Damn that Bojangles

He made me cry. It's not his fault, I suppose. I mean, when "Mr. Bojangles" makes me cry, I'm pretty far the other side of OK.

I wish people would quit saying to me, "It's too bad you guys couldn't work things out" Like that hasn't occurred to me before:

"Gee, the woman who made me believe in forever love is out of my life. Hey, Mr. Stranger, could you make a suggestion to stop my heart from breaking? Oh, "work it out"? Yeah, maybe that's what I should have done. That's a stroke of blinding genius! Why, oh why, didn't I think of that."

With ideas that good, I'm surprised these people aren't curing cancer:

"Why don't we just tell peeple not to get the cancer? Then we won't have any. Let's go have a drink to celebrate our thinkfulness. Then we can think up some more gooder ideals."

Thanks, dumb people.

Urban Legend Reference Pages

I just noticed that my post titles had been getting shorter and shorter, so I though I'd call this one, "Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town". But then I realized that was just the Pearl Jam playing on my iPod, so I decided to make it about one of my favorite websites. Don't tell my mom about this site; she'll realize I'm not really smart about popular culture, I just know where to look.
Every time I get one of those stupid (or sentimental, or ludicrous) e-mails, I think to myself,"Now did Jay Leno really say that?" or "I've heard all of George Carlin's stuff, and that is definitely not in character for him to say.". So I just mosey on over to www.snopes.com, type in some keywords, and BOOM! the tight end gets blown up by the safety. When you get tackled like that, you really know that you got tackled. Sorry, too much Madden this week, what I mean is: Bam, there's the real story behind the crap 349 people just e-mailed me.

Check your facts, so you don't send crap.

Bitch

That was what he said. Bitch. It was like it was the first time I'd ever heard the word, as the nuances opened up before me. It's weird how connotation works. When a person calls a guy a "bitch" he's verbally emasculating him. A petty guy, crying about his troubles gets, "Don't be such a bitch." This statement is almost the connotative diametric opposite of telling a girl, "Don't be such a bitch." Directed at a woman, it's almost an empowering statement. A woman called a bitch is being put into a dominant role. Traditionally, though not exclusively, this is a masculine point of view, but one almost never means it that way when directing it at a man. When describing a man this way, we are putting him in a submissive role: "That's my bitch, he does all of my grunt work." Again, traditionally a feminine role.

So, the next time a guy calls you a bitch, ladies, maybe on a subconscious level he feels like he's identifying with you. On the other hand, you may just be being a bitch.

Lyrics

As I play with my new toy (the blog), my iPod is playing songs. Really it's more like shoving the songs into my ears. Ramming the songs down my aural gullet like I'm going to be some sort of musical foie gras. And, as these sound waves enter my brain, they drag emotions across my raw nerves. For me, the pain the music evokes is like Fight Club is for the narrator from whose psyche Tyler Durden springs.

What brings this up is the lyrics that just forced their way into my cranium, scraping my raw nerves on the way by. It's not like I'm actually listening to the songs, they're just background noise until one of them hits me. The lines that just hit me are:
If you can't save yourself
you save somebody else
maybe that's how you survive
this, I know as soon as I hear it, will soon be followed by:
I ain't no hero, but the truth is I know
it's the bravest thing I've ever done
and I identify, I know what this guy is talking about, I've been there. And I did it to myself.

America, Fuck Yeah!

Apparently there are 9 guns in America for every 10 citizens.
What I find funny about this is their admission that all of the "facts" are really just estimates. Estimates for which they don't even tell us where they get the basis. Not that I'm saying they're way off, hell I'd say that the number is low just based on the people I know personally.
The encouraging part is that the number of privately owned firearms outnumbers those owned by governments by nearly 3:1 which is as it should be.

America, Fuck Yeah!

Happy birthday, Pedro

Happy birthday, brother. I hope your reading went well. I particularly hope the line "You will be fucked like a $2 Hong Kong whore" showed up somewhere in it. Please thank your 52 roommates for putting up with me. A special thanks to your wife for allowing me to impinge on her limited time with you for an entire month. It was most excellent getting to know her better, even if it was a little weird to take her home from the bar more often than you did.

What I learned in a Portland bar

So, Portland was fun. I spent more time hanging out in bars this October than I had accumulated in the past 30 years.
Now, I've shared my ignorance, so if you're a barfly and already knew all of these things you may not be surprised by my findings. I certainly was; I had no idea how much I was missing out on.
The first thing I learned was that it really helps to know your bartender. If you know your bartender, and aren't drooling all over them, you will immediately seem cooler to everyone in the bar than you really are. It's your job to not blow your cover, the bartender can't cover up all of your moles. That's what the alcohol is for, but you have to wait for it to kick in before you revert to your dorky self.
The second thing I learned it that when the bartender loves you and purports you to be one bad ass individual, this will put you several levels above the coolness that just knowing them confers upon you. Thanks, Pedro.
The next thing I learned, which after ruminating on #'s 1 & 2 above should be obvious, is that when a bartender steps behind the bar they gain the same superpowers as a rock star who has just jumped on stage. Now Pedro and M. are very cool people (attractive, too, according to the reports) but when they step behind the bar and throw that white towel over their shoulders they turn into Greek gods of booze. People will do anything to get their attention.