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.

Recently, my daily intake of coffee has risen from about 1-2 cups to 5-6, consumed over the course of a simgle day. This is due entirely to the purchase of a kickass new coffee machine at the compound and the fact that the company I work for has recently sprung for an above average beverage setup in my office kitchen. Now, instead of the usual dosage of weak crap from the coffee-truck guys, I’m drinking 2-3 times that amount at much stronger levels.

I’m far too wired for my own good. While able to maintain an acceptable, if not slightly bitchy and shifty demeanor by the day, when evening arrives I am reduced to a twitching mess of a person you’d never want for a neurosurgeon as my nerves wilt and collapse under the strain of non-stop stimulant assault.

Since my trip to California, I’ve become all about Peet’s coffee, which is now starting to show up at some stores here in New York. Peet’s rules.

I can’t stop drinking the shit. Black or with milk and sugar, as soon as I destroy one pot, I have to resist the knee-jerk temptation to brew another. It’s not just quite noon right now and already I’m halfway through my third cup of the black, radioactive, paint-peeling stuff we make here at my office and I know that it won’t be my last.

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 past Thursday, fate stuck her incisors in my ass and I found myself ordered to appear at the Brooklyn Criminal Courthouse for a round of jury duty. I figured that my exile to that gulag of civic duty known as the Juror’s Assembly Room was in some way payback, be it karmic or realistic, for my extreme tardiness over returning that damn juror questionnaire for about four years. This time, I intended to be a good little American and show up on time and get this shit over with. I felt pretty confident that, once meeting during voir dire, no sane lawyer would ever want me to actually sit on a jury. I’ve been the victim of several crimes, one violent. I’m a leech on society and an all-around utterly despicable person. Good luck finding any sincerely redeemable qualities. Go me!

Choosing to heed what I later found to be decidedly unsound advice, I went out drinking the night before and got myself as wobbled and hobbled as any a self-respecting scurvied pirate with a bad case of the dreaded clap could wish for. In the morning, I dragged my still-drunken ass out to the courthouse and collapsed on a bench, lost in a undulating sea of near-vomitous joy. Covered in a light sheen of alcohol sweat, I passed the first couple hours twitching, itching and rocking back and forth like a Hare Krishna gone off the deep end, all to desperately divert my mind from the increasingly urgent fact that my stomach was knee-deep into a virtual Richard Simmons workout of projectile-like proportions. Hell, served clammy and cold on cheap, vinyl seating.

The first order of the day for myself and the other prospective inmates was a short film about the history of the judicial system. Hosted by Ed Bradley and Diane Sawyer of 60 Minutes fame, this cinematic gem featured such glorious moments as a reenactment by a bunch of renaissance fair flunkies of a medieval trial where the defendant is tied and dumped in the river, his innocence or guilt dependent on whether he should float or not. The aim of the film aside from putting food on the table for the lowest tier of out of work actor was to show us a timeline of the judicial history and hopefully make us feel better about our stay in the courthouse, because by golly gee, look how far we’ve come. We wouldn’t want to go back to dunking defendants and crucifixion would we? Well, actually I would be in a much better mood about having to spend an entire day sitting in a room with a whole shitload of strangers if we had some good old fashioned executions to sweeten the moment. How can you be bored when you have a guy with nails through his wrists and feet, hanging from a tree to keep you company?

It’s a fair assumption to say that if you take a hundred or so people and put them in a room, at least one is going to be shit-nuts insane. Normally, I’m resigned to wear that moniker myself. Show me a jar of peanuts and I’ll show you “fucking nuts”. However, that day I was surprised to find that I had some serious competition in the form of an elderly African American lady who for most of the morning, had been sitting quiet and unassuming in her seat near the front of the room.

After the film ended and the person in charge of keeping us in line returned to the room, the old lady sat up and asked for a question and answer session. The court officer rather reluctantly agreed and the woman proceeded to pull out a couple pages of scrawled notes and began shouting, “Why did you lie to us? The court system began in Africa! You stole it! Admit it! You’re a liar! I refuse to recognize this court because it’s based on a lie! Y’all a bunch of thieves and liars! Thieves!”

The court officer, with a look of glazed pain tried to nip it in the bud by informing the lady that the Jurors Assembly Room’s purpose was not to serve as her personal soapbox and that she was welcome to come into his office where he would be happy to hear her complaints and answer any questions she might have. “Hell no! You’re a liar! You’re big, fat and a liar and there ain’t no damn way I’m moving my ass for you! Hell no! You’re a liar and a thief. Admit it!” The court officer quickly retreated from the room and spent the rest of the day addressing us over the PA system, leaving us to fend for ourselves.

At one point in the early afternoon, the doors opened and a group of tourists were led into the room by a guide. Apparently, the Brooklyn courthouse attracts sightseers. A rather large posse of Asians and what looked to be Sikhs came in, cameras flashing. Their guide introduced us as the lovely and patient Brooklyn jurors, happily waiting to do our civic service. Naturally, this was meant as a light joke, but the crazy lady immediately stood up and started screaming, “That man’s a liar! We’re prisoners here. Ask him where the court system originated! He’ll lie to you! He’s a liar! The court system came from Africa!” A swift exodus of the befuddled and slightly terrified tourists was made.

In between trying not to puke everywhere, plugging my ears against this lady’s rants and another man’s wall-shaking snores, I mentally went over my game plan. Surely no court would want me on the jury and only a few questions would bear that out, but just in case, should I sweeten the pot with some choice behavior faults be they true or imaginary? I envisioned myself in voir dire, and the possible questions that could be asked based on my extensive knowledge of the New York legal system à la Law & Order:

Q: “What do you do for a living?”

A: “I make magazines, but my real love is rubbing my genitals against door handles. Hey, gotta love New york!”

Q: “Have you ever been a victim of a crime?”

A: “Yes! The court system was founded in Africa! Y’all a bunch of fathead liars!”

Q: “Based on your experience and knowledge of the crimes the Defendant is charged with, do you feel that you will be able to weigh the facts impartially?”

A: “Well it depends on whether he floats or sinks after we dunk him in the water. Just kidding. Actually, yeah I think I can. I’m wearing clean underwear. Do we get free tinfoil? Anything longer than an hour without being able to rub my junk against a door handle and I have to wrap that shit up, if you know what I mean and I think you do, you dirty, dirty devil.”

For better or worse, all my preparation was pointless. They never called my name. I spent the entire day in that assembly room. At around four-thirty, I was released with a sheet of paper to prove my service and promised that I would not have to repeat it for another six years. I left the building restless, relieved and with the understanding that I’d done my civic duty. I was a fine little American and I didn’t have end up rubbing my nuts on a door handle to prove it.

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.