The Sedated Ape

I remember an experiment the teacher did for us in the third grade. She got a tooth – I don’t know from where, maybe teachers get a special catalog that you can order stuff like teeth out of – and soaked in in a bottle of soda for an entire week. By Friday the soda has already started to rot the tooth and it was really gross.

That was almost thirty years ago, but I still remember that lesson. From that day on I made it a point to never take a drink of Pepsi then not swallow it for several days at a time. Sure sometimes I’d forget and keep the cola in my mouth overnight, but the first thing in the morning I’d be sure to swallow it down.

That was the same year we did a project where we raised brine shrimp from eggs that also taught me another valuable lesson. From that I learned that brine shrimp aren’t worth the trouble. You have to eat like a million of them before you feel full and they’re so small it’s hard to tell if they’re  fully cooked.

Third grade was a good year. Not like the fourth grade. In the fourth grade we spent several months learning all the state capitals. I still remember most of them. Years later you know what I found out? They print the damn things right on the damn maps and it was just one big waste of my time.

I heard this motivational speech. The guy was pretty good, but at the end of the hour he said, “I’d like to leave you all with one thought…”

 Well, I ran out of the conference room as soon as he said it. Fuck that. I need more than one thought!  I need all of my thoughts. If I only had one thought I wouldn’t even be able find my way back home.

 I don’t know how the speaker was going to remove all of my thoughts except one, I didn’t stick around long enough to find out.  I’m not sure I really want to know.

I don’t know why it’s so hard for people to give some thought to naming sports teams.

The Kansas City area has a lot more trouble with team names than most markets. For example: There used to be a soccer team (maybe there still is, I can’t be bothered to look up stuff about soccer) called the “Wiz”. It was dopey reference to The Wizard Of OZ and that “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore line”. Corny, but fair enough I guess. It would make more sense in the team actually played in Kansas. Kansas City is in Missouri. But still, calling the soccer team “The Wiz” is a little dorky, but not objectionable…until you realize that they play the team from St. Louis called “The Burn”.  So several times a season there would be commercials or sport talk radio guys saying stuff like “Wiz and Burn tonight at the stadium…”  They should have thought of that before they named the team.

 They even can’t name mascots right. I’ve had a feud going with a baseball mascot.   A few years ago a  minor league team in the Northern League  came to Kansas City, named the T-bones .   They had a contest where you pick the name of the new mascot, a baseball playing bull.

Don’t bother trying to think of the perfect name for a baseball playing bull from Kansas City, because I already did. His name should be “Casey Strip”.    It works on several levels. Casey=KC= Kansas City.   Also, “KC strip” is a cut of beef (It’s called “New York Strip” on the east coast).   And Casey is  also  a  reference to “Casey At The Bat”.

There is no possible better name for a baseball playing bull in Kansas City.

Know what they named the bull instead?  Sizzle.   That’s the lamest fucking thing I ever heard.   And it’s not about the prize – it was just a t-shirt a cap and some tickets, it’s the principle of the thing. When someone gives you a perfect name for free, the kinda name marketing people would charge you an arm and a leg for, you don’t name the damn bull “Sizzle”.

 “Sizzle” the name of a stripper, not a baseball playing bull, and if they wanted to go that way, Casey Strip would still be a better name. They could do promotions with the titty bars – like have the bull’s picture on a billboard with a G-string hanging from one of his horns.

 I still get a little pissed thinking about the whole thing, but it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. I’ve pretty much stopped the death threats.

The Royals minor league affiliate in Omaha changed their name during the off-season. They used to be just be called the Omaha Royals. I can see why they would want to distance themselves from the Royals. We’re to baseball what the Washington Generals are to basketball. Unfortunately the name they picked wasn’t much better. They’re now going to be known as The Omaha Storm Chasers. They didn’t think the name out very well. It’s only a matter of time before the Storm Chasers get rained out.

There have been a lot of questionable choices for baseball names over the years. These were all real names, but most aren’t around anymore. Some of the names are from the Minors or the Negro Leagues.

 There was a team call the Portland Webfoots. They didn’t keep that name long though, just one season. Then they changed their name to the Portland Webfeet. That’s a little bit better, I guess. Sort of.

 Clarksdale Swamp Angels. It would be worth the cost of a ticket just to see what their mascot looked like.

There used to be a team called The Lexington Legend. Maybe. Some people believe that this team never existed and was simply a story the old baseball fans would tell to amuse the children.

St Paul Colored Gophers.

Independence Producers – They never finished out of last place. The team’s owner intentionally fielded a  bad team because he needed a a tax write off. Their mascot was “The Aryan Supraman”.

 Gulfport Crabs –A name like that leads to quotes in the sports section like “we play the Giants this week ,then we get the Crabs over the weekend”.

Baltimore Black Sox- This name doesn’t sound that bad unless you know that the team came after the Black Sox scandal in 1919. If you don’t know what that was, look it up. I can’t be explaining everything to you people. You’ll learn more if you looked it up yourself. This is what they call “tough love”.

Zulu Cannibal Giants. They “decorated their faces and bodies with African tribal paint, went shirtless, wore only grass skirts, used special custom-made baseball bats crafted to supposedly resemble Ethiopian war clubs, and always played barefoot”. Back in the 30’s even black teams with black owners were horribly racist.

Leaksville Spray Triplets. The team owner had a golden shower fetish.

 Centralia Zeroes – It seems like a name like  that would hurt the teams self-esteem.

Battle Creek Custer’s – Unfortunately for them they are way out numbered by the  dozens and dozens of  of teams called the  Indians, Braves and Chiefs.

 A lot of teams had very fruity names. There were teams called The  Katydids, Rosebuds, Meadowlarks, White Ribbons, Cloverleaf’s, Daisies and the  Betsy Cubs.

Other teams chose an  oxymoron that could never exist for their team name  like the Sanatoria Black Indians, Edmonton Navy Cardinals,  The Atlanta Black Crackers and the Normal Corn Belters. (That’s impossible. You can be normal, or you can wear belts made of corn. But you just can’t do both)

 The Hot Springs Bathers. Hot Springs is in Arkansas, so you can sort of understand that they would brag about taking baths. Their mascot was just a wet naked guy.

I don’t know if any these teams ever actually played against each other, but if they didn’t it was a missed opportunity:

Boston Beaneaters VS Bonger Gassers

Wichita Falls Spudders vs Birmingham Tubers

Stone Crabs vs Hickory Crawdads

Holyoke Paperweights vs. Greenville Staplers

The Durrant Educators vs Indianapolis ABC’s

Bridgeport Orators vs. Danville Speakers

Minot Why Not’s VS Utica Pent Ups

 Casper Ghosts (ok,  that one is pretty good) VS North Shore Spirits

 Vermont Sea Monsters vs Youngstown Gremlins

 You could even have a tournament with some of the names:

 Bativa Muck Dogs, VS Charleston River Dogs Vs Phoenix Dessert Dogs

Youngstown Works vs the Martinsville  Manufactures vs Morristown Jobbers

San Diego  Padres vs St Paul Apostles vs  the St Paul Saints  – If you’re a betting man, go with the Apostles. They outrank the other teams

For a while I posted stuff I wrote to twitter. Then I started again – my name thing is SEDATEDAPE – the link is somewhere on the left side of page if you don ‘t like typing. It bugs me that little girls who just post stuff like “OMG I just saw the cutest kitty!!!!!!!!!!!!!” have thousands and thousands of followers and I have twenty. It’s an insult and demeaning that I’m not famous yet. Is it my fault that the shit my dad says isn’t very amusing since he stopped drinking? Where’s my book deal and tv show with a tv spaceman playing the part of my father?

You know what? No more mister nice guy. From now on ANYONE who doesn’t follow me on twitter is going to be automatically put on the NRA, NAMBLA and Al Qaeda In Iraq mailing lists. So if you’re going to be an asshole and not follow me, your mailman will be giving you a lot of strange looks from now on.

If you’re one of the pricks who won’t follow me on twitter,  I expect you to send me your mailing address so I can start harassing you through the mail. And if you live nearby tell me when you’re usually home so I can find you incase I decide to punch you in the throat someday .

As you can see,  it would be easier to just follow me on Twitter. It only takes a second and  It’ll save us both a lot of trouble and throat punching.

1) I really doubt that any more than 5% of the people who text, tweet or whatever telling you to  “Save Japan Text Whatever-it-is to send 10$!!!”  have actually sent the ten dollars themselves. The rest just think they’re doing a good deed by telling other people to do it and they think that they’ll seem like a kind wonderful person for pointing this out to everyone who has internet access but somehow hasn’t heard there’s been an earthquake.

2) How wealthy does a nation have to be before they can suffer a natural disaster without begging the rest of the world for help?  Hati, I understand. But Japan? Aren’t they supposed to be doing better than we are? I don’t recall us asking Spain or Belgium to send their military to help clean up after Katrina or 9-11. We DID ask Mexicans to help clean up, but we do that all the time anyway.

3) They interviewed Yoko Ono on CNN about the earthquake. I like Yoko – not her music, but I like how she protects John’s memory. She hasn’t turned the Dakota into Graceland. But when you’re interviewing Yoko Ono (who hasn’t lived in Japan since  WW2 ended) the next day about a natural disaster we really need either more Japanese famous people or fewer 24 hour news networks.

4) Japan is the only nation that has been attacked with an atomic bomb, and they made dozens and dozens of movies where radiation creates a monster that destroys their country. You would think that as a people they wouldn’t keen on the idea of nuclear power plants.

5) It’s been suggested by some religious folk that God sent the earthquake to punish the Japanese for Pearl Harbor. He’s been known to do crazy stuff like that in the past. He created pain and death for all humanity become someone ate an apple he was saving for lunch. And he did turn that one woman into salt.  So I wouldn’t put it “spite-earthquakes” past him. Still, if he wanted to smote people for Pearl Harbor why would he wait 60-plus years later before he started the smoteing? 90%  of everyone in Japan that  had anything to do with the war has died of old age by now. Is God that busy?

I don’t have a dog of my own, but I’m friends with a dog I know. Sometimes we hang out together.

They don’t let you take a dog with you to the zoo. I guess they don’t want any competition.  Nobody would pay the panda any attention if Andy the Dog was there too.

It’s a shame too, because that would be the greatest day ever for him. Hundreds of different new kinds of poop to smell.   He could have barked at animals from all seven continents.   How many other dogs can say that? None. They’re dogs. Andy the Dog wouldn’t be able to say it either, but if he met anyone I would tell that story for him.  

I don’t go to doctors, but I worry about my health a lot. I’m like an over the counter hypochondriac.

 I got a bottle of Flintstone’s vitamins. It’s not really important to me that medicine be in the form of a cartoon character, but it’s a nice bonus. I ate one and it tasted pretty good. Anyway, to make a long boring story short – I ate the entire bottle in one day.

 I don’t have a joke or anything funny to say about that, I just felt like I needed to tell someone.

Ps- Until the internet was invented and I could look it up I was never able to understand what they were saying in the Flintstones theme song after “let’s ride with the family down the street…”

Shakespeare invented dozens of words we use everyday (not all in the same day probably –  unless you’re reading this blog out loud) like courtship, moonbeam, lustrous, majestic and a bunch more.

This is impressive now, but I bet at the time it just pissed people off. If I bought a ticket to a play and the actors just started saying made- up words that no one ever heard of before in the middle of the play, I’d demand my money back. If I’m paying good money for a show I want real words, damn it! Talk sense, man!

 But now everyone thinks he’s a genius. That’s a good trick. Back in school when I started using  my own private words that I made up they just put me in the slow class.

I’ve  heard that it was a good idea to invest in precious metals. I looked into it, but they’re way too expensive for me. So now I’m looking around trying to get a good deal on some metal that’s just sorta cute.

I have an agreement with the world’s oldest woman – if neither one of us is married in 40 years we’re going to totally going to hook up. Sure she’s 114 years old, but that’s barely legal if you think of it in space-time.

I just signed a contract that for a  special on Comedy Central. It comes with basic cable at no extra cost.

The hardest part of joining the mile high club isn’t finding a woman willing to try it with you. The hard part is trying to stay hard surrounded by the smell of piss, shit and disinfectant. By the way –  if you fucked in a normal commercial airline bathroom technically you’re a member of the 6.8181818181818182 mile high club.

I got one of those banks that look like they’re really cans of shaving cream to fool crooks that I use to hide my real, smaller, cans of shaving cream. I’m always thinking two steps ahead of shaving kit burglars.

Most village idiots must have some sort of job so that they can support themselves somehow.  Nothing important or high paying, of course. But something. That means that someone has to hire the village idiot. If you do that, don’t you automatically become the new chosen one?

I’m going to start billing myself as “Tony Myers: The man of a million, very, very, very similar voices”

I know a guy who got married last year. It was the first time for both him and his bride and they had no kids. On their honeymoon they went to the Santa’s Village Amusement Park. This is just a true thing, I don’t think you could add anything stranger to that to make it funnier.

Thing I learned too late: If the light bulb in the bathroom is burnt out, sit down when you have to pee.

I went to the eye doctor and had to wait almost an hour. Finally the dumb receptionist told me “you can see the doctor now”. If I could do that I wouldn’t have made the appointment in the first place, now would I?

I guess it’s a trend, but I’ve never been into the older women they call “cougars”. If that’s what you like that’s fine, but personally I prefer rich 18 year old girls who are attracted to out of shape guys who have no money that are 19 years older than they are. They have an animal name too – “unicorns”.

I’m starting to think my high school gym coach was wasting my time. It’s been 20 years since my last gym class and so far I’ve never had any reason to climb a rope hung from the rafters of a large building. Besides , I’m pretty sure OSHA has a rule about not doing stuff like that.

I don’t think the grocery store should be allowed to call them “free range chickens” if they still expect me to pay for them.

I almost joined a religious cult, but it turns out they all do credit checks now .

I just took a civil service exam. I haven’t gotten the results back yet, but I’m hoping that I did well enough to get  on the union side.

People made fun of David Berkowitz, but I think that if you suddenly meet a dog that has actually mastered the power of speech anyone would take what he has to say very seriously.

My grandfather used to always tell us that no man is truly poor as long as he has one true and loyal friend that’s made out of solid gold.

I’m just two people away from being an orphan.

Why are there no zombie infants and toddlers?  Seeing a little zombie baby suckling on her mother’s brains would be scary, but also kind of adorable. For that matter, shouldn’t there be aborted fetus zombies? I don’t suppose a fetus, even a zombie fetus, could ever pose much of a danger to anyone, but it would be creepy as hell. And I bet one look at something like that would turn a lot of people pro-life.

Misery loves company, but you really should try to cut the visit short and leave before all the weeping starts.

Whenever I go on a trip the credit card people will always call me to make sure that I’m really the one making the charges because I usually just use the card around town. I don’t mind, it’s a good idea. I just wish they wouldn’t  also call to confirm my identify every time I use the card to buy deodorant. That’s a little insulting if you think about it. Even if you don’t.

I’m not into anything kinky. I don’t think I want a woman to give me a rim job. It might feel nice, but I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it. I’d be too nervous . I would just spend  the whole time thinking “DON’T FART!! “DON’T FART!! “DON’T FART!! “DON’T FART!! Whatever you do, for God’s sake  DON’T FART”.

I have health insurance, but it’s not very good. They don’t believe in frills like hypodermic needles and stuff like that. If my doctor needs a blood sample to run tests with he just punches me in the nose really hard and catches the blood in an old beer bottle. Now that I think about it, I’m not even 100% sure he’s even a doctor.

You never see Superman going back to the phone booth to pick up his clothes after he saved everyone. I bet his clothes get stolen a lot. I guess he could just buy more, but wouldn’t his wallet and keys be in there too? As far as I can tell the superman outfit doesn’t have any pockets, unless they’re under the cape.

I bet that of all the government agencies the “Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms” throw the best office parties.

People came to the door to try to save my soul from eternal damnation. That’s how some people want to spend their weekends, I guess. The first thing they asked me was “Have you heard the good news about Jesus Christ our Lord?”. I got all excited because I thought they meant he did something recently. It’s been a while.  But I was mistaken. I don’t know the rules or the exact  cut-off date, but I don’t think you can consider something that happened 2,000 years “news”.

I bet most paraplegics hate Stephen Hawking. He sets expectations for cripples way too high. While he’s figuring out the universe, the rest of them just have to spend four hours a day trying a swallow a spoonful of tapioca pudding.

It’s odd. The words hit, beat and knock all mean very similar things. But the phrases “hit me up”, “beat me up” and “knock me up” all mean very different things. And around here it’s very common for all three things to happen on the same first date.

At the door to the “Old Country Buffet” there was a sign that said “Let’s be friends – join us on Facebook” . If you’re friends with a buffet you probably have an eating disorder.  I really would like to know the average weight of the people on their “friends” list. I wonder if there are any really fat guys hoping to take their friendship with “ Old Country Buffet” to the next level…  like maybe move in together first and then get married someday if the democrats are still in office.

Have you even been on a long walk and smell really great barbecue cooking, so you follow the smell and eventually find it’s coming from a crematorium? What happens next is an important choice with possible life altering consequences.

 There is a commercial on the radio for some type of prostate medicine. They asked, “Men, do you have a problem with getting up in the middle of the night to urinate?”.  I guess so, but it would be a bigger problem if that didn’t happen.

If I was blind I’d get me a really mean seeing eye attack dog. You could take him anywhere and have him attack strangers for no reason  and they couldn’t ‘t say boo about it because of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

If the blind get seeing eye dogs I think that near sighted people should get something too. Nothing as good as a dog, of course.  Maybe a rabbit or a small opossum. Something like that.

I guess it’s probably a coincidence, but you never started to hear anything about global warming until after the cold war ended.

Well, I lost my job as a baseball mascot. I guess a lot of people think that a guy in a Lion costume curled up in a ball by the hot dog stand weeping uncontrollably isn’t going to help team moral very much and was frightening some of the younger fans.

Manifest destiny was a great idea: “Everything should be mine! Why? …. I thought of it first! Fuck you!  God wants me to have everything . No, he doesn’t want you to have any…. You’re just saying that because I said it and now you’re stealing my idea…..fuck you!  EVERYTHING SHOULD BELONG TO ME!!!!”

 We need more ideas like that.