Either way it's 'Merica

So we've endured our first mass shooting of the week, and I'm starting to think that there's this one thing that maybe both sides of the gun debate aren't considering well enough. And it's not just where did all of the Super Soakers go (wtf?). It's more that, at any moment, any regular-seeming, gun-legal American could become a crazy person. Not just a look, I'm wearing a Mickey leotard and my hair is spiky, and my tongue is out, and I'm naked on a wrecking ball crazy. But an I want to rip you up and feed you to my pigeons crazy. Like, if I had a gun on me right now, I'd pull it out and shoot you and your turn-at-a-no-turn-on-red-intersection ass. The gun nuts (nuts, I think is an appropriate word -- I am nuts about picking my toes, and I would fight good and hard to keep this right, should the right for Americans to pick their toes no matter what ever be made into an Amendment, but the fact remains: I know that how often my toes are bleeding is unacceptable) want all the guns n' stuff, all the time. The Mounds (sometimes you feel like a nut...) would rather limit the guns n' stuff people can have, which, like it or not, would probably result in fewer prematurely dead people. The Mounds would also like to limit who can have these things. And that, really, is the hairy drain: there will be some point[s] in every person's life when said person should not have access to a firearm. There will always be gabiliondy-round magazines, Terminator IV weapons in which to put them, and people who are willing to shoot them at other people. But there will also be people who seem perfectly calm and happy until their team fumbles in the end zone. There will always be people who like the Eagles, and people who don't like the Eagles. There will always be people who start watching "Lost," then finish watching "Lost." There will always be people who live next door to people playing loud oom-pah music. There will always be people who have to wait for other people to write checks at the grocery store. There will always be people who eat other peoples' Cheetos. For the time being, the problem is that there will always be people. So we either get rid of all of the guns ever and live "The Walking Dead" with Whopper-eating zombies, or we watch the fuck out. Either way, we'll have to live our dream in 'Merica.

The Vagina Wikipedialogues

You know how sex scenes tend to make available most of a woman, but hardly ever reveal much of a man? I know it's not always, always, but you know what I'm saying. The female form is generally there, while the male form is somehow humping itself away behind the camera, hopefully against Michael Bay's leg while he records yet another unnecessary tender moment between a sensitive robot and a terrible, WD-40-stained actress. I'm not saying we more often see female genitalia than male genitalia in film -- I think we generally don't see a lot of genitalia in film -- but I do think we see more of Kate Winslet...I mean...of the woman. This argument certainly does not hold true in graffiti and within and on top of the Mead notebooks of males aged 4 and up; I've seen a whole lot of squiggly, smudgy spray-painted and chalk-drawn wieners on electrical boxes and sidewalks, and I've seen a whole lot more ballpoint pen cock etchings repeating in notebooks, as if another cursive character had been added to the alphabet and required practice, practice, practice. On the contrary, how many crudely-drawn vaginas have you seen. And if you have seen a crudely-drawn vagina, are you sure it wasn't a hotdog bun?

So it doesn't seem right, then, that Wikipedia's "Penis" entry first shows us a crude lineup of jarred whale dongs. Was it a happy mistake that the penises of the largest mammal were chosen for the first photo? Where's the photograph of a whale in a Hummer? Then, a bit later down the penis scroll, we get a glimpse of an engorged elephant dick. Which has got to be the second-biggest weiner on the planet. Then, okay, there's the tiny Cheeto of a tallywagger that the mallard apparently has. But still: first biggest penis, second biggest penis, and Cheeto penis averages out to a pretty damned big Jimmy Dean.

So it doesn't seem right, then, that Wikipedia's "Vagina" entry first shows us, straight up, a human vagina, which is not only just there, but also being pried apart by what I assume to be the fingers of the vagina's owner. But it's Wikipedia, after all. Those are probably the fingers of someone whose sources are totally skewed.

Where is the grizzly bear vagina? Or the kangaroo's TRIFECTA of vaginas [Don't try it -- I've just trademarked that name for a really terrible all-girl band I'm starting. There will be three flaming vaginas from whence we will spring and, on the stage, we will allow our flutes to express our personal fits of Wikipedia rage.]? I am demanding more animal vaginas on Wikipedia, and I am demanding them now! I think that's what I'm doing. Or am I demanding more human penises on Wikipedia? Let's say both and call this rant a desperate attempt for genitalial equality. Fat cock of a chance.

Costco: the underside of a big set of hairy balls

If you've never visited the sweaty, unwashed underside of a big set of hairy balls, and wish to, venture to Costco, America's consumptive wonderland, which is not only home of the one hundred and eighty count, twelve-pack pallet of anything you can think of (mayonnaise, toothbrushes, computer printers...), but the place where Americans go to shuck shreds of their ugliest habits, then leave them scattered about the Costco concrete right where it's hardest for you to maneuver your cart around them. Costco is a different sweaty underside of a big set of hairy balls than Walmart, though I fear they may be diesel-belching, basement hostage-hoarding, poop-in-a-bucket-in-a-van cousins who masturbate to the same beaming (well, sort of) magazine cutout of Sarah Palin. Walmart is where you go to see people dressed in old shower curtains (the transparent inside curtain that builds up mold, not the outside one that is sometimes less gross), where you go for new, fleshy metaphors for the Grand Canyon. Costco is where you go to get the stuff that makes the Grand Canyon wider, grimier.

I haven't been to Costco in a few years, probably since the last time I was driving past one and my mom was in the car with me, and she says "Let's go to Costco," and I say "Absolutely not," and she says "I'll buy you something," and I drive perpendicularly across three lanes of traffic to get to the Costco parking lot. The Costco parking lot. It's really something. And we were there at noon on a Wednesday. So thirty minutes later we've parked and walked up the mile-long shopping cart centipede only to be halted by a pod of housewives digging for their membership cards in their purses, as if being at the entrance to Costco is some sort of surprise. That is annoying. Get your card out before you're at the place where you need your card. I know this happens to these people every time they're here. It's the kind of thing you know about people. It's the kind of thing that makes serial killers kill serially. But Mom and I, we're prepared -- she flashes her card to the blank-eyed gatekeeper, for whom I feel very sorry, as he is African American, and he is in the very albino heart, in the thickest clot of the biggest artery of suburbia. Poor fellow just sort of glances at my mom's membership card, then hands us a coupon book, then wonders when he'll get to die.

I like buying things. I like having things. I like having a pillowy backup armory of toilet paper in the garage. I am an American consumer. And I like it. I do see the allure of Costco and its block of cheese that is six times (honestly) bigger than the block of cheese I am used to buying, but only because I've heard of the Duggar family. And, honestly, I think big families should have to suffer Costco and its bottom of the American barrel-ness. The problem is I think most people aren't bothered by the sludge at the bottom. They like it on toast with a genetically mutated over-easy egg on top. Bigger and uglier tastes fine to them. And I am comforted that at least, when the Zombie Apocalypse comes, and if Levi and I are able to get out of the house alive with our shotguns, there will probably be lots of good beer for us to drink; the Hummer family will be out scalping for Coors. 

So Mom and I are pushing our cart through the high ocean of pallets. We see a pie that is eighteen inches in diameter (honestly). I don't bother to look at the label because I know it is filled with something from a farm that injects its produce with the sweat and tanning oil that drips off of Hulk Hogan's elbows. Mom thinks I should forklift it into the cart so that Levi will be a happy man after dinner. I refuse, but mostly because I would find it embarrassing to ask a stranger to help me lift a pie. Thankfully the box full of 96 tampons was manageable on my own. 

There's a lot of amazement on my part as we peruse the aisles. You know what Costco is like. There are a lot of products you can't help but like, and they're all in bigger boxes, bags, or bottles. You take some, you leave some, you eat a few meatballs, and you smash a few heads with your quickly-filling cart in the process. 

And then there's the shore of checkout lanes. I found a pretty thin line at number twenty five, but was abruptly cut in front of by an Amazon shrew with a handful of baby clothes. I imagined they were for her fire-breathing infant, which will hopefully someday get backed over by a Range Rover in a Costco parking lot before it can learn its mother's ways. But it will probably live to post the pictures it took of its penis on Subway sandwich bread on its Instagram account. At the very least she was buying the clothes for a baby shower, which she will have to suffer through. In any case, she cut in front of me. I looked at my mom and gave her the pouty face I used to give her when we ran out of dessert. She shrugged, communicating to me that we would not be going spider monkey on this bitch, so I just threw our box of 36 Izze beverages sort of on top of her baby clothes and gave her some slivery eyes before a sickly thin, sickly tan, sickly strident cashier barked at me Gestapo style. I accidentally tried handing our coupons to her  and was gently reminded that she would please need my Costco card first (i.e. "COSTCO CARD!"). I gave her the Costco salute, then marched to the end of the checkout stand and shyly waited for Mom to pay. We cleared checkpoint one, rolled past Costco's weird and uncomfortably low-priced food distribution center (three hot dogs with chili on top and a set of four tires on the side for $1.99), then we cleared checkpoint two where an old man armed with nothing but two-day old whiskers wiped a highlighter down our receipt, and we were, save the Navy Seal exercise across the parking lot, home free. 

I did not like the experience. I am a wider, grimier Grand Canyon for it. And that's somehow okay. And that is absolutely the worst part.

Will Work For More Cardboard

Been a long time since I rapped at 'cha. But I am forced to, as I now regularly see a bum in Capitol Hill who has actual B.U.M. Equipment from 1985, and there's no not blogging about that. He's got the super cool backpack, the very chillin' letterman jacket, AND the most awesome beard with flies. I never give him money or food or anything, as I am currently of the asshole persuasion, but I do use my iPhone camera to steal his soul every now and then for the benefit of my untended blog. So this is for you, B.U.M. Equipment bum -- waste not, want fifty cents not. 

(B.U.M. jacket, B.U.M. backpack, bum beard-with-flies)

While I'm on the bums, what the fuck does this guy think he's doing? 

He is clearly very hungry for cellphone minutes. I would appreciate it if he were a tad more honest and just wrote that last part on his sign: HUNGRY FOR CELLPHONE MINUTES. I would possibly throw a dime sort of hard at that kind of candor. I would definitely throw a dime at this:

Not just because it's me and I'm totally in love with myself, but because it's clever, it's not asking for anything, and it took only slightly more effort than the favored 50 CENTS HELPS sign, which is ridiculous -- if you're going to beg, there's no asking for quantities. Unless it's twenty below and your sign says "TWO MITTENS HELP." So the bum lessons are: 

1. If you're a bum wearing B.U.M., you will be blogged about.

2. If you're a "bum" on a cellphone, you don't deserve to live.

3. If you're a "bum" on a cellphone, you make me make this face, but without the middle school teacher hair, without the viciously deep v neck, and without the obviously terrible fiction.

Groupon: crime scene Red Bull

Everyone knows about Groupon. It's that magical coupon kingdom where, for just thirty dollars, you can buy approximately sixty dollars' worth of bullshit. Which is what I did as a gift for Levi. And on Sunday we used those bullshit coupons for a bullshit "cheese making" class. "Cheese making" is in quotation marks because we only sort of made cheese, and I think that the person who taught the class was being punny -- during this two hour class she made "cheese," i.e. cold hard cash, while we, her students, made "cheese," i.e. shitty cheese. Hahahahaha.

"Expert gourmand supplies all materials for a two-hour cheese-making class that produces approximately 1.5 pounds to nibble."

For starters, our "expert gourmand" was a middle-aged woman in an oversized Patriots jersey and severely holey jeans. Or Swiss jeans, if you want the technical cheese gourmand term. I don't know -- I guess when I buy tickets to a food-making class, I figure the person in charge is at least nearly as refined as her craft. But I'll forgive the homeless person loungewear, not that your couch doesn't deserve better than that. What I won't forgive is that the mozzarella we made started off as a gallon jug of milk from Seven Eleven, which she admitted was a last minute buy, but not as an apology. More of as a point of pride. Like, I didn't have time to go to the Albertson's I usually go to (which is not a real grocery store either), so I used my problem-solving skills to buy this gas station "milk". Come on. You're a gourmand, yeah? Then you don't get within a hundred yards of a Seven Eleven unless you're bound and gagged and the guy who stuffed you into the back of his van is stopping in for some crime scene Red Bull.

"While absorbing knowledge of cheese production, students can opt to take turns grabbing hold of butane burners, pots, and thermometers to learn how to make fresh, handmade batches of mozzarella and ricotta cheese."

This part, the part aside from the "while absorbing knowledge of cheese production," I must have missed in the Groupon explanation, as it is exactly what happened. It was like chemistry lab for a paraplegic kid -- just sit over there, Susi, while we take turns grabbing hold of this butane burner. WTF, Gourmand?! You grab hold of the butane burner. I'll hold the fucking pot. And that other guy can hold the thermometer. And that's what we'll do while you tell us about your failed cheese shop, which, upon some Google investigation, turns out was maybe something of a whim on your quest for a new profession -- "I don't honestly know why I chose artisan cheeses[,] but I have no regrets." I'm not going to make a list of things you should do before you open your own cheese shop, but...okay, I am:

Things you should do before you open your own cheese shop:

1. Have a passion for cheese.

So the five of us are sitting around the table taking turns holding the thermometer, and our gourmand blathers on about friends of hers who make cheese, and a fight she got into with a famous cheese guy, and why he won't talk to her anymore, and the man who bought a fence from her on Craigslist who asked her how she pleasures herself, and blah blah blah, and once in awhile one of us would ask her a question about cheese, and it turns out she's never really made any cheese other than mozzarella or ricotta (the production of both of these cheeses, as it turns out, is like boiling pasta), so she'd point to this cheese-making book on the table and ask us to turn the butane burner up or down. And eventually, yes, we did end up with a fuckton of mozzarella, but let us not forget the Seven Eleven, or the Patriots jersey, or the fact that Gourmand has never made any cheese south, north, east, or west of Easy. As in Easy Cheese. Except that's probably a lot harder to make. And, really, less gross.

Gold, frankincense, and leg lamp

This is a dog in a Christmas sweater. It is humiliated. Not because of its sweater, but because of the figgy pudding it just whipped up under the family Christmas tree.

This is a gingerbread goat. It appears to be munching on fake candy canes. But it's not. Gingerbread goat isn't hungry because earlier it ate the foreskin from gingerbread baby Jesus.

This is Krampus. If Santa were God, Krampus would be Satan. While Santa brings all the good children toys, Krampus stuffs naughty children into his enormous biodegradable tote bag and takes them to see the new really awful Hobbit movie. 

This is a merrily-dressed woman walking to her job at a local bookshop. Boy, is she going to scare the shit out of some people in the geography section.

This is the Abominabababable Snowman. His favorite food is Christmas elf who really wants to be a dentist, but he'll settle for the rest of what's in your really sad Christmas Day KFC bucket.

This is a major award. 

This is Denver's Civic Center. If you look close, you can see that Jesus' foreskin is missing. A couple of years ago the city of Denver had to put the Christmas nativity behind glass so hipsters couldn't just run up and steal the trendy facial hair off the wise men.

And this is just a tree that's pretty. Merry Christmas.

The incident of the spread-out bee parts on the Burt's Bees

I bought a bottle of Burt's Bees honey and milk lotion. While taking it out of a bag, I noticed a bee head on my hand, then the rest of the bee, in spread-out and crunchy bee pieces on the bottle of Burt's Bees. Say what you will about Burt, but his bees are motherfucking committed.