Tag: Featured Articles (Page 4 of 8)

Are you sick and tired of prom themes that over-promise and under-deliver?

Well, have I got just the theme for you…

“C’mon! Y’all know my prom theme is da bomb! ‘Ten Steps’ is way more cool than just ‘A Step’. Why do y’all insist on being so boring!?!”

I was attempting to fulfill my duties as a member of the Rolla High School Junior Class Prom Committee, and give the Seniors–aka the Class of ’98–a prom they would actually remember. But no one was daring enough to actually do something cool for once.

Despite the tacit acknowledgment that my idea was indeed pretty ----- awesome, my fellow RHSJCP Committee members wouldn’t take the plunge and commit to my suggestion of having a classic Old West theme entitled, “Ten Steps Back In Time.”

I mean, who wouldn’t want to hearken back to the simpler time when cowboys would regularly resolve their differences in a civilized and gentlemanly gun duel that may or may not have ended in the death and/or maiming of one and/or both of them? There’s nothing quite as romantic as some unnecessary violence, amiright?

Nope, instead we were stuck with “A Step Back In Time”–still Old West themed, but with all the lameness that seems to be obligatory for high school prom themes.

Realizing that I was completely outgunned on this one, I eventually gave up. I had to simply resign myself to the very unoriginal gift that we would be giving to our upper-classmen and -classwomen.

The only solace I had was knowing that “a genius is rarely recognized in their time.”

Wait a sec…I think that is supposed to be ‘prophet’ instead of ‘genius’…

Putting me in charge of putting up the giant letters that would spell out our prom theme? That was their first mistake.

A month or so later, and apparently they had already forgotten that they had picked a super-vanilla theme over my Vanilla-Ice cool theme back during the planning stages of this whole she-bang.

But now it was go-time, and we had to get the lunch room decorated for the party that was about to go down later that evening. For some reason I was deeply unmotivated to do anything, and I found myself just sitting there, blankly staring at the letters in front of me:

As I kept staring, the letters started to swirl in my mind. I could see a message hidden in there, but I couldn’t quite make it out. Thank goodness I had been playing Scrabble since the age of 6, and in that moment I just knew that destiny had been preparing me for this all along. So I went to work…

Interestingly, this is the point where Present Me had to take “A Step Back In Time” himself, and do a bit of time-travel investigating.

You see, I clearly remember that a very important Message had been transmitted through Teenage Me–a mere humble conduit–but I couldn’t quite remember exactly what it was, only that the Greater Being(s) of the Universe had oddly chosen to include a slight typo in their Message.

Wanting to present an accurate account of what transpired that fateful day, I had to bust out ye ol’ Scrabble game and do a little historical reenactment. And I’m not going to lie: I’m not as spry in the mind as I used to be, and my Third Eye is going a bit blind. It took me awhile, but it was indeed quite the revelation when I finally figured out what very important Message could be constructed using ALL the letters from that lame-ass prome theme “A S T E P B A C K I N T I M E”. The very same Message that was revealed to us rural teenagers, all those years ago…

…

Are you ready?

…

Are you sure you’re ready?

…

I mean, once you have heard such a world-view shattering Message delivered from upon high, you realize your life will never be the same, right?

…

Okay, well, you’ve been duly warned. I wash my hands of anything that happens after this point.

…

Take a deep breath, and prepare to receive the Message:

…

Ok, J.K. Kidding! Call me a tease, but I feel the urge to keep you in suspense a little longer…

It occurred to me that high school proms are like modern-day versions of Araby–you know, the 19th-Century short story by Irish author James Joyce. Just like Joyce’s protagonist, you’re young, full of hormones, and ready to, um, “come-of-age”–and Prom is your very own Arabian market where you just know all of your youthful lusts will be fulfilled.

But does it ever work out that way? No! Or to be fair: Rarely!

It’s supposed to be this super-romantic night, yet for all-too-many youths, it doesn’t exactly go the way they really hoped it would go.

Tragically too often, the evening instead ends with disappointment and frustration…

And this singular thought, pithily summarized by the 1998 Rolla High School prom theme that almost made it past the teachers, passing through their mind:

(Read with the most depressing Redneck accent you can muster in your head:)

Content created on: 14/15 May 2021 (Fri/Sat)

“I can’t believe you’re asking me to be your Best Man!

I promise you wont’ regret it…”

“Now, if somebody could kindly lend me a Bible…”

*Crickets.* Nothing but ----- crickets from my captive audience.

I found myself staring out into the vast sea of Christian faces that had gathered for the wedding reception of my good friend and faithful TPOTS fan, Roger-Dodger,¹Not his real name. If you are Roger-Dodger and would like to know where the heck that name came from, let me just put it this way: roger-DoDGer. There, make sense now? and, I, as his best man, was dying up on stage as I tried to give him and his beautiful bride the toast of a lifetime. And none of these Jesus-heads had not a single Bible amongst the lot of them.

I was starting to feel like a regular citizen of the fine city of Sodom, if you know what I mean.²If you don’t know what I mean, I meant that I was feeling “sodomized” by the situation.

To make things worse, the wedding reception was being held at the headquarters of one the larger Christian youth ministries in the Kansas City area where the bride worked. So forgive me for thinking that when I needed to quote the Good Word at a Christian wedding in the offices of a Christian organization, that there would be a plethora of copies of the Holy Scriptures at hand.

But nooooooo. Jesus was nowhere to be seen to save me from my own over-thought and somehow strangely sexually-charged speech.

Wait.

Let me back up to the beginning, though…

It’s not like I just showed up and started orating extemporaneously out of my anus, you see. I had found out at Thanksgiving that I would have the honor of being R-D’s best man. And, yes, I had been ruminating over the toast I would have to inevitably give during every waking moment since that point in time.

Like, literally. Or almost literally–every single time I went for a run in those 5 intervening months, The Speech is all I would think about. I wasn’t going to let my homeboy down, oh no I wasn’t!

And I had it figured out, too! You see, R-D and I happened to inadvertently, umm, “pursue” many of the same fine young Christian women during our college days at Kansas State.³Largely unsuccessfully. And for the record, not sexually, you ----- pervert. So, in my infinite King Solomon-like wisdom, I thought that our failed romantic conquests would be the perfect topic around which to craft a wedding speech.

Now in my defense, my angle was “see, you and I have great taste when it comes to the ladies: the one thing that they all have in common is that they all had excellent Christian character–just like your current bride!”

But in retrospect, it is much more obvious that the crowd wouldn’t follow my train of logic, and instead–as one friend in the audience later shared with me–what they heard was, “Damn, man, do remember back in the day when we were a bunch of stud-muffin horn-dogs?!? And alllllll those fine honeys we used to chase? Aww, yeah, buddy!”

As you can imagine, this gathering of devout Christian folk was not bemused. And given that it was a dry wedding, I found myself denied even the most basic of Best Hu/Man Rights: being able to turn to an alcoholic beverage for a bit of extra liquid courage.

Luckily, before all hope was lost and the entire wedding ruined, I managed to pivot to talking about the many wonderful qualities of the bride herself (instead of all these “other women”), and despite going completely off script, this strategy proved to be much more popular with both her and the crowd than–and I repeat–talking about all the other women your future husband lusted after.

And now, all I had to do was bring it home with a quick wife-themed quote from Proverbs:

“A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies…Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”

Proverbs 31:10,30

Pretty solid, right? Yeah, believe it or not, I do have some good judgement in me.

But why would I actually need a physical Bible when–full disclosure–I could have easily recited this by heart?

Because, my thirsty friend, there is nothing like a bit of prop comedy to really get the marital celebrations flowing.

After a rather awkward 3-minute delay, one of our friends tracked down seemingly the only Bible in the entire place. Using this to my advantage, I pretended to be super-nervous, thus causing me to “accidentally” start my Biblical quotation maybe just a verse or two too early:

“Let beer be for those who are perishing, wine for those who are in anguish! Let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more!”

Proverbs 31:6-7

*rimshot*

Unlike my attempt at lightly riffing on ambiguously implied fornication, I absolutely killed it with the crowd with this one:

“Ha ha! It’s funny because it’s true! Many marriages, long term, will drive one to drinking.”

“Tee-hee! Oh, the misery, anguish, and perishing that awaits the married man! That’s hilarious!”

“But seriously though, we could use some beer up in here, having to listen to this guy…”

The point of the story is, if you’re gonna give a wedding toast, the best advice I can give you–and, more importantly, my younger self–is to make it all about the bride. And, even though my where-is-the-much-needed-alcohol-up-in-here humor landed with the audience, I fervently repeat Toast Tip #1: keep it all about the bride–you gotta treat a wedding reception with a little more sanctity than an open mic night a bar, amiright?

Anyways, despite the several glaring errors in judgement that I made when trying to fulfill my duties as Best Man, I couldn’t be prouder to report that 15 years later, and the only thing R-D and his wife are drunk on are each other’s love!

Happy Anniversary, you Fatties!⁴This makes much more since if you 1) know their last name, & 2) speak a particular foreign language.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to find a fermented drink⁵Kombucha. I’ll be drinking kombucha because my vegan ass can’t handle real alcohol any more. to imbibe in your honor…

Content created on: 15 April 2021 (Thursday)

“Oh sh*t…” you say, as you do your best Fred-Savage-from-the-Princess-Bride impression. “Is this a pooping story?”

“This is a pooping story, isn’t it…”

If you’re lucky, you probably have little to no memory of your early childhood years. If you’re unlucky, you might be cursed with remembering every ----- detail since birth. And if you’re real unlucky, you could be stuck with all-too-vivid recollections of those wonderful Golden Years¹You bet your un-wiped ass that was urine pun! of potty training.

Guess which shat-agory I fall into? Yup, you can bet your darned left butt-cheek that I remember way too much from that particular era in my life. But the good news is…wait for it…yup, you guessed correctly again! There is a gem of life advice buried somewhere in all that brown gooey muck, and I’m about to dump–er, I mean, “share” it with you right now!

Our 3-year-old daughter, The Younger, is pretty well potty-trained at this point, but she hasn’t quite mastered the art of wiping herself up yet. And since she is like her old man, she typically is left on the potty to do her business for extended of periods of time while her caretaker takes care of other business elsewhere in the house.

But instead of patiently waiting for someone to come clean her up when she’s done, she’s gotten into the habit of just wandering around the house casually with her pants around her legs, butt-cheeks red from sitting to long hanging out and all, loudly proclaiming, “CAN YOU WIPE ME UP PLEASE?!?”

I got to thinking about this the other day, and realized that I am extremely grateful that her little habit is so low-key. Well, relatively speaking, that is.

You see, she could have turned out just like me…

By the age of 3, I, too, had mastered the art of defecating in receptacles previously designated for just that. But unlike The Younger, I had actually become well-versed in the whole wiping thing by then. The only problem, though, was that I just didn’t know when to quit.

Like, literally–I had no clue when it was okay for me to be done wiping. So what did I do? I got a second opinion from someone with better judgement than me, of course!

My standard post-poo protocol was to wipe 2-3 times, then traipse down the hall shirt-on-but-buck-naked-below-deck to the living room where Mom was, do a 180, bend over with my cheeks spread in her general direction, and loudly inquire “AM I CLEAN YET?!?” Then repeat as necessary, until she gave me a clean butt of health.

This probably went on for a good few months without anyone batting an eyelash until one day my much older sister pulled me aside and shared her most precious life-tip with me:

“If you look at the toilet paper after you wipe, you can tell roughly just how clean dat ass be. And you just simply have to keep wiping until it comes back clean–no need to involve our poor mother in this!”

The Ancient wisdom of an older sibling

Now I have had a few experiences in my life that just shook my worldview to the core. This was indubitably the first one of these.

My mind was simply blown away by the genius of it all. And best of all, I wouldn’t have to choose between living with my mother for the rest of my life or smelling like crap all the time.

I recall excitedly sharing this amazing revelation with my slightly older brother One Skinny Jay, and he was like “Pfffft! Everyone knows that! How did you not know that?!?”

Well, excuuuuuuuse me, mister. Apparently, no one in my life could have bothered enough to share that ----- memo with me!

So, from that very moment in time, I knew that I never wanted any child in my purview to ever suffer the indignation that I did of having to regularly perform the uncouth ritual of what I now refer to as “Behold The Gobbler.” Always and forever, I told myself, I would solemnly vow to pass on to my nieces & nephews–and eventually my own children–Life Lesson #1: How To Wipe Your Ass Clean When You’re All Alone.

Speaking of which, I think it’s about time I sat down and had a little chat with The Younger…

Do you like Oreos? I bet you do. Especially if you’re [Whole-Food] Plant-Based like me. They’re a classic treat that simply can’t be beat!

For my part, I distinctly remember falling in love with Oreos at a young age…unfortunately it was during, um, “a particular era in my life.”

Shortly after discovering The Joy of the Big O’ around the age of 3, I had a rather indulgent session with them that involved probably a third of a package and the milk to match the task. Hey, it seemed like a ----- fantastic idea at the time, so sue me.

Well, shortly after “at the time” I experienced one of my earlier life lessons in “consequences of my actions” (surprise, surprise). Not to be too gratuitous, but…yeah, it wasn’t quite diarrhea, nor was it quite solid, rather, my poo was a 4th state of matter more akin in nature to flubber.

Actually, after all these years, I just realized the perfect description for it: “super slow-motion semi-solid diarrhea.” Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

Anyways, after all the damage was done, I was going through the usual steps of running out to Mom with my short shorts around my cowboy boots for inspection. But unbeknownst to me, there was a hanging chad hiding in one of my crevices, and I only discovered Chad when he became dislodged and landed squarely on my calf before preceding to sloooooooowly creep down to my ankle.

Now, I don’t remember much that happened after that, but I do recall gagging like I had never gagged in my life before or since, and I think I…I think I touched it. It was traumatizing. I couldn’t eat Oreos again for another 4 year or so.

…aaaaand that’s it. That’s the story.

Sorry, I meant The Story, as in “That’s The Story that I actually told–out loud–to everyone sitting with me in Kramer Dining Hall back during my freshman year of college, thinking it to be a relevant tale after making myself the ingenius dessert of crushed Oreos in a glass of milk. You know…the kind of story that begins, ‘This chocolatey mush reminds me…’ “

And guess what? Now you, just like all 15 of my [former] friends and acquantainces present on that fateful day, have officially been cured of your Oreo addiction.

Ta-dah!

Content created on: 10 March 2021 (Wednesday)

When she said “Farmboy, fetch me the finest seats in the house,” you know what he said?

“As you wish…”

“Hana hou!” In Hawaiian, that means “one more time!” or “encore!”¹https://www.hawaiianairlines.com/our-services/in-flight-services/hana-hou And for the Boss Lady and myself, it meant getting a second chance at a missed opportunity from our childhoods: seeing Rob Reiner’s 1987 block-buster movie, The Princess Bride.

“What?!?” you say? “How can this be true? Inconceivable!“

Yea, verily I say unto you, ’tis but true! You see, back in 2012 when we were living in Honolulu, one of the local theaters decided to start up their Hana Hou movie series, in which, on one special Wednesday each month, they would play a classic movie from Hollywood’s movie vault. I believe this is actually common now, but back then it wasn’t really a thing yet, so it was super exciting.

When we first saw the poster for The Princess Bride we ’bout crapped our britches in shear excitement! But although it was being shown on the largest screen in all of Hawai’i,²https://www.consolidatedtheatres.com/ward/cinema-info we were lucky to reserve ourselves 2 of the 225 seats available for this twice-in-a-lifetime event. In fact, I think we scored the last two tickets next to each other, so it was nearly an opportunity missed.

Well, it indeed lived up to the hype, and was perhaps one of the most incredible movie-going experiences of my life. It’s a pretty incredible energy when you get 224 hardcore fans of such a classic movie in an enclosed space–the place was literally buzzing with excitement!

Now, you may have noticed that I said “224 fans,” when there were 225 seats. Let me explain…

The Princess Bride is perhaps one of the most quotable movies ever. From “As you wish.” to “Inconceivable!” to “Stop rhyming, and I mean it!” *pause* “Anybody want a peanut?”, there are a plethora of opportunities to jump in and say your favorite line along with the character on screen. And believe you me, there was a lot of that going on that night, with at least a handful of audience members reciting dialogue during any given scene.

However, there was one quote, occurring several times throughout the movie, that seemed to unite the entire audience in what I can only describe as a religious experience: Iñigo Montoya’s “Hello. My name is Iñigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

The only way I know how to explain the phenomenon we experienced that night is this: if you’ve ever gone to just about any church in America, there is a good chance that you’ve been in the congregation when they’ve recited the Lord’s Prayer. Well, it was exactly like that: everybody knew every word, but nobody ever figured out how to say it in unison, so you endup with this eerie asynchronous chorus of whispers, which would be freaky as ----- if you didn’t know what was going on. It literally gave me the chills. Or was it the creeps…?

Anyways, I was at first astounded that everybody in that packed-out movie house was still obsessed with this film 25 years later…but then I realized that there was one auspicious exception: the guy sitting on the other side of me was strangely silent the whole time.

It seemed that it was this virgin’s maiden voyage into our collective world of fantasy, and this grown-ass man was just now seeing The Princess Bride the first time in his whole life. How was that even possible?

I mean, are you kidding me??? The lone heretic in that entire place just happened to be sitting next to me? Super. When the gods of Hollywood would inevitably smite this infidel with a bolt of lightening, I just knew that my ass was going to get zapped too…

Shortly thereafter, and based on our experience the previous month with The Princess Bride, we made sure to be ahead of the game and bought our tickets early to Quentin Tarentino’s 1994 cult-classic Pulp Fiction–a movie that I, as a grown-ass man, actually had never seen.

Now, I was particularly proud of my purchase this time, as I had scored seats right in the middle, 3 rows up from the open aisle that divided the front seats from the back. I’m talking primo, grade-A location, man. This experience was going to be even better than The Princess Bride, I just knew it.

It turned out, though, that around that same time, the Boss Lady was kicking around the idea of getting a Master’s degree from the University of Hawai’i, and her on-campus interview inadvertently got scheduled for the same night as the showing of Pulp Fiction. It ended up causing us to rush across town to the theater, only to show up about 5 minutes late.

I really had to use the restroom, so I told the Boss Lady which seats were ours, and told her to go on in before someone tried laying claim to them. When I came out of the john, I knew that our seats–25 & 26, to be precise–was slightly closer to the right side, so I took the hallway that went to the right going into the auditorium.

To my surprise, the place wasn’t nearly as packed as it had been for The Princess Bride, but the first 5 or 6 rows where our seats were were plum full. Assuming my life partner was already in her seat, I “excuse me, pardon me’d” my way past 20+ fellow patrons trying to enjoy the movie…only to find that the Boss Lady was not in her seat, and further, somebody else’s fat ass had set up camp in one of ours.

So what did I do? Well, I worked hard to reserve those highly-sought after seats for my Buttercup, and this Farmboy wanted what was rightfully his. So I went down the row, trying to figure out who didn’t legally belong, and who had just scooched over one seat out of courtesy to the mother- ----- squatter. It wasn’t until about Seat 7 or 6 that I found the culprit and kicked him out of our row. And then, after that, I had to “excuse me, pardon me” back over approximately 20 people who I had just forced to move one seat over…

Meanwhile…in the back row of the front section–on the far left side–the Boss Lady had set up camp in the handicap seats and was vigilantly watching for me to come in, so she could tell me that it wasn’t worth trying to get to our single seat and that it would be much simpler to find some open seats closer to the front.

Patiently watching for me in the dark, she heard a commotion behind her. Turning around the other way to see what the hub-bub was about, she quickly had her worst fears confirmed: there I was, “excuse me, pardon me, you need to move over to the seat that’s on your ticket”ing to the whole ----- row, single-handedly disrupting everyone’s movie-going experience.

Wondering where the hell she was, I started scanning the place as I viciously guarded my hard-fought prize–that primo, grade-A empty seat with my wife’s name on it–before I eventually locked eyes with her…sitting on the left side, of all places!

We had a bit of a stand-off, impertinently waving at the other to get their ass over to our respective locations: “Come over here!” “No, you come over here!” and what-not, until finally she very reluctantly caved. Of course, getting to her seat at this point was no easy task in the least, and she ended up having to climb over the bars in front the first row, “excuse me, pardon me” a couple seats over in Row 2 so she could climb over the lone empty seat there, and then “excuse me, pardon me” over a few more very perturbed patrons to finally get to me.

Needless to say, that was perhaps the least romantic date we’ve ever been on. Now in all fairness, from my perspective, I was fighting for the honor and comfort of my fair maiden. But in reality…

Well, if chivalry wasn’t dead already at that point in time, I had just murdered it in cold blood and then skull- ----- its rotting corpse, in front of roughly 125 onlookers…

The point of the story is: don’t be like me–be adaptable! In the end we decided the best way to deal with that utter fustercluck was to laugh at our incredibly embarrassing shenanigans–so embarassing that I had totally forgot that there had been a power surge that night and the theater had totally blacked out about 10 minutes from the end of the movie.³I found this out when searching old emails for the exact seats we had that night. Apparently, due to the black out, the theater was offering us free tickets to the next month’s showing of SpaceBalls. But you wouldn’t believe how many times I have had that used as Exhibit A against me since then, as irrefutable evidence of my inflexibility, single-mindedness, and inability to compromise.

These days, the Boss Lady only has to utter a mere 2 words to win any argument of that nature: “Pulp Fiction.“

To which, my only real reply is a solemn, demoralized whisper, also 2 words in length: “#NeverForget.”

…

Oh! And speaking of “adaptable,” the whole reason why I brought any of this up was so I could have an excuse to share with you the “Home Movie” version of The Princess Bride that I recently came across. If you ever wondered how your favorite celebrity spent their time during the Great Quarantine of 2020, may I present to you: Exhibit A.

“A” as in “f***ing AWESOME,” that is:

Content created on: 6/7 March 2021 (Sat/Sun)

Sometimes, the drunken truth can be the most sobering thing of all…

“I had a dream…” Is there really any other way to begin a tale of epic greatness? Of course not! And does every tale that begins like this end up being epically great? Meh. We’ll see.

Back in the summer of 2004, shortly after officially completing my undergraduate career at Kansas State for good, I had a dream that I had long hair. I don’t think there was anything special about this dream, nor was my hair particularly awesome, but I just woke up with this persistent nagging feeling “I need to grow my hair long.”

A few days later I was confident that this was exactly what I wanted to do, so I set about pursuing this newfound life goal of mine…by skipping my next haircut 6 weeks later. It turns out that you need a bit of patience if you want to have them luscious locks, so it’s good if you’re able to find a distraction to help you pass the time.

At first, my main distraction was repeatedly solving Rubik’s Cubes during my day job of solving cell phone customer’s billing problems. It wasn’t long before I realized that my brain was bored af at that job, and before I knew it, I had a new distraction, applying to grad school so I could fulfill a dream that, come to think of it, I never actually had in my life: becoming a Doctor of Physics.

Now, for anyone who has tried growing their hair out from a crew cut to a full lion’s mane, you probably know that there tends to be an awkward phase somewhere there in the middle (especially with my fairly curly hair, you kinda got to give up on the requirement that you’re stylin’ day in and day out).

Around February 2005, right when I was totally hitting peak awkwardness, I had a major breakthrough in my Doctor-of-Physics-non-dream/distraction. Hidden away in my spam folder, and thiiiiis close to being deleted without a second look, was an acceptance letter from the Department of Physics at the University of Florida. I hadn’t heard back from any of the other 3 schools I had applied to, so this was HUGE: I was going to get into grad school!

I was new to the grad school game, as I had never originally planned on doing anything of the sort with my life, and what I didn’t know before this moment is than an acceptance letter often will come with…A FREE TRIP TO FLORIDA! Well, not necessarily Florida, per se, but to wherever the fine institution of higher learning may be located, for a prospective grad student weekend. Pretty cool.

What wasn’t cool was the weekend I visited Gainesville happened to be the weekend that, for whatever God-awful reason, I was experimenting with using Nair as a longer-term solution for my facial hair. I vaguely recall that I had finally had it with shaving regularly, so decided to apply my genius-level problem-solving skills to the matter. On the other hand, I clearly recall that it made my face smell like a hot baloney sandwich–and it didn’t even work!

Fun fact, though, my ill-conceived adventures with Nair don’t actually have anything to do with the story. It’s just interesting to re-discover long-lost and/or repressed memories when one goes down the path of autobiographical exposition. But my hatred for my facial hair aside, I confess that I do indeed digress…

Despite the possibility that I reeked of old lunch pails, I hit it off pretty quickly with two other prospective students, Rebecca & Natasha. And, yes, the stereotypes are true: anyone named Natasha is probably Russian, so if you want name your kid Natasha but you’re a Proud American Patriot, just randomly change one of the ‘A’s to an ‘O’, and you should be good to go.¹That sentence wasn’t supposed to sound that Russian, but I couldn’t help leave my typo in.

Anyways, back to the story. Given that I recently casually dropped the fact that I had multiple (simultaneous) girlfriends earlier in my life, you may think that this story is going to end with “…and that is how I became an Orgy Guy, kids.” But to that, let me reassure you:

Nope, me and my gal pals were strictly platonic. Anyways, that Saturday night a bunch of us went out and hit up the Gainesville bar scene, so naturally I was rollin’ two deep with my home girls.

At one point in the evening, after we each had had a moderate-yet-responsible amount of drinks, Natasha stopped what she was doing and started staring at me. She then leaned over and, practically yelling at me in her thick Russian accent over the thumping club beats, she said something that shook me to my core:

“You know you look just like Napoleon Dynamite, right?”²At one point in time I could remember what I thought she was saying. Due to her accent, the bar noise, and the ridiculous nature of her accusation, what I do recall is that it was something waaaaaaaay different.

Once I realized what she was saying, I gotta admit that I had to angrily disagree with her just a little bit on that point.

Nope. No way, no how. She apparently had gotten too comfortable with me and thought she could light-heartedly rile me up by invoking the nerdiest cultural icon of 2005. I mean, we were all physics nerds, but how dare she single me out as nerdier than the rest of us.

I told her she was clearly full of shit, because, for starters, I was blonde and Napoleon was a red-head, but she was unmoved by my argument. I looked to Rebecca to be a tie-breaker, but she just shrugged and mumbled, “Yeah, I guess I could kinda see it.”

I wasn’t completely butt-hurt over these accusations, but I did feel a little bit like they were picking on me, albeit in good fun. I got over it quickly enough, writing it off for the ridiculous claim that it was.

About an hour later, the ladies had finally managed to drag me on to the dance floor against my will. Against my will–because unlike Napoleon, I didn’t have the sweet moves of his that I’m about to show in you in GIF form:

But I was making the best of it, and thanks to the Power of Alcohol, was managing to have a pretty good time.

I was in the middle of groovin’, when out of nowhere from behind me I feel a hand on my shoulder. Since the only two people I actually knew in the whole town was right in front of me, I was a little confused as to exactly who the hell would be touching me without my consent.

I turned around to see it was none other than…two drunk dudes that I had never seen before in my life. While I was still trying to figure what the heck was happening, one of them blurted out:

“Napoleon Dynamite! Awesome!!!”

“NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!” I screamed that way you scream when you realize that you’ve been in denial with a very uncomfortable truth about yourself.

I was like, “You too, really? Did these girls put you up to this? The Russian girl put you up to this, didn’t she? TELL ME THE TRUTH, YOU DRUNK UNDERAGE BUMS!”

“Nope, dude, I don’t know that girl. But what I do know is that you look exactly like Napoleon Dynamite. I just figured you had to be doing it on purpose. I mean, it’s not even Halloween, though, so that takes some commitment, my man.”

At that point in time, the other drunken guy chimed in, “Just one line–any line–from the movie that’s all we ask!”

Trying to swear at the cursed situation I found myself in, I turned my face to the side and let out a “Gosh…”

But before I could finish my mild oath, the small crowd around me erupted in cheers.

“OHMYGOD OHMYGOD OHMYGOD! That was AWESOOOOOOOOME!”

*Sigh* While I had strongly favored my theorem that this was all an elaborate Natasha-prank, as I scientist I had to respect a statistically significant number of unbiased observations.

I was awash in a confusing cocktail of emotions in regards to my self-identity, so once I got away from the cheering masses I ducked into the nearest bathroom, took a good hard look at myself in the mirror, and way-to-accurately recreated both parts from this iconic scene:

Content created on: 20 February 2021 (Saturday)

Take a look inside the Book of Forbidden Fruit, if you dare.

But, young lad, can you handle what you may find in there?

Mojo. True story: I once had it out the wazoo. You may recall just a few days ago I #HumbleBragged about one of my hot-n-heavy girlfriends from first grade. Yeah, that’s right I said one of them. There were multiple, if you didn’t pick up on that.

I forgive you if your immediate reaction is, “What the heck happened?!?”

Well, first, thanks for being so intimately interested in my life. And second, are you okay if I don’t exactly answer that question, but kinda do?

*Pauses for the consent of the Dear Reader*

Okay, I didn’t hear you say “no”, so I’ll take that as a “yes!”¹Well, this is problematic. Consent granted!

Yessiree, Bob, I was indeed a stud muffin all the way up through second grade. Then third grade hit, and that’s when I moved from sleepy little Richfield, KS to the thriving metropolis of Springfield, MO.

Now, my new school, the fabled Christian Schools of Springfield, was actually about the same size as my school in Kansas, so in this case size truly didn’t matter. My theory is that my Kansas rad-itude must have just not translated too well to the muggy, humid atmosphere in Missouri.

However, still having the confidence of a hot dude, I thought myself to be all that and a bag of chips. Alas! Over the course of my third grade year, this metamorphosized into cockiness unbeknownst to me. Problem was, no one bothered to tell me.

Now, for most of that year, I had been pining after the cutest girl in my class, Andrea B., though my affection never seemed to be quite requited. But late in the spring of that year, my luck²I didn’t say good luck. You just assumed that’s what I meant. was about to change.

It so happened that the church I went to, the fabled Baptist Temple, was across the street from the CSOS grade school building and used the classrooms for Sunday School. Ever being the rascal that I was, about once a month or so, myself and another like-minded classmate/churchmate would stay in the building after Sunday School was over, and we would break into our classroom and pillage our teacher’s candy supply.

One of these times, I got a little too comfortable in my crimality and decided to poke around my classmates’ desks. Lo & behold, what did I find? A diary with Andrea’s name on it…SCORE!

There was a page in there where she had written down the name of everyone in our class, along with a short, very private sentence stating how she really felt about them. Oh, boy that was an interesting read!

Then I got down to my name: “Can be a real jerk sometimes!”

That wasn’t true! I wasn’t a jerk! What a jerk thing of her to say!

Oh, but the knife wasn’t done being plunged into my heart just yet. I could clearly see where she had erased what she had wrote at first: “Kinda cute. I think I might like him <3.”

Not gonna lie, that cut straight to the bone. Apparently my first impressions weren’t my problem. It’s the whole “getting to know me” part that seems to be sabotaging my relationships…

Well, one would think that this would have been a sobering experience for me, and that I would have lived a life on the straight and narrow from there on out. But, hey, where would the fun be in that?

What did I do with this newfound trove of forbidden knowledge? A few days later I thought it would be a GREAT idea to tell all the other boys at the lunch table all the little juicy nuggets I had uncovered in her diary. Well within earshot of her, too boot!

It wasn’t long before she realized what I was up to and immediately stormed over in a whirlwind of angry tears.

“And you wonder why I think your such a jerk!”

As she stomped off still sobbing, she left me standing there, completely stunned.

Holy shit, I really was a huge jerk. And what a meta way to find out such an ugly self-truth. Touche´, Universe, touche´.

And that, Kids, is sorta-kinda how I lost my mojo…

Content belatedly created on: 18/19 February 2021 (Thurs/Fri)

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and it’s time to get your funk on, baby!

But first, you’re gonna have to get that funk the funk off you…

When I was a studly young Sophomore in high school, I lived on the farm with my dad in dusty-ass Southwest Kansas. Occasionally my unpaid labor on the farm wasn’t enough to get the job done to his satisfaction, so Dad would hire a farm hand to help him out.

Well, it just so happens that during this epoch in my life, Dad’s go-to guy was ol’ “Dirty Bob” Harris. I shit thee not–this was this guy’s actual nickname that people used when speaking directly to him. This moniker was well-deserved, too: he was a bachelor probably in his 60s who lived south of Rolla in a little shanty of a trailer, chain-smoked, and, when feeling particularly hygienic, would bust out his pocket knife and clean out the grit from underneath his grubby-ass fingernails. In fact, the one condition Dad had for his continued employment was that he had to take a bath at least once a week. Talk about setting the bar, pretty low, right?

I always thought that was kinda gracious of Dad, seeing as how a weekly bath wasn’t nearly enough to keep him from imparting a semi-permanent stank to our pickup, tractors, and other implements in which he spent more than 5 minutes. I would beg Dad over and over again to consider spending just a little more money on external farm labor, hoping that he would hire Clean Bob instead. But, NOOOOOO, apparently Clean Bob was outside of our price range. So there I was, stuck with the privilege of having Dirty Bob’s b.o. rubbing off on me any day I had to ride in the pickup with him.

It got worse though. You see, even though there were only three employees on the farm, there was definitely a power hierarchy. Dad (also a “Bob” FWIW), unfortunately, wasn’t afraid to pull a power-move when he had to. So being El Jefe of the whole operation, he got exclusive use of one of our two tractors to himself…meaning that us peons, Bob and I, had to share the other tractor.

His own flesh and blood–can you believe it? He made his own last-born son share a tractor with the stinkiest mother- ----- in all of Morton County! I really should have called Child Protective Services on his ass and reported him for cruel and inhumane child abuse….

As much as I loved working on the farm with the Bobs¹https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rWP_PGfiow (huge ----- eye roll here), what I really enjoyed doing with my time was chillaxing with my city-slicker bestie, the infamous, Phillip K. Ballz.²Featured thus far in: Solamente Selena, Back In The USSR, and Blowin In The Wind.

If I was lucky, I would get to hang out with him on the weekend. And if I was real lucky, I would get to hang out with him the one and only Saturday night Leslie, his hot-as-hell cousin from Texas, was coming to visit him.

Sure, I may have been a bit, uh, “ambitious” thinking that my scrubby butt had a chance of romancing her, but what can I say? I’m a dreamer and an optimist at heart. In BF-Egypt³Bum-Fuck, Egypt, for you geography scholars out there. Kansas opportunities like this didn’t come along very often, so I had to give it all I had, right?

I could feel it in my bones that colder winter day in ’97: that evening I was sure to have a date with destiny. But first, I had hot date with Tractor #2, as Dad had graciously agreed to let me take off a little early that afternoon once I finished plowing one of our many huge tracts of land⁴Inappropriately applied Monty Python reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=g3YiPC91QUk first.

When I got in the tractor that morning, I could definitely tell that Dirty Bob had been stanking it up in there quite recently. But, I figured it would be no problem–I would just take a nice hot shower afterwards and go on my merry way to Phillip K.’s. Look out, Leslie! Here comes your Casanova!

Now at this point, you may be thinking to yourself, “Wait just a tick there, Buddy! I know the Boss Lady’s name sure ain’t Leslie. That must mean…no. It can’t be. How ever in the world did your plan to court and marry your high school best friend’s cousin from out of town go awry?!? ‘Twas foolproof!”

Funny you should ask. In the end what screwed me over was Dirty Bob’s dirty smoking habit. Apparently when you smoke as much as he did and rarely bath or wash your hands, it turns out those hands will get covered in the most horrible smelling layer of smoke/nicotine/sweat/dirt funk. And then when you drive a tractor, you forever funkify the steering wheel for the aspiring young Don Juan that has to drive it after you.

It was only when I got home that evening and had washed up that I made the gruesome and horrifying discovery–now my hands smelled like Dirty Bob! I washed them over and over until they were almost bloody, but to no avail at all. I was doomed. Doomed, I say!

I lathered them in Old Spice aftershave, hoping that would overpower my dear sweet Leslie instead of the scent of Old Dirty Bastard Spice that I couldn’t seem to quite shake, and headed on over to P.K.B.’s house in town. Ol’ Phillip K., though? He sure noticed the smell and started endlessly ribbing me about it.

Figuring he would have some sympathy for a brother-from-another-mother looking to become a cousin-from-another-grandmother (you know, by marrying his hot-ass cousin, and what-not), I shared with him how distressed I was on account of how the Universe and Dirty Bob had conspired and done gone and blown my chances with Leslie. Big mistake. My god, he simply would not let me hear end of it, about how absolutely ridiculous I was, thinking I had any chance in hell with her.

Harrumph! What a prick.

Oh, and it turned out that she decided at the last second to not come hang out with us after all.⁵At least I don’t remember hanging out with her… So it was a basic all-around shit-show in the romance department for me that weekend.

The point of the story is, don’t ever let your dad hire anybody who unashamedly has “Dirty” in his name. But if he does, at least you can always blame him for the reason why you’re not dating the hottest 17-year-old in the 5-State Area. And that’s the only reason.

After all, you’re nothing but a studly young Sophomore stallion, right?

Content created on: 27 January 2021 (Wednesday)