Random Thoughts on Pest Control and Phil

Posted on by JP Shaver

Random Thought

Pest Control

Our deck is sinking. At first it was only an inch or two but now it’s over a foot deep and it has ripped away from the house. This is not good as my big beautiful deck now looks like a bowl shaped skateboard park. Apparently, carpenter ants are eating my house and it was time to call in a professional pest control company to take care of this as I will soon be living in a hole in the ground in the chewed up remains of what was once my home.

I like to give my business to companies that pride themselves on good customer service. When I call, I want a moderately fast response. Like, I don’t call my refrigerator repairman to check in on how things are going in his world, my damned refrigerator is broken and my five dollar pint of Ben and Jerry’s is melting all over the floor. I take into account that these people have more customers than myself to service and as long as they can come out to the house by the next day, I’m fine with it.

So these ants didn’t just start destroying my house last month. I figure this has been going on for a few years at the very least given the amount of damage they’ve so waiting a day or two was of little consequence so I thought it a bit odd that Pest Control Guy, henceforth referred to as PCG, was almost literally at my house before I put the phone on. I immediately suspected shenanigans and man was I right.

Me, “I was hoping you could come out and take a look at what I think is either a termite or carpenter ant situation at my house?” PCG, sounding very much like he was scanning thru his thoroughly booked calendar, “let’s see, I guess I could meet you at your home in like, ten minutes?” Me, “uh, excuse me, did you say ten minutes?” Where is this guy, in my effing driveway? PCG, “yes sir, ten minutes.” I’m a bit freaked at this point. I was starting to get a sense that this PCG guy may have, in fact, planted these voracious ants on my property and was camping in the woods behind my house just waiting for my call but then I remembered that I actually saw this scam go down on an episode of Ren and Stimpy.

We agreed on 5 o’clock. It’s 87 humid degrees, ants are eating my house, I had to leave a rather frustrating day at work an hour early and had to drive home with a screaming baby in the back seat as I picked up my granddaughter from day care on my way, so I was already pissed. Enter Phil, the PCG.

Phil is so fat that he actually had to do a twist to get in my front door. Like so fat that I can’t even guestimate his weight as I have nothing to compare him to. Maybe like that giant guy on TLC except in this case the show would be titled “My 600 Pound PCG.” We have an eight pound dog who literally goes into a barking frenzy to the point of giving herself an asthma attack when someone knocks on the door, but one look at Phil pirouetting in the front door and even she knew that scaring this poor bastard could only bring bad and obsequiously backed up into the bedroom.

Phil is sweating, profusely. Yes, it’s 87 degrees but he just got out of an air conditioned truck and had to walk all of about thirty feet to the door. The bill of his hat is soaked to the core and is actually dripping leaving a wet spot about the size of a garbage can lid on his rotund belly. I am worried about Phil. In fact, my first words to him are not to introduce myself or to say hello but, “Dude, are you alright?” This guy then proceeds to tell me that he has been, in between appointments, sampling chili at various local eateries in order to find the best brew. Seriously? It’s 87 degrees, he weighs an unfathomable number of pounds and he’s driving around eating bowl after bowl of chili? Who eats chili when its 87 degrees for fuck sake? At this point, I decide that there is no way this guy is living through this appointment and all I can think about is how am I going to get rid of these ants?

Fearing that I had little time left with PCG, I roll him out the kitchen doors straight onto the bowl shaped deck. I ask Phil to be careful as the deck is, as I stated earlier, at least a foot below where it used to be. Phil warns me that he isn’t in the best of shape, no shit, and hangs there for longer than what it took for it to become uncomfortable for the both of us. He embarrassed and me just praying for him to not die in my yard. I have repairmen coming two days from now to start fixing the deck and there is no way they can work around this whale. I become obsessed with trying to figure out how they would get him out of here if he did die and can think of nothing but my fence having to be cut down so they can get a backhoe to hoist him out.

My obsessing pays off as I design a scenario in my head where insurance picks up the tab for this whole project when I blame the bowl shape of my deck on Phil falling and crushing it into the ground. I am calm now.

This is the part where things start to go bad and I start taking the frustrations of my day out on poor Philly Phil.

It’s Phil’s fault. He bends down and trust me, this is no easy task, and starts picking up those brown pipe cleaner looking things that fall off of the oak trees every spring and proceeds to tell me that they are ant frass. First of all, frass? Is he supposed to use the word frass because it sound more dignified than shit? And secondly, what kind of special idiot does this guy think I am? Is he honestly thinking that I will believe that a four inch long piece of an oak tree dropping came out of an ant’s ass? Fuck!!

I realize at this point that this is not going to be as simple as me writing Phil a check and turning him lose on my ants. Something besides Phil stinks and I now feel like I’m being sold a timeshare. I tell Phil, “Dude, that’s oak tree sperm not ant shit and you don’t need the hard sales pitch with the scare tactics. I would have signed up twenty minutes ago. I just want you to kill the ants!”

Meanwhile my granddaughter is inside screaming for me because she has finished her dinner. I tell Phil, “can I just pay you now, I have to go in, my granddaughter is hungry and alone. At this point I notice that PCG is studying just how he is supposed to get back in the house as he is not a good foot and a half below the entrance to our kitchen. He starts heading toward the gate out to the driveway as his only option but I, instead, grab his sweaty hand and yank him up into the house fearing that if he took the long way I would find him dead in my wisteria garden.

It was at this point that I really understood just how fat this guy really was. Now, I’m no 98 pound weakling myself, I’m 5’ 10” and weigh in, depending on how well I’ve eaten in any given week, at around 210 but even at that, there is no budging Phil. I, next to Phil, looked like one of those little fish you see swimming around a sharks mouth picking at scraps on flesh off their teeth but we eventually succeed in rolling him back thru the kitchen door where Phil tells me that he doesn’t consider it a successful day unless he’s had a good meal. Well no kidding, fat ass. I kinda figured that out on my own when I tore a back muscle shoving you back into the house.

Where am I? The Twilight Zone? Is this some kind of a sick joke? Is there a hidden camera on this guy and is Alan Funt about to come out and tell me how stupid I looked fucking around with this behemoth?

Phil heads back to the truck to work up my quote, he actually has to turn sideways in order to properly lumber down our front steps. Twenty minutes later, no sign of Phil. I open the front door and there’s Phil, rummaging thru our bushes holding this ridiculous looking tool. It straps to his shoulder and has a long metal tube attached to a black squishy ball that Phil is furiously pumping on. It looks a lot like the ghost detecting apparatus Peter Venkman used in Ghostbusters.

Me, fed up with this bullcrap routine, “Phil, what the hell is that thing?” Phil, “I’m looking for signs of formic acid.” Me, “Really? I thought we were going to dispose of the sales pitch and just kill some ants? Phil, I know I have ants. You don’t need to build a fucking case! Will you please come back in the house so I can pay you?” Phil, “do you know there are ants on your fence?” Me thinking, “I would kill you if I could dig a hole big enough to hide your body.”

Phil, back in the house, is clearly weary from his ant hunting and is looking for a place to take a load off. I am hesitant to offer him a seat at the dining room table unsure of whether our chairs can support his more than ample girth. I can just see the chair splintering to smithereens beneath him and him going into another sales pitch about treating our furniture. In the end, he plops down between my granddaughter, now eating Oreos to keep her quiet and she only likes the cream inside, and myself and kicks the used car salesmen routine into fifth gear.

He tells me that the bug genocide price is based on the square footage of our house which he has overestimated by more than one thousand feet. This is clearly another ploy at getting me to sign up as the price at the adjusted area is one hundred dollars less per quarter. As I begin to lay into Phil about this bullshit sales crap, I refuse to break eye contact with him. I am burning a hole in his brain right now as I remind him that I would have signed his stupid agreement over an hour ago and am seriously pissed off right now. Phil has other more pressing matters on his mind at this point as I notice that while he is aware of my ranting, he is clearly torn between placating me and Leila’s Oreos which he cannot take his eyes off of.

Me, “I think this hard press to get me to sign up for a year’s worth of bug killing is bad business. You come in here with these stupid tools, you purposely over estimate the size of my house…..Phil? Phil? Dammit, do you want a fucking Oreo!?!?” Phil, “No, no, I’m trying to cut back. But if she isn’t going to eat the cookie part maybe I could just help her out a bit” He proceeds to eat three Oreos worth of cookie only parts and then polishes off the remaining two cookies in the pack.

Phil and I did finally come to an agreement and I think the ant problem is on its way to being fixed but I am now stuck with this guy for a year. Should it really take a year to kill ants? Something tells me that most of what they are doing is just feeding these intruders out in the yard so they stay away from the house then when my contract runs out Phil comes back to renegotiate.

I’m a learner and into gaining wisdom. This is what I take away from this life experience, everything and everybody is out to fuck you over, especially Phil.

Name the movie this line is from:

“Why are we in the parking lot across from my church?”

“You go to church?”

Random Thoughts on James Taylor, Heat Waves and Pizza Company Desserts

Posted on by JP Shaver

Random Thoughts

Once in a while I come up with a great idea for a new Top 5 List but simply cannot come up with the five ideas needed to round it out. It happens all the time. You can stop me at any given time and I will have four or five sheets of paper in my back pocket loaded with half filled out Top 5 Lists. I’ve been doing this for a long time and it is bordering on an obsession at this point.

So I figured I would take a few of those un-finished lists and put them together into one Random Thoughts piece. Just because I lack the creativity to round out the list of musicians who I wish would simply disappear into the next sunset and stop embarrassing themselves with new and horrible music is no reason to let James Taylor off the hook.

Musicians who need to go away –

You would be hard pressed to find a person who doesn’t like at least one James Taylor song. Even a head banging metal freak knows the words to Fire and Rain but the time has come for James to bring this act to a close. He wrote a song about a hundred years ago called Walking Man, he needs to be that guy now and walk.

James Taylor has not had a decent song in over twenty years and that’s being kind. Truthfully he hasn’t recorded a listenable piece of music since like 1980. That’s going on forty years and yet he continues to churn out album after album without any sense of self-respect. He has single handedly made himself completely irrelevant and destroyed what would have been a Herculean legacy of music.

At this point in his career James Taylor reminds me of my dad when we have a party. Two hours after the party is over my dad is asleep in the chair with zero intention of leaving. He simply has no concept of people wanting to go to bed. He’s 80 and really doesn’t have anything better to do which I think might be afflicting JT. I love my dad but it’s agonizing much like how James is now agonizing,

In addition, this bullshit bucolic act he puts on with the denim shirts and the leather hat coupled with this never ending stream of idiotic songs about blacksmithing and black licorice has made him into a clown. Nicki Minaj is regaling us with songs about her “anus” and James is still singing about railroad cars and picnics. Now I’m not going so far as to say that I appreciate the musical musing about one’s anus but I am saying that the world has passed moved on from poor James.

Is he broke? Is his wife a bitch and he needs to get out of the house? What?

Indian heat wave –

This is more of a current event rather than a part of a Top 5 List but if I were to assign it to an actual list, I would file it under the Top 5 Things I Don’t Understand.

Currently there is a killer heat wave going on in India with daily temperatures hitting 47 degrees Celsius.

Writers note:

I wondered just what 47 degrees Celsius equates to in the Fahrenheit scale since this whole metric system thing never really caught on and was told to simply multiply it by 5/9 or 9/5 then divide by something or other. WTF? I don’t remember how to do any of that shit so I just looked it up and found it to be somewhere in the 120 degree range. That’s pretty effing hot.

Sadly, some 1400 people have died. This is sad, no doubt but what flummoxes me is an article in the India Times, which I assume is a paper in, no surprise, India. First of all, the India Times? There are like over a billion people in India and they have one paper covering everything? The obituary section alone has got to be the size of the Manhattan phone book! What poor bastard has to deliver this daily tome?  Anyway, the article said that the Indian government was mounting a crusade to inform the people suffering in this inhuman heat to stay in the shade and to wear light clothes.

Really? You have to tell people that it’s hotter in the sun and that they probably shouldn’t be wearing that wool overcoat when the thermometer bust into three digits? The weirdest part of the whole thing is that the death toll actually dropped the following week once this advice hit the streets further reinforcing my belief that at least half of the earth’s inhabitants IQ’s hover someplace near full blown idiot.

Shouldn’t the fact that you’re hot be enough to move into the shade? Profuse sweating is an indicator that maybe now isn’t the best time to be sporting that new North Face jacket no matter how awesome you may think you look in it. The need to maintain a non-lethal body temperature is innate in all of us, so I thought. I’m at a loss.

Pizza company desserts –

I was trying to assemble a Top 5 List of the companies who should have stuck with what made them good in the first place but was stymied at only one which kind of defeats the idea of a Top 5. Anywho, what is this obsession with stores like Papa John’s and Domino’s insisting on making desserts? I guess I know there is the never ending quest to find ways of increasing revenue but taking a pizza crust and coating it in cinnamon and icing does not constitute a dessert. Pizza crust is basically bread and when you add sugared toppings to bread, it’s called toast. I don’t want to pay to have toast delivered to my house and, frankly, I’m offended and pissed that he tried to slide this by me. Look blowhole, you have left over dough, suck it up and throw it away like everybody else does. Don’t dress up your garbage and sell it to us.

I made the unfortunate decision to purchase one of these atrocities a few months back from Papa John’s. It’s no secret that I am known to make bad food decisions when I am even remotely hungry so I don’t fault myself but, my God, this thing was just awful. It makes me hate their pizza which is why I say, stick to what made you good in the first place. You don’t see the people who make those Easter egg dying kits branching off into making missiles and land mines so what makes Papa think that we will welcome his pathetic desserts?

I think this went well. I got to use up some material that would be otherwise lost to my lack of creativity.

“Are you Alice menstruating?”

“What has that got to do with anything?!?!”

“Hey, back off man. I’m a scientist.”

Top 5 Actresses We Are Told Are Hot But Are Really Repugnant

Posted on by JP Shaver

Top 5 Actresses We Are Told Are Hot But Are Really Repugnant

I hesitated in putting this list together as I have incurred much acrimony as to it being cruel. I, for one, will not be swayed by such behavior. I am also receiving a decent amount of scorn and questions about my sanity like, “Dude, you’re crazy, I would totally do Cameron Diaz. Remember how hot she was in The Mask?!” I am getting a bit weary of having to remind people that the movie Mask came out about twenty years ago and while Cameron Diaz was unquestionably hot in the early 90’s, she is a total mess now. Her face looks like it’s actually melting.

This Top 5’er isn’t about stars who have aged into being a hag, that wouldn’t be fair. I’m more bothered by them being presented to me as benchmarks of beauty by the media and their ilk. Maybe there just isn’t enough new talent to plug in to fill this gap, I don’t know. Lindsay Lohan made a run to grab the torch a few years ago but she can’t keep herself sober long enough for us to see much more of her than a mugshot. Who in the hell is Selina Gomez anyway? Unquestionably, there is a serious lack new talent being infused into the mix and that is genuinely part of the problem. Maybe I’m not the one to decide if that’s true or not though, I don’t watch Entertainment Television and have a great disdain for those who skank around Hollywood. My disdain, however, is exactly what gives me the freedom and capacity to tear into these horrible people. It makes me feel good.

I like to float my ideas for writing out to friends to see what kind of controversy they elicit and usually pick the ones that generate the most discussion and angst. Frankly, I preferred to write about my favorite candy bars, and I swear I will someday, but for some reason, no one cared. Go figure. This one, though, pushed some buttons. I like that.

Before we get to my list, I would also like to send out honorable mention to Uma Thurman who ran sixth on my list and to Hilary Swank who I don’t have on any list because I’m not really sure if anybody ever said she was gook looking in the first place. Poor Uma looks like a victim of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome as her eyes are virtually on the sides of her head and it seems to be getting worse by the day. She would probably make for a sweet point guard in the NBA as her “no look” passing abilities would be off the charts.

Also worthy of nomination is Sofia Vergara. No doubt a beautiful woman but she earns honorable mention on this list because I cannot imagine the torment of having to listen to her talk on a daily basis.

Jennifer Garner

Every time I see her I think her mouth resembles that of an octopus with pointed teeth that go all around her mouth, sort of like a real-life Squiddly Diddly (those of you under the age of 40 can use Google to look up this hilarious, blue cephalopod.) Pretty sure if you were to take her camping you could leave the can opener at home and just jam your bean can up under her lips and twist. And what’s with the muscles? Bleh (that’s the sound of me gagging FYI.)

I’ve never really liked her husband Ben Affleck either. I always thought it was because of his holier-than-thou political activism, and I truly do hate him for that, but now I see that his judgement is for shit as well. How am I to value his opinion on whom to vote for, since he feels compelled to cram it down our throats constantly, or what to do about global warming when I know that he finds this gargoyle attractive? As long as we’re on politics for a second, what better place for the “rest of us” to go for political advice than somebody who probably dropped out of high school and now makes their living pretending to be somebody else on film? Who appointed these people the bellwether on knowing who to vote for? I, for one, haven’t voted since the second Reagan administration because I will not be made a fool of but if I did vote, I am not going to look to Barbara Streisand for guidance. She sings, that it! What makes this melonhead Matt Damon worthy of a visit to the White House? Because he made a fucking movie? Does that make any sense to anyone? What kind of a special idiot does one have to be to take advice on who to vote for from these people?

Sorry, got off track there a bit but it’s not that Jennifer Garner is ugly or anything, she clearly isn’t. It’s that we are told that she is stone cold hot and she just isn’t and I object profoundly.

Cameron Diaz

Yes, she looked good in The Mask and, yes, she looked good in There’s Something About Mary but those movies were a hundred years ago and now she just looks like ten miles of bad road. Again, this isn’t about aging, I’m not saying she looks old and gross, just gross. Plus she looks filthy like she just came off a bender. Gross, greasy and hungover are not the characteristics of attractiveness.

Julia Roberts & Sarah Jessica Parker

I have opted to group these two into one literary equine stable as they both look like a two-legged version of Secretariat. More so Roberts than Parker but if you took their heads and jammed them on a kid’s hobby horse you probably wouldn’t be able to notice the difference from the wooden original. These two would draw better than decent odds in the fifth at Belmont, surely at least worth a show bet.

Plop either of them down in any given office environment and they’re at the top of the looks heap but not so in the movies. I’m looking for more from a leading lady than these two horse-toothed jackasses and by their smug attitudes, they seem to be buying into this beauty bullshit too. Don’t they have access to a mirror?

Scarlett Johansson

You know why she always has her melon cleavage on display for the paparazzi? So you don’t notice her crooked face. We are being sold a bill of goods. What is a “bill of goods” anyway and why is it so bad?

Now she’s lost a bunch of weight and it was all at the expense of her boobs and butt exposing her for the fraud that she always was. It was like when Toto pulled the curtain back on the Wizard or when we found out that McDonald’s makes their nuggets with that pink slime. Scarlett Johansson is pink slime.  Like, “This is what you were hiding?!? Holy hell!” At her current playing weight she reminds me a lot of that scary, preacher ghost guy in Poltergeist 2.

So there you go. Comments? Have I omitted anyone?

“It was a stone groove my man! You are the most righteous…. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just get the fuck out.”

Top 5 Gross Things They Sell at the Grocery Store

Posted on by JP Shaver

Gross Stuff at the Grocery Store

When I was a kid, I ate virtually nothing. I liked donuts, pancakes, French toast and pizza. That’s about it with the exception of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. My mother and I had many battles about my eating practices, with the proverbial, “there are starving people in Africa” line spoken on an almost daily basis. I would eventually win the majority of these battles as I’m she would eventually tire of looking at me sitting at the table alone with a cold plate of untouched food in front of me and acquiesce to my eating a PB&J sammich instead. I graduated high school at 5 foot 10, 129 pounds, an emaciated rail, and it was mainly because I hated food. I was not trying to be a dick about it and I appreciated her efforts but I simply didn’t like food. It wasn’t her fault, she was a good cook and I never blamed her, she was merely working with the disgusting tools nature provided her.

While my pallet has broadened a bit, there are still foods that no matter how old I get, I will not eat. Most of the foods I despise are you run of the mill variety but the subject at hand here are foods, and I hesitate to even use the word food when it comes to these treasures, that no one should be eating. I mean, somebody is buying these things and encouraging the store manager to continue stocking them.

Pigs Feet –

Surely you’ve seen this atrocity on the shelves of your local supermarket. It is exactly what I said, a jar of the feet of a pig.  What demon could possible possess someone enough to make them want to eat an animal’s foot? Especially the foot of a pig. Have you seen what pigs walk around in? They skulk around in mud inches deep comprised of their own shit and piss. What genius thought, those feet look delicious and should be bottled and made available at local stores? Mothers often use the phrase, “your room look like pig sty?” Why?  Because a pig sty is the epitome of filth.

Next time your grocery shopping, look for the pig’s feet, they’re always by the soup. If you hold the jar up to the light and thank God the Hormel people have opted for a clear glass for this epicurean delight, you can actually see the fine pig hairs still imbedded in the skin.

Feet are gross. They’re dirty. They take the brunt of most of the swill we delve into on a daily basis and I do not want to ingest them. A woman’s finely manicured feet in a pair of heels is an outstanding look but I have never been overcome with an uncontrollable urge to shove her foot in my mouth. I know there are people that get into that sort of thing but that is not my bag. I have way too many germ issues to indulge.

Forty years ago, I knew this little green looking kid named Bart, I’ve mentioned him in here before. Well Bart, in addition to having a weird fluorescent green color to him and pointed fingers, that made him look like Bat Boy, wore these brown plastic sandals that made an obnoxious farting noise when he walked. My sister and I used to get in trouble for calling him Bart the Fart. I think of Bart sometimes when I see the bottled pig’s feet while shopping. How can I be expected to eat something that makes me think of a green bat boy’s farting feet?

Tripe –

Tripe is defined as the culinary term for the stomach tissue of a cow, goat or sheep. Why in the hell is the stomach of a goat used as a culinary term anyway? Are you kidding me? I really don’t think there is much point in going any further here. My God, why? I venture that the first person to eat a farm animal’s stomach was probably starving and I get that. You’re going to die from hunger and all there is a cow stomach available, I guess you start eating but some idiot along the way ate this shit and enjoyed it enough that it now has a culinary term. I am disappointed in humanity.

Potted Meat –

Apparently those that enjoy the epicurean delights of this Potted Meat stuff colloquially refer to it as “pottage meat.” I’m not sure if this mispronunciation is due to there being a direct correlation in IQ points and an appreciating for this can of sadness but I’m pretty sure there has to be some mental deficiency responsible. We all know what hot dogs are made of but I have a pretty good feeling that I am right in assuming that this Potted Meat stuff is made from the stuff we wouldn’t dare make a hotdog out of. I thought about what sort of pieces of an animal would be left after the hot dogs fixins are taken out. I thought of things like cow utters, pig and goat utters would probably be included here as well. Utters would be something that I wouldn’t want in my hot dog but would expect in something called Potted Meat. That flap of skin thing that hangs down off of a chicken or turkeys neck would work well here too.

Organ Meet –

I don’t mean the liver sold in the meat section. Although that stuff is just awful. What I’m talking about here is that bloody sack of innards you find inside of a turkey.  It’s like somebody stowed their garbage inside of my Thanksgiving dinner bird. Why is this in here? Did I ask for this? Can I get a turkey without the guts? My mom used to boil this little bag of goodies and eat them like potato chips while she prepared dinner. The thought of watching her take a bite of the heart was and still is enough to make me never want to eat again.

Vegetables –

For my 49th birthday last year as a gift to myself, I gave up vegetables and specifically the guilt associated with not eating them. I despise them. I love fruit but vegetables are like their evil twin. Socrates was a firm believer in opposites. Like you can’t define light without experiencing dark, life without knowing death and so on. I believe the same idea applies to fruits and vegetables. You cannot understand just how good God given fruit is until you sink your teeth into an artichoke and witness first-hand the work of Satan.

If the entire vegetable section at the grocery store were suddenly eliminated I would be elated. I hate vegetables. They taste awful. I do like corn and potatoes which I am told are not really a vegetable but a starch which easily explains why I like them, they aren’t vegetables.

When I tell people that I don’t like vegetables, and I do feel the need to interject my opinion on them regularly and usually unsolicited, they always say something like, “well, you just don’t know how to prepare them.” This is a frequent response to my distaste for Brussel sprouts and broccoli as I think they are reaped from the pit of hell. “You have to sauté them in olive oil and butter then once they’re done cover them in cheese.” What? The fact that Brussel sprouts and broccoli have to be slathered in butter and coated with cheese is a testament to just how disgusting they truly are.

Case in point, everybody love to eat kale and spinach now, it’s the thing to do. However, I don’t see people walking around with a bag of greens. What they do is shove them into a smoothie covered in fruit and yogurt so they don’t have to encounter the acrid and rancid taste of these vile weeds. Consider this, if salads are so good, why does a multi-billion dollar salad dressing consortium exist? Vegetables are so awful that we will spend five dollars on a jar of dressing just so we can bury the taste.

What’s the deal with balsamic vinegar? I don’t remember this stuff when I was a kid. But I have a theory that without it, literally no one would be eating Brussel sprouts. The balsamic people really have saved the sprout people and I don’t think enough credit is given.

The question has to be asked, “If vegetables are so effing good why are there so many ways to prepare them with the intent of covering up the taste?”

I have tried for years to force myself to like tomatoes to no avail. I have one in an occasional cheeseburger and the foul taste is so overridingly powerful that the bitterness sullies my fine meal. People say, “Oh tomatoes are so delicious and sweet.” Wrong. You know what’s sweet? Ho-ho’s. Ho-ho’s are sweet. I like everything made from tomatoes, like pizza sauce, salsa and ketchup but the thought of eating them solo is nauseating.

Once you put a tomato on something there is no going back either. Those slimy seeds start spilling out all over your food like a monster from a 50’s sci-fi movie and you are not getting them off at any cost. And, trust me, I can taste every last one of them.

Don’t even get me started on mushrooms. I think they taste just like the dirt they are picked from and continue at the age of 49, like a five year old, to pick every last one of them out of anything I’m eating. I looked up the definition of “fungus” and this is what I found:

A spongy, abnormal growth, as granulation tissue formed in a wound.

And people eat this?!?!

When we were kids my mother used to make us imbibe this foul drink for breakfast every morning. It consisted of, what I surmised to be, unsweetened cocoa powder and sawdust swirled together in a cool glass of water. My mother hated us eating anything sweet. I delivered the Cleveland Press when I was in elementary school and I would do my collections on Saturdays. I would always plan my route to end up at Bordonaro’s , a local grocery store, so I could buy a box of Ho-ho’s and binge eat them all before I got home. To this day I cannot eat anything for breakfast but sweets. My mother and sawdust drink did some serious damage.

My favorite meal of all time, as I have discussed here before, is a gas station tuna sandwich, a bag of Munchos, a 3 pack of Ho-ho’s and a thick chocolate milk. If it were societally acceptable, I would eat this for Thanksgiving dinner and if I was on death row, I would chose it as my last meal. Why do we provide death row inmates with a last meal anyway? It’s not that I’m pissed about them getting preferential treatment, they’re going to be put down the next day and the least we can do to alleviate our collective guilt is to offer them a nice meal. What I wonder about is that when someone dies, don’t their bowels release? Really, if I have to clean that mess up, I’d be more inclined to give them a glass of water and wish them well.

“Hope you had a hell of a piss, Arnold!!!”

Aloha

Trying to Lose Weight

Posted on by JP Shaver

Trying to Lose Weight

I hate to harp on the “getting old” theme but I am currently struggling with the inability to lose weight. Like no matter how little I eat, and please don’t start with the “your body is in starvation mode” bullshit as I am clearly not talking about living on meals of kale thrown back with a big frothing bowl of steam. I am eating plenty but simply trying to control the portion sizes I ingest and still, I lose no weight. I can pretty much eat as much as I want and stand par so common sense should dictate that if I cut back on the junk and portion sizes, I logically, should get thinner. Sadly, this is apparently not so. My body has found a way to defy physics. Pretty awesome right?

So I fire up this MyFitnessPal app thing which keeps track of my daily calorie intake. I plug in my height, 5 foot 10, and weight, 213, and also shamelessly tell it that I am virtually sedentary and that this lifestyle will continue for the foreseeable future. I tell my friend Ryan all the time as he hurts himself continually hiking and just generally dicking around outside, that no one ever got hurt laying on the couch. No truer words have ever been spoken. Anywho, MFP decided to allow me a daily allotment of 1500 calories which I found to be bountiful and quite easy to adhere to.

I decided to give this iPhone fitness machine thing a month to produce results and actually committed to where I would like to be when done. A goal weight, if you will. I figured a month would be more than enough time to take care of 40 years of caloric abuse. Now, Lord knows, I would like to be back at my playing weight of 175 but let’s be realistic here. Truth be told, if I could get under 200 pounds I would probably break down and start weeping from sheer joy.

I must say, in my defense, that I am pretty good at telling myself no, almost achieving a sort of sexual gratification in denying myself pleasure. Pretty sure it’s based in some sort of self-loathing issues I’ve picked up over the years. I also decided that I would only check my weight once a week not wanting to get caught up in the day to day worry of whether I was dropping any pounds. In my mind, I would just know that it was working because of the new blousy way my clothes were fitting. Sadly, this did not happen.

After one week, I mounted the scales. I weighed 213, which, if you will remember, is exactly what I weighed when this suffering began. Great! Shit! I could focus on nothing but the foods I missed out on all GD week just to find out that I’ve done nothing but spin my wheels on this stupid diet. Damn me for trying to be healthy.

After entering my pathetic statistics into the app, I discovered that MyFitnessPal also gives you inspiring messages when you make good decisions and also predicts how much you will weigh in two weeks if you keep on track, “If you keep this up, you will weigh 205 on June 17th and will have lost 8 pounds!! How inspiring! I blamed my stagnating weight on drinking too much water and decided to carry on with my one month commitment. I knew I was lying to myself but the alternative of quitting seemed like I was signing my own death warrant for some reason.

However, after a month of meticulously following my calorie counter I got on the scale and discovered that had gained 3 pounds. Gained! Is somebody fucking with me here? Immediately I demanded to know if my wife had monkeyed with the scale. I feel compelled to remind you here that I was not exercising and will not but I don’t exercise when I am eating whatever I want so shouldn’t there be some progress? I mean, shit, I could have eaten pizzas and burgers and stayed at 213 but I had to eat a bunch of crappy salads and garbage like that so that I could gain 3 pounds? Eat shit MFP!

MFP was now giving me irreverent messages like, “If you keep this up, you will weigh 240 by July 1st” and delivered with a large dose of sarcasm. Like, “Nice job fatass, please delete our app.” I felt like I was getting the same attitude that I received from the salespeople at Express when I thought about buying clothes there. Like they were begging me to please not wear their clothes and sully their fine name. FYI Express, your clothes look like a costume for a gaudy European pimp and I wouldn’t wear them anyway. MyFitnessPal was now ashamed to have me as a user. Apparently, they only want winners, or losers as the case may be here.

I quit. I give up. I am convinced, at this point, that I have done serious damage to my metabolism with all of the fad dieting I have dabbled in. I once lost 40 pounds on the Atkin’s Diet but gave that up after Dr. Atkins dropped dead on a treadmill while eating a block of cheese and one of those giant Slim Jims. Not that I would ever catch me on a treadmill but still, this was distressing news.

I also noticed the other day, in addition to having lost the ability to lose weight that my hair has become remarkably grey on the sides leaving me looking like an Irish version of Paulie Walnuts from Sopranos. The hair on top is still pretty black but it’s thinning and when I use too much gel I feel like I look like a doll that had its hair chopped off like that thing from Toy Story or a pin cushion.

I know a guy who dyes his grey hair fire red. He’s old and wrinkled too which makes him look like one of those Peruvian mummies where the skin is all rotten and shriveled but the wig is still perfect. Mostly, he looks ridiculous and sad because he’s a douche and really his hair is the least of his problems.

I read that taking B vitamins might help bring back some of the original color of your hair. I don’t want to become vitamin guy though. I really don’t think they do anything but make you waste your money and they make me queasy. I’ve been to GNC and they push really hard to get you to join their “insiders club” and that gives me the willies. Anybody pushing that hard is up to no good. “Look pal, I don’t want to give you my email address and I don’t want to spend a hundred buck to be a gold member. I just came in here to buy that latest fad diet pill, so let me buy it and, yes, I know it isn’t going to work but please leave me alone and shut the fuck up.” What is this some kind of a supplement time share? Sheesh!

Plus people that take vitamins are like the Krishnas that used to hang out at the airport shoving their lifestyles and pamphlets on everybody. “Oh, you should really think about taking a multi-vitamin.” I hear that a lot and it’s always coming from the least healthy person I know. Like didn’t you almost die from a nose bleed last year? Where were you previous vitamins then? Back to the Krishnas, whoever decided that the airport was the place to hang out and get converts anyway? Like they expect that I’m going to wake up one morning and go, “What I need is a new religion, let’s hit the airport and see what they have to offer.”

I just guess that I would rather be a tad overweight, keep my greying hair and crush the occasional extra-large pizza all by myself than to be an app using, hair dying, vitamin taking d-bag. Evidently, I don’t really have any choice anyway.

The Top 5 Worst Songs Ever

Posted on by JP Shaver

Top 5 Worst Songs of All Time

Let’s face it, there is a lot of shitty music out there. I do realize that music is a very subjective business though, its appeal is always relative to the listener. Sadly though, the listener is usually a troglodytic Neanderthal who has no appreciation for what is really good and is entertained by music equal to the culinary equivalent of a fish sandwich from the gas station. I, for instance, am a huge jazz fan, real jazz, not that plug your instrument in and jam out to stuff made for an leisurely elevator ride. I like my jazz raw and acoustic, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Art Tatum, etc., but I am fully aware that most of the populace hates my music. I get it, jazz is an acquired taste and I also get that I am kind of a conceited dick about it too.

The Top 5 Worst Songs Ever list has to be built from songs that actually were appreciated and charted. Songs that were embraced by the general public and were and continue to be played on the radio at an excruciating frequency. There are literally tens of thousands of songs that are much worse than the five on my list but everybody knows that they suck. I mean, “Puttin on the Ritz” by Taco is a horrendous song but doesn’t have enough exposer to qualify. People like Shaggy are also disqualified before the debate even begins because they suck so much.

Even good bands make bad music. Ever heard the Flash Gordon soundtrack by Queen? Two songs into this album and you’ll want to jamb an ice pick into your ear drum. Van Morrison, of “Moondance” fame, made an album called “Payin Dues” filled with a couple of dozen 1-2 minutes ditties written purposefully bad so that he could get out of a perceived insufficient record contract. That kind of spleen draining musical vitriol doesn’t count here as even the artist knows it sucks.

I’m not entirely sure whether this list is an indictment of the artists who produced these musical atrocities or the people who dug them enough to make them famous. The people who actually went out of their way to call a radio station and request, “Time of Your Life” by Green Day should be locked away from the rest of us who are trying our best to develop some kind of refined musical style. Do people call radio stations anymore? Does anyone even listen to the radio anymore?

There is no accounting for taste. People eat Cheez Wiz, pork rinds and are wrapping bacon around Oreos and deep frying them so it’s inevitable that the lack of taste in true epicureal delights would spill over into music from time to time, I just don’t have to like it along with the rest of the cattle.

Red, Red Wine –

I abhor reggae. It is really the worst kind of rhythmic clatter ever inflicted on a people. Every freaking song sounds exactly the same which makes it easy because if you hate one, you hate them all. Reggae is also an excruciating and unrelenting lullaby to smoke pot by, it’s more of a serenade to burning yourself out to. Marijuana really seems to be the only hallucinogenic to have its own theme music which I guess is pretty cool. Like there isn’t a particular kind of music to smoke crack to.

With the song “Red, Red Wine” the mediocre UB40 took my distaste for this genre to another level of hate. Before I get started on the specifics, did you know that this contemptible song was written by Neil Diamond back in the 60’s? I know, right? Who gives a shit?

“Red, Red Wine” transcends all of my hatred from reggae though. I remember sitting in clubs back in the 80’s and when this song would come on the girls would go nuts screaming and running to be the first ones on the dance floor. I, now sitting alone, would contract a pained scowl on my face and spend the following 20 minutes asking, “What’s wrong with you? Do you know what kind of an idiot you have to be to be entertained by that song!?” This probably explains my unrequited efforts to get laid. There’s nothing hotter to a chick than being told that she’s an idiot.

This song with that pimply voiced crooner actually hit number one on the UK charts and made up as high as 34 in the US. This is truly a sad state of affairs and makes me lose faith in humanity.

We Built This City –

Back in the 60’s, Jefferson Airplane, used to be a kick-ass rock band. They actually played at Woodstock and gave us great hippie tunes like “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love.” For sure, if reggae is the music of the pot smoker then Airplane served the same purpose for your acid droppers.

As the years passed, band members came and went but even after they changed their name to Jefferson Starship they still churned out some good tunes like, “Jane,” “Miracles” and “Count on Me.” However things took a precipitously bad turn to the hideous when they decided to drop the Jefferson moniker altogether and just run with Starship. Not sure who this Jefferson fellow was but he seems to have been the finger in the dyke holding back a harmonious torrent of horror.

Case in point, “We Built this City,” a song for the nonsensically named album, Knee Deep in the Hoopla. What city, exactly did they build?” I know Starship came from San Francisco and I know Grace Slick is old as fuck but they built nothing, San Francisco is and old city even older than Grace Slick. They never really specify. The lyrics are preposterous, further embedding this song in the Top 5 Worst of All Time. Take a gander at this drivel:

Marconi plays the mambo, listen to the radio Don’t you remember? We built this city We built this city on rock and roll

Marconi plays the mambo? Marconi is the inventor of the radio but I don’t recall him or any other station ever playing any mambo music and they keep insisting that they built “this” city. Alright! Fine. You built it just please stop singing about it.

I liken the demise of Airplane to this one time when my friend Joe Rodriguez got tore-up drunk back in college. Joe was one of those cute, little guys that girls love to cuddle but this night he stood up in front of everyone and pissed his pants. It was in public too right after he had called for everyone’s attention. Starship’s pissfest was more metaphorical but in the end, they still pissed themselves.

Sussudio –

This little piece of heaven was a 1985 release of Phil Collins’ and here we are thirty years later and it still sucks just as bad. Sussudio is supposed to be the name of some girl he had a crush on. What irritates me most is that Sussudio is not a person’s name.

Remember how kick ass Genesis was back before Phil Collins took his axe of shame to it. I guess, in the long run, I need to blame Peter Gabriel for leaving the band and creating a hole for this weasel to crawl through. I have, in the works, a Top 5 list of the best bands ruined by d-bags and, rest assured, Phil Collins and the hatchet job he did on Genesis will be featured.

I really have a chip on my shoulder about this guy not only for what he did to Genesis but also because I can’t help but notice the striking resemblance he has to Earnest T. Bass from the old Andy Griffith show.

Sussudio is a musical nightmare and I hate it. The only thing worse than Sussudio is the Extended Mix of Sussudio.

Don’t Worry Be Happy –

Is this even a song? Bobby McFerrin is an accomplished vocalist. He conducts and has won a Grammy like ten times. How does a person this talented produce this kind of drivel? The entire five minutes or so is filled with McFerrin making noises that set off my Misophonia (see the Top 5 Things That Annoy Me) like nothing else.

Five minutes of this ten time Grammy award winner making cracking and popping sounds. Is this McFerrin or that idiot from Police Academy doing his ridiculous sound effect shtick?

Plus I hate his laissez faire bullshit attitude. Yeah, sure, don’t worry, just be happy. Life is all about happiness, right? Just be happy. Nothing bad will ever happen. Stick it up your ass you pie in the sky toolbox. I refuse to be happy.

In his defense, his Beyond Words album is a masterpiece. If you are so inclined, I recommend checking out his song, Invocation. It is awesome! Holy shit! I just said something nice! Maybe Bobby did have an effect on me.

Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now –

Another Starship masterpiece. Please refer to We Built This City. However, I will just take a moment to add another thought. This song was actually picked up as the theme song for the insipid movie Mannequin back in the late 80’s. Mannequin was about this total a-hole loser who falls in love with a store mannequin, I know, what a dick, and wills it to life. That’s the cherry on the sundae of a big pile of poop.

Worst Songs

Red, Red Wine

We Built This City

Sussudio

Don’t Worry Be Happy

Nothing’s Going To Stop Us Now

“See I told you y’all was a couple of f*ggots. You ain’t Jacuzzi-an nobody”

Gwyneth Paltrow Sucks

Posted on by JP Shaver

Gwyneth Paltrow Sucks

I recently stumbled on this headline:

Gwyneth Paltrow Tries To Live On a $29 Food Stamp Budget For A Week, Fails

Let it be known now that I have no love for celebrities and seeing a headline like this is like throwing raw meat into a lion cage. The thing I detest most about these self-important morons is their assumption that we have any concern whatsoever about what they think about social and especially political issues. Like, why are these people consulted on politics? Yes, please tell me who I should vote for perched in your 25 million dollar estate because surely we have so much in common. Why am I subjected to the likes of Sean Penn sitting down with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela to discuss foreign policy? Did Penn even graduate high school? What credentials does he have to rationalize his presence in a powwow with the leader of a foreign country? He was Spicoli for God’s sake!

I remember this guy Harry Thomason was always hunkering down with the Clinton’s back in the 90’s. As the producer of the show Designing Women, of course, he had every right to be helping to set policy on foreign affairs and domestic policy. (In case you missed it, that line was served with a very heavy dose of sarcasm.)

So back to this food challenge, it basically breaks down to trying to feed oneself on a meager pittance of $1.38 per meal for seven consecutive days. The challenge was thrown at Princess Gwyneth by #FoodBankNYCChallenge and was also offered to Debbie Harry of Blondie fame and well know douche bag Sting. I am not privy to knowing nor do I care if Blondie or Sting accepted. Sting is a giant asshole or at least I have always perceived him to be an asshole. He is the worst kind of self-righteous, pseudo-intellectual dingbat, so he was probably busy elsewhere surely tied to a tree trying to save the Amazonian rain forest. I’m sure he was also hesitant as one needs more calories than $1.38’s worth of nourishment to keep up with the tantric sexual lifestyle of his that he shoves in our faces continually.

Like, really, Sting? Maybe if I didn’t have this thing we like to call a job, I could sit around and make my orgasms last for hours too. As it stands now, I need to keep my job and make it by on my thirty seconds of occasional carnal pleasure. You keep making your tantric videos, though, and maybe someday I’ll have enough money set aside so I can nut in my pants all day. Eat shit you elitist d-bag!

I had to Google Debbie Harry as I wasn’t even sure, frankly, if she was still alive, I haven’t heard a peep from her since her hay day back in the 80’s. She, apparently, is still around but looking rather emaciated and the pictures left me with the feeling that $1.38 in food might be more than she can handle. By the looks of her, she would do herself a service if she blew the whole wad on some candy bars and signed up for the WIC program for some free cans of Ensure. It would simply be cheating if she accepted the food challenge at this time.

Surely this privileged bleeding heart adventure into temporary poverty was meant to prove the point that $1.38 per meal isn’t enough for a person to be properly nourished which is true as I just paid six dollars for a gas station tuna sandwich and a bag of Munchos.

Writers note:

I like food. I like to shop for it, cook it and eat it. I may be the only straight man with a Pinterest account and I have it purely for the recipes. In spite of my love for food, my all-time favorite meal is a gas station tuna sammich and a bag of Munchos washed down with chocolate milk and topped off with a 3 pack of Ho-Ho’s. I prefer to eat this smorgasbord in the car, I just think it tastes better.

What bothered me was the list of things this idiot, Gwyneth, purchased with her $29. To my thinking, when one has only thirty or so dollars to spend on something as vital to staying alive as food is, you go for the cheapest items that bring the highest nutritional return like beans, for instance. Beans are high in protein and cheap. With $29, I’m loading up on as many bags of dried beans as I can, leaving just enough for a big bottle of hot sauce to cover up the nasty taste of this vile weed. The only other ingredient I’ll need for this bean feast of mine is the water to boil them in. Guaranteed, I will be sick to death of beans but I will be well fed and alive.

And while Gwyneth did buy a bag or two of beans she also bought:

A giant head of cilantro

One, and I repeat, one ear of corn

Seven limes

A head of garlic

Please tell me what she planned for the single ear of corn. I know she’s skinny and all but damn. Let me just say this and I mean it with all respect, poor people don’t eat cilantro and limes, they are a luxury. Limes really serve no purpose anyway outside of enhancing the flavor of my Corona and truthfully I’m probably not picking up a sixer of beer with only thirty bucks to spend a week. Plus limes cost like a buck a piece. No doubt the poor would probably like to indulge in the occasional flavor enhancer but when you have 30 bucks a week to subsist on, taste is probably not real high on your list of priorities, staying alive takes precedence. Garlic would also, sadly, fall into the category of an indulgent guilty pleasure.

It seems this Gwyneth creature also “curates” her own website titled Goop.com, Gwyneth claims that “Goop is one of the rare places on the web where food, shopping and mindfulness collide.” Okay, I can get behind something like this and I am actually marginally intrigued to dig further at this point. She continues, “We are all resource strapped so Goop hopes to surface the very best….” So apparently Gwyneth the Terrible is in tune with regular families and the constant struggle to make a dollar stretch as far as possible. I can get behind this too. I mean, I’m not naïve enough to believe that this privileged, country club witch has even a hint of what it’s like to try and feed a family of four on $29 a week but it seems like she’s trying to help out. What else does she have to do anyway? She hasn’t made a good movie since Shallow Hal so why not spend some time investigating hot deals for the “resource strapped.”

So I click on the clothing button on this Goop.com and the first thing I see is a plain old white t-shirt that’s selling for a mere $350. Is this chick out of her mind?!? How does one concoct the temerity to say that a $350 t-shirt is for the “resource strapped?” Pants for $475? An ugly sleeveless, plaid shirt going for $1750? For 1750 bucks, I want sleeves! And the NYC Food Bank expected this jackass to get by on $29? Shame on them for thinking for even one second that associating themselves with this elitist fraternity douche bag was a solid idea.

Gwyneth has also penned a cookbook for us “resource strapped” plebeians. However, the average cost of just one of the meals in this culinary rag is about 60 bucks and that includes the cheaper breakfast options. Average cost per day to cook out of this abomination for a family of four? $300 dollars! That’s a month’s worth of food for some families! This is truly a soulless bitch.

I also found that if you Google “stupid things Gwyneth Paltrow said” you will get literally thousands of sites covering just this subject. For instance, when asked about the difference between being a working mom and a movie star, her response was:

“I think to have a regular job and be a mom is not as, of course there are challenges, but it’s not like being on set.”

How does this person have a fan left on the planet? Her entire existence is reprehensible to me. Are we to believe that she is actually watching her children when filming another snore job of a movie? She is a modern-day Marie Antoinette with her “let them eat cake” bullshit and we all know how that ended, with a swift trip to the guillotine.

Not exactly sure how I decided to go on this crusade of hate against this prissy, self-righteous bitch exactly but it’s 10PM and I’m supposed to be in bed by now. I have to work in the morning and now I’m all pissed off and can’t sleep because tomorrow this idiot, Paltrow, will still have a fan base of idiotic sycophants and Sting will still be spending his time blowing it in his pants. Marvelous.

Hey Ahab, can I have my dubbage?

Madonna vs. Drake

Posted on by JP Shaver

Madonna Kisses Drake

There’s a lot of hubbub going around lately about Madonna kissing (molesting?) (infecting?) this Drake character. I make no claim of knowing who this Drake person is but I understand he is some kind of entertainer or something. Regardless, as my not being aware of him is of little consequence, this poor fellow was on stage with Madonna and she apparently slapped a big, wet smooch right on his lips. One might, at first glance, think, “Wow, what a lucky guy. I wish Madonna would kiss me,” but you would be wrong. Today’s Material Girl is a haggard and horned demon from the pit of hell and the spit she deposited in this poor soul’s mouth was probably acrid and black from evil and a severe case of gingivitis.

Drake, so grossed out by the proceedings, began gagging and spitting out the congealed skag juice and did not care a lick that the entire world was looking on.

I can’t say that I blame the guy, as the cute Madonna of the 80’s is long gone and she now looks like a succubus they drag out of the grave every morning, electrocute back to life and foist back on the world simply to force us to listen to her low grade version of music.

I have an unfounded theory that I can tell what people on television smell like in real life and Madonna tops my list of people who, I believe, reek of a thick and cheesy ass sweat but try to cover it up with a perfume so strong that it induces a headache. However, if the perfume fails to cause a splitting migraine then surely listening this skank blather on about politics and sex should be enough to make you wretch. I think it’s pretty clear that Drake’s gagging reflex proves my point.

Burned into my memory is this idiot and her unpatriotic vitriol about how she didn’t want to raise her children in this cesspool we call America and moved lock, stock and barrel to England. Two things bothered me about this, A – she helped create this “cesspool.” Have you ever seen her videos? And B – a month after moving to England she’s suddenly speaking with a British accent. Are we to believe that after living in the US for forty years that you, after a one month stay in Europe, suddenly have a new accent? C’mon you idiot! I don’t know who I despise more, her or the idiots who still fall for and encourage this behavior.

I thought hard about something positive that I could say about this soulless harpy and came up with only one thing. The Jellybean Benitez House Party Dub Mix of Feliz Navidad. Produced when dating Madonna, clearly she threw her weight behind the project, and Christmas wouldn’t be the same without it, in my opinion.

Nobody likes Sean Penn anymore. Between having to be subjected to his political rantings and his proselytizing bullcrap movies, I can stand the sight of him anymore. This, too, is Madonna’s fault. I could have enjoyed watching him recreate the Spicoli character over and over again and been satisfied but, no, she had to ruin his life and embitter him and now I have to watch films like Milk. Can you imagine the damage done to this poor guy? Having to listen to her? Pretend to enjoy her music? Ugh.

Kudos Drake and if the kudos aren’t enough than perhaps a shot of penicillin and a Z-Pack?

Top 5 Things I Don’t Want To Do When I’m Old

Posted on by JP Shaver

Top 5 Things I Don’t Want To Do When I’m Old

This is not intended to hammer on the seniors as much as it is a reminder to myself, as I will be 50 this fall, to not do certain things as I limp toward either senility or death. As my golden years approach, I’ve decided to set expectations of myself that maybe most people haven’t even considered yet. As always, I have narrowed these “things I don’t want to be when I’m old” down to a Top 5. I am resigned to the fact that, at 50, not much is going to get better. Like my knee that hurts now, when I turn 60, I’m not going to wake up and say, “wow, remember how bad my knee hurt when I was 50!?” No, more than likely, my knee will be, by then, similar to a petrified piece of drift wood and hurt even more. That’s life telling you that it has moved on from you. That you serve little purpose. That you are a taker now more than a giver.

I have no genetic guide stone to go by either. My doctor likes to ask me about my family history of illness and disease. Pretty sure that she and the other doctors in the medical group have a Death Pool going and she is just cheating in order to improve her odds. Everyone in my family with the exception of my father has died from something induced by things other than natural causes. My grandfather started smoking when he was nine and I’m pretty sure that had something to do with why he died in his early 70’s. Like who starts smoking when they’re nine?!?! Nine?! I smoke but didn’t start till I was 35 and I suppose the question should also be posed, “who starts smoking when they’re 35?!”

My mother died from complications from Lupus, I don’t have that. My grandmother fell on a wooden chair and the injury eventually caused fatal stomach cancer, I haven’t yet fallen so I think I’m good on that front. My other grandfather died from brain cancer but he was younger than I when he died so I think I beat that. My mother’s mom lived to be like 95 but called me David for most of my life so I don’t think that’s a good barometer of how I’ll go. BTW, my name is Jonathan not David. From the familial evidence, I guess, I’m either going to die from some crippling, freak injury or live until I’m one hundred when my mind is so full of holes that it causes me to call people by the wrong name. Not really sure which one is better.

There are always early warning signs that something is awry like when you get that excruciating sore throat right before an epic head cold sets in. Those alerts don’t have to always be of a physical nature either, sometimes you get a feeling that something mental is starting to break down. My mental warning came to me while I was watching this Daniel Tosh character on television with my daughter. His sarcastic remarks and his irreverent behavior had me seething and it dawned on me that I now understood the definition of the word “whippersnapper.” If I had a cane I would have been shaking it at the television screen. Tina Fey is a whippersnapper and so is Jack Black. I can’t stand the sight of any of them. Using the word “whippersnapper,” to me, is the epitome of the definition of “old.”

With that, I present the Top 5 Things I Don’t Want to do When I’m Old….

Top 5 Things I Don’t Want To Do When I’m Old

Buy medical supplies off TV

Wear bad sunglasses

Say “old” things

Let Wilfred Brimley speak for me

Drive during rush hour

Buy medical supplies off television –

I notice these kinds of commercials mostly when I watch re-runs of old MASH or Andy Griffith episodes and the fact that I am watching these types of shows in the first place is a pretty strong indicator that I am approaching the age of being in the demographic but the idea that I would buy a catheter off television let alone need a catheter is abhorrent to me.

Do people really install these things on their own at home? Like shove a plastic tube up their pee-hole? Seriously? When did this become a “do it yourselfer?” Who thought this was okay? Is this Obamacare in action or did the Republicans and their insurance provider cronies block an actual doctor from performing this procedure and pump the savings into another missile project? In either case, I think, I would rather piss myself than to have to sit on the edge of the tub and cram a tube up my junk hole. Surely no one wants the indignity of sporting a urine soaked diaper but isn’t technology supposed to get better with time? Is self-flagellating myself with a tube of plastic and toting around a bag of pee really supposed to count as advancement? “Good news old dude, no more diapers!” “Nope, now you can just shove this thing up your pecker in the comfort of your own home and walk around with a pee bag instead. Just don’t drink too much or this thing might explode allover you and everybody around you.”

Will there be catheters available in the “As Seen on TV” section at Walmart?

Wear my leftover cataract surgery glasses like a new pair of Oakleys –

Okay, this one frustrates me to no end. Apparently when you get old, a crusty film can develop over your eyeball resulting in having to have the doctor peel that shit off so you can see right again. Once the procedure is done your eyes are very sensitive to light and they give you these “temporary” giant black glasses to wear until you heal.

Problem being that you see people months later still using these ridiculously huge things as regular, everyday sunglasses. Lord knows that a good pair of shades can get rather pricey and no one is expecting somebody on a fixed income to go out and pick up a pair of Revo’s but, damn, any gas station has a rack of sunglasses that go for like $3.99, get some! Not only do you look like an idiot but you also look cheap as fuck.

At what age does one just not care anymore and forgo plunking down a few extra dollars on a pair of shades to at least pretend to still be sort of cool? Maybe if they came with a month’s worth of free pee-hole tubes?

Say things that define just how old and surly I really am –

Ever notice how old people describe the unfortunate amputation of someone’s body part(s)? It’s never, “once the doctor got in there he found he had to remove the spleen.” No it goes something like this, “the diabetes was so bad that they had to TAKE her leg.” Take? Took it where? They make it sound like the doctor needed the leg elsewhere or had a vendetta against the patient and crippled them.  Another example is, “he LOST his arm to the arthritis.” I guess the losing or the taking of a limb sounds better that saying that this poor fat bastard spent his life eating himself into oblivion to the point where his body couldn’t keep up anymore so they had to start dissecting him.

When did the doctor become the enemy? I propose it occurred right about the same time that one had to start self-cramming plastic up their genitals.

Old people also like to add the word “the” in front of any disease that one might have contracted. “Did you hear about Mort? Looks like he’s got THE cancer.” Maybe the severity of the disorder justifies the need for a “the?” Like you don’t see people saying that he had THE cold or THE strep throat.  Those are both rather benign and easily cured but when you get to your headliner kinds of diseases maybe those merit a “the.” Maybe using a “the” takes away the potential of associating it with themselves? I don’t have an answer but it’s annoying and I will try not to do it.

Appoint Wilfred Brimley as my spokesperson –

I’m not really sure who decided that this old, grizzled bastard was the poster child for the aged. What’s his fucking problem? What is he so pissed off about?

Drive during rush hour –

There is no reason in the world that a retired person needs to be out driving during rush hour. Where are they going? Why now? Can’t it wait? If I were to run for some kind of political office, which, by the way, will never happen because I think politics is stupid, I would run on one thing and one thing only, if you’re retired, you can’t leave the house in a car between the hours of 7AM- 9AM and 5PM- 7PM. I don’t care about abortion, gay rights, war, whatever, just leave the roads alone for four hours a day. Of course I would never get elected as old people are the only ones who vote but, really, unless it’s an emergency, and I can tell by the speed that you are proceeding with that it isn’t, stay off the road. I and everyone else out driving at 7AM are on our way to work. You can sleep in for God’s sake! You and your crotchety old buddies can wait to park it at McDonalds for the free coffee an hour later than normal.

My father doesn’t drive during rush hour. He has fully acquiesced to the fact that he has nowhere to be during those hours. What he does do, instead, is call me and regale me with his stories of yore. It’s cool though. I’ve heard his stories a thousand times and they never get old.

How many of these people should legitimately have a driver’s license anyway? 25 years ago I took my grandfather to renew his license and that requires a re-take of the eye test. Well, he had just had a stroke and was partially blind in his left eye and I knew he couldn’t pass but we figured it was better if they told him instead of us. I watched as he let five or six people cut in front of him and soon realized that he was memorizing the test. He passed! Crafty? Yes. Dangerous? Without question. The left side of his car already looked like he bought it at a war surplus auction and surely it was a matter of time before one of those dents had the impression of somebody’s face. Worse still, was his insistence that all of the other drivers on the road were the real problem. It was like riding with Mr. Magoo or Lindsay Lohan! No doubt, at least, the aged are devious.

Random Thoughts – Parking at Home Depot

Posted on by JP Shaver

Random Thoughts – Home Depot and I Cannot Fix Anything

Ever been to Home Depot? Lowes? Ever notice that there is not a good parking space in the entire lot? You can put your car where ever you want but one side of the building is for entry and the other side is the exit. You may get a great spot by the entrance but then you are walking a country mile with all your stuff when you come out. Why do they do that? It’s annoying and stupid. Best to just park as close to the middle as you can. That way you’re equidistant from both doors but it also means you’re a screwed going in and coming out.

I cannot fix anything. I have zero “do-it-yourself” skills. I do have great intentions though. I love to think that I can build a giant deck covering pergola with fragrant purple Wisteria draped all over it but when it comes down to it, I can barely put in a new toilet valve.  I do love the smell in Home Depot though. It, for some reason, gets my creative juices flowing. Most stores seem to have an inappropriate amount of influence over me. I am what marketing people would refer to as “a sucker.” Like if I go into a guitar store, I immediately think, that if I spend $700 on a guitar, that I’ll surely be the next Jimi Hendrix. I have two guitars that disprove this theory, by the way. Put me into a craft store and I am virtually on overload.

I once replaced a light switch in my bedroom and thought I had done everything by the book. Yet and still and in spite of shutting off the power, not just to this particular switch, I actually shut down the entire house, I still managed to electrocute myself, finding out later that the wire wasn’t grounded right or some shit like that. It’s hard for me to remember what my neighbor was saying as I came to. I do remember the word idiot being uttered though.

I want to put ceiling fans in a couple of the bedrooms in our house. I figure, how hard can that be? Just turn off the power, take out the old light and shove the ceiling fan into the hole. I proceed to Google and type, “How to install a ceiling fan,” and the first thing I hear is about this ceiling fan box mount. What the hell is a box mount? Mounting holes, brackets and braces? Without an afterthought, I am done. I know better. I can see this thing spinning around a few times then crashing down on my wife’s skull like an upside down helicopter. It wouldn’t hit me though. No, my particular brand of suffering would come from her complaining about her gashed open head for the next thirty years.

I believe that there is a concerted effort by some elite group of contractors, probably the Illuminati, who want to keep commoners like me from doing things around the house. They sit around in ceremonial aprons sacrificing animals and inventing intentionally scary words like bracket and box mount to intimidate me so they can hold on to their ceiling fan monopoly. They say things like, “hanging drywall is an art,” then laugh at people like me who suck.

There was another time when I decided that it would be nice to re-tile the bathroom. I mean, you just take off the old tile and glue the new stuff on. Easy, right? Getting the old stuff off was actually kind of fun, cathartic, if you will, but I found out during my demolition that the wall behind the tile in the shower was wet and rotting, something I would not have known if I had just left this alone in the first place. Too late now. I encountered intimidating words again. What the hell is sheet rock? My answer to the rotting shower wall incident was to not use that particular shower anymore. Voila! Problem solved. I did, however, move forward with my plan to re-tile the floor. I did every damn thing they told me to do, I mean, to a tee. Within a month, half of the tiles were loose and the grout was disintegrating so badly that it looked like a hillbilly dirt floor.

I think that some people are just born with the ability to be handy around the house. I see no other explanation for it, it simply cannot be taught. I do have a few success stories though. Once I installed, and I use the word “installed” in an overly impressive sounding way, a toilet seat. It wasn’t as much of a story of the glory of my handy work as it was a story of containing my germ phobia. I had to literally fight the urge to vomit the entire time as I was sure I could feel the poo viruses climbing up my arm headed straight for my nose and mouth with a determined vengeance. Once I was finished, I made my wife come and bask in the glory of my triumph, I still talk about it to this day.

I have also been known to change out a few malfunctioning toilet valves in my day though there is still a bit of handle wiggling required once I’m finished; I just can’t seem to get it quite right. Most of my fixing of things seems to revolve around the toilet for some reason, not sure why. I must be comfortable around it.

I do currently hold an impressive vomit streak, at this point having not thrown up since August of 1993, right before my daughter was born. My other two kids had the flu and I knew it was coming for me next so I downed an entire box of Whitman’s Samplers knowing that I would just expel it all before the calories kicked in. Sort of a viral induced bulimia. What this has to do with parking at Home Depot, I have no idea. I just felt that I need to defend my manhood somehow and aren’t extensive vomit streaks always apropos. Should someone make disparaging remarks about my lack of fix-it skills at least I can always fire back with, “yeah but at least I don’t throw-up, bitch.”