I rented a safe deposit bank at the bank today, and if there’s a legal way to feel like more of a total badass, I haven’t heard about it. I felt like I was dropping off money to pay for a contract hit, and I think we can all agree that being involved in a contract hit in any fashion is fucking awesome. (Ok, fine, it’s not that fun to be on the receiving end of one, even if it would be nice to know that you meant so much to someone that they tried to have you offed.) Continue reading

I watched Starship Troopers again the other day. Most people I know who have seen that movie think it’s stupid, and cheesy, and not worth seeing once, let alone multiple times. But if you’ve read Heinlein’s 1959 novel of the same name, it stays shockingly close to the original spirit, which was as much a political essay as it was a novel. Heinlein’s meritocratic democracy stands in stark contrast to our own system of government which, in the novel, ultimately collapses because “people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted… and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.” Also, the movie has a shower scene in it, and you get to see some tits. Continue reading

I was driving in rush hour traffic this morning when I thought to myself, “This is fucking bullshit.” This, of course, is far from an original thought. We all hate traffic. If you know anyone who says to his friends, “Hey, it’s almost five o’clock! Let’s see if we can get caught in a traffic jam on the 101!” that person is fucking crazy and you are legally allowed to administer powerful psychotropic drugs to him, even if you need a funnel and a fire hose to do so. Traffic gargles donkey-balls.

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Last Tuesday, at 6:15 in the morning, my six year old woke me up with this statement: “Hi Dad! Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you… I accidentally dropped an eraser in my ear yesterday. And… It’s still there.” I hesitate to say that there is a good time of day to hear this kind of thing, but I can tell you with some confidence that 6:15 AM is not a good time to hear it, even if your son does take the trouble to tell you the news in a faux-casual tone. A quick trip to the bathroom revealed that, yes, there was an eraser in his ear, and yes, I would need to take him to Urgent Care to get it removed. Continue reading

Gather ’round, children, as Uncle Greg regales you with another tale of his youth. No, this isn’t another alcohol soaked tale of depravity, but rather a story about great big, huevos, and how having them can sometimes bring you great wealth (and sometimes bring you a well deserved ass-beating). I am going to tell you the story of how a boy named Scott stole a keg of beer. Continue reading

It has been said that the only two sure things in life are death and taxes. Actually, that’s bullshit. If you’re sufficiently self-involved to the point that you consider yourself a God, then you can claim tax-exempt status as a religion. Then you spend the next twenty years of your life on the lam, one step ahead of the IRS and their blood-thirsty attack weasels, until you are finally cornered, beaten into submission, and remanded to the custody of a federal penitentiary for attitude adjustment/asshole widening. But, and this is the important part of my argument, you didn’t have to pay taxes! So that statement should actually read, “the only two sure things in life are death and one of the following: taxes or dry anal rape”. There. Continue reading

I was having a boy’s night with my six and three year old sons this weekend when my three year old asked, with a hint of panic in his voice, “Where’s my black guy?” I looked up from what I was doing (drinking a beer) to see if maybe his actions would lend some context to that statement, but he just stood there in the middle of the kitchen shouting, “Daddy! Where’s my black guy? I can’t find my black guy! Where is he?” It took me a while to figure out what he was talking about. At first I wondered if maybe his day care had recently admitted a child from a particularly racist cracker family, or possibly he’d been watching The Wire. Continue reading

A wise man once said to me, “Son, there’s a lot more to life than what you see right in front of you. You have to explore life as if it were a foreign land, the natives exotic and dangerous, the flora luxurious, the fauna deadly. If you walk through life treating it as some ordinary, humdrum repeating series of tasks and duties, you’re going to miss the magic and wonder of it all. Now if you want to ride the Tilt-O-Whirl, you need to give me four tickets.” Continue reading

Fred Grandy, for those of you who don’t know, is the actor who played Gopher on the 70’s/80’s hit show The Love Boat. He also served four terms as a Congressman from the state of Iowa, and later served as the CEO of Goodwill Industries. I decided to write Fred Grandy an email. He decided not to answer. It went downhill from there. Continue reading

I am asked on a fairly regular basis to tell more stories of my youth, specifically stories that took place in college when I was supposed to be earning a degree, but instead spent half a decade pickling my brains. This is because a lot of my readers like to live vicariously through me living vicariously through my past self. (That’s two generations of vicarious living in case you are keeping track, which you aren’t). I’m usually more than happy to oblige because these stories always bring a smile to my face, especially when one of my friends consequently sends me an email to remind me of something related that I’d totally forgotten. “Dude, that’s so funny! And then you rode that police horse around the quad while wearing a Speedo made out of duct tape and parking citations! Hahahaha!” Uhhh, yeah. Continue reading