What an asshole

 'How are you?' asked the barista of the man behind me.
'I'm still waiting to be served so you tell me' he angrily replied. He'd been waiting no longer than eight seconds, I'd been there about eight seconds and I was there first, and my transaction was only at the midpoint, hence his agonizing wait.

He decided the wait was long enough however and began to describe what he wanted out loud just assuming they were writing it down. I'm not a coffee connoisseur but it should not need a long lecture to describe how you want your coffee. Especially at a Starbucks.  

I wasn't listening as I was too focused on hating him with my mind. He was a middle aged man, with salt and pepper hair partly covered with a tiny hat, and he wore clothes that were clearly chosen to be stylish yet quirky. This was a man who wanted to be noticed, and if you want to be noticed and are also rude then surely that means you want people to know you are rude? I did hear the tone of his request, and it was far from jovial and I did hear his tag line as he went to walk away - 'I'll be right back but you better use warm milk, you got that'

I went and took a seat and he returned with a pile of magazines, all gay themed, much of it porn. This was in a big chain bookstore and I know the big chains allow people to read like it’s a library, but I have a particular dislike for those who take too much advantage of this. It doesn't mean trash the magazines, rip pages out if you want like I have seen done, or break the spine of books, rendering them 'used' so those who end up paying for them don't get a clean product, and it doesn’t mean read the porn in front of strangers, but I already knew this was the type of guy who didn't give a shit.

It turned out that he had previously left a magazine that he didn't own at a table before ordering his coffee. People are forever leaving magazines lying around in bookstore coffee shops, so you learn to just take tables if that is the only sign someone else is using it, however when this man discovered a woman sitting in a chair adjacent to the magazine he had left he yelled at her 'HEY, that’s my seat!' and when she apologized and started to leave, clearly embarrassed, he yelled again 'you can take one of the other chairs' pointing at the two at the table he was at, as if she may want to now sit and share a table with him, in one of the chairs he found too poor for his own behind.

As she hurried away, clearly hoping to avoid being yelled at again by a strange effeminate middle aged man in public, he yelled loud enough to make sure everyone heard 'look at the Montreal princess, we should send her to one of the boarding schools I went to.'

A couple of people laughed nervously. I just thought ‘what an asshole’.

Then I began to fantasize. I am in Montreal at the moment, home to the huge ‘Just For laughs comedy Festival’, and I began to imagine I was performing in the festival tonight, and how I may tell the story of this man to my adoring crowd.

‘I bet he never even went to boarding school’ I thought I may say ‘he probably just masturbates thinking of boarding school boys?’

Hmmm, would my audience laugh at that? Maybe not.

‘He's probably the rare kind of gay man who is a dominant bottom’ I speculated, ‘he probably says to his lovers’ I continued, in my mind, and then imagining acting him out I put on his voice and said to my audience “alright now you're going to fuck me, but I only want you to penetrate me four inches, if you go deeper I will get very mad, you got that? Ok do it, now.  Ok, ok, now that's only three and a half inches, are you a fucking moron?”'

‘Yeah that would get a huge laugh!’ I decided.

It was now I remembered that I was not performing tonight in the comedy festival, as the festival isn’t on, and I don’t have an adoring fan base, perhaps because I don’t even perform stand-up anymore. Instead I was currently sitting in a Starbucks imagining middle-aged men having gay sex.

That's the problem with rude assholes, they never think about just how they affect those around them.

Wanna come with me?

Usually I would have been wary of a stranger coming up to me and saying 'hey do you like pins? If so you should come to SmithWicks with me?'

Not today however. I was wary free. It surprised me how wary free I was to be honest. So much so I was wary of my lack of wariness.

I mean I do like strangers obviously. They inspired Doors songs. They are the most likely people to offer you candy when you're a kid. And almost everyone I'm currently friendly with was a stranger at some point. Some of them are strangers still today! Yep that's right, I'm the kind of fellow who befriends those who have yet to make their acquaintance with every person. Sure in my friends' cases it's less of a time constraint keeping them as strangers to various people and more because they are trying to make acquaintance with every species of amphibian before focusing on humans, but I met most of them while making Sugarless Flea Wine, so who am I to judge?

Also I do love pins, obviously, especially when they are being used to pin something awesome up. Like a weird colored leaf, or a drawing of a rambunctious pig, or a cool poster advertising something super cool like a 'pins at SmithWicks' night.

I didn't know SmithWicks well at the time but clearly it was an awesome place. I mean 'smith' is short for blacksmith, and they used to make swords! And 'Wick' is short for 'Chadwick' who was a soccer player for Manchester United in 1896 before he randomly disappeared only to make a surprise comeback for three games in 2009, now with an intensely pronounced overbite, which just goes to prove that you can do amazing things as a ghost if you're willing to be supremely ugly.

So it must have been the words 'if' 'so' 'you' 'should' and 'come' that sourced my wariness at my lack of wariness. 

- Should

- You

- So

- If

- Come

All weird words. All one syllable. All practically meaningless unless inserted and ordered correctly into a meaningful sentence. Usually a sentence made up by a weirdo on the street. So why wasn't I wary of them? 

Perhaps I am maturing. Perhaps I am becoming more 'literal' in my old age. Perhaps having a weird colored leaf pinned to my left eyeball was distracting me. I really don't know. But 'if' 'you' 'have' 'an' 'answer' you're probably smarter than me, and if so want some candy? I have some that was given to me by an overbite ridden stranger so you know it's awesome.

Auckland - well known for lack of statues

The largest city in New Zealand – Auckland - was well known for having very few statues. It was their claim to fame you may say, and they were mighty proud of it.

‘Auckland – well known for having very few statues!’ Was printed on t-shirts, bumper stickers, tea towels, and even little empty squares that looked like a statue may sit on it, only was not there at all, which were designed to symbolize the lack of a statue, and show off Auckland’s claim to fame, being that Auckland was well known for having very few statues.

Then Lord of the Rings came to New Zealand. The Lord of the Rings was filmed on the south island of New Zealand, where as Auckland is on the north island of New Zealand, so Auckland didn’t feel like their personal tourism industry was under any real threat. ‘Besides’ they thought ‘if the movie the Lord of the Rings is so smart how come none of the characters ever jumbled the bad ring up among a huge pile of less important yet similar looking rings so it would be harder to figure out which one to nick? Or they could put the ring on a robot, because robots obviously never form emotional attachments to “things” until they get cast into a sitcom and you can't have a sitcom in the Lord of the Rings world because there are talking trees, and that'd be silly’.

No Auckland was happy to be well known for having very few statues thank you, because smart tourists wouldn’t go to the place Lord of the Rings was filmed, smart tourists would want to go to a place well known for having very few statues, and Auckland was super well known for having very few statues. People from all over the world could be heard to say to their friends ‘lets go on a vacation to Auckland, did you know they well known for having very few statues?’ and their friends would reply ‘of course I know they are well known for very few statues, that's a very well known fact about Auckland and when things are very well known I am the sort of person who would know those things, but yes let’s go to Auckland, did you know they are well known for very few statues?’

Things in Auckland swam along swimmingly for thousands of years, but then disaster was invented – twitter.

@TimDaven tweeted one day 'I’m in Auckland, there sure are very few statues'.

The backlash was huge and instant and bad. Angry responses came in the dozens over the next few weeks, things were said such as:

-       Don't say it like that.

-       Um obviously, we’re well known for having very few statues, so why do you have to say it like that? And

-       We’re already really well known for having a lack of statues, you don’t go to Manchester and twitter ‘sure are lots of English people’, you don’t go to the moon and twitter ‘sure are lots of moon rocks’ no you don’t, because those things are well known, they don’t need saying, so don’t say it like that.

The dust was only just beginning to settle on this nightmare when @ToddSchiles posted a twitter picture of him standing in front of a statue in Auckland with the caption 'Me in front of a statue in Auckland’.

The backlash was huge and instant and bad. Angry responses came in the dozens over the next few weeks, things were said such as:

-       Really, I thought Auckland was known for a lack of statues?

-       We're known for few, and few is few, not none, you idiot

-       If that’s true how come this guy has a photo of himself in front of a statue in Auckland?  And

-       FEW ISN’T NONE, we’re well known for having very FEW statues, learn your ambiguous number representational words you TOOL!

Soon a war broke out that threatened middle Auckland, someone tried to get a ring involved but then someone mentioned a big bucket of similar yet less important rings, and robots were pointed out, foreheads slapped and new solutions sort.

‘We could have heroes win the war for us’ was offered by a forward thinking Aucklandier,

'Yeah but then we'll have to build statues in their honor, possibly shirtless, and then we may end up with MORE than few statues’ came the swift and intelligent response.

Arguments on what to do about the war persisted and while that was happening the war itself petered into nothing.

Unpredicted by all involved, Auckland now was known also known for not having much of a war, this reputation started to cancel out the long held gravitas they had earned as being well known for having few statues. You can’t be well known for having not much of two things, the cast shadows over each other and create a dark blur.

Auckland is not known for much at all anymore. Now they’re just known for having not much of anything. The tourism board doesn’t know where to turn. I told them they should start a sitcom with talking trees and a robot that forms emotional attachments to things. But they shot me down 'that's too obvious' they said.

They were so mean about it I didn't even tell them my real idea, the idea guaranteed to get them tourists - they could start a war so they have an excuse to build statues!

On twitter everyone’s talking about statues. Follow me on twitter @davidtieck

Unsung hero of the week

A would like to offer a quick salute to 'Gregarleo' the first man ever to realize that if you randomly take your shirt off a lot in public someone will eventually make a sculpture of your torso.

As I am sure you are aware, immediately after Gregarleo debuted his fearless avant-garde use of shirtlessness, countless inventions, many of which we still cherish today, were created to aid and enhance the shirtlessness experience, things like:
- T-shirts, which were invented for men to get shirtless as quick as possible whenever a sculptoror is rumored to be near
- Ab implants, still the only way to acquire a six pack
- The phrase 'do my back moles look cancerous to you?'
- David Beckham, who was invented to immediately take off his shirt after any game of soccer regardless of how cold it may be

And

- Horses, which were invented to climb upon so more people could see you once you’d taken your t-shirt off.

Of course it was Caesar himself, at the time a lowly flag waver in the New Roman Green Berets, who upon sensing that a fellow soldier moonlit as a sculptoror spontaneously jumped up on a horse, whipped off his t-shirt and screamed to the battle faring army around him ‘show no mercy on this battle field, for our enemy, those unarmed villages down there, they are pure evil, and evil has no heart’.

And later that night it was a newly promoted Sergeant Caesar of the 34^th Airborne who sensing a fellow celebrator sculpted when he was drunk spontaneously jumped up on the pool table in the bar, whipped off his t-shirt, and screamed ‘tonight we celebrate, for today we stuck a stake right into the heart of evil, you know those unarmed villagers we murdered today.’

Inconsistency of information about the anatomy of evil aside, we remember Caesar for his splendid, implant enhanced abs, because of the shirtless statues a bunch of drunks made that night, and sculptors of shirtless men finally escaped the underground avant-garde world and entered the mainstream, and so it is often Caesar who gets the credit for inspiring the movement.

Gerebero, sadly does not get the honor he deserves. Maybe because after Caesar took all the glory Gerebero realized that if you randomly take your jeans off a lot in public someone will eventually make a sculpture of your penis, starting a far less liked movement.

Well I choose to remember Gerebero the younger man, as he appears in the statue of him sitting in front of the delapetated Church on Oxfordshire Rd in Auckland, waving his t-shirt above his head, flabby but ‘natural’ abs jiggling widly, jeans firmly secured by a fine handcrafted belt, and riding upon one of the early models for the horse, which at the time was just a bunch of David Beckhams sticky taped together.

Don’t go and re-see Titanic until you read this

People are once again flocking to see the movie titanic, this time in 3D, and yet - true story - today I saw a man eating a hamburger with chopsticks! And somehow I was the only one gawking at him in wonder!

I may be in the minority here, but I say real life is sometimes more interesting than fiction. And it's in this spirit, and with Titanic back at the movies, that I've decided to finally reveal a very, very dark family secret.

My Great Great Grandfather ‘Harvey’ was ON the Titanic! (This isn’t the secret by the way, but still too cool to not warrant a dramatic one-line announcement that could only possibly be spoiled by an inclusion of unnecessary exposition following the big reveal!)

Here is the secret - one night during the voyage Harvey was on deck going for a stroll when a man came up to him hurriedly and said 'hey Harvey right? You have a car on ship don't you? Well a couple of filthy kids just fucked in it and left gross sweaty hand prints all over it!'

In a rage my Great, Great Grandfather Harvey ran to his car and what he saw there made him go 'eeeewwwwww'. Sure enough, there were gross sweaty handprints on the windows, and all sorts of bodily fluids on the back seat. One of these bodily fluids was splooge, and splooge is the ickiest of all bodily fluids.

'You don't fuck in someone else's car, you just don't!' Harvey yelled. 'eeeewwwwww' he added.

Later during this same voyage, and you may or may not know this, but the Titanic sank. Still, despite the horror of the accident, Harvey just could not get the idea that people had fucked in his car out of his mind.

He did everything he could to get the grossness out of his mind. He even sent a recovery crew to the sink sight to recover his car just so he could burn it. 'You don't fuck in someone else's car, you just don't!' Harvey yelled as the car burned 'eeeewwwwww' he added, but it wasn’t enough.

This became the obsession of his life. Trying to stop people fucking in stranger’s cars became his life’s work. He would tell anyone he met anywhere. Friends and strangers alike. He even took a job as a car salesman for a while, he figured anytime he could sell a car to someone it would allow them to fuck in their own cars instead of other people’s, 'can I interest you in a new ford because you don't fuck in someone else's car, you just don't!' Harvey would say to prospective customers. 'eeeewwwwww'  he'd add as they walked away.

After he was fired from that job he just began ranting on the street, ranting at church and even ranting on corporate golf retreats. One time he was in a foursome with some associates when one asked about his refusal to ride in the golf cart ‘you don't fuck in someone else's car, you just don't!' Harvey to told them while he looked at the cart,  'eeeewwwwww' he added noting that none of his colleagues owned their particular golf carts and yet all three were currently fucking in them.

Well one of those colleges was quite taken aback by my Great Great Grandfather Harvey’s attitude, as a man who regularly fucked in other people’s cars he'd never thought about how gross it might be. 'It must be the splooge I always leave behind' he thought.

That mans name was Gerald Durex. He went on to invent the condom, at the time specifically so he could fuck in other peoples cars without leaving splooge behind, but ultimately turning the condom into the invention that would render just about all casual sex into an act that feels far less good than it could, whether in your own car, god forbid, someone else’s. 

In fact condom use had now become so rife that I have heard that some people are so detached from physical contact they even use chopsticks to eat hamburgers! And it's all my Great Great Grandfather Harvey’s fault.

Well I guess this is all pretty much public knowledge, however I should also point out my Great Grand Father Harvey actually died on the Titanic! He was standing by his car when the iceberg hit ‘you don't fuck in someone else's car, you just don't!' he was yelling 'eeeewwwwww' he added as water filled up this section of the underbelly of the boat drowning him.

Everything that happened since happened with his ghost! He's sitting behind me watching me type this as we speak.

So there it is, my family’s big dark secret. And that my friends, is real life. So don't go re-see a movie about a gold digger who cheats on her fiancé with a dreamy third classer with awesomely realistic special affects, clearly real life is way more interesting.

But if you do go despite my warnings, please keep your ears open during the scene when they fuck in that stranger’s car, if you listen closely you may be able to hear the ghost of my Great Great Grandfather Harvey whispering 'eeeewwwwww'.

Who wants an awesome job?

If someone ever randomly asked me if I wanted to control the tollbooth levies I think twelve very distinct and important questions would have to be answered first:

1.  Really me?
2. The tollbooth levies?
3.  Control?
4. Do the tollbooths themselves have levies, or is it the levies the tollbooths charge that you want me to control?
5. Control is such a fascist word; can I just give them guidance?
6. Can I paint them purple?
7. Are people really ‘born’ gay?
8.  What's the big deal with misusing the words’ their’, ‘there’ and ‘they're’?
9.  Why not the bowl tooth levies?
10. My knowledge of the economics surrounding tollbooth levy control is only somewhere in-between intermediate advanced and advanced expert, so really me?
11.  Are you going to answer any of these or should I just keep going?

12. The tollbooth levies?

If the answers came back as:
1. Yes
2. Yes

3. No - see later answer

4. Are you an idiot of course what they charge!

5. I don't think you can be fascist with a booth

6.  Yes please – we’ve actually long considered painting over the swastikas

7.  Sort of - it’s hard to explain DON'T YOU JUDGE ME!

8. Some people's lives are so perfect they have time to concern themselves with trivial bullshit

9.  Because of time wasted on trivial bullshit the we're forced to live in a world so bland bowl tooth levies barely even exist anymore

10. We would like someone with a bit better credentials but no one else is willing to take this shitty job

11.  Yes I just did
12.  Yeah, why not, it’s an awesome job that almost everyone will be fighting over

Well then yeah, I’d consider taking control of the tollbooth levies, apparently it’s an awesome job that almost everyone will be fighting over, so that sounds cool, so you know what, count me in, just as long as there planning on driving me they're otherwise I'd never even consider working their.

I am king of the roofs

'Your exhibiting some particularly bizarre behavior recently' she said
'Thank you, I was hoping you'd notice' I replied

We were on the roof at the time doing some roofing, because we don't practice on the ground, no siree, we're not that kind of couple, when we want to ride moose like they were donkeys, we ride moose like they were donkeys, when we want to invent an alcoholic shot called a 'coconut corner face leaf' we don't just do it, we make them the number one alcoholic shot on earth, and if you've never heard of them that's just because you've had so many of them that you don't remember the past eight years of your life. We call it roofing out. And it happens to us all at some point. Even to teetotalers, and those guys are pussys, until you spike their coffee with a 'coconut corner face leaf', and so clearly if we want to roof, you better believe we go straight to the roof!

I don't remember why exactly we wanted to go roofing. Since the 'coconut corner face leaf' took off we've been so rich we live in buildings so extravagant they no longer even have roofs. Don't worry, it's not your lack of eight years of memory causing you to not know about the 'roofless living extravaganza lovfrest sheds', you have to be a world famous alcoholic shot inventor to be invited to even tour the premises, and you have to pay for your own subway token. 'Subway’ of course being the 'ironic' name we use for 'moose ride'. Ha ha, and you can't buy a moose ride, you have to earn a moose's respect with inventing skills, everyone knows that. Ha ha,

I won't bore you with information on what we use instead of roofs, which is lucky because what we use for roofs is so interesting it could never bore anyone, in fact it’s so interesting it could make a sloth dance for a slipper sole, which is ironic because sloths don't wear slippers, and also because we use stretched sloth scrotums for roofs even though they are so weak that once stretched they barely can keep out a drop of rain, let alone the storm of sloth feces hurled at us daily by angry moose. ‘It’s all about living dangerously’ said my neighbor Bill, and he knows a thing or two about that, he invented the alcoholic shot known as the ‘cocksucking cowboy’ and you better believe he is a guy that does research before naming an alcoholic shot.

Yep times have been good. Or so I believed. Until my lover told me that she thought I'd been behaving bizarrely recently while we were roofing, now times aren't good, they are magnificent, my lover has finally noticed I'm not the boring guy I always assumed she thought I was.

I'm not going to lie, even I have doubted my levels of interestingness, I mean I've never even seen a bat vomit candle wax on a sunken submarine, so how dare I consider myself interesting? I mean what kind of boring psycho hasn't seen that? Sure I could see a bat vomit candle wax on a sunken submarine if I simply swallowed my pride and finally gave a nice tip to my local straw deliverer, but I refuse because his straw is always pre-licked by bats and I prefer my straw pre-licked by animals that can see for fuck sake, what do you think I am? A fucking roofer?

Oh right, THAT is why we went roofing. I remember now. My lover was chewing on a string of straw that had been pre-licked by a bat, just to mock me, and I realized that she was just another opportunist trying to take advantage of my flawed levels of normality. ‘Fuck this, let’s go roofing! I cried. I wanted to prove to her once and for all just how interesting I can be. But why should I? Her commentary of ‘your exhibiting some particularly bizarre behavior recently' in hindsight was clearly sarcasm. I hate sarcasm. Just be real, and honest to the core, like ME for god’s sake. 

Why can’t you love me just the way I am, boring and all? You know what lady lover, screw you, I’m blowing this pop stand, and I am telling the moose that I invented the ‘coconut corner face leaf’ all by myself, so enjoy WALKING back to our 'roofless living extravaganza lovfrest shed', and if you want to make love tonight then fine, but we’re only doing it in twelve positions maximum! I am not making special efforts to be interesting for you anymore!