A little while ago, a month to be exact, my mailbox was broken into. This should strike you as odd because there's no reason anyone would ever want to break into my mailbox. I have nothing that is useful to anybody. This blog should be resounding proof of that. Well, my neighborhood has these mailboxes that are really everybody's mailboxes. It's a locker system. It stinks.
I know why that's there. It's Texas. It's hot. Going door to door will cause a person to sweat through their own personhood. It's being controlled by a Congress that is inept. Many of the problems that face USPS today are not of its own making. I understand.
I do not understand the USPS system to report a broken into mailbox. You call the postal inspector at 1-877-876-2455. You have to speak your answers into the phone. You don't hit a number like the good old days. You don't speak to a human like the gooder old days. You have to speak to a machine that is wet-brained. The machine understands 10% of the time. This happens.
But do you know what happens when the machine doesn't understand? It HANGS UP on you after saying, "I didn't understand your answer. Goodbye." It doesn't start from the very beginning. It doesn't keep trying in an endless loop. It doesn't give up and call a human. It just fucking hangs up.
I was so pissed after the fourth time this happened that I shoved my phone down my throat and tried to see if shitting it out would help me. A bowel obstruction and an anger management class later, I'm still drinking smoothies with no help to my lack-of-mail situation.
It's been a month and the mailbox still hasn't been fixed. I go once a week to pick up my mail at the post office. This would be great if the post office was a mile away. It's 20-30 minutes away in Austin traffic. Nobody knows when the mailboxes will be fixed. There's a spate of mailbox theft going around in Austin.
To make matters worse, my HOA is charging a late fee for a bill that was sent during this period. It is the only bill sent to me in my name but we're apparently a year behind. I figured out that they'd been sending bills to the old owner but a bureaucracy never admits fault and only doubles down.
The HOA is worse. The USPS has to exist. The HOA is there to take money and not protect your mailboxes.
It's that time that nobody waits for, nobody desires, and nobody yearns: THE NEW YORKER CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST! It's a contest that is open to the public that I never enter but I give you my captions as if you don't have better things to do with your life!
Yeah, I'm just watching some guy try to prove how much he hates God by taking a shit on a church. In a way, his non-belief in God and his dedication to it is its own religion. He has erected a throne to nothing and participates in public displays of zealous devotion to nothingness. I hope he dies.
Dude, this day fucking sucks.
This is just traditionalist propaganda trying to get me to accept the notion that I must escort some stupid fucking kid across the street as if I don't have better things to do with my life like LISTEN TO FUCKING DEERMAN.
Thank you for suffering through that with me. Yesterday was ninety degrees. Today it's sixty. I'm sneezing my taint away. I needed this.
Oh, hey! Joe Lansdale, my hero, retweeted the most recent Inbetweener episode with Zach Chapman. Give it a listen. We talk about Joe Lansdale some.
Ol' human Chuck E. Cheese animatronic machine that became sentient and started ruining everybody's life, Mike Pence, bowed out of a football game because he couldn't stand the sight of free speech at a football game.
Thank you for spending all that money on a security detail and a seat just to walk out like a spoiled little brat.
That's the Trump administration for you. Symbolic gestures that amount to nothing but costs the taxpayer a hell of a lot. Let people kneel, dammit. Who gives a shit? Go fix something, you empty-eyed son of a bitch.
I respect the military, I respect the flag, I respect your right to get up out of your seat and walk out of a game after spending at least a hundo on your ticket. That's your right. I respect an American citizen's right not to put his hand over his heart. I respect his right to make a statement about police brutality. We are a police state for black men and women. That should make Americans uncomfortable. If the most offensive thing about their protest is kneeling for the national anthem - you should get your head out of your ass and start being enraged at what caused this whole thing.
Contrary to popular dogma, black Americans are just as American as anyone else even the orange colored skin bag that happens to be President. Black Americans have the same right to express themselves as white folks. White folks are free to show up at political rallies with guns but any time a black man is practicing his right to open carry, people lock their doors and call the cops. Or, this incident from 2008 when a black man wore "paramilitary" garb at a polling place and white America shat its diapers.
Let's be clear. It wasn't the uniform that the black man was wearing that caused Fox news to send the cameras. It was the combination of his skin color and what he was wearing. If it was just his clothing, we'd have cameras in Ted Nugent's face every time he left his house to find cat scratch fever medicine.
While we're at it, if the sight of people kneeling during the national anthem bothers you but the above photo of Ted Nugent wearing a US Army uniform does not you are a moron. A fuckin' moron as Rex Tillerson would say. Ted Nugent was so brave that he shit his pants to avoid the draft during Vietnam. Now he goes around playing dress up in a uniform that so many braver men and women died in.
President Trump avoided the draft by getting a doctor's note for bone spurs. But please, let's shit on some football players for understanding their constitutional right. I guarantee you they pay more taxes than any walking teratoma in the Trump family.
Hey, you're an American. I'm an American. Can we just go back to debating fucking concussions or something?
Broken River Books has relocated to El Paso, Texas and I was able to go to Rios de la Luz's reading at BookWoman for her debut novella, ITZA. The book is wonderful and I'm sure as hell glad that Texas could gain and reclaim such talented folks. I first med J David Osborne at the New South Festival a few years ago. He consistently publishes great fiction. It's a friggin' talent to have such an eye for great talent. This is a Texas writer family down there. I stole this photo from Gabino Iglesias.
I have many stories to tell about this week. It was the week from hell. I have a new arch-nemesis. Mold in Central Texas wants to kill me. But who cares? There's a new DEERMAN episode out. Check it out.
I'm planning a big October for my little Deerman podcast. There will be a whole slew of spooky stories being uploaded this month. They'll be the spooky story inbetweeners.
