The Smelly Flower Festival Saga- Part 2

We were trapped.  I held my daughter precariously in front of me, my shoulders weakening. Faint sunlight filtered in through the tiny vents above.  Surrounded by filth and fecal matter, disease festering on ever surface.  My grip was loosening.  Her little body dangling over a pool of decayed filth and chemicals, certain death in physical form.
“Daddy!!!”
“Shit!  Hold on, baby…hold on to Daddy! Pleeeeaase!”‘

But let’s rewind first before we get that little scene.  As I left off in the last post, we were just making our way into the over-crowded annual Lilac Festival in our city park.  As we shoved through the pounds of sweaty, smelly patrons and their over-heated dogs on too-long leashes that tangled in the feet of all that passed by, we had decided to make our first destination the kiddie carnival rides.  We were at least going to make this fun for our child if anything.
I picked our daughter up and put her on my shoulders just as two pit bulls on flimsy leashes walked by, right at her face level.  I don’t trust anyone’s fucking dog around my child, particularly in hot, crowded, confusing places like this for animals, where their agitation level is probably pretty goddamn high.  I felt like biting every fucking person that bumped into me, I could only imagine how they felt. The owner gave me a self-righteous look that implied “Pit bulls are beautiful and loving dogs and the public fear in them is unfounded and a result of BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH”.  Bitch, please.  They’re living chainsaws.
I looked up, “There, up over the hill, is where the kiddie rides are, we can-OWWWW!  FUCK!!”
A crushing sensation over my foot sent tears to my eyes.  I staggered and my daughter nearly fell off my shoulders.
“Oh…sorry about that..he heh…” replied the yuppie bitch who had just pushed her toddler mega-stroller over my foot.  I use the word “stroller” but that’s not apt.  This thing was not simply to transport small kids around in a convenient  manner.  This thing had eight-inch, treaded tires for off-road support, shocks, a double wide passenger section, double canopy, about five different compartments for storage and 3 racks underneath for more storage.  And their kid wasn’t even fucking in it!  The thing was loaded like a fucking camper, like some doomsday preppers ready to make their last stand.  They were packed to the crest with coolers, bags, toys…
I hopped  back on my foot and shot her a look.
“Rick, don’t,” my wife cautioned.
“The thing is a fucking Hummer Stroller,” as we pushed on.  It never ceases to amaze me what yuppies spend their money on, thinking the “biggest and most expensive” was what you bought if you “really cared”.  Like that fucking stroller was really gonna play a deciding factor in their kid getting into Harvard.  Or that other parents like us actually looked at them in envy.  I felt the urge to pop another yuppie bubble, but suppressed it.
We got to the kiddie rides and bought a roll of over-priced tickets to get on ‘em (the line to get tickets only took twenty minutes!) and then stood in line at the kiddie train for another solid fifteen minutes.  When we finally got our little girl on and she was all buckled in, we stepped back and beamed.  Her first solo run on carny ride.  And she looked calm.  The little girl in the car behind her…not so much. As soon as the ride started, the little blonde slid out of her belt and stood the fuck up.  The attendant hit the E-stop and the girl tumbled forward into the lap of another kid.  The father went ballistic, hopping the gate and screaming at his kid and shit.  The girl looked like she was barely two.  Her eyes wide with shock and tears.  The father pushed her back into the seat and made some violent threat about not standing up, then he stepped back and the ride started up again.  Our daughter was now enraptured in the drama unfolding behind her, as the little girl starting screaming and standing up again.  Another E-stop and the another tumble and the father was hopping the gate again.  Well shit…
Before he even got to the train, my foot had extended just enough to send him sprawling onto the grass.
“Oops.”  I nodded to the attendant who let the little girl off and she was running over her daddy’s back and to her mother waiting arms, tears streaming down her face.  The dad got up and gave me a look, but he wasn’t gonna do shit.    “She was fine!  She’s old enough!  She can handle the train!” he screamed to everyone within twenty feet.  Fuck, this guy was gonna have this girl snow plowing his driveway by the time she was four.
The ride finally finished and we moved on to the ferris wheel, with a line that snaked around the bend and ended somewhere in China.
“No.  I’m not standing in this one.  I just ain’t,” I said.
My wife sighed but I could see she had little more interest than me in standing in another line of attrition.
“Then we’re hungry, let’s head to the food tent,” she responded.
We pushed and shoved our way through the vendors and pavilions until we came up the hill to the gigantic food tent.  The thing was like a circus tent, only all the animals inside were dead and ready for consumption.  We muscled our way in and looked up in the horror: within the outer circle of food vendors were nearly four hundred people, shoulder-to-shoulder, back-to-back.  There were no discernible lines to each of the vendors, just hordes of people pushing and shoving and flapping money in their outstretched hands.  It looked like the floor of the stock market, except people were haggling for meats and fats fried in corn-syrup sauces and grease.  Vertigo set in almost immediately.  Trying to get you bearing was a hopeless task, you just bowed your head and tried to push along behind the first person you saw, hoping they would lead you to food.
At one point, we got pinned between a table of mindless zombies eating with their heads down, oblivious to the constant bumping and abuse they were receiving from the bulging crowds, and another table of mentally challenged adults who were on some kind of field trip.  Now I’m no heartless bigot and have the kindest of hearts for our mentally challenged brethren…but when one of them has vomited all over his face and hand and is trying to eat it again…them vomits it back up…then starts to fling it in our general direction and paint my daughter’s hair with it…yeah, I get a little…upset.
I quickly scooped up our girl before her scalp could be pasted with what appeared to be cottage cheese and bile, and turned my back to him, hoping to avoid too much spray.  Luckily my wife spoke up before I had to:  “Yeah, um…who ever is taking care of this nice gentlemen….could you please get him cleaned up….HELLO…ONE OF YOU!?  WHO AT THAT TABLE IS IN CHARGE? HEY! I SEE YOU LOOKING AT ME…SOMEONE CLEAN THIS GUY UP…..”

Okay, my turn.  I handed our daughter to my wife and spun around to the guys wheelchair.

“OKAY!…COME ON, BIG GUY, WE’RE GOING FOR A DIP IN THE HIGHLAND POND.  Can you hold your breath?  Can you?!” as I began pushing his chair away from the table.  He let out a “WEEEEEE!” and coughed up some more vomit.

“Umm, sir….*sigh* I have him.  I’ll take him….”

It was some teenager that had obviously been saddled with way too much fucking responsibility while her superiors took full advantage of her “resume building” charity work and were probably “taking a moment” at the beer tent.  Well, my heart can’t bleed for everyone.
“Okay, he’s all yours…”
I’d like to say we moved on from there…but we did not. The crowd barely budged.  The smell of cooked meat and grease was everywhere, but none within reach.  Plus, after Pukey McPukertan, I had pretty much lost my appetite, and I was really starting to get a bit of agoraphobia from all this shit.  I just ain’t built for it.  I yelled to my wife I wasn’t hungry and I would just wait outside the tent for her and our kid…and didn’t wait for a response.
Outside, I stood uncomfortably to the side, just looking at the masses of people…and it really started to hit me: almost everyone I looked at seemed fucking spent.  Like miserable and not even trying to hide it.  There were a few smiles and laughs, mostly from the beer tent, but most of these masses of faces looked exhausted and pissed.  What the fuck were we all doing here?  Why did we all try to force half our city’s populace in such a small area in one afternoon?  There will be other days…other festivals.  What drives us to engage in such hopelessly disastrous social events?  Before I could even ponder the answer, my cell phone rang.  I picked up and it was my wife from the far side of the tent.

“I got our food order in but I’m still waiting for it.  Our daughter needs to pee…like right now.”

“Now Now?”

“Rick, come get our daughter and find a fuckin’ port-a-potty.  And hurry.”

“You’re kidding….”

She wasn’t kidding…and the line went dead.  I shoved my way back into the smelly pile of flesh within the tent, after nearly starting several fistfights and stepping on a toddler laying in the mud (it was an accident, and I’m pretty sure he was alive…thinking back, it may have been a doll but I really didn’t have time to look), I made it to my wife’s side.  I bent down and scooped up our daughter and proceeded to shove my way back out.

“Do you really have to go, honey?”

“Yeah, I have to go pee.”

“You can’t hold it till mommy can take you?”

“No.  I gotta go RIGHT NOW!”  And when she says “Right Now” you got about sixty seconds, roughly.

Nice.  And we were off.  With her cradled in my arm I was jogging through the park at a steady clip, scanning the horizon for the purple shit-shacks like a desert dweller looking for an oasis.  Every time I found a row, the lines were backed up twenty feet.

“Daddy, I gotta go….I gotta GO!”  Judging by the pitch in her voice, we were down to the last twenty seconds, then the yellow river was gonna flow.  We had circled back to the entrance and saw two purple shitters placed under a tree with only a couple folks in line.  I ran up to the front of the pack a flashed my best mean-mug at the sucker already standing there.

“Hey, the line starts-”

“I will hurt you.”

“…fine…dick…”

One of the doors opened and a hefty gentlemen, also referred to as “fat ass”, lumbered out.  We trotted up to the door and prepared to step in…then I got a good smell and even worse glance inside.  It was a goddamn holocaust.  A fecal war zone soaked in urine and blue sanitizer. Drenched toilet paper lined the floor and walls.  Liquid shit coated half the seat and back wall.  The toilet itself was nearly filled to the top in a mound of paper and…god, I don’t even know.  I choked back vomit and quickly turned away.

“Oh GOD….oh god….we can’t go in there, honey.”

“Daddy…I gotta pee right now!  I GOTTA-”

Bile crept into my mouth.  “…*hmph*…baby, I can’t take you in there…daddy can’t…”  then she started crying.

Oh fuck me.  Time to be “tough daddy”.

“Okay.  Listen to me.  Put your hands against your chest and keep them there.  DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING!  Keep your eyes closed.  Daddy is going to hold you over the toilet.”

She nodded quickly.  I picked her up and walked back in and locked the door behind us.  With one movement, I hiked her pants down and held her in front of me in a squatting position, her tush hovering over the toilet, my back muscles locked in agony.

“Okay.  Don’t open your eyes.  Don’t move your hands…just pee.”

“Daddy, you’re shaking…put me down-”

“Shit!  Hold on, baby…hold on to Daddy! Pleeeeaase!”‘

“I can’t…”

“Just PEE!  PEE RIGHT NOW, DAMMIT!  Daddy’s shoulders are gonna break off…”

I suddenly heard the heavenly sound of tinkling beneath us, as my legs joined my back in trembling.  I was holding my breath, but the sights were doing serious mental damage.  I had never seen such filth in my worst nightmares.  Such massive quantities of human waste seething all around me.

“Hurry, honey…god hurry…”

“Okay, daddy. I’m done.”

I hiked her pants up in one more quick motion, reached behind me to unlock the door and slammed my way out backwards.  I made it a few steps before plopping my daughter on the ground and vomiting against a tree.  I looked up and a small crowd was standing around us.  I wiped my mouth and smiled.

“Beautiful day, huh?”

I scooped my girl back up and walked to an open area on the grass and sat us down.  My cell phone jingled.  I answered to my wife on the other end.

“I got the food, where are you?”

“We’re at the entrance.  Bring the food, we’re going home.”

“We just got-”

“I nearly dropped our daughter in seething pile of shit and piss.  I’m calling it a day, dear.  And I’m calling a cab.”

“…a seething pile of shit?”

“Love ya!” and I hung up.

Twenty minutes later, we were piling into a cab to go about three miles back to our car.  After recounting our daughter brush with toxic death, my wife spent the car ride home cradling our little girl and stroking her head, “We almost lost you….we almost *sob*…”.

As we pulled into our driveway and my family was walking inside, I walked to our garage with purpose and came out with an axe.  My wife didn’t cry out in terror, however…she knew what I was doing…and she approved.

I walked calmly to the back yard and proceeded to chop our lilac bush to kindling. The Lilac Festival was over.

The Smelly Flower Festival Saga- Part 1

It’s supposed be all about the god damn flowers.  Lilacs to be exact.  Purple little blobs that bloom on bushes once a year that everyone is supposed to trip over themselves to gaze upon and smell.  As if they are the farts of the Gods in tangible form.  Once a year, for one week only, about half my city’s population cram themselves onto about four square city blocks in Highland Park to look at flowers, sweat, feast on sickening amounts of deep-fried lard, and sweat…a lot. People call this “fun”.
The Lilac Festival holds a bit of nostalgia for my wife and I…it was one of our first dates and was later where I proposed to her (right after hitting the beer tent) and it was the first festival we brought our then-infant daughter to.  We try to make it a point to come at least one day every year…but only on weekdays. Only.on.weekdays.  On weekday evenings, there is free parking in the field across the street and the crowds are tolerable, and pretty good times are had by all.  Hell, I even smell the fucking lilacs.
But during the weekend the festival becomes a fucking nightmarish social experiment on the human species to see just how much social torture they can take for hours on end while still pretending to have a wonderful and fulfilling family outing.  I’m not really sure who runs this experiment but I’m leaning toward either the Illuminati or Rich People, because it’s fun to blame them for everything.  It’s like Suburban Survivor, only no one knows what the fucking prize is.  I believe it is festivals like these that actually inspired Dante’s Inferno, ’cause you truly do find yourself on a progressive trip through hell.
Similar experiments have been done with other primates, chimps for example.  A pack of them are put in a fenced-in, but spacious area…and then the area is reduced and reduced, forcing the chimps to live in closer and closer quarters…until they all snap and start ripping each others fucking fingers and testicles off in an orgy of violence.  During weekends at the Lilac Festival, fingers and testicles are not torn off by the end of the day (not in large amounts, anyhow) but that fine line is ever-present.  Allow me to tell you of our family outing to this very festival just this past Saturday, the opening day (I’m talking to YOU.  Sit down).
Like I said, we normally stay away from weekends, but the weather window was showing this to be the perfect chance, and maybe only chance, ’cause rain was predicted for most of the following week. My wife made the proposal while my daughter and I were lounging’ on the couch watching Goonies on cable for the second time that morning. We found some previously undiscovered channel in the far reaches of our satellite package that was actually marathoning Goonies all day. Why would they do that?  You do not question genius.  You really can’t ever get enough Goonies and my young spawn had just begun to realize this herself.  Anyway, I reluctantly agreed to the proposal…isn’t that how everyone ends up in Hell?
We gathered up a few supplies in a back pack, layered the three-year-old with sunblock and jumped in the car to drive to…the shuttle pick up.  Yes, there is no parking on weekends at the festival site.  You have to drive to a shuttle site a few miles away and board some yellow school buses on loan from the city schools. Really elegant travel.  As we pulled into the parking lot and saw the already snaking lines just to get on the goddamn shuttle bus, my warning bells began to ring.   But because I already have quite the family reputation for being the Debbie-Downer, I bit my lip for the moment.  We had to park three lots away in asphalt purgatory just to find a spot, then walked ten minutes to get to the shuttle line, then another twenty minutes to board it.  It was approaching noon and the sun was high and blazing, and the sweating had begun.  As I stepped onto the yellow school bus with my daughter in my arms, a wave of hot body odor struck me in the face followed by the aural assault of too many screaming infants.  It should only be a ten-minute ride, we can handle this.  We shoved ourselves into the convection-oven-on-wheels like lambs to the slaughter, many of us still plastering fake-happy smiles on our faces to keep the facade of “No, no…this fun. Really.  Just a minor inconvenience…can’t wait for some deep-fried lard!”
As the bus headed down the road and made a left toward downtown, it instantly became clear that this would be no quick little jaunt.  The streets were jammed for miles, endless rows of tin cans on wheels sizzling in the noon sun, all pouring into a sea of confusion at ever stop light. You see, on opening day, the Festival Parade takes a large number of important streets out of commission and it was clear that they had yet to be re-opened.  Logistics are not a strong part of our city planning I guess.  So the shuttles were relegated to crowded side streets…along with the thousands of other cars full of geniuses who thought they could outsmart the whole “shuttle service thing” by driving as close as they could to the festival and just park on a side street and walk. A brilliant maneuver if only a few think of it.  Fucking Auto-Armageddon if EVERYONE attempts it.  One minute became ten and ten became forty.  Every child had to use the bathroom and they were pretty fucking vocal about it.  All of the infants had already fullfilled that obligation.  The smiles had all turned to tight-faced grins of repression.  Even with every bus window open, that fucking thing had to be 110º inside.  The park itself finally came into view, but at the rate we were going, we wouldn’t actually reach it until sometime in 2014.  Goonies would be over by then.  I looked down at my darling daughter as she looked back at me with those worrisome, innocent eyes that begged “Where are you taking me, daddy?  Why are we doing this?  What hell have you forsaken us to?”  Fuck it.  I peeled my sweat soaked body from the vinyl seats with an audible rip and stood up.  Yes, I stood the fuck up. Every eye turned toward me, including the driver.  I felt a sudden urge to scream “Oh captain, my captain!” and I never even saw that movie plus I didn’t think it fit thematically in even a minor way.  I picked up my daughter and turned to my wife. “We’re walking.  Let’s go.”  My wife didn’t even blink.  “Fuckin’ A, honey.” We shuffled to the front of the bus as everyone gawked at us and we turned to the driver.

“Open the door, man.”

“I…I can’t yet.  This isn’t the stop…you have to wait til-”

 ”Open…..the….door.”

Somewhere behind us, someone farted loudly.  It wasn’t comical, though.  It served almost like a natural exclamation point to everyone’s current condition.  The driver turned his head and slowly reached for the door lever and pulled it.  It was like popping the cap on an overheated radiator.

“Ah hell, I hate my fuckin’ job anyway….”

We hopped off and onto the side of the street and the rest of the passengers followed suit.  It was some  kind of stupid revolution against a power that didn’t exist and was only leading us deeper into the pits of hell, but it felt important for a moment.  We walked the last half mile to the park entrance in near silence.  A procession of already exhausted and overheated festival goers who hadn’t even reached their destination yet.  As we walked into the park entrance, most attempted to put that fake, happy-face facade back on.  Making canned comments to their children about how much fun the festival would be.  Excitement, or something passing for it, I guess.  Then we passed the threshold and looked onto an endless sea of sweaty humans that went as far as our city eyes could see.  Nearly everyone holding a dog leash with a suffering canine lapping at the air with its drooping tongue in a futile attempt to stave off heat stroke, or pushing oversized baby strollers doubling as mini-campers that crushed every foot they rolled over.
The music blared.  The smoke from the food vendor tents choked the air.  There was no order.  No direction.  It was pure chaos.  I looked at my wife as she smiled half-assed back at me.

“We could be watching Goonies right now.” And I picked up our daughter and shoved our way into the giant super-organism of primates.

To be continued…

Bullying: A very special episode of The Rant Machine

*Sigh* Okay society…I’m gonna help you out again.  Yes, yet again.  I should be getting paid for this shit.  Let’s talk about the big buzz word of the moment: Bullies!
Bullies are part of the human condition.  Hell, bullies are part of the animal condition too.  Shit, I bet grass considers fucking weeds to be bullies.  My point is that where there is life, there is competition, and where there is competition, there will always be some asshole trying to slap you down in some form.  All living things, especially ones that live as groups, strive to be on the top of the fuckin’ totem pole and there is always a pecking order.
Whether you are a goldfish in an aquarium getting slapped around by the beta fish, or a pansy house cat that gets harassed by the cocker spaniel, or the short, dorky kid in 8th grade who gets depantsed in the hallway and shoved into the lockers, you’re stuck in this system.  It’s natural law and there isn’t much we can do to change that.  And there isn’t much we SHOULD do to change that.
School bullying is currently THE hottest social and media hot-button trend going. For the longest time, it was ADHD and Ritalin, led by lazy parents and script-happy doctors.  Then it was the vaccination/autism connection (of which there is none) led by one of America’s greatest minds, Jenny McCarthy (Who used to play the bimbo host on an MTV dating game and then had a sketch comedy show in which she would vomit every episode and pick her nose).  But right now, nothing is hotter than bullying.  Particularly school bullying.  As if this is some new fucking behavior that kids have never had to deal with until recently.  Prior to 2005, kids acted like unicorn Care Bears in the sparkling meadows of civilized bliss.  Uh huh.
I guess my rant comes from two places here: The fact that the media is treating it like some kind of new epidemic that is destroying our youth’s culture, and the fact that many in society are expecting/demanding that it be removed from our culture all-together (as if that was possible).
Now I don’t want to come off as a heartless bastard (No, really, I don’t).  When a ten-year-old hangs himself in his closet because all the kids at school called him “faggot”, that’s fucking awful.  But that is not something you can easily just legislate away or make a bunch of advertising campaigns and documentaries and have kids, with their underdeveloped Jello brains, just suddenly “get it” and start giving out hugs instead of black eyes.
To my first rant, bullying is not new.  It’s as old as life, it has only grown more complex as life grew more complex.  I got bullied when I was a kid.  Kids got bullied in the 1865.  Kids got bullied in 1569, and I’m sure Neanderthals got ripped for wearing the wrong kind of loin-cloth to the Mammoth hunt. “Ug…Look at Magock!  He wear brown loin cloth! Not match boots!  Throw rocks at Magock!”  Kids have dealt with it forever.  And many have had to live with the scars that came with it.  And there have been many that never fully emotionally recovered or even killed themselves when they felt they couldn’t.  The media, however, is not presenting a “growing trend”.  They are simply creating the illusion of a growing trend and thus, creating more news for themselves.  This is what the media does and will always do.  They don’t just report on society.  They create stories for which they can exploit.  How the fuck else can they fill a 24hr cable news channel?

“An alarming trend is being reported throughout the nation.  Dirt.  Yes, dirt is being seen and found in alarming quantities all across the nation.  People from all walks of life have been reporting that they have simply noticed that dirt is everywhere…especially in the ground.  That’s right, a possible new epidemic of dirt..right beneath your feet.  Scientists are mixed on this latest find.  Some are simply baffled on how much there really might be…more than we ever thought possible.  Others are calling for more studies and still others are demanding immediate action to protect our children from this alarming trend….of dirt.  Maggie Sykes of Endicott, NY is refusing to let her children go outside until more is learned about this possibly dangerous increase in dirt…”

I’m not saying never trust the media to keep you informed, but understand that much of those news outlets come from a place of business and profit…not social goodwill.

To my second rant.  What really can we do or should we do about school bullying?  Let’s remember you are dealing with kids and teenagers here.  Their brains are so fucking underdeveloped and primal, things like ad campaigns and YouTube movements are gonna amount to little more than a brief fireworks display followed by “eh…I’m bored, let’s inhale some DustUp”.  It’s easy to get them all yapping and acting all activist-like about anything for a week, but they have attention spans of goldfish.  You are not going to reprogram them with ads and songs or celebrity campaigns or “A very special episode of Glee”.
Look, we need to be vigilant of the extreme cases.  Kids being beaten to a pulp for ANY reason is awful and should be stopped.  Parents need to keep an eye on their children and take notice of their emotional states.  No kid gets to the point of fucking killing themselves without giving TONS of signs beforehand.  The parents that say “He was so happy…I had no idea”….yeah, they are full of shit and have to live with that guilt the rest of their lives.
There are some simple fixes for the latest technological advancements in bullying, though.  Getting bullied on Facebook or some other social networking site?  Here, watch this: GET THE FUCK OFF FACEBOOK! Done.  No one needs to be on Facebook.  People getting a hold of your “secret, private” texts and pictures?  I got that covered: STOP SENDING THEM! Try calling the person and talking with them one on one.  Once you put anything out into the electronic ether, it’s there forever.  Don’t text sensitive stuff.  Don’t SEXT anyone.  Done.  You’re welcome.
And as for the rest of it?  Getting shoved in the lockers, getting mocked for your clothes, someone writing obscenities on your text books, someone demanding your lunch money….FUCKING DEAL WITH IT.  It does not get any better, little 10-year-old boy or girl.  You will be bullied your ENTIRE life in some form or other.  People will always try to tear you down to get above you, to take what you have.  You gotta learn from the get-go that you have deal with that bullshit as best you can.  Whether it’s avoidance, using your wits, using your fists, joining groups and getting allies….they all have their pros and cons.  Dealing with people you don’t like and who don’t like you is required in a civilized society.  I’ve punched bullies in the mouth.  I’ve had other friends punch bullies in the mouth for me.  I’ve made friends with bullies.  I’ve avoided them.  I’ve firebombed their Ford Mustangs at 2am.  You stand on your own two feet and deal with it…and you learn something about yourself when you do.  Like I learned that I have a talent for throwing flaming materials at other people’s property.  I mean…like…really accurate too.
That’s it.  You don’t like it…..WHAT YOU ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT, BITCH!?

These Pants Are Evil

“These pants are not fucking real! There is no fucking way!”

I’m screaming at my work pants, laying on the ironing board in front me in my bedroom.  My wife is attempting to sleep in on her day off and our three-year-old daughter has snuck into our bed to watch Dora The Explorer while I battle the evil fabric from the Netherworlds.

“Daddy, why are you yelling?”

“Because these pants are evil, baby.  I have been ironing them for five minutes on the highest heat and the wrinkles…they stay!  This defies reality!  They are evil, you hear me little girl?  These pants are evil.  I hate you, pants!”

My daughter giggles and crawls across the bed toward the ironing board.  “Can I see the evil pants?”

“NO, don’t touch them.  Who knows where they came from.”  I look at the wrinkled khaki slacks before me.  “What are you?  Why do you defy me?!  What do you want from us!?”

My wife rolls over.  “I’m seriously going to go live with my mother for a while.  You are fucking insane.”

Yes, I talk to inanimate objects.  Some may consider this no different from talking to yourself (which is also perfectly acceptable in many cases and another behavior I regularly partake in) but I don’t think it’s exactly the same.  When I talk to an object that is, by standard scientific standards, not alive or self-aware, I am still talking to that object.  I don’t really care if it can hear me or has any biological or even metaphysical ability to receive my voice and process it in any way.  I don’t fucking care.  I’m talking (or yelling at it) on principle…and we all fuckin’ do it.
It is key to our personal psychological health, in my extremely educated opinion, to express our displeasure at any person or thing that fucks with us.  It’s a must for stress relief and it constantly reinforces our sense of pride and personal principle.  Plus it makes you look kinda’ crazy and NOBODY messes with the crazy guy.

See, conversation is not necessarily a two-way street.  We all know they can be very one-sided.  We even find ourselves often entering into a one-sided conversation intentionally…because we just have something to fucking say and we are going to say it.
We do it with people…and we do it the inanimate objects.  That rock you just tripped on?

“Oh fuck you, rock!  The fuck good are you!  You literally couldn’t amount to anything geologically important so you just sit there on the sidewalk, tripping people like an asshole?  Great life choice, rock!  Way to give back.”

That needed to be said.  It did.  That screw you were trying to put back in that slips out of your fingers and down into the heating vent forever?

“So that’s it, huh?  That’s where you wanna go?  Down in a fucking heating vent for eternity?  Not man enough to screw back into this shelf and support the frame the way you were meant to…huh?!  Just couldn’t hack it so you’d rather lay in a dusty heating vent and accomplish nothing! Rust away into the ether.  Fine, you coward!  Stay down there.  You’re a disgrace.  And you’re replaceable!  Remember that!”

And because we all think it, yes even you, dear reader….maybe, just maybe, those things CAN hear us in some way.  I am a believer in science and laugh at the supernatural…but maybe some of those crazy religions are right.  The ones that say everything has a spirit or whatever the fuck.  If that is in anyway the case, then we have a duty-however small that possibility.  What if you found out some day that every thing DOES have a spirit of some kind?  How haunted would you be knowing how you let all those stupid asshole objects throughout your life get away with such bullshit?  It’s too late to go yell at that dumpster that came out goddamn NOWHERE when you were seventeen and hit the back of your car while you were backing up.  That dumpster is gone now and totally got away with fucking up your summer scott-free.  Somewhere, that dumpster could be laughing its green, rusty ass off at you.  I will never have that problem.

Back to the pants.

These new but very cheap khakis I had bought on clearance at Target were apparently made of some material unknown to modern science.  No amount of heat, steam, and pressure would force that fabric to lay flat without wrinkles.  So I had to turn to my words.

“It’s like they are defying known physics!  Where do you come from!?  What do you want from me?!”

My daughter is laughing hysterically.  My wife is rolling over in bed moaning.

“Seriously, these things are like from a Lovecraft story.  Do you worship Cthulhu!?  Stand back, these pants are not of this world!”

My wife finally jumps out of bed.  “For fuck sake…just go downstairs and get her some breakfast.  I’ll iron your stupid pants!”

I grab my giggling daughter and we make our way down the stairs.  “Quickly, my munchkin.  We must leave your mother to her fate!”

“Daddy, you’re crazy.”

Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  I leave nothing to chance.  Though I could then hear my wife cursing under her breath from the bedroom: “What are these things made of?  Freaking kevlar? You fucking suck, pants…ruin my goddamn day off…”

Uh Huh.

Why I Should Probably Ride The Bus

Today pretty much convinced me I should probably stop driving and start taking the bus.  I mean, I’m not going to, but I probably should.  No, it has nothing to do with the environment.  Car pollution is pretty minor these days (though no one tells you that) and it’s not to help cut down on oil usage (automobile consumption of oil is a fraction of what we use in industry-ah fuck it…LOOK IT UP!) or the rising price of gas (I can dip into my kid’s college fund for that).
Any guesses?
My temper?  Well, shit…you must read my blog.  Which is what you’re doing right now.  How meta.
But it’s more than that.  Shit just seems to happen to me when I’m behind a wheel.  I just attract bad karma or something.  I really can’t explain it fully, but I can relay my most recent exploits while cruising the asphalt to give you a taste.  As the first sentence of this blog announced, it happened today on my morning commute.
I was a healthy twenty minutes late to work.  Now I believe in always being a little late for EVERYTHING.  It keeps your blood pumping, your synapses firing faster, and lets people know you bow down to no one!  I don’t see it as disrespectful to the other party…I see it as commanding respect from them.  Alpha-dog stuff.  You wait for ME!  But I’m off track here.  I was cruising down 104 when I began to feel a steady, rhythmic thumping.  I turned down the stereo and focused.  Something was in my tire.  Now I could have just finished my commute and checked the tire in my company parking lot.  But that was like another ten minutes of listening to that fucking sound and what if it popped my tire?  Fuck that.  I made a quick veer to the right and pulled off on the next exit, using my one-finger hand signal instead of the standard electronic device on my truck, and proceeded to sit in a very long red-light line.  My initial idea was to just pull off into the Target parking lot and see what the fuck it was…but I decided to challenge myself.  I was pretty confident I  could hop out, check the tire, pry out whatever shit was stuck in the tread and be back in my seat before the light turned green.  Then I cruise right back onto 104 and wham!…so slick.  There’s a little Mission Impossible in all of us.  So I left the truck running and grabbed my little folding knife from my dash and hopped out the side.  Of course, I had only taken three steps when I realized I had forgotten to pull the parking brake.  My truck is a stick shift…I don’t have that pussy “Park” crap.  We pop it in neutral and pull the parking brake like real men.  Except I didn’t.  And my truck kept on keeping on.  I probably would have realized this after one step but I was momentarily distracted by the person in the car behind me.  See, he saw me suddenly jump out of my truck with a knife in my hand, walking toward him…and well…the look on his face was just fucking priceless, man.  And the look on a dude’s face when he shits his pants is just one-of-a-kind.  I quickly flashed him a “What?  Calm down, McFly” look but then noticed my truck rolling by me, swiveled on one foot and dove back into the open driver’s side door.  I clawed for the brake with my hand, hitting it just as I tapped the back bumper of the asshole in front of me.  He was an asshole because…well…he was in front of me.  I reach up with my other hand and pulled the parking brake back and hit the hazard lights for good measure.  I could see this was going to take slightly longer than anticipated and I wanted to follow the street laws and alert my fellow-man.  I’m a nice guy.  I let out a sigh then jumped back up and out into the street, still holding my knife.  That’s when the guy from the car I just tapped, who had gotten out to come yell at me or some shit, screamed and flew backward with his hands in the air, dropping his iced-mocha-latta-thingy (I know, right? Who gets out of their car to act tough holding an iced-mocha-latte?) and throws his wallet at me.  His wallet?  Oh, my knife.  He thought…ha…just like the guy behind me.  Funny shit.  Did I mention my folding knife was a six-inch Kabar Warthog model?  Small detail.

“Dude.  Relax.  I’m just…”

“I’m calling the cops, you crazy fuck!”

That was Shit-Pants yelling from the car behind me with his cell phone to his ear.  By this point, all the cars behind us were honking their asses off and pulling around us.  What a sight.  Me standing outside my truck holding a large knife and another man’s wallet while that guy cowers in the street whimpering.  Insane.  A picture is worth a thousand words…and this one would probably come with 1-2 years for armed robbery, so I ran back to my rear tire, getting another scream from Shit-Pants in the car behind me and probably forcing him to empty out whatever was left in his ass-sack.  I quickly searched the back tire and saw a good-sized rock jammed in the tread.  One quick flick of the knife and it was out.  I jogged back to the front of my car and nudged the other guy still cowering next to his car with my foot.  He just let out another screech and proclaimed that he “had two kids, please don’t kill him blah blah”.  Whatever.  I dropped his wallet on his head, jammed my boot underneath him, and rolled him closer to his car using calming phrases like “You are the biggest pussy I have ever met.”.  Then I scooped up his iced-mocha-latte-thingy (Fuck off, I like those things) before I jumped back into my truck, hit the hazards off and swung back into traffic and around the guy’s car.  I just hit the tail end of a yellow light and I was back on track.  Only forty minutes late now.  Take that, Tom Cruise.
It was only a few minutes later when I noticed the flashing lights in my rear view.  No, not a cop.  Ambulance.  Almost as annoying.  I really hate the whole “pull over and let them by” thing.  I mean, I get it…but they still come off as smug.   Anyway…they were waaaay back there.  Like over  a hundred yards.  I looked ahead and saw my exit coming up so why bother pulling over, I’ll be out of their precious way in minute.  I hit the exit and saw the ambulance pull right off behind me.  Shit. What are the odds?  Okay, well, the exit is one lane and I wasn’t pulling off into a ditch.  Who the fuck expects that?  And they were still a little ways behind me.  I was still, in NO FUCKING WAY, holding them up.  I made a quick right at the merge and had EVERY INTENTION of pulling off to the side…but then I realized the road I was on had three lanes.  And sure enough, as soon as the ambulance came out of the merge, they went into the far left lane.  Well shit, we got a whole empty lane between us now.  No reason to pull over.  There was like two other cars around us.  Room for everybody.  So I continued on my merry way.   A second later, the speeding ambulance comes past me in the far left lane and SLOWS DOWN. I look to my left and the driver and passenger are just staring at me.  The passenger mouths the words “asshole” and just keeps mean-mugging me.  Really?  Did I, in any way, impede your precious fucking progress?  I can’t stress that enough.
And dear readers, don’t even start in with the “Well, what if they were on their way to save your mother from a heart attack or a two-year-old gunshot victim..who has diabetes and AIDS..and blah blah thppppppt!“  Fuck off.  We all know they were probably on their way to Wegman’s ’cause some fat lady slipped on a Jujyfruit in the bulk foods aisle that made her gout flare up.
So I give those assholes the standard salute as they speed away and I come to another red light a minute later.  I’m mentally waiving the whole incident off in my head when I am suddenly under an audible barrage of horn-honking from the car behind me.  I look in the rear-view to see some little hippy bitch giving me the double bird and mouthing endless obscenities while pointing at me, then the ambulance on the far horizon.  Amazing.  This little sanctimonious yuppy must have witnessed the whole event and decided to take it upon herself to avenge the poor, helpless EMT drivers.  Oh, the plight of the poor, shit-upon, Ambulance people.  So, I attempt to ignore her and just wait for the light…but the EMT Avenger just isn’t having it and gets out of her fucking car and runs up to my side window.  Oh, bitch, you done open the gates to Rickville now.  Before she even gets a chance to knock on the glass, I have the window down and with a flick of my wrist she is wearing that iced-mocha-latte-thingy.  She screams and bats at her thick, plastic-rimmed glasses while I hear the Mission Impossible theme song start playing in my head.

“Did that get in your eyes, sweet heart?  You should call an ambulance.”

Light goes green.  I leave her standing.

Fuck a bus.

Academy Masturbation and 10 Great Horror Flicks You’ve Never Seen

I do love me some drama.  As you may have guess from previous posts, I attract it in my life like a magnet…or maybe I’m attracted to it.  But I also love watching me some drama, particularly on the big screen.  I’m not talking of the “English Patient” variety (I guess that shit has its place)…I’m talking the true epitome of drama and high emotion: Horror. To me, a single mom battling against the odds to raise her children while she tries to keep her job at…*yawn*….yeah, never mind.  Shit doesn’t hold a  candle to a single mom fending off mutant serial killers attacking her home with nothing but a steak knife and a tight-fitting tank-top.  Get my adrenaline going, don’t try to make me cry by killing a child with cancer while the family looks on and grows together because of…*YAWN*..fuck me…ANYWAY…so if you are of like mind as myself (good choice, wise choice), how do you find the top shelf in movie-land horror?  The Oscars? No, you fucking idiot. You can’t look to the Academy for help on that one.  Not anymore, anyway.
In the early days, horror got plenty of Academy love all they way up to Psycho, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and even Jaws.  Then, horror was suddenly relegated to “Achievement in Special Effects” and shit like that.  Except for Silence of the Lambs and The Sixth Sense, the Academy mostly treats horror like fireworks: “OHH…isn’t that…visual.  How visual.” They generally ignore the horror genre almost as much as the comedy genre-which they routinely shit on and despise like the unwanted fifth child in a trailer-park family (YOU’LL SLEEP IN THE CLOSET AND LIKE IT!).  They’re far too busy circle-jerking to art house films or “powerful” biopics.  To them, that’s the sexy stuff.  In fact, that really is what the Academy Awards are: It’s an institution set up by Hollywood, staffed by Hollywood, to give awards to people in Hollywood…it’s a giant, televised orgy that we are only allowed to watch.   Like a couple who tape themselves having sex and wank-off to it…Hollywood just does it on the grandest of scales.  And we all know what gets them going the best:

“Ohh…it’s foreign!” (faster…harder..), “Oh…and it’s in black and white!” (I’m almost there…keep going..), “My God!  It’s a silent film…in 2012!” (MONEY SHOT!!), “THE ARTIST SWEEPS THE OSCARS!” (phew…will you get me a cigarette and a towel, baby?).

So, again, where do you go to get the goods in horror?  I mean, there’s no shortage of them in the theaters, and a few of those big productions are pretty decent.  But while the horror genre is a plentiful sea, the fucking system is set up so that only a handful ever get through the net to a theatre near you, and they are rarely hand-picked on quality…it’s more about marketability to the target demographic.   If you don’t have hot teen models running from something scary, you probably ain’t getting through that net..and it’s off to the DVD basement for you.  Others may make it through the net and hit a theatre, but get marketed like shit and disappear before you even knew they existed.
But that’s okay, because you have me. You’re welcome. Now let Uncle Rick take your hand.

Here’s a list, in chronological order, of ten horror flicks you probably have never heard of, and sure-as-fuck never saw, but damn well better see:

Last House on the Left (1972) : That’s right, 1972. NOT the fucking remake.  I did not see the remake but I can tell you it’s inferior by default because it’s lacking one of the key qualities of this original 16mm shocker….it doesn’t look like shit.  I mean, terrible film grade, grainy, seedy.  It feels like your watching a recently found snuff film.  And that’s why it’s so goddamn great.  The story is shocking and there is plenty of gore, but this movie shakes you to the core for what it doesn’t show you just as much as what it does.  Some scenes that it pans away from force you to imagine the rest in your mind…taking you to those nasty places you did NOT want to go.  Also, read up on the release history of this movie…total “fuck the man” bad-ass-ness.

The Brood (1979) : If you’re even a moderate horror fan, you’ve probably heard of this Cronenburg flick.  You might even have hazy memories of it.  Watch it.  Very dated but just beyond fucking creepy.  And the schlocky, gross-out ending is just epic.

The Funhouse (1981) : I’m sure you know The Texas Chainsaw Massacare…but very few know of this other Tobe Hooper entry into the teen-slasher genre.  Again, very dated, but very seedy and more disturbing than you would expect and a ridiculous amount of saliva for some reason.  And a fantastic, highly mean-spirited ending which always makes me smile.

Wolfcreek (2005) : This should ring a bell, it actually hit theaters for a few weeks and made a little money and got some controversy going.  But still too few have watched this Australian blood bath.  Don’t want to give too much away…but SOOO worth it for the infamous “Head on a Stick” scene. I tried to get my wife to go as that for Halloween.  No dice.

The Acolytes (2008) : Another Australian entry.  They are fucked up down under.  This is a truly brilliant look at the serial killer genre.  What do three teens do when they figure out a local loner is a serial killer?  The wrong thing. The VERY wrong thing.  Fucking idiots.  Some kick-ass, early acting work from Joel Edgerton too.  That guy is boss.

The Burrowers (2008) : A horror set in the 1800′s wild west.  Yeah.  Think “Screamers” with cowboys and indians.  Solid, brutal, and no happy endings.

Splinter (2008) : This was in theaters for like a microsecond and then off to the DVD racks it went.  Shit, now it’s on SyFy Channel.  You probably flipped past it on a saturday afternoon and thought “ehh…SyFy Channel?…fuck this.” Watch it.  Brilliant monster movie on a shoe string budget, but the special effects are still top-notch and gross.

Carriers (US version) (2009) : Another one that made a brief entry to theaters and had some marketing..but bombed terribly and was pulled.  Not sure why.  Oh, probably ’cause it was waaaaay darker than the target demo was expecting.  Extremely nihilistic and sad.  No cute, stupid romances or last second saves.  Slow but engrossing.  Vile and depressing.  Shit, isn’t that the recipe for an Oscar?

House of the Devil (2009) : A homage to very early 80′s teen splatter films..centering on that late 70′s/early 80′s satanic cult scare.  Beautifully shot and edited.  I’d fucking swear it WAS shot in the 80′s and I was on my dad’s couch sneaking in another saturday afternoon gore-fest before I went out to ride my Big-Wheel. I was waiting for a cameo from Kolchak.  A VERY slow burn…but the tension builds nicely and pays off pretty well.  Now this movie is NOT about the ending, it’s about the ride, so recognize.

REC 2 (2009) : From Spain.  They are weird people. The kick-ass first one made enough of a splash to get remade in the US under the title “Quarantine” (which was also pretty decent). Continuing immediately where the first one ended, the sequel takes the “viral zombie epidemic” model of the first movie and turns it on its fucking head.  Clever and bloody.

There, I’ve done all I can for now.  Go forth and disturb the shit out of yourself.

The Jamaican Incident

I think we’ve all been in many situations in our lives in which we have been seriously fucking scared to various degrees.  It’s a pretty standard life stuff.  Being home alone as a kid and hearing the back door rattle.  Getting cornered by the school bully.  Having a pit bull cross your path and stare you down.  A biker, high on meth, trying to rape a kid in your kitchen.  Scary shit.

Then you have those incidents that are just the one-of-a-kind, FUBAR, pants-shitting fests that you (hopefully) only go through once in your life.  That’s when you really find out a lot about yourself.    It just so happens mine happened in another country, during my honeymoon no less, and involved machetes. And about 300 beaded necklaces.

For our honeymoon, my wife and I went on a West Caribbean cruise back in 2008.  It cost a shitload but this is supposed to be a memory you build forever, so who can put a price tag on that?  Well, Princess Cruises sure as fuck can…and did.  Itemized. The cruise departed from Tampa, Florida and its first stop was Ocho Rios, Jamaica.

We were beyond thrilled when we woke up that morning on the ship and walked out on our balcony to see the tropical shore of Jamaica come into view.  Unfucking real.  Palms trees and exotic vegetation covered the entire mountainous landscape.  The water was more blue than the sky.  I felt like I was on some exotic movie location…and I was, basically.  We pulled up to port and could already smell the sugar cane and rum…and weed, a fuck-ton of weed.
Now we had some excursions planned later but wanted to go into the small town market and explore a little.  This is what travel-savy people refer to as “really fucking stupid”.  My wife also wanted to get her hair braided, as this is the necessary custom of all young females with long hair visiting a tropical country.  The exact reason for this behavioral phenomenon is still a mystery, though scientists and sociologist alike tend to theorize that it’s predominantly caused by “white guilt”.  As in “Sorry about that shit my ancestors probably did to your people. Rape, slavery…all that.  How about I let you braid my hair into corn-rows just like yours and then we’re like…you know…even?  Cause I look more like you?  That’s not patronizing, right?”  Apology through assimilation.  It’s also possible that women just want a convenient way to keep their long hair out of their face in a tropical environment.  Whichever. Regardless, the real crime here is that the locals charge an obscene amount of money to take tourist’s hair and tie to their scalp for them.  I’m ranting about this because this need to get her hair braided was the catalyst in what became known in our family as “The Jamaican Incident”.

As we were leaving the boat, we had been warned not get into any taxis that did not have explicit, red, government-issued plates in their back windows.  Apparently those taxis that did not have those tags were actually ruthless criminals that would kidnap, rob, rape, and hold you for ransom…probably.  And no one seemed particularly bothered by this.  The tone was “Hey, just don’t get in their taxis and they won’t rob and kill you.  No big deal”.  Okay.  No worries.  And I use that term “taxis” very loosely, as the twenty vehicles that crowed that port outside the boat were primarily rusted, late-80′s Nissans and Yugos and didn’t look like they would make it another ten feet.  You’d think if you were gonna kidnap people you would use vehicles that wouldn’t allow your kidnapee’s to just sneeze the door off and escape.  But I guess you gotta make due.

We avoided the taxis altogether though, not wanting the risk the chance of being kidnapped and raped on our honeymoon (I know, no sense of adventure) and began walking the main road to the little market town.  Now we were also told of some other standard tourist practice when going through Jamaica:  Don’t get in unmarked taxi, as I mentioned, don’t buy any weed, don’t walk off into the little side-road shops, and stay on the main road ONLY (where police patrol on foot).  We assume the downside to not following these rules probably included that whole kidnapping and rape thing (that’s really a booming industry in Jamaica).  Well, we refused all attempts to sell us weed, and we were seriously approached about five times within the first twenty feet of the main road.  I mean, these dudes didn’t even bother with the pretense of discretion.  I think one guy had a mega-phone.  But we politely declined all attempted sales. And we avoided the off-road trinket stands…for about another thirty feet.  Then some old woman came running up and practically begged us to come see her goods just off the road.  She looked pretty rough and I had a little money so…shit, I’ll buy a little statue or necklace and she can feed her kids for a month. I’m a great man.
We walked off the main road and down into to this sort of culvert…and were instantly surrounded by like five guys shoving handfuls of cheap, beaded necklaces in our face and yelling “$10!  You buy for $10!”.

“Dude, no. I just wanted to buy something from that lady.”

“That’s our motha’, mon.  You buy dese beads!  You buy four for $30!  Make you sexy, muthafucka! You want some weed?”

“What?”  I looked over at the woman who had sat down in a chair and was smirking at us with a wicked grin.  Oh, I get it.  Nice little con.  Bitch.

Luckily, an officer had followed us down the side road and started yelling something to all the guys and they backed off.

“You still buy, right mon?!  You come back?!”

“Umm…yeah,” I said, “I’ll buy some stuff on our way back to the boat in a little bit.  No problem.”  Whatever.  This one guy…big, shirtless dude in dreads that looked like he benched cattle, just glared at me.  Customer service was defiantly lacking on Jamaican roadsides.

So we quickly made it the nice, safe market village and walked around the shops.  It was right on the shore.  Really fucking beautiful.  My wife walked into a little hair studio and sat down while the woman starting braiding her hair.  She had a sign that said $10 a person.  Shit, good deal.  So I sat on the wooden porch and stared at the blue water while the lady commenced tying my wife’s lovely hair into tiny, gangster knots.  I was deep in…thought….okay, I didn’t turn down EVERY guy that wanted to sell us pot, okay?  I figured I could smoke the one joint before we got back to the boat.  Whatever.  But I was enjoying my buzz when it was soon harshly interrupted by my wife’s sudden pleads for attention.  Pshh.  Women.

“What?  We’re on a tropical island.  What’s wrong?” I whined.

“Umm….it’s $10…per inch.”  Her hair was halfway done.  She has long fucking hair. I had brought $60 with me.  It was gonna cost about $100.  The hair lady had another one of those smirks on her face.  I see.  Conned again.

“Fuck.  Where’s the ATM?” I asked her.

“No ATM in this village.”

“Uh…huh.  Okay.  Fuck.  I have to go back to the boat.”

My wife looked at me with saucer-cup eyes.  Did I mention she was two months pregnant?  Yeah, basically I had to leave my pregnant wife in a Jamaican village that seemed to survive by conning tourists and perhaps kidnapping and raping them at times, alone, while I ran to find an ATM on our boat.  I’m a great man.

My wife mouthed the words “fuck you” as I asked the hair lady if there was a quicker way back to our boat.  I could actually see it from the shore line here…not far at all.  But I would have to walk by that little con-artist culvert again and I didn’t want the harassment.  Beads clash with my style.

“You can walk through water..there,” she pointed at a portion of the coast.  “Wade through there, then climb up that hill and go through field.  You come up on main road right by port.”

Shit.  Okay.  I kept my shoes on and started wading through the ocean shore toward the far hill…and stumbled upon Dan.  That’s what this skinny little Jamaican man called himself anyway.  He had waded into the water after me.

“Where you goin, mon?”

“Um…back to the boat.  I don’t have any money.  I just gotta…ah…nothin.”  I tried wading away a little faster.

“You shouldn’t walk through dere, mon.”

*Sigh* “Why?”

“Bad people.”

*Double sigh* My pregnant wife was sitting alone in a Jamaican village-eh, you get the point.  It was desperation time.

“Dan, if I give you $20 now and promise to give you another $20 when I get off the boat, will you get me to the boat and then back to my wife without any of the other guys fucking with me?”  I pulled out a $20.

“No prob!  I sell you dese beads!” He pulled out a handful.

“I don’t want any beads, Dan.  Just get me to the boat and back.”

“No prob.  You follow me.”

I know you experienced travelers are already shaking your snobby heads at me.  Fuck off.  But it worked.  At first.  We came up the hill and climbed it and jogged through a small field where he fended off a few approaching guys.  Dan was a small guy…but I guess he had some sway.  He just said a few words and they walked off, beads in hand.  Then we came up on the main road right next to the port and our boat.

“Dan.  I love you.”

“You want some weed?”

“No, Dan.  That would be a bad idea.  Now just hold tight right here for me, okay?”

He did, and I ran up the port, boarded the boat and ran to the dining hall where the nearest ATM was.  Okay.  I gave Dan $20. I have to give him another $20 and I only have….fuck it.  I pulled out $200-AND STOP SHAKING YOUR HEADS AT THE COMPUTER SCREEN!  WHAT DO YOU KNOW!?  I WAS PROBABLY STILL HIGH!

Once back on the main road, Dan was there waiting for me so I slipped him another $20 and we quickly skirted back into the field.
And then shit just got super fucking real.

We weren’t five steps in when that huge dude from earlier came out of fucking NOWHERE with an arm full of beads (again with the fucking beads) and a machete hanging from his belt and his oversized pectorals glaring at me.

“Hey!  You said you buy now?  You buy, mon.”  He walked right up to me…like RIGHT up to me.  “You buy these.”  He shoved a handful of necklaces at me.  He wasn’t asking, he was telling me.

“Um..Dan? Time to earn that money.”

Dan was frozen.  It seemed his earlier clout on other potential pests didn’t hold on this guy. That was great.

“How much?”

“How much you got?”

Fuck.  Fuck.  “I’ll give you $30 for those ones, okay?” I pulled out two $20′s. “You got change?”
Oh wait, I get stupider.

He smiles and says he doesn’t have any change.  I tried to just offer him the $40…but he saw that cash in my wallet.

“You come wit me and I get change. You come.”

I look at Dan.  Dan is looking at his feet.  That was $40 well spent. I look at the big guy…and at his machete.  We are in the middle of some nondescript field in a poor, crime-ridden, foreign country. I think I would have been better off getting into one of those unmarked taxis.

I follow the guy down a small path that opens to a clearing with little shack,  a row of black SUV’s and whole bunch of teens sitting around a fire, chopping logs with machetes (does everyone in fucking Jamaica have a machete?)…while live chickens run through their feet.  I can actually see the far shore from here, just past the shack…and can see the market village where my wife is still (hopefully) waiting for me.  It’s right there.  The big guy jogs over to some seriously sketchy dudes standing by the SUV’s and mumbles something to them.

“Hey, kid! (I’m a kid now) Come ova here, we get you change!”

“Don’t go ova dere, mon.”

Dan had waddled up behind me.  “No shit, Dan.”  It was pretty obvious they weren’t giving me any change.  I walk over there, I’m gonna be introduced the before-mentioned #1 industry in Jamaica.  I wondered which one would actually rape me.  Okay, I’m not going that way…that left me with trying to cruise past the teens with the machetes, who were now cat-calling me and asking me for money.

“Come ova here, kid.  We got change!”  the big guy called again and started walking back to me holding the beads up high. His other hand was pawing for his machete.

Shitshitshitshitshit…Okay, here we go.  “You know what?  No beads for me, man.  I’m cool!”  I start jogging past the teens who are now standing up.  Fuck, I’m gonna get hacked to pieces by a bunch of thirteen-year-olds.  That would not read well in my obituary.   I try to make a quick dodge and I walk directly into some other shirtless guy with dreads down to his waist.  The fuck did he come from?  I swear Jamaicans can teleport.  Dude smelled like death and rum.  In that order.

“You give me money.”  He didn’t even bother with the beads shit, which I actually found refreshing.

“What?”

“Give me money-”

I pull out a $20 and shove it in his hand and run by him.  The kids start yelling “Hey YO!  Give us money too, muthafucka!”  I’m not looking back, I break into a full sprint with my eyes on the water.  I can just picture the whole gang of those fuckers behind me, swinging their machetes and handful of beads, arguing over who gets to rape me first (okay, I was little stuck on that possible scenario.  But it’s terrifying, okay?)  I sprint into two feet of ocean water and nearly fall over but manage to keep upright and keep running as fast as I can.  I can see the market shore.  My legs are pumping like pistons.  I can just picture a machete sailing through the air and impaling me in the spine.   I see my wife sitting on the porch of the hair salon.  She sees me and glares.  I keep running as I make it to the shore and run up to the porch, waving my hands.  I’m out of breath.  Can’t talk.

“Where the fuck have you been?  And why were you running like that?” she asks.

I look behind me.  No one.  The shore is quiet and calm.

“I was…I….shit…” I pull my wallet back out.  Exactly $100 left.  I hand it to my wife and she goes to pay the hair lady.  I slump down on the porch.  My wife comes back out.

“She said there is a free shuttle coming here in a few minutes that will take us right to the dolphin show.”

“Cool.”

“Are you alright?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, let’s get going.  Do you have money for the show?”

I reached down and touched my wallet. “No.  I have to go back to the ATM.”

Jamaica.  Fuck yeah.