Sunday, February 24, 2013

Your High School Love Is So Strong It Made Your Principal Abduct His Ex-Wife And Commit Grand Larceny Day!

You remind him what love is. He had your love once, with Denise. It was just as strong, he could swear it was. He watches you two walking around his school, the affection and desire you feel for each other is just a glowing force-field around you, like you’re walking inside a giant illuminated globe of love. He wants to be inside that globe again.

He’d become convinced that if Denise could encounter you and Jack, if she could see what he sees every day he passes you two in school, she’d remember what was possible. She’d remember the kind of love that was achievable because they’d already achieved it. If they hadn’t been distracted by the laser-focus on their careers, and the long dark period after Denise’s parents died, they might never have let it go.

Denise got the Honda Accord in the divorce. He got the Volkswagen Golf, but he still had the keys to the Honda. So one day after school he went to her office, got behind the wheel of the Honda, and when Denise came out he told her he wouldn’t get out of her car until she took a ride with him.

They started at the park. He drove the Honda up to the ridge overlooking the camp area down below. Lots of kids from the vo-tech trailers go down into that camp are during school hours to smoke cigarettes. Other kids go down there and hang out after school, get high. That day you and your boyfriend were down there, sitting on the trunk of a knocked down tree, making out.

Your principal and his ex-wife watched you for about a half-hour. Your boyfriend’s hand went up your shirt. Both your hands would go down each other’s pants sporadically. Occasionally you’d just stop and nuzzle your heads against each other’s necks like animals keeping warm, like your principal remembered he and Denise would do when they first fell for each other.

You didn’t see him in his car when you climbed back up the ridge because you weren’t looking anywhere but into each other’s eyes. Had you peeked inside you would have seen your principal’s ex-wife crying. Your principal was right. The strength of your love affected Denise. She saw what he saw. She remembered how they felt when they first fell in love. But it didn’t give her any hope of rekindling that love. It just made her sad for all that was lost.

Your principal’s ex-wife explained to him, “It’s like being forced to attend a second funeral for a loved one I’ve already mourned.”

Denise’s lawyer later explained that if they ever wished to press charges, his entering the car without her permission, and driving the car without her permission constitutes larceny. And even though she got in the car of her own volition, without being forced physically, she did so under the threat of not getting her car back otherwise. That constitutes kidnapping (though it would be harder to make stick).

They filed a restraining order against your principal, no phone or email contact except through an attorney. No face-to-face except by appointment, arranged via an attorney. Denise has been cool enough to get her lawyer to refile in such a way that the order is part of the divorce filing, so a restraining order doesn’t show up when future employers Lexis your principal.

And it was all so your principal could drive his ex-wife around town and watch you make out with your boyfriend.

Happy Your High School Love Is So Strong It Made Your Principal Abduct His Ex-Wife And Commit Grand Larceny Day!

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

February Man Day!

Today, you’re February Man. No matter what challenges might face you, no matter what evil might be lurking in your city, waiting to do harm to your neighbors, you have the power to say, “Fuck it it’s February fuck you if you want me to do shit it’s too fucking cold Jesus how can this be the shortest month of the year I wake up every morning in pitch black darkness using all my strength to not drink a bottle of bleach and you expect me to try this month? If you get in trouble in February it’s your fucking problem, not fucking mine. I’ve got my own fucking February to deal with. I’m fucking February man. Jesus, how many more days of this? I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I just can’t.”

They’re going to write comic books about you one day, February Man.

“Who gives a shit? Fuck you. I can’t. I ca–”

Happy February Man Day!

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Walking Home, Listening To Some Songs Day!

You have 90 blocks. Approximately seventy minutes. Time for approximately 12 to 15 songs that celebrate you having just said hello to your ex and his date.

It’s cold. The bones of your ribcage, you feel them all, each one colder than the next, like you’re nothing but skin wrapped around a fancy party’s ice sculpture. But you’re not getting on a bus or a train or hailing a cab. You have songs you need to listen to.

You’re the soundtrack to his evening. It’s important to you that while he’s still at the bar, having a third-week-of-dating conversation, you’re walking through his city, listening to the songs that take your broken-up-after-two-years heartache and scream it over organs, pedal steel guitars, and sad atmospheric, electronic dirges. You’re dragging your frozen bones along miles of icy sidewalk while he’s warm and unsure whether he should put his arm around her in front of his friends. Are they there yet? He doesn’t know.

Your walk home takes place on one half of an imagined split-screen, your ex and his date smiling and drinking on the other half. You’re bathed in the glow of a Don’t Walk sign waiting for the light to change as a singer howls for something lost, while your ex is laughing politely while his date tells a story. You’re leaning into the wind while slow drums build under a sparse guitar line, and your ex is telling his date that not very revealing story about a high school teacher who believed in him. Your eyes are on the moon as the lyrics in your ear wish a departing spouse well, and your ex is playing with his date’s hand across the table.

He has no clue that the two of you shared this night. No clue you’ve DJ’d a 70-minute soundtrack to his evening, a musical storyline playing out concurrently with his quiet date in a booth at a bar. Send him the playlist maybe. Songs For The Sadness You Inspire, maybe. Or, Songs To Walk Away From You To.

Happy Walking Home, Listening To Some Songs Day!

Monday, February 18, 2013

New Netflix Category Day!

A new Netflix category just popped up in your streaming catalog. It’s called, “Movies That Aren’t Really Movies They’re Just Video Recordings Of You Doing Stuff You’ve Never Done.”

The first one is a three minute video of you riding a horse. You’ve never ridden a horse.

The next one is seventy minutes of you asleep in a seat on a zeppelin. That never happened.

The third one is called “Madison Square Garden.” It’s video of you hanging around in a bathroom at Madison Square Garden, until a guy walks in with a briefcase and enters a stall. You enter the one next to his. He slides the briefcase under the stall to you and walks out. Then you open the briefcase and reveal several hundred thousand dollars in cash. You look satisfied. Then you walk out. That never happened, even though it’s right there streaming on your TV.

The next one is called “First Kiss.” And it’s you sitting in your car, honking your horn loudly to interrupt your daughter having her first kiss in the parking lot of a movie theater. The boy she’s kissing gives you the finger, so you get out and threaten him. A police officer interrupts you and he smells liquor on your breath. Your daughter cries and says, “Daddy you promised never again. You ruined my first kiss.” You tell the police officer to take your daughter home because you’re never going back there. The next shot is of you on a bus to Mexico. You pull a photo of your wife and daughter out of your wallet and throw it out the window as the bus crosses the border. You don’t have a wife or daughter.

There are 27 more titles in the category but they’re pretty boring so you just scroll up to look through Romantic Movies With A Weak Female Lead That Take Place In A Dystopic Future And There’s A Dog.

Happy New Netflix Category Day!

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Raised By Wolves Day!

You were raised by wolves since birth, and you’ve recently been rescued from the woods and now you’re in the process of being socialized to live with humans. For science.

No one can understand why you’re fighting them so much, and you can’t explain it since all you can do is growl and slash at people who get too close. Finally they call in another guy who was rescued from wolves so he can interpret your growls.

“He fell in love with a wolf from another pack. He wants to be set free to go and be with her,” the other raised-by-wolves guy explains to them after you snarl at him a bunch.

“Cool with us as long as we can watch,” one of the scientists says

“For science,” the other adds.

They release you back into the wild, then you spend the next six years being videotaped by some guys in trees while you have sex with a female wolf. For science.

The videotaping ends when the female wolf dies and you’re rescued from the woods again. Once you become socialized enough to understand stuff you find out millions of humans have watched video recordings of you having sex with your dearly departed wolf girlfriend, so you activate your primal wolf instinct and murder lots of scientists. For love.

Happy Raised By Wolves Day!

Thursday, February 07, 2013

Play The Bar Game “Just Me” Day!

“Who thinks they should have died in someone else’s place?” shout.

There will be a show of hands. Six or seven at least.

“Who says the words ‘It should’ve been you’ in the mirror every single morning?”

Another show of hands. Four or five.

“Who’s here solely to drench in liquor the part of the brain that remembers the year 1986?”

Only a couple hands.

“1987?”

Lotta hands.

“Who here feels like every single day he walks on this earth is an affront to nature? That the only way to pay for a misfortune that happened to someone you loved is to inflict it upon yourself?”

Two hands. Yours and the redhead’s.

“Who’s all done? Who’s had enough of trying to believe what everyone insists, that it wasn’t your fault? Right now. Tonight. You can feel it in your bones. Who’s all done?”

One hand. Yours.

“Just me! I won!”

Big cheers for you. A few slaps on the back. A kiss on the cheek from the redhead.

You did it. You won.

Happy Play The Bar Game “Just Me” Day!

Wednesday, February 06, 2013

Jeff Died Yesterday The TV Show Day!

You are the star of a fun new show called “Jeff Died Yesterday.” The show takes place on the day after you died, and everyone is sad, some more so than others. Your Mom and Dad are very sad. Your younger brother Dan is a little sad. Your older sister Jen is not sad at all. Your friends aren’t sad at all either. They’re attractive and they’re trying to have sex with your older sister Jen, who’s always saying, “Pssh. Not over my little brother’s dead body” which gets a laugh from the crew. Your older sister Jen does sometimes have sex with your friends though. Ratings.

The challenge in each episode involves everyone at your funeral having to try and comfort your Mom and Dad or your aunts when they burst into tears. Every week, another of the mourners is kicked off the show. Yes it’s a reality show and you’re really dead. Sorry. This week your friend Pete gets kicked off when the judges say he was the worst at the funeral for getting a boner while your coffin was being lower into the grave. Pete says this isn’t the last we’ve heard from him and we’ll see big things from him at future funerals one day.

Happy Jeff Died Yesterday The TV Show Day!

Tuesday, February 05, 2013

Wish Upon A Couple That’s Breaking Up At Dinner Day!

When you see a couple out at a restaurant and they’re clearly in the middle of breaking up, go and stand next to their table, put one hand on each of their dinners, and make a wish.

It’s a guess-wish, in that you don’t really know if what you wish for is possible to come true. The way it works is you can wish for their future to be transferred over to you. The only wishes that will come true are when you wish for something that would have come to pass for that couple had they stayed together.

For example, if you wish for a billion dollars, the chance that it will come true for you is as wild as it coming true for them had they stayed together. Probably not very likely.

But if you wish for a gradually declining romantic interest in your partner, until you find yourself middle aged and wondering why you decided to decline into a joyless marriage with someone you should have broken up with all those years ago in that restaurant that one night when you mustered up the courage, there’s a very good chance it will come true!

So go make your wish. And remember, you do have to touch the food on both their plates. To get the full potency of your wish, wait for the entrees, not appetizers.

Happy Wish Upon A Couple That’s Breaking Up At Dinner Day!

Monday, February 04, 2013

The Boyfriend Your Dad Chased Away Day!

You still think about Dewey, your boyfriend from when you were seventeen, the one who made you feel as rare as a diamond, as light as a breeze, as free as a supermarket sausage sample.

You now know that you settled for your husband. As you grew older and you dated more men you gradually accepted that no one would love you with the strength that Dewey loved you, so you settled for less.

“All through this divorce,” you tell your Dad. “All the time, I keep looking back on Dewey, and how even though it’s ridiculous, I wonder what would have happened if we just kept on loving each other. I wonder what would have happened if you hadn’t chased him away.”

Your Dad and Mom share a look.

“Tell her,” your Mom says.

You ask what she’s suggesting he tell.

“Tell her,” your Mom repeats.

“I didn’t exactly,” your Dad begins. “I didn’t chase Dewey away, if we’re speaking literally.”

You burst out crying. Of course. Your parents only told you that Dewey was chased away to spare your feelings. Because not even Dewey loved you. No one ever loved you the way you dream of being loved.

“No, no,” your Dad says when you stop crying long enough to listen. “I didn’t Chase Dewey away. I paid him to go away. And I’ve been paying him ever since.”

“Your father pays Dewey $71,500 per year,” your Mom says. “All to keep him from ever dating you.”

“But why?” you ask.

“Never liked that long hair of his,” your Dad says. “Or that car he drove. Too fast. Not letting him drive around my daughter.”

Over the course of fifteen years your father has paid your high school boyfriend a middle-class salary to prevent him from dating you. His starting payment was $46,300, but your father continued to give him increases commensurate with the average cost of living inflation.

“He’s still not dating anybody,” your Mom says with a smile. “Never did move on from you. Just lived off your father’s money and waited for the day when—”

“When the checks would stop coming,” you say.

Your Dad looks unsure of this.

“Please Daddy,” you say. “Cut off the checks.”

Your Dad doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to stop being a Daddy to his little girl.

“I know the love I’ve settled for and the love I deserve,” you tell him. “Dewey can give me the love I deserve.”

Your Dad thinks for a second, then says, “I’ll send him just one more check, so he has the money to cut that hair of his.”

You throw yourself into your Dad’s arms then you Google Dewey and find out that he won’t be needing that extra check to get a haircut after all because Dewey’s completely bald now.

Happy The Boyfriend Your Dad Chased Away Day!