More fun than you can shake a stick at

My birthday party is next weekend and the main events are: Karaoke and Amateur Comedian Contest.

Today my friend Suzanne and I went to buy the Karaoke machine. Once back in the car I pulled out my device that turns my lighter into a plug and fired that bad boy up.

Each of us with a microphone in our hands we cruised the streets of San Diego entertaining the passer-byers with a quasi rendition of Elton John’s Daniel and some preemptive comedy routines.

There were mixed reactions: angry, confused, annoyed, joyful and delighted. For the less then thrilled by the free entertainment population I let them know my next show would be at ten, try the veal and don’t forget to tip your waitress.

Suzanne spotted a hot guy in a Carolla. I raced to catch up with the speedy little demon. We followed him singing, “You light up my life, you give me hope to carry on…..”

The man parks and we pull up next to him, forgetting that the Karaoke boom box was at maximum volume and we had mic’s in our hands I say, “He just parked, there he is.” Suzanne responds, “Oh no, not interested.” The guy looked at us, we laughed and drove away singing Bohemian Rhapsody.

I highly recommend having a Karaoke machine in your car. It is more fun then asking the firemen at Starbucks if that is a hose on their truck or are they just happy to see me.

Super, thanks for asking

So Mandy writes me, “He could be a gay straight man.”

Such is the summary of my date last night.

I am still quasi involved with Santiago as I have faux adopted his children. I love those kids and they have decided to love me back. Each time I see their father I long for him but for the moment I have chosen to look at all my possibilities and be single for awhile.

Date number three looked promising: successful, handsome, intelligent, confident, funny and kind. Might I add he is a card carrying catholic and republican. A match made in heaven or so it would seem.

I met him in an environment where some things that should have been more obvious were not apparent. I was not intoxicated so no excuse there but I was in Kimmie is funny mode and everything was beautiful.

My date picked me up and he opened my door, bonus points. He took me to Mortons, a Chicago high end steakhouse, because I am a Cubs fan. I was charmed.

Then the clear and impalpable characteristics of his being picked up my brain and tossed it around like a sick circus freak. He is effeminate.

Much to my horror the man had a personality one doorknob turn away from pirouetting out of the closet.

I grappled, debated and begged myself to look past it as he is amazing but alas I could not.

Back to the drawing board.

I've got sunshine on a cloudy day.....

I am sitting at Starbucks (shocker) on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. The clientele is a Hollywood crowd and I am fairly nauseated. I have a meeting in about an hour so I thought I would caffeinate myself yet another time. I am a walking carcinogenic.

I have been grunting and thrusting non stop. I can’t stop myself.

A thought from Friday night has passed through my mind and I giggle. The other patrons look at me, one searching for signs of a blue tooth……

Hold the phone a total hottie just walked in – breathe in – breathe out – breathe in – breathe out.

Ok back to me giggling like a lunatic.

Friday night my friend Suzanne and I head out to my favorite Irish pub and are immediately approached by these two men from Liverpool. The witty banter started immediately. Suzanne was not familiar with British sense of humor and was offended by them. I pulled her aside and explained it to her. She is a clever girl and once she understood she joined in like a pro.

As the conversation continued one of the men ask me why I am still wearing my coat. I hadn’t even noticed. It was a long black coat and, in my opinion, made me look taller. Before I could answer Suzanne chimes in, “Don’t trsdr hrt sbou (another hottie just walked in and you can see the effect he had on my typing.) That was supposed to read, “Don’t tease her she is hiding her birth defect.”

I look over at her to see where it was going and the guy we named “puke breath” says, “What birth defect?” Suzanne replies, “She has no buttocks.”

They look at me with a curious but mortified gape and I raise my hand, make a circle and say, “Yes boy’s my backside is all sunshine.”

Expecting them to run I was surprised by the guy Suzanne called pitifully unattractive and I called amusingly sexy saying, “Wow I am actually turned on by that.”

Suzanne and I looked at each other and laughed so hard that it hurt.

Good times, good times.

One of Life's Many Miracles

There are things in this world are difficult to describe accurately let alone understand fully. We live on this planet with other people who have their own way of communicating and expressing themselves. We all live in our own universe and when it collides with someone else’s cosmos that doesn’t mesh with our own the knee jerk reaction is to pass judgment.

So I take a step back.

We all can recall an experience with another person in which the boundaries vanished, in which your consideration for the other person equaled your consideration for yourself, in which the question “Who am I?” seemed irrelevant.
Our relationships with people matter on many levels. Physically we need others for the care and feeding of our body. Our highly elaborated society provides all our necessary and desired material goods and services, which we could not possibly produce on our own. Emotionally we need others to care for and be cared for by, to relax with and share with, to enjoy, to respect, to have compassion for, and to love. Intellectually we need others to learn from, to debate with, and to collaborate with.

Spiritually we need others to help us see beyond our egoism, to teach us the practices of the path, and to share our sacred work. Each of these brings crucial help on the way.

I tell myself not to judge.

I am standing in the CD section of Best Buy looking for the “Best of the Cranberries” CD. A sound comes from behind me. Mmmm, mmmm, mmm said in a deep, heavy tone that reflects a soulful rendition of mmm mmm mmm good Campbell’s soup. I turn astonished by the grunting to see a large African American man wearing a Steelers jersey, TIGHT polyester coaches shorts, white knee high sports sox and black tennis shoes. His hair is reminiscent of early Rick James and the jewelry he has adorned himself with brings back images of Mr. T.
I look at the man and he gives me a pelvic thrust, a ch ch ch sound as he nods his head and points his large gold ringed finger at me. My response is, “Whoa, whoa, whoa.”

The man walks away.

I call over to my friend Vicky to come quickly.

The man returns down the aisle, grunts and thrusts his pelvis at me, winks and keeps walking.

My world has just collided with a miracle.

What is your disorder? I may know someone who can help.

There are some things that bear repeating. I have said before that God leaves me little gifts everywhere and all I need to do is be patient and look for them. I am saying it again. God is marvelously generous and has such a lovely way with his gift giving talent.

The first really big gift he gave me was Starbucks. Leaving behind the corporate issues and focusing on the place itself I have found much pleasure both in quenching my thirst and addiction as well as in my social life. My new favorite patron is the stuttering turrets syndrome man. He is really a sweet man and smiles a lot. He sits quietly and unassuming most of the time until one of his outbursts occurs. They are never violent but wonderfully entertaining. I do wonder if coffee is good for him though?

I rarely have the chance to actually sit and enjoy my coffee there. I usually go in, exchanging witty banter with the Baristas. They fill me on in their personal lives; I get my drink and whistle Dixie as I head out on my way. I always closely watch the other patrons, except of course when I am anal retentively organizing the shelves. The coffee mugs for sale all disheveled and out of place drives me nuts.

I sometimes strike up conversations with people waiting for their drinks. Well, they strike up conversations with me. I am ludicrously social though I don’t like to initiate conversations customarily and prefer to be approached. There are always the exceptions but it just isn’t my style.

This morning I was going on and on with one of the baristas about my fiasco of a date on Friday and the situation with Santy when this guy walks up to me. He was cute, not hot, but had a charm to him. He was enchantingly complimentary of me and I was captivated by the non-cheesiness to it. I kind of heard what he was saying; it was something about me having a glow and an obvious zest for life. Yadda, yadda, yadda. My head was swelling up so much that my ears got clogged. I bathed in this sugary moment as if I was a goddess.

In this state I am practically unbearable. I get shy and giggle a lot; I make cute little faces and move my foot back and forth like a little girl. I do this without thinking but it is nauseating.

If I could put a sound effect here it would be athe sound of a record being scratched.

The guy tells me he works for a sexual disorder clinic. I looked up and said a quick mental thank you to God and giggled like a 3 year old. His specialty: The Self Induced G Spot Orgasm. Oh my, oh my, oh my.

Now I love sex, especially the prospect of really good sex but even contemplating spending any time with this guy had only one response: HELL NO!

He asked why I was so embarrassed and I told him he was talking to the wrong girl and that I hang onto my repression like Linus does his blanket. He attempted to speak to me about the openness of sexuality but I wasn’t having any of it. The other customers were nearly breaking their necks to listen in on this topic.

I had to get out of there. I told him I needed to get to work. He gave me his card and asked me to call him, followed me to the door and tried to continue walking with me. I looked up at God again and asked for help. Just then in his miraculous benevolence my phone rang. Woo hoo saved by the bell. I told him I had to answer it and thanked him for his card - GOOD BYE. The call was my sister and we laughed my whole walk home.

I was reading “Dubliners” last night and I thought this paragraph was cool.

She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall. He held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about the passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers with brown baggages. Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall, with illumined portholes. She answered nothing. She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress, she prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long mournful whistle into the mist. If she went, tomorrow she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres. Their passage had been booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer.

My drunken doctrine “the life of an asshole” by Scott

Kimmie is allowing me to write on her page again. I am supposed to get my own but am too fucking lazy to do it. Tagging along behind the beast is easier. So here is what I have for you today. It is a classic story of the American dream made real: a privileged white boy graduates from Ivy League schools, lands a high paying job then blows it all on Jack Daniels and Self Loathing.

On the way he fights temptations and bribes, survives the heartbreak of a broken relationship and, despite it all, achieves a high level of success at work.

This extraordinary story is told by a shit bag named Scott as he recalls the life of the men who inspired him and then get themselves killed in Afghanistan.

In becoming a useless drunk I have discovered that I am not just a deeply flawed individual but an abusive egomaniac, whose life was ruined not by power, greed or lust but my own weaknesses.

And, devastatingly, the testimony has come from Miss Kimmie.

Last night I was shitfaced by 8 pm. I kept on drinking because who the fuck really cares. Sometime after midnight I check my email and a story from Kimmie with a quote from full metal jacket sends me over the edge. The beast has tapped into my memory banks and it is all I can do not to open another bottle. Costco is a major supporter of my ability to drink more than one bottle of Jack a night.

I call the beast after commenting and she answers, “What the fuck is it now?” She draws out her words and says them slowly just to show me how annoyed she is with me.

My petite little friend has alleged that my wife finally left me after I repeatedly flew into whisky-fuelled rages and pity party invites. Her words exactly and what I do to her on a regular basis.

Friends say drinking is blighting my life – I almost got arrested for driving under the influence and could possibly lose my job.

However, this is no hindrance to my womanizing: pussy is easy to get and I like pussy.

The beast said after her eloquent opening statement: "You are haunted by your own failures. You grew up thinking you were a brilliant intellectual and pioneer of justice only to learn that in times of crisis you are basically a drunken lecher." At least that is what I heard and wrote down after we hung up.

This ugly truth, say I, has made me ruthlessly determined to use every weapon that I have to prove this little beast and her perfect world wrong. **sips coffee that is peppered with Jack**

In a text message this morning Ms. Kimmie told me to start writing again for two reasons: to have a look at myself when I am sober (if that is possible) and to have something to read at my funeral. I really fucking hate her and love her at the same time. According to her I can only be tolerated in small doses and everyone gets annoyed with me after spending any amount of time in my presence. Fuck her… and her horse.

I am on the road to either death or recovery and if I am to get any help from the beast I have to square my shit away (another fine quote from the lady). So here is my drunken doctrine “the life of an asshole” More to come.

My world my way

I looked at myself in my rearview mirror today and thought, “Wow, I have a congenital obliviousness that is astonishing.” How I stumble in an out of things without any real planning or consequence is either a gift or a tragic accident.

Never mind I almost hit the car in front of me while pondering this fact. I want to blame my friend Jon because he wouldn’t stop texting me. It is illegal to text while driving in California. Each time I crank one out I find myself singing like Beavis and Butthead, “Breaking the law, breaking the law” while I am typing. So I am texting, breaking the law, singing about it and looking at myself in the rearview mirror identifying my inborn lack of awareness behind the wheel of an SUV driving 80 mph. Only God knows why I am still alive.

When I am walking anywhere with my father he is constantly grabbing my arm and asking if I looked both ways before crossing? I explain to him that my peripheral vision expertise makes it appear as if I am not looking but I am (just as a car is honking that I stepped in front of). I immediately feel like I am twelve years old again as my father is fretting over my safety.

I am alive though: I have dodged bullets from a semi-automatic, avoided a few improvised explosion devices and some dudes that were extremely hot and looking for a good time with my privates but where bad news for me. I am doing something right.

Last night I sat in the lobby of my building and with the help of the security guards disguised my remote control fart machine by the elevator and giggled, along with the security guards, till we turned blue watching people’s faces when I pushed the remote.

My world is small. It contains few people and even fewer real activities. One could say I live in a bubble. I am not a good communicator and I lack the courtesy of a return phone call, email or text far too often. The people I care about are always on mind and I think about writing, calling or texting but something comes up and I get distracted. The something, like a man picking his underwear out of his butt, has me lost in my own world and failing to remember to get in touch with the people who care about me.

Last night while Ruben, Dave, Steve and I were laughing like animals at how people looked at each other wondering who farted I left the actual moment I was in and looked at it from afar. Our faces were lit up and we were sharing friendship, laughter and time together. It was simple and effortless. I wondered for a moment why all of life wasn’t this straightforward? How easy it would be if I could have that moment with me all the time and put forth the effort to share it with everyone in my world.

I have discovered a fault in my character. That which is in front of me is given my full attention and that which is not doesn't get paid the attention it deserves. I worry that people perceive this as me not caring? This is something I have decided to work on. I am oblivious and I don't pay as much attention to some of the people or things I should. I do get in a lot of fender benders, step in front of cars, forget to call, forget to buy food, forget to think about anything that isn't right in front of. I am not proud of this.

In my efforts to be a better communicator I will be inspired and driven the words of Gunny Sergeant Hartman, “Who said that? Who the fuck said that? Who's the slimy little communist shit, twinkle-toed cocksucker down here who just signed his own death warrant? Nobody, huh? The fairy fucking godmother said it. Out-fucking-standing! I will PT you all until you fucking die! I'll PT you until your assholes are sucking buttermilk!”