I just heard a Christmas gift related commercial on the radio. Gene Juarez salons are inviting men everywhere to buy gift certificates for massages and the like. They ask men to give their significant other the “Gift of Calm.” Personally, I think the commercial would be much more effective if they had Samuel Jackson deliver the sales pitch instead of what sounds like a woman stoned out of her gourd. I think it would go something like this:

This is Samuel Jackson telling all guys out there to get their asses over to Gene Juarez to get your lady a gift certificate. Get her the gift that says, “Calm down Bitch! You tell that bitch BE COOL!” Just like Fonzie man, and what’s Fonzie like? That’s right, Fonzie’s cool. Worst case scenario you get her out of the house for a day so you and your friends can get down to the strip club and then out for some tasty burgers. I’d say it’s more of a present for you; it’s the gift that gets her away from you for a day, and calms her down at the same time. So go get that gift certificate and tell them that Uncle Sam sent you… Oh, and enjoy the strip clubs.

That commercial speaks to me a lot louder than the stoned chick. Hell, seems to me the salon is missing out on a bet by not partnering with a local bar for the guys. You could even toss in a free drink coupon for every $50 spent on the certificate. Take her to the salon, then get hammered… everybody wins. On a completely unrelated note… with ideas like this, how am I still single?

Dear World,

I can actually feel the civilized world as we know it crumbling down around me. When the simplest of social niceties can no longer be counted on by your fellow man, well, it's all over and we might as well head back to our caves. I entered the restroom at work today and found the stall was unflushed... no, worse than that... unflushed and full of shit. The floor that my lab occupies is filled only with adults, and this happened.

WHEN DID THIS KIND OF THING BECOME ACCEPTABLE ANYWHERE!!???? How is it possible that a grown man would simply walk away from that mess? I figure of all places you wouldn't pull that kind of bullshit, the office would be it! What happens if somebody walks in just as you leave? In the immortal words of Travolta, "It would have been worth him doing it if I had caught him." I would have spread the word so fucking fast he would never be able to show his face again.

Sadly this is simply an extension of the direction most public bathrooms have been heading for years. Why do people feel that they can simply destroy a public restroom? I'm not simply talking about not flushing... though that is an all-too-common occurence (mostly in the urinals). I'm talking about pissing all over the toilet seat, or all over the floor around the urinal so that others have to stand in your puddle as they relieve themselves. Has society really been degraded this much? I figured the last time I would see a destroyed toilet would be grade school, but sadly the situation has only become crappier... pun intended.

Forget why a person could do these things for a second... HOW could a person allow themselves to behave this way in public? It's not like you rented a fucking car with the insurance and want to drive it into the ground! You have to repeatedly return to the scene of the crime and look at the consequences of your behavior! Then some poor soul is eventually going to have to hose that shit down. HOW can a person allow this?

Even wild animals have an instinct to be clean. Even dogs and cats have the good sense not to shit where they have to remain! Some even bury their leftovers. Have we as a society become filthier than our pets? Before you answer "no," do you always flush? YOU may very well be the problem!

I shouldn't even have to ask this, but here it goes... "STOP ACTING LIKE SUCH FUCKING ASSHOLES AND FLUSH THE GODDAMN TOILET!!!!! FURTHERMORE, STOP PISSING ALL OVER THE FUCKING SEAT, AND STOP PISSING ALL OVER THE FUCKING FLOOR! I SINCERELY PRAY THAT WHOEVER DOES THIS GETS NUT CANCER AND DIES A SLOW, HORRIBLE DEATH!"

Love,
Bryan

OK, as I was out and about this weekend, the issue of flowers was brought up on more than one occasion. Specifically, it was the question of whether it is a good idea for guys to give their significant others a nice bouquet from time-to-time. Given past experience, I would like to say this to all men out there... "Don't do it! Don't fall into that trap!" I know this sounds cold and unromantic, but allow me a moment to explain.

Men are always taught from a young age that giving flowers to their girl is a nice thing to do, and doing nice things will make for a happier relationship. While this may be true in the short-term, it makes for a poor long-term strategy. Giving flowers is surely a nice thing to do, but it will start a vicious cycle. What cycle is this? I'll tell you... but I think most of you already know. It starts the "How come you never buy me flowers anymore?" cycle. Unless you are prepared to give flowers on a fairly regular time schedule, you should never buy flowers in the first place.

I know this sounds harsh and heartless, but let's look at it from a non-emotional perspective for a moment. You are basically paying good money for a dying plant that will smell good for a day or two. You will have a happy woman around you for a little longer... but as the saying goes, "No good deed ever goes unpunished." You are now on the hook to forever deliver flowers with reasonable frequency or else next time you get into an argument of any sort, she has ammunition. She has proof that you are neglectful and uncaring... after all, "You never buy her flowers anymore." It's much easier to answer the flower accusation if you never bought her flowers in the first place.

The worst part of performing this good deed is that eventually it becomes an expectation. Then even when you DO deliver the goods, it's more of a common thing than a good deed. The more you give, the less it means because you always do it... and that is the suck. So best not to start, then if ever the day comes that you fuck up really badly, you have that ace up your sleeve.

Bonus Rant: I was at the ATM this morning, and the first question asked was "What language do you want?" I hit English, but for some reason I got a Spanish subtitle to every question anyway. Is that really necessary? Why ask what language I want if I'm going to get both anyway? WTF? Are they trying to teach me Spanish for some reason? And why have they dumbed-down these machines? I'll give an example, instead of asking for my PIN number like in the old days, it now asks for my "Secret Code." Was PIN number really too confusing to some people? Did people have a tendency to freeze and not know that this is the point where they enter their four-digit code? WAS THIS REALLY A PROBLEM????? When they put these programs into service, do they really need to make sure that even the most dimwitted fool can use the machine!? I say it's time we stopped catering to the least intelligent among us and started demanding that they wise-up. I'm pretty sure that if we expect more from them, they will have no choice but to rise up to a functional level of competence or simply fade into the background as mainstream society becomes inaccessible to their level of stupidity

Lutefisk may just be the most repulsive food in the history of humanity. For those that don't live near a large Scandinavian population, lutefisk is fish... sort of. In order to make this affront to humanity, you start with whitefish (usually cod), then you act as if you have lost your senses completely. First, you must air dry the fish, and then soak it in water for several days until it takes on the consistency of jelly. As if this wasn't ridiculous enough, you must then soak it in lye. For those not in the know, lye is better used to clean bathroom floors than cook... it has a tendency to turn flesh into soap (literally). After this particular step, the fish is highly poisonous, and would be the equivalent of drinking Drano... so you soak it in water another five days or so to neutralize the hydroxide. Then, you take this nasty, disgusting, gelatinous fish... and steam it. Once it is steamed, it looks, smells, and tastes like rotten, soapy fish. Anybody hungry? Believe it or not, our friends from Sweden, Norway, and Finland eat this shit... and they don't even have to beat themselves over the head with a hammer before attempting to scarf it down.

Now I know what you are thinking... "Hey Captain Jackass, why are you giving me a lecture on this nauseating concoction?" Well, as those following this tale know so far, I had a cannon and some explosives.. but what on earth would I use for ammunition? That's right ladies and gentlemen; this gun was going to be firing a rather unique round. Now all I had to do was acquire enough lutefisk to fill the cannon, and I wasn't about to pay hard-earned money for this gelatinous goo that smells like it came out of Satan's asshole.

There is a city not-to-far from Issaquah called Ballard. Redhook beer made it the location of their first brewery because it is full of fishmongers. Statistically speaking, these fishermen drink more beer per capita than any other city in the Seattle area. While this is indeed a proud achievement, it also happens to be one of the largest concentrations of Scandinavians this side of Minnesota. I figure they drink so the lutefisk goes down a little easier, but on the other hand... it might just make a person want to pray to the porcelain god a lot more.

Whatever the reason for their strong drinking and strange eating, they had lutefisk... and lots of it. The only problem is that Scandinavian fishermen tend to be very large... which is to say they are mostly taller than six feet tall and absolutely ripped. Woe be to the poor soul on the receiving end of that particular beat-down. I was not deterred by this potential ass-kicking, so I plotted to pilfer the largest lutefisk factory in town... my target was called the "Lutefisk Lair." To put it into perspective, the largest lutefisk manufacturer in a town full of Swedes and Norwegians was still only a two-story building made of brick and taking up about half a block in each direction. Not exactly an impenetrable fortress... but (as usual) there was a problem.

The problem happened to be the night-shift guard. The guard was far more dangerous than Huey, Dewey, and Lewey... and far more beautiful. You see, the night-shift guard was a woman named Inga Sirenson... and Inga could have been a model for the Swedish Bikini Team if she so chose. She was about as close to the ideal in beauty that she really had no business keeping her looks behind the wall of a stank-ass lutefisk factor. The trouble was, for as nice as Inga looked, she was (in technical psychiatric terms) absolutely bat-shit crazy. Inga worked the night-shift because she was not mentally stable enough to be inflicted on society during the daylight hours.

I know many of you out there may be scoffing at my claim of a dangerously hot guard, so allow me to enlighten you. Believe it or not, but historically speaking I'm not the only person to have designs on robbing the "Lutefisk Lair." I may be the only one that simply wanted the stinky fish, but others tried to get their hands on loot... lutefisk loot that is. As disgusting as the whole fish-melting process sounds, it is also quite expensive since the EPA got involved with clean-up of all the caustic materials. If you pile on top of that the reality that every single person in Ballard buys some vomit-inducing fish at Christmas, you have quite the jackpot.. assuming of course Inga doesn't get her hands on you. Just last Christmas two would-be robbers entered the Lutefisk Lair. Accounts of what truly happened are a little sketchy because Inga isn't exactly much of a talker, but suffice it to say that both robbers were hauled off to the morgue with broken pelvises, severe internal bleeding, and huge grins... use your imagination.

Make no mistake, I totally intend to breathe my last while nailing a hot Swedish bikini model... but not until I'm a crusty old man. Needless to say, I was a little nervous going in to this particular phase of the prank... could I say no to a hot, horny supermodel? This would surely be my biggest test, and I knew I couldn't go it alone. Again I would need help, so I recruited yet another friend... let's call him... oh I don't know, how about Josh Weltman. Yeah, that works... but certainly not a real name. Stop looking at me like that.

Josh and I made our way out to Ballard on a dark and stormy night. Yes, I know that sound cliché, but in Seattle, pretty much every night is dark and stormy. The Lutefisk Lair stood in the middle of a somewhat industrial area of Ballard, so there was not much foot traffic passing by to see two high school guys dressed all in black and clearly up to no good. We moved as silently as we could in the shadows that reached from the Lutefisk Lair to the alley behind. The back door to the Lair was one of those "Emergency Only" doors that would sound an alarm if we tried to open it, so we had to make our way to the side entrance. The side entrance was not visible from the street, so we had time to pick the lock... but we had no idea how to pick a lock. It seems to me that in every part of this story, somebody at some point has to try to knock in a door... and here we go again... (Hey, it's my story).

Weltman and I lowered our shoulders and charged the door... and we both pulled up at the last moment. Neither of us actually hit the door, apparently we both knew that this was one of those anti-tank missile type doors. So we had to regroup and come up with a better plan. This particular plan involved getting on the roof and sneaking in through a door up there, or perhaps an air vent. Thankfully this was a rather old building and it had one of those emergency stairwells on the side like you see in New York all the time. We made our way up that rusted-ass piece of shit ladder to the second level. (I made Josh go first because I knew he would totally check out my ass if I had gone first.)

The roof of the Lutefisk Lair was dark... and it was still stormy out. We saw a shadow of a doorway in front of us, and we quietly made our way over. As luck would have it, the door was unlocked, and no alarms went off when we threw it open. The door slammed against the wall with an ear-shattering "BANG!" It probably would have been smarter for us to quietly open the door, but we wanted out of the storm. A dark metal staircase stood before us leading down into the bowels of the Lair. There was a faint light at the bottom of the stairs, not unlike a fire. The fire fit perfectly with the illusions of traveling into hell that I had running in my head... and the stench... holy shit dude. It stank of rancid fish wrapped in a mule's asshole and left out in the sun... somewhere a Swede is getting hungry.

We crept down the staircase like two teenagers trying to sneak out for a kegger... but sadly the door slam had already alerted Inga as to the presence of an intruder (stupid storm). We saw the shadow of a very shapely, very attractive woman thrown against the wall.. and we knew we were in serious trouble...

(Sorry folks, you'll just have to wait for the rest... though by my count there are now 6 episodes)

In this world it is a well known fact that high school guys love watching shit explode. It doesn't matter what explodes, just that it gets wasted. High school guys have been blowing shit up from the day the Black-Cat was invented. We laugh in dark rooms about strapping M-80 to frogs' backs… bottle rockets up a cat's ass… good times. As a result, responsible adults everywhere have gone out of their way to make sure that serious explosives don't end up in the hands of mischievous people who would put them to spectacular use… bastards. I only bring up this point because I had a cannon and a plan… but plans can't fire things out of cannons.

I needed something that would provide the necessary power to unleash the most unholy ammunition this side of hell. I knew what I had to do, but I had no idea how this part of the plan would unfold. We have a gravel mine here in Issaquah, and that is where I intended to find my explosives. I knew again that I would need assistance if I was going to successfully "borrow" what I needed for my plans to work. For this part of my plan I enlisted another friend that shall remain nameless… but for the sake of storytelling I'll call him Mark. Again… not a real name, just something I threw together at the last minute.

The mine was a formidable obstacle to my vision of pulling off the greatest prank of all time. The entire facility was fenced in with razor wire, and what I needed was surely down in the pits, and not up on the surface in any of the storage facilities. I figured that had to be true because this story would be very boring if I didn't actually have to go down into the mine. I mean seriously, why bother stealing from a mine if you don't get to go see what horrors lie inside? So Mark and I waited until nighttime when all the workers had gone home, and we made our way past the fence with a little help from my trusty bolt-cutters.

In the interest of fairness, it should be said that Mark announced before our travels into the dark depths that the building marked with the explosive warning on the door was probably a good place to start our search. I told him to stop ruining my story, and we made our way toward the entrance to the mine. It's amazing how mines in reality look nothing like the mines in the movies. I was assuming there would be little railcars, and tracks that we could use to quickly make our way down into the pit… you know, like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Sadly we were not going to be getting into any railcar chases this particular night. I know, I was as disappointed as you are.

So unfortunately we had to hoof it down into the pits. Thankfully we had remembered to bring a couple of flashlights, and we brought extra batteries because everyone knows that flashlight batteries always die right before the really dangerous part. We were not going to fall victim to that particular cliché. So we proceeded into the tunnel system on our way toward the explosives we needed… and could only assume were waiting for us.

As we continued down into the mine, it occurred to me that mines are really boring places. It was nothing more than rock walls with wooden reinforcements and it went on forever. That's a pretty boring walk my friends, and it took about twenty minutes to get to our destination, so I'll do you a favor and skip to the good part.

There was a door marked "Danger! Do Not Open This Door!" We immediately knew we were in the right place. The door also had a skull and crossbones situation going on, which made us all the more curious about what the big deal was. I figured that if something really terrible was on the other side of the door, there would be a better description of why we shouldn't go charging through. So we did what anybody in our position would do… we lowered our shoulders and charged the door. Unlike Mike and Charlie, Mark and I totally owned that door. We hit that shit so hard we ripped it off the hinges as we charged into the darkness beyond.

The stench in the room hit us like a sledgehammer. I mean it was bad, it was like a rancid case of six month old sardines. The floor of the room looked as if it had been painted white by a psychotic monkey on speed. As we lit up spaces in the room with our flashlights, we saw moving shadows that immediately made us think we had stepped into a bat cave. The creatures flying around the room didn't quite look like bats though… they were far too colorful. They were also pretty small for bats, and that's when it hit us… literally hit us… bird shit. We were dealing with canaries, thousands of canaries.

These were not ordinary canaries either, these little bastards were aggressive and had eyes as red as demons. The well picked-over human bones on the ground also tipped me off that Mark and I might be in a little bit of trouble. Right about then I was wishing that we hadn't managed to knock the door of the hinges. The demon canaries started swarming us, tearing at us with their claws and beaks. It was pretty fucked up. While we had planned on our flashlights dying, we had not managed to foresee an angry swarm of tiny demon birds.

Looking back on it now, I have a theory about how the canaries ended up in the mines. Back in the day, miners used to take them down as an early warning about toxic fumes down in the pits… if the canary dies, everyone leaves the tunnel. I figure somebody just left a few of the birds down one tunnel and forgot about them. Over time, they evolved into ferocious hunters, and then they went after the miners. The miners managed to shut them off in one part of the tunnel system, and there they have remained for years… just becoming angrier. I suspect they wanted to keep the whole thing quite, so the miners that got eaten in the initial rampage were simply listed as casualties of a digging accident.

So anyway, Mark and I were up a certain creek without a certain paddling device. Our only defense was swinging for the benches with the pry bars we brought. Canaries were so thick in the air that we couldn't help but wipe out four or five birds with each swing. As many as we hit, we were losing the fight and we were starting to bleed pretty badly. That was when things went from bad to worse… somehow the stench in the room got worse. It was terrible, but an amazing thing happened… the canaries started dying. I looked over at Mark, who had a guilty look on his face, "Sorry, it's that Taco Bell we had for dinner," he said.

It seems that as vicious as the birds had become, toxic fumes still had a strong effect on them. We knew what we had to do… we had to unleash the Taco Bell beast within us. Suffice it to say, Mark and I had been training for this very moment our entire lives. We had the eye of the tiger, and the gas of the taco. Those poor canaries never stood a chance, we had created a fog of killer fumes in that room faster than they could fly for cover. Bodies were everywhere, legs twitching, wings shaking, they never knew what hit them. We left the birds to their fates, and placed the door back on its hinges. We had had enough adventure for one night.

We made our way back up to the surface and paid a visit to the building marked with explosive warnings… and Mark was right. We grabbed some dynamite and made our way out into the night.

I told you the story wouldn't be interesting if we didn't go down into the mine.

To Be Continued...