Carve Your Own Path

There are some great stories here, but none of them start: "So I was sitting at my computer reading..." And there's a reason for that.

No man ever conquered a nation by sitting in front of a computer.

No, those monuments in world history might have learned the tricks from books and whatnot, long before the internet came around. But what would history be like if Carl Marx spent all his time looking at German sheissen porn instead of starting revolutionary shit at bars? But at some point, saint and sinner, hero and villain, stepped out of their house and did something.

Come here for your daily sermon on the mount. Then, take a lesson from me, and take a chance in life. Go to Vegas, hit on a stripper, and live a story you can tell for the rest of your life. Just don't get hooked on crack. Or, at the very least, walk to the liquor store and grab a 40. Then take a different route home. Here's how to break the chains of bullshit and live a little:

1. Examine your finances: Can you afford to travel? Find a way. Can't afford even an overnight road trip? Scrape up the cash for a few rounds at a bar in town, but do not - under any circumstances - go to a familiar place. Pick a new strip club. Go to a biker bar (or, if you're a biker, a yuppy cocktail bar). The farther out of your element, the better.

2. Get out. Today. Call in sick. Don't come back from lunch. Break out of the tedium, the boredom, and just go. Escape the familiar.

3. Go where there are people gathered for some reason. Dive bar, street racing, Pentecostal faith healing, frat party... Then be the mongoose to their python. Revel in the attention. Duck thrown objects.

4. Make your presence felt. Take it a whole long-jump farther. Insult the hippie asshole ordering Chai, or anything else non-alcoholic or foofy sounding. Dance on the bar, or encourage a hot college girl with a good fake ID to jump up there and shake it. Do something patently "not like me." Bring small bills.

5. Assert yourself at work. Wear a sombrero, start a petition for a keggerator next to the water machine...stick up for what you believe in. Create something if you have no beliefs, like a new pagan god, and most importantly: Act.

6. Look at the drones, clones, and robots around you: Closely. Slaves to their jobs, their homes, their yards, mortgages, whatever. Think of what they don't do. You are defined as much by what you abstain from, as what you indulge in. Indulge yourself in their abstentions. Break out of the mold. That guy has way more fun...be that guy.

Take this perspective to the casinos, the concerts, the state fair, wherever you go, and live by the rules you decide for yourself. Then you'll be free in the land of the free. Then you'll start to live the kind of fucked up life you only read about here.

Then you should send those stories to me.

The Anonymous Alcoholic

Recently, while hunkering down on my favorite barstool at my local watering hole, somebody overheard me order my eighth Gin Buck and asked perhaps the strangest question to ever cross my ears:

"John, don't you think you've been drinking too much?"

Shock and surprise came over my flushed and drunken face. Me? How dare you, sir? How dare you, indeed. Are you suggesting the possibility that I, John Alim...(yeah, right...asshole), am an alcoholic?

Then, right as I was about to throw my drink in his face and kindly ask him to step outside so we could discuss these matters further through the gentlemen's art of fisticuffs, I stopped dead in my tracks. To throw my precious concoction of Gin and Ginger Ale in his face would be a waste of alcohol! And that was when I realized, "Oh fuck me runnin', I may very well be a goddamned alky." Shock and awe, my friends, shock and fucking awe. So my heavily bruised liver and I surfed on over to the Alcoholic's Anonymous website and tried my best to answer their infamous "12 questions". What I learned shook me to my very core:

1.) Have you ever decided to stop drinking for a week or so, but only lasted for a couple of days? No. Never. I HAVE, instead, decided to take a day or two long break from my usual daily intake of sweet, sweet liver pickler, but only to give my body a chance to replenish itself from the amount of abuse I've inflicted upon the night before. I can only go for so long until I just completely shut down and become a foul, terrible shambles of a man. I'm not a machine, goddamnit.

2.) Do you wish people would mind their own business about your drinking -- stop telling you what to do? This has never been an issue for me, quite frankly. The majority of the people I hang out with are just as much a lush as I am, if not more so. If anything at all, THEY are the ones who push me to drink and get as drunk as I possibly can every time I go out drinking. For one thing, the drunker I get, the better looking I am and the same goes for those who I meet in my whiskey-fueled nightly adventures. To top it all off, if I DIDN'T drink, my friends would call me a lightweight pussy and I've never been able to handle peerpressure. I try to avoid being around people who go out of their way to tell ME what I should do with MY life. Fuck that.

3.) Have you ever switched from one kind of drink to another in the hope that this would keep you from getting drunk? WHAT!? Quite possibly, the most ridiculous question on the list. Who the fuck switches from one drink to another in an effort to get less drunk? Have I somehow slipped into Bizarro World, where up is down, left is right, and 151 Rum sobers you up? If so, then please, I beg of you, kill me now. Because simply put, I drink to get drunk. I don't drink to drown away the pains of my youth, or to forget my own personal problems. No. I drink to get shit-faced, falling down, laugh my ass off drunk. If anything, I switch from one kind of drink to another in the hope I get even DRUNKER!

4.) Have you had to have an 'eye-opener' upon awakening during the past year? Is this supposed to mean the ol' hair of the dog? A kiss from the whore that fucked you? A little fur of the bear that mauled you? Then no, no I haven't. Bloody Mary's don't count, right? That shit's like breakfast in a cup, anyway. It's got fruits, and vitamins, and even a zesty little olive for protein.

5.) Do you envy people who can drink without getting into trouble? I only envy them because they've never experienced the utter humiliation of stripping down to your bare cock and balls in front of police officer, and spreading your ass cheeks so he can take a peak inside your dingleberry encrusted asshole with a mag-light. They've probably never experienced the feeling of saying something you shouldn't have said out loud about that big biker dude standing at the corner of the bar, only to turn around and introduce your jaw to the heel of his steel-toed boot. And above all, they've probably never been dragged out of a bar kicking and screaming the chorus to "Wasted" by the Circle Jerks with your member hanging out of your pants, and piss spraying in the faces and drinks of the other bar patrons. No, I don't envy them a bit. They just haven't "lived" yet.

6.) Have you had problems connected with drinking during the past year? The only problem, at least THIS year, is running out of money and not being able to pay my bar tab. That always seems to be my biggest problem; having Cristal tastes on a Natural Ice budget.

7.) Has your drinking caused trouble at home? Drinking at home has broken television sets, thrown light bulbs at random people's heads, burned cigarette holes in my carpet, pissed all over my couch, kicked down locked bathroom doors, fired BB guns at pedestrians out of my second story apartment window, vomited in a pair of shoes owned by a friend, shoved another friend off a balcony, wrestled in the pouring rain over a mason jar full of moonshine, spit in my face countless times, spit in the faces of others, gotten me into a fistfight with a roommate on his birthday over a video game, blew shit up, and smashed a variety of shit with fists, feet, hammers, and one time with the dead body of an 10 foot boa constrictor. Does that sound like trouble to you?

8.) Do you ever try to get "extra" drinks at a party because you do not get enough? Again, another ridiculous question. Who the fuck in their right mind goes to a party NOT expecting to drink more than they've brung over? To think otherwise defeats the whole purpose of attending a party in the first place. Of course I try to get "extra" drinks off of the host(ess), I can't very well be expected to get shitfaced drunk off of my supply, now can I? To do something like that would make me look an alcoholic. No, the plan of attack for every party I attend is this: Get there nice and early, ransack the booze supply before the godless heathens come and pillage it, and be good and drunk an hour into the party starting...THEN tap into my own supply.

9.) Do you tell yourself you can stop drinking any time you want to, even though you keep getting drunk when you don't mean to? What? Who ever in the history of imbibing fermented fruits or grains has gotten drunk when they didn't mean to? Are there people walking around in society as we speak just randomly having the shitty assed luck to be falling into vats of microbrew? What the fuck!?

Why can't I have that kind of luck?

10.) Have you missed days of work or school because of drinking? There's got to be a punchline to this joke, people. Have I "missed" work because of drinking? Shit, I don't even miss it when I'm there. *rimshot*

11.) Do you have "blackouts"? None that I can remember, and only from what I've been told by friends the morning after. If I can't remember it, it never happened, right? Right? Right.
12.) Have you ever felt that your life would be better if you did not drink? Sober, the world is a cold and unfeeling place, purely analytical and brutal to those who thrive on chaos and tom-foolery. As an artist and an unpaid hack writer, I thrive on such things. Without the benefit of booze, most others like me would never be able to sharpen that finelycrafted edge of wit or think of witty anecdotes and/or outright lies on the fly.

No, life without booze would be a horrible, terribly hellish life that I cannot even fathom living in. Granted, every morning I wake up with a mouth that feels like I've been chewing on cigarette flavored sandpaper, a headache that explodes behind my eyes with each and every grueling step towards the bathroom to shit out 6 pints of liquid hershey squirts, and the approaching dread that I did something somewhere to someone so horribly embarrassing that the mere thought of even trying to THINK of what I must have done last night in a drunken stupor forces me to erase all contacts and text messages in my cellphone so I'll never, ever, ever have to own up to it, I think to myself,

"You know, maybe I SHOULD stop drinking. Is it really worth all this?"

Then the Bloody Mary kicks in, and I'm back in fighting form.

Fancy New Voice

Good people, I have something that I’d like to admit. This has weighed heavy on my heart for a while and only after discussing this affliction with good friends such as Joel and Matt have I come to this conclusion. The only way to be free of the burden of carrying this dark secret around with me is to expose myself in public. I am not a homosexual nor am I some sort of gun-toting, army surplus shopping, military freak but I…for the life of me…absolutely cannot get enough of Duane “Dog” Chapman, The Bounty Hunter, so what if he’s a convicted murderer.

I’m not sure how many of you remember how Dog mightily smote the convicted serial rapist (and heir to the Max Factor Cosmetics fortune) Andrew Luster in the far away land of Mexico. It is rumored that Dog disguised himself as a life-sized statue of the great Poncho Villa. Witnesses describe Dog as “Springing from the podium he stood on and grabbing Luster as he walked by saying ‘I came to Mexico to do two things, lick my balls like the dog that I am and catch serial rapists. …and guess what, I’m all outta balls!’“ All who saw the event agree that it was then that Dog Chapman accidentally stepped into the bucket of copper paint he used to disguise himself, tripped and tumbled down the beach with Luster in tow. They stopped rolling mere feet from the water. Dog leapt to his feet in triumph, still holding Luster by his collar. The sand sticking to the paint which now covered both of them gave Dog and Luster the appearance of two beach sized testicles. The crowed that gathered erupted into laughter and applause, Dog waved and flexed his muscles mightily.

Of course he was arrested shortly thereafter by Mexican authorities and was charged with using illegal methods of disguise to catch Luster. Dog soon escaped to California where he was greeted as the greatest hero since Ollie North. A television series followed and even here in Jersey people smile when the name “Dog” passes their ears or crosses their lips. Personally I want Dog to do a few episodes of his show here in New Jersey. It could be a ratings behemoth larger than that of the MASH and Cheers finales combined! I can see it now…

Ricardo Rodriguez, 33 admits that he shot 61-year old Edward Valdez in the ass when an argument over an episode of COPS went bad. He was released on bail and not long after disappeared into the Jersey forests.

High above a night sky a dark figure pierces the clouds, a plane speeding away in the distance. A parachute deploys and this human shadow drifts gently to the jungle floor. While he ditches his gear a beam of light shines across his face and the sounds of a thousand guns cocking pierce the night air. This guy has fallen smack dab in the middle of trouble but that’s ok. This is Dog Chapman, “Trouble” was his Aunt’s middle name. More lights flood the area and a microsecond before Dog can whip into an ass-kicking fury someone pushes their way through the armed soldiers who all have Dog locked in their sights. The figure steps into the light and it is Ricardo. His eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep and when he gets to Dog he flicks his burning cigarette into his face.

“I doubt you’re here for the scenery.” Ricardo asks, unimpressed with being found.

“I’ve come here to do two things…” Dog grumbles in his fancy new Batman-voice. “…and that’s to have my remaining testicle bathed in chilled celery pulp by a half-monkey, half-eagle monster that plays the spoooooooons…and to place my palms on either side of your skull.

“High in the trees a giant pair of glowing yellow eyes light up the canopy. The sound of a giant martini shaker tossing around boulder-sized ice cubes shakes the ground. Upon seeing these menacing eyes, the soldiers scattered in fear, bumping into one another in a hysterical sprint. A huge shadow falls on Dog who only glares.

And that’s probably where they’d break for commercial. God, I hate television!

They Just Don't Get It

Firefighters know what's up: Water puts out fire, so when they respond to fires, they bring lots of water. Incidentally, they are very good at what they do, as this understanding and procedure is perfectly suited to the task. They, as it were, "Get it."

Other folks aren't so bright, and like the buffalo herd, we can only move as fast as the slowest among us. In my merciless (often scurrilous) attacks on those who drag our herd down, I present the case of "People Who Just Don't Get It." Today, we look at folks who fight fires with waffle irons and end up in the headlines. Their taint in our gene pool is frightening indeed.

To whit...

I present the case of a seriously elderly man on a Hawaiian Air flight from San Diego, who attempted to go to the bathroom by opening the fuselage door. Now anyone who puts up with nine decades of life in this foul world should be entitled to do essentially whatever the hell they want, but opening the fuselage door of an in-flight aircraft is a bit excessive. The poor bugger probably didn't have a clue what he was doing, and who can fault him for desperate measures when he really had to pee and the chubby housewife just wouldn't leave the mini-bathroom. My issue lies, rather, with another passenger, Daniel De Carlo, who is either a scientific genius or a failure at communication.

"...I know what could happen if the doors open at that altitude," he said.

Now that's impressive. I have an idea of what could happen, and it isn't pretty, but he knows and told the world as much...until his next sentence:

"Who knows what could have been sucked out of there?...Who knows if those seat belts would have held us?"

I thought you knew, Daniel. You rose to the fore then discredited yourself, and I, for one, feel mislead.

In other news, schools in Arizona are offering a new elective class: kids can learn all about gun safety and responsible shooting in a firearm-related class taught by certified instructors. Said Dr. Mary Rimsza,

"I'm afraid these programs are really geared more toward increasing peoples [sic] interest in guns rather than safety."

And "Health" class doesn't increase teenagers' interest in sex. Mind you, STDs (of which AIDS is arguably the most deadly) kill more folks than firearm-related accidents yearly. And like sex, Arizona is also full of firearms; might as well teach kids how to be safe with both types of gun, since they're around ‘em anyway.

Besides, it's an elective class: girls can take it. Boys can take it. Other classes are offered as alternatives. Why get up in arms?

Speaking of parents getting riled up about firearms, I surfed the related links and found this inspiration. It seems that Kyle Barroso is a fifth grade student who, tired of reading books about nature and cars, picked up a book on the history of firearms. Kyle's mom, Robin Barroso, flipped out when she saw the book, and is refusing to give it back to the school's library; she talked with the Daily Record about school shootings and violence with the background of a mind educated on sensationalist headlines, dropping such pearls of fear-response and paranoia as

"I know my son's not going to do it, but I don't know that somebody else's son is not."

Not since the Little Red Book has a published volume incited so much fervent paranoia on sight. It would be amusing, if the overreaction wasn't so frightening. Pay attention, though, to her response here:

"When asked if other parents should be responsible for allowing their children to read the book, Barroso responded, 'not if they (other children) get the gun and my kid is in the class and gets shot."

What gun? She was asked about the responsibility of parents monitoring their children's reading material. Robin Barroso is talking about kids getting not just any gun, but "the gun" (no gun has been mentioned...a book has, though), and then using "the gun" violently.

I thought we were talking about a book here?

A book is exactly what the school administrators are talking about. Principal Michael Derczo made several other comments pertaining to the matter at hand: the book. He also commented on the educational value of historical volumes that may address such things as the role of weapons in history. Need we forget, mind you, that our history - for good, and often ill - is littered with violence and the tools of violent parties.

The lesson here isn't one of which side is right - censorship vs. freedom of information, pro-gun vs. anti-gun, policy vs. opposition - but rather the clouding effect of passion, anger, and zeal. Even when the questions addressed specific points, the enraged party was unable to let go of paranoia. This is why logic and facts, regardless of "right" or "wrong" qualities, will never win when pitted against moxie and emotion. Likewise, feelings can't topple facts. Instead the trains miss each other in the night, and both parties go away angry and without much understanding of their opponent.

This happens all the time when folks aren't together on the same page...and then there are those poor dumb bastards who just don't get it.

Your Virginity Is Not In This Castle

My dear friend Joel recently came to my office to visit me, and, along with his usual repertoire of titty jokes and a penchant for farting on me, he brought with him his latest super-friggin-coolest-thing-ever gadget, a Playstation Portable. Or a Nerd Panty Moistener, as it's known to the sexually-active world.

Gamers frighten me. They don't frighten me as much as, say, globo-thermo-nuclear war, or the fact that Matthew Broderick makes boom-boom to Sarah Jessica Parker every night - no, I fear gamers because in the bowels of my repressed geek's soul, I know I'm perfectly capable of becoming one. I, too, could whittle away my days obsessing over game engines and background graphics meticulously created by rooms full of outsourced Asian dorks, and staking out the local Swap-a-Game with sweaty-necked American dorks who can eat the weight of the Asian dorks in Hot Pockets, until that blessed day of rapture, when the Dork Lord summons us to his side, where we will discuss the hardware specs of the next-generation Xbox at great length.

When Super Mario Brothers was first released, I was ten years old - too old, some might say, for a child to still be soiling his pants. But that didn't stop me from backfiring a hot spray of glee-fueled intestinal Valvoline upon hearing the news that grandma had bought me a copy of SMB, thereby justifying my 5th grade existence and placing me back in the good graces of my peers, whose considerably less-poor parents had bought it for them months ago. I nearly trampled granny when she hobbled through the door - Christ, you decrepit Civil War relic, what took you so long to get here with my fucking cartridge? Held up by Stonewall Jackson?

Weeks passed. Months followed. I was thirteen and already being ignored by girls before the novelty of Mario finally wore thin. At that point, like many thirteen year-olds on the cusp of manhood, I took a thorough inventory of my life, what I had accomplished, and where I wanted to be. Like all seventh-graders, I needed a Five Year Plan. Eighteen was just around the corner, after all, and did I want to spend it rolling twelve-sided dice with the captain of the Science Olympiad team, or doing as most newly legal adults do: purchasing pornography, cigarettes, and lottery tickets?

Well, as you can plainly see, I took the road less virtuous, and that has made all the difference. Today, I can proudly report that I have had sexual intercourse with multiple girls - many of whom I didn't even pay, or, if I did, I got a discount for being slightly less physically repulsive than their average customer. Try pulling that off with a copy of Nintendo Power on your coffee table (assuming you haven't already dismantled your coffee table and mounted the Formica top over a window to block out the sunlight).

Of course, I mean no disrespect to Joel with this tirade against him and his gaming ilk. Well, perhaps the slightest disrespect - no one forced him to be a geek, after all, but to his credit, he has had sex. For now, I just want to offer some hard-earned advice to any young, impressionable males who might somehow come across this editorial:

Kids, don't get sucked into the gamers world. Believe me, it starts with Tetris and ends with you dying, brow-beaten and alone, with enough pent-up sexual frustration to power a deep sea oil rig, and no way to release it through your crippled thumbs.

What The Hell Is Going On Around Here?

I look out the window, and I see a nice, quiet city street with steady foot traffic and the occasional kid on a bicycle. You know. Common tranquil sights. Sure, there's the underlying threat that any car could be loaded to the gills with modern Vikings bent on pillaging and ransacking the area, but with so many cars and so few Norsemen chasing around, the odds are quite against it.

Apparently, the rest of the country isn't quite so lucky.

I stay up on it with internet news and whatever printed rag my neighbors let lie in the hallway or lawns overnight. This afternoon's cull through the headlines was focused on the Fox News website. Are they conservative-biased? Perhaps out of a need to counter all the Liberal-biased news sources? Funded, perhaps, by secret Right Wing money? I don't know. I don't care. Their version of reality can't be any farther off than anyone else's, and when you're throwing darts at the target, the eight-point ring is worth eight points all the way around.

What I do care about is what's going on over at the next street down, or across town, or in neighboring states, what's weighing on the minds of legislators and pressing on precedent. The Supreme Court just dealt perhaps the most confusing blow ever to the fight for - or, against - pro-marijuana legislation. Folks can legally acquire and use weed for "medicinal purposes" if they jump through certain hoops in ten states, but the Supreme Court ruling said that even these folks - who count among their number vast armies of cancer patients, the elderly, and mortally sick or wounded folks from all walks of life - can be arrested and prosecuted under federal anti-drug laws. So, they have protection from the State, but not the Feds.

Huh?

How about a little consistency in policy...what would happen if Pennsylvania said I could drive 65 on the Turnpike, but the Federal Government said I could only do 55? Might I go whizzing past a Podunkaville city cop as we waive good naturedly to one another, only to get nailed by a secret task force from the Drug Enforcement Agency's Traffic Policy Center? Sound absurd? Of course. Because it is.

What about money for college...with a new school year coming up around the corner there are thousands of horny liquor-thirsty incoming freshmen bursting at the seams to run rampant across campuses around the country. Well here's a novel way to pay for it: get a scholarship from death row inmates. Yes, by entering your essay into a contest sponsored by "Compassion," a magazine written and edited by death row inmates. Subscription money goes towards covering printing costs and funding the scholarships, as it can't go to benefit the prisoners themselves. This seems like a great use for the generated proceeds, if in fact that's where it's all going. But still, getting a scholarship from death row inmates? There's not a little about that which strikes me as quite, quite odd indeed.

Speaking of folks in jail, another headline that grabbed my attention was the plight of Rancocas Foreman of Little Rock, Arkansas; or, rather, the three year old boy who died in the day-care van he was driving when Foreman allegedly forgot the kid was in there, parked the van in the summer heat for a few hours, then returned to find the kid dead of apparent heat-related injuries.

How the hell can you forget there's a 3 year old in the van with you? Anyone who's spent time in the physical company of a three year old knows the commotion that even the most sedate of the little buggers brings. Some call it cute; some call it unconscionable. No normal human being would be able to ignore such a kid in any event.

And he forgot the kid was in there? Hardly.

Call it tragedy, call it murder, call it oversight. I'm calling it a bad day for a lot of folks and cause to seriously reconsider the condition of the village in which such things happen. As former Arkansan Hillary Rodham Clinton said, "it takes a village (to raise our kids)."

Ever hear of a "rainbow party"? You can read all about it in the book "Rainbow Party," by Paul Ruditis, but I'll save you the hassle: folks get together and have group oral sex. The rainbow part? Each girl wears a different color of lipstick, so the guys' dicks end up looking like something that belongs in a leprechaun's trousers. That sounds like a great idea, eh? Here's the kicker though:

In this novel, the "folks" attending are fourteen year olds.

Some schools have banned the book; some chain book stores refuse to carry it on their shelves (but do on their websites). Simon & Schuster, the publisher, insist that there's a redeeming cautionary tale value to the work. Ya wanna read about fourteen year olds gettin' jiggy with it? I sure as hell don't. Yet this is not only published, but also front page news. Supposedly it really happens. Not on my street...but somewhere out there, in places I don't want to go.

Here's a handy dandy story I found through another news source: a website where I can plot the effects of a nuclear explosion delivered by car or airplane relative to its yield in kilo- and even mega-tons. I can plot an explosion as it would rock Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, or hey, even Washington, DC. Place your pointer on your choice of Ground Zero, calculate the megatons you think you...um, I mean, the hypothetical yield of a hypothetical bomb delivered, hypothetically, by your choice of light aircraft or automobile, to see what would, of course "hypothetically," be the result.

This is a great resource for terrorists...I mean, high school kids doing research reports.
No, actually, I do mean terrorists. As they say, freedom isn't free; well, neither is freedom of information, press, or free will, and apparently the cost has something to do with dropping relevant intelligence right into the palms of hands that wish to strangle us.

What's that about loose lips and sinking ships? Oh, I forget, a mind-numbing sitcom is calling me again.

So I suppose all is well on my street. I've got a fridge full of beer, and so long as those Vikings just keep on driving at least it won't be my village that gets pillaged.

Marathon Sex And Alternative Medicine

I'm sitting here in a burgundy bathrobe with an open whiskey bottle and a bag of frozen vegetables on my cock. This isn't how I planned to spend the afternoon.

Nor was having marathon sex how I planned to spend my morning, but my girlfriend had other plans. If I had a Frequent Shacker Program, she'd be a blowjob away from a new oven or a set of encyclopedias, so finding her nestled into my armpit was nothing short of normal. What's not normal is her increasing sexual appetite—it's building like that boulder that chased Indiana Jones through the Temple of Doom. I made the mistake of dislodging it, and now she wants more, needs more, gaining in momentum and power and lust like that rock rolling downhill, and I know that one misstep will find me crushed and bleeding as she rolls on to destroy small villages.

She's a succubus, and I must defeat her. For the sake of the world, you know.

For all the good things condoms bring - the blessed ability to forget forgettable sex, and security and safety as you brave unknown waters and explore the back alleys of proclivity - they also bring gnarly cases of floor burn. At least, these bargain-basement discount ones do. Not at first, you see, but she jumped me several times last night, and what should have been a quiet evening writing degenerated into something out of a poorly lit home porno. After a few hours, the condoms wrecked my equipment.

Everyone's been there. At least, I hope you have.

Then this morning I came to with a hand on a very sore place that quickly soldiered up and rose to the occasion. She jumped me before I fully woke up, and an hour later we were sprawled and twisted on the bed like train wreck victims, breathing heavily and afraid to move. Then it hit me: the itching. The burning. Not of some crazy STD, not of some phantom pain, but friction burn, that evil payment due any man who dares spend more time fucking in twenty four hours than eating, sleeping, and bathing combined. That hasn't happened since college. I forgot how bad the burn can be.

So I did what any good gentleman would, and blamed it on her as I walked bow-legged to the shower. Scrubbing off the lube, and sweat, and who knows what all, might help, I thought. Sure enough, a little TLC from a bar of Zest and lukewarm water got things back down to normal. Then a thought struck me, in the way that jumping off buildings and pearl diving and wrestling alligators seems like a good idea at the time...

An ex was into holistic remedies and natural heeling and all that shit, and left a jar of emu bird oil balm in my bathroom. It was her cure-all, from cuts and scrapes to soar muscles and even period cramps. It supposedly helped headaches and blood pressure. No blue gelatinous bird oil compound, no matter how miraculous, belongs anywhere near my body, but sure enough, this morning I thought I'd give that a whirl for some quick healing action.

I shouldn't have done that.

I really shouldn't have done that.

It tingled at first like IcyHot tingles before it consumes you. Then it warmed up a bit, like when you grab a hot frying pan and don't immediately feel the burning. There's pleasure in pain, they say, and no pain, no gain, and pain is weakness leaving the body, but all the trite aphorisms in the English lexicon ran screaming away and left me writhing in agony in my bathroom as the tingling and burning doubled and doubled again.

Fucking a hole full of fire ants couldn't be any worse than this. Emu oil penetrated the tears and abrasions and attacked the raw flesh ripped open by her cursed pussy and I shrieked like a banshee in heat. This shit turns your dick into a strawberry-red wand of fire that only you can feel.

I jumped in the shower immediately, spinning the faucet handle to “icy” with abandon. It was so cold my package tried to run and hide inside me, but that only made the burning worse so I flipped the handle until I was boiling alive in clouds of steam—that didn't help either. Soap didn't work. Shampoo didn't work. Plain water only made it worse, and I laughed to keep from crying. Bursting out of the shower I fell to my knees on the bathmat, hands around my cock, eyes welling up with tears as I laughed like a maniac into the mirror by the sink.

I stared deep into the reflection of my eyes in that mirror, the image obscured by steam but clearly that of a man in the throws of lethal agony. Seeing my face only made it worse, and I laughed harder, it throbbed, and somewhere in the cosmos a pack of virgins crossed themselves and rededicated their lives to abstinence.

Maybe I should do the same.

It's better now, with a pull of brown courage warming my throat to match my throbbing cock. The cold compress numbs the residual fire and reins in the prickles, but it still feels like I fucked a flaming cactus.

So much for home remedies, natural medicine, and tantric marathon sex.

Art Crimes

It hit me at about 3 o'clock in the morning last week, my head laying on my pillow, mind still unable to slow down enough to rest those scant few hours till I needed to get up and go to work. Dare I forego sleep, and venture out into the dark hours of the very early morn to satisfy the itch that's been gnawing at my brain like some rabid toothed monkey, clinging to the back of my neck in a firm death grip ever since I first started doing it? This addiction of mine is chilling the very core of my foundations, and quite frankly, it's starting really scare me. So that night, try as I might to fight back the demons of addiction and impulse, I could no longer. I sprang out of bed, dressed up in all black, and bounded out the door.

It was time to vandalize and deface public and corporate property.

I feel ashamed to admit it, even at the ripe old age of 29, I still go out there and deface property with my art. Call it what you will: Graffiti. Vandalism. Social propaganda. I prefer the lofty term of "guerrilla urban re-beautification". Art should be free, no matter how high brow or sophisticated the artist claims it to be. The world would truly be a grander place if everyone was allowed to express themselves on the walls of the outside world without fear of being held back by the man, I truly do believe that. But no, now people like me are forced to venture out into the night under cover of darkness like modern ninja, armed with spray cans and a message, all in the name of art. It seems silly to some. I question myself some days. I thought I would outgrow such foolishness and move onto loftier, more "adult" recreation. Like getting married, neglecting my kids, or playing amateur league softball with all the fellas at work. No, instead I've become addicted to the rush of prowling around at night and throwing my art up on highly visible walls. The glowing sense of accomplishment when I drive by it during the day, and realize no one else knows the identity of the person who had the nerve to even bother wasting his time doing something like that. But sure enough, you'll see MY art everyday. I'm sure it's an ego issue at hand here, but aren't all artists egotistical? If we weren't, why in the hell do we create anyway? Shit, why do you think porn stars do what they do? Other than being filthy, filthy whores who love the cock, they also love the fact that complete strangers will see what they've done. Plus, there's always the rush.

Ah, the rush. As I walked through the empty city streets, it started to creep up my spine like the serpentine jolt of tantric kundalini. That feeling of knowing you're about to do something illegal or wrong, but you're going to do it anyway. That's the one I'm talking about. But that's just an appetizer. A little something to tide me over before I really get down to work and lay my ass out on the line. After an hour of searching, and the ever present threat of the morning sun about to rise, I found my canvas. A very low to the ground billboard pointing the way towards Interstate 95, visible for all to see during rush hour traffic. Only problem was, is that it's right off the street and while it would take me really only a scant 5 or so minutes to hastily throw up my stencil, that was just enough time to be seen by some pig on patrol. Graveyard shift cop shave got to lead a miserable existence. Probably hopped up on 18 cups of coffee and a bottle of Mini-Thins, I bet the sketchy sight of me dressed in all black armed with a spray can and a cut out sheet of polyurethane would look about as inviting as wearing a sign that said, "POLICE ARE FAGGOTS! BEAT ME PLEASE!". But that feeling struck me again. Better than crack, I swears it.

So, in a rush of paranoia-induced endorphins, and the ever present threat of being beaten about the face and neck with a billy club, I sprayed away. Some black kid rode by on his most likely stolen bicycle, gave me a nod like "Wassup" and continued on his way, I'm sure to go to some corner and sling a freshly prepared batch of rock. I don't blame him. I'm just glad I'm not him.
So I finish up my latest masterpiece, and stand back to bask in the fumes from the can of Krylon. But the monkey on my back had bitten perhaps a bit too deep that night, but I stuck around longer than I should have.

"HEY! YOU! WHAT ARE YOU DOING OVER THERE!?"

Translated loosely in my head as "RUN, ASSHOLE!". So that's what I did. I ran, but not before turning around and taking a good look at what was coming my way. Mr. Typical, Overweight, Fat-Assed Police Officer Tubby...like something straight out of a movie. He was pointing at me, one hand holding up a MagLight, the other pulling up his belt over that plumber's crack of his. I took off like a bandit, with him plodding away behind me out of breath but not backing down. No sir, that fat fucker was all red faced and screaming at me. "STOP!" I couldn't help but laugh out loud like a crazed lunatic while I raced through an alleyway, over a resident's fence, back around behind a mechanic's garage, and finally back to the side street where I parked my car. Heart pumping like an engine piston, I threw my black sweatshirt under the car seat, hid the can of black paint in the side pocket of the passenger door, and layed my head back on the seat rest. As the sun started rising, I drove by the scene of my crime, looking over nonchalantly at Officer Fat Neck as he stood there hunched over and sweating like a leaky faucet. I finally felt exhausted enough to go back to sleep. But the clock said 6, and I had to be at work in an hour an half. 8 hours of mindless, sweaty assed, spine crippling monkey labor...

...and me with only black painted fingertips as evidence of my addiction and crimes.

Runnin' With The Devil

I'm sitting here stuck between full throttle and the full force of the emergency brake, my blood alive with endorphins while my body is already asleep. What part of my brain is typing is a mystery, but stranger things have happened. And may happen again if I don't make tonight's deadline.

It sounded like a good idea at the time: link up with some guys from work and head over to the five kilometer (3.1 mile for guys like me who equate the metric system with the French and despise both equally) road race, pound some pavement for a while, and hit on some athletic local girls in tight sports bras. Glorious, and there'd be free food afterwards. Sounded like a solid plan.
We met up after work and piled into my friend's SUV, fired up the engine and smelled the sweet smell of American mechanical highway domination. Fuck the rainforest, that engine purred. Fuck it with a bulldozer's dick. I didn't care one way or another, as a formidable adversary presented itself at the exact moment my ass hit the seat: a big, slobbery tongue licked me right in the ear.

Dude has a dog...in the car. I love dogs, but I have wicked allergies to anything with more hair than a college girl. This presented something of a problem, as on the ride across town to the race my nose and throat closed up. Barely able to breathe in the car, I panted and snorted, the dog panted and licked itself, and we found ourselves equal butts of continuous jokes. All's fair before a competition.

At the registration tent I found the packet with my runner's number and a little electronic dog tag that's read by a computer at the finish line. Now I'm in a pretty conservative place, the sort of city with a church on every corner and a cross on every neck, surrounded by upstanding and decent people, and I pull out runner number 666. Today was day five of the "I hate shaving" strike, my hair was frozen in impossible positions by dog spit...and the 666 on my chest seemed a little too appropriate.

The kicker came when an old woman walked up to me while I was stretching and asked if she could take my picture, then zoomed in so all she could get was my face, number and crotch. Who knows what the hell's going to happen to that photo between here and the wall at the Happy Valley Home for the Disturbed Elderly. I might become an underground celebrity. "When Grandchildren Turn Evil," and other pamphlet-ready material bound for nursing homes and conservative middle schools.

I was at the front of the pack, in front of all 2,000 of us, when the starting pistol went off. That was, incidentally, the last time I was at the front of the pack of all 2,000 of us. This lanky guy in gym shorts from a 70's gay porno bounded ahead, followed by a guy from South Africa who could damn near outrun time itself, and the rest of us got the overwhelming feeling of standing still while the leaders screamed off into the distance.

Actually, the feeling I had was more of drowning, falling ever deeper and deeper into a writhing sea of humanity as dozens of high school heroes and twenty-something hotshots rocketed ahead of me. This tapered off around the two mile mark, when the pack had settled into more or less a steady pecking order. The anorexic guys who run ‘til they're dead were in front, followed by high school kids and championship runners, then average Joes running for all they're worth for reasons unknown to anyone, then me, then the mass of folks who questioned—about at the first mile mark—why the hell they let their wife/husband/hallucination talk them into the damned affair. In the rear of this seething mob were the men with beer bellies, the bigger the belly, generally the farther back. If we were being chased by lions across the Serengeti, it would be easy to pick out who'd get naturally selected right out of the gene pool.

Fast forward to the end of the race, after I've sprinted through the finish line. I was hallucinating from the effort, the natural chemicals coursing through my blood, the whole works, but I was sure of two things: that the ground was under me, and that under me meant somewhere slightly to the left. A sharp collision with the ground corrected my perception, and I suppose it could have been worse: one of my teammates was projectile vomiting into a plastic shopping bag while children fled in terror. The hardcore runners cheered him on. He just kept puking.

There was a free food tent in the cool-down area, so I collected my wits and wandered over to make dinner from handouts. First up was a round of fresh apple cider, which I chugged like cheap beer. Then I fished my hand through a bucket of orange slices, and over the next few minutes ate about an orange and a half. Back I went to the juice stand for another round of cider, and an apple-mash-donut. It all seemed like a great idea at the time, and really hit the spot as I stood in line to check my standings.

305th out of about 2,000 folks. Not bad. My grandma would be proud, and you know you've succeeded in life when you can look back and say "man, grandma would be so proud of _______ (insert name here)." Conversely, you really aren't having a good time until you realize, "Holy mother, I should probably kill the witnesses..." The race was the former, while the latter type of party is scheduled for Memorial Day Weekend.

The car on the way back leaked a solid trail of adrenaline, testosterone, and dog spit. War stories were swapped. Laughs were had. Taunts were made. And somewhere in the traffic jam I discovered the horrible truth about drinking, and eating, that much fruit-product on an empty stomach after running a 5k race.

We hit the back parking lot twenty seconds before "just in time". I ripped the door open ten seconds before, I hit the second floor landing five seconds before, and with a mighty "BRRROOOOAAAAWWWWRRRR" I sprinted across the sales floor in a fury of pumping legs and dropping pants that scared the beejeezus-shit out of everyone watching. The things I did to that bathroom left parts of my brain, and parts of the bowl, scarred for life.

Ah hell, not every story has a moral.