Who Smells On This Subway Train? (A Love Poem)

Holy fuck.
Who smells on this subway train?
(it's not me, is it?)
A medley of mothballs, B.O. and urine
An odious concoction.

Jesus.
Look at these people.
Does anyone shower anymore?
This guy with the dandruff
Falling like dead confetti
That girl with the hairy boil growing out of her neck

(what the fuck is that thing - it looks like a fist).

Who's hand is that feeling my ass?
Goddammit, where's my wallet?
Can't this asshole give me some room to breathe?
Which would only yield me back to...

Who fucking smells on this subway train?

I often get on the subway and think to myself:
What dormant pool of Darwinian human waste did these pre-evolutionary slugs crawl their way out of?

Then I get to my stop and I'm okay again.

Daily Affirmations...(You're Welcome)

To ensure you start your day in the right frame of mind, repeat these 3 affirmations to yourself everyday:


I am depressed, melancholy, concerned, worried, restless, fearful, panicked, cheerless, dejected, despondent, distressed, pessimistic, bitter, enraged, resentful, indignant, somber, doleful, downcast, petulant, peevish, malevolent, anxious, forlorn, and riddled with general malaise. But atleast I don’t have to eat pudding with a spoon held between my toes.

I’m broke, have no prospects or future opportunities, no credit, no confidence, no girlfriend, no meaningful relationships of any kind, no principles, no allegiances, no faith, no perspective, no hobbies, no interests, no diversions, no significance, no hope and no positive outlook, but I’m not bleeding from the eyeballs either.

Today I will do nothing, feel nothing, read nothing, learn nothing, meet no one, avoid everyone, become frustrated, obtain a bad attitude, be cynical, ill-fated and impossible, indifferent, insecure, selfish, sulk, seethe and be spiteful and try my best not to obtain any sense of inspiration at all. It will be a very successful day.

Shall I Reserve You A Room?

So, the Trump International Hotel in Manhattan is now offering a 55 minute spa treatment called the “Liquid Gold Body Wrap” and all I can say is, it’s about time.

Finally, someone is offering us a body wrap of liquid gold followed by a massaging of oil with gold particles into the skin, which is then followed up with a dusting of an iridescent gold powder.

Now I know what you’re thinking…”But Monk, how come no one’s done this before?”. I can’t answer that fellow blogger. All I can say is I hope it doesn’t take as long for Trump International Hotel to move into the next phase of hospitality. Perhaps, if they’re listening, they may consider some of my simple recommendations…

How about a smoking room where these rich, spoiled hotel guests can roll cigars made from hundred dollar bills? You know, to relax and suck that burning, excess cash deep into their lungs.

Or a restaurant called the Famine Room, where patrons aren’t given a menu; instead everything that’s on the menu is prepared and brought to their table. Then they pick out the one item they want and the rest goes straight into the trash. No wait. Make that the incinerator. Well, you know you can’t trust these greedy homeless people. Always trying to dig food out of YOUR garbage.

And all the waitstaff will be starving children from third world countries. You know the type, all pot-bellied and flies in their eyes. Give ‘em a shower and put ‘em to work I say. But no tipping! Tipping will not be allowed. These greedy self-obsessive third world waiters! “I’m hungry!” “Ya? Me too, now where’s my ketchup, Mogambo?”

Let these bastards make an honest living like the hotel guests their serving (y’know, cheating, stealing, lying, swindling, competing and generally being corrupt business assholes).

All the carpets will be made from the fur of clubbed baby seals. Well…its softer on the feet, after they’ve been through the patented Trump Hotel’s Pedicure, a special rubdown of the feet with chamomile and crushed ivory from the tusks of endangered African elephants.

And finally, how about this? Drain the swimming pool of it’s dirty, chlorinated water and instead fill it with vaccines desperately needed in countries crippled by HIV. Well, wouldn’t you feel better doing the backstroke in something that’s only going to boost your immune system? Hell, you ARE on vacation after all….we, at the Trump Hotel, wouldn’t want you to get sick.

SO enjoy your stay at the Trump Hotel, where our motto is….

Sleep tight and leave your worries behind…

I'm Sorry But....

People should really stop apologizing every time they offer their opinion. I’m really tired of hearing people say “I’m sorry but…” before they make a statement as in “I’m sorry but you just shouldn’t shove bread in your ear”.

I’m sorry but it shows a real weakness of character to add the modifier “I’m sorry but…” before you exclaim your opinion, ok? So stop it.

People think by prefacing a statement that they are insecure about with an “I’m sorry but…”, it’ll get them off the hook for what they’re about to say, as in “I’m sorry but your penis is not adequate, Jim”, or “That’s fine Sally, because I’m sorry but frankly your genitalia scares the hell out of me”.

“I’m sorry but…” is sort of like our insincere and inappropriate overuse of the the phrase “just kidding!” when people try to soften a joke told at someone else’s expense, as in “I’m sorry but your penis is not adequate Jim”…(pause)…”just kidding!”.

If you’re an abuser of this type of language, stop it. It’s soft, insincere and inexcusable. In fact, I’m sorry but if you insist on continuing to use this phraseological abomination then you deserve to be stripped, rolled in corn syrup and locked in a steel trunk full of fire ants then tossed into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean from a helicopter…(pause)…just kidding!

Musings From The Airplane

Ya know who bugs me? These people who mindlessly applaud the pilot when he lands the airplane at their destination.

I never understood this weak behaviour. Cheering on a man because he has accomplished the fundamental objective of his job description: get the plane to where it has to go. That’s hardly worth my applause. Some schmuck who’s just performing his minimal best?! I don’t think so. You want my applause, you better go beyond the call of duty. Do something impressive.

Land the plane with one of its wings on fire.
You want me to clap, Spaceman, let’s see you do that.

Anyway, I’m not one of these people who just stand up when everyone else does just to give some minutely-talented performer a standing ovation. They have to earn it. And this isn’t Vegas. These people aren’t even entertainers. This is mass transportation. I say if you’re not going to applaud the indecipherable cab driver that smells like a cross between rancid chicken and a diaper desperately in need of attention when he drops you at the airport, then you shouldn’t applaud the pilot either.

If people are going to insist on clapping for pilots when they land planes, then I think we should make it deserving of the applause. Make it a showstopper.

I’d enthusiastically clap for the pilot when he lands the plane after 3 hours locked in the cockpit with a wild, man-eating tiger all flipped out on PCP.

Finally, something worthy of my applause.

Snails.

Snails.

What's the deal there?

Weird.

Create Your Own Adventure

Someone recently asked me what my favourite children's book is. Tough question. It's been awhile.

After some careful consideration, it came to me and I said it.

"Choose Your Own Adventure Books".

Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) books were novels with several different endings dependent on how the reader "chose" the protagonist's decisions throughout the story. Ideally, I think the purpose was to make it to the natural end of the novel, to stay "in the book" as long as you could, but most people I know had a different purpose for Choosing Their Own Adventure.
See, the appeal of the CYOA book was that it gave control to the reader to choose how much he wanted to read. Don't wanna read much? Make a couple of bad decisions and voila! Last page. That's why I liked 'em. Quick read, now shut up and let me get back to Super Friends.

They were also a favourite (but always ostracized by teachers) for book reports. If I couldn't convince a teacher to allow me to read a novelization based on a movie (such as Return of the Jedi or Oh, Heavenly Dog!), then I'd often turn to an obscure CYOA book and hope the teacher didn't know the source.

But you had to be careful.

You had to choose your adventure carefully.

Pick something with a classic Swift-ian title, but without being Ed Wood-ian. You'd be dead if you went with something like "George Rides the Time Travelling Bubble Into Dimentia 9".
Too expansive sounding.

You can't have an expansive sounding title when your book report's essentially going to read:
George, an inventor, created a time-travelling bubble and one day tests it. It takes him to some strange world called Dimentia 9, where he lands in a swamp. He finds his bubble is stuck and decides to get help but can only go in 2 directions: along a golden paved road into a spring meadow. Or throught the murky swamp leading into the dark, ominous forest. George took the swamp, got eaten by a giant 3-eyed frog.

The End.

Newsflash!

This just in...

The Phantom of the Opera may have been a virtuoso on the organ, but most people don't realize the Hunchback of Notre Dame could play a mean set of bongos.

More True Facts (I Just Made Up)

When the singer Sting dies, we will be grammatically obliged to called him Stung.

Don’t let the label fool you – butter pecan coffee neither has butter or pecans in it.

Same thing with Orange Brandy coffee.

Piercings are fun! But not in the eyelid.

When you think about it, caffeine is probably also the cow word for “pre-teen”.

Freud once said that children who get stuck to metal poles after licking them in the winter have an “oral fixation”.

Eating the prime rib at Denny’s can give you rheumatoid arthritis.

MUSINGS FROM THE AIRPORT

Every magazine shop at the airport is loaded with porno mags.
Who are these walking hard-ons that can’t go 3 hours on a plane without some smut? And where are they browsing these magazines anyhow? Hey pal, that lavatory’s small enough without me having to dodge your DNA on the angled ceiling. Stop that. And grab yourself up a Chatelaine, asshole.

* * *

As soon as I get through security, there’s always someone from American Express trying to pitch me another credit card.

“Do you have any metal objects?”

“No.”

“How about a line of credit?”

* * *

The moving sidewalk never ceases to amaze me. Moreso are these people who, seemingly, lose all motor skills when they get on them. They’re walking. They get on the moving sidewalk. They stop. Hey Treebeard, even George Jetson kept moving on the moving sidewalk. I don’t see any chairs. SO keep moving!

And if you have trouble maneuvering the delicate combination of walking and the motion of a moving sidewalk below your feet, what the fuck are you doing getting on an airplane?

* * *

$6.99 for a tuna fish sandwich. For that price, there better be a little bit of dolphin in there somewhere.

* * *

It’s the waiting that’ll kill ya at the airport. It’s like they go out of their way to make it purposefully boring. Drab walls, Fluorescent lights. No music.

I got a great idea. Let’s move the homeless into airport terminals. Well, it provides them with warm, dry shelter and if I gotta sit around for 2 hours, I wouldn’t mind watching a dirty, crazy dude in a blanket smack a child’s tambourine and incoherently hum “Love Me Do”. Hell, I’d probably feel so guilty for it, I’d buy him a 7 dollar tuna fish sandwich.

HDTV, Blow Me.

What's the big deal about HDTV? $1500 bucks for a TV with detail so clear you can see the blades of grass on a football field?

Clearly, you're not watching the game, asshole.

AN OPEN LETTER TO SO-CALLED HOTTIES

Dearest girls who wear t-shirts, hats and other paraphenalia sporting the brand "hottie",

If you have to say it yourself, then you are not.

Love as always,
The Sexiest Man Alive

SOMEONE'S BOUND TO SAY 'YES'

Have you seen these ads for speed dating?

How desperate have we become for a quick fix? 25 dates in one night. 3 minutes a date. I guess these people presume 3 minutes allows you enough time to figure out if you're compatible with someone.

Well, why even go 3 minutes? I think we can do this in 3 questions:

What's your name?
Do you have any communicable diseases?
And do you want to go home and have sex with me right now?

MY NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

I guess it’s that time of year again when everyone sets aside reality for a little while in the delusional aspect that they can better their lives simply by selectively setting themselves some finite and soon-forgotten rules.
Well, I ain’t no different..…


MY NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS:

- to eat more soft cheeses.

- to avoid friendly eye contact with strangers (not a problem in this city).

- to quit screaming neologisms at churchgoers on their way into service.

- to have sex with a freakishly tall woman with odd and alluring mutton-chop sideburns.

- to start a scab collection.

- to overcome my fear of developing a phobia.

- to get inducted into the Guiness Book of Records for number of consecutive kicks in the crotch by a guy with steel-toed boots.

- to streak at a Billy Graham crusade.

- to shave bald a wild rabid hyena with a dull Bic shaver.

- to win the lottery and spend the winnings on filling a public pool with butterscotch pudding and supermodels wearing only mango-flavored edible underwear.

- to open a pet store dedicated solely to selling supplies for pet head lice called “The Pest Shop”.

- to revive the once popular name "Idella" for girls.

- to more successfully mimic the false sincerity of news anchors when discussing cataclysmic events with people. (“A horrible, horrible day for Sri Lankans as monsoon rains hampered getting food to refugees. (turning to weatherman) Well, we didn’t exactly have to worry about monsoon rains here today, did we Wally?”).

- to quit…while I’m ahead.