Beer Burgers

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Puckle Gun.

Please note items 16 and 17 on the diagram.

Dear Shoeshine Guy:

I realize that I am, in fact, both white and somewhat drunk, but do I look like the kind of hopeless rube who will pay forty dollars for a lackluster shoeshine? And you actually have the nerve to complain when I give you five? I would advise you to either become a better judge of character, or find a new line of work.

Dear Young Mother:

Madam, I am sure you have nothing but the best intentions, and I certainly sympathize with your apparent desire to expose your children to some of the uglier realities of this world we live in, but since it is ONE IN THE GOD DAMN MORNING ON BOURBON STREET and there is a VERY REAL RISK THAT SOMEONE WILL VOMIT ON YOUR CHILDREN, I would advise you that you should take that STROLLER and wheel it back to your hotel, please. If your child is too young to walk a few blocks, it is probably too young to watch drunken skanks flash their breasts for plastic beads thrown by beefy, white hatted frat boys with streamers of beer-vomit running down their pink, collar-turned-up polo shirts. But that’s just my opinion.

BONUS LETTER:

Dear Girl I Went to South Africa With:

For the last three months, you have watched me gorge myself nightly on ungodly amounts of thai and indian food, cram my face full of vinegar-soaked french fries so greasy that they turn wax paper into a soggy mush in minutes, chug whiskey until I become incoherent and scream obscenities at the night sky, and driunk gin and tonic for breakfast on Sundays, and you are finally MAKING A STAND about my SELF DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR because I’m eathing the YOLK OF A HARD-BOILED EGG? Madam, I put it to you that you should be wearing a helmet.

Sincerely
Sam.

Well, my sister is leaving for Africa tomorrow. I just recieved a telegram from her. She is taking the boat train to Liverpool, and plans to hire a disreputable tramp steamer with a crew of coolies, half-castes, and other dockside ruffians. As I understand her plan, she intends to journey to Algeria, where the opium-addicted captain of the ship will allow a trio of black-clad assassins to creep into her stateroom and attempt to do her in with wicked curved knives. After escaping through the porthole and landing in the ocean, she will strike out for land and wash up on the shores of Morocco. Peniless and still pursued by a deadly conspiracy, she will make her way on foot to Tangier, disguised as a misinformed Arab making pilgrimage to Mecca in the wrong direction. Once there, she will make contact with an ancient, shadowy order of mystics, seeking a legendary artifact concealed deep in the interior of Africa, protected by an impassible desert filled with tribes of hostile nomads, deadly creatures, and, according to legend, nightmarish monsters. Armed only with her pith helmet, elephant gun, and her trusted bearer and bosom companion, the stalwart Umslopagaas, she will journey deep into the shifting sands of the Sahara in search of danger and the anwer to the riddle of life itself.

Either that or she’s teaching English to some starving Ether-Nopians or something. I can’t be bothered to keep up with this stuff. Seriously, though, it’s crazy to think that two years from now, when she is where I am in life, she will have had such a wildly different set of experiences. I’ve spent the last two years training to kill people and fly airplanes, and while I’ve endured my share of hardships, I can hardly imagine what she’s going to go through, or what it’s going to be like to get back to America after TWO WHOLE YEARS. I mean, good lord. But I wish her the best, and I am damn sure going to do my best to visit her. But who knows?

More importantly, however, I’m moving to a new appartment. Moving is a huge deal, especially when you are doing most of the work yourself. It’s always amazing to see just how much shit you actually own. All of my possessions are piled up in my living room in cardboard boxes, and I have no idea what’s in most of them, but the pile is huge. What is this stuff? When did I buy it? Do I really need to drag it down three flights of stairs and up another three? What if I just throw it all out, or set fire to it? What if I became a Buddhist monk? Don’t they have no material goods? What about the hats? Can I get one of those huge yellow hats? Those things rock!

I seem to have digressed, while still making the point I set out to make, so I’m just going to keep this wrecked train rolling and make one final point: I hate people. Not all people, just people in my appartment. I decided to move into a one bedroom place for this very reason, but right now an old friend from an early phase of flight training is staying with me, and although I love the guy to death, I can’t stand it. He is constantly on the computer and watching shit I don’t want to watch on the TV, and he invited another guy I don’t even know to stay, and this guy just flat out sucks. So I’m looking forward to Friday, when I will move into my new place, which will be pimped out as all hell if I have anything to say about it, and, as a matter of fact, I do.

So now that the Democratic National Convention and the Illinois Senate race have pushed Barack Obama into the national consciousness, two things have become clear. One is that I liked him before he became cool, you bandwagon pussies. The second is that this dude does not have long to live. Besides being the most promising leader the black community in this country has seen in a long time, his name rhymes with Osama, so even if you don’t believe in evil conspiracies, it’s not a big leap to figure that some wild-eyed redneck will decide that he is a secret terrorist and take him out with a high powered rifle. All of this brings us to one simple question: what can we do?

Well, I have a simple suggestion: Barack Obama Death Pool! Everybody puts in five bucks and picks a date and the winner takes it all. I’ll kick things off by going out on a limb with June 15th 2008. Sound off in the comments section and let’s kick this shit off.

P.S. Yeah, I’m back. What are going going to do about it?

If any of you really loves me, you’ll get me one of these. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

Also, if you’re not reading these you are a fool.

That’s all for now. Back to your regularly scheduled nothing.