Damien Galeone

As she puts in the movie it’s the first moment all afternoon she hasn’t talked about how the movie is a Czech classic and how it’s been rated the number one comedy in Czech history. I have long-since promised myself that I am going to love this movie – out loud – even if it’s the Czech equivalent of the latest Demi Moore film (stop trying to figure out what that was, it does not matter).

The title comes up: S tebou mě baví svět (I enjoy the World with you) accompanied by the most recognizable music in the entire history of the Czech Republic. The film is about three married guys who want to take a ‘Guy’s Weekend’ in the mountains and whose wives allow them on the condition that they take their children. About fifteen minutes into the film the men and kids are in the mountains skiing and being awkward with each other.

And about ten seconds after that, for the rest of the film, I am laughing in a manner that is illegal in Amish communities and in most Midwest states.

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The End

As we all know, Earth is just winding down its time until its Mayan destruction comes to foot in a few weeks. This comes as a bit of a hardship for those who have not gotten to their Christmas shopping yet and those whose birthdays come right at Christmas – It’s true that they’re always being screwed.

The bad news is that we will all be dead. Also there’s a chance that through some fluke of nature most of us die and the only remaining people will be Snookie and Donald Trump.

But it’s best not to think of these unspeakably horrible consequences.

The good news is that astronomers have recently discovered a “Super Earth” about 44 light years away from Earth I (aka: the Earth you are reading this on). Planet HD40307g, as it is sexily named, is known as a “Goldilocks Planet,” which means that it has sufficient atmospheric pressure to be able to maintain liquid water on its surface. So, should Earth I explode or be taken over by zombies on December 21^st, we could consider Earth II (HD40307g) a possible new home.

As it could be our new home, I have outlined Earth II’s specifications.

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Abraham Lincoln’s second career as a vampire hunter is well-known these days. And while I am warmed in the belly by visions of Ole Abe plunging wooden stakes into chests as he steps up on the dais at Gettysburg, I am fairly certain it is a fictional second career.

Still, it’s fun to think about.

These days, we tend to equate the term “President of the United States” with a picture of a stuffy older man standing behind a podium, starting wars on a small tribe in Timbuktu that’s rumored to sit on an oil deposit.

We rarely imagine our presidents as men of action or daring or danger. It is rather difficult to envision an American President as we know them in office heading a charge against an enemy stronghold or bailing out of an airplane under fire.

But several U.S. presidents did heroic acts such as these, and in almost every American war. This post is dedicated to the top five bad ass Presidents of the United States.

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“Oh, for the f*cking f*ckers f*ck f*ck of f*cking f*ckerville!”

It’s at this moment that I remember that I am not alone. There are seven sets of eyes on me.

Letting loose a few curses is fine, especially when you’ve just dropped a hot dog and run over your pinkie toe with your office chair at the same moment. Doing this in a departmental meeting is another story.

Always a genius at covering my tracks, I say, “Uh, you were saying.”

I have a potty mouth. This can be attributed to many factors. First of all, my dad was never one to, uh, hold back his anger in moments of acute strife. I have a very clear memory video of him trying to put in a ceiling fan. And failing. Spectacularly. The tangible quilt of obscenities that sprung from his mouth over that half hour would have made a Tarantino film look like an episode of Sesame Street.

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Halloween at Different Ages

Some of the benefits of stampeding towards your middle years are that you accrue pill bottles, a stash of good excuses and experience. It also allows you perspective on what people call the “circle of life.” With the advent of Facebook and the ability to see into each others’ worlds so easily, it has occurred to me just how differently all age groups celebrate Halloween and yet how similarly.

Baby’s First Halloween

OK, let’s be clear about something: If you are an infant, you are a human doll. Yes, you have a heart beat and yes, you did come flying out of someone’s nether regions and yes, your wailing and screeching does force your feeders to drink and hide their weapons.

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The Russian sitting across from me is an anomaly of the human form and yet a normal occurrence in the land of Russian women. She is approximately six feet tall, with blonde hair, a Barbie Doll frame and the cobalt blue eyes of a KGB “information gathering expert.”

Her name is something I have either forgotten or never understood in the first place. We are involved in a role play in which she is interviewing me for position of translator. I want this job badly.

My weekly Czech lessons are somewhat indicative of what it is to be a language teacher. There are 24 people on the list – mostly Russians, a few Vietnamese, a Kazakh, two Germans and me. Of those 24 people, two people show up every week: me and one random Russian Goddess. Interestingly, the Russian Goddess who arrives each week is never the same girl. It’s as though they are sent from a vault hidden beneath the university meant to distract me from my studies or reward me for arriving every week.

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It’s October 10^th and I’m sitting in an armchair in my living room. It is 2:31 a.m. and I am eating a waffle. There is nothing on it. Until a few minutes ago, I was enjoying a blissful denial.

I am exceptionally good at living in denial up until a point. Then it falls apart. There have been so many denial campaigns: I choose to be poor 2001, She loves you 2006, Your feet smell fine 2003 and, of course, I just enjoy drinking 2001-2012. Today’s campaign, You’re still young 2012, just ended because in 21 hours and 29 minutes, I turn 38 years old.

In preparation for the mind addling that will lead to bingo enjoyment and knitting scarves for several cats, I feel the need to research what is waiting for me. And in this moment that I will relive in my dreams, I make a decision and get out of bed.

I go to the internet.

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I’m sleeping in my home office tonight. My ‘home office’ is really a former bedroom that has housed three former flatmates. When it was vacated I added a treacherous Ikea desk, a cork bulletin board, and a reading lamp. There is also a wooden book-case with glass doors and a single bed. This room serves as my primary spot for writing…or reading, eating, dancing, watching porn and perfecting dog barks. And I am sleeping in here at the moment.

That’s fine, since it’s October.

Weird things happen in this office. There is the occasional soundtrack of distant laughter, footsteps scurrying past the door, and a series of taps, clanks, chinks and knocks that gives it the aural quality of a construction site. This room has had a dozen visitors, some of whom claim that someone knocked on the door in the middle of the night, most of whom claim hearing someone giggle on the balcony and all of whom report strange, vivid dreams. It’s not uncommon to find a visitor sleeping on the couch after the second night of their visit.

Yet at the moment, I come to this room willingly, rejecting the comfort of my king-sized bed and lay down to sleep. Because it is October.

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I am sitting in a lounge chair in front of a large group of people wearing a gown and mortar board. The academics file past wearing their own get-ups which make them look to be Vatican Guards. There are no people flying through the air playing a ball game, nobody has a wand and Alan Rickman is not sneering at anyone, but I still look and feel like Harry Potter. (NB: It occurs to me that this is the fourth of fifth Harry Potter reference made on this site. I assure you reader that I am as uneasy with that fact as you are either irritated or delighted).

Music starts and I yawn and stretch, pull a paperback out of my robe and start reading. I assume my fallback position: too cool for school.

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The only free seat on the tram is being guarded by a dog that is roughly the size of the entire interior of the tram. In true ironic form, I am sure his name is something like Daisy or Sally. I climb over the snouted Yeti and sit in the seat. Shamu, acting on the hopes that my crotch is covered in bacon, buries his nose into it. As with many of my bedmates, my genitalia has a sadly soporific effect on the beast because he releases a disturbingly pleasing breath and falls asleep.

This is not a surprising interaction. I open my book.

The Czech Republic is astoundingly open to dogs.  Dogs are allowed in pubs, restaurants, supermarkets and on public transport. A side effect of this openness is that I have had several unusual interactions with our canine friends. I have been licked on the arm by a tiny dog sticking its head out of a bag on an old woman’s shoulder. I have been trapped against a statue in Old Town Square by a Yorkie terrier as I continuously shouted the only two words I knew in Czech at him – Nerozumim (I don’t understand) and Pivo (beer). Like every other resident of Prague, the bottom of my shoes have hit dog crap so many times that it’s like a brand of shoe polish.

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