My college roomate "Kubota"

I only stayed in the dorm one semester; my dad wanted me to have that experience. I went to college in the same town I grew up in, as a matter of fact, my parents house is about 4 blocks from the college.
So it is the beginning of the semester and I am just sitting around in the dorm room wasting time, when somebody knocks on the door. "Hi! I am Kubota", said a small Japanese man standing there with an armload of whatever. His actual name is "Yoshinori Kubota, but he said everyone just calls him Kubota because they can't say Yoshinori right. I called him Yoshi. This guy was so cool. When sleeping, he would lay on his back with his arms at his side, and never move during the night. He put his alarm clock right on the bed and never knocked it over. In stark contrast, I would wake up across the bed with the sheets all over the floor. it looked like wild banshees had slept in my bed after drinking coffee.
Kubota was a really jolly sort of fellow and always wanted to go out with me to the bars. He said he learned a lot of culture this way. Well, thanks to my drinking habit, he got a LOT of culture. I would teach him all the good cusswords and bar slang, and he said after a while that I was his "real" english teacher. Kubota was getting a degree in english education so he could go back to Japan and teach.
He never got the cussing quite right. He would say things like "I hate Millican, he is a shit fuck ass!!".
Yoshi taught me the real way to eat ramen noodles. We would get the square packs, not the ones in the bowl. He put the square of noodles in the bowl of hot water and eat it like a steak, not breaking it up.
One night after getting all cooked downtown, we got back to the room starving to death. Onward to the corner store for a frozen pizza. We walked to my parents house at 2:30 in the morning, fired up the oven, and commenced cooking. I guess we were not quiet enough because in walks my dad, with a puzzled look on his face. I guess he was not expecting to see a small Japanese man bent down sliding a pizza into his oven in the middle of the night. Anyway, my dad was cool and let us eat it right there at the table.

"Why can't we be like the Waltons?"

My dad used to pull the Walton-guilt out all the time. We were totally dysfunctional, just like most families back in the 60s/70s. Me and my brothers fought constantly, my mom drank Gallo wine by the gallon to stay sane, and my dad watched sitcoms to escape reality.
The reason we could not be like the Waltons is because it is a stupid TV show.
That show was dripping with wholesomeness and although there were certainly families like that, i would say they constitute about .000001% of the population.
What about that wonderful Brady Bunch? Gosh darn, were they not as cute as shit?
My dad's favorite shows was All in the Family, and he looked a lot like Archie Bunker.

My first 8 years of school

First Grade - mrs. shelton.
Being 6 at the time, I don't remember much about first grade, but i do remember getting whipped by her one time. She used a "bolo paddle", you know, the thing with the rubber ball and elastic band stapled to the paddle. Of course you had to spice up the story to your friends by saying that the "staple was still in it". Speaking of bolo paddles, once I bought one to take on a long distance gas balloon flight so me and Brian would have something to kill the boredom. My mom said "Give me that thing and I'll show you how it works". well, at 75 years old, I had my reservations about my mother's ability to control a ball flying around in the air, but in no time flat she had that ball rapping away against the paddle. She had this weird stance with her right hand doing the paddle work and her left hand firmly on her hip, kinda with her hip kicked out a bit. "you have to have your hips just right to make it work" she told me. My mom inched up a few notches on my "cool people" list after this demonstration.

Second Grade - Mrs. Gunn
She was a nice enough lady, but she had two rather annoying habits.
1. When it was your birthday, she would put on a really heavy coat of bright red lipstick and give you a huge kiss on your forehead. we all hated that.
2. If you misbehaved in class, watch out. she'd roll up one of your pants legs and go to work on your calf with a ruler. This hurts a LOT more than you think. give it a try.

Third Grade - mrs. i cant remember.
This was a rather unmemorable class except for the time that Douglas Kirk threw up in class. The whole class ran to the back of the room in horror. "You kids are horrible" she yelled. "You run away like wild cattle".
We used to throw sewing pins in the back of her dress when she was at the board.

Fourth grade - Mrs. starnes.
Mrs. starnes was nuts, and my so my dad sent me to another school for this year only.
One time i was talking during class and the teacher made me write 500 lines of "I will not talk in class". Another time I had to go up to the board and stick my nose in a circle she drew on the board. I had to stay there a long time.

Fifth grade - Mrs. Blount.
I had a crush on Mrs. Blount.

Sixth Grade - Mrs. Clark
Mrs. Clark was a great teacher, but had a rather substantial sweating problem.

Seventh Grade - Mr. "Asshole" Steward
I posted in another chapter ("Cruel People") about Mr. Stewart. A small gay man (of course we did not realize his sexual preference until a couple of decades later), that seemed friendly, but would whip the living shit out of us for minor infractions. Another rather annoying habit of his was to humiliate anybody that was caught reading a book during class instead of listening to the lecture. When he saw somebody engrossed in a book, he would stop talking and very quietly have everybody slowly gather around this person. Now, you might think that the victim would notice the lack of talking and movement around them, but trust me, when you are consumed in a book, you don't know the rest of the world exists. So anyway, everybody would stand around this person until they finally woke up and looked around. At this point everybody would laugh at them, led by Mr. Asshole.

Eighth Grade - Mrs. Hyde
Mrs. Hyde was a big ol' woman, but reasonably pleasant. She was probably 6'3". She was also an alcoholic and heavy smoker. Once while lecturing, she tried to take a drag off her chalk stick. This was totally cool to us. We talked about that for a week. She used to disappear several times during the day, for reasons not understood to us at that time, but later we realized that it was for smoking and sneaking a shot of Jim Beam. I think Eighth grade might have been the last year of the "Ditto Machine". Any of you over 45 will remember the sweet smell of the purple ink produced on the pages run through the copy machine of that era. That stuff smelled great, and I bet you dollars to donuts it gave us a great buzz that we did not even realize. It was in this grade that my best friend Randall and I achieved the record for wearing the most number of safety glasses at once; 14. You don't think much of that? Ok, butthead, you try to put on 14 pairs of glasses at once.

Cruel People

In 7th grade our teacher Mr. Steward, a short gay man, wielded a rather substantial board and would use it with great zest. After the first lick, you would gray out from the pain. The 2nd caused immediate crying and whimpering. The third did you in. It was a half an hour before you could get in good enough shape to return to class.
But this was not this man's most cruel act.
One day my friend Richard threw a paper ball at the trash can and missed. Mr. Stewart put the paper ball on the floor in the front of the room and made Richard get down on his knees and push it with his nose to the trash can. Richard was humiliated, begin sobbing and had to leave the room
Mr. Stewart, I sincerely hope you burn in hell. You bastard piece of worthless shit.

A long time ago I went with some friends to eat at this famous steak house west of Ft. Worth, "Cattle Barons". Boy did people get moist over that place, so we had to go. It was a big joint that smelled pretty good and looked fun. The four of us sat down and i noticed that there was a huge party of probably 100 people across the room at this infinitely long table. They had a few waiters and were just taking their order. A couple of minutes later our waiter took our order and we started our evening as usual. After about 30 minutes we asked the waiter where our food was, and he said he would check, blah blah. Forty five minutes now, still nothing. I noticed that steaks were being delivered to the small city of people on the other side of the room. 15 minutes later our steaks came. We ate and on the way out, I told the manager that I did not understand how we had to wait while they prepared a meal for 100 people. She said with this little smirk on her face "we serve people in the order that they are seated". The look on her face was like "we are famous and rich and i don't give rat shit about your little problem". I told her we would never be back and she just gave me this little smile and walked away. She was this short little old ugly lady with a crappy typical ft worth puffed up hairdoo.
I wish i could go back in time and take a piss on her, or better yet, burn that place down to the ground.

This one is really nauseating:
I was riding in a car with several people including Roxanne, a girl that was part of our team at a jobsite in Geneva. I was talking about the fact that as a programmer, my work was necessary, but not really important like a fireman or doctor. She looked at me said "oh phillip, you are just having a little mid-life crisis, try to relax". Amazing. i guess she holds no respect for firemen and doctors. What a witch she was.

The brilliance of StarBucks

Here is a conversation between me and one those mindless slopeheads that work behind the counter at Starbucks.

(by the way, I tried to put a tab or spaces in front of the clerks responses to better separate and make this easier to read, but Google Blog does not recognize spaces in front of text. I guess the moron programmers at Google missed the memo)


Me - Hi, I’d like a small coffee
“Ok, one tall coming up”
No, I said a small
“A tall is a small.”
Then what is a medium?
“Grande”
Grande means “huge”.
“Well, it is a medium here.”
So, I fear to ask, what is a large?
“Venti”
Venti means “twenty. I don’t get it”
“Venti’s are 20 ounces.”
How many ounces are “grandes?”
"Sixteen"
So why don’t you call a medium a “sedici”?
What does sedici mean?
Sixteen
(Silence from the slopehead behind the counter)
Do you realize how idiotic this is?
"Um, I don’t know. Do you want a coffee?"
Yes, I’ll take a dodici
"What’s that?"
A small, I mean tall, which is one less than “Huge”, and two less than “twenty”

My Debating Skills (and ensuing rant about religion)

You could put me in a debate competition and give me the position of defending the statement “The earth is round”, and I would get eaten alive. Every single time in my life that I have tried to conflict and argue a subject, even one that I am fluent in, I get torn to shreds. Especially amusing is when I try to debate politics. Hahahaha!!!!! When growing up, my brothers and I were never allowed to argue, my dad would tell us to “be quiet and try to get along”. Excuse me for my tear jerking therapy statement, but it is true. I bet this certainly has something to do with my debating skills.

One time I was discussing religion and my stance was that Christians are pretty pompous and egotistical because they believe that their beliefs are right and all the other religions in the world are wrong. Check out this quote from an independent group that gathers statistics:

A comparative survey of churches and religions - AD 30 to 2200: there are 19 major world religions which are subdivided into a total of 270 large religious groups, and many smaller ones. 34,000 separate Christian groups have been identified in the world.

It seems even the Christians are unable to agree with each other. So anyway, in my discussion with this person, I asked “why did you pick Christianity out of 270 choices”. “Because it is the best choice and only one that is right” was his answer. Considering the fact that Christianity represents only 30% of the world, his answer seems rather pompous and rude. As always, I went on to lose this debate since religions are based on faith. You can’t argue facts with faith. If you get a religious person in a corner they usually just start ranting versus from the bible until you wander off. But I’m no different, I’ll continue to use logic until I’m blue in the face.

Have you ever seen anybody change their mind in a debate based on the other person’s argument? “Bob, you are right! I never thought about that, I now I see I am wrong and you are right”. It’s never happened. People debate and argue, never giving in even to the death. I’ve never seen a single person back down and change sides.

In summary, my debating method now consists of just agreeing with everybody even if I know they are dead wrong. My motto is “unless somebody could get hurt, there is no advantage to arguing with people”. Aggressively trying to convince other people of your opinions is really just an act of insecurity. Those who are secure with where they are in life usually sit back and watch the fight while smiling. Now, quickly I would like to point out an exception to all this; if you are simply goofing around with your friends and say something like “bush is a no talent ass clown”, that’s more of a fun sport among friends. Obviously you cant prove that bush has ever been employed by a circus. Additionally, sometimes it is a good idea to start a debate with a loud opinion in order to get people stirred up and thinking. Sometimes the ensuing arguments can bring new facts to the surface.

My neighbor Arnold, World Champion of Torturing Inanimate Objects.

Arnold lived next door to use when I was growing up, and was highly skilled at torturing anything that did not have a pulse. He was a very kind kid to anything living, especially animals, but if you were a screwdriver, you better run for cover.

Arnold’s earliest influence was his hero, “Jody Dade”, who lived a few doors down. Jody once took a saucepan out back and shot it full of holes with a 9mm pistol because “it burnt his beans”.

Here are a handful of stories and events about Arnold and his skills.

When around 16, he was driving his grandfathers 1960 pickup and it died at a stop sign and would not start. He jumped out and grabbed the jumper cables. Did he proceed to jump start the truck? HA! He took the cables and begin slinging them on the hood in a violent whipping action while shouting “SHIT TRUCK! SHIT TRUCK! SHIT TRUCK!” as loud as he possibly could. He family still has this truck, the scars of it’s past can still be seen on the hood.

He got a “new” truck soon after, a 70s model, and was quite happy with it until one day it stalled at the red light when he pressed on the gas pedal. “Oh, you want to be a city truck, huh?”. From then on, at each light, he would hold the brake and when the light turned green, he would floor it while holding the brake and then release the brake launching it hard. He would run it wide open until the next light when he would wait until the last minute and then stand on the brakes as hard as he could.

In addition, in the mornings, he would would start the motor and immediately put it in gear and floor it, giving the engine no time to warm up.

Small objects that misbehaved, such as nails that bent when hammered, little things that hid from him, and so on, were sentenced to his torture chamber. This special place was an area on the exhaust manifold on his truck engine, the part that gets very, very hot. These objects were taught a lesson by spending various length sentences being burned hot. The severity of the crime committed would dictate the length of the sentence. There were several objects that were “in for life”, but most items got a pardon after a few months or so.

“Abrasion” was a very popular torture method at started up later in his life, maybe in his mid 30s. If you say, drop a screwdriver while working on something, when you lean down to pick it up, you drag the tip on the concrete for a couple of seconds before going back to work. This teaches the tool to not make the mistake again of “jumping out of your hand”.

Once I came home from work and Arnold was out on the patio with some small can with a fire blazing away in it. I walked up in a way that he was not aware that I was watching. I heard him talking to the can. “I’m sorry picante sauce, but if you would not have jumped off the table, I would not be having to set you on fire”.

ANYTHING that ARnold knocked over and made a mess was tortured mercilessly.

Once Arnold got sick with a sore throat. “I’m gonna teach this baby throat of mine a lesson” he announced. He went out back and started gargling with lemon juice and Tabasco, hoping that the acid would damage his throat. But it did not end there. He would gargle, and then start screaming as loud as humanly possible to further damage his throat.

Many objects were destroyed, but if it was essential that it “stay alive”, like a tool, Arnold would use a bit of abrasion or hammer damage, but keep it alive because “It has a job to do”.

Arnold’s “city truck” like all pickups, tended to not handle so well because the back of the truck would bounce quite a bit if the bed were not loaded. This is typical of any truck. Well, Arnold did not think this bouncing was acceptable, so he filled these 3 steel pipes with 300 pounds of concrete and welded them on the rear of the bed to “make it behave”.

Arnold had kind of wavy curly hair, and when it would get a bit long, his bangs would start to hang down around his eyes, so he would get his mom’s sewing scissors out and cut off his “fag curls”. His mom of course would kick his ass for using her sewing scissors.

The lawnmower that arnold used was an old beat up thing. Arnold used to say that lawnmowers were worth no respect and should be worked hard with never an oil change or spark plug cleaning or a wash-down. This mower of his of course started running not too well, and on occasion, the engine would die if you hit high grass. It did this one too many times and Arnold announced "I have had enough of you!". He drained the oil out of the engine and started it up. He then put the throttle at maximum so the engine was just screaming away.

He calmly went inside and enjoyed a sandwich while listening to the sound of agony coming from the tortured mower. After a couple of minutes, the engine go so hot (remember there was no oil in the crankcase), that it seized up and ground to an immediate halt. The next morning it started up fine and has been running ever since.

One time Arnold’s mom set him down on the kitchen counter when he was like, a year old, and while she was talking on the phone, he ate a whole stick of butter. to this day, he still likes to eat butter and also raw meat.

Me and Arnold played golf a few times together when we were in our mid teens, and arnold, as you can guess, did not show the best sportsmanship if things went wrong.

Once, on a par 4 hole, Arnold hauls off and whacks one, big hitter, long. He sent it into the bottom of a 10,000 foot glacier. Oh wait, that’s from CaddyShack. in reality, the ball dropped in a muddy ditch halfway to the green. In normal golf, this is called “casual water”, and you can take your ball out with a 1 stroke penalty. Well, Arnold starts whacking away at the ball, and I stop him and explain the concept of casual water. “NO! I AM GOING TO PLAY FAIR!! He keeps burying his club deeper and deeper in the mude “SEVEN, EIGHT, NINE....”. I walked back to the other guys at the green. “...SIXTEEN! SEVENTEEN! EIGHTEEN!”.

We made him stop at 22 so we could move on. He had successfully dug a pretty nice little pond.

Tennis was similar. With each bad shot, Arnold would whack the ground with the side of his racquet. After a while, the raquet was pretty much square, I am not kidding. And the edges were beat beyond recognition.

When Pizza Hut first came out with their pan pizza (thick) back in the 70s, Arnold started calling them "Dough Hut" and refused to eat there ever again.