When Was Meat so High?

"I think it's always good to know where someone's coming from and, quite frankly, your origins have been a bit of a mystery to me."


Yeah. I find myself thinking this about 15-30 times a day.

I went through a period of just saying whatever popped into my head, no matter how scathing, how offensive, or how odious and loathsome the notion was. These were my acerbic high school days. Luckily, sarcasm and wit were considered "funny" at the time, and so no one ever tried to stab me in a parking lot. But as the years went on, I realized that one cannot safely say whatever is on their mind at any given time - you could conceivably get stabbed in a parking lot. Or worse, you could end up coming across as an utterly egregious great douche bag to a person who means well.

Or perhaps you don't care how you come across to well-meaning people. And in which case, kudos, I guess. Good luck leading a life utterly devoid of decent friends.

Do I sound like I'm getting soft in my old age? Well, SCREW YOU!

Kidding. But not really.

I don't condone censorship. I want people to speak their mind. But I feel that one can do so without being a tactless, overly caustic, curmudgeon.

As far as poking fun at people who are NOT well-meaning and who, for all intents and purposes, are complete morons – I say, HAVE AT THEM! But they could be psychotic, so keep your voice down, lest you get stabbed in a parking lot.

Moving on, I was at the beach the other day* – attempting to get some color. My skin is as pallid as a carp's belly. For me, the coloring process is slow and steady. By the end of the summer, I'll have the skin tone of a normal Caucasian human being. But enough of this tangential blithering.

I was at the beach. It was very crowded with the wrong kind of people, mainly because they weren't charging admission. So the beach was rife with all sorts of littering, abrasive, alcoholic riffraff. And, of course, teeming with the dime-a-dozen, two-dimensional, gum-chewing "teenage girl" and "teenage boy." The pack (because they always travel in packs – god forbid one of these characters goes off and does something on their own. Perhaps they're afraid wolves will pick them off if they stray too far) nearest to me was having fun consuming alcohol and climbing the lifeguard tower. Never a good combination, but, hey man, whatever it takes to thin out the shallow end of the gene pool.

Now, when I say lifeguard tower, I don't really mean "tower." It's not really a "tower." A tower implies something that's kind of, you know, tall. Something above.... maybe 8 feet. The lifeguard "towers" at Narragansett beach are about 6 to 6 ½ feet high. And below the "tower" is lots and lots and lots and lots of very, very, very, very, very soft sand. So basically, what I'm trying to imply is, should one decide to jump off one of the "towers," said person will not get hurt.

Unless, of course, they jump head first, and in which case, once again thank you for removing the undesirable genes from the pool.

So some of these generic girls climbed up the tower, sat down and, as far as I could tell, just stared at the boys in their pack, and giggled inanely. This is completely copacetic behavior, I suppose. However they want to spend their time is fine by me. But they progressively got louder and more abhorrent. I have a strange genetic malady that does not allow me to block out background noise, so I overhear conversations – NOT BECAUSE I WANT TO, TRUST ME!! It is a curse!! There's really no point in reiterating their "conversations." It will cause neuronal breakdowns if I do so.

The part that vexed me so was when it came time for them to get down. Keep in mind these girls are only about 6 feet or so off the ground. They were immediately bamboozled and started to panic. So they started shouting for the boys. And that's exactly what they called them – "the boys." "Oh.....um......uhh.....err.....how do we.....ummm.....get the boys! Call the boys! We can't get down!!" So of course the boys wandered over one by one once they realized that the girls were screeching for them. And they didn't really help! They just kind of watched while the girls made a big deal out of getting down.

Then they all merrily skipped away. They most likely blew chunks in the parking lot, and had lots of unprotected sex in the car, and in 10 years, they'll probably be soccer moms and dead-beat dads. Me? Judgmental? NO WAY!

This is the kind of scenario that, should you feel so inclined to make fun of people, you have my blessing. In fact, I'll join in with you. We'll make a time of it. What exactly a "time" is, I'm not quite sure. But we'll make one. Together. But I must insist you wear protection since I'd really rather not make a contribution to the gene pool. That way no one can wonder about the origins of my potential offspring.

One major problem avoided.


See you in the Netherworld,
The Cage.



* Clearly this is an older blog. I did not, in fact, go to the beach the other day, seeing as it is January. This blog was written during the summer of '08.

Now I'll Never be a Teen Model!!

Skadoosh.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately (NOT drinking, although drinking can be fun and good for what ails ya, unless life is what ails ya, and then you might be an alcoholic and then more's the pity and so forth and et cetera.), and I have come to the conclusion that I may be the reincarnation of Andy Rooney, even though I'm pretty sure he's not dead.... Yet.

Don't worry. I'm not going to kill Andy Rooney. But I've had my eye on Jimmy Kimmel for years. He's going down, going down like a sweet muffin.

So anyway, yeah. Andy Rooney. Reincarnation. Granted, I don't have bushy eyebrows and a profoundly nasal voice that is hitherto unprecedented. But I DO have a lazy eyelid and a goofy laugh. BOO-YAH! So the proof is in the pudding, whatever the stinking hell THAT means.

Here's the thing: I don't really trust gummy bears. No matter how much you chew them, they never really start to break down. You can only scissor them into smaller chewy bits, smaller versions of themselves, if you will. Then swallow very carefully so as to avoid choking. Nobody wants gummy bear bits getting into their lungs. Instant death, or so they tell me.

But with most other foods, you can feel them start to break down as soon as they mix with a decent amount of saliva. No amount of spit can break down a gummy bear. I'm convinced that after the end of the world, after the nuclear holocaust, all that will be left are cockroaches, spider plants, Mimi from The Drew Carey Show, and TONS of Haribo gummy bears.

I eat a lot of gummy bears (only Haribo gummy bears will do) and I'm convinced that they're building up in my colon somewhere. I just know that as soon as I turn 50, when it's time for all god's chillun' to have their preemptive colonoscopy, that they're going to find a lifetime's worth of masticated gummy bear bits nesting within my.....*gulp* .... murky tract.

And by that time, I'm sure that pile of gelatinous nastiness will have become sentient. It'll be like that episode of "Futurama" where Fry eats the egg salad sandwich from the vending machine and ends up with sentient parasites that fix all his neurons and make him more intelligent. Except my sentient gummy bear colon mass will just make me all bloated and irritable and cantankerous. So in actuality, I'll be exactly the same at 50 as I am now at 26. WOOT! Or maybe they’ll develop into a second brain – a Bum Brain, just like dinosaurs!

I'll have sentient colon cancer (aka A Bum Brain) and the world's worst case of TMJ from eating too many Haribo gummy bears. I'll be a whole medical case study AND a study in evolution, what with my new bum brain and all. My retirement is going to be so cool!


Yours with everlasting fervent admiration bordering on sinister obsession,
The Cage.