This Christmas I made my greatly anticipated return to church. I guess you can say that 12 years of Catholic schooling may have burnt me out of the whole "mass" thing. A realist since conception, I've always been of the belief that everything truly is better in moderation, especially religion. Had my time at church as a youngster been more evenly spread out, maybe I would have continued to attend services on a more regular basis. However, the fact that early on in my life I was carted off to these unbelievably dull praise parties once, twice, sometimes even three times a week during school greatly contributed to my eventual departure from the church.
But on Christmas Eve, I returned. Like I said, it's been years since I attended Catholic services, so I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. However, everything was just as I left it. It would be ridiculous, but I wouldn't be surprised if they (The Catholic suits) were using the same Mass today as they were five or six years ago, verbatim. I know the Catholic Church has never been big on change, but come on! The Vatican goes half a decade with the same old song and dance and then they have the audacity to wonder why they're having membership problems?
Anyway, I digress. It was during this service that I remembered how church had always served as a muse of sorts for me. This divine inspiration never lent itself to artistic masterpieces or moving poetry; rather, this divine inspiration manifested itself in the form of ways to fuck with people during the service. Sitting there during Christmas Eve Mass, the hilarity of these ideas hit me so hard that I had to leave the building, or I would've lost it completely and gotten kicked out of "God's House" for the second time in my 25 years. Anyway, I went outside, huffed some raw ether and gathered myself enough to make it back just in time to give out some awkwardly long hugs to my fellow churchgoers during the Sign of Peace. Below, I've included some surefire ways to spice-up your ordinary celebration of the Catholic Mass:


The Stunt: 100-percent Jesus Juice
What you need: 14 handles of red "Mad Dog" wine (just to be safe) and more balls than a driving range.
How it works: When it comes time for communion, position yourself in an unoccupied area of the church. When people start leaving the pews, start yelling out (make sure you're loud because the music will be playing), "don't drink their wine, it's only 25-percent Jesus juice; drink my wine, it's 75-percent Jesus juice and it fucks you up!" Proceed until a mob of blue haired women starts coming your way with walkers and canes raised in disgust, or until moderate bodily injury is sustained.

The Stunt: Needs Something
What you need: salt, pepper or any seasoning and/or condiment of your own preference. A complete disregard for everything that devout Catholics hold sacred.
How it works: (Tip: do not take Communion orally even if this is your custom) After receiving Communion, calmly step to the side (but still in plain sight of the majority of the congregation) and begin to season the Eucharist with salt, pepper, ketchup or whatever you choose. Offer to pass your seasoning/condiments to the next patron in line, and then get the fuck out without ever turning back. Warning: If hell exists, this will probably ensure that you'll up there.

The Stunt: That Guy
What you need: sunglasses, a newspaper, an iPod or discman, and a natural talent for pissing people off.
How it works: Arrive fashionably late (after the opening procession is complete). Sit down somewhere in the first pew for maximum visibility. (Note: This is extremely important. No matter how crowded the first pew is, find a way to squeeze in. The success of this stunt depends upon it.) After your bothersome entrance, proceed to put your headphones on and pull a carefully folded newspaper out of your inside coat pocket. Hum or even sing along to whatever tunes you're listening to, loudly crinkle the completely open paper, and mumble inappropriate comments about different headlines in the news: "Looks like they got another nancy priest in Boston." Do not stop just because people start to cough and moan; proceed until you are asked to leave the premises.

The Stunt: "You Shouldn't Have"
What you need: A white rob similar to in appearance to those of the time period 6 BC - 39 BC with a matching maroon or red sash, sandals (preferably without a visible Abercrombie log), two and a half months without a haircut and a beard you can hide entire meals within.
How it works: (Note: Again, entrance is key. Try to arrive fashionably late, possibly right behind the entrance procession.) Walk into the church in awe at what you're seeing. Comment out loud to yourself as you loudly take your seat, saying things like, "would you at this," or "Well, I'll be darned." As you take your seat, tap the congregation member directly next to you on the shoulder and state, "All this for me and my pops? Wow! You guys shouldn't have. I mean I know I died for your sins and all, but this is pretty amazing. How many of these, what you call them...churches...are there anyway?" Maybe as an afterthought add, "that's a pretty good picture of me up on the altar, huh? The halo's a nice touch; hope Dad gave the artist a pretty nice suite in the afterlife." Warning: The warning from stunt #2 to the 10th power applies for this one.

The Stunt: Swan Song
What you need: The ability to con an entire church, the ability to remember and reenact an entire Catholic Mass verbatim and a don't-give-a-fuck attitude that stretches all the way to the consequences this act will have on your friends and loved ones, plus one government-issued priest costume.
How it works: When I was an altar boy, occasionally we would have visiting priest come and say the Mass. No one knew exactly who the guy was or where he came from, but he had uniform, so he had to be legit, right? Wrong. Before I die, I want to visit Lochness Lake and see the monster, I want to run with the bulls in Spain, and I want say a Catholic Mass with everyone in attendance thinking I'm a certified, Grade-A Father. There are a lot of variations that can take place with this particular stunt. For me, personally, I want to say the mass the regular way right up until the homily. At this point, the sermon will become my stand-up comedy act; I figure if I can get the blue-haired codgers and bible-banging do-gooders to laugh at my jokes (after I fooled them into thinking I was a priest), I can probably even get a standing-O on "Showtime at the Apollo," you know? But that's just me. There some other variations that should work just as well, if not better:
1.) During the sermon, casually juxtapose ridiculous notions and thoughts with the typical, mundane love-your-neighbor Sunday dogma. For example, something to this effect may work: "When I think of what my duties are to the Lord sometimes I'm overwhelmed with stress. Sometimes I get an aching in my ample loins and sometimes I want to hit an elderly man with my automobile for no apparent reason, but everyone reacts to Lord's call in different ways. Remember children, it's not how we feel but how we act that determines our fate." The most important part of this is to keep a perfectly straight face and move from topic to topic as if something is amiss about what you are saying. This is a lame example to illustrate the point, but remember, it's your church when you're wearing the collar. Be creative and let the spirit move you.
2.) Say the ENTIRE mass, from the opening prayer until "you may go in peace to love and serve the Lord" and then tell the congregation that you have an announcement. At this point, thank everyone for coming out to the service and then tell them that it did not count because you are not an official priest. Then, strip off you're priestly robes and reveal your true occupation by showing the parishioners the uniform you wear to your work on a day to day basis (Note: this works best with well-known, easily recognizable work uniforms. Think trash collector or UPS driver). After this startling revelation, march off the altar and off into the sunset or, more likely, the ensuing lighting bolt that will strike you dead.

Well, those are the ways to spice up the Catholic experience. Now go out and give them a shot if you like to have some good, clean fun or, if you believe in that "Catholicky" stuff, go out, try these things and ensure yourself a fate of eternal damnation.

Miss USA and the Beauty Pageant Paradox Thank God Mr. Donald Trump found it in his heart to allow Tara Connor to retain her title as Miss USA. Like the rest of the country, I followed the story of Miss USA's alleged "inappropriate behavior" very closely. That poor girl must've been very confused when she almost lost her title as Miss USA for the very same reasons she was crowned in the first place.Tara Connor won the Miss USA pageant because she's a hot girl. And they almost took that title away from her because she was, well, because she was acting the way that hot girls act. Hot girls go to bars when they're underage because the owners of these bars would rather have extremely attractive underage ladies patronizing their establishments than homely, middle-aged Cougars. Hot girls act intoxicated after a few sips of a Cosmo, so unhappily married, middle-aged men will buy them all the Cosmos they want for the rest of the night. And hot girls make out with other hot girls because they know there is no better way to draw attention to themselves.To think that Tara Connor almost got dethroned for her actions is reprehensible. If anything, she should've been promoted to Miss Universe. Anybody, from the general public to the Miss USA pageant committee that thinks that Miss USA has a moral responsibility to act a certain way is a fucking moron. Not just a moron, a fucking moron.The only responsibility that Miss USA has to the public is to stay hot. If her drinking should interfere with this responsibility, if she starts packing on pounds, or if the blood vessels in her nose begin to burst, or she becomes such a lazy drunk that she neglects her grooming and her unruly bush pokes out of her tiny bikini during the swimsuit competition, then take the crown away immediately. But judging by the recent publicity photos, she looks just fine to me.

On the way to work today, I ran into a rather curious situation. Below is an account of the incident as I saw it. Maybe you've had something similar happen to you, maybe not. But to me, this is worth writing about.
A painting truck (that had already cut me off) stopped in the middle of the road and started reversing towards me. I beeped my horn (somewhere between two and 14 times), as to inform the driver that he may hit my low-end sedan, and he immediately stormed out of the car. He came over to my car and informed me that if I honk "that fucking" horn again, he would take "that fucking horn" and shove it up my "fucking ass." It was here that I realized I had reached a crossroads, a fork in the road if you will. This man had almost struck my insured vehicle with his own vehicle; I responded with an instinctual reaction to the possibility of being struck by said vehicle; and he offered an invitation to my reaction. Basically, I had two choices in this given situation. Yes, there were several variations that could be made; however, there was still really only two coices.
This man was obviously angry. There's a certain level of anger that engulfs a heterosexual man (at least that's what I assumed he was based on fact that he yelled, "nice tits, wanna fuck?" to a female pedestrian right after cutting me off) when he bypasses wanting to kick your ass and wants to shove something up it instead.
Things seem surreal in the morning when you have an addiction to coffee and haven't actually had any yet, so I wasn't entirely with it at this point. I went with my first instinct and confirmed that, yes, it was only ten after eight in the morning and, yes, I was being threatened with something being forced up my "fucking ass." I wasn't in a doctor's office or in a Republican senator's office and yet there I was, one wrong move away from being sodomized on my way to work.
The end of the story is anticlimactic: I gave the man (I think he would be called a "top" or "Foley") some kind of wave and, in return, he sort of tilted his head (the way my dog Maddie does when you say the word "jeep"); he then turned around, loudly went back into his truck and sped off to touch up some trim or roll a room or blow some early morning lines . Luckily for both us, nothing was shoved up my "fucking ass", because animalistic sodomy on Leverington Ave. at 8:10 a.m. could've had far-reaching consequences that may have haunted the both of us for years to come.

It has been said on numerous occasions that Kurt Cobain was the voice of my generation, even though most people couldn't really ever understand what the fuck he was saying.
He could turn three muted, choppy chords and some angst-driven vocals into catchy tunes that found an awkward home in Billboard top-100 charts and confused teenagers' CD collections, alike. True, Cobain had an impeccable ear for melody, a style so beautifully simplistic in nature that his songs could stay stuck in your head for weeks, and a musical vision so unique that he spawned an entirely new music genre (a style that many sub-par bands still attempt to emulate very, very badly-think Nickleback and Puddle of Mudd).
Yes, Cobain did all of this and more; however, his most impressive accomplishment by far was making it cool to be depressed and miserable again. And not a moment too soon, too. After the 80s, a decade defined by cocaine-fueled optimism and material opulence, shitty music and even shittier clothing, it took someone with a whole lot of balls (and a pretty terrible Northwestern upbringing) to sit back and say, "wait a second, just put the fucking hairspray and eight ball down for a minute, things are not so great... life is actually bullshit." Not that I actually know anything about this awful decade that I speak so emphatically about, because I wasn't even a teenager when the decade ended. I do, however, have a vast working knowledge of writings from cultural bibles such as Spin and Rolling Stone that I took as Scripture regarding Cobain's effect on a world I was living in (yeah, I was pretty annoying preteen).
I also remember the effect Cobain had on me, as well as the majority of my peers. It seemed like the transformation happened over night; one day my entire class is decked out like Candyass Preppies complete with turtlenecks and Champion sweashirts, and the next we're buying out Salvation Army's everywhere, raiding our parent's closests for old, ripped jeans and ugly sweaters, growing our hair and only washing it every fortnight or so, and most importantly, acting pissed off at the entire world. Yeah, nobody accept Kurt could possibly understand ever the plight of an average, white, middle-class 12 year old.
It was amazing how it worked, socially speaking. Instead of trying to bury your family problems and dysfunctions and pretending like your life was perfect, you could actually flaunt them. I remember sitting in class and just wishing that my family was just a little more fucked up (it wasn't until years later, when I didn't actually want it to happen, that I found out they were "a little more fucked up" than I thought). I remember people actually being like, "man, Bobby's mom is literally known as the town whore, his sister looks and acts like she should wear a helmet, and his dad is a drunk that beats the shit out of the whole family, Bobby doesn't even know how good he has it."

Recently, I got the opportunity to meet a friend of one of my closest friends that I'd been hearing about for years. Let's call this individual "PersonA" just to conceal his identity from the masses and masses of people that faithfully read my insights into humanity as quickly as I post them.
Like I said, I'd been hearing about how I "just have to meet PersonA" for awhile, and everytime I pressed for more details all I got was: "He's fucking nuts. The kid is just fucking out of his mind." When I asked how, all I got was, "he's just fucking crazy. There's no other way to describe this dude, just fuckin crazy."
Naturally, I was pretty excited about meeting PersonA; however, when the time came to meet said person, I was more than just a little disappointed. This peron, PersonA, was not CRAZY, he was just an ASSHOLE. PersonA was a loud, obnoxious, drunk asshole and all the pills and therapy in the world would never be able to change that. Now, I know that I shouldn't really be that upset because, afterall, most people are assholes, right? But I was under the impression that PersonA was chemically imbalanced, "fuckin crazy" if you will. I was expecting someone with at least some signs of some mental illness. PersonA wasn't scratching repetitively, yelling at people that didn't exist or spouting government conspiracy theories (or any of the other mentally ill stereotypes that we've learned from pop-culture and television).
This is something that pisses me off. We categorize everyone from the eccentric to obnoxious as "fuckin crazy". Crazy is a term that gets thrown around a little to loosely for my liking. If being a loud, annoying, Chappelle Show quoting drunk is all is takes to be classified as "crazy" than every fucking frat guy and gym rat in this country would be in a straightjacket. Lesson: If you can't specifically tell someone why exactly your friend is crazy, then you'd better warn your friend that they're going to have to deal with an asshole for the night.

Nestled along the southern shore points of a state that is often unfairly judged as America's asshole lies the quaint town of Ocean City, New Jersey. A dry town, Ocean City attracts blue hairs and families alike. In an alcohol-free environment filled with the simple pleasures of funnel cake and ski ball, sandcastles and boardwalk bike rides, Ocean City is an idyllic spot for wholesome people to enjoy some well-earned relaxation along the crystal-clear waters of the majestic Atlantic Ocean.
Okay, anybody from the Tri-state area knows that last paragraph is a crock of shit. Nevertheless, Ocean City is regarded as a nice family spot 50 weeks out of the year. The other two-weeks, for some reason or another, attract area high-school students celebrating the monumental accomplishment of "graduating 12th grade" in a hedonistic orgy of drugs, drinking and sex that is commonly known as "senior week".
That is where this story takes place.

The Gary Dean Lovelace Story

On his way back from a one-evening courtship, my roommate Matt stumbled upon the equivalent of a winning to lottery ticket to a bunch of recent high school graduates miles and miles away from any type of supervision: A driver’s license that belongs to someone over the age of 21.
It was dawn and the sun was just starting to creep over the horizon with a slowness that seemed to mirror our own sluggish movements. It was really fucking early or really fucking late, depending on how you spent the night before. We were still awake as Matt bounded up the steps of "Beach View" (? is that right Greg?) and onto the porch to show us his newfound treasure.
It was a Virginia driver’s license of a man named Gary Dean Lovelace. Unfortunately, the man on the license is not only at least five-inches taller and 80 pounds heavier than any of us, Mr. Lovelace is also an African American (or Jamaican). We find this whole situation hysterical and commence to laugh for what feels like hours. It not the picture of Mr. Lovelace, or the combination of the license and the picture, or even the porno-like name Gary Dean Lovelace that makes us laugh. It’s the fact that this time of day makes anything hysterical when you’re drunk, you haven’t slept and you’re 18.
The laughter died down and Ian, one of the five who was still awake, said, “that’s funny and all, but I really wish there was some way to use that.” That's when it clicked. I ran inside to start the coffee and the rest of the guys started brainstorming. When I come outside, Tom (another one of the original five) offered his plan: “We can always find a black guy that looks like the Lovelace guy and pay him to use it.” This idea wouldn't work for three reasons:
1.) There are no black people in Ocean City.
2.) Even if there were any black guys that fit the description, they would definitely be over 21, so why wouldn’t they use their own correct identification?

Right as we were about to give up on the whole idea and start drinking again, it came to me. I would paint myself black and attempt to pass as Gary Dean Lovelace at the liquor store. The laughing started again, but I didn't join this time. I was dead serious about this one. I started spewing out reasons why I thought it was a good idea: What could it hurt? What if it works? What about the story? Eventually, everybody was on board, and we had to decide what could be used to transform me from a skinny, Polish white kid named Jared Bilski into a tall, stocky black man named Gary Dean Lovelace. A sharpie marker seemed too unrealistic, time-consuming and bothersome to remove; shoe polish seemed too pungent, dangerous and likely to run in the heat; and even though charcoal didn't seem like best option ever, it was the best we had.

We decided it would save time if we only painted my face and I covered the rest of my frame in baggy clothes. Despite the strange appearance of a person covered in bulky, long-sleeve clothing in mid June, we figured it was safer than showing up at the state store with an entirely charcoal-covered body, plus the clothes gave me a few extra pounds.
I don't want to imply that I ever really experienced what it was like to go through life in this country as a black man, because if it got too intense, I could've just washed my blackness off and went back to the comfort of being a white, middle-class teen in a white-dominated society. However, I will say this: From the moment that charcoal engulfed my pale face, things changed. The people strolling by our house stared and gawked at me with gaping jowls and curious, mischievious eyes. Even the tone of my friends' voices was altered. These changes were not concrete or tangible, but I could sense them, nonetheless. Instead of shirking my newfound "blackness", a strange pride overtook my entire person. I began walking with a cool, rhythmic swagger and added a full-step of bass to my smooth, velvety voice. "Let's do this shit," I commanded and with those words I became Gary Dean Lovelace incarnate, for the next half-hour, anyway.

We drove to the liquor store in a sea-foam green Minivan with the air on full-blast to ensure that my blackness was not prematurely lost because of the extreme temperatures of that June morning. I tried to live every moment as a black man to the fullest, and I promised myself that from this day forward, I would never forget what it was like. And just like that we were there; it was sink or swim time.

Everything went off without a hitch until I got to the register, despite the fact that the four other guys in the van were all of ten feet behind me giggling like a bunch of girl scouts at a slumber party talking about their first blowjob. When I got to the register, I actually felt confident. The cashier was a cute, blonde vixen that looked about 22, tops. I figured even if she wasn't fooled by my clever disguise, she'd at least reward me for my persistance. Maybe she wouldn't even card me, right? No such luck. Not only did she ask for my ID, but she only briefly glanced at it before stating, "I'm sorry I can't serve you with that." I quickly retorted with, "What's a matter sweety, you don't take out-of-state licenses here?"

"No, it's not that....it's....look, I'm not gonna serve you," she stated with a tone of finality.

There were only two ways I could go from here: I could cut my losses and walk out of the store, go back to my week of debauchery and laugh about this over some breakfast beers, or....

"Oh, I get it now," I came back. And after a dramatic pause, "it's because I'm black isn't it?"

I'm not sure what I thought was going to happen. The cute blonde was going to be so intimidated by the faux race card that she not only served me, but handed me a number while asking, "is it really true what they say about black guys?"

Actually, she called security, and these two guys came and informed us that if we didn't leave, they'd call the cops. So, Gary Dean Lovelace and his posse left the liquor defeated with our tails tucked between our legs.

Afterword

Luckily for us, there was this wino loitering in a semi-conscious state right outside of the store. He watched the whole thing and told us it was one of the funniest things he'd seen that morning. For a small tip and a ride home, the man offered to buy us what we needed. We had achieved our story, got some liquor and met a man that came to become a symbol of our time that week. We called him Uncle Leo, though we never actually learned his full name, and as promised we gave his tip and ride in exchange for the liquor. We actually dropped him off in the general vicinity of where he was staying; Uncle Leo had been drinking since 1983 and wasn't completely sure where the exact location was. Anyway, that's the last we ever saw of Uncle Leo. Though we got a number and called repetitively for the rest of the week, we were never able to bring Uncle Leo into our world. We did write a song in his honor and sang it ceremoniously at the start of every morning and at the close of every evening. After all, Uncle Leo was essential to the success of the Gary Dean Lovelace story.

I'm getting old. It may sound ridiculous, but it's true. I don't mean physically old; I've noticed some differences in myself, but nothing I'm ready to worry about just yet. And I don't mean culturally, either. Nothing that kids are doing for entertainment and recreation shocks me to point of indignation. I don't catch myself saying thing like, "you call that music? Pick up Stone Temple Pilots' Purple and then talk to me about music." It's not that in-your-face, cliche', I'm becoming my dad kind of aging. It's more subtle, but no less real.
Look, everybody lies. And I firmly believe that most people greatly exaggerate everything that happens on a day-to-day basis; however, there are limits. I have been a liar since a very, very young age and there's one cardinal rule of lying that I live by: Never stretch the story to the point where it doesn't even resemble the actions in question. I guess telling a story is a lot like covering a famous song like "Imagine" or "Detachable Penis" or even "Sex, punch, poop". Of course there's room to experiment, to add your own peculiar nuances and artistic expressionisms; however, if your rendition has streched the song so greatly that the listener doesn't even recognize the original tune, then you've gone too far. That's where me and my friends come in.
I'm not saying a lot of interesting things haven't happened to us over the course of the past ten years or so. I react to just about every situation based on the story that can come out of it. I'll gladly suffer personal injury, loss of dignity and even short jail time if it results in a tale that can be told for years to come. Squirrels stock nuts to survive the long, harsh winters, and I stock stories, so I can hopefully survive my "golden years", the years where you hobble around on a walker, suck food through a straw and suffer the humiliation of not even being able to wipe your own ass. These are the years that the stories of the past matter the most. However, only so much can happen growing up as a Catholic schoolboy living in the suburbs. The stories that I've been hearing lately have been ridiculous. This would be only a nagging suspicion of mine if it wasn't for the fact that I'm an active part of a lot of these stories. I've been listening to my friends tell the same stories for years now, and slowly these stories have morphed into urban legends. It started with a detail here, a detail there, and than suddenly it's like, "wait a second, when the fuck did THAT happen?" I don't want it to sound like it's just my friends that tell these yarns. If anything, I'm the worst culprit. But for the longest time I thought I was the only one. But it's about more than lying; it's about aging, as well. The need to greatly exaggerate even the most exciting times of one's life is a way to cope with the lack of excitement that is an inescapable part of aging.
See, I spend a lot of time talking to random characters-hitchikers, homeless people, schizoids, and any and every type of weirdo that I come in contact with. If you pay close enough attention, every bar has a guy that's a little too drunk and a little too old to be there by himself. The kind of guy that slurs his words, and gets a little to close to you when he has something to say, and laughs at every possible instance except for the actual punchlines, and most importantly, the kind of guy that tells stories that no one would ever believe. I've always been fascinated by this type of individual. How does someone get to that point? Well, it doesn't just happen; it's a gradual process, much like aging itself. My friends and I are all on the way to becoming that guy. The exciting stories are becoming fewer and fewer, while the exagerations in the one's that we've been telling for years are becoming greater and greater. When someone outside of our circle has an interesting story, we have to one up 'em by adding some new shit to a story we've been telling for years. Next, we won't even let the people finish before we cut them off mid-sentence with something like, "Oh shit, that reminds of the time we almost died on the way to Scranton," even though it doesn't have a fucking thing to do with what the person was actually talking about. Soon people will stop trying communicate with us altogether, and we'll find a permanent seat at a local dive and wait patiently like a Venus Fly Trap until some unsuspecting patron comes sauntering over to within earshot, and then, we'll attack. We'll tell them anything and everything until a brave friend comes over on a rescue mission. I'd always wondered what I would be like as an old guy. Now I know. Me, and a good deal of my friends, I'll end up being "that guy". As karma goes, I'll get to be on the opposite end of the ridiculous conversations I'll been having for years now.

It's not that I never do anything, I've actually been pretty busy lately. But that just never matters when the question is asked. I think sometimes it accurately sums up what I've been up to, and othertimes it doesn't even touch the surface. See, whether I've been living a life as exciting as a rock star or leading a mundane everyday experience, whenever someone I haven't seen in awhile asks that obligatory, "So, what have you been up to lately?" I always have the same answer: "You know, working and shit." The "working" part of the phrase lets the person know that, yes, I am employed as a contributing member of society, and the "and shit" covers everything else in between. If I just said "work", the person would assume that I have no time for anything other than my job (save for the necessity of eating, shitting, sleeping and pissing), and this may even cause the said person some undue worry at the fact that I've been under such a great amount of work-related stress. However, by adding two simple words to the term "work", I'm able to express the fact that my life consists of a harmonious balance between work and recreational activities (shit).
Sometimes I wish I had more to offer in terms of a response when I run into a casual acquaintance. I find these encounters painfully uncomfortable and after that a few moments of awkward silence, I end up meekly limping away from the forced conversation after mumbling something to the effect of "nice talking to you" or "see ya around". I honestly feel more comfortable around complete strangers. There's something liberating in knowing that you will probably never see a person again as long as you're alive, or even if you do, neither of you will recognize one another. It's this kind of liberty that allows me to walk up to people at a food court and ask without embarassment, "If you're not going to finish them fries, I'll take em."
However, I'm of the strong belief that you never get judged as harshly for saying too little as you do for saying too much. I happened to run into a girl I went to high school with the other day at a 7-11 convenience store and before assessing the situation properly I walked over and asked, "Hey, (name I won't mention goes here), how have you been?" And as I was refilling my coffee for the third time, listening to this girl go on and on about how she caught her babies' dad fucking her little sister and how he said it was her own fault because she's been too tired to satisfy his needs ever since the baby came along and how to think she was actually thinking of surprising him with a blow-job because he's been such a caring father....... So, with no end to her tirade in sight, I'm left there desperately looking for an out going, "why didn't I just wave to this bitch and keep walking." These are the kinds of people that can benefit the most from the "working and shit" approach to random encounters with casual acquaintances.

Let me preface this rant by stating I have nothing against organized religion. In fact, like anything else, I think it's a great thing if used in moderation. I believe in God and I pray. Whenever I feel my life is in danger, or my girlfriend may be pregnant, or anything of that magnitude, my first instinct is get on my knees and beg for a positive outcome or a negative pregnancy test.
Do I think that some people are a bit over-the-top and do some strange things in the name of religion? Hell yes. If you want to refuse to eat certain delectible foods, deny yourself the pleasure of casual, carnal sex or even wear one of those silly berkas because you think it'll put you in better standing with the big guy, well, that's your business. Personally, I'm not too into all of the rules. I pick and choose the snippets of each faith that I find conducive to my current lifestyle and I practice accordingly. You do things your way; I do things mine.
That being said, however, I think there are certain people that take the whole God thing too far. I met these Born Again Christians and all these people talked about was God this and God that. "Isn't it just amazing that god made all this food that we're eating right now? Gosh, isn't it just amazing that god made the ground we're standing on right now?"
These people are like cheerleaders for God only they never turn that shit off. They're just too excited about that shit; they take their god and their faith too far and it's just annoying as hell to everyone else but them. Even God must be like, "ALRIGHT, ENOUGH ALREADY! Yeah, yeah, I'm good good, I'm great, I built the whole world in seven days and all that shit, but will you please shut the fuck up about me for just five-fucking minutes. Jesus Christ, don't you people have lives. Get out there and live your own life. You know what, go get laid; you have my blessing."

I didn't want to talk about it, but I can't stop thinking about it. Now, I just have to vent. The Rolling Stones left such an indelible mark on me (much like the botched brand attempt that has rendered my left shoulder permanently scarred) with their halftime theatrics at this year's Superbowl that I can't let this subject go. I realize this topic is no longer current or relevent or interesting; however, it has taken me a few weeks to gather my thoughts and speak articulately on the subject, so here I go.
I have always like the Stones. I always keep their songs on when they pop up on the radio. But thanks to their unflattering performance at this year's Superbowl, they are no longer a rock band, they are now a spectacle. I would've rather watched Richard Marx play "heart and soul" with his dick on a used, battered Casio keyboard than those guitar-toting skeletons called The Rolling Stones. I'll grant you this: The Rolling Stones are still funny, but it's in a sad, pathetic way. The Stones are like that old guy at the club with the tight black tee-shirt and the slicked back hair. You watch him dancing to songs performed by singers his daughter's age. You nod back when he gives you a clandestine head nod indicating the understood exchange of some primal, carnal secret. You laugh, and you laugh and then you laugh some more, but a part of you shakes your head and thinks, "somebody should tell that poor son of a bitch". I watched in the same hypnotic way that the rest of America watched as all the hits were served on a silver plater by rock n' roll's golden girls-Mick and the boys. There's something so amazing about seeing an old fag prancing around in tight, skimpy clothing and singing, "I can't get no satisfaction". Mick, you're a hundred f$cking years old; you don't need satisfaction. You need rest and regularity, you need vitamins, and fiber and calcium for your brittle bones. Satisfaction, no my friend, that's not what you need. What you need, Mick, is time to reflect on the fact that you're as old as at least a third of the people in the average retirement community, and you're wearing belly shirts that are marketed toward thirteen-year-old girls.