August 9,
2002: It's Always Something / Random Random Shit
As like two or three of you know,
I'm about to finally escape Mississippi and move halfway across the country
to the golden promise land (compared to here, at
least) of Norman, Oklahoma. In part, it's a holy quest to try and turn my visor-wearing
Jay-Z worshipping brother back from the Dark Side, but mostly, it's an escape
from a rotten shithole of a state and I figure, at 22, I really should have
moved out of my mom's house a long time ago. Anyway, the last week has been
a lesson in just how many things can go wrong. Granted, it's mostly my fault,
as it involves stuff I should have done weeks ago, but this is America, and
in America, no one's responsible for the consequenses any of their own actions.
Or something. Anyway, it started innocently, as I took my trusty, rusty, old
1977 Datsun 280Z (the semi-rare "2+2" model as well, biatch) to the
garage down the street to get them to make sure it was road-worthy for the upcoming
trip it would have to take if I couldn't get a U-Haul van to tow the thing there.
After walking a block home, I called the local U-Haul place to get a quote on
what it would cost to rent a truck and a car-towing trailer thingy to make the
trip. The total, which I expected to be a paiunfull 250 bucks or so ended up
being in the more fatal $530 range. No good man. At this point, it became apparent
that the trip would have to be done in the Z-car. Okay, no reason to panic.
If we have to, we'll rent a trailer and one of those tow bar thingies and pull
my shit up there if it won't all fit. Later, me and my mom made our way to the
airport in Jackson to pick up my brother, who was basically coming because my
mom didn't want me driving 500 miles alone and I didn't know the way anyway.
About an hour away, my mom get's a call on her cellphone. "Uh, did Lukie's
(Yeah, that's what thy call me sometimes. Fuck you) car break down somewhere
on the highway between Merigold and Mound Bayou?" "Uh, no, he took
it to Charlie Miller to get it trip-checked." "Well, Jeffrey just
drove by there and he saw it parked at the side of the road, and he knew it
was his car. because he recognized the dice on the rearview mirror." My
mom was certain there was some rational explanation, but in my mind, I just
knew the worst had happened: Those fuckers went joyriding in my
car, saw the "160" on the spedometer, tried to get it up that fast,
and blew up my goddamn engine. So the period of time between
that night and the next morning was utter hell, as I was certain my car would
never ride again. Of course, when I called yesterday morning, they told me that
the fuel pump had gone out, and I would need a new one. What a relief. Until
they told me that parts and labor would come to about $300 to fix it. Fuck.
Now knowing that my car would be well, I made a few calls regarding towbars
and trailers. Well, I had figured you couldn't attach a hitch to a Z, even if
it was a temporary one, but the guy told me you could. It's just that independent
rental places couldn't provide them, and I had to go to an official U-Haul dealer
for one. And the closest dealer is like 200 miles away. Fuck. Basically, this
means that I'm going to have to leave a lot of my stuff behind, and either have
my mom mail it to me or just wait and come get it when we come back for Christmas.
And from the way it looks, among the "expendable" items to be left
behind, one of the victims will probably my semi-vast video collection, which
to a rasslin' nerd is like taking our oxygen and water. God dammit. Having made
peace (sort of) with this harsh reality, I called this morning to see how my
car was doing. Well, it turns out, it might not be the fuel pump after all,
and just some burnt-up wires going to it. Yay. And oh yeah, I needed a new U-joint
on my left rear axle, or my wheel would probably fall of. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
So now, the planned departure time of Friday (which is actually today now, since
this took a while to type) has been moved up to Saturday IF the car is fixed
by then. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck. Mississippi is not just a shitty state. It
is hell. And it is a hell that does not like to see the damned escape. And now,
not only has my escape been temporarily foiled, but my brother who escaped seven
years ago is now also caught in its deadly trap. Fuck.
Oh yeah, with me moving and all,
it's going to be a while before eveything gets settled in, so I figured I'd
leave you kids with some sort of update. (As if this thing gets regular updates,
or something...) Below is a few paragraphs of various pieces of brain crap that
had been floating around my head and wasn't big enough to warrant it's own page.
Enjoy.
Summer Camp
I never actually went to summer camp,
but over the years, people have given me a very vivid picture of what camp is
like, and it's certainly nothing like it is on TV. It's not the happy, wholesome
place where kids laugh and singh and play harmless little pranks on the dopey,
loveable camp counselors. No, summer camp is a dark, twisted place. The kind
of place where the girls camp is across the highway from the boys camp, and
at least three girls come home pregnant. A place where, as one camper told me,
"Satanic rituals are all we ever did when we got bored at Boy Scout camp."
I shit you not, that was an actual quote. Apparently, when all the signing and
canoeing is done, the boys of Troop 335 get bored and summon the Dark Lord.
Another bizarre story told to me was the one time some of the campers came home
one night to find another computer nerd type guy huddled in a corner, completely
naked and grinning wickedly, holding one of those big police flashlights that
apparently had been smeared with Vaseline. I have the strangest feeling that
the guy had set up the scene just to freak the others out, but either way, I
really wish I didn't have that mental image. I can only imagine the living hell
it must be for the ones who found him. On the other end of the spectrum, there's
a story told to me by a guy who's currently an announcer for a local wrestling
promotion. Apparently, he had found an interesting way of earning extra income
at camp. He sold drugs. No, not the usual wimpy crap like crack and heroin.
No, my friends. He sold cigars... Made out of pine needles. This was
already a ridiculous concept, but it was pushed over the edge by the manufacturing
process he described. "First, you get some dried up pine needles and crumble
them up real small... Then, you get out your notebook paper."
Yeah. He also went on to tell the stpry of running around camp all day with
a pine needle / notebook paper cigar with the word "stogey" written
on the side in magic marker. You had to be there, I guess. Summer Camp is beyond
fucked up.
Hippies Get
On My Nerves - Part 2,345,768
Hippies get on my nerves. I was flipping
through the channels the other day, as I am prone to do, and I landed on a show
on the educational channel where they were exploring the newest hippie fad of
dumpster-diving. For those of you who don't know, this is when hippies walk
around in big groups and rummage through people's trash for food. Yeah, I know.
The goofy part was when they were showing some big gathering of hippies about
to go eat filth,
with the lead hippie giving some self-righteous speech about how they were going
to save the world and defeat capitalism by eating shit that a dog won't touch,
or something. It all boiled down to rejecting corporate society's practice of
having to throw things out to buy bigger products and keeping the evil Nazi
baby-stomping corporate machine going. I'm sorry to break this to you, but I
don't really think expiration dates are just a corporate plot to bleed us dry,
and I kinda doubt the evil corporate devils have some sort of non-spoiling produce
that they've been keeping secret from all of us for the last few hundred years.
And if they were really that eager to make us throw out our shit and buy new
shit, microwave popcorn would take a lot less than the current year-and-a-half
to go bad, according to the dates on the box, and they wouldn't spend so much
time putting wax on all the vegetables. The practice of throwing out old food
revolves around the consumer (ooh, what a dirty word) not wanting to take a
gamble with their health when they sit down to eat a goddamn bowl of cereal.
Granted, there are times when something edible gets tossed, but if it's moldy
or smells like shit, people tend to throw it out, and I don't think it's because
of the all-encompassing evil of capitalism. Seriously. And actually, that's
what I like about capitalism; it FORCES people to be productive. If you work
hard and develop a skill that's useful to mankind, you get paid for it, and
as a result, you get to eat Velveeta Shells & Cheese and drink Tang. If
you don't participate - if you choose to just slack off and "fight capitalism"
- you get to eat the leftover Shells & Cheese stuck to the paper plate of
someone who made themselves useful. And fuck you, you get no Tang.
Fixing Stuff
Guys like to fix things. When something's
broken, women want to get a new one, but men go, "shit, I can fix that."
Just the word "fix" has a special meaning to us. Which is why when
I go out to buy baked beans, I go for the "Big John's" brand, because
they come with the extra can of "fixin's." Fuck you and your "ingredients."
I want fixin's, goddammit. Men are never preparing to do anything.
They never say "I'm getting ready to go mow the lawn." They say, "I'm
fixin' to go do it." Men don't prepare food, either. "I'm gonna fix
me up some breakfast." Maybe if we were more prepared, we wouldn't have
to fix so many things. Who knows.
I'm Your Football
Hero, It's True
(Copied and pasted
from a post I made on the Confederate
Mack message board - I'm lazy.) Interesting story. There was like a
three-way high school football rivalry in my town, with all the black people
rooting for East Side High, all the white people rooting for Bayou Academy,
and our sorry sucessfully-integrated asses at Cleveland High being left with
nothing but family and faculty members in our half-empty stands while all those
other racists went to see their folks play. But I'm not bitter. No, really.
Anyway, CHS and East Side would have our big yearly "city championship"
game, and the rivalry with Bayou consisted mostly of everyone at our two schools
making fun of them because they were a pussy private school that lost all their
games, and all they could do is go "hey, shut up!" because private
school football teams don't play public school teams, because they don't want
to be crushed. But they play each other in soccer, because soccer is for assholes.
Anywho, it's the City Championship during my senior year in 1997, which was
the only year I got any playing time, because I sucked. I'm not proud of my
sucking, but I'm honest. Anyway, while our team as a whole was getting our asses
whipped by East Side, I was doing an unusually non-shitty job at left guard
that night, which at times included blocking East Side's ace defensive end and
current Seattle Seahawks offensive tackle (he was more of a star on defense
than offense in high school) Floyd "Pork Chop" Womack. (And I really
don't remember anyone calling him Pork Chop until at least college, but I might
be wrong.) Our quarterback decided to try some trickery and do a play on a silent
count, where instead of going "hut hut" or whatever, he doesn't say
anything, and kind of taps the center on the thigh in a really gay way, who
snaps the ball with no warning. And well, this time it worked. The ball was
snapped, and by the time I made it across the line, Womack still hadn't moved,
and he just kind of fell over when I ran into him. I think he thought it was
a false start. But it really doesn't matter how it happened so much
as that it happened. I pancaked Pork Chop Womack. Fear me.
at
least) of Norman, Oklahoma. In part, it's a holy quest to try and turn my visor-wearing
Jay-Z worshipping brother back from the Dark Side, but mostly, it's an escape
from a rotten shithole of a state and I figure, at 22, I really should have
moved out of my mom's house a long time ago. Anyway, the last week has been
a lesson in just how many things can go wrong. Granted, it's mostly my fault,
as it involves stuff I should have done weeks ago, but this is America, and
in America, no one's responsible for the consequenses any of their own actions.
Or something. Anyway, it started innocently, as I took my trusty, rusty, old
1977 Datsun 280Z (the semi-rare "2+2" model as well, biatch) to the
garage down the street to get them to make sure it was road-worthy for the upcoming
trip it would have to take if I couldn't get a U-Haul van to tow the thing there.
After walking a block home, I called the local U-Haul place to get a quote on
what it would cost to rent a truck and a car-towing trailer thingy to make the
trip. The total, which I expected to be a paiunfull 250 bucks or so ended up
being in the more fatal $530 range. No good man. At this point, it became apparent
that the trip would have to be done in the Z-car. Okay, no reason to panic.
If we have to, we'll rent a trailer and one of those tow bar thingies and pull
my shit up there if it won't all fit. Later, me and my mom made our way to the
airport in Jackson to pick up my brother, who was basically coming because my
mom didn't want me driving 500 miles alone and I didn't know the way anyway.
About an hour away, my mom get's a call on her cellphone. "Uh, did Lukie's
(Yeah, that's what thy call me sometimes. Fuck you) car break down somewhere
on the highway between Merigold and Mound Bayou?" "Uh, no, he took
it to Charlie Miller to get it trip-checked." "Well, Jeffrey just
drove by there and he saw it parked at the side of the road, and he knew it
was his car. because he recognized the dice on the rearview mirror." My
mom was certain there was some rational explanation, but in my mind, I just
knew the worst had happened: Those fuckers went joyriding in my
car, saw the "160" on the spedometer, tried to get it up that fast,
and blew up my goddamn engine. So the period of time between
that night and the next morning was utter hell, as I was certain my car would
never ride again. Of course, when I called yesterday morning, they told me that
the fuel pump had gone out, and I would need a new one. What a relief. Until
they told me that parts and labor would come to about $300 to fix it. Fuck.
Now knowing that my car would be well, I made a few calls regarding towbars
and trailers. Well, I had figured you couldn't attach a hitch to a Z, even if
it was a temporary one, but the guy told me you could. It's just that independent
rental places couldn't provide them, and I had to go to an official U-Haul dealer
for one. And the closest dealer is like 200 miles away. Fuck. Basically, this
means that I'm going to have to leave a lot of my stuff behind, and either have
my mom mail it to me or just wait and come get it when we come back for Christmas.
And from the way it looks, among the "expendable" items to be left
behind, one of the victims will probably my semi-vast video collection, which
to a rasslin' nerd is like taking our oxygen and water. God dammit. Having made
peace (sort of) with this harsh reality, I called this morning to see how my
car was doing. Well, it turns out, it might not be the fuel pump after all,
and just some burnt-up wires going to it. Yay. And oh yeah, I needed a new U-joint
on my left rear axle, or my wheel would probably fall of. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
So now, the planned departure time of Friday (which is actually today now, since
this took a while to type) has been moved up to Saturday IF the car is fixed
by then. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck. Mississippi is not just a shitty state. It
is hell. And it is a hell that does not like to see the damned escape. And now,
not only has my escape been temporarily foiled, but my brother who escaped seven
years ago is now also caught in its deadly trap. Fuck.
go eat filth,
with the lead hippie giving some self-righteous speech about how they were going
to save the world and defeat capitalism by eating shit that a dog won't touch,
or something. It all boiled down to rejecting corporate society's practice of
having to throw things out to buy bigger products and keeping the evil Nazi
baby-stomping corporate machine going. I'm sorry to break this to you, but I
don't really think expiration dates are just a corporate plot to bleed us dry,
and I kinda doubt the evil corporate devils have some sort of non-spoiling produce
that they've been keeping secret from all of us for the last few hundred years.
And if they were really that eager to make us throw out our shit and buy new
shit, microwave popcorn would take a lot less than the current year-and-a-half
to go bad, according to the dates on the box, and they wouldn't spend so much
time putting wax on all the vegetables. The practice of throwing out old food
revolves around the consumer (ooh, what a dirty word) not wanting to take a
gamble with their health when they sit down to eat a goddamn bowl of cereal.
Granted, there are times when something edible gets tossed, but if it's moldy
or smells like shit, people tend to throw it out, and I don't think it's because
of the all-encompassing evil of capitalism. Seriously. And actually, that's
what I like about capitalism; it FORCES people to be productive. If you work
hard and develop a skill that's useful to mankind, you get paid for it, and
as a result, you get to eat Velveeta Shells & Cheese and drink Tang. If
you don't participate - if you choose to just slack off and "fight capitalism"
- you get to eat the leftover Shells & Cheese stuck to the paper plate of
someone who made themselves useful. And fuck you, you get no Tang.