A True Christmas Story

Usually when I have a story from my life I exaggerate the hell out of it for humor’s sake. Today I have an absolutely true Christmas tale that needs no hyperbole. I’ve been having trouble with mice getting into my trailer this winter. I plugged a hole under my sink and re-covered a spot in the living room where they were getting in. I’ve also been feeding them poison which they’re eating like candy. Still I hadn’t seen or heard one in about two weeks. Then it was Christmas.

2:30 a.m. Christmas morning I was awoken by a strange noise, like scratching and bumping around the wall behind my bed. It happened enough that I finally got out of bed and turned on the lights. I got a flashlight, shining it behind my nightstand and that’s when I saw it. Walking near my power strip was a brown field mouse dragging a piece of Dove chocolate. You may ask, “How could you possibly know it was Dove chocolate?” The answer is I could read the word “Dove” across the top of the square.

My first thought was “Am I still asleep. Is this a dream?” It was after all 2:30 a.m. But I quickly realized I had actually seen a mouse dragging a piece of chocolate. My next thought was “Where did it get a piece of chocolate from?” Suddenly it hit me. I ran down the hallway to my living room. My wrapped gifts were under my Christmas tree and there was the evidence.

My brother loves dark chocolate so I had taped a piece to each of his packages. The mouse had chewed away the foil from the piece of Dove chocolate and dragged it back the hallway into my bedroom. By the time I went back I couldn’t find him again so I figured he must have left the same way he got in. At 4:30 a.m. I finally went back to bed Christmas morning.

When I got up a few hours later I found that the mouse had nibbled at all the pieces of chocolate so it all had to be thrown away. He had also crapped on two of the packages so I had to re-wrap them.

Later in the day my brother came up to my place and we found a spot of the floor that had collapsed causing a hole between the foundation and the wall. We did a little MacGyver work, filling in the hole with garden rocks, shoring up the baseboard with a few pieces of fake wood my brother had in the trunk of his car and then covering it with a piece of left over tile from when I re-did my bathroom a few years ago.

That is my Christmas tale. If anyone from Disney or Pixar is reading this and wants to make a blockbuster movie from my story call, email, text, send a postcard, send up a smoke signal, carrier pigeon, a hand written letter on tasteful stationary, whatever. Let’s make a movie!

No Comment

I make the mistake of reading the comments section sometimes of articles I read online or of videos I watch on YouTube. I say it’s a mistake because it always makes me sad for the amount of ignorance that is displayed in these statements. Also defensiveness and vitriol. Comments sections sometimes resemble cesspools of nuclear waste.

At lunchtime at work I sometimes peruse a web site called Deadspin. It is in itself its own pond of sewage. Ostensibly a sports site, they run mostly stories that other sites don’t and then proceed to slag off the people involved. They also print rumors and conjecture. They admit up front of no proof for their post but write about it anyway as though their admission absolves them of guilt when the proverbial shit splatters the fan blades.

My favorite articles are the re-telling of supposedly bad behavior by sports commentators or journalists. Again, no fact checking is done, the stories could be true or complete fabrications, Deadspin doesn’t care. Usually in the comment section this will prompt people to write about their own supposed encounters with semi-famous people behaving badly. This will always be followed by someone commenting “I totally believe so-and-so would do something like that.” Really? Someone with a screen name that contains 3 expletives and has an avatar with a scene from a movie no one saw because that makes him ultra-cool and hip, writes a story and presents no proof beyond the phrase “I swear this is true” and you totally believe it? Of course, the next question is why I continue to read this kind of shit and I don’t have a good answer.

I like to watch videos on You Tube of heavy metal bands I’m not familiar with to see if I like their music. Reading the comments sections is an exercise in pedantry and juvenile behavior. There is always the inevitable argument over what sub-genre of metal the band is performing:

Metalhead #1: I love black metal!

Metalhead #2: This isn’t black metal. This is death metal.

Metalhead #3: No way. These guys aren’t metal enough to be death metal. This is pansy power metal.

Metalhead #4: You’re all idiots. This is funeral doom metal at its finest.

Metalhead #1: Funeral Doom?????? Are you out of your mind?????

Metalhead #3: Doom!!!!??? Justin Bieber is closer to doom metal than this band!!!!!!!!!

Metalhead #2: It’s DEATH METAL you $%%#$%

Metalhead #4: It’s clearly funeral doom. Maybe you could classify it as drone metal, but it’s not power, progressive, thrash, speed, dark, gothic, hardcore, emo, noise, nu, hair, punk, deathcore, Christian, emocore, powercore, screamo, symphonic, grindcore, experimental, stoner, industrial, sludge, melodic, technical, Viking, extreme, deathgrind, goregrind, neo-thrash, or post-thrash.

This conversation goes on for 8 pages worth of comments with the expletives flying fast and furious. Everyone is an idiot or a moron for having an opinion that differs from say, FatSam34 or IChokeOnMetal666. I’m an idiot for wasting my time reading the thread, but it makes me laugh.

If you decide to comment on this post about commenting on other people’s posts, be sure to call me an appropriate name, make up a new and colorful swear word and act like your opinion is superior to mine, even though that is pedantically not possible.

By the way, that video was totally German power pop glam metal. Morons. 

The Bathroom Conspiracy

I spent this Friday evening cleaning my bathroom. I know, what a way to spend a night but even though as a single male I can live in a fair amount of my own dirt, even I have limits. When the hair in the shower drain compiles so high it creates a new life form who slowly gains sentience, it might be time to clean.

When the dirt on the shower curtain hardens and breaks off in chunks and you examine it only to find gold flakes embedded inside, it’s probably time for some soap and water.

When you buy a toilet brush made from tungsten filaments and after two hours of scrubbing using an industrial mining drill to turn the brush, you still can’t get the toilet bowl clean, you may have waited too long to clean the bathroom.

When you find out friends are telling people the most terrifying moment of the lives was using your bathroom and that the visions of gargoyles eating their face took a month to subside, that is definitely a sign you have waited too long to clean.

So I spent my Friday evening scrubbing my shower and toilet, sweeping and mopping the floor and washing down the sink and counter tops. I should be good until next December. Kidding. I’ll probably do it early, maybe around Thanksgiving.