Fresh Air; Pulling Our Heads Out Of Our Asses

In the long road to pulling our collective heads out of our collective asses we, as a country, need to modify a few of our behaviors, curtail some bad habits and adopt a more positive and forward thinking philosophy if we don’t want to end up like Albania, a country of poor villagers pushing wooden carts filled with bales of straw around all day while their donkeys stand emaciated on the side of the road waiting for the sweet release of death.

We need to breathe fresh air again and we can’t do it when our heads are lodged in the constricted confines of our rectums. We have somehow become a nation of sound bites and thirty second video clips. We’re all attitude and no bite. A large portion of our population still believes that Velveeta cheese is food. We’re mixed up and confused and it is directly related, I believe, to having had our heads up our asses for generations.

It’s obviously very difficult to move or even see where one is going when one’s head is up one’s own ass. Think about the physics of having your head up your own ass. Some serious yoga moves must be employed plus some joints simply need to free themselves from their sockets in order to achieve such a seemingly impossibility. In order to begin, however, we need to understand a little history on how we got here in the first place.

Well, we began sticking our heads up our asses sometime after World War II. The nation had come out of a very difficult time and was tired of having their heads all out in the open and using rational thought and critical thinking to solve everyday problems. Using their critical thinking skills had become very taxing on Americans. So, in 1952 in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois a man named Herb Smith proceeded to be the first person to successfully insert his own head up his own ass.  He had tried it unsuccessfully twice before in 1951. Both attempts got him sent to the hospital where doctors were unable to detect the cause of his injuries. Herb explained that they were simply ‘gardening’ accidents and everyone left it at that.

In his garage Herb successfully overcame the ‘rigid-spine’ conundrum that had plagued white people for centuries and was able to lodge his head three quarters of the way up his ass. Excited about breaking the halfway barrier Herb continued for the next two weeks until had achieved full head/ass insertion.

Herb became overjoyed at the feeling of having his head up his ass. No more thinking, no more deciding on stuff. There was no responsibility for anything. Herb could walk around and say anything he wanted and it didn’t even have to be true. Herbs friends noticed that he was more relaxed, more confident than he was before. When asked about it, Herb brought them to his garage where he showed his astonished friends how to stick their own heads up their own asses.

It wasn’t long before suburban communities all across the country were enjoying the freedom of having their heads up their asses. The trend quickly spread to the cities and ports and forests of America. At the same time this was taking place, however, a slow disintegration of core values began to take place. Hard work was being replaced by unrealistic pursuits for fame and fortune.  The Rat Pack and John Wayne was replaced by the Real Housewives of Who-Gives-A-Shit and the Kardashians. America was crumbling before our eyes. It wouldn’t be long before we would become fixated with Justin Beiber and what kind of car he was driving.

Not everyone, however, was enamored with the idea of having their head firmly wedged in their ass. Some people thought it was reckless and even dangerous, especially when driving a car. Others thought that it was unnatural and not very flattering. But, by this time it was too late. It was the 1980s and more than half the country had their heads securely lodged in their own asses. This was reflected in the nation’s acceptance of big hair, shoulder pads and parachute pants. It is now 2011 and we are still dealing with the traumatic effects that parachute pants has caused this nation.

America, we need to pull our heads out of our asses, and fast. We’re falling behind in rubber dog poop production, hair loss technology and hot dog eating contests. We cannot move forward unless we dislodge our heads from our rectums and take a look around at the big picture. Only then will we be able confidently say that America has the largest ball of twine, we have constructed the longest Hoagie sandwich ever and that The United States of America, hands down, is home to the greatest foosball playing, beer-chuggers the world has ever known.

A Flight To Forget: And The Peanuts Sucked Too

The following stourie is true. Only the word stourie has been changed to make it seem fancy and regal. 


This is an actual letter written to U.S. Airways about one of their wonderful flights.

Passengers Ian Strang and Cheryl Strang. Concerning our flight from Austin, Texas to our connecting flight in Phoenix, Arizona on Feb. 19, 2007. Flight #73, seats 19A and 19B. Departure time: 2:55 pm.

On our return trip from Austin, Texas to Los Angeles, (with the above mentioned connecting flight to Phoenix) my wife and I had the window seat (19A) and the middle seat (19B).  A woman sitting in the aisle seat next to us (19C) had a considerable posterior and was taking up half of 19B. I want to be nice about this because I know that some people can't help it if they have weight problems, but, SHE TOOK UP HER OWN SEAT PLUS HALF OF ONE OF OUR SEATS! Although she seemed to be friendly (except for insulting us for being from Los Angeles and telling us how much she hates Los Angeles and that she would never move to Los Angeles because she couldn't make it there as a singer once) we were scrunched up next to the window for approximately two and a half hours. The flight was completely full so we could not change seats with a couple of small children or something. We could not physically put the armrest down nor could we even put the middle tray table down because of her jumbo sized hind-quarters and legs. We're talking heroic proportions here. I'm not really complaining because the flight was just another normal flight and the air waitresses were sub-par in their attitudes and they feigned friendliness as best they could, but this lady was HUGE!!! I don't really see how we pay for a whole seat, but only get to use half of it. I'm not sure what your policy on hefty humans who travel by air are, but if you have a policy on the size of baggage that can fit into the overhead compartments and a policy that if your luggage is too heavy you get to pay an extra fee, shouldn't you have one for people who can’t fit into seats? It's hard to believe that not one employee from U.S. Airways would have seen this woman's substantial buttocks, register the size of a standard coach seat on a U.S. Airways airplane in their heads, put two and two together and somehow come to the swift conclusion that she simply isn't going to fit, and that plan B should be activated immediately. I really hope that there is a plan B and that maybe some forgetful or disinterested employee simply blocked the possible scenario out of their minds because, this, my friends, is no way to travel. I realize that the airline industry has had their hands full since 9/11, and I thank you for all the security and inconvenience that TSA provides, what with the stripping down to the bare essentials in the airport and whatnot, but seeing how we're probably on a level blue or green or some other safe color, I think we really need to start addressing some of the other air-travel concerns of the day. We should try making some of your more apathetic employees take notice of uncomfortable situations, such as whenever someone might be scrunched up against a window, fighting for air. Maybe train some of your other semi-interested associates in the art of identifying a problem somewhere earlier in the program instead of when it's way too late. I really don't know what the answer is, friends. I'm not boycotting your airline because I'm probably going to travel in the future and I just might ride on one of your fine airplanes and have the pleasure of being served stale pretzels and soda pop by someone with a thousand yard stare. But, I hope that by then our little problem of enormous people taking up almost two seats will be yesterday's news. And once we've solved the problem of people taking up more than one seat, maybe we can finally tackle the problem of screaming children.

I hope this was helpful.

Best wishes.

Ian Strang

Store Wars: A New Hopelessness

The grocery store is an already crowded and panic-stricken atmosphere filled with wild-eyed shoppers with no grocery lists who are not allowed to return home without something for dinner. The easiest thing, I’ve discovered, is spaghetti. It’s real simple to make, but you shouldn’t have more than twice a week unless you want to look like big-fat Marlon Brando right before he departed the earth. Too many carbs.

One of the most frustrating things for me in the grocery store is trying to find the Q-tips. Am I insane or do they always seem to change locations every time I look for them? Sometimes they’re next to the baby food, sometimes they’re next to the soap and razors. One time I found them in the beverage aisle squeezed in between the A&W Root Beer and a six-pack of Tab. Sometimes they don’t seem to be in the store at all and I ‘m forced to use toilet paper wrapped around my pinkie finger until the next shipment of Q-tips magically reappear.

There is a nuisance, however, that has suddenly appeared in grocery stores that makes shopping even more difficult and irritating than I ever imagined. One day I was in the toiletries aisle, which was fast becoming clogged with people who had no idea what kind of toothpaste to buy or shampoo to change to because their hair was feeling a little limp lately and people were beginning to notice. My anxiety was building as it usually did in the narrow, cramped store aisle. I asked myself, “Will I ever make it out of here? If I die here will the morticians ever be able to get the panicked, bug-eyed look off my face so that I may have a proper open casket funeral without everyone thinking about how goofy I looked when I kicked the bucket. Why is dental floss so friggin’ expensive?!!! It’s FLOSS!!!”

Anyway, the toiletries aisle was now beginning to resemble a stopped up sewer pipe that was quickly filling up with poop, toilet paper and stuff you shouldn’t flush down the toilet but people do anyway, like children’s toys or empty cans of Chef Boyardee's Ravioli. One end was completely jammed by two elderly women whose carts are parked side by side while they reminisced about World War I or when they had an affair with Ben Franklin or some goddamned thing. My anxiety was quickly turning to utter panic when I noticed that several carts were part slalom style down the length of the aisle and open just enough for me to squeak by without hitting them. There was a small burst of light towards the other end so I began to race for freedom, and that’s when I saw it.

It casually, menacingly turned the corner, almost in slow motion, and effectively blocked any more light from entering the toiletries aisle. It was a behemoth, a Corellian Star Destroyer piled high with soda bottles, boxes of cookies and sugar based cereal, and some Weight Watchers Brownies because mom deserves to be decadent every once in a while without putting on the pounds. The entire cart was already on the brink of spilling out and crushing to absolute death anyone standing next to it, and yet, attached to the front of this already overloaded junk food buggy was an extended kiddie-cart that resembled a car, a Yugo I think. Or maybe it was a Honda? Two tiny, deranged looking children were in the front fighting over the steering wheel while two more kids were running around the top like a couple of squirrel monkeys in an open-air Indian food market. It looked like a cross between scenes from the Road Warrior and Deathwish. I began to panic. What did they want? Did they want fuel? Did they want my soul? Should I abandon my cart and bolt the hell out of there, never to return? The mother of these insane toddlers didn’t seem to notice that not only was she taking up more square footage than the Space Shuttle but that her lunatic offspring were causing a calamity that, in my opinion, could only be suppressed by a highly trained squadron of riot police, or perhaps Delta Force.

Is this what they called ‘shell shock’? Had these children/beasts mangled this woman’s ability to recognize when other humans are suffering as a result of the anarchistic behavior of her hell spawn? Mother Hubbard didn’t seem to give two squats or even notice that her children had almost completely taken over the toiletries aisle and were now holding three couples hostage, or that her aircraft carrier sized shopping cart was literally preventing evolution from occurring. We were all now overcome by this family of oblivious freakazoids and there was no SWAT team prepared to make entry and TAZE this family into submission, something somebody should have done long ago.

So, what do we do in this situation? STOP going to the store for fear of running into one of these roving kiddie-Death Stars? Do we really need the kiddie-cart attached to an already oversized cart in an already undersized store? If we are going to expand the size of the shopping carts why not correlate that by expanding the size of the store? Why are we using 2011 carts in 1942 shopping aisles? People were smaller a hundred years ago. Let’s try and keep up with the ever-changing human bulkiness and try and design our buildings, our restaurants booths and our airplane seats accordingly.

Grocery stores need to curtail the kiddie-cart attachment at once! This rolling menace serves no purpose either for the parent or the customer. It is a giant waste of plastic that parents stuff their disorderly, uncontrollable children so they may purchase unhealthy food that will almost surely contribute to their highly unlikable whippersnapper’s eventual imprisonment. Shopping for food doesn’t have to be a life or death experience. Shopping for food should not make a person contemplate suicide. Going to the grocery store should not be the equivalent to a death match in the octagon.

We need to solve this problem immediately so that we can move on to the problem of people who still write checks, use way too many coupons and cannot understand that 15 items or less does not mean ‘as many items as you want’.

Changing Lanes On The Road To Nowhere

The freeway, as most people in modern cities agree, is a wonderful place to merge with other cars and pretend like you’re in the parking lot of the grocery store and you’re waiting for your wife who just ran in to get some tampons but got distracted by a Twinkie display and is now filling a grocery cart with frozen burritos, Gummy Bears and beer. The traffic jam is a classic here in Southern California and is beloved by all who participate. To be involved in a Los Angeles traffic jam is a special, special experience that, I’m pretty sure, shortens your life by about ten years.

It is a widely known fact that the current location of the 405 freeway here in Los Angeles is the site of a famous covered wagon traffic jam that occurred on a June morning in 1874 and lasted for seventeen days and four minutes. This was where a convoy of Mormon settlers was headed south towards Mexico in search of a great beanstalk that was rumored to grow so tall that it reached a Giant’s castle up in the sky. Along the way a cattle rancher who didn’t see the oncoming settlers sideswiped the wagon train with a herd of emus, causing the very first Sig Alert in Los Angeles. And, because a group of rubber tree farmers stopped on the other side to see what was going on, but never offered to help, it also gave birth to the term ‘assface who watches but does not help in any way and also impedes progress by blocking all traffic with their stupefying curiosity’. The term was later shortened to simply ‘rubbernecker’.

Ever since then Angelenos pay tribute to that blessed event by holding a commemorative traffic jam every day Monday through Friday at around 7 am and another one around 5 pm. However, because of the growing popularity of ‘The Great Western Pile-Up Of 1874’, as it is now affectionately called, the commemorative traffic jam is currently held seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day.

It is in these awesome traffic jams that you might have the unique experience of observing one of nature’s most elusive and annoying creatures, The Constantly Running Late Lane Changer. Imagine yourself at a complete and utter standstill in your car along with six hundred and fifty thousand other cars. Now imagine another car desperately needing to get in front of you. You can tell because their turn signal is on and the nose of their car is slowly inching towards the nose of your car. This is the point where all of that high school algebra comes in handy and makes you realize that the physics of what they are trying to do isn’t going to work out. The math simply doesn’t add up. There is already a car in front of you and several thousand cars in front of that one that one and the probability of the Lane Changer occupying that particular space in front of you is very close to zero point zero zero. But don’t tell them that. Our forefathers didn’t sacrifice their lives so that we can be told that two objects can’t be in the same place at once. This situation is on the verge of becoming a freedom issue and cooler heads must prevail.

Somehow though, the Lane Changer, who is never cool in stressful situations, is running late as they do every day of their lives and therefore, in more of a hurry than the other four million people who are headed in the same direction. And don’t get me wrong, everyone wants to let them in, it’s just that we can’t. It’s physically impossible. Even when they roll down their window trying to get your attention with that desperate wave and the pleading look on their face. You feel helpless. It’s like watching a basket full of puppies being adopted by a family of hyperactive kids. You know those dogs are in for a lifetime of stress and panic, but what can you do about it? Hyperactive kids need pets too. For a moment you have a thought of putting your car in reverse and ramming the car behind you creating enough space for the Lane Changer to squeeze in, thus shortening their commute to work. But alas, because of the millions of cars behind you, this too seems improbable.

The Lane Changer believes that moving laterally, no matter how minute, gets you to your destination quicker. This may be true in their mind, but to the rest of the universe it doesn’t make any sense. Perhaps they are ahead of their time and that one day the cars of the future will have the ability to swiftly merge into each other without colliding, but at this moment during the commemorative morning traffic jam it seems like an idea that is light years away.

Upon further research I’ve discovered that the Lane Changing species goes back several thousand years, all the way back to the Buffalo Wing Dynasty in Upstate New York. It was here amongst crowds of people in wooden carts where they discovered that the way to get somewhere faster than anyone else was to be as obnoxious and irritating as you can with your cart. Constantly changing lanes creates the illusion of forward progress. In the end though, we all arrive at the same destination at the same time to a job that we all hate, wishing it was Friday so we could begin drinking our lives away. If you happen to know a Constantly Running Late Lane Changer perhaps you can recommend to them a book that I have written called ‘Always Running Late? Try Getting Up Earlier!!!’ It gives people tips on how to avoid staying up late on a work week and also includes a link to a PDF file that has the operating manual of every type of alarm clock made in the USA since 1967.

If you come across a Lane Changer, though, please don’t touch them, don’t look them in the eyes and absolutely do not feed them. We need to keep them in their natural state of being lost, confused and desperate and certainly would not want them to begin depending on us for survival at this point in the game. See you all on the freeway.

Ultimate Fighting: A Love Story

Many Ultimate Fight fans across this country and across the world are not going to like this report.  Many fight fans will be shocked and angry and puzzled and sleepy at the following facts that I have personally uncovered about their favorite sport and the men who participate in it.  After reading this report, many fight fans will probably wish to commit Hari Banana Kari, which is a form of ritualistic suicide where one consumes an undisclosed number of banana splits until one literally explodes.

They would rather endure this grotesque, yet delicious, demise than accept the following facts about Ultimate Fighting. 

1) In addition to mixed martial arts most Ultimate Fighters are also proficient in the crochet and macramé arts. 

2) Most Ultimate Fighters like to pee while sitting. 

3) Most Ultimate Fighters have more than one copy of the movie He Said, She Said in their homes.

4) When asked what their favorite pet is, most Ultimate Fighters would respond “My Teddy Bear” and then immediately bash the questioner’s brains in with a Jonathon Adler table lamp.

To the untrained eye one would watch an Ultimate Fight match and think that these men are very brave and very manly and very sweaty, and yes, they are all that, but they are also so much more.  To the trained eye Ultimate Fighting might as well be called Ultimate Loving. 

Let’s come to terms with what Ultimate Fighting really is; cage matches for sensitive men who hide their sensitivity with wanton violence and sheer brutality.  The overdose of testosterone in Ultimate Fighters is simply a cover for the F-word, and unfortunately, it’s not Fart.  It is Feelings.

Feelings are a relatively new concept to men.  Throughout history, men have been taught to hide their feelings or to simply not have feelings at all.  For a man in ancient times to show a sensitive side would mean that he was probably not up to certain tasks like raping and pillaging a town or village filled with women and children.  In medieval times a sensitive man would have never been invited to join a regiment of knights in clobbering a crowd of unsuspecting villagers because the King believed that clobbering villagers was a cure for the plague.

Then, after years of frustration, sensitive men finally turned on each other.  Sometime around the year 1433 in the middle of a peat bog a sensitive chap drew a seven-sided ring using deer antlers and sheep dung and challenged another sensitive man to a bare-knuckle fist-fight.  An astute bystander suddenly suggested that perhaps an eight-sided ring might be less retarded looking and more pleasing to the eye, not to mention that The Octagon would also sound more intimidating than The Septagon, which isn’t even a word.  After the changes were made, the very first Ultimate Fight was born.

Ultimate Fighters have put on a good show by snarling a lot and scowling a whole bunch and wearing their TapOut gear to fancy restaurants thinking that a t-shirt with a giant TapOut printed on the front is appropriate dress wear for a two-star restaurant.  However, I have it on good authority that Chuck Liddell likes to write poetry while taking long bubble baths using his favorite soap, Auburn Mist.  Kenny Shamrock once tried out for, and didn’t get, the part of Mr. Bigpants in the Broadway hit ‘Rosy Cats’.  Dejected, he turned to the only thing that could fill the massive void in his soul, pummeling other men in an octagon shaped ring surrounded by barbed wire, chain-linked electrified fencing and guard towers where snipers watch their every move.  A very famous feud broke out one time when Quinton “Rampage” Jackson wrote a love letter to his rose garden.  Not to be outdone, Randy “The Natural” Couture responded by writing a love letter to every piece of furniture in his house.  The feud finally reached its zenith when the two gladiators realized that they had written love letters to every single inanimate object in their lives, and then decided to write love letters to each other.  They decided to consummate their respect for each other by eating a light lunch at The Olive Garden.  Once, a group of Ultimate Fighters disguised themselves as snarky, big belt wearing college girls in Birkenstocks and secretly followed the Lilith Fair in the summer of 1998 and called that summer “the best and most defining time of their lives”.  Royce Gracie is known to have a 7^th degree Black Belt in Affection and Fondness.  Bas Rutten’s house has an endless loop of Evergreen by Barbra Streisand playing so that you can hear it in every nook and cranny, even under the house, which is where he keeps most of his scrapbooking projects.

These are hard facts to contend with, America.  However, there’s no need to go off and commit Hari Banana Kari over the fact that Ultimate Fighters are caring, loving, poetry writing, Real Housewives-watching men who cannot let their true emotions be known because their fans simply wouldn’t understand.  We now know this isn’t true, because behind every Ultimate Fighter is a caring, loving, poetry writing, Real Housewives-watching fan.  And isn’t that what it’s all about?  

A Tale Of Two High-Fivers

High-fiving needs to stop.  It has always been an exceptionally stupid way to acknowledge that your favorite team has just scored a point or that your friend has said something extremely witty and biting towards another friend who is not as quick to reply.  It is uncivilized and barbaric.  It is vulgar and unsophisticated.  It is the real reason that North and South Dakota went to war with East and West Dakota where the North and South wiped their high-fiving enemies completely off the map.

Our forefathers sacrificed their lives to free themselves from the brutal reign of the high-fiving British Empire.  Most people don’t know this but it was the King of England who forced the early colonists to high-five each other in taverns and then had the audacity to levy taxes on all high-fives that occurred.  Prisoners would be forced to years of hard high-fiving in labor camps all across the thirteen original colonies.  There was a famous saying that Paul Revere used to recite whenever he was drinking in a bar.  It was, “No taxation for high-fivation,” or something like that.  George Washington would give a nickel to anyone who didn’t high-five after they sunk an incredible shot at the pool hall.  The Revolutionary War was primarily fought over a single incident that occurred when a colonist wouldn’t high-five a British soldier after he whooped his butt in a game of snooker.

The ancient crazy Romans outlawed high-fiving early on in their history and as a result came up with the concept of the arch.  It seems that before the law was enacted there was rampant high-five use in Roman society and very few people were interested in moving their community forward.  By ridding Roman society of high-fives it refocused the Empire’s attention on science, math and raping and pillaging every country they could get their hands on.

Perhaps you might remember a little conflict called World War II where western civilization was on the brink of annihilation from the high-fiving Nazis.  Adolph Hitler was an ardent high-fiver and a secret ‘high-tenner’, but only around close friends and family and out of sight of the cameras.  Or maybe you might remember the time when a rowdy group of high-fiving hooligans took over a small island in the Caribbean called Grenada, where once again, the world’s armies fought back the tyranny of high-fivers that nearly brought the world to collapse once again.

Nine out of ten scientists believe that high-fiving leads to bad moral rectitude.  It’s a gateway greeting.  One day you’re high-fiving your buddies in the bar and the next day you and your buddies are calling in phony pizza orders to your neighbor that walks his dog in his bath robe.  Where does it end?  When will walking your dog in your bath robe out in public so that everyone can see your gross chest hairs and bony legs end?  Come on, guy, put some pants on!!!

Over the years, illegal high-fives have been smuggled into this country through sophisticated tunnels all along our borders and has now somehow woven its way back into our national fiber.  We have now become a nation of high-fivers.  What is wrong with a simple handshake or a point-the-finger-and-wink-like-a-gunfighter or a simple nod that says “Wow, that was some neat-o goal huh?”  We now see high-fiving going unchecked and out of control in bars and pubs across America with no end in sight.  It needs to end quickly.  Believe me, nothing good can come from high-fiving.  If we aren’t careful, high-fiving has the potential to bring our entire country to a screeching, mind numbing halt.  Take a look at history if you don’t believe me; the Mongols, the Romans, the Aztecs, the Dodo Bird, all brought down and are now extinct because of a simple, flagrant hand slap in the air.  Is this the path that we want our country to follow?  Is this the legacy that we want to leave our children and grandchildren and the beloved pets of people who are unable to have children?  We need to take a closer look at our celebratory practices in sports bars and decide if it is worth it.  My answer; No Way, Jose.  Keep the high-fives in Greenland where they belong.

One Upping A One-Upper; Mission: Impossible

Ever tell a story about something that was so amazing that happened to you and then had it immediately swept under the rug by a One-Upper?  Do you know any One-Uppers in your neighborhood?  I’m positive they’re there.  They’re everywhere.  In pharmacies and bars and pet stores and public restrooms.  They’re a little difficult to spot from far away, but once you get up close and are actively participating in a conversation it becomes crystal clear that you are now face to face with a One-Upper.  They use your stories as launching pads for their better, more awesome stories.  They never listen to you or anyone else because they already have better anecdotes that always seem to border on pure folklore, cocked and ready to fire, waiting for you to finish so they can empty their story clip into your lame-o story and fill it full of holes, sending it plummeting to the ground where it crashes into a gigantic ball of fictitious fire, probably burning down several homes in the process. 

I imagine in the inside of the One-Upper’s heads there are stadiums packed with fans cheering and yelling as they reveal their spectacular yarns to stunned and thrilled audiences who hang on their every word.  You could tell a story about how you jumped your BMX bike over 20 schoolchildren when you were ten years old and the One-Upper will tell you how they jumped over 30 school kids plus a pregnant dog, which to them, counts as about six dogs.  You could tell a story about how one day you ate a twelve pound burrito in less than an hour and then pooped it out in less than five minutes and the One-Upper will tell you how they ate six three pound burritos in less than twenty minutes and didn’t poop for two weeks.  You could tell a story about how you competed in a triathlon on the moon with Neil Armstrong last year and a One-Upper will tell you how they flew to Mars, married an alien and raised a family of five, opened a small import/export business and retired before returning to earth.  It doesn’t matter what you say, the One-Upper will always surpass anything you may have done in your life that would seem slightly interesting to normal people but very, very boring to the One-Upper.  

If gone unchecked, the One-Upper’s tales of their own fascination with themselves can often escalate into a game of fictional ingenuity, even when the story may seem not only blatantly false, but supremely preposterous and sometimes even physically or mathematically impossible.  The goal of the One-Upper seems to be to garner as much attention as they can get.  They want us to shut the heck up with our lame stories and start ‘ooohhing’ and ‘aaaahhing’ when they give us access to their spectacular tales.  At some point everyone begins to silently realize that certain factoids of the One-Upper’s story may not be entirely true.  However, for some reason no one is able to rid the conversation of the One-Upper or inform them that listening to other people is not a bad thing.

The One-Upper often butts into conversations that they have no business being involved in.  All it takes is for them to hear more than one person talking and they immediately begin shooting down their stories like a duck hunter firing into a crowd of rowdy NASCAR fans.  They hone in on other stories like a lion chasing a gang of alter boys on Good Friday, dicing and mincing them up with their own tales of heroism or misfortune or that really, really funny thing that happened to them at McDonalds one day.

The One-Upper is a close cousin of the Know-It-All.  They both think that everyone that they’re talking to is an idiot.  They both believe that they are stimulating everyone’s boring lives with provocative and exhilarating yarns filled with gobs of juicy information.  What separates them is that the One-Upper is much like a hyperactive Chihuahua constantly on the hunt for baby chipmunks to scare the crap out of, where the Know-It-All is more like a sagely old elephant, slowly walking along dispensing wisdom and knowledge while thinking to themselves, “You’re welcome universe.”

The other day in my Operation Desert Storm Re-enactor’s club we were sitting around a campfire guarding about ten thousand Iraqi Prisoners Of War Re-enactors when a One-Upper tried to tell us about the time he personally invaded the country of Lichtenstein by himself, overthrew the government and renamed the country ‘Hank’ after his grandfather who was a cop in San Diego.  We took that One-Upper prisoner, unintentionally changing the course of that particular re-enacted conflict, held him for ransom for eight days, to which a billionaire from Saudi Arabia then paid six hundred thousand dollars for his release, but was immediately disappointed to discover that he had just paid for a One-Upper to a bunch of Gulf War Veteran Re-enactors who have never been in the military at all.  Only a couple of us had some Boy Scout experience.  Apparently, he thought he was buying a racehorse or something.

The fact that we even tolerate the One-Upper says a lot for our collective mettle, not to mention our national stamina.  That we endure the narcissistic, vainglorious oral compositions that contain more wonder, more danger, more action, more adversity and just all around more awesomeness than our own stories says in itself that we are a mightily tolerant society, where in a whole ‘nother part of the world the One-Upper would probably be packed into a suitcase and put on a flight to Antarctica where the luggage would be intentionally lost somewhere during a connecting flight in Brazil and never seen again.

Everyone has an interesting story.  Everyone has experiences that we can enjoy and sometimes even learn from.  One-upping someone’s story is not the way to have a good conversation.  It is a way, however, to identify yourself as someone everyone can really do without.  Let us tell our stories of spectacular parties we’ve been to or how poor we were when we graduated from college and had to survive on Top Ramen and sunflower seeds or driving really fast on the freeway while fleeing the cops.  Yes, we know you’ve been to more spectacular parties and that you’ve been poorer and have driven faster.  Yes, thank you for telling us all that.  Now, here’s something I bet you the One-Upper has never heard before: Please leave.

A Royal Pain In Their Shorts

Well, the official invitation and seating list for Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding has come out and, once again, I am not on that list.  Sure, David Beckham and his wife what’s-her-name are on the list.  They’re always on the list.  They’re on every list.  I don’t know why.  She wears giant, bug-eyed sunglasses while drinking Midori sours all day long while he gets paid millions of dollars to not win soccer championships.  I have a trophy for the 1985 Utah state breakdancing championship under my house!  He’s never showed me a soccer trophy once!  Also invited is, surprise, Elton John.  Wow!  I guess they decided to keep it pretty orthodox by inviting the usual stale celebrity crowd that shows up to just about any event to get their faces splashed all over the gossip pages.  They have also personally insulted me by adding Mr. Bean to the list of invitees.  Charles knows that Mr. Bean and I have had a very unpleasant and awkward friendship after I told him that he was the weak link in the film Rat Race and that perhaps he should take up re-shingling old roofs as an alternative career.  Both Chuck and Mr. Bean cannot take constructive criticism like they claim they can.

This is the second time in my life that the Royal Family has overlooked my presence at one of their silly weddings.  The first time, of course, being Bill’s dad’s wedding to Princess Diana.  I was only ten at the time, but I still haven’t forgotten the sting of rejection.  As I watched that catastrophe unfold on TV I couldn’t help but to think that I had told Beezus (Diana loved that name and all her closest friends called her that.  She actually hated it when people called her Di.) only weeks prior that marrying this stiff, floppy eared member of a family that has lived off of the charity of British citizens for centuries was a huge mistake.  Beezus didn’t listen to me because she was head over heels in love with this royal buffoon, so I just let it be.  She was an adult and she knew what she was doing and I didn’t want to meddle on her special day.

For the record, I was also not invited to Fergie and Andrew’s wedding but I don’t really count that as an oversight on their part because I knew that that marriage wouldn’t last at all due to Andrew’s addiction to hardcore pornography and Fergie’s obsession with metal detecting.  I simply didn’t want to be involved in that matrimonial blunder in any way, shape or form.

I was told that, if I had been invited, I would have been sitting in the section right behind Queen Liz’s seat.  Honestly, if I had to sit behind that giant derby hat that I know she’ll be wearing, blocking my view of everything, I would probably vomit all over their 17^th century carpet so it is probably best that I wasn’t invited. 

I heard, through some confidential informants, that they have also invited a herd of African elephants, the ghost of Jack LaLanne and the remaining members of the Wu Tang Clan.  From the looks of what I’ve seen so far it seems that they are intentionally designing their guest list to resemble a gigantic slap in my face.  Just about every invitee has some personal grudge towards me and I imagine have gotten to Chuck and Bill’s ear before I had a chance to plead my case.  Well, Jack LaLanne and his fancy aerobic underoos can just kiss my ass!

My gift to the newlyweds was going to be a karaoke version of Once Bitten, Twice Shy by Great White, Kathy’s and Bill’s favorite song.  I just know that they are going to play that song for their first dance and I wanted to be the one to sing it.  Well, thanks to some sneaky assistants I’ve been cut out of the loop and it will probably now be Harry singing his version, which is pretty pathetic.  Believe me, I’ve heard him sing it at Bill’s bachelor party.  He just can’t hit the high notes like I can.  I was also going to present them with coupons for a free taco dinner at our house whenever they were in town.  I make pretty good tacos.  It’s a very simple recipe; ground turkey with onions, Anaheim chiles, green chiles, and tomato sauce.  They’re absolutely fantastic.  I made them once when I was visiting Billy and Kathy at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.  The whole family went berserk over these tacos!  Kathy wanted to open a restaurant in Glasgow immediately and sell tacos to Scottish people.  I was grateful, but I remained level-headed and reminded her that tacos just can’t be thrust into the face of any culture.  They have to be coaxed and eased and nudged into their national palette.  People that have been eating haggis for their entire history usually aren’t very receptive to new food stuffs.  I suggested that perhaps a couple of pop-up taco restaurants in the foothills of the Scottish Highlands would be a good way in and she agreed.  Well, I hope Kathy and Bill enjoyed them because I don’t think I’ll be making the Royal Family tacos any time soon.

Well, once again I guess I’ll have to watch the royal debacle from the comfort of my own home while sipping on Midori sours all day.  I’m not one to hold grudges, but in this case I feel that the guest list, the seating chart, in fact, the entire wedding altogether is probably their way of politely telling me to stay away from Buckingham Palace, London and Great Britain altogether.  I know when I’m not welcome.  I just wish that the Royal Family would be honest enough to tell me to my face and not have to go through this façade just to send me a message.  Well Chuck and Liz and Bill and Kathy; message received.  I hope you both have a lovely wedding and I hope Elton John and Paul Potts and Susan Boyle don’t screw up on their version of God Save The Queen like they did at her birthday last year.  I felt supremely embarrassed for all three of them.  My version would have brought the house down.

Nitwits: The Clog In The Toilet Bowl Of Life

There are some people who seem to dilly-dally their way through life, clogging up the rest of society with their indecisiveness, their selfishness and their overall stupidity.  Yes, there are a lot of stupid people, but these ones in particular directly affect the rest of us, especially when we are in line waiting to conduct some form of business or transaction.  These people are the reason that lines exist in the first place.  If it weren’t for them we wouldn’t need fast food restaurants or Quickie Marts because everything would be smooth and streamlined, flowing effortlessly in a virtual utopia of consumer efficiency and decision-making.  To them, venturing out of their home is just one big guessing game.  They don’t seem to know where they are, what they want and what they are even doing out of the house at this time of day.  How these people made it this far in life without running themselves over with their own cars is beyond me.

They are the Nitwits of our society.  Slow and boneheaded in every aspect of humanity, holding up progress with their confused and imbecilic ideas, believing that they can just wing it when it comes to simple commerce.  These are people whose brains are in perpetual first gear on the freeway of life, and a great many of them seem to be hopelessly stuck in ‘park’.  They are the ones who stop in the middle of the street because they are lost, rather than pull over to the side of the road and consult their map and try and figure out where they are in life.  They have difficulty understanding complex choices like ‘Would you like large, medium or small?’, to which their response is, ‘How big is the large?’  One could probably expect to hear them ask ‘Where do babies come from?’ and ‘Why is the sky blue?’ in the same conversation.

They are overwhelmed with choices.  Their brains cannot handle multiple tasks.  They are the people for whom the term ‘one at a time’ was invented.  In Biblical times Nitwits were considered to be a nuisance and were usually stoned to death out of sheer frustration and annoyance by people who waited behind them at the market for several hours while the Nitwits tried to decide whether to buy a sack of dates or a baby goat.

Nitwits are slowly killing the rest of us with their “not-knowing-how-to-do-anything-in-life” way of life.  I think these are the same people who merge onto the freeway at 12 miles an hour, causing other cars behind them to screech to a virtual halt or swerve out of the way, knocking other cars off the road, as the Nitwit happily listens to a loop of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in their head.  

At restaurants or coffee shops they are unclear on what to order when it is finally their turn.  There is nothing more excruciating and painful than ending up behind one of these human snails in line at a Starbucks and watch them try to figure out whether they want an iced latte caramel mochaccino with candy sprinkles or a blended mocha frappuccino latte with chocolate swirls, all while asking if the tomato and basil pesto sandwiches are gluten free.  I imagine this is what Purgatory is like. 

In restaurants they consume vast quantities of valuable time with their complicated and nit-picky ordering.  They want the waiter to whittle and carve and chisel the menu down to their obnoxiously finicky and fuss-budgety liking, turning the chef’s creations into a dumbed-down version of high school cafeteria food. 

They are the people at the grocery store who watch the checker scan their enormous order, scan all of their coupons, see the total, make a ‘wow’ face and then decide to write a check, which, of course, they cannot find. 

Nitwits like to linger at the front of bank lines and bombard the bank teller with questions about their account and about the American banking system in general, having absolutely zero knowledge in either subject.  The tellers often need extra help with the Nitwit’s asinine questions and must then consult other tellers, taking those resources away from other customers who are prepared and simply want nothing more than to get the hell out of there, join a street gang, commit a major crime and be willingly sent to prison for the rest of their lives in the hopes that they would never have to experience anything that hellish ever again.

It must be pure hell at a Nitwit’s home when it comes time to decide whether to take a bath or take a shower or to simply rinse off with the garden hose out in the backyard.  A baby Nitwit must be particularly frustrating at breast-feeding time when the infant, unable to communicate yet, begins crying at the lack of choices they have and wonders if their mother has a third nipple somewhere they can try.

It is not lame to know what you want beforehand.  It is not lame to be prepared.  It is not lame to be considerate of people behind you and perhaps try and facilitate moving things along in life.  You know what is lame?  Being blind to everything around you as you walk out your front door.  Have a plan.  Have a goal.  For people who can’t handle more than one thing at a time, don’t try to decide what type of coffee you want on the fly.  Plan it beforehand.  Write it down and then memorize it at home.  Try ordering to yourself in the mirror.  If it proves to be too difficult, give a couple of bucks to a Cub Scout and have them order for you.  If that doesn’t work then maybe a pack of stray dogs ordering your coffee will prove to be more fruitful.  If you still find success elusive, then perhaps it would be best for all of us if you just stayed at home and drank tap water while watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island, allowing the rest of us got on with our lives unmolested by you and your indecisiveness, you Nitwit.

Attack of the Know-It-Alls

Have you ever felt stupid before?  I feel stupid all the time. Every day, in fact.  It’s no big deal.  I’ve accepted my limited IQ and just try to learn as much as I can along the way while keeping the buffoonery to a minimum.  I feel especially stupidy, however, when I’m talking to a Know-It-All.  You know these people?  They get their information from the radio and the newspaper and their favorite Know-It-All magazines and then graciously dispense it to the rest of humanity, filling our empty lives with their liquid, life-giving knowledge.  Here’s the dilemma that Know-It-Alls currently have, however; the application of their useless information to real life scenarios.  They seem to know everything about everything, and yet, there they are working side by side with the rest of us dummies.  You’d think that being a repository of such a wealth of information would perhaps land the Know-It-All a job at some prestigious think tank where they would spend days and nights solving the world’s problems.  You would think that some company out there would pay top dollar to constantly mine the Know-It-All’s brain for valuable data on how to make that company wealthier and more powerful and more able to take more advantage of more people.  You would think that by knowing everything there is to know there would be a line of people at their doorstep begging for advice on how to make their lives better and more fulfilling and more like Brad and Angelina’s lives.  One would even go so far to think that a Know-It-All would be so valuable to the human race that the government would relocate the Know-It-All and their family to a specially built module in outer space in an effort to protect their massive intellect from being drained by all of us imbeciles down here on earth.

One would think.

The truth is that Know-It-Alls do have very large reservoirs of mind numbingly, tediously, inanely, stale information, and yet, they seem to have absolutely zero knowledge on how to interact with other human beings or make themselves likeable.  They believe that a conversation is a one-way lecture on the meaning of life, and they are not the student. They think that we enjoy being constantly corrected for semantical mistakes that no one else seems to mind.  A single Know-It-All can bankrupt a whole conversation with pointless factoids that no one ever asked for.  They question the validity of the details of our stories and are constantly investigating where we got our facts from as if they are the lead detective in a story mangling crime scene.

I bet you that cavemen never tolerated a Know-It-All in their society.  I bet that those hairy, unkempt relatives of ours probably put the Know-It-All in their place before anything got out of hand in that cramped, funky smelling cave of theirs.  I bet Know-It-Alls don’t exist in the animal kingdom.  Look at a colony of ants.  You think that thousands of ants working their asses off, risking being doused by a can of Raid, trying to get food from my kitchen because I forgot to wipe off the counter last night would tolerate a single knucklehead ant standing there telling everyone else that they should lift the crumbs with their legs and not their backs because it could cause spinal problems in the future? 

Most of the time Know-It-Alls tell us what we already know.   Yes, we know that staring directly into the sun is bad for our eyes.  Yes, we know that leaving the toilet seat up is frowned upon when you’re married.  Yes, we know that ant colonies can range anywhere from a few dozen to a million and that Raid kills them all pretty much immediately.  But, it’s the way that Know-It-Alls present their information that’s so off-putting.  They make us feel foolish and moronic.  They make us feel like children who couldn’t make the cut when we tried out for the school play because we got stage fright right before the audition and as a result, peed our pants in front of everyone, ruining our playground credibility forever.  They make us feel as if our entire lives have been a complete waste of everyone’s time and that every word we’ve ever uttered has been an endless parade of lies. 

Know-It-Alls interrupt the natural flow of a gabfest with their endless desire to repair misstated facts, grammatical mistakes and trivial, pointless information that backs up no one’s story at all.  They don’t seem to realize that there is a certain level of error acceptability in communication that most people simply let slide.  Not the Know-It-All.  They are the conversation police handing out tickets to criminals for various social offenses such as improper sentence structure, failure to know how asphalt is made and insufficient understanding in the area of American tax laws.  They are the beaver dam in the middle of a swift moving conversation, halting the momentum with trivial tidbits of useless information.  They are the burnt piece of pretzel in the Chex Mix of life.  A Know-It-All is the single strand of hair that has found its way into your Caesar salad, ruining your appetite for the rest of the day. 

Knowledge is good.  Being intelligent is good.  Being curious about life and having the humility to learn new things from other people is good.  Shutting the toilet seat so that your wife doesn’t yell at you is good.  Raid is good.  Walking around the planet with a smug look on your face and looking down the bridge of your nose at other people because they don’t know that in 1887 something happened to some guy and his family that changed the course of history and now that’s why we have indoor plumbing is not only bad, it’s lame.  Quite lame.

Freedom To Fear In Ten Years Or Less

I’ve recently learned that the Department of Homeland Security will be discontinuing the colored threat level of scariness, a system that was designed to keep us safe and scared since the dreadful events that occurred on 9/11.  I thought this was a wonderful public service that not only warned us all of great dangers that may or may not befall us, but it would have or would not have given us ample time to prepare ourselves for the impending/eventual terrorist doom that may or may not come eventually/probably. 

The fact that announcing threat levels will no longer be a public service anymore, it seems to me, merely adds to the danger/havoc/catastrophe that we can all be sure is coming our way. So, now what is our plan of action in the case of a probable/eventual terror attack? Today’s world is scarier, more intimidating and creepier than ever before in our nation’s history. We must be on constant alert for not only potential terrorists but also other deviant groups of people who constantly threaten the sanctity of our public lives like drug dealers, jaywalkers, loiterers, reality stars, people who refuse to wear shirts and shoes inside 7-elevens and people who just don’t know how to stand in line at the grocery store without bumping in to you every twelve seconds. In my opinion, the government’s past recommended activities for the now defunct threat level system seemed a little unproductive, so I’ve come up with a new proactive warning system for thwarting not only eventual terrorist attacks but can also be effectively used for preventing all kinds of unwanted human behavior like peeping Toms, boring story tellers and unwanted dinner guests.

My solution for appropriate behavior for past threat level colors is to respond with corresponding Fear Levels in order to battle the terrorist/peeping/dimwit forces of the planet. Let’s start at the beginning.

Fear level Green: The Fear is Not Ripe Yet.  It’s okay to relax, but not too much.  This is where terrorists get their foot in the door, if given the opportunity.  You could be at a backyard barbeque or reading a book at the library and the next thing you know KABOOM!!!, you, your friends, your family and everything that was on that barbeque are now the size of bacon bits, ready to be sprinkled on a terrorist salad.  This level should be spent quickly glancing around as if you’re a dog and you just heard a sound somewhere in the distance and you’re trying to figure out what it is.  This tells the terrorists that you are alert and ready to act.

Fear level Blue: The Deep Blue Fear.  This is where you need to kick the fear into second gear.  Shaking your hands and jumping up and down as if you were getting ready for a boxing match is a good start.  Perhaps some impromptu stretching may also help ward away radical, barbeque-hating insurgents.  Are you preparing for a Thanksgiving 5K charity run, or are you priming yourself to do battle with the forces of evil?  The terrorists will never know, and that’s the way it should be.

Fear level Yellow: The Banana Supremacy.  Clench your fists and furrow your brows.  Walk around and look like you are about to punch a baby panda in the face.  Don’t say ‘thank you’ or ‘excuse me’ when out in public.  If someone says ‘hello’ or ‘good morning’, do not, I repeat, do not respond at all. At this time we should also begin raising our paranoia level accordingly.  There’s a knock at the door at 2 in the morning; is it the neighbors there to tell you that your house is on fire because you haven’t cleaned the chimney in years and you built an especially crackly fire that evening full of floating embers that caught some of the soot in the chimney on fire before you went to bed in a drunken stupor, or is it one of Osama bin Laden’s soldiers there to blow you and your family to kingdom come because you believe in freedom and they cannot live in a world where you believe in freedom?  Whatever the answer is, DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR!!!

Fear level Orange: Freedom Carrots.  Hold your breath until your face turns red.  Bug your eyes out as big as you can so that terrorists know you mean business. Of course, it’s going to hurt, but so will an ice chest full of grenades that are set to destroy freedom. Adding a twitch somewhere on your body is a nice touch of unpredictability.  Continue not responding to other human beings in public.  If you have to, look down at your phone or Blackberry and pretend to be sending an important text message.  This should let the terrorists know that you are not interested in small talk at all.

Fear level Red: Fruit of the Doom.  Prolonged bouts of shouting and punching the air will definitely scare any would-be bomber off.  Shave the number 53 in your scalp to confuse anyone trying to wreak havoc on your political beliefs.  (53 has no real significance to anything, it’s just another random, crazy tool in your anti-terrorism survival kit.)  Every once in a while you should simply faint so that terrorists understand that you are completely nuts and are to be taken very seriously.  Hopefully, they will then come to their senses and go back to the Christian-less campground that they came from somewhere on Mars.

May I add one more level to this scenario?  Threat/Fear level Black and Blue.  This is where we don’t just sit around waiting for the terrorists to strike, peeping Toms to molest us with their eyes or boring story tellers to lull us to sleep in our own homes, but rather, we go on the offensive and bring the fight to them.  We take the fight to their cities and their dinner parties and their bushes near the windows where we get undressed at night with the curtains wide open. We terrorize them, forcing them to come up with a system that warns their citizens of impending American freedom/justice.  Only then can we declare victory in the war on terrorism, peeping Tom-ism and people who just don’t know how to tell a good story at dinner parties.