Gym Gremlins

Why are there so many weird people at the gym? It never fails. Every time I step through those doors, I find myself in some foreign land, surrounded by weirdos who looked like they crawled out of holes in the ground. Now I know you're thinking, "Didn't you praise weirdness in a previous post?" Yes. Yes I did. But I should have clarified . . . there are good weirdnesses and bad weirdnesses. Weirdness is ubiquitous, no doubt, but it takes a skilled mind to discern the difference.

Remember Doc Brown and Marty McFly? There was a guy the other day who looked like Doc Brown, working out his shoulders with free weights. He has this silvery, white explosive hair, he looks wiry and lanky, and wears multiple layers of sweats that he presumably cut into weird shapes with the same pair of scissors he used to murder people before storing them in his basement. Hey Doc Brown, why are you pumping so much iron? Shouldn't you be spending that time refining your flux capacitor, or building an electric conductor to attach to the clock tower so Marty can get back to 1985 and avoid being perved on by his nubile mother?

But last week, I saw the weirdest guy, hands down! To define his appearance doesn't do him any justice, but I'll make an attempt regardless. Let's start with his feet. Leather flip-flops. Then he had a pair of tight black biker shorts that went halfway down his thighs, adorned with neon-green stripes down the side. Into these shorts, he tucked his spaghetti strap-like tank top. I say spaghetti strap because there was virtually no fabric in the front or back. He had a strap over each shoulder, attached to a strap over his belly and a strap over his back, all tucked into his biker shorts. He must have been in his 50's because his pale mole-covered skin was worn and somewhat floppy and he was covered in a coat of coarse, nappy blonde hair. He sported a blonde moustache that curled around his mouth to make a quasi beard. But his hair was the weirdest part. I must have done 10 takes at his hair because I wasn't sure if it was fake or not. I realized after awhile that it couldn't have been fake, because nobody would ever pick out a wig like that. His hair looked naturally reddish-blonde, but the top layer was dyed...get this....CARROT ORANGE. We're talking baby carrots too. Regular carrots have a more earthy orange color, partly because their just dirty, but baby carrots have a bright orange color. And such was the color of his hair. He also had a BOWL CUT. Rembmer how cool those used to be?? On kids?? It literally looked like he cut a bunch of hay, glued it to his head, beat up a bunch of carrots in a Magic Bullet, and poured it over the top. Even worse was the back region leading to his neck. On bowl cuts, this part was supposed to be shaved. His hair here was definitely shorter, but it looked like he tried to cut it himself without a mirror. Parts were longer than others, you could see a "shingle" effect, and the end result looked like he slept on a weed wacker. He had a red flip phone that he was charging at the gym, and between each set, he'd pick up the phone, dial someone, and talk about the importance of education as loud as he could. WTF??? When I passed by him, his body odor was so severe, it hurt to breathe through my nose.

That man, whom I call "Fry Kid," is probably a severe example, but why are there so many gremlins at the gym? It makes me never want to work out. Especially when I look at the guys who look like they're training to try out for the Packers. What are you training so hard for? Accounting? Selling insurance? Typing on your keyboard? Picking your butt? Make sure your pecs and abs are hard enough first.

Tale Of The Hosie (The Hobo Newsie)

Remember the Newsies? I sure as hell don't. Never watched the movie. But I do have a vague idea about what a newsie looks like. Picture a kid out of the 20's...maybe just in his prepubescent, or even teenage, years. He's a rebellious lad, and's he'sa gonna get a whippin' when he gets home, see? His poppa works in the steel mill and his momma feeds the family what she can. His attire ironically seems sought after by the modern-day N.Y. hipster who both prides and disillusions himself into believing nobody understands him. A pair of tweed knickers held up by suspenders and a dirty t-shirt. Possibly a tweed coat and a fisherman's cap that looks like he stepped off the wharf following a long trip to sea looking for fresh grouper. His face is smudged and grubby, yet it doesn't seem to mask the innocence of his cherubic features.

That is what I believe to be a newsie.

Picture this: Post-Incubus concert. Sunday night, August 21, 2011. I'm rocking my surfer wig that was freshly brushed to remove all the greasy clumps. 2, 24 oz cans of Bud Light deep, plus some pre-concert beverages. Feeling weird. Incredible, but weird. I was in a field of people listening to my favorite band of all time, basking in sonic glory, inhaling the faint scents of mesquite fires, grape tobacco, and weed. The air is warm, but slightly cool with the breeze. I am on a high I can't even describe...I feel as though I'm on another planet. To put it short, my brain is in another place.

After probably over a mile's walk back from the Peninsula to our RV, I find myself standing in a large, pretty much vacant parking lot. My wife is next to me as we wander to the other side of the lot which is cornered by two buildings. We notice a body, lying on the pavement in the fetal position. The head is resting on the curb and is facing away from us. His clothes looks pretty normal...slightly too big, and maybe a little unkept, but nothing out of the ordinary. Jackie is convinced the person is dead, that perhaps it was someone who drank too much at the show and passed out in a parking lot...she insisted he wasn't breathing. After closer examination, I could see a light rise in the chest and pointed out that this person was most definitely alive, and if anything horrible had in fact happened to him, he most certainly would not have fallen into a perfect sleeping position with his head resting gently on the curb. This stirs Jackie even more.

"Wake him up Josh!"

"What? No! What is going on here?"

"Josh...we have to do something! At least call police!"

"Why? What is he doing wrong? He's sleeping!"

"Well we have to make sure he's ok!"

At that moment, Beau walks up behind us, and after a brief explanation, he walks right up to the guy. "Hey! Hey buddy, you ok?" No response. What happened next will forever be seered in my memory. Beau again prods, "Hey man! You ok?"

In that very split-second the guy flies up out of his fetal position, directly onto his feet. Instantaneously, we all stumble back, and Beau literally jumps backwards as he screams, "Oh shit!" The man, clearly awake now, is staring at us. My heart is beating fast....I'm worried he has a gun. I look him up and down. He is tall and lanky...taller than me. His clothes appear much bigger now...they are baggy like the old pictures of hobos. His face is a little grimy and his hair is messy. His head is as round as a basketball and guess what? He looked like a Newsie!!!!

Beau says, "Hey man....you got somewhere to sleep tonight?"

The man stares at us and nods no.

Beau replies, "Ok. Well, you gotta figure that out."

We take off running, afraid of a potential violent aftermath. I continue to glance over my shoulder and notice that he is following us. As we load the RV, I proceed to the bathroom to poop, and I raise the blinds. I peer out and notice the hobo-newsie is walking in a 5-foot diameter circle in the parking lot. Round and round he goes. Lapping circle upon circle. Where is this guy going?? I wanted to give him food, but figured his brain was probably in a much weirder state than mine, and if given the chance, he might kill me and use me as a lampshade.

And thus is the tale of the hosie.

Let's Get Weird

I've been told I'm weird by many people in my life. In fact, it's a phrase I've heard more frequently the older I've become. I wondered how that could be, since most people seem to think the process of aging naturally grounds you.

But then I realized that maybe I'm not the one who's weird. Maybe I simply choose to acknowledge the oddities of this world more than the next man or woman. I recently watched a video Lewis sent, and there was a sheep with a sausage link tail (P. Deeny et al.) that was growing appendages out of its ass, all while throwing up sheep heads. And though it may have been a bit creepy and disturbing, I couldn't help but find it amusing.

The truth is, we all live in a weird world, and nobody is exempt. The world is full of wizards in bathrobes, deer nuggets, "pants" shirts, and chicken pelvis rhymes. The very fact that you exist on this planet means that the so called "weird" people are not the only ones privy to weirdness...you are too. It is always made available to us, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

What I find funny then, is the people who seem to disregard weirdness altogether. It's possible they're either in denial or they've somehow managed to subconsciously omit the weirdness entirely, and it never ceases to make me laugh. Next time you are in public, just listen to conversations and look at the people walking around. Everyone has "important" things on their minds...even people who think they are funny have an agenda to create this socially constructed environment of so-called comedy. But the truth is, they are all oblivious to the fact that at least one person in the crowd just finished wiping his cornhole, pushed too hard, slipped a didge inside, and failed to wash his hands thereafter. They all refuse to acknowledge the vast multitude of words that could be rhymed into a spur-of-the-moment pleabus poem. And they blanket their eyes to the Navajos asking for a bag of chips as a consolation for five bucks.

So what I must say to these people is...stop pretending and stop trying to glamorize your life. You have just as much sweaty, tangled grundleweed as the rest of us.

Chicken Bus.

Stall Wall Musings (Lava Snakes)

i sit here today with a mix of emotions. and red ass cheeks. i am angry, but i'm also afraid. i feel confused and anxiety-stricken as i think about the future. i feel cheated by those close to me. those who told me that a simple blob of body wash and a vigorous karate chop of the hand would solve all my problems and render me a fresh and renewed human being.

but today, i'm faced with the harsh cold reality of my anal expulsions. to make matters worse, i'm punished by the consequences from the same gruesome scene that took place the day before. this self-perpetuating cycle has made me afraid to defacate and has made me angry at the lies that were fed to me, both from friends and media. there isn't a day that goes by when i'm not told how much i need my daily fiber. did all those stupid constipated folks out there ever stop and realize that there are some of us who don't need a shovel's worth of fiber in our diets? it irritates me to think the FDA knows what my GI-tract really needs. f*** them. and let's not get me wrong here - i'm not your average immodium hd customer complaining about my sloppy brown puddles on tv. so don't think that i've got some kind of virus or stomach bug you stupid inconsiderate pleab.

to put it short, i'm plagued with lava snakes. these seemingly innocent turds come out looking like normal poop, but they are pastier and tapered in consistency (hence the reference to snakes), they feel hot (hence the lava), and they smell like the reaper knocking at your door. aside from their obvious foul nature, it's the consistency that really punishes you. you never get a clean cut so you're left with an asscrack that looks filled with the remnants of a melted burnt sienna crayon. i kid you not...the brutality of the vigorous wiping that takes place thereafter demands a half a roll of toilet paper...and this is the thin, mass-produced crap from companies like sysco. i look at the leftover roll and want to cry heavily into the consoling arms of the mother who birthed me. eventually i have to give up because i'm in so much pain, or the lady janitor, the old angry russian woman with terrible B.O., comes exploding through the door to scrub up the poop driblets from the previous guy who could have applied for one of those immodium hd commercials i was talking about...not to mention the dried up piss fungus from the retard who decided not to pee in the giant white target like a big boy, but rather aim his little peanut dick at the clean floor and defoul it with his coffee-smelling, dark yellow, viscous piss. what an asshat.

and then the following day, when you thought the storm cleared, it happens all over again...only this time your dirt star is terribly wounded like a soldier on the field. and you further massacre it with abrasive toilet paper as if to punish it for the gross malfeasance it committed the day before. why does it have to do that? why does my body, even on non-coffee days, insist on creating the most difficult, intricate, time-consuming process for me? i've double-checked my diet, and it's fine. the tp i use is fine, because the same happens when i'm at home using our own tp (which is like rubbing pillows in your butt...and you go through an entire roll in one sitting). a lot of times, i simply give up on the wiping and just have to wait til nighttime when i scrub it all out with bodywash, something i never had to do before.

this leads me to two conclusions. 1. i was never meant to bodywash my dirt star in the first place. i was told by two friends, who shall remain nameless, that an unscrubbed star was a disgusting one. well i'll tell you what...that didn't stop lots of hens from wanting to lick it back then. now, i've created the lubricated environment for poop to run wild like the elk of the northern plains. it sickens me. 2. i need to start eating saltine crackers now. my diet is fine, but i realize the need for substances that can really solidify my poop. saltines have always been my ally for this...saltines are like your friends across the large, ovular table at a United Nations meeting...they want peace, and they do the job it takes to make peace. (unlike coffee, which is like the weird, narcissistic prime minister that sits off to the side with a dirty, conniving look on his face...you just know he wants to do something bad). the problem, then, is that i must always maintain a constant supply and devote my monthly income to a plethara of saltines.

my bowel monologues are far too frequent, this i realize. but it's been a constant source of anguish for me, and it's time i do something. this is seriously affecting my daily life, and as i begin the healing process for lower intestinal tract, i will simultaneously strike down my wrath upon the two smelly asses that catalyzed this nightmare for me in the first place.

Hands

as i sit here in the early hours of my work schedule, i think about all that needs doing...all that needs to be done. i think of the purposelessness of writing sheer babble...drivel...banter. alas, i care not. i work in a job that demands 5% of my brain-power. i work in an open field with a wall and my job is to get to the other side of that wall. i spend my days walking around the wall, backwards even, so that i can get a glimpse of my coworkers feverishly tying knots and splicing together crude segments of rope using whale bones from a kill they made in order to splice rope. i just don't understand it. i don't understand all the fuss, the commotion. i remember being a small child, or even a teenager, and looking at adults as if they somehow had it all together...as if they represented accomplishment and ingenuity. now that i'm an adult, i look around me and realize 90% of these people are retarded.

i digress.

i come here to discuss hands. women's hands. the thought crossed my mind the other day as i was sitting in traffic, and i realized what a difference a woman's hands can be. now, there are a number of misconceptions women have about what makes women beautiful. many a time, you'll see a woman sporting 2 pounds of clown paint on her face, zebra stripes in her hair, and burnt skin nothing shy of an overgrilled ballpark hot dog. yuck. worse yet, there is a demographic of men that cater to this particular look, perpetuating its existence. perhaps this is a subject for another discussion.

i speak today regarding the delicacy of a woman's hands. chances are, if you are into the women i mentioned above, or you love the short, prepubescent-looking girls, you'll have no idea what i'm talking about. when you experience a woman's sleek, thin, and delicate hands, there is no comparison. the long, sloping fingers. the aerodynamic shape. the gentle curves. i can imagine those hands running through my hair and i get goose bumps!

on the contrary, if you've been wading through landfills, you probably spend quite a bit of time with pudgy, bloated looking hands with half-crusted orange nail polish falling off the ends of her fat, sausage like fingers. these are the hands that look like the top of a mcdonald's hamburger bun that's been sitting too long in the heater...a soggy, bloated bun with 5 lil' smokies shoved into it. next time you are getting some lovin', take a moment and analyze the woman you're with. does she have hamburger bun/lil smokies hands? do her fat fingers smudge your face when she's trying to be delicate? does she bat at your face with her chubby paws when she's trying to be romantic?

Escape From Beardy

He knew. I knew he knew. And I knew he knew that I knew. I could tell by that look in his eyes. And it was probably apparent given the swiftness of my feet and the look of panic across my sweat-ridden face...not to mention the cacophany of my digestive tract as I barrelled down the hallway.

Any other day, any other situation, and this wouldn't matter much. The problem was that he was lingering at the corner of the hallway that crossed the main hallway. And the cross-hallway provided the wall against the bathroom I called my own secret haven. It was ideally a place of solitary confinement...a place I could poop in piece, left to my own organic smells, tapping away at my phone, searching for 100+ point words in Scrabble. At least, that's what this place was intended to be. Since discovering my underground oasis, it's peace and purity have become defiled by the carelessness and putrid dirt stars of what I could only assume to be washed out degenerates. I say "assume" because I have never laid eyes upon these foul perpetrators; the closest I have ever come to seeing them was through the slits between the stall doors.

As I raced toward the door, the thoughts of these imposters lingering in my secret bathroom crossed my mind. But more importantly, the thought that Beardy knew exactly what I was going to do was weighing on my mind. His face ruddy and worn, presumably from the long summers he spent shucking corn and tending to the hens out in the stable. His flannel echoed many a Christmases and his white hair and beard trimmed neatly, reminding me of a well-kept Santa. And as I pondered over his brief yet vivid imagery in my head, I swung the door open to the bathroom, and bolted in.

To my surprise, nobody was there. Two stalls and two urinals and not a soul around. I quickly latched a door shut and furiously pulled tp off the roll to cover the seat. In my typical OCD fashion, I pulled off 6 seperate sections, 2 of each, all in different lengths. One section for the front trap with all the piss stains and pubic hairs. Two side sections for the thighs. To back corner sections for the butt cheeks and a rear section for safety reasons. Each layer was 2 ply thick because there was a chance of piss driblets on the seat, rendering the first layer nothing more than an absorbable pad. I quickly sat down, rang out farts reminiscent of heavy artillery, and dropped a few nuggets in relief.

The next 30 minutes were typical. My privacy was invaded 2 or 3 times by the inconsiderate a-holes who thought it ok to sit in a stall next to someone who's pooping. The foul and foreign odor of their excrements made me dry heave and thank the heavens that, even in my worse days of violent explosive diarrhea, my butthole was nowhere near that kind of stank. I listened to several pissers, a couple of which thought it would be great to hack up a huge spitball and dribble it into the urinal. The sound alone made my stomach knotty.

After I was convinced I had everything out, and I had finished playing all my Scrabble moves, I washed my hands and finished up in the bathroom. I exited the 2nd door feeling content and confident once again, only to see Beardy at the same corner, leaning against it, his arms crossed at his chest and a sumg look across his beaten up face. HE KNEW! He had been watching, waiting, surveilling. At that moment, my eyes shot to the floor in dejection and I picked up my pace like a dog running away with its tail between its legs. Sure I was being followed, I tore through the stairwell door and ran up the stairs as fast as I could. A few corners later, I relized I had lost him. I had escaped Beardy. This time.