floorpie

I’ve decided that Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” feature is god’s gift to…me. Me, specifically. The NBC Video Rewind is pretty cool, too; but, with the commercial breaks (albeit short ones) it’s only a lesser gift to me. Probably from Jesus, or maybe that cheapskate Gabriel. “Oh, do I have to bring a gift?” god’s only son asked plaintively, “Well if I have to I’ll provide today’s episodes tomorrow…with a few commercials for the same thing over and over.

That’s how they get you, you know. The deities, I mean.

There are a few things in life that I’m fairly good at. I can, for instance, walk and chew bubble gum all at the same time. I’m a pretty competent Halo player. I’ve been known to drain a 3 with 5 seconds left on the clock with a wadded up piece of paper from all the way across my room.

I have skills.

I also, am pretty good at the fine art of conversation. A fact which continually surprises me as I’m strangely shy and have cripplingly low self-esteem.

My best friend in high school (up until, that is, he hated me for a still unclear reason that I think involved a girl, but I’m still not sure about) used to tell me that I had a silver tongue; and whenever he’d do so I imagined a small, vaguely tongue-shaped object in place of my actual tongue. Cold, shiny, and fast. For some reason, this silver-tongue was always too small for my mouth…why wouldn’t I just imagine it being the same size as my real tongue, just all chromed and classy like?

I digress.

Highschool friend said I had a silver tongue. When I got to college, I got a reputation as an incorrigible flirt, and that continued into present day where I again have said reputation among my friends at work. I’m not afraid to talk to the big boss like he’s a normal person and I can pull off the jokes at his expense that maybe most people can’t. I was giving advice to a friend of mine about how to talk to this girl he likes and when I told him that it would work he said, “Well sure, YOU can pull something like that off, but I can’t.”

Here’s the thing, though: for as much good the talking and the flirting and the dancing around have done me, they’ve done equally bad for me as well. If you think about it, what do I have to show for all my clever linguistic loops and witticisms? Maybe, just maybe, I need to learn to sometimes keep my damn mouth shut…

This public service announcement has been brought to you by…well, me.

SoCal is all about the summer. The whole year is pretty much ideal, but the summer is especially so, and with each passing day it’s getting close. But alas, it’s not quite here, yet. The days are warm and sunny (60’s), but the nights are fairly cold (low 50’s).

I know I have a certain responsibility to now insert a paragraph giving a shout to all the people living in Michigan or Main or something, and say how I know it’s not really cold in SoCal, and I’m just a whining baby. But today, I’ve decided to say to hell with that. Like everyone else here, I wasn’t born in LA. I moved here by choice, and you have the same one. And what’s more, if I took my rent with me to whatever part of cold-ass Wisconsin you’re in, I’d be living in a mansion. So remember, I pay for the privilege of complaining about “cold” being 62F.

To continue, though, the water’s still too cold to abandon the 3:2 full, but I’m really looking forward to it when it isn’t. BBQ’s every week, beach days, bike rides on the strand. There is no surer cure for depression.

I’ve decided that “I’m hanging in there,” is the most depressing answer possible to “How ya doing?”.

Consider, you have the “I’m doing great!” people, who are depressing in their own right, but that’s just the darkly comedic side of me talking. Then, you have the people who’s house just burned down, or they got in their 4th car accident in 3 months (hmm, those sound familiar), and though they have gone through potentially depressing situations, the fact that they are able to complain about them, and voice them, proves that the situations are aberrant and temporary. Susie hasn’t accepted that her fate is that of a person who’s house has burned down. She’s going to bitch about it until she’s back on her feet.

But then there’s the “hanging in there”. There is grim acceptance in that phrase. There is no expectation of improvement, nor the means to do so. There is resignation. There is defeat. There is, if their is a positive spin to put on it, the just-barely strength in the statement to Death it’s suicide, but that’s about it.

Last week, I replied “Meh, I’m hanging in there,” when asked what was up. Hopefully, the fact that I’m complaining about it now means that there’s still some fight left in me.

Is this really all there is?

Look, the thing about going to a rave in your 30’s is that at this point it is totally ironic. The saving grace, of course, is that it wasn’t actually a rave, just a party for a friend of mine that was rave-themed. Granted, it had all the ingredients of a rave…right down to the sweet-ass glowsticks; but there were about 1,000 less people than an actual event.

Not that I’m complaining, everyone was beautiful.

and my question is, if you’re really homeless, what do you need all those keys for?!

So I should probably explain about the mustache (which, so you know the end of the story, is mercifully gone). A few months ago, my buddy proposed to his girlfriend) mistake #1 [what? I seem jaded?]), and so we obviously had to have a bachelor party. This particular group of friends (because we all have different groups) is my Closest Friends Group. These are the guys and girls that I’ve known, and hung-out consistently with, for nigh on 14 years. This is my Beverly Hills 90210. This is my Melrose Place.

SO, when we do bachelor parties, we do them fairly big. I’ve heard tell of normal bachelor parties being a round of golf and a couple of hours at the local strip club on a Saturday, but that my friends, is amateur-hour. For us, bachelor parties are at least a 3-day affair, and for this particular one, we went to 4 because my friend is the one who was never getting married…it is the end of an era.

So that’s the set-up. The punchline is that a couple of month ago we were having a BBQ together. This is something we do all the time, nearly every weekend during the summer, in fact. We just get together, hang out, and generally enjoy each other’s old company. We’re at the the BBQ, there is a little bit of alcohol involved, and we’re talking about Tim’s bachelor party when I blurt out, “Dude! (It’s all about “dude” when you’re drinking) We should totally have MUSTACHES for the bachelor party!” And, probably coerced by alcohol as well, everyone agrees. And, even more strangely, everyone remembers it the next day. And even more strangely, we all (almost) commit to it and come through in the end…which was the most surprising part, that most of us actually did it.

And it was spectacular, as you can plainly see below.

Where have I been? I’ll tell you where I’ve been.

I’ve been holed-up in my room with the lights off, 10 days without shaving and twice that without a shower. My cheetos-stained tightie-whities illuminated in the glow from my laptop to which my fingers have become permanently fused. Thank Jebus for online-ordering for delivery, otherwise I would have died long ago. Facebook, my friends, is the new crack (or “Mexican Brown Heroin” as I learned about in Facebook’s Dope Wars, where I am currently a World Distributor and worth over $300M…but that’s another story).

Anyway, it’s totally addictive and I’m not exactly sure why. Do I really get enjoyment out of attacking my friend’s Creeper Werewolf with my Ice Vampire?

And the answer is yes. Yes I do.

Besides cultivating my virtual life, I’ve actually been pretty busy. Busy creating this:

I’ve never had a really strong opinion about gun control. I just didn’t care one way or the other; people have guns, people don’t have guns, whatever. My theory was that I (or people I care about) could just as easily get stabbed by a sharply pointed stick as shot with a gun, if someone was really interested in killing.

Admittedly, that’s a pretty juvenile opinion.

But with all the murder/suicides we’ve had in this country, lately, there’s really no rational way to justify the right to bear arms any longer. Murder, as strange as this will sound, used to make sense. People killed other people out of revenge, or over possessions, or jealousy…none of them good reasons, but at least they were reasons. Lately, though, you can’t go anywhere without wondering if someone random idiot with a god-complex and a handgun is going to walk in shooting wildly. Taking someone’s life like that…wasting is the second most-selfish act I can think of, preceded only by suicide.

If there’s any silver-lining to these events, it’s that these morons do kill themselves. At least they’re out of the gene pool.