Natural Selection – It’s Broken

Unlike Manti’s Girlfriend – that door EXISTS.

You watched someone walk up a down escalator, A woman walks into a glass sliding auto-door at the airport for 5 minutes, you pass someone backing down the freeway at 60 miles per hour to take an exit they missed by three miles. I know that it sounds cold hearted, but some people are too stupid to live. There, I said it. A lot of the people reading this will immediately think of the dumbest person they know and think to rally to their defense, but I caution you – just because you care about someone does not mean they are not a complete moron.

But Uncle Harold MEANS well…

Regardless of political affiliation, religious preference, sexual orientation, or race educated human beings who exercise common sense are beset on all sides by lemmings. If you have a TV the commercial where the woman is driving and is hit on all sides by 4 student drivers sums up this principal. She was minding her own business, probably on the way to work or maybe a “hot” yoga class when BAM her Jeep gets fuck started by four geniuses who have apparently never heard of a stop sign. This is the world in which we live. Unfortunately, because of political correctness, sensitivity, and the likelihood of catching charges or sweet sweet lawsuit it has become a faux pas to simply walk up to this people and place a Dunce cap on their heads so that everyone around them will know to watch out, because clearly the simpleton wearing this had is so damn stupid that they are capable of anything.

Best to give this son of a bitch a WIDE berth…

While we can all agree that a great many things about the past sucked big time (no cable, no iPhones, no air conditioner, and no keg-er-rators) they did do a lot of things right, like not letting these people walk the streets with us “normies”. Back in the day, Forrest Gump would have been carted away by a van full of white coats the SECOND he started that “Stupid is as Stupid does” mumbo jumbo. Luckily for him, in the movie rural Alabama had yet to discover phones and had to resort in having the local children chase him on bicycles and throw rocks (actually, this is till the state policy according to the Alabama State Legislature). Still, even in that movie all you really had to worry about was maybe Forrest sprinting across the street at mach 5 before checking both ways, no a days the stakes are much higher. In an age where a heart beat gets you a drivers license, a corpse can get a high school degree, and mentioning to someone that their stupidity almost cost you an eye is called bullying these intellectual giants are left unchecked and free to saturate common society with their pestilence. Case in point: Rebecca Black: Friday, Every movie after “Face-Off” by Nicolas Cage, and the guy sitting next to you in your cubicle farm that doesn’t seem to know that everyone can see him picking his nose until it bleeds.

We see you Mark Sanchez… the entire free world can see you.

So the next time you see someone stuck in a revolving door, block two lanes in rush hour to adjust their make-up, or wear something in public that you thought only existed in the sickest corners of Japanese pornography – just remember to take a couple of extra steps backwards. When someone acts completely retarded, there is literally no limit to the things they can’t do; which will probably include royally fucking up your day.

NO CAPTION NEEDED.

Football, Like Life – Is Unfair.

Football is perfect illustration of the human psyche and truly paints a picture of the dichotomy of human nature. Enjoying a football game while having a few beers and cheering on your favorite team is equally likely to make you a set of new life long friends, as it is to get you stabbed in the neck in the parking lot with the business end of a urine covered stick.

“I NEED THAT FOR WORK!”

Football is the only topic that bridges the gap and allows a person of even below average charm and intelligence to have an engaging conversation with both ends of the social spectrum. Whether it be the President of the United States or that irritating co-worker who gets up 1100 times a day to frequent the bathroom or make coffee for themselves – all the while KNOWING that you are trying to blog and your damn computer screen faces that area of the office and his constant intrusion forces you to click over and stare at meaningless e-mails all while praying in your heart of hearts for a localized and catastrophic kitchen explosion. When all else fails, and you know that you have nothing in common, you can always talk about how if you were the coach you would never have run that Fullback dive and how in all your years of Madden a play action bootleg to the tight end always gets that first down.

A whole new meaning to PREMIUM ROAST – you bastard.

The best time of year for football is without a doubt the playoffs. Why you might ask? Because all year fans of their respective teams have entertained a dream fantasy of their team hoisting the Super Bowl trophy in triumph as they scream obscenities into the faces of their rivals. Sweet JUSTICE. However, much like the first time you found out that there is no Santa Clause or that the Tooth Fairy is little more than tooth hoarding reverse burglar these hopes are often dashed to the point of life long and therapy inducing depression. For the chosen few, their teams get to advance into a hunger games type elimination where at the end there stands only one, all else lay in a pool of their own inadequacies desperately searching for an answer to that age old football question – WHY!?! The good news is, I am here to tell you why and the answer is surprisingly simple; the reason why is that life is not fair, that’s why. How many terminally ill patients do you think sit in their hospital rooms begging for their team to win the Super Bowl so that they can give St. Peter a fist bump and mock their rival teams fan destined for hell waiting behind them, only to be left with the taste of agonizing defeat and likely equally agonizing 3rd degree coffee accident burns that will end them. A lot, that’s how many. Instead, who does the victory go to? The person who needs it least of all – the loud, obnoxious, perpetually drunk, chest thumping meat head that at the time seems to be placed on this Earth solely for the purpose of reminding you that the reason your team lost and their team won is because of *insert Sports Center fact here* or *Damaging profanity laced insult about your appearance*.

Ha! Tony Romo never completes a pass over 11 yards when he has Spaghetti-Os for dinner twice in one week!! – KeyShawn

Stay strong in the face of this foe, in football as in life in order for there to be winners there inevitably most be losers and as you gaze into the agape mouth of your victorious foe just remember that the chances of you probably throwing a nickel into their trash salvaged Starbucks coffee cup the next time you stop to fill up drastically improve with every single victory whip-it he takes in the store room with the bar back. On the other end of the spectrum nothing feels as good as watching the team you love advance to the Super Bowl, with the exception of being able to do so in the company of someone who thought that they couldn’t do the impossible. This year has been a year of triumph and defeat, of victory and failure, of all the good quarterbacks and Tony Romo. So remember to wear that jersey, fly that flag, think of some original cut downs, and regardless of what happens that there is always next year.

Unless you are the Kansas City Chiefs – THOSE GUYS BLOW.

Air Travel: Part Deux

Turns out that this epic nightmare is too large for one post. This is part two. Read part one below.

How Elephants fly in our NIGHTMARES!!

We finally make it to California and exit plane last so that Precious has enough time to navigate the aisles and make it to training on time and have a pretty decent time on the West coast. There are only two ways in my mind to make traveling better the first is to become so obsenely rich that you can be trafficked around in your own private plane. This option is far to distant to fathom. Or the second option, buy a fat suit and pack the innards with beef jerky, bud light, and kindle and pass the buck to the poor fools seated next to you. My fat suit is in the mail.

Air Travel: The Lottery I Never Win

Don’t get me wrong we have come a long way since the Oregon Trail covered wagons of old and what used to take months now takes merely hours. Back in the day, if you wanted to take a trip to California from the East coast you needed to be a wealthy banker with two strong oxen, a buckboard, and a cold callous heart. So while, I appreciate not having to make the difficult decision of having to stuff a pistol into my best friends mouth outside Sioux City because waiting a week for him to recover from a snake bite might keep me from working my panning claim at the mouth of a tiny stream in the mountains – traveling still blows.

Don’t worry – I always keep my first aid kit loaded.

In my current function, traveling is a necessity and I venture to say that I am traveling pretty regularly. This has afforded me the opportunity to fall victim to all that air travel has to offer. If you ever travel for work, most places have a limit on what you can spend on your ticket – which totally understand, you can’t have the mail boy flying first class to London for a stamp convention – the whole damn company would be broke in a week. At the same time forcing all of your employees to suffer through the modern equivalent of the grade F circus meat steerage class on the Titanic doesn’t exactly increase moral either. In fact, besides the ship going down and everyone getting felted –  at least they got to have that cool beer fueled dance party down in the bowels of the ship – if you even try to get out of your seat on an airplane to use the bathroom on a cross country expedition at the very least the flight attendants try to smash you in the grill with the drink cart – or even more likely a highly aggressive, sexually frustrated, steroid fueled ex-blackwater U.S. Air Marshall disguised as a middle aged vacuum salesman from Tampa breaks your spine with his kneecaps by jumping up and down on you in the middle of the isle like a mountain dew guzzling six year old at a trailer park birthday party.

“A case of 50? But that will keep us wired for… HOURS… I know.”

So that being said, my co-worker and I take the responsible steps and make sure to get to the airport with plenty of time to spare. We walk into the terminal and approach the ticket counter. That is when my heart skips a beat – instead of hiring M.I.T. graduates that just needed a little extra spending money to pay their entrance fees into their robot fighting league – they have instead hired graduates of the “Jerry’s Kids” placement initiative which basically consists of completing a color by numbers picture of Winnie the Pooh. Instead of taking my chances with these geniuses I elect to use the automated kiosk. I pay the 15 seperate fees associated with checking bags, carry ons, oxygen while in flight, and the new two part left and right buttcheek fee and proceed to check my bag. Therein lies the first problem. Checking the bag and moving it 2 feet onto a conveyor belt proves too much for the ticket counter staff and while they bicker amongst themselves over how to spell my last name on the baggage ticket precious minutes are lost. When my bag is finally placed into the screening pool I am all but certain that within a couple of days a young boy named Ivan from the Eastern Bloc will be wearing my Calvin Klein tie as a head band and using my bag as a toilet.

Like this only with less hot girl and more burned out pre-cold war era Soviet tanks and a soccer field covered in land mines.

As we approach the security line I notice that they have combined all 5 available lanes into one really long and unmanigable single lane thus increasing the over all wait time and irritation factor while decreasing the distance between the gentials of the person behind and the buttcheeks of the person in front –  a condition we like to to call “nuts to butts” standing distance. As my co-worker and I settle into our spots in line I notice that they have also elected to assign only one of the 20 TSA employees doing screening to actually checking the tickets. Not only that, they seemed to have chosen the most ill suited of the bunch for this bottleneck position at the front of the security area and have elected to pick the kid that always showered with his bathing suit on in every locker room of every gym class since he entered the 7th grade and got towel popped by a gym teacher fresh out of county that intentionally severed all of the ropes included with public school gym shower “soap on a rope”. Shudder. However, in his new found role as a TSA officer he is able to make hundreds of new friends every day who are forced to engage him in conversation before being allowed to board their respective flights. Each passenger receives a slow and creepy glance followed by rehearsed dialogue regarding how nice their chosen destination is that time of year and an explaination of although he has not actually been there himself that he has “heard” from a friend of his. Something like this, “Oh hello, I see here that you are taking a little trip – that’s great I hear that Mogadishu is really nice this time of year – Oh me? No I have not actually been there but I have Blackhawk Down on DVD”. The unfortunate variable likely overlooked by this simpleton is that since the coming of the internet most people that can actually afford to travel have stopped taking travel tips and advice from local morons. Thus putting himself, and every statuesque old redneck with a banjo in a county with no phones near a road side fruit stand largely out of the “lure unsuspecting tourists into a scene depicted by the film ‘The Hills have Eyes'” business.

“What you wanna do is take a left here next to the old cactus that looks like a cello, and keep driving straight until you hear a loud snapping noise… that’ll be us harvesting your organs”.

The good news is that after passing by this gaurdian of the gangway the rest of the security staff made sure to behave professionally, and ensured that every passenger was screened and processed in the most expeditious manner possible all while maintaining a courteous and friendly attitude. HAHAHAHAHA not at this disco. More like every passenger was interrogated about the child sized bottle of Crest toothpaste in their carry on, and had every orafice checked with a magnifying glass. We finally get through this nightmare just in time to be totally fucked. As we walk up to the gate, we see our plane has decided to depart early and is already moving to take off. Yay! back to the ticket counter manned by Simple Jack and Rainman!

When you miss your flight in my head movies – it makes my EYES RAIN.

We finally get tickets for a later flight and move back through the line at security and board the plane. The attendant let’s everyone know that the flight is packed full and that there are no open seats. She encourages everyone not to move seats and explains that the plane will be moving away from the gate shortly. This is no suprise as I am sure that United would actually charge people to be strapped to the wings and landing gear struts of the plane if it wasn’t for that whole “don’t kill your fucking passengers” rule that is on the books. As my co-worker and I settle into our respective seats (12D, and 12F) I notice that through some type of miraculous oversite or more likely general incompetence by the airline that the seat between us remains unoccupied. FINALLY a break. Just as I am imagining myself stretching out some and maybe even getting a chance to sleep comfortably on the flight the loud speaker chirps. Apparently we have been waiting for a lone passenger who required just a little more time to board. As the door to plane opens I look up in horror at the occupant of seat 12E.

12E

The eyes of every passenger follow her as she slides down the aisle toward us – each person showing visible relief when she passes their row until finally she is positioned besides row 12. With labored breath she explains that she will be sharing the flight with us and with the aid of a commercial sized tube of Crisco and 4 shoe horns slides into the seat. As I look around the cabin panicked and pleading with myeyes I find only blank stares. There will be no salvation. There will be no rescue. The realization that what had the chance to be a semi-relaxing flight has now become an 8 hour torture fest riding in a phone booth with a baby elephant finally sinks in – this is hell.

How elephants fly in our dreams…

 

In God We Trust…

Ok, I know I have been gone for a while but rather than write a page long explanation as to where I have been, I won’t. What brings us here today is talking about football. As many of you know, I am a Ravens fan – there is just something about a team of warriors built solidly around an acquitted shank weilding double murderer that just screams “FOOTBALL”. Football players are the modern equivalent of ancient gladiators, donning their unique armor, and hitting the field to represent their city and their fans only with less decapitation and more penalties for breathing too hard on the quarterback (gay).

This is the equivalent of a goodnight kiss on a 4yr old - WE PAID FOR BLOOD.

For those of you fortunate enough to also have a team in the play offs, I congratulate you but don’t start planning your road trip to the super bowl to watch your team just yet because there is a bigger threat out there. Tim Tebow. Make no mistake, I am not one of those retards who actually thinks this guy is a good quarterback. I am a blend of Irish and pure redneck to obscenely religious groups who almost without exception assign anything positive to god and anything bad to his mysterious plan. That being said, I am convinced that Tim Tebow has no skeleton and instead his muscle tissue is supported by two solid gold crucifixes welded together at the spine.

Like this only Man-Sized and covered in Tebow Skin

On a field full of warriors, Tim Tebow stands out. Not because he is particularly special – but because he clearly has a pact with the almighty. If you have ever watched old war movies – the camera pans into an empty village (proly French cause those dudes run at the sound of firecrackers much less gunshots) and there is a lone squad of badasses sneaking through the combat zone like a group of corn-fed ninjas putting every nazi they see through a red,white,and blue meat grinder without even breaking a sweat or losing one hour of sleep. Then inexplicably the camera pans to the angsty and damn near mute sniper who after bringing sweet justice on arguably the most evil people to ever exist pauses to say a prayer. Like a really twisted version of “Find the one that doesn’t belong” this guy sticks out like a broken window on an airplane. Save it for the confessional holy roller.

A rosary for every neck, and a cap in every ass.

Tim Tebow is frightening because the players we all know and love tweet about strip clubs, shots of booze, and loose women. The kinds of things that society has taught us are the kinds of things that soul-less blood thirsty steroid fueled neanderthals should talk about and naturally reminds us of how different we are from them. We wake up put on a suit and drive a 1998 toyota camery 60 miles to a small cube which we sit in for nine hours drinking bad coffee and tolerating Suzy from accounting whose sister just had a baby – that let’s face it is the ugliest baby anyone has ever seen. They wake up – eat a live calf – put on a track suit – lift weights with Navy SEALs drive 5 miles in a brand-new Escalade which they burn as soon as they get to the stadium cause lets face it – a real baller only rides in a car once, then gets paid millions of dollars to play a game for a living that elevates them to a god-like level of fame all while having all kinds of strange sex with random women – and the only thing they have to worry about is not getting injured and making child support payments to Suzy from accounting’s sister who just gave birth to a little monster that looks just like them.

No caption necessary - this is just one of the many dudes we pay millions to play professional football - he just also so happens to be the ugliest man on the planet.

Hurricane Tebow and his god squad are continuing their inexplicable journey into the playoffs and dare I say it the fucking super bowl by making sure to thank Jesus every chance he gets or any time a microphone gets within three feet of him and there is a chance that it might record him saying a hail mary. One can only hope that on the ultimate stage, with millions of people watching play off football – that evil can triumph over good. That any other team (and I mean that) can un-seat the holy rollers and preserve football as we know it, other wise NFL scouts are going to be recruiting at theology schools and catholic missions abroad, and let’s all pray it doesn’t come to that. Irony is funny.

With their first draft pick the Baltimore Ravens select the fucking Pope - game on TEBOW!

As he continues to win and remind the rest of us who can’t go to church regularly because we are busy watching the playoffs that he can conduct church on a field while in the playoffs – we will continue to be shamed. So what if you are better than me Tim, I don’t want to be reminded of that fact every time I turn on TV. Just to be sure I will be sacrificing live chickens in my Ray Lewis jersey from now until they are defeated.

 

 

 

A Necessary Evil…

In D.C. we like to drink. This fact is undisputed. Every year, D.C. ranks in the top five for alcohol consumption. Why? You may ask, honestly – who cares? Maybe it is because of the high stress government or government related jobs. Maybe it is the fact that per capita this area has more people with college degrees and masters degrees than anywhere else which makes the job market hostile and competitive. Or maybe it is because there is a bar with a sweet $1 beer special every 14.3 feet. Regardless of the reason, livers in this area are under assault. Which is fine with me, because if some horrible phenomenon were to occur which turned the entire area “dry” – bad dance moves, bar hook-ups, hang overs, and street pugilism would take a sharp decline leaving most of us to spend our weekend reading or bettering ourselves. I don’t think so.  Imagine the pandemonium scores of meatheads, bar flies, and jersey shore look alikes flooding the streets in search of books instead of booze – sure they would be coloring books, but you get the point. Our world as we know it would cease to exist.

“Following D.C. area prohibition – sales of 8 pack crayons and Miley Cyrus coloring books have sky-rocketed”

 My point being this area thrives on drinking. The bars make money, the customers get  hammered, and stores can keep Hannah Montana coloring books in stock for the kids that really need them. We need drinking, and drinking needs us. If drinking were a great white – we would all be that lame sucker fish looking thing attached to its stomach. The whole area is set up for people to go and drink – and it works. However, because of this set up the night can end only in one of three ways: (1) You walk home, or find a sober friend to pick you up (unless you have an Amish or Mormon friend this option has a low chance of success) – (2) You leave with a couple of new friends who want you to stay over at their place with a bunch of new “friends” – normally they will have a gun, a badge, and a horrible attitude – (3) In the back of a taxi cab or on the metro.

"Yay! Sleep Over!!"

 Now, the real snake in the grass here is option three – because god knows that everyone is aware of how much options (1) and (2) suck. Droves of cab drivers roam the streets night after night looking for customers, or “marks” as we will call them. Generally, the drunker the better. Their goal? Simple. They want to try to get someone into the cab that is drunk enough not to remember who they are, dispute the fair, or remember their $800 smart phone in the backseat of the cab which they will then steal and sell on e-Bay to some asshole living in Wisconsin or something that really does not care that he just bought the phone from a cab driving version of the Hamburglar.

“It’s got face-time bitch.”

Maybe comparing them to a lovable felon from our youth is being too generous, these people are real scumbags – and not every single cabby – the cabbies that are also thieves, or better yet pirates. I know the definition of pirate is someone who attacks and robs ships at sea – but if you think about it at any given time on any given weekend are we not all ships adrift in a sea of vodka redbulls, budlights, and shots of whiskey desperately searching for a port in the storm? Of course we are, and who happens along? Our buddy the cab driver – here to tow us into the harbor… or rape, kill, and rob the crew while setting fire to the ship – either of those.  The worst part is, you have no idea who is good and who is bad. All the cabs and all the cab drivers look exactly the same. At least, back in the day pirates used to fly the Jolly Roger over their ship or in the case of modern day pirates fill a water tight bathtub shell to the brim with RPG wielding douches and set out into the open ocean powered by a 3HP Yamaha outboard. Either way, you knew what you were dealing with, the only way to make it more clear that you were about to be beset upon by assholes would be if every single one of them had a parrot and an eye patch.

 

“Haha no I’m not here to take you safely home – I sailed up to your ship on two closet doors nailed together… Now everyone get butt-naked, RIGHT NOW.”

 

Cabbies have it easy too, because they know that you are either leaving with them or leaving with the police – either way you are going to end up cramped into the back of a crown victoria that smells like Jack Daniels, urine, and a dash of shame. They know that you will either ride quietly in the back, and not dispute the $50 fare for a 2 block ride or they will let you out in front of the courthouse and blare the horn until you get arrested. Even this was an unwritten social contract whereby we accepted the dangers of smart phone theft, and fare fraud just to make sure that we woke up somewhere that was not under a bridge (damn you, last Friday). I am here to tell you, that things have changed folks – we are not playing the same game we were playing a year ago. I have had several friends just in the past few months talk of being held hostage by these deviants just because they do not want to pay the $2.00 fee for the passenger using the credit card machine in the back of the cab – instead pulling over and demanding to be paid in cash. Well, excuse me a-hole  for assuming this credit card machine was not “display use only” unfortunately for you I am not a crack dealer, pimp, or mortgage banker who walks around with hundreds of dollars in sweaty cash to pay seedy shit-box driving descendents of black beard and Captain fucking hook.

 

"Credit Card? I ONLY accept Gold Bullion or Confederate gold pieces"

 

The cabbies have started to evolve. Like a low rent, highschool drop out version of Sky Net – the D.C. cabby has become self-aware. They have figured out that they have a valuable tool with which to strike out at the very customer base that pays for them to get those really cool beaded massage seat covers, and much like the pirate they have realized that their power is rooted in violence. I have a friend that was attempting to take one of the death traps pictured above a couple of blocks back to her house after a night of time traveling (drinking) and when she arrived at her destination she produced a credit card with which to pay the hack licensed swash buckler and was told instead to pay in cash. When she informed the cab driver that she was either going to have to pay in credit card, or not pay at all seeing as he had the machine in the car – he threw a fit worthy of any eighth grade girl that literally had just found out that Billy likes Crystal and has totally been making out behind her back and pulled the cab over in a fit. When she handed the card to him threw the window he hit the gas and used the still open door to knock her to the pavement before speeding off with her credit card. Unbeknownst to the rest of the credit / debit card using universe the crime for attempting to pay for a service with a form of legal tender a stones throw from the nation’s capital is punishable by being dragged with a 4,000lbs Ford POS.

 

"Similar to the cans pictured here - except replace them with credit card holding citizens"

 

So remember, the next time one of those cabs pull up and some dude is staring back at you with a snaggle toothed grin and a cell phone headset that he might as well have a peg leg and a machine gun. Tape your iPhone to the inside your leg, wrap your belt around your hand, and prepare for an all out death match with a cab driver who thinks that cash and sexual favors are the only two ways to pay for a ride. Hopefully, some time in the next few months the government will realize that we sent the Navy to Somalia to deal with these same turds and that we should allow SEAL team 6 to patrol the streets to weed out these miscreants as well. Until then, make sure that you get a good look at the cab, the cab number, and the maritime bandit piloting it before you end up phoneless, face down on the pavement in the middle of Newark, New Jersey.

 

"Jersey? I said Clarendon... where is my phone? Why does my ass hurt? NOT AGAIN..."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You might as well be walkin’ on the sun…

If I had to pick a least favorite season living in DC it would have to be Summer. I know like half the people who just read this are saying, “Oh why? I love summer – summer is the best” etc. Yeah well, you’re wrong. Most people are smart enough to get away from DC when the summer heat waves start to hit and actually go to the beach or on vacation to escape what can only be described as God doing his best impression of that kid that lives 2 blocks from your house that is always putting his G.I. Joes into the microwave and hitting “de-frost”… news flash DC – we are God’s action figures.

Alas, I never saw Rome…

Also, when you hear people say things like, “Oh INSERT STATE HERE is not so bad because it is a dry heat” – well you know what the opposite of that is? You guessed it, D.C.  in the summer. If Hell has a swamp, I guarantee it looks like the alley behind Murray’s Market on 5th street and feels about the same too. You know you are in D.C. in July when the act of breathing is torturous enough to make you believe that the city is literally trying to kill you, like you are in a scene from The Happening – except less Mark Wahlberg and no real planet life that has not already be scorched by the unyielding sunlight.

 

It is too hot for baseball - FUCKING POOL DAY - Benny!

 Not that there are not tons of really fun things to do in DC during the summer, because there really are – the only downside is that everything you hate about the city has also received a powerful upgrade – the smell of hot. Now some of you, have no idea what the smell of hot is and are probably mistaking it with the smell of sweat or the smell of the outdoors – and that is not what I am taking about. I am talking about the actual smell of a ridiculously hot temperature attempting to burn the clothes off your body. That is the smell. In small doses, this is tolerable – but when an entire city has been blanketed in it – the effects are catastrophic. For example, you like to walk a couple blocks to your favorite Chinese food place for lunch? No problem, if you do not mind running a gauntlet of overheated bums that now smell like a 5 gallon drum of fish heads that were left out in the African sun for two weeks and then covered in despair. Or, if  by some miracle you actually survive heat stroke, the homeless, and dehydration and make it to the restaurant (and don’t worry – you won’t) the normally slightly offensive smell of back alley garbage in the dumpster has used the oppressive heat to turn itself into what can only be compared to the VX gas chambered in “The Rock” after “Butter-Fingers” drops one of the super poisonous orbs whose handling instructions read like a line from a Samuel L. Jackson movie, “DON’T FUCKING DROP ME”.

 

"We'll never make it sir!" - "I need lunch special 4 with fried rice and I am NOT coming back without it!"

Not only that, but an already painful commute has turned into the Trail of Tears – whether you take the metro or drive into work you might as well be on a forced march with nothing more than a small pox laced blanket and a Smart Trip card.  Even simple breathing, feels like you have wrapped your lips around a hair dryer set on “FUCK YOURSELF”. It is almost too hot to survive.

"Oh god please! I just have to get to work - STOP!"

 All those times I had conversations with people in college, and they kept telling me how they were going to be teachers and I kept telling them how stupid that was – well, the joke is on me because as I walk through the city of broken dreams and A.C. units in a full suit feeling like a toddler strapped into a car seat of a 1988 Toyota minivan with all the windows rolled up – they are on vacation. Damn you irony.

Behold my tomb.

 The only things seemingly unaffected by the heat are the tourists, who despite the Sahara-like conditions seem to flock to this summer-time hell hole in droves walking around in their giant hats and Hawaiian print shirts stopping only long enough to back up an escalator on the metro or take a 45 minute long video of their kids making faces and flashing peace signs or reenact a Sports Illustrated photo shoot right in front of your office building door and the only place within 4 blocks where you can get some damn AC.

"Show me sexy..."

On my walk to work today from the metro, 4 people spontaneously combusted. There is no joke there, that is real talk. Like little q-tips coated in napalm. So if you have the chance, jump the first thing smoking that is heading somewhere with a beach or at least a pool with a ban on children and get out of here. The rest of us – are not going to make it.

 

Google Street View: 2000 Pennsylvania Ave NW

 

 

 

Size Does Matter…

Despite what someone would have you believe, size does matter. A King of Spades beats a two of spades, a Tank beats a moped, and any kind of car destroys a bicycle. I mean even if you are Lance Armstrong and  managed to get a duplicate of the bicycle that Pee Wee used in his great adventure with rockets, spiked tire flattening pieces of metal, and super gay saddle bags –  an overweight housewife eating fist fulls of chicken nuggets and talking on her smart phone to her friend Jamie about how her husband and her never go on dates anymore driving a smart car could turn you into a human hood ornament in the half a second she takes her eyes off the road to dip into a small tub of BBQ sauce you would have been transformed into a human hood ornament and then abruptly into a steaming pile of hamburger meat on the side of the road. Bicycles in the city will get you killed, and your murderer looks like Rosie O’Donnell.

Stare into the Face of Death.

We have all seen it a thousand times – every one and their brother is trying to get to work on the same road and people riding bicycles are ducking in and out of traffic, running red lights, riding in the middle of the road at half the speed of snail, and in general being tools. Either strap about a thousand bottle rockets to that thing and get to where you are going a little faster than it takes an old man with a bad hip to mount the toilet or you are going to die out there. Let’s face it, people already hate work – and they hate going to work in traffic – and they hate the fact that you feel the need to ride your bicycle in the middle of a traffic lane in rush hour while wearing skin-tight clothing that looks like a wet suit made for a four-year old french scuba diver. You’re gonna die out there.

Good thing this came in child's size negative 8...

People already have no problem ramming their mini-vans, Volvos, Explorers, Sierras, and Civics into objects of equal size – so what makes you think that darting across the road in front of them with nothing more than a half hair thick condom suit and an outstretched palm wrapped in some kind of European fingerless cycling glove is going to protect you from being turned into road kill? The simple answer… it won’t. That is why some really smart guy (who probably used to ride a bike before he got creamed by some drunk dude in DC with no insurance while cycling to jamba juice for a muscle shake) invented something called a side-walk – or if you must a bike lane in the street to keep you from making me late to work while they scrape your sorry ass off the 14th street bridge with a snow shovel.

It's ok boys - leave the stretcher in the back - we could fit this guy and his bike into a thimble.

So do the world a favor either buy a damn car and drive it (if you are riding your bike to be better than everyone else cause your green then get a hybrid), or stay the hell out of the way of people who would like to get to work without being covered in sweat, smelling like a foot, and looking like you just got through with a 12 round cage match against a coked up gorilla. While I admire your bravery, and your commitment to exercising, saving the planet, or sculpting your sweet calves your inevitable death by cycle will likely cause some, if not all of the following to happen: a.) I’ll be later for work than normal due to your intolerably slow pace and your constant need to look back over your shoulder in amazement to make sure that I’m still back there cause in your mind you are moving at the speed of plaid  – b.) I’ll be eating a breakfast sandwich just as what used to be your face gets taken off the over sized mirrors of a metro bus and have to take the day off to get the vomit dry cleaned out of my suit or – c.) I’ll be the one that turns you into a grease spot and have to spend like 4 weeks in and out of the body shop just trying to get the braces you got put on last year to make your smile just irresistible snipped out of the front of my grill.

That is gonna buff out right? Am I right?

While I will admit, it is probably better than the metro – but if you have to do something that is 100% certain to kill you juggle dynamite in your backyard, smoke cigarettes, or wrestle bears at least that way you’ll be remembered as something more than that “traffic jam on Constitution” when they are zipping you up into that black hefty bag. So give up on your bicycling dreams and join the masses of glassy eyed, disillusioned, car operators on their way to work or at least get on the damn sidewalk.

Bring Back the Wild West

Back in the day, things were a lot simpler – there was no political correctness, no advocacy groups, no protests, and very little bullshit. Now you can barely make it to work in the morning without being berated 15 times about the kind of car you drive, the job you slave away at, or something you might have said when you were hammered at a bar 2 weeks ago. In the old west it was OK to be a dick, as long as you accepted the inevitably of being challenged to 15 gun fights on your way to the bank. Personally, I think that a certain degree of predictability is a good thing to have in life, that knowing before you do something that there is a 90% chance that things are going to go just as bad as you thought that they would go – is comforting.

Taste cold steel - guy who cuts in line at the super market - BOO YAH.

I mean think about it, people would be a lot less likely to fuck around if everyone was walking around like John Wayne. Oh, you took my parking spot at CVS? Fuck you – gun fight. I see you thought it was cool to borrow my stapler and not put it back – You’re a dick – gun fight. Who the fuck ate my lunch? CARL!? – GUN FIGHT. Nothing says remember your manners like being dragged out into the street to stare the grim reaper in the face because you took the LAST diet coke in the break room fridge. I mean think about the last time someone did something good and fucked up – maybe it was this morning on your way to work when that metro bus driver went from 0-60 across four lanes of traffic with his middle finger out the window cutting you off and forcing you to hit your brakes and spill searing hot coffee all over your testicles.

You're right - I do drive with my eyes closed

I am not saying that would not still happen if it were wild west, or as I like to call them “prison rules” but at least you would have been able to pull alongside that bus and spray it with whatever hardware you could fit in your car at the time. Now that is sweet vengeance. The garbage that we have to put up with in today’s society is ridiculous, and never would have been tolerated back in the day – NEVER. They used to have a duel over one dude calling another dude, “yellow”. Whereas in modern America we are expected to eat shit ALL the time. For Example, the other day I was on the metro and of course the orange line train into DC at 7:30 is packed to the gills and as I am standing there attempting to find room to breathe a woman carrying a giant tote bag and wearing clothes at least one size too small for her 300lbs frame boards the train. No problem yet, besides of course the train listing a good 10 degrees in the direction of her girth and small pieces of trash beginning to orbit her body after being caught in her gravitation pull. Well eventually, we arrived at my stop and I was able to navigate through the crowd until I came face to face with this wildebeest blocking the door I needed to get through.

Diet starts Monday!

I tried to edge by, and when I do my shoulder brushes against her – she immediately freaks the fuck out and shoves me saying, “You touched me”. Making it sound like I tried to rape her or something – never mind the fact that this woman outweighs me by a good 80 pounds and probably shaves her mustache with a bush hog.

For use on Fields, Brush, Bamboo, and Gilbert Grape's Mom's Upper Lip

Needless to say I tried to defend myself, and this seemed to only make her madder. After about 5 seconds of trying to squeeze (literally) past this woman I had to go for it or I was gonna miss my stop, as I rushed the door I hit this wall of flesh and attempted to push through. If it were not for my ninja like balance and speed she would have pancaked me flat in the middle of the Foggy Buttcheeks metro stop. I tried to get out my iPhone and call animal control, but had no signal. I wanted to say, “listen fat body, this is not the line for the steak buffet at the sizzler you do not need to shove – further more if any part of your sweat covered body touches me again – I am gonna throw a saddle on your back and ride you the rest of the way to work”.

It's feeding time at the ZOO!!

But because we live in the crappy real world instead of the awesome wild west / prison rule world I have invented in my head I couldn’t say that and instead had to walk the entire way to work smelling like bacon grease and shame. Had it been the wild west – I’d have propped my harpoon gun up on one of those cement benches and speared Moby Dick to the side of a south bound metro train.

I am gonna aim for the fucking eye-ball.

Justice goes un-served.

Welcome to the THUNDER DOME!

In the Washington D.C. / Arlington area you can find yourself in a fight quicker than you can find a parking spot in Ballston or a reason not to hang yourself with your shoe laces after 3 minutes on a hot car, courtesy of the god forsaken metro.  I attribute this Lord of the Flies mentality to the over abundance of money, the frequent watching of action films, that damn rap music, and the seemingly constantly drug and alcohol infused populace.  That being said, if you are a tourist and you are coming to visit there is one very important thing you should know – give up hope… you’re already dead.

You got a better shot of making it through eye surgery with Gary Busey as your doctor

I know what many of you are probably thinking – “WHY!? I am a lover not a fighter” or some other similar piece of tripe you read in a book or saw on cable television. Well here is a news flash, in the cold, hard, barren, bosom of the real world there is something called Yin and Yang – the art of the opposite, the divine and inarguable truth that for every person and attitude in the world there exists an equal and opposite belief system in another person – and unfortunately for you being a “pansy” puts you squarely at the bottom of the food chain. By day the area is largely filled with bustling shops, young urban professionals, chirping birds, and smiling faces. As soon as the sun sets and happy hour ends, and scores of hammered retards poor into the streets – you would be better off taking a stroll down baka-laka-daka street in the middle of Mogadishu.

The bouncer at WHITLOWS.

It must be something in the water because this area has the ungodly ability to take the most mild-mannered soul and warp them into a jay walking, glass breaking, ass grabbing, tip stiffing, bag of excrement. For instance, a seemingly normal, well-adjusted young man who 12 hours and 12 beers before had hopes of going out with good friends and having a few drinks, maybe meeting a nice young lady to take home has literally transformed into a psychopathic battle ready terminator with only one objective – to give you a reason to wear an eye patch… for the rest of your life.

You just spilled my fucking COSMOPOLITAN!!!

The transformation normally occurs right around the 1:15am – 1:30am time slot, when the remaining bar patrons slowly begin to realize that their future ex-wife was not among the patrons that night, and that even though they thought every single joke they made over the course of the evening would have made even the most stalwart critic applaud,they were  in fact as well received as any act a white guy may have attempted during the 90’s on the set of “Show Time at the Apollo” and their outfit looks like they got dressed in a dark room full of thrift store clothes and old prop costumes from the wizard of oz… and someone has got to pay.

WHAT!? This is Armani...

The smallest perceived transgression can ignite this powder-keg of low self-esteem like flare gun in a napalm factory. For instance, one night a few friends and I were out at Car Pool having a couple of drinks as the clock slowly ticked ever closer to the doomsday hour of last call and as I sipped (guzzled) my Jack and Coke I was casually talking to a friend of mine who just happened to be a good-looking female. Unbeknownst to me, by acknowledging just how crappy the last round of lemon drops had been I had unwittingly thrown my hat into the ring on the set of “Bloodsport”. As soon as I turned around, I was confronted by two meat headed roid jockeys who until I opened my mouth and deflated their balloon of unreal expectations had actually thought that by dressing in Affliction graphic tees and looking like they were prepared to eat broken glass would be able to take home a hot blonde at a bar packed with other dudes. I’ll be honest, normally this would have been just the type of interaction I would invite after a night of drinking Jack Daniel’s but things are a little different when you are not ready for it – literally it was like a modern-day bar version of Pearl Harbor – I was in the fight before I had time to realize that by not seducing two girls and passing them off to Buzzsaw and T-Bone I had some how offended them. Luckily, a mutual friend was able to intercept the gruesome twosome before we all ended up in jail – courtesy of the Arlington County Police.

Photo: Arlington County Police Squad Room - June 2011

So leave the flip-flops at home, always wear a belt, tell your mom you love her, and get into the fray. Cause let’s face it – you miss out on 100% of the shots you don’t take and you are going to need as many shots as possible if you have any hope of surviving the beat down that is waiting for you in the county of broken dreams and by some miracle if you do not end up in jail, the hospital, or in a brutal grudge match over scuffing some 21 yr old kids puma at Mister Days you might just live to do it all over again next weekend.  So get buck naked.