A question from Israel:

Liron wrote:

Q:

Dear dave,

I have a small colony of arctic penguins living under my bed. Every morning, they braid my hair and fry me eggs for breakfast. They say that they are preparing me to be nice, pretty and plump for sacrifice to the King Penguin.
What should I do?

Respects,
Liron

A: Well, let’s see [backs away quietly, making no sudden movements], I guess the main thing to do is take your medication…

Just kidding. Every question to daveb is a serious question. Daveb knows all! Never fear O’ braided and egg-smeared chickie-monkey, daveb is here for you!

You may or may not be aware (I’m assuming from your question that you are) of my issues with penguins. It’s true, I have had quasi-erotic dreams involving them. I’m not ashamed. It’s perfectly fine. I run Linux, it’s probably got something to do with that. No reason to call the police.

Since you claim to be in imminent peril of being eaten (assuming you’ve reached the requisite plumpness), I took your question very seriously. I needed to consult a higher power. I needed to talk to my “Spirit Penguin”.

Some people are in touch with their animal totems, be they birds, lions, bears, turtles. My spirit totem is a partially shaved obese emperor penguin with a ridge of rainbow feathers down his back. I often see him slouching about, eating fritos and belching whole sentences in Portuguese. He’s one fucked up puppy.

So, in order to prepare myself I fasted for a whole twenty minutes and climbed the highest point possible, which was the roof of my apartment building here in Brooklyn (you can’t expect me to go mountain climbing. I’m delicate, you know) and proceeded to meditate on my spirit penguin, calling out to him. Finally, after rubbing my armpits with vegetable shortening, he arrived.

I posed your question to him. After some thoughtful shuffling and crunching of deep-fried corn products, he looked me in the eyes and gave me the answer:

Titties and beer.

I know, you’re probably a bit doubtful about this and believe me, so was I. Rather than steer you wrong, I hopped down to bodega and picked up a couple 40’s and ran back to the roof. I offered the malt beverages to my penguin and he went right for them. As soon as I noticed that his Portuguese belches were starting to slur and get repetitive, I quickly tore off my shirt and ribbed my hairy man-nipples in his face.

He ran away honking and screeching like a bitch.

Good luck.

[Ask daveb anything! Either use this form or send an email to webmaster [at] davebgimp [dot] com with “Ask daveb” as the subject line. Remember, daveb knows all!]

This morning, having defused my alarm clock without really having awoke, I was forced to eject my ass out the door at a normally undesired rate of speed. I grabbed what I could, made sure I was clothed and nothing that might get me arrested or slapped was hanging out of my pants and charged the subway station to make my daily commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

I have a personal rule of always riding in the very far front or back cars of the trains in New York City. My theory is two-fold. First, the middle of a train is always the most crowded, much like how when entering a subway car, people take two steps in and stop completely, therefore crowding the entrance while leaving the rest of the train quite spacious. This is due in large part by the fact that people in general are fucking brainless sheep and deserve to die. We of the smarter elite should eat them, but that’s another post. My second reason, by virtue of the first, is that if ever there was a bomb or some crazy-ass motherfucker (aside from my innocent self, of course) decided he wanted to kill a bunch of people, all that shit’s going to go down in the middle of the train because that’s where you can cause the most damage. Call me paranoid, but its a habit I picked up in 2001 for what, at the time, I saw as a very good reason and to this day, I don’t really see a need to change.

So, when the train pulled into the station, I hopped into the very last car. Usually, the train is moderately crowded at it’s ends during the morning rush hour, so I was surprised to find an empty seat available. I looked around and saw at least four people standing nearby. If you get on a train during rush hour in NYC and there’s an empty spot with people standing nearby, understand that something is up.

I checked the empty seat. No spilled coffee or sketchy foreign smears of unknown organic nastiness. No half-eaten chicken wings. Nothing wrong there.

I checked the other occupants of the bench. Two middle-aged Asian ladies speaking mandarin and elderly white man in a ratty tweed coat, knit hat and serious case of ear-hair who appeared to be snoozing. I can handle that. I sat down next to the man and after settling my bag and getting out a book, I started reading. About two minutes later, I was startled by a sound to my right.

“Nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuungh!”

It was the old man next to me. I looked over, noticing that his eyes were still closed and aside from the outburst, he still seemed to be sleeping. Whatever, I thought. Old people make fucked up noises all the time—it’s part of being old. I fully intend to make a shitload of disturbing exclamations in my sunset years, so who am I to take offense at his? I went back to my book with part of my brain painting rosy pictures of a withered and ancient visage of myself screeching profanity at children and whipping my catheter tube around like a dangerous weapon.

(more…)

This morning, I left home in Brooklyn at seven-thirty and started walking to work. My office is right by Madison Square Park, so the distance I needed to cover was about 5.7 miles. I slapped on the hat and gloves, screwed the mp3 player to my ears and started moving.

I hadn’t been to work since the transit strike started, spending two days as a shut-in with my eyeballs stapled to video games, mumbling to my cats. One can only have so much fun, so I decided that I’d best make some effort to get in to work.

I crossed over the Manhattan bridge, walking through Chinatown and Little Italy till I hit Union Square and finally Park Avenue. I’ve never done the walk in before and while it was interesting and fairly picturesque in an ugly, New York way, it sucked fucking donkey ass. It was really cold. I would have taken pictures, but my hands were freezing and I didn’t want to take them out of their gloves.

It took me two and a half hours to get to my office. I froze my ass off and really wanted to stop in Chinatown for Dim Sum, but was running late as it was. Faced with the probability that I will have to walk back the same way at the end of the day, it is completely not worth the trouble to come in.

I’m at a slow point the year for my production schedule, so technically, I’m fine to not come in till Tuesday, but I felt bad missing so much, so I figured I’d do the walk at least once. I sure as hell will not be doing it tomorrow. I’m done.

This transit strike seriously blows. I don’t care what happens or who gets fucked in the ass over it, but those trains need to start running again. It’s ridiculous.

Last week, I had just stepped out of my office in Manhattan for my lunch break when I heard a guttural groaning close by and to my left.

“NUUUUUUUUUNNNGGGGHH…GAAAAAHHHHH!”

Turning to look, my eyes were scarred, possibly forever, by the sight of a greasy, smelly, dirty and probably insane homeless guy, semi-squatting on the sidewalk next to me. Mr. Stanky had his pants down and was holding the New York Post under his butt like reading the news with his ass was an everyday thing and taking a huge shit. Whatever the guy’s motives (it was the Post…) or mental maladies, rather than stand around and ponder, I quickly put some anti-stank distance between myself and this man in the process of taking a huge dump at one in the afternoon, in front of my office on Park Avenue.

I’ve been living in New York City for five years now and I can unfortunately admit that this moment of fecal fun was not my first experience of being exposed to the bowel movements of the city’s indigent and insane. If you live in here, at some point you’re going to see some skanky homeless person drop one. It’s horrible, especially when you’re about to get food.

You know you’ve reached the pinnacle of stanky homelessness when you cheerily take your pants down on a crowded street and without a second thought, vomit out of your ass. You are a star amongst your peers. You are captain of the fecal cornucopia. No one can touch you, in large part due to the fact that you smell really fucking bad and more then likely do not wash your hands, ever.

I remember walking down twenty-third street, by Madison Square Park one year and finding my way blocked by a toothless and grinning old woman, skirts raised, gushing a geyser of piss onto the sidewalk. I actually made eye-contact by accident. I recall her idiotic glee far too well. It was a happy pee for her, no doubt.

Another time, I was in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, having just entered the Grand Army Plaza subway station, when as I started down the stairs to the platform, I noticed a neatly dressed and elderly black lady with a nice, middle-class, grandmotherly air about her some distance in front of me. Near the bottom of the stairs, she stopped, put down her shopping bags full of groceries, shuffled a bit and squatted. I thought that she was perhaps tired and had sat on the steps to wait for the train as some people do. Nope. Grandma was taking a piss. After leaving a huge puddle, she hoisted her pants and walked on to the end of the platform, toting her purchases.

I can’t pretend to understand the motives of someone willing to violate this extreme social taboo. I guess you could chalk it up to insanity. Perhaps it’s a lack of any environmental sensitivity due in large part by being socially invisible as a homeless person. However, you can argue that it could be intentional by virtue of this same defense. Hey, look at me! I’m taking a shit on your toy poodle! I’m a person! Whatever the reason, be it defendable or not, it’s fucking disturbing.

This morning as I was coming down the stairs to the subway platform, a tad hungover from a wine smorgasborg that lasted pretty late, I noticed this really big guy holding the world’s cutest, smallest dog, standing around and waiting for the train to come.

I mean, this dog was small. The man was holding him under his arm on the side that wasn’t facing me, so all I could see of the little bugger was his head. Seriously, this beast was absolutely, jaw-droppingly adorable.

Now normally I really don’t talk to strangers. I’m not the type of person who pets other people’s animals or comments on them. Truth told, I actively avoid strange dogs in public because all they really want to do is sniff my crotch and bark at me. Who wants that (at least in public)? However, this little pocket-dog, this pint-sized package of Pokemon-like cuteness was just too much to pass up. I started walking over, a big dumbass grin on my face.

This big guy saw me coming, slipping and sliding in my own drool and practically falling down, tripping over my own tongue with semi-crazed eyes locked onto his pint-sized pet. He shot me a look of suspicion that I well knew is reserved for crackheads that look like they’re about to come up and talk to you. It’s a look that says, “I will go ghetto. I will hit you so hard, your kids will be born dizzy. Go drink some antifreeze, motherfucker. Leave me alone.” Anyone who lives in New York City knows of this glare that I speak of.

I wasn’t to be stopped. I had to see this dog. Once I was up close and he saw that I was reasonably well-dressed, clean and obviously not a homeless crazy person, the man would undoubtedly understand that I too, was a fellow miniature dog lover (well, I was one now that I’d spotted the little fucker) and he would relax and even let me pet his dog and everything would be fine if not slightly gay.

Finally, I reached the guy, stopping before him, grinning like a busload of Down Syndrome kids after a Teletubbies marathon. “I just cannot believe how utterly cute that dog is. What breed is he? Is he friendly?”, said I.

The man looked at me like I was naked, smeared head to toe in my own feces, offering to impregnate his mother. “Get the fuck outta here”, he grunted to me as he shifted his weight and turned away from me.

It was then that I noticed that the world’s most adorable doggie’s head was actually the handle of some stupid novelty umbrella that the guy had tucked under his arm. It was made out of plastic and I was officially the most retarded person in New York. I slunk away to the other end of the platform.

Always wear your glasses.

I was riding the 2/3 train into Manhattan yesterday morning and as I stood there, blasting that German death metal, as I am wont to do in the mornings, I noticed a middle-aged black woman, seated, knitting and bopping along to whatever was playing on her walkman. Her bag on the floor was overflowing with balls of thread and after a second’s scrutiny, I noticed that aside from her boots, the lady’s entire outfit was made of yarn. She wore a knitted hat, skirt, shirt, vest and socks. Lo and behold, I was in the presence of a yarn junkie at the end stage of the disease.

I stood there thinking that she must be crazy or something. She looked clean enough to be a normal person, but then again, plenty of seriously crazy fucks dress better than I do. Case in point, I once watched a genial looking grandmother type, very tidily dressed, walk to the bottom of the steps to the Q train platform, smile, drop trousers and pee on the floor. Another time, on Wall Street, I witnessed a very dapper businessman get into a one-sided screaming match with a magazine rack that culminated in fisticuffs and a copy of GQ having to go to the emergency room. You just never know.

Anyway, as I stood there pondering the sanity of the yarn lady, we came to a stop and two girls got on, carrying coffee cups. Squeezing through the commuting crush, they ended up right in front of this lady, who upon seeing them, raised her needles threateningly and yelled “You motherfucking bitches better have those coffee lids on tight ’cause if you spill one goddamn drop on me, I’ll fuck your ass right up! I ain’t fucking around, you better watch yourself. Nobody spillin’ coffee on me! I’m from Brooklyn, bitch!”

The two girls, visibly taken aback, mumbled affirmatives in regards to the tight seal on their coffee lids and quickly moved farther down the car, taking care to clear this crazy knit-freak’s needle plunging range. The lady yelled after them, “You damn right you’re moving on! Ain’t nobody spillin’ their shit on me! Damn right you gonna get outta my way, motherfucking bitches!” and then went straight back to knitting and bopping along to her tunes.

Unfortunately, I make it a habit to never bring food or drink on the train. I was sorely wishing I had a cup of coffee so I could get the same attention. Oh well, next time.

This morning, I left my apartment to catch the 2/3 Eastern parkway train here in Brooklyn as I normally do every morning. Normally the station is really busy with people coming and going and there’s usually a kid that’s selling papers parked out in front of the steps but I was running late this morning and instead of the usual 8:30 mad dash, I was starting my commute at around 10 AM and there was no one really around.

As I started down the stairs into the station, five guys started coming up towards me, scoping behind them and ahead off them to see if the coast was clear. They were acting really sketchy and one of them looked at me me and said to the others, “Him! Get him! Do it! Fucking punk-ass, do it now!” I had no doubt that I was about to get jumped for my bag or my wallet.

They blocked off the stairs to try and box me in, so I turned around and high-tailed it out onto the street. One of them reached out to try and grab me, but I was too quick. All five of them ran out onto the street after me and for a few seconds I had the incredulous thought that I was about to get beat down and robbed on a busy street in broad daylight, but they took off running down the block, stopping at one point when the mouthy one slammed another guy up against a car, yelling at him and calling him a punk-ass, I assume because he let me get away.

I really don’t like the idea of being mugged again. I don’t know what it is about me or this fucked up neighborhood ghetto shithole, but being robbed twice and mugged once is really and quite truly fucking enough. Just that morning, I’d received the shipment of my brand new laptop and for some reason decided to leave it at home, against my natural inclination to dive headfirst into a new toy, which is a really good thing because if I had gotten robbed, I’d be shit out of luck.

When I got home from work yesterday, there was a letter waiting for me in the mailbox from the Brooklyn city courts. Apparently I’d failed to respond to two previously mailed juror questionnaires and the letter was informing me that I was to present myself at the courthouse within ten days of the letter’s date or face a fine of one-thousand dollars and possible imprisonment.

Unfortunately, the letter was mailed to my old address and Brooklyn mail being what it is, took three weeks to get to me. So, since the letter was dated September first, my mind was suddenly filled with the horrid thoughts of unreasonable fines or worse, being the ass-toy of whoever has the most cigarettes on the cell block to buy me. Not my idea of fun. This kid is far too pretty and way too skinny for prison. I was never much into sports and at this stage in my life, it’s really not in me to embark on a professional career as a shower room soap-picker-upper.

I tried calling the courthouse, but they were closed for the day, so I was left to stew in my own neurosis until the next morning where, assuming I survived the night, I could run my ass straight down there and try and sort things out. I lay awake till four in the morning, running through every scenario ranging from indignant and righteous ranting at the court and mail system to lying prostrate and whimpering before the judge, begging for leniency towards my poor, withered self.

Of course, my mind and paranoia being the state that it is, I started thinking about imprisonment. Specifically, jail time in the New York City correctional system. What if they threw me in the slammer for not responding to jury duty and/or for just being a shifty degenerate leech on society? Could I handle it? Would I be able to just walk in there just like Paul Newman in “Cool Hand Luke” and gain the respect my fellow inmates by bucking the system and refusing to bow to the “man”? Not likely, seeing as I’m not particularly charismatic, nor do I have a likable smile, backbone or the hard-boiled egg eating prowess that Luke commanded.

What about gangs? Should I join one for protection? I think my IQ would be too high for the Aryan Brotherhood. Biker gangs are out, unless it’s a bicycle gang and even then, I don’t ride anymore and any gang that might have a name like “Schwinn’s Angels” doesn’t seem too fear inspiring. Bloods are out. So are the Crips, unless they let you in for being mentally crippled. The Mafias out, unless they have a Irish/French Canadian branch that I don’t know about.

Perhaps I could start my own prison gang? Do they have ones for disaffected, twitchy and neurotic weirdos that have semi-erotic dreams about talking penguins? If so, would we command fear?

All I know of prison is from movies and six long seasons of OZ and if any of it is to be taken as fact- skinny, antisocial white guys have two possible scenarios: dead or wearing lipstick and braiding the hair of some big dude who considers them his personal anal pincushion. Things do not look good for the tweaky white boy.

All these fearsome thoughts kept me awake until sometime before dawn, when I managed a few hours of fitful sleep away from the horrid visions of myself as the branded, bikini wearing bitch of a Rikers Island cell block.

When I awoke, I took a moment to gather my courage before calling and prepared my strategy. If the shit hits the fan, I’d shave my head, grow a beard and tattoo “Gerome” on my forehead (an added touch to confuse “The Man”) and skip the fuck out of Dodge to someplace remote, peaceful and safe like Montana where I’d head to the mountains, living off the land and befriending bears and shit like that dude from that 80’s TV show “Grizzly Adams“.

This time, my call to the courthouse was answered and I was transferred to the Jurors department. When a lady answered the phone there, I proceeded to gush, practically verbally vomit my situation through the phone line and all over her morning bagel and coffee. Dear sweet woman, I reasoned, can you not find it your heart to understand that I am not to blame in this error? I have the yellow forwarding sticker showing the dates!!! I come from a good family but along the way, I admit that I have erred at times, but if shown this one little bit of mercy, I swear I will reform my ways to live a life of upstanding honesty and morality. No more evil, pinky swear!

Somewhere in the midst of my pleading and ranting, the lady said something along the lines of “Jesus Christ, will you calm down? Just come here, fill out the questionnaire and we’ll take care of it”. I stumbled over some profuse thanks and she hung up on me.

That was all. It was over. I filled out the form and went to my job in the city, a little bit older, a little bit weirder, but at least not about to be incarcerated anytime soon.

Lately, as far as I’m concerned, everything’s been all about the mad subway masturbater. A man, dedicated to what I envision as a insane, frantic and unstoppable pud-thwacking frenzy that was caught on a cell phone camera, spanking his monkey like there was no tomorrow. Not a man to be upstaged, nor crossed. It’s all over the news. It’s the topic of conversation. It’s the image that’s burned into the back of my retinas when I awake, sweaty and screaming for mother in the wee hours of dawn.

Few of us, here on this earth can reach such levels of social inappropriateness as a guy who likes whipping his junk out in public. It’s raw, it’s primal, it’s really bizarre. Most of all, after consuming a lot of alcohol, it’s really fucking hilarious to me.

Now I know, this guy is a serious pervert. He’s victimized a lot of people and he’s really bad and should be castrated with extreme dull-bladed prejudice, but fuck, I have brain damage, I come from a broken home and at this current mental state, the whole thing is looking kind of humorous to me.

I mean seriously, a mad, demonic subway masturbater. Just when you think it’s safe to take that 6 train… THWACK, THWAPPA-THWAPPA-THWAPPA-the demon wanker of the underground has struck! You look up from your newspaper to a grinning fiesta of greasy, meat-spanking weirdness and you ask yourself, “Who am I, really?” As a passenger here on Spaceship Earth, do I really know where I’m going in this life?” Some deep moments can be had when facing the leering mask of the Monkey-Spank God.

By whipping his johnson out and painting the ceiling, he has single-handedly (literally) shown the world that as civilized as it may look, underneath the surface, lurking around the corner is a crazy dude that likes beating it in public. You probably work with him and don’t delude yourself by pretending he washes his hands on a regular basis.

There’s something almost primal about a dude who sees something he likes and just starts punching that clown till there’s no tomorrow with total disregard for social norm and restraint. It’s totally fucking caveman and in that sense, is awesome. Unfortunately, there’s victims. But let’s pretend for a minute that there aren’t. Remove the victim and in my mind, the Mad Subway Masturbator is a hero of the times. A man that refuses to bow to society’s rules, who indulges in his animal roots and yanks it left and right, preferrably on public transportation. His rigid, grinning visage of onastic pumping joy serves as a beacon to shock us and remind us that we are human and not that far away from the caveman, whipping one off by the campfire.

If he hadn’t terrorized those girls, I would’ve felt a lot more support for him. I envision him pulling an OJ Simpson, riding the train into the sunset, cops on his tail, whacking that shit till it bleeds because he’s not jerking it for himself, he’s jerking it for the world. He’s whacking it for God, man. I’d be right there on the platform as the train would whip by at breakneck speed, with my cardboard sign that said, “Go Mad Subway Masturbater, Go!”

But reality is something I’m far removed from. This guy’s an asshole. He’s a pervert that needs to be someone’s ass-toy at Riker’s for a few months.

I’ve had one of those generic lousy mornings, complete with the shitty night’s sleep, the late to work action, the forgotten lunch on the kitchen counter and the misplaced cash. So, exhausted, tired and lost amidst wires, ink, chaos and a vague, general malaise, I broke my usual dietary rules and ate a doughnut. Glazed. Two of them, actually. Shh, don’t tell.

I gave up about 90% of the sugar from my diet about five months ago. I stopped putting it in my coffee in the morning. No more candy, except for the occasional piece of dark chocolate. No ice cream, cookies, nothing. Over time, I’ve allowed the occasional exceptions, but for the most part, I’ve been really good about abstaining. It helps that since I’ve cut so much sugar out, my tolerance has dramatically dropped. A few bites of chocolate has me OD’d, sweating, dizzy and feeling I like just did time in a wind tunnel filled with airplane glue. Those days as a child, when I would devour ten to twelve candy bars for a post Halloween breakfast seem like a distant and hazy mirage. I am now a sugar wimp. Call me Mr. Goodbar’s bitch.

So now I’m sitting in my Cubicle of Doom, desperately fighting the effects of two oversized glazed doughnuts, wondering what the hell I could have been thinking to do this to myself. I’m standing square at the crossroads between blowing chunks all over my monitor and passing out, face-down on the keyboard. My brain is contemplating hanging itself from my spinal cord with a suicide note taped to the medulla oblongata. My eyes are fighting a cage match against each other to see who can hold the monitor in focus the longest. For every word my left hand picks out on the keyboard, my right hand’s on the backspace acting like Godzilla in the streets of Tokyo, breathing fire and laying waste to whole sentences of gibberish and half-formed, semi-drooling thoughts. It’s kind of sad to see.

However pathetic my current situation may be, it can’t hold a candle to last night’s experiment with Kava Kava.

Some time ago, when quitting cigarettes and hitting that frenzied state of withdrawal where you want to rip your skin off, staple your eyeballs backwards and dance the tarantella till you die or someone says it’s okay for you to smoke, I’d tried using Kava Kava to quell or at least lessen the suffering. I picked up a bottle at a health food store and popped something like four or five of the capsules. It helped, I think. Or if it didn’t, I was at the very least too fucking high to notice the difference.

Last night, on a whim, I popped three capsules and sat down to yet another Zatoichi film (someday, somehow, I will have watched them all, dammit) to see if anything would happen.

Very shortly after, I found myself high as fucking hell, head cocked at three o’ clock, with the beginnings of a decent drool as little leprechauns goose-stepped back and forth in my stomach. I had the schizoid desire to jump up and do massive manic jumping-jacks while simultaneously taking a nap. While it was not entirely unpleasant, it was more than a little unnerving and in my advanced age and much more pasteurized lifestyle, I’ll probably refrain from taking it again.