I Hate Outside

Posted on by JP Shaver

I hate being outside. To me, being outside for even a few minutes, is like enduring a slow, unending and painful torture with no end in sight. Being outside gives me an overwhelming feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. Outside, I haven’t the ability to alter my surroundings. I must adapt to it and I don’t like that loss of control. As if a human being has the ability to come to physical terms with 95 degree humid heat or survive very long in anything below zero. Being outside at the mercy of the elements sucks ass.

Some may contend that I suffer from agoraphobia or some other psychosis but they would be wrong. I simple hate hot, cold, dirt, bugs and any other natural infirmity that plagues this world.

Outside it’s never “that perfect temperature,” ever. It’s either too hot or too cold and if by some freak of nature it is meteorologically (I think I just made that word up) comfortable, the humidity is 90% and fucks it all up. I’m either sweating like a fat, greasy sow or covered in painful goose bumps. The are too few days with any middle ground. Probably fewer than a dozen times a year I am actually happy with the weather..

As I said, I also hate dirt and filth. Has anyone ever gone outside and actually come back in the house cleaner than they were when they left? No. The answer is no. Outside is dirty and disgusting.

I hate the sun. There’s no getting away from it. Being in it is like undergoing an unrelenting, energy sapping, savage beat down. My God! It actually burns our flesh! Like fire! Have you ever considered that if you go outside on the planet you were born on and stand in the sun that birthed said planet that you will turn to a pile ash? Does this make any sense? Clearly, we belong indoors.

Bugs and animals also make their homes outside. I don’t care for bugs. Mainly the ones that fly. Flying gives them unfettered access to my ear holes which they all seem quite attracted to. Ever get a gnat in your eye? All shoved down and crammed inside your eyelid? It fucking hurts and God only knows how many piles of dog excrement that thing has been wallowing in before it suicide itself in my optical fluid. One thing I can assure you of, shit covered vermin have never gotten lodged in my eye when safe in the comfort of my home.

Where do fruit flies come from anyway? It seems like they spontaneously generate whenever you spend more than twenty bucks on fruit at the grocery store. How are you supposed to get rid of them unless you throw away every piece of fruit in the house? Once you dispose of your fruit, why do the wayward fruit flies always gather on the bathroom mirror?

I love to play golf. The one thing I despise about golf is that it has to take place outside. I think I read once that there is an enclosed golf course somewhere in Japan. If that’s true and I lived anywhere near it, I would play every day. Indoor golf, that is happening.

The out-of-doors are now blessed with Zika virus carrying mosquitos. This festering disease causes babies to be born with tiny malformed heads. Where did this come from all of the sudden? I’ve never heard of Zika until this year. The day these things hit Northeast Ohio will be the last day you’ll see me outside wearing anything but a yellow biohazard suit.

Mosquitos don’t bother me. I mean I hate them (big surprise there, I know) but they leave me alone. Dana and I will sit outside (me reluctantly) and they are on her like a fat kid on a tube of cookie dough. By the time we throw up the white flag and head back indoors (where we should have stayed in the first place) Dana looks like she has come down with a scorching case of rheumatic fever. Maybe my blood is as sour and acrid as my personality but then they don’t even try to bite so how do they know what I taste like?

There’s nothing worse to me than a fly in the house. The only thing I’ve ever seen a house fly do outside is roll around in a pile of dog shit. Everything they touch, I throw away. I don’t try to kill them either. Just like I don’t belong outside in their domain, they don’t belong in mine.

Who’s idea was it to put grass around everybody’s house anyway? What a fucking genius that guy was. Once a week, I am forced to go outside to cut the grass. Any day of the week I would rather my house was surrounded by molten, bubbling lava filled with fire breathing dragons trying to kill me than grass. I wouldn’t have to mow lava and weeds certainly wouldn’t grow in it. Wouldn’t it be a much better use of space if we just covered everything over in concrete?

Don’t even get me started on swimming in the ocean…

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Piss mud

 

Stranded in the middle of nowhere covered in muddy piss is not how I want to remember a beautiful summer night sitting under the stars listening to The Beach Boys play live. To top things off, one of the Beach Boys, at least in my mind, was responsible for setting my car on fire forcing me to eat stuffed peppers made by a grease monkey.

 

Top 5 – People Who Are “Into” Things Make Me Sick

Posted on by JP Shaver

Maybe it’s because I’m old but I’m pretty sure I’ve held this belief as long as I can remember, I can’t stand people who are “into” things. Like so into things that it’s all-consuming and it’s all they talk about. I’m not bothered by a person’s nonchalant or cursory interest in a hobby or in a particular interest but when it borders on an all-consuming obsession, I boil inside. I’m willing to allow some grace here in a couple circumstances, one, my granddaughter has what one would describe as an obsession with Pete the Cat but she’s two years old and besides, Pete is pretty freaking cool. Even in spite of her fixation with Pete, she is still able to mix in a few other hobbies like making Play-Doh jewelry and crapping her pants. Two, I am willing to give some leeway like if you’re autistic and you get off on your fascination with plate spinning. Basically, in my mind, obsessing is okay if you’re a child or if you happen to be mentally challenged.

Lord knows that my house is full of equipment I bought in anticipation of my new hobby. Home improvement tools, exercise doodads and low fat cookbooks to name a few. My saving grace is that I had the sense to wise up. Yes, I made a mistake and got all caught up in something for a few days but I quickly came back to my senses and all it cost me was a few dollars. The people who go into something full bore, hold onto it and act like total d-bags with their stories of running fifty miles over the weekend have lost much more than money. They have also lost their dignity and probably all of their friends.

I’ve made a quick list of the things people obsess about that make me the sickest. These are, by no means, the only ones but simply the ones that will make me avoid you like the plague. “Who am I to say these things?” was a comment I’ve heard quite a bit since I started floating this idea out there. I’ve also been told, “Who the fuck are you to be bothered by anyone? You’re one of the most obnoxious people I’ve ever met,” was another observation made by others. The answer is, I’m me. Most things irritate me and this is my forum for venting. By the way, most of the people who made disparaging comments about my subject matter are the very people I loathe so it only stands to reason.

Yoga –

I see some of my people posting pictures of themselves doing(?), practicing(?) yoga and I think, “Okay, fine, so you do yoga or whatever you call writhing around on the floor carefully balancing on your earlobe. Big fucking deal. Whoopee, so what if you can blow yourself. I don’t care. Do I take pictures of myself sitting in a chair watching television which happens to be my form of recreation? What the hell does Namaste mean anyway?

Are you aware that yoga pants can cost up to 150 dollars? What kind of a mindless and pretentious d-bag pays this much for stretch pants that in all actuality are the equivalent of a couple of pairs of nylons piled on top of each other? Don’t get me wrong. I am totally in favor of women walking around in these things but I have a notion that most people are wearing them as a piece of fashion and are skipping out on the intended yoga session.

Very often you’ll find that your hardcore practitioners of yoga are also into eating gross things like lentils and wheat germ. Not only are they annoying about their Indian exercise fixation but they also smell like a hippie food co-op. This odor does not make them more appealing and frequently only adds to their annoying nature as they won’t shut-up about how I’m killing myself with beef or pork.

I went to a yoga class a few years ago at my wife’s insistence. It wasn’t so much that she demanded that I go, she gave up on the hope of commanding me to do anything years ago, but more wouldn’t stop talking about how great it made her feel. Knowing full well that nothing makes me feel great with the exception of complaining and lethargy and in order to make her stop bringing it up, I went to a class. Everyone in the class was a fucking flower-child weirdo and reeked of cumin. What was worse was the constant stream of farting that ensued once the class began. These freaks had been ingesting beans and hummus all day and were probably already on the verge of crapping themselves then thought it a good idea to sit on the floor and stretch the shit out of themselves. Charming. I don’t think I need to mention that I never went back and blame my wife for scarring me permanently to this day.

Bicyclists –

Of all the people who annoy me, bicyclists are the worst. It’s not that I hate cycling, I really couldn’t care less about any aerobic activity. What bothers me are the get-ups these people think they have to wear in order to properly operate the bike. Why do these people think that in order to be a true cyclist that they have to wear tight fitting spandex clothes slathered in French and Italian words, stupid clunky shoes and those ridiculous elongated helmets? Whatever happened to just riding your bike in regular clothes?

When I was a kid, in order to keep my father from going into a tirade about how he had better things to do than to dig my jeans out of the gears of my bike, my mother would give me a rubber band to wrap around the ankle of my pants. This is the only accessory you need to ride a bike. If you’re tooling leisurely around the neighborhood for a little exercise, you don’t need a 200 dollar featherweight, polycarbonate air-cooled helmet. You look ridiculous trying to be aerodynamic at 4 miles per hour. We didn’t even wear helmets, in my day. If you fell and got hurt, you were an idiot. We laughed at you and you got back on and rode some more. When did people start smashing their heads on the ground?

And what’s with all the Italian writing on the shirts? I’m pretty sure that some of those words translated mean “douche bag” and “pretentious snot rag.”

I drive home from work thru a national park and it doesn’t matter what time of the day it is, the roads are full of these people. “It’s 2 o’clock in the afternoon and you’re riding your bike? You must have jobs or you wouldn’t be able to afford that expensive bike costume you’re wearing so I’ll just assume that you are so much cooler than I am and run you off the road into a ditch.”

Religious zealots –

I don’t expect that I will have to go too far here to make my point as you can turn on the news at any given moment and some ass wipe is blowing up a street full of innocent people who are just living their lives, not interested in being killed for God. We all despise those people, it’s a no-brainer. Why do people find it necessary to post chain letters for Jesus on Facebook? “Repost this if you love Jesus. Ignore it at your own peril.” What? Now I feel pressure to pass this on to my friends to avoid terminal damnation? What’s worse, hell or being blocked as a friend?

My loathing does not only apply only to the devout. Atheists have a belief system that is as much a religion as any, no matter what they may say. They, just as often as the fundamentalists, try to cram their side of the debate down our non-soliciting throats and it’s equally irritating. Why can’t people just believe what they want, no matter how stupid it is, and just shut the fuck up about it? You believe that Grimace from McDonalds is the New Age Messiah? Cool. I don’t care. Just leave me out of the proselytizing.

Meanwhile Pearl Jam and others are cancelling tour events in North Carolina because the people there voted to keep their public restrooms gender specific. Why does it seem that this debate is really about religion? Your hardcore fundies and God, apparently, don’t like women peeing in the men’s room. Frankly, having been in many a men’s rooms myself, I would rather use the chick bathroom. Women seem cleaner and they sit down to pee which eliminates sloshing through the soup of every man’s pee pooling around the base of the urinal station. You ladies need to be careful of which side you take in the transgender bathroom debate. All of the politics and the humanity of the whole thing aside, I’m pretty sure that a man who opts to wear women’s clothing and use the ladies room is still a man and will still pee all over the seat.

Women have nice public restrooms. If I happen to be walking by at the right time at just the right angle I often see a furnished and carpeted lounge area. Why do women have couches in their bathrooms? I make an effort to spend as little time as possible in a public men’s room and women have furniture? I don’t see the need to take a breather on the couch wallowing in the odor of someone else’s fresh dump but women maybe don’t mind so much. Men don’t have any entitlements in our cold tiled men’s rooms. Once in a while, if you’re lucky, you’ll have that jar with the metal lid, filled with some mysterious blue juice and cheap black combs. Like, yeah, why shouldn’t I feel safe combing my hair with those vermin infested things?

You can recognize one of these people who refuse to welcome urine on what was their once untarnished toilet seat by a number of traits, snake handling, blowing up of perceived infidels, rolling on the floor speaking in tongues, protesting soldier’s funerals and / or rallying support at a Trump demonstration. They would also be the ones punching black people for having a differing opinion, sporting a cheap baseball style hat proclaiming the benefits of one of the many truck manufacturers or that they are “retired and have gone fishing.”

Sports fans –

I love sports. I can give you a baseball player’s lifetime batting average from any age of the game within 5 points of the actual. Yet and still, I have never painted my face and refuse to wear a team jersey until somebody pays me for the advertising.

I’ve been an Indians fan my entire life. I don’t know how to root for another team. I have friends who were born and raised in Cleveland and are Yankee fans. I don’t understand that but what I hate more are the people who are so wrapped up in sports that they decorate the entirety of their home in Dallas Cowboy colors or morph their car to look like a Browns helmet.

Hipsters –

Everybody has problems with Hipsters. My particular beef with them revolves around them thinking they discovered every damn thing when, really, they’re just going back and grabbing things from the past, my past mostly.

Take this obsession they have with music, specifically how they listen to their music. Vinyl, as they call them, are really called, records. I grew up with vinyl records so I know. Hipsters are, for the most part, under the age of thirty and don’t remember how shitty records were. They scratched easy, got stuck and we large, heavy and cumbersome. When CD’s came out, the first thing I did was either sell or throw my records away. You know why I did this? Because they sucked. The sound of CD’s blew vinyl out of the water. I couldn’t even listen to records anymore because all I heard were irritating scratchy background sounds. CD’s ruined vinyl and justifiably so. Hipsters act like they discovered this vinyl shit when in reality all they did was just dig through my garbage.

I hate the term “craft beer.” Hipsters drink that shit. Where I come from, one doesn’t pay 15 dollars for a beer. My age group would call you a jackass for doing that but the hipster set thinks it’s cool to piss away money, literally. If you see the words “artisan” or “artesian” before any product get ready to be ripped off and / or stampeded by a group of Hipsters thinking they’ve found the next best thing to prop up their uncertain self-esteem in partaking.

I like to think that this whole Hipster craze is based in being anti-establishment. I get that if that’s the case, and applaud it. But going against the grain set by “the man” does not mean to be a giant sucker buying things that are inferior or pay 12 dollars for a jar of pickles that are holistically bottled by a guy with a beard and a criminal record because it make you look cool.

 

Seriously? This is the Best We Have to Choose From for POTUS?

Posted on by JP Shaver

Since it’s primary voting day here in Ohio I threw together a little voting guide. Bear in mind that I hate politics so don’t expect anything of a any civic consequence…

 

I don’t vote. I haven’t voted since the second Reagan administration. Am I a bad American? Maybe. The reason why I don’t vote boils down to two prevailing reasons. One, I don’t want to get called for jury duty. Jury duty should be for old, retired people. Old people love crap like jury duty. They feel useful and they get to vent about what pisses them off. Like, “In my day, men didn’t wear earrings so he’s clearly guilty.” I also don’t vote because I will not be made a fool of. I’m good enough at that on my own and I don’t need to be spoon fed an election process that purports to offer me the choice of two morons both of whom are in the back pocket of some rich oligarch yanking their strings. Those in charge don’t care who wins because they have them both in their control. You think you have a choice? Think again. No all-powerful yet anonymous overlord would dare risk an actual open democratic voting process and run the risk of not having his guy as the lead actor in his play.

You mean to tell me that with all of the brilliant people we have in this country Trump and Clinton are the best we could find? Granted anyone with a brain in their head wouldn’t want anything to do with politics but still. Both Hilary and Trump are two of the most contemptible people I have ever witnessed. She is a horrible, old, used up shrew and he is a total idiot at best, Hitler in a fancy blue suit at worst.

I tried to watch some of these debates and as much as I can’t stand any of the people on stage from either party, I despise the people in the audience even more. How can there be so many suckers in the world? Do they actually believe that any of the promises they hear are actually going to come to fruition? How many times do you need to fall for a liar before you just stop listening to what they are saying? Given that the average IQ in the US hovers someplace just above being labeled as retarded, this could go on forever.

As I said, I don’t care about politics anymore but I do pay attention, mostly in horrifying disgust with the American people. Like I’m driving by a bad accident on the freeway. I don’t want to look but you feel like you owe it to myself. I don’t critique politicians by their platforms, because they’re all stupid, but more by their persona or the insipid things they say and do.

With that…

Ted Cruz

Pretty sure this guy ate a booger at one of the early debates. There is plenty of video available for those of you who are still considering voting for this snot-eating fundamentalist for proof. It’s really gross and I don’t recommend it.

Outside of the booger-fest, I really don’t know much about this guy except for he showed up for the prison release party for that fat, gritter-scag, Kim Davis, in Kentucky who was made famous for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay people. This alone should demonstrate to most of the civilized world that he has zero understanding of the Constitution and is willing to pander to religious nutcases for votes at the expense of our liberties.

Not sure why but when I picture Ted Cruz I always see him in bright red lipstick. He reminds me a little of the guy who played the Tinman in The Wizard of Oz but more like if the Tinman were a crossdressing hermaphrodite.

Mrs. Ted Cruz, Heidi, is a managing director at Lehman Brothers which means she works for the people who lost all their money on bad investments and corruption in 2008 then sent the bill to the taxpayers. Ted Cruz makes the claim that he wants to audit the Federal Reserve? What are the chances of this happening while his wife’s company is manipulating him through the ass like a cheap hand puppet?

How is this guy even running for President anyway? I thought he was born in Canada? How come it’s okay to be President if you’re from Canada but not okay if you were born in say, Kenya? Hmmm, not too hard to figure if you think about it, I guess. What I’m insinuating is it’s okay with the racist, gritter faction here because he’s white. Oh, his mom was a US citizen, you say? So that makes it okay? Isn’t Obama’s mom a US citizen too? He wasn’t afforded that kind of reasoning because he’s black.

I hate Illinois Nazis.

As a wrap up, Ted Cruz eats snot, reminds me of and old, sad crossdresser, is a hardline fundamentalist who wants to force his beliefs down the throats of those who already have a set of beliefs already, defends people who make it their crusade to deny basic rights from other Americans, whose wife works for the devil himself and he isn’t even from the United States. What a great resume to be President! Did I mention that he eats boogers?

Enough about this guy. He’s totally boring and suffice it to say that I don’t like the idea of a pseudo Calvinist douche-bag in the White House.

Marco Rubio

Who is this guy anyway? I’m a pretty vigilant news hawk but even I don’t know anything of any substance about this idiot. What I do know is that there are photos making the rounds on the internet of him dancing in 80’s style gay foam parties. Now I don’t care if somebody is gay and would certainly never assume them unfit for office because of their sexual proclivities but I just don’t think I can support a presidential candidate who dressed up as the Indian from the Village People on certain Saturday nights. This guy has to stand his ground against Russia and Iran and I just can’t see him being able to hold his head up high to the likes of Vladimir Putin with this image in the playing on an endless loop in the back of his mind.

More than anything, I can’t stand the lying. If you’re gay, be gay because if there’s one thing I’m sure of, if there is even the slightest scent of you lying about something like this, the media wont rest until they’ve ripped you to pieces. Cut them off at the pass and put your cards on the table. No one is going to hear a word your saying politically until that elephant is out of the room.

Bernie Sanders

Mr. Sanders may be the most qualified for the job of POTUS but he doesn’t stand a chance mainly because he is a giant walking semantics disaster. This guy belongs to the Democratic Socialist party. Now, as I understand it, and I’ve done quite a bit of research on this subject, Democratic Socialism is a far cry from actual Socialism and even farther cry, how far is a cry anyway, from the Corporatism we have today or what we are told is Capitalism. The word Socialism on a ballot is enough to make people run screaming from the booth. Mention Socialism to my father or anyone his age and it’s enough to almost shock them into violent cardiac arrest.

This guy would have been better off labeling himself, Bernie Sanders the Child Molesting, Kitten Drowning, Druid instead of Democratic Socialist. Does he really expect that people are going to look up the difference between Socialism and Democratic Socialism? There are people out there still hoping that Ben Carson gets back into the race and he expects some personally responsible kind of research from them? Are you kidding me? I’m amazed that the majority of the people even remember to wake up and breathe in the morning let alone Google something of substance that doesn’t revolve around Kanye and Kim.

Another reason why I believe that this guy is a lost cause is that I’ve grown to taking pleasure in Google-ing famous people’s net worth. Not sure why but I’ve been wondering for some time now how Madonna can be worth over 800 million dollars? She’s an old, tired hag who hasn’t had a recognizable song since “Take a Bow” that came out when Obama was still a law clerk. One would think, and when I say “one” I mean myself, she would have burned through most of this cash on experimental antibiotics for the plethora of sexually transmitted diseases tearing at her wrinkled and yellowed flesh and/ or forking it over to some lunatic Kabbalist Maharajah but not so.

My point is, Bernie Sanders has been a servant of the public since he was the mayor of Burlington, Vermont in 1980. He served as a congressman from 1991 till 2007 when he became a member of the Senate. How in the hell is this guy only worth 105,000 dollars?!?! A U.S. Senator’s yearly salary is $174,000 and we all know that’s just the tip of the iceberg; seed money if you will. Even if we assume that Bernie isn’t corrupt like the rest of his colleagues, why doesn’t he have any money? I can’t get behind electing a guy who apparently spends his money like a sailor on leave. This guy’ll probably be hosting yard sales on the White House lawn by spring of his first term to raise some cash for the new Halo game. What’s next? Rent parties? If all that isn’t enough, I also think he smells like a hippy food co-op and sandalwood.

Hilary Clinton

My God haven’t we had enough of this family already? Why won’t they just go away? People should seriously have to take an IQ test before they are allowed to enter a voting facility. She’s being investigated by the FBI for possibly sharing sensitive and classified information through an unprotected email server. From where I sit, this is a major deal. Can you imagine if you went to a job interview with this hanging over your head? “Like, hey man, um, so, I know you’re going to run one of those background checks on me before you can offer me this gig so I kind of feel like I should be the one to bring to your attention that I am being investigated by the Feds for potentially sharing classified information with the enemy. I may or may not be indicted. Like I probably won’t be but just in case, I didn’t want you to just find out the hard way.” Except this isn’t about some stupid lame-assed sales job, this is a person running for President of the United States. What’s worse? No one seems to care!!

As I said, I don’t care about politics and it makes zero difference who wins because they are all bred from the same bloated, carnal pig but if Hilary Clinton isn’t the biggest douche-bag asshole, I don’t know who is.

Do I hate her because she’s a woman? Not a chance. I think a woman would make an ideal President. Some of the best people I know are women. My wife knows how to get shit done with just a look. We need that kind of “look” in the White House. Hilary is a wasted, used up old shrew and I seriously think she might have The Consumption with all the coughing.

Donald Trump

Enough has been said about Donald Trump and most of it political which mean that I don’t care. What is intriguing about Trump is his wife. I recently ate at one of those restaurants right off the freeway in rural Ohio and the paper place mat had pictures of every first lady all the way back to Martha Washington. Unfortunately the series ended with Hilary Clinton as a testament to just how old these things were. In every case, at our table, someone had gone to the trouble of poking out Hilary’s eyes and had drawn devil horns on her. The situation was the same at the other two tables I investigated.

Who goes to this kind of trouble to deface a placemat even if it is Hilary? Does the owner take a stack of these things home at night and defile her in some masturbatory ritual type frenzy of hate? My God, I know you live in the middle of nowhere and have nothing else to do and I don’t care for her either, but really?

Having moved on from my obsession with the thumbtack besmirched Hilary photos, I came to the realization that there has never been a good looking first lady in the entire history of the United States! Literally never. Michelle Obama isn’t a horrible looker but Barack could have pulled much better. He’s a good looking guy and he’s President of the United States for God’s sake. Now I realize that they got married long before he was POTUS but he was a lawyer back then and that’s still pretty good. I will give her credit though for making him what he is today. She probably rode him like a rented mule or he would still be a pot smoking d-bag hanging out at the local coffee shop bitching about one liberal cause or another and doing nothing about it.

Think about the ugly parade of tail that has resided in our country’s main official domicile. No matter how old or young you are, even if you’re a history buff and can look back semi-fondly on Edith Roosevelt, they are all, when all is said and done, hideous. Dolly Madison looked like she had some potential and I would totally bang her but her picture was a freaking drawing and she could have had that sketched in any way she wanted. “You draw me fat and I’ll have you drawn and quartered, boy! And leave my goiter out of it!”

Betty Ford was probably a hoot to hang around with back in the day, I mean, she does have a rehab clinic as her namesake, but good-looking? Afraid not. Nancy Reagan’s head was so big and her body so frail that she looked like a lollipop. Too soon on that?

I have a feeling that Andrew Jackson’s wife may have been a piece because in 1806 he actually KILLED some guy for besmirching her reputation. Killed? He was elected President about 20 years later so I guess things haven’t changed much.

Eleanor Roosevelt wasn’t just another unattractive First Lady, she actually may have been the ugliest person in the history of the earth. You mean to tell me that FDR, coming from monumental family wealth and being not a bad looking guy himself, couldn’t pull better tail than that? I just can’t vote for a guy with near-sighted judgement like that. How can I trust him to negotiate vital trade agreements when he finds something like her to be wife material?

What was the deal with Jackie Kennedy anyway? People say she was hot but I respectfully must disagree. She clearly carried most of the symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome with the most prevalent being that her eyes were on the sides of her head. Her peripheral vision must have been off the charts. Her no-look passing abilities would have made even Magic Johnson green with envy. She was, by no stretch, Eleanor Roosevelt ugly but, c’mon. She just happens to be the best of the worst but that does not make her attractive.

You know who I don’t like? Jimmy Carter. It has nothing to do with his politics though he really was a putrid president. Remember interest rates of like 17% when this guy was at the helm? What makes me angry and by angry I mean to say making me feel bad about myself, is that this guy is like 90 years old and he’s out there building houses for people in need. What do I do for people in need? He’s busy hammering and nailing all the while trying to inspire others with his selfless efforts to do the same and the only effect it has on me is to resent him and deepen my own sense of self-loathing. Why do I need this? Eff him and his stupid peanut farm. Plus,his wife, Rosalynn seems kind of preachy. Like you’d have to listen to her cram Jesus down your throat while you’re trapped at their house for a dinner of boiled peanuts and stale evangelism. She had weird teeth too. They appear to be stubby little tusks with a weird purple polyurethane glaze on them.

If my grandson ever asks me what it takes to be President of the United States, my answer will be a simple one, be as corrupt and contemptable as possible, maybe leave a few dead bodies in your wake and marry the ugliest women you dig up out of the mud.

A Trump presidency, while we would probably end up with concentration camps planted across the US frivolously exterminating immigrants, at least we could end the drought on good looking first ladies.

John Kasich

This poor bastard. He may be the only one running from either party who is actually about real issues. I don’t give a care what he thinks, I just happen to notice him standing there in shock at the debates. Like a deer in the headlights, he looks like he’s wondering, “What the fuck is going on here? Is this really happening? I thought we were going to talk about education reform and this guy is talking about the size of his dick? Are you kidding me?”

So, there you have it, my assessment of the political landscape as I see it. And people ask me why I don’t vote. Are you kidding me?

 

The Top 5 Benefits of Hanging Around My Granddaughter

Posted on by JP Shaver

The Top 5 Benefits of Hanging Around My Granddaughter

As I may have mentioned before, our two year old granddaughter, Leila, lives with us. About the time my wife, Dana, and I figured that we had lived out our usefulness as parents of small children, we were dusted off and brought back into service. I’ve titled this essay as “hanging around MY granddaughter” and not OUR granddaughter because this Top 5 list is specific to me and the things I find remarkably useful in Leila. Dana surely has her own unpublished list but if she wants to write about it she’ll need her own outlet.

When our youngest went off to college our minds were full of things to do with our new found free time. We could eat out all the time, no more cooking heathy, nutritionally rewarding meals for a kid who subsisted off of chocolate and Pop Tarts anyway. Unlimited and spontaneous vacations would be the rule. Like I said, we had done our time.

Enter Leila. There is a quote I read not long ago that’s was attributed to Sandra Bullock. I couldn’t find the quote anywhere but I read it on the internet which means it must be true. Whomever spoke it, it resonated with me especially in my current living situation. It went something like this, “If I didn’t have children my wallet would be full, my house would be clean but my heart would be empty.” That’s pretty true. She has spent a few nights away from home visiting her Granny and those weekends, that we assumed would be full of bacchanalia and debauchery, were instead left empty and rather unfulfilling. Most of our conversation revolved around saying Leila-isms, like, “I do it self!” Or, “Piggy poop,” which is a term she uses to shift blame to the dog when she had pooped in her diaper.

Parenting at the age of fifty is different than when I was in my twenties. Leila would live outside if we let her, I hate going outside save for about eight or nine days of the year when I don’t sweat or freeze to death. Playing on the floor, for me, is, for the most part, an exercise in pain, an exploration of body parts that I haven’t used in decades. I do it but getting up and waiting for my left knee to unlock is an adventure in itself. Leila likes to play with trucks. She makes all the requisite noises as she shoves them across the floor but sometimes I have to use my foot to move my truck while I sit in my chair watching ESPN. It’s just part of what happens when your caregivers are old. I know the things I’m supposed to do it’s just that I’m not physically able or emotionally willing to anymore.

In the end, though, I wouldn’t trade a day with Leila for a vacation to anyplace in the whole world and getting up in the pitch black at 5 AM to slice kiwi in the exact shape she prefers is an honor and never a chore, besides what would I be doing otherwise? Sleeping?

All the syrupy stuff aside, I have found a few rather impressive side benefits to toting your granddaughter around with you that for some reason escaped me when my own kids were little.

Exposure to immunity from viruses

They say that you can only get so many colds in your life as there are a finite number of viruses that cause the common cold. I remember the number being something like 150 but I could be wrong and you know my policy on looking things up while I write. I feel like if you want to know so badly, you can just do it yourself. Having had four kids already, I have been exposed to and suffered through well over one hundred colds in my fifty years leaving me at least fifty more to get out of the way. While I have, for quite some time, assumed that these last vestiges of virus dwelled in some deep, dark jungle, Leila has kindly, yet unknowingly, volunteered to help me discover that I was wrong. In actuality, these viruses live in the dried snot on the toys in her school and in the noses of the other crumbsnatchers she calls friends.

While Dana and I work during the day, Leila goes to daycare, we call it school, and walking into that place you can actually feel the infestation climbing up your arms heading straight for your nasal cavities. In the first month and a half of her attending Typhoid Mary’s Petri Dish for the Young, I had acquired at least three colds and had seen my impressive twenty-three and a half year vomit streak come to an end.

The germs in the place are so big and virulent that you can actually see them crawling up your sleeve towards your nasal cavities! They have faces and they laugh at you when you try to sanitize yourself against them.

The way I figure it, by the time Leila has finished at “school,” Dana and I will have encountered and suffered through the last remaining cold viruses and in retirement, never get sick again. So, we have that going for us.

A Solid excuse for not going out

I’ve never been a “clubbin” kind of guy. I hate loud noises and dancing is stupid so I am left with dinner and a movie. A lot of our friends are twenty years younger than we are. I love them but, “No, I would prefer to not meet you for tailgating at 6 AM in the ten below wind-chill. Thanks though. And, no, I’m not a giant boring douche for not going, I’m actually much smarter than you as I will be warm in my house drinking good beer that didn’t cost me license to my first born. You have fun though and tell me all about it on Monday.”

When you have a two year old, you have a built in excuse for avoiding just about everything. “You say you’ve signed up for a “can’t miss” multi-level marketing ploy and you’re having a party to tell our of your friends about it? Aww, dammit! I wanted to be there for that but we don’t have a sitter. Sorry.”

What happened to Amway anyway? Is it still a company anyway?

“You say you’re moving and at the age of forty still think your friends are going to help you because you dangled some pizza in front of them? You are aware college ended like twenty years ago and there are companies who specialize in taking your stuff from the old place to the new one, right? I’d be there for you man but we have Leila and if I brought her she would just get in the way. Good luck with all that though.”

“Man, I’d love to come to your Pampered Chef party because there is nothing I like more than spending ridiculous amounts of money on pots and pans that I can get for half that at Walmart. Too bad it’s after Leila’s bedtime. So maybe call me the next time you get into a multi-leveled marketing scheme, cool?”

Stains on my clothes

Leila has no concept or the ability to know just how much I pay for my zip up Tommy Bahama sweaters that I wear just about every day in the winter. In fact, she couldn’t care if I’m wearing a torn up old t-shirt full of holes, it’s all the same to her. I knew this going in. Like I said, I have four kids of my own. What never occurred to me as a benefit to this was that I could blame food stains that I made out of my own carelessness on Leila and actually get away with it.

I obviously can’t wash a sweater every time I wear it and as I tend to have the eating habits of a fat, sweaty hog sidling up to the trough for my next unhealthy meal, I spill. Whereas I used to have to make some asinine excuse as to why there was a huge stain on my sweater, like, “Oh, I did that on the way to work this morning. Thanks for reminding me!” Now all I have to do is say, “Leila.” My disgusting stain instantly becomes cute! The disgusted looks I used to get have turned into comments like, “She’s so cute! How can you stand it?” Why didn’t I think of this before? I could be covered in grease stains and Pop Tart innards, from my own doing, of course, drop a knowing nod of Leila and all is forgiven? Brilliant!!

I am instantly attractive to women again

It didn’t take me long to figure out that Leila is a chick magnet. In fact, the very first time I took her with me to the grocery store, we had barely made it in the door before women started flocking to me like I was Brad Pitt. Now, let’s be clear here, I am not deluded enough to believe for one second that this attention had anything to do with me. I am well aware that I am old and well passed my prime. My hands are getting age spots, if I stay out in the sun too long I get age spots on my face that won’t go away, I’m over-weight, I’m not fun and I’m kind of crabby. None of those qualities are even remotely appealing to women. But take me and all of my grossness and add a cute baby and all of my blemishes disappear. No one notices my gut or that I walk around with a perpetual sneer on my face. In fact, I’m pretty much not there at all in their minds but at least they didn’t run away like I was the Elephant Man or something like they used to. She is like a delicious cherry on the disgusting poop sundae that is me.

I no longer need to hold back

On the list of funniest things to do to my children is to fart in public and blame them. Disgusting? Yes but equally hilarious. As much as I enjoyed doing it I can’t help but think that it may have left some residual emotional damage that they may not recover from without the aid of some deep therapy or until they can do it to children of their own. All of this leads me to the last but arguably the best reason to hang around with my granddaughter, farting in public and blaming her.

Most of this flatulence seems to go down when we’re at the grocery store. Not sure why exactly maybe because it’s one of the few places I’ll dare take Leila on my own. It’s usually a short trip and it’s close to home.

Who hasn’t been stuck in the precarious situation of having to unload a giant fart but can’t because there are people nearby. Even if you could somehow pass the gas silently, the odor would implicate you. I have solved this problem, bring Leila along, hold nothing back and unload on unsuspecting strangers. I have even used the line, “How embarrassing. You probably thought I did that.”

Who would have thought that there was so much more to being a grandfather?

The Top 5 Foods That Are Not Worth the Effort

Posted on by JP Shaver

The Top 5 Foods that are Not Worth the Trouble

Everybody today wants to label the food we eat. By that, I don’t mean labeling in a nutritional sense but rather how it fits into this or that particular diet. I’m a big Pinterest fan. I use it for just about everything but it is especially good for recipes. My friend Dave tells me that Pinterest is for girls and he may be right but as a cook, it is like having access to every cookbook ever written and it takes up no more space than my tablet. The point is that while you can do a search for favorite Italian recipes, say, you will produce, at least in my experience, a more broad return if you search for “low carb” recipes.

It’s no longer just Italian recipes at that point, it becomes a low carb smorgasbord from all four corners of the world. Besides, I don’t believe there are any low carb Italian dishes anyway so this might be a bad example, There’s “high-protein,” high-protein / low carb.” For those of you looking to spend more quality time in the bathroom there is “high fiber.” “Low fat,” “low glycemic,” “vegan,” “non-GMO,” “kosher,” ‘gluten free,” etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

What the hell is gluten anyway and why have so many people all of the sudden decided that it’s bad for them? I looked it up:

Gluten refers to the proteins found in wheat endosperm (a type of tissue produced in seeds that’s ground to make flour). Gluten both nourishes plant embryos during germination and later affects the elasticity of dough, which in turn affects the chewiness of baked wheat products.

Wheat sperm? Had I known that, I would be allergic too.

For what it’s worth, my favorite food category would be the, “I don’t give a fuck anymore and want as much fat and sperm-less gluten as I can get, with a nice dose of sugar for good measure and please deep fry it for me while you’re at it.”

I like a good recipe. I don’t care if it’s complicated and comes with a shopping list that takes me to a couple of specialty stores. If it’s as delicious as I think it’s going to be then it’s worth the effort. Homemade vanilla ice cream that requires fresh vanilla bean? Worth it. I made a Baked Spanish Risotto that asked for Spanish Saffron that I had to buy on the internet because I couldn’t find it anyplace else. Totally worth it.

I make the best hummus you’ll ever eat and I painstakingly peel ever single garbanzo bean so that I can be sure that it will be creamy and delicious. My hummus is so good that any self-respecting Middle-Easterner would have no other option but to hang their head and agree. As I said, though, it takes hours to make. Like I need time alone after I finish a batch so I can recover mentally but it’s worth it.

There are foods, however, that I will not mess with. Stupid foods that, even in their most basic form, like right off the tree, require much but return little or nothing. These are foods we’ve all eaten but probably never to take a step back and say, “Man, this sucks and I just wasted a decent sized piece of my life preparing it.” Allow me, now, to save you some sweat and disappointment.

Watermelon

Why are these things so big? Yes, I am aware that they have genetically altered this god awful fruit into smaller sizes and even weird shapes but let me tell you something, you can have a stripper pop out of it when I cut it open and I still don’t want it. You drag this monstrosity into the house, cut it open, take one bite and you’re like, “Oh, that’s not what I was hoping for.” Now what? What am I supposed to do with it now? What is with all the seeds? Black ones, white ones, everyone is spitting. Disgusting.

I think people used to like watermelon back in the day but then Jolly Ranchers came along and set a flavor expectation bar that this poor pod just couldn’t live up to. Everyone loves watermelon Jolly Ranchers, they’re always the first ones gone from the pack. Nobody likes those light blue ones though, whatever flavor that’s supposed to be. The light blue ones remind me of medicine like a menthol cough drop or somethings which further spoils them. Can you imagine if you tasted the watermelon Jolly Rancher before the actual watermelon?

Wide eyed innocent fruit virgin – “Oh my God, that was so delicious and you’re telling me that the real thing is a twenty pound version of this?!?! Holy shit!”

Hardened produce veteran – “Well, kind of. I mean, yes, but in a really tasteless, watered down, seed-filled nightmarish kind of way.”

Watermelons are so enormous that people actually form them into serving baskets complete with a handle and jagged edges like the artist sliced it with pinking shears. Filled with disgusting chunks of other hellish tasting melon varieties like honeydew and cantaloupe, this basin of foulness is the fruit equivalent of a green bean casserole that nobody wants.

Dogs are supposed to like fruit. There are fruits you don’t want to feed your dog like grapes and things with seeds but on any list of things that I’ve seen of “what not to feed your dog” watermelon is absent. Okay, great! Sophie, our dog, loves people food, Let’s unload some of this eyesore on her. Mind you, this is a dog that eats her own vomit and yet will not even approach watermelon to even give it a sniff. It’s like, “Yeah, I saw that shit on the counter for the last few days and, no, I do not want any. Thanks though”

I can tolerate any culinary disappointment if it’s the size of, say, a Hershey’s kiss, but this thing weighs twenty pounds and is the size of a Buick. My kids wont even eat it. So it sits there until we throw it away or some genius puts it in the blender with some lemonade and vodka. End result of the watermelon? I’m either disappointed or drunk.

Mango

Not really sure when the mango was introduced in the Midwest United States. I think it fell sometime around the introduction of the kiwi. Back when we became bored with simple apples and oranges the produce door was left open for some foreign neophytes to make the scene. No doubt the kiwi has its own carving issues but not nearly as extensive as the exasperating mango. First of all, how are you supposed to get the peel off of this thing? It feels like human skin. Like old people skin. All loose and gross.

I am always astounded at how little fruit actually comes from mangoes. If they were sold by the pound, I would not be a buyer as most of it goes right in the trash. Between the rind and the gigantic seed there is little room left for any edible fruit. Even if you somehow manage to get the skin off, how are you supposed to extract it from the seed? I have yet to win a battle with a mango. In every case I end up with a handful of mangled, wet, yellow meat and a big dose of feeling like I’ve been sold a bill of goods.

I also believe that if you were to blindfold a person and give them their first taste of a mango, they would swear that you just fed them rotten cantaloupe. The mango has made some inroads into your salsa and chutney markets but even in those cases, the taste is so overbearing and out of the ordinary that it’s all you can taste.

It’s a very sinewy fruit too. Like it has ligaments and tendons or something. Couple that with it having human skin and I feel like I’m eating my grandmother’s rotten, severed hand.

Like the watermelon, though, mangoes go great blended up with some vodka and sour mix. You can’t really ever get rid of the sinewy texture in a mango either, no matter how long you blend it, which leaves you drinking what feels like a vodka flavored ball of yarn martini.

Artichokes

If there was an award for the most useless waste of materials in a given vegetable, why there would be such an award is beyond me but work with me here, it would be the artichoke. When I was a kid, my friends mom tried to sell me on dipping these rather cumbersome and disgusting looking leaves in butter and, using my two front teeth, scrape off the gelatinous sac of green material at it’s base then throw the rest of it in the garbage. Even at that age I thought, “This cannot be all there is to this thing.” It’s basically a disgusting vegetable manipulated into as a spoon with the sole purpose of ingesting melted butter. Why don’t we all just dispense with the artichoke and just fess up that we no longer require it to justify the eating of liquefied animal fat.

Apparently, the heart of this abomination is used to make spinach artichoke dip. I hate spinach artichoke dip. It smells. Bad. Like the worst smell of all foods ever. I wont eat it and just being near it makes me feel like I am going to throw up.

So, two substantial honors for the much adored artichoke, the biggest waste of space and the foulest smelling concoction made using said artichoke. These things aren’t cheap either. Disgusting, useless and expensive? Nice combo.

Pomegranate

I must say that in comparison to the aforementioned botanical abominations, the pomegranate is really not that bad tasting. It has a nice cleansing flavor and it apparently really good for you. In spite of that, getting to the actual fruit of this thing is like trying to dissect a fluke worm. If there’s a place to slice into it initially that allows for easier access to the little juice pockets, I haven’t found it. Which partially explains charging seven dollars for a bottle of it at the grocery store. Cut it open and it looks like the tumor in that guy’s head in Fantastic Voyage.

I am quite sure that you actually lose calories eating a pomegranate. The effort involved in surgically extracting the bounty surely burns more calories than are in one seed. I’ve tried adding these juice pods to my smoothies without regard for the little wooden seed and ended up with a great tasting smoothie filled with sawdust. Fibrous? Yes but the health benefits were greatly outweighed by the time spent on the toilet picking splinters out of my tongue.

Pomegranates are colloquially, and when I say colloquially, I mean, some red-necked gritter racist made it up, known as Chinese apples. Have you ever noticed that anything labeled as “Chinese” is fucking hard? Chinese Checkers? Marbles coming from everywhere. Chinese Finger Lock? I have a hard time believing that the industrious Chinese people slid wicker tubes over the fingers of those they were looking to subdue but they are pretty difficult to wrestle out of. As for the Chinese Apple, it’s like the Rubik’s Cube of produce so I think aptly named, if you’re a bigot.

Pez

I don’t want to spend the entire time picking on, pun intended, raw fruits and vegetables when there is other more deserving artificially made fodder out there. Let me just state for the record that I love Pez. The delicious candy, Pez, is not the problem here. The issue is the frustrating process of loading these ridiculous shaped bonbons into the slots of the various character dispensers. Why do I feel like if I don’t load these things into the machine that I am somehow cheating myself? They just don’t taste the same.

Who is the Pez outfit anyway? I’ve never seen any other products from them and I kind of have the feeling that while they do make enchanting and colorful candy squares that they also dabble a little in defense contracting. Like they make missiles and cluster bombs and stuff like that on the side. Of course their missiles are shaped like Goofy and Santa Claus just like their dispensers and their grenades they manufacture explode off into little rectangular pieces of pastel colored shards of death. Like you almost feel good being killed by something like this.

Surely, in the end, there are many more products to add to this list but these are the best of the best, at least as far as I’m concerned. By the way, if anyone wants my hummus recipe, let me know. I don’t part with it easy. Kind of like you wouldn’t let a child molester babysit your children. Not that you’re a child molester. Not sure where I’m going with this exactly so I’ll just stop here.

Top Search Terms to Find My Blog

Posted on by JP Shaver

But first a word from our sponsor. FREE ON AMAZON FROM JANUARY 2ND TILL JANUARY 5TH. Many of you may find this offensive but, coming from me, what else is new but I have another book available for your reading pleasure.

So many stories from the Bible make absolutely no sense and I decided it was my life’s duty to compile them into one glorious volume of hilarity. I mean the material was practically handed to me and I couldn’t resist.

I offer my commentary on Lot, a pretty big deal with God, banging and impregnating his daughters. Like if there was a picture of Lot with God, God would be flashing a thumbs up at this guy.

God clearly hates women too. I have a whole chapter dedicated to God’s disdain for the fairer sex.

Available on Amazon. Just click on the book.

slanderingGod

The Top Search Terms to Find My Blog

So I’ve been doing this blogging thing for almost a year now. It would be pretty cool if I weren’t about fifteen years behind the rest of the world but I’m old and slow to adopt. In spite of being behind the curve, I find this whole blogging thing fascinating. At first I thought it would be fun to just write about some of my Top 5 lists, for no other reason but to see what I came up with. Then people actually started reading this stuff and even more amazingly, digging it. Because I loved the reception, I decided to write about anything that came into my head and conjured up even a modicum of emotion. In reality, a lot of things piss me off and I enjoy complaining which provides me with a never ending fountain of material.

The most fascinating aspect of this experience has to be the list my hosting company provides me of search terms used to find my website. The list is rather extensive and you may or may not be surprised to hear that not one of them is even the least bit flattering.

Years ago I read an article making the claim that porn was responsible for 80% of the internet traffic. If that 80% figure was an accurate number back then, then today, based on what I see, in my own little blog world, that figure is 99%. 99% of the terms used to search the internet, causing people to stumble onto jpshaversays.com are porn related. I’m not sure why this is because I don’t write about porn. No doubt, knowing myself quite well, I have made mention of porn but I’ve posted no raunchy pictures nor have I gone into any detail on donkey sex in Tijuana. No, what I believe is going on here is that, like I said, 99% of the searching done on sites like Google are regular people, aka perverts, hell bent on a massive electronic poon quest. Sure you have your standard searches for “how do I get my husband to share his feelings” or “I want to know more about wine without becoming a pretentious douche,” but those are outnumbered almost 100 to 1 by, “how to get in my girlfriends butt” and “erasing my browsing history.”

Retard

I realize that I use this politically incorrect and offensive term too often in my writing and in my regular life but, let’s face it, it’s quite descriptive and funny at the same time. The number one search term in this category is “retard.” Okay, I get this one. I checked and I’ve used this word over one-hundred times in just under forty blog posts but most of the time, in my defense, it was quite apropos. Though the time I referred to Hitler as a retard may be construed as offensive to the actual retard.

In second place, “retard people” and “retard boy” are tied in some kind of race between grammatical troglodytes. The proper linguistic terms would be “retarded people” and retarded boy.” Duh. There is something strikingly ironic about an idiot Googling the word “retard” using improper grammar. Was it a hunt for self-help possibly?

Gary Dean Prewitt Money Laundering

I would have written this off as a simple mistake had it not happened over a dozen times. It’s not one of the biggest words in terms of sheer volume in finding my blog but it is by far the strangest. Who in the hell is Gary Dean Prewitt and why is he in my blog? I’ve never once mentioned him or money laundering. If I alone have over a dozen hits on the Prewitt guy there must be thousands of people on the hunt for the straight poop on felonious doings.

I Googled it and couldn’t even find anything so…

Porno

There are so many porn related terms used to find jpshaversays.com that to list them here would take more words than you have attention to give so I’m going to stick to the most prevalent, weird and of course, perverse.

The first smut password granting entrance into my blog is the confusing phrase, “song then porno.” What does this even mean and why does it find its destination in my blog so many times? What is the intent of this search? Near as I can guess, these people need to be transitioned into their hardcore porn obsession with a nice tune. A seamless transition with none of that annoying extra clicking that comes with so many other “song then porno” sites. Like, “I just want to hit this button once, hear a nice song, maybe some smooth jazz then go straight to my Asian midget anal fisting melange. Is that too much to ask for? Dammit!”

These next two are more specific to my name, which at least adds some relevance but are no less confusing. “Porno JP,” My first thought was that some people, hot chicks, of course, so enjoyed my writing that they immediately thought that they must see if there are any nude pictures of me on the internet. Kind of like when you do a quick search to see if there are any nude shots of the new Bond girl. Fortunately, there are no nudies of me out there. I’m a pretty snappy dresser so it’s best that photos of me are of the clothed variety. The sheer volume of ear hair that I have to wrestle with on a daily basis should serve as a harbinger to anyone looking for more of me to immediately halt all proceedings. Yet and still, I have no idea what “porno JP” means.

“shaver porno,” I think I can format an idea in my head as to what these people had in mind with this search because it also fell in with, “shaver box” and “shaver vag.” I think what horrifies me more than anything, including the references to porn in my name, is the atrocious grammar used by these desperately horny people to discover their odd form of electronic carnal pleasure. It’s “shave her porno” you idiot not “shaver porno!” I not too worried about my fine name being sullied by association with this crowd though as I’m pretty sure that when these “titans of wisdom” hit the first polysyllabic word on my site, they clicked out to rejoin their quest for shorn genitals.

I’ve saved my favorite one for last. It reads like a mother’s desperate and tragic search for help for her sexually maligned son. This phrase, “son couldn’t take anymore porn” has led to my website more than fifty times and, let’s face it, jpshaversays.com is not visited like say an ESPN.com would be. If over fifty people have stumbled onto jpshaversays.com searching for “son couldn’t take anymore porn” then there are a lot of hurting mothers out there.

What happened to this poor “son” who “couldn’t take anymore porn?” Did he spend so much time in front of the computer looking at porn so withdrawn from the world that his penis exploded? Did he turn into a zombie vegetable with a permanent erection? Something major happened to this poor kid and we are left to only guess at what tragedy befell him. Did he run away and join the French Foreign Legion hoping to outdistance his nasty addiction to smut?

I have a vision of this poor soul slouched in the corner of his dark room looking like a victim of late stage progeria, crooked beret awkwardly balanced on his greasy head, in full French military regalia furiously masturbating himself into oblivion until, in a desperate attempt to save his so called life, his mother bursts through his locked bedroom door and immediately commandeers his laptop and furiously Googles “son couldn’t take anymore porn.”

And as always, who doesn’t want to read about my vasectomy experience or the time The Beach Boys set my car on fire?

http://www.amazon.com/JP-Shaver-Says-Bang-Your-ebook/dp/B0170EV4MG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1451666365&sr=8-1&keywords=jp+shaver
http://www.amazon.com/JP-Shaver-Says-Bang-Your-ebook/dp/B01770XWOQ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1451666365&sr=8-3&keywords=jp+shaver

 

Top 5 Thanksgiving Movies

Posted on by JP Shaver

Top 5 Thanksgiving Movies Ever

No question that I am a huge movie fan. Almost as much as I am of running my life by Top 5 lists. So it only stands to reason that I have a Top 5 all-time best Thanksgiving movies list. I am frequently asked, “Are there any Thanksgiving movies?” The answer to that questions is, yes and I’m not talking about the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving cartoon thing, though that is an outstanding piece of material, no question.

While the catalog of Thanksgiving movies is small, there are some real gems out there that I simply cannot start my holiday season without watching.

Thanksgiving Movies

Hannah and Her Sisters

Grumpy Old Men

Nobody’s Fool

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Uncle Buck

Hannah and Her Sisters

I must warn you here that this is a Woody Allen movie. Some people didn’t like Woody Allen movies even before he started banging his daughter and I’m sure this little PR move didn’t help any but this is still a great film. I have been a Woody Allen fan since I was a kid as thought it would make me seem more adult if I dug his high-brow brand of humor but now that he is freely molesting his kids, it getting harder and harder, no pun intended, to be a fan. The movie starts on Thanksgiving and revolves around some people then it ends on Thanksgiving the following year. Sorry if you don’t care for my description. I’m just trying to tell you what movies to watch. I’m not fucking Siskel and Ebert here. Trust me, it’s good.

Grumpy Old Men

Pretty sure this movie would be on my Top 10 funniest movies ever if I dealt in such things as Top ten’s. Walter Mattheau and Jack Lemmon have been tops on my list of funniest duos since The Odd Couple came out in 1968. I was three then so I had to wait a few years to appreciate them.

I’m a movie crier. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’m not going to start bawling unless it’s really sad though, I’m not a total douche, but when Jack Lemmon has a heart-attack and the nurse asks the visiting Walter Mattheau if he’s friend or family and he chokes up and says “friend,” I almost lose it. To me, a good movie makes you emote. So what if my kids are horrified by my display in the theater and move away from me.

Nobody’s Fool

Possibly the best movie you’ve never heard of and Paul Newman is in it and that should be enough right there but if you need more, Newman plays an old acerbic asshole, Skully, who has ruined every relationship he’s ever had but finds a way to re-connect with his son. And if that’s still not enough to sell you on it, then there is the topless shot of Melanie Griffith that might lure you in. Like a younger Melanie Griffith. Not like she is today, all old and messed up with her wrinkled skin drying up dying around her fake tits.

Nudity and Thanksgiving go together like peanut butter and jelly. Really nudity and anything go together but not so much with that naked housecleaning thing. Watching somebody clean the filth from my toilet and emptying my garbage is not hot.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Steve Martin plays a tight assed, prissy executive, Neal Paige, on his way home for Thanksgiving but gets stuck traveling with John Candy’s ultra-annoying Del Griffith character. Surely most of you have seen this but there is an exchange where Neal goes ballistic when he accidentally washes his face with water used to soak Del’s dirty socks that is priceless and I have memorized and use as frequently as possible:

Neal: You know everything is not an anecdote. You have to discriminate. You choose things that are funny or mildly amusing or interesting. You’re a miracle! Your stories have none of that. You’re not even amusing accidentally! “Honey, I’d like you to meet Del Griffith, he’s got some amusing anecdotes for you. Oh, and here’s a gun so you can blow your brains out. You’ll thank me for it.” I could tolerate any insurance seminar. For days I could sit there and listen to them go on and on with a big smile on my face. They’d say, “How can you stand it?” I’d say, “Cause I’ve been with Del Griffith. I can take anything!” You know what they’d say? They’d say, “I know what you mean. The shower curtain guy. Whoa.” It’s like going on a date with a Chatty Cathy doll. I expect you have a little string on your chest, you know, that I pull out and have to snap back. Except, I wouldn’t pull it out and snap it back – you would. Blah! Blah! Blah! Blah! And by the way, you know, when you’re telling these little stories? Here’s a good idea – have a point! It makes it so much more interesting to the listener!

“Train don’t run outta Wichita, unlessin’ you’re a hog. People train runs outta Stubbville.”

Uncle Buck

I don’t even know if this is a Thanksgiving movie or not as there is no mention ever made of any holiday but the movie is set in the winter so I have adopted it as the first movie I watch every holiday season. Nothing else hits the DVD player until this classic has. Plus this was the primer to Macaulay Culkin’s brilliant performance in as Kevin in Home Alone, a Top 5 Christmas movie which we will get to next month.

One of the signs of a good movie, to me, is the number of usable quotes that I can utilize in my own life and this movie is full of them. Not a day goes by when I don’t tell somebody, “Get in your mouse and get the hell out of here.”

There you have it. The Top 5 Thanksgiving movies of all time. There is no need to deviate from this list as I have potentially watched every last holiday movie ever made and in order to save you countless hours of horror have narrowed it down to this. You’re welcome.

Mountain Sicknesses

Posted on by JP Shaver

First a shout out to my people in Brazil. Now I have people from all over the world who read this blog, Qatar and Cambodia included, but for some unknown reason I have more readership in Brazil than all of the other countries of the world combined.

Buy my book. It’s like 99 cents for God’s sake…

Bang Your Head Here

Bang Your Head Here…Some More

A couple of thoughts, you people in Brazil, at least as has been reported in our mostly fake news, are virtually out of drinkable water yet hundreds, yes hundreds are a lot to me, of you take time to read my nonsense. My thought is that, as bad as it is to be on the threshold of death, you read my vitriol to remind yourselves that it could be worse. You could live in America with people like me. You would rather dehydrate yourselves to death than live here. I get that.

The other possibility is that there are Americans who have moved to Brazil for whatever reason and frequent my blog to remind themselves that they have made the right decision to leave. Regardless, thanks for taking the time.

The Top 5 Hillbilly Illnesses

For twenty years I helped run our family manufacturing business. My grandfather started it in 1952 when he moved to Cleveland from West Virginia. I am frequently thankful that he had the gumption and the fortitude to uproot his family and move up north to make something of himself. No offense to those of you from West Virginny but I wouldn’t have made a very good mountain man. I don’t like dirt and I like my food to come in a box with a label on it and not from the woods or a river. I don’t think I could shoot a “varmint” and I hate the taste of fish. I am a decent shot though, I think it’s just in my blood. I don’t want to “take vittles.” Hell, I don’t even know where the word vittles comes from, I just know that I don’t want any.

I love the movie “Deliverance” but I am afraid that, in real life, I am the fat, sissy character, Bobby and not the rugged woodsman, Louis. Bobby was the character played by Ned Beatty and also the one anally raped by the mountain cracker. I, however, draw the line at the hillbilly anal rape thing in my comparison of myself to Bobby.

I like paying too much for a cup of coffee, I don’t hunt or fish and if something needs fixing around the house, my best skill is writing a check. Not to imply that everybody, just because they are from the hills is an expert in home repair, I was just trying to make the point that I am not handy and am quite soft when it comes to what the mountains would describe as a real man.

In spite of the racist stereotype people from hills have, my grandfather was an equal opportunity employer. As long as you came from the hills, he didn’t care what color you were, gay or straight, man or woman. You could be an African-American, cross-dressing lesbian and as long as you’re from “downhome” he’d give you a shot. “You say you’re a machinist from Brooklyn? Sorry, never been there I don’t trust people who come from the city.”

People from the hills are passionately and fiercely loyal. You had to be a serious fuck-up to get fired and neither do you quit. I’ve fired my share of people in my time as the kingpin of our hillbilly manufacturing conglomerate and rarely ran into objections and excuses as most people knew when they had taken the whole “downhome” loyalty thing too far. The excuses upon firing almost made the whole firing process worth the heartache of it all as some of them were comedic genius. “Thursday night’s my night to get drunk,” was always one of my favorites and also the most frequently used. As if that makes the whole thing about not showing up for work for eight straight days just a part of business.

My absolute favorites though were the hillbilly street names for the myriad of common maladies people came down with that caused them to miss work. This, therefor, is the Top 5 Names of Hillbilly Illnesses. It wasn’t until the advent of the Internet that I could actually do a little research into the hidden meaning of these terms.

Cold in your eye

Now every cold that I’ve ever had was a respiratory kind of thing. Runny nose, sneezing, fever, cough, the whole shmear but unbeknownst to me, you can also, apparently, get this in your eye.

Upon further investigation, an eye cold, is also called conjunctivitis and / or pink eye but taken up a few degrees. It seems that eye colds are caused by the same virus’ that cause mumps, measles and herpes. Herpes? In your eye? Holy shit! Had I known that the person sitting in front of me, pleading for their job, had a rampant case of highly infectious and contagious case of eye herpes I would have gladly dismissed them and told them to take as much time as they needed. Gross!

Apparently, eye colds are untreatable with anti-viral medication and you are told to put compresses on the infected area for treatment. Any time they tell you to put a wet towel on some kind of injury or malady, it pretty much means that means they have nothing else. “Yeah, that shit looks like it hurts. Best if you just put a cold compress on it till it clears up.”

“So I have the herpes in my eye and you think the best plan of action is to slap a wet towel on it? Oh really? Thanks! People get this on their genitals and it lasts a fucking lifetime but you’re saying that a wet towel will solve my problem. Wonderful.”

The Gleet

As long as we’re on the subject of herpes I figured this would be a good place to introduce you to The Gleet. This was not a common excuse for missing work but I heard it at least a dozen times in my twenty years of service. The Gleet is a hillbilly name for gonorrhea and involves a nasty smelling discharge weeping from ones urethra. Kind of gross, right?

I have always believed that there is no better excuse for missing work than to just say that you have diarrhea. No one wants to hear you talk about it and they certainly don’t want anyone around who has it. Diarrhea is something that we all get once in a while and can certainly be understood as something that would keep one home from work. I cannot commiserate with The Gleet and even if I had it and had to miss work because of it, I would not admit it.

Falling sickness

Also commonly known as epilepsy. We had a guy, Moses, who had epilepsy. Everybody from West Virginia has a given name and a name they go by. Moses’ real name was Carroll but his dad was friends with the mailman, Moses, so yada, yada, yada, Carroll became Moses. It seems that when he was a teenager his drunk pappy put him on the back of his motorcycle, drove through an intersection and both were subsequently hit by a city bus. Of course, the drunk, was unscathed but Moses was dragged under the bus till it could come to a stop, and in the process tore off half of his flesh and did enough damage to his brain to give him epilepsy. The fact that this guy lived through let alone continued to work fifty hours a week, is a testament to the, “Dare to keep me down? Fuck you” mentality of the people of West Virginia.

Once in a while Moses would disappear for a week and we knew that he had a case of the falling sickness but that he would be back as soon as he was able. Worst part was that Moses lived alone and when a spell of the falling sickness would hit, he would lay there all by himself till he could get his legs.

The Grip (Grippe)

This was the most common of all of the absenteeism excuses I received. I mean people were falling victim to The Grip like the Black Plague in medieval Europe. There are two different Grip disorders meaning two very different things but because I couldn’t understand a lot of what they were saying and because I didn’t know what either of them were, I would just ask if they felt good enough to work and move them on their way.

First, The Grip, is a hills infirmity that keeps on from grabbing things. The Grip would cover your arthritis, strokes, any kind of paralysis or nerve damage. Hard to believe that somebody would miss a Friday of work because they were paralyzed but stranger things have happened.

More than likely they were afflicted with the more common Grippe, still pronounced just like the previously mentioned Grip. This version of the Grippe is simply the common flu. I know, not as cool but all of the names in this Top 5 list, the one I can see myself incorporating into my occasional flu life.

Jerry, a man twice my age, was continually afflicted with the grippe and would get angry if I ever asked what exactly this grippe thing was. “Look, I had the grippe, alright?!?! People with the grippe are very sensitive.

Puking fever

This would be, you would think, the easiest of the group to figure out. Puking fever should be exactly what it says it is. “I was throwing up and had a fever.” Bingo! Easy. “You feel good enough to go back to work?” “Would I be here if I wasn’t?”

You would be wrong if you assumed that any infirmity of the mountain people would be that simple. Puking fever also goes by the pseudonym Milk Sickness or The Sloes. Milk sickness is also called tremetol vomiting or the trembles and is a kind of poisoning that brings with it trembling, vomiting and severe intestinal pain. All pretty standard features of the average stomach flu except that The Trembles comes from ingesting milk or meat from a cow that fed on the white snakeroot plant. Cows, during a drought, will go into the woods in search of water where they find the snakeroot plant. Snakeroot? Some I am to believe that you went home for the weekend to the hills and drank some milk from a poisonous cow?

Do you know the astronomical odds of ever encountering even one person afflicted with Milk Sickness? You need a cow, a drought, snakeroot, white snakeroot at that, and you need to drink the cow’s milk like right off the udder. Like you basically had to be suckling the cow to come down with this. Yet I have seen dozens of people live through this terrible disease.

The Sloes are basically milk sickness mixed with a dose of small pox. I didn’t get a lot of claims of the sloes. “So you were off on Friday because you had milk sickness induced small pox but you’re okay today?”

Bonus – Straining your milk

A common caution verbalized by women to other women working in our plant was not to lift too much or you’d likely run the risk of “straining your milk.” I can’t imagine this warning applying to anybody but women who are nursing a child but after all of the sloes, grips and gleets who the hell knows.

What exactly happens when one “strains their milk?” Does it come out with blood like if you got kicked really hard in the nuts or does it just dry up? Can anything be done to de-strain your milk?

A Real Solution to Illegal Immigration and Disgusting Imported Food

Posted on by JP Shaver

A Real Solution to Illegal Immigration and Disgusting Imported Food

I can’t even turn on the effing news anymore without being lambasted with stories of illegal immigration. Muslims invading Europe. Mexicans overtaking the United States. God forbid some poor soul from a war-torn or impoverished country would want to come here to give his family a decent shot at not dying from drinking untreated, fecal-infested water or having a bomb dropping on their roof. What an asshole.

I know I’m probably in the minority here but I can’t help thinking that are we going to need bodies to help pay the pretty hefty Social Security tab for our aging population? Just a thought. I think I have a solution to the problem but first, my complaints.

What’s irritating me mostly now are these strange fruits and vegetables that weasel their way into the produce department of my local grocery store. I remember when I was a teenager and my mother came home with these strange, brown and fuzzy pieces of difficult to eat fruit later to become known to me as kiwi. To this day, I am still not sure how to eat a kiwi. No doubt they are delicious but how are you supposed to get the most of this tiny piece of fruit? I cut the ends off then peel, taking as little of the actual fruit off as possible. Is there a better way? Either way, it’s a lot of work and the laborious nature of consuming foreign fruit seems to be a fairly common complaint. Maybe they have more time to fuck around with their meals in other parts of the world. Here in the United States, I work all day and help raise my granddaughter. I don’t have time to soak beans or de-seed a pomegranate, I’m busy and even if I didn’t have a damn thing to do at all, I would not waste my time.

Plants that are indigenous to the United States or that I grew up eating are, for the most part, pretty easy to get access to. If I want an apple, I wash it and eat it. Same with most of your berry products. Oranges and grapefruit are a little more work but you aren’t risking throwing half of it away during the peeling process like you would with a Kiwi. Banana? Peel and eat.

There are exceptions to the rule, for instance, okra is from here, as far as I know, but I don’t eat it because it’s gross. I find it’s slimy consistency intolerable. Plus I only ever see it offered as fried. I could fry the bottom of my shoe, give it a splash of hot sauce and people would eat it. That is not a rousing endorsement for okra. Just saying.

Cilantro would be a veggie that has made inroads much the same as the kiwi into the American diet. However, I believe that any traction gained by this leaf has been on the coattails of salsa. Where would cilantro be without salsa? Cilantro is a bitter tasting leaf that has a nasty habit of finding ways of sticking to your front teeth and humiliating you when you smile. I wont smile after I eat salsa until I have a chance to inspect my mouth. I don’t care for smiling much anyway so this is not much of a problem.

Why do they sell coconuts at the grocery store? Seriously, what am I supposed to do with this thing? I don’t want any food that I have to beat mercilessly with a hammer to eat. Coconuts should come with an electric drill so you can get the milk out before you have to destroy it causing it to spill all over the place. Isn’t it enough that you can buy the coconut milk and the actual coconut fruit in other aisles in the same grocery store? Have we become so obsessed with hipster level freshness that we are resorting to buying non-prepared foods that require power tools just to indulge them?

What the hell is jicama anyway? I once had Jicama Slaw and found it to be quite tasty. Based on that, I bought one at the store and soon sorely regretted it. The thing is so full of watery juice that by the time I was done grating it, it had turned into a disgusting, cold pile of slop, as if it had melted or something. Around here, we use cabbage in our slaw and it has served us well for some time now. There really is no need for a replacement at this time. Please check back if ever you hear of a devastating cabbage blight. Plus, I’m not sure if this jicama stuff provides any extra nutritional value but if it’s laying in a puddle of it’s own filth on my kitchen counter, I fail to see how it really matters as I wont be eating it anyway. Besides, there are a whole bunch of vegetables in line in front of you, jicama, that I need to sample before I move onto other countries bounties. Take the turnip for instance. I’ve never had one, probably never will, but I will be damn sure to try a turnip long before I have another bite of jicama. Turnips are from here and I feel like I owe them some loyalty. Parsnips and rutabagas, whatever they are, would also fall into this category.

So there are three root veggies blocking the progress of this jicama tsunami and as I hate vegetables to begin with, the chances of jicama getting off the bench into a starting role are slim to none. I don’t even know if this jicama is a root, it just has the look of it. In any case, count me out.

I am a big Pinterest fan. I love it for the recipes mostly and I have been told that I may be the only straight guy with an account. Sorry but I guess that I am comfortable enough with my own masculinity to embrace Pinterest. Lately, I have been seeing a disturbing number of ideas for how to cook with jackfruit. What the hell is jackfruit? There are videos of people shredding this jackfruit stuff and using it as a replacement for meat. Like jackfruit with BBQ sauce. Yuck! They say stuff like, “you’ll never know that you’re not eating pork.” Okay, right. But my pulled pork sandwich doesn’t have seeds and a pit. I’m not fooled. Peddle your jackfruit elsewhere.

People tried to tell me to make a pizza crust out of cauliflower. Let me state, for the record, I hate cauliflower. It has a certain acerbic taste that does little more than invoke a strong gag reflex in me. I did just as the recipe said. I beat the crap out of it in the food processor and added all the spices just like the directions said. I formed it into a remedial crust and I put on all of my pizza toppings including sauce, cheese and veggies that I do like. Took one bite and spit it out on the plate. Why? All I could taste was acrid cauliflower. Yuck!

Wikipedia says that jackfruit is “widely cultivated and popular food item throughout the tropical regions of the world.” Let me translate for you, “widely cultivated and popular food item throughout regions where there is nothing better to eat.”

I tried star fruit once. Are you supposed to peel this thing? I couldn’t get any skin off of it and got sick of fucking around with it and just took a bite, after thoroughly washing it with soap first, of course. It tasted like diluted orange juice. It was useless. Why, if we have full-tasting oranges, do we need to airlift star fruit from Cambodia or where ever the hell it comes from? I can just add a whole bunch of water to my orange juice if ever I should want to experience the whole star fruit extravaganza again.

Really, outside of the kiwi, the world can take the rest of their weird and bad tasting fruit and stick it up their collective asses. I suppose a reasonable compromise would be that if we are going to willy-nilly import another countries native foods then we should allow their people to emigrate here as well. That way we will have people who know how to cook things like dragon fruit and plantains and they will have a job cooking said foods thus funding my Social Security. Problem solved.

Let us not forget that all of this insightful brilliance and more can be yours with one simple click. Both are available for free on Kindle Unlimited and are $0.99 and $2.99 respectively on Amazon.

JPShaverSaysbyhhsomemore

Top 5 Words No One Says Anymore

Posted on by JP Shaver

JPShaverSays

Available on Amazon for your reading pleasure. New content that has never seen the light of the blog. My dad says that I’m wasting my time writing this mindless bullshit so it must be good.

Top 5 Words No One Says Anymore

I recently put together a little piece about the Top 5 Words You CAN’T SAY Anymore which bears a striking difference in content but not in name to this particular gem of literary masturbation. There is a big difference between words you can’t say and words that have simply lost their luster and gone out of style. For instance, I would still love to be able to drop the occasional “what are you some kind of an effing retard?” on someone who has merited the distinction. However, society has chosen to make that term objectionable, no matter how impactful it may have been, leaving me, the bad guy, sounding like an unfeeling asshole. But uttering the now unfashionable 60’s term “groovy,” which I still use extensively, just makes me sound like a dork. Go figure.

This time I want to address specific words that no one seems to use anymore or have simply fallen out of favor. Per usual, there are rules to qualify for mention and inclusion in this list. There will be no pining for the loss of words used by the gigantic losers who roam the medieval fairs such as forsooth, doth, or any regular words where they just added a ”ith” on the end of it.

I struggled at first to come up with five but then they suddenly started to spill out of me to the point of actually having to break the list down into categories. I don’t feel like I have violated the sacred nature of the Top 5 List but if I have offended, I apologize.

Top 5 Words No One Says Anymore

Household words

Personal Items

Food

Body Parts

Miscellaneous

Household items –

Davenport, rubbish, parlor, icebox, rummage sale, milkman

So apparently, a Davenport is another term for a couch. A little research showed that Davenport was actually a company who made couches. Sort of like how we call a tissue a Kleenex, I guess. In any case, it sounds stupid. When you invent another term for an already established word, it should be shorter and easier to say. Couch is a five letter, single syllable word. You simply don’t move from that to a nine letter, polysyllabic term where when you say it, no one has a fucking clue of what you’re talking about. “Hey, will you go grab my coat, I left it on the Davenport?” What? Where the hell is that? What are you talking about?

No one says rubbish anymore. I feel like garbage and rubbish used to run neck and neck in usage volume but somehow rubbish lost its way. I don’t know, maybe rubbish still has some legs in say the south or something but up here in Ohio, it’s dead. Maybe the ease with which the word “bullshit” falls off ones lips helped ruin rubbish. People used to say, “that’s rubbish,” but now they say, “that’s bullshit.”

Does one go to a garage sale or a rummage sale? Rummage to me sounds like rubbish and rummage sales are really an adventure in digging into another person’s garbage so I opt for garage sale. It lets me know ahead of time that I will not be allowed to actually enter their dwelling. Like I’ll happily sell you my trash but please don’t think about going in my home. Estate sales are always held in the house though and usually after someone has died. The kids selling off their parent’s stuff to collect every last penny possible, Garage sales are basically a way to clean out the old shit so there’s room for new shit.

I went to a garage sale probably in the thirty years ago realm. This creepy old lady who lived a few doors down, we called her Madam Piss because she reeked of a loamy human urine smell, was clearing out some obsolete items, items that no one in their right mind would ever want. I remember that she had up for sale an old afghan throw blanket that, if it were possible, smelled even more of human piss than she did. But the thing of most interest was her son, who had to be retarded at least in an emotionally developmental kind of way and whom we referred to as Prince Pee, was selling sculptures he created out of dried up used condoms, ribbed for our pleasure, of course. Now let me be clear here, Prince Pee was not getting laid and, if he was, it certainly was not at the kind of volume that would provide him enough used prophylactics to go into the art business. If you ever get the chance to see a mini-sculpture of Mickey Mouse formed from used condoms, it will be forever burned into your brain. Prince had set up shop in the back corner of the dark garage and once I saw what he was purveying I had visions of the garage door slowly closing. With my next lucid thought coming when I woke up in their basement sucking my thumb with my pants down around my ankles. I quickly exited.

Madam Piss, who was officially named Rose, was a cat lady before we had the term cat lady but I don’t think she had any cats to speak of. I’m pretty sure that being a cat lady is a modern emotional disorder. I feel like we didn’t really care that much about animals fifty years ago to have dozens of them in the house peeing and shitting all over the place. PETA wasn’t around and we didn’t have sappy commercials begging for money to the tunes of Sarah McLachlan. I feel like I will start giving money to starving cats and dogs when all of the people are fed first. Kinda feel like humans are a bit more of a priority at this point in our evolution.

Old people don’t seem to smell like pee as much as they used to. When was the advent of the adult diaper? Before, did old people just change their underwear a lot? I guess old women could sport a maxi-pad, like one of those super pads but what did men do? Isn’t it bad enough that I’m peeing all over myself but now you want me to wear a feminine product? Remind me again why I want to continue to live.

Anyway, back to the word study, there are, of course, other out of date words that are beyond the time frame I’m talking about here like parlor, milkman and icebox. I’m, as always, most concerned with the time frame that is JP Shaver.

Personal items –

Pocketbook, dungarees, slacks, girdle

I could be wrong on this, because I’m not a girl, but I swear the last time I heard the term pocketbook used was at one of my grandmother’s friend’s funerals. It’s a dumb term and it need to be pushed to the wayside. Where is the “wayside” anyway? I have never used the word in any other context outside of, “pushed to the wayside.” It’s a purse. It is neither a pocket nor a book. Was purse always a word that you could use instead of pocketbook? If so, then why did people still opt for the longer, less descriptive word?

Body parts –

Bosom, gams, buttocks

Bosom is a horrible word. My grandmother had bosoms. The word itself is the most sexual deflating of all time. Ladies, if you’re looking to fend off your husbands amorous intentions, just ask him to play with your bosoms, problem solved. No one ever uses the word bosom in porno movies. Not that I watch porn. I’ve just heard that from people who do.

Gams may be a bit out of my time wheelhouse but I really like it. I’d like to hear people start using it again. Nice gams! It has a Humphrey Bogart kind of air to it.

No one says buttocks. Forrest Gump tried to resurrect it when he got shot there but it didn’t stick. It’s too clinical and we have become too desensitized to use such words. Now we just come out and say things like ass or in the case of bosoms, tits.

Food –

Pimento / olive loaf, oleo, supper, Jell-O, Black licorice, the black Chuckle

I think you can still get olive loaf at the deli but I can’t say that I have ever seen someone order it. If they did actually order up some olive loaf, I suspect that they would be over the age of eighty. Those of you with kids, can you imagine their reaction to being served a couple of slices of this stuff?

My grandmother used to call margarine “oleo.” I had to look that one up and found that it is a colloquial term for oils used commonly to make margarine. It’s also a type of shock absorber used in aircraft landing gear.

How many different terms are there for the various meals we eat every day? Breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, supper. What is the difference between supper and dinner? Are they the same thing or am I missing out on another potential meal here? Supper seems to have been phased out though and replaced solely by dinner. While you can sup and dine, I prefer to not think of myself as supping. It sounds gross and is unappetizing.

Does anyone eat Jell-O anymore? I don’t mean as an alcohol delivery system but as an actual side dish to their dinner. We had it almost every night when I was a kid. My mom put fruit and shit in it to dress it up but I always dug it. I think it’s downfall started when we all found out that gelatin is made from things like horse hooves. That doesn’t really bother me that much I’m more interested in how they figured out that Jell-O needed horse hooves in it in the first place. “Something is missing here. It’s just not Jello-O-ey enough for me. You know what we need? Horse hooves!”

Miscellaneous –

Pound sign, Goodies headache powder, Doan’s Pills, mongoloid

Do they still make Doan’s Pills? You couldn’t be on a game show in the seventies and not, at least, come away with a consolation prize of a year-long supply of these mysterious pills that seems to know exactly how to target pain specific to your lower back. How is that possible? Like they were some early version of nanobots created by this mad scientist, Dr. Doan and were available for virtually nothing at your local drug store. Little known fact, Dr. Doan was killed in a freakish car accident back in the early eighties under very suspicious circumstances. That’s not true. I don’t even know if there ever was a Dr. Doan. I just thought it sounded cool to say.

Goodies Headache Power is another one of these freak remedies that can target specific pain. I never saw the stuff sold up here, only in the South, but I do know they sponsor a NASCAR race so maybe they and their magic elixir are still around. I don’t know, I barely leave the house let along go south for headache medicine.

Was mongoloid a term ever used as a derogatory slur? Like clearly dropping an N bomb on someone can only be construed as horrible but I think we’re still allowed to say Mongoloid? Are people from Mongolia known as mongoloids? Oh, wait, no that’s Mongolian.

I blame the people at Twitter for killing the term, pound sign. Why couldn’t they just stick with that? Why hashtag? You have to be a pretty big deal to just go in and rename something. Like I would like to rename the prostate gland to the bifarcal valve but I don’t carry enough weight to pull it off. Maybe if I can get somebody who wields some real power to start telling men over the age of fifty to have their bifarcal valve checked. Wilfred Brimley may be able to pull that off. He already sells diabetes supplies on television so what’s the harm in mentioning at the close of the commercial, “and don’t forget men over fifty, have your doctor, on your next visit, shove their finger up your poop-hole and get that bifarcal valve checked. You wont be sorry.”