Journals: The Blogs of Yesteryear

In New York City for Thanksgiving, the only thing I can give thanks for is that Thanksgiving happens only once a year.

Don't get me wrong: I "love" seeing my family, and even though this holiday is ostensibly about how Pilgrims were saved from a wintery death by the Native Americans hospitality, only to brutally murder them and steal their land, I still enjoy it.

But, I hate the process; I endlessly end up with a burdening task; either mundane, painful or laborious. This time it's all three; as I have to spend the next three days going through my old stuff to prepare it for the lonely life of storage locker.

In any case, I did come across an old journal of mine (from about 2000-2005); and actually, I think in many ways I was a better writer; more poetic, more thoughtful, more literate. Going through it now, the most compelling parts are probably stuff I can't post online (too personal), but I'll pick one that I don't really understand. If you can explain it to me, I'll give you a shiny penny.

Broken up for readability:


If you squint and think of all the mistakes you never made but wish you had anyway, and all the people you meet and forget, you realize that it's not worth it to care about nothing when nothing can be something in the blinding stare of hindsight

and blindness can sometimes show the light that switches off in the night when people say goodnight but your eyes are the light that keeps you awake when the dreams are so far away.

My guess? It's a plea for Carpe diem. "Seize the day!" Go make mistakes because people you make them with will only drift out of your life after a short while anyway. Don't regret...

It seems to get more and more true as I get older, although sadly there's less and less opportunities for me to make mistakes...

Ode to 90% of My Editors (freeform)

I hired you out of a hundred (100)
not because you're the best
but because you were the least worst

when you email me your c/u/t
it reminds me of a dirty soot
darkened, the product
of pollution that's stuck (upsidedown, blinded and unmind)

i don't understand
it wasn't hard
it's all in the script
are you a retard?

you call yourself an editor
but for a name, i have one better
"bane of my existence"
not because you make my life tough
but because you've made me contemplate
my career's enough

please, please, look at the script (with eyes)
give me a timely cut (for you, I despise)
not a messy, puzzle-like enigmatic cryptic
piece of regurgitated vomit mouse shit

soon i will die
you've cut 60 years off my life
but there's one thing i can't deny
life without you is a lovely
peaceful sigh

so if you have a heart
hopefully better then your cutting skills
please kill me now
so i can remember a life without you still

i can't believe you're making
$1500 a week.

Beauty is a...?

I remember reading a few months ago about a scientific study about beauty. I thought I might bring this up, as I have absoutely nothing interesting to say.

Scientists monitored brain waves as people looked at "attractive" things and "ugly" things. The results showed that the "attractive" things required less cognitive power than did the "ugly" things. The findings were thus:

Beauty can be defined as something uncomplicated to look at. The more we have to process what we see, the less attractive it becomes: the more deviations from the norm, the more we have to think about it; ergo, the less attractive it is to us.

Normal is hot, and unique is not.

Personally, it frightens me that the more we have to think about something, the more our brain rejects it. This would explain the last 8 years of foreign policy, however.

I'm all for hotties, biotches, the sexy, man-whores, etc; but I've never found "attractive" attractive. I like women who are beautiful, for sure, but I prefer those that look unlike anyone else.

For example, I would most likely vomit on Pam Anderson's flea-ridden underthings, while bowing mercifully at the dainty feat of Lisa Bonet circa 1986.
But that's just me.

Quoteth Frank Zappa:

Beauty is a bikini wax 'n waitin' for yer nails to dry
Beauty is a colored pencil, scribbled all around yer eye
Beauty is a pair of shoes that makes you wanna die
Beauty is a Beauty is a Beauty is a Lie

Basically; "beauty" is really boring.

Beautiful Race Hate

I just finished a blog posting entitled "Astrological Race Hate Hiakus"

A taste?

nothing can escape
from a black whole; except beer
the irish are drunks

But, I shant post the rest, dear reader. Why? Because I'm afraid of retribution from:

Russians
Blacks
Jews
Hitler
Indians
Indian-Indians
Midgets
Poor People
Mexicans
Mexican'ts

Race hate always SEEMS like a good idea to begin with; but just like Swedes, I choose to remain neutral and watch depressingly morbid films.

As I speak of race hate, I am reminded of all the people that have dissed me throughout my life because I am of the Jew-nosh persuasion. There was:

1) The hip-hop kid who said "fuck you Jew!" and spit on me when I was 12. Now, keep in mind, this was the Upper East Side, which is also known as "Jewburg Central". It was my first memory of someone hating me because I was so devilishly handsome and Jewish. Big nose? More like Awesome Nose!

2) The roommate at North Carolina School of The Arts. I believe his name was Dave, and I caught him staring at me one evening. It was a weird stare, because it wasn't a "you've got something in-between your teeth" stare, and it wasn't a "I want to gay fuck you" stare, it was a "there's something not quite right" stare. He said:

"So, are you I-tailian?"
"No.", I responded, understanding what he was leading to, but not willing to progress the convo to that point.
"Well, what are yuh then?"
"Well, I'm not anything, but I guess you mean...I'm Jewish".
"A Jew? But you don't have horns. My mom said ya'll have horns".

Now Dave was a poor soul who grew up in Charlotte, but even then; he was 16 and literally thought Jews had horns. I mean, duh, we do, but we don't show it in polite company.

3) Freshman year of college; Now here's a weird one. I'm walking with this Irish girl (which is maybe why I let the above haiku slide) and out of the blue she says:

"What's the difference between a Jew and a pizza?"
"Uhhh...what?"
"A pizza doesn't scream when you put it into the oven".

I looked at her in the eyes. I'm all for comedy, and even Jewish jokes, and yes, I'll even tolerate a holocaust joke, even though I find them beneath contempt, but the joke was said in such a way that it was obviously a "shhh!" joke between two gentiles.

"I'm Jewish"
"Oh, man, I'm sorry; I'm just not used to being around Jews".

Now the clincher for me was that we weren't talking about Jews and this basically just came up out of the blue. I'm not used to being around Sudanese, but I'm not about to make Darfur jokes (though it might be potentially hilarious). This chick was from upstate New York, which just goes to show you ignorance is everywhere.

I could go on and detail every little anti-Semitic line I've ever heard, but I believe I'd be falling straight into a neurotic Jewish stereotype. In fact, thinking that listing anti-Semitic lines would make me a neurotic stereotype is in fact a neurotic Jewish stereotype.

As Woody Allen said in 1997:

Hey, I may hate myself, but not because I'm Jewish.

And Larry David, 2001:

Let me tell you something; I do hate myself, but it has nothing to do with being Jewish.

Sense a theme here? My thought; most Jews hate themselves, but are pretty happy that they're Jewish.

Bare Bear

Plotsky sat down at the summit of the dense, but radiant ivory foothills that scatter the suburbs of Berkeley.

He thought limply to himself, "I'm handsome, strapping, intelligent, creative and motivated. Why am I sitting alone at the summit of the dense, but radiant ivory foothills that scatter the suburbs of Berkeley?"

Then it occurred to him.

"I need a hair transplant! That, along with strategically sucked breath mints, will solve every problem I have!"

You see, Plotsky was not a religious man, but when it came to male pattern baldness, he prayed to every conceivable deity; Jesus, Adonai, Ganesh, George Hamilton: "Please, your most merciful lordship, bless me with the blessing of blessed hair".

He didn't believe in God; but when it came to praying for a solution to baldness, he was a Hairsidic Jew.

Plotsky had tried everything; Rogaine, Propecia, jerking off while strangling himself, but nothing seemed to work.

Worse, his hair seemed to be migrating south; until recently, he was unaware that cheek hair was a distinct probability. Never mind leg hair, inner-ass hair was where it was at!

Why, prey-tell, he wondered, couldn't the ass hair just grow on his head? He thought briefly of cutting off his butt cheeks and gluing them on his scalp, but stopped when he realized there were no fedoras that were "ass head sized", which was also an unrelated problem for Zac Efron.

So, all that was left was the hair transplant, yeah, that would make things much easier and better and more delicious for him.

It was when he raised himself up off those lovely ivory foothills and picked up his cell phone to call the "Bosley Medical Center", when he saw the bear.

This was a bear like Plotsky had never seen before. A rare bear, one might say.

For this bear had male pattern baldness.

Plotsky was taken aback, then he was taken a back. He dropped the back he was handed and walked over to the bear.

"Excuse me", he whispered in his whisper-like whisper voice. "Can you speak English?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I can! It's your lucky day, for I am the only bear in existence that can speak and understand English. I also have a degree in communications from Ithaca college".

"I'm more impressed with your ability to speak".

"Yeah, I should really stop bringing up the fact that I went to Ithaca, no one is ever impressed; anyway, I wanted to ask you about your hair, or lack thereof. Does it bother you?"

"You know it used to; I felt like I was losing respect in the animal kingdom; deer fawns stopped running away in horror, other bears made fun of me, like: 'hey, it's too bad you can't paws your baldness' and 'that transient you just ate had more hair stuffed in his bindle then you do on your head'. I guess you could say I couldn't 'bear' losing my hair".

"Then what happened?"

"Well, I realized that I was a freak of nature; I might look like the Steinfield: The Hairiest Jew In Astoria, Queens; but you know what? I'm happy I'm not like the other bears. Sure they have hair, but maybe it's nice to stick out once in a while, be a unique sort-of bear! There's nothing wrong with being a bare bear."

Emotions flooded Plotsky's heart; maybe this bear was right; maybe he was taking this too seriously. It's time to buck up, set myself straight and be OK! with losing my hair.

That's when the bear spoke up: "Of course, this is a completely irrelevant comparison to a human".

"What?"

"Yeah, because you've got a ton of bald dudes. You aren't unique like me. If I was human and bald, I'd be ashamed, probably cry alone into a mirror every night and slowly cut my wrists in order to remember what it was like when I still had the ability to feel pain".

That's when Plotsky came up with a solution to all of his problems.

He took out a shotgun and killed the bear. He wore his "bear-skin" wig for the rest of his life, which, sadly, ended three days later after he killed himself when his manager told him his "30 Rock" Spec script didn't cut muster.

Little Brown Bunny

I have no misconceptions; I am fully aware of the huge gap between "the way things are" and "the way things should be". This is the reason communism doesn't work.

But it still doesn't allay my frustrations, especially when my rabbit died tonight.

I went to the animal hospital when I noticed that my rabbit was in a catatonic trance. I was hoping that it was something the "Fancy Pants Animal Hospital" could take care of. But that hope was pretty much stuffed down the shitter once I got there.

I dropped Sholmo off at the front desk, and it should have set off a sign when one of the first things the receptionist said was "don't worry; rabbits aren't too expensive" - not, "don't worry, we've got some really good people on call", but "don't worry, this morose routine won't cost you an arm and a leg...maybe just half an arm".

Little Shlomo was brought into the back and after a few minutes a "doctor" came out to ask a few questions. It should be noted that prior to this I had filled out a laborious chart answering questions about his sex, age, medical history, etc. When the doctor came out, with a large billing chart in hand, she asked about his sex, age, medical history, etc. Really instills a lot of confidence here.

She said "well, I haven't looked at what you filled out, but we have a few options", and she pulled out the large billing chart. This was before she asked more than 2-3 questions. She began to list prices; how much each decision might cost. I tried to steer the question back to the actual rabbit, and asked what might be able to help and what the cause might be, she said "listen, I don't know much about 'exotic animals'; my job is to stabilize the animal enough so that they can be moved to a specialty hospital in the morning".

OK, I'm aware that a rabbit isn't an 'ordinary' animal like a dog or cat, and I'm aware that what she said is perfectly reasonable; but there wasn't even the slightest bit of a hint of comfort in her voice; she was saying "I'm here to keep this animal alive and offer you no sympathy whatsoever. I'm not open to discussing ways to make this animal better, but I am here to discuss costs; because there is a limit to how much you want to spend before just giving up and putting the animal to sleep".

After taking his temperature, she came out with the price sheet again, and ostensibly said "things look bad, and it's going to cost a lot to keep this animal alive", again I asked about what symptoms the animal was displaying, but she didn't answer more than "temperature is low and he doesn't look well". After I consented to a $150 catheter of fluids to be injected in his arm, she left.

She returned, though, a few minutes later and basically said, "listen, this is going to cost a lot of money; do you want to just put him down?". My pessimistic thought was that she was concerned that she was going to put another hour of work into it and then present me with expensive options that I would eventually turn down; to her, I had reached that precious point where the amount of money I was willing to spend met the amount of money she felt it was worth keeping him alive. She didn't want to put in more time, because she wasn't going to be able to milk any more money out of me.

I consented to putting my little friendly bunny (who loved to get pet, sit in your lap and be carried around) to sleep. Final cost? $400 bucks. For what? 15 minutes of a doctor's time. Just showing up was $300...(sadly lucky that I made the decision to put him down before they put the catheter in him.)

I am highly critical of the medical profession in general. Because it's a "profession", the doctors and staff are out to make money, and for so many of them out there, treating people is just that fine balance:

Money That Can Be Made = Equals Money That It Costs To Keep You Alive + 1

Maybe George Bush had it right:

We've got an issue in America. Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many Ob-Gyns aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country.

Personally, I just miss my rabbit. I know it sounds extremely silly, but I dare you to live with another animal for almost two years and not feel miserable when it's lost.

I had two rabbits that were happy just licking each others' foreheads all day. If I was home during the day, I would look over and see them in sinful rabbit embrace. They weren't married, and maybe some people in southern states would look down at them; but they were in love.

Now the other rabbit is frantically hopping around looking for something; ducking her head into corners, standing on her hind legs; contorting her body around, and sniffing everywhere. Hard to feel sorry for a rabbit, but I do.

Retardeous

I've always had a strong sense of societal fairness. I can't stand when people cut in line, talk loudly on their cell phones or text message during films. We're all trying to live together and we should all take each other into consideration. I follow the rules; why can't you?

Anyway, when someone violates these little unsaid edicts I begin to stew; my heart pounds, my anger rises; and I try to remedy the situation, not only for myself, but for the community. I'm kind of a fucking superhero.

This brings me to an autumn day towards the end of 2004.

After finishing up an edit of my short film, I hopped on a packed 6 Train at 23rd and Lexington.

There was a middle-aged Hispanic man sitting next to me dressed in a slightly-better-than-shabby suit. He was playing a loud game on his cell phone which was not only beeping with game noises, but also playing some sort of 8-bit style soundtrack.

I felt like saying something, but I held back. Everyone else on the train was annoyed. It was prime rush hour traffic and when you're in New York, there's pretty much nothing worse then a crowded subway train with unnecessary hullabaloos annoying you.

Finally, a 60-something year old woman spoke up:

"Excuse me, sir, can you please turn that off?"

The man looked up at her with an unreasonable amount of scorn in his angry face. He did a childish, high-pitched imitation of her:

"Excuse me, sir, can you please turn that off?", and he looked back down at his game.

Now this bullshit pissed me off; I spoke up:

"Hey, you wanna turn that off? We're trying to have a civilization here."

He looked up at me, made a "fuck you" face, and looked back down.

My blood started to boil. Seriously, we are trying to have a civilization and in a civilization civilized people attempt to follow civilized rules. I believe in self-governing.

"Hey, seriously, turn that off."
"Fuck you!"

Well, that was the last straw. Sure, I could have chosen to ignore him or switched cars, but what the fuck. I slapped the phone out of his hand. Seriously, it felt better then an orgasm.

"I'm going to fucking kill you."

Well, I didn't really know how to respond to that, so I went the Groucho Marx, "fuck the fucker" route.


"You get so cute when you're angry, do you know that?"
"Are you a fucking faggot?"
"Are you flirting with me? Because I'm not that kind of guy."
"You're a fucking faggot. I'm going to kill you!"
"At least take me out to dinner first, buy me a nice wine..."

Anyway, it was around this point I began to notice the people on the subway thinking I was the weird one; which is probably true, but at least I was amusing myself.

Things quieted down for a few stops, with the exception of an occasional "I'm going to kill you" to me and a "fuck you, old lady" to the 60-something who initially told him to be quiet.

He began to play the game again, mostly while staring at me (so I guess he wasn't actually playing, more idly touching buttons while gazing angrily at me).

I was sorta stuck, because my stop was coming up and I could tell he was waiting to follow me. Instead of doing something exciting and getting off, then leaping back on the last second before the doors closed (which might have happened if I was a character in a cop drama), I simply decided to get off at my stop on 86th street.

When I got up, he got up too. I turned to some of the other passengers:

"This guy's going to try to kill me", I said glibly.

A Middle Aged Woman spoke up: "You deserve it".

Really? I thought I was the good guy.

Anyway, I exited and he followed about two steps behind. I noticed a large, friendly looking black guy (I think he worked for the MTA) and told him I was being followed and if he could help me walk out.

As soon as the Cell Phone guy saw the Black Guy, he disappeared. Slowly coming to the realization that this gentleman might have actually been serious with his threat, I hopped in a cab and went straight to my mother's house.

I still think I was pretty righteous, but maybe I was just retarded. Or both? Retardeous?

Matt "Retardeous" Manson has a ring to it, no?

The iPhone: "It's like a nerd dildo for geeks".

I love how 90% of the traffic to this blog comes from people searching for "Jewish Cocks".

Interesting note; many of the aforementioned searches originate in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Egypt), which just proves my theory; anti-Semitism is really just another word for penis envy.

Meanwhile, in my Batcave, I had the following thought:

I hate people with iPhones.

I guess I'll rephrase that:

I hate what people become when they get an iPhone.

I thought Blackberrys were bad enough. I'll even go one further; I hate the idea of a cell phone. I don't like the expectation that you're supposed to have to talk to someone the second they call you. And if you don't...

Well, then either the person who called gets angry and thinks you're avoiding them, or you have the experience that I had this morning...

My brother called me yesterday, but I wasn't feeling particularly well, so I didn't call him back. Thinking I was either injured or dead, he called my father and told him something happened to me because he hadn't heard from me for "two days"; which is true if you count 8 hours yesterday and the period between 8am-10am this morning.

Needless to say, I awoke to 5 voice messages from people "wondering where I am"...

Now, call me a bluff old sentimentalist, but I miss the days when there was no expectation that you would even call a person back the same day. People had "answering machines" where something called an "audio tape" would gather messages in an analogue format.

Sometimes you'd come home after a long day and you'd have messages from people saying "give me a call back when you get a chance", as opposed to the messages I get now, which are "where are you?", "why aren't you picking up?", or "please stop staring at me with binoculars while touching yourself".

Ridiculous, I say!

Getting back to the iPhone; have you noticed that anyone with one will sit there, next to you, constantly texting, checking their email every ten seconds, and playing lame games that, if on a computer, people wouldn't begin to consider playing. "Pole Position" and "Yar's Revenge" look positively complex compared to some of those games.

People are literally unable to hold a conversation with you because they're too distracted pulling their little toy out every three seconds. It even vibrates! It's like a nerd dildo for geeks.

Yes, my cell phone is from 2005. Yes, it can only call people and send text messages. It doesn't play music or rape children or whatever iPhones do.

I'm trying to resist being a huge douchebag. Maybe I've already failed; but unlike most people, at least I'm fighting it.


UPDATE:

Pole Position is a BIG SELLER on the iPhone. Are you fucking serious? I put that in as a joke: that's a game my older brother played in 1983...that was kinda lame in 1983.

Day Two

I woke up early and exhausted. We had to be in by 8:00am to call the elderly and disabled voters who didn't respond to the other 3 messages we left for them the day before.

I had a suspicion that they wouldn't respond then either. I figure once you've called someone 3 times and they haven't picked up, they aren't going to answer a 4th time. I've learned this through many a-non-second-date.

There was a general sense of "we've already won" among most of the volunteers. My brother, the ever-neurotic, always-conspiratorial type was fairly sure that the evil Republican Vote Stealing Machine was in motion, but he was in the minority.

After making some last minute phone calls to generally enthused old ladies, I spent a few hours canvassing around a bus stop; passing out voting information to "unlikely voters". And boy, were they ever unlikely.

I didn't realize it, but Scranton must have a large grizzled, acne scarred, Meth Addict population. They were about as interested in the national election as Karl Rove is interested in not looking like a life-sized potato and they definitely let me know. "Go Away" "Nah Way Man", etc.

One interesting interaction came between myself, a young African American and Hispanic couple. The Latina, who had her name tattooed on her neck in cursive, spoke up when I asked her if "she had voted today".

"Why do you support Barack Obama?"
"Well, first off, under his tax plan, I would receive $850 more in relief per year..."
"And what about abortion?"
"Well, I believe in a woman's right to choose, and I think that Senator Obama will appoint someone to the Supreme Court that will uphold that right."
"How do you feel about the fact that Obama supports transporting minors across state lines to give them abortions without their parents' consent?"
"I don't think that's true"
"I read it in a flier"
"Well, there are a lot of things you can read in a flier that's not true. They're passing out fliers that say Obama is a Muslim."
That's when the African American kid spoke up:
"Well, I support Obama...but he's not a Muslim?"
The Latina joined in "He isn't?"

After a few hours of this, I began to get dispirited. I really wanted to go back to NYC to vote and I didn't really feel like trying to get people who weren't going to vote...to vote. It was like trying find a piece of hay in an extremely large stack of needles.

I went over to my brother and asked him if we could go back to NYC so I could vote. We had a little bit of a fight, because he was planning on celebrating the win in PA, but he was kind enough to agree, after I through my feces at him and cried like a woman or baby.

I spent the next 4 hours calling a list of potential Democrats reminding them that it was election day. Again, most people were kind; but some were angry, because everyone we called were on about 5-6 different call lists, which means that they were getting AT LEAST 5-6 different calls a day.

If we left them a message, they were put on another list to "call again". I felt bad, and you really have to wonder if it was necessary. At least 2 people told me that were "rethinking" voting for Obama because we called them so much.

Anyway, we left at 5pm (just when everyone else went to the local college to knock on doors and remind people they still had 2 hours to vote), and rushed back to NYC so I could get my vote in.

As I anticipated, Indiana would be too close to call at 7:01, which told me Obama was going to win. I did think Virginia would be called at about 8:00, so that did cause me to pause for a second...but once they called Ohio, it was over.

I was actually surprised that Ohio went for Obama and went so convincingly. It seemed like the kind of state where Palin's BS would fly. BTW, FOXNEWS(!) is reporting that Palin didn't know the countries involved in NAFTA (uhhh "North American Free Trade Agreement"), and didn't know that Africa is a CONTINENT, not a country when McCain chose her as VP. Smeriously?

Anyway, I got back just in time to vote, there was no line and everything ended the right way...except Gays Can't Get Married Or Adopt...so it's two steps forward and one step back, I guess.

Scranton

I awoke bleary eyed around 6am after about 3 hours of sleep. Late the night before I had decided to forgo voting and drive to Scranton, PA the next morning to get out the vote for Obama.

I wasn't really concerned about him losing PA, but you can never underestimate the American electorate's ability to make huge, ignorant mistakes.

I arrived at Obama's Scranton HQ around 10:45. After a quick cup of coffee, I began to call elderly and disabled people to schedule drives for them to polling locations. They were generally nice, affable, and even a few; religious. God Bless Me for helping Obama. That's sweet.

A few hours later I began to call "Probable Obama Supporters" in the area, to: make sure they knew how to vote, knew where to vote, and see if they wanted to volunteer.

Most of them had been called already; some were rude about it, some hung up immediately, some used it as an opportunity to affirm their support of Obama. It was here that I began to see how unorganized things actually were.

A lot of volunteers were "taking the long way 'round". Checking one thing ten times, instead of checking ten things once. Having people on six different lists, making sure that one item is in a packet of five things, instead of counting all five things at once...

That sort of thing.

I'm pretty sure that was made up for by two distinct things:

1) Free Baked Goods: WOW! Everyone's Halloween leftovers were there. Not to mention fresh baked cookies, breads, pastries. Delish! I think the rust belt has the best home-baked goods. I can say this with certainty because I went to high school just a few hours away.

2) The Sheer Joy Of The Volunteers: Everyone was totally nice, sweet and determined. I gotta say, since this was the closest "swing-y state-y small city" close to New York, there were a lot of Jews From NYC hanging about. Those be my favorite sort o' folk. Good fun all around.

Anyway, I'm getting up in another 5 hours and doing it again. It's nice to feel like I'm actually accomplishing something productive, rather than the normal "crying/pornography/crying pornography" routine.

Update Schmupdate

The subtle shriek of Steinberg set the Upper West Side aflutter.

After all, he was the number 1 regional seller of Bunk and Trundle Beds, and that's not something easily laughed at. In fact, he was quite the minor celebrity on the Upper West Side.

"He was the kindest, gentlest soul you could ever meet! Also, the man knew discount home furnishings", said Sarah Schlongstein of 86th and Broadway.

"Oy, with the beds and the talking; this man...this was a man who could do things and etcetera", said Jewy McJewerson of 69th and Columbus.

So why was he brutally murdered by 12 ACLU lawyers on their lunch break? Why was the murder weapon a week old chicken salad sandwich from Lenny's? To answer that, we must go to the beginning.

Steinberg was born at the age of 12 on a cold night in 1954. Raised by an overbearing Jewish mother and an Alsatian in his late 30's named Floppy; he found himself simultaneously overfed and begging for scraps at the kitchen table.

After not living up to his parents expectations (his mother wanted him to be a Doctor, his father wanted him to pee on fire hydrants more), he decided it was his turn; he would go forth into the high stakes world of bed selling.

It was there he met Matilda, a drunkard/Irish girl who pleased men by pouring authentic Vermont Maple Syrup on their pancakes.

She sauntered into his bed store one day with a saunter that was saunterlicious. When she came up to him, his jaw dropped.

"Hello, I'm looking for a bed"

"AHIRSGAEG AINERGA E?IGRJ AOERJG AEOGRJA" he said, bleeding profusely from the bottomless gape where his jaw used to be.

After some super glue and minor surgery, he returned to her.

"Can I offer you a bed...Mrs?"

SUDDENLY, A newborn baby fell from between her legs; she took a swig of Whiskey to numb the pain.

"It's OK, I'm Irish"

"Oh"

"So, I'm looking for a nice comfortable bed to drink and procreate on"

"Well, we've got the Whore-O-Matic here...automatically contours to vagina size and weight. What's yours like?"

"Meaty"

"Meaty is a little vague, can you give me something more specific; a cut, for instance?"

"Hmmm...let's say fatty pastrami from Cantor's deli"

"Oh, you're an average!"

"Well, I was more of a Roast Beef in college, but you know how you can just let yourself go!"

"Do I?"

They shared an awkward laugh.

That's when 12 ACLU lawyers came in, brandishing a large, stale Chicken Salad Sandwich.

The biggest one spoke up.

"We're here from the American Civil Liberties Union and we think this short story is violating many personal rights of the readers"

The chorus of ACLU cronies spoke up: "YEAH!" "ME ANGRY!!" "WHAT TIME IS THE GIANTS GAME TOMORROW!!"

"Well, that's not fair, I mean, I didn't even write this tripe, right narrator?"

...

"Hello...narrator?!? You aren't getting away with this one, you little sack of..."

The chorus spoke up again: "HE'S STALLING!" "BURN HIM!" "I SMELL LIKE PEE!"

"OK, time's up, Steinberg!"

That's when they threw the moldy Chicken Salad Sandwich on him. He shrieked like crazy as his insides were being burned by scolding hot mayo.

"Oy, this is meshugana!"

THE END

"The end?...fuck you, narrator!"