who can fix me up before the big policeman's ball?

Good lord, it’s not even 9 and I’ve already been identity thefted this morning. It started when I got an email suggesting that there’d been odd activity on my card, which, since I was just in the UK, made sense to me. It directed me to a website where I filled out all sorts of personal info (dick size, favorite snack, pin number, songs that make me cry [“there’ll be sad songs” by Billy Ocean] etc). Well, Next thing I know, I’m realizing that it wasn’t a legitimate website and so I’ve been on the phone all morning fixing what I broke. Jesus. I feel like a grade A rube. I guess all I’m saying is that if you come to this blog soon and it says something like GROW YOUR PENIS IN JUST TWO WEEKS or HELLO MY NAME IS ABDULLA MARTINEZ ON BEHALF OF THE DISPLACED CROWN PRINCE OF CONGO or anything like that, it’s probably not me. It’s the internet, which, if you take away all the beautiful young girls getting happily pounded by throngs of high fiving misogynists with huge cocks, is actually a pretty dark and exploitive place. Who knew? Not me. That’s for sure.

Before all this ID theft craziness took over my morning, I was going to talk about the garbage man. I think I’ve touched on this before, but I’m gonna go ahead and repeat myself. In the morning, especially a spring morning my windows are open and I’m asleep. I live right by an alley that’s full of dumpsters. On certain days (in this case Wednesdays) the garbage men are out there just backing up their trucks (which loudly beep, imitating an alarm clock pretty perfectly) around five forty five/six AM. This, unsurprisingly, wakes me up and causes me no end of stress. I mean, I don’t get a lot of sleep. I’ve got an almost two year old running around every day starting around 645-7, and I’m about three weeks out from having a screaming infant keeping me up around the clock for three months, so I cherish these moments of sleep when they come. The garbage men rob me of that precious sleep. It’s a sack pummeling on the highest level.

BUT, you can’t get mad at the garbage man. I mean, think of the exchange:

“Hey asshole, quit backing up your goddamned truck! I’m trying to sleep up here!”

“Oh, sorry. I guess I lost track of what time it is because I’ve been up since 345 picking up YOUR FUCKING GARBAGE YOU UNGRATEFUL PRICK!”

And, well, he’d be right. There’s nothing so thankless as being a garbage man. They get up SO fucking early…howard stern early, but they’re not rolling in millions of dollars and interviewing strippers. They’re rolling in your diapers and old casseroles and maybe getting a crappy members only jacket or old tube tv set here and there.

Oh, they’ll say shit like “you’d be surprised at what dumb motherfuckers throw away!” but you know what? I’ll go ahead and miss out. When I get caught behind the garbage truck in the winter, in my car, when the smell is at its lowest possible level of putrescence, I still have to turn or pull over because it’s so gnarly. In the summer, on my bike, it makes me feel faint. And that’s once the shit’s in the truck and sealed behind those giant metal jaws. But those dudes just ride along on the back of that truck like it’s not absolutely fucking disgusting. Know why? Because they’re used to the gross pitfalls of their job just like we’re all used to the gross pitfalls of our lives.

The garbage man doesn’t want to change my kids diapers or stand in front of a crowd of hostile NOFX fans and try to play music. The garbage man doesn’t want to suck off six strangers and have them blow loads all over his face. The garbage man doesn’t want to sit in a cube all day and fill out timesheets. The garbage man gets his tube TV’s and old playboys and takes the stench, just like the middling rock musician takes the sliver of appreciation for the heckling and the pornstar takes the cocaine for the facial blasts and the person in the cube takes the crappy health insurance. It’s all kind of the same thing, but still….

Can’t yell at the garbage man. Oh, I know. People tell me they make tons of money. So do porn actresses and guys that service high voltage wires at the bottom of the ocean.

No thanks. I’m fine here wiping asses and getting woken up by garbage trucks.

What else? Oh, right! The Menzingers have dropped what will probably soon be considered ‘the release that made red scare famous’ in their new full length “Chamberlain Waits” which is now available on itunes and streaming on their myspace page. Check it out while they’re still obscure, because let me promise you something, after this record hits the teeming unwashed hordes, you’re gonna want to say you were there first, before they got huge. Yes you are. I know you. So go ahead, get out there and check out Chamberlain Waits by the Menzingers. Tell em I sent you.

Or don’t. Sheesh. You people are so touchy sometimes!