Things and Stuff

http://www.quibblo.com/quiz/gCfdcYo/Which-Avenger-Are-You

You are most like Captain America. You have a strong “good guy” ethic, and hate injustice of any kind. Understanding what it’s like to be pushed around helps you fight for the little guy. You are not one to give up too easily, and often get yourself into tricky situations just to prove your worth. Your high ideals and old fashioned manners set you apart from most of your peers.

Cool quiz, if they didn’t say that Captain America’s name was David Rogers.

Prompt: That’s What She Said

Write a story that contains this line of dialogue:

You know, you should really do something about this carpet. If you don’t it might just be the end of our marriage.

—-

“I will be the first person to admit it, I am not the greatest guy in the world.  I have made a lot of dumb ass moves in my day, done a lot of things I wish I could take back.  But the stupidest thing I have ever done is without a doubt, getting married. 

I didn’t always feel this way, obviously.  I met my wife when we were young, just barely out of high school.  Two stupid college kids, we met at a party at some frat house.  I impressed her with my mad beer pong skills, she impressed me with how good she was with her tongue.  A few drinks later, and well, you know how that sort of thing goes.  Woke up the next morning with a splitting head ache and a pair of tits in my face.  Worst things have happened, I suppose.

But instead of just keeping things casual, she wanted to go on an actual date.  I felt bad telling her to just fuck off with her laying there naked in my bed with me, so I agreed.  One date led to another one, and before I knew it a few years had gone by and she was harping on me to get married.  If I knew the woman was going to be as fucking crazy as she was, I would have never took her back to my dorm with me that night.  But there I was, about to graduate college, a girlfriend I didn’t even like, and everyone telling me I just needed to ‘grow up’ and become a man.  So I caved.  Stupidest thing I could have ever done.

We eloped in a shitty Vegas chapel right after graduation, and God, did I have to hear about that for the next couple of years.  Nothing was ever good enough for her.  But what the fuck did she expect?  I had no job, no money.   She was the one that wanted to get married so damn bad, and I was the one getting stuck with the bill.  It’s the best I could have done.  I found a shitty little marketing job in the city not long after that, wasn’t my first choice by a long shot.  I mean, shit.  I was an accounting major, for Christ’s sake.  But the bitch just kept pestering me and nagging me until I took that job.  Then she did nothing but bitch and moan that I didn’t make enough money to support us.  What the fuck?  She didn’t even work!  Literally every dime that we had came out of my paycheck!  But nooo! Nothing was ever good enough for Sheila.  Not that bitch.  Fucking pisses me off.

After a few years of absolute ‘marital bliss’, I managed to save up enough money to buy us a house out in the suburbs.  Nothing too fancy, no, but good enough for us.  Well, good enough for me, anyway.  Sheila hated it.  Said it wasn’t big enough, we didn’t have neighbors fancy enough, yada yada yada.  What did she care?  Yeah, she wanted to have kids, but I made damn sure that that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.  Went and got myself a vasectomy, I did.  No way was I going to bring a kid into that hellhole of a marriage.  The bitch would eat the kid alive.  Not that I told her that, anyway.  Got to admit, I got a little bit of a thrill every time she would talk about wanting kids.  Bitch didn’t deserve that honor.

I guess the incident you wanted to know about happened a few months ago.  I just got home from work, busting my ass all day long to keep the roof over our heads and food on the table, and she just starts going off about the carpet.  Sheila hated the carpet in the living room from the moment she saw it.  But it’s just carpet, right?  If you don’t like it, just don’t look at the floor!  Not like we had the money to change it anyway.  But she was always going on about it, and she said…listen to what she said to me!  You are never going to believe this one.  But she said to me, plain as day, ‘You know, you should really do something about this carpet. If you don’t it might just be the end of our marriage.’  Now, I know what you must be thinking.  You got to be thinking, ‘hey, that sounds like everything that a guy like me should be dreaming about!  But I wasn’t happy.  No, I got to admit, I was livid as hell.  And then, I just snapped.  After everything I had done for the bitch.  Fed her, took care of her, put clothes on her back and a roof over her head.  Married the bitch just because I thought that’s what I had to do.  After all of that, SHE was going end our marriage?  Over a fucking carpet?  Fuck no!  If anyone got the right to end this abortion of a marriage, it was me!  I was the one who had been through all the suffering!  I was the one who didn’t even want to get married in the first place!  Me!  So I guess I just lost it.  I walked up behind her, took some ugly pot that she insisted that I buy her at Pottery Barn for ‘decoration’, and knocked her right over the head with it.  When she was down, I got a plastic bag out of the kitchen, wrapped it around her head, and suffocated her.

I knew no one would understand, so I took her down to the old park, went out into the woods, and buried her body.  I know that wasn’t the best thing to do, and like I said, I know I’m not the greatest guy in the world.  But she gave me no choice!  You have to believe me!  Tell me, tell me that you believe me!”

My lawyer looked me straight in the eye, and told me the thing I was dreading to hear from him.  “John, I do believe you.  I believe that you are bat shit crazy.  I’m sorry, but I don’t think there is much I can do for you.”

Figures.  Even in death, that bitch is still ruining my life.

Prompt: Robots or Dinosaurs?

I can’t believe it has come to this.  After years of trying in vain to put an end to this reign of terror, the fight seems to finally be winding down in humanity’s favor.  It seems like just yesterday that I heard the news that put the whole world in an uproar.  They had finally done it, finally cracked the right sequence or code or whatever it is, and finally created the first living, breathing clone of a long extinct animal.  There are no words I could possibly say to give voice to that moment, the moment they showed that baby Tyrannosaurus Rex on the television.  As a young man, still in high school, it was one of the coolest things you could ever imagine.

They told us that nothing bad would come of it.  That they weren’t going to make a large number of them, and that they were adding things to their DNA sequence that would keep them smaller and generally more docile.  That we didn’t need to worry.  But then again, when did those French bastards ever live up to what they promised? 

Whatever ‘inhibitors’ they put in place were faulty, if they even existed at all.  The dinosaurs grew to outrageous proportions, dwarfing houses and making it a nightmare to cage them.  They also bred at a pace that was really quite hard to grasp, seemingly able to gestate an egg in under a month.  The scientists lied about how many different kinds of beasts they had cloned, and lied about the precautions they were taking to keep them in place.  It was almost as if they wanted them to go full blown Jurassic Park on the world, which, as you know, is what they eventually did.

The creatures broke out and began their reign of terror on the modern world.  At first, it was an ‘isolated incident’ where a Triceratops was simply looking for grass to graze on, just trying to get to the wild, and ended up spearing seven innocent people on the freeway.  Then, the Pterodactyl that decided to make its nest on top of the Eiffel Tower.  It wasn’t long until these ‘simple misunderstandings’ became violent, and then they stopped being isolated to France.  First it was Germany, followed by England.  Russia was next, then Italy and Egypt.  The dinosaurs were spreading, and humanity was being ravaged in their wake.

That’s when the so-called ‘wars’ started to break out.  I joined the army, barely out of college with a girlfriend and baby boy back home.  Anyone and everyone that was capable of lifting a weapon was expected to help fight the beasts back, but no matter how many times we shot them, we just couldn’t do it.  They bred to fast, they travelled too fast, and there was no way that taking down even a simple herbivore left your troop without at least five casualties.  It was madness.  There was no way we could win.  And then our own scientist decided that they had to fight insanity with more insanity, apparently, because what they decided sounded like it came straight from a five year old boy’s playroom.  If we as mere men couldn’t take down the rampaging beasts, then perhaps we could create robots do to the job for us.

Within a few years, they had the first working model of a war-time drone robot out on the battlefield and ready to kill some dinosaur invaders, right around the time when the beasts finally made it over to the Americas.  I’ll never forget the first time I saw that robot, who they named ‘Fighting Fred’ for whatever reason, fighting side by side with us soldiers.  It looked sort of like how the Terminator looked without any of the flesh on it, just a scary ass humanoid made entirely out of firearms and metal, shredding the shit out of a Stegosaurus with bullets.  Even then, there was something unsettling about the sight, but it got the job done.  Within a few months, the Americas were clean from those dinosaur bastards once again, and we were ready to go on the offensive overseas.

It was relatively easy to clear Europe out of the cold blooded bastards once we got more of the Fighting Freds, officially named ‘the USR-2342 line’, out on the battlefield and ready to fight like a man.  Winter had fallen on the continent when we landed, and few of the beasts were capable of surviving the snow, making it easier to pick off their numbers.  Things went even easier in the Asian countries since those crazy Japs made robots of their own to fight in the wars.  Being Japan, they couldn’t just make normal humanoid robots like ours, though.  They made giant ass Gundam-esque fighting mechas that took on Brontosauruses with their bare fists.  It was like living through a shitty sci-fi movie, complete with explosions from Michael Bay. 

At last, it seemed like we were able to track the last of the dinosaur numbers to the jungles of the African wilderness.  Sad to say, those things were terribly territorial over their newly acquired land, and many of the staples of African wildly, like the lions, rhinoceros, and gazelles, were completely wiped from the wild in their migration.  The dinosaurs’ numbers in these parts were heavier than anywhere else, and it took almost five years of fighting before we got to today, before we could look over what was thought to be the last remaining Velociraptor nesting ground existing in the Congo.  Personally watching over the burning remains of the ferocious fighters, taking a flamethrower to their fragile little eggs, knowing that the fight was finally over.  We did it.  With the help of our robotic soldiers,  we finally made sure those menaces were extinct once more.  The nightmare is over.

I can go back home.  My kid has already grown up, joined the army all on his own.  I wish I could have been there for him more.  Seen him grow up, you know?  I know that I won’t ever get that chance, and god, do I hope it was worth it.  I did it all to give him a better world than the one I suddenly found myself with.  But no matter what, I can’t help but shake that…maybe, just maybe, the things that we used as our tools to end one threat just might lead to our next.  These robots were smart enough to fight on their own, and that’s all they were programmed for.  What’s to say we aren’t going to be next on their list?  All I know is that science better start looking into new options very soon, otherwise we may have already created our undoing…again.  I’m personally hoping they pick superpowers.

Prompt: What Makes You Feel Better When You Are Angry?

First post, super rusty.  Hopefully I get back in the groove so these aren’t just long ass rants.

Prompt:  What Makes You Feel Better When You Are Angry?

Little known fact, I am an extremely angry person.  I try to hide it with my trademark sarcasm and shitfaced grin, but a huge majority of the time; I’m one wrong word away from blowing my lid.  I don’t really know why I am such an angry person, but somewhere in my life (most likely after one of the six times that I have been cheated on, probably,) I have developed a deep, burning temper that would make Bruce Banner look like he was just a child.  But the question is, how do I go about making myself feel better?

Probably the biggest gun in the armory that is my bag of tricks to chill out is music.  My entire adult life, people have questioned me about my choice in tunes and what I choose to listen to.  It would seem nature that someone who is so intensely angry all the time would listen to something heavy; loud guitar wailing and thundering drums.  Metal and hard rock seem like the perfect fit for someone with my personality, and literally all of my close friends from the time I was a teenager to this very day listen to mostly heavier music.  While I do confess to liking it in small doses, it’s just not for me.  No, the kind of music that really makes me mellow is…country music.  And not just any country music, mind you.  I like the kind of country music that people make fun of.  The sadder, the better.  The more anguish the singer is in and the more depressing the lyrics, the better I am sure to feel.  I realize that this probably sounds pretty sick, like I am taking pleasure in their pain, but I assure you, this is not the case.  In all reality, the reason why I chose country music over any other, particularly when I am in a fit of rage, is because it is the only genre of music that I have found that allows me to put a decent perspective on my life.  I may be surrounded by morons, my family may be driving me crazy, my girlfriend may be a psycho bitch (speaking from experience on that one), but there are good things to focus on in those times.  A silver lining to the cloud, if you would.  I may be surrounded by idiots, but hey, I have some of the best friends a guy could ever ask for, as well.  I may be irritated as fuck with my job, but at least I’m working, providing a living for myself that I can be proud of in a job that I actually enjoy doing.  My family may be driving me crazy, but how many people can say that their families are as close as mine?  The answer, in my experience, is a lot lower than I would think.  Hearing other people’s problems, expressed through song, really helps me see that not everything is as bad as it absolutely could be.

Of course, there are more than enough times where I don’t want to be calm.  Sometimes, I just want to kill everything in sight.  Unfortunately, that seems to be frowned upon by society for reasons I’m still unclear about, so I have to use the next best outlet: video games.  Yes, I am a gamer, and yes, I love the hell out of it.  Depending on my actual level of rage, my preference of video games changes.  For instance, if I am just pissed in general, like my average state of being where I hate the world, I will chose something I can escape into, like Dragon Age or Skyrim.  If I am seething pissed and want to break some skulls in, I’ll pick a mindless killing/punching game like any of the Spider-Man games after Spider-Man 2 and Dante’s Inferno, things where I have to do nothing but tear out the hearts of my enemies.  Now, there are certain people that tend to piss me off a lot, and severely.  For cases such as this, I have a special way of dealing with them.  That’s right, I own the Sims 3.  And yes, I do have a house where I create Sim versions of my real-world enemies specifically to torture/kill them.  I’m just that cool.

Lastly, but perhaps my favorite way of dealing with my seething rage problem, is to take a long drive in the country.  There is absolutely nothing more freeing than getting away from the city, taking a back road out to the boonies and driving until you get lost.  Ultimately, I don’t think I’m the type of person that was meant to be around society for as long as I am forced to deal with it, and getting out to where there is virtually nothing but woods and farmland is…well, it’s just the bee’s knees.  The more mundane the scenery, the more my anxiety melts away.  The wind blowing through my window is fresh and clean, and my music is always loud.  Sadly, while this option is by far my favorite because it includes music and removes me away from whatever it was that triggered my anger (almost always people), gas is fucking expensive.  I don’t have the money to fill up my tank any damn time I want, which usually means that time out in the country is more and more sparse.

These three things are definitely my greatest ways of fighting my burning anger problem that I almost certainly should talk to a professional about (aside from masturbation, but then again, what doesn’t masturbating fix?).  Which is good, really.  Bad things happen when my anger isn’t kept in check.  Not bad for me, mind you.  And not bad for whoever happens to be around that my anger isn’t directed towards, I’m told that my rage is almost always incredible to see unleashed.  But Maker help you if you happen to be the person who sends me off the deep end without something to bring me back.  On more than one occasion, I have taken absolute delight in watching people cry because of what I had to say to them.  It’s pretty incredible.  As much as I love that feeling, I realize that it isn’t always the best way to approach my problems, so I try to keep that to a minimum.  But now that we have established that, you can’t say you haven’t been warned when you inevitably force my hand and I have to smack a hoe.