November 2014

Too Much, Too Soon

Posted on November 19, 2014 | 4 comments

November 1, 2014 11:11AM.

I will never forget that day (only because I can always come back here and read this).

It was a rare day off so we were doing things people have to do on their days off. Of course, it’s not what I want to do on my days off but I’m told if I want to keep a roof over my head I’d better listen to my supposed better half.

So the day after we spent a night in a bar filled with sexy nurses, sexy toll booth attendants and sexy Ebola victims I was going to have to enter a store scarier than a stadium full of sexy shoe salesmen. I won’t name the store in question because to do so would only conjure up the visage of a sexy Beelzebub himself. So what I’ll do in a time honored comedy tradition is make you guess what the name is via words that closely sound like said pit of hell.

Missmass Pee Shop.

If you don’t have one of those soul sucking establishments where you live consider yourself lucky. And keep it to yourself because I don’t want to hear about your good fortune.

I’ve said it in these very pages that this place is a bigger threat to the sanctity of human life and welfare than the US senate in session. Have you ever had an experience that made your ass pucker so tight you could taste what you had for dinner three days ago? That’s how it feels when you are dragged kicking and screaming into that bowel of swill.

Before you enter this pit of desperation you can smell it. They tell me it’s potpourri but you can’t fool me. It’s the stench of melting souls from pervious unfortunate men. It’s a scent that lingers with you forever. Like New Jersey.

I fall into my The Shopping Dead thorazine shuffle, trying desperately not to let anything reach out and grab me (that’s my theory anyway. You don’t actually ‘buy’ anything in this store. It jumps off the shelf into your cart. That’s the only explanation for a three foot tall satanic looking farting Santa to be in anyone’s cart). I see like weary men feeling the heaviness of being soulless and give them nearly imperceptible nods. When you know you’re going down it’s good to have a few friends on the other side.

Suddenly, as if the soul sucking vacuum has been turned up to eleven, I am stopped dead in my tracks. Could this store have finally gathered the last of my frayed soul? Am I about to collapse in an aisle of 50% off Halloween decorations? I look at my Zell Bros. Jewelers watch to mark the time. 11:11AM on the previously mentioned November 1 I heard the song ‘Have A Holly, Jolly Christmas’ grind through the air like a belt sander.

I grab my ears and twist them. My tintinitus must be playing tricks on me. There is no way in hell, even this hell, anyone would be playing Christmas carols the day after Halloween. No, it can’t be. I’m looking into the eyeless holes of a half price skeleton. Seeing that and hearing that cannot exist in the world. Yet it does. What evil would cause this to happen?

The Missmass Pee Shop comes the answer.

Maybe it’s just a fluke, I think while being lead deeper into this bastion of unrelenting horror. Maybe it’s just a starter song. You know, a warning to the devils who work here that if they think their lives suck now just wait to see what’s in store for them over the next fifty-four days. It takes all the strength I can muster not to run out of the store screaming. I try to console myself by figuring the music machine is just pulling a fast one. The next song has to be a standard piece of drivel usually squeezed out of it’s tinny speakers. It just has to be.

But it isn’t.

Winter Wonderland is spit into the air. Which is causing me to seize. I cannot stop my eyes from blinking. I’m light-headed. My shaky palms are sweating. Then suddenly a wondrous thing happened. I went into the state of hysterical deafness. I may be the first person in the world for this to happen to. I could be a medical marvel. But no, wait. It’s not really deafness, is it? It’s more like selective hearing. I cannot hear whatever it is the human responsible for me experiencing this is saying. All I can hear is Christmas tunes. On November first.

Too much, too soon.

Shuffling through this hellish landscape I feel nothing. My soul has been chomped to it’s core. I am a non-feeling creature. Three, four, five Christmas songs in a row. I wish I had state secrets because I’d offer them up to anyone who wanted them right now to make this stop. I am a mere husk of the man I used to be.

Just then, in a cacophonous rumble, all sound returns. Everything is amplified but nothing more so than a minion of terror pushing her cart filled to over flowing with Christmas decorations no one needs yet will somehow leap into their carriage when their back is turned looking at a candle holder in the shape of a snow flake. What the associate of hell is singing is too high a frequency for a soulless vessel to hear but I can read her lips and know for sure that she is singing along to the fucking song.

As you’d expect, a murderous rage is my go to emotion. I know what you’re thinking, when isn’t it? But, unlike every other moment in my day, it passes quickly. Her death, which would have come swiftly for I am a kindly murderer, does not arrive. Instead a weird emotion courses through my body when she looks up at me from behind her dolly of useless items she’s going to exchange for the remains of the Halloween decorations. She shrugs her shoulders and says,

“Christmas.” With a beaten tone. It was then I figured whatever sins she’s done to make her live here full time, well, there’s nothing a mere mortal such as I can do that would be worse. I let her pass with her cart of uselessness.

It was then, as the seventh Christmas song played in a row on this first day of November, a life line in the form of words is thrown my way,

“Let’s get out of here.” I have heard many words in my day but none have been so life affirming.

Or would have been of the drone at the register could move faster than a glacier. It was then, as the ninth Christmas song of the day began, we finally slipped out the door to attempt to regain a smidgen of my soul. It happened slowly during the day but I did finally slip back into the mean spirited asstard you’ve come to expect.

November 1, 2014 11:11AM.

The day the Christmas music should have died.

While watching a. . .

Posted on November 14, 2014 | Leave a comment

. . .wasted guy trying to get money out of his pocket (and failing) I thought,

“The mind is a terrible thing not wasted.”

While watching a. . .

Posted on November 6, 2014 | Leave a comment

. . .wasted guy trying to get money out of his pocket (and failing) I thought,

“The mind is a terrible thing not wasted.”

It’s All About The Class

Posted on November 5, 2014 | 2 comments

So, because I’m classy, I was in one of the classier boites in the downtown area. And by classy I mean there was no blood on the floor. Yet.

I’d never been here before so was unaware of the amount of class that oozed from it’s feted walls. Whatever varnish was on the floor has long been scraped off by the shuffling soles of long dead men’s shoes.

I’m sitting next to a classy gentleman who was glaring into the ether mumbling what could be classical sonnets when a classy lady wearing a muumuu and what could be best classified as a fright wig bellowed something unintelligible to everyone, except herself, before lifting up her muumuu to display what can best be described as a 1970’s era porno muff.

Classy! Thou is on display today.

Her crotch looked like something a bridge troll would reject as being just too damn scary.

With many folks averting their eyes to avoid blindness while others brayed in fits of abject horror, I remained calm allowing the fracas to wash over me like a warm summer day. At the beach. After a nuclear meltdown. And a tsunami. Which broke apart a graveyard. And all the bodies washed ashore. During low tide. And the bathhouse is closed for renovation so you’ll never get the stench off your flip-flops.

Do you see my level of tolerance for the world around me? Astounding, ain’t it?

This whirling dervish finally catches up with her innate dizziness and comes to a complete stop staring and panting in my general direction. I smile at her a comforting smile that, hopefully, conveys my sentiment of, “One step closer and I’ll taze ya.” Sorry, even my tolerance has its limits. I look at her for a second, bush billowing in the breeze, and ask,

“Do you need a scrunchie for that thing?”

#funny #humor #boundandgags #comedy #chriszell