Gandalf's Powers Sucked Big Hairy Monkey Nuts

First, I'm not a Lord of the Rings nerd. I've never read the books, I've never taken an Elfish correspondence class and I don't have a "ring" replica hanging around my neck. But, I have seen the Lord of the Rings trilogy and I just went to see The Hobbit last weekend.

Overall, I'm a big fan. I think Peter Jackson has done an amazing job. I think he has created a very interesting and fascinating set of movies. Some may argue that breaking The Hobbit into three, three hour parts is a bit excessive. But I don't care.

However, something hit me about two hours into the Hobbit—Gandalf's powers are SHIT.

Let's review what this "wizard" can actually do, based on the movies:

1. Fireworks. We know Gandalf can make them. So can the Chinese. I don't see us lauding the Chinese factory workers who make our favorite "Golden Showers" sparklers and "Poopstick Destroyers" with the title of wizard. Hell, these folks can't even get lauded with a pimento cheese sandwich at lunch, nor can they make more than $1 a day—I don't consider this magical.

2. He can summon birds. Big deal. The hillbillies on Duck Dynasty figured out a way to make millions of dollars off duck calls. So does this mean they are on par with Gandalf? No. If they are prepare for three headed ducks who shit fireworks.

3. He can start a fire (barely). In the Hobbit, he lights a pine cone by rubbing it against his staff. I would like to point out it was very dry in this scene and any good boy scout can start a fire by rubbing two sticks together. Also, a lighter can do this, again made by the Chinese.

4. He can rise from the dead. Kinda/sorta. In the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, he rode some nefarious creature into a black hole and came back a white wizard. I have a problem with this whole thing.

When he came back he seemed a bit dazed. Well if you fell into a giant hole and hit your head, wouldn't you be a bit scrambled? It's called Post Concussion Syndrome. Also, the only difference between Gandalf the Grey and Gandalf the White was his clothing.

Big deal.

My grandmother fell in her kitchen this summer, broke her shoulder, her wrist and banged up her knee. She also shit herself.  It's okay, it's human nature. She was scared and in intense pain. So isn't it fair to say if you rode a big, squishy creature several stories, that you used to as a cushion, that you too might shit yourself and need a new robe?

"Oh fuck, they're out of grey. Damn, I'll have to get white."

5. He can make a big light flash occur. Big deal. Buy a mirror and angle it at the sun or bright light real quick and you too can blind people when you walk into a room. Also a million candle watt spotlight will do this too.

Overall.

I'm not impressed with Gandalf as a wizard. I think he just stumbled into a job he's over qualified for—kind of like the kid you called "Cathead" in high school stumbling into a McDonald's Senior Management when he should really be working the drive thru window.

'Merica, Fuck Yeah!

I've written this headline before or at least something damn close to it. 

I also feel like I've written and American pride post before. 

Therefore, I have no idea what to write about. 

Anyway, let's just agree this photo's pretty bad ass.

Vote for Borden! Suck it Edy's!

To quote my favorite ex-high school baseball coach, "Pissed!"

This is how I feel about Edy's discontinuing their Cinnamon Christmas ice cream. (I realize Borden has nothing to do with Edy's but I needed a segue, cut me some slack it's the holidays!)

For a few magical years of Christ's Annual Birthday Explosion, the highlight was spooning my way through a cardboard tub of Edy's Cinnamon ice cream. Then the fat, milky, churned and frozen concoction dried up. Freezers went bare. Children cried. Old women died. The economy went into a poop circling turd spiral.

It's awful. Each day feels vacant. The air tastes of hog slaughter and the water is tainted with rust and tetanus.

I don't eat a lot of ice cream out of the desire to fit into the current flock of pants I own. But, I loved this stupid treat.

For the past 10 years, it was the one thing that I knew wouldn't suck about the holidays. No matter if I got lady's socks (I'm a man), my name misspelled on a gift from somebody I'd known closely for over 12 years, abandoned to spend the holiday in a movie theater by myself in a state full of backwards Vikings, had to travel through frozen winter shit storms with two strangers from New Mexico I met in an airport after my flight was canceled, another JC Penny shit sweater, an overnight bag that was free with the purchase of cologne (I didn't get the cologne), a talking Jar Jar Binks, a 2XL gas station God Bless American t-shirt, (I'm barely a large and not at all a redneck trucker who whistles dixie and farts Budweiser farts), was forced to drink spoiled milk, was nearly poisoned by salsa that expired 8 YEARS AGO, a gasoline gift card, gift cards to stores that don't exist in the state I lived in at the time, cat toys, items from garage sales or broken Christmas tree ornaments, I could count on Edy's Cinnamon ice cream.

But no mas.

I've tried a few other cinnamon flavored ice creams since. No dice. Homemade Pie and Ice Cream Kitchen in Louisville has a version of cinnamon ice cream. It's not good. The ice cream is chunky not smooth and the flavor is spicy, not delicious.

I hear Blue Bunny has a version. But alas, I can't find it in my area.

So Borden, it's up to you. Can you save my Christmas? Or do you want to go ahead and have Elsie the Cow set a bag of her shit on fire on my front doorstep for Christmas morn?

I'm done being a Baptist, thanks to the Westboro Baptist Church.

I was raised Baptist.

I went to Sunday School and church nearly every Sunday from age two to 20.

But over the past 15 years, my attendance at church has occurred about as many times as the Mayan calendar has promised the world will end. (Which is what, 50 times?)

My original departure from the Baptist church occurred after a pastor lambasted women one Sunday during a sermon. He was angry at women who divorced their first husbands—my mother was one of those women. She divorced the deadbeat sperm donor that I can't even bring myself to call a father and remarried the only father I've ever known.

The pastor then informed the congregation that every day a woman was married to somebody other than her first husband, that woman was living in sin. That murder was a sin and second marriages were equal to killing another individual. (I love that murder and loving family relationships are equal sins. Gives me warm fuzzies!)

This was the beginning of my realization that the Baptist church could be a vengeful, angry and depressing organization. That family values, acceptance and being considerate of your members was in fact not their concern. That hey, if a woman is beaten by her first husband and cheated on, it was her fault and not that of the man. Add this to the Baptist church's views on homosexuality, dancing, abortion and numerous other issues and over time, it has forced me to pull away from the Baptist church almost completely.

George Carlin may have said it best when he said, "I was Catholic until I reached the age of reason." Sadly, this is how I've felt more and more over the years. While I'm not renouncing a higher power, I am renouncing my membership in the Baptist church after the latest antics from the Westboro Baptist Church.

As we mourn the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut the Westboro Baptist Church has finally made me too embarrassed to call myself a member of the Baptist church.

I awoke this morning to read that the Westboro Baptist Church has decided to picket the funerals and the vigil for the innocent children and victims of the Connecticut school shooting.

What the hell?
What is wrong with these people?

I understand the Westboro Baptist Church wants to push their backwards, insane asylum beliefs. This country was founded on crazy views and beliefs—in fact we might do crazy better than any other nation in the world. But how can the Westboro Baptist Church justify this being the right venue for a picketing? How morally bankrupt do you have to be to justify the idea of protesting an innocent child's funeral as an okay idea?

I realize that the Westboro Baptist Church is comprised of weirdo fundamentalists in the eyes of most Baptist church congregations. But the sheer fact that some governing Baptist body hasn't stepped out more against the Westboro Baptist Church, especially in light of these shenanigans, concerns me and has ultimately lead me to renouncing my membership in the Baptist church.

The Westboro Baptist Church is single handedly ruining an entire religion for millions of Americans. They are rebelling against society, an established semi-governing body of churches and acts of common human decency. I remember another group of fundamentalists who did this same thing. They rejected the Treaty of Versailles, told Germany what it could do with itself and then ended up massacring millions of innocent people.

I don't want to slight genocide and the horrors of Hilter. World War II was the worst event in the history of man. But during, and especially after the war, there was no such thing as a good, "Good Nazi". Every Nazi got lumped into the group of anti-semitic hate mongers, because that's what they were.

This same thing is now happening to Baptists. We are getting lumped into this evil, corrupt, backwards interpretation of religion that the Westboro Baptist church has created.

The Westboro Baptist Church has now caused America at-large to hate Baptists.

I can't say I belong to this religion any longer.

It's a shame that innocent people have to die and nutbags like these Ku Klux Klan wannabes get to live. Oh wait, that wasn't very Baptist of me, that was very Westboro Baptist of me. Ugh, that's it, I'm no longer Baptist.

Batteries are dramatic.

Today's photo comes from Kyle B. in Georgia. 

Whomever scribbled this down has a point, a very good point.

I never thought I'd be able to compare batteries and people in the sense of their life spans but here we go. 

The death of both means crying will ensue. 

People die, we cry because of whatever reason of attachment we have to that individual. 

Batteries die and we cry or at the very least cry out. Usually tears are shed over batteries because when they die in your car they leave you stranded, late for work or your daughter's harvest fest dance and soup drive or you end up dropping an important call or your favorite vibrator leaves you mid-escalation.

Sadness everywhere.

People go in the dirt. Batteries go in a dirty landfill.

Burying people has always been weird to me. There's a graveyard in my hometown that dates back to the 1800s. This means there are thousands of bodies that nobody knows, visits or gives two hoots about. Their families have dried up or left town. Yet we're taught these 200 year old piles of bone dust are precious. 

Meanwhile, we're tossing batteries in landfills. Why? We had good times with batteries too. We made prank calls together. We snuggled up on the couch and switched back and forth between bass fishing and women's naked indoor lacrosse and basket weaving tournaments. And there was that one time we videotaped our 70 year old neighbor yelling at her grandson's dog as her bathrobe flew open in the spring, Kentucky Derby morning breeze.

Don't we need to put batteries in little mini caskets made of old cereal boxes and treat their passing as a traumatic life event?

People piss you off. Batteries piss you off.

Everyday, some person pisses me off—dumb drivers, the morbidly obese who don't understand that their sheer girth plus their cart are blocking the grocery aisle and my path of exit away from their gravitational stink pull, bankers who won't call me back, bathroom attendants at restaurants (I don't need you to dry my hands or my balls), people who talk on their phones on the shitter, Dollar Tree cashiers, idiots who wear shorts all year round in the midwest, the people who make corn dogs, ESPN (too many tickers and it doesn't take 19 people to host SportsCenter), etc.

Batteries piss me off less frequently, but nothing is worse than having a battery operated device and having it stop working suddenly. Then it's a mad dash to the drawer in your house that holds pens, toothpicks, plastic silverware, old Christmas cards, coupons, those warranty cards you were going to send in but didn't and batteries. Only to reach that drawer and find out you either don't have the right size or by the time you get back to your battery operated device, you can't figure out which fucking way the batteries go back into it. 

There's 10 minutes of my life gone.

So in the end. I agree with the drama that surrounds batteries. Maybe I'll start a battery casket and tombstone business. Or just turn my backyard into some kind of weird battery cemetery. 

Slow Down, Enjoy It!

During a meditation class this summer, we were taught to slow down and enjoy all aspects of life, both negative and positive. While I agree with certain principles from the class, when it comes to nightmares, I do not believe this is what Buddha meant.

I've been plagued by nightmares lately and these damn things suck.

In the last week, I've woken up in the middle of the night soaking in sweat twice, punching the air violently once and swearing through a disoriented dream/not-really-a-dream haze more times than not.

Whether it's stress, too many pretzels, too little meat, the change of the season, too much dust from the raked leaves, the mating habits of ducks or just regular insanity, my sleep has been the equivalent of a roller coaster armed with hobos throwing handfuls of shattered glass at its' riders and another set of hobos throwing handfuls of salt.

My skin hurts, my neck hurts, my mind is scrambled and I'm beginning to question whether I wouldn't be better off in some type of good ole fashioned insomnia trance. Just like the good old days where I stayed up way too late and didn't dream because I never had enough time to slip into REM sleep.

But that shit doesn't work either. It just causes me to end up jittery, disconnected and dazed. It also causes wicked diarrhea, cramps, mood swings, bloating, gigantism, bread making, increased levels of swearing and a propensity to sing only Randy Travis songs.

I've had nightmares in the past, but this is the longest stretch I've experienced. It's like being trapped in the entire seven season run of Designing Women—it's just awful, humorless and it smells like an Aquanet convention. Yes, my dreams smell.

Maybe I need to go back to the Peddler's Mall and buy this dreamcatcher to rid myself of these nightmares.

(Seriously, I took this picture at a Peddler's Mall)

And while I usually dream in color, I don't dream about people of color. (Sorry. Please don't take offense, this is actually, probably a good thing.) Knowing I dream of only white people would probably make the Ku Klux Klan member who made this dreamcatcher very happy.

Ultimately, I'm not sure what this dreamcatcher is supposed to catch, but at this point I'll employee any member of any organization that can make whatever demon is tap dancing inside my skull at night stop. I wouldn't join their organization, but I'd at least sit through one of their "Free Timeshare" meetings if they can make this shit stop.

Swallow.

Today's photo comes courtesy of Tha Funky Headhunter, Matthew Hornyak.

As we round the corner and head for Thanksgiving, I question why we still celebrate this holiday.

It's the same damn thing year after year.

Same turkey.
Same pies.
Same vegetables.
Same horrific dish brought by that one Aunt who is 99% smell deaf.
Same conversations.

It's like watching reruns of Gilligan's Island for 35 years straight.

Shouldn't we do something to make this holiday fun? Something that makes this Thanksgiving one to remember, something that busts up the regular, mundane bullshit?

Here's my list of things we should all attempt:

1. Yell, "Swallow My Kids Bitch" at Grandma.
2. Bake an old pair of underwear into a green bean casserole. 
3. Include a pants down Penis Windmill as part of your victory touchdown dance when your team scores.
4. Call your aunt, Hitler. But not not in a normal voice, in the kind of voice you would talk to an infant or a dog to, "Ooooohhhh look at your new purse you cute little Hitler."
5. Shot for shot White Rain contest with Uncle Mitch.
6. Start complaining that your right arm has been numb for three days then replace your normal glass with a dribble glass.
7. Give yourself pink eye then touch your eye before you put your finger in the middle of every dish.
8. Wear a raincoat. That's it. Don't remove it. Just wear a raincoat.
9. Fill your plate with nothing but butter. Refuse to share it with anybody.
10. Upon arrival, turn on the sprinkler or hose. Upon leaving do donuts in the front yard.

Cat. I hate you.

Anybody who knows me, knows I have an fat cat. Appropriately named Fatty.

He actually is a former fat cat.

He is a secondhand cat and when I got him this obese bastard weighed 36 pounds. That's right, he was bigger than most 3 year old humans. He now weighs 13 pounds. (The Cat-kins Diet worked for him!)

Right off the bat this fucker was a nightmare.

First week I had him, he shit yellow diarrhea all over my condo. The second week I had him I thought he escaped the condo and had fled to the streets of Chicago. I came home late one night and thought I saw a frightened, morbidly obese pile of orange hair meowing underneath a Hummer with a Gay Pride Mickey Mouse bumper sticker.

When I pulled him out, he scratched the shit out of my face, my ears and my back.

He then ran off. This left me in the streets screaming, "Fine, you fat fuck, fuck you, have fun living in the streets! I hope a rat eats your eyes!"

A half hour later, as I was peroxiding my wounds, a giant fluffy orange mess emerged from under my bed. Seems there was another fat fucking orange cat in the neighborhood I had picked up that destroyed my northern torso. Or this fat fuck has a time machine or invisibility or some kind of ability to walk through walls.

Then, the second month I had him, his bladder got blocked from eating too many carbs. So they roto-rootered his pee hole out and charged me $1100.

Since then he has been on special food, which most days, costs more than human food costs.

He has shit on furniture. Peed on the carpet. Puked on everything. Destroyed the carpet on my stairs, which I won't replace until he dies—and they are threadbare at this point.

One time I watched him have what I like to call "Instant Oil Barron Diarrhea". For example, in "There Will Be Blood", there's a moment when oil erupts from the ground and there's a look in Daniel Day-Lewis' eyes that says, "I'm rich bitch!" Replace the ground with my cat's asshole and the look in my eye with one of impeding vomit and there you have "Instant Oil Barron Diarrhea".

His newest thing is a cross between insomnia mixed with dementia. I have the insomnia, he has the dementia. Most nights I have to get up, stumble to the basement and reassure him he is not lost which usually quails the screaming, bloody, cat raping murder tones he's fond of making, usually at a blank wall.

This will be the last cat.

He is too daffy, too needy and way too much of an asshole for me to want another.

Sure he has his sweet moments like when he jumps on my chest and claws my nipples. Or when he goes apeshit and scratches the dog for no reason. Or when he poops outside the box. But this is it. No mas gatos.

Fuck. I need sleep. Hopefully tonight will be caterwauling, cat rape scream free.

Fuck you Fatty.

Art Tuesday—Drunk, Stoned & Bike Riding Slimer

I'm calling this Drunk, Stoned & Bike Riding Slimer.

BTW, I have no idea what the artist was going for here. I guess it could be a green football with arms and eyes.

Or it could be a really tired, radioactive kidney bean who like cigarettes.

I have no idea. Go, Go, Ghostbusters!

Anybody else have any guesses?

Trash!

I've met a lot of trash in my life.

Here's a list of the biggest pieces of trash I've met in no particular order.

1. The pregnant woman I had to cut off from drinking Budweiser. Funny the bar I was working in didn't even sell Bud. She snuck it in, in her purse. She then used that purse to hit me in the head when I kicked her out of the bar.

2. My college neighbor. He was 40. He would drop acid during the day, eat uncooked canned goods and would steal from our neighbors and try to sell their stuff to me and my roommates. I bought CDs off him once. I turned down a Mongoose mountain bike though. Damn, that was a nice bike.

3. Flash. I don't know his last name. He was a camp cook the summer I taught boating. He was on work release. He got caught in a field with $2 million in marijuana, which is why he was on work release. He still grew pot on the campgrounds, not so secretly. Had a cocaine stash and once got put in solitary confinement for calling a rather short prisoner, "a sawed off midget".

4. My cousin. After getting arrested 3 times this summer, mostly marijuana related, he had the nerve to essentially steal a car from my grandparents.

5. Dale the Whale. Kid I grew up with in my neighborhood. He would beat his parents, they were significantly older, until they bought him the toy he wanted.

At one point my mom told me she didn't want him in the house because of his trashiness. So one day we were playing baseball and he asked if he could use the bathroom. I said no because of my mom's comment. So he then took his shoe off and peed in it.

Last time I saw him, he was in working at a convenient store. I didn't buy anything at that convenient store.

6. Mailroom Stacey and his sidekick Mailroom Gary. At one ad agency I worked at we actually had a mailroom. Why it took two guys I don't know. But both guys smoked a SHIT TON of pot. Numerous people would actually buy pot off them. One time we traded a crate of M&M's for a dime bag. (I was just around for the transaction.) Stacey wasn't so trashy. But Gary would wear denim shorts, ball exposing denim shorts. Not cutoffs mind you. Just really short denim shorts.

7. Anybody from North Middletown, KY. If you've never been there—GO! It's the perfect cross section of hog incestuites, dirty nailbedded shit farmers, perm wearing white trash female vagabonds, and slack-jawed, pickled livered fuck ups. It gets my vote for worst town in Kentucky.

8. Steve. (I won't use last names, he was trash but he was kind of a good friend.) He was a rather large fellow with even larger nipples. I mean these fuckers were like coasters and will haunt me until I die. His appearance wasn't helped by the purple shirt that he wore that made him look like Grimace.

He only became "trash" when he got drunk. Which usually led to him punching dorm fridges, kicking out windows, convincing us that his uncle was currently murdering his aunt, throwing up on dressers and not cleaning it up the next day and streaking. He had baby dick syndrome, it wasn't pretty.

9. Cheryl from Wisconsin. Met her through a friend of a friend. She had scabies.

I understand, people get scabies—dirty, trashy, hill people, but still they are people. What made Cheryl trash was how she got scabies.

She worked second shift, as her second job, at a Pizza Hut. One night she gets a call from a dude in a convenient store who wants a pizza. (Why he didn't eat something in the store, I have no idea? Something like, I don't know Pizza?) Her delivery driver was out, so she took it upon herself to deliver the pizza. When she got to the convenient store, she decided to blow the guy behind the counter at the convenient store.

THIS is how she got scabies.

10. Tina. She was a waitress at this hotel I worked at. What made her trash was the fact she broke into an old man's house, tied him up, beat him and robbed him of several thousand dollars of silver and jewelry.

She somehow got work release out of this.

Maybe I need to know less people on work release.