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Things were different a hundred years ago. Blacks couldn’t vote (or run for president). Women couldn’t vote (or run for vice president). I don’t know what the price of gas was, but I’m sure it was cheaper than today. Even marriage was different. Back then, a wedding consisted of a guy, gal, her dad, and a shotgun. It was so much simpler. A modern wedding includes all of those things–plus numerous forms, fees, and other unnecessary bureaucracies.
The Girlfriend and I had to apply for a marriage license. Who needs a license to get married? Can that license get revoked? Why do we need the government’s permission to get married? It’s not like the state has any right to deny anyone marriage. Not anymore. Assuming were dealing with two human beings, everyone has the right to get married in California.
Applying for a marriage license isn’t that hard–the hardest part is come up with the 60 bucks required to get a license. Unfortunately, marriage licenses aren’t granted online or over the phone so we had to trek down to the courthouse to get our license. What a sight that was. You see it in television and movies all the time, . . . . .
We’ve reached the point where even I’m complaining about the price of gas. The national average is supposedly a tad bit above $4 a gallon; the Orange County price is about $4.60. I needed half a tank and it still cost me a little under 30 bucks. This is ridiculous–and it’s not going to change anytime soon. Consumers would like gas come down at least 30 percent–but we’re not going to see it. We’re more likely to pay $5 a gallon gas by the end of the summer than we will be to see sub-$4 prices ever again.
I’m not economist; just a guy who makes a lot of assumptions with very little research. But I know this much: gas prices that high can’t be good for the economy. If it cost more to ship everything everywhere, it’ll drive up the price of products. So in addition to having less cash because it cost more to fill up our cars, Americans will also hafta spend more money on pretty much everything they buy. Groceries are gonna cost more. Online shoppers will have to pay higher shipping costs. Even pizzerias are going to hafta start charging for delivery. Everything is going . . . . .
When I was in high school, I used to bike pretty much everywhere. Soccer practice, friends’ houses, Music Warehouse–anywhere I had to be I got there by bicycle. My buddy and I had annual passes to Knott’s Berry Farm and we spent a lot of summer days there. A few times we went over to the beach…even though none of us liked to swim. I biked to Disneyland when I didn’t feel like driving just because I could (Disneyland, Knott’s, and the beach were all with in biking distance…yet somehow I was always bored). I think my radius was about ten miles.
A couple years after high school I abandoned my bicycling ways. Work ended up being too far to bike and it was awfully hard to pick up girls for dates on a Huffy. Like most things in life, it’s not like I stopped biking cold turkey: it sorta just phased its way out of my life.
But for years I’ve felt bad about it. I used to love biking. It was fun, easy, and fast (mainly ’cause I ignored every traffic law imaginable). When I went to college, it was easier to bike there because finding a parking . . . . .
I’ve been having problems with my T-days lately. It seems like whenever I speak, I say ‘Thursday’ when I mean Tuesday and ‘Tuesday’ when I mean Thursday. That’s not to say I get the days of the week confused. If I’m talking about an event or appointment, I always have the day correct in the aspect of before or after Wednesday–I just use the wrong moniker. I’m not sure what caused this breakdown of basic preschool skills, but it’s getting pretty bad. At this point, folks are better off assuming I’m incorrect instead of believing what I say. I consistently refer to Thursday softball team as the ‘Tuesday squad.’ Weekly Tuesday appointments are always described as a Thursday event. I gotta find away to fix this. I know I get hit in the head a lot, but this mix up has to stop before somebody gets really confused.
Like me.
As mentioned before, I’m a big believer in doing the little things to make someone else’s day (just as long as they don’t inconvenience me). Thursday was a good day for me. Not only did I do a good deed, I got reward for it. That whole ‘pay-it-forward’ concept.
I . . . . .
I hate traffic. It’s probably because I’m an impatient person. Disneyland is my worst nightmare because the lines and a traffic jam is nothing but a line with cars. My job, my girl, my family–they all live within ten minutes because if I had to drive 11 minutes, I probably wouldn’t see any of them again.
Last month I caught in the mother of all traffic jams. I know there have been 80-car pile-ups in the Midwest, but since that hasn’t happened to me I’m gonna pretend they never happened. I was sitting on the 210 freeway–completely not moving–for reasons unknown. I know this is SoCal and folks sit in traffic jams everyday–but not me. The idiots who work in LA and live in OC brought that upon themselves. If they wanna sit in traffic for an hour each way, that’s their business–the lifestyle they chose. But not me. I hate traffic more Kevin Costner movies and people who vote for the Green Party. You’re forced to do nothing but sit and wait. I’m not an important person–but I have more important things to do than sit around twiddling my thumbs.
I called The Girlfriend up. She said according to . . . . .
I am so over eating. It’s such a chore–and the process never stops. The typical human eats three meals a day–that’s three times a day you gotta figure out what to eat. Three times a day to cook. Three times a day to clean it. I feel like a stray cat–always on the look out for my next meal. And the worst part is this process never ends. We always hafta eat. There’s always going to be a next meal (unless you’re on death row: than it’s your last meal).
Maybe it’s ’cause I’m in a relationship now and eating for two. In the past, I never thought about my next meal. I always just waited until I was hungry and ate something like a box of cookies or bowl of cereal. Even when I cooked, it was much simpler (it’s not hard to grill up chicken and put it in a tortilla with cheese). When I was single, I didn’t have ‘meals’–I ate food. But now that I’m in a serious relationship with a girl I have two meals a day–it just requires more planning. No junk food. No fast-food. No pizza. We gotta have healthy meals–plates with green . . . . .
My girlfriend has ticks. There’s no pussyfooting around it. No funny intro; no catchy opening. How can there be when my girlfriend has ticks? There’s nothing amusing about that. I go away for a few days and she gets ticks. Shudder. I feel icky just thinking about it.
Thursday I went to her house and she told me she had a bug problem. According to her, the past few days she’s seen bugs on her couch. She led me over to the couch and quickly pointed out four of them.
“Those look like ticks,” I said. She insisted they couldn’t be. I put the four critters in a Zip-lock bag (alive) with the hope of identifying them on the internet.
It wasn’t that hard to do–I googled ‘ticks’ and found ’em on the first page I looked. I was kinda hoping I was wrong. When I lived at home, one of my brothers managed to get the house infested with ticks. Disgusting creatures. The ticks I found on The Girlfriend’s couch were nowhere near as big as the bloodsuckers we had–but they were definitely ticks. Thanks to the easily identifiable pattern on their back, I was able to determine The . . . . .
I have a theory that when I was a little kid–possibly even before I was born–a giant bonked me on the head with the bottom of his fist. It’s the only explanation I can come up with. My head is a gigantic enormousity. My feet are too wide for the widest shoes Nike can make. My broad shoulders make sitting next to someone in a movie theater or ball game extremely uncomfortable. Even my tonsils have been diagnosis as “unusually large” by doctors. I’ve got a six-foot-five body stuck in a five-foot-six frame. Everything it too wide. Even something as simple as buying batting gloves proves to be difficult (the sizer says my fingers are as long as a tee baller but because my wrist is wider than a sumo wrestler’s, they always rip at the seams). It’s discouraging ’cause nothing on my body fits my body. Even my wide ass doesn’t fit for someone this short–or white.
I know I don’t entirely take care of myself. I’m getting better. Now I take Tylenol when I get a headache and Tums for indigestion. But I used to just ‘tough’ out uncomfortable situations. As I get older, I’m doing a better . . . . .
I think we as a society would be much improved with the return of “Yo Mama” jokes. Harmless and non-malicious, “Yo Mama” jokes always seem to bring out the best in creativity, one-liners, and delivery. Two people can continuously insult each other…yet walk away good friends because of the innocent nature of “Yo Mama” jokes. They’re fun to say, fun to hear, and really bring people together. I think instead of hiring mediators to solve disputes, two people should simply spend 20 minutes exchanging “Yo Mamas.” Whatever conflicts they have are sure to be resolved after comparing the girth or liberated sexuality of two mothers. Guaranteed.
My distain for salads is well-known–but I’m not completely adverse to them. In fact, El Pollo Loco has a salad I quite like. It has cheese and tortilla chips in it. If more salads resembled nachos I probably wouldn’t be so opposed to greens. But they don’t, I do, and doughnuts will always remain my top choice as appetizers.
I’ve been trying to eat a tad bit healthier lately–which means more salads and less French fries. So yesterday at El Pollo Loco I order one of those crazy salads with tortilla chips. I’ve been . . . . .
According to CBS, an FBI agent accidentally shot herself this week when her gun discharged in her pocket. This is exactly what happens when you allow women to be cops. Last time I checked, John McClane only gets shot by terrorists.
A few years ago, El Diablo and I were eating late-night tacos. We had no place to sit and eat, so we went inside a 24-coin laundry mat. I couldn’t help but be fascinated with the business. At first, I questioned the profitability of a coin laundry–after all, most are fairly empty and the average customer spends only two or three bucks. But then I got to thinking, there has to be a reason people own coin laundry mats–no one is in business to lose money. As far as I could tell, running a laundry mat is pretty easy. It’s fairly self-automated. There are no labor expenses because the place is never manned. After startup, only expenses are rent, water, and electricity. Meanwhile, customers pump quarters into a machine that cost relatively nothing to run.
That’s when I realized if I was to open my own business, coin laundry would be it (if the Hooters plan fails). I don’t . . . . .
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