Mondays With Roger at Pooh Corner

This past Monday marked my final Monday shift at the bar where I work. Due to gainful employment --specifically the whole "9 to 5" schedule-- I figured it was no longer beneficial to pass out on the couch at 4am covered in Taco Bell and regret if I was going to have to wake up at 7am. Sad as I was to give up the Tuesday sleep-in, what with its well-cultivated scent of Jagermeister, stale beer and dishwashing detergent, I think I made the right choice. And that is what this post is about: the RIGHT choices, as opposed to the WRONG ones which I will be highlighting shortly. The following is a list of the greatest hits, misses, and horrendous decisions that I've been privy to during my Mondays at the pub. Names have been changed or withheld, not because I'm protecting the innocent, but more because I don't want to have to explain to you why what you did was so out of line when you Google yourself and my blog pops up in the top slot. Helpful Hint: if your name pops up on the Google-machine when you type in "bad decisions" or "village bicycle", you're probably doing something wrong and it is probably too far along for even me to help you out. I may look like Gargamel when I walk around in my Snuggy, but I'm not a fucking wizard.

Sex in the Parking Lot is Never a Good Idea:

As the above states, no, it isn't a good idea. Ever. And especially not when said parking lot abuts not one, but two giant outdoor decks filled with unrepentant smokers dusted to the gills on whatever drinks we've been firing down their faces all night long. What could make the entire situation a whole lot worse? The "couple" doing said horrendous deed against an Econoline that has windows down both sides! For the helmet-wearers in the group, that's like sneaking a quickie in a glass phonebooth if said phonebooth were on stage at a Pogues concert. Sadly, my jump-kicking the van repeatedly didn't dissuade the two Vodka-faced stroke-victims from their liquor-fueled fumbling. On a happy note, the night ended in both crying and a slurred "I think he really likes me", so there's always that. Hint: if you're at any particular bar for more than two shifts every day and you don't work there, it's time to shut it down before your liver is as damaged as your skin.

Claiming to be in "Special Forces" won't stop me from throwing you out:

And even if you are in said "special forces", the 18 drinks you've consumed over the past 6 hours makes you the short-bus kind of "special", not the Jason Bourne kind. I don't care what cultural background you come from, if you toss your arm around the shoulder of a woman whom you don't know and she tells you, and I'm paraphrasing here, to "go fuck yourself" in a tone normally reserved for scary clowns and LaRoush pamphleteers, then I am going to keg-toss you out the front door. You may think you're a badass after watching Bloodsport on the FX channel and drinking beers all morning, but sadly, that is not the case.

This is about 100% more intimidating than you look right now.

Two problems with your line of thinking: a) everyone here loves me and b) you are in unfamiliar territory. If you think I'm your only problem then you obviously weren't paying attention to the bar full of patrons loosening their belts behind you and my other bar-back pulling Nunchakus out of his backpack while grinning like a mental patient. We get weird up in this bitch, and Algerian Commandos rank pretty low on our totem-pole of dipshittery. Plus, you shake hands like a dead fish and your grasp of the English language made your insults sound like half-stuttered wedding congratulations.

You may be a regular, but I f#$%ing work here:

Yay, we get to leave now!!!

I know, you think that because you come in 6 days a week and tip more than your average Brit (read: nothing) that you pretty much own the bar and can do whatever the hell you want. That is only half true, and even then only if we like you. Now, if we don't like you, your leash goes from "enough for you to jump over the fence and hang yourself" to "about the length of a friendship-bracelet" faster than I can take my shoe off and hit you with it. Note: nearly all of my shoes are of the slip-on variety due to my pontoon-sized feet, so this is not a time measurement you want to test out; a) I'm really fast, and b) my shoes weigh the same as an F-150 car-tire. Whatever the case may be, whatever disconnected Socratic method you've got running through your wine-soaked brain, I can guarantee that you are wrong and I am right. Even if I'm wrong, the mere fact that you're arguing with someone serving you AT A BAR means that it's time for you to make like a tree and get the fuck out of here.

Biff Tannen taught me both English and collar-popping.

Also, please take note that we throw people out ALL THE TIME. This is not our first rodeo, so your claims of "I'm never coming back here!!" will be answered with "Promise?" and your shouts of "You just lost my business!!!" will be greeted with "I think we'll pull through. Use that $10 dollars to buy a new striped shirt." In closing: poor behavior in public reflects poorly on your parents (i.e. your mother is disappointed in you, and your dad blows truckers for Lotto money).

I'll still be around to throw insults at on Fridays and Saturdays, but for now, Mondays? I'm in the wind... And by "in the wind" I mean asleep on my couch watching Invader Zim.

I may be some time...

I think that my ass has become as numb and lifeless as the stool at the counter of my local café that I’m sitting on. I’m not sure though; let me check.

Yep, not moving.

All sense of touch and potential gropings has been squeezed out of my backside, bled out through a brilliant combination of not-moving and lack of hydration. Well, not lack of hydration so much as only ingesting arrhythmia-inducing amounts of caffeine instead of actual water. Water, while free, does not justify my sitting in a café for 5 hours at a time to the all-seeing barista; that is coffee’s job.

My $1.85 plus repeated fifty-cent refills pays my rent here, not 8oz. glasses of water available free of charge next to the sugar packets and napkins over my right shoulder. I could drink both at the same time but I have a limit to the amount of things I will stack in front of me in a public place and my laptop, coffee and cel phone fill that quota. No water for me then.

So here I sit; jittery and bled of fluid via my coffee enema, numb legs braided around my bar stool like a poorly thought-out friendship bracelet.

I wonder if I can flag someone down –solicit some help in getting off of my perch with a minimum of embarrassment—before I topple ass-over-tea-kettle off of here with a lack of perambulation that would make a paraplegic blush?

Visions of skyward facing feet tumbling leftward in a slow-motion arc, shoes shooting of in different directions as I crash to the ground, are filling my head.

“Shiftless layabout flattens 12 toddlers and a Dominican friar –news at eleven!”

I may be overreacting. I could just reach down and untangle my legs from this not-so-overly-complex single-poled bar stool I’m sitting, couldn’t I? Maybe. That’s the problem when I drink too much coffee: I come up with Rube Goldberg-esque solutions to, say, reaching for a pencil that is two inches out of my reach.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

A Dead Horse: New Ways to Beat It... Wait... Never Mind...

Tiger Woods Funny as Balls(adj.) Mad-Libs

Good ______(noun) and thank you for _______(progressive verb) me. Many of you in this room are my ______(noun,plural). Many of you in this room know me. Many of you have _______(verb, past-tense) for me or you've worked with me or you've supported me.

Now every one of you has good reason to be ______(adjective) of me. I want to say to each of you, simply and directly, I am deeply _______(adjective) for my _________(adj.) and _______(adj.) behavior I _______(verb, past-tense) in.

I know people want to find out how I could be so _______(adj.) and so ________(adj.). People want to know how I could have done these things to my _______(noun), ________(proper noun), and to my ________(noun). And while I have always _________(verb, past-tense) to be a _______(adj.) person, there are some things I want to _______(verb).

I have a lot to _____(verb) for, but there is one ______(noun) I really want to ______(verb). Some ______(pl.noun) have speculated that ______(proper noun#1) somehow hurt or ______(verb, past tense) me on Thanksgiving night. It ______(verb) me that people would ________(verb) a story like that. ______(proper noun#1) never ______(verb) me that ______(noun) or any other ______(noun). There has never been an episode of _______(noun) in our ________(noun), ever. _______(proper noun#1) has shown enormous ______(noun) and ______(noun) throughout this _______(noun). _______(proper noun#1) deserves praise, not ______(noun).

Parents used to point to me as a ______(noun) for their _______(noun, pl.). I owe all those ______(noun, pl.) a ______(adj.) apology. I want to say to them that I am truly _______(adj.).

Some _______(noun, pl.) have made up _______(noun, pl.) that never happened. They said I used ________(noun, pl.). This is completely and utterly ________(adj.). Some have _______(verb, past-tense) things about my ________(noun). Despite the _______(noun) I have done, I still believe it is right to _______(verb) my family from the public ________(noun). They did not do these things; I did.

I recognize I have brought this on myself, and I know above all I am the one who needs to _______(verb). I owe it to my _______(noun) to become a better _______(noun). I owe it to those _______(superlative adj.) to me to become a better _______(noun). That's where my focus will be.

I have a lot of ______(noun) to do, and I intend to ______(verb) myself to doing it. Part of following this ______(noun) for me is ________(philosophy/religion), which my ______(noun) taught me at a young age. People probably don't realize it, but I was _______(verb, past-tense) a __________(philosophical/religious follower), and I actively ________(verb, past-tense) my faith from childhood until I _______(verb, past-tense) away from it in recent years. _________(philosophy/religion) teaches that a _______(verb,progressive) for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and _______(adj.) search for ________(noun). It teaches me to stop _______(verb, progressive) every _______(noun) and to learn ______(noun). Obviously, I lost track of what I was taught.

As I move forward, I will continue to receive ______(noun) because I've ______(verb, past-tense) that's how people really do ______(verb). Starting tomorrow, I will leave for more ______(noun) and more ______(noun). I would like to thank my friends at _______(proper noun) and the _______(noun, pl.) in the field this week for understanding why I'm making these _______(noun, pl.) today.

That also means relying on ______(noun, pl.) for help. I've learned to seek _______(noun) from my peers in therapy, and I hope someday to return that _______(noun) to others who are seeking ________(noun). I do plan to return to _______(sport) one day, I just don't know when that day will be.

Finally, there are many _______(noun, pl.) in this room, and there are many _______(noun, pl.) at _______(noun) who believed in me. Today, I want to ask for your _________(noun). I ask you to find room in your _______(noun) to one day believe in _______(noun) again.

______(verb) you.

Demetri Martin is a Criminal Genius; OR 'How Palindromes Ruined My Day'

Demetri Martin, for the uninitiated, is a standup comedian who features a wide array of props in his sets. He points out simple figures of speech that can be made hilarious with one small change, one misplaced vowel or by simply adding 'ladies' to the end of any sentence. Go ahead and try that last one out, I'll wait. See? Didn't adding that last little bit just make whatever you were saying infinitely creepier? No? Did you say 'ladies' like you were Mel 'The Velvet Fog' Torme? Go ahead, try it again...

'Mmmm, noodle soup... ladi-i-ies.'

But I digress --Demetri is a brilliant guy who has no problems shooting from the hip with surgical precision, lacing the air around a metaphor or homonym with verbal buckshot. I, on the other hand, get thrown out of places when shooting from the hip for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I take things too literally and firearms make people nervous.

"Shoot Me a Letter" - You're doing it wrong...

Despite my verbal handicaps and an inability to see beyond the most ham-handed of metaphors, at times I still fancy myself something of a wordsmith --not unlike Taco Bell fancies themselves a center for epicurean fantasy, I imagine. That there is what we in the industry call 'self deprecation'; I looked it up.

Now recently I have begun to have a tad more energy. This could be for a number of reasons, but the most likely culprit is the bionic looking C-PAP machine that now adorns my bedstand. For the uninitiated, C-PAP stands for... something about breathing and forcing air into my lungs. Wait, hold on --Continuous Positive Airway Pressure--that's it! Anyways, the crux of the situation is that I have, according to my Cardio-pulminologist Dr. O'Connor, 'severe obstructive Sleep Apnea'. Short version: I stop breathing a lot when I sleep. A lot, a lot. They've done studies --with doctors and scientists and everything-- and my level of Apnea registers an 892 on the 'Reggie White Chance of Dying in Your Sleep Scale of Abstract Numbers'.

"What, too soon?"

The long and the short of it is that of 330 minutes of measured sleep I stopped breathing over 450 times for an average of 20.5 seconds. Do the math on that --I'll wait. Did your TI-83 catch on fire? Mine crunched numbers for 30 seconds and then spit out an x/y axis graph that looked like an '82 Cutlass --I may have done something wrong, but the end result is the same: my apnea does not make for good math. Nor, apparently, does it make for restful sleep. Back to Dr. O'Connor, who's deadpan delivery borders on British, and the results of my sleep test: I spend 2/3 of my total 'sleep' volume in stage II sleep and never truly reach stage IV slow-wave/REM sleep. This means that I don't dream, I don't heal properly, and, most importantly, my brain never rests. Apparently my body hasn't gotten the amount of sleep that a normal person needs since the Carter administration.

"Though I am sad that I apparently sleep-walked through the era of this gem..."

But no more!! Now I have my trusty C-PAP machine propping my airways open with humidified air at the small price of looking like some half-naked fireman while I sleep --the footie pajamas only increase the 'Road Warrior meets Children of the Corn aspect of it'. With my ability to finally get to stage IV sleep came two things:
1) I now not only dream, I dream about really weird shit. Apparently my brain is cramming together all of the dreams that I was supposed to be having with all of my new dreams into some decade-spanning VH1 mashup of nonsense imagery. With clowns. It's f#$%*d up.
2) I have a ridiculous amount of clarity and energy now, which brings us back to my original point: Demtri Martin and his comedic ability. Was that segue jarring enough? I think I lost a tooth from the side-impact.

This morning I was putting my new found energy and rested brain to one of its most efficient uses: multi-tasking with extreme prejudice. Or, to at least not feeling bad about the primary action items that I was shoving to the side of my brain while Wiki-scaping and attacking someones vampire on facebook. Either way, I was getting more useless/time-wasting/ebay purchasing/porn-scaping stuff done. So while I was staring at the ceiling wondering what the f#%& I was doing with my morning answering email this morning I decided to cruise my favorite link-dump, reddit.com. It was whilst traipsing through reddit that my morning was brought to a screeching halt, my lunch break was accordioned by an 18-wheeler and much of my afternoon was carried off on an overly-used and poorly thought out metaphor all thanks to Demetri Martin.

"I write sentences good --and think them good too!"

What I found blew my ever-loving mind: it was a poem entitled "Dammit I'm Mad" is 224 words long and reads the same backwards as it does forwards; an insanely long palindrome, if you will. Ridiculously long in fact... la-a-a-dies.

Wow, that really does sound creepy

In dissecting one man's genius with my own dull-witted and imprecise brain pan I began to feel akin to an old buggy driver whipping a braying mule while getting dust shot in my face by a horde of passing Ferraris... Ferrari... Porsches. Or, because I'm lazy you're retarded and need visual cues, something like this:

Hint: I'm the one in the foreground --not the full-sized one--in this visual-metaphor.

In any case I was not about to take this challenging of my manhood --for it was a challenge-- laying down. Nay, I would construct my own Palindrome Poem that would shake the very foundations of literature, linguistics and, yes, facebook. "This would be easy", I thought. "I know what palindromes are and I know what letters are; I'll just sit here and construct one long stream-of-consciousness War and Peace-length palindrome out of known palindromes and other letters." Child's play, yes?

4 hours later -- "Poop, Radar!; Poop!" is all that I had... Things were not looking up.

"Um, Hawkeye? Can you not shout that at me?"

Well, this was going to be harder than I thought. As I began to shake my C-PAP machine like a magic 8-ball, screaming increasingly hostile questions at it, an idea came to me:

"Why not unleash the power of the internets, the all-knowing horde-of-hordes hive-mind, on my problem?" I screamed into the intake nozzle of my inanimate, unknowing breathing device.

So here's what I came up with:

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

(A Palindrome's Odyssey)

Satan oscillate my metallic sonatas.

Nipson Anomimata Mi Monan Opsin.

Ma, I so resign. It's all a poet air. Ben is, I see, so Greek, (in?).

Was I a gateman? Eh? Spit a diaper. Mood's mode; Pallas, I won!

Diaper pane, sold entire - melt til ever!

Revel, little merit Ned? Lose, nap: repaid.

Now is all Apedom's doom -Repaid a tip, she; Name tag, a, I saw.

Nike ergo sees! Is inebriate opal lasting? Is Eros? I am!

Nipson Anomimata Mi Monan Opsin.

Satan oscillate my metallic sonatas.

Ah, the sweet smell of success. Suck on that, Yalie! Wait, isn't this a Nickleback song? F&*$! DAMN YOU DEMITRI!!!!

Billy Mays: Death of a Pitchman; or 'Trust the guy with a heart condition who did blow'

'As Seen on TV --Billy re-enacting 'Scarface', now with more blow.'

Early last week I felt somewhat put-upon when confronted with cooking dinner for myself --I had just spent the prior week moving from one side of Seattle to the other after doing the same thing in the opposite direction 3 months before. While this was a move up and infinitely better for me in the long-run, it has played havoc with my ability to cook a meal that didn't include the words 'instant', 'ramen' or misspelled versions of 'Cheese'. Instead of rummaging through my recently organized cupboards, chock full of an alphabet-soup of things unlikely to be found on any diet marketed as 'Healthy' or even 'Won't Turn your Bloodwork into Chemical-Gumbo', I decided to eat out. Not that this really changed the menu to something more healthy, it just allowed me to feel less directly responsible by adding a middleman, in this case 'Hamburger Harry's'.

This particular sports-bar in Ballard has opened the floodgates and possibly torn a hole into the 8th Dimension in regards to its ability to stuff foods into other foods. The one burger in particular that may be directly responsible for shit like this happening again:


"This picture ignores the 18th law of thermodynamics: 'The Fly, The Kurgen and Robocop cannot be in L.A. at one time'

is this:


The Jalapeno-popper burger --they stuff an already stuffed food into another piece of food!! But I digress...

After preparing my body to accept this caloric bounty (I ran across the street, thus elevating my heart-rate and, in my mind, justifying a 4200 calorie meal) I set to eating. It was while searching for a distraction from what I was putting into my body that my attention was drawn towards a commercial on one of the 482 flatscreen tv's flashing bright colors and lights at me. I'm simple like that -- 'What? Loud noises and flashy lights? This must be important!'

...And it was important. Why? Because Billy fucking Mays said so.

"What is the rhetorical definition for 'beating a dead horse'? This blog."

Not 6 months after dying from a cocktail of Heart Disease mixed with Co-Fucking-caine, the ghost of Billy is back hocking hands-free-super-cleany-sham-wowy crap on t.v.

Now I'm not one to dogpile on the recently deceased (unless they really, really deserve it, or I'm feeling uppity) but does this strike anyone else as odd? Billy Mays died just only six months ago (June 8th, 2009) and it already seems that everyone has forgotten just how exactly that came about. Apparently the public at large has the same ability to ignore the unpleasant realities of their heroes as I have in regarding my own health and the dipshittery that I inflict on it --I'm drawing strained parallels in order to justify my Junkfood/Buckaroo Banzai tangent. Shut your mouth.

Back to the task at hand: anyone else feel weird about trusting a guy to recommend products to them who blew his weakened heart apart by choosing cocaine over, say, Aspirin?

Maybe his longtime friend and the owner of 'As Seen on TV' can explain their choice to continue using Cokey-the-Bear to peddle their wares:

'Longtime friend and colleague AJ Khubani, founder and CEO of the "As Seen on TV" product company Telebrands, said Mays never exhibited any signs of drug use and was always prepared for his many commercial shoots. "I'm just shocked," Khubani said. "He was the model of a responsible citizen."'

...Or maybe not.

Oh-kay, so they're going to play the age-old modest praise/encomium gambit. This figure of speech, also known as a 'River Phoenix Eulogy', is implemented in the hopes that by meeting certain minimal character requirements (in this case, appearing to not be doing Cocaine) we will forget that the person actually was doing Cocaine. Well two can play at this game, 'As Seen on TV'.

...Wait, that sounds like a lot of work. How about I just cut and paste amusing photos in with ironic captions down below.

Now, with fewer calories burned per unit of output.


"WARNING: Irony Kills"

....Ahhh screw it --I'm tired. Must be all that not-doing-cocaine.

Bacon Lube - 'Applewood Smoked' Sounds like a Priapism-induced Sexual Mishap...

I love bacon --bacon on my bacon; bacon-wrapped bacon and potato cheddar wedges; bacon floss; hell, I think that Nitrous Oxide needs to come in several bacony flavors so that I can pass out to the smell of crackling pig-fat while I'm going under for my first of many Bypass surgeries. Nothing says irony like getting your ribs cracked open in order to replace your bacon-damaged heart valve with one from a pig whilst being serenaded by the dulcet tones of Hickory-Smoked bacon cooking on a grill.

Wow --smells like a rendering plant in here...

What I won't stand for though is someone who takes things too far --ironic, I know. When someone puts my love of bacon in mortal danger; danger so palpable, so close at hand that I can feel it breathing over my shoulder and poisoning the one love that I thought, in the immortal words of George W. Bush, was 'un-put-downable', then I must act. Or at least write a strongly worded blog about it and then go back to my Sunday of pajamas and screaming at the television.

What danger, you ask? Bacon-lube, that's what.

But Finnian, what's so bad about Bacon-lube?

I'll tell you what, commie --take off your beret, put down your little red book and stop murdering those children for a second and listen to my words, America hater.

Raise your hand if you love bacon. You too, pinko; I know you *heart* bacon in all of its glorious iterations --don't be afraid.



'Che, the Bay of Pigs is just a place name --there are no pigs there for your bacon." "But I love the bacon..."

Here's where it gets complicated --follow me, if you can.

Bacon Tastes good. Bacon SMELLS even better.

Sex is generally good (barring late night mistakes at the Airport Lounge). Sex though, generally, does not smell even better.

In fact, the smells associated with sex are a general road-map as to how your night is going and how much worse it may possibly get. Add in to this already volatile mix the confusing aroma of roasting pig-flesh and you can see where I'm going. The smell and taste of cured meat is something that, during sex, elicits in me a Pavlovian response somewhat akin to a Chinese Firedrill.


Like this, but with more cowbell and less chubbiness.

If I am in the midst of having inadvisable sex with someone after too many tall cans of Steinlager then I am going to need to rely on all of my beer-dulled senses to keep the night from swerving from 'just plain depressing' to the land of 'holy-hell, how in the monkey f#$k did I end up here??!?!'. One of those senses, sadly, is my sense of smell.

Far be it for me to poo-poo anything bacon-scented/flavored/otherwise, but this particular product seems to blur several lines that I would prefer stayed unblurrable. Bacon in the kitchen; uncomfortable crying, groping and sadness in the bedroom --and never the two shall meet.

Carl Sagan - Erudite enough to almost make me care...

This makes me want to re-read 'Broca's Brain' and 'Dragons in the Garden of Eden', maybe even 'Cosmos'. 'Want' then fades in to 'thought about' which loses it's v-hold and rapidly devolves in to 'Someone attacked my Vampire on Facebook?' How can erudite exposition and insightful narrative ever compete with the ability to coast through life passively, spoon fed pocket-book wisdom and bite-sized half-truths from cradle to grave? I have an idea about that; two words: Michael Fucking Bay.


I shit you not, this is what came up as the 14th image when I googled 'Michael Bay'


Michael Bay needs to remake 'Cosmos' right the fuck now. Can you imagine what that book would be like in movie form with Nicholas Cage and a sassy, wise-cracking asteroid for a sidekick?

Michael 'Movie-plot-line-rapist' Bay: "I just, you think, this needs, I mean, ya know? Bigger explosion-ness-iveness-osity. I mean, MAN, grrrrrrrrr, just, ya know?"

Nicholas Cage: "I can see where you want me to go with this. I'll kick it up a notch -Bangkok Dangerous-like. Guaranteed millions. Where's my bear costume?"

Asteroid (Played by Michael Clarke Duncan): "I... Are you two fucking high, or just retarded?"

Mike Bay: "Aaannn-n-nd... CUT! Print it!! I'll be in my airstream, bathing in the blood and tears of a 12 year-old blind Inuit."

Wow, that took a left turn somewhere. Probably sometime right after I slugged those two 5-Hour Energy shots in a row. I think I can hear the future now. No, wait, that's my heart screaming.


"All the sugar, Twice the AWESOME!!!"