She Loves To Hate Me

Whenever I hear it said of somebody that, "there isn't anybody who doesn't like him", I think to myself, all that means is that not very many people know him. One of the many things history can teach us is that anyone who is well known has been both loved and hated. As they say, "you can't please everyone."

Now, as a person it didn’t take mass popularity for me to attain the status of one who was both loved and hated. I have been on the receiving end of these two extremes my whole life; loved by my mother and hated by pretty much everyone else. Even my wife, whom I have a very close and intimate relationship with, harbors ambiguous feelings for me. However, as a writer, specifically, a writer in the blogosphere, I have only been the recipient of positive, if not neutral, criticism. That is, until recently.

One afternoon, when I should have been reviewing the finer points of the Cold War with my students, I decided to go blog surfing instead. (I assure you, this is not common practice. I am a dedicated, hardworking, invested, loving, caring, nurturing teacher. The education and development of my students is paramount in my life. Except this particular day when I figured, to Hell with the sniveling little bastards.) So there I was reading up on the latest exploits of some of my friends and family when I stumbled upon a blog that belonged to Kara, who is from Las Vegas, and is the friend of a friend. I.e., I did not know Kara.

Mind you, this is not uncommon practice in the blog world. After all, Blogspot.com, and other like sites are networking websites. People go there to read about and meet new people. (If it is your first time to theunmighty.com, welcome. There will always be a hot meal and a warm bed for you here.)

The site that I stumbled upon was your typical “mom blog.” If you’re not sure what I mean go to the blog of some mom you know and look for one of the following:

The word “family” in the title
A picture of one or more of their children in the banner
A subtitle that specifically references one or more of their children
A very recent post about the wacky misadventures of moms with their kids at home

Kara’s blog hit 4 for 4.

Lest any mom’s hurriedly edit their blogs to make them look less mom-ish, let me say that some of my favorite blogs are mom blogs maintained by hardworking, stay at home, American mothers. I think it’s a fantastic outlet for their creativity, and feelings (which we all know they need to unload often and in great repetition lest their brains explode). So blog on moms of the world, and be heard!

I digress.

When I stumbled upon Kara’s blog I happily read about her most recent mom experience, which included a swim with her young son at an outdoor swimming pool. In said post she expressed her concern for her son’s safety, as he is very top heavy and not yet stable on his feet, thus necessitating her constant attention. Cute, right? That’s certainly what I thought. Her crafty wordsmithing combined with a few charming pictures made me want to run to my own children, scoop them up, and drown them in my love. But they were having so much fun playing their favorite game, “knife fight”, in the street I decided to leave them undisturbed and continue reading instead. At the very bottom of the same post Kara left these words:

“I want to thank all my faithful friends who leave me comments. My last post had a record # of comments and it made my whole week! You have no idea how it makes my whole day to get comments.”

Reading this I thought, great, here’s my chance to make somebody’s whole day. And they can probably use the pick-me-up being from Las Vegas and all, with their lives steeped in drugs, gambling, pornography, prostitution, and violence. I felt like a modern day Good Samaritan.

I don’t know exactly what I wrote, since Kara has since deleted my comment, but it said something about human babies being born with the innate ability to swim similar to dog babies and therefore she need not worry. Harmless enough. Or so I thought. Soon after my comment was posted, Kara visited my site and left this comment:

“I don't even know you, but Anjie [Anjie and her husband are close friends of mine] says you're just a funny guy. I'm just wondering why you post comments on a complete stranger's blog?? You don't have anything better to do, than to stalk Anjie's friends' blogs? It kind of freaks me out a little, so can you please mind your own business. Thanks.”

Surprised by her reaction, and fearing the misunderstanding might permanently prevent any chance of our becoming life long bosom buddies, I decided I better write her back and clear the air. This is what I wrote;

Kara,
Wow, I'm sorry. I must have really offended you. My apologies. But you should know, your blog is on the WORLD WIDE WEB! It's not unusual for people to surf blogs and to stumble upon friends of friends. Take a deep breath and count to ten before you blow an ovary.
-The UnMighty
PS. If you're that paranoid about strangers reading your blog you can put a privacy block on it where only invited parties can look at it.
PPS. Thanks for visiting my site and leaving a comment.

Needless to say, this comment too, was immediately deleted. But I politely respect Kara’s right to run her blog as she sees fit. In fact, the whole purpose of this post was to thank Kara, who, in my opinion, facilitated my arrival as a writer. I’m not saying that I am now a good writer. Quality has never been a criterion for success in the arts. I just believe that anyone who experiences any real breadth of influence is, without question, going to be loved and hated. And with her short comment I have officially achieved both sides of that line.

I would also like to express that I bare Kara no ill will. And I’d like to encourage all my readers to visit Kara’s blog, which I’m sure you will find stimulating, artistic, heart-warming, and really really special. Once there, please, leave Kara a comment and let her know how much you appreciate her. And that you think she is doing a great job as a mother and a writer. And that you would like to meet her sometime… at night… when she’s not expecting you. And that you are currently in Las Vegas watching her, and her family… through binoculars. And you’re waiting… just waiting… for the right time.

But don’t be creepy. Kara hates that.


BLOG UPDATE - 5/15/08: Yesterday Kara put a privacy block on her blog, so all the helpful links I provided in this post are now useless. From what I've observed, from outside her window, she had become inundated with comments from admiring readers and had to slow the flow as to provide ample time to catch up on comments already left. This became understandable only after I got ahold of, and read her medical file and learned she has severe dyslexia. So lets all just be patient with Kara. I'm sure she'll be back soon.

Top 10 worst moments to experience spontaneous, explosive diarrhea

10) While spinning naked, at zero gravity, in the space shuttle

9) While stuck in a broken elevator with five strangers

8) The exact moment you pass through the metal detector at airport security

7) While delivering your first baby (you’re the doctor)

6) While standing on the diving board at the public pool

5) While performing the “how many clowns can we fit in this VW Bug” trick at the circus

4) While lying face down on the proctologist’s examination table

3) While climbing into bed on your wedding night

2) While leading a post cave-in escape through a very narrow passage

1) While looking down the barrel of gun of a man with a hair-trigger and a sensitive nose

The Human Pearl

Confession: I am a nose picker. I don’t think this is a revolutionary declaration and probably doesn’t even warrant the “Confession” beginning that I used because I think a high percentage of the population are nose pickers. In fact, I’m convinced that people who just plain refuse to stick their own fingers in their own noses make up a very small percentage of the population. (1.6% according to the latest U.S. census survey)

Despite the high level of picking that occurs there is still a negative stigma attached to this very natural process. And to me, this begs the question, when did picking ones nose become socially unacceptable? It is not my intention here to be gross or juvenile. And I’m definitely not striving for shock value since, despite the negative stigma attached to picking, the subject is too juvenile, while at the same time not gross enough to solicit any real shock. It’s just that I have been thinking a lot about social norms and cultural relativity, and this subject is one of many that address the greater issue. I guess I could have written about a number of things; shaking hands, bowing, chewing with mouths closed, burping, flatulence, shoe and shirt requirements, clapping, forms of chivalry, functionless clothing, and other seemingly innocuous acts of social propriety.

To me this subject lacks inappropriate connotation because of my personal feelings about the item being picked. When analyzed scientifically, the booger is not as unpleasant as pop culture would have you believe. I have reasoned that the booger is not unlike the pearl. My comparison is not in the realm of aesthetic beauty or monetary value, but in origin. Though I am not a marine biologist, it is my understanding that a pearl is made when an oyster gets an unwelcome grain of sand inside its shell. The grain causes discomfort and to cope with said discomfort the oyster spins mucus around the grain. Once hardened, the final product is a pearl. In like manner, the human will get a foreign object in its nose (i.e. sand, dust, saw-dust, etc.) and to cope with the discomfort the human nose will coat the object with mucus. This conclusion has helped me look at my boogers in a whole new light. I don’t think I’ll soon be making a necklace of them. But still, it’s not impossible that my family will someday fall on hard times and I’ll need an anniversary gift.

Aside from the social implications, there is still some danger in picking ones nose. And it is this danger that has occupied an inordinate amount of my thoughts. The other night, while driving home, I started to wonder to myself about the possibility of picking a vein large enough to cause massive hemorrhaging from the nose. And if I struck the large vein, would I have the wherewithal, amidst all the bleeding, to get myself to a hospital?
This led me to think about what would happen if I died at the hospital. So I started making mental plans about what to do in such an event. Get my wallet so I have Id. But the address on my license is incorrect. This could lead to an unpleasant exchange.
“Miss, I regret to inform you that your husband has died.”
“Died?! How? What happened?!!”
“He bled to death due to a nose picking accident.”
“NOOOOO! THAT BASTARD! HE TOLD ME HE QUIT! THAT LYING BASTARD!”
“I’m sorry Mrs. Quinn.”
“Who?”
“Is your husband not Ben Quinn?”
“No.”
“Sorry to alarm you.”

It could take days before my family was finally tracked down and told of my untimely demise.

I rethink my mental plans. Grab my cell phone. Once I die they’ll go through my pockets, find my wallet, learn my identity, send a cop to the wrong house, find my phone, start calling everybody in my contact list alphabetically. Hopefully Adam will tell them who my wife is so they don’t bother calling all the people I don’t care about between A and K. Good. Don’t forget the phone.

My wife has little patience for the deeper questions in life. If I asked her if she thought death by nose pick was possible, she’d roll her eyes far enough to see her own brain. I know this because every once in a while, while driving along in silence, I make the mistake of vocalizing some of my deeper questions.
“If you were paid 100 dollars an hour to work out, would you limit yourself to working out one or two hours a day, or would you work out to the point of becoming freakishly ripped with all your veins popping out all over and your breasts turning to man pecks, just so you could be rich?”
“Who’s going to pay me 100 dollars an hour to work out?”
“No one, I know. But for arguments sake, what would you do?”
“Where are they getting the money, and how does my working out benefit them?”
“Forget who or where the money is coming from! Just answer the question!”
“No. It’s stupid. It would never happen.”
At this point my daughter would chime in and remind my wife that we do not say, “stupid”, and the conversation would be over. I would then recede back into my own mind where there is greater opportunity for profound and meaningful conversation between the hemispheres of my brain.

Deep into this conversation I feel an itch and have to pick. “Wait a minute,” I tell myself. “Grab your wallet. Check. Get your phone. Check. Think of the nearest hospital. Check. Now dig away. But use caution, because

My Idea For A Children’s Book

So, the other night I was sitting down with my daughter reading, “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss, and I started thinking, I could write this. In fact, my daughter could write this. It’s totally amateur. Half these words aren’t even real words. I looked them up. I’ll bet Dr. Seuss doesn’t even have a real doctorate. Eventually I concluded that if “Dr.” Seuss could write a book and be successful, I could write a children’s book and be wildly successful. So I got to brainstorming and came up with, what I think are, some solid ideas for my book.

My protagonist is a wizard. A boy wizard named Gary. Kids love magic, and Gary seems like the name of an approachable person. Gary is on a quest to find his family, which he was torn from at an early age. They’re polygamists and were part of a fundamentalist congregation that co-existed inside a very small compound outside of Waco: Waco, England. Gary will go everywhere on the back of his luck-dragon named Holyfield. We’ll have to give a little back-story and show that Holyfield is fiercely loyal to Gary because Gary saved him from angry mountain lions when he was still an egg and then Gary forced himself to lactate out of sheer willpower so he could nurse Holyfield as a baby. Every time they get in a fix and Holyfield has to fly really fast or kill someone with fire he’ll shake his head and say, “I’m gettin’ too old for this crap,” and then they’ll both laugh. The story will probably take place in two realms, which wizards like Gary have the power to go between; the Magical realm and the Gay realm. But he only goes to the Gay realm when he needs to procure new potions and spells from his magic mentor/supplier, a black guy named Anton. Anton will be the comic relief. He’ll have all kinds of crazy new tricks and potions that he’ll show off every time Gary shows up. And his catchphrase will be, “Abra-ka-Fabra”, which he’ll deliver regularly whilst resting one hand on his hip, snapping his fingers with the other, and furiously rubbernecking his head around. There may also be room here for a love interest. I’m thinking an Indian girl named Squaw. This would be good because kids love Indians with all their broken English and backwards ways. To broaden the book’s appeal, I think it should be educational. So it might be good to introduce words and scenarios kids should be familiar with. Maybe Gary could use his magic to help bust a meth lab or a crack house and then smack around and shake down the addicts for information on his family. Then they’ll have a heart to heart about the downfalls of drug abuse and the addicts will give scouts honor to never do it again. There should also be a chapter dedicated to sex education and how intercourse always leads to pregnancy and VD. (I’ll have to workshop some of those ideas, but I think this will make it marketable to the home school demographic.) Eventually Gary will have to confront and defeat the antagonist, the same man who took him from his multiple mothers as a kid and put him into foster care. I think the bad guy will be a mean cowboy wizard, named Sheriff Hitler, who rides a black Pegasus named Tupac who only talks it rhymes and drops, what he calls, “truth bombs.” And instead of six-shooters, Sheriff Hitler will carry two magic wands, which shoot lightning. And every time he blasts one of his enemies with his lightning wands he’ll do a victory dance, which is just of lot of pelvic thrusting while screaming “Cuminayeahaaa!” like Neil Diamond. Since kids like a happy ending I don’t think Gary will kill the Sheriff. Instead he’ll teach him the true meaning of Christmas when he spares the Sheriff from death in the final battle. That’s also a good idea because it leaves it open for a sequel where we find out that Sheriff Hitler is really Gary’s father.

That’s all I have so far, but what to you think? Too cliché?

Death Of A Friend

I never was one of those guys who enjoyed attaching an undue amount of personification to his car. It never got a nickname like Gertrude, or The Beast, and I never referred to it like someone I was intimately or physically involved with. Nevertheless, I did have a certain fondness for my ’95 Geo Prizm. Partly because it was a gift from my father and partly because it was the means by which I saw so much of this beautiful world. So allow me, for a moment, to suspend my unwillingness to see machines as our equals, because, to be perfectly honest, my car was a truer friend than… well… all my other friends. Shame on them for being outdone by a car.

Gertrude the Beast was born June 27th 1995. I was not her original companion but became so in September 1998 after her original companion ran out on her like a coward. She was maroon, had four wheels, four doors, a great rack, which I liked to attach stuff too, and a trunk big enough for one medium sized body or two small bodies. We seemed to hit it off immediately and were surprised at how closely our interests aligned. We both liked music, air-conditioning, and driving places. We were like peas and carrots.

Within her lifetime she drove exactly 1,605, 250 miles, which is equivalent to driving to the sun and back. She visited every state in the nation, every country in North and South America, drove to Europe twice, Asia once, and is the only four wheeled vehicle to drive on the Great Wall of China.

She was also born with a surprisingly competitive spirit. Before she passed, Gertrude the Beast won three Formula One titles, two NASCAR titles, a motor-cross championship, and an aerial freestyle competition. Other notable accomplishments include the trafficking of displaced African refugees, assisting in the initial invasion of Iraq, personally capturing Sadam Hussein, and hosting Saturday Night Live. Sadly, her competing came to an abrupt end when she was convicted of vehicular dogslaughter in 2002. She pled guilty, paid a heavy fine, but was relieved the court never learned of the vehicular catslaughter, deerslaughter, and minorityslaughter she had also participated in.

Gertrude the Beast was there to see me through college, marriage, the election, the surgery, and the birth of my first two children. I had hoped she would be there for many more years but on the morning of April 14th, 2008, while driving to work she suffered major internal damage due to old age. After I cursed her and kicked her in the side I was immediately filled with regret because a man could not have asked for a better companion or truer friend. She was loved in life and will be missed in death.

Tomorrow she will be taken to the scrap yard, sold for the handsome sum of $100, and crushed. Goodbye old girl.

You've Been Lip Serviced

Most people don’t know this, but my wife is a master of persuasion and champion debater. And being a graduate of a state college public speaking class, I am well aware of the tools used against me when we are forced to go toe-to-toe in a verbal sparing match. They are the 3 Greek elements of persuasion, as set forth by Aristotle himself, and I’m sure you will all agree that he was one deep thinking SOB.

The three elements are as follows:
Ethos (Credibility or Ethics) means convincing by the character of the speaker, or persuading by appealing to one’s ethics.
Pathos (Emotional) means persuading by appealing to one’s emotions.
Logos (Logical) means persuading by the use of reasoning.

My wife, like all females, has never tried to use Logos. Before you ladies freak out and blow an ovary, let me say it is not my intention to offend. Females cannot be faulted for this. It’s just that they are born without the part of the brain that produces the logic hormone. We can no more expect them to use logic as we can expect them to pee accurately standing up. They’re just not built that way.

She is also unable to use the element of Pathos. This time however it is not due to a lack, but rather an over production of the element. When she attempts its use, words and noises fly out of her mouth in an uncontrolled barrage of inflammatory nonsense, which undulate in pitch, volume, and intensity. It's like watching one of the mutants, from the X-Men movies, as they first discover their powers and unwittingly cause large amounts of destruction.

As for Ethos, well, she uses it on a very limited basis.

So how can she possibly be a persuasive speaker, you are probably wondering. It is because she has discovered and capitalized on the forth Greek element;
Hyperbolos: persuading by the use of ridiculous exaggeration.

Allow me to illustrate with an excerpt from our most recent debate.

Situation: We are at the local Dell Taco to appease my wife’s “cravings.” This locale is equipped with a play area for kids, which my daughter disappears into the moment we arrive. Halfway through our meal…

Wife: Where’s Maggie?
Me: She’s playing.
Wife: Where? I can’t see her. Can you see her?
Me: She in one of those tubes. She’s fine.
Wife: Go find her.
Me: Go find her? Honey, there’s like 50 miles of tubing in there. It could take days. She’ll come out when she gets hungry.
Wife: There’s an outside exit in the play area. How can you be sure she didn’t open the door and run out into the street and is about to get splattered by a giant semi from Hell?
Me: What?
Wife: She’s probably in the back of a windowless van, gagged, bound, drugged, and helpless, with you sitting here stuffing your face, while her captors are forcing her to shoot up heroin and smoke crack and do acid.
Me: That’s a lot of drugs.
Wife: She could be getting high and watching pornography right now.
Me: Huh?
Wife: Maybe she’s in a shipping crate, on her way to war-torn Africa where she’ll be given a gun and forced to participate in the latest ethnic cleansing campaign and kill mindlessly while, simultaneously being forced into a life of child prostitution as the tribe passes her around like some kind of soulless plaything, and pushed to the brink of existence till she is nothing more than an empty shell, a vague memory of the cute, rosy-cheeked girl we once knew and one day, as she teeters on the edge of a monstrous African cliff, before she leaps to her own demise upon the jagged rocks below, she will utter one… last… word.
“DAAAADDYYYYY!!!”
Me: *gulp*
Wife: You’d never be able to forgive yourself. You’ll sit around in a constant state of morbid depression, getting old, fat, ugly, bald, stupid, and retarded. Unmovable. Slug-like, and crapping yourself, like a giant freakish baby. Nothing. You’ll burst into uncontrollable, seizure-like, fits of weeping every time you think about the day you chose a burrito over your own daughter. Hmmph.

And with that last “hmmph,” I was defeated; once again bested by the Queen of Rhetoric. I promptly ran to the play place certain I was too late.

As it turns out, she was only playing on the slide. Not a windowless van in sight.

Slip 'em a Mickey

I’m not what you would call a “pickle” guy. Sure, I like pickles as much as the next person. I’ll enjoy them with a sandwich, or on a sandwich, or even right from the jar if I’m hungry for a salty snack and there’s a lack of better choices. But I would never use “pickle” in a list of favorites, let alone to describe my tastes. Also, I can’t recall a single conversation, from my 30 years, when someone said to me, “I love pickles” or “I think the pickle is the best damn thing in the world. I think I’ll marry pickle and conceive human-pickle babies.”
No, I have never heard that.

But somehow, by some ethereal sorcery, when everyday people cross the threshold of the Disneyland barrier, they not only want pickles, but they want them so bad they’re willing to pay exorbitant sums of money to obtain one.
“Is that a pickle?” Joe Tourist will ask. “I want a pickle. Nay, I need a pickle! I must have pickle!! How much is pickle? Thirty-six dollars? That’s totally reasonable. Give me one.”

However, the spell Walt has over every person who dares enter his world holds no sway over me. For me, Walt’s domain (which I call Mordor) lost it’s magic in the summer of 1990 when I got kicked out (on my birthday) for nothing more than a few trumped up charges of assault and battery. I was taken behind the scenes to Disneyland “security” and it was there that I was first exposed to the dark underbelly of what was universally touted as “The Happiest Place on Earth.” Dwarves were smoking, ducks and dogs were gambling, and fairy-tale princesses were prostituting themselves for nothing more than a meal. During my short stay, before my official ejection from the park, I focused my senses and became an astute observer. It was there that I saw, firsthand, the puppet strings and learned the Wizard of Oz was just a man behind a curtain.

I saw the canisters, filled with various smells, (vanilla, buttered popcorn, etc.), which were systematically sprayed over the crowd as they walk past the corresponding food shops. I saw the cages where the Disney characters are kept at night. I witnessed an official Disney song recording session in progress where seemingly innocent Disney songs like “It’s a small world” and “A Pirates Life” are laced with subliminal messages that encourage over-spending, over-eating, the purchasing of ridiculous souvenirs, and promote teen promiscuity, binge drinking, communism, Celine Dion, and white supremacy.

Despite the blatancy of it all, no one is the wiser. The world has collectively been slipped a giant Mickey and it won’t wake up. It’s like the town of Stepford, but instead of robotic wives they’ve given us little robotic minorities who chant about laughter and cheer whilst brainwashing us into mindless disciples.

The most alarming thing I discovered was found in the journal of Walt Disney himself. How I stumbled upon said journal is unimportant. From the journal I learned that the capitalistic abuses of Disney Inc. and it’s subsidiaries are for one purpose and one purpose only. To secure Walt’s empire preliminary to the second coming. Not the Second Coming of Jesus, (I would have used CAPITALS to specify that one) but the second coming of Walt Disney himself.

A few excerpts from his prophetic timeline read as follows;
2012: The United States of America becomes The United States of Disney when Disney Inc. pays off the national deficit.
2013: World War 3 breaks out when the entire band of Franz Ferdinand is assassinated at the Mtv Music Awards hosted in Sarajevo.
2021: The United States of Disney emerges victories and declares world domination.
2022: A secret society named The Illuminati of Mickey thaws Walt Disney from his cryogenic status to full vitality thus facilitating his “second coming.”
2022: Walt Disney assumes his position as Supreme Ruler of the World and governs from the highest tower of the Disneyland Castle.

Yeah, I was surprised too. And, despite the fact that going back with my family in tow is only aiding the fulfillment of Walt’s dark prophecy, I went back anyway because I’m a sucker for large crowds and long lines.

In case you’re considering visiting The Black Magic Kingdom on your next vacation, let me tell you what you should expect to spend.
Entrance Fee: $66 ($56 for kids 3 – 9)
Pickle: $36
Churro: $72
Burger: $85
20 oz. drink: $98
T-shirt: $153
Yamaka w/ plastic discs stapled to it (a.k.a. Mickey Ears): $379
Giant Turkey Leg: $586
Glow-in-the-dark crap for post sunset: $1,105 (when I say "crap" I mean stuff. It's not an actual glow-in-the-dark terd. You get those at San Diego Zoo.)
Tiara: $2163
The look on your child’s face when they realize the full magic of Disneyland, try to beat you because of it,

and then collapse from heat stroke:

Priceless.

I wasn’t willing to pay full price for my turkey leg, but I was willing to tear it from the hands of a screaming 6-year-old and hide in the bushes while I ate it.