And it’s not like it’s the first time, though certainly the longest. So far. We’ll see. Just the act of resurrecting this blog will surely set me up for more self-sabotage, because that’s the thing I truly excel at.

Anyway, here I am, maybe back at it should I have a chance encounter with Inspirado. There’s probably some broken links here and there. Maybe I’ll fix them one day. Probably not.

I’ve copied some facebook notes I wrote in the interim over here. That’s anything dated 2010 or 2011. There’s five of them. I’ve written five things in nearly three years.

So you know, check back daily!

So one of my friends posted one of these. The gist was “At age N I was doing this, and in a relationship with this person, and my favorite band was, and [a bunch of other stuff I don’t remember]. ‘Like’ this and I’ll assign you an age.”

But I never play these things.

So the age she gave me was 22. This was a week or so ago, so she surely thinks I’ve forgotten, but I haven’t. It’s just that I seem to have no idea where I was or what I was doing at age 22. Which is weird for me. Despite decades of bombarding my cortex with various chemical cocktails, I usually remember past events so clearly and with so much detail that it freaks my friends out. “Do you remember that time we were doing Whippits and Black Label in Tom’s apartment and you said Robyn Hitchcock was totally overrated?” “Ummm….no.” OK, bad example, that was every night in Tom’s apartment.

And what’s more, this comes at a time when my introspection has become retrospective. I’ve been playing parts of my life back in my head to the point that I start to feel like Billy Pilgrim.

But where the fuck was I at 22?

I was born early in a year ending in zero, so the math is easy enough even for me. 1992. OK. There are two facts I’m reasonably sure of. I was working at Chicago Speakeasy, and going to DMACC. I’m reasonably sure of both of these.

But what was I doing at The Speakeasy? Was I washing dishes or had I become a cook yet? I know I was still a dishwasher when I turned 21, because I remember turning 21, getting off work, and buying beer. It was at that exact moment that I stopped getting IDed.

Pretty sure I was at DMACC from like 1990 to 1993 (yet still managed to come up 20 credits short of a two-year degree). Is that the year I took Desktop Publishing and met Photoshop? Don’t think so. That was later, because I remember my 3 favorite things were writing, programming and graphic design right when I discovered the web, which was ‘93ish. Let’s hear it for convergance. Sick of all the assholes I hated in high school suddenly dressing and behaving the way I always had, I declared that I’d just be a huge computer nerd. That would never be popular.

But that was 23, not 22.

Was I living in my mom’s basement for one of my many just-can’t-get-my-shit-together spells? Did I have my apartment in Ankeny? Did Leslea and I have our place by The White House on Penn Ave? No, that was earlier.

Was I even with Leslea then? I know I was in ‘91, because I heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the first time in a car (whose, I don’t recall) sitting on University in front of her place at 42nd Street in what is now the parking lot of Git-N-Go. But we broke up for good right around that time. Was I hopelessly in love with the married waitress at work? Was I madly in lust with the married girl at school? And which one of those did I make out with? Kidding, I totally remember that. It was the girl at school. Shame, I could’ve spent a good long time with that waitress. Women married to dicks who toy with nice guys. If ever there was an archetype. Whatever, killed by a jealous man seems as good a way as any to go out. Part of the reason Robert Johnson is a legend. Also that he was an OK guitar player.

I wasn’t with Ann yet, though I may have been working on stealing her from her boyfriend (the attentive reader will notice a theme emerging). I know I had my own place then, because I remember sealing the deal with a song. Man, I thought that girl was everything. So did everybody else. Shame about the blackout drinking, the other guys, and the not-very-brightness. But where did I play her that song? Must’ve been my place in Ankeny. Did I really live there that long? I know I was still there in ‘95. No, Ann must’ve come later.

And what was I listening to? It’s a safe bet The Beatles, The Who and The Police were in there, but that’s not exactly going out on a limb. Rush and Tull, of course. But who did I discover at 22? I didn’t give much of a shit about the grunge thing, though it was clearly better than EMF. Think I first met the blues around then. Or maybe not. I should go see when all those old issues of Guitar Player are from.

Any remarkable film impressions? Not that I can think of. The Kubrick, Scorcese, and Gilliam kicks came much earlier. Tarantino and Smith were later.

Fuck, I’ve just got no idea at all about 22. I’m gonna mark it “Transitional Period”.

So this is a few years back, the last time I was big into lucid dreaming, an activity I highly recommend to everybody, because it’s fun, it’s free, and oh yeah, you can fucking fly!

Anyhow, I’m at bat in a softball game. Or maybe it was baseball. It’s a meaningless distinction in my dream world. I notice that the pitcher is kind of warping back and forth between the mound and 2nd base, and for some reason that strikes me as odd. I think, “wait a minute…DREAM!!” And then I manage to pull off the tricky part, which is, of course, not waking up. Newly aware, I wander away from the game, not caring if my team wins or loses. Why would I want to play baseball when I can now do literally anything. Also, if I’m on the team, these people obviously don’t give a shit about winning anyway.

As I’m walking, I remember reading a thing on a lucid dreaming site (in waking life that is, lucidity being awesome that way) that said you should look at the sky in your dreams, and I’m like, “Hey, maybe I should look at the sky!” So I look up, and it’s breathtaking. The sky is a late-dusk shade of darkish blue, full of astonishingly bright stars, and several bunches of lengthy, sheer, translucent strips of pale yellow fabric, each maybe 18″ wide. They blow and flow in a gentle breeze, extending from just above the ground to vanishing points on the shell of the sky. I’m happy that this moment, so serene and surreal, will forever be imprinted in my memory. I cannot say the same about the events that soon transpired.

After gazing at the sky for somewhere between a moment and an eternity, I look down to find a path, a mosaic of impossibly smooth, glassy, black stones, each reflecting specular highlights in the whateverlight. I follow the path, and it leads to a small village of what seem to be handcrafted wood cabins.

Standing in front of one of these cabins was Hot Demon Girl. And man, she was a sight to behold (and why wouldn’t she be, this is my dream after all). Her skin was a deep red, and she wore a black leather one-piece that split down the front, each half covering little more than the nipples of her large-but-not-freakishly-so, gravity-defying  breasts. The leather joined just above the crotch to dip snugly between voluptuous thighs (and those, hips…damn!), coming up the back to cover not much of a perfectly formed, plump, fleshy ass the likes of which only exist in dreams and occasionally on Univision. Small horns protruded from beneath long hair of the darkest shade that never existed, and a remarkably stunning face was defined by generous, visibly moist lips and black eyes that pierced me to the bone. Her magnificence was only slightly betrayed by a demeanor and facial expression which implied that my existence, while merely a nuisance, was still utterly contemptible.

I knew immediately I had to talk to this woman. She spoke first as I approached. “Do you know what the road to Hell is paved with?”

Hey, I think I know this one! “Good intentions?”

“No,” she said matter-of-factly. “Human flesh.” She raised her left arm, and dangling from her exquisite, blood-drenched fingers was a long, thick, sloppy strip of person meat. Skin and hair were on one side, loose muscle and veins on the other, and chunky yellow fat in between. It dripped blood and quivered sickeningly as she lifted it. It had clearly been torn—there were no signs of precision here—from an unfortunate soul in an act of horror that’s better left unimagined, and the accompanying odor of filth, rot, and death was overpowering.

A voice inside my head screamed, “Wake up! Wake up! WAKE UP!” with animalistic fear. I followed its advice.

My show will be called “Beaten by a Biker”, and that’s the entire premise. You agree to go on television to be stomped within an inch of your life by a one-percenter named Smokey, and you get $25,000. And you get to be on TV.

We’ll keep it safe of course. We’ll have paramedics on hand, and the Biker won’t be allowed to use any weapons. Sure, he’ll be wearing boots. He is a biker after all. And there might just be a two-by-four on the ground near him, but we’ll save that for sweeps week.

Now, for the audience to really enjoy it, we’ll need some build-up. We’ll spend some time getting to know each week’s wannabe reality star douchebag. Let them talk tough and act like an asshole for awhile until everybody sufficiently hates them and everything they represent. Fifteen minutes should be plenty. Then when they’re talking to the camera and least expect it, Smokey punches them in the back of the head and 3 cameras swoop in to shoot from multiple angles while he just goes ape-shit on the poor bastard.

And this is my favorite part: After Smokey has been pulled off of them, and they’re covered in dirty blood and giving their big “Yeah, I got beaten, but I survived it and Igot PAID!” speech, that’s when Smokey sucker punches them in the side of the head and brutally kicks their ass for another 20 minutes.

When they’re laying on the ground unable to stand up, sputtering blood from their swollen, busted lips in a vain attempt to form coherent words, the host will go over and throw their check at them. Roll credits.

But anyhow, he came home from school Friday all excited and told me he’d been learning other numbering systems. Base 2, base 5, base 7 and 8…. I asked him if everybody was learning that or just him. Just him. It was the math teacher trying to keep him interested and/or occupied.

Now whether I hate math because I suck at it or suck at it because I hate it is open to debate, but the fact that I’m a huge computer geek isn’t, so I jumped on the alternate numbering systems thing. “You know,” I told him, “the only really important ones to know are base 2 and base 16. Binary and hexadecimal.”

So we go over some hexadecimal: Digits 0 through F, with a very nice correspondence to binary, i.e. FF equals 11111111. Two hex digits map perfectly to 8 bits. Kind of a shorthand for binary, really. Anyhow, he said he was going to tell his math teacher all about hexadecimal when he gets back to school on Monday. “Great,” I think. “I’m gonna get blamed for that one.”

So later that day we’re watching Futurama reruns, as we often do, and there’s this gag involving a binary number. See, everybody’s staying overnight in a mansion haunted by robot ghosts, and the number 0101100101 appears on a wall written in blood. Or maybe oil. Robots, you know. Anyway, everybody turns to Bender (the robot) and says, “What does it mean?” He reads the number out loud and declares “It’s just gibberish!” Then he catches the number reflected in a mirror. “1010011010!! Arrrrggghhhhhh!”

So, seeing this I say, “Danny, why don’t you figure out what that number is in decimal.” He pauses it on screen, gets a piece of paper and a pencil and goes to work. Couple minutes later he reports, “It’s 666, dad.”

I hadn’t laughed so hard in weeks.

I’m going to assume a charcoal grill here, because that’s what I use and I think they make better tasting meat.

What you’ll need:

Charcoal - A lot of people swear by Kingsford, and it’s good, but I found some I like better that’s actually cheaper. I think it’s called Royal Oak. Comes in a big red bag. Menard’s carries it and so do some grocery stores.

Charcoal lighter fluid - They make some charcoal that you can supposedly light without it, but I’ve never tried it. It’s good to get a name brand here, as the really cheap stuff can make your burgers taste funny.

Hamburger - 85% lean ground chuck. I know, the 98% lean is healthier, but it’s also expensive, dry, and flavorless. The burgers are going to be around 1/3 pound each, so figure out how many you want to make and do the math.

Buns - Get big ones. Sesame seeds if you like them. Kaiser rolls are awesome. The grocery store bakery ones are good, but you usually need to cut them. Use a serated knife, cut away from your hand, and apply no more pressure than the weight of the knife.

Cheese - The individually wrapped slices are convenient, but stay away from the store/generic brands, they can be horrendous. Kraft ones are usually OK. Better is just to get a block of cheddar, American or colby/jack and shave off some thin slices. Some people think cheese is optional. I’m not one of them.

Lawry’s Seasoned Salt - This is key. Never make burgers without it. I’ve used the Aldi’s version of it and it’s very nearly as good.

Assorted condiments - You know, whatever you like. Catsup, mustard (I like the borwn spicy kind, but it’s not for everybody), dill pickle slices, lettuce, thinly sliced rings of onion, tomato slices (the thinner the better)… And need I say bacon? Mmmmmm…bacon….

Butter - If you really want to go above and beyond, have some butter on hand. Real butter is far superior to margarine, and most nutritionists these days agree it’s actually better for you.

Get the Grill Going

You want to put enough charcoal in your grill to make a single layer of bricks underneath your burgers, so it varies depending on how many you’re making. You also want to have a small area to one side of your cooking rack without coals below it. Just big enough for a burger or two. Some burgers will get done before others, and it’s good to have this cooler spot to stack the ones that are done so they can stay hot but not burn.

Remove the cooking rack and stack the coals into a pile roughly pyramid shaped, and douse with lighter fluid. Don’t drench them, but try to get some on all the exposed charcoal bricks and some down in the middle of the stack. Light them from three or four points at the edges of the stack. I like to twist up a sheet of newspaper, light it, then use it to light the coals, just dropping it into the grill when I can’t hold it any longer. Or you can use one of those fancy long grill lighters if you have one, but it’s not as much fun. At any rate, make sure the entire stack is completely engulfed in flames. Leave the rack off and the lid open.

It’ll take awhile for the coals to be ready, so this is the perfect time to make your patties.

Pounding Your Meat

First thing you want to do before you start grabbing handfuls of hamburger is to open your jar of seasoned salt. Your hands are going to get messy, and if you don’t open it now you’ll wish you had.

Now you’re going to grab a handful of hamburger and press it into a ball between your hands. Bigger than a golf ball but smaller than a tennis ball. Cue ball maybe? Anyhow, do that until you have as many balls as you want burgers.

Now we’ve got to press them flat. I like to do it on a cutting board just to keep the mess more isolated, but whether you do that or just use the counter, lightly sprinkle some seasoned salt on your surface first. It’ll help keep them from sticking. Just how much salt you put down is a matter of taste, but be aware that you’ll be adding more on top after you press out the patties.

The goal is to get them about the diameter of a CD, maybe a little bigger, and around a half inch thick. As they cook, they will shrink in diameter and thicken in the middle. Press a ball of meat flat with your palm and get it roughly that size.

Now you have to slap it a bit. This knocks all the little pockets of air out and keeps them from just falling apart on the grill. So slap it quickly and repeatedly with your fingers held flat about as hard as you would if you were surprise smacking your partner’s ass. OK, maybe not quite that hard. Somehwhere between a slap and a pat. As you do this, continue to shape the patty. It will get thin around the edges, and they will start to split and break a bit. Use your thumb to press the edges back in until you have a nice dense uniform patty. Once the patty is done, sprinkle some more seasoned salt on the top. If you’ve never used it before, you should probably err on the side of too little until you know how it tastes. Carefully work a thin spatula under each patty, and lift it from the surface you pounded it out on. It will want to stick, so try not to rip it. If it rips, you might be able to press it together. Worst case you can ball it up and start over. Stack the patties on a plate and pop them in the fridge while we finish getting the grill ready.

Want Amazing Buns?

This part is optional, but it’ll make the difference between really good burgers and the best fucking burgers ever. Take your buns and spread a thin layer of butter on each half. If the butter’s too hard to spread, try microwaving it for 5 second increments until it’s nicely spreadable. Set the buttered buns aside for now.

Back to the Grill? Seriously?

I’m afraid so. By now, hopefully the coals are ready. They should not be openly flaming and should be mostly (85% or so) covered in gray ash. If they are, spread them out into a single layer. Put the grill rack (the part you cook on), over the coals. Ideally, it will still be dirty from thelast time you grilled. That’s not a joke. Good steakhouses never get their grills too clean, it adds a lot of flavor. But we do need to get it good and hot and scrape off the big chunks, so close the lid of your grill to let heat build up on the rack. Couple minutes is good. Open the lid back up and scrape off the top of the rack with your scraper and wire brush. Your grill is now (finally!) ready to cook.

Cooking the Burgers

So get your plate of burgers, and carefully pick up each patty and place iton the grill. I use my hands to lift each patty, because they’re less likely to fall apart that way, but if you do the same you’ll want to get them on the grill quick. As they go on, flames will probably flare up from the coals. This is a good thing unless it gets too out of hand.

With burgers, it’s good to keep them flipping, because it’ll help you monitor just how done they’re getting. Do not close the lid to the grill or your burgers will burn very quickly. The good news is, even if you cook them until they’re crunchy, they’re still good.

Some people like burgers pink in the middle, but that’s not really a great idea. Steaks are safe to eat rare, but hamburger? Not so much. On a steak, the surface that’s been exposed to air is on the outside and gets plenty of heat. On burgers, that exposed surface gets worked into the middle. Cook them brown all the way through to be safe.

If you buttered the buns earlier, move all the burgers to a side of the grill without so many hot coals under it. Stack them if necessary. Place the buns butter-side down on the grill until they become brown and crispy. It doesn’t take long, so keep a close eye on them, lifting and checking regularly. One they’re all nicely browned, move them off the grill and onto a plate.

Now all we need to do is melt the cheese. I just spread the burgers out on the grill, put the cheese on top and close the lid for 10 or 15 seconds or so. That will get the cheese a good start toward melting, and it’ll melt more as the burgers sit.

So pull them off the grill with a spatula and place them on a plate. If a burger’s got cheese, don’t put another burger on top of it. All that’s left to do now is put them on the buns, dress them, and eat. Enjoy!

Me: Hello?

Collector: David?

Me: Yes?

Collector: David [my last name]?

Me: Yes.

Collector: This is Eric Harris, I’m calling on behalf of [my county] County Hospital collections in regards to five accounts.

Me: Did you say your name was Eric Harris?

Collector: Yes, I’m calling on behalf of…

Me: Wasn’t Eric Harris one of the gunmen in the Columbine massacre?

Collector: He might’ve been. What’s your point?

Me: Well, that’s an unfortunate name.

Collector: Sir, I’m calling on behalf…

Me: I had a recruiter call me one time, an IT recruiter, his name was Jason Voorhees. Like the killer from Friday the 13th. So you know, it could be worse.

Collector: …

Me: OK, thanks for calling.

(click)

But anyway, all the coverage has got me thinking.

For instance, why is it that so many of the people kicked out have been Arabic translators? That’s where this new round of outrage originated. Apparently a whole shitload of Arabic-speaking interpreters have been kicked out of the military (for being gay, please try to keep up) just when we really need them to read those intercepted messages to us. Now I agree that that’s a pretty boneheaded thing to do, but I just can’t figure out what the connection is between gayness and speaking Arabic. Was it some crazy trend that swept through the gay community in the early 90′s? Were all the gay clubs having wacky Arabian theme nights or something? Or is it just that gay native speakers tend to get the fuck out of the backwards little theocracies they were born into? Probably a wise move if they did. Maybe I figured this one out.

But interpreters aside, isn’t this an incredibly easy way to get out of the Army/Air Force/Marines/Navy (OK, maybe not the Navy)? I mean suppose you’re about to go on your 4th tour in Iraq or Afghanistan, and you’re really fucking sick of of shitty food, sand in your asscrack, and being shot at. Can’t you just go to your commanding officer and say, “Sorry, but I’m not gonna be able to ship out. See, turns out I’m gay.”

And what if you do do that? Do they start processing the paperwork to throw you out right away? And what if they don’t believe you? I figure the conversation goes something like this:

Soldier: Sir, I’m not going to be able to ship out. You see, I’m gay.

CO: Aw bullshit, you just don’t want to do another tour. You’re always bitching about the shitty food, sand in your asscrack and being shot at.

Soldier: No sir, I love the Army. But not as much as I love cock.

CO: You have a wife and kids at home!

Soldier: I was in denial, sir. I didn’t realize I was hopelessly gay until showering with the other guys in the barracks.

CO: Mr. Crawford, get in here!

(A man in civilian clothes enters the room and drops his pants.)

CO: Alright, if you’re so gay, suck this man’s dick.

So what do you do if you’re a straight guy trying to get out of the military? Do you suck Mr. Crawford’s dick? I’m guessing you do. Sucking one dick to get out of the army doesn’t make you gay, it makes you a fucking pragmatist.

Thing is, Mr. Crawford has to be a civilian contractor, or else he’d get thrown out of the army too, because last time I checked getting blown by a dude was pretty gay. Maybe that’s why we’re spending so much money on contractors, because we have to keep a guy on every base willing to have his dick sucked by soldiers of questionable homosexuality. Waste of money if you ask me. I’m sure there’s guys at KBR who would do the job for free.

Now on the other side of this already convoluted coin (I’m not sure what that means either) we have the gay soldiers who want nothing more than to serve their country in the military. In a time when most people don’t want to be in the army, they’re upset about being forced out.

But here’s the catch: Christians and right-wingers (redundant, I know) think that gayness can be cured. Some of them have even said, “Being gay is a choice.” This makes me wonder if they came to this conclusion because they want to fuck members of their own sex but choose not to. That would explain a lot about most of them.

So if you’re a member of the armed services and somehow it comes out (pardon the expression) that you’re gay, couldn’t you just say you’re not gay anymore? I figure it would go like this:

CO: Sorry soldier, it says here you’re gay. I’m afraid you’re being discharged.

Soldier: No sir, that was last week. I’m straight now.

CO: What are you talking about?

Soldier: I was reading The Bible, I asked Jesus to make me not gay, and he did.

CO: Miss Conway, get in here!

Now of course we wonder does the gay man wolf down the pussy to get out of the army? But the gay man has an advantage here. Just because Jesus made him not gay doesn’t mean Jesus made him straight. Jesus could have made him asexual, and that should be fine with the US Army. Far as I know they don’t have any rules that say you have to be a heterosexual, only that you can’t be a homosexual.

So there you go. You want out of the army? Say you’re gay. You’re gay and want to stay in the army? Jesus made you asexual. What could be simpler?

Let’s not forget where those eggs have been.