Paper bibs are *so* in right now.

I went to the dentist yesterday because…actually, I’m not sure. I guess because I’m kind of a masochist.

So I sit down in the chair and they put that little bib on me and all I can think about is how not cool I look in that moment. But then, they offered me sunglasses! Fuck yeah! Now I look awesome!

Actually, I just look like that asshole who wears sunglasses inside. At the dentist.

Like all dentists seem to, they hate that I have my lip pierced, and seem bent on making up horror stories to terrify me into getting rid of it, even though they said it hadn’t damaged my gums…yet. But it will. DUN DUN DUN! Then they told me all about gum grafting, and how they cut out your palate and stitch it to your teeth, which apparently feels like eating barb wire that is on fire while snorting a mixture of Tabasco sauce and sulfuric acid. Apparently this happens to everyone who gets their lip pierced, ever, and even after you get grafts, your teeth will still fall out when you’re like 30. And then your face will freeze that way. Because the calls are coming from your house.

UPDATED: This is why noone uses the post office anymore.

About a month ago, I went to the post office to mail a Christmas present to my mom. I watched the woman behind the counter weigh the package herself on the magical post office scale that’s somehow better than the liar scale you have at home. Then she charged me ten bucks, which at first I thought was kind of high, but then I figured that it probably costs a lot to run the time machine, especially if they didn’t have any other packages that were going to last Christmas, so I just paid it and didn’t say anything.

When I got home, I went to their website to track the package, but it didn’t say “delivered like a month ago,” it just said “accepted.” That should have been my first clue that something was wrong. Other than the fact that I was at the post office at all. I just assumed it made it there because then I didn’t have to do stuff, like go back to their site again or actually call and ask my mom if she’d gotten it.

This is what I got in the mail yesterday:

It's only smiling on the outside.

You can see right in the middle where it says 12.40. It also says “POSTAGE DUE,” because apparently $12.40 a) is more than $10, and b) is what they would have charged to actually deliver it instead of just keeping it for a month. It’s like the worst ransom ever. They didn’t even cut out magazine letters or give me a creepy digitized phone call. It’s like they don’t even care. UPS can lose and break my shit much faster than that. And much cheaper. Also, apparently they don’t even have a time machine. And that’s why nobody uses the post office anymore.


UPDATE:
So I brought it back to the post office the other day, and I was all "what the hell happened?" Postmaster Keith said that the $12.40 was actually return postage, because apparently after they beat the shit out of it, they charge you to bring it back to you. I told Keith that I wasn't going to pay a total of $22.40 for them to bring me something that I started with in the first place. And I didn't, but I did have to pay for them to try to ship it again. It got there in 2 days. Intact. Apparently "priority mail" means something.

You can't make this shit up.

A couple weeks ago, before Texas decided to play dress-up and act like it was fucking North Dakota, we were sitting at home watching TV one night at maybe 11 o’clock, when we heard someone pounding on our neighbor’s door and shouting “police!” Why this has happened more than once in the past six months, I have no idea, but this time, the voice sounded less like it belonged to the SWAT team, and more like it belonged to a seven-year-old, which actually turned out to be true.

Up until this point, we weren’t really certain that we still had a neighbor, as we hadn’t seen her in several months. When we went outside to ask “what the fuck is going on, and could you please shut the hell up,” we found her standing out there with her younger brother, trying her key in the lock, and looking pretty pissed off. Apparently, she had her two younger brothers staying with her, one of whom was inside, and who had locked and deadbolted the door. This was before all the ice-and-snow-in-the-South bullshit started, but it was still pretty cold, so we invited them inside while they tried to figure out what to do.

They figured that the brother in the apartment was either being a bratty little shit, or that he was taking a bath, but either way, they still needed to get inside. They could have tried calling the courtesy officer, but even if he had keys to their apartment, the only way to get past the deadbolt was probably to kick the door in, so that wasn’t much help. After a few minutes, she realized that the sliding door to the balcony was unlocked, so we went out on our balcony and found ourselves looking about fifteen feet down at this:


That would totally break your legs fall.

We decided it would be fun to pretend we were in a British comedy, so our neighbor shakily climbed over the railing, with my wife holding on to one of her arms so she wouldn’t fall. She wrapped her feet through the bars and gripped the railing as tightly as she could. Then she closed her eyes and timidly tried to reach one foot across, pulled it back, put one hand on the side of the building, pulled that back, too, and said “um, shit.”

Neighbor: “It’s really far.”Us: “You can make it. Probably.”Neighbor: “I’m going to die in a bush.”

After several similar efforts, she asked my wife to hold her waist, and she somehow managed to get both hands onto the railing on her balcony, but then she pretty much froze, awkwardly bridging the gap with my wife still holding on to her. I suddenly realized that, since I was a lot taller than her, I could probably get across, so I just climbed over the railing and jumped…

Before anyone else realized what had happened, I was standing on my neighbor’s balcony, trying to figure out how I was going to walk through a dark, unfamiliar apartment and unlock the front door without scaring the shit out of an eleven-year-old. Actually, that might have been fun, but it was probably more likely that I would have had to fight off a screaming eleven-year-old who had just discovered a stranger in his apartment and grabbed a baseball bat or something. It turned out to be kind of anticlimactic, though, as he was asleep in the living room with the TV blaring. Incidentally, the deadbolt wasn’t even actually locked.

I’m not really sure how or why this shit always happens to me, but I’m totally adding this to my résumé, because it’s probably going to come up in an interview someday.

Fruit2Day

Americans have long been known for embodying all seven deadly sins, but until recently, we had been content to do so one at a time. Envy, pride, wrath–we were at leisure to switch out our vices to meet the specific need of any given moment. No longer! In today’s fast-paced world, Americans simply cannot afford to have our sins competing for our attention; we must learn to multitask.

One of the biggest drawbacks to gluttony is that such a high level of consumption makes us lethargic. This crossover into the domain of sloth means that, once we have eaten all the food in our immediate vicinity, we lack the motivation or even the energy to go in search of further overnourishment. This could lead to delays of up to 30 minutes as we wait, not eating, sinning only singlefold, for Domino’s or Calorie Express or who-the-fuck-ever to deliver us from our quandary.

Fortunately–and apropos–the folks over at Hero have brought us a solution: Fruit2Day. It’s 2 full servings of fruit without all the inconvenience of actually having to remove a peel or even chew! No longer will our rampant laziness prevent us from eating any time, anywhere we can muster the minimal energy necessary to lift a roughly 7-ounce bottle. Even better, because it’s fruit, it provides the illusion of being healthy, so we can also incorporate a small measure of a third deadly sin: vanity. Take that, only moderately evil citizens of other countries! Americans may celebrate mediocrity in every other aspect of our lives, but I’ll be damned if we’re going to tolerate that in our deadly sins.

Mirror Mirror

Not long after my wife and I moved into our first apartment in Texas, a new plaza sprang up about half a mile down the road. It was named Ajax Plaza, after what was then–and may still be–the only business there: Ajax Mirror Superstore. I used to bitch about this every single day as we drove past it. A mirror superstore. What the hell is wrong with us? What does it say about our vanity as a nation that we allow such an establishment to exist? Where are the torch-bearing mobs from Frankenstein and The Phantom of the Opera?

I find it even more relevant that this store exists in Texas, because there is no place in the world more obsessed with its own image. Here’s a simple test: if you suspect you may be in Texas, look around you; if you don’t see a picture of Texas, or a Texas flag, or at the very least, a giant beveled star, you are not in Texas. This information is crucial to Native Texans–the Real Chosen People^®–whose religion considers it a sin against Texas to leave the state (or, as about a third of its residents–including its governor–seem to believe, the Nation). Because Texas is a vast expanse, and much of it is an empty wasteland, its residents need almost constant reassurance that they have not inadvertently strayed from its precious boundaries into basically anywhere else, where people don’t give a shit that they’re from Texas.

Give Me Some Credit

I signed up for a credit card recently, because that’s what you have to do now if you can’t afford something right this second–it used to be called layaway, but we’re too goddamn impatient for that bullshit anymore. Save up? What the fuck does that mean? Not spend my money now? What are you, some kind of fiscal terrorist? You un-American bastard.

So I signed up for this credit card, and when the first statement came, there was this little brochure with it that said “You’ve earned the credit. Now you can protect it!” Credit insurance! Two of my favorite things, now in one convenient package!

Thank God for that. Now I can spend scads of money I don’t have, and I don’t have to worry about damaging my credit rating if I also get my ass fired! Otherwise, I’d have to deal with my credit score ripping up my furniture and pissing on my floor, and then I’d have to get a job at the Renaissance Fair. Apparently.

Count Me Out

Someone told me today that the Census Bureau has a PSA featuring Dora the Explorer. The first coherent thought I was able to have was “what the fuck?” I think that, first of all, if I were trying to decide whether or not to fill out my census form, and I saw a commercial in which a cartoon character from a children’s network tried to convince me to do so, I would throw it the fuck away. Then I would move to a country that took itself seriously.

I have to admit that I haven’t seen it yet–hence my ability still to type coherently–but I’ve discovered so far that it’s part of a campaign called “Children Count, Too,” which attempts to counteract the apparently common problem of parents who forget to count their young children when filling out the census form. Fair enough–maybe–but who are they marketing this to? Are there children filling out the census form? If so, this could help to eliminate the error of not counting oneself, a common mistake among children, especially those under the age of five, who HAVE NO BUSINESS FILLING OUT A FUCKING CENSUS FORM.

Or do they expect these children to take on the responsibility of reminding their parents to count them? If you can’t remember how many children you have, the answer should be zero, because you are a shitty parent.