SomethingClever
08-17-2005, 06:50 PM
Posted from Mark Driver's website (web page (http://blindwino.com)). Explore it... it's really funny.
I’m Not Sure Why I Dropped that Mattress on You
It wasn’t because you were fat. I don’t give a [censored] that you were fat. I may have had childish things to say about fat people in the past, but I’ve moved beyond the media-manufactured freak body image that keeps us insecure in our own skins and buying buttwash by the gallon. It sucks to be Mrs. Potatolegs in a Victoria Secret culture, especially if you buy into that [censored]. I can sympathize…or empathize….no, sympathize. Whatever having a body like Randy Quaid will get me. But it was great to see you, beet-red cheeks a’huffing and puffing, those sausage casings cranking pedal after polished pedal—out trying to get some exercise. Good for your heart. Stress reduction. One less car on the road. Can’t fault you there. That’s not why I dropped the mattress on you.
Maybe it was your bike. The shiny new bike, the expensive bike, the pristine and sparkly bike. The bike that was out on the road for the first time, fresh from the store, assumedly to be soon forgotten and garaged until the divorce. Blue and bold, sporting thirty gears—for the upcoming ascension of Mt. Vesuvius, no doubt. Yes, I think it was the bike that set me off. The bike worth ten times more than my beater Civic. You know how many bags of rice a bike like that’ll get you? I could live for a year off of what you paid for that bike. Hey…maybe this was thinly veiled class war. Could it be? Class war? Yeah, maybe that’s why I dropped the mattress on you. Maybe it was class war.
But it has to be more than that. I’m confronted daily with the excesses of income, and sure…there is a general disgust of shiny people that boils between my ribs. It’s not that I want what you have. Jealousy is not what I feel. It’s the fact that when you appear in public dripping with purchases, you carry this cloud about you like you’ve actually accomplished something. You’re like a dog with a new haircut, clicking its nails and prancing for ooohing company across the linoleum kitchen floor. A hopeful child star practicing smiles in a shopwindow reflection. You figure that through purchase of consumer goods, you can breeze through social signifiers to give us specific signs that inform us where you fit in this bizarre social hierarchy we find ourselves organized into. You think you’ve purchased the specific image of reality you inhabit. Perhaps advanced marketing techniques have convinced you that this pattern of consumer choice has elevated you to the point where you can, on your spanking new bike, huff and puff your fancy ride into an impoverished wolfman stuggling greasehaired and barefoot on the hot asphalt to wrench a queen-sized mattress from the back of a double-parked rental truck and address him as your social inferior. Bright yellow truck, flashing red hazards, beating black sun, and you—purplefaced and arrogant, inflated with irrelevant complaint.
Did you really put on eyeliner and blush before you put on that helmet? Do you think, in the scheme of things, a dash of designer perfume will help the degraded state of your palsied moral development?
Perhaps you believe society has become so tame that you can rudely approach a sweatdrenched guy who’s been moving furniture all day long, a man stinking openly of bloated corpses…you think you can roll on up on your million-dollar bike, squeeze your brakes to a stop, plop two biking booties on either side of the asphalt, and, catching your breath through the wheezing snot in your acid-battered throat, pollute the atmosphere with barking admonishments like “You’re blocking the bike lane!”
I’m blocking the [censored] bike lane.
You actually had to stop? You actually had to harass me? You actually had to stop there, five feet from my struggle as your civic duty to all fatass Sunday bike peddlers and inform me that I was, shirt soaked, arms splayed, mattress arched and bouncing over my head, blocking your precious bike lane? Are those duraflame logs attached to your shellfish shoulders incapable of rotating handlebars fifteen degrees counterclockwise? Can you not check your advanced traffic monitoring system for overtaking cars? Call OnStar crying for emergency assistance? What did your GPS system say? Was there time to check the Oxygen blog for quick celebrity galpal advice?
No. You chose to stop. And yell at me. Are you friggin’ nuts?
For [censored]’s sake, we were across the street from the Zoo! Who can be such a bitch one thousand yards from a baby elephant named Theodore? How can such pettiness exist on a street where peacocks call to penguins in the warbling ascent of each waning moon?
Do you think you’re in Elizabethan England? Menservants on your carriage, ordering we urchins around the sewer troughs on urgent pain of death? A whistle to the constable and three years in the clink? Or would Madam pref’r Steps and the String for a brutish Ne’er- do-well such as Meeself?
Obviously, you have never attempted to move a mattress by yourself. Obviously, people like you hire people like me to do things such as this.
It’s not that mattresses are inherently heavy…we’re talking issues of grip, balance, general awkwardness. Even with two people, the damn thing keeps collapsing on you. Mattresses don’t want to be moved. It’s completely against their nature. But you wouldn’t know that. You pay people to move your mattress for you. So I will tell you this in all sincerity: mattresses suck to move.
And they hurt when they’re dropped on you, I’ll bet. Why such violence on my part? I mean, I was sober. Violence is completely out of character for sober Mark. Confronted, I poured and poured over events in my past which may have triggered such reaction, repressed memories brought into immediate id-bliss upon the gleeful screams of primal Dionysian bloodlust…I envisioned your head exploding underneath your helmet, splattering downwards in an umbrella pattern of blueberry gore, chinstrap catching the top of your esophagus and slowly sliming its way to your kneefield like a slug on a saltslide…but why? Why, at that instant, did I hate you more than I hate existence itself?
Wait! I know what it was! Of course! It was your [censored] SPANDEX BIKE COSTUME. Holy [censored], what are you? An IV for a sperm whale? A three-hundred gallon water balloon? And…holy [censored]…is that Lance Armstrong’s signature silkscreened across your breast? Hey! Look at you! You’re just like Lance Armstrong! You were inspired by his story! You watched the Tour De France on the TeeVee! You dutifully read the Oprah-endorsed autobiography! Thus programmed, you dutifully attended a consumer outlet to assume the physical consumer embodiment of your new inspiration and, because you’re riding a tournament bike around the ZOO LOOP three times, you need a YELLOW [censored] SPANDEX RACING SUIT to suck your sleek cottage cheese torso into proper aerodynamic biking shape because EXTREME AERODYNAMIC PRECISION IS MANDATORY FOR RIDING MY PERFORMANCE MACHINE THREE TIMES AROUND THE ZOO.
Now…I own a bike. Well, own is a strong word. I’m borrowing a bike. From a girl who got sick of tripping over it in her apartment. Girl bike? No sir. Mountain bike for a mountain girl. She’s taller than I am. And hot as hell. And I’m hopelessly in love with her. But back to my point: Since it got too sticky to ride the bus, I’ve been biking a good twenty miles a day, and guess what? You don’t need a day-glow Spandex diaper suit—fluorescent pink, safety orange, urine yellow, gangrene green or otherwise. Try a pair of cut-off work pants and a wifebeater. You’ll find that the bike works just fine. Pedals go around and around, wheels roll, brakes make you stop. Astonishing, huh?
And you don’t make anyone want to drop a mattress on you.
Yeah, it was the Spandex, and the Platinum n’ Pyrex Prada helmet with digital cardio readout via LED heads-up display and rearview optical photofluorescent camera, and the screwed-on Evian water bottle, and the self-inflating tires, and the Coco Chanel brakes, and the Support our Troops sticker, and—[censored]! When you went to the bike shop, did you just put your gold card on the counter, spread your arms and announce, “squires, drape me in all accessories bikish in nature! Ravish me with unnecessary accoutrements, for my low self-esteem allows me the royal ability to maintain credit debts that would stagger the common yeoman! Let no piece of third-world plastic be too small or too expensive, for I will be traveling thrice around the zoo! And he who shalt get in my way shall feel the smite of my advanced consumer wrath! Behold, peasants, for this is my mad face! Grrrr!”
Yes, unnecessary Spandex. That’s why I dropped the mattress on you. That’s why you got knocked over. That’s why we all laughed at you. Because you deserved it. That’s why. To shut you up. To correct your obnoxious antisocial behavior in a way that would make an impression on you. And it seemed to. You pedaled off in a hurry and I believe you were an even deeper shade of red. Good. If I ever see you again, I’m going to throw a stick in your spokes, enjoy your hurled trajectory, and, as I relish the thud of torn Spandex on asphault, pull the racing wallet from your Lance Armstrong fanny pack and run ten rounds of Manny’s Ale for the lads down at Duck Island. And for once, cruel existence, Victory Will Be Mine!
I’m Not Sure Why I Dropped that Mattress on You
It wasn’t because you were fat. I don’t give a [censored] that you were fat. I may have had childish things to say about fat people in the past, but I’ve moved beyond the media-manufactured freak body image that keeps us insecure in our own skins and buying buttwash by the gallon. It sucks to be Mrs. Potatolegs in a Victoria Secret culture, especially if you buy into that [censored]. I can sympathize…or empathize….no, sympathize. Whatever having a body like Randy Quaid will get me. But it was great to see you, beet-red cheeks a’huffing and puffing, those sausage casings cranking pedal after polished pedal—out trying to get some exercise. Good for your heart. Stress reduction. One less car on the road. Can’t fault you there. That’s not why I dropped the mattress on you.
Maybe it was your bike. The shiny new bike, the expensive bike, the pristine and sparkly bike. The bike that was out on the road for the first time, fresh from the store, assumedly to be soon forgotten and garaged until the divorce. Blue and bold, sporting thirty gears—for the upcoming ascension of Mt. Vesuvius, no doubt. Yes, I think it was the bike that set me off. The bike worth ten times more than my beater Civic. You know how many bags of rice a bike like that’ll get you? I could live for a year off of what you paid for that bike. Hey…maybe this was thinly veiled class war. Could it be? Class war? Yeah, maybe that’s why I dropped the mattress on you. Maybe it was class war.
But it has to be more than that. I’m confronted daily with the excesses of income, and sure…there is a general disgust of shiny people that boils between my ribs. It’s not that I want what you have. Jealousy is not what I feel. It’s the fact that when you appear in public dripping with purchases, you carry this cloud about you like you’ve actually accomplished something. You’re like a dog with a new haircut, clicking its nails and prancing for ooohing company across the linoleum kitchen floor. A hopeful child star practicing smiles in a shopwindow reflection. You figure that through purchase of consumer goods, you can breeze through social signifiers to give us specific signs that inform us where you fit in this bizarre social hierarchy we find ourselves organized into. You think you’ve purchased the specific image of reality you inhabit. Perhaps advanced marketing techniques have convinced you that this pattern of consumer choice has elevated you to the point where you can, on your spanking new bike, huff and puff your fancy ride into an impoverished wolfman stuggling greasehaired and barefoot on the hot asphalt to wrench a queen-sized mattress from the back of a double-parked rental truck and address him as your social inferior. Bright yellow truck, flashing red hazards, beating black sun, and you—purplefaced and arrogant, inflated with irrelevant complaint.
Did you really put on eyeliner and blush before you put on that helmet? Do you think, in the scheme of things, a dash of designer perfume will help the degraded state of your palsied moral development?
Perhaps you believe society has become so tame that you can rudely approach a sweatdrenched guy who’s been moving furniture all day long, a man stinking openly of bloated corpses…you think you can roll on up on your million-dollar bike, squeeze your brakes to a stop, plop two biking booties on either side of the asphalt, and, catching your breath through the wheezing snot in your acid-battered throat, pollute the atmosphere with barking admonishments like “You’re blocking the bike lane!”
I’m blocking the [censored] bike lane.
You actually had to stop? You actually had to harass me? You actually had to stop there, five feet from my struggle as your civic duty to all fatass Sunday bike peddlers and inform me that I was, shirt soaked, arms splayed, mattress arched and bouncing over my head, blocking your precious bike lane? Are those duraflame logs attached to your shellfish shoulders incapable of rotating handlebars fifteen degrees counterclockwise? Can you not check your advanced traffic monitoring system for overtaking cars? Call OnStar crying for emergency assistance? What did your GPS system say? Was there time to check the Oxygen blog for quick celebrity galpal advice?
No. You chose to stop. And yell at me. Are you friggin’ nuts?
For [censored]’s sake, we were across the street from the Zoo! Who can be such a bitch one thousand yards from a baby elephant named Theodore? How can such pettiness exist on a street where peacocks call to penguins in the warbling ascent of each waning moon?
Do you think you’re in Elizabethan England? Menservants on your carriage, ordering we urchins around the sewer troughs on urgent pain of death? A whistle to the constable and three years in the clink? Or would Madam pref’r Steps and the String for a brutish Ne’er- do-well such as Meeself?
Obviously, you have never attempted to move a mattress by yourself. Obviously, people like you hire people like me to do things such as this.
It’s not that mattresses are inherently heavy…we’re talking issues of grip, balance, general awkwardness. Even with two people, the damn thing keeps collapsing on you. Mattresses don’t want to be moved. It’s completely against their nature. But you wouldn’t know that. You pay people to move your mattress for you. So I will tell you this in all sincerity: mattresses suck to move.
And they hurt when they’re dropped on you, I’ll bet. Why such violence on my part? I mean, I was sober. Violence is completely out of character for sober Mark. Confronted, I poured and poured over events in my past which may have triggered such reaction, repressed memories brought into immediate id-bliss upon the gleeful screams of primal Dionysian bloodlust…I envisioned your head exploding underneath your helmet, splattering downwards in an umbrella pattern of blueberry gore, chinstrap catching the top of your esophagus and slowly sliming its way to your kneefield like a slug on a saltslide…but why? Why, at that instant, did I hate you more than I hate existence itself?
Wait! I know what it was! Of course! It was your [censored] SPANDEX BIKE COSTUME. Holy [censored], what are you? An IV for a sperm whale? A three-hundred gallon water balloon? And…holy [censored]…is that Lance Armstrong’s signature silkscreened across your breast? Hey! Look at you! You’re just like Lance Armstrong! You were inspired by his story! You watched the Tour De France on the TeeVee! You dutifully read the Oprah-endorsed autobiography! Thus programmed, you dutifully attended a consumer outlet to assume the physical consumer embodiment of your new inspiration and, because you’re riding a tournament bike around the ZOO LOOP three times, you need a YELLOW [censored] SPANDEX RACING SUIT to suck your sleek cottage cheese torso into proper aerodynamic biking shape because EXTREME AERODYNAMIC PRECISION IS MANDATORY FOR RIDING MY PERFORMANCE MACHINE THREE TIMES AROUND THE ZOO.
Now…I own a bike. Well, own is a strong word. I’m borrowing a bike. From a girl who got sick of tripping over it in her apartment. Girl bike? No sir. Mountain bike for a mountain girl. She’s taller than I am. And hot as hell. And I’m hopelessly in love with her. But back to my point: Since it got too sticky to ride the bus, I’ve been biking a good twenty miles a day, and guess what? You don’t need a day-glow Spandex diaper suit—fluorescent pink, safety orange, urine yellow, gangrene green or otherwise. Try a pair of cut-off work pants and a wifebeater. You’ll find that the bike works just fine. Pedals go around and around, wheels roll, brakes make you stop. Astonishing, huh?
And you don’t make anyone want to drop a mattress on you.
Yeah, it was the Spandex, and the Platinum n’ Pyrex Prada helmet with digital cardio readout via LED heads-up display and rearview optical photofluorescent camera, and the screwed-on Evian water bottle, and the self-inflating tires, and the Coco Chanel brakes, and the Support our Troops sticker, and—[censored]! When you went to the bike shop, did you just put your gold card on the counter, spread your arms and announce, “squires, drape me in all accessories bikish in nature! Ravish me with unnecessary accoutrements, for my low self-esteem allows me the royal ability to maintain credit debts that would stagger the common yeoman! Let no piece of third-world plastic be too small or too expensive, for I will be traveling thrice around the zoo! And he who shalt get in my way shall feel the smite of my advanced consumer wrath! Behold, peasants, for this is my mad face! Grrrr!”
Yes, unnecessary Spandex. That’s why I dropped the mattress on you. That’s why you got knocked over. That’s why we all laughed at you. Because you deserved it. That’s why. To shut you up. To correct your obnoxious antisocial behavior in a way that would make an impression on you. And it seemed to. You pedaled off in a hurry and I believe you were an even deeper shade of red. Good. If I ever see you again, I’m going to throw a stick in your spokes, enjoy your hurled trajectory, and, as I relish the thud of torn Spandex on asphault, pull the racing wallet from your Lance Armstrong fanny pack and run ten rounds of Manny’s Ale for the lads down at Duck Island. And for once, cruel existence, Victory Will Be Mine!