The Sedated Ape

For a long time now Reader’s Digest has put out a magazine for people who want to stay informed about the world around them but don’t want to have to read more than a page or two on any one topic. 

  But in today’s fast paced world who has time to read a whole digest? People are too busy going to discos or nascar races, or whatever it is people do, for them to bother with digests anymore.  So I decided that I would come up with a Cliff Notes version of the magazine for people too busy to read a digest

It was still too wordy, so I kept editing it down so people would be able to read a magazine that required almost no reading whatsoever.I finally got the magazine down to a workable size that could fit on a postcard for the April issue

-“Abridged Summary of the Condensed Version of the Cliff Notes of Reader’s Digest”

- Not using as much electricity will save money

Potter Stewart, who used to be a supreme court judge,  wrote   regarding obcenity that  ”hard-core pornography” was hard to define, but that “I know it when I see it.” 

He’s lucky.   I don’t know porn when I see it  This has caused me to piss away  a fortune on “Reader’s Digest”magazines , subscriptions to “The Watchtower”  and  those “Encyclopedia Brown”  books hoping that when I get home I might find some  smut in there.

 It takes a hell of a lot of imagination to get off from reading “Increase your word power”

I saw “Cool Hand Luke” for the first time in my dorm room at school.   Afterward, I started to wonder how bad if would be to have to sped a “night in the box” like they had to do in the movie when they broke one of the rules.  So, as an experiment I took all my junk out of the closet and spent the whole night sitting in there.

It was pretty much like how you’d imagaine  it would be.

I’ve just started to go to driving ranges. I like it a lot. It’s all the fun of golf, without all dull stuff like the walking, carrying clubs around with you, and score keeping. Even in miniature golf you have to walk a little bit. At the driving range you really don’t even have to move very much. It’s great.

All sports should take out the dull parts – boxing would be a lot cooler if they had to stand still and weren’t allowed to block the other fighters punches.

Anyway, it’s a good thing I discovered driving ranges when I did, because I’m not allowed to play at the country club anymore since I hit this woman withone of my balls.  It was at the pool.  I thought she was sleeping, but she was just sunbathing.   Now they treat me like I’m some sort of a sex criminal.   Screw them, who needs their little elitist country club anyway? It’s like Groucho said, ” I refuse to belong to any club that would have a rule about not letting you rub your testicles on the other club members while they’re sleeping”.

This  happened last week and I can’t stop thinking about it.

 It was about 4:30 in the morning on a Wednesday.  I keep odd hours.  I sleep a lot – more than most people would think would be possible for a 33 year old man.  I try to get between sixteen and twenty hours a day. 

I was in Wal-Mart looking at the DVDs trying to decide between “Bobby” and “Rocky Balboa”.  I’ve always been interested in the Kennedy family and have read several books about John and Robert’s assignation.  Plus I think William H. Macy is a very good actor and Helen Hunt is very pretty for an older chick.  “Rocky Balboa”, on the other hand, promised a lot more boxing and jogging up steps.

Anyway this woman asked me if I worked there.  That’s kinda insulting.   I wasn’t even wearing a blue vest.  I told her that I didn’t work there.  This is the part that I keep thinking about -  after I told her I didn’t work at Wal-Mart she pointed to another guy looking at DVDs down the isle and she asked ME if he worked at Wal-Mart.

That’s pretty odd, but the more I thought about it the more insulted I got. 

She was guessing  that I would hang out in wal-mart often enough that I would know everyone that worked there.  That’s even worse than thinking I might work there myself.  She thought I was a wal-mart employee groupie or something.

ps – I picked “Bobby” but haven’t gotten around to watching it yet.  When you’re only awake for four hours a day, and you need to devote a portion of your waking hours to eating and crapping every day, it can be tricky to work in time for a lot of movies.

I’ve never driven a motorcycle. It looks kinda fun, but it’s not worth the risk. I don’t want my cause of death to be listed in the paper as “failed to see a dead cat in the road”.

I like the idea of the old bikers back in the ‘50’s and 60’s.   Rebel outlaws living on the fringe of society.   It’s not like that anymore.  Now it’s all middle aged men who pretend they’re tough by getting together with all of their middle aged biker buddies dressing up alike in their matching t-shirts and jackets and riding around the suburbs on Sunday afternoons before they go back to being dentists, making screen doors or selling insurance on Monday.   It’s never been tested but I bet I could beat up at least 80% of the people I see out driving motorcycles.   This just should not be.   I think the rule should be that if you can actually afford a Harley Davidson motorcycle you shouldn’t be allowed to own one.

Another  unrelated motorcycle rule – If you drive a Geo Metro you shouldn’t  be allowed to wear t-shirts with Harley Davidson written on it. Why would anyone want to pay for the privilege of advertising a product that you can’t afford for yourself?

I guess this might come as a surprise to most of you, but I was never a very good employee.
Reasons I’ve quit jobs-

- At the end of meetings the boss always said “let’s get out there and rock ‘n roll!”. What we actually did after the meetings was make fabric softener. That’s about as far from rock ‘n roll as you can get. He also used to say “forget yesterday, but learn from it”. That would be a good trick.

- A supervisor asked me if I wanted a “snack treat”. I can’t respect anyone who would actually say the words “snack treat”

- Once in week a maintenance man would sing everyone a song in the break room. I didn’t think I should be asked to bear witness to something like that

- Someone shit in the sink.

- A coworker in her late 40′s never even heard of Bob Dylan.

- Asked to come into work before 3pm.

- Coworker kept telling me about his part time paranormal investigator job.

- Someone put a flyer on the bulletin board that actually said “For sale – 1988 Ford Festiva. Asking $1,000 but will take $800″. I still have that flyer somewhere.  I took it from off the wall so I could prove that that story was real.

Somebody I knew went nuts a while back.  I found out that some mental hospitals have gift shops. That’s not too surprising, I guess, but at at least one of them sells t-shirts with the name of the mental  hospital printed right on it.  I guess mental problems are nothing to be ashamed of, but is it really something you’d want to advertise on a shirt? It’s hard enough to get women to talk to me, I don’t need to be wearing a souvenir from the funny farm too .

 It’s hard to decide what gift would be right for a crazy person. I finally decided on the Season 1 Punky Brewster DVD box set. Who knows, they might like it.   And if they don’t like it you can always deny that you ever gave them any such thing. Who are people going to believe,  you or some nut?

My thoughts are with all the students at Virginia Tech.  If you know any of them please ask them to send them back to me. It’s  been over a week and I really need my thoughts back now.   I don’t even know how they got halfway across the country anyway.  And I can’t even figure it out because, well my thoughts are gone.   It’s a problem that causes a lot of other problems.