While we're in the mood for some more Jesus, why not consider the Roman Catholic Church? I've been thinking about just saying I'm Catholic. I'm not going to actually go on with the rest of it, kind of like getting more respect on a Sunday afternoon if you dress up like you went to church, but didn't actually go and sit through it.

The thought bounced around my brain yesterday when I went to my mom's church. It is in a small rural community called Big Lick, and is just about the most picturesque church you've seen. It's laughable how much it looks like an L.L. Bean catalog or Tennessee tourism commercial. I was attending the night service for Christmas Eve, which was two hours long. The service was standing room only, which was nice because that church deserves such positive attention. Everybody and their extended families showed up, equipped with screaming, sugar-filled children. God, those fuckers got annoying.

Moving on, Catholicism. First of all, you have the chicks. You just can't beat 'em, they're amazing. Second of all, if you could get married in a big cool cathedral and surround yourself with big flashy hokum all of the time. You could attend mass, but I don't really know what that would be like since I've never been. Most of the Catholics I know don't go to mass every often, so they couldn't say shit about me not ever going, which I would plan on happening. The architecture is undeniably impressive.

Among the bad aspects, you'd be absorbing responsibility for centuries of shitty ideas, dogma, theology, murder, and other stupidness. I took a class on the history of Western Civilization (required) where two thirds of the class were on how poorly managed Christendom was. There were massacres than we even know about, and the ones we do know about were pretty gruesome. If you want to feel happy about the age we live in, look some of it up on Wikipedia some time.

So help me weigh the possibilities of this. I'm hoping it will open doors instead of bite me in the taint, though the latter is possible for reasons unforeseen.

There are certain songs, I've found, to actually lower the IQ of a party. A few that come to mind are:

1. Bob Marley
2. Jimmy Buffet
3. "I've got friends in low places"
4. "I love this bar"
5. Any other song that completely cops out and uses a final chorus with a room full of other shouting people, wherein there is intended resemblance to a really good bar. This is so weak it makes me want to kill when I hear it, also as much as Nelly* does.
6. "Bohemian Rhapsody", obviously.
7. "Run-around", a song so saturated into our social conciousness via radio that you can spot the most stupid (or possibly nervous) people at the party because they are the ones bobbing their heads and singing along. Same thing with that Blind Melon song.
8. Weddings: Chicken Dance. No no no.


If you have any observations on this, please add them, because Hank is at home for a few days and is distracted by TV, pie, beer, and pie, and forgets about his Internet obligations. Patience.

*What the fuck is wrong with this person. First he writes "EI", which was sonic barf, then later follows with "Air Force Ones". Singing about shoes worked when Run DMC did it, but since Nelly tried it, not so much. Now he has possibly created the worst song of 2005, the one about girls who want guys to smile so they can show them their "grill". That's right, their nasty ass gold teeth. Fuck off, Nelly, you and your posse are worthless. When the revolution comes, you'll be first against the wall.

Blind With Rage

Recently a website has come to my attention, one that makes you stop and think, "How the hell did I wind up here?" That's the great thing about the Internet, each click is a new decision and a new road to head down. And with a snap, you can wind up back in a safe place. But I digress.

The site I found was CuteOverload.com
It is something that was bound to be created. We all knew that it was a matter of time before women would discover the Internet, and that this is the kind of thing they would do with it.

I looked through it, and found many exhibits of animal abuse and other stupidness.

Here are some of my favorites:

Another genetic monstrosity gone wrong, the evil half amphibian/half kitten had to be put to death before it had its chance to wreak havoc on humanity. (Seriously, what an attention whore. I wonder if this cat knows how stupid he looks right now.)



This cat loves boobs.



OK, granted flying rodents are kinda cool, but perhaps in another context than flying at your damn face.



After this, there is just blatant animal abuse. This chipmunk whose face has been stuffed looks like something off Rotten.com instead.



They aren't even hinting at anything than animal cruelty with this one.



"I...can't....breathe..."


"If you're going to ACT like a bitch, then I'm going to TREAT you like one!"


These cats do a pretty weak coffee impression. Idiots.


Touchdown. Well, it would be if a stupid kitten weren't doing the signalling.


This one is hiding to get out of a beating. Think again, Mr. Peek-a-boo.


Pshh. This lazy ass deer will do anything to get out of work.


This cat was promptly fired from its job as bagger at Wal-Mart when he showed up drunk.

I try not to link too much with this blog because there are others out there who do it more often and with more skill and fervor. However, when I do link to something, trust that it's worth a glance.

Another article from Slate, making you wonder why you never thought of this before.

Our creepiest genetic invention, the dog.

**Hank Rankhorn/Buck Truck Update!!!**

I had a dream last night that I was Buck himself, sitting at the counter of the Weird Waitress. She sang her self titled song, then burst out crying because her life was so sad and fucked up. The kicker here is that the permeability of my subconscious to highway albums of dejected misery is what's really fucked up.

I need to find a hobby.

I've found a podcast that's quite enjoyable. Ricky Gervais, the boss from The Office, has conversations with a couple of other guys that are interesting. The guy they keep saying is so stupid seems pretty inventive and clever to me, the kind of guy whose conversations you wish yours were like. Which brings me to the point that sometimes you wish your conversations with friends over drinks were just way more clever, not like they really are. I mean, why can't you assholes just be smarter?!

the name game

Some people are just meant to have a nickname. I worked with a guy once who was pretty big and bald, but at the same time really friendly. When I had met him, he had gotten drunk the week before and carved an X into his shoulder that made a disgusting scar. On top of that his name was Ronnenbaum. Basically, you could come up with any cool nickname for this guy you could have wanted to. We used Striker, the Baumer, Slick (because of the baldness), Blade, Flyin' Ryan, all of which aren't bad nicknames.


Some people are on the other end of the spectrum and are prone to bad nicknames. In elementary school I knew a kid whose nickname was Fjord, like the geographical phenomenon prevalent in Scandinavia. His friends had been sitting in geography class no less, when they had to learn the terms isle, strait, fjord..."Oh my god, fjord. What a stupid word. Hey we're going to call you Fjord from now on." He laughed a little and didn't think anything of it, because as far as he knew, people couldn't claim a nickname that quickly or with such little effort. He was wrong. We still call him Fjord to this day, though I'm not sure if he hates it or what.

I never had a nickname growing up, besides the time my cousin called me "dickweed" when I was four years old. I turned to him, looked him in the eyes very intently, and clarified the situation, stating "I am not a dickweed." Actually, as a camp counselor, I did have a kid who called me Boner Washington, but I just told him to shut the fuck up and go back to bed before I had to come over there and shut him up for him. Boy, I really dodged a bullet there!

What I can distinguish between the two phenomena here is that people who look or are named like cartoon characters are those that are more likely to acquire nicknames, be they good or bad. People want their lives to be like the movies, and nicknames make them feel like they're part of a gang. So let's say a group of boys decides they're going to give out nicknames to one another. I hypothesize only the fat kid, the rat looking kid, or the smelly kid will have a good chance of keeping their names. The normals are off scott free.

What are the worst nicknames you've ever heard? Tell me, I'm intrigued.

White Line Fever

To me, no other culture is more indiginous to our Americanness, to our robust, Western, enterprising spirit than trucker culture. Music, hats, bumper stickers, mudflaps, license plates with Taz on them, all of these are manufactured just for the guys that spend their lives hurtling down the interstate every damn day to God-knows-where, U.S.A. There are people working specifically to keep these people entertained.

Travel centers with a Dairy Queen, Pizza Hut Express, showers, a convenience store, and an arcade with the naked lady game are all to be found at least every 100 miles or so, accessible almost exclusively from the highway. These people do not care that you are looking over their shoulder as they take a damn break from the ol' highway and enjoy some video gin rummy that rewards with pictures of a topless pinup from 1991. They could not care less that you are weary of their presence as they look too long at your girlfriend as you both walk across the parking lot to the Travel Center to get coffee and to pee. They do not care that you are disgusted by their fractured and slangy language or creepy looks as they exit the bathroom. All they know is that some people aren't cut out for life on the road the same way they are.

And those people are you.

Truckers have their own hidden niche that few more than fellow truckers appreciate and respect. But here are some examples of those that do just that.

My first exposure to the laughably esoteric trucker culture was a chap by the name of Boxcar Willie. In his overalls, travelin' hat, and standing next to his big rig, he was perched on the cover of an album my family purchased many years ago. Truck Driving Favorites was an album that I remember well.



My stepbrother and I made fun of it both lyrically and comically, giving little slack for the lifestyle presented in its words. It contained some gems such as Teddy Bear, wherein a crippled kid whose trucker father had died was always talking to truckers on the CB radio and explaining his story to draw sympathy. Then all of the truckers pulled off of the interstate, came to his house, and took him for rides in their trucks. Then the mother came on and said thanks to everybody. The end.

Another one was Convoy, which was about some badass truckin' motherfuckers who decided that they would rebel against...um...The Man. Actually, I'm really not sure what point they were ever trying to get across, but they do it by just not stopping for gas and caralling 1,000 of their fellow truckers into just driving somewhere. The Army tries to stop them, can't, gives up, and the truckers eventually split up after they feel better about themselves and deliver their loads as usual.

If you're going for truly underground trucker entertainment, the Internet can provide where others can't. I'm talking about Buck Truck. His songs are most readily available here.

*****NOTE: LISTENING TO THE SONGS ABOVE WILL GREATLY ASSIST YOUR FURTHER READING PLEASURE. IT WOULD BE A DISGRACE FOR YOU TO GET LOST IN YOUR TRUCK DRIVING MUSIC EDUCATION, AND I WOULD FEEL PRETTY GUILTY. THANKS.*****



Buck Truck is his own man. There are no hip-hop beats or rhythms to his music, just regular country twangyness over a distinct Casio cacophony. The depicted cigarette is really a waste of ink, since the rhasp in this man's voice is so prevalent. His songs include Buck Truck, The Weird Waitress, How'd I Get This Way, Too Old to Truck, Elvis Once Drove a Truck, and more. In these he analyzes different aspects of trucking. He looks into man's origins at the career, preferred culture, common personalities encountered in trucking, and the super slab (that's street talk for the highway for all you four wheelers out there). Mr. Truck goes deeper still, perhaps without intention. He addresses the emotional, mental, and social plight that strikes the trucker on a day to day basis.

Take, for example, How'd I get this Way? In this song, he starts out with "Hey trucker? What are you doing" in a calm, eerie, focused tone. He does this to replicate the noticeable voices that truckers sometimes hear, in order to get their attention. After this, he delves into the basics of trucker beginnings, which is mainly because his dad did it and his dad before him. So based on this, if you aren't a trucker then you probably aren't going to be one later on.

An intriguing psychological specimen is entitled The Weird Waitress. Brother Dale has this to say on the song:

In Mr. Truck's world truckers, in comparison to waitresses, are rich people, or at least they consider themselves to be, since their jobs enable them to patronize and enjoy the friendly services of the waitresses, who are ostensibly poor enough to be grateful for the opportunity to serve. In fact, this socioeconomic disparity between who she is and how she acts, may be what makes the weird waitress weird. Her insouciance and nontraditional attitudes toward her clientele define her; the archetype of the trucker in relation to a liberal female is shocked into submission, as in when he accepts the cheese pizza, and when he is stunned into silence by her witty retort after he tells (pleads with?) her to give him a break.

Truckers are royalty at truck stops in the same way that blackjack players are royalty at the blackjack table, but on a smaller scale, and women on the cusp of homelessness are going to suck dick even if it's for five bucks. At the heart of my analysis is that it's in a relative way that truckers are rich, but importantly, this does nothing, psychologically on either side, to diminish their clear dominion over the lowly waitrons at the bean pot.

But then, I don't listen to Buck Truck because of his ablility to envision truckers' collective social identity as a renegade, speed-crazed vagabond, pushing a smoking death machine to its limit at the edge of reality itself. I like Buck Truck 'cause he keeps it simple.

Buck continues his ego-lifting, jargon-filled propaganda with Elvis Once Drove a Truck. The thesis of this song is that there aren't boundaries in trucking, but if you "hold on to what ya got", you can be like Elvis Presley, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and others.

So why all of this self uplifting dialogue? One could stand back and be realistic, saying "Because they're normal people, Hank, and normal people get depressed and blah blah blah" and make other sensible remarks. But seriously, how many careers are there that have albums to remind them that they shouldn't make a false move, run off the road, and take the lives of innocent motorists? Not very many. I guess it is because there are few careers wherein you spend so much time with your thoughts. These fellows must share a common sadness as to their future and toil. Perhaps they feel that there isn't enough of a point to their labor and their time, which piles up mile by mile in the logbook at the end of the day. If you were a trucker, would it be more depressing that you think your work is fruitless, or more that the only kind of entertainment christened to your job is Buck Truck or Boxcar Willie?

With that, I thought that it would be only right for me to make my own contribution to the pool of ideas, because these guys need a break (and not the kind that the desperate/weird waitress is asked to provide). Dale and I were once barreling down the road and almost got run off the road by an eighteen-wheeler, which inspired a new and fresh piece of trucking Americana. As we continued our trip we created the multiversed power ballad presented here. I leave you with The Trucker Song. I would like to say, though, that the lyrics alone do it no justice, but if you want to hear it (which you surely will because it is the greatest thing ever) then email me and we'll work something out. While you're flying down the highway, maybe this will make that heavy load a little lighter.

Enjoy.

Well he hasn't had sleep in many moons so he's running people over like water balloons
Well he don't give a damn about the load he lugs 'cause he stole his nephew's prescription drugs
Well he's trying to keep his rig between the lines but it's kind of hard to do with a broken spine
Well his knuckles are white and his eyes are red 'cause it's been two weeks since he went to bed
Well he's been fired and it's time to leave so he's selling his ass to Bruce and Steve
He's got a trailer full of cattle and an itchy crotch so he eats a big mac while he makes them watch
He does twelve lines of coke just to stay awake, three states ago he disconnected the brakes
If you don't move over and let him pass he's gonna drive that truck right up your ass
Well his wife's been cheatin while he's away, so he does a half gram of coke a day
He drives four hundred miles on a head full of speed but it still won't fulfill his aching need
Well he don't give a damn where he goes any more he just pushes that pedal down to the floor
Well he don't give a damn about the highway patrol and the ninth gate of hell is eating his soul
He keeps a gun in the cabin in case he sees a cop cause he'll do anything to keep from having to stop
He keeps driving like hell in his big ass truck just running people over 'cause he don't give a fuck
Well his nose is bleeding and his pupils are big so he keeps on driving that bad-ass rig
He's done so much meth his head's about to explode but he's got to keep hauling that heavy load
When he dies and I know he will he just wants to be strapped to the grill
Well he's running out of bullets from shooting dogs but he don't put it down in his truckin' logs
He tries to hold it in but it's leaking out that's what being a trucker is all about
Well he's going real fast 'cause of too much speed and he needs to slow down so he smokes some weed
Well his axles are broken and his wheels are shot, where he's goin he done forgot
Well there ain't another exit for a hundred miles but he don't give a damn 'cause he's pukin' bile
Well he's goin' real fast around a dangerous curve 'cause the methamphetamines have fried his nerves
Well he's scarin' hitchhikers and he don't know why so he asks his puppet mordecai
Well you can't see fear in his bloodshot eyes 'cause he don't give a damn if he lives or dies
Well he passed the weigh station at the county line 'cause he don't give a damn about the fine
Well he ain't been in love since he don't know when but his hooker is stayin at the shoney's inn
Well he'll run your ass right off the road 'cause he don't give a damn if your car explodes
Well his load is shifting and his knuckles are white, he's a bat out of hell screaming throught the night
Well he's on qualuudes and percodan so you just can't stop this truckin' man
Well they took his license in Arkansas but he don't give a damn about the law
Well he dropped of his load at the fifteenth gate and he's starting to hallucinate
Well, fifth gear is the only one he knows 'cause he don't give a damn about drivin' slow
He don't give a damn about following rules, like those sissies in trucker school
He's got a heart infarction and his lungs won't expand and his aorta's blocked but he don't give a damn
Well he don't give a damn about the radio, just the voices in his head saying GO GO GO
Well the other guys on the old CB stopped talking to him in 1993

I post, YOU decide

Guy landing in track and field sand pit, or special effect for The Mummy sequel?

Mother Was Wrong, I Am Somebody!

So maybe I can come out from under the porch to accept my caption contest award from Wrapped Up Like a Douche.

A friend of mine was sitting in her business lecture, and at the end of the class the professor asked if anyone would be interested in performing a role playing business simulation for extra credit. She groaned out loud and the guy next to her said in his most seductive, testosterone choked rhasp "What's the matter, you don't like role playing?"

Needless to say, she threw up in her mouth a little bit.

Why do people think that relationships work like a porno? This is what you get for watching hours and hours of BangBus or Queen of Farts. How many people apply to be pizza delivery guys, plumbers, lifeguards, cable maintenance dudes, preachers (I saw this one once, dude totally scored!), male cheerleaders, personal trainers, pool boys, and landscapers with the idea that women will walk up to them, give them the ol' please-oh-please-can-you-help-me-I-don't-know-what-to-do, and carry on with some hot slut action? I'd say at least 80%.

What happened to doing things the old fashioned way? Bathing, getting gussied up, turning on some P.M. Dawn and laying it down right? For old fashioned honky-tonkin', just ask the masters (might have to scroll down, the top looks obnoxious). THEM bitches be so old fashioned that...um...well you know where I'm headed with that. Oh, snap!

A woman at Wal-Mart had a cellphone with a ringtone that sounded just like the portable phone from The Big Lebowski. I was jealous, of course, but when I noticed she was purposefully ignoring the incoming call, I walked up to her and said, "Your phone's ringin', dude!"

I would've pissed all over myself had she said in a frustrated tone, "Thank you Donnie," but she just looked at me funny, turned her buggy, and fled.

I would like to think that she reacted that way because of her disgust in Americans' constant impersonation of popular culture and the saturation of media into our collective psyche. Even more so, I'd like to think that she was a devout fan of The Big Lebowski, and that my mediocre impression of the late Donnie was completely sub-par and unworthy of her time or appreciation. However, life isn't always what you want it to be, and in all likelihood this woman just wanted her batteries, toilet paper, cereal, hammer, celery, milk, or whatever the fuck it was people want at Wal-Mart, and without my obnoxious observations on her screening of phone calls.

I'm probably unrealistic here, but if she were perturbed for the reasons I'd hoped for, she'd be better off in general.

I'm an individual, just like everybody else.

Despite a steep lean to the left, Slate.com has some great writing on politics and culture. Yet another article worth checking out is this one regarding the Left Behind series. Realistic, observant, somewhat sarcastic.

How to end the world on a budget.

caption contest

Because I'm in a picture-y kind of mood.