Bloggy McBlog Blog

It’s not every day that I write about something as ordinary and mundane as shoes. Usually I’m all about the big picture. The important things. The Work! That’s what I’m about, usually. But today I’m abut shoes.

Time was a man could have a cup of coffee at Starbucks without having to worry about people talking about him and giggling behind his back. Used to be you could have a cup of coffee and JUST BE LEFT ALONE in order to DRINK YOUR COFFEE IN PEACE! There didn’t used to be neo-nazi sex-girls in black and red spandex repeating quotes from Nitche over and over again in appalingly well pronounced Hoche Douche in the back of every coffee shop. A cup of coffee also used to only be $3.50.

I don’t know about you, but I prefer to add my own sugar and milk. They never get the proportions quite right if they do it for you. And if a cup of coffee isn’t just right that’s an opportunity for a perfect cup of coffee that you’ve missed and is gone forever! You can’t get it back. It’s over. You’re one cup of coffee closer to DEATH and you had a cup of coffee that wasn’t just how you like it. Maybe it had too much sugar in it. Maybe it’s not so weird to want two and a HALF sugars in your coffee. Maybe that’s not so strange. Maybe you shouldn’t make fun of people who ask for that if you run a coffee shop. Maybe you should just make the coffee the way they ask!

And the people in the coffee shop. So many laptops. Some people have three or four. Standing waiting for a table with a laptop in each hand and one tucked under one arm and another held between their knees. So that when a table does become available they drop the one between their knees rushing to get it before some yoga-toned young mother with a stroller and a baby in the stroller gets to it, her breasts screaming “Look at us! Look at us! We’re producing nutrients!” And she sits there, her own laptop perched on the baby’s stomach while she changes it’s diaper and gives it a bottle full of chai, smiling up at the poor man, who has just somehow aquired six more laptops from somewhere. And he smiles back, because what else can you do? You can’t scream at her, you can’t scream “CAN’T YOU TELL I WAS HERE FIRST! I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR A TABLE AND YOU TOOK THIS ONE THAT I WAS LEGITIMATELY ENTITLED TO! IT’S UNFAIR! UNFAIR! I SHOUT TO THE GODS! UNFAIR!” Not in front of the baby. It would cry.

Even I bring my laptop to the coffee shop. But I have to. I have to keep working. I have to keep up with the Work. It’s getting hard. It’s weighing me down, but that’s what is expected of you when you are king of the bloggers.

God, you can’t imagine the incredible suffering I go through on a daily basis. You can’t. There’s no way you could. Imagine a pine marten down your pants. I dare you. That’s the kind of suffering that might bring you up to a level where you could imagine what it’s like to be me. I’m telling you this.

You may say, “Mr. McBlog, how can it be that one of your greatness suffers so much?”

“Please, call me Bloggy,” I say. I don’t really mean it, because though I am humble, I know showing me respect is something you do for yourself and for society as a whole.

“No, I couldn’t,” You say. You sense that it would be wrong to be so familiar. You are right.

“Alright then.” I say. We stand there. We are awkward. I begin to get hungry. I am thinking of lunch AND BOTH OF US HAVE ALREADY FORGOTTEN YOUR QUESTION!!!!!

And then what should I have for lunch? If I ask you, you might take it as an invitation. I’m not sure I want to have lunch with you. Not really. ESPECIALLY NOT IF I HAVE TO PAY!! THE LEAST YOU COULD DO IS PAY FOR LUNCH! But I can’t stand there all day waiting for you to leave. I need my lunch.

And when you finally do leave and I call to order lunch the guy on the phone can’t get my order right. I make every effort. I read from the menu listings in Chinese, “Little squiggly thing, like a yam with cross hatching, then what might be a goat or something,” I say. He says they only have pizza. I say I want a pizza with little pizzas all over it AND HE SAYS HE READ ABOUT THAT IN THE ONION!

THE ONION!!! THE ONION STOLE THAT IDEA FROM ME!!! I AM KING OF THE BLOGGERS! I INVENTED THAT! And he won’t make it either. He says it’s not possible. I say that if I was there I’d show him what was possible or not. He suggests some things which, though possible, I would not enjoy at all and I end up going to Subway for an foot long sandwich which turns out to be NOT EXACTLY 12 INCHES LONG and also to taste like crap.

Sometimes I wish for the icy fingers of death.

New York, NY — One of the candidates for president recently asked that people not protest and disrupt the upcoming political meetings. I have to agree with him or her. I know it may be upsetting to you that I will not run for president, or even vice president, but it is the case. PLEASE DO NOT DISRUPT EVERYTHING IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY WITH YOUR PROTESTS!!! THAT IS NOT THE WAY TO MAKE ME LIKE YOU!!!
Everyone wants their betters to think well of them. When I was younger and had betters I wanted them to like me too. Sometimes they did. Sometimes they didn’t. When they didn’t I know it was because of stuff they were going through at home, like the passing of a parent or loved one or a messy divorce. I remember one teacher who I liked a lot until I heard her mentioning to another teacher in the hall that someone with the same name as me should probably be institutionalized. Later I found out that her cat had died several years earlier, so that explained a lot.
Here are some things you can do to make people like you, your betters or your worsers:
1) Upgrade them from coach to business class.
2) Don’t CANCEL CHECKS you have written to them JUST BECAUSE THE FIRST BOX WAS EMPTY!!! It might just be a mistake and another BOX WILL PROBABLY ARRIVE SOON!!!
3) Everyone likes cocoanuts.
4) Have sex with them, ONLY IF they find you attractive. If they find you repulsive, don’t have sex with them. It will have the same effect.
5) Take them to the movies, but let them pick the movie. You can pick the snacks. Though everyone likes popcorn. And cocoanuts (see #3).
6) Watch a lot of TV. The commercials will give you lots of ideas of nice things you can do for people. Things you can send them. Cards you can buy with nice things already written in them so you don’t really have to do anything.
7) If you are very fat, please do not go to the mall. The aisles are very narrow. People can’t get past you. It would be a nice thing for those people if you staid home. You shouldn’t be eating the food at the mall anyway. Never insist that someone should have to go get a “real” job JUST TO MAKE MONEY TO HELP TAKE CARE OF THEIR FAMILY!!! Some people have better things to do and it is nicer for those people, if they have a great work to work on, not to be reminded that you might be a little “disappointed” about how things are going, or how many borders you have to take in, or home many times you have to give blood or ANY OF THOSE THINGS WHICH YOU SHOULD DO OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF YOUR HEART!!!
9) Most people like to be reminded that things could always be worse.

New York, NY — At last I can tell the story the world has been waiting to hear. The story of the King of the Bloggers on jury duty. Sworn to secrecy during the case I could tell you nothing of the drama, the suffering, the drama and the other stuff of the trial. No it can all be told.
Listen now to a story of alleged DENTAL MALPRACTICE among foreigners living HERE IN OUR COUNTRY. ALIENS if you will. People whose English is not that good at all. And some of them are dentists. Some of them go to dentists. One of these people has problems with their teeth. They go to another one of these people, one who is a dentist. He, the dentist, DRILLS IN HER TEETH WITH A DRILL! He hollows them out and shoves metal posts into them using cement. MY GOD HE DRILLS INTO HER TEETH!!! And that’s not even what she’s suing about. Can you imagine? He drilled with a drill inside her mouth, down into the roots of her TEETH and that’s not even what she’s mad about.
“Lady,” I said, “Lady, are we to believe that you don’t mind having someone using power tools in your mouth, but THERE ARE OTHER THINGS YOU DO NOT LIKE?”
“Well, but, but…” She said.
“I object,” said some lawyer.
Clearly I would have to solve the case myself.
Imagine if you will. A locked room. A dead body. The only other thing in the room is an elephant. What could have happened? Who could have done this crime? The ELEPHANT? NO! We can not talk about the elephant, so it can’t be guilty apparently. And how do we know he’s really dead?
Only one person can solve this crime! The KING OF THE BLOGGERS and consequently KING OF THE CRIME SOLVERS!!!!

New York, NY — It turns out that there are some things that it’s really better not to know about. For instance, I mentioned earlier in my blogging career that Mel Gibson was an anti-semitic Australian. This is not knowledge that has made me happier. It is a dark dark secret that I learned through my many connections. It is SOMETHING THAT HAUNTS me day in and day out. Every time I watch an Angry Max movie or contemplate moving to Brisbane, where a blogger can be a blogger.
Some things it is just better not to know. Like the things I am learning about on jury duty. Horrible nasty things. Things from the underside of this steamy pressure cooker we call America. Things that people like you and me, or at least ME, because I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, YOU COULD BE SOME SORT OF CRIMINAL, never encounter in our ordinary lives. Things maybe you see on TV when the cable is working because the bill has been paid.
But the big difference between these things that I am learning and the things that you see on TV is that the things on TV have been PROPERLY EDITED! And no one complains if you get up in the middle to get a diet soda.
And apparently the jurors are not allowed to OBJECT during the trial, though everyone else seems to be allowed to. And I have a lot to object to. A lot.

New York, NY — Bloggy is doing his patriotic duty this morning. Sitting in the stuffy jury duty holding pen, like some sort of fattened JURY DUTY COW. Waiting for the VOIR DIRE, which is French, like ABATTOIR is French. People sit around waiting to be called. Is there a man with a stun gun in the next room waiting for us? Who knows. THIS IS JUSTICE AT WORK!
They put your name in a drum and spin it like BINGO and pull it out and you’ve won. Won a chance to participate. A chance to sit on a jury so that at the end of a six week trial they can pull a crazed homicidal maniac screaming from the court room that HE WILL MURDER YOU and THE REST OF THE JURIORS if it’s the LAST THING THEY EVER DO for convicting him of issuing counterfeit debentures against dubious holdings in THE CAYMAN ISLANDS!!!! Then one day when you go somewhere stupid on vacation like Cape Fear or Lake Terror or Hills of Death he catches up with you and your VOIR becomes truly DIRE!!
All for $40 a day.
And sitting in the jury selection room isn’t like waiting in the ante-room of Ford’s modeling agency. There are some really fat people here. Really fat. How can they sit on a jury when they ARE SO FAT?
On the vending machines there is a sign saying that the bottled water in the Coke machine is cheaper than the water in the Snapple machine. ARE THE VENDING MACHINES UNDER OATH? Can’t we let them just sit there and vend without requiring them to spill their guts about the past, about the dirty dirty things they used to do? If only that felony conviction hadn’t been overturned I WOULDN’T HAVE TO BE HERE!
All for $40 day. Sure it’s a lot of money. Sure I’d like to be able to earn that much EVERY DAY! But is it worth it? To risk my life for? If it wasn’t worth getting a part time job for, WHY WOULD I PUT MY LIFE ON THE LINE FOR IT?
Inevitably I’ll be sequestered, I just know it. Everyone always is. Happens close to 113% of the time on TV. I’ll end up eat sand dab in a hotel room with Felix Unger. WORSE YET I’ll be the lone hold out of 12 angry men, SOME OF WHOM WILL BE WOMEN, and I’ll have to solve the crime myself in the evening hours with Angela Landsbury and then I’LL CALL A SURPRISE WITNESS: THE SO-CALLED VICTIM who ISN’T REALLY DEAD.
I can’t believe they do this over and over day in and day out. One jury after another. Seems so tiring.

New York, NY — I was sitting at my desk, piled high with research materials, telegrams from well wishers and supeneas, eating my favorite lunch, pizza con le pizze piccole in cima esso, the speciality of a newly opened pizzeria owned by a man from Delaware, when I realized a fundamental literary truth. Jokes with monkeys in them are just funnier than jokes with birds, especially pigeons. Jokes with elephants are good too. Bears and rabbits are good, but only together. Dogs are funny if they can talk. Horses aren’t funny. I made a chart. Someday I will show this chart to other people and it will REVOLUTIONIZE COMEDY THE WAY I HAVE REVOLUTIONIZED THE INTERNETS. People will know what kinds of animals to put in their jokes. They will not make the sort of mistakes they have made in the past. Allow me to illustrate my point.

Joke #1: How can you tell if there have been elephants in your refrigerator? Their footprints in the butter.
Joke #2: How can you tell if there have been rats in your refrigerator? Their footprints in the butter.

You see the difference? The first is an amusing joke you could share with a good friend over a grape soda or a cognac after dinner, chortle for a few moments together and then go back to your hum drum lives a little happier, the load on your metaphorical shoulders a little lighter. The second is just a horrible thing that sometimes actually happens.
Rats aren’t funny. Not normal rats. Damp rats are even less funny. But damp radioactive rats can be funny, but only in movies. For instance it would be funny to have a pretty young girl being chased through a sewer by a pack of damp radioactive rats. One of them leaps and tears her shirt off. She runs up some stairs and burst through a door and she’s running through a soup kitchen full of drunken homeless men and nuns with her woman parts bouncing up and down, followed by hundreds of damp radioactive rats. The nuns scream and run, the homeless men, most of whom are played in the movie by former child actors from TV, assume the rats are just hallucinations brought on by drinking Sterno mixed with Pinesol and Diet Sierra Mist. They shrug off advancing wall of wet rodents, ignoring the frantic buzzing of a geiger counter left behind by the mother superior. Then they rats are upon them, rending their flesh and giving them cancer all at once. But there is this pretty girl jiggling around half naked, so everyone laughs.
Steve Martin once said that comedy was the art of making people laugh without making them… something.. something… He was probably right.
People talk about comedy a lot. More than they should really.

New York, NY — Here are a few things I have learned over the last few weeks. 1) If you are sentenced to 30 days in jail, that can be MORE THAN A MONTH if that month is February. 2) We have all heard about “time off for good behavior.” Apparently there is a corollary rule where they can ADD time. 3) Just because an undercover police car looks like a taxi, doesn’t mean they have to take you anywhere if they don’t want to.

New York, NY — Seems my post from yesterday has raised quite a stir. People have been writing in non-stop. Some people ask “Why do you hate fat people so much? It seems so cruel and petty. They’re just like you and me, just fatter. Maybe they have medical problems, maybe they have just grown up accustomed to a very poor diet and little or no regular exercise. And I’ve seen you, you’re no Tommy Tune yourself.” Others write to say, “I noticed that you hate fat people. Should I also hate fat people?”
To both these groups of people I say, I DO NOT HATE FAT PEOPLE. I was just in a rush to get to the movies and the fat people were in the way. If they had been less fat I would have gotten where I was going on time and been able to see the movie. As it was, the fat people took up so much space that I couldn’t get around them and missed my chance to see the movie. But I do not hate them. No. Your gentle blogger is a forgiving soul. I understand that these people do not realize how much space they take up. And the designers of the maul (I continue to use the clever term for mall that I myself coined) did not realize when they designed it that they were designing it for people whose girth was so great that they could easily be two or three people wearing the same belt and walking together.
I imagine a scene like this: “Mr. Boss Architect, how many people should be able to walk down the corridor in this mall (they had not yet heard my clever pun that would soon be sweeping the nation.)” “Well, assistant, I think nine or ten would be good. And remember that every few feet there will be a booth selling cell phones or cell phone accessories or accessories for your cell phone accessories.” “Well, people generally have a circumference of about 40 inches. So, this will be just wide enough.”
Well, at this maul that isn’t half big enough.
But I don’t hate the fat people. I’m not a hater. I’m king of the bloggers.