The thing about my wife is …

She doesn’t like it when I wake her up in the middle of the night to croak “oil can” like a heavily-medicated Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz. Say perhaps, that just at that moment, I had a stroke and a heart attack … and the only words that I could get out were “oil can”, which I thought were symbolic enough for her to realize that I’ve had two incredibly unlikely-for-my-age major health issues at the same time.

I COULD HAVE DIED.

Insensitive, I tell ya’.

       ]]> http://oscarmonteforte.com/2008/12/31/fuck-em-if-they-cant-take-a-joke/feed/ OscarMonteforte http://oscarmonteforte.com/2008/12/28/getting-butts-back-in-my-mouth/ http://oscarmonteforte.com/2008/12/28/getting-butts-back-in-my-mouth/#comments Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:02:08 +0000 fred1979 http://oscarmonteforte.com/?p=78

I quit smoking 153 days ago. Yes, I’m still counting it out by single days. No, I didn’t just calculate that number; I’ve been tracking it every day. It would be kind of poseurish to do that just for this piece, wouldn’t it? In any event, I’m still miserable. Absolutely, 100%, bay at the goddamn moon miserable. I hate it. So I maintain that I should be allowed to smoke. The isn’t even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my Irrational Needs Wishlist, but it’s top of mind at the moment so we’ll start here.

Now, technically, I’m allowed to smoke cigarettes presently. I’m over the age of eighteen. I’m not an inmate in a correctional facility. I don’t live in an airless vacuum. Despite these qualifying factors, there are things keeping me from doing so. These things must be eliminated.

The Rules

Criteria #1: Must be able to tell my children not to smoke without destroying my own credibility.

I’ve got a few ideas here. The first, and most simple, option is brainwashing. No, no, I know what you’re going to say: you shouldn’t brainwash your kids. I maintain that it’s perfectly acceptable in this situation because my intentions are noble. I just want the kids to never smoke. It’s not like I want them to become child stars or birth cellar-babies to sacrifice to Satan or anything. Lighten the fuck up; my heart’s in the right place and absolutely no one will be moving to Jonestown.

Plenty of people brainwash their children into believing in Jesus or the [frankly more credible] Easter Bunny. It’s not like I’m telling them stories about the invisible man in the sky who wants you to hate people because they consider cows sacred. It’s that I want them to live long lives. Perhaps they’ll find reasons to want to that I never could. I hope so.

My heart’s in the right place.

Ok, I can see that it’s going to be difficult to sell that one.

How about hiding and lying? Before you immediately discard this one, consider that it’s a strategy that has worked for countless people over time from Pilate to Liberace to Clay Aiken; nobody saw through any of those people’s lies. I’ll be fine.

So I’ll smoke for the remainder of my life, perhaps as many as twenty whole years, and just refuse to admit that I’m a smoker. I’ll pretend that I work in an opium den to explain away the smoke smell. Fuck, that’s bad. OK, ok. I work in a casino. We’ll still have casinos in twenty years, right? The ban on fun isn’t allowed to take effect until I die.

My heart’s in the right place.

Still not perfect.

Let’s come back to this one.

Criteria #2: Must be able to maintain reasonable level of health

My definition of “reasonable level of health” doesn’t include living past 60. So, for my own sake anyway, cancer risk isn’t necessarily a big deal. I feel like people shouldn’t really live past the point at which they can no longer fuck without assistance. Or, I should say, the point at which anyone should want to fuck without assistance. I mean really, at eighty, with giant saggy balls that swing to your ankles … the only thing you should want to do is buy a shovel and start digging. Sex should be the last thing on your mind. Really. Pack in it, you’ve already seen every single episode of the Golden Girls.

No, I’m looking to make it through a winter without bronchitis. This is really my definition. I wouldn’t mind death so much, but feeling like you’re going to die just blows. I’m not interested in that. I’ve had bronchitis between four and eight times each winter for the last ten years; it’s gotten kind of old. I’ve enjoyed not being sick so far this winter. I want to keep that.

The persistent cough will also have to continue to stay hidden. I’ve enjoyed not having that. Perhaps someone can invent smokeless smoking. Don’t even suggest any form of chewing/oral tobacco. This is not what I mean. Dip, snuff, chaw, etc. are to be used only by people that have sex with their sisters. It’s in the Constitution. Look it up if you don’t believe me; article II, section III, passages orange through purple calico.

Criteria #3: Must maintain present tobacco budget

My present tobacco budget is approximately zero dollars per week. I’m going to have to stay at just about the same place. It’s not that I don’t have the money; it’s that it seems silly to spend it on cigarettes when there are perfectly good opportunities to buy lap dances from midgets with prosthetic legs that I’d have to pass up on.

Should I leave them out in the cold?

In this economy?

Clearly, I can’t. That’s just fucking heartless, B. How could I possibly live with myself?

So, if I have to keep it up with the midget whores, and we’ve demonstrated that I do, what else could I cancel out? Eating? What am I, a meth addict? That’s never going to work. The longest that I’ve ever gone without eating was four weeks, and that was only because I’d just seen Kathy Bates naked in About Schmidt. Fucking movie. And let’s face it, it made me really hard to deal with. Wasn’t fair to anyone.

So yeah, I’m going to have to steal them or accept a Big Tobacco sponsor on my blog. So Phillip Morris, you’re giving them to me for free anyway – shouldn’t we throw up a banner?

Choices

I’ve laid out a few of the ways that I could go with this, but I think that the path I should take is pretty clear at this point.

First, I have to figure out a way to cure cancer. This will ensure that my kids will be ok, even if I do destroy my credibility and they follow my shamefully bad example. I’m going to start work on this tomorrow. Sean Connery has led me to believe that it has something to do with fire ants. I’ll start there.

Secondly, I need to fit myself with hot-swappable lungs. Perhaps I’ll invent the first artificial lungs that plug into a USB.

Thirdly, for the sake of the crippled midget meth addicts, I’ll be stealing all my smokes from now on. Sorry Big Tobacco, it’s time to think about the [really] little guy.

That was uncalled for.

Conclusions

Ultimately, I’m not a scientist and even if I were … I’d be a really bad one because I’m lazy. So these things won’t work. I guess I’ll just have to agree to quit not quitting and admit that maybe there’s something in me worth saving yet.

I’m probably wrong, but what does a bit more misery hurt?

       ]]> http://oscarmonteforte.com/2008/12/28/getting-butts-back-in-my-mouth/feed/ OscarMonteforte http://oscarmonteforte.com/2008/12/13/stagefright/ http://oscarmonteforte.com/2008/12/13/stagefright/#comments Sat, 13 Dec 2008 23:59:02 +0000 fred1979 http://oscarmonteforte.com/?p=75

So I was thinking ….

I was pissing at the time, but you assumed that.

Anyhow

I have terrible stagefright.  Urine stagefright; not the kind that keeps you from performing speeches or improv, but the kind that keeps you from emptying your bladder.  The mere presence of people in the next room will make it difficult to relieve myself.  I always can, it just takes a bit longer than usual.

It got me to thinking …

I don’t think that I could ever pee on anyone.  I wouldn’t be able to perform.  If my wife came to me and demanded that I piss on her or lose her, I’d lose her.  That’s really sad.

Just one more thing to worry about.

Fucking life.

So I’m pissed off and I have no one to blame but myself.  If I had any foresight at all, and I like to think that I do, I would’ve seen this coming.  But I’ll back up to the beginning …

I was at Walmart two weeks ago.  I was buying four new tires for my car, and as much as I hate Walmart their tires are quite inexpensive.  Anyway, four new tires would take a while at any place, but at Walmart it takes forever.  My estimated wait time was four hours.  So, I thought, no big deal; I’ve been trying to make my way through this massive “books you should read” list and I was about to begin Frankenstein.  I would read that.  Well … I really disliked it.  Thirty minutes in, I was banging my head against the wall in the waiting room imagining three and a half more hours of that.

A devastatingly simple solution eventually came to mind; I would go check out the Walmart book section.  It can’t totally suck.  Right?  There’s got to be something there for a person that considers themself literate.  Not. so. much.  I don’t know why I didn’t realize this in advance, but their book selection is really piss-poor.  Your choices are basically: romance novels, Clive Cussler novels, The Secret (yaaay), the sanitized Walmart top sellers list, and picture Bibles.  As much as I love drawings of Noah and his magical mystery ark of fantasy, I was unimpressed and depressed.  How the hell was I going to make it through 210 more minutes of this.  How?  I can only play the Guitar Hero demo for so long before the store employees begin to become suspicious of the guy rocking out with a circle of kids around him (happened twice already - yeah, I’m almost 30).  How was I going to get through this?

Then, I saw a book out of the corner of my eye that made me turn my head.  It was a book that I’ve heard of.  To this point, nothing that I’d heard didn’t make me want to make fun of it.  I couldn’t read that crap.  I like literature written by important people rather than trash.  As an aside, I’m kind of a douche.  Anyway, back to the story … so, my sense of fairness kicked in, aided perhaps by my desperation, and I thought “I really shouldn’t make fun of this if I’ve never even read it - maybe I could read it today for three hours while I’m stuck here anyway and I’ll feel better about taking shots at it.”

This is how I came to purchase Twilight by Stephenie Meyer.

I understand if you never listen to anything that I ever say again.

I may join you.

So here’s the thing: I liked it. I’m as shocked as you are.  This comes with provisos, of course.  It’s no great literature; this is not a book that fourteen year olds will be forced into reading by an overzealous English teacher three hundred years from now.  It just isn’t.  But … it’s entertaining.

As I read through Twilight, I thought: “OK. Vampires are real.  They’re really hot.  They like to drive fast.  I get it.  I’m intrigued for some reason.”  Then I realized that I had finished the book … in less than 24 hours.  I had devoured it; doing little else aside from sleeping from the point I picked it up to when I put it back down.

So I had decisions to make.  Should I read the next one?  Twilight is the first of a four book ’saga’ - ick.  Should I tell anyone that I read it?  Let’s take the second one first.  Upon finding out that I was reading it, my wife made fun of me non-stop for approximately a week.  Let’s examine that.  I was ridiculed by a woman that reads Dean Koontz books.  Koontz actually writes with a crayon and his ‘novels’ are printed on construction paper.  Was I really looking to admit publicly that I’d read it?  Not hardly.

Would I read the next one?  I decided that I was intrigued enough by the first one to justify reading the second one, as long as I didn’t tell anyone that I was doing it.  Yes, I’m quite secure.  Thanks.  So I went to an actual bookstore (Barnes & Noble) to buy it and discovered that they only had it in hard cover.  So I thought … is this worth nearly $20 to me?  Ultimately, and I don’t get it either, I decided that it was.

So I read New Moon and enjoyed it for the most part.  OK, so now there are werewolves.  They’re huge.  They bay at the moon, run temperatures of 108 all the time, yadda yadda yadda.  Look, I’m not proud of it, but all of these things I can buy.  For the most part I enjoyed New Moon.  Not the best thing ever, but it did present a problem.  Would I buy the third book?

So let’s review before I answer that question.  Basically, I’ve spent several days and more money than I’d like reading semi-trashy watered down supernatural romance fiction written for teenage girls that either a) are stupid or b) cut themselves.  I’m feeling really really fucking cool.  Right, but back to the decision surrounding Eclipse.

So I bought it, and the final book Breaking Dawn, in hard cover no less.  This has done wonders for my self-esteem.  Eclipse continues the love triangle between the werewolf, the vampire, and the girl who can’t get out of her own way.  It’s good.  I hate to say it, but it is.  Meyer draws overhanded, almost omnipresent, fucking constant even, comparisons to Wuthering Heights and … I can see it.  Kind of.  Love triangle.  People that are bad for and to one another.  Two of them are supernatural figments of your fucking imagination.  Wait … what?  So anyway, yeah.  I moved onto the final book happy that I’d soon be done and back onto things that I wouldn’t mind admitting I’d read.

Breaking Dawn is the name of the final book rather than a German bondage flick.  I mention this so that you know too. It opens as the wedding of the girl and the vampire approaches.  Because you know, in post-9/11 America it’s so easy to get fake ids good enough to pull off an entire fake life like the Cullen [vampire] family does.  Anyway.

Right now, I’m 200 pages in and I’m not sure that I’m going to finish.  I’m fairly annoyed.  Yes, I’m already 2000 pages or so (in less than two weeks - I’m so cool) into the Twilight Saga and I may put it down and never finish it.  Why?

As I’m sure this essay shows to this point, I’ve treated this like ridiculous, fun, “summer” reading [if you will] that always teetered on but never really crossed the absurdity boundary.  Obviously, I don’t believe in vampires and werewolves.  But they’re common enough in legend and popular culture that I can accept their presence in a fantastical story with clearly-defined rules that aren’t too absurd. I am only human after all.  If, for instance, the Cullen family could all turn into bats all of the sudden it would piss me off.

Which brings me to the thing I’m upset about.  All of a sudden, like 150 or so pages into the fourth book of the ’saga’, Meyer tells us that Bella (dumbass girl) is pregnant with a fucking vampire succubus that is eating her alive from the inside.  I’m so disgusted that I had to read that, let alone type it, let alone tell you all about it.  Fucking a.  This was not in the rules.  This was never mentioned.  It was never close to possible.  What the fuck?  I mean, I could buy it if they had sex the first time and it killed her because he had a massively strong vampire dick or something like that.  Hell, I could even understand if having sex with him gave her some kind of vampire ovary junk disease or something where her fucking fingers fell off.  But a demon baby eating it’s way out?  What the shit?

So that’s why I’m pissed; both at Meyer and myself.  And this is why I don’t think I’ll ever finish despite the time and money that I’ve put into it.

Who the fuck am I kidding?  I’m off to read this crap right now.  Disgusting idiot I am.

Yesterday I got an email from Hilton Honors that was written entirely in Chinese.  I thought it was odd.  Then I got the apology email.  I’ve had to write these before.  Somehow, this doesn’t make it any less amusing to me.

The email:

Dear Oscar Monteforte,
Hilton HHonors^® Account Number: xxxxxxxxxxx

We wanted to send you a quick apology to inform you of an erroneous email we sent on November 17, 2008. You may have received it in the Chinese character set, or as an email filled with computer code.

Thank you for your understanding and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Best regards,

Adam Burke
Senior Vice President, Customer Loyalty
Hilton Hotels Corporation

In short, we fucked up.  Our bad.

I’m not really sure what the motivation for capturing this on video was …. but enjoy anyway.

I present … whatever the fuck this is

So it’s been a while.  What’s it to you?  Of course, I’m being sarcastic, both of you are very important to me.  I’ve been busy.  OK?

Few thoughts on Sarah Palin:

1. I think that it’s admirable that John McCain has chosen such an important role for a retarded person.  Obviously, he values them.  And let’s be honest … retarded people vote.  Smart and nice.
2. I don’t think that I’d really blame them if women banded together and launched a class action lawsuit against Sarah Palin.  She has set them back at least 25 years politically after all.
3. The very idea that Sarah Palin will draw a single Hillary Clinton voter (who isn’t themselves retarded) is insulting and I don’t know why more people don’t see it.  Ladies, the McCain campaign has absolutely no respect for you.  They think that you’ll vote for the one with a vagina because she has a vagina.  This takes none of her stances on issues, or your intelligence for that matter, into account.  It’s amazing to me that McCain hasn’t lost the support of every woman in the country.
4. Aerial Hunting.  Is exposition needed?  She’s in favor of allowing people to hunt from planes.  Really.  Is there a contest to crown the American Crocodile Dundee on?
5. I think it’s pretty clear that living next to Russia has absolutely no value as a substitute for foreign policy experience.  I used to live next door to African-Americans, that doesn’t mean that I know all about the civil rights movement.
6. When pressed, Sarah Palin can name no Supreme Court cases outside of Roe vs. Wade.  You really don’t know any others Sarah?  Not even every plutocrat’s favorite: Gore vs. Bush?  She’s not familiar with Brown vs. The Board of Education, Marbury vs. Madison, or anything else that the average grammar-schooler knows.  We’ve been given the choice of a woman who would likely lose on Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?
7. When pressed, Sarah Palin can’t come up with any magazines that she reads.  She reads all of them.  She must be very busy.
8. People riding dinosaurs.
9. I’m so excited about the debate tonight.  Biden will finally mop the floor with Palin and end it by sticking her back in the broom closet.  My schaedenfreude  level  has soared to all-time high elevations in the run up to their debate.  I wish that they could debate twice a week until the election.  I’m beginning to feel like the school bully, clenching my fists while mouthing “three o’clock” at someone that just got me in trouble.  It’s like being a virgin all over again, afraid that the excitement will spoil the act before it begins.  It’s like a metaphor and a simile fucking on your neighbor’s lawn.  Admittedly … I got lost in there somewhere.

I promised not to ramble on about anti-intellectualism, so I’m cutting this off here.

I’d weep for the world, if it weren’t all so funny.

If Washington D.C. were a country, children in bad 80s movies everywhere would spend time memorizing its exports and principle industries. Its economic mainstay would of course be bullshit. The exporting of bullshit. The manufacture of bullshit. The preparation and spoon-feeding of bullshit. Should it get any worse, I’ll have to add windshield wipers to my television screen to periodically scrape it clean. Who’s more patriotic? Who wears what pin while attending which church? Whose dick is bigger? Perhaps the answers to some of these questions actually matter; it is possible. It does matter that the only way that anyone will get the truth on any of these questions is to turn off the goddamn TV and think about it for a second. Balance out all of the things that you heard and draw an opinion.

So let’s talk about this McCain/Wesley Clark bullshit. Wesley Clark, excuse me, GENERAL Wesley Clark was on Face The Nation a few days ago. He had the nerve (according to Republicans and the media) to question one of the lines that McCain and his supporters have trumpeted into FACT over the last eighteen months or so. Namely, that McCain’s military service AUTOMATICALLY qualifies him to be the President of the United States. He didn’t say that it disqualified him. He didn’t say that it didn’t matter. He didn’t say that this nation wasn’t grateful for his distinguished service. He didn’t say that we’d be better off with a draft-dodging, pot-smoking, hippie. Not a single one of these things were said though you’d think he did if you didn’t see the original clip.

Admittedly, there were more thought-out, articulate, and calculated ways that Clark could have said this, but it’s clear to anyone who sees it that, though he fumfered a bit like a ‘tard, he was trying to raise an important point. John McCain is not inherently more qualified than Obama to be president because he spent some time in a tiger cage being tortured. Does it add to his qualifications? Certainly it does. You can see through this experience, and his reactions to it, that he’s a genuine American hero with strong character and convictions.

Could you also argue that his time in a tiger cage is a negative? I think that you could. You could say that his temper and his tendency to fly off the handle were influenced by his time as a POW. You could say that throwing him into the pressure cooker of the Oval Office would further enflame these tendencies that may have in fact been borne of his military service. Would I? Probably not. Did Wesley Clark? No, of course he didn’t.

The point is that you could. If you can reasonably make an argument for EACH side of an issue, then clearly it’s debatable. Possibly it makes people uncomfortable, but the discomfort really comes from the spin and ‘analysis’, nay extrapolation, from the media. Wesley Clark doesn’t hate veterans; he is one. Michelle Obama doesn’t hate America. Barack Obama is a patriot. You can support the troops without canonizing them or thinking that being shot at will automatically transform them into the next leaders of the free world.

Ever scared of your fellow Americans?  Yeah, me too.  This video is from an Alabama news broadcast.  Yes, this is apparently what passes for news in Alabama.  What else happened that day?  I’m scared to do the research.  I just don’t want to know.  In the future when I get to throw states out of the union, this will be marked People’s 1A in the case against Alabama.