Fart Dictionary coming soon!

Available on Amazon.com (Internationally) for pre-order NOW!

Farts Can Kill You!

Watch the video…

http://youtu.be/bwxEQo_fjX4

Network Video Employees: Enter Here…

Excerpt from my current book:

Hello, God.  Can You Spare a Few Bucks?

Thank You for Coming,

Please Exit Through the Door at the Rear

             When I enrolled in a few business classes my freshman year of college, Professor Been-There-Done-That made no mention of the economic indicators we later encountered in 2007, for instance:

• Boss Man is spending more time in the office
• Boss Man’s office door is most often shut
• Boss Man sold his boat
• Boss Man cancelled his Country Club membership
• Boss Man is getting phone calls from people who want to know why he hasn’t made a lease payment on his vehicle
• Boss Man has completely lost his sense of humor
• Boss Man doesn’t pay for conventions any longer

 

      Our office economic barometer changed suddenly. And, as our luck would be, it changed during Connie’s and my decision to refinance the house, and add a 400 sq. ft. room and a screened-in pool. It would have been nice to hear from Boss Man’s mouth that things were taking a bad turn, especially since he knew of our home improvement plans. But, Boss Man had rapidly changed to Paranoid Boss Man-afraid that Connie and I would steal all of the heavily guarded Video Store/Tanning Salon trade secrets. No need to point a finger, plainly, we weren’t paying attention. We’d found the (narrow) yellow brick road, but failed to draw back the curtain to see which levers the wizard was pulling.

It was the week of both our birthdays, and being Aries, we normally would plan a birthday “week”. Aries is the infant of the Zodiac, and having our birth events merely two days apart most always resulted in at least a 48 hour celebration. But, the lack of competent (competent: the ability to comprehend days of the week on a current calendar and possess the intelligence to tell time by use of a wall clock, watch, cell phone, etc.) employees left us stuck on Friday afternoon at one of our remote salons, swabbing up pools of oily, Channel #5 sweat left by wrinkled, 60 year old, large-house-cat-but-wannabe-cougars from L.A. (Lower Alabama). Not that we were above that type of work, but it was our birthday weekend and we didn’t want to kick it off smelling like sanitized burnt skin on the ride home. Paranoid Boss man phoned us on our way back into town, Connie answered, and the conversation went something like this:

Paranoid Boss Man: I need you both to come by the office before you head home.

Connie: It’s late Friday afternoon, and I told you we’d be taking time…

Paranoid Boss Man: It’s important, see you in a few.

Click.

The conversation should have gone like this:

Paranoid Boss Man: Just wanted to call and tell both of you Happy Birthday, and thanks for filling in out there today. I know you had better things to do than slop sweat all afternoon. By the way, make sure you stop by the office Monday morning, there’s some important stuff we need to go over first thing.

Connie: No problem. Have a great weekend.

But, that’s not what happened, and the explosion that ensued shook Northwest Florida to a near 8.5 on the Richter scale.

It was a blur, like a slow-motion car wreck, and I was strapped motionless in the baby carrier.  Boss Man was seated behind Connie’s desk, and twelve years worth of personal belongings had been lumped into two small boxes. “I can’t afford you guys anymore”, was all he could mutter. No explanation, no apology. “I’ll need your keys, cell phone, and credit cards”. I was in brain-lock mode, I’d never been fired before, and the unexpectedness took logic and clear thought out of my head. I looked at Connie, but she didn’t return my stare. And I swear, right before my eyes, she transformed into Al Pacino-the Scarface Al Pacino-she was full blown Tony Montana. I was initially frightened to witness my little love flower metamorphose into a walking and talking  angry dictionary of nasty words, suggestive death warrants and threats involving family, business, and any chance Boss Man will ever have again at being a person worthy of life here on earth. She grabbed a Taco Town plastic knife out of her box and aired a few Zorro-like swipes in his direction. She was pissed. And me, well, I was a little turned on. Her display of rage was, in an odd, caught-in-the-moment sort of a way, kind of cool to watch. But this was going to get bad fast, so I grabbed our boxes and my (hot) wife and made our way out the back door. The only words I could muster for Boss Man were, “Karma’s a bitch, dude”.

For those of you who’ve never experienced ‘shock’, it’s a state of being severely disturbed emotionally. Blood volume and pressure are reduced and redirected, causing, in Connie’s case, irrational thought and mindless behavior. Our ride out of the parking lot and down the road was like being locked in a semi-padded moving cage with a mentally unstable epileptic having a very bad day. Words like ‘kill’ and ‘bastard’ and ‘revenge’ echoed through Connie’s rolled up car window. The old lady in the vehicle next to us ran the red light. But, being the more logical of the two, I managed to calm her down enough to set our sights on reality. We had calls to make, but…oh…yeah…we have no cell phone.

My Dad had passed away the year before, which meant frequented visits from Mom at our workplace. So the sensible task to tend to first was let her know what happened. The last thing I needed was for Mom to show up at the office, find out we were fired, and go into cardiac arrest surrounded by video clerks with no recollection of the CPR training we gave them. Mom deserved a better place of death than the foyer in a video store. She was a worry-wart, and number two on my list who would need mental sedation. I put myself at number three in need-I’m poster boy for the three C’s: calm, cool, collected. I handle things like this better, and have been teaching Connie how to do the same over the years. Problems, such as the one we just encountered, can in my opinion be compared to scenes from the Wizard of Oz. For whatever reason, I relate a whole lot of life to Dorothy and ToTo. In this case, it was the song they sang: Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! For me, this translated into Mortgage, car payment and food, oh my! Mortgage, car payment and food, oh my! Putting life’s jagged cuts into catchy show tunes just makes the bad sound less significant. Try it sometime.

After spilling the afternoon’s events to Mom, I picked her up off the kitchen floor and fed her and Connie a Xanax. I had things to do and neither of them could get past the anger enough to be of any assistance. I made the necessary call to the unemployment office-no time like the present to file a claim, right? Living paycheck to paycheck, regardless of your financial worth, is a definite disadvantage when unemployment smacks you in the face. A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned, and that was about all we had, a copper collection in a water cooler jug behind the front door. Hindsight is twenty-forty (I don’t believe in perfection).

So we did what any good Aries would do: we temporarily ignored our woe, counted our blessings, and commenced procurement of beer, wine, and party supplies for the Big Birthday Bash. And the cell phone was not going to ring this weekend.

I had “The Mouse” by the Balls

An excerpt from my current book project:

Hello, God. Can you Spare a few Bucks?

How I landed a professional position with The Mouse still evades me. It must have been the big words I used on my resume. Regardless, I had “made it” too. I was in cahoots with the Big Cheese, and shared a building with brainy MIT grads and so called Top-Professionals-in-Their-Field. And Walt’s predecessors liked to spend money. They threw bucks around like nobody’s business. And much to my liking, my well-worded resume apparently gave them the notion that I was extremely adept at structuring intelligent paragraphs and selling something (mainly me).

“Hmmm. How could we use this Mechanically-Inclined-Dude-With-Expert-Bullshit-Writing-Abilities?” one suit said to the other.

“Let’s ask him to write 100 page proposals to attain funding for park-wide improvements thus resulting in a more pleasurable experience for our guests so we can raise ticket and accommodation prices”, replied suit number two.

So, basically, Disney funded me to, well, BS my way to justifying my employ; I was awarded free reign of the parks at any hour, a huge budget, and job security. I had The Mouse by his little mouse balls. But don’t get me wrong, I worked. Many times I spent the pre-dawn hours hunched in muddy ground behind a Jungle Cruise native shining a flashlight up his butt to determine why we’re using $300 aircraft bearings to make this little brown guy bend his knees three inches. Other days I spent chasing down pneumatically launched firework duds through an orange grove when it’s 100 degrees Fahrenheit with 200% humidity outside. There were fun times too. I was sanctioned to “improve” the ride experience of the “Small World” attraction. I spent thousands of dollars on vibration equipment to gauge the on/off ramp of the ride boats; the goal being to eliminate the bumpity-bump the guests were experiencing. As it turned out, all I needed was a video recording of the female guests (the ones with ample boobs) to demonstrate the “before my improvement” and the “after my improvement”. The suits were convinced, and entertained.

But I soon tired of staring across mahogany tables at Michael Eisner look-a-likes….

The Birth of the Fart Dictionary

The Birth of The Fart Dictionary

It was another day of walking counter-clockwise around the pool, grudgingly coaxing creativity out of my left hemisphere and onto paper, and I’m duly rewarded with email number ninety-seven stating “…though your writing has merit…”, or “…it’s an interesting concept but…”  Rejection, I’ve prepared myself for this. It’s part of the process. But that particular day was a bad day, or maybe a good day, to tell me “no”.

            I settled on my patio and commenced irrigating my self doubt with a bucket full of chilly lagers and an overall screw it attitude. I’m rarely a pessimist, but today I was ticked. So I did what any great writer wannabe would do and asphyxiated my recent refusals in a cooler full of beer. I deserved it. The sun will rise tomorrow.

            Aaahhh, and there, across the table from me: my lovely wife in all her elegance. That beautiful, always supportive, love of my life who just carelessly and shamelessly annihilated me in several games of backgammon. She didn’t just win; she kicked my brain, and did it so gleefully. Great, more fuel to the proverbial fire of my currently sedated writing skills. My mood went from foul to downright rotten and stinky. I leaned back in my chair, after clearly stating that I’ll never play backgammon again and, well, I farted. She giggled, and a beer-headed, foggy idea came to me.

“What kind of fart would you call that?” I asked.

I quickly answered my own question.  “That was a defeated fart. A fart intended solely and maliciously for your board game competitor because they just beat the crap out of you.”

She laughed, I laughed. I grabbed my journal and my Webster’s and spent the rest of the afternoon slogging sweaty beers and letting the fart definitions fly. The world soon became a fart canvas for my somewhat deranged, minus a few brain cells, imagination. I could do this all night – drink, write about farts, and laugh hysterically with my soul mate.

The next morning I sleepily rumbled to my desk for a possible accomplish-something-literary-breakthrough, and noticed my scribbling from the day before. The semi-inebriated handwriting was difficult to recognize at first, but the words lunged at me. Read me. Read me again. This is funny stuff. I’ve thoroughly entertained myself. Was this a sample of the artistic goop that’s sitting in my already strange-sense-of-humored soul? And it’s released by hops and barley? I hope not. Old age runs in my family and I’ll need an intact liver.

So I challenged myself. Do it again. Sit your hung-over, no breakfast, caffeine butt down and have a repeat performance. I randomly picked letters of the alphabet and created more original fart definitions. I read the business section of the paper and came up with not-so-politically-correct farts. I walked my dog and thought of farts. I sat in the bathroom while my wife showered; talking so incessantly about farts I had to grab my pen and journal. This stuff was oozing out of me faster than chorizo out of a used car salesman on a laxative overdose. And it was funny.

            Fast forward six months and I’ve found an agent, editor, and publisher who believe in my three-legged humor. Did I think a dictionary of farts would be my premiere literary work? No. Am pleased with myself? Yes, I think so.

And don’t forget, everybody farts. Except Zoey Deschanel, there’s just no way.

Fart Dictionary Introduction

My book, The Fart Dictionary, is slated for release September 2011 by Running Press. Big thanks to my editor for eyeing my oddball humor. The following is an introduction to the book…

Everybody farts, even movie stars. Did you know Jennifer Anniston owns a Fart Machine? True story. Imagine (back in the day) Jen and Brad sitting around a gigantic fireplace in their humongous Beverly Hills mansion…farting at one another? Benjamin Franklin even wrote a book titled “Fart Proudly”. Wasn’t he a fore founding father of our country? And he had time to take out of his busy political career to write a fart book? Makes you think, huh? I guess he was a fore-founding-fart-father of the great U.S. of A. They should change the seventh grade history books. Not to mention the tabloid headlines.

We’ve all experienced the same old fart jokes, antics and social discomforts. But we’ve limited ourselves by hiding it. It’s a human trait we all have in common. Farting. So, readers, I challenge you. The next time you fart, or bear witness a fart, take note of your surroundings, purpose, or social inconvenience. Label it, as I’ve done in The Fart Dictionary. From A to Z, there’s something for everyone. Embrace your farts (not figuratively) and make it a laughable event. And remember, everybody farts. Except Zoey Deschanel, there’s just no way.   

 “…and but a few stems of asparagus may define our impressionable public character…”

 – Benjamin Franklin

 

You Can’t Break My Funny Bone

The following is an excerpt from my current book project

Broke Not Broken or You Can’t Break My Funny Bone: One Couple’s Comical Journey through a Bad Economy with a Big Dose of Humility

…financial ruin. If you don’t know what financial ruin is, then put this book down, go to the library, read anything about Martha Stewart, and think the opposite. Yes, I know she went to prison. I know she developed a bad tic on the left side of her face while incarcerated, but, truth is, she made more money behind bars than on national television. There’s a moral here, I just don’t know what it is yet, but at least you now have a firm grasp of financial ruin.  Let’s mix in three more things: 1) The largest oil spill in history 2) humility and 3) unemployment. The spill probably wouldn’t have affected us so much had we not been living less than one mile from the Gulf of Mexico. It’s hard to ignore an underwater oil slick the size of West Virginia. And, it’s hard to ignore a 20% local unemployment rate. However, it is easy to ignore 200 million gallons of odorless, tasteless, scientists-are-unsure-of-the-health-risks chemical dispersants floating in and out of my patio doorway. I should close the front door to prevent the cross-breeze. In mathematical form, it looks like this:

Financial ruin + oil spill + humility + depressed locals everywhere you go = the book you’re holding in your hands

            But, I promise, you’ll laugh; if not with us, at least at us.

Something Out of Alfred Hitchcock…

Long-time friends, Doug Rogers and Scott Sorensen, made local headline news this afternoon on a deserted dock at the Ft. Walton Beach Landing. But they weren’t alone. Apparently, according to eyewitness accounts, they bravely fended off a ‘gang’ of underfed, and whacked-out-on-bad-Koolaid seagulls. The devil birds have been sighted in past weeks  terrorizing finches, mullet, and small children with Subway sandwiches.

As the beaked terrors circled and swooped, Doug and Scott immediately realized the situation could become  worse. Armed only with day old bread and stale Sun Chips, the heroes took position for battle.

As one onlooker remarked, “It reminded me of the day when Doug and Scott would take the field for the Little League Chargers football team, holding strong and fast in defense of territorial turf.”

The boys stood firm, shouting PG-13 obscenities while torpedoing Bread-Sun-Chip-Ball-Wads at their attackers, and the pack of gulls soon realized this was no match for them. The feathered fiends swooped away and the crowd that had gathered at a nearby gazebo to view the aerial battle cheered in victory.

Scott and Doug’s wives, Connie and Johnie, were not available for comment. They were found just moments later quivering in fear near the Ladies bathroom.

Color My Hair?

Fart for the day…

Loreal fart – a fart your wife can’t possibly escape, because you’re coloring her hair (and because…she’s worth it)

Merry Christmas!

She Wants a Man…

I questioned my friend, Lynn, about her love life. Her response was:

I want a man who gives a crap, not smells like it.

This was an excerpt from my soon to be published book:

She Said, He Said: Sarcasm and the Opposite Sex