i love people

Here is the complete text of the best conversation I've ever had via instant messaging. Nothing previous to this has been left out, and never have I mentioned a post office, ever:

GIRL: wow thanks for telling me what time the post office closed the other day-i appreciated that
ME: what?
GIRL: shut up
ME: what the hell are you talking about
GIRL: QUIT YELLING ! why don't you mind your own business !

No dice.

Unless you're retarded, you remember DonkeyLips from Salute Your Shorts.



Michael Bower has since tried to turn himself into something else, but sadly has failed. What's worse is he probably thought this was going to work.

Here he is takin' it to the streets.


Feelin' kinda sassy


Based on the last two pictures, may seem hardcore or rigid, but he's got a playful side, too


Mr. Lips, your plight is one shared by many child actors and one you cannot overcome. You're donkeylips. If there was something I could do to help, I would. Porn might work out, or going around telling kids not to do drugs. Other than that, you could sell cars or cellphones or something like that. Denial is never good, nor are those shoes.

Info-matic (not especially funny)

A week or so ago, I had a very informative day. I learned about a kind of grass that emits a protein that makes the balls of a kind of vole bigger. This in turn makes more voles, which eat a kind of shrew that eats the grass. The grass lives and the voles have big ol' balls, everybody wins (except for the shrew). Evolution is so neat, and proves its neatness every day. Something that astounds me all the time is the denial people have for evolution, and their one-dimensional perspective when it comes to how things came to be.

When I was a kid ( so many of my paragraphs start out like that), we used to get books from Klutz press that were centered around having fun as a kid. They had great ideas on how to piss off adults and play childish pranks, and do crafts and magic tricks and all kinds of great kid stuff. They put out science books too, because science is really fascinating and kids should be allowed to realize this. Such a science book by Klutz was called Explorabook, which had a page on evolution. It briefly explained things using a picture of a monkey and a picture of Tom Cruise (har), but my dad wrote on it:

"Note: this page is not true. Love, Dad"

I know why he did it, but it wasn't a good fight to have gotten himself into. Most kids have an easier time with evolution because it's just really cool, while biblical origins of the universe are wordy, boring, and full of rules and dialogue. I myself don't like listening to speeches about how fucked I am for being who I am and thinking what I think , so I don't think kids are going to be much better at it than I am.

Another thing I learned about on the radio that same day I spoke of was religious extremism. There was an interview with a guy who had spoken with suicide bombers who had failed at their missions for various reasons. He described one man in special detail since he had been really affected by him. He said the guy was almost sociopathic, and was completely detached from everything. He was so immersed in religion and so ready for the next world that he "was already dead."

Having given up on planet Earth, he was going to kill as many people as he could and go home to his 777 virgins in the sky. This disturbed me, that a person could remove himself from reality like that, and have his frame of thought be in a place completely unlike a normal person's. It was like the last day of school for him before summer break, and all he had to do to go home and play in the sprinkler was to kill the class hampster and run out the door. His imaginary way out was so real that he operated under a different dimension's parameters while still here.

I then thought about how I knew people who were in a similar frame of mind, but who were obviously far less militant. Sure, the above person's situation is not normal, but his kind of judgements are quite near those of people I've known. These people have saturated their consciousness with religion or other dogma so deeply that they do not have but the last remnants of a personality. They have a glazed over look in their eyes as if high, a far off expression in front of a mind taken away to the afterlife. They're the zombie kids on TBN and the ones celebrated in Jack Chick comics. They have nothing much interesting to say because they don't think on their own at all anymore. These people who are "already dead" no longer belong on the planet and want to go to their own some place else. I'd wave them goodbye if I could because I feel at home here.

It takes a certain kind of person to achieve this, a certain kind of blind, naiive passiveness. They are not only the same kinds of minds that can become suicide bombers, but also the same kind that join cults or PETA or sit at home scared by whatever Rush Limbaugh tells them to be scared of. Maybe they need to be sheepish and be told what to do, but since they're so immersed they are far more impressionable and this can turn in a very bad direction given the wrong circumstances.

I make no generalizations with this, saying faith is entirely bad, which it is not. It is really, really important in the best of ways for a shit ton of people. I have friends who would be bad places if it were not for their faith. What I am saying is there are people who are so emotionally and mentally vulnerable that faith is just a bad idea. They turn into suicide bombers and make their kids into suicide bombers to follow right after them. Islamic extremism is, in itself, an evolved form of religious extremism that Christianity has not encountered. To me, there is not a lot of difference between these two sons of Abraham, just that the guns, germs, steel and time have turned one into the radical bullet party that it is now considered to be. As a consequence, the normal people who need and use faith and who try to exhibit the principles of it are left to take the brunt of the criticism since they're the only ones who haven't strapped C4 to themselves yet.



On that same informative day, there was a show about a guy who was being recorded helping his Grandpa out on his 100th birthday. In the scene recorded, he's helping the old man get dressed:

Man:"Hey, Grandpa, you got your jacket? It's right there. Looking good."
Man's Grandpa: "GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE, GODAMMIT! GO, GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!"

Hank doesn't like Anne Geddes or Anything She Represents

Besides Asians, the biggest cause of overpopulation in the world today is Anne Geddes. Looking at her photography makes women want to force their husbands into making more children in the hopes that their baby will wind up in as precarious situations and poses as Anne would put them in if she had the chance. Women are probably lined up outside of her door trying to give her their babies so she can do embarassing shit to them for money. Here are some examples of Geddes' stupidness:

Most people use cradles, Anne. You use whatever is laying around and happens to be in emotional lighting. The one laying in the roses looks particularly uncomfortable.





Celine Dion loves all races, regardless of whatever shit is growing out of their back.


Gives new meaning to the term "Africanized" bees.


Baby calendar, or the Island of Dr. Moreau?




This is what it must be like in Thailand.



This one looks like an M.C. Escher tesselation. Except, you know, stupid.


This kid apparently wasn't cute enough to be dressed up like a cat or put on top of a giant tulip, so he hangs his head in shame. First thing he should do is get some work done on those big ears of his.


Better throw that'n back, my old fisherman friend.


"Chirp chirp! I'm a nasty-ass bird, swimming with disease!"



This kid will never go hungry.


Apparently someone was too old but insisted on coming to the photoshoot anyway. Attention whore.


Anne is probably trying to make a point here, but not getting anywhere.


This kind of muddiness happened to me at scout camp, but we didn't hug and hold hands like this and no one took that sort of pictures either. I feel sorry for kids like these that have to do shit that their weirdo moms want them to. They could be playing baseball or playing video games or killing dogs instead of being dragged into this.


Buy a bigger table next time. Or you could just put some clothes on the kid and put him in a real bed. Retards.


No comment.


See? This one is pretty defining: the more babies, the better. Girls love babies so much that they wish they could go in this picture and just toss these little dudes around all day because they're just that great. Maybe somebody should start waking all these babies and get some damn work out of them.


Anne Geddes is estrogen run amock with a camera nearby. Sheesh.

Dear Hank....

Dear Hank,
What if there was a chinese guy a hundred feet tall?
Sincerely,
Penelope Cosgrove




Great question, Penelope. Lots of people are tall. Whites, blacks, even mulattos. Some kinds of people, though, are very predictable in their stature, including the Chinese. People say they're the biggest population on Earth, but they look pretty short to me. Ha! Seriously, may god never damn us with a one hundred foot tall Chinese guy. Let's put on our thinking caps and pretend he did...

1. Yao Ming would suddenly feel very inadequate, shutting himself in and eventually resorting to suicide.
2. He would sell out to a shitty Chinese buffet and stand out by the four-lane waving for people to come in.
3. He'd probably eat a lot of Chinese food, but that joke is a little easy so I'm just going to skip it.
4. He'd build a lot of railroads in a short amount of time, kind of like a chink John Henry

So to sum up, Penelope, the change in the world due to this hundred foot tall Chinese guy would be so inconcievably radical that we would just have to kill him to avoid destroying ourselves.


Captain Hank is a regular contributor to Hank's Hefty Helpings, as well as badass extraordinaire and author of his own series of pre-teen mystery novels. If you have a question for Dear Hank, send by e-mail to gumbobiscuits@gmail.com.

from hell to hell-arity!

When you're in a truly weird or shitty situation, corresponding emotions go from anxious to apathetic to pissing yourself with laughter. Perhaps standards for what is weird or strange may change throughout life, but you should still experience them. I hope I am never desensitized to where nothing catches me off guard and break out into laughter, because I'll feel blue about it.

I once went to Taco Bell for some delicious treats from south of the border. The wait was really long despite few customers, so apparently someone was screwing up in the back of the kitchen. Working at the food-construction zone was a deaf guy. He wasn't just your normal, run-of-the-mill quiet type. He was a show-off and wanted to entertain everyone in the busy restaurant. Problem was, he wasn't very good at it and simply made things even more uncomfortable. His jokes mainly consisted of wiping his brow with a "WHEW!" look on his face and then smiling and waiting for us to laugh. We didn't. Then he would pretend to yawn, and pretend to throw down his taco gloves in a fit of rebellion. Still no response from the audience. If he had stopped his scampish mimery, I might have had my double decker tacos a little sooner, and not had to stand near the counter with my reciept listening to "Private Dancer" by Tina Turner. Sweet Jesus is that song horrible.

So there we stood as the anxiety grew and grew and I just started laughing. The deaf guy thought I was enjoying his show so he stepped up the intensity even more. This made everybody else really mad that someone had encouraged him, so they all gave me really mean looks as my food was finally called. Fuck everyone.

Worse is when this kind of situation goes from fear to laughter, and you are then afraid that your laughter is going to get you killed. I worked as a City Maintenance Technician for my hometown in Tennessee, and is tied for the worst job I have ever had (see previous post "together, realizing potentials"). You know how dads drive along and say to their kids, "See that guy? If you don't go to college, that's what you'll be doing with your life,"? I was that guy. I had to weedeat in highway medians all day long during one summer, while my friends with much better jobs drove by saying, "Hey, whatcha doing?" I would then flip them off, because friends don't make fun of friends for making terrible decisions.

I worked with several people, some college students like me working for the summer, and some worked there year round. These two groups didn't mix very well. We stayed pretty polar the whole season, so sometimes we were forced together for the sake of simply getting more work done.

One man we had to spend considerable lengths of time with was Henry. He had an obvious anger problem, and was probably pretty lonely judging by all the talking he did. He was also a poorly maintained diabetic who loved cigarillos. Henry was a tractor driver, until the day he was relieved of that position for running over a mechanic who sat in his chair in the break room. This is true. After that, Henry was one of the underlings like us, so we had to get used to his constant, tense presence. His best story, though, was how he was "run off the road" by a Greyhound type bus. He pulled over and got his pistol out. Then a different (but same style) bus drove by and he started shooting at the back of it, trying to blow out the engine.

So since Henry was so possessive of his break room chair and all other work involved commodities, we decided to get a laugh by toying with this face. First, we put a salt shaker on the table right in front of his chair, and sprinkled a pinch of it on the table, too. An hour later, we found the salt shaker broken in half on the other side of the room. Then we took his vest and moved it from one part of the truck to another, and were going to see what happened next. This was a bad idea. Henry started screaming for his vest and did something that gashed his fragile skin open on the back of his hand. We laughed, oh god why did we laugh. "Where is it, godammit!"

"Oh, here it is. Oops.", we said as we pulled out of a pile of dirt and rocks. He didn't think it was too damn funny.

This same guy would sit with us in the truck, avoiding work, and talk about basically everything he could describe with words:

"Now my daddy's cousin, they don't know what killed him. Now I think it was the stab wounds. And my brother back in '84, he died in a wreck. He's just out drinkin'. Just like that fella that was in all them movies. Damn movies. I used to rent so many movies down there at that Short Stop Market. Buster's it used to be called. Every day I'd rent up about five or six of 'em, take 'em back the next day and get six more. I seen every movie they had down there. I used to be get them porno tapes. But I got so damn bored by it, it's the same damn thing every time. Then I used to rent up them horror movies. Hell my neighbor came over with his wife and she got so scared she started screamin' and what not to where he hit her and kicked her out and..."

You can see how this begins to reach critical levels pretty fast. I began to laugh and Henry got mad, and so the circle of life went, around and around.

In retrospect, these people may have been crying out for help, or something hidden and significant. If they did, though, I was probably trying not to make eye contact or wondering how I was going to empty my bladder without anyone noticing. Life is hard like that.

Silly Business 3-D

Once in a while you see something that is initially acceptable/great/hilarious/comforting, but upon further investigation is indicative of something more dark and deceptive. An example of this is an ongoing project pursued by my stepbrother Carlos and myself for the last eleven or so years.

Garfield is a fat and furry feline created by Jim Davis in 1978, and is not funny. We took the initiative to modify this cartoon, inserting homosexual innuendo (which evolved to explicit acts) and absurdist humor. Allow me to begin with a sample:






Noticable characteristics include Jon's repeated changes of physical state, inexplicabe bowtie and drinking problem, and Garfield's homonid morphology and speech capability. It may lead to hilarious consequences, but you have to consider the source for a moment. No ganja went into the production here, just hours and hours in a stuffy United Methodist church.

The church in question was primarily attended by old people, which is fine. Statistics show that old folks' church attendance, spirituality, and the like all contribute to a longer life span which makes complete sense to me. Go for it, old dudes. The problem arises when a church where these are the only members envelopes different demographics that do not fit in. Enter Hank and Carlos. We sat in Sunday school and in church every week and I'm proud to say we kept our personalities intact. We made light of every boring thing we could and were damn good at it. There was enough nervous laughter, strange potluck food, forced conversation, and awkward silence to make one lose hope. Garfield cartoons were the result of our oh-so-necessary coping.

Actually, they didn't begin there. The first one ever was a picture made at home of Garfield looking dissatisfied (as usual, that old scamp! Ha!) looking at the reader saying "My dick and balls fell off, must be a Monday."I showed it to Carlos, who laughed, and returned with a picture of Garfield with his dick going over his head and going back up his ass. Not to be outdone by each other, we wound up making a booklet called Garfield's Funniest Outtakes. It was pretty fucked up. The real extension, though, did come on Sundays at church. Our preachers were usually bad and not interesting so we drew, naturally. When things got settled in we would grab a stack of paper and just churn those babies out. If something odd or funny happened, it was integrated into the Garfield universe. We'd give them to each other at the end or when no one was looking and giggle and sweat as quietly as we could manage. Itchy hot church clothes, visiting families with hot daughters, lame guest preachers/groups all added to the tension and requirement for obscurity.

Here is an oddly poetic example Carlos made from a template in the children's church bulletin:





About the pastors for a moment: The preacher when we first got there was a fat lesbian named Jan. Her coming there made a lot of people leave and there were few remaining members. She was replaced by Jim, who was pretty decent but had frequent guests come in instead of doing sermons. This meant a lot of drifting weirdos preached to us, like Clown Communion. This was two people, truckers, who went from church to church dressing up as clowns and doing a mime act. The husband did most of it, where he first did motions of regaling and happiness like saying "Yow! Wow! Yay, yippee!" with his face and arm motions. He picked up a piece of bread and cradled it like a baby. You know, like Jesus. Duh. Then he got really sad and broke the bread in two. He pretended to cry. People in the congregation cried too, but they weren't miming. After Jim, there was Fay. She is a nice woman, but has her limits of tolerability. Once she decided that all the kids in the church (me, Carlos, and three other kids about 5 years younger than us) should bring their musical instruments in and play music for the whole church. She called us up early in the morning before church and we were told to bring our musical instruments, which were a trombone for me and a saxophone for Carlos. The choir director was put in charge of this and she didn't want to do it anymore than we did. To get back at Fay, we played all non-Christian songs: My Dreidel, She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain When She Comes, and Skip to my Lou. We practiced for about 20 minutes until Carlos said that we "should stop now because I don't want it to be any better than this." During the performance we couldn't stop laughing and would purposefully place little blurts and squeaks in with the music to make it seem "cute" for the old folks. Everybody was pissed off we didn't play Christian music but we didn't give a fuck. The monkeys did their little dance for their entertainment, so they could just screw off. Also, if Fay saw you look at your watch during her sermon, she would extend it for another fifteen minutes. Not cool.

So this is the kind of shit we put up with via Garfield cartoons, and it worked really really well. Garfield would fuck somebody and say something stupid, problem solved. Odie would eat someone's balls, therapy finished. It was great. And you can really see it looking through them.
In this one, we can tell Carlos had a book report on William Faulkner:





(I've chosen not to display the homosexuality-riddled cartoons because the picture server would kick it off, so poo on them. )

We just weren't satisfied with such few characters to use in our cartoons despite having plenty from real life to choose from. Here's some of the ones we made up, among many.

Marfield-Garfield with bigger manboobs and long, blonde hair. Garfield killed him.
Jarfield-Garfield trapped and suffocating in a large jar
Numberfield-surrounded by numbers of various fonts
Nigfield-black
Farfield-Garfield who is just really far away and waving
Futurefield-several variations, pretty much Garfield in a cool future space suit
Garfieldoux-Cajun Garfield
Grarfield-the name we came up with for the whole project to avoid copyright infringment
Benny-a filthy, raving lunatic bum who befriends Garfield and the gang


Cartoons were fine and good, but why stop there? Why not make movies of your very own? Well we sure as shit did just that. We started out with a number called "Silly Business" where Garfield eats some lasagna, Jon yells, "GARFIELD" and they all dance. "Silly Business 2" featured Garfield drinking Drano, throwing it up, Odie eating the vomit, and Odie's brain shooting out of his skull (awesome, I know). Life evolves, and should Garfield, so then came "Silly Business 3-D", featuring an all clay cast of characters. The plot was mainly the characters standing, yelling, and falling apart on the table. A piece of paper that said "the end" on it surrounded by rainbows signaled the end while folk music played in the background. The Garfield Silly Business series will be on DVD in stores across America soon!

Garfield is now primarily generated by computer now, but the point stays the same.





Tradition holds true, and Garfield abides.

Amen.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while.

i remember...

Back at South Cumberland Elementary, we used to go to the library once a week to check out a book. The following week, we had to return it when the librarian called out our name and the title of the book we had checked out.

The librarian was a total bitch. In order to embarass her, my friends and I would check out the stupidest sounding books just so she would have to announce it.

Example: "Chris Brown; Hefty's Hot Air Balloon in the Land of Pickles...Josh Burgess; Darla's Dream Come True..."

The best was the Space Cat series, including Space Cat on the Moon, Space Cat and the Kittens, and Space Cat goes to Mars. We checked these out all the time, and I actually read one once. It was awful. Space Cat and his astronaut master/friend went to a planet with bubbles and caves and plants that could take on the form of other matter. Then they came home. Space Cat apparently recieved all recognition for the discoveries and the astronaut did not.

The library was full of similar books published in the 1960's and 1970's, about children overcoming yada yada and being awesome for something typical. Some books made me hate reading, which were the prairie model of children's books. These were meant to instill a sense of respect for how hard life used to be, how thankful we should be to be alive when we are, and were a reason to be quiet while teacher had a headache.

People back in the day had to go to market a jillion miles away, and would take a week to buy shit for the farm. When you finally got back your daughter had disentary and the mule was dead. This says to me not that you're a hard workin' man with dirt on his hands, pioneerin' for a dream that's just over the horizon. It says you should have stayed in South Carolina and fished. Life on the farm was lame, and I wanted to play Mario Bros.

But I digress.

I spent most of my library time checking out "Bigfoot" and "Bigfoot Across America". I must have checked those books out, especially the first, twenty or so times. They were great, including first hand accounts of people who encountered bigfoot, or who were even abducted by them. They explain why no one can find him and his origins. They include grainy, inabsolute photography and pictures where a brown blob was frantically trying to run up a hill. In addition to this book was one about all forms of supernatural phenomena across the world such as the Loch Ness Monster and the Mothman. Mothman was so fucking scary because he would jump on your car and try to come in through your windshield, or try to break into your house through the windows. Nessie couldn't do shit.

Sexual intercourse was an unstoppable force at South while I was there. The library had a giant dictionary that was always, and I mean during my entire 9 year tenure at that school, on the page with "sex" on it. Always. When the classrooms got the internet (and were thereby dubbed "21st century classrooms" by the powers at be), they did not have any kind of protective software. This was AWESOME. My best friend and I figured out a system to look up porn that everyone else knew nothing about.

On the Macs, we would have a "safety window", through which we surfed stuff like video games, online encyclopedias, and information on our book report on dinosaurs. It didnt' really matter. What mattered was that we had a smaller window that we would use to navigate the fledgling internet porn industry. "Lara Croft nude" was my first porn search, I distinctly remember this. We would sit in the back, all alone, for half the day and everyone just thought we were quasi-dorky. Little did they know how awesome we truly were and how envious they should have been. One of our teachers was so cool that, while she knew (or strongly suspected) what we were doing, she still let us do it. How great is that.

We eventually started saving our greatest hits to a floppy disk. One day we hit the jackpot and filled up an entire disk, but my friend thought it was wrong to save it. He erased the disk while I begged out loud for him not to. The next day he was smacking himself, because he had discovered an extremely important lesson in life: be strong through times of morality. We laughted when he came up with that way to put it because it was completely true. From that day forward we made fun of as much people as we could and climbed our way to excellence.

shit damn ass balls fuck damn butt hell screw

I just took a test for 8 straight hours. Do not get between me and whiskey right now, or the consequences shall be dire. Sorry for the shitty post, crew.

It was a day like any other

This morning my future sister-in-law woke up and found her bike had been stolen, and whoever stole it left their small, shittier bike with "L.A. Edition" written on the side of it. That way, you can show people your Western class and charm as you ride around.

THEN we find our back window had been opened, though not entered. All of this happened while we were asleep in the adjacent rooms.

We suspect a Mexican did all of this because 1. they passed up a much nicer bike next to my brother's fiancee's, and 2. a few years ago my brother had his bike stolen by a Mexican dude while the bike was in the exact same spot in the house. Dale spotted the guy a day or two later and asked him if he needed work. They both went to a bar Dale worked at with an enormous Hispanic bouncer, who Dale told to ask the guy where he got the bike. So Dale got his bike back, but I think it was stolen again later, I'm not sure.

I've nailed up another board across this window so no one can enter without really really wanting to. Phase two will be a booby trap, preferably spikes of some kind.
Dammit, now I have to put Punji sticks out to keep spics out of the house. I hate this fucking country.

On the way to the post office, I was followed by a rambling bum, and a transvestite was walking out of our house as I was walking in. I also found out a girl I go to school with was injured in the London bombings.

Sheesh.

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How to Create Your Own Army

There was a time long ago, when my reality was basically at a reverse of what it is now. Skinny now, I was once a porker. Now ready to take on bears and ligers, I was unsure of things pretty much of the time. Family life was rocky with the abrupt introduction to a group of soon-to-be relatives (my now stepsiblings who are some cool cats), and things are more or less leveled out. Also, I do not spend my time being the vent for the rage of redneck martial artists, while back in the day this was how I passed much of it.

I did not fit in at the studio, and for many reasons. As a chubby, nearsighted 12 year old, I didn't like the idea of having to run laps down the side of the highway and then forcibly meditating in the front yard of a trailer with drunk white-trash neighbors yelling and laughing at us the whole time. But that's just one of those things that everyone goes through in life, I thought, that everyone had to go through at some point. Just like everyone has to dig glass out of their feet, or find some way to stop peeing blood, or pull their larynx back out after somebody pushed it in practicing a move called "Passing the Horizon" on me in class.
Just the facts of life, fat boy. Get in the game.


All in a day's work for Scott, sensei and (probably self declared) 6th or 7th degree black belt. This was a man who didn't take no for answer and got what he wanted. The only problem was that what he wanted was his own army of prepubescent boys who could yank your spine out and sacrifice it to him. He trained children to finish off their attackers, usually by death but sometimes by simply pulling out their eyeballs. One move protected against someone grabbing your shoulder, but constituted a broken back, a shattered humerus, and loss of coherent speech for the dastardly villain who dare try it. I hope no little boy's grandmother slipped up a little too quietly from behind to get their attention, because some of those little fuckers could do some damage.

If you were to just step up to the dojo, you'd see lots of trophies, mirrors, and excited hillbilly kids with rattails kicking many things, principally other hillbilly kids. You would presume that this was one of those evil karate schools because of the black ghiseveryone had to wear, like someone who would be taking on the underdog cool karate dudes in a Disney movie. You would be exactly correct in this presumption. They weren't evil, just ignorant to advanced human emotion and thought like benevolence, charity, goodness, and not sucker punching children.

The routine as I came to know it started out in the first class with lots of punching imaginary criminals and going through some sort of gauntlet called the "Sidewalk of Death". Really. This was where we had to be blindfolded and walk down the line of the other students in the class, and then one of them would grab us in a very specific, prepared hold and say something like "HIYASAHHHT!", at which point we had to react with one of the handy and devastatingly powerful self-defense technique that we were taught earlier on. I didn't know any of these at this point, so I had to make shit up as I went along and basically did my best imitation of Ryu from Street Fighter 2.

"Heh heh, good job," the instructors said as I shamefully stood back in line in my tight, tight beginner's ghi. Then the sons of bitches decided to teach some more moves, with Scott the centerpiece of the demonstration. Kenpo is a karate with lots of little swipy, choppy moves to it, like playing the bongos or something like that. What it lacks in power it makes up for in showmanship. So Scott goes to the front with one of the other instructors as the bad guy. While Scott basically does ballet around the guy, the other instructor makes lots of faces that said "Ow, I really didn't see this coming!" and "Youch! Your crane stance has really gotten the best of me!" How dumb.

Each class was usually something like this, with lots of extended periods of meditating to Pure Moods. I must have listened to "Sail Away" by Enya and "Return to Innocence" by god knows who 75 times. Meditating was hard when you sat like they wanted you to, on your knees. Holy mother of fuck did this hurt. Also, Scott would tell tales of people who really knew how to kick some ass, including a guy who supposedly punched a bull that was running at him and its horns fell out of its head. One night he took a group of his best students and went to another dojo to start a fight with them. Nobody ever mentioned how this turned out.

At the beginning and end of each class we had to pledge our allegiance to the ways of Kenpo through the Kenpo Creed:

I come to you with only Karate! Empty Hands!
I have no weapons!
But should I be forced to defend myself! my principles! or my honor!
Life or death!
Right or wrong!
Then here are my weapons!
Karate! EMPTY HANDS!
KIYAAA!...

At this point the instructor clapped and we bowed like monks in a heap on the ground. How degrading.

Scott loved this shit. Even more so, he loved expressing his rage towards his class. Problems with his wife could be dealt with on a nightly basis via 35 people, young and old*. Simply longer periods of time in the "horse stance" that in no way resembled a horse, or about 100 extra rounds of "Chinese Corkscrew", which sucked. Another option was pushups. When I first started out there was an instructor named Bo who I am convinced is in jail somewhere. He just has to be. One night he made me do a ridiculous amount of pushups, getting on the ground and yelling/laughing, "Go boy, go boy! Do it, you ain't done!" I stopped where I was and I said "Bo,
I can't do anymore pushups. I'm done now." Bo was unhappy, but didn't say anything. He was possibly high and thought I was Duke Nukem or a talking chimp.

My stepbrother was more adroit at getting out of these especially shitty classes, saying he felt sick or whatever it fucking took. After a round of face-to-face pushups (because it would arise competitive instincts and make you an ass-kicking machine, of course), I yelled at him "HIYAAAAHSAAAHHT! I BEAT YOU!" Nobody was supposed to talk though, so he and I had to do extra. Sorry, dude. Also, he was cool enough not to lose his cool when Scott said to him "Did you order a cup yet? I bet you need an extra small! Aaaahahaha!"

To summarize, Kenpo sucked because of:

1. Pushups
2.Somebody stealing $100 from my stepbrother
3. Standing in the painful karate stance
4. Cupchecks, especially when your parents would not buy you a cup**
5. Pagan worship of a guy whose trailer is next door
6. The ballsweat smell in the men's bathroom



After an anticlimactic end, my tenure at Crossville Martial Arts was over. I started the gentlemanly game of tennis and really enjoyed it. I was no longer fat, which I owe to Scott. I also owe him a stick to the nuts and $600 in property damages after smashing his trophies through the window (Not really, but that would be pretty awesome. If anyone wants to do that, let me know). In retrospect, there are some things I learned from Scott Padgett. Not only moves like "Japanes Stranglehold" and "Opening the Cowel", but that if you want your kids to get exercise it would be cheaper and less traumatic to throw them in a fucking bull ring. That or meth.





*Many of the adults that took these classes had some serious problems. They always came in talking about their failing custody agreements and how they don't see their kids much, or how awesome Van Halen's 1986 tour was all the time. They thought Scott was a really together guy, mentally and emotionally. One dude said "KENPO POWER!" after every punch he threw in practice, even though the instructors told him not to.

**We had to stand in that damn stance again, in a big line while Bo and his nightstick went down the line. The "thock-thock" got closer and closer, and when he came to me Bo and I shared a glance that made it clear that my scrotum was open territory. "pip-pip" is the best way I can describe the sound, though the feeling wasn't so simple. I'm not saying Bo and his stick had a field day on my balls, but he did give them enough of a thwack to grant him a place on my shit list.

I changed the comments to haloscan for greater ease for all of you. Yes, I just care that much. On the other hand, all the other quotes are gone. But I'm sure you'll all come up with new wit and charm to display for us all!

Also, I don't know what the trackback thing is or how to turn it off. Insight may be helpful. You dudes rule.

all set

Yes, we all hate that phrase. But it does describe my new situation with my new computer and I'm reasonably happy so far. It's a Compaq and is pretty with its glowing lights and ambient hum. The only thing is that it's really slow sometimes and other times is fine. It's enough to drive a homeboy insane in the membrane!

that aside...

I would like a consensus of whether Garfield (or "Grarfield" as he is now known) ought to be addressed here or should that be lain to rest as representative of a screwed up era.

Thoughts and suggestions? Gracias.

technology sucks big donkey dick

Hey gang.

Just found out yesterday that I have to get a new computer and this will not be cheap. I will do my best in these circumstances to not effect the awesomeness of my written word here. Please be patient in these times of struggle.

Also, if you have a free computer, mail it to me.

-the management.