Posted by Dirk on March 4, 2010
I’m in the local HEB and decide to use the automated checkout line, something I typically don’t do, because I like to interact with the cheery checkout people. But tonight I throw caution to the wind, and choose not only to ring up my own damn groceries, but to do it in Spanish.
Not knowing one lick of Spanish was a bit of an obstacle, but I did it and it was crazy-fun; makes me wish they had more languages to pick from.
The greatest satisfaction I got out of this experiment was wondering if the people next to me actually thought I was Spanish.
“Hey, check out that Spanish dude, he so doesn’t look Spanish. He’s the whitest Spanish dude ever.”
Posted by Dirk on April 6, 2009
My five-year-old son put forth some pretty interesting ideas the other night. Maybe it’s the tap water or too many gummy vitamins, but he has definitely hit some heightened awareness few rarely reach. The conversation is as follows.
“Do you have holes in your stomach?”
“Huh? I think so. Yeah, one where the food goes in, and one where it goes out, I think.”
“Is it east and west holes?”
“Uh, maybe?”
“It would be funny if you could take your head and put it inside your stomach, and then, and then, and then, you could use your eyeballs to see through the holes in your stomach, right?”
“That would be really weird.”
“And then there wouldn’t be any cars on the street, and if you walked around on the street, you can’t see that there aren’t cars on the street because your eyeballs would be in your stomach.”
“Aren’t you tired yet?”
“East and west holes. Not north and south. That would be backwards.”
“Aren’t you tired yet?”
Posted by Dirk on February 7, 2009
Explaining the death of the Sun to a nine-year-old boy isn’t such a big deal. “Well, one day, billions of years from now, the Sun will expand and swallow Mercury, Venus, and most likely Earth as well. Even if Earth is spared, the Sun will boil away all the water and the atmosphere, and that’s pretty much it.”
“That’s OK, cause we won’t be around anyway, right, Dad? We’ll probably blow each other up by then.”
“Right, son. That’s the spirit.”
Yes, for my nine-year-old son, mass extinction of the human race and the ultimate inhalation of the earth by a blazing star is pretty damn cool. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the four-year-old listening intently behind the couch.
That same evening, my wife, while tucking the little tike into bed, is confronted by a most odd question.
“Mommy, do we have a rocket ship?”
“A rocket ship? No sweetie, we don’t have a rocket ship. Why, honey?”
“So we can get off Earth when the Sun blows up.”
The conversation continues with my wife back-pedalling, explaining that there is no cause for concern, and that, in general, Daddy is a complete dumbass.
“I was just learnin’ him a little science, honey. It’s not my fault the kid has no concept of time,” I say. But it doesn’t help. I’m just stupid now. It’ll wear off, but it’s a badge that will be pinned to my proverbial jacket for some time. It’s like the time my older son asked me why Jesus is always holding out his hand in all of those pictures. “He’s saying, ‘Give me two dollars,’” I tell him with a chuckle. Apparently Jesus jokes don’t go over well in elementary school.
Posted by Dirk on December 23, 2008
When I go out to eat, I like to feel like I’ve been transported into a quaint, wooden antique store; a really tacky, quaint, wooden antique store. I want stained-glass; I want memorabilia. I want to eat a 2000-calorie appetizer beneath a haphazardly painted outrigger canoe. I want football helmets and photos of people I don’t know adorning the walls. I want a chalk menu highlighting the fare of the day, and I want the hostess to show off her thong to my kids as she escorts us to our booth. I want to hear Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” when I walk in and when I’m eating dessert.
I like my waiters to be named Chaz or Travis, Britney or Megan. I want them to be upbeat, freakishly so, actually. I want to be slightly frightened by their forced happiness, so much so that I return that forced happiness, afraid perhaps, that they missed their Seroquel dose for the day. When they ask, “So, can I start you guys off with some Habanero, oriental, cheesefry dunker muffins?” I’ll say, “Hell yes, you can! Oh, and while you’re at it, bring me one of those light beers in a 72-ounce, fluted, cold-ass glass.”
I want to have the option of losing it when my giant onion ring is not perched correctly atop my Teriyaki, bleu cheese-infused eight-ounce top sirloin. I want to chain-smoke just outside the entrance to the restaurant, so that the hugely obese people entering will sneer at me as though I’m the one with the problem.
I’ll leave, making a point to tip 15%, because, like the other diners around me, I pretend not to realize the standard changed to 20% over a decade ago. I’ll hop in my giant SUV and point it towards home, my family and I filled to the gills with processed garbage. Bobbing down the road, we’ll all sing along to the new Taylor Swift CD, and ponder some way of coming up with the $400 for the new Playstation. Sure, I might miss a car payment, but it’s worth it so the kids can play Fallout 3.
Posted by Dirk on December 22, 2008
For the last hour a helicopter has been buzzing around my neighborhood, that damn spotlight lighting up my living room every ten minutes. It’s either the grand opening of the Arby’s down the street, or Pookie, the deranged crack dealer is on the run again.
All this activity makes me want to go jogging. Hey, I’d probably make the news.
Run Pookie, run!!!
Posted by Dirk on December 15, 2008
I’m fascinated with space travel. I admit it, I’m a goddamn fan! What really has me cocked and loaded these days are the photos taken by the Phoenix Mars Lander. Apparently this cute little guy has found ice on the Martian North Pole! Yes, maybe in a 100 years or so, we’ll be celebrating Christmas on the Red Planet, because we sure as hell will have destroyed good old mother Earth by then.
Just think of it, the kids all bundled up to avoid those blustery Martian winds. And the winters? Don’t even get me started! It reaches 191 degrees below zero! Ok, so the kids are bundled up in their super-duper-don’t-die-of-exposure-suits, standing around singing Christmas carols, their helmets getting all fogged up, with that red Martian sand gusting about, blurring the view of the light-up baby Jesus nativity scene. Hey! How in the hell are we going to sing “Come all ye faithful” if we can’t see the baby Jesus! Oh screw it, they’ll say, this place sucks. Onward, to wreck another planet! We’ve left our trash and feces and our baby Jesus; alas, we must depart.
Alright, so I think I just went off on a tangent, because I could really care less about humanity. My heart lies with the Phoenix Mars Lander. He looks so lonely out there. Look at that landscape! You know he’s thinking, “just over this ridge, there’s gonna be something cool! Almost there, almost…there….ah damn, it’s another red mountain range. I guess I’ll go dig up some more shit and take some pictures.” I can just see him sulking around to the next dig, with a bumper sticker on the back of his silver chassis that reads, “I love my Cocker Spaniel,” or “I flew to Mars and all I got was this stupid shovel.”
That’s why I was so excited when he discovered ice. He must have been ecstatic! The little robotic arms scooping and scooping, his little circuits all alight, his electronic head thing bobbing up and down. Maybe he’s whistling a little something, like AC/DC’s “Whole Lotta Rosie.” He’s thinking, “yes, I found something useful, I did it, I did it! I get to come home now! I’ll have a hero’s welcome, I’ll be in the Smithsonian! What? What’s that command? Go to the south pole and dig more shit and take pictures? God, I hate this place.”
Posted by Dirk on July 2, 2008
I don’t usually like to toot my proverbial horn, but I’ve been told I look young for my age, although over the past few years, “wow, you only look twenty-eight,” has now been replaced by, “wow, where’d the grey hair come from?” I simply reply that they come from the same place the brown hairs come from, only my head’s gone all mutli-cultural on me, and then I tell them I hope they die soon.
Indeed, living the “hard knock life” has begun to take its toll. I do still get looks from cashiers when I slam a six pack of beer on the counter, but the question of my age is easily remedied by turning my head either way and letting the little tikes have a gander at the grey, twisting hairs blooming out of my ears. My ear canals now look like some long-forgotten cave that Sloth from The Goonies lives in, waiting for Chunk to bring him another Baby Ruth.
But there are those that still consider me “young.” At one point these people would have been forty-years-old or so; now they’re seventy. It’s sad, but what’s even more depressing is that somehow they think I’m hip, and these individuals feel the need to test my hipness by throwing some crazy slang into a sentence for me to mull over. For Christ’s sake, I’m wearing Dockers, a cardigan from Old Navy, and Clarks! I’m not hip.
Case in point: Hilda, or least that’s what we’ll call her. That sounds old. Hilda likes to use the word “diss,” as in, “I’ll never understand why my son is always dissing me.” First off Hilda, I’ve never listened to Jay-Z, I don’t go to Raves, and the word is “disrespect,” not diss. Diss is something my four-year-old would say when he’s confused, like, “what is diss?” And I don’t care if it’s in the dictionary or not, it’s not a word! As a courtesy to me, Hilda, speak the king’s English, or go brush your cat again. I don’t have time for this nonsense.
Another pet peeve of mine is when old folks, or anyone for that matter, find it necessary to use profanity in one of their crazy, ranting declarations, but purposely whisper the profane portion of the sentence. For example, Grandma Toots might say, “Obama wants to continue those faith-based initiatives Bush started. That’s bullshit if you ask me,” the word “bullshit” barely audible. First of all, if you’re going to take the chance and use the word “bullshit” in a sentence, then just say it! You’ve just added a huge dollop of color to an otherwise benign statement; don’t ruin it, make it pop! You’re wasting a perfectly good compound word. Hell, you’re seventy years old, no one listens to what you say anyway (sorry John McCain).
So the next time you Grandmas and Grandpas see me rounding the corner, don’t ask me to score you some X or flash your bling in my face. And no, I don’t know where you can buy glo-sticks and Gatorade in the same place. I’ve got better things to do, like picking up the latest Led Zeppelin album (and yeah, there’s a new one). What? It’s not available on vinyl? Oh, the humanity.
