The City at Night

Where our broken bodies lie, the darkest clouds form…
Like Pagan sounds from the oncoming storm…
Hooks from the sky selling me sin
To the corner of the room I’ve backed myself in…

When you learn to lose, winning is okay too…

My collage roommate Brent was the greatest loser I’ve ever met. Sure he was as competitive as all American boys are taught to be, and he was good at a lot of things but losing was his specialty. He was great at Dr. Mario, walking on stilts, and making chicken wings in his Fry-Daddy, but what I remember the most was his ability to continuously lose at the sports video game John Madden Football. He and my other seemingly well adjusted roommate Chris use to play John Madden Football every single night for at least 3 years. Brent never won. Now when I say ‘never’ I don’t mean it flippantly or for dramatic effect either. I mean Chris kicked the pants off of Brent every single time they played the game for the duration of our roommatehood. But Brent would take these beatings with an eloquent and almost inhuman grace. See Brent came from a very small town and went to a very small rural high school in northern Michigan. I think he told me that he graduated with 36 other students. Like all good American boys he played a number of organized high school sports, and partly because of his athletic ability, but mostly due to the sobering fact that the athletically capable student population was so minuscule; Brent played offense, defense, and special-teams on his school’s varsity football team.

One night when we were profoundly drunk, and without a single female in a 10 mile radius of our apartment, he told us all matter-of-factly something equally as profound as our collective intoxication level. He explained that on Homecoming night of his senior year, which was October 17th and the day he turned 17, (His Golden Birthday), he caught a diving 4th quarter game winning touchdown pass in the end zone with time running out on the clock. Later that night he smoked a huge joint in the back of his good friend’s car listening to Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing while getting drunk on warm cans of Coors Light beer. And even later that night he had sex with a girl after the Homecoming Dance (where he may have been crowned Homecoming King, I can’t remember if that is just my subconscious trying to inflate the story for dramatic effect or not, but just doing the math on that would give him an 18.5% chance of being the actual Homecoming King. And that is if every single senior attended the dance which is highly unlikely. I’m sure the Stoners and Gearheads where out smoking pot behind a dumpster and missed the whole event because they were to busy talking about how they’d still have sex with Tori Spelling even though she looks like a horse). Brent said after that night, losing didn't matter to him anymore. That was it… this guy didn’t mind losing! Well that’s just flipping everything Western Culture holds sacred on its head isn't it...

Being a known Dove like that has its drawbacks though. Once other dudes learned this character trait of Brent’s and realized they could rack up countless W’s onto their personal self-esteem scoreboard in any sort of contest they wished, lines formed around the block with Michigan’s male youth waiting to beat the pants off of Brent in sport or other games of chance and wit. I imagine that this is what a hooker must feel like with countless suburban, often married men, ejaculating into and onto them night after night without ever so much as a tickle of enjoyment gained. (Sorry that was gross).

One of my very last memories of Brent and Chris playing Madden Football came after I had already graduated from collage but was still living in the house in a vain attempted to hold onto my irresponsibility as long as I could. It was a typical Wednesday night (or Saturday night I don’t remember). Every TV in the house was on, fighting for volume supremacy with the horrid jam-band music billowing out of my trust-fund-kid-pothead roommate’s shithole of a room. 4 smoldering cigarettes for every 1 conscious occupant of the house, and a menagerie of clear, brown, green, tall, and chubby beer bottles in various states of emptiness and temperature placed atop all manors of flat surfaces or the floor. Brent and Chris were locked in another epic battle of electronic versions of real athletes running and tackling and blitzing each other all over the place. The TV was humming with the vibrations of charged electrons and sweet-ass 64-bit graphics. I think it was storming outside or it was leap year, something was amiss from what I can remember. But this was the night, this was THE night… Brent was up by some number of touchdowns on Chris and time was running out. Everyone gathered to witness this bit of folklore in the making and it was eating Chris alive. Honestly I rarely spent any time around them when they played that game because watching two people play a videogame is on par with watching a grasshopper scratch his head with his huge back leg… although faintly amusing in some sense, it’s mostly just boring as all hell. But when history is being made the bandwagon seems to run out of window seating rather quickly. As time ticked away, Chris was trying some desperate tactics. From what I can surmise this meant throwing the long bomb on every offensive down and blitzing Brent’s quarterback on every defensive play in hopes of causing a turn over. But Brent was picking up the defensive trickery and covering all of the deep wide-outs with no problems, while also covering the flats for any would be quick slants. (Why the fuk do I know this stuff? What is wrong with me). Toward the end of the 4th quarter Chris attempted what was in the sports world referred to as the ‘nail in the coffin’ play. A quick-slant pass to a wide receiver that Brent’s safety anticipated, picked-off, and ran back for a touchdown. (Complete with high stepping and end zone spike graphics to roaring digital crowd cheers). Chris grit his teeth together with so much force - accompanied by a guttural moan - that a sizeable triangular shaped piece of his front tooth chipped off and flew about 4 feet strait ahead, hitting the TV screen and landing on the beer stained but still quite sky-blue shag carpet in front of us all. Brent didn’t throw any high-fives, he didn’t brag or do any retarded end zone dances. He calmly set the games joystick down, lit a cigarette and walked out of the room to retrieve a colder beer. It seems like everyone else spoke of this moment for weeks but Brent never said a word about it. I guess when you’ve got the whole losing thing down… winning doesn’t really matter all that much either.

Jay's Soup Cube. Episode 1 (The Pilot)

Hi and welcome to Jay's Soup Cube, I'm your host Jay.

Today we're going to try the Healthy Choice Old Fashioned Chicken Noodle (with white meat only) from ConAgra Foods Inc.

After placing into a ceramic bowl, this canned delight cooked up in a jiff on high in the microwave. A dash of pepper and a healthy splash of Tobasco Sauce later and you're ready to go. Today's accompaniment is a Turkey and Swiss sandwich on whole wheat bread with Jay's brand hot chips and a pickle on the side. (slurp)

---eat eat eat, sip sip sip --- (Time is elapsing)

Over all I'd give this soup a 4 stars out of five. With it being touted as "Healthy" and all (note the little running man next to the 'C' in 'Choice' denoting that either: A) This soups so good you need to run to the store to buy some, B) People who run for fun tend to enjoy this soup rather then say... the Meatnormus Rib-n-Giblets Triple Cheese Burger at Burgers King or C) If you eat this soup to fast you may need to run to the bathroom), the most obvious thing you taste is the lack of sodium. We Americans love our salt and when embargoes are placed on it by Socialist companies like ConAgra Foods Inc. (the 'Con' stands of Con-munists Universal Health Care Plan Supporters I'd imagine my Super-Republican co-worker would accuse), our taste buds can pick up on it right away. Aside from the salt deficiency (there-by increasing my chances of getting a neck goiter I'm sure), what I did find refreshing was the "Only White Meat" aspect of this soup. See, every can of chicken based foodstuffs almost always claims to be made with 'only' white meat. But anyone who has ever had a can of soup knows that sometimes when that chicken-colored object that is floating at the rim of the bowl as buoyantly as a chubby kid at the community pool, it is anything but "white meat". You're never quite sure what it is exactly but you're sure as shit it isn't white meat. (It's gizzards or chicken ankle fat I always assume). The Tyson Mechanically Separated Chicken Pieces Machine never bats a thousand, we all know this. But every piece of chicken in this soup was in fact white meat chicken from what I could tell so I'm happy with it. I'd say to buy this soup when you are in need of a saltless good time and don't have hours to spend hand separating your chicken carcasses.

Tune in next time for Jay's Soup Cube when I try another brand of canned domesticated fowl in liquid.

Thanks and have a nice day.

Healthy Choice Old Fashioned Chicken Noodle (with white meat only) - 0 0 0 0 o

Trying to think of a word I like better then Motto or Mantra because those words both suck

comasoftjay: Mantra… hmmm that is better then Motto I suppose but it is still not that great of a word. I need something stoic and possibly Russian sounding I think. Something iron and rust clad, something that sounds cold-war era and rigid. Something like (this is a completely made up word): Afrendendo… or... Carthogen...
cxxxxxxx2: than use that
comasoftjay: hmm but it doesn't mean anything... i just made those up...
comasoftjay: Cadre'
comasoftjay: I think really like that word despite its negative connotations. Maybe I could say The Imperial Cadre of the Divine Jay Ramirez say: and then place my statement right after that!
cxxxxxxx2: sure you can do whatever you want
comasoftjay: This would give the implication that I'm a tyrannical dictator of some hopelessly poor and backward country, and that my Cadre' of military police recite my doctrines in the street whilst dolling out fair or unfair justice heavy handedly on the oppressed populous, all while I’m resting comfortably in my imperial palace... eating grapes and watching American cartoons on the TV Lookiddy Box.
cxxxxxxx2: you are a very strange boy Jay…

Swimming lessons sucked

Growing up, my mother forced me to do a number of team oriented physical activities I had zero desire to do. One of the worst things I can remember was learning to swim. I understand the need to be able to survive in water, especially growing up in close proximity to Lake Michigan and having 2 boats in the family. But my mother would simply come home and walk into whatever room I happened to be playing toys in, and say “I signed you up for (insert sport here), you start next Wednesday”, and I would stair blankly back up at her, holding a few plastic dinosaurs or some army guys without saying a word. Later at night I would dread the coming shame and embarrassment that would befall a: shorter then average, weaker then average, Hispanic kid with no muscle structure what so ever, when faced with physical competition against 6 foot Dutch blonde people with size 13 shoes. (Our girl’s volleyball team never lost a game as long as my school existed. They’d just stand in front of the net with their hands up and block every serve from the opposing team. They always reminded me of those furry-footed creatures that lived on the Island of the Goons in the Popeye cartoons).

At first, I thought that swimming seemed more like a singular sport and that I might be able to just wade around in the shallow end and keep out of sight when they asked for relay race volunteers. Sadly, such luck would not be on my side. Right off the bat they wanted us to learn to jump in… the thought of which, my young mind was not ready to handle. (Jump in? You mean I’m all dry and warm right now and you want me to just jump in? It’s freezing for one thing, and looks deep as hell on top of that… AND well quite frankly, I’m not convinced that there aren’t any eels in there either just waiting to slither around my legs and possible eat them off). I remember kicking and screaming and raising a fuss about it, which was not easy to do in front of a bunch of super cute collage girl instructors who were just trying to make a few dollars over the summer to spend on booze and pizzas in the fall. One particular blonde instructor captured my heart in her bright red bathing suit, and after a while I began to warm up to the idea of jumping into certain death as long as she’d be there to blow precious oxygen into my lungs to save my possibly legless life after I sank the bottom and died. (Remember those eels would be starving).

Now I had been in deep water before, I was that kid at the public pool wearing those arm swimmies but still trying to pull off the cool thing… even though everyone my age was doing can-openers off the diving board without the need for self-contained inflated technology attached to their bodies. My arms were so hopelessly skinny when I was a kid that when I did jump in the water I would immediately sink while my arms shot strait up and the swimmies slide up to my equally tiny wrists. From a submerged window I would have looked like I was doing underwater jumping jacks I think.

Anyway, when the day came that I couldn’t weasel my way out of jumping into the deep end any longer, I decided that the only course of action to save my young life that I could take was to jump directly onto the young instructor while she treaded water in front of the spot I was suppose to jump into. I figured my charm and cuteness would negate any of the bruising about the head and shoulders our watery collision may cause her. My plan worked in the fact that I’m still alive and currently writing this essay. It did however make that young co-ed rather uncomfortable when my foot landed directly at the breast line of her red swimsuit and snapped down, exposing her collage aged boobs to everyone, as gravity pulled both me and her suit down into the water. I think I’ve liked girls in red bathing suits ever since that day. (High five).

Always with the soup!

There is something I will never let go of as long as I live. And that is my love of KillerSoup. When filling out social networking profiles or doing interviews for rock and roll stuff, the question is almost always asked about my favorite food. I think pizza is usually everyone else’s choice, that or sushi if they are female and a fan of Sex in the City. (I would venture to say that Sex in the City single handedly made sushi the most talked about food stuffs for 20 and 30-something females who get together in groups of 2 or larger. If they are not meeting for sushi later that afternoon, they are almost certainly feeling bloated from eating too much of it the night before but can’t wait until Thursday after Grey’s Anatomy to do it again).

ANYWAY, my favorite food is KillerSoup. KillerSoup is an Americanized and/or Bastardized version of the Mexican soup called Cauldo. (If you were talking to my mother, she would embrace the more negative connotation as she feels my dad ruined her mothers version sometime in the mid 1980’s). It was aptly named “KillerSoup” by accident. As I’ve said before my mother is extremely religious and does not allow works of the devil in her household. This means that my dad drinks and smokes in the garage and we all try our hardest to not swear around her (which keeps getting harder and harder the older I get).

Growing up my mom worked a normal 9 to 5 work day, but my dad worked second shift so he would leave for work at 3pm. That means that I would have the house to myself for a few hours after school pretty much throughout my school years. This worked out great for playing the drums every day after school without bothering anyone. And in high school this also worked out fantastically for my dope smoking friends that were hungry and didn’t want to show up at their own homes with bloodshot eyes until their bellies were full. My dad was a cook in the army, so he was always both: cooking, and cooking too much food for a small family like mine. So no one seemed to care (or know) that my high-as-all-hell friends would come over every day and munch on whatever my dad had cooked before leaving for work. He made this soup in a gigantic pot. I mean HUGE, you could stir it with an ore… it took up 2 burners on the stove… it was so big it pretty much meant that you’d have left over’s for a good 4 to 5 days. The day my dads soup became KillerSoup is still vivid to me. It was a rather warm Saturday afternoon in the spring and all the windows and doors were open blowing in some much needed fresh air after the long winter’s death-lock grip on our western Michigan community. My mother was in the living room watching her usual scam artist religious guy in a fancy pastel suit, bilk the elderly and weak minded out of their hard earned money. I was warming up some left over soup when my friends Jeff and Drew pulled up in Jeff’s black Grand Am (with sweet tinted windows no less). I could hear the Bulletboys playing Smooth Up in the tape deck before I heard the engine of his car outside the slider door.

Drew and Jeff came in smiling from ear to ear, no doubt high as hell and probably still laughing about something infinitely funny to only someone who is: 16, high, and male. They both sat down at the table and I added some more soup to my smaller pot which was nearing its eating temperature without even asking if they wanted any. Once the 3 of us had our bowls and began eating Jeff and I both began to watch Drew shovel the soup into his mouth with extreme prejudice. He was attacking the soup… he was owning the soup… he was devouring it’s essence for all he had and his long, stringy, bleach-blonde bangs were dipping into the broth without him even batting a bloodshot eye about it…

Jeff and I began to laugh at the sight of this kid going balls-out on the soup when Drew noticed we were making fun of him… He looked up from the hunched over the bowl position and uttered some words to us as some of the soup began to spill out of his mouth and back into the bowl: “This is some Killer fuking soup!” Needless to say .235 seconds after that my mother flipped out at this blasphemous speak in her godly household and we were all sent out of the house to finish our soup on the deck and contemplate our misdeeds in the eyes of god. Since that day there isn’t anyone that knows me that doesn’t call that soup KillerSoup. It just IS KillerSoup now.

Here is my KillerSoup recipe incase anyone wants to try and make it. Good luck:

KillerSoup, by Jay

This is a magical soup passed down from my grandmother to my father. Legend has it the Spanish Conquistadors would eat this soup before going out and Conquistadoring around… and during the infamous Spanish Inquisition they would lower you into a vat of boiling KillerSoup to see if you were a Christian… if you liked the soup your life was spared as long as you agreed that Intelligent Design is not a Science and shouldn’t be taught in our high schools… (I couldn’t agree more)… KillerSoup is great for a hang over and for a cold fall day. It is best in the winter though, when you can make a huge pot and eat it for days with out having to go out side and it warms your entire apartment while cooking, but you can still enjoy KillerSoup in the summer just remove your clothing down to your underwear before eating, that’s what I do, you’ll be fine.

Okay so measuring cups are for sissy’s so depending on the size of your pot… (I use one of those large soup pots you can get at Target or whatever.

Ingredients:
Stew meat. (Usually 2 packs of the 2.oo size at the market)
5 potatoes (Idaho makes the best ones I think)
Veggies (depending on what ones you like, must use Celery for the flavor though).
chopped 4 Celery, 4 big carrots, 10 mushrooms, 1 ripe tomato, 2-3 corn on the cobs (or can of white/yellow corn in the winter when cobs are hard to find).
1 big can of White Homney. Goya brand in the Mexican food section. They look like white Corn-nut shaped balls.
1 small cabbage. Either those little wrinkled Boston Cabbages or just use half of a reg. big cabbage.
4-5 beef bouillon cubes.
liberal amounts of the following spices: Italian dressing, A1 steak sauce, salt, pepper, cumin, lemon pepper, season salt, oregano, parsley, red pepper, save some of the top of the celery, the leafy part and chop it up) bay leaf.
Lime
Corn tortillas
Can of tomato sauce

Process:
put meat into some chopped onion and Worcestershire or a few hours or the night before your going to make the soup. (if you have the time).
fill pot half way with water and start that sucker boiling on high
you have some time to kill now so chop up everything EXCEPT the potatoes (they will oxidize and turn brown like a bit apple super fast).
when water is roiling add the meat and some of the juice along with the chopped up large tomato and bay leaf. Let boil for at LEAST 2.5 hours (the longer you boil the meat the softer it will be when you eat it). ck back a lot and keep adding water because it will evaporate away. After few hours the meat should be able to fall apart with little effort while slicing thru it with a fork. Add some more water so the pot is again little over half full
add 4 or so bouillon cubes. All the spices can of tomato sauce, three or so big squeezes of the Italian dressing, splash of A1, chopped celery leaves. The sauce should now look red… you can drop a splash of V8 juice in there as well if your feeling funky like that… let boil for a good 15 min…
when the soup looks good and mixed up (the tomato should be all shredded up and broken down by now). add all the veggies starting with the now pealed potatoes. This will fill a LARGE portion of the pot so good thing you didn’t put to much water in or you’d be overflowing soup all over your stove right now…
lower the heat off of high but still with some power and let that sucker boil. The cabbage and mushrooms should be floating on the top…

Option: Add a small hand full of white rice. (it will sink and you’ll never see it again!).

Essentially the soup is done when the potatoes are done… you have to keep checking it (DO NOT STIR IT A LOT or YOU’LL MAKE IT INTO MUSH). When the potatoes are firm but split in half easy its done… don’t over cook because when you turn it off its still hot as hell and will continue to “cook” for an hour or so. You’ll prolly screw this up a few times, so you’ll have flaky broken potato pieces in your soup but its still good and don’t be discouraged… Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Warm up a corn tortilla and chop the lime up. Serve in a big bowl with those lime as garish. Sprinkle a touch of parsley or your favorite spice on top, roll the corn tortilla and dip it in the juice… yum.

Sing this song after your done eating:

“Thank you KillerSoup… thank you…
For being so good to my face and belly…
Thank you KillerSoup… we will always love you
Until the day that we are dead and can’t eat soup anymore…
Harp solo
We are looking into a way to embalm our bodies with KillerSoup though…
Thank youuuuu.”

Then take a nap, store soup in Tupperware in frig, and make sure you eat It all with in about 4-5 days… Taking bowls to work to share with co-workers is a good way to make friends and get people to come to your rockbands shows, just tell um the story about it proper…

(Respect Knuckles… out)

Rain serves only the following purposes

- Making things soggy
- Messing up my hair
- Taking an accurate census count of worms

The Troubadours of Andromeda and beyond

The virus is a perfect design. Any alien beings that choose the dangerous occupation of interstellar space exploration would undoubtedly take the shape of the common T4 Virus. Our sun is a 3rd generation yellow dwarf about midway through it’s main sequence. That means it has been converting hydrogen into helium for around 4.75 billion years without any sticks in the spokes. Earth is roughly the same age as it was formed from the table scraps left over from the core collapse that formed the Sun. So the life forms on Earth have had slightly less then that long to evolve. (Keeping in mind that the Earth was molten hot for a while, then poisonous, and has had some major pain in the ass mass extinctions every once in a while… sorry Trilobites, you had your 100 million year reign).

But there are some stars that are much older then our star. Some red dwarf stars can shine for 100s of trillions of years and have been around since the dawn of our universe some 13.4 billion years ago. Now I know that it is precisely the material ejected from supernova explosions of massive stars that makes the periodic buffet-table so diverse today. We have fantastic elements to work with like Carbon and Silicon that make totally sweet chains and lattices for building complex organisms. But let’s suppose life arose on a planet whose star had been shining for 8 or 9 billion years; almost twice as long as ours. Life on a world like that could have had many millions or even billions of years to evolve. (Baring too many catastrophic extinctions of course). Intelligent life on that world could have a considerable leg (or legs) up on our primitive asses. One thing they’d want to figure out how to do is safeguard their species from mass extinction brought on by catastrophic events like large asteroid impacts, gamma ray bursts, or harassment from geological phemonia like planet quakes and super volcanoes. After this was handled they could get down to the serious business of making themselves immortal. We all know that one of the greatest thrills for creatures who have mastered self-awareness is the curious business of the exploration of the unknown. (Think about the sport of Sky Surfing or Half Pipe Snow Boarding). Any Intelligent beings would know pretty quickly that the vacuum of space is a foreboding place to play. Radiation, cosmic rays, extreme temperatures and distances… space junk… I mean there are a lot of things that can kill a squishy bodied traveler out there.

Some designs don’t change much over time. Alligators and sharks have changed very little in the 300 million years they’ve been around. Basically they are mouths with a propeller. Pretty good design! Some creatures will actually de-evolve when some of their given traits are deemed unneeded. Snakes, also basically a mouth with a propeller, decided to shed their legs altogether because they kept getting caught up on things when trying to slide down the burrow-holes in pursuit of some tasty snack. Possibly when pursuing a mole, who over time, decided to pass on the eyesight option. (Kind of like people who own convertible cars not paying the extra $900.00 for the air conditioning option).
The Arthropod would be a great design for space travel. Keep all your squishy stuffs, (or ‘innards’ like my dad likes to say), on the inside and protect yourself with a hard case. The common virus looks a lot like a very tiny crustacean. Our space heroes would have integrated the seemingly inevitable concept of bio-mechanics and perfected the design by the time they were ready to depart on the greatest journey of their collective lives. “Okay kids, everyone go pee and shed your dermis before we leave… we have 687 Quadrillion miles before our first stop”

The top of the virus shape can be the Super-Converting/Ultra-Filteration/Hyper-Propellant/Flux-Capacitor/Ionizer and Britta Machine. This way our intrepid friends can land on any planet deemed interesting without worrying about risky things like breathing toxic air or the local Rhinovirus. (No amount of penicillin will suffice against the dangers of some Jungle Flu from the carbon swamps along the equatorial regions of Proxa Phi -X4799-B3).

The bottom of the structure will be the landing gear and will also make a great set of legs for scurrying about the surface and turning over rocks in search of interesting goo. Over all size will not matter so much. Our explorers can be the size of a pea or as large as a hippo, the propellant system they devise will be more then adequate to get around.

The last thing our brainy friends will borrow from the T4 virus design deals with propagation of the species. That’s right, I hate to admit it but A-sexuality seems to be the best bet for making copies of one’s self one in deep space. And it will save a lot of time and money wasted on dinner and retarded romantic comedies every Saturday night. (Finally there will be no need for Ben Stiller and Mathew McConaughey any longer).

Have these beings been here to Earth yet? I’m sure of it, but they don’t look like shaved hydrocephalic toddlers bent on ass-raping rednecks and their livestock in remote rural locations. They simply stop in and look around, take a few notes and move on…

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Space Log 29938849930-1
-Liquid iron-core igneous and sedimentary rock planet 3rd out from main sequence yellow dwarf star.
-Healthy tectonic activity.
-Surface covered in liquid water.
-Planet nearly covered in carbon based life forms.
-Mouth and Propellant seems to be the dominant design.

----------------------------------------------------------------

What are you a sissy?

For all intensive purposes, I am. To 99% of the male population on Earth I would seem that way at least. I wear smeared pastel blue make-up, nail polish, and girls pants. I know very little about and can’t stand sports of any kind, and I don’t ever say the word “Bro”… ever. The curious thing about all of this is that I have a very staunch stance on what I believe is ‘sissy’ as well. For instance, I would never wear sandals or say the words “Mocha Soy Latte” out loud. To me, smeared dirty make-up and long hair is the epitome of Rock N Roll. That’s 80’s Sunset Strip Glam Rock at it’s finest. And those guys nailed more females then almost any other archetype of male ever. (I am convinced that Silicon Valley Ultra-Geeks blow through 3 hookers at a time nightly, but they are paying for that sex so it’s not a fair comparison). I think the distinction here is that the perception of ‘sissy’ and the concept of ‘gay’ are blurred into the eye of the beholder. (Eye shadowed or not). To me sharing my bent-rim baseball cap collection with 4 other sports obsessed, porn addicted, high five throwing, beer-bloated roommates seems sissy.

Maybe ‘sissys’ are any and all males that are not like either Vince Vaughn or Crocodile Dundee. Those two chaps show us that ‘Real Men’ exist in both urban and rural environments. (Not to mention that they only eat food that requires a lot of chewing). And well, if real men can exist in those completely dichotic locations, then God-damnit they’re everywhere!

I guess I’m okay with being a sissy. I don’t mind it much… I get called a fag or Pete Wentz a lot, but things could be much worse. No one has thrown rocks at me or dropped an anvil on my head as I walked by a jagged cliff. I did almost get beat up by 4 frat guys outside of the Wiener Circle a few summers ago. I pulled out my pocket knife and told them that they may in fact kick my teeth in, but the first guy that charged me was going to have to be holding his innards from spilling out of his abdomen on the way to the hospital, and that it would make quite a mess in the backseat of his buddies Honda Civic. They left me alone and I found it ironic when I woke up the next day and was able to tell people that they were the ones hanging out a place called the Wiener Circle.

Hell

Forget all that fire and brimstone, horned half-goat fallen angel, and burning in lakes of fire for some eternal damnation bullshit. Hell is a never ending office job with no windows. It’s always 2:17pm, and you will be uncomfortable from over eating at lunch time in a vain attempt at infusing a tiny fraction of happiness into your existence. When you walk to the water cooler there will be people congregated there whose names you can’t remember but who know your name and talk to you about things you don’t care about… mostly how you look like some guy on American Idol and/or Chris Angel, or if you enjoy Ugly Betty as much as they do. When you walk into the bathroom, each stall will be filled with grown men flipping through pages of magazine and newspapers which will further perpetuate your already slightly above moderate germaphobia. You will not be able to relieve yourself either. Not because you have that clichéd ‘Urinal Shyness’ hack writers always use as lame ‘Dude-Joke’ punch lines in retarded frat-boy movies like The 40 Year Old Virgin, but because you are in fact in Hell and that would make things to easy. That coupled with the fact that the newspapers readers are also flatulating like a fuking 4 bassoon quartet and you just want to get out of the room as fast as you can. Running out the door will only return you instantly to the very spot you were sitting when you looked at the corner of your computer screen and saw that it was only 2:17pm and started to feel like maybe you should go take a piss.

Animals make a lot of sense

I can’t decide if I’d rather be a panther or a snake. I’m not all that crazy about heights and I realize that both the panther and the kind of snake I would want to be (the Emerald Tree Boa), live a majority of their lives in the canopy of the jungle, but I seem to really enjoy the idea of it. Maybe it’s some weird over compensation for being short all my life and never really getting to see the movies or concerts I went to all that well. Aside from the lofty choice of home base of these 2 creatures, it’s their sleekness and utter invisibility in silent hiding that intrigues me. Lying in wait for countless hours until just the right moment to pounce on your prey seems like a lot of fun. That and I think both creatures take an inordinate amount of naps during the day and I’m an all out sucker for that.

You’re a nice girl when you’re not crying

Close the door on your way out...