Yup. That's It. We're Done. Pack It Up, Everybody.

Every once in a while it's nice to get a little reminder of where you are in the Universe. A reality check, as it were.

It's just helpful to know exactly where you -- and society as a whole -- actually stand in the Grand Scheme of Things.

A little perspective.

For instance, it might interest you to know that right this very minute we are no longer teetering on the precipice between order and chaos, between stability and utter bedlam.

Nope!

We have already plunged headlong into the muck and mire of the End of All Things!

The End Times have arrived, my friends, and everything you've held dear has crumbled to dust!

All bets are off! Tear up those rule books, they don't apply anymore!

Time to start flinging your poop, everybody!

Because apparently nothing goddamn matters anymore!

Yup. That happened.

(And actually continued to happen for several minutes.)

And by the by, this wasn't a kid who didn't know any better. This was a woman in her late 50s to early 60s.

Somebody's mom or grandma.

And there were several employees literally a few yards away! Employees who I'm sure would have been delighted to help her not step all over the damn hot dogs.


It may not be raining hellfire and brimstone just yet, but I think this is pretty solid proof that we are, in fact, living in a Pre-Apocalyptic Wasteland.

So good luck, everybody! And remember, babies have the tenderest meat!



It's my own fault, though. I shouldn't be shopping at Thunderdome.

Two men enter! One man leaves ... with savings!



Till next we meet ...

(Animal) Protection Racket

THE SCENARIO:

It's two in the morning. You're sprawled on the couch, drifting in and out of consciousness. An episode of Forensic Files flickers unwatched across the TV screen ... the oddly comforting white noise of a grisly tale of murder and depravity easing you into slumber.

And then you hear it.

The slow plinking of a very sad piano filters through your haze.

Instantly your eyes SNAP open!

NOOO!!!

With all the grace of a pile of lumber tumbling down a flight of stairs, you lurch up from your repose, scrambling madly for the remote!

You mash all the buttons in blind panic ... desperate to avoid what's coming ...!

But it's too late.

"They call me 'The Night-Ruiner'!"

Before your fumbly, sleep-palsied thumb can find the GO-AWAY button ... you've seen them.

The filthy, the emaciated, the scabrous. Quivering in rusty cages. Their terrified, imploring eyes boring holes straight into your soul.

Like a pitchfork twisting through your guts, reminding you what you already knew ... humans, whether by action or neglect, can be goddamn monsters.


And yup. It's official. Your night is ruined.

Thanks a LOT, Sarah.

(And not only that, you used to like that song! Can you ever hear it again without having a Pavlovian tear-gush response?)

But I have a humble suggestion for Ms. McLachlan and her various cohorts whose seemingly feature-length misery-paloozas haunt my late-night cable box.

I WILL PAY YOU TO STOP.

I mean it.

My proposal:


The ASPCA, Humane Society and other such organizations should band together and launch Kickstarter campaigns in each of the major media markets.

The purpose of the campaign? To raise the funding needed to run their good and vital operations in those regions, of course.

But what do we get if they reach their goal?


They promise NOT to play their horribly upsetting ads in that area.


I suspect I'm like a lot of people out there when I say I would pay cash money to ensure those deeply troubling and tear-inducing ads do not show up on my television. Ever.

The thing is though, their current ads just can't be working very well. Because logically, people who love animals don't want to see soul-searing footage of animals being abused. They're going to change the channel.

In fact, I personally have NEVER seen the end of one of those commercials. Like a lot of people, I've changed the channel long before they've had a chance to make their donation pitch. I wouldn't know where to send the money even if I wanted to.

So why not make a promise that if folks donate enough cash, they'll withhold the thing that so many of us find so horrifying?

If that sounds familiar, it should. That's precisely how a protection racket works.

"Some nice tear ducts you got there. Be a shame if something happened to 'em."

Now I realize this is a dangerous precedent to set. If it worked, other less scrupulous advertisers would surely try to exploit this same tactic to try squeezing money out of a beleaguered public by crafting the most irritating and grating commercials possible. (To be honest, I can't say for sure the people at Intel aren't already setting us up for this right now with those execrable and profoundly unfunny Jim Parsons ads.)

But I'm willing to take that chance.



Now, if the anti-animal cruelty folks wanted to sweeten the deal and really make us love them, they could replace their existing ads with ones featuring cute, hilarious and heart-warming animal footage.

After all, if the Internet has taught us anything (I mean, other than: "never read the comments"), it's that people LOVE LOVE LOVE looking at pictures and videos of adorable cats and dogs.

If they really want people to watch their ads all the way to the end, they need to make it possible for us to watch them all the way to the end.

Because I can say with absolute certainty that you're MUCH more likely to get money out of me by just showing me pictures of, say, this guy for sixty straight seconds:

"You can't look away, can you. And you know what? You don't have to! Yay!"

Seriously, where do I send the check?





Till next we meet ...

The Object of My Affectation

I have no patience for affectation.

Never have.

You know the people I'm talking about. Whether it was the kid from theater camp who always carried the sword cane, or the guy from junior high with the fish ties, or the girl in homeroom who dyed her giant mohawk every color in the rainbow.

Look around your workplace right now. You're bound to spot a guy with a handlebar mustache, or skinny jeans, or sleeve tats, or one of those huge, upsetting tribal-earlobe-disc-things. (Come to think of it, you'll probably find all of those things on the same guy.)

"My neck gets cold." 

"Look-at-me!" behavior has always just rubbed me the wrong way.

Which is pretty ironic.

Because since I could walk I've engaged in nothing but look-at-me behavior.

When I was a kid I was constantly writing, acting, directing, drawing, sculpting, animating, filming, and generally extracurricular-ing my ass off.

On and on it went. You name the activity, I was desperately trying to draw attention to myself by doing it.

But back then you'd never have known I wanted you to look at me just by ... well ... looking at me. The way I dressed or cut my hair was never flashy, unique or even remotely fashionable. My oft repeated mantra was, I wanted BE unique, not LOOK unique. I wanted attention for accomplishing things, not for how I dressed. I never wanted to visually stand out in a crowd. If somebody was going to notice me, I wanted there to be a good goddamned reason.

I wanted to be known for doing, not for shopping.

Which I suppose could be considered commendable.

You know ... if I hadn't been such an unbearable asshole about it.

For some reason, I really felt the need to harangue people who had the temerity to decorate themselves for their personal pleasure. They drove me up the wall and I didn't mind one little bit explaining that to them -- with all the judgmental, acid-tongued sanctimony I could muster.

Which was a lot.

I was a teenager, after all.

From my roost waaaaay up on that high horse, I'd lob long, preachy diatribes down at all sorts of innocent folks whose only crime was engaging me on the subject. Like Deidra -- my high school's version of Mohawk Girl. We'd have long arguments that usually ended with me feeling smugly superior and her feeling shitty and bullied.

(Did I mention that I was mean, pompous little fuck when I was a kid? Well, I was. "Recovering Asshole" isn't meant to be a clever title for the blog. It's more "Science-facty".)


The problem is, it's now thirty years later and while I've somewhat successfully managed to sand down some of the more objectionable corners of my personality, I still can't quite curb that knee-jerk aversion to affectation.

I know how I ought to feel. I ought to be rejoicing that people are celebrating their glorious and beautiful differences and letting their freak flags fly. Because, honestly, I LOVE the beautiful and bountiful banquet of different faces in the world!

I do!

Honestly!

Objectively I know there is nothing wrong with wanting to look different or unique or stylish.

It's not a character flaw.

I know this.

But for some reason I just can't help instinctively recoiling. It's a bone-deep, lizard-brain reaction that I've never been able to shake.

And it's swollen over the years, into a kind of blue-collar snobbery.

It's actually become a point of pride for me (rather than shame, as it probably should), that I own just one solitary necktie. An inexpensive accessory that I had my father tie for me about 20 years ago, that I loosen and tighten as the occasion dictates.

"No. Mr. Grey will not see you now. Go torture-sex yourself, you unprofessional shit-heel."

My lower middle class upbringing (or more accurately upper lower class) taught me early and often that money wasn't free. And since I've never had any, trendy clothes and haircuts have always been the equivalent of the expensive dishes that were on that page of the menu we weren't allowed to order from.

So I've never been able to stomach the idea of spending money on pricey outfits just because some magazine said I should. (Also, let's face it, the Fashion Industrial Complex is responsible for perpetuating some pretty awful things in our culture, so defying them can't be so bad.)

(Plus, as I've pointed out previously, I am in fact shaped like a mailbox made of meat. So there's a fair amount of fashion (read: all of it) that isn't tailored for my body type anyway.)

So it's all cargo pants and tee-shirts for me. Unfashionable in any decade.

"Dress for the job you want," the old axiom goes. And a cursory glance at me should tell you I apparently want to be homeless. Or a writer. (Not mutually exclusive, I suppose. Also both equally likely.)

Such is the level of my reflexive bias that simply "dressing like a professional" in my mind has become akin to "showing up at work in mutton-chops and a monocle."

"We're putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports now, wut-wut. Bumbershoots!" 

But all of that is prologue.


Because The Universe has tossed me a bit of a brain grenade recently.


An extremely worrying thought crossed my mind the other day:

What if my staunch anti-affectation stance is actually an affectation unto itself?

Oh.

Shit.

"Well, that sure looks delicious! Better start swallowing until I wink out of existence in a puff of well-earned, self-absorbed karmic retribution!"

Well, if the hypocrisy fits, I guess I have to wear it.



(sigh)



Suppose I'd better start shopping for a top hat and a unicycle.

And I gotta call my dad. Gonna need him to tie my new fish tie.




Shit.




Somewhere, I hope a smile just curled across Deidra's pierced lips. It's been a long time coming.




Till next we meet ...

Everybody At The Garage Learned To Rue The Day Bill Got His Word-Of-The-Day Calendar

"I mean, can a person ever really know what is or isn't broken on your car? Heck, what does 'broken' even mean?"

"And what's a 'car', anyhow?"

"How could any of us ever possibly know?"





"Those new struts are gonna run you about a grand, though."




Till next we meet ...

Flour Pouer

I don't pay a LOT of attention to stuff.

Sometimes it takes me a while to notice things that everybody else spotted ages ago.

(Did you know there are DRUG references in Scooby Doo!? I know! Crazy, right!?)

So it wasn't terribly surprising that the bag of flour The Missus sent me to fetch sat on the counter for a couple of days before I finally took a good look at it.

Day 1:

Went to the store with a list. Came back with everything on it.

Including this bag of flour. Yessir. Right there.

My work here is done.



Day 2:

Bag of flour. Right where I left it.

Boom.

Everything still A-OK with The Universe.



Day 3:

Yessir. That sure is a bag of flour all ri---WHAT THE SHIT?!

SWEET MOTHER OF FUCK!

THAT'S A GODDAMN BABY WITH A GODDAMN KNIFE!!

Look, I'm not entirely sure how flour is made -- I have a vague notion there's a fair amount of sifting involved -- but I'm almost 100% certain that it isn't made by buttery cherubs carving up phone books with hunting knives!

"Heckers: Tastes so good, you'll swear it was dangerously manufactured by children!"

And while we're on the subject, if you MUST carve up a phone book with a hunting knife -- and I'm not altogether convinced you must -- never cut TOWARDS yourself! That's just tempting fate. You're practically begging to lop off a minimum of three of those stubby little sausage fingers.

Pretty sure it was Henry Ford who said that.




Till next we meet ...

Little Big Man

I'm a little guy.

On a good day, when gravity isn't being too dickish, I totter around at a vertigo-soothing five feet six inches.

Undertall for an average adult man, to be sure.

But hey, what are you gonna do? Genes are genes. They line up how they line up. No point getting fussed about it.

Unlike a lot of short guys, though, I've never been one to get overly hung up on my lack of verticality. No Napoleon Complexes for me, thanks.

Why?

Probably because, while I've always been a little guy, I've also always been a pretty big guy.

Which is to say, what I lack in height, I more than make up for in breadth.

Visual Approximation:

This. Except my cape isn't as fancy.
Also, I'm much blockier.

I've always been broad. Cartoonishly so. Even when I was thin. (Check that. "Thin" isn't really a thing I can be.) "Unfat" I suppose.

When I hit puberty it was like somebody yanked the ripcord on an airplane escape raft. Almost overnight, muscle sprouted everywhere. I went from a scrawny little spider monkey of a child ... to a lowland gorilla of a teen.

Sturdy. Burly. Dense. Thick.

I have the type of body that's built for pulling a plow. Like a Shetland pony crossed with a Clydesdale.

So even at my unfattest, I'm still absurdly broad.

Like a mailbox made of meat.

I honestly don't know how they got this photo of me without skin. I almost always have skin.

I'm often reminded of a great throw-away joke from Cheers:

WOODY

What are you up to, Mr. Peterson?

NORM

My ideal weight, if I were eleven feet tall.



Which pretty much sums up the relationship I've had with my body since about the age of 10. (By the way, some quick back-of-the-envelope math says my ideal height would be about 8'4".)

So I wasn't hugely surprised when the doctor turned to me and said:

"You are morbidly obese."

"Saywhatnow?"

(Okay, I was pretty surprised.)

"Morbidly obese."

"Morbidly?"

"Yup."

"As in--"

"Yup."

Jeez. I knew I'd paunched up a little in recent years, but it's not like I'm one of those poor souls that have to be cut out of their houses by the fire department.

"Just out of curiosity ... where are you getting those numbers?" I asked.

"Your BMI."

"Ah."

"That's Body--"

"Body Mass Index. Right. The chart. I'm familiar with its work."

"I'm sorry, but your pie chart seems to be composed entirely of pie."

Now, I'm not saying the chart is bullshit. It's a generalized tool meant to help a broad spectrum of people get healthier. I have no quarrel with that.

And I'm also not denying that I'm significantly "well-marbled" right now.

It's just that, if you're built like me -- and god help you if you are -- that chart doesn't really "work."

It doesn't factor in muscle mass or bone density or frame. So if you're a dense meat brick like myself, the numbers get a little squiffy.

According to the BMI chart, a fella of my height ought to be tipping the scales at roughly HALF of my current weight.

It's true -- I really do need to drop some weight. (I'm planning to shed about 50 pounds of unneeded girth over the next year.) But the BMI chart would prefer I drop a ludicrous 130!

This is not a thing that is likely. Nor is it -- without considerable assistance from a serious consumptive disorder and at least two amputations -- even remotely possible.

At the recommended 135 pounds, you'd be able to see every bone in my body. Every rib, every vertebrae, all my teeth ... Even the microscopic bones inside my eardrums.

Probably.

Look, I know my body. I've been lumbering around inside it for the past 45 years. At 190 pounds I'll have a pretty respectable six-pack. At 135 I'd be horrifying. Like, Christian-Bale-in-The-Machinist horrifying.

So, what I'm saying is ... if I can land in the neighborhood of 200 pounds ... that'll do, pig. That'll do.

"Hey kids! It's Mr. Bulky! Enjoy my thickness, won't you? I certainly don't!"

So while I try not to take the whole BMI thing too personally ... it does jab a pointy stick straight into one of my emotional sore spots.

Like I said at the top, I've never been hung up about being short.

But I've long been hung up about being wide.

I may not be tall, but I'm physically obtrusive.

Put simply ... I'm in your way.

It's an issue I've had my entire adult life. Even in the salad days of my 20s and 30s. Back before the washboard turned into a washtub.

I've always been in your way.

This is especially vexing for me because I consider Personal Space to be sacrosanct. A right guaranteed by the Constitution. Or the Magna Carta. Or at least by the unwritten, but widely agreed upon Social Contract. We are all entitled to our own physical buffer zone. I don't want you in mine, and I sure as hell don't want to be in yours.

Trouble is, when you're essentially a slow-moving man-hassock, it's near impossible to stay out of everybody's buffer zones.

I don't want to be in your way ... desperately so ... but my thickness makes a hypocrite of me. A fact that drives me more than a little nuts.

At all times, I'm acutely aware of the space I take up.

I twist and I contort, but I just can't help it. I'm physically obtrusive. I'm in your way.

"Sorry."
(sigh)

When you're broad, the world just isn't designed for you. Restaurant booths, crowded sidewalks, escalators, theater seats, not so crowded sidewalks, subways, buses, trains -- any kind of public transit, really -- it's all gonna be uncomfortable somehow.

I can't squeeze through a subway turnstile unless I twist sideways. I can't walk down the aisle of my commuter train without having to bob and weave to keep my shoulders from bouncing off the heads of everybody on the damn train as I trudge past.

Even those little "modesty" partitions they put between urinals to keep guys from spraying urine all over one another are too narrow for my ridiculous shoulders. I either have to stand further back (not recommended), or wedge myself in at a 45 (also not recommended). Hell, if men's public restroom toilet stalls weren't universally horrifying places, I'd consider doing all my peeing in there. But then, there's usually not enough room in those things for me to turn around either.

And as you'd expect, air travel is particularly fraught with miseries.

There's nothing quite so dispiriting as that grim, crestfallen look that settles over your seatmate's face when they realize the wide, rhinoceros-shaped guy squeezing down the aisle is headed for the seat next to them.

It sucks pretty hard knowing that your mere physical existence is causing other people discomfort.

I always try for an aisle seat so at least one shoulder can hang over the side. (Which then gets clipped by every single person heading to and from the toilet. Not to mention the bruises from the drink cart.) Then, in order to clear the arm rest, I clamp my hands in my armpits and cross my arms high across my chest for the duration of the flight. Worst case scenario, I also have to keep my torso twisted at a 45 degree angle the whole time.

When you're thick-set, the world is a neverending Parent/Teacher Night and you're crammed into those little kindergarten desks wherever you go.

Then, of course, there's the fact that I commute into Manhattan from Jersey every day. A voyage teeming with thousands of some of the most aggressive, impatient and hostile humans on the planet.

(I've said it before and I'll say it again: When we get the news that the asteroid is coming and the world is about to end, commuters will be the first ones to start with the cannibalism. Even before the asteroid hits. And even if they've just had lunch. Just to be dicks.)

I'm in their way. And they hate me for it.

I can feel their loathing searing into me as they push, shove and desperately scramble to get around, over and away from me at all costs. All the while, resenting the utter volume I occupy.

Every.

Single.

Day.

And it sucks.

Penn Station. 7th Avenue and 32nd Street, New York, NY 10001

(True, they pretty much hate every other living soul, too, but that doesn't make you feel any better about it in the moment.)

Buying clothes is exactly as vexing as you'd expect, too.

Well, buying nice clothes, at any rate. There really isn't a rack off of which I can buy formal wear. This is why I'm almost always seen wearing cargo shorts/pants and t-shirts. I just buy a double or triple XL in everything and roll it up.

The good news is, I'm mercifully through the gauntlet of all my friends' first marriages. There was a stretch in my 30s where I was asked to be in about a dozen weddings in a row. The chief indignity of renting a tuxedo when you're anvil-shaped is that you will endure more fittings and alterations than the bride. And when you're done, it's still going to look like shit and be crazy uncomfortable.

I remember once trying to buy a suit jacket at a Men's Warehouse and having a great deal of trouble finding one to fit me across the chest and back. (Nevermind the foot and a half they'd need to chop off the sleeves.)

The sales clerk, who clearly wished he was somewhere else, tried to hurry me along. He made no effort to hide his disdain. (His name, if I recall, was something like Smuggy McFuckStick, but I could be mis-remembering that.)

"I think I need more room through the shoulders and upper arms. It feels like I'm going to rip right out of it if I move wrong."

"Well, I don't think it's meant for wearing to the gym," he smirked condescendingly.

"Well, I don't think it would be appropriate if it splits up the back while I'm carrying the coffin," I shot back.

He didn't say much after that.

And yes. One of the armpits did rip out during that funeral. But fortunately, no one noticed.

Except me.



So, yeah ... the point is ... I'm sorry for being in your way.

Maybe someday I'll figure out how to get out of mine.






Till next we meet ...





(Total side note: If we have Big & Tall stores why don't we have Short & Thick stores? Humans CAN be big without being tall, people. It's Science.)

(Seriously, how great would it be to have a shop that specifically carried short and thick sizes? How great? Very great. And it should be called "Napoleon's Complex." And I would totally shop there all the time.)

Sorry, Drew Barrymore.

"IF YOU CAN START FIRES WITH YOUR MIND, PLEASE DO NOT USE THE WASHING MACHINE"

Thank you,
--The Management




Till next we meet ...