endearingly shy.
"It went ok... did you hear me through the walls?" He references his ... and my... homage to a by-gone wrestling star that he and I both have been shouting at the top of our lungs for the past two days.
"The 'Rick Flair-Woo?'" I ask.
"Yeah, did you hear it? I did it twice!"
"No, I had my ears in," I lie. I heard it, twice, and the thought of his ... exclaimitory orgasm embarrassed and grossed me out at the same time. I mean, I share bowls of Cap'n Crunch with his kid, I don't want to have to think of him jettisoning his spunk across the stretch-marked back of a female moose.
"But I did it for you!" And not only does the conversation become so awkward that I can no longer look him in the eyes, it becomes kinda gay as well. I clear my throat,
"Well, I'm glad you had a good time, are you going to see her again?"
"No way bro, she was gross!" He says. I concur, she was in fact gross. Now he starts to get sorry for himself.
"I want to find a hot chick, one that I can like, take out to places," He says.
"You took out this chick, you took her to Sam Diegos."
"Yeah, well, I want to be able to take out a chick that doesn't eat like the T-Rex from 'Jurassic Park',"
I hate the game where people leave their shit behind on purpose only to get you to see them again. It's such a weak and desperate and sad manuever. If you find yourself resorting to those kind of tactics, it's probably because your gut's telling you that the other person really wants nothing to do with you. And you know, 90% of the time, it's painfully obvious. People tend, through body language or even verbally, telegraph that they are no longer interested or in some sort of phyiscal pain just being around you. Fucking.. take heed, man. Suck it up, move on, lick your wounds, yeah it hurts, but do you really need to leave a momento behind so you can call a day later and be like "oh hey, yeah, um, I think I left my laptop in your car...." Dude! No one "leaves a laptop" in someone's car. That's like me saying "Oh hey, you know that $800 dollar gun I just bought, yeah, oops, left it in your car. Can I maybe have you swing by and drop it off for me? The door will be unlocked so just let yourself in... if you hear the shower running, feel free to stick your head in the door and say hello...."
Fucking sad man, fucking sad.
Or maybe I just think that its none of your fucking business. Not to mention my stalker tends to read my posts (on that, thanks for sending me that kitten's head in the mail the other day, appriciate it.).
Anyway, the roommate was scoring some trim the other night. How do I know this? Because I could hear him achieve orgasm through the bedroom walls. The only downside to all of this is that the young lady in question moonlighted as a stunt whale at SeaWorld.
But it's whatever. Every guy's had at least one nasty lay that they're not proud of. I know I have, shit, I have a few. Actually, I have a whole stable of unsavory sexual encounters that I would love to forget if it weren't for the warts.
..Joke....
Anyway, so this story starts off where again, innocent me is padding his way out to the rest of the apartment, in my robe and slippers to fashion some sort of chinese food-left over-breakfast. I enter the kitchen, make myself something to eat and then go into the living room to watch the news or the Weather Channel, or whatever it is that white people watch with their morning meal, when before me lays this little crumple of black on the floor in front of the tv.
I set down my bowl of food and take a long stare at this bit of black fabric and curiously wonder, slightly under my breath as to what it is. I walk towards it, bend, and with two fingers pluck it up from the rug. What unfolds before me was as horrific as the events that took place on the morning of 9/11.
It was my roommate's date's lacey little black panties. However, there was nothing 'little' about them.
I gagged and dropped them back to the floor. They were likely size 11 or greater and smelled like sweatsocks. I chuckled a little and then picked them back up, daintily, and flung them on to my roommate's still sleeping head (teaches him a lesson about A-not picking up after himself, and B- not closing his door.).
What irks me so much about this whole situation is that it's just plain disrespectful for this she-beast to leave her things literally laying around our apartment. She left early in the morning, but after the sun was up and shining through our picture window. You don't think she would've remembered that 'oh yeah, hey, those are my underwear,' and retrieved them?
I mean, not to mention she ... probably wasn't wearing a set?
Obviously she meant to leave them there, and I would suspect that she probably even went so far as to plant them there on purpose. I mean, in front ... center front at that... of the big LCD display television?
She wanted them to be found, and she was - in a round about way - ensuring that my roommate would have to see her again to return said property. Bitch, there's other ways of getting a second date; leaving your filthy, used under-things behind as a souvenier does no one a favor.
And it's very disrespectful, in case I haven't already mentioned that.
Regardless, upon waking an hour or so later and discovering what was placed on his head, the roommate quickly put the evidence into the rubbish, exclaiming "that's gross!"
"So... how did it go?" I ask from over my cup of coffee. He grins like an adolescent: childishly, yet endearingly shy.
"It went ok... did you hear me through the walls?" He references his ... and my... homage to a by-gone wrestling star that he and I both have been shouting at the top of our lungs for the past two days.
"The 'Rick Flair-Woo?'" I ask.
"Yeah, did you hear it? I did it twice!"
"No, I had my ears in," I lie. I heard it, twice, and the thought of his ... exclaimitory orgasm embarrassed and grossed me out at the same time. I mean, I share bowls of Cap'n Crunch with his kid, I don't want to have to think of him jettisoning his spunk across the stretch-marked back of a female moose.
"But I did it for you!" And not only does the conversation become so awkward that I can no longer look him in the eyes, it becomes kinda gay as well. I clear my throat,
"Well, I'm glad you had a good time, are you going to see her again?"
"No way bro, she was gross!" He says. I concur, she was in fact gross. Now he starts to get sorry for himself.
"I want to find a hot chick, one that I can like, take out to places," He says.
"You took out this chick, you took her to Sam Diegos."
"Yeah, well, I want to be able to take out a chick that doesn't eat like the T-Rex from 'Jurassic Park',"
I hate the game where people leave their shit behind on purpose only to get you to see them again. It's such a weak and desperate and sad manuever. If you find yourself resorting to those kind of tactics, it's probably because your gut's telling you that the other person really wants nothing to do with you. And you know, 90% of the time, it's painfully obvious. People tend, through body language or even verbally, telegraph that they are no longer interested or in some sort of phyiscal pain just being around you. Fucking.. take heed, man. Suck it up, move on, lick your wounds, yeah it hurts, but do you really need to leave a momento behind so you can call a day later and be like "oh hey, yeah, um, I think I left my laptop in your car...." Dude! No one "leaves a laptop" in someone's car. That's like me saying "Oh hey, you know that $800 dollar gun I just bought, yeah, oops, left it in your car. Can I maybe have you swing by and drop it off for me? The door will be unlocked so just let yourself in... if you hear the shower running, feel free to stick your head in the door and say hello...."
Fucking sad man, fucking sad.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
On The Road: The Blackberry Chronicles
Ugh. I am never going to eat spicey thai food and watch 'American Psycho' before bed ever again.
Lesson learned.
Lesson learned.
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