My parents were racist, it’s true, but luckily, I had the Cosby show to set me straight, so I’m not really racist. I’m much more specific. Like, I have no problem with black guys, except for black guys named Tyrone. Sorry Tyrones, we just never hit it off. I have the same prejudice with white Dereks. Black Dereks are the coolest, but a white Derek will key your car. Now, if you were to actually find a white guy named Tyrone.. I think that would be pretty cool. My girlfriend believes that all Stephanies are dirty sluts, but for my part, I’m ok with Stephanies.

So twitter is over capacity, and if you want to check their status they send you over to a tumblr page.. Perhaps they want me to explore a world without character restrictions?

I delivered my own baby because I’m a fucking man, and like a real man I said to myself, “Why should I pay some doctor to do something I know damn well I can do at home?”   It’s a pretty simply job when it comes down to it, you just hang out down at the end of the lady and wait for a baby to come shooting out.  If I can catch a football, a baby should be no problem at all!  Imagine how much easier football would be if the ball had little arms and legs to grab onto..

     I went to a comedy open mic last night and the son-of-a-bitch host called me up on stage while I was in the bathroom having horrible diarrhea.  I had signed up second on the list, so I figure I’d have plenty of time, but the bastard still decided to call me up first by getting the crowd to chant my last name while I was locked in the throes of defecation.  I’d had a mean broccoli soup for dinner, add to that a few shots of vodka and a ton of nervous energy, I was going to need a few minutes. Even better that the bathroom opened out to the audience, so everyone was focused on the door waiting for me to appear.  I only wished I had been blowing coke instead, then at least, I would have welcomed their chanting.  I didn’t rush, I took my sweet-ass time wiping, but he continued to egg the crowd on.  I wouldn’t really say I played it off, but I did come out screaming, “Are you serious!? I’m having horrible diarrhea in here!! I had broccoli soup for dinner!! Can you give me a muthafucking minute!!?” …and now, my act:

postscript:  the crowd may well have taken it all as one big premeditated joke if I hadn’t forgotten to flush the toilet, leaving a nice brown mound for the girl waiting next in line.  }:7 /

 I like my kid’s sense of humor. Maybe I can relate to it so well because she’s five years old and that’s where I’m at mentally, I don’t know.  I do know that I was filled with pride the time she asked me what the words on my tape measure said.  When I told her it read “HEAVY DUTY” she burst out laughing.. I must admit, I was nonplussed.. she explained through guffaws, “You said ‘DOODIE’!” *more giggling “HEAVY DOODIE!” *falls on floor laughing. That’s my girl.

 So, last week, Ophelia informed me that she wishes to own a “case filled with pranks”.  I can’t say what spurred this, presumably it was the influence of some snappy cartoon show, perhaps SpongeBob, maybe Fishtronaut.. In any case, the idea instantly resonated with me, and I started to reminisce about all my favorite old joke shop pranks.  She was familiar with the hand-buzzer and kaleidoscope eye-stamp, both of which she planned (with my implicit approval) to ply on her old Portuguese grandfather.  I told her about the time I got my high school math teacher with the whoopie cushion and how we cleared out a laundromat with stink-bombs.  She was partial to the snakes in the peanut brittle gag, and of course the classic, fake poop.

There really aren’t too many descent joke shops around anymore, the nearest ones are all at least an hour away, but every day Ophelia would bring it up, begging me to help start her collection.  Then it finally occurred to me that Spencer Gifts in the mall has a shitty little gag section, and it would most likely be enough to temporarily satiate her prank-lust.  The first round I allowed her one item.  She chose the “Mixed Nuts” gag, and for the next several days I was forced to play dumb, then act surprised when a squeaky snake came jumping out. After a while it got tiring and I would refuse the nuts. “Oh, are these roasted with salt? I prefer raw.” No, she would not accept that.  Just open the damn can and scream.  

 Eventually, we found ourselves back at the mall for more, this time adding the “Spearmint Gum/Finger Snap” gag, and the hand-buzzer to her “case”.  Having memories of all these old toys, I must comment on how shoddy and cheap they’re all made now.  They all bore the finger print of Chinese manufacturing, on the Spearmint Gum gag, was written “Be always happy with praticle joke!”<sic> In any case, she didn’t know the difference and was completely stoked on her new vocation as prankster.  (As a side note, while I was waiting in line at Spencer to purchase said pranks, I witnessed a woman buying brass Truck-Nuts on a credit card.  This, to me, was the epitome of consumer confidence.) 

 Now we have a nice little collection going, and we walk through the mall to Ruby Tuesdays, as she tries out her new tricks on me along the way.  At no time would she ever subject herself to any of them. The finger snap was o.k. to try on me,  but too scary to put her own precious little finger into.  The same goes for the hand-buzzer.  So, we sit down in a booth and the waitress comes over to take our order. I figure, I’ll give the waitress a chance to earn a better tip, by playing along.  I give her a big deliberate wink in case she’s a total rube, and offer her a stick of gum.  She gets me, and goes to accept the gum, when Ophelia suddenly dives in the way, “Nooo, it’s a trick!!”  Naturally, we all crack up laughing at my sweet, softhearted little girl.  Ophelia, satisfied at having saved the lady, went on to explain the ins and outs of all her pranks like Penn & Teller, giving away all the secrets.

We enjoyed our dinner together, as we always do, and on the way out Ophelia stopped the waitress “And remember, if you see me with a can of mixed nuts.. Watch out!”

We’re still not married.  If you ask me, she’s got commitment issues.  It’s a simple agreement: If I ever leave, you kill yourself.

  I honestly don’t know what’s right or wrong, but you know, I try.  

Don’t judge me, but I went into Walmart the other day because I wanted to purchase a balaclava (not a honey-drizzled greek puff pastry) and I was in the company of my sweet, innocent, little four-year-old daughter.  

 I know there are a lot of things about shopping at Walmart that aren’t politically correct, because the people they have working out front are generally hideous, corn-fed mutants from an underworld of incest. As I understand it, most of them are actually enslaved, tethered to their cash registers with zap-collars.  Corporate practice at Walmart allows these genetic defectives no more than 6 hours per shift to make sure they can’t unionize, or maybe qualify for some kind of health insurance.  So, people say we shouldn’t support them by shopping there, but if you’re poor there are few other places you can go, to find a 99¢ balaclava.  

If you’ve been to Walmart, you know that they usually have someone assigned to the main entrance as a greeter. It’s generally some ninety year old geezer who’s pension ran out and needs to supplement his meals on wheels, or maybe some old granny who’s flower shop was run out of business when the Walmart opened up in her town.. Well on this fine afternoon, as my sweet little girl and I crossed the corporate threshold, they had employed as their greeter, a little person. What we used to be allowed to call a dwarf.  He also seemed to be fairly well challenged, mentally, and was riddled with a complexion such as that of Manuel Noriega.  

To me, this was an exhibit curated by the corporate bureaucracy as an expression of their disdain for their own equal opportunity status. A fucking retarded dwarf with leprosy, and they had him out front, sitting up on a tall stool so his legs were just swinging free!!  I guess Walmart says “What would Jesus do?”  Why, he’d put this sideshow freak right out front and make him smile, and wave, and hand out balloons!! Oh, how gracious of you Walmart!  

So now, I’m walking in there with my sweet, adorable, balloon-hating four-year-old daughter, and Walmart assaults us with this little monster, who smiles and goes to hand her a balloon. And she says, quite calm and politely, “No thank you, I don’t like balloons.”  Now, I’ve known this about her.  I believe it’s something about the squeakiness of balloons, coupled with the anxiety that it may pop, or slip out of her hands and fly off.  Try explaining this to our hero here, Mr. Plaguey McDwarfTard.  This little fucker shoots me the dirtiest of looks, as if I was the one who taught her to hate freaks! As if I’m the one responsible for sticking him up on that stool to terrify small children!  Don’t blame me, blame Walmart!  Them and God, apparently they’re both on the same side of this joke.  The best I could do was confirm “It’s true, she doesn’t like balloons.. sorry.. thanks..” and keep walking on, but not too fast.. So now, I too avoid Walmart.

  There is something very phallic about the peninsula that is Cape Cod, and clearly, I’m not the first to notice it.  The fact that Provincetown, which would serve as head on the Cape Dong, is a homosexual mecca, perhaps attests to this.  I don’t know how P-Town came to be this way/gay, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s something intrinsic in the topography that makes it so gay there.  It seems like even the word “peninsula” is barely hiding a penis. 

 One summer my family rented a couple of dank and moldy cottages out on the Cape and dragged us kids along for the week. My cousin Ryan and I were both twelve or thirteen and our sisters were much younger and terminally lame, so us dudes pretty much ran off together the whole time and pissed about how boring all this shit was.  The cottages were in Truro, sandwiched between the beach and the highway.  Truro is like the upper-shaft on Cape Dong, it’s really just very narrow sandbar, with room for little else beside these beach cottages which fester all the way up to the bulbous tip like strategically placed herpes.  It was terribly quiet there, and it seemed as though our parents were trying to keep us at a safe distance from P-Town, lest we “Catch the Gay”.  Not to worry, Ryan and I were both innately straight, and our primary concern was finding some fine young ladies who could believe that we were actually pro skateboarders.  We weren’t, of course, but we never got a chance to make that pitch because there were no other kids in our cottage camp. Our families were mutually content, sitting like happy clam-turds in the sand, while we were burning angst in the hot sun.

The only thing we had to look forward to was a plane ride later in the week.  We had an older cousin who was a pilot flying commercial jets for American Airlines.  He had worked his way up from flying smaller craft out of Hyannis, and he still had some friends there who would let him borrow their Cesna 4 seater.  He was supposed to take us up for a joy ride over the Cape, and I was eagerly anticipating my first flight in a prop-plane.

  That day was brutally hot, and Cousin Pilot wasn’t due to show up until around 3 or 4, so early in the day, Ryan and I decided to get away from everyone else and find some bigger waves or at the very least, a breeze. Our mission, in the spirit of manifest destiny, was to cross the Main Vein, Route 6, and traverse dunes until reaching the adjacent beaches which faced the open ocean to our east.

 On the other side of the highway was a dirt road with and open gate that led into the dunes.  We followed the road for a short while until it started to twist and turn, then we decided to climb the dunes and see how much farther to the beach and maybe get an idea where this road is even going.  At the top of the dune you could feel some air moving, it was a lot cooler, but I still couldn’t see the beach over the next dune, so we had to climb back down across this crater to the top of the next enormous sand hill.  As we were running back down the first dune, a big blue Chevy Suburban, came slowly rolling around the bend with about seven or eight queer men of various ages and ethnicities inside, all grinning out as us two young sweaty boys frolicking in the beach grass together. Of course, my sheltered suburban teenage brain was shocked. After all, we knew the nature of P-Town, as every New Englander does, but this was the first contact on our vacation.  Our parents had been saving a trip into town for the final weekend.  Naturally we presumed this truck to be the get-away vehicle for some kind of clandestine cocoa butter-butt-fuck-fest.  At the time I’m wondering, is this how they do what they do, out in the dunes? And at the same time, we figure, they’re assuming that we’re gays too! While our instincts told us this was all hilarious, our insecurities were indignant. We both tried to force a stern, angry face, but mixed with our shame and amusement, it probably just made us look that much more adorable.  No words were exchanged, and we trudged on red-faced and sweltering.

  As we mounted the next dune with hopes for a better view to the ocean, we beheld an enormous phallus, and suddenly those gay smirks took on a different meaning.  What we were now staring at, amazed, was a work of land art that was probably eighty feet long: a crude but well-executed cock and balls, erect and pointing to the north.  We just about shit our pants laughing.  A few seconds later I get an idea that we should remake the big dick, limp.  So we set to it right away, and as we do, we realize these guys put a lot of hard work and effort into this “gag”.  They had spent hours, all of them together, digging trenches and filling them with beach sand, to ensure that the “piece” would remain and be visible for a considerable length of time.  We decided, for the sake of time and risk of heat-stroke, not to invest as much effort. It may have taken us more than an hour of scrambling around that sun scorched crater, to move all their beach grass and stick it in the sand in such a way, as to make that colossal cock go limp, but we that’s just what we did.  We did it with urgency because we knew it was getting close to the time of our planned airplane joyride,  which we were now anticipating with confident intensity.  Whatever butterflies we might have had about flying were now squashed by the knowledge that we would get to view our work as it was intended, from above.

   After being fully satisfied at our deed in the dunes we dashed back to the cottage camp.  We kept our adventure a secret.  It took more than hour to drive to the airport, and when we got there Cousin Pilot thought it would be cool to take us boys up with him alone.  It was an amazing experience, and I resolved to one day fly a plane myself.  Feeling the wind blow you around and carry you in a small plane like that, while the landscape shrinks to a map, is absolutely exhilarating.  ”Do you guys wanna buzz the cottage?”  Of course, we do.