What I Think About When I'm Bored

Hello to all of you who read my blog. I appreciate it, and I want both of you to know.

Anyway. Some random thoughts.

- If I clone myself, but I switch my X and Y chromosomes so that the clone turns out as a girl (how I would have been if I was made a girl, not just me with long hair) and then I fuck my clone, is it incest? What is it? Is that technically still me, or is my twin?

- Am I alone on really wanting to fuck a deaf girl? I think this stems from being a kid and having a crush on the deaf woman from ER.

- If you were at a costume party and started nailing a chick (or guy, for the women who aren't reading this) with a mask...and then halfway through the mask falls off, and it's your cousin, what do you do? Do you keep going? Take off your mask? Run away? What's the protocol? I want to tell you before you answer that this in no way reflects some weird desire of mine (creepy) it's just a crazy hypothetical i thought up.

- One time a friend of mine told me about this guy who was messing around with a girl who had her arms and legs amputated when she was a kid. She said "You can do anything you want to me." To which he replied "Yeah, I fucking know." I've been laughing about that for a while.

- What if I was retarded and no one was telling me? This can't be true, because it would mean that everyone is in on it, and each person is also an excellent improv actor. That's unlikely.

- Every time I see something gross, my first reaction is to say 'What if that went in my mouth?!" This makes it even worse.

Cryptozoology is for Lovers

3/26/31-???

“Is Leonard Nimoy still alive?” I ask this in passing- I think he is still around.

“Who the fuck knows,” says Billy.

We’re sitting in the living room at 2 am watching DVR’d episodes of some Learning Channel show about the unexplained, which had reminded me of “In Search Of…” a favorite television program of mine as a child. The introductory music was for some reason terrifying to me, and I always watched it with my father. Once I gathered the courage to watch a videotaped episode alone and was so startled at the image of a boy raised by wolves, and the unsettling violin/flute score behind that I did not sleep alone for half a week.

Beer cans litter our feet on the floor like machine gun casings in a foxhole and we’re staring at the gigantic screen in front of us, learning in half-buzzed interest about the lake monster of Lake Champlain, known as Champ. The documentary follows a group of nerdy, awkward and polite scientists on their quest to try and get to the bottom of the Champ mystery by using sonar to detect unidentified life signals. What this means is they have an entire library full of noises that normal animals make, and they are now trying to compare noises they hear to ones they’ve already memorized. Imagine that being your career? Eventually they tell us that they hear something that sounds like echolocation; what a dolphin or whale uses to “see” their way around underwater.

“So why don’t these idiots drop a goddamn camera down there?!” Billy is shouting now. He stomps a Miller Light can to a crushed disc.

“Or a depth charge,” I add quietly.

I don’t necessarily enjoy the killing of animals or destroying the environment. In fact I’d consider myself a supporter of most animals. I do not particularly care for horses. For some reason every obnoxious girl I‘ve ever met (they are plentiful) has had an obsession with horsies. I consider them idiotic by association. Despite not being a sadist, I am becoming increasingly irritated with the inability of hokey, campy, fleece-wearing ‘scientists’ to prove or disprove the existence of creatures of cryptozoological status. Instead of shaky amateur video of Bigfoot wandering through the woods with his ridiculous gait, I want someone from Wisconsin to plug the bastard with a 30-06 and just be done with it.

Like I said, it’s nothing personal. We all love a mystery, we love to be put under the spell of knowing something is possible- but I’m sick of that. I’m really tired of all the garbage methods these people are using to try and find the reality of the situation. I suppose instead of a high powered rifled someone could catch the Sasquatch with a net, but have you ever watched a movie where nets became involved? It does not work out correctly. Either the prey simply tugs on the net and takes its would-be captor with it (usually ending in the death of a human) or the beast is brought back to civilization only to wreak havoc upon escape. I can only imagine what introducing a wild Bigfoot to an American city would do. If we just kill one of these goddamn things, show everyone the carcass to prove that its real, and then forget about it- it will be such a relief.

I want to be personally responsible for the death of one of these mysteries. Not all of them, mind you, I don’t want to exterminate anything, and I admit that slaying even one of the beasts is more than likely “not good.” I’ve never been hunting. Billy has already expressed concern by saying that he wouldn’t “want to see Champ hurt!” Imagine that in the girliest voice you can. So I have decided that my sidekick is going to be Jeremy, who has volunteered enthusiastically. Unlike me, I believe his motivation comes from being a megalomaniac.

The most satisfying of circumstances, as far as legendary excursions are concerned, would be to travel to the Himalayas, get a Sherpa to take me up the mountain, and shoot a yeti right between the furry eyeballs. Imagine that? At one point in the journey I suppose my Native Guide would become skittish. He would tell me, through a translator, that he “can go no further!” My companions and I would be forced to go it alone into the blizzarding mountain ranges, icicles freezing to our trigger fingers, rationing surplus military food, perhaps eating one another.

However, Champ is the easiest target as far as resources are concerned. It’s a short drive from my home to the lake, and my grandfather actually owns a camp right on the Vermont shores near Burlington. I believe this is where most of my annoyance with the lake monster comes from. The cabin itself is a barn red structure that sits about 6 feet off the ground on stilts made from rock pyramids and steel posts. This protects it from the winter tides. It’s a nice enough place to stay, with a short walk down a gravel road to reach the not very sandy or warm shore.

It’s mostly a bunch of broken shale and smooth rocks which lead into the cold freshwater lake, and at the point the cabin sits on it’s fairly narrow. At its widest Lake Champlain is about twelve miles across, and overall it’s over a hundred miles long. The average depth is actually 64 feet, but I really wouldn’t know any of this if I hadn’t checked the encyclopedia. The reason for this is that I haven’t even been in the water past my ankles in quite a while. And by that I mean fourteen years or so.

I’m absolutely terrified of the idea of seeing this thing up close. Supposedly he is at least 20 feet long, with a spotted grayish-black skin and a horse like head. As a child I thought the idea of Champ was very interesting and neat, and I believe I actually considered the monster my friend. I used to pour Sprite into the water when no one was looking because I figured since it was my favorite, it would also be his. I made my mother tell me stories about Champ and I going on adventures with one another. Something changed, and I’m not sure what, but the idea of animals in the water began to really bother me. For a while I couldn’t even go in my own swimming pool if it wasn’t lit well enough, forgoing all logic that a shark or serpent could not possibly be dwelling within 7 feet of chlorinated water; for the idea that you don’t fucking know that.

I hate irrational fear. I don’t like not knowing the reality of whether Champ is in there swimming around, being ancient and unsettling. I don’t like being disappointed and so far I’ve just been sitting around waiting for the experts of the world to answer my questions. I don’t know if as a kid I really believed Champ was in there enjoying my soft drink but there was that hope, right? Childish hope.

What’s with all the fucking hiding? The first real “sighting” of Champ was made by Samuel De Champlain himself in the early seventeenth century, but Native American legends surrounding a revered beast in the water are far older. The Abenaki called him “tataskok” which is much more difficult to pronounce. P.T Barnum offered $50,000 to anyone who could provide him with a Champ carcass, but obviously no one was ever awarded the money. I suppose no one tried enough, or people did not have the spirit in them.

The problem most people have with this idea of killing Champ is that they somehow believe there is only one. This simply isn’t plausible. Now, I’m willing to stretch my beliefs to convince myself that there is a large serpent-like creature which has managed to elude scientific discovery for hundreds of years. However, to believe that it is the same one being sighted sin ce 1609 is just a bit much. They obviously have to bereproducing as sightings are made almost every year, and no animal can live that long. Still, it is considered an endangered species and is scientifically named Champtanystropheus, and it is illegal to harass, harm, or kill the animal. In America, that is- I could travel to Quebec and harpoon it all day long if I wanted. Though perhaps a license is required.

At the end of the documentary about Lake Champlain, the narrator informs us that We May Never Know. This is a bullshit attitude. We don’t know because people keep behaving like complete pussies about the entire thing. If I succeed, from then on you would know. You would know because the documentary would end with whispering footage of the killshot, exactly like on those hunting shows that play nonstop on The Outdoor Channel. “That was a good one- good buck. Goodbuck, Roy! You got him.”

I’m tired of explaining myself. You either think I’m being destructive or you think I’m being satiric, ironic, or any of those other words. The point is most people think I’m fucking around. So let’s discuss weaponry and tactics.

My first instinct was the depth charge. Originally this weapon was intended as an anti-submarine weapons system, and is the oldest weapon designed for this purpose. Deployed by either ships or aircraft, its design is basic. A cylinder is filled with explosives and a fuse is created which will detonate the bomb at a pre-determined depth. The explosion causes extreme pressure against the submarine’s hull, hopefully rupturing the structure enough to allow the ocean’s pressure to do the rest of the work. However I’ve noticed a few problems with using this weapon against Champ.

First, depth charges in their most rudimentary form (the kind I would be able to build myself) are fairly inaccurate. A streamlined version of the cylinder is necessary to allow for the weapon to drop through the water properly. Even when loaded with Torpex (an explosive more powerful than TNT) the depth charge needed to come within 5 meters of a submarine hull to cause significant damage. The bottom of Lake Champlain is littered with shipwrecks, some from before the Revolutionary War. This provides ample cover for the seadragon, and the hull of a sunken vessel would likely absorb the larger portion of a depth charges concussive blast. Also, since the depth charge requires some degree of accuracy, we would need to develop a system of locating the beast from the surface which has proved unusually hard to teams in the past.

Secondly there is the fact that I would most likely have to drop more than one of these devices to effectively maim or destroy a champtanystropheus. While I am not worried about the cost of having to do so (movie and book deals will certainly compensate) there is collateral damage to consider. The blasts would most likely kill every other form of life in the surrounding area, which makes Jeremy and I appear far more brutish than we are. Or that I am, anyway, like I said he’s a nutcase.

Jeremy has suggested a simple whaling technique. Whales were originally killed from the deck of a small boat, being harpooned and then dragged in closer for a more intimate end. Now, the prey is shot with a harpoon launched from a deck-gun. It’s a very cool looking item, and the shafts of the harpoons themselves are rigged with explosives. Once the weapon pierces the whale’s body the charge is ignited, causing what is hopefully a massive trauma that ends the animal’s life quickly and as painlessly as possible. This method suffers the same drawback as the Depth charge model, in that it requires first a reliable visual contact of the elusive monster. One must assume a certain level of intelligence in an animal capable of eluding capture or solid detection for this long. No, he’s down among the ghost ships.

This means that we have to go to him. By going under the water ourselves, there is much less room for needless damage to Lake Champlain’s ecosystem, and a much better chance of contact. It also solves the issue of sitting unprotected in a rowboat with a spear, exposed to the elements- or worse, Champ’s wrath. Thus, some form of submersible is the preferred tactic for killing an underwater enemy.

As a male I’m fascinated by gadgets and vehicles, and the personal submarine is perhaps the neatest. Small manned submarines became popular in the 60s and 70s as a means for scientific research, and were made commercially available by companies such as General Dynamics and General Electric. This is convenient, as my father is the Manager of General Dynamic/Electric Boat’s Radiation Control and Protection department. Despite the fact that I have no idea what he does due to information being classified, I’m pretty sure it means he knows how to build or steal a submarine. The rough cost of a 2-person submersible, known as the Explorer 1000, is about $400,000. However, with borrowed schematics, this cost is reduced drastically and becomes an issue of supplies, training, and labor.

The Explorer 1000 is desirable for many reasons. The front window offers 120° of viewing, and makes for distortion free viewing of the hunter’s environment. When mounted with high-power lights, this will greatly aid in making contact with Champ. Rated for a depth of over 300 meters, the hull is more than sufficient for diving to the greatest depths Lake Champlain has to offer. Couple with a high maneuverability on a three-plane axis, this means our team of destroyers will be able to navigate the host of ghost-wrecks lining the battle grounds. Also, it comes with instructions.

The transformation from Explorer 1000 to Sigurd will be complete with the addition of weaponry. Equipped with external manipulator arms, the submarine would be almost limitless in its potential to carry a payload of any array of weapons. The harpoon’s deck-gun could easily be mounted and fired from within, and the other manipulator could be outfitted with some form of fixed weaponry. This would perhaps be a lance or battle axe, for up close fighting, or some form of stun baton. The Sigurd’s hull would provide armor against the force a 20 (or more) foot serpent could generate, a factor that the whaling method did not provide for. Once slain, the animal could be fixed to the harpoon line, and the Sigurd would surface. The line would then be attached to a vehicle of a stronger towing capacity, and Champ would be brought to shore.

I know I didn’t start out this way. Sitting on the couch in the middle of winter, buried underneath blanket, my father on the other couch, I know I loved these things. I believe I still do. I haven’t been able to figure anything out in years and when I think I have, it slips back beneath the surface. There are so many confusing, elusive things that consume. Curiosity, hope, love, it’s overwhelming.

“Bill, go grab some more beer. Forensic Files is on next.”

I like to open beer cans with my teeth. You catch your upper front teeth right behind the edge of the pull tab, place your bottom set on the lip of the can, and close your jaw. Style points if you lean close to a friend and get him in the face with the spray. I’m just a boy after all.

Mostly alone and drunk

Last year I had a shitty apartment. The parking lot was cramped and the driveway was too steep. The landlord would let the ice and snow accumulate in the middle of the winter and it was virtually impossible to get back up, if you managed to leave at all. There was a crack somewhere between my floor and wall in the corner, so there was an icy draft at all times at about knee level. Also, I believe there was some sort of animal- either a woodchuck or groundhog- living in the walls. I believe this because I woke up and saw him sitting on my dresser one night. You can’t really leave a mousetrap for something that large and it was welcome company, so I allowed him to stay. I don’t believe they’re dangerous.

Anyway, I’m sitting there in my overpriced igloo late on a Tuesday, or early on a Wednesday depending on how you do that. It was right before Christmas vacation, and I had decided to lay awake watching DVDs, and skip my morning classes. It was about 4:30 I’d say, and I was watching National Lampoon’s Vacation. Despite the fact that I had four or five blankets on, I had to keep moving and twiddling my toes to keep the blood moving. I’ve been terrified of having my toes freeze ever since I saw a documentary about Arctic explorers in third grade. Most of the men had all their toes die and turn black, so they took turns cutting them off with hammers and chisels. Looking back that’s actually sort of funny in a bizarre way.

Vacation is a good movie to watch because of how often you’ve seen it. You don’t really have to pay attention- you can sit there going over your day, thinking about what you‘ll have for lunch the next day or how much of a lying whore your ex girlfriend is, and when you snap out of it, you won’t have missed a thing. You’ll be right at the part where Aunt Edna’s dog is getting leashed to the rear bumper. Poor little guy probably kept up for the first mile or so. Usually I start thinking about sex during this movie because I have a thing for the Mom and yes, I know that’s a bit weird. So as most guys do I’m picturing myself as the hero and I’m keeping up a really good, loud rhythm when I realize I’m not just thinking about sex right then, I’m actually listening to it. The girl that lives upstairs has her bed centered directly above mine . The first few times I heard her and her boyfriend going at it, it was pretty amusing. I’d call my roommates in, and we’d all have a chuckle. It was funny because one of my roomies had already nailed her a few times, so maybe he liked reliving the experience. Really though, I’m not big on voyeurism, so by this point in the year it had become an annoyance, more of a removed curiosity than anything.

I told her once while we were playing beer pong- Hey, you know this house isn’t exactly well insulated, right? After that, she only got louder- so she was the pervert, not me.

Back to the sex. What struck me as odd about this particular time was the fact that it was now nearing 5 am, and it was just a random Tuesday. I hadn’t heard anyone moving upstairs for quite some time, so it means they both just woke up and decided to go for it. Fine by me, I’d shake his hand, but this was actually the loudest, most violent sex I had ever heard. On screen or off, I need to bottom line this fact, she was screaming like it was a karaoke performance and I could hear every syllable of every filthy word. My eyes go wide with shock at a particular sentence and I mute the Griswalds because I definitely need to know what happens next. I can understand now why she’s a cheerleader because this girl could project- it was actually so loud that in my imagination she had one of those bright-red cones held in front of her face, shouting Letters to Penthouse out into the audience. I just let my imagination run wild, but really I’m more nervous than anything because right between a “Fuck” and a smack, her floor (or rather my ceiling) cracks. Loud. The kind of dull, creaking crunch that a ceiling definitely should not make.

So then I think, Sweet fucking Christ, what if the ceiling caves in?

This really worries me, so I realize I should move. But then, in another way, I’m actually paralyzed by the idea of dying like that. Having a queen size bed come crashing down on me, a half naked cheerleader falling directly on top of my television just as they arrive at Wally World, and she’s still tied to the fucking headboard. Feather dusters, love potions, and empty bottles clattering around and smashing in the debris around my room, the poor Woodchuck left without a home.

This death would be oddly fitting, I think, staring up at the ceiling, trying to find the crack. Let me explain. No one in my family has ever died normally. By normal, I mean I’ve never heard about a man from the Kelly’s dying in his sleep with a smile, or attached to a machine in a hospital. My great-great grandfather was fresh off the boat from Ireland on the day someone took his wallet out of his back pocket and shoved him into an oncoming train. Subways were apparently unsafe back then. His son, my Great grandfather, died a decade or so later during a thunderstorm. The way I’ve been told the story, he was attempting to carry a sheep to the safety of its pen during a violent storm when he was struck by lightning. For all the sensitive souls, I believe the sheep survived. One of my great uncles was found frozen to death in a snow bank when it started to thaw, his palm still frozen to the glass of a whiskey bottle. My grandfather Norman is actually still alive, thankfully, though he did have a very close brush in the late 70’s, which may have broken the cycle. He went down in a plane crash while on a business trip, and out of about 40 passengers, he was one of two survivors. He dragged the woman sitting next to him out a shattered window after escaping himself, though they were both burned. There are photographs somewhere.

So you can see how, in my brain, I’m picturing this as the revival of Death’s Vendetta against the Kelly clan. The Reaper is skipping a few generations in order to catch me unawares. Imagine that, Death by Screwfest? And I’m not even the one getting laid? A closed casket funeral because I’ve been disfigured by a double sided dildo, impaled through the chest. Her boyfriend is stumbling around, still blindfolded, fumbling to find a phone to call 911. He reports to the dispatcher that he just seriously fucked a girl through the floor, and there are casualties. His father is the proudest man alive while mine has to deal with having an urban legend for a dead son.

But then, right then as I’m imagining all the bizarre police reports and news castings and everyone trying not to laugh as my casket gets lowered into the earth, the ceiling cracks again.

You better believe I slept on the couch.

Ray is fucking wrong.

Let me preface this by saying that I won't ever use words like "blogosphere," or pretend that my opinion is in some way fresh, exciting, or relevant to anyone who does not know me personally. I am creating this 'blog' (what a faggy word) in order to actively fuck with my friends who also have 'blogs.' I believe the practice of famous 'bloggers' linking to each other's entries in order to create some false sense of traffic is both pathetic and impotent, in the grand scheme of things. Actually, in the fucking small scheme of things too.

But anyway, my first entry is in response to Razzle's entry. And also, it will involve Ed's entry. So, that's the required reading for this course.

First, I have to call Ray out on saying that Tucker Max is in some way exaggerating. Don't worry, I'm not a fanboy, I'll cover my own problems with the Tucker phenomenon later. I've never once read a Tucker Max story and said "wow, he is great at making things up." And yet, it seems, that this IS the first reaction many have to his stories. You can browse his forum if you want proof that many people simply will not, or cannot, believe that he leads this sort of life.

I don't understand this at all, because I know for a fact that I have stories just as crazy as his. I do not have as wide a selection as Max, but between the girl shitting my bed and the goth girl trying to fuck me in a graveyard, and then biting my lip and drinking the blood- well, I've seen my share of quirky evenings. I suppose I thought any college-age American would have had similar experiences. In fact, Max says this all the time-- how many times have you found yourself in a bizarre situation? The difference is he wrote his down and crafted them into a well paced story. The only fabrications I can easily see are condensed time frames, and cutting out excess information that would interfere with the pacing. I mean, really, cut through his story-telling and actually boil the story-arcs down: He fucked a girl in the ass, it got messy, she left.

That's really it. You're telling me you've NEVER had a similar experience? Obviously the bitch is in the details, but really, I have to agree with him. He's never done anything in these stories that I cannot imagine doing myself, if I were presented with the opportunity. A thought struck me the other night as I was preparing to drink at Ray's- since I seem to be among the few who buy these stories, does that mean I am, actually, among the few who can imagine it happening to themselves?

So I told Ray a story. I believe it might have been an extension of the Cemetery saga, or the Bed Shitter story. And he said- "Dude, how come you always have these stories?" So, has my friend thrown me into the same Bullshit Artist category he seems to have Max in? It would be a blow to my self image if I thought one of my friends found me to be a dishonest person. I don't bother telling stories unless they really happened, because I have an enormous problem with liars.

I mean, for fuck's sake, I have the word VERITAS tattooed to my chest. I am a firm believer in the truth. This is where Ed's entry comes into play. I am with the third movement. I do not lie unless it is to save my life or someone else's. If someone said "Hey, how many girls have you slept with?" they would get the honest answer, no matter who they were. But if a group of bikers comes up to me swinging chains and pulling out switchblades, and says "Are you that faggot Andyconda?" I'll probably point them in a direction other than my own, obviously.

However the problem with Ed's approach, and the reason he will be labelled as an asshole, is a lack of tact when telling the truth. When a girl asks if she looks bad in a pair of pants, and she does, saying "Yes you look fucking ugly" would be the truth. And you'd be an asshole for telling her the truth in that way. There is obviously a more tactful way of letting her down- Well, sweetheart, I just don't think it's your style. But I like when you wear ______.

See? You told the truth, but you are also NOT an asshole.

Back to Tucker Max. My problem with him and his fans certainly is not within the veracity of his stories. Rather, I have to find a problem with the worship being thrown at him, which he seems to both encourage and discourage at his own whim. I hate the fact that, browsing his forum, you can find people who continuously ake reference to some deeper meaning of his work, and how only the intelligent can truly understand him. Excuse me? Like I said, I won't insult his ability to tell a story. I have never once been bored while reading his material, I laugh often, and I love the stories. I bought his book, I gave a few away as gifts, and I'll do the same with his next volume of tales. Should his TV show go through, I'll be a regular viewer.

But deeper meaning? Guys, these are glorified fart-and-fuck jokes of the most basic kind. There is no carefully crafted meaning here, and there CAN'T be, because, as he says-- they are true stories. I have never heard of someone who's personal life had been carefully constructed of double meanings, symbolism, and metaphor. What message can you possibly gain from Max's writing? To thine own self be true? Please, that is the most basic message of any piece of literature. I have a copy of King Bidgood's In The Bathtub up in my closet with the same exact message. It is neither profound, nor remotely new.

Also, why the fuck is he always using the word Hubris? using the word is, in itself, an immense act of hubris. Last I heard, this word was applied to the likes of kings and warriors from ancient epics. Odysseus didn't write about fucking whores and drinking absinthe, he sailed around slaughtering the enemy, killing dragons, blinding the cyclops, etc. Please start using the word arrogance from now on, you fucking idiot.