NE – Page 7 – HappyStinkingJoy

Stinking Old Germans!

There are so many things about the Craphandle of Nebraska not to like! The wind blows here almost all of the time. The scenery is… uh… not very scenic. There is little to do here that does not involve killing critters of one kind or another or drinking lots and lots of alcohol (I know, I know; sounds like a redneck heaven… but if you aren’t 100% pure redneck, it sucks.) Low wages and a relatively high cost of living (i.e. we make less and pay more because we like killing stuff and drinking stuff… or something.) Oh, I could go on for hours about the stuff here that sucks! There is some good stuff here too, but the good stuff isn’t nearly as fun to write about!

One of the most annoying things of all about living in the Craphandle of Nebraska is the stinking old Germans!

Now, I have nothing against Germans as a people (other then, I guess, World War I… & maybe World War II… and that holocaust thing wasn’t real cool… and BWMs kind of suck ’cause they are only for rich, snotty people.) Heck, I have my fair share of German blood running through my veins. However, the Germans here are different! The Germans here in the Craphandle of Nebraska are Germans from Russia who left Russia to get away from the Czars… blah, blah, blah. I’ve had the whole thing explained to me before but it didn’t interest me at the time and I have no desire to bore you to death with it now. To make it short: Germans around here are… uh… different; did I already mention that?

To Germans around here, bratwurst isn’t a mainstay and sauerkraut is seldom seen. “Garlic sausage” is the meat of choice. Never heard of garlic sausage? Yeah, neither has 99% of the US population. Garlic sausage is a beefie porkish big link sausage thingie that tastes pretty garlicy. Don’t get me wrong, the garlic sausage stuff is good… but it ain’t bratwurst! Also, they have these things here called “cabbage burgers.” These are also known in German communities around the world as kraut burgers or runzas.

Kraut burgers are a mixture of lightly seasoned cabbage and ground beef stuffed inside bread dough and baked. Sounds yummy, huh? Actually, they aren’t nearly as gross as they sound and, if you’re like me, you will enjoy the gas-producing side effects:) There is even a franchised fast food restaurant based out of somewhere in eastern Nebraska that specializes in kraut burgers; it’s called Runza and it sells extremely overpriced, very small versions of the kraut burger. So, next time you’re in Nebraska, stop at a Runza and order some cabbage and ground beef stuffed bread dough… it will only take like 3 of them to fill you up, and they are only like $5.00 each. That’s a reasonable lunch!

Germans around here also like their “German Blackberries”, which aren’t blackberries at all but are the potentially lethal Black Nightshade.

The local Germans use these berries, which are from the same plant family as tobacco, in breads and various desert products. Poisonous tobacco berries… line up kiddies, Grandma has something special for you!

Aside from the strange cooking habits of the stinking Germans, the attitude that many of these people force on you will either really tick you off or make you sick! “My family helped found this valley,” the stinking Germans will say (’cause, I guess, much of the Craphandle is located in a valley.) They throw this at you in an attempt to, I don’t know, impress you? It’s like the fact that this moron’s great-grandfather settled here a long time ago makes the moron someone special. I always want to come back with something like:

“Well, if your family helped found this valley, why in the hell aren’t there better paying jobs here? Why is the crime rate so proportionately high here? Why has this turned into a retirement community where young families have to be semi-retarded to stay? Why is it, that at any given time of the day, you can be stopped by not one but two trains when trying to travel from one side of the “twin cities” of Scottsbluff and Gering to the other… what kind of “progressive” community still has railroad crossings on major streets instead of underpasses or overpasses… oh, that’s right, we’re not ‘progressive,’ ’cause we’re a bunch of stinking Germans who don’t need no stinking progress! Why is there a meth lab in every corn field and a meth head on every corner? If your family helped found this valley and played a major part in what this valley is today… I guess your family kind of failed us, didn’t they, Sparky!”

Of course, the stinking old Germans only throw this crap out when you are dealing with a customer service issue and they want special treatment because of “who they are.” If I was actually able to come back with the response I feel is appropriate, I would find myself filing for unemployment. Stinking Germans!

Another time where the stinking old Germans really try to tick me off is when they are driving! Even in my church parking lot, you really have to be careful with the stinking Germans behind the wheel. It can be 15 degrees Fahrenheit with the wind howling and the snow blowing and you are coming out of church with your family, including your new-born baby. You are trying to rush your family to the safety of the awaiting car but… LOOK OUT!!!… a stinking old German is coming right at you and there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that that old moron is going to slow down let alone stop to let you and your family find safety from the weather in your car… not until they drive by. How DARE you think that the stinking old German should let you cross just because he or she is in the warm safety of their car; they are old and they are German… you should feel lucky that they didn’t just run you down where you stand, because that is perfectly within their rights. Don’t you know who they ARE! And if you think the church parking lot is bad, just wait until you try the stinking Walmart parking lot!!!

Stinking Nebraskans and Their Stinking Low-Beams!

I spent some time back in Montana over the long Thanksgiving weekend. Spending some time driving in a normal state made me realize how ridiculous drivers are in Nebraska.

In Montana, especially eastern Montana, there are a lot of deer. A LOT OF DEER! When you drive in the rural areas after the sun’s gone down, you have to constantly scan the sides of the road looking for any sign of movement. I lived in Montana for most of the first 22 years of my life; I hit two different deer on two separate occasions. If you live in Montana and you drive at night, you will almost unavoidably hit a deer. Something that Montanans realize is that it’s a heck of a lot easier to catch the glint of a deer’s eye in the headlights if your headlight beams are on high. Thus, people in Montana, when approaching another car at night, usually dim their headlights about 4 to 5 seconds before passing the other car.

Nebraskans (and, to be honest, Wyomingites are even more anal about this than Nebraskans) start flashing their headlights from high-to-low in an effort to get you to dim your lights at anywhere from 1/2 mile to 1 mile away. This means these morons are flashing you at 30 seconds to 1 minute away! Seriously! If these old Germans have such poor eyesight that they need oncoming lights on dim at this distance, they should have their licenses taken away… not only because they are increasing the risk of roadside hazards becoming unexpected surprises, they also just annoy the CRAP out of me!

These light-flashing idiots used to get to me so bad that I would wait until I was about 4 or five seconds away before I would dim my lights just to make them mad. Of course, this backfired, because the light-flashing nincompoops started sticking it to me. By “sticking it to me” I mean that they would wait until the last second and then hit me with all that they’ve got… high beams, low beams, and if they got ’em, fog lights, all at once. The blinding brightness usually lasted well after the other car passed and made me even madder. I actually considered turning around and running the idiots off the road on more than one occasion, but doing hard time because grandma Schultz ticked me off on her way to make butterballs at church wouldn’t sit well with the wife. Instead of tinkering with my blood pressure more than need be, I have attempted to learn to conform to the local idiotic driving patterns.

And then I went to Montana and re-experienced night driving the way it should be: safely avoiding the hazards at the side of the road. On our return trip, it started getting dark right about the time we arrived in our local driving area… and I once again had morons flashing their lights at me from up-to a mile away.

I wanted to get this straight once and for all. Tonight, I went to several states’ DMV websites, including Nebraska and Wyoming, to find out what the law is regarding distance for dimming headlights when approaching another vehicle. Nebraska did not list a specific distance. It did list a distance of 200 feet when approaching another vehicle from the rear but it didn’t list a distance for forward-approaching vehicles. 200 feet from the rear was the same distance I found on several other websites, except for the Wyoming site which put this distance at 300 feet. The funny thing is (and I don’t mean funny in the sense of “ha ha” but more in the sense of making you want to stick a red-hot steak knife into your eyeball) the distances on the sites I visited regarding the correct distance to dim you lights when approaching another vehicle from the front ranged from 300 feet to 500 feet. The Wyoming site stated 500 feet.

So, you might ask yourself, how long would it take for two vehicles to meet each other from a distance of 500 feet… considering a speed of about 55 mph? Thanks for asking! The Wyoming Driver Manual, on page 75, states… and I quote… “You should dim at least 500 feet (about four to five seconds) before meeting an oncoming vehicle.” I kid you not!

So, let’s see if we can get Adventurer Rich’s situation all straightened out. I have been dimming my headlights in a very legal fashion and should have increased the safety on the road (due to potential roadside hazards) in the process. The stinking knuckleheads that blast me with all that they’ve got are, in reverse, breaking the law because they think I am breaking the law (which I’m not) and causing a danger to me and anyone in my car by obscuring my vision with their temper tantrum… not to mention that they are tempting fate that I don’t have a temper tantrum of my own, turn around, and run their sorry butts off the road!

Let’s see if we have learned a little lesson here. If you are driving on one of the many rural highways in western Nebraska or eastern Wyoming and you come across a gent who refuses to dim his lights at 1/2 mile away, proceed with caution. If you get to anywhere from 10 to 4 seconds away and he then dims his lights, remember that he is acting in a completely legal fashion. If you, at this point, decide to blast him because he didn’t dim his lights when you wanted him to (law be damned!), accept that he may very well turn around and do everything within his power to see you run off the road (which would be no more illegal or put any more life in danger than you did by blasting him with your headlights.) And the number one thing that I hope you have learned is this: if you would even consider flashing your lights at someone when they are 1/2 mile away in an attempt to get them to dim their headlights… you need to turn in your driver’s license, Grandpa, ’cause you shouldn’t even be on the road!

40 :(

It had to happen. It’s approach led to this started-with-good-intentions-but seldom-written-in blog. It has been the Moby Dick to my Ahab. It has been a black cloud on the horizon of my life for the past 10 years. “It” is 40, and it finally overtook me last Saturday.

Turning 30 sucked. Turning 30 meant the end of innocence. No longer a naive 20-something, I felt like my 30s were meant to be my true entry into adulthood. It was during my 30s that I felt I was meant to create my career-life. 30s are meant to be a career building decade and if you play your cards right, you will be well on your way to building wealth and flowing into your “prime income earning years” (40s and 50s) with ease.

Of course, turning 30 sucked. Did I mention that already? As I approached 30, I panicked. “What are you doing with your life?” I asked myself. I was in my late 20s and realized that I was not in a good position to enter anything that involved a long-term career plan. I panicked. I talked my wife into researching franchises so we could open our own business and start down the road to financial independence. We chose a business, we moved to Craphole… er… Scottsbluff, NE, and we tried to make a go of it. All of this panic was caused by the turn to 30.

A few things went wrong.

1st: The franchise we opened did not do bad… we made a small profit in our first year. The franchise did not, however, make enough profit to support my wife and I and our young son. The franchise did not live up to our calculated expectations. We ended up selling it.

2nd: We personally financed the person we sold the business to… and within a couple of months she declared bankruptcy. Guess there was a reason the banks weren’t lending to her…

3rd: After getting shafted by the person that we sold the business to, we could have probably declared bankruptcy as well. But NO… we decided to take the high, moral road and pay back all of our debt. So, instead of taking a lump to the old credit almost 7 years ago (which would have resulted in much less scrimping over the last 7 years and a better quality of life for my family over the last 7 years… and the lump would be healed by now), we have reached a point where we are only a few months away from finally getting rid of all that debt. I know I’m supposed to feel good about this, you know, for having repaid my debts… but I’d really much rather avioded the past 7 years worth of stress and that money, invested, would mean that I would have had a chance to retire some day. Oh well, retirement is overrated, right? Who doesn’t want to work until they die. At least I owned-up to my responsibilities… again, that just isn’t doing anything for me. Retirement would have meant more than making sure the stupid credit card companies got their money. Who’d a thunk that doing the right thing would suck so much?

4th: The wonderful panhandle of Nebraska is not a good place to attempt to open a specialty retail business. Not only is there little disposable income here, if you can’t make a living with the new business, your job opportunities in the Craphole are, well, quite limited. Let’s just say that bright futures aren’t created here. The Craphole is a retirement community… the Craphole is an agricultural community… people either come here to grow corn or people come here to die. People shouldn’t move here to open a little business (in an effort to avoid the stress of turning 30)… because the odds are that you will fail.

Turning 30 may not be a walk in the park, but turning 40 after getting yourself stuck in stinking Nebraska… I don’t know much about growing corn, so I guess I’m part of the retirement community in the Craphole just waiting to die. At 40, it’s really kind of too late to start all over again. Guess I’ve kind of just given up on having the kind of career making the kind of money I went to college to make. At least I have a loving wife and two great kids… if only I could provide for them the way I always imagined I’d be able to. And it’s not that we’re doing bad… it’s just that I always thought I would be financially successful… not fighting to remain middle-class.

I usually try to make these gripe-sessions at least a little funny. You know, cynically tongue -in-cheek. I just really can’t find anything too amusing about the entire situation… not this time.

Stinking McDonalds:)

I remember growing up in a small Montana town. I remember a small Montana town without a McDonald’s. I remember, on any trip that my family took, eating out at McDonald’s and a trip to McDonald’s being an exquisite experience! We would each order two fat-encrusted hamburger patties slathered in mounds of special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions served on a whimsical sesame seed-encrusted bun and enclosed in magic Styrofoam castles! With this magical burger, inside the “to go” sack that contained the wonderful burgers and their irresistible deep-fat fried french fry counterparts, rested a seemingly-endless pile of small packets of ketchup! A fry not covered in a conspicuous covering of the wondrous tomato-sugar mixture was not worthy of finding its way to your mouth. I remember that, after a trip to McDonald’s, my mom would not purchase ketchup for several weeks because we would rely on the small packets of ketchup from McDonald’s to provide our ketchup needs for several weeks after a visit to the restaurant chain 🙂

Flash forward to the year 2009. You are going through the drive-through at your local McDonald’s is an effort to provide sustenance for your body in an extremely rushed environment. You order a burger and fries and, most likely, some form of liquid refreshment. You pay at the first window in a clinical manner not reminiscent of your youth… you pull up at the second window and are hurriedly handed a grease-spotted bag containing the magical food-items ordered a few moments previously at the large order-stand at the back of your local restaurant… you drive away in a rush to get home and enjoy this meal in a friendly environment. Often, you will reach your hand inside the warm, moist bag to pull forth a limp fry. This fry will make it to your mouth… and, even more satisfying, your stomach… and in the front of your mind you are thinking about how good that burger will taste when you get home… and how good that piece of deep-fried potato will be with a little KETCHUP!!! And then you get home and… guess what… you forgot to ask for the STINKING KETCHUP… SO YOU HAVE NO STINKING KETCHUP!!!

Oh sure, you may have some ketchup in the fridge, but that just isn’t the same. The ketchup in the fridge is cold, and you had to purchase it seperate from the McDonald’s food… and purchased cold ketchup just doesn’t seem to go quite right with fast food. You need those little packets of ketchup that have been heated by resting against the heat-lamp-warmed food in the greasy bag on the ride home.

You can’t tell me that McDonald’s doesn’t take into account the cost of ketchup when they price their products! They budget a certain amount of those little bags for each customer for each purchase. So, when you go to McDonald’s and forget to ask for the ketchup, they are literally RIPPING YOU OFF! When you consider that there are even some freaks out there who do not partake of the ketchup while enjoying their fries, then you really start to get enraged. There are people who don’t take full advantage of what they are paying for and yet the staff at McDonald’s is still now being trained to not give me my stinking ketchup unless I ask for it?!? What’s next… the drink that comes with the “value” meal? You get home and realize they didn’t give you your Diet Coke (’cause we all know that a McDonald’s meal is a healthy choice as long as you order a Diet Coke). You will have to turn around and go back to the restaurant. Can’t you hear the response already:

“Well, you didn’t ask for it, so I didn’t think you wanted it.”

Ok, so let’s say you aren’t brain-dead like me and you actually remember to ask for the ketchup at the drive-through window. They don’t ask you how much you would like; instead, they look and rummage around for a good 20 – 30 seconds (as if no one ever asks for ketchup and you have just interrupted the magical flow that makes fast food fast). When they finally find the hidden vault of the nightshade-delight, they reach in and grab what looks like a large handful of the wonderous packets. They shove them in the bag (in an apparent attempt to wedge as many of them as possible in between the actual fries) and throw the bag in your general direction. Apparently asking for ketchup makes you somewhat of a nuisance. The really strange thing is, when you finally get home, you discover that large handful of packets that appeared to be placed into your bag is actually only four packets. Four (4) packets! Four packets is not enough to get me through a small bag of fries let alone the super-sized version that I let the fancy graphics on the stinking drive-through order-stand talk me into! You would think the amount of time and money that McDonald’s apparently spends on training its employees the make-it-look-like-a-handful-while-only-grabbing-four-bags technique could be better utilized by, oh, I don’t know… GIVING US AN ACTUAL HANDFUL!?!

I blame my ~~addiction~~… er… normal, healthy attachment to ketchup on McDonalds! They are like the drug dealer that used to hook you up with the crank for free, until you got addicted, and now expect you to pay for it. Ok, they really aren’t like a drug dealer selling crank… maybe more like sex and marriage. At first, you get as much as you want, so you become quite fond of it. Over the years, you get less and less until it gets to a point where you actually have to beg for it… or so I’ve been told by people in less-than-perfect marriages unlike my own marriage which has been, as of tommorrow, 15 years of perfection! Yes, my wife reads my blog 🙂

At McDonald’s, the staff has no problem asking if you would like to purchase anything else before the transaction is completed; the correct thing to do would be to ask if you would like ketchup with those fries. After all… one way or another… you’ve already paid for it!

Fundraising, or… “How Life Sucks When You Have a Boy Scout :)

I have been my oldest son’s Scout leader since he was a Tiger Cub. He is now in his first year of Boy Scouts working on his Tenderfoot. I have been a Scout leader for about 5 years, which is almost a year longer than I have held any single employment with any single employer in my almost 40 years of existence… how pathetic am I? Needless to say, the time of the annual “Popcorn Sales” is upon us. Oh, and how Boy Scouts of America (BSA) wants you to sell that popcorn! My oh my, it seems that perhaps the entire reason for Scouting’s existence is to sell that stinking Trail’s End popcorn!

I don’t get it… Girl Scouts sell those delicious little cookies for less than $5.00 a box. So, even if someone has already bought from a Girl Scout, they may be willing to buy a little more from another Scout; after all, who doesn’t love Thin Mints? In the past, when we have actually tried to sell this stinking popcorn, the biggest door-in-the-face we would get was, “Oh, I already bought from so-and-so,” or “my boss’s niece’s son is in Scouts and we always buy from him.” I think BSA needs to find a fundraiser where the garbage the Scouts sell isn’t so outrageously priced. I mean seriously, $15 for a box of microwave popcorn that (the last couple of years we have purchased and it) pops up like crap… seriously, there are always dozens of unpopped kernels and old maids in each and every bag; what a selling point.

After doing a little research, I have discovered why the higher-ups in BSA push for the popcorn sales. When a Scout goes out and sells (or, in many cases, the parents go out and sell) the – seriously – ridiculously priced popcorn and related crap, 30% of those sales go to the Scout’s troop, 30% goes to the Scout’s council, and 10% go to the Scout (in the form of worthless pieces of carnival-type trinket crap) . Seriously, the council gets 30%? For what… to maintain the summer camps that cost $200 or $300 per Scout to attend (and that doesn’t include all of the extra crap the Scouts have to buy at the camp to get their merit badges). Scouting is run by (I am under the impression) volunteers. I volunteer my time to Scouting… and I have never spent more of my own money “volunteering” for any other cause at any time in my life! I have to pay to go to the summer camp… and sleep in a stinking tent… and eat crappy food… and share a disgusting shower-type complex and filthy, falling apart toilet facilities with tons of other males (and there is something about many males that prevents them from being able to lift up a toilet seat when peeing… so if you have to go “#2”, which on a week-long campout, you will have to go “#2”, you are most likely going to be sitting in someone else’s pee… and when I actually catch one of these idiots peeing on the toilet seat, I will spend an undefined amount of time in a correctional facility for assault after rubbing said moron’s face on said toilet seat)… having a curfew at night of around 10:00 pm and getting up in the stinking morning at 5:30 or 6:00 am… all to help the camp manage the kids!!! And they have the stinking audacity to charge me!?! I should be charging them!

At least our troop doesn’t keep the whole 30% that is designated to the troop (at least they better not, because they don’t pay for squat). I believe the troop gives part of the troop’s profits back to the Scouts. The troop’s contribution, along with the 10% earned by the Scout, go into a fund that the Scout can use to pay for all of the camps and camping (our troop has come to the realization that the overpriced crappy trinkets that BSA tries to con the Scouts into redeeming their earnings for… which I’m sure is just one more way that BSA is trying to pilfer funds for unknown purposes; maybe BSA is building a secret underground facility for a refuge for all Scouts for during the 2012 phenomenon… are garbage) which are required for advancement in Scouting. At least, I’m assuming that our troop is giving a large percentage of their cut to the individual Scouts, because our troop seriously doesn’t pay for squat! All expenses for any activity that we do as Scouts are split evenly and paid by the Scouts and participating volunteer leaders… well, except for gas which is apparently solely the responsibility of the volunteer leaders. I’ve started charging every kid that needs a ride in my vehicle to any function a small fee (that never comes close to covering the cost of actual fuel used), which I feel is looked down on by the other leaders, but if they don’t like it, they can fire me. Seriously, I have no idea what our troop pays for, except, of course, helping those “down on their luck” pay for all the Scouting crap that the rest of us can barely afford (seriously, if my wife quit her job… and she ain’t making a physician’s salary… our family would qualify for all kinds of free crap: we’d get free school lunches for our kids, we’d get food stamps, we’d get free medical care at the “community service” clinic, we’d get scholarships to the YMCA [among many other places, I’m sure], and we’d get all of our Scouting costs paid for by the troop… and we wouldn’t have to sell a single canister of $50 chocolate popcorn that offers like 5 servings). Wow, I just really thought about what I wrote. Maybe my wife should quit her job… we’d be money ahead. Either my wife needs to quit her job… or she needs to leave my sorry rear-end and find a guy who makes above a free-school-lunch income 🙂

I am formulating a new life-philosophy. My new philosophy is: “If you can’t afford to pay for it completely out-of-(your)pocket, you shouldn’t assume that anyone else gives enough of a crap about it to help you out through fundraisers, so you probably shouldn’t do it.” I don’t mean to sound cynical or anything (yeah right, me not cynical 🙂 ) , but seriously, $25 for an 18oz bag of stinking trail mix?!? How are we supposed to sell this crap? And you want me to buy what: $15 for some sub-par enchiladas and crappy, Play Doh – tasting cookie dough to help send your kid to the private school that I can’t afford?!? Well, I guess if you buy mine, I’ll buy yours… but if you show up at my door trying to sell me some worthless crap, you had better be willing to buy some worthless crap in return!

If I could actually sell stuff that I thought was a complete screw-job without any sense of remorse, I’d probably be a successful Schwan’s Man or be selling endless amounts of Kirby vacuum cleaners. Is this what BSA really wants us to prepare our boys for: tedious, non-gratifying jobs in door-to-door sales? I don’t have the courage or confidence to sell crap door-to-door; how in the name of everything sacred and holy can I expect my 11-year old to do something that the thought of which makes me nauseous? I can’t… so it falls on my and my wife’s shoulders to help our son sell this garbage to people we know. Needless to say, a large portion of the people we know either have health conditions that prevent them from enjoying the benefits of ridiculously-overpriced popcorn products (diabetes and the like), moral stances against eating anything animal-related (and in their obscured minds, popcorn is not a vegetarian treat but an unholy monstrosity concocted of various animal fats and pelts… yes, these friends did far to much “experimenting” in their youths), have sons of their own in our troop, or know those friends of ours who have sons in our troop and have already purchased from those sons! Once again, if stinking BSA would find a fundraiser that wasn’t outrageously priced… you know, like Girl Scout cookies, where people are willing to buy more than one… it might not be quite so difficult for an average dude with an aversion to selling door-to-door to sell the stuff and save money on all of the crap BSA charges to be in Scouting!

Wow, now that I am almost done with my rant, I would like to say that, overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with my son in the Boy Scout program. After all, I don’t want anyone to assume that I’m not appreciative of the spot reserved for us when meteors strike the earth and Yellowstone explodes in December of 2012 🙂

Man Toes :(

The family and I just got back from a much-needed vacation in Colorado. There were so many wonderful things to do and to see. We saw all kinds of animals at the Denver Zoo, we got to pet stingrays at the Downtown Aquarium, we ate what apparently is the best salt-water taffy in the world in Estes Park (I’m not a big fan), and although my favorite Italian restaurant of all time (Valente’s in Wheatridge) has disappointingly closed, we had a final farewell-to-Colorado meal at Cinzetti’s… which rocked (for Italian). And with all of these wonderful memories, my mind is clouded with one stinking thing: Man Toes!

You know… Man Toes; guys out in public wearing any number of freakishly designed shoes that allow other people in the near proximity to see their toes. No person should have to see a man’s toes while out in public… unless said person is at the beach, the pool, or in a public shower. The toes of a man are a thing to be hidden in socks and shoes and shadows and not to be seen by other human beings. Sadly, Coloradans do not agree with my philosophy. In Colorado, the Man Toes were out like bees on lilacs in the spring… except Man Toes don’t make sweet, sweet honey and they don’t smell like lilacs… they stink!

I grew up in Montana, and I currently live in Nebraska. In the places I have called home, men, for the most part, keep there toes where they belong: covered in tight-fitting shoes all day, festering and sweltering with heat into abominations of stinkiness that are only released either right before a cleansing shower or right before being tucked under the covers of a good night sleep. The toes of a man are not a thing meant to roam the daylight freely. The toes of a man are like vampires… hideously deformed creatures of the night that can suck the life out of other humans with a mere glance. I kid you not; Man Toes suck!

I have a little bit of an aversion to feet. Feet stink… period. But, being a guy, I have little problem with a female of relative normalcy wearing sandals or flip-flops while her dainty little toes with painted nails dance about in the daylight. Normal female toes are, I hate to admit it, cute. If one single person out there in my reading audience can show me a picture of one single male toe that belongs to a male over the age of 10 years-old that even somewhat resembles cute… I’ll give you a free one-year subscription to my blog. Yeah, ok, my blog is free anyways, but when I hit the big-time and can start charging you for the priviledge of reading my drivel… you’ll get a year free.

The average male toe is, to say the least, hideous. Large strands of hair stand out between grossly deformed knuckles. Often, the yellow nails growing off the ends of the toes are severely neglected. I have actually seen instances where the toenail is longer than the toe. Of course, there are countless instances where the toes themselves are monstrously long. Seriously, have you ever seen these dudes with the freakishly-long toes? You expect that, at any moment, these dudes will spring from the sidewalk and thrust their legs up towards the heavens, grasping the nearest tree branch with their elongated toes. They will then swing above you from the branches, spitting and urinating and defecating and doing all of that nasty stuff that monkeys and other nasty beasts with freakishly-long toes do! Ohhh… I shudder whenever I see these toes. Another common Man Toe that is visible on a trip to Colorado is the Preppy Toe. You know this toe: the soft foot skin, the delicate outline of white tipping the beautifully manicured nail, the trimmed hair resting peacefully between the still-freakishly deformed knuckles… this is a toe to be respected. This is a toe that the toe’s owner has actually paid another human being to maintain. Can you imagine being in such a low post in life that you would spend your days with a grotesque man-foot between your hands as you fruitlessly attempted to turn those orangutan-like appendages into something that can be displayed before the common humanity on a daily basis? Oh, you poor souls; the tips will never make amends for the damage assaulted upon your psyches.

Ok, so back to stinking Colorado. All throughout our peaceful vacation, I’m assaulted by Man Toes. In Estes Park, it’s Man toe after Man Toe, Berkinstocks be DAMNED! In Denver, flip-flop after flip-flop revealed the inhumanity of the Man Toe. Finally, I can take no more. We are finally going to head for home back to Nebraska where men hide their toes the way God intended (in fact, after Eve talked Adam into taking a bite of the forbidden fruit, wasn’t the first thing that Adam did after discovering his nakedness was he throw on a pair of Converse Chuckie T’s?) Ohhh… but wait! We have our final lunch before leaving Denver… and it a lunch not to be forgotten.

So we sit down at Cinzetti’s and I got Man Toe on the mind. But, I’m thinking to myself, ‘we’re in a restaurant… what kind of guy is gonna expose Man Toe to other diners during a meal?’ Apparently, lots of them! On my right, I got preppy-boy-freak-long-toe in his $125 Birks with his chica with equally long toes and their chowing on the freaking antipasta! On the left, I got Mr. 65+ on a business lunch with two young whipper-snappers who are trying to sell him the farm while he’s sporting flip-flops and grimy-nails filled with black-sock crud and other unmentionable black things that apparently he’s not willing to pay some high school drop-out to clean out every 3000 miles… I want to scream! Thank God for the stomach of iron that He has given me as I proceed to fill my gut with the most unbelievable pizza and eggplant parmigiana that my tongue has ever tasted. If those infidels had ruined my lunch (… seriously, I’ve cleaned puke off of myself from my son’s gag-reflex during a meal and not missed a bite of Tuna Helper… these geeks and their Man Toes ain’t stopping me from scarfing World-Class pizza…), I would have complained to management… or something.

You know how they have those signs as you enter a restaurant: “No Shirts, No Shoes, No Service!” ? These signs were created because most people don’t want to see a dude’s back hair or Man Toes! Seroiusly, if women were walking into Taco Johns with no shoes and no shirts… do you really believe that, even for a second, business wouldn’t be through the stinking roof? Guys would be standing at the counter ordering six-pack-and-a-pound after six-pack-and-a-pound until the police showed up… which means they’d be standing there FOREVER… ’cause no one would call the police because topless, shoeless women are invading Taco Johns! Those signs are directed specifically at males. Men are sucky, unattractive beasts, and many a weak-gutted person would not be able to ingest a meal with certain man-parts available for public viewing (I, for one, am blessed not to be included in this weak-gutted group). If the sign says “No Shirts, No Shoes, No Service”, take a look at your feet. If any part of your foot is exposed… and you are a male… you should not enter the premises! I couldn’t give a crap how comfortable those ugly flip-flops you picked up at Sports Authority are… NO ONE WANTS TO SEE YOUR MAN TOES!

Man… isn’t a vacation supposed to be relaxing?

Stinking 4th of July Weekend

Alright, I had been sooo looking forward to a long weekend for quite some time. I had been really wanting to go back to Montana for the 4th for several months. There is this big softball tourney in the town I grew up in and a lot of my old friends were going to be there. One of my friends is in a band and his band was going to be playing at one of the local clubs (ok, there are no clubs in Montana… it was a bar, but it would still have been cool to see him play). My wife’s sister, however, has been begging us to go to North Platte, NE for a couple of years now. There is a Christian camp that puts on this big 4th of July extravaganza every year and it’s supposed to be fun for the whole family. Well, listening to my friend wail some good old rock n’ roll in a bar sounds fun to me, but the family friendly fun of Maranatha Camp wins out and it’s off to North Platte we go.

We drive the 3-plus hours to North Platte. The kids don’t even fight the entire way and I’m thinking this may have been the better choice for our July 4th activities. We arrive at the in-laws. We are bringing in our stuff and unpacking our weekend bags when my sister-in-law gets a phone call from some dude at the camp. Her kids are counselors at camp so she has an “in”. The dude on the phone tells her they are cancelling the 4th celebration at the camp because of an outbreak of swine flu. Hold on, wait a second, it’s July 3rd and I just drove over 3 hours to North Platte, Nebraska for the sole purpose of going to a July 4th celebration that’s no longer going to happen? Well hoodeedoodeedoo… at least I’m in North Platte. North Platte is known for… there is a lot to do… at least in North Platte there is a… oh, who am I kidding, North Platte is just like crappy Scottsbluff but is a 3 hour drive away.

Ok, I’m not quite ready to put on my complaining hat yet (no… I have no idea what a “complaining hat” is and I know it sounds stupid… but it is what popped into my head and I’m going with it) and am ready to give this weekend in North Platte a try. So, me and my family and the in-laws put our heads together and try to come up with a plan. We decide we’re going to have our own little celebration. We’re going to buy our own fireworks. We’re going to buy our own food. We’re going to have the best darn 4th of July celebration that money can buy. So we head into town and quickly realize that in order for the phrase “that money can buy” to mean anything, you actually have to possess large sums of money, which we didn’t. CRAP!

You see, in Scottsbluff, we have a few crappy little roadside fireworks vendors, but we also have a couple of dudes that have actual warehouses they set up chock full o’ goodies and they sell the crap at a decent discounted price. Oh sure, it’s still WAY too expensive for little bits of gunpowder that take a few seconds to blow up in a multitude of colors, but it’s way cheaper than the little roadside guys. In North Platte, all they have is the little roadside guys.

Was it really that long ago that, on the 4th of July, grocery stores would have really good pop sales? You know, like four 12-packs for $10.00? Now they run specials like “Hot Sale – two 12-packs of Pepsi for $10.00… with a stupid club card”. Seriously, like twice as expensive for stuff as it was just a few years ago… and I guarantee you I ain’t making twice as much money as I did a few years ago. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work: the price of stuff rises over time, but so do wages? I see the price of stuff still going up, but my wages remain unchanged. I thought Obama the Holy One was supposed to fix this crap? C’mon, he’s had half-a-year already; that’s more than enough time to fix the economy, right? Stupid politicians… and stupid pop manufacturers (I mean, how much can a stupid can of soda with some carbonated water and some high fructose corn syrup really cost)… and stupid overcharging roadside fireworks vendors! Soooo, the outcome of our 4th of July was some of those stupid little snappers you throw at the ground (they were only like 25 cents per box), ramen noodles to eat and all the hose water we could drink! Stinking 4th of July in stinking North Platte!

Ok… actually it wasn’t so bad. The in-laws felt horrible about us driving all that way from crap-hole Nebraska to expensive-fireworks-crap-hole, Nebraska, so they pitched-in more than their fair-share for the meal and the fireworks. We had a decent little display and a feast of bratwursts, pork ribs, macaroni salads, coleslaw and sweet corn. It was yummy. The camp even let the niece and nephew come home from camp to celebrate with us (all of the kids were supposed to be quarantined whether they were sick or not… apparently this swine flu thingie is really contagious.)

So, all things considered, we had a pretty decent 4th of July. Good food, good fireworks, good family. With the odds against us, we had a good time. The overpriced pop vendors, the outrageously overpriced roadside fireworks stands, and the stinking lame swine-flu infested camp we drove over 3 hours to go to but didn’t get to go to didn’t ruin the 4th of July for the family of Adventurer Rich!

You know what’s weird, though? Ever since we returned home, I’ve felt a little feverish and have had an intense desire to roll in the mud…

Advice from the office sage…

I was having a little trouble going back to work today. After a vacation or a holiday it’s always a struggle to go back to the day-to-day monotony of work-a-day life. At work, I was doing a little venting to a wise coworker.

“Wouldn’t life be perfect if we could wake up every day and work at something we’re passionate about?” I asked. “When you get a job working for someone else, you are most likely trying to turn someone else’s passion into your own. Life would be so much easier and more fulfilling if we all worked on our own passion instead of trying to become passionate about someone else’s passion.”

The wise sage looked at me with a slight smile gracing the corners of his lips. “We humans grow tired of things so rapidly,” his deep voice rumbled as he shook his head knowingly. “If our passions were our means of earning a living, we would quickly grow tired of them and they would no longer be our passions. By keeping our passions separate from our means of economic survival, we maintain the passion that is our passion and our lives retain their meaning. After all, a job provides the sustenance we need to live… but a passion provides the fullness of heart and soul each of us need to live well.”

I looked at the wise sage and began to contemplate his wise words. This man, with his hair half-way down his back but contained in the most majestic of ponytails, had a lot of time to contemplate the meaning of life. This man… this 32 year-old hulk-of-a-man, lives in the basement of a house he shares with his brother and his… cat. This man’s passion is World of Warcraft and conquering that online games world with his band of misfit brothers. This man almost peed his pants when the new Mountain Dew Game Fuel (in tribute to World of Warcraft) came out… and he came close to punching me in the face when I told him I thought the “blue” tasted best (“Blue represents the pesky Alliance, a grouping of mere humans and their ilk, who are far inferior to the majestic, raging power of the Horde,” he had said to me in a raised voice with a fist at half mast. “Ok, Dude, the red is better… take a pill,” I responded, not really thinking the red was better but not wanting to get into a debate, or my butt kicked, over a stupid video game.) This is the guy I’m taking advice from on the idea of following one’s passion? This is the guy who, for one brief instant, I am considering a sage and one worthy of listening to? I’m an idiot!

Man… coming back to work after a holiday can really SUCK!

Stinking Walmart!

My wife was at Walmart earlier today getting a little of this and a little of that. When she got home, she told me know Walmart has its summer stuff on clearance… and they have some back-to-school stuff out. IT’S JUNE 30TH…JUNE IS NOT EVEN OVER… SCHOOL GOT OUT IN THIS AREA ABOUT ONE MONTH AGO!!!!????!!!! For crying out loud, Walmart has sooo changed the way we live life in this country… and not for the better. It used to be that you could buy a swimsuit at the end of the summer, you know, in case you actually lost that weight you were planning on losing. Not anymore. By the middle of July, no stores will even be carrying swimsuits anymore and it’s all Walmart’s fault.

Ok, I don’t know if this is all really Walmart’s fault or not, but I have a pretty strong feeling that it is. Walmart always gets rid of seasonal merchandise slightly after the season has begun. Walmart also always brings out the next season’s merchandise freakishly early. Does anyone really want to think about back-to-school when school just got out? Does anyone really want to think about fall holidays (Halloween and Thanksgiving) before school even starts? Does anyone really want to start planning for Christmas at the beginning of the school year? I’m sure the answer to these questions for some people may be “yes”… but those people need to be tied up with Christmas lights in the middle of July and whipped senseless with jack-o-lanterns until they come around to my way of thinking.

Have you noticed how time seems to go faster than it did when you were a kid? I used to think this was just part of the aging process; I don’t think this way anymore. I think time seems to go faster than it used to because Walmart has back-to-school supplies out in their stinking stores before June is even over. I think time seems to go faster than it used to because Walmart (and every other stinking store that has to follow Walmart’s stinking tactics in order to survive) forces consumers into thinking about the next major shopping season many weeks (often months) before that season arrives… all in the name of stinking profit!

So a big THANK YOU to you, stinking Walmart, for your contribution to the increasingly insane pace of life in the United States. After all, who really wanted to slow down and try to enjoy summer anyway? Thank you for forcing me to buy what I want and need when YOU want me to have it, not when I really want or need it. Thank you for making me hate you more than I hate a pair of underwear that is too small and constantly rides up and constantly has to be pulled back down at the most awkward moments… and I really hate that. And, finally, thank you for keeping your prices just slightly lower than your competition so that I feel like I would be throwing my money away by shopping somewhere besides Walmart!

Well, enough griping for now. I think I’ll head out to Walmart. I’m gonna need a new sled for next winter and there is a pretty good stinking chance Walmart has them on an end-display. It is the last day of June, after all.

Goodbye MJ… and Farrah… and Ed… please stop dying, celebrities of my youth!

Wow… celebrities that actually had an impact on my upbringing have been dropping like flies this week. First, good old Ed McMahon kicks the bucket. The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson could be mind-numbingly funny. When Johnny and Ed were “on”… you would swear your head was going to explode. I can remember my mom actually crying because she was laughing so hard watching Johnny and Ed. Ed was the perfect straight-man to Johnny’s… well… whatever form of perfection Johnny was falling into that night. Johnny has been missed for awhile… Ed is a fresh loss.

Next was Farrah Fawcett: Charlie’s most beautiful angel. A great actress and a hottie. She was hot into her fifties… lets see a current twenty-something hottie actress follow in those footsteps! Seems like it would be impossible, but I’m sure plastic surgery and loads of cash can make that happen 🙁

Finally… The King of Pop… Mr. Michael Jackson. I feel like there are so many jokes I could make right now. I’m not going to go down that road. I’m going to take the higher ground. I loved Thriller. As much as I hate to admit it, I would stare at my reflection in the sliding glass door of the home I grew up in listeing to “Beat It” and practicing my moonwalk. I actually got pretty good, although the sliding glass door in the only thing to have ever seen it. M.J. was an extremely talented entertainer; no one can dispute this fact. M.J. is the perfect example of modern America: struggle; work hard; through hard work and developed talent, rise to the top; once at the top, everyone will gun for you. You may go insane and do all sorts of things that are horrendous and unforgivable… and you will be accused of these things even if you are the purest, most loving being on this planet.

I don’t know if M.J. was a creature of love who was too good for this existance… or if he was a child molesting monster… all I do know is that his face seemed to melt more each and every time saw him and he freaked me out!

I received a text message less than 12 hours after Michael Jackson’s death. It shocked me. It made me wonder what kind of person has nothing better to do than make up sick jokes. It made me chuckle… and because of that, I’m going to share it with you:

Farrah Fawcett dies and goes to heaven. Because she has been an inspiration to thousands and has done much good in her life, upon arrival to heaven God tells her, “My dearest Farrah, because of the good deeds you performed and strength you portrayed in your life on earth, I am going to grant you one wish.”

Farrah, being Farrah, looked at God and said, “I wish all of the children in the world to be unafraid and safe from their worst nightmares.”

… and Michael Jackson immediately fell dead to the floor…

Yeah… I know… so much for the high road 🙂