Brian’s blog yesterday gave a Michael Vick-like view on dogs.  Many animals expressed disapproval.  It’s okay.  Sit.  Stay.  Listen.  You’re in for a treat.

THE REASONS

1.  My Building feels like a dormitory for troubled youth with a propensity for creative behavior.    At any given time, at least one apartment is crackling with activity – but never someone’s TV.  If I want to see a DJ work on her next mixtape, a chef prepare her recipe list, a band jam before tour, or a horticulturalist plant his next strain – uh, then I… go do that.  I use my knuckles to double-click on their door.  While being there, I inevitably learn something about their human experience, and thus, something about mine, which adds to the experience.  We chat, with our mouths.

2.  The Beach – I live 50 feet from the sand.  I’ve always lived in close proximity to the ocean.  I can’t live without it.  You hear it all the time.  Waves crashing, the volume scrolls up and down randomly.  The whitewash rolling across itself in the background like white noise or Rice Krispies (sp?).  The water and the sun change people’s moods.  Everyone here is on vacation when it’s sunny, especially the people who sleep in their shoes.  I deal with a lot of stress indoors, on screens.  I don’t deal with any outside.  I don’t take smoke breaks so much as reality breaks.  Ten minutes from my door, in the sun, I’m a different person.  Gasp of air.  I usually meet an actual new person, too, because I smile at people.

3.  The Boardwalk is as much of an entity as the beach.  It is a creature that sleeps like the sun.  It has moods.  I wake up to the sounds either Hendrix on loudspeaker or a live, acapella version of Lil Wayne’s ‘ Six Foot Seven’ done by the Jamaicans on the boardwalk.  ‘If it’s sunny, it’s summer.’  Clack of clay wheels on pavement – carts and skates.  This is Dogtown and we have our own economy.  The skeleton is made up of pot collectives and tattoo shops – our population is highly docile, but dedicated.  We live in peace, we will defend ourselves.

The boardwalk dresses up differently all the time.  Ads.  Spraypaint.  Murals.  Graffiti.  She changes clothes constantly, but she’s got perfect taste.  She’s art.

4a.  The Alleys (Day)

My first love was film.  They’re shooting all the time here.  Even though I don’t watch many, I’m always walking through a set.  Lighting rigs.  Actresses in sundresses.  Director screaming cut.  PAs funneling traffic and escorting the way-too-real-people out.  No one minds the disruption, because the industry pays the city.  Locals, housed or otherwise, consider this fair, because we all enjoy the irony of an expensive shoe stepping in a smelly pile of shit.

Speaking of which, I rewatched Richard Kelly‘s Southland Tales the other day for the first time since it came out.  I generally like everything I watch now (because of the scarcity), but the fact that I am in 50% of the scenes (just 4 years later) made me enjoy it tremendously.  I can relate to JT, SWS, and TR that much better now.

4b.  The Alleys (Night)

My part of the city is 100 years old.  That might as well be a million to me.  It’s haunted.  This place has been counter-culture since the 60s.  Time stopped here.  We won.  An ordinance ‘allows’ people to sleep in certain areas.

Example:  I take the dog for a walk at night.  There are areas I can’t go.  The local population gets territorial around winter.  They’ll defend themselves.  They have secrets here and you can get into trouble if you don’t notice things.  There’s always something going on.  Ignorance of the law is no excuse, they say [first rule i’d take out, by the way].  I can’t offer much advice, but I l[...]

To the congress that just reaffirmed the USA motto, I will be sure on this day of plentiful thanks, a day when there is so much thanks that it gets thrown into zip lock bags to be used later, that you and your cohorts receive none. In fact I will be wasting more government time next week when I show up to propose my own motto that has been the lifeblood of Americans and the human species alike…

“In Deformation, We Trust.”

More government waste will be avoided with this motto as it will eliminate bullying in all of our schools. Replacing the current motto with this one will remind that one girl with inverted boobs to be proud of her deformation. That one guy who has to pee with his pants all the way on the ground for some reason when at the urinal will now look up proudly at this new motto and put his hands on his hips and sway proudly as he pees. So your voice breaks wine glasses with it’s high pitch-ness, so what that one testicle is enormously out of proportion to the other, so what your front teeth are perpendicular to the rest, so what your freckles hide your normal skin, so what? With my new motto our already deformed nation will finally have a reason to open up and reveal the truth. Now walk forward America and join me in Washington to show the world exactly what we are and who we trust in.

Deformed and elongated middle toes.

I need this motto to feel good about the two by fours I have been walking around on for the last 28 years. My deformed middle two toes stick out way past my big toe making it virtually impossible to wear normal shoes. It was this deformation that gave me two ingrown toe nails after wearing soccer shoes that were not block foot ready. Did you know insurance wont cover ingrown toe nails because it is self inflicted? With my new motto, maybe the shoe lobbyists will finally get off their wasteful and unneeded pedestals and allow for the creation of square foot shoes.

Evolved hitchhikers thumb

I can’t even count the times that I have been hitch hiking and stuck my deformed thumb out to get picked up and no one would pick me up. “FREAK!” “BEHEMOTH!” “RIGHT ANGLE!” They would scream at me as I cried on the side of the road. So what I have to use my first knuckle to push on things? Who cares that the police have to remind me that they do not want knuckle creases on their finger prints? My deformity is my evolution and it is about time that our nation embraced this and what better way than changing the nations motto?

So on this day of eternal thanks and celebration of temporary peace between murderous white people and native american indians, I want to give thanks, nay, give great celebration to my deformities and to all those of the readers of this deformed blog.

Thank You and Merry Thanksgiving!

The post “In Deformation, We trust” first appeared on Our Thursday » Podcast Feed.

The post “In Deformation, We trust” first appeared on Our Thursday » Podcast Feed.

My dick is bigger than yours!” Collin exclaimed, folding the tips of his fingers over mine. It looked like the scene in Tarzan when Jane presses her dainty palm against the wild beast-man’s hand. “Your dick is the same size as your middle finger. See, mines bigger than yours, a lot bigger. You have a small dick,” he explained, showing its alleged size with his thumb and index. Since this was a gross overestimate, I remained silent, not sure if I should correct his mistake.

In 5th grade I got my first boner. I immediately wanted to tell Collin it was bigger than my middle finger, but decided against this after realizing it might inspire new questions I didn’t care to answer, like “How much bigger?” This was inconsequential. I was above average.

In 6th grade, a popular song by a girl named Gillette played on the radio constantly. “Don’t want no innie weenie shriveled little short tort man,” she whined to a repetitive dance beat. Being the smallest in my class, kids would point and serenade me with these lyrics during recess and lunch. When my best friend bought the unedited, parental advisory version, I found out the song really went “Don’t wan’t no short DICK man,” which I’d been hearing incorrectly for the past month. Now I wasn’t sure if people were insulting me or my dick.

In Junior High I had my first “real” girlfriend. There were a few in elementary school, but we never actually hung out or talked. This girl kissed me – on the lips. She opened her mouth and rolled her tongue around mine in a clockwise pattern. She held my hand in public and let me grab her ass while we walked. We were legit. Her parents never came home before 5 pm, so we’d go to her house after school and have long make-out sessions that would strangely make me more insecure. After thirty solid minutes of kissing we’d take a break, then I’d go right back in, just to make sure she’d still do it.

During one heated afternoon, I took my hand out of her hair and placed it on her stomach. We slowly leaned back to a lying position and I started moving it in circles, too scared to head north or south. I continued to rub her stomach like it was a good luck Buddha-belly, ocassionally sliding my fingers underneath the tight fit denim below. Finally I started playing with the button on her jeans, testing the waters — no resistance. After minutes of uncertainty, I wussed out and went back to her stomach, considering the consequences of putting my hands down her pants. She might then put her hands down mine. That damn song popped into my mind again. That fucking Gillette bitch cock-blocked me from getting my first hand-job. Or maybe I cock-blocked myself and was looking for a scapegoat.

In 9th grade, a friend gave me an old VHS porn. Before this I had to rely on the Reef ads in my Surfer Magazine, or the “Help My Troubled Teen” episodes of the Jenny Jones show. Since porn stars are unusually large, I still had no accurate frame of reference to compare myself. When I expressed doubts about the middle finger theory to a classmate, he demonstrated how to measure on his own hand. “From the bottom of your palm to the top of your middle finger,” he showed me. Which if true, meant the average size now doubled. Another wildly uncredible source told me to measure with my feet. “Take your shoe size, divide it by two, and turn that number into inches . . . so if you wear a size 10, you have a 5 inch dick,” he said pointing down. I believed this for about five seconds until noticing the smaller UK measurement next to the US number inside my Converse. Surely everyone in this UK place didn’t have smaller dicks. Plus, I was a 9.5 in Converse, and a 8 in DVS’s. Frustrated, I turned to the web for advice. One of the earliest Google searches I remember doing was ” averag[...]

Nirvana and Marilyn Manson patch on the white out painted backpack … you were Candace the “I don’t care” hesher girl.

Over weight and jolly … you were Jebediah who “turned out to be gay” guy.

Cute, but excessively shy girl with carefully hanging bangs … you were Christina the “study until I get into Harvard” girl.

Got your girlfriend pregnant at 15 and were cool for it … you were Travis the “failed sex ed” guy.

Exceedingly intelligent with a social problem of making every situation in life a scene from Seinfeld … you were Eric “my parents never let me play with my friends” guy.

Came up with an acronym to represent your group of friends like TCFS crew … you were the “too cool for school” guy.

Asian and proud of your high score at the arcade for Street fighter 12: Marvel heroes vs Jacki Chan … you were Matt the “unusually good virtual dancer who never danced with a real girl” guy.

And on and on and on …

So where did I fall?

Captain of the soccer team, doubles tennis star, and vice president of the Ping-Pong club would suggest I was Brock the “never take my letterman jacket off” jock guy. But I wasn’t.

My solid schedule of nerdy honors classes would suggest I was Melvin the “took my SATs two years early” nerd guy. But I wasn’t.

My refusal to drink and do drugs might give you the idea that I was Johnny “don’t fuck with me I’m straight edge” guy. But I wasn’t.

So I ask again, where did I fall in the high school social strata?

Well ladies and gentleman, I invite you now to know, understand, and appreciate exactly what I did when I was not on the fields or courts or behind the books.

I was a gamer.

The key to this story is to understand that in the waning years of the 20th century, their existed a tiny gap in our technological lifespan where the communication channels of the burgeoning internet were slow and came bundled with loud modem sounds and screams of siblings telling you to get off the computer so they could use the phone. In this brief snapshot of time, I found my social circle.

What is a LAN party?

There was no option, to circumvent annoyingly slow modem speeds, we would have LAN parties at someone’s house. Laptops did not exist at this point. So you packed up your 32 pound monitor, three foot tall computer tower, keyboard, mouse, cables, network cable, speakers, chair, and a table and “gamed” at your buddies house.

Speakers were frowned upon so most of us acquired 5.1 channel surround sound headsets that would loosen a vertebrate with every fatality. Imagine walking into a room with 10 glowing computer monitors, with 10 young adults staring at them and not a single sound to be heard except for rapid clicking and then without warning…

“Ahhh FUCK YOU man, I was reloading.”

“Dude, who took the chain gun?”

“Eric! Stop fucking stealing all my porn! I can see you doing it!”

“Alright guys, you ready … lets go.” And no one moves a physical muscle.

The Early Days

We began modestly with a core group of guys. LAN parties were simple, you showed up, plugged in, and were gaming in a matter of minutes. Organizing a party was no more than telling your parents that you were going to have a few friends over.

For most of us, our virtual identities were established and I myself adopted l0c0luke with zeros and which I still use to this day for many online identities. Ballnchink made a name for himself early. BadKarma was never far away for that head shot. The twins of congerific and Congerking were bastards behind the Gatling gun and were always good for a good turrets blurt out. A virtually living legend was born in the form of Raven who’s blood coursed with Pepsi and was, in all forms, the comic book shop guy from the Simpsons. Dahpimpsta received some of the nastiest jewish slurs to have existed. And the godfather of them all was BuckWilder who amazed us all with his ow[...]

Calling people is weird. So glad we text stuff now. Talking in real time gives me the willies. I feel like I should have flash cards or a TiVo remote in case I don’t know what to do. But some people are pros at it.

The post Cat Calls first appeared on Our Thursday » Podcast Feed.

Dear JAC Bus Company,

I write to you in hopes that two people will be castrated and stricken from the employee records of your company, and with any luck, stricken from the human record for all of time and space.

Allow me to set the scene so you can sympathize with my wanton desire to remove testicles…

On the afternoon of April 9th, I was poorly instructed to travel to Temuco Chile where I was told the Chilean/Argentine border is as loose as that one girl in college who should really be in jail for raping men in their drunken sleep like a Greek myth. I arrived with dubious explanations that this border crossing was not possible at this time of day and I would either have to wait until the morning or go back to where I had started. I decided to walk to the town and ponder the situation. It quickly became clear to me that wearing two backpacks and being the only white person in a town full of people six inches shorter than me was not to my advantage. I swallowed my pride and decided to go back to where I started my journey, admitting failure, and acknowledging the five hours in the bus I took earlier to get to Temuco, a waste of life. Your friendly staff in the Temuco office instructed me that the next bus I could take would be at 1:30am and I could not leave my bags in the lockers. Without many options, I decided to spend the next six hours doing as any person from the U.S.A. would do and find a bar, watch sports, and drink alcohol.

I am asking, no … demanding, that the first castration be executed on the bus driver who was supposed to pick me up at 1:30am. I can only hope that Pablito, or whatever his name is, got a good hard look into my steely eyes as he drove right by my jumping and flailing arms and understood the voodoo incantation of swear words in two languages that I was letting flood from my beer stained lips. Is it company policy there at JAC to instruct your bus drivers to look at the manifest and think, “Well, there’s only one person we gotta pick up at this station, let’s let this one slide. He’s probably not even there anyways.” Rusty knife in hand, Pablito’s scrotum in my other, the only thing he could tell me to excuse his behavior would be something along the lines of “I was having an incredibly lucky spell during an epileptic fit that ultimately ended in total destruction of the bus that you didn’t see due to the lucky spell.”

If there is anyone in your company who deserves a raise out of this, it was the sleeping security guard who woke just in time to say the bus had already left and there would be another one arriving at 2:30. Now if you are looking for a vacation destination, I suggest the liquor store in front of your station in Temuco,  in between the hours of 1:30am and 2:30am. The friendly liquor store staff are more than amicable and enjoy giving you free cans of beer if you make enough noise outside of their establishment. The constant flow of gay male couples hitting on you with overly gross come on lines will give you that flamboyant vibe that you are missing in your vida. And finally, your Temuco vacation would not be complete, without the meandering Peruvians who walk their bicycles that clearly have never been ridden for months.

With Pablito’s balls in the trash, next on the chopping block is Jorge, the bus driver who could do nothing but stop and talk to me as I waited in the road as he arrived at 2:45am. Firstly, a gringo and two skeezy looking Peruvians at his side is nothing to be afraid of and there isn’t any reason to step back into the bus when I approach you to talk. Secondly, there are not many people on this earth who could have pulled off such an acrobatic display of balance and maneuverability as I walked every metal railing and jumped off every available tire to prove my sobriety. Thirdly, responding with “No you wont,” when I tell you that all I am going to do is board the bus and go to sleep, is not an accept[...]

I’ve decided to jump back into the world of online dating. I joined Match.com in hopes of finding the perfect : fun loving, adventurous, down to earth, easy going, outgoing, passionate about music, loves to go out but also enjoys staying in, sassy and smart, new-to-this-whole-online-dating-thing-and-still-thinks-it-weird-but-thought-she’d-give-it-a-try girl. I chose Match.com over some of the free alternatives like Plenty of Fish because I appreciate the commitment it takes to give out your credit card information and spend 25 bucks a month to find love.

 

Before I get into my first Match date, I’d like to say one more thing regarding the profiles. I’ve already ranted about these in my 10 Things I Hate About Online Dating blog, but there’s a new epidemic that needs to be addressed. To quickly add one more to the list . . .

 

11.  The Dog Pictures

 

Not the ones of you and your dog, the pictures of JUST your dog. You know who would enjoy seeing photos of the cute terrier spaniel mix you rescued? Other fucking chicks. Not dudes.

 

Despite a seemingly pessimistic attitude, I still get excited over the prospect of finding my “soulmate”. And so it began.

She was a blue eyed beauty named Kelly0584. She messaged me first, saying how much she enjoyed the documentary King of Kong (it’s in my profile). She had a pale complexion, contrasted with dark brown hair. I thought she looked like Zooey Deschanel, who is easily the most underrated hot celebrity. She was also an aspiring writer who has her own blog. I was in love. Unable to control my excitement, I emailed her picture to my friend Dustin, telling him about the date we were soon to go on. I chose a particular shot in which she especially resembled Zooey, boasting about how I’d found the next best thing. “She’s either hot or she’s not hot” he ambiguously replied. I stared blankly at his words on my computer screen for a minute or so, trying to decipher what he meant by this. Surely there was something in between hot and not she could be, like “cute”.

We agreed to meet at Bosa Nova, the only restaurant in Hollywood I’m familiar with, even after living there for two years. I pulled up at 7:20, ten minutes before our arranged meeting time, and received a text from my future girlfriend saying, “Work is crazy ugh! running a little late, can we push it back to 7:45?”. I told her it was no problem and turned the ignition back on so I could listen to the radio. At 7:40, I checked my reflection in the rear view mirror one last time before stepping out and walking down to the restaurant. The hostess who greeted me said there was no wait for a party of two, so I told her I was expecting my date to arrive any minute. She suggested I sit outside. It was a beautiful night.

 

At 7:50 I received another text. “Moving just as fast as I can! traffic is ridiculous, be there in 15”. Reading this, I felt a wave of relief. For ten minutes I could relax and not worry about doing my best James Dean impression while posing on the wooden benches out front. I slumped into a more comfortable sitting position and stopped checking out every dark haired girl walking by to see if it was her. I looked through the emails on my phone and actually read them instead of just making my cool reading face. Finally, when ten minutes passed, I went back to James Dean mode. Unsure of which direction she might be coming from, and not wanting to look like a spaz jerking his head left to right every two seconds, I popped the collar of my Euro jacket and stared into the distance, furrowing my eyebrows as if deep and meaningful thoughts filled my head. At 8:10, another text: “So sorry, almost there, 10 more minutes”. I started to grow impatient and care less about my looks.

 

At 8:20, fifty minutes late and fifty pounds overweight, she arrive[...]

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I am, by far and away, the fastest walker in Santiago. And to take advantage of my obligatory and permanent label of “ignorant gringo”, I will conclude that a Chilean walker is no different than any other Latino walker. Thus making me the fastest walker in all of South America… fact. So what could I hate about walking when I am the clear champion of the southern hemisphere and no one should be able to stop me? Well many things, and it is my innate ability to overcome these problems that got me where I am today. If you are a slow or bad walker, or what I like to call a “slawker”, you may never have thought of any of these things because you are dead smack in the middle of doing these things… all the time.

1) Turning your head more than 15 degrees to either side.

If you are walking straight forward, and you turn your head more than 15 degrees to either side, you better divert your course in that direction or you have just become a slawker. Without a clear field of view in front of you, you cannot be expected to walk without causing chaos.

2) Taking a slow slant across the sidewalk to get to the other side without looking

This is the most efficient way to fuck over the most people in the most amount of time making you the most hated person on the sidewalk. You are not in an inner tube laying on your back, with a bag of beer attached to you cooling in the water, as you kick lazily and flap idioticly with your hands to cross a slow moving current. You are in the middle of a high speed sidewalk so you better know exactly when you are to get off, and make it happen with precision and hastiness.

3) Fail to move a shoulder or turn your body as people approach you when there is not much room.

You are a fucking dick. Have common courtesy for your fellow species. There is no reason you should feel that you are more important than another walker so that you should never have to turn your body or bow your shoulder to let someone fit through a gap. Nor are you the better person to turn and look back at the person who just bumped you. Douche bag.

4) Stopping on a staircase

This is never acceptable, never. It is tiring enough climbing a staircase and it sure as hell is frustrating enough to put both my feet on the same stair as I mentally urge you to walk faster. But when you ignore my mental urgings and stop, and I ram my head into your jello butt that had me hypnotized just enough to slow my reactions down, it makes me want to throw my shoe at you. If you dropped something, forget about it. If you forgot something behind, you will need to use the designated stairs for going down. If you are tired, sack up and get on with it before I push you over.

5) Walking four people wide

Firstly, if I am one of the four, I hate this situation because I cannot hear what the hell is going on. But imagine the 80 meter queue of people behind you and your arm linked friends. Are you playing red rover red rover? Are you trying out for that burlesque dance with the high kicking legs? Are you stopping a crowd as they riot around you? Unless you are doing any of these things, immediately deconstruct your wall of in-passe, and go down to two by two. You will be a lot happier as well as the released flow of people going past you.

6) Wildly flailing your arms as if you have a mental disorder

Maybe more common in South America, especially Argentina. But to think it’s just a “thing that happens” as you back hand slap someone to your side as they are trying to pass you, is just plain wrong, and you are two steps closer to being a salted slug of the earth.

7) Gazing up, browsing around, and looking at this and that

Sudden stops will ruin governments, computers, machinery, and it sure as hell will destroy a sidewalk. When you decide to gander at that cute top or new computer game, you just unleashed chaos and that ain’t cool in my book. Be courteous and look to t[...]

One of the luxuries/drawbacks of being a quazi-illegal immigrant with a UK and USA passport living in Chile is that you must collect another tourist visa every 90 days. Combine this obligatory task with a love for adventure and mayhem and you have one happy Luke. My method of travel is to arbitrarily elect a “must do in my life” goal, then make absolutely zero effort with regards to planning or preparing for that goal irrelevant of it’s very possible dangers and pitfalls, and then head off in what I believe to be the right direction. Well a few weeks ago I decided to renew the visa and complete a “must do in my life goal” of climbing a 6,000+ meter mountain (roughly 20,000 feet) in the very beautiful and challenging Bolivian mountains.

Earlier this year, on a very uncomfortable and ball bruising bus in between the Bolivian side of Lake Titticaca and Lima Peru, I shared a bag of coca leaves with a group of chaps who had just finished up a few weeks in La Paz. They told me about “the easiest 6000+ mountain in the world” and I immediately knew that I would be back to La Paz at some point to officially “one up” my American friends for good. My friends and I are constantly trying to outdo each other and “one up” the other. A group of us climbed Mt. Whitney a few years back, the highest mountain in the continental 48 states, and we thought we were cool. But Whitney stands at 14k feet and some change, so to peak a 20k mountain would officially close that one-upping-category with Luke as the clear and away one-upper. The chap’s stories of the mountain were sparse and not very detailed, and it really would not have mattered what they had told me, as I was practically already on the mountain in my mind.

Six months later and the day of my adventure was upon me. I do not even know what the mountain is called and all I know is I need to get to La Paz. I had just packed my way too small JanSport backpack with the following that was supposed to last me eight days and take me to the top of the world.

2 pairs of ankle socks

1 pair of cycling socks with a giant hole in the heal of one of them

1 pair of smart wool socks that I have used so much you can see my skin through the very intelligent wool

1 pair of jeans

1 thermal cycling shirt

1 pair of wool thermal pants. extremely warm.

1 pair of slightly homosexual gloves

1 scarf

2 dress shirts

3 boxer brief underwears

toothbrush but no toothpaste

sunscreen that I never used

pen and journal

thin sweater

deodorant

iPod

$40 digital camera and 2 spare batteries

And I was wearing jeans, a shirt, reebok shoes that have carried me around the world but are in no state to climb a giant mountain, and a thick jacket. As I stood above my backpack wondering if I could remove some underwear, here was the gameplan I was conjuring in my head. Fly to Calama in the northern part of Chile, go to bus station, get bus to La Paz, find party hostel, sign up for the mountain tour, walk up the mountain with ease, then the next day go to Uyuni Bolivia which is a giant salt flat used to take weird perspective photos, pop on over to San Pedro Atacama to sit in some thermal spas, and trot on over to Calama to catch my return flight. Seemed easy enough, so what does that really entail?

I arrived in Calama. Calama is probably the closest main airport to use if you want to see the Atacama dessert in San Pedro. Every chilean will say it is a must see place so I intended to stop by at the end of my trip but I wanted to give myself ample time in La Paz to figure out how to climb the mountain. Calama itself is a one horse town. You truly feel as though you are in a dessert and the terrain is flat with small undulations, brown, and generally lifeless. A miners town that has two main streets, one to go each direction. Every bar is a girly bar and I am pretty sure the inbreeding had begun early here as the population looked “odd.” If you have an [...]

I do not consider myself an evil man. I open doors for the ladies. I will cross a busy highway to help a wheelchair up a curb. I don’t step on cracks to avoid breaking my mother’s back. In general, I love everything and everyone on this planet and do my best to contribute to our continued growth and development. But one hilarious and cruel evening, I faltered. This story is about the time I anti-poisoned Grant.

This page puts it rather well … http://www.break.com/index/ipecac-vomit-prank.html

My University was 140 kilometers from my parents house. Just the right distance. Far enough to feel independent, but close enough to beg for money or eat a few meals. One trip home I found myself scrummaging through the bathroom and I came across one of those things that every single child dreams about. There it was, underneath the sink, nestled inbetween the broken hair dryer and a two foot tall can of hair spray my mom was still milking from her days in the 80’s, was a small glass container no bigger than my thumb in the shape of a milk bottle. There was a thin dirty gray label and whatever was inside might as well have been glowing green as far as I was concerned. I delicately took the bottle out of it’s dark murky cave to have a closer look. The label was hard to read and I had to really rub hard to remove the gray gunk. Underneath was no more than a few words. Some company name, a date from the 70’s, and the word “Ipecac”. I removed the cap with a great twist and inside was an odorless clear liquid and the cap had an eye dropper attached to it. I had struck gold, I had no clue what I had found but I knew that it was awesome.

“Dad, what is Ipecac?” I queried to which he dryly responded, “It makes you vomit.” to which I wetly grinned.

From Wikipedia…

The actions of Ipecac are mainly those of its major alkaloids, emetine (methylcephaeline) and cephaeline. They both act locally by irritating the gastricmucosa and centrally by stimulating the medullary chemoreceptor trigger zone to induce vomiting.

The commercial preparation of ipecac consists of 1/14 of fluedextractum of ipecac root. The rest is composed of glycerin and sugar syrup. Ipecac root itself is a poison but due to the normal strengths used and the inability of the patient to keep the solution ingested it is seldom fatal.

I grew up in Simi Valley, CA, USA. Third safest city in America with a population over 100,000 for years on end. The single republican/conservative city in Ventura County. Haven for retired CIA, FBI, and police officers. Famous for housing Charles Manson and hosting the Rodney King trial due to the lack of blacks that live in Simi Valley. Of my graduating class of 471, I would estimate about 50 immediately went off to find further education, myself included. This latter statistic gave myself a slightly higher respect level when I would return to Simi Valley for a weekend galavant away from my studious University activities. Although I’m not an egoist, it was time to put this fact to use.

Two years out of high school and the house parties had not changed. Someone’s parents were out of town and a few phone calls later and a train of cars about 14 long was formed that descended upon a usually quiet neighborhood. The crowd was the same and the conversations were the same. My position in the party was the same, n the backyard drinking a beer like the guys in King of the Hill and still scared to talk to girls. The fact that I despised the static nature of Simi Valley and it’s inhabitants did not matter at this point as I was carefully selecting my target.

I did not know what would happen or how I would do this. I figured I would put a few drops of Ipecac in someones drink. I would pick someone shamelessly hitting on a girl, they would take a drink, say a few words, then yak all over the girls chest. She would look at him, he would look at her, she would say [...]