To Roderick From Maggie May

Maggie May stopped by for a visit earlier this week. I was surprised to see her, since I had no idea who she was. After I made some tea and we caught up with what each of us has been doing the past sixty years, I asked her to explain her presence in my abode (I ask the same thing of my children each day when they come home from school. The first few times they would answer something like, “I live here”, but eventually they grew tired of my interrogation and now simply give me the ignorant look and head for the snack cabinet.). Maggie told me she needed my help to contact Rod Stewart so she could tell him something about the song he wrote about her. She has not been able to regain contact with him over the years. I informed her that I was not acquainted with Rod. She explained further that Barbra Streisand had referred her to me because of Leper Pop. Apparently, Ms. Streisand is a regular reader and knows for a fact that Rod checks in a few times a week. So, Maggie asked me if I would help her and post a note for Rod on the blog. Below is her message.

This is a personal communication between two ex-lovers. I would appreciate if everyone else would respect their privacy and not read it. Thank you for your cooperation.

Hello Roderick,

It’s been quite some time since I’ve talked to you. The last time I saw your face in person, you were grimacing in ecstasy, chucking your muck on top of me. It is an image that is etched upon my mind. I’d like to say I hope you have been well, but I can’t.

I appreciate that you had written a song about me. While I do not think you depicted our relationship accurately, I understand that you were very young and confused at the time. What I do NOT understand is why you chose to make a comment about your perceived impression of the aged state of my face (in case your decrepit mind does not recall the line: “the morning sun when it’s in your face really shows your age”). There was no need for it as it relates to the rest of the song, unless you felt the urge to let the world know how superficial you really are. I was only 29 years old at the time, for crikey sake! You didn’t seem to mind my aged face while I was giving your tadger a tongue bath, now did you? Besides, you went on to state in the song that my face didn’t “worry you none”, so why even bring it up?

You can’t imagine the ridicule I’ve dealt with over the years because of that lyric. Men would chide me in the street. “Maggie, could you please step into the shade so we don’t see your age?” “Maggie, would you mind wearing this burlap sack on your head until dusk?” “Maggie, can we finish this conversation at night or at least in a closet?” It got to the point where I would only go outside or near a window at night. And even then, some guys would shine a torch in my face and tell me how old I looked. I know I was no Felicity Kendal, but I was no trog, either, even at the still young age of 29.

I don’t know if you have looked in a mirror recently, but it doesn’t take the brightness of the morning sun to show your age lately. Blimey, a full solar eclipse in a dense fog could do the job. Maybe I should write a song about it. Tell me, what rhymes with crag?

The song was a nice little earner for you. I wish I could say the same thing about me. There are no royalty laws on the books governing the compensation for the muses of popular, lucrative art. Otherwise, I would not have had to spend the last thirty years heaving pollocks in a Newlyn fish market and living in a caravan underneath the wharf. I know you are a very talented man and deserve your riches. Still, it would not have killed you to send some of that crust my way.

I’ve said my piece. But, before I go, I do have to question another lyric in my song. “Oh, Maggie I couldn’t have tried anymore.” I think you quite possibly could have. Instead of writing a song about the feelings you had about our relationship, maybe you could have, I don’t know, maybe talked to me about it. Unless your definition of “trying” is sneaking out before I woke up without saying a word or leaving a note. Heavens, if you had written, “Later, bitch!” on my mirror with your lipstick, that would have been considered trying harder than what you actually did. But, I’m not bitter. I will leave you alone now.

Good-bye, Roderick.

Maggie May

p.s. what is that thing on your face by your mouth, by the way? Is that a button you installed to make your wanker go up and down? Just wondering. But, I’m not bitter.

This has been a public service announcement brought to you by Leper Pop and the Council for Aged Faces.

The Passive-Aggressive Cleaning of George

Two of my sisters think I’m fat. They didn’t come right out and say it. They conveyed their opinions of me through the ancient art of passive-aggressive gift giving. Most people do it. Husbands give their wives sexy nightwear in hopes of transforming a tired mom into a skanky cock gobbler. Wives give their husbands power tools to give them something to do other than thinking about tooling for anus. Bosses give their employees squishy stress relieving squeeze toys because they had them left over from the trade show and can’t use them next year because they were stupid enough to put a date on them, which isn’t exactly a passive-aggressive action, unless you interpret it as a measure to distract the workers from the lack of bonuses dispensed so they don’t waylay the bosses in the parking lot, in which case it is both passive-aggressive and lily-livered. Doctors give their nurses free rectal exams because, well, why not? There is nothing wrong with a friendly rectal exam. And sisters give their brothers a hard time whenever possible. Gift giving is no exception.

In the past year and a half, they have each given me a George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine as a gift. Is it because I’m a bachelor on the go, and have little time for culinary activities? Is it because George Foreman used to be my favorite boxer? Is it because they are concerned about my health? No, it’s because they think I’m fat and want to make fun of me. I get it. I need to reduce my fat intake. That’s fine. I can’t argue with them. I’m a little chubby – but only around the fat areas of my body. My ankles are in good shape. They’re like race horse ankles. And you should see my sleek elbows. One would wonder why I am not a professional elbow slash ankle model. I know I wonder about that.

Insult or not, the George Foreman grill is an effective cooking machine. It renders steaks a perfect hue of pink, detoxifies rancid chicken in a succulent manner, crisps corn flakes to a delectable singe and vaporizes little drops of water when I’m strapped for entertainment and have no cash for the bar. But, the grill has one annoying flaw. It doesn’t self clean. My oven does, why can’t the George Foreman grill? What is the difference between an oven and a grill? Wanna go camping? Not only does it not self clean, it is a pain in the ass to clean.

The cleaning instructions suggest waiting until the grill has cooled before cleaning, purporting some precautionary piffle about avoiding burns and skin grafts. The problem is the cooling time is also animal fat petrifaction time. By the time the grill becomes a safe temperature to clean, the left-over meat residue has chemically melded with the so-called non-stick surface. Removing it is like trying to grind the scuz off Paris Hilton. As a joke, they include a molded piece of plastic to help scrape the charred meat scum. It cracked in half the first time I tried using it – and that was only to carve a totem pole out of a banana. It would probably disintegrate if I tried using it on the petrified animal fat.

I was about to drop the grill into a vat of Ocean Spray Cran-Salami juice until I read, in large bold letters in the instructions, Do Not Immerse In Water Or Other Liquid. Not only did that ruin the light show for my Accompanying Flavors of Cranberry Juice Festival, it destroyed my hopes to turn the George Foreman grill into my new favorite bath toy. This, of course, has nothing to do with the cleaning of the product, but I felt it was important to mention at this time because I figured some of you were wondering about it.

Ultimately, it takes about fifteen minutes of dousing and scrubbing to clean the grill. In my world, where cleaning after cooking either involves the dish washer or the garbage can, that’s the definition of pain-in-the-ass. Consequently, I don’t use the grill often. I set aside the first one I received after using it once without cleaning it, and forgot about it, only to find it a few months later underneath the couch. Who knew the George Foreman grill could also be used as a Petri Dish? They may want to incorporate that feature into their brochures. The grill my other sister gave me is still clean. And it’s still in the box. That’s the best way to keep it clean.

Now that I think about it, George Foreman is fatter than I am. The grill must not help people lose weight. Maybe my sisters weren’t trying to torment my fat. Maybe they wanted to torture me through excessive cleaning aggravation. They know I only clean enough to keep my kids from drowning in soot. Either way, I admire their dastardly ingenuity. You got me. Nice one.

Fanny: An Interpretation

Fanny
by Edgar Allan Poe

The dying swan by northern lakes
Sings its wild death song, sweet and clear,
And as the solemn music breaks
O'er hill and glen dissolves in air;
Thus musical thy soft voice came,
Thus trembled on thy tongue my name.

Like sunburst through the ebon cloud,
Which veils the solemn midnight sky,
Piercing cold evening's sable shroud
Thus came the first glance of that eye;
But like adamantine rock,
My spirit met and braved the shock.

Let memory the boy recall
Who laid his heart upon thy shrine,
When far away his footsteps fall,
Think that he deem'd thy charms divine;
A victim of love's altar slain,
By witching eyes which looked disdain.

Why did Edgar Allan Poe write a poem about somebody's ass? That is what I thought when I read the title of this poem - Fanny. Poe, it seemed to me, had too much class to write about something so trashy. Although his other works tended to concern the macabre and the psycho-gruesome, his approach had seemed sophisticated. The fact is that old Edgar was a guy, and that "class" was feigned. You knew at some point his true nature would surface. And surface it did; in the form of Fanny. It's not a pretty sight.

Guys like women's asses. If we had the talent, I'm sure we would all write a poem or two praising them. Since the majority of us aren't as gifted as Poe, our verses are manifested in whistles, howls and grunts. Sadly, our efforts aren't as appreciated as of those who can paint with a quill. Fanny is no more than a primal grunt from Poe as he wallowed in the inescapable truth of his maleness.

After reading Fanny I was confused. Not one mention of a butt; not even a cheek. This surprised me, because the word "ass" has many words that rhyme with it: bass, class, gas, glass, lass, mass, etc.. It should have been simple to write a poem using all of those rhymes, not to mention the plethora of rhymes that go with butt, buns, tush, rump, rear end, derriere, gluteus maximus, buttocks and, of course, pooper and turd cutter. Yet, the words in the poem did not seem to live up to the title. I felt disappointed. Instead of giving up, I decided to dig deeper into the hidden meaning of the words on the page. To my delight, Poe, like the master that he was, came through for me.

With most poetry, the meaning is never blatant. Hence the need for interpretation. I gouged the lines of verse to discover Poe's true perspective on the posterior.

The poem presents itself in retrospection of a man looking back on his younger years when he tangled with his attraction to "Fanny", as described in the third stanza: "Let memory the boy recall". The event encoded in memory must have taken place some time in the past, "when far away his footsteps" fell. Obviously, he met someone with a remarkable backside, and he confused his lust for the butt with love for the person who wore the butt. He "deem'd thy charms divine". Literally translated, those charms were an ass made in heaven.

The second stanza describes his first rendezvous with the "Fanny". This gets a little disgusting, so bear with me. Remember, I did not write this poem. I am merely an observer. Also, keep in mind that Poe was bent toward the degenerate side.

In this stanza, he finds himself in the Arctic (I will explain why later), as evidenced by sunburst through the clouds in the "midnight sky". Sun and midnight rarely commingle unless you are near one of the earth's polar regions during the summer. My hunch tells me he was in the north; that's just the kind of guy Poe was. The appearance of the cloudy sky provokes his memory of the initial look at the bung in question: "Thus came the first glance of that eye." In many circles (at least the ones with which I am familiar), the anus is referred to as "the brown eye". Why Poe chose to use this uncouth analogy, one can only guess. So, I will.

At this point in the interpretation process, it helps to have knowledge of the personality of the author. Poe was not very smooth with the ladies. He had a hard time meeting them. One covert strategy he employed was to climb into the pit of the ladies outhouse, pretending to be searching for a lost wallet, with the hopes of initiating a chance encounter. As he was extremely shy, he generally went unnoticed as he floundered in the sewage, too afraid to fulfill his scheme. From this vantage point, Poe had direct view of "the brown eye", if you will. It was during one of these endeavors that he spotted the "eye" of worship and became infatuated with it. You could imagine how the lighting underneath an outhouse might resemble that of a northern evening sky, so I will not offer a graphic description. It is this parallel that stimulates the author's memory to this occasion.

The power of his infatuation or his "spirit"..."like the adamantine rock" vanquished his normal apprehensiveness as it "braved the shock". He pursued and seized the ass and the woman to whom it belonged. Like most relationships based on carnal attraction, this one failed. Focus switches from the single "eye" (her tush), which originally enticed him, to the "witching eyes that looked disdain". Disdain brought about when she finally learned of his cesspit meanderings, which also explained his interesting aroma. He should have known he could not keep his squalid past a secret forever. My guess is that one of his buddies, hopped up on mead, haphazardly blurted it out at a party. She dumped him, leaving him "a victim on love's altar slain".

With a broken soul and pain in his heart, he traveled to the North Pole to introspect. The first stanza begins at this point. After appropriating some of his pent up aggression on the skull of a swan, he takes time to reflect. As he listens from a distance to the wailing of the broken fowl, his retrospection begins. He realizes that the swan's "wild death song" (probably "Killed By Death", by Motorhead) echoes his waning state of being. "Thus trembled on thy tongue my name." I'm not sure if swans have tongues, but it doesn't matter. The metaphor works, and he probably got extra credit for using a personification. It would not have been as effective if he chose to write, "Thus trembled on thy BILL my name". That would have been silly, and Poe would have lost all credibility.

We now know what Poe is telling us. It's an idea that has been around for eons and can be summed up with the old proverb, "Don't let the little head do the thinking for the big head." This philosophy is never a main ingredient in a successful relationship, although it works well as a garnish. Poe's greatness allows him the ability to expand on this adage: "...unless you don't mind becoming distraught, moving to the North Pole and clubbing water fowl".

The Miley Cyrus Lesson

She’s at it again. Miley Cyrus has infiltrated my parenting world once again. A few months ago I wrote about how Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus hates my baby. She still does. Now she has my son’s interests in her sights. But this time, she is being helpful, not harmful. She has created an educational video lugging a valuable lesson for all the machine-gun-bonered adolescents of the world. Here, take a look..

Pretty amazing, huh? One would think that all I would have to do is show my son this video and all of my boy-girl relationship parenting guidance would be complete. Unfortunately, my son is not bright enough to comprehend the video’s blatant message, and, even if he was, I doubt he could see beyond his hormones. So, I’ll have to spell it out for him and his partners in his gender-age continuum. The rest of you can continue reading, but what follows is for the young men of the world.

At the core, what Miley is telling us is to stay away from girls because they are psychotic. But you won’t. Nor should you. But, don’t blame me when you are sitting in your car with the tires slashed, maple syrup gushing out of your carburetor, fingernail scratches on your neck, all of your money gone and you are wondering what the hell just happened. If this should happen to you, stop wondering. You will never figure it out. Just move on and see what happens tomorrow – it’ll probably be something that will confuse you even more.

To keep it simple, I will not attempt to interpret all of the lyrics. However, I will identify some points of danger in them later on. Let’s look at the song as a whole. What is it about? What is she telling us? (I don’t mean to generalize, but I’m using “she” in a general sense applying to all women. I do this because Miley Cyrus is the voice of all women, from what I’ve heard.) First, she reflects on our prior relationship. Then she tells us there are seven things she hates about us. That’s understandable. It’s no surprise that there would be some animosity lurking after a break up. But then we find out the seventh thing she hates about us is that we make her love us. Sounds confusing, right? Well, it is, so don’t get too hung up on it. It’s confusing on two levels. First, how can she hate us and love us at the same time (unless she has multiple personalities – which she does, but this is not a psychological essay, so we’ll let that go)? Second, we weren’t trying to make anybody love us – we were just doing what our little generals wanted us to do (just so I don’t get into any kind of pedophilic trouble here, I’m using the term “we” and “us” in the general male sense, and it should only be perceived as applying to legally age congruent situations). By this point, we get the idea. We suck. Fine. We can live with that. We’ll go hang out with the fellas. But, no, we can’t do that, because, all of a sudden, without any warning, the second half of the song comes along and she’s telling us about the seven things she likes about us! Well, which is it???!!??

They can do that, you know. They can stop on an emotional dime and turn. One hundred and eighty degrees, if need be. Their emotional output mechanism is fine tuned from all the work they give it. This creates an emotional trajectory resembling a laser beam shot into a ball of uneven mirrors. It’ll drive you mad unless you learn to filter out everything except the important emotions – like the ones that will cost you money or require you to make an effort. We guys cannot be so precise with our emotions. Sure, we have emotions, but they serve us more as an infection than a social utility. When one emerges we try to ignore it hoping it will go away so we can get back to whatever it was that we were doing. We don’t have the means to make it stop and change its course. We have to ride it out until the next one comes along. In this sense, we are very much like geographic locales affected by varying weather patterns. Sometimes I like to think of myself as London, England – basically walking around in a fog. For extra credit, write a paper about your geographic emotional climate city.

Overall, as the song tells us, this is your lesson: Women are psychotic by male standards. The lyrics and the video support this claim. As promised, here are some lyrical danger zones of which you should be aware.

The initial break up has made her scared? What’s that all about? Scared? Scared of what – did the break up move her up on the Boogie Man’s list? Since she is now available, is she committed to follow through with her pre-arranged marriage to Ryan Seacrest? Will this cause George Bush to usurp the twenty-second amendment of the Constitution and stay in office? What the hell is so scary?

:~ Nothing is gonna change until you hear the seven things… ~: ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! DANGER WILL ROBINSON! Don’t you get it, man? She wants you to change. You can’t be who you are. You have to be who she wants you to be. These seven things are your honey-do list to selfamorphosis as designed by her. Run away. Run away as fast as you can.

“I wanna be with the one I know”. This relates to the prior lyric’s demand for change. The one she “knows” is her archetype for the ideal man – the one she’s been constructing in her head since she was born. If you aren’t that man already, there is no amount of changing you can do to become that man. Besides, you are a guy, so you can’t change, anyway. You’re better of being yourself and putting up with the insults.

Somewhere in the song she asks for a sincere apology. Go ahead and give her one, but it won’t change the fact that she caught you naked in the hot tub with three of her friends. I know, apologies don’t really do anything in the real world, but somehow they make a difference to girls. Just don’t ever let her know that none of your apologies have ever been sincere. The point of this lyric is that you have to apologize because the break up was your fault for not being her ideal man. In her defense, she probably already apologized to you, but you didn’t notice, nor did you care.

“Your friends are jerks”. The people you have let into your life, the ones you’ve palled around with your whole life, the ones who accept you for who you are and still are your friends (sure, there are plenty of things about you that bug them – it doesn’t mean they are going to write a psychotic love/hate song about you and expect you to change), the ones you have shit in the woods together with, well friend, they’re just not good enough. And when you act like them it hurts her. So quit trying to have fun, go sit in the corner and do as you’re told.

There is more evidence if you want to delve further into the lyrics. You can do that on your own for more extra credit. And be sure to explore the purpose for choosing the number "7" as the break point number of love/hate selections (it would be an ideal thing to do). As for the video, try watching it with the sound turned off and concentrate on the girls’ expressions and their mannerisms, especially the stuffed animal clutching. If you didn’t know this was a Miley Cyrus music video, you very well may mistake it for a documentary depicting women in a prison for the criminally insane.

There you have it, young men. Miley Cyrus has given it to you straight. She is very wise with her manipulation of the music video art form. As I said before, this should not deter you from trying to have meaningful relationships with women. Miley Cyrus can only tell you so much. There is much more to learn about them, although, you will find that it eventually comes back to what Miley has taught you in this video. Try to enjoy the good times, and take the blame for the bad times.

As a personal note to Miley Cyrus, I thank you for your help in this matter, but it does not make up for the hate Hannah Montana launched at my little girl. You still owe me for that.

Oh, and just in case any women or Alan Aldas out there take offense to anything I’ve written above, remember, these ideas were all those of Miley Cyrus, not of my own. I was merely acting as a conduit to enlightenment, kind of like a hookah.

Leper Pop Earth Day Special Report

This is Bob Polar Bear reporting from somewhere in the Arctic. I can’t tell you exactly where because I’m a polar bear, and frankly, we’re not too good with maps. While many concerned citizens are attending rallies and other events to raise awareness of Earth’s fragile environment, I stand before you all too aware. Do you know why I’m aware? Because my home is melting into the ocean and doesn’t seem to be coming back, that’s why. That’s not the sort of thing you miss because you were distracted by Dr. McDreamy on the television. See that stretch of ocean out there? No, not there, over there, about a mile out underneath that cloud that looks like an injured seal (they all look like injured seals to me). THAT used to be my living room.

Now, I can’t prove anything, but I’m pretty sure you humans had something to do with it, which is part of the reason all y’all are having these Earth Day festivities. Sure, the sentiment of Earth Day is nice and I appreciate it, but I don’t know how long I can wait for something to be done. A bunch of hippies sitting around feeling bad does not seem to help with the…shit, there goes my KITCHEN! Right into the ocean. How would you like it if I came over to your house and ripped out your breakfast nook? And then the next year I tore out your gun room? Huh? How’d you like that?

As I said, something has to be done. Luckily, I have an idea. Did you know humans add eighty-five trillion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere just by breathing? It’s true. Look it up. You could easily cut that in half – just breathe less. Hold it in every other breath. Pretend you’re smoking pot. You’re the ones with the gigantic brains. Figure out a way to genetically engineer yourselves to breathe less. I’d do it but I didn’t get a big brain. You know what I got? Big paws and a big snout. And, unlike you, I use my gifts. I whap things and smell stuff all the time. Although, there is not much to smell out here on an ice sheet. Most of the stuff I smell is far away, and by the time I get there, whatever it was, what I planned on eating, salivating all the way, has fallen into the ocean because the ice sheet melted, and the Orcas ate it. Those damn Orcas. They’re loving every bit of this global warming stuff. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were in on it with you. They’re pretty smart, too. They’re lucky they never come up out of the water onto the ice sheet. I’d whap their ass with my big paws. I could take an Orca.

Mrs. Bob Polar Bear: Oh no you couldn’t, Bob.

Shut up, Gladys, I’m trying to give a Special Report. I could TOO take an Orca.

Gladys: No, you couldn’t. Quit being an ass.

Well, maybe not, but I can whip a narwhal. When one of them sticks his big nose out of the water, I’d grab it, pull him up on the ice and go all Bam-Bam on his ass. Bam-BAM! Bam-BAM! Bam-BAM! That’s one thing I have to hand it to you humans for. I sure love those Flintstones cartoons. Good old Fred and Barney. Never understood the Great Gazoo thing, though. Where’d that come from? You know what else I like that you humans did? I like those big blue plastic air tight drums. My cousin Lester sent me one from the zoo. I had it in the water and was wrestlin’ with it, jumping on it, whappin’ it with my big paws (showin’ the Orca what he’d get if he ever comes up on shore). I was having the time of my life with that thing until that damn walrus poked a hole in it with his big ole walrus tooth. I should eat that walrus. The damn thing filled up with water and sank to the bottom of the ocean. If there are any humans reading this, please send me another one of those things. I’ll trade you a half a mangled seal for it.

OK, where was I? That’s right, you humans gotta start breathing less. You are adding too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Gladys: You know your breath puts carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,
too.

WOULD YOU SHUT UP, GLADYS! I am trying to make a point here. WE are not the problem. The humans have admitted it. Why else would they have an Earth Day? You don’t see us having an Earth Day, do you? They are destroying our home.

Gladys: How do you know that this global warning…

That’s global WARMING!

Gladys: Right, global warMing. How do you know it’s not due to the
Earth’s normal long term weather cycle?

Who would have thought that Las Vegas was a sick enough town to actually allow two polar bears to get married at a road side chapel and that it was LEGALLY binding? I’m never going there again. It has ruined my life. I tell you, I am ruing the day.

Gladys: It’s been no picnic for me either, Bob. All of my friends get to
have other males fight over them ending up with the best fit one each mating
season. You know, you’ve gotten a little pudgy since you stopped having to
fight for me. And I don’t mind saying it’s affected your performance in
the snow bank.

THAT’S ENOUGH, GLADYS!!! You know I’ve been worried about this global warming thing destroying our chances for survival.

Gladys: Why don’t you join the humans and go get a job in an office like
your brother Murray did?

Gladys, you know Murray has unusually elongated phalanges with little to no webbing on his front paws. He’s a dynamo on the computer keyboard. I could never survive in that environment and you know it! I think it makes you happy to see me fail.

Gladys: In case you didn’t notice, I wasn’t too happy about your failure
in the snow bank last night, Bob.

Sigh. I’m gonna go whap some baby seals.


For Leper Pop News, I’m Bob Polar Bear. Back to you, Sid and Moist.

Book Store Girl

I almost asked out the check out girl at Barnes and Noble yesterday. She might have been too young for me, maybe around 30, and was kind of plain jane cute. But I didn't because I figured she was poor. So I went to Steak 'n Shake by myself instead.

Chat Room of Ignorancy

My son's friend's sister is thirteen years old, and apparently, she "fell in love" with some guy she "met" in a chat room. He lives out of state. Her parents were unaware of this “relationship” until recently, when this dude showed up at their house. He is twenty years old, and he claims that he is in love with the thirteen year old girl. He also threatened suicide if the family wouldn't allow them to pursue their relationship. Sounds like she picked a winner.

My kids don’t do much chatting online. They limit their online communication to email and MySpace messaging. But, you never know when they’ll submerge themselves into the world of Lamarckian Skank Talk. That’s what I call it, anyway. Why? Well, “Lamarckian” because, as far as I can tell, all that people do in those chat rooms is pass their adaptive characteristics back and forth to each other. I threw in “Skank” because I like that word and it has a cantankerous feel about it. Probably because of the two k’s, just like Krispy Kreme. There is nothing worse than cantankerous doughnuts. They taste like a fuzzy sound, never fit neatly in a box and I don’t even want to get into their effects on my digestive system, other than stating that feces should not bubble. The last thing I need is my daughter coming home with a box of cantankerous doughnuts and asking me to mix her up a batch of my famous vulcanized tuber coffee. You know what? I’m not gonna do it. In an attempt to employ some preventive maintenance, I had a little family meeting with the kids to discuss chat room love and other perils.

Below are the minutes from that meeting (as documented by our dogs – note: “I” refers to me. I have trained my dogs to write in the first person, where the first person is always me. It’s good to be a primate.):


1. It is physically impossible to fall in love until you are at least thirty years old because the emotional part of the brain, the amoritorium, does not mature until then. I showed them my Psychology diploma from college which proves I know about that kind of stuff, and whatever I say is true.


2. It is impossible to fall in love with somebody who you have only interacted with in a chat room. You cannot “know” somebody by merely talking to xe on a computer. You must interact with xe on other levels and share actual experiences with xe in order to get to know xe enough to even think about falling in love, which you can’t do until you’re thirty, anyway, so you might as well just play video games until then. Also, you can’t go bowling together online, and if you can’t go do that, you can’t fall in love. Any attraction or feelings you sense in chat room relationships is just your brain filling in the spaces, i.e. the unknown details about the other person with an ideal concept of who you want that person to be (just like after you put a door in you have to caulk the spaces between the door frame and the wall, and you use the best caulk, not the crappy cheap stuff, because that will crack before summer comes), and the yearning you feel is just your hormones telling your body to procreate, but your hormones don't care about your psychological, financial or not-being-a-whore well being. Their job is to promote the sustenance and continuation of life, regardless of the long term emotional, psychological and financial impact their actions may have on the host, or the host’s father (primarily in regards to the financial impact). The government should regulate hormones like it does booze, cigarettes and guns. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should add Hormones to their repertoire – the ATFH. Action Item: Write letter to congressperson.


3. Twenty year old people who pursue thirteen year old people are losers, otherwise they would be pursuing people their own age. There are just as many losers at your age as there are at any other age. This is due to the principle of physics known as the conservation of losers, which states within some population domain (e.g. age group), the amount of losers remains constant; losers are neither created nor destroyed, but only changed through the action of social forces as described by Newton's law of losers. Twenty year old people only seem like non-losers to thirteen year old people because of the eternal law of adolescent ignorancy, which states that if any twenty year old person hits on a thirteen year old person, xe is a loser and the thirteen year old person is too ignorant to know any better, but the thirteen year old person's parents do know better and should be heeded. It is for this very reason that I always turn down advances from hot chicks in their twenties (you gotta lead by example, ya know. It’s quite a sacrifice, but my kids are worth it). Action Item: For demonstration purposes, find a hot twenty-two year old chick to come over to the house and hit on me and then send her away in a firm, yet polite manner (but find out where she’ll be later).


4. Threats of suicide are not measures of ultimate devotion. They are symptoms of psychological imbalance and should not be reinforced with promises of love. Or blow jobs. And definitely no anal.


5. Don't do drugs until college. Action Item: Go back in time and do more drugs in college.


6. Always wear a rubber.


7. Somebody take out the garbage. Action Item: Somebody take out the garbage.


8. I’ll be home after last call. Action Item: Borrow twenty bucks from the son.

Who Do You Think I Am - Michael Chertoff?

So, I was cuddling with this woman after a hot and sweaty session of pilates. Working out is the most intimate activity I can think of that two people can share, and I cannot imagine doing so with someone without finishing it off with a mutual hold. We didn’t talk much as our sweat glands dialed down to a slow leak. Once in a while one of us would comment about our workout and then drift back to mind numbness. I was about to snag a doze when she gently poked me in the rib with her nose and said, “I feel so safe when you hold me in your arms.”

As you can probably imagine, I was flabbergasted. What the hell could that mean? Did she owe a loan shark some money? Was she wanted by the police? Were Martians after her? Maybe she got on PETA’s bad side when she molested that toad. Was it that she felt comfortable farting in front of me? What kind of safety could my scrawny, yet deceptively powerful arms provide?

The more I thought about that comment, the more dumbfounded I became. I finally surmised that she relied on my arms for safety against some unknown cadre of demons I could never comprehend. I know that’s quite a conclusion leap from loan sharks, police, Martians and molested toads, but I had a lot of thoughts going through my head at that time and memory has smeared them, kind of like peanut butter spread over a positive meniscus lens, so I could not possibly review them all here. I do remember, however, thinking about a good way to remove my pants without appearing presumptuous, but that’s a bit off the point. The implications presented by her comment were quite a burden to have laid on me. I could have lain there all day if she would have just kept her safety concerns to herself. (I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “lain” before. Feels kinda weird, yet liberating.) I’ve spent most of my adult life protecting myself from the perilous content our world affords, and now I have to be responsible for her safety, too? That’s hardly fair. I just met her on a bus a few hours ago. For her to thrust this preposterous demand upon the faculties of my arms was domineering, and, frankly, a little rude.

I excused myself, and sat in the living room. Two minutes later (yeah, it only took her two minutes until she got suspicious and came looking for me – can you believe it?) she came out of the bedroom and asked me what I was doing. “Yeah, you’re gonna have to leave,” was my response. She questioned my reasoning, and I tried to explain to her the encumbrance she so flippantly launched at me, like a pink polka-dotted harpoon sent careening viciously at a finectomized puffer fish. It wasn’t until I declared that if I wanted my arms to act as safety nets, I would have gotten a job with the Flying Wallendas years ago. She was so confused at that point, she decided to leave. In hind sight I can understand why my last statement confused her so much – I don’t think the Flying Wallendas used safety nets.

As she walked out of my home and out of my life, she was attacked by a mischievous horde of marauding fruit bats. Now I realize she may have had a point about feeling safe in my arms. Not a single fruit bat has ever attacked anything I was holding in my arms. Although, since I had just met her, I have no clue how she would have known that. The subject never came up during our pilates.

A Study in Fantasy

I’ve been studying lately. I didn’t feel like studying, and I was going to blow it off, like I did in college, or at the very least, wait until after Late Night with David Letterman was over and then start studying, and after an hour or so, decide it would be better if I went to bed, since any knowledge I might gain by studying that late would be worthless if I didn’t get a good night’s sleep. I did that in college, too. As you can see, I was a multi-faceted studier back then. Nowadays, when I do get myself to study, my strategy is to skim through material hoping something sticks, similar to the way a blue whale scoops up euphausiids for a scrumptious dinner of raw euphausiids. If you looked at my brain, you would recognize that it looks very similar to the baleen plates that equip a humpback whale’s mouth. Or maybe it’s similar to the plate heat exchangers in a hydraulic oil cooling system. I always confuse whales’ mouths and hydraulic oil cooling systems. Then they ask me to back up and say it slower.

Speaking of euphausiids, I like words that have two i’s in a row. Like skiing, obiism, piing and The Godfather II. You don’t see that much in words. Not in English, anyway. It is ironic that most of us have two eyes in a row on our faces that we use to read words, including words with two i’s. You would think there would be more instances of that occurring in our language. Maybe the language writers didn’t want to be redundant. The lower case i is probably my favorite letter to write. Sometimes, when I’m writing a letter to an ex-lover or taking down a recipe or preparing an injunction, I will leave all the i’s undotted until I have finished. Then I will go on a crazy dotting spree and dot them all in one fell swoop. Sometimes it gets out of hand and I dot other things like the dogs, sandwiches or other dots. There is nothing more demonstrative than a dotted dot. I’ll even dot myself sometimes, which helps explain the enormous amount of freckles I have. And the gonorrhea.



I’ve been studying this week for fantasy football. I’m in four leagues. The first draft is this Saturday. If you don’t know about fantasy football and what a draft is, don’t bother looking it up or asking anybody about it. Save yourself from the geekitude. I wasn’t going to study this year, as I haven’t studied much in the past few years. My interest in fantasy football is waning. I mean, I still enjoy it – especially the drafts. The drafts are like bachelor parties, without strippers. Unless, of course, we decide to get strippers. And I still enjoy playing each week and watching the games on Sunday, but not enough to exert too much energy to the process. Which is why I wasn’t going to study.

So I planned to wing it this year, relying on a free cheat sheet downloaded from the Internet to help me decide which players to take for my teams. Then, earlier this week, I happened to have Sports Center on in the background while I was pruning my sasanquas, and I heard them say the name Marshawn Lynch. I realized I had no idea who he was. So I looked him up on the Internet and discovered he was the third string punter for the Saskatchewan Roughriders*, which is a vital piece of information for us fantasy football enthusiasts. Then I thought, “I wonder how many other players there are that I don’t know about.” Forty-seven, as it turned out. Well, forty-seven players who might have fantasy football impact this year, anyway. There are countless lineman nobody cares about. I then realized there would be no way to remember forty-seven players, so I decided to sleep during most of my study sessions. But that still counts for studying.

I used to be much more into fantasy football, especially with the draft preparation process. I would buy magazines as soon as they were published at the end of May, read them, highlight them, and update them with crayons when I learned new information. I would listen to sports radio 24 hours a day, waiting for snippets of information that would help me destroy my competition. I would trade my urine to NFL players for drug testing in exchange for inside information. In fact, Edgerrin James was declared Physically Unable to Perform after submitting my urine in a drug test in 1999 (not that Edgerrin was trying to hide any illegal drug usage – he just doesn’t like other people touching his pee). They made him do fifty push ups, which the NFL thought was impossible for him to do based on the physical health of my urine, to get out of it.

Something has caused my interest in fantasy football to dwindle over the years. Am I more mature now? Do I have more sophisticated interests in life? Do I now realize the insipidity of such ventures? Have I grown tired of winning all of the time? The answers to these questions are “not even close”, “does Muppet porn count?”, “what does insipidity mean?”, and “you have to win in order for that to happen”. The real cause is divorce.

I have correlated my diminishing will to make an effort in fantasy football to my state of being divorced. When I was married, preparing for fantasy football was a diversion to the marriage (not necessarily a diversion to the wife, since she was my fantasy football partner for a couple of seasons). Speaking of the ex-wife, I went to her birthday party over the weekend. She has hit an age milestone – I think she’s 30. I wasn’t sure what to get for her as a gift. The first thing that came to mind was shoes. Nobody ever buys people shoes for their birthday. So, I bought her shoes – a pair of casual, fashionable Sketchers. I’m not sure if she wears those types of shoes, but she better start. Actually, I’m guessing she’ll return them (gift receipt included), but it did produce a collective laugh throughout the party, which was my primary objective, and even a “You’re the best ex-husband ever” comment from one of her friends (yes, I got her number). Add to that the “The Lord is our greatest physician…” sympathy card I gave her serving as a birthday card (I wrote Happy Birthday on the inside with an eyebrow pencil) , which included a dollar and a free beer token from one of my local bars that she never goes to, and I’d have to say that I was the hit of the gift giving portion of the party. During the rest of the party I sat by the bar and looked cool, which wasn’t easy to do because I was a little gassy.

Without the pressure to divert from the shackles of married life, I have no impetus driving me to immerse myself into flawed speculation of gridiron future events. In other words, I don’t feel like reading about the possibility of Devin Hester becoming the next Reggie Bush. Now that I think of it, most of the other guys in my leagues are married, so they’ve been studying all summer. There is no way I can compete with that. Maybe I should remarry. Naaaaaah! Time to take another study session and get some rest. It’s going to be a long season.













* I know he’s not actually a third string punter in the Canadian football league, but just in case any of my fantasy football adversaries read this, I don’t want them knowing I plan on drafting Lynch in the sixth round**










** I don’t know what I’m worried about - like any of those assholes actually read anything except football magazines and sports web sites.***











*** Most of them are still waiting to feel their first boob, whereas I’m waiting on feeling my sixth.****











**** What do feeling boobs have to do with fantasy football?*****











***** That’s why we have to hire strippers for the fantasy football drafts.

The Rat's Ass

Do you love somebody? Do you kind of like somebody? Do you hate somebody’s guts? Is there somebody out there that you give a rat’s ass about? Is there somebody out there that you don’t give a rat’s ass about? Well, do it, then! Give them a rat’s ass. Or, get a rat’s ass and withhold giving it to them just to piss them off. That’s the beauty of The Rat’s Ass. It is the epitome of versatility.

I know you’re probably wondering what The Rat’s Ass is. It’s only the ultimate gift of love or hate one person could possibly give to another. It is a remarkable product that I have created centuries before its time.

Why waste your time giving flowers, candy or stuffed animals to your sweeties. Those gifts convey such ambiguity. I’m surprised they’re not at the root of more domestic violence cases. Think about it. When a man sends a woman flowers, what is she to think? Does he love her or is he hinting that she get off her ass and do some work in the garden? Or maybe he thinks she smells like a pile of manure and the flowers are his attempt to save the olfactory of her co-workers. Flowers tend to die. Is he implying that their love is short lived? Roses have thorns. It’s obvious that such a gift is a metaphor for conditional love and that there will be prices to be paid down the line. It’s just not worth it.

Let’s examine the tender act of bestowing a luscious box of candy, preferably chocolates. It seems harmless enough. The sweetness of the chocolates represents corresponding emotions between two people. You can believe that if you choose. Or, you can believe the truth. The truth is that the giver’s motive resembles that of the mean old witch in Hansel and Gretel, only this time she doesn’t want to eat Hansel, she wants to fatten him up so that he is unattractive to the other witches, so she won’t have to worry about losing him. That security coupled with Hansel’s diminishing self-esteem caused by the sudden weight gain allows the witch to treat Hansel like shit, inflicting endless emotional torment on him. And don’t think she won’t.

OK, maybe I’m being a little profuse in my assumptions. But, what about zits? Zits can be the side effect of the intake of too much chocolate. Where do you think the phrase, “Hey, pizza-face, get me another beer” came from? That’s right, from a box of chocolates (indirectly). If that sounds like love to you, stay away from my daughter.

There are countless other acts of charity in the name of nabbing a loved one - far too many for me to comprehend. Here is a list of some of them with their possible (probable) ulterior meanings:

Stuffed Animals – representation of artificial life implying artificial love. Your relationship is as fabricated as the polymorphic fibers that surround the stuffing.

Lingerie/Undergarments – “How about if you put out a little more often, huh?”

Balloons – Since most of a balloon’s volume consists of air or helium, which is invisible, so are the feelings of the gifter towards the giftee. Without the air, all that is left is a wrinkled sheath of rubber. I’ll leave the interpretation of this visual for the imaginative.

Jewelry – “Let he among you without sin cast the first stone” (or something like that). Most jewelry contains some sort of stone or stones. The act of giving jewelry is analogous with the act of pelting another with stones. The bottom line is the giver is declaring his or her superiority over the recipient, since only non-sinners pelt sinners.

Automobiles – “I think of you as a prostitute or man-whore.”

Cash – “I think of you as a prostitute or man-whore.”

Meat – There is nothing wrong with giving meat. Little conveys the meaning of love more than a box of frozen Porterhouses. Warning: if you ever decide to give your lover meat, you had better be prepared to say the words “I do”.

Obviously, the aforementioned gifts are capable of informing your sweetheart that your affection is genuine. But, as you have been shown, there is plenty of room for error and miscommunication. Can you afford to jeopardize your most heartfelt relationships by employing such precarious gift giving rituals? Don’t be an idiot.

With The Rat’s Ass, your feelings are literally spelled out for your honey, friend, enemy, boss, acquaintance, postman, or whomever else you want to give it to – or not give it to (explanation to come).

The Rat’s Ass can be construed as a form of a stuffed animal. What makes The Rat’s Ass different from the example of a stuffed animal gift defined prior is that, by cutting off most of the rat, I have, in turn, cut out most of the doubt inherent in the typical stuffed animal gift. The Rat’s Ass is fully equipped with a revolutionary feature I call the Torsonic Panel (see illustration). The Torsonic Panel covers the rat’s innards that would normally be exposed after The Rat’s Ass was detached from the rest of the rat. Just like the mess that is your emotional state, the rat’s entrails are barricaded by the Torsonic Panel as it acts as a message board to convey your true feelings to the beneficiary. Here lies the preeminent flexibility The Rat’s Ass provides. It can be a gift of love or a gift of hate or a gift of anywhere in between. Your message dictates the severity!

The Rat’s Ass is the perfect gesture of whatever emotion you want to throw at people. From Love to Like to Uncomfort to Itchiness to Uncontrolled Drooling to Hate to Indifference. It’s all covered.

Say you can’t stand a guy named Humus. You don’t care if this person lives or dies and he’s always bugging you. You’ve tried to be diplomatic, you’ve hinted that you want to be left alone and you’ve sent him a dozen rotten eggs. Nothing has worked. He just does not get the idea. Instead of having wasted years of your life tap dancing around the subject, all you needed to do was get yourself The Rat’s Ass with this appropriate message:

This Rat’s Ass was never and will never be given about Humus.

Whenever Humus bothers you, you simply taunt him with The Rat’s Ass that is not being given about him. He will be crushed and will eventually leave your life. But, remember that you can’t not give The Rat’s Ass if you don’t have The Rat’s Ass not to give. So you need to buy one from Leper Pop.

Consider this scenario. You’ve discovered that your longtime lover is secretly having an affair with a carnival worker. You want to end the relationship with definite closure, but you are worried that your partner will try to hang on because xe is very dependent. Simply send your soon to be ex The Rat’s Ass with this message:

You suck, this is the last rat’s ass I’ll ever give about you.


If xe doesn’t figure it out after that, you have a stalker on your hands, and you had better contact the authorities. Warning: The Rat’s Ass does not work on all stalkers!

Then there are the instances where you want to express your love. Do I really need to explain how to use The Rat’s Ass to accomplish this? Without getting too detailed, I will give you a number of sample messages you can use as references:

I give a rat’s ass about you. (obvious)

I love you. If I didn’t why would I risk declaring it on The Rat’s Ass?

You are the only one for me. The proof is in The Rat’s Ass.

I love you. What more do I need to do? Please get off my back.

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I give The Rat’s Ass
Just about you.

So………do ya wanna do it?

I’m drunk and horny, even if you are only a goat.

With this Rat’s Ass, I thee wed…

The uses of The Rat’s Ass are infinite. There is no better method for revealing your true feelings about the people around you.

Now that I’ve convinced you that you can’t live without this extraordinary tool of communication, how do you get one? It’s simple. Just complete the order form that follows this article and send it to me with a check for around fifty bucks and I’ll get one out to you as soon as the check clears.

Remember, The Rat’s Ass is hand made. Also, keep a look out for other fabulous Rat’s Ass merchandise like:

The Rat’s Ass Pen and Pencil Set
The Rat’s Ass Toilet Paper Dispenser
The Rat’s Ass Ear Muffs
The Rat’s Ass Computer Mouse
The Rat’s Ass Enema Bag
The Rat’s Ass Onion Bloomer
The Rat’s Ass Surgical Bandage
The Rat’s Ass Lawn Mower Blade
The Rat’s Ass Big Note Maracas Book
The Rat’s Ass Nipple Ring
The Rat’s Ass Bag of Rat’s Asses
The Rat’s Ass Book of Commonly Used Elegies
The Rat’s Ass Alarm Clock
The Rat’s Ass Phlebotomy Kit
The Rat’s Ass Fondu Set
The Rat’s Ass Overhead Projector
The Rat’s Ass Chimney Cozy
The Rat’s Ass Rifle Cleaner
The Rat’s Ass Blunt Object
The Rat’s Ass Glass Bottom Boat
The Rat’s Ass Zipper
The Rat’s Ass Pearl Farm
And much, much more…….

The Man Zoo

I have figured it out – the key to the success of the future of our society. It wasn’t easy for me to do this, because of my limited cognitive capacity due to my lack of advanced state as a life form (as you’ll learn about shortly). But I did it. This is a woman’s world, and it’s about time they took it over.

I’ve been listening to women lately. In the past I have pretended to listen to them, but I wasn’t. Instead, I was thinking about sports or sex or food or some combination of them. But, lately, I’ve been paying attention. I’ve learned a lot, of what I could understand, anyway.

In addition to the topics I do not (cannot) understand, like beauty and fashion ideas, raising children, Desperate Housewives, flaky feet elixirs, feelings and emotions, general concern for people and railroad design theory, women talk a great deal about men. Sometimes it’s their husbands or boyfriends, sometimes it’s the men in their family and sometimes it’s men in general. As far as I can figure out, they don’t like us very much. Apparently, all we men ever think about is sex, sports and food, and we shouldn’t be. We don’t care about anybody’s feelings except our own. We have no control over our bodily functions. We sit on the couch all day long, have no clue how to raise children, are tremendous slobs, are too hairy and are incapable of making any kind of decision other than deciding which direction to aim our farts. And, we are incapable of opening up emotionally to another human being (specifically, them). Some women go on to say that men have been running this world throughout its history, and they’ve done a pretty crappy job doing it.

I can’t argue. I agree with them. All the criticism women have of men is true (as far as I can tell, anyway). And, I know why. The simple fact is that the male human is a slightly less advanced life form than is the female human.

Many may consider me somewhat of a modern day Pliny the Elder standing at the foot of an erupting Mount Vesuvius, as I have not employed the scientific method in this discovery. I do not have any scientific proof, such as DNA evidence, strictly controlled behavioral analysis or even Ouija board case studies, to support my claim. All I have are vicarious experiences and provisional deduction, which my standards of study shoddily accept.

Empirical evidence shows men to be governed by two great innate forces – sex and aggression. Generally speaking, men want to have sex and if they can’t have sex, they resort to beating somebody up (or kicking a dog, slamming a door, pounding a sledge hammer on a comforter, etc.). I don’t want to get into all the specific data that supports this declaration. Suffice it to say that the proof for male aggression is in all the wars this world had suffered. If men were getting enough sex (which is impossible in the male mind), they wouldn’t have time for wars. The point is that these characteristics are among the most base in the animal world. Aggression is a conflict resolution technique used by lower life forms because they do not have brains capable of reasoning through a problem. Take, for example, the rhinoceros. Have you ever tried talking sense to a rhinoceros? It’s impossible. Before you can get two words out, they charge at you, attempting to acquaint you with their horn. It’s not like I meant to run over his mailbox. I was just trying to avoid hitting the meerkat that jumped out between the parked cars. If the rhino was having sex at the time, he would have never even noticed. And if he did notice, he wouldn’t have cared, at least not until he was finished. By then I would have been long gone. I tried to offer to pay for it, but then the charging happened. It didn’t solve anything. Sure, I’m gored, and all, but I still think he’s a jerk.

Women, to the contrary, excel in communication and community building. Women are the architects of society with the emotions they wield and the nurturing they bestow. The human animal depends on this society for survival and to support progress. Without their ability, we would all be living in houses with no sheets on the beds, no food in the refrigerators and no silverware organizers in the drawers. That’s how animals would live if they could figure out how to build houses.

These are characteristics of an advanced life form who work together for the survival of the species, instead of the survival of a single member of that species, like men do (hence the reason men only think of themselves). Consider the slug. Slugs are very low life forms. Do you ever see a group of slugs getting together for a Tupperware party? Need I say more?

These societal factors as I outlined them above suggest that women are higher life forms than men. But there is more evidence out there. Way out there. Look to the cosmos and the physical laws that rule it. There is a wonderful concept in physics called entropy. Entropy is the tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of disorder. It is in entropy that we shall find truth.

If you believe in the Big Bang theory, or some facsimile of it, prior to the big bang, this universe was in perfect order. Everything was organized into a single dot or spec or whatever (I don’t want to get too technical on you). Then, all of a sudden, the dot exploded and expanded and then galaxies formed, and stars formed and planets formed and life formed, and that life formed fans, which were subsequently hit by shit, which added to the disorder. The universe became more and more disordered, and becomes more disordered each second. It may seem that the universe is becoming more ordered, but it’s not. Trust me. Do the math: S = k log W. Consequently, anything helping the entropy in its plight for disorder would be more in tuned with the universe than something that is not.

When I first learned of entropy, I thought it gave me an excuse to sit on my ass and do nothing, since it’s easy to let things fall apart. I figured it was nature’s way, so I embraced it. However, I was wrong. As it turns out, when women straighten out a room, put things away, organize their recipe cards and reorganize their shoes, they are adding to the entropy of the universal system, not quelling it. It may appear on the surface to the uninformed that women are creating order. But, they’re not. In the whole scheme of things, the heat they release and the disruption that heat causes to atoms floating around us while women rearrange their closets actually messes up things more than the order they attempt to achieve. Women, with their organizing efforts, are adding more to the natural entropy than we guys do sitting on a bar stool watching sports. They are more in tune with the cosmos because they are a higher life form.

Now that we know that women are more advanced then men, how do we use this knowledge to help society? Well, what do we do with lower life forms? That’s right, we put them in zoos. That is what I suggest women do with men. Although, like circus animals, men can contribute to society. I propose a work release zoo program for men. Men can do things women don’t want to do, like haul Port-o-Johns, clean Port-o-Johns and use Port-o-Johns. I’m sure there are other things men can do. Not that women couldn’t do whatever those things are, but why should they if they have a work release zoo full of men to do them?

Zoo technology has advanced over the years. The days of sequestering animals in cages are gone. Today’s zoos are built in a manner so they emulate the animals’ natural habitats and living conditions, including food, instinctual requirements (yes, I’m talking about accommodating the human male animal’s sex drive. More on that later.) and leisure. The man zoo should be created in the same fashion. The environment should be equipped with sports bars, playing fields, leather recliners, garages/work sheds and massage parlors. Studies have shown that the average man can work effectively for only four hours per day. This should be considered when creating work release schedules.

The work release programs should be designed to take advantage of each individual male’s talents. Some are good at math, so put them to work in insurance companies. Some are good at cuddling, so dish them out to women who need some cuddling. Note: expecting a non-cuddler male to cuddle will cause a similar result as expecting an elephant to incubate a chicken egg - so make sure your assessments are accurate. Some men actually are good at listening and empathizing. Harnessing these rare specimens could be a great money making initiative to the entrepreneurial woman. Then there are the builder men, the fixer men, the heavy lifting men, the plumbing men, etc. I’m sure you women will be able to figure it all out. I certainly can’t, being a lower life form, and all.
Maintaining a healthy male population in the man zoo will also necessitate the instinctual requirements (as mentioned above) of the human male animal to be satisfied. There are a number of ways you can accomplish this. One would be to relegate select “hot” and “adventurous” members of the female population to “work” with the animals. A more severe and cruel solution would be castration (please don’t do this. C’mon, you’ve already put us in zoos! What more do you want???). One last suggestion would be the invention and implementation of the BJ 2500 robot, fully equipped with drink holder, ash tray and sandwich dispenser. But, you ladies do what you think is necessary.

Once the men are safely tucked away in the sports bars, I mean, man zoos, women can run the planet as they see fit. I would expect to see less wars, less pollution, a better environment, more human dignity abound and more knick knack stores. If any men act up, then employ the castration I talked you out of in the last paragraph. Freeing the world of the scourge that is the less developed human male animal will certainly pave the way for the success of the matriarchal society our species has evolved to maintain. We already have the raw materials – sports bars, leather recliners, playing fields, etc. They just need to be organized into a zoo setting. Once women use their entropy enhancing powers to do so, the world will be a better place.

Salon de la Moist Rub

I never had a Barbie Head when growing up. My sisters had a Barbie Head. They used to play with it. If you consider brushing its hair and putting make up on it “playing”, then they played with it. I didn’t consider that “playing”. It seemed more like work, which is why I never wanted one. Although, I did want a jackhammer, and some consider using one of those as work, which I guess it is if you’re using it to accomplish something. I wanted one so I could break stuff, like my sisters’ Barbie Head.

As it turns out, they weren’t really playing with the Barbie Head. They were in training. Training to be full fledged, self-grooming women. And, through this training, they became not only self-grooming. They are able to groom others, as well. I’ve further come to learn that most women have this amazing, community grooming ability. Ex-Mrs. Rub can do it, too. I, on the other hand, having spent my youth dreaming of jackhammer demolitions, do not have that ability. Or, I didn’t used to. That Barbie Head training would have come in handy nowadays, now that I’m a father of a daughter.

Recently, my daughter has adopted a rad new hairstyle called, “Knot-Ridden Get Dad In Trouble Mess”. She never used to have problems with knots. Or maybe she had, but I never paid attention. In the past, if she had a knot here and there, I would brush her hair in a way so that the outside strands covered the knots, and it looked smooth until she actually moved. Hence, the iron lung I bought and made her go to school in on the problem days. This strategy worked fine until, I guess, it got out of hand, as determined by ex-Mrs. Rub.

This is actually fun for them, until they expect a guy to do it.

Somehow, it became my fault that my daughter’s hair had become a knot farm. Although I swear she’s come to my house after a few days at ex-Mrs. Rub’s home with a rat’s nest on her head. After I took the rat’s nest off her head, I noticed thousands of knots in her hair. Not being able to prove it (and I didn’t even question why my daughter was wearing a rat’s nest), I chose not to even bring up the argument with ex-Mrs. Rub.

She had the gall to question my daughter-grooming ability. My retort was clear. I never had a Barbie Head, nor have I ever had long hair (relatively), nor have I ever, personally, had a knot in my hair. I did get gum stuck in my hair in seventh grade during a pep rally, once. I couldn’t get it out with my comb, so I chose to rip out the entire clump from my skull. The bleeding stopped by seventh period. I brought that up to confuse ex-Mrs. Rub, but it didn’t work. My diversionary tactics haven’t worked since the day after our honeymoon. Still, they make arguing more fun (for me, at least). My point was, how the hell would I know how to get a knot out of my hair, let alone, my daughter’s hair? She’s seen my daughter’s Barbie Head. It’s bald. It’s bald because one day my daughter was crying because she had trouble brushing the ratty fake hair on the Barbie Head, so I shaved it. That probably wasn’t the optimal solution to the problem, and it didn’t stop my daughter from crying, but it was a solution. That Barbie Head hasn’t had a knot since. It all worked out. She and I make fun of the bald Barbie Head sometimes, and it’s a wonderful father/daughter bonding experience.

My defense was stricken from the record and overruled by the emotional agony ex-Mrs. Rub endured while extricating the knots from my daughter’s head. She claimed that she was brought to tears with the sight of bales of my daughter’s hair being meshed in the comb, as if she was being plucked to death. I did some research on this. You can’t kill somebody by plucking them unless you do it all at once and pull at least 39.4 percent of the skin with it. Ex-Mrs. Rub did not use the global pluck technique, so I considered her testimony immaterial. That made no difference to ex-Mrs Rub.

I was losing the argument. It’s hard to beat an emotional opponent when all I have are bullets made out of logic and responsibility avoidance. I had one more bomb in my arsenal. I proposed that maybe, just maybe, our daughter was not mature enough to take care of such long hair by herself. Ex-Mrs. Rub agreed, and before she could get her “but” out there, I suggested we cut my daughter’s hair short until she learns to knot-proof it herself. Or, at least until the Barbie Head grows her fake hair back so my daughter can practice. Then, the “but” came out. Ex-Mrs. Rub said something about me being lazy and not willing to sacrifice some effort to keep my daughter’s hair the way she likes it. I’m not sure of her exact words. There was a game on. Then, I may have accused her of not being a good enough mom to teach our daughter how to self-groom. OK, I’m not an idiot, I didn’t actually say that, but the thought did cross my mind. Not the part of her being a bad mom - she’s a wonderful mom. It was just the part about her not having taught our daughter the self-grooming. It’s only fair since I have taught our son everything he has to know about being a guy, which is nothing since he’s a guy. I was going to say it, but I couldn’t think of a way to phrase it without getting a brush jammed in a part of my body that brushes usually don’t go.

Finally, I succumbed to the pressure and agreed to make more of an effort to the follicle fostering of our daughter. After giving my daughter a bath, (a bath that rendered her hair knotless, I’ll have you know) I asked her to get her pajamas on and report to me for some beauty parlor time. Somewhere between her bedroom and the family room and during the three minutes, twenty-six seconds it took her to don her pj’s, no less than forty-five hundred knots infiltrated her hair.

Immediately, I wondered how my daughter would look with a Dorothy Hamill haircut. No, not too good. Not even back in the seventies. So I armed myself with a brush, a fine-toothed comb and a fifty-five gallon drum of that Knot-Be-Gone fluid, which should be called, Knot-Be-Wet-But-Still-In-Your-Daughter’s-Hair. The stuff doesn’t work. I attacked the knots with the brush. The brush was able to smooth out the top layer of her hair, which almost tricked me, but I was now too wise in the ways of tuft teasing. I looked underneath the calm sea of hair to find the looming tumbleweed graveyard. So, I pumped some more knot-buster sauce and went after it with the comb. After I traumatized my daughter with whiplash from the massive comb stroke being thwarted by the knots, I considered that maybe going after all of the knots at once was not the best approach.

I began carefully taking each knot at a time. Some of them consisted of only two or three strands of hair. Before I knew it, I was half finished. Thinking that was better than I usually did, I almost sent her to bed to let her mother figure out the rest in a couple of days. But, I carried on, and finished the job. Sure, I ripped a few strands out of my daughter’s head, eliciting shrieks of pain. But, I didn’t let that bother me. I don’t know what ex-Mrs. Rub’s issue was with seeing the amputated hair in the comb. Those are tokens of learning. Me learning how to de-knot, and my daughter learning that she needs to figure this task out herself so that I don’t resort back to my clump yanking gum extracting technique of my youth on her.

I now consider myself pretty good at grooming my daughter’s hair. Pretty good in relation to other non-gay fathers, that is. I have long ago conquered the ponytail, braid, bun and beehive. I still can’t compete with the Barbie Head trained women of the world. That doesn’t bother me, since I have other mountains to eventually climb being the father of a daughter. Mountains such as puberty and the “monthly visitor” I can see coming over the horizon toward our house. I wonder if Mattel has a Barbie part to help me out with that.

Two For The Money: A Movie Review

I saw Two For The Money, starring Al Pacino, Renee Russo and that guy who messed with Jodie Foster’s brain about god versus science in the movie Contact. It was pretty good. You should go see it.

I went alone. I like going to movies alone. It’s easy to find a seat, I can concentrate on the movie without interrupting questions and comments from others, and people tend to feel sorry for me and offer me their Goobers. Free Goobers, now that’s livin’. Usually, if the theater has a good sized crowd, I’ll pick out the hottest chick next to an open seat and sit next to her. I’ll pretend she’s there with me. By the end of the movie, I’ll pretend we had a fight and storm off without her, so she doesn’t expect a good night kiss. That leaves them none the wiser, although at times a little freaked out, and I avoid any tiffs with annoyed boyfriends. This time the theater was pretty empty, so I sat right in the middle of an open row about two thirds up. There were some other loners there, too, a few sets of pals and a couple on a date.

I’ve noticed that when a man and a woman go to see a movie together, nine times out of ten, the woman will choose where they sit. The guy will hang back, holding the food and drink, and wait so as not to get reprimanded for not picking the ideal viewing spot. Sometimes I’ll see a man lead the way and sit somewhere, only to find that his woman is still selecting. Then he has to get up, pretend there was cheese on his chair, and cower back to her while she is interviewing already-seated-people to find out how the viewing experience is from their seats. Some women attribute this male behavior on a supposed inability for men to make a decision. In reality, it doesn’t matter too much to us where we sit, as long as there is no cheese on the seat and we aren’t getting yelled at.

I was set. I had my oil drum of popcorn, my 40 gallon Coke and the security of my own row. As the previews rolled, a few stragglers came into the theater and sat down toward the front. That is good movie going etiquette. If you get there during the previews, sit in the first available seat. Some people are watching the previews, and you don’t want to bother me, I mean, them. I felt comfortable. I had my own row. Until.

Right before the movie was about to begin, in walks this couple on a date. The man, holding three trays of food and the woman’s purse, beckons with his shoulder to sit down in the first row off the floor. But the woman was paying him no attention. She wore her night vision goggles scanning the seats for the optimal viewing location. I saw her look at my row, so I removed all of my clothes and placed them on various seats in the row as if they were being saved for someone. To no avail. She marched right up to my row, picked up my underwear, threw them in my face and sat about four seats down from me. Drat. And I mean DRAT! There were at least 9 empty rows available to these people, but they chose to invade my row of solitude. Oh, my poor row of solitude, revitalizing me with the life so wrung from me by a hard day’s staying awake at work, infiltrated by these callous comers. Would she dare pick up Superman’s underwear and heave them in his face at his Fortress of Solitude? No, she wouldn’t. I’m not sure if Superman wears underwear. I’ve never seen any panty lines underneath his tight red outer briefs. Maybe that IS his underwear. Maybe he’s the type to wear his underwear on the outside so as not to soil them. Maybe he wears a thong underneath. Ya know, I just don’t know. Regardless, I believe I deserve the same respect. I was even wearing a cape.

Without taking too much time to consider my possible streams of recourse, which is how I handle most adversity in life, I reacted by moving to sit in the seat next to her before her beau hunk could even finish unpacking their luggage. She was a bit startled. "Excuse me?" she asked.
"Why, did you fart?" I replied.
"Why are you sitting next to me?" she continued.
"This is my row", I explained, "and you are a trespasser."
"What are you talking about?" she exclaimed.
"Oh, I think you know, lady. What’s wrong with that row back there?"
"What?!" she stammered incredulously.
"This is my row," I reiterated.
"We are free to sit anywhere we like," she argued.
"Aha! And so am I. And if you choose to desecrate my row of solitude with your presence, I choose to sit next to you where I can keep an eye on you. And consider yourself lucky, baby, because you’re not even that hot (she was pretty hot, but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of me admitting it to her), and there is no way I am kissing you good night!" I don’t know how I could have been more clear.
"Carl, do something!" she pleaded.
"I wanted to sit up there," Carl sighed.

Before long, we worked out an agreement. I agreed to return to my seat and put my clothes back on if they chose another row, and she agreed not to report me to the manager of the theater until after the movie was over. I wasn’t worried since I had already been banished from that theater and had managed to sneak by security. What could they do, double secret banish me? More importantly, I had my row back and the movie was only about half over.

Having missed the character development, plot building and any roots of parallel narratives taking place, I wasn’t sure what the movie was about. I did, however, get to see somebody pee on the religious guy from the movie Contact and see Al Pacino act as if he was doing an impression of Larry David doing his impression of George Steinbrenner on Seinfeld. Nobody was murdered, there were no car chases and I was pretty darned confused as to what was going on. In spite of that, I recommend this movie. Try to see it on a night Carl and his girlfriend stay home to fondue. The characters seemed happy and fulfilled at the end of the movie, which made me feel happy and fulfilled as well.

If you would like to hear a more thorough review of this movie, check out a Regular Guy on WXRT radio.