Lest Ye Be Judged…

The church I attend is spread across two campuses. I go to the North Campus. Not sure why I capitalized that, but there you are. It wasn’t always like that, though. Not the capitalization thing, the two campuses thing. There used to only be one campus. It was the South Campus. But of course, back when it was the only one, it wasn’t called the South Campus. Or the south campus. Or even the campus. It was just called the church. And if I capitalize that, you’ll start thinking of Under the Milky Way.

Anyway, the point is that when it used to be just one building, and that’s where I went, I was married to a different woman than I am now. I have nothing negative to say about my ex-wife. She’s a lovely gal. We just weren’t meant for each other like I used to think. When we went through our divorce, which was one of the most difficult times I’ve ever gone through, I stopped attending that church. I also lost forty-five pounds. That should tell you how stressful it was, and – therefore – how seriously I took it. I hate divorce, and can often be heard saying I don’t believe in it. But that’s a whole other column.

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Area Man Refuses To Grow Up

So I had a birthday party Friday night. This isn’t very peculiar. However, there were a few items of interest that do make that list labeled peculiar. First of all, as most of you know, I’m almost thirty now. So let’s just for ease of conversation, say that I am “twenty-seven” now. And then allow me to elaborate on those items I found peculiar.

First of all, I had a birthday party. That in and of itself should not be viewed as out of the ordinary. I wanted to have a few friends over, listen to some music, stand around and drink beer and tell each other war stories, and compare tattoos. Without necessarily taking our shirts off. It’s not even really all that odd that there would be a cake for me. I mean, well, actually I specifically told Haycomet not to make me a cake. But she wouldn’t have any of that. “If I make one for everyone else, of course I’m going to make one for my partner in rhyme.” She does have a valid point. So thus, I had a cake at my party. No candles, of course. But there was a cake. A ridiculously extravagant cake, no less. A Cake. Capitalized. One that someone might have paid perhaps upwards of a couple hundred dollars for. So what was so odd?

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The Fall of a Masterful Empire

When I was young, I collected Hot Wheels cars. Matchbox too. I remember those John Cleese commercials where he’d slip one into his shirt pocket, and that always made me feel so good. I made my mother buy me a white dress shirt with two breast pockets just so I could stand in front of the mirror and slip into my pockets my two favorite Matchbox/Hot Wheels cars again and again.

I collected them. Like I do guitars, books, Elvis Costello albums, tattoos and Evan bottles, I collected every one of them I could find. They had realistic die-cast metal miniature automobiles with vibrant colors and awesome chrome wheels (and sometimes flake paint). It was magical when my mom would take me to the Wal-Mart and I had a five-dollar bill in my pocket. I could buy five new cars. They were 89 cents apiece. The only problems I ran into back then was which five or six to get. There were so many to choose from, and I knew that at any minute, Matel could go out of business and the Wal-Mart could burn down, and I’d be forever kept from completing my collection. So I had to select the best five.

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Let’s recap the weekend.

It was quite a busy one. You probably know by now that I didn’t get a tattoo on Friday, so that won’t be included here. So let’s start with Saturday. I ran out to Shift’s place to catch some college football and a few Cold Ones. The Ones are always Cold at Shift’s place.

Then we walked over to the Blue Note to catch the Tech game, where we sat across the bar from a bunch of losers rooting for Mizzou. Wrong state, assholes. Since I was at the bar already, and Shine lives in the area, I figured I’d call her and get her to join us there for a little football action. So she showed up in her costume (she was on her way to a costume party), which was an autograph book. She was the autograph book. Clever, eh? So I grabbed a marker from the bunch and found the only blank spot left on her shirt by that time, as you can see in this first picture.

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The 9 Types of Pain

There are five types of pain, as the title of this column suggests. I’d like to discuss with you just a few of the four types of pain, because it’s important – I believe – for you to be able to identify all three types of pain.

The first type of pain is a physical one. Say you get your foot stomped on by a passing horse, or your arm sawed off with a rusty bow saw… That’s pain number one. And it’s excruciating, and you’ll probably cry. The first of the six types of pain, we’ll call “Crying Pain”. It’s bad. It doesn’t happen often. But when it does, you know it because you cry. For sure.

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I’m getting too old for this shit.

Yesterday a friend and I were swimming at his house when we decided to go check out the house next door. It’s been vacant for several months now, having been a foreclosure. I thought it might be pretty cool to buy it so we could live next door to each other. I’d noticed when driving down the alley that the top panel of the garage door had been pushed in. So we took a wooden ladder over and I climbed up and over the door, dropping down on the inside.

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Why are men such douchebags?

I go out to the pool sometimes. You know, to swim? Remember that? You like jump in the water and swim around and enjoy the cool refreshing water and the warm sun. I’m pretty sure this is what the pool was originally intended for. But anyway, it’s all a big pissing contest now.

This chick comes out all wearing a nice bikini. So what starts happening is all the guys start getting out of the water and laying out like bitches trying to show off their bodies to this chick. As if any of them have a chance with her. Now granted these are all high-class guys, with the big tattoos on their back and stuff. You know, real men.

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