Monthly Archives: June 2012

War on Peace

If I were President, I’d declare a War on Peace. That way, the terrorists would get confused. They’d say to themselves, “Wait a second, the United States is against peace?” and, being terrorists, being by their nature sworn to hate everything we love and being honor bound to fundamentally love and pledge allegiance to everything we hate, they’d have no choice but to embrace peace. “If the United States hates peace,” they would write in their online manifestos, “then we’re going to give them all of the peace in the world!”

And the terrorists would hatch all of these crazy plots and sneak into government buildings around the world but, instead of blowing them up with suicide bombers, they might distract the guards and completely fix the places up, like install some new drywall, or slap on a couple of fresh coats of paint. Instead of kidnapping foreign journalists and overseas contractors, instead of bringing them back to their terrorist hideouts and holding them hostage for vast sums of ransom money, they’ll find expats and, well, they’ll still kidnap them, but when they bring them in to their hideouts they’ll reward them with the pampering of a lifetime. They’ll give out professional massages and complementary glasses of champagne. And afterwards they’ll blindfold them, but with really comfortable terrycloth blindfolds, and they’ll put them in the back of a nice limousine and drop them off at their houses, where the terrorists’ wives will have cooked a really nice dinner for the whole family. And after they execute all of their plans, the terrorists will run down the streets of their homelands, setting fire to American flags, but then immediately extinguishing the flames, and they’ll wave the flags in the air and chant, “Peace to America!”

As President, if I want the terrorists to keep up their Jihad on America’s War on Peace, I’ll have to pretend that I’m pissed. And I’ll have to rile up the public to make it look like they’re all pissed as well. I’ll take to the airwaves and declare that, “These attacks on America’s War on Peace are unacceptable! We will hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice!” And this will only encourage the terrorists to commit even grander acts of peace.

It’s simple. If the terrorists are against everything we hold to be true and sacred – I mean, that’s what we’re all told, right? – then all we have to do is make them think that we think the opposite of what it is that we actually hold to be true and sacred. Got it? After my War on Peace drags on indefinitely in unimaginable failure, which, remember, would secretly be a good thing, (but it’s America’s secret, so don’t tell the terrorists,) I’ll finally just admit defeat. I’ll make an elaborate surrender speech. I’ll say stuff like, “America has been outmatched. Peace has won.” And the terrorists will parade down their streets once again thinking that they’ve won, when in reality they’ll all have been ridiculously outsmarted, by me.

After that, I’ll be in a position to have the terrorists do whatever I want. I’ll declare a War on Literacy. I’ll give speeches where I tell everyone, “America will not rest until nobody knows how to read!” And the terrorists will stand around their tiny TVs in their dusty caves and they’ll get super pissed and say, “Oh yeah? That’s what he thinks!” And they’ll get out there and start teaching everyone how to read. Blinded by their fundamentalist ideals, completely devoted to their crusade against the West, the terrorists will put all of their effort into making their literacy programs the best and most respected in the world.

Their system of terrorist schools will grow and develop until finally they’re on par with the finest universities in America. Terrorist schools will be in such high demand that the rising cost of a terrorist education (which, remember, will actually be a regular education) will threaten the stability of the whole terror network. But as President, it’ll be as simple as declaring a War on Affordable Education. The terrorists will snap out of their lucrative terrorist education business models and commit themselves to providing a quality education, for free, for anybody that needs it, simply because America wants the opposite.

When finally comes the day where society completely runs out of problems, because I tricked all of the terrorists into fixing them, then I’ll be able to finally sit back and just make the terrorists perform various trivial tasks at my discretion. I’ll have a War on Getting The President a Cold Beer from the Fridge. The next thing I know, there’s going to be a terrorist sneaking into the White House to pour a fresh brew into a frosty mug that he’ll have secretly planted in the freezer.

Mission Not Accomplished. Foreign policy doesn’t sound so tough.

Good old-fashioned nonsense

I like anything better if it’s old-fashioned. Sometimes I’ll go to the grocery store to buy a soda. If I’m in the mood for root beer, I’ll always pick the bottle that says it’s the old-fashioned kind of root beer. The new-fashioned kind is, in my experience, disgusting. A while ago I bought a gallon of Turkey Hill iced tea because it proudly described itself on the bottle as “cold-fashioned.” At the time, I thought this was extremely clever. It had the term old-fashioned in it, which I like, and it also got the word cold in there, which, when dealing with iced tea, I also like. I also really enjoy wordplay, so as far as purchasing this particular brand of soft drink, this seemed like a no-brainer.

Unfortunately, by the time I got home from the grocery store, my plastic jug of iced tea wasn’t so cold anymore. I was a little disappointed, but also really thirsty, so I poured myself a glass. I figured, maybe it would taste cold even if it wasn’t actually cold. Maybe that’s what cold-fashioned meant. But it didn’t. It actually tasted pretty gross. I considered popping it in the fridge to cool off, but the room-temperature taste was really stuck in my mouth. It wasn’t agreeing with me at all, and I didn’t think that any amount of actual coldness would ever make me have a favorable opinion about this particular brand of iced tea.

I looked at the label and it was all warped and starting to peel off at the edges. I’m guessing the condensation that formed on the way home from the store had started to deactivate the glue that was keeping the label in place. Wouldn’t it make more sense to invest in the same cold-activated technology that Coors Light uses to make its mountains turn blue? Coors light doesn’t have to deal with any annoying paper labels. And you can be assured that when the can says cold, it’s actually cold, because it’s cold activated. If Turkey Hill doesn’t want to spend too much money on a whole cold-activated label, that’s understandable, but it really doesn’t have to break the bank. It only has to print just the letter C of cold-fashioned in cold-activated ink. That can’t cost too much, definitely a lot cheaper than printing a whole cold-activated label. This way if it’s left outside of the fridge, it will just say old-fashioned instead of cold-fashioned. But it’s too late. I’m never buying it ever again.

Whenever I go to a bar, I always order an old-fashioned. But I must go to some pretty underclass bars, because the bartenders never know how to make one. I keep meaning to look up how to make it, so the next time a bartender uses ignorance as an excuse, I can instruct him on how to mix one. But I keep forgetting to look it up. One time I asked for an old-fashioned and the bartender told me he could make me one, kind of, but he didn’t have any bitters. “Would that be OK?” he asked me. But honestly, I had no idea what he was talking about, so I ordered a Coors Light instead. As cold as the Rockies.

I always like anything that says old-fashioned, but with one exception: I hate anything that labels itself as old-fashioned family fun. In my experiences, this is just a somewhat clever way of tricking people into thinking something will be fun, but it’s actually going to be super, super boring. One time my family was vacationing up in Massachusetts, and we all decided that we’d like to go bowling. So we looked online for a bowling alley, and two results popped up. One of the results was a regular bowling alley, but the other place offered something called candlepin bowling.

“Candlepin Bowling: Good Old-Fashioned Family Fun!” it read on the search engine. Of course we picked what we thought would be the better experience, the old-fashioned experience. But we got there and, right away we should have known that this was going to be a terrible experience. The whole place smelled like one of those rinky-dink carnivals that travel through town every summer. But it didn’t smell like the carnival in general, which, while it smells all-around awful, every once in a while the badness is offset by a pleasant whiff of a fresh zeppole or popcorn, which makes it smell not as bad. No, this smelled like the inside of the Gravitron, the concentrated stink of you leaning back against the foam seat and it’s still sort of wet from the sweat of the countless people who got stuck to it before you.

Candlepin bowling is just like real bowling, except the ball is really small, the pins are really narrow and impossible to hit, and even though you get multiple turns within a frame, there is no machine that picks up the already knocked down pins, so you have to bowl around these unnecessary obstacles. There was also no arcade, no concessions, and no automatic scoring. Nobody knew how to score, so we all just kind of stood around, bored, taking turns not really knowing what we were supposed to be doing. (I wrote down 300 on the score pad after each of my turns. Nobody else looked amused, but I thought it was hilarious.) As far as old-fashioned things go, this was a rare miss.

Actually, I’m trying to think of something else that’s better when it’s old-fashioned, but I can’t really think of anything. Old-fashioned dentistry: terrible. Old-fashioned Internet: what, like AOL? That was the worst. Maybe I meant to start this out by writing, “I like everything better if it’s new-fashioned.” Yeah, that makes much more sense. Just start reading this whole thing over, and in your mind, replace old-fashioned with new-fashioned and vice versa. It might get a little confusing with that whole cold-fashioned part, but just keep going. And if you don’t think it’s funny or interesting, just force yourself to smile and laugh, because I really do believe that if you do it for long enough, part of you will start to think that you’re actually enjoying yourself. See? I’m sure you’re feeling better already.

How’s your ice?

I’m the oldest of six children. When we were all little kids, my mom would make the whole family dinner every night. Trying to teach us to be responsible or something, she would all make us do a chore to help get the meal underway. But since my mom did all the cooking, there was never really a ton of work to do, not enough for one person, certainly not enough work to be divided amongst six hyperactive little kids. But fair is fair, so we all had to pitch in.

Since I’m the oldest, and the biggest, and the smartest, and the loudest, I always got to pick whatever job I wanted to do. I received a lot of privileges as the oldest. If there was only one parent in the car, I always got to ride shotgun, every time. If one of my other brothers or sisters was watching something on TV, I could just push them out of the way and watch whatever I wanted, and if they even thought about making a fuss, if anybody wanted to get loud and start crying or challenging my actions, then mom would have to get involved, and her solution would be to turn the TV off, no TV at all. And since I wasn’t watching TV in the first place, that was always leverage that I’d use to my advantage. What would you rather do, have no TV or watch what I want to watch?

Anyway, come dinnertime, unless I was bored, or unless I felt that one of my siblings had a job that they for some reason really seemed to be enjoying, (in which case, I would steal that job,) I was always in charge of getting cups for soda and filling them with ice. Like I said, the whole setup was way too little work for way too many people. The other jobs were: clearing off the table, getting plates, getting silverware, getting napkins, and assisting whoever was getting napkins.

As always, I never passed up on even the smallest opportunity to make somebody else in my family miserable. And getting cups of ice – while on the surface it might seem to be a duty with the least potential for psychological sibling torture – was the perfect way to exercise total power in the most limiting of circumstances. I have to make it clear that, I couldn’t just one night decide to start messing around with somebody’s ice and expect a decent payoff. If I tried that, there would be crying and screaming and we’d all wind up in trouble. Sometimes that was a consequence that I was willing to accept, like if I was really bored or something. But in this scenario, the payoff of my ice cup manipulation was the result of a gradual buildup of me getting cups of ice, seemingly without any problems, night after night after night.

After a while without any incident, I established my credentials as a decent enough cup preparer, to the point where my mom wouldn’t have any reason to question my motives. That’s when I started tipping the ice scales. I started giving one of my brothers slightly less ice every single night. At first I don’t even think he noticed his lack of ice. So I started asking him, whenever my mom was just out of earshot, “How’s your ice?” And that was it; I wouldn’t say anything else. I would calmly go back to my dinner and not pursue it any further. But I would keep up the same routine, every night, “How’s your ice?” over and over again, each night doling out less and less ice.

After a week or so, my brother caught on to the game and, although probably a little pissed off, would just go up to the freezer and get himself some more ice. So I took it to the next level. Every night at dinner, I would give everyone the correct amount of ice, except for my one brother, who I would only give one cube. And as he sat down to the table, I would repeat, over and over again, “How’s your ice?” smiling a little shit-eating grin at him, until he went to the freezer and got more ice. It got to be a huge joke. All of my other brothers and sisters would laugh and laugh. Eventually my brother would start crying to my mom that I was teasing him, that I was harassing him, so I would stop and play dumb and protest that he was making stuff up to try to get me in trouble. It was usually enough for my mom to issue a blanket, “shut the hell up, all of you,” to everyone, ending the argument right there. As I sat there in silence for the rest of the meal, staring at my brother, smiling at him almost imperceptibly, I knew that I had to ratchet up my scheme to its final phase, because it was only a matter of time before my mom caught on to my torture and banned me from cups.

So I did the one-cube trick the next day, but this time, I took all of the ice out of the freezer and hid it in a bowl that I hid in the opposite corner, surrounded by boxes of frozen vegetables. I got all of the cups ready, and immediately started chanting, “How’s your ice? How’s your ice?” to my brother, who also immediately started screaming and crying and making a run to the freezer. And when he got there, there was no ice at all. There was maybe a second of silence as he looked at the empty ice tray and saw what was going on, and then he really started screaming, and my mom had no choice but to get involved. I protested that we simply must have run out of ice, and that it couldn’t have been my fault. My mom demanded that I give him some of my ice, and I agreed, but I noted out loud that I had already poured myself a drink and that I had introduced a sizeable amount of my own spit to the cup, but that my brother was welcome to as much of my ice as he wanted.

There was much more screaming and much more crying, but somehow my mom managed to quiet us all down to eat. After I finished my drink, I made sure to chew on each ice cube, making really loud chomping sounds, the kind of obnoxious noises that you can only really make by biting down really hard on a cube of ice. Ten minutes after dinner had started, my cup was totally emptied. I got up and walked to the freezer and reached for my hidden supply, and I came back to the table with my cup filled with ice and, knowing this was the culmination of weeks and weeks of build up, I smiled a huge smile and asked, “Hey, sorry, did anybody want any more ice?”

This is why I don’t leave the house

Whenever a movie comes out that I’m really looking forward to see, I used to like to head over to the theatre the night before to watch the first showing at midnight. But I’m beginning to realize that I hate everything about this. I hate having to compete with everyone else, waiting in line for hours, buying a ticket, making sure I find a good seat, taking turns with whoever I’m there with getting up to going to the bathroom, buying snacks, all while I’m sitting in this crowded theatre for an hour before the commercials even start, watching stupid commercials for another hour before the previews even start, watching some ridiculous previews for movies that I have no intention of ever seeing, (I always say never, but there are always exceptions to watching bad movies, like if I’m on a long flight and, after trying not to look at the screen, I find myself watching regardless of whatever else I may feel like or not feel like doing,) having random people come up to my row, pointing to that pile of coats next to me and saying, “Is anyone sitting there?” and I have to try to act polite and say, “Yeah, sorry, my friend is in the bathroom or getting snacks or stretching his legs because he’s been sitting in this seat for the better part of a day and he’s worried about developing a deep vein thrombosis or he’s making a phone call and didn’t want to be rude or he had second thoughts about our friendship and only told me he was going to the bathroom but he really snuck off and won’t be returning any of my calls again in the future, in which case, you would be welcome to the seat, but I’d hate to just assume the worst, so if you come back maybe fifteen minutes after the movie starts, and he’s still not here, then you can have it, but that wouldn’t really make much sense, because this is his coat, so even if he did want to ditch me, to ditch our friendship, to ditch everything we’ve been through, you’d think he’d at least take his coat with him, so, yeah, I’m sorry, the seat’s taken,” and I have to act all apologetic for having the nerve to occupy such a desirable seat, and I look up at the people asking, hoping that they aren’t rolling their eyes at me in contempt, but it’s too dark in the theatre, so I can only make out a general outline of their faces, not the specific facial expressions that they may or may not be taunting me with, but like any dark space, where you can only kind of make something out, but not really, the mind has a way of filling in the blanks, and for some reason, whenever I tell people that the seat’s taken, I’m automatically looking up at potential faces of disgust, anger, just barely held back rage, but who knows if the people are really that pissed off or not? And then it turns out that the joke is usually on me anyway because, even though I got there super early, even though I waited there and sat through all of that nonsense, right before the ambient lights go dark for the movie, the last member of the group of people in front of me arrives, better late than never, just in the nick of time, without a second to lose, and his friends move the pile of coats they were using to save his seat, and it’s right in front of mine (no wonder I thought my seat was so perfect; it was a mirage; it wasn’t real; there is no spoon) and the guy happens to be eight feet tall and his head is right in the bottom right corner of my view of the screen, not enough to completely obscure my line of sight, but just enough that I now have to stretch my head awkwardly to the side so I can see everything, and I have to hold it like that for the entire movie, and I’m not even fortunate enough to be able to lean into my friend next to me, which, no doubt, is still a little awkward, but not nearly as awkward as what I have to do now, which is to lean really close to the complete stranger next to me, the dude who ordered a small soda cup of nacho cheese sauce, and he’s just holding it, and you can’t see if he has any chips, (he must right?) because what else would he be doing with that stuff, and I want to focus on the movie, but I also want to see if this guy is going to do something with the cheese, like maybe he’ll just dip his fingers in there every now and then and take a lick, but I never catch him and it’s driving me nuts, so I only see like half the movie, and every time I look to the cheese, the audience erupts in a huge cheer or a laugh, and I look up at the screen but I totally missed it, and it might look like something cool had happened, but it’s currently no longer cool enough to elicit such a loud response, in which case I just have to assume that I missed something, or saw something partially potentially cool but totally out of context. And then the movie ends and it takes me forever to push my way out of the theatre, and I always wind up eating way too much popcorn, so my lips hurt, my tongue hurts, I have those stupid little pieces of popcorn shell stuck way up in between the spaces between my back molars and the gums they are attached to, and I’ll just say to myself, Rob, listen, you’re not going to be able to get them out without floss, so just ignore them and wait until you get home, but while my head is convinced of this plan’s logic, my tongue never really gets the memo, and proceeds to play with the kernels and to try to maneuver and twist its way back there, and I always accidentally wind up biting my tongue, and every time I think the piece is about to be lodged free, loose enough to where I can stick my finger in there and pull it out, it always backfires, and I’ll pick at it with my fingernail, but when I go to inspect the area with my tongue, it’s always in the same exact spot, or maybe even pushed a little further in, and I’ll think, OK, did I pick at the wrong tooth, because teeth feel much different to the tongue than they do to the fingers, and I’ll count from the back tooth with my tongue, one, two, it’s the third one in, and I’ll do the same with my fingers, one, two, three, nothing, so I’ll just put it out of my head and go home to floss, but my friend wants to go get coffee or something even though it’s super late, and I always say yes, because I don’t want to give my friend any reason to doubt our friendship, the kind of doubt that will start out small, but it will linger, until the next time we go out to see a movie, the next thing I know I’m sitting next to an empty seat and, look at that, he did take his coat this time, maybe that’s it, maybe I’m ditched, maybe that other person does come back to see if the seat’s open fifteen minutes later and I have to give it up, and then I won’t be able to enjoy the movie because, even though half an hour has passed, even though an hour has passed, I’ll keep thinking that, my friend’s going to come back, and what’s he going to say when he sees that I’ve given up his seat?

It’s time to answer the call

I’m thinking about joining the army. I always felt that I’d be a great fit for the US armed forces. I’m tall. I’ve got a really loud voice that I can project for very long distances and that I can sustain for an almost indefinite period of time. And I really think that I could pull off the uniform. I wonder if there’s some sort of general training program. I don’t mean general in the general sense of the word; I’m talking about actually being promoted right from civilian to General. I think two-star general would be appropriate, because I’d need some higher rank to aspire to, like maybe five-star General. I could be the first five-star General since Omar Bradley.

When the day comes that I find myself promoted to five-star General, my first order of business will be a non-violent military coup against the President. I’ll convince the American public that the President is actually a Chinese spy. I’m not going to have him executed or imprisoned. I’m just going to have him hidden away somewhere, where he can live out the remainder of his days in peace and obscurity.

My second order of business will be to demand that the Congress create a new military rank, a six-star General, and that I be promoted to this new rank immediately. What’s the difference between a five-star General and a six-star General? Well, besides the fact that there’s a whole new star, six-star Generals don’t have to answer to anybody. Not the government, not the public, not even the economy. Six-star Generals transcend currency. Money doesn’t exist for them. If they want something, they go to a store and just take it for free. Some might call this a blatant grab for power and wealth, but I’ll really just be making sure that nobody, not even the richest people in the world, could ever even think about trying to buy the six-star General’s influence. I’ll be incorruptible.

My third order of business would be to eliminate the current ranks of four-star and five-star Generals. This way I could discourage any of my less honorable subordinates from gunning for my position. This will be a genius move. I’ll tell them, yeah, sure, maybe you guys could be six-star Generals someday, but only if you move up the ranks in number order, no skipping. And if anybody pressed the matter further, which I highly doubt, if they point out how I went from civilian right to two-star General, then I’ll start eliminating even more ranks, until everybody under me is nothing more than a frontline infantryman.

After I take over the US armed forces, my next order of business will be to approach the other world nations and offer them the services of my army. This will be my smartest move yet. I’ll approach the other nations, starting with the next biggest army and moving my way down, and I’ll say, hey guys, the US army wants to join your army. We’re at your service. There’s only one demand: that I get to be in charge as the six-star General. And they’ll be confused at first. They’ll ask me, “But General, does this mean that it would still be the US army or would it be our army?” And I’ll reassure them that it would be their army. They could call it whatever they want, I don’t care. And they’ll agree.

Fools. As soon as they relinquished control, one by one, I’ll depose the majority of all of the world’s leaders and presidents until only a number of much smaller countries remain. I’ll insist that these tiny powers keep their sovereignty, but not really, because I’ll be constantly making them sign these ridiculous treaties, promising them this and promising them that, but then as soon as the elaborate signing ceremonies are over, I’ll order all of my troops to start doing exactly the opposite of what the treaties said.

And if their puny leaders call me up, saying stuff like, “But General! But General! You promised!” I’ll order all of my troops in the surrounding areas to line up around the perimeter of their national border, and I’ll command them all to start pointing and laughing at everybody inside, at the whole country, in unison.

My grip on power will be absolute, but I will be a fair, just, and wise leader. And in my final years of life, I’ll order all of the world’s guns and weapons and ammunition to be thrown into a giant pile somewhere. Every single one of them, except for one nuclear weapon, which I’ll use to blow up the whole pile. And then I’ll have everyone collect all of the molten slag that remains after the explosion, and I’ll have them use it to build a giant statue in my image. It will be the biggest statue in the history of the planet, and the statue will be of me, posing triumphantly, holding the end of a giant missile, pulling if from my mouth as if I were eating a shrimp cocktail, and the face will be chewing, like the statue is just finishing the missile off as a snack. And on the bottom there will be a ridiculously oversized plaque, even the plaque itself will be bigger than any other statue in the world, just to give you a sense of the true size and scope of this statue, and the plaque will say, “Forever live the eternal memory of history’s only six-star General, destroyer of war, herald of world peace, savior of humanity.”