The stank of the town

Tonight, I feel like I must hesitantly discuss what we all clearly agree is the proverbial elephant in the room. And that, of course, is United States Patent 6855313. There’s about a 1% chance you don’t know what that is, and if you are in that 1%, you’re about to join the 99% of people who are vomiting right now just thinking about it, whimpering between hurls some antiquated curse on my name for mentioning the topic after they had finally, after months or, in the case of Ol’ Herman Willingham, decades, gotten the idea out of their heads.

The only way you’ll escape that fate is to minimize this window and never open it again and, just to be sure, perhaps you should throw your computer out your window or, if it’s a nice computer, send it to me. I won’t pay you for it, not even for shipping, but if you want to avoid a life of 6855313-induced misery, it’s your best bet (but if the computer sucks, you should just, like I first advised, throw it out your window, or if you live in a basement without a window and the stairs are sealed off by a fire you accidentally started while cooking a ham so you can’t get upstairs to throw it out the window, just throw it in the fire). I’ll sell your computer for way, way over its market value to Ol’ Herman Willingham, who doesn’t need a computer because he’s 116 years old but will buy it anyway because I’ll tell him it’s the magically resuscitated body of his dead wife, Claire.

I’ll use the earnings to buy at least one sandwich, maybe two (I’ll put the second one in the fridge and eat it tomorrow), but no more than four, because come on, who’s ever heard of five sandwiches? That is more sandwiches than there are people in my immediate family, and if I learned anything from the sole lesson I was taught by Ol’ Herman Willingham, it’s that “a lot of good men lost their lives in the Argonne.” And when he taught that to me, I said to him, “Hey, Herman, that’s a statement, not a lesson. Are you by chance mistaking the recommended quantity of sandwiches a person should buy for a battle you fought in 1918 France?” And Herman said, “Yes.”

And that was the day that I first saw Herman for what he is (a scared, lonely old man, stricken with a permanent case of dysentery and believing your computer to be his wife) compared to what he once was (a scared, lonely young man, stricken with a permanent case of dysentery and no computer, no wife, but a sad wet existence in a nasty trench, fighting alongside men who didn’t really like him and in fact called him “Herman the Hated” behind his back and to his face). I felt bad for him, because despite those terrible men spitting in his eyes with regularity and practically sodomizing him with their bayonets for giggles, he still, over 90 years later, thought that they were good men. The day Ol’ Herman finally dies of that dysentery will be among the most melancholy of my life. I’m kidding.

US Patent 6855313 is a deer attractant consisting of a combination of 14 to 15 parts three-day-old human male urine and 1 to 2 parts deer urine. You may be asking why I think this is the elephant in the room. Obviously, if you’re asking that question, you’re a newly arrived one percenter, and your opinion is sidelined by an asterisk. But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and answer that question. It’s the elephant in the room because it literally is in the room. No, I have not been trying to attract deer. No, I am not trying to attract psychopathic, piss-loving toddlers. Yes, Ol’ Herman Willingham is in the room. And yes, he reeks of US Patent 6855313. And yes, I know why.

Herman was inexplicably born, like nobody else I’ve ever known, in a shoebox, underneath the shoes. The shoes belonged to a hunter named Vicente, who was his father. When Herman was one year old, his pop took him deer hunting. Vicente’s wife protested: “You can’t take him hunting! He’s one year old!” But Vicente struck her down with a club, and off they went, father and son.

Later, in the woods, Herman was crying and crying and crying. A deer had just attacked, killed, eaten, and regurgitated Vicente. The deer began to re-eat the regurgitated remains, but even a deer knows that’s gross, so he scampered off, looking back periodically to check Herman’s reaction, which was still a lot of tears. Herman stayed right there in those woods until he was conscripted into the United States Army twenty years later and sent to Europe. Having grown up alone in the woods, he didn’t know how to speak or walk or tie his shoes, which you’d think, having been born in a shoebox, should have come naturally to him. His lack of communication and relatability and any dependability in battle whatsoever isolated him from his comrades, who did sodomize him with bayonets. When I wrote earlier that they practically sodomized him with bayonets, I meant that they did sodomize him with bayonets. I was trying to soften the image for you, but if you’ve read this far, you deserve to know the truth. A lot of good men died in the Argonne, but before they did, they sodomized Herman with bayonets.

Somehow, Herman survived. He spent most of his life seeking vengeance against the deer that killed his father. Every day, he doused himself in US Patent 6855313, hoping to attract his nemesis. He attracted many, many, many deer, but none of them were “the” deer. He never did find that deer, which had been shot by another hunter six minutes after killing Vicente.

So that’s the story. There it is. Here I sit. Me, Herman, the 40 deer that followed him here, and “Claire.” We’re having a great time!

I need friends.

Tiger’s Statement

Tomorrow, Tiger Woods will make a statement. What will that statement be? Well, you’ll just have to wait for the statement.

But while you’re waiting for that statement, I’d like to make a statement. And let me preface my statement with another statement: the statement that I couldn’t care less what Tiger’s statement is. And let me follow up my pre-statement statement with another statement, which still precedes my actual statement, which prefaces Tiger’s statement, and is thus a post-pre-statement pre-pre-Tiger-statement statement (I think).

Have I lost you? I’ve almost lost myself. But almost losing myself is not losing myself, and so I haven’t lost myself in discussing which of the statements in the long line of statements both I and Tiger Woods will state is the statement I’m about to state next. That statement is this: my statement will be better than Tiger’s statement.

Yes, the statement I’m about to state will thrust the world into such a frenzied combination of excitement and rage that Tiger himself might even reconsider stating his statement. Even the mere statement that my statement will trump Tiger’s statement should be enough to make Tiger take a real hard look at whether his statement is worth stating.

Tiger pondering his statement

But here’s where some problems arise. If just stating that my statement is enough for Tiger to unstate his statement even before he states it actually convinces him to unstate said statement, how would we really know that my statement is better than Tiger’s would-be statement to begin with? It would take a rather large leap of faith to believe that Tiger’s statement would be worse than my statement, despite neither of us actually stating our statements. Even if I did state my statement after stating my post-pre-statement pre-pre-Tiger-statement statement, if it prevents Tiger from delivering his statement, we still wouldn’t know which statement beats out the other statement. So while I have supreme confidence that my statement is the better of the statements, I still want Tiger to go ahead with his statement.

That stated, I’ll state my statement: I framed Tiger Woods.

Unwittingly, but still. I’ll explain:

I’ve long had a Tiger Woods costume. A very realistic, and therefore very troublesome, Tiger Woods costume. I’ve had a Tiger Woods costume since 1993, which is strange because Tiger Woods was not yet a professional golfer, not yet even in the public eye. On top of that, I was only eight years old. What kind of eight-year-old has a Tiger Woods Halloween costume three years before Tiger Woods even hit the pro ranks? No kind, that’s what kind. It wasn’t a Halloween costume. It was an Australia Day costume. Yes, in my family, every January 26, we wore costumes for Australia Day. My mom would take my sister and I around the neighborhood, and we would go up to the houses and knock on the doors and say, “Trick or treat!” And every homeowner would say the same damn things: 1). It’s not Halloween. 2). Oh, you’re celebrating Australia Day? 3). You realize we’re in the United States? 4). So then why are you celebrating Australia Day? 5). Oh, that’s pretty fucked up. 6). Oh, that’s really fucked up. 7). What is that costume, anyway? 8). There’s a tiger in the woods?? 9). Get the hell off my property!

Australia Day!

Eventually I realized I could capitalize on Tiger’s fame to get with women. It worked out for a while, but then it came to a crashing halt when the women I, as Tiger, slept with, accused Tiger of sleeping with them, and this whole thing unraveled.

And before you start sympathizing with Tiger, let clarify my statement: Just because it was me sleeping with all the women who, thinking I was him, came out against him, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Tiger did not have affairs aplenty with other women. He probably did. In fact, I’m sure he did. And I’m sure he’s very sorry. And I’m sure his statement will be along those lines. And I’m sure he didn’t expect that there was some kid out there who’s had a replica of his body for the last 17 years and was simultaneously using it to get with women, sometimes even the same woman on the same night at the same time. I’m talking about you, Janet. You really thought there were two Tiger Woodses? And that they’d hit that at the same time? God, Janet, you’re so dumb. Fucking Janet.

And Tiger, too. You’re Tiger Woods! You didn’t put two and two together over at Janet’s house? You really thought there were two Tiger Woodses?

Regardless of whether or not Tiger understands that there can’t just suddenly be two of you (unless your name is Dolly, and even then, it’s more complex than that), I can’t wait to hear Tiger’s statement. I realize this goes directly against my first of three statements, which, as you might recall, stated that I couldn’t care less about Tiger’s statement, but all this talk of statements has made me statement-giddy. I’m now excited for statements in general. Any statement whatsoever. Bring on the statements!

Except you, Janet. Stay the hell away.

Piranhas

Okay, so I really, really, really, and let me reiterate, really, blew it with this blog. This was going to be the one that continued on to great heights without ever collapsing into that familiar territory of unupdatia. And this time, I swear I have a valid excuse.

That excuse? Piranhas.

From last July 16 until September 11, and then from September 13 until today, my life has been infested with piranhas. Piranhas of all shapes and sizes. Mainly, though, piranha-sized and piranha-shaped.

You know what stinks about piranhas? They’re not afraid to just latch on. Somebody posted on Wikipedia that they have a “voracious” appetite. There are only two scenarios where it’s appropriate to use the word “voracious” to describe an appetite. One is encountering a piranha. There other is encountering my Uncle Ted.

I’m kidding. I don’t have an Uncle Ted. But if I did, I imagine that he’d be really obese, because he’d always be voraciously eating, every single time you saw him. Picture this: you’re in the bathroom, shitting and reading Kirby Puckett’s autobiography, when all of a sudden you realize that the shower faucet is on, and the reason is because there’s somebody in there taking a shower, and how you didn’t previously notice that somebody was taking a shower while you were in the bathroom plopping waste is a whole other matter, but you pull back the curtain (Why, you ask, would you pull back the curtain to see who is in there? For all you know it could be fat Uncle Ted in there. Read on:)

Piranhas are fans of Kirby Puckett

on the off chance that Brooklyn Decker had a fight with Andy Roddick and broke into your house to use your shower on the off chance that you might be shitting and upon hearing the shower running would pull back the curtain and fuck her, but said off chance was indeed an off chance and it is Uncle Ted in there, and he’s eating his second of three full racks of spare ribs, and the sauce has smeared all over his boobs, which incidentally are bigger, albeit manlier and nastier, than Brooklyn Decker’s.

So since Uncle Ted doesn’t actually exist, the piranha really is the only critter whose appetite could be considered voracious. And since my point in bringing up piranhas was to imply that they’re somehow the reason I took a shameful six month sabbatical from writing in this blog, I guess my only option as far as where to take this post is to now say that they voraciously ate my body.

Except my hands, which are currently typing this.

And my brain, which is signaling these thoughts to my hands.

What I’m trying to say is, I’m now just two hands and a brain, detached from a piranha-ingested body and miraculously still functioning.

No I don’t

You ever drink bourbon out of a turban? Of course not. You don’t drink things out of other things just because they rhyme. Come on.

I mean, it’s obvious

If you’re thirsty and lost in the desert, and you’re feeling like if you don’t hydrate soon you might die, and all of a sudden through some act of divine intervention you stumble upon an oasis with a small body of water, and you drink some of the water, but it tastes more like piss, and then you notice that nearby is a guy zipping up his pants, and saying “That was the best piss of my life,” and pointing towards the water, chances are you just drank that guy’s piss.

The guy who can barely throw a football

The scene: Prospect Park, Brooklyn, mid-afternoon.

The characters: College Guy 1 (well built), College Guy 2 (skinny, fragile)

The plot: College Guy 2 sucks at throwing a football. He sucks so bad that I’m laughing at him from halfway across the lawn. I’m laughing so hard that people are starting to turn and wonder what I’m laughing so hard about. Included in these people is College Guy 2. For years, he has secretly been extremely self-critical about how bad he sucks at throwing a football, and now his worst fears have been realized. A stoned guy in a Pink Floyd T-shirt is laughing at him from a distance. He has been dreading this day, positively dreading the inevitable moment when someone, instead of politely keeping it inside, actually laughs out loud at his horribly unathletic posture and hilarious motions and strange little grunts and hiccups and sighs. If one person laughs, he fears, it could open a floodgate. And now it does. I’m not the only one laughing at this pathetic display of uncoordination. Everyone is. My buddy Sean. A couple of dudes who are playing catch with a shoe because they forgot to bring their frisbee. A pregnant mother and her five young children. College Guy 1. A goat. Why is there a goat in the park? That’s a whole different issue. I can’t address the goat in the park issue while still tackling College Guy 2’s hysterical hijinx. For the sake of argument, let’s just pretend there wasn’t even a goat at all. Let’s just pretend it’s something I made up for the purpose of this post. It’s not– because of course there was a goat in the park, a whole herd of them, in fact, I’m talking at least 35 goats, maybe 40– but let’s just use our imagination. College Guy 2 is mightily embarrassed as everyone in the whole park (not just the lawn we’re currently on, but the entire park, as even people who have been by the lake half a mile away and in no way could have seen the lackluster football skills or heard the incessant laughter emerge from their respective sections to berate the boy) emerges from their respective sections to berate the boy. And berate them they do.

The berating, heckling and rioting eventually gets to the point that I’m just feeling sorry for the kid. I mean, it’s kind of hard to, because he really sucks, but things have escalated too quickly. I don’t want to compare the situation to post-election Iran, because that would be irresponsible of me, but what I will do is compare the situation to post-election Iran if that particular situation had been considerably calmer. Either way, I’m glad I learned how to properly throw a football when I was eight years old, like I thought every other male in America had done.

The stork should deliver soup

I wish the stork delivered things other than babies. Like soup. Because let’s face it. We all love soup. Every last one of us. Without exception. And we crave it endlessly. Sometimes while we’re eating soup, we’ll already be craving the soup we’re going to eat two soups later. And by the time we get to that soup, we’re already craving a soup we’re not going to eat until the year 2011. That’s just the way we’re programmed. We’re basically addicted to soup. We can’t physically live a single moment during which soup is not being consumed and digested by our bodies. I’m eating soup right now. If I wasn’t, I think I’d be dead.

Given this, why wouldn’t the stork deliver soup? Only babies? Who needs a stork to deliver babies? Fucking delivers babies. Fucking does not deliver soup. The only thing that delivers soup is getting up off the couch, which we’re obviously not going to do, and walking to the supermarket to buy some soup. It’s 11:42pm right now, the supermarket isn’t even open. Well, the bodega is, and the bodega would also have soup, but this ruins my argument, so let’s pretend there isn’t a bodega literally half a block away. Or another bodega half a block past that. No bodegas. Only closed supermarkets. Where am I supposed to get soup after the supermarkets close? If I ran out of soup (which I won’t, because I have a 16-year supply), I’d really appreciate a stork knocking on my door with a new stock. I don’t even care that a stork likely can’t knock on a door, due to having wings instead of hands. There’s got to be some other way he can get my attention. I’m sorry for assuming the stork is a “he.” I’m just very sexist, and women belong in the kitchen. Making me soup.

The tortoise and the idiot

Seriously, why did the hare have to be so cocky? The race was his to win. He’s a speedster, and the tortoise is slower than a slug, but that cockiness was the end of him. How can anyone possibly be so cocky to think that a nap wouldn’t be some sort of hindrance to winning an event which requires you to always be moving forward? You don’t nap during a competition just because you’re way, waaaay ahead. That’s being a sore winner.

Poor hare has no idea what's in store for him

We all know the story of the tortoise and the hare, but the version we’ve all heard generally ends with the hare realizing he’s lost the race. What is usually neglected is the fact that the tortoise, after beating the hare in the race, became an even bigger sore winner than the hare had been in the first place.

When the hare reached the finish line, the tortoise was already drunk, having consumed nine glasses of champagne and currently in the midst of downing an Irish car bomb. The rest of the animal community had at first been proud of him, and had even joined in for some boozing, but the tortoise had, over the course of about ten minutes, become so obnoxious that the rest of the animals had been turned off, and they gradually abandoned him to let him drink on his own. (They all went to the local tavern to play darts). When the tortoise noticed that his opponent, the hare, had arrived at the finish line, he was sloppily slurring his speech and yelling hurtful, racist remarks.

The hare’s feelings were genuinely hurt, and he felt remorseful for having been so cocky (which he, for the rest of his days, never made the mistake of being again). He congratulated the tortoise, who spit in his face. The hare sighed, then went home to work on his thesis paper (“How Nestlé Raisinets® and The Italian War of 1535 Contributed to Chapman’s Decision to Shoot Lennon”). During the course of his studies, which were surprisingly not going so well, the tortoise repeatedly called him on his home phone and left insulting messages, such as “You literally smell like I would smell if I had lost the race instead of won it, but I don’t smell like that because I’m a winner and you do smell like it because you’re a pathetic, pathetic loser, and a gay,” and “You’re not good.” Once, he left eighteen messages in the span of seventeen seconds.

The hare was extremely upset. He wanted the obscene phone calls to end. He wrote a letter to the tortoise, pleading for peace. In response, the tortoise sent a gift basket. In the gift basket was the body of a dead hare. It belonged to the hare’s wife.

The hare moved to Seattle to escape the tortoise (who, due to being a tortoise, was not imprisoned for murder), but the tortoise cloned himself and sent the clone to Seattle. The clone was even more evil than the tortoise. Cloney (as he was called, not because he was a clone but because that is as close as you are legally allowed to be named to George Clooney, of whom the tortoise was an enormous fan, especially in “The Thin Red Line”) was not above torture. After hearing so much about Chinese water torture, he decided to give it a try on the hare, but then quickly changed his method to hanging, drawing, and quartering, which was once the ordained penalty in England for the crime of high treason. It is also a method that quickly leads to death. Cloney was victorious. The hare was dead.

But the tortoise didn’t stop there. He wrote a novel entitled “Why I’m Ashamed I Engaged in a Series of Acts That Led to the Violent Death of My Friend the Hare.” It was a bestseller. The novel allowed the tortoise to quit his day job (he had been an investment banker) and focus on writing full time. He was adored for his brave and emotional prose. He would later write “Shellshocked” and “1,053 More Things I’d Rather Eat Than That.”

But “Why I’m Ashamed I Engaged in a Series of Acts That Led to the Violent Death of My Friend the Hare” is a satire. It is blatantly obvious throughout the whole 950 pages that the tortoise, ever so sarcastic, was not at all ashamed and in fact elated at the torturous and murderous events that killed off the hare. There was a two-word epilogue. It read, “Goodnight, hare.”

The hare was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He had been a decorated World War II veteran.

If broken legs were contagious

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how terrible it would be if broken legs were contagious. You’re walking down the sidewalk with your buddy Micah (if you don’t have a buddy named Micah, stop reading now, you won’t be able to relate to this) and suddenly six thugs appear out of nowhere and start hitting Micah in the legs with metal rods! It doesn’t take long before his legs are completely broken, and he’s screaming out in shock and severe pain, and then you realize that you too are screaming out in shock and severe pain, because your legs are also broken! Not only that, but there are six other people (the thugs) who are screaming out in shock and severe pain, because their legs are broken, too! So there’s eight of you squirming around on the sidewalk with broken legs, screaming out in shock and severe pain! A passer-by comes over to help, but then both her legs break! Another couple passers-by also try to offer a hand, but a few seconds later a hand is the only body part they have that’s not broken! (Additionally, all other body parts excluding both legs are not broken). By this time, other passers-by in the vicinity have realized that if you go near the eleven people squirming around on the sidewalk and screaming out in shock and severe pain, both your legs will break, so nobody else dares inch closer.

Until the paramedics arrive. But not long after their arrival, all of their legs have broken! To make matters worse, in this scenario, broken legs cause a very rapidly-spreading version of leprosy! Soon the broken legs have rotted completely off, and everyone goes about their normal routines once again.

By “everyone” I mean everyone except those whose previously broken legs have rotted off. You just can’t go about your normal routines if your legs have rotted off. That’s not the way the world (and human anatomy) works. If you’re one of the people whose legs have rotted off, chances are the rest of your body will soon rot. Because you have leprosy. And leprosy doesn’t stay exclusively in the legs. So before long, you’re dead.

Sorry. I know it’s grim, but it’s gonna happen.

Ryan Zimmerman: the team

Washington National Ryan Zimmerman’s 30-game hit streak came to an end today, but at least he can take solace in the fact that his team won the game. Right?

Wrong. At 11-21, Washington is the worst team in the majors. A hitting streak by its franchise player is just about the only thing it had or will have going.

The only thing the Nationals organization can do to retain any significance and/or dignity, in my eyes, is to release everyone on the team, clone Ryan Zimmerman 23 times, and start an entire roster of Zimmermans. The 25th roster spot would be held by pitcher Jordan Zimmermann, who, although he spells his name slightly differently, is still a Zimmerman at the end of the day. And just to cement it, Jordan should be willing to legally change his name to Zimmerman. There’s not really a need for that extra ‘n’, anyway. It doesn’t add anything. It’s dead weight. Like the previous two sentences.

In this scenario, Ryan Zimmerman would occupy every spot in the lineup except for every fifth game, when Jordan would give it a go. Can you imagine eight, or possibly nine, players in your lineup who are all on 30-game hit streaks? It would be exceptional. It would more than make up for the fact that Ryan Zimmerman would be playing defensive spots like center field and catcher, in addition to pitching, both as a starter and a reliever. So what if he gives up a bunch of runs? They’ll be balanced out by all the hits.

At this point, you can no longer logically call the team the Nationals. You’d have to change the name of the team to the Ryan Zimmermans. And yes, they may play in Washington, but as far as I’m concerned, that town is Ryan Zimmerman’s and we’re all just living in it. (I don’t actually live in that town. In fact, a majority of the people on this planet don’t live in that town. But let’s go with it). So instead of calling it Washington, we’ll call it Ryan Zimmerman.

So we’ve got the Ryan Zimmerman Ryan Zimmermans, consisting of twenty-four Ryan Zimmermans and one Jordan Zimmermann, who now goes by Jordan Zimmerman.

Who should make up the managerial staff? Let’s keep Manny Acta in there, simply because I think “Manny Acta” is a cool name. If you say it really fast, it sounds like it could be a province in Spain. Maniacta. The bench coach would be Ryan Zimmerman, as would be the hitting instructor (obviously). The pitching coach would be Joe Biden. First base coach is Nelly Furtado, and the third base coach is a random guy in a Jon Arbuckle costume. The bullpen coordinator is Ryan Zimmerman.

Sounds like a formula for success!

Ryan Zimmerman