To Me, From Someone Who Is No Longer In My Will

I'm here to tell you this in the most loving way possible:

You are totally out of shape.

Like, if you tried to wrestle an organ-grinder's tiny monkey for its shiny, shiny coins, well, I wouldn't be placing my bet based on the so-called evolutionary ladder. I watched you try to do a push-up the other day, and then I held your frail, origami-like body gently as you suffered all the joys of total and epic failure.

I remember watching you struggle with the front door, and then walk outside. As your malnourished pupils attempted to adjust to the terrifying spring day, I noticed you wavering in the light. As if though your twiglike essence was slowly losing a battle against the very photons bombarding your body.

There are a few things you could do to improve your well-being:

1. Food is good. According to some radical thinkers, eating one or more meals a day is a primary factor in you not dying. You understand how, to write a really good book, you usually have to put some letters in? Yeah. Apparently your body works the same way. Just a heads up.
2. A regimen of light exercise can be fun and rewarding. For most people, I'd suggest twice-daily calisthenic regimens. For you, maybe a little weightlifting. Take it easy at first. I've taken the liberty of purchasing you a yo-yo.
3. Wishing that I were dead, while undoubtedly requiring effort, does not actually cause muscles to expand and contract.
4. Gin does not contain vitamins or amino acids. Also, when reading the label, the word "proof" does NOT mean the same thing as "% of your US RDA", like you think it does, all the time. To explain this in a different way, drinking two 40 proof drinks and one 20 proof drink does not mean you have "gained a level", as you frequently say after knocking back one of those horrendous rum-and-meds concoctions that you make.
5. Yes, I know that you pace. You pace back and forth, all the time, deep in thought and completely blind to whatever is happening around you. I understand that walking is good exercise, and that your perpetual, manic strides are probably the only reason your body hasn't completely fallen apart. It's not so much that you shouldn't keep doing it. I'm just saying, would it kill you to grab the trash bag once in a while and pace outside with it? Just a suggestion.

I know these are some pretty revolutionary ideas. Why don't you sleep on it, and then watch that Karate Kid movie a few times? And, if you start to get any ideas, well. I don't want to imply anything, but the kitchen floor could use a good scrubbing.

Yours,

S--------

PS - After you read my last letter about your hygiene, I'm certain this missive will also be deserving of your "Stabby Stabby Death Glare". This is alright. I've made my peace with the world.

Piracetam

So, I ordered some piracetam, which is a nootropic. For people who don't read wikipedia obsessively, this means it is a smart drug. It's a smart drug because it's a cholinergic. A cholinergic promotes the production of acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter (actually, it's the bitch of the neurotransmitters- it does the grunt work). Neurotransmitters make your brain work. Basically, if you don't understand what the pill does, you need to put some in your mouth.

Piracetam is prescription in the UK, but is totally fucking legal here. Why? Because America is a country of performance enhancement. I mean, come on. When Viagra stopped being hardcore enough, we invented Caverject, which you inject into your penis. YOU INJECT IT. INTO YOUR PENIS.

YOU INJECT IT INTO YOUR PENIS.

So anyways. I'm planning on taking some for the next few days just to see what kind of "legal" brain high I can go on, because if I can enhance my mental performance, well then. I can think of ways to kill people THAT MUCH FASTER. Which is an extremely useful skill where I work, because all I do is write fucking beautiful code and sit around wishing everyone else would die. I'll give you some updates, after I have been taking magical brain pills like the hicks in Tommyknockers, forever.

America The Costly

Ah, subprime. You can hear the venture capitalists screaming in their uneasy sleep as the mortgage-backed securities they used to use to clean up after a steamy session of solo sex plummet in value, like so many used lottery tickets. Hell, out of my back window I can see places that young, stupid couples used to call home. Now, they're like the older prostitutes in a brothel; working double-hard to show that their new, reduced foreclosure value is a good deal, an economical lay for a john with less discerning tastes.

On top of all that craziness is that demon banshee ethanol, the new monkey on the back of the energy economy; a magical elixir sent down upon us from the Corn Goddess herself to keep the truck lanes flowing with overpriced grain and clandestine nuclear waste. Never mind that the grain and milk are more expensive because the Corn Goddess wasn't slutty enough to put out enough produce for both the rice racers and the cattle. You can't blame the farmers; they'll grow whatever crop keeps them from going into debt.

A week or two ago, I heard that gas prices were going to hit $4 by summer, and I pretty much ignored it. That's what we've learned to do recently, collectively as American citizens in a badly mismanaged federation; just ignore the doomsayings and hope that there's enough of a country left at the end of this reign of apathetic terror to rebuild. It was a shock to come back from a long drive and see the pumps had jumped by a quarter, seemingly during my travails. I don't know about you, but I'm going to stock my acorns for winter and hope that somebody is smart enough to blow all this over.

Tastes Like Dying

Somebody decided to leave me a present in the form of a terrible chest cold, which I've been dealing with since Friday. The taste left behind after I go into a flurry of coughing is indescribable. It's like I accidentally ate a bag of rotten marshmallows. 

Yesterday, I went to visit my doctor for my favorite holiday, Pilloween. I didn't get anything for the cold, since I thought that by today my mighty Asian body would have handily dispatched its disgusting gaijin invaders. Instead, I got more Seroquel, Rozerem, and Ambien. Having lived the past month without the benefit of Rozerem, I'm pleased to once again have pills that make me go to sleep, just like I'm entitled to by the Constitution.

So, sorry I'm not making with the extreme funny, but be warned: I'll be back with a vengeance. As soon as I eat enough coffee grounds to get the taste of dying out of my mouth.

Getting In Shape

Yoga
On one hand, it would be pretty damn cool to be able to walk on my own shoulders. On the other hand, people who do yoga are part of some secret yoga club where one day you're doing "The Buffalo Transcends The Mosquito" and the next day you eat yogurt parfaits, drive an SUV, and engage in kinky menage a trois with disgustingly flexible Swedes. Then again, I do like yogurt.

Calisthenics
It's pretty easy to get into a calisthenics program, because you don't really need much to do pushups and pull-ups and all that jazz. It's pretty boring, though. It's kind of like the missionary position of exercise. Also, with my feeble, feminine arms, I have never done a free-hanging pull up in my life. When I was in high school, my gym teacher got so annoyed by me just dangling and struggling on the bar that he made me wear a peach taffeta dress for an entire week. I am stunning in taffeta.

Boxing
Although I always thought of boxing as a pretty boring means of fighting, mostly because there's no biting or kicking, it seems like when a boxer gets into a scrape with somebody who knows something showier and more exotic, the boxer ends up beating the juice out of the other guy. The down side is that you have to drink raw eggs and scotch, you have to be pretty stupid, and at some point in time you will get into a fight with a Russian who looks exactly like Mr T. If I were Mr. T, I would learn how to strangle people with all that bling.

Pilates
Pilates was invented a long time ago, but nobody knew or cared what it was until suddenly the indie rock generation revived it. Nowadays, people who do Pilates are also eating sushi, driving Nissans, and listening to CocoRosie. Actually, I do all those things, but I'm still not doing the exercises.

Karate
Karate was "totally rad" in the 80's, after Enter the Dragon and all of that, but nowadays every asshole you meet has a black belt and is into Zen Buddhism. I think the Zen Buddhist thing is really just a way of getting out of fights. I'm pretty sure a swift kick to the yin-yang is about all you need to protect yourself from these guys if you actually get into a fight. The problem is, they like to talk about all the things they've learned. I've had to listen for hours to a boss that just blathered on and on about how during a tournament he had some guy in this position or that position where just a little more pressure would have totally shattered all his bones into fine dust. It sounded like he was talking about gay sex. Ever since then, I've been totally off the whole karate thing.

Heavy Alcoholism
On the other hand, I might be in perfect shape, since I have to go to the store to buy two more bottles of gin about every other day. If you get the glass Seagram's half-gallon jugs, you're totally feeling the burn by the time you finally get your first drink of the morning. Once they're two-thirds empty, you can just take out the flameguard, fill the bottle with grapefruit juice, and you're all set to commit to a grueling afternoon of hurling sexual insults at your local boy scout troupe, lying naked on your lawn in a pool of your own stomach juices, or staring lasciviously through the living room window at the kids getting off the school bus across the street.

Thoughts During The Morning Drive

Everybody says you shouldn't give homeless people money, but I know that if I were homeless I wouldn't eat random food some soccer mom in a suburban launched at me from her car window. I should get a whole bunch of Wal-Mart gift cards for giving to homeless people. Obviously, you can still buy booze from a Super Wal-Mart, but come on. Just because you don't have a place to sleep doesn't mean you can't have a beer.

I wonder what the creepiest mustache ever is? I'm thinking Salvador Dali, but with dreadlocks. It would be like you were always eating hair spaghetti.

I am going to change my name to Viagra Cialis and then email everybody I know.

If I knew I was going to have a midget child, I don't think I would be able to keep myself from naming it after a Peanuts character. Just sayin'.

Uh oh, this song has the phat beats. I'd better turn my volume down. Otherwise, I'll be that car. The one where it sounds like the person inside is trying to make love to an aircraft engine. What pisses me off about that is that I really like this song.

Holy smokes, how am I already all the way to Vegas Drive? I don't think I remember anything after Charleston. One of these days I'm going to accidentally kill someone.

It is really, really hard to imagine an actual barrel full of monkeys. I can do it for a couple seconds, but then trying to imagine the monkeys moving and doing things is like, primate overload. I think that anybody who can consistently imagine a barrel full of monkeys for over five minutes should be allowed into the Olympic Games. For monkey-barrel imagining.

I should learn to play acid jazz. I could go by the name Miles Ekko, which would be cool because it is an anagram of my name. I wonder if there is such a thing as an acid trumpet. Even as a keyboard setting on one of those fancy keyboards that has like nine thousand instrument settings where none of them sounds like an actual instrument anyone has ever played, ever.

One of these days I bet somebody is going to invent topical coffee. If I had some, I'd be rubbing it into my temples right now. While I'm driving. My car has excellent alignment. I'm sure I'd be okay.

I cannot get the safety dance out of my head, even though I haven't heard it for ten years.

Highlights From The Bar

Mike: Fancy! You're here! And you brought a Korean with you!
Me: What!? Don't touch me. Seriously. Do not touch me. Quit poking me. Stop it.


Mike: I just need a hundred and forty bucks to sail around the world!
Fancy: Really? How are you doing that?
Me: Do you just look for swimmers at the Mexican border and hop on?
Mike: Erm... thousand. A hundred and forty thousand.


Mike: I'm going to reinvent the ninja shoe.
Me: Ninjas already have shoes.
Fancy: Yeah, they have really fucked up toe things.
Mike: But they have the rubber grip!
Fancy: What?
Mike: There's this grip rubber! It lets you keep going up on the 45 degree angles!
Fancy: So, now you just need a rubber factory?
Mike: No! They already make it! For the 45 degree angles!
Fancy: So if you're going up a 46 degree angle, you're fucked?


Mike: Seriously, these foot fetishists are hardcore. They'll do anything to see more feet.
Fancy: I know. It seems like it would be so easy to get off on feet. I tried to develop a foot fetish, but it didn't happen.
Me: So, if there's pictures of feet all over the internet, how do you attract your own fetishists?
Mike: You have to make people stand in pies, or something.
Me: I don't get it.
Fancy: Yeah, me neither.


Mike: So, do you fantasize about [ex-girlfriend]?
Me: Hell no. She threw a bottle of booze at me. What a waste.


Not Attractive Girl: So, will one of you guys buy me a drink?
Me: Yeah, whatever. I need to break a hundred.
Not Attractive Girl: Okay, I'll sit next to you guys.
Me: (under my breath) I want to spit in your hair.


Bartender Jacob: Dude. These whores can put away the alcohol.
Fancy: Where's the whore?
Bartender Jacob: Over on the other side of the bar, in the corner.

(an hour and a half later)

Fancy: Wake up, we're leaving.
Mike: Already?
Me: We've been here for two hours. We're drunk. All the Henderson people have already left.
Mike: Where's the whore?
Fancy: Across the bar.


Mike: Oak World. That's a strip club, right? Oak World?
Fancy: Yeah, sure it is. Come on in and see all our wood.
Me: These aren't the bitches you're looking for.

OTCMiHKaL: Over The Counter Medicines I Have Known And Loved

A Chemical Love Story

advil
I figure that if my girlfriend can take one of these every ten minutes, it stands to reason that I can take ten of them every minute. Bolstered by this algebraic equation, I plunk a handful into my mouth before my mind can recognize the mathematical inconsistency. In three bites, what seemed like a mouthful of medicine-sweet M&Ms is now a sick-tasting bite of jagged glass. After swallowing, there is pain in my throat. Eventually, the pain goes away. Shortly afterwards, so does the bottle. Nothing seems to happen. I lie in bed listening to Bob Marley. This is boring. Fun: 1/10

claritin
My throat still a little sore from the Advil bit, I pop twelve pills from their blister pack and crush each one under a half-dollar. Using my driver's license, I cut out three lines and insufflate the first one. The burn blossoms in my brain, but my nose feels clogged. Then, suddenly, it doesn't. Ecstatic, I move on to the next line, and then the next. Each one is progressively easier. I chase it with half a liter of gin, just to make sure. Suddenly, I feel dizzy; I sit down on the couch and wait for the ride to kick in. Oh yeah, that's the ticket. Wait. Maybe it isn't. Half an hour later, I wake up in the middle of a flowerbed. A zinnia is staring me in the face. I'm two blocks away from my house. I get up and look around; there is a small tricycle behind me. Apparently, I stole it from my neighbors and rode it here. I return it and apologize; my neighbor, Suzanne, offers me a slice of blackberry pie. Fun: 3/10

calamine lotion
After I get home from the pharmacy, I pull the three pink bottles out of the bag and look at them thoughtfully. After a shot of Rumpelminze to boost my courage, I break the safety seal on the first one and chug it down. Ugh. This is worse than drinking vomit. I can barely keep the first bottle down as I crack the next one open. It tastes like a combination of sand, glue, and hair. The texture is indescribably bad. Halfway through the bottle, my gut heaves and I spray paint my kitchen in yellow-pink. I never knew such a color existed. Just looking at it makes me sick. After pondering whether or not to clean it up, I chug the rest of the second bottle so I can paint the rest. Fun: 0/10

theraflu
I dump two boxes of theraflu into a giant coffee mug, filling it by a quarter. After heating some water in the kettle, I mix it all together and drink it as quickly as I can without scalding my throat. Yes. Yes. Oh yes. After the past three attempts, finally something is happening. I feel calm, relaxed, drowsy. Very drowsy. When my legs tumble out from under me, the sound of the coffee mug shattering on the floor is somehow muffled. Fun: 6/10

birth control pills
These weren't over the counter, but I did find them in a coworker's purse, so they officially count. I can't remember if I'm supposed to eat the ones there are 7 of, or the ones there are 21 of, so I eat all of them. Nothing happens immediately, so I go to watch television. After three hours, I am vaguely aware that I am watching Days of our Lives, that my nipples are extremely tender, and that I am starving for candy. I get in the car to drive to the corner store, but on the way, I crash into a mailbox and break down in tears. Fun: 2/10

trucker fuckers
I persuade the cashier at 7-11 to sell me an entire box of trucker stimulants, then go home and tear the packages open like a gleeful child at Christmas. After the first three packages, I suddenly feel sixty thousand feet tall. My eyesight seems telescopic, eagle-like; I look around the room and notice that I now have a mental zoom that allows me to notice single objects in detail without missing a single thing that's going on anywhere else. I am dangerously aroused. I understand the lyrics to "East Bound And Down". Fun: 9/10

Maybe I'm Just Odd...

1. When I think of internet piracy, I like to whisper "Yarrrr..." under my breath.
2. Women are in a Schrodinger state, in between Hot and Not, until I can hear their voices and rate them on how annoying they are.
   
3. When I'm driving, I like to get a good look at the other drivers and imagine where they might be going.
4. While walking, I like to make sure I've taken an equal number of steps with each foot.
5. I like to suck the air out of cheese puffs, then swallow them without biting. That way, I don't feel the immediate need to brush.
6. I think that all forms of movement are acceptable dance techniques.
7. The concept of riding on a living animal makes absolutely zero sense to me.
8. If you add hot sauce to any food or beverage whatsoever it becomes absolutely life-sustaining that I consume it immediately.
9. When I imagine a bottle of poison, it is always greenish-black.
10. If I'm thinking in words, I always visualize a printed page in a serif font.
    

These Stumbledown Corners

This is the kind of beautiful response that will get turned into atrocious spin. And it's all true.

A couple weekends ago, I was up in Butte. Not for the people (of which there are none) or the niceties (which is pretty much air), but because I need to do what any responsible parent does and train my children for the competitive world of business. In this particular case, drug muling. So we found my buddy Doc's cabin, which is so remote that even the two people who live in Butte said that it was "out in the middle of nowhere". Getting up to his place requires four wheel drive and a deep respect for those pointy-headed bull terriers, since he keeps seven of them on his property and has named them for the majority bands in the visible electromagnetic spectrum. Yeah, I know. He's weird like that.

This stuff is nothing new to my kids, and the Boy kept pointing out the window- "Look, it's Blue!" or "Green, Daddy, Green!" whenever one of those insufferable murder-weapons came yipping into the yard. Honestly, I have no idea how he tells them apart, since they all just look like giant mice on steroids to me. As soon as we parked the borrowed Jeep, they crowded around and started licking the kids' hands.

Doc was looking lively, but you could see a slight twitch- he was beginning to ration his marijuana input and so was starting to deal with the uncomfortable schpilkes which comes from not being thoroughly stoned. He had a prescription for Marinol- hell, half the people in Montana do- but he said that it was a far cry from the natural thing.

Anyways, we drove up to about six miles from the border, and then started picking our way down the familiar trail through the mountainous forest. The Girl was on my shoulders, and the Boy was jumping from rocky outcropping to stone, carefree as a goat.

Once we got to the place, Doc unslung his camouflage-green duffel and handed it to the Boy. I squatted down and reminded of his pointers while the Girl mercilessly pulled my hair. Don't go near wild animals. If you are attacked, drop the duffel and run. And for goodness' sake, stay away from the Mounties.

He was down through the thicket in a flash of lightning, even though the duffel was almost as big as he was. Doc and I sat back, that uncontrollable little bit of fear that you can never quite reason away biting like a mouse at the napes of our necks.

It seemed like eternity, and all the things a father can worry about started popping up in my head, when we heard the tripping feet through last winter's needles. Without a word, when he got closer, I picked him up and gave him a great hug while handing Doc the duffel. It was an automatic gesture, one that we'd done many times before, but this time the weight of the duffel sunk into my subconscious before I could really put a pin on it.

"They fucked us. Those bastards. I should go up there right now and cap that ignorant moose before he can get away," Doc griped. The bag felt almost half as heavy as it ever did, and now that I noticed, it had the dimples which signified vacancy towards one of the ends. Visions of Doc's shiny steel pistol popped up in my mind.

He dropped the bag to the ground, crouched over it, and unzipped it savagely. With practiced motions, he began sifting through the stuff like so much shorn alfalfa. The familiar scent filled the air. The Boy tensed up, and I could feel his fear at Doc's sudden angry outburst.

"Hold on, what's this?" I said, pointing at the plastic identity tag. Where before had been a blank "Name:____, Address:_____" and what have you, there was some crude writing. Right before Doc snatched at it, it decoded in my brain. 1 USD = .98 Canadian. Cripes.

"It's not right, it's not right!" Doc began to howl. "After all the time you know somebody. I should go give that ignorant loon a curbstomping."

He continued to rage, and the Girl started to cry. I grabbed Doc roughly by the shoulders and forced him to look me in the eye. "Look, man," I said. "This isn't a question of that poor dumb moose ripping you off, you got it? They've got different money over there. They have a completely different set of rules, you got it? They're not the ones who did this to you. It's those Californians, those ignorant, decadent Californians, with their Rolls-Royces and their backyard pools."

Doc nodded assent, though I could tell he had no idea how a state full of movie stars and liars could possibly affect something here, on the 49th parallel. He was a man whose life revolved around fixing motors and casual disregard for the laws of the land, and there were things he knew he would never understand.

Finally, he pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to the Boy. "Here you go," he said, trying to sound jolly but coming out numb. "Don't spend it at the movies."

Ceci N'est Pas Une Pub Crawl

9:30 PM

In bed, watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. The little GiR icon on my screen starts bouncing. It's Fancy, at my front door, messaging me from his iPhone. He's managed to dump Devin Danger off on some unsuspecting ball of estrogen, and wants to go out. I call Sonny, who works at PT's. Sonny is asleep, and works at the PT's on Water and Boulder Highway at midnight. I express concern, because Water is way out in Henderson, where nobody lives and the zombies rise up at night in search of Pilsner.

9:45 PM

Calling around frantically for somebody - anybody - to go out drinking with us. I briefly consider each of my friends, then my wife's church friends, then my wife's church friends' parents, then her parents, then my mother. Fancy informs me that Joolz is spent from the night before. He looks panicked as he realizes that the inability to form a drinking party is the first sign of senility.

9:50 PM

In desperation, Fancy suggests we go play the ponies, since it's the cheapest way to drown yourself in high-grade alcohol. I explain to my puzzled wife what an electronic horse racing machine is. She seems to think it's the exact same thing as the kids' carnival game at the Excalibur. I patiently explain that a group of drunken adults are unlikely to play a gambling game in order to win a plastic viking hat. The entire point, the summation of the experience (if you will), is in the drinking, since playing the ponies is equivalent to paying 25c per rum-and-coke.

10:05 PM

Frazzled, desperate, and watching his youth fade away like those guys who drank from the wrong cups in Indiana Jones And The Jesus Cup Thing, Fancy orders me to get in the car so we can head to the Inn Zone. There is an extremely bad cover band there. They look like overaged metalheads, except they're playing Georgia Sattelites covers. We charge the bar to begin our pathetic pub crawl. Fancy goes for rum and coke; I sip a shot of Ouzo. I remember that I have already started this afternoon off with about three glasses of gin and orange juice. Fancy is whispering a mantra to himself.

10:25 PM

The Inn Zone sucks. It's mostly a place for extremely mannish women to flock together and congregate. It's impossible not to meet the potential love of your life at the Inn Zone, as long as you don't have an aversion to thoroughbreds. Looking at the shuffleboard table is reminiscent of the starting line at the Kentucky Derby. Fancy and I weigh our options, and flee to the PT's across the street. Sonny is still probably not even awake.

10:30 PM

PT's is dead. A somber pair play pool upstairs; there are a smattering of couples sitting around the bar; the bartender is only four days employed. We decide on Newcastle. We talk about drugs. When the gin cries out from my stomach, I suavely wander out to vomit in the parking lot. Fancy finishes my beer.

10:50 PM

The New York Bar & Grill has reached the point where only the regulars are seated at the bar. Two couples are playing eight-ball. I wonder aloud if any of them are attractive. None of them are. The bartender is a short, round woman from the South. She's got the tough streak that so many Southern women have when they run bars, or so I assume from watching Gunsmoke. She has a truly frightening pair of breasts, the kind that make you remember dreams of suffocation. I order a rum and coke simply because I can handle hard alcohol far easier than beer. Miraculously, I'm sobering up, but am starting to get bored. Steve orders one beer, then another. The bartender warns us that we need to go out the back door, since there's apparently a crazy guy at the front door.

Things are looking up. A crazy guy means I could potentially get into a fight. When we're ready to leave, we head out the back door, then wander around to the front, since that's where we parked anyways.

An old guy comes out of the entry chamber, presumably after being denied entry. He calls the bartender a rude name under his breath. He isn't worth getting in a fight over. Fancy drops me off at home, then heads off to cry.

Bugnuts

The Consumerist just posted a link to a fantastically ironic scenario - apparently, a New York shop selling a $25k chocolate sundae got shut down by the health department for hosting what appears to be a horde of vermin.

It's enough to give me the shivers. I may be pretty darn awesome, but that doesn't mean I don't have my own fears. I've already written about how a moth once broke me down into tiny girl tears. Well, let me regale you with another tidbit:

Last year, I was a slum enforcer. What this means is that the owners of certain low-budget properties needed someone to live in their apartments to keep the previous renters (who'd usually stopped paying) from breaking back in. For several months, I slept with a baseball bat and prayed for a shotgun. I was doing this for a measly $5 a day, but at least it sort of counted as negative rent.

And there were infestations. Oh, goodness, were there infestations. My foray into slumwatching came at approximately the same time as the United States federal government banned my favorite neurotoxic insecticide, Diazinon. So, instead of barging into these filthy hovels like a Texas Ranger with a trusty six-gun by my side, I'm sleeping in rooms where I've literally doused the carpet with malathion. Whenever another idiot roach walked into my Super Poison Field, I'd scream like a fairy princess in a boxwood derby and start swinging my baseball bat, completely oblivious to my nearsighted lack of aim.

Eventually, I stopped being such a prissy little whiner and into more of a grim soldier with a twisted sense of humor. I started hoping that leaving little impaled corpses behind would have all the effect of heads on stakes. Right about when it started to become a cruel game, I completely lost my sense of fear. Cool, huh?

Obviously, I've regressed, but that's mostly because moths are really, really scary, and I hope I get earmuffs for Christmas because I am scared to death that they will lay their filthy moth eggs in my tender ear holes.

She Really, Really Loves Me

Love	Creepy
Makes you dinner	Gives you a necklace made of mice she caught
Watches The Transformers Movie with you, cries	Watches Event Horizon with you, gets turned on
Writes you letters when you're away, gives them to you when you come back	Cuts herself to mark the hours you've been gone; names all her houseplants after you
Secretly fantasizes about Johnny Depp but doesn't compare you	Secretly fantasizes about her father, comparisons frequent
Smells like lavender	Smells like the morgue
Knitting	Taxidermy
Calls you pumpkin	Calls you uncle Roger
Misses you a lot	Ignores your restraining order

The Liars Are Out En Masse

Derek is posting up a storm, if you live in some bizarro universe where "storm" means "a couple drops of rain". Luckily, that's exactly what 'storm' means here in Vegas.

He seems to be intent on feeding massive lies to the common consumer, so I have to take it upon myself as someone who knows the truth to inform everyone about the massive web of disinformation he's passing out. Let's see if we can clear up all the mistruths so that everybody can go back to minding their own business.

Lie #1: He Visited Kentucky

This is total nonsense. Derek is afraid of string ties. He once called me from a Halloween party where somebody had dressed up like the evil priest guy from The Gunslinger. He was in a closet, peeking out at the guy through the crack in the door, crying into a bra some chick gave him literally two seconds after he arrived (I don't know how he does this but I suspect he carries Rohypnol). There is no way he'd ever visit Kentucky, even though the company he works for has a massive building there, because he would have freaked out. I once ordered KFC and he had a grand mal seizure as soon as he smelled 10 out of the 11 herbs and spices.

Lie #2: He Reads Fiction

Yet another horrible lie. If you ever walk into his house, you'll notice a few things: first, that he keeps girl scouts in his garage; and second, that the only fictional books in his house are those New Ager books by guys named Rajesh that tell you to do things like "focus your chakra" and "visualize your chi". I have a vague suspicion that these books are actually literary pornography. I mean, I remember the last time I focused my chakra, and it was in this bar where you had to do it up against the door in the bathroom because there aren't any doorknobs.

Knowing this, it's bizarre that he would give you details that are the exact opposite of anything he would do ever. Trust me, the only "teen fiction" he knows anything about is listening to little girls tell him they're past the age of consent. On the other hand, he would totally read a book about antimatter, because this one time I didn't see him leave his bedroom for a week, and when I got bored and accidentally burst in I saw him building something I swear was an android version of Maya Angelou. I couldn't be sure, though, because I only got a glimpse before he threw a handful of moths at me, and that night I had a dream about a giant rabbit that eats skyscrapers.

Lie #3: Up Up Down Down B A B A Select Start

Derek would never have memorized the Konami code with the select button. Using the select button means you're going to play two player. Derek grew up in total isolation in a sensory deprivation tank while being fed nothing but royal jellybeans by an order of blind monks.

Lie #4: ZFS Is The Greatest Thing Ever

ZFS "will" be the greatest thing ever. Like, when today's cutting edge disk access technologies become the mainstream disk access technologies. Way too many people have drives way too pathetic to handle the mighty powers of ZFS. If you don't know what ZFS is, let me tell you that it's basically having a horde of tiny Ron Jeremy clones in your hard drive, taking care of it in that way that only scary porn stars can.

Now that we've uncovered the thread of blatant falsehoods, it's pretty darn obvious that he's telling you all of this because he wants you to think he's got something in common with you, the book-reading, Kentucky-loving, two-player-Contra-gaming, non-ZFS-knowing pink American everyman. And the reason he wants to do this, I suspect, has something to do with the pill bottle clinking in his pocket.

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On The Corpses Of My Enemies

You know, there really isn't anything to complain about. I mean, I've got a pretty decent life now- a home, a job, a mighty space empire that revels in my leadership, and every single episode of The Young Ones on DVD. Every single threat that ever stood in my way to total galactic conquest is pretty much obliterated now. Let's get cathartic. Let's relive some of those past rivalries.

My Entire Third Grade Class 

Oh, you sniveling roomful of assweasels. I understand it probably means I have some psychological issues to even remember your names, but let's make something clear. I have superhuman intelligence and I bathe every morning in the blood of virgins; you are all probably working at the same Burger King. Yes. I'd like fries with that. All the fries your pathetic hovel can muster.

That One Chick In Seventh Grade

Yeah, well, you know what? I was totally being nice to you. Mostly because I heard you were a total skank. You didn't have to tell everyone I had worms. First of all, and this is totally coming from left field, how would you even know? That sort of comment indicates a rather intimate connection with my lower intestinal tract, which you and I both know you had absolutely no access to. I say had because, well, I don't really remember you very well, and it's possible you and I have gotten reacquainted during one of my opulent forays into human flesh. Oh, lighten up. It's not like you never wondered. In case you were wondering, it's like the world's best filet fucking mignon. Bitch.

The Asshole Manager Who Took $20 From My Till And Then Told Me My Drawer Came Up Short

Oh, but I do remember you and your simpering never-going-to-be-better-than-a-manager-at-Shakey's ass. You know, I really did roll pretty calm, right up until my faithful men in the Ninth Star legion scorched the Earth and raised the Dusk Shield to plunge the planet into eternal darkness and misery. I never really blamed you. I figured your mother must have locked you in the closet when you were young. Like, for a really long time. I gave one of my most faithful commanders the right to desecrate your body and then, desecrate your corpse. I'm almost tempted to make a holiday in the name of your defeat, but that would be just pitiful.

The Long, Long Line Of Psychiatrists

Where do you get off telling people they have issues? Of course they have issues. Now. They're all dying from lack of sunlight, bitches. That solar energy runs my Luminous robot armies, and those Skullfucker corporal bots are pretty fantastic. Aren't they? I think you would know. I've sentenced your kind to the eternal polishing of them. As they sharpen their mighty death tools on you. I shall permit myself a tiny evil laugh. Heh. Heh. Hahaha. (Note: Get evil laugh tutor. Shower with unimaginable riches.)

That Guy Who Cut Me Off When I Was Piss Drunk And Just Trying To Get Off The Streets For The Good Of Humanity Before I Caused A Wreck

Yeah, I got home, idiot. No thanks to you. You and your friggin Audi, you'd think someone with that kind of car would do something to make sure nobody actually hit it. I'd stopped counting drinks after the fifth of scotch. Single-malt, thank you. I rolled pretty high even back then. Well, it's your fault that the Audis of the world have all been confiscated. I have a plan for them. They will trample delicately upon the flesh of the former upper class. I just have to come up with a kickass name for them. Which is hard. Because when I look at an Audi, 'kickass' is not the first word to come to mind.

The So Called Faithful Former General Who Then Attempted To Assassinate Me

Dude. Seriously. What the hell. That shit be totally wack. Did you not read Julius Caesar? Or the million shows that borrowed plot points from it? Well, nobody will anymore; reading is strictly forbidden among the slaves of former Earth. You might as well have proclaimed it on a billboard. You try having an abusive old man and not watching over your shoulder wherever you go. But seriously. I'm okay. I'm okay. Everything is okay.

Thought Of The Day

I'd be a narcissist if I didn't scare the ever-loving crap out of myself.