A Festivus for the Rest of Us

To those of you who are familiar with Seinfeld, you know about Festivus.

This December 23^rd I attended a bar where Festivus was being held, complete with the traditional aluminum pole. One of the Festivus organizers, Cooper, had attempted to cut down a fence pole in his back yard,, but after failing, he sent his girlfriend to a hardware store. A woman buying a single aluminum pole on the night of December 23^rd is no doubt an unusual thing and the cashier asked why she was buying it. Her reply was "my friends are retarded." If loving Seinfeld enough to celebrate Festivus is retarded, then I'm profoundly retarded.

Since the bar was also a restaurant, it was supposed to be a family environment and therefore had no bouncers. This meant that the bar was unprepared for the drunken debauchery that we unleashed. Imagine this for a moment: you have no knowledge of Festivus, and you're having a nice evening out with the fam. Then, a man walks into the bar with a six foot pole, says nothing, and leans it against the wall, inspects his handiwork, then heads to the bar to get a drink. How loudly would your brain be screaming "What the fuck?!"?

Eventually the normal people escaped and we were able to celebrate Festivus undisturbed.  Every time that someone entered the bar we would all shout "Person is here! It's another Festivus Miracle!" And Person would grin at the rest of the bar and be assimilated into the drunken hivemind.

After airing grievances as loudly as we could, Cooper wandered the bar with the aluminum pole. One of the patrons, Ron, asked if the pole was aluminum or galvanized steel. In response to this, Cooper handed the aluminum pole off to someone and knelt down in a Tim Tebow pose. Cooper slowly made a fist and drew back his arm, then he unleashed a savage uppercut to Ron's testicles. Ron immediately grabbed his crotch and ever so slowly tipped over to one side and fell on the floor. The waitress calmly stepped over his corpse and wandered off to deliver some food. Later Ron's facebook status would read "I should not have questioned the validity of the aluminum pole."

A Day in the Life

7am.

At work already. The sky didn't want to work this morning either, so it stayed in bed knowing that the clouds would cover for it. I paced back in forth in front of my crew, a hypnotic pendulum that would likely send them back to sleep. The coffee was strong and black like something in a vaguely racist metaphor. We took to calling it 'a punch in the face,' because it wakes you up like one.

"Why the fuck are we here so early if the delivery truck isn't here yet?" said one of the crew. He was all the worst wigger stereotypes, Vanilla Ice himself would be embarrassed. The crooked hat completed the look.

"It's here now," gestured the second crewman, Sean, who was a friend of my boss.
I stopped pacing back and forth and looked up. The delivery truck took over as the pendulum, repeatedly backing up and pulling forward. I looked at the markings on the ground and realized the tires were driving precisely over the same tracks. I sighed, as my boss tried to direct the truck driver back. It was like a mind-boggling version of the broken telephone game, played with only two people. No matter how clearly my boss instructed the shit-chucking-ape-of-a-truck-driver, nothing got through. Meanwhile, the crew and I tried to guess how many points this turn had already. We settled on thirty.

I'm reminded of all the joy and laughter that Family Circus didn't bring me over the years.

After ten minutes of dicking about, he spontaneously recovered his knowledge of truck driving and put the damn thing in park. Even though we see them all the time, you never realize how big a 18 wheeler truck is until you have to unload one.

Well shit.

We set up to unload, the profoundly retarded truck driver and his assistant unloaded the cargo onto a set of rollers, at the end of which was a flight of stairs. I stood at the bottom of the stairs and passed the cargo up half a flight to Vanilla Ice who in turn would put it through the railing at the top of the stairs where Sean, my boss, and his father would put it away.

Oooooh, now I get it. Cargo is slang for cocaine, right?

Naturally, the most intense work is passing stuff up the stairs, because you have to lift a lot of weight straight up, while everyone else just jerks off or something. I set an impressive pace, knowing that the masturbators wouldn't tell me to slow down, knowing that I'm doing the harder work. They call me the Energizer Bunny.
  

Ladies.

Part woman's bathrobe, part lagomorph, all badass.

After about five minutes, Vanilla Ice acts like a jive ass bitch and switches with Sean. Now Sean and I are doing the hard work, while everyone else is chatting about fishing or something in order to distract themselves from the fact that they're secretly lonely.

"Fuck, I'm really out of shape, man" said a red-faced Sean fifteen minutes later.
He started begging to switch back with Vanilla Ice, who refused, citing my maniacal pace as the deal breaker. I expected Sean to walk up the stairs to get Vanilla Ice but instead he took a few steps down the stairs. I was confused, what was happening? Then it hit me.

 In the face.

"Sean, did you have an onion bagel for breakfast?"

Epilogue
-Sean was sent home for being "fucking useless."
-Sean returned and apologized and gave me "the most deserved case of beer in the history of mankind."
-Sean had chili for breakfast, which is a WTF in itself.
-No, I'm not exaggerating about the fifteen minutes thing.
-I have renamed the coffee "a puke in the face." 

Maple, the Drunken Smartass Tree

Tale of an Eight Year Old Randall

I decided that I wanted to leave my band of hellions and become one of the cool kids.  I decided that in order to prove myself I had to be the first person to win at Monster tag, excluding all the times someone won by catching the slow, fat kid.

Monster tag was a retarded game we had invented, which was to be played on the playground.  The person who was 'it' had to make stupid monster noises and couldn't climb on equipment on the playground.  So, naturally everyone who wasn't 'it' would climb to the highest point on the playground and deride the monster.

We were bright enough to know that being the monster sucked, but we were still dim enough that we kept playing the game anyway.

You must be at least this stupid to lose at monster tag

We gathered at the playground during recess and as usual, no one wanted to be Monster.

Children, fair and balanced.

"I'll do it," I said.

The crowd gasped and whispered that I had gone crazy.


No one had ever volunteered before, usually the group just shouted at each other until the mob reached a consensus, and the selected person resigned to their fate.  The mob silently agreed that I was the Monster and they scrambled to the safety of the top of the playground where they could try to spit on me.  Except for John, the cool kid.  He was a daredevil, standing on the bridge, which left his feet within my reach.

 
John: one lanky fucker.

This was it.  I just had to run forward, leap, and tag my way to coolness.

Feel good release of the year is how I sometimes describe my farts.

I unleashed a gutteral growl and channeled my strength into my legs.  One, two, three steps... jump











aaaand...






















I shrugged off the devastating blow I had just received, crying wouldn't help make me cool.  My head was throbbing, but I heard John descend to a lower platform.  Only an idiot would give me another chance.   I let out a deafening roar, it would have made a terrifying war cry. 

John was standing on the lower platform, he wore a concerned look on his face.  I saw that fat Mike was standing atop the ladder with the rest of the kids behind him who had come down to see if I was okay.  John couldn't escape up the ladder, and there was no way he could outrun me on the ground.  My legs were still powered with all of my strength. 

John spoke "Randall, you're bleeding!"  Pfft, what a lame stalling tactic. 

I was mere seconds from my triumph.  Waitaminute.

  Your story checks out.

 My head REALLY hurt.  I felt a blood trickle reach my eyebrow.  Uh oh.  Maybe I'd better get some help.  I left my friends and ran off to find the nearest teacher on yard duty.  I saw my  teacher, Mr. Farley a short distance away.  I approached him from behind and unsure of what to say, I said "Uh, can you help me?"  My voice was barely a whisper, too much of my strength was tied up in my legs and battling the pain in my head, so I didn't properly convey the urgency of the situation.

 Unfortunately for me, Mr. Farley was a Manners Nazi, anyone who didn't phrase their questions politely were not worth his time, so he said "No," and walked away without looking back.  He didn't realize I was injured, he was expecting me to follow him and ask again with the word "please."  However, in my panic I didn't realize this and wandered off to find someone who would help.  By this time, blood was gushing out of my head.  My entire face was covered in blood when I ran into my classmate William. 

 Level of blood: actually not exaggerated.

Wasting no time he grabbed my arm and dragged me to toward the school, passing by students who couldn't believe what they were seeing.  We made it inside and began passing more dumbstruck students. 

As Murphy's law would have it, the teacher's lounge was on the opposite end of the school from the playground, so we had to walk the length of the building much to the chagrin of the janitor who had to mop up the blood.  We entered the teacher's lounge and stood there in silence,  all at once the teachers looked at me the same stupid look affixed itself to each of their faces. 

National Synchronized Horrified Facial Expressions Team

Then a chorus of "Randall, what happened?!"

"I killed my head."

The next day in class everyone was interested in my stitches, and people were retelling the story of my facebridge.  Cute girls would touch my stitches then pull their hand away quickly and giggle.  "That's nothing, I heard that Dr. Quackers gave him a needle in his head too!" Fat Mike shouted.  Then John told me "Randall, you're so cool." 
  
I still have a badass scar, but somewhere along the way I lost my coolness.

And now for something completely different.

I'm sure you might be wondering why I refer to myself as a complete nutcase, so here is a story that doesn't give any insight into that whatsoever.

As a child I was the same free spirit that I am now. In a nutshell, I do what I want. 

Me doing what I want in a nutshell.

My father was the kind of guy who likes to be in control, he was an executive. So naturally, one day when I was ten he said "You have a choice, either follow the rules or find somewhere else to live." I left. During this period I peed on the outside of a portopotty and lived on the playground. 

Really important, thought you should know.

Sadly, I was dragged home by my brother before I could complete my first day as a homeless person. Apparently when my father told me "you have a choice" he really meant "you don't." My parents decided that defiance was a sign of mental illness and took me to the doctor. Dr. Quackers told me that I was suffering from depression. Depression is supposed to be diagnosed after a battery of tests, but he didn't bother with that.

Pediatricians are great with psychiatry. Not pictured: a battery of tests.

That is when I began taking antidepressants. Looking back, I don't think I ever really suffered from clinical depression, though perhaps I had a major depressive episode. I can never know for sure. At the time however, I believed that my doctor knew what he was talking about. So, I took the pills and my parents watched as their attempts to drug me into obedience failed, regardless of how many meds were tried, and regardless of dosage. You can't fix a free spirit because it ain't broke. 

Man am I glad I took that symbolic logic course.

Shortly before my 20th birthday I decided enough was enough, I was going to do away with the pills and resume my normal life. However, there is a little known withdrawal effect caused by certain antidepressants that had caused me to fail at ditching the meds in the past. Brain zaps (or brain shocks, brain shivers, head shocks) are easily the most distressing things I've ever experienced (and I've had an abscessed tooth). The name is very descriptive, it feels like your brain is being electrocuted. When do they happen? Sometimes they occur randomly, but they usually happened to me when I moved my eyes or closed my eyes tightly.

Go ahead, wince. It'll only lead to more zapping.

Yeah, just don't move your eyes, you'll be fine. Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep your eyes still all day? To make things worse, I had constant nausea as well. When the withdrawal symptoms reached their peak, the brain zaps were intense enough to bring me to my knees. Luckily the symptoms only lasted a few days. Oh wait, no. Even five weeks later I was still being zapped regularly. Did I mention I didn't miss a day of work during all of this? After eight days I was a wreck, my legs had been replaced with spaghetti and the zaps were coming in harder than ever, and in clusters rather than single servings. Something had to give. Luckily I found that alcohol helped to mitigate the intensity of the shocks, so began I drinking absolutely extreme amounts after work. Unfortunately this required regular trips to buy alcohol, and driving properly is impossible with brain zaps. Try checking all of your mirrors without moving your eyes. 

Maybe if I smoked a lot of pot the bribe would have worked.

After the worst of the withdrawal I went through premanstrual syndrome (or possibly manopause), I was a bag of emotions, none of which made any sense. I tried to take it easy by watching a movie and I ended up bawling my eyes out. Have you ever seen the movie Life is Beautiful? The one where that father and son are in a concentration camp, and the father convinces the son that they are in a contest to win a tank? Well, that wasn't what I was watching. I cried my eyes out while watching The Matrix. No, I didn't cry when Neo died or anything of the sort. I made it about ten minutes in when Agent Smith drives the truck through the phone booth just as Trinity jacks out (is that the term? Fuck it, that's the way it is now). When I watched my first dog being put to sleep I cried, and I wondered what would be the next thing to make me cry. If you told me that I wouldn't cry until six years later when I watched the Matrix, I probably would have called bullshit. Emotions baffle me. I have been off the antidepressants for years now, and I'm as happy as ever. Regaining the full use of your eyes can do that.

Notes

1. I should probably point out that I don't hate my parents, what they did was just a misguided attempt to improve my life.
2. The whole withdrawal thing gave me a lot of perspective on drug addiction. I hated the pills, and yet I still kept going back to them after a few days of headzapping. I can only imagine how hard it would be to give up something that gives you pleasure when you use it and agony when you don't.
3. I really did pee on a portopotty when I ran away from home.
4. Brain zaps

Four years of this earned me a university degree

I was sitting in my camping chair (that I bought with my then girlfriend's bread money) in the middle of a parking lot of a factory that I don't work for when it occurred to me that long, unruly sentences are the best way to ensure that no one reads your blog past the first sentence.

I'm apparently too incompetent to do a proper introduction, so let's just jump into this thing shall we? 

Npte to self, fix the spelling mistake in this sentence.  Comic inbound.