monkeywithabutcherknife

In the early 1990′s I was in the U.S. Navy and none too happy about it. The structure and discipline of the whole things didn’t really fit my personality. I very much enjoyed my job, but didn’t like the Navy. Oh the irony. While serving aboard the USS California I took leave and returned to Cincinnati for a few weeks.

While on leave I went to the same recruiting office I had joined up at several years before. None of the original recruiters I’d signed up with were there; having moved on to other assignments. So I enlisted. I didn’t have a very “military” haircut at the time so they had no reason to suspect anything. They’d set me up with a date and time to go to the Military In-Processing Station (MIPS) for my physical and to take the battery of tests that would determine what jobs I was eligible for and all the paperwork was filled out and signed. A few days later I got a phone call from the recruiter: ” Petty Officer Ware, we do not find this the least bit funny and have notified your Commanding Officer”. My response was, “That’s fine. He already doesn’t like me.”

I never heard anything about it when I got back to the boat so the story doesn’t have a great ending. I refuse to believe I’m the only one to ever do this. After all, it’s the government, so there’s always the chance they wouldn’t notice and you’d end up getting two paychecks every month. I suspect that people try this with some regularity and that the recruiters find it amusing and don’t really want to get someone in trouble. Most of their job is to find good anecdotes to entertain high school kids with. It helps romanticize the military. As more and more war footage is made available, that has got to be a difficult thing to achieve these days.

Never Again Volunteer Yourself!!

So, uh, The Hot Librarian has decided to start some bullshit National Confess Something….whatever. I honestly thought when I started reading her post that she was going to confess to being neither hot nor a librarian but I was mistaken – maybe next year. But since her site is so god damn funny, I decided to participate. So if any of you fucktards want to get upset with someone because of the information that follows – that someone isn’t me.

Confessions of a Monkey

I’ve always thought fat people look older than thin people in general. I think this is because in my mind it just seems like they would be older since it must have taken a long time to get that BIG. After all, if you see a tree, you can be relatively sure that the bigger ones are older than the smaller ones. I’m just say’in.

My toenails are like veloce raptor claws and they click on the kitchen tile when I walk. The also cut through my socks. I have, on more than one occasion, cut my own leg in my sleep with them. But the really disturbing thing is that the left one is very noticeably yellow and is apparently growing a spine of some sort for re-enforcement. I’ve considered medications but I don’t want to blow out my ass like a two hundred pound zit (one of the listed side effects). But according to this jackstick, all I have to do is rub Vick’s Vapor rub on my toenails every day. I had a bad oral sex experience with Vick’s Vapor rub some time back which is why I have a sincere respect for the ‘for external use only’ warning. Point being: I don’t have any and buying it makes me feel dirty.

The shortest, ehm, briefest sexual experience I ever had was when I accidentally put a lubricated condom on inside out. That wasn’t so much a problem but, realizing what I did, I promptly grabbed the reservoir tip with my index finger and thumb. And pulled. That more than did the job.

So, about 8 years ago, I noticed a growth of sorts on the side of my man-stick near the base of the shaft. It was cute and didn’t really bother me so, eh, who cares. I named it Oliver Hardy because it kind of looked like him. But then I became concerned so when I was at the doctor for a pulled muscle in my back, I mentioned it to him. Naturally, he wanted to see it (I was flattered). He informed me that it was nothing to worry about and that if it bothered me then he could burn it off with a laser. What? You want to point a laser at my penis? I don’t think so. In my whole life, if I never smell burning penis flesh that would be just fine. Weeks later, I really was becoming self conscious about it. Especially, when it got a friend which I conveniently named Stan Laurel. That was just too much. so I did what any other reasonable person would do: stopped at this little store and bought some dry ice. They only sold it in five pound blocks – awkward. It was a hot Midwestern day so I had to act quick. It took me some time to locate my winter gloves – they were in the pockets of my winter coat. With the gloves on, I broke a piece of the dry ice off to use. I turned on some porn to ensure I had the largest possible target as I didn’t want there to be any unfortunate accidents. I pause, and briefly imagine having to explain to my doctor how I welded my urethra shut with a piece of dry ice. “Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into, Stanly”, I say trying not to laugh too much. So I’m standing in my living room in a pair of winter gloves, with my pants around my ankles, watching porn, and holding a piece ofdry ice on my semi-erect penis.

Fuck you – don’t judge!!

This is an excerpt from a novel I started several months ago and recently have been re-reading in anticipation of finishing it before the end of the summer. Comments encouraged.

There are two schools of thought on shopping in the suburbs. The first is the mall. The mall has the advantage of parking once and not having to be outside if the weather is bad. But the mall is the worst and should be avoided by all but the staunchest shoppers. There’s something depressing about the mall. There are kids. The kids really come in two flavors, both of which seem to have never been in public before but react very differently. The runners and screamers tend to see the world as a playground and all the other people and things around them as somehow there for their amusement. They will touch everything with their germy kid-hands; fresh with slobber and possibly some kind of sugary finger food the parents dole out like crazy pills. They are without fear or remorse. Everyone is a playmate, a parent or a grand parent. Apparently to most kids these are the only categories everyone falls into. It is strictly based on age, but a slightly skewed sense of age. These kids always identify me as a playmate in spite of the fact I’m in my thirties. And probably will until I hit grandparent status; which is just a slow, feeble playmate. To children, old people seem to be weird, retarded children. The grandparent type is great for kids in a certain age bracket because they reinforce the child’s idea that they are the unmoving center of the universe.

The other flavor of child you’re likely to find in the mall are usually a little younger. They can usually be found by looking in the direction of someone screaming bloody murder. They will be gumming some sort of cookie or other unhealthy thing picked up along the way. Whenever I see this type of child, I can’t help but think whatever they’re slobbering on was probably found on the floor just moments before I saw them. If they aren’t screaming like a banshee, they will likely be walking along in wide eyed amazement at everything around them and simultaneously oblivious to it all. It’s a strange thing because they will walk right into your shins, invariably fall down, and start the aforementioned screaming. The parent, and there will usually only be one, will be at least 25 yards away and come rushing over. It is important not to attempt to help this child up because the screaming will only get louder and the parent’s ‘suspicion everyone will steal their child’ gene will be triggered and nobody wants that.

Assuming you can navigate the test of agility and patience the young children set up for you, there are still other trials waiting. Lurking around benches and taking up near-permanent residence in the food court sometimes drinking a warm, dark beverage will be the elderly. They are easy to overlook and underestimate. Over their considerable years they’ve learned to camouflage themselves against anyone under the age of fifty. The only people under the age of fifty that can readily see them are people trained to care for the elderly as their senses have been finely tuned to locate the elderly in a chaotic environment. The elderly are a constant threat to your social confidence. An omnipresent reminder of your own eventuality. But for now they are a socially awkward situation waiting to happen. If one were to fall and hurt themselves, what do you do? Do you help them? The instinctual answer is ‘yes, of course’, but then something happens. You think ridiculous things like ‘I’m sure they’re fine’, ‘I don’t want to call attention to them and embarrass them’, or ‘there’s probably someone more qualified to help’. It’s very easy not to help. It’s very easy to talk yourself out of it. And if you are a sad excuse for a human being, you may even feel a sense that you did something right by not helping. But there are more significant threats from the elderly like heart attacks, strokes and seizures. With these situations if you don’t know what you’re doing you could honestly make things worse. You have to get help at that point, but again fear, uncertainty and doubt creep in to question this. Things like ‘the mall has cameras everywhere manned by security guards who saw the whole thing and the ambulance is probably already on the way’ or ‘there are lots of people around, all with cell phones, I’m sure someone already called’. Even without medical problems, some old people just look like they could drop dead with every footstep. Even the smallest bag containing a pair of earrings for some unseen but exceptionally loved grandchild seems a struggle.

In recent years, technological improvements in batteries and battery-powered engines have enabled scientists and health care professionals the cherished ?mobility device?. These wonderful creations, born out of a need put forth by the growing elderly population, the morbidly obese, and the just plain lazy, have improved the lives of many who may or may not deserve it. I have benefited from this personally by the fact that there’s that much less chance of a socially awkward situation. The person, say, dropping dead of a heart attack probably has about a fifty-fifty chance of just sitting balanced on one of these contraptions, going unnoticed until I’m able to safely vacate the area. Another way I’ve benefited is through comic relief. Seeing these people’s frustration at trying to control the thing or occasionally loose control of it completely and go tearing into a display of some kind can put me in a good mood for hours. I think the plan for these devices is an extension of the invisibility thing I mentioned earlier. These machines will have to be much faster in the future. The people driving them now are more test pilots than anything. They will have to be faster to outrun the old persons’ arch rival: the teenager. Future generations of old people will enjoy a feeling of confidence and security by being able to outrun a teenager on a mobility device where past generations of the elderly were resigned to trying to be invisible so as not to get the teenagers’ attention.

Now, I’m not going to sit here and defend teenagers. They’re a bunch of creepy, ignorant, felons with no soul whatsoever. They are heartless deviants and always were. They should not be given special consideration under the law because of their age if they commit a crime. Put simply, a fifteen year old knows better than to shoot someone and has for ten years. Parents aren’t being honest with themselves or each other. It’s like they’ve all gotten together and decided that the bad people of the world didn’t have parents and were never children. Or maybe they just don’t believe there are bad people in the world. I can assure you, there are. And they’re all around you everyday. I would say that at least nine times out of ten, Johnny sniper rifle up in the clock tower taking out passerbys got into some kind of trouble as a teenager. He’s probably always been a bad person. And if his parents were capable of being honest with themselves they probably knew all along that little Johnny is a dangerous fucking lunatic. But parents aren’t capable of that kind of honesty. I don’t know that anyone is. The fact is children, are people, or at least they become people at some point. Eighteen isn’t even a nice round number to use. Ironically, most parents ? maybe all parents but I haven’t met them all ? insist that their child’s personality appeared within weeks of birth and has only changed slightly during the course of growing up. I believe that’s why mothers always recognize their children; they’re looking at that spark they saw in the very beginning. Children are people. And people come in good, bad, and an infinite number of shades between.

Naturally, I avoid the mall like the smartest alter boy avoids the rectory.

When I was little my mother instilled in me a love of horror movies. Not stupid splat movies but good shit like old Alfred Hitchcock, Bella Lugosi and Rod Serling. I think that kind of appreciation of fear is healthy. Growing up with John Carpenter and Stephen King (no link – fuck him) was very disappointing as you can imagine. Their movies are just too easy to watch; too watered down and they lack that certain something. Its like morning sex: sometimes it seems to stay with you all day, and sometimes by lunch you wonder if that was this morning or yesterday morning.

The good news is that I’ve noticed a resurrection, as it were, of really good horror movies and they seem to be based on or inspired by a handful of eastern writers. I’m sad to say I haven’t had time to research this more and find out the story but I will sooner or later. In the mean time I have these wonderful nights of watching horror movies in the dark – just like mom taught me to do.

Last night was SAW and White Noise. They aren’t great movies and White Noise is a little predictable. But saw was pretty good. Both are well worth renting.

-Sweet Dreams-

If you go to nola.com there’s a link to the Bourbon Cam. It’s this web cam set up outside of the Cat’s Meow that takes pictures of the street every 20 seconds or so. There really isn’t any way to tell when its taking the picture so what ends up happening is you see these random assholes there on their cell phones for 20 minutes and 400 pictures trying to get the timing right. This is especially popular with the dressed up Mississippi Hillbillies that visit during the off-season when it’s too hot outside for anyone but a hillbilly. They’re fairly easy to spot: Sandals, earth-tone shirt, almost (but not quite) matching shorts and an obnoxious NASCAR hat.

But in the end, it’s all worth it! The perfect Bourbon Street momento: priceless.

People suck. And being a person I think I’m as qualified to say that as anyone. Maybe the Rain Forest might be able to make a better point. And I’m sure the White-footed Tree-rat and the Syrian Wild Ass could make a different argument still for why people suck (being recently extinct through no small part of people). But I don’t want to get into all of that.

It’s really inherent in our nature to suck. We put these weird expectations on ourselves and others. We have these twisted little views on how the world is; and even more damaging, how it should be. We control everything rather than try to live within it. As a species, we’re fucked and I don’t see how the planet can allow us to continue much longer. We can’t get along with each other or the world around us. We’re very bad at living here if you want to know the truth.

It seems so common that I’m disappointing myself or someone else. How could that be? Am I just that bad at being a person? And, if so, why? It’s unbearable sometimes. I find myself shying away from people because there doesn’t seem to be any possible way that I’m not going to disappoint them or they’re not going to disappoint me – one of the two will certainly happen. And disappointment isn’t really that bad in the grand scheme of things but it does suggest something about me and everyone else.

When I picture the world from outer space everything is so quiet and pristine. Everything seems to move in elegant ways with purpose and intent. As you get closer you begin to make out the blights that people have created; the cities, roads and bridges, and your understanding starts to break down. Soon, you’re close enough that the whole chaotic mess is bearing down on you and your understanding has long since abandoned you leaving you with questions and misunderstandings where things don’t fit together. You long for the time when you could observe the world from a distance and you start to feel that initial thread of regret that you ever wanted to know more. Your ignorance of the world spared you the discomfort you feel now. Some silly need to know more drove you forward and got you involved and it didn’t work out for you at all and you can’t go back. But you can walk away.

People are generally the same way.

Out in the little town of Athens, Ohio is Ohio University. Ohio University is constantly being confused with Ohio State University and that always bugged me. For one OU is older than OSU, and for another thing, OU is better than OSU. The confusion is easy to understand but that doesn’t make it easier to swallow: OSU has a very well known football team and OU does not. Sports have a place in college but the place it’s taking up is too big – but that’s something for another time. The real point here even more ridiculous. Outside of about 2 miles or so of the campus was pure Appalachia. I didn’t question the idea that I went to the Appalachian Mountains for higher education until well after the fact. At any rate, about 6 to 10 miles outside of town was Hocking Valley Community College. The college has a lumberjack festival every year, but, as interesting as that is, it isn’t my point either. They also have a world class wildlife program – and this is my point.

One of my housemates in this revolving door of a house was in the wildlife program. Really great guy. One night, like nearly every other night at that time, I came home what I like to refer to as “Dean Martin Drunk”. This is where you’re really too drunk to function but you manage to do an alright job of it – also, there’s likely to be some singing. I’d brushed my teeth and was getting rid of some of the water that they package the alcohol in when I noticed a snapping turtle in the bathtub next to me the size of a dinner plate. I thought it was bigger at the time, but corrected my perception the next day. I can tell you that having the ‘ol daddy stick out around a snapping turtle just seems like a bad idea to begin with but put the likelihood that I’ll fall down around 90% and it really gets scary. So, I can’t just stop what I’m doing so I’m trying to turn sort of with my back to the turtle while not getting any closer to the turtle or fall backwards into the tub and still keep my stream hitting the toilet. This was very awkward and took a great deal of concentration since I was glancing back and forth between the cammode and the tub and my vision was slightly impaired. I find after a moment that I can use the sink, which is now in front of me, to balance myself so I don’t feel so much like a bobblehead.

I finish up and give the turtle a Three Stooges “Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk” and turn to wash my hands in the sink when I see my roommate in the mirror; standing at the open door. I had only planned to brush my teeth so I didn’t close the door. It was like 4 in the morning and he’d heard me come in (must have been the singing) so he wanted to warn me about the turtle so I wouldn’t ‘freak out’. He’d gotten there just moments before I noticed the turtle but didn’t want to bother me while I was busy, and then once I’d notice it was more fun to watch. He thought I was turning away because I was afraid it would jump up and get me somehow, which only made it funnier from his perspective.

I took a lot of heat for being afraid of a turtle.

Years ago, when I was living up north, I had a female roommate who was a vegetarian – not vegan or anything – and she had a sense of humor about it. She would eat eggs, which always bothered me. I mean, if you have a conviction then you should stand by it. So it made no sense to me that she wouldn’t eat chicken, but she would eat little, liquid chickens. When I finally asked her about it she said she was ‘pro choice’. Like I said, nice sense of humor about it.

She had this cat and she would play with it all the time. On one particular occasion she was chasing the cat around the apartment like some Wild Kingdom shit. The cat jumped onto the bed and I can only assume was trying to jump to the window sill. The window was open and the cat sailed right out the window – three stories – straight down – nothing but concrete. The cat (a female) had been fixed recently and still had stitches in her cute, little kitten belly. The cat was fine; just a little shaken and some broken claws. It was the first time I was around her during a crisis. She was calm and decisive and I guess that kind of surprised me.

So with all that said, I thought it would be fun to kinda rattle her cage. I tried several things but the I had a flash of brilliance. I got a cantaloupe and some aluminum foil. I constructed what looked like a pretty convincing human head wrapped in aluminum foil. Then I tossed it in the freezer along with all the vegiburgers. I left it in there for months and she never said a word. We even had parties and it was nice watching people’s expressions. At some point I got tired of the game or needed the freezer space or something. I’ve been thinking about roommates lately so expect more entries like this in the next few weeks.