GUN CONTROL

Summer, 1993

One night at about 2 am a bunch of us were partying over at Velvet's, just like usual. Suddenly the front door bursts open, and its some wild eyed dude, and in one hand he’s got a handful of some slutty looking chicks hair, and in the other hand he’s got a big ol' pistol.

“Where the fuck is JoJo!” he hollers out.

JoJo was one of the people that lived in the trailer there, but  he was was not there at the moment. Jojo’s roommate steps forward, her name is Velvet.
“What are doing bursting into my house?’ she demands
“JoJo been fucking my wife here!” and he jostles the slut around by the hair a little, and waves the gun some more.

Man, I’m sitting on the couch, and I just want out of there, ya know? I'm pretty sure that as crazy as this guy appears to be, he has a valid case because JoJo was fucking just about eeryone in the county, married or not, and this chick looked like she'd been around the block a time or two.

Well, Velvet, all this does is piss her off.

She stomps right up to him, grabs him by the ear, says

“I told you JoJo aint here, get the fuck out of my house” and with a swift kick to the ass,  tosses the guy out and closes the door behind her.

Man, we all just looked at her like she was some kind of badass, ya know? And someone asks her ‘Velvet, weren’t you afraid of his gun?”

Velvet gets this funny look on her face and says:
“GUN? WHAT GUN?”

She never saw the pistol. I dont know how she missed it. I think about that every time I have occasion  to say “I’ve never been in a situation that would not have been made worse with the introduction of a gun.”
Which has been a lot lately because here in Texas we have a  bunch of Open Carry gun nuts going around with rifles slung over their shoulders.

COST OF LIVING

My rent  went up 36 bucks a month. They want me to sign a new lease.
I resisted the urge to do what I usually do and go down to the office to raise hell and start asking in a whiny voice what they are going to do with my 36 bucks a month.
"We're replacing the roof" they will say.
"But my apartment already came with a roof didn't it? I've had a roof all along." I will tell them.
"Its a cost of living increase" they will say.
"Cost of living? Whose cost of living?  You are going the wrong direction here. If you want to decrease the cost of living you should be LOWERING my rent" I will say.
Of course, none of this makes any sense to them at all, even if it makes perfect sense to me, and the end result is that they just think I'm a smart ass prick, and for the next year we will make each others lives miserable.
So I went ahead and kept my mouth shut, signed the lease and slid it under their door in the middle of the night.

THE MILLERS AND THE NSA

These shooters in Las Vegas, the cop killer militia nuts that were run off the Bundy Ranch by members of other militias who , arguably, were slightly more sane than the Millers?

The ones that neighbors and personal friends complained about, and the cops went to see them three times?

Where was the NSA?
I thought they were listening in on everything.

What were they doing up there?

Busy watching Dita von Teese?

Oh, I know what you are thinking.
Why can't it be Kate Upton?

Or why not go all the way with Scarlett Johanesson?

I MUST HAVE FRISKED 1000 YOUNG PUNKS

I got pulled over one Friday night by a black cop. It was back in my Jesse James Days, so of course I had warrants. The second car showed up, lights flashing, and the black cop goes to frisk me before putting the cuffs on.
He grabs my belt buckle and pulls up, puts his hand to feel the inside part of my leg, and takes a good long look at my crotch.
“Is that all you?” he asks.

“Yessir”
He lets go of my buckle and says “DAMN”.

He and I just laughed and he put me in the backseat of his car.
I was very proud.

ONCE YOU KNOW HOW

When I first started working for Hyatt, the chef had me make lasagna. It came out great. Two weeks later, we were serving it again.
 I said "Do you want me to make the lasagna again?"
"No" the chef said "We'll buy it this time."
"Why ? Was my lasagna not good"
"Yes, your lasagna was fine" he said "But once you know how to make it, you never need to make it again"
God, how I miss working with chefs.

THE DEAD SEA

It reminds me of last Christmas when I was at the mall. I hadn’t been to a mall in a number of years, so I was just kind of meandering bout, slack-jawed, with no particular destination.
As I passed a Kiosk, I hear a voice say ‘Hello sir, how are you today?”
I turned around, and there's a good looking middle eastern fellow in a crisp white shirt and tie.
“I’m fine” I say.
He’s approaching me with his hand out. I cant help but stop my meandering and shake his hand.
“Call me Ishmael” he says “Whats your name?”
“I’m Steve “
“Well Steve, let me ask you. Have you washed your hands today?”
“Yes”
“How many times?”
“Five or six” I lied.
“Well let me show you something amazing”
He proceeds to show me a fancy bottle of pink salt, and he has me rub some in my hand. He tells me it comes from someplace exotic in the middle east, and asks me if I know where.
“The Dead Sea?” I venture.
“That’s right, you are very smart Steve” Ismael tells me. “Do you know why they call it the Dead Sea?” he asks.
“Because nothing can live in it” I say.
“Oh wow!” he says , and calls over to his buddy on the other side of the Kiosk “Hey, Steve knows why they call it the Dead Sea!”

Let me tell you, I had no idea how to get away from this guy. I listened to his whole spiel, watched as the salt made my hands cleaner than an angels butt, knowing I wasn’t going to buy any salt at the mall. He finally got to the pitch and the price.
80 bucks, that’s how much a jar of pink salt and a tube of cream cost. I laughed. No way.
He leaned in a little closer and whispered “I tell you what, I can let you have TWO for 60. That’s two salts and two creams in the special gift pack”
Anyone that knows me knows I don’t have an inside voice.
“SIXTY BUCKS FOR TWO? REALLY?” I said.
His eyes get wide and he grabs me by the shoulders and whispers “Steve, not so loud!”, and looks around as if to make sure no one has heard.
It was hilarious, and I laughed again.
"I’m sorry buddy, I cant pay that much for your product as excellent as it is”
“How much would you pay Steve?”
“I dont know. Maybe 15.”
Ismael looked at me with the most hurt look I had ever seen. I would not have been surprised if her were to render his garment, or pluck out an eyebrow and blow it away to the wind.
And that was my exit, except he had me sign a card to get on their mailing list.
Some folks just cant say no!

A CAT AND A HALF

-3) x (-6)= 18

Huh?

(-3) x (-6)= 18

That’s right!

Multiply two negatives and you get a positive. There is even a logical explanation for it, I know there is because I just read it, but I’ll be damned if I can explain it back to you.

So, (-3) x (-6)= 18.

That’s the one I’m sure I missed on the College Entrance Exam I took last night.

I was never any good at math.

That’s not true.

Once upon a time I was good at math. Good enough to land myself into an Honors Algebra class. But it was there that I learned how to not do my homework and barely pass. I passed algebra without really being able to do any algebra. That’s a real art man, one that I almost perfected. From there I went on to flunk Geometry, then Chemistry, and find myself as a senior in need of one single math credit in order to graduate from LD Bell.

That’s how I came to walk into room C-3 for my last shot at passing a math for dummies class.  There stood Mr. Barker.

Mr. Barker had been my teacher for those failed Geometry and Chemistry classes. He took one look at me and said “Steve, after I call roll you can go to the office and see about a transfer to a different class if you like.”

I stumbled into my desk and said “No, Mr. Barker, I’m going to pass one of your dumb math classes if it’s the last thing I do” and the whole class busted out laughing.

See, I was one of these guys that sat there, and when the teacher said “Two plus two equals four” I would  loudly  proclaim “Yeah, like when will I ever be able to use THAT out in the real world.”

Well, it didn’t take too long to find out. As a chef I learned to do food costs, and price menus; I figured labor percentages, and planned budgets. I actually spent about a year doing light accounting when I was assistant manager at a restaurant.

Even doing tile work, figuring square footage and how much material was needed for a job I utilized more math skills that I ever would have dreamed of as a young punk. I even got to use the Pythagorean Theorem  (even though Pythagoras didn’t actually invent it; the Incas and Chinese had been using it for a thousand years before he came along, although I shouldn’t slight the man for that) for drawing out a perfect grid for laying a floor.

So I was surprised last night when I took the math portion of the test and did pretty well, except for that darn multiplication of a negative.  I never had to use that in the real world.

But who knows? Just like 2+2=4, it could come in handy someday.
See? I’m learning.

"If a cat can run up and down a tree in a minute, how many times can a cat and a half run up and down a tree and a half in a minute and a half?"

PRUNING

Reminds me of some Indian Hawthorne I had in the front yard. I’d babied it, and pruned for a couple years getting the shape and bud production to a maximum. Then one year, I watched and waited, it was loaded with buds. Every night when I came home, I would take a look, it was just about to burst into pink bloom.
Then one night as I passed by, the shapes were all wrong, there were no buds opening in the moonlight. I turned on the porch light and AGGHHHH! 

My wife had SCALPED it. All the buds laying decapitated there in the bed and gasping a last breath on the concrete walk.
I nearly cried I really did.