Jim Varagona

May 15, 2006

>How I Met My Future Wife–Pt. I

I will be wed in about a week now. It’s not too much of a frightening thought, because I am practically married now. The only real nerve wracking part is dealing with all of this formality. Granted I have not done much to actually get ready for this wedding, not by my choice, but still just watching Shannon try to organize all of this with the musicians, the DJ, the photographer, the flowers, the officiant, the wedding site, the reception hall, the cake, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…I go nuts too.

When it comes to this point in someone’s life, one common question is “how did you kids meet?” I am starting a series of blogs, beginning with this one, to answer just that. You may be thinking that you don’t want to hear some long, sappy story of love at first sight and puppy dog eyes. You shant get that here. I give different stories for how we met. They are all true, but I can’t pick just one as the time we first met. It’s not fair.

I was down on my luck with the ladies back in early 2001. My buddy Josh had made some attempts to introduce me to ladies. We even tried spraying brandy on each other with a syringe before going to parties, so girls thought we were already drunk, but sadly it did not work.

One day he told me that the Sexy Mex and her friend Shannon were to come over my place. It was awkward because he was doing this for me and I had never met these gals before. To help myself relax, I decided to wear my official Diabetoboy helmet. I used it when I rolled down hills and performed comedic routines in it when my blood sugar went too low.

The girls arrived and I was quite taken by Shannon, the blonde. I’m not sure if Josh noticed this or not, but to lighten the mood, he decided it would be a good idea to have a lap dance contest amongst myself, him, and Chuck, a big boy that Josh worked with and that I knew from grade school. I don’t remember the songs played, but I know we were playing a lot of Tom Jones and Prince back then, so you can get an idea.

Josh and I showing off our mad skills

The other two schmucks were nothing compared to me. I stood on the couch over Shannon and shook what my Mother gave me (Happy Mom’s Day by the way). I even involved a prop. A device I acquired from my late Uncle John that looked like a corded phone base with a triangle shaped plastic piece corded to it came in handy. It was actually to be used for patients with pacemakers to phone their doctors and let the doc hear the unit. I enjoyed the “bleep” and “bloop” sounds it made though, so I rubbed it on my chest seductively as it made its music.

Needless to say, I won the contest, but after the scores were announced, Shannon withdrew my win and gave it to Josh, simply because she knew him better and felt weird about letting a stranger win.

I still won’t let her live that down, but I still got her in the end. And every once in a while, we will break out that noisemaking device for fun.

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May 10, 2006

>Bachelor/ette Party Hijinks

>I am a married man in less than two weeks. So far it hasn’t sunk in much, except during our premarital counseling sessions. It’s so much fun to review why this is and is not a good idea. Luckily, it mostly is.

On Friday, we had our joint Bachelor/ette Party. We envisioned it at as an extravaganza with stripping midgets and plenty of penis and boobie macaroni and cheese for everyone. Neither happened due to lack of funds…you’d be surprised how much a stripping midget costs. Throw in your obligatory half off joke there.

Anyway, the place we planned to have it at turned out to be closed when we got there. Having connections with the management is not necessarily a good thing. So please never give business to The All American Bar and Grill in St. Louis County.

Thank you.

About 15 of our party showed up there on time to find us gathered at picnic tables in front.

What almost was a Bachelor/ette Party Picnic

We left that joint for greener pastures in South City at Crusoe’s, where we had a grand ole time.

The entire Filipino Mafia came to send me off into the marital abyss by purchasing multiple alcoholic beverages for me and my lady. Most of our wedding party was there as well, including best man Daniel Rothstein, who floated around in an inebriated state.

Hollywood Daniel Rothstein, the best man

It is difficult at such events to spend equal time with folks. I tried as best I could with a fake ball and chain attached to my ankle given to me by one Babyface Pinoy. Penis lollipops were distributed to the female guests, and were surprisingly worth my money, since they lasted through the 3 hour plus affair. I even sampled one myself.

I did my best to rope off our area of the bar with “Orgy Zone” caution tape, but it kept getting wrapped around people like myself and Babyface Pinoy’s little brother, whose given name is Marquestro, especially by some dirty old man that works with us in the Italian Retail Service. He told me it was okay because he bought me a shot of the finest Irish whiskey in the place. I told him I had the finest Irish lady in the place and if he so much laid a hand on her, I would have Big Boy Pinoy annihilate him.

A dirty old man introduces Marquestro the Pinoy to the Orgy Zone.

Things went well though, considering the love in the air and the location mishap to begin the night. Most left saying they had never been so drunk. Since I paid for nothing, except for some penis-shaped pops, I would say the night was a rousing success.

May 8, 2006

>Cheaper Gas In St. Louis Than In Kuwait?!

Babyface Pinoy called me yesterday to tell me he discovered a pump at his local BP on the south side that was dispensing gas from the Silver slot at 27 cents a gallon. He had already filled up three of the cars at his place for under fifteen bucks. I explained to him that we couldn’t drop everything and go there, but we would head that way once we were done with our business at the cemetery.

The few in on the secret

An hour later we arrived at the station. Babyface was there getting ready to fill up car number four. People were at the pumps looking pretty angry. Apparently the cheap gas had run out. At least that’s what the first excuse we got was. An Arab looking fellow who was working there ran out and began pulling the pumps out of people’s tanks. A few got yelled at him for touching their vehicles. It looked as if punches would be thrown, but it didn’t happen. More cars pulled up to cash in on this deal that was spreading by word of mouth. The worker intercepted each new customer saying that the pumps were out of order. This obviously was not true considering some had just put as much as 34 gallons in their tank and for under ten bucks!

34 Gallons for Under $10!

The folks at the pumps refused to leave until they received gas at the price which was still indicated on the pump at 27 cents a gallon. They said someone spoke with the cops and the officer told them that those at the pumps should receive it at the current price. The Arab worker ran out with register tape in hand (which he was keeping very close to hide it from some) telling people to leave because they were closed, which was contrary to the neon sign in the window.

We stuck around a little longer until the worker and some of his cohorts got the price corrected, which should have just involved moving a decimal point on the computer. The crowd slowly disappeared as their dreams of dirt cheap gas were flushed down the drain. For several hours though in south St. Louis, the gas was cheaper than it was in Kuwait.

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April 29, 2006

>”Death, Taxes, and MySpace?”

>I have to admit that I check on my MySpace daily. MySpace is that site all over the news for being a playground for sexual predators because stupid kids put every detail of their life on these personal web pages, including addresses and cell phone numbers. I may be a scary guy, but I am not one of those scary guys.

It is an addicting thing that seems to be growing daily in our society. Apparently its membership grows by tens of thousands each day. I must say the numbers are padded by pages for role players, like many of my MySpace friends, who say they are “Viagra” or “Andy Warhol“. It’s weird though, to consider how many people’s lives it is a part of. I recently discovered MyDeathSpace.com, which really puts it all in perspective. The site lists people who are on MySpace that have died, whether it be by falling off a cliff or falling off of a skateboard while trying to ride it holding on to a car. Not only that, but it lists how they died and gives corresponding news articles. Regular people that became murderers are even listed. With each listing is a link to that person’s MySpace profile, frozen in time, but still collecting comments from friends. It’s bizzare and yet fascinating. This is definitely a sign of the times.

April 23, 2006

>Record Suicides In the Army and Otherwise

>It comes as no surprise to me to read in the news that “The number of U.S. Army soldiers who took their own lives increased last year to the highest total since 1993, despite a growing effort by the Army to detect and prevent suicides.”

The situation over there looks pretty bleak and hopeless. I only hope the Iraqis are enjoying their new found freedom and liberty that ol’ Georgie was told by the Lord to give them.

The article that reported this fact went on to state:

The Army rate is higher than the civilian suicide rate for 2003, which was 10.8 per 100,000, according to the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the Army number tracked closely with the rate for civilians aged 18-34, which was 12.19 per 100,000 in 2003.

I must say that last fact is a shame, but makes a bit of sense. People in that age group are entering “the real world” and are still trying to figure themselves and life in general out.

I know a guy that was headed for Iraq; I can only assume that is where he is now. He was a friend of my brother’s growing up. I saw him around Thanksgiving, right before he was to head out. I was not going to preach to him about my views against this war. He has probably heard it enough from others. Who knows which side of the fence he’s on anyway? A lot of the boys in the military, I feel, are simply lost and a guaranteed paycheck from the government doesn’t sound half bad.

He told me the money was good for him and that the experience would help him get a job in law enforcement when he got out. Before he left, he was married. Who knows how long it will be before his wife sees him again?

One thing he told me stood out. As he said it, I saw the fear and uneasiness. He said to me, “They train you to be ready to die. I don’t want to die, but I’m ready.”

…Just for money and a future.

I can only imagine thousands of other lost boys like him. The fear must always be in them. Is this worth it? Why can’t we take care of out issues here before interfering in other countries’ affairs, which we fabricated in the first place as a threat to us?

I don’t understand this at all.

At least the boys overseas don’t have many nail guns. A 33 year-old Oregon man went into a hospital complaining of a headache. It turns out he got high on meth and shot 12 nails into his head with a nail gun trying to kill himself. Somehow his head wasn’t permanently damaged much…from the nails.

How Not to Attempt Suicide–by Nailgun (photo from MSNBC-TV)

The article matter-of-factly states that “No one before is known to have survived after intentionally firing so many foreign objects into the head”. We need to clone this guy and send those boys into the Middle East. Our new Army of meth crazed super freaks. That way we don’t have to worry about the fragile mental state that we are putting them in.

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April 18, 2006

>Fun with Ceiling Fans

>My fiance and I live in a quirky place. I have blogged about our adventures with rodents, but haven’t really touched on much else. The legal ramifications may be too risky at this point. I cannot, however, avoid this rant.

We live in a two family flat. When our landlady decorated the joint, she added pretty spiffy ceiling fans, two upstairs and two downstairs in fact. They even have their own remote controls for the ultimate in laziness. The problem lies in the technology and the thought process.

The fans have no code or anything that distinguishes one from the next, so using the remote can get tricky. Say I turn on the light on the fan in the living area, but my fiance is sleeping in the other room. If the switch to the fan in the other room is on, the light will go on along with the intended one. This goes for the fan itself as well. Like I said, great idea on paper, but already a little silly.

Up until last night, it has only happened a few times that the gal upstairs didn’t like her fan or light being on, and therefore turned one or both of ours off along with hers. It was humorous. I even spent a few hours at one time, going back and forth with them. Or is that what is going on?

I will say that we were warned of this when we moved in, but she didn’t make a big deal of it. Now is it truly the gal upstairs fighting with us electronically, or is it some kind of bad signal or interfering signal? Could it even be a ghost? Could this be the ghost of my late brother messing with my head? And what does the neighbor lady think if the same occurences are happening upstairs? Does she think we are complete assholes for playing tug-o-war with ceiling fan remote signals? My head hurts.

So last night was a warm night. We have had unusually warm temperatures in this area recently. Our mice even expressed to us that they can leave now because the cold weather has left. We had the A/C on plus various fans. When you have a fan above you, you must take advantage of it, unless you are horribly allergic to the crap flying through the air. Our bedroom fan was on full blast…for about 10 seconds. What followed was like Shock and Awe with ceiling fans. Throughout the night, we went back and forth.

Lights and fan on.

Then off.

Then fan on.

Then off.

Lights on, then off.

It was complete and utter nonsense that we have to attempt to sleep through such torture. We were dripping in sweat as much as we tried to avoid it. The fans wouldn’t stay on for more than 10 or 15 seconds. Just as we would get our hopes up, the insurgents would add their signal to the fray. It was maddening, especially for my lady. The enemy was psyching us out.

We sincerely thought of this as war. How could someone punish us like this? If you don’t like the fan, flip the switch. Don’t make us suffer by using the convenient little remote to turn it off. Or were we at war with a new type of enemy–one of the supernatural kind or the super-technological kind? I have a sneaky suspicion that Republicans are behind this mess.

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April 12, 2006

>Ours…and The Don’s Gas Crisis

>The Don of The Italian Retail Service visited me at work the other day and sat me down at a pation furniture display.

“Don Diabeto, something is troubling me”, he said in a somber tone.

“What is it sir? Do you need me to crack a patio umbrella over some poor soul’s shins?”

“No, Don Diabeto. We may need to castrate somebody though. You see I went to get gas today. I gave the attendant a Lincoln. He proceeded to pull a cup out and fart into it. He then handed me the cup and went on his merry way.” The Don was obviously tense and angered.

“This is the price we pay for giving others freedom, liberty, and democracy“, I retorted.

Just then, I faintly heard the polyphonic version of The Grateful Dead’s “Casey Jones”. It was Daniel Rothstein, of The Daniel Rothstein Blues Revolution and my best man for my upcoming wedding.

“Jimbo, I dreamt about that guy you blogged about, the crazy one that said he would castrate Bush.”

I listened on.

“I was just watching him. Suddenly Bush appeared and he was writhing in pain, clutching himself. The guy told him, ‘Now you are just a Bush.'”

I considered telling The Don this humorous story, but thought it might rub him wrong at this point and proceed to fart in a cup and rub it in my face. I told Daniel goodbye.

“Who is worth disrespecting me and interrupting our conversation?”, he demanded of me.

“Oh, that was Baby Face Pinoy. He says he’s stranded in Jesusland without any gas.”

I saw the steam burst from my boss’s ears. “I’LL GIVE THAT FILIPINO SOME GAS.”

The Don stormed off, and I fell asleep under a gazebo indoors, dreaming of gnomes and Butt Paste.

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April 8, 2006

>Criminal Act to Say Bush Should Be Castrated–Who’s Crazy?

>Out of East St. Louis today, a hop, skip, and a jump over the river from me, the AP reports a mental patient now faces federal charges because he told two workers at his mental health center that he wanted to castrate our President. The workers told Secret Service, and upon interview, the man, Arafat Nijmeh, told the agents that his threat “is not too harsh, considering what he has done to my country. If not that than maybe something else, you know?”

He now faces two felony charges for “knowingly and willfully” threatening to harm Dubya.

What is our country coming to? I’m sure some left wing pundits or comics have said something similar in the past, considering our President’s controversial reign. He didn’t say he would kill the man, or that he had an elaborate plan to do this. I’m sure many people unhappy with Bush and our country at this point has said something similar at some point. Watch your back. Big Brother’s out there.

Bush and his cronies’ differing accounts of how much to cut off.

On a side note, Nijmeh was staying at the Alton Mental Health Center, north of East St. Louis. I have worked in those parts. Alton is home to Robert Wadlow, who measured at 8 feet 11 inches as the tallest man on this planet. The city honors him with a statue at the Southern Illinois University School of Dental Medicine and a municipal golf course named after him. Why dental medicine? I suppose the dentists appreciate the fine bone growth. Golfing might have been quite entertaining involving such a sasquatch though.

Wadlow…more like Weirdo.

Maybe the people of Alton are crazy. Maybe they should be criticized for worshiping a golden cow. I am only fooling, but why can’t we simply have the freedom of criticizing somebody by saying they should have their penis removed. John Wayne Bobbit most likely deserved it. No one is calling for anyone’s head…well, you know what I mean. In fact in my MySpace profile, I say I’d most like to meet the President , “so that I may bite his nose off.” It isn’t meant to be taken as that, but as a fun way of saying “I don’t like him”, and what is wrong with that if 64% of the country disapproves of the way he is running this country (a new all time low for Bush and his elephant friends)? Have we no freedom and liberty here?

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April 5, 2006

>Let the Folks In Jesusland Know: Jesus Walked On Ice, Not Water

>I have spoken of my journey into Jesusland, where folks believe in drinking blood to get drunk and eating flesh as a tribute to their faith. But seriously, the crew at Disinfo.com find some great stuff. Today they link to a LiveScience article that suggests Jesus may have actually walked on crystal clear ice patches and not water as previously assumed. I knew this would eventually happen. The whole Jesus thing is unraveling now, just like Santa Claus did when I was a kid. Next thing we’ll find out is that George W. Bush is the antichrist that Nostradamus predicted in the Black Scrolls.

…Or maybe he is.

Some more questions before I go…

If Adam and Eve were real, does that mean we are all inbred? If they weren’t real, what’s the true story behind it all?
Why do men leave boogers behind above urinals? Is this the freedom that God intended to give us?
If God gave America democracy, what made us so special? Was it Jerry Lewis? He won the French over.
Why don’t parents enact their free will when their little boys tug at themselves? If I had a son that did that, I’d tie his hands up. It would be embarassing to me, yet I see it a lot, and the parents let it happen. Don’t they know that’s how serial rapists are born.

Adieu. Adieu. To you and you and you. (I used to watch that movie backwards.)

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April 3, 2006

>Disaster Strikes at Wal-Mart

>The fiance and I have been working on our wedding invites all weekend. It saves abunch of money doing it yourself, but takes a lot of time. I never realized I could be so passionate about certain fonts.

Anyway, today we set out to get seals for the envelopes. We hit up Party City, which certainly is, and got what we needed. The weather forecasters were then predicting severe weather, but who listens to those bozos anyway. We decided to go to pick up some ribbon for our favors while we were out, even though the skies were beginning to look a bit suspicious.

I was headed for Hobby Lobby, but our sense of budgeting and penny piching took over. We decided to go to the evil Wal-Mart instead, which I have done a pretty good job avoiding, but when it comes to ribbon, I figure save the fifty cents and give a kid in a sweat shop a job. I’m kidding, but saving money means a lot when you have none. That’s the trap these corporations put you in, and it works so well.

Of course the prices on pretty white ribbon were amazing, so we grabbed it, then the lights went out. I had experienced this before at Target and Home Depot, so it wasn’t a big deal, but Wal-Mart’s backup lights sucked and were for the most part non-existent. We considered shopping more, then as the rain and winds came, we considered running out with a cart full of merchandise like those folks in New Orleans did. Before we could finish our thought process, waves of people screaming “TORNADO!” started running our way.

This was it, the big one.

It was insane. Crowds were amassing at the rear of the store, some even daring to run into the back stock room for shelter. The workers didn’t even know what to do. As much as they wanted to rely on their walkie-talkies, they couldn’t hear anything because of the sounds of people screaming and crying.

Then it hit me–walk into a crowded theater and yell fire, or walk into a crowded Wal-Mart during a power outage and yell tornado. I called my mother for some kind of outside confirmation, because this all could be some really good, yet sick, joke. She did confirm that there were rotations in my area and a Tornado Warning was issued for the area we were in, but there was no confirmation of any touchdowns.

It was enough to calm us down, then the lights came on. We started to make our way to the office section for some envelopes when the lights went out again. This time management tried to gather customers at the center of the store, but we decided to keep shopping. It’s the American way. I’ll go down in a tornado, shopping no less…and for less.

I overheard different strategies people had. It is bizzare what you consider at a moment like this. One woman wanted to be near the food in case we were trapped, so she could be the closest to something to eat. A couple were running to the pillows and linens, to be near soft things in case of flying glass and other objects. I just wanted to go take a crap because the whole situation was making me feel funny.

We made it to the front lanes to check out. Some were trying to escape at this point. I noticed some women talking to an employee. One exclaimed, “What?! Why didn’t anybody tell us? What about my car?”

I thought maybe it meant hail or something, but I wasn’t sure of much. We got to the door, and the greeter was suddenly armed with a flashlight and checking receipts. Suddenly the most kind person in the store (and usually elderly or handicapped) has power. I just wanted to leave.

As we approached the exit to the outside, I noticed slabs of drywall scattered across the parking lot, apparently from the Lowe’s next door. The “1 Hour Photo” sign was destroyed from the winds and the “T” in the Wal-Mart sign was about to come crashing down.

The winds had calmed, but the rain was still coming down along with lightning across the gray skies. We were home free, but we know never to go back to Wal-Mart, because we received a sign.

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