Men vs Women Drivers

So I got a message the other day from a guy complaining that women drivers are essentially brainless morons and to write about that. I'd like to say that I do not think women or women drivers are brainless morons, but I do think this.

Women are extremely unknowingly selfish drivers, while men are angry testosterone fueled jerks. Men are constantly on the lookout for anybody doing anything that irriatates them. Women are not on the lookout for anything. This is why there is no girl on girl roadrage.

For example: A guy will drive down the road and basically this is what he's thinking:

Guy: Boobs...Sex...Vaginas...Butts....Twins Game...HEY ASSHOLE WHY DON'T YOU LEARN TO DRIVE...Butts... Sex...OH NICE BLINKER MORON, I HOPE THE COPS PULL YOU OVER AND TAZE YOU TO DEATH....Vaginas....Boobs...etc. At least that's what I think. Not a woman. She is much more peaceful, and much more unaware.

Here's how we really know this is the truth. A guy will carefully let you merge and then waive at you as if he's doing a huge public service. A guy will also cut you off, and then hit his brakes so you almost crunch into him and give you the finger because he thought you weren't merging smoothly enough, or if he didn't like your faded "Kerry-Edwards 04" bumper sticker. A woman will cut you off because she has no idea you, or anybody else, exists on the road.

I don't think anybody is better than anybody else. So we've settled that debate. Now I'm going to go back to thinking about boobs.

Giant Mutant Spiders are Scary!

I woke up this morning and there was a huge spider crawling on my arm. Why is it that whenever you wake up to find a bug crawling on you it's always way bigger than it should be? It's never just a run-of-the-mill bug, but a huge, flushed-down-the-toilet and grew to immense proportions bug. One time I woke up to find that a Millipede was breakdancing on my forehead. I still haven't quite recovered from that and I was 11.

So anyway this stupid, tarantula like spider was crawling on my arm so of course I shrieked like a girl and made this lame attempt to smack it off my arm, kind of like a tennis backhand, or maybe even a bitchslap. I didn't want to smash it directly on my arm because it looked like it had a lot of guts in it and I didn't want guts all over my arm. It also looked like it would be hard to squish and kill instantly and perhaps with it's last dying wish it would bite the hell out of my forearm and my forearm would get infected and the skin would slough off, and then I'd have to get my arm amputated. My brain is full of realistic consequences like this.

So I bitchslap the spider and it flies into the wall, making a noise like a Tic-Tac hitting a wood floor, then it falls to the ground and scuttles away. Now I'm posed with an even scarier possibility. What if this big spider is some sort of mutant that's also super smart? And what if he was just out for a walk and thought he was walking over a big log or something but instead it was me. Then I beat the crap out of him for no good reason. What if he's back hiding in a house crevasse licking his wounds and plotting revenge against the big angry log thing that slapped him around? This is serious! I might never sleep again!! Then again I probably will because if I spent all my time worrying about every supersmart spider, invisible burglar, and sneaky ninja who hides my inhaler at night, I'm sure I'd really never sleep.

Who's at the Casino?

I had a family reunion this weekend. Not for my family, my family is all dead people. If the Jensen's had a family reunion, it would have to be held at Lakewood Cemetary, and 90% of the invitees would be underground, and like I've said before, no dead person would want me standing on top of them, reminiscing softly to myself. Therefore, until that day that we inherit a bunch of Cambodian refugees, or a village of Oompa Loompas like Willy Wonka, we will not be having a family reunion.

I'm speaking of my wife's family, which just happens to be the largest family is the history of people. The family tree is bigger than that big redwood tree in California that has a highway running through it. Or bigger than a blue whale's nutsack, whichever helps you remember better that it's big. Anyhow, the reunion is held at a Casino in the outskirts of Northern Bumblecrotch, MN. So I got a little gambling in and lost a little bit of money, but for the most part, I just looked around at the people. I never really noticed this before, but there appears to be 4 distinct groups of people that goes to the Casino on the outskirts of Northern Bumblecrotch, MN.

1.) Really fat middle aged people playing slots. Many are wearing mesh hats and overalls, or floral print pants where the flowers are like a foot in diameter and all faded and stretched out from the giant ass that they are containing. These people nearly always bump me with their backfat when I am trying to slink in between them.
2.) Really skinny people milling around and smoking constantly. They rarely play any games, instead choosing to keep an eye out for anything suspicious, and by anything suspicious, I mean anything at all. They glance up at the eyes in the sky at least once every 30 seconds and then sneak to some other part of the casino.
3.) People who hustle over to Blackjack tables in the middle of a shoe and play hands for at least $25 while standing up. Then they get 20, the dealer gets a lucky 21, they pound the table and swear, and then leave as fast as they came, presumably to go back to the cash machine to squander more of their mortgage payment or kid's college fund.
4.) Punk ass 20 year olds who think they are the world's best Texas Hold-em players. They talk a lot, use their cell phones at inappropriate times, and wear sunglasses at the 2-4 table and try to bluff. Then they lose their ass and curse at people for not knowing how to play. These kids are the reason that if I ever see Chris Moneymaker, I'm going to punch him in his stupid head.

So since I noticed this, I started wondering where I fit in. After all, I used to go to Mystic Lake a lot. I'm not a morbidly obese slot player, or a meth addled fidgety conspiracy theorist. I'm not betting my mortgage, and even though I act like it 95% of the time, I guess I'm not a punk ass kid anymore either. So I had to go ahead and create another group.

5.) Me- As far as I could tell, I was the only one in my group. I looked around a lot too. It was kind of weird and lonely. I felt like the guy in I Am Legend. All I needed was a dog and some vampires. I know there are others like me out there, they just weren't at the Casino on the ouskirts of Northern Bumblecrotch, MN. Maybe next time...

Just so you feel better about yourself...

I went to the store yesterday and for the first time in about 20 years I bought a package of Trix cereal for my kids. It made me think back to how easily I was duped by everybody back then. My parents, kids on the bus, TV, this guy Mike that used to come down to the park and play basketball with us until he got arrested for molesting kids at another park, and so on. It made me very thankful that I didn't wind up killing myself out of sheer ignorance before the age of 15. Here are just a few things I believed:

1.) Prizes in cereal boxes- The inspiration for this post. Cereal companies were always giving away stuff. The prize of prizes, at least according to me, was a Sony Walkman. I think it was a tiny handheld TV, but I'm not sure. I thought you could win it by buying Trix, and by that I mean I thought a little tiny TV might actually be IN the cereal box. Nevermind that a little tiny TV would have been the size of a shoe and not fit in a cereal box, I bought pounds and pounds of Trix, and then dumped it all into a big bowl and waited for small electronics to plop out. They never did. Just coupons and occasionally some sort of cereal loving larvae. So then I did what any responsible kid would do. I dumped all the cereal down the vent and told my mom some fat neighborhood kid stole it. There's probably 20 lbs of Trix laying dormant in the ventilation of my parents old house. Really upped the re-sale value.

2.) Slime is Awesome- Everytime I saw commercials for any kind of slime I had to have it. Maybe it was Green Slime from You Can't Do That On Television, or maybe it was Ectoplasm from Ghostbusters, or maybe it was just generic slime in a big bucket. (Side note: I got a big bucket of generic slime for my 9th birthday. It was in a big yellow container that just said "Slime" on it. I'm concerned to think that there was some sleazy slime peddler selling his wares off the back of a truck downtown or something.) Anyhow, slime of any kind, was not awesome. It was all sticky and it would fall on the floor and part of it would get stuck there, and the rest would get all covered in carpet fibers and cat fur, and in about 2 days it just looked diseased. Down into the vent it went.

3.) If you get the wrestling ring, you can have realistic wrestling matches between toy WWF wrestlers- Again, very untrue. I always thought that getting the wrestling ring would mean that the little rubber wrestlers (Superfly Snuka, Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Macho Man Savage, and strangely, Capt. Lou Albano) would somehow take on their own lifeforce and have small scale Battle Royales and I could just sit back and watch. What I found was that the ring was just an impediment to fun because your hands would bounce off the ropes and scrape against the turnbuckles. The only good thing was that you could slingshot the wrestlers way up in the air if you put the ropes in their crotches and pulled them way back (except Capt. Lou, he was made of a harder, heavier rubber.) Where'd the wrestling ring wind up?? Well, in the garbage, because it didn't fit down the vent.

So anyway, I hope to impart all this extremely valuable knowledge on my kids in the hopes that my vents remain filled with nothing but air, and the occasional gerbil.

Chester Stories

Around my family we have a set of tales involving strange things my grandfather did. We call these "Chester Stories." Because he would have turned 99 on saturday, I thought it would be appropriate to come up with a list of my favorite Chester stories. Here is the list.

Chester:

-Got his car stuck perpendicular to the road in Meadowbrook so that the school bus I'm riding on (or any other vehicles) can't get past. When the bus driver tries to intervene, Chester yells at her.
-Drove to the grocery store and accidentally parked on the island so that all 4 tires are somehow dangling in the air.
-Gets a pork chop bone lodged in his throat. Opts for "sleeping it off" instead of "going to the hospital."
Family: But Chester, you have a pork chop bone stuck in your throat!!!
Chester: EHHHHH (waives hand dismissively)
-Loves to eat moldy things because they contain healthful penicillin.
-Screams out answers when it isn't his turn while playing Trivial Pursuit, much to the chagrin of my grandmother
-Says to female collection agency callers, "Thank you for calling Madam, now will you kindly go fuck yourself."
-Has a seeing eye driver. Was legally blind but still drove. My grandmother would work the steering wheel, and you'd hear things like "LEFT CHESTER" "RIGHT CHESTER" and "STOP CHESTER, THERE ARE SCHOOL CHILDREN IN THE ROAD"
-Almost ate Jimmy and Lily, my two chameleons who had died in the winter and were in the freezer because I was waiting for Spring to give them a proper burial, because he thought they were appetizers.
-Ate 1/4 of a stick of butter on a fork because he thought it was a scallop.
-Intended to marry a woman 40 years younger than him but was concerned that her father wouldn't approve of him.
-Frequently let his testicles hang out of his boxer shorts when male company was over. His reasoning? "It's just a guy."
-Erroneously believed that "dry" always equaled "clean", especially when it came to pants. And urine.
-Had to completely lay down to get out of a car. We still don't quite understand the dynamics of that.
-Had toenails that were thicker than tree bark, and harder too.
-Insisted that he be called "Chet" instead of "Grampa" because grampa made him sound old, even though by the time I could say "Chet" he was in his 70's.

And our personal favorite:

-Goes to the doctor. Finds out he has mouth cancer. Shrugs his shoulders and begins to leave. The doctor wants to begin treatment immediately. Chester will have no part of it.
Doctor: But Mr. Jensen, you have mouth cancer!!
Chester: EHHHHHHH. (waives hand dismissively and leaves)

Reasons To Be Named For Your Butt Color

I was at the zoo the other day with the kidlings (I go to the zoo about once a day it seems) and we were looking at all the animals, and we came across somebody called a Red Rumped Agouti. I got to thinking how happy I am that my species is not named for the color of it's butt. How would you like having to go through life knowing that you were a Pink Assed Human, or a Brown Rumped Man? Of course, every girl's crazy for a Brown Rumped Man, but that's beside the point.

Maybe it would have been a good thing though. It would be hard for the racists to be so discriminatory against butt color. Nobody would want to say, "That's the brown butt entrance in the back." It would seem too creepy. Martin Luther King would have wanted us to not judge a person by the color of their butt, but by the content of their butt. The Ku Klux Klan would never have been formed because what kind of a weirdo forms a group based on butt color supremacy.

OK, so in closing, although I am eminently thrilled that I'm not called a Pink Bootied Human, if we were called that the world would be a better place, for you and me.