I was bored, having blasted through the day's work quota within roughly 1/3 of the workday. This isn't a point to stop working, but rather a point to stop caring, which I promptly did. I focused instead on ideas, ideas I'll never follow to completion, products to sell, ways to market those products, the commercials, catchphrases, spokespeople and everything else I'd need to have a product with a deep consumer identity. I stopped working...no, stopped caring...and started thinking about being an entrepreneur.

My product is simple: it's an low-calorie energy drink with a little fluoride and a lot of fiber. My idea, essentially, was just to create a beverage that would save the world. Concerns of taste were and still are non-existent, because all I want is to make something that would make things like heart surgery obsolete. Can this be achieved with an energy drink? Hmmmm...

...well, I figure (and I'm an idiot, so bear with me) that the caffeine would open the blood vessels, as well as generally get the body functions to work with increased speed, force. The light carbonation in an energy drink would work in coordination with this, thus nearly pressure-cleaning arteries with the fiber and pushing strength into the teeth (one of the early casualties of a soft drink drinker) via carbonated fluoride. A host of B Vitamins would also be included, as well as 5,000 % of the RDA of Vitamin C, a water-soluble vitamin that can be mega-dosed. In cases of supplements, it's good to do that with the water-solubles, as you can't really be guaranteed that the supposed 100% is actually being made available to your cells...

...all right, so that's the beverage. I'm thinking it should have a ton, a shit-load if you will, of fiber in it. I'd easily want to push the 50% RDA threshold, going higher only if doing so would not increase the grittiness quotient of the beverage. No one likes gritty.

This assertion, of course, and the mere fact that I've said the word "fiber," has people thinking "diarrhea." It has my prospective clients (really, just co-workers, but if I thought these bums had enough green to become venture capitalists for my vision, I'd pump them for the cash) seeing brown, seemingly ignoring the capabilities of fiber to clean hardened plaque from artery walls, leading to vast reductions in the occurrence of heart disease. That's unfortunate, but any good entrepreneur has to shift with the market while maintaining the integrity of the product, and so shall I do.

The product will remain exactly the same, which is to say, "I don't know how it'll turn out, but it's going to be like a Sugarfree Red Bull with fiber." My biggest hurdle is the cash, of course, but I'd also like to find an alternative sweetener for the drink, or perhaps sell it in a juice hybrid that will up the caloric payload but provide the sweetness of real juice alongside that juice's nutritional content.

Finding a new sweetener would kill the drink in the water, I believe. High fructose corn syrup is a non-contender, as is crystalline fructose, which is essentially the Crack made by evaporating fructose into crystals. That's what is/was in Vitamin Water, and that's why that shit has to go.

Also out, I'd say, should be cane sugar. It's natural, but a pure sugar source. I do think that whatever sweetener used (if any, actually!) should be derived from an element of the beverage that is naturally sweet...hence, my inclination towards the juice combo. Orange/pineapple is the way to go, I think, but a berry blend would work well, too...the important key in this case is to keep the caloric content at or under 50 calories per 8 oz. serving, so that a can equivalent to, say, a can of Monster Energy Drink, would have 1/2 the calories, tons of health benefits and still be tasty. If I can keep the calorie content low, people will grab it because they automatically equate "low-calorie" with healthy.

Let 'em believe it, and I'll save the world right under their noses!

But as I mentioned, people can't get past the idea that they might have to shit...which, might I mention here, is a wonderful thing to do and should be done 3 times a day, or as many times as you eat a meal in a day. Sure, it's a little stinky, but so is pumping gasoline, and people are still stealing rogue whiffs of that shit and killing their brain cells while filling up the ol' Chevy Suburban! We should all shit more, and that shit could be better for us and the world if we drank my drink, I thank to think!

So, we'll drink it...but what will we call it? Well, in the interests of the infantile set who equate my magical elixir with a liquid stick of shit dynamite, I'm going with the title of ROCKETAss. It's blunt, to the point, all about the poop, and yet not. The "rocket" aspect is the caffeine, despite what the fiber might do to the poop-chute.

And it'll be served like a shot of sorts! Bottle design: the main beverage, with its mixed fiber content and vitamins, will be in a cylindrical can that's similar to a Red Bull can, but with a screw-on, rocket-shaped top instead of an aluminum push-tab. And buttressing (yes, pun intended) the other end of the drink will be the "rocket," an ass-shaped booster shot that, when clicked and poked into the bottom of the beverage can, will initiate the countdown of ROCKETAss...10 seconds until the liquids mix and the UnPACKER is born unto this world!

The UnPACKER is the combo of the fiber, the caffeine, the fluoride, the vitamins, minerals, natural sugars and lightly carbonated goodness. It is the actualized state of ROCKETAss, ROCKETAss taken to the next level, the level where drink becomes religion. I guarantee it's better for you than Christ's blood, you dirty drunks! Now, "BOTTOMS UP!"

When ROCKETAss and the UnPACKER came to be, I realized that a full line of beverages could see the light of day...and BOTTOMS UP is one of them. It's the Lite version of an already-light beverage, guaranteed to taste like pure Hell but only have 10 calories per 8 oz. serving. No ginseng, no taurine, and nothing artificial; just a quick kick in the pants that does the whole body better than good.

Then, what may be the coup de grace, a little 2 oz. piece of nothing called the CABOOSTER SHOT. All the fiber, all the B, all the caffeine, and THAT'S IT! Pound it and get on with your life, you complete fuckin' wimp! Yes, the customer's ass will be alight with bulging veins due to power-poops, but they'll be lighter, brighter, healthier and happier. And hey! They might live long enough to get into those car wrecks that'll kill them after too many Sambuca & Red Bulls...

...some marketing aspects of the beverages:

"ROCKETAss...just fuckin' drink it already, bitch!"

"Hey, BOTTOMS UP! No, Liberace: the drink."

"Before they run a train on you, make sure you get your CABOOSTER SHOT. You'd hate to be the weak end, wouldn't you?"

"Hi, I'm 'Big Poppa Pump' Scott Steiner, also known as The Big Bad Booty Daddy. When I want my freaks ready for a night on the Steiner Recliner, I call them 9 hours in advance and demand that they down a 6-pack of ROCKETAss. At only 100 calories a can, they won't even feel guilty enough to puke it up, and then I can go to town on one clean, empty ass once I'm done pummeling the ever-loving Hell out of Kurt Angle or Sting. Holla, if ya hear me!"

"BOTTOMS UP, before you're face down."

"Drink CABOOSTER SHOT before you drive, and they'll think that the .16 BAL is due to faulty equipment! You'll still get hauled in on suspicions of being a Meth-head, but hey! Life is a series of trade-offs...learn it now, before prison!"


Okay, so there's work yet to be done. Perhaps a little more tact in the PR department, and I do still need that venture capital. I figure that, for about 10 grand, I can buy a clean bathtub and enough raw materials to tinker with the recipe for a good year. And like I said, it's going to save the fucking world...so if you're with me, just find me and cut me a check. Blank is fine, but if you want to put in numbers, that'll work, too. Silent or vocal, you'll be a trusted partner in the burgeoning goliath that will eventually be ChrisCo., and David's slingshot isn't going to do jack shit, yo!

Think about it, friends and investors...ROCKETAss! If this doesn't make you the twitchy fuck in the club that SOMEHOW still gets laid, nothing will!

I've written about all of this stuff, probably in much the same way, in previous blogs on here, so if you've read my opinions on religion and don't want the story that drummed them back up to the surface today, please feel free to overlook this entry. Also, this is posted here and on Facebook, so read it here, there, or both, but don't feel compelled or obligated to do any of it. Hope you're all having great days, and if you're not, message me or something. You're a good person, and if there's anything I can say that might help, I'd like to say it for you.

Okay, there's that and here's this: enjoy!

***

When I recently took an employment extension and a demotion in regards to job duties, I wasn't dreading a whole lot. When it started, I dreaded that I'd not be getting proper sleep for a couple more months due to the sheer anxiety caused by being at the crossroads of needing a paycheck and being better than my job description indicates. I dreaded the prospect of yet another new manager, moving from the friends I'd made in my dissolved department and the simple fact that I was being moved over to the side of the office that always gets hot for no reason. We'll say "ghosts" are the reason and the mystery will be solved, so we don't have to worry about that anymore, but the rest of the things were a series of kneadable knots in my gut that would pass with time.

They have, too. I love where I sit, I have friends with whom I can joke and converse, the job is so easy that I can devote my brain to focusing on other writing projects and possible on-stage routines and that paycheck is as helpful as it's ever been. The only problem: I sit next to Her.

No, I'm not assigning the non-traditional feminine gender rule to the Alpha and the Omega. Rather, I speak of a woman, a creature with an amazingly womanly body but an astonishingly childlike mind to go with it. She grates on my nerves almost every day, although I'd actually consider her a friend. We talk often and about many things, share music and spend a very satisfactory amount of time laughing each day, which is a good amount of all I want in a friend. The problem, of course, is that she's a Christian.

Now, before the "well, I'm a Christian so what do you have to say about me?" horseshit begins, let me state, if not for the first time then for the 10th, that I grew up Christian. I believe in God, an omnipotent being, a creator. My difficulties also come in that I believe in science.

And I don't believe in one God, either. If you like Allah, we're cool. Vishnu, Bramha and Shiva more your style? Fantastic! The Mesopotamian water demon Tiamat? Super! Something Zoroastrian or Gnostic? You are great, and I want to be your friend.

The same follows suit if you're agnostic or atheist, if you're sustained by your simple faith alone or you root for the underdog and are a Satanist. I like it all, because it seems like it does a lot of good for a lot of people to have the idea in their heads. It may cause war, death, bigotry, bias, and plain ol' hatred, but not always and in every case. And it happens to change people, turns those who would otherwise be fighters into lovers. It helps the sick and the poor, allows people to break bread together, have common ties that extend beyond the family, and generally have more human experience and more love than it does to believe nothing, feel passionately for nothing. Really, religion and the love of a god (or lack thereof) is the ultimate hobby in this world, and for as much as I don't like some aspects of it, I would never think to wish away the magic for the science, never give up the story for the straight report. Life's about a lot of things, and we'll never figure out what all of those things are, so let's not exclude angles that still hold a lot of promise, eh?

Anyway, She sits next to me and is all about the Jesus, talking about how giving your life to the Lord and the acceptance of Jesus Christ as one's only personal savior is the only road to Heaven, and I absolutely abhor the line of thinking. I don't have a distaste for the story, necessarily, but when people believe shit like that with their whole hearts, it does nothing but plant seeds of arrogance in a person's heart. Heaven's not a clique...but if it is, give me Hell. The practice of exclusion in this world has done all the damage, not the stories or the faith. You tell me that my good deeds, my love, my honesty and life not wasted aren't good enough to ensure me an eternal paradise, should there be one? Suddenly, sir or ma'am as the case may be, you have to go fuck yourself.

Like I said, I'm a works-based kind of guy. If I'm going to accept that there's a "true" afterlife (I'll explain the quotes on "true" in a second...kinda. Like in jazz music, it'll be in the words I don't say, I'm sure), then it's only fair to humans, who are supposedly created in God's image, to be allowed access to that glorious afterlife through what was done with the live given to each of us. You waste it? Keep on wasting it; you're not needed where the industrious are. But if you left this life with more love and joy in it than when you arrived, if you helped, if you were simply humble and gracious to those who both helped and praised you, you're in. This isn't Prohibition, and I don't need some dumb fucking secret password to get into the speakeasy.

But eventually, this conversation continued and I ultimately had to explain that I don't believe as She believes, never will, think that her beliefs are arrogant and myopic, and don't provide me with the solace, theories or happiness that mine do. This led to me declaring what my faith actually is...

...again, I've mentioned it before, but I'm trying to take a very long, if not permanent vacation from the idea of God, for myself. Religion and its most fervent followers haven't provided me with the things for which I seek in this world, and the thought that a God, a being who can help me is seemingly all around me yet doesn't lift a finger to ease my suffering or that of anyone else is a painful, angering thought to me. It makes me think that a God is cruel, malicious, or perhaps just criminally negligent. Wanting no more of that in my life, I choose to no longer believe, or perhaps more appropriately, to willfully ignore going forward in this life of mine.

She didn't like that, and then got on about how Christianity was the first religion, no matter what I say about how many ideas for Christianity were so cleverly lifted from Buddhist philosophy, with Her reasoning being that Adam and Eve were the first two people, they're in the Bible, therefore...Christianity! I wondered for a second if She had ever heard of the Torah, or knew that it essentially is the Old Testament, so if She is going with Her Old Testament bullshit, then She has to concede that Judaism is the "first religion," even though she's so fucking wrong that I drive a Hummer through the holes in her logic. Without even going into the hundreds of faiths of hundreds upon thousands of other tribes and cultures that were contemporaries of or even pre-dated Judaism, I called "Shenanigans" on this blind-minded fool in roughly 2 seconds.

She continued ranting, but was flustered, which made me flustered. Her arguments were grounded in circular nonsense and incongruent conditional statements, which ultimately made me pull out the trump cards...oh, fun.

I have two, really: two beliefs grounded either in science, faith, both or more, and they tend to make most people feel awful, although they are my true beliefs and I find comfort in having them. The first is pretty simple, and it's just that I think that people come back to life for moments of seconds, "fingersnaps," as I like to call them, after they die. She started talking of zombies, and this obviously has nothing to do zombies because she's occasionally a moron who, as I so eloquently put it this afternoon, "earned a degree in Dumbass." All that this belief is actually about is the idea that, once you've died, the remnants of the electricity in your body still "flicker," and people "live" again for mere instants. They're dead, but maybe they get enough time to know it!

What I like most about it is "how long does it last?" Is it a moment on an emergency room stretcher? A blink in a body bag? Can it be at your wake, in the furnace, in the grave? Holy fucking shit, that's so wild to me...it's scary, too. People like to think of death as the end, and I'm sure it largely is, but the energy has to go somewhere besides the process of evacuating the body's remaining waste matter, doesn't it? I think the body still sparks, for miniature instants, and terrifying or not, I think that's wildly cool.

The second is my favorite, and it's my favorite because I happen to think it sounds tremendously reasonable, gives a sound explanation for an afterlife in a scientific world, and pisses off people who so obnoxiously believe in their God-hobby that they should be back-handed one good, swift, hard time, with the phrase "shut the fuck up, bitch-ass!" to follow in a powerful and commanding tone. Think James Earl Jones crossed with Barry White and filtered through Freddy Krueger...

...we all die, and if it's not an immediate thing, our brains often atrophy due to a lack of oxygen. After just 4 minutes, if my memory serves, brain damage begins to occur. Not too long after, a person is brain-dead and could no longer live without the amazing medical advances we've made as a species...and the cruel, sadistic ways we use them to keep people alive because all humans have far too much trouble losing the flesh, faces and smiles of their loved ones.

Now, if the death is immediate, such as a crush-all-your-organs-at-once car accident or something, I'm not sure if this happens, but even in the Norse tradition, a warrior could be no happier or in his life than if he could fight and die for his king. If that warrior's fear of being hacked to death by a warring tribe with a lot of ill intent was to such a degree that said warrior ran from the fight, his life would be miserable in that he'd be shunned from his society at large, but also miserable in that Valhalla was there for the taking, and he was somehow not good enough to have it. In life, he could be miserable forever, but in a 10-second death he could have pure bliss in this world...and beyond?

Truthfully, I don't buy into Valhalla, or Heaven or anything else one wants to call an afterlife as a destination. George Carlin said "you go where you wanna go," and that's exactly what I think is true. In those moments, when the brain is dying along with the rest of the body, shock is taking over, as is fear. Brain cells are both dying and shooting around more information than ever at the same time, and such a condition would easily cause hallucinations of great scale, scope and power. That's where it begins.

If you're dying, and you love the Lord Jesus with all of your heart, you're afraid to die, but you gave your life to God and that means you know you're about to meet God and spend the rest of eternity in Heaven. It'll happen.

If you're dying, and you consider yourself a true waste of a person who was awful to everyone he or she ever knew, lied to get everything she or he ever had and did the world a true injustice by living in it, you might be thinking you don't deserve a Heaven; you deserve to burn forever, to pay for your crimes and be left with your guilt for all time. It'll happen.

If you believe it's all bullshit, or you never got the proof you needed, may I suggest thinking of your favorite place, favorite time in this life, with all of your friends and your most-loved family with you for all of eternity? Or, at least, a never-ending supply of Vicodin. Just believe in the power of the Schwartz, because the strongest thoughts in your mind are the exact ones that are going to be amplified in those last moments spawned among the living.

And those thoughts, the last thoughts you'll ever have, will dwindle down to just one final thought, one scene or collection...like a painting or collage of the whole big, damned thing. The last thought, I think, doesn't disappear; barring the fingersnaps, I think that the last thought has no choice but to go on forever. Where's the marker, the indicator that a thought is passing and a new one is coming? What will mark any end, any beginning ever again in your mind?

This, to me, is God. It's Allah, it's Buddhism and the Zoroastrian stuff and Ra and Isis and Osiris, all hanging out and drinking white grape juice while talking about the last episode of Deadliest Warriors. And since it's so absolutely private, and the hallucination becomes the most realistic thing left in the dying person's world, I think it's valid. It fits science, because we know that the brain is in such a state immediately before death (any of my doctor friends, please feel free to correct me of offer opinions on this assertion). It fits New-Agey horseshit, because it can so easily explain things like near-death experiences and the power they have in changing someone's life; ever met someone who had either a really great or really horrible Acid trip? Are they different to you at all?

Mostly, though, it fits religion. No matter how we congregate, share our stories, beliefs and loves for lords, the relationship each of us has with her or his god (or lack thereof) is ultimately one of the most private things we have. It's what they can't take from you in jail, can't write out of your severance package when you're laid off , and can't exclude from your Social Security benefits. That relationship is often the most important thing in a person's life...and while it may seem like a slight to call that relationship's end a "hallucination," I'm absolutely certain it happens.

If the best thing happens for you and only you, and it happens forever and no one knows but you, does it happen? Well, Eva Longoria might not know about it, and Jason from Customer Service certainly doesn't even give a shit as he tokes up on his second paid-15 of the day. But you know it happens...for sure, you do. It's yours, it's the last thing that's yours, and it gets to go on forever. Isn't that exactly what Heaven or Hell is? Is it any less Heaven or any more Hell if it just originates from each and every one of us?

We're more than we think: far more and far better. We are amazing, no matter our status as animals. For some reason, She thought this was a completely ludicrous line of thought, and so we started talking about other religions, like Scientology or Mormonism. For not liking their auspicious beginnings and questionable moral stances as it relates to natural human freedom, I have a certain amount of respect for Mormonism. They've built a very strong core, maintain provisions to last them through 12 months of hard times (or end times, I guess), and their PR/Marketing departments are fucking awesome, because they've done more to build the brand in the past decade than Oreo and all condom brands COMBINED!

And that's almost where we ended...there was the observation, collectively made between She and I, that both Scientology and Mormonism are based on rather shitty books (which isn't to say that any of the other holy books are flawless; pick one up and read any two pages to catch my drift). It led into a joke that's one of the best brain-party/sheer boredom games of all time.

The joke: what does The Book of Mormon, Spider-Man 3, Return of the Jedi and our San Diego production hub have in common? They all prove that the third part of anything fucking sucks.

The game: what “part 3's” are actually good? I came up with Rocky III and Nightmare on Elm St. 3, and otherwise found myself largely stumped...your thoughts? Suggestions? Additions? We played that for the last 45 minutes of work today, and it did one thing that even massive amounts of caffeine couldn't: I'm finally awake.

I once swore to myself that I'd never do an update to fill people in on where I've been, were I to ever take an absence from writing blogs on MySpace. It's something that's always seemed silly to me, as most people understand that there's a real world out there full of things that need to get done or, better yet, should be done because they're exciting, fun, interesting, profitable, healing, and above all, emotionally necessary.

I've been doing a lot of that, and that's why I haven't been here.

Spilling the beans: it's no longer a secret to plenty of people on here that I had a very close relationship with a very wonderful woman on here, and it went sour. What began as a friendship turned into something more for about a day, and it was from 500 miles away. We both realized the mistake, tried to correct it, and I don't know her end, but I couldn't turn off my switch.

She's still gorgeous, of course, but I learned a lot about her that I didn't like in the year that we tried to reclaim an honest-to-goodness friendship. It's tough, when you meet a smart, funny, intelligent, kind, beautiful woman who is trying to make something of her life and seemingly in the same boat as you. When it finally proves to everyone involved that it just won't click, can't click like hopes might have hoped, it doesn't mean that the feelings disappear. It doesn't mean that a guy, even a guy with a girlfriend he loves, still doesn't feel like a broken-hearted wreck. And it doesn't mean that he can so easily forgive the other woman for her part in not ending the relationship on an adult level...

...but I'm talking about me: my faults, my mistakes. I fell hard, and those feelings lingered for a long time. I wasn't content with being a neutered pal, and so I had to be done with her. I said as much, and she had to be done with me. So now it's done. I hope she's happy, I hope she hopes I'm happy, but I don't know either answer. What is essential now is that I can still hope, but the thought absolutely can not reside in my head any longer. It's a squatter, and it must be kicked the fuck out...so I have. I write about her on occasion, but I've felt such peace in these past few weeks, not thinking of her until such a time that becomes almost a forced thought. She's no longer just "there." This, if you've ever been obsessed with some woman, whether she deserves it or not, is an amazing thing.

And it's the first amazing thing of many! I felt the pain of this, I felt true loneliness and misery regarding the loss of her friendship, of no longer having that cool novelty in my life of saying that she and I were close. But with each day, I gained clarity, perspective. I began to sleep better again. I began to hurt less, physically speaking. My chronic back pain began to lessen and the iron-like stiffness in my neck melted way.

Tonight, I'm awake because I'm motivated, excited to write and enjoying a ton of new movies I've bought in the past little while. Horrors, comedies, documentaries and dramas, and I'm going to sit here until well after the sun rises and watch them all as I write away, picking up fragments of stories, alternating attention and multitasking like a world champ.

This is what pleases me most. With my new-found clarity, with my ability to finally rest after so long, after over a year of dealing with this perpetual...well...whatever it was...I'm not just writing. I'm tackling projects. And as they're getting tackled, they also happen to be getting finished.

I've finished a collection of 13 short stories which are just going under the working title of The Dirty Baker's Dozen. This has been a project which I've begun and completed since the beginning of March, this year. I'm proud of the stories, which are all genre-defying and maintaining some of my favorite writing devices (an obscenely unreliable narrator, for example) while breaking a lot of new ground for the kind of work that I've done. Some seem like essays, some like prose poetry some like traditional tales and some more like transcripts, journals, interviews. And some have all of that put together. This was so necessary, to build something new and complete it, something untied to everything I've done before, from online posts to stories written for lovers past and present, expanded college essays run amok to ghost-written material for friends and partners.

But there's this book, and then there are two true crown jewels, books of which I'm not only proud, but confident that they could be truly successful. One is a comedy/self-help/road journal hybrid with a title that will be absolutely unmistakably mine when folks see it on a shelf. The other is a children's book on which my girlfriend and I have been working for a year...in theory. These past few weeks, the two of us have cracked down and hashed out the story, tons of artwork and what seems like 1,000 ideas for the first book and books beyond

When she presented it at her college's senior gallery exhibit this past Wednesday, it drew rave reviews from peers and professional artists alike, both for its groundbreaking, excellent artwork and what has been described as a funny, cute, wonderfully characterized written story. My girlfriend and I are more excited than ever to work on these books, which will be much easier to do now that both of them, my self-help melange and our Round With The Champ, are both complete!

The first drafts of both books are finished; one book took me over a year, the other over 6 months, and this past weekend I happened to finish both. This put me in what I have to acknowledge as one of the best moods I've ever experienced, and everything this week has held for me has only improved that mood. Job interviews suddenly abound, new friends have been made, old friends reconnected, love is strong with everyone for whom I deeply care, and I've found my heart again, found it with my partner in crime, in writing, and in love.

It took a hard month, a lot of writing, a lot of pain and a firm decision to finally let go, but I have found a measure of that buddhist Middle Path. I have finally understood that I am both in motion and perfectly still at twice the rate as I am one or the other, and that this applies across the spectrum of all feelings, all states of being. I've forgiven the woman, I've forgiven myself. We're done with one another, and that helps. See...we had a nice little online divorce: she deleted me from Facebook, I blocked her on here. Perfect split of the assets, wouldn't you say?

I miss her sometimes. As I said to start, she truly is funny, smart, witty, interesting to me, unfathomably gorgeous and one of the many who ultimately didn't like the wares I was selling. But I realize now that I'd miss this feeling more, of productivity and clarity, of simple fun and honest smiles, and of honesty all around. For myself, for my peers, for my family, and for her should she ever want it, I finally have an all-encompassing honesty to give.
 
It's not an honesty that flays me open before a frothingly rabid audience of ticket-holders to the freakshow. It's not exposing every dirty secret I feel compelled to tell as a measure of penance and every flaw that makes the wall of insecurity that I've built so high. My honesty now tells you that I would like you to like me, and that I've tried to give too many people what they want for too long. From now on, try what I am; if it's too bitter, too sweet, too sour or just plain makes you sick, put it back. Sure, it'll bum me out, but you need your honesty just like I need mine. I may blame myself for a lot of things, and a lot of things might be my fault, but my punishment is longer mine to exact. If someone wants to fuck me up, it's time to "let 'em try."

The immediate future involves two interviews on Monday for new jobs, jobs which are very lucrative and jobs for which I am unquestionably qualified. I've been ready for this expansion on my life for far too long, and so it's time for that to begin. Then there are second drafts & cover designs on the 1st two books, the 3rd book project on which I'm working (a cookbook), more short stories, a possible book of comedic poetry in sonnets, epics, limericks and haiku (so maybe 4 books of fucking poems? Okay, maybe not...), tons of movies to watch, a scriptwriting idea that has me very excited, good comedians on tour (Penn & Teller in May!), great concerts to see (Dredg! Lacuna Coil! Emilie Autumn!), open mics and amateur comedy nights to perform, lots of sex to be had, new recipes to cook, friends to know better, my family to see, my sister's wedding to attend, and maybe even a few rounds of Tetris and Ms. Pac-Man. The world, for the first time in so long, feels open. I simply can't wait.

There's some bullshit "Behind the Music" or "Behind the Musician" or "Behind the Douche" show on some channel, probably MTV or VH-1, if those even still exist; thankfully, I honestly don't know anything about anything on which I'm commenting at this very moment.

It's there though, and its topic this week is Snoop Dogg! Yippee! I don't know nearly enough about how Calvin Broadus smoked lots of pot and killed people while buddying up to Dr. Dre and market-whoring himself to everything in the entire fucking universe, so this show is not only going to be vastly entertaining, but also richly rewarding in its in-depth commentary and sheer volume of newly unearthed information. Not only that, but apparently I can see it whenever I want, because it's On Demand! Who cares about life now? Gimme that Snoop Dogg!

Okay, now that I've been a bit of what I hate, which is a snarky Internet media reviewer, allow me to make clear why it is that I'd decide to write about this in the first place. I honestly don't mind that there's a show about Snoop Dogg on TV, that people will watch it, like it, etc....what bugs me about the whole thing was a simple quote, a snippet from the show's commercial that caught me in what must be the midst of one of my least-pleasant moods in a long time.

In the sound byte, Snoop says something to the effect of "yeah, like, I was the class clown, but I was also fly." And in that moment, I totally fucking lost it. I couldn't even explain the rage I was feeling, but I just started freestyling all over Snoop's bullshit, right then and there, staring at my TV while standing around in my underpants.

"All right Snoop, time for you to shut the fuck up! I get it, you were the class clown, but you were also fly. You were the rebel and the prom king. You were gay, but you still got all the pussy. You were a star on the football team, but you were really kind of a nerd. You smoked pot but got straight A's. Even though you were out gang-banging 'til 3 in the morning, you were able to make it to church on time and help out after the late service for Sunday School. You were a total pacifist, even though you could beat anyone's ass. You were a Democrat, yet you could easily also be a Republican.

"Yeah Snoop, you were a total dork. Yet somehow, you were voted 'Most Likely to Be The Most Awesome Person Anyone Will Ever Know!' You were a hardcore rapper with the heart of a romantic poet. You loved your mama more than Tupac loved his mama, but you'd cut her clean if it came down to it. You used to speed all the time, but never got a ticket. You could drink everyone under the table, but didn't touch a drop because you had the fucking light of Jesus shining in your life!

"Fucking Hell, Snoop! You were the best at everything you ever tried, but you still remained humble after all these years. You praised the Lord, even though you have to keep it a secret that you actually ARE the Lord. Your friends are all better than anyone I'll ever know, you're a Hindu beefeater, you work on the Sabbath, you can do 500 sit-ups while Fat Joe sits on your lap, Jay-Z's currently eating the perimeter of your anus, Donald Trump comes to you for financial advice, you named the Oakland Raiders, soccer was first played as a tribute to you, you own Jamaica, you wrote all of Dostoevsky's novels, John Grisham is your grandson, you stole fire from Heaven and threw Sisyphus boulder into outer space to make the fucking moon, and your a Leo and a Taurus at the same fucking time! Fuck you, Snoop Dogg! You fucking piece of shit!"

And then, the commercial was over...it was immediately followed by a commercial for MTV's "The Hills," which I always assumed was a fake show...but it's a reality show? Is it a worked shoot, like Japanese MMA? I don't get it...I mean, I always used to think that the show "My Super Sweet 16" had to be faked, just because I couldn't fathom humans who were actually that awful. But then, I took a walk through the King of Prussia mall and found out just how wrong I was. Maybe my problem is just that I no longer understand TV programming. Perhaps I missed one too many meetings, and now I just don't know what the Hell is happening? Anyway you slice it, it shows a remarkable...well, a remarkable something...when Snoop Dogg is pissing me off more than a dozen teenage blondes.

Rappers, here's the thing: we all get it. You were the best at everything you ever did, you're all moguls and entrepreneurs, and your lives were hard but now you have lots of money. Good for you. Now shut the fuck up and run your businesses. Give us your documentaries when you're dead. That's when the story's over, right?