I Am The Cheese

My van is 15 years old.

It’s a reliable beast, but cutting edge technology it ain’t.

Roll up windows, arm-strong steering, and no sounds or lights to let me know when a door is open or I’m not wearing a seatbelt.

It is also equipped with a cassette tape player.

I have about 50 cassettes, nothing more recent than 1998. I rock out to Def Leppard, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Spin Doctors, Eddie Money, …

My friends laugh at me, ask me if I watch video discs and play Atari 2600 as well.

Recently a friend loaned me an adapter that plugs into the tape player, so I can listen to my i-pod now.

It’s great!

What music is on my i-pod?

Def Leppard, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Spin Doctors, Eddie Money, …

 A question not asked by a 20 year old:

How long will beer last before it goes bad?

I just had a discussion with a friend about this.
I’m starting to think I am getting older.

New topics are popping up in our conversations.

And I don’t think I like it.

I’m amazed at how many single shoes I see lying on the sides of the road.

Usually they are running shoes. I haven’t seen any pumps, gumboots or sandals.

My first thought is usually that someone must have been hit by a car, but I don’t think there are that many people getting hit by cars. And the police would probably pick up any shoes as evidence anyway.

Are people throwing shoes out of their car windows?

In Australia myself and a few others were in a National Park following a river that cut through a canyon. We walked beside the river where we could and swam certain sections where we couldn’t walk.

We found a sandal on a rock, and about 30 minutes later we found its partner. My friend picked up both and wore them for the rest of his Australia trip. He probably still has them. They were nice sandals.

We called them his Dead Man Sandals.

Supposedly somewhere in Africa an Aid Agency was distributing clothing and shoes. The local people wore the clothes, but they didn’t wear the shoes.

They thought the shoes must have been from dead people, as no one would just give away such nice shoes. 

 A friend of mine worked in a Daycare/English playtime centre for a year, and as part of his job he accompanied/assisted children using the bathroom.

He casually mentioned this phenomenon to me one day, to which I told him he was pulling my leg and I wasn’t that gullible.

He insisted it was true, and I kept a doubtful expression on my face until I could check the internet.

Why couldn’t I have some cool birthmark like that?

I just have a regular white ass.

note to self:  buy some pool chalk.

I am woefully ignorant when it comes to playing musical instruments.

It’s like algebra all over again. I don’t get it; I probably never will.

I remember brutalizing the recorder they gave me to play at school. I was downgraded to the tambourine, then the triangle, and finally bottomed out as the wooden stick clacker person.

I love listening to music, singing badly to it, and watching live concerts. I have even worn a Ramones t-shirt prouldly at one time in my life.

My closest friend is a musician; I think what he does is mysterious and magical.

I unintentionally phase out when he starts trying to explain chords, notes, and other music related things to me: not out of disinterest, but out of confusion.

I don’t get it; probably never will.

note: if knee slapping or steering wheel tapping become popular, I’ll be able to redeem myself.

When I was in High School, a friend of mine had a nice looking younger sister: one year younger.

Myself and my other friends liked her: she was pretty, good sense of humor, and fun.

But we stayed away from her.

The problem was her and her brother really resembled each other. They could have been clones. There would be something creepy about being with her. I could imagine kissing her, staring into her eyes, and thinking about her brother. Double Creepy.

After High School, she ended up living with my friend’s best friend.

Everyone wanted to ask the boyfriend if he saw a freakish family resemblance between his girlfriend and his best friend. But we didn’t; it wouldn’t have been in good taste.

If he did eventually have kids with her, I bet I know who they look like.

All of us have i-pods.

By the end of the night we were fighting over who was going to be the next to plug their i-pod into my stereo.

Everybody wants to be the DJ!

note: I don’t know why we were fighting; we all have the same music on our i-pods.

I love hot weather: summer means t-shirts and shorts, BBQs, turning brown, and visits to the beach.
The hottest place I’ve been is Perth, Australia during a heatwave: 45 degrees Celcius (113 fahrenheit).
I sat on a shaded patio at a hostel with a few others. Between sips of beer, we took turns saying things like:

“It’s hot.”
“Man, it’s hot.”
“It’s so hot.”

Really hot weather affects speech, I guess.

My friend was working in a metal warehouse Australianizing Eastern European jeep things: attaching roo bars, adjusting suspensions, and bolting beer holders on to the dashboards.

He roasted in that warehouse.

Someone put a dial on the wall and labelled it air-conditioner.

Every 15 minutes someone would shout, ” Can you turn up the air-con, it’s getting a bit warm in here”.
Someone would walk over and turn up the dial.

Those guys had a pretty good sense of humor that day; and heat stroke.

I hope at the end of the day they turned the air-con off.
It’s not good to waste energy.

I have a friend.
He’s not a good speller.
He knows this.
When he writes something on his computer, he uses SpellCheck.

It doesn’t seem to work.

When he sends me something, I can usually spot a few terribly mangled words.

I let him know that there are spelling errors.

He questions me.
“Are you sure? I used SpellCheck. Are you sure syphilis isn’t spelt sifilus? I used SpellCheck.”

I went to his house last week. We were looking at something on his computer. I noticed his SpellCheck button.
It said SpelCzech.

I guess he shouldn’t have bought that cheap Mc N’Tosh computer.

I told him to buy the HooLit Picard, but he wouldn’t listen!