Balls

I heard somewhere that the guns that traffic cops use to gauge your speed emit enough radiation to cause cancer. After laying them in their laps to take a drink of coffee, that thing rested against the cop’s nads long enough to give the man testicular cancer. Although I could never wish that on another man, the irony of the situation isn’t lost. Here are guys who get off on being macho; pulling someone over for not stopping before exiting a driveway isn’t keeping the streets any safer, it’s a pissing contest between you and a sad bastard who didn’t make the football team. That’s why, when their under-calibrated tool poisons their other under-calibrated tool into cancer, you can almost feel God nudging your ribs to make sure you got the joke.

Now days it’s almost cool for guys to get testicular cancer. It’s like since we no longer have to worry about getting shivved in a back alley we can still go to war – against our own balls. It’ll leave a scar and it’ll draw attention to our groin. How tough is that to tell your friends in your white sweater on a tennis court? It’s totally cool. Plus Lance Armstrong had it and, if he experienced it, then it’s most likely good for humanity. I bet there’s even a type of guy who likes when people ask about his yellow, rubber bracelet just so he can go into his own battle with the big, dark cancer. That same guy has a bumper sticker that says “These Colors Don’t Run” and thinks he’s making a statement.

Cancer survivors and cops are both groups of men who like to make sure we all know that they’re really indeed MEN. With their mustaches and their overbite and their cheap cologne. Of course, I want to be a cop – what guy doesn’t to some degree. Especially guys my age, we grew up with Magnum PI, Sidekicks, and Beverly Hills Cop 2. We think that being a cop involves at least one car chase scene, one strip bar scene, one straight-up beat down scene and probably one scene that involves layers of complicated emotions every single damn day. You get to wear whatever you want and answer to no one except for a nebbish Police Chief who always complains about your unorthodox methods to the Commissioner¹.

You barely have any paperwork and when you do it’s in a cool office that you can smoke in. Your partner is either hot or awesome and you drive a car that runs on pure machismo with flames. And you don’t even need to worry about testicular cancer because, not only are you immune but you don’t have to worry about pulling people over because you’re actually out fighting crime.


¹except for Batman who spoke directly to the Commissioner. But Batman wasn’t a cop, he was a billionaire playboy.

Poop

Girls don’t poop. I swear to you that this is true. I went on a road trip with a girl once that lasted over 8 days and I never once saw (or heard) her poop. This was a road trip, mind you so we were eating like truck drivers and smoking like chimneys. If anything could get your bowels moving it’s road trip food and cigarettes. I spent most of that trip doubled over in cramps just so I wouldn’t fart in front of that poopless girl. The worst part is that when you finally get to stop, you’re stuck either using the gas station bathroom or a sketchy motel bathroom.

Gas station bathrooms are the worst. You can smell the industrial chemicals changing your DNA from pump number 2. There’s always strange colored puddles running out from under the rusty door. You’re dragging that muffler that the key is attached to behind you through aforementioned puddle like a caveman. They always make the door so heavy that you can’t avoid having to touch that greasy knob with your bare hands. There’s always novelty condoms on the wall next to your head if you’re thankfully standing. The concept of sitting down at one of these for any length of time is so yucky my toes curl. I don’t even like standing in one with cowboy boots on. You just know you’re going to have scabies after you flush.

Motel bathrooms are, at the very least, private and relatively free from air born viruses. They almost always have that weird, long toilet that puts your cheeks way too close to the water. The best way to get comfortable in these is to shotgun a cheap beer. After several trips to evacuate your bladder you’ll feel so at home you could take off your pants and play some SEGA®.

I always thought SEGA® was grossly superior to Nintendo®. It was back in the day – not so much now. Alex Kid in Miracle World is so drug-trippy it made me pop on a Piss Test. Sonic is not only way cuter than Mario but he could smoke him in a foot race. Even the music for Sonic games was better than anything Mario could throw at you. Although it was nice that Mario had a vocation in case the video game thing didn’t work out for him. He was a plumber and there’s always room for another plumber. He could have plenty of work driving behind me on road trips fixing the toilets after I’m done with them.

Funk

Sometimes something about an album and your mood will collide and it’s pure white magic. Jackson 5 must’ve been infused with the Ghost of Christmas Happy at birth because their music is so goshdarned upbeat it gives you cavities. Michael’s voice is like a honey-coated Steve Perry that’s impossible to even pretend to sing along with. I think time stood still while their voices washed over me in a crystal wave of emotion. That kind of magic only happens when you empty out your CD Book and have no system for your CDs so they’re kinda just stacked everywhere. You don’t want to bother looking for anything so you just grab the first thing in the nearest stack and push play. The surprise element of it being perfect for your mood triggers a release of awesome chemicals in your mind that make you sexy. Sexy and rocking to an album of kickassery like God Herself played rhythm guitar on Track 04 and helped write some of the songs.

They need to name the moment that happens. But it would be a word too pure to say if you didn’t mean it. That way people couldn’t wear it out so it didn't carry the weight it originally intended – like the word “awesome.” It used to be awesome now it’s only cool. Sucks for that word. Also I think Funk contains a strand of every person’s DNA that’s why it feels so fucking right to listen to it. There’s probably something mathematically satisfying about the chord progression that resounds with all carbon-based lifeforms. Maybe it’s just me. Probably not though.

Funk makes me think of a chase scene in a '70s cop movie. When I hear Funk my vision gets grainy from the poor quality film. It’s like I am the '70s cop movie and all carbon-based lifeforms are my bitch. If you don’t like Funk, you’re a Communist Alien Robot without the ability to feel feelings and your kind will be crushed by the power of human spirit. Feel it if you could, Robot! Wah pedals on guitars can get you pregnant. When God created Earth he always meant to put wah pedals on guitars but ran out of time. It was up to us to figure that out and join the two together in holy harmony and distorted love. I bet, if you tried, you could have sex with the sound wah pedals make. I bet you could.

Music can make you dangerously happy. It can also make you sad if you let it but that’s just a bad album. If you find the right album and rock it correctly, you are guaranteed to feel good. Good like barbiturates - - and that’s crazy good.