May 10th, 2011 10:16am - Shiny Things

When I was little, I liked shiny things.

My mom would take me, my brother and sister to the mall, and we would run around like the little terrors we were. My mom would attempt to take us winter shopping, and we'd be playing hide-and-seek among the clothing racks. She'd want me to try on a pair of jeans, and I'd be laying amongst dirt and dead skin on the floor underneath a shirt rack.

We would inevitably scream that we were hungry, and my saint of a mother would take us to the food court to feed us. When I was six years old, we were standing in line to order when I saw something incredibly round, shiny, and silver. I touched it. My hand lay on the silver circle for ten seconds before I felt a burning sensation. My reflexes weren't fantastic, and it took another minute before I realized that I had burnt the shit out of my hand.

The reasonable thing would have been to cry at my mom and expect her to fix my hurts. She continues to be one of the most loving, caring, understanding women in the world. Instead, I didn't tell her that my hand felt like it had been crippled in a fire. I had recently learned the child definition of retarded and thought she would be mad at me for being so retardedly stupid. Instead, I tried not to cry. Because that's logical. When she asked what I wanted to eat for lunch, I screamed, "Water!"

"Okay, okay," my mom replied.

When two seconds passed and I wasn't immediately given a glass of water, I screamed at her that I wanted water NOW.

"Calm down hunny," she said.

A full two minutes passed by before she bestowed me with a glass of water. I didn't even thank her, I just plunged my hand directly into it.

"What are you doing?" she asked, eyeing my hand inside a plastic foam cup.

"Just trying to get out an ice cube," I responded.

When we sat down, my mom's focus was on my little sister throwing food and my brother poking her. I cradled an ice cube in my hand like it was a diamond. I liked diamonds a lot - they were shiny too.

After lunch, we were in store #3 looking at cowboy boots when my mom noticed that I was shaking my right hand back and forth violently. I had thought that shaking my hand would get some air into it and make the burning stop. Because that makes sense.

We later discovered that the fast food place had been technologically advanced in the early nineties and had circular coffee warmers placed into their countertop. I had third degree burns because of a shiny coffee pot warmer.

May 8th, 2011 2:05pm - Mother's Day 2011

When I returned from Australia this past December, I didn't know what I'd be doing. My life plan had as much direction and ambition as a blind sloth. When my mom insisted that I get a phone so I could live like a real human being, I considered it. When she offered to pay for it, I deliberated my options.

After three minutes of Internet research, I was flustered and perplexed. I hadn't searched for anything online in months and the myriad of pop-ups I encountered distracted me to no end. Within thirty seconds, I had accidentally clicked a pop-up and was reading about Viagra. Upon reading that Viagra doesn't cause an erection when there is no sexual desire, I realized what I was reading, screamed "for the love of God!" and settled on the first phone that appeared on my screen: a Prepaid cell phone through AT&T. When it arrived in the mail, I tore open the package giddy to join the twenty-first century again. The phone was large, blue and silver, and elliptical. It looked like it belonged on a space shuttle in the 1970's.

After two weeks, I became disenchanted with my space shuttle phone. It didn't look anything like a real phone, and I became a subject of mockery for all of the technologically advanced six-year-olds running around with iPhones. My primary frustration, however, was that my space shuttle phone didn't work. I was living in Santa Rosa, in northern California, and I barely got service. I would sit in my office discussing the economy and the number of distressed properties with a potential client and my phone would cut out.

When I called AT&T to politely inquire why my phone calls disconnected thirty-eight times a day (I was a Realtor, I talked on the phone a lot, okay), they reviewed the coverage area.

"If you're within one and a half miles of the 101 freeway, you should have good coverage. The rest of the area doesn't look so good," I was told.

"I'm looking at the goddamn freeway out my window right now!" I insisted. "It's probably a fifth of a mile away, and I'm talking to you on the office phone because my cell phone won't make calls." I knew it wasn't the representative's fault that AT&T had shitty coverage. "Just reposition the goddamn satellites or something!" I said passionately. I didn't scream. She still hung up on me.

By April, my mom had had it with AT&T. We disconnected her AT&T iPhone and my AT&T space shuttle phone, and my mom bought us both Verizon iPhones. I was ecstatic over my iPhone. It didn't drop calls and it even took pictures (space shuttle phone didn't). My mom was not so enthused. Somehow her new Verizon iPhone magically uploaded her contact list from five years before. When she tried to rectify the situation, her AT&T iPhone erased her current address book contents and uploaded her contacts from five years before. She owned two iPhones with outdated address books. This was not ideal for a Realtor. After hours on the phone with Verizon, and directing profanity at her new phone on a daily basis for two weeks, it was too much for her. She couldn't take it. My mom went to Bora Bora and Tahiti on vacation for three weeks. For reasons that are beyond me, she left her new Verizon iPhone in a bathroom drawer and took her inactive AT&T iPhone with her. Two hours later, I received a frantic voicemail from an unknown number. It was my mom calling from the airport to say that she'd left her phone on the bus. I sighed and a few days later I picked up the phone from the bus station office and placed it in her car's glove compartment.

My mom returned three weeks later, arriving the day before Mother's Day. It was the first Mother's Day in three years that I had been in the same country as my mom. It was also the first Mother's Day in eight years that I wasn't hung over and feeling like death.

She called me on Mother's Day from my sister's phone to tell me that her phone didn't have service.

"Call Verizon," I told her.

"I don't want to go through this again, where I don't have contacts or text messages or my voicemails or notes," she cried.

My mom, brother and sister were supposed to pick me up at 11:30am. By 1:30pm, Mom was still on the phone with Verizon and Apple. I was still at the place I rented. I decided to drive to her house anyway. When I walked in, mom had her head in her hands and was staring at the kitchen counter, dejected and beyond comfort.

"Look, someone tried to break into the iPhone case," she told me wearily, pointing at the case.

"That doesn't make any sense. Why would someone break into the case? It takes two seconds to remove it," I replied and looked at the phone.

"Wait, Mom, that's your old phone. That's why the case is all scratched up. That's your AT&T phone. It's not going to have service because we cancelled that service last month."

She had been on the phone on Mother's Day for four hours trying to get Verizon service on an AT&T phone.

May 7th, 2011 11:43am - Pee Shorts

I was four pounds when I was born, and as childhood progressed, I clearly saw the opportunity to expand my girth and my dominance over smaller children. My dad worked, my two younger siblings occupied my mom, and I constantly snuck food from the kitchen. By the time I was ten, I was medically obese, and part of my daily afternoon snack comprised dessert and an American cheese, Pringles, and mayonnaise sandwich. I couldn't see my toes over my stomach, and I tyrannized little kids. All I had to do was sit on them. It was the easiest and most profitable exertion of my life. I lounged on children until they would give me their chocolate or get me their string cheese.

When my family got a puppy, Mom saw and seized a fantastic opportunity. The dog ran away, she made me run after it. My mom would yell that the dog escaped, I would sigh, shove four more brownies into my mouth, and lumber out the front door. The dog conveniently escaped four times a week, the suggested days of weekly exercise for morbidly obese children. What began as shuffling pursuits around the hill progressed to fast walking, to jogging and feeling like death, and eventually to actual running.

By junior high school, I could run. Once I realized I could run, I found that I liked winning. I ran junior high cross-country, played basketball, and competed on a club soccer team. It was kind of a big deal to do all at the same time, whatever.

One of the cross-country coaches nicknamed me Dimtrip. That's how cool I was. He had a thick blond mustache and beard, which was the universal sign of awesomeness.

In eighth grade, a restaurant called Clo's Ice Creamery sponsored a county-wide cross-country meet. A photo was to be taken of the first three finishers from each grade, blown up, framed, and hung on the wall of the restaurant. The race was two and a half miles long, and, warming up, I felt good. I jogged in a circle and told myself I was going to win. A few minutes later, I stretched and realized that I had to pee. Desperately. One of the coaches said there was no time. If I went to the bathroom, I'd miss the race. An announcement blasted over the field to get on the line. I nodded and approached the starting line, telling my bladder to be good.

A month before, my dad had made me steak and eggs for breakfast on the morning of a meet. He said it was warrior food. Halfway through the race I felt like death and decided that warrior food was not runner food. Since then, I had composed an intricate menu for race days: eat almost nothing. I had had a bowl of cereal and three french fries.

The starting gun went off, and we ran. I had three reasons for running the race as fast as possible:

1: The faster I finished the race, the sooner I'd get to eat.

2: The faster I finished the race, the sooner I'd get to pee.

3: If I won, I could hug everyone, including the boy I had a crush on.

(Side note: the last time I had talked to The Boy had been at lunch the day before. I was giddy that we were actually having a conversation, just the two of us. He was in the middle of a story when a bird shit on my head and I ran screaming for the bathroom.)

We ran through the hills, the paths, and the sidewalks that made up the race. I kept telling myself that my dad had a sandwich waiting for me, there was a bathroom near the finish line, and if I won I'd impress The Boy.

The finish line was ahead, and another girl from my team was running a few feet in front of me. I sprinted right past her and finished first. I cleared the finish line, and bent over to catch my breath, my hands on my knees. I smiled so hard I almost forgot to breathe. I looked up to see The Boy walking over with a congratulatory smile on his face. I stood upright. The Boy's presence had diverted my attention away from holding my vagina shut. When I saw him, I forgot that my bladder wanted to explode, and instead thought about how impressed he must be that I won. I thought how amazing I must seem to him. And then I peed my pants. As he approached, urine gushed through my underwear, flowed into the light grey sweatpant knee-lenth shorts issued by the school, down my leg, and puddled onto my right sock and shoe. I looked down, and The Boy looked down. I screamed, turned around, and ran away. The shorts were light grey, and urine was everywhere. My dad gave me his black leather jacket to tie around my waist. As if that would hide the pee. It did make the piss on my ass less obvious, but it didn't do much to cover my urine-soaked vagina and shorts.

Clo's Ice Creamery took their photo, they blew it up and hung it up on the wall of the restaurant. That picture hung in the restaurant until it closed down nine years later. To this day, it is the only picture of me that has hung in a restaurant, and it was blatantly obvious that I had pissed my pants.

April 29th 2011 2:27pm - April 2011 Quote of the Month

Princess: "I've decided that sex is just a fancy way of saying hello."

April 24th, 2011 4:05pm - Kicked Out

In the past four months I've lived back in Northern California, and my male standards have drastically decreased. While my standards the first twenty-four years of my life (yes, I was checking out strapping young boys as a toddler) have hovered around educated, humorous, intelligent, athletic, and attractive, now anyone slightly above the mental retardation level causes notice.
For lack of male options in Sonoma County, unemployed, illiterate, quasi-gangsters have become beneficiaries of my attentions. I'd been seeing one such man in his early thirties for a month or so, and my respect and esteem for his life plummeted every time I'd see him.

Initially, he was a hot, pseudo-skater/thug. I hadn't experienced this combination before, and I was intrigued. The first time I met him, he mentioned that he wore a uniform. This delighted me. In two seconds, I had envisioned fireman, doctor, police officer, military man, and/or Jesus. However, directly after the word "uniform," I also noticed that I had finished my drink. I screamed, "Bar! Rum!" and sprinted away from him like an alcoholic. The conversation that night never returned to occupation. It instead progressed to intelligent things, like how awesomely strong the drinks were, and how I could beat him at pool.

Over the weeks, it became evident that I would never be able to beat him at pool. He brought his own cue stick to the bars, complete with one white glove. Just one. Like Michael Jackson. He believed that The Glove caused him to excel at pool. The Glove might have been excusable if he was unbeatable. He was not. I couldn't conquer the one-gloved wonder, but many others did.

When I eventually remembered to inquire as to his uniform occupation, he said he was in law enforcement.

"Oh, you're a police officer?" I nodded approvingly. "And you carry a gun?"

"I don't carry a gun," he responded.

"So you're not a police officer. What's your job?"

"I'm security."

"Oh, well, at least you have a badge!" I nodded approvingly again.

"I don't have a badge."

"Oh. Ok, what do you do? Where do you work?"

He worked as night security three times a week at Walmart. He chased kids smoking pot in the parking lot.

He eventually confided that he owned a dog teeth cleaning business as well. I was impressed by this until he proudly divulged that the business brought in about $250 a month. In total sales. He never shared stories about his childhood. He wouldn't tell me where he lived or whom he lived with. He did mention that he'd had 3 DUI's and had been arrested twice. This knowledge did not thrill me.

One night, he was over at my place and kept biting me. Hard. I do not like biters. Gentle nibbling is nice. However, it does not feel good to have my cheek bitten into like a chicken drumstick. I told him to go to KFC. He laughed and chewed my arm.

I grabbed his face in between my hands and screamed, "Please stop biting me, it hurts!"

He chomped onto my shoulder. I sat up.

"If you don't stop biting me right now, I'm going to kick you in the head. Maybe in the trachea. Stop it. I'm going to kick you in the head. I'm not kidding!"

He thought I was kidding. His yellow teeth tore into my stomach. When he moved towards me again, I bunched up both of my legs and kicked out. They connected with his chest, and the 6'3" 260 pounds of muscle shot into the air and crashed onto the floor. It was one of those body blasts you see in action movies. He flew. With his impact, we might as well have been in a two second 7.0 earthquake. The ceiling shook. My legs hadn't kicked anything in awhile, and I had been under the impression that they would feebly connect with his body and then ricochet off like small rocks. Instead, they launched him across the room. I was shocked and working extraordinarily hard at not laughing like a fiend. I snorted and asked him in a strangled voice if he was okay. I apologized. And then I really charmed him by saying that I had warned him.

He lay on the floor in the fetal position until that statement. He then stood up slowly, put his clothes back on, and announced that he was leaving.

"Okay," I said. "Sorry!"

He left. It was four o'clock in the morning and he actually left. He didn't call me. He didn't text me. I fell asleep immediately, smiling over the fact that I literally kicked him out of my bed. I clearly never contacted him.

I ran into him at a bar almost a month later. He had his cue stick and his one white Michael Jackson glove. I ended up going home with him. At nine o'clock the next morning, a woman pounded on his door like a maniac asking if he had any cigarettes left.

"No, leave me alone," the thirty-two-year-old man growled.

It was a woman's voice, his mom's voice. He lived with his mother in a rented apartment. I haven't seen him since. I slightly raised my standards to exclude anyone who wore one glove while playing pool.

April 17th, 2011 7:05pm - April 2011 Photo of the Month

Redwood Forest, Northern California

April 11th, 2011 10:30am - Breaking in with Children

I´m a Realtor, and I try not to excessively intoxicate myself downtown while it´s still light outside. I monitor this with the breathalyzer that my mom recently bought for me. I don´t want clients or potential clients seeing me in public as a drunken shameless hussy. If it´s dark outside, my logic is that inside the bar people won´t know me. I was fully embracing this theory at Russian River Brewery, downing pints of a beer called Damnation, and arguing with my friends why the concept was superior, regardless of the fact that there are, in fact, lights inside all bars.
¨I don´t care, it´s dark and it´s okay to get drunk,¨I slurred and flung my arm in the general direction of the window. An hour later I blacked out. I awoke the next morning naked and in the process of a booze death recovery. My muscles felt like I´d been in a fight with a mailbox, my mouth tasted like I had consumed a rotting rodent, and I had mascara smeared across my face, which was nicely complemented by drool on my pillow as well as the lower half of my head. My saliva was in my hair. I groaned and glanced at the clock. It was ten-fifty in the morning, and I was supposed to show a house at 11am. I looked up the address, and the house was twenty minutes away. I called the clients and told them I was on my way but running a few minutes late. I threw on a dress, sunglasses to cover my drunk eyes, and perfume to disguise the smell of copious amounts of beer. I got to the car before realizing two things.
1: I didn´t have shoes.
2: I didn´t have my purse.
I ran back inside, doused myself in perfume, grabbed shoes and purse, and drove across town. I realized that I had left the address back at my house, so I called my mom to look it up. She texted me the address, and I didn´t feel like a complete failure as the addresses progressed and I got closer and closer to my destination.
Sonoma Mountain Road was like the goddamn Yellow Brick Road: it just kept going and going and going. I almost drove off the road twice in my haste to not look like a completely late asshole to the clients.
When I got to the end of the street, there was no For Sale sign in sight, and the address my mom had texted me didn´t correspond with any house on the street. It was 11:27am, I was over twenty minutes late, and I couldn´t find the house. I couldn´t call anyone because there was no reception. I couldn´t harass anyone through my window because there was nobody to ask. Every aspect of my life was in pain, demolished by my boozehag self. My eyeballs hurt, and the backs of my knees felt like they´d been attacked by a violent gremlin. I drove back down the street with the distinct impression that I was driving a loonybin. Seven minutes later, I saw a For Sale sign and the clients´monster van. Their youngest child had named the vehicle. They had four children.
I pulled up and jumped out, repeatedly apologizing. I noticed Child #3 lying spread-eagle on the ground crying. Child #2 had a stick in his hand and was playing a game that can only be called ¨Stab the Sibling¨ with Child #1. Child #4 smashed his head against the side of the house in ten second intervals. I ran up the steps to the front door of the house, only to notice that there was a combination lockbox on the front door. Combination lockboxes are almost extinct and technically illegal to use. The Listing Agent hadn´t provided any combination in the description of the house. I called the Agent, with no response. It was 11:38, I was almost forty minutes late, and I couldn´t let them into the house. We walked the perimeter of the property, tried all the doors and windows, and came to the conclusion that we were officially locked out. At this time, I realized that I was going to get violently ill. Within a minute. I handed the dad a bobby pin and a credit card. I said that I was going to continue to look around the house, and he should try to break in. I galloped around the side of the house feeling that the alcohol from the night before had eradicated half of the brain cells from my skull. I looked around, and then projectile vomited over the fence and into the neighbor´s yard. I struggled back to the front of the house to discover that the dad had broken into the house through the garage door.
The house was an absolute cesspool. Carpet had been torn up, walls had been punched in. Doors were missing, as was one of the bedrooms. Electrical outlets and light fixtures had been removed. The roof leaked. One of the kids walked into the bathroom and sprinted out seconds later, screaming. The other three followed suit. When questioned, they were all crying about different things.
Child #1 was in hysterics over the largest shit he´d ever seen, Child #2 over the excessive amounts of vomit. Child #3 had to pee, and Child #4 was crying because everyone else was.
I returned home and got directly in bed. Once there, I thought it prudent to breathalyze myself. I blew a .1. It was twelve-thirty in the afternoon.

March 30th, 2011 - March 2011 Quote of the Month

Sinner: ¨He´s drunk, high, and has really small sunglasses. You shouldn´t follow him.¨
T-Rex: ¨Those sunglasses are illegally too small.¨

March 25th, 2011 9:00am - March 2011 Photo of the Month

Bodega Bay, California

March 20th, 2011 4:50pm - Porn in the Office

In sixth grade, my teacher assigned some friends and I a presentation on deforestation. The only computer in the house was in my parents' room. We gathered around the computer, I typed in www.deforestation.com, and hardcore porn popped up. We were eleven, we had never seen porn. There were penises in vaginas and penises in mouths and penises up asses. Our mouths dropped faster than a pedophile's pants at the park. One of my friends gasped. Another cried. I heard my mom walking down the hallway. I tried to exit out of the site but nineteen porn pop-ups littered the screen and the computer froze. I ran to the bedroom door, slammed it shut and locked it.
My mom was smacking her hand into the door yelling for us to open it, I frantically pressed control-alt-delete to no avail, and my friend was still crying. Another friend started screaming and let my mom into the room. I catapulted my eleven-year-old body across the screen and shrieked, "It's not our fault, it's not our fault." My mom tore my body away from the computer and looked into a frenzy of particularly raunchy sex pop-ups. She wailed like a dying mother.
That was in sixth grade. Last week, a fellow Realtor wandered into my office. My mom's boyfriend bought her an iPad last Christmas. Recently he bought her an iPad case with a built-in keyboard. iPads are fantastic tools for Realtors, because we take them with us when driving around clients. If clients have any questions about other properties, the iPad delivers like a god. My colleague shook his hand at the iPad and asked me to show him the tricks.
"Please just show me a few things. Like how to get on the Internet. Show me the good stuff," he said.
I am the youngest Realtor in our office by fifteen years. As with most Real Estate offices, the agents are old. They don't have hearing aids, but ninety-nine percent are members of AARP with Viagra and wheelchairs looming in the near future. And our office might as well be in Japan, the walls are so thin. When I clicked the Safari button, a porn site popped up. Again, there were vaginas and penises and asses and mouths. There were videos. My colleague covered his eyes and started screaming, "Why is there porn? Why is there porn? Oh my God, my eyes, oh my God, why is there porn?"
I replied by repeatedly shrieking, "It's not my iPad! It's my mom's! It's not mine, it's not mine!"
Within seconds half of the agents in the building were in my office. We were both still yelling. I thought one of the elderly women was going to have a stroke.

March 15th 2011 8:40am - Boobs and Bush

After my first experience with the FIT Extreme class at the gym, my pride took weeks to recover. A roomful of geriatrics had dominated the fitness class. At the end, they had sashayed out of the class, and I crawled.

Last week was my second attempt at a class. I had been frequenting the gym at eight or nine in the evening, but this class was at 6:30pm. I walked into the changing room and it was packed. My eyes darted from boobs to bush to boobs to bush. I didn't know where to look. My breasts are so small they don't fit into a bra, so I am very comfortable being naked. Men have tits larger than mine. However, I am not comfortable being enveloped by old naked women. I stared at the ground while changing. I glanced up and I looked directly into brown hairy nipples. I looked down but could feel someone observing me. I flashed my eyes up into a three-hundred-pound forest of pubic hair and then over to a girl staring at me in the eyes from across the room. I didn't know what to do, I was flustered and confused. I screamed across the locker room at her, "Did you go to Montgomery High School?" There was no immediate response. I looked down again. When I looked up, she was looking at me like I had asked her if she injected drugs into her vagina.

"Me?" She yelled, "high school?"

"Ya," I shouted.

"I'm in middle school," she replied, smiling. She had braces.

I looked away, but my eyes connected with a brazilian bikini waxed vagina. Sweat swept into my eyes and my heartbeat reverberated through my body. There were so many naked women. I ran to the showers and directly into the largest naked ass I had ever seen. The woman had a small waist with a ginormous ass. She might as well have injected collagen into her butt cheeks. She screamed, I screamed. I wanted to cry. It was my fourth grade teacher.

March 6th 2011 3:40pm - Tahoe and a Wire

My friends and I were supposed to go to Tahoe for the weekend. They were going to do productive, athletic things, like snowboarding and skiing. I struggle to walk in normal life. I cannot strap my feet onto a board and throw myself down a hill without colliding with other objects or people. The last time I attempted snowboarding I was terrified of getting off the chair lift. I went around three times before I launched myself off the chair with overwhelming dread. I wobbled, fell over, and flew board-first into a family with three young children. I smashed into the five-year-old and smacked one of the other kids' ski poles. I lay on my back in the snow listening to the sobs of three people: the five-year-old, the seven-year-old, and myself.
This time I was ecstatic about going to Tahoe to play in the snow. I returned home from work with a handwritten list of items to pack. My desire to make a snowman paralleled my desire to one day be the mother of a small black child. I walked in to the house with a new pair of snow gloves. The microwave had been ripped out of the wall. It was sitting on the kitchen floor directly in front of my bedroom door. The oven was in the middle of the kitchen. A ladder blocked the hallway and a layer of white dust-like remnants of the wall settled over everything.
"Ummm, what happened?" I asked.

My landlord was my friend Pakistan.

"The last roommates I had somehow caught the microwave on fire, it hasn't worked in about six months, and now I'm replacing it." His voice came from the roof rafters.
I said, "alright," and shimmied around the ladder to go to the bathroom. The light switch didn't work.
"The light's out," I shouted.

"Ya, I just cut a wire."

"You cut a wire?"

"Ya. None of the outlets work. There's not really electricity in half of the house."
"Not really electricity in half the house?"
"Nope."
I walked over and looked at the place the microwave should be. There were two holes in the wall large enough to put Einstein's brain through. Wires hung out at schizophrenic angles.
"So you cut the wrong wire, we don't have electricity in half the house, and now you're looking at roof beams for answers?"
"Yep."
"You just looked at the wires, picked a color, and cut it?"
"I kind of looked it up first," he replied.
Pakistan is not an electrician. He canceled our Tahoe trip to stay home for the weekend to fix the kitchen.
As of now, it has been almost four months. The kitchen still doesn't have a microwave.

February 28th 2011 10:45am - February 2011 Photo of the Month

San Francisco, California

Palace of Fine Arts

February 16th 2011 11:45pm - I Scream when I Drive

My senior year in high school, I was awarded "Most Likely to Fall Asleep in Class." A few characters in my graduating class of four hundred provided a great deal of competition. However, I obtained the final honor by procrastination and persistence in my sleeper reputation. That, and I drank.

I almost earned the distinction of "Worst Driver." I made the final three, but ultimately my dear friend Pills conquered my efforts. The morning that our graduating class voted, she had made a left-hand turn on a red light. An oncoming car honked, she accelerated through the turn, the other car swerved, and she drove headlong into a line of idling vehicles. I couldn't compete with that.

Over the years, I've attempted to redress my missed glory. I've been cited for illegal turns, running through stop signs, cutting off officers of the law, failing to indicate a turn, having outdated registration, driving without a seatbelt, and being in possession of an open alcohol container in my car. I once had a warrant issued for my arrest because I didn't send in the processing fee after I fixed my side mirror. However, more than any other violation, I persistently get pulled over for speeding.

It's not that I forget meetings or appointments. I just assume it will take me less time to get places. I pride myself on my ability to leave later and arrive earlier than Google maps tells me to.

My Real Estate office is near the bottom of a hill in Santa Rosa called Fountaingrove. I was scheduled to show three houses located up the hill. Google maps estimated eleven minutes. I mentally allotted myself eight minutes. I got caught on the phone and sprinted to my car five minutes before the viewing.

I planned on tearing out of the parking lot and flying up Fountaingrove. Unfortunately, I was driving a 2000 Toyota 4Runner. The car had four cylinders and a lot of weight. I floored it and leaped up the hill at a steady rate of 15mph. A gorilla could have outrun my car.

Seven minutes later I was late and the hill leveled out enough to gain some speed. A bicyclist prevented me. The guy was swerving all over the road. My five-year-old cousin can ride in a straight line. He wobbled to the left and then would suddenly jolt to the right. Every time I tried to pass him, he lurched directly in front of my car. I slammed on the brakes three times to avoid hitting the nutter. The fourth time he wavered to the right, I smashed the accelerator to the floor and inched past him. The sun glinted off his red helmet and into my eyes.

"Get the f*** off the road," I screamed at him out my open window.

There was a sidewalk. I failed to comprehend why he couldn't use it.

Three minutes later, I opened the door to the house and turned on all of the lights. I was sweating and breathing like a rapist. I was wildly thankful that my client wasn't there yet. I looked out of the window to see a bicyclist ride up and dismount in front of the house. He wore a red helmet.

Feb 11th 2011 12:36pm - February 2011 Quote of the Month

Pakistan: "I should hang out with more stoner chicks. They have much lower expectations."

February 8th 2011 9:30am - A Gate and a Pair of Heels

Heels make legs look skinnier and more toned. Heels accentuate calves and provide a booty lift. Walking around in heels all day can shed an additional six hundred calories. I can't wear heels. I limp, I grimace. I look like a hunchback.

However, as a Realtor, I have to look professional. I sometimes wear those goddamn torturous heels.

Earlier in the week, I had taken a client's house key to get a copy made.

"Please bring it back, it's my only key," the seller begged.

I assured her that of course I'd bring it back.

I drove the twenty minutes from her house back into the center of Healdsburg, but then a crises erupted with another deal and I drove in a mad frenzy to my Santa Rosa office. It wasn't until five hours later that I realized I still had her only key.

Four days after that, I returned to the seller's house with the key. She lived eight miles out of Healdsburg. Those eight miles comprised a windy and narrow road lined by cliffs and massive trees. It took twenty minutes to get from her house to a normal street and civilization.

I called the client to let her know that I was coming. When I arrived, the gate was padlocked. The gate wasn't electric. It had to be unlocked and opened manually. I parked outside the gate and could see the house in the distance. I jumped up and down, I waved my arms wildly in the air, I honked the horn like a crazy person. I flashed the headlights. Nobody came down from the house to let me in. Fifteen minutes later, it was getting dark and my vision was rapidly diminishing. With my 20/400 vision, I can barely see in daylight.

I decided to hop the fence. Except that the fifty thousand dollar fence was too narrow to get my foot in and the spikes across the top prevented me from muscling my way up. A tree grew nearby the fence. How I visualized getting over the fence required gymnastics and flexibility. My limbs have the pliability of a sixty-year-old man, and I was wearing heels. I propped my back against the tree and leveraged myself to the top of the fence. I stepped down on the narrow horizontal strip of wood and hung onto the tree so I wouldn't die. The only thing I could do was jump. I jumped. My right foot caught the spiked top of the plank and I plunged five feet to the ground. I fell directly on my knee into a mush of leaves, dirt, and roots.

As I started hobbling up the quarter-mile long driveway, the seller got into her car and drove down.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I meant to open the gate for you."

"Oh, that's okay," I replied. "I just tried to hop the fence."

She looked at the grass and dirt stains covering my arms and legs. I had bark stuck to the back of my shirt. Some twigs and leaves were in my hair.

"You hopped the fence," she said. It wasn't a question.

I waited for her to say that I could get in her car and she'd drive me up to the house. She didn't ask me to get in the car. She nodded and continued driving towards the gate. I assumed that she was opening the gate so that I could walk through it on my way out. I sighed and staggered like a cripple up the long-ass driveway. I struggled towards the house and handed her the key when she had parked and gotten out of the car.

I wobbled back down to the gate, my body scratched and bruised, and my feet in agony.

When I got to the bottom, the gate was still padlocked, and my car was still outside the gate.

February 6th 2011 9:02pm - Trimmer

I had severe reservations about moving into the house that my high school friend Pakistan owned. My new room had stains on the carpet that looked like a cat massacre had occurred. A penny was glued to the wall. What appeared to be a blood stain adorned the baseboard.

In the other spare room, the previous occupant had left a television, dresser, bed, small refrigerator, some clothes, a desk, computer, and a drum set. I honestly don't know what he took with him when he moved out.

Pakistan and I posted an ad on Craigslist. It read:

New roommate needed. Cheap rent. Downtown-ish location. Fully furnished if wanted.

Ideal roommate:

* Buys me beer

* Cleans the house

* Buys me beer

* Plays darts with me

* Buys me beer

Realistic Roommate:

* Pays rent on time

* Doesn't mind ants in the dishwasher

We received a lot of responses. We got emails from women in their fifties with grown children. Old men with dogs responded. A DJ, a drug dealer, and a beautician interviewed for the room. A handwritten note on pink paper appeared in the mailbox explaining that the prospective roommate didn't have internet access but was interested in the room. We hadn't specified the address in the ad. I wasn't really down with a stalker for a roommate, and Pakistan and I agreed that he would call her and tell her that the room had already been filled.

When I asked him the next day if he had called Pink Note Chick, he said that they had talked for awhile.

"She's awesome! She's coming by tonight!"

"Seriously?" I asked.

Pakistan smiled.

"Seriously?"

Pink Note Chick came by, and she was fantastic. She was twenty-six, and self-proclaimed down to earth, nice, and clean. She said that she worked part-time trimming.

"Trimming?" I asked.

"Trimming," she confirmed.

I assumed that she meant trimming bushes. As in women's bushes. As in specializing in hair removal of the lady goods. Pakistan thought she meant trimming plants. I'm still unclear as to what sort of trimming she did.

After interviewing Trimmer, a cage fighter came by to see the place, and then we went to Third Street Aleworks for the kind of night that simultaneously causes me despair and wonder, destruction and brilliance: $2 Tuesdays.

A few hours later, I was tired and wanted to go home, but after Third Street Aleworks we went to Russian River Brewery to meet up with some friends. At Russian River our friends asked how the roommate search was going. We told them that Pink Note Chick was currently known as Trimmer, and that she was excellent.

"She's sweet. She's down to earth, nice, clean... said she parties a bit but not that often. She's actually really cool."

"So compared to the women in their mid-sixties, the ex-military man with crazy rabid dog eyes, and the guy with a tattoo on his forehead, this girl rocks?" one of our friends asked.

"Precisely. She may be a stalker, but she's clearly superior to our other options," I confirmed.

Pakistan looked at me afterwards with raised eyebrows and asked, "Trimmer?"

"Trimmer," I agreed with a nod. She was number one on the list of potential roommates.

After Third Street I was still tired and still wanted to go home, but we went to the 440 Club. Typically, when the word "Club" is in a name, there is some dancing involved within the establishment. The 440 Club in Santa Rosa is a dive. It was established in the 1950's and the interior decor hasn't changed, aside from the vomit-infested carpets being upgraded a few years ago. As a liquor store in front and a bar in back, the 440 always offers the potential for violence and the marginal appeal of ordering a drink at a window outside the bar.

My friends and I stood in a circle in the 440 talking, when an incoherent mess of a girl fell into us and onto our drinks. She threw her arms up in the air and screamed a slurred speech. The only sentences I was able to comprehend were, "This is MY bar. It's mine. MY bar."

She swung her arms around, knocked two drinks onto the ground, stumbled into the corner of the bar, and vomited.

The chick was Trimmer.

February 1st, 2011 9:03pm - I am Awesome, Everyone's Going Down

By February 1st, I hadn't worked out in two months. I had traipsed through Australia, Vegas, and Tahoe accompanied by booze slushies and cocktails. The extent of exercise that I had accomplished in those months was swimming as fast as possible in the opposite direction of a shark while diving the Great Barrier Reef. I was later told that what I thought had been a shark was in fact a very large turtle.

Starting February 1st, I joined a gym.

I ate a roast cricket a few years ago in Thailand and immediately gagged. Typically, I would rather eat a cricket than go to the gym. However, Sonoma County was flooding and my abdomen was expanding so much that I was starting to look pregnant. Someone in the grocery store last week actually rubbed my belly. I desperately needed to work out.

Unfortunately, I am consistently under the delusion that I have superior muscles. I played sports constantly until I graduated college, and I like to think of myself as an athlete. The fact that I haven't lifted anything heavier than a beer in the past three years failed to factor in.

I walked into a FIT Extreme class at Parkpoint Health Club, and I scoffed. Aside from one twenty-something overweight chick in the corner, everyone else was over the age of fifty-five. I noticed one of the men in my office smiling and waving at me. He's sixty-two.

I glared around the room, swung my arms across my chest a few times, cracked my neck, and thought to myself, I am awesome. Everyone's going down.

Within a minute and a half, I was sweating. Within five minutes, every breath was a gasp. My arms punched less enthusiastically and my legs shook. On my fourth girl push-up, I looked up at the old bag in front of me. She was doing man push-ups, elevating and lowering her body faster than I was. When we shuffled across the room like crabs, sweat pored into my eyes and I couldn't see. I missed the change direction and crashed into a man called Old Balls. He put his dry arm around my soaked shoulders and asked if I was okay.

"Water," I whispered, but Old Balls had continued shuffling and all I could discern was a blur of movement every way I turned. "Water," I murmured, stumbling like a homeless drunkard through the elderly. The last detail I saw before the sweat stung my eyes was Mayonnaise over in the corner looking at me and shaking her head.

After shoving my entire head into the drinking fountain and consuming a liter of water issuing forth from the tiny water stream, I was ready to go back inside.

I am awesome. Everyone's going down, I repeated to myself.

That was a hallucination. At the end of the class, all of the senior citizens walked out laughing and talking. I was incapable of speech and crawled out of the room.

January 31st, 2011 10:11pm - January 2011 Photo of the Month

Kirkwood, California

January 26th 2011 8:30am - January 2011 Quote of the Month

Sinner: "My dick isn't sensitive. It's rugged."

January 25th 2011 8:30am - A Mechanical Bull, a Tranny, & a Fall

When we drove to Vegas in a motorhome, my friends and I made a list. Because we were downing enough rum and Coors Light to fell a mammoth, it was a drunk list. Whoever accomplished something on the list got a point. Whoever had the most points at the end of the trip, won.

A few items from The List:

* Get laid (couples don't count)

* Ride a mechanical bull

* Take a picture with a tranny

* Puke and rally

We kicked off our last night in Vegas by pledging to accomplish things on The List. We started at the Cosmopolitan. It had opened two weeks earlier, and we went because of the three-storey crystal chandelier. The guys wanted to hit on the girls that were inevitably drawn to the gazillion crystals hanging from the ceiling. Shiny things attract girls. They're like birds.

When we walked in, Caitlin Moe, an electric violinist, was playing to the house music that DJ Mia Moretti was busting out. I was in awe.

These women were hot and I was convinced had as much musical genius as Beethoven. If I were a lesbian, I would have proposed lesbian marriage. To both of them. I was so enthralled with the tunes they were spinning that I failed to notice my friend Sinner getting molested.

Sinner's girl kissed him and bit his face. While dancing, she fondled his willy through his jeans. She straddled Sinner on a chair in the Cosmo and moved her underwear to one side. A random girl approached Sinner and told them that they were being inappropriate. Sinner's molester mumbled that it was late, and then she stumbled off him and out of the casino. Her name was Candy, and it was eleven-thirty at night.

T-Rex noticed a semi-attractive female and hit on her. He asked her what her favorite color was. He asked her what her favorite drink was. He asked her to go home with him. She declined. When he pointed her out to Sinner, Sinner said that she was the cockblock who had sent Candy home. T-Rex repeatedly hit on Cockblock the rest of the night, incessantly yelling to Sinner, "I don't care what she did, she's hot!"

I eventually extracted myself from the mesmerizing music being produced, and recalled that I wanted to ride a mechanical bull. Natty Light, Parrot, Baby Bear, Delight, a few others, and I found my brother and cousin looking for food in the Cosmo's empty conference rooms.

According to Cousin, Brother had been demanding food for an hour. While we attempted to find our way to one of Cosmo's exits, Brother petitioned for food. I appealed for a mechanical bull ride, explaining that he could get food at Treasure Island, directly across the way. Brother detoured to look for food up stairwells and down escalators. He inspected under chairs and behind Blackjack tables. We discovered Pakistan dominating the Blackjack tables, but no food.

When Pakistan wins, he is overly generous. Money falls from his hands and his pockets. I wanted to stay with Pakistan for moral support and free drinks, but I wanted the mechanical bull vibrations more. Plus, Brother kept complaining. He wanted pizza, or food, or pizza, or any kind of food, and he continued to announce it.

We went to Gilley's at Treasure Island. Gilley's had swings suspended from the ceiling, a mechanical bull, and a full restaurant with an authentic country BBQ menu. The place was fantastic, and Brother was ecstatic. After thoroughly studying the menu, he ordered one side of baked beans.

Everyone who signed up to ride the bull had to sign a page-long, eight-point font disclaimer. The paper essentially said that if you were injured on the bull, or if you died, Gilley's wasn't responsible.

Cousin was riding the bull when Natty Light walked up to us and said that there was puke in the toilet he used, and the guy in the stall next to him was puking. When he walked out of the bathroom, Security Guard accosted him, saying, "You were puking in the bathroom. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"But I'm sober, I wasn't puking, and my friends account for ninety percent of the people in this bar."

Security Guard insisted, "My guy told me it was you."

"I'm completely sober. Do I seem like I've been puking? Your guy's wrong."

Natty Light's sober eyes and coherent speaking confused Security Guard, and he let him stay.

"I can't believe I almost got kicked out of a bar for being sober," Natty Light exclaimed.

We rode the mechanical bull until the place closed, and when we left, Brother limped out of the bar. He had pulled his groin while riding the bull.

We returned to the Cosmopolitan to find the rest of our friends. My girl Delight and I were watching Pakistan at the Blackjack tables when we noticed a tranny. Pakistan was rolling in money, but the tranny was wearing booty shorts and garters. He won.

After the tranny called us "darling" eighteen times each, we were walking back to our friends when we noticed a tall man flanked by two girls that looked like models. All I saw were boobs and booties and long, thin legs. Hot Girl #1 said, "You're funny!" and stroked the guy's arm. Hot Girl #2 followed with, "You are sooo funny!" and ran her fingertips along his back. Clearly the guy must look like Brad Pitt. A random man walked by, noticed us watching, nodded towards them, and said, "Those two girls are totally hustling that guy." It wasn't until eighteen steps later that the guy turned around. It was T-Rex.

T-Rex continued to energetically chase down every female that walked past him. His standards lowered every ten minutes. At one point he pursued a girl who closely resembled a manatee. However, her vagina was hanging out, so she was an easy target.

My crew and I gathered and walked through Cosmo when one of our high school friends strolled up holding the hand of an Asian chick who may or may not be a stripper. She wore eight-inch heels, fake eyelashes, bright red lipstick, and a short turquoise sequin dress that extended out in a two-foot radius. We said hi with a few hugs before the group descended into utter silence. To add some conversation, Sinner screamed, "Wow, never thought seeing your friends in public would be so awkward."

After a few forced chuckles, everyone went mute again.

And then Asia yelled, "Hey, look, it's Carrot Top!"

Everyone turned around in confusion, didn't see Carrot Top, and turned back to Asia with question marks for faces.

"Look, it really is Carrot Top!" she repeated.

We still didn't see Carrot Top.

"Right there!" she exclaimed and pointed again.

She had been pointing at Baby Bear's brown hair.

Sinner explained that Carrot Top actually had red hair, and that she was mistaking our brown-haired friend for a firecrotch.

"I'm so sorry!" she screamed, and hugged Baby Bear as if he were a stuffed animal. Asia then placed her face three inches from Baby Bear's and talked about seeing Criss Angel. She repeated the same three sentences four times. Baby Bear smiled, laughed, and looked at us shaking his head, baffled. One second Asia was standing, echoing that she saw Criss Angel, and then she was on the floor. Her legs flew over her head. Turquoise sequins went everywhere. Everyone within a forty foot radius stared.

"Baby Bear, did you knock her down?" someone bellowed.

I grabbed the nearest thing to me, Sinner's arm, and we turned our heads away, shaking violently from laughter. Sinner enthusiastically high-fived a stranger. When we had recovered and looked back around, they had disappeared. Sinner immediately Facebook friend requested Asia. He wanted to make fun of her.

When we were ready to return to the Rio, the taxi wait line was longer than the entrance line to Tao.

Pakistan had won $1,500 and was ballin' it up. He paid for a limo back to our hotel.

As we walked towards the elevators, Pakistan looked at me, said, "One more," and laid $100 on a Blackjack table. He had a soft fifteen, and the dealer had a six. Pakistan doubled down and won $200 on the table. He exited the casino a Blackjack pimp.

Hours later, Cousin ended up at a restaurant in the Rio. He didn't know how he got there, but after twenty minutes of careful consideration, he ordered a two-egg platter. When the waitress asked if he wanted links or paddies, Cousin was confused. It was the hardest question he had heard. Ever. After more careful deliberation, he settled on paddies. Deciding what to order: twenty-three minutes. Receiving the food: eighteen minutes. Throwing up after finishing the food: immediate. Cousin puked and rallied.

January 19th 2011 7:05pm - Vegas 2011 - You Know You're Drunk When...

Vegas 2011 - You Know You're Drunk When...

* You sneak beer into the club in your pockets, open one, it explodes all over the club's carpet, and you act like it's normal.

* You start a Conga line down Las Vegas Boulevard.

* You get denied entrance to a casino multiple times by the same security guard.

* You pee in a casino's employee locker room next to four sheriffs.

* You funnel champagne into a cardboard horn blower.

* You straddle a guy in public, in a club, move your underwear to one side, and get told by a random girl that you're being inappropriate in public. You then say it's late and go home.

* You enthusiastically high-five a stranger when your friend's girlfriend falls and lies on the ground.

* You request Facebook friendship to the girl who just fell down solely to make fun of her.

* You hit on and literally chase every girl you see down the walkway. You run back to your friends every time.

* You spend an hour looking for food, finally get to a bar that serves food, and order baked beans.

* You don't notice that your vagina and ass are hanging out of your dress while posing for a picture in thirty degree Fahrenheit weather.

* You are more concerned with the previous name on the restaurant's waiting list (Gigi) than you are with getting yourselves seated.

* You puke and rally twice in a day.

* The hardest question you've heard all night is, "Links or paddies?" After twenty minutes of careful consideration, you order a two-egg platter, which you immediately throw up.

* You pull your right groin from riding a mechanical bull.

January 15th 2011 11:27am - Squeeze the Tip

Any girl can bag a guy in a bar. As long as she doesn't resemble Frankenstein. I've seen my good-looking male friends kissing girls who have the appeal of a banana slug. As long as a chick's face doesn't resemble a vagina, there's hope. Girls just stand in a bar and have options. Guys have to work to get laid. Relationships=consistent sex.

We were still sitting in the Rio. The guys were still trying to lower their standards by alcohol consumption, and I still wanted to ride a mechanical bull. We were talking about sex.

Sinner stood up, demanding our attention, "The thing is, when you're with your girlfriend, you can last forever. When you're single, forget about it."

He placed his hands out in front of him, beer in one hand, and thrust his hips forward, making the O face. After three thrusts, he shrugged and sat down.

"I've found the solution to that one," shouted T-Rex. "You just have to squeeze the tip of the penis. It lasts longer."

He stood up, thrust three times, and then squeezed his hand into a fist in front of his crotch.

"You just squeeze it, 'Oh ya baby, you like that? You like Papa?' The harder you squeeze, the longer you last. It's like Viagra."

Sinner stood up again. "I'm squeezing my dick, it's physics, Bitch!"

"You just grab it and, aggghhhh, aggghhhh," T-Rex screamed like a rapist.

I was giggling and unintentionally squirting beer out of my nose. I felt like a dysfunctional drinking fountain. When I was capable of speech again, I said that as a girl, if I was in the middle of the mattress mambo, and the guy I was with strangled his schlong and shrieked, I would be concerned.

"But girls like it when you last longer. And that is how you last longer," T-Rex said. He then repeated the squeezing motion and screamed.

"And suffocating your dick is the answer?" I asked.

"Dude, by squeezing my dick, I can last like thirty seconds longer."

I choked on my beer.

"Seriously. You squeeze, you thrust, you squeeze, you thrust. I've lasted a LONG time. It's like Viagra. I'm telling you."

"Dude, if you have a girlfriend, you can go all night," one of the serial monogamists said.

T-Rex laughed. "That's impossible. I have a sex mix. With shortened songs. The more songs play, the longer the girl thinks it lasts. I'm serious. Eight minutes!"

Some of our other friends choked on their drinks.

"Eight?"

"Ok, wait, let me think. I've gone twelve minutes before. I gave that sex kitten the ride of her life. Twelve minutes, you guys. Twelve. I'm not exaggerating!"

He's never been in a relationship before.

January 12th 2011 10:05am - Bady and Piping

Some of my friends have the texting skills of a crocodile. I can usually decipher. However, when I receive a text message that is complete gibberish at four in the afternoon, I have to assume that whoever sent it was drunk. Knowing my friends, if I get a "qwgr r up pll?" text at eleven in the morning, someone was drunk. When the entire text is impeccably written in coherent English except for one pig latin word, I get confused.

We were sitting in a circle in our room at Vegas' Rio getting our drink on before embarking on our quests. Most of the guys wanted to locate girls with low self esteems. I wanted to ride a mechanical bull.

Sinner blinked at his phone twice and then announced to the room, "I think she's kinda drunk because she just texted me, 'Wanna pipe?' What is that? How do you respond to that? What's piping? What does that mean?"

We stared at our phones for five minutes trying to determine what she might have intended to type.

"Maybe she meant the word sire?" someone suggested.

"Sire? 'Wanna sire?' No way man. This isn't the goddamn Renaissance."

"What does sire mean?" someone else asked.

"Never mind."

"But what does pipe mean?"

"Maybe it means dance?"

"What about talk?"

"No girl asks a guy if they wanna talk."

"Who would use the word pipe if they wanted to dance?"

"Agghh what is pipe?" Sinner yelled, throwing his hands up in the air. He was addressing God.

"It's from a girl, right? Just say yes. Always say yes," I advised.

"It must have been a typo. I just responded with, 'What???'" Sinner replied. "Three question marks. I couldn't wait any longer before replying. It had already been eighteen minutes."

T-Rex then shouted, "I just got a text from a girl who said, 'Maybe bady.' I asked her if she wanted to hang out tonight, and she replied, 'Maybe bady.' What the hell is a bady? And what the hell is up with these girls?"

"Maybe she's calling you bad. Like you bad boy. You bady," I suggested.

My brother walked into the room, and I asked him if he knew what piping or bady meant. He said that piping meant to have sex.

"So, 'wanna pipe' means wanna have sex?" I asked.

"Nooo," screamed Sinner. "I'm texting her, 'Let's pipe' right now!"

She never responded.

Sinner went on a drunken tirade. "Damnit, it took me twenty-six minutes after her initial text to reply 'Let's pipe!' She's probably piping some other dude right now. Girls have it so easy. I'm such a loser. I'm not piping anything right now. I'll be piping my laptop in a few days. T-Rex has been piping his laptop since he was sixteen. He's in a long-term relationship."

T-Rex: "She doesn't get viruses. She's clean."

Sinner sighed, "She's got a cute screen."

T-Rex: "She's got an amazing screen. Twenty-seven inches. But seriously guys, more importantly, what is a bady? And why would that chick respond with, 'Maybe bady?'"

Natty Light looked it up and informed us that according to Urban Dictionary, a bady is: "A spelling of baby for people (usually people who think they are gangsters) who are particularly retarded."

"I'm so excited," T-Rex exclaimed.

"Why, because she might be particularly retarded, or because she thinks she's a gangster?" I asked.

"Both!"

January 6th 2011 10:40am - NYE 2011 Vegas Quotebook

Sinner: "Every girl I've ever seen, I've considered sticking my weiner in her."

Parrot: "I feel like sex with T-Rex always ends with an apology."

Pakistan: "Smell this. It smells awesome."

Me: "Mmmm, cinnamon."

Parrot (smells it): "Is this chewing tobacco?"

Pakistan: "It's soap!"

Pakistan: "Even those children Parrot was working with were attractive."

*Note: kids were 8-17 years old*

Ass-Flash: "No wonder you were telling me yesterday that the sex registry is a bad idea."

Sinner: "The fact that I know where I am is good."

T-Rex (singing): "And then I go agh ungh agh agh ungh (with pelvic thrust) in her va-jay-jay."

Sinner: "Exact quote from the girl I'm texting: 'I'm not gonna lie, I made out with three guys last night.' Oh, and her name's Candy."

T-Rex: "I need to find a girl with low self-esteem that will let me stick my pee-pee in her mouth."

Me: "Kissing is easy, you just have to rape a girl's mouth."

T-Rex: "If I was gonna rape a girl's mouth it wouldn't be with my mouth."

Sinner: "A lot of girls say things that T-Rex might say, they just say it a lot less."

T-Rex: "You should hear the stuff I don't say. You're hearing the censored shit."

Sinner: "If girls like wrinkled shirts and weird neck hair, I'm in."

Sinner: "She wasn't great. She wasn't good."

T-Rex: "I think I'm going to lower my standards tonight."

Delight: "Tell me what that means so I can stop you from doing anything you'll regret."

T-Rex: "No one with a dick."

January 4th 2011 5:08pm - Punched in the Head

When most people think of Vegas, they think of money, whores, lights, drugs and booze. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Unfortunately for my friends, what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas. I write that shit down.

This year was New Year's Eve Vegas Round 4. I had severe reservations about going to Vegas for the fourth year in a row. I would have preferred to be in Ko Phangan, Thailand, drinking rum buckets and getting molested on the beach. However, I surrendered my doubts to America and the promise of temporary alcoholism and excessive depravity. That, and I had no money. After traipsing around the world for two years, I was homeless with no job, no car, and no cash. However, my birthday and Christmas are both right before New Year's Eve. I win. I begged my relatives for monetary donations with the pledge that I would not become a hooker. They obliged.

My friends and I drove from Sacramento, California, to Las Vegas, Nevada. In a motorhome. For ten hours. Alcohol saved my sanity. We began playing drinking games a few hours outside of Vegas. By the time we got to Sin City, dignity had been lost and coherence was in jeopardy.

We arrived at the Rio, yelling inarticulately. A stranger in the casino's reception accused us of sounding like dinosaurs.

We did the only logical thing: continued drinking in our hotel rooms, and then we went out. We didn't make it very far: my friends and I ended up at VooDoo Rooftop Nightclub. It's in the Rio.

While we were in our hotel room playing the game let's see who can get drunkest fastest, I realized that I like big clown hair. Not colorful hair that extends a foot from the scalp that potentially has feeding parasites in it, but I'm a fan of big hair. Hair that says, I don't give a damn. My friend Pakistan (he's obsessed with Pakistan) had big clown hair and a bit of a beer belly. He wore a long-sleeved collared shirt and glasses. Apparently he looked like a drug dealer.

When Pakistan went to the bathroom at Voodoo lounge, he walked past a man that asked him for drugs.

"I'm not a drug dealer," Pakistan responded.

"Yo man, I know you have drugs," the guy said.

"I don't have any drugs."

"I know you have drugs, hook me up man."

"Dude, I'm not a goddamn drug dealer." Pakistan continued walking, and then he flipped the guy off without looking back.

When he was about to exit the bathroom, a guy with the Hulk muscles wearing a tiny wife beater, earrings, sunglasses, and lip gloss approached Pakistan.

"Hey man, you got a problem?" Guido asked.

Pakistan looked up into his gorilla frame and honestly didn't recognize the guy. He was confused.

"No. What are you talking about?"

"I just saw you in the hallway. You got a problem?"

"Oh. I told you, I don't have any drugs."

"I know you have drugs. Hook me up, man."

"I'm not a drug dealer. I don't have any drugs," Pakistan repeated.

"You have drugs. I know it," Gorilla Guido insisted.

"I don't have any fucking drugs."

"I know you have drugs."

This exchange continued for three minutes.

Pakistan was infected with drunken confidence and Kongism. He thought it would be a good idea to stand up to Gorilla Guido. It was not.

Two of our other friends walked into the bathroom to witness Pakistan getting punched. In the face.

He was punched in the head for not being a drug dealer.

January 3rd, 2011 4:52pm - Christmas and Fire

My least favorite thing about Christmas is church. My most favorite thing about Christmas is stalking shoppers walking to their cars. I follow unreasonably close and pursue them like a creeper. I flash my lights. I throw the car in park and rev my engine. When shoppers turn and look at me, I shout "Merry Christmas." I smile and wave like a normal person. It confuses people.

This Christmas, my mom bought matching pajama pants for herself, me, and my sister. They were from Abercrombie & Fitch and collectively cost what I had been getting paid for a week's work in New Zealand. I tend to shop at Forever 21 and H&M. All major clothing chains employ children and are ensconced in labor scandals. I might as well get my clothes cheap.

Christmas morning, we opened presents. My mom, sister, and I wore our matching pajamas, and my brother got my mom a big-ass candle.

"It smells so good!" she exclaimed and immediately lit it in her bathroom. Minutes later, my sister changed out of her new pajama shirt and pants. She threw those pricey p.j.'s on the bathroom counter. On top of the candle. The candle exploded.

Christmas casualties one and two: new pajamas, new candle.