I Visit Two Scenic Locals

In the height of all ironies, I was stricken with an illness yesterday. While it certainly wasn’t the Hantavirus, Lupus, or Scabies, the jury is still out whether it was Scurvy, Rickets or just the Black Death that terrorized Europe during the 1300’s. If anyone wants to recreate yesterday’s schedule, here’s a few steps that will accurately simulate the experience:

1. Hire professional Strong Man Jouko Ahola for the day.
2. Buy a 20 Sledge Hammer.
3. Have the former beat your solar plexus with the later every 15 minutes or upon regaining consciousness.

Essentially my day consisted of pain, sleep, pain, things rushing out of various orifices and more pain. I didn’t even know my body held that much liquid. It was as if my digestive tract was the Titanic and the contents therein were screaming women and children.

I’m glad to report that I have since recovered enough to at least journey somewhere other than the toilet and my bed. Let me tell you, as scenic as those locals may be, they were getting pretty old as far as I was concerned. I place the blame for this illness where I believe it’s deserved: Paris Hilton. Some say I’m crazy, but come on. You can’t look at her and NOT think she’s a hotbed for stupidity, poor-fashion, and some really nasty forms of STDs. She’s got to be like the Congo of Sexually Transmitted Illnesses. 20 years from now they’ll be finding diseases on Paris that they haven’t even named yet. How’d I come in contact with her? I’m proud to report I’m one of the 6 people living on the planet that has NOT had sex with Paris Hilton, but she did briefly flash across my screen while I was channel surfing on Tuesday night. Apparently that’s all it takes.

I also think that due credit should go to the God of Sickness, who decided to smote me down for the post where I make light of a number of diseases. Oh Great God of Sickness! Hear my plea! I hereby repent my evil ways and will never mock those who suffer from unfortunate diseases with even more unfortunate names again

…today.

When I get sick, I always think back to college and the one time I actually went to the wellness center to try to get treatment. I had been suffering with a pretty horrible flu—fever, nausea, head-aches, the whole deal. The first question they asked me was, “Are you sexually active?”

The attendant got really nervous when I answered, “Are you asking me out?”

Essentially, any student admitting to being sick was immediately assumed to be suffering from obscure sexual ailments. Not that it really mattered, because the only thing the wellness center was allowed to prescribe was free samples of Claritin and cough-drops.

I guess the moral of today’s post is this: Stop the spread of disease. Stop watching Paris Hilton.

Why I Shouldn't Be Allowed To Speak In Public

Sometimes I really wish that life happened at slower speeds. Not because I’m over-whelmed by today’s fast-past world, but because I feel like maybe then I could work on my blurting problem.

And I do have a problem. Make no mistake. I mean, it’s one thing to say the stuff I write on this blog. It’s another to blurt this stuff out to the wrong company.

For example, I was walking home with a girl I was dating towards the end of college. She was nestled onto my arm and we were quietly chatting and joking to each other. I made a comment about how soon I’d be leaving this life behind forever, and wondering if I’d really left my mark on the place.

“What do you expect them to do?” she asked sarcastically. “Chisel statues of you and sacrifice virgins in your honor?”

“Hon, you of all people should know that to really honor my memory accurately, they’d have to sacrifice the slutty girls.”

A little free advice: girls you’re dating don’t like to hear that kind of thing.

I’m not sure why I do this kind of thing. Maybe I’m secretly afraid of achieving happiness. I only wish that this was the kind of thing I did only in my personal life. Unfortunately, that train (as I like to say) has sailed.

For more information on me screwing myself at work, check the very end of this post. I swear, sometimes I’m sure I have Tourettes. COCKSUCKERFUCKSHITASSBITCH. You know, I think that’s the answer. Next time I blurt out something unbelievably inappropriate, I’ll just follow it with a string of the foulest language you ever heard. That way people won’t think I’m an idiot. I’m just suffering from a neurological disorder.

The king of all blurt-outs, however, happened a number of years ago. I was sitting in a dining hall with one of my dear friends, and she was talking about her recent man problems. We had reached a point in the conversation where she was really looking deep inside herself, wondering if she would ever be happy. I leaned forward and grabbed her hand across the table.

I looked deep into her eyes, cleared my throat and realized I had no clue what was about to come out of my mouth.

“You know, Jen” I began, looking at her earnestly, “we’ve been friends for a long time now. I feel like you and I have really come a long way; as if we’ve grown up together. I know we tease each other now and then, but through it all there’s no doubt that we’re always there for one another.”

Jen’s eyes opened up wide. She leaned forward just slightly, as if sensing what to come would be a pivotal point in our relationship, forever changing how we interacted.

“That’s why I want you to know that if we’re both still single in 20 years--”

Her eyes started to mist. Her hand trembled ever so slightly.

“—I’m going to keep looking.”

There was a moment of stunned silence before she threw her cup of soda at me and stormed out.

I know it’s going to come as a shock to all my loyal readers, but I have to admit, after looking at all the evidence, there’s a very strong possibility that I’m a dick. Shocking, I know. I’ll give you all until tomorrow to come to grips with it.

Things I Find Hysterical or "Why I'm Going To Die Of A Tropical Disease"

I’ve found, through years of testing this sort of thing, that I’ve got a very strange sense of humor. For example, I was speaking to a particularly AWESOME female who lives in Washington DC, when she mentioned that the popular morning radio personality has Lupus.

I was incapacitated by laughter for the better part of 10 minutes. Not to make light of some one else’s pain…well, ok, I guess I am. I guess I just find the idea that a morning radio man, whose job it is to get people excited and happy about the day, has a crippling, horrible illness.

“Hey folks…today I thought about killing myself again. God, I hate you all. Living your lives. You don’t know what it’s like to suffer, any of you! I hope you ROT, you smug bastards!!!”

Or maybe

“Hey, this is Mad Wolf in the morning, coming to you live on DC 101. I’m glad you stopped in this morning. Today we’ll be talking to Rob Lowe, having strippers in for a hotdog eating contest, and don’t miss part 27 of our ongoing series: the agonizing pain with which I live every waking moment!”

I also observed that there are a number of illnesses that I find hysterical. Not people suffering from them understand. It’s pretty much just the names. Here they are:

• Lupus
• The Hantavirus
• SIDS
• Scabies
• Rickets

You realize what I’ve done, right? I’ve just published the names of one of the afflictions guaranteed to kill me. It’ll be the only time anyone will be able to say, “He died of Scabies. How’s that for poetic justice.”

I don’t even know what scabies is.

The other incident that reduced me to incoherence (well, more than usual. Incoherence is rated on a sliding scale) involved a movie plot. My friend was telling me about an idea for a movie involving a prison in the future, where whatever crime landed you there is committed against you every day of your stay there. Sure, the murderers get off pretty easy, and it’d be difficult to find a dude whose job it’d be to ass-fuck the rapists, but the people I think would have it the hardest? Car thieves.

I can just imagine a car-thief waking up one day, 20 years after his offense and just being utterly reduced to tears.

“Please, God, I’ve learned my lesson! I just want to be able to keep a job or make a date with a girl!”

I know…I’m sick.

Name That Mental Illness Or Physical Defect and Other Joys Of Dating

Princess, thanks so much for mercilessly pimping my blog. I often think if everyone who read my posts here told three friends, and each of them told three friends…I’d still have no social life and make no money. But at least I’d be popular…to strangers…over the internet.

Speaking of online friends, my buddies and I recently had a discussion about the loserliness of internet dating. Lots of people feel that meeting someone over through the computer is the dating equivelent of food shopping at the dollar store. I'm not sure I agree.

When I first started blogging, way back when I was still using My Space, I wrote a bit about how I didn’t understand the online dating process. Now I’m a little bit older and a little bit wiser…well, older anyway. I’ve actually successfully picked a few girls up online so I guess I have more perspective on the whole phenomena.

Picking someone up in cyberspace is like the opposite of going down to a singles bar. At a bar or a club, the music is usually turned up so load that you can’t speak to anyone. When you pick someone up, it’s based almost entirely on appearance. I mean, girls say they like a guy with a sense of humor. How exactly am I supposed to make you laugh when horrible music is blasting at decibels and frequencies meant to collapse high-rises? Essentially, you go to a club to hook up with someone good looking. Why do those relationships fall apart? Because sooner or later you realize that she’s a bitch, or an idiot, or trying to harvest your kidneys for sale on the black market.

When you pick someone up online, you’re getting to know all about their personality. Intelligence, sense of humor, beliefs…you know, all those little things that I hear are so important to a working relationship. The downside is you might not be physically attracted to the other person when you finally get together. Come on, all of us have those pictures that make us look amazing. And we sure as hell flaunt them online at every opportunity. When you finally meet someone you’ve only seen pictures of, you realize little things like: wow, maybe you should have told me that you just got out of the burn-victims ward; leprosy is not Indian for “sexified;” no, you definitely never mentioned that you were not “technically” a woman; and there really is no such thing as a “young 85.”

Online dating sucks…but I don’t think it sucks any more than regular dating. I guess meeting people is hard, because ultimately, we’re not looking for “people,” we’re looking for a special someone. I don’t think that online dating should carry any kind of social stigmatism these days. There are bad dates aplenty out there, both online and in bars. Some have goiters the size of a football helmet. Others stab you with a power-drill while you sleep because they think you’re “planning to leave, just like daddy.” So don’t hate against the online daters. There are plenty of psychos and sideshow freaks to go around.

Men: Chimps Of The Fashion World

Perhaps the greatest part of being a man is that the bar is set so low for us. We’re not expected to know how to dress, cook, decorate, clean, or groom ourselves. Women just sort of assume that we’re completely incompetent. That’s why I always love the amused smile that appear on the face of girls when the see men shopping. They look at us the same way they’d look at a monkey who can fly a kite. You almost expect them at any moment to point and say, “Awwwww…That’s adorable. He thinks he’s people.”

If a woman tells another woman that a dress they’re wearing is ugly, it turns into a scene from High Noon. I think that’s why they tend to tip-toe around the issue if (or more accurately, WHEN) their boyfriend dresses like a slob. What they fail to realize is:

1. We really don’t care.
2. We know that women are more than happy to do it for us.

Really, all you need to know about fashion, you can tell by looking at the styles. Women have all manner and styles of dresses, skirts, blouses, sweaters, and shoes. God, don’t even get me started on the SHOES. The last time I noticed a woman’s feet was because I was holding both her ankles up over my shoulders. Then you come to Men’s clothing: suits. Basically, you can get three styles of suit: black, grey, or striped. Even fashion designers say, “You know what…three colors is pretty much all men can handle anyway.”

I had this theory for a while that women like to passive-aggressively project their opinions of their man’s failure through fashion. Some girls wanted me to dress more sensitive, some more rugged, some more upscale. It was as if they subconsciously expected me to change depending on the shirt I was wearing. Then I decided that women only date men when they run out of stuff to accessorize. Married women just have kids. My mom had two boys and then, finally, a girl—the youngest. By the time my sister was 2 weeks old she had more clothes than I had owned in my entire 12-year existence on Earth.

Even well-dressed men are still dwarfs in the world of taste, as far as women are concerned. A man who's fashionably attired is sort of loked at as a huge step forward for our gender: like chimps using tools.

Today I decided that I needed a drastic bedding up-grade. Let me tell you, when a MAN decides he needs new bedding, that's how you know it’s a disaster. If I had slept on my gear for another night, I’m pretty sure that I would have woken up in a government containment area, like at the end of E.T. I had been dragging around the same motley assortment of blankets, sheets and pillows since college. There are rape wards that haven’t seen as much potentially scaring sexual activity as my blankets.

So I wandered around the mall for about three hours of pure hell. After staring blankly at different bedding sets for an hour I took my phone out and tried to decide whether to call a fashion expert to walk me through the next two hours or the Suicide Hotline. I’d like to tell you it was an easy choice.

One part of me wants my living space and my body to look absolutely stylish, but the other part revels in being able to get away with throwing on jeans and a hoody. The deciding factor in how I dress is that it takes me 15 minutes to buy jeans and hoodies for a year. If I wanted to look nice it would take up entirely more of my life than I’m willing to part with. When I’m wandering around the men’s section, all I can think about is all the vastly more important and constructive things I could be doing with my time: like…videogames…starting fires…cheese-eating competitions…you know, stuff that really helps make the world a better place.

I guess I’ll just have to marry a woman who’s willing to dress me. In the meantime, I’ll just continue to approach shopping the way married women approach sex: bored, distracted, and praying for a speedy conclusion.

Jerking-Off For Jesus

The whole goal of sex, in my humble opinion, should be the enjoyment of the other person. I mean, let’s be honest, as a man (and therefore a chronic masturbator), the whole thrill of the experience is from the other person. The fact that you don’t know what’s next and that they don’t know exactly all the right spots to hit. I mean, if the point of sex were simply to get myself off, I’d be better off doing it myself. Hey, if God didn’t want us to masturbate, he would have made our arms shorter. I’m proud to admit that I do God’s work on a regular basis.

Any man who says he doesn’t masturbate is either lying, in a relationship where sex is plentiful, or edgier than Rodney King at a Police Charity Ball. I mean once I held out for a month without doing it. If you think I’m angry and crazy now…let’s just say I went through a span of a few days where I developed an irrational hatred of the Dutch. I’m really not sure why.

One of my friends, a Muslim, maintains a “list” of places or people that he refuses to deal with. He fasts every day of Ramadan: from sunrise to sunset, no food, no liquid. The amusing part is watching his list triple in size every Ramadan.

“Did you see that waitress look at me when I ordered water??? She thinks I’m a cheapskate. Fuck her. Fuck this place!”

“Dude, she didn’t do anything.”

“No, fuck that! I’m not going to be treated like a third-class citizen! They’re on the list now. I’m never coming back!”

It’s like this just about every single night. The man has blacklisted HOSPITALS. By the end of Ramadan I’m always shocked that places exist that he hasn’t placed on his list.

Masturbation is vital to the peace and harmony of the planet. I was probably twice as crazy as my friend was when I quit masturbating. Can you imagine if all the people in the world quit?

“What the fuck did you say to me Pakistan? Fuck you! I will BOMB you, bitch!”

Do you want to know why so much of the Middle East is in turmoil? Two words: sexual frustration. Seriously, if the fundamentalists beat their dicks half as hard as they beat up on everyone else, each other, or the Jews, we could probably cut war in half.

Masturbation is the single biggest deterrent to violence, crime, and voting republican. Every time some one jerks off, it’s assured that they’re not starting a fight, stealing from the poor box, or publishing racist pamphlets. If you don’t believe me, try it yourself! I like to do it anytime I get mad and think I might punch someone. What do you do, count to ten? Ha!

So my brothers and sisters, I urge you to do the world a favor, drop your hands, close your eyes, and rub one out for God, yourself, and World Peace. Halleluiah!

Epilogue To "Six Words"

I’m really not sure how I can possibly top yesterday’s blog. I had been thinking about writing a post on that incident for a while, but decided it would be too weird. When I finally broke down and wrote it, it made for a great story…but I’m not sure how to follow that one up.

Let’s see…I guess I should answer a few questions that were posed to me, regarding the story:

1. I’m happy to report no lingering problems with my equipment. Though it took about a week before I could pee without flinching. I tell you, there’s nothing like horrible, agonizing pain and trip to the E.R. to make someone a little gun shy. All is well now, however. In fact, the whole incident had an unexpected bonus. You know those penis pills that appear all over the TV and Internet? The ones that promise to increase size? Well, they work by increasing a man’s blood flow, which in turn stretches out the ligaments. My allergic reaction caused a whole lot of blood to rush to the area. However good those pills are, I’m sure they’re not life-threatening. Meaning I experienced a growth spurt that I’m sure is not offered from any of those pills.
2. The allergic reaction was NOT caused by cheap, or bizarre, low-level condoms. A few months later I ran into a similar (though not hospitalizing) incident. It seems that a fairly large portion of the population, both men and women have the same allergy. Gives a whole new meaning to what we define as “safe sex,” doesn’t it?

Here’s an interesting side note to the story. About two months after the incident, my parents confronted me asking, “Were you in the hospital?”

“Huh?”

It seems that when they submitted me I had given my medical card which had my parent’s address on it…so naturally they sent the bill along with the results to the veneral disease tests they ran to my parents.

I love my parents, but there are few nightmares more horrifying to me than a conversation between my parents and I, which begins with:

“So I was fucking this girl until early hours of the morning. Anyway, finally when I got up to piss, I noticed how swollen my cock was.”

Yeah, given a choice between living the story and recounting it to my parents, I might have to prep the E.R. and go buy some spermicide. At any rate, I told them that I had been submitted for an allergic reaction…to sunflower seeds. Hey, it was the first thing that popped into my head!

Unfortunately, it appears that they had already gone ahead and opened the bill that hospital sent. While they didn’t contradict my story, they had definitely seen the section where the hospital had indicated all the diseases I was tested for. So now I’m fairly certain they think I was rushed to the hospital for some sort of bizarre sexual ailment. I can tell, because now they ask me about “the kind of girls I go out with” and tell me how there’s “no shame in waiting for the right girl.”

Let me explain something to you about my parents: I have never so much as smoked a joint, but my mother (who STILL smokes weed, I might add) is absolutely convinced I’m a drug-addict. Personally, I think it’s just one case of that paranoia kicking in.

At this point, my parents are convinced I’m a crack-smoking, sexual deviant. Since they never believe me anyway, I’ve given up trying to convince them otherwise, and am now thinking I might actually start fucking with them. I’m seriously considering leaving a dildo, used syringes, and a catalogue for mail-order brides in clear view on the passenger seat of my car.

The Six Words That Instantly Command The Attention Of Any Man

The story you are about to read is true. Really, in my wildest dreams, there’s no way I could have made this one up. Those with weak stomachs might want to stop reading now.

About six months ago, I was dating a girl who absolutely loved sex. I sure as hell wasn’t complaining, but her enthusiasm for sin meant that I was going through a lot of condoms. One night, she called me up to ask me over, so I jumped in the car and began driving over to see her. About halfway there, I realized that I was totally out of condoms. So pulled over at a gas-station and went inside.

There’s a weird ritual about buying condoms. No one likes to buy only condoms. Invariably, men will buy a box of condoms and some other stupid trinket or candy that’s lying around. It’s like we want the clerk to think that we came in expressly to buy a 4 dollar pen but suddenly remembered that we needed birth-control.

So I grabbed the first box I found, along with a pack of gum and went to the counter. “Have a good night.” The clerk told me.

“That” I replied, “is the plan.”

When I got to the girl’s house things went as planned. Three condoms later, I staggered up to go to the bathroom. I was thinking about what a perfect height her bed was positioned at when suddenly I felt shooting pain.

“Oh God! My tract!”

20 minutes later, I had squoze not a drop and the pain was worse than ever. I also noticed that my most prized male possession was noticeably swollen.

“Fuck it. I’m driving to the emergency room.”

There are really few things in life that can prepare you for driving yourself to the emergency room at 3:30 in the morning because of an unidentified problem with your cock.

I strolled into the E.R. where an old, weary looking nurse gave me a skeptical once over.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes. I need to check myself in.”

“Because?”

“I think I have a kidney stone.”

Look, I was freaked out. We men scare easily when we think anything’s wrong with our block and tackle. It was 4 AM, I hadn’t slept and I had had a twenty minute car-ride alone in which to dream up the most agonizing of ailments that had afflicted me.

They put me in one of those horrible robes and sat me in a little curtained area. Then they proceeded to treat me like a sideshow freak. I’ve had my fair share of women over the years, but I must have shown, by request, my gear to about 16 people that night. That was a personal best for me.

Among the low-lights of the night was when a young doctor came in and said, “We’re going to have to do the syphilis and Chlamydia test.”

For you ladies, or scummy, untested men, said test involves a soft swab on a stick, violating your most tender of openings. Nope, not your ass. Your OTHER most tender of openings. Basically, they rape you with a Q-Tip.

I’d had the procedure done before, and it’s never fun. However, when you’re already swollen and miserable, the test is just about unbearable.

Not 20 seconds after the doctor had ceased violating me like the drunk girl at a frat-party, a second doctor came in with a far more rational explanation of what had afflicted my crotch.

“Were you sexually active tonight, son?”

“Uh…yeah.”

“Did you try a new brand of condoms, by any chance?”

“…I guess.”

“You’re allergic to spermicidal lubricants. I see it all the time. You’re having trouble urinating because you’re swollen up so far that you’re cutting off your own pipes.”

Oh, how I wish that the trauma had ended there. I was reading a book, waiting for the pills they had given me to take effect when a nurse entered and started busying herself about the room. I was only half paying attention, when she asked me to move up on the bed.

“Sure” I said. “What are we doing?”

From personal experience, there is nothing, NOTHING that gets a man’s attention faster than the next six words that were uttered.

“I’m just putting the catheter in.”

All in all, I’ve had better nights. In fact, I’m hard pressed to think up with a worse evening. The whole experience led to a few revelations on my part:

1. A man would rather sustain an injury to almost any other part of his body. Give a choice between permanent crotch or permanent brain damage, most men would opt for the cinderblock upside the head.
2. I never, ever want to get a kidney stone.
3. I don’t pay nearly as much attention to the brand or model of condoms as I should.
4. While I may have secretly have imagined scenarios where I remove my pants at the request of a room-full of nurses, the real thing is significantly less appealing than I thought.
5. A set of circumstances actually exsist where I don’t want to hear the phrase, “Wow, your dick is HUGE.”

Why Ike Beat Tina

My friend recently sent me an email discussing potential problems with my “Long Distance Dating Formula.” One of his problems with the theory was that he felt that it would be impossible to carry on a relationship with a girl who was negative 10 beers. A hot girl who drank 10 beers would be comatose, thus unable to do anything in bed or offer any good conversation.

He has a point, but I think he’s missing an important rule of dating women: while getting a hot girl is extremely difficult, maintaining a relationship with a hot girl takes almost no effort. So she might have to be drunk to go to bed with you, but once she's done so, it takes very little effort to keep her around as a steady girlfriend. So she wouldn't actually have to be drunk for the entire duration of your relationship. Probably just the first romantic, enchanting, barely-consensual night.

Getting a hot woman is hard. I usually feel that if I have a few hours of one-on-one time with a girl, I’ve got a 75% chance of convincing her to go to bed with me. Or at least agreeing to consider going to bed with me. Believe me that this isn’t me being conceited: it’s just that in my opinion most women are just looking for a funny, compassionate guy. In a club or bar environment, though, women are in this whole other environment and attitude. It reminds me of what it must be like pitching an idea for a TV show: make me laugh in 7 seconds or get the fuck out of my face.

In a club or bar, girls are more inclined to just shoot a guy down based on his appearance or some snap decision. It’s like they’re just conditioned to say “no.” That’s why there’s really nothing better than the network of friends. Girls who would have thrown a drink in my face at a bar have spent whole evenings telling me their inner most thoughts and desires just because I claim to have a mutual friend.

Women take a lot of convincing, but, in my experience, once they’ve made their decision, they show a dedication to getting what they want that no man can top. Think about it: women are willing to put up with bad sex, outlandish body hair, immature behavior AND repulsive body-odors—and that’s from the good men. Everybody knows a hot girl who’s managed to put herself with some loser who mistreats her. You know what the constant is? SHE ALWAYS STICKS BY HIM.

I’ve been dumped all of once. In my experience woman are looking for a reason to stay, rather than an excuse to leave. Which is shocking, because it seems like they’re qualifications for acceptance seem so high or particular. It’s like hiring an employee based on one good interview, turning over the keys to the company, giving him an unlimited budget and then never checking in on him again.

I know I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: low standards for interviewing, high standards for promoting. It’s really the only way to run a business. Sure, I waste a lot of time dealing with candidates who are absolute disasters, but I also find some great diamonds in the rough.

I was watching a new HBO show last night called “Big Love,” which is about a family of polygamists. Even after seeing the episode, I have no clue how that works in real life. The guy in the show has three wives, 12 children and downs Viagra like Whitney does coke. That was wrong of me. I have no proof that Whitney actually does coke. It might just be crack and crytal-meth.

At any rate, over the course of the show, you learn that each woman was married at a different time, usually about 6-10 years apart. My question is: how do you have the balls to be married to two women and then start dating a third? This really ties in with everything I was just saying. Why the hell would wife number one still be around? Because she loves her man. And even if he’s bringing home more women to marry, she’s not going anywhere.

Listen to me, women. If you wonder why men treat you so badly, it’s because you don’t hold us to the standards you set when you picked us up. You let us get away with being selfish, careless, and clueless because we know that Tina’s always going to be there for Ike.

Funny Lines Without A Home And I Call A Duly-Elected Representative Some Very Bad Names

A lot of people ask me, “Ehren, how can I write like you?” My answer’s pretty simple:

Discontinue sleep for 8 days while gorging on a steady diet of cocoa puffs, cartoons and enough mind-altering drugs to bring down a bull-elephant. I keep telling people: I run almost completely on sarcasm and alcohol.

Over the months I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve had a bunch of lines, ideas and stories that I was never able to successfully work into a post. Below are some of the good ones:

• I was down in Philadelphia last weekend. I didn’t really get a good look at the sign for the city, but I gather it’s the home of some kind of man-on man love.
• Some guys would be insulted when their girl asked, “Is it in yet?” I wasn’t. I just said, “Bitch, I’m already done!”
• Here’s a tip: if you’re dating a very flat-chested women, don’t ask “Why do you even bother wearing a bra?”
• I was with a girl who told me that she wanted me to talk more when I was having sex with her. But I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just started yelling the lines I heard in the last porno movie I saw. “Hi, I’m here to fix the pool.” “God, it’s so much better than my husband.” “Oh baby, you’re so big!”
• Fat, talkative friends: God’s birth-control.
• Once a girl asked me, “Is it ok if I call you ‘Daddy’ while we’re making love?” I answered, “Only if I can call you ‘Aunt Phillus.’”

In reality, only one of the above situations ever happened. I think it’d be better if I didn’t say which one is real. I’ll leave it to your imagination. Still, this is the kind of shit I think about at 3 A.M. on Tuesday nights when I can’t fall asleep.

Here’s a story that really did happen: Apparently I told the mayor of my town to go fuck himself.

My sister came home shaken one day because a man around the block started screaming at her when she was out walking her dog. So the next day I took the dog out, and sure enough, a fat dude in a bathrobe came charging out of the house when he saw me.

“Get that fucking dog off this street, dickhead.” He said, by way of a greeting.

“The street is public property. The dog’s not on your lawn.”

“I’m calling the cops, jerk-off.”

“Call the cops, you tub of shit. Is this the way you compensate for being a failure in the rest of your life? Harassing 12 year-old girls and strangers? If you talk to my sister again, I’ll come to your house and I will fucking crack you.”

“You can’t talk to me like that! I’m calling the cops!”

“Go fuck yourself! I already told you to call the cops. Take another step towards me and I will drop you like your mother for two bucks at the truck stop.”

He stepped back up on his lawn and proceeded to howl obscenities at me. I turned my back on him and extended a middle finger by way of farewell. All things considered, I thought that it had gone rather well.

It was two weeks later that my father mentioned something in passing about sharing the neighborhood with the mayor. “Really?” I said. “Where’s he live?”

“Just around the block. The house with the wood paneling.”

Look, I didn't know he was the mayor. I thought he was just some local idiot with too much time on his hands. Turns out he was both. Hey, at least now I know why I keep getting parking tickets.

Dating Commandments and Lesser-Known Drinking Holidays

I was thinking today about the different balances men have to strike. If women are stuck between Madonna and Whore, then men are always trapped somewhere from Warrior to Minstrel.

When I wear my Harley-Davidson boots and don’t slouch, I can reach about 5’11” and change. Add in 160 pounds, glasses, and cheeks that make girls want to pinch them and I’m far from an imposing figure. So it’s impossible, or at very least, improbable for me to act like a warrior. I’m roughly as physically imposing and intimidating as Calista Flockhart.

I’ve made peace with that. And I know that plenty of women out there are looking for a creative, intelligent, compassionate guy…or at least THINK they are.

I’ve decided that no one really knows what the hell they want. That’s why I don’t make lists of what I’m looking for in a girl.

I was speaking to someone today who’s led a very goal oriented life: looking for the right school, the right program, the right job, the right partner, the right house and so on. But now, having gotten all that, they’re not happy—and they’re running out of accomplishments to aim for. And after speaking for a while with them, you just get the sense that something’s going to give. Sort of like O.J.’s marriage.

Years of dating and experience with the opposite sex have led me to develop guidelines about what doesn’t work. Things like:

• Girls who get drunk and sucker punch my friend’s fiancé.
• Girls who decide to spend $3,000 a month on blow, Ritalin, and X.
• Girls who passive aggressively maintain lists of my faults to spit back during arguments.
• Girls who decide blow dumb, skinny rednecks and think I won’t find out

You know, just some basic guidelines of what I’ve found hasn’t worked in the past. It’s sort of like the ten dating commandments. Thou shalt not date girls who gargle with hillbilly semen behindest thine back! Now that’s catchy.

In all seriousness, though, I think it’s much better to be open to whatever comes by. Or at least, not be so intent on what you think you’re looking for that you miss something great right in front of your nose.

St. Patrick’s Day is upon us again. Let me ask a serious question: Are we, as a culture, really that desperate for another drinking holiday? I mean, between this, Cinco de Mayo, Fat Tuesday, Marti Gras, and all the rest of these ridiculous little binge-fests that we create, are we really fooling anyone? Have we reached the point in our society where we can’t drink just because we want to? No one really knows what the fuck St. Patrick’s Day is celebrating anyway, aside from some half-assed salute to Irish Homosexual parades. That’s why I like to pick random days to enter bars and bellow, “Give me five shots! It’s a holiday, bitches!”

To which someone will invariably go, “Really? What’s the occasion?”

My answers depend on my mood:

• Guy Faulk’s Day
• St. Swithin’s Day
• National “Venereal Disease-Free” Day (beware of people who don’t drink on this holiday)
• Canadian Independence Day
• Australian Thanksgiving
• That crazy Mexican Dead-Person’s Christmas

It’s amazing how many people will suddenly decide that it would be the gravest of insults not to honor the struggle of our slow speaking, mild-mannered Mountie neighbors to the north by getting absolutely falling over drunk.

The Long Distance Dating Formula

My friend has composed an ingenious system of ranking how beautiful a woman is. We call it the beer scale. The idea is to measure how many beers it would take in order for you to sleep with a girl or for her to sleep with you. Thus, an ugly girl would be 5 beers and an attractive girl would be negative 5 beers.

A while ago, I wrote that there is a direct relationship between how hot a girl is and how long distance a relationship a man is willing to tolerate. However, I realized that I wasn’t fully taking into account ability in bed.In order to come up with a worth-while formula, however, we need to first come up with an accurate measurement for a woman’s bedroom abilities. I submit that we divide the bedroom portion into four distinct portions, each deserving of a grade between 1 and 25.

• Foreplay: how well does she rev your engine and make you want her?
• Oral: does she have a silver tongue?
• The Main Event: No real explanation needed here…
• Creativity: can she get both legs behind her head? Extra points are awarded for “nailing the dismount.”

Now that we have our ranking systems, I am proud to submit the first ever “Long Distance Dating” formula:

So let’s try an example. Say you’re dating a blazing hot girl, with decent foreplay skills, no experience in oral, great in bed, and moderately creative. Then she ups and moves 200 hundred miles away. Should you break up with her?

-10 (57) + 400 < 0
-170 < 0

Conclusion: stick with that girl! In fact, we can definitively see that that girl is worth sticking with if she moves up to 285 miles away. I really don’t know how men functioned before the advent of this formula. I’ll be sending this to the patent office next week. I fully expect this to replace Einstein’s relativity theory as the single most important equation of all time.

A few side notes about what an evil person I am. (Note: I recently discovered that a small segment of the population suffers from a condition known as “Sarcasm Interpretation Deficiency. People with SID can’t tell when I’m making a joke, so they write me angry messages at 4 A.M., accusing me of not having a soul. For their convenience, paragraphs in red are meant as sarcastic, tongue in cheek comments.)

As I was writing this, a friend of mine came up behind me. I asked for his assistance in thinking of one last category in ranking bedroom performance and he said, “How about the way you two interact afterwards.”

I stared at him blankly for a second and said, “Why would a man care about what a woman does after sex? I just assumed that 2 minutes afterwards you’re already driving home again.”

In the words of Dave Attell, “It’s a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can’t escape.”

My friend responded, “Well, you know some times relationships require brief intervals of speech between the two parties involved.”

“Relationships? The most speaking I’ve ever had to give on the subject is, ‘Whoa, honey. I think that by sleeping with me, I may have inadvertently given you the wrong impression.’”

The Palisades Mall: Death Star Of Suburbia

A few years back they opened a monstrosity of a mall not far from my house: four floors, an ice-rink, and enough sweat-shop quality merchandise to make Indonesia the powerhouse that it is today. Seriously, the tag of every item of clothing that comes out of that place should read, “Made lovingly at gun point by starving 10-year-olds.”

The place is perhaps the largest man-made disaster since Star Jones. In searching desperately for a location, they finally decided on a place 6 miles up the road from the other mall, and in the middle of a swamp. I kid you not: the west side of the mall is literally sinking each year. It’s as if God, looking down, has finally taken an interest in thwarting the ever-expanding evils of Rockland County.

In staying with the “worst location ever” theme, there is a large section of land in the middle of the acres upon acres of parking lot that is not paved. “Why?” you ask. “What could be more important than building a decadent monument to consumerism and poor taste?” It seems that there was a small interest that would not sell their land: a veteran’s cemetery.

At this point, you have to wonder what the fuck the builders were thinking. It’s like they were trying to build a mall based on all the horror movies they’d ever seen.

So, the mall is sinking, located in a stinking swamp, a stone’s throw from the old mall, all while violating the memories of a group of dead veterans. As far as first impressions go, that’s a tough one to overcome. It’s like breaking the ice with your girlfriend’s parents by professing your love of necrophilia.

The inside is giant, ugly, tough to navigate and about as dry as Barbara Bush’s snatch. Migrant, Arizona dust farmers have an easier time staying hydrated than anyone who spends 20 minutes in that hell-hole. I heard they used it as a training ground for troops about to be shipped to Iraq on how to survive desert environments.

One time I was shopping there with a group of friends. We had been there for about three hours and I refused, out of principle, to buy any beverages from the vending stores in the mall. I figured as long as I was supporting evil anyway, I might as well try to minimize it. By the end of the three hours I could barely open my eyes. Each blink was accompanied by a sound that I’d associate with tearing duct-tape off the roof of a shanty. I was pretty sure that I was going to drop dead at any second.

So we all went to a local diner. We sat down at a booth that had a large pitcher of water. However, there were no glasses in sight. Finally, in my last effort before I crumbled into a mound of dust and blew away on the next gust of wind, I grabbed the pitcher and proceeded to drain half of it without taking a breath. When I came up for air I noticed two things:

1. Water had a far more bleach-like after-taste than I remembered.
2. The bus-boy was looking at me as if he discovered me violating the corpse of a week-dead goat

I placed the pitcher back on the table, and, without saying a word, he took it, dropped a dirty rag in it, and disappeared back into the kitchen.

At my age, walking through the mall is an experience that leaves me feeling dirtier than the urinal in a Bangkok whore-house. At some point in time, (long after I had turned too old to take advantage of it, I might add), it somehow became standard practice for barely pubescent girls to dress in clothing that would make a transsexual street-walker blush.

Tiny tank-tops that say “dirty, cum-craving skank” and tight little ass-pants that say, “I want you to rape me in a dumpster behind a bar” are apparently the height of fashion. After spending 20 minutes walking through the mall you suddenly develop an overwhelming empathy for pedophiles. Girls who can’t be a day over 13 are dressed like they moonlight as strippers. It’s enough to make any man say, “sweet statutory!”

However, if Star Wars taught us nothing else, it’s that all evil things have a single, tiny, flaw in their design. And just like the Death Star, I’ve discovered the mall’s one fatal weakness.

I was walking on the fourth floor one day, looking at the thong riding up on the ass of a 10 year old girl, when I felt the entire floor vibrate. I stopped and retraced my steps. Sure enough, when I reached the same spot again and set my foot down, the entire floor shook. In light of everything the mall had inflicted on me, my community, and the memories of a group of veterans whose grave now overlooks a Cheesecake Factory, I think my next action was duly measured and justified. I immediately began jumping up and down.

In the span of about 15 seconds I was surrounded by three mall cops. It would seem I was not the first to discover the one spot with which to rid the County of this eye-sore. I doubt I’ll be the last. What I will say is that if you ever hear tell of a rag-tag group of rebels assembled to make a plucky counter-attack to forever free Rockland of evil, you’ll know who was behind it.

May the Force be with us.

Jealousy

Jealousy is a strange thing. I’ve only ever been jealous of one girl that I dated…but then again, it was the only time it was justified.

I was dating a girl who lived about 40 minutes away and we had been having some problems—little arguments, nothing out of the ordinary. But one morning I woke up, sat bolt upright and I just KNEW she was cheating on me. It was like some weird silent alarm. “Somewhere, another man has trespassed on the cootch that I own!”

To this day, I’ll never be able to explain that one moment of clarity or psychic enlightenment. Maybe it was a bunch of clues I’d picked up subconsciously—or maybe I should start playing the lottery. Whatever the case, the jig was up.

Even at my jealous worst, I wasn’t that bad. I called her up and asked her what she had done the night before, if there was anything she wanted to tell me, or how she thought our relationship was going. She denied everything.

Little did she know that I had inside sources, mutual acquaintances, and that she had the mental quickness of a bag of rocks. Great ass, great at arguing, but no brains behind it. I started asking what she did nights and who with, then matching them up to my sources. She failed every time this kid “Andy” she knew was involved.

That was pretty much enough for me, but the fact that he avoided me like the plague and never made eye-contact with me when I was around was the final kicker.

I broke up with her pretty much right after that, and it was one of the few times in my life that I seriously contemplated violence. I’m no weight lifter. I’m about 160 pounds soaking wet, and not an inch over 5’10”. Still, there was little doubt in my mind that I could have beaten this kid into a pulp. I was lean—he was scrawny. It was the only time that I sort of understood a certain psychotic girl I dated briefly who cold-cocked my friend’s fiancé.

I finally decided against it. There was nothing really stopping me from rolling down there with a crew and beating him like a minority suspect, but I realized that I wasn’t really mad at him. I was really just pissed that my ex had lied to me and I had no real good way to direct my anger back at her...until I got drunk a few weeks later and left a passive aggressive away message. Besides, he was going to find out soon enough what kind of a woman he had gotten involved with.

It’d be best if everyone came around to this point of view. Why get mad at the other man if your girl runs off? Your girl was the one who cheated! Guy number two was just an available cock. And really, that’s all some girls need. Temptations are everywhere—it’d be like beating up a butcher when your girl got fat. The butcher was just offering the meat; your girl was the one who couldn’t turn down the extra sausage.

College Sports: The Most Crooked Sport This Side Of Foxy-Boxing

March Madness is on us once more and all I have to say is “Fuck College Sports.” Really. College sports are SO wrong on SO many levels. I refuse to attend or watch college games on principle. Let’s start with the least deplorable bit of this disgusting past-time and work our way up.

First, I don’t understand why people would WANT to watch college sports. Are there not enough pro-sports out there to satisfy your need for pointless competition? If that’s the case, I’ll give you three to one that you haven’t seen a woman naked in years. College Basketball is even worse because they do it while NBA is in full swing. If you’re into basketball, why would you want to watch semi-pro over professionals? It’s like banging Margaret Thatcher when Selma Hyack is naked, oiled and spread eagle on your bed. Where are we going with this next? Retarded, Paraplegic French-Women’s Softball?

Second, I have no idea why anyone would root for a college team. How many dumb rednecks are into Duke or Georgetown, but never even open an admissions booklet? Seriously, spend that energy and attend some of your kid’s little league games. If you attended one of these schools, how can you be anything pissed off at these student athletes?

Let me explain something: I graduated from college and I had to bust my ass and accrue a sizable debt to do it. These “student athletes” are an embarrassment. I’ve watched post game interviews, ok.

“We juz…you know pulled together for coach. And I know’d da lor’ juz wanted uz to win cuz we done ex’cuted fundamentals.”

Is this the image you want projected to the world about the kind of graduates your school produces? These kids

1. Don’t know dick
2. Don’t pay dick
3. Don’t do dick

I would be PISSED OFF that a kid, who doesn’t have to meet GPA and SAT minimums, attend classes, or apply for financial aid was getting a degree similar to the one I sweated, crammed and bankrupted myself for. He can put the ball through a hoop. Big fucking deal. Remind me again why this is something that makes one deserving of a free-pass?

And don’t give me that “school spirit” bullshit. Your school is mercilessly fucking you for any and all funds they can squeeze out of your parents. My student loan officer is one late payment away from breaking my knees with a crowbar behind a bar. There are Siberian Prison camps that showed more compassion than I received at my school (that was aimed at New Paltz where, thankfully, I spent one hellish semester before transferring. FUCK SUNY NEW PALTZ!). You want my school spirit, here you go: if I see you walking down the street with a sweatshirt from my university, I will make an effort not to swerve up onto the sidewalk and grind your face into the pavement with my front tire. Yay, Blue Devils!

Lastly, I detest the sheer dishonesty of it. I understand that the world is corrupt. But the corruption displayed in college sports is the kind that is so blatant that it makes you want to riot. Every 30 seconds, some portion of the following cycle is publicized:

1. A school is busted and/or fined for a news story where it’s revealed that some of their athletes had people taking their tests for them, received cash, committed crimes that where covered up by the university.
2. The School expresses shock, outrage and disbelief. The coach is promptly fired.
3. 1 year later the same coach is hired by another school and the cycle begins again.

Basically, what each one of these schools is saying is:

"We don’t care about academics, morality, or even the pretense of honesty. If you attend this school and you’re not an “athlete,” fuck you. You’re a third class citizen. All we care about is you paying your tuition or, for you females, providing a place to deposit precious Student Athlete-semen."

I would have far more respect for these schools if they stopped with the pretense that these kids were students. In fact, I might even be able to stomach the whole event if I thought that these academic instuitions were displaying a portion of the integrity and excellence they're always claiming to stand for. These kids are not there to learn and we all know they’re getting paid. Just because you’re giving scholarships to idiots, doesn’t mean everyone else is one. Then again, judging from March Madness ratings, maybe we are.

Public Humiliation: The CVS-Guide To Safe Sex

I needed to buy condoms so I stopped by the drugstore near my house, a few months back. I went in and, since I’d been there a few times before, went down the “Family Planning” isle to make my selection. However, when I reached my destination, I found something new: the condoms were now locked away behind glass. I was a bit deterred, but I marched up to the front to talk to one of the employees.

I was standing on line, in front of a mom and two kids, roughly 8 and 6 years old. Behind them were a father and his son of about 7. I like kids. I get along with them, so I shot them a smile and even stuck my tongue out at one of them. They giggled and the mom smiled at me. When my turn in line came, I explained my need for protection to the chick behind the counter. She promptly got on the intercom and announced:

“Manager, to the front. A customer wants to buy condoms. Manager to the front.”

See, this is why I'll never be a politician: I completely forget how one aspect of my life impacts another. Ten seconds ago, I was just a goofy looking kid making harmless fun with the children in line with me. Now, I was a sexual deviant, trying to lure middle-schoolers into my basement with promises of toys and candy. I mean, from the looks I was getting, it was clear the parents thought I was planning on using the condoms on one of their kids.

The manager finally arrived (Which was good, because I was fairly certain that the mom was outside jotting down my plate number and calling the cops), bearing a key ring and we walked back to the “Family Planning” section. He opened up the precious items and then proceeded to stand over my shoulder and watch me make my selection.

This latest development was something that totally blindsided me. There’s an unspoken rule that govern men when it comes to buying pornography or condoms: take what looks good and get the fuck out. When a man spends TOO much time deciding which condom or movie or magazine really suits his needs, it’s disturbing. I however, was suddenly struck by indecision.

Normally, I’d buy whatever the hell first looked ok. Now, however, I was worrying about what the store manager would think of my selections. It’s dumb, I know. What the hell did I care if the guy thought I was a freak or a deviant? He was just some loser CVS manager!

“Lubricated? Too boring. Ribbed? What, I’m not good enough on my own? Flavored? Am I saying that I can’t convince my girl to go down on me without flavors? Glow-In-The-Dark? Would that mean I’m too uptight to have sex without the light off?”

On a side note, do women really care what kind of condom a guy uses? Isn't a dick still just a dick, no matter how you dress it up? Until I hear otherwise, I think we can just assume that the condom enhancements have gone too far. I actually own a pair of "Whiskey-Flavored" condoms. They're from Scotland, naturally. When I saw those, all I could think was, "Wow, how bad does cock taste that women prefer the taste of grain alcohol?"

Finally, I just grabbed a box my “usual” (if anyone wants to know, please send a headshot, personal measurements and a list of turn-ons to my email address) and started up towards the front. I stopped after a pace or so and turned back towards the manager.

“Why’d you guys start locking them up?” I asked.

“People kept stealing them. We figure that they were too embarrassed to buy them.”

“Oh, right." I said. "This is MUCH better.”

Dinner Is Served

One of the key differences between men and women is this: women like good sex. Men like ANY sex. I knew a few girls who, through years of bad sex and incompetent lovers, had almost completely been turned off to sex.

I met a girl at a concert once. She was tall, had a great body and a very pretty face. I flirted a bit with her, but I noticed an almost sexless aura that she gave off. It was just something about the way she spoke or the way she moved you could just tell: she was not very sexual.

Despite that, I persevered. I’m nothing if not determined. I had been speaking to her for perhaps a week when I said, “You know, you’ve never had really great sex. I don’t care what you say about your old boyfriends or hook-ups, I can tell just by talking to you that you’ve never had GREAT sex.”

She protested, but I didn’t back off. I asked her about her last boyfriend.

“He was a virgin”
Strike one.
“He didn’t really have any other experience with women.”
Strike two.
“He wasn’t really into foreplay”
You’re outta here, buddy.

This poor girl had been with the same bad lay for over a year, proof that men are far too insecure about their performances in bed. If a man can go a year without giving a girl and orgasm and she still sticks with him, there’s nothing that he can do in bed that will make her leave him. Seriously, that to me is more reprehensible than the girls you see on the internet blowing horses. Because in that scenario, at least you know the horse is enjoying itself.

At any rate, my attempted seduction was made doubly hard by her ex. Not only was she really hot, she had completely forgotten what adequate sex was. Let me tell you: if I have to argue a case before the Supreme Court, I will never again be as persuasive. If I ever have to talk a jumper down from a ledge, I’ll never be as soothing and as inspiring of trust. I shit you not, by the time I was done working this girl, I could have gotten her to agree to a threesome involving herself, her mother, and some sort of water creature.

When I finally got her into bed, I made a conscious decision. Generally, I do what I can to make sure the girl involved has a great time. This time, I went a step farther—I was ready to give up my body. Forget my own pleasure, I was going to give it my all, chaffing, cramps and latex burn be damned!

From then on, she was even hotter. She began flirting more, making more lewd comments, and on top of that seemed so much more happy and relaxed. Later, she told me that I had reawakened her interest in sex.

What can I say? I go where I’m needed.

Seriously though, it’s this type of shit that makes me despair for the state of gender relations. I don’t care how great you get along with eachother outside of the bedroom, when it gets to the point that either of you has no interest in sex, that’s a dysfunctional relationship. On one hand, I wish that men and women could talk about sex without being defensive and really work through their issues. On the other hand, I’m more than willing to revive the appetite of a girl who’s been fasting for time out of mind. Ladies, dinner is served.

Porn

As I’ve said before, there are few things more unnerving than people who are completely comfortable with porn. We’ve been raised our entire lives to believe that pornography is single-handedly responsible for blindness, hairy palms, deviancy, and moral decay. And most men have made peace with that. We’re content to be social pariahs in the privacy of our own basements. But when we emerge in public and have to interact with strangers who are really comfortable with this deviant sexual behavior, the whole experience is really unnerving. This is exactly why I dislike strip-clubs.

I’ve always been somewhat amused and bewildered by the comfort that men have watching or discussing porn with friends, however. Large groups of men tend towards bragging and homophobia, yet for some reason it's utterly acceptable to watch naked men engage in sodomy with a woman of doubtful enthousiasm and acting abilities. In fact, it's occationally a past-time that involves popcorn. Example:

Not long ago, I was planning on moving into a place with three of my friends. One of my more computer-literate pals was plotting on installing a server for the apartment, complete with a drive and files available to anyone on the network he’d set up.

The ears on another friend of mine perked up. “How much space are we talking about?”

“Ummm…Probably about 300 gigs.”

“Not good enough. I need like four of those. At least a terabyte of space dedicated completely to porn. I want to be the single largest supplier of porn on the east coast.”

This is the same kid who lost his porn collection after a hard-drive meltdown. To this day, he gets emotional when you bring the topic up. He acts as if he lost a child.

“Man, I know you had some good times with your old collection, but it’s gone now. It’s time to let go and move on with your life. Maybe stop the candle-light vigil and start to rebuild.”

“You don’t understand! No one understands! What we had was special. I’m not talking about this anymore!”

As comfortable as men are watching porn with their friends, there are a few rules that are absolutely non-negotiable. For example, you can watch, but don’t seem TOO interested. You can comment on what you see, even talk about another man’s hog, all while sharing a sofa with another man. But under no circumstances allow any part of your body or clothing to touch the guy sitting next to you.

I think that most women have made their peace with the fact that men possess pornography. I suspect that they’ve adopted a “as long as I don’t have to see it, I’ll pretend it doesn’t exist” attitude. Or maybe it’s more of a “boys and their toys” type of position, where they shake their heads and chuckle to themselves.

Personally, I find that my porno collection grows and shrinks, month to month, year to year. When I’m in a relationship where sex is plentiful, the collection dwindles. In those cold weeks of singles life, the collection expands. It’s like a measurement of my social life. I’d like to think that when I finally settle down with that perfect lady, I can forever delete my porn collection and finally clear about 70 gigs of space off my hard drive. Then again, from what I’ve heard of married life, it may be that I won’t really appreciate porn until I’m hitched.

There's Always Room For Jello-Shots!

I know what you’re all thinking: “Ehren, sure I like drinking, but isn’t there an easier way to ingest alcohol?” Well my friends, as luck would have it, there IS another way to get drunk. It came about like this:

One of my friends was having a party, so I went with him to the store to stock up. We wandered about the supermarket, picking up things that caught our eye: chips, dip, cards, and lots of Mardi gras beads. You know, to this day I’d really love to be there for the first transaction that went down in this way:

Man: Remove your top!
Busty Lass: I shall not!
Man: Show me your boobs!
Busty Lass: I, sir, am a lady of dignity, class and high breeding. That you think I would “show off my goodies” to you, an ill-mannered, drunken hooligan is an insult to women everywhere! Have we, the fair sex, toiled for so long in the name of equal treatment simply for me to debase myself for a perfect stranger in the midst of this common thoroughfare? Hang your head in shame, sirrah!
Man: I have shiny beads.
Busty Lass: Woooooo! Spring break! Fuck you, mom and dad! I’m gonna be on America’s Skankiest Cum-Dumpsters!

Seriously, at what point in our culture did the trade of beads for nudity and dignity become standard? Still, I guess I, as a man, should be happy that it came to this. All I know is that I’m not about to flash my testicles to girls for plastic jewlery.

At any rate, my friend and I at last came to stop in front of the Jello display. He was browsing through the various flavors, trying to find the perfect concoction to mix with alcohol when I called out his name.

“Greg!”
“What?” He drifted over.
“GREG!”
“What...” then he followed my eyes and there was a moment of silence.
“Greg, everyone always makes jello-shots…is there any reason we couldn’t make alcoholic pudding?”
"I don't know."
Another long pause before, in unison we said one word that would change house-parties forever: “Butterscotch.”

We combined the pudding ingredients along with Kailua and rum and proceeded to get absolutely hammered on the results. Basically, if you’re looking for a way to not only kill your liver, but send your cholesterol through the roof at the same time, we had the snack for you. Binging on it was the equivalent of living four days as wino on the streets of New York.

The whole experience was eye-opening for me. It made me wonder what other ways there were to get plastered. Perhaps my greatest moment was still to come. I was sitting (well, propped up, barely clinging to consciousness would be a better description) on the couch, licking the empty serving bowl when I yelled, “GREG!!!”

He stumbled in. “Yesh?” he stammered.

“Greg! Wherza pot-brownies you made lasht week?”

“Dunno…I think they’re gone. Shtop spinning, Ehren, ish not cool!”

“Greg…next time you make them, you should frost them with the alcoholic pudding.”

Long silence.

“Ehren, are you the devil?”

I’ve also been toying with the idea of an alcoholic ice cream. As soon as I figure out a way to get liquor to freeze, I’m going to make a fortune. I want to be clear here, I don’t mean liquor flavored ice cream—I mean get-you-so-drunk-you-fall-face-down-in-the-cone-and-drown-in-chocolate-sprinkles alcoholic ice cream. The way I see it, it’s the next natural progression from those Zima drinks that they serve now.

I’ve honestly never understood the purpose behind those things. They’re so loaded with sugar that you’re guaranteed to get sick. Not only that, I hear so many girls say, “I love them because you can’t taste the alcohol.” I don’t suppose these women ever considered that maybe tasting alcohol is a defense mechanism? Maybe if you don’t like the taste of alcohol after a few drinks, you shouldn’t be drinking that many in the first place. What are these girls doing? Seeing which one will get date-raped first? Then again, these are usually the same females wearing body glitter and pants with writing across the ass.

At this rate, we’ll be up to alcoholic I.V.s soon. Bartender, 300 CCs of Henessey, stat!

The Night I Lost My Casino Virginity.

Casinos are strange places. I really have no idea how they caught on, other than some fundamental joy people have in receiving pain.

The first time I ever went to a casino, I was 21. It was right at then end of a semester of college, and two of my friends were driving up to one of the Canadian casinos. “What the Hell?” I figured. “I’ll ride along, soak in the experience and maybe have a little fun.”

I’d played most card games a few times and I’d seen “Casino” and “Swingers.” That was pretty much the sum of my knowledge. Based on what I knew, I had formulated a plan for the evening:

1. Dress up like a high-roller
2. Lay $50 down on blackjack
3. Lose my $50
4. Have drink

Unfortunately, my friends had other plans. What is obvious to me now is that I went with the wrong crowd to have fun a casino. Allow me to elaborate.

Friend number one was a Puerto-Rican dude, with one eye, who drove a minivan and had an obsession with computer-science. He was also perhaps the most uncool kid I knew. And I don’t mean that with disrespect, because he’s sweet, smart and funny guy. But seriously, he made the inventor of Dungeons and Dragons look like John Shaft.

Friend number two was a six foot, female socialist who lived on a spiritualist commune. She was a very strange mixture of hippie and red-neck, because she was born and raised in a small town outside of Buffalo, NY. As a result, she had never actually SEEN a hippie, before college, and had sort of made up her own opinion of what they were. So she ate venison steaks, listened to Ani DeFranco, grew long hair, but drove a pick-up truck. I’m not really sure where the socialism came from…My guess is that she knew that people were protesting something in 60s, but never really figured out what. So just picked a random movement ending in “ism.”

So my friends came to pick me up and let me tell you, I looked like a million bucks: Black suit, black button-down shirt, black tie, black fedora, pulled down at an angle, silver tie-clip and cuff-links. It looked like I was three drinks and a bottle of cologne away from giving someone a dead fish wrapped in a newspaper.

My friend’s battered minivan rolled to a stop, and I opened the door and looked at my friends. Hippie girl was wearing a gortex hunting coat and jeans. The Puerto-Rican kid was wearing sweatpants and a ripped hoodie. It was like they had been picking through the trash all night and had decided to find threads appropriate for drinking the day away in dumpster behind a liquor shop.

“What the hell? How come you guys didn’t dress up?”

“Why bother? We’re just going to the casino and back.”

“You’re right. In fact, why bother with basic hygiene? Eventually, you’re just going to get dirty again.”

So we rolled into the casino that evening and I tried to salvage my optimism for the night. I was young, looked good, was prepared to lose some money, have drinks and maybe meet a cocktail waitress and tell her that I was "the guy behind the guy behind the guy." If you don’t know what that line means, for God’s sake, go rent “Swingers.”

Plus, I had a posse with me. However, little known fact: your posse loses credibility when they wear sweatpants and drive a minivan. My friends instantly found the nearest change machine and converted all their money, along with their remaining dignity, into tokens. I was trying to re-enact the high life of 1970s legalized gambling and they were intent on blending in with the group of seniors on a field trip from the retirement castle. What was next on the list for them? Prune juice and high-stakes shuffleboard?

Let me explain something to you: No one really has good odds when they walk into a casino. The whole purpose of the place is to make profit, so they’re not going to set up any games where you REALLY have a good chance of winning money—at least not THEIR money. If you sit down at poker, you’re going after the money of other players. But every other game is set up to be unfair. That shouldn’t be a shock to anyone. But the biggest scam of all is the slot machines. If you sit down to play the slots, you’re better off listening to Lewis Black’s plan for an evening in Vegas:

“Convert $500 to quarters, go your room, empty the quarters out on the bed and stare at them for a long time. Why? Because you’re never going to see them again. Then go into the bathroom and one by one, flush the quarters down the toilet. And the nice part about that is every once in a while the toilet will back up and you’ll feel like a WINNER!”

As unfair as the other games maybe, the slot machines are the only spot in the casino that NEVER have a losing day for a joint. Dice tables might get hot, someone could hit it big playing baccarat, but slots NEVER lose. BECAUSE THEY’RE LITTERALLY PROGRAMED TO NOT PAY OUT.

Needless to say, my evening did NOT go well. I lost my $50, got a drink and then had to wait around for 4 hours while my friends flushed their money away, playing nickel slots. My casino virginity had been taken and, figuratively, I was lying in a corner weeping, while scrubbing desperately at the dried semen and shame that was dripping down my pants legs.

A different group of friends and I are going to visit the Borgata in Atlantic City tomorrow. They’re a lot more socially graceful, a whole lot better dressed, and generally a lot of fun, but stepping back from the whole thrill of going, I have a difficult time of figuring out WHY people love to go. Because I know, the plan for everyone is to have some drinks and lose $300 at poker. The weirdest part is we’re going down to celebrate someone’s birthday. It’s a really strange present when rather than give anything, you take the birthday boy to a location where they’re more or less guaranteed to lose, everyone knows it, and everyone still wants to go anyway. Men are bizarre.

Jack Saddle: Great Friend, Ghost Writer, and Exorcism-Nominee

I’m sure that by now, a number of you are wondering about the people I hang out with. It seems as if every single post I write has a story that begins, “I have this friend who once…” And from there I launch into the most unlikely, or unbelievable account that you’ve ever heard. Well, lest anyone think that my stories are less than gospel truth, I proudly present my first ever post by a special guest. The rant below is courtesy of one of my friends who has chosen the pseudonym “Jack Saddle." He keeps telling me that if he ever makes a porno, that’ll be his screen name. I keep telling him they have laws against exploiting medical curiosities. Enjoy, Bitches!

Words form Jack Saddle:

Taking the suggestion that E has proposed (that he should have guest writers on his blog to show how strange some of his friends) are I jumped at the chance. So here goes.

You know what I was thinking about today? I was thinking about how you never really hear about Muslims or Jews being possessed by evil spirits. This department of possessions and exorcisms are exclusively held down by our wily Christian brethren. I mean there is a slue of movies depicting priests going around the world and performing exorcisms. You hear about stigmata in small Mexican towns. What the fuck, just because the Muslims and Jews don’t believe that Jesus was the Son of God we get gyped of the whole getting possessed thing? It’s like God said, “you don’t want to believe in my son you are cut off, no evil spirits will posses your kind.”

I mean, I have never met anyone that was possessed, but if it’s anything like the movies portray then, shit sign me up! What better way to freak out your mother, get out of school and work then a good old possession? You can clime walls and throw up green shit—you basically become spider man. Plus, all of a sudden you can speak Aramaic a 3000-year-old dead language. Shit, have enough trouble with Spanish but apparently when you are possessed your become quite the linguist. You basically become the life of every party. I know if I was high and I saw one of my friends crawl up a wall, I would find it cool. Come to think of it, I did see that but that’s a whole different story—most of that night is a blur anyway.

You could become one of the most feared Don’s in the Mafia history. Going by what movies have told me of course, who in their right mind would want to piss of a guy that has the spawn of satan living within. You’d be a bigger bad ass then Dick Chaney, and he shot a guy and then made him apologize.

Though I would imagine it would be a lonely life. Yeah you’d be fun at parties and feared in your day to day, but no one wants to fuck a guy who’s voice drops 7 octave below Barry White’s during sex. I wonder if you could some what control the demon that’s in you, it would be type awkward trying to pick up a girl. You ask her, “can I buy you a drink?” She says, “yeah, cuz you look stable enough.” And then half way to the bar you forget what she wanted and your head automatically turns 180 degrees to ask her again. I don’t know, I see some set backs in certain social situations.

I guess I have to meet someone that’s been through it and ask them how it was. I mean you don’t want to be stuck with something you don’t want, like that time I wanted rock ‘em sock ‘em robots and got them, but it turned out to be less fun then the commercial initially illustrated. In conclusion the super powers and linguistic skills would be cool but never getting laid again would be a problem for me. So I guess I am happy that Muslims and Jews can’t be possessed, good looking out, God. Keep up the good work.

-Jack Saddle