July 2007
Karma Is A Tough Mistress
Posted on July 25, 2007 | 2 comments
No one has to tell me there’s a serious flaw deep within my brain. And it’s not a good flaw. I have many flaws that are manageable. They make up the bulk of my personality. But the one in my head tends to do things. Don’t worry, karma always swings back on my ass so I don’t get away with it. It’s just always interesting to see what it does. If by interesting you’re talking lucky I don’t get shot.
From 7:45 when someone accosted me in the Dunkin’ Donuts line until 5:03 when I pushed the last heaping hulk out of the building someone wanted something from me. At 5:06 I wanted two little things from others. I wanted a beer from my local dives bartender. And, this is where I started pushing it. I wanted to be left alone. No talk. No touch. No trouble. The first half of my desire came though with relative ease. In front of me was a cool, frosty beverage of my choice. The second part of my wish, however, was a little more difficult in obtaining. Actually, it was impossible.I knew it but a boy can wish, can’t he?
A guy leaves me alone for a few minutes before he says,
“Smile.”
Because I ignore people speaking I’m directly looking at I obviously had no trouble ignoring this gentleman.
“Hey, how come you never smile?”
This time it was much more difficult to ignore because he had crossed into the second T: Touch. I guess that left me no option but to take it upon myself to sally forth with the final T and cause a little trouble. I slowly turned towards the guy while sipping my beer. I didn’t say anything. I just stared. I find that this option often works to, if not leave me immediately alone, let them stammer a bit before leaving. Of course I’d enjoy the first option best but I’ll take whatever I can.
After an extended silence from me and a few stutter steps from him he didn’t leave. He asks his question again and tells me it takes more muscles to frown than smile. I tell him I’m not frowning, I had a stroke.
This causes a series of what I call WTF Blinks. They think they heard me correctly but there doesn’t seem to be much truth behind it so they start sending semaphores with their eyes. I never answer back. This one usually works.
I did say usually.
Once again he says I should smile more. I nod. I’m sure I don’t need happiness lessons from a guy who spends more time in this shithole than the owner. After my one beer I’m outta here. Sure, I’m going to have to get on a bus that’s going to be doubling as a cattle barge (don’t worry, I had my Mad Cow shots) but, after that, I’m off to a very happy and joyful home.
But that doesn’t stop my brain from wanting to get involved. That bastard seems to always want to get involved in shit.
“Thanks for your concern,” my evil head begins. “But smile means something very different to me than yourself. So I save it for those times when my girlfriend is Sucking My Immensely Large Erection. That means SMILE to me!”
Now I truly do not understand how or why things like that come out of my head without warning. I can’t say I don’t enjoy the ride but it still makes me ponder. Which I do on the cattle barge on my way home. I also wonder when karma will make me pay for my heads interaction.
Turns out I didn’t have to wait long at all.
I trudge up the hill commemorated in song and interpretive dance for the creation of ass luging to my home. I know I have a few chores to complete before I can fully relax but it’s good to be home.
“We have to pick her up.” My girlfriend says the first minute I’m in the house. I drop my things, feed the cats, scoop the shit and, within three minutes, we’re in the truck to go pick up her daughter.
And two friends.
Who we have to take to the mall.
Oh karma, why must thy be such a cruel mistress?
In case you’ve never been inside a small truck with three teenaged girls let me explain the sound level. Remember the time you got stuck in that garbage truck on metal object pick-up day? It was sort of like that. Just less melodic.
They’re talking about someone in their group they don’t like. Using a phrase from Dane Cook, they call her Karen. Cook says there’s someone in each group of friends no one likes. And her name is always Karen. This is their Karen.
They rip into her. They top her stories. They make fun of the hell which is her life. If she has to clean her room some else has to paint and put in a new floor. If she has to mow the lawn someone was forced to go to topiary school to create life-sized replicas of her family. This goes on until we get to the mall.
When the real fun begins.
They wander off as the adults gather in the bar. While holding the door open watching the girls get swallowed into the belly of the beast I look up and smile.
“Thanks, karma,” I think. “It was a little uncomfortable, like shoes too small on the wrong feet, but that was a just payback for my heads earlier transgression.”
Take it from me, never thank karma. She’s a Karen.
Just as we’re cracking our second beers, the cellphone rings. It’s the kid. Although she’s been told to give us ten minutes before necessitating pick-up, ha, who am I kidding? That request never works. We have to go and go now! There’s an emergency! Life and death! Information is gathered and the earth shattering disaster is one of the girls lost her cellphone. Although this happens all the time I don’t get it. These devices are more dear to these kids than their hearts. Without it the beat of life would cease to exist. How can they be lost with such frequency?
I’m pondering that as we’re finishing our now less relaxing beverages as her daughter comes in to tell us we have to go. The search is on and it’s of the utmost importance. They’ve already scoured the mall; called people in the last house they were at; alerted SWAT (Searching Wide After Telephone). But, so far, to no avail. To the best of her memory, she may have left it in the bathroom (which they’ve already searched).
To me, if that’s the best recollection I had, my search would have ended there. I’d have put the ‘I’m An Idiot’ sign around my neck and gone about my day. But that’s not what these kids need to do. The search has just begun.
But why, if all you’re going to do is walk around the mall dialing and redialing the lost appendages number, do we have to leave this comfy and beverage filled bar? Because it’s an emergency is the answer you will receive if you ever have the misfortune to be sucked into a cellphone cyclone.
When gathering information on the girl who lost the phone I laughed (to myself. Sometimes I bite down hard on my tongue so my brain doesn’t anger Karen, I mean, karma further). You see, earlier in this week I was sitting next to my girlfriends daughter when she got a call from this girl. Who, as was conveyed to me later, called because she’d dropped her cellphone into the toilet.
For the second time this month.
Damn!
“Did you tell her to look in the toilet?”
Oh! Dang! What horrible timing the bartender needing me to speak to her at that moment. It gave my brain that slight opening to blurt out those, well, let’s be honest, fucking funny words.
“This is not,” I am being chastised. “A laughing matter! This is serious!”
Now wait just a chicken plucking minute here. If memory serves, after giving her cellphone a second dip in the STD WC, she had to bring it to the cellphone store to get a new one because it was inoperable and that was funny. Yet, carelessly leaving it on the side of a sink is a traumatic event?
I guess this proves there is a difference between a dip and a dork.
Lest you think karma was done with me, you sure haven’t been paying attention. Karma made us leave the bar and wander aimlessly through the mall close behind a gaggle of girls with one sobbing uncontrollably.
For the next half an hour.
I swear, while walking past the bar for the third time, I saw Karen wave at me.
That bitch.
2 Comments
Posted in Comedy
Tagged bound and gags, Comedy, funny, humor
Cookouts!
Posted on July 11, 2007 | 4 comments
As much as summer is a wonderful season it does have it’s drawbacks. Getting invited to people’s house for a cookout or other such gathering activities for instance. Don’t get me wrong, I might like being invited to your house for food, hell, I may even like some of the conversation and possibly even find something nice enough in your house to steal, but, inevitably, there will come a time when something goes horribly awry.
And it usually revolves around a kid. Kids, as a concept, have many uses or so I’m told. But since they’ve been cracking down on sweat shops those uses are getting less palatable.
As a reality, they’re pretty much a drenching on the campfire of fun. There could be a raging bash with loud music, loud conversation and even louder bong hits, but, through the din, there will be that one child heard above it all. What is the issue pressing this child to such vocal clamor, you ask? Who cares!
The parents, at first siren, should collect that little noise festival and whisk it away as if we’re in ‘Roadhouse’ and they’re Dalton. But do they ever? No! Never! Not once in the history of people feeling sorry for the parents because they never get to go anywhere so, despite their better judgement, they invite the spawners of the screech to the event.
What they do is stand there defiantly while triumphantly echoing to the assemblage that this is their life so grab a big spoonful and swallow.
I was at one party where the hosts became so unhinged at one kid they were about to close it down and set fire to their house. I couldn’t abide by that! After I checked the cooler to make sure I couldn’t abide by that.
I went up to the hosts and told them I’d take care of it. That shows you how distressed they were. They let me, without guidance or checking their insurance policy, handle it.
I grabbed a high powered squirt gun, turned, walked toward the kid and shot him directly in the face. I didn’t make it a barrage because I’m not that mean (okay, I am. I’d checked the water level and didn’t want to waste ammo).
I’d wet him, pause shooting, and approach. When he stopped gasping I’d stop until he made a sound. Then I would begin my volley again.
Remember, I’m in a yard full of adults who allowed me, unfettered, to march directly up to a kid firing jets of water into his face.
This went on until I was about six feet from him. I’d blasted him about eight times. Water is dripping from his eyelids. His sound weakened with each blast. But, gotta give it to the kid, he kept trying. Gasping for breath. Remaining defiant. Until,
“MOMMMMM!!!!!!!”
He gives in and rushes to the safety of his parental unit. Who, amazingly, seemed to ignore my drenching of their child. The father did look over at me but, seeing the dripping gun in my maniacal hands, smiled and nodded. I’m sure he was just as happy with the peace and quiet. I half expected a call the next day asking if I made house calls.
Just so you know, this tactic may not work for you. People may not have the same sense of impending disaster when you enter a room as is often bestowed upon me. If that’s true, my suggestion to you is use a garden hose.
I’m at a cookout in a friends beautiful backyard. I don’t know too many of the people there, they’re mostly his wives friends, so that’s good. I may have to do some small talk but, for the most part, I’m a self-contained unit. I have with me my lovely and more social girlfriend and my equally snide and growly friend, Fred.
For the most part things are going pretty well. Fred and I, looking like we’re recruiting officers for a gang, are pretty much left to our own devices. But, as sometimes happens, we got separated. The guy host corralled Fred getting into a lengthy discussion about weaponry.
They went so far as to bring out a couple fairly powerful guns of the pellet variety. Deep in the yard, away from the assemblage, a small group of us went to do a little shooting. If I must be truthful, and I must, we did more standing around drinking and laughing but, as experience has told us, people avoid a group of guys standing around with waving guns.
Little by little, as wives grumbled and girlfriends bothered, the group dispersed. The host asked Fred and I to watch the guns because he had to go make cole slaw or some other vital task he was commanded to accomplish. He said he’d put them in the basement later as we nodded and wandered back to our seats.
We put them on a table next to us as we sat down cracking more beer. So far, this has been a fine event. After a period of time with us soaking in the solitude, Fred wandered off to grab us a couple more fine and frosty beverages.
“Hey,” I said to get his attention. “Take one of the guns. I don’t think it’s advisable that either of us has two guns at any one time.”
Fred nods in agreement, grabs a gun and sticks it down his pants.
I’m sitting there enjoying the thought of this impending beer when the pinata of woe spilled it’s annoying guts all over the yard.
A few feet from my location stood a mother, father, and kid who’d been quiet. Up to this point. That all changed when the kid let’s go of a balloon and it got lodged in a tree. It could be retrieved with a short shimmy up the tree but it seemed as if his parents didn’t care the kid was freaking out. So the kid looks around and races to me to ask for assistance.
Do I look helpful? At all? That just goes to show you how stupid kids are. Just because I’m a few feet from his ignoring parents doesn’t mean I’m next in line. But, in situations like this I’ve learned a few things. Such as screaming,
“Fuck off you little snot farm before I jam my sneaker up your mother’s twat so she doesn’t infest the earth with any more of your ilk!”
Is frowned upon.
Psychically satisfying, but frowned upon among the general populace. Even for someone with my reputation.
The kid is whining and thrashing for my help. I look to his parents who pretend to be childless. Oh, if they only knew how close I was to making their wish come true.
I look around at all the other party goers and notice that my friends, people I’d been in the pits of hell with, like Fred, the host, and my girlfriend, are laughing their asses off.
So this is how it’s going to be, eh?
I look at the kid with burger juice flowing down my arm, beer next to me, my ass firmly hidden from humanities view and ponder my next move. The kid looks planted in his search for assistance. I look at him and tell him to go bother his father. Shocked, the kid spins off, approaches his father who tells him it’s just a balloon and to get over it.
Just a balloon? Just a balloon? Yeah, well, it is just a balloon. But it’s the only balloon this kid has received this day and, possibly, this entire week. And, because of that, he’s not letting go. The kid starts ranting and pointing and, generally, looking like a crazy person.
As enjoyable as all this sounds (a kid tormented because his newest prized possession is out of his grasp while getting a buzz and eating something dead does sound entertaining) it quickly became annoying. The kid beseeches me to do something.
So, because the drinking and eating part is still fun, I try to get rid of the thing that would be much more enjoyable from across the yard.
I stand up, put my arm on the kid (yes, I did it to wipe the grease off my arm. I felt I should get something out of this deed), and smile.
“It’s been said by people smarter than I that, if you love something you should let it go. If it comes back it was meant to be.”
I reach down, pick up the pellet gun, get a good grip and. . .
Pift.
“As true as that may be, trust me, they never come back the same way they left.”
As the balloon plummets to the ground I sit, lay the gun on the table and smile. His face is tormented as he races to his, now, noloon. He picks it’s up, looks at me sadly with what looks like a Dali clock across his arms. It only takes a moment but he accepts his fate as he makes a large arc around my location.
Soon after Fred comes back with a beer and we spent the rest of the cookout having one hell of a time. When we left I was actually looking forward to my next cookout invitation.
Invitations can be sent through this web site. But don’t get your hopes up. I’m pretty booked for the next month or so.
