this here is for my [fellers] that be flippin' them birds

So, across the street from our Irving-ree-la here in Brooklyn is located the most ridiculously crappy bodega in all of the crappy world. Its shelves overflow with only the most expired of weird products, in addition to the most perfectly random, dusty, not for sale bric-a-brac.

Oh, and why not throw some cats in there. Yea, that's good, drape them about like bunch of sloppy clowns.

So where I'm going with this is: its owner is this woman from a Spanish-speaking country, who doesn't do much English-speaking, but does plenty of Irving-judging.

Sure, we basically only buy beer, toilet paper, and the occasional candy bar from her candy bars-only-deli case, so maybe her assumption that these items comprise our entire diet would be deserved fodder to fill her cannons what be firing judgmental looks on the reg...

But atop that, she stands on the street corner all day, casting glares up through our windows as I lawfully strut about our creepartment shirtless, hatted, and maybe also singing.

And really, it's more her fault than ours that it requires drinking a few cocktails for a person to even consider shopping at her bodeguernica, so the fact that we are, on occasion, less than 'not drunk' should be stricken from the record in the prejudiced case that I just know she has against us.

So we suffer sentences of half-smiling, sideways looks, and the shakings of a head in utterance of a Spanish idiom that roughly translates to 'confused disgust'.

Hey lady! Guess what?! I'm a weird person. Consider these observations a sneak-preview of the straight to 6 train dvd-bootlegger's bag movie, which will be based on the tell-all My Little Pony diary entry, written unauthorized by my brother Peter, and maliciously e-published post-my eating the last of his marzipan in the freezer just to spite him because I don't even like marzipan. If you follow.

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I WROTE THIS IN 2007, BUT I THINK IT IS STILL AS IRRELEVANT TODAY

I was in the park the other day. I was relaxing as i am wont to do; but this sort of chilling was especially inclusive of illing. Anyhoo, at one pointI swung my head about to survey the luscious mid-brooklyn greenage, when what do I see and cellphone-cam, but this dapper fellow doing stretches on the grass nearby:

Hard to make it out, but yes, he is wearing a bandana on his scraggly long hair. Oh yea, also a bright yellow g-string.

After feeling mildly disgusted by the scene, and sort of laugning about it, I took a step back from my own self. And what should I see but a sweaty, smelly guy on a bench, newspapers scattered all about, shoes off, coffee spilled all over shirt, black and white cookie smeared on face.

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Ready With Ready Wit

I am now employed at a place d'employment where the outfit I'm made to wear is, you guessed it: plaid on plaid on plaid. And not the really attractive plaid you're definitely thinking of. Oh, and part of it is a vest.

And people ask (make fun of, subtly) about the outfits all the time.

"Do you like wearing that?"

"Do you wear that outside of work?"

"Who came up with that horrendous outfit?"

Well, this forced fool-makery has got me thinking.

I wish to someday start a Morrissey-themed restaurant where the uniforms will be leather pants and half-open sweat-soaked shirts, which we waitrons will change like every 15 minutes, or between songs--and we'll play non-stop Morrissey, and we'll only have tables for one; and oh my, well I haven't worked out all of the specifics! Let's just say you'll probably leave crying, but I won't.

For more Morr, please see Ricky's sensical blog: http://morrisseyandpicturesofcats.blogspot.com/

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wait! wait!

My father once, at a rather melodramatically unfabulous time in my life, bestowed upon me a bit of advice that his friend George had received from his father. It was that "girlfriends are like buses-- if you miss out on one, there will always be another coming soon."

And sure, the attitude enabled by this sentiment might be considered the hose end of the slip n'slide to full-on sociopathic behavior. But he told me this because it is funny, and it made me feel better, if by simple distraction.

At any rate, I have recently found in this argument a very serious flaw. What happens when you miss the only bus that was devoid of stenches, and creepy dudes with band-aid hands, and ladies screaming at you about their alimony? And what if that bus was impossible for you to reach in the first place?

I have found that bus. It is my 60-something year-old land lady, Lydia. And oh what a primo bus she is.

Insane? Sure.

Overly talkative and reptitive in her ramblings about painting cabinets and what one might hypothetically cook on a stove (coffee was all she could think of)? Hell yes.

But she has already been taken. Long ago. By a small bald fellow, whom I thoroughly, ragingly envy. If only I had been there to scream this in the Polish church on that fateful day:

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remember that movie 'there goes the neighborhood'?

Because it has become abundantly clear that our hermitic ways will surely guarantee lifetimes of creepy and secluded bachelorhood, Peter and I have decided that the house warming party (the long-awaited Irving Invitational) next month or so will also be your opportunity to give us all of the presents for the weddings that we will never have.

What follows is a gift registry of sorts, but you know, be creative and we DO NOT need another teak salad bowl set. We have two already.

Our new ceilings are pretty high, so don't let this picture limit your generosity.

Peter has always wanted this electric trampoline coffee table. I know, weird, right?

If we want to truly rep the hermit lifestyle, we're going to need a hell of a lot of old newspapers with which to build a complex tunnel system and deter intruders.

Any fallout shelter-type sundries and other supplies that one or two might find useful in an armageddon sort of situation would be great. These gifts would be given without strings like 'please let us into your spooky hermit refuge, the world is ending and remember we gave you all those fabulous sundries' attached.

Yea, so hope to see you at the Invitational, and best of luck out there in the cruel world if we don't.

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if you have nothing else to do...

I support this list 1000%
BOOM

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it tastes like chicken because it is chicken

The other night, I had a lengthy discussion about the land of Africa with a plump, mature employess of a Popeye’s Chicken restaurant, which was located in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn—not coincidentally proximate to the bar where my drink had been gotten on.

After a preheating of African geography quizage, I proved deserving of the cultural informational fruits she could provide me, so we discussed not just her motherland Mali, but Western African culture generally.

She explained the differences between these many countries, but more remarkable was her insistence on their true similarity. I continued to baste her with questions, succulent questions, for five to ten minutes continuously.

NEXT, the manager came over and told me that I could learn about Africa at the library. And that they have maps there, at the library. I thanked him kindly, but explained that I was more interested in the culture and such, and so I continued to speak with the employee.

“Yeaaa. They have books there too. Lots of books. Books about Africa. Books about everything. At the library.” He said, glaring at me with a most ghastly stink eye.

I guess we finally got the manager’s angry point because she went back to boxing chicken, and I took my chicken box back home and ate, like, the whole thing.

By the way, her name is Sonny-something-something (it was printed on my receipt that I just spent 20 minutes looking for, with no success,) and we’re shooting for mid-January for our Malian destination wedding, so best you find safe passage, post-haste.

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