In which Our Hero is rick rolled in the god damned bathroom.

Now that my bubbling ire has subsided in regards to a giant vat of cherry-flavored Rita's Ices currently languishing in the freezer downstairs (like toilet-clogging bowel movement, it was simply taking up too much space in my little mini-fridge), it's time to relate the horror show that was my weekend.

As I mentioned, Third Party's parents were here for an overnight, plaguing us with their nasty presences.  They left New York on Saturday morning, promptly sat in traffic for about 6 hours, and finally got here sometime in the late afternoon, nice and extra surly.  This is a remarkable feat, considering that TP's mother has the temperament (and the shrill Noo Yawk accent) of Fran Drescher high on motherfucking Angel Dust.

I got a free lunch and dinner out of the deal, which was nice but a rather high price to pay, considering how I had the distinct pleasure of tagging along while TP's meat head father completely ignores his shiny new GPS and gets us terribly lost on our way to their hotel to drop off their bags.  We got to take the fucking longest shortcut ever, through the wilds of former Pennsylvania railroad towns that have since degenerated into places even "the nigras" wouldn't be caught dead in.

We finally pull up to the goddamn Best Western in Limerick and, to my absolute horror, this is what fills my view:

JESUS FUCK LOOK AT THIS

Yeah, that's right.  There's a god damned nuclear power plant in the fucking hotel's back yard.  It just then that I suddenly remember that Three Mile Island is in Pennsylvania.

Well, weekend couldn't get any worse, right?  What could possibly be worse than spending the entire weekend with some shrill harpy and her devoted, balding, metrosexual manchild of a husband?

Well, after they'd gotten checked in, they decide to take Third Party shopping at the nearby outlet stores (again, with the fucking Pillars of Death in full view beyond the parking lot), where finally I'd had enough from ducking into overcrowded stores stuffed with overpriced crap and excuse myself in order to go to the bathroom.

Finally, peace and quiet.  I can get a few moments to myself, I think, maybe take a seat, read some graffiti, leave some of my own perhaps.  I choose the handicapped stall; I like the roominess.  It feels comfortable - it may very well be bigger than the room I'm renting upstairs at Chucklehead Estate - and I settle in for a nice 5 to 10 minute break.  I light some candles, put down a throw rug, hang my favorite picture of David Hasslehoff on the wall.  Of course, as soon as I really start feeling comfortable is when the boring, inoffensive pussy music being piped in over the speakers ends and something else comes on.

We're no strangers to love....

I blink, disbelieving, as the first bars of a new song shoot through my ears and bypass the cognitive centers of my brain and light up the part that handles incensed rage like a fireworks show.  

You know the rules, and so do I....

Even in the fucking bathroom, the one place I have that is completely and utterly mine even if it's just for a few minutes, even here, my god damned Fortress of Solitude, the Universe decides to troll me.  Hard.

Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down.... 

Fucking Rick Astley on the god damned loudspeaker.  Fuck my life.

In which Our Hero tries to shove an entire quart of Rita's Cherry Italian Ice into his mini-refrigerator's tiny little freezer section

So I'm doing my best to stay awake and actually complete the work I've got pending for tomorrow morning when I hear a knock on the door at the bottom of the stairs. To my surprise, it's Little Miss Tripping Balls holding a giant quart of Rita's fucking Cherry Italian Ices, gratis, for both myself and Third Party, who is sleeping off the fatigue of having to deal with a weekend visit from their vile troglodytic parents.

What the fuck am I supposed to do with 12 pounds of cherry-flavored shaved ice? Is this some sort of god damned joke? I've got a fucking mini fridge. The freezer compartment is about the size of a stick of butter; these things were designed for dorm rooms for the love of Zombie Hipster Jesus (he was nailed to a cross before it was cool).

I wanted to dump it on her god damned head and wipe that smug fucking look off her face. Does she think we can be bought by god damned crunchy water with some red food coloring thrown in? I need at least 2 pints of Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream to even consider any favors. Hell, if she really wanted to get on my good side, maybe she could clean out the fucking sink downstairs in the kitchen that's teeming with mother fucking fruit flies because

of the rotting corn cobs and tomatoes and Flying Spaghetti Monster-knows what else rotting in the bowels of their plumbing systems.

White-hot rage burns itself out quickly, however, and I find myself embracing the annoyed apathy expressed by our good friend the bubo virgianus here:

I need to find my fucking Xanax.

In which a massive amount of douchebaggery is distilled down to a few hundred words.

Once again it has been several days between now and my last update. Once again, I am thoroughly unapologetic; I've had other shit that needed dealing with. Some quick highlights from the past two weeks have been:

• preparing for, attending, and then cleaning up from Little Miss Tripping Balls' birthday party
• battling a flea infestation brought on by two neglected dogs and one neglected cat, neither of which belong to Our Hero
• extended caring for said dogs and cat in light of the fact that Little Miss Tripping Balls, Signore Flailing Retard, and Our Glorious and Illustrious Benefactor (May His Blood Alcohol Level Never Exceed the Legal Limit) have all been out of the house for extended periods of time

Let's break these down, shall we? The day of my last post was the Monday after a middling-large social gathering to commemorate the eventful day when Little Miss Tripping Balls slid down her mother's vaginal chute into a pile of drugs and money, of which one or the other has she been steadily consuming since that date. There were several key players in attendance, along with several more who just couldn't be bothered to come all the way out to the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania for the privilege of having a shitty time. The farm was in relatively good shape, thanks to the ministrations of Our Hero and Third Party, who had been steadily maintaining the work done on the side patio in addition to the backyard pool and deck areas (despite the giant dogshit landmines everywhere).

Additionally there was a flurry of cleaning and preparation that had taken place that previous Friday when, after an indefinite amount of prompting and and encouragement from outside sources, both SFR and LMTB actually got off their fucking asses and cleaned their shit up and out of the first floor. Of course, their version of "clean" is rather laughable; all the loose pieces of personal property were trundled upstairs and deposited into their dumping ground on the second floor, a dog-shit encrusted room that used to also be their bedroom until they actually moved their bed to a smaller, adjoining room in some asinine bid for World's Most Stupid Couple. I think they're still in the running.

So the pool room was cleansed of all their ridiculous mess, and the shared living room and kitchen space was given a once-over as well. There was some work done outside in addition, such as the vile, reeking cooler hosed out and disinfected before being filled with cheap, evil-smelling beer and the pool cleaned within an inch of its life, but alas they cannot take credit for all of these things themselves; as people began arriving early for the party, they were actually put to work on these tasks. Can you fucking imagine? Later I discover this is why so many people arrived either later in the evening or not at all, as this kind of behavior has occurred several times in the past.

Another reason some people were reticent to come is because their two hosts would routinely, in addition to making their guests clean their filthy house and environs for them, also neglect to purchase adequate amounts of food and drink to actually entertain their guests. Well, in a stroke of altruism and goodwill that is surely forgotten by now, both Third Party and myself got together, pooled our resources in regards to food and drink easily purchased with government aided funds, and went food shopping for the party. We were determined to at least be able to offer some sort of recompense for all the poor assholes that got suckered into coming over for this noxious celebration, and since Signore Flailing Retard and Little Miss Tripping Balls now have no money since Il Benefattore (Lui Che Non Parla Italiano) took his credit card back from the clutches of his vapid little daughter. Hell, TP and I were even the ones who paid for her fucking birthday cake.

But that's neither here nor there; the actions weren't taken for her or her vile fiancé but for their guests, several of which are friends or at least people that don't deserve a slow, painful death. So we did a mitzvah, so what? No expectation of gratitude. Which was not really all that forthcoming.

Behavior displayed during the party was of the head-scratching variety, of course. The general demographics of the party broke down in two ways: close friends of approximately the same age, or newer, younger people known through some retarded LARP game both the Birthday Girl and her remora of a fiancé frequent once a month. The two of them spent the majority of their time with the teenagers over on one side of the house, while the adults were all gathered on the other side, as far away as possible from the kids. There was little to no overlap, save a frightened little boy or girl scurrying outside to grab something from the cooler (which was luckily placed in our demense). Occasionally our Host and Guest of Honor would grace us with their single or combined presence, but we were mostly left to our own devices. From all accounts, it was more preferable that way.

After the weekend was over and everyone had gone home, things went back to normal, of course; this means that the place was slightly rumpled and in need of being policed for empty cans, bottles, and cigarette butts. I personally had to rescue any perishable items from the cooler while there was still some ice left in there keeping it cold, as I wasn't about to let a full gallon of orange juice go bad. I knew that if I didn't pull it out of there and stick it in the fridge, we'd be buried in rot and filth by October when it's opened again for the next ridiculous party.

So as soon as that was done and taken care of, the next week and a half have been a constant struggle to contain and eliminate a massive flea infestation brought upon us by neglect: the decision was made to bring an absolutely wonderful indoor-outdoor cat upstairs and away from the dogs because both I and Third Party would continually find that he had terrible scratches and scabs from when the dogs would play with him much too roughly. As the cat weighs about 10 pounds and the dogs weigh around 35 pounds each, it was an easy decision on our part.

Unfortunately both he and the two dogs were teeming with fleas, which spread to not only any other animals in the area but also any human beings. This resulted in a massive expenditure of funds and effort in such things as two kinds of flea medication for cats, thoroughly vacuuming, cleaning, and linen-washing the contents the entire attic from top to bottom, and giving a bath to four cats.

Think about that. Four cats. Not all at once, thank God - that would have been absolute Bedlam - but one at a time, right after the other. It was a miserable experience, and not just for the cats. Only now have things started to show improvements; last night was the first time in two weeks where I hadn't woken up with my legs teeming with flea bites.

All of this effort could have been avoided by the owners of these God damned pets actually taking care of them, of course. The cat has unofficially been adopted by me and Third Party, so we're comfortable in seeing to his needs, even though he's not fixed yet and we'll have to figure out a way to pay for his neutering, but there's no way in Hell we can take responsibility for two very rambunctious growing dogs. We have been reassured time and again by their owners that the dogs have been given all sorts of preventative flea medications, and while that may be true, unless someone actively cleans the locations where the dogs frequently inhabit indoors, they can become re-infested and start the cycle all over again.

Guess who hasn't taken any efforts to clean the living room, where the dogs are constantly whenever they're not outside, looking for delicious chunks of their own shit to eat? That's right, Little Miss Tripping Balls and Signore Flailing Retard. I'm doubly sure that they haven't cleaned their living space on the second floor as well. This means that even sitting on the couch downstairs to watch television is an impossibility when you constantly feel fleas swarming out at you from the seat cushions.

The only solution would be to not go downstairs unless when absolutely necessary, of course, but not only does that make this little room up here into a prison, it's just not practical, especially since once again the dogs' "owners" have left for the weekend, leaving it to other people to care for the little abused bastards.

And I do mean abused; I had taken them outside Friday night so that they could urinate and defecate outside for a pleasant change when I noticed the fur had all been chewed and scratched off one dog's hindquarters, leaving large patches of exposed skin. Of course this was brought to my attention when he squatted down to expel his foul excrement all over the patio I had just scoured within an inch of its life, but I praised him for shitting outside, like a normal dog, and began to walk towards him to reach the long-handled shit scooper nearby.

He jumped up fearfully, his sphincter still clutching a half-deposited doggie log, and scrambled out of reach of me. He then squatted back down and released his putrescent load, all the while watching me warily, like I was going to rush him and beat him severely for shitting all over the place.

Like it had happened before or something.

It's times like these that make me wonder why I don't drink.

In which our hero awakens with a headache and cottonmouth, without the benefit of a good time the previous evening.

I woke up this morning at roughly 7:30, my head pounding like a kettle drum and my tongue feeling as if it was a giant wooly caterpillar crawling about my mouth. I found this perplexing, of course, because I had done nothing the previous evening that would account for such physiological abnormalities - no drinking, no smoking, no fun of any kind in fact - so I merely stumbled downstairs in order to pilfer two Excedrin Migraine from the shelf above the desk of Little Miss Tripping Balls.

When I performed this nefarious act of larceny, I noticed that her computer screen had been left on, presumably all evening. Additionally it looks like she had been playing The Sims or some other such irrelevant refuse, most likely for hours at a time, instead of doing something useful like looking for a job or training her dogs not to either shit uncontrollably over the highly expensive hand-sewn Persian rugs her father had bought once upon a time or to viciously attack each other over the slightest provocation.

It's come to the point where I don't know what will set off these bouts of spontaneous homicidal rage with the dogs; I merely know that they are usually triggered whilst the dogs are in close proximity to each other. I've taken to only petting them when there is at least a few feet of daylight between them in order to avoid becoming collateral damage and getting my face torn off. This is frustrating because not only are they wonderful dogs taken one at a time, I'm the kind of person that routinely prefers the company of domesticated animals over people and I'm unaccustomed to being fearful of dogs. Every animal either I or my family has ever owned has been incredibly gentle and well-behaved, up to and including my parents' current 85-pound behemoth. He moves lightly for a rhinoceros, to quote Jim Butcher.

Adding to my frustration is the fact that these two dogs aren't mine. On the one hand, this frees me from any technical responsibility in regards to their general upkeep and well-being; on the other hand it bars me from any direct say in how the dogs are raised, trained, and treated by the two vile, soulless homunculi that are their "owners." I find it difficult to watch two perfectly good, loving, ebullient, highly intelligent dogs get utterly and completely ruined through neglect and mismanagement.

It's indicative of the both of them, both Little Miss Tripping Balls and Signore Flailing Retard. Shortcuts, neglect, lack of forethought, poor mental hygiene, whatever you wish to call it. Just like leaving the computer monitor on all night, letting the image of some vapid game burn itself into the LCD screen, not only are their acts wasteful but destructive to boot.

Another fine example of this behavior is Signore Flailing Retard's plans for the near future, shared with me a couple of days ago whilst I feigned interest in his ramblings. He's currently employed as an independent contractor for a tech services company (in other words, he's a fucking IT temp), and the contract with his current employer is up in a few weeks. As that contract ends, his plans are to apply for a loan from the government, co-signed by his mother, and return to school in order to gain his MCSE certification, a very long, very expensive course of study. School will be two 8-hour days, twice a week. While he does so, instead of working a part-time job to help pay the bills with the remaining 3 days of the work week like a normal, responsible human being would do, he'll be filing for unemployment benefits. Again.

Now I've done the work-and-go-to-school thing. I know how much it sucks. Hell, the stress of working 40 hours a week and then going to law school for an additional 20 probably contributed to my cancer diagnosis, but you know what? I fucking did it for two-and-a-half god damned years. I didn't go on fucking unemployment, taking bread out of the mouths of people who really needed the cash to help pay mortgages, or to buy food for their kids, or keep the gas tank filled so they could get to doctors' appointments because they're fighting for disability benefits. There are people in this world who need that money more than I do. That's something that Signore Retard just doesn't seem to get, and that sense of entitlement makes me want to start biting the heads off chickens in some sort of snarling, animalistic rage.

I've been on fucking Food Stamps. I know the shame and anger you feel at having to resort to a governmental safety net program. I also know the relief and gratitude you feel when you can go to the supermarket and buy food that doesn't consist of Maruchan Top Ramen and mustard. I don't wish that situation on anyone, but I do know that when programs like that are abused by people who can avoid using them by engaging in just a little hard work, it makes me sick to the pit of my stomach because somewhere, someone just got denied absolutely priceless help because the funding ran out. Especially now, when the unemployment rate is so god damned high.

Doubtless Signore Retard will make more money on unemployment than he would working some shit job down at the Gas'n'Sip cleaning the bird jism off car windshields. In that way it makes good financial sense on a microeconomic level. But what about the other 37.5 million people on unemployment in this country currently? If even 10% of those people did what this jackwagon was going, that's a huge amount of government funds being eaten up by selfishness.

Seinfeld can go fuck himself; there is such a thing as a truly selfless act.

In which our hero's first day as a corporate shill has unexpected consequences.

I woke up this morning, after a terrible night's sleep, to start my first day as a news copywriter for that UK banking client. I received a crash course in some bizarre occult mechanisms, studded with glowing sigils and dripping steam-powered gears known as Search Engine Optimization (oh wait, I've got to practice masquerading as a Brit, don't I? That should have been Optimisation).

It was all meta tags and keywords and all kinds of absolutely meaningless garbage. I feigned interest quite convincingly to the strange accent at the other end of the Skype call and was summarily let loose to do my worst upon the landscape.

Let me illustrate the actualities of this gig. I first trawl through RSS feeds until I find a suitable article on some sort of business banking news. Then I take it and re-write it, making sure to inject into its vapid, lifeless mass several pre-determined keywords to make it more attractive to Internet search engines like Google. After that I check that the drivel I've cobbled together can pass a plagiarism check by feeding it into a specialised (see what I did there?) website. Then, if it comes back clean, I re-post the bleeding monstrosity to my client's blog, where it masquerades as "news."

I'm supposed to do this two to three times a day, all for $60 a week. It works out to about 4 bucks an article, and it takes me maybe an hour all told from RSS search to final posting, so I'm working for roughly $4 an hour. This is deplorable, but I don't have to get off my ass in order to do it so I really can't complain that much.

There is an up-side to immersing myself in the UK business culture by reading all these news outlets, however. I've learned that people are fucking horrible monsters. I re-wrote one article today on how about one-third of British people going on holiday (oh my god! How authentic he sounds, you say!) are planning on borrowing the cash in order to do so. Now that's not terrible, plenty of people put skid marks on their credit card every time they go away, that's just common stupidity.

Then I read how 58% of them won't immediately be able to pay it back. Well, that dovetails into how bloody fucking stupid people are (wow, I'm getting good at this, aren't I? Pip pip, cheerio, and all that shit).

Then comes the kicker. Out of those people who are planning to borrow in order to go to the Isle of Wight or wherever else these assholes go (anywhere but the dentist, I'm sure), 13% of them say that they have to go away every year, regardless of what it costs. Their reasoning? Their neighbors have to see them going on an annual holiday.

What.

I didn't think people were that awful. I actually believed that the only chuckleheads who pull that kind of bullshit are those independently wealthy jackholes that have a BMW for every season and who buy different dogs to match their outfits, not normal poor folk like your good ol' pal Doc Gonzo here. But here's Mr. and Mrs. Nigel and Mary Fishcunt of North London going off to fucking the Côte d'Azur every year and dropping 1200 pounds Sterling on little tchotchkes and overpriced hotel rooms so they can come back home to rub their melanoma tans and massive debt in their neighbors' faces.

Do you know the last time I took a god damned vacation? Do you have any idea the last time I've been out of the general New York/New Jersey/Pennsylvania area? It was six years ago. I figured I'd might as well go to Vegas at least once in my life before I die since I was actively battling cancer at the fucking time. I've been trying to put my god damned life back together since, despite the flaming boulders of assfuckery I've had to constantly dodge ever since then. So don't tell me you simply must go on holiday despite the fact you can't afford to feed you or your vile offspring once you get back from Jamaica or Easter Island or fucking Singapore where you swam with the ladyboys and paid for sex from a great white shark. Get the fuck off my lawn. Bloody wankers.