Hazard Flashers and the Magic Twine

There is an old adage that claims that ignorance is bliss. Well, if this is the case, then driving down the highway in the hammer lane at forty-two miles per hour with your hazards on and a California King mattress tied to the roof of your Honda Civic with the free twine from the furniture store must border on orgasmic. What is it about hazard flashers and that magical free twine that makes people lose all sense of physics and common sense? If you think about the amount of wind sheer it takes to fold a Sealy Posturepedic in half like a newspaper, why on Earth would you trust free twine from a cardboard box to secure it to your roof for a jaunt about the interstate? That twine looks and feels like it is made from extruded grocery bags and should have the tensile strength of wet Charmin. But it's magic twine. Somehow, emboldened by the psycho-kinetic power of ignorance, that fucking twine (and sometimes a bit of arm muscle) can hold said mattress against hurricane force winds. It boggles the mind. It truly does. Combined with the force-field creating effect of hazard flashers, you can go anywhere with your pillow-top death-trap without a single care in the whole wide world. Pop those hazards on and *poof* laws of common man no longer apply to you. Want to create a full size Jenga set out of your household furniture in the back of your pickup truck and go for a buzz down the road without securing it in any way? Just flick on the hazards and do it. Go five miles per hour, too. Just for good measure. Wouldn't want to topple that Jenga tower at the first pothole, would you?

Some Brad Neely Toons For Your Enjoyment

Sometimes, you just feel like a king. Drinking Ghetto Blasters all by yourself, whipping out fliff like a sultan, and just generally being a bad MoFo. But then, sometimes it all turns on you. Videos kinda NSFW due to some colorful language.

"I was perfect. I was important, and funny, and helpful, and seemingly rich. And I had the body of a heavy lifter."

"The world got mean really fast. Death was hanging out, his buddies were there, hippies started pouring in, the girls were gone, and I was no one to everyone. I looked down, and I had the body of a heavy reader."

Shitty Mustaches Are the New Cool

Yes, shitty mustaches are the new cool. You know why? It's because a shitty mustache speaks volumes about the owner of the face upon which it rests. I like to think that my shitty mustache shows the world that I am a hopeful optimist. While this abomination of accrued facial hair might be shitty today, who knows what tomorrow holds? I mean, I could wake up with a glorious Magnum P.I 'stache. You never know. It's all about the grooming though. You have to commit to a shitty mustache. You have to make sure you keep the remaining balance of facial real-estate clean, lest people just assume you are too lazy to shave. They must know that you are really making a concerted effort towards growing a real manly 'stache. Oh, who am I fooling? There is no hope for this damn mustache and it is more tragic than cool. Dammit, I wish I could grow a real mustache.

Small Steps Towards a Smoother Doomsday

I watch a lot of shows about preppers. Since I don't fear the imminent destruction of civilized life as we know it, I don't consider myself a prepper per se, but I do employ small strategies that keep me prepared for any unexpected emergency situation. It's all about the small lifestyle changes, not the big ones. Rather than building a huge underground bunker, just modify the little things, like the way you remove your pants at the end of the day. Make "fireman pants" available in various locations just in case of impending doom (or maybe a quick response to an unexpected knock at the door while you are sleeping). Easy day, right? Instead of having to figure out the complicated process of donning pants while in a sleepy haze, just follow this easy process. When removing pants, just let the waistband fall and step out of the resulting pile of pantaloon. This will leave the legs of your trousers accordioned about the cuffs and ready for action. When an emergency arises, simply step into the cuffs and pull the waistband up. Boom. You just put on pants in record time. Just like a fireman. Remember, the small steps add up. We are all about cumulative prepping 'round here. Do yourself a favor, toss a Gerber multi-tool in the pocket of the pants before you fireman them and you are ready for any apocalypse scenario. That's like advance prep, though. You'll have to work up to that. God-Tier preppers duct tape Crocs to the bottoms of their pant legs for the ultimate set of fireman pants. One day, one day readers, I will achieve God-Tier prep status.

A Break From Our Normally Scheduled Programming

One thing I always like to do with a new blog before I publish it is to flesh out about half a dozen posts and kind of see what direction the blog tends to go in. Every blog seems to have a direction of its own that it naturally gravitates towards, and it's best to get a feel for that direction before you begin to seriously try to engage a readership. I know that might sound weird, but in my experience that is some real-deal shit. It's all about the title, the tone, the audience, it's really less about creating a blog as is it babysitting one that already exists in your mind and no matter how hard you try, some blogs can never be steered into the right direction. Uninspired Idiocy seems to be riding the rails of amusing anecdote, but that wasn't the case for all past blogs. For example, I was working out a blog titled The Art of Yelling at Bugs, a blog about the inherent futility of life itself and it just took a really mean turn early on. It was based upon the metaphorical construct of yelling at bugs, an act akin to pissing in the wind, a true exercise in futility. Seems like a fun blog right? Yeah, I know. The tone of the blog was never positive, it was just.... well, it was downright depressing. I never published it, although I did archive a few posts based solely upon the fact that, even though they were depressing, they had a passion and prose that I liked and wanted to preserve. So, from the failed and deleted blog The Art of Yelling at Bugs:

For the first time in my life, I woke up this morning feeling every bit of twenty seven years old. Grey hairs beginning to rise from my scalp, eyes bagged and heavy with the burden of days filled with manic happiness and sleepless nights of drunken self loathing, it all showed through at that single instance. It was one of those mornings that convinced me that my life could be cast into prose by an omniscient narrator with the phrase “And so it came to be that, at the age of twenty seven…” Unfortunately, I know that nothing good ever grows from the rich soil of “and so it came to be”. And so it came to be that I spent my free sober moments casting out into the endless abyss of the internet, anything that I feel important to me at any given time, but strictly within the confines of a blog that no one reads. But isn’t that the point? I mean, the metaphorical construct of Yelling at Bugs was that everything in life is basically an act of futility that few would notice, and among those, fewer would care. Sure, I yelled at bugs, but for the first time in my life it felt like the bugs were screaming back and they were all saying “we, simple creatures built for singular purpose and of singular mind, care not what you scream at us but, instead, remind you that at the end of the day, while we know nothing, you know in your heart that what you scream falls upon deaf ears and that not even an insect could give a fuck.” And when the gravity of it all hit, it felt like a pallet of bricks.

I guess when I look back on these old posts, it gives me a true appreciation for the positive track that Uninspired Idiocy rides upon. Now, let us steam forward with some lighthearted idiotic fun, shall we? 

Numerical Palindromes and the Aquatic Unicorn

Who would have ever thought that a simple water fountain could become a source of contention and animosity in a workplace of grown men? It seems odd, but one has indeed become the center of a strange competition nexus at my place of work, and the end of civilized life as we know it. On the first day of it's installation, it was a water fountain like any other. Stainless bowl, filtered water, but what is that strange glowing display? A counter? Nice. You see, this fountain was designed to dispense not only from the goose-necked spout designed for direct oral hydration, but also from a downward facing spicket meant to fill reusable water containers. The green backlit display affixed to the front of it touted proudly the number of plastic water bottles that it has displaced from landfills. Little did we know, it was really the steely-eyed face of a quietly lurking Green Eyed Monster.

"I'm number 100, bitches! Read 'em and weep! Centennial water tastes soooo good!". And that's where the problem started. "111! Trips. Eat it, muh-fuggahs!". "121. You ain't never tasted water like numerical palindrome water!". And so that was the game, fighting over any number you could make sound significant. I mean, literally fighting over a water counter. Throwing bo's and knocking water bottles out of other grown men's hands for the chance at some flavorful numerical palindrome water. It was all soon to boil over however, for the chance at a numerical triple double was too great to resist, even for the most Qauker-like passive resistance type dudes.

On this fateful day, the machine was rolled to an insignificant 998 by a Muggle, an innocent bystander in the heated battle of the water counter. My mind instantly reeled with the possibilities. "Oh, yes" I said to myself as I furrowed and unfurrowed my brow like a cartoon villain "I am about to taste of the most victorious set of numbers to ever tick sequentially across this stupid display." 999. Trips. 1000. First to beak 1000. 1001. Numerical palindrome. It was the fabled trifecta. The aquatic unicorn that every player in this makeshift game has been waiting for. But it was I who would hold the honor. Or would I?

I don't know if it was the fact that I ran to my water bottle and speed walked to the water fountain or my trembling hand that gave away the fact that huge numbers were about to be played but the sharks smelled blood in the water and they sprung into action. The sound of wrenches hitting the deck alerted me to the fact that a counter attack was underway. I was shoved to the side as I reached longingly for the fountain and another player approached the machine. A team effort. Dammit. I picked and rolled, and tried to juke my way to an offensive attack on the offending players. It was all in vain. I watched from a distance as the numbers rolled by. 999. Trips gone. 1000. Gone. 1001. Numerical palindrome gone. The unicorn had been slayed, and I didn't even get a taste. Fucking jackals.

The Fate of Physical Books in a Digital Age

I have this strange irrational fear that physical books will one day be made obsolete by digital media devices. I know that this would most likely never happen, but there has been a definite shift as of late towards more digital forms of print media. E-readers are now more affordable than ever, very portable, can hold infinite titles via cloud storage drives, and are really becoming the norm for a lot of readers. Why does this scare me? I don't know, honestly. I just really think that it places the role of physical books in a very precarious bind. The "inconvenience" of lugging around bound bricks of printed information may just push our on-the-go, on-demand, web-connected-everything society right into the hands of our future literature storage overlords. The thought of future generations living without ever having held a real book or having never turned an actual page seems like a crazy notion that I would rather never see come to fruition. I think this is driving me to hoard books. I am constantly on the lookout for books to "save" from the purgatory of bulk bins or second-hand store shelves. I might be a crazy person, yes, indeed I think I have lost my mind. The only thing that satiates my madness is the smell of aging paper and the feel of well worn book jackets resting in my palms. I turn pages with wild anticipation of what will unfold next and dog-ear pages that contain passages that hold special meaning to me. I return to these dog-eared pages to review their significance and find new meaning in every re-reading of these marked paragraphs. It is a fools errand that I have tasked myself with, leading the charge against digital books. In this futile quest I have assembled an assortment of literature both classic and whimsical, both fiction and non, both crispy fresh and moldy old. It is with great fervor that I will continue to line my walls with archaic examples of how we once shared knowledge. Ink, paper, glue. Physical books. Call me crazy, but backlit pixels will never touch my heart like printed word, and pressing the power button will never have the same feeling as coaxing open the pages of a book. Your digital bookshelves will never have the character of worn wrinkled spines and tattered dust jackets. Gutenberg, you my boy, Blue! I got your back, paper books 4life, son!

Urban Archaeology: Granby High School Yearbook, 1948

The strange thing about thrift stores is that they deal exclusively in merchandise second hand in nature. Each and every item in a thrift store has a story behind it, whether you realize it or not. You wander among shelf after shelf of items once treasured but which eventually lost luster and were relegated to the donation bin, cast out of memory and gone forever. But who owned this stuff? Who held these items in treasured possession until they were surrendered to unknown hands? The fact of the matter is, you rarely get a chance to put a name or a face to these artifacts. More often than not, you don't even give the chain of ownership a second thought. I mean, who cares who owned this copy of the Hardy Boys or who decided that they no longer had need for this Polaroid Land camera? Most things in our lives are meant to be transient, they are impersonal by nature. We own things until they outgrow usefulness then we cast them away. But sometimes as you dig through piles of these cast away objects, just sometimes, you stumble upon something that was meant to be held on to, something so personal that it is almost a tragedy that it would find itself on a shelf nestled among heaps of this transient garbage. Such was the case with something that I found on the shelves of Thrift City USA. It was a Granby High School yearbook dated 1948. What struck me about this yearbook was that between the pages, among the notes personally addressed to its rightful owner in such painfully careful cursive, were newspaper clippings detailing the lives and exploits of the people who inhabited the pages of this archival record. Wedding announcements, scholarship announcements, engagements, and so on. The owner of this book had painstakingly tracked her classmates as they moved along in life and, by assembling these clippings, had documented the finest points of their lives. But the care it took to do this stood in stark contrast to the neglect that this book had fallen into and ultimately led it to being classified as "unwanted". It almost hurts to think that this book has been separated from owner and/or next of kin. This is not a transient object, it was never meant to be. It is an assemblage of memories, an archive of achievement that should be in the possession of someone who would treat it as such. It is now in my care and it is now my mission to find this book a proper home. There has to be a place for this book even if it tucked away in the dark reaches of a local library or in the care a community archivist. The transient life of this book is coming to an end.

If you want to help the search or know of a good home for this book, please feel free to contact me. Just shoot me an e-mail at theliterateidiot@gmail.com and share some knowledge with me. What I know so far is that the book was owned by a Dollie Tarrant of Norfolk, VA. She had a brother named Frank Tarrant. So, if you are an OG Norfolk resident and know of the Tarrant family, please, please, please let me know. I very much want to get this book into proper hands.

Tin Foil Hat Strategies for the Everyman

Don your tin foil hats readers, we're going for a ride. Lets begin with the realization that every other precious metal speculator and doomsday prepper out there is more than likely scooping up every bit of gold and silver they can get their hands on to use as a fallback currency in the event that the US economy tanks or the world ends. In terms of US currency, that means they are hoarding pre-1964 quarters and dimes due to the 90% silver content they are formed from. However, finding these coins among your pocket change is nigh on impossible nowadays and if the US mint hasn't removed them from circulation, the silver speculators have already sorted most them out of the current pool of coinage floating around in a register till near you. But, if you care to listen, I'm going to put you on to some shit that you CAN get your hands on. Ready? Got your tin foil hat nice and snug? Don't want the aliens picking up this inside tip from your excreted brainwavery. Ok, here it is: PENNIES. Yep, mutha-fuckin' pennies. All 1982 and prior pennies were struck from 95% copper blanks. By weight, the value of copper in a 1982 and prior penny is $.02, double that of its face value. Boom. Instant 100% return on investment, right? Wrong. For now anyways. This is because no scrap dealer will touch copper pennies due to laws against mutilating US currency and due to the fact that it is technically illegal to export pennies and nickels for the purpose of destruction (http://www.usmint.gov/pressroom/index.cfm?action=press_release&ID=724). However, people have begun hoarding pennies on speculation that the US mint will do away with a one cent currency thereby nullifying any law against melting them for scrap. I read an article about a warehouse holding a quarter of a million dollars worth of copper pennies. If legislation ever passed to rid us of the one cent currency, they would stand to make $250k overnight with zero risk involved. I mean, if worse came to worse, you could always turn in your stockpile of pennies at face value, never having lost even a cent (not counting any interest you may have gained in a savings account). So, my loyal readers, I expect you to hammer open your piggy banks and start sorting the pennies. You have just had an egg of knowledge cracked all over you. You're welcome.

Were Babies Sturdier in the Fifties?

Looking through this set of Popular Mechanics DIY Encyclopedias I found at the thrift shop sure makes me think so. In contrast to today's world where baby safety products comprise a $66 billion market, back in the day you could apparently just toss a baby in a metal basket made according to Popular Mechanics plans, strap it to the front seat of your car, and just buzz around town without a care in the world. Moms in the fifties were on some straight up DGaF status. This collected volume of awesomeness even offers up a set of plans to make a beach cage for your toddlers. Yes, you read correctly, a beach cage for toddlers. Just toss 'em in the cage and go about your beach adventures. No padded stroller with SPF 100,000 shades, fans, and iPod dock for a fifties baby. Nope. Lumber and chicken wire, complete with sharp edges and plenty of opportunity for splinters. But injury builds character so that's a good thing, right? The question that comes to my mind after looking through all the baby related plans in these books is whether this disparity of concern reflects poorly on the fifties or the roaring two-thousands? Were fifties babies neglected? Are today's babies coddled too much? To those questions I have to say, I don't know. I think that there must be a whole generation of lumpy headed fifties babies running around who are better suited to answer them. I personally just think kids should have more opportunity to hurt themselves and grow from the experience. However, I don't really advocate putting babies in homemade basket car seat contraptions. That seems like a bad idea.

Looks legit, right? Easy on the brakes, Mom. This basket has some low gunwales, I might roll overboard.

Nothing says love like tossing your baby in a cage while you go walking the dunes with ol' Muscly Joe over there.

Memories of a Fecalcentric Youth

It’s always a strange realization when you look back on your childhood and finally come to understand that you were an odd little kid. Actually, looking back on it, I ran with a whole pack of odd little kids who, when assembled, would feed and thrive off each other’s weirdness. So that atmosphere of oddballs, in conjunction with my natural compulsion to do off the wall stuff, meant that my childhood shenanigans were not quite what I imagine other children of similar age doing. Sewer fishing is one notable example of our strange hi-jinks. When I was around the age of 6 or 7, we somehow developed a game that simply entailed breaking the arm off of an action figure, lashing it to kite string, gently lowering it down the vented opening in the manhole cover, and collecting any detritus that would happen to flow by and catch itself on the crooked arm. Once carefully extracted from the sewer, you would swing the arm about your head a-la helicopter rotors, and chase other children. For some reason the game caught like wildfire and soon every boy in the neighborhood was having to explain to his mother why his action figures had no arms and why he smelled like putrid sewer water. Now that I look back, we spent a whole summer obsessed with that sewer. We would lay in the street peering down into the dark caverns of municipal waste water and attempt experiments to determine how fast the water was, or how long it took for things flushed in our homes to reach our subterranean peepshow. So, many a flashlight was absconded with and many a brightly colored Lego block was flushed in hopes that we would be able to see it rush by on the watery interstate of waste. We never saw any of our flushed items, and even if we had, I don’t think we possessed the mathematical wherewithal to even calculate the speed of the water nor the scientific discipline to even care about results. None of that mattered to us and for some reason, it was our greatest hope to one day gain access to the sewer and explore its tunnels for lost treasure and gators, all of which we KNEW was there (we watched way too much Goonies). I can remember breaking at least two broom sticks trying to pry the manhole cover up to unlock the doorway to our adventure. We never did gain access to that subterranean wonder land, but it wasn't due to lack of trying. That was how we spent a whole summer though, watching turds, flushing toys, planning what we would buy with our sewer treasure, and generally being odd kids. Fecalcentric. That his how my brother and I describe our childhood upon retrospective reflection. Yes, fecalcentric.

Analog Blogs: Pocket Sized Idiocy

Before my days on Blogger, I used to carry around the travel version of my "blog" in my back pocket, always accessible for jotting down stupid ideas or whimsical musings. My analog blog, if you will. It all started with my Moleskine, the legendary notebook that Hemingway carried with him to keep track of his ideas and writings. I will admit that I started carrying it for reasons of vanity, sure. It was just a cool little book to have on hand and it smacked of inherent hipness. I mean, shit, Hemingway carried one, why shouldn't I? Soon, as I had strange thoughts or stupid ideas, I started to jot them down in my Moleskine because, naturally, who doesn't want to remember every stupid thought they have ever had?

For example, as seen above, in 2004 I decided that you should be able to convert Life Alert pendants for mere convenience. A subscription service would be there for you when you hit that little call button and proclaimed "Help! I've pooped, and I have no T.P!" or "I've fallen on the couch and can't reach my beer!". In these books it was just page after page of dumb ideas just like that. But, that is where this whole concept of me blogging came from. It was just a natural extension of keeping paper records of my idiocy. Why not convert that idiocy into the digital form of ones and zeros and post it to the web where it would always linger in the annals of web ephemera. Now I carry around my little green Memorandum books, the indestructible little bastards that they are, and jot stupidity down amongst my work notes or project measurements. These little scribbles soon get fleshed out into the blog posts you have come to know and loathe (but hopefully actually love). There you have it, the history of my desire to keep and preserve the dumb things that rattle around in my brain. I hope that in some way, shape, or form, you find them as amusing as I do when they strike me. After all, if I didn't think it was funny to me, why would I bother jotting it down? Here are a few more excerpts from the books.

My original manifesto was slated to be a picture book extolling the virtues of a treeless world. It was a bit tongue in cheek and subversive, but it just came across as the ravings of a lunatic.

This was something my mind put together after solving one of those stupid crypto-puzzles where the solution is always some stupid pun. I created my own cipher and this was the solution. 

A page of random scribbling, waiting to be converted into blog posts.

Camping the Interstate Highway System

Along the vast concrete and asphalt desert that we refer to as the Interstate Highway System, there exist a series of oases, slivers and triangles of dense foliage and vegitation, refuges for wildlife amongst the buzzing chaos of vehicular tidal movement. So, why can't they serve as refuge for humans? Seriously. Why not? Have you ever given any more than a passing glance at the random tree clusters that line our highways? Highways that you might travel everyday for years house odd patches of forest that you see everyday yet you wouldn't be able to pick out of a police line-up. Seems like the perfect place to set up camp to me. Nobody would fuck with you and I bet if you picked your spot just right, you could live covertly just a stone's throw away from civilization and you wouldn't be found for years. I think this is seriously going to make it on to my bucket list. Camp the interstate highway system. I'll set up camp on a wooded clover leaf offramp and see how long I can avoid detection. Seems like a great place to clear my mind, focus on what really matters, and carve out some time to punch out that manifesto I've been meaning to write. Plus, I bet that the sound of rushing traffic is like the urban version of a waterfall. I love falling asleep to ambient noise. Oh, shit, random thought: two birds one stone. I'll build an eight by eight shack out of pallets and camp the interstate while simultaneously enjoying that clubhouse I always wanted. I might literally try to kill two birds with one stone, too. Hobos gotta eat too, ya dig?

You Are Never Too Old For a Treehouse

To me, and bear in mind that I am no expert on maturity, it seems that the desire to own a treehouse is something you never really grow out of. I don't care who you are, you can't possibly tell me that if you were at a friend's house and they said "Hey, let's have a beer in the treehouse!" you wouldn't grab a brew and start climbing. It's a treehouse. Who passes up the opportunity to chill in a treehouse? Certainly not the kind of people I like to associate with, that's for sure. I guess in a broader scope, I would also include clubhouses as a variation of a treehouse or a treehouse as a variation of a clubhouse, whatever semantic situation you prefer. Treehouse, clubhouse, they are both places to get away from the world. A slice of Earth earmarked for the sole purpose of recreation. The Bat Cave: just a clubhouse. Batman loved solving mysteries and defeating evil doers, he played out his little games in the comfort of his Bat Cave. Doomsday bunkers: yet more clubhouses. Grown men stockpiling snacks and drinks, chillin' in underground clubhouses planning for the end of the world, it's just a clubhouse. Whatever "reason" they have for them, at the end of the day, they have their own little space, segregated from everyone else, where they can do the things that they take satisfaction in doing. I'm not judging. Shit, I'm thinking about building a clubhouse, too. I want an eight foot by eight foot hideout where I can hide from the world and remember what it was like to be a kid again. You know, a place to cast off all the stress of the world and enjoy a space that serves no other purpose than to make you happy. Compartmentalize your leisure. Separate the things you love to do from the things you don't. Build a clubhouse. But never, never ever ever pays bills inside your clubhouse. That's grown up shit that has no business in your shack of solitude.

Bears Have It All Figured Out

Case in point: scratching your back on a tree is friggin' tops. Never judge a bear until you give that a whirl. Also, corrugated metal siding, wall corners, car side mirrors, they all work just as well. So, log off, go outside, and do the wiggly bear dance on a barky tree. It will change your life.

Bungees vs. Fucks Given

I have come to the realization that the amount of visible bungee cords holding a vehicle together is directly proportional to the amount of disregard that the driver has for everyone else on the road. Odd concept, yes, but I think you will find that you cannot argue with graphs. Graphs never lie. I read that on a graph one time.

I have collected years of data and poured through it for months to assemble this very accurate, very scientific, and very well made graph. It wasn't made in MS Paint. I used Excel or something. Yeah, Excel, that's it. Definitely not MS Paint though. But as you can see, as the amount of bungee cords goes up, so too does the amount of disregard. Eventually, following mathematical logic, there is a point at which absolutely zero fucks can be given about other drivers occupying the road way. This is due in part to the fact that at this point in the graph, there are so many bungees on the vehicle that the windshield is undoubtedly 100% obscured by devilish elastic tie downs (This has tentatively been called the Can't-See-Em-So-Fuck-Em Hypothesis). So, there you have it, challenge it if you must, but I will not budge from my belief in this mathematical certainty. 

Tundra Pulls Space Shuttle: Am I Supposed to Be Impressed?

Now, I will admit that when a stock Toyota Tundra pulled the space shuttle Endeavor I was fairly impressed at first. It seemed like an astronomical feat for any stock vehicle to tow such a huge payload. But then I thought about it. I'm not dogging Toyota, that's not what this is about. I'm just saying that after considering all the facts and remembering some things, I think any stock 1/2 ton pickup manufactured today could pull off such a feat. It wasn't a cross country tow, it was a 300 yard pull across relatively flat ground. The whole trip was approximately four minutes. The real feat here was the razzle dazzle PR job that blinded me to the facts. Before you call me a hater, let me show you the reasoning behind my apprehension to be impressed.

Space Shuttle Endeavor plus trailer weight: 292,500lbs
Toyota Tundra Advertised HP and Torque: 381hp and 401ft/lbs
Mission: Pull shuttle and trailer 300 yards on nearly flat ground (was pulled across a bridge with a slight crown engineered into it)
Status: Accomplished

McDonnell Douglas DC-10 airplane weight: 240,000-270,000lbs (depending on variant)
HP and Torque of 44 little people: unknown
Mission: Pull a DC-10 airplane 50ish yards on flat tarmac with a team of 44 little people
Status: Accomplished
Watch this feat in action!

So you see, if 44 little people (even 44 big people for that matter) can overcome the inertia of and pull a weight of 240,000lbs, a pickup truck should be more than capable of overcoming the inertia of and pulling a weight of 292,500lbs. I bet that a Toyota Tacoma or a Ford Ranger could have pulled that shuttle. Shit, make it an even 50 people, and I bet they could have pulled that shuttle 300 yards. The commercial was awesome, the PR blitz was awesome, the mission seemed relatively impressive, but I am just not convinced that it is a true test of a truck's ability. But then again, I am an idiot. So, don't take my word for it, make up your own mind.

The Saharan Dung Beetle: A Modern Incarnation of Sisyphus

So, it was just another one of those sexy-ass Saturday mornings, laying out, recovering, and watching some Discovery. All of a sudden, I find myself enthralled by the saga of the Saharan dung beetle. These Planet Earth type shows have a way with personification that make me feel like this shit-pushing beetle is my best friend and every bit of his struggle is in some way a struggle of my own. So it goes without saying that when this poor beetle, an outcast of bug society, trying his best to trudge along though his shitty (get it? haha) life, becomes locked in an epic struggle trying to roll his ball of camel poop up a loose packed sand dune, I almost shed a tear. For over five minutes, I watched the persistent beetle roll the deuce ball up the dune, only for gravity to defeat him just before he is able to breach the crest of the dune. What had this beetle done to deserve the punishment of rolling his chunk of excrement uphill only to fail just before victory again and again and again? Then it dawned on me that this beetle was merely a modern incarnation of Sisyphus, king of Ephyra, forced by the gods to push a boulder uphill just to have it roll back down again before he could achieve victory, and repeat the task until his death. Poor dung beetle. I wish I could sponsor such dung beetles for like $.35 a day, less than a price of coffee, and provide him with a beetle dune buggy or off-road Segway or something. I think I am most upset at the heartless camera man who stood idly by as the dung beetle faced failure over and over again. What a bastard. Just chuck the turd ball up the hill, problem solved. Quit being a dick, bro.

Adventures in the Land of Thrift

Venturing out to the Land of Thrift has pretty much become a weekly ritual for me as of late. On the weekends, when I find myself with little else to do, I wander the aisles of my local thrift stores looking for ancient treasures to rescue from the threat of mistreatment and annihilation. I often find myself on little tares for specific goods, focusing my searches on singular items, blinding myself to awesome treasures that do not fit the criteria of my present mission. In this regard, I always find new and exciting things even after visiting the same thrift store for the umpteen millionth time. So, now that I am on a quest of renewed literacy, I have been searching for books that pertain to the act of improving one's writing skills, are listed on the ALA banned books list, look generally bad-ass on a bookshelf, relate to obsolete trades or crafts, are published before the 1970's, or hold some sort of nostalgic value to me. Today, I happened upon a few books that held a great deal of nostalgic value to me. Hardy Boys novels published in 1985.

It may sound stupid, but I grabbed every copy I could get my greedy little mitts on. Unfortunately, that was only seven copies. But at a buck and a half each, plus the fifty percent off blue tag sale, it only came to a grand total of $5.51 after tax. I would have paid the full price, probably even more because honestly, how can you put a price on nostalgia? These are the books I cut my teeth on, the very first novels I read religiously. I can just picture little me, standing in the youth reading section of my local library frozen in awe of the giant (or seemingly giant to a young child) walls of shelves towering over me, brimming with books of all varieties. Choose your own adventure books, Tom Swifts, gripping tales of heroic youths and child detectives, tame mysteries, they were all begging to be plucked from the shelf and read. But as I scanned the vast sea of literature, it was that block of blue spined novels that caught my eye. I carefully slid one copy from the ranks and reviewed the cover. You see, as a youth, I was not aware of the adage discouraging the act of judging books by their covers. To me, that was business as usual, you know, my modus operandi as they say. And what a cover it was: two brothers just being total bad-ass mofos (me and my brother were bad-ass mofos so I could relate to this) checking out clues and solving mysteries that adults couldn't even piece together. I pulled two more copies down and headed to the check-out desk, chest out, strutting my literate little butt up to the counter with a look on my face that said "yeah, I read novels now, don't act like you aren't impressed". It was an amazing feeling. As it came to be, I returned to those towering shelves again and again pulling three books at a time until I had read my way through the Hardy Boys series, then I was on to the Encyclopedia Brown series, then a short tryst with Choose Your Own Adventures, then Goosebumps, then for some reason I got really into the Vietnam War and read a lot of non-fiction pertaining to the atrocities of attritional warfare (I never claimed to be a 100% normal child). But at the age of twenty seven, seeing that block of blue spined nostalgia on the thrift store book rack rubbing elbows with Reader's Digest Condensed Classics, that feeling of excitement I had as a budding reader came washing over me again. As I carefully slid a copy from its ranks and reviewed the cover, I had no other choice but to grab them all and strut up to the register with a look on my face that said "I'm twenty seven and read Hardy Boys, don't act like you aren't impressed". Now those books have found themselves a home on my bookshelf, folded into the ranks of some serious heavy duty literature. I know the Hardy Boys won't be scared, they are two bad-ass mofos that I consider just as timeless and culturally important as the Grapes of Wrath or the Lord of the Flies. Welcome home, boys. Welcome home.

Hey Freud, Tell Me What This Dream Means

I am standing in front of a row house with an ax and a card table. I make a phone call. A pizza delivery man arrives and places a pizza on the card table. For some reason, the pizza is not boxed. I smash the pizza with the ax held sideways so the broad side of the head is smashing the pizza. I call in another pizza from another establishment, and repeat the process. A crowd gathers. I cannot explain how or why I came to be here smashing pizzas with an ax. More people gather. They are beginning to heckle me. This continues for a while until a torrential downpour begins, forcing the crowd to disperse and seek drier venues for their mocking stares. I wash my ax in the gutter, step into a gondola, and float away into the mist of infinity. What the shit would Freud have to say about that dream?

Bustin' Them Ghosts

Sometimes, when I am driving on a lonely stretch of road and I see a patch of fog lingering in my path, I imagine that it is a ghost. Then, I strike it with my vehicle. Why? Because I'm a Ghostbuster in training. And because ghosts have no business crossing the street outside of designated Spectral Entity Crossings anyways. Now, I know some of you ghost advocates are going to question my motives here, so let's just clear the air. I don't hate ghosts, per se, but I won't stand for the overt arrogance of lone road ghosts or even lone fog patches for that matter. Are you too good to hang out at the cemetery with the other ghosts? Do you think that the road is your own personal haunting ground? Well, I'm here to tell you that the same rules that apply to living outcasts still apply to you. Don't play in the street, lest ye be ready to meet your fate. If you happen to be a ghostly fog patch in my path, that means you better be prepared to be blasted by a heavy dose of Proton Stream, AKA my high beams. On that note, it's a general rule that if you are busting ghosts from the opposite direction of traffic to dim your Proton Stream when approaching another Ghostbuster in action to prevent stream crossing. Egon said that shit is a no-no.

"There's something very important I forgot to tell you! Don't cross the streams… It would be bad… Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light."

—Egon Spengler on crossing proton streams

I Bought a Time Machine From the Thrift Store

Well, a time machine of sorts. It's an old school Dymo label maker. Heavy metal, chrome plating, it's like bawse status as far as label makers are concerned. This thing has the power to turn your maturity clock back to the elementary school era instantly. Oh sure, it starts well enough. *click* *click* *click* *click*. "MINE". Nice, now I can label things that belong to me. *click* *click* *click* *click* "CRAP". Hmm, that's odd. Why would I.. *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* "SHIT ASS BUTT FART". Oh, real mature. Yeah that's what this label maker is for, unbridled obscenity. It's a shit ass butt fart machine, right? But that's how it operates with these cursed machines. You simply cannot turn that alphanumeric wheel without eventually clicking out ribbons of vulgarity that no respectable adult would replicate in any other media. There is something about this hunk of nostalgic crap that makes you want to insult friends and label everything in completely erroneous ways. Why? I have yet to figure that out myself, but I am working on it. There has to be a logical explanation for why this thing turns you into an immature crapmaster.

Questions That Bother Me

1. What are dragon teeth made out of? Seems like teeth should not be able to withstand prolonged exposure to flame, but I dare not Google "incineration point of teeth" lest I be added to some kind of watch list.

2. Where did Paul Bunyan poop? I would hate to work on a lumber team with him if he is just running around dropping mega-deuce up in the woods. Even if you dug a latrine deep enough, I have to imagine that the forest isn't going to smell right for hours after a giant does his duty. Doody?

3. Why is there no listing in the phone book for "Scientist"? This is just stupid. Sometimes, I just want to consult a Bill Nye type character with my scientific queries. Shit, I'd settle for a Beekman type character at this point, just give a direct line to a damn scientist.

4. Why is there no hardness standard amongst turtle eggs? I mean, when I Google "are turtle eggs hard or soft?" and find out that it is a damn trick question, my goddamn day is ruined. Evolution, get on that shit ASAP.

5. Why is no one credited with the invention of shoe laces? Oddly enough, some b-hole has claimed to be the first person to jam meat betwixt two pieces of bread thereby inventing the sandwich, but no one stepped forward to claim shoe laces? What the actual shit? Jonn Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, whether you be in Heaven or Hell, know that I am on to you. Motherfuckers were jamming meat between breads waaaay before the 1700's. Quit lying, bro. Is it too late to claim credit for those shoe laces?

So there you have it, five questions that bother me. Have answers? Have theories? Drop me a line! I'll post any reasonable explanation. I'm probably just as likely to post unreasonable explanations, too.

A Formal Apology to the Hipsters

Hey guys, sorry about all that disliking you nonsense. I kinda fucked that one up, my bad. You see, what had happened was, I had you guys confused with another subculture that I wasn't really even aware existed. I mistook them for you, mild annoyance grew to dislike, dislike almost grew to hate, all of this cast upon the entirely wrong group. All of that gobbledeegook was meant for the "Try-too-hardsters". Venerable foes they are. Often masking themselves like wolves in sheep's clothing as members of other subcultures. Alas, I have seen the seams in their Hipster costumes. Got those sneaky bastages pegged. Buying fixies at Walmart and wearing handlebar moustaches for the sake of fashion instead of irony. The shame, the shame of it all. Oh what's that? You rocked the Velcros before that Macklemore fellow? Sure, I'll buy that, you dirty Try-too-hardster. You bandwagon overachiever. Hipsters, you keep doing what you do. Do it for the irony, do it for the lulz. Step out of the dark shadows PBR in hand, Civil War brogans on foot, and ride that fixed gear into the infinite sunset knowing that you have one less enemy in this world. But beware the ones who hide among your fold trying desparately to fit in, buying their way into your lifestyle. Question the motives of anyone who buys ugly sweaters from Amazon instead of the thrift store and anyone who has reciepts for pashmina scarves from Eckerd drugstores dated anytime in 2012. But lastly, if they can't tell you exactly when something went mainstream, how can they say for sure that they were into it before it went mainstream? That's the silver bullet for Try-too-hardsters. Oh, and Try-too-hardsters, stop with the Imax 3D glasses with the lenses punched out. That's trying way too hard, even for you assholes.
Yours Both Respectfully Apologetic and Simultaneously Annoyed,
John Q. Pseudonym

Paying for Clicks

Just have to float a few of these bucks about town, and BAM! instant readership. Or not. Who cares?

If you happen to be here because you found one of these bills, do me a solid and drop me a line. Fuck it, drop me line even if you didn't. Hate the blog? Love the blog? Don't give a shit either way? Let me know!

The Clacking Cacophony of Manifesto

Blogging via typewriter this morning. Click the image to expand.

Having trouble reading this? Click here for a larger image.

The Strange Tale of the Piggyback Bandit

Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society: The Strange Tale of the Piggyback Bandit

Somewhere in that hazy grey area between late night and early morning, I stumbled across a gem of an article written by Bryan Curtis over at Grantland and found myself instantly captivated by the mischievous and creepy antics of a man deemed The Piggyback Bandit. This bizarre but true story follows the exploits of a loner with aspergers syndrome who traveled the country by Greyhound seeking the nostalgic joy of piggyback rides. By force. Banned from entering five states, and trespassed by countless schools, will the Piggyback Bandit ever stop helping himself to uninvited piggyback rides from unsuspecting high school athletes? Read the full story here, you won't regret it.

Random Acts of Manliness: The Ax Purchase

Few things in this world are as viscerally satisfying as swinging an ax. I know this because after twenty seven years of idiocy, I finally broke down and bought an ax. Why? Shit, I don't know. But for some reason, for the first time in my life, I suddenly became aware of my complete lack of axery. To me, this was just further evidence of the disconnect that my generation has with all generations prior. Go back just a few decades and you will realize that for households past, an ax wasn't a luxury or a novelty, it was a life necessity. Go back a few centuries, and you will realize that a man without an ax was essentially a dead motherfucker. Part tool, part weapon, full friend and confidant, an ax was essential to early man's life and without it, shelter, fire, and safety were not an option. Fast forward to today, and an ax is about as necessary to daily life as hen's teeth. But, as I held that hickory handle in my hands for the first time, a wave of memories from my past lives of manliness came flooding through me and as I swung and struck that first blow into an oak stump, I knew that this just felt right. I pictured bad-ass dudes in flannel and suspenders clear cutting forests in the North West with nothing but their trusty axes and satchels full of flap-jacks to provide daily nourishment*. Then I pictured plainsmen settling homesteads, cutting down logs and notching felled timbers to assemble log cabins, structures which would stand as a testament to manliness and craftsmanship long after the builder was dead and buried and his ax had rusted away into oblivion. Last I pictured a sea of angry Norsemen, gone berserk on 'shrooms and Meade, axing their way to glorious victory or dying the most honorable death at the hands of another crazed ax-man and passing on to the Halls of Valhalla. Through my ax, I would continue this saga, even if my contribution was minimal. At the very least, as I lie upon my death bed, I can whisper to my survivors "remember that time I bought an ax and chopped a chunk out of that oak stump? Yeah, I know, it was bad-ass."

*The historical accuracy of lumberjacks carrying satchels full of flapjacks could not be verified. This may or may not be a glitch in my memory, whereby I mixed chunks of Paul Bunyan with actual historical knowledge.