Wednesday, August 31, 2005

I Call For a Jihad Against the Phone Company!

As the title of this post implies, I am rather upset with Powercom, my local phone company. And no, I'm not an Imam, I'm not even Muslim, and I realize I can't actually call for a Jihad, so save me the theology lesson. I recently received a bill of $232 for phone calls to my internet provider, a call that should be local for me, being that I live less than four miles from the locale I was calling. That's right, less than four miles. I imagine if I shouted loud enough people in Waupun could hear me.

Be that as it may, I was informed that because of the way the phone service providers, Verizon and SBC, have drawn up their coverage maps, Waupun is what they call "Extended Local Service", which apparently means that one company owns some of the lines, the other owns the..um..other lines. What it boils down to is that even if I switched companies, it would still be "Extended Local Service"! Perhaps I live in some sort of telephone twilight zone where no calls are local.

I tried explaining the idiocy of this to the customer service gal on the phone, and when she decided she'd had enough of me she handed me over to her manager. I tried to explain it to him using logic, which was stupid. Corporations don't understand logic and forbid their employees from using it, and I should have realized that. So....they won't reduce my bill and are demanding their money right now. So I did what any sane, rational person would do: I swore at them, called them names and cancelled my phone service. And I'm not paying them, either. Besides, my credit is so messed up from my divorce that I can't really hurt it anymore. This may go down in history as the only time having bad credit actually benefited someone.

Jihad, you fuckers!

(Is that right? I don't have to blow myself up or anything, do I?)


M. PotPie

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Man Bites Dog

I sit and stare out the window, weaving back and forth in the chair, my head spinning, feeling like I’m gonna pass out. Maybe it’s the heat.

Yeah, right. More likely it’s the three tabs of acid and five beers I’ve had in the last half hour. Oscar looks at me disapprovingly, shaking his head. Or maybe my eyes are vibrating and it only looks like he’s shaking his head. He’s a dog, but I’m here to tell you that there’s a lot more going on behind those brown eyes than he lets on.

I lean back in the chair and think back on how we ended up together, Oscar and me. I was living in Minneapolis, cutting grass and plowing snow for a living. Hard work, but for some reason I liked it. It brought me peace and paid decent enough. My girlfriend/fiancée was waiting tables at a chain restaurant. We had just gotten out of a crappy student apartment building and were renting a house. Our house. Sure, the house was crappier than the apartment, being infested with mice and what not, but there were no all night parties (unless we threw them) and no banging on the walls, floors or ceilings. We were sitting around talking one night and the topic turned to dogs. I had always had dogs and really wanted one now. She had never had one of her own and thought it was a good idea. Sensing an opportunity to score some points I turned the conversation in a different direction but didn’t stop thinking about it.

I let a few weeks pass, summer turning into fall, before I acted on the idea. I started reading through the papers, looking for dogs that needed homes. I don’t like purebred dogs. In my experience they’re high maintenance, expensive and usually fairly stupid. Being inbred also produces lots of health problems that I don’t want to deal with. Besides, I don’t want a dog to show or breed, I want a companion, friend and family member.

My eyes fell on an ad from a woman who owns a farm in Buffalo, Minnesota. The ad said she had a litter of Boxer/German Shepherd pups that she would let be adopted for only $40. They had their shots, too. I called her up and asked some questions about the dogs and found out she had two males and a female and that they were about three months old. Call me sexist, but I prefer male dogs. She said they’d grow to be about sixty pounds or so, which suited me just fine. I feel the same way about little yip-dogs that I feel about designer dogs: No fucking way, thank you. So I drove out to Buffalo to meet the dogs.

I pulled up in the gravel driveway, tires crunching. I love that sound. Anyway, I got out of the car and walked over to the house. It was your typical farmhouse…brick, probably over a hundred years old, needed a new roof and probably windows but it would more than likely never fall down. I heard a voice off to my right yell out “I’m over here.”I looked over and sure enough, there she was, walking towards me. She was older than she sounded on the phone, probably in her sixties, but she looked strong and healthy. We met in the driveway and she shook my hand, hers warm, rough and calloused. We introduced ourselves and she told me to follow her out back. I did.

“Out back” is where all the animals were. I say animals because she apparently rescued more than just dogs. I saw a buffalo (or is it bison?), a camel, cats, a pot-bellied pig…probably some others I’m too messed up to remember right now. She led me to a six-by-six chain link pen that had the three litter-mates. The female was yellow, one male was a dark brown and the other red. The female and the dark brown male were wresting around a bit, playing like puppies do. They didn’t stop when I walked up to the pen, so I looked down at the red one. He stared at me, looked me right in the eyes and didn’t blink. That’s odd, I thought. I asked if I could open the pen and saw that she was already doing it. “They’re real gentle.”

The two that were playing looked up as the door opened, paused for a moment and then went back to biting each other’s legs. The red one looked at the door and slowly walked out. He walked up to me, sat down and looked me in the eyes again.

“Do they have names?” I asked her.
“Nope. But I think you may have found a dog.”

I thought she was right and said as much. I decided to ignore him and see what he would do. Nothing. Just sat there. I turned and walked to my car, the little red dog following me about a step behind. I opened the car door and he jumped right in the passenger seat, curled up and went to sleep. At that point I figured that I hadn’t found a dog, but rather the dog had found me and decided I was ok. I still get choked up about that.

Well anyway, I thanked her, paid her and went home. On the way there I figured I better give him a name. At the time, my favorite boxer was Oscar De La Hoya, so I named him Oscar, him being half Boxer and all. He seemed to like it.

By the way, it turns out he’s no Boxer/German Shepherd at all. No, he is, in fact, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, minus the ridge. And he goes about ninety pounds, not sixty. He just turned ten the other day, the same day I turned thirty-six. Yeah, that’s right, we have the same birthday. Karma? Fate? Destiny? Maybe.

I have a lot more stories to tell about Oscar, and I may tell them, but not right now.

By the way, this story is absolutely true. No lie.


M. PotPie

Friday, August 26, 2005

Oops, It's Not a Cold

Ok, so I lied, I have no cold. It can't be a cold, not after four days, so it must be some sort of horrible sickness, some alien virus that infects my very blood.

And my ass hurts, too. Not a good hurt, like a woman's finger...more like prison rape. So what sort of sickness has these symptoms: Runny nose, itchy, watery eyes, lethargy and ass pain. What sort? Ass flu? But my ass is not runny, only painful.

I'm fairly sure I haven't been abducted..certainly my dog would've told me that, wouldn't he? Perhaps put up some sort of fight to help me avoid the abduction..or bark, at the very least. He is canny, my dog, and foul trickeration is not beneath him. I think he still harbors a grudge about the whole castration thing, so perhaps he has tricked me and is silently laughing at me and my sickness.

Or maybe I'm gay sleep-walking. What if, after I fall asleep, I put on chaps, a cowboy hat and a fake moustache and go cruising the rest stops? Not only would this explain the horrible sickness that I could easily have obtained from the dirty bathrooms, it would also explain the ass pain.

Oh shit. I'm gay sleep-walking.

Please, if you see a monkey wearing the afore-mentioned outfit late at night in a rest stop bathroom, take him home. His address is written inside the brim of his cowboy hat.


M. PotPie

Monday, August 22, 2005

I Have a Cold

Today, I have a cold, a summer cold. Summer colds, as we all know, are the worst. Mucus is flowing from my nose in a steady drip reminiscent of Chinese water torture. I sneeze in triplicate, each explosive exhalation (Triple alliteration! 300 points!) the blast of a bull elephant. Even sick I am alpha. The dull ache on the left side of my skull booms like tympani in three-quarter time and my eyes are an irritated scarlet.

I do not feel good.

And yet I am at work, confident in my ability to overcome sickness, determined to be productive in spite of this malady. Or maybe I am out of sick days and cannot afford to stay in the relative comfort of my home.

On most days I am supportive of environmental activists and their staunch defense of oxygen-giving trees, but not today. The pile of tissue beside my desk grows exponentially each hour, a veritable mountain of soggy bits of fluff. To stop the flow from my nose I would cut down an entire forest of trees that make the softest tissue known to man, in hopes bringing even the slightest relief to my reddened nostrils.

Agony, oh agony! Whence comes relief?


M. PotPie

Thursday, August 18, 2005

It's Just Me

You know when people start a comment with "Maybe it's just me, but...."? Well I found out today that it is just me. I'm the only one. Now I'm certain the James Taylor song "You are the Only One" is about me. So is that stupid Carly Simon song, "You're so Vain". Though I've never worn an apricot colored scarf.

What brought on this epiphany, you ask? I'll tell you. First of all, I was (and am) out of weed. So, like any good stoner I decided it was time to scrape my bowl. After 10 minutes of grueling work I had a nice, sticky little ball of resin to set fire to. While raising the lighter to the bowl, it suddenly occured to me: I have a roach in the ashtray in my truck. Yes! I put the pipe down and put on my sandals to go outside. Every time I put on my sandals my dog thinks we're going for a walk. Needless to say, he gets excited. Being a big dog this excitement sometimes moves the furniture, in this case the table my bowl was resting on. Plop! On the floor goes the bowl. Plop! On the floor goes my delicious resin ball, which is now covered in dog hair and no longer delicious.
"A pox on you, foolish canine!" I always talk that way to him. He seems to like it. "There will be no walking today!" I stomp out to my truck and discover that the roach no longer occupies the ashtray. "A pox on you as well, short term memory!" I stomp back into my apartment, walk heavily past my sheepish dog and look at the resin ball. Can it be saved? Alas, it cannot, and I can't stand smoking dog hair. A cry of purest agony escapes my lips. I turn on the radio to console myself, thinking perhaps music can give me a spiritual lift. However, try as I might, I cannot locate a station that is not playing a commercial. Except the country music stations, which I abhor. Besides, everyone knows that country music is for the gays and the soon-to-be-gays. And the gays who don't know that they're gays.

So you see, it is just me. The world, the Gaia spirit that I don't believe in, is conspiring against me. And because the spirit is stupid, it can only concentrate on ruining one life at a time. Mine. It is just me.

M. PotPie

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Oy Vey

I just got back from visiting my Grandparents in Florida (where all good Jews go to retire) and I'm terrified that I've witnessed what I'm doomed to become. It was like stepping into a time machine, jumping forward 44 years and watching myself waddle around waiting to die. But enough about the raisins.

Florida is an abysmal place in the summer. I was staying near Tampa, on the Gulf side, but I assume the rest of the state sucks just as bad. Oh sure, if you like giant reptiles, giant smelly birds, giant bugs...all of which leave giant piles of crap everywhere...than the Sunshine State is the place for you.

Ah, but M. PotPie, you say, you should come here in the winter, when the weather is nice! You'll change your tune then! Horseshit, I say back! Winter is when the families go, and everybody hates families on vacation. The giant reptiles, birds and bugs are replaced by giant groups of frustrated husbands, drunk wives and sticky children. They also leave giant piles of crap everywhere.

Stupid Florida.


M. PotPie

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

I Wish You Well

Goodbye, so long, I guess
All that's left of us is this song.

I'm so tired of being sad
I've cried all the tears that this body has.

And I only wish you well.
I only wish you well.

I tried so hard to keep you here
But now all I am is sorry my dear.

It seems we didn't have what it takes
To make it work and now it's too late.

And I only wish you well.
I only wish you well.

I hope you wish me well.
I know you wish me well.

It's time for me to move on.
It's time that I moved on.


M. PotPie