During my vacation I discovered the HBO show In Treatment. Okay, I guess I didn’t totally discover it, after all I knew that it was on but never saw it and didn’t have much interest in the show. Actually, I thought it was a fictional show about people in rehab, hence treatment. Well upon further review, I’m a moron, but you probably already realized that if you have read even just a little bit of my posts. The show is actually about people in therapy. No, not physical therapy, however that would be hilarious watching people fall down while struggling to walk. Okay, so now in addition to me being a moron, I’m also a sadistic asshole. But, you probably already knew that. Back to the show though. It is about people in mental therapy. Let me explain to you a little bit more about the concept of the show.

Gabriel Byrne plays a therapist who, although unlicensed, dispenses mental advice to a bunch of whacked out nut jobs. Each week he pushes them to the brink of suicide and at the end he begs them not to sue his dumbass. Wait, perhaps I’m being a bit harsh. He does have a license. Than again, I really don’t know, after all they have never shown it. So about the show. Each week there are four half hour episodes. Each episode deals with a different patient. In the last episode of each week, Gabriel Byrne’s character, uhhhhh…………..Dr Dude, goes to his own therapist, Some Chick, to make fun of his patients. Well, maybe not make fun, but to discuss them and his own problems, because as it turns out, he is worse off than his patients.

All of the patients and episodes are compelling and very interesting, which is ironic since its just a half hour of two people talking. The show has got me hooked. What made me start watching was the hot, gay teenage patient. But, that wasn’t what kept me watching. Okay, maybe a little. But beyond the looks is a tortured soul filled with overwhelming teen angst. And get this, most of it is not about him being gay, however it does allow me to relate to him.

Now, call me unqualified, but a big part of me has always wanted to be a therapist. This show makes me want to be one even more, even though I would be a total disaster, shit, I laugh at people when they cry. And I interrupt people a lot. And I could not be disciplined enough to not tell people what to do and to just sit back and let them whine and then shoot back with a question. But, there is a caring side of me that likes to give advice and help people. For several years I had a very close friend of mine who went through a bit of a crisis in her life. She pretty much used me as her therapist, I would listen to her for hours on end, offer sound advice, actually not laugh when she cried and most importantly, not charge her. Well, the freebies are up, I’m cashin’ that fucking shit in, I see what a therapist can make and she is going to get the biggest fucking  bill from me!

I should clarify that I’m not serious about any of that stuff about how these people are nutjobs or whiners or anything like that. Although I have never been in therapy and for the most part, have somehow managed to grow into a well adjusted, overall happy person, I do fully recognize and understand the hell of having to need therapy or medication for help with any mental issues one might have. It is a very real and pressing issue that should be taken seriously.

Yesterday I purchased myself a snow blower. Is it just me or is there something erotic about a snow blower? What with the blowing of all the white stuff and all? But I digress. So today being the last day of my vacation, I figured I should make sure I know how to use it and have it all set and ready to go for when it snows so I’m not standing out there in the cold and snow trying to figure the damn thing out. Turns out the thing needs gas! Now I’ve got two gas cans that each hold a gallon of gas. One of the cans is about a quarter full with gas that I used for my lawn mower. The gas is probably about 2 years old so I figured fresh gas would be best.  So I set off for the gas station. I went to two different gas stations to see if I can dispose of the gas I have and then get new gas. Turns out, they don’t dispose of it. So I had to go back home and get my other empty can and fill that one up.

Now I’m presented with the problem of getting rid of that other gas. I figured I can drink most of it, so I made me a drink of vodka, scotch, and gasoline on the rocks. I gotta tell ya, it ain’t so bad. I mean, the screen is kind blurry and my breath can start a fire but…………shit maybe I should lay down.

I know most of you aren’t big NBA fans, but is anybody else getting as much joy from the Miami Heat’s struggles as I am? After making such a big deal of signing Lebron James, Chris Bosh and resigning Dwayne Wade, a month into the season they are only 9-8 and in third place in their division. Sure, that’s not all that bad, after all, if the playoffs started today, they would still be a playoff team. But, after all the pompous hoopla and the expectation of not only being the best team in the NBA but also one of the best ever, this is a huge failure so far. Oh, I’m well aware of the fact that they will turn it around and at the end of the season will probably still find themselves in the NBA Finals, but for now, this is great. And that Lebron James is such a fucking punk. Just look at this video:

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/Video-LeBron-James-bumps-his-coach-again;_ylt=Aqx6AMeO9r5Ih7sHFPINFk28vLYF?urn=nba-289728

Okay so it might not be possible to click and paste on the link. But, go to Yahoo sports to see him throw a shoulder at his coach. And not only this coach but his previous coach too. And of course they let him get away with it. And why? Because he is the epitome of spoiled, enabled, egomaniac athlete. I’m not a big Kobe Bryant fan, but compared to Lebron he is a dream. Here’s to hoping the Heat continue to lose.

Farewell Lt Drebin. The world is a less funny place without Leslie Nielsen. Surely, I am serious.

Being off work totally fucking rules. If anybody wants to give me all of the money they make for the rest of their lives, please do so because life is great not having to work. Sadly though I have to go back……………… but not until Tuesday!

Wednesday night being the biggest bar night of the year, I went out for pizza with a group of friends before heading over to a bar. Yadda, yadda, yadda the night was over. As for Thanksgiving, it was pretty cool, I had the family over and yadda, yadda, yadda, next thing I know it was Friday.

No I didn’t go shopping on Friday. In fact, I barely even left my house. In the evening I went over to a friend’s house because she had a game night and yadda, yadda, yadda I came home.

Wow, that yadda, yadda business is really fucking annoying.

Meh………….I just didn’t have anything to really write about.

Remember my post from October 4, 2010? No? Didn’t read it? Well fuck you then! I guess I will just have to give a brief synopsis. Turns out, I killed a man in cold blood. See, there was this 89 year old man who looked at me and smiled while I was walking down the street. I didn’t like that as nobody should ever be allowed to make eye contact with me, what with my perfection and all. So first I pushed him down the stairs, but he only broke a hip. So I broke into his nursing home and poisoned his farina with cyanide. 10 days later after violent diarrhea I went back over there and held a pillow over his mouth for 45 minutes. Oh sure, he fought me off but in the process he gave himself a heart attack and died. Because of this little, tiny, minuscule transgression, THE MAN handed down a stiff and severe penalty: I had to spend a night in traffic school.

So last night was when my punishment was to be carried out from 6pm until 10pm. I arrived at the school promptly  at 5:45 am. I wanted to make sure I was on time, what with it being a 90 second drive from my house. So I camped out in front of the school the entire day, harassing people as they walked into the school. I may have tripped a pregnant lady. Finally 12 hours later class began and I was only 38 minutes late!

The class had a total of 31 people, some of them hot. This one girl was probably only 18 but a total blond flake. She seemed hot though. It was hilarious. I was in between two hot guys and behind another hot guy. Wow, this is punishment? Shit, I should murder more people in cold blood.

Then the class started. The teacher was a local cop. He decided not to wear pants. It made things kinda awkward for a while, but eventually we got used to it. Oh and it wound up being kinda boring, I mean except for the sex in the back of the room. We did get to end about 45 minutes early, which was nice, the only condition was that we had to help put the teacher’s pants on.

Since it is a holiday week and I don’t expect many people to read this anyway and I’ve got extra time due to being on vacation, I decided to post about something that most people probably won’t want to read: politics. I’m going to write about the absurdly impossible; what I would do if I were president. Sure, now that I’m officially old enough to be president, that doesn’t mean that I can be president. Thanks to President Obama, I’m no longer too dark to be president, however I am still too gay, too short, too uneducated, too poor and too honest. Unless all of that changes, all I can do is just write about it. Oh, and I also would never want to be president, jeez, the pressure that comes with that job, no thank you. But, let’s pretend for a little bit that I could be president and it was possible to actually achieve things, especially things as drastic as I would like to do. Certain things would need to priorities. Allow me to explain.

• Most people don’t realize how important it is to cut the national debt and not in the fake way that the Tea Party and Republicans claim to want to do. Why do I say that, because they wouldn’t even consider the first drastic and most important step to cut the national debt: defense reform. This is a big one. The people on the right always claim that defense is too important to even consider cutting as our safety should be our number one priority to which I say it is too important NOT to cut. Our defense budget is way over bloated, mainly by the use of corrupt defense contractors. I would end the use of said contractors because the military and government can do it better and for less. I would then bring home all of our troops and I don’t just mean those in the middle east; I would bring them home from Germany, Japan, Korea, and every other country we forgot to leave. What to do with the hundreds of thousands of troops who no longer have anything to do you ask? Simple, solve another overdue problem: have them guard our borders. I’m not one of these big anti immigration people, however our borders around the entire country are under manned and not nearly secure enough. Any terrorist can get anything in and also, illegals can get across. Oh and there is a drug war along the Mexican border that we can help end. Think of everything we can solve by just doing this; the national debt goes way down and our country is safer.
• Speaking of safer, Obama is right on to want to sign that treaty with Russia that limits the amount of nukes we and Russia have Only it doesn’t go far enough. I would reduce it to under 500 instead of the 1500 the treaty aims for. People are nervous and scared about this, but the way I see it, the more we have the less safe we are. Doesn’t quite make sense you say? Well think about it for a second, the more we have, the more of a chance we have of one being stolen and used against us. The less we have the less of a chance we have to have one stolen. And the less money it costs to guard them. Honestly we really only need, what, 20 of them because if we get into a nuclear war 20 from us and 20 from any other country would be more than enough to end the world.
• Environmental reform. The environment is a disaster. What better way to jump start the economy by creating a bunch of green jobs to replace our current outdated methods of energy. Off oil, off coal and off anything else that damages the only planet we have. To help pay for this I would also legalize pot and tax the shit out of it. That and the money we would save on enforcing our marijuana laws would almost pay for itself.
• New infrastructure. Parts of our country is crumbling. Roads, bridges, tunnels, gas lines, water pipes, overpasses, all of those things and many more are well overdue for upgrades. Many of our bridges were only built to last 50 years, yet some are over 60 years old. Our gas lines are meant for 50 years and some are 80 years old. This is a major problem that we can no longer afford to ignore. Obama has come up with a plan to put about $50 billion into our infrastructure, but it is not nearly enough. And although this should be a rather easy issue, the Republicans are firmly against it, meanwhile gas lines like the one in California a few months ago explode.

Certainly I can go on and on with this list. And of course, even if there was some viable candidate that agreed with all of this he or she would never stand a chance in hell of getting elected, which is why these things will never change.

Since I’m on vacation this week, I decided to spend the day in downtown Chicago. I love going into the city and just walking around. Some people might think that is ridiculous or find it boring, but not me. I love the hustle and bustle of the city that you can only get on during a weekday; there is nothing quite like it. I haven’t just gone down there and walked around with no plan or agenda in years. Oh sure, I’ve been down there but it was to go somewhere and therefore I couldn’t just take it all in. The sights, sounds and smells are all part of the experience. There were a lot of people walking down there with headphones on but to me you miss out on a lot when you do that. Of course, those are probably people who are down there frequently so they are probably all too used to it. Not me though.

So I got down there about 10:45 in the a.m. which was a little later than I wanted to arrive. Although it was overcast and occasionally drizzly, it was unusually warm, pushing 70 degrees so I wore jeans and a t-shirt. I may have even gone commando, you will just have to see the pictures to find out.  I parked in the Millennium Parking Garage and came right out onto Michigan Avenue. I love Michigan Avenue; so much to see. One of my first stops was Niketown, where I may or may not have stolen a crate full of Nikes and resold them on the street throughout the day. It would certainly explain the wallet full of cash.

The whole day it was one iconic Chicago structure after another. There was the classic Tribune Tower. Look, there was the Chicago Theater with it’s world famous Chicago sign. Just a short walk away was the Oriental Theater, not far from the Goodman Theater. I got a chance to go to the Merchandize Mart for the first time ever. I had always heard about it but never went there. I walked down State Street and Rush Street, two legendary Chicago streets. I went into the newest Chicago skyscraper, the Trump Tower. I was shocked to find that it even had a giant really bad hairpiece on top of it!

I had lunch at Gold Cost Dogs in Union Station. They have the best hot dogs I’ve ever had and I had not been there in probably 15 years. I love the train station though, it is a great place to people watch and fantasize about taking a great train ride across the country to some far away town like Salt Lake City or New York City; two cities just minutes apart from each other, yet miles apart in ideology. Or maybe it’s the other way around? Or how about they are way the fuck apart from each other in distance and ideology.

About three o’clock I discovered that Chicago has a Hershey store. That place was awesome and it was single handily the best smelling store I’ve ever been in. Right across the street was the Ghiradelli chocolate store where I got a $9 sundae, which was good, although I don’t know if it was $9 good even with the dark chocolate hot fudge.

After that, I went to Water Tower Place which for those of you that don’t know, is a seven story indoor mall right next to the John Hancock building. Fun fact, the Hancock building is the world’s largest cock! But I digress, after spending about 45 minutes there I walked outside to find that it was pouring out which really sucked since I had over a mile walk back to the car and no umbrella or jacket. So I pushed some old ass fucking lady into the Chicago river. I may have gone to an adult book store too.

Just kidding about the old lady. Maybe. I had to divert your attention from the adult book store. Maybe.

So that was my day in downtown Chicago.

Every year my friends and I get together or a massive Thanksgiving fest the Saturday before the real Thanksgiving. We have taken to calling it Friends Thanksgiving. Well, last night was that night. We were expecting about 40 people, kids included, to be at my one friend’s house, let’s call him Brett Favre. Well yesterday morning I got a call from another friend, we will call him Dr. Feelgood. He told me that two other friends, we will call them Podd and Tam and their two kids and Podd’s sister, let’s call her Nancy Reagan, thought they were invited also, even though they have never been invited in the 11 years we have been doing this. Not that we were opposed to them being there, but we just did not have the room to accommodate another 5 people. Or so I thought, Brett Faver’s wife disagreed and said they could come.

I went over to their house for the first time in the late morning/early afternoon to help them clean up and set things up a bit. One of the things we did was move a couple of nice love seats and an ottoman to the garage to room in the dining room for the dinner tables. This is an important piece of info for later, so file that away.

We started an hour normal than usual this time at 4 instead of 5 in the pm. The food was pretty much outstanding as it normally is, shit I ate myself stupid; I think I’m still full. Oh, and as for Podd, Tam and Nancy Reagan? They never showed up! We made sure that we accounted for them with a setting at the table and turns out they couldn’t make it.

One of the things that was different this year was that we bought a hookah pipe (IT WAS NOT FOR POT) to smoke in the garage. We spent a good portion of the night in there smoking it. I was drinking red wine and I stood up to smoke it and my glass, which was full mind you, was on a table next to me. Somehow, in my own way, I knocked it over and not only did it break on the ground, but the wine went all over the ottoman. I felt awful, but the thing must be scotchguarded because I was able to clean it. And a couple of hours later my twin brother spilled his rum and Coke on the ottoman as well! 

All in all it wound up being a very fun night, that was until……………

So last week I made mention in a post of my ex-brother in law sleepwalking to the next town over. Even though not many people read the post, I can’t just write that without giving details. So here is about one of the craziest absolutely 100% true stories you will ever hear.

This happened in about August of 1991. My sister Carmen and her then husband at the time, Mel, were visiting from Denver. My sister was about 30 at the time, Mel was older then her by probably about 10 or 12 years or more. He was probably about 6’2 and around 200 pounds, but not too big. He was a bit of an odd guy, but then again, my sister is odd too. Well the first night they were here we were up until about 10:30 or 11 at night hanging out and whatnot. He went to bed first and had probably been in bed for about a half hour when he got up. My sister was in the bathroom at the time and I saw him trying to get out the back door but just couldn’t get the door unlocked. So I asked him if he was trying to go outside and he shook his head yes and I proceeded to let him out. Within a minute of letting him outside I remembered that my sister had told me that he has a habit of sleepwalking. So I shouted into the bathroom and asked her if he often goes outside this late at night to which she responded “shit, he is sleepwalking!”

So me, my sister and my twin brother Mark ran out back only to find him not there. He was gone. We went out front and there was no Mel. My sister said that sometimes when he sleepwalks he has woken up in an open field. So we ran to the end of the block where there was an open field to find Mel walking very fast trying to get away from something. Somehow, he was speaking Greek even though he didn’t know Greek. My sister said the only chance of stopping him and waking him was to get him on the ground. So, here is Mark and I, each 15 years old and just over 5 feet and not much more than a hundred pounds, trying to take down this big guy. I don’t quite remember how he got on the ground, but he was still sleeping and screaming trying to get up. He was in the position like a push up trying to get up when Mark and I each pulled his arms out from under him and he hit the ground and woke up. He had no clue where he was or what had happened.

So you are probably saying “well shit Mike, that’s barely a block and certainly not the next town over.” Well you would be fucking right, it wasn’t the next town over. So why would I say that he slept walked to the next town you ask? Well, because that was only the first night!

Later on in the week I was sleeping at 3:30 in the morning when my brother John woke me up to tell me that we had to look for Mel, he had gone sleepwalking in the middle of the night. Shit, if I had a dollar for every time somebody woke me up to help look for a sleepwalker…………..but anyway. At that time, John started work at something like 5 in the morning so he was just getting up for work when he saw the back door open. All of a sudden, I didn’t feel so bad for letting him out a few nights prior.

The natural place to look is in the field he ran to previously. So, we ran down there with flashlights looking for him and screaming his name. At four in the morning. I wished people screamed my name at 4 in the morning.  He was nowhere to be found. By five my brother went back home and called into to work and said that he would at the very least, be late and maybe might not even be there at all. When he told his boss why, he told him that in all his years (of, I dunno, bossing?) he had never had somebody call in because they were looking for somebody who had gone sleepwalking.

By 6 am we had called the cops to help them look and maybe file a missing persons report. Turns out he needed to be missing for 24 hours before we could file a report. The funny part is that the previous year they were out here when a tornado hit in a nearby town. He went to help out in the recovery efforts and we didn’t hear from him for two days and had to file a missing persons report then.

As the hours when on, my sister grew worried as we were just not finding him in this field, even after the sun came up. Finally about 9am he called from a Denny’s in the next town over nearly 5 miles away. He said he woke up leaning against a guardrail sometime after the sun came up and walked towards the nearest town, having no recollection of his journey. Keep in mind, this was a guy who was a nudist and slept naked and managed to get dressed and put in his false teeth without waking up.

I’ve heard of people doing odd things in their sleep. Shit, I’ve done weird things in my sleep. But, this situation takes the cake.

Because I now have an iPOD, of course I got iTunes and started not only converting a bunch of CDs to the iPod but also buying and downloading songs. Now I’ve only got 839 songs in my iTunes collection, which sounds like a lot, but it really is not, after all my all time favorite song, Don McClean’s American Pie, is not even on there. How can my favorite song not be a part of my iTunes? Well, I don’t actually have the song on disc and I just haven’t gotten around to buying it yet.

Now I’ve got a wide range of songs and artists on the iPOD. Everything from Stevie Wonder and The Rolling Stones to Frank Sinatra and System of a Down (not a duet, but it would be funny as hell if it was) from Outkast to the Violent Femmes, from Billy Joel to Pantera, from Bobby Darin to Jay-Z. One thing I’ve noticed is how many damn songs share the same or similar titles, regardless of genre.  Honestly, the redundancy is ridiculous. Rigoddamndiculous! I never realized just how many there are. For example:

• American Girl by Tom Petty not to be confused with American Boy by Estelle, not to be confused with American Idiot by Green Day. Fuck, its enough to make this American boy feel like an American idiot.
• B.O.B. by Outkast which is totally different from B.Y.O.B. by System of a Down. Hmmm………..I wonder if I can make like 2005 and mash up these two songs.
• What is the best? Well, how about Best I Can by Queensryche, Best of Me by Far Too Jones or Best of You by the Foo Fighters. No matter how you slice it, it is the best of something. 
• How about Blinded by Third Eye Blind which is what happens to a Blind Man by Aereosmith. Suck to be him.
• I certainly hope you like to boogie, because there is John Lee Hooker’s Boogie Chillin’, Boogie Man by Aerosmith and Boogie Nights by Heat Wave. And yet, no songs about boogers.
• If one Boom! is enough for you than you can thank System of a Down. Maybe you want more, like Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas. Or maybe that is too much boom, if so than you want Boom Boom by John Lee Hooker.
• Everybody likes to come, which is good because we have Come Go With Me by The Del Vikings, Come Monday by Jimmy Buffett, Come Together by Aerosmith/The Beatles and Coming Clean by Green Day.
• You know what is really Crazy? Crazy Aerosmith, Crazy by Gnarls Barkley and Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Queen.
• I can list all nine of the songs with Don’t in the title, but I don’t want to.
• Are you down with this? Down by 311, Down on the Corner by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Down Rodeo by Rage Against the Machine, Down with the Sickness by Disturbed and Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me by Elton John.

Fuck, I need to stop. Shit, I’m only down to the letter D, I haven’t even gotten down to the words people, revolution, rock or run. And think, this is only a sampling of 839 songs.

Oh, and I realize I should have put all of the song titles in italics, but fuck, there are a lot of song titles and I’m lazy!

I’ve been working my literal ass off the past two weeks. And I mean literal, yesterday I was leaving work and my ass fell off! While this might not seem like a lot of hours to some people, two weeks ago I worked about 52 hours. This past week I worked 58 hours. After working 10 out of 11 days for a total of  110 hours, today starts a time in which I will have off 14 of the next 22 days, including weekends. Needless to say, I’m excited, however I still will probably have to work a bit of overtime this week, but as of Friday at 6 in the P.M. I will be off work until Tuesday November 30th.

I had some beer left over from my Halloween party that I needed to get rid of. I’m not a big beer drinker and since the beer was not going to drink itself, I invited a few friends over last night to help me drink the beer and watch Get Him To The Greek. I should also mention that I bought a hookah pipe for our big Thanksgiving on the Saturday before the real Thanksgiving. So last night my friends and I had the brilliant idea of smoking from it before and during the movie. The only problem is that none of us had ever loaded or lit something like that before. While putting the tobacco in was relatively easy, keeping it lit was a different story. We were pretty sure that we could use charcoal to keep it lit, so I went out to the garage and got some match lite charcoal that I had. This resulted in the funny scene of us sitting around trying to get this damn thing lit. It was quite comical, but you probably just had to be there. Nevertheless, we were never able to consistently keep it lit. And I wound up with charcoal ashes all over a little mini table and my carpeting. For the second Sunday in three weeks, I wound up vacuuming up ashes from my carpeting.

So if anybody knows how to light a hookah pipe and keep it lit and what we can use to keep it lit, please by all means, help a brother out. We need to know this before Saturday.