Dumbass Things Continued

6. Cheating at a drinking game. I used to be notorious for getting people to play a drinking card game called High Low Red or Black. Basically you have a card flipped over and you can guess whether the next card will be higher or lower or alternatively you can guess whether the next card will be a red or black suite. You must answer three in a row to switch to the next players turn. If you miss you have to take as many drinks as cards on the table. In theory if enough correct answers are given you might end up with a stack of 20 cards before someone misses and has to take 20 drinks.

As you can see this game has the potential to get people really fucked up quickly. We generally play with beer and one drink is equal to a mouthful basically. I remember one time back long before we were ever neighbors JC came over and we played the game. I am pretty good with card tricks so I can generally get away with fibbing the deck so to speak. Especially after a few rounds of High-low once the beer starts kicking in. Suffice to say I cheated like hell and within 2 hours of arrival JC was head rocked back passed the fuck out drunk.

Well one time this seriously back fired on me. A couple of months back JC and I were getting hammered with some vodka drinks and decided to play some high low with vodka drinks. We really started to get tore up with those. Well after a few rounds of those our friend Kenny showed up with a pony keg of beer. Now you might remember Kenny from before from when he backed into our neighbors car, twice. Anyways this was before that incident.

Kenny is a pretty bad drunk. Doesn't  take a whole hell of a lot to get him there either. So  we decided to get him started right and made him jump right into the high-low game. Not only did he have to start drinking right off the back with a drinking game but he also had to have both a glass of beer and a vodka drink. Jc and I made the vodka drink and put 6 shots of vodka in it. Probably not the best idea but we were hammered and thought it was funny.

Well you can get the idea of what happened. Within about 2 hours Kenny was passed the fuck out drunker than a fiddler. I was hammered too at this point and stumbled in my family room where kenny's daughter was sleeping on a sofa under a blanket. In my drunken stupor I grabbed the blanket off her and laid down on another sofa.

I am not sure how much time passed but I don't think it was very much before I was being woken up. Apparently Kenny woke up at some point and realized he had to throw up. He made it all the way up the stairs but could not manage to open up the bathroom door so went in my bedroom and threw up all over our bed. Lovely. I stumbled upstairs and by this point I had to piss so fucking bad it wasn't even funny. Kenny by this point had managed to get in the bathroom and was still puking over the toilet. So in my drunken haze I went into the cat's bed room (yes my cats have their own room) and pissed in the litter box. Believe me that was interesting cleaning it out the next day. When I come back downstairs Kenny is passed out face down ass up with his pants down around his ankles, oh yeah his daughter was standing right there haha.

I decided right then that the days of playing high-low were over.

Searching

It is no secret that the movie Excalibur is one of my favorite movies. I am reminded of a scene late in the movie, the night before Arthur must do battle with his son. He approaches a Stonehenge like formation and speaks aloud to Merlin who had long ago been locked in a cave by Morgana.

  

This is actually from earlier in the movie but you get the point. He says roughly  "More than I ever did I need you now." 

I am no King. I am not meant to be the stuff of future memories. I am just a man but I have my own Merlin. Whether that Merlin is a person, inner voice in my head, or whatever doesn't matter. What matters is that there is a guiding force in my life. When it is not there, even if just for a half a day I am completely lost.

Another List of Dumbass Things I Have Done

I know I said I would finish my bad driving exploits entry first but since this is my blog I will do what I want and right now I feel like making another list of dumbass things I have done in recent history.

1. The way I dressed Wednesday. With Subfreezing temperatures, snow, and a bitterly cold windshield I decided to make a point that day. I wanted to prove that my mental will was stronger than anything else. I would not get cold because I would not allow myself to feel cold. I had so much on my mind that I didn't even have time to feel cold.

So I went to work wearing a pair of jeans, socks, my boots, a short sleeve shirt, and a zip up hoodie. No thermals, no gloves, no hat, just the absolute bare essentials. Hell I didn't even bring a lunch with me, I didn't have time to be bothered with my personal comfort. Besides it was nothing that my mind couldn't beat out of me. Much as the immortal Dalton said in the movie Roadhouse, "Pain doesn't hurt."

 

I left my house and saw the breath vapors exit my mouth. The howling wind bitterly struck my face with a stinging bite. My hands felt cold then numb almost right away. Not that i registered any of this. I shut out all feelings of discomfort and wasn't going to be deterred.

So by about noon I sat there at a cable amplifier freezing to death, hungrier than fuck, wondering why in the fuck did I think this was a good idea. I couldn't feel my fingers, nose, or ears, and my stomach felt like it was trying to eat its way out of my body. Yet again one of my bizarro ideas that only makes sense in my own head bite me on the ass. I survived but I tend to think it was just barely.

2. About 3 years ago or so roughly, I can't remember but it may have been longer, I was driving around in my work truck and decided to make a stop at a local walmart. Once inside I realized I had to take a piss so I made my way to the bathroom. The urinals were occupied but there was one open stall so I walked in and started to do my business. All of a sudden a strong coughing fit overcame me in the middle of missing and my whole body violently jerks as I start coughing quite heavily. 

This had the adverse reaction of causing me to spray piss all over the piss including under the stall door and right over to the guys feet in the stall beside me. I then heard a loud "Hey!!!!!!!!!!!!!" from said guy as he realized the guy beside him was pissing under the stall door and upon his shoes. At this point I did the old two flip switch and got the fuck out of there. Since I was in a work uniform I decided my best course of action was to get the fuck out of dodge before the guy in the stall beside me found out the company I worked for and made a nice little complaint. Since I never got called into my supervisors office to discuss the incident I have to assume he never found out that information. Me 1 Guy in stall beside me 0 His shoes -1

3. Giving my cousin the phone number of a girl I liked. This was back in the old high school days when you really didn't know your ass from your elbow, especially when it came to the opposite sex. There was a girl I worked with at the time who I liked for no other reason than I liked the way she looked. This had to be it because I can't recall ever really talking to her. Shit like that always works out so well right?

Well my social skills have never been my strongest suit and much less so then. After a few awkward at best attempts we agreed on something resembling a date. I had her phone and she had mine and we talked on the phone a few times. The time of the date came around and of course she made up some bullshit reason to avoid it. I pretty much saw it for what it was and decided my best course of action was to back off the situation. 

She had a lot of sisters. I am not sure why but I am pretty sure it numbered in the low teens. My cousin who had a pretty notorious history of making prank phone calls asked me if he could have the girls number so that he might be able to talk to one of her sisters (my cousin had previously worked at the same store so we knew a lot of similar people). I am not sure why I thought this was an okay idea, but sure enough I gave him her number. 

Later that night I sat in my room and didn't really think much of anything when my phone rang. I answered it wondering who would greet me on the other end. Turns out it was that girls dad and he was fucking furious. Apparently someone called claiming to be me and threatened to rape and murder his wife and daughter. Apparently his daughter didn't believe it was me but a whole back and forth exchange went on that ended up dragging in another employee. 

Now here is the story my cousin "claimed" happened. He said he called our other cousin (who has spent most his adult life in prison if it tells you anything) and then on 3 way they called the girl. The agreement was that cousin number 2 would pretend to be and talk to the girl and hit on her. Cousin 1 claimed that as soon as she got on the phone cousin 2 just went off threatening to murder and rape her, or maybe rape and murder her, one of the two, this is kind of one of those things that the order of events does seem to matter. Anyways, she doesn't believe it is me since that would be somewhat out of character for me. Her mom gets on the phone and cousin 2 proceeds to say even worse things to her. At some point the phone gets hung up.

The dad wanted to play mr. dad and gets on the phone and star 69s it back to cousin 1's place (well his parents). My cousin 1 not wanting to get in trouble pretends to be another guy we work with who is in competition  with me over his daughter. This story at this point becomes shady (I am trying to remember events that happened half my life ago). But that is the story my cousin told me. I tend to think he knew damn well the whole time what cousin 2 was going to do. 

Anyways the next day I go to work and guess who the fuck is there talking to my assistant manager, the girl's obscenely obese dad. I still remember the look on his pudgy face as he talked to the Ass Man (for short). I sincerely hoped I wouldn't be dragged over to the conversation but sure enough I ended up having to talk to the Ass Man and her dad. I was still unsure of what all had transpired so I was probably tripping over my words trying to explain what did or did not happen. I know it ended with the other guy I work with dropping the dime on my cousin and my Ass Man telling me to give her dad my cousin's phone number. I said with a straight face "I don't have the number on hand but will call you with it as soon as I get home." His reply was "good I will be waiting." I wonder if his fatass is still fucking waiting. Did he really think I would sellout my cousin? Even though said cousin screwed me over again. 

4. Listening to my cousin... ever. So at some point in my life I was dating a girl who's parents had a lot of money. People with a lot of money collect things. Her dad had a collection of liquor. That was a foreign concept to me as the drunkasses in my family drank things faster than they could acquire them. One of the things in his collection was a 20 year old bottle of jack daniels. Seeing as he had it for 20 years I thought obviously he is not going to drink it so I helped myself to the bottle. 

This started an Odysseus of wild night of drinking. At some point after downing most of the bottle I made it to my cousins on the northside of town. His cousin lived across the hall from him and we three decided to go to the bar. So first we went to a strip club but since we were all broke and didn't want to tip (not to mention only 20 years old) we hung by the back  hoping the dancers wouldn't ask for tips. Considering we were the only three people in the fucking place pretty much guaranteed they were still going to ask for tips. So we cut out of there and head over to a country bar.

This was again uneventful aside from my cousin walking over to two women and telling them his cousin and I thought that they were prostitutes and wanted to know how much it would cost to party that night. Now clearly they were not prostitutes and my cousin was just fucking with us. Anyways we cut out from there and my cousin decides to drive over to his mom's apartment as he had stashed some money over there hiding it from his wife. Sitting in the car I had to piss really bad so I asked his cousin which apartment was his mom's. He told me and i walked through the door and went to the bathroom. Then as I left I was hungry so I opened the fridge and grabbed a Bahama mama. As I was walking out eating it I didn't notice his mom's little dog and accidentally stepped on it. The dog let out a blood curdling scream. Not even like I stepped on it but more like I was murdering it. I walked out of the apartment quickly and back to my car. 

My cousin was in the car which I thought was odd that I didn't pass him on the way in. As I got in his cousin and him started laughing hysterically. Turns out that his cousin lied and the apartment number he gave me wasn't my cousin's moms apartment. Turns out it wasn't anyone's apartment they knew. Apparently I walked into some strangers apartment, used their bathroom, ate their food, then kicked their dog on the way out.

5. More from the same night. Is it breaking and entering if the door is unlocked? I don't know. Is eating someone's food theft? Still not sure. What I do know is that what happened later that night is most definitely criminal. After leaving his mom's apartment complex we went to some night club. Though this night club seemed to be something out of the twilight zone. It mostly consisted of very overweight women wearing very tight clothes. I never seen such a concentration of fatties before. 

Oh and to top things off a lesbian band was playing and the thing about lesbian bands are that they attract a lot of lesbians. This means trying to score some action was akin to playing russian roulette but it didn't stop my cousin. He started talking to two real fat chicks and next thing his cousin and I notice he is fucking gone. We thought he left us there so we went to a pay phone and called his apartment.

Not a good idea. His rather pissed off wife answered and no he was not there and she was furious. We tried covering for him as best as one can after drinking for most the day and night which means probably not well. Our cousin surfaced a couple hours later with those fat chicks being a few lines of coke short I imagine. 

The next couple hours were a blur of drinking and fighting and all those things that make living fun. My next recollection we three are at an all nite breakfast diner. We are scarfing down big plates of food at 4 in the morning. Being as I was crushed and didn't know better I blurted out rather loudly "how are we going to pay for this we are all broke" to which my cousin looked visibly annoyed (he was much less drunk because he had been snorting coke all night). I got my answer soon though.

His cousin went to the bathroom and my cousin motioned for me to get up. We walk straight out the door. A waitress tried to stop us but my cousin said our friend was in the bathroom and going to pick up the tab. he then got my keys and pulled my car around. I saw his cousin come barreling out the door being followed by a couple of cooks. He dives in my car and we take off. The old dine and dash. 

My Driving Ability

No this won't be a post extolling the grand exploits of my master stunt driving skills. Anyone who has ever rode in a car with me would call bullshit right away. In the interest of full disclosure I must admit two truths right now, one my balls and taint really itch right now, and two I am a horrible driver. Though I feel that my balls and taint are perhaps one of if not the most important of topics to cover, I am going to save them for a later date and describe my (lack of) driving abilities.

I think we can go all the way back to the day I took my test to get my driver's license to give a good example of why I probably shouldn't be on the road. I barely passed the test, as in if one more point got knocked off I would of failed. The best part was though that after the test was over and I was driving back to the test location I blew a stop sign with an oncoming car barreling towards me and the testing instructor nearly had a heart attack. She wanted to fail me on the spot but technically the test had ended so there was nothing she could do.

This was just the start to many many driving adventures. My first car was an 86 Park Avenue. The car was a piece of shit and broke down constantly but it did not help that it had a madman for an owner. Within an hour of getting the car I nearly rear ended someone. By nearly I mean I locked up the brakes and had to swerve off the road and into a field to miss the car. About a month later in a gas station I took a turn two wide and side swiped a car denting the entire side of the person's car. This person happened to be my mom by the way. I still remember the look of disappointment on her face.

Over the next year I hit two walls, yes walls, backing into them. I ran over multiple curbs and ran an old lady on a bicycle off the road (it was an accident). Since that was over 10 years ago I will admit I didn't stop and kept driving. Hopefully she didn't break a hip. Almost a year after getting my license I rear ended some woman absolutely smashing the front of my car. I forget how much damage it caused my vehicle but it was a substantial amount.

My next car was a 92 tornado. I don't recall any major accidents in that car but I do remember driving home from a girlfriends a bit drunk and woke up as my head hit the roof of my car as I had driven over a curb through a mailbox and into someones front lawn. Luckily I was able to steer the car back onto the street before I took out half the house. About a week later my transmission went out. Also wondered if one had something to do with the other.

I think you get the point by now. The other day my bro said "I notice that your answer to any driving problem you encounter is to mash on the gas." That seems to be the case. Alright I will finish this tomorrow lol there is so many incidents I am skipping over it would be a travesty not to include them. If you are reading this re-read it again tomorrow there will be a lot more.

Sad Man Behind Blue Eyes

So am I resorting to ripping of lyrics from the Who? I guess maybe. Sometimes when you listen to a song the lyrics can speak out to you in a way other forms of writing cannot. This kind of makes sense as songs are essentially poetry set to music. The National Anthem began life as a poem that was eventually put to music.

So why in fact did I chose the song Behind Blue Eyes for the title to this blog entry? I have heard multiple interpretations to the lyrics of the song ranging from it is about a pedophile, to being about a cop, or even being about Pete Townsend and his drug use. I don't really care what some self indulged drugged out rocker meant behind the words though. For me, I take things and apply them as I see fit.

I find more and more that very few people know the true me. This is not without reason since I put on a front or act to nearly everyone around me. Behind my calm but laughing and jovial demeanor hides a lonely and tragic figure who cannot relate to most of the world around him. I don't feel a sense of closeness to most people that others feel.

That is not to say that I do not care about about those around me. If anything I care quite a bit, but even those I care about the most I feel intensely uncomfortable being around them for any length of time. I cannot even pick up the phone and call someone I have been friends with for years without feeling a great sense of anxiety. Even around my own family I feel like an outsider looking in.

Have you ever heard of the story of Atlas? He was a titan of Greek mythology who supported the spheres of the heavens upon his back. That is the way I often feel like, that the weight of the world rests upon my shoulders. It does not make any sense really since I am not a world leader or person of great importance but all the same I feel that stress in my day to day life.

 

I am not crazy nor am I suicidal. I took this picture the other night and it would appear I was either one or the other but I am neither. I am not even sure why I took the picture. I had an extremely stressful weekend filled with so many ups and downs I could fill an entire book. By the time Sunday evening rolled around I was exhausted and had no where left to go but inward. I didn't like what I found there so I searched outward for a means of feeling pain so that I might remember what it felt like to be alive. But I am not one for self inflicting pain so I settled on taking a lame photograph of myself holding an unloaded gun to my head with a semi-crazy look on my face. 

The other day the person I consider closest to me, in every way possible, told me there was something tragic in my eyes. Behind all the laughing and joking there was a look of pain. I tried down playing it at the time but this person seems knows me better than that and saw right through my attempts. 

Certainly the fact that I cannot grow a good mustache does weight heavily upon my mind in this picture but there are far greater implications. Since the person said this, I have looked at this picture often to try and see what they had seen.

I posted a video today on my facebook profile from the 2009 movie Doubt with Meryl Streep. No I am not turning homosexual, I just happened to run across the ending of the movie on youtube and thought it conveyed my own beliefs. I have doubt, such doubts that I will ever be able to be truly happy in life. There are moments in life I begin to feel like I am getting closer to finding a sense of happiness I hear about so often in movies and on television but then it seems like bad news rears its ugly head. Something waiting in the wings to tear it down before it can even grow. In the end I just put on my sunglasses and pretend like nothing bothers me, an indestructible rock devoid of emotions, while inside another piece of me dies. 

What's worse is that I am afraid that I will push away the one person who does understand me. I want to warn them not to go searching further because they will not like what they find. 

With that out of the way and off my chest I will go back to the Jason Act and being the laughing funny person everyone expects. 

---Edited Feb. 2012--- I have for some time debated about whether or not to delete this entry. I have mixed emotions about the post. This was written during one of the most difficult periods of my life. My former marriage had long since crumbled but we were still inhabiting the same apartment. It made for one of the most miserable periods of my life. My ex wife had turned into a very bad alcoholic that was also prone to violence. She had alienated all of her friends and most of her family due to her drunken rages. I was receiving the worst of the lot and had a couple years ago just decided to shut off my emotions completely. 

I had for 2 years or better wandered through life in a daze like a zombie. It was a defense mechanism to deal with a major depression that had set in. I was not happy from the beginning and things just got progressively worse. I did not think there was much chance of any happiness in life and I really just accepted having a miserable life. I think this had a lot to do with my up bringing as I do not think my father was ever really happy in life and I know that my parents marriage strung along for years in unhappiness just for my sake growing up. In hindsight this did me no favors as dealing with a divorce as a child is tough but what kind of harm is dealt seeing a loveless marriage and thinking that is normal. It left a big black mark on my life that followed me into adult hood. 

Then I met someone who changed everything I ever thought about life. I saw things in a completely different light. It is funny how you just don't realize how unhappy you are until someone gives you a reason to be happy. The problem was that we had so many outside our control factors that would work to keep us for being together. When I wrote this entry it was the weekend of my birthday and it just reinforced how helpless I felt. A big part of me wanted to just give up on life and sell off what I owned and just lead the life of a wandering nomad, a ronin with no master. 

That picture of me holding a gun to my head is very controversial to myself. I think it gives the wrong impression that I was suicidal but that was not the case at all. The gun was not loaded and I gave no thoughts to ending my life. Rather it was some sort of expression of how I felt that my life was so far out of my own control at the time. Some people might use that picture against me saying that it shows I am unstable or any number of things. While they have that right it is a distortion of the purpose behind the picture. If that is the best fire power you have against me than that says something about your argument.

Training Updates

Training has been slow the past couple of weeks. Been mixing in more and more boxing/fight training to supplement the lifting which has trailed off considerably. I find it hard to eat lately and even harder to just keep on track. Seems like lately I went from total tunnel vision when I train to my mind wondering to all sorts of things. I know why this is the case and I am fighting hard to counter act it, but I am not sure it is a fight I can win at the moment. So I just grit my teeth and bear with it.

Some Mysteries Revealed

So I found out some answers to some long standing questions I had.

I found out the answer to the riddle of the man-child. It turns out that the reason why I always see him walking around with a backpack is because he does that for fitness reasons. He fills the backpack up with "weight" and walks around town every day. I have actually noticed that in the time since I have moved here he has dropped a good deal of weight so good for him.

No I take that back. He looks like a damn rapist and chances are if you look like a rapist you probably are. I am sure he just walks around looking for his next victim then hits them over the head with one of those weights and drags them into an alley. Sick fuck.

Next is the mystery of what happened to the black lady who moved into the end unit. JC found out from Megan across the street that while Megan was in jail for crashing into a parked car inbetween taking shots of jack daniels our neighbor was in there as well. Apparently she got arrested almost immediately upon moving in and has been sitting in jail since then. Question? How the fuck is her rent being paid. I miss one paycheck and there is a problem getting rent on time but somehow she can be in jail and still not get evicted. Beats the fuck out of me. Do black people have something hardwired in their DNA on how to work over the system? Wait most my neighbors are white and live off the governments tit. Maybe it is just that I lack said DNA so I just have to do that wild and crazy thing called work hard for my money. Oh well.