May/2004: The SNP - I hate Courtney Love. I'd write about why and how much I hate Courtney Love, but my buddy Ninja R over at Hoodratz already did that shit for me.

If Courtney Love was poor, she's spending five years in jail and her kid is taken away. But Courtney Love isn't poor. She sucked rocker cock and someone gave her a rock band, despite her completely untalented state.

Back in "tha" day, my former (sniff... former? Former? Where'd it all go wrong?!?!) sidekick Erika and I launched a two-person invasion of Hole.com's message board. Now, while Courtney Love herself is sick as hell, her fans are worse. Laden with females defending self-mutilation, formerly abused goths and socialists, the board was a ripe rotund target. I, of course, got banned very quickly after mocking the member photo album area and a long, long thread about vegetarians. Erika followed a while after.

It's scary how someone so dumb can be so quickly deified. Love is seriously the world's biggest white trash. That includes Anna Nicole Smith.

It was a pretty uneventful weekend. I mostly watched TV and kept up on PeeJ happenings at the same time. I finally got caught up on what American Idol is by watching the E! True Hollywood Story on the show. It's pretty obvious that they don't choose people on singing talent, but rather ethnicity. Brings in more viewers that way. Otherwise, how can you explain the red-head kid or the Hawaiian chick? Ridiculous. PeeJ happenings were somewhat eventful. Managing a website with hundreds to thousands of volunteers can be quite taxing due to all the personalities involved. Our efforts to be all-inclusive carries a risk of having cliques and hatred over differences. Putting down such "cliques" and intolerance can take some time. Still, it's easy when I'm such a scary guy. Oooogah.

Scarier still would be Uday Hussein. While invading Iraq was stupid policy, it's not something I can get too upset about. Why? One major reason would be Uday Hussein. People about how terrible Saddam was, but his kids were worse. Torturing olympic athletes? Raping 12 and 13 year olds, and various other women just to prove he's not impotent after an assassination attempt? Killing Saddam's food taster over an insult? The guy was completely wacked. His younger brother was no better. Yes, you can tell I watched the documentary on A&E about the Hussein family. If I'm a cruel dictator, I don't care who you are... don't fuck with the food taster.

Fact is, people are overly against the Iraq war. I'm against it, but I also have the long-view. The view that a person like Uday Hussein at the head of a country with chemical weapons would not be too smart a world plan. The fact that we were able to take out these thugs mollifies my principled outrage. Even important life-guiding political principles have to be moderated by pure reality: These guys were the worst of the worst. I can shed nary a tear or ounce of outrage over our wiping Iraq clean of these idiots.

I'm going to try to put together some random thought Sunday Night Post each week. I probably will miss one or two, but hopefully I can keep some sort of consistent weekly schedule.

May/2004: Working - Being that I was born pretty damn poor, I threw myself into work too early which really screwed up going to school. But I got cash. From crap-ass jobs. The worst of which can be obviously gleamed from the title of this entry. Yes, United Postal Service. You know, the guys in the brown suits.

I didn't have a brown suit.

Nor did I drive a brown truck.

First, let me preface my big ol' pending bitchfest by pointing out that most people who bitch about jobs are simply malcontents. I've had plenty of jobs that were great... except for the fact that all the other employees bitched about it. Typically, you're getting paid what you're worth. And you're usually not worth much. I set the bar pretty high. A wal-mark employee, for instance, is not deserving of a dime over minimum wage. Beep, beep, beep. Not hard. Doesn't take skill. Ridiculous to complain.

But UPS is not ridiculous to complain about. I have never worked for a worse company than they. First, they train you for two or three weeks (Three probably, it's hard to remember) when they only need to train you for one day. THe training is pretty remedial and only has value for morons. Now, what's fun about that is that most of the people there were morons, but they weren't stupid enough to work for UPS. Most of them quit after the training period, which, at the time, I thought was mean.

Boy, were they right to screw UPS like that.

I went for this job because it was part-time and late at night. And when I say late at night, I mean it. Work started at 2:00 AM and got off at 6-7 AM. I figured, hey, I'll have some cash to treat my girlfriend well and some cash for college! In truth, I would have been better off joining the military. It's almost as dangerous, almost as physically taxing and you get paid more.

After I got to learn how to "move a box by picking it up while bending at the knees and then bringing it into the power area", I was put out to unload trucks. There were only two jobs they were hiring for. Loading trucks, and unloading trucks. I decided to unload, since I didn't want to deal with the added idiocy of getting a tight load (yeah, snicker and move on) into the back of the trailer. In truth, it was probably the wrong call.

So I chose unloading. Now, the trucks you unload aren't those stupid small brown UPS trucks. They're trailers, you know, the regular kind that semi's pull. You open the trailer door up and dodge falling boxes. Once you avoid having a computer fall on your head (happened enough to mention) you extend a system of rollers up to the boxes. You're then supposed to use the rollers to load boxes onto, extending it as you clear out the trailer.

However, the inside started the fun part. The trailers were seperated into four sections by flat boards. When you cleared out the top two sections, you got to lift the boards up above your head, and dive down into the rest of the boxes. Seems like nothing, I'm sure, however, consider that these trailers are about ten to twelve feet tall. Perhaps fifteen feet. So these were huge wooden boards.

The best part about these boards though, is the latches. You're supposed to put them up and latch them. However, a good third of the time, the latches didn't work well. So you either got to try to make production by bracing your body against the board, or just chancing that it wouldn't fall on your head. Well, I took the chance and paid the price. Still, I made production. Oh yes, production...

The production at UPS was equally insane. You were expected to, as an individual, clear a trailer in about ten to fifteen minutes by yourself. Now, we're talking about a huge trailer. It could be done, and I usually made it by doing something akin to the tazmanian fucking devil, but few others did. The rollers barely worked half the time. The whole system would jam on you, you wouldn't know it, and if you were below, the boxes you lifted and put up on the rollers would start swaying and falling on you. Now, if the frequently jammed conveyors didn't cause you to fly into insane cursing rants, the "overweight" boxes did.

Look, I don't know who of you out there orders weight-sets by mail, but you need to quit. In training, they taught us about the overweight boxes. If you got a box over a hundred pounds, you were supposed to get a co-worker to help you carry it out of the trailer, through the tight overhead conveyor spot, and about eight feet over to the "overweight conveyor belt." Which was often full. Meaning that you would put the packages on the floor and then re-lift them later on in the night.

The first problem with this lofty idea is the belief that a co-worker will or can help you. Most of the time I was in a trailer by myself. I, as a noob, would go get someone else to help me and find that my production sucked and that we're not actually supposed to do that. So I was left with carrying the overweights by myself, like everyone else. I was 5'10 and about 130 pounds. Some of this stuff weighed upwards of 200 pounds. But I did it. And about killed myself a hundred times.

As I mentioned, I don't know who orders weight-sets via UPS. But please, for the love of god, go to the mall. The company that sends them puts them all into the same shipment. Meaning that while Joe Jackass Coworker gets a trailer full of cosmetics (more on that later), you got a trailer with fifty to sixty weight-sets. The worst part about the weight-sets was that they would come in small packages but weight 100-200 pounds. I could never figure out how something so small would weigh so much... but they did. The best of course, was the shoddy packaging they came in. Nothing like picking up a shredded package and having dumbbells fly everywhere, including your legs and feet.

Now, here's another byproduct of the dumbbells. Remember my mention of the cosmetics? Guess what happens when dumbbells get stacked on cosmetics? Yes, CK1 goes everywhere. On the dumbbells, even. Now, the job may not have been so bad if I would have gotten to see the look on the face of Ms. Musclebound Meathead when she caught a whiff of her husbands mistress-scented weight-set. But I did not get to glimpse that, unfortunately.

So, cosmetics would get broken. What else? Well, Dell and Gateway would ship their computers via UPS. Yes, sure, they pay for priority shipping. All priority shipping is worth is the insurance. Because items are thrown together anyways. That means that Jimmy's new harddrive ate the dumbbell just as the perfume did. There was nothing sadder than picking up a cow-colored box to hear "shakey shakey shakey" as if it were a stepped on christmas-tree ornament. The rule on such obviously damaged products? "Send it anyways, UPS will replace it. Let the customer file the claim!" Pure class, baby.

The best and tops of it all was, of course, the lethal. The first of the two lethal products was of course, ammo. I'm busting ass on the top level, I clear it, blam, start clearing the bottom (while balancing on the rollers, usually), then I clear enough to drop down and lo and behold! Bullets everywhere. Now as a person that knows exactly how little it takes for the striker-end of the bullet to go off, that usually disturbed me. Jumping into a load of shotgun ammo may be your fun idea of a four AM, but it wasn't mine. Now, of course, you're left with the job of putting all the ammo back into the broken box and taping it together. This was a very common occurence.

Yeah, handling live ammunition with heavy boxes teetering above you really makes you appreciate sunshine.

The other was far worse than live ammunition. "Aroo?" you may say, but Hazardous Materials is what I say. A large portion of the training revolved around what to do when you run across hazardous materials. Now, you may be thinking that there is no way UPS would be stupid enough to ship hazardous materials mixed in with say, ammo, dumbbells and computers, but yes, they are. They were shipping acidic materials, and other fun stuff that we were warned "could kill you, so be careful." Of course, that was rosy compared to the reality.

My favorites, the dumbbells, did a great job slicing through the weak cardboard boxes that housed the Hazmat. So, when you jump down to the bottom level, you got to play the guessing game. I called it "Is that anti-freeze or am I going to die?" Because when hazardous material spills, it doesn't spill any differently than any other liquid. So you had to hunt down where the liquid came from. That means you got to trapse around in what could be acid before determining what you should do. Typically, it was hazardous material, but you had to check as screaming "HAZMAT!" and running out of the trailer gets you in trouble when it's just brake fluid.

And yes, that was our protective training. Scream hazmat and run. Then a hazmat specialist on the floor would come over and take care of it, before shipping you back into the trailer. Of course, these rules were relaxed for the lower levels of hazmat, which was contrary to training. See, the hazmat guy was lazy and would bitch if it were lower levels of hazardous. "You should be able to take care of this, it's a lower level of hazardous material, just don't get it in your eye or too much on your skin." Lovely advice, really.

One instance was a more serious level of hazmat. Of course, it was green. Usually that meant it was auto-shit, so while looking through the boxes, I pick one up and this shit covers my arm. And starts burning like an Albino in San Diego. I screamed "SHIT SHIT SHIT FUCKING FUCKERS!" and blow out of that trailer as if I were the Flash after a buy-one-get-one free sale over to the hazardous material wash station. After getting the crap off of myself, I go back to where the trailer was. The lead of the trailers bitches at me for running away before the hazmat guy showed up, so that I could tell him where it was.

The hazmat guy then comes out of the trailer with a bucket containing the sht, and tells me it's some sort of acid, and that if I had waited I would have ended up with scarring all over my arm. At least the lead had the good humor of telling himself to fuck off before I did. That was the one silver lining, the good humor of the lead.

Other fun hazards were simply falling boxes. Loaders loved to put weights at the very top of the stacks. So when you clear it out going front to back, you continually got to deal with boxes and stacks falling from behind you. That means that at any moment, you got to dodge something that could weigh more than you did. I got nailed right in the head with something heavy, which bounced me into the rollers. I still don't know what it was, but I was out for a good two minutes.

...And nobody noticed.

After the day was over, you got to walk out bruised, often a little bloody, and my favorite part, covered head to toe in the blackest dirt possible. Sometimes you even had a few bugs on you from some of the packages that were shipped from overseas. I always expected to get some crazy asian flu from some of these weird critters. Seriously, when showering at home afterwards, you'd basically watch what looked like oil run off your body. The pain of the job was also blessid. I probably still have physical issues due to my time there, scratch that, I know I do. I don't think my back or knees have ever recovered fully.

So as you can imagine, all but three people quit after the first three days on the floor. I got hired with twenty five people. Twelve quit after training, and nine more quit the first day. I didn't quit though. My idea was to make it thirty working days of perfect attendance. If you did that, you got an extra three hundred bucks. So after the first week, it was me and this other guy. I would give him rides home after work and he would bitch about the job. It was the only time I wanted to hear it, I think.

He was fired later on for not clearing his trailers fast enough about a week later, and it was only me. Guys double my size had quit over the workload, guys far tougher than I. So why did I do it? The three hundred dollar bonus? Well, sure. There was that. But the real reason was pretty simple: the fourth of July was coming up, and I wanted to buy my girlfriend some fireworks for it, since she was heavily into that. If I had quit, I wouldn't have had enough to do that, as I was only making minimum wage for about four or five hours a night. Didn't have enough time to find a different job in order to have the cash.

So I sweated it out at that shitty job. But I fucking bought those fireworks.

Only to discover that she and my best friend of the time were shacking up on the morning of the Fourth of July.

That sucked for about two days. Then I didn't care.

So after breaking up with her, I debated quitting the job on the next day of work. But I decided not to. I came to love the idea of calling in and quitting on the very day after qualifying for the bonus. Just to stick it to them a little bit, and have that extra cash. So I made it. I sped some nights to get there on time, I went to work basically asleep a few times, ate some boxes from great height, but I made it.

I still remember calling in and quitting just like it was yesterday as well. I was pretty rude about it. I called in and informed them that their job was the worst job I can imagine, that I would not be giving them two weeks or minutes, and that I would enjoy spending my bonus on FedEx packages.

Seriously, if you don't have to, don't send an expensive package through UPS. I would estimate that a sixth of the packages in those trucks ended up broken or fucked up in some way. Even if the computers, for instance, weren't broken, they were treated in such a way that I can imagine future computer problems being the fault of shitty UPS handling. They simply are not a company that gave one shit about not breaking your items, or the backs of their employees. Even now, years later, I'd love to see them get sued out of business. Too bad it will never happen.

Moral of the story?

Don't give a shit about buying fireworks. It really doesn't matter. Let it go.

I think that's the moral of the story, anyways...

May/2004: Video Games - I really, really want to play City of Heroes.

I'd love to. This game was built for me. From the day I played my first video game pre-Nintendo, deep, deep down... I wanted to play this game. I saw it back then, I swear. City of Heroes is potentially the game that could wrap me up in another world and cause me go go techocoma like the kid in that one Nowhere Man episode that was positively stellar. If you remember the show Nowhere Man, congratulations. It was a good show. If you remember the episode I'm talking about, IM me. I'd be VERY impressed.

I could lose myself in this game. Massively multiplayer. Non-linear. Forming superhero alliances to combat crime. A rich, lush, 3D environment that you could spend days upon days exploring by itself. Total superhero customization. New content releases. The pure addiction of it.

Not to mention the upcoming expansion pack: City of Villains, which will let people create a villain, and down the line, let the player-heroes and the player-villains do battle. And the player... I mean, just imagine this possibility!

You're patrolling the city.
You're very powerful.
You turn the corner.
Bam, there's the much ballyhooed supervillain group!
The fight ensues!
Word spreads!
Others come to the rescue or to attack the heroes.

Goddamn, it's almost enough to keep me up at night, salivating over. I have waited so long for this game. So very, very long. This is my every old-school comic markout video game wish. All in a pretty box for fifty measly bones.

Sound good? Yep.

Until you realized that the company that has made the game is charging an additional fifteen bones to even PLAY the game online with others. And that you can't get used to the interface and controller settings until pay the fifteen on top of the fifty. And if enough people don't pay the fifteen or buy the game? Boom, you're out at least sixty-five bucks.

Why does this cost fifteen bucks a month to play? Sure, the server costs would be something, but if Diablo 2 can turn a profit with free online play, so could City of Heroes. Hell, even if it were a reasonable price, say... five bucks a month... that could be doable. An additional sixty bucks a year is feasible. But 180?!?!

There is just no way. The investment itself would demand you spent copious amounts of time playing... which would probably make you lose your job and then lose the ability to play anyways...

But I think of all the possibilities... another player taking out an ally of yours, you swearing to bring them to justice! Hunting them down through the city, the titantic battle... the politics of it, the grouping, the pure mayhem... oh the mayhem! Hell, I'd even use "Xavier Von Erck" as my supervillain name. It sounds quite supervillain style to me.

But oy, you cruel, cruel world.

Or should I say, video game company.

May/2004: Repost - Recently, the fine staff at chatmag, a website devoted to "the news of chat" (excitement!) outed the reason why I do Perverted-Justice.com. Seriously, the guy totally figured me out. I have a confession, everyone. I do Perverted-Justice.com to be a famous person. To be a celebrity! To be The Notorious X.V.E. I did not think I would have to admit this, but the investigative work of one site has figured out my TRUE intentions!

First they start off with this line...

This is very good advice. I had not counted on news organizations visiting my personal homepage. Here I am, with all this sensitive information on my homepage! I can't believe someone did the arduous "research" of clicking the link from my PeeJ staff profile to this site! My secret diabolical scheme is foiled by chatmag's tremendous research abilities!

Here is what the investigative genius at chatmag found out!

Holy #$^%! The secret is out! OH $*$#!!!!


Yes, because nothing says "guy trying to be famous" like a quasi-blog that gets 100 hits a day.


I will admit that I rant and curse, but where in the world is the sexual innuendo? I think I need to read my site closer, I haven't seen the sexual innuendo yet. I wish someone would tap me on the shoulder and show me the sexual innuendo. In fact, if any of you thousands of ladies are nearby, you can show me as much sexual innuendo as possible.

Hey, wait... the above was sexual innuendo! I found some! It's true!


Oh, trust me, if this wasn't good before, it gets good now.


He actually took the above blurb seriously. Just re-reading that paragraph I wrote, I had to go get a new towel to wipe the flood of sarcasm off of my body, and this schmuck took it seriously! I don't know which is dumber, a side of beef in a KC paper calling me a nazi over my personal homepage that features a "friend of Israel" button promeniently, or this goof at chatmag actually taking the quoted paragraph seriously.

In my time of doing my homepage, I have received probably ten pieces of email about it. Hell, the thing would not get any hits if it weren't for the fact that I once made fun of a few rap songs. Shout out at you guys Googling Little Kim song lyrics! Whuzzup!!!


It's true, it's true. In the end, I must admit it. The hours, upon hours, upon hours I put into PeeJ? It's all to get a hundred hits a day on my personal homepage and to become a celebrity. It's true, no, don't shake your head disbelievingly, it is true. It is! I can prove it, for you few doubters out there.

What follows is proof that I am only after notoriety!
Here I am talking to Alanis Morrisette and Alan Rickman!

As soon as Stan Lee learned I ran a website, he came over to hang out!

This is Ben Affleck telling me how famous I am!
Who can argue with pictures? You certainly can't. The above is irrefutable evidence that I am simply running websites in order to become famous and be notorious. Let's be honest here, there are no bigger celebrities than webmasters. We all know that. Not just anyone can be a webmaster. When you walk around, people look at you and go "omg... you're a webmaster! I saw your website! *throws panties*"

Think of all those other famous webmasters. Herb Brooks of Indiana. Michael Casner of South Dakota. Jackson Beljohnson of Vermont. These are names we know, love and adore. Who didn't catch Herb Brooks live in coding during his national coding tour? I sat there in awe for two hours as he typed out HTML. Herb Brooks, typing out HTML! It was the greatest moment of my life, and I only paid 34.95 for nosebleed seats. Luckily, my binoculars caught EVERY keystroke. Do you know he reaches with his left hand for the Y key? I couldn't believe it, what technique.

It is a true relief that people now know the truth, that I am running an Anti-Groomer website in order to be famous. In order to be like all those other larger than life webmaster icons that we all know and love. To be on the cover of People magazine. To do my own coding national tour. To have panties randomly thrown at me. To fuck webmaster groupies. To do drugs and trash hotel rooms.

Yes, that is the life of a webmaster. That is why I do what I do. To live that jet-set lifestyle.

I am a webmaster. Feel that fame.

May/2004: Spirituality - There aren't many things I envy the religious over. Sure, they get to think that there is something better to go on to experiencing, but I don't envy that. If I thought there were a heaven, I'd be doing everything I could to speed that ride up. I'd eat unhealthy food, not exercise, drink lots of soda, not go to the doctor and...

Wait... nevermind.

Anyways, I'd try to speed it up. That probably explains why so many Christians do crazy shit like sky-diving, rock-climbing, and friend-making. They're just thinking... "Well, I will pull the rip-cord, but if that parachute doesn't come out... it's not suicide. Hee-hee!" You won't see this Atheist hopping out of a plane to spin with a snowboard. No. I don't even jump. That's how much of a thrill-seeker I am not. I have no heaven to go onto, so I won't be doing things that could end up with my possible death.

So I don't even envy their immortality beliefs. I don't envy their "gathering of so many like-minded people", because if I were religious, I would chaff at the fake-pious. You know, that drunkard that beats his wife but still goes to Church while doing so. That guy. It would be hard to trust such a similar group, as so many go astray and don't care.

After that, not much to envy from an Atheistic perspective. Except one thing...

I have indignation. I want righteous indignation.

I can't have that. I can't be "righteous."

That sucks.

I want to tell people that they're going to hell.

And, I want to mean it.

Think about it, Atheist or not, the idea of telling someone to go to hell is absolutely divine. There is no worse place to tell someone to go. Really think about it. You're telling them that you want or think that they're going to go to an everlasting purgatory of pain and solitude. That's extreme. "Fuck you" doesn't really do it. "You're a piece of shit" is tame compared to that.

And that doesn't even address the best use of "You're going to hell!"

To purposely annoy sinners and just annoying people. I really want to go to a party and tell a drunkard that his drinking will lead him to hades. "You're going to hell doing that!" That guy talking about sleeping around so much? "You're going to hell, save yourself." It's so high-minded and arrogant. I want to do that. I want to sit in judgement of people. Yeah, you're not supposed to judge, but the majority of Christians I know have told me that I'm going to hell for being an Atheist, so I don't think that rule applies to the "you're going to hell" statement.

I'd even use it inappropriately. Say, some annoying petitioner with a petition I don't like? "YOu're going to go to hell, son. Save yourself." Friend who is arguing with me? A random you're going to hell in jest would be fun. You're going to hell! Your path will lead you straight to hell! Hell is where you're bound, jerk!

We Atheists need something equivalent. A good sentence that packs the same punch. The problem is, we don't have anything nearly as bad in idea to tell people they're going to. "You're going to the Laundromat!" doesn't pack the same punch. Sure, it's a terrible place, but they know they're not going to the Laundromat. And even if they did, they could just leave. You don't have to stay there.

Hell? You ain't leaving. It's everlasting. You're done, it's over.

Sigh.

Stuck with plain ol' indignation.

May/2004: Culinary Advice - I am, as everyone knows, el Single. I am also male, as more know. I also do not have much experience in the world of cookery. I am Xavier Von Erck, "The AngryGerman", not Capriel or whatever the jolly chef is that was given his own TV show.

Just the fact that I can't name that chef is proof enough of my point: Putting me in a kitchen is dangerous.

Truth is, at nineteen, I knew how to make three foods.

1. Garlic and Cheese English Muffins.
2. Eggo waffles.
3. I could have swore there was a third.

I was 120 pounds at the time, knew nothing about cooking. All I needed to know was that Burger King had whoppers for 99 cents and I only needed one to fill me up for the whole day. So that's what I would do. When I needed to provide food for myself, I found a fast food worker to prepare it for me. A wonderful arrangement.

However, when I hit twenty, I found myself in a wonderful relationship. At her place one night, she showed me how to make bean and cheese quesadillas. It was interesting, yet looked terribly complicated (Photoshop isn't complicated. Beating the Flood in Halo isn't complicated. Mexican food though? Now that was complicated). So I figured it was a skill I would never, ever use and filed it away in the "useless stuff I know" box.

Then, she and I go to a social gathering. One would call it a party, but I don't party. I stand. When you stand, you cannot claim to be at a party. You are standing at a gathering. Other people, yes, they may be at a party. But when all you are doing is standing in place, you are not. Simple.

So she drinks her ass off. I've never seen someone so small put away so much alcohol. It was insane. She wasn't that drunk either, which was the amazing part. Still, she drank tons of booze and hard liquor. Probably the result of having to spend time at a party with a "stander." Hell if I know.

Anyways, we go back to her place, she's sick, needs food.

Oh yes, you can see where this is going.

So uber-boyfriend (myself, for those with short attention) has a light go off in his head, dusts off the filing cabinet and remembers that he knows how to make quesadillas. Now, why you would want to make Mexican food for someone who is close to vomiting, no clue, still, I went into action thinking I had forgotten how to make them perfectly... yet still, blam, I get them done. Take them in there, and a bit is eaten. Boyfriend comes through. RAAAAHHHHH!!!!

So I ate the rest. DAMN GOOD.

At that point, I decided "well, maybe you should learn how to cook a few dishes." Still, after that relationship ended, my zest for doing... well, anything, ended. Still, slowly but surely, I have built up what I like to think is a good moveset of cuisine.

I can go Mexican with Enchiladas, Quesadillas (adding Chicken and Steak to my repetoire was grande), Tacos or... chips with mexican dip (meh). I can go American with Steak (DAMN GOOD STEAK), Chicken, Pizza or Waffles (Eggo, I choose you!), or Italian with...

Well, that's where the aforementioned world of "Bachelor Cooking" gets just a little scary. A tad.

I'm at the supermarket, checking the buy one get one frees, as I am cheap as hell. Couple pounds of steak? Natch. Five Red Baron's for ten bucks? Natch. Three boxes of eggos for five bucks? Natch. And lo' and behold, I decide to get adventurous. Italian Sausage, package of five, buy one get one free. The plus? I love Italian Sausage.

The negative? I have never made Italian Sausage before.

Still, how hard can it be? Cook them, they're good. Right? Right, sure, in a happy world where I am gifted at cooking. In that world, there is no stress. No fear. Kittens dance in fields.

I get the Italian Sausage home, look at the directions and they suck. I go online and look for directions... the suck. Google failed me. Without the supplement brain giving me the solution, I come up with my own. Boil 'em. No problema, just a bit of boiling.

I open the package. First, the skin on uncooked Italian Sausage looks like plastic. For a few minutes, I thought it was plastic. Having to weigh the possibility of the sausage company doing something stupid and wrapping their Italian Sausage in plastic is stupid on my part. Still, the idea of cooking my dinner in weird plastic didn't appeal to me. I chance it.

I boil.

They go ashen grey.

I go "aroo?"

I wait for them to turn brown, Olive Garden stizzy.

They don't.

So after about twenty something minutes, I start to wonder if they're supposed to go grey. I've never SEEN them grey. I have no clue if they're supposed to BE grey. I cut one open. It looks cooked, I think. I cut another open. Looks cooked.

I'm hungry.

I give up and announce to Mr. Colby Jones that the sausage is done. He had a look on his face that mirrored my stomach. "Are you sure, because I, a cat, do not think they are fucking done, nimrod." Truth be told, I didn't think they were done either. But I tried one with my special garlic-pepper spaghetti sauce that I use to double as a ghetto version of Marinara sauce, which is about double the price for the same sort of ground up tomatoes.

IT TASTED LIKE COOKED ITALIAN SAUSAGE!

While that was a victory, I'm still uncertain. These fucking things are grey! They're not supposed to be grey! What turns from BROWN to GREY due to the addition of WATER? That makes no logical sense. I boil a hot dog, blam, no grey. I create steak, blam, no grey. What the fuck gave Italian Sausage the right to "go grey?"

Nothing. I eat the food, tastes like food. Then I start to doubt myself anew. I get the inner cynical voice going. "You idiot, you can't tell TASTE. You don't have a clue. You never tell the difference. Give you fine ground chuck or a Mickey D's hamburger and you'll eat either and be happy as hell. You are not a connisseur and now you're going to die since you ate sickly looking grey meat. E. Coli, a winner is you!"

I go upstairs. Get online. Wait for death. Continue to wait for death. Then, I decide I'm not going to die. I wait for stomach explosion. Wait... wait... nothing. No stomach explosion. No anything. I did it right.

BUT GREY!?!?!

That makes no sense! Italian Sausage should not be grey. No meat should ever go grey. Grey is not an appetizing color. Can you think of any food you have ever ate (Willingly) that was the color of depression? I cannot. Food is not grey. It can be green, orange, red, brown, hell, even black, but never grey. Not even candy can be grey. Not even jelly beans can be grey. Nothing is grey when you cook. Nothing. That is fucked up.

But apparently, Italian Sausage is grey. Thanks, Italy.

So now I have learned that after boiling for twenty minutes, you take the Italian Sausage and fry it up for a couple minutes in a pan with butter and it goes brown. Tonight, I ate brown Italian Sausage. Tasted exactly the same, taste-wise. However, the satisfaction level was much higher.

Why? Because it was brown. Not grey. That's what matters most.

I can make Italian Sausage now. Once again, I have overcome and tamed the fine art of foodery. Slap a dirty chef's hat upon my head, I am King of Bachelor Cooks. Why?

Because dammit, I'm alive.