WWJBD?

        This month I’m inspired to write about someone I never thought I’d waste the time or effort on, Justin Bieber. The growing Bieber Baby Mama Drama (I’m copyrighting that) is just too much for me to stand. I’m picturing Maury Povich’s booking manager leaving Justin Bieber about 437 voice mails a day trying to get him on the show. Can you imagine the ratings bonanza that episode would be? The entire free world poised on the edge of their seats while Maury unseals the envelope with the test results like he’s presenting the Oscar for Best Sub Title Translation in a Foreign Documentary. He dramatically unfolds the paper and reads the results, “Justin Bieber, you are not the father”, and the Biebs starts dancing in the girls face. I’m getting a little moist just thinking about it. As funny as the entire scenario is, there is also an underlying issue which has been on the Coffee and Scotch radar for a while now. Is Justin Bieber a 20th century male sex symbol? Are women, by virtue of sexual selection, turning men into women and turning themselves into lesbians?

        Justin Bieber may not be solely responsible for the surge in popularity of tight jeans, but my guess is the closet he’ll one day come out of is full of them. If I ever find the motherfucker who designed and marketed tight jeans for men, my wrath will be unquenchable. Is this what you pathetic lady-boys want? To have your frank and beans sausage-cased so tightly in denim that your balls become sterile? Maybe more relevant to this discussion, is that what you women are looking for? What kind of a man would wear a pair of pants so constricting that he can barely walk, let alone run or jump in them? I for one am looking forward to the zombie apocalypse because you tight jean wearing she-men are gonna be easy pickings. We’re essentially dressing like women in the hopes of attracting women, with the added bonus of strangling our testicles off? As much as I blame the men, and I do, you women are the ones who are encouraging this bullshit and have the power of the mighty vagina to put an end to it. Just say no to bro camel toe. Conversely, my hats off to the good people at Duluth Trading Company whose innovative “ballroom jeans” will allow me to escape the undead hoard with ease. The anti-tight jeans are designed with extra room in the crotch, where real men like yours truly need it. First they came up with long tailed t-shirts to hide plumbers crack and now this, these guys are fucking geniuses and are doing more to save mankind than Al Gore.

        Maybe I’m just jealous because I’ve never really had particularly nice hair, but what the hell is going on with the brofro’s that today's men are sporting? It was bad enough when it was just the Biebs doing his lesbian bowl cut thingamajig, but now we’ve got the perennial Coffee and Scotch whipping boy Jersey Shore jag-offs with their over-primped, guido, gel-spiked hair fiasco’s too. Ladies, are you looking for a guy who spends more time on his hair and makeup than you do? Don’t get me started on all the other bullshit that goes into today's “male look”. A man should smell like sweat, sawdust or motor oil and his hair should look however the wind “styled” it while he was outside wrestling invasive boars and splitting firewood. And while I’m at it, a man should be as tan as his time working under the sun makes him, do you think Clint Eastwood goes tanning? Fuck I’m getting pissed off just writing this. Men, what the hell is going on?

        Does this slippery slope end with men and women changing on a biological level? Are men becoming less “manly” as a defensive mechanism triggered by Mother Earth in response to overpopulation or a generally over-aggressive society? Are we witnessing a major evolutionary development in our lifetime? Could Justin Bieber be Charles Darwin’s answer to World War III and the Duggar family? Is such a thing even possible?

Occupy Elm Street (Halloween Edition)

        If you’ll indulge me this month, I’d like to open with a forgotten quote from the famed Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget, “ I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside. Give them a sense of pride to make it easier. Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be.” Dr. Piaget spoke these words in his famous address to the United Nations in 1962, where he outlined a stark future for the world’s children based on his predictions of a total global collapse of Halloween, which would preempt an unprecedented worldwide economic meltdown and finally a zombie apocalypse with a small pocket of survivors outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I find it impossible to refute the wisdom and prescience of that speech, but is it possible to save Halloween before the arrival of The Walking Dead? By now your palms are probably getting pretty sweaty and your pulse is quickening, while your impossibly small brain is trying to compute the consequences of your Halloween negligence. The bad news is, your underdeveloped medulla oblongata can’t possibly rationalize what to do. The good news is that I’m here to do your thinking for you, and as an added bonus if things continue to go wrong, the zombies probably won’t bother you because they’ll be distractedly shambling after my enormously delicious cerebellum.

        During my hiatus from writing this fine blog, I started work on a secret project funded by the Department of Homeland Security and powered by Google Maps. I’m endeavoring to provide every child in America with an iPhone app, since you’ve all bought your precious little snowflakes five hundred dollar smart phones which are ironically more intelligent than they are, charting the houses of “extremist childhood terrorists”, who are presenting a clear and present danger to our children’s lawful youthful development by giving out apples and toothbrushes on Halloween. Next year I hope to increase the database to include popcorn balls, candy corns, and black licorice. Get your heads out of your asses people and buy some candy for Christ’s sake. While you’re at it, do your karmic inner child a favor and spring for some full size stuff, not those tiny boxes of milk duds you’ve been giving out you fucking cheapskates. The joy on a child’s face when they reach reverently into a bowl full of checkout-line-size candy is worth the money. I know you’ve got the cash because I see you rummaging through my recycle bin every other week taking my beer bottles. Also, take some fucking time and pick out decent candy, don’t just grab a box of salt water taffy and call it a day. It’s not rocket science, it’s candy. You were a kid once remember? If you ended Halloween night by pouring your candy out on the floor and making a pile out of the stuff you didn’t want, break the cycle and stop buying that shit. One last thought on the candy situation, if you’ve gone through the effort to get the good stuff, don’t abandon it in a bowl on your doorstep with a sign that says “take one”. Guess what the first kid to come along is going to do? With kids today, you’ll be lucky if they don’t take the candy and the bowl you left it in as some kind of gang initiation.

        Alright so we’re getting the adults on-board with the candy, now I need the kids to listen the fuck up. The Halloween costumes are getting really pathetic and I’m about fed up with it. If you want to go trick-or-treating until your 18, more power to you, but god help you if you knock on my door this year wearing a Yankees jersey and hat as your costume...again. Along those lines, your Little League baseball uniform doesn’t count, and neither does putting on some lame ass mask you’ve worn for the last five years, or any of that other half cocked bullshit. That’s just fucking lazy and we can’t continue to reward lazy in this country. There are 67 Halloween stores on the Post Road in Milford alone, get an actual costume. In fact, forget I said that. Learn to be a little creative and make a costume like I did when I was your age. We’re becoming a generation of lazy shits who walk into a store and slap down twenty bucks for Halloween in a nice little package. This year, when your Dad’s rummaging through my recycle bin this Thursday morning cashing in on my bottles of Schlitz, have him grab some cardboard boxes so you can make yourself into a robot or a spaceship or something. I’m going to start rewarding creativity with bonus candy and start handing out homemade candied onions to kids that don’t get the Halloween spirit. Biting into that caramel covered vidalia on a stick somewhere down the street outta leave a nice taste in little Alex Rodriguez’s mouth.

        The last prong in our offensive is kind of a catchall I’ll refer to as Halloween spirit. If you’re not sure what that is, swing by my house this year and have a look at my neighbors to either side with their lights out and their doors closed; that’s me proving something like Halloween spirit exists by demonstrating a total lack of it. It’s kind of like dickhead antimatter. Serial killers don’t start out torturing animals, they start out as kids whose neighbors didn’t give out candy on Halloween. If that’s you, you deserve to have your house egged, in fact it will probably be me doing it. And another thing, I know we live in a hyper-sensitive, bubble your children type of world now but trick-or-treating isn’t something you do at the mall in the middle of the afternoon; it’s something you experience on a cold fall night under the stars, lugging around a pillow case full of candy until every last house light is out. We used to do that with our friends as kids, it was safer then though, so I’d encourage you Occupy Wall Street parents to put your signs down for a day and try Occupying Elm Street, where life’s real battles are won and lost. We can just pretend being a useless dirty hippie is your Halloween costume.

ASSWAD

        If you’ve been reading Coffee and Scotch regularly, like my mother, you’ll know I have a little peeve with cliched expressions in our vernacular. We tend to overuse these popular sayings to justify or guide our actions. This week I’ve been thinking about the adage, “cleanliness is next to Godliness” for some reason. Have we been quietly waging a warm on germs over the last decade with an arsenal of specialized weapons of mass destruction? If we’ve won a few battles are we closer to winning the war? I set about to create a special UN Commission to investigate America’s Super Secret War Against Dirt (ASSWAD).

        While I’m pretty sure I am immortal, as well as omniscient and omnipresent, I count my age in earth years as thirty-three. When my life was in it’s relative youth, I have fond memories of playing outside in the dirt. I don’t say this in order to segway into yet another long winded diatribe about growing up without cell phones or computers, I simply want to establish historical precedent for dirty kids. We played all day and well into the evening and we got good and damn dirty doing it. In fact, I think the quality of the days of my youth were often measured in the layers of mud and grime I had caked onto my skin and clothes by the time the street lights came on and I had to be home. Kids today are different. If they’re allowed out of their bubble and beyond the gravitational orbit of their parents, they certainly are not allowed to go outside and get dirty. So by my reckoning, Operation ASSWAD began sometime in the 90’s.

        Like many of today’s modern wars, ASSWAD is being quietly fought on some surprising fronts. The bathroom has become a primary battleground in the war on germs. This isn’t about whether or not you should wash your hands before you handle your equipment or after, that’s a debate for another day. This is about our increasingly maniacal obsession with brushing our teeth. It’s not that I don’t condone proper dental hygiene, it’s just that things have gotten well out of hand. When did the dentists finally break through our Maginot Line of common sense and wear us down with their propaganda campaign? You don’t need to arm yourself with a toothbrush the second you lay down your fork and knife people. Every time I see someone after lunch in the bathroom at work, packing a duffel bag worth of dental equipment and sand blasting bits of spinach out of their mouth, I want to do them a favor and kick their teeth out. My completely uneducated guess would be that our diets are ruining our teeth and that our Pattonesque stance on brushing is not the answer. Don’t get me started on mouthwash, I’m fairly certain government scientists created Listerine to use up our stores of Agent Orange after we withdrew from Vietnam. Incidentally, the same guys created Ethanol a few decades later.

        I’ve uncovered another major component of Operation ASSWAD, which is far more insidious than the anti-dentite propaganda campaign. With the success of the Agent Orange program, aptly named Free OJ, the government started a similar operation to dispose of the growing quantities of nuclear waste which were becoming problematic to store. The latest program, code named Wipe Pluto, was designed to re-purpose spent plutonium into a new class of consumer product called hand sanitizer. However, when secret government documents were leaked to the media and Wipe Pluto’s name was discovered, a cover-up story was launched to reclassify the planet Pluto, successfully diverting public attention. Hand sanitizers kill germs through micro doses of radioactive plutonium gel. Notice how hand sanitizers look exactly like the stuff from The Manhattan Project movie? The alcohol smell is added as a sensory diversion. Do we really need personal bottles of hand sanitizer? Do we need it mounted outside the doors to our office and next to the sinks in our bathrooms? Are soap and water not good enough anymore or are we too lazy to use them regularly? Why do we continue to let media fear-mongering drive us like the consumer cattle we have become? Like it or not, we’re on a crusade to wipe germs, bacteria and dirt from the planet. It’s up to you to stop being an ass-wad.

Smoke and Mirrors

        Here on Coffee and Scotch I expound about beer frequently. I think the most obvious explanation is that beer is the nectar of the gods and I would hate to think I’m pissing them off somehow by not honoring it properly or guiding my flock in its proper enjoyment. As much as I love to love beer, I also love to hate it as well. We have entirely to much mainstream bullshit piss-water being brewed and consumed in this country. When your beer of choice needs to hide behind millions of dollars in marketing and hype, chances are it’s lacking in substance and quality. I’m reminded of Absolut Vodka, whose brilliant marketing campaign carried its low quality vodka into every home in America. We love funny commercials and witty advertising more than we love decent, honest products in this country. Unfortunately for us, there is a correlation between the craptasticness of the beer and the creativity of the marketing. What happens when even the best advertising executives in the world can’t salvage the watery, disgusting taste of your beer anymore? Send in the engineering clowns.


        One secret to making even the most horrid of drafts somewhat more palpable is serving it cold, very cold. Hearken back to yesteryear with me and remember the pinnacle of stadium bathroom accessories, the trough. The trough ran the length of the bathroom wall and was a communal urinal of sorts. The very best troughs were filled with ice. Why the ice you ask? Well, cold piss smells a lot better (or at least a lot less) than warm piss, just like cold Coors Light tastes a lot better, relatively, than warm Coors Light. It stands to reason that when you’re producing one of the foulest beverages the world has ever known, it’s in your best interest to make sure your audience is drinking it as cold as possible. My guess is the same guys who engineered the trough, engineered the Coors Light cold activated cans and bottles. Ironically enough, just one degree of cold activation wasn’t enough to overcome the stale piss taste of Coors Light, so they needed to add an even colder activation state in the hopes that beer drinkers the world over would freeze their taste buds to death before realizing they were drinking the sweat from a Sumo wrestlers balls. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Busch Light is following suit with their own cold activated packaging. Do the bums and wino’s that drink Busch Light even have access to refrigeration?


        Not to be outdone by the wizards over at Coors, who are ingeniously employing technology that was a big hit on novelty t-shirts from the 90’s, the MIT grads working over at Miller designed their own technological breakthrough, the vortex bottle. Another beer that tastes like piss can swirl into your mouth with the same motion it swirls down the toilet like God intended it. I think it’s safe to say that we need the Miller Lite vortex bottle about as much as we need, well, Bud Light Golden Wheat for starters. How many ways can you manipulate the flavor of this crap? Someone with less IQ points than they have teeth left, is working on deep fried Bud Light Lime for next years Kentucky State Fair, you just know it. On some level it feels like these companies understand how bad their beers are and they’re blatantly mocking us. On the whole, the usefulness of the Miller Lite vortex bottle seems on par with the DvD re-winder. I’ve been thinking in the back of my head that this is a bit of form over function but in reality I’d classify it in the “lipstick on a pig category”. No amount of marketing gimmicks or technology can make beer taste good, in fact, I’d say the secret to good beer is exactly the opposite. Stay thirsty my friends.

The Continuum

        Life is a giant problem made up of thousands of smaller problems that need constant solving. If life is like the universe, than the problems are the stars. The meaning of life, therefore, is to navigate and solve as many problems as possible, in order to achieve happiness. Some of the problems are unavoidable, almost destined to happen, and some are completely self inflicted, like a Plaxico Burress gunshot wound. Throughout my distinguished life I’ve had cause to create two, trademark pending, theories which have acted as guideposts to help me navigate a couple of specific issues I’ve faced. My hope is that by sharing my Coffee and Scotch Jewelry and Beverage Continuum’s, you can navigate the stars and grab life by the short and curly’s.


        If we’ve established that life is the universe and problems are the stars, dating is like a giant black hole slowly sucking the entire cosmos into it. Is there a more perilous time in a relationship’s infancy than an occasion that calls for a gift? Just started dating a girl in November, what the hell do you buy her for Christmas? The first gift is absolutely critical to the tone of the entire relationship. First, let’s clear up some misconceptions about women straightaway. **Attention women (particularly my wife) stop reading here and jump down to paragraph three.** Men, I’ve learned something very disturbing over the course of my life...women are a completely alien species. Not the awesome kind with three boobs, like in Total Recall, but a terrifying and horrible kind with two hungry mouths. They have a normal mouth which eats chocolate and drinks wine and never shuts up; but they also have a “second mouth”, which feeds on a special diet of gold and diamonds and almost never opens. What we’ve been fooled into thinking was a vagina all these years is actually a very greedy mouth, which needs to be fed constantly to work. Unfortunately for us, the second mouth goes on strike a lot and asks for constant pay raises. The bottom line is, if you’re not buying jewelry as your primary gifts, you’re doing it wrong and you’re probably going to wake up to the sound of the trash compactor running with your severed penis in it. So that brings us to the Jewelry Continuum (JC), the penultimate guide for male gift giving.

“For every occasion in a woman's life, a man should buy said woman jewelry of a composition and value proportionate to the amount of time the two have been in a sexual relationship together.”

        Deciding where on the jewelry scale to start buying can be a little complicated. You need to factor in your age; if you’re older than 20 for instance, I don’t recommend starting below gold jewelry. If you’re younger than 20, by all means, work with silver for a year or so before you move up the scale. Also, if you’re making decent money, you need to consider your entry point carefully, but I think plain gold jewelry is a good place to start for the most part. It should be noted that watches, depending on the value, can be used as a replacement in almost any step of the Continuum, in order to mix things up a bit.

        Now, as implied by the name of this blog, I tend to enjoy a cup of coffee and a good glass of scotch from time to time. Actually, coffee has become an addiction for me, like midget porn and peanut butter Captain Crunch. I walk into the office and get my first cup before I do anything else. Consequently, over the course of thirty-three years of trial and error, I’ve perfected the Beverage Continuum. The Beverage Continuum (BC) is my way of gauging the “success” of my day, in terms of relaxation and enjoyment. My particular drink choices may not apply to everyone, but the concept is adaptable. After five days of work, I like to unwind on the weekends. When I’m not too busy skeet shooting, hang gliding, or volunteering down at the soup kitchen, I like to take it easy. Some of my simplest pleasures are enjoying a cup of fresh coffee in the morning, a cold beer and a baseball game in the afternoon, and a good quality scotch on the rocks at night. To that end, the Beverage Continuum was born.

“The quality of a day can be measured in incremental beverage stages; starting with coffee, progressing to beer, then to scotch, and on some occasions back to coffee.”

        This concept is a simple one. It’s about waking up on a Saturday morning to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. It’s about the taste of an ice cold beer when you come inside on a hot day. It’s about the warmth that spreads from your lips to your toes with that first sip of scotch on a cool fall evening. Truly, the best things in life are the simplest things. Stay thirsty my friends.

Shared Experiences

        Here on Coffee and Scotch I spend a lot of time writing about the things that make us different, well more like the things that make you different from me, but you get the idea. I’d like to try something else this week, a tribute to the late George Carlin, and spend a little time laughing at some of the things that bring us closer together. I’m talking about the little things that we have in common; the habits, annoyances and nuances of our day to day lives. I hadn’t given these quirks much thought, assuming they were signs of my own unique blend of ADD, OCD and insanity. As it turns out, some of you may have the same special blend of crazy that makes me tick. Here are a few of my personal favorites, let me know if you can relate.

        You know that moment when you’re swimming in the ocean and it gets deep enough where your feet can no longer touch the bottom? Am I the only one who starts to irrationally panic imagining killer sharks, giant man-eating squid, and possibly Cthulu circling around below me? God forbid something touches your foot...full on panic mode!

        When you’re awake in bed starring at the alarm clock, are you calculating the precise amount of sleep you’ll get assuming you can fall asleep that second?

        How about when you realize the blanket is the short way across your body and it won’t cover your toes, so you kick and thrash at it to get it the right way but it just ends up turning 360 degree and is back the short way again? That might go on for hours until I can get it sorted out.

        Ever have someone aim a rubber band at you and your entire life flashes before your eyes, like the shot could be fatal? I had a boss who used to offer days off if you’d put a miniature baseball helmet on your head and let him fire rubber bands at it. If he missed the helmet and hit you, it was good for a day off. Of course, you’d probably spend that day in a psychologist’s office trying to recover from the trauma. Thanks Rob, I’m still emotionally damaged.

        When you go into the bathroom and the shower curtain is closed, do you look behind it to make sure no one is hiding in the bathtub waiting to murder you while you’re on the toilet?

        Or when you’re in the shower with soap on your face and you’re convinced that the girl from The Ring movie is in the bathroom with you and is about to come through the shower curtain, what’s that about? That seems perfectly rational.

        Ever get into the shower at a friends house or a hotel and have absolutely no idea how to turn the water on? Fuck you and your fancy college engineering degree, I’m a shower fixture!

        Have you ever been around two people you don’t know, who are talking about something you absolutely love, like a movie or a book, but you don’t know how to maneuver into the conversation and it feels like a lost opportunity?

        How about when there is a conversation going on and you have something relevant to say but it changes topics before you get a chance to say it and you’re stuck with that thought rattling around in your head with nowhere to go?

        Or how about when you’re driving the car and the sun is blinding you, so you pull down the visor and realize that the sun is exactly positioned so it streams in the half inch gap between the visor and the edge of the window? How the hell does God always manage to pull off that little miracle? He must own stock in Oakley.

        Ever watch a video online and think it’s hysterical, then show it to some friends and suddenly it’s not even remotely funny anymore? “Keep watching guys, it gets funny!”

        How about when someone says hi to you in the hallway but you don’t realize it until they’re gone? Nobody wins in that scenario, especially when it was a hot chick.

        Or when you try to plug a USB device into your computer and it doesn’t fit, so you flip it but it still doesn’t fit, so you flip it back to it’s original position and it goes right in? Time to call the Geek Squad.

        Do you ever get really self-conscious when you’re leaving a store without buying something so you feel like you have to act extra carefree and innocent to prove you aren’t stealing anything? I’ll often fake a cell phone call too so it looks like I’m being polite by stepping outside to talk on the phone...nice cover.

        That’s it for this week, normally I pride myself on original content creation but this was more about gathering some fun things I’ve read here and there and bringing them together. Every one of the above made me laugh and reflect on how bizarre and irrational we are under certain circumstances. I hope you can relate.

Words To Live By

        You hate that guy, you know you do. He can’t make it through one conversation without peppering you with sanctimonious, bullshit, cliched expressions. Inside every office, every circle of friends, every family, every team; there exists at least one. Usually, I’m lucky enough to sit next to that guy at work and if he sees me staring out into space he’ll helpfully chirp, “penny for your thoughts?”. How about I make it an even buck for a falcon punch in the junk you jackass? I’m always interrupted at the least opportune moment too, like when I’m on the verge of a daydream breakthrough about my new cologne idea Sawdust, Motor Oil and Unicorn Sweat. That guy is as bad as my alarm clock, jolting me awake right as the midget hops onto the bed with a peacock feather and a set of jumper cables. A lot of these stupid sayings are commonly taught to us as children, presumably to help tune our morale compasses.Recently, I’ve been thinking about a few of the more commonly used expressions and worrying that they are conveying the wrong messages.

        Let’s start with the Golden Rule, as I’m sure it’s the one people think of first and seem to preach about the most. Heck, it’s got to be important because it’s been labeled with the gold standard, and at a whopping sixteen hundred dollars an ounce, this hefty rule must be worth it’s weight in gold. Punny, right? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It’s an elegant, simple, religiously grounded maxim about treating people well. Unfortunately, it’s not particularly good advice. Hey, I’d like everyone I meet to hand me twenty dollars, should I walk around with my wallet open and start handing out money? I realize that’s a bit of an extreme example, but assuming people are inherently good and treating them in kind,is a surefire way to get stepped on and abused. I suggest we adopt a new rule, the Silver Rule; “do nothing unto others and in turn expect that they do nothing unto you”. You may not make any new friends today, but you’re less likely to get Ponzi schemed out of your life savings either.

        Another saying I’ve been thinking about lately is, “one in the hand is better than two in the bush”. Now, there are times when I think the concept behind this is justified and it’s downright good advice. However, people seem to treat the kernel of wisdom as a hard and fast rule to live by. Success is often a direct result of risk taking. I look at the “one in hand” as a euphemism for mediocrity, an excuse to take the easy path. I think many of our great leaders, soldiers, thinkers, teachers and inventors have often opted to let go of the “one in hand” and go after the “two in the bush”. I think “nothing ventured, nothing gained” is better advice, if you insist on being that guy. Let’s teach our children to be smart risk takers, so that our next generation is full of winners, not simply participators.

        Finally, I give you the absolute worst axiom to live by, “don’t judge a book by it’s cover”. Whoever thought this was good advice and passed it into our collective vocabulary was an idiot and obviously didn’t know anything about books. Walk into a book store, if you can still find one, with no preconceived idea of what you want to buy. You will undoubtedly walk around looking at the covers of books and making judgments about whether they might be worth your time to read or not. It is of vital importance to our safety that we size people up as we meet them as well. If you see a guy in line at the bank with “Fuck You” tattooed on his forehead, I think you have a pretty good reason to consider leaving and coming back after the robbery....err later in the day. If you see a guy in line at the convenience store at three o’clock in the morning with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream, a bag of Funions, and blood shot eyes, chances are he’s stoned. The bottom line is, it’s perfectly normal to judge books and people, by their covers. Nature has given us that tool to aid us in our survival, don’t be an idiot and not use it. Teaching our kids not to judge people based on their appearance is dangerous, politically correct bullshit. We don’t have to create a generation of racist bigots, but we do have to acknowledge that when red touches yellow, you're a dead fellow; but if red touches black, you're all right Jack.

Baseball, Sex, and Jelly Donuts

        I’m writing this blog on the heels of one of the slowest sports weeks of the year. Major League Baseball has been mostly dormant, with the exception of the mid-summer classic, and the rest of the professional sports leagues are slumbering or locked in contract negotiations.The FIFA Women’s World Cup is going on supposedly, but I’ve become desensitized to watching women on TV or the Internet engaging in anything other than pornography, so that’s out. The New World Order has successfully removed the top black athlete from the PGA, so golf has lost it’s scant appeal. It’s back to the usual, “which boring rich white guy in bright green plaid pants will win this week” routine. When is the world of golf going to realize that it needs a little more Happy Gilmore and a little less Shooter McGavin? This athletic dry-spell creates a good opportunity for listening to some very entertaining sports talk radio at least. What better way to ease the misery of my commute home than hearing baseball trade proposals from Sal on Staten Island or fantasy football draft planning from Rocco in New Rochelle. Keeping with the theme, I’m going to focus this weeks Coffee and Scotch rant on three aspects of baseball that need an overhaul and which have been getting a lot of airtime on the AM band this week. For the sake of perspective, I’m a perennially disgruntled Mets fan, so take it all with a grain of salt.

        The major topic of the week has been the MLB All Star Game. The slow decline of the event, from it’s glory days of pride and competition to it’s current state of meaningless irrelevancy, has been well discussed. In recent years, the MLB has tried to inject purpose by having the outcome determine which league gains home field advantage in the World Series. I imagine the same thought process occurred when some unfortunate confectioner decided that powdered donuts weren’t good enough and they needed jelly injected into them. Classic fuck-up. Unfortunately, this tactic has simply not worked and we’re stuck trying to figure out how to scoop the damn jelly out so we can enjoy the purity of the donut again, which is always a shitty mess. Most of today's baseball stars are so delusionally self-absorbed that they can’t be bothered showing up, let alone playing in an “extra” game. The players who do show seem to play the game with no level of passion or real desire to win. It’s like going to work on Friday, sure you go but are you really giving it your all? Don’t get me started about how ridiculous the Home Run Derby is either. The Chris Berman, “back, back, back” home run call makes me want to throw my TV out the window. They ought to nominate an all-star announcer every year and allow them to call the home run derby and the game. Back on point, my proposed solution for the All Star Game is not to add or modify the rewards for the winning team, frankly I’d prefer if they removed any type of artificial incentive altogether. It’s the one time that Major League Baseball allows the fans to control who plays and who doesn’t. Sure, the managers get a few picks as well, but we have the opportunity to tell the prima donna players that we’re sick of their bullshit. I propose that we band together and throw the vote. Let’s send the leagues worst players out there and send baseball a clear message. And what better time to do it than with Citifield as the proposed site of the 2013 game? Hey, at least the worst players in the game won’t have to travel very far to get there.

        My biggest complaint with Major League baseball is the difference in the rules between the two leagues. This topic has been beaten like a dead horse but I want to get my two cents in. Being a National League fan, I’m generally inclined to believe that having pitchers hit is better for the game of baseball in terms of strategy and complexity. However, the designated hitter (DH) allows the sport to more effectively showcase its most popular aspect, the home run. If baseball is like sex, National League baseball is missionary, lights out, don’t make too much noise and wake up the kids sex; while American League baseball is hot, sweaty, spontaneous vacation sex. Home runs are the money shot and the designated hitter is like baseball Viagra. Whichever rule set you prefer is fine by me, my angst is with the simple illogical fact that the two leagues play a different game. The problem is further compounded every year with another baseball anomaly, inter-league play. National League baseball teams cannot compete on a level playing field with American League teams because they're not built around the DH. There is simply no consideration given to a National League team’s roster to carry a player solely for his offensive output. In the NL, bench spots need to be allocated for flexible players who can be used situationally for double switches, pinch hitting and injury replacement. For the sake of brevity I won’t get into the minutea of bunting, the wheel play, the butcher boy, pinch running, pinch hitting, double switching, or the value in clearing the pitchers spot at the bottom of the batting order, but in the interest of fair play can we level the playing field and decide on a unified set of rules?

        My final thought on baseball ties back into the players lackluster feelings about the All Star Game and their level of non-participation in it. Presumably, these guys have gotten to big for their stir-ups, with their bloated contracts and superstar statuses. Obviously, with the players union as strong as it is, major contract and salary changes are not likely to ever happen, but what if? What if baseball adopted a single contract that all players worked under? Every player is allowed to negotiate their base pay and the length of their individual terms of employment with a specific team. The base pay has a league minimum, as it does now, and a maximum “cap” set to something reasonable like five million dollars. Every dollar a player earns beyond their contractual base pay is incentivized, so performance is heavily rewarded. Every game played, base hit, home run, RBI, stolen base, strike out, and saved game are monetarily rewarded. Every aspect of the game is incentivized and built into every players contract. The players have nearly unlimited earning potential, assuming they stay healthy and perform well. The owners only pay for the kind of results that sell tickets and create successful franchises. The fans stop getting screwed by superstars who don’t seem to give a shit anymore. In my opinion, and obviously that’s the only one that matters here in my world, the system would work and would help baseball bring sexy back.

Time Is Money Friend

        I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I consider my time to be an extremely valuable thing and I don’t like other people wasting it. I piss away enough already, as evidenced by my weekly ramblings here on Coffee and Scotch, so I find it particularly annoying when inconsiderate jackasses employ copious amounts of stupidity and self-importance to waste precious minutes of my life. Now, people waste our time everywhere we go; hell I could write for days about how people at work waste our time and how the government wastes our time. The government has a monopoly on wastefulness in general. What has been grinding my gears lately though is the imbeciles who have no idea how to pay for things and manage their finances at the checkout counter. If I didn’t know better I’d think I was stuck behind a bunch of career felons who just got released from prison and were buying bags of topsoil at Home Depot for the first time in their lives.

        The absolute most heinous offense you can commit when you’re checking out is a lack of preparedness. Are people just clueless about the process or do they have a complete lack of regard for everyone else? How many times have you been in line behind some ditsy woman reading Parade magazine while her groceries are being scanned?
Lady, for the love of God, at least start the 20 minute archaeological excavation of your purse in search of your wallet. It’s not like the cash register is some kind of mysterious place where the procedural outcome is clouded in a veil of secrecy. Here’s a news flash for you sweetheart, you need to fucking pay for all that crap and that hitherto unheard of event occurs shortly after the last item is scanned by the cashier. Can everyone agree to get on the fucking ball and pay a little attention? Incidentally, when did we start working for the stores we shop at? What kind of scam is self checkout? How brilliant are the executives who made the decision to have us simultaneously spending money at their stores and also working for them for free? Sure, I’ll ring up my purchases, pay for them and bag them myself. Fuck we’re gullible.

        Figuring out which checkout line to get in has become a complicated science as well. On the surface, sizing up a line based on how many people are in it and how many items they have would seem to be enough to go by. Unfortunately, you need to stereotype people in order to save yourself a headache. Personally, I never roll the dice on old people, especially old ladies. Grandma is the number one perpetrator of the social crime, paying by check in the first degree. Check payers always seem to be pocketbook archaeologists as well, waiting for the last second to start the check book dig. After they find the ancient relic, they need to wait for the GPS satellite to get into synchronous orbit so they can trans-locate the pen in their cavernous purse.
Naturally, the pen won’t work because it was designed for form over function. Who wants a pen that reliably writes when you can have a twelve dollar, craft fair, decorative pen that some art school dropout hot glued plastic crystals onto? If you’re sharp-eyed and lucky enough to avoid the pay-by-checker, beware the stay at home soccer mom with time to kill. Chances are she’s going to pay with cash, which is fine, but she’s gonna screw you at the last second in a move I call “exact change diving”. One sure way to spot a change diver is by looking for signs of early onset scoliosis. Every time soccer mom buys a venti, extra hot, soy, no whip, caramel macchiato, she tosses the change down into the depths of her bag until it’s so heavy it hurts her back to carry it. Later, in the express line at Shop Rite when her box of Tampax costs $6.37, it’s time to plunge headfirst into the bowels of her behemoth pocketbook in search of the elusive exact change. What should have taken 10 seconds turns into minutes as she surfaces for air in order to dive again for the last two pennies.

        So you’ve avoided the grannies and the hunchbacks and you’ve slid in line with your debit card out, ready to rock and roll. There’s still a few pitfalls to look out for, the problem is they are hard to spot. The first problem is tricky but avoidable with a little awareness. Make sure you’re not the guy at the register with an item that doesn’t have a price or a bar code on it. Nothing brings the checkout carousel to a grinding halt like seeing the cashier reach for the intercom and broadcast a price check on your box of Trojans.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of embarrassment, trust me. Next come the dreaded, “Why yes I’d love to fill out the application for your store credit card so I can save 10% on my purchase today” people. This always seems to happen to me when I’m past the point of no return in a line. Once you’ve made it into the cash register on deck circle and you’ve already waited for five minutes or more in the same line, you can’t abandon it. It’s one of the unwritten rules of the universe, like starring at nice breasts and absentmindedly bouncing any tennis ball that finds its way into your hand. Lastly, you need to try and dodge the dreaded key ring rolodex of disorganized store rewards card scanners. Buying a sixty-five cent pack of gum at Walgreens, better scan my card and get the bonus points. Two minutes later they’ve managed to extricate the rewards card mobile from their pocket and they’re hunting for the right scrap of plastic like the school janitor looking for the key to utility closet number nine. Your knew you were in Walgreens, you couldn’t have started that process while you were waiting in line checking Facebook on your iPhone dipshit? The theme of the day here is preparedness. If everybody could take an extra second or two to get organized at the checkout line, we all might be able to get a day or two of our miserable lives back.

America, Fuck Yeah!

American hero Russel T. Casse.

        Fourth of July weekend, what a great time to be an American! We’ve got crappy gas station fireworks to buy, gluttonous hot dog eating contests to watch, wiffle balls to throw our aging shoulders out with, and tons of other festive things with which we can celebrate our great nation’s independence. I always take a few minutes on the 4th of July to remember how those aliens would have gotten us if it weren’t for the selfless actions of Russel T. Casse, may he rest in peace. There are, however, a few clouds threatening to storm on our parades this year. By the way, is there a point to parades? Talk about a useless waste of tax money and resources. Anyway, I’m going off on a tangent here. I’d like to touch on three particular things going on in our beloved country which are really bothering me. Unlike the news media outlets that you might be used to, here on Coffee and Scotch I don’t claim to provide any sort of fair or balanced viewpoints. I just give it to you like I see it; ass backwards, politically incorrect, emotionally insensitive, sophomorically juvenile, and crassly vulgar.

Harvard bum.

        Starting with the most severe of the three atrocities happening in this country, I give you Fred Phelps and the shitbags at the Westboro Baptist Church. Fred and his congregation of inbred goat fuckers like to protest at the funerals of soldiers in order to spread their hate filled anti-gay message. How can a religious organization, seemingly devoted to God, be filled with such malice? Before you Constitutional lawyers start sending me mail about the first amendment, I understand the right to free speech. I also understand that the people who sacrifice themselves to protect that right are the people whose funerals are being marred by these bible thumping nut jobs. I’ve seen the movie With Honors, so I understand that the true strength of our Constitution lies within its intrinsic capability to be amended. This country is ready for a government official to stand up and propose an addendum to our beloved first amendment, an alteration which makes it illegal to be a complete asshat and protest at the funeral of a soldier. I’d be happy to volunteer for jury duty on these cases, feel free to give me a call Big Brother...I know you’re watching.

Lining up right behind Freddy the Fanny Fencer come the power hungry, self-important, delusional communists that run the Homeowner’s Associations where all the veterans keep buying condos. Who the fuck do these people think they are, telling military veterans that they can’t fly the American flag in their front yards? We need to start gathering up these HOA jackasses and putting them on a bus to Mexico with the Westoboro lunatics. They can swing down to Tijuana for a few months to get a handle on how lucky they are to live in this great place we call America. Here’s another bunch of people that have no god damn appreciation for the sacrifices that our soldiers have made, and continue to make, on a daily basis. This is another perfect situation for one of our otherwise useless political suits to stand up and propose a law making it illegal to bar someone in this country from respectfully flying Old Glory, especially if that somebody put their life on the line to defend it. Find a veteran and ask them what the Stars and Stripes means to them. You can take your HOA rules and shove them up your collective asses. I wonder if any of those HOA folks happen to be gay, I know just the right person to call to borrow some signs.

Participation trophies for everyone!

        Lastly, and on a markedly lighter note, what happened to the value of competition in this country? Have you recently asked an eight year old coming home from a baseball game if they won? Who the fuck decided it’s not a good idea to keep score? That it’s not a good idea to promote competition in our youth? What are the long term consequences of indifference to winning or losing? Do we really want to raise a generation of Americans who feel no pride in winning and no desire to improve in losing? I’m all for inclusion in youth activities. No child should be turned away because of a perceived lack of skill, but what lesson are we teaching tomorrow’s leaders when we don’t bother keeping score? I think we need that lone wolf congressman (not congressperson than you very much) to stand up and make keeping score at sporting events a law!


Everybody relax, I’m just kidding...or am I?


Happy Independence Day!

Coffee and Scotch Mailbag

     I’m proud to say that my blog has really taken off lately. I hope I’m not putting the proverbial cart before the horse in saying so, but don’t be surprised to see me writing for a major publication soon. I’m in active negotiations with MacInAmish Quarterly, a digital magazine for Amish Apple enthusiasts. I’m told circulation is poised to push beyond ten subscribers sometime in the next 5 years, which would be twice as many readers as I have now. I’m also flying down to Washington next month to meet with some top brass in the CIA. Evidently they’re interested in my writing as an effective replacement for water-boarding prisoners in Gitmo. Preliminary tests show that being subjected to my blog is a 73% more effective form of torture than having your testicles connected to a car battery. I finally found some job security. So, in my continued effort to give something back to my readers, I’ve decided to put aside this weeks regularly scheduled content and tackle some fan mail questions. My inbox has been flooded with letters from adoring readers the world over. I’ve picked out a couple random questions to answer in the premiere edition of the Coffee and Scotch Mailbag.

     Hey Brad,
I’m kind of an idiot, how many ingredients should my peanut butter have in it?
- G.W. Carver (Missouri)

     I’m glad you asked G.W., because it seems like a lot of you morons out there have no idea how to read and interpret the ingredients label on the packaging of the foods you eat. Ask yourself, what do I think peanut butter should be made of? Now go to your cabinet and look at the label on your jar of Skippy. If you see anything other than peanuts and salt, punch yourself in the face because you’re stupid. Why would you have to add or subtract anything from peanuts to make peanut butter?


     Dear Brad,
I’m hoping you can settle an argument my husband and I have been having, can feminism and chivalry co-exist?
- Constance Elizabeth Henderson-Garfunkle (Connecticut)

     Thank you for your question Constance. This seems to me like one of those, have your cake and eat it too, kind of scenarios. On the one hand, bra burners like yourself have fought long and hard for equality and a level playing field. On the other hand, you don’t want to let go of the equally archaic idea that men should treat you chivalrously. I’m afraid my position is no, feminism and chivalry cannot exist together. The life of one is the death of the other. Let’s agree to hold doors open for each other because we’re civil and polite human beings, not because of some arbitrary delegation of sexual organs. You’re voting now, fighting on the front lines and captaining industries, don’t pretend like you can’t open your own car door anymore princess.

     Coffee and Scotch,
I like sprinkles on my ice cream but when I go out I’m to embarrassed to ask for them because I know it emasculates me. What should I do?
- rainbowsprinkles44@aol.com

     For Christs sake, I don’t even know where to start with this one. Is that really your email address and do you really still use AOL? Is it 1996 again and nobody told me? First of all, get a fucking gmail account and step into the future big fella. As far as your question goes, I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that you can never eat rainbow anything ever again, especially sprinkles. The good news is, you can enjoy your favorite ice cream topping, but you need to man it the fuck up a few dozen notches. Rainbow sprinkles will never be a part of the Coffee and Scotch vernacular, but chocolate shots might have the girl behind the counter looking at you like a fresh piece of man-meat. It's all about the image. You didn’t mention anything about sugar cones versus waffle cones, but let's not open Pandora's Box of De-Pussification all at once sprinkles.

The Truth Hurts

      Well here we are, ten weeks into this blog writing experiment and it’s been ten weeks of sarcastic, opinionated, belittling, bitter dross. I thought this might be an apropos time for a little change of direction. I don’t have it in me to be any less abrasive, but like Frost’s famous traveler, I thought I might choose the other path this week and try turning the tables on myself. It’s entirely possible that I’m a giant loser. Honestly, my hobbies aren’t exactly what the cool kids are doing these days and looking back on things, I suppose they never were. I’m sure you’re thinking  I must be taking some creative license here, in order to have a little fun at my expense, but I’m afraid what you’re about to read is the whole truth and nothing but. Hopefully, any of you I’ve alienated over the past few months will consider this, my autobiographical comeuppance, as satisfactory recompense. Or, quite frankly, you can go fuck yourselves and say hello to your therapists for me this week, you insecure losers.

Waiting for a match in World of Tanks.

      Hi, my name is Brad, I’m 33 years old and I spend entirely too much time on my computer contributing nothing to society. That’s one of our big imaginary goals in life right, contributing to society? I can’t just be a selfish prick, I have to make sure every dirt farming African villager has clean water and a sack of beans to eat? Unfortunately for starving Africans, I’m more interested in my own little delusional Facebook world, which is ironic because I’m not much of a socialite. Frankly, I don’t give a shit about you, less so if you live someplace I have to spin the globe to find, and you don’t give a shit about me. So why do I do it? I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve become obsessed with playing Facebook games, which has created a compulsion to be online that should have me institutionalized. Sure, I’ll harvest your watermelons, join your mafia, and help you assemble the Vorpal Bastard Sword of Virgin Slaying. I also like to whore out this atrocious blog, which I’m inwardly grateful but outwardly aloof about you reading. I don’t want to seem needy but I like the idea that a few people like reading this garbage I’m churning out. Beyond Facebook games, I find entirely to much pleasure in other computer games, most of which involve me dying endlessly to 13 year old computer hackers from around the world. Anyone better than me is obviously cheating, fucking noob-tubers. I’ve met and been killed by people from places my Social Studies teacher couldn’t find on a map. I’m essentially 33 going on 15 and as much as I know I should be growing up, I’m fighting it with every fiber of my juvenile, irresponsible, lazy being. I’ve wasted an incalculable number of hours of my life accumulating a treasure trove of pixels, with absolutely nothing tangible to show for it. My admittedly thin defense is a quote from T.S. Eliot I fall back on like the French fell back on the Maginot Line, “time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time.”

The big guy in the middle is my Gold Severum, Fred.

      Coupled with my moonlighting as a closet gamer, I’m an avid tropical fish enthusiast. That doesn’t sound so bad until you try using it as an ice breaker at the bar, “So, you wanna come back to my place and check out my sump filtration?”. I have a 150 gallon freshwater reservoir in my living room, which serves as a constant reminder of my wife’s tolerance with my eccentricities. While video gaming puts me in a social bracket with teenagers, keeping a fish tank slides me to the other end of the spectrum; into the early bird special, Sansabelt slacks, buy a Cadillac and retire to Florida crowd. The big problem for me is I have a bit of an obsessive personality. I can’t just throw a few goldfish in a bowl and be satisfied. When the desire to do something arises, like setup and maintain a fish tank, I fully commit myself to the project and set about doing it on a grand scale. Custom Starphire glass tank built in Texas, plumbed and configured in Rhode Island, delivered and installed in Connecticut...check. Anything less than what I feel is the best is not worth the time, effort and money put into doing it. Perfection is a demon I live with everyday, pity me.

Searching for my dignity...

      Lastly, and also chronologically my most recent endeavor, comes the desire to go out and buy a metal detector so I can be a beach bum this summer. This one leaves me scratching my own head and I really have no idea where the impulse to do it came from. I’m certain my inner philanthropist wants to discover a trove of Civil War era relics to donate to some lucky area museum. Honestly, this hobby trumps the other two put together on the scale of lame-assity. There’s been more than one time already where I’ve been down at the beach metal detecting and I’ve noticed some awkward looks from people. Frankly, I can’t blame them. I know full well I look like a giant toolkit with my wannabe DJ headphones on, stumbling up and down the beach with the intensity of Jacques Cousteau probing the seabed 100 meters down for a chest full of Spanish doubloons. If bottle caps were quarters, I’d be rich by now. Actually, if I had a nickel for every girl at the beach who reached into her purse to make sure she had her mace when she saw me coming, I’d really be rich by now. Could the true value of a metal detector be it’s secondary function as a chick magnet? Only time will tell but unless getting tasered is a new form of foreplay, things aren’t going so well.

Image Is Everything: Obey Your Thirst

     Last week I started a new job at a Hedge Fund. It’s my first time working for a Fund, but I’ve been in the financial industry most of my professional life. Finance is generally a nice niche to work in, as the money attracts talent and the talent encourages the companies to invest in employee retention, which is just bullshit corporate jargon for not treating the people you rely on like shit. Anyway, my department has an overzealous, still wet behind the ears intern who likes to tag along with me to the kitchen in an attempt to tap into my vast pool of technical knowledge. Whilst on a recent foray into our sectors designated kitchenette, said intern and I got into a conversation regarding beverage selection and the image associated with what you choose to drink. The refrigerators in the office are teeming with choices; sodas, waters, seltzers, energy drinks, juice drinks, sports drinks etc. We got into a conversation about what the other chose to drink, which trailed us back to the dim sector of our office where they banish the IT group, and quickly enthralled the other acolytes of the Church of Coffee and Scotch. As my devotees imbibed the sermon I was preaching from my full-time cubicle/part-time pulpit, I knew with divine certainty that I had a message I needed to chisel into the stone of the Internet, like a modern day blogging Moses.

     Your image is an extension of who you are, where you’ve been, and where you hope you’re going. It’s outwardly evident in many ways, but in true Coffee and Scotch style I’m focusing on the relationship between what you drink, and what you want people to think of you. Stopping at Starbucks on your way to work for a grande, decaf, extra hot, soy milk latte with no whip? Look in the mirror, do you see a pretentious douchebag behind the wheel of a Saab wearing designer sunglasses? This is the part where you lecture me about what safe cars Saab’s are while I’m tea-bagging your grande, skinny, iced, carmel macchiatto, which happens to be the perfect temperature for cooling my balls off on a hot summer afternoon. Do you really need to spend five bucks on a shitty cup of coffee that tastes like burnt vegemite or do you just need the other people in the office to know that you can afford to? Hey, instead of that hippie hangout, full of wifi loving yuppies banging away at their Macbook Pros, commanding an army of zombie barista’s in green aprons, maybe you’re stopping at Dunkin Donuts on your way to work instead. Ordering coffee there is a hell of a lot simpler, but the odds that your job involves wearing a shirt with your name on it quadruple when you drink your morning joe from that vaunted white styrofoam cup with the orange and purple letters emblazoned proudly on it. You can swap out the Saab for a van with a 1-800 number on the side and a “How’s my driving?” bumper sticker on the back too. Have you seen a lot of construction sites littered with Starbucks cups recently? Dunkin Donuts is working class coffee that keeps America running, served by little old ladies wearing brown visors and smiles.

     The astute reader is probably ready to ingest my thoughts on scotch drinking but I think a more appropriate libation for this dissertation is beer. You know that moment standing at the cooler in the package store, trying to figure out what the hell to buy? It’s the same feeling you get when you’re in a crowded bar staring at the tap handles like a monkey staring at the keys on a typewriter, trying to crank out some iambic pentameter. Beer is all about image and you don’t want to make a bad impression. I thought it might be helpful to break down a few bad beer decisions, so you don’t blow your limited opportunities at landing some skanky bar meat this Friday night. The average bar is filled with potable pitfalls for the unwary, and the tube tops are sizing you up as soon as you walk in the door. So when the bartender, who is the odds on favorite to be the hottest chick in the place anyway, asks you “what will it be?”, don’t fuck it up right away and order a light beer. If you order a beer based on how many calories are in it, or worse how many carbs it has, you might as well just go home now, sit on your left hand until it falls asleep and enjoy a few blissful minutes with the stranger. Don’t order a fucking Bud or Miller either you hillbilly, unless you’re looking to go home with the toothless chick rocking the Dale Earnhardt t-shirt and you don’t mind getting your freak on in the bed of her pickup truck. I’d also advise pumping the brakes if you’re ordering a beer that comes with any kind of fruit garnish. Strictly speaking, I wouldn’t drink a Corona if I had a mouthful of fire ants and nothing to wash em out with except the aforementioned beer or a bucket of warm donkey piss. If you’re a recent burrito convert or it’s Cinco de Mayo and you need to go south of the border for your beer, stick with a Dos Equis. I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I make sure it doesn’t make me look like a pussy. Incidentally, no matter what beer you ultimately decide on, if it comes in anything but a pint glass or maybe a mug, you should pour it on the bar, light it on fire, and go someplace else. That shit really pisses me off. Nothing says, “I’m not gonna get laid tonight” more than sitting at the bar drinking a light beer with a lemon wedge floating in it, out of some kind of over-sized brandy snifter. Good luck out there single guys.

Can It Be A Vacation Without Chevy Chase?

This is not my topless neighbor or the UPS chick.

        So I’ve been between jobs for the last couple of weeks, which is to say I’ve been sitting at home in my underwear, growing a beard and eating cereal three times a day for the last couple of weeks. Incidentally, since I despise laundry, its been the same pair of underwear for about 14 days now but I did turn them inside out after the first week to keep them fresh. I kind of feel like I’m on Survivor without the bad-ass teal bandanna “buff”. I’m not sure if I’m a villain or a hero yet but I formed a strong alliance with the pizza delivery guy, the UPS chick and my retired neighbor/crossing guard, who in true Survivor fashion doesn’t wear a shirt nine months out of the year. I’ve named our tribe Nosferatu because I’ve fallen into the classic vacation pattern of sleeping all day and staying up all night hunting for boobs on Cinemax. I planned ahead and bought enough milk and Fruity Pebbles to hold out for the duration and using the same bowl and plastic spoons saves me from doing dishes. It seems my laziness is highly motivated. There’s no need to start sending me donations via Paypal to ensure I can continue brightening your dreary lives every week. I have something lined up and I’m starting my new gig on Monday, the day this blog hits the press, and I thought this might be an appropriate time to share what I’ve learned from my time on unemployment Redemption Island.

I thought "Dutch" was a good movie.

        I’d like my staycation shockumentary to be a cautionary tale for all the teenagers out there who are trying to get pregnant so they can be on MTV’s newest craptacular show about transgender amputee high school students from Bumblefuck, Arkansas who are pregnant and cooking meth in their double wide trailers. Don’t do it! Kids are hard work and there is no way you can prepare for the rigors of graduating from Sweet Valley High, maintaining your 2.0 GPA and training to be a pixie dust spreader on the tilt-a-whirl, while taking care of an infant. While I was working a full time job I did the typical evening and weekend super Dad stuff; sweep in at the end of the day for bath time and bed time, order pizza for dinner, stick my hand down the front of my pants in true “No Ma’am” style, watch some TV and call it a day. Being home 7 days a week has given me a fresh perspective on what it means to be a parent and what it takes to care for a child full-time. My hats off to my wife, my mother and all the other parents out there. Abstinence is the best policy, but if you accidentally slip one past the goalie, consider yourself warned.

        I’m fairly certain that 85% of all work that is done in the universe occurs before McDonald’s is done selling breakfast. This isn’t strictly a vacation related phenomenon, but the severity of the problem is amplified when you’re sleeping until 10:00 everyday. Every time I have a week or more off from work I tell myself I’ll drag my ass out of bed by 8:00 and try to maintain a normal schedule. By the second day I’m staying up until 2:00 and sleeping until 10:00. I’m rolling out of bed with maybe an hours worth of usable, productive time to spend. Assuming no occurrences of rectal tenesmus, I’m ready to roll in about 15 minutes, leaving me with a solid 45 minutes to get shit done per day, giving me a grand total of 450 minutes per two week vacation. Frankly, I’m downright astonished with the amount of things I’ve managed to take care of with such a brief amount of time available. After crunching the numbers on it, I can understand the shocked looks on my wife’s face when she comes home from work to see what I’ve managed to accomplish with a mere 45 minutes of labor a day. On behalf of men everywhere with growing honey-do lists to accompany their growing prostates, to the wives of said men, with shrinking patience and shrinking understanding, you’re welcome for all the hard work. We hope you appreciate it.