Dear Facebook Diary,

 

I am in my 16^th year of receiving my college education and only moments ago I nearly gave up.

 

College is no longer about education unless you are becoming a physician or an engineer, or a plumber. College is about teaching people how to perform a job, putting them into debt while teaching them how to perform a job, sending that person out into the world to work that job, and then the state run college collects a huge chunk of that person’s paycheck to pay off the ridiculous debt they racked up being taught how to work a job. So in a way it’s education but it’s really just another way for the mighty gubberment to collect money from its citizens. Nobody seems to notice that as our state funded businesses and mighty gubberment go deeper in debt, the so called “educational requirements” for a degree increase. This is so you rack up more debt and the gubberment gets more of your money. THANKS OBAMA!

 

Welp, I am all about trying to rape the system. Or more like I am all about making sure the system is lubricated as it rapes me. I have been in college for a lard-ass baker’s dozen of years and just last year they pinned a foreign language requirement onto my degree. They told me that I would have to stay an extra 2 years for 4 foreign language classes and that I would have to be fluent in a language to graduate. And my choices were French or German because I had already had a few years of Spanish in high school, which was only 15 years ago. So I lubricated the ass raping system by sneaking past this crap and enrolling in 2 intro to sign language classes.

 

Then, oh get this, then, the sign language teacher dropped the class on the very first day! So there’s 20 some students, myself included, that were left out with our dicks in the wind as to how we were going to graduate. So I again lubricated the system by sneaking into 2 intro to French classes.

 

I want to keep talking about this but I have to get on the road and drive to Denver. I mostly just wanted to state the current purpose of college and how at times I feel like I am just treading water with my life by pursuing a degree. But I’m positively giddy about taking French though because I still remember the lyrics to the song “Bifteck” and I can’t wait to sing it again. Adieu!

Dear Facebook Diary,

 

I am only talking about this again because I am questioned about it very often and it came up again the other night, and I hate having long conversations about it because it is extremely hard to explain. I could tell and probably have told this story a million times and no matter what I feel like I’ve left out 90% of what happened. Partly because it is impossible to put the experience into words along with the fact that it is unexplainable to begin with. I don’t know why but it feels very personal to me, it’s like spreading my cheeks and showing my bung at a party. It’s oddly embarrassing. A corny personal blog is hardly the place to expose myself like this but whatever. It was a long time ago and I’ve had enough time to get over most of the emotional aspects of it. Anyway Kyle, here is a long but still very summarized version of what it is like to die along with my opinions of it.

 

It was late February and my fellow high school friends and I were out celebrating another Friday night of our youthful ‘not giving a shit’ lives by getting shitfaced and smoking left handed cigarettes, as usual. I was riding in the car with Joe to go to a freshman or sophomore girl’s party and although my memory of the ride is sketchy, I do know how it ended.

 

I believe the car was coming out of a ditch at a high rate of speed. The front end of the car went upward and pointed directly up at the sky. I was sitting in the backseat behind Joe, the driver. I looked up at the unusually clear sky and took notice of how black the sky was compared to the stars. They say that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die, but my brain just froze and took a picture of the night sky. Then there was a loud and jolting crunch from behind me; this was the car making contact with the ground after its brief moment of flight. The car proceeded to do cartwheels from what I’ve been told and then it slammed down on its wheels and the momentum shot me out of the side window and I landed on the gravel road… onto my face.

 

According to my anesthesiologist and the paramedics it was at this point that I was instantly killed. However, from my point of view I was suddenly standing outside of the car looking down at my body and looking around at the aftermath of a single NASCAR styled accident that three of my friends and I had just been ejected from. I say that I was standing over my body but my view of the wreck was from every angle possible. I remember seeing Dale in the middle of the road appearing to have been nearly sawed in half but still wide-awake. Joe was off to the side of the road and the top of his head looked like it was missing and Tom was slowly stirring from the ditch.

 

Another three of my friends were following us in a truck and the driver, Jay, was already on the phone with a 911 dispatcher. Jay was giving out orders to Abe and Jeb about what to do. Jeb was checking on Dale when Abe came over to my body and I was immediately alarmed by Abe’s fear. My body was laying face up and there was blood coming out of my nose and mouth. Abe then went back to the truck and returned with a CD. He placed the shiny part of the CD under my nose to see if I was still breathing. I was mentally cheering myself on to breath on the CD and although I saw a little puff of steam and speckles of blood form on the CD, Abe has said that he saw nothing. Abe threw the CD off into the field, I swear it was an Alan Jackson CD and I’ve never been a fan of country music, so it was no big loss. It was then that my point of view seemed to be getting further away. I stayed focused on the scene of the accident but I felt some sort of light behind me and I refused to turn around and look at it because I was becoming aware of the fact that I might be dead. I am a very stubborn person and if I genuinely do not want to do something, I will not do it. And at that point I was not going to go easily.

 

I saw an ambulance rushing up the road and Dale waved a hand in the air because he was afraid that it was going to run him over. Paramedics burst out through the back of the ambulance and ran to the injured victims, myself included. I don’t remember watching them take my body into an ambulance but I know that they revived me because I instantly went from floating around a car accident on a country road to complete darkness.

 

My next memory was looking out into the hallway outside of the ER. I saw an enormous amount of friends and relatives showing up and all of them were very concerned about what had happened, many of them were crying. This whole part is very episodic as I was going back and forth between viewing the hallway and moments of total darkness. I’m guessing that this is because the doctors were struggling to get my heartbeat going again at a steady rate.

 

My body was pushed out into a hallway on a table, and although my body was alive I was standing outside of it, looking at it. My brother and parents were around my body crying and holding my hand. I have no memories of being concerned about my own well-being but was very attentive to everyone else’s feelings about my well-being. Then, everything went black.

 

I suppose that I was in a solid coma for a while before my next near death experience because my brain completely stopped recording anything. But then I was given the medication Rocephin to fight off bacterial infections. Unbeknownst to doctors and everyone else, I am highly allergic to penicillin and unfortunately for me Rocephin is a penicillin based antibiotic. Shortly after being injected with Rocephin my body went into anaphylactic shock and I died, again. It happened at one or two in the morning so there was one nurse on duty that noticed.

 

This is when the big and most commonly described near death experience happened. It first started with my deceased grandparents being in the hospital room with me. My grandfather was walking around the room looking at the various machines that were plugged into me and my grandmother was sitting on the edge of the bed comforting me. This would have been typical behavior of them even though I had only known them as a child and probably wouldn’t have picked up on their personal traits. As my grandmother sat with me, a bright light began to form in the middle of the room. Both of my grandparents turned to me and comforted me as the light took me into it. I was then in a dark blue, almost black hallway with a bright white light at the end of it. I had this weird feeling of being underwater and soaring over my uncle’s fields in Ord where I sort of grew up, and then I reached the light. In this light was an endless amount of people and all of them knew everything about me and I knew everything about them, none of us were strangers. At the forefront of the group was an individual that closely resembled myself. Without words I was told that I was entirely welcome to join the group and it definitely felt like I belonged with the group. It is the place that I came from and the place that I will return to. It wasn’t a big room of people being overlooked by a God; it was the combination and source of all life. Once again, without words, I asked if it would be okay for me to go back because like I said, I am a very stubborn person. I was told that it was my choice and that I would be mentally and physically fine if I chose to live. So I chose to live instead of die. And then, total blackness until I woke up from a coma.

 

There is so much more that happened in all of that but I think that was a pretty decent summary of the events, and I changed the names because I always do that. A major reason that I avoid talking about this is because as soon as I finish speaking I am berated with everyone’s religious and nonreligious but still completely uninformed opinions on the matter. It’s like me forming a definite opinion about the rhubarb growing conditions in Nauru although I’ve never been there and didn’t even know it was a country until I looked it up a minute ago. Nobody has the ability to just listen and take it in because everyone wants to have a solid belief about what is going to happen after they are dead.

 

Anyway, last year there was a very important but under published study about brain activity at the moment of death. The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor plugged a bunch of electrodes into the brains of rats and then recorded the brain activity as they killed the little fuckers. Beginning at the moment that the heart stopped and continuing up to a minute after complete death, there was an extreme surge of consciousness in all of the rats. The surge that was recorded was more electrical brain activity than can be produced while being alive. So the researchers concluded that this was quite possibly the cause of the common near death experience. The electrical surge may be the body’s way of trying to jump start itself or easing physical pain or maybe making the conscious brain accept the idea of dying.

 

Many of the people in the near death experience communities hate this study because it takes all of the heavenly mysticism out of it and makes it a physical experience. I like this study because it is an actual explanation and it puts me at ease about maintaining my fear of dying. I think having a fear of death is a good thing. Yeah, death is inevitable and you should somehow make peace with the fact that it’s a hoop you will one day have to jump through, but that doesn’t mean you should welcome it.

 

Well, about the group of people that I saw in the almighty light at the end of the tunnel. Well the greatest painkillers in life are acceptance, love, and recognition. All of the things that offer these feelings, like drugs, sex, and religion, are all things that people are willing to die or kill for because they give the greatest feelings in life. The one doctor that knows this is the human brain and the only injection of natural Novocain that is stronger than the phrase “I love you” is a shot of “we love you”. I think that is why every near death experience that I have read about or been through involves seeing a large or infinite amount of people welcoming you to join them. It gives you a great sense of peace and puts you at ease with the idea of moving forward, or in this case dying. I also have no memories of physical pain during any of these experiences so it worked in that aspect as well. I think that it is also important to note that the level of coma that I was in would make it impossible for me to dream. So any brain activity that I had isn’t explainable.

 

So, being that it is an electrical action occurring in an individual’s brain would explain why people see their own deceased loved ones and figures of their own religious beliefs rather than every person that has a near death experience seeing the exact same people and figures. Because if there really is some all ruling God then everyone’s near death experience would be a little more cut and dry and less varying about who they met at death’s doorway. It also explains the commonalities with the tunnel and the bright light at the end.

 

After having an experience where my brain has reached a level of awareness that it could never reach during normal living conditions, I do feel very different now. I will briefly go over the whole psychic and seeing spirits and shit. It is freaky to me and if anyone asks me questions about it I role my eyes and give them the “fuck off” look, but ever since I got out of the hospital I do get weird feelings and thoughts in some places. I first took notice of this less than a year after leaving the hospital, when I was staying at my now sister-in-law’s house in Brazil. In the room that I was staying in, I kept getting this feeling and had a mid afternoon dream about a teenage girl that really hated being in the house but an old lady told her that she had to stay no matter what. I later learned that the house had been a convent a long time ago and that gave me the heebie jeebies.

 

Christ knows how many of these weird experiences I have had since then, and many of these feelings have been proven correct after I looked into them. However, I do not believe in ghosts or wandering spirits. I think that maybe people leave behind some trace of emotional energy during life changing or life ending events, and maybe after having my brain receive such a huge shock it’s able to pick up on those things. To me, the idea of someone hanging around to watch people go about their everyday lives for decades or centuries after they have died is ridiculous and a rather pessimistic belief of life after death. Life after death is already a jackass term because if you’re dead then you’re not alive, so what the fuck does ‘life after death’ even mean? And why do people on those ‘ghost hunter’ shows always assume that all ghosts are retarded? Like how they say, “We are not here to hurt you” and talk down to the ghosts like they’re two-year-olds. And why do ghosts wear clothes? Wouldn’t all ghosts be naked because their clothes didn’t necessarily die along with them? If you get to choose your clothing after you die then when I become a ghost, I am going to dress up as the Kool-Aid man and float through peoples’ walls while hauntingly moaning, “Oh yeah”.

Dear Facebook Diary,

 

I went out drinking with friends last night and woke up with a Hitler mustache drawn on my face (true story), but that isn’t the reason that I want to talk about the current war between Israel and the Gaza Strip. I want to talk about it because I was involved in a heated and lop-sided Facebook debate where one side was contesting that Israel was wrong for launching attacks on Palestine and I was the lone fighter in arguing as to why Israel is right to fight back. So despite the Hitler mustache I’m wearing on my face as I type this, I am in support of the Jews.

 

 

Okay, I just typed and then erased a brief but surprisingly long summary about the history of Israel and its issues with Palestine. But here’s how the current war started in July. First, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered. Then, the Israeli government blamed Palestine’s Hamas government for the kidnappings and arrested 200 or so Hamas members but soon found that they were not responsible. While those 200 or so guys were in an Israeli jail, one Palestinian teenager was kidnapped and burned alive by some random Israelis. Now the Gaza Strip has been indiscriminately firing small-armed rockets into Israel since 2001 for the purpose of harming and killing civilians, and the launching of these rockets went from 2 or 3 a day to a couple thousand in a week. So Israel said “fuck you guys” and shot some big ol’ bombs at the locations where the rockets were being fired from. It turns out that these rockets were being stored in and fired from hospitals and schools in the Gaza Strip. So Israel’s big ol’ bombs killed an assload of innocent Gaza people. There are videos of the rockets being shot from elementary school yards and just last week 3,000 missiles were found being stored in an abandoned school that was being used to house refugees in Gaza. So the Gaza Strip’s elected government, Hamas, which is not fully recognized by the rest of the world as an official government because they are a known terrorist group whose goal is to create an Islamic state, is using its own civilians as a way of protecting its own weapons.

 

Now I will tell you why I support Israel over the Gaza Strip/Palestine and why you should too:

 

Number one, the super Liberals that are supporting Palestine have no clue what they are talking about and I loathe genuinely stupid people. For example, in this heated Facebook debate on the subject I made a comment about Palestine being guilty of killing innocent civilians and children in the past and some hyper Liberal retard told me that I was wrong and was the victim of propaganda. A loose definition of propaganda is something that is delivered as factual information but has the intention of leading its audience to support one side of an argument, or in other words it is somewhat false news with an agenda. Anyway, this hippy douche also posted a Youtube cartoon to show me the history of Palestinian suffering due to Israel and then the video tells the viewer to fight against Israel. So the fuckhead posted a propaganda video to prove that I was the victim of believing propaganda and I guarantee the guy is too stupid to even know that, even if somebody explained it to him.

 

Protip for hippies and liberals, you cannot debate by repeatedly making a blank statement. When someone posts news articles to support their opinions and states the solutions that they would approve of, repeatedly saying that Palestine has been oppressed for 70 years means nothing. I mean, thanks for telling me that even though I already knew it, I’ll call you back into the room if I need someone to point out everything I already know you fucking genius. And worst of all, the debate always ends with them saying some shit like, “If everyone would just stop fighting then there would be peace on Earth.” Are you serious? Somebody get the President on the line! Tell Obama that the key to stopping people from fighting is for people to stop fighting! Better yet, go tell that to the kindergarten teacher so she can give you a fucking sticker! Everyone claims they want peace on Earth but none of them actually put any thought into it. A world without conflict would be the most boring and meaningless existence because a major point of life is finding what you want and then deciding what you are willing to sacrifice in order to get it, and that’s war in a nutshell.

 

Second, Palestine’s government is an established terrorist organization. The preamble written in The Covenant of The Hamas is, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” No, not peacefully coexist or kindly ignore Israel, but “obliterate” it. Hamas was also one of the big supporters of Syrian rebels rising up against their president and beheading all non-believers in their path. Sure, their president is an asshole but the civil war to oust him turned into Islamic extremists pushing their own agenda to gain control of Syria. That’s also why I was a bit pissy over Obama’s original support for the rebels but happy when he withdrew it. And the people that say ISIS is just part of the civil war in Iraq and it should be allowed to happen haven’t seen the picture of a little 3 year girl in her flower dress, laying next to her severed head and her 13 year old brother screaming and crying as an ISIS member is beginning to slice into his neck. They are fucking batshit crazy terrorists and to support any sort of belief system that is that violent, even if an entire nation of people wants it, makes the supporter just as batshit crazy.

 

Third, at this point in time I am completely opposed to an established Islamic state. Both the original Bible and the Quran have verses telling believers to kill non-believers as does most religious crap, but the Quran is a bit guiltier than the Bible. And the current trend in the Middle East is for Muslim extremism to reign over all. So allowing an extremist group like Hamas to take over Israel or to even allow them to form their own recognized nation would be suicide for all “non-believers”. They would begin by establishing a nation where it was mandatory for all of its citizens to live under Sharia Law, and according to that law anyone that refused would be cruelly executed. All other forms of beliefs and education would be destroyed. They would be able to form their own established military and intelligence systems and form allies that would support them militarily and financially. And after a generation or two of raising and brainwashing an entire population into their violent beliefs they would be able to use their power and population to spread their radical beliefs around the world and kill anybody that disagreed. Islamic states have and do exist but I am opposed to one being started by Islamic extremists. Allowing that to happen would be the same as saying, “Welp, I guess it’s about time we get this whole World War III thing started.” Islam is fucked up right now. Does anybody remember last summer when over 100,000 Muslims in Egypt held a protest because Atheist bloggers had defamed Islam on their blogs, and they demanded that the bloggers be executed? It’s part of the reason that I really do believe the whole Benghazi thing was sparked by a Youtube video because those people actually are that stupid. But yeah, that’s where Islam in the Middle East is standing right now.

 

It sucks that terrorists are leading half of Palestine and that the civilians are the ones that have to pay the price, but that doesn’t mean that they should be allowed to have whatever they want. Palestine is always the one that avoids any sort of peace agreement, and their only terms for having peace is on the agreement that Israel follows Palestine’s rules, and that ain’t an agreement, it’s a demand.

Well this post was pretty long and unfunny but I am making myself write something everyday, and I don’t feel like I have anything all that funny to write about right now. But if you did actually read it all the way down to this paragraph then I would like to inform you of the fact that you just read a long piece of propaganda written for the purpose of making its readers support my beliefs. My brother will probably be a little pissed off if he reads this but deal with it bro.

 

(The picture I posted with this was tweeted by a Palestinian that was evacuating his home after Israel had dropped leaflets informing them that their neighborhood was going to be attacked. According to the guy that took the picture, this man was hanging children around a building so Israel would not bomb it. I’m not sure if that’s the true story behind the pic, but if it is then it shows why the Palestinian civilian death count is so high as well as how fucking loony their way of thinking is)

 

Dear Facebook Diary,

 

My birthday was this past Saturday and I am now just six years away from what I consider to be middle age. Another sign of my relentless aging is that my 15-year high school reunion is on this upcoming Saturday. I learned of this reunion back in May but was somewhat avoiding it because my mental version of high school was recorded a bit differently, with several erased moments and most likely with a lot of mistakes in terms of what really happened.

 

Granted that I could have easily been labeled a borderline alcoholic, chewing tobacco abusing, pothead piece of shit by the age of 16, and every one of those mindless devotions alter memory capabilities for the worst; it is that goddamn car accident that bumped my head into a month long snoozer that fucked up the memories of my past. I say this because when I meet up with friends from my childhood and high school they like to reminisce about things we’d done together, and while I remember some of the events, namely the humorous ones, I end up having to nod my head with a smile as if I really know what the hell they’re talking about.

 

Even worse is remembering who people are. It is impossible for me to remember names but since moving back to Kearney I regularly meet people that can tell me one or more stories, sometimes good stories, about events that I was involved in with them. And I have zero fucking clues as to what they’re talking about or even who this person is. People try to tell me that this is common and in certain circumstances I know it is, but I recognized this problem immediately after I had awoken from a coma and hadn’t even graduated high school yet. I went to my ten-year high school reunion five years ago and while I remember my closest friends very well, I probably knew less than 10% of everyone else that was there.

 

My memory is very strange in its operations ever since it had the shit smashed out of it in that car wreck. I am able to remember events semi well, but I have no emotional memory of anything before the car accident. What I mean is that I am unable to remember times of ever being embarrassed or how I felt when somebody I knew died or ever loving anyone. When I think back to the memories that I do have there’s no emotion, and the ones that I remember best are the funny memories because they’re still funny when I tell them to others. I think I still have a bit of this inability to embed emotions into my memories because I have an uncanny ability to just move on after an incident or separation from friends. This flaw in my cranial hard drive has damaged many of my relationships from the past, including childhood friends and family members. And I can still count on one finger how many times I’ve ever felt like I was genuinely in love and I’m never really seeking more of it anymore. And I think the memory thing is part of what makes me good with little kids. People always say that being around kids is great because kids know how to live in the moment, but kids can only live in the moment because they don’t have any past you dumbshit. And that’s how I feel fairly often, like I don’t have much of a past to look back on.

 

Anyway, this is what it is like to be afflicted with actual amnesia. When people tell me something that I or we did together and I have no memory of it, I feel like they’re lying to me because I genuinely have no recording of it in my mind. It’s like if somebody told you about the time you were getting stoned at Jeffrey the “Dahmernator’s” place and neither of you had any money for munchies so you decided to kill a guy on the street and eat him and then Jeff got into the habit of eating people instead of spending money on food whenever he got high because Jeff never had money and then Jeff was busted for it and you used to cry while you talked about how guilty you felt for getting him hooked on the whole ‘people eating’ thing. You wouldn’t believe the story because it’s something that never happened. So at these reunions I end up listening to a lot of stories of things that I did and I’m not even sure if they’re true or not because I sure as hell don’t remember them.

 

You know, I’ve never really spoken in any detail about what it’s like to recover from a boo-boo that stung so deep it killed me and then put me into a long coma. Another reason this is on the forefront of my screwy mind is because on Tuesday I talked to a friend of the past at length about this car accident that has become a legend at Kearney High School. Or at least it was for a semester or two. Here’s what happens after waking up from a coma:

 

First, my memories were completely scrambled. You don’t just instantly wake up from a coma and snap out of it. I was awake for a month before I was fully conscious of what was going on around me. My body also wasn’t working right because I was partially paralyzed on the left side of my body. I was also mostly blind and a little deaf on my left side and even though some of that still continues today, it has never bothered me because I have no memory of what it’s like to have feeling and sight and sound on my left side. I never noticed it until a doctor tested my sight and stuff and then he told me that the left side of my body is fucked up, but I have no frame of reference as to being able to fully function on both sides of my body so I’ve never had to adjust to it or anything.

 

Second, this is when things start getting fucked up. I am talking about the recovery period that begins about a month or two after waking up from a coma. It’s like your brain goes through constant systems checks on a 24-hour basis. Some days I was so horny that I couldn’t control myself and then the next day or even later that evening I wouldn’t be able to get it up to save my life whether I had cranked one out or not. I would feel extremely depressed and maybe even suicidal for days or maybe a few hours and then I would be so happy that I would pee, poop, and ejaculate simultaneously just from the sound of a singing bird. I will openly admit now that there was a lot of sexual confusion during this time. I have always been straight and never felt any need to question it, but during this recovery time my sexual preferences were all over the fucking place. I flew through the whole boner preference spectrum from being asexual to thumbing the ornament of my pelvic tree to videos of coprophagia.

 

My emotions were all over the fucking place too. The frontal lobes, or emotion feeling part of my brain was damaged the most and there was a sort of self-kept war on the emotional front in my mind. I would feel absolutely dead on the inside for a few weeks or months, and then I would be so extremely emotional that I would cry when Indiana Jones slightly wept about his favorite dog that he took his namesake from. I specifically remember feeling very paranoid for an extended amount of time. There was a good three or four months where I rarely left my bedroom because I was truly scared that people I knew were hell bent on hurting or killing me. This shit went on for a solid four years and it wasn’t until I was 25 that I felt like I was emotionally sound again and able to have normal feelings like everyone else. My sleep is also really screwed up and that has yet to get better, so I’ve given up on having a normal sleep pattern.

 

Third, the compulsions are a downer. Now I don’t know why, but more than one doctor told me that I would have trouble controlling my compulsions after being in a coma. I don’t know where they got that shit from but it’s true. When I drink alcohol I drink until I’m face down. When I want to play a video game or read a book or watch movies, well that’s what I’m doing non-stop for a week or so. The girl I talked to on Tuesday, her ex husband was in this same car wreck and was knocked into a coma as well and he’s all kinds of compulsive now too. The one thing that has saved me from this is becoming a meathead. I am compulsive about exercising and eating healthy and it’s made all the difference. I still drink more alcohol than I should but it’s balanced out by the fact that I have to workout everyday and I am eating 250% healthy until the sun goes down.

 

Fourth, the mind lapse thing, well, it’s whatever. It’s never been noticeable to others because I have always been aware of it and know how to cover it up, but the types of things that I can forget on a daily basis amaze me. Here’s a common one, I could be spending an entire day with someone that I’ve known for years now, and then in mid conversation I start being a little less talkative because I realize that I can’t remember this person’s name or maybe even how I know them. It rarely lasts longer than a few minutes but it’s scary as shit when it happens. Sometimes I wonder if I’m having a fucking stroke or something. I’ve even forgotten my own name while signing checks and my birthdate and address are almost always up for grabs. That’s probably because my abilities to do math and anything related to numbers were messed up. I’m not talking about a brief pause before I remember my name, I’m talking about setting down my checkbook and having to find my driver’s license or something. All of this scares me because statistically I am way more likely to have dementia when I’m older because I had my head smashed out my ass when I was younger, and that older age is approaching faster than I want it too. Writing and memorizing written things on a regular basis is what I rely on to keep my mind working. It’s a small part of the reason that I have this blog thingy.

 

In the end, this whole story is useless. I normally only talk about the fact that I spent a month in a coma because it’s a nice little conversation piece to throw out there when everyone is quiet and unable to find something interesting to say, or if I’m really trying to get laid and I’m desperate enough to play a pity card. I’ve just been thinking about it this week after talking to Tailier Wetland on Tuesday and today I realized that I’m going to mingle and converse with well-known strangers again on Saturday. I’ll get some drinks in me and let the alcohol do the talking

Dear Facebook Diary,

 

I believe that all women are whores. I hold to this belief because I have had a handful of one night stands with women and I know a few other guys that have had them too, and I’ve seen movies and TV shows where men have sex with women on the same day that they meet them. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that all women on planet Earth are whores.

 

Oh wait, are you saying that it is childish of me to lump an entire group of people together based on a few personal experiences and assumptions? Oh Christ, and how gay it was of me to label something as being retarded because it is my duty to make sure that nobody ever has their feelings hurt because I used a word they disagree with. Dammit! I probably pissed off a Christian by using the word Christ and I bet there’s a member of the lGBTQIASOFMPOMUBL community that could be extremely offended by my use of the word gay in a negative sense!

 

Well anyways, I just watched a pro-feminism awareness video where a young attractive girl dressed up like a hooker, à la leather miniskirt and a tube top, walked through the shittiest part of a city where degenerates and other uneducated men yelled horrendous words at her like the word “beautiful” as she walked by, and then the video used this as there example of how rampant ‘cat calling’ is and how hurtful it is towards women and how all men must stop this extremely common act immediately. First of all, I have never ‘cat called’ a girl before and I don’t know any other guys that have and I’ve never even seen or heard it happen before either. I am an educated, straight, single, healthy white male in America and according to every reality TV watching, Facebooking, Tweeting , teenage mentality asshat I am naturally a racist, gay bashing, misogynist that has it easy in life. It’s easy for them to point me out as the enemy because I am supposedly part of the majority, and it is the majority that is holding down the hundreds of ever important #MINORITIES.

 

Let me tell you what is wrong with all of this. The problem is that it is now cool to be in a minority. It is now common thinking that you are not considered a person of significance unless you have been marginalized by another group of people and you are now trying to fight this wrongful act by marginalizing others. Breaking yourself and your make believe social media friends off into their own groups and giving it a hashtag does not constitute as a social movement or anything of significance. It is simply your own way of attention whoring. You are not changing peoples’ minds by wearing a “Gay Support” t-shirt or a “I Love Being a Fat Ass” bib while eating at McDonald’s, you are only doing it for your own sense of gratification of having a random person smile and give you the thumbs up, and then you feel reassured in your imaginary battle when someone looks offended by your fucking “movement”. If I wear a Swastika or a Pedobear shirt out in public there will be countless people that would get offended by it, but I’m willing to bet I would at least get one high five from some random white janitor, and all it would prove is that there are at least a few people that are thinking the same thing that I am. But either way I could bathe in the grace of being publicly noticed. Which is exactly what all of these fucking hashtagging fucktards are doing. They are creating their own make believe movements just for the sake of thinking that they actually have something to fight for and they can get attention without doing anything more than posting shit on Facebook or Youtube.

 

And the gay thing, I do agree that the suppression of gay rights is wrong and I do relate it to the way that black people were treated in the earlier 20^th century in the states, but how many fucking letters do they have to add to their LGBT thing? The more letters and groups that they add to it the more ridiculous I think it is. Everyone wants to be that special minority that claims to know what it is like to be repressed because then they can bitch about how tough their life is, even though their difficult life is comprised of searching for negative comments that vaguely relate to their lifestyle on other websites. And guess what else, those people that are opposed to your lifestyle, well they are another minority of people that have created their own little group too.

 

And the “body love” bullshit where fat people say that they are proud of being fat even though they are insulted when somebody calls them fat, guess what? You are the majority! Over half of Americans are now overweight and your stupid fucking movement where you claim that it is easier for mankind to change their opinions of beauty rather than one single person changing their appearance for the sake of others’ sexual approval is now pointless. You won the battle of making the majority of people look and act as you do, so now what are you going to cry about? I eat healthy and workout like a motherfucker and it is not my duty to make sure that there are chairs or planets to support your weight and I am not going to change what I am physically attracted to because you think you should be a part of that group.

 

I’m going to create a movement where I only wear sweatpants and am allowed to shit my sweatpants and walk around with stinky pants full of poop, and anyone that is offended by it is simple minded and hateful. My saggy sweatpants will be so weighed down with poop that my dick-neck will be visible above the waistline of the pants, and then I will start a movement where I am deeply offended by the amount of people that stare at my dick-neck while I am speaking instead of looking me in the eyes. And all of this will prove that people are idiots that need to be more open minded about people that shit their sweatpants and show off their dick-necks because Christ alive that is a battle worth fighting for. And you can bet my poopy ass that I will be on the constant lookout for anyone that looks at or talks to me in any way that I might find offensive because I am tired of being repressed!

 

#POOPYDICKNECKLOVE

Dear Facebook Diary,

 

I invest in the stock market and make a fairly good living at it while finally finishing my fifth doctorate degree at MIT, so I made the decision to take it easy this summer and not give a shit about finding a job to keep me busy. So far this summer, I was in a play in Holdrege two weeks ago, in which I was the lead role. I absolutely hated the amount of lines I had to memorize but it ended up being a really good learning experience and extremely well worth it. Oh! And I have done a little bit of personal training with Louis, who is locally famous because he is the actual Louis from the ‘Louis and McArthur’s Potato Statues and Poems’ restaurant which is across from the campus. My motto for him is to “Get Juicy or Die Miring”. But other than those two things I haven’t been doing much. Or at least that was true until about ten days ago or whenever it all started.

 

Well, there is this business called The Nielsen Company. And oh my god, I feel stupid for even explaining what it is because I know that everyone that lives in a first world country knows about it, but anyway, it is one of the leading companies that rates channels in areas of the nation as to how much they are watched by viewers. Hence, it is best known as the Nielsen Television Rating System. So three weeks ago the mail lady was generous enough to leave a letter from The Nielsen Company in my mailbox and I was bored enough to open it instead of throwing it away. My boredom remained for most of the day because as I said I am not doing much this summer, so I took the time to answer The Nielsen Company’s questionnaire and I mailed it back to them because it said that I would get $2 for it.

 

Like a week goes by and The Nielsen Company never sends me my 2 fucking dollars. Instead, I got a phone call from them while I was sitting in my blue chair staring at a stain on my rug. It was the type of phone call that I wouldn’t have answered because I didn’t recognize the number, but I accidentally pushed the send/answer button while I was struggling to get the phone out of my pocket because my gigantic black penis named “Get Off My Lawn” makes it difficult to get items in and out of my pockets because my huge penis makes my pants so tight. So since I had already answered the phone, I went ahead and did this long and tedious question thing with The Nielsen Company lady, and at the end of the cellphone interrogation about what I watch on TV and the ridiculous amount of time I spend watching it, I was given a prize and a duty. The prize is $30 and the duty is to fill out an unusually specific diary of the channels and shows that I watch and when I watch them over the course of a week.

 

So okay, another fucking week goes by and I haven’t heard a word from Mr. Nielsen or his wife. But shortly after waking up this morning at the wee early hour of 1:00PM, I looked in my mailbox and there it was, the diary. I opened it and immediately six of the crispest 5 dollar bills fell from the envelope and fluttered downward like green feathers falling from a mighty and exotically colored condor soaring through the atmosphere and then they fluttered down onto the stain on my rug. I picked up the bills and read the letter contained with the diary. It said, “Mr. Lucas Cox, you have been elected to be the television representative of Buffalo County for The Nielsen Company.” Tears welled in my eyes as I stared at the word “elected”. I’ve never been elected for anything, and although I’ve never really ran for anything either, I was completely elated to finally win.

 

I took out the diary and got to work that instant because as an elected official, I’ve got a lot of motherfuckers counting on me to do my job. And they said that I would continue to get $30 for each diary that they send me and I fill out and they want me to mail back the diary whether I fill it out or not. So why not watch TV and get paid for it? I could be making $120 a month to watch TV and that’s enough to pay for my cables and interbutts right there. It’s like paying a heroin addict to do heroin. Maybe in 2016 I will run for masturbation representative of Buffalo County because I feel like I’m a little more knowledgeable in that area and I know that I wouldn’t let anyone down if I were elected.

 

As a newly elected official for my county, I am already becoming a liar straight out of the gates. I lied and said that I was up watching the news and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air this morning, but I was in bed intermittently sleeping and fondling my balls until at least noon. And then I stood in my kitchen and ate eggs with Sriracha Sauce for an hour or so. Then I went outside and yelled at the sun for being too bright before getting the mail. Also, I will not tell them that I am normally awake until 3:00AM watching mindless titty movies on Showtime while listening to Katy Perry on my Itunes and there is no way in hell that I am going to tell them that I just spent the past hour watching “Antiques Road Show”. But yes, I am the newly elected representative of Buffalo County for The Nielsen Company, and I will not be taking this job lightly.

 

And now I have to meet Don Shawnson at Lighteningcrack Brewery to spend my hard earned $30 on a breadbowl of stew and a turkey leg.

Dear Facebook Diary,

 

I went to bed around 4:00AM this morning and I woke up at 7:30AM. I made an egg burrito thingy and put 2 scoops of whey protein in my shaker cup with water. I walked into my living room and without closing the little cap on my shaker cup I began to shake the cup vigorously, spraying half of my very large and newly remodeled living room with 48 grams of chocolaty whey semen.

 

I was unusually tired this morning not only because of my lack of sleep, but because my body is unable to process fast food the way that it used to. I workout more often and more hardcore than ever before but my body has been steadily losing its ability to thoroughly digest super shitty foods ever since I turned 23 only 10 summers ago. Last night I had no plans of leaving my lustrous Arabian Nights themed apartment but then Don texted me and I refused to respond because I was tired and wanted to go to bed early. Then Dale called me after I failed to reply to Don’s text, so I answered after about 4 rings. I stated that I didn’t want to do anything but Dale argued against it until I caved and invited them over.

 

This Friday, Don is leaving for South Dakota to spend his summer running his campaign for state Senator and building igloos and horse troughs for the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for $550 an hour, or at least that’s what he told me. So Dale, Don and I figured we would spend one of his last nights in Kearney drinking vodka and grape Mio cocktails while relaxing and getting awkwardly flirty with one another in my theater style living room while we watched the entire second season of “Saved By the Bell: The College Years”.

 

The night was moving along with boisterous enthusiasm for Kelly’s newfound love interest in Professor Lasky when I blurted out that I was getting hungry. I had previously hosted a small and private Boxer Beer gala in my kitchen this past Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday so I am a little low on food. Don asked me what I was hungry for and after a moment of deep thought I said, “Warm cherry pie right out of the oven.” Don and Dale’s mouths dropped open before I had finished uttering the word “oven”. We decided right then and there that we had to go to the new 24 hour Hy-Vee immediately to find a single freshly baked cherry pie or maybe 4 of them.

 

I looked at my checking account online and saw that I only had $1757.62 in it, so I grabbed my jar of quarters and spilled it on the kitchen floor to see if I had enough money to purchase an entire pie while Dale measured my compact chrome plated oven to see how many pies we could cram into it. I had $17 in quarters and Dale came up with a measurement of 4 feet by 2 feet of inner oven space. So we ran out the door and I called “SHOTGUN!” as we piled into Don’s pink Volkswagen Beetle and sped to Hy-Vee at midnight.

 

We arrived at Hy-Vee within 5 minutes and ravaged the store in search of cherry pies. We only found one cherry pie and although it was exactly what I wanted, Dale mentioned a food hack that only a select group of fine diners know about.

 

“40 McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets for $10 Lucas.” Dale said blankly.

 

I slowly lowered the cherry pie and made direct eye contact with Dale. Dale’s last name is Birdman, and telling Dale Birdman that he cannot have chicken McNuggets is the same as telling Hitler that he’s not allowed to bake the Christmas cookies this year. We were already running for Don’s Beetle before anyone had even said “yes”.

 

We arrived at McDonald’s around 12:45AM. I looked at the menu and realized that I couldn’t purchase 40 McNuggets, I could buy 60 of them. Now, should you ever enter the northeastern McDonald’s in Kearney after midnight you will be greeted by the same old and angry toothless pirate hooker that works behind the counter every night of the week. She hates her life and any other life that interacts with it. I took my place at the counter and in a shaky voice said, “Sixty. Sixty Chicken McNuggets to go.”

 

The toothless pirate hooker gave me a phony toothless grin and pushed the biggest McNugget button on the register and I proceeded to pour the cup of quarters onto the counter. The pirate hooker’s phony grin immediately changed into a gummy frown and she asked, “You’re not actually going to pay for this in change are you?”

 

Dale and I didn’t skip a beat. We continued to separate the quarters into piles of 4 until we had 16 piles and one extra to cover the last 15¢. Our concentration on counting quarters was an iron wall against her cigarette-scented complaints.

 

“I already have like $25 in quarters in my drawer and there’s no way in hell that I’m gonna be able to fit that many quarters in there.” The pirate hooker said in an angry and raspy tone.

 

Apparently they do not teach monetary value on pirate ships because this lady of the sea was unable to understand that quarters are real money too. What’s she going to do, tell her captain that she didn’t want to accept money in exchange for nuggets? She put her arms in the air and marched off with anger while one of her shipmates took her place at the helm. Normally I am very polite with the people that prepare my food, but this was McDonald’s and every American of proper bodyweight knows that McDonald’s does not sell food. I also understand what it is like to work a shitty job that you hate, but you’re working at McDonald’s bitch. Either get used to it or get a job at Walmart.

 

Dale and I pushed the quarters to the new shipmaster while laughing loudly, and then we sat at the nearest table with Don and eagerly awaited our bounty. A smelly fart-pusher placed the bags of nuggets on the counter and made eye contact with us, he didn’t say a word. Each of us grabbed our own bag and agreed that we would not open a single chest of nuggets until we were once again sitting under the chandelier in my kitchen.

 

Once we were back in my kitchen we quickly realized how difficult it was to eat McNuggets with fully flexed grins on our faces, but eventually we consumed all of the nuggets in less than 10 minutes. We finished watching two more episodes of “Saved By the Bell” and then Don and Dale went home. I drank a few glasses of water and went to bed.

 

I refuse to eat at places that sell chicken tenders because I have no idea as to where the ‘tender’ comes from on a chicken, and I will never eat chicken fingers because I know that chickens don’t have hands. But I do know that roosters have one ‘nug’ and hens have one ‘get’. They are found in the rear part of the neck on every chicken, so two chickens must be slaughtered to make a single nugget. If you don’t believe me then you can look it up yourself. Don, Dale and I consumed 120 chickens last night. So there is good reason that I feel like shit today and I fear the future because I haven’t even pooped yet.

There’s No Heaven for Unplugged Toasters

By Lucas Cox

 

 

INT. MRS. ALTERMAN’S LEGAL OFFICE – MORNING

 

CHERRY:  Ronnie Riverson?! You want Ronnie Riverson to perform his foul-mouthed shtick at your funeral? You really are crazy aren’t you Gary?

 

GARY:  Cherry. Baby. He’s like a brother to me.

 

CHERRY:  I don’t care if he’s “like” a brother to you! He’s not your brother! You have a brother and Ronnie Riverson is not your brother!

 

GARY:  My brother’s an asshole Cherry! You know that. Don’t even start with that crap.

 

CHERRY:  Look, Gary, all I am trying to say is that it is inappropriate. No. It is absolutely ridiculous… it is asinine to want Ronnie Riverson to use your funeral as a means of personal promotion.

 

GARY:  But it’s not a means of personal promotion. Well, it is a little bit, but I just don’t want my funeral to be some cry-fest where my friends stare at my casket and worry about their own mortality while creating phony memories of me being a nice guy. I am not a nice guy honey.

 

CHERRY:  Oh tell me something I don’t know Gary.

 

MRS. ALTERMAN:  If you don’t mind me asking Mr. Salzman, I believe your wife mentioned that you have a brother. Would it be intrusive of me to ask the name of this-

 

CHERRY:  Shawn. Our son Shawn. Now what is so wrong with having your own son give the sermon at your funeral? Hmm?

 

GARY:  Shawn? He’s not even Jewish anymore and you want my son to be the pastor or whatever at my funeral? I don’t even want a pastor, I’m Jewish remember? I don’t even want a rabbi or any of that sad mushy crap at my funeral.

 

CHERRY:  Shawn is your son. How can you favor that shmuck Ronnie over your very own son.

 

GARY:  Well, let’s see. Shawn hasn’t called me in two years and seven months. It’ll be eight months next week. And he hasn’t even-

 

CHERRY:  Oh here we go. It is always HIS fault isn’t it Gary? You do know that phones go both ways don’t you? Besides, with Shawn’s family situation you know that he could use the money more than Ronnie.

 

GARY:  He doesn’t even e-mail me. And not only did he stop being a practicing Jew but he became a coach for the other team. He falls in love with the first Christian girl he meets and all of the sudden he just has to become a Catholic or Protestant or whatever part of the Bible he thinks he understands better. Not just a member, but a preacher.

 

CHERRY:  Gary Salzman he is your son. And you need to treat him-

 

GARY:  And I am his father Charlotte. I raised him the best that I could and I gave him everything that a kid could ever want. Spoiled him rotten. Why would he turn his back on me the moment he started a life of his own? Was he just spending all of those years in college… spending all of my money in college just planning and waiting to stab me in the back as soon as he graduated?

 

CHERRY:  Do not bring this up again Gary.

 

GARY:  What do you mean don’t bring it up? He was raised Jewish. Then he marries some Christian simpleton and now, not only has he magically converted himself into a Christian but he’s a damn speaker for their cause?

 

CHERRY:  You’re not even a practicing Jew yourself! Besides, you’re the one that wanted to send him to Notre Dame.

 

GARY:  Oh don’t you dare lecture me ab-

 

MRS. ALTERMAN:  Forgive me for my interruption Mr. And Mrs. Salzman. But it is already eleven-thirty and I have an important lunch date this afternoon. I think that we should shift our attention back to completing your last will and testament. Now Mr. Salzman, although it is primarily up to you as to how the ceremonies of your funeral are, um, performed. You have given your wife power of attorney and that does allow her some authority over the coordination of your funeral in terms of funding. Now someone stated that your son has some sort of family situation right now. May I ask what that-

 

GARY:  He’s about to have a child. His holiness is about to have his first kid.

 

CHERRY:  Today in fact. We should be in the hospital but instead Gary here wants to focus on his own death today. So now I’m waiting for a phone call.

 

GARY:  He calls his step mom but not me. And for Christ’s sake Cherry, I’ve got cancer! I don’t have time to doddle and smoke cigars in the hospital. I’m sick of hospitals and I don’t want to spend one of my few days without chemo sitting in a damn hospital.

 

MRS. ALTERMAN:  Well yes Mr. Salzman, I can understand that. Now you told me over the phone that you had (reading from a sticky note, struggling with the words) “stage 4 pancreatticobiliary adenocar-”

 

GARY:  It’s liver cancer. You don’t need to use the fancy words to describe it. It’s liver cancer. I’ve got a year left to live, tops.

 

CHERRY:  And why can’t you just honor your son and humor me by having a traditional funeral with a priest and what have you?

 

GARY:  Because it isn’t me Cherry.

 

CHERRY:  What isn’t you?

 

GARY:  The whole stuffy religious thing. I’ve been a comedian my entire life and there is no way that on the last day that my body remains above the dirt, everyone is going to be crying over my body while a magician reads and recites from a bullshit book.

 

CHERRY:  Oh for God’s sake Gary! He is a Pastor, not a magician or a witch doctor or a circumcision salesman or any of the crazy names that you call him. He is a-

 

GARY:  I don’t believe in it Cherry! I think it’s all a bunch of garbage and I don’t want anyone spouting out some ancient marble garble at my own funeral. I want it to be a roast, not a ritual.

 

CHERRY:  What Gary? What is it that you don’t believe?

 

GARY:  There’s no heaven for unplugged toasters honey.

 

CHERRY:  Oy vey. Do you hear this Mrs. Alterman? We are discussing his funeral and now he’s going on about kitchen appliances.

 

GARY:  Kitchen appliances? No, I am talking about heaven. Do you think that when you unplug a toaster, when that spark of electricity leaves a toaster, that toaster goes to some mystical heaven where all the good toasters receive bird wings and fly around on clouds playing harps and singing about Toaster Strudels?

 

CHERRY:  Oh come on Gary-

 

GARY:  Or maybe all of the bad toasters go to a toaster hell where forks are jammed into them and they’re forced to toast onion bread for eternity because they either burnt too many Pop Tarts or they didn’t accept the teachings of the almighty toaster in the sky.

 

MRS. ALTERMAN:  Once again Mr. Salzman, I am sorry to interrupt. But as a Christian woman myself I must say that I disagree with you and-

 

GARY:  Oh shut up! Now I’ve been your age before but you’ve never been mine. I have witnessed enough miracles and tragedies in life to make my own conclusions rather than consulting a book written by uneducated nomads thousands of years ago.

 

CHERRY:  And what is your grand conclusion Gary?

 

GARY:  You are alive for a little while and then you’re dead forever.

(a cellphone rings in CHERRY’s purse. Everyone quiets as she removes it and answers it)

 

CHERRY:  Hello. Oh yes Shawnsy-baby, we were just running out the door to go there right now! Already? Is it a boy or a girl? No wait! Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know yet! I want it to be a surprise.

(Pause as she listens on the phone)

Yes. Your father will be there. Okay baby. Bye. Oooooooh!

(CHERRY closes the phone and places it back into her purse)

 

GARY:  Well what is it?

 

CHERRY:  It’s a baby you idiot! Now let’s go!

 

GARY:  I know it’s a baby you frigging dolt! Is it a boy or a-

 

CHERRY:  (Hits Gary with her purse)  I told you to never call me that name again you assho-

 

MRS. ALTERMAN:  Alright just calm down Mrs. Salzman! Now Mr. Salzman. Something important has come up for you and I suggest that we reschedule this-

 

GARY:  No! We are finishing this right now!

 

CHERRY:  Oh for god’s sake Gary. Let’s just go already.

 

GARY:  No! I want to wipe all of the religious bullshit out of my funeral before I go to some hospital where I’ll be forced to hear more religious bullshit about the miracle of a baby being born. It’s a baby. It’s got a lot of life left to live, but I don’t.

 

MRS. ALTERMAN:  I know that you are a comedian Mr. Salzman, and that makes me wonder as to how you can have such a grim outlook-

 

GARY:  It’s not a grim outlook. It’s a fact. Find any science or religion that can disprove the fact that you’re able to walk around on this Earth for a small unpredictable amount of time, and then you just disappear forever.

 

CHERRY:  My god Gary. Here we are talking about your death when we should be celebrating the birth of your grandchild and now you’re trying to make it worse by depressing us with your stupid pessimism.

 

GARY:  That spark. That spark of life. It isn’t my brain, it isn’t my achy cancer ridden body, it isn’t anything physical. When I die I will not be some miserable 68 year old fart shmutzing around in heaven or hell. Just that spark leaves and goes somewhere. Nothing else. And what’s left behind is my body, an unplugged toaster.

 

CHERRY:  You hear that Mrs. Alterman? Apparently I’m married to a philosopher. Now let’s-

 

GARY:  Ronnie Riverson is performing at my funeral and that’s all there is to it. It’s final.

 

MRS. ALTERMAN:  Mrs. Salzman. Do you approve of-

 

CHERRY:  Gary you selfish son of a bitch! You are having a traditional funeral and we are going to see your newborn grandchild right this minute!

 

MRS. ALTERMAN:  Um, Mr. Salzman. If you wouldn’t mind me interjecting with a little bit of my own philosophy here. I would like to add that-

 

GARY:  Oh for Christ sake kid. Everyone’s a philosopher when it comes to death and religion. Can we just put Ronnie Riverson on my damn will so I can get to the hospital already?

 

MRS. ALTERMAN:  Funerals are for the living, Mr. Salzman. And I think you should consider that before you-

 

CHERRY:  Shut up Mrs. Alterman! I just want to get out of here so I can go to the-

 

GARY:  Holy shit. The girl said something smart for once. Quiet down honey, I wanna hear this.

 

CHERRY:  Sweet Jesus. My step son is celebrating the birth of my grandchild and I’m stuck between Gandhi and Nietzsche while they ponder their existence. Could we just-

 

GARY:  No Cherry. She’s right. I’m not going to give a rat’s ass about my funeral after I’m dead.

 

MRS. ALTERMAN:  That isn’t what I was saying Mr. Salzman. What I was trying to say is that funerals are merely a time for the celebration of one’s life and a time to lament their passing. You should view it as-

 

GARY:  Well yeah, exactly. People always talk about how their dead loved ones are watching over them and I’ve always thought: Now how selfish is that. My dead parents’ reward for raising me is to spend their days watching me eating and sitting on the toilet and then spending their nights watching me try to fall asleep. That sounds like hell if you ask me.

 

CHERRY:  So are we done here? Are you going to let your son preach at your funeral?

 

GARY:  Oh what the hell, why not? Put Shawn on that piece of paper there Mrs. Alterman. Let’s get out of here.

 

MRS. ALTERMAN:  Now you’re sure about this Mr. Salzman? We could always arrange another meeting to discuss-

 

CHERRY:  Write it down you twit! We have to get to the hospital to see my new grandson!

 

GARY:  A son?! They had a boy?

 

CHERRY:  Yes! It’s a boy. Now let’s go meet him instead of crying about your cancer and funeral and such.

 

GARY:  Alright let’s go. You know what would be a good name for a boy?

 

CHERRY:  Anthony. I have always loved the name Anthony. We can call him Tony, you know like Tony Curtis. Or maybe-

 

MRS. ALTERMAN:  Well thank you for coming to a conclusion on this matter Mr. Salz-

 

GARY:  Ronnie. They’re naming the kid Ronnie.

 

CHERRY:  Goddammit Gary!

 

 

 

THE END