“I’d like to begin by saying fuck Lance Armstrong. Fuck him and his balls and his bicycles and his steroids and his yellow shirts and the dumb, empty expression on his face; I’m tired of that asshole. And while you’re at it, fuck Tiger Woods too.” — George Carlin

Chapter Ten is upon us.

Just one more to go…

Here ‘tis: Chapter Nine.

Enjoy.

I give you Chapter Eight. Only three more to go…

Happy Monday.

Of course, not quite all of the crap my dad had squirreled away was purchased on AARP Wednesdays. In fact, a lot of it wasn’t even purchased. By my dad, anyway.

Pops was always a big fan of found items. Things he could, sort of, recycle, as it were. He would stop and pick up almost anything that was lying on the side of the road: tennis balls, dog toys, Bic pens, nail files (I wonder what he used those for…), silverware, paperback books. I’m pretty sure that the fanny pack he wore—wait, yes, the fanny pack he wore was found on the side of the road.

When I was about eleven, I started to find—eleven-year-old boys have radar for this sort of thing—my dad’s collection of pornographic magazines hidden in various spots around the house. And I discovered a pattern: all of the various copies of JUGS and Hustler and Cheri and Swank and Butt Lust and Finally Legal all had one thing in common. They were dirty. Literally. Their covers were torn and pock-marked and encrusted with sand. I’m pretty sure Dad would search around the grounds at truck stops for used porno mags. My dad had a pretty extensive collection of smut, and I doubt he ever paid a single red penny for any of it.

Continue reading.

Screwball #4

journal

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June 29, 2008, at 10:58pm
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tags: dad, memoir, screwball

So I work a little part-time job a couple days a week (at a library), and today I was told I was on “stool duty,” which my (equivalent of an eleven year old’s) brain basically hears as “poop poopy*,” so in celebration of that, I give you the latest in the world of poop:

*I’d try to explain what it really meant, but it’s just not worth the effort of contextualization for our purposes.

Cross-posted at clusterflock.

Stool Doody

ephemera/elsewhere

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June 27, 2008, at 2:07pm
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tags: poop

Here it is: Chapter Seven.

One quick point: You’ll notice a slight jump in the page numbering. Pay it no mind; it’s just part of my preparations for the big finale at the end of next week.

Enjoy your weekend, serial Buttoners.

Ahh, McSweeney’s. Given the context, I have to post this one—The Great Gatsby, in three lines:

NICK: I love being rich and white.

GATSBY: Me, too, but I’d kill for the love of a woman.

DAISY: We can work with that.

But this one’s really my favorite—1984:

WINSTON: Don’t tell the Party, but sex is way better than totalitarianism.

EVERYONE: Surprise! We’re the Party.

WINSTON: Oh, rats.

Lit 101 in Three Lines or Less

ephemera/elsewhere

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June 26, 2008, at 12:11pm
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tags: books, literature

I almost feel guilty posting just this, but hey, I didn’t write the thing. Here it is: Chapter Six.

First, here’s Chapter Five.

Now that that’s out of the way, two points:

  1. I apologize for the lateness in the day for today’s installment. I understand that some of you have made this whole thing a part of your daily routine, and I’m sorry if my tardiness has gotten you all off-kilter on this fine Wednesday.
  2. Reader bowerbird has saved the italics in our story for us! Many thanks to him, and corrections have been made going back to Chapter One.

Okay, Chapter Six tomorrow, at which point we’ll’ve passed the halfway point. See you then.

I give you Chapter Four. Enjoy.

And keep letting me know if you find the stray typo or two. I’ve just been proofreading as I read, and most of these errors are clearly of the OCR variety—like ‘dose’ where ‘close’ should be—which makes them tough to spot. But I’ll keep correcting as we go so that the final product at the end of next week should be pretty close to perfect.

Thanks for reading, and see you tomorrow.

never mind that now.