apocalypto

Groom and Kennel Expo Feb 12-15, 2009 in Pasadena. Lets do it.















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groomer to groomer covers

Tonight we sail...

Tonight we sail! Ohhh, the Dutchbag has been landlubbing too long, it's time we stood tall and beat upon our sails with the winds of a thousand bean burritos!

Oh yes, in fact, I did go there.

I apologize, the fumes of a day spent inhaling various thinners has left me in a mood stranger than most. "Mr. DB, I thought I asked you not to put glaze on that chair!" "Did you say that? Guess it's time to visit my friend Mr. Thinner and ask him for an impartial opinion..."

This reminds me of a funny story regarding an island, a beach chair, and 3 different colored solid T's (as advertised in that week's Mervyn's ad).

You see, I was on an island, and I was having a great time, stumbling to and fro while my circulatory system tried to make sense of the various liquids contained in coconuts covered with increasingly more realistic human chest hair. "Dr. Mureau?" I asked, pulling the chest hair off of my coconut and stuffing it down my shirt. I mistook a palm tree for a very tall woman and seductively unbuttoned my hawaiian shirt to show her how much more of a man I was now compared with a couple of hours back. Then I mistook a very tall woman for a palm tree and tried to sneak out a bit of urine while the rest of the island was distracted by Rum-inspired singing.

Fortunately, this tall woman was more distracted than most and didn't notice when my urine began to soak her socks. in fact, i'm pretty sure that she may have shrugged a "what the hell" up to god and added in to the fiesta at hand. I can surely bear no witness to her actually using a proper restroom receptacle in my moments of interaction with or without her.

As I stumbled away, I realized what a cliche i was, the drunk american in the hawaiian shirt, and so I stumbled and stumbled and unbuttoned the hawaiian shirt until it was floating away on a moon reflecting undertow. "The moon!" i cried, accidentally kicking a coconut. I felt so bad that I spent several minutes cradling it telling it that I loved it, that I loved all coconuts, that people make mistakes sometimes and you just have to forgive me, trust me, no i can't expect you to trust me but at least please believe me when I tell you i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i'm so sorry! While I was saying this cradling that I stuck a straw there where the sun don't shine on fallen coconuts, and I sucked out all that I could until I was thrown into the dark and stormy shadows of beginning sobriety. I'm pretty sure the opening chords sound a little bit like the Darth Vader theme song, except without violating any copyright laws because that's just coco-nuts.

I found myself alone, shirtless, cradling a ball of chest hair, and I understood my mission well: secure the mervyn's bag sitting motionless behind the stained wooden bars of the outside bar. I crawled along until I was against the wall beneath the bag, and I sat there motionless until I was sure that I hadn't been spotted. Then, carefully, I pulled the bag through the bars, held it against my bare chest, and ran away screaming. The couple in there new position of ownership based only on 10% of the law stood, shocked, and went running after me. But before they could reach me I hid, i hid like the devil knows how, I hid behind a tall woman with urine in her socks and I dumped the contents of the bag out on the ground to find 3 different colored solid T's on the ground before me. I put on the green one, then the red, and then the blue. Then I ran.

I collapsed about 15 feet away, kissing softly at the shapely feet of a palm tree, when a shadow cast itself upon me, taken from the bright lights of a nearby stage where people danced the same way 7 times each day. The shadow moved darker and revealed itself to be attached to a couple with 3 shirts less than an hour ago.

I stood. It was a sudden movement that left me lightheaded, so I repeated it a few times, then sat.

"We saw what you did to that coconut earlier," said the woman part of the couple. Or perhaps she demanded her shirts back, I'm a tad hazy on this point. The man said the same thing, which is unlikely now that I think about it. They probably both wanted their shirts back.

"These shirts are the only thing that keeps me from being an American cliche," I said, completely forgetting the accent mark (another american cliche I was guilty of). "Here I am, drunk as a South Carolina skunk, unawares of who I am or what I do for a living, beating up coconuts by accident in a hawaiian shirt, and an opportunity comes along for redemption so I took it. Do either of you by chance believe in gob-GLOB-glorbbb." I left my sentence unfinished and let a shower of vomited coconut insides finish my thought for me. I took off the top 2 shirts and held them out for the couple, who exchanged glances, then walked away arguing angrily. "I told you to put the handle of that bag around your ankle!"

I quit. I quit my job as an american cliche trying not to be an american cliche and I went and found a beach chair and slept until the sun came and cleaned up all my rain.

The End.

guy smiley, this is your life!

We spent the whole night in her cigarette stained apartment, dragging the edges of scissors across ribbon, curling them then taping them to her pubic region to hide her premature balding. This way the men she slept with might think she was just being festive.

"What do you think?" she asked, leaning back against the couch.

It looked sort of horrid. "I'd lick you," I said. I really meant it.

"Of course you would."

"That is why I asked you to marry me."

"Maybe a thicker tongue would have convinced me to say yes." She propped a mirror up against a cushion. "It'll be like mardi gras for pussy eaters," she said.

I finished another glass of red wine. Maybe I should get out of here. Was I really expecting her to let me go down there and sniff around, like a dog licking the frosting off of a birthday present that toppled into the cake? I tapped at my pants, but nothing much was really going on down there anyway. I guess when you're friends with an aging stripper you get bored of masturbation pretty quick. I decided to wander the city for a bit. Maybe I could meet somebody new. Someone daring. Someone that would let me be daring. Maybe I could meet the daring me! I twisted the edges of my moustache to make them pointy. I checked my reflection in the mirror on the way out, fast enough to see the points without getting the image of my face etched into my mind, like the ghost of patheticness pickled or marinated for 39 years. I tapped at my pants again.

"Knock knock."

"Nobody home."

Downstairs, everything was grey with early morning, an entire world living in the shade. "Nighttime is the shadows, twilight is the shade. Daytime, the sun." I said it again with a french accent, but it didn't sound any more sexy.

I heard the voice of an angel behind me. "Good morning, sir!" She bumped into me, but I had the wallet out and held at arm's length before her tiny fingers reached my pocket.

"Nice try," I said.

"I'll never figure this out!" she said, and ran around the corner where I could hear her crying. I didn't care! I was emboldened by the wine. Was this daring? I stooped down to her with my pointy moustache and said "little girl get lost!" Why I chose the french accent, I don't know, but that's probably why she started laughing. I stood back up. Wonderful, I thought, I just cheered up a thief. Nothing doing, mr. officer, just wandering the city cheering up the little girl who tried to rob me while the woman I'm in love with makes herself more festive for the men she lures in. I tried to picture myself happy, 30 years older, with her at my side. Instead, I saw my fingers cut, scraps of bright colors strewn about while some hideous voice called from the other room "make sure you get more toilet paper you pathetic mess, and tell that bagboy to come on by with his penis of his to put inside me!" It dawned on me, amazingly for the first time: I didn't love this beast. I wasn't even sure how she'd become my best friend, if she was my best friend. We spent more time together than people naturally do, but I think I'd become more of a pet than anything. Yes, this is it! A moment of truth. Oh, thank you wine, thank you pathetic crying girl. I would hug you, but I'm still angry.

I started back towards her apartment, then hesitated. Mine was too far for all the wine I'd been drinking. The girl peeked around the corner and giggled. Damn her! I lurched forward with a kick, but missed. She giggled again! How dare her! I kicked again, hit the wall, my wallet fell down, she grabbed my wallet and ran to a figure standing nearby.

"Damnit!" I cried. "Well, the joke is on you, I'm afraid! I have rigged my wallet with an explosive device that will spray blue ink all over you and all the money!"

"Sir," said a woman, "we know that you are local, we're just trying to run little practice runs for when we go into the city." As she spoke, I quietly pushed buttons on the cell phone in my pocket.

"We had no intentions of taking your money or your wall-"

The wallet exploded, covering them both over with blue.

"Little man wins!" I cried, and ran back into her apartment building. When I got upstairs she was lying in the bathtub watching the curled ribbon float about in little currents she pushed around.

"I wish I had thought of this when I was still stripping. When I still had the body for it." She sighed. "Why don't you go open another bottle of wine, and then maybe you can give it a try and tell me what you think." She looked up at me for a second, and I nodded somberly, using all my energy to hide my excitement. Tap tap? Come back later, something is cooking.

A Video Game script written by the character that the game is about

Int. of my car, a humble 1988 honda that I drive because I’d rather spend the money I make (from jumping on enemies) to help the little orphans or the victims of the bad guys I have to jump on top of. Or wait, a prius. How far back do those go? Fuck it, a ferrari.

Me: If I can just mutliply this figure into this one, in my head. (shot of a notebook with very detailed mathy shit – we’ll hire some nerd to draw it). And jot this down here… wait a second, this reminds me of something I calculated on page 103… (shot of me flipping back through the notebook to reveal every page has just as complicated mathy shit on it. We’ll pay the nerds in calculators, they’ll love that). Ahhh, just as I suspected, world domination! I knew he was up to something!

Ext. of my car (ferrari, don’t forget) peeling away.

Ext. of mansion (mine) with ferrari pulling up. An older man hurries off the porch to meet the ferrari.

Cougar: Dogman, I came as soon as I got your txt message! Let’s commence.

Me: Let’s roll. (camera shot of me with sunglasses, and a bad-ass guitar riff plays. Fade to black)

Int. of large evil looking castle. A man with a big moustache stands grandiosely overlooking us all.

Kid Wizard: I am Kid Wizard! I shall rule the world!

Me: Not if I can stop it! I’m the best they’ve got.

Kid Wizard: It’ll take more than that!

Cougar: He’s right, Dogman.

Me: I’ve got a plan.

I make a heroic dive for a weapon, but as I do so Kid Wizard pulls back a curtain to show my girlfriend who is totally hot in chains. Make that my wife. No, girlfriend. No no no, girlfriendS. 3 of them. All hotter than the next (wrap your minds around that one, MC Escher!). So I see the 3 girlfriends. 4? No, 3 is fine. 4 wouldn’t fit in my ferrari. So, there’s the 3 girlfriends and I put my head down sadly, like “what am I going to do now?” Then Cougar puts his hand on my shoulder and I know he has a plan, he always does.

Int. my mansion. Me and Cougar are going over blueprints and papers.

Cougar: and then if we just wait a day or so…

Me: No dice, Coug. We don’t have a day, OR so…

Cougar: What are you going to do?

Me: What I do every time, Cougar… Kick some ass.

Movies of our lives

Since I've got nothing else to contribute, I'll add this to the pile.

uncle touch me

Uncle Touch-Me sits at home watching sports. He rewinds and rewatches an outfielder make a diving catch a dozen times, then turns off the TV and takes a nap.

When he wakes up it's 3pm. The mailman has come and gone, and Uncle Touch-Me feels sad momentarily that he wasn't there to say hi, to offer some lemonade. He's very proud of his homemade lemonade. Last weekend one of the neighbor kids set up a table to sell lemonade, 1 cup for 75 cents. Uncle Touch-Me set his up for 50 cents with slightly larger cups. He saw the kid point, send his brother inside. A few minutes later the brother came out with their father. The father came over, asked Uncle Touch-Me what the big idea was.

Uncle Touch-Me laughed. Like he was going to reveal the big idea! "Give me a break. This is business," he said. "Look at my cups. Look at my prices. Take a taste."

The man took a taste and was immediately impressed at the quality of UTM's lemonade. But he was dad here, and had to make a point of standing up for his son. "I'm just trying to teach him some basic business principles," he said. "We're not trying to dominate the neighborhood lemonade business or anything. I mean, the wife and I are losing money on the whole thing, it was just something fun for him to try. Look at him over there." Uncle Touch-Me looked. The father felt a little queasy about having this giant 45 year old balding mammoth of a man looking at his son, but he hid it and went on. "He's just a kid. Slathered with sunscreen, bored out of his little mind, sitting there and pretending. His only business so far has been his stuffed animals, and they've just been running up tabs that they'll never be able to pay off. So..." The father glanced over, surprised that UTM hadn't laughed at his joke. He sighed. "Can't you play something else?" he asked. "Or at least pick a different day to do this?"

Uncle Touch-Me poured himself a glass of lemonade. He chose a tree in the distance to look at and began his reply. "Competition is the root of all business, Mr. Neighbor sir," he said. "If you want to teach your son a thing or two about business, about becoming a man, then i think the best route would be to let me sell my lemonade, as I have been doing, at a better quality, larger quantity, cheaper price, and encourage your son to adapt. This is a lesson in not counting your eggs before they hatch. This is a lesson in the real world, in the real limitations that exist out there. When McDonald's started selling hamburgers, they didn't cry to their daddies when Burger King popped up out of nowhere. They went over and investigated, researched prices, tasted the burgers, and figured out ways to cut prices, improve their own flavors, and keep on keeping on. I am the burger king to your son's mcDonald's, Mr... " he waited for the neighbor to tell him his name, and after a few seconds of awkward silence passed, he went on. "Tell him that I will be happy to purchase his business when he is ready to claim bankruptcy."

The neighbor nodded, shrugged his shoulders, said "well, you make a good point," and started back to his own yard. About halfway across the street, he heard Uncle Touch-Me yell over to his son, "You're Going Down you little rascallious lemonade vender!! Uncle Touch-Me for life!!" When he turned around, he saw UTM pounding his chest like king kong. This was too much. The neighbor went over there and knocked UTM's table over, spilling his lemonade over everything.

"Hey!" said Uncle Touch-Me. The neighbor put his finger into Uncle Touch-Me's face, tried to find something to say, gave up and walked home. An hour later Uncle Touch-Me was set up again, same as before, except now with his little ragged pet dog leashed to the table. There was a sign in front that said "back in business after repairs." Another sign a little closer to the street said "Neighbor kid lemonade in cahoots with the mob! Protest! Revolt!" He shouted to the kid, "tell your dad that the insurance company paid for all of the damage he did and then some!! You tell him that!"

The neighbor kid packed up his stuff and went inside. Uncle Touch-Me had won.

He puts the TV on and Oprah's worried face appears behind a small black microphone. Uncle Touch-Me pulls out his notebook. By the end of the show he has several new diet options to try, a couple of books to read, and a new sad story to cry himself to sleep to tonight. He turns off the TV, heaves himself off the couch, and slips on some shoes so he can go to the drive-thru for chili cheese dogs. In his notebook full of Oprah suggestions are circles and X's. The circles go around any of the diets, books, etc that he actually tries. The X's go through the ideas that he revisits and decides not to follow after all. Everything else sits untouched. As of this afternoon, there are 3 circles, 29 X's, and several hundred untouched. He smiles to himself as the taste of chili cheese dogs in his imagination gives him a sneak preview.

"Today is going to be great," he decides.

work diaries 17APR: I drive out of hatred of driving

In the past driving to work was all about how fast I could get there. Speed around the slow cars, do anything to get around the car in front of you... even if... that meant... being one car ahead of the next car.

Now I don't hate my job, it's fun. I get to be creative but it has it's issues like working 3 days straight etc. Most people hate to go to work. Most people can't wait to get out of work. I find myself more and more wanting to get out of work.

What I can't understand now, is driving fast to get to work. I realized after doing this, that a ticket for speeding to get to a place where I'm trying to make money makes no sense. I also realized that no matter how fast I got to work, the e-mails, desk, people in the office and parking spaces will always be there. They aren't going to magically go away if I get in early or just because I got in to handle things faster doesn't mean they will stop coming. The next day I have more e-mails like those people didn't know I got into work early the day before.

What the hell, I do these things to have a relaxing Friday in khaki shorts and a golf shirt. I do this so you don't email me with issues and actual work to do after 5pm. How hard is that to understand? Stop emailing me when I drive 90 mph to get to work on a residential street cutting off moron's who are enjoying their new CD's in their car. I'm still staying in the office till 10pm every night writing e-mails to try and make myself sound smart to everyone around me. Everyone sends an e-mail and puts in their own words the same damn thing that everyone else is saying so you can pretty much expect a laundry list of replies that basically say the same damn thing. "I feel that this is not going to be good for our company cause it costs alot..." "the cost of this issue I feel will be detrimental and put us over our budget..." "I don't think this cost is justifiable within the parameters of the margin..." Come on people, throw in your favorite Fraggle Rock episode and why you like it to help break up the monotony.

SUV SUV SUV SUV SUV SUV SUV
parking lot, wave of SUV's, sales event on PCH so many cars with no people in them SUV's for sale in the middle of the road, on $05 freeway, stop and you can't go again so many SUV's with AC on, little girls that can't see over the steering wheel, you want a Suburban? test drive one right now, just get out of your little HOnda and hope in. It's right there next to you on the $01 freeway heading North.

The higher off the ground you are the more of a man you can be. The higher your throne above the other cars the more power you instill with your manliness, lion maneliness on your throne of porcelain, are those 30 meter rims you got spinnin on your tonka truck? man, man, I am a man I can shake my fist at someone that can't see me from my aztec style truck that looks like Voltron's foot and towers above your puny little car.

is today over yet?