Wait, Madam! There is comedy in your purse

Don’t wake Daddy was the Candy Land of My Generation

2007-04-30T13:37:00.000-07:00

There have been worse ideas for board games besides Don’t Wake Daddy, but that game was called Hungry Hungry Hippos, and it made millions, so I won’t go into that.

But besides those hedonistic hippos and their white ball hoarding feasts, DWD was quite possibly the dumbest idea anybody could have ever conceived of, rivaled only by Polio and Andrew Dice Clay’s career.

The premise of the game was simple. You picked up your pieces, went doo di doo di doo, around the board, while some jerkoff would hit the button by daddy’s bed until he woke up and everybody, in unison, mind you, would shout, “Don’t-wake-daddy!” In the mean time, your real daddy, taking a nap after a hard day at the sulfur factory, would wake up and wallop you with a day old Daily News for disturbing his sleep before dinner. (“I told you kids! I told you! Daddy needs sleep!”)

Another great game, and by great, I mean terrible, was Trouble. It seems that every board game back then in the Paleozoic Era I was born in had some kind of stupid thing to shout out as you progress, with this particular utterance being, yep, you guessed it (or maybe you just knew it): “TROUBLE!”

I don’t quite remember the rules of the game, or even if it was actually a game at all (it could have been a piece of propaganda to successfully elect Spiro Agnew, I’m not quite sure). But what I do remember was that it wasn’t fun, and actually caused trouble in my own life when I stepped on it on purpose when my friend’s little sister was having a slumber party. That girl’s mother made me pay for a new game for her with my own money. I never talked to that friend or his sister ever again.

But where was I going with this?

Oh, yeah, DON’T-WAKE-DADDY!

As much as I hate the game, you gotta love that title.

If only they came with souls

2007-04-19T10:10:00.000-07:00

Mentos is good for chewing, or getting paint on your pinstripe business suit and rolling around like a beached walrus so your entire suit gets paint on it, but what else is it good for? I’d like to know. If they had souls, I’d say keeping them as pets, or making them into robots (Saves the trouble of inputting the C ++ soul program into them). But what else? As it stands right now, all they’re good for are two things, so I don’t see what the big deal is about them.

Now, crack! THERE’s a booger sugar with a personality. Not that I’ve done it or even recommend people do it, but if there’s one thing that represents the 80’s, besides keytars, it’s crack.

And Mr. Belvidere.

But mostly crack.

Stupid good for nothing Mentos. Freshmaker, my clavicle!

Does NO ONE love the “nappy headed hoes” at Rutgers U?

2007-04-15T06:58:00.000-07:00

There are words (muffin, puppy dog, tax refund adjustment) and then there are WORDS (nigger, spic, Sanjaya fan). And depending on what you say and how you say it, words can either be your best friend, or your worst prison inmate, it all really depends on who’s saying it, and who you’re saying it to.

Case in point: Don Imus. Let’s be honest, the shock jock radio personality, donning a cowboy hat and a face reminiscent of Hudson from the show Gargoyles, does NOT seem like the kind of person who should be calling women from the Rutgers’ basketball team “nappy headed hoes.” But, if you’ve taken the time to click out of World of Warcraft for a second, you’ll know that the I-Man did just that. And not only that, but he got fired for it, too.

Now, do I think Imus should have been fired? In all truths, no.

But here’s another, more important question. (I’ll get back to the aforementioned one in a second) Was what Imus said hurtful or funny? Honestly, I think it was the latter and have been calling people “nappy headed hoes” nonstop ever since (“Mom, you’re nothing but…nothing but a NAPPY HEADED HO!”), but I suppose it all really depends on how thick skinned you are, and how easily you can brush off a joke.

But let’s back up for a second, shall we? Should Imus have been fired? In my opinion, no, he shouldn’t have, but then again, most people call me the “whitest black person on the planet,” so maybe I don’t really have a say.

I think I do have a say, though, and in turn, I think Imus had a say, too, even though some might have found what he said to be offensive and just plain wrong.

But, if you think about it, isn’t that what shock jocks get paid for? SHOCKING you. They say things with reckless abandon and hope that the censors don’t pull the plug on them while they’re talking mid-sentence. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, either. Everybody says racial jokes, right? They’re more American than apple pie and Kurt Cobain, and most people laugh when they hear them, too, don’t they?

I mean, come on, be truthful. How many times have you been in a situation where you saw a white guy thrust their hips totally out of rhythm to some Three 6 Mafia song and said, “Look at that white bwoi go!” If you haven’t, then you’re either A) lying to yourself, or B) lying to me, because you have, and when a black person says it, supposedly it’s acceptable.

But when a WHITE person says something (and one who wears a cowboy hat and listens to country music to boot), he’s a bona fide racist, and, and, and, how DARE he talk about the black community like that?! Let me get Al Sharpton on the phone this instant. HE’LL know what to do about this.

It’s so unbalanced, it is, and blacks, through the years of gangster rap and movies like Boyz n The Hood, have been calling women hoes since the 90’s. And you know very well if somebody like Star or Buckwild made a comment like that on the air, they wouldn’t even have gotten a slap on the hairless wrist.

MAYBE some women MIGHT have called up and said, “Look, you have to watch what you say on the radio,” but I’ll tell you this, The New York Post wouldn’t have run a front page story declaring their ousting from the building immediately. The New York Post, trashy toilet paper that it is, wouldn’t have even had it below the fold. In fact, it wouldn’t have even been in the paper at all.

But Imus, well, that white boy can’t say things like that. He MUST be a racist. I mean, I’ve never even listened to the man before (and I’m not saying I haven’t, because I have, that’s why I think I should be able to voice my opinion on him. I’m just giving an example, you see), but just LOOK at him. That weird shaped hobgoblin face, those Ku Klux Klan eyes (Where’s your hood, honkey?!). No white man should be able to talk about MY race like that, I’m (*bursts into tears*) and so on, and so forth. That’s how the black community has acted about this whole thing—first in a fit of rage, and then with a teary eyed whimper, demanding justice from the network that housed him.

And while yes, I’ve ranted on quite a bit and haven’t really reached a real point, does everybody get where I’m going with this? I mean if Bill Clinton had called them “nappy headed hoes,” jokingly, of course, I don’t think he would have received the shit storm Imus has, and he was once President of the United STATES, for Taco Bell’s sake! Most would probably just see it as a joke, (“Oh, how he kids”), because many blacks respect Clinton and would probably just shrug it off and say, “Well, he’s one of us anyway, right? Remember when he was in office? He did so much for the black community.”

But what do you think? I’ve always been one to point out obvious contradictions with race relations, and think the black community goes overboard sometimes at what they cite as racist. (Michael Richards, yes. Imus, no.)

Leave a response after the beep. If you think I’m wrong, then maybe I am. But I have my say, too, don’t I? Words are MY best friend, after all.

A Sermon for Kurt (of the Vonnegut variety)

2007-04-13T13:31:00.000-07:00

Alright, alright, everybody sit down, sit down. This is a FUNERAL for crepe’s sake, not a burlesque house…that’s at six.

Hokay, now that everybody’s settled, I think it’s time to take a toast to my dear friend, Kurt, 84 years ancient; his obliterated Paul Maul endorsed lungs no longer breathing in air. As a personal admirer of the man who only knew him through his books, I believe I am the end all, be all authority to talk about his life history, for who else is qualified, his wife and kids?

And while the answer to that rhetorical question might be an obvious, “yes”, they’re not here right now, and supposedly didn’t receive the 389 emails I sent them.

So…so it goes.

Kurt grew up a young boy like most young boys. The only problem being that his father was an oft-unemployed dreamer, and his mother was a pill popper who one day mixed her Flintstone pills with her booze and never woke up again. This, I’m sure you can gather, was a suicide that would rest heavily on Kurt’s soul, and often was the reason why there was always a hint of sadness in his mirth—a punch to the heart for every donkey kick to the funny bone his one word paragraphs would deliver.

Because, in all truths, Kurt really wasn’t a very happy man. In his masterwork, Slaughterhouse 5, he recounted his occupation in World War 2, which was a war that he saw some terrible things in, and also some pretty funny (But not funny, “ha-ha”) things in as well. Like the fire bombing of Dresden, for instance. Believe it or not, Kurt actually LIVED through it by staying stored up in a meat locker with a bunch of Germans at the time. And when reading the book, you really can’t tell which Kurt found funnier, the firebombing, or the fact that he came out of it alive. And to be honest with you, I don’t think he even knew the answer to that himself, which makes him even MORE of a mystery. That crazy moralist always WAS kind of “funny” in that way.

But Kurt had a whole bunch of other books, too, and to think that people usually characterize him based on just that one makes me want vomit in a fit of rage! And Mountain Dew. But mostly rage!

Player Piano, his first novel, is a masterpiece that goes into the whole HAL issue (When will robots start taking over, already?) before HAL was even a twinkle in Arthur C Clarke’s eye. And The Sirens of Titan, a head trip if there ever was one, tackled questions that I can’t quite remember right now, but it was an adventure all the same, as all of his stories were.

Following Sirens was Mother Night, and following that was…Well, I’m not going to read you off the list I have in front of me right now. In the age of wikipedia and iTunes, or whatever you kids use to steal Sir Mix-a-Lot songs these days, I don’t have to read you off the titles, as you can just look them up yourself. But I will tell you this, they’re all wonderful, introspective, brilliant; tickle your belly button, hoo-ha’s, that should be read by all ages, no matter the generation, or whether you’re squeamish to a well-told story fattened up in all the right places with humor.

So, Kurt, hopefully resting on Tralfamadore with your sister, Alice, your brother Bernard, your doppelganger Kilgore, and all the other crazy, hepped up characters you lifted your ass up for and farted out, God bless you, and your Unitarian ways. If there’s anything this Earth ever did get right, is was messing you up in all the wrong ways for you to write your stories and make the rest of us show our toothiest grin to the world. And while that may be a horrible thing to say, somehow, I think it’s what you really thought, too. (*Turns around and ruffles Kurt’s hair*)

And so it goes, forever and ever. Amen.

Come one, come all, to Uncle Ben's Player's Ball

2007-03-19T10:40:00.000-07:00

Everybody knows Uncle Ben’s a pimp. With Aunt Jemima on one arm, and Sara Lee on the other (“Cause nobody doesn’t like her, fool!”) Uncle Ben has single-handedly made the rice business his bitch and has ratted out his sole competitor, Senor Goya, to the INS, making him the premier rice distributor in the world.

So, with the crown atop his head, Uncle Ben has decided to throw his first annual Player’s Ball. But not just anybody can come to said ball of player’s. To get into this ritzy joint, which is being held at the White Castle on 7th Ave this year, you have to be the baddest of the bad, and the coolest of the cool. And currently, with such a tight economy, only four possible player’s actually made it in this year. Here are their attributes and shot at winning the crown.

Colonel Sanders:
With a face as iconic as slavery and chicken breasts, Colonel Sanders has a good shot at winning it all. His greasy chicken, choice to wear all white, and Kentucky fried mustache make him one heck of a pimp. It also makes him one snazzy looking colonel. What the hell, US Military? Why don’t soldiers dress like the Sands anymore?

PROS: Owns his own business from beyond the grave, has revolutionized the use of the bucket, KFC biscuits the only product from Heaven to safely make it down to Earth.

CONS: Too much of a thigh man, skin only edible part of his chicken, nasty habit to go to comedy clubs and drop the “N” bomb.

Chances of winning: 10-1.

Mr. Monopoly:
Everybody knows that the Monopoly magnate (also known to his stock broker friends as Rich Uncle Pennybags) is one of the filthiest—in the rich sort of way—player’s out there. Not only can he make or break you with as little as a dice roll, but he can also make a top hat, a cane, and a red bow tie look as natural as professional wrestling and the cell membrane of a plant. Oh, and he can put on his own diaper, too. Ladies, look out!

PROS: Literally has a card that gets him out of jail, has four railroads, all of them, amazing, has his own currency.

CONS: Drives a one inch silver car, talks like he’s still living in the thirties, spits when he eats fish and mustard sandwiches (It’s true, watch him eat sometime).

Chances of winning: 40-1.

The Quaker Oats Guy:
The Quaker Oats Guy, though you didn’t know this, is one of the most notorious, rapacious arms dealers out there. Using a special blend of oatmeal that he mixes with gun powder and old Chinese newspapers, he has single handedly supplied the middle east and North Korea (Not to mention Vatican City) with more weaponry than Hunter S. Thompson’s stockpile. And yes, while he is a pimp, you’ll find that he’s also a very dirty, lecherous, not very nice pimp, which is unlike most pimps you’ll find in your slums and ghettos.

PROS: Rocks white Prince Valiant hair and smiles about it, product can make you lose weight by induced vomiting, can recite Rapper’s Delight perfectly without missing a single word

CONS: Gay, which is not a con, but at a Player’s Ball where you’re supposed to bring hot females, it hurts when you bring Mr. Goodbar and Clark Bar by your side, Did I mention his product makes you vomit?

Chances of winning: 30-1

Orville Redenbacher:
The obvious looker of the bunch, Orville made his career with salty popcorn that frankly, really isn’t all that good. Still, with his Steve Urkel get-up and lack of any real history of being a pedophile or anything like that, you could do a lot worse than Orwell. Like the guy on the Crackerjacks box, for instance. Let’s not get into his back-story…

PROS: A nice guy who just wants to shove popcorn down your throat, wears glasses so thick they can see through time

CONS: Eats with his elbows on the table, has tendency to pop his corn when you’re making love just so he can walk in and say, “Oops, sorry, didn’t see you there.”

Chances of winning: 20-1

And the winner is...Dark horse candidate Count Chocula, who has amassed a fortune in his 3000 years on this planet. Sorry fellows, better luck next year. Your delicious treats and whimsical board games that teach us the facts of life will not be forgotten. And you can take that to the bank (You get it? Like Rich UnclePenny Bags? And, oh, forget it, these kind of jokes are lost on you…)

I beat leprosy!

2007-03-10T12:34:00.000-08:00

Many of you may not have known this (including myself), but I actually had leprosy. And if my idea for why I got it in the first place serves me correctly, which it probably doesn’t, the reason I acquired it is because I “accidentally” ate meat on Friday, which, as all Catholics know, is a big no-no, or, as Bruno from The Ali G Show would put it, a big “nish-nish.”

So, the only logical explanation for my sudden bout with leprosy, which I beat by scaling the highest mountain and singing “I’m a maniac, maaaaaniac, that’s for sure, and I’m dancing like I never danced before,” all to Marky Mark’s “Good Vibrations” (And let me tell you, singing and dancing to a song with another song playing in the background is much harder than you think), is because God was spiting me.

Leave it to me to forget that Good Friday just so happens to land on a Friday, which is the same day I enjoyed a foot long meat sub from the house that Jared built (or at least made popular).

I knew by the first bite, after realizing that it was Friday, that I should stop while I was in mid-mastication, but did I? Noooooooo. I reasoned that God wouldn’t be too upset with me since I’ve done a pretty good job of not eating snacks or deserts for the entirety of Lent so far, which is my sacrifice for the season. But jeepers, He was just as mad as ever.

Out of the clouds, God (yes, THEE God) pointed a long, austere finger at me, his voice booming in between bouts of thunder, and scolded me with the severity of a father catching his only son borrowing his brand new Camaro: “RICHARD BRANDON KNIGHT!” He said, “I SAAAAW YOU EAT THAT SUB, AND NOT JUST HALF OF IT, EITHER, BUT ALLLLL OF IT, AND YOU CHEWED IT WITH GREAT RELISH AND GLEE. AND WHEN I SAY GREAT RELISH, I MEAN OF THE PICKLE VARIETY! YES, I SAW YOU, DON’T THINK I DIDN’T SEE YOU PUT RELISH ON A MEATBALL SUB. YOU SICKEN ME!”

And with that, leprosy spread all across my body. I wandered the land for a whole day speaking inaudible things to passerby’s who spat on me, and called me Leprosy McLep Leper, which, now that I’m cured, doesn’t really make much sense. But you know how cruel people can be when you have leprosy. And if you don’t, I never liked you anyway.

So, back to my story.

Well…actually, that was it.

But if you’re looking for a moral to this story, here it is: Good Vibrations, even today, is a totally radical song.

Oh, and try not to eat meat on Friday. At least not a whole meatball sub, anyway.

Thank Jehovah’s Witness that Black History Month is Finally Over

2007-02-28T08:45:00.000-08:00

February, besides being the shortest month of the year, is also the most annoying, since it harbors both abysmally, balls shriveling cold weather, and black history month. And anybody who’s anybody knows that BHM is the biggest farce since Scorsese won the Academy Award for The Departed (Just because he didn’t win for Taxi Driver or Raging Bull doesn’t mean he deserves it now).

“But, wait,” you say, scratching the rash on your belly you’ve had since Monday but are afraid to get checked out (You’ve even smeared Peanut Butter on it, thinking it would work), “Aren’t you black, Richard B. Knight?”

And while this is a good assumption (and an accurate one), judging by my skin color, it doesn’t mean squat. Back in, ummmm, I’m going to say fourth grade, I was actually reprimanded for saying black history month was stupid (I wasn’t referring to things as “gay,” back then, but if the phrase was part of the English vernacular like it is now, I probably would have) when we had to study it for a whole month in a section of the book that was SOLELY designated for the month of February. Showcasing that black history is obviously not comparable to the rest of the history in the text book, as black history is a whole ‘nother monster, probably with a big black dong. Black History, like most blacks, probably has a big black dong.

But the whole concept of it is sofa king retar Ed. A month dedicated to black history is segregation, plain and simple. Black history, Heaven and Georgia forbid, in this light, is not to be taught the rest of the year, since it deserves a whole month, which is just a way of saying, “Here’s your damn month, take it and like it.” And while Martin Luther King Jr. is nifty and all, why do I have to celebrate what he did every single stinking year (in cold booty weather, no less) as if he parted the Red Sea with his bear hands?

Yes, I KNOW he did more for blacks than the average Notorious B.I.G., and yes, I KNOW black people now have rights they never had as little as five decades ago, but with that, we’ve also got rappers talking about why their “leather’s so soft,” and “this is why I’m hot.” Come ON, man, don’t you have anything BETTER to talk about than your newly acquired opulence? Sheeh!

And why do I have to see stupid Coke commercials reminding me that I better be celebrating (and drinking sugar from a bottle) while I still can? I know this kind of treatment only happens once a year, but garsh, you’re kinda beating me over the head with it and disappointing me when you tell me that the last great black achievement was in 1963 (See: MLK, again).

It’s all so…cloying! Take something good, and then bastardize it. Good job, fellas. You guys did for black history month what Hallmark did for love: Made a stupid, commercial day out of it, and then tell people it’s all in the spirit of the holidays. You’re AA sponsors would be proud.

Oh, and Kwanzaa’s dumb, too. People dressing up in Afrika Bambaataa garb and lighting candles? Why don’t they just play Planet Rock and call it Afrika Bambaata day then? Black History Month and Kwanzaa=unneeded.

Thank God the month is short, at least.

I’m not doing it, I’m not doing it, I’m not doing it (And by it, I mean, selling my Goosebumps Collection)

2007-02-21T19:53:00.000-08:00

The other day, while I was writing a blog entry (whooooa, Meeeetaaaa), my mom told me, and these were her exact words, “Snoop Doggy Dogg needs to get a jobby job,” with the name Snoop referring to me, and the word job referring to, well, a job.

In other words (Or maybe it’s just the same words) I need a job. And I’m talking about one that pays this time, too (No more free pogs for me).

So, I’ve decided to go into teaching, which is something I would actually be good at instead of something I would fail miserably in (*cough* like writing *end cough*). But, before I take that final plunge into the Praxis, my mom advised, all Zen-like and stuff, that I cast away all the things that emblemize my childhood to truly take that one, two, two and a half, three steps into manhood.

Now, when she says “get rid of the junk” in my room, I know perfectly well that she’s hinting at the overflowing box of Goosebumps books I have, and she made that abundantly clear when she left a note on it saying, “THIS does not equal grandchildren.”

But I’m not doing it. Next she’s going to ask me to get rid of all the awesome Garbage Pail Kids I’ve collected over the past decade (You think its easy stripping for rare cards?! Well, it is!)

I’m not going to do it. I just won’t.

So, the next time you see me around, I’ll probably be a teacher. But not JUST any teacher, mind you, but THE teacher with the whole Night of the Living Dummy trilogy. Take THAT, family! R.L. Stein, be proud!

My Double Chin has the Power of North Korea and Aquaman Combined!

2007-02-06T13:03:00.000-08:00

Everybody I’ve ever gone to the local China Buffet with has commented on how it’s tacky that I use the soup bowl as a larger, more accommodating bowl for my after meal ice cream (are you kidding me? That little silver bowl they give you is not Buffet worthy, I don’t know why they even bother putting that out there). But NOW who has the last laugh?

After eating myself illegally obese this past weekend, I’ve discovered that my once prominent one chin has evolved into an all mighty, all powerful, Godzilla killing, TWO chins, and now has the power to single-handedly take on whoever’s the champ right now in just about any sport in the world (Including curling and cup stacking). The cool thing about my double chin is that it weighs a healthy fourteen pounds and is also eligible to vote at this upcoming 2008 election (We’re torn, I’m for Obama, my chin is for Hillary, this is going to be one hellish primary).

But most people (mostly women) aren’t impressed with my second chin, citing that it is ghastly in many ways, and horrifying in others. To those people, I say, Mungadung. Now really now, are you honestly telling me that if you had the ability to scientifically sprout an extra chin, you wouldn’t? I find that hard to believe, really, I do.

And to prove you’re wrong in every conceivable way legal in the state of Nebraska, I’ve listed a few famous people in history who have had double chins, and also reasons why they’ve succeeded in life (Pro Tip: it’s because they had double chins)

John Goodman—John Goodman’s double chin actually made him look uncannily like Babe Ruth in the movie of the same name, and also enabled him to have the deep vibrato (whatever that means) to deliver exciting new endorsements for Dunkin Donuts commercials. Without a double chin, John Goodman would just be Roseanne Barr.

King Henry the letter V and three uppercased I’s.—Though I’ve never really seen a picture of King Henry the eighthhhhh, I do know that he had a lot of wives and supposedly died of syphilis. But, legend has it (a legend I just made up, mind you), if he didn’t have his awesome double chin, he would have also been inflicted with Chlamydia and gonorrhea...as well as rickets (though, I don’t know how). But don’t take my word for it…That’s the end of the sentence. I'm sorry if the dot, dot, dot, made you think there was more.

Henry James—Most people these days don’t even know who Henry James is, and that’s okay. Most people don’t know who their Secretary of State is, either, and this country is getting by fine, isn’t it? Well, for those out there who DON’T know who Mr. James is, all you have to know is this: he had a double chin and is immesely overrated. And that’s all you have to know about Henry James.

There are a whole lot other people with double chins, but all this weight I put on over the weekend is reeeeealllly making me sleepy. Just know that the greatest thing you can do for this country is grow a double chin (if you don’t have one already, which you probably do.). Remember, girth increases birth. I actually don’t know if that’s true, but it rhymes, and rhymes are always true…when they’re on time, ohhhhhh! But seriously, though, lose weight. The following has been paid for by McDonalds.

Rich Knight interviews...Rich Knight? Huh???

2007-02-03T12:40:00.000-08:00

Hello, my name is Rich Knight. Most people who know me know that already. They’ll say, “Hey, Rich Knight, how’s the book coming along?” and I’ll say, “Good, haven’t sold it yet, but good!”

But what they DON’T know about me, though, is that I’m not the only Rich Knight I communicate with. Sure, like everybody else, I take my daily trip to the mirror and perform Rapper’s Delight with my shirt off. But there’s another Rich Knight I’m also personal and cordial with. And his name is…Rich Knight. He’s pretty famous and he’s even the first Rich Knight you find when you type his (my) name in google (No lie! Check it out). He’s a make-up artist, actor, guitar hero, shop owner, and even a black belt in Taekwondo (What the hell DOESN’T this guy do?) So here, for your eyes only (and anybody else’s who reads this interview) is my candid interview with Rich Knight, make-up artist/actor. And when you have the chance, check out Frankenstein vs. the Creature from Blood Cove, which he worked on extensively. It’s camparific! Eagle Scout’s Honor. Okay, on with the carnival.

1: You recently noted on your MySpace page (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=856683) that you stopped taking on interns. Why did you decide to take on interns in the first place?

A few years ago I thought it might be a good idea to start taking on interns to help out on film and television projects. The idea is that I would teach them the art of special effects makeup in exchange for them assisting me on my projects. This all sounds like a very good idea in theory; however, in practice, it’s another story altogether. I discovered that very few "interns" actually cared about bettering themselves as artists and were mainly interested in gaining a film credit.

Of all the interns I’ve had under my wing, only a small handful actually stuck around to learn something. I ended the internship program in frustration and have come to the conclusion that unless someone is paying for their education, they won't take it seriously. Sure there's a handful of people that are qualified for such a program, but I just don't have the time to weed through the flakey people. Another issue with the interns was that I discovered that it slowed me down. I got much less work done because I had to stop and teach...When the interns would leave for the day I would actually get some work done. Today I have one apprentice, and will only teach/train one person at a time.

2: When and why did you decide to get a black belt in Taekwondo?

My ex-wife was a martial artist and she and I studied martial arts together. I always wanted to learn karate when growing up, but for whatever reason I never pursued it. It was my ex that encouraged me to pursue Taekwondo. In fact, I believe that was the only good thing that came [out] of that marriage. When I first started, it was all just for fun and exercise, but as I got into the sport more and more, I discovered that I had some natural abilities. I never really thought that I’d become a black belt, it was all about having fun and staying fit for me, but I advanced quickly.

I became hungry to learn as much as I could, and would go to class as often as four times a week. I continue to practice martial arts to this day, on a much more casual basis, [though]. I am just now beginning to put my training back into high gear to prepare for a possible martial arts film that I may be doing next year. Either way, karate has become a part of my identity and I encourage everyone to consider learning the sport.

3: Have you ever thought of directing?

I'm not one of those people who goes around saying, "what I really want to do is direct". That is about as cliche as saying "let's do lunch,” or "I'll have my people call your people". Believe it or not, there are actually people out there who still use those lame catch phrases. It's like the corporate buzz phrase "Think outside the box.” I say, maybe if you didn't work in a box you wouldn't have to think outside of one. Seriously though, I think that directing is the natural progression of things. There will be some projects that will require my vision and will ultimately place me in the director's chair.

This however, is something that I am not dwelling on or vigilantly pursuing at all. My thing is creating characters and in some cases, even becoming the characters I create. So long as the person that takes that director's chair has a vision, I am more than happy to work with them to bring that vision to realization. 4: You've mentioned that the Hulk is one of your heroes? Why is that? Is there a method to his madness that you find you relate to? The Hulk is one of my favorite super heroes for many reasons.

First and foremost, the Hulk is a monster inspired by the Universal Studio's Frankenstein monster, and Frankie is of course my favorite monster. I think that the other thing about the Hulk that appeals to me is that I relate to the Hulk's alter ego, Bruce Banner. Bruce is a mild mannered scientist that is, for the most part, a normal guy. But when people push him too far, he becomes this rampaging monster.

I sometimes feel like Dr. Banner, a mild mannered guy just trying to make his way in the world, except that when people make me angry, I don't turn green and break things. I just get angry. It's the idea that this destructive monster lives inside the good doctor and it can escape at any time that I find so appealing.

We are all sort of alike, you see. We all have this raging monster inside of us. We all have the capacity for violence and destruction and we are all challenged to cage the beast. For Dr. Banner, a blast of gamma radiation freed the monster despite his best efforts to suppress it. There's just something that is very liberating in seeing the beast be unleashed—it expresses true freedom.

It also demonstrates the importance of keeping a cool head. In reality, we all have to take responsibility for our actions and we can't just lose our tops when we are mad or start breaking things. What is most interesting about the Hulk is that, despite the anger and the destruction, there’s a child like innocence about him. The real question is, should Bruce Banner be responsible for the actions of his alter ego? I am thinking yes, because he allowed himself to lose his cool. The story of the Hulk is a constant reminder for me that cooler heads prevail. Just once, it would be nice to be able to grow huge muscles, turn green and smash things, though.

5: What did you think of Christopher Nolan's Batman starring Christian Bale? You've mentioned that the original Batman feature directed by Tim Burton was one of your greatest inspirations.

I loved Batman Begins! I think that Christopher Nolan hit on what made Tim Burton's Batman so successful . . . He made us believe that it was actually possible for a guy to put on a bat suit and fight crime. The other sequels tried too much to be like a comic book. That's where filmmakers fall short with superhero movies. I think they try too hard to make a comic book movie.

When Bob Kane originally created Batman, it was a very dark tale. It was not a colorful and campy comic book. It was a dark story of a boy who lost his parents and became a man who swore to avenge his parents by confronting evil—and that is the same story that we saw in Burton's and Nolan's Batman.

I still like the simplicity of the original Bat suit much more than the newer incarnations. Today's superhero suit designs are all way too over produced. The Tim Burton Batman had a very raw look to it, it was like eye candy... Sure, the newer suits moved much better and were probably more comfortable for the actor, but I dunno, I just prefer to see the human anatomy and form as they’re drawn in the comics as opposed to a bunch of meaningless lines and shapes added to fill space. One of these days, I would like to see a filmmaker do a comic book movie without changing everything and instead staying true to the original. I will bet that super hero movie will make more than any other before it.

6: You've done work for big pictures like X:Men: The Last Stand, and Rocky Balboa, but also a great deal of smaller films. What do you find more satisfying to work on?

Actually, although X-3 and Rocky are indeed bigger films, my involvement was minimal in the grand scheme of things. On X-3, I worked in the mold department and was brought on to the project near the end.

Same thing with Rocky Balboa, I worked on that for one day as an assistant. I did much more work on the upcoming films Beowulf, The Flock, and Seraphim Falls, as well as the recently released Omen picture. Although it is great to work on such high profile projects, the reality is that you get to do way more on the smaller films. On low budget indie, there's usually little time, little money and very little help which puts the responsibility all on my shoulders. I like it that way because I have the final say on how the effects play out. I also get to do more of the work myself rather than farming out to a shop full of lab techs.

In my experience, independent films are way more challenging than working for the studios anyways. In truth, the big studios can't seem to make a good movie these days. I mean, how many times have you gone to the theaters and spent ten bucks (or more) only to leave feeling ripped off? You would think that with a 100 Million Dollar budget, that something good could come of it, but it just doesn't seem to work that way.

I think that many of today’s mainstream films are over produced and lack the true art which makes a movie worth watching. Sure, the studios have all the money to make the effects perfect, but along the way, they lose the art and everything becomes too over the top, and too over polished. The end result is a pretty movie to look at with no substance. If you can get past the obvious lack of budget, I think that you will enjoy independent films much more than the cookie cutter movies that go straight to the theaters and to the DVD shelf exactly three months later. The real passion and art for film making is in Indy films.

7: Your biography on imdb comments on how you were born on the same day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon (July, 1969). Do you think that somehow cosmically played a role in your ultimate career choice?

That's a funny question that I never really thought about [before]. I mean, everyone feels in one way or another that they are destined for something, right? I think that there's something interesting and trivial about it. Being born in July makes my astrological sign Cancer, the symbol for cancer is a diagonal 69... I was born in 1969. The ruling planet for Cancer is the Moon, I was born the day they landed there. I don't know if there is any cosmic significance here except that it is all very fascinating and has lent itself towards many a night gazing into the stars and dreaming of other worlds.

I would like to believe that it also means that I am special in a cosmic sort of way, but then again, we are special and unique in our own way. As for it playing a role in my career choice? The only significance I can see is that I would like a stab at acting in the role of Marc Spectre aka Moon Knight. In fact, I want to at some point do my own fan film of the Moon Knight... I can hear it now... "Rich Knight is…The Moon Knight". That would be a kick!

8: You're a big Star Wars fan. So what was it like being in the movie Comic Book: The Movie as Vampire fan? It was directed by none other than Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill.

Comic Book: The Movie was just another day at the San Diego Comic Con for me. I was attending the convention with friends whilst wearing a pair of vampire fangs and FX contact lenses. I was minding my own business seeking out Hulk stuff, when I was approached by the crew of Comic Book and asked if they could film me. They asked a lot of people at the convention to be filmed so it wasn't really any sort of big deal.

What I think is sort of neat is that in the final cut, I sort of share a scene with Mark. It’s the scene when Mr. Hamill dissolves and my scene fades in. For a Star Wars geek like myself, that was a great honor (as silly as that may sound). I also recently worked on a Star Wars fan film titled Star Wars: Forced Alliance. That was a really fun gig because they went all out to do justice to the Star Wars universe. There were several R2 units and a full sized Chewabaca on set which really made you feel as though you were immersed in the Star Wars universe. Sadly, it may be the closest I’ll ever get to being able to work a SW film since the prequel has already come and gone. There is still the upcoming TV show, so there may yet be (bad pun alert!) a new hope!

9: Would you ever give up being a special effects and make-up artist to be a full-fledged actor?

Last year, I would have said "no.” However, this time around, I am going to have to say a resounding "yes".

I will always be creating monsters and effects, that's a given. But recently, my acting has turned from a casual thing to a real passion. I worked on a movie last year called Thirty Thousand Dollars. I played the lead.

This was the most lines I’ve ever had. It was my biggest part. I was not sure how well I would be received or even if I could pull it off. You might say that this was my test to see if acting is in fact a true calling for me or merely a fluke. But something happened on that set that I can’t explain. My acting skills improved a hundred times over and I realized that this was something that I can do.

I have been told that I am a natural at acting and I’m still trying to understand what that means. I seem to be really good at cold readings. In fact, I really like to read a script cold. It reminds me of oral communication class in school when you had to read to the classroom. I always enjoyed reading for people and have always been pretty good at story telling because of that. I feel like I am in my own element with acting. I mean, after all, I have been acting all my life... only recently has someone put a camera in front of me.

I don't know where all this will lead to, but I am not going to worry about any of that. I am having fun, playing a cowboy, or a monster, or a bad guy. If I never become rich and famous, that's fine, at least I still have all these great memories and captured my work on film to pass down to future generations.

10: When you were a kid, you created a villain to go up against Wonder Woman for a contest and won a free bike. So if you had success with such a contest, why didn't you ever pursue a career in comics?

That is a very good question. I actually still have some interest in working in comic books, but I think that I would prefer writing rather than penciling. As I have grown as an artist, I have learned what it is that compels and motivates me to create. And it’s not the story telling aspect that artists deal with in creating comic books, but rather the actual character creation. I really enjoy creating unique and original characters. In a sense I am still doing what I did all those years ago when I won second place in the Post Cereals Create a Super Villian Contest—I am creating characters.

11: What's your favorite Planet of the Apes movie and why?

My favorite is the first and original version of Planet of the Apes. I truly love the entire saga. Part of me even likes that horrible remake they did not so long ago. What can I say, I have been affected by those "damn dirty apes" since I was a kid. I am not alone either, as a lot of us FX artists share the same influences. What is most interesting about that, though, is how so many artists share the same influences, yet there still remains so much diversity in artistic style.

12: What responsibilities do you have as owner of your own make-up shop, Creatures By Knight?

As a shop owner, you are responsible for everything from hiring and firing people to paying the rent and everything in between. I do what I can to keep my overhead low, which means, I only open up a large warehouse facility if the work calls for it. I also will hire independent contractors as opposed to employees.

In this day and age, it has become increasingly difficult to find and maintain steady work in this business. I am one of the few lucky ones who can manage to stay afloat despite all the competition. I think that because I tend to work outside of Hollywood and not directly in the middle of the slums of North Hollywood (like most of the major FX shops), I am able to keep things running. I don't have to pay super high rent or deal with homeless people living right behind my shop or with the general Hollywood BS. I have always gone against the grain. I am like a salmon swimming upstream in the mighty river that is show business. A lot of my colleagues just can't figure out how I am able to get so much work consistently.

Whatever I am doing, I must be doing it right. 13: In your 14 years of work, what's your favorite project you've worked on? There are a lot of fun things that I have done, so this is a very difficult question for me. I have really great memories of my work at Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights. I worked with Michael Burnett's crew for three years in a row creating fantastic monsters for the haunted attraction. Recently, I worked on two projects that were very fun and rewarding which make them fall into the "favorites" category. One of them is the film I mentioned earlier, "Thirty Thousand Dollars"—This movie is headed towards the festival circuit such as South By South West, Tribecca, etc. The other project that was so fun it should be illegal was "Welfare Bunnies". On that show, I created four human/bunny characters and I also played a lead in makeup as well. Welfare Bunnies is a comedy pilot that will be introduced as a podcast—the show is very funny and sure to gain a lot of interest.

14: What kind of projects wouldn't you take on besides tasteless horror porn?

Because the work is quite scarce, I try not to think about work I won't do. So rather then focusing on what I won't do, I'm going to instead tell you what I would really like to do. Superhero movies! I want to do a superhero movie very much, it is the superheroes that inspired me and started me in this direction so it would be like coming full circle. I would love nothing more than to get in on the upcoming Star Wars TV show.

I also want to do something really big like dinosaurs or dragons. I prefer the gigs that allow me to create fun characters as opposed to the gratuitous gore. Don't get me wrong, I love the gore... but there's just more satisfaction in creating something that doesn't require being soaked in blood or be cut off or made to explode.

15: Do you find it's easier or harder doing your line of work just outside of LA?

It is definitely more challenging working outside of LA because of the distance. It means getting up earlier than most, beating the traffic in some cases, working harder and longer hours and even paying a bit more on gas or in shipping costs for supplies and materials. What it does do for me, though, other then lower rent, is that it allows me to not have to work in a dangerous Hollywood slum.

Seriously, some of the biggest FX shops in the valley are located in the scariest neighborhoods of LA. It is hard to believe that the studios will actually send big name talent to the ghetto, but believe it or not, it happens. That is why I will never ask talent to come to a bad part of town. If it is ever inconvenient for the director, producer or actors to come to my shop, I will come to them. I just prefer to stay far away from the ghettos of Hollywood.

16: When can we expect the Ruff and Skitch Show to debut? Are there any bidders as of yet?

Because I am self producing The Ruff and Skitch Show, and by nature it is quite a big endeavor, the process is slow moving. At this point, things are in the design stage. The stories are being written and developed, and the puppets are in the prototype stage and/or in pre-pre-production. Paying jobs always take precedence, so unfortunately, the project remains on hold at the moment. I have generated much interest for The Ruff and Skitch Show. However, I want to do this in such a manner that I will maintain as much control as possible. I will soon be taking the project to potential investors and am always seeking out interested parties. I hope to get this project off the ground soon, within the next two years or less.

17: Okay, last question. How important would you consider the make-up artist in today's movie making business?

Today's makeup artist is just as important today as ever. Many people are running scared with the advent of CG effects. Yes, the computer effects are looking better and better, but they still look like cartoons. Many of today's directors prefer to shoot on 35mm film and refuse to work with digital video or HD. I believe that a lot of directors will also have a similar attitude towards CG.

Let's face it, it's a big risk doing an effect totally in CG. No matter how good it appears, the audience may still react as if it were a cartoon. A good effect should go unnoticed because it is intended to be an illusion. If your audience leaves the theaters saying "did you see that CG effect?" then you have failed miserably because the effect was noticed. The desired reaction should be "How did they do that?"
When you shoot your effects in "live action," you have based the scene in reality, and not in cartoon land. You can kid yourself all you want, but if the effect isn't live action and seen right through your camera's lens, then you are not in control of the final outcome of the scene. The director has effectively handed the scene over to a geek behind a computer.

In my opinion, CG should only be used as a tool in combination with live action effects such as makeup, miniature models, stop motion, etc. Going CG should be saved as a last result when the effect can not be done any other way. There will always be a need for basic beauty and straight makeup as long as there are actors with pale complexions and blemishes. But for the special effects artist, the landscape is constantly changing and we will forever be in competition with computer effects. Where the computers can't seem to effect us is in the realm of reality making venues such as live theater, amusement parks, Halloween Attractions, Tradeshows and Conventions, etc; this all fertile ground for the effects artist.

The other place where the FX makeup artist will dominate is independent film...we are simply faster and able to cut corners in areas that computers can not. For example—a stock hand mold can be used a million times if need be, whereas a CG artist will have to start from scratch to create a computer generated hand every time. The math is on our side for independent films. At least for now.

In My Next Life, I Hope to Come Back as Either a Dictator or the phrase “Oh no, you sunk my battleship!”

2007-01-07T10:43:00.000-08:00

What does the afterlife hold for us? Actually, scrap that last sentence. I think an even better question would be, is there an afterlife at all, or just a supermarket aisle full of dim lights over the frozen food section with expiration dates that never get turned (my vision of hell).

Well, in all truths, I don’t care. If there is an afterlife, swell, you’ll still owe me five bucks. If there isn’t, still swell, I’ll get to spend time with all the gravediggers and maggots I feel I’ve neglected over the years. But I think the true point I’m trying to make here is that if there’s neither, then I hope there’s reincarnation because I’d really like to come back as either a dictator or the coined phrase, “Oh no, you sunk my battleship!”

If I were the former (the dictator guy thingy), than I would rule with a copper fist and teach the children that there is no shame in drinking toilet water from a construction site porta potty as long as it serves the national interest of the country. I would be both fair and tolerable.

If I were to become the latter, though, well, that’d be all sorts of different now, wouldn’t it? As a coined catchphrase, my responsibility is both stern and nonrefundable. A child, for instance, disappointed to the max after their opponent gets all the little red pegs in his tiny vessel very well couldn’t shout, “Oh no, you sunk my battleship,” if the opponent really DIDN’T sink his battleship, and instead destroyed a submarine or, (Lord have mercy on my Lego collection!) a patrol boat. That’s…that’s just plain sin in a pack of condoms.

If I were that phrase, then, my responsibility would be to make the kid’s head explode right in front of his opponent if he were to utter the phrase out of context, which I think is both fair and legal in its practice. I heavily hope to come back the latter.

I Just Can’t Get Enough of this New Rash I Have

2007-01-01T14:01:00.000-08:00

Being a young, impressionable male, aged 23, I have always been a little upset that I was never around to get the infamous Bubonic Plague I’ve heard so favorably about in the annals of time and old issues of AARP. And with modern technology readily improving every day (they can send a man to the MOON now!) I’ve decided that my life’s ambition—to acquire the Bubonic plague and BEAT it in a draw of stud poker—will not be occurring anytime soon. This disheartens Rich Knight by at least a 73% percent margin on the happiness scale.

But there’s HOPE! Just the other day, while lying face forward, stomach touching my pillow, I felt a sort of a winding trail of prickly goose pimples on my clavicle that I later found out to be a rash. How I acquired it (Possibly when I smeared mayonnaise all over my chest in attempts to woo a female seagull at the shore) I dare not surmise, but the fact that I have it is testament enough that, through not getting it checked out at the doctor or putting any sort of cream on it, it could one day hopefully mutate into a form of the plague I have already denoted and named “Gene.”

“Gene” is a 4 inch by 3 foot rash that has since spread from my clavicle to my pinky toe on my left hand. It is red, likes long walks on the beach, and is licensed to pilot a motor boat in several states. Sadly, mine is not one of them.

If you would like “Gene” to host your next Bar (or Bat) Mitzvah, or are interested in being godparents to its eventual children, please contact your local Pope and tell him to inform me of your interest. Don’t delay; dial your local Pope today!

*The following has been paid for and sponsored by the New Jersey Vatican Gift Shoppe*

I have seen the future, and it is ruled by Crossfire

2006-11-29T13:48:00.000-08:00

I don't want to alarm anyone, but I have peered into the future and found that in it, we are confined to sit on the sidelines of the universe's ultimate Crossfire battle between God and the devil. It is most certainly a scary chapter in the timeline of history, especially when you find out that God really ISN'T George Burns from the movie "Oh, God" and its sequel, "Oh, God 2," but rather a woman named Beth. She is a truck driver, and she is good. Her opponent, the devil, likewise, is not some fork tailed, red emblazoned, goatee sporting demon, but rather an issue of Highlights Magazine that has never been opened. Rumors are speculated that in it, Goofus actually does a good deed and Gallant does the opposite. Everything is backwards in it, and we are all afraid to read it, as it is most evil. The worst part about the future, though, is that the match lasts all eternity since God says She won't allow the devil to let her win so easily, as She constantly gets the shiny ball past him since all he does is sit there on his stool and lets his pages be turned slightly by the wind. And our job, as the Lord's people, is to stand in the background and build up a crescendo of the word "Crossfire"in deep baritone voices as seen in the commercial until God scores a point, in which we all say in one uniformally excited scream, "Croooossssssfffffiiiiyyyyaaaa!" And since I've lived in the future for so long, I have come back with this to say. Sartre was wrong. Hell is not other people, but, rather Hell is Crossfire. That is all.

I pledge my vote to Megatron

2006-11-12T10:14:00.000-08:00

Fuck the Autobots! I know this kind of gutter language is not usually found in my normally squeaky clean vocabulary, but I have such a sour distaste for Optimus and Co.’s current administration, that I think that a little cussin’ and fist pumping is in order. My loyalty to the admirable Decepticons actually didn’t start until about three weeks ago when I saw them over in Louisiana giving a rousing speech about health care and the future of this country.

Megatron, with the gun cannon on his shoulder occasionally shooting out red, yellow, and blue pills (like Dr. Mario!) to the audience at large, slammed on the podium not once, not twice, but thrice, in rapid succession, when he began to talk about his disdain for how Optimus Prime was handling the current situation.

“The Autobots,” Megatron squealed, his vice candidate, Starscream, wearing a tweed hat and seersucker suit, clapping on the sidelines, “Say that you don’t deseeerve the benefits that you have coming to you down the line, but I disagree! You deserve EXATLY what’s coming to you, and I will make sure of that.”

We all cheered explosively, but he put up his metal hands to calm us down. He wasn’t finished yet. “And the Autobots,” he said, gesticulating with his hands the way they transform, insinuating that they do it in the homosexual manner, pelvises first, “think that stem cell research is esssssential to our lives. But you know what I say to that?”

The audience, dumbfounded for a moment, shrugged their shoulders and eventually said “No!” We thought he was asking a rhetorical question.

“Well I say, stem cell research is barbaric! Why kill them when they’re babies when you could kill them when they’re all grown up on the battle field?”

The audience, now stirred to an insane amount of support, threw up their hands and cheered in unison, “Mega-tron, Mega-tron!”

Megatron just stood with his arms crossed, the visor over his eyes deflecting the magnificent amount of light that was splashing off his breastplate and bouncing back into his eyes.

But one person WASN’T hooting and hollering. Stepping forth from the sea of the crowd, the waves pushing him back a bit, was Marty McFly, himself, Michael J. Fox. He was wearing the poncho from Back to the Future 3 and the leather Jacket on top of it from Back to the Future 2. Apparently, he thought it was going to be chilly day that day.

“I disagree,” Michael said, a bit twitchy, but maintaining himself well. Parkinson’s is a miserable disease.

“Step cell research could help eliminate a lot of problems. If you’d only look at this literature I brought along, you will see that the benefits far out shadow the”

But before he could even finish his sentence, with a quickness I have never seen before, Megatron leapt into the air, transformed (Ooh ha ha ha) and landed in the hands of Starscream in the form of a pistol. In a matter of seconds, Marty McFly was vaporized dust.

Silence permeated the area for quite some time, the smoke still spiraling from the muzzle in an eye of the storm like cloud. We all looked at each other, then at the clothes lying on the ground atop the cremated remains of Michael J. Fox, and then back at each other. The silence wasn’t broken until one man, morbidly obese and wearing a novelty Frankenberry t-shirt, lodged his thumb and index finger into his mouth and let out a shrill whistle. The clapping came slow and deliberately, but it came, and after that, we were all back to having teary eyes of joy and hope. Once man even shouted, “Teen Wolf 2 sucked!” and everybody laughed. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that Michael J. Fox wasn’t even IN Teen Wolf 2 (It was Jason Bateman). The whole crowd was already too elated to try to calm down at this point.

So in 2008, with this next election rolling around the corner like a bramble bush, vote Megatron and the Decepticon party. They’re the only ones with the balls to say they’re going to turn you into dust and actually DO it. All hail Megatron and the Decepticon party! Ooh ha ha ha, ooh ha ha ha!

Thee ende of chapter tres

2006-10-24T13:08:00.000-07:00

The weather outside was much harsher than it appeared from inside the hospital, and Margaret thought that the hospital must have put up some kind of sunscreen in the window since it wasn’t sunny at all anymore but rather dark and dreary, which suited her personality. This made Margaret consider her current predicament.

She knew she only had about six more days to make the money she needed, but she didn’t know how to make it. Plus, as if things couldn’t get any worse, she also had an elderly partner to worry about, too. The day was already starting off with excess, useless baggage, and she didn’t like it.

Still, the first thing Margaret wanted to do now was give her new sidekick a new name as Margaret liked naming things and didn’t want to call her Old Margaret anymore.

And she thought about this new name as she was crossing the street, stepping in between the diagonal white lines that made up the crosswalk without even looking to see if there was traffic coming. Old Margaret grabbed Margaret by the shoulder and pulled her back just in the nick of time before a Nissan Pathfinder almost ran her over; Old Margaret scalded Margaret as if she were the mother Margaret never had.

“Hey, weren’t you lookin’ there, toots? You almost got yourself crushed!” But just then, for reasons unknown, the voice at the roof of Margaret’s mouth said, “Estoban” and that was it, Margaret had a new name for her sidekick.

And while no, Old Margaret didn’t exactly look like an Estoban, by this point, after being beaten up by a martial arts master in a supermarket (twice) getting kicked out of her house, getting arrested, and breaking out of a hospital with a geriatric cancer patient, Margaret was pretty much willing to accept anything. So as Old Margaret scalded her, Margaret shouted out “Shut up, Estoban!” to get her to keep quite, leaving the two people standing at the crosswalk beside them to wonder if she was mistaking them for somebody else.

She wasn’t, though, and was in fact talking to Old Margaret, who stood aback and stared at Margaret with questioning blue eyes. She was still wearing the old fart’s pajamas, and Margaret was still wearing the Lucille Ball get-up, so they both looked out of place, meaning, that calling an old woman Estoban in public clearly wasn’t the best move if they wanted to avoid suspicion of inanity.

“What do you mean, Estoban?” Old Margaret barked, the two people at the crosswalk hurriedly walking away from these lunatics. When they left, Old Margaret used her hands to emphasize her dislike at all this randomness coming out of Margaret’s mouth.

“One minute I’m telling you not to cross the street without looking, the next you yell out ‘Estoban?’ What’s with you, Toots? You got a screw loose or somethin’?” and Old Margaret asked while spinning her pointy index finger by her ear in circles as she crossed the street with Margaret. Once across, and while they passed a French Connection, the neon lights bouncing off her cheek and painting it leopard yellow, Margaret explained to her:

“There can’t be two Margaret’s, you see.” she said matter of factly, the legs beneath now her carrying her to the subway. “Either I’m Margaret, or you’re Margaret, but we BOTH can’t be Margaret.”

“So why can’t I be Margaret then?” Old Margaret asked impatiently, her face turned while she ogled the clothes that lay within this delightfully tacky store. Margaret shook her head with closed eyes. “No way, man, I’m the leader here, so I get cool the name. You have to change yours.”

Old Margaret, staring away from the clothes for a second, thought about it for a moment, coughed, and then looked up at the encroaching rain clouds in the sky. She let the matter go. She didn’t feel like arguing

“Fiiiiiine, you can be Margaret,” Old Margaret said, nonchalantly, flicking her wrist in the air as if disavowing the name to the wind. “I’m too old to bother arguing, and I never liked it anyway, so take it. But I don’t want to be Estoban, either, that’s a boy’s name.”

The slow moving black parade in the sky that was the clouds began to shift and slowly march from in front of the sun, changing the dismal dark air into a pleasant blue skyline. Margaret didn’t like it.

“Then what DO you want to be called then?” Margaret asked, aggravated.

“Gertrude,” she said, her eyes dazzling, “I’ve wanted that name since I was a child and I think it fits me well, don’t you?”

Margaret agreed, it DID fit her well. Gertrude was such an old people name, and Old Margaret was certainly and old people, er, person, and so Margaret had nothing to argue about, Gertrude it was. Margaret was happy with the decision going so well without fisticuffs and she spat into her own hand to solidify the deal. Old Margaret shook it. She was happy with the name change, too. It was like starting a new life.

After their hands slid apart from the spit, Margaret then turned around quickly and continued to trudge forward without even thinking about Old Mar…er, Gertrude catching up her. “Hey wait a minute.” Old Margaret, er Gertrude said (Sorry, this may take a little while to get used to). “Where are we headed now?”

“To my job, it’s Wednesday,” Margaret answered, and with that, Margaret continued to walk on hastily, forgetting all the while that she couldn’t show up to work dressed like THAT anyway. And then she had this old woman to deal with, too, making her believe again that maybe breaking out with her wasn’t such a great idea after all, the voices at the roof of her mouth complained and was all scratchy and gritty. “Why’d you have to take her along anyway, Margaret?” The voice growled.

Margaret told the voice, “Shut up, voice,” as she sped walked and told her why she was justified in saying that, “She helped me out, and I owe her my gratitude.” The voice agreed by staying quiet, this WAS indeed a noble cause.

Gertrude, only a few steps behind, didn’t quite know who Margaret was talking to, but as long as wasn’t she wasn’t calling her foreign names like Estoban anymore, Gertrude (there we go, got it!) really didn’t mind. She had nowhere else to go, anyway, so it was either follow this maniac to hell or go back to the machines that breathe for her in the hospital. Gertrude chose the maniac and hell.

Margaret really didn’t have to walk that many more steps before she would eventually be spotted by one of her biggest fans. But before that reveal, let’s get into a little back story during the commercial break, shall we? In all truths, when Margaret was placed in the hospital, not carrying a wallet or any form of identification, she was lucky that a woman like the bear lady existed.

For it was she who paid for everything on her husband’s salary, which made her find that morning in the hospital even more soul crushing. “What do you mean she escaped?!” the bear lady yelled as she grabbed the man in blue behind the counter and shook him violently; the two orderlies from before rushing to restrain her. She then ran to the door, cursing the entire hospital floor with some mystical incantation that didn’t mean anything, and then hopped back into her van that was waiting outside, the engine still running. She was going to find Margaret today if it was the last thing she did. But little did she know that today was also the day that she would also find her next specimen of interest in Gertrude. The bear lady’s luck looked like it was turning up gardenias.

Margaret pondered what exactly she was going to say to Karen once she finally got to the PETORIUM, which she would need to get to soon since she was late. She really needed the money, like, now, but knew that she couldn’t argue with Karen, it wouldn’t do a lick of good. She also knew that her normal approach, vicious violence, wouldn’t work on Karen, either, so that was out of the question, too. And besides, vicious violence didn’t seem to be going over too well for her, anyway, what with her bruised ribs and missing teeth as a visible example.

But she couldn’t just sit on this hot button topic of “what the hell do I do now” forever as this was a matter of life (Nickels’) and death (Karen’s), if she didn’t get the money she needed soon, so Margaret continued to walk to the subway to get to work and considered that if she couldn’t garner the money she needed by the end of the week, she would actually go back to the police station and tear it down with her bear hands. But that was only if worst came to worst. She wouldn’t make a move that desperate if things seriously weren’t rock, rock bottom.

It was on 6th Street that Margaret was finally found speed walking. The bear lady spotted her only a few blocks away from the subway that she was so hurriedly rushing to descend into. Ever since she got punched in the face by her, the bear lady had been highly interested in how this strange, lost woman operated, and after she woke up the first day upon meeting her, she rushed to the store the very next day to see if she could possibly get her on her show, Extreme Elderly, perhaps as a commentator or something else with a loud, booming voice and a little bit of sex (but not too much!) appeal. Margaret seemed poifect for the job. Just poifect.

But what did we have here? The bear lady spotted Margaret, looking like she just left Ricky Ricardo for Fred, but also saw another woman who seemed to be hopping up and down behind her like she was riding one of those sticks with the horse heads at the end, and by the looks of things, it looked like she was trying to catch up to Margaret, too.

Could this woman possibly be her sidekick? The bear woman pounded on her driver’s shoulder, a young Filipino from the Bronx who was a Grenada war veteran that didn’t like being pounded on his shoulders, and he sped up, not saying a word aloud but cursing under his breath in Tagalog. One day, he was going to strangle that wench.

But before that day, more back story: Right when the incident in the supermarket happened, the bear lady instantly began henpecking on her cell phone, dropping and breaking it, and then borrowing somebody else’s, just to dial 911. She called that number to get an ambulance to come rescue this woman who she was already considering her new star for her show. But let’s stop calling her the bear lady, okay? That name’s getting old, fast.

Her real name was Laura Pascarelli, but her husband, thinking an ethnic name like that wouldn’t fly in the big leagues, had it shortened to just plain, ‘ol, Pascal. So the bear lady’s name was really Laura Pascal. Her husband’s name was Arthur, making him Arthur Pascal. Hopefully, that clears some questions up for you.

So Mrs. Pascal, who was married to Arthur Pascal, who was a corporate exec at Digivision, the largest, multi-distributed company in the tri-state area, was given the right to make her own show just to keep his wife away from him so he could spend some quality time with his Canadian mistress. He thought, what the hell, I’ll give her a show to keep her busy, and why not? It’ll probably be taken off the air in less than a week.

But the truth was, Laura knew all about her husband’s affair and she didn’t care. Arthur was a puny bo boony anyway and she had her eyes on another man, anyway, and his name was Donald Trump (You may have heard of him). Her plan was to surpass his enormous wealth (and Oprah’s), before she hit 50, making a ditzy red head from Alberta, Canada the LEAST of her worries.

And it just so happened that when Margaret was swept to the floor with a flying kick that actually sent two of her teeth to the back of her throat, Mrs. Pascal had fallen in love all over again. She dropped everything and ran to the stubby woman’s aid as the mustache martial arts expert threw up his ninjitsu stained fists and the crowd cheered uproariously, hefting him up on the shoulders and taking him to Applebee’s.

Mrs. Pascal didn’t go with the flow, though. She was too busy taking a knee by the poor girl’s side and rubbing her face, saying soothing things like, “There, there, precious” and “The world might not get you, darling, but I’ll try.” All Margaret could hear in her stupor of unconsciousness was a loud, fog horn like noise. Mrs. Pascal sounded like the teacher from Charlie Brown in her head.

And as the white van rounded itself around the corner, Margaret and Gertrude were flowing seamlessly into the darkness that was the subway terminal below. When they disappeared, Mrs. Pascal hit her chauffeur hard in the shoulder and put a nasty incantation on him, too. The chauffeur didn’t much believe in her incantation, but he listened to it all the same. It was the least he could do to take his mind off things, because if he had his mind on what he wanted to do, which was bring Mrs. Pascal’s face right into the windshield, he’d probably be chucked in jail. So he listened to the “Maguumba’s” and the “Bachingo’s” as she said them, it was the safest thing he could do in the circumstance he was in.

***

Margaret rushed to take the A train uptown, and Gertrude followed close behind, doing a duck walk as she traveled as it was the fastest way she could walk. But as Margaret rushed on past the yellow teeth colored tiles down below, she ran into a bit of a problem. She didn’t know what train she had to catch.

She knew that she had to catch an F train, but she wasn’t even sure if this station HAD an F train. She just knew she had to take an F train as that was the one she used always to take from her house. And since she never imagined she’d ever be kicked out of her apartment, she never learned to read the rest of the signs, making her F-U-C-K-E-D, fook-ed. So when Gertrude asked, “Where are we going now?” her voice swallowed up by a passing train, Margaret didn’t answer her, she really didn’t know.

Even so, Margaret darted over the turnstile without paying a dime, ran towards the train that just stopped, and leapt into it, hoping to God that it would take her to where she needed to be. Gertrude, close behind, just made it in herself before a police officer, who saw what they did, ran to the train and began banging on the scratched up window with his fists, his hard thuds waking up a Jamaican woman in nurse clothes dozing off every few seconds.

“Hey, what the bumboclot?!” she yelled and brandished a syringe from her purse, ready to poke whoever got in her path. Eventually, she calmed back down again and went to sleep, but Gertrude had her fists up ready to sock her one. She didn’t want to see another syringe for the rest of her life.

Margaret peaceably let out a sigh of relief and walked over to the map on the side of the train, bumping into businessmen and teenagers with iPods, just to get to it. If she couldn’t read a map before, she better learn now, as the train was heading somewhere, and she had no idea where. She also was determined to learn because she had a feeling that if things didn’t go right today, she might end up sleeping in one of these tin can thingies tonight. And while a park bench was one thing, a subway car was a whole ‘nother golf match, as sleeping on a subway train was even worse than poverty. So much worse than poverty, that it would have to take upon a new word, and we’ll just call that word bacapabapapa. There, that works just fine.

But, surprisingly enough, according to the map, she WAS actually heading in the right direction, but it was one of the last stops on the chart and she only had 5 more minutes to get to work. And Margaret knew the time, which was 2:25, because she could see it glinting off the oversized novelty clock of a backpack wearing B Boy’s chest. The clock was draped around his neck like Flava Flav’s. Gertrude tugged on Margaret’s shirt incessantly and tried to get her attention. She had to pee. “Margaret?” she asked.

“What?” Margaret asked angrily, she was already growing sick of this old bag in the pajamas and she desperately wanted to kick her like she would kick her beloved cat, Nickels. Maybe later, Margaret thought, but Gertrude continued to tug, she didn’t hear Margaret over the scraping of the rollicking subway’s screech.

“Margaret?” She asked.

“What?” Margaret asked again angrily, still eyeing the map as if doing so would make the train skip some stops and go faster for her. But Gertrude kept tugging.

“What?!” Margaret shouted, turning around with her fist up this time. Joke’s on her, though. When she turned around this time, she wound up facing the aforementioned B-Boy with the clock around his neck. When he saw her fist, he backed up for a second with his hands up, but then realized what time it was—it was CLOBBERING time! So he punched her right in the nose, her head flying back.

Just getting off of work at a bowling alley, the B-Boy had a lot of pent up energy, and he didn’t want to be bothered. He just wanted to listen to Mos Def.

When he punched her in the nose, it made her head go flying back into a pole. But here’s the strange thing. The curved metal of the pole bounced her head off its spine like a pinball and sprung it back forward, making her head butt the B-Boy in one efficiently snapping motion. He went tumbling down backwards into the rattling doors with a broken nose. He was unconscious.

Gertrude looked scared out of her wits, as did everybody else on the train. Lucille Ball just kicked Flava Flav’s ass! Gertrude refrained from asking Margaret the question she had on her mind, which was “do they have bathrooms on these pieces of tin?” and just kept quiet, holding in the pee.

Margaret grabbed Gertrude by the bony wrist tightly. Her head was throbbing (front and back) but her lust for blood was now increasing. That head butt really gave her back that loving feeling, as the goon with the clock laid slumped back against the rattling door unconscious. The crowd around him backed away as Margaret pushed her way through, with an old woman in pajamas in tow, to the front of the train. Margaret needed to get to work, and she needed to be there NOW. Getting there late certainly wasn’t going to improve her situation or get her a raise.

On each train car, she got stunned looks of fear and warning. Margaret didn’t know it, but her forehead was completely red and her mouth was bleeding profusely, she looked like she just got in the face with a chair. Gertrude didn’t say a word about it, though; she just followed on with her wrist tightly ensnared by Margaret’s hand. In all truths, this really was the most fun she had in a long time, and as soon as Margaret’s temper went down, Gertrude was going to ask her if they could go skydiving next.

When Margaret finally made it up to the front, she pushed the button on the side of the door and it slid open. She found the driver of the train. He was completely naked. The driver quickly released the lever, pushed his penis between his legs, and barked at Margaret, asking her what the hell she was doing up there. Margaret wasn’t paying attention to what he said as the voice at the roof of her mouth was humming a Louie Armstrong song, and this made Margaret pass the point of infuriation. She didn’t even notice that the man at the helm of the train had his Johnson dangling out. Gertrude did though; she thought the driver could stand to lose some weight.

“Hey, Mr., I need you to take me to 17th Street, now.

The naked driver turned his head back, slightly embarrassed to be caught unaware, the glow of the lights on the monitor turning his pallid, white flesh blue, but then he continued to stare ahead.

“Hey, lady,” he said, not noticing the old woman staring at the snaking trail of freckles on his shoulders, “I don’t know where you came from, but this is a subway, not a taxi service. We make all the stops.”

Margaret smiled, but not in a jovial way, but more in a, “I am prepared to hurt you,” kind of way.

“No, no, no, no, no, you don’t understand,” she said calmly, “I’m not requesting it.”

“What, are you threatening me, lady?” He asked, his eyes directed at his crotch as it began to peak through his thighs as the seat beneath him began to hop and bop.

Margaret’s smile dissipated into sort of a frown. She really didn’t feel like hitting anybody anymore today.

“Threatening you?” she asked, his face still not looking at her. She was going to have to get his attention the hard way, it seemed.

“Well, is this a form of threatening you?” She asked as her fist flew so fast into the back of his head that he wasn’t sure if a fist hit him or a jai aliah ball. It connected with such a great force that the driver was knocked straight forward and accidentally into the control stick by his…um, hips…causing the subway to spring forward, making it shoot sparks out of its side against the heavily graffiti laden wall (And how anyone could scribble these elaborate designs on the walls without being hit by an oncoming train is still one of life’s greatest mysteries next to whether God exists and why hot dog buns come in packages of 8, while hot dogs come in packages of 10).

All the passengers, including the dozing Jamaican woman and Gertrude, went hurdling forward off their seats and fell over with the motion. The driver slid onto the floor, his fleshy body fully exposed.

At this point, a man wearing a jumpsuit, ran up to the front of the train in a world of panic. He wanted to know what the hell was going on.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing up here?” He asked, the chest hairs just edging their way over his zipper. “You’re not allowed in here! Are you?”

At this point, Margaret was holding the driver’s head up, and wiping the blood out of his eyes. She didn’t know he would go down THAT hard.

“Wuh?” He kept saying, as Margaret kept patting him on the head. Gertrude took the wheel. She had never done it before, but hey, you only live once, right? The future sped past her eyes at a blinding rate, and on her right, the world was yellow and brown. She had just passed by two stops in less than a minute.

“Sir?” The jumpsuit man said, stepping forward cautiously at the swaying of the speeding train. “Can you get up?”

“Wuh?” said the naked driver again, his vision blurry. Jumpsuit man didn’t even pay attention either to the fact that the driver was completely naked (Was NOBODY surprised by this?)
Margaret paid no mind to the jumpsuit man, and just kept trying to budge this naked lummox as best she could. Gertrude wasn’t doing such a great job of riding this train to victory after all.
“Margaret, my wrist hurts,” she moaned like a six year old, “take over,” The train was now careening across the rails at a crisp and cool 140 MPH, much, much faster than the speed of safety.

“Wuh?” said the driver again. And as if out of a daze, the driver began to stand up wearily, holding his head all the while and shuffling as if he was just getting out of bed.

With Margaret and jumpsuit man’s eyes glaring up at his bad posture as he stumbled with the rollicking of the train, they saw him push Gertrude aside with the back of his hand politely and plop back down into his cool seat, his chapped ass receiving a quick sensation right down his spine.

And as he pressed down on the break with his bare foot with a stomp, his lips slapping together and his other hand wiping off the drool from his mouth, the train stopped abruptly, which caused all the passengers on board, some clinging on for their lives, to fly forward wherever they may have been sitting or standing. And, (what kind of strange luck was THIS?!) The train just so happened to stop at the exact spot where Margaret needed get off.

Lucky for her! Unlucky for everybody else.

At the stop, Margaret patted the driver on his tired head, and walked out holding Gertrude’s hand like a good chaperone should. The jumpsuit guy wrapped his arms around the driver’s neck and held him as tight as he could. The naked driver didn’t really see what the big deal was. All he did was get up and go to work. But then he started to look around startled. How’d he get here? The konk on the head made him forget that he left his house that morning.
***

The mall was packed, and the parking lot, with floors upon floors upon floors of yellow and white lined parking spots, was all filled up. This was the biggest mall in all New York. It was also where Margaret worked. And when she finally reached the PETORIUM, where, with only a half mile of territory of space, was the smallest store in the mall, Margaret felt fortunate she was working in such a small location, it really made her feel at home with her environment.

While she passed by the many stores she always passed, Gertrude was left with her mouth wide open. This place was GYNORMOUS! And for a woman who hadn’t been shopping for over 25 years, this was a big deal for her. Her shriveled heart did a little somersault.

But why 25 years, you ask? Well, while he was alive, let’s just say that her husband wasn’t the type of man who would let his wife spend the entire day shopping with two out of his three major credit cards. Her husband, may he rest in pee, was the old school type who would actually make her mend her OWN clothes. So you can imagine what the sight of not one, but TWO stores selling Gucci bags and accessories, would do to a woman like Gertrude. She felt like a young, budding boy who just stumbled upon his papa’s porno collection. Joy!

“Can I go over there?” Gertrude asked while pointing at a neon red Timex store, her bony, pajama covered legs already moving in that direction.

“Yeah, sure, knock yourself out,” Margaret said, barely listening.

“Where should we meet up again?” Gertrude asked, her body almost two steps away from the store already.

“I’ll be at the PETORIUM,” and they were both separated. But after she said it, Margaret wished she had been thinking before she spoke, the voice at the roof of Margaret’s mouth was already telling her, “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” with each step Margaret took. And the voice was right, too. Margaret should have lied. She could have gotten rid of that old tea bag once and for all.

Oh, well, there was nothing she could do about it now. What’s done is done.

When Margaret finally bypassed the Journeys and the Sam Goody that led to her store, there stood Karen at the front counter tapping her KEDS against the carpet and staring at her watch with a “You’re late,” expression beneath her eyebrows.

Margaret knew she was late, but what could she do about it now? She tried her best to get there on time, but she couldn’t. The fat bitch in the KEDS should respect that.

Today also didn’t seem like the best day to ask upper management for a raise, either, but she knew she had to ask it, and if that didn’t work, demand it.

But before Margaret could get what she felt she deserved, Karen stopped her abruptly with an upraised hand. “What the hell are you wearing? That’s not store regulation.” Her fat, badly covered lips were drenched in splotchy red lipstick and wouldn’t stop yap yap yapping at Margaret now, leaving her with little to no time at all to ask for the raise and get out of here. Margaret didn’t much feel like working today.

“You can’t just step in here looking like Lucille Ball and think you can get off THAT easily, do you? You know we don’t have any extra shirts in back.” Karen had a lot of power in the PETORIUM, she was the assistant manager to the assistant manager, while Margaret was only the assistant manager to the assistant manager to the assistant manager, which meant the only power she had was to choose the color of the scoop she would use to clean up after the Lapso Apso’s.

That’s why Margaret had to be on her very BEST behavior around Karen all the time. Not because Karen could promote her or anything like that, no ho ho, fat chance, Karen didn’t have any sort of super power like that. But with all the cameras in the store, Margaret hoped that if she worked diligently enough, she might just get her that promotion she so desperately felt she needed.

The joke, though, was that there wasn’t even any footage in those cameras. They just sat there idly in the corner, waiting for someone to wave to it so it could turn its head and never wave back ever.

So Margaret, being on her best behavior, did a little curtsy and walked in back without saying a scathing word. But just then, Karen, her mountainous body bobbing up and down lumbered over to her and grabbed her shoulder.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing” Margaret asked as she got the shove from behind.

“Un huh huh,” Karen said, wagging her finger and pointing to the worthless camera in the corner she knew Margaret feared. “Don’t start that nonsense with ME, young lady (Margaret was 15 years older than her) YOU know that if you make any false moves, you know how fast I’ll get you fired.”

“But,” Margaret began. Karen stopped her.

But it was at that moment that Karen noticed had messed up and bruised Margaret was. Plus, she also saw that Margaret was also missing some teeth in the back of her mouth, Karen grabbed Margaret by the jaw and turned her face left and right, the voice at the roof of Margaret’s mouth was subdued and couldn’t make a peep, and mostly sounded like “mwo moo mwo moo.”

“What the hell HAPPENED to you?” Karen asked sympathetically, she may have hated Margaret, but not enough to wish any sort of harm on her. Margaret just turned around and began to head in back for the mop, her heels rising and falling like Peggy Bundy’s. “It’s nothing, leave me alone,” Margaret said just as she passed the cat display and the tarantula under the purple lid that was marked down because it was missing a single hair follicle on its third left leg. But when Karen cleared her throat, Margaret stopped, she didn’t know why.

“Yes, Karen?” Margaret groaned, her eyes already rolled to the ceiling before Karen could say a word.

“Seriously, Margaret, what the hell happened to you? Are you okay?”

Margaret kept on walking, and said, “I’m fine,” as she went on in the back, her heels clickity, clickity, clacking. Karen followed her for just a couple of steps when a man and a woman walked into the store. It was a black guy wearing a white Kangol hat backwards and an Asian woman in a nurses’ outfit who had her arm wrapped snuggly around his. It was Rona, the nurse from the hospital. She had a big lump on her forehead.

“Can we just look at the puppy faces for awhile?” She asked, her voice lilting as they stepped into the store.

“Of course, honey,” the man said, his voice supportive and strong, “anything for my snufflelovetokiss, especially after that fall today, does your ass still hurt?”

Rona didn’t answer, her body was already bent forward, she was staring at a baby Pug knocking another Pug over and around in confetti.

Once in back, Margaret took off her shirt and put on a smock that was hanging by the desk, Karen followed.

“Hey, you lied,” Margaret said, “there WAS an extra shirt back here.”

“That’s a smock.”

“Same difference,” Margaret said as she slung it around her neck and wore it proudly, the green stripes of it lingering down her bare flesh.

“Hey! You can’t just wear THAT!” Karen scolded.

“I know, I know, hold on,” and off Margaret went walking over to the corner and picking up a sandwich board that had been lying on the floor, folded up end over end. Margaret once had to wear it to advertise for the store, as it said, “PETORIUM, WE PUT THE PET IN ORIUM” whatever that meant.

Margaret put it over her body and it covered her smock. “What does it matter, I’m just going to be cleaning up crap all the day anyway, right?” she said. And then she walked out the room, turning to the side to get out the small doorway and went in the backroom with the animals, her backside banging and scraping across the glass. When Karen saw the customers outside, she gave one last angry look at Margaret, and shuffled out to greet them. Margaret was going to ask for her raise after she finished cleaning. It only seemed fair.

Rona was still dressed in her work clothes when she walked into the shop with her boyfriend, Richard, a jobless bum wearing a Pink Flamingoes t-shirt and ketchup stained sweatpants. He had called her to relieve some of his stress from writing. He was a freelance journalist and a wannabe novelist, and he claimed that he needed some outside time, his typing fingers giving him problems. Rona was happy to oblige, and she even put on some perfume she had stored away in her medical bag. ANYTHING would be better than reliving the catastrophe in the hospital.

When the couple walked in, Karen scooted over to them like she was wearing a kimono, her feet were twittering so close together. Rona and Richard were staring at some chew toys for her pet dog, Belle.

“Can I help you two with anything?” Karen asked, her cheeks rosy red.

“No,” Richard said, his hand already gripping for his wallet, protecting it from a sale.

“Richard,” Rona snarled, “I can speak for myself, now how much is this chew toy? There isn’t a price on it.”

“Oh, that’s just fourteen dollars, and you get a discount if you buy six of them,” Karen said, Richard’s heart leapfrogged seven beats.

Rona looked interested in the sale. Oh, snap, Karen looked like she might just sell something, but when Karen saw behind Rona’s back the mess Margaret was making in the animal room, knocking over cages whenever she turned around, she tried to divert the two customer’s attention. Couldn’t Margaret EVER do anything right?

But it was too late, Rona had already seen her. She squinted at first, but then her eyes grew wide with fear.

“That’s her!” she shouted as one shaking hand pointed, while the other leapt to her horrified mouth.

“Oh, no,” Karen muttered.

“Oh, yes!” Rona stammered.

“Who’s her?” Richard asked, startled by his girlfriend’s paleness.

“That’s her, the woman at the”

But before she could say a word, Gertrude came running into the store wearing a pair of stolen sunglasses with the price tag still on them, a new straw hat, and a dress from Coco Chanel. All the clothes were stolen, of course, and just down the way was a surly woman with fists of fury.

“Margaret, we got to get the hell out of here, we” she said.

But before Gertrude could finish, Rona turned 90 degrees and shouted while pointing with a shaky index finger, “And that’s her! The woman who tripped me on the ground!”

Gertrude didn’t have time to worry about the injured nurse (She had a Grendel on her chase) so she instead rushed over to Margaret and pushed Rona out of the way to get to her, both Richard and Karen shocked beyond their wildest beliefs. Neither of them rushed to help Rona, though, even though she was knocked out unconscious by the blow she took to the back of the head on the counter, both of them were too dumbfounded to help.

Behind the glass, while Margaret was handling a guinea pig and looking up at the chaos outside, Gertrude found the door and rushed to it, the Grendel, a 5’11 beast of a woman in earrings and a black knee high skirt came storming into the PETORIUM, her eyes set to the shade of “mutilate.”

“Where is she?!” She demanded to both Richard and Karen, who were still nonplussed by the calamity they had witnessed. “Where’d she? Aha! There she is!”

And right then she noticed Gertrude who was decked out from head to toe in stolen merchandise, the sunglasses slowly falling down her slender, wrinkled nose. “What are we going to do?!” Gertrude asked Margaret, genuinely frightened as she gripped onto the wood of Margaret’s sandwich board. Margaret wiped her hands off of her, dropping a guinea pig in the process, and said, “Oh. don’t get your thong all in a bunch, I’ll handle this,” and as the Grendel pushed her way through the door, which was idiotically left unlocked, she came stomping on over to Gertrude, who hid behind the A shape of Margaret’s advertising board.

Karen ran to the glass and shouted, “No fighting in there! You’ll rile up the animals!” but Margaret couldn’t hear her, the voice at the roof of her mouth was speaking too loudly, saying things like, “Clock that bitch!” and “Don’t let her ruffle up your sandwich board!” Margaret felt like taking her down the hard way, but her fists were still hurting, so she decided to turn around and tell Gertrude to fight her own battles. And then of course there were those cameras up top (the one’s that didn’t work) that she was concerned about. But when she turned around, the board, when flung at that speed and velocity, turned into a weapon, that knocked the salivating store woman to the floor, out cold. Margaret didn’t even know what happened when she hit her.

Both Rich and Karen let out a shocked, “ohhh!” and Rona was just starting to get up. When Margaret turned around to look at what she had accidentally done, she felt two liver spotted arms wrap around her neck from behind, they were Gertrude’s. She was talking so fast that Margaret couldn’t make out a word she was saying. “I’m having a blast hun, and I haven’t coughed once since I’ve been with you, it must have been that damn hospital, they were probably pumping me so full of shit that”

Margaret wasn’t listening as she didn’t have time to worry about this old hag. She stepped over the supine store woman’s body and walked out the door. She had a question to ask Karen, and she didn’t want to waste anymore time.

“Karen, I need a raise, I need to get my place back so I can have my Nickels back. The police said that’s the only way.” She said this drearily. And after all the chaos that just occurred, with two, count ‘em, two (Richard finally ran to Rona’s aid) women on the floor, Margaret already knew the answer before she got it.

The answer being no.

What she didn’t expect, though, was to be fired, which she was promptly. Karen pointed to the exit with her finger, and Margaret stumbled out of it as if the wind had been knocked right out of her.

***

That night, Margaret and Gertrude slept on a park bench together. But this was a different park bench than the one by Margaret’s old house. This one was by the mall, leaving it vacant of any rent-a-cops as they had already all gone home to their wives and their televisions. Margaret decided that Gertrude wasn’t nearly as comfy to hold on to as Nickels, but then again, she also didn’t make as many jerky movements in her sleep, so Margaret considered herself lucky in this regard.

The problem was, though, that there were only five more days left before the police department kept her cat, and Margaret STILL didn’t know what to do about her situation. And at the notion that she would never see her poor cat Nickels again, Margaret actually began to miss her clawing at her skin, so much so that while Gertrude slept soundly in Margaret’s arms, Margaret actually began to pet her like a cat. It was nice and comfy, and sweet, and, oh, who was she kidding, it wasn’t the same at all. This sucked!

The Beginning of Chapter 3 (Chapter 3 is looong)

2006-10-22T11:04:00.000-07:00

When Margaret woke up in the hospital, she realized that she had once again teleported, but this time, she was actually somewhere comfortable, somewhere…well, not safe, but at least she wasn’t in handcuffs anymore. Or maybe (just work with me here) it wasn’t teleportation at all. MAYbe she was just moved here by some great force like God or a giant Hershey’s candy bar that levitated like a magic carpet. Margaret desperately hoped it was the latter, but she couldn’t dismiss the former, quite frankly it could have been anything.

But it definitely wasn’t teleportation and Margaret had given up on that theory because it was stupid and it didn’t make sense. Teleportation? Please, who could teleport? That idea wasn’t smrat like the idea of a flying candy bar. It wasn’t smrat like that at all.

So it was settled then, a flying candy bar it was. Probably. But as she started to get up and cricked her neck, she soon realized that the idea of teleportation or a flying candy bar were the least of her problems. Her neck was in abnormally horrible pain. “Ah, ah , ah, ah,” Margaret squealed with tightly clamped eyes that had tears streaking out the sides of them. “What the hell happened?”

“You must have gotten yourself in a bit of a nasty shuffle, that's what happened.”

The voice was creaky like a loose drawbridge that couldn’t handle anymore occupants on it just as the most obese man in the village was about to cross it. Meaning? It sounded like it could give way at any second now. Margaret turned her head to the right to see who was behind the rickety voice and felt the pain ricocheting down her spine again. To her right, she saw a glass full of human teeth. Whose, she didn’t know. But behind the glass, all wiggly and disproportionate and blue, was an old woman with wrinkles that stretched all across her face and made her look like a pale pool of waves with ears. She was wearing a pink night gown that had her liver spotted backside clearly visible, and she was sitting up knitting an afghan, her nibble fingers going end over end.

“I’m sorry if I sounded a little psychotic last night, honey, but they had me on these pills that made me all walla wallo woooo!” the old lady said while throwing her hands up in the air and waving them like she just didn’t care that Margaret was staring at her mystified. And that’s because there was just something about this old woman that reminded Margaret of Mildred from her apartment complex in 3G. It was something in the jaundiced old skin and the way she waved her arms around a lot making the wiggly skin beneath her arms jiggle that did it, and this made Margaret smile. But when she smiled, she felt a dull cavernous hole in her mouth where teeth should have been, and

Wait a minute!

Were those HER TEETH underneath that cup by her bed? Surely that guy at the ShopRite couldn’t have possibly knocked them out, could he have? Margaret glided her tongue along the edge of the back of her gums and felt…nothing.

At that moment, Margaret felt infinitely weak and powerless lying back in her bed, but as the scintillating sun splashed her chest, it gave her the strength to try to sit up. She wanted to walk out, knock some of his teeth out as revenge and wear his molars around her neck like a necklace, but as soon as she tried, there in flew the pain again.

“You’re not going to get out of here like that, lady,” the old woman said, not looking away from the gray and brown afghan she was stitching together, her other eye on the mute TV screen she had in the corner that was broadcasting replays from last night’s Knicks’ game. “Terrible,” she muttered as she shook her head at the Knick’s atrocious defense.

The ceiling was spinning when Margaret lied back down. “Why is life so hard?” she blurted out to herself, talking out loud again as if nobody else was in the room with her (her solipsism is astounding). The old woman just scoffed at her.

“Your life? Hard? Ha! Just ‘cause you lost a few teeth and you got all bruised up that makes life hard? Don’t be such a pussy, I lost all my teeth years ago, see?” And then the old woman put her afghan down, peeled her lips apart with her skinny fingers and opened them wide and showed the grand canyon that was her gums. “Just ‘cause you lose a few teeth here or there doesn’t make life hard, I have terminal cancer, do YOU have terminal cancer?”

Margaret said, “No, ma’am,” but didn’t know why she added the “ma’am” part. It just slipped out.

The old woman shook her head and picked back up her afghan, “So stop whining then,” she said and didn’t have anything else to say. She remained silent for a long time while the TV was the only voice left in the room. It wasn’t until the overall silence, plus the maddening sound of the old woman’s needles clicking together that Margaret decided that she needed to start talking before she went insane.

“What kind of cancer do you have?” Margaret asked.

“Throat” The old woman said.

“Oh…” Margaret said. And at that, was at a loss for words. She had thought this gangsta granny had something cooler, like pancreatic cancer or femur cancer or something like that, the abruptness of this fairly average cancer made Margaret a little upset, as it was like a shortcoming of an abrasion that’s not quite purple, and not quite blue, either. It just was what it was; plain and entirely ordinary.

When Margaret tried to sit up again, she had a hard time but managed it, something about this strange old woman made her want to sit up and see beyond her cup of teeth.

“My name’s Margaret, what’s yours?”

“Margaret,” she said without skipping a beat in her knitting.

(GASP! Margaret thought. She had the same name!) “Are you sure?” Margaret asked so surprised by this minor coincidence, her jaw the size of a beach ball.

“What the hell do you mean, ‘am I sure?’ Of course, I’m sure! I’ve been a Margaret since before your mother was letting scumbags get to second with her tets. That was a stupid question,” the old woman barked. “Now ask another.”

Margaret put pressure on her arms and pushed herself up even more (This woman wasn’t like Mildred in 3G at all!) but just as she did, an Asian nurse in light blue ran in with a worried looked on her face. “No, no, no, no, no,” she said, visibly upset. “Lie back down.” She scampered over to Margaret and pushed her back down upon her pillow until Margaret was completely on her back. Rats, all that work for nothin’. In normal circumstances, this nurse would be sprawled out on the ground by now with blood leaking from her hair, but right now, Margaret was too weak to put up a fight. Hell, she was too weak to even curse her out.

But in all truths, Margaret didn’t really feel like fighting back right now anyway, she was serenely in another frame of mind than the one she was normally in. They must have sedated her with something.

When Margaret was all the back down, the nurse, her name tag saying “Rona,” fluffed her pillow as if Margaret’s head wasn’t even there, and then walked out humming a Louie Armstrong song. The urge to kill began to rise again in Margaret’s heart.

While only a few moments ago, Margaret was swimming in a perpetual LaLa land, now, she was Margaret fuming angrily on her backside. The old woman, we’ll call her old Margaret, just stared over at her and wondered what the hell was wrong now. “Oh, don’t mind her,” Old Margaret said, her voice almost soothing, “her name is Rona, and she doesn’t mean any harm, she’s just being precautious and has other things on her mind. Don’t get all riled up about it.”

But even with Old Margaret’s newfound friendliness towards Margaret, she was still pissed off beyond recognition, her chest rising. There was just something about people humming Louie Armstrong songs that just always set her off. YOU CAN’T HUM LOUIE ARMSTRONG, you can only sing it! Or was it hum? Now Margaret was confused. Margaret didn’t know anymore, and the fact that she didn’t know pissed her off even more. She didn’t stop fuming until she heard Old Margaret coughing up her lungs into her hands, the sound of it sounding like a train flying off its tracks into a stained glass window. Margaret looked over at old Margaret and stared with sympathetic eyes. She forgot she was even there.

“Lady,” Margaret began, but then rethought it and said, “Margaret.”

Old Margaret didn’t say anything but “cough, cough, cough.”

Margaret tried again. “Margaret, are you okay?”

Still no response. All Old Margaret had to say was “cough, cough, cough.”

Eventually she stopped coughing, but when she did, she let out little hacking noises that gradually made her body slump down against her bed, her head now staring upward just as young Margaret’s was only a few seconds ago. There wasn’t a peep on the room for at least four minutes. It was then Old Margaret this time who uttered the first words.

“You think you got it tough, kid?” Old Margaret finally asked into her fist after her coughs subsided, her eyes a stony blue gaze that had no future in them. “Knowing that you’re going to die coughing to death, now THAT’S tough,” she said, and then just stared up at the ceiling, her chest heaving and her lungs wheezing all the while.

The two of them remained quiet for a very long time until eventually, Margaret
had thought that Old Margaret had possibly died, as Old Margaret had her eyes closed, Margaret called out to her. “Margaret!” she yelled, Old Margaret opened her eyes again, they’d only been closed for about four minutes.

“Yeah?” she asked, her voice distant. And just then, Margaret assaulted her moribund roommate with a question that was so out of the blue that it was almost purple. Margaret asked her, “What kind of car does your family drive?” Old Margaret chortled, it sounded like a frog urinating in another frog’s mouth it was so dirty. “Ha, you want to know about my family? Yeah, I got a whole lot of family.” This made Margaret smile. “Under the ground,” This made Margaret frown.

Old Margaret turned her head to Margaret and asked, “Why’d you ask such a stupid question?”

Margaret sat up again and looked over at this woman above her cup of teeth, holding herself up with one arm while the sanguine sun shone brilliantly on. “Well, I just wanted to know, that’s all.”

“Nobody just wants to know anything, so spill it, sister. Why’d you ask?”

And at this, Margaret was at a loss for words. She didn’t exactly know WHAT she was supposed to spill, but since Old Margaret wanted a show, Margaret decided to give her one. So she started talking aimlessly about nothing in particular. She talked about her little brother, her pacifist parents, her run-ins with the law and then…

“Nickels!”

Old Margaret pointed weakly to the floor by the foot of her bed, she was pointing at a pocketbook. “I probably got some in there if you’re really that strapped for cash.”

Margaret clarified. “No, not nickels. Nickels! My cat…” and then Margaret told her THAT story, too. Old Margaret listened on intently.

***
“So that’s all you got left in this world, huh, hun?” Old Margaret asked, now sitting up and interested, her cough gone. Hopefully, Rona wouldn’t show up and make them lie back down as their bodies were far too drained and weak by this point to possibly sit back up like this again. “Yeah,” Margaret said, her eyes staring down at her hands buried beneath her covers, her eyes wet.

“Hey, don’t be so…so…” a fit of coughing, and then, “so down, honey, you really want that cat back, huh?”

Margaret nodded, her ears hearing but not listening.

Old Margaret sat back against her pillow and crossed her skinny little arms again, angry at herself for actually feeling sympathy for this young girl. “Well, I want to get out of here but that won’t happen anytime soon [actually, it will] so I guess that makes us BOTH fucked, huh?”

And Margaret conceded petulantly, shaking her head like a little girl who doesn’t get her way. But as the two of them continued to sit there internally bemoaning their predicament, something hit them at the exact same time. Why not try and make a break for it?

“Let’s blow this popsicle stand!” they both said simultaneously. And at that, they both gathered all the strength they could to fully sit all the way up again. They had no time to lose. They had a popsicle stand they needed to blow.

***

Getting up was tough, but once they finally did it (Margaret was up first, Old Margaret took a late second) the two of them were out of bed and as spry as pie when they got up and tiptoed to the door, searching for a way out. “Shhh, quiet,” Margaret said even though Old Margaret hadn’t even made a sound. At the door, Margaret slowly, very slowly, peeked her head out and looked both ways, with the coast clear, she and then pulled her head back in all the way.

“What’d you see?” Old Margaret asked.

“Wheel chairs, people.”

“Lots of them?”

“Wheelchairs?” Margaret asked, perturbed by the question.

“No!” Old Margaret snarled, smacking Margaret on the back of her head, “People, were there lots of ‘em?”

“Not lots, just little” Margaret responded with a wince expecting another smack on the neck, “I think if we just lay low, we can get out of here, no problem.”

Old Margaret, now not so angry, winked at Margaret and then agreed to proceed, but before they could make a move, two uncovered legs stood in their path. When they looked up, who should they happen to look up and see but Rona, their nurse. She was aghast to find her two patients (Who she had already fallen to calling mother/baby) out of their beds. She was holding a bed pan and two cups of apple juice that sat on top of the pan. The two cups were shaking.

“What are you two doing out of bed?” Rona asked, her eyes wide with consternation and the fear of God in them.

“We were, uhhhhh…” Margaret began, she hadn’t been prepared for THIS.

But apparently, Old Margaret had, and she had already crawled all the way around Rona’s legs and gotten behind them, before Rona hadn’t seen her. Old Margaret was too fast, and all Rona saw (or thought she saw) was a blur on the floor like seeing a leaf from outside glide across the floor and mistaking it for a centipede. Rona looked from the floor to the bed, and back to the floor again. All she saw was Margaret, and that was it. “Where’s the other one?” she gasped, the cups on the bedpans swiveling back and forth on top of her shaking hands.

But just then, Old Margaret, hunched over on the floor on all fours behind Rona, figured this would be the perfect time to do it, so she shouted “Now!” and, without even thinking, Margaret pushed Rona over Old Margaret’s bent body, the bed pan flying out of her hands, along with the apple juice, all over the floor when she hit the ground hard. There was yellow juice and blue pills all over the hospital grounds.

“Move, move, move!” Margaret shouted as two orderlies, big ones with bald heads, began running down the hallway to see why a young nurse just went flying backwards onto the hospital tiles. But as Margaret went into a full dash down the hallway, Old Margaret was having a hard time just trying to stand up (Rona’s fall had apparently made Old Margaret dislodge her hip somehow)

“Helllp, Margaret, I’m down!” Old Margaret screamed.

Margaret, already almost completely down the hall, did a complete 180 and went back for her, the orderlies already almost very close behind. While still on the ground, Old Margaret hoisted her hand up and Margaret lifted her up and put her on her back. But just then, as if nothing was wrong with her at all, Old Margaret gingerly wrapped her legs (both of them, even the broken one) around Margaret’s waist. That sly devil, she had been playing opossum the whole time!

“Shake it sister, we’re on the lamb together now,” and with that, Margaret began to hightail it out of there, the orderlies were right on her tail.

With a right turn, the halls were now claustrophobically slim, and as Margaret sprinted, Old Margaret much lighter than she looked, her bare ass showing, she had to make some quick feints while avoiding the oncoming traffic of doctors, nurses, and sickies. And while Margaret ran past one man, his mouth covered by an oxygen mask and unaware of the calamity above him, Old Margaret reached down, snatched the oxygen mask from his face, and took a quick whiff before she threw it to the ground. “Ah!” she exclaimed as if they just got the recharge she needed. The dying patient on the gurney waved at fist at their departing behinds.

“Take a left here, Margaret!” Old Margaret said, but with a hint of treachery in her voice that only Margaret heard.

But while she did indeed say left, the pinch she gave to the side of Margaret’s neck signaled otherwise. And at the end of the hallway, which was a fork in the road, Margaret began to take a left, but then took a sharp right, the two orderlies heading the wrong way entirely. Margaret was already in the elevator out of there. Once inside, Margaret and Old Margaret found two other people inside already. One was a woman who looked very much like Lucille Ball, what with the sunglasses, the poofed red hair, the bonnet, and the shoes. The other was a man with a dead hangdog expression on his face wearing pajamas. He was in a wheel chair. A strange pair indeed (both of them). A while Margaret stood there, still holding Old Margaret on her back, Lucille Ball looked at Old Margaret’s butt, it was all prickly and gross. The old fart didn’t look, though. He just stared straight ahead, his dark brown, cataract congested eyes incapable of looking anywhere else but forward.

Margaret, realizing that she had still been carrying about 90 lbs of dead weight on her back, finally asked, “Do you think you can WALK now, Margaret?” her voice out of breath and angry.

“I think I can make it.” Old Margaret said, kicking out her leg as if she was getting the kinks out.

“Oh, get down, you.” Margaret said, tired of the shtick already.

Old Margaret got down and stretched out her legs, she was flexible like a gymnast. Margaret let out a low snarl. She didn’t like to be deceived.

There were only two more floors to go until they reached the bottom floor, but just then, the reflective door opened on the third floor. Lucille Ball must be getting off here, her eyes were trying not to make eye contact as she began to wheel the old fart she had with her out the elevator. But before she could get out, just then, she felt a hard, sharp pain in her left shoulder. It was a human hand, definitely a human hand. But more precisely, it was Margaret’s human hand, and Margaret had a hold on her shoulder with those of malicious intentions. She dragged Lucille Ball back into the elevator, while Old Margaret pressed the button to close the door back up.

When the elevator had eventually gotten to the third floor, Lucille Ball and the old fart had changed clothes dramatically. Instead of Lucille Ball and Tuckered out Tommy, they were now two EX-Patients leaving St. Joseph’s Clinical Hospital. The orderlies eventually found them shivering, reaching for the strewn hospital gowns, alone and crying in the elevator, even the old fart. But what they didn’t find were the two Margaret’s. They were already long gone by now.

I just ruined some kid’s Christmas

2006-10-10T13:44:00.000-07:00

So guess what I just did this morning, kiddies? Come on guess.

Gueeees.

I just preordered a PS3. And you want to know how?

Well, it turns out that my ties to the local Gamestop have finally turned up roses as I got the call about the secret, hush hush tip from an informant around 7:00 this morning.

I woke up to the call groggily. I really didn’t know what the caller wanted, but if he was waking me up during a dream I was having about ruling Vatican City with an iron fist, then it better be good. But when I brought my hand down my face, I noticed something strange when I looked down at my phone. The number was blocked.

Perplexed, I was still too tired to think about NOT picking up the phone, so I answered it. There was talking at the other end. It was my friend. He sounded out of breath and excited.

“You know about the PS3 preorder I was telling you about last week?”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice sounding tired like clouds drifting across an orange skyline.

“Well, we have it today, and if you want it, you better come soon.”

My barely slit eyes were now opened wide with worry. “YOU MEAN TODAY’S THE DAY?!”

“Yah, man, and you better get down here fast if you want one,” and then he hung up. That was all he had to say.

I would find out later that he was calling from an undisclosed location (possibly his car) and that his voice was technologically altered (possibly by a futuristic cold), but all the secrecy was necessary when you think of it—the PS3 is going to be the hottest console this Christmas (Sorry, wii warriors, but you know it is).

When I rushed outside, I hopped feet first into the windshield of my Rav 4 and sped off to the bank, my tires squealing like a banshee on the murky banks of Scotland.

After taking out a $100 bucks (can you BELIEVE that’s how much they’re asking for a reservation?!), I avoided all the red lights—by going through them—and reached the Gamestop at 9:15 on the dot, forty five minutes before the store was set to open.

Blast! There were already 3 people outside the store, and if my corrective vision contacts were correct, then I was seeing yet another mom coming out of her minivan and sauntering up to the line with the intent to buy. I unbuckled my seatbelt and stormed out my car.

When I sprung out my door, I curled up into a little ball like Samus and went into a roll across the pavement GI Joe style. When I got up, I ran to the Gamestop and just beat her by a few steps. When in front of her, I stuck out my tongue and wiped the sweat off my forehead.

But why the rush to be number four, you ask? I mean, why not just settle for being number five, or six or seven, even? I mean, come on, they were going to have more than four or five reservations, right?

Right?

WROOOOONG! What my little informant ALSO told me this morning was that this particular store was only going to get FOUR PS3’s on launch day and it was going to be like that all over the country.

Wha wha wha whaaaaaat?

Really?

Yep, really.

And this really isn’t all that surprising when you consider that Sony only plans to release 400 thousand PS3s on release day in North America (really? That’s it?). And you know what that means, right? SOMEBODY in this apple pie and Soul Train lovin’ country is going to fork over double the price of admission just because they feel they HAVE to be a part of the next generation on day one. And when I charge for double the price of the console, it’s really not my fault. I’M not in the wrong here.

Sony is. They’re the ones shipping such a paltry amount to these shores on day one.

Didn’t they learn anything from the pratfalls of Microsoft’s 360 release? Apparently not, because now some kid from the ‘burbs is going to have a pretty crummy Christmas since he won’t get the system he’s been creaming over ever since he saw previews of it on YouTube. He might even have to settle for a wii, or, God forbid, an X-BOX 360. Alas, poor guy.

But by the looks of the PS3’s dismal launch (And the wii’s immaculate one) maybe I just made that kid’s Christmas the best he’ll ever have. Or maybe I just made it just a little bit crummy.

Either way, I know what I’m going to do with MY PS3 when I get it at launch…sell it on EBAY! I mean, seriously, what else am I going to do with it when it comes out? Play it? Yeah, okay, that’ll be the day.

Maybe, if I sell high enough, I’ll have enough to buy a wii, a yacht, a PSP and Riiiiiidge Racer. Or maybe just a wii and a few games. But whatever I get, I can tell you this; if anybody’s the loser in all this it’s Sony. The consumer could always buy something else, the wii being a testament to that.

Chapter 2

2006-10-05T14:44:00.000-07:00

Margaret didn’t much enjoy her sleep that night. The park bench was rather hard and rigid, which caused her to get one hell of a neck strain. Oh, and then there was Nickels who kept squirming all about and scratching just when Margaret was getting comfortable. It got to the point where Margaret had to put Nickels to sleep (by cutting off her air supply until she got sleepy) just to get a decent night’s rest.

The night air was cool against her symmetrical face, and she constantly sucked some of it in whenever she wanted to cool herself off since she was so hot from her temper, which was fuming. The voice at the top of her mouth wouldn’t shut up after she found herself outside. And actually, it was the voice that woke her up in the first place. “Oh, now you want to talk to me?” Margaret asked the roof of her mouth angrily, “tough luck, sugar plum, you’re just like the rest of them, you talk big but then you leave me high and dry when I need you the most, feck off.” But the voice wouldn’t just “feck off” and it constantly reminded her why she was stuck in this predicament in the first place.

“Girlfriend,” the voice would say, “You know why you’re stuck out here, don’tja? It’s cause a that skinny, Ghandi impersonator over in the supermarket. You ain’t just gonna take this lying down, are you?”

And then Margaret blinked her eyes four times and said, “Well, yeah, I am” before she dozed back off to sleep, squirming on the bench trying to get some rest. She went to sleep very quickly after that and had dreams about stray dogs lapping at each other’s private parts for as long as she slept.

And it was all quite peculiar, really, because how she wound up out here in the first place, she couldn’t tell you. One moment she was peering up at the black encroaching stain on her roof, the next, she was staring up at the twinkling stars in the sky. This transition—from house to bench—made Margaret believe that she had somehow mastered teleportation in her sleep. “If only I teleported myself to somewhere swank like the Taj Mahal or someplace like that,” she said, talking out loud again—she really had to learn the novelty of keeping her thoughts to herself.

What was even more amazing, though, was the fact that nobody tried to touch her while she slept. Don’t think that’s amazing? (Then you’ve never been to New York before). Maybe you’ll think this is, then—Margaret was sleeping on the bench in just her bra and panties. (See? fuming hot, it was burning her up inside).
Eventually, though, one man DID try to touch her. But it was a police officer. His name was Officer Martinez.

While she lain with her back to the world, her yellow panties with the bunny rabbits skipping across her rear mocking the unhappy world, Officer Martinez, with a mustache that curled like a Ferris wheel, knocked on the edge of the green bench with his night stick.

Under the orange light of the park lamp, his sallow face was almost a heavenly shade that created an angelic appearance, almost like a halo around his slightly pudgy head. And in this light, one could almost mistake him for St. Francis of Assisi. That is, of course, if he wasn’t donning the badge and the po po clothes. His teeth could use some improving, too. When he smiled, his teeth were as yellow as the sand in the Mojave Desert.

“Hey, hey you,” he said, knocking all the louder, making a quick thud noise against the hard bench to wake her up but also making sure he didn’t whap her in butt, which was rising and falling along with her backside. “You can’t sleep out her wearing that.”

And that’s when Margaret’s subconscious got her in trouble again, because it was at that moment that Margaret, barely awake and still in her REM state, gave Officer Martinez the same obscene gesture that she would often give her mother back home when she used to be told that it was time to get up for school. She gave Officer Martinez the finger. Unbeknownst to Margaret, the wrist that so proudly held up that finger soon had a handcuff coiled around it. The truth was, Margaret was going to go to jail for a crime she didn’t even consciously commit. Poor Margaret, this happened to her a lot.

***

When she woke up again, she was in the back of a car. Turns out she had teleported yet again! this time to somewhere more comfortable and with much better music, which was Steely Dan. Margaret could get used to this; it was much better than being on a park bench. But when she turned over, she noticed something that wasn’t all hunky dory. Behind her back were her hands, which were bound together. “What the fuck?” she said, you could imagine her surprise.

“Hey, hey, hey, it’s that kind of language that got you back there in the first place, lady,” said a voice that she wasn’t familiar with. It had a Latin tinge to it, and it was kind of high pitched, kind of shrill. It definitely wasn’t the voice at the roof of her mouth, which was very deep and brassy. That voice sounded like a female jazz singer’s voice. And besides, that voice came from the roof of Margaret’s mouth, this voice came from behind a metal cage on top of the seat, and

Ohhhhh, now she got it…shit, how the hell did she get arrested this time? She hadn’t been in the back of one of these since she was 14, except, this time, the circumstances were a little bit different. For instance, this time she wasn’t being held down and raped. Also, this time, she was wearing a…what was this? A potato sack?

The face behind the cage turned to her as if he knew what was on her mind just as headlights outside dragged their way across his hairless cheek. “Yeah, it’s a potato sack. It’s all I had, and you’re lucky, too, ‘cause you were just about butt naked out there when I picked you up.”

And that was all he had to say. Margaret felt like screaming.

As they pulled into the police station, Margaret stared up at the metal roof of the car and could see the orange glow of the city rebounding off the ceiling in front of her. Something wasn’t right—besides her life. It was something else that she couldn’t quite put her poking fingers on, something like…

Nickels!

Margaret sprung up as quickly as possible while in handcuffs, her hands bound together making it a challenge to get up as the metal incisors bit into her wrists. But when she got up, she saw her cat sitting up attentively in the front seat while the cop kept one hand on the wheel, the other petting her head. Margaret’s eyes were embers as she saw his slim fingers feeling all about the holes on her cat’s patchy backside. She didn’t like anybody else putting their hands on those holes.

“Butt naked in the park with a cat with mange,” Officer Martinez tsked as he shook his head left to right, “lady, you’re something else, you know that?” And with that, he stopped the car. Officer Martinez got out of his side, opened the door for Margaret and dragged her into the well lit station that looked like the entrance to an Emergency ward.

It looked so out of place and awkward in the cityscape around her that Margaret asked groggily, “Are we still in Brooklyn?”

“What? You think I was sent to pick you up from Washington or somethin’? Of course we’re still in Brooklyn.”

Without thinking, Margaret uttered, “This place has changed,” and said it so low and drearily that Officer Martinez almost didn’t hear her.

“Yeah, we’re starting to crack down.” Martinez said snidely, defending his unit. “Back about a year ago, we’d probably just let you sleep out there like that, but the city’s trying to renovate and clean up the garbage, you know?”

He pronounced “garbage,” “gaa-bage.”

“Are you calling me garbage?” Margaret asked, not in an angry tone, but more as just a question that she desired to hear an answer to, but an answer never came.

She took that as a yes.

After 49 steps (Margaret counted) they were at the front desk in the police station. Margaret could see herself in the tiles beneath her Reeboks. She looked terrible. Had it really only been one day? Her hair was all ratty, and her face had already grown four distinguishable wrinkles in them that weren’t there this morning. And she actually looked like she may have lost some weight as her face was beginning to look gaunt and slim.

But to prove it was still her, she performed a little Margaret litmus test. As Officer Martinez signed away for her, Margaret stuck her tongue out at her reflection and wiggled it around. The reflection stuck its tongue back at her and wiggled it; too, making it look like the reflection was licking the floor. Margaret smiled.

Good, she was still alive.

***

“So, where are we headed to now, Officer?”

“To a holding cell,” was his response.

“And for how long?” she asked, her eyes the color of tired.

“Stop asking questions,” he said, but then thought better of this and decided that there was no reason to be mean, so he revised his statement. “Until tomorrow morning, which is…” He then stopped and stared at his watch.

“An hour.”

The holding cell was small and like the cells you see on TV in black and white on shows like the Andy Griffith show. When he dropped her off, he wiped his forehead with a kerchief in his breast pocket before he closed the gate as if to say, “I’ve done far too much work for one day,” and then he went to his desk which was literally only eight paces away. He sat down with his back to her and he started writing out his plans for the tailgate party he was having over the weekend.

Outside, the barred windows in Margaret’s cell made the world look as if it was trapped in its own little box, the lemon meringue sun beginning to peak its way through Margaret’s new digs. And as it crept through, she began to stomp on the yellow trail that clung to her floor. Margaret liked having her own space and didn’t want any other body or THING in there with her, well, except maybe Nickels, of course.

After a solid fifteen minutes of stomping (and Officer Martinez ignoring her), she tired herself out and sat on the small bench in the corner. She rested her head against the gray cinderblocks behind her and sighed, the sun just wouldn’t go away.

***
In her cell was a toilet that was blocked by a small, one walled stall so Officer Martinez couldn’t even get a looky loo inside if he wanted to. With a yawn, Margaret caught a whiff of something and brought her arm to her nose. She smelled the potato sack she was draped in and it woke her up. It smelled like New York City hot dogs.

And you know what else often smelled like New York City hot dogs? Nickels! And the smell of her potato sack got her into thinking about her cat again. “Hey, copper man, where’s my cat?” Margaret asked, her voice sounding much more chipper than a person behind bars should sound.

Officer Martinez turned around in his chair, the legs scraping against the gray pavement beneath them. He looked over the side with his shoulder and peered down at her with discouraging eyes that said, “Why are you talking? You shouldn’t be talking.”
And then he turned back around in his chair and continued to plot out his party.

Not a good eye reader, Margaret persisted being annoying.

“Hey, copper man, I said where’s my cat?”

He turned around again, this time with very wide eyes. Had he just heard what he thought he heard?

“That was YOUR cat?”

“Yes, officer, her name is Nickels and she’s my best friend.”

This woman really WAS crazy, Officer Martinez thought. How could ANYONE possibly love that ugly ass cat? Officer Martinez turned back around in his seat and began scribbling something on a yellow form of paper. Margaret thought he was writing down this pertinent new discover, but what he was really writing was his next draft pick in his fantasy football league. His interest in Margaret was already fading into nothingness. His back talked to her, “Oh, I thought it was just a stray. Well, we’ll see,” he said casually. “I’ll have an answer for you in the morning.”

Margaret sat back down on the bench and fell asleep instantly, hoping morning couldn’t come soon enough, and it really couldn’t. Fifteen minutes later, Officer Martinez woke her up. It was morning.

“So, I talked it over with the higher uppers,” Officer Martinez said, Margaret’s bleary eyes directed at his crotch when she woke up, “and they said you can’t have the cat back if you’re homeless.” And at the sound of the “h” word, Margaret was up like a race dog. She rushed to the gate and clung to it, her fingers wrapped around the bars. Homeless? Was she really homeless? She hadn’t really thought of it like THAT before. She didn’t really have time to think, really.

“What am I going to do?!” Margaret pleaded to the bars. Officer Martinez took seven quick jumps back to his desk, his hand already reaching in his pocket for his pepper spray. “Hey, calm down lady, calm down,” he said. He didn’t expect this lunatic to do THAT.

And then she said without even thinking, “You can’t take Nickels away from me, she’s all I have.” And Margaret had never really thought about this either, but it was true. Nickels WAS the only friend she had. She was the only one in her life who actually stayed around for the abuse.

Officer Martinez, now taking three steps forward, but still keeping his hands at his sides, his fingers still lurking into his pockets for that pepper spray, had calmed down. His heart stopped pounding so much when he remembered that there was a whole ton of reinforced steel keeping her away from him. Still, he kept on his guard—he didn’t know WHAT this woman was capable of.

“Well, if you can manage to garner the money to find yourself a place to live and can provide us with the papers to prove it, THEN you can have your cat back.” Officer Martinez answered. “But until that day, I’m afraid that your cat is going to have to remain here at the station. You have a week to find yourself a place. After that, the cat’s going to the pound.”

And with that, Officer Martinez stood by her cage, pulled out his key, and unlocked her door. And as she walked out, his eyes jumped to her hands, which were still behind her back, handcuffed and turning blue. “Hey, hey, hey, wait up!” he shouted. “Let me just take those off your hands, heh heh heh.” he joked, his chuckle laced with worry. And as he took them off, he waved to her back and then wiped off his sweaty forehead with his forearm.

“Phew,” he said.

If someone had caught her with her with her handcuffs still on, he could have gotten in big trouble. He was so busy staring at her legs when he brought her in, though, that he completely forgot to take them off. Whoops, he thought, well, you can’t be perfect all the time. And then he turned around and went back to his desk. He spent the whole rest of the morning plotting out his perfect line-up.

***
What the hell was she going to do NOW? Her shift at the PETORIUM wasn’t until tomorrow and she only had seven days to scrounge up enough cash to get her poor, lovable, irreplaceable cat, Nickels back. “Think, Margaret, think!” She said, again and again loudly. And then, like a Sylvania light bulb going off inside her brain, a thought popped into her head like a bubble (or an aneurysm) right at that moment. “My parents!” she shouted out loud, causing a flock of birds by a penny pond to take flight.

But that thought was quickly dismissed. Her parents were off limits now ever since Donavan was painted in the picture, leaving her all the way off the frame. And besides, she didn’t even know where her parents were anyway. They said they moved, so that meant they could be anywhere now. Even Québec, which was for some reason clear in Margaret’s mind as the place they must have moved to.

Margaret shuddered at the thought of Québec—Québec was cold!—and thought about other means to make money. And it was at that moment, a moment where the onrush of pedestrians just crossing the street had reached a fever pitch of noise, that the voice on the roof of her mouth began to talk again, this time, with a solution: “Kill that wiener at the Shop Rite who knows karate and get your money back.”

And as crazy as it was, it was still the best idea she had heard all morning (Learning to play saxophone and playing it in the subway just sounded silly in retrospect.)

So that was the plan for the morning: exact revenge and take back what was rightfully hers—the stolen money and the envelope opener. Hell, she might even be able to get a much better haul today. It was a Tuesday, which meant that more people would be playing hooky from school and work. It made a whole lot of sense, really. Why the hell didn’t she think of it earlier? That voice in her mouth sure was a Godsend. Thank God for Godsends.

And today, with the crisp sun pounding on the pavement, the streets were much fuller with the hustle and bustle and hell and smell that New York was known for—the smell of commerce. But as she walked, she wondered what the hell everybody was staring at. Whenever she would pass somebody, it didn’t matter who, they would always look at her up and down, chuckle, and then leave with a last look back at her. Did she have some kind of disease or something? But then Margaret realized what it was.

She was still wearing the potato sack.

When she left the station, no one was at the front desk and her mind was so preoccupied with her dilemma that she forgot to even ask what the hell happened to her clothes, meaning, that for the past two hours, she’s been sauntering around Brooklyn looking like a freak from Idaho. No wonder people would pass her with a gawking expression.

This was just great. She very well couldn’t walk around like this all day, what would the Asian tourists think? So she decided to do the next best thing to actually buying clothes, she decided to steal them.

The Laundromat was pretty packed, but not with people, but rather with names. Every machine in the place had a name, and every name seemed to fill that machine with that much more life. Margaret checked her watch; it was only 8:30. The Shop Rite she was heading to didn’t really fill up until 9, so she had plenty of time to take what she needed.

Margaret shimmied out of her potato sack and tossed it to the ground. She now stood in just her bra and panties again, which were starting to stink as they clung to her pale skin. A woman, sitting down and reading a curled up magazine looked up instantly. She then looked both ways just to see if anybody else saw what she saw, and then ran over to Margaret and threw a beach towel around her body.

“Are you out of your mind?” The woman screeched. She was very short, about 4’9, and was wearing a Twin Peaks promotional T-Shirt with a shower cap. If anybody was out of her mind, Margaret thought, it was this lady, but Margaret didn’t say a word, she just stood stock still. The woman looked like she could be in her early 30s, with her lavish olive skin and lack of make-up, but the shower cap kind of threw Margaret off. It made her look like she belonged in a senior citizen home. Or an asylum.

“What do you want?’ Margaret asked, “I was just about to clean my clothes.” This was a lie. The correct statement was, I was just about to steal YOUR clothes. The woman tightened the towel around Margaret and blew air through her teeth. “You can’t just stand around in your underwear like that.”

AGAIN with the underwear? What did everybody in this city have against underwear? Was it the small shit stain?

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she exclaimed, her tiny hands making sure that the towel was secure. “What if a little keed walked in here and saw you like that?” She asked. The Laundromat was empty, and there was nobody else there except for her and Margaret.

But before the awkwardness of silence could set in, there was a DING! in the distance—a dryer had just finished drying. Margaret was now going to collect whatever clothes she could find, and she didn’t even care if none of it fit her, anything was better than waddling around in a potato sack.

“Excuse me, I have to get my clothes now,” Margaret said, her head upturned. She was tired of this woman and wanted her to leave her alone, so she began to walk away, the woman’s hands still holding onto the beach towel. “Hey, hey, hey, wait up a minute, lady, slow down, my legs don’t move as fast as yours.”

Margaret sauntered over to the dryer and passed a Pedro, a Dustin, an Avery, a Mickey, a Latoya, and a Betty, just to get to the dryer she was heading to, but there was no “Margaret,” and this troubled her—they could have at least put a Maggie in or something. It definitely livened up the place up, didn’t it?

It wasn’t until Margaret began taking the clothes out physically that the woman began to realize what was going on.

“Hey, hey, hey, do you know whose laundry you’re taking out?” The woman asked in an irate tone.

Margaret turned her head back, her cheek a little red, and said, “Yeah, of course, mine.”

The towel woman got angry, she even let go of the towel. “No, no, no, no, no,” she said.

And Margaret replied, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” and then continued to take out the clothes, hallelujah, hallelujah.

And it was at that moment that the towel lady made one of the biggest mistakes she could have possibly made—she stomped on Margaret’s foot. Five minutes later, the towel woman was laid out on the ground unconscious and penniless. She was also left with a broken nose and a dryer that was completely barren. Margaret even took the dryer sheet that accompanied the clothes. She was thorough with her stealing.

The Shop Rite really wasn’t all that far away from the Laundromat, which was a good thing, since these garish and tiny clothes just weren’t cutting it. They were small, ugly and uncomfortable, and felt like how Margaret felt on the inside. When she finally got to the Shop Rite, she pushed her face against the glass window and gritted her teeth. There he was all right; that four eyed, little freak.

He was smiling and scanning coupons like nothing even happened yesterday, and this aggravated Margaret even more. “That little prick,” she said, “he probably forgot about me already.” And this left a sour taste in her mouth and set her on an even deeper edge of vengeance. This time, it was personal.

So Margaret stormed in through the automatic doors seething while customers moved out of her way when they saw her hunched forward with clenched knuckles and split hairs. By the cereal aisle was the manager with the football player’s nose again. He looked on edge and as if he would jump at the slightest sound of a fly by his ear.

He had a big bruise on his forehead, and this perplexed Margaret a great deal since she didn’t remember ever hitting him in the forehead. But then she thought that whatever damage she must have done to him must have gone all the way up his body and reached his head. She smiled at the thought of how mighty she was.

When the manager saw her pass, he jumped straight into a display of Corn Pops and screamed, “Security!” as loud as he could.

But she wasn’t listening to his incessant cries; she was storming over to the register where the karate champ was stationed. And as she walked over to him, every head in the store turned in her direction.

They might not have known the already historic feud that had already been built between them, but they definitely knew that something exciting was going to happen, and they stopped pushing their carts and shut up their babies as Margaret bull walked over to the skinny clerk.

If the OK Corral existed today, it would be localized in this Shop Rite, right here, right now as the tide turned frightful. And one shopper even began to whistle the theme from “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” when she moved, his shrill sound emphasizing her mission...SOMEBODY was not leaving here today in a conscious state.

When the security guard finally came, the lumbering pile of flesh huffing and puffing, the store manager put his hand up and told him to let it go. This was between Margaret and the master.

Margaret turned her head to the security guard with a vicious look, and this made him scream. Once again, Margaret smiled at the thought of her power.

But with her head turned, she didn’t notice the flying shadow that was coming straight at her way. When she turned her face back in that direction, there it was, a flying foot right in her face. The karate master believed whole heartedly in the element of surprise.

“Hooooooooo!” He shouted as he landed a foot right on her cheek, shattering a permanent tooth and leaving her spinning around in circles in a sort of whirlpool affect that left the store turning in a sort of explosive blue and yellow blur.

Margaret hit the ground hard and slid into a display of Chips Ahoy, her back skidding on the green and white tiles.

Everybody in the store ran towards the action like flies to a light that will electrocute and kill them. They were absolutely fascinated by this woman in the small clothes and the skinny guru with the quick fists of death.

“You’re back for more are you?” the skinny mustached man asked, his fist taut and ready for breaking bricks if they had to. When Margaret shook her head and got back her bearings, she steadied herself and readied herself for combat.

“Why’d you take my money?” she said, wiping a bit of blood from her busted lip with the back of her hand.

“That money did not belong to you, “he said. “It was ill gotten and stolen. You are to learn from your mistakes.”

“But I wasn’t able to pay my rent and now I’m living on a bench in the park.” Margaret said, bolstering up her anger. “And now I need that money so I can get my cat back.”

“You should earn your money like me,” the mustached man said as he spread out his arm to his register. “Only then can you feel proud of what you done.”

“I don’t have time for that crap, now just give me the money back and I’ll be on my way.”

“No,” the mustached man said, his eyes cut like slits. “You will learn through pain that your way of living is no way to live at all.”

“Fine,” she said, and that was that.

Margaret cracked her neck and tightened her fists, the mustached man began to do a kata and stretched out his legs, they were going to engage in combat.

“I am happy to trounce evil,” he said as he bowed.
Margaret bowed too, her long hair draping over her face, but for no apparent reason at all; she reached over and took a packet of Mentos as she did so. She opened it, swallowed one, and then took out another, chewing on it, and then spitting it the floor. Yuck! Plain.

“That shall be the last thing you shall ever steal,” he told her, and he got into mantis position.

The audience was now cheering and punching the air even though nothing had even happened yet. All the same, they were ready for blood.

“Are you ready?” He asked, his leg now behind his neck.

“Ready? I was born ready,” Margaret said, her knuckles now cracked and ready. He just stood there when she ran full speed ahead, his arms crossed and his face expressionless.

“Yeeyeeyeeyeeyeeyeeyee!” Margaret shouted in fury, giving out her best Xena impression before she lunged forward and got hit in the back of the neck with a chop followed by a trip that sent her gliding across the floor.

And as if out of nowhere, he was on top of her, slapping her in the back of the head like a monkey while he hopped up and down, his hands relentless. “Are you ready to leave this place, evil spirit?” he asked, the sound of her head sounding like a cantaloupe being assaulted by a million grubby hands all at once.

“Never!” She shouted, and flipped him off, her clothes almost splitting down the middle.

He then did seven flips in the air before he landed on his feet again. Everybody clapped, except Margaret, who was now rushing at him again, the world around her a blur. But at that very moment, up in the sky was the mustached man, he had the apocalypse on the bottom of his store regulated sneakers. And as he soared in the air, all Margaret could see was the shadow above her head. And that was the last thing she saw grace her peripheral vision before she wound up waking up in the hospital.

***
When Margaret woke up, all she saw were white tiles and a square light fixture above her. She was staring up at the hospital ceiling. When she turned her head, which sent a shock of excruciating pain down her spine, she saw that the patient next to her, an old woman with no teeth, was smiling at her. “Those are some of your teeth in that jar, darling” the old lady said while she cackled. And she was right. On Margaret’s bed side there was a covered cup with some of her teeth in. The karate master had knocked four right out, the ones near the back.

Margaret weakly winced and then put her head back against her pillow, staring up again. She then acknowledged that she now only had six days left to get back her cat and then drifted off into sleep. With her eyes closed, she waited out the long stint of annoying fireworks behind her eyelids, and finally got some rest when all the colors eventually faded to black.

Shortcomings of the Abrasions

2006-10-04T12:11:00.000-07:00

The rent was due today at noon, and Margaret was well aware of this because she had the date posted on her refrigerator in human blood (not hers) next to her laundry list of things she had to pick up at the store today (nail clippers, cereal, a new butterfly knife, etc). The clock in the corner reminded her that she really needed to hustle if she wanted to stay in her barely livable one bedroom apartment. The time was 8:45.

She also had to get ear medicine for her Persian cat, Nickels, whose name was apropos since all the cigarette holes in its fur coat looked like little nickels on its back. Poor little Nickels, she was all patchy and ugly now. Margaret was awfully sorry for being so cruel to her, even though she deserved it most of the time (Damn furball needed to learn how to dodge a foot one in awhile).

Yep, it was definitely going to be a long day’s journey into noon, and while Margaret pondered ways on how she was going to acquire the money today, she looked up at the ceiling above her and noticed a garbage can sized water stain that was leaking right through.

This was indeed strange, especially since she was living in an apartment, and not a house. This must mean that someone upstairs must have water all over their floor that hasn’t cleaned it up yet. Dumbass. It must be Mrs. Beakman again. She probably died in her bath tub; this was the third time this week.

Margaret didn’t know how many times she warned her that this would happen, but she knew it’d been a lot, especially since Mrs. Beakman liked to take ridiculously long baths and waste away her twilight years in the tub reading Soup Opera Digest and eating Fritos.

She also sang along to the trumpet playing of Louie Armstrong on her radio, and this solidified the fact that Mrs. Beakman was an idiot—you can’t sing along to a trumpet, moron, you can only hum along to it. Mrs. Beakman was dumb, and Margaret wished she would die for real this time. It would do the whole apartment complex a lot of good.

“Dammit,” Margaret murmured while staring up at the encroaching stain that seemed to be expanding the more and more she looked at it. “How the hell am I going to fix this?” she asked herself before she stared down and saw Nickels, who was slinking across the floor with impunity. “Huh, Nickels? Huh? How the hell am I going to afford this? You tell me that.” Margaret spread out her arms and shook them as if by doing this she would make her gray, patch furred cat with all the holes in it actually develop the ability to speak.

But despite all the abuse, Nickels was still stupid enough to believe her owner gave up her belligerent ways time after time; probably interpreting Margaret’s shaking of the arms as a peace offering. So she began to rub her body against Margaret’s leg beneath the fabric of her Capri pants and draped her tail across the bump that was her ankle. Margaret scowled. She didn’t want to be rubbed; she wanted a solution. So she kicked the cat in the butt and sent it flying into the ottoman by the refrigerator. This was common in their relationship of owner and pet. Margaret didn’t get what she wanted, so she kicked Nickels in the butt and didn’t see the problem in all this.

“Stupid cat,” Margaret said as she slipped on her windbreaker. “You could at LEAST try to do some work around here, you lazy bum. I don’t see why I always have to be the bread winner in this family.” Margaret shook her head and walked to the door cursing. If she couldn’t talk to her cat, she could at least talk to herself. It was therapeutic.

Margaret actually began to wish she had the cat’s life as she picked up the sharp envelope opener she had on the counter. It definitely would make life much simpler. Eat, sleep, shit, eat, sleep, shit, that’s all Nickels ever did. Eat, sleep, shit. What a life!

Margaret shook her head at the unfairness of the evolutionary process of mankind as she dug the letter opener deep inside her pocket and kept it well concealed from any suspicious eyes. If she was going to get the money in on time by noon, she had to hustle. She stepped out the door in such a hurry that she didn’t even remember to lock the door when she left.

In all truths, Margaret wasn’t too fond of mugging people, but it was better than her part time job at the pet shop where she was forced by Karen (that fat cow) to clean up behind the animals nobody wanted. “One of these days,” she told herself as her eyes darted to the double bolted lock on her neighbor’s door in 7G, “I’m going to stick Karen’s fat elephant head in some of that crap she makes me clean up. That’ll show her,” Margaret said, she talked while she walked. “I’ll make her give me a raise and make me a full time pet lady. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. Maybe I can be the girl who gets the crickets for people to feed their bearded dragons. I think I could be that girl, that wouldn’t bother me that much,” and as she talked, she then rapped on the door to 3G and continued to stroll down the dim hallway.

When the person in 3G poked her head out and saw who it was, Margaret put up her hand and waved while she walked away. The woman with the pink hair curlers in her head said, “Good bye, Margaret, dear, you be a good girl, now, you hear?” and Margaret said, “I will, Mildred,” as she stepped down the stairs that smelled like urine and heroin and continued on her way. The time was 8:50.

The envelope opener against her soft skin through the windbreaker was cold, but she kept it close by and hidden because of the great deal of nosy people who pervaded these hallways. It wasn’t a terrible apartment complex, really. The people were kind, the kids didn’t make too much noise, and the animals all seemed to be pretty well trained and quiet enough to not cause too much of a fuss when the lights went out.

Even the junkies were pretty nice actually, often waving with missing teeth before they nodded off with the needle still stuck in their arms. All in all, everybody was pretty nice. The only thing that really bugged Margaret, though, was Chuck, the landlord. And it wasn’t so much the fact that he didn’t do his job—he actually did his job quite well. What bugged her was the nasty break up they had, because in all truths, he was actually really not that bad of a super, even if he did only have one arm and 12 of his teeth left after Margaret threw him out the window.

In fact, back when she was more naïve and wasn’t mugging people on a regular basis, Margaret and Chuck were actually quite the item. Things went well back in those days. She was the new assistant manager at PETATORIUM, and he was the new super in the complex, leading them both to believe that they had a rock solid future ahead of them. Yep, everything was going pretty well until—

“Oh, excuse me,” Mrs. Telaweather said as she bumped into Margaret on the stairwell and continued with her travels, almost knocking Margaret right down the steps as she passed by. Margaret was getting lost in her thoughts again; she needed to stop doing that. But often times, she couldn’t help it; it was just something she did when she started thinking. But usually, she only did this when she thought about her parents, Nancy and Phillip.

She never did like her parents. They were the type of people who would actually go to Vietnam just so they could protest on the front lines with their signs of “Ban the Bomb,” and “Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Here’s a better example: they were like progressively aggressive pacifists but with a 41K and better hygiene. This also translated into them being very bad parents who really couldn’t settle on what they wanted in a child—a tomboy of a daughter or a pansy of a son. They wound up getting a little of both, but mostly the tomboy—a tomboy with testicles and the fists of a prize fighter.

But they tried; oh they did try, to be good parents. They just happened to fail miserably. They paid for her college and supported her extra two years to take philosophy, which she never used, for that matter. Hell, they even paid for her psychiatric treatment that forced them to give up their savings just to see what was neurologically wrong with her. After taking out two mortgages and selling a BMW, the final conclusion was that she was just a bad kid; the doctors really didn’t know what else to do but shrug their shoulders once the parents demanded their money back.

After awhile, though, and countless windows broken and animals strangulated, Margaret’s parents just gave up on her after her baby brother, Donavan, was born. He was, of course, named after the singer/songwriter of the 70s, in case you were wondering, and he was named such because he was born in the midst of the song “Mellow Yellow,” in a bar in Waco, Texas.

But now that they actually have a real pride and joy in their life, they don’t even NEED Margaret anymore. The only reason they were sending her money in the first place was because they thought she might be the only one to keep the Mancheze blood alive. After Margaret took the car for a joyride when she was 12 and ran over her mother because she couldn’t reach the brakes, it was thought that she would be infertile for the rest of her life since her uterus was shattered. But with the miracle of science (Somebody actually donated their uterus), and now that they have a boy (a son! A real, live son! He could keep the blood AND the NAME alive) who needed a violent, sociopath of a daughter anymore? She was kicked to the curb on December 16th, 1998—the day Donavan was born. It was a Friday and it was cold. It was also the day when Margaret got an express delivery in the mail and found no check, but rather a note. The note read:

Dear, Maggie, our ungrateful daughter.

I’m sorry to tell you this, you heartless little bitch, but we’ve conceived again. This is the last you’ll hear from us for the rest of your life, so don’t even bother looking for us, because we’ve moved. And you know what that means, don’t you, sweetie pie? It means no more support from mommy and daddy. We’ve wasted enough money, time and love on you and it’s about time we gave it to someone who actually appreciated it and didn’t kill animals or main small children. I hope you rot in hell, you tramp.

Love Mom and Dad

PS. We know you burned down our summer cottage. Why? Who the hell knows why you do anything you do, you pyro freak.

PPS. Don’t try to look for us.

PPPS. We never loved you.

Margaret remembers lobbing the letter in the metal garbage can by the mailboxes without giving it a second look. There were actually a few more Postscripts on the letter, but they were mostly just blurry words with lots of exclamation points and drawn on angry faces, so she didn’t even bother reading them. But even in the garbage, she still remembers it clearly since it was also the day that Margaret started her life of crime. She also remembers the first thing she bought with her first stolen wallet. It was a Persian cat she named Nickels with a luscious coat of silver fur. This was long before it became a battlefield with landmine sized cigarette burns on it. She named it that because it was grey like a bag full of quarters. But she didn’t like the name Quarters for a cat, so she instead chose the next best thing, which was Nickels. Nickels was a good name for a cat, Quarters was not.

And as for why Margaret was such a badass, she couldn’t tell you, really. She didn’t know why she did some of the things she did, she just did. It was something on the roof of her mouth that told her, “yeah, yeah, yeah, this is good, this is good.” And if people couldn’t deal with that, then tough luck for them. Life is too short to not give in to the voices on the roof of your mouth. You should always give in. It’s what’s good for the nation.

But back to Chuck. In all truths, Margaret wasn’t a bad looking girl, and as she passed the 3rd floor on the way down, checking her makeup as she passed by a communal mirror that was out in the middle of the hall for some odd reason, she caught a brief flicker of her face, which, in another time, about three years ago, actually got her a runner up place in the Miss Brooklyn competition.

Too bad the girl who eventually won first place that year didn’t hold the title too long due to the fact that a little accident happened to her face. Somehow, it got all scratched up by a closet hanger while she was jogging late at night (like, 6 PM) in the park. It was a terrible tragedy, but what was even more tragic was the description the local paper gave of Margaret. It said that she was a squat woman, a little top heavy, with dark blond hair that could be confused with brown, and a very light complexion with very soft looking skin. Under the description, it said: White female on the loose. Keep on your guard.

While Margaret did wind up getting off Scott free due to the fact that the cops in the area usually give up after the first three hours, Margaret was still upset that her description was completely ravaged by the tabloid. The only parts Margaret agreed with were that she was white, female, and had soft skin. The rest was pure malarkey. Her head of hair was red if anything, and the squat part? Margaret was a whopping 5’6, which was hardly squat for a woman. And top heavy? Please, she was only a B cup; though, Chuck used to compliment her on her chest size all the time saying that she could have been confused for a D cup any day of the week, maybe even double D if it was the weekend.

Chuck was good with giving out compliments; he just wasn’t good with commitment. And after he found a bloodied knife in her room and a garbage bag full of severed hearts, he knew instantly he had to cut it off with her—for health reasons (his own), of course. She had a hard time getting over him, but the voice on the roof of her mouth said, “Uh huh, girlfriend, you don’t need him.” And she thought to herself, “You know what, you’re right”. And she said this while Chuck dangled out her window, his face frozen with terror wondering who the hell she was talking to before he plummeted seven flights into a garbage bin. He ended up shattered and wheelchair bound for life.

She allowed herself to think about him just a bit more as she passed by his door. She of course hadn’t seen him since she threw him out the window, what with the restraining order and all, but she often tried to apologize to him, even though she knew she could never get passed his new impenetrable front door.

But she really was sorry, and she wanted to see him so bad that at one point she even began to break things in her room just so he would have to come up and fix them. But Chuck wasn’t stupid (or nice) and whenever this would happen, Chuck would send his cousin, Manuary, up instead. Manuary was cute, but not as cute as Chuck once was. And Margaret quickly got bored of Manuary. She stopped breaking things in her room.

Once on the bottom floor, Margaret rushed outside passed the mailboxes. But as she did, Mr. Salinger from 6A jumped when she said hello to him, his bandaged hand shaking as he dropped all his mail—a few bills and an issue of Baron’s—to the floor. He turned around quickly to greet her, his eyes with the fear of God in them.
“Hello, Mr. Salinger, how’ve you been? How’s your dog, Barky?

“It’s Sparkplug,” he corrected her tremulously as he backed up against the mailboxes, the handles digging into his backside. “I’m doing great, Margaret, just great,” he stuttered, his hand racing to his pocket.

“Hey, what’s that you got there?” she asked, walking in close to him as he dug his hand even deeper into his corduroy pants. “It’s nothing!” he shouted much louder than he would have wanted to. He picked up his mail as quickly as he could and rushed up the steps, stumbling on the fifth one, and then scurrying up the rest as fast as possible. What he had in his pocket was in fact a gun; a nine millimeter to be exact. He just didn’t feel safe living in a crack house anymore.

“Strange, strange man,” Margaret said to herself, chuckling a little bit at his unease, because really, what more could she possibly do to him, break his other hand? It wasn’t her fault he bought all her property in a friendly game of Monopoly, he should have known better. That railroad was as good as hers, and he should have known that buying that from her would only buy him a cast for his arm. Margaret didn’t feel the least bit sorry for him.

Once outside, the wind greeted her with a friendly “goo goo ga joob” as she stepped from the paint chipped door to the outside world, the wind brushing her hair back a bit and making her stride all the more satisfying. It felt like she was walking against some great, immovable force, and Margaret liked being held back—it meant she could ultimately break through.

When Margaret pushed her sleeve back and looked at her Mickey Mouse watch, the gloved hands pointing at small hand, 9, large hand, 12. She realized she really didn’t have all that much time. She began to run down her mostly desolate street, but as she ran, constantly looking down at her watch, she ran into a linebacker of a woman who didn’t even fall down when she was run into.

Margaret brandished her envelope opener and said, “What are YOU looking at three eyes?” while she was on the ground. The linebacker leapt back appalled at Margaret’s vitriolic audacity. “Why, I never!” she proclaimed, before her cankles duck walked away.

Normally, calling someone three eyes wouldn’t make much sense, but the woman in question was wearing a stole draped around her pudgy shoulders and a monocle over her right eye. She must have been lost. Nobody with money ever came to this part of town.

When Margaret got back up, the chiming church bell in the far off distance indicated that it was now officially nine ‘o clock (her watch was a little fast) and she didn’t have time to bother with pulling her weapon out on old women with monocles anymore, she had to get moving. Upon speed walking to nowhere in particular, with eyes roving the sidewalks in search of a possible victim, the first thing she noticed was how dead the city was today, even for a Monday.

She walked over a grate in the ground and watched the subway underneath her shake and rattle the earth below. “Where IS everybody?” she said aloud again, this time with no monocle wearing busy bodies around to answer her question, the streets were all but clean.

But just then, Margaret knew what block she was on and then realized that there was a Shop Rite not very far from here. It was about two blocks away, and once she made the trek, she found that NOW the area was much more populated. She saw women pushing their kids in carts, and geriatric people shuffling along. Margaret felt around in her pocket and grabbed the handle of the envelope opener. She was ready to work, it was go time.

When she walked inside the Shop Rite, the doors spreading its legs for her, she noticed that all the registers were pretty much unoccupied save for one, which was manned by the weakest looking man she had ever seen in her entire life. He wore a red Shop Rite smock that barely fit around his slender neck, and had arms the size of small strands of wood. He also had enormous red, Sally Jesse Raphael glasses, and he leaned slightly to the left because the cool air in the building seemed to be coming from the right.

“I’ll mug him only if I have to,” she noted out loud again, causing a woman with a baby who just walked into the store to do a complete 180 when she heard Margaret make this proclamation.

Margaret began to saunter down the aisles whistling a Crosby, Stills and Nash song while Hall and Oates played on the radio throughout the entire store, which made her whistling a bit off. She found it strange that there were so many cars outside and yet so few shoppers, but she just put it off to the fact that they must all be in one, specific area. Possibly the meat section. Shop Rite was known for its meat.

The first few aisles landed her with nothing, as they were all filled with the elderly or nearing elderly, and if there was one thing Margaret didn’t do, it was mug the elderly. Not because she thought they wouldn’t put up much of a fight, mind you, because they probably would have, old people can be feisty farts. She actually didn’t mug them because she respected them, and if she ever had a grandmother in her life, she might have turned out a different person. Too bad grandma was dead on both sides of the family.

And her respect for the elderly was probably because she liked the Golden Girls so much. She especially liked the sage like advice of Sophia, the mother. Margaret hoped she was still alive, and if she was, she’d like to give her some flowers someday if they ever met. Margaret was a sap for celebrities.

So Margaret skipped all these fogeys who probably didn’t have a pension to piss in, and went right on over to aisle 7. She’d never robbed anybody in a Shop Rite before. She had robbed people in a Path mark, but never a Shop Rite. She found the layout to be very different.

But in aisle 7, Margaret fell upon her first victim. It was a woman who couldn’t have been younger than 40 who was looking at a Get Well Soon card and was bent over. She was wearing a floral dress fit for a fifty year old and was giving extra scrutiny to a card with a bear on it with the caption, “Bear with it,” inside the fold. And while Margaret crept up on her, letter opener brandished and all, the woman with the bear never looked up; her eyes were too preoccupied with what was at hand. She was probably debating on whether the bear was cute enough; it definitely could have used a few more puffs in its tail.

Before Margaret tip toed up to her though, passing her shopping cart full of cans of beets and boxes of band aids (that sounds like one hell of a party!) Margaret searched the ceilings for a camera. If she was going to mug someone in broad daylight and in a public place, she always liked to find the camera and wave to it before she assaulted her victims; it was like a calling card from a serial killer.

So she searched, and she searched, and she searched, squinting at all the tiles that layered the ceiling, but she couldn’t pinpoint a single one. There was neither a black circular eye in the sky, nor a standard old fashioned roving camera anywhere. There was nothing. Margaret became very distressed, “What kind of store is this?” She said aloud, the woman with the bear card jolting up when she noticed that someone was behind her.

But when the bear woman realized that the person behind her was just some squat lady in a windbreaker who was staring up at the ceiling, she became less nervous. “Poor girl,” the bear woman thought, “she’s probably lost, she’s just staring at the ceiling like an elevator’s going to pop out of it, or something. Maybe I should help.” So the woman tried to make contact with this illegal alien, even though the only place Margaret looked like she could have come from besides a hovel in Brooklyn was Ireland, what with her very pale skin and hair as red as a peach and all.

“Excuse me,” the bear woman said, staring straight at Margret’s chin. She was hoping that if she helped this strange woman out, then in turn, Margaret would ask her why she had so many beats and Band-Aids in her cart, which was something that she had been dying to tell somebody all morning. But Margaret wasn’t looking at the woman anymore. Her eyes continued to search the while trail of ceiling all above. The bear woman began to tap Margaret on her shoulder.

“Excuse me?” she asked again, but got no response. The bear lady wanted somebody to know how noble she was. You see, she was the wealthy wife of Doug Faltrane, who had given her the opportunity to produce her own show for the Sunday line-up on CBS. Sure, she had the ability to create something that would garner a lot of money for the company—she had a knack for that—but she wasn’t in it for the money this time. This time, she was in it for the people, and she wanted to do something altruistic for a demographic that never got their share of the TV market—the geriatric crowd. But since the network knew that nobody wanted another show that was a cross between Matlock and Touched by an Angel, she had to change her plans a bit to create a show that could appeal to both the young at heart and also the young in general. And thus began the creation of an extreme sports league that was specifically created for the Elderly. It was simply called, “Extreme Elderly,” and it was very much like American Gladiators, but with less action and more nap time.

If Margaret actually knew this, she would most likely have been good friends with the bear lady, they shared something in common—a love for the old and feeble. But Margaret didn’t know the bear lady, and in actuality, after staring at the ceiling for so long, she didn’t even know where she was anymore. She was totally mesmerized with this enigma of a supermarket that had no cameras.

“Excuse me?” The bear lady said again, but with no answer for the umpteenth time, she began to get a bit testy. This time, the bear lady dug her index finger so far into Margaret’s shoulder that she actually bent it a little on the bone. “EXCUSE ME!” the bear lady said again, ignoring the pain. Margaret was brought back to reality with the sharp stab of the finger. She rubbed her shoulder and whipped out the letter opener, the bear lady didn’t notice it.

“Huh, what?” Margaret asked, still taken aback. “Excuse me,” she said again, her voice much more polite now, “you were saying something before?” She took a step back to reveal all the old people food and Medicaid she had in her cart.

“I did?” Margaret said, but then her mouth smoothed out the confusion, “Oh, yeah, I did, give me all your money!”

“Oh, dear!” the bear lady exclaimed, just now noticing the letter opener in Margaret’s hand. In the heat of the moment, the bear lady dropped the card altogether, making her just the lady now, as the card slowly zig zagged to the floor.

“Can’t we settle this some other way?” the lady asked, backing up against the jagged mountain of cards, “Like, perhaps a credit on my new show, Extreme Elderly? I can put your name in the credits as a producer, I don’t think my husband would mind. You see, he’s a big shot at CBS, and” Margaret was tired of this prattle and put her hand with the knife in it on the woman’s mouth. “No, I just want money, give it to me now” and then she opened up her other hand and began to crunch in her fingers as if to tell her, “No talk, just give.” The woman dug her hand deep into her bosom and pulled out a roll of twenties, counting them proficiently just to make sure none got stuck in her bra.

“Okay, okay, just put the knife down, please.”

Margaret lowered it a bit, but she still kept it visible.

“Okay, what will it be,” the lady asked, licking her thumb and shuffling through the Andrew Jackson’s she had in her hand, “Twenty, forty? You probably want forty, right?” and then she handed it to Margaret, but Margaret shook her head, “No, not 40, all of it. I want it all.”

“You want ALL of it?” the lady exclaimed, her rather saggy face growing quite pale as she backed up even further against the card rack. “No, dear, I can’t give you all the money, Doug would just have a fit. And you don’t want to see when Doug has a fit, he has this nasal problem, you see, where his nostrils flare up and he makes this weird weasel noise, and,” Margaret stopped listening and just snatched all the money out of her hand and punched her right in the face, knocking her dead out. Her hefty body flew back and moved the rack a bit, but it stayed up while the lady went down, her dress awkwardly rising as she slid down the shelf until her body was completely slumped unevenly on the floor.

At the sound of the noise of gravity saying “enough is enough already,” which actually sounded like an elephant falling over on its side, a stock boy poked his head into the aisle, but quickly pulled it back out when he saw Margaret looking at him and waving in his direction (FINALLY, some attention!)

The boy did the first brave thing he could think of, which was run to the men’s room and lock the door behind him. He decided to wait out the altercation until he could find the courage to go back out there and face the music; which he hoped would be Simon and Garfunkle. The stock boy liked Simon and Garfunkle.

Margaret counted the money over the victim’s body, and noticed that there had been a coupon for beets shuffled in with the cash. She dropped the coupon, and it landed on the downed lady’s back. Margaret continued to count. “Only $120 dollars?” she groaned, this was hardly enough to pay her $700 dollar rent, and it was already 10:30! Wasn’t time only supposed to fly when you were having fun? Margaret had to hustle if she wanted to get the $580 rest of the dollars she needed.

She rushed by all the aisles quickly to see if there were any more customers to assail, and then she found one in aisle 10, but then decided to pass her by since she looked kind of old and was riding around in a little red cart. Margaret figured she probably didn’t have much money anyway, what with the cart probably costing her a fortune. The rest of the aisles became a blur until she came upon aisle 17, the snack goods aisle.

She turned down the aisle and ran down the back where a teenager was showing off to his girlfriend by picking up a jar of salsa and flexing his bicep all the while. His girlfriend, a tall, lanky brunette with an overbite covered by braces, squealed her enjoyment. “You’re so big and strong, Oswald.” Oswald complied by bending over the side of the cart and showing off his cut off jeans, she spanked him in the bottom while he bent over. He was perfectly alright with being spanked, but then blushed when he noticed that Margaret was looking down at him.

It was now 10:35, and Margaret knew that this Oswald character and his troglodyte girlfriend wouldn’t have that much money, so she decided to skip the formalities and just show them the envelope opener and get it over with. “Give me everything you’ve got, no bull.”

If it wasn’t for Margaret’s impeccable reflexes, she might have actually been hit in the side of the face by a purse as the girlfriend in braces screamed, “You keep away from ma boyfriend!” and swung it with all her might.

Margaret deftly jumped out of the way and cut the bag right down the middle, causing Jolly Ranchers and a wallet full of quarters to drop to the floor and glide across the green and white tiles. “Security!” she shouted as loud as she could as she lunged to the ground to scrape up all the grape flavored Jolly Rangers on the floor. This left poor Oswald totally in the open.

“Here!” He stammered, pulling out his wallet and tossing out singles and golden Sacagawea dollars as quickly as possible. “Take it, it’s all I have!” And take it she did, but not before stepping on his girlfriend’s hand before she left the aisle just to prove a point. The teen screamed in agony, which finally caused the store manager to raise his head from the desk up stairs and run down to do his job. He had been reading comics the entire time.

When he finally got there, he saw Margaret as she was walking down the aisle. He stayed hidden, his back against a display of Captain Crunch, and then turned to grab her at the exact second that Margret had reached the end of the aisle, catching her by surprise while he shouted, “ha Ha!” before she could even make a move. “I’ve got you now,” he grinned, his big, burly man shoulders and broken, football player’s nose all over her. They were on the ground.

The store manager wrapped his arms tightly around her and tried to give her a bear hug to get her to calm down, but Margaret didn’t make a move—she was as submissive as a dead lobster on a patron’s plate. She had a king of diamonds up her sleeve.

“Are you ready to calm down, lady?” he snarled, his teeth clenched and his forehead dripping with sweat. But Margaret didn’t say a word, she just nudged her body up a little so his arms were now wrapped snuggly around her breasts and she screamed out, “Raaaaape!” as he continued to squirm. And with the sound of the R word, a word that this store manger had actually heard before only a month ago, he let her go. He even helped her up.

“Lady, I’m sorry, I” but just then, Margaret initiated faze two and kneed him in the crotch while she dug in his pocket in one swift motion. She had done all this before he even hit the ground. She then counted the money as he lied face forward cringing and clutching at his abdomen. “Jackpot,” she said. Now this guy had money—$300 dollars and a winning lottery ticket for two bucks to be exact. Things were definitely coming up Margaret now. She was almost there.

Now all she needed was $272 left once she cashed in the ticket, but where was she going to find that? After frantically checking all the aisles again, and then checking them twice—she even saw the bear lady just coming to her senses—she decided that it was inevitable—the shrimp in the front who couldn’t have weighed more than Margaret did as a fetus was going to have to be her last target.

The song on the radio was now from Sonny and Cher, but Margaret couldn’t make it out, it was one of the bad ones. When she strode up to the thin man, she already had her envelope opener out, ready for poking. Her steps mimicked the song on the radio.

“May I help you, madam?” He asked, meekly smiling at her beneath his glasses as she encroached closer and closer on his personal space.

“Yes, stop talking and give me everything you got,” she said while pointing with her slim blade at the register, the mustached man just smiled and kindly said, “No.”

Margaret looked at him and didn’t quite think she had heard exactly what he said and brought the knife closer to him, just to make sure she heard correctly. “What did you just say?”

“No” he said again, just as calm and serenely as before. This perplexed Margaret, but she didn’t have time to be perplexed, so she began to advance on him, she would try to find reason in it later.

“Okay then, if you don’t want to give it to me, then I guess I’ll just have to just take it then, won’t I?” and as she reached over to open the register, the last thing she heard before she lost all feeling in her hand was the sound of a man shouting, “HI-YA!” before she blanked out completely. He almost karate chopped her hand right off.

***
When she woke up, she was outside in the Shop Rite parking lot bleeding. It was 12:07 and her pocket was now completely empty, even of the envelope opener. All the money had been taken from her and all she had left was a flyer on her chest for a show called Extreme Elderly. She crinkled it up and threw it to the wind.

When she walked back to her place, glum, depressed, and out of luck, she had a hard time getting up her steps—her body felt like hamburger meat. But when she finally got to her door, she found that somebody had already gotten there before. On her door was a sign that read:

YOU’RE OUT OF LUCK NOW BITCH! YOUR RENT IS LATE FIND A NEW PLACE TO STAY YOU WHORE! REPO MEN ARE COMING FOR YOUR SHIT!

And at the bottom right hand side of the paper, it said who the cryptic letter was from, but Margaret didn’t need to see who it was from, she already knew by the handwriting. It was Chuck’s.

Without even registering what the sign said, she tried to open the door and found that the lock, just like that, had already been changed. She mechanically tore down the paper sign, kicked down the door with her foot, and walked into the room, exhausted. When she bent her head, she saw that Nickels was hiding underneath the ottoman, probably scared from when the door fell down.

Margaret stumbled over to her, pulled her out from under the ottoman and began to pet her. Maybe, Margaret thought, she should head to the Pet Shop now and demand her raise, but then she thought highly against this because she knew there was nothing she could do, Karen wasn’t even working today. Margaret had no solution and even the voice on the roof of her mouth was totally silent as she just sat there and waited for it to say something. “Just like that you’re going to leave me hanging, huh? What a prick!”

Margaret was so lost in thought that she didn’t even realize that the cat was scratching at her arms, Nickels wasn’t used to this kind of attention.

The truth of the matter was, Margaret didn’t know what she was going to do now. She offered a winded sigh and sat down on the couch that was soon to be taken away from her. “You’re right, Nickels, you’re right, I messed up big this time.” And as the cat, too tired to fight anymore, fell asleep in her lap, Margaret looked up one more time at the ceiling as the water above it now seemed to have spread all the way across the entire roof. “Stupid Mrs. Beakman,” Margaret said before she lied back down and fell asleep. And by the time the Repo Men got there, they carried her out the house without even bothering to wake her up.

Bill Cosby gave me the eye (You know the eye I’m talking about) while I was watching the Bill Cosby Show last night.

2006-09-20T12:31:00.000-07:00

Bill Cosby is a pervert! The other day, he gave me the, “I want to turn you over, spread your asshole wide open and rape you while I wear this sweater” look, and by Gum, I just don’t know if I feel safe anymore leaving my pets and open refrigerator around him when he’s like that—he’s just so different when he’s drunk on Clear Pepsi and Jell-O snack products.

It was like any other Nick at Night, Cosby was doing his gyrations and special dance for heroes when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he started wiggling his fingers in front of his face. And just then, out of the purple, he opened his eyes wide (wide like THIS) and gave me THE LOOK. And I think we all know what look I’m talking about here. THEE LOOK.

I felt violated, and I backpedaled backwards on my couch, kicking my legs out and shouting, “Mr. Cosby, I had no idea you were anything like this,” and tossed my Fortunoff pillow at the screen, which, as it should have, made the TV jump right to a commercial break (It knows what it did).

Now, I’m no prude, and I don’t know about you, but I know for a fact that you don’t like stuff like that, so I went through the trouble of forging your name and putting it on a petition to have Cosby, with his salacious symptoms, taken off the air.

If you agree with me, then please send four dollars to the Rich Knight has been violated, so let’s give him money to calm him down foundation. With only four dollars out of five, you too can give poor Rich Knight clean water and an education. Not only that, but when you sponsor Rich Knight, he will send you a personalized letter written in someone else’s blood detailing what he did today with your four dollars. Don’t you care about Rich Knight? If so, then call now!

Oh, and screw Bill Cosby. Take his perverted ass off TV.

I think I’ve waited long enough for Parker Lewis Can’t Lose to come out on DVD. Hollywood, you’ve been warned.

2006-09-18T10:49:00.000-07:00

Now, I’m normally a peaceful man. I pay my taxes (sometimes) and I live with the belief that it’s wrong to hurt people unless they annoy you or like music that is contradictory to your own taste, but enough is enough already! What’s going on in this world when the Simple Life gets all of its seasons plastered right on DVD while a series as good as Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, the closest show we’ll ever have to finding out if God really exists, doesn’t get the time of day or the chance to make an appearance on DVD? It’s enough to turn a pacifist like myself into a belligerent, ammunition hungry American itching to step foot in Iraq just to blow some feces up for no apparent reason other than my government said I could.

So, with the absence of my favorite show on DVD, I’ve resorted to random acts of violence. Don’t believe me? Listen up, then!

Just the other day, when I went to the Best Buy to request my copy of the show (Which I knew wasn’t out, I just wanted to raise some caine), I brought on the pain. Before the busboy in blue could even turn around to see if they had it, I knocked him out with a sack of doorknobs I have collected over the years in an attempt to be a world record holder of the most doorknobs in a single sack. My star rating had already jumped to two by the time I hopped in my car, blasted Tears For Fears from my tape deck, and sped off home while the cops chased me all the way back to my safe spot.

Phew, that was a close one, but I guarantee it will happen again.

Put Parker Lewis Can’t Lose on DVD or else. For who knows what a man obsessed with a sack of doorknobs can do in a city or town near you? I do, and the answer is deliver pain, pain, pain! Put it on DVD, now!

The life and death of innocence after watching myself dance in front of the mirror with my shirt off listening to Queen.

2006-09-04T08:59:00.000-07:00

It wasn’t like I’d never seen myself without my shirt on before. I mean, sometimes when I take a shower, I even flex in front of the mirror before I step into the tub and make my man boobs hard like they’re made of magma formed rock, or, if not rock, then at least some sort of flan like Jell-O that’s been frozen in the freezer for about half an hour. But nothing, and I mean nothing, prepared my eyes for the assault on my soul when I danced to “Don’t Stop Me Now,” by Queen, and took off my shirt and spun it around over my head like a helicopter propeller as I rocked out to Freddy Mercury and his wailing libido.
Now, my soul has been crushed before—when they took off the Waynes’ Brothers for no apparent reason, when I faced Sagat in Street Fighter 2 and all he did was “Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!” over and over again until I threw my Super Nintendo out the window—but seeing myself, in all my glutinous glory, kicking my legs up in the air doing the can can and watching the fourteen rolls in my gut make washer machine noises and overlap each other while I shook about, made me realize that my life would never be the same again.
So I turned it off, but the sight wouldn’t leave my mind. Whenever I heard a Queen song on the radio, Pavlov dog style, I would start to drool at the sight of bosoms, but then I realized that they were MINE! So I decided I had to get help since every station preordained in my car is designated to classic rock, and while I could just change the stations, I can’t miss the opportunity to hear Boston’s “More than a Feeling,” I just can’t!
So I decided hypnotism was the best and most logical step, outside of liposuction or losing weight, of course. The doctor looked at me severely. I don’t think he thought a change was possible. I lifted my shirt and he dug his middle finger into my belly button and tickled it, I didn’t feel anything.
When I asked why he did it, he told me that it made him happy and that I shouldn’t ask any more questions. He then crammed a lollipop into my mouth and told me to suck it rhythmically to him thrusting his pelvis while he put his hands behind his head and danced to Madonna. He told me that this was crucial to me getting better.
Afterwards, in a strange turn of events that had both of our shirts off and his pants, he began with the hypnosis. He told me I was getting sleepy, and I was, his breath was part turkey sandwich, and part halitosis, it created a scent that was an instant drowse medicine. While I was in my daze, I began to hear the roster of greatest hits play on a speaker in the corner by the fichus tree—“We are the Champions,” “You’re My Best Friend,” “Bohemian Rhapsody”—they were all there, dammit. I began to feel a bit nauseous when the hypnotist finally put on “Don’t Stop Me Now,” and I knew I was going to vomit at any moment. But then he said, when I snap my fingers, whenever you hear Queen from now on, you will now only see scenes of Lou Diamond Phillips in the movie Bats.
And when he snapped my fingers, like magic, I was back at home. But after hearing Queen once again, I’ve realized two things: 1. I kind of miss having daydreams about my man boobs, and 2. if anything in this world sucks, it’s Lou Diamond Phillips.

Five Fast Food Places Morbidly Obese People Would Create If They Had the Energy to Build them.

2006-09-04T08:49:00.000-07:00

Fast food places, in comparison to the fat man’s wet dream, pale in comparison to what the fat man ultimately prays will be their supreme burger/burrito/forbidden donut glazed in three different kinds of sin joint that they can eat at. The solution, ideas mailed to their congressman about new places that can be built in the middle of their town or closest to the nearest hospital so they won’t have to travel very far for their next triple bi-pass.

Sure, Burger King’s new quadruple burger is a good start to the impending apocalypse, but we’re talking about meals that could even put the lumbering, modern day Godzilla, John Goodman to rest. So here are four great new ideas (and one great old one) from fat folks around the world for fast food joints that have yet to be constructed, but will be, as soon as they garner the energy to pick up their arms long enough to draw up a blueprint.

1. Burrito Hut with Dripping Cheese on the Roof-Taco Bell may have its endearing qualities (obese employees who look like their customers, sticky floors, sassy sauce packets), but what it doesn’t have is nacho cheese that drips from the roof in a constant stream of gooeyness that people can stand outside and just let drop into their mouth like snow on a cool Christmas morning.

Matter of fact, Burrito Hut actually doesn’t need to be erected and Taco Bell can stay just the way it is—it already has the ideal menu for the fat man’s perfect diet. But they definitely should add that dripping cheese feature as soon as humanly possible so hefty people won’t have to wait for their meal when they drive up to the window. They can just get started on cheese and top it off with four or five ½ lb. Beef and Potato burritos for the road. The council has spoken!

2. Sloppy Seconds-Sloppy Joe’s are often underappreciated in the world of Trans fatty acids and deserve the respect of having a whole restaurant that serves nothing but meat piled in mounds of red sauce. It doesn’t really matter what kind of red sauce it is—ketchup, catsup, cocktail, Kool-Aid powder, the cherry kind, of course—but it has to make an appearance on some sort of chopped up hamburger meat. Also, there should be whole bodysuits, advanced husky size; that we can wrap around ourselves just in case we happen to spill any goodness on our best moo moos. The council is hungry!

3. Sausage Factory-Meat and pounds of it. We’re talking about so much meat that a thirty pack of White Castle burgers is equivalent to one hot dog of glowing goodness. And if anybody happens to, I don’t know, die of a heart attack while eating one of these succulent, succulent dogs that any one of us would sell our 17 year old daughters for on eBay, there would be no need to dispose of them or find them a burial at sea. I’m sure the council will find a means to dispose of that fallen fatty. Just have somewhere to put those bones, though. Those don’t go down so easy. The council is starving!

4. Donut Depository-A great idea would be a bank that basically deposited all your doughnuts from home or nestled in your belly button and kept them in safe keeping from anybody else around the house. This would especially be good for people who are supposed to be on diets but realize that diets are for sissies and shouldn’t be told what they can and cannot eat. This not only should be built but needs to be built, as my wife keeps finding blueberry jelly marks on my collar and this has turned into a problem. And God help her, she just can’t find out I’ve been cheating on my diet. The truth, like my body, would crush her soul. The council is ready to devour human flesh!

5. Fat Burger-Yes, it already exists, but no, there aren’t enough of them in the world, so just build a few more and our unctuous UN unity will be satiated. The council is now ready to take a nap! Thus shall it be!

Can someone please pass the jelly?

2006-07-31T18:21:00.000-07:00

Does anybody remember those commercials? Well, of course nobody does (especially since I’m the only one reading these nowadays) that name brand went out the window a loooong time ago. But there are quite a few other name brands of gimmicky crap that I also miss, most notably Grey Poupon (Which I used to call Gray Poop On, as I’m sure many other unctuous, ugly fat kids my age probably also called it as they slammed the back of the jar with their fat palm and got it all over their striped Lacoste shirt as well as their Pop Tart and ham sandwich)

Like, what ever happened to Osh Gosh Bigosh, or Bugle Boy, or the band They Might Be Giants? Whatever happened to responsibilities (Oops, that one slipped) or Diamond Dallas Paige, or, or, or…Well, pretty much ANYTHING besides Proactive and Diddy.

I miss those days.

Those days without Proactive and Diddy. I look upon them fondly and adoringly. Not to mention with a whole lot of Gray Poop On all over my salami and provolone sandwiches.

Facebook has lost its hold on me, and I’m now licking stamps and sticking markers up my nose to get high at a Kindergarten level.

2006-07-25T08:46:00.000-07:00

Facebook sucks. It just doesn’t grip me anymore like it used to. It used to be, I could come home from a hard day at the sulfur mine, kick off my shoes, wipe off my cheeks, and just sit in front of the computer screen for hours and poke random strangers and befriend Asian women for all the wrong reasons (What? I was trying to figure out how they get their hair that jet black color! What were you thinking? Perv).

But now, it just isn’t the same. The other day, I was on facebook and somebody sent me a, “Hey, Rich, what’s up” message on my wall and I didn’t even cream my pants or write back a message so long that it knocked off all the other messages on their wall and blow up their computer.

It just doesn’t do that for me anymore.

So now, I’ve taken to other ways to blow away my brain cells, like watching The Medium or sniffing glue until my brain goes pop! This is the life of a millionaire, and I’m living it on only -128 dollars in my bank account. You must think I’m a god.

I hope I go bald before thirty

2006-07-18T08:12:00.000-07:00

I have a receding hairline, but that’s just not enough for me. And since it’s been about 12 years since I’ve actually grown hair, I’m hoping that it won’t take so very long to lose it. But I don’t want to lose it all (I’m not a freak), I would like to have a big bald spot right in the middle that I can cover up with a little stool pigeon’s hat and take off at will whenever women pass by. I could then bow down and say, “Hello, ladies, isn’t today a marvelous day for a unicycle race?” and then take off the hat and show them the awesome black man’s comb over I’ve produced. I’m thinking of trying this out at the local discothèque.

Another thing I hope to do is stand up again. The first time I went, some guy in back was flashing a red light and the host of the evening was walking up the stage to either pummel me or tell me that, “Hey, kid, you’re not funny, now give up the stage to a black guy who actually makes black jokes,” in so many words. Next time I hit the stage, I plan to make Malcolm X earn that extra large coffin of his by making him spin in it until he goes flying into orbit.

And PS. I hate my life, nobody wants to give me a job…

There’s not enough cowbell in our nation’s supply of mineral water

2006-07-10T09:42:00.000-07:00

Though Will Ferrell is not funny and deserves to be pushed head first out of a runaway mine cart, I think he made a good point with his overly referenced SNL skit when he mentioned that there wasn’t enough cowbell in this solar system.

While drinking a refreshingly warm bottle of Poland Spring that I left on the floor of my car in the sweltering heat, I realized that the one thing it was missing, besides ice, was cowbell. Oh, and Gummy Bears at the bottom. That would have been nice, too.

And that’s the thing; cowbell really DOES make everything better, including tantric sex, watching kung fu movies, synchronized swimming, and, of course, hobo sled riding. I first heard its offbeat clanging back in grade school. Back then, a mullet dreaming Rich Knight used to take a taxi to school because the bus driver was far too cheap to drive two more blocks to my house, and I was far too fat to walk the two extra blocks to actually catch up to him.

So my dad wound up forking up cash for a taxi almost every morning. I always had the same driver, and his name was Chuck, but he told me to call him Menthol Slim. I said, “Menthol Skim? Like Milk?” And he yelled at me behind Bret Hart sunglasses, “No, bitch, I said, Slim! SLIM! Like what you ain’t, fatty!”

So I learned that talking to Chuck was not going to be a part of my future.

But one morning, he had the radio on and Blu Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” notably, the only real song with the sand to actually include cowbell in its harmony, made the small hairs on my chest stand on end and my penis do a little Russian dance (You know the one, the one where it gets real close to the ground and kicks out its legs. That’s what my penis was doing; it made me feel proud to be a member of the Super Mario Super Club).

“Can you turn this up?” I requested.

“Hell no, bitch!” Chuck responded before he turned the station to something else that neither he nor I could ever enjoy (It was 14th Century style chamber music. He just put it on that station so I would shut up and stop looking at his tattoos.)

So…yeah! The cowbell is a really special gal, and we need more of her in our mineral water.

Why, you ask?

Why do I say anything that I say?

That’s a question for the ages…

Or maybe the funny pages, I’m not sure which.

Even I’m surprised to still be alive after eating the world’s largest supply of Sugar Daddy’s in under three hours.

2006-07-05T06:38:00.000-07:00

I like to eat. I also like the idea of impending death from eating too much. That is why I am proficient at eating at buffets since I have pushed it to the limit many times and even have a bachelor’s degree in it, which I earned fair and square. I have honed my talent to a science, teetering from this world to the next with a piece of pizza crust dangling out the side of my mouth. And when I finish my caloric conquest, I always raise my arm in the air for a victory that nobody will ever see as I push my 11th plate to the side and pass out on the hood of the table.

“Huzzah!” I hear in my 12 pound heavier head before I fall into a coma, “Huzzah!”

Over eating until you are on the brink of death is an important family tradition for me; an important family tradition that I am starting.

Am I scared of getting diabetes?

NAAAAW.

My family gets cancer, not diabetes, so I have absolutely nothing to worry about.

So yeah, back to the suspense! And here are a few extra exclamation points for good measure to show just how suspenseful this story actually is.

!!!

There. So, anyhow, just the other day, I went to the small booth in the middle of my mall and purchased the world’s largest supply of Sugar Daddies (Which is 15, by the way) When I asked the tattooed freak girl with the eyebrow ring behind the counter if this was the world’s largest supply of Daddy Sugar’s, she shook her head and replied, “First of all, they’re called Sugar Daddy’s, not Daddy Sugar’s, and second of all, I doubt it, since they probably have a whole warehouse full of these things.”

So I took that as a yes.

When I bought them (they rang up to about $8, a steal if you ask me—especially since I stole the 15th one) I unwrapped them, one by one, and sat them on the counter in front of me, sweat trickling down my face and onto my lips, which were quivering.

Sure, I’ve almost made the local China Buffet bankrupt with my eating habits, but that doesn’t mean I was prepared for anything like THIS. So, one by one, I stuck them in my mouth. It wasn’t until Daddy Sugar number four that I realized that sticking two in my mouth, on each side, would make them evaporate in my mouth much quicker, so I did that.

“Suck, suck, suck, suck, suck,” said my mouth. My eyes wandered to the microwave timer while my mouth was losing precious, precious saliva. Two hours, it said, two hours.

Eventually, I got to number 14, and finished it with 8 seconds left on the clock, which was an hour and 20 minutes fast. I passed out on the floor and stared up at the ceiling fan like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now. “The horror,” I whispered as my lips stuck to my teeth, “The horror.”

But after I realized my accomplishment, I leapt for joy and exclaimed, “I did it! That’s all of them. I’ve now eaten the world’s largest supply of Daddy Sugar’s and I couldn’t be happier!”

I lied back down and squirmed on my floor and danced my glee when…my hand accidentally bumped into my pants pocket. There was one more left! I had completely forgotten about it! It was the one I had stolen when the tattoo freak girl was bagging up the Daddy’s and ringing up my total.

The sad news is that I couldn’t eat it that day, I just couldn’t. It would have blown up my small intestine and caused me to erupt into my alter ego state, Seizure Man, from all the sugar I had smuggled into my body. And I didn’t have the heart to tell my soul that I was a failure. So I just thought about Bea Arthur crossing her legs over and over again and jerked off and fell asleep on the floor in my own jizm. And in that way, I think I redeemed myself, if not just a little.

Some may call me a hero. And I hope very much that you are one of those idiots.

If I was given enough Red Bull Energy Drink, I think I could piss fire and scale the empire state building with the cilia in my nose

2006-06-26T12:35:00.000-07:00

Red Bull pumps me up, like, mucho a lot. Back in the day, I used to drink Surge and I kept a time table of how much sperm I was supposedly losing per sip, but then I realized that that time table was stupid and it didn’t deserve to exist. So I took it outside and terminated it with extreme prejudice with my Ice Cube CD, put on repeat, ad infinitum. When I got back to it, mid ad infinitum, that time table had a Jheri curl and a bad attitude, and I realized it was then time to put it out of its misery (poor time table).

Anyway, back to my staked claim. Today, Red Bull is the new Surge, and I betchoo, if you gave me enough Red Bull, I could scale the highest mountain shaped skyscraper using only my good looks and nose hairs. Since I’m about as attractive as the warts on Jon Lovitz’s ass (Have you ever seen that guy? “Subway! Eat FraasH!”), I guess my nose hairs are going to have to be my only resource.

So….

So….

So….

Somebody buy me a whole lotta Red Bull already and see if I can actually do it! Yeesh! Whose scrotum do I have to suck around here to actually get noticed and listened to?

I hate stupid idiot books like the Devil Wears Prada and other stupid idiot books like the Da Vinci Code and anything more than four people have ever

2006-06-25T19:51:00.000-07:00

Movies featuring this list of the following people shouldn’t be made and are most likely based on shetty, popular books written by jerks, drunks, derelicts, or Al Gore (Who I personally like, by the way). Here is the list as follows of actors and directors who normally star or direct popular, idiotic movies for idiots with the maiden name Idiot McIdiot.

Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks’ Indian Alter Ego, Otm Shank
Meryl Streep
Anne Hathaway
Sir. Ian McKellen (Unless he’s playing Magneto, Gandalf or an underground Nazi)
Sir. Spike Lee
Britney Spears (post penis)
Gore Vidal (Yes, THE Gore Vidal)
Leonardo DiCaprio
Tobey McGuire (Unless he’s playing Spiderman or a backseat passenger scared of Johnny Depp playing Hunter S. Thompson)
Don King
Don Quixote
Don Pepe
Juan Valdez
Arthur Miller
Arthur Pendragon
The Taco Bell dog
Urkel
Stephan (Urkel after he stepped in the hotness Machine)
Olmec from Legends of the Hidden Temple
And
Frankenberry

Notice that my list soon turned into a rant of random people with similar names. This proves that Rich Knight is pretty smart because his stream of consciousness meter is way up on the Richter scale of MENSA-ness. And you know who else wrote about stream of consciousness? Faulkner. And look at that guy’s corpse! It’s a worm laden genius! French fries!

Crappy games that looked good at the time but are now considered crappy because people understand crap once it’s pointed out to them

2006-06-23T15:48:00.000-07:00

As a gamer and nonprofit comedian, you folks (Jeff, Bill, mom) should have TOLD me that I should stop ranting about nonsense and start ranting about important stuff, namely gaming. But since you didn’t, I’m just going to have to pretend that you did and make my own list of games that are considered crappy today, even though, back then you probably exclaimed: “Oh, man, this game’s the shit. When I die, I hope to be buried with it alongside my POGS and Ecto Cooler.”

Well, for those gamers who actually talk like that (May Jehovah have mercy on ye soul) here is your list:

BATTLE ARENA TOSHINDEN
Why? Why was this game ever considered revolutionary? I remember Ultra Game Players gave it a whopping 98(wowza!)% rating out of 100 and were raving about it like it was sliced bread invented by the second coming of Christ. Well, what I have to say to that is…I was in on it, too, so I really can’t say anything. But, I will say this, today, it rully, rully, rully, rully, rully sucks. Hard. But back in the day, with sleek graphics, the ability to dynamically roll in and out of the way of attacks, and an awesome weapon system that Soul Blade totally shatted on in months to come, BAT was like a landmine in a Cambodian village just itching to go off. Nobody expected it, and BOOM! Everybody took cover inside the latest game shop and stepped out with a shiny new Playstation in their hands. Now, if only somebody realized that purdy graphics and a stupid premise never works. Unless, of course, that game is Tekken.

LETHAL ENFORCERS
Besides its women’s right movement pink pistol that actually invited women and metrosexuals to play along (The pink gun is now a house hold standard in gun games where you kill people), this game sucked it on the right places. First, it had the most annoying factor in any gun game—the moronic hostage who stood up at just the wrong moment (At least in Virtua Cop, hostages had the courtesy to plead “Please don’t shoot me” as they ran out in the midst of gunfire). And second, well, there is no second, the game just sucked. But it DID have an interesting sequel set in the Wild, Wild, West. Too bad the sequel sucked equally, if not more than so, the original. RELOAD!

DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION
You can lose WEIGHT playing this game?! What the hell do you think Tai Bo is for? For FUN?! Well, I didn’t see that one white guy with the goatee in the back surrounded by all those fat chicks next to Billy Blank having fun! Did YOU?! Save the exercise for the beautiful people, DDR, and go back to Japan. Everybody knows only lepers and fatty cakes play video games. And that’s a fact you can wear like a back pack, P Jack.

RESIDENT EVIL (Before 4)
Okay, don’t wave your fist or glare at me too hard, gamers, you all know that every game in the Resident Evil series (yes, even 2) was utter and complete garbage. And I’m not just saying compared to Resident Evil 4, I mean garbage in general. First, let’s talk about the control scheme. Can you honestly tell me that you didn’t spend at least 40% of the game getting your face out of the wall while you were running away from one of the various craptacular monsters that pervaded the playgrounds of Resident Evil? Be honest, you know you did. And you know what I say to that? I say, I hope whichever idiot had the “brilliant” idea to make “up” the command to move “down” lost his job and couldn’t feed his family, because that was just plan brain dead on his part. Also…well, watch the movies; they’re pretty close to the game, and the movies are as terrible as it gets (Prove me wrong!)

PANZER DRAGOON
Okay, I’m not sure if anybody besides fanboys even played this dung pile, but if you did, shame on you for still liking it!

I actually have more (Battletoads, though I love thee, you were just TOO DAMN HARD!) I hafta eat dinner now—a protein shake and a Ritz cracker for flavor.

If you have any of your own, be sure to post (but I think you hafta become a member first, which is weak tartar sauce) and put them up. And yeah, Nintendo wii is going to be sa-weeeet.

Women got the Vagina Monologues, and I think men deserve something exactly the same or something very similar about their penises

2006-06-16T15:07:00.000-07:00

The Vagina Monologues is an interesting play. I remember seeing a reproduction of it at my school and being asked what my vagina smelled like, and I just sat there and marveled at the audacious question. “Wow,” I said, “wow.”

Some women, mostly the loud ones, shouted out stuff like “Heaven,” or, “Him” pointing to the bewildered sap sitting right next to her with his head down. I shouted out “Snozzberries!” in a very womanly (or what I thought was womanly) voice and thought that it would go over quite nicely.

Needless to say, it didn’t, and the women of the Vagina Monologues didn’t think this was appropriate because one of them dropped the f bomb out of character in my direction. The other actresses chastised her for that little scene, and I ended up looking like Prince Valiant (with the haircut and everything). I smiled back at her while she scowled at me and I put my hand beneath my chin and twiddled my fingers like The Little Rascals. I felt like a superstar that evening.

So anyway, I think men should have a play about THEIR private parts, and I’ve already thought of a title for it: The Scrotum Soliloquies.

Each segment can be a different pun on the word penis.

Like one of them can feature an Asian guy wearing a Red Lobsters bib. I would call it: Wang’s Lament.

Another one could be Dick’s Dilemma, and so forth and so on.

I’m already taking reservations.

Yes, my belly button is gay, but so what?

2006-06-14T06:31:00.000-07:00

My belly button has gone through many different phases. Back in the 20’s (when I wasn’t alive) my belly button got sloshed at bootlegger parties and believed it was a Communist. Back then, my belly button was named Sacco. Flash forward a few years (about 86 or so) and my belly button, with mutton chops and a handlebar mustache is going through another transition—it thinks it’s gay.

Just the other day, while walking down the street with my belly button I accidentally bumped stomach to stomach with another belly button, this belly button called himself “Bruno.”

When I woke up the next morning, my stomach had a searing headache and was coughing up pills; it also said it felt like it was in the wrong body.

It told me it was now playing for the other team and wanted a name change (at this time, I had named it Leonard Asskicker !!!—and yes, those are exclamation points I used to indicate that he was third in line in the illustrious Asskicker name)

So anyway, my belly button said it didn’t want that name anymore and was tired of being an inny. It now wanted to be outy, and by outy, I mean outy the closet.

Being the fair, beneficent body I am, though, I said, “No, you’re my belly button, and I’ll call you what I wish. You’re straight and that’s that.” But then my belly button started fighting back and turning green and collecting more lint and what not.

Some people said it even started to stink and suppurate. The doctor told me it’d have to come off if I didn’t do something soon.

“For God’s sake, man, just give it what it wants.” The doctor shouted at the full force of his voice as he stood up from listening to my belly button’s pleas with his stethoscope. “Can’t you see your belly button is in LOVE, man?! Let him marry this “Bruno” fellow and give him your best blessings.”

So it’s been two months now, and my once, smothered inny belly button is now a prominent, protruding outy named Lawrence. He gets to see Bruno whenever I go to the YMCA, but I must say, it is quite awkward. Lawrence insists at least one kiss of Bruno every time they encounter, but do you know how awkward it is to have to rub bellies with another man? Oh, brother, it is aaaaawkard.

But I still love my Leonard, er, I mean my Lawrence. Without him, I’m really not sure I’d want to go on living.

21 Jump Street and Jumping Jack Flash Both Have the Word Jump in Them

2006-06-12T06:44:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure who thought of it, but jump is a fun word. Kriss Kross made me do it back in the day (with my pants zipper over by butt), and I’m doing it right now while I type, so this simple BLoG entry will probably take me about 22.7 minutes longer than it should since I dragged the trampoline inside and am currently typing this at one letter per *boing!*

Also, I don’t really remember Jumping Jack Flash all that much (the movie, not the horrible Rolling Stones song) but I remember it had a leading black roll. Possibly Mekhi Phifer from 8 Mile. I don’t know, but I know it was a man with braids or something.

C’mon, man, you know who I’m talking about, whatzhisname! That guy who was also in Sister Act 1 and 2. Well, I don’t know, I can’t remember his name right now, but I’m sure it’ll jump into my head next time I’m on the shitter.

Anyway, back to Jump.

No wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait…wait. First, I have to talk about 21 Jump Street. I mean, it IS mentioned in the title, right? RIGHT? Answer me, asshole!...oh, yeah, this is a BLOG. Meep. Sorry, I get a little carried away sometimes.

Anyway, back to 21 Jump Street.

That show was great, or at least the intro song was. I don’t really remember that show either but I know it had that guy who looked like Johnny Depp. I wonder if Johnny Depp ever sued him for looking so damn similar to him. Poor sap, I think he even had his name in the opening credits as Johnny Depp. Some people are just so deluded.

Okay, but back to jump (the word).

Um…I don’t know what to say about it. Wow, to think you read a whole BLOG entry and there was no real money shot (spoot!) in the end. You should be pissed. If I were you (which I’m not), I’d get into your Sunday best clothes and grab a torch to burn this motha down! Only then, through random acts of violence, will you feel better and be making this world a better place, for you and for me, and the entire human race. You guys need to get together, and riot in the streets for all mankind.

Oh, yeah, and go ahead and JUMP!

If Charles Was in Charge of Me, Technically, I would be Living in a Dictatorship

2006-06-08T06:56:00.000-07:00

I’m not going to fib; Scott Baio seems like a pretty cool guy to have as a political leader. He has cool hair, I think he’s dated a few buxom super models, and overall, I don’t know if I’d mind having Charles in Charge of me.

But I’m thinking of the bigger picture here, people, the bigger picture.

I mean, do we really think Charles would be so cool after awhile when he starts to feel his power corrupt him absolutely?

I can already see it now: a 40 foot tall, 20 ton Scott Baio robot stomping through our avenues and telling us it’s time to go to bed at 8:00 PM because he has a date coming over and doesn’t want anybody to interfere with him scoring.

Can I live like that? Well, sure, I can, but I’m not thinking about me, I'm thinking about you, the little people, the dwarves.

Like most children of the 80’s, I could care less if Mr. Baio’s iron fist squeezes the nation dry of its resources and squanders all the coolness left in this world. If Scott Baio wants it, then dammit, I say let him have it.

But I’m looking out for my brother, a 90’s baby, and other such 90’s babies who didn’t grow up with the twinkle in the eye, sparkle in the teeth deity that is the Scott, but rather grew up with Mark-Paul Gosselaar and the Saved By the Bell gang (and we all know that THEY wouldn’t be fit to rule, I mean, have you seen their careers after that show? Jesse was the star of Showgirls for Vishnu’s sake.)

So I tell you all, my brothers, sisters, and Yu Gi Oh fans, rise up against Scott Baio and don’t let him be in charge of you. Like the green mulleted, eco champion, Captain Planet says: “The power is yours!” And I can only hope desperately that you actually believe that.

I’m wanted in every state except this one

2006-06-04T09:33:00.000-07:00

I’ll tell you, man, when you punch out the Pope’s wife, bad things happen to you, man, bad things. Not only is the law on my chipmunk tail, but also Jesus’ entourage as well, and I gotta tell ya, it has not been a pleasant seven days riding in my white Bronco across the interstate.

For one thing, I am running out of Cheetos in my change compartment and on my floor. I mean, being on the lamb is great and all, but when you run out of food, it’s game over, man, game over.

For second thing, I have not been able to have a good piss in a long time. It’s always right out the side window, or in my Converse All Stars, or on my hands, but never in a urinal (or porta potty) as it should be.

I feel like less a man.

But if I can make it to the lawless state of New Jersey, I just know I’ll be safe. There, the sheriff will cower behind the shadows of the state’s great gun slinging heroes. And then the cameramen, the law, and even Jesus’ ninjas will have to face the wrath of the Garden State! Mwa ha ha ha!

Jersey will protect me.

And, oh yeah. This last message is to the Pope.

If I could, I’d punch your wife in the monkey face again! Booyah! I have no shame! NO SHAME!

Apparently, Snoop Doggy Dogg needs to get a Jobby Job

2006-06-02T07:11:00.000-07:00

I was watching a documentary the other day on this strange network, and I saw the most depressing scene in my life. In it, a young, poor, black man from the slums was waking up in the morning and his parents were going on some sort of vacation that wasn’t really specified, but by the look of the clothes they were wearing, it looked as if they were going to Florida to die.

Well, in this short film directed by a multitalented physician named Dre (I hope he practices medicine with the same astute awareness he does to capturing the conditions of the impoverished on film), a young man with cornrows is told by his parents that: “Snoopy Dog Dog needs to get a jobby job” or something of that nature. I’m not really sure, I was drinking an Arizona Iced Tea at the time and my mind was wandering about what kind of Toaster Strudel I should eat that morning.

Anyhow, as soon as this young man’s parents left, he shouted: “HOMEBOY ALONE!” and all of a sudden (I kid you not) out of the blue, music began to reverberate from my speakers. It was like this was some sort of music type video, but I’m not sure if those have been invented yet (Here’s hoping, though! There are a lot of great songs I hear on my radio that I think would be great to see in some sort of short, three minute vignette).

Well, after his parents left, this man’s house filled up so fast that I thought it looked like my house, but instead of centipedes crowding up his room, there were people! Cars were bouncing up and down as if they were going to jettison off to the moon, and women with very large posteriors were shaking their behinds with great force, something in my pants demanded me to look on!

The young man also kept talking about mixing the alcoholic beverage gin with juice (presumably orange) and everybody seemed to be in agreement that this was a good combination as they were all shaking their hips and nodding their heads to the almost hypnotic music.

Everything was going great for the young man until his parents came home and thrashed him violently for inviting so many people over without cleaning up first. That upset me greatly; the young man with cornrows was obviously just trying to have a good time (He probably spent the rest of his days bussing tables or some other sort of degrading Negro job that black people in lower class neighborhoods sometimes fill.)

I only hope they show this documentary again someday so I can one day show my kids. Television needs more short films like these. It only helps that there is music to accompany it.

A robot is only a robot if it's wired with high tech circuitry. You see a cow, a cow is not a robot

2006-06-01T07:04:00.000-07:00

I went to the store the other day (Isn’t that an interesting opener? No? Bah, the hell with thee!) to find me the parts to build me a robot after seeing one in Rocky IV…you know, the one with the Russian guy in it. What I found at the Salvation Army, to my dismay, were not the sort of tools I could use to refine the kind of Ovaltine bringing, Nintendo playing robot I was looking for.

Instead, what I bought was a toaster. I took apart its intestines, studied the interior design of it, and cobbled together what my unsteady hands could produce. And what I have now is a top of the line piece of crap.

It doesn’t do anything I programmed it to do (Retrieve mail, open hard to twist lids, kill people) and it usually just sits around all day and watches Rikki Lake while it drinks V8 through the hole I put in its lid.

I named it Sturdy Gertrude, but it’s not as sturdy as it sounds.

Sometimes, when I kick it down the stairs for pure amusement (I programmed pain into its system, so it actually feels all those jagged steps slamming against its mainframe) it doesn’t get back up for hours, and I usually have to put it back together myself for it to operate again.

Another problem I have with my pet robot is that it swears at me sometimes and demands I feed it rosary beads drenched in Tabasco sauce when it’s writing rhymes in its notebook.

As a polytheistic religious man, I feel a little guilty about this and often times don’t want to anger my many gods like Zeus, Santeria, God, Vishnu, Television, and Odin by feeding it rosary beads. But then I realize that I’m only offending one god in that motif of magistrates, so it really won’t be so bad in the long run. Hopefully not.

But I still wish my robot did better things with its life. It’s practically eating itself to death with all the Combos it consumes in a day.

So, what I’ve decided is that I need a new robot. The next one I build is either going to be a Robocop or a Terminator. I haven’t decided yet.

I find people who eat meat fascinating

2006-05-31T22:19:00.000-07:00

Watching people eat vegetables is depressing. So much so in fact, that when I went to the mall the other day and saw a whole table of vegetarians (They could have been meat consumers too, for all I know, but they were all eating salads, so they might as well have been pterodactyls to me), I went home that night and wrote a suicide note, thinking there was no hope in this world for a poor meat eater like myself. But midway through the letter, I got bored and just turned on cartoons instead. At last that made me feel better for about an hour.

And the reason I get so darn upset seeing people lick lettuce is because it means they are depriving themselves of sucking the beautiful bounty of tastes that is the bovine. Meat is such a healthy, exciting alternative to vegetables, and vegetables don't do anything for you but make you weak in mind and spirit (and probably transform you into a ravaging Communist if you're not careful).

So, in that way, I would like to honor the brave people around the world who are carnivores who believe the only teeth they really need are their incisors and maybe that other flat tooth near the back for ripping open ketchup and hot and mild packets at Taco Bell. You, my friends, are the heroes of this great land, and everyday you are making a diference. One dead animal at a time.

Ten Dead People Who Should Be Reincarnated Just To Be Run Over By A Tricked Out Honda Civic

2006-05-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

10. Thomas Edison
Electricity is freaking awesome, man. Sometimes, when I’m all alone at night, I take off all my clothes and worship the vacuum cleaner and press the button on and off so it goes veem, voom, veem, voom, veem, voom. I then chant random words I heard Barbra Streisand say in a sort of mantra (“Mashuga, mashuga, mashuga, mashuga”) and sacrifice a Hot Pocket so the vacuum never stops working on me. I’m a devoted follower. And you know what, electricity is so freaking awesome, that if I had the know how, I’d even attach a Flux capacitor to my Rav 4 and time travel back into the 1800’s to run over Thomas Jefferson in drive, reverse, drive, reverse fashion. In my country (America) running over people is the greatest form of respect you can give a person, as long as you do it tastefully and while playing Jefferson Starship in your cassette player. Try it sometime; I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

9. Alexander Graham Bell
Without Mr. Graham, we wouldn’t be able to call 911 and have the ambulance arrive 12 minutes later than the Spanish guy from Dominos. And running over the creator of the telephone before he finished it would send ripples through the annoying “chat as loud as you can at the movie theatre” crowd. Those jerk-offs ruined Shrek 2 AND Munich for me, both great family films if you ask me; also great date movies (Especially in Munich after Eric Bana has sex with his wife amidst a wtf transcendental flashback of gunfire at the end. That scene gets me in the mood for lovin’ every time.) So good riddance to him, that Mr. Bell. Sending angry smoke signals to your best friend to stop sleeping with your sister is so much more efficient and practical anyhow. Try telling your friend that you’re going to meet them outside the 25 cent Peep Show to kick their ass by flapping a giant potato sack in front of a frenzied fire and you’ll see just what I mean. It works!

8. Abraham Lincoln.
Four Score, and Seven Decades ago, Abe Lincoln was a hero. Now, after being a wuss and stepping down from office by getting assassinated (wimp), Lincoln looks like a magically materialized bra at a Star Trek convention—highly creamed over by fans, but seemingly pedestrian to practically everybody else. Running him over with a Honda Civic would be the best move of his career. Or John Wilkes Booth’s.

7. Elvis Presley
Everybody knows that Elvis is much better dead than when he was alive, so running him over a little earlier in his career (Like, before he started singing) would have definitely sent him into the stratosphere of success. Who knows, perhaps instead of being acclaimed as the king of rock and roll, he might have been known as “that Menphis truck driver that like to eat all dem fried banana and peanut butter sammiches at the diner.” Now isn’t that a whole lot more endearing? The answer to that question is yes. Yes, it is.

6. Lou Diamond Phillips
Lou Diamond Phillips IS dead, right? I mean, I haven’t seen him in a movie in like, a gazillion years. Anyway, the “set it and forget it,” star would look very good as a tread mark because no man should be able to do such an awesome movie like “La Bamba” and then turn around and do a turd with corn in it like “BATS.” Travesty is a word. Lou Diamond Phillips (If crunched together) is another word. Those two words are synonyms in my book.

5. President Taft
Did you know Taft had to be buried in a piano when he died? He was THAT corpulent. A man like that deserves to be treated with utmost respect! That is why you should choose the sleek, comforting ride of a Lexus RX 4h to plow over his fat ass. If you like running over speed bumps as fast as you can, running over this speed bump will send you into the stratosphere! Yee haw!

4. Adolph Hitler
Okay, since everybody on this list has done something positive for this world (except Lou Diamond Phillips), I have to include at lease one jerk-off, so here he is: the fuehrer himself, Adolph Hitler. It would be fun to roll over this bastard with a hefty Honda because it was his idea to create the Volkswagen Beetle. Have you ever seen that thing? Besides it’s presence on the side of roads being a good reason to scream “Punch buggy reds” and leave a right arm sore as salt for hours (You see that? Hitler’s even causing pain from BEYOND the grave), the V wagon is also the fugliest vehicle since the P Wagon (The Prius), but not as fuel efficient. Oh, and besides that, the douche bag also sent millions of Jews to their deaths. It’s that atrocity and the hideous Volkswagon that earns him a place on this list.

3. Marlon Brando
First off, Brando is too epic to be run over by a Honda Civic, you’d have to hit him with a Hummer…or a meteorite. Second, bowling over this blubber ball would be worth it just to hear that glazed ham say, “The horror…the horror…” just one more time for old time’s sake. That never gets old. Neither does Steeelllllllllaaaa!

2. 2Pac Shakur
How many albums did this guy release after he “died?” Seven? Eight? EIGHT?! He’s not dead, he’s probably the one wrote that catchy Empire Carpets jingle (that white guy with the mustache even kinda sorta LOOKS like 2Pac a little bit). Run over this gangster real proper like at least one time to make sure he’s really gone for good this time!

1. Current President George Bush
This fucker’s been dead to me since his first day in office. In his honor, Hot Wheels should lead the way right over his supple, bureaucratic body.

Shattered Solider Enjoys flashbacks. “Vietnam is my fucking Epcot Center, Man.”

2006-05-31T09:20:00.000-07:00

Kids today are fucking pussies. When I sit in the dark at night, drinking my beer and watching TV, I get disgusted. All this talk about people coming home from Iraq traumatized and shit, saying they still hear gunfire and screams. All I gotta say to that is that you kids are softer than the spot where my crotch used to be after it gangrened and rotted off from shrapnel fire.

Back in my day, men were men, and boys were old enough to be considered men. I mean, yeah I’m glad the military has now lowered the enlistment age to 12, but still! What’s everybody talking about that they had such a horrible time in Iraq? I had a blast in Vietnam. And I’m not just referring to that minefield I lost the vision in my left eye in, either.

Don’t you understand that war is a beautiful she-bitch of a fat mama? And the best part is I still get photographic flashbacks reminding me of how good times were. They’re like renting movies at Blockbusters without standing in line next to some fat jerk-off who smells like QuarterPounders and Gummy Bears. Sometimes, I even have flashbacks at the office, and it’s like riding on a monorail at Epcot Center for me.

It could be Monday morning, and I could be swamped in paper work, and just one loud noise from the copy machine and BAM! There I go into the jungle. The flashbacks begin to kick in and I go from being swamped in paperwork to being swamped in the Nang River. Good times. Good times.

And hearing that gunfire in my head is like listening to ocean waves on the beach. Ratatatatatata! I could listen to that sound all day and go to sleep hearing that serenading song. My wife can’t, though, but that’s what the couch is for—for her to sleep on! Hoorah! You thought I was gonna go somewhere else with that, didn’t you? Git ‘R Done!

Aw, shit, just thinking about killing some of them gooks out there in the jungle gets me all horny in ways the doctor says is no longer possible now that my penis is made of aluminum siding.

And then there are the Vietnamese prostitutes you get to remembering. I wish there was a word for when you kiss your forefingers and thumb to exclaim how great something is, not that I could do that anyway, though. Not after I lost my two fingers when they were burned off when one of the boys in my company was using a fucking flame thrower to light his cigarettes. Fucking knucklehead. I’m glad he died in my crossfire. Bam bam bam bam bam! He wasn’t pretty no more.

When I can no longer do two in the pink, one in the stink, that’s when I get angry. And that’s when my trigger finger goes blasty. Kaboom!

So, all I gotta say is this. To all you Iraq returnees, stop yer complaining, get back on the battlefield and play your missing arms and legs like a guitar if it makes you feel any better, you wuss. And if it doesn’t, all you gotta do is wait until phantom limb kicks in, and it’ll be like you never even lost them in the first place. Honest.

War can be fun. So stop acting like it’s the worst thing that could ever happen to you. I mean seriously, have you ever watched “Two and a Half Men”? After watching that dung pile, you’ll see there are much worse things than being impotent for the rest of your life. Trust me. So go on, make America proud, son.

Jimmy Faulbucket, Former Infantryman, current mailman

I hope I die a virgin in your arms

2006-05-31T09:13:00.000-07:00

Hi, Amanda, it’s Roy. Roy Applebum. You know, that guy who got your name tattooed all over his body in body paint that won’t come off now and has me permanently branded as a stalker. Thanks a lot for not having sex with me when you had the chance; even after I wrote you all those sonnets and told you how much I loved you in binary code (I even sent you a manual so you could decode the damn thing).
And remember when I strummed that song for you on my loon and pranced to your house wearing that awesome Shakespeare leotard I bought off eBay? All I got from you was laughter and eggs pelted at me by your older brothers, even though all I was trying to do was win your affection.
But let’s be honest. We all know why I did it. The loon playing, the poems, the impressionistic dancing I learned from the bar scene in Star Wars: Episode 4—I wanted to get laid! Twenty-two years old and my only lover is still the hand I use to play Marble Madness with at the Diner down the street.
And we all know you’ve slept with every dirty dick in the whole solar system, even the losers with pimples that go all the way from their face down to their small intestine. You even fucked Danny Atola, the school mascot, and that dickwad still has warts on his penis after he stuck his dick in his sister’s Easy Bake Oven (He didn’t even have to show it to me on his MySpace page. It was his user menu picture!)
So why wouldn’t you do me, Amanda?
I’m funny, have my own hair and retainer, and am even a member of the Metallica Club; doesn’t that do ANYTHING for you?
I’m writing you this letter to let you know that I’m not much longer for this world. I’ve decided that if a jerk wad like Danny Atola could get laid and brag about it to all his friends in his Yu-Gi-Oh club, then I should be able to get laid, too. I mean, God, I’m not THAT bad looking, and my prick has even grown a few millimeters over the past few years. At that rate, if we ever got married, my penis would be at least 5 inches, hard, over the next 40 years. And you can take that check to the bank, sweet cheeks.
So I hope you know what you’re missing out on, baby. A guy like me comes only what, every 12, 13 millennia, and you just lost me, sunshine; you just lost me big time!
When they find my dead body underneath that Street Fighter 2 machine by the car wash, I hope you know that you just lost out on the best lay in 30 seconds you could have ever had this side of the universe. Save your tears for somebody else, sister, I’m already dead.

Roy Applebum