Top 5 Nicknames for Bellingham, WA

  1. Nacho Bell
  2. Bellington Thirst Howl III
  3. Bling Hamz
  4. Hamenstein
  5. Mr. Beldingham

CK get’s all the credit for the obvious winner on that list. We just had a phone conversation about this and he made tears well up in my eyes with Mr. Beldingham. He said it almost reluctantly, not immediatlely grasping its genious, but then when I used it in a sentence we both knew it rolled off the tongue rather nicely.

Me (recreating CK calling me up out of the blue): “So a,.. hey man… how are things up there in Mr. Beldingham?”

[Sidenote: When I said the previous line in conversation with CK I used the voice and character that I have now officially named Chucky Hasbean. Now you all know that I sometimes use voices and or facial/hand gestures to add in a little physical comedy here and there. So now picture the me you know and… forget him. Instead picture me as Chucky Hasbean (aka Chuckles the Dude, aka Chuck-E-Sleaze) who is kind of a washed-up, never grew out of high school parking lots, mindless guy who stumbled in life but who has a heart of fucking gold. That is Chucky and, damn it, picture him instead. ]

So what are the top 5 nicknames of your city?

Reading for Dummies

I consider myself a man of letters, a scholar, a learned gentlemen of the zillionaire persuasion, if you will. When I’m not brushing up on my Latin, you can usually find me buried nose-deep in the written word. I’ve studied the works of the masters and spent hours debating the likes of Joyce, Hemingway, and Suess. But that was before I had this leach called “Work” suctioned to my spine, sucking out all my motivation, energy, and will to live. My brain has atrophied to the point where my head now makes a sloshing sound when I lay it down on the pillow at night. With my last firing synapse, I’m trying to remedy the situation by delving back into books. Through painstaking research I’ve discovered that books are the best jumping off point for actual reading.

The fruits of my research grew slowly, however. The first week all I did was admire the book. Week two was spent examining the dust cover. By week three of my program I decided to start sitting down in a comfortable chair while holding the book. I would prop the book open in front of me for long stretches of time, regaining the strength in my wrists, forearms, and biceps. The sorer my arms felt the more work I knew I had ahead of me.

It should be noted that throughout this process I was avidly journaling my experiences and marking my progress. This sort of stuff was bound to help others, I figured. There are no training manuals for middle-aged illiterates. There are no how-to guides for redeveloping the atrophied mind. “Aha!” I said! I had stumbled upon my first brilliant idea since reinvigorating my faculties; the only unwritten book in the popular (and lucrative) “Dummies” series. I would assemble my various scribblings, jots, and canoodlings into Reading for Dummies. I even came up with a subtitle to make it seem more legitimate, “The First and Last Book You’ll Ever Need to Read”

I ran this idea by a few trusted friends who also suffered from MPB (mash-potato brain) and they were keen on the premise, but thought a book in any form might be daunting to those who can’t yet read. After all, while the first chapter of my book entitled “What is a Book?” advocated specifically against reading and promoted “prolonged casual glances,” the advice could only be conveyed to the reader through loosely strung-together words. To top it off, I can’t and won’t compromise my feelings that picture books aren’t really books, a decision that to this day stops me from recognizing all degrees from MR’s alma mater, Central Washington University.

At this point, my bunsen burner of a neck had been lit and the soup in my skull was warming up faster than MR can write up a post about playing xbox while getting wasted with high school buddies at his wedding. In other words, brilliant idea number two popped into my head. My book would be the first book bundled with an accompanying book on tape! Books on tape and book means no more tedious lessons on all the letters of the alphabet. No more overtaxed retinas deciphering every curve and dash of ink. Say goodbye to eyebrows and eyelashes and all the other fancy ocular adaptations we evolved over the years. They are going the way of the dodo or more currently the Nealon.

It’s simple, easy, and simply easy. All you do is follow along. I REPEAT, ALL YOU DO IS FOLLOW ALONG. In fact, you can just fake follow along, changing pages whenever you feel like it. If you listen with headphones, you can pull out the book while you are on the bus or some other public place and fan through the pages in one minute, close the book and put it away. Everyone will think you are Albert-freaking-Einstein. And in a way you will be, because he couldn’t read either!

To my astute readers, the answer is “Yes.” To my Jeopardy-challenged readers, the question was, “Did you just solve the world’s education problems?” To my kneeling and praying readers, I accept your sacrificial goat-meat but warn that a great and mighty plague shall ruin your arable land unless you get me a copy of Halo 2 on November 9 at midnight.

I have a feeling that some of you doubters are reading this and don’t see the merit of my ideas. To you I say you really need a new act because I sensed you were doubting and you’ve become such a reliable force of doubt in the world that the rest of the world has written you off as doubters. There isn’t a shadow of a doubt in my mind that you doubt “doubt shadows” even exist when all I see around you is shadow all the time. No diggity. No doubt.

What about cd’s you ask? I’ve thought of that. Tapes are old and not many people have tape players anymore. So that’s why I bundle Books on Tape (or CD) and Book. If you have an archival storage media, I can and will put a book on it. Guaranteed. No matter where you go, whatever you are doing, you can be listening and learning the content of a book. That is my promise. If you are on the go, I offer Ebooks on Book, CD, Tape, PDF, and ebook. Analog or digital. Kilobyte or candy-gram. Mp3 or DVD.

The DVD option, aside from the fact that writing this is the equivalent of taking a cat o’ nine tails to the corpse of a shetland pony, could be the simplest option of them all. With a DVD, you wouldn’t even need to follow along with the book while listening, you could just watch the video of someone following along to the book on tape (or cd). They would be sitting in a comfortable chair, just like yourself, with a copy of the book outstretched before them, doing all the labor! And for all the DVD heads out there, the special features would contain alternate endings where the reader of the Book on Tape or CD would vary their tone or inflection slightly on the last paragraph of the novel.

The End.

or is it

The End

Things That Two Years Ago You Thought You Would Never Say

  • “The future of books is audio books.” Am I an idiot or are audio books going to”blow up” any minute? It’s only one or the other, not both.
  • “Halo is the best game ever released for the Xbox.” First game I played and still the best. Microsoft should be ashamed.
  • The Bloated Over-Merchandised Star Wars Franchise® just came out with another pork chop of a video game. This one’s called ‘Ton-Ton Guts and The Rise of the Rebel Snow-Yetti.’ It’s a Mortal Combat-type fighter. The Ton-Ton Guts shoot deadly little frozen Mark Hamill’s at the enemy.” Okay, I never really said this but it will be my canned response whenever someone asks me what I think of “Star Wars” now.
  • “How is Matt doing?” He’s good. You know he’s married, right?” I guess Poison was right. Every rose does have it’s thorn.
  • “I only like watching TV Shows on DVD’s now. Megan and I will rent a whole season and watch it in a couple nights.” Perk of abandoning network and cable tv that I never expected.
  • “Professional basketball is less interesting to watch than professional soccer.” Granted I don’t watch either but I think I could still argue this point effectively.
  • “See, buying a condo could be a sweet move.” All the proof anyone ever needed that I’m nearing completion on my goal to be a 100% complete yuppy sellout by the age of thirty.
  • “If you are going to buy a computer, buy an Apple laptop.” Just last week I received my official “Apple Zealot” framed certificate that I will put up on my wall in place of my Harvard degree.
  • Ohmygod! Two years ago I never would use LOL or LMAO. :) Has iChat reduced anyone else to this instant message gibberish? ROTFLMAO.
  • “Burger King® closed down in Bellingham.” Is it fathomable that a huge burger franchise could crumble within my lifetime?

What did I forget?

My Signature on the Stars

My Signature on the Stars

Rewind to two months ago. It’s late June and MR is spamming Zillionaire daily with a bevy of shameless self-promotion pieces about his upcoming “marriage.” (I use quotes because I have heard from a number of sources that their union is illegitimate. Matt had previously married his Xbox and refused to have it annulled. He is technically a polytechnogamist.) Well, it turns out Matt wasn’t the only one falling in love. I have an announcement to make everyone, and I’m doing it right here on Zillionaire.

I am engaged.

I met my fiance on the day before Matt’s wedding actually, in a little town called Olga on the muddy sand beaches of Orcas Island. In fact, Matt introduced us. You know those awkward first conversations with someone you don’t know, well we didn’t have any of that. We just sat and looked at each other. Webster’s would call it love at first sight, but what is that? Does that describe the way someone can look at you and your foot starts tapping and your throat turns hairy? Does it do justice to the way that feeling “known” by someone can turn you into the child you’ve been bottling up for so long? I don’t think so. So yeah it was love at first sight, but that was the just that first split-second when we first laid eyes on each other. The rest of the time felt like love for an eternity.

So let me introduce you all to my new love, the Space Pen.

Space Pen

A beloved gift from MR for corralling long-lust buds at his bachelor party (Gabe Smith was a tough one to round up. Apparently, he is the Pecos Bill of Ellensburg now.), the Space Pen is unlike any other gift I’ve ever received. None of the other presents that have graced my Christmas mornings or bad-ass birthday bashes have ever been documented to write in zero-gravity. None of them. Not even the Underwater Typewriter I got that one year my family celebrated Hanukah. (Stupid thing was only “waterproof” though, meaning it could function at a maximum depth of 10 feet. Useless to me, at that point.)

Its uniqueness is only matched by its exquisite craftsmanship. It is a marvel to hold in the hand. I can only speculate what holding a 200 carat diamond feels like. I have never wrapped my fingers around a solid gold bar. Even so, I can guarantee the Space Pen is of that caliber. I would say it reminds me of handling a 200 carat diamond encased in a solid gold bar, but that’s just off the top of my head.

Seriously, this is the kind of material possession that makes me want to have babies; little ones that will someday grow up and I can pass on the treasures that I’ve collected over my lifetime. Dirty little rug-rats that, god willing, I can call my “inheritors” someday. That’s this man’s dying wish. (My nightly prayer always starts, “God, please don’t make me immortal”)

Picture it. My daughter sitting on my knee, looking up lovingly at her disgusting half-man, half-robot, 300-year-old cyber father while I tell her the story of the Space Pen. (I’m not planning on having kids soon.)

Me (Cyberdad): “This is called a Space Pen because it can write in Space.”
Daughter: “Cool. Did you use it Space?”
Me (Cyberdad): “Actually, no. I never went to Space.”
Daughter: “So it was just as functional as a regular pen?”
Me (Cyberdad): “Alright smartypants, time for bed. Go to your sleep chamber.”

All I can say is run, don’t moonwalk, to the galaxy nearest you and pick up a Space Pen. The heavens are now our infinite year-book to scribble on.

The Two Day Lease

I am officially about to become a landlord. My first tenant is set to move into the spare room in my apartment tonight or tomorrow. The circumstances of my sudden venture into real estate are not typical, but I’m trying to be as professional and organized as possible given the situation.

True, you could say that a friend is just crashing at my crib for a few nights while his new apartment is being renovated, but that would take a lot of the fun out of it.

For instance, I couldn’t call him and leave messages as his landlord, pestering him to sign the two-day lease I’ve drafted up, calling our other mutual friends or should I say his “references” and asking them about his financial situation. And I wouldn’t be able to do a walk-though of the room with him, asking that he note all the wear and tear so that it doesn’t come out his damage deposit later. After all, a tenant has certain rights and I don’t want to be caught in a bind when it’s nearing midnight and he is listening to music a little too loud and I can’t sleep. I want to be able to tell the officers that knock on his door that I specifically stated in the lease that the apartment quiet hours are between 11pm and 8am.

Listen, this might sound harsh, but who is the one taking on the responsibility that we have running water for those two days, a working refrigerator, and a solid roof over our heads. That’s right– me, DA, Mr. Bring-Home-the-Bacon Landlord. And I don’t take kindly to young punk kids who think just because we have been friends since “7th grade” they can milk me for a free weekend’s accommodation. So just sign your John Hancock on this here two-day lease and I promise not to raise the rent on you until Sunday!