Because Why Not

Because I felt like it.

No, not really.

Why U no fuck off and die?

More likely than not.

No thanks.  I'm good.

Whatever.  The fuck.  I want to.

I might be dumb, but at least I'm happy.

I'm sorry -- are you getting exasperated?  Perhaps you should bugger off, then.

I don't..........care.

That it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Actually, it still seems like a good idea.  If given the chance, knowing what I know now, I am certain I would go back in time and do it the fuck again.  Twice.

Church.

Fuck no.

Your mom.

I don't see how that's relevant.







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Identifying a Stupid: A Guide to Recognizing the Idiots that Walk Among Us

Disclaimer: I am aware that writing a rant inspired by the incorrect pronunciation of a word during a news story about a horrible tragedy makes me a douche bag.  I do not care.

There is a news guy on my TV right now who I rather like.  He seems to know what the hell he's talking about most of the time, and also gives the slight impression he might be a bit demented.  He has nice hair as well.  These three things generally combine to create a newscaster I enjoy watching.  But today he fucked up, and now I think he might be a Stupid.

He was speaking about the earthquake in Japan and the subsequent tsunami -- specifically, what's happening at a nuclear power plant in Japan.  Or, as he called it, a nuculear power plant.  THAT IS NOT A FUCKING WORD.  NUCULEAR IS NOT A WORD NO IT'S NOT SHUT UP.  If you see a clear sky, you do not say "Ooh!  Look at that beautiful culear sky!  That sky is so culear!  I could stare at that culear sky for hours and hours and hours because I am a Stupid, and staring at things for hours and hours and hours is what my slow and stupid brain likes to do!"  You can't just put letters into words that weren't there before.  You're not in charge of words.  I can understand if the word is weird and you maybe haven't heard it said out loud before (phlegm, facetious) or if you have been hit repeatedly in the back of the head with a shovel for some reason, but if you are a regular, everyday, normally-educated person and the word looks like this: NUCLEAR, then I cannot think of any reason for you to say NUCULEAR other than you're a Stupid.

Your brain is seeing and then saying a letter THAT IS NOT THERE.  You are hallucinating a letter.  This also applies to: cavalry, especially, ask, escape, February, library, Arctic, jewelry and realtor.

The inability to see and then say a word that SOUNDS EXACTLY AS IT IS SPELLED is not the only way to identify a Stupid.  There are millions of ways, and I can't possibly list them all, but I'm going to point out a few of the ones that drive me the most insane.

Inability to retain information pertaining to major events

Actual conversation I had with an actual person within the last five years (not verbatim, but close enough)

Person: "I love Johnny Cash."
Me: "Yeah, he was good."
Person: "I'd love to see him perform live someday."
Me: "That would be terrifying."
Person: "Why?"
Me: "Because he's been dead since 2003, and if you ever see him perform live that means he is a zombie and we are all fucked."
Person: "Really?"
Me: falls over unconscious and twitching from the sheer stupidity of conversation.

I assume this person (who, sadly, I am related to) is a Johnny Cash fan.  I make this assumption based on the fact that she said she loves Johnny Cash.  She enjoys his music so much that she would like to see him perform live.  Yet she does not know that this musician, WHO SHE LOVES, is dead.  Even people who don't like Johnny Cash know he's dead.  Even people who would, if they had the chance, drop Johnny Cash from a tall building even if it meant he'd land on and crush a velvet-lined basket of adorable orphaned puppies as he plummeted to his death know that Johnny Cash is dead.  But not this fucktard.  Nope.  No damn idea.  I could understand if we were talking about the producer of a documentary about the life and times of the rare Indonesian Rice Mouse (I made that up, don't bother Googling it) because who the fuck would know/care about that guy, but a major recording artist of whom you are a self-described fan?  Yeah, maybe you should know he's dead.  Just a thought.

Lack of understanding of how simple things happen/do not happen

I know someone who did not know you could buy clothes hangers at stores.  She thought they "came with the house."  She was Paris Hilton before Paris Hilton was Paris Hilton.  A Stupid ahead of her time.

Mouth-breathers

(exemption for those with colds/allergies/no nostrils)

If you breathe with your gaping maw hanging open, then you are so stupid that even your basic, instinctual bodily functions and abilities do not work properly.  Also, you are fucking gross.

Inability to recognize a fact even after that fact has been proven

Remember when the remake of Godzilla came out?  Yeah, that movie was terrible.  Whoever made that movie should be fired out of a cannon into a brick wall decorated with the severed limbs of his or her favourite people.  Despite that, the soundtrack wasn't too bad.  I even bought it.  There's a Puff Daddy/P-Diddy/Puffy/Sean Combs/I Don't Fucking Care Anymore What His Name Is song on there that samples Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir.'  Jimmy Page was OK with that (even approved it, the big jerk) but that's besides the point.  The problem here is that a generation of Stupids grew to believe that this abortion of an excellent song WAS THE FIRST SONG TO USE THAT MUSIC.  Fine.  If you've never heard the original song, then that sort of makes sense.  You would have no way of knowing that Puff Douchey's 'song' samples part of a good song if you had never listened to Led Zeppelin.  But when someone tells you that Puff Dickbag did not come up with that hook, and then plays you 'Kashmir' on a CD that clearly states on the back of the CD case that it came out in 1974, and then goes on the Internet and shows you every conceivable website that proves 'Kashmir' existed DECADES before the shitty song you like, yet you STILL insist Puff Dingledick came up with it first, then you are a Stupid, and you deserved me flicking you in your ear and had no business whining to people that I hit you, you uppity bitch.

This is what he looks like when he poops.

Continued belief into adulthood in shit people told you when you were five

Gum does not take seven years to digest if you swallow it.  THINK, moron: Your stomach can digest steak.  It can digest meat-gristle (but please don't eat that -- it's really disgusting when people eat that).  It can digest Pop Tarts, and Pop Tarts ARE NOT EVEN FOOD.  What magical fucking ingredients do you think gum is made of, that your stomach acid cannot break it up in less than seven years?  Sweet FUCK -- if gum is that powerful, we should really start building planes out of gum.  We should make bulletproof vests for the police and military out of gum.  We should wrap babies in gum the second they're born, protecting them until they are seven and better able to protect themselves.

Seriously, people.  It's ok.  Go ahead and swallow.....heh heh heh.

Oh relax -- it's whipped cream, you effing prude.

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Weeeeee! I'm a Horsie!

You might be SHOCKED to learn I use this blog sometimes to write inappropriate and fucked-up weird shit when I feel like crap.  By SHOCKED, I mean you're all very smart, and you already knew that.  For every one thing I write about how hurricanes names are apparently selected by people who eat wallpaper or how Christmas music by Paul McCartney is mind-bendingly boring, there are five posts about how shitty life can be, but how it's not really that bad if you put it in the right perspective.  Some days, that perspective is easier to find than others.  Today, it's somewhere in here:

Finding a needle in a haystack?  Piece of cake, compared to finding the damn thing when it's piled up WITH A BILLION OTHER NEEDLES, jackass.

To be clear, this is not a veiled cry for help.  Or even an obvious cry for help.  I just feel like shit and I can't find the right perspective, and writing about it and making jokes and putting up funny pictures makes me feel better.  It's my version of talking it over with a friend, but I get to do it while on my couch, eating potato chips, and not having to wear sunglasses so you can't see my stupid cry-eyes.  This is like my therapy, and you guys are my therapists -- you sit there while I talk and talk and talk until I realize I'm retarded and I already knew the answer.  But I'm not paying you to listen, so if you're looking for some sort of hourly rate here, then you can piss right off.

I have a friend -- someone I've known for about 10 years, someone who will always be my friend even though we live far away from each other now -- who I probably could have fallen in love with.  But I didn't.  Couldn't.  Right place, wrong time, blah blah blah.  Or maybe I did, but my brain knew better than to let me know it had happened.  Sometimes my brain can be smart.  So instead of falling madly in love with this male version of me, I ended up making a friend who I don't think I could live without.  He has a good life now and a beautiful family, and someday I'll stop being so lazy, and I'll go visit him.  And yes -- I am talking about you, mister.  Bet you didn't know any of that, did you?  Should make my next visit slightly awkward :)

Possibly even more awkward than this.

I used to think I missed out big-time, when I missed out on him.  But realized a few years ago that's stupid.  If I'd fallen for him, I'd never be able to lean on him the way I can now.  And he has no idea just how much I lean on him, just by knowing he's out there.  I wouldn't have that friend -- far away and infrequently seen, yet more important to me than he could ever know.

This is too mushy.

That's better.

I have another friend (well, I have several -- but for the sake of this part of the tale, we'll talk about just this one.)  He's honest and straightforward and doesn't bullshit me.  Sometimes that hurts, but only because I know what he says is true, and I have to accept that he's onto my devious little plan to fade into the background, avoiding anything that could even remotely lead to pain. And it's like every part of me from the top of my head to my freakishly-shaped nugget-like baby toenails and every part of me from the middle of my insides all they way out to my outsides knew the second I met him, without question, that I would need him to be my friend.

Getting mushy again.

That's better.  Again.

So, I feel like shit.  Even though I've thought about that first friend and I've talked to that second friend, it's not going away yet.  Even the pictures of horribly deadified cartoon animals isn't helping, which is pretty much unprecidented.  I've made jokes and been self-deprecating and as close to honest as I care to come right now.  These are the things that usually work.  Fuck.

So on I go, doing my best to be open and honest.  Using the Interpipes to semi-but-not-really-anonymously talk to my friends about what's bothering me.  Writing on a goofy blog instead of doing what normal people do, and just sitting down and talking to someone else.  I know I should do that, but it involves face-to-face contact and crying and sometimes a snotty nose, and I don't wanna.  You can't make me.  So there.

Everyone around me is doing stuff.  Things for them are changing, moving forward.

And then there's me.

Or at least, that's how I feel today.  I know it's not really true.  I know that's not really me.  For one thing, my ass isn't nearly that big.  But today, and lots of other days lately, I feel like a big stupid horse with my big stupid head stuck in a big stupid tree.  So I'm sitting here thinking about that today, and thinking about how everybody probably feels like that sometimes, and thinking about how when they feel that way, they feel just like me right now: that they're the only one.  That all the other horsies who aren't fucktards are running ahead, and I'll never catch up because I apparently thought it would be a super idea to stuff my head in a tree -- even though I'm a horse and nothing I eat lives inside trees.

Seems every few days I find myself with my head stuck in a different tree.  I got used to it.  Can't see the scary things around me -- the things I should be doing to keep up with the other horses.  Can't see them getting further and further ahead of me.  If I don't see it, it ain't happening.  If I don't know it, it's not real.

No one likes an oblivious beaver.

So today I pulled my head out of a tree.  And it fucking hurt.  Not because I wanted to keep my head in the tree forever, not because I'd developed some sort of inappropriate fascination with the tree, but because this tree, this particularly comfortable tree with it's strong branches and sturdy trunk and calming shade, made me feel safe.  Kept me from having to see what the other horses were doing.  Gave me somewhere to hide away from everything.  Gave me an excuse not to look around me for somewhere to go.

Now my head hurts and I'm a bit wobbly from trying to hold myself up after leaning for too long.  It's too bright and windy.  But it feels good, too.  It feels right.  The other horses are still pretty far ahead of me, and I'm still terrified I won't catch up and I'll be left by myself, just looking for more trees to stick my head in.  And I'm worried when I look back, my tree won't be there anymore.  It might fall down, it might be gone if I need it again to protect me or give me somewhere to hide for a while.  There's nothing I can do about that.  Horses aren't in charge of trees, because horses are (despite what people who haven't had horses might think) kind of dumb.  Don't believe me?  Scroll up and take another look at the horse with it's head stuck in a frigging tree.

How exactly did I turn into a horse in this story?  Oh.  Right.  Heaven forbid I just come out and say something straightforward.  Wouldn't want to accidentally be open about how I feel.  Might come across as a dufus or a loser or some sort of dufus/loser hybrid.................

You had to know I'd work this skidmark into the story somehow. 

Long story short (which actually makes this entire story longer, when you think of it) -- I'm trying to keep up, but I keep finding something to lean on.  Something that makes it ok for me not move forward.  Something that validates my staying behind, so I won't have to admit that maybe I feel left behind not because I have been left behind, but because I haven't even bothered to keep up.  Because I'm scared that if I try and fail like I so often have, I'll fall and lose even more ground, like I often do.  And because it breaks my heart to think maybe the place all the others are going to isn't the place for me.

I hope I can get up and go.  I hope I can keep up with the rest of my herd and stay with them for as long as I can.  I hope I can stop sticking my head in trees and hiding -- because one day, one of those trees might break.

I hope that the horses coming up behind me -- instead of seeing me with my cracked-out cranium crammed in a tree-hole, leaning and hiding and avoiding changing and growing -- get a big eyeful of this as I move on with my life:

A horse's ass.



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