It all started when my shoelace broke off in my hand.
I mean-- shoelaces are supposed to be like cockroaches, right? Indefuckingstructable. Especially on a pair of Doc Martens that I haven't even owned for four months. Obviously the shoelaces on Doc Martens are not impervious to fat, acid rain, gluten, locusts, etc, etc.
Then, my car wouldn't start. To be more accurate, the key wouldn't turn in the ignition. At all. I was fulfilling one of my sworn duties as a non-profit lackey, going to Staples and purchasing a huge box of Avery 5160 mailing labels-- easily one of my least favorite errands, and, when I got back inside my car, the key wouldn't turn. I took the key out. I put the key in. I jiggled the steering wheel gently at first, then I shook it like it was a paint can and I was the MAB mixer. I fucked the ignition lock with the key like I was an epileptic on PCP, but it would not turn. I called my boss to tell her what was going on and to let her know that I might very well be late returning to the office.
Then I called Soly, my often irate, unpredictable, sixty-two-year-old Israeli mechanic. His younger, harder-to-understand Chinese employee, Jack, answered the phone. He told me to jiggle the wheel.
"I did that, Jack. Do you have any other ideas, please?"
He passed the phone off to Soly without even saying "hold on" or "goodbye" or "no."
"Do you have a hammer?" Soly asked me. I laughed. Who, besides Bob Villa, wouldn't laugh at that question.
"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LAUGHING AT?" Soly screamed at me, "Do you have a goddamn hammer or not?!"
"NO!" I yelled back, "I do NOT have a hammer. I do NOT DRIVE AROUND WITH A HAMMER IN MY CAR!"
"Okay, okay" he says, feigning that he's offended. "Are you wearing shoes?"
I resisted the urge to laugh again.
"Yes, Soly. I am wearing shoes."
"Are they good shoes?" he asked. It was sixty-five degrees out and I was boiling inside this car.
"They're good shoes. They're Doc Martens, in fact, with a broken shoelace," I replied.
"WHAT?"
"Nothing, they're good shoes."
"Okay," he said, "take one shoe off, and beat the key into the ignition. Four or five times. Hard-- not hard to break the key, but hard."
And so I took off my shoe and I beat the hell out of the key. I felt a little ridiculous doing this in the middle of the Staples parking lot, but I did it because Soly told me to do it. If he had told me that dressing up like the Queen Mother and singing the Chinese national anthem while sticking my finger up a fish's asshole would start my car, I would have done that, too.
Do fish have assholes?
And, don't you know-- the motherfucking car started.
"Okay, goodbye," Soly said after hearing the car turn over.
"Wait, wait, wait," I protested, "there's no 'goodbye' yet. Is this going to happen again?"
"Probably," Soly said.
"Well, what the hell do I do when this happens again?"
"Same thing. You obviously have magic shoes."
When I got home from work, I found that our computer had been completely assraped by a Trojan virus. I'm blogging from work. (Shhhhhh!)
Then, on my smartphone, which suddenly seems very smart when your CPU is sitting in the back of your car that often refuses to start, I received an email from a woman named Lisa. The subject line was "20sb featured blogger."
I knew that, on March 8, she wasn't already telling me that I'd won. I knew it was more bad news. But I opened it anyway. Here's what it said, word for word:
"Hello, Mr. Apron!
I'm Lisa, the founder and chief admin of 20SB. I just want to make sure that you realize that the high number of females who have been featured isn't some sexist ploy. Only 14% of our members are male, yet by my last count, 25% of our featured bloggers are. Our list of featured bloggers represents some very diverse demographics, and I'm super proud of that. But also- each featured blogger was voted for by the community at large in a process that's as democratic as democratic gets!
-Lisa
ps. I'm not sure how you decided that insulting everybody who has previously been featured is the best campaign plan, but hey, do what you gotta do."
Well, that was pretty much the icing on the cake of a day meant to be lubed up with poisoned icing and shoved up my ass by a waiter named Babyfucker Jones.
Lisa, I don't know who the hell you are, but my computer and my car and my goddamn fucking shoelace are all broken, you know what I mean? There's earthquakes in Turkey and Chile and Haiti and Karl Rove is an asshole and the polar ice caps are drowning the polar bears or whatever, and I'm really not terribly interested in the statistics of how many members of 20something bloggers have penises and how many have vaginas. I don't know who you think I've insulted or how, but, if I've insulted anyone who was a featured blogger before, I'm very sorry.
It's funny, I know of at least one former featured 20sb bloggers who is a follower of my blog, and that's Lilu, and she's pretty hard to insult. So, Lisa, Chief Administrator of 20sb, the site that you're "super proud" of-- perhaps you ought to ask people if they're insulted before presuming that they are, and then taking time out of your day to insult and offend someone else who takes at least an hour out of every day of his life to share some creativity and humor with a very tiny chunk of the world. And I'll tell you something else, if this is the kind of hypersensitive horseshit that goes on in the 20sb world, then the last thing I would want is to be featured on that site.
You may notice that I've removed the link including Paris Hilton's admittedly hot and overfondled tot that was used as a link to vote for me for this supposed "honor." How silly of me to forget for a moment that the reason I blog isn't for recognition or accolades, it's to make other people happy.
Thanks for your email.
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