Eat Chicken Fries! Think about sports! 10 DOLLARS, BRO, SHIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sports seem fairly irrelevant here. The promotion has, as far as I can tell, nothing to do with sports. You just have to buy a shit ton of chicken, and then you get rewarded with $10. Obviously, the balls are there so that bros know this promotion is plenty bro-friendly. The kicker is that I think boneless (BROneless) wings are bro enough to stand alone (aBRone). For example:

The B stands for Bro!!

See what I did there? I took out the sporting equipment and replaced it with three Susan B. Anthony-s (AnthBROny-s). Will bros still buy pre-made freeze-dried quesadillas in sprite of/because of a triple portrait of this Quaker BROad? TIME WiLL TELL.

I guess this isn’t as bad as that Dr. Pepper advertised as being ‘not for women!’, which is the worst example of a beverage discriminating against a group of people since Baskin Robbins came out with that Meat&Milkshake, which was advertised as being ‘not for Jews!’.

Why am I not focusing on my own? BECAUSE IT’S TOO HARD. (My NYR is to pull off calling people ‘hoss’. So far every time I’ve tried I just end up sounding racist. Racist against…cowboys? I don’t know it just sounds racist.)

Last year by this time I had also given up on my resolution, which was to become the kind of person who has a lot of different mustards. I know what you’re thinking, ‘sounds easy. Couldn’t you just buy them in a store? This is America.‘ And to you I say, ‘First please stop talking like a Brett Easton Ellis character, it is terrifying; and second, you clearly DON’T GET IT.’ It wasn’t about the mustard at all, really. It’s about the lifestyle that the mustard alludes too. For instance: A guest could ask me, ‘Michela, Do you have any Champagne mustard?’ and I would reply haughtily, ‘Of course, Admiral, I have plenty left over from the feast of One Dozen Honey Baked Hams that I held last week’. I don’t want to just buy mustard, I want to be in a position to need many mustards. For my guests.

So having already failed two resolutions in a row, I feel just the right amount of qualified to help you out.

If your resolution is to lose weight, which I understand is a pretty common one, I have an excellent diet that I can recommend to you. I invented it and it’s called the Manic Housewife with Body Image Issues diet. Basically, instead of eating things that taste good, you eat only baby carrots and cheap Riesling wine. They taste awful together. The best thing about this diet is that due to the nature of the character you will be playing, there are periodic binges built-in to the structure of the diet, though to stay in character, your binges must be things you purchased for your fictional children. For example, you will have to eat a whole box of Gushers or something nuts like that. You probably won’t lose any weight (I certainly haven’t), but you will wake up every day feeling just terrible with a gross taste in your mouth!

Obviously my diet will not be enough to succeed with the resolution, you will also need to incorporate an exercise regimen. If you’re like me and you don’t like the look of all these modern gyms with their windows, I have an EGGSELLENT and needlessly complex solution for you. First you’re gonna have to apply, and be accepted to New York University. You’re then going to need to be assigned to live in the incomparable Third Avenue North residence hall, where you can take full advantage of the generously titled ‘Fitness Center’. There are only three machines and one of them is haunted (the others are broken), but there are no windows and the room has a certain dank veneer that you will no doubt find encouraging. While working out, you will be motivated to not become the human version of this room, who is the overweight ghost of a murderer whose day job is to calibrate thermostats on industrial refrigerators (which he fills with the remains of victimsOMGGGGGGGGG!!!!!).

If your resolution is to read more, then first let me congratulate you, because reading is fucking awesome and super goddamn important. I recommend that you model yourself after my go-go library-hold-placing, jet-set lifestyle. It is incredible glamorous, according to both ‘Modern Pajama Schmo’ and ‘The Weekly Hermit’ magazines. Most importantly, get on goodreads.com and friend me, because my double secret plan B resolution is to get more friends on Goodreads.

If you want to build an arsenal of interesting tales in 2012, an easy way to do this is to hitchhike and/or pick up hitchhikers. Your friends will love to hear stories from the road, everybody does! That’s why Jack Kerouac is famous, despite all evidence that he is probably a shitty friend (he just left Neal Cassidy in Mexico! What a shitty move!).

I’ve heard that getting organized is a popular resolution. This one is easy. All you have to do is get so super disorganized that your friends and family submit an audition tape for you to that show ‘Hoarders’. Then those fuckers will come and clean the shit out of your house for not even any monies. Yaht. Zee.

Apparently the most popular resolution is to spend more time with your friends and family. I’m flabbergasted that you even need to resolve to do this. Who are you spending your time with instead? Are you the Phantom of the Opera? Do you live in a network of tunnels beneath the Paris Opera and have no contact with people, friends or otherwise? Are you spending all your time with your enemies, undercover, to learn their ways as part of a revenge plot? You will never be happy. If you want to spend time with your family and friends, I recommend that you…just do…that? They probably would love to see you.

If you need any other help, just let me know.

The idea came to me while I was milking the dregs out of a wine bladder that I had extricated from its box-home (incidentally, is there such a thing as ‘the dregs of boxed wine’? If there is, I’m sure that you can read about it on this website: http://bumwine.com/).

I think what really got the inventive juices flowing that enabled me to come up with this idea that I think is just so great is that someone in my dumb house was blasting Harry Belafonte’s ‘Shake Senora’, which has long been one of my favorite songs, mostly because it makes me think that anything awesome is possible. Dance with these spectral offensive linemen in my spooky Connecticut home (is there any other kind?! Am I right, Mom?!) during finals week? Of course I will be doing that. That is within the realm of possible activities, because ‘Shake Senora’ exists and is great. Some of you might not get this Beetlejuice reference, because you’re busy doing other things. (Some really rough endings to that sentence that I tried before deeming them simply too harsh to be said by someone sitting cross-legged on a bed littered with multiple former egg nog vessels (Side note: A fun thing to put on my resume/make into a TV pilot would be Egg Nog Vassal, where I describe my relationship with this seasonal beverage as being feudal and full of mutual obligations and I have to call Nog ‘my Lord’) are: busy doing absolutely nothing better with your life, and, busy not deserving to live. Obviously, these sound way too mean and I would never write them down.

I promise that I’ll tell you my great idea, but for right now just let me think a little more about Egg Nog Vassal. Maybe it is not too edgy to be the name of a mostly saxophone folk trio? No, you’re right, too edgy. That band would obviously be called Just the Sax, assuming ‘just the facts’ is a real expression and I’m not just trying to convince myself that it is for the sake of Just the Sax.

Okay here we go.

So I’m thinking what I’ll do is save the bladders from the box wines, fill them with water and sell them as incredibly inconvenient CamelBak-style hydration solutions that you have to carry like a slithery football, or, more accurately, like a fucking bag of water. You’re probably thinking ‘this doesn’t sound like such a great idea, not blog-revival great, at least’, but that’s because I haven’t told you the kicker (it’s called a kicker, because it makes you want to ‘kick in’ some start-up capital to get this idea off the ground, obviously). The kicker is that I won’t rinse out the bags, so the water that you’re drinking will taste vaguely of old $12 per 5 liters White Zinfandel.

This product can also be used as a posture de-stabilizer because if you are interested in using Fun Bladder (that is its working title) in a hands-free capacity, you will need to drape it over your shoulder and walk around pretty hunched over so that it won’t fall off when your wineter sloshes around. Wineter is obviously the name of the water and wine mixture with which your Fun Bladder is dangerously over-filled. Winter Wineter is a special edition Fun Bladder that I will release seasonally, where your wineter contains traces of a very Christmas-y mulled wine. Winetar Weiner is a promotional event where competitive hot dog eaters have to dip their dogs in wineter instead of water to scarf them down. There are no survivors.

Just kidding?!

But for reals I love eating things in sandwich form. Lately though, that passion has taken a distinct turn for the weird. This past winter I perfected a pretty good, not-too-grotesque sandwich that has ended up being a sort of gateway sandwich into much more outré shit. That sandwich, named for the town wherein I purchased the ingredients, was as follows:

The Farmington- A pita pocket, slit open about 180° around, inner topside slathered in a generous portion of spicy brown mustard, inner bottom side coated in a thick enough layer of roasted garlic hummus to hold in place 14 mini carrots (NOT baby carrots)* in a gracefully geometric, spatially efficient design. Insert any piece of round white cheese (preferably part skim mozzarella, but provolone will do), and keep that shit mustard side. Between the carrots and cheese goes about 4oz. of mesquite spiced turkey. This sturdy sandwich goes great with a nice stout or brown ale, or a tall glass of skim or 1% milk.

The thing that I like most about The Farmington is that it’s creative without being alienating. I ate this sandwich a lot this past winter and when people asked what I was eating, I had nothing to be ashamed of. I would give a beat-by-beat description of it’s contents, which usually garnered an optimistically curious ‘Mmmm?’ and sometimes even a ‘holy shit that sounds like a hell of a sandwich!’.

Lately, this has not been the case. Or rather, I’m pretty sure it would be the case if there was anyone around to witness the aberrations I’ve been coming out with in the past few months.

The moment I really realized that I was really in a bad way weirdness-wise in sandwich town came at Trail Days in early May of this year. A friend of mine who had justifiable qualms about the security of his pack asked if he could store it in my tent, as he had only a hammock and was not content with it as a storage unit. I told him sure, no problem. Well cut to a few days prior when I was in the checkout line at the Roanoke, VA Walmart with an incredibly queer assortment of groceries, the which were to be my supplies for my week in Damascus. All things considered, I did all right in the supply department, and managed to come out of that Walmart with a decent array of goods (at least, they were enough to keep me alive for a demifortnight). I will offer as my defense that it is not easy to enter an entirely overwhelming store with no list or plan of attack and come out on top when you’ve spent the previous day/night in the company of an old friend staring down the business end of a gravity bong and chasing it with the straw end of a taqueria at happy hour. Any way you slice it, though, I stared at my wares and realized that what I had was the fixins for a weird sandwich.

Anyway, I ended up eating almost nothing but this sandwich all week, and lived in constant fear that my pack-storing friend would eventually catch me in the act of totally ogre-ing one of these little monsters during his frequent forays to my site to retrieve various items from his pack. I should also mention that almost all of my daylight hours of trail days were spent in my tent, recovering from the previous night, so the odds of catching me in the act of eating this sandwich were pretty high. Nearly every time I heard his approach, I was obliged to bolt down the carcass of my WS and every time he hailed me with a cheery query about what I was up to, I was inclined to respond ‘not eating a weird sandwich, that’s for sure!’. I managed to play it off and I don’t think he ever suspected anything. I have named this sandwich for the book that I was reading while eating it, as well as the way I felt about it.

The Needful Thing- Take a fajita-sized flour tortilla and make a large ‘M’ (also a Σ will work, depending on which way you’re looking at it) out of off-brand yellow mustard. Next, throw a slice of Valu Time brand Swiss Flavored Pasteurized Imitation Cheese Food on there and use it to sort of spread around that mustard. Sprinkle a couple of pieces of teriyaki flavored beef jerky onto the cheese and roll it up into a blintz-shaped torpedo of weird. Eat it really fast. Goes great with warm Old Milwaukee or untreated river water.

This sandwich was really the turning point. As much as I was ashamed of it, I was also enamored of it. In my move to Huntington, West ByGod Virginia I have found myself living alone for the first time in my life, and it really couldn’t have come at a more opportune time heterodox sandwich experimentation-wise. I’ve really been able to go goddamn nuts in the sandwich department over these last five months. And nuts I have gone! Here are some more of my total abominations:

Agent Orange- Named in part for the color of its ingredients, and partly for the fact that it just tastes like fucking poison, this sandwich, like its predecessor and it’s usurper, was born out of my general lack of motivation to go to the grocery store and pick up anything to eat that wasn’t just a lonely ingredient of a vague recipe. Agent Orange starts with two pieces of honey wheat bread, both light-mayonaissed to the nines and covered in a loose assembly of baby carrots (NOT mini carrots)**, then sprinkled with a pretty decent amount of shredded taco cheese, and garnished with a few sloppy drunken shakes of parmesan. Goes great with boxed white wine and general malaise.

The Lo-Fi Pizza Open Face- To be honest, calling this open face a ‘lo-fi pizza’ is a bit of a stretch. It’s basically a no-fi pizza, because its fidelity to its inspiration is almost not even discernible, as it gets lost in its weirdness. What you do is take a couple of slices of that honey wheat bread that I mentioned earlier, and put some pizza sauce up on there. Then you garnish it with Kroger’s finest pineapple tidbits (one size down from chunks, one step up from crushed. I was incredibly jazzed to find out that this cut of canned pineapple existed), cover those bad boys up with some shredded mozz’, and sprinkle a little bit of garlic salt and cracked red pepper on there. Now this sammich would probably not even be that weird if it was heated up. It would really be like a little pizza. But here’s the thing- I don’t have a microwave. Here’s another thing- I am so fucking lazy. So one thing you need to keep in mind when eating this sandwich is that you have to hold your breath when you’re going in to take a bite, because if you breathe at the wrong moment you will either find that you have inhaled a sizable portion of shredded cheese and garlic salt, or else you have blown it all the fuck over your lap (that is, if you’re like me and you like to enjoy your weird sandwiches sitting cross-legged on a futon that is permanently set to the bed position, otherwise you probably just got it on your plate or table). Tastes great in the dark with poorly mixed Country Time pink lemonade.

I know that there are some other unusual sandwiches that I have recently enjoyed, but I can’t seem to remember them. Probably because I have repressed them, because they are just to weird to be stored in my memory alongside normal things like ‘how to tie shoes’ and ‘mom’s cell phone number’. I know that my experimentation is far from over, and I look forward to what the future holds for me in this department. And by ‘look forward to’, I mean accept with a not inconsiderable degree of resignation laced with fear.

*Note: The reason it is important to use mini carrots instead of their much girthier cousins, the baby carrots, is that the pita, once split open lacks the structural integrity to bear thata kind of a load. The mini carrots are thin and light enough that when arranged properly they can act as a sort of vertabral column, reinforcing the bottom side of the pita instead or shredding it to ribbons (which will absolutely happen with the baby carrots, so fucking leave them out of this).

**Another Note: The reason this sandwich is better off with baby carrots is simple: they don’t sell mini carrots at my local grocer. They have these things ‘petite carrots’ but I don’t like the look of them. Also, I’ve recently switched to buying carrot chips, because they’re easier to dip in hummus, so hopefully this sandwich is a thing of the past anyway. Good riddance.

Firstly, let me thank you for installing my internet– it really feels great to be reliably connected to the world wide web after a year of stealing other people’s wireless and trying to finish writing various f’book status updates while one of any number of the adorable old lady Rangeley librarians shut off all the other computers around me in a way that felt very passive aggressive and menacing. But moving on to more serious matters, do you really think that that story you that told me about the lady you know who just got sent to jail for delivering heroin that ended with the sentence ‘what I want to know is how many times has she given that ass up for some drugs, because you know it’s happened’ was an appropriate way to represent Comcast Cable to one of their newest customers?

My Dear Rabbit, Joey Chaos Thunder,

You might think I’m just some monstrous, terrifying fool who doesn’t realize that you’re only pretending to nap next to those wires so that you can start chewing them to useless electrified ribbons as soon as I get up to refill my water, but let me just say this: I bet I can wait longer for a drink of water than you can wait to run off to your litter box and shit. Who’s the fool now, old friend?

Dear New Apartment,

Thank you SO MUCH for not being haunted!

Dear Toilet that Won’t Stop Flushing due to a Rare Rubber Malfunction in the Tank,

While I appreciate your vigor, your enthusiasm, and your truly admirable level of job satisfaction, I feel obligated to point out that your eagerness to completely rid yourself of my waste and that of my guests is most likely going to end up costing me a small fortune in water bills. So, as much as I hate to be wet blanket/party pooper (*Note: Choose your own pun adventure!) I’m going to have to respectfully ask you to cease this behavior and please start acting like a regular toilet. Thank you.

Dear Cup Phones,

I was always only pretending that you worked. I could never actually hear any one talking to me through you.

I don't even know which science to blame for this...

So, yeah, we should all have that straight by this stage of the game (the game being automotive history and development, or even human evolution and its effects on mankind’s ability to perceive the concavity of sections of asphalt). Not only do bumps not equal dips, but they are the exact opposite of dips! Bumps are even less like dips than level road! The reason that this is relevant is that recently someone whom I can only assume is not affiliated with the Department of Transportation has put up between 3 and 5 home made bump signs to indicate some dips in this one 4 mile strech of road. I think this is total horse shit. The reason we even have a DOT is so that any old yahoo can’t just wil-nil erect nonsensical road signs! This is potentially a very hazardous pastime. For example, on this same road as all the bogus bump signs there is a hair-pin left curve called Geneva Bog (I always accidentally call it Fisty’s Bog after a level on this game World of Goo that comes as a free demo on the Nintendo Wii). What if some ambitious (/totally batfuck) amateur sign enthusiast were to opt to hang up a big sign with an arrow bent 90 degrees to the right? Many people would crash into the snowbank is what would happen there. That would be just awful! This same person could wander out to Dead Indian Pass in Wyoming putting up signs that said ‘NO OPEN RANGE, DO NOT WATCH FOR LOOSE STOCK ON ROADS’, or out to Grafton Notch in New Hampshire and erect notices that indicated ‘THERE ARE NOT ANY FROST HEAVES, MAINTAIN SPEED AND CONTINUE FIDDLING WITH YOUR IPOD RADIO TRANSMITTER, MICHELA’. This would result in many collisions with things and people and cattle.

I’m the first person to admit that I am not a perfect driver. Though others may disagree, I will also say that I’m not an awful driver. One thing on which we should all be able to agree, though, is that I do not cut people off. If anything, I am overly cautious when turning into traffic and often miss opportunities due to playing it safe! For some reason, though, the only 3 times in my life I’ve ever cut some one off, it’s just been this one old lady. Three separate times. Same old lady.

Rangeley is a real small town, and like all real small towns, you see and recognize the same vehicles on the road all the time. Especially if you drive an enormous red land monster. This old woman happened to drive a slate blue Rav 4. So in short, we could easily recognize each other.

In my defense, the only reason I cut her off (all three times) was because it was a choice between cutting her off or T-boning her. As some of you know, the Bronco didn’t really have any brakes, so downhill stop signs were a real white whale for that truck. All stop signs were a little iffy, but down hill stop signs were a real roll of the dice. Each of the incidents went something like this: I got to the stop sign, stopped, let go the ‘brakes’, realized she was coming but that it was too late to stop again, gunned it, offered an apologetic wave while she made this face:

Exactly this expression, but an old lady making it...and more hurt surprise and disbelief and less unbridled yuppie rage.

The face got more and more surprised with each incident, as if to ask ‘are you serious, 20-something Bronco driver? Do you ever not cut people off?’. Because the only times she ever saw me were when I was cutting her off she must naturally have assumed that I was just cutting everybody off all over town. This was not the case, but I can’t blame her for making logical conclusions. I was going to describe each incident in loving detail, but I realized that to the vast majority of you who are unfamiliar with this particular small Maine mountain town, these details would mean nothing. So I drew this really excellent map instead:

Slate blue Xs mark her position at time of cut-offs

Please note that in my rendering of the Saddleshack (our devilishly clever nickname for our house. It works on 2 levels- 1) all the residents worked at Saddleback, 2) it was actually a total shack), I accidentally drew it slanting the wrong way. The degree of the slant is accurate, but the roof should be pointing to 11 o’clock, not 1 o’clock. Also please note that it took me like an hour to draw that Bronco, so be sure to take a good long look at it so as not to make my efforts a total waste.

I know that the odds of that old lady reading this blog are miles beyond calculable, but if any one who does read this knows who she is or is in a position to contact her, please let her know that I am so, so sorry.

I don’t think that anyone has probably ever wikipedia-ed that candy Riesens. Here’s my thinking: mostly only old people like them, and mostly old people are not aware of Wikipedia. Even the ones who are have probably eaten enough Riesens in their long long lives to not need to know anything else about them. But here’s the thing, I don’t think anybody cares about this. Here’s another thing, I think that’s fine. 

When we start worrying about Riesens having, maybe, feelings? Bad dice. Note: I couldn’t decide whether to say ‘no dice’ or bad news, so I compromised and went with bad dice. I think it’s stupid but I also sort of think it’s just great so I’m going to LET IT RIDE.

You might also think nobody’s wikied Gene Shalit, but you’d be dead wrong. Some buddies and I used to do that like all the time.

So the other day I got the following super generic text message from a Wyoming telephone number: ‘What up’.

Naturally, I responded, ‘Who’s this?’

Response: ‘Rob’.

Again, naturally, I assumed that it was the Rob with whom I made acquaintance this summer while in Wyoming (Actually I met two Robs, but only one whom I would ever really expect to hear from). The Rob that I wouldn’t consider it odd to hear from, however, would probably not say ‘what up’, but that didn’t strike me as odd at the time. What did strike me as odd was that this was a Wyoming number. So I asked what was up with that.

I got back: ‘I live here…’

I replied: ‘Oh no way! When did you leave Kentucky?’

I got back: ‘You must have me confused with sum 1 else, I’ve lived here for 10 years!’

AND HERE BEGINS THE MYSTERY.

So I stare at that for a minute, and probably I should have just not replied, but as I said in my last post, I hardly ever get to deal with mysteries, for good or for ill, and as result I can’t help meddling when I get one (unlike the Scooby Doo kids, who meddle despite [or maybe because of] the staggering frequency with which they are confronted by mysteries).

So I ask, ‘Which Rob are you?’

And get back, ‘From Walmart in Cody’.

I’m aware of the Walmart in Cody, yes. I used to get my paychecks cashed there before my employers began a direct deposit program. Also I purchased a compass that sticks to my windshield there and ‘High Plains Drifter’ on DVD. Also, once when I was at least 5/8 in the bag I bought 2 pounds of beads, a sun dress, a mango, a lamp, and a phone card there. On at least two occasions I filled a prescription there. But met a fellow named Rob? Sorry, not ringing any bells.

I asked how he got my number and he replied ‘I worked on your truck a few times over the summer in the tire and lube express’.

Oh okay, Rob. Now I can completely understand why, in late February, more than seven months after you originally ‘met’ me, you might think it’s 1) all right to send me a text message and B) expect me to know who you are.

I sent back: ‘Oh right on’

He replied: ‘Cool you remember me?’

To spare his feelings I replied: ‘Yeah, I think so.’

So the next time I’m on my high horse talking about how I don’t lie anymore, you can all remind me that I definitely have legit fibbed at least once in recent memory. Because I do not remember Rob. Not even a little bit. The only mechanic I remember from my several trips to the Walmart Tire and Lube Express (twice for oil changes, as I did manage to put well over 3,000 miles on that truck in the 2 months that I had it in Wyoming, and once for a fuel system cleaning) was a woman named Stormy. I remember her for several reasons. 1) Her name was Stormy- which in addition to being a pretty unique name also made me think about The French Connection, because I thought maybe that was Detective Buddy Russo’s nickname (it’s actually Cloudy) 2) she’s a lady mechanic, which is not something I see enough of, and 3) the first time I went for my oil change, when she was asking me the vehicle year, make, model, et cetera she said, ‘this is a Chevy, right?’ and I said ‘Ford, actually.’ Totally calmly because it’s a mistake that anyone could make, but she got all flustered and was like ‘Oh my God I’m so sorry!’ probably because she has to deal with American car enthusiasts (read: rednecks) all day who would almost certainly kerfuff about that sort of mistake, being especially partial to one make or the other. But even were I to receive a text from Stormy, whom I remember with definite clarity, I would still think it was weird. Rob, of whom I have no memory whatsoever? Even weirder! Also that he listed working on my truck as a reason for having my number, not the reason I should know who he is. As it was always Stormy who checked me in and took my phone number, I have to assume that he went fairly unethically out of his way to obtain this information. Like how Coach Riley went unethically out of his way to get star player and notorious cake-eater Adam Banks to play for the Hawks, when really, he should have been playing for the District 5 team (THE MIGHTY DUCKS) all along–a blunder perhaps good enough to fool all the other pee-wee hockey coaches in mid 1990s Minneapolis, but not a shrewd lawyer like Gordon Bombay. It never pays to leave Gordon Bombay’s impressive legal track record out of your calculations (just ask Coach Riley or the varsity team from D3).

Mighty Ducks references aside, it was totally weird to take down that number in the first place, and then further weird to let me know that that’s how he came upon it.

I asked why he thought to text me.

He responded, ‘Thought it’d be cool to get to know a new person’.

Touche, Rob. I guess on some level, this is always a cool thing, but I ought to have mentioned before that this whole shenanigan festival was taking place well after 8pm, a time by which I have almost always shotskied myself into bed, and on this particular night I was down with the hellish cold of which I have previously made mention, and so was especially not inclined to continue with what I have always found to be an exhausting pastime (texting); in fact, I’m super impressed I managed to get as many out as I did, given my inability to text faster than one or two words per minute. This last text I opted to ignore, because I just couldn’t even wrap my sleepy Nyquil-logged mind around it. Rob was having none of that. After waiting about 5 minutes for a reply he further ventured: ‘What do you say?’

I felt that after carrying on with this nonsense parade for so long, I ought to at least give him some closure, so I wrote back, ‘Listen, bro, I’m sorry I’m not more conversational right now but I’m sick and mostly asleep. Have a good night though, man.’

I get back, ‘Oh sorry hope you feel better! I’ll hit you up tomorrow then.’

Godammit, Rob.

True to his word, he totally texted me the other day with a cheery, ‘Me again!’ that I had no qualms ignoring. Unfortunately for Rob, by the time I got that text I was already dealing with the Dang Surprised Mystery, and I couldn’t very well deal with two mysteries at once (it never rains but it pours AM I RIGHT?!). The Rob Mystery really boils down to one question- Why does some one who never actually met me, only really met my vehicle (which is probably true of hundreds–nay thousands–because this vehicle is 31 years old) think that it’s all right to unscrupulously obtain my contact info, and then use it? The Dang Surprised Mystery encompasses many more questions and is really in many more ways a true mystery, so I’ve opted to shift the focus of my mystery solving resources mostly in that direction. Sorry, Rob. Or more accurately, you’re welcome.

So one thing that I loved to have emailed to me is these messages with the subject, “[Summer of One Thousand Bullshit] please moderate” which means I have a comment on a post that I get to decide whether or not to let stand. So far I’ve never rejected a comment and can’t see why I would. Up until today I assumed that the only people who read this were my friends and family, which is why I love getting those emails, because each comment is like a little message from someone who I think is just great. Now I know that in the case of one reader I have been mistaken. This reader who identifies him or herself as ‘Dang Surprised’ (I’m inclined to think it’s a him) and lists his email as ‘ishereallythisstupid@holyshit.com’ and his URL as ‘surelyhecan’tbe.com’. The reason that I don’t think Dang Surprised is a friend or family member is because he repeatedly refers to me as a boy, which for the most part I believe my friends and family do not think I am. Sure, I may don men’s footwear for the most part (the exceptions of course being my I’m-graduating-from-college high-heeled sandals, my thrift store super sweet red shoes, and my job interview/grandma’s birthday party fancy party boots), and my voice tends toward the lower register, and yes, I drive what is clearly intended to be a hunting rig as a regular commuter vehicle, but I’m definitely not a man. Nor have I ever been. Nor, God willing, will I ever be. I wear a really feminine coat, for one thing.

So this is the comment that he left on my post about Planter’s Nut Brittle Medley: ‘wow how old are you little boy?  sounds like you just learned how to swear!! grow up dickweed’

This comment is just great. First, because it contains the word dickweed, which I think–even when being it’s being assigned to me–is a hilarious thing to call some one.

Had Dang Surprised picked any other quality of mine that he had been able to gleam from reading that one blog post, he could have severely damaged my self-esteem. Luckily, he managed to insult one of very few abilities that I have in which I am totally confident, which is my ability to incorporate swear words into sentences composed mostly of non-swear words. There are plenty of things that I have been doing for slightly longer in which I have no where near unshakable faith. Walking, for example. I am fucking terrible at walking. If you called me up and bet me one shiny dime that I would not fall while walking today, I would turn down that bet. I am not ten cents worth of confident in my ability to successfully walk any where or for any amount of time. Because I fall all the time!! But if you called to propose a wager of, say, 600 nickels that I would not regret my placement of a curse word today, I would take that bet. In fact by now I would already have done the math to see how many dollars that number of nickels equaled (most likely reaching one or two incorrect sums first, my ability to do simple arithmetic NOT being one in which I am especially self-assured) and then thought of something to buy with those dollars. That’s how phlegmatic I am when it comes to my ability to use cuss words.  Borderline arrogantly phlegmatic. Actually, probably a little bit arrogantly phlegmatic. Some times, I admit, I go a little over the top. Especially with the f word because that one is my special favorite. But implying that I just learned how to swear means I’m using it incorrectly, not merely too frequently. Like if you saw a little kid wobbling on a bike you might think ‘I bet that kid just learned how to ride that bike, because he’s not very good at it yet’ but conversely, you don’t look at Lance Armstrong and think ‘I bet he just learned how to ride that bike because he seems to be doing it fucking often. More than most adults, at any rate, or even little boys, for that matter.’ Check. Mate.

But really what I lerv about this comment is that it doesn’t have any commas in it. Had I authored this comment, it would have contained three commas. Not very many, maybe, but enough to make it sound way more professional. I will give Dang Surprised kudos for his use of the imperative ‘grow up’, though, because it’s one that I use often and facetiously as I think it is almost always a hilarious thing to tell some one to do. *Note: I tried about 200 spellings of facetiously before I landed on the right one. In fact, I didn’t even land on the right one, I typed ‘humorously’ into a thesaurus to find it after giving up any attempt to spell it after the dictionary redirected me to ‘feces’ for like the hundredth time. If any of you see my 10th grade English teacher around, please keep this to yourselves as it may make her feel shaky about her ability to teach 16 year-olds how to spell various vocabulary words, something that she is on the whole pretty good at. And if this post is about anything (questionable), it is about how people shouldn’t make other people feel shaky about their skills via the internet, or more specifically, my blog.

Another thing that I love about Dang Surprised is what a mystery he is. He uses a swear in his fake email address so he’s not just some prude who can’t abide cursing. Also, his use of ‘dickweed’ lends credence to this theory. While it is not strictly a swear word, I would venture to say that anyone who had a problem with a few shits and damns probably wouldn’t walk around calling people dickweeds all over the internet. This is another thing on which I would wager upwards of 600 nickels. But if he’s not offended by the swears, then what? The fact that I use them in an amateur manner? Well, clearly, but how so? Rarely does a mystery of this caliber fall into my lap. Typing that last sentence totally just reminded me of another mystery with which I have had to reckon recently, but that’s for another time. In the mean time, this one is quite enough to be going on with. WHO ARE YOU, DANG SURPRISED? And how, if you’re not a friend or family member, did you gain access to this blog? It is not, as far as I know, promoted by anything other than my facebook profile and one time by my sister’s twitter, neither of which, again, only as far as I know, reaches many people who think I’m a dude.

Dang Surprised, I urge you to expand upon your previous comment and help me to sort out the enigma that is your presence in the swear tornado that is my life.

Recently, I was introduced to what might be the cleverest advancement in drinking since the Coors Light frost brew liner can (which, of course, did wonders for the locking in of Rocky Mountain flavor). I’m talking about the Shotski. The Shotski is an old ski with 5 holes drilled into it that have the same circumferance as the middle of a shot glass, so 5 shot glasses can rest comfortably in the 5 holes. Then 5 people can take the 5 shots at the same time which is just great. Normally, I’m not into taking shots, because they’re gross and grossly expensive. But here’s the thing- I LOVE BEING PART OF A TEAM. Here’s another thing: I AM TERRIBLE AT ALMOST EVERY SPORT. So I can’t really be on any teams at this point in my life, because the CYO doesn’t offer any everybody-gets-to-play-at-least-a-quarter-and-feel-good-about-themselves leagues for 22 year olds not currently enrolled in an elementary, middle, or high school. So now you’re reading the words of the Saddleback Maine Shotski Team Co-Captain. Co-Captain?! Me?! This is unheard of. The only time I’ve ever even been a starter was in my first game of JV water polo back before my coach realized that my excellent defensive skills were rendered maximum moot by my inability to keep up with the pace of the game. So to be on the upper-echelon of a team is like a dream coming true that I was never even bold enough  to dream up in the first place. Because the idea of it coming true just seemed so damn far-fetched. This is just great. Granted my co-captain, Tristan, and I only had to split the cost of the first ski to earn our titles, but still! It showed leadership! That’s what being a captain is all about! (A lesson Charlie Conway had to learn the hard way in D3)

The cost is another GREAT feature of the S’ski. It is $20. Note: As I typed "$20" the librarian said $20 in reference to something else, but at the EXACT SAME TIME!! Totally bananas!!! $20 for 5 shots of whatever you want except for the absolute toppest shelf shit. So far, the S’back S’ski team has stuck with Jameson, because it totally rules. I’m pretty sure it’s normally $6 for a shot of Jameson. And by pretty sure I mean positive because I bought a round one time and was totally bummed when I went to pay my tab. So the Shotski is like getting 1.66 shots for free. What a steal!

Also– super serendipitously, most of the friends that I’ve made here are really close to my height. This makes taking Shotskis a total cakewalk, because no one really has to tippy toe it or bend wicked far down to compensate for any one else. In case this is ever an issue though, we can just institute an everybody’s elbows on the bar policy and it totally ceases to be an issue. I am just over the damn moon about this.

If anybody is hemming and/or hawing about coming to Western Maine, I hope that an open invitation to play on my Shotski team will be enough to tempt you. Guys, for real, this is a really, really fun thing. No foolin’ at all!!! Not even one little bit of fooling.