Summertime Blues

Well, thankfully, the summer is over.

I hate the summer. Nothing is harder to deal with than heat... (If you don't believe me, ask the survivors of Ausch- eh, just take my word for it.)

I know a lot of people hate the cold, but it's not as hard to compensate for.

In the winter you can keep adding layers and bundling up to make yourself warm, but it doesn't work the other way. When you are hot, there are only so many things to take off before you've written your own ticket to jail.

People tell me to just go somewhere with air conditioning - but, come on. You and I both know that an air conditioner are always breaking. They break easier than a hymen.

I can't stay inside and I can't go outside because the sun burns me like a match!

A lot of people go to the beach to cool off, which ironically is one of the worst things about the beach. It's jammed full of hot, sweaty people!

Its not the worst part, though. THAT honor is a toss-up between knowing that setting one foot on the beach ensures you'll be grinding sand into everything you own for the next 9 months and the ocean itself.

The ocean, or as I call it "the bathroom of the sea" absolutely sux! I don't know about you, but I can only take so much of that delightful aroma we know as a mix of fish piss and death.

Some people like the summer because they take it as an opportunity to go on a vacation. Those people are richer than I am.

I was stuck at work for the whole summer, but my friend went on vacation. He sent me some pictures of his vacation that you can check out here.

The pictures are very interesting, to say the least.



That's all I have... click the damn link and check it out already!

Kids Do the Safest Things

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time wondering just what kinda world are we leaving for our kids. I know you're thinking, "Ray, you are so important and generous! Or, you have recently been diagnosed with a terminal disease."

Either way...

I'm not talking about all the war, greed and other shit like that. An even worse legacy is these sterile, rounded-corner, styrofoam boxes we give them to grow up in under the guise of keeping them safe.

I was talking to a 7th grader about what he did over the summer and he told me, "he slaved."

"Slaved?! That sounds terrible,” I say. “What'd you have to do?"

With agony, he explains that he had to spend the summer cutting grass. He was out there 3 and 4 hours at a time!

I try to commiserate, telling him how much I hated pushing that fuckin mower around all day, too. It was the worst! He stops me to point out that he didn't have to push the mower. His family has a riding mower.

Well, they must have really been working this kid’s ass if he said that he spent his summer slaving. I continue, "How many times a day were you out there mowing?"

"Well, it wasn’t really every day. It was more like once a week."

"You sat on a mower for three hours a week… and, just out of curiosity, did you get an allowance this summer?"

"Well, yeah…"

“You basically got paid to drive a go-cart around the yard for three hours a week and you’re telling me that you spent the summer SLAVING!?!!?”

Can you imagine what it's gonna be like for HIS kids?!

"Oh god… I didn't know how I was gonna make it through this summer! I had to make the robot mow the lawn 3 times! I even had to PUSH THE BUTTON twice!!!"

What kinda life are we leaving for these kids?!!?

A few minutes later, I hear that familiar cry of, "Mom," come from the direction of the home office. It's a tone of voice that asks 'hey, are you around, I have a problem that I'm going to shout out to you…'

She calls back "yes" in a way that lets you know she's prepared to trouble shoot, and I hear the first voice say "do you know where my codes are?! I can’t find my word document!"

Did I really just hear that?

Sure, I remember being a kid and asking where things were - but I was looking for ACTUAL THINGS! I was too lazy to walk around the neighborhood to find where the Frisbee! Not to lazy to look around on a VIRTUAL DESKTOP! NOT TO LAZY TO JUST CLICK A FUCKING MOUSE!

We're trying to make a better life for our kids by making life safer and easier, but we're doing them a disservice. We're keeping them TOO safe. Look at the great people: everyone from Abe Lincoln to Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Boy Named Sue! They all struggled and over came obstacles. They all lived lives that, at times, were hard. They all could probably fuck any other historical figure they wanted to!

As a guy who came from a safe-but-dull, white, middle class background - it's a fucking prison! My idea of fine dining is ordering an appetizer AND a meal from T.G.I. Fridays!! The amount of character forging experiences I’ve had is a number just below the amount of sexy homeless people.

And, I for one, promise to break the cycle! I refuse to be a party to this vicious backslide into comfort! If I ever have a kid of my own, I'm gonna drop them off in South East DC, and drive off screaming, "good luck!" knowing in my heart that they'll thank me.*

* = if they live through it...

Let Freedom Swing

In America we love our freedom, but I've noticed some people have MORE freedom to love.

What are you talking about, Ray? Everyone is equal in this country.

Well, look at a guy like Tommy Lee. When he first saw Pam Anderson at a party, he introduced himself by licking the side of her face. Just walked over to her and licked-the-fuckin-side of her head.

That's more freedom than I have! It's not that I haven't ever wanted to walk up and lick a girls face, but I don't have that kinda freedom. You know why I don't but Tommy Lee does?

It's not money or fame... it's because he's got a dick like an aluminum softball bat.

No one even has to KNOW its that big for you to enjoy that kind of freedom! The only person who has to know that is you. Then you can go through life doing anything you want, knowing that its gonna be fine because, in the back of your head you're saying "just wait till she sees it."

Look at anyone you know who really plays by their own rules... Anyone who you really think is free, and I can guarantee that they've got a serpent between their legs.

Look at anyone who just does whatever-the-fuck they want with no regard to other people, consequences or even logic and I promise you that you are looking at a man who's lower body can do an impression of an elephant.

I'm sure this knowledge doesn't exactly warm your heart, but at the very least, it explains why the First Lady is always smiling.

Sense and Scentability

There's a limitless number of things that can (and do) annoy you through out the course of your day. The "witty" bumper sticker/t-shirt... People who think the 12 item limit in the express lane doesn't fuckin' apply to them... Maybe even reading this blog....

But the worst thing on Earth has to be the guy who wears too much cologne. The guy who you know if he's in the building or not WITHOUT EVER SEEING HIM! The guy who showered in Drakkar Noir this morning, yesterday morning and every morning since he was old enough to think shaving made him seem older.

Please note that, for whatever reason, this doesn't apply to women. I used to know a girl that wore enough vanilla body spray to cover a body 15 times the size of hers, and every second of it was delightful. She would come to my house and for literally 4 days afterward the place still smelled like an ice cream parlor, and it was great.

Smelling a girl, any girl, sometimes even a girl you wouldnt fuck if it'd cure cancer, is terrific.

But, having to smell Mr. Too-Strongly-Scented is insufferable. Knowing that his sent, and in some small, disgusting way HE HIMSELF has gotten into your body is revolting. It's violating! It's worse than being raped!

I'm not sure how, but I am sure it is.

The guy who sometimes bathes in whatever mosquito-repellent he calls "aftershave" two or three times a day if he just got back from a round of golf or if he thinks that he can fuck the cute girl at work.

No. Let me rephrase that: when he thinks he's gonna fuck the cute girl at work. Because, invariably, these guys are the office scum bag as well.

Mr. Too-Strongly-Scented could also be Mr. Thinks-He's-A-Big-Wheel... Mr. Thinks-He's-The-Most-Popular-Guy-At-The-Christmas-Party... or Mr. Thinks-He'd-Be-Doing-Any-Girl-A-FAVOR...

You know, the guy who (wither he knows your name or not) calls you "tiger." The guy who will address a 30 year old co-worker as "sport." The guy who calls everone "guy."

This beloved man, the one who seems squarely in a mid life crisis for as long as anyone remembers, with no real sign of stopping. This pillar of the community who thinks that we all need to breath deep and inhale him into our souls, both figuratively and literally.

This man who's arrogance usually knows no bounds... The same one that, if no one was looking, you'd love to just hit in the sternum with an aluminum bat over, and over, and over till he was merely a pile of bloody pulp that we could pour onto a fancy little body and sell as "Musk of Couldn't-Be-A-Bigger-Asshole."

You know we'd make millions.

The Future is Today for Yesterdays Tomorrow!

Take a good long look at a calander... not the part with the Hooters Girl, I mean look at the numbers: 2-0-0-5

We are five years past 2000 and we don't have shit to show for it! What a jip!! We don't have jet packs, ray guns or space suits… We don't eat meals of astronaut food... We don't watch 3-D holograms... We have nothing that the scratchy black and white films from the 50's told us that we'd have!

The closest we came to the future we were promised was in 1998 when the singer from the Smashing Pumpkins shaved his head and started wearing silver pants every day.

What about flying cars, Ray? I can almost hear you say, Flying cars cant be more than a few years away, right? If you think so, then it makes me happy to know that they got internet in Neverland. (I can only guess that Cptn. Hook is charging an arm and a leg for it... well, I'm pretty sure about the arm part.)

If you think this place is ready for flying cars, take a really good look at the sides of the highways in this country. They are littered with cars! You can't spend more than 20 minutes in the car without seeing one broken down on the road.

Now picture that same car, except, instead of just inconveniently rolling to a stop on the shoulder of the highway, maybe in the height of the rush hour commute, on a hot, sweaty summer afternoon...

Picture that same car falling out of the fucking sky!

We can't handle this kinda responsibility. People in this country won't even stop to find out why their check-engine light is on! You think that they're gonna take the time to clear a flight path to 7-11?

The sky would burn with people on their way around town who felt that they didn't really need to climb to cruising altitude. Hell, they weren't even gonna be in the air but for 36 seconds - who would know if they didn't follow the rules?

Flying cars?! We still cant get a real alternative means of transportation to fossil fuels! In out lifetime, the best we can hope for is a car that runs on something other than gasoline that won't get you called names for driving it!

I would love to have my own flying car, but I know that in our lifetime they will be parked in the sky right where they belong - next to flying pigs, Wonder Woman's Invisible Jet and unicorns.