#40 Leftovers
I was blown away to learn that in a recent study, more than two thirds of the American populace confided that they believe in an intelligent design behind the universe. This does not, for the record, mean that these people believe in the Biblical story of creation; it only means that they do not believe that the human race is the product of a random or not so random process called evolution. These people simply believe that at some point in the history of Earth, something more than science took place in creating what we reason, at this point, to be the only highly consciously evolved animals on Earth.
This report got me thinking, and what I was thinking about, most of the week, is about how much unintelligence I see in a world full of so many supposedly intelligent, creatively designed human beings. Sure, we’ve launched stuff into space, cured polio, and invented black jack, all great feats, worthy of asteriks in the great annals of mankind’s history, but what about the majority of history? For the most part, I think that humanity is composed of a bunch of morons. And for the record, I am a moron**.
I don’t know if I believe in intelligent design or not, but I do think that regardless of how intelligent our ‘race’ may be, when it comes down to it, we’re just a bunch of animals, wearing clothes and holding each other to standards that we’ve invented. If you don’t agree with me, then I suggest that you do something I did in my early twenties, which would be to become a bartender. I guarantee you that after one full year of full time bartending, you will see more of the animal side of human beings, and less of the so-called sophisticated and consciously evolved side that so many of us want to believe in.
Alcohol, for better or for worse, certainly helps ease most people into acting the way they truly want to act, and again, for better or for worse, I think that you should be held accountable for any and all of your actions, no matter how much booze you’ve guzzled. I think Mel Gibson said what was really on his mind, I think Michael Richards probably thought what he said was pretty darn clever and funny, and I think that the Kennedy’s – aw, Christ, I’m not even going to go there this week. But I got booze on my mind, because, well, last night, I drank my body weight in booze as a few friends and I attempted to create our own bar crawl in the fine city of Seattle, Washington.
I got back from Seattle today, after spending less than sixteen hours there, five of which I was asleep for, and ten of the eleven of which I was pretty blotto (which is a fancy pseudonym for shitfaced.) The whole time I was there, I took copious notes at each bar, in an attempt to write a column about my night of drunken debauchery. But alas, when I woke up this morning, and attempted to read my notes, they read something like this:
Sgfwef wgwetwef t4rtoiv hwerjsdf wefhwerlwerf vhlwefrewrf beer sdflkehf packed zip lock bag wersc hdo teojg find the time towet graffiti in bathroowsefn? Triangle loung, freemont werscv8 masterbation wer as last call wer too wef much whisky sdffs whot shoot me if I ever do that when I’m thirty-five! Don’t base Seattle on that.
Yeah. Great, way to go, drunk mike, that would make for a great column! So instead of writing about my drunken debauchery, I’m going to do what most people do the week after Thanksgiving, which is to clean out the fridge, and use up all the leftovers. This means that this week my column is designated to a series of non-sequitorial observations that I’ve never managed to assimilate into any of my previous columns. Enjoy these leftovers for what they are worth, personally, I find them deliciously entertaining.
Seattle has an awful homeless population. So do a lot of cities, but I finally came up with a way to circumvent the awkwardness that is telling a beggar that you don’t feel like giving them any of your hard earned cash or cigarettes. The idea is simple, if you see a beggar, walk right up to them, put out your hand, and ask them for change.
I just found out that one of my good friends is colorblind. This friend of mine is one of the least envious and jealous people that I’ve ever met. He’s not passive, in a lame way, he’s just really easy going, a pleasure to hang out with, and never seems to yearn for things that aren’t his. Once I found out that he was color blind, his persona suddenly made complete sense to me, because if you are color blind, then you don’t see shades of colors very well, let alone certain colors at all, so how could he be jealous, and think that someone else’s grass is greener than his own, when grass doesn’t even look green to him, and all grass looks pretty much the same. I deserve a nobel prize for this discovery**.
I often make signs at work on our chalkboard, to advertise specials and what not. I notice that many other places have similar signs, and compared to other restaurants, my ‘signage’ skills are pretty poor. But there is one thing that I pride myself on, and it is that when I advertise a price, and draw the American dollar symbol next to the price, I always cross that darn S with two lines. For some reason, I hate it when people don’t cross the S twice. So please, if you make signs, for the sake of humanity, double cross your S’s. It just looks better. And my keyboard doesn’t do it this way, which really irritates me. $ee?
And speaking of writing, have you ever seen a sign or a note that a stranger wrote, and mistaken the handwriting for your own? This happened to me when I was drinking at a bar a few weeks ago, and it really creeped me out. Some artist had hand written their artist’s statement, and their handwriting was exactly the same as mine. And the best part of all of this was that they remembered to double cross their S’s on all of their price tags!
Have you ever thought about how stupid it is to knock on someone’s door, and then ask them if they are sleeping? I hear people doing this all the time. For example, I will call a house, and ask one of my friend’s housemates if I can speak to that friend. The person on the line then says, “hang on, I think that they may be asleep,” and before I can tell them not to bother my friend, I’ll hear them walk over to the door, knock on it, and say something like, “Hey, Joe, are you sleeping?” I mean, if the person is asleep, then you are more than likely going to wake them up by knocking on their door, and if someone is asleep, then they can’t answer a question, because they are not conscious.
I bought a bag of socks the other day, and on the outside of the package, in bold red text was the sentence “New, resealable bag!” Why on Earth would you package socks in a resealable zip log bag, and what sort of moron would buy said socks because of the bag?
I’m pretty cheap when it comes to buying things for myself. I buy cheap beer, cheap whisky, and I only eat out at happy hour, in order to save cash. I’ve mentioned before that my mother calls this mentality frugal, not cheap, and I wholeheartedly agree. When it comes to spending money on other people, however, I’m quite lavish and anything but cheap. But I have to say that I’m finally changing my personal standards when it comes to Vodka. My good friend Alex left me a plastic bottle of Banker’s Club Vodka when he moved out of our house, as a thank you gift, and when I went to make myself a martini the other night, after shaking the vodka and vermouth with ice, I poured the drink into a glass, and it fizzled, and kept fizzling, as though it were a carbonated beverage. It was disgusting, and as frugal as I am, I will no longer drink cheap vodka from a plastic bottle.
I don’t understand why the unicycle was invented. It’s awfully hard to ride, it’s slow, difficult to manauever, falls over easily, isn’t very fast or convenient, and people look very stupid riding it. Whoever invented the unicycle must have been on drugs.
I don’t think that I’m a very observant individual, but I’m shocked by how many of my friends don’t know how to answer the following question: “When you butter toast, which side do you put in your mouth, the butter side face down, or face up?” If you don’t know the answer, then you don’t pay attention to the little things in your own life. I can’t tell you what I want to do for a living, or where I want to live next year, but I know all about my idiosyncracies; I like my butter face up on my toast, I perefer to cut my sandwiches diagonally, and I like to eat the half popped kernels at the bottom of the popcorn bag better than the actual popcorn itself.
And bringing things back around, full circle, to the subject of drinking, I have a question that no girl has ever been able to sufficiently answer, so I’m calling out all of my female readers to try and answer the following question: Why is it that girls go to the bathroom in pairs or groups, to help each other out when they get sick from drinking too much and need to hurl? Personally, the last thing in the world that I want when I’ve drank too much and need to clean out the old system is a friend—or anyone else for that matter— to be within earshot, line of sight, or puke splatter range of me when I’m hurling.
And last, but certainly not least, I’m a huge fan of game shows, and one of my alltime favorites is “The Price is Right.” I recently found out that after 35 years as host of the show, Bob Barker is retiring. I’m very saddened by this news, and ask my readers to observe a moment of silence at some point in honor of Bob Barker’s retirement.
