June 4, 2007

How Would You Fend Off a Bear?

One of the things I like to do while traveling is observe the differences between other cultures and American culture. I was in New Zealand recently, and I discerned one interesting difference between Kiwis and Americans. It seems a uniquely vulgar American trait that, upon meeting someone for the first time, we feel compelled to ask him or her, “So, what do you do for a living?” Why do we do that? Kiwis don’t do it. Ever.

zombie%20bear.jpgOne explanation for this might be informed by a trip to the Bark Park. For the uninitiated, a Bark Park is a designated place you can take your dog, ostensibly to play with other dogs. In reality, it more resembles a giant outdoor butt-sniffing and humping canine orgy extravaganza. Bark Parks are rife with “mounting.” “Mounting” is something dogs do to demonstrate their dominance over other dogs. I believe the compulsion that Americans feel within five minutes of meeting someone at a party, to ask, “What do you do for a living?” is a form of verbal “mounting.” Happy Hour at Yard House = Human Bark Park.

What baffles me about this line of questioning is that if you are looking for stimulating conversation, is anything worse than listening to some moron drone on about his job?

You: “Nice to meet you. What do you do for a living?”

Moron: “Well, I’m the Procurements Manager for Inventory Control at the Gas Company, and (guffaw…snort)…interesting story…(chortle…guffaw)…the other day, someone put decaf in the coffee pot with the brown handle and it’s supposed to go in the pot with the orange handle (knee slap…giddy foot stomp…guffaw)…and Marge in accounting gets her coffee (gasp for breath…second knee slap…loud nose snort)…and she’s like, “I hope this is decaf,” but she grabs the pot with the orange handle…THE ORANGE HANDLE! (belly laugh…foot stomp/knee slap/chortle/nose snort combo…fart)…CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!”

You (in your head): “How in holy hell do I extricate myself from this banal dickhammer before I intentionally choke myself on a cocktail weenie?”

Look, unless you are Scarlett Johanssen’s gynecologist, I don’t give a shit what you do for a living.

We should shake this up, America, and start asking questions that will lead to meaningful, exhilarating interaction. I have an idea.

Next time you meet someone new at a party, instead of “what do you do for a living?” try this:

You: “Hey, nice to meet you, Chuck. Say, Chuck, how would you fend off a bear?”

Now, if Chuck has had any experience actually fending off a bear; you are in for an evening of exciting conversation! But don’t stop there. I might go with:

“Hey Chuck, nice to meet you…say, Chuck, what will you do when the zombie army arises to feast on the brains of the living?”

Imagine where that conversation could go. You could compare potential zombie battle strategies and share interesting zombie trivia. Imagine the possibilities:

Chuck: “Wow, Tim, I’m glad you asked. Did you know Martin Luther King’s original speech actually said, ‘I have a dream that one day little black children and white children will join hands together’…and he added but later edited…’to fight the encroaching hordes of zombies as they roam the land to feast on the entrails of the living, not as the black race and the white race, but as the human race!’”

Me: “I didn’t know that. Thanks for that information, Chuck!”

But watch out because this guy, Burt, who’s the douchebag at the party, and nobody knows who invited him, might overhear the conversation. Why is this a problem? Because, like I said, Burt’s a douchebag. In fact, Burt is always a douchebag. I defy you to name a “Burt” who isn’t a complete and utter bag of douche. You can’t do it, can you?

Anyway, Burt is walking around the party weaseling his way into conversations, and he might hear you and chime in, “Did you just say you wrestled a bear?”

bearwrestlecopy.jpgSo, you and Chuck would look at each other and think that maybe Burt understood the spirit of the conversation and you had been a little hasty in your judgment of him and say, “Yeah…Chuck did.”

But Burt, who, as previously mentioned, is a royal douchenozzle, would say, of course, “uh…what do you do for a living?” This would result in a simultaneous cockpunch from Chuck and I, and Burt would cup his throttled, throbbing yambag and scurry off to the kitchen to refill his Ketel One Appletini, because that’s all douches like Burt drink. And after getting ragingly drunk he’d end up slouched on the front porch in a frayed lawn chair with an itchy “Bless This Mess” welcome mat slung over his shoulders and he’d be heaving Sour Apple liqueur down on to his $87.00 plain, white Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt, and people from the party would parade out to the porch to snap cell phone pictures of him and rush back to their laptops to create bogus myspace profiles for Burt, listing his interests as “preschool surveillance”, “jihad” and “interesting animal insemination techniques.” And while Burt is kissing concrete on the porch, his wife is inside the party getting busy with Chuck the Bear Fighter. Burt doesn’t find this out until a couple of weeks after the party and he gets so depressed, he stops taking his Zoloft and spirals downward until he ends up at the San Diego Zoo where he leaps into the black bear exhibit and they don’t find him until three weeks later, cowering in a corner wearing lipstick, a garter and a bloody polar bear pelt because his new boyfriend, Coco the Black Bear, is into white chicks.

See, that sets you up for great conversation at the next party when someone will inevitably ask, “Hey, did you guys hear about Burt getting cornholed by that bear?”

I just think that’s more interesting conversation.

Tim is Scarlett Johansen's gynecologist.

A Dark Matter Archives

April 23, 2007

Angry Jesus

What do you think would cause a 13-year-old boy to wake up, run into the kitchen, grab a pair of scissors, remove his underpants and cut them up into tiny pieces and painstakingly hide them at the bottom of the garbage can?

Drugs? Insanity? If you answered “Angry Jesus”…you win an unhealthy dose of religious guilt coupled with a mild form of obsessive compulsive personality disorder and ego-crushing sexual dysfunction well into your adult years! Welcome to living hell!

Who is Angry Jesus? Allow me to introduce him to you. Angry Jesus frequents the homes of fundamentalist Christians, heaping scorn and shame on the fragile, developing psyches of young people.

angryjesus.jpgBut Tim, you might inquire, isn’t Jesus loving and compassionate and caring and kind? You obviously didn’t grow up in my house. You’re thinking of “Loving Jesus.” Angry Jesus beat the shit out of him and put his thorn-covered, hippie head through my bedroom window by the time I was 8.

Angry Jesus took up residence in my room throughout my adolescence, taunting me. I’d be in bed with the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders scampering and bouncing about in my head, when I’d hear a growl from the dark corner.

“Who are you and what did you do with Loving Jesus?” I queried weakly.

“I am Angry Jesus and play time is fucking over! Now, see that nub between your skinny white legs, worm?”

“Um…yes.”

“Go ahead and touch it…no…go ahead…oh, look…it seems to be growing…that feels good, doesn’t it?”

“Well…yeah…” Hey, maybe Angry Jesus wasn’t so bad.

Angry Jesus continued, “Oh yes…it feels real good…and every time it feels that way…you’re one step closer to eternal hell! Now hit it with a hammer…and burn it with a candle…never let it feel like that again!!!”

“Ahhhhh! Why? Why? I want Loving Jesus back.”

“Ahh…fuck him! And stop thinking about booooooobs!”

So, each night, I fell asleep with Angry Jesus glaring at me from the foot of my bed. The visions of eternal damnation and winged demons ripping the flesh off my penis replacing the cheerleaders in my head.

I would drift off to sleep and later wake with a start. “Oh no…oh no…oh no…”

You see, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders made an uninvited return engagement in my dream, and this time, they brought along Charlie’s Angels.

nocheer.jpgI looked toward the end of my bed…and there he was.

“What have you done? Satan juice has squirted out of your demon nub, sinner!”

“It was a dream…I can’t control my dreams!” I cried.

“You’ve been disobedient to Angry Jesus!”

“But I thought the Bible said grace and not works get you into heaven?”

“Fuck the Bible! I wrote it! It’s not what it says, but what it means and it means you’re going to hell unless you cut those sin-stained underpants up and hide your shame at the bottom of the garbage can…now, run before your mother sees your shame! Let’s see some guilty tears!”

How did Angry Jesus come to live in our house? Well, my parents just brought him home one day from our new church, figuring that all that love, understanding and compassion I’d been developing might turn me into some sort of peace-loving, humanity-serving, justice-seeking, NRA-eschewing, pink tights-wearing Richard Simmons.

“Angry Jesus, this is our son, Tim. We think Loving Jesus has been a little soft on him. He seems to be developing his own thoughts and opinions, forging a sense of self worth and curiously, he exhibits almost no guilt and shame about his penis…in other words…he’s being rebellious. Maybe you can talk to him. We’ve tried everything.”

And they did. At one point, my parents forbade my brother and I from watching Scooby Doo. You know why? Because there were ghosts in it! And ghosts are part of the occult! That’s right…Scooby Doo was banned in my house.

Even at that age, I was like, “Mom, you are aware that those meddling kids and a talking dog always discover that the “ghost” is really the Harlem Globetrotters or Sonny and Cher or Shields and Yarnell or something, right?”

Angry Jesus would have none of this backtalk. “Let me talk to him! Stop thinking about Daphne’s booooooooobs!”

The irony…the hypocrisy…is that while my parents were imposing these rules on me, the TV was on in our house 24 hours a day. My dad still falls asleep with it on. And he always used to watch violent Bruce Lee karate movies. So, Bruce Lee pulling a man’s beating, bloody heart out of his chest, throwing it to the ground and stomping on it is okay, but Scrappy Doo and Charo eating Scooby snacks and solving crimes condemns my soul to hell?

My sister has taken my parent’s approach to a whole new level. She has three kids and she home schools them to protect them from the secular evils of the world. When we are all at my parent’s house, with the TV blaring 24/7, and some mild sexual scene comes on, she will scream like a crazy person, “Kids…avert your eyes!” And her kids are trained. They immediately stop playing, and place their hands over their eyes. And they don’t stop until she gives the all clear.

“It’s okay kids…you almost saw a boob…but everything’s fine now…it’s only a man’s head being smashed like a cantaloupe by Bruce Lee. Thank Angry Jesus, I caught it in time.”

And there is Angry Jesus, nodding approvingly, “Yes…yes…I love this movie! Tim, stop thinking about Bruce Lee’s booooooooobs!”

Time to go cut up my underwear.

Tim has solved the problem of Angry Jesus. He no longer wears underwear.

Archives

March 20, 2007

My Kind of Stripper

Please welcome Tim Shaw to the every growing cabal of FTTW writers. A few of the editors know Tim, a comedian, from TotalFark and dragged him over here to entertain you. His column will appear once a month, unless we can bribe him to write more often.

Strippers fascinate me. I’m not talking about the classy Scores, Treasures and Crazy Horse strippers. I’m talking about those strippers who, if someone wasn’t paying them, would be labia massaging some drainage pipe behind a methadone clinic for three homeless dudes and a stray dog. As Picasso must paint…they must strip.

I was in New Orleans with some buddies pre-Katrina and we ducked into this strip joint on our way to Bourbon Street one night. I can only describe the décor as sort of post-70’s Cajun orgy as imagined through the translucent mole on Aaron Neville’s face.

We sat down and immediately this stripper took a fancy to me. This chick was pinging the Skankmeter. Along the low-rent stripper continuum, there’s disgusting ho, oily skank and…I don’t know…marsupial? That’s the only thing to which I can adequately compare her. She had a pouch. I swear to god, Quato peeked out of it and gurgled, “Tim, start the reactor…and stick a dollar in her thong.”

She had an open wound on her head like a third eye. It was located just above where the break in her eyebrows should have been. I swear it winked at me. Her gaping, pus-dripping carbuncle actually went wink. “Heed the words of Quato!”

She was working me hard. “I’m gonna dance extra special for you, honey.” She was rubbing my crotch with her furry, little marsupial hands. “You wanna watch me dance just for you, darlin’?”

She was talking real close to my face and her breath smelled like rotted cock. I don’t know how I know what rotted cock smells like, but this just had to be it.

Finally, she says, “It’s my turn. Here comes your dance, baby.” She got up and you know how sometimes when you’re sitting down and you fart, your ass cheeks create kind of a hermetically sealed bubblequato.jpg from which the fart smell can’t escape, but when you get up, the odor has magnified to some radioactive intensity because it has fermented in its humid, methane tomb? Well, she stood up and pungent, aged egg fart filled the air. And I know it wasn’t one of my buddies, because guys can’t wait to claim that shit and we all looked at each other like, “Was that you?” “Nope, not my brand.”

She sashayed/wobbled her way to the stage, occasionally stopping, turning and staring at me like Linda Blair getting ready to heave pea soup.

Upon taking the stage, she began a series of jerks and spasms that, in her meth-addled brain, probably seemed like dancing. At one point I believe she actually did the robot. Her look of seduction more resembled an excruciating bout of constipation. She was working hard, though, and eventually she slid down the pole until she was writhing on her back on the stage.

After a few minutes, and with no warning, she started slapping the shit out of the floor like a crazed bongo player. This startled my friends and I and we strained to see what was causing the commotion. It turned out that a cockroach as big as a Tonka truck was scurrying across the stage and she was after it with full force. After about two minutes of manical floor-slapping, she finally got it. Wham! Crunch!

Now, this might have thrown most strippers, but not Chastity. That was her name, by the way. No, not Chastity. Extermination complete, she went right back to the seduction; smearing the fetid roach guts all over her tits and crotch.; smashed roach eggs, marsupial sweat and the thick New Orleans humidity rubbed into a paste and garnished with Quato spit and carbuncle pus.

My friends, you can have your Crazy Horse and Cheetah’s strippers with their glitter and vanilla body lotions and lack of visible, gangrened knife wounds to the head. But for me, unless she’s a pouch birthing, rotted cock gobbling, egg farting, giant vermine killing, robot-dancing machine, my rolled up dollar bills are staying right in my pocket.

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