Open · Door · Policy

It is perhaps the single greatest invention of our modern times. No, no. It IS the greatest invention mankind has ever had: The self-checkout line at the grocery store.

There is nothing in the world like going to the grocery store, grabbing 2, 3, 4, heck, maybe 5 items and putting them into your little basket (or cart, if you’re lazy) and rushing off to the self-checkout line. It’s gratifying in two regards. Number One, you get to beat the rush to the lines and get in-and-out with such quickness that people will swear you lied about going to the grocery store. “That was only fifteen minutes, are you sure you went?” “What? Do you think I willed these bags into my hands?” “I don’t know … I’m keeping an eye on you.”

Number Two: You get to pretend you’re a cashier for a few minutes, don’t you? Do you ask yourself if you have any coupons or your shopper’s club card? Do you try to beat the other cashiers in the other lines with your checkout speed? I bet you do. You wish for those few brief moments that you had a uniform, don’t you? You cashier wannabe.

Oh, if only the rest of the people in this world were as smart and educated as the people that came up with the self-checkout line. If only …

Have you been behind one of the people that falls outside that category? The ones that spent nine-and-a-half hours shopping in the dimly-lit-smells-of-freezer-burn-and-floor-cleaner-grocery-store and have six carts all packed tightly and overflowing and decides to forgo the regular checkout line and check themselves out? These are the people of this world that should be weeded out and shipped off to a deserted island where they will no longer tear out the very fabric of society and civility.

These people attempt to cram onto the one-and-a-half by three feet weight the number of items that barely fit on the length of a regular belt. I was behind a woman the other day that had a cart, no lie, overflowing with various goods AND a coupon for each item! If I was the employee designated to watch over this area, I would shoot her. Right there. Just shoot her. You know the problems with those lines with only five items.

PLEASE WAIT FOR CASHIER ASSISTANCE.

PLEASE REMOVE ALL ITEMS AND WAIT FOR CASHIER ASSISTANCE.

PLEASE REMOVE ALL ITEMS FROM THE BAG.

PLEASE WAIT UNTIL THE RAPTURE WHERE YOU WILL BE JUDGED.

PLEASE WAIT.

FOR ETERNITY.

NO LIE.
That’s with FIVE items! I can only imagine after the 20th item what the screen would say.

SERIOUSLY?

PLEASE REMOVE ALL ITEMS, PLACE BACK ON SHELVES, WALK IN FRONT OF BUS.

These people lack any understanding of the way society works and should be remove immediately. They were never fully told the secrets of manners. These are the people that make left turns from the right lanes with no blinker. They run stop signs and beep at you.

The next time you see one of these people in your local grocery store, call your local parish priest and have him give them a talk. Get psychiatrists involved. These people need help, they need salvation, and they need to be offered it.

I wonder at what age it becomes ok to start shoving things down the front of your pants. Because there apparently is an age and I just don't know what it is.

What makes an old man think it's ok to stuff a football program down the front of his pants while walking to, from, or just during a game? What is the train of thought that leads you to that? "Well, I have this program and ... well, I have these pants ... That's about right!" Boom! Program in the pants.

But it doesn't just end there, does it? I saw an old man the other day, this is the truth, walking around with an umbrella crammed down his pants. AN UMBRELLA! I was curious if it was for the rain or to cover-up his incontinence.

But old people do this, don't they? They do things that, as younger people, we would never ever consider. They're stuffing all sorts of things down their pants, like hams, turkeys, full dinner spreads. They buy cars that are larger than some yachts.

Really, though, AN UMBRELLA?! He was just walking around. I have to just think that that's uncomfortable in the first place to walk around with. Can you imagine trying to maneuver? What if you have to leap over a puddle?

I wanted to run up to him and say, "Hey! Is that an umbrella in your pants or are you happy to see me?" But it was an old joke, it was played. I could've taken that low road. I could've stooped to the level of the 8th grader and ask him that joke. I could've done all of that. But I didn't.

I just ran up behind him and reached around to find out for myself.

It was just an umbrella.

Sit down. No, no. Stand up. Well, you know, it doesn't matter. Get comfortable and ask yourself this question in the quiet solitude of wherever you are. Get a cup of tea, some lemons, some honey, put on a Tom Jones album, and relax. Then ask:

"Would I walk in front of a moving vehicle?"

That's it. That's all you have to ask yourself between sips of that delicious chamomile tea. That's all. Would you walk in front of a moving vehicle? Would ya, champ? Huh? Would ya?

You'll probably say no right now. You're probably thinking, "NO WAY! What am I? An idiot? I'm gonna drink my delicious tea here and not walk in front of moving vehicles. Crazy people do that. Crazy stupid people do that. Not me." And you'll be confident in your self-analysis. I know it. You'll be proud of yourself and this conclusion you made of yourself today.

But, friends, you are idiots. You are. We are. He is and she is and they are and whoever else is. You're the people that you flip-off from your own cars when people do this to you. You're the people in the busy streets at busy intersections, getting on your cell phones, who will start blindly walking into a crosswalk, traffic be damned. "Traffic, get out of here, I'm walking." You might not say that aloud, maybe you're unaware that you think it, but you do. "TRAFFIC, GONE!" And you walk.

Now, I know what you're thinking, "Aren't cars supposed to stop for my dumbass in the crosswalk?" Technically, yes, you're correct. Yes, bravo, chalk a point up for you, Detective Dan. If a car is approaching a crosswalk from a safe distance with pedestrians in it, yes. But if you, Sherriff Stu, start walking into a busy street with traffic at the end of the crosswalk, just inches from you, then, no. You will be struck by one of those vehicles and people will laugh at your expense. "Did you hear what happened to Stu? He was hit by a car! Yeah! The idiot could've walked on the hood of the car by the time he decided to cross."

You do not have the right to flip-off the driver if he continues or beeps or swerves, you know, into you. You should scold yourself rather harshly and never use a crosswalk again. That's what should happen. Don't act like a victim, you stupid distracted street crosser. You are not a victim. Don't! DON'T! STOP! Whiners!

Why is it that we do these stupid things? You all asked yourself the question and, independent of the situation, you all know you would not willingly step in front of a 2000 pound piece of metal hurling at you. But you do. And we do this everyday. I do it. Will I talk on my cell phone while driving? No. But guess what? I'm behind the wheel, cell phone talking, eating chips, iPod blasting, no seat belt, lying down. Yes, lying down on the front seat in cruise control. That's how I do it. Why not? I'll walk in front of traffic; I can do this. And we all do these stupid things. We value our lives but we'll ride a motorcycle without a helmet while standing on the seat. Why not? Fuck it. Throw caution to the wind. We'll run from spiders and snakes but do this.

I don't separate myself from the pack, obviously. It's human nature, I think, to be a complete moron at times. I won't kill a spider without six layers of tissues but I'll think nothing of flipping off the 300 pound biker with the "BORN TO KILL" tattoo on his forehead who cut in front of me walking in a crosswalk. He and his bike are a bigger threat to my physical well-being and LIFE, my existence, than the spider. But whatever. I'll do it.

Hey, I'll take the chance, and you know what? I'll cross the street and see what's so goddamn great over there with an 18-wheeler bearing down on me.

As I sat in my Easy Chair desperately awaiting the Apocalypse on 6/6/06 (the sixth day of the sixth month in the sixth year of the new millennium, or 666, the sign of the beast), I began thinking if I had enough water stockpiled. One can never be too careful. I immediately ran out to get water, some milk, a little bread, some Cocoa Krispies, a few donuts, and some ice cream. You never know how much binging you can do in the Rapture and I damn well wanted to be prepared.

But as I was standing in line at the grocery store, 15th out of 30 at this point, I was behind a brittle old woman who was purchasing just some italian bread and spaghetti as if the end of the world was not approaching. I said to her, "Excuse me brittle old lady, are you not concerned about Armageddon?" She seemed unphased nor taken aback by the question but simply replied, "I have no faith in a man-made Apocalypse. It is God's design."

I was baffled. Not only was this brittle old woman brittle, she was obviously very mentally disturbed.

But then I remembered something from my long history of schooling that apparently every other one of my cohorts, all of the religious zealots and fear mongerers had forgotten: The Gregorian and Julian calendars.

You see, God did not create the month of June. As a matter of fact, the month is named after a Roman mythological deity, Juno. In fact, the month was created nearly five thousand years after the creation of the world and the writing of the Torah (Old Testament).

See, in 46 B.C.E., Julius Caesar created the Julian Calendar, with 365 days and 366 days every 4 years with 12 periods within based on the cycles of the moon (hence why they're called months). The problem was that it was approximated and was off by eleven minutes every year. Thus by February 24, 1582, the calendar was off by 10 days! TEN!!!!

So Aloysius Lilius, a Calabrian doctor, proposed what would become the Gregorian calendar, enacted by Pope Gregory XIII, to correct the 10 day problem and have the time elapse more accurately. The Julian calendar ended on October 4, 1582, and the Gregorian calendar began on October, 15, 1582. Ten days went missing.

But now by this time 10 days were erased before 6/6/06!!!! What does that mean? Even if we assume one of the calendars was correct, the real Apocalypse would be 6/16/06!!! We still have plenty of time. And while brittle old lady is buying spaghetti and italian bread, I have Fruit Roll-ups and milk!

Good-bye world! Hello Heaven!

Well, ladies and gents, it's official. The apocalypse is upon us and there's nothing we can do about it.

President George W. Bush came out today and said he was wrong about something. Not only that, but he said he was wrong about something he did a few years ago. And WHAT'S MORE is that it was something people have been telling him for those few years he was wrong about!

I don't know if my brain can possibly handle this information. On a day when those Enron execs, Lay and Skilling, were found guilty and the Senate passed major immigration reform, I just have to sit back, grab a beer and a gun, and wait patiently for the oncoming demons and the Holy War. Afterall, people predicted Bush would never admit he was wrong and those guys wouldn't be convicted and we were founded by immigrants. Something's going shithouse and I have a feeling it's us.

But I digress, I guess in a way Bush admitting he was wrong is (amajorpoliticalstrategyhopingtoretainsomerepublicanseatsinthemidtermelections) a good thing. It shows that our political leader (islosingpoliticalclout) has a backbone and is willing to (tryandsalvagesomeformofgraceanddignitybeforegoingoutasalameduck) admit he's wrong when it comes time to. Set an example for the rest of us, President Bush.

Tony Blair was with him too and we shouldn't forget that. Our strongest (puppet) ally stood by us and even helped shoulder some of the blame (weforcedontothem). Hopefully this will help bolster our reputations across the world because (otherwisewelljustbombtheshitoutofthosewhostilldisagree) we need to repair the damages we've caused to our other world allies.

I just hope in the scope of things this is looked back upon for what it is and that people can accept it for that. We've made some mistakes in the past and we're trying to correct them now ... no matter how long or how many lives must be spent to correct the mistakes that have caused so many lives and years to be spent. ...

... Hm, there's an apocalypse coming.

Ah, the wonderful world of travel. Where would we be without trains, planes, and automobiles?

Well, stuck at home, that's where. Or riding bikes. Or public transportation.

I'm not sure if you've noticed lately but gas prices are on a steady increase. I remember the days of the $.89 gallon of gas. Oh, it was a glorious time. I would drive constantly around the block because it was only $.89 a gallon. "Hey Jason, what're you doing?" "I'M WASTING GAS! IT'S CHEAP! I CAN!" And I wouldn't stop until I ran out. Would just run right out of gas and then push my car to the gas station. Screw ozone! Screw emissions! I had money to burn and gas to burn it on! $.89! I couldn't get a hotdog for that!

Today, though, these prices are insane. Last I checked it was around $9.00 a gallon, I think. I may've read the sign wrong. Now I don't even drive down the first section of my block. I move my car ahead a space then head to the gas station on bike to get a new container. My car's been on E since last year. I haven't gotten paid enough in an ENTIRE YEAR to fill up my gas tank! What's the deal here? I remember the glory days of open-road American travel! Now I can't even light my grill because of rising gas prices!

Of course everyone's to blame. It's the futures on the market; it's the Mideast not sending us enough; it's our reserves being depleted; it's the oil companies. Certainly an oil company whose business is oil is guaranteed the basic American right to make an exorbitant profit (making it the most profitable company in WORLD HISTORY). They don't have to invest that shit into anything. They're not bound to do it. That's like having a lemonade stand when you were younger and the lemons were kind of getting low and you had to mark-up prices. Well, kids couldn't REALLY afford it anymore, but they'd try and you'd sell a ton of lemonade anyway and have tons of money. So those kids didn't have the business sense to get into lemons. "Hey, Jason, can we borrow some of those lemons or maybe can you put some of your money back into it for us?" "Hell No! This is why I was selling it in the first place! F-You!"

What obligation would I have? Maybe the kids needed lemons to get on with their days; not my job. I supply, they demand. Simple economics.

So gas is $18.00 a gallon (changed since the start of this) and you can't drive anywhere anymore without spending your life savings on it. It's not the guy with the $400 million retirement package's job anymore to care. He needs that money to pay for all the travelling he'll be doing now that he's retired. Have you seen the prices?!

So I've decided, since I couldn't decide, to leave this up to you, the masses (the 8? of you?). First, spread the word because, while I love the 8 of you that are part of this trip with me, it's just not enough to get a decisive vote on this important issue and here it is!

I want you, the avid readers, to decide, to vote, to pick your favorite ODP because the one that gets the most votes WINS! And wins what, you ask? It will be the one performed for the first time!

So why don't the 8 of you count? First, it's an even number and if there's a tie I have no back-up system for choosing. Second, how do I know all 8 of you wouldn't conspire to pick the worst one so I look like an ass? Oh, I know you, yes YOU! You'd do it to spite me. Third, it's very lonely with only 8. Spread the word on MySpace and here! Yes! Make me a whore! Pimp me!

But last, it's because I love and trust you. You 8? have stuck by me and these writings. You've read the good ones, the bad ones. Some of you have even commented. And I know with your help, dedication, and my drugs, we can make this work one very small audience in a back alley town at a time.

Good luck, God speed!
J

I remember the fun of the Christmas holiday. When you're ten and you wake up, BOOM! Right out of bed at the crack of dawn, no alarm clock, nothing, and you run into your parents' room -- "MOM! DAD! LET'S GO! WE GOTTA GO! THEY WON'T BE THERE ANYMORE IF WE DON'T GO NOW! COME ON!". You find out later, of course, that they're already up because they have been since three days earlier finishing up the slave work of wrapping all of the toys they now regret buying and setting them up overnight on Christmas Eve. But they fake sleep so you can really wake them up.

So you're up, and you've woken up any other brothers and sisters you might have, as well as any other neighborhood children and parents who do not respect the Rule of Dawn on Christmas, and you take the Hell off down your stairs oblivious to any other concern you'd have from day-to-day about the dangers of them. "Why are there so many of these? I'm going to take them twelve at a time, looking back and yelling to everyone to hurry up, and not pay attention to that corner wall down there ..."

But you make it down safely and there before your eyes, AAAAAH!, is everything in the world that you could possibly imagine just wrapped, ready and waiting to be ripped to shreds to discover what's beneath. And it doesn't even matter what it is. You don't even know what some of the presents are when you're that old. Your brother open's it up and it's like Johnny Funjob's Mechanical Laughing Arm and you're like, "OOH, what is that? It's mine, put it down!" But you have no idea what it does. No clue. But it's yours this day because you took the intiative to wake up at the crack of dawn and get everyone else up.

So you're flying through all of this wrapping paper and this is where the holiday season takes a tragic turn and all parents should have their children taken away and put into foster care. What kind of parent lets their children tear full-on through a seemingly endless pile of paper with little concern or regard for PAPER CUTS?

You're firing through it and BOOM! The world's largest paper cut and it could've been prevented. I say, "BAD PARENTS!" What are these people thinking? No, my children will wear practical gift-unwrapping gloves designed, by me, for the safe and easy handling of wrapped gifts. They will not suffer the tragedy of thousands of little kids reaching into a potato chip bag and hour later and discovering the number of paper cuts they actually got. Oh my God, don't these parents remember what that was like?

You'd really think in a world where OSHA has laws about what height railings can be in places that there would be some form of law that says how much wrapping paper can be unwrapped in an hour and leave room for random spot inspections of children's hands.

Ok, but after the unwrapping's over and you've properly dressed all wounds, it is time to, ooooh, I'm excited, play with the toys, right? Except one problem: You now have thousands, literally thousands, of new toys. How do you decide which one(s) you play with first? So you don't. You move a toy for like five seconds then, wooo, tossed over the shoulder. Gone. Forgotten about for about three weeks until it's found under the sofa.

And you start having battles that are not even remotely possible. Not even in fake cartoon worlds. Look, I don't care who you think you are, Commander of Christmas Morning, but you cannot have Transformers battling GI Joe's. Yes, GI Joe is America's hero but he can not battle form-changing robots. It's just not logical. Stupid ten year-olds. Twelve's really the age where you discover the feasibility of such battles. It just dawns on you like, "Wait, wait, screw this. This robot would KICK this guy's ASS. I'll just have him make out with Barbie a little bit." But you don't touch Barbie, no you don't. You just sort of lean her against something.

And then about four hours or so after playing with all of these mounds of toys you just sort of pass out. Doesn't matter what you're doing. Your intergalacting battle of robots and military guys just abruptly ends and, SPLAT, you're face down in whatever's in front of you out like a light.

And that's Christmas to a ten year old. Yeah, ok, Jesus, blah blah blah.

Every kid breaks at least one of the Ten Commandments on Christmas.

Every kid.

I think one of the most embarrassing things for a guy to do is to dance when he can't. Me? I'm not a good dancer but that does not stop me. It embarrasses me after the fact; but it does not stop me. I get to a bar and there's some music playing, there's some drinks in the system, there's some girls out dancing, and every guy all of a sudden thinks, against better judgment, that he's Fred Astaire.

But we all do the same dance moves. I don't know where we learn them, but we do them. We just kind of put our hands up and act like there's a lot of bass or something to the music, whether there is or not. And it's very awkward and we look like a 2 year-old trying to tell their parents a story, right? Kind of all over the place and not really sure where we're going from there. And we try to talk to women this way. "Hi, yeah, I do look like I just suffered a traumatic head injury, sure, but can I get your phone number?"

It doesn't work so well. Some ladies will take pity on us knowing that most of us can't dance and that's why some guys have girlfriends. They found the girls that are not above charity. I've learned to do the Robot over the years because of my severe disability to dancing. I just kind of pull it out to any music; it doesn't really matter what the song is or if you can even do the Robot to it. I'll find a way. "Hey, what's that, Mozart? Fantastic ..." Robot.

There's just nothing more embarrassing then a guy dancing in a bar. Except, maybe, just maybe, older women dancing anywhere. I'm talking like over forty-ish women. And this maybe is the real reason women end up dating men. Every person knows exactly the way an older woman dances. You see it at weddings, at concerts, anywhere where music is playing and older women are in a group you will see it:

They do that little hands bent-at-the-elbows-shoulder-height-snapping-fingers-swaying-hips-back-and-forth dance. And they lipsynch to the songs whether they know the words or not, right? It doesn't matter what the song, when it was written, they just lipsynch and do the dance. "Oh, 'Mother' by Glenn Danzig? Mother ... *mumbles*" and dancing. You can pin-point a woman's age based on this style of dance because younger women don't do that, do they? When they're in a group they just combine forces and scream songs as loud as they can.

But what do older men do when all of this is happening?

They just stand in the back of the room in disbelief that that's their son, daughter, and wife.

Did you ever get involved in a conversation that, really, in the scheme of things you did not want to be a part of? During one of these conversations, and this becomes one of my favorite moments, when someone's talking to you and it's not quite a funny thing they're talking about but it's not wholly inappropriate to laugh to signal that, "Hi! Yes! I am paying attention to what you're saying!", you just sort of, kind of throw a chuckle in there to also say, "Ok, I'm paying attention but I have nothing really to say in response to what you're saying."

Except, and here it is, you try to project to the end of the conversation. You say to yourself, "I think what this person is saying is not going to be very long," except you fail miserably. You think they're going to say twenty to thirty words TOPS. So you throw your little chuckle in. But they're not done. They're far from done. This is the re-write of The Last of the Mohicans you're about to sit through and you just blew your conversational load. Now you have to keep semi-chuckling and smiling throughout this person's one-man production of The Deer Hunter and so your cheeks start hurting from doing this, your mouth goes dry, your laugh gets hoarse because your throat's dry and, basically, you're screwed.

There is no easy way out of this situation. You can't stop now that you're at the twelfth chapter and be like, "Oh, remember chapters one through eleven? I missed those." So you keep listening and maybe in this situation you'll try to substitute words for laughs, kind of a Lend-Lease, so you say things like, "right ... right ... right ..." or "yeah ... uh-huh .... right, right," and this is how you try to get out of, or at least expedite, the conversation. And you look like a moron and you know you look like a moron and you know the other person thinks you're a moron but you can't do anything about it. You've set this trap for yourself and you're stuck in it. Good luck getting out, you terrible hunter you.

My favorite thing to do when I see someone zoning out on me, which is not rare, my friends, is to just throw something random in that catches them off-guard but that they don't really hear exactly what you said but they know in their nodding-off that it had nothing to do with what you were actually saying. "So he said there was a used pick-up truck in the back of the lot and I said ... I'm going to sling a chicken out the top story window ... that I wasn't looking for a pick-up truck."

And people will just stare at you. They just look like they've seen a ghost or Nessy or perhaps a Sasquatch, depending on what part of the globe you're on. It's very regional, the freak out the person has here. "Did he really just say that or was I just spacing out that much that I imagined it and completely lost this conversation? How do I cover this up?" And the don't know if you said what they think they heard and you make no mention of it again, forever. Don't bring it up and deny it if they do.

They'll feel awful and they will never, so help me God, zone out on a conversation, especially from you, ever again.

What is going on with straw wrappers these days? Has anyone else noticed something different? We used to get these nicely wrapped straws in that sleek paper exterior. Now, however, some fast food joints are pawning straws wrapped in plastic to us. Not only that but they put these tiny little trash cans just for the wrappers that get all jammed up out by the soda machines.

Have these restaurants considered the implications of plastic wrappers and plastic trash cans? It is a static electricity mine field waiting for you to walk over it. I pity the person who is charged up, Oh My God, I pity them, when they approach it. Can you imagine? They go to throw the wrapper away and BAM! thousands of tine plastic wrappers are clinging to every part of their body. They just drop to the floor, squirming, suffocating, under the weight of plastic wrappers.

Let me pause a second. I'm an environmentalist and I love trees. I love everything about them and I know we're saving them by not using paper wrappers. I'm not necessarily sugesting we bring the paper back, though places still use it. I've heard, though, that it actually takes one thousand, ONE THOUSAND, trees to make one wrapper and I believe that. I whole-heartedly believe it without questions. Maybe, though, just maybe our paper industry can come up with more efficient means to process trees into paper? I mean why does it take 6 trees to make the paper you're using? Other industries have all kinds of regulations to make them run more efficient and paper's getting away with using a trillion trees to make a square of toilet paper. The car industry's like, "Wait, no, that valve's too big. Too much exhaust, change that. It's an eighth of an inch to big." And paper's basically saying, "What's that? Only one tree? No, bad formula. Go back there, cut down a few more. Even those rare ones. Chop them up, let's get a few more trees in here and make really thick paper. Go." Maybe we can use one limb per wrapper -- I don't know, I'm thinking out side the box which is not necessarily always good.

But I have other ideas besides an overhaul of the paper industry. Imagine this: A destaticize -- made up word that will catch one when this becomes huge -- zone in the joint. You walk through and -- BOOM -- no more static. You're cleansed of static cling. No more will you be swallowed by wrappers and your pants clinging awkwardly to your shins. No fear of being attacked by a plastic monstrosity set on your demise. Or maybe with the meal, they give you a little can of Static Guard. They just hand it over for you. You just spray yourself before opening your straw.

Can you imagine a line of people just standing around spraying themselves and each other down? It'd be like a small spray party. People just kind of skipping and frolicking, spraying things all over the place. It'd almost be like a musical. You know, everyone for no apparent reasons knows all the moves of everyone else so they're all choreographed and synchronized. I'm picturing 'Spray Gangs' like the Hoses and the Buckets -- we can work on the names later -- and they're a rivalry over who has the least static and cling wars break out. Guys walking and snapping fingers while spinning and what not towards each other, spraying, dodging, circling.

It'd be a magical time.

Hi Friends,

I decided I would take this time to welcome all the people that have read, signed up, or otherwise came across Open Door Policy (ODP to the cool kids). And it's because I want to know who you are as people, as fans, as rabid haters of this constant stream of drivel that I put out here.

I want to know what you think, good or bad, about the "bits". I want to know what's your favorite, what's your least favorite, what makes you tick. I want to know if you like long walks on the beach and the sweet sounds of Barry White as you sit on a couch sipping a Chardonnay and if I came over and started talking sweetly into your ear if you'd put out.

But besides all of that, I just need my ego boosted. I have such a terrible ego and it requires constant streams of love for my being that I need you to pump it up. So let's get to it!

I hope you all enjoy the ODP. And I hope you enjoy each other. Isn't that what it's all about?

Well, that and war.

J
New ODP coming Tuesday!

I recently spent some time in the hospital. Now I know when people hear that they think, "Like, what? Four days? Three weeks? What's the matter with you?!" But I was there for, give or take, about fifty minutes. That, however, did not stop the hospital staff from scaring me to near-death and leaving me baffled for a good portion of the time I was there.

For those of you unaware, the Emergency Room, or E.R. for short, which is how I'll now refer to it, has doctors on staff to see patients when they come in and decide if it's an emergency or not. So I walk in there with the left side of my face swollen to about the size of ... well, have you ever seen a medicine ball? It was like that, I think. Maybe bigger. It looked like I had grown another head, or at least that's how I perceived it.

It took me about two and a half hours after I woke up to realize my face was even swollen and this was after coming into contact with people. But no one said anything to me. I'm walking around looking like I have a tennis ball -- get your minds out of the gutters -- jammed into the side of my face, minus the color. And not one person said a word. If I'm walking down the street and I see a guy with a swollen face, I'm going to say something to him. I don't want to see that and I didn't want to interject my face into these peoples' days either. Just like when you have something on your face while eating. I want people telling me all kinds of things when that happens. "Hey, J, umm, you have a whole salad on your face. Yeah, is that arugula?" You know, TELL me these things.

So I'm doing my laundry and decide to go to a drive-thru and get some lunch. When I got back, I was eating and I had pain, see the swelling, finish my laundry and it's hospital time. I get there and I'm with a friend and all of a sudden I just knew this hospital visit -- indepedent of how long it takes -- would be awkward. There's this girl sitting in the waiting room who just automatically wanted to launch into conversation and diagnose me. Look, when you're at the hospital ER, see?, the last thing you want to do is converse with some person other than who you came with. And she asks me what's wrong and I turn to her. She sees the Face. She said it could be swollen lymph nodes because she had that once and her parent's a doctor.

Let me pause there. If it's that easy to become a doctor -- by relationship -- we would have a lot more doctors. I didn't go to the ER to be diagnosed by a girlfriend of a patient who, as I found out because she wouldn't stop talking, was in there because he had an allergic reaction to food. She compares this for me, in case I don't know what swelling due to allergies is, as when Will Smith's face swelled in that movie Hitch. At that point I knew I really hated this person.

Anyway, I finally get into the Triage nurse who runs some tests, throws some things around a little, and then moves me to a back room where my next nurse comes in. She asks me a few questions, looks at me a bit, and then this is where the visit does a 180 and goes shit-house. She's like, "Hmm, I had mumps once. Do you know what mumps is? It looks like you have mumps. Mumps. Mumps. Mumps. Let's wait for the doctor, but I think you have mumps. And Lordy, if that ain't painful! Hallelujah! The man's got mumps!" And like a big chorus from a baptist church came in and all of a sudden people are singing and praying for me and all I'm doing is sitting there sweating profusely now concerned that I may or may not have mumps based on the opinion of a foreign NURSE because SHE had them once twenty-five years ago!

Why do people in a hospital feel the need to speculate? I could speculate at home, that's easy, that's cake. I sat around before going to the hospital thinking it was a spider bite or something. So I can do that, I'm qualified for that. But the nurse didn't even touch my face or anything, she just asked a few questions and I'm thinking I'm going to be saddled up in bed for months with the mumps now.

Then the doctor comes in. I'm pretty sure I was older than him. He throws some gloves on and asks a couple of questions then looks in my ear, in my mouth and feels around my jaw. He tells me I have a swollen and infected saliva gland, tells me he's going to give me a prescription, tells me to take ibuprofen. Not once, NOT ONCE, did he use the word "mumps". He never mentioned it, he never looked at it, if it was written on the wall he would've painted over it. He swore it off but told me to come back if I had a fever later.

And I thought I was in love with this guy but, uhh, he sort of lost favor with me quickly. After telling me he's giving me a prescription -- which usually when a doctor does that, they give it to you right away -- he leaves. He just walks out. Doesn't tell me to stay, doesn't tell me to follow him. I'm sitting in there for 20 minutes, imagining that he's out there talking to the nurse's, making fun of me. "OH my God, did you see that guy's face? Yeah, yeah, I told him I'm giving him a prescription, it's a swollen gland. This is going to be great. Wow, that face was swollen!"

Well, I walk out and start roaming the halls of the ER (again!) area, and then someone stops me and asks why I'm out roaming. And I tell them that no one said I couldn't. So I'm walking around, picking up charts, diagnosing people. You know, just generally having a good time during it. But then the one nurse comes back, gives me my prescription and goes over what dosages of ibuprofen I can take 9000 times. He went over it so many times I was finally like, "Look, pal, I can remember a number and a time period. I'm pretty good at multi-tasking."

So I leave from this visit with the doctor who never mentioned mumps and who do I run into? The Mumps-Nurse. She pulls me aside like she's about to tell me Lassie was just hit by a car and says, gravely, "What did he say to you?" I was like, "Look, lady, he never brought up the word mumps once. I never heard it past when you used it. I don't have mumps." But she wants nothing of it. She says, "In adult males, mumps can spread to the testicles and cause sterilization." I think my jaw dropped through the floor. Just straight through it. She wouldn't let it go. She would not let go that I might have mumps. I think she was HOPING I'd have mumps so I could stay. She wanted me to have them and she wanted the world to know that I have them. I finally just kept inching away from her until she realized I was trying to get out.

I don't know what it is about hospitals but there's no rules, no laws that can be upheld in there. Things happen and they do things to you that you can't do anything about. They're like airlines. Airlines are like, "Oh, hi, we lost your luggage AND oversold the plane so you can't fly anywhere and we don't have your luggage. Sorry." And that's it. They just close up the window, put up an "Out to Lunch" sign and leave you standing there. And there's nothing you can do about it. You just walk away.

And that's what I did. I just walked away.

TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE DAY!

How many people love Halloween? I love Halloween. It's cute. You spend weeks studying, analyzing, formulating ideas of what you're going to, awww, be this year! Yay!

As kids, we love it. You got out in your little costume, with winter coats and snow pants and everything else in the world your mother can contrive to put over your costume so you can no longer SEE the costume, and scrounge around for candy from strangers. It's a beautiful holiday. It says to you, "Hey, for one night, get crazy and do whatever it is your parents' tell you not to do." And you don't care and your parents don't care. No one cares that you're out taking candy from strangers. Yeah, I know, the whole neighborhood thing. Where do you think the strangers from who you're not supposed take candy come? You think there's some cage on the outskirts of town caging these guys up that opens every few weeks for a few seconds so a few can get out?

Anyway, you come home with these bags full of candy and you consume more food in that one night than you will the rest of the year, don't you? For that one night we all legitimately become gluttons. There's so many deadly sins being broken on Halloween that God's just like, "Fuck it. We'll catch up tomorrow. I'm going to bed."

But then we get older, right, and Halloween takes on a new image. We're no longer concerned with candy. It becomes Drinkfest. People get dressed up, go to parties, and drink until they forget the years when Halloween was about candy. People spend so much time on their costumes and ten minutes into the party you're already drunk enough that the crown to your King is hanging off your head, the cape you brought's dragging around your waist, your shoes are off, there're cuts and tears everywhere. And in the morning you'll be lucky if there is anything left of that costume. This is after you can't even answer questions about it anymore. "HEY, what're you?" ... "I'm ... I ... I don't ... it's a cape guy." ... "What's the crown for?" ... "Sewing." ... "What?!"

It's the same thing every year, though, isn't it? Girls, you get older and start dressing in sexier costumes and guys, well, we just find anything to put together to go see the girls. It doesn't matter. One year I put a hood up on my sweatshirt and sunglasses on and went as the Unabomber. I made the decision ten minutes before I went out. But I didn't help my cause when I went out with the ladies. I made fun of their costumes, calling them unoriginal and uninspired. Apparently, ladies, you don't like that. "Oh, Hi, princess? Yeah, you know what, your Dad's not here, we all know you're an awful human being." Apparently not a good pick-up line, who knew?

But we love the dress-up. We love to forget about everything for a night and just be whatever we would be if someone said, "HEY, if you could be anything, what would it be?"

From now on I'm just being honest with my answer to that question. I will be going as the same thing every year: Drunk.

I'm from Pennsylvania, Penn's Woods, if you will. For those of you from the cooler climates of the Appalachian Mountains -- yeah, they're considered mountains by our Northeast standards but it's embarassing saying the word "Mountain" in front of a tourist from Colorado, "These here are the Appalachian Mountains," ... "Did you say Mountains? In Colorado that's an ANT hill. Mountains. Hah!".

But, really, if you're from this area you know that one of the biggest tourist attractions in that beautiful time between autumn and winter is the, aww, changing colors of the leaves. You know, everything's a beautiful palette of reds and yellows and oranges and it just lifts your spirits and makes you feel all warm and cuddly inside. Right? Don't you feel like a big cuddly teddy bear? Feel like one. Go ahead. Go outside right now and look at it.

I'm sure even some of you not from Pennsylvania and this range know all about the colors. New York has the Catskills and that is a vision in and of itself. Except I don't get excited and celebrate this color changing. Why should I be excited for the death of a living thing? That's what's going on here. The celebration of the death of leaves. Is it the tree's fault that the death of it's children happens in an array of beautiful colors?

Would you be caught staring at the dying carcass of a deer if, while dying, it suddenly looked like a rainbow? "Hey, honey, come here. You gotta see this. Yeah, look at it, it's a dying deer." ... "Oooh, I haven't seen one of those this year yet. Kids, grab the camera. We can hang the picture in the den next to the leaves."

You might but animals don't die beautifully, do they? No, animals crawl off into some remote part of the forest and curl themselves up and they pass on, they move on. They do it with grace. That or they get hit by a moving vehicle.

Humans now, now, now. That's a different story. We don't die with grace, do we? Some of us, I guess. We go in our sleep and we die "peacefully". But no, most people, we hang on to every thread and scrap of life that we can reach our little, white knuckles around. "Oh, hey, there's J. He can't do anything physically without mechanical help, but he's a fighter." No, no fighter. I'd be a dyer. I'd be dying. The machines, they're fighters. "Christ, do you believe this guy? I'm working overtime keeping his lung working." ... "I know, man. How about Billy up there on the heart? I heard he put in a hundred twenty-eight hour week this week." ... "No, shit, really? What a fighter." ... "Seriously.". The machines are fighting. Look, if 90% of your body is being controlled by them, you're not living anymore. End it. Give the machines a break. They're hungry.

And no one really wants to see you when you're on your way out anyway. Sure, your family and friends visit. "Hey, J, you look really good." And then they go outside and they're like, "Oh my God, did he just lose fifty pounds while we were in there? I think he did. I think he lost fifty pounds." And people talk about you and how gross and wired up you looked. "Seriously, like Doctor Octopus, dude." That's what your friends might think. A boy can dream.

But that's life for a human. Or death. Not terribly graceful. No one's winning Academy Awards in real life because of the way they die. Wouldn't it be great if that's how leaves went though? You exam them closely and as they're turning yellow and red and purple there are little machines keeping them going. "Christ, this fuckin' guy's going to indigo now! I've been doing this for four years and I'll tell ya what I'm gettin' sick of it." Some little mechanic complaining about keeping it going. And then it falls. Where do the machines go? Who's paying for these machines anyway? I guarantee there's no tree health care.

Maybe that's what I'll do. Start a tree health care firm. Set them up really nice. But I wouldn't offer forest fire protection because, hey, look, the trees are there and they should know the risks with living in a kindling environment. I can't help them if they're too stupid to move out of an obvious harm's way. But I'll offer the rest of the standard protections. You know, broken limbs, severed trunks, I'll run the spectrum with them. Afterall, they do give me such lovely pictures for my walls.

What the Hell is going on with razor blades these days? It all started with the straight razor and now we're moving into razors with five-plus blades.

Gillette upped the ante with the Mach 3, then the Power Mach 3. Schick counter-acted with the hyrdogenic blast of the Quattro! FOUR BLADES! Who the Hell needs FOUR damn blades to shave?! But if that wasn't enough, they changed the colors of it and came out with the Quattro Midnight! Same effects -- dull-blade shaving -- with different color and more expensive! The Quattro creates the sensation of shaving with a six-month old razor blade but BRAND NEW!

I'll be honest, though. I use the Power Mach 3 and I've never had a closer shave. It's a delicate balance of three razor blades and a Triple-A battery. They say good things come in threes and I think Gillette mastered that with the Mach 3 but they've apparently lost their fucking minds. They're coming out with the Fusion, a FIVE BLADE razor! FIVE FUCKING BLADES! If the Quattro feels like sandpaper on your face, the Fusion, I can imagine, will feel like a power grinder. There are only so many blades you can put on a razor before it stops taking hair out and starts pulling skin off.

And who has ever shaved with a dull razor? Hurts like a son-of-a-bitch, doesn't it? Your eyes start watering, your nose starts running, and you get this feeling like, "Am I using tweezers to remove each hair one at a time?" And that's just on your face. There are multiple other areas people shave that, frankly, I don't want to know what the reaction is to a dull razor. But the dull razor on the face is the worst and just because you have more blades that cut and cut and cut and cut and cut, infinite, does not mean it's a better shave.

Guys can relate to this problem a little more. How many guys still go to a barber and get the back of their neck cleaned with a straight razor? Do you know how many blades are on a straight razor? One. One blade. I have never, in my life, had razor burn from a barber. Trust me, I don't think it's their technique because I have been subject to a bad haircut from the same barbers.

But ladies don't do this, do they? So they have no real comparison to the multiple-bladed razor. The alternative you ladies use to razors is wax. Hot, searing wax spread of hair then peeled out root by root. Believe me, the Fusion would be a cake walk to that. Do you know what my reaction is when a candle drips on my hand? "MOTHERFUCKER THAT'S HOT!" I never really go to a candle-lit dinner or vigil and say, "Hey, how're you doing? What's that, wax you got there? Can you pour a little of that on me? Yeah, yeah. And if you have some wax paper, how about sticking that to it then pulling really fast?" The thought never really crosses my mind when I attend such events.

So what the Hell is up with these Blade Wars? It's like the US versus the Soviet Union all over again. "YOU CAN REMOVE 10 TIMES THE NUMBER OF HAIR YOUR BODY WILL EVER PRODUCE WITH THIS RAZOR!" Why the Hell would I want to remove more hair than I have?! What purpose would that serve? Everyone always compares a clean shave to a "baby's bottom" but that's not something I ever strive for. To me removing ten times the number of hair my body produces sounds to me like, "HEY! GUESS WHO CAN SEE YOUR INTERNAL ORGANS?" And those are just not on display. I like to keep them locked away in a vault, called my skin, that keeps them safe from the outside world.

I don't know about you but I'm sticking to the Power Mach 3. Let's leave the one-ups-manship to countries and the nuclear weapons they possess.

It's interesting that in the country we live in -- you know, land of the free, home of the brave, blah blah -- save for narcotics, you can sell almost anything you want for any price you want. ... Almost.

I can sell, should I choose to do so, a pen to someone for $125. I can take my car, pound the shit out of it, leave it for death, and sell it to someone for $7000 -- if I wanted to. Of course there's no guarantee someone will buy it, is there? "Oh, hey, what's that? A pen? Red? $125? Yeah, wow, that's a steal." No one buys these things for these prices but there's nothing saying you can't sell them for that price. And that's what's amazing about this country. We are free in our consumer economy.

But there is one item out there that is so precious, so economically viable, that governments across the land will restrict its sale to a specified value and will not allow you to mark it up. Blood? Fuck that. Organs? Donate it. Oil? Yeah ... . The answer, my esteemed colleagues? Event tickets. There are more restrictions on event tickets than there are mitigating circumstances for murder. You cannot, under any circumstances, mark up an event ticket's price to any level you want. Don't even think about it. You'll be arrested, sent to jail, and, I think in Texas, executed. You can lose your life in the Southern states because someone's willing to pay more than face value to see Yanni. THEY should be executed. Who goes to a Yanni concert? Who even pays FACE value for a Yanni concert? These people should be locked up.

But apparently ticket scalping is a big blow to the economy. I know the argument: limiting the prices is to protect the consumer. It's to stop people from buying hundreds of tickets and selling them at huge mark-ups. And that's a lot of shit. What it is, companies like ClearChannel and TicketMaster think, "Wait, people are buying our tickets then screwing others and making huge profits? That's OUR job!" Ticket scalping becomes illegal and you see Yanni after paying a SERVICE CHARGE so TM can print out and tear off your ticket. Yeah, what a great service.

Charging for the service separately from the ticket price, by the way, is probably the worst slap in the face you can receive. "Wow! $33 to see Jackyl WITH Ratt? NO WAY! ... Wait, wait ... a $50 service charge? Fuck that. Poison wasn't on the bill anyway." These companies should just include it in the price of the ticket. People are more apt to buy then. I've been deterred from seeing Huey Lewis AND the News because of a separate service charge. People don't want it to look like they're being hit with hidden fees and, you know, like an Extra Warranty on a ticket? People will pay $80 as long as it's not $50 + $30.

My stance on ticket scalping is the same as sex. As long as I'm willing to pay for it, let it be sold.

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Also! Please comment or post a response to your favorite (or least) ODP! THAT'S SLANG FOR OPEN DOOR POLICY!

Road rage. We all suffer from it, right? Some of us, a few of us, take it to a bit more of an extreme. You know, we have the laser-guided cannon packed away in our back seat and pull it out when the car in front of us pauses, hesitates, one additional second before pulling out from a stop sign, right? We sit there, boiling, flaming, fuming, smoking, and then, BANG, rocket launched right into the other car. Flames, destruction, and we drive on satisfied that we handled that intense driving situation as the manual says to, right?

But some of us are a little more cautious about how we defuse such situations, aren't we? We get cut-off by some guy in a pick-up truck with a bumper sticker that reads "My Other Vehicle's a Tank" and we might beep, we might "lay on the horn"; maybe we'll raise a hand intended to say to this guy, "What the hell are you doing, buddy?!" But we don't say it, do we? We wait until he's out of sight, about 10 miles away, after we've let every other car on the roadways go ahead of us and we'll flash -- briefly -- the finger at this guy.

And then, if you're like me, you take your road rage to the weird, baffling extreme. You just start doing and saying things that normally, in every day life, you would never even think to do or say. I just yell at people for stupid things, too. I get pissed at some of the dumbest things on the road. People putting on their turn signals too early or putting the wrong one on for a second before switching to the right one; people parking slowly, whatever. And I yell these things at whoever's doing it. I take no precautions based on their size and, I mean, I'm not the biggest guy in the world. I'm pretty small, kind of weak. Let's just say, for clarification, that I do not, hm, make it to the gym on a regular basis. But I get pissed, the road rage takes over, and I just let it fly. I let them have it and throw all caution to the wind -- "GET OUT!" -- gone.

Luckily I haven't been killed yet because of this and I think I know why. I think the reason for it is that I just baffle the Hell out of the other drivers. I yell things at them that they don't even ... that they can't even react to. They're spellbound by what I say, and in most cases I am also, that they're stunned like a deer in headlights. I'll give you an example.

One time I'm driving behind this guy and he's driving "slow". Now, by "slow" I mean he was driving "slower than I wanted to be at that moment". He's doing the speed limit but that's not good enough for me. He needed to be going faster. He was prohibiting me, infringing on my rights, to do so.

So I'm driving behind him and the rage is just building. I'm upset because I can't get to, I don't know, the McDonald's drive-thru quicker, whatever. So I'm pulling the move where I inch over so like my whole car is in the line-of-sight of his side-view driver's mirror and putting my hand in the air as if to, kindly, suggest, "COME ON! MOVE IT, BUDDY!" But he's not having any of it. He doesn't want to or isn't paying attention to me and at that moment it was me who should've been making the rules. I don't quite start tailgating him because as much as I can't stand people doing it to me, I'm very much afraid of doing it myself. I'm afraid I'll forget and hit him, or he'll hit his brakes, or I'll accidentally drive over his car. But I'm certainly letting him know that I'm not happy with him and his current driving decisions.

After several seconds or maybe minutes of this, I finally see his turn signal come on and my brain switches to, "YES!" I'm ecstatic at the prospect of this guy turning. It's making me happier than I've been at any point in my life, that's how happy I was. And we're approaching the turn and I'm just at the height of excitement. Finally I will be able to reach my destination which moments ago I thought I would never, ever again reach.

He starts turning and this guy, I have to say, Have you ever been behind someone that makes a turn as if they're turning in to impending doom? Like the second they make the turn, right around the corner is the apocalypse? That's what this guy was doing and I instantly went from ECSTASY right back to utter Hellish RAGE. It was fight or flight time and my brain said fight. I lean out my window at this guy. I just pull it out. In this state I have no control over what I do or say; so I yell at this guy, "BUDDY! What're you doing?! BUYING the turn?!"

And he stops. I can tell this guy wants to get out of his car and pull me out of mine and beat me. Hard. What he initially heard was, "FUCK YOU, BUDDY!" But his mind finally processed it and he thought about it and he was so baffled by what I said -- "BUYING the turn?" -- as I also was, that he sat for a moment. He grabbed a swig of his water, lit a cigarette, and tried to calm down his nerves and his confusion. He didn't know what to do. I could tell this. He was rethinking every decision he ever made in his life because of that question. It put him from "calm day of driving" to "pissed off" to "philosophically analyzing his very being". And I couldn't have been happier because this guy was a big guy. I mean he was huge and would've annihilated me if he had gotten out. I was wiping a big sweat off my forehead. I just hesitated behind him briefly.

But do you know what I did? I just decided to pass him. I drove right passed him without making eye contact, waited a mile or twenty, and gave him the finger. And this is the lesson I teach when I am teaching my driving courses: Confuse other drivers into submission.

And as far as I know, there are currently no turns for sale.

We live in the most technologically advanced country in the world, maybe second to Seoul. Those Koreans really know their technology. But we live in this country where iPods, computers, digital camera phones, PSPs, all these things saturate out country. It changes so rapidly that you can buy one of these items today, this minute, and it would be out-of-date by tomorrow. It would be obsolete. People would ask you, "What is that? Where'd you get that? Is that retro? Caveman."

Here we are, technologically advanced, and we can't prove if Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, UFOs exist. There are thousands of photos, videos, drawings, sketches, thousands of these things are in existence on all of these topics. Why is it every time someone, in this technologically advanced world, goes to take a picture or a video of these things they have, you know, the most backwards equipment every produced with them?

These people are out there with one of those 1920s cameras that you have to continuously wind to record and everything comes out moving at 20x the normal rate and the focus is just, you know, it looks like they were filming through a bed sheet. And if they take a still picture it's from 45 miles away with a camera where you have to put the plate glass in the back and cover your head with the black sheet while holding a huge flash above your head.

"Say cheese, Bigfoot! I got you now!" Except they don't. The picture comes back and they're saying to the their friends and family, "Well, it looked much clearer when I took it. I mean, he was 45 miles away but in the camera he looked like we were standing next to each other. You would've though, the way it looked in the camera, that he was sitting next to me chatting, talking about the picnic we were having." But he's 45 miles away and looks like a tumbleweed with a beard floating through the trees.

So they use this "lack of evidence" and the fact that no one's found a dead one in the woods as the proof that they DON'T exist. Who's ever come back from a camping trip with a picture of a bear on their camera and dragging a dead deer carcass?

"Hi, here's the tent, the fire. Oh, this is the bear we saw. Yeah, no, he was right in the camp with us. He was telling us about Bigfoot while we snacked on granola and s'mores."

How many people have gone into the woods stumbling over the dead carcasses of animals? No one. Do you know why? It doesn't fucking happen. There's scavengers in the woods that pick these bones clean; there's all sorts of other factors. Most animals crawl away to their own death in some dark cave. They're not going to walk out of the woods, into a crowded market, and be like, "Oh hi, yeah, hi. I'm a deer and, well, gosh, it looks like my time's up. I'm gonna die so if you can get me to deer graveyard. It's a few miles from here up that ridge. Oh yeah, we're all buried there. Me, the bears, sometimes a rabbit or two, go up there and hang out. We talk about all of our friends that have passed. So if you can get me up there I'd appreciate it."

That just doesn't happens. Human beings are the only people stupid enough to put themselves on display after death. We'll actually lay ourselves out in a small bed on a slab like a buffet for the world to see and then go to a big dinner after it.

"Oh, wow, he looks so peaceful. Look at him. Isn't he peaceful? He's so peaceful. He's not moving; he's at peace. Does anyone want some fried chicken and ham? Some mashed potatoes?"

OF COURSE we're peaceful. We're dead! They can make us look however they want. I'm going to get some botox injected into my face on death and have it done up like The Joker. Put me in a purple suit, green tie.

"Wow, oh man, he looks like The Joker! That's fantastic! Who wants some wings?"

And I'm going to request on my own death that I be buried in the deer graveyard. Right next to the Bigfoot.