Moosejaw Mischief

So for one summer I worked at this place called Moosejaw Mountaineering. It's a store that sells camping gear, and, if you know the right guy, hash. I like to build most of my relationships on lies, and in Moosejaw's case, the lie was that I had gone camping before. Well, it wasn't really a lie, more of a miscommunication. In the interview, when I said I had "spent some time living off the land" specifically, I meant "sleeping in the dog park with a bow & arrow." I started fires and stuff, but I guess it still wasn't applicable.

And they figured me out almost immediately, like the first day. Behind the register they had this huge wall of carabiners and other shiny rock-climbing crap. When I saw it I said "Man...we have a lot of key chains." Yeah. So the cat was out of the proverbial scrotum, and it took about a week for everyone that worked there to start hating me, even the guy I bought tons of hash from. See at Moosejaw, the staff is encouraged to tell invigorating anecdotes to the customers, drawing from our wealth of outdoor experience. And even though the other employees were all serious climbers and backpackers, my stories were way better because I was just making shit up.

(me) "I see you found the RX-1700, you got a good eye, I summited Kilimanjaro with that model and four rubber bands."

(customer) "This is a kayak paddle"

(me) "...If you know a better way to carry Sherpas, I'd like to hear it"

As it turned out I sold tons of stuff, because customers don't want to hear a bunch of technical crap that makes them feel stupid, they want to be right and feel good.

(customer) "What's this loop on the side of the backpack for, attaching another backpack?"

(me) "Exactly...attaching another backpack."

People buy things for the stupidest fucking reasons imaginable, and all you have to do is give them that reason. "So are you happy with this fetching navy one that matches your piercing blue eyes? Because it also comes in communist-red and Jesus-black." Sold. "This tent is bear-proof, that one makes you look fat." Sold. It was a really easy job.

And the constant bullshitting made my daily routine completely surreal. It was like living in an episode of Saved by the Bell, only with less black people (which is saying something, because that's just Lisa Turtle). The one Asian guy working there had to hold down the ethnic diversity teeter-totter all by himself, and he only put in like 15 hours a week. So I would get high, clock in, and then lie to folks all day long about items their life might soon depend on.

Eventually, I sold some guy an ice axe that I had been using as a bottle opener, and I started to feel kinda guilty. I kept waiting for somebody to storm in after me because a bear ate their kid while he was sleeping in a bear-proof tent, but it never happened. Don't get me wrong, I got fired, and for a very good reason. Just not that one.

It was about an hour from close, and I got a call from an ex who was in town. That's always great, it's like getting a royalty check for some song you wrote twenty years ago. Anyway, she said she was picking me up and taking me to her friend's place--awesome. Problem was, I was foul. I hadn't showered, I was all sweaty from the day's deception, and just generally in no condition to enter a social situation, let alone another human being.

I went to the employee bathroom to spray myself down with air freshener, and stumbled upon salvation--the sink, beckoning me like a desert oasis. The perfect porcelain birdbath for my penis, taunting me with prophecies of blowjobs that end after 12 seconds, and set off a gossip A-bomb that gives me shame cancer. In what I still consider a chivalrous act, I ran some warm water and began bathing my little sparrow like an infant. Predictably, a fellow employee walked in on me, and for the first time in that building, I told the truth. "OK, I know how this looks, but I wasn't peeing in the sink, I was just washing my smelly dick." Game over, thanks for playing. I got fired the next day for gross misconduct, which has never been more literal. In summation, lying is a viable life strategy, and only wash your dick in the sink at home.

A Valuable Lesson

My new roomate is of the female persuasion, and as a result I've been learning the ways of civilized folk. Gone are the days of cashing bowls into the empty Funyuns bags on my feet, arrived are the days of tucking savage morning wood into my waistband. But ushering my personal hygene out of third world standards was only the first benfit of her presence.

In addition, my roomate brought her morbidly obese cat into what I now understand is my aimless, empty life. This is not your run-of-the-mill fat cat mind you. This is a stunning, tail-less, geometrically perfect globe of feline. If it had two assholes side by side, it would be hard to tell which way it's facing, like a crafty moth.

I've never had a bond with a lower life form that even approaches this level of respect and, dare I say, intimacy. We play many games, namely 'Diabetes', which is where I feed it again after my roomate leaves for work. But as inevitably happens to young love, some of the initial passion and spontinaity drained out of the relationship. I decided to share a piece of myself with my newfound friend, and see if we couldn't bottle that early lighting. That's right, I was going to get that fat fucker high as all balls.

As usual, I also had an alterior motive. I'd heard about blowing pot smoke into a dog or cat's ear to get them stoned, and always wanted to test the theory.

Step one: internet research. I'm not a total moster, so if this was going to cause instant seizures, I wanted to have a spoon or wallet ready. To my shock and dismay, internet research turned up little in the way of reliable knowledge. The only people discussing the topic in earnest were on 'pot.com' forums and the like, populated exclusively by the guy with the High Times pinup over his futon (remember, if you're having trouble distinguishing between naked women and plantlife, just ask yourself which one has a uteris). Now, you can't get much lower on the information legitimacy totem pole than stoner shut-ins who spend their days online posting about Visine product preference. Maybe if crackheads had websites, that would be worse, but crackheads don't have websites.

That said, the tragic, dickless illiterate on pot.com all agreed that you CAN get your pet high by blowing smoke in it's ear. One of them even used the word capillary, I was excited.Like an eager priest, I placed my unsuspecting quarry firmly on my lap. At first, I would take the hit myself and then slowly blow it in the cat's fluttering ear. The sloppy-seconds smoke was sort of deflecting off the thicket of ear hair, and it didn't seem like much was going into it's brain. It just wasn't satisfying, and it was clearly pissing the cat off pretty good.

So I switched tactic and filled the bowl up with smoke, then blew it into the little gent's ear. This strategy exceeded all expectation. After the cat's head hit that shit, a thin line of smoke slowly curled from it's ear for a SOLID ninety seconds. I thought it's inner-ear hair caught fire, but apparently it just takes that long for smoke to wisp out of a cat's endless labrynth of noggin-cavities. Then for a long time, nothing. No movement, no munchies, nothing. I was a little sad, but I was also stoned into oblivion and at my computer, so porn mercifully pushed the experiment to the back burner.

During round three my tennis elbow started acting up, and I had to shift position. I'll be damned if that stoned cat didn't roll off my lap like a dead four-year-old, and land flat on it's fat back. I thought it might indeed be dead, but when I twisted it's nipple, it gave a little mew. And that's how I learned I'm not as much fun when I get stoned as I think I am.

Ode to Beard

Ahem. Let me speak, for a just moment, about the glory of your beard. It is THICK, thick beyond measure. Like a thousand rasping rosebushes on a single pale chin, even the faintest spear of light fails to penetrate its canopy. Up, up it grows toward the heavens, and the angels envy its lush sheen as the tendrils lick their feet. We ordinary men dream daily of such face pelt, though speak of it only in hushed tones and deathbed forbodings. It is the sweet nectar of perfection, the pinnacle of mouth-adornment, the Mona Lisa in follicle.

Gather round my friends, for this is God's Beard.

Winter Grievances--

Icy winter claws on my warm little penis. I lost my gloves because I'm like a child, and nobody pinned them to my sleeves. So now whenever I come out of the cold needing to piss, I have to pull this elaborate maneuver to avoid touching my junk or else it'll freeze solid and shatter in the sink. But hey, get your dick out of the sink, right?Anyway, the maneuver involves unzipping yourself and then sort of squat-thrusting until you've breached pant. As you can imagine, It's alarming to the untrained eye, and half-chubs are par for the course. In the plus column, being able to reach even half-staff in a public bathroom makes me feel kinda proud. Which in turn makes me feel very gay.And not upstanding Whole-Foods shopper gay, gay bashing gay senator gay.So there you go... winter makes me feel bad-gay.

To segue

Winter adds at least an inch of girth to the dick-in-the-ass that is public transportation, specifically waiting for the bus. It's bad enough during the summer months, when the peasant ferry keeps me from getting hot, shallow women. In the winter, it renders me entirely unfuckable.

While I wait for the bus I smoke, and because It's cold enough to kill head-lice, I look like a junky sucking cereal though a straw.And I don't feel even slightly cool while smoking to begin with, thank you smug-fuck Truth capaign. When I see another smoker, I know that, like me, that organism is incapable of making even the most basic distinctions about what should and should not go into it's body.For some period in life, they smoked cigarette after cigarette thinking 'well, maybe this one won't feel like death clawing it's way down my throat' until they were hopelessly dependent. It's humbling really.

Not to mention the daily shakedowns if you live in a city. All smokers in Chicago have this permanent tortured hunch because they're fresh off an $8 a pack molesting. Broad shouldered working-men stop for smokes, get back in the car, and after a while their buddies go "Hey man, is something wrong?".These days when I get a fresh pack, first thing I do is give myself a little paper cut and put a drop of blood on each cigarette. Then when people ask to bum one, I say "Yeah, but you have to smoke my blood." That way it's win-win. Win-winter. Segue.

Winter is also responsible for the chunk of word vomit that comes bubbling out of me several times a day, only to be re-swallowed for further regurgitation. I feel the tickle in my throat, then suddenly I'm a helpless bystander as my own rubbery, simple face says the words--"Man, it is FREEZING out here."Yes, yes it is. It's also probably either day or night, and a bad idea to walk across the Dan Ryan Expressway, but for some reason I don't feel the need to update my present company. If you're me about an hour ago, it's also time to give that old man his hat back, cuz he's about to punch you.Depending on the state of your liver, 'It's freezing out here' can be more damaging than 'I'm so drunk'. If booze didn't keep you warm, I wouldn't be able to hold a fucking conversation.

Now, I hear folks citing snow in defense of the dark months, and for good reason, snow is wonderous. But from my apartment it's all greasy road slush for two miles in any direction, and you can only throw slushballs at people you sorta hate deep down. And cabs with the light on.The point is, winter blows and I can quit smoking any time I want too.

An Open Letter

Dog, Bounty Hunter is a human riddle. How does one shame a leather-clad white man with a feather dangling from his dreads? That man is pretty much already screaming it to the world, isn't he. And yet this sad clown has the nerve to descriminate against other people, simply astonishing. The problem with Dog is that there's just not very far to fall. At least Kramer made a little thud when he permanently shat on the American public consciousness, Dog's descent is more like a toddler sitting down too fast. I think we white men need to really dig deep, and find a way to publicly apologize. Something less than reparations, but more than a basketball scholarship. Maybe make Dog, Michael Richards and Don Imus fuck in a bathtub and put it on payperview. That'd take the sass out of their britches. But in all this hooplah over Dog's racist sputterings, an equally heinous crime has gone unpunished:The donning of combination cell phone/sunglasses. Yes, Dog has become a national punchline, and yes, he will be stripped of his TV show and dragged through the mud. But when all is said and done, Dog will still stomp the earth with that abomination wrapped around his leathery ex-con forehead. He will return to his volcano lair, and resume happily pumping seed into his spherical she-beast on a kevlar upholstered couch. Under normal circumstances, the matter would obviously fall into the wise hands of vigilante justice, but as you know, Dog is impervious to both projectile and melee attack.It is in this moment of crisis that I send an open letter to all who would guard our American public--How can we end Dog's crushing reign of mobile availability and UV protection? What in god's name is that shit-pheonix's kryptonite?For now there are many questions and few answers, but one thing is certain:We must succeed. No plan of action is too far fetched, and no effort in vein. Please distribute this form as widely as your means allow. Thank you, and good luck. (Please head all propositions with the following) I_____________, say we dispatch of him thusly: