Brian and All his Visitors

I must live in a huckster's paradise for a neighborhood, because there are always people walking around door to door trying to get me to do something. Usually they fall into one of 4 categories:

1.) People trying to get me to worship their god.

Usually the exchange goes something like this.

(When Mormons come)
Mormon: Hello Sir, how are you today?
Me: AAAAAGH!! Mormons! (Slams door and hides in basement for half hour)

(When Jehovah's Witnesses come)
Jehovah's Witness: Hello sir, would you like a copy of the Watchtower?
Me: AAAAAGH!! Jehovah's Witnesses! (Slams door and hides in basement for entire hour)

(When I am fooled)
Person: Hi Sir. Say, that's a nice truck you've got.
Me (Suspiciously): Yeah.....thanks. (Slowly reaches for baseball bat to crush skull of certain home invader)
Person: You look like you have most everything you could want.
Me (Thinking): Is this guy coming on to me?
Me: Well, I'd like a pool table...
Person: But do you really have everything?
Me: No, I want a pool table, remember?
Person: Do you have Jesus Christ in your heart?
Me: Yes! (Always answer "yes" to this question, even if you worship the devil)
Person: God bless you. By the way, I'm a 7th day adventist. I go to church on saturdays. Neat huh?
Me: I still want a pool table.

2.) People selling windows:

First off, windows are really expensive, like 25 thousand dollars expensive. Do door to door salesman think people are just going to give that up on a whim? This is Burnsville, not Neverland. Plus they use really faulty logic that I feel the need to correct them on.

Sales guy: So, with the Energy Tax credit, and the money you'll save on your heating bills, they practically pay for themselves.
Me: Yes, if I live here for the next hundred years.
Sales Guy: No, that's not right.
Me: Yes, if I pay $25,000 for windows, take off the $1500 tax credit, and apply the savings I'll get on my monthly energy bill, and then take the future value of money that I would have received had I merely invested this money, it will take me a good 114 years for these windows to pay for themselves.
Sales Guy: I said "practically" pay for themselves. Pay attention. Now buy the windows. I need my commission check to buy meth.

3.) Fat, unenthusiastic high schoolers selling things for various activities:

"Hi, My name is Jasmine and we're raising funds for our cheerleading trip to Ballsack, MO. Would you care to purchase something from this catalog? While you look at this amalgam of overpriced items, I'm going to fiddle with my Ipod and swear in front of your kids."

I remember when we did fundraisers for Little League. Good old Park South. We sold candy bars. For a dollar. One had nuts, the other did not. For a dollar. Let me repeat that for posterity. One dollar! It's all about the Washington's baby.

Now, this catalog that Jasmine the fat cheerleader gave me had all sorts of things in it. Candy, and candles, and wreathes, and incense, and dog toys, and ice cream, and silverware, and sexy negligees, and pooper scoopers, and, my personal favorite, scented wallpaper paste. All of it was way more than a Washington. But since I'm nothing if not helpful to the causes of fat cheerleaders everywhere, I bought a $17 box of Peanut Butter Chocolate Buckeyes. They'd better be the best fucking buckeyes this side of Ohio, that's all I know.

Me: I want these buckeyes.
Jasmine: Those are $17.
Me: Yes. Buckeyes!
Jasmine: Do you want to pay now?
Me: When do I get my buckeyes?
Jasmine: I dunno, June?
Me: I believe I will pay COD for my buckeyes.
Jasmine: Who's that?

4.)People who want me to donate to strange charities:

I will donate to the ones I've heard of and believe are for good causes. But a lot of times the causes are too bizarre to even consider. Here is a list of organizations I will not be donating to:

-The American Association of those Wrestling With their Sexual Identity.
-The Massachusetts Chapter of People born without anuses
-Burn the National Parks
-Ku Klux Kats
-The Center for Abominable Snowman research
-The Make-A-Wish Disruption Foundation
- The Society of Booger Eaters
- A large group of people who wants money for crack
-The Morbidly Obese Gymnastics Troup of Western Dakota County.
- Save the Mosquitos
- The National Association for the Advancement of Horny Pedophiles (NAAHP)
- The MS Masturbate-A-Thon
-Proposition 62-Kill all people named Brian
-The United Federation of Albanians Who Like to Bone Pandas.


I wish normal people would come to the door. Or better yet, no people.

The American Girl Near Debacle.

My daughter has this doll that Santa Claus got her for Christmas. It is an American Girl Doll and I've spoken of the lunacy associated with having an American Girl doll before. But regardless, she loves the doll and drags it around with her everywhere she goes. Let me just illustrate how much she loves the doll.

It's 3:00 in the morning, my daughter has climbed into bed with us hours earlier, and is now proceeding to slowly shove me off the bed so that by 6:00 I will be resting with my head and one of my arms on my nightstand, and my butt and legs will be dangling precariously off the side. This is a nightly occurance and not even a Sleep number can save me.

Anyhow, I'm asleep, when all of a sudden I am awakened by somebody peeling one of my eyelids open with their fingers. I am dazed and confused.

Me: Huh? What's wrong? A fire? A burglar? Somebody pooped their pants? Gay ninjas entering through the porch windows?

Daughter: Daddy, move it! You're laying on Abbigail's arm!

So there you have it. My daughter loves her doll so much that she is perfectly willing to pick my eyeballs open and wake me from my blissful slumber to tell me that I am sleeping on her doll's arm. I tell her, in no uncertain terms, that I am going to throw her doll out the window (and possibly hit some ninjas) if she wakes me up by pulling my eyelids open again.

So the other day we were playing in the backyard: Me, my wife, my daughter, my son, the dogs, and Abby with her dad-layed-on arm, all playing and picking up the occasional rogue dog turd. The next day, we can't find Abby. We look all over, can't find her. My daughter is sad, but leaves to go to daycare without her. I check around more thouroughly, knowing that not finding her will undoubtedly cause a spaz of epic proportions sometime in the near future. After 15 minutes of searching I spot her laying out behind the trampoline. She has been outside all night. And it rained!!

I rush out to get Abby. She is very wet. She smells like rainwater and old leaves. I panic. I call my wife, tell her I have located Abby, and remark that she is soaking wet and smells like a homeless guy from Seattle.

Me: I just tossed her in the dryer. I hope that helps.
Wife: What? What if the dryer melts her head or something?
Me: Um.....

I am worried now. I think to myself that it would be much worse to have a dry doll with a melted head than a wet doll that smells like October. Thinking quickly, I pull up the American Girl website, and send them this email:

"Hello,

My daughter left her doll out in the rain yesterday. Now she is wet and smells like leaves. I was going to put her in the dryer, but then I got scared that her head would melt. Is it OK to put her in the dryer? If not, what can I do?

Brian Jensen

P.S. She smells funny"

I got this response back.

"Dear brian,

We are sorry to hear that your daughter left her Bitty Baby out in the rain. Please do not put her in the dryer. Her plastic parts may melt or become warped. Instead, you can put her in front of a fan that blows cool air and try drying her that way. If all else fails you can send her to the Doll Hospital"

That's how I learned about the Doll Hospital. You can actually send your doll to the special American Girl doll hospital. You have to fill out an admittance form, where you list the doll's issues (i.e. Smells like leaves, missing torso, melted head, etc) and they will fix her up and send her back with a hospital gown and hat, a good health certificate, and a band-aid (although I'm not sure how relevant a band-aid would be if the doll had a missing torso.)

As it turned out, Abby just kind of dried on her own and stopped smelling like old leaves and things went back to normal. But it was a close call. Just another example of what a goofy world we live in. The Doll Hospital. I wonder who works there.

In case you get bored...

Here's something really fun to do that I bet you've never done. Go into the library and grab a book. Then, instead of reading the book quietly and not drawing attention to yourself, do the following:

1.) Scream at the top of your lungs, "OH NO, IT CAN'T BE TRUE?!!"

2.) Throw the book in the air and begin loudly vomiting on everything and everyone you see. (Side note: You'll have to actually vomit for this to be really cool, so prepare for that too.)

3.) Strip naked and sprint around, bumping into bookshelves and knocking them over, all the while lamenting about the lack of card catalogs in the library.

4.) Sprint up to a librarian and ask her a question that makes absolutely no sense, like, "Does Air have wings?" Or make up your own.

5.) Microfiche your butt, and then make people look at it. Mock and ridicule them if they don't know how to use a microfiche.

6.) Calmly put your clothes back on and explain your actions by quoting a secondary character in the book you just threw up in the air and vomited on.

7.) Run, you are going to be arrested.

If you pull it off, you are officially awesome.

Brian Takes a Stand.

Most of the time I like to think I'm pretty passive about things that bug me. If you read this consistantly, you know there are quite a few things that bother me, but for the most part, I try to be understanding. I'm far from perfect, so I try not to let things like common decency, and acting like a human being from this planet cloud my vision. I just assume that most people are mindlessly shuffling around in their own lives and forget about things, like other people, and I'm OK with that.

Occasionally though, I get very irritated at something. Today it was a really fat, ugly woman. She incurred a little wrath from me, and I feel a little bit better. I think I balanced out the world a little. It started when I pulled into the gas station, to get some Dill Pickle sunflower seeds and a Faygo. I got around the gas pumps, so I was in between the store and the pumps, when I was suddenly cut off from the parking spaces by this woman who had decided that it was a good idea to park on a yellow curb right next to the store, even though there was a real parking space 10 feet in front of her.

I am stuck now. I am puzzling over what to do, when she lumbers out. She is morbidly obese, with greasy slicked back hair, a t-shirt that looks as though she cut head and arm holes in a parachute, and, of course, floral print pants where the flowers are stretched and faded because she has an ass the size of a vending machine. She has a permanent sneer on her face, although it may just be that the weight of her cheeks pulling the corners of her mouth down. I am aggravated. It occurs to me that had this been an attractive woman I may not have said anything. I feel conflicted about this realization. I roll down my passenger window and speak anyhow.

Me: Hey, you can't park there. How am I supposed to get through?
Her: I don't care.

Now I am mad. I would have harpooned her on the spot. Thankfully, my harpoon is at home, stored safely under the children's bed. I have to back up and drive around to get to a parking spot. I march into the store looking for revenge. I see her. She is looking at pre-made salads. I think she is trying to confuse me. I am not fooled. I walk up to her. I try to be composed.

Me: You know, it's fairly rude to park illegally and create a bottleneck for others. There was a spot like 10 feet in front of you.
Her: I'll only be a minute.
Me: I think you're missing the point here. You've already caused an inconvenience for me.
Her: I don't care. Go away.

I am about to say many mean things when something weird happens. She begins coughing, and coughing, and coughing....furiously. Then she hocks up a big piece of inside lung, pulls out a purple napkin from her pocket, spits the inside lung into her purple napkin, and puts the purple napkin back in her pocket. The whole ordeal takes about 30 seconds. I realize I am staring at her with no expression whatsoever. She looks at me like "What? So, I got a big chunk of inside lung in my pocket, what's the big deal?"

I get my food and leave. I think it's an appropriate metaphor. Sometimes it's best to just get your food and leave.