I Feel So Cold And Naked Without My Dressing

I just returned from a rainy, wet, miserable walk to and from (it takes me an hour both ways) the free food kitchen here in town to eat me some fucking FREE TURKaaaaaYY!!. Hell yeah! And no, I didn't go there to get a "warm fuzzy" in my heart from volunteering to help feed the poor and hungry, do their dishes, help cook, serve, etc.-- I went there to fucking EAT! Hahahaha! I went to get a "warm fuzzy" in my beatific BELLY, if you know what I mean. I don't know, it just felt like the right thing to do. A good way to feel the real Thanksgiving spirit is not by helping your neighbors or by helping to feed the hungry. It's by being one of the hungry and taking what they give you! There's nothing better than a cold, miserable wet walk across town in the dark, chilly November air, along deserted sidewalks and roads, across abandoned intersections, until you arrive at the food kitchen soaking wet. You stumble to where they are serving the food and just say, "I'll take a little bit of EvErYtHinG!" They had turkey, sweet potatoes, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and all kinds of luscious desserts. They even let me take home a free sack of potatoes! It kinda sucked having to carry them home, though.

To be honest, though today kind of sucked, I had a fairly normal, decent Thanksgiving with my family this past weekend. Due to some issues having to do with half my nieces and nephews staying with their biological father every other year on the actual Thanksgiving Day, we celebrated a few days early so the whole family could be there. It was actually the first time I'd been with my family for Thanksgiving in at least 10 years. It was a nice time, I guess. My family is pretty conservative so I got to hear my Mom talk quite a bit about Jesus and the End of The World. She has always been one to go to church here and there, but the past few years her religious fervor (or as she likes to call it, her "Faith") has really seemed to escalate. She says it is from simply reading the Bible; for the past year she has been reading it from front to back and is now nearly finished. I've always been interested in religious and apocalyptical stuff so, even though I don't really share her views on alot of things, it was fun to see her so passionate about something.

Jesus seems to have blessed my Mom and Dad with alot of new stuff since I was last home. They have this fucking HUUUUUGE high-definiton, flat screen TV, a new computer, and two other new TVs in two other rooms. They already had one of those older-model big-screen TVs the last time I was down in December. I admittedly was enamored with the big flat-screen upstairs, just sat there staaaaaring at the picture wide-eyed. On Sunday morning I sat there talking to my mother and watching her favorite preachers on the TV while she cooked the Thanksgiving Feast. Later on in the day, though, at the risk of seeming anti-social, I scurried rather rat-like down stairs to watch football on the old TV downstairs. Despite my family's conservative nature, their unabashed patriotism (there are more than a few American flags decorating their home's interior), it seemed like I was the only REAL AMeRiCaN there who actually wanted to watch football!

It seems my family has trained the little conservative minions well. At one point we were all sitting around the kitchen table. My Mom or Dad was talking about how much they hate the government and dislike Obama, when all the sudden three or four of my little nieces and nephews overheard us while they were playing and said, "Yeah Obama sucks!" LOL! And these kids are no older than 10! I guess they were just parroting what they hear the adults around them saying all the time. What is funny is how my family, ALL of THEM, my two sisters and their families included, all seem to be doing quite well. I mean, it just seems kind of funny to me to be sitting in this kitchen. The table is COVERED with food. In the room next door is this new $1,500 TV hanging from the wall. There are seven kids running all over, all wearing nice clothes; a couple have nice cell phones; they've got the latest video games, etc.; Mom and Dad's driveway was filled with their and my sisters' families' nice, big trucks and SUVs, and my family is obsessed with how evil the government is and how the End of the World is Near! LOL!

Lipstick-Stained Butts Aren't Worth Fighting For

So for various reasons, the past couple years I've been living in pretty much ABjEcT poverty. I've been surviving on working just a part-time job as a porn-store janitor and supplementing it with the (very) occasional temporary job (selling glowsticks at carnivals, front desk clerk at Motel 6) and occasional sales of my "Obama Taco Underwear" paintings. I'm a semi-regular presence at local community kitchens where I get free food. I have next to zero disposable income and doing things like eating out, shopping, doing anything social that requires money, etc., are pretty much out of the question. I have the mindset where this doesn't bother me as much as it would alot of people, but man, the worst thing about being broke all the time is trying to support my insatiable CIgArEttE HaBiT! I simply can't afford them, but yet I simply can't quit either.

One of the things I've come up with to solve the problem is smoking what I call "Billy's Blend." My first name is actually William; people call me "Bill" (but you can call me "Taco," lol). And "Billy's Blend" is made up of a mixture of the tobacco wrought from all the cigarette butts I pick up in public ashtrays and on the street. Yes, I do this; it's disgusting, I know. In most instances, when I pick up a cigarette butt from the ground, I tear the tobacco from the filter and, once I've found enough butts to make a whole cigarette doing this, I roll the tobacco salvaged from the various types and brands of cigarettes into a paper and smoke it. So I'm not smoking it straight from the filter of some stranger. That is UNLESS I find a cigarette butt that is at least 3/4 the size of the original cigarette-- in these cases I often just say fuck it and start smoking it straight from the filter, germs be damned. I especially like smoking from butts that have LIPSTICK on them so I can imagine I'm sort of somehow indirectly touching lips with some hot chick, sucking on her lipstick-stained cigarette butt the way I'd like for her to suck on my . . . . . BURRITO? LOL!!!

Hey, baby, I got your little butt in my mouth but what about your other butt, the BIG JUICY one? Hahahaha

So yeah, it's fucking sad and pathetic. And these "Billy's Blend" cigarettes are sometimes so awful tasting that when I smoke them I feel like crying or putting a gun to my head. I don't even care who sees me picking these butts off the street anymore. I've gone up to public ashtrays in front of convenience stores, the library, hotels, etc. and there will be people standing right next to them. I just say, "Hey, what's up?" if anything at all as they watch me picking through all the butts, occasionally saying things like, "Oh that's a good one there!" like a jeweler would hold a prized diamond up to the light. Sometimes someone will throw a butt down on the sidewalk right as I'm approaching and they'll see me pick it up.

I've also thought about this marketing idea. I could go to all these different cities nearby, picking up cigarette butts and blending all the tobacco into these plastic sandwich bags, have the butts organized by the cities I get them from. Sell them to people on the street who are as desperate as me for tobacco. I could have "Chicago Blend," "Indianapolis Blend," Cincinnati Blend," etc.

No one said anything or seemed to care or be offended by my picking their nasty used butts up off the ground and smoking them until TODAY when I almost got into a fight with some customer at work. I went outside to rake leaves at work this morning and I saw a cigarette butt lying on the ground. It was about 3/4 of a cigarette so I was like, hey my lucky day! I automatically popped it into my mouth and lit it, started smoking away. After taking about two puffs off of it some guy comes out of the store. He looks down on the ground where I'd picked up the butt, appearing bewildered, like he was looking for something. He then kind of shakes his head, looks at me and asks me for a cigarette. I look at him and say, "Nah, I don't have any, man, this is my last one," referring to the one in my hand. He looks at it and says, "Hey, that's my cigarette! I left it out here a few minutes ago before I walked into the store!" And this dude was some scumbag. He was getting all angry and I could tell he was willing to physically fight me over this fucking cigarette butt.

I just act dumb and say, "Nah, man, this ain't your cigarette," but I knew that it was. I could just tell, but I was dumbfounded and shocked that this guy was actually wanting the cigarette back that he had thrown on the ground 10 minutes before!

"It's a fucking Winston 100 Ultra Light," the guy said, "right there there in your hand. That's my cigarette, I left it on the ground planning to get it when I came back out!"

I was pretty agitated. Not only was I being called out on picking this dude's cigarette butt from the ground, I was being put in a position where I had to GIVE IT BACK TO HIM OR FIGHT HIM OVER IT! I decided this shit just wasn't worth fighting over or getting in a physical altercation with a customer and potentially in trouble at work over, so I just handed the guy his dumb fucking cigarette butt and said, "Here, take it then." I don't know, the whole experience just made me want to quit smoking more than ever. Luckily after having to give the guy his butt back, I looked over a few feet away by the dumpster and found another butt that was just as big. I managed to smoke it all the way down this time without some fucker coming up to me and CLAIMING IT.

Tacos, Not War: Veterans Day Musings

My mom called me yesterday after listening to the radio where they urged all their listeners to call a veteran and thank them for their services. LOL. I thought it was touching and sweet of her and told her I appreciated it, even though there are and were a lot of veterans who sacrificed more than I ever did. I was in the U.S. Navy from 1988-1992. I did spend 6 months of that time in the Persian Gulf, home-ported in Bahrain on the USS Lasalle, during Desert Storm, and I do technically qualify as a "war veteran," but man, I was never in fear of my life once. I just sat on a ship in front of this computer watching radar blips on the screen. And I served as the secretary for some crusty, gruff old commander, typing out messages for him all the time. I smoked alot of cigarettes, drank coffee and beer; masturbated in my bunk at night; cleaned bathrooms and watched Phillipino bands sing bad American pop songs in hotel lounges. It was boring most the time and, with the exception of the handful of times I got to have sex with prostitutes at my ships' various port calls, I fucking hated my time in the military.

I was a troubled 17-year old kid who did too many drugs in high school. I did barely graduate high school but my parents didn't have a whole lot of money and felt it was a bad investment at the time to pay for my college, and they were right--I wouldn't have lasted a semester. So I didn't really have much choice but to join the Navy or some other branch of the military, like a lot of guys in my family did.

I barely even had to handle a gun. I didn't even come close to doing what a lot of the ground troops go through in the Army and Marines in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. That stuff is terrifying and intense and, though I find the motivation behind America's wars questionable in that they are painfully obvious campaigns to benefit banks, corporations and war profiteers, I do respect anyone who goes through that type of human experience. I'm proud of the fact that, though it was four of the most miserable years of my life, I did make it through my entire 4-year contract. I lived up to my word and got an honorable discharge. But I am not even close to being in the category of those who engaged in actual combat, and it's important for me to make that distinction. Though I do appreciate the fact that I can justifiably say, "I served and you didn't you fucking hippy!" there are so many jerk-offs out there who lie, embellish or exaggerate their military service to garner some sort of respect or benefits that they don't deserve. I spent my GI Bill benefits long ago and don't feel anyone owes me a damn thing anymore.

Thanks, Mom. I do love you and it was genuinely sweet of you, but thanks are best served for the guy in the wheel-chair, the guy sitting in a hospital bed with his legs blown off or the thousands of poor soldiers rotting in the ground because of the greed of oil companies and other corporate avarice.

Your Couch Is Not My Couch!

I was standing outside my apartment complex Saturday night and one of my neighbors comes out. I didn't even really know the guy, didn't even know his name at the time, and he asks me if I'll help him move his couch from his apartment to another one right next door that he is moving into. I'm like, sure, and we plan on moving the couch Sunday morning. I told him I'd be around between 8am-10am so just let me know. He said he was going to start moving all his other stuff into the new apartment early in the morning and so he'd see me out in the hall at some point.

The next day I'm walking down the hall about 9am and he isn't anywhere around. I figured I'd see him out in the hall because that's when he SAID he was going to start moving all his other stuff, EARLY in the morning, but I don't see the guy until probably around 11am. He says he got up late and now he has to go somewhere, that he'd be back around 1pm and he'd be ready to move the couch. I'm like, this is starting to become a pain because I just wanted to get up and get it OVER WITH; now I've got to hang around a bit more waiting to move this couch of some dude I don't even know in some effort, I guess, to be "neighborly"?

So I see the guy again out in the hall around 1pm and he's telling me that he's a big football fan. He's a big football fan who likes to watch the games on Sunday and it just dawned on him that if we move the couch at 1PM that that's when the FooTbALL GaMeS start and he wouldn't have a couch to sit on in his old apartment (where the TV cable connection is) while he watches the games! So he asks me if I can come back around 7pm, after the afternoon football games. I'm like, yeah, I guess, whatever. I like to watch football, too, and I wanted to watch the night game at 8:20pm, so I hoped to get the damn couch moved before that one started.

I see him again at 7pm and he tells me it's a REAL BIG COUCH and that he called his friend to come over and help us, that his friend would be over around 8pm. I tell him, "Well, we'll need to hurry because I want to watch the night game between the Steelers and Saints which starts at 8:20pm." Then he's like, "Oh, that's right, that's gonna be a good game! Maybe we should just wait until morning to move the couch so me and Harold (his friend) can have some place to sit while we watch it, too!"

Reluctantly I set a time with him to move his damn couch on Monday morning at 7am right before I go to work. I get up, go down the hall and, of course, he isn't anywhere around. I start to knock on his door to wake him up so I can get this idea of moving a stranger's couch out of my head, just get this thing off my back so it will stop HAUNTING ME, and just before I start to knock I stop, stare at his door and point at it, say softly but firmly to the door, "YOUR COUCH IS NOT MY COUCH!" and just head off to work without talking to the guy.

Of course, as soon as I get back from work a few hours later I'm walking down the hall, heading to my apartment; I walk past his place and he has the door open. He is standing there with his friend and I look and see the couch. I just KNEW that if we didn't FINALLY move the couch that instant that it was going to continue haunt me, so I said, "Let's go ahead and get that couch moved!" So we do move it, finally, and it was a real bitch to do. It took about 20 minutes to move it out of his old apartment and into the new one, the two of us grunting and groaning and sweating while his friend--who actually KNEW HIM and seemed in perfectly fine physical shape to me-- stood there watching and texting people! When we were finished the guy gave me a bag of instant oatmeal, a half box of instant potatoes and a full pack of Camel Turkish Royal cigarettes for my troubles so I guess it was worth it, but boy was I ever glad to get that couch moved and off my mind!

Use Air Fresheners On Election Night

It's Election Day in this great land of ours, and even though this election isn't nearly as exciting as the one in 2008 (it's possible we will never have one that exciting again), I'll still enjoy watching the results on TV later. I even cleaned my apartment up a tad for the occasion in addition to buying one of those sweet-smelling Renuzit air-freshener thingies that only cost $1! Those things make my wolf's den smell pretty good but the bad thing is they only last 5-6 days (you get what you pay more or, in my case, what you can afford!) and it won't be long before the fresh air clears and my apartment will smell like my own hairy butt again. Hahahahaha. That is, on the days when it doesn't smell like tasty, tantalizing TACOOOOOS!! Actually, the tragedy of being a Taco Hombre Lobo for me right now is that I rarely can AFFORD to eat tacos. Sad and pathetic, I know!

So the general perception is that the Republicans, inspired by the "grass roots" Tea Party movement, are going to win over a bunch of seats tonight. I like football analogies and one thing I've noticed in following teams is that whenever a team CONTINUOUSLY decides to fire a coach after one bad season and gets a new one nearly every year or so(take the Washington Redskins and Oakland Raiders, for example), the team almost NEVER GETS ANY GOOD. You have to give the new coach a chance. You have to give him awhile to get the right players, create the right system and environment for his players to thrive in; and if you keep firing the coach after one or two bad seasons you will NEVER HAVE ANY CONSISTENCY OR PROGRESS. It just frustrates me how, only two years after "Independent voters" were so fed up with Republicans and wanted change they are--yes, it is ridiculously true--voting THEM BACK IN before the current Democratic administration even gets a chance to do anything. All Democrats have had time to do so far is gradually try to climb out of the hole Republicans put us into in the first place! It's just this wishy-washy, vote-with-the-wind mentality of the Independent voter that frustrates me to no end sometimes. I've never voted anything but Democrat and I doubt that will ever change.

Democrats haven't done anything that no one saw coming when they elected them in, and the Republicans would have done pretty much the same thing in regard to TARP (actually the initial TARP was under Bush), the Stimulus, etc. All the surprise, shock and anger in regard to these things makes no sense to me unless you hated the Democrats to begin with and never voted for them in the first place. I can see liberals being upset because they feel Democrats "aren't doing enough" or conservatives being upset because they are "doing too much" (which is really a joke), but to be an Independent voter who voted for Democrats in '08 and to now be "disappointed" in them--and so are now voting Republican--just seems naive and silly. Pick a side, already!

Oh, and what's with everyone who votes going around showing off their little stickers that say "I voted" or people mentioning it in their social-networking profiles. Is performing your civic duty really something you need to be BRAGGING about? Just put on a clean pair of underwear, go vote, stuff a taco in your mouth, hope for the best and be quiet!

A Day Of Tricks And The Unexpected Treat

Well, it's Halloween and here's to hoping that everyone has a devilishly delightful day. I hope that all your tacos are tasty and yet somehow still TerriBLE and Terrifying; that your enchiladas inspire ecstasy yet are somehow still EeRiE and ELDRiTcH and that your beautiful burritos, while tantalizing your tongue with a tinge of terrific taste at some point sit in your belly and BLIND you with their BADNESS as they shout out "Boo!" to you from the depths of your bowels before you go hooooowling into the BatHROOM! Hahahahahaha!

I'm just enjoying a weekend of finally having a little MONEY and eating REAL food, smoking decent cigarettes--my beloved Marlboro Reds(after a week of smoking cigarettes rolled up from butts I find on the street)--and watching a little football. I saw that our hometown perennial LOSERS, the Indiana Hoosiers, finally vanquished the hopes of any fans who were foolish enough (and I, admittedly, was one of them) to think that we could actually get to a bowl game this year, by losing to Northwestern here at home 20-17.

Today my beloved Minnesota Vikings play the New England Patriots. I was sooooo excited a few weeks ago when the prodigal son--and my favorite NFL player of all time--Randy Moss returned home to the Vikings, but those feelings are now mixed and I'm admittedly confused and tormented because Moss has now played in three games for them and the Vikings still SUCK!! It looks like Favre is still going to play today with the fractured ankle. Let's see how it goes. Stop throwing touchdown to the other team, Brett! That might help! LOL!

I was so broke last week that I didn't have any coffee. I was at work, at the bookstore, and I walked out into the parking lot around 8:00am. I was really jonesing for some CoFFAAAYY and lo and behold!-- I actually spied a cup of coffee out in the parking lot just a few feet away and the cup was standing UPRIGHT! "Could it be?" I thought to myself as I eagerly walked up to it, HOPING BEYOND HELL that it actually had some coffeee still in it and I can't express my delight when I found that it was still nearly FULL! Of course, I just started drinking it, paying no mind to whose cup it might have been or how many or what sort of germs I might get. I think my boss was a bit grossed out by it, but hey, the way I saw it it was just a free cup of coffee and an UNEXPECTED TREAT! The odds were in my favor that it was just a customer who had gotten the cup at nearby McDonald's, came to the bookstore, and took a few sips before coming into our store. I'm guessing it had only been in the parking lot a couple hours, tops.

Isn't it wonderful when we experience unexpected treats like that in life?

Obama And Michael Jackson Star In "Noseless"!

Michael Jackson's nose fell off on his way up to Heaven! Feeling guilty about not making a public address regarding Jackson's death in June 2009, President Obama agrees to let Michael borrow a few of his supporters' noses so that the King of Pop can smell the tacos down on earth while sitting on his cloud in Heaven! Obama even volunteers to let Michael borrow his OWN nose on occasion! Read more about it HERE or just check out this latest installment of my "Obama Taco Underwear" Painting Series below:

The Eyes In The Underwear Speak Of Unity

The "Obama Taco Underwear Painting Series" adventure continues with my latest installment, "The Road To The White House Goes Through The Dog House (The Eyes In The Underwear Speak Of Unity)". This is a commissioned painting I made for a friend. He just got a new dog, an English sheep dog, and he wanted a painting that involved him, the dog and Obama. I just mailed it out to him today so I haven't heard back from him yet on what he thinks of it. I hope he doesn't mind that I have him and Obama on all fours eating dog food. LOL. Eh, I think he'll be cool with it. It's all in fun!

My Cincinnati Baseball Adventure

Here is a picture of me posing in one of my werewolf masks in front of the "Great American Ball Park" in Cincinnati. Though I'm not really a baseball fan (I'm a football guy!), I have a friend who is a huge Cincinnati Reds fan and he needed someone to go to a couple games with him. He offered to pay for everything, including my TACOS and I was like, dude, I'll only go if I can wear my WeReWOlF MaSK part of the time!

We got a hotel across the Ohio River from downtown Cincy, in Newport, Kentucky. There is a big bridge with a walkway alongside it that goes across the river to the ball park. I originally thought it would be CooL to walk across this narrow walkway across the water into town. It was cool when I first started walking across it, but as I neared halfway down it (the walkway was about a quarter mile long) I started getting VerTiGO reaaaaaal bad and started walking faster and faster, nearly freaking the hell out as I gazed down the side of the walkway into the water. I don't know exactly how high above the water it was, maybe 100 feet or so, but it ignited something in my brain that made me not really want to walk across this walkway again! I didn't want to seem like a baby, though, so I wasn't going to say anything to my friend who lagged behind me a few feet. Thankfully, when we finally got across the river and off the walkway and he caught up with me, he said he felt the same thing, that it scared the hell out of him looking down, and that he was going to pay for us to take a cab across the bridge for the rest of our stay. Boy, was I relieved! Hee!

The baseball games, themselves, were actually kind of miserable for me. The first night we were in the "cheap seats" behind center field and it was HoTTeR ThaN FucKKKK, the sun beating down on my newly shaved bald head as sweat dripped down my face and this dude next to me's exposed ARmPit about made me gag during the whole game. The second night we had better seats, "scout seats" right behind home plate. We were in a shaded area and it was a little cooler. I got excited because halfway through the 1st inning the seat right next to me was vacant and I was like, cool, no smelly armpits tonight and I can relax and stretch out a little. But it wasn't long before I started hearing this rumbling sound of someone walking my way. Before I knew it this HUGE lady was squeezing herself against people's knees in my aisle, coming my way, and she soon PlaNteD her plentiful, gigantical RumP RoaSt right next to me and yelled at me, "You a Reds fan?! You better be!" The Reds were playing the St. Louis Cardinals so alot of their fans had actually made the trip to the game. I just despairingly said, "Yeah, I'm a Reds fan," to keep this woman from eating me the way she ate bratwursts. Around the fifth inning she ordered four or five bratwursts covered in sauerkraut, shreds of which flew out of her hands and mouth and SplaTTered on my arm and shirt as she ate them.

Oh and to top it all off the Reds LOST both of the games we saw. The whole trip, though I can't say I had FUN just became this interesting test of endurance. It got me out of town for a couple days, at least!

Cheeseburgers Make Me "Hungry Like the Werewolf"!

Here is a picture of me with my cheeseburgers from the other day. It features me in both human and wolf form, so please do not be afraid. It is often the case that when I make cheeseburgers or any other delightful dish, I often get so hungry that I turn into a werewolf! LOL! Please excuse my wardrobe. I was actually naked when I decided to take this picture and just threw on something real quick from out of the depths of my closet. I think I'm wearing some kind of girl's softball uniform top or something. Hell if I know!

My First Can

Here's a pic of me and a few of my fellow werewolf buddies outside (and inside) one of the dumpsters in town. I've got a 50-year old friend who lives with his mom and doesn't have a real job so he goes around collecting scrap metal, mostly aluminum cans, for a living. Since times are tough and I haven't been able to find any extra work other than the 20 hours a week I work as a janitor, I decided to go out gathering cans with him the other day for some extra cash, bringing my wolfen pals along with me. In the picture you can see that I am holding my FIRST CAN! Yay! It's a Diet Pepsi can and you can tell by the self-satisfied look on my face that I'm pretty proud of it.

I hadn't shaved in a few days when this picture was taken, so you can see why amongst the can-collecting crowd I'm known as the "Silver Wolf" because of the abundance of gray hairs you can see in my scruffy, half-assed beard. I've been at this can-collecting thing for a couple weeks now and I've almost filled a whole trash bag full! Hopefully in a few more days I'll have a whole bag and when I take it to the junkyard I expect to get around, I dunno, 10 bucks for it. Hey, don't laugh. That's a pack of smokes and a bag of frozen burritos and I will have EARNED it, man, not having had it given it to me as some fucking hand-out by the government.

Speaking of "hand-outs," I've been eating free lunch at this local church downtown. The food isn't too bad but the place is always jammed packed with hungry, stinky people, people like me (yeah, maybe I stink every once in awhile, so what?) who are just trying to make ends meet. I come to get free food to save money so I can pay my Internet bill and not have it disconnected unlike alot of lazy, unemployed people who come there just because they feel they are entitled, like having food in their bellies is some God-given right. Then they eat and go a block away to use free Internet at the public library's computers when I PAY for my damn Internet. But anyway, I was at this church trying to eat the other day and this big fat, greasy dude had his chair pulled out from under him by some mischievous little weasel. The big guy's plate of free food--a pork fritter, some corn and a couple cheese sticks-- went flying everywhere. The big guy got mad, got up and started grabbing the smaller dude, the two of them slipping and sliding in a puddle of Kool-Aid on the floor, and it was funny as hell. There wasn't room to sit down and eat so I just stood in a corner by the free coffee pot, stuffing this big piece of free cake into my mouth as I watched the whole sad, hilarious scene.

After I finished eating, I walked down to this garage that my can-collecting friend uses to sort out his scrap metal every week. He's alot better at collecting this stuff than I am and he spends nearly every waking hour out gathering metal up all over town, so every week he has a huge pile of it needing sorted out before it goes to the junkyard. You have to sort out the aluminum from the tin from the steel from the foil from the copper wire, etc., and he hired me on to help him do it once a week. It's an intense, fast-paced, gross job that takes about 4 hours and he pays me $25. The funny thing is that the garage we are using is just some garage for an apartment complex. Neither one of us live there, my friend just noticed it wasn't used by any tenants and took over the place. LOL. The metal-sorting isn't so bad until you run into some big foil pan full of week-old lasagna. YUCK. Then towards the end of the job all you have left is this big pile of tiny tin lids, caps, tiny bits of tin foil, etc., and I have to get on my hands and knees to sort this shit out with my hands stained and greasy with lasagna. And the other day I noticed a dog turd about an inch away from my hand. I was wearing gloves at first but it made me go too slow in picking stuff up, so I went bare-handed and when I came close to putting my hand right in that piece of dogshit I damn near regretted it. There was one point when my friend fucking yelled at me for putting an aluminum cat food can in the bag where tin is supposed to go. I got pissed and started kicking shit. He says he's going to give me a magnet next time we do it, so I can tell the difference between tin and aluminum. Tin sticks to the magnet, aluminum doesn't.

But when the work is done I take my $25, go home and have a real party because that's what life's about, making the most of what you got or what other people are willing to give to you. I do a little bit on my own, I let people do a little bit for me. Now will someone please come change my diaper for me and make me a taco? LOL.

An Initial Exploration Of Cheese, Lettuce, Tomato

**NOTE** Please ignore the presence of sour cream in the image below. Sour cream is not addressed in this essay.

It is important for me to maintain in my work as a hairy food fetishist, and in my life as a werewolf, to do my best to promote a positive, healthy lifestyle. Though I do respect past werewolf traditions I feel that I need to move beyond many of the perceptions of a werewolf being a violent, murderous beast. It is not always easy to be positive in this world, and as an artist the symbols I use in my work are very important, for it is through these symbols that my vision is cultivated and it is through the lens of these symbols that my outlook is forged. That is one of the reasons why I choose the TACO as my primary symbol of positive meditation. There are many things I have said and will say about the taco as a whole, but in this particular essay I want to quickly address three of the taco's primary ingredients: Cheese, Lettuce, and Tomatoes.

"Cheese, Lettuce, Tomato" has become like a mantra to me, a chant I say over and over again to myself during times when life is not going as I had planned. Whenever I become angry or distressed, depressed or disappointed in life I think of these three main taco ingredients. If possible, I eat them soon after I am upset about something. Ideally, I eat them as part of a taco, but in an emergency I can also eat them plain one after the other; or in a salad grouped together; or as toppings for a hamburger.

The cheese, it soothes me. The rich, creamy taste and the orange hue of sharp cheddar cheese reminds me of the sun on a warm, summer day. I bite into the flakes of the shredded cheese upon my taco, slightly melted from the heat of the meat upon which it rests inside the shell. This slight melting is important to me because it serves as a metaphor for what I am currently going through in life. It is the rich, good taste of life-- but slightly melted, slightly bent of shape. Someone has turned up the heat on and they are trying to make me angry! The melted parts of the cheese tell me life is not perfect but it is the preponderance of the cheese, the vast majority that is unharmed and golden as ever--which is still unscathed by the heavy, greasy meat-- that I know is the true reality, that is the cheese I truly know. This comforts me as I let the cheese rest upon my tongue and slide down my throat.

The lettuce, it delights me! It is so crisp and slightly cold, so soothing to feel inside my belly after I've been angry over something. Followed by, or mixed in with cheese within a taco, I think of it as being alot like love. "Lettuce is the love that binds us." I've said this many times when relating all the various colors and hues within a taco to the different-colored skin tones of all the people of the world. There is cheese, there is tomato, and then there is the LETTUCE. There is usually more lettuce than anything else because it is cheaper. This is especially true within a salad where lettuce serves as the main body, the overbearing symbol, because our natural tendency to want to eat something such as salad intuitively sees lettuce as love in the deepest sense, as the oceanic, turbulent body of oblivion from which we all came and from which we get just a little taste of in our relationships and in our eating of LETTUCE. Just sit somewhere by yourself sometime, preferably on a park bench on a nice sunny day. Bite into the lettuce and feel the water wet your tongue and that ever so slight but potent flavor smear your palate. It is bringing back a memory, see, an ever faint memory lettuce brings that reminds you of the time when were all one, when we were all together, and the lettuce inside a taco further pronounces the taco's ability, as a whole and more than the sum of all of its ingredients, to serve as a symbol of unity. You bite into a taco and hear that crunch. To the unenlightened, this is the louder crunch of the taco's shell, but if you train your ears, and when you open up your heart to the subtleties of taco mysticism, you can make it so you are only hearing the soft, sweet crunch of the LETTUCE, my friend, oh yes, and what a beautiful song this little lettuce bird sings!

Then there are tomatoes, the most beautiful part of this trinity of Cheese, Lettuce, Tomato. Is it any wonder that the tomato cannot truly be classified? Is it a fruit or is it a vegetable? Does it have a double meaning? The tomato to me is sacred because it represents the blood that goes through my veins. It is its symbolic function as the blood that gives me life that always presents me with an opportunity to go against more traditional ideas of the violent, murderous werewolf, especially the ones portrayed in werewolf movies where blood is splattered EVERYWHERE by virtue of the sharp claws and dripping red teeth. Why does blood in so many cases in our media have to represent death? Why, when in paintings, drawings or movies, when a person is covered in blood does this have to be deemed disgusting? The way I work around this, see, is by first giving blood a poetic transformation. Firstly, blood is the life; and tomatoes, to me, in my taco lexicon, are representative of blood; so with tomatoes-- being a primary ingredient of HOT SAUCE, a liquid similar in appearance to blood-- I can portray people covered in HOT SAUCE instead of blood, and it has the same magnetic effect upon a person when they look at it. So when a person is typically said to be transfixed with death if they have a fixation with gory imagery, see, the truth of the matter is that they are obsessed with LIFE, life that is ideologically saturated within the symbol of a tomato and further refined within the structure of more complex substance, hot sauce. And it is here, once again, that the mysterious occult tomato rears its awesome, majestic double-headed meaning. Is is a fruit or a vegetable? Is it life or death? And to take this observation even further, isn't it interesting that the tomato appears TWICE within the best-tasting tacos as a tomato and once again in HOT SAUCE? Think about that. The next time you bite into a taco and feel that delicious, spicy and sweetly luscious flavor of the tomatoes mixing with the hot sauce, ask yourself, "Am I perhaps eating just a little bit more than my LUNCH?

"Tummy Everything" Official Blog

So I decided I wanted to have an "official" blog and I've been messing around with setting it up the past few days. I want a blog to post some of my longer, more serious (LOL!) stuff, as well as a sort of centralized funnel through which to post and link to all my website updates because I've got all kinds of different stuff I want to get out there in the future. Plus, this new blog is set up entirely on my own hosting account, on my own domain, and that makes me happy. I actually just wanted to get it set up for now and don't plan on updating it on a regular basis for a few months. Anyway, this official blog is now ready and set up at Tummy Everything (NSFW! Adults Only!). Since I got it set up I went ahead and made a first, introductory blog entry for it called "Tummy Everything About That Taco I Bought You"(NSFW! Adults Only!)to try and explain the blog's strange title but, like I said, I don't plan on actually using this blog until probably this summer. I'm always thinking ahead and have to stay ahead of the game if I'm going to seriously make some waves in the "food in the stomach" fetish micro-niche. Hahahaha.

We got about 8 inches of snow here in Indiana last night and today. This is like the fourth major snowfall we've gotten this winter which is alot compared to the past few years. I'm actually kind of glad because it makes you appreciate the warm weather when it finally does arrive.

I Stand United With Myself In Good Taco Taste

I decided I wanted to spice up my Links Page up a tad so I made this little logo for it today. Honestly, it just bothered me to no end to have a simple "links page," it sounded so lame. I had to somehow juice it up and make it seem like something special and extraordinary, so it is now called "The Hairy Taco Lovers' Alliance". Hahahaaha. All of my websites now stand UNITED, dude. Me and all my hairy friends are now entangled in our mutual hairs and united in our good taco taste!

Yeah, well, the Colts LOST last night. The Saints were honestly just a better team, I hate to say. The Colts finally had to play a team with a good pass offense which exposed alot of the their weaknesses in defending the short passing game. Plus, the Saints were just alot more dynamic; their special teams made alot of big plays and their coaches made some excellent play-calling decisions, especially with the onside kick to open up the second half. Peyton Manning's legacy is definitely hurt by the loss, especially in light of the Pick Six he threw toward the end of the game that cemented the Saints' first Super Bowl win in their franchise history.

Anyway, I just made a big bowl of taco salad with DORITOS in it and mounds of sour cream and sharp cheddar cheese, splattered with spicy, exhilarating hot sauce; crisp, fresh lettuce; firm, juicy cherry tomatoes; tender clumps of seasoned ground beef and unified with a ton of FreNcH DreSSinG!! I've got a two-hour documentary on crop circles to watch, plus a couple documentaries on wolves. No, not WeReWolvEs, you sillys, these are about REAL wolves because I live in the REAL world. LOL!!

Fans Are Allowed In The Pro Football Hall Of Fame?

Here's a logo I just made to put on my Hairy News and Views Archive page, a simple little links page I had to make to replace my non-adult/mainstream blog at Hairy News and Views because Blogger is doing away with its FTP interface functions. I'm working on "official" Taco Werewolf blog that'll function entirely from my own hosting account and will integrate both my mainstream and more porny/extreme hairy taco stuff and I'll link to it when I get it set up. Blogger blows goats, anyway, I've been planning to stop using it for awhile now.

Today is Super Bowl Sunday and, of course, I am going to watch the game because I am an unabashed fan of the NFL. Being a life-long Indiana resident and living pretty close to Indianapolis I am, of course, rooting for the Colts. I watch nearly every single one of the Colts' games on TV and am pretty grateful we have a local team that, year after year, is pretty damn good and is always in the hunt for winning the Super Bowl. I'm not as excited about the Colts being in the Super Bowl this year as I was when they made it and won it '06, because that was their first time since being in Indy, but it's still pretty damn cool.

I'm disappointed that the Saints are even IN in the Super Bowl because to get there they had to beat my beloved Minnesota Vikings that I've been a fan of ever since my mom bought me some Vikings pajamas at K-Mart when I was 6 years old. It had some kind of subliminal effect on me as a child and I've loved the Vikings ever since. Their loss to the Saints two weeks ago was one of the most agonizing, heartbreaking games I've ever had to watch. I guess it was too much to ask for a Vikings/Colts Super Bowl. At least now I won't have to deal with torn loyalties and I can root for the Colts angst-free.

I also don't like the Saints being in the Super Bowl because they were one of five teams that have never been in the game, along with the Browns, Lions, Jaguars and Texans. I just think there needs to be teams that NEVER make it to the Super Bowl, it makes it seem more special and, just as in life, some things to some people should just be-- no matter how hard they wish or try--UNATTAINABLE, so here's to hoping that the Saints at least don't WIN.

I'm also upset because this guy is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It's some New Orleans Saints fan who calls himself "Da Pope." I read about him in the local newspaper this week and didn't believe they even allowed fans in the Hall of Fame. But after doing some research I learned that in 1999 the NFL did allow a fan from each of the then 31 teams to be inducted into the "Hall of Fans" a special display in the Hall of Fame, and yes, Lionel Alphonso, Sr., the guy in the pic, was inducted. I need to do some more research to see if they actually got their own bust or not, though.

My Orange Ski Mask Is Warm Light From Mexican Spaghetti

Aaaaah, yes, my bright orange ski mask feels so good on my face, especially when I wear it outside when it is cold. It makes my head feel like the burning, nurturing warm summer sun in the midst of such depressingly frigid winter temperatures. I stare at the bright white snow through the ski mask's eyes and it is like a piercing, hot laser shoots from my pupils as the snow all around melts when I approach it, leaving me a clear pathway from which to walk into this disheartening milieu of madness, this orange ski mask over my face and this rotting, sacred plate of spaghetti in my hand. Rays of sunlight shoot outward from the plate of spaghetti and I realize I must not only wear my heart on my sleeve-- I must also wear my clean, white underwear over my pants!

It takes courage to do what I do. I takes a lot of valor to walk about with one's underwear placed over their pants. The spaghetti on my plate is about two weeks old. I don't know, sometimes I just let it sit around awhile to keep me company. It is made with a mixture of angel hair spaghetti and mostaccioli. When I made it I didn't have any pasta sauce, per se, but I did have a packet of taco seasoning which I used to flavor the ground beef, so in a sense this is actually Mexican Spaghetti. LOL!! As you can see, whenever I fork a few of the mostaccioli they strangely have this magnetic pull toward my private parts instead of my mouth. To me, this further emphasizes the importance between the relationship of my need to fuck hairy tacos and my desire to eat. I have been doing both for so long that the wires have become entwined. This howling dualistic desire has now gone full circle as I bite my own wolfen tail, feeling a need to stuff food down my pants whenever I see a hairy vagina, or fondle my wolfen cock as I walk by McDonald's to see people coming out with those new "McSnack Wraps"; the very thought of them makes me roll my eyes and walk a few extra blocks to Taco Bell.

Hahaha, one of my neighbors, Daniel, recently died. He was some dude in his early/mid 40's. He always bummed cigarettes off of me whenever I went outside my apartment complex to smoke. It is funny because I was actually outside smoking when I saw the ambulance pull up. They rushed into the building and about an hour later the paramedics came out wheeling my dead neighbor on a stretcher. I guess he just had some sort of seizure or something. I was sort of sad and shocked. I didn't know the guy real well. He was okay, I guess. It was annoying having to give him cigarettes all the time but I guess I won't have to do that anymore, will I? I talked to another neighbor of mine a day or two later and he was mad that Daniel died because he'd let him borrow some movies that he'd rented from the library. The movies were now stuck in dead Daniel's apartment, accruing higher and higher late fees. My neighbor talked to the rental company about his problem and they told him to leave a note on the door for Daniel's family so, as they packed away their son's belongings, they could take the library movies down the hall to him. LOL! Yeah, leave a fucking note on the door saying, "Sorry your son is dead, but can I have those library movies I let him borrow?" Hahahahaaa. Anybody who lets someone borrow shit that they, in turn, have BoRRoWeD from the library is an idiot, anyway, and I refuse to let bum cigarettes from me, wear my orange ski mask, or invite them over for a Mexican spaghetti dinner.

My New Long Johns Are Sooo Excited About the New Year!

I got home yesterday from being at my family's various houses for the holidays since New Year's Eve. I hadn't been home for the holidays in nine years, so it was a pretty good experience for me. It felt good to see my mom and dad and my two sisters. It was especially fun to spend some time with my four nephews and two nieces, ages 6-12. They all welcomed me with open arms and were really sweet toward me despite the fact that I have barely seen them for most of their lives. In fact, before this past summer when I went home for my older sister's second wedding, I hadn't seen any of them at ALL except for the oldest one; I saw her briefly when she was four years old.

New Year's Eve was spent at mom and dad's watching movies with the kids, family-type stuff like Race to Witch Mountain, How to Eat Fried Worms and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. At midnight my mom dressed all the kids up nice and warm and let them go outside to light firecrackers and bang on pots and pans. It was pretty funny. I went out with them in my shorts and just stood there laughing, smoking a cigarette and wishing I could be eight years old again.

Friday I went to my oldest sister's HUGE fucking house and that's where we all opened our belated Christmas presents. I got a pair of Long John underwears and Season #1 of True Blood from my mom and dad, both of which you can see in the pic above. I also got a coat and a comforter. HELL YEAH, IT's ALL ABOUT KEEPING WARM and watching vampires FUCK this winter. Or at least I heard that the vampires in True Blood fuck alot. I wonder if they fuck any werewolves? We also played alot of games. We played UNO FLASH, some fast-paced electronic version of that old "Uno" card game I used to play as a kid. We also played "The Sopranos" trivia game. My whole family are Sopranos freaks. I won the game because I had only recently seen the whole series from front to back, this past Fall. When I play these fucking games I want to WIN even if it's against my mom and a bunch of 6-8 year olds. Hahhaaa.

Saturday I went to my youngest sister's house and played Wii for the first time with her kids. I really liked the Wii bowling game, but I sort of sucked at "Guitar Hero." My sister has a bunch of chickens and I went out and helped my brother-in-law go out there and collect eggs from them. They laid twelve that day! I guess they were happy to see me?

Sunday morning I went to church with my mom and youngest sister and actually took communion for the first time in over 25 years. It's a Protestant church and they don't offer it very often, so I lucked out! I'm waiting for some miracles to start happening now. Before I drank the grape juice and nibbled on that little wafer, I said, "Jesus, please let the Vikings beat the Giants today and have the Cowboys beat the Eagles so the Vikings can get a first round bye in the playoffs and get the #2 seed!" All of that actually happened Sunday afternoon, so I might be taking communion more often from now on. Hahahhaa