Taboo Stories

I was reading a story the other day about a guy over in France who tried to commit suicide. Now, normally, any story about suicide or attempted suicide is sad, and most people hope the individual involved will seek professional help if the attempt failed, and will have sympathy for the surviving family if it was successful.  But sometimes, there's one story that makes you snort. Now you know what I'm talking about, so don't go all "holier-than-thou" on me.  You're sitting there reading the story, the circumstances strike you as funny, and you snort.  If you're by yourself, you do a short penance and go about your business, and if you're with someone and they ask you what you're snorting at, you make up some lame-ass lie and change the subject.

In this particular story, a guy is living with his girlfriend, and I guess she gets fed up with him and dumps his ass and moves out.  Now, a regular person would probably go get drunk, moon around for a couple of days or weeks and then move on.  Not this guy.  He turns on every gas jet in the house and then calls all of his friends to tell them he's going to off himself.  What a Prince!  One of his friends takes him seriously. Either that or they're tired of putting up with his shit too, and calls frog 911.  The gendarmes come blazing up to the house, lights flashing and sirens howling ....  probably not the best move. The guy hears the sirens, pulls out his Bic, and flicks it.

Okay, I can just see this ..... The guy is standing in a cloud of natural gas, pulls his lighter out of his pants, puts the lighter up to his face and says to himself (insert French accent here) "I wondaire eef thees wareks?" It does.  The house explodes.  The windows blow out into the street and the roof shoots up in the air.  But the guy lives.  After the smoke clears and all the rubble flutters down to the ground, the cops find him standing there.  I imagine it's like in a comedy sketch. His hair is smoking, his face is all black and his shirt collar is sticking up.  Now, the guy is okay.  He lost a few feet of skin and will need some hair plugs, but he's basically okay.

So, this poor guy is obviously having the worst day of his life.  His girlfriend left him, he blew up his house and he looks like a burnt baguette.  But it's not over! The cops arrest him and charge him with arson, for blowing up his own house!

At his trial, I hope the magistrate (or whatever you call a French judge) cuts this dude some slack.

With his story, he wouldn't last 10 minutes in prison.

Late Night Thoughts

It's Saturday night, the Midnight Special is on the radio, and that means it's time for another "Late Night Thoughts."  This week, brought to you by Lucky Strike!

I almost backed into a car at the Kwick-ee Mart this evening. Sometimes the difference between a good day and a bad day is just a matter of inches.

Everything is NOT better with Blue Bonnet on it.

Do the benefits of acai berry outweigh the squickiness of mucous-y stools?

Absence does not make the heart grow fonder, it creates strangers.

I bought a cigarette rolling machine once.  It took 3 hours to make a pack of cigarettes and they all fell apart.

In high school, I knew a guy named Jack Gough (think about it).  He never looked happy.

Abandoned Pizza Huts still look like Pizza Huts, even if you put a funeral parlor in them.

Windows Solitaire is fixed.  You always start out 52 points in the hole.

I once didn't ask a girl out on a date because her first name was Beverly.  I figured if we got married, she'd have to change her name to Chloe.

What would have happened if my Mom had gotten her way and named me Bart?  Would I have been more popular?  Less?  Discuss.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Last night, I was looking for a picture of Meteor Crater to put on my other blog, South By Southwest, and I came across the one seen above.  So, I was sitting there looking at it and it occurred to me that there was something odd about the depiction.  Then it came to me. See, there is already a crater there made by one meteor, and now, here comes another one!  In the exact same spot! Holy Shit!   The people who did the artwork for the website must know something. Maybe they are Seers or Shamans and can predict the future!  But when is this "second strike" going to happen?  Jan and I are going to this place in a couple of months, but I don't want to be within 500 miles of it if there's a chance of this shit happening.

Anyway, I was looking up some information on the crater, being certain to check that bastion of all truthiness, Wikipedia, and came across some interesting things.  The place was originally named Canyon Diablo Crater (which translates to "The Devil's Asshole") by some Eurotrash who were wandering around in the desert looking for a Jamba Juice stand.  Around 1900 or so, some dude named Barringer hears about it and checks it out.  He figures that a humongous alien iron ball made the crater and that the iron ball must be in there somewhere.  Now, I guess iron is really hot shit at that time and he has an idea that he wants to make all-iron cars that get crappy gas mileage, or something.  So, he buys it from the Indians with a combination of "wampum", "firewater" and casino licenses.   But, the joke's on him!  Turns out that the big iron loogie vaporized on impact and turned into an "iron mist" that spread for miles, which must have been a real mess to clean up.  So, he tries desperately to think of other ways to make some money off of the crater, including renting it out for children's parties, but nothing works.  And so, pissed off and depressed, he dies of a massive coronary several years later.  A sad tale indeed.

I found out something else interesting about the crater.  In 1964, two guys decided to fly their plane into it for some unknown reason, but were unable to fly out again because of "tractor beams", later amended to "down drafts" by the U.S. Air Force.  So, these idiots end up just flying around inside the crater until their gas runs out and they crash.  Now I have put together a short, one-act play of how this happens.  Opening Scene:  Two guys named Fred and Charlie are sitting in a dusty airport on their 18th beer.  Fred says to Charlie "Hey Charlie, let's get in the plane and go over and fly into that big hole in the ground".  Charlie:  "Capital idea old chum!"  Scene Two:  Charlie:  "Boy Fred, it sure is fun flying around in this crater, but we should leave before someone gets our license number and reports us to the authorities."  Fred: "Good idea! Whoa dude! I can't get out, we must be in some kind of tractor beam!"  Charlie: "Let's fly around until we run out of gas!"  Fred:  "Good idea!"  Scene 3:  Plane: "KEEERAAAASSHH!"

One last thing.  Some pals of mine and I visited the crater in 1972, and I decided to crawl down inside of it for some reason.  I got about 200 feet down and this guard started yelling at me to "Get out of the hole!"  I thought "Hole?" But it gave me an idea.  What if I could buy the place and rename it "Rob's Hole".

I bet I'd get tons of visitors. 

I'm Easily Amused

Okay, a couple of months ago, I ran across something really funny.  I'll set it up for you.  Now, I'm going to pretend like I'm discussing something really weighty, like why did those astrophysicist guys pull the Solar System Planet title from Pluto? I mean, who the fuck died and left them in charge of what rock or gas ball gets to be called a planet and what doesn't?

And then I say some more shit and get you really worked up on this subject, so that you'd want to know everything you possibly could about it.  Then I'd say something like "If you want to know more about this very important subject, click here."

Go on.... click it for chrissakes!

Hah!  You just got RickRoll'd!

Oh My!  That was such a hilarious thing to do about one or two years ago. Man, that's really funny!

I am so pathetic.

A Very Mean Man

I have a bad habit of giving uncomplimentary nicknames to my neighbors. I give them to other people too, but I usually forget these because I don't have the opportunity to use them as often, and as we all learned in college, constant repetition is the only way to remember something, at least until the exam is over, at which point you forget everything. In fact, the only thing I still remember from college was my World History instructor talking about how women in 17th century France found men with blond hair and dark sideburns really hot, which was of no relevance to me because I had dark hair and no sideburns because I couldn't grow a decent mustache, let alone hair down the side of my face. I also remember the name Sam Rayburn.

I digress. Jan doesn't like the nicknames, because she's nice and all. But I keep reminding her that they probably have a nickname for me too, which is probably something like "That Asshole", so she puts up with it. Actually, I like all of my neighbors, except one maybe. Pickle Boy & Mammy Yokum live behind us. Mammy chews tobacco. Jan did not believe this until I made her look out the kitchen window one day and Mammy was spitting Red Man all over the place. Pickle Boy has a turf fetish. A couple of years ago he hammered a bunch of stakes in the ground along the side yard and I thought he was going to build something, but it turned out that he just didn't want me mowing on his side of the grass. So one day I got pissed off at looking at them and pulled them up and threw them in his yard. He hammered them back in a couple of times, but I just kept pulling them back up again, and the last time I broke them into pieces. I'm also sure he doesn't like me because he and my other side neighbor are bow hunters and they set up targets in their yards and were shooting arrows across my yard at each others targets until I told them to cut that shit out or I would call the police. Pickle and Mammy have a little kid I call Toad One, who calls me a "VERY MEAN MAN" when I'm out in the yard. I'm sure his parents taught him that, the little shit.

I knew a guy once who called all of his neighbors "Doobie", as in "Hey, Doobie is mowing his lawn" or "Doobie just fell off his roof." His wife thought this was hilarious.

But, she divorced him, so I guess his one-trick pony joke wasn't enough for her.