Have you ever had one of those days? You know, when you wake up, make some breakfast, take a shower, put on some cloths, go to work, go to open a letter and get a paper cut that gets infected and you wind up in the hospital having your arm removed? Well, I hope you never have because that would be just terrible. Could you imagine having to tell that story in a bar? “How did you loser your arm Philip?” “I lost it to an envelope.” You would probably get beaten up a lot  just because nobody would understand, and since you hang out in shitty bars, that is the type of person you are probably going to end up talking to. You had a lot going for you before the envelope incident. Now you can’t go near a post office without wetting your pants. Forget the Publisher’s Clearing House,  you sure as hell aren’t going to win that if you can’t be around the entry form. Having a deep fear of paper is probably the stupidest and most agonizing of all phobias. How the hell do you get away from all forms of paper? How do you wipe after using the toilet? How do you make paper dolls? Well, you can’t because you are a fucking mess. I think they make a drug for you, but unfortunately the bottle has a paper sticker on it that keeps you from opening it. There it is, sitting, starting you in the face, your cure, your one and only shot, but the very thing that it is there to cure is keeping you from it. I have no idea what to write next. Do you like cats? I like them, although I haven’t always. I used to be very allergic but now I seem not to be. I have a cat now and she meows and poops a lot.

I probably shouldn’t have posted this nonsense.

I love bread, who invented it? It is so damn tasty and we don’t often appreciate where the hell it came from. In fact, nobody really knows. The poor person who invented bread is forever lost in history yet everyone knows who invented the cotton gin, and who the hell gives a crap about that? I bet the person who invented bread was very nice and enjoyed playing prehistoric board games with her neighbor, who was also her sister, and her cousin. They did a lot of inbreeding in those days. Let’s give this person a name — Bertha Butterbutt. That is probably not right, because Bertha as a name wasn’t all that popular 12,000 years ago. Bertha was the wife of a seal clubber and lived in a little cave in upstate Porgangio. She often toiled in her rock kitchen with rock cooking utensils and her rock oven and was experimenting one morning with smashing up grain with a stick. She smashed it, ground it up, stepped on it, threw it around, snorted it and blew in it, yet it never turned into anything but powder. She finally got so fed up that she broke down over her big bowl of pummeled grain and cried and cried and cried. When she realized she’d gotten it all wet with tears, she dumped it on a pile of rocks and went over to her sister’s cave to play Boggle (invented by an idiot who liked to eat rocks and poop them out.) Afternoon quickly came and the day turned out to be a scorcher. Bertha decided she needed to go get some water to cool off her pet pickle. As she reached under her rock sink she was hit by a delicious smell coming from the rock pile. She quickly ran over and saw the wet grain had turned into a tan crusty new thing. She picked it up, tasted it and said, “OH MY GOD, I JUST INVENTED FUCKING BREAD… and also the use of ‘fucking’ as an adjective.” Her sister came rushing over and they invented the bake sale. There you have it, bread was invented by accident with flour and tears. Doesn’t that make you want to go cry into some flour right now?

For you smart asses who are now saying, “This guy doesn’t know anything about bread —you need yeast, where is the yeast? I see no yeast.” Well, yeast wasn’t introduced until 8,000 years later by the Egyptians. That story is very disturbing and involves an old sweat sock.

Have you ever had that feeling you are not alone? Like when you are standing in line for Subway at the mall — you know, that shitty one that is not nearly as good as the stand alone Subways, but better than the gas station ones. Who the fuck decides to get a sandwich while pumping gas anyway? “Boy these noxious fumes are really putting me in the mood for a meatball on honey oat that might possibly carry the flavor of refined oil. I should also use the bathroom while I am here and not look at the seat before I sit down.” If this is you, I bet you watch a lot of really shady porn and huff paint. You should probably be ashamed of yourself, but you aren’t because when your neighbor punted you over a fence as a baby, that part of your brain broke. I feel bad for you. Good news is you could probably run for senate.

Anyway, back to the initial question… Wow, that was a stupid question and I can see why I went off on a tangent. If you feel like you are not alone while in a line full of people, it is probably pretty normal. If you feel like you are totally alone, then you might want to seek help. You could even go to the medic station in the mall. I bet that would give them something to talk about. “This idiot came in today complaining of feeling alone while in line to buy a sandwich. We sent him to Spencer Gifts to stare at the black light posters and he totally did it — what an asshole.”

Remember the band Better than Ezra? Well Ezra got pissed and killed them

I usually title my posts before I start writing them. I am not completely sure why. Sometimes it is for inspiration, other times it is because I feel like it, and occasionally it is because I was run down by a monkey wearing a popcorn bag on his head yelling “FUCK THE POLICE” and flinging shit while riding a tuna. I hate it when that happens, and unfortunately it happens a lot.

I miss writing in my blog. This time it was actually because I have been busy — the last time was pure laziness. A lot has happened, I would tell you all about it , but your response would be, “Boy, I really don’t give a damn that you did that, I’ve got my own shit to worry about. Stop thinking I want to know this shit, GOD!” Instead, I will tell you the story of King Ferdinand.

Ferdinand was King of Stanstanistan for only 1 short year, 215BC, actually it was the same length as any other year, minus leap year, but I describe it as short because it really flew by. 

Ferdinand’s rise to power was certainly unorthodox, even for a stupid country like Stanstanistan. One day he was shoveling shit for the local shittery, and the next day he was King. You see, back then you didn’t have to be born of royal blood to have a shot at the throne, all you had to do was drink a gallon of milk in an hour, or be able to make a really tasty gumbo. Well Ferdinand could do neither of those things, but he sure could play a mean hambone. He was the inventor of the hambone in fact. He discovered the technique by accident one day when he was bombarded by flies — typical for a shit shoveler — and he just started slapping away. The result was something rhythmic and the shit shoveler next to him started to dance. It quickly spread though the shit fields and pretty soon everyone was dancing and clapping right along with him. The next day the sitting king, King Everyonehatesme, died of a heroin overdose and since nobody else had done anything interesting, they declared Ferdinand as King. Within days, Ferdinand’s fame and fortune went to straight his head and he spent all of the country’s money on solid gold mechanical pony, and used up the yearly food reserves at a pool party/baking contest for his old high school friends. With no money and no food, Stanstanistan quickly spiraled into a deep depression. After 4 months, 78% of the population had moved to Canadastan, and those who were left behind started to plan an overthrow. Being that all the smart people had moved, the plan they devised was pretty lame. Late one night, two men snuck into the King’s chambers armed with pillows. They slowly crept up to Ferdinand’s bed and right before they lurched, both of them were decapitated by the guardsmen they forgot to kill on the way in. With no brainpower left in the population, and no more pillows, the people gave up and pooled their money to buy a boat and crossed the river to Richassistan where they all got free admission to the zoo, and a nice snack. The next day Stanstanistan was invaded by Fuckoffistan and Ferdinand was put on a small rowboat and set out to sea with only a can of clams and no way to open it. He was never heard from again.

Fin

A couple of weeks ago, I was faced with the very challenging decision of what to do with my old lawn mower. I was confronted with this dilemma after finding out about the Great Maryland Lawn Mower Exchange. This is one of those deals where you bring in your old manly gas powered mower, and trade it in for a clean battery powered sissy mower and get a 65% discount. It was a good deal so we decided to go for it. The problem was, I was very attached to my old mower. My family and I got it when I was ten years old and I was so excited because I got to help pick it out and bring it home. It was a shiny red Snapper easy-start, self propelled, 3.5 horse power, grass bagging bad ass mother fucker and I loved it. I could barely move the thing around, but it cut grass like a coked up goat. As I grew up we became inseparable, we would go to the movies, play music together, throw things at unsuspecting kids from high above in our favorite tree… hmm maybe I did that with my best friend Mike. Oh well, I mowed the grass with it a lot and sometimes cleaned dog shit off of its wheels, so we were certainly bonded. Anyway, I grew up with it, drove it out to Maryland from Ohio when I got my first house, then moved again to my current house.

The night before we traded it in, I mowed with it for the last time. The gas and oil had to be empty so I decided to run it until it was empty. It chugged along mowing this way and that until finally it started to sputter… sputter… sputter…. then no more… The lifeless mower just sat there like a neglected baby left out in the snow. It passed away with only 2 strips of grass left to go. So I put a little more gas in it and YAY it came back to life. It mowed the last two strips, then the job was done. After a few minutes it died again, but was much less sad this time. I let it cool, drained the oil and loaded it up in the truck.

The next day we drove it out to Camden Yards where the event took place. We pulled up to a mountain of dead mowers and some guy grabbed my sweet little friend out of the back of the truck and started to take it away. I asked him to stop so I could get a picture of it, and apparently that was the weirdest thing ever because all these people came up to me (including an ABC news crew) and started asking me all about it. Why the fuck would I want a picture of a mower, and why am I so attached to it, and how do you take a picture with this iPhone. I must be strangest person on earth. The news crew followed us through the entire process and just must have thought I was insane. Jess (much smarter than I am) stayed in the car and out of sight.

Here is the story….. I am in it a lot at then end. Yes, I know I am driving an explorer to a green event so you can just shut up about it.

http://wjz.com/video/?id=73533@wjz.dayport.com

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live on the moon? I haven’t, but figure some people may have… It seems to me that living on the moon would be fun for about an hour, but when you never find the beach and there are no cows to tip, you would realize your mistake in vacation planning. You could jump around a lot I guess, but that whole cheese thing was proven to be false so don’t plan on not bringing a snack. It might be fun to find the moon landing site and try to find some Tang bottles that still have some residue left in them. Drinking Tang left on the moon by Neil Armstrong would probably be an experience you could tell someone else about at a party when you don’t have anything better to talk about. I wonder if Astronauts really even like Tang. I mean whenever you run into one of at the store, that is all they want to talk about, “Have you tried this tang? It is magnificent.” Then you are like “What about space dude, I mean, that seems to be even cooler than Tang.” To which they usually reply, “Fuck space man, I do it for the Tang.” I always get suspicious when they hand me a coupon for 20 cents off the purchase of 12 jars. Do they even sell Tang anymore?

I spent the greater part of the last two months coming up with a new name for this blog and drawing a new header illustration — the greatest portion of that time being spent on the little bird. He was really hard to draw. I know it doesn’t look like much, but it is truly a technical breakthrough. The yellow I used is a brand new color that nobody has ever seen before. It is actually an optical illusion because your computer monitor can’t actually make that color. I created the data using a simi-boratomic algorithm taken from the nearly undetectable radiation emitted from bat semen and spliced it with the coding system used by the USSR during the Cold War that was hidden in reruns of Loony Tunes in attempt  to brainwash U.S. children into drinking vodka. Lazy people make up words.

Okay, so I took some time off because this blog didn’t relate to my situation anymore. I still work for myself, but it feels like a job, so whatever. I went back and read some of what I had written in this blog and think some things are much better than others. I should stay away from pop-culture, because other people do that much better, and there is too much of that on the internet anyway. If I review a movie I should watch it first because Avatar was actually pretty good. Making fun of bad advertisements is banned too, you already know they are bad. I am going to try as hard as possible to only post original content, and use this as a place to experiment with writing. Feel free to comment, good or bad. I am going to experiment, so surely a lot of it will suck.

Actually, several people come from Nantucket — although I don’t believe I have ever met one. Maybe they don’t like to travel because they think Nantucket is the best place on earth and going elsewhere would be a big waste of time. Wow, they sure are missing out — what closed-mindedness. Oh well, I guess that is a few less people we have to deal with while waiting in line for It’s a Small World. If you just agreed with me, then you have very poor taste in rides, because that one sucks. Why do they still even have it? It is not scary, fun, humorous, wet, dangerous or a good place to eat lunch so therefore it is totally useless. Some parents think their kids will like it, well they won’t, they will just end up making fun of it in a Smlog (that is a blog in the future). Take them on Space Mountain, ignore the “you must be taller than Mickey’s middle finger to ride”, because it is more fun for them to almost slip out of their seats and cheat death.

My brother used to lie to me constantly. He got a kick out of making me believe inaccurate historical “facts”. I think the the worst one was about how the word diarrhea came to be. It goes something like this…

Back in the Dark Ages when people were mean to each other for fun, the king would go house to house tormenting citizens because apparently he didn’t really have much to do. He would make fun of their kids, punch them in the throats and step on their cats so they make that noise that cats make when you step on them.

One day, the king came across a family with a sick grandmother. When he came to the door they asked politely, “Oh please King Shlep, today is not a good day for you to make fun of us, Granny is sick with the liquid excrement.” The king gets a big grin on his face and barges through the door. “Where is she?” They point to the bathroom and he bursts in as she makes her duty and screams “DIE OR EAT IT!” Granny, not hearing so well, hears it jumbled up as one word (diarrhea) and just looks at him with astonishment. When she felt better, she went around telling the story about how the king barged in on her while she was sick just to let her know the name of her ailment. She really liked him after that and often sent him flowers, which he ended up being very allergic to and gave him a bad rash.

I believed his story, god was I stupid when I was four.

I am writing a blog post. It is composed of letters, words,  sentences and even paragraphs (probably two). Some of these sentences are poorly structured and may use improper punctuation, but I think that is okay. I think punctuation is something that should be used however we want, and I say fuck the rules! Punctuation doesn’t actually say anything, it just tells us when to pause, when to pause longer, when a list of shit is going to be said, when something has been spoken in dialogue, to stop a sentence, to denote and inflection according to the principles of question asking. Okay well maybe it is important and I should play closer attention — whatever.

This reminds me of a story. Back when I was in high school (attending, but normally not actually paying attention) I got an English assignment to write a fictional story about something you would like to happen in the future. I thought about blowing it off, then decided this may be fun and I should go ahead and actually try to write something decent for once instead of turing in my usual shit. Maybe this would be the assignment that turned me around and made me start paying attention to classes other than Art, and the sciences. Over the next week I really worked hard, tossing out story ideas, doing research, staying up late — I even had it proofread (something I neglect to do on this blog quite frequently). I turned it in and couldn’t have been more proud of myself. That night I went home and started reading Beowulf, because it was assigned and I was going to be a great student. Two days later our papers were returned and my heart was racing with anticipation as the teacher walked around handing our papers back one by one. When she came to me, she looked it it, turned it over to hide the grade (surely an A+) from my potentially jealous neighbors and gave me an odd and unexpected look. I waited until she left and turned it over….. “This paper is too good to have been written by you — F.” Without thinking and before I could stop myself I said, “WHAT THE FUCK?” which got little more than a harsh glare and a “See me after class” from my new worst enemy. I stayed after class and talked to the meanest person on earth, but got absolutely nowhere. She was convinced I had not written the paper and that I was destined to never pen a worthwhile sentence ever in my entire life. The last thing I said to her before storming out of the room was,”Fine, I will just go back to not caring about your class and turn in crap from now on.” which I did.