January 25th
Miss Us?

I know it has been a long time since our updating. But now we're back with all the funk, jive, and love you have come to expect from a couple of boozers popping pills and working menial jobs. To forewarn anyone, this update was actually a letter to Ben that is about a year old. It is not current, so nobody freak out on me. Now, for talk on the winter ball:

Ok, more news on the women front. Which I hate. I like the women back. Because that means they are leaving. But no, I am talking to the little girlfriend (more sane but still a muppet) and her college is having a winter ball that she wants me to go with her to. I have many many problems with this.

A) Who goes to a winter ball? Who the fuck am I? Duke Westernheimshire who is coming to the formal to spread tales and fine silks from the far east and speak of the terrifying hinterlands where people with skin dark as midnight romp through the fields like stray puppies not yet properly put to the leash and the lash? To bow extravagantly and offer the king a dowry for his 16 year old daughter that would make even the queen bat an eyelash (that being all she is capable of since her untimely demise, mummification, and plastering to the throne). Then we could heartily engage in one of those strange ballroom dances with a lot of curtsying and ritualistic partner switching that I cannot understand. It is like square dancing without the nice, solid, geometric addition of a square. And as an avid square dancer I cannot abide that. I know that the evening would find me firing my six-shooter into the air and declaring “Pythagoras forever, down with Euclid!” then throwing the piano player into his own instrument and beating a hasty retreat into the nearest bottle. Who does that?

B) I hate college kids. I hate their attitude, I hate their bearing, I hate their arrested development, I hate that they make banners. I am not going to stand with a bunch of flirting, dancing, preening, vapid little walking reasons for natural selection so that my “funky ass bitch” can get her groove on. And I don't dance. I mean, I don't dance at all. But she wants to drag me to this. And (is with her typical style) she is going to go whether I go or not. Boy, that makes me want to kill her less. She bitches about the people she goes to school with and then wants to spend social time with them. Because she has a uterus and it swallowed her brain. A condition medical science is calling “being a woman for more than five minutes”.

C) Primarily, I like to make believe that she is mostly likeable. Good to get along with. Handy company. I have seen her (open her mouth and) degrade into someone who I pity and loathe. To see her wallow in that persona would be like trying to use a horse syringe as a catheter. You might be able to get the fluid out, but is the pain worth it? That was a sexual thing if you didn't catch it. So no, I think that I have a whole lot of not being sober that sounds a lot better than that semiformal garb day care.

Oh, wait, have I gotten to the best part? It is Moulin Rouge themed. I know, I went from being your average, run-of-the-mill blue collar drunk to knowing people that go to themed balls…. Themed balls. My life has become a place of neither sight, nor sound, but a state of mind. My idea of themed balls are ….ok it is almost too obvious to say “when I put a little Santa hat on my scrotum” but I am doing it anyway. Because when the mistletoe is hot and the cider is spiked it is a Yule tide celebration of pelvic ripping proportions.

Themed Ben. Themed. At least your girl is just nice and run of the mill crazy. Mine is |-| that far from making a chain out of curled paper with the names of all her pets on it before they pump her full of 2% and put her down for a nap. How our higher education system sanctions this is beyond me. Because it doesn't seem to be properly readying our youth for the concentration camp they will spend the rest of their life breaking rocks in.

I am going to be honest here. Your loony bitch is starting to sound like fun. At least she is just shitty nuts but likes you. I can cope with the cheating, screaming, note-writing easier than someone that wants me to come to a Moulin Rouge themed ball. I don't have enough dynamite for that party man. I just don't. Not even if I started refining like a fucker right now. I've got the glycerin (don't ask) but where I am going to land the 21 pounds of nitrous I need….I'd have to knock off two veterinary clinics. And we all know that I would be distracted by the horse tranquilizers and never get anything done.

Tell you what, I will take yours for a while and you can take mine. Like when you got tired of your BMX and I got tired of my Schwinn and we traded for a weekend. She gives lousy head, but has a high pain threshold. Put something out on her, she'll even get that singed flesh smell out of the sheets for you.

Wrote the other little twat, a rather nice note I thought. I didn't start it with “hey other little twat” like my editor wanted. No reply. It seems she wants to be fucking out of her skull full time. Which is no fun for either of us. Oh well, I gave it the old college try. And by college try I mean I took a political stance and whined about how my “music theory” class was just soooooo brutal. It is worse than that time I totally messed up at the spelling bee. I know now that it is “EATEN” and not “EATING”. Those judges were totally biased. How gay.

So I am not sure I have enough whiskey for the rest of the night. But if anyone can try it, it is me. So I bid you farewell and if you ever need a witness for the defense….

October 26th
OMG! You are juth the living end!

What, exactly, is up with the media and its newfound love of homosexuals? I thought Richard Simmons, RuPaul, and the entire male cast of the Brady Bunch was a point where everybody realized they should desist. But noooo. I can't flip to a fucking channel that doesn't have homos superciliously tossing throw-pillows around the unkempt house of some extra-barbaric straight dude, or flailing around on Will and Grace like previously incarcerated pixies who can’t find the daiquiri mix. I guess it's supposed to be tacitly and universally understood that anybody with a forced speech impediment and funky hair should perform a feng shui ritual in your living room. They are also the quintessential source of humor. Every time some swaying jackass on TV that pretends he rides the man train cracks a joke about his love for Cher or the immaculate completeness of his Striesand albums, I just die laughing. HAHAHA, you assholes. Stop with the gayness, people. I see enough of it outside of my living room to where I come home looking for industrial soap, so I’d appreciate it if you’d stop telling me what I need to feel “satiated” after a hard day of dealing with humanity in general. Bunch of damn inscrutable, obfuscated conjurations of the "gay world" manifested by a panel of Calvin Klein-clad uppity straight people that's then broken up with a few Hot Pockets commercials in case you don't know if you're hungry. And you're supposed to laugh at the jokes whether you understand them or not, just to be on the safe side when your "hipness" is on the line. Fuck that, I say.

"But gay people are people too!" No they're not. You cease to be a real person when you slap an adjective in front of the word and have it screen printed on a Hanes Her Way t-shirt. It’s ridiculous. At that point you’re nothing more than a Saturday morning cartoon. That's like me walking around referring to myself as "Big Penis Person," or Matt walking around calling himself "Ruler of All Things Person." The intimate details don't need to be a part of the term. Nobody wants you haunting their nightmares because you just HAD to pose in a manner that you only thought to be seductive yourself and lisp out your sexual preference after pulling your finger out of your dirty damn mouth. I don’t fucking know what kind of concomitant chromosome attached itself to you when you were in the process of being conceived, but it sure as hell wasn’t an X or Y.

"Sthtop making fun of uth! All we want to do is ride a float in the shape of an erect phallus down main street during the gay pride parade!" And that is another thing. I'm not allowed to be in any of these much lauded "pride parades" due to, I guess, genetics, preferences, and affiliations. Male pride? HAHA, that's funny, Mr. Connery. White pride? A million guys in golf shirts marching through the center of D.C., eventually arrested for "attempted lynching" because somebody decided to wear jogging shorts with a draw string. You can't ever be too careful when it comes to us crackers. We might'n kill us an injun! Straight parade? We're too busy trying to fuck your sister.

I mean, damn, doesn't the fact that you have to exploit something or "be known” mean that what you're doing is a little abnormal? Or, more pithily worded, that you're a minority in some form or another? Let me just go ahead and speak for the majority on this one, since the rest of us are probably trying to piece together Hitler's shattered skull and revive him; WE DON'T CARE! Seriously. Stop. You can be a black homo midget (sorry, dwarf) for all I care. Just please, please don't get on a float with a plaster cast of Mt. Kilimanjaro, Chippendale dancers, and a poster of Mini-me. It shows nothing more than the fact of your being proud to be a raging dumbass without a job. My happiness is contingent upon you NOT doing something extraneous and time consuming for YOU. If people would just stop and think about the direction of their apathy, Rodney King's dream might just become a reality. Honestly, I'm having an apathy parade right now, in the comfort of my own living room. And the great thing? Nobody cares!

I should seriously be President,

Ben

October 5th
Tape: Stick around for the idiocy.

Normally I try to avoid watching the morning news, the evening news, and any reruns of such programs at later hours. And I also make it a point to no longer become incensed at the prolific fucking idiocy of your average American. Then six-year-old Peter-Anthony Hereu came along, represented by his parents, Judy and Pedro, in a legal plea against the Coral Gables Elementary school system. These individuals are another perfect example of how selective breeding works, forcing people of certain attributes to come together. Dumb people find each other, mate, and have dumb kids. And you know exactly what comes next with a family like that; a lawsuit.

The story is that Peter-Anthony couldn't seem to adhere (while we're on that theme) to the Draconian inspired book of unreasonable rules that exists in your average grade school. Namely consisting of things like "Don't eat the crayons," "no back-talking," "make a line in an orderly fashion," "stay in your seat until you hear the bell," and "seriously, don't eat the crayons." Peter couldn't keep himself in his goddamn seat for increments of time longer than, oh, two minutes. Which, normally, parents blame on some form of ADD, pump the kid full of ritalin, and subsequently wonder why he's still peeling up sections of the linoleum in the kitchen and trying to strangle his siblings to death. Nothing works like a good old-fashioned ass beating, I say. I'm seriously on the verge of marketing the backside of my right hand to drug companies. They can slap a fancy graphic on the bottle with the words "What's that? WHAM!" printed in big, red letters. The dosage all depends on how much they happen to be pissing me off.

But when you work in the American educational system, and you're teaching kids that are able to talk, that shizaz doesn't fly. So his teacher did the next best thing; taped his ass to his seat. Bitch should have been given a Cruel and Unusual Creativity award, as far as I'm concerned. The kid needs to learn these little rules in school because, much to his chagrin, rules exist outside of school as well. Like the fact that running around in the fucking bank and hitting the other customers gets you shot, or arrested; which entails the stretching-out of certain orifices. Which would you prefer? Piece of tape at the tender age of six, or a 40 caliber slug in the chest at the age of twenty because your parent's incessant coddling and excuse making when you were younger didn't give you the tools necessary to act normal? This is why 90% of adults today aren't sociably functional. "Never hit your kids. Violence in their youth, (and this always follows) which are their FORMATIVE years, breeds violence in them as adults." Yeah.

Please. That's why everybody's grandparents grew up as such disrespectful gang bangers. My Pop always keeps his bitches in line, and when he wants something, he just whips a Louisville slugger out of the trunk and handles his bid'ness.

But what, you may be asking yourself, does this have to do with his parents and their faux-looks of utter astonishment and indignation plastered all over the news? That's right, $$$. Guess who was right next to them during their interview with the news anchor. That's right, their attorney, Jorge Silva. The mother, Judy, who can barely form a coherent sentence herself, claims that she was "physically ill" after hearing about the "trauma" that her son incurred as a result of this horrific treatment, that she "had to vomit," and that she "just can't stress it enough." Her husband merely shakes his head in an Academy Award bid for "Most Distressed," while occasionally parroting what his mousy wife says like a big, dumb oaf. She continues to claim that her son now suffers from violent nightmares. Pardon? What's he dreaming about? Bigass rolls of tape chasing him through the woods? Breaking his action figures? Shaking him down for his lunch money? I say again; Please. Something comes to my attention in this matter as being entirely contradictory; Peter-Anthony did not come to his parents with this information, rather, the parents learned from the mother of another student that the taping was taking place, then asked their son if the allegations were true. Now, Hereu's mother said her son would wake up in the middle of the night saying, quote unquote, "I didn't do my work! They're going to come after me!" Had the child been, in actuality, uttering these phrases, induced by nightmares, would the parents have had to attain the information from the mother of another child? I think not. Did the nightmares somehow not magically manifest in Peter-Anthony's sleep until Judy Hereu learned of the incident? Bullshit someone else.

Keep in mind that Peter-Anthony was only taped on one occasion.

You'd think the kid had just been carted out of an iron maiden, or gotten home from a four-year stay at Hanoi. Fucking louses. And since they're going for the Big Bucks, she's thrown in the fact that he suffers from acute asthma, as well. And what does asthma have to do with tape on his ass? Good question. The answer is abso-fucking-lutely nothing. But, you see, there's a new and obscure angle. Other students reported of having been threatened with the possibility of having tape placed over their mouths. The mother states that, had this punishment been enforced and used on mommy's little angel, she's quite certain that he would have DIED! The fuck is that? Speculative negligence and abuse? Yeah, she's claiming that tape could have put an end to his runny-nosed little stint as a human. I'm sorry lady, but, aside of this being a bullshit claim, your child has much bigger problems to contend with if some sticky-tape is going to end his life. He's the next candidate to leave this world in an attempt to mimic a stunt from MTV's Jackass, mark my words. That way he can at least go out with a flourish. "He was just a tortured artist that nobody appreciated." Much less embarrassing than finding him stone cold on the floor somewhere with a three-inch piece of tape over his mouth. But then the book deal would never materialize, "Peter's Struggle; It Just Wouldn't Come Off." I guess you have to pick and choose your moneymaking schemes.

I mean, had this been something more industrial, such as duct tape, I could see what all the concern would be about, albeit not the lawsuit. Teacher apologizes, goes on transitory probation, Peter lives, everybody is happy. However, the father clearly stated that, when he asked his child about the denomination of tape used, the kid told him it was the thin clear kind. Oafman, however, says that it "might not be accurate" as it could have been a "clear kind of duct tape." Last time I looked at a dictionary, "intentional inaccuracy" held a connotation with "disinformation," or "lying." So your kid's a liar, then? Maybe he didn't get taped at all, asshole. I think anybody would be hard pressed to mistake some innocuous clear tape with the kind used on metal ducting unless it is entirely intended to mislead. Even your little Petey-boy.

The parents sicken me more than anything I've seen in a long time. Like their son is a totally benevolent, little wheezing, asthmatic dreamboat that's bursting at his cutey-pie seams with love and tenderness. BITCH PLEASE. I saw the little hell-spawn's photo, and Satan is simmering right below the surface of those ostensible doe eyes, I can assure you. You think the two of you might like to come forward and actually admit that, yeah, your kid is probably a walking, sass-mouthed class disruption? Nah, 'course not. We'll just wait a few years, and when he's still having trouble grasping the concept of whole numbers and addition, it'll speak for itself. They're seriously going to need to use whatever money they pull out of this to buy a new book of idiot excuses first and foremost, because the crystal ball depicts a grim outlook for the future.

You need to borrow my belt?

Ben

September 29th
I get paid to love nachos.

You're going to need your drunk decoder ring for this bastardization of the English language. I think I will have that King's Quest review soon. Ignore the reference in this update.

People are always asking me, Burnz, why aren't you a CamGirl? They also tend to ask me, Burnz, why did you kill my only begotten son? Actually, that is God a lot more than it is people. This leads me to one inescapable conclusion:

I framed those Jews good. And Judas ...total smokescreen. I also was the first to break the sound barrier and invented the beer hat. Ok, the beer hat thing is a total lie, I was just trying to impress the .01 ladies that read this site. (Actually, you would be surprised to learn that it seems the majority of my readers are female. To this I can only say, ladies, stop doing searches for the words Crazy Bitch). Pardon, I meant our readers, snubbing Ben is just biting the hand that you pay to hit your girlfriend. And we don't approve of that here. The biting, the hitting is just dandy with us.

On to the first question, why am I not a CamGirl? Why aren't I posting pics of myself in various states of undress so that pathetic nerds can worship me and shower me with dozens and dozens of gifts? I'm a young, healthy, sexy, single stud with a kung-fu grip and the insertable anatomy feature with the special collagen enhancement to necessitate that to store it I must wrap it around the hosemaster 1500. Shouldn't I be letting you watch me eat cereal? Why can't you enhance your video card to view the wall behind me so that you might see my used LSD tab collection? When I am doing un torrid things with my neighbors cat, shouldn't you perverts be allowed to view the whole honey covered mess? When you see me, Whiskey Jack, Knuckles, CowMan Leonard, and Powder Puff McGee torching the trailer I live in and you don't report it to the cops, shouldn't you be tried for accessory to conspiracy to commit insurance fraud? Pardon, I meant "when you see Whiskey Jack, Knuckles, CowMan Leonard, Powder Puff McGee, and I."

I'll tell you why I am not a CamGirl. I mean besides the obvious anatomical problem. Well, it isn't a problem, actually it is a solution to the question "What else can we shove into this blender?"

Hosemaster 1500...what the fuck happened to the other 1,499 models?

What will strike you most about King's Quest V is it's dissimilarity from it's four predecessors in that it does something none of the prior ones did. It got reviewed by my site.

The plot begins with a castle.

Lost somewhere between beauty and insanity. I learned a long time ago that I have trouble defending my left side. It was the crunching sound of someone trying to pound my teeth through my right ear that taught me to keep my elbow high and hit the knee fast ...mostly with a crowbar if I could do that.

I didn't say anything as he told me that he was just her friend. He followed me into the kitchen while he talked, because I kept walking away. She and him were nothing more than acquaintances. She and him were not going to stop seeing each other. I needed to let her go. I needed to simmer down. He explained that while she and I had something, friendship was important too and he "knew my pain," but that I was being ridiculous. On the tile floor, I was standing while he talked right into my face. I would chuckle at him and say nothing. I popped the cubes out of an ice tray. He kept trying to simply make it clear that there wasn't anything between them. He was confused but unsurprised when I popped my knuckles against the edge of the oven. No, he said, patting me familiarly. No was the last thing he got a chance to say. With an ice cube wrapped in my bony hand I'm sure it felt like a brick. I remember his gentle and forgiving smile, and then I remember him hitting the floor. When he got up, there was a red puddle he was laying in. And there was a glass puddle in my car that was formerly playing the role of my windshield.

Men are all children. Women are all objects.

September 24th
The w00m3n f100d!

It is possible our formatting came to resemble something your sister might suck if promised enough money. Right now, it is too late for me to get more liquor, and holy shit do I have a lot I want to talk about if I can keep myself afloat.

First, thank Ben for the last update, if not for him, you'd still be staring at a disclaimer. Let's just get blogging on this motherfucker, shall we?

Some time ago, I was going to update you with the jabberings of my roommate and I about the new reality show "Surprise, you're a hobo." I didn't. After that, I thought about putting up the updates to my old book, The Madness of Saint Malcolm. I didn't. Right now I should be writing to you a review of "King's Quest V" and I still refrain. But that is because something has gone awry with your lovable webmaster. Do not fret. But for now you'll just have to be content to accept that I am going to talk about whatever the hell I feel like...And you might want to copy it, as I will probably delete it tomorrow morning. At this rate, instead of our daisy chain of garbage, we might have to keep to a couple of updates a page. So settle in shitbags, this is gonna be long. But come on back, the King's Quest update will be damn funny when I get to it.

Anna is a name I never want to hear again. She's a squat asian that never seemed to learn English that well. No, actually she is a squat Asian that learned English just fine, and then seemed to forget all of it and then instead of speaking a language that was coherent, chose to giggle like a furbie on bad speed.

The other night I was stuck with Anna like Lance Armstrong was stuck with a tumor...except that in his case, suicide could have solved everything, while I have no doubt she would have ate forty five dozen ball bearings and followed me, gagging, into the underworld if I had done the reaper dance.

I'd tell you more, but I just don't want to relive it. My point is that she is one of a string of acquaintances that have decided to resurface in my existence. Only one of them is pleasant. Here's some fast profiles:

1 - Anna - She was a funny bitch about 2 years ago. Now, I wouldn't kill her to eat her. Because I just don't need that kind of calories. Someone make her die. And now she knows where I live. Fuck it, someone just make me die...or give me a nickel, I'll do it if you trouble yourself to bury her.

2 - Darcy - Why god? Why? Absence makes the heart grow fonder. So why the living shit cows can't she just let my heart get all kinds of fond and leave me the hell alone? No, I am too stupid to just snub her. The depressing part of her and I is that a lack of regard or respect doesn't keep us from defaulting to each other in harmless little conversations. I can't even blame her for this. Darcy is like vomiting up barbed wire. You are stuck with it no matter how much you gag. And it seems she can't get rid of me any easier. If I were in a confessional mood I would say that is because I really don't choose to. It's pathetic symbiosis. But she wanted to "talk" for a while. We were unable to do that for too long. Maybe because we remind each other of someone we would rather forget. One way or another, we will kill each other. It's good for us. Most animals do it. Maybe if we pushed out a baby we could just feel content ripping each other from the gut out.

3 - Emily T - I've never been able to figure out if she was a joke, a mistake, or a missed opportunity. A fast few minutes and I think I could have been done with her. There is something vaguely insulting about having her call you up to chit-chat when you never liked chit-chatting with her. But I can't say as I wasn't nice as she was a missed vagina...was that derogatory? I'd have taken her to the boneyard. The good news is she would have been riding an impressive wagon down there. It was my prudence that cost me that lovely loving.

Intermission - This is here to break up my bullshit so you can come back when you get done throwing up, and to allows you to make some "special time" with your toilet paper and grainy soap in stall #3. Like we didn't know why you were groaning.

4 - Julie - For those of you that are pathetic fanatics of Terroronthe32ndfloor.com, Julie is a somewhat familiar name. She's a darling creature with nonsensical ideologies that wants to save the world through jumbo vans and sleeping bags ...No. I would share but her I am not sharing with you. I'd kill you with a fucking peanut butter jar first. Don't ask me how I know, but that takes hours.

5 - Leanne - You should have seen her peel an orange. An act I so wanted to marvel at on some Sunday morning alone with her in a well-lit house, as sunlight streamed in, her lips twitching at some comment of mine as she does it, or perhaps pursing with concentration in that impish way that would ultimately be used to slay me were I ever to rule Metropolis from a throne of skulls.
I can bask in painful thoughts with more ease than those about Sunday mornings because those mornings will never come unto me like that. My living quarters are dank and unfriendly and cheap. There isn't a room in my home that could properly house her peeling. My world isn't something slashed into peach carpet that I surround her with in my mind's eye. That just isn't something I can have, so I hate to dwell tragically on it…not when I could dwell on something simple and hideous from the past that I have no power to alter. Something that is easier contained into my lightless quarters.

That is all. You've got it until I delete it.

No, as long as I know it will be gone soon: Enjoy fluff. The person might be disposable, but you should love fluff. Everyone should.

That is truly all.

September 21st
Look down, yeah, there, at my crotch.

So I am in the grocery store. Perusing the panoply of aisles and giving mental contention to what's actually in them versus what the signs say. Thumping melons that I have no intention of buying, and trying to make sense out of the absorbed sound. I can't resist picking up a six pack of Amstel due to a drastically reduced price. Far be it beyond me to refuse possibly skunky beer if it is cheap. And it's the usual scene one would expect to see at a supermarket during peak hours. Employees trying to look busy, scurrying between front and back like headless chickens, seemingly wanting of proper direction. Mothers keeping their children in check with scowls and verbal pleas to relax, followed by ominous threats regarding "when we get home."

The arrythmic beeping of items being scanned at the front, and price checks on various items. Somebody named "John" being called to the front for a vague duty. A total hellhole of confusion.

The ruddy color of the expansive meats forum sets in its gravity, and I am forced to buy a couple of good looking steaks, wondering, all the while, how I am able to exist off of nothing more than yeast products and bovine. Maybe my health is merely an ostensible thing, I think, as I yank down a box of corn flakes on the way to the cash register, feeling like any kind of grain would be supplementary beneficial. If only mentally so.

All I want to do, mind you, is go home, grill a couple of steaks outside, drink a few suds, and hang out with my dog while I contemplate what kind of flick I'm actually in the mood to watch. In solitude. And I remind myself of this, and breathe a deep breath of all-encompassing satisfaction as I walk through the fluorescence of an aisle filled with random canned goods, already feeling the warm embrace of my couch. It is at this point of Supermarket closure that I hear my name being called. Not the usual "Ben" or "Benji," but a long drawn out "Beeeen-jamin" in a simultaneously cheerful and sickening manner that makes me feel more disgusted than a gay guy at a Neil Young concert. I like my name. A lot, quite frankly. But not when its vowels and consonants are being put together in vocal form by a voice that I have done all I can to avoid ever hearing again. The house might have fallen squarely on the witch, but she has somehow survived the trauma, and has risen up again like an extra from the Evil Dead.

My subconscious briefly closes my eyes for me, and the deep breath I had previously taken, utterly satiated, is blown out, leaving me with the bereft feeling of a hollowed log. Unnecessary and badly performed histrionics are absolutely the last thing on my mind, and the queen of their creation has just, once again, stepped over my threshold. I knew I should have invested in that burglar alarm.

I turn and see her face. It is a severe blemish in an otherwise normal tapestry of human doing. I don't speak as she approaches. All I feel is a hopeless drop of my heart, and the further capitulation of my diaphragm pushing out my happy fill of air. A beachball punctured by a sharp shell. My arms, always strong and stout, feel lax. I just want to get home.

"Hey you! I've been trying to call you for the longest time," perhaps to explain your previous actions of turpitude and constant nature of lying to me. Like I care. I can figure things out on my own. I remain speechless. For a reason.

"You ok?" define 'ok.' I've been happy today. I was happy up until ten seconds ago. And, furthermore, I don't want to hear what you have to say. "Look, I'm just going to say it," I'm surprised, "I've been thinking about 'us' a lot ever since, you know, we broke up. And I think it was a mistake." Apparently she's run out of money. And sources to get it from. "How do you feel about it?" Fuck the importance of a segue-way, right?

"I feel like I dislike you very much," I say, turning, walking to the shortest line of leaving customers I see. Yearning for some teenager to ring up my items, ask how I am, and send me on my way. It feels like an eternity as I feel her stare on my back. I glance over. "Just spill it, please. I have... things to do." History is always a good indication of the future.

"Look I think we should move in together. My boyfriend after you - he just...," spit it the fuck out, already, "didn't treat me like you did." Now that's something I can believe. The crazy haze starts to form in her eyes. "That's why I've been calling you. I miss you. You never... you never call back." Which is the precise reason I told her that calling would be useless in the first place. Cheat. Lie. Steal. I'm sure I want more.

"Please leave me alone." I say, the girl acting as cashier looks at me and mouths, You need her gone? trying to position her head to where it can't be seen by the opposing party. I shake my head, no. I smile at her as I pay my bill, and leave the place, not bothering to look back. I am going where no man has dared to go before; the parking lot.

Throwing my bags into the back of my vehicle, I jump in the seat, and ignite the spark plugs. Tom Petty is in the midst of a song on the radio as it lights up with the rest of the gauges and devices. I back out of my parking space quickly, the jeep rocking as I stop. I shift it into first, looking for the nearest exit, hoping the wind blows my indignation away. "Yeah, Tom," I say, to nobody, "I do know how it fucking feels."

In any case, I ate my damn steak. The dog got the other. True love goes a long way.

Ben