Recipe for Pain

I don't normally post recipes on my blog. That really seems like a topic better left to the experts. People like Ryan However, I decided to make an exception this one time.

Pain Sandwich

You will need
2 Italian Sausages
6 Pieces of bread
3 Tablespoons of Canola Oil
1 Large Onion sliced
1 Green Bell Pepper sliced
1 Red Pepper sliced
1 Serrano Pepper
2 Jalapeno Peppers sliced
2 Habanero Peppers chopped

Take all of that stuff and fry it up. Ok, wait don't fry the bread but fry everything else. Then put all of that stuff on the bread wait an hour or two and then keel over in pain.

I ate two of these sandwiches on Friday and felt like death afterwords. I was laying on the couch watching tv curled up in pain. And then on Friday I was hungry, I had leftovers, so I did it again. Strangely enough this time it was also torturous afterwords. The burning of my stomachs lining was hard to ignore. And here I am again today, on Sunday, thinking that I would like to try just one more sandwich. I know it's a terrible idea but it just taste so good.

Responsiblity - What's That

Once upon a time there lived five friends. These friends were like any other group of friends. On the weekends they would hang out. Sometimes for fun they would go sheep tipping and occasionally, when they were feeling really crazy and the moon was full, they would throw off their tunics and see who could float the longest in the dead sea. But then one day something terrible happened. Friend number five got a terrible disease and lost the ability to walk. This was very unfortunate and made sheep tipping quite impossible.

But then one day friend number two and friend number three overheard some great news. There was a man named Jesus in town and he could heal the sick. So friends number one through four put friend number five on a cot and they hauled his fat butt to the house where Jesus was speaking. Friend number two kept making fat jokes while friend number three kept complaining that he was going to get a hernia. Fortunately friend number one was the sensible one and told them to both shut their mouths. Unfortunately when they got to were Jesus was the house was full. Friend number four suggested that perhaps they could climb up on the roof and dig a hole to lower friend number five down. But friend number one, being the sensible one, reminded them that that would be irresponsible. After all, they didn't know the owner of the house and what if they accidentally dropped the poor guy on his head. It would kill him and that would be counterproductive. That being said, they hauled their friends fat butt home and he died a few years later.

No wait, that's the wrong ending. They decided that they didn't care if it was the responsible thing to do and they put dug a big hole in a strangers roof and lowered their friend down on a ghetto rigged cot and Jesus healed him.

Think about it. Is it responsible to put a giant hole in a strangers roof? That's vandalism. Is it responsible to ghetto rig a cot with ropes and lower a disabled man down ten feet? That's reckless endangerment. God does not always require us to do the responsible thing. He requires us to do the right thing.

*the story I just told may or may not be completely Biblicaly accurate but forget about that and watch some MXPX

Do you Flinch Back?

Your answer to this question will determine your level of happiness in life. What do you do when someone flinches at you? Do you flinch back? Do you sock them in the face? Do you threaten them? Do you curse at them? Do you ask them what's wrong? Do you walk away? Do you smile? Do you ignore them? What do you do?

"I'm talking to these little white girls." she yelled across the parking lot to another parent. "Little white girls," it hardly seemed like an appropriate way to refer to someone else kids. We were at the park and some drama had transpired between my, um, white girls, and some other, um, white girls. The drama was a clear case of he said she said with a heaping dose of kids being kids. It was silly.

"Are these girls with you?" the lady asked me angrily from across the playground.
"Yes" I replied.
"Well this little girl said she was going to slap my little girl and I ain't gonna let no one slap my girl."
"Don't worry," I reassured, "I don't let the kids slap each other. I'm watching."

I didn't bother to get up or raise my voice. My tone was clear and consistent. My calm demeanor seemed to catch her off guard. She wanted a fight, an argument, a chance to yell. Not knowing how to react she took her kids and stormed off.

"Did you hear her call us little white girls?"
"Yea I did. I mean, you are white you know?"
"She's racist."
"Maybe," I replied, "But it doesn't matter. It's best just to ignore people like that. Take a few deep breaths and go have fun."

I think that is good advice for life. Take a few deep breaths and go have fun. If you ignore the stupid people, the angry people, and the people who are just looking for a fight, your life will be much happier. Don't flinch back.

My Life in a Seinfeld Episode

I'm a huge Seinfeld fan which makes sense considering it it is one of the greatest sitcoms in the history of television. In my mind nearly every situation in life somehow relates to an episode of Seinfeld. I've even come to realize that I have conversations that sound like they came straight off of a stolen script. For instance, what is the proper placement of the second button on a shirt? I've had that conversation more than once. Sometimes I believe my life may just be an un-aired episode.

Now, however, it's gone too far. If you are a fan of Seinfeld than as soon as I say this next sentence you are going to know exactly what I'm talking about. The other week I sold a guy a used wheelchair. Ok, now your mind has started to wonder and your thinking about the episode where Kramer gives the lady a used wheel chair and she looses her breaks and, well, it didn't go well. Ok, stop thinking about that and keep reading. The guy I sold the wheel chair to text messaged me tonight to tell me that something broke on the chair that I sold him and it rolled right over him. Oh snap, that's not good. Well, the guy was fine and he said he still loves the chair. But still, my first thought, "Oh no, I'm in a Seinfeld episode!" I'm just glad that this guy is both very nice, and lives very very far away.

One Too Many...

I went to the Delhi Skirt Game tonight. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this strange Westside tradition here is a short explanation. A couple of thousand Westsiders go to the park and watch grown men dressed up as women play a game of baseball. Then there are fireworks. It's a charity event. Now that I've got that out of the way I can get to the heart of this blog and that is alcohol abuse.

I was sitting next to a good friend of mine who was talking to one of his friends little girls. She was around 8 and was obviously upset. "I want to go home"
"Why do you want to go home?" my friend asked her.
"Because my mom is drunk and she has already gotten two guys numbers."

When I heard this my heart sunk. So many parents think that their use of alcohol has nothing to do with their children. They believe that somehow, their being an adult is an excuse to model bad, addictive, and often destructive behavior in front of their kids. If you think that your drinking has no affect on your children, think again. Let me assure you, your kids are watching you and your behavior affects them on a level that you may never completely be aware of. A drunk role model is a bad role model. What kind of role model are you?

The Story of the Dumb Spider

There is a spider who lives at my house. He doesn't bite me so I leave him alone. Everyday the spider builds a web. He puts hours of work into his web until he gets it just right. But then, everyday, I open my front door and I walk face first into his craftsmanship, tearing it to pieces. And as I walk away wiping the sticky strands from my face, I think. What is wrong with that spider? He certainly does not lack work ethic. Everyday the spider re-builds his web. A sloucher he is not. What the spider is lacking is intelligence. That spider is dumb as a rock. Why would you continue to re-build something that will inevitably be destroyed? Why does the spider not invest his time and energy in building a web where it will at least last more than 24 hours? That spider needs to work smarter not harder. But alas, he is but a stupid spider whose very days are numbered. He will continue to build his web in my front door and I will continue to destroy it with my face. And then one day the web will be gone and the spider will be dead and I will not miss him because he was nothing but a dump spider anyhow.

and Everyone Was Happy and Everything Worked

Have you ever experienced something that should have gone terribly wrong but somehow, despite the circumstances, worked out great? To me, this weekends kids church was a prime example of that very thing. First off though, let me assure you that I knew everything would turn out great from the beginning. But that's just how I am. It could just as well gone terribly wrong.

The first thing that went wrong started a while ago. The air conditioning in the Elementary kids church room died. The HVAC guy agreed with me that the entire system was worth it's weight in scrap metal and not too much more. This being said I set up a temporary kids church room in the churches main building. That turned out to be a bit more work than I had envisioned. Pretty much everything in life is like that though. But, alas, after wondering around the church for hours stealing... uh, borrowing things from various rooms, it was done, and it worked. Granted, instead of a puppet curtain I had some sort of drop cloth and instead of a projector screen I had a round table turned sideways on top of yet another table but it worked. It kind of looked futuristic in a ghetto rigged kind of way.

Saturday evening came and yet another problem arose, I had no adult helpers show up. Luckily though I had three 12 year olds volunteer to help and they took care of everything that needed to be done. And it worked, it worked well.

Then Sunday second service came and I had 30 kids. Normally there are video games, Foosball, air hockey, and pop shot to keep them entertained before the start of service. Today, being in a temporary location, all I had was a broom stick that I found in the corner of the room. So, we danced and did the limbo and I won, and they had fun, and I had fun and two six year old girls discovered that they had a lot in common and declared themselves to be best friends. They held hands and challenged me to a dance off, and they won. And then I once again had no adult helpers. Only this time I had only one 12 year old. So, she walked kids to the bathroom and, since I had no puppeteers I did the next best thing, ventriloquism. I guess I did a decent job of it because one of the kids asked me if I was doing the devils voice or he was really talking. I assured him that it was just a puppet and puppets can not talk of their own free will. Along with the ventriloquism, when I needed to talk to a character who was supposedly back stage, I would lean over the stage and use a different voice. And once again, somehow that worked and none of the kids pointed out the obvious that I was in fact talking to myself. And thankfully, before any more ventriloquism was required, help arrived and everything worked.

As I sat in the back of the room during the 10 minute movie portion of kids church I ate pancakes and was happy. And if your wondering why their were pancakes in the back of the room, well that's a different story. As if by some sort of miracle, only one of the 30 kids noticed that I was eating pancakes, just one little girl. And as she stood next to me I asked her if she wanted a bite and she said yes. So I gave her one and she was happy too. And everyone was happy and everything worked.

Dumb Trick #1034

I'm a big fan of dumb human tricks and world record holders. And, although I realize it is not normal behavior, I try my best to partake in such activities. For instance, eating an 8lb watermelon in an hour, lifting my body using just my thumbs, pulling a car with my hair, and now this. This is me drinking a bottle of water in 2 seconds. I'm still about a half a second off of the world record though.

How to Make 80K a Year with only a High School Diploma

So, how can you make $80,000 a year straight out of high school? Cutting Grass? No. Working at McDonald's? Nope. Doing one of those work at home things? Nope not that either. Do you give up? The answer is sell drugs.

I was talking to a guy today, who for obvious reasons, will remain nameless. (Ok, ok, the real reason is I can't remember his name.) I'm not really sure how the subject came up but he decided to tell me how he, for many years, made a very lucrative living. Now, I enjoy being self employed. I'm not a big fan of having my time dictated to me by a boss. This guy, however, really didn't like having a boss. In fact, the only boss he ever had he punched in the face. Needless to say he lost that job. And thus began his career of being self employed. Now, he didn't have any benefits, unless you include free room and board that he got during his 4 year stint in prison, but never the less he did pretty well for himself. In fact, before he made a career shift, he was pulling in $300,000 a year.

"Look at these people. They work their a**s off just to make a living. Some of them are working just to pay their mortgage and will still lose their houses. Before I let that happen I would just go get a brick and make more money than these suckers make in a year. I won my house, cars, motorcycle. I'm not rich but I got everything I want. S**t, or I would just rob some place. You don't want to rob a bank though. They don't carry enough cash. What you want to do is rob a liquor store."

Now granted, most of you have not had a conversation like this before. We went from dealing drugs to knocking over liquor stores in a 3 minute conversation. And strangely, this all seemed lie a perfectly normal conversation to me. You see, everyone has at some time had some form of this conversation and that is, "What would you do for money?" Would you sell drugs? Would your rob a liquor store? Would you cheat on your taxes? Would you work 60 hours a week and not spend time with your family? Where do you draw the line?

Picking Up a Prostitute

When I get together with my family we talk, we talk a lot. And that is why I was leaving their house at 1am this morning. As I started to pull out of the driveway I could see a lady who had been walking down the street stop, turn, and wait. She was waiting for me, I just knew it. She either wanted money, a cigarette or a ride, or even more likely, all three. For a moment I considered going back inside the house and waiting for her to leave but then decided that that would be silly. Sure enough, as soon as I reached the end of the driveway she asked for a ride soon followed a request for a cigarette and three bucks. "How far?" I asked, "Just a few miles to Reading," she replied. I could smell her body spray from out the window.

"Yea, sure," I said, clearing my front seat of all the junk. She was sweating profusely like she had been doing some, um, hard work. That also explained the body spray. The overpowering smell filled my lungs and it was hard to breath. Her directions were a bit incomplete and we ended up sitting in a dark driveway. I couldn't help but to think that this would be a very inconvenient time to get robbed considering the fact that I had $600 cash in my back pocket from an eBay sale the day before.

She asked to use my phone so I handed it to her. She started every call by typing in *67 to keep them anonymous. The first few times she got no one. On the third try she had a conversation that went something like, "Do you have anyone for me on 9? Yea, I'm over hear on Reading. Ok." This is when I started to really realize the occupation of my passenger. I could only assume that she was calling her pimp. I asked for my phone back and she asked me to delete the numbers. I did and she asked to make one more call, to her mom. Yea, uh huh, her mom. I said ok but make it fast. After two more calls with no answers I revoked her phone privileges. She asked me if I had deleted the numbers and I assured her I would later.

"Ok, you can drop me off up the street." I was happy to be leaving that dark driveway. The visions of being knifed slowly left my head. I had only pulled in there because I had thought she was getting out. Up the street turned out to be a cheap motel. And mind you, she didn't want to be dropped off in front of the motel. She wanted to be dropped off in back of the motel. Ok, a little further, nope, she laughed nervously, a little further, not here, a little further. She was starting to get on my nerves. Finally we were at the exact right spot and she said thank you and proceeded to walk to, um, work I suppose. So, I guess you could say that last night, one of the Children's Pastors from the Vineyard Westside picked up a prostitute. And I guess that would technically be an accurate statement. However, if you should choose to say that please feel free to share the rest of the story just as I have shared it with you.

eBay Policy

eBay's policy on dealing with their sellers is simple. Your not allowed to talk to anyone who can make a decision. Sure, you can talk to their support team via live chat all day. You can even talk to them on the phone if you can find their phone number that is. It exist but is buried deeper than Jimmy Hoffa's body. Ask to speak to a manager and they will give you this gem "Our managers don't talk via live chat but you can email them." "How about I call them?" Same cookie cutter answer. To make matters worse the email address that they give you is a generic one. Can you imagine getting that response from a physical company with a store front, customer service representatives that can't make decision and managers that can't be contacted? Ok, well how about you tell me what's wrong. "I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to share that information with you."

Of course your not, that would be convenient. This all works perfectly with their policy of not replying to an email for 72 hours. I think eBay's policy regarding how they deal with seller can be summarized in this sentence, "I'm big and your small, ne ne ne ne boo boo."

Back Where I Started

My life, as my dad calls it, of being a horse trader started around 10 years ago. I was 19 years old and my mom introduced me to the grand world of auctions. Soon after my brother, being a minor, illegally set up his own eBay account and my life of buying and selling was on it's way. For years my brother and I would go to the Goodwill auction, twice a week, every week. Most of the people who attended knew each other, a lot of them were friends. I met a lot of nice people there, people that I saw twice a week, every week. And then, I got a job.

Tuesday, after being absent for six years, I returned. I walked in and pulled out my wallet. As I started to pull out my ID the auctioneer looked at me and asked, "What's that for."

I replied, "I need a number."

"Why" he asked, "it's 691, right."

He remembered, after all these years, he still remembered my number. As I walked around, people that I hadn't seen in many many years walked up to me and asked, "Where ya been?" What a funny question. Where have I been? I've been gone for 6 years but it seemed like only days, or perhaps weeks. "How is your brother doing?" they would ask. When I told them that he was in Italy they all said the same thing. "Wow, must be nice." One lady, presumably in her seventies, called me an Old Timer. "You were here before I was," she said. I knew I recognized you, we all did, all of us. So there I was. I was back where I started and it was a happy place to be.