A Weird Morning for Brian

So this morning a bunch of weird things happened. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad omen for the day, but I think it means something. And to that stupid dream interpreter, it doesn't mean I should be questioning my sexuality. (Side Note: I saw a dream interpreter once. I described a dream, that was basically a combination of Harry Potter and Conspiracy Theory. It had to do with people who were secretly wizards riding around on those old time bicycles with gigantic front wheels, and I wondered how they got up there, and the government arrested me for asking, and it turned out they floated up there. The dream interpreter said "Hmm, very interesting... Have you ever questioned your sexuality? So I had sex with her, and then left in a huff. What a slut!)

Anyhow, first I went around to various parts of the neighborhood putting up garage sale signs because we're having a garage sale. While I was in the midst of shoving a sign into the dirt, a car full of hot Swedish bikini team members drove by and honked and squealed at me. (Maybe they were just regular girls, I guess I don't know.) Anyhow, this struck me as odd because it was like 7:30 AM, and I was dressed in the clothes I slept in, and I hadn't showered or shaved or brushed my teeth or taken my morning dookie, or anything. Basically I looked like a sleepy bum, and I was carrying a garage sale sign and a half-eaten Slim Jim. Really attractive.

So then after I got done shoving signs into the dirt (by the way, I'm sure the chaos that comes with a garage sale will inspire a later post) I walked over to a port-a-potty to pee and tripped on a tiny stick and fell down and got all dusty. I got really mad at the stick so I picked it up and whipped it at a tree really hard, but it hit a branch and ricocheted back at my face so I had to hop out of the way. I was starting to feel a little like Donald Duck.

Fianlly, I walked into the potty and peed, and all the while the potty was making a humming sound. I was confused. I walked out, and then curiosity got the best of me, so I opened the door back up to try to comprehend the source of the humming. When I opened the door I saw like 40 hornets flying out of the toilet hole. I freaked out and ran away and almost tripped on the little stick again. There were hornets in the toilet hole! I hate hornets! One could have flown right up my urethra, and then where would I have been? Probably dead. I'm guessing if a hornet stings you on your inside-weiner, you die.

It might just be one of those days. I'll probably get struck by lightning or eaten by a bear this afternoon. Oh well, so be it.

Dude, Where's My Car

Recently I bought a new car. I had a big SUV, and the lease was up, and quite frankly I was spending a buttload on car payments and gas, and it had started to not work all that well, and high class prostitutes weren't nakedly flocking to it like I had imagined, and it never fit in the garage so I had to leave it in the driveway and sometimes the stupid hooligan kids in the neighborhood would shoot paintballs at it or smash the back window and not even have the common decency to steal my drug cache or my autographed Phil Hellmuth playing card hidden in the trunk.

With those things in mind, I bought an affordable, slightly used car that gets great gas mileage, will fit in the garage (as soon as we fix the garage door), and gets me from Point A to Point B in an economical and expeditious fashion. This makes me happy because in the long run I'm going to save a bundle of money, and as many people know, one of my favorite things in the world to do is check my account balance, and then imagine myself having a giant vault of money and diving in it and swimming around like Scrooge McDuck. I guess I'm weird.

The problem I had though, is that now I no longer have a giant, officious looking truck. I just have a regular old gray car that looks like 50% of the rest of the cars out there. So I go into the gym the other day and do my workout (25% working out, 70% staring at girls' butts', and 5% trying not to fart loudly and scare the other patrons) and then I finish.

One of my many weaknesses is that once I go into a large building and walk around in it for a while, I get completely discombobulated regarding where things are. I would have scored a lot better on my ACT had I not completely bombed the "Spacial Relationships" portion. Sometimes, when I'm in a large grocery store that I'm not familiar with, I attempt to leave and wind up in the way back of the store, by the employee toilets, which always disturbs the pooping cashiers.

This weakness affects me outside as well. Unless I'm paying complete attention to where I am when I get out of my car, I will have no idea where I've parked when I come back. I've walked many a weary mile at airports and parking garages, quietly seething while trying to figure out where I was at.

Anyhow, I come out of the gym and I instantly realize I have no idea where my car is. Shit. Usually my saving grace in this situation is that I have an automatic door locker that honks the car and flashes the brake lights when I push the "lock" button, so I wander around aimlessly pushing the "lock" button until I see the car honking and flashing at me.

Car: I'm here dummy (Honk Flash). Over here dummy (Honk Flash). You can't drive me if you can't find me dummy (Honk Flash).

Me: Gee, I don't remember parking you here.

Car: Yes, I'm Kit from Knight Rider. I was off fighting bad guys while you were eating bone-in filets. Either that or you are retarded. I'll let you figure it out.

I look down at my key chain, and find that I have no "honkflash saving grace" button. Shit! I say to myself, "OK self, you aren't a huge moron, just think where you parked the car."

I think about it. Absolutely nothing comes to mind. I think some more. I start thinking about burritos. This doesn't help me find the car. I give up.

I say to myself, "OK, so you can't remember where you parked. No biggie, just look for your car. There aren't that many rows."

I start to look for my car, but then I realize I have no idea what it looks like. I'm pretty sure it's a car, and I think it may be gray. It's a Chevrolet, but I can't remember the model name. Something like Oreo, but somehow, I don't believe there's a car called a Chevy Oreo. SHIT!!

I decide that I'm looking for a gray Chevy. There are about 15 in the parking lot. This is embarrassing. I swear at no one in particular, and begin arduously checking each gray car to see if it's mine. I'm sure I look like a really tentative burglar. This sucks.

Car 1: Definitely not. It has one of those things brides wear on their thighs and then throw over their heads and whoever catches it gets married next hanging from the rear view mirror. (Side note: What the hell is that stupid thing called?)

Car 2: Nope. There's a cat carrier in the back seat.

Car 3: Maybe. It looks pretty clean. It's a Chevy. I eyeball it for a while. Then someone gets in it and drives off, while shooting me a peculiar look. I assume it was not mine.

Car 4: Too dirty and pockmarked with hail dents.

Car 5: Too messy on the inside. Looks like a homeless person might live in the back seat, and maybe even urinate back there.

Car 6: Nope. Small dog is in it. I contemplate for a moment that maybe I left my window open a little and a small stray dog hopped in looking for food or warmth or something. I decide this is unlikely.

Car 7: Eureka!! This is definitely it. I confidently stride up to the driver door, and stick my key in. I am perplexed when the door won't open. Why can't I get into my own car? I step back to reassess. I notice that the license plate says "ALL4U2." This is not my car. I kick the air, and then quickly pretend to be stretching my leg as some people walk by.

Car 8: Hell no! There's a plastic bucket filled with buttons on the passenger seat, and a Yanni CD case on the driver's seat. I decide that whoever owns this car sucks a lot.

On the 11th try I found my car. It's called a Chevy Aveo, not an Oreo, and it was parked right by the entrance to the gym and I had just missed it. I had spent about 15 minutes stumbling around the parking lot because I have no brain. This is why I get frustrated with myself sometimes. I've decided that I'll have to put a big red flag on my car, or a nutsack on the tailgate or something so this doesn't happen again. Sometimes it's rough being me...

My Mom's Lawnmower has a Drug Problem

So the other day my mother's lawn mower stopped working. A couple of friends of hers offered to fix it. This is a very nice story so far don't you think?

The people that were going to fix it were two very nice young men, and their offer to fix it was based out of the genuine goodness of their hearts, and the fact that they like my mom. This is still a really nice story!

The two nice young men were unfortunately in the process of smoking or shooting, (I wasn't privy to this much detail), copious quantities of methamphetamine. The story has taken a turn for the worse, although meth use does make any story more interesting, so that's good.

To this point we have a broken lawnmower, a mom who's grass is too long, and some well-intentioned but methed out young men with a keen eye for lawn maintenance. Just thought I'd recap that.

The two well-intentioned but methed out young men with a keen eye for lawn maintenance fixed up the lawnmower so that it worked again. The story has become heartwarming. My heart is atwitter.

Unfortunately, the lawnmower now has an outboard motor or something attached to it which causes it to fly forward at an alarming speed. According to my sources, when my mom tried to mow the yard, the lawnmower took off, dragged her around the lawn for a while, and then zoomed away down the road looking for other lawns to mow without the impediment of a person hanging behind it.

Yes, it's true, apparently my mom's lawnmower is on meth. She sent it to Lawnmower Hazelden, so hopefully when it comes back it'll be straight, and able to settle down long enough to just mow lawns, and it won't be so fidgety when she puts it in the garage. We can only hope and pray right now. Parents of appliances, please have "the talk" with your kids about the dangers of drugs. If it can help even one appliance, it will not have been in vain.

Brian Yells at Horses

One time I was driving the family around aimlessly probably to kill time until a sporting event, or in the unlikely hopes that the children would fall asleep and quit screaming at each other and trying to maim each other with whatever was in their reach from their car seats.

I stopped at a red light. To my left was a pasture filled with horses. They were standing there, munching the ground and looking stupid, and walking around pooping indiscriminately, as horses are prone to do. For no particular reason, I rolled down my window and yelled, "GIDDYUP!!" really loudly. The horses went bonkers and started running around and doing horse wheelies and whatnot.

This was unexpected and caused a lot of excitement, especially from the youngsters in the back. After that, whenever we'd drive by some horses, my son would shout at them, regardless of whether the windows were down or not.

Since he was pretty young, his pronunciation of "Horsies" came out sounding like "Foofies" so we got used to random exclamations from the back of "GIDDYUP FOOFIES!!" Sometimes there were foofies nearby, and sometimes not. Foofies became sort of incidental to the whole business of yelling really loud after a while.

So now, whenever I see a collection of horses, I always make sure to roll down my windows and shout "GIDDYUP FOOFIES!!" at them. This happens regardless of whether my kids are with me or not. Sometimes, when I'm in a particular mood, I add an "F" bomb as an adjective in there, just to spice things up.

This leads me to this morning. I was leaving the gym, feeling particularly strong and happy. Nearby the Lifetime Fitness in Savage, there is a random, fenced in field filled with a bunch of horses. I'm not sure why they're there, but there's a lot of them. So I came to the stop light, rolled down my window, and shouted, very loudly, "GIDDYUP YA FUCKIN' FOOFIES!!"

Right as I did that, a middle aged woman pulled up next to me. Her window was open because she was getting ready to flick a heater out the window. She looked at me with utter shock and disdain. Not wanting to feel embarrassed, I did the only thing I could think of. I said, "What are you looking at? Fuckin' foofie." Then I drove off laughing. I'm not sure what she thought of that whole confrontation, but I'm sure when she re-tells the story I will not be held in a positive light.

That's OK, I don't think screaming at a horse is against the law...

Fear and Loathing of Comp 101

Here's something I bet nobody knows about me. I suck the old hind tit at College Composition classes. It's not that this revelation is of any particular relevance or anything since my college days are 10 years behind me and I have no desire to go back, it's just a little odd considering I have this wildly succesful weblog that is, according to some "the second coming of the bible, but not in a sacreligious way" or "the dopest shit since Sarah, Plain and Tall'' or even "the culmination of what would happen if a Fire Monster had sex with Godzilla's bigger, less stable cousin and the baby came out and then choked them both to death with his penis and then started writing a blog." Uh.... I got all excited there reading those accolades and forgot what I was saying...





Oh yeah, so I sucked at Comp 101. I don't know why I was thinking about this, probably because I spend 2 hours or so a day reflecting on things that went askew of my plans in the past, and how I would approach them differently if the situation were to ever arise again. My solution usually involves cartoonish violence and/or death, pre-pubescent name calling, and sometimes, a complicated system of levers, pulleys, guy wires and buttresses. In lay terms, my solutions are friggin' sweet.





Anyhow, I even got two separate chances at Comp 101. You would have figured at least one would have gone well. Wrong as usual, you idiot. Didn't you figure that it couldn't have gone smoothly if I was writing about it? What are you, dumb or something? Wait, who am I talking to?





Chance #1 was in Junior College where I went for a year to play baseball. I quickly realized that I would rather be peed on repeatedly by an 80 year old man than matriculate there any longer than I had to. The college in question was filled with 5 types of students as far as I could tell.





1.) Really scary 25 year old knuckleheads and gangbangers whose conditions of parole required they attend secondary institutions, and scare the shit out of everybody there as frequently as possible.





2.) Women of unknown origin wearing full length burqas that showed only their eyes and foreheads. They made loud popping noises occasionally but otherwise were completely mute. I thought they were wizards or something.





3.) Trashy looking white girls that were 50 pounds overweight and brought their babies to class with them. I guarantee you that all those babies are now 15 year olds that know every single ingredient you need to make meth.



4.) Non-traditional jerk off old people who would show up to class dressed like they were going to a job interview (complete with an attache case filled with crumpled up newspapers or something) and then proceed to fuck up the curve by getting really high grades on everything. Hey Dingus, getting 100% vs 90% in Intermediate Algebra at the local JC is not going to land you any better of a job in the real world, but you are very likely to get a serious beatdown by group #1 if you don't quit fuckin' up the curve.



5.) ME.



So as I sat down to my class, it was kind of like prison. Don't make eye contact with the scary gang members, don't sit near the non-trads, so the gang members won't mistake you for one, avoid the wizards so you don't get turned into some ingredient that goes in a cauldron, and stay away from the trashy white women because both them and their babies are squawking incessantly for no good reason.



Anyhow, our first assignment was to write a paper about a book or a pamphlet or something. So I wrote what I thought was something fairly incisive and clever and turned it in. I got my grade back about a week later. 43%. Apparently I had forgotten to follow some rules regarding spacing and margins, and font, and bibliographies, and other shit that we all use A LOT in real life right? It's terrific that most everything I learned ceased being relevant the exact instant I learned it. But whatever, I did it wrong, I could accept that. So the next paper I wrote was done absolutely according to form, correct margins, a works cited page, etc. It was flawless, like a naked lady holding a burrito. I got my grade back. 44%. What?? Even the freakin' white trash babies had done better than me. I was going to fail this class!



Here's where I made one of my uncharacteristic brilliant decisions. Since I already had a good idea of where I was going to school the following year, and since my GPA was hovering right around the 2.0, baseball eligibility Mendoza line, and since the current season had just ended, I quit. I dropped all my classes thereby ensuring my GPA would drop no lower than it already was and guaranteeing admittance to the next school, along with baseball eligibility. I do a lot of really stupid things, but this choice was right on the money. On the flip side, I was embarrased to tell my Mom and Dad that I quit school, so for about 5 weeks I would get dressed and pretend to go to school, but instead I'd just go to Aquila, SLP's version of Rucker Park, and play basketball for a few hours and then come home. I always wondered why my Mom never asked me why I was drenched with sweat when I arrived home from school.



So then I went out to South Dakota for school, and did pretty well, so my cumulative GPA got up a little over 3.0, but the whole Comp 101 debacle still sat in the back of my head like a dirty secret, so I totally avoided taking it. Finally my 5th year of school, I decided I'd have to buckle down and take the class. I was being openly mocked by my friends because of my class schedule. I had 4 upper level business school electives.... and Comp 101. I even had to mock myself a little.



The first thing I noticed when I got to this class was that for basically everybody but me, this was their first college class. There were girls shrieking and giggling and pushing their desks together and writing their first name and then their boyfriends' last name and stuff like that.



The second thing I noticed was that the TA (listed as TBA on my schedule) was actually a year younger than me, was somebody I knew, and was a friend of mine's girlfriend. Or to put that another way she was a girl that he had dated once. Or to put it another way she was a girl that he had gone on one date with. Or to put it another way she was a girl he had had a sexual relationship with frequently and had taken her to Burger King to feed her once because all we had in the fridge was beer and empty ice cube trays. Or to put it another way, she was a girl he would call at 2:30 in the morning after he had drank 20 beers and eaten a giant vat of fettucini alfredo and was too bloated with food and booze to pass out yet and then would hide in the morning in the hopes that I would break down and drive her back to her sorority house and he wouldn't have to see her.



So with all this newly learned information I was practically ejaculating with anticipation for this class. So the TA/redundant one night stand comes in, and not only does she appear to have been shopping at the Lilith Sternin-Crane House of Style for her TA uniform, but she's also become an incredible hard ass.



Her: There will be no speaking out of turn, no talking without raising your hand. If you're late by 1 second it counts as a tardy, if you get 5 tardies your grade drops by a letter. Unexcused absences drop you a letter grade, etc etc.



Me: Um.... you left your underpants at my house last May. But you can't have them back. Thanks to you I now have a canopy bed. Oh, and come get your bike. It got all rusty cuz it laid outside all summer and I can't ride it to parties anymore and the landlord tripped on it.



It was weird. I had 4 senior level business school classes, and 1 high school class. And of course, while I did just fine with the 4 business school classes, my grades in Comp 101 were consistently D's and F's. I was barely hanging on to a passing grade that was inflated because of my spotless attendance that we got points for.



In my business school classes, if I had gotten a poor mark on something, I would generally go in and speak with the teacher about it, and we'd have a very congenial argument on the merits of my work which would generally result in an upwards revision of my grades, but in the Comp class, it seemed weirdly unconfortable to go talk to someone who was younger than me and whom I knew. I just figured she was going to get some sort of passive aggressive revenge on my buddy with me as the conduit by giving me poor grades. I had accepted this as fact when she asked to meet with me after class one day. I figured I was going to get harangued because Lisa Jo Johnson, the 18 year old from Sioux Falls with the sparkly purse and braces was doing two letter grades better than me. What I got was this:



Her: How do I get him to like me again?



Me: I don't think he really ever liked you in the first place.



Her: OK Mr. D Minus, thanks for the advice.



The lightbulb flickered on in my head. Then I got an idea. An awful idea. The Brian got a wonderful, awful idea. I'm not going to divulge what my idea was, but sufficed to say it involved my friend and her "making up" thanks to some really serious treasonous lying on my part, and I wound up with a solid B in that class.



So I got through the holy hell that is Beginning English Composition, but I still don't understand why I sucked at it so bad. Maybe I'll never know, or maybe it's as simple as a quote from a very wise friend of mine. "Sometimes you suck at stuff because you do." I like simplicity. I hope that's it.

Brian Dislikes Baseball Practice

Baseball practice started yesterday for me. That's a sure sign of spring, so it always makes me happy. A few of us get together and we throw the ball around, and we hit. Then we leave. It doesn't take too long, and it always reminds me of one thing, the fact that I am extremely thankful that I don't have to endure daily baseball practices anymore.

Although I love baseball itself, baseball practice is right up there with wading penis-deep into a pool of electric eels. There may not be a more boring sport to practice, especially in the winter, in the North.

Baseball practice in the winter in the North means that you have to find a dome or a fieldhouse or something to practice in which is dumb thing #1. You can't throw as far, you have to hit in a cage so you can't watch the balls fly, and there are invariably other sports teams practicing near you, so you're constantly squeezed for space.

Have you ever run to catch a fly ball and smashed into a track girl running hurdles? I have.

Have you ever hit a softball player in her ample buttocks with an errant throw? I have.

Have you ever tripped over the Associate Athletic Director while running sprints and then yelled at him to "get his fat ass out of the way" and then been punished by having to run more sprints until your legs felt like they were going to fall off and you felt like you were going to take a big involuntary diarrhea in Lane 6? I have done this as well.

All this makes me very glad that I don't have daily baseball practices anymore. You know what else I won't miss?

-Practicing at 6:00 AM and having a fly ball hit me directly in the head because I was still a little loopy from the bar the night before.

-Practicing at 10:00 PM and not being able to get to sleep until 2 in the morning and then stumbling into class at 9 AM looking like I'd stayed up all night shooting meth rectally with Courtney Love.

-Running stairs at the DakotaDome. This was a form of conditioning, and also a way to keep us from smashing into other sports athletes because nobody else practiced on the stairs. Usually about once a year somebody would trip and fall into the row of seats below and get a really big bruise. That was the highlight.

-Other forms of conditioning. I never understood why we had to run so much for baseball. Isn't 360 feet the farthest we'd ever have to run without stopping? Apparently, we were training for the time when we had to play in a desert with no fences that sloped downwards for 4 straight miles. Some of our players couldn't hit a ball more than 25% of the time, but they could sure post a great 10K.

-Constantly deferring to the women's basketball team. I know they were the revenue sport and we weren't but still, I could have assembled a team that would have beat them 100-4. I shouldn't have to wait for anything for anybody I could whoop that bad at anything.

So thank you to the Gods of things that are fair and just for not making go through baseball practice very often anymore, because it's very likely that I would have sawed off the head of some unsuspecting athlete by now, and that just ain't how I like to roll.

The Cat Poop Dilemma

I'm sad to report that both of our dogs favorite food is cat poop. I'm pretty sure that they would rather eat cat poop than steak or burglars or whatever. This presents an obvious problem considering we have a cat. If we didn't have a cat they'd never know how tasty cat poop is, because it's not like I could go buy cat poop at the grocery store. I don't even think they sell that at Aldi.

Anyhow, we have a cat, she poops frequently, and then the dogs, especially stupid Polo, sprint down to the catbox and hungrily gobble up poop. Then he runs back upstairs, giddy with delight, with fecal remnants stuck in his gums and tries to lick us. Fortunately it's easy to tell when he's done this because the entire room he's in begins to quickly smell like a train station men's lavatory if a homeless person died in it. So usually I spend the next hour actively avoiding Polo and attempting to shame him into never eating cat poop again

Me: Polo, you're such a moron! What kind of animal eats something that comes out of someone's butt? You should be ashamed.

Polo: Arf

Me: I mean seriously, we paid good money for you, is this any way to repay us?

Polo: Woof

Me: You're a gross idiot!

Polo: Bark.

Then I say this poem to him that I made up to really illustrate the gravity of constantly eating turds:

If you eat cat poop from downstairs
I will not get annoyed
I'll simply take you to the pound
And I'll have you destroyed

You'd think all these threats would really make him think twice about indiscriminately munching crap. After all, it works with the kids. But you'd be sorely mistaken, because it keeps happening. Seriously, why are we so lenient with our dogs? If my wife ate my poop we'd be divorced. After the first time she did it. No marriage counselor in the world is going to help reconcile that.

So I came up with this great idea to buy the cat a fancy new catbox with a cover on it. The cover had a little hole in it so that cat could sneak in and poop and Polo wouldn't be able to get his big stupid head in it. The problem was solved and I was a genius for figuring it out. I felt a little like Sir Isaac Newton when he invented gravity and people no longer just up and floated away.

But of course, since I'm an idiot and not a genius, my foolproof solution became anything but that. Yes, the cat figured out how to crawl in the hole and poop, but, unbeknownst to me, she doesn't like to pee where she poops. With no other bathroom than the poop hole box, she had no where else to pee but in the deep crevices of the furnace room, where I'm certain a hobo once squatted, and also on top of the poop hole box. It's pretty frustrating, especially when you're feeling all smart, to come down to clean the catbox and find a big stinky yellow river floating on top of it and dripping into the poop hole.

So, my solution was to go get the old catbox out of the garbage, and fill it with litter, and then she'd have a separate place to pee. I felt really super smart again, like Ken Jennings smart.

Me: I'll take "Really Smart, Awesome People with Gigantic Heads" for 2000 Alex.

Alex Trebek: "This guy is the smartest, most innovative man in the world in terms of cat bathroom issues"

Me: Who is Brian?

Alex Trebek: Right.

The cat messed up my delusions of grandeur. Since the old catbox had been the catbox she pooped in, she now just continued peeing on top of the new catbox and pooping in the old catbox which was easily accessible to Polo's mouth. So I'm right back where I started plus I'm out 40 bucks for this deluxe catbox with crystal clean litter inside of it and cat pee flowing on top of it that gets rave reviews on the internet. Suck my butt, internet reviewers, you have no brains.

Basically, I'm going to have to either kill the cat, or the two dogs, or just start a urine emporium in my basement. This is retarded.