Sprinting to Hell

I believe I’ve mentioned before that I dig midgets. I don’t care what you say, or how gross their weird little hands are, midgets are hot. Everyone I know who’s had sex with a midget says they are friggin’ magical creatures in the sack, probably sent by the gods to reward those men who were brave enough to try and get to know them in the biblical sense. Kind of like whoever got to taste milk for the first time. It might not immediately strike you as pure genius, but once you start gorging on mozzarella and cheesecake, and you see how much better cinnamon toast crunch tastes doused in milk as opposed to whiskey, or blood, or whatever they used before milk, you realize that juice from a cows tit might not be so nasty after all. Long story short, if you don’t think midgets are hot, you are a coward, and Zeus thinks you suck.

So what lead me up to this point? I’m glad you asked. Well any Tom, Dick, or Harry probably sees midget porn eventually. Guys, don’t lie, this is a safe zone. You’ve all seen a ton of porn, and dollars to donuts you came across a little person shacking up with a normal person at some point in your internet meanderings. Ask any fifth grader about midget porn and they will tell you, the most famous midget porn star is Bridget Powerz, or Bridget the Midget.

Alright, well she may be a pioneer in her industry, and I can’t say no to tattoos and dyed hair, but seriously, in all of Gods wide creation you would think somewhere there’s a much hotter midget who’s willing to bang strangers for money. I mean come on, that’s got to be the easiest job ever, and it pays WELL! If you’re stuck with a physical disability, why the hell not? Are you afraid you’re going to look stupid? (snicker snicker) Is Bridget the best the Lollipop Guild has to pimp out? For realz? Dude, cause much like my attraction to big women, the attraction isn’t without limit. I mean, midgets are only hot if they are actually hot. You can’t just take any random midget with a freaky gremlin face and call it sexy. No way.

Once again Jerry Springer, the ultimate white trash hero, has come through for me with the hottest midget who’s ever lived. She’s a stripper, she’s an aspiring porn star, she’s a stage performer at various night clubs and metal music festivals, a real renaissance girl. I’m absolutely fascinated by this little chick, she’s cool as shit. Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, without further ado, I present to you, hailing from the wilds of Columbus Ohio, Kat the midget! (massive standing ovation, fireworks, confetti, and sperm killingly loud heavy metal rock and roll guitar!!)

There’s really no need to explain why this is cool, but just in case any of you conservative religious folks out there are wondering why your pants just got tight, let me point out a few of the things that may be to blame. First of all, she has on a spiked collar. Why is this hot? Cause it fucking is, what are you retarded? Second: Billy Idol sneer. Anyone who’s waist high on average folks, half naked, and prancing around on stage in front of a bunch of drunken giants, and still has the balls to bust out a Billy Idol sneer is sexy. Third: Fishnet stockings. Any guy who doesn’t think fishnets are hot is clearly sexually incompetent, and should probably go play with his pecker until he figures out what it’s for.

Fourth: although not showcased in this particular outfit, she’s got a pot leaf tattooed on her hip. Does it get any cooler than a midget smoking pot? Honestly. Maybe like a cyborg ape-man, who follows you around and cooks you deep fried steaks filled with nacho cheese or something, and let me know when that happens in real life, cause I’ll be all over that too, but for now all we have is a midget who strips and smokes weed and loves heavy metal. (as if that’s not enough) Fifth: tattoos and multiple facial piercings. This is not a flawless indication that she’s a freak in the sack, (some women are boring no matter what they look like) but odds are, you’re at least headed in the right direction.

I can hear you now. “But Josh, you’ve shocked and offended our delicate sensibilities. You must be some kind of perv. According to the FCC and our pastor and/or priest, midgets are either children with giant heads, or demonic freaks, and neither of those should be turned into pieces of meat for you to lustfully leer at you sicko. You probably rape kittens while you worship the devil in your communist labor mill run by starved orphans!” Well that’s for me to know, and you to wonder. Cause this is the internet, and as far as I’m concerned, nobody can tell me what to do on here. I mean, do you think midgets don’t deserve a little lovin’, no pun intended? Do you? Do you think they should be put through life with not only the burden of being physically abnormal, but also confined to a lifetime of loneliness and self gratification? Do you think they should be treated any differently than normal sized folks? Not so cocky now are you? Well if they should be treated like normal folks, I’m going to try my best to get the hot ones drunk and naked, and possibly love them up, cause that’s how you’re supposed to treat women.

Anyway, Kat, if you ever read this, cause I assume you read every blog ever posted just in case someone ever mentions you, you rock the casbah, and if you ever come to Raleigh, North Carolina, I’ll be there throwing dollar bills at you.

I had one of them redneck weekends you might say. The kind where I simultaneously wish I had photographic evidence of what I did, and am grateful I don’t. I could tell you all about it in story form, like round a camp fire or whatever, but in the spirit of good redneck fun, I’ll just share it with you in one liner, Jeff Foxworthy format.

If you’ve ever gone to a housewarming party for your buddy, at a trailer on a dirt road in the middle of farm land on the edge of your county, and already known just where that road was, you might be a redneck.

If you’ve ever got drunk and seriously thought about stealing a pony, you might be a redneck.

If there are more leashes tied up in the yard than there are dogs owned on that property, you might be a redneck.

If you’ve ever chased tequila with tequila, you might be a redneck.

If every girl around looks real pretty till she smiles, you might be a redneck.

If there are three or more barefoot children running around your screened in porch, playing in the water you’re using to keep the beer cold, and none of them call their mom’s man daddy, you might be a redneck.

If all the ladies ask you for your recipe for the dip you brought, and it’s store brand salsa and store brand cream cheese mixed together, you might be a redneck.

If you’ve ever driven your tow truck to the mailbox so you didn’t have to walk down the drive way, you might be a redneck.

If you’ve ever picked you morning beer based on how easy it would be to throw up, you might be a redneck.

If you’ve ever trespassed on ranch land with your brother, to scout for a good place to bang your woman, and ended up coming back home with a bag full of deer bones, you might be a redneck.

If you’ve ever trespassed a second time, with a rake, to find more deer bones, to glue to your kitchen bar, you might be a redneck.

If you’ve ever argued about the price of recycled copper, you might be a redneck.

If your breakfast consists of everything you had for dinner, plus eggs, you might be a redneck.

If you’ve ever seen your sister in law hit a liquor bottle with a baseball bat, and it hit the boat in your brothers back yard, you might be a redneck.

If you’ve ever repainted a drill so your good neighbors wouldn’t recognize it as the one your crack head neighbor stole from them, you might be a redneck.

If you’ve ever said “now she needs fuckin!” about every single female guest on an episode of Jerry Springer, and meant it, you might be a redneck.

If your response to a story about incest is, “well, it happens” you might be a redneck.

If more than one woman has made fun of you for eating squirrel, you might be a redneck.

If you’ve ever cut down a tree with a sawz-all and an extension cord tied around it, you might be a redneck.

All true stories in one liner form. And now for a little red neck entertainment. For your viewing pleasure, I bring to you, all the way from the farthest reaches of internet land, the one, the only, Ray Stevens! (if you aren’t familiar with Ray Stevens, go look his ass up, cause he’s hilarious in a very old school southern way)

And how about a face melting southern rock band that jsut doesn’t give a fuck about you or anyone who isn’t down with dixie land? Here you go:

Holy crap the updates I have for all of you! I sincerely hope you’re interested in topics such as missing pieces of my body, wild animals and carrion, and too much information about my sex drive. Of course you are, who isn’t. Put on your wading boots people, cause this is some deep shit.

First of all you will notice I am not in jail/prison tightly clutching a bar of soap as I lather my face. This is because the legal system in America is about as speedy as every other government system in America. Apparently I’m just dangerous enough to seriously fuck with, but not so dangerous that it’s a big priority. Nice comfy middle ground, aka justice limbo. So until late May I’ll still be around to occasionally post frivolous bull crap on the internet when I’m not too busy acting like a love struck retard with Em. (which is all the time, thank you very much) Also, if any of you seem to be bored (although experiencing this after high school has proven to be a bit of an urban legend) and you want a nice brain teasing time waster to pass the hours/days/weeks (without sleep or bathroom breaks) here’s a slightly addicting game that Emerald showed me called Chain Factor. You should be able to figure out how to play it pretty easy. If you need help, you are a tard and should not be playing brain teasers, or reading my blog, cause this textual outlet of mine is obviously intended only for the extremely highly intelligent.
Speaking of intelligent, I recently became well acquainted with a little stretch of Old Garner Road. In an attempt to make it through a changing green light so I would not be late for work, (that light is on a pressure plate and doesn’t sense when I’m there, and due to it’s proximity to the train tracks, other vehicles are often less than keen to pull up behind me, leading to 10-15 minute waits) I went over some rail road tracks at a slightly faster than anticipated speed, immediately banked hard left for a turn, happened across a poorly placed patch of loose sand and rocks, and promptly wrecked like a banshee. I’m assuming banshees wreck on their left side breaking their fall with their forearm. Don’t worry, the road was fine. And surprisingly the scooter was fine as well, minus a few scrapes down the side.

Following traditional man code, I immediately jumped up and pretended like nothing had happened. In my haste to get back on the road I did not stop to check and see if the traffic stopped in all directions had noticed anything or not, but I think I pulled it off pretty well. So anyway, after a day or two I kind of got sick of taking care of my little arm scratch and ceased any and all cleaning/bandaging. WebMD informed me that “school-age children ages 5 to 9 are most affected” by scrapes, and clearly being a fucking gnarley bastard with an armor-like man pelt, I would not need any of the candy ass medical froufrou they recommended for children, women, and the elderly. Here is the progression of how my healing process went down.

First you can see I am all bandaged up, and strikingly rugged and handsome. Please note that my money maker, as in my face, is still intact. All you ladies can breathe a collective sigh of relief. This bandage situation did two things for me. First it gave me a new found respect for medical tape and it’s abilities to not only stay on tight through a night of sleep and a day of sweaty, dirty work, but also to rip your hairs off at the end of said day of work. Second it gave me this idiotic looking bandage tan line cause I was outside the entire next day. That would be when I quit wearing the thing.

Now you’ll see the next day as the raw skin starts scabbing up. Please note the interesting pink and white color of the deeper road rash, along with the rock cut lines going through it. I thought that was the coolest part. I’m not sure exactly which layer of skin looks like that when you expose it, but I’m assuming it’s the one right next to the bone.

It was this point that my manstincts took over and I started just fucking around with it. I had my birthday, (yaaaaay me!) and that lead to happy booze times, which led to me doing absurdly abusive activities like dousing it with vinegar and beer, and getting sprayed with a fire extinguisher. (that last one was actually at work now that I think about it, and had nothing to do with booze) All care for and protection of the wound ceased, and today (one week later) I noticed it was rather odd looking and squishy. After a bit of field surgery I found that bubbly squishy scabs mean they’re floating on a bed of (presumably infectious) pus. I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure that’s bad, so as JT would say, I’m bringing bandage back. Here’s what it looks like now.

You will note the big ass opening in the scab in the bottom left and top right. That would be me and my wicked awesome/reckless field surgery skills. I’m not really sure what that face is all about, possibly I had eaten a super lemon, or been riding on top of a jet fighter all day.

In unrelated news, we have foxes. Well, technically we don’t “have” them, they just pass through the yard, but that’s pretty close as far as wild foxes are concerned. Having now observed a fox fairly close for the first time, I’m not sure where the term “foxy lady” came from. I can however attest that foxes are both nimble and cunning. We put out some chicken for them, and the fox that came through ate some, and hid the rest scattered all over under the leaves in the woods. Fucking smart ass little dog if you ask me. And they can speed walk down fallen logs and shit. Even tiny ones. Anyway, foxes are cool. I also saw a hawk that got a squirrel. Hawks are cool too. And I saw a chicken hawk, which should really be called a chicken eagle, cause that thing was huge. Among the less cool sightings: mosquito’s, still-friggin-pollen-season, and of course, sweat. I didn’t really miss sweat over the winter, but of course I’m kind of sick of cold with no snow, so I’ll deal with it and take what sun I can get.

I believe I mentioned too much information about my sex drive. I just made that up. There’s no update as far as that is concerned. But I’ll wish you all happy hump day anyway.

Alright so I’ve been out a while and have been too busy to blog. Well I’m back with a vengeance and ready to roll up my sleeves and pound out some hard fucking core blogery for you. Actually, I have nothing important enough to fill a whole post, so instead I’ll just jump around randomly.

First of all, apparently I’m the only guy who thinks muffin tops are sexy. I like curves, what can I say. I like my women squishy, and a muffin top is a flashing neon sign that lets everyone know just how squishy a chick is. I like thunder thighs too. And belly buttons, and boobies, and big fat asses. Especially belly buttons. In fact my women tend to get annoyed with me because I constantly poke their bellies and their love handles. I can’t help it, I just like my women fluffy. Tight clothing is hot, chubby chicks are hot, showing skin is hot, what’s not to love? We as a society need to embrace our chubby girls and not encourage them to become skinny bitches. Like we don’t already have enough of those. Has anyone seen Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen recently? Holy crap, eat a sandwich girls. That’s right, one for each of you. You would think with millions of dollars they could afford FOOD.

Gaaaaaaah! Thay’re hideous! Make it stop! I had such high hopes they would turn out to be incredibly hot twin adults, but instead they wasted away into some sort of Somalian famine victims. I’m sorry, but when did celebrity life in Hollywood turn into Auschwitz? Here’s what we do, we find some brave doctors, and fuse them together into one normal sized woman. House would do it, and he’d make us laugh with his gimpy, stoner antics.

Next topic: why does New Jersey suck so bad? Seriously,what the hell is wrong with people from New Jersey? I work with a yankee from Jersey, and he’s a cocky pain in the ass every day. I work with another guy from New York, and he’s the shit, so it’s not that I hate yankees in general. My biggest problem with Jersey folks is their union attitude. Like you got hired to do just your job, and you should never be expected to do anything else. Bull shit ass hole, you get paid more than anyone else here because of your fucking CDL. You do an easy fucking job compared to us, and you only do that marginally. If you’re sitting around the yard with no deliveries, grab a fucking drill and help fix some shit. “But that’s not what they hired me to do!” Fuck you, you’re getting paid aren’t you? Then whatever we need done is what you got hired to do. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of lazy people in the south, but you just don’t usually find this whole it’s-not-my-responsibility attitude as much as you do with union workers. I can’t stand unions. If you can’t pull your own weight, go the fuck back to Jersey. Damn!

In the spirit of hating New Jersey, check out this site dedicated to New Jersey douchebags. In fact, upon searching the internet, it would seem there are a ton of people who hate Jersey just as much as I do. Why is it New Jersey anyway? There’s no old Jersey. After a brief search I found this site, all about how much driving in Jersey blows chunks. And here’s a fellow who came up with five reasons why Tennessee is better than New Jersey. Way to represent for Dixie land buddy. Apparently, New Jersey is so evil that even their squirrels are toxic. In fact, apparently even other yankees hate New Jersey, as evidenced by this fine gentleman from Manhattan:

I would love to see Gigantic Pennsylvania deal with the Jersey blemish on Americas pimply face, except as a former Pennsylvanian yankee myself, and with dearly loved family members still living in PA, I kind of hate to see Jersey and Delaware taint the state. I think we should just turn Jersey into a huge garbage dump for the rest of the country, and all the people living in Jersey can form one giant trash workers union and sit around telling each other they won’t move that pile of shit cause that’s not what they were hired for. Also, what the fuck is up with their love for donuts? Seriously, put the Dunkin Donuts down and do some sit ups fat ass, cause down here we eat biscuits for breakfast.

Next topic: furries. What the hell is wrong with furries? Look, I like weird people, I really do, but dressing up like a stuffed animal, and scrogging other people in weirdo mascot outfits is fucking bizarre. And it’s creepy. Not to mention their unnatural love for anime. Dude, I hate anime, it’s the lamest possible thing a full grown person could possibly spend their time on. Not only that, but they are creepy as shit. They combine children’s toys and sex in a way that borders on pedophilia. And while we’re bordering on fucked up sexual preferences, how about bestiality. Say no to furries! Go play tummy sticks somewhere else freaks. And please everyone, remember to get your neighborhood furries spayed or neutered, so we don’t get any more.

Last but not least here’s a baby in a microwave, two dogs fucking, and a Hitler joke.

I’ve been trying to think of a good way to segue into my real topic here, and apparently when it comes to matters of significance I get writers block. I’ve thought and thought about how to say it in some cute, romantic, snarky, comical way, but I’ve come up with absolutely nothing. So like I always do when I can’t disguise my real feelings with a smoke cover of juvenile comedy and filler adjectives, I’ll just cut the bull shit and tell y’all what’s really going down in my life. I’ve fell in love.

Take a minute to think about how just a few wrong words can change the meaning of what I just said. I fell in love. I fell in love with a woman. I fell in love with a woman from another country. I fell in love with a woman from another country, that I’ve never even touched. (with my wang) See how quick that goes from romantic, to complicated, to perverted. When you limit your communication to written words you have to be careful to say exactly what you mean, cause it’s easy to read my words how you would say them, and not how I would say them. But it’s hard to misunderstand “I fell in love” when I cut out all the superlatives, cut out any catch, cut out any bull shit. The fact is that I fell in love, so come with me on my little journey through how this miracle came to be.

Y’all know the story of how I got here in the blogging world by now, at least the readers who’ve been with me for a while. If you haven’t, I’ll sum it up right now. My friends showed me Ask A Ninja, which linked me to YouTube, which got me interested in the internet for the first time. I then started my own YouTube channel. Then my friend Steph (can’t find your link Steph, hit me up and I’ll edit it in) showed me a post by Sundry, which somehow through a family and parenting content based blog got me interested in creative writing, which I’ve always loved. Then after a year or two of reading her blog, I decided to try my own luck at it.

So then through a series of links, which to this day I still can not retrace, I ended up at The Queen’s blog, which linked me to Talea’s blog, thanks to her hilarious title, and from there I linked over to Emerald’s blog. Now I realize this was a complicated route, but at this point I suddenly stopped and took notice. On October 23′rd I read her blog for the first time, and I was struck with this incredible attraction to her personality and the way she expressed herself through her words. This girl was obviously something I would have to check out a second time.

Here is Em in all her buxom beauty:

Here is an exact transcript of the first sentence I ever said to her: “Despite my general distaste for the Indie scene in general, I loved your account of the evening. I wish I could get this post drunk and seduce it into a one night stand that ends awkwardly but still leaves both parties gratified.” Clearly, I was on my way to seducing her, by insulting her taste in music, and forcing myself on her post. (a gratifying sort of force mind you) I followed up this comment with these quite romantic words, if I may say so myself: “And take pride in how many people you pissed off. They were probably the bald deuche bags that blocked traffic with their charitable buggery. And forget about the grammar. Grammar is for class work and science articles. This is teh facking interweb noobs. Mother fuckers don’t have to grammarize shit if they don’t feel like it!” Wow, I can see the cornerstones of a solid relationship falling into place even as we speak. What sort of pillow talk should I woo her with now that I tried to date rape her post and cussed in four fake languages? “I like chicks with balls. (not actual balls mind you, the metaphorical sort of balls that don’t clutter up the paradice city that is the ball-less vagina)” Sometimes I amaze even myself. If you are a woman, or a homo man, please try and abstain from telling me how incredibly hawt I am right now, cause I know, and redundancy is repetitive and shit, I don’t need that. I’ll gladly accept money, or a child named after me. Shrines work too. (photo evidence needed)

But anywho, I started some discreet messaging between Emerald and myself, or possibly she started it. I can’t remember now. But I got a Facebook account to talk to her, and the other lovely Toronto vixens of course, but mostly her. At the time, both of us were in no way looking for a relationship. In fact, at that point I don’t think I had even seen a picture of her beside those ugly ass Halloween pics she posted, with the whole botched abortion costume. (gross, check them out) So I came to be friends with her, after getting out of a very disappointing relationship, feeling like shit, while she was still in some rather complicated relationship activities of her own. And we just talked like friends, sharing what we had been through, and what we were going through. Slowly but surely this grew into an undeniable attraction and bond between the two of us.

We began sending not only comments, but also long letters back and forth every day. This turned into two long letters every day. And then she convinced me to get on her IM network, and we began chatting some in the evenings. And then it turned into one long ass (as in has to be split into two letters to send) letter every day, and I would come home during lunch to talk to her for half an hour, and then rush home afterwards to talk to her for another half an hour before she got off work. (no internet at home, just yet, soon darlin) Then it bacame the letter, the lunch chats, and links, and several hours in the evening, with her staying after work just to chat with little old me. And we talked like people.

We skipped that first awkward few months of dating, because we had no time or use for any of it. There was no weird dress codes or date locations or activities. We just talked like people. Like peers. There was no awkward first kiss. There was no awkward first sex. There was no awkward feeling out of the other person on every level. We just talked like humans. We were irresistibly attracted to each other and we both knew it and neither of us really was going to say it. Because as you may know, or may even be thinking right now, internet relationships aren’t as real as face to face relationships. Well I’m here to tell you they CAN be much more authentic and heart felt. I never had any reason to try and pretty up my looks for her, she accepted me just as she found me. I never had to dull myself down one bit, cause she jived well with the things I poured out of my heart, just for her. I shared things I’ve never shared with anyone else. And likewise, she opened up to me. And we both loved what we saw.

Now let me just say right now that we are not completely compatible. There are things in our lives that are in total opposition. Our views on politics are dangerously opposite. But we recognize that and try to allow each other the freedom of will to choose whatever we like, without letting it cause arguments. She swings left, I swing right, and as far as I see it, though I can’t speak for her, I think we’ve both influenced the others views a little bit by explaining why we believe what we do. We come from different countries, from different cultures, her from the city, me from the country. She’s a Canuck, I’m a rebel flag waving, Dixie Land red neck. But we get along not agreeing on these things. She’s a vegetarian, I worship meat. But she respects my love for the tastiest food on earth, and likewise, I respect her choice not to eat meat or harm any creature. I expect her to respect my free will and not (try to, as if anyone could break my stubborn streak) force me to conform to her standards and beliefs. I’m not her puppet or pet. And likewise, she expects me to respect her choices, her beliefs, and her views on life, and I do my very best to do just that. We love each other for who we are, and not for who we want the other person to be.

And not only do we respect each others differences, we celebrate them. She has this zest for life that is hard to explain if you haven’t experienced it. We just yesterday had this conversation about living. Not living as in existence, but living as in to the god damned fullest with every breath you have left and every fiber in your being. She told me that she doesn’t want to live with me, she want to LIVE with me. And I just about jumped for joy, because I had never told her this, but I feel the exact same way. I don’t want to grow boring with someone, I want to live the greatest adventure in history with someone. I want a woman who will constantly challenge my thinking, my behavior, my intellect. I want a challenge, and she does too. I don’t want to sit down and watch Everybody Loves Raymond for the rest of my life, I want to go jump out of a fucking airplane while having premarital sex in the sky and playing the lottery and starting my own business, and possibly before I hit the ground, I’d like to learn to knife fight bears. I want a partnership where we accept the differences we have, but never accept anything less than the most the other person has to offer. Maybe we’re naive, but I’m lovin’ it like McDonald’s never dreamed of. And I’m having it my way like BK never though possible. (not to imply that anyone working at BK is capable of thought, of course not)

But in all the important ways (because face it, politics and what kind of food you eat are not that important, so fuck that shit) we are a perfect match. We believe very similar things about spirituality, and the meaning of life, and major religions. We believe similar things on society, and culture, and status, and all the things that go along with human interaction. We believe similar things on having fun, and being yourself, and our future together. We both have this vision of what our tomorrow holds. We both see us visiting each other, and us figuring out a way to make our lives work together. I love this girl so fucking much, it makes me dizzy.

Before I finally worked up the balls to tell her I loved her, I was hardly sleeping. I was a total wreck. I was afraid she would do like the other women in my life, and leave me unexpectedly, and my heart would be broken. So I wrote this long ass, super poetic, retardedly romantic letter to her letting her know how I felt, and then promptly forgot to send it, and my sister in law closed the window. So I just fessed up like a real man and told her straight up how I felt about her. It was scary. It was almost the death of me, But it was also the moment I learned she loved me too, and as much as I wish I could have maybe said it a bit more eloquently, it just got blurted out in frustration and stress, and then a huge wave of joy and relief passed through both of us. We knew, this was not just some internet crush, like in my post. This was something we are both working towards every day.

She knows all about my legal problems. Much more than I’m willing to share with you, my kick ass blog readers. I love you guys too, but not the same. She knows all about my alcoholism. She knows all about my bad skin, and my low income, and that I will probably be locked up very soon. (tuesday maybe) She knows things that no other person had ever known about me. Sometimes she even knows things about me that I haven’t shared with her, or am even cognizant of. And likewise, I know her burdens. the fact that she is willing to look past these HUGE disqualifiers is heart wrenching for me. I am so in love with this woman, after all this time, that I’m actively looking into immigrating to canada and finding a job there, and hopefully making a new life for us as a family there. I am more than willing to leave my close knit family, my awesome friends, and everything I’ve ever known, even my country to just have a shot at making things work with this woman. She’s not my girl, she’s my woman, and there’s a difference, cause this isn’t fucking puppy love, this is the only time in my life I have ever been so happy, and the only time I’ve ever taken big risks to secure my future.

We have never met in real life. I have never held her. I have never kissed her. I’ve never smelled her. I’ve never got a look at her poon tang. This isn’t about sex. It isn’t even about looks, since we started talking before we even saw each other. This is about me and another soul falling deeply in love, and not giving a fuck about popular opinion. Speaking of which, it’s your turn to make this subject yours. I want to know what you feel about internet relationships and their validity. Don’t worry about insulting either of us, we’re absolutely cool with your views. Whether you think it’s good or bad or fucking retarded, tell us what you think. I’ve heard both sides a lot. My brother Nate is tired of hearing me talk about this girl all the time, even though I’ve never met her. My sister in law is already as in love with her as I am, possibly about to steal her. My work friends think I’m an idiot, since my last relationship was long distance, and I got burned on that one. I’ve had people tell me “if you haven’t done the dirty, she isn’t really your girl!” Not true, and we will, as soon as I get out of jail, ad save up some money to go visit. For now, there’s no chance. And on the other side, I have my two best friends Kenny and Rachel, who met online and are now happily married. And I waited a long fucking time to see Kenny meet a girl who was right for him, and I couldn’t be happier with his decision. So I have both the good and bad represented in my personal life. Now that the secret is out, and y’all know Em is my woman, let me know honestly how you feel about it.

I love you so much baby, and you mean the world to me. Just to make everyone gag a little bit more, love and hugs and kisses all over! <3

As you may or may not know, I served a 24 hour sentence over the weekend. And much like I expected, every aspect of it was unpleasant. It honestly wasn’t as bad as I remember, partly due to the fact that I’m a little older and bigger, and partly due to some new rules that help keep general order, and partly due to the fact that I’m no longer some eighteen year old honky punk with a mohawk. Crowds of big angry black men tend to frown on mohawks and other such blatant displays of cracker-ness, so this time I spit a little ebonics at them and mostly just kept to myself, and everything went smoothish.

Let me just preface this story by saying that it is a very very unnatural feeling to purposely walk into jail and turn yourself in. It goes against every anarchistic, criminal bone in my body. All I wanted to do was jet the hell out of there and make them find me to lock me up. But I have things in my life I want to live for, so I chose not to flee to Mexico to work as a cabana boy for rich horny widows who live on the gulf. I’ve got a good job, and I want to go to college, and I have a new relationship with an amazing woman, and so I fought my natural urge to fuck the system, and turned myself in. Try and avoid this situation in your own life if at all possible, because I assure you, it’s no fun.

Anyway, I walk in the front of the jail, actually, before I even got there I saw a familiar face. Sitting between the two main doors to the jail was a homeless man I was locked up with in 2003. He was about as hammered as hammered can be, and briefly shouted something unintelligible about money or god blessing me or some such bull shit, and I walked on past him. It’s hard to look a homeless man in the eyes after you’ve seen him masturbate under a sheet, that’s all I’m saying. It changes your outlook on that person forever. I guess he was trying to be enough of a nuisance that they would lock him up over night, cause it was cold and rainy. I don’t know, that’s all I saw of him.

So there’s a line all the way across the lobby for the weekenders. These are mostly probation and parole violators, and they come in from Friday night to Sunday night. Well, there were a million of them, and so I got myself ready for processing as I waited. I removed my laces, turned my phone off, counted my money, (exactly zero, fuck those stealing ass guards) and generally tried to look vicious and scary, just in case any of the weekenders felt like starting some shit. I didn’t get in any fights though, so it must have worked. When I finally make it up to the front of the line, they can’t find my paperwork. As far as they know, I’m not supposed to be there at all. There was a brief moment of hope there where I thought I might not have to do my time, but then the womans supervisor found my information, so I got to go through processing extra fast. I always thought it was only supposed to be hard getting out of jail, but apparently getting in is just as much of a pain in the ass.

Processing extra fast simply meant I got to sit in a holding cell longer. It was funny how quick I started shifting back into my jail mentality. There’s behavior and a general mindset that would not be appropriate on the outside, that you have to adopt to fit in well on the inside. Like, I have to adjust my speech somewhat to communicate with all the blacks. It’s funny because if you have one black guy, you can usually talk to him just fine. But if you get a whole bunch together in one spot, their whole behavior changes, and all of a sudden you can’t speak in complete sentences or you’re a cracker, and you have to start slinging out all sorts of retarded slang and dumb up your accent or else you’re just another honky. It is actually pretty frustrating, because black men in jail are the most racist ass holes in the world, but you damn sure better not let anything racist slip out from a white guy, cause they easily outnumber all the whites and hispanics three to one. And little things like watching the girls getting arrested march past us all cuffed together. I had only been in for a few hours, and already it felt like I hadn’t seen a woman in a year. It’s kind of bizarre.

So after about five hours of sitting in that stuffy ass cell smelling like bad breath and cocoa butter, I finally got called out for the infamous strip search. If you’ve never had the pleasure of a strip search by a corrections officer, let me tell you, it’s pretty weird. There’s the whole arms straight out thing, and the ball lift, and the old squat and cough. Homeboy in the uniform got quite the show that evening. And after they dressed me out in my allegedly clean, orange and white striped uniform. Last time I stayed there they gave me sandals that were about ten sizes too big. This time I got leprechaun sandals. It was ridiculous. But I was on my way up to the sixth floor, yellow pod, and I was going to get some sleep at long last.

I went out on Thursday night to celebrate my last evening of freedom with my friends, and ended up getting maybe three hours of sleep, then working through a hang over. So by the time they actually got me into a pod, it was around midnight, and I was pooped. I was the first one into the jail, and the very last one to make it upstairs. The reason you would want to get upstairs faster is not so you can enjoy the company of the general population, but rather so you can get a good spot for your mat. I did not. There was one spot left against the wall, but this black fucker was taking up two spots, so I told him to move his shit. We argued for a minute, and eventually I let him keep his spot. Because I don’t need any time added on for fighting, and I was going home to eat real meat and potatoes, and he wasn’t, so let him keep his precious double spot for my 24 hours. It wasn’t worth it to me.

About four or five of the friendlier weekenders from the holding cell had been thrown in the same pod as me, so that was nice. And of course you have the first fifteen minutes or so of the long time prisoners shouting at the new guys. they want cigarettes, but I informed them that the guards were very thorough in their search. There was only one place they didn’t check, and nothing that came out of there was any good for smoking. It’s kind of loud in jail at night. Half of the inmates just stand at their doors and shout at each other. Some of them rap, some sing, some snore away. I learned how to sleep through noise a long time ago, when I came in the first time, and I had absolutely no problem tuning them out and sleeping like a baby.

Six o’clock rolled around, and I briefly got up for what they called a breakfast. More along the lines of an appetizer, but I guess beggars can’t be choosers. And again, I slept right on through to lunch, when I briefly got up for what they called a bologna sandwich. Again, light on both the bologna and everything else. I will say this for them, Sheriff Harrison has enforced a new one hour lock down system every time the inmates get fed. This means that we are allowed to come get our plates in groups, instead of a free for all, like on my first visit. All the prisoners with cells have to eat in their cell, and all of us without cells have to remain on our mats for the entire hour. One person can go to the bathroom at a time. This eliminates all the food trading and stealing and fights that would break out over the food. They feed you so little, that everyone is always hungry, so it was a big problem before, but now it’s much safer.

After lunch, I got up and watched some TV. Wake Forest stomped NC State, because let’s face it, as much as I love state, they suck at everything. It’s ok wolfpack, I love you anyway. But I don’t particularly care about jungleball, so that was pretty boring. Really, everyone was just super excited about the Duke/Carolina game. Holy shit, now there’s a rivalry. I hate them both, and I hope the whole building collapses and kills both teams and State rises to victory, but I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen. (I didn’t actually watch the game that evening, I went home)

The jail time ended on a rather pleasant note. That dickless, double parking, cotton picking son of a bitch who wouldn’t scoot his punk ass over actually had the balls to ask me for my food at dinner, since I was getting out in a few hours. I told him to go fuck himself, and that I was giving all my food away to the two guys next to him, and they would let him know just how delicious and filling it all was. Ha! Sweet revenge! So that was pretty much it. After dinner I processed out and went home and showed my mother how to set up a flickr account and how to start a blog. Teaching my mom how to do things on a computer is a whole different kind of jail time. Sheesh, that woman is technology impaired. So that was my little jail experience, how did your weekend go?

My mother is a wonderful woman in many ways. She carried me for nine months and brought me wrinkled and screaming into this world in a painful and disgusting process I would rather not think about. I owe her a debt of gratitude for that. And after the whole being born incident, she continued giving to me in many ways. She donated a significant amount of milk towards my continued existence. There was the whole ordeal with learning to use a toilet, which is a serious sacrifice by any stretch of the imagination. She taught me to read and write, and to count and add and subtract, and eventually even multiply and divide. She taught me how to cook. She taught me how to do laundry, an art I still haven’t perfected. (I’ve donated towards charity many of my belongings that mysteriously shrunk to the point I could no longer fit into them. I suspect magical foul play) All in all, she’s taught me a great deal of what I know today. She did not however teach me how to drive. I love her, but the woman can not safely handle a moving vehicle. Honestly I don’t really trust her behind the wheel of an immobile vehicle. She’s what I would consider a typical woman driver.

Now I would like to point out that I am a huge fan of women. You have many things to offer society such as intelligence, striking inner strength, a nurturing nature, and boobs. And there are women out there who are perfectly capable of driving in a controlled and non-maniacal manner, however, it has been my observation that 95% of women out there are horrible drivers. I’ll be the first to admit that women are not the only bad drivers on the road, but in all honesty, you scare me. When I see a woman driver I try and steer clear, knowing that at any time her gender handicap might take control of the wheel and send her careening on a path of carnage and destruction. You haven’t looked into the eyes of death until you’ve let a distracted woman drive you around. As suddenly as a Florida thunderstorm, the pleasant spring drive you thought you were on can transmogrify into a horror fest of shoddy lane changes and erratic stop and go mind fuckery.

I would ask that all women who drive vehicles please either stop doing so, or pay fucking attention to what you are doing. If the car you’ve been driving for five years still confuses you with it’s simple controls, that could be a sign to let a man drive. If you still have to stop and read the traffic signs in the neighborhood you’ve lived in for say, three weeks or more, don’t leave your driveway. Stay at home and try not to kill me. If you drive a school bus, this does not mean you are the king of the road, it means you are supposed to drive well enough to carry in your hands the lives of thirty or so children who may or may not have futures to look forward to if you can’t remember that the tires on the right side of your vehicle are farther out than the ones in the Camry you drive at home. Those lines painted on the street are there to help guide you, try and keep track of where you are in relation to them. If you miss your exit on the highway, please don’t stop on the side of the road and put your car in reverse. You are only begging to end your blood line. Continue on to the next exit and turn around like an intelligent, educated person. And lastly, put on your make up at home. I’m not even joking about that, don’t fucking do it in your car, or I will make it my life goal to donkey punch your dumb ass. Stop it.

You may be wondering why i feel it is my job to educate people on how not to be fucktards. Well the simple answer is that I drive a scooter, and the odds of me surviving on the roads with bad drivers are significantly less than they were when I was driving in one of those bigger thingymabobs. You know the ones with steering wheels and safety belts and airbags and the like. Cars I believe they are. At least in a car I had some metal to stop the crazies from crushing my fragile body into people paste. On a scooter I have exactly one helmet to cushion the impact. And after the initial car meets body scenario, I get to become reacquainted with asphalt. I realize scientists have conjured up with many amazing upgrades to the road ways of yesteryear, but I assure you the pavement is just as hard and abrasive now as it was when you were a child.

“But Josh,” you say, “you are so incredibly good looking, surely a few scars would only make you more rugged and handsome, a true sight to behold!” Yes, it’s true. I do look incredible, and scars only make me more irresistible to women, but actually getting them, especially in the face area, is a rather unpleasant process. I mean, Jesus took extra time chiseling this face out of granite, you wouldn’t want to deface his art would you? Would you want to piss off Jesus? No, I didn’t think so, so drive carefully. “But Josh,” you say, “you have the body of a Greek God, surely a little tumble wouldn’t phase your Herculean physique.” Yes, it’s true. As a matter of fact I have already lived through one such incident. Back in the day, I was driving myself home from my job as half mayor of kickassville, half male model, and some rednecks decided to have a little fun with me. They ran me off the road, and I promptly lost any and all traction in the gravel on the side of the highway. I was traveling at approximately forty miles per hour. For those of you who use the metric system that’s approximately fast-as-shit. It doesn’t really matter how fast you’re going, hitting the ground from a standing position hurts. I’ve got some wicked scars from that incident. So long story short, I know what it feels like to survive a wreck with no protection besides a helmet, and I’d like to leave my personal experience with using rocks to remove my face at it’s current status. No more road tumblin’ for me, Let’s leave the tumblin’ for the weeds and the bedroom shall we. Learn to drive people.

Several other things have pissed me off lately, and I will gladly inform you of what those things are right now. Look, I understand that if you are a high school drop out with a vague-at-best grasp on English (that means you, Ebonics speaking mother fuckers) I understand it may be hard to find a good job, and you may have to seek employment at the grocery store I’ve been going to for the last decade. I’ve seen many of you come and go in that time. However there is no excuse for not knowing how to use the register. You scan something, and then move on to the next item. For items like produce, someone who actually knows their head from their ass has programed the computer sitting in front of you to help you identify those objects using pictures, since clearly learning the actual names of food (in proper English) is far beyond your grasp. Just one time I’d like to make it through the express lane with my three items without waiting fifteen minutes while Shameka goes and gets her manager Lavonda to help her figure out what all those weird curvy lines mean. They’re letters idiot, and together they form words and sentences. Try and keep up, I don’t have all day. And please use protection next time you are sleeping with every guy you see, because clearly you shouldn’t be reproducing. Also learning how to count to one hundred might come in handy since making change is part of your job. It’s not hard, we’ve taught horses to count, even you can do it.

If your eyes point in different directions, I’m allowed to stare at you. If your ass squishes out eight inches past your hula hoop sized belt, and you take up more than two chairs, I’m allowed to stare at you. If you are severely scarred or deformed, I’m allowed to stare at you. If you kid is retarded, I’m allowed to imitate them. If you hair is fake, I’m allowed to point and laugh. If people can’t tell if you are a man or a woman, I’m allowed to say “it’s Pat” and laugh like I just came up with that myself. If you are more than forty years old, or two hundred pounds, and you leave your house without a bra, I’m allowed to grimace and make saggy boob movements. If you’re a man and you swish when you walk, have a salmon colored shirt on, or clearly do stuff to you eyebrows, I’m allowed to make gay jokes in public and throw my wrist forward in the universal homo-gesture. If you are too old to walk at normal speed, I’m allowed to cut in front of you at any time. If you don’t hit your children enough to shut them the hell up when they are in public, then I’m allowed to yell at both them and you. Hey, they can yell apparently, and so can I, but I do it better and louder, and I’ll teach them words you’ve never even heard of. If the office people get fancy coffee shit, and I have to start work an hour before them, then it’s my right to take their coffee shit and use it for the guys who do real work every morning. You can buy some star bucks with all that money I keep hearing about. If you dress like a slut, I can treat you like one. If you act like a bitch, I can call you one. If you talk about shit you don’t know anything about, I can call you out, I would expect you to do the same for me. If you approach me in a parking lot and talk to me about Jesus, I’m allowed to send you to meet him. and lastly, if you don’t know me, you don’t get a cigarette, or any change, (sorry Em, I know how you feel about bums, but I just can’t do it) you may however have the time, which is always “time to get a new watch”.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a convicted felon. What I haven’t talked much about was the life changing experience of being locked up in the Wake county jail for ninety nine days. It may not have been prison, and it may not have been that long, but I certainly consider it one of the experiences that has most impacted who I am and how I view the world. Please allow me to share with you my memories of the time I spent on the inside.

I committed my crime while blacked out. I had drank eight shots of Jagermeister, approximately, and had a mixed drink, and also drank a little over twenty beers that evening. I am not going to go into the details of my crime, my story for you starts much like it did for me, waking up handcuffed in the back of a police car with the lights flashing, and a full force of other cars and officers milling about in their typical cocky, I’m-the-fucking-shit policeman way. My immediate reaction was one of general panic and confusion. I hate the pigs anyway, and clearly I had had some sort of confrontation with them which I couldn’t get away from. As my eyes cleared, and I blocked out the pounding pain in my head, I began to take further note of my surroundings.

I was chilled and shivering, my jacket nowhere to be found. When I sat up and twisted my arms behind my back I noticed my shoes were also missing. I had no idea where I was, or what had transpired to land me in the back of a police car in the middle of what appeared to be ground zero for some sort of mass murder scene. The sheer amount of law enforcement on site suggested some serious shit had gone down.

When I got to the police station, still drunk out of my mind, they explained to me what I had done. I didn’t really think my crime was that big a deal. Certainly not one that would warrant a force capable of defending the fucking Alamo. And like the cock sure little bastard I am was, I began talking pure shit to the pigs in the station. Although funny as hell, it was quite possibly the worst thing I could have done in that situation. Over the next eight hours as I was processed through the Garner station, I gradually sobered up some and one by one battered my way through every emotion on the spectrum. Things were beginning to sink in, and I could feel a mental cage quickly closing in on me. There was nothing I could say or do that would stop me from getting locked up for a long time. And I cried. I felt sheer fear and helplessness sitting there in cuffs, just waiting to be thrown in a box with the worst criminals my city had to offer. I broke down at that moment, and all my fear and rage and raw emotion came out in one base expression.

By the time I actually made it to the jail house and got processed I was painfully sober, and feeling the full effects of a Guiness world record hangover. Blow in this machine son. I coughed and sputtered on the verge of vomiting. Look at the camera boy. My eyes screamed against the flourescent lights. What were you thinking punk? What does the law allow us to charge him with? Fuck you pig. Fuck you.

I sat in the holding cell for another twelve hours. Who could I call? My family was on vacation in another state. They wouldn’t be back for several days. My room mate never checked the answering machine. The work office never answered at all. And no one I knew would accept a collect call from an inmate. I was alone, and scared. I tried to get some much needed sleep on the bench, but it’s designed to be uncomfortable. My jumpsuit was scratchy and simultaneously restricting and unnecessarily loose. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t rest. The lights never go off. The concrete walls echo every scream from every inmate, every mechanical door slamming itself shut, every time an impatient ass hole beat on his window to get the guards attention. Each thug scum bag would eventually ask me why I was in. “None of your business” was my only response. Time came to a crawl, and I waited, craving a cigarette, occasionally throwing up the water I drank. Slowly, I waited.

And soon enough the next shift came in and rounded us all up. We were shackled at the wrists and ankles and led up to each of our new homes. I got third floor green pod. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. The guard led me in and told me to find a spot to put my mat. Forty some odd pairs of eyes stared at me, none friendly. I scanned the pod to see how the mats were placed and look for an open slot. There was a full house that night. Every cell was full, and every open space between doorways looked to be taken. I just stood there glaring at the room, trying to look strong, but feeling very small.

A large white man with a shaved head hollered at me to come place his mat beside him. Even laying down he was a big fella, and he seemed to be in excellent physical shape. On first glance he appeared to be meaner than than the devil himself, but upon closer inspection his eyes betrayed a genuine kindness that somewhat reassured me he wasn’t too dangerous. He showed me how to tie my sheet around the mat so it would stay in place, and how to roll up my extra clothes and supplies to put under the mat for safekeeping, and to provide a makeshift pillow-like lump.

A voice came from behind the door next to me. The face in the shadows asked what my name was. Well it turns out the mystery man was in fact a dealer named Chuck from Woodland, a semi run down neighborhood inhabited by a notoriously rough criminal crowd. Mostly white trash skater kids who grew up poor and gnarley. I wasn’t close friends with Chuck, but it was still good to see a familiar face, especially among the predominantly dark meat that certainly wasn’t looking like they were going to be easy to get along with. We caught up on old times and played some cards under the door for a while, then went to sleep.

The next morning I was introduced to my first state provided breakfast. Let me assure you, the government does not provide anything near good food, nor do they provide it in large quantities. I believe it was cold grits, one hard boiled egg, a thimble sized helping of some kind of sausage, (the term sausage is being used very liberally in this situation) and some toast.

I’m looking forward to having my current legal troubles over and done with. This has all been going on for so long now that I just want to bring it to an end and deal with whatever they give me. I’m ready to serve time if I have to, but I sure as hell don’t want to. I know I can survive on the inside, but I’d rather not. Until you have been locked away for a few months of your life, you probably don’t appreciate all the freedom you have. Today I get to sleep in a dark room under real blankets. Today I get to choose what I eat, and when I eat it. Today I don’t have to keep one eye on my mat at all time so my personal belongings don’t get stolen. But this afternoon I may not be so lucky.

So I start my day with hope, because that’s really the only thing you always get. There used to be this hawk that roosted somewhere around the jail house. I named him Mo the Hawk, and to me he became my personal symbol of freedom. I would sit at my window and watch him fly around for hours. He was my hope, that one day I could be free like him. No matter what happens to you in life, no one can ever take away your hopes and dreams. The hope that I can be free. The hope that I can educate myself and make a successful life for myself. The hope that somewhere out there is a girl I will fall in love with one day. These are the things that give me the strength to push on through the hard times in my life. In case I don’t talk to any of you for a while, keep hope alive my friends. They might shackle my body, but they can’t chain down my soul.

I’m gonna tell y’all a little about my drug dealer. We’ll call him Frankie the Weed Man. Now Frankie and I have been close friends for a very long time. We know each other very well. And good old Frankie just got himself a new house. Well, it’s not a new house, and it’s not really his. He has three other room mates, but you get the idea, he just moved in. And Frankie is a younger fellow, so this is the first time he’s lived away from his family. I’ve kind of been procrastinating about going over to visit him. There’s no easy way to get there on my scooter. It’s either balls to the wall speeders on highway 40, or it’s pissed off rednecks in gigantic trucks down little old skinny ass, crazy winding Old Garner Road. Either way spells probable death for yours truly. Plus I’ve been busy as hell anyway, between work, studying, chores, alcohol classes, and spending way too much time on Facebook and looking at porn, well I’ve been pretty well swamped for time. But he came over last night and told me I had fifteen minutes to get ready, cause we were going to hang out at his house. So I got my ass off MSN messenger, cleaned up a little, and hopped in his car to go have some fun.

Now, I don’t really need a good weed connection. I’m what you might call a light weight. But as any of you who have spent any time purchasing drugs will know, dealers tend to be kind of like Cheech and Chong. They get really into their pot scene, and sometimes go a bit overboard with it all. First of all, on the way to his house we stopped at a country gas station for some booze. Since he’s underage I told him to chill in the car while I got my Budweiser, and of course he promptly forgot all about it and walked right in to buy some blunt papers. It’s a small store with these ancient country folks running it, and they know we came in the same vehicle, especially when we end up right next to each other in line. So Frankie gets his mango-strawberry-cool whip-hickory smoked blunt wraps, or whatever those freaks have come out with this week, and the old man is just scowling at him like he ran over his dog or some shit. He’s clearly one of those old school baptist country boys, who frown on things like smoking weed and getting drunk and saying fuck really loud when you accidentally knock over a bunch of beef jerky. Anyway, old man river is looking right pissy when I set my twenty case up on the counter. He just scowls at me, not saying a word. So I scowl right back at him, and very very slowly pull out my wallet. We have our little stare down and then the transaction continues and I walk the hell out of there before he goes vigilante justice on my ass. Me and frankie laughed about it on the way out. Apparently he was giving the old man a hard time too. Surly bastard.

Anyway, so right before we get to his house he warns me not to have sex with Blondie. Now, I’ve never met Blondie before, so I appreciate the lookout, but normally I pretty much trust my own judgment on what sort of strangers I meet at my drug dealers house I want to sleep with, and which ones I want to avoid. (mainly all of them) So I asked him why exactly should I pass on Blondie’s tang if it was available. Apparently she has herpes. Good call Frankie, I’ll make sure to never ever bang that chick. Close one, sort of.

We go in and flick on the lights and he tells me that none of his room mates are home right now, but one of their moms is going to be stopping by later for some pot, so not to freak out if she showed up unannounced. I thought I could manage that. Now this house is a very old farm house. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a hundred years old or more. All the rooms have weird angles. It’s full of those twists and turns, and surprise nooks that you only find in old houses that have been built on to over the years. And it turns out that this house is also racist. No joke, the living room is covered with murals of old plantation life. At first glance it just looks like some pleasant pictures of people riding horses and having picnics. But then you look a little closer and all those people are rich white folks. The rest of the mural is black slaves leading the horses back to the barn, and I’m not kidding one single bit, picking cotton. Bahahahahaha! Cotton picking slaves! That’s so horrifically politically incorrect that it blows my mind. I can’t believe no one has painted over it in all these years. It’s clearly been there for a very long time.

So we head on up to his bedroom, and I’m telling him how I love old houses. He said he liked everything but the ghosts. “Ghosts?” Well apparently there’s some sort of cellar where he thinks black slaves were tortured. I think he’s just been smoking too much reefer. So he whips out his bud, consisting of several very large bags of different grades, and picks the one he wants to pack up Camel Tits with. (Camel tits is a zig zag shaped bong with a picture of a camel that has tits for humps) Now, I haven’t smoked out of a bong for years. Like I said before, I’m a lightweight. So of course upon hearing this he packs up his hairiest heady dank, and even pulls out some dank crystals he had been collecting from his dank only grinder. Skip ahead a few minutes as Frankie is hollering down the hall at me, “if you’re gonna puke do it in the sink! The toilet leaks into Nicks room!” I didn’t puke, but I did take one hell of a dank ass bong hit, followed by a few more. What the hell right? I mean life is short, I might as well have some fun with my dealer. Who needs functional lungs?

So he hands me a purple marker and tells me to draw something on the door paper thingie. After closing the door to get to the back side I was greeted with a big sheet of paper across the back labeled “door paper thingie”. Me thinks I have found what I was looking for. I started drawing a dragons head, but quickly realized that dragons drawn in purple are inherently non-badass, so I gave up on the whole gnarly death lizard thing and gave him black-face lips and a corn cob pipe. At this point I notice the naked chicks at the top of the door. “Sweet, nice pussy dude” was my first reaction.

Now I did not know it at the time, but apparently these two posters of fine young women putting on display what the good Lord had given them was more than just two posters of naked chicks. Turns out it’s their secret gay test. Apparently Frankie and his room mate across the hall have had some guys come over and they weren’t sure if they were ….. digging in the oyster ditch or playing the meat flute, so they devised a gay test that was a secret between the two of them. They would seat said individual on the couch facing the door and casually swing it shut. If their first reaction was something about the ladies, they were straight. If they didn’t say anything about the girls, they were fags. Not that they hate fags or anything, they just like to know. But I passed. I asked Frankie if he had to deal with a lot of gay folks and he just laughed. Apparently right before he had come to pick me up he had accidentally found a butt plug at one of his gay clients houses. I can’t write down his reaction because it was just a long series of faces and guttural sounds, but let me assure you it was funny as shit. Kind of like Earnest P. Worrell.

We had some really funny stuff go down, and I can’t even remember all of it, mostly because of the dank bong hits and the beer, but just a few more stories of interest. I saw my first hydroponic setup. They’ve got a wicked little grow room hidden away in part of their roof. And they’ve got a bunch of little seeds germinating from five different kinds of dank strains. I am excited to see that take off. He had another bong he called the Nintendo. Probably like myself you are wondering why they named it that. Well apparently it only takes cartridges. If you don’t know what cartridges are, don’t feel dumb, neither did I. Apparently you roll up a blunt, dry it out, and cut it into four pieces. These can be inserted into the slider on a bong, and give you four hits or so of premium blunt flavor. And each little section of blunt looks like the cartridges that Spider man uses to shoot web. Cool name but lame application. I hate blunts. I think they taste like dog shit and should only be smoked by the ghetto ass urban bitches who came up with them. I think respectable potheads should smoke from pipes and bowls and bongs and shit, and limit their rolled up smoking to joints like God intended, but apparently I’m the last person on earth who thinks that, so too fucking bad for me. (I don’t like 50 cent either, and I think corn rows look retarded) Plus it’s almost impossible to pass around a blunt with half the people you-know-what lipping it. Bah! I hate blunts.

He had a tit ball. This is even more kick ass than whatever you are thinking of. Imagine a rubber ball filled with some sort of liquid, so it jiggles like a tit. And on one side, is a nipple. It’s all painted to look like a human tit and everything. And they invented a game to go with tit ball. Basically you have to make a basket out of your hand and keep the tit ball jiggling, then pass it back and forth. Whoever drops it, or accidentally stops jiggling it looses.

So anyway, we had gone down to the kitchen for some more beer, and I asked him where this torture dungeon cellar was where apparently he had said they got their ghosts from. I mean, you can’t just tell me you have a haunted dungeon under your house and not show me the damn thing. He opened this door that lead down to the cellar, but the light wasn’t working. So he went off looking for a flashlight to show me. He couldn’t find one. So instead we pulled out our lighters and headed down the staircase into the pitch black cellar. You could feel the cold air blowing past you as we descended the rickety stairs. I had to duck to avoid hitting my head, and the bottom stair was broken, which I found out right about the same time I found out the hand rail was only barely attached. In the blackness I could smell that stale dirt smell that really old cellars have. There was a light bulb, but it was blown out. It was a short room, looked to be the size of the house, but honestly I couldn’t see more than seven or eight feet ahead of me with the tiny flame as our light.

The ceiling, built low to begin with, was made even lower by the air ducts that had been added onto the house some time after electricity was invented. You had to stoop over to walk around, and old cobwebs hung from every beam and duct. The house above us creaked and groaned from the wind, complaining of old age to anyone who would listen. Frankie lead me to the back wall of the cellar where there was a door built into the block wall. It appeared to be a very sturdy door, with those old hand wrought hinges, and a large metal beam that locked it shut. It was stuck in place, so Frankie had to push on the door as I slid out the cross bar, in the dark since neither of us could use our lighters for this. I set the bar up against the wall and pulled on the door. It was heavy, and groaned at me as I opened it. One of the air ducts had been placed close to the door, so it only opened enough to barely fit one person in if you squeezed. Frankie told me this is where they had kept the slaves who were bad, and tortured them when they tried to escape. So I held up my tiny flame and peered inside, but saw only cobwebs and falling dust from the door. So I put my flame hand in first and slid my body in sideways between the door and it’s frame. I stood there just inside the tiny room, trying to make out images in the flickering light. Right then Frankie screamed and grabbed me.

I am not going to lie, I hollered something awful loud. He got me good on that one. There were never any ghosts. The lights worked just fine. He had actually brought it all up at the beginning of the night trusting that my own curiosity would eventually lead me down into the basement for a good scare. One day I am going to own a house with a creepy ass basement and scare the living shit out of people all the time. It was priceless. And the lighter part, that was pure genius. I should have seen it coming, in fact the thought had crossed my mind that he was going to try and scare me when we got down in there, but still he completely surprised me. The timing, the scenery, every part of that practical joke was executed perfectly. So here’s a tip of the hat to Frankie the Weed Man for scaring the crap out of me, I loved it dude. That was like watching all two hours of the Devils Rejects for the first time, except cramming all the fear into ten seconds. Cheers you hilarious asshole. You’ve got it coming.

Good old Emerald, being the daughter of Rock and Roll incarnate, has recently mentioned how much she hates the suburbs. And that’s all good, except almost every memory I have is from the suburbs, where I’ve lived my entire life. So in todays post I want to address some of the pro’s and cons of Suburbia, the land of manicured lawns and one thousand drug stores.

First off I want to say that I can’t speak for all of the suburban sprawl across the planet. I realize that there are vastly different cultures in vastly different areas, and that will have a big impact on how life in Suburbia is for you. But I will tell you about my own experiences, as I saw them, in my little slice of Earth culture.

I was born in Florida, not that it matters much. I only lived there as an infant, although I spent a good deal of my childhood living there on vacation with my extended family. After Florida, my family moved to Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. More like the city of filth and crime. And even there we were in the suburbs. I remember some great memories from my life in Philly, but I also remember the constant threat of city violence and crime. It was livable, but not really good. I remember the snow the most. We had this kick ass park with what seemed like a gigantic hill that got covered in snow every winter. We weren’t allowed to play there by ourselves, but I remember sledding on that hill all the time. I still miss snow to this day. Also I remember this pizza joint in our neighborhood. Every time we went there this old Italian yankee dude would greet us and take our order. He remembered our names every time, and I’ll be damned if that wasn’t the best pizza in the whole freakin world. I mean this family could cook up some delicious shiznit. Fo sho. But that’s about all I remember about living there.

So my family ended up in Raleigh, North Carolina. This is where I have almost all of my memories. All my life can be summed up in the suburbs if Wake county. And I don’t really think that’s a bad thing. I had a lot of good memories in Suburbia. So here’s some of the good and bad things I remember from living here.

Something about Suburbia has always felt really weird, like it shouldn’t exist in real life. It’s always had a certain Alice in Wonderland feel to the entire experience. The way the carefully landscaped lawns and gardens laid across the land like checkerboards at night. Rabbits and cats prowling the shadows and the occasional night bird. Fairy circles in the grass, and the symphony of a thousand cicadas trying to drown out the crickets and frogs. The flickering orange light from the street lights, illuminating empty streets occupied only by the occasional dog walker and cop, and of course the random scurrying societal misfit sneaking hither and thither on some black market mission. That’s why I always liked taking a lot of drugs and wandering around at night. My favorite was hallucinogenics, but you can take whatever you like the most. It’s all fun. I recognize this may be perceived as a bad idea, but I wasn’t ever in any danger, except from the ever vigilant pigs. There are a lot of cops in Suburbia, but you can artfully dodge them if you know you neighborhood, and have two licks of common sense. Trust me when I say that cops are much, much less intelligent than criminals. (me at least) If you can get away with it you deserve to. And boy did we. Almost every night in my later high school years, I would carefully slip open the window, ease my body out into the hot air of the night, and hit the road for some nocturnal suburban chemical voyages.

The general hub of travel for our neighborhood was South Garner Park. (that’s right, South Park) Located between the two subdivisions next to ours, it had a seemingly endless array of dark forest paths to escape through. All the bad kids would eventually meet up in this park. And at eleven every night a police officer would drive in, scope the place out, and lock it up so no cars could get in. After then you were safe. We climbed the soccer goals, threw rocks at the lights, raided the shack for candy, started fires. Whatever destructive activities our minds could come up with, we could do it, and all whilst higher than a fucking kite. And if the cops ever did show up, none of them knew the paths well enough to run down them at night. Even with the added advantage of flashlights, we could out run the cops in the dark. At one point we constructed this massive, MASSIVE fort in one section of woods between some trails. I mean, the walls were made of logs dug into the ground and placed as vertical posts. The exterior was camouflaged so well that even in the winter with no leaf cover, you still couldn’t see the damn thing from twenty five feet away. We carried some benches into it, along with a cooler and some lawn chairs, even a grill from the park. We had a fire pit. It was awesome. I couldn’t ever find it without help, since I was absent during the construction phase. But I had this friend named Scott, and I would follow him down these forest paths at night, only barely perceptible patches of moonlight sifting down through the branches to light the way, and he would simply glide down the path. Scott was a kind of creepy guy anyway, because besides being extremely large, and having green hair, he almost never spoke. Still to this day getting him to say more than three words is like pulling teeth. But Scott would silently, I don’t know how to explain it, levitate through the woods for a few minutes, then suddenly stop at some secret marker, and walk right into the forts secret door just a few paces away.

Eventually though, we started getting cars and could branch out and find newer, cooler places in suburbia to fuck around. There was a closed down strip mall about ten minutes up towards Raleigh, and all the bums lived in the woods behind it. At the time, the only thing that was open in the mall was a black night club, and it was only open at night. So we would head back to the loading docks out of view of any pigs and skate around getting drunk and having fun. Occasionally we would have to chase off some homeless fucker who thought the sheltered dock belonged to him, but usually we would leave each other alone.

We discovered this dirt utility road that lead back into the woods on highway fifty. It wound past a condemned house that had been grown over, and around to this really sweet pond in the middle of the woods. I guess the city built it there to access the water lines that had man holes farther on down the road, but at the time we just hung out at the pond. I didn’t discover the man holes till a few years later when I slept in my car at the end of that road for a month or so. But this pond was completely hidden from all view. No houses around at all. And it was just as pretty as you could ever ask for. The duck weed grew thick and healthy, and the woods looked pristine, even though we were really just between developments. We rolled some concrete pipe down the road about a hundred yards and made a trash barrel so we could keep our new spot nice and clean. We called it “the cut”. But eventually word started to spread that there was a new safe place to pull off a car and smoke up or get drunk with plenty of people, and the city chained off the road. Too many dip shits found our secret cut, trashed the place, and brought the heat.

I remember the first time we climbed the towns water tower. It was located right behind one of the police substations, so you had to be really careful. Well, we should have been really careful, but we didn’t really give a shit back then. We would steal the antennas from the police cars and give them to our friends. They get really good reception I hear. For some reason stealing antennas from in front of a police substation on the historic main street seemed perfectly safe, but screwing that sucker on my own vehicle seemed way too risky. Once you parked your car and snuck back to the lot, you had to get in this huge fence with barbed wire. But the idiots who locked it up left enough chain to slide in between the gates. Then you had to turn a palate up on it’s end to reach the bottom of the ladder. And someone had to carry the beer up, usually a 24 pack. That was harder than it sounds cause you’re climbing hundreds of feet straight up a ladder. Maybe thousands of feet, I’m not sure, I am what you might call a ground person.

It gets scary at about thirty feet, cause you realize that if you do fall, you will probably get killed. Once you get up above the pine trees you can see out across the town, and your arms start to get a little tired. Then you realize that if anyone above you on the ladder slips, you’re probably going down too. When you pass the tree tops, the wind starts to pick up and whip at your body. Somewhere around fifty feet before you reach the top, the ladder actually starts to lean out a little, so you’re climbing up a ladder waaaay off the ground, carrying 288 ounces of beer, leaning back, and your arms feel like they’re going to give at any minute. Sometimes people would panic right about here and just freeze. Not cool. But somehow we made it all the way up and back down every time. We’d sit up there looking out for what seemed like the whole span of the planet, sipping our beers, pissing down on the trees below us, and staring out at the moon and stars and the big buildings over in Raleigh.

Eventually the cops caught on that we were fucking around there too. Again, too many dumb fuckers making too much racket and tearing shit up. We had a few close calls where we had to hoof it from the police. They never caught us climbing the tower. But eventually this dickless sack of monkey shit narked out me and my two little brothers by name, alleging that he was meeting us there later that night for a big drug deal, which wasn’t true. They stationed two police cars at each of the water towers in Garner that night. It just so happened that one of the guys in my car lived on that tiny road that went past the police substation and the water tower. When we went to drop him off, they pulled us. That was on Independence day, 2001. The police were so proud of themselves for catching such vile public enemies. That was the first time I ever caught a charge, possession of an alcoholic beverage by persons under the age of 21. If I ever see that rotten mother fucker who narked out me and my brothers to try and save his own ass, who made up some bull shit and had three fucking separate police stings going to catch us, I swear on my fucking testicles I’m going to stomp a mud hole in his ass and walk it dry. Snitches get stitches Brandon fucking Stancill, and if I ever find you, you’d better have a fucking gun, cause no amount of kung fu or muscles is going to stop the tirade of hate I rain down on your sub human ass. Fuck you, you wigger bitch.

Ahem. Sorry about that.

I suppose that pretty much sums up my life in the suburbs. If we need anything special, you can find just about anything you want up in Raleigh, Durham, or Chapel Hill. We didn’t have all the crazy shit people living in big cities have available, and that meant we often had to find our own ways to have fun, but we were good at that. Because kids in the suburbs are often a lot of fun. I had many more good experiences than bad. I met a lot of good people, and only a few scum bags like Brandon. Sure, in the suburbs you can’t ride the subway, but that means everyone owns a car and therefore has more mobility. And maybe if you get a craving for falafels at two in the morning there isn’t any place to get them. But this is North Carolina, there aren’t any places to buy falafels in the first place. If you get hungry in the middle of the night, and you don’t feel like getting off your ass and cooking, then just head on down to the Waffle House, or the Country Kitchen and grab some good old fashioned souther cookin. I promise the tea will be just as ice cold and sweet as you can imagine, and the waitresses will be gnarled and burly country women, just like they should be. We may not have the Broadway nights, but you’ve probably never tasted any shine. And we may not have huge museums, but have any of you downtown big city folks ever picked psilocybic mushrooms from a cow field fifteen minutes from your house? I can be in the capital building in twenty minutes and feed deer in the back yard every night. I can head to Raleigh and watch the Carolina Hurricanes stomp your asses for the Stanley Cup again, or I can head the other direction towards Benson for Mule Days. Nobody gets to have everything in their life, and sometimes I wonder what it’s like to live in a huge urban metropolis, but honestly I really love the suburbs, and I really love the south. I’m happy with my place here on earth, and if you don’t like it, you can kiss my rebel ass! (no offense Em, I’m not directing that at you, even though you inspired this post. Although if you really got the hankerin’ for a little booty smooch, well, we could play that by ear)

Now in the spirit of doing stupid, crazy shit, just for fun to pass some time in the suburbs, (like right before the Super Bowl for instance) here’s a few pictures of me riding my scooter while holding a pirate flag stapled to a pick axe.

I realize this is probably the most bad ass thing you have ever seen. Mr. Redshirt felt the same way about it. Please note that I am clearly standing up while driving downhill at top speed, with one hand, and no helmet, with not only a pirate flag in my hand, but a skull and cross bones on my Lynyrd Skynyrd shirt. I apologize if you just came in your pants, I assure you that was not the only purpose of this photo shoot.

I really liked this last photo. It was actually a crappy shot of me riding around in circles in the cul de sac, but you can see the entire family of red necks sitting across the street watching me screw around. I kind of like to think of my beer fueled antics as a public service, curing the boredom epidemic. Have a nice hump day, or plague day, whatever you call it.