Usually after referencing the biography I would be assured that I had another year or so to attain cosmic greatness.

Now, at 39, by checking the Jim Morrison biographical time-line………I should have been dead about 12 years.

I have great respect for all three institutions, but the Mongol’s graduate program in barroom brawling is absolutely world class, and a yearlong sabbatical to Oakland, CA would be a real feather in my cap.

Then again, the Warlocks are cutting edge in racketeering and they’re really making a name for themselves in the field of bedraggled beards.

I just hope that D in basic scootering doesn’t screw up my chances.

Like many of you, I have a modest home property whose value could increase greatly with global warming, and the accompanying rise in sea levels.  In St. Petersburg, Tampa Bay and beyond a several foot rise in daily tide averages would submerge the current rich people houses in areas like Snell Isle, Shore Acres, and the barrier islands, and bring the home price-boosting waters to our doorstep.  A $140,000 dollar bungalow could  easily skyrocket to a $2 million dollar bayview paradise.

This could happen within a decade or so.

But who’s got time to wait that long?  Not me.

So, I’m employing several atmospheric-carbon raising techniques to hurry the process along.  If you are in a similar situation, I suggest you do the same.

Techniques to Hurry-up the Sea Rise:

1) Remove all stock emission controls from your car, even better yet, get a gigantic American sedan from the late 60s to the early 70s.  Drive it with the parking break on and lead weights in the trunk to lower gas mileage.

2)  Make separate trips to the grocery store for every item that you buy.  Cheese, toothpaste, tampons–each one a separate exhaust-spewing, fossil fuel burning excursion.  In addition, start using a grocery store that’s inconveniently far away, like in a different county or state.  And make sure to drive only one person per vehicle.  And if possible, make cars drive with no occupants at all.

3) Who says that the engine has to stop running once the car is home in the driveway or garage?  Put the thing in neutral with a heavy block on the gas pedal to maximize the rpm and let her run all night.  Use an auxiliary gas tank in the garage to keep the engine screaming till morning.

4) Inside your house: replace lame-ass low watt electric bulbs with stadium lights, or hollywood style searchlights.  Plug multi-unit outlet adapters into every socket, and plug additional multi-unit adapters into every socket of every multi-socket adapter.  Run appliances from the 1930s and 40s with needlessly large electric motors.  Have a contest with your neighbor to see whose electric meter box can run the fastest and who can blow up a transformer first.

5) Try to build your own coal burning plant in your back yard

6)  Cut down a rain forrest.  Actually yell at animals and wildlife.  Tell them you hate them.

Went to artshow: splurged on painting I can’t really afford, spilled wine on the floor

Went to Jazz Club: spilled beer on table, blurted out epithet, spent more money I couldn’t afford, made ass of myself

Saturday

Tried to fix cable guide, cable goes away completely

Rooms to Go guy tries to fix furniture, ruins furniture completely

Buy used crappy fishing pole (from very neighbor I called codes on for having a garage sale every day of the week for two months) to try to make video in which I lower a video camera off the side of a parking garage downtown.  Turns out crappy.  Only three hits, no comments.

Watch Jim Carrey movie, Yesman, totally stupid formulaic retread of all his other movies.

Watch District 9 pirated movie, not nearly as amazing as everyone has been talking about.  Aliens a ripoff of predator aliens (wiggly face tentacles).  Plot a standard “ironic reversal,” hunter becomes hunted, used a million times, twilight zone, etc.  District 9 Aliens are the sorriest, dumbest, underachieving aliens in the history of aliens.

Sunday

Try to eat at 400 Beach Drive, but line is down the block like Harry Potter grand opening

Eat at queenshead: get a pile of pink raw salmon on a blob of eggs, gross

Try to go boating, weather terrible for boating, no boating

Go furniture browsing, can’t buy anything, no money

Go to Rooms To Go to complain about furniture being ruined, they can’t do anything until report is filed, three to five days, blah, blah, blah

Drive to Busch Gardens to pick Mariel and friend up, windshield wipers honk like geese

There was only one problem when I got back to my house.  The 3500 was a two man lift all day long, and I was just one man.

I looked up and down the alley for a strong, helpful, friendly neighbor, but none could be seen.  The only sign of a neighbor was the car of “the Shitbag,” my mortal enemy, whose death and suffering I wish for above all else.  The neighborhood busybody, who tries to tell you where to park and how to use the dumpster.  The local humbug who whose frown could kill a kindergartner at fifty feet.

Fuck him, I’m not asking him for anything.

I decided to just go for it.  I think I’ve unloaded one of these by myself before.

I pulled the engine on wheels off the back of the  truck bed, and tried to use my thigh as a ramp.  The pressure washer turned my cargo shorts into a grease rag as it slid to the ground.  The metal beast did its best to rip the flesh off my left forearm.

It really hurt.

When I was in fourth grade I ran for school treasurer with the slogan, “Vote for Mork Michaels!” trying to capitalize on the popularity of the hit sit com, “Mork and Mindy.”

It worked and I was swept into power with a bunch of other ambitious grade-school politicians.

I remember going to one meeting, feeling pretty excited–but confused about what I was supposed to do.

I don’t remember handling any school funds or making any important decisions.

That was the end of my political career.

I asked my sister one time when I was a little kid how wars were started.  Her explanation went something like this:

Probably two guys got in a fist fight, and one guy beat the other guy up.

But then the one guy came back with two friends, and this time they had clubs and bats and beat the first guy up.

After that the other guy game back with with like five other guys with knives and swords and cut the dudes with bats and clubs up.

…and so on and so on, until the number of guys fighting got very large and the weapons got more sophisticated.  Finally you had a war.

Pretty logical.

I was really terrible at making model planes and cars as a kid.  I remember the glue would start getting all over my fingers, and then it would turn into a black, smeary substance on the model that actually deformed the plastic.  Pieces that I thought had dried five minutes ago would suddenly ooze out.  The big fuselage or chassis pieces that you put together near the end would never fit together, or pop apart after I had forced them together with all of my strength.  And then there were the teenie-tiny parts, like the pilots’ joy stick that were so small you could barely pick them up with your fingers.  One false move and that piece was lost in the shag carpet.

Finally,  there were those frustrating decals that you were supposed to soak in water until they came off their backing.  The slightest overuse of force and they would tear into unusable bits of nothing.  Leave them too long in the water and they lose all their sticking power.   Or  God forbid, let them fold over on themselves and they’ll never lie flat again.

All of the anguish of unsuccessful model building eventually led me down the path of “snap-together” models.  These models were very simple, and only had a few parts which easily snapped together.

A few minutes after  opening the box of your “snap-together”, you were finished–

—with a feeling like you had accomplished nothing.

Two pretty big disappointments in my childhood were:

Joke books and Magic books

From a pretty early age I really wanted to be something impressive and amazing.  So I figured with joke books I could learn to be really funny, and with magic books I could dazzle people with tricks and illusions.  I went to the local library at various times and pored over both kinds of publications.

Well, as you probably now, joke books are pretty stupid.  They have jokes like, “why was the spider such a great outfielder?  (because he could catch so many flies).”  These kinds of jokes don’t make people laugh, they make people punch you in the arm.  As I got older I realized that funny people don’t really tell jokes that they’ve memorized from library books.

The magic books weren’t much better.  Some tricks would says things like: “construct a false bottomed crate with a spring loaded trap door…”

How the fuck was I supposed to do that?  I was 7 years old.

Other tricks were just too simple, like: “Show your friend a coin in your left hand, pretend to transfer it to the right, while actually dropping the coin in your sleeve.”

I remember one trick that was pretty easy:  Take a carrot and cover it with a handkerchief.  Now tell your friend that its your thumb and stab it with push pins.

I guess this trick is pretty cool, but you have to carry a carrot around with you.

Do you hate it when you hit red light after red light on your way to wherever?  Of course you do!  Here’s how to get all green lights the next time you drive:

Bring some sort of tasty food with you along for the drive.  It needs to be a food that can only be eaten with two hands, like hot chili.

Since you can only eat chili in a car when you’re stopped at a red light, now you will be assured (by Murphy’s Law) to get nothing but green lights.  Your chili frustration will get you to your destination in record time.

Try this.  It works.