Crispy tweets.

It’s two in the morning, and there is a bird in my ventilation system. That isn’t a euphemism, either. Like “man, I had this bird in my ventilation system last night! It was crazy!”

I bet he'll be tasty.
There is an actual, live bird, trapped in my ventilation system. A fowl imprisoned in a silver cage.

I started hearing things a few days ago. Simple things, not enough to attract any actual attention. At first, I thought it was just the house settling at night, or perhaps even a squirrel on the roof, high out of his mind on acorns, chasing imaginary giant nuts!! But as the noise persisted, I knew it could only mean there was a creature inhabiting my vents. The thing is... It´s not just a normal vent. Its the one linked to my water gas heater!

I first thought it was quite possible that a mouse was running amok in my house, rampant with lust for the pizza I had left the night before and perhaps that mouse decided to take refuge in the vent in the kitchen. But I came to this horrible conclusion this morning, when I heard the unmistakable “tweet tweet tweet” that was accompanied by the slight flutter of a pair of wings, futilely attempting to get enough room to fly.

But instead, the bird sits in my vent, attempting to survive. What a prick. Doesn’t he know that I’m trying to sleep? He can at least have a little respect for those who aren’t facing an imminent death and shut the fuck up.

For now, I need to figure out how to get the bird out of the vent. It would be useful if I knew how the damn thing got in there to begin with. The only reasonable scenario that I can drum up at this early hour relies heavily on the notion of teleportation. Or the chimney.

But that would be ridiculous.

Fed up...

I'm fed up with life. Not only life but work. And driving. And shopping. And eating. And working. Somewhere, somehow, they're different now, none of 'am are the same, they all got chewed up and spit back out, and they don't taste like living anymore! Don't you see what it's like in this deranged Waring Blender of a world?! Every day is an agonizing ordeal, like balancing a pot of scalding water on your head while people whip your legs and butt... (hmmmmm) You never forget Uni...

YOU think I'm "sick"? Well the only disease I've got is "Modern Life," a schnutbusting gauntlet of inefficiency and misery that's one long parade of let-downs, put-downs, trickle downs, shutouts, freezeouts, sell-outs, numnuts, nincompoops and nimrods, all making every day as much fun as waxing a flaming Cherokee Jeep with your tongue, where even if you do luck into the possibility of some fleeting pleasure, like, say, if some nymphomaniac telephone operators with the muscle control of Rumanian mat-slappers agree to a little Strip Air Hockey, it'll be over before it starts 'cuz some vowel-lacking, feta-reeking cab-jockey slams his Checker up your hatchback and the cab is owned by some pinata spanker from a Santeria cult in Xoacalpa who starts shaking chicken bones at you and gives you a boil on your neck so big all it needs is Michael Jordan's autograph to make it complete, and even with all this, with ALL THIS, I still drag my sorry butt off the Sealy every morning and stick my face in the reaping machine for one more day, knowing when it's time to flash the cosmic card key at those Pearly Gates, I won't be in the coffin anyway 'cuz some underhanded undertaker sold my heart, pancreas and other assorted Good 'N' Plenty to that same Santeria cult, so does anybody really wonder why anybody is hanging onto sanity by the atoms on the tips of their fingernails while Life dirty-dances on their digits, and is it really any wonder that I seem DERANGED???!!"

But...heh that's probably nothing you haven't heard a hundred times before...

Some suggestions for the Youth of today on how to not be Useless

First of all, PULL UP YOUR FUCKING JEANS!!!
Look, I support your right to express yourselves, I did the whole Rebellious Youth thing when I was in school. But having your jeans hanging down with your underwear sticking out of the back is about the stupidest look you could go for. You look worse than a fucking retard, cause at least the retard was trying to put them on right. Besides, in Prison it means you're already "spoken for" and it's a signal to other cons not to hit on you, because you're someone else's bitch. So unless you take it up the ass from a 300-plus pound, life sentence or more, not-ever-eligible-for-parole murderer on a regular basis, or have to blow him & his buddies whenever he says, pull up your jeans you useless bastards.

Learn the value of respect. For instance, if you don't respect yourself, how in the hell can you expect anyone else to respect you? Years ago, before you could call 999 and have the Child Protection Agency arrest your parents, disrespect earned you an ass-kicking. If you fucked up, you paid the price, simple as that. Respect is better than money in a way, because the more you give to others the more you get in return. An unruly, disruptive, over-indulged little cshit is a useless individual, destined to be nothing more than a burden to society, unless your parents were smart enough to become wealthy. Then you won't be a burden to society but you'll still be a useless fuck head.

Learn the value of money. I don't know why your parents can't say "No" to you whenever you whine for the latest hundred-euro pair of jeans or an expensive gaming console, but just be glad you're not my kid. I started making my own money before I started school by washing windows in the summer and shoveling snow in the winter. There will always be someone willing to pay you to do things for them, if you get off your lazy ass and do it. I would probably pay some neighbourhood kid a 50 to cut my grass, but in an area full of teenagers, there aren't any who would do it. Believe me, it feels way better to pay for something out of your own pocket. That way you don't have to justify it to anyone. My dad caught me smoking when I was 14 and swore he would never give me money for cigs, and was true to his word. But I always had cigs, because I always had money. So knock off your pussy-assed whining and earn your own money, otherwise you're also a useless shit for brains.

Pimps and drug dealers are not role models, they're pussies. When you call something "Pimp" all it says to me is that it's something overtly tacky and ostentatious (look it up) and cheap. In other words, totally devoid of class and purpose. When you implement the previous suggestions, you will realize that you can't buy class. Just because a suit cost 1,500 doesn't mean it won't make you look like a fucking carnival barker (look that up too). If you drive a chimp around in a limo, it doesn't mean that chimp has class, because he'll still beat off and throw his shit at you. The same is true for people; just because some white trash fuckwit won the Lotto doesn't mean he's a better person, it just means he'll swap his rusted-out 88 piece of shit Ford Capri for a new Escort, and finally buy that second Elvis-on-velvet painting he could never afford before. A pimp makes money by bullying women into giving him money,and any able-bodied grown man who doesn't earn his own living is a useless shit.

I'm sure I'll be putting up similar posts in the future, because I'm far from done.

Unemployed smokers

As people, we occasionally we bear witness to some magnificent event that happens but once in a lifetime. Halley’s Comet, the Aurora Borealis, or Pam Anderson’s first sex tape. Sometimes these things are glorious, mystifying, or just too effed up to that they make you say “Wait, did that just happen?”

What I experienced last week was all three. Here is my story…

Every day during lunch, I take a little stroll around the park area near my office. During these walks, I’m treated to a veritable rogues gallery of citizens: Young professionals enjoying a bite to eat outside, students catching a smoke between class, a handsome young stranger (Oops, that’s just my reflection! I’m so silly.)

My walk nears its end as I make my way out of the park and back to the office building – a convergence of four streets that serve as a conduit to the rest of the city. This is where the action happens. A lot of traffic, both of the rubber and leather variety. (By leather, I mean shoes, not an S&M enthusiast parade.)

In other words, there are a lot of people here. And when you have a lot of people in one area, in the middle of the day, that can only mean one thing: Unemployed jukes with nothing better to do with their time than hang out. And when I say “unemployed,” I don’t mean 30-year-old account executives who were laid off. I mean people who are barely qualified to walk and chew gum at the same time. You dig?

So there are a lot of jukes hanging ’round at noon on a weekday, and as I turn the corner of the home stretch of my daily jaunt, my eyes lock onto one at about 20 yards. For some reason, this juke intrigues me. I’m a people watcher by nature, so I just watched this guy. Maybe it was his bandanna that held his ratty hair back just so, maybe it was the torn denim jacket that appears to have several blood stains (none of them his), or maybe it was the black tracksuit trousers that were tucked into his combat boots – as if to tell the world “Hey, I still use a tape deck – what of it?” Whatever the case may be, this guy reeked of something. This must be what Spiderman feels like when he senses trouble afoot, or when he gets a boner. (Come on, you’re telling me that Peter Parker’s Spidey-senses don’t go off when he is about to get a piece? HA! I said “go off!” That wasn’t even on purpose.)

Anyhow, I knew this guy wasn’t going to let me down. At 15 yards, he slows his pace as he spots something on the pavement. Yes, yes. 10 yards, he bends at the waist and picks something up. Okay…what is it? The cap to a magic marker, a rubber band? 5 yards, he stands upright, the treasure in his hand. You fool, what is it? 3 yards, he opens his hand to reveal…a cigarette. WHAT? A previously lit, used and stepped on. THAT’S GROSS! I don’t mean that it was lit for five seconds and tossed because the smoker couldn’t take it on the bus, I mean that this thing was damn near smoked all the way. All that remained was the filter. And he spotted it from 40 feet, like a nervous eagle who had the shakes.

And it’s not so bad that he picked it up (Wait, yes it is), it’s that he then examined it, smelled it, and put it in his wallet. In front of a dozen other people who were waiting for the bus or just walking by. In the middle of the day. Obviously, he was holding onto it so he can smoke it later, unless this cat just so happened to be some kind of archivist who specializes in half-smoked cigarettes, old lip gloss and used condoms.

But really, well done, sir. Well done.

It’s gross enough that he picked up a used cigarette, but it was lodged in a pavement crack. A crack, mind you, that was probably filled with urine at some point. And feces. And probably vomit. And DEFINITELY semen. These pavements are such filth traps that even the rats avoid them. THE RATS!

Which brings me to my point: Where did society fail this man? This isn’t as simple as “he wasn’t loved enough as a child,” either. This can only be the end result of some aggressive, abusive, mind-effing as a child. We’re talking Menendez brothers meets Joan Crawford meets the guy who jizzed on Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs. Something went very, very wrong with this guy at some point in his life.

And as Thoreau said: The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Maybe this man was a little too quiet. A little too desperate. Maybe no one heard his cries for help or his pangs of hunger. Like so many of us, he was left in the cold to freeze, alone and naked like a penguin egg without its mother to protect it. And when life finally called to grant him a reprieve from the torment he had suffered, perhaps he chose not to answer it. For a life unearned is a life not worth having. I think that’s something we can all appreciate.

But maybe this guy was just gross, but hey, free cigarettes.