breakin' the law.

i had a crappy day.

i was driving to work around 8:15 this morning, and was stopped by a state trooper about ten minutes from my office. both officers stepped out of the cruiser and approached my window. the officer greeted me, mentioned that i was being recorded, identified himself, and proceeded to explain that he had stopped me because i was driving on a suspended license.

you can imagine my shock. it's the oldest excuse in the book, but i honestly, truly had no clue that my license had been suspended. it had been under suspension most of last year because of a traffic violation to which i had never responded. because i wasn't driving at that point, i just didn't bother with it. when i bought my car in january, i contacted the police, who referred me to penn-dot (pennsylvania department of transportation, for those out-of-towners who are unfamiliar with the world's most incompetent government agency). penn-dot gave me the information i needed to restore my license: which tickets i needed to pay, restoration fees, etc. i paid the tickets, sent the d-o-t a check, and drove off in my new-to-me sable.

but here was this man, crisp in his uniform, sleep in his eyes, telling me that all that had never really happened.

my dry mouth cracked as i struggled to grasp his words, and he retreated to his car to run my license. as i was sitting there, i went over possible scenarios in my mind: had they not received the check? had they incorrectly advised me? i did everything they said, and still no license? so i assumed i would get a ticket and have to abandon my car. i called my boss, told him i would be late, and began to consider how i would get to work.

after a few moments, the trooper returned and asked me to step out of the car. red flags everywhere. he walked backwards in front of me, guided me around to the back of my vehicle, and asked me to put my hands on my trunk. i had my key in my hand, so i put it in my pocket. he didn't like that very much. he yelled for me to get my hands away from my pockets, grabbed my arm and spun me around, forcing my hands against the cold white metal which enveloped my slowly dying automobile.

"sir, i'm on my way to work", i pleaded. he said everything would be explained in a moment as he slipped a particularly oppressive pair of handcuffs onto my wrists, almost completely cutting off the circulation in my hands. they turned me around to face them, and the first thing they told me was that i was not under arrest. could have fooled me. the officer went on to say that i had five outstanding warrants for parking tickets, all from 2004, and i would need to be brought to the police station to respond to them.

once we arrived at the station, i was remanded into the custody of a constable. i spent the better part of the morning in small, cement cells, waiting to appear before judges in several different district offices across the county. eventually, i was placed in a harness, one of those leather belt things with handcuffs in the front. the next few hours were a blur of signatures, promises to pay this and that, and general demeaning, dehumanizing treatment.

i was stopped, apprehended, thrown into a cell, and forced to make a very embarassing phone call to my boss (not to mention waste a personal day) because of parking tickets. i'm glad the streets are safe from people who can't seem to stay away from fire hydrants or read street cleaning signs. i understand that i didn't take care of my responsibilities, but does irresponsible behavior "warrant" that kind of treatment? what kind of fucked up, fascist police state arrests its citizens for failing to pay a ten dollar parking ticket? i'm definitely not going to murder anyone now (i had been considering it*) if this is how they treat parking violations.

p.s. i still can't feel my thumb. i think it might be dead.

*not really.

asstard of the month: august

august's asstard in chains, just how i like 'em.

he’s america’s newest sweetheart. not since scott peterson has our increasingly embarrassing mainstream media embraced someone with such fervor, nor have they devoured and spewed information about a single person with such voracious excess.

amidst the great news (great, n. incomprehensibly crappy; depressing) the last full summer month delivered, john mark karr demoted michael jackson as the worlds most fucked up individual by confessing to the murder of jonbenet ramsey. of course, what most of us (or, at least, i) suspected from the beginning of the latest greatest show on earth was confirmed through dna testing: he didn’t do it.

apparently, boulder police were aware of karr’s obsession for some time. a documentary produced years ago by the lead investigator featured a scene where police attempt to contact karr by telephone to no avail. when he was arrested in thailand a few weeks ago, he confessed, revealing that he and jonbenet, and not nicole “i-don’t-eat” kidman and tom “shut-up-and-give-birth-to-my-spawn” cruise were the hottest supercouple of the nineties. they were in love, he says. on the night of her death, he claimed they had engaged in a “romantic and very sexual encounter”, after which he accidentally beat the bejeezus out of her, pulverizing her internal organs, and strangled her until she died. oops.

to hear him speak of the crime, one would come to the conclusion that this man is not only batshit, but also quite proud of it. he seemed to revel in the attention. while on camera, his eyes glazed over and his expression was one of serenity as he basked in the afterglow of fucking the taxpayers of boulder. he virtually stopped short of hiring an agent, requesting that johnny depp play him in a movie about his life. johnny depp has taken on an eclectic assortment of rolls in the course of his career, but this guy just might be too strange, even for him. i can’t speak for johnny, but i would rather have karr piss on my face than be associated with him in such a way.

one can’t completely blame this guy for his behavior, though. he’s obviously not living in the same world as the rest of us. anyone who is turned on by a five year-old’s “hot bellybutton” can not be held responsible for their actions. this is where society should step in, lock him up, and hide the key between saddam’s nukes and pecos bill’s collection of leprechaun semen samples.

personally, i blame the media.

our media: sweet, aren’t they? as the technological hold on the mainstream press advances, it’s becoming apparent that the media obstructs our justice system by over-analyzing and overexposing alleged criminals and giving preference to certain stories while completely ignoring others. when was the last time you saw nancy grace running through the streets with a lynch mob because some little black girl got killed?

the worst of this breed of “journalists” is rita cosby, who routinely serves as puppetmaster to public lynchings so blatant that fox news was effectively transformed into the lacy peterson network for the better part of a year. the man is guilty as hell, but she had him tried and convicted before police had even found the body. she is a sensationalist who engages in irresponsible speculation with seemingly little regard for the way her influence on the american people shapes public opinion. is it still possible at this point to find anyone with little enough exposure to the ramsey case to qualify as a juror? it’s highly doubtful. there is a fairly telling photo circulating online of ms. cosby peering into the window of the cruiser which transported karr to his first court appearance. their gazes are locked, and from the expression on her face, you would have thought she had just walked in on the dead half of the beatles taking turns ass-ramming jerry garcia in her bathroom.

we must, must, must practice restraint when reporting news related to our justice system. there is a reason our citizens are considered innocent until proven guilty. the founders understood that mankind has a history of condemning the innocent, and although the system they devised is far from perfect, it is still among the most humane and reasoned in the world.

so, thank you, john mark karr, august’s asstard of the month. thank you for being the sick, perverted, tax-wasting, kiddie-tittie-fucking whackjob that you are. you have opened many eyes to the consequences of over reporting. cheers.

alcohol + too much free time = this.

cover your face.


open your eyes.


show him how you feel...


...about the great satan.


jihad

...death to america.

a new fragrance by abdul-samaad versace

songs about bob[ulah].

another super-cool bob

same drill as on trouble's page: i give you the song title, you give me the artist. good luck!

but first....here are those simply entitled, "bob":

"bob" by ed's redeeming qualities
"bob" by primus
"bob" by weird al yankovic
"bob" by nofx

here we go:

"bob3"
"analog bob"
"song for bob dylan"
"bobby's girl"
"bobby's song"
"run bobby run"
"bobby brown goes to town"
"bobby franks"
"bobby jean"
"bobby know-it-all"
"viva bobby joe"
"me and bobby and bobby's brother"
"me and bobby mcgee"
"bob's crew"
"my friend bob"
"nobody beats my bob"

the best.

i was thinking of the best (so far) things that have happened to me in my life. then i began to break those things down into different categories. once that was done, i chose best of the best winners. i started making subcategories, and things got hazy after that. so i'm going to keep it simple for you folks. in the grand tradition of stupid myspace bulletins, here are my best. call it the bobcademy awards. the bobscars.

best dinner

the best meal i ever ate was a crab feast at a small joint called "jack's" just outside of fenwick island, delaware. for 25 bucks we got all the crabs, corn on the cob, hush puppies, and coca-cola we could stomach, and it was delicious. it wasn't that the crabs were outstanding. they were pretty average, actually. it was the combination of foods, and in such great excess, that made this meal a memorable one.

best brother battle

my siblings and i had many, many battles over the years, and for the most part successfully hid their full scope from our easily distracted parents. my favorite began in the summer, and didn't completely end until the following spring. on a particularly hot, humid afternoon, i decided to make a pitcher of frozen apple juice. my wheels kicked into motion, and about five minutes later i found myself offering my younger brother a glass of the cool, delicious nectar. as i watched him chug, and subsequently vomit my urine, i felt a warm sense of satisfaction, only peppered with minor feelings of guilt. the next winter, my time had arrived, only this time the trojan horse was a steaming cup of cocoa. my brother had, quite brilliantly, come to the conclusion that urine's yellow tint would leave the cocoa close to its original shade, plus, since both liquids are warm, it was more likely that i would imbibe more of the nasty concotion before realizing what was happening. so, until the next spring, we were tied. i decided to go atomic on our little war, and pissed all over the basement floor. i then summoned my deepest feelings of disgust as i told my dad i'd seen my brother do it. i sat on the basement steps, victorious, as the poor guy got the lecture of a lifetime while cleaning up my piss with an old rag.

best sister battle

when i was a kid, i had a pet mouse named luke. he was the first pet i'd ever had that lived for more than a year. i was extremely proud of this fact, as well as quite emotionally attached to the little rodent. my slightly younger sister, one afternoon, felt it would be prudent to introduce luke to the family airdale terrier, kelly. we'll say they got off to a rocky start, and my little mouse died in my hands minutes later. in the days that followed i pondered, then exacted my revenge. i filled the water dish in the small aquarium that housed my sister's pet tree frog, monkey (i have no idea why), and waiting for the amphibian to die a slow, but streak-free death. when nothing happened after about an hour, i picked the little guy up and gently placed him in the tainted dish. still, nothing happened. apparently, frogs and windex are not a lethal combination. luckily, the marriage of frogs and having their faces shoved under any kind of liquid for a few seconds is quite deadly, and thus monkey perished.

best kiss

the summer of '02 drew to a close, as did the romance that had blossomed between me and the goofy nerd from florida, and we were saying goodbye at sunrise. things had gotten shaky a month before, and we decided to be friends for the remainder of his time here. so there had been no kissing, no touching, for a solid four weeks. he looked at me with his lovely brown eyes, and whispered that he wasn't leaving without a kiss. i hesitated, but it was too late. we were locked into a passionate, desperate kiss that put all others to shame, yet completely broke my heart. as i drove off, i watched him in my mirrors, knowing that i would probably never see him again. this would later prove to be an untrue assumption. we've remained friends for more than four years. my love life has grown more mature and more passionate, but i've never forgotten that kiss.

best sex

i will respect the other participant and only say this: it involved a toilet seat, an unpaid heating bill, and a lot of steam.
note: this is actually the second best sex i've ever had. the actual first best is much too personal to recount. sorry.

best night of drinking

i used to work at a brewpub in lancaster. one sunday night, i was covering the closing bar shift, and by ten p.m. the place was empty. the manager on duty that night had started as a server, so we were all friends with her. we decided it would be a good idea to close down two hours early and get drunk for free. now, there were about four or five of us: the two servers, mark and a.j., my roomate, kate, the manager, brooke, and myself, and together we drank roughly $400 worth of beer, shots, and cocktails. i drank a lot of winter warmer, a dark, thick brew with nearly 10% abv. four pints of that, a flurry of shots, and four hours later we were stealing six-packs and preparing to walk back to my apartment to drink more. needless to say, we were all heavily bombed at this point, so walking and carrying beer was probably not the best idea. we lost quite a few bottles, but no one seemed to care, and we spent the remainder of the night playing asshole and hitting my bong. around 6 a.m. we somehow managed to drive to columbia diner for the greasiest meal any of us had ever eaten. we were all in bed by 7:30, and back at work the next day by 11.


tell me yours, or come up with some new categories. everyone who responds will get a virtual gold star.

retrospect killed the progressive star.

it's been a big week for the "told you so" crowd. i've said before that knowing too much can lead to apathy, and it's never been more true than it is right now. the war rages on indefinitely, things in the middle east are falling apart, the value of the dollar is plummeting, the treasury is being systematically raped, yet americans still have their heads up their respective asses over gay marriage, immigration, and joe lieberman's majestic fall from grace. personally, i'm looking forward to kicking back and watching our once-great nation crumble before my sweet brown eyes. o'reilly, this isn't because i hate america; i have great admiration and respect for those who dreamed this crazy shit into existence in the first place. i just hate what industry has done to it and its people. it's as if we know our time as a nation is winding down, and we're trying desperately to hold onto any glimmer of a life we once knew, where girls were girls and men were men. but mister, could we really use a man like herbert hoover again?

at first glance, the '40s and '50s were pretty great. the big war was over, everyone was getting laid, dames and dollars were at an all-time high, and the 'american dream' was born. but let's look at things objectively. while we were polishing our kenmore appliances in pearls and heels, most people in hiroshima and nagasaki were still trying to get the plutonium stains out of their carpet. this "golden age" was ushered in by unprecedented death and destruction. so, the pile of horse shit in the road has a flower growing in it. you still going to stop and fucking smell it?

by this time we had long replaced the state-sanctioned enslavement of blacks with the status-quo servitude of women. imagine a time where individual human beings--people with minds and hearts and thoughts and emotions--were conditioned to believe that their only worth lied in their inferiority and loyalty to other people. every decision, from what to make for dinner, to what polka-dots to wear while vaccuming the rug, was made to please, satisfy, or at least orchestrated so as not to disturb, their male counterparts. so, a woman stays home all day, cooks, cleans, deals with all the shit the children do, all so a man can come home, sit on his ass, drink six martinis, and pass out in his fucking chair? sweet deal for the guy, but how come? because he has a job? imagine how pissed women must have been when they finally entered the workforce and realized that they'd been duped into man-worship for a couple of centuries. housework has always been much harder.

and this only covers white people, the folks who supposedly had it best during this era. being black in the fifties is probably comparable to being jewish in lebanon right now. separate drinking fountains, bathrooms, schools, bus seating, and (in some places) sidewalks. sidewalks. this is a bruise on the american psyche which speaks for itself. granted, rosa parks wasn't a suicide bomber, but still.

politicians like to appeal to older or more conservative voters by invoking images of the nuclear family, carefree, skipping into the sunset. but once that sun went down, what was left was a lot of injustice, inequality, and general ugliness. we started cleaning up the whole mess in the 60s, but there's still a long way to go. with all of its problems, i still prefer 21st century life, although some evil has been replaced by new evil (in the 50s, if you were black, the government simply ignored you. now, they leave you to die --katrina). how good can a country be when its quality of life is better for some citizens than others? you can't hit the breaks, you can't go back, and honestly, we don't want to. so stop trying.

blocked.

i have nothing to say. i am uninspired, random, and dull. so, here's some t.v. trivia.

take the line from the t.v. theme song and tell me the name of the show. i'm so sorry about this.

1) "if you threw a party, invited everyone you knew, you would see the biggest gift would be from me"

2) "new york is where i'd rather stay, i get allergic smelling hay"

3) "you burned your breakfast. so far, things are going great."

4) "why do we always come here? i guess we’ll never know. it’s like a kind of torture to have to watch the show."

5) "whatever happened to predictability? the milkman, the paperboy, the evening t.v.?"

6) "it's a rare condition, in this day and age, to read any good news on the newspaper page."

7) "boy the way glenn miller played, songs that made the hit parade, guys like us we had it made"

8) "best notify my next of kin, this wheel shall explode"

9) "oh we spend our days like bright and shiny new dimes. if we’re ever puzzled by the changing times."

10) "fish don’t fry in the kitchen; beans don’t burn on the grill."

updates and such.

i realized today that i've been blogging like a fiend lately, but i've drifted away from insights into the life of moi (as if anyone in the blogosphere cares). for my close, personal friends, however, here is what is going on in bobby's world:

1) i made the difficult decision to end my friendship with my ex, charlie, for now at least. we have plans to hit hersheypark tomorrow with his son, so we decided this would be the last time we see each other for a while. the idea of not talking to him every day and seeing him is about as pleasant as internal bleeding but, as i told him, it's not healthy for me to be his friend right now. when you love someone who used to love you and doesn't anymore (as unfathomable as that may be) you try to hold onto any shred of hope that his feelings will change. having, through him, confirmed that i am indeed not devoid of human emotion, and that i really can love someone in a real way (as opposed to the fairy tale love to which i once aspired), i'm aching to experience it with someone who feels the same way. knowing myself, this is the only way to move on. keeping up the friendship would be like picking a scab and wondering why the wound won't heal. that's a lot of blood references. quite fitting.

2) my new position at the newspaper is exhausting. i'm here six days a week, i'm getting little sleep, and i work weekends. but i'm making money and i feel like a grownup, both pluses. on the downside, i got in trouble for being three minutes late last week. i'm used to being in a private office with two other like-minded people, strolling in at 8:45 every morning to zero grief. plus, i miss the fish. one is named after me, mr. bobbles. he's mr. bubbles' twin brother. i don't think my plant, elliott, likes it here, either. i water him plenty, and he gets ample light--more so than before--but he's slowly drooping and turning brown and yellow. yesterday, he lost a leaf. in addition to the "change factor" there's a lot of math involved in my work (those of you who know me just groaned in sympathy). don't misunderstand, i enjoy my job. it's challenging, the people are nice, and i'm able to flex my brain in areas that i hadn't with previous positions. but i'm thinking: two years, tops.

3) my baby sister had her first gay bar experience tuesday. she joined kmoney, who was in lancaster during the week (a happening worthy of a parade), trouble and two of her friends, and charlie. of this momentous occasion, she remarked, "i like it here. i don't have to worry about guys hitting on me." a slow night for me, i replied, "apparently, neither do i." i did eventually get a phone number, and a really hot, albeit brief, makeout session in the bathroom towards the end of the evening (with the same person, dirty minds).

4) i've developed a mild case of insomnia. i sleep, but it's usually not until 2 or 3 a.m. i would cite my years in foodservice with its odd hours and late nights as the reason for my restlessness, but this is a more recent problem. in any case, i've discovered the remedy: 2 shots of nyquil. i'm skeptical of its healing powers in terms of illness, but it certainly cures consciousness.

ok, so there's not a lot going on. i'd better get back to writing about abortion and obnoxious game show contestants before someone dubs me "the new nyquil".

sir bounce-a-lot.

"our" karaoke bar has a bouncer. you'll find her at the bottom of the stairs at the three crowns dungeon lounge. we're regulars, so she'll give us hugs and then take our $2. it feels like we pay for hugs. don't get me started on the fact that i have to pay a cover to get into a carpeted bar in the basement of a hotel frequented by at least three guys named "snake". my late aunt helen used to drink at this dive in the fifties, and i'm pretty sure they had the same chairs. and just the fact that the bouncer is female-- a burly, imposing female, but a female-- should indicate that this is not the most happening place in town. then again, the most happening place in town has the original disco floor (which still lights up) that was installed when it opened in the late-seventies, not to mention a notorious ghetto meat market reputation. doesn't anyone in this place redecorate?

so, we're patiently waiting our turns to sing one night, when troub-a-dub-dub mentions that one of the guys with a link on her blog has been reading my ramblings and is quite amused. i'm pretty new at this blogging thing, so this revelation floored me. this guy has a book deal! and he reads my blog! and he likes it! it's kind of like being an up-and-coming actor and finding out al pacino really admires your work. so, wasting no time, i checked out his skills as soon as i got home that night, and they are plentiful. i laughed so hard i think i need a new bladder. ten things not to do when you get thrown out of a club is the blog entry equivelant of anna karenina. ok, the drama queen in me is starting to seep through, but he's really, really funny nonetheless. so to the three of you reading this right now, please do yourselves a favor and click here.