I Saw a Dude Take a Dump Outside in Daylight

Some of my friends have wonderful stories about crazy homeless people.

I have the trump card.

One day, I was walking from where I worked at Carter's in Downtown, New Bedford, to a bank across the block called St. Anne's to deposit a check.

Along the way, I noticed a suspicious looking individual hanging out by the dumpster behind Naughty Dawgs. He didn't look crazy or homeless, but he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, which was rather disconcerting.

He had long, wavy blondish hair and a slight beard, and was wearing cargo shorts. Basically, he looked like the average dude I'd see at a Pearly Baker show at The Bullpen.

(To my out of town readership: Pearly Baker is a Grateful Dead tribute band. The Bullpen is where they play their shows. Depending on your cup of tea, Pearly Baker are either the best or the worst thing ever. What I'm saying is, the dude looked like a burnt out hippie, and may've been.)

The thing that really got me about this guy was his shadiness. When I walked by and glared at him, he didn't make eye contact and kind of walked around the Naughty Dawgs dumpster; hid almost. Then I crossed the street to the bank, and the dude started scouting around the dumpster again. Maybe he lost something, I thought.

As I entered the bank, I looked out of the entryway and noticed the dude had made his way behind the dumpster, in between the dumpster and the building. When I got in the bank, he disappeared from view. Just dropped out of sight.

I walked to the window and noticed the dude squatting behind the dumpster.

I hurriedly made my transaction at the bank. When I left, the dude was nowhere to be found.

I was curious as to what this idiot was doing behind the dumpster. So, I walked over there to take a look. I thought he may've been looking for a partially concealed place to shoot up, and expected to find a used sharp.

Instead, I was greeted with a rather sloppy looking dump. I didn't stay too long to find out particulars, but I do know the guy wiped his ass with Dunkin' Donuts napkins, because there were shitty napkins all over the place.

I was going to tell the owners of Naughty Dawgs what happened, but didn't want them to think, even subconsciously, that I'd taken the shit.

And I felt for the guy. How many times had I been in similar situations? A man about to shit himself, in need of a toilet with none to be found. Pure torture.

So, I went back to work.

The next day, my buddy Jake and I were walking to Naughty Dawgs for lunch.

"I saw some guy taking a shit behind the Naughty Dawgs dumpster yesterday." I said.

Jake laughed. "You're full of shit, man."

"I'm not. You'll see."

And sure enough, the shit was still there. The wind had blown around the shitty napkins a bit, but one straggler remained, clinging to the turd for dear life.

That day, Jake learned never to doubt me again.

Herzog: Great Book, or Horror Show? You Tell Me

Every weekday, I listen to NPR news. I'm especially fond of a segment called "You Must Read This". It's basically writers recommending works by other writers.

And everybody knows nobody knows good writing like other writers.

This week, Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex, talked about how when he gets into a funk, he'll open Saul Bellow's Herzog to a page, any page. Start to read. And immediately, the blues just lift away like dew under a noonday sun.

Funny. I read Herzog and a passionate fury takes hold of me.

A synopsis: Herzog tells the story of a man named Herzog. The well-built son of Jewish immigrants, young Herzog gets his PhD and a bit of fame in academic circles. He marries. Gets divorced. Remarries. His new wife kicks him out. She's having an affair with his one-legged best friend.

He moves out to the Berkshires and begins writing letters. To newspapers. To fellow academics. To the dead.

He just writes. He doesn't send the letters.

He has a few lady friends, but there are some issues there. He tries to make amends with his ex-wife, but there's no making amends. She hates him. He goes to a therapist with her, and the therapist makes it seem as if everything is his fault. His divorce lawyer agrees with his wife and his therapist. His former best friend is laid back to a fault, attempting to remain Herzog's friend while he's fucking his wife and bathing his daughter. The best friend's ex-wife blames her situation on Herzog and verbally tears him to pieces.

Long story short, Herzog takes a gun from a relative's house and has some wild plan to kill his wife and her lover, then kidnap his daughter and make a run for it. Then, he can't go through with murder. So, he picks up his daughter....

And gets into an accident. The cops find the gun in the car. News of the gun gets to his ex-wife.

Uh oh.

Some analysts refer to Herzog as the first truly Jewish character in modern literature, but I don't see it. Then again, I'm not Jewish. But if I'm going for Jewish, I'll read Philip Roth. He's got being Jewish down to a science. Or at least I think he does.

My main gripe with Herzog, as a character and tale, is that the entire time I'm reading it, I just want to reach into the story and slap the shit out of Herzog and Bellow. Herzog the man's basically a study of impotency, and Bellow breathed life into him.

Herzog's a gifted academic who writes letters he never sends. He's a decently built man who doesn't beat the living shit out of the one-legged ex-best friend who's fucking his wife. He's a consistent failure, and that just gets old after a hundred or so pages, never mind four hundred. The whole time, I was just begging him to snap at somebody. Tell his wife off. Tell the lawyer to go fuck himself. Rip off his friend's prosthesis and beat the fuck out of him with it.

Point: If you want to read Herzog without reading it, read Bellow's Seize the Day. In my humble opinion, it tells the Herzog story without the length. At 120 or so pages, Bellow gets quickly to the point with Seize the Day. You get all the same impotency as Herzog. All that great Bellow style Eugenides goes on and on about. And the ending is far better. So there's my "You Must Read This".

The Smartest Television Ever?

A couple blogs ago, I mentioned something about a chef doing something dirty with the mashed potatoes.

I'd hope never to eat such potatoes.

But, if I was forced to eat those potatoes, I'd gladly do so... as long as the Swedish Chef made them.

The Muppet Show had to be one of the smartest shows on TV. It was a consistently hilarious skit show.

And, unlike a certain other consistently sucky skit show (I'm looking at you, SNL), Jim Henson and company moved on to other projects before The Muppet Show ever came close to becoming a pathetically lame caricature of itself.

Oh, how I mourn the loss of entertaining television! There are only a few decent shows left.

Until I expand a little more on good TV, enjoy this clip from The Muppet Show.

I Swear, All of This is Au Natural, Baby!

Fresh off the Belgium presses: Doping officials showed up to the Belgian bodybuilding championships to test for steroids and other controlled substances.

And the bodybuilders fled rather than face testing.

Every single one of them got dressed.

And ran out the door.

It was a shocking event for the doping officials. Shocking... even though last year, 22 of the 29 bodybuilders tested positive for steroids.

But is it really shocking that bodybuilders use performance enhancing substances to look the way they do?

Judging from the picture above, I don't think so.

I have intimate knowledge of bodybuilding. For roughly five years, I was a serious bodybuilder. In the beginning, I made quite a few fast gains. But eventually, I plateaued - reached a level of strength and size that I just couldn't get beyond without help.

What'd I do? Not steroids. I took creatine to aid muscle growth and retain water. Swallowed horse pills of amino acids to help my muscles rebuild after workouts. Gulped down glucosamine and chondroitin to strengthen my joints. Jumped on the androstenedione bandwagon after Marc McGwire admitted to using the stuff as a steroid like substance to aid growth and strength. Forced down 3500 calorie Weight Gainer to gain weight during power cycles. Chewed Ephedrine and caffeine pills to cut down during tone cycles. Day and night, ate like a beast.

Oh yeah, and I took protein. 90 plus grams during my power training cycles - way more than recommended for proper liver and kidney function.

I plateaued many times, and I'd take more stuff and change my workout routines to get out of those ruts to meet new goals. But eventually, my weight topped out at about 190 pounds. I stopped making gains in the gym. I'd come to that point where steroids were the next logical step.

And I had more than a few friends willing to help me take that leap.

But there, I balked. Suddenly, I wasn't so enthusiastic about being the most jacked 5'8" dude at the party.

OK. So, this decision coincided with a very attractive girl at a bar saying she was scared of me because I looked like I'd just gotten out of prison. And I'd reached a crossroads at college. Basically, it was spend 3 hours a day at the gym to look like a hardened criminal, or spend an hour at the gym and the other 2 studying and writing to get a college degree.

Long story short, the gym lost out. I just wasn't willing to devote everything to bodybuilding. And since I wasn't planning on doing it professionally, I made the right decision.

What I'm getting at here is talent, genetics, and training only gets you so far. The human body just wasn't meant to carry 300 pounds of muscle on a 5'10" frame (that is the size of former Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman, pictured above to the left, during competitions. He weighs 325 during off periods. The other, more recognizable gentleman is The Governator himself... another former Mr. Olympia, and no stranger to steroids.) The only way you get to that point is with lots,

and lots,

of help.

It takes a serious commitment to gamble with drugs like steroids, HGH, synthetic testosterone, and diuretics in order to get the build that bodybuilders do.

To recover from injury like professional wrestlers.

To give an aging lineman a little more strength coming off the line.

This isn't a condemnation of bodybuilders or any other athlete. And this isn't a condemnation of performance enhancing drugs.

Far as I'm concerned, if you're willing to go to such extreme lengths for the perfect body, for that home run swing, for the extra kick at the end of a marathon, or to keep that twilight career going a couple seasons longer, more power to you. And if performance enhancing drugs will get you to those greater human limits, why not do them?

OK. There are very good reasons not to do them. They're against the law, and against the operating rules of most sports.

But hey, who cares about rules? Everyone's doing them. So you do them, too.

And get caught.

Whatever you do, don't bullshit me. When caught, don't whine and say your doctor fucked up. Don't blame it on asthma medication or your wife. And, whatever you do, don't run out the door like a goddamned pussy when the federales appear to screen your orange piss.

Have the balls to come out and own the issue, and I'll continue to respect you. Don't, and you're a big, dead-to-me moron piece of shit.

Roger Clemens.

Stupid Things Bartenders Do

Not long ago, I stopped in at the local public house and asked for a Guinness draft.

What I received looked something like this cutesy-poo pint to the left.

"What's this?" I asked.

"It's a Guinness." The bartender answered.

I shook my head. "Tsss... not the beer. This," I pointed at the doodle in the foamy head.

"Oh that. That's a shamrock." She seemed upset. "Can't you tell?"

"I know what it's supposed to be. What I want to know is why you put it there."

"Oh, it's just something I do." She said. Then she turned her nose up and waddled on down the line to the next customer.

I was so pissed. She should've just gone ahead and drawn a swollen furry penis on my draft. At least that would've been funny.

Before I could take a sip, a friend of mine arrived. He took one look at my beer and exploded in laughter.

"Hahaha... what are ya? Queeah?" He slapped me on the back. A slightly inebriated couple to our left started cracking up. "Seriously. Shamrocks in the Guinness? What kind of moron does that?"

Just then, the bartender arrived.

"That kind," I muttered.

Drawing shamrocks in the Guinness is one of those unnecessary things bartenders do, akin to a chef using his penis to whip your potatoes.

Ok... it's not exactly the same, a bartender sketching a clover in your draft and a chef using his man meat as a kitchen utensil. No matter. Unless I request the goddamned shamrock in my Guinness, I don't want it.

Put it this way: I don't need a fucking shamrock to remind me that Guinness is Irish beer, just like I don't need a lime to remind me that Corona is Mexican beer.

Rather, I need the lime because Corona is bad beer. Therefore, the lime is a necessity. The shamrock is not.

This unnecessary critique also goes to the troglodyte at the Catwalk who tossed half an orange in a pint of UFO, brought it over to me and told my bewildered eyes, "The orange really brings out the citrus tones."

Citrus tones? More like shitrus tones, after I catch dysentery from tongue-kissing a half rotten orange and end up stuck battling the hershey squirts all evening long.

So bartenders: Take it from someone who worked behind the bar. Unless you're slinging drinks at some classy martini joint, keep the fruity accoutrement to a minimum. And if you're thinking of putting some dumb design in a pint, or tossing a slice of orange into a perfectly good hefeweizen, ask first. 9 times out of 10, the answer's going to be no.

I Think I Have a Problem

About a year ago, a friend of mine and I were talking sports over Dark & Stormy's.

Well, let's clarify that. I talked sports, and my friend talked Noam Chomsky. He specifically spoke at length about Chomsky's belief that sports take the place of religion in a secular society, and both are, as Marx put it, "opiates for the masses".

Long story short, my friend doesn't follow sports. And I do.

Fanatically.

Put it this way. When the scene in this picture occurred, I was screaming with manic devotion at that fucking pussy Gay-Rod, demanding Varitek to drive and plant that pretty son of a bitch into that hallowed Fenway turf, a tombstone commemorating the death of Yankee domination.

Wait. What am I saying? Manic devotion? Hallowed? Tombstones? What the hell is wrong with me?

And that's not the end of it. Along with my beloved Sox, I closely follow the Pats, Bruins, Celtics,  Revolution, British Soccer (Liverpool), Thoroughbred racing, International soccer, boxing, mixed martial arts. Hell, I'd follow beer pong tourneys if they were televised. Basically, if it's competitive, I'll watch, follow, and back it.

Which brings us to tonight and the dual Playoff blow: The Celtics lost, falling a game behind the Magic, and the Bruins lost again, falling two behind the Hurricanes. Tonight, I feel somewhat like how I felt when my first girlfriend cheated on me with some gangly, goofy motherfucking dishwasher: Physically ill.

Therein lies the problem. This stuff makes me sick! I literally fell into a deep depression after the Pats lost to the Giants in the Super Bowl. When the Sox lost to the Yankees on Aaron Boone's homer a few years back, I puked, and felt like hiding in my room for days. Just a few weeks ago, when Liverpool was eliminated from the Champions league by Chelsea, I found myself crestfallen, contemplating the tides and wondering just how long it would take to drown.

And now here I am, a bald, goateed man on the verge... of puking, crying...

... or ecstasy? Maybe? Please sweet baby Jesus... let the Bruins win.

Wait. Jesus? What am I saying? Something's definitely wrong with me. Garcon, another Mint Julep, please. I feel a bender coming on.

TMI

I have this friend. Great person.

One problem though. This person doesn't have a bullshit filter. Anything and everything that pops into this person's mind propels out and runs through my auditory canal like a hardcore squirt of fiery hot diarrhea, plopping and splattering forcefully into my brain like one of those horrorshow swine flu dumps that depth charges into the toilet bowl and blasts shitty water all over your butt cheeks. Just the thought of another of my friend's soliloquies has me actually desiring h1n1 infection.

Put simply, I'd rather puke and shit myself to death than listen to another diatribe about race relations and welfare, "opposite marriage", or how autism sufferers are "just faking it".

Yet, I'd take a million of my friend's scalding hot bouts of ultra conservative verbal dysentery before spending another day scanning the irrelevant Facebook updates page. Or worse: Tweeting.

(A disclaimer: To this day, I've never used Twitter. And I never will. From what I've seen and heard, it's something media outlets are attempting to push on America as the next big thing in social networking. Guess what: Something that basically amounts to the Facebook updates page minus the stupid apps and quizzes and plus a 140 character limit isn't the next big thing. It's texting. And everyone knows texting is so passe. Sexting is what's in. All the kids are doing it.)

So please: Before you go and update your Facebook status, or Tweet about how you're going to nap ("I'm sweepy") before going to the gym ("To git buff!") and renting Quantum of Solace (because you're just so alone), stop. Take some time to think about what you're going to post.

Because there's a good chance your nonsensical Too Much Information flood will send someone into meltdown.

Wait. That's a good line. I better post that to my Facebook page.

(Another disclaimer: I know zero people who Tweet. Or do I? You tell me.)