Get the Fuck Off My Gravestone, Bitch

If you're a petty, judgmental, insecure motherfuck, then you've come to the right place today, like pretty much any day. In any case, welcome, pull up a bar-stool, Son. The peanut butter M&Ms are on me.

Or, rather, in me.

I'm sure you know by now that I have some, well, issues. I'm never quite sure if my homespun style of emotional instability is charming, or unsettling, or, as my wife likes to say, "WNL" (Within Normal Limits). Some folks are tempted to hide the inappropriate things that they do and say, for fear that they will be judged or critiqued or, worse, shamed.

Me?

Balls, no. Why stay hidden? I've worked tirelessly to create a comfy little cocoon here, insulated by the warm snuggles provided by all's y'alls, my affectionately bewildered and skeptically intrigued readers.

You will not judge me. You will just be glad that we do not share a zipcode or lavatory.

I can remember, back in my burgeoning days of high school, timidly testing the waters of shared experience by tossing out a masturbation joke, to see if it was met with a knowing glance or smirk of a classmate. See, I just wasn't sure if six times a day was inappropriate for a fifteen-year-old of my height and weight proportions and social standing. We always want to know if we are WNL, and so we check ourselves against our peers, against celebrities, (surely Tim Robbins and Bob Hoskins jerked it six times a day when they were fifteen) and against our perceived betters.

I'll bet you check yourself against people, too. I just hope you don't check yourself against the bitch in the red dress who eats "Special K with Berries" in her kitchen to lose weight, because that fucked cunt is already skinny.

And I'll bet she rubs one out six times a day, too.

Anyway, who, you might be asking yourself, does Mr. Apron check himself against?

Why, "Jeopardy!" contestants, of course!

Most people who ride the "J!" Train, I suspect, check their intelligence against that of the three contestants mentally duking it out with each other Monday-Friday night. I wouldn't dare pit my brain against theirs. No, on weeknights from 7:00pm-7:30pm, I bust out the social awkwardness yardstick.

I'm pleased to announce that, most of the time, I measure up. I'm actually kind of smug about it.

Last night was a particularly devastating example of my social awkwardness propensity to be WNL as compared to the average "Jeopardy!" contestant. Alex was conducting the painful contestant interviews (why do they persist with this archaic, awful practice? Can't they just put up a caption that says "Alice, 39, Hausfrau, Appleton, MN. Was once mauled by a rabid Postal Inspector"? That would save everybody a lot of trouble.), and he had just finished with Saad, a nanotechnology sciency dude, and the chick with the impossibly huge breasts that were practically resting on the podium, and Alex sidled up to the returning champion, a complete and utter milquetoast from the depths of Middle America. Alex looked at his little index card, inhaled crisply and said the following:

"And you have a rather interesting hobby-- you take charcoal rubbings of the gravestones of deceased Speakers of the House, is that correct?"

"Yes, it is," answered the contestant, wearing a black dress shirt and a gold necktie, as if he were in the mafia or a waiter at Carrabba's. "It's taken me all over the country, and in graveyards, sometimes to private property-- but I always ask permission."

Of course you do. Look at you.

"Sounds like fun!" Alex said, without a hint of the insincerity such an exchange would require were it performed at an office Christmas party, AA meeting, or basement snuff film premiere.

But with those three little words, "Sounds like fun," Alex Trebek at once validated my small, questionable, eclectic hobbies and pastimes. Finally, shopping in antique malls for vintage eyeglasses, typewriters and telephones, trolling www.ebaymotors.com for forty-year-old VW Beetles and 1970s-era ex-police cars that I will never buy, and enjoying me a good patter or maritime song doesn't seem so crazy anymore.

Charcoal rubbings, indeed. Freak probably does six of them a day.