Fear And Loathing On The Way To Beaverton

My relationship with my Dad's Subaru will never be like David Hasselhoff's relationship with KITT.

I’ve never really understood the concept of motivational speaking. I sort of bristle when somebody who isn’t paying me tells me what to do, and as I understand it, motivational speakers tell you what to do and you pay them. I might just be skeptical of anybody who tries to charge me for advice when I can find the same advice with a little less credibility on the Internet for free, but I feel like my wariness toward motivational speakers is well founded.

Motivational speakers always set me on edge when they say “Nothing is impossible.” See, I don’t know what kind of person you are, but I’m an asshole, so whenever someone makes such a blatantly declarative statement I start trying to find loopholes that will completely and utterly prove that person wrong. The reason the term “Nothing is impossible” gets bandied about so much in schools and the motivational speaking circuit is because they want you to understand that if you try really, really hard, you’ll be able to achieve your dreams. This, of course, always makes me wonder what you do if your dream is to walk in space while completely naked. I’m no expert on space, but I’m pretty sure that no matter how hard you try, jumping out of the International Space Station without a spacesuit on will most definitely result in you freezing to death and explosively decompressing, and maybe not in that order. Space is a fickle mistress; it never takes a day off. It won’t see you blasting out of the airlock in the buff and say, “Oh, hey, look at that! He’s trying really hard to walk naked in me! Just for that, I’m not going to make him freeze to death and explode. Let’s see if I’ve got any candy…”

No matter how hard you try, there are some things in life that simply can’t be done. Jumping off of a skyscraper and flying, for instance, or teleporting from one end of the country to the other, or driving to Beaverton.

Beaverton is the Oakland to Portland’s San Francisco, the Hoboken to our New York, the Parma to our Cleveland. It’s a poorly laid out, heavily populated suburb just outside of Portland, and judging by how many people from there work downtown you might get the idea that the city of Portland is, in fact, just a clever façade, and that after 5:00 they close the park gates and everyone goes home to Beaverton, where people actually live. Of course, this is not actually the case, for I am one of the elite few (hundred thousand) who can call Portland their home. The problem is that most of my friends from school live in Beaverton, and while Beaverton is only ten or so miles away from my house, the roads between here and there are a warped and twisted labyrinth doubtless designed by some black-hearted evil mastermind with an unfathomable loathing for all that is good. I can see him now, good ‘ol Adolf Cthulu (Karl Rove to his buddies), standing up on the hillside and cackling as thousands of weary travelers are ensnared and crushed in the asphalt buttfuck that lies between Portland and Beaverton.

According to Google Maps, Beaverton is exactly 11 miles away from me, yet it routinely takes me in the neighborhood of 45 minutes to get there. This is either because the space between Beaverton and Portland is the Oregon branch of The Bermuda Triangle or because there is no one surface street that will take you straight there. To drive to Beaverton is to cruise down residential streets and past cul-de-sacs, through roundabouts, and across gravel parking lots; it is to chop down the forest in front of you and order a battalion of hobos to build a road, it is to stuff wax in your ears to ignore the siren songs of Quiznos and Burgerville restaurants along the way, it is to caulk the tires of your car with mud and float it down the river like a Subaru raft. This journey has driven men insane; it has driven insane men sane, and then driven them insane all over again just for the hell of it. It were as though God himself did not want human beings to travel between Portland and Beaverton.

Common logic would suggest that if at all possible you should avoid going to Beaverton, and perhaps attempt to eradicate all knowledge of Beaverton so that nobody else ever makes the same mistake. However, it so happens that one of my friends who lives in Beaverton turned 20 yesterday, and when I realized that free cake was on the line, I felt that I had little choice but to pack a week’s provisions and try to ford the pavement between here and Beaverton.

In the past I’ve printed off directions from Google Maps in my attempts to reach Beaverton safely, but even with the help of extensive diagrams and simple directions I got lost several times, so I opted to instead use my family’s GPS unit. By imputing the desired destination and pressing “GO!”, the GPS unit will ideally guide you to where you want to be as quickly as possible. The system is more or less idiot proof – the unit will actually speak the directions to you in a halting robotic fashion as you come up to each waypoint, which makes it a lot easier to play Knight Rider while you’re driving. The experience was particularly vexing for me because our GPS unit inexplicably speaks with an Australian woman’s accent. Sometime between ordering me to “Bear. Right. On. Sunset Highway.” and “Turn. Left. On. Wilson. Street.”, I’m pretty sure she suggested that I “Throw. A. Shrimp. On. The. Barbie.”

However, not even the down under streetwise know-how of a sassy GPS satellite could guide me through the hell between Portland and Beaverton completely without incident. I spent the entire drive sweltering inside a 5000 degree car, scared to roll down the windows or turn up the AC lest the noise block out one of the lilting, effeminate directions I so required. Also, the GPS unit routinely gave me instructions like, “Turn. Left. In. .01. Miles.” Sadly, I am not Lewis and/or Clark, and I can’t just spitball a tenth of a mile out the windshield. The result was a few wrong turns. At one point, I missed a crucial turn and wound up heading into downtown.

“Recalculating.” The GPS unit said. ‘Recalculating’ is the GPS unit’s way of saying, “You moron, I gave you simple goddamned instructions! What part of ‘Turn left’ don’t you get?” Shortly after saying this, the unit will calibrate a new route that will put you back on track. However, it will take its sweet time doing so.

As I cruised past Franklin Boulevard, the GPS unit ordered me to turn left on Franklin. “Recalculating.” It snapped, incensed that I’d screw up twice. “Turn. Right. On. College.” It commanded when I had already passed College Street. “Recalculating.” It said again, gritting digital teeth at my foolish human inability to manipulate time and space so that I could turn only when it told me to.

After a lot of mental anguish and a scathing, profanity ridden indictment of technology in general, my GPS unit and I were able to find our way back to the route to Beaverton and get going again. From there, it was a relatively smooth trip, up until the point where I drove into Beaverton and found myself confronted, Legends of the Hidden Temple style, with four options: Canyon Court, Canyon Road, Canyon Street, and Canyon Lane – the choice is yours!

As much as I hate to lend credence to motivational speakers, I most certainly did do the impossible by arriving at my friend’s birthday party without falling into a black hole. However, I didn’t try really hard to achieve this goal – I didn’t sit down and study maps of the area, or save up the money for a jetpack so that I could fly over the entire mess – I simply used a piece of technology that reduces driving to the simple following of directions, which, even then, was sort of a hassle. I suppose that, given the right circumstances, maybe even the impossible is possible – it’s easy to drive to Beaverton when you relinquish all control to the orders of an uncaring Australian fembot, just as it’s easy to jump into space in the nude so long as you don’t care about freezing to death and then exploding.

Truman Capps motivates himself when he speaks, if that counts.

Video Games And Me

Here we go!

Sorry, I’m not going to be writing a blog tonight. You see, I just received my Xbox 360 from Amazon, and as you might remember, I’ve been waiting a good six months for this, so… Yeah. Sorry. Grand Theft Auto IV won’t play itself, after all. Run along, now! Go enjoy some other part of the Internet – Zero Punctuation updated today, and you could do well to start reading Achewood or maybe The Expiring Leader.

Well, go! Go away! There’s no blog here, alright? Don’t look at me that way! You think I wanted it to be like this? I didn’t plan for the game system I’ve been impatiently waiting for for so long to arrive today – it just kind of happened, and now that I’m on the cusp of the video game world, certain sacrifices will have to be made. I won’t get out of the house as much, and I might not do as much writing as I’d intended to, and maybe I’ll let petty luxuries like eating and hygiene go by the wayside.

This has happened before. The year was 1996, and the console was the Nintendo 64. Remember the Nintendo 64? It was the system Nintendo made that didn’t involve any of these new fangled disks, and it had less processing power than your cell phone, and when you played it you actually pushed buttons instead of waving a little white thing around. Until the Nintendo 64 came out, I’d had little interest in video games – I was a fat and lazy 1st grader, and rejected the notion of having to react to images and push buttons, as I felt that watching Wishbone and eating Cheez-Its at the same time was hard enough work already. However, one faithful day my father bought a Nintendo 64 on his way home from work, and my life was forever changed. Much in the same way that heroin sounds disgusting and dangerous up until you try it, the Nintendo 64 proved to be a highly addictive force that dominated me through most of elementary school.

For years, my parents and I spent every evening playing Mario Kart 64, gleefully shouting and whooping at one another in what the neighbors surely thought was some of the most rambunctious spousal abuse they’d ever heard. At first I, the 8 year old, had a distinct advantage, because the relaxed pace of my life allowed me lots of time to practice. However, my father eventually started working from home, and while he denies it I feel certain that he spent literally every moment that Mom was at work and I was at school playing Mario Kart, because he got a lot better after he started his new job.

Games begat games and I was well on my way to becoming the accomplished nerd you see before you today. I honestly don’t remember anything about the summer between 3rd and 4th grade, save for the fact that I spent more time playing Super Mario 64 than I have ever spent on any other commitment in my life (apologies to my professors, my trumpet instructors, and my ex-girlfriends). I logged serious time in Pilotwings 64, a remarkably simple game that could have just as easily been called Fly Around In A Gyrocopter Doing Stuff 64. However, it was when I first started playing Goldeneye 64 that video games stopped being heroin and became crack. Filled with gold. And delicious, delicious Crunchwrap Supremes.

Goldeneye, based on the 1995 James Bond film of the same remarkably silly name, is one of the best selling video games of all time, having sold over eight million copies. The basic premise of the game was that you, James Bond, have to shoot a lot of different people in a few different settings in order to save the world – and man, was that ever a concept to base a game around! I was an 8-year-old boy; I loved James Bond and I loved violence. My friends and I spent many afternoons brutally murdering one another over and over again in multiplayer, I talked endlessly about the best weapons and strategies for each situation, and I started drawing pictures of guns and explosions the likes of which you might see drawn by a hollow eyed Serbian boy sitting in the burned out husk of what had once been his elementary school. All of this was rather concerning to my Mom and Dad, who subscribed to the belief that, if your kid runs around drawing pictures of AK47s and eagerly discussing multiple homicide, you probably fucked the pooch pretty bad somewhere in the parenting process.

Now, it’s probably too soon to call whether my parents did in fact screw up bigtime during my upbringing, but one thing is certain: I kept on playing violent video games as I progressed from elementary into middle and middle into high school. My philosophy was, and is, that video games are all about fulfilling your dreams, which is why racing and sports games never interested me. However, I have always felt a deep-seated urge to rescue the president’s daughter from zombies, and video games gave me the chance to do what I feel I was made to do. That’s the beauty of video games: They allow you to do something that you want to do but never realistically could. As soon as a good sex video game comes along, you can bet that I’ll buy that, too.

It’s awkward being a fan of violent video games. I’m pretty sure the media doesn’t blame your favorite hobby for mass murder (unless your favorite hobby is mass murder). The entire genre that I favor – the first person shooter – is all about shooting people until they’re dead, and thus people tend to assume that were it not for self restraint, I would be shooting them until they were dead. Games of this genre are commonly referred to as “shooters”; crazy people who take a gun into a shopping mall are also called “shooters”. My hobby walks hand in hand with psychosis – pretty much every emotionally stunted teenager to ever go on a shooting spree at his high school has the same taste in video games that I do. It’s like if your favorite color is green, and then you find out that Hitler’s favorite color was green too.

Not only do I have to contend with the fact that I play the same games as the criminally insane, I also have to contend with the fact that I play the same games as the criminally stupid – males aged 18 to 35. If you’ve ever met a young man who claims membership in a college fraternity, I guarantee you that within the last 48 hours he was playing a first person shooter called Halo; a highly mediocre, highly successful game that is as much a part of manhood these days as the possession of testicles. First person shooters tend to pander to the violent emotions of manly men – thousands of years ago, we gents would be hitting one another with rocks and dragging women around by the hair, but now we’re content to push buttons in sequence in order to hit one another with bullets and drag the other team’s flag around by the hair. I find it just as offensive to be lumped into the same category as macho JV football players as I do being lumped into the same category as psychopaths.

The simple fact is that I like violent video games because I like the story they tell. A good video game to me is an interactive movie – you’re as much a part of the plot as anyone else, and your actions determine the outcome. I can’t help the fact that I like stories that usually involve people shooting each other (not a lot of that happened in Cat’s Cradle, but I doubt that any of Vonnegut’s books will get receive video game adaptations), and video games give me the chance to live in the world of the stories I find the most interesting. Now that I’ve got an Xbox 360, I’ll be able to live in beautifully rendered stories, complete with flashy particle effects and capacity for online play.

And that’s why I’m not updating my blog toni…

Well, shit.

Truman Capps wants his parents to know, should they see him killing any hookers in Grand Theft Auto 4, that the hookers totally had it coming.

Wipeout - A Treatise

"...The show!"

Hollywood is a city powered by theater and creative writing majors, yet it is run by business administration majors, and there’s a lot of strife between the two camps as the studio heads try to figure out how to make as much money as possible while the writers and actors try to figure out how to make as much money as possible while maintaining creative integrity and, if possible, dignity. This past fall, just as Lucifer led angels against God (Paradise Lost) and Magneto led mutants against humans (X Men, X Men 2, X Men 3), Hollywood’s writers rose against the studio executives and went on strike in hopes of making more money. The result was several months without scripted television, and when the strike ended we got our TV back, but what we didn’t realize was that in all that time the writers weren’t working, they weren’t writing new summer replacement shows. Now, with no scripts to base shows on and an actors’ strike on the horizon, the studios have pulled the “Cop Out” crank and dumped even more reality TV shows onto the airwaves.

Of course I hate reality TV – why wouldn’t I? It’s a thing that most people like, and this blog seems to thrive on my not liking things that people like, and then making overly verbose penis jokes. I feel like that at heart, way back when the team of hamsters in control of television programming first drew up the plans for reality TV, they had somewhat honorable intentions that I, as a writer, can appreciate to some extent. Most reality TV shows, and by most I mean all, revolve around a group of ethnically and psychologically diverse people working together to achieve some sort of goal whilst quietly dicking one another over in pursuit of the big win (or, in some cases, just dicking one another – that, ladies and gentlemen, is this paragraph’s penis joke). Shows like Big Brother and Survivor are all espionage and backstabbing; everybody’s in cahoots with one another and lying to serve their own needs, yet despite all this they need to work as a team in order to build a mashed potato trough down a ramp that will guide a nonstop flow of gravy into a bucket in the interests of gaining the right to use pool toys (I’ve watched one episode of Big Brother and that is exactly what they did). Now, all of these elements – deception, pursuit of a common goal, bizarre feats involving gravy – appear to make for absolutely crackerjack entertainment, because they play people against one another at every turn in order to create conflict, which the basis for drama, which is the basis for storytelling. Just thinking about this sort of thing sets my creative parts a-tinglin’ as I try to imagine how best to play out each character’s emotions and actions as they struggle with and against one another and gravity itself in their attempt to channel a river of gravy into a bucket at the bottom of a ramp using nothing but mashed potatoes and their own two hands. This event is just one of thousands that provide fodder for emotional video confession booth sessions and hushed bedroom strategy meetings filmed in voyeuristic night vision green. On paper, a reality TV show looks like the best thing to happen to storytelling since the invention of the mafia.

The problem with all this (and there’s always a problem) is that what makes our favorite stories so great is that real people, the mainstay of reality television, aren’t in them. No one in the universe will ever be as cool as Han Solo: I don’t care if you smoke Camel Lights and shit black T-Birds; you’re never going to be able to stare down a vat of carbonite and still totally put Leia in her place. You’ll never be able to defeat a legion of zombies using only your shotgun, your Oldsmobile, and your gigantic chin. And, if you’ll permit me to once again visit the works of Harrison Ford, you will never, ever, ever say “No ticket.” These sorts of things are balls-to-the-wall fuckin’ Awesome, and part of what makes them so Awesome is that real life is at any given time up to 60% less Awesome than the realm of fiction. If it were a real person in Han Solo’s shoes, his response to Leia would probably be, “Oh holy shit Jesus I love you too DON’T LET THEM FREEZE ME IT’LL BE SO COLD OH LORD-” In the face of the Army of Darkness, a real person would probably die. And to the shocked passengers on the zeppelin, the most likely response from a real person would be, “Holy shit! Did you see what I just did? I just did that!”

So a Big Brother setup, while ideal for fictional characters with their foresight and their capacity for Awesome, is squandered on 29 year old bartenders from Miami and the occasional Midwestern single Mom. The high-strung emotional climate generated by the goals the group is forced to achieve winds up expressed by sloppily censored profanity and a lot of huffing and puffing as people sit around bemused and covered in gravy. The scheming and plotting consists of contestants tearing others down behind their backs while trying to act tough and resolute, which doesn’t come across very well from people like Becky (51, dental hygienist, Ypsilanti, Michigan). Worst of all, the video confessions usually wind up with people crying, and frankly, sadness in real life just isn’t half as good as sadness in fiction. In real life there’s puffy faces and congested voices and stammering, all of which are like poison for Awesome. What makes me angriest about this is that Fox cancelled two of humankind’s greatest achievements, Firefly and Arrested Development, in favor of reality shows, when really the shows they cancelled featured all the same dramatic elements, only more gracefully presented and with the occasional psychotic Reaver or deranged seal attack.

So I’ve been tearing down reality television for a good thousand words – now is the perfect time to mention that I have been watching and enjoying a reality TV show for the past couple of weeks. “Oh, well,” You say to yourself. “If Truman likes it, it’s bound to be highly sophisticated and very up its own ass symbols and meaning.” In fact, this show is pretty much the opposite of that: It’s called Wipeout, and the title of the show is more or less its premise. In every half hour episode, 24 people race against the clock in elimination-style rounds to complete a series of elaborate obstacle courses that involve mud pits, automatic punching fists, and jumping on giant bouncy balls, all of which is narrated pseudo-MST3K style by two guys cracking lame jokes about the contestants’ performance.

It is a work of absolute genius.

You know why? Because it’s entertaining to watch! You remember entertainment, right? It’s what TV was before they added high school girls’ bathroom conspiracies and teary monologues. Wipeout does not pretend to be high drama; it does not pit people against another, it instead pits them against a series of elaborate traps designed to make them look like pillocks on national television. Wipeout is genius because it’s taken all the degrading feats that reality TV contestants have to perform and left out all the interpersonal fluff that makes up the other 90% of any given Big Brother episode – it isn’t trying to be drama, it’s trying and succeeding at being comedy. There is no way that you can shimmy across a one inch ledge along a mud pit and not get clocked in the face by one of the boxing gloves that pop out of the wall; thing is, the show isn’t about people achieving their goals, it’s about people failing miserably and us getting to watch slow motion replays of the results. While real people aren’t well suited to drama, they are absolutely perfect for comedy. Watching a fat butcher from Indiana, already covered in mud from previous pitfalls, trying to jump from one giant bouncy globe to another and instead ricochet headfirst into the water is absolute gold. There is no need for writing or acting here, because the beauty of it is watching his genuine reaction. Wipeout has no mission statement or attempt at social relevance; it simply subjects people to gross indignity in the pursuit of a cash prize, and when one has spent his day making hot fudge banana milkshakes for a thankless public, sometimes watching greedy people embarrass themselves is just what the doctor ordered.

Wipeout, reveling in its one-dimensional pursuit of laughs, could even be construed as a sendup of reality TV itself. “That’s it!” Wipeout is saying. “We’re out of ideas! Just laugh at people’s bizarre misfortune for half an hour!” I like a show that’s honest with itself and its audience: Like an ideal one night stand, both parties understand exactly what they have to offer one another and everyone goes away satisfied. While Big Brother tries to draw you in emotionally and eventually boils your pet rabbit, Wipeout goes on its merry way after a half hour, not afraid to be a callous penis joke in a TV landscape that gives itself too much credit.

Truman Capps only knows what a one night stand is because of Wikipedia, Mom.

Letters To People

At least one of these guys is getting a letter from me.

In the course of my day-to-day life, I encounter people in passing who I either don’t get to talk to or don’t get to talk to for long enough to sufficiently express my true feelings. Seeing as it’s summer and I have the time, I’d like to send a few letters to these folks, just so they know what I was really thinking when our paths crossed.

To The High Schoolers Who Walked Past The House Across The Street And Tossed All That Shredded Up Paper On The Lawn
Pick that up! Go on! Turn around and pick it up! We don’t just fling garbage into the street around here – this is Oregon, not California. I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up I had it hammered into my head that Littering was like the ninth deadly sin (after Writing In Library Books), and ever since I’ve been very steadfast about disposing of my trash in an environmentally responsible way, even when it meant hauling the same damn Styrofoam cup across God knows how many New York City blocks – and this was back when Al Gore was just an unsuccessful presidential candidate, not a professional Guy Who Uses PowerPoint. I can’t imagine you missed out on this indoctrination of eco-friendly living, so I can only assume that throwing your shredded up homework on my neighbor’s lawn was some form of teenaged rebellion. Well, congratulations, Skyler, you have successfully raged against the machine by dropping your shit on the ground without breaking stride. Anarchy indeed, son.

To Whoever Owns That New Black T-Bird Down The Street
I’m going to be honest, sir or madam – every time I walk past your car, I really want to steal it. I’m a very law abiding person – remember, I don’t even litter – but when I see your curvaceous, obsidian speed demon, dark hands from within press me toward malfeasance. I’m not the guy who reads Road and Track magazine and can tell the model year on a Corvette just by smelling it or knows what a V8 engine is; my dream car is electric, and it has Tina Fey in the passenger’s seat, and a box DVD set of the second season of Firefly in the glovebox. However, I’ve always had a deep love for the new T-Birds ever since they came out a few years ago, and yours, your Black Beauty, as I’ve come to call her, has captured my heart. It’s a sort of forbidden love, because I know that as a sports car it probably has laughable fuel economy, and as a former lot boy I’m well aware of how tough it is to keep a black car clean, but maybe it’s how blatantly unwise a purchase your car is that draws my miserly self toward it so. Of course, I never would actually steal your car, for to break one of her windows or hotwire her would be a horrific violation of her beauty. Also, that all leather interior is bound to be hot as the dickens in this heatwave we’ve been having.

To The Party That Came Into Carl’s And Ordered 2 Large Root Beer Shakes With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups And A Banana Shake With Strawberry During The Busiest Part Of The Night
What the HELL, people!? Really? Is that what we’re doing now – humans, I mean; are human beings ordering large cups of diary fat mixed with syrup and crushed up candy bars!? That’s a thing we do now? Okay, no offense, but I hope your teeth rot and fall out and you choke on them in your sleep and die, because we were already mad busy with the sort of milkshakes that ordinary people who don’t want to get diabetes order, and then you guys show up with your fancy pants demands for candy in your root beer. Do you know how hard that is? We keep the Reese’s in the fridge – for you, consumer, for you! – and when they go in the blender with the ice cream it’s like trying to use a lawnmower to turn gravel into hummus. And it was my fourth day! Oh, and don’t think I forgot about you, Mr. Banana And Strawberry Shake! Let me ask you a question: Did you see a sign outside that said Jamba Juice? No? You know why? Because mixed-berry smoothies are not Carl’s modus operandi! If you want two different kinds of fruit flavors all squished together in a cup, you should just hop on your recumbent bike, crank up the Coldplay on your iPod, and take a nice long trip over Northwest Portland, where I promise you there are plenty of places that will serve you that sort of thing in a much healthier fashion! But for God’s sake, don’t make me chop up a banana, stick it in a cup, blend the banana all by itself, then add ice cream, then add strawberry on top, and then blend the whole thing! I mean, come on! That won’t even taste good!

To Angelina Jolie
Hey there Angie, it’s Truman again. So I was watching the news tonight and it turns out you’re pregnant with twins! Congratulations on that. But, and I’m sorry if this isn’t any of my business, don’t you already have literally hundreds of adopted children? I mean, sure, I can see adopting a child if it turns out you can’t have children of your own – I sort of figured that this was the case all these years that you were actually adopting impoverished Asian children before they had been conceived, but now I find out that your lady parts (and what lady parts they must be, if they’re in any way like the rest of you) are working just fine, well enough that you appear to be growing a set of twins sired by none other than Brad Pitt. Sure, you’ve got the financial means to take care of the impressive number of children you’re plucking out of the third world or producing the old fashioned way, but at the rate you’re going I’m afraid you’ve crossed the line from child rearing into nation building. All I’m saying is, it’s going to be really embarrassing if we have to annex Nova Scotia to store your lineage.

To The Really Cute Girl With Glasses In Bella Fresca The Other Night
Maybe you noticed that I refilled your water a lot, even when you clearly didn’t need it refilled. Was that creepy? I’m sorry if it was. I don’t know what I’d thought would happen – maybe that, as I stood at the back of the restaurant, you’d pause beside me on your way to the bathroom and whisper in my ear, “You’ve been doing a really great job refilling my water, and that guy I’m with isn’t my boyfriend, and even though I’m 21 and you look to be about 19, I’d really just love to go get dinner with you sometime.” And I’d say, “Sure, I could work that into my schedule.”, and then a couple days later we’d go get dinner at some colorful locally owned restaurant, and then we’d have a second date at a theater pub or something and watch some independent movie, and then for our third date you’d take me to the three bedroom apartment you share with your friends, one of whom has a tattoo or a nose piercing and the other of whom is from Mexico or the Netherlands or some other country, and we’d have dinner there and swap embarrassing secrets about one another, and when it came to be my turn I’d say, “Well, sometimes I play Dungeons and Dragons.”, and then I’d grit my teeth and wait for you to be shocked and kick me out, but instead you’d take me by the hand and lead me into your bedroom, where you’d open a drawer in the bedside table to reveal your Dungeon Master’s Guide and dice, and then we’d proceed to roll character sheets or have sex, either of which is fine with me. So, yeah, that’s sort of what I hoped would happen. Sorry if that’s creepy.

Truman Capps will be sincerely embarrassed if any of these messages reach their intended targets – that being said, Glasses Girl, we really should hang out sometime.

You're A Better Man Than I Am, Gunga Din!

As I see it, my options for this update were either a poster for "The Waterboy" or Velazquez's "The Water Carrier of Seville", and as usual I favored the more pretentious choice.

In both of my new jobs, either as a Milkshake Technician at Carl’s or as a busboy at Bella Fresca, people keep asking me how I’m liking the work so far. And the obvious answer is, “Well, I’d prefer it if you paid me the same hourly wage to sit around at home and not work, but until that happens, this’ll do”, but that makes me seem even more jaded and antisocial than I already am, so I usually just say, “Oh, yeah, it’s a lot better than my job last summer!”

In the fine dining hierarchy, the busboy occupies what is pretty much the lowest possible position in an industry dedicated to being a complete stranger’s personal servant for a few hours. At Bella Fresca, my job is to quickly and quietly remove the customer’s empty plates once they’ve finished eating and then wipe down and reset the table after they’re gone. The only time I’m trusted with something the customers are actually going to put in their mouths is when I make the rounds with my pitcher of icewater and fill up their glasses with the cheapest thing on the menu. The cooks prepare the uniformly delicious food that Bella Fresca is known for, the waitresses make pleasant conversation and form a bond with the customer, yet the busboy’s primary purpose is to be seen and not heard, and maybe not even seen, if at all possible.

Now, this is not a bad job by any means – in fact, I think it’s what we’d call a good job. I get free meals, and there are few things classier than sitting on a folding chair in the parking lot behind a fine restaurant, eating a free bowl of garlic crusted chicken and thumbing your nose at the hobos in line for the bottle return at the market across the street. Also, unlike my coworkers at the car dealership where I worked last year, the people here are actually kind and respectful, and they don’t brag about how many women they’ve impregnated or make fun of me for going to college. Last, but by no means least, I get paid ludicrous amounts of money to do what I do. The brilliant thing about making $10, count ‘em, $10 an hour is that it’s very easy to look at the clock and calculate exactly how much money you’re making over the course of a given period of time. If I spend ten minutes eating my free dinner, then I’ve just been paid $1.40 to eat a crazy delicious meal that would ordinarily cost $17, which is what happens at every meal in Heaven.

However, there are inherent difficulties in being a busboy. For one thing, Bella Fresca is about as spacious as a German U-boat; it scarcely had room for the customers and staff (two cooks, a dishwasher, and three waiters) before I arrived and it certainly doesn’t now. During busy periods, the staff have to operate with all the clockwork and efficiency of, oh, I don’t know, the crew of a German U-boat perhaps, and the result is a graceful dance as we dip and weave around one another in a frenzied attempt to launch the torpedo of Fine Italian Dining at the RMS Lusitania of our clientele.

The other, considerably larger problem is that human beings in general just drink too damn much water, and as the person in charge of refilling water glasses I really wish you’d all slow down just a little bit. Water is my primary responsibility as a busboy – the waiters are too busy dealing with consumables that aren’t piped into the building for a nominal monthly sum, so I spend most of my time standing quietly at the back of the restaurant and scrupulously analyzing the water glasses of our customers, which is probably unimaginably creepy to the hungry thirtysomething who wants to enjoy his shrimp scampi without being leered at by a mute, poofy haired water bearer in a black apron. The rule my boss gave me to follow is that as soon as a customer’s glass is one quarter empty (or three quarters full, depending on perspective), it’s time to boogie on over (or shimmy, or shuffle, or sidle, or ollie, or whatever it takes to navigate the maze of tables and people that is Bella Fresca) and refill their glass. Once I’m at the table, though, I’m supposed to refill everyone’s water so as not to imply favoritism or negligence, and by the time that’s done somebody else has probably quaffed 25% of their water and I’m off to do the same thing again. Of course, this is far better than the alternative, which is merely standing observantly at the back of the restaurant, pitcher in hand, and willing someone to drink enough water so that I actually get to do something. This usually happens when things are slow and there are no plates to be cleared; at times my boredom has led me to neglect the three quarters rule and start refilling customers’ glasses even sooner, to the point at which it’d be a better idea to just set the pitcher down in front of them with a straw and tell them to have fun. So really, I guess I shouldn’t be griping about people drinking too much water – nevermind me, go back to drinking as much as you want.

I suppose the main reason I’m complaining about refilling people’s water is that it’s really a pretty fruitless gesture, when you think about it. How many of you honestly go into a restaurant and just dive right into that glass of icewater, drain the whole thing, and sit there thinking, “God, when’s that busboy going to come along, I am dying for some more water!”*? I’m betting you don’t, unless you’re That Guy, Mr. “I Only Drink Water, Because It’s The Best Thing For You!” Let me tell you, That Guy, you can go straight to hell – I have very few vices to make my life interesting. I avoid drugs and alcohol and women avoid me, therefore not drinking enough water is about the only really risky thing I can do for myself at this juncture. Whenever I go to a restaurant the water is, at best, a temporary diversion until the real drink arrives, and then water is really just sort of a backup drink, an ice cold respite from calories, color, and flavor. I don’t know, maybe you might take a sip every now and again, but once there’s a distraction on the table you really don’t give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about your glass of water. But then, suddenly, out of nowhere, here comes a busboy, intruding on your personal conversation to reach through your field of vision, grab your barely depleted glass of that liquid you don’t even care that much about, and clumsily fill it again, all while muttering apologies and not making eye contact! Does that bug you? It always bugged me, and now I’m the guy doing it, and let me tell you, it’s a little odd to be on the other end of the situation. Also, given the cramped nature of the restaurant and the awkward placement of some of the tables, I’ve had to more or less hug customers to grab their water glasses off the table for refilling, and have at other times risked involuntarily groping patrons in the pursuit of their continued hydration.

*Actually, Alexander did that very thing at a Sharis one night. He made a point of chugging his glass of icewater every time it was filled, mainly to spite the busboy, or his body, or maybe even water itself for all I know, and eventually drained three full pitchers before we had to rush his shivering, nauseated self home. For the record, he’s been invited to attend West Point.

I like my job as a busboy for the same reason I like my job cobbling together desserts out of lactose and sugar: I can see the direct result of my actions. When I was pressure washing unpurchased gas guzzlers at a car dealership last summer, I felt as though my hard work was essentially futile, and while I’m more than willing to get paid to do a job that ultimately has no point, I’d need to make a lot more than I was making back then. At Bella Fresca, however, I feel like a necessary part of a big Rube Goldberg machine designed to deliver tasty, carbohydrate rich foods to hungry people, even if my only function is to clear away empty plates to make room for full plates and fill the occasional glass of water. I enjoy work more when I’m working toward some sort of greater purpose; I also enjoy work more when I’m making $10 an hour.

Truman Capps not only made a reference to 19th century literature in the title of this update but also an art history reference in the accompanying picture – he now commands that you bow down before his giant brain.

My Milkshake Is Bigger Than Yours

“Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that's a straw, you see? You watching? And my straw reaches across the room, and starts to drink your milkshake... I... drink... your... milkshake!”

-Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been looking for work as of late. In the past, I’ve compared my experiences in the job market to my experiences in the dating market, but it seems that those days are long over because I am now a resounding success in one of those two categories. Which one is it? Here, I’ll give you a hint: Both of my condoms are still safely tucked away in my desk drawer. Yes, I’m just as disappointed as you are.

I’ve been doubly successful in my job hunt, because I’ve not only been hired as a busboy at a local fine dining establishment (which, for confidentiality’s sake, we will call Bella Fresca – the only two Italian words I know), but also as a front staff member at a local diner (which we will call Carl’s). Let me tell you, without working a day at Bella Fresca yet and having only worked two days at Carl’s, that these are the best two jobs I’ve ever had in my life, and that’s counting my partnership in the failed lemonade stand venture when I was 9 as well as the afternoon when I was 5 that my friend’s mom paid me $1 to tear up confidential documents because her shredder was broken. Sure, work at Carl’s is sticky, humid, and exhausting, but I get paid for it, and it sure beats getting kicked in the head for a few hours every day. Incidentally, being kicked in the head for a few hours every day is horrible, but it sure beats pressure washing Chevies at a car dealership with three mouth breathers, which, as it happens, was my job last summer.

Carl’s is a neighborhood staple, a burger joint that, in all honesty, serves some of the most ridiculously delicious food in the universe. Of course, until they start serving hummus burgers there’s not going to be any completely healthy way to enjoy a slab of beef with deep fried potatoes and mayonnaise somewhere in the picture, but Carl’s, God bless it, sort of goes the extra mile. They serve a bacon cheeseburger with a fried egg on it, which is sort of like screaming, “YOU’RE NOT MY REAL DAD!” at your arteries and then riding off on your newly purchased dirtbike. That being said, the burger of which I speak is fucking tasty.

So about half of the menu at Carl’s is various permutations on red meat, cheese, and boiling hot fat – that’s fine. I am in no way saying that’s a bad thing. I think if more people had access to this kind of food, there’d be fewer wars, if for no other reason than that most people would be too fat and lazy to fight anymore. However, the other half of the menu is dedicated to various permutations of ice cream, syrup, and cup. Carl’s serves ice cream sundaes. Carl’s serves banana splits. Carl’s serves ice cream cones (in two sizes). Carl’s serves waffle cones (in two sizes). Carl’s serves root beer floats. Carl’s serves malts. And Carl’s serves milkshakes.

Oh, how Carl’s serves milkshakes.

Dear readers, for past two days, it is I, Truman S. Capps, who has been slaving over a hot ice cream machine to make milkshakes.

Maybe you’ve made a lot of milkshakes in your life. Maybe you’re just an old hand at it by now. Maybe you don’t understand why my terminology seems so bleak. Here’s the deal: I have never made a milkshake before, because I’m lactose intolerant, and for me drinking anything with “milk” in its name is sort of like hitting the panic button on my intestines. If you don’t believe me, I have documents and witnesses to back my claims. Just understand that, when I arrived at work and my coworker pointed to the countertop where mere mortals tame the savage elements of Soft-Serve and malt flavoring, I was going in with far less experience than an ordinary, lactose tolerant individual.

You put the cup under the Soft-Serve machine and pull the crank, and you let it fill most of the way with vanilla ice cream*, at which point you add whatever flavor the milkshake is supposed to be along with some arbitrary amount of milk. Let’s say you’re making a medium sized blackberry milkshake – at this point, you’ve got a cup filled to the brim with slowly melting ice cream, three scoops of very juicy blackberries, and a fresh coating of milk. It’s sort of precarious, and you’ve got to hold the cup very carefully lest some of its sticky contents spill over the edge onto your hand. It is at this point that you take this concoction over to a small blender like apparatus mounted behind a clear plastic screen. You stick the cup behind the screen and submerge the blades into the goopy mixture, and then you push a button that makes those blades start spinning really fast. And if they’re not going fast enough, you can adjust a dial to make them go even faster. The disaster potential in this sort of operation runs disturbingly high, as does the potential for loud and colorful language within earshot of the family-friendly restaurant’s clientele.

*Every milkshake at Carl’s is made with vanilla ice cream. Even chocolate. This knowledge sort of takes the fun out of what little dairy I can safely eat, because whenever I would risk it and order a small root beer milkshake, I’d assume that they were making it with some sort of root beer flavored ice cream, as opposed to root beer, vanilla ice cream, and root beer flavoring. Fact: A root beer float is a root beer milkshake, only with less ice cream.

I spent four hours making milkshakes yesterday, and just about every moment was pretty intense. When you get that blender thing going and crank the dial up to about 60, it’s really something to behold. The engine is just chugging right away, and the blades are splattering against the ice cream and grinding against the cup, and you’re worried that at any minute they might burst through and suddenly your hand is part of the milkshake (don’t worry Mom; I’ve checked and this is actually impossible). Sometimes it’s pretty simple – the toppings mix easily with the ice cream and everyone goes home happy. Other times, it’s what could be charitably described as a nightmare. Sometimes, those Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups just don’t want to get mixed up with that vanilla ice cream and milk, and so they’ll try to escape by jumping out of the cup and dumping filthy lactose all over your hands. Sometimes the ice cream will decide against being blended, and suddenly the cup is spinning in circles, not the ice cream inside it, and you’re trying to keep a hold of the cup without breaking your wrist (again, Mom, I’ve actually got a better chance of meeting a nice girl who’s interested in me than I do of breaking my wrist making a milkshake). You can never tell which milkshake will be problematic – a hot fudge banana malt could blend without issue, and yet even the simplest flavor can strike when you least expect it. I learned this the hard way.

Someone ordered a large vanilla shake toward the end of my shift, which is about the easiest thing to make outside of a small cup of water. Since every shake is made with vanilla, all I had to do was fill a cup with ice cream, pour some milk in there, and blend the two together. It’s basically a cup of vanilla ice cream, the vanilla shake. However, somewhere in my preparations, something went wrong. Perhaps I used too much ice cream. Perhaps I used too much milk. Perhaps I just really suck at my job. But as soon as I flipped the blender on, I knew that this was The Perfect Storm. Of milkshakes.

“BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES, YOU BASTARDS, THIS ONE’S A FIGHTER!” I screamed, cranking the blades up to 100 with my free hand as I struggled to keep control of the cup with the other. Geysers of milk and creamy Soft-Serve lava floes spewed forth from the top of the cup, splattering the plastic safety screen and obscuring my view. At this point a coward would have let the cup go and given the ice cream and milk the escape they so desired; a sane man would fetch the nearest handgun and execute the rebellious confectionary. I was certainly not a coward, because cowards do not last long in the milkshake industry, and I wasn’t sane either. However, by the time the blades had stopped, I was considerably less sane than I had been before. Who knows how long it took me – ten minutes, the entire summer – but eventually my endurance was greater than that of the milkshake, and it solemnly submitted to blending, having already sprayed itself around most of the kitchen before giving up.

If you’re out there, you, the one who ordered that large cup of vanilla hell, I hope you enjoyed it. Because I sure as hell enjoyed making it. Unlike my previous jobs, where my work usually went either ridiculed or unnoticed, at Carl’s my actions have a direct influence on other people. It is this sort of responsibility that I like – it keeps me sharp. Also, I’m making bank off of that tip jar.

Truman Capps would like the customer who ordered the vanilla shake to beware – in the middle of the night it might try to burrow out of your stomach, sort of like in Alien.

Let Them Eat Legos

Product recall in five, four, three...

In the process of going to college and moving to Portland, I had to give up a lot of my old toys. Some things were easier to get rid of than others – getting rid of my squirt guns wasn’t too hard, losing the Army men was tougher, and giving away the Beanie Babies just about killed me (not because of any sentimental value, but just because I’d bought the damn things as an investment when I was in 4th grade, expecting that they would one day finance my retirement). However, I never doubted that these toys were unnecessary - I had no illusion that there would ever be a time in my adult life where I’d suddenly need them.
“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Capps, but it appears that you have cancer.”
“No, it’s cool – I’ve got some Hot Wheels.”

However, if there was one thing in my closet that I felt I absolutely couldn’t part with, it was my giant purple tub full of Legos. I feel like my life will in one way or another be hollower, because now that my Legos are gone I am unable to jump up whenever I want to and build a pirate ship crewed by dinosaurs. I loved my Legos, and so did you. It was like the 11th Commandment: Thou shalt think Legos are totally rad. It was a real shame that my family had to go and move when we did, because I had a pretty impressive Lego collection going at that point. Imagine, if you will, a solid decade of Legomania*, either bought with carefully saved allowance or received on birthdays and at Christmas. In that purple tub, cowboys intermingled with spacemen, little plastic guns mixed with miniature pizzas, not to mention loose plastic doodads and God knows how many strands of my hair. Ten years of my life and literally hundreds of dollars were represented in that box of possibilities.

*Do you remember those old commercials, with the song? “I’ve got a case of [pause] Legomania!” There was a time when I really seized on Legomania as a viable excuse for just about anything – “I can’t go to school today, Mom; I’ve got Legomania. I have to keep playing with my Legos!” My parents, evidently not understanding the severity of the Legomania virus, never accepted this excuse. Now I’m proud to say that I’ve kicked my Legomania in favor of Egomania, a common occurrence in people who grew up creating and destroying their own miniature civilizations on a daily basis.

I have never met a person who, when I mentioned one of my millions of great experiences with Legos, said, “Oh, hell no, I hated Legos. My favorite toys were my piece of string and my Bible!” Legos are, simply put, one of the absolute greatest creations of all time. They were like the DNA of fun – you start out with a bucket filled with random multicolored bricks, little smiling men, and the occasional palm tree, and then from this jumbled mass create something wholly original, like a spaceship driven by dinosaurs, or a rocket propelled covered wagon driven by dinosaurs, or a giant fortress outfitted with booby traps and dinosaurs. Legos may as well be called the “God Starter Kit”, because it’s basically a box full of opportunities to create new, exciting worlds, and then fill them with dinosaurs.

Well as it turns out, the unstoppable march of human progress has seized upon the inherent genius of Legos and combined them with the inherent genius of candy. Behold, ladies and gentlemen, Lego Fun Snacks – fruit snacks that are shaped like Lego blocks. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Is this awesome, or is this a class-action suit waiting to happen? Allow me to render my opinion.

When I first heard that they were making food that was shaped like Lego bricks, I was thrilled. On paper, Lego bricks that are made out of delicious candy are arguably the greatest step forward in toy history – not only are they functional as structural materials, but they’re edible too! For thousands of years, mankind has strived to create buildings that double as foodstuffs. We were brought up with the story of Hansel and Gretel, we built miniature gingerbread houses we longed to live in, and Ray Nagin once referred to New Orleans as “The Chocolate City”. Buildings made out of candy have been prophesized for centuries, and Lego Fun Snacks are making it that much easier for us to live out our dreams. As I mentioned before, I would often play God by creating Lego societies and then destroying them when I deemed them sinful (or when it was time for bed). It was one thing to instill fear in your Lego citizens by knocking over a building or two, but imagine how powerful and awesome it would feel to eat an entire city! If it were possible, I would drop out of school to spend my days building breathtaking creations, and then eating them.

The bad news is that these Lego Fun Snacks aren’t really Legos, because despite looking exactly like Legos in every way, you can’t interlock and stack them like the real thing. When you realize that it’s impossible to actually make anything out of your Lego candy, you’ve got to wonder why they even bothered in the first place. How could a project like this even get out of the design phase when there’s such blatant wasted potential?
“My proposal is that we make fruit snacks shaped like Legos!”
“Brilliant idea, Simmons! I can finally build my Lego dream house, and then eat it!”
“Actually, sir, we’re unable to build edible interlocking bricks with current gummy fruit technology.”
“So you’re saying we’re just going to be marketing candy that sort of looks like Legos? Where’s the fun in that?”
“No, it’s cool – I’ve got some Hot Wheels.”

Now that any hint of coolness is gone, we must turn to the flat out stupid irresponsibility of Lego Fun Snacks, much of which has already been handled in this article. The simple fact is that little kids will treat just about everything as food until experience proves otherwise. What’s really ironic is that this coupling between Lego and Kellog’s is probably intended to sell more Lego building blocks by getting kids interested in Lego fruit snacks, which is fine until you remember that only one of these two identical items is edible, and the other is just a chunk of hard plastic with a bunch of pointy bits. So what’s going to happen? A lot of kids are going to start eating their Legos, obviously – more kids than are already eating Legos, because now they’ll have a legitimate reason to believe that their toys are delicious. If it was possible to actually build with Lego fun snacks, I’d say that a few three-year-olds having to get their stomachs pumped was a fair price to pay for progress. But instead, we’re just endangering the lives of a whole bunch of little kids so that we can have the exact same kind of fruit snack in a different shape, and frankly that’s not an exciting enough prospect to sacrifice children for.

I don’t really see what’s so amusing about food being shaped like something anyway – if it’s not functional, it’s just one more thing to put in your mouth and smash up with your teeth. Just because a food is shaped like something you love doesn’t really make it all that much better; this is why I will never eat Tina Fey shaped candy. The cold hard truth is that shapes do not have flavors; however if they did, I’m betting circle would be freaking delicious.

Truman Capps would like to point out that Good & Plenty candies could cause similar problems, as they reenforce the notion that all pills taste like delicious licorice, and you should eat as many of them as possible.

A Message To My Potential Employers

See? Teamwork!

Oh, why hello there. I was wondering when you'd show up.

Why, yes, I have been expecting you. I can’t tell you how prepared I am for this – honest to Pete, if I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it a thousand times from guidance counselors and professors, “Be careful what you post on Facebook or in your blog, because potential employers will Google your name! Whatever you post on the Internet is theirs to read!”

Hey, hey, don’t act all ashamed – you weren’t being nosy at all! I post this sort of thing on the Internet, don’t I? It’s out there for people to read, after all.

Yes, I am that Truman Capps, the one who came into your establishment not too long ago with a flashy resume and an even flashier smile. Welcome, Potential Employer, to my blog. By all means, have a look around! Can I get you anything? Some Perrier, or maybe a Fresca? I’ve just made some banana bread, you really have to try it.

Yep, home sweet hairguytruman.blogspot.com. Sure, it’s no Exploding Unicorn, but I’ve only been at this for nine months. I guess that, if I’d knocked up some HTML in October, this blog entry would be the screaming, writhing, passive voice using, run on sentence writing baby. Of course, the entries here on Blogspot only go back to December, but I got my start on Facebook way long ago. Oh, man, the stories I could tell you about me and Facebook – entire entries lost when it spontaneously decided to log me out of my account right after I pressed “Submit”, the ability to tag your friends in your blogs in order to exploit their most selfish urges to read what you think about them… It was fun and safe, but I had to move on, y’know? I’m motivated and I like to think big, which is part of why I feel that I’d make such a great employee.

Feel free to have a look at my Facebook too, if you haven’t already. It’ll tell you that I’m single and pretty liberal, and that I’m all too fond of Firefly and the notion of a zombie apocalypse – you could find all that crap out here, too, but you can’t play Jetman on my blog (which, come to think of it, might be why I don’t get so many hits). You can look through all of my pictures but you won’t find any shots of me smoking pot or knocking back Natural Ice or clubbing a state trooper with a sock full of batteries, both because I don’t engage in that sort of behavior and because my attacks are so swift and unpredictable that no cameraman can catch me in the act.

Perusing my blog might lead to a few awkward moments between you and I when next we meet. Yes, Large National Banking Chain, I did specify on my application that I was fluent in both English and Spanish, despite evidence to the contrary that, if you hadn’t found already, you are most certainly reading now. Saying that I’m fluent in Spanish may not be entirely truthful, but in my defense, you didn’t define your standard of fluency on the application. Sure, I’m not exactly the Daniel Webster of Spanish, but I could probably carry on a limited conversation with a small Mexican child, or perhaps a talking Chihuahua if it spoke slowly and didn’t use the future tense. For all you know, that could be how I define fluency. However, I meant every word in my cover letter about devotion to customer service and my abilities as both a team member and team leader. Hell, one of my favorite video games is Team Fortress 2 - the word “team” is right in the freakin’ title! How much more devotion to teamwork do you want? I’m not one of those half-hearted jocks who’ll talk up his ability to delegate until he’s blue in the face and then go home to play some “Me vs The World” game like Halo. I’m a team player at work and in my spare time! So whether it’s capturing the Red Team’s flag or just flipping burgers, know, Potential Employers, that I’m devoted to helping my team be all that it can be.

And since we’re having this little heart to heart, I suppose it’ll be pickles on parade if I tell you that one of the two previous jobs I list on my resume is not, in fact, a job in any sense of the word. Sprague High School Library Aide is not, and never will be, a job as you and I know it – I didn’t get paid, there was very little responsibility involved, and my supervisor was the cheerleading coach. However, my time in the Sprague Library was less than a job in every sense of the word: Not only was it less fulfilling and rewarding than an ordinary teenager’s first job, it was also considerably less enjoyable. As you are no doubt keenly aware, Potential Employers, the job that I hope any one of you will give me involves a great deal of contact with customers, even if it’s simply putting a burger in front of them or pleasantly asking for their money from behind a sheet of bulletproof glass. I think that working without pay at the front desk in a library attended only by surly 14-18 year olds and not having a major psychotic episode is more than enough qualification to work in the service industry. To be employed in a place where the clientele are at least there by choice, and where a paycheck is waiting for me at the end of every two weeks, would be a dream after spending a semester rotting amongst crusty Garfield comics and Goosebumps tomes, periodically rousting stubborn MySpace fiends from the computer lab and trolling the back room for amorous goth couples. So, yes, that was a bit of a fib on my resume: “Sprague High School Library Desk Assistant” was not a job – it was more a trial, nay, a sadistic character building exercise at the hands of the Salem-Keizier School District, from which I have emerged with the same attitude as a man who has just been cured of a terrifyingly painful disease. “Come on now, World! Is that all you’ve got!? After that, I can take anything! No sweat!"

Maybe it’s outright lunacy for me to come clean here, to lay out a couple of flaws and present myself as I actually am, as opposed to the charismatic and unobtrusive lad you all met earlier. If what you’ve read here has turned your opinion of me for the worse, be it due to my admission of fudging details on my application or my decidedly cheeky tone about the whole affair, then I’m quite sorry that it has to be that way. My reasoning was that if you, as my Potential Employers, had the wherewithal to look me up on the Internet to make sure I was legit, I had no chance of hiding the real me as archived in this blog, where I sign off with my full name twice a week. I wanted to have this relatively reasonable (and profanity free) message be the first thing you saw of my online presence, rather than my flagrant disbelief in the existence of math or my pleas to the government for an XBox 360.

If you don’t want to believe anything else about me, at least know that I’m honest and I’ve got nothing to hide. That, coupled with being able to look a man in the eye and ask him if he wants fries with his cheeseburger, makes me one hell of a good employee, in my own estimate. If I were running a business, I would undoubtedly hire myself to work there as well – but of course, if we were living in a world populated by numerous Truman doppelgangers, I’d give up on that small business owner crap right away and try to unite an army, or at least a special interest group and Congressional lobby.

The point, Potential Employers, is that I really want a job. I want more money in my bank account, I want more ink on my resume, and I really want to have a reason to get out of bed this summer that doesn’t just involve eating or the toilet.

Thanks for your time, and be sure to give me a call. Don’t be a stranger, now!

Truman Capps hopes that at least one of his Potential Employers continued reading past the third paragraph.

Movin' Out

I haven't been so much thinking inside the box as I've been thinking about putting things inside the box.

A few years ago, when clearing out my grandparents’ house after they moved into a retirement home, my parents and I were shocked to find all the stuff they’d accumulated over the 40-odd years they’d spend in their 3500 square foot North Portland abode. As veterans of the Great Depression, my grandparents held onto everything just in case they’d need it later. There was a bottle filled with the round bits of paper that come from a three-hole-punch, neatly labeled “confetti”. There was a closet filled with mayonnaise jars that my grandparents were unwilling to throw out in the vain hope that 50 gallons of free mayonnaise might materialize somewhere downtown, mayonnaise that was all for the taking provided you had the right sort of jar to scoop it into. And last of all, there were boxes. Oh, lord, how there were boxes. Every box for every item they’d ever purchased was saved somewhere in that house, usually stuffed inside of a slightly larger box, with a few smaller boxes tucked away inside of it. My grandparents could fit 10 or 15 different boxes inside one another like those little Russian dolls – the difference being that these had at one time held a microwave.

After the arduous task of separating valuable family heirlooms from containers full of containers was completed, my parents made me promise to never accumulate crap like my grandparents did. We made a point of going through all of our own stuff and throwing out everything that wasn’t completely necessary for us to live our lives.* Moving to Portland helped this process along considerably: Sure, there was some sentimental value to the dusty box full of my preschool assignments, but not enough for us to want to haul 20 pounds of dried macaroni and glitter up 60 miles of Interstate just so we could stuff it in another attic and keep not looking at it. Moving into my tiny dormitory, I made a point of not bringing extraneous crap that I didn’t need, and as space was a priority I made a point of not collecting stuff that was otherwise garbage.

*Things my family still owns:
1) Set of pink plastic boobs
2) Fake arrow-through-head prop
3) Austin Powers 3

At the time, I felt like I was running a pretty tight ship. I wasn’t one of those girls who wallpapered her room with pictures of every single one of her friends, family members, and family members’ friends, and I wasn’t one of those guys who carpeted his floor with loose paper and dirty laundry.* I had very little in the way of decoration – a print of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks on one wall and the poster for Superbad on the other, in a wonderful juxtaposition of fine art and movies that use the word “dick-demon”. Drawers were employed for the storage of clothing, garbage was disposed of in a timely fashion, and the dust bunnies never got big enough to steal my iPod. Thus, I assumed that things would be easier when it came time to move out.

*I also didn’t crap in my garbage can, Julian. Yeah, that’s right, I said your name on the Internet – you probably don’t even read my blog, so what do you care? Everybody, Julian is the one I was talking about; he was the guy who packed hot lunches right there in his own room.

The week when everyone moves out of a college dormitory is about as entertaining as the circus. SUVs and minivans furiously jockey for positions in the parking lot as parents and returning students scream at one another. I’ve been watching, and these sorts of meltdowns occur pretty quickly after the parents and student are reunited; the parents realize why they were happy to get rid of their kid in the first place, the students realize that they won’t be able to come home drunk for a whole three months, and things just go downhill from there once these emotionally strained parties have to move heavy objects down six flights of stairs. The product of all this strife is an intricate ballet that involves a lot of swearing and the occasional dropped refrigerator.

Now, the very act of moving out of the dorms sounds pretty unpleasant when you first start thinking about it. If you live in a place for long enough, even a tiny closetlike place that you endeavor not to fill with pointless kitsch, things kind of start to get settled. Stuff that came down to school neatly packed and organized in well labeled boxes starts to get spread around the place, things you need mix up with things you don’t need, you keep the same bottle of orange Gatorade in your fridge for an entire year… The more a place becomes home, the harder it gets to move it, no matter how spare a lifestyle you’re trying to lead. You stop thinking about what needs to get packed – you don’t see a power strip as a possession, you don’t think of it as yours, a thing that you own, you just start to see it as a part of the room in the same way you’d think of the wall, or the 20 year old piece of gum stuck underneath the desk. But then it comes to you that no, those power strips belong to you, and they have to go home, and suddenly you’re looking around your little room so full of stuff and you realize that you’ve got to put your entire life into seven cardboard boxes and somehow fit them into your Mom’s Prius, and you’ve only got two days to do it because you figured packing was going to be a breeze. It is now that you realize why all of your friends had been packing for weeks before. It is now that you realize why some people are renting U-Hauls and trucks. It is now that you realize that the very thought of packing and moving anything in two days or less is some straight up asinine shit.

In a move distinctly reminiscent of my grandparents, I had saved all the boxes I’d brought my stuff to college in, and in order to clear one hurdle right away I set unfolding them and taping them together once again. At that point, I had seven large boxes blocking just about all of the available floor space in my room, so I figured that the next logical step would be to start putting things in the boxes. I decided to forego the careful planning with which my father and I had packed my things before I came to school in favor of just grabbing as many of my possessions as I could find and throwing them into the nearest empty container. I continued to throw just any old thing – laundry, desk toys, free lube courtesy of Planned Parenthood – into a box until it was filled to the brim, at which point I would close the lid and tape it shut using brute force and also some profanity. At some point during my packing frenzy I realized that I could easily starve to death, blocked into the corner of my room by piles of boxes with my traditional sustenance of dark chocolate and peanut butter already packed away.

Incidentally, I bet this sort of thing isn’t a problem for Buddhist monks. If a Buddhist monk wants to move, he just gets up and starts walking. Hell, he might not even be wearing clothes! It might sound kind of nutty right now, but when I was elbow deep in material possessions and packing tape I was thinking pretty hard about taking a trip to Tibet.

The good thing about my method of packing was that when my Mom arrived, everything I owned was in the boxes and we were able to leave with about as much dignity as possible. The downside to it is that now that we’re at home, I’m not really sure which of the seven identical boxes any given item is in. For example, I couldn’t tell you exactly where my mouse is right now – it sure as hell wasn’t in the box with my computer and power cord. I don’t know why I put it in a separate box, as my memories from my packing craze are somewhat hazy – I more or less blacked out and woke up in a room full of neatly packed boxes. I’m sure my Dad* is shaking his head as he reads this, because this is exactly the sort of disorder and inefficiency that he’s been trying to teach me to avoid, but I think it’s enough of a miracle that I made it home without leaving anything behind.

*Happy Father’s Day, by the way, Dad. I know Mom got her own entry and all that, but you have even less tolerance for this sort of holiday than she does, so I figure a footnote works just as well. You’ve never made any secret of the fact that you’re proud of me, and you’ve always been my blog’s biggest fan, even when it isn’t all that funny, and for that I love you. Also, you could easily pass for Steve Martin’s brother, which I think would be an incredibly handy trick if we ever need to get into an exclusive nightclub.

As much as we try to not to pick up crap that we don’t need, I think that it’s impossible to have a home without at least some crap you don’t need in it. In fact, “home” is Latin for “place to put novelty pencil sharpeners, back issues of Maxim, commemorative coins/plates, etc.” We keep these things around because we know we’re going to be in one place for an extended period of time, and that’s sort of the base definition of what a home is, when you take out all the sappy poetic stuff. People don’t put down roots so much as they put down crap; moving said crap is what makes life so difficult, and that’s why people are so reluctant to leave home. In a few months, in order to make my new apartment home, I’m going to have to help move a couch up a flight of stairs.

Buddhist monks, of course, have no couches…

Truman Capps has just realized that he’s going to repeat this move in/move out cycle at least three more times in the coming years, a thought scary enough to make him sleep with the lights on.

Salem: The Return

All this and more await you in... Salem!

I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I hate my former hometown of Salem, Oregon. For those of you who read this and for whatever reason love Salem, that’s cool – I’m not saying that Salem is bad, I’m just saying that it’s boring and slightly depressing. As you’ll remember, I spent the Memorial Day weekend in sunny Reedsport, population 4500, and I actually found it marginally more entertaining than Salem, if not just for the novelty factor of sporadic bear attacks. There is about as much going on in downtown Salem at any given time as there is going on in downtown Reedsport, which might make sense until you consider that 150,000 people live in Salem and none of them, it seems, can think of anything to do after the The Honeybaked Ham Store closes at 5:00. Fortunately, my family moved to Portland just after I left for college, so now Salem is little more to me than a wide spot on I-5 and possibly the only city in Oregon to put a half naked golden pioneer on top of the tallest building in town.
It so happens that my friend Alexander, who once climbed 40 feet up a drainpipe on the side of a Kohl’s and would have made it the whole way if a cop hadn’t stopped him, just returned home to Salem after six months of various kinds of Army training in the deepest, darkest depths of Georgia. Seeing as he was back in Salem and there’s nothing on my agenda until this Friday at 10:00, I journeyed with some friends back up the road to visit. So yes, I suppose you could say that I did sort of go to Salem on a vacation – but in my defense, I’d much rather be in Salem than the dorms right now.*

*Somebody else vomited in the hall. I’m not even kidding. That’s two people puking in nearly the same place in our hall in practically three weeks. And the rumor is that the latest expectoration contained macaroni and cheese – and I don’t doubt it. Do you know what it smells like up here? You can’t even guess. Pick the worst thing you’ve ever smelled, and then pack it into a small space, and then have 40 guys who don’t bathe regularly live in it so that the smell will gradually get worse, sort of like interest in a bank account, only instead of generating money it’s just generating more of the absolute stankest odor in the history of stank odors. It smells like Satan’s jockstrap in here right now.

Alexander has not changed much since I last told you about him – he’s still frighteningly creative, disturbingly funny, and forever the Mozart of making silly noises. Now that he’s got Army training, however, he’s all that in addition to being a killing machine; and mind you, he was no slouch in the killing department before he went into the service (he’s really good at twirling and subsequently hitting things with sticks – it’s a wonder to behold). The main thing the Army changed about him is his physique: He used to be a lot stronger than me, but now he’s as strong as God and I’m as strong as week old celery.

One day over the weekend, Alexander invited me to go running with him. Now, I really hate running. My legs get tired, my lungs feel cold, and passing children say, “Gee, Mister, you’re sweating like a man but you’re prancing around like a lady!” In my opinion, if I’m going to be running, there had damn well better be a Velociraptor behind me. However, I’ve polled most of the girls I know and they all rate my butt at roughly a 6 out of 10, so I figured that running was my only chance of ever achieving the sculpted, Godlike ass society dictates I should have, and so I agreed to go running. I knew it was a mistake as soon as we started, because it took about three steps for Alexander to gain a considerable lead and for me to start seriously considering throwing up. Not long after, Alexander gained such a lead that I couldn’t see him anymore, and then I took the wrong path and wound up in a bizarre part of the park I’d never been to before and probably would have half jogged, half staggered all the way to Manitoba had Alexander not used his Army tracking skills to find me and guide me back to civilization (near the monkey bars).

“Relax,” He said to my stinking, panting self. “We’ll do some cooldown exercises.”

This was, of course, more incomprehensible military jargon. When I, a civilian, think of a “cooldown”, I think of my parents’ definition of the word, which generally involves gin, peanuts, and making fun of the neighbors. However, as I found out, in the military a “cooldown” is about the same thing as a “fatality” in Mortal Kombat, wherein you rip out the guy’s heart and scream at it while his dead body writhes on the ground. Alexander glibly taunted me as I struggled to do the exercises he did, exercises whose innocuous names like “leg lifts” or “push ups” don’t come close to describing the inherent horror of their effect upon the person doing them. We finished off with something called “The Body Destroyer”, which sounds like some sort of excruciatingly painful torture device but is, in all honesty, a hell of a lot worse. Lie on the ground with your arms stretched over your head and try to elevate both your arms and legs a few inches off the ground for as long as possible. Side effects include long lasting muscle aches and insanity from the white-hot blinding pain.

Salem is a lot like Alexander, in that it too has changed in a few subtle ways that cause me great anguish. The ugly billboards along Commercial Street, one of Salem’s main thoroughfares, have disappeared, replaced by video billboards so colorful that you could pour Skittles into your eyes and get roughly the same effect as looking at one. A Carl’s Jr. has opened next door to the Adult Shop out on Mission Street, ensuring that you won’t have to walk far if you want to eat a Six Dollar Burger while perusing the blowup dolls. And my alma mater, Sprague High School, decided to really sock it to the senior class by forcing them to wear bright orange robes at the graduation ceremony this past Friday, yet another Salem experience that can best be likened to pouring Skittles in one’s eyes.

However, once again like Alexander, Salem has also stayed the same in many ways. The streets pretty much roll up at 5:00 – we were downtown at a little past 6:00 and found nearly every store, including the gargantuan Salem Center Mall, to be closed. Banks, coffee shops, bookstores – everything was shut up tight. The police department closes at 7:00 in Salem, but fortunately the criminals all close at 6:30. The streets were so deserted that we could’ve performed open-heart surgery in the middle of the road. The only other people downtown were a group of middle schoolers who implied that we were gay, to which I tearfully replied that it took one to know one. Now more than ever, Salem has a vaguely apocalyptic feel – desolate, empty, and full of savage children with nothing to lose.

During one of the few moments that Alexander and I weren’t talking about Firefly or making silly noises, he mentioned that he’d never realized how much he disliked his hometown until he came back from training. I, having resented Salem for several years, was surprised that it had taken him this long, but I agreed that it was sort of a shock to come back and see how things had both changed and stayed the same. I guess, when you think about it, home is supposed to occupy some sort of special place in your heart, warts and all. But really, I think that what makes home so great is the people, and the bulk of the people I loved in Salem have gone on to bigger and better things, and/or died. When the people I formed connections with are gone, I can’t help but take Salem at face value: A suburb of a suburb, a mere place to put people, like a filing cabinet with a meth problem and poor public transportation.

Now, of course, there’s always going to be a part of me in Salem – in the teachers from my school, the parents of my friends, and my friends themselves whenever they’re home from school. It’ll be great to see all these people again over the summer; what isn’t so great is that we’ll have to make sure to have all our fun before the town closes at 5:00.

Truman Capps loves to complain about Salem’s lack of night life. He also loves to complain about the very active and loud nightlife right outside his dorm room.

Finals Week

Your tax dollars at work.

If you asked me to give you one reason I regret moving beyond middle school in the course of my education, it would probably be because I have to work now. In middle school, grades didn't even have the illusion of mattering, whereas in high school I knew that all it took was one grade below a B to completely throw my life off the rails by sending me to a purgatory of mediocrity in some God-forsaken state school. Here in this God-forsaken state school, professors are quick to remind their classes that there is absolutely none of the precious wiggle room we so cherished in our secondary educations - one slip up, one folly, one misplaced comma, and poof; there goes 40% of your grade. There is no extra credit! There are no do-overs! Welcome to the jungle! In middle school, homework assignments were simple, in middle school, girls were vaguely interesting but still too scary for me to even attempt to embarrass myself in front of, and in middle school, we did jack shit for the last month of the school year. 

Now, this is just a guess, but you probably saw The Sandlot a lot in middle school, most likely within a few weeks of the end of the school year. You saw it on the day that your teacher rolled out of bed, poured an extra bottle of Smirnoff on his Bran Flakes, and ignored his latent thoughts of suicide for long enough to decide that this dreams of being an inspiring, creative educator were never going to come true. He had realized that, if 13 year olds were hyperactive and very nearly unteachable in the dead of winter, there was about as much chance of him getting through to them in the face of summer as there was of him ever showing up to work sober again. Thus, he swung by Hollywood Video on the way to that festering citadel of education and rented every teacher's panic button: The Sandlot. It's clean, it's entertaining, and it lasts about as long as a standard middle school class period - it is what every teacher has in their back pocket for the day when there is no knowledge left to impart. It is simultaneously a white flag and a "Fuck you, kids!", a spiteful surrender from someone who has babysat the most intolerable of human beings for an excruciating seven hours a day for a full eight months, and simply doesn't have the fight to keep going for one more - certainly not for $32,000 a year. Language Arts, Math, Science, Health - from May 14th until June 14th, all of these classes were The Sandlot 101. 

Of course, in middle school we were really buckling down by watching The Sandlot, because in elementary school we'd quit doing anything even remotely educational a full three months before the end of the year.  We watched Disney movies, we had ice cream parties, entire days of recess - people are getting stupider because teachers have less and less of the perseverance necessary to teach for a full nine months. As our teachers ran out of movies for us to watch and paper for us to fingerpaint on, they grew increasingly desperate until the activities became little more than school-sanctioned vandalism. On the last day at my elementary school, our teachers sprayed shaving cream on our desks and encouraged us to spend as long as possible wiping it around our workspace. Why? Because it's there! Because shaving cream is cheap, and kids are stupid, and we've got to do something with them before we give the little bastards back to their parents for three months! What else do you want? Here's some mercury! It's a science lesson! Here's a loaded gun! We can learn about survival of the fittest! 

I had been so conditioned toward laziness by the public school system that when I reached high school I fully expected to be rubbing shaving cream on pretty much any stationary object I could find for the last few weeks. You can only imagine my shock when I found out that right up until the bell rang on the last day of school I'd be doing work of some sort. My high school teachers were made of tougher stuff than the elementary and middle school teachers - like evil cyborgs or Hilary Clinton, they refused to give up until the fight was absolutely and completely over. We took tests. We gave speeches. We wrote research papers. By and large, we actually did schoolwork for the entire time we were at school, and I for one felt cheated by this. To be fair, though, the last week of senior year before graduation was pretty fun, because at that point the senior class had realized that we outnumbered the entire school staff and local police department by a good 100 people, and therefore could do pretty much as we damn well pleased with our last few days of public education. Yes, I most certainly did play golf on the baseball diamond when I should have been in speech team - you must understand that I had become accustomed to vandalzing some part of the school after all those years of rubbing shaving cream on things, and since I couldn't find a can of shaving cream, defacing the baseball diamond was my next best choice. 

Here in college, finals week can either be pretty laid back or a torturous descent into madness. Fortunately, I consider just about every day to be a torturous descent into madness, so I've been able to weather the storm pretty well over the past few terms. The real beauty of college finals is that the only time you have class during finals week is on the day of your final; you go to the class, you take the test, and then you go on your merry way, no shaving cream necessary. Once you're finished with all your tests, you're free to go home. Now, this all sounds wonderful at first - a week without classes or homework, and nothing to do but drugs? Yeah, sure, seems great, until you consider my position: I have only one final. This final is on the last day of finals week. For the next five days, I get to sit around watching my friends go off and start their summers while I rot in this fetid dormitory, waiting to take my economics final so I can go home and not have to share a bathroom with a bunch of guys who shed like goddamn Labradors. 

So while you're off enjoying your summer, free of final exams or the nondescript B.O. of the University of Oregon, please think of me - sleeping all alone in an empty dorm on the Thursday night before my final and expecting a reenactment of The Shining at any moment. The last week of my school year will, in fact, be the least active of any school year yet, because as I'm not required to be here my professors aren't compelled to entertain me. For habit's sake, I'm going to spend the next few days sitting in my room watching The Sandlot over and over again while covering everything in sight with shaving cream. 

Truman Capps is pleased to have made it through an entry chock full of Sandlot references without mentioning Smalls, or the detrimental effect his actions have on his friends. 

An Open Letter To Mexico

If Spanish - nay, life itself - was more like this, I'd be much more optimistic about it.

Dear Mexico (et al),

Hi there! How are you? I think that in Spanish, this would translate to something like “Hola! Como estas?” And, as a matter of fact, that’s sort of what I’m here to talk to you about.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I completely love Spanish culture – the Taco Bell Dog, Salma Hayek, and the Wishbone adaptation of Don Quixote are all big favorites around my house – and I’m completely respectful of the place of the Latino in American culture, be they legal or illegal. I myself am a Mexican American; I was reluctant to accept this at first seeing as I can trace my lineage all the way back to the motherland of Ashtebulah, Ohio, but the University of Oregon is quite convinced that I am, in fact, a Latino, and you’d think that if anybody knew what they were talking about, it would be an institution of higher learning. I put all of this information out in the open just so you know that I’m really on your side as far as the whole racial equality thing goes.

That being said, if it’s not too much trouble, could you stop having your own language?

I know, that probably sounds really insensitive, but try and see this from my point of view. It’s a lot of work to learn a new language – I’m talking hours of studying here, no joke – and frankly I think that’s time that I could better spend on other pursuits. I mean, it’s not you – it’s me. I’ve already got a language; its name is English, and it treats me really well. We’ve been together for a good long time, and I can’t imagine myself with any other language at this point. I hope we can still be friends, though – I’ll still refer to my house as Casa Capps, and I promise to always sing all the Spanish parts of “Feliz Navidad”, even though the English parts are a lot more awesome.

I tried, I really did. I’ve been taking Spanish, on and off, since the fifth grade, but it’s just never really worked out for me. Come to think of it, that could well be the fault of some of my educators. In fifth grade, we had a half-hour long Spanish class once a week – it met on Fridays, for the last 30 minutes of the school day. Apparently understanding the futility of trying to make a group of 11 year olds do anything non-Spongebob related at that point and time, our teacher drilled one phrase into our tiny heads by forcing us to chant it, in unison, to him at the beginning of every class. I know now that the phrase was, “Hola, Senior Carter! Como estas, usted? Y tu? Muy bien, gracias.” However, in those 30 futile minutes before the weekend, my weary mind, inhibited cognitively from its 10:00 hazing in Math and overstimulated by the rush from the seven Jolly Ranchers earned during Language Arts, perceived this statement as, “HolaseniorcartercomoestasustedytumuybienTRANSFORMERS!” This was about the only Spanish-related thing we did in fifth grade Spanish at Shirlie Elementary; for the rest of the 30 minutes, our beleaguered Senior Carter would lead us through halfhearted games of Spanish Bingo, which were about as educational as they were entertaining.

Thanks to my lackluster Spanish education in elementary school, I floundered in middle school Spanish, although this could just as well be thanks to the teaching abilities of Senora Smith. Senora Smith was insane, I’m almost sure – offensively so, to the point that she encouraged us to remember the Spanish word for desk (“Pupitre”) by reciting the verse, “You poo, then you pee, then you carry it on a tray!”* Now, even in my early adolescence I had a decent enough sense of the world to disregard anything said by a woman who openly advocated the carrying of one’s own piss and shit around with them, and thus I made a point of not listening to her as she laid the foundations for the rest of my class’s eventual Spanish education, for I fully expected that at any moment, two orderlies would burst in and cart her back to the Oregon Institute for the Criminally Insane and the real Senora Smith would arrive to teach us actual, non-crazy Spanish.

*No, I’m not joking. I couldn’t make this up if I tried. She said this, and she said it a lot.

Alas, that day never came (it still hasn’t – according to my middle school’s website, she’s the head of the Spanish department now), and I stumbled into high school Spanish with passing grades thanks only to my remarkable abilities as a teacher’s pet. In high school, I slaved away for the two years that were required of me to graduate, and I actually became a respectable Spanish speaker by Sprague High School standards, insofar as I was pretty good at asking what time it was and could carry on an abbreviated conversation about my favorite food so long as the other person spoke slowly. However, I finished my high school Spanish education in my junior year of high school, and it was in my senior year that I started actively dating. There’s only so much room in my brain, and it got to the point where I had to choose between remembering the Spanish language or remembering the finer points of tonsil hockey, and I don’t even need to tell you what my 17 year old mind deemed more important.

So here I am in college. I am now the Wayne Gretzky of tonsil hockey – a proud career behind me but no new games in sight. Returning to the neglected world of Spanish, putting up with the same conjugations and simplified, present-tensed stories once again, I realize that this is truly not my area of expertise. I’m not good at this. I appreciate the dozens of English cognates, but I’m falling apart on remembering the conjugations for the dozens of verb tenses. I don’t think a language needs any more than three verb tenses – the extra ones are just sort of muddling things up. My problem with the overall structure of the Spanish language is one of the reasons I’m suggesting that maybe you just give the whole thing up, Mexico.

I know that it may seem crass of me to simply ask you to disregard the language you’ve been speaking for 500-odd years, but again, I’ve really been trying here, and it seems that fate is conspiring with the subjunctive and past imperfect verb tenses to keep Spanish from meeting me halfway. I think that if American school systems really intended to educate their students in a second language, they’d make a better go at it than starting the program one Friday a week for fifth graders, followed up by scatologically based studies and high school curriculum more forgettable than the majority of Steve Martin’s career for the past decade.

So, Mexico, you’ve got to understand that I’m really in a bind here. I either have to make a decided personal effort to learn a second language, or convince all Spanish speakers to learn English out of goodwill towards me. I sure hope you’ll consider this seriously – I think I’m a pretty reasonable guy.

All the best!

Truman Capps
Internet Celebrity

Truman Capps realizes that he's talked about Mexico for quite some time without mentioning that Carlos Mencia is a no-talent hack. So, Carlos Mencia is a no talent hack.

Down With The Sickness

Originally, I had intended to attach a picture to this update that had something to do with illness in general. Following my usual routine for finding images for my blog, I did a Google image search for 'disease', forgetting that SafeSearch was off. The things I saw were so hideous that I think I may, in fact, be sick all over again. My legs are kind of tingling, and not in a good way. Always use SafeSearch.

The More You Know!

Yeah, I see you there, Thailand. Don't you try and hide. I know where you live. You live in Thailand.

When people say, “I’m sick”, there’s basically two kinds of sick that they’re talking about: Runny nose, coughing sick, or gross stomach illness sick. By all accounts, the preferable kind of sick is the runny nose sick, because that’s a perfectly good excuse to take off work/school and spend the day watching Jim Carrey movies.* Sure, it’s not fun to have a runny nose and a cough, but it’s a worthwhile price to pay so that you can put your entire life on hold and catch up on sleep.

*I recommend Jim Carrey movies not because I’m a huge fan of the man’s career, but because they’re actually scientifically proven as a cold remedy, and by “scientifically proven” I mean “My Dad says so.” Two years ago, he was lying on our couch, ravaged by the flu, and happened to catch most of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective on TBS, and by the time it was over he was feeling a lot better. He now maintains that Jim Carrey’s early movies have a detrimental effect on bacteria in the same way they have a detrimental effect on brain cells, and that watching The Mask and Dumb and Dumber back to back could probably cure cancer.

And then, of course, there is the gross stomach illness kind of sick. If afflictions were TV characters, a cold would be The Penguin from the 1960s Batman show, while any stomach illness would be Tony Soprano. With this sort of illness, you’re not lying on the couch in front of the TV, you’re spending a lot of quality time in the vicinity of a toilet, making some of the most horrible noises and smells that a human being can make. It’s during these bouts of sickness that you spend a lot of time observing the décor in your bathroom and wishing that you’d installed a TV in front of the toilet with a stack of Jim Carrey movies at the ready.

I am proud to inform you that from Wednesday up until about yesterday, I was gross stomach illness sick. It is not fun to be gross stomach illness sick when you have to walk down a long hallway and around a corner to use a communal restroom – keep this in mind the next time you’re planning on catching a norovirus. I don’t quite know what did this to me, but I’m pretty sure it has to do with the fact that I ate Thai food for the first time on Tuesday night.

Thailand, you have not made a good first impression. This is no way to treat someone who was interested enough in your culture to pay $6.00 for a meal, $6.00 that could’ve gone toward an Xbox 360, or food that wasn’t laced with motherfucking Drain-O. I had my doubts when I heard that American businessmen fly to you in order to have sex with children, but I was going to let that one slide if your cuisine was at least decent – I mean, hey, I’ve seen the business majors here do a lot of really disgusting things, and pedophilia isn’t necessarily the worst of them. Instead, not only did your overpriced meal make a hasty and uncomfortable exit from my body, but so did pretty much every other meal I’ve had since – evidently, you didn’t just want me to not enjoy your meal only, you wanted me to not enjoy every other meal I consumed afterwards too. Well, congratulations, Thailand – it’s on.

Getting sick in college is all kinds of awkward: For one thing, your symptoms are very public, and for another, you can’t turn to Mom for help anymore. When I lived at home, I would always go to my Mom with medical inquiries, which would start with me saying “Mom, my _____ hurts – is that cancer?” and would end with her saying “No, you idiot, here’s a band aid/Ibuprofen, dinner’s at 7:00.” As my Mom is so very far away, I’ve instead come to rely on the University Health Center, a clinic located across the street from where I live. And this, my friends, is the real reason that being sick in college is awkward – you’ve got to tell a complete stranger that you’ve got diarrhea. In a quiet waiting room. Within earshot of beautiful girls waiting for their emergency contraception after last night’s frat party. I suppose if it was really that big of an issue for me, I could have written my condition on a piece of paper and slid it across the desk to the nurse, but the thing is, I honestly don’t know how to spell diarrhea without the help of Spellcheck. Have you ever looked at that word? What’s with that H in there, or the E? And did this word, the word that we use to describe frequent and neigh-uncontrollable pooping, really deserve two Rs? I think not. I think one would have been enough. In any sense, I had to either tell the woman, conversationally, that I had a scorching case of the trots, or horribly misspell the word diarrhea on a cocktail napkin – I opted to just tell her, because if I wrote down “I’ve got diarea”, then I wouldn’t just look like an idiot, I’d look like an idiot with diarrhea, and nobody wants that.

Have I mentioned that I’m on the Dean’s List?

A nurse took me back to an examining room and I enthralled her with the details of my gastrointestinal adventures thus far. She listened with rapt attention, told me that I’d most likely caught some sort of bug, and recommended that I not take any medicines but simply let the affliction run its course. I pointed out to her that every time I went to the bathroom I was more or less playing out the D-Day scene from Saving Private Ryan in my colon, but she would not listen, and in the end I left without any high powered prescription anti-diarrhea drugs. However, they didn’t give me any shots and they didn’t try to put anything in my butt, so all things considered I think it was a pretty good visit to the doctor’s.

I’m doing much better now, though, thanks for asking. For the first time in days I’ve been able to return to the nonstop diet of stir-fry and Diet Coke that maintains my wretched shell of a body. And I guess that’s good thing about gross stomach illness – once it’s over, there’s a little while there where you don’t take anything for granted. For example – I haven’t gone to the bathroom in a few hours, and I had a muffin earlier with no negative repercussions. Most weekends that would be par for the course, but right now I feel like a king. An incredibly lame king, perhaps, but a king nonetheless.

Truman Capps does realize the irony in being reluctant to share his intestinal malady with a registered nurse and then posting all the same information on the Internet for anyone to read. It was either that, or not make a bunch of perfectly acceptable poop jokes. He is very comfortable with his decision.

Treatises On Crystal Skulls, And The Kingdoms Thereof

"He chose... Poorly."

Hm.

I didn’t really want to discuss this. I specifically asked you, dear readers, in my last blog to not push me to the edge of reason and sanity by challenging my utterly truthful and unbiased opinion of the fourth Indiana Jones film, and you insisted on tickling the proverbial dragon’s tail by doing so. One person demanded that I get off my high horse, and to that I say no. I like it on my high horse. The view is good up here, and the altitude makes it easier for me to spit on your low-horsed opinions for comedic effect. If I got off my high horse, this blog wouldn’t be terribly entertaining, because as a general rule, humble people aren’t funny. Do you know any Amish standup comedians? No, you don’t, and you never will, both because they’re too humble to challenge the legitimacy of airline peanuts and because their religion restricts them from using an electronic microphone.

So let’s face the facts: Yes, I did imply that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Egregiously Long, Overwrought Homage to 1930s Serial Adventure Films was more terrible than redneck humor and the worst nuclear disaster in history. I still stand by my opinion, even with full knowledge that as we speak people are dying from cancer brought on by Chernobyl or Larry the Cable Guy. Don’t take this to mean that I thought this movie was any better than Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, because I most certainly don’t. Temple of Doom is higher on the travesty list, just barely above those airport toilets with the sensor triggered flush that always flushes when you’re still going.* I can’t decide what I hate most about Temple of Doom - the overblown horror movie gore, Kate Capshaw as a bitchy and incompetent “heroine” who never quit screaming, or the fact that a streetwise treasure hunter/university professor maintains a close and apparently platonic relationship with a 10 year old Engrish speaking Chinese kid who also happened to be in The Goonies. No, you know what? I’ve decided what I hate most, and it was definitely Kate Capshaw. A few weeks ago, my friends a few doors down were watching Temple of Doom with their door open, and all the way down the hall I could hear her screaming. With my door closed. Here’s a fun fact about writing for the movies: Characters screaming is the result of the screenwriters being too lazy to think up any dialogue, so in as scream-heavy a movie as Temple of Doom, you’ve really got to appreciate the writers’ firm commitment to dicking the viewers in pursuit of a quick paycheck.

*Seriously, what the hell? Who thought that was a good idea? Because some people don’t flush the toilet, did society have to implement a haywire sensor that triggers the flush mechanism at any old time? Have you ever started using one of these and only realized once you’ve passed the point of no return that you’re on a toilet that decides for itself when you’re all finished? You wind up sitting perfectly still, poised to jump up at a moment’s notice lest you be treated to a highly unsanitary bidet experience. It’s like crapping on a time bomb! My theory is that a bunch of folks at some laboratory got drunk and said, “Hell yeah! Let’s put a laser on a toilet! Because we can!” Then somebody found it and marketed it so that people in airports everywhere could have The Bowel Movement Of The Future™, and now the whole world suffers. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why laser sensor toilets are such a travesty.

At this point, there’ll be a few spoilers about all this Crystal Skull nonsense, but for the record, I’d figured out all these plot points before the end of the first reel, so you could just read ahead and save your money.

So no, Crystal Skull didn’t have cute 10 year old boys or Kate Capshaw. On the contrary, it had Karen Allen, Indiana’s lover from Raiders and a particular favorite of mine in terms of spunky adventure film heroines. However, Karen Allen alone could not save this movie from three devastating problems:

1) I’ve had it with these motherfucking science fiction elements in this motherfucking fantasy based film series! - I’m not particularly enamored of fantasy, and Bible history ain’t exactly my bag either, but the two good Indiana Jones movies (Raiders and Last Crusade) managed to combine the elements into a perfect formula. If you watch these two movies, you’ll see that the bulk of the action consists of Indy and friends fighting Nazis and debating the ethics of hunting these Biblical relics, all within a fairly realistic tone. At each film’s climax, there’s a brief, graphic, and highly awesome scene in which God serves the Nazis, and then everybody goes home happy. That’s a great system and it made everybody rich; I don’t see why they had to divert from it by adding aliens to the mix. I mean, I love aliens as much as the next science fiction aficionado, but the Indiana Jones series has been primarily about globe trotting archaeology, not cover-ups and conspiracy.

2) MS Word Spellcheck hates your name, LeBeouf - Hi there, Shia, it’s me – Truman. Much like you, I am geeky and funny looking. However, I am not so fortunate to have made out with Megan Fox on the hood of a muscle car, which, in and of itself, is a Transformer. During the shooting of that scene at the end of Transformers, you achieved the high point of your career, and I don’t care if you go on to win an Oscar, because 1) Megan Fox is a modern day Baberham Lincoln, and 2) Transformers are awesome, and you had both at once! Let’s leave it at that, okay? You don’t make a very good greaser. I don’t believe that Indiana Jones sired you oh-so-many years ago. Watching you swinging from vine to vine, leading a charge of monkeys to attack a Communist platoon, all while combing your hair and wearing a leather jacket, I could only lament the fact that one dopey cinematic set-piece had not only tarnished my memories of the Indiana Jones franchise, but also Transformers. Good luck on Transformers 2, and give Megan and all the Autobots my love.

3) It beats screaming, but only just - This movie was poorly written. There are no jokes in the previous sentence because this is a very serious matter: The script for this movie was absolute caca. You can disagree with me about everything else, fine, go ahead, be my guest, but I’d like to think that I, as a writer myself, have a pretty good idea of what good writing is, and I can tell you that it most certainly wasn’t present in this movie. In Raiders, Indiana Jones is gruff, abrupt, and sort of a fuckup. That works. In that movie, Indiana Jones didn’t need witticisms or a sense of humor to solve his problems; for example, he didn’t say anything to that ninja in the marketplace, he just shot him and went on with his day. We have a word for that: Awesome. That shit is all the way live, and evidence that sometimes the best scripts know when not to be too talky. In Last Crusade, he’s a little more verbal in the fight scenes, but it’s quick. For example: “No ticket.” Once again, awesome. To be perfectly honest, I use either “No ticket” or “He chose… Poorly” on a daily basis, and that’s what makes Last Crusade’s script so great. But Crystal Skull just tries too hard. The writers obviously watched a lot of Indiana Jones and tried their best to mimic it, and they wound up overplaying every line to the point that this feels more like a bunch of people trying really hard to be in an Indiana Jones movie than an actual Indiana Jones movie. “They’re going to the space between spaces.” “The real treasure was knowledge.” “Stick around son,” “Why didn’t you, Dad?” It’s cheesy and hammy and corny, and if I were describing a sandwich right now we’d be in great shape, but sadly I’m talking about an installment in a highly popular film series with many devoted fans. Now I’m hungry.

The simple fact is that they should have left us with our memories. I mean, c’mon – the last movie was called Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which is as about as final a title as you can get save for Indiana Jones and the Decision to Stop Having Adventures and Move to Florida. I didn’t want to see Indiana Jones as a family man, because this is the guy who built his image on being a tough as nails, globe trotting asshole. Watching Indiana Jones settle down and get married is a complete departure from the character we know and love – it’s like watching Han Solo stop being a dick long enough to express his feelings for Leia!

Oh, wait, I guess that happened too. One day we will discuss Return of the Jedi, and why I hate George Lucas.

Truman Capps hopes you’ve all learned your lesson about getting him started on movies.

In Reedsport

If you equate every aspect of your life to 80s power ballads (and let’s face it – who doesn’t?) my neighbor and future roommate Josh is Journey’s proverbial “small town girl” (livin’ in a lonely world), while I’m more of the “city boy” (born and raised in South Detroit), because…

No, no, no, no.

My friend and future roommate Josh lives in Reedsport, Oregon. I don’t blame you if you’ve never heard of it – neither had I, up until I met Josh, and up until this weekend I was honestly convinced that Josh had been lying about it and was from suburban Portland just like everyone else I know. It was this weekend that Josh proved me wrong by inviting my friend Jeff and I to stay with him in Reedsport for the Memorial Day weekend. I’m here to tell you that yes, Reedsport does exist, and yes, Josh is from there, but it’s arguably the best kept secret in Oregon. Reedsport is two hours outside of Eugene, an hour and a half of which is spent on winding two lane roads that cut through dense, sparsely populated forest – I shit you not, I’m pretty sure I spotted some Hobbits on the way in here. At the end of the road lay Reedsport, a town of 4500 people within spitting distance of the coast (provided that you can spit for two miles).

I’ve never been in a town this small before. Salem, technically speaking, was a small town in that it had no culture or nightlife, but it had crime and urban sprawl on big city levels, thereby sacrificing any potential quaintness. Reedsport, though, has proven to be everything I expected a little town to be. Everyone here knows everyone, and everyone knows what everyone else is doing, so it’s sort of like a 4500 person high school with its own volunteer fire department. Listening to Josh and his parents talk is like listening to two people discussing the events of a TV show you’ve never watched. “Mike and Wendy are having a barbecue tomorrow night, and Kim is going even though she’s a vegetarian but she hasn’t told Frank yet, and Paul isn’t going because he’s got to take Cheryl- No, not that Cheryl, the other Cheryl, to a dance recital in Coos Bay, but Jack Bauer is in town and he’s probably going to crash his car into Paul’s and make them tell him where their Cousin Abdullah is with the nukes.”

Josh drove us around town yesterday (there isn’t much town to drive around, so it took about 15 minutes) and pointed out where all of Reedsport’s movers and shakers live. He showed us the house of the high school history teacher, Mr. Tymchuck (I’m not even kidding, that’s actually his name), who also happens to be the mayor (I didn’t believe it at first either, but mark my words: Tim-Chuck), and along the way waved to one of Reedsport’s six policemen, Officer Funk* (I am so not making this up).

*“In a world where evil deeds go unpunished, one thing is certain – WE NEED THE FUNK! Coming this November to a theater near you.”

Also, I’ve never been in a town this close to nature before. On the first night, as Jeff and I were getting settled on the floor of Josh’s room, his mother came in to see if we needed anything. We told her that we were fine, and the following conversation ensued:

Josh’s Mom: “Well, alright, we’re right upstairs if you need anything. Oh, and if the dog starts barking, don’t worry about it. She gets spooked pretty easily if a bear or some deer come through the neighborhood.”

Truman: “Excuse me… Bears?”

I guess every town has its problems. Salem has meth, Eugene has hobos, and Reedsport has bears. And let me just say, Salem and Eugene’s problems don’t seem all that bad when you put them up against wayward bears tramping through your yard while you sleep. Sure, I don’t like it when hobos press me for change outside Quiznos – I feel guilty for not giving them any of the spare change I’ve got on hand. However, I’d much rather run into a hobo outside Quiznos than a bear. A hobo you can reason with. A hobo shuts up when you give him change. A hobo doesn’t maul you and drag you back to its den (at least, not before sunset).

There are no movie theaters in Reedsport – for that, you have to drive 25 miles to a theater in North Bend.** There is no shopping center – for that, you have to drive 100 miles to Eugene. There is, however, a bowling alley, and since it was Saturday night, Jeff and Josh and I went bowling, along with the rest of the town. Now, as I’ve mentioned before, bowling is little more to me than a $10 reminder that I’m embarrassingly incompetent in every field that doesn’t involve cheap jokes or the Internet. However, in a small town it’s unspeakably worse, because every single person in that bowling alley had been going there for entertainment a few times a week since they learned how to walk and throw heavy objects. There was a 7-year-old girl in the lane next to ours, and she was toddling around rolling strikes like nobody’s business, whereas the high point of my evening was singing along with “Cum On Feel The Noize” when it came on the stereo. Women have always made me feel foolish and inadequate, but they’ve never started this young.

**Might I add, there’s something about that theater that just isn’t right. I can’t put my finger on quite what – the smell that’s borderline unpleasant without actually being unpleasant, the desolation in the eyes of the employees, the senior citizens making out in the ticket line (I regret to inform you that I am not kidding). I might just be overly critical of the theater because that’s where I’m ashamed to say I spent money – real, valuable, currency – to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which is quite simply one of the worst things in human history. It’s no Holocaust, sure, but I’d put it above Chernobyl and Larry the Cable Guy on the tragedy scale.

I’m going to go on the record and say that I like Reedsport a lot. I like not hearing sirens all the time and I like how everybody smiles at me despite the stifling aura of despair that I do my best to bring with me no matter where I go. In the past 36 hours, I have eaten fresh fish and chips, pancakes and bacon, and homemade steak, baked potato, corn on the cob, baked beans, etc. When word got around Reedsport (and it gets around fast) that I had my trumpet with me, the Marine Band, in town for a concert and parade later this weekend, invited me to their rehearsal on Sunday – you probably don’t find this terribly interesting unless you’re my Mom and Dad, and yeah, Mom and Dad, I’m pretty excited too.

Despite the atmosphere and the friendly servicemen and the delicious food that is, as we speak, building a hydroelectric dam of cholesterol in my arteries, it will be nice to get back to school in a couple days. I was talking with Josh’s Dad earlier and we both agreed that we didn’t like Eugene much – he thinks it’s too big, and I think it’s too small. The peace and quiet of Reedsport is nice for a little while, but when all is said and done I need to be someplace bigger, a place with at least two movie theaters and more entertainment options than bowling. I like the big – or at least mid-sized – city for its anonymity and bustle, such as they are in Oregon. Reedsport’s charm and isolation are a great draw for a few days, but they’re also the main reasons I could never stay in a place like this.

Also, I don’t want to get eaten by bears.

Truman Capps urges you not to reply if all you’re going to say is, “Hey! I liked Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull Soiree for the following reasons!”, because he will not respect you afterwards.

House Quest V: Tokyo Drift

Hahaha! Isn't this funny? He has the same name as where people live!

As you may remember, I, along with my friends Jeff and Josh, have been in feverish pursuit of someplace to live next year, and we’ve been consistently thwarted by the fact that nothing we’ve looked at has struck our fancy, piqued our interest, or blown up our collective skirt. Each one of us is picky in our own way: Josh, the resident Adrian Monk, finds inherent fault in anything that is dirty, has been dirty, or will be dirty at some point in the near future; Jeff, an architecture major, has a knack for pointing out dangerous architectural flaws in our proposed dwellings; and I, Truman Capps, refuse to live in any house that isn’t exactly like Tony Stark’s house in Iron Man, complete with robots and Gwyneth Paltrow.

However, some time ago, we all came to the conclusion that we either had to compromise, live on the streets, or succumb to that most unimaginable of horrors: Living in the dorms again. Now, I’m sure that if you’re a college student the dormitories at your school aren’t quite ghetto-fabulous. You’re probably sharing a bathroom with people who would rather die than attempt to aim their pee, and climate control probably leaves something to be desired, and maybe the food isn’t exactly Emril quality. However, your living situation is not nearly as bad as the living situation at the University of Oregon, because while the housing department at your school may simply not care about you, the housing department at the University of Oregon actively loathes all of its residents. No, forgive me, this statement is unfair to University of Oregon Housing – they don’t hate the residents only, they hate all humans in existence. The director of our board of housing has aligned his soul with the dark gods of Chaos, and in their service he is relentlessly driven to completely and utterly RF the bejeezus out of everything that breathes. Why, yes, there is a loading dock right outside my window, and yes, food service trucks do make loud beeping noises when they back up there at 6:00 every morning. And yes, over the past three weeks construction crews have been demolishing the building across from my dorm, with work starting at about 8:00 every morning. And it’s also true that from time to time I’ll just throw the food they serve us into the toilet in order to save it the trouble of spending five minutes inside my body. However, no matter how bad it is right now is a mere preview of how bad it will be next year, for the housing department has promised beds to 6000 incoming freshmen when the dormitories right now only have room for 3500. Next year’s freshmen, who will be paying thousands of dollars for a dormitory, may well wind up sleeping in lounges. RAs will have roommates. I predict early morning knife fights over bathroom stalls and long lines to smoke pot in the shower. Why would the housing department do this? Because, my friends, Chaos is a seductive and persuasive mistress. Also, the housing department is run by morons.

Faced with living conditions somewhat akin to the Tokyo subway, my friends and I lowered our standards and have put down safety deposits on a quad unit across the street from campus. A quad unit, for those of you out of the bargain basement housing loop, is a series of four rooms surrounding a common kitchen and shower. Each room has its own sink and toilet, plus two doors – one leading outside, and one leading into the shared kitchen. Each room is rented individually to each tenant as a bedroom, and the three of us are splitting the cost of the fourth room so that we can use it as a TV room/swimming pool (bear with me – it’s going to be awesome). At first, we were somewhat reluctant to get a quad, as most of the quads we’ve seen are about as aesthetically pleasing as Richard Nixon, and twice as dirty. Right now, the quads we’re going to live in next year still have all the warmth and livability of our 37th president, but we’re rationalizing the decision by reminding ourselves that the quads are going to be remodeled over the summer, and we have been assured that by the time we move in, every room will sparkle with a beauty and charisma reminiscent of JFK, or at least a young Chester Arthur. We sat transfixed in the cramped and dim rental office as Kimberly the Landlady, her eyes sparkling with excitement, spun us breathtaking tales of granite countertops and hardwood floors, of wall mounted flatscreen TVs and brand new furnishing packages (one of which includes robots and Gweneth Paltrow).

What’s wrong with the place? Well, for one thing, I’m going to be a tenant, so there goes the neighborhood, I guess. Also, the complex is situated between a fraternity and a sorority, so we’ll have yet another chance to listen to drunk people belching and, what’s worse, Kanye West, but on the plus side we get to watch the girls doing the Walk of Shame the next morning. Also, the complex is roughly two blocks away from one of the largest hospitals in the city, so if you’re injured anywhere in or around Eugene, Oregon, you can bet I’ll hear the ambulance going out to pick you up, and also coming back. Make a point of not getting hurt late at night, asshole.

Is it absolutely ideal? No. But that’s not really the point; we’re just a bunch of college students looking for a place to live that isn’t infested by as-yet undocumented breeds of wood tick. It’s just a place to sleep when we’re not in class. None of us are planning to raise a family there – I’d love to, but I haven’t been on a date in about a year and as a journalism major I doubt I’ll ever be able to pay for the place without my Dad’s assistance, so it’s probably not going to happen.

Truman Capps is worried that he won't be able to fall asleep at night if there isn't someone near him is puking up cheap beer.

Heatwave

Right now, this would only make my room cooler.

If you’re fortunate enough to live in Oregon, you’ve probably noticed recently that the sun is a lot closer than it usually is – namely, it’s hovering about 10 feet over my conspicuously non climate controlled dormitory in an attempt to cook out all my flavor so that it can make gravy. You may doubt this, and if so, you are stupid, because you don’t know how hot it is in here right now. I don’t care where you live, be it a constantly erupting volcano, Hell, or even Michigan in the summer; no matter where you are, it’s hotter in my room. As my room is on the third floor, all the heat generated by the nonstop hormone factories (girls) on the second floor has been drifting up to me and my Y-chromosomed compadres. The heat has been so bad that most of the guys up here have taken to smoking marijuana in the showers and getting drunk all the time – to be fair, they do this all year round no matter what the weather is like, and would probably continue to do it if it spontaneously started raining cash and Jessica Alba, but thanks to the heat the smell of their activities is that much worse. The stairwell leading up to my room, which usually only smells a lot like stale urine and pot, now smells so overpoweringly of both that I’m starting to wonder whether the very building is made out of anything but ganja and pee. I live in a very smelly place* ordinarily, and turning up the heat has done little to improve things.

*Rumor abounds that one of my neighbors has been crapping in the garbage can in his room instead of walking all the way down the hall to the toilets. No, I’m not making this up. In fact, we’re all pretty sure that it’s the truth, y’know, that this grown man who lives very close to me has been defecating in a small plastic container, because we’ve heard the suspect talking about it to his friends (and who wouldn’t be proud of that, am I right?) and also smelled some disturbing things. So, just for the record, at the University of Oregon, at least one freshman is pooping in the garbage bin which he keeps in his 100-odd square foot room. Yeah, he’s just sitting around in there, dropping the kids off at the pool, only it’s not a pool, it’s a garbage can that he just keeps in his room, because to say ‘pool’ implies that this human being who is paying for and receiving (to some extent) a university education is capable of utilizing the miracle of modern pumbing, which he is clearly not, as evidenced by the fact that he stores his own shit in an open receptacle right next to his bed in the middle of a goddam heat wave! These people are fucking savages! I have to get out of here!

As you can tell from the above footnote, the hot weather has been bringing out the more aggressive qualities in just about everyone. Indeed, it is at this time of year that the unbridled rage on campus really gets flowing, but not just because of the heat – because of the combination of heat and some of that old time religion.

The University of Oregon has a few full time Christian evangelist types, the most prominent of whom is Jesus Guy, who, every day, rain or shine, stands outside the student union with a large sign reading “TRUST JESUS”, along with a few hearts thrown in for good measure. For the record, I like Jesus Guy a lot. He isn’t preachy, he doesn’t force his views on anyone, and the message he’s sending with his sign is pretty friendly and unobtrusive. Also, he’s out there every day. I’ve I can’t remember a day that I haven’t seen him leaning on the fence, holding his sign, and quietly smiling at passerby. I admire his devotion; I mean, sometimes I feel like I’d give my life to get Firefly back on the air, but I sure as hell wouldn’t stand around on the street all the time with a “TRUST JOSS WHEDON” sign. The other regular is Apocalypse Dog Guy, who generally makes an appearance about once a week for a few months at a stretch, preaching about the impending Apocalypse while his dog lies at his side. He’s a lot feistier than Jesus Guy, but I like his dog, and I still have some respect for his tenacity, if not quite his message. However, the warm (or, as I might have mentioned earlier, unbearably hot) weather of spring term signals the arrival of other, less enlightened street preachers.

These are the Incredibly Hateful Christians, who show up for a few weeks every spring like the horribly prejudiced swallows returning to Capistrano. They stand around in the amphitheater by the student union and shout at passers-by about how anyone who doesn’t abide by God’s law is going to hell – this includes “rebellious” women, loose women, people of any faith except their branch of Christianity, people who drink, people who smoke pot, women who are not entirely subservient to men, and – say it with me now, folks – atheists. They’ve got loads of facts to support their views; for example, did you know that all Mormons everywhere are child molesters? Apparently, Mormonism is just one big ‘ol cult dedicated to molesting children – but hey, somebody’s got to do it. Those kids aren’t going to molest themselves, now.

Fortunately, the very rational students of the University of Oregon have responded to the Incredibly Hateful Christians with more hate of their own, which, as every country in the Middle East has repeatedly shown us, always solves everyone’s problems completely, forever. Angry feminists, atheists, and all sorts of other “ists” spend hours gathered around these Incredibly Hateful Christians, trying to pick apart their nonsensical bigotry with logic and facts; this process is about as effective as trying to tunnel to the center of the Earth by Riverdancing in the same place for several hours – you just wind up making a lot of noise and looking like an idiot. But hey, some people saw Riverdance like seven times, so you can be my guest and go argue with these people, but expecting them to hear your Wikipedia researched facts about the Bible’s take on homosexuality and spontaneously stop being Incredibly Hateful is about as logical as them expecting you to hear that all Mormons are child molesters and join their church.

I think the best course of action, when faced with this sort of offensive, aggressive, attention craving razzmatazz, is to follow Jesus Guy’s example: Just stand further away and let the idiots do their thing. We can’t let this distract us from our real enemy: The Sun. It’s so hot and sticky around here that my hair won’t even hold its form anymore, and that just will not do. I plan to spend most of tomorrow on the roof screaming at the Sun to stop being such a dick, and we’ll see what happens.

Truman Capps understands that he’s written two faith related articles in the course of a week, but it’s really way too hot to think of something else to write about.

Economic Atheism

I only found this after writing the blog, so I guess I got upstaged by a highly imaginative 6 year old.

I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I’m an atheist. In the past, people have been confused about the exact definition of the term, so allow me to explain: A theist, when confronted with the Grand Canyon, human civilization, and beautiful distant planets, attributes them to the work of an immortal, infallible, benevolent God who swiftly created all of these things and yet left no concrete evidence whatsoever of his existence but expects us all to believe in him anyway. An atheist, on the other hand, looks at the Grand Canyon, human civilization, beautiful distant planets, and uses sciencey weasel-words to explain away these monumental edifices of beauty and complexity as mere accidents and coincidences. Out of these two, keep in mind that I am the second kind of crazy.

I’ve also never made any secret of the fact that I’m horrible at math. “Pfft.” You think, waving your hand at your monitor. “I’m so much worse at math than Truman is.” No, sorry, you’re wrong. I can provide evidence to the contrary. I can produce witnesses to the nonstop tirade of rage and despair that was my so-called “education” in mathematics during elementary, middle, and high school. I achieved something of a mythical status in the Salem-Keizer School District – “Have you heard of Truman Capps?” Teachers would whisper to one another over vodka-spiked coffee in the crumbling, asbestos laced teachers lounges of my former hometown. “He doesn’t get anything! Cross multiplication, dividing fractions, the metric system… Not a damn thing! He tries hard, but nothing can get through that thick hair of his!” At the beginning of each year, my math teacher would sit down with me and explain that he or she wasn’t giving up on me, and that by the end of the year I would be an expert at whatever institutionalized crap they were trying to cram down my throat. Of course, the teacher would explain, I was going to have to meet them halfway – I’d need to do my homework, be willing to stay late, and possibly sacrifice one of my parents to the Math Gods (I’m sorry, Dad, but if it ever came to that you would’ve been my choice). Every year I would solemnly agree, and within two months the teacher in question would be tacitly avoiding me when I came in after school looking for help, and at the end of the year, respectful of the fact that they had truly encountered the village idiot of math, they’d mark down a B on my report card out of concern for my GPA and shunt me off to the next unlucky educator.

This continued until my sophomore year of high school, when I took Geometry. Most people had said that Geometry was going to be easy, much in the same way that most people said that I was going to have no trouble finding a girlfriend in college. At the beginning of the year, Mr. Brown guaranteed all of us that if we tried as hard as possible every day, we would at least get a B in his class. This was a relief to me, especially as the year wore on and Geometry taught me to mistrust everything Sesame Street had ever taught me about the very nature of shapes themselves. A month before the end of the school year, with the final exam looming, I received a progress report showing that I had a solid C in the class. I brought this up to Mr. Brown, who said, “Well, just study really hard for the final, I guess.” I pointed out that I’d been studying hard for every test that I’d gotten a D on, and he said, “I don’t know what to tell you, Truman.”

It was at that point that I gave up entirely on ever learning math. Shortly thereafter, I contacted a girl in another one of Mr. Brown’s Geometry classes who happened to be really good at math, and because they took the final before my class did she was kind enough to copy down all of her answers on a separate piece of paper and give them to me. So yes, I cheated like crazy, and if Mr. Brown found anything amiss about one of his worst students getting a 94% after a long history of Cs and Ds, he sure as hell didn’t say anything about it. Next year, our school’s new math curriculum made it possible to coast through my final required year of math with a mid range B, and ever since then I’ve been free of the stuff. Journalism majors at the University of Oregon are not required to take math classes, which is the closest an atheist will ever come to acknowledging a miracle. However, they do require Journalism majors to take economics.

And before we go any further, allow me to say this about economics: Fuck that shit.

Economics is an academic Trojan horse. Outwardly, it appears to be an interesting study of the nature of consumerism and the pursuit of total market efficiency – the sort of thing that’s right up the alley of a guy who watches The History Channel in his spare time. So yeah, I invited this Trojan horse into my schedule for spring term, partially because I had to in order to graduate, but also because I figured this would be something kind of nifty to learn about. But within a week, that Trojan horse burst open and suddenly math was, for the first time in a year and a half, all up in my Kool-Aid. As we speak, the mathematical Odysseus is beating my face in with the very concept of long division, and it really, really hurts.

I understand the ideas of supply and demand just fine. I understand that a drop in price creates a surge of demand, which will, as a result, bump prices up again, so I definitely understand the economy better than Hilary Clinton and John McCain, but then they had to throw in all these freaking equations! My book is tossing out equations like they’re going out of style, monstrous equations the size of skyscrapers with grizzly bears for arms! You’ve got to subtract this from this, and then multiply it by that, and then subtract it from another thing, and then divide it by the second thing you subtracted it from, and then, just for the hell of it, you multiply it by 100! And at that point you’re only half done, because you’ve got to do something similar to another set of numbers and then, when you’ve forced these numbers to jump through hoops and do unspeakable things to one another, you take each equation’s bastard child and start grinding them together until, after a few years, you might potentially have a number that corresponds to one of the multiple answers on the test. However, when I attempt to do these equations, the results that my calculator vomits out are a near incomprehensible jumble of integers and decimal points; a numeric “Garden of Earthly Delights”, if you will.

I like to live my life pretending that I’m smarter than just about everybody else on Earth, but when I’m reduced to intellectual rubble by a class that frat boy business majors are excelling at, I can no longer sign my name as “Truman Capps, Certified Genius” in good conscience. This is all too familiar a replay of the 11 years I spent struggling with math in my pre-college education. It will not stand, and I have taken the proper measures for my own well-being:

I no longer believe in math.*

*Since economics spurred this, it goes without saying that I don’t believe in the economy anymore either. I now consider trade, banks, inflation, and all other day-to-day elements of what you know as an “economy” to be the work of a pack of particularly bookish witches.

One of the many reasons I don’t believe in God is because I can’t verify His existence. How different from that is math? In my textbooks are equations so grand that they doubtless have their own ZIP codes, equations that, when performed, magically produce the correct answer like some sort of incredibly boring Rube Goldberg machine. I’ve tried my very hardest, but I can’t reproduce these results on my own; from a scientific perspective, as far as I’m concerned math is a mere theory.* It just doesn’t make sense to me. Take Algebra for instance: A + B = C – it’s all well and good until you remember that you can’t add letters! Don’t try to argue, I’m the expert here (I was almost an English major). You can just as soon add one letter to another as you can add North Dakota to cheese. I just don’t see the point in adopting a form of study based around the teachings of a civilization that ceremonially ripped the brains out of their dead by way of the nose.

*If every school system in the South has decided that Evolution, something I believe in, is a mere theory, then I can do the same about math, something everyone else believes in.

This will no doubt come across as blasphemy to math majors, economists, and the entire student body at MIT. I’m sorry it had to be this way, but math kind of brought this on itself, after all. I’m sure that you can provide plenty of evidence indicating that math does, in fact, exist, and perhaps even provide evidence indicating that science fiction or marching bands do not exist. However, like most theological debates, that would do little more than entrench us deeper in our respective beliefs. As I see it, it takes a remarkable amount of faith to believe that numbers fuse together and split apart in the creation of new numbers – likewise, it takes a lot of faith (and ego) to spontaneously adopt the notion that a quarter of all educational curriculum is hocus pocus while the monetary doings of our country are witchcraft.

You have your cockeyed beliefs, and I have mine. Let’s stop quibbling about math and agree that chemistry is an outright joke.

Truman Capps wants all his potential employers to know that 10th grade was the only time he ever cheated on a test. Seriously.

Mother's Day

The only picture I could find where Mom and I both had our eyes open at the same time.

In light of last week’s update, I’d just like to clear the air about my mother. Now, you may have got the impression from her red wine fueled faux-pas that she, while inebriated, is simply a ticking time bomb of sensitive information about me. This is most certainly true; however, Mom is almost never drunk, so she’s only really embarrassed me maybe five times in my entire life. This is no doubt a great disappointment to her, as both she and Dad have made it clear almost every day that they want nothing more than to embarrass the bejeezus out of me as much as possible. As they see it, half the reason to have kids in the first place is to embarrass them in front of their friends. And so, on this Mother’s Day, I’d like to say this much, Mom: You may not embarrass me very often, but when you do, you do it so damn well.

“Oh, no, Truman’s a cop out,” you’re saying. “He’s writing about his mother on Mother’s Day – boo, hiss! Write about alcohol and sex again, we like it when you do that!” Here’s the thing: My mother is arguably the main reason my blog is funny. For one thing, if not for my mother I wouldn’t have been born, and blogs that don’t exist are generally not only tough to read but also rather dry in terms of content. But what I think is really important – yes, even more important than being born in the first place – is that my Mom happens to be one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. Example: My mother can do an impression of Ethel Merman singing “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane. Can your mom do that?* No, she can’t, and that’s why I have a blog and you’re reading it.

*Before this even starts, I’m not insulting your mother, I’m just letting you know that her Ethel Merman impression doesn’t hold a candle to my mother’s. I’m sure your mother is a very nice lady, and she’s probably much better than my mother at math or bow hunting or some crap like that.

A lot of people I’ve talked to have asked me how my Mom happened to know that I was spending most of my time in college trying to get laid. It’s quite simple, really – I was talking with my parents on iChat and Mom said, “So, what have you been up to?” And I said, “Oh, the usual, just trying to get laid.” And then Dad started laughing and Mom squawked and threw a napkin over her face, as she usually does when I manage to turn the tables and embarrass her. Why would I say something like this to my own mother? Honestly, I don’t even know. This is clearly not a thing that normal people do. Abraham Lincoln did not discuss his sex life with his mother – just another reason that he won the Civil War and I’m still struggling with Guitar Hero.

For some reason, taboo subjects have always been a comfortable topic for family discussion. At breakfast one morning in high school, I referred to our principal as a “tool”. My Mom and Dad, uncertain of what the term meant, looked at one another, and then my Mom said, over our toast and orange juice, “What, you mean like a dildo?” Once, while out driving somewhere with Mom, I noticed an Adult Shop right next door to a Jack In The Box. “Huh.” I said. “Mo’ like jack off in the box!” And we laughed! Oh, how we laughed! Of Thomas Kinkaid, self proclaimed ‘Painter of Light’, Mom once said, “You’d need a Painter of Light when your head is stuffed that far up your ass.” I can’t remember the last time Mom told me to watch my language, or grounded me for making crude jokes at dinner. On the rare occasions that I’ve had a girlfriend over at the house, Mom quickly gives up on her mission to embarrass me and will instead become sweet and witty before quickly absenting herself in order to create as much ‘alone time’ as possible. Furthermore, whenever she reenters the room she makes a point of clearing her throat loudly before coming in, as a sort of warning. It’s always worked as intended, but there have been a few close calls.

Now, of course, all of this sounds like the sort of thing that a responsible mother wouldn’t do. I mean, talking about dildos? Simply giving her son the opportunity to make out without even forcing him to sneak around first? On TV there was always the kid with the “cool” mother who lets him get away with all kinds of stuff, but then there’s always that really melodramatic episode where it turns out that there’s something messed up in the family, like somebody cheating on somebody else or maybe the kid’s brother is a robot, that explains why the kid is getting such a responsibility free upbringing. There’s the prominent opinion in our society that in order to be a good mother, you can’t also be a good friend.

I’ve got to say, I disagree with all that. My Mom treated me as an equal for most all of my upbringing. I was never hounded about grades, homework, or keeping up with the trumpet – I just sort of did it on my own, with my parents’ help when I needed it. I did these things on my own because from an early age my parents made it clear to me that they’d be proud of me no matter what I did, even if I became a gas station attendant or, worse yet, a blogger. Because they didn’t pressure me I felt like I was achieving for myself as opposed to them, which was why, in sixth grade, I did my homework instead of simply taking the easy way out by killing my worthless hack of a science teacher. I’m not discounting any other method of parenting, I’m just saying that I think I turned out alright myself, having spent my adolescence swapping dirty jokes with my mother. I don’t consider myself entitled to anything (except unconditional love from everyone I meet, and also an Xbox 360), and so far I haven’t murdered any of my friends for drug money – although I’m not below selling their possessions on eBay.

So, yes, I love you Mom. I know you hate Mother’s Day because you think it’s a cheap excuse for Hallmark to make money, but since you didn’t bat an eye when I elected to stay in Eugene to see Barack Obama instead of coming home to see you, I owe you at least this much. You’re sweet and intelligent and hilarious, and nobody makes fun of Republicans quite like you do, and you’re a fabulous cook, and you always say nice things about my blogs even when they’re not that funny and we both know it, and when I was sick last year you sat there with me while I threw up which is a truly nasty job but even a year later I still can’t tell you how much I appreciate it, and I promise that when I finally do bring a girl home she won’t have any visible tattoos or extraneous body piercings. Happy Mother’s Day.

Truman Capps will feel sincerely awkward if anybody starts crying after reading this, especially if they’re not his mother.

Treatises on Alcohol

He's doing this because girls are watching, so maybe I DO have a little Captain in me...

I believe I’m a closet Mormon. I sometimes go door to door trying to convince people how awesome I am*, I don’t smoke, and up until recently I didn’t drink, either. I know what you’re saying: I’m wasting the precious four years in which I can get absolutely shitfaced every night and not be an alcoholic for it. I’m well aware that I’m squandering my youth by opting not to spend most of my evenings with my head in a toilet, because people often tell me this between games of beer pong or while sponging their own vomit off the bathroom floor. I’m just not quite willing to dive into drinking yet, and since I’ve got a whole lot of blog left to write, I’ll share my reasons with you.

*I’ve got a lot of readers from Utah – particularly you, Allie – and I just want to let you know that I’m not making fun of the Mormons with that comment, I’m making fun of organized religion’s penchant for pimping itself out to complete strangers. I mean, hey, at least the Mormons don’t kill thousands of people when they go on mission trips – I’m looking at you, Catholicism!

For one thing, I aspire to be a writer, and if not for alcohol there would be literally hundreds more writers on Earth, traveling in majestic herds and foraging throughout the Upper East Side for cheap coffee. By not acquiring a taste for alcohol, I already figure I’m dodging a bullet that hit the likes of Poe, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Joyce, Melville, Crane, Roethke, O. Henry, Lowell, Steinbeck, and so on – there’s so many alcohol bullets flying around in the writing community that that you’d think God had a Tommy Gun.

Furthermore, I hate throwing up. I probably hate throwing up a lot more than you do, in fact, that’s how much I hate it. Like, how much you hate throwing up times infinity, and then you’ll be close to knowing how much I hate it. Leading my normal, healthy lifestyle I scarcely ever do throw up, and I don’t see why I should increase my risks by drinking. Now, I’ve got friends who drink that claim they’ve never thrown up despite countless tequila binges and games of beer pong. I’ve also got a friend who blacked out and spent 45 minutes crying and vomiting all over the bathroom during a concert at the student union and only escaped a citation through the guile of her sober friends. I don’t know why, but somehow the bad stories always stick out in my mind even more, particularly when vomit is involved.

However, the primary reason I don’t drink is my mother. You see, last weekend, my parents went to a wine tasting party put on by the manager of their condominium for all the residents. Now, as time went by, my mother tasted a little too much wine, and then she wound up talking about me to a large group of our neighbors. “How’s your son doing at U of O?” Someone asked, to which my mother offhandedly replied, “Oh, he’s doing fine… He just wishes he could get laid.” This reportedly brought on the granddaddy of all awkward silences. See, thanks to alcohol my own mother said this, knowingly, to a group of people who I’ll be seeing on a regular basis all summer.

Yeah, that’s right, Mom, you embarrass me in front of the neighbors, I’ll embarrass you in front of the Internet. Now everybody knows what you did! It’s on! Happy Mother’s Day.

All these perfectly logical reasons not to drink aside, I did indeed take my first shot of alcohol this past Thursday. “But Truman!” You, the highly offended casual drinker shout. “If you’re so opposed to drinking, why did you do it?” The answer is quite simple: Someone offered me a shot of Malibu rum while girls were watching. Had girls not been watching, I probably would have said, “No thanks.” It’s a little known fact, but nearly everything men have ever done, including jousting and the Spanish American War, happened because girls were watching. If girls weren’t watching, men wouldn’t be perceived as ignorant, macho lugheads, but would instead selflessly dedicate themselves to the creation of art. Writers selflessly dedicate themselves to art regardless because they know that they can’t do anything to impress girls anyway, and the reason so many writers become alcoholics is because they start drinking in a vain and desperate attempt to impress the girls who are watching.

The experience itself wasn’t really an eye opener. The shot (which smelled like Herbal Essences Mango Orgasm shampoo) made my mouth numb, and my first words after swallowing were (direct quote), “Urgh. Blarg!” My friends quickly passed me a chaser, which happened to be one of the girls’ bottle of pink lemonade, to help me wash down the fruity mango rum, officially making this the gayest first drink in history.** It wasn’t all bad, though, because shortly thereafter my esophagus got pleasantly warm for a few minutes. That was the extent of the experience for me – I didn’t have any more to drink, I didn’t throw up, and the girls weren’t impressed enough to have sex with me. You hear that, Mom? You want to let the neighbors know? I can call grandma right now, if you want.

**Unless you had your first drink while having gay sex, which would be considerably gayer than my first drink.

It’s becoming clearer to me that college binge drinking just might not be my thing, along with anime and swing choir. It works for other people, and I’m glad they can have a good time, and despite my highfalootin’ language I don’t look down on them, but it’s just not my scene. I don’t like the taste of alcohol, and even though I hear it’s not all about the taste, I don’t see the percentage in putting stuff in my mouth if I don’t like it that’s what she said. And yeah, maybe being drunk is fun. In fact, I’m just as curious as you are about what I’d be like while drunk. The thing is, I’m also frightened by what Drunk Truman could be like. A lot of my friends already consider me to be an outrageously vulgar and irreverent person, and alcohol would take away the precious few inhibitions I have left. Maybe Drunk Truman thinks he can sing and dance. Maybe Drunk Truman will ramble on for hours about his novel. Maybe Drunk Truman will kill a hobo. And sure, all of this sounds like fun and games to you, but in the morning, Drunk Truman is just going to be Mortally Embarrassed Truman, or possibly Fugitive From Justice Truman, neither of whom can dance.

Truman Capps has no problems with gay people, and only said that his first drinking experience was “gay” because the simple fact is that mangos and pink stuff are really, really, really gay.