Essa Alroc's Blog, page 12

A Response to My Insurance Company

Recently, while driving my car, my mother was involved in a minor fender bender. Being Florida, this of course turned into a massive life altering car accident. Today, I received the following email from my insurance underwriting company. After the message is the exact response I sent to the insurance company.

—–Original Message—–

From: underwriter <underwriter@esurance.com>

To: slaroc2005 <slaroc2005@aol.com>

Sent: Mon, Feb 3, 2014 2:56 pm

Subject: Re: Important information about your Esurance policy Tracking#ET6WZ6HV#

Dear Stephanie,

Thank you for your email. We have reviewed the information provided. Unfortunately We require coverage verification for all drivers with regular or occasional access to the vehicles we are insuring. Elizabeth Larochelle was a vehicle operator in a claim who shows current at your residing along with Jeremy Larochelle. Please contact us to add, exclude or provide proof of auto insurance in the form of a declarations page for Marquise Johnson. We also show we are requesting documents to verify your garaging address. Please submit a current complete utility bill established in your name. We can review gas, water and electric bills. All pages must be included.

Please provide the above requested documents by 2/10/2014 to avoid the driver being force added to your policy effective 8/23/2014 or your policy being cancelled or non renewed.

You may fax the requested information to 1-866-616-2686 (Attn: Underwriting).

Thank you for your cooperation in resolving this matter. Please don’t hesitate to let us know if we can be of further assistance. You may call us at 1-866-702-3746 or email underwriter@central.esurance.com.

Please note, the Underwriting Department telephone hours are Monday through Friday from 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM, and Saturdays from 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM Central Time.

Sincerely,

The Esurance Underwriting Team

From: slaroc2005

To: underwriter

Sent: Mon, Feb 3, 2014 7:31 pm

Subject: Re: Important information about your Esurance policy Tracking#ET6WZ6HV#

Dear recipient,

Thank you for the form letter responding to my concerns. Well, not really, but you get my drift.

First, does everyone in the world have to respond with a declarations page from Marquise Johnson? He must be like the worst driver that ever existed. I only ask because I’ve never met the man, so I assume that this is a request to you send to all policy holders.  Maybe you should create a special form for it. I would call it the “Marquise Johnson Refusal.”

In regards to your demand that you have verifications from all people who have “regular or occasional access to the vehicles we are insuring” I assure you that I am the only one with ‘regular access’. I would be willing to argue the ‘regular access’ part, as it is a surprise that my car starts at all.  It is a temperamental vehicle and I can assure you that no one on the planet is guaranteed regular access to it, not even me.  Most of the time I just turn the ignition and pray.

As for drivers, I can assure you that other people find it humiliating to drive my car. It’s a Dodge Neon with black tint and spinning rims. The only people I can get to drive it do so under duress. My mother calls it my ‘ghetto mobile’ and refers to it using racial slurs. We can’t blame her for that though; she is from a different time.

I don’t have access to my brother’s declarations page as I am pretty sure he has rolled it into a coke straw and used it to snort coke off a hooker’s ass. He lives in Vegas and drives a BMV, so I doubt he is very familiar with Esurance. In fact when I told him I have Esurance he responded “why don’t you just carry a sleeve of pennies instead. It would cover you for more and cost you less.”

As to your ‘garaging verification’ demand, I assure you that my car is ‘garaged’ nowhere and has never seen the inside of a garage. Who the hell do you think I am, Donald Trump?  My car sits in a hot parking lot made of gravel. If I’m lucky, my drunk neighbor disappears for a few days, and I steal his spot. God, I can’t wait until that dude dies from cirrhosis. I’ll never have to walk more than 300 feet again!

You realize the irony of sending me a letter at my address, and then demanding that I verify my address. That’s like pickling a jar of cucumbers and demanding someone verify they are kosher.

Also, thanks for assuming that I have a fax machine despite the fact that I own a car that bluebooks at about $900. That is very forward thinking of you. It’s kind of like when a white person describes a black person without mentioning that they are black. We both know that there is no way I have access to a fax machine, but you politely ignore that fact and suggest it anyway. Way to ignore the elephant in the room.

Finally, cancelling my policy as of 8/23/2014 works perfectly for me. See I am an incredibly lazy individual, and I can almost guarantee that my crappy car will be getting formed into a metal cube in a scrap metal yard by then. Now I don’t have to cancel my insurance. Thanks for saving me a phone call.

 

 

 

 

What’s in a Name?

I have a friend who is about 3 months pregnant. One of the best parts of being pregnant, from my own memory, was the picking out names. But many parents only concentrate on the fun, and forget about the responsibility.

Choosing a name for another human being is a huge responsibility that way too many people take far too lightly. Name your daughter Destiny or Cherry, and you’ve just set her up for a lifetime of stripper jokes. Give your boy a common name like John, and you’ve set him up for an identity crisis as he tries to make himself stand out from all the other Johns. When naming a child, the margin for error is huge.

Which is why I don’t understand why anyone would put that responsibly in the hands of a pregnant, hormonal woman.

Anyway, we were talking and Desdemona* confirmed that she was expecting a boy. Then she started listing off her top picks for names. Her number one choice? Applebee.

Yeah, I’m sure you have the same horror stricken look on your face right now as I did when she told me. When she noticed my look, she laughed a little.

“It’s because me and John met at Applebee’s. I figured it would be cute.”

I responded, “Yeah, it would be cute…for about 3 minutes. But when the novelty wears off, your kid would still have to spend the rest of his life with that name.”

Look people, naming a child isn’t like creating a novelty license plate. You don’t get points for creativity. Instead, you just get a little kid, with a really weird name, who grows up to be a bitter adult.

Essa Alroc isn’t my real name (shocker, right?) It actually came from a modified anagram of my own name, minus a few repetitive letters. My real name is an 18 letter monster of a thing, that while pretty, is less than practical.

When I first started writing, and realized my own incredible genius, I also realized that eventually, I might be called upon to sign one of my books or give an autograph. I had nightmares about being at a book signing, with hundreds of angry fans watching, as I took twenty minutes per customer while I signed my gigantic name. I pictured hardcover novels that had to be made 2 feet wide to fit my name.

I thought back to the frustration I had as a child, when my teacher gave “Amy Smith” a gold star because she figured out how to spell her name on the first day. It took me the majority of the first grade.

I thought about the awkward silence every time I sign a check or credit card receipt, when it takes just a little bit too long to get it done.

I thought about the frustration I feel every time I call a company to make an appointment, and need to repeat my name twice, spell it, and then repeat it again.

I thought about those obnoxious fucking government forms, where there never seems to be enough boxes to fit my name in.

I thought of all that, and I then I elected to change my name. I just wish I had thought of doing it sooner.

Parents, when naming your child, please be practical. Naming a baby isn’t just a fun chance to pick out the trendy new thing or throw a dart at a baby book. It is the single most important thing that you will give your child.

So try not to fuck it up.

* Name changed so my pregnant friend will understand what it is to have a horrible name.

Schrödinger’s Laugh Track

First, let me say I’ve never really gotten the whole Schrödinger’s Cat paradox. For those who don’t know, it mainly involves sticking a cat in a box, with some time release poison. Allegedly, there comes a time during the experiment where the cat is simultaneously alive and dead; i.e. the paradox.

My conclusion to this theory? Schrödinger hated his cat.

This paradox comes from the Copenhagen interpretation, which is more about observation with no true objective reality. Personally, I think it’s bullshit. You wanna know if the cat is dead, you don’t need physics.

Just shake the fucking box.

I’m bringing up Schrödinger’s Cat because I’ve heard a lot about it recently, which is odd. I haven’t gotten annoyed by that paradox since I was a college freshman struggling my way through physics. I think the reason that Schrödinger’s Cat suddenly made a comeback was because it was mentioned on a highly rated show, The Big Bang Theory.

So when my buddy Ryan mentioned Schrödinger’s Cat, I mentioned The Big Bang Theory. Ryan responded ‘yeah, I can’t really get into that show. I have a feeling I’d like it, but the laugh track ruined it for me.’

That threw me off because, get this, I had never even noticed the laugh track until he mentioned it. The next time I watched the show, all I could think about was the damn laugh track. I’d hear the laugh track and would immediately stop laughing myself.

Ironically, I had developed my own Schrödinger’s issue. My new observation of the show had changed the way I perceived the show.

So I needed to determine if the show was still funny, or if I had simply been conned by the laugh track. I went online and found a tech guy who could get me copies of the show with the laugh track dubbed out. I watched it.

I watched it and the show was eerily silent. I wanted to laugh a few times, but for some reason, couldn’t. No one else was laughing. I couldn’t figure out if it was funny anymore.

I ran into a new paradox. The laugh track made the show simultaneously suck and not suck. I had developed the paradox of Schrödinger’s Laugh Track.

I get the theory behind laugh tracks. Laughter is infectious and it’s easier to laugh when someone else is laughing. But the weird thing about laugh tracks is that they only work when you don’t notice them.

I probably could have brought my theory up to some important physicists in Switzerland. Instead, I did what I always do when confronted with a paradox.

I drank four beers and smoked a joint. Suddenly, the show was funny again, laugh track or no laugh track.

Time Heals All Wounds…An Experiment in Schadenfreude

Have you ever heard a woman bitch “it’s not fair; women get worse looking with age, while men only get more ‘distinguished’”?

I would like to take this opportunity to call bullshit. Most of my female friends in their 30s and 40s are utterly smoking hot, while most of the men I know are completely falling apart. I myself, at the ripe old age of 33, am far more attractive than I was in high school.

Then…we all make bad choices in high school. Red hair dye was mine

Now…amazing how much hotter I am when I’m actually happy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But while delightful, that is not what this post is about. Instead, it is about how time, and the complexly karmic nature of the universe, can fix just about any heartbreak.

You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘time heals all wounds’ before and thought that it was yet another platitude that people throw out when they don’t know what else to say. But the fact is, most platitudes come into existence because they are true. There are plenty of fish in the sea. What happens really does happen and time does heal all wounds.

Thanks to gravity and a high carb diet.

Let me explain. If you can believe it, I fell in love in high school. Yes, back then, I had a heart, a ticking biological clock and a fully functional sex drive. I fell in love in that desperate, grasping way that teenage girls do, with a guy who wasn’t even remotely interested in me.

At the time, it was soul destroying. I spent most of my time agonizing about him, complaining to my friends and crying.

God, I must have been really fucking annoying back then.

Nothing aside from a few romps in the back seat of a car ever really happened between me and my high school crush but I obsessed all the same. It was painful, it was hopeless and it was depressing.

It was part of being a teenager.

I left my home town about two weeks after I graduated high school and aside from the occasional week long visit, never went back.  Life went on. It changed. I met other men to obsess about and men who actually got obsessed with me (creepy, yet flattering). I joined the military, had a kid, went to college, built a career, destroyed that career, and built another career.

For 16 years, I never thought about that crush. He went from comprising 90% of my conscious thoughts, to absolutely none of them.

Then, about a week ago, that crush popped up in a friend of mine’s timeline on Facebook.

I saw that name, and I’ll be honest; for a second, my heart skipped a beat. I was back to being that obsessed teenage girl. I tried to resist, but I couldn’t. I clicked on his profile, sure that he’d be successful and just as gorgeous as I remembered. I was ready to get obsessed all over again. Then, his current profile picture filled my screen…

And I snorted so hard, beer came out of my nose. After my coughing fit was done, I smirked, closed down the page and said to myself, ‘what the fuck was I thinking?’

Either I was legally blind at the age of 17, or my high school crush had gotten the shit beat out of him by Father Time. No joke, this dude looked like the paper towel guy ‘Brawny’ …if Brawny went on an all bacon diet and stopped trimming his beard.

About 20 years ago, this guy was all I wanted. Today, he would be yet another creepy fat dude that I avoided eye contact with at the store.

“This has to be an anomaly,” I told myself. “Surely karma doesn’t work that fast?”

So I pulled out my legal pad and I made a list. I didn’t make a list of every guy who’d ever broken my heart. In some cases, the breakup was fully warranted, mutual or necessary. For those guys, I expected no karmic justice because they weren’t at fault. Sometimes, we like someone who doesn’t like us (or the other way around) and we just have to accept that.

No, instead, this list was focused on the guys who had used and abused me or who had dumped me horrifically (like the dude that took me to McDonald’s on Valentine’s Day and dumped me after making me pay for his Value Meal).

Then I started Googling. During those Google searches, I learned one thing. Apparently, I am a super hero; my vagina dispatches karmic justice.

 

Every guy who’d ever made me feel utterly destroyed and useless had gone through some horrific metamorphosis. They went from being handsome, ambitious toned young men to harry ‘Jabba the Huts’ living in clapboard houses and working menial jobs.

You know that phrase ‘schadenfreude’? In case you haven’t, it means ‘shameful joy’. Well that night, I schadenfreuded multiple times, in multiple positions, and it was fucking fantastic. After I was done, I smoked half a pack of cigarettes and slept better than I’d slept in years.

To the ladies out there, if you’ve had your heart broken, I urge you to try this experiment. Of course, keep a few things in mind.

All my worst heartbreaks occurred more than 10 years ago. Something turned off inside me in my early 20s and I really haven’t felt a thing since. I think the ‘ripening’ from karmic justice occurs at about the 10 year mark, so I really wouldn’t recommend looking up the guy who dumped you 3 months ago.
Don’t look them up drunk. Nostalgia and alcohol don’t mix. You might start thinking of ‘the good old days’ and forget that you’re talking to a bald fat loser
Be fair in your assessment. I only looked up jerks that treated me like shit. I’m sure if I’d looked up some of the dudes that dumped me for a damn good reason, they would be doing quite well and I would just be jealous.

I strongly recommend trying this at least once in your life. No joke people. It will restore your faith in humanity and the universe in general.

So You’re Moving to Florida…

In about a month, I will be leaving Florida to take on the great, classy city of Las Vegas. I get the urge to change states every 4 years or so to outrun all my warrants take in new scenery.

Anyway, most of the people you will meet in Florida are transplants. In the years I have been living here, I have only met 1 or 2 ‘born and bred’ Floridians. Everyone else came from freezing cold states, and were lured here with the promise of eternal summer.

I have to agree that the weather is beautiful. As most of my friends are shoveling out their driveway, I sit here in flip flops and complain when the weather gets below 60.

But there are a few things that I wish someone had told me when I first moved, and now I’m going to share those things with you.

#1. Only hookers wear panty hose in the Sunshine State.

With weather that tops 100 on a daily basis, and an average 90% humidity rate, most people are practical enough to forgo an extra layer of nylon covering when they go out. The ones who don’t are the ladies who need to hide their varicose veins and track marks. Unless you’re looking to get solicited by a car full of college boys, leave the tights and pantyhose at home.

Seems weird that the people who wear the most pantyhose are also the ones who need to take it off the most.

#2. Never trust the outside appearance of a neighborhood

As an apartment dweller, I’ve always been careful to avoid places with bars on the windows or mattresses in the yard. But Florida landlords are getting wise to that and now slap enough window dressing on any apartment complex to fool prospective tenants into moving into a ghetto neighborhood.

17 inch Kobe rims on a $900 car? Why the hell not…

How to avoid it? When looking for a place to live, don’t look at the landscaping in the complex. Look at the cars in the parking lot. If you spot more than one 1998 Corolla with window tint, spinning rims and a stereo system that Blue Books for more than the car is worth, move on.

#3. There is no such thing as an ‘outdoor’ pet.

You won’t see a lot of stray cats roaming the neighborhoods in Florida. Here, stray cats are alligator food and they will not last very long. The only people who leave their animals outside in Florida are the meth dealers who need to leave their Rottweilers outside to protect their meth labs.

Believe it or not, this story has a happy ending.

#4. Rudeness saves lives

Florida comes in at a hefty third place, right behind California and New York, for the most victims of serial killers. Remember these two words; Fuck ‘em.

But you only get the free candy if you help him find his lost puppy…

A person broken down on the side of the road and they’re trying to flag you to stop? Fuck ‘em. A person knocking on your door looking for their lost dog? Fuck ‘em. A person in a cast wants help carrying their groceries? Fuck ‘em.

Yeah, I know it sounds terrible, but I don’t care. I’d rather a stranger think I’m rude than some Buffalo Bill nut job think I’m an easy target.

#5. ‘Palmetto bug’ is Floridian for ‘creepy assed flying cockroach’.

A Palmetto bug, aka the Periplaneta Americana, is a member of the arthropoda phylum and resembles a cockroach with the same approximate size as a small dog. While they do not bite, the first time you have one fly into your face in retaliation for spraying it with Raid, expect to be scarred for life. I’m not fucking around people. It will haunt you to your grave.

They can survive a nuclear holocaust…and they can fly. We are all fucked.

#6. Manatees do not exist

I think they are some kind of fake endangered species made up by a corrupt Florida official in order to get government funds for preservation. While I have no statistical proof, I can tell you that I have been to 3 manatee festivals and have yet to see one actual live manatee.

Essa hasn’t seen it = Doesn’t exist

#7. All your neighbors will be nuts.

Again, something about the heat drives people nuts here. In my short time in my middle class apartment I’ve seen;

A guy try to light his girlfriend’s place on fire…while completely nude
A high speed chase, ending in a police standoff in my neighborhood, where the man claimed to be receiving secret messages from the children’s show “Yo Gabba Gabba.”
An invitation to join a cult
Another note telling me I’m going to hell for not joining said cult
A bronies convention (Google it)
A six foot red headed Asian woman with 6 toes on her right foot, who will gladly show the mutation to anyone for $1

If you don’t have any crazy neighbors in your Florida neighborhood, guess what? You are the crazy neighbor.

Florida has been fun, and it’s given me a lot of material, but its time to move on. For anyone about to move to “The Penis of America” (

I’m Average…and You Can Be Too!

I often get compliments on my intelligence. Many of my friends assume that I am incredibly smart, because I know that the gestation period of an elephant is 2 years, that standard anthrax isn’t as dangerous as man-made streams, and that the arsenic in your apple juice probably won’t kill you.

Here’s the thing people; I’m not that smart. If I had to track myself on a scale, I would put me at average, to minimally above average. But people get the wrong impression, and attribute genius abilities to me because I know how to research and code.

Wanna hear a secret about coding? It’s not that hard. In fact, it’s nothing more than adding and subtracting in series of 10s. I don’t know any average intelligence person who will get the question ‘what’s 20 + 10?’ and have to Google the answer.

You know what makes people think I’m smart? My sarcasm and clever quips. When it comes to sarcasm and clever quips, I’m fucking Einstein. I assume this ability comes from a higher than average sense of humor quotient, coupled with a complete lack of any kind of moral filter, inborn cynicism, and significant quantities of alcohol and mind altering medications.

It is indeed, delightful to be me.

But no, I am not that smart. I can’t look at an algorithm and know the answer immediately. I can’t hear a composition played on a piano and copy it. Hell, I can’t even do that Rain Man shit where I count the number of toothpicks on the ground.

Only one thing separates me from the masses, and that is my ability and desire, to ask questions. And when I ask those questions, I know how to get answers from the right people. Let me explain.

A long, long time ago, I met my first boyfriend. After a day of riding around on one of those bicycles with a giant wheel, and pulling each others powdered wigs off, we started to get hot and heavy. As he desperately rounded third base, I stopped him. He resisted.

“I have blue balls. Did you know those can cause cancer?”

Indeed, I did not. This of course, is pure bullshit. However, here is where most teen girls make their mistake. They either give in to the idiot entirely, believing his factual medical advice, or they ask one of their idiot girlfriends. Of course, their idiotic girlfriends always knows a girl, who knew a guy, who said his cousin’s sister’s husband had that happen to them.

But I was born a cynic who knows how to ask questions and who has no shame in approaching anyone to get those question answered. So when Mr. Blue Balls told that to me, I didn’t go to my best friend for verification.

I went to my best friend’s dad, because he was a doctor and he would have some actual, factual knowledge on that shit.

When he finished laughing his ass off, he explained to me that this was an age old excuse, used since men started walking upright, to get laid.

And I had my answer.

Look people, I’m not that smart. I just know how to pull up a browser and cipher the fake from the real. It’s kind of like how you tell a set of fake tits from a set of real tits. After a while of looking, you just know.

I do something unique. I form my own opinions. When I hear a news story, due to my inborn cynicism, I know that it is impossible for anyone to report news purely based on the facts. They all have their own slant.

So I ignore their slant, I take in the facts, and I let them swirl around in my head a little bit before I make a determination.

I don’t assume something is true because someone tells me it is.
I don’t assume that something gives you cancer because some TV doctor tells you it does
I don’t assume period…I evaluate.

What makes me so smart isn’t some kind of inborn intelligence. It is my ability to ask questions in the first place. I don’t see some news story about how latex causes cervical cancer and throw out all my condoms and stop fucking

Instead, I ask three questions;

Is this fact too ridiculous to be reasonable?
Does the person sharing the fact have any reason to be biased, one way or the other?
How knowledgeable is the source?

This is actually a pretty easy method to learn. Watch as I break it down using the Mr. Blue Balls story.

“Blue balls give you cancer.” The fact is too ridiculous to be reasonable. If this happened regularly, it would be all over the news, with newscasters urging all women to start giving blow jobs to strangers.
Mr. Blue Balls was 100% biased. No way around that one.
Mr. Blue Balls was a 19 year old boy with no medical training. In no way at all did he qualify as a ‘knowledgeable individual”.

This tells me that the opinion of Mr. Blue Balls was not a valid opinion.

That isn’t intelligence. It’s just logical reasoning.

You too, can be average like me. You can make logic based decisions relative to the evidence you’ve seen. You don’t need to accept anything at face value just because someone tells you it’s true. You can make your own determinations. That doesn’t make you a genius; that just makes you an average person who refuses to have their opinions spoon fed to them.

And that is nothing to be ashamed of.

Nothing You Do is Exciting and New

We are a society made up of people who set the trends, people who follow the trends, and people who watch both those other groups with baffled amusement.

I fall in to the last group.

The last group understands that trends are ridiculous. No matter how edgy you think you’re being, no matter how fresh you think your idea is, it’s been done before.

Fashion is cyclical. We seem the same styles come back every 40 years or so, with very few updates to discern them from the last cycle, but like sheep, we all act like the idea is so modern and exciting.

Skinny jeans and boots? What a visionary combination! I wonder who thought of that?

Thanks for the fashion forward advice 1984.

I’m sick of trends and the people who follow them, thinking they’re somehow being edgy. The fact is, most of today’s trends are either straight up fucking stupid, or something that is fully recycled from something that has been done before.

#1. “Ironic” T-shirts

I recently got congratulated for wearing an ironic t-shit.  First of all, as a professional writer, I’m going to go ahead and promise all of you that a t-shirt cannot indeed, be ironic;

i·ro·ny – noun

the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.

In short hipster, your shirt can’t be ironic because it is an inanimate object that is incapable of using sarcasm.

My ‘ironic’ shirt featured the phrase ‘task terminator’ in bold black letters on a blue background. I got it as part of some team building exercise when I was still a welcome and appreciated member of corporate America. I got fired from the job for being very bad at it, but I got to keep the shirt.

I considered it a win.

Anyway, on a massively hung-over Saturday morning (the kind of Saturday where you need to delete all your Facebook status updates and check your call history) I used this shirt to wipe a small amount of vomit off my bathroom floor.

Then, on account of the fact that it did not smell extremely bad, I elected to wear it. At which point, I became an incredibly cool hipster who wears ironic t-shirts.

I don’t spend 45 minutes every day making my hair messy and picking out the perfect ‘I don’t give a fuck t-shirt’ to show off how cool I am and how little I care to the world.

I dress this way because I am an alcoholic drug user with bad vision. And nothing about me is ironic.

#2. Twerking

I love how shaking your ass suddenly became the newest dance craze, like it’s never been done before. Look people, Miley Cyrus didn’t invent twerking. It’s been around for awhile;

The only thing that changed was the camera angle. In 1956, the camera focused on Elvis’ gyrating pelvis. In 2013, it flipped around and focused on Miley Cyrus’ chicken butt instead. A new angle does not a new dance craze make.

#3. Ombre Hair

This new fashion forward ‘trend’ makes it cool to be a lazy bitch who lets her roots grow out, while her ends remain four shades lighter.

There are actually hair dye kits that will allow you to create this ‘I’m a crazy recluse who no longer dyes her hair’ look. Weirdly, my hair is already doing this, because I’m actually a crazy recluse who no longer dyes her hair.

Between my six inch roots and my ‘ironic’ t-shirts, I might be the most unintentionally trendy person on the planet.

#4. ‘Cool’ People Who Like ‘Uncool’ Things

“I’m such a nerd!” has become the hippest new way to subtly tell everything that you’re not as shallow as a puddle. I see morons on Facebook loudly proclaiming “I fucking love science!” when they can’t even spell the word photosynthesis, let alone describe what it is. Ten years ago, Star Wars was for nerds like me. Now every poser who sports a pair of fake horn rimmed glasses is telling me how much they love Star Wars.

Listen posers, if you don’t have a fully built counterpoint, complete with family trees and timelines, as to why Chewbacca was clearly from Kashyyyk, as opposed as Endor, as alleged in the famous Johnny Cochran Chewbacca Defense,  you don’t “love Star Wars”. You’re just a poser.

Every now and then, I’ll make the mistake of assuming that humans are the most highly evolved of all creatures. Then, I remember trends. Nowhere else in the animal kingdom do you see animals doing things with the goal of being called the ‘coolest.’ Lions don’t stop hunting gazelles because gazelles are ‘so 1985’. Birds don’t fly west instead of south, because all the trendiest spots are in Santa Fe.

Only human beings are so desperate to stand out that they wind up conforming instead.

 

It’s a Dog’s Life

Generally, envy isn’t something I feel, except for when I’m dealing with one being on this entire planet who I would choose to be if given the opportunity.

That would be my dog. My dog spends her days napping, eating and being told how cute she is. No cleaning, no work, no cooking…no responsibility. So this weekend, I decided to try it, to see if the grass really was greener.

Our weekend starts on Saturday around noon. We roll out of the bed and go outside for our morning walk. After briefly chasing some squirrels, which we have no idea what to do with if we catch, we return home and lay down on the couch. No hair or tooth brushing. No coffee. Just an immediate midmorning nap.

Around 2 in the afternoon, we wake up and switch couches. We take a mid-afternoon nap as we are very exhausted the earlier nap.

At about 4 pm, a person pulls into our parking lot. We both immediately race to the door, sure that they are drug dealers, terrorist, burglars or all three. We glare at the individual walking past our apartment, growling under out breath until he is completely out of sight.

I’ve never seen an elderly man with a walker move so fast!

We returned to the couch, but this time, choose to lay upside down. Constant vigilance is exhausting. We go back to sleep.

We awake and realize we are hungry. My son is eating something. We both stare at him until he feeds us too.

Back to sleep.

We wake up on Sunday. Sophia looks no worse for wear, but my hair has tangled into a knot in the back of my head that no tool made by man can separate. I follow Sophia’s morning grooming routine, that mainly involves scratching my butt for 30 minutes straight. I try to lay back down on the couch, but can not get into a comfortable position.

I follow Sophia’s lead and walk in a circle 3 times before laying back down again. Despite the fact that my position has not changed, I have to admit that it feels much better.

After another 4 hour nap, I give up on my dog’s life. Sure, all the napping is great, but it gets boring after awhile. Plus, barking at every neighbor who pulls into my complex is starting to get weird. In addition, in all the time I’ve been laying on the couch no one has petted me or told me how cute I am once!

Sophia is much better at this than I am.

Dear Alleged Friends Demanding Free Novel Copies

Do I show up at your office demanding free tax returns? Do I show up at your boutique, demanding a free shirt? Do I show up at your day care center, demanding free child care?

Then how the hell do you feel justified demanding a free copy of my book?

Look, the first request was cute. The second request was flattering. The third request was getting a little bit weird.

By request 17, I felt obligated to do the math for you;

1 wholesale paperback copy of my book $5 * 17= $85.

Shipping and handling for 17 copies of my book. $85.

All together, in order to satisfy people who haven’t given a shit about me since high school = $170.

That is far too much money for me to spend in the hope that some loser in a podunk town thinks I’m cool. I stopped giving a shit about being cool in my 20s.

My book isn’t my boring assed diary. My book isn’t a book of angst filled poetry that I’m desperate to have some asshole read. I sent query letters. I developed a fucking concept. I worked my ass off.

You want a free copy of my writing? Check out my website. I publish every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday and I have a regular following of about 30k people. Get the fuck in line.

You want a free copy of my writing? Go to iTunes and download my free novella. It’s 28k of words that my publicist told me to give away for free because my novel was actually good enough to let that kind of money slide.

It’s not my fault you haven’t gotten an iPad and I don’t give a shit that you ‘love the smell of new books.’ In fact, I hope that fucking smell gives you cancer. Get with the 21st god damn century and get an eReader. You sound like some old douchebag who won’t use a BIC because you like using a quill and parchment instead.

Nobody gives a fuck about the good old days. Get over the desire of being able to enjoy the death of thousands of trees for your own fucking temporary amusement, planet killer. ebooks are the wave of the future, get one and stop sniffing your own ass.

If you barely know me, but demanded my book over some half hearted attempt to support me so you could feel better about yourself; let it go. When you’re actually demanding a free copy of my book so you can feel like a good person, know that you are actually costing me about $14 per person.

You would probably be better off sending that money to some little brown kid in a foreign country. I’m a midlist author, not some Sally Struthers brown kid eating gruel. I don’t need your pity, especially when that ‘pity’ costs me money.

Next, if you consider yourself a ‘real’ friend, but again, expect me to send you a copy of my book for free, I think you need to reacquaint yourself with what a real friend really is. A real friend would have bought my book without prompting. A real friend would have sent it to me to autograph.

A real friend wouldn’t have expected to pay for the book out of my own fucking pocket and then pay for shipping and handing, then autograph it, and then mail it to them.

Do Jennifer Lawrence’s friends do that shit to her? Do they email her and demand a new autographed copy of “The Hunger Games” ?

No, because Jennifer Lawrence’s bodyguards handle that shit for her.

In short, I think what I’m trying to say is “fuck all y’all”

You’re not doing me some kind of favor when you read my work for free. My work is actually incredibly popular. It doesn’t require pity reads because it has actual reads.

And the next time you request a free damn novel from me, you know what you’re getting when you open that UPS box?

You’re getting a used fucking tampon. Because you and a used tampon have one thing in common. You’re both massive blood suckers.

Fear and Loathing in Orlando

Florida is the sunshine state, where millions flock every season to enjoy overpriced rides at Disneyland and see the tourist traps, like ‘world’s largest lawn flamingo’. Florida is the retirement state, where millions of snowbirds show up every November so they have another place to bitch about the weather. Florida is the car accident fraud state, where the mildest of fender benders will result in personal injury litigation that will follow you to your grave.

I got a call from my mother, who was off in my fabulous, slightly used (the engine has turned over twice) Dodge. She had just gotten to experience a common Florida occurrence, which is more common than sunburns at the beach and STDs during spring break.

The roadside shakedown.

The anatomy of a roadside shakedown is as follows. An accident will happen under suspicious circumstances. The shaker will then get out of their car and demand the shakee (it this case my mother), give them $500.

That always seems to be the amount people demand. $500. No more, no less. My mother wisely elected to not turn over the money. I wasn’t there, but I believe her response went something like this.

“(Expletive, racial slur) no.”

She turned over my incredibly awful insurance policy information so they could file a claim. I don’t know exactly what it covers, but as I got the most cut rate, nonstandard plan I could, I imagine it only covers incidents related to ‘act of bird.’

There is a method to my madness.

In a fraud intense state like Florida, having a good policy could actually work against you. Coincidentally, most individuals here wind up having injuries that directly equal your policy limits. For example, if you have a $10,000 policy, the neck injury becomes ‘whiplash’. If you have a $100,000 policy, that neck injury suddenly turns into ‘multiple level cervical herniations and thoracic outlet syndrome’. If you have a $1,000,000 policy, that neck injury becomes ‘cervical fusion surgery with underlying Post Traumatic Stress Disorder’.

As I would hate to see anyone have to go through surgery, I make a point of having the bare minimum plan.

“But insurance is supposed to protect you from paying out of pocket! What if they sue you?”

Well then, their ambulance chasing lawyer will take a look at my assets first. Let me due the math.

Current Assets – Current Debt = -$40,000

I am firmly in the red…or the black…whatever color it is when your finances are in terrible condition. My greatest assets include a car that probably Blue Books at $2000 and a twitchy 9 pound dog with an inflammatory anal gland condition (current value, about $25).

You know the most common reason that lawyers drop clients in this state? Because the other party doesn’t have insurance. To be entirely honest, I wish I didn’t carry any at all. Then, I would have offered to pay the other party in acorns or tales of adventure.

Luckily, my mom is ok, though this accident did set her firmly into ‘angry muttering mode’. For me, the whole incident is worth it because I got a blog post out of it. And it reminds me of one thing…

I do not miss working in insurance.