Let’s Talk About Gun Laws

I went to a relative’s house for Thanksgiving this last year, and someone who wasn’t really part of the family was hanging around. It wasn’t awkward, as such, it was just one of those things that makes you frown for a second and pull your head back a little, and then you move on and eat a bunch of turducken. But I did have a conversation with her that I thought was worth mentioning. It was one of those things that made me frown for a second and then pull my head back a little.

So I walked into the house and shook all the dudes’ hands and kissed all the ladies’ knuckles and hugged all the kids. The usual. Then I said hi to this woman. And she saw the handgun I was wearing in a holster under my jacket, on my hip. So she sees my gun and says, “You think you’re going to need that on Thanksgiving?” and sort of made that face. You know the one. The one that says, “Ooh, you just got burned.” And I looked at her for a second and said, “I don’t know.”

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Vincent Hobbes is a Thief

I’m a writer. One might debate how well I perform this craft. Or not. Almost everyone who has read my books has told me they liked them greatly. I say this not in boastful arrogance, but just to say that I do it to the best of my ability, I take it seriously, and I take pride in making it as good as my ability will allow. I’ve written millions of words. A lot of them on this website. If you peruse back through the archives, you will see I have over 450 columns attributed to my name. And most of them are 800 words or more. Not just some quick paragraph about nonsense. Why do I say all this? I don’t know. I think I’m just trying to justify the title I used in the first sentence of my column.

But I don’t need to. Not really. The word writer speaks nothing of the personality of the writing. It doesn’t lend itself to any superlatives or adjectives describing the talent of the human being who takes the title. It only expresses that he or she has set out to perform a task, an effort that takes at least a fair amount of talent or skill, and has thus taken the label.

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  • Reading time:6 mins read

Tales from a Repo Man

Thursday night when my phone rang and a friend asked me if I could do a favor, I said yes. But I had no idea it would make for such an interesting weekend, and with so many stories. Of course, some of those stories are better told in person than in writing, so they won’t be mentioned here, but overall, it made for a very entertaining and interesting weekend. Will you allow me to tell you about it? Good. And there’s your opening paragraph.

So the call I got from a friend, who shall remain nameless (and genderless) called to ask if I would run up and repossess a vehicle for him/her. Well, I’ve never been called the Repo Man. And the only experience I have with repossessing a vehicle is when my truck got stolen when I was in the service. I came back home for a weekend, discovered my pickup had been stolen out of my dad’s driveway, and went and got it back. I happened to know where it was, who was likely to have stolen it, and so I got it back. But I’m not really much of a repo man. Well, I wasn’t… until yesterday.

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More Great Ideas From Space

We all know I was the one who introduced the world to the idea that we could solve the global warming crisis with National Leave Your Refrigerator Open Today day. So, clearly, I’m a pretty smart guy. Apparently, no one has taken this idea and run with it, but that doesn’t really mean the idea isn’t genius. You know? I think the government is trying to get rid of me so that they can claim the idea for themselves, then we’ll start seeing the idea put into practice. But I just wanted to bring that up – not to rub it in your face that I’m a lot smarter than you, but rather just to remind you that I am, in fact, pretty smart.

So anyway, as I always do, I was sitting around yesterday thinking of more ways I could change the world and make it better for people. Like when I came up with the idea of how to run cars on water… Well, they won’t start using that until we run out of gas. Because you’d put all the gas station employees out of a job. See? But just like that, I came up with a few more ideas that will really help the world become a better place. And I’d like to tell you about a couple of these ideas. You can tell me how awesome they are and how smart I am in the comments section below, because I know you’re going to get your socks blown off.

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Calling the Call Center

I hate having to call customer service. Mortgage company, bank, cell phone company, whatever. I hate having to call them. If I can’t handle whatever problem I’m having on the website, I’d rather just cancel my service than have to call and sit through all the bullshit. Alas, that’s not very realistic though, as I’d be changing providers and canceling shit about every month. So I have to deal with calling in and talking to someone – hopefully – a lot more often than I would in a perfect world.

The first thing that pisses me off is the menus. Forget the fact that I have to push a certain number to hear it in English. I don’t mind the “Para Espanol prima el numero dos” or whatever, so the Mexican folk have to press two to continue in Spanish. That’s fine. Just don’t make me push something to continue in the national language. But the menus are just silly and time wasting. Now what they’re trying to do here is keep you from talking to someone. If they can take care of your problems with an automated system, they much prefer that. Keeps their call volume down. Store hours, available balance, directions, whatever – they can all be taken care of without having to talk to a human. But most of the time I already know all that shit. And I need to talk to a person. Enter my next complaint.

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I’m changing my career path.

Yes, my fearless readers, I have decided to go into insurance. And let me tell you why. We all know it’s legal crime, and who doesn’t want a little crime under their fingernails? Aha, two puns in one paragraph. So let me tell you why it would be so wonderful to work in insurance. Well, actually, let me back up and rephrase that because I think it probably wouldn’t be all that cool to work in insurance. The money, and therefore, the fun, would be in owning an insurance company. That’s where it’s at.

First of all, you charge people money every month. Let’s talk auto insurance, just for the sake of conversation. Okay, so let’s say you pay me around $150 a month for your Jeep Grand Cherokee to be insured. Ooh, let’s even say that it’s bright orange with a brown racing stripe down the middle! And it’s got twenty-inch wheels that are painted brown. And one of those chain license plate frames. Okay. So I insure that for you. You pay me $1800 a year. So if I have say twenty clients, I’m making a pretty good bit of coin. Now we get to where it would kick ass to own the insurance company.

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Relief? Check.

So by now we’ve all gotten our relief checks in the mail. Right? If you haven’t, then please stop reading here. I don’t want to spoil the surprise for you.

Yeah, so I got mine this morning. Well, it didn’t come in the mail, as such. It just sort of came in my bank account. That sounds unnatural and disgusting. It arrived in my account. How’s that? And let me tell you what a relief it was.

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Dude, that’s a lot of money.

So by now I’m sure you’ve all heard about the guy who walked into a bank here in Fort Worth, Texas with a check from his girlfriend’s mother. Not a big deal, I guess. People’s girlfriends’ mothers give checks to them all the time, right? To open a record company and whatnot, I mean. For 360 billion dollars.

Dude, I’m sorry, but I’ve never had a girlfriend whose parents liked me. My wife’s parents like me quite a bit. But if they had 360 billion dollars to spare, I doubt they’d write me a check for it. They might give me a million if they won the lottery or something. To take care of their daughter and grandchild, right? Sounds logical. But 360 billion? From a girlfriend’s mom? Yeah. Sure. It’s believable. I mean, I’m a likeable guy, but – okay, enough on that.

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Good Things About the IRS

I wanted to say good things about the IRS. So I did. Now we can move on to other sentences I should say. Like, “To hell with the IRS,” and “Son of a bitch I hate the damn IRS,” and “Wow, so the IRS is like legalized crime, right? What the hell.” Those are pretty typical sentiments when talking about the IRS. IRS, of course, is an acronym that stands for Invasive Rape System. And for those of you who don’t know, they take your hard-earned money from you. So not only do you get raped, they take your money while they’re doing it. Then if you protest or anything, they do what’s called an “Audit” where they bring several friends to your house, dig through all your private shit, then take turns raping you before throwing you in jail. That’s right. If you don’t let them have their way, they throw you in jail to get what? Ass-raped some more.

So tax day has come and gone another year. I know millions of you filed extensions. And you know what I say about that? I say kick ass. I pat you on the back. Because you know why? Because screw them, that’s why! I filed this year on April 1 or so, and throughout the process got more and more angry as I watched more and more dollars get tagged to be sent to them. Oh, so the ten thousand dollars I sent you already last year wasn’t enough? Right. So I found as many deductions as I could, claiming everything I could think of. Donated to charity? (You can claim up to $500 without a receipt.) Uh, oh yeah. Now that you mention it, I did send about five hundred bones their way. Who the hell wouldn’t claim something you have to show no proof for? Duh.

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My Run-in With a Pedophile

When I was in grade school there was this kid who was a friend of mine named Kerry. He had the same last name as several other kids in grades above ours. Obviously they were brothers. Well, not as such. This one guy, Bob Samelastname rented them. It was weird, but all through his adult life, I guess this creepy bastard has always adopted young boys, then when they grow up and move out, he gets more to replace them. Always boys. He wasn’t married or anything either. He just liked boys.

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