Saturday, November 17, 2012

DAY 89: THE HULK


(Transcript of a telephone conversation between my delicate flower of a wife and myself from earlier in the week)

Ex-ter-min-ate!...Ex-ter-min-ate!
EX-TER-MIN-ATE!...EX-TER-MIN-ATE!
(that's my ringtone)


Me: (answering my phone) Thrill me.

Wife: Can you come get me?

Me: I can't, my wife should be home any second now to make me a turkey pot pie, it's too risky!

Wife: Ha ha, very droll. I think I locked my keys in my car.

Me: Are Lou Ferrigno?!

Wife: Wha...? Am I...? What did you just say?

Me: Are Lou Ferrigno?

Wife: Am I Lou Ferrigno?! Why am I Lou Ferrigno? You're Lou Ferrigno!! 

Me: Answer me...Are Lou Ferrigno?

Wife: What are you talking about?! I think it's going to rain...

Me: It's our new thing.

Wife: What is? You understand that I'm locked out of my car, right?

Me: Whenever we were going to say "Are you for real?" instead now we say "Are Lou Ferrigno?"

Wife: (Long pause)....sigh...my coat is in the car...

Me: Say it.

Wife: Grrrr...."Are Lou Ferrigno?!"

Me: No, that's my part, I already said that. Say your part.

Wife: Fine! "I'm Lou Ferrigno!" Satisfied?! Now are you coming to get me or what?!!!!

Me: Noooo. Whenever I say "Are Lou Ferrigno?" the correct response is "You bet your Bill Bixby!"

Wife: I'm freezing, it's getting dark! This isn't funny.

Me: No it's not....It's frickin' awesome is what it is. I just thought of it now. Pretty cool, huh?

Wife: Fuck...it's starting to rain!

Me: Really? Are Lou Ferrigno?

Wife: Seriously! Hurry up!

Me: BZZZZT! Incorrect! What do you say?

Wife: A-ha! I say I just found my keys in my purse Ass Clown, and you are a dead man!

Me: Oh. I take it there will be no turkey pot pie to be had?

Wife: "Oh" is right Cock Monkey!

Me: Are you mad?

Wife: You bet your Motherfuckin' Bill Bixby!



Sunday, October 28, 2012

DAY 88: HALLOWEEN 2




Good evening boils and ghouls! 

That mythical time of year is once again upon us, a month long tribute to all things mysterious, spooky, and all together ooky, culminating in All Hallowtide. The Night of the Hunter. Dia De Los Muertos: The Day of the Dead. That feeling of creeping dread, the ominous foreboding, the ball tightening disquiet....I love every second of it!

For those who know me, or have been following on here long enough to recognize my awesomeness, they know my ghastly glee is not grounded in the thinning of any veils or the solemn celebration of any Solstices. Unlike the capricious masses my affiliation with fear is not fleeting; for me everyday is Halloween. My excitement revolves around the fact that at this time of the year the rest of society embraces my world, accepts it and, albeit briefly, me.

During the Season of the Witch exploitive consumerism ensures I am blissfully surrounded by imagery normally considered macabre 11 months of the year: gothic castles and gargoyles displaying darkly beautiful architecture and sculpture; Creatures of the Night, what sweet music they make, so rare and exotic; the Undead, representing immortality and the promise of a better day, their impending apocalypse favourable to a world of punch clocks, mortgages and Honey Boo Boo. Halloween Specials litter the coveted Friday Night slot, reminding us that The Addams' were probably the most loving and functional family, Chuck needed to kick Van Pelt's blue frocked ass, and Fat Albert was really fucking fat.

Not everyone shares my passion for hot sweaty terror, even during this awesome Autumn Equinox. Their own personal demons and aversion to a case of the Creeps prevents them from enjoying the rush of palpable palpitations and cloying fear. In my world these are the Odd and Unlucky, the Freaks.

One such weirdo is my wife.

A beacon of positivity, she is one possessed of such constant cheery disposition that she can not fathom the desire to be terrified, to embrace The Dark.  It sickens me.

We were nearly not a We. 

There was almost no second date as the first was to go to the movies. More specifically a horror movie. On Devil's Night. 

At this point I didn't know she couldn't handle horror movies, that there was something wrong with her. Why she agreed to go I have no idea other than she must have been overcome by the sheer magnitude of my...awesomeness. What can I say, I'm a master wooer. I'm into wooing. I guess I woo.

I wasn't one of those cheeseball contrived lame-o's who thought taking a girl to a horror movie would make her crush her face into my heaving pectorals and cling tenaciously to my steel-like biceps as her terror mounted. No, my selection of the flick was more selfish than lecherous. I had decided that I was going to be Myself, not the Ideal First Date Version of myself, and well, that could only mean I'd end up upsetting her and never seeing her again, so I might as well pick a movie I wanted to see, and all the other people I could have seen it with I'd already upset.

As it turns out it was my bluntness and complete honesty that won her over and made her swoon. And she got so freaked out during the movie that she crushed her face into my heaving pectorals and clung tenaciously to my steel-like biceps as her terror mounted, which was pretty sweet.

We left the safety of the darkened theater only to discover that a thick and baleful fog had rolled into town. You literally could not see two feet in front of you. Misshapen shadows drifted in and out of the viscous brume. When I queried in a hushed tone "What was that?!" my date and future bride slapped my arm that she had attached herself too thinking I was trying to scare her, but truth be told I swear I could hear things moving behind that murky veil, vile things, slithering...scurrying.

We blindly fumbled through the lot in search of my car, which was parked in the farthest row away from the theater in a feeble attempt at exercise. Grey faces would suddenly lurch out of the even more grey miasma, only to disappear again just as quickly; sounds were thick and muted, unearthly and slightly unreal. Unseen Things would brush passed our shoulders, like a shark testing a potential tasty morsel. I was in my element and made a silent wish to the Elder Gods that this night would never end.

I eventually found my car by hitting the panic button on my keys.

The drive home was treacherous and slow, my headlights completely ineffectual. I didn't mind, in fact I was grinning from ear to lopsided ear as the beautiful woman beside me was clutching to my free hand and leaning as close to me as her seatbelt would allow. Suddenly she screamed in absolute terror, startling me from my doe-eyed revelry and making my earbulbs tremble. I slammed on the breaks and calmly enounced "Jesusfuckingchristwhatthefuckwoman!" as I am wont to do on occasions of unexpected shrill and piercing exclamations.

She was wildly gesticulating towards the drivers side window, her mouth agape in a silent scream as though the bellow she had just loosed had stolen the last of her voice. Her fear was both intoxicating and contagious and I was hesitant to follow her gaze. I slowly admired her slender arm, appreciating the  smoothness of the hollow of her elbow, noticing how the ultra fine and near invisible hairs on the appendage were standing on end, up to the supple wrist, and ending at the delicate and quivering finger that was wagging out my window. I didn't see anything at first as I was still drunk off the image of her perfect alabaster skin.

Wait...there...a darker patch in the swirling mist. Something was there.

Something big and lumbering. 
And it was coming closer. 
Getting larger and more defined.
It appeared to be a tangle of fur and legs. Lots of legs. And there was a clicking and scraping of claws on the wet cement. I didn't move. Not because I was unable to or frozen with fear, but because I wanted to see what fresh hell this was scuttling towards me. I needed to see.

My heart raced with giddy excitement as I envisioned some great demon-spawned arachnid inching its way towards my open window, or perhaps it was some mutated bear, hideously deformed through years of feeding on wildlife tainted by mutagens caused by industrial pollution. Oh god please let it be a giant mutated bear! 

The shadow slinked out of the obscuring fog and into full sight. My soulmate-in-waiting let out a sharp gasp. A grinning Christopher Robin-esque schoolboy in knee-high wellington boots and a blue and yellow Paddington bear rain-slicker emerged from the enveloping damp shroud. He was being lead by two standard poodles on rainbow striped leashes. The one on the left had a pink bow tied to its overly large and adorable head.

My date suddenly burst into tears. In between ragged sobs she said "Take me home. Now".

I told you I'd upset her.


To Be Continued...




Saturday, September 22, 2012

DAY 87: BSG-WTF?


I have always paid attention to the way people communicate, the language they use. I've found it to be an invaluable tool when manipulating those less awesome, and by those less awesome I mean everyone who is not me.

Language has always fascinated me. Just for fun I once translated an ancient Sumerian text I found in the Kandarian ruins containing bizarre burial rites, funerary incantations, and demon resurrection passages.  It was never meant for the world of the living. But that's another tale from the riverbank.

Sure, I make the rare erroneous grammatical and semantical submissions myself from time to time, usually spawned by the lack of sleep that comes with being a dashing playboy, but today's developing, and more alarmingly, accepted, vernacular not only sticks in my craw, but has a firm grasp on my goat.

I recognize that every generation has its own slang, man, but the following are 10 of the many that are just like, totally bogus:


1I HEART: Just as obnoxious in the written word as spoken. One does not HEART something, you can't NOUN something You VERB it. If it was a picture of the symbol of a heart, and it was before the letters N & Y would you say "I HEART"? If the answer is yes, "I Jam My Thumb Deep Into Your Eye Socket You". 

2. Ro-But: In reference to the electro-mechanical machine of humanoid appearance that I may or may not be building in my basement to assist me in the servo-crushing of my enemies and the ultimate goal of world domination. BOT...RO-BOT. There is no 'U', no 'uh', no 'but'. 

3. Shedule: If you don't recognize this word its because it doesn't exist. Its Schedule, pronounced 'skedule', just like it says in the dictionary you pretentious tweed wearing douche. With the drunken exception of schnapps, and schottische (a forgotten drunken Scottish polka, but who can understand those sweaty socks anyway), words starting with SCH are pronounced as a hard SK. The sheeming shitzophrenic shooner captain was on shedule. Sheesh, don't they teach you anything in them thar fancy shools?

4. For realz: The urbanization of the letter 'S'. This was long overdue. I can't tell you how long I've tripped over that cumbersome sss sound, or become tongue tied trying to pluralize a word. The groundbreaking shift to the letter Z in place of S is Nobel worthy. Ya boyz!

5. Punkin: Similar to # 4, the replacement of consonants to formulate completely unnecessary new words still recognizable to their simple origins makes you sound like a web-toed inbred. Examples include the double D in place of T's, such as Buddons instead of Buttons, Middens in lieu of Mittens; Birfday; Punkin...really? Punkin? Fuck you. Why switch out letters as you see fit, dropping others all together? Oh, because you were TRYING to sound like a mentally deficient 5 year old girl with a cold and a hair-lip. If you really want to sound like you have recently broken your nose, just keep it up Popeye.

6. OMG: Ah text-speak, how I loathe thee. At least I understood its original purpose. Words and sentences were abbreviated so one could keep up with the instant conversations being held via chatrooms or texting as the typing took time; what short hand was to dictation. But to have that necessity adopted into verbal communications is just fucking asinine. To hear someone actually say "Oh. Em. Gee", instead of "Oh my god" makes me want to hit something, like the face of the person saying "Oh. Em. Gee". What time are you saving? 3 syllables are 3 syllables. Seriously, WTF (note: in this form it takes longer to say than What The Frak)?

7. EPIC FAIL: I could write a diatribe the length of the narrative poem Beowulf on how this catch-phrase makes my blood boil, but I will keep it to the point. This saying is used both descriptively and grammatically incorrectly. EPIC is something impressive, majestic, vast, something of unusually great size or extent. The Grand Canyon is EPIC. Coming out of an ollie into a Darkside Grind with your gay-assed skateboard is not EPIC. Nutting yourself on the railing when said Darkside Grind goes awry, or simply tripping up the stairs after one too many brown bottle pops is not A FAIL. It is a FAILURE. And pretty freakin' funny because your pain makes me happy.

8. Miracle: While we are on the topic of misused words it's only fair that I educate you primitive screwheads on the perversion of the word Miracle when used in relation to Childbirth. This is completely diametric to the definition of a miracle. A miracle is something that surpasses or is contrary to the laws of nature and is attributed to a supernatural or unexplained cause. Something rare, an anomaly, maybe even thaumaturgic. There is absolutely nothing miraculous about childbirth. It is completely natural and commonplace. Approximately 500,000 babies are born every day. It has been occurring for literally millions of years, hardly a rarity. It's the one thing we were designed to do! After breathing, eating, tweeting, and copulating, its the most common and regular occurrence on the planet. If anything, its banal, boring, bourgeois. Stop trying to make it into something more than it is, which is mundane. Sorry ladies.

9. Axe: As in "Let me axe you a question". ASK. "Let me ASK you a question". 3 letters, 1 syllable! How difficult could this possibly be?! Holy living fuck you have to be some special kind of stupid to not be able to wrap your puny brain and tongue around this simple word. This used to be my number 1 linguistic peeve. Until very recently, when it was usurped by the disturbing prevalence of...

10. I know, right?No, no you obviously don't know, otherwise you would not be framing this as a question of uncertainty seeking validation. No sir, you do not know. Not at all.


These are just a few of the many examples that are like totally grody to the max, like bag yer face fer sure. The removal of these from our current lexicon would be like totally tubular. 

Bitchin', IKR?




Saturday, September 8, 2012

DAY 86: WORLD'S FINEST



I am truly a blessed man.

My wife and I are a perfect match for each other. Like two awesome superpowers of awesomeness. Partners. 

I know I am not an easy person to live with. I am riddled with neurosis and peccadilloes of specificity, not to mention my remarkable ability to limit our social circle through my ever-present and increasing powers of Bluntness and Misanthropy.  But she is incredibly patient and understanding. 

She gets me. 

I could go on and on ad nauseam about how beautiful and kind she is and about how ridiculously suited we are for each other, but I think the following exchange from earlier today as we observed The Highway Dance of the Self-Absorbed Assholes is a pretty good snapshot of why she's awesome, why I love her, why I married her, and why we belong together:

Wife: (Out of the blue) You're right. People suck! Everybody's an idiot! No one knows how drive, they're all douchebags!

Me: You had me at "You're right".



















Sunday, July 22, 2012

DAY 84: THE DARK KNIGHT



"I don't understand what makes a man hate another man, help me understand"
                                                                                                   -Depeche Mode


I've been thinking and talking a lot about the tragic shooting at the Colorado film premiere of the Dark Knight Rises. It has really got under my skin.

There is forever going to be a stigma attached to this film due to the tragedy that has occurred. This is unfortunate as there is no link between this movie and the events, or even cinematic violence in general and this psychotic individual. This was just another in a long list of violent crimes in a violent world.

The perpetrator was nothing more than a glory seeking sick fuck who knew this would be a media hyped and crowded arena imbued with pop cultural iconography that he could hitch his wagon to and be forever associated with.

Immortality through infamy.

I'm sure the small-minded and sensationalistic media whores will try to find correlation between the acts of a singular sick individual and the movies or characters in a feeble attempt to make sense of the world, or at least make it pop with more pizzazz.

But I don't want to go off on an editorial rant. This isn't about my distain of the media. And I definitely don't want to give James Holmes any more power through attention.

This is merely Exhibit 'R' in my growing case for misanthropy and the unfortunate necessity for personal social isolation. I don't even like to leave my house anymore unless necessary. Its not Agoraphobia, or a neurosis. Its self-preservation.

One is not permitted to go anywhere public to enjoy themselves, whether it be the darkened theater for a highly anticipated premiere, the food court of a crowded shopping mall after joyfully finding the perfect anniversary gift, or the simple pleasure of a coffee and an apple crumble on a first date at a Just Desserts, without threat of this violent sick world personally imposing upon the ridiculous notion of happiness.

A few hundred years ago this was a world where wars were waged in the name of God, and people were persecuted, tortured and burned at the stake as witches because of the color of their hair.

Look how far we have evolved.

Today we live in a world where wars are still waged in the name of gods, and trillions of dollars are spent on modern day witch hunts.

A world where a convicted serial killer is given a free education and then loosed upon the world, and freedoms are vehemently fought for for someone who brutally decapitates a stranger on a bus.

A world where a madman manages to smuggle an assault rifle, 40-caliber handguns, and a 12-gauge shotgun into a movie theater, yet I am threatened ejection from a cinema for bringing in my own bottled water.

I love the movies, the theater. It is a bastion for me. A place to escape from the terrors and senselessness of the world at large for a couple of hours. To me it is a place of innocence, a place of hope. A sanctuary.

But that's not true.

I cannot go anywhere because nowhere is safe, and nowhere is safe because everywhere has people, and people are disgusting and dangerous.

I know I may be rambling heavy handedly, but I feel such profound sorrow at the sickness of this crazy world.

A world that just doesn't make sense to me.


My heart goes out to the victims and their family and friends.

            

Friday, July 6, 2012

DAY 83: PLASTIC MAN



Eel O'Brien, aka: Plastic Man. Probably the one and only time White Sunglasses on a guy are acceptable, and even then it's a.....(wait for it....wait for it).....STRETCH!


And yes, and the question has been posed: "does EVERYTHING stretch"? 


The answer: "You are a huge nerd".