Beard Man Begins

I look out my window at night. I see a disgusting mosaic of depravity in the streets below. The effluvium of crime threads its way through the community I know and love. Police can’t be trusted. No government agency can. That’s why I send all my mail through the Trystero. Sometimes, an ol’ fashioned vigilante has to put his or her foot down and extinguish all the riff-raff. Beard Man is that vigilante. But do not compare him to Batman. In fact, he is the absolute antithesis of Batman — where Bruce Wayne is a billionaire hiding behind a synthetic mask, Beard Man is poor, and he grew his mask. Here is the first installment of what looks to be a riveting series (it’s easier to read if you click on it):

Peanut Buttery Soy Sauce Noodles With Like, Garlic And Junk In It

Whether it be automobiles, threads, or robotically accurate mathematicians, The Influence Of The East can be felt reverberating throughout our American foundations nearly everywhere. This brings us to the dish at hand. Is it actually Eastern? Sure, if you want to get down to semantics. Is it South American? Yeah, if you want to get into specifics. Did the sweaty Italians have a hand in it? I guess, if you want to be racist about it.

But then, one could think, where does the East begin, and where does the West end? Does a round object even have a South? To what we in America perceive as the Far East, I would assume that they think of themselves as simply “here.” And an Italian, no matter where it is located, East or West, up or down, is going to perspire. That calzone you’re eating is about two-thirds sweat-weight.

We’ve got numerous geographical influences coming at us for this recipe. Asian — soy sauce, spinach, garlic; all formidable culinary titans in their own right, and then, in comes Italy, pit-stains and all, with broccoli and pasta, both respectable injections into our catalog; and last, but not least, Peru, the quitely rumbling dark horse of this recipe — contributing the peanut.

Just follow these instructions:

-If you’re Italian, cover your head in a plastic bag so your sweat doesn’t get all over everything.

-Cook up some noodles*.

-Drain them. Put into a pan.

-(While still over low/medium heat) Add a couple “glugs” of soy sauce and a dollop of peanut butter. And garlic powder. Stir it around for a while.

-Mix in broccoli and spinach**.

-Eat it.

You’re welcome.

*For higher altitudes, add 1-2 minutes boil time.

**For higher altitudes, add the glute meat of your friends who have frozen to death, for added protein.

With A Great Beard Comes Great Responsibility

“Right now, we’ve got freedom and responsibility. It’s a very groovy time.” -Austin Powers

Thick. Lustrous. Gingery. Stupendous. Fantastic. Sprawling. Authoritative. Finer than the pelt of a Colorado marmot. These are just a few of the words that have been used by me to describe my beard. Finer compliments are rarely dished out, and I’m very flattered to have been on the receiving end of them. Recently, an adjective was added to the growing list of accolades — great.

And I didn’t even come up with that one.

A few weeks ago as I walked into line at Cub Foods, the cashier, so taken in by the beauty present before her, knowingly eschewed corporate policy by failing to offer the standard “Hello” and instead said, “Wow, that’s a GREAT beard.” Had a manager been within earshot, this blatant display of off-script dialogue could have gotten her fi-yad.

She even went on to say that it was better than her own husband’s. Men, imagine if you were working at Cub Foods as a cashier and said to some girl, “Hey, nice boobs. Those are better than my wife’s!” You’d be roasted like a suckling pig if your spouse ever found out. And the same goes for women. So you can imagine how truly great this beard must be for a woman to take such a calculated risk, in addition to swimming upstream against the powers-that-be of the mighty Cub Foods employee training videos.

I realize now I have a great responsiblity before me. It is within in my power to become what the Mexicans call a sancho. Dealing with ravenous hordes of women, married or not, openly throwing themselves at me is standard operating procedure. Often, there’s just no time to check the ring finger. Do I want to be a home-wrecker? I don’t know. That’s why this brand new epoch is so exciting and confusing. It’s a very groovy time.

The Power Of Meditation

Excerpt from my self-help book. This comes from the chapter on spirituality and personal growth.

The Power Of Meditation

Sometimes writing can grind on your emotions. It’s OK, in fact necessary, to take a break every now and then. Believe me, it’s all too easy to become stressed out and physically tired from overworking your brain. This can cause a number of problems in other areas of life. When your brain hasn’t had sufficient rest and relaxation, it is not at all uncommon to become short-tempered with a loved one, or make a rude comment to an undeserving coworker. When I was younger and more naive, I always assumed that this only happened to women who were in the heaviest, grossest part of their cycle. But because I’m not sexist anymore, I think that men can be just as bad, but never worse. We’ve all had those moments when others approach us in kindness, and we react negatively because we are too centered on our own selfish feelings. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? When I begin to feel this way, I like to go to a place where I know I won’t be disturbed and start M.A.S.T.U.R.B.A.T.I.N.G. (Meditating And Studying The Unconscious Realities By Altering Them Into Nirvanic Gnosticism) When I’m M.A.S.T.U.R.B.A.T.I.N.G., I feel nothing but a deep calming sensation. No matter how stressed I am, and whether I do it for just five minutes or an entire hour, this time of deep, intense thought and self-examination soothes me. I like to do it at least once a day. If I don’t, I can feel all that negative energy building up inside of me, bubbling under the surface, ready to spew out in a hot eruption of anger. On days that I don’t take this time for myself, I’ll get upset by the smallest, most inconsequential things. For instance, when I used to take mass transit to work, there was an old one-legged Vietnam vet that showed up at the bus stop one morning. His presence really upset the balance of my A.M. routine. He smelled like an old hamster cage, and wouldn’t shut up about needing money for his diabetes shots. I was hoping he was just passing through, and would be gone the next day. But alas, he was there the next morning, and the next. On the fourth morning, I woke up ten minutes earlier so I could do some M.A.S.T.U.R.B.A.T.I.N.G. before I left my apartment. Did that help? You bet it did. As I was basking in the afterglow of that particularly powerful session, I stood next to the old vet and told him what I had just done. He didn’t say a word – he just slowly lowered himself to the ground, looking like he was about to do some M.A.S.T.U.R.B.A.T.I.N.G. of his own. I really struck a chord with him, because he was still in the same spot the next day, lying motionless on the bare earth, eyes rolled back in his head, letting some local rats drink rainwater out of his open mouth. He was so in tune with nature that he forgot all about his silly diarrhea shots. After that, I never saw him again. I like to think that I gave him a new outlook on life, one where he spreads the message of how important it is for everyone to be M.A.S.T.U.R.B.A.T.I.N.G.