When STRONG means something else.

   I don't remember New Yorkers creating a backlash every time a picture of Osama Bin Laden graced the cover of a magazine when talking about 9/11. The current situation between Bostonians and Rolling Stone magazine is akin to muslims being outraged over images of their prophet being portrayed in a Danish cartoon. That's the Muhammad guy to all you Christians.

   Remember making fun of other cultures because they got so angry over a simple cartoon?

       Heeeeeere's the pitch....

Dinner with Stephen

     I am officially swearing off Stephen King for his latest tirade that will most certainly convince his lesser self-thinking fans into believing bad math. The government he ridicules for not taxing more is the same government misspending the dollars they already extort from us. Make them feel noble for taking more than they need from those who worked hard to get what they have. I'm sick of these fucking hippies with their t-shirts, sports coats, and dad jeans deciding what to do with my money. You're not cool. Go fuck yourself.

      I apologize if it seems a little harsh to bash a bestselling author so directly. Perhaps the Coke bottle lenses have betrayed him. Perhaps it was just an instance of the Maine public school system's world renowned math program rearing it's empty head. I'm from Maine, so I can say that. Before my classmates race to our home state's defense, I would like to remind them of the year we were taught geometry by people's moms and the fucking bus drivers. Go ahead. Try me.

      Here's some math I learned by reading books (assumably not written in Maine;most assuredly not written by Stephen King):

      Let's say the standard tax is 10% for everybody. It's not. Anyone lucky enough to get a raise should know well the pain of the government's dick burrowing further in your ass as a hearty congratulation for leaping into a new tax bracket. If you were unaware of different tax brackets, don't let me interrupt your JERSEY SHORE marathon.

      Anyways…10% tax. That means for every dollar you make, you pay a dime to the government. Make ten dollars, you pay a dollar. Hundred bucks means you pay ten bucks, and so on. All the way up to that guy making a million bucks. He'd be paying the same tax you were. 10 cents for every dollar earned. Seems fair.

      But not according to Stephen King or Obama. Listen close to any speech about taxes, and over and over again, Barack will say the wealthy should pay what's fair. Should pay a LARGER percentage of their earning because they make a LARGER amount of money. It made complete sense to a friend of mine when we had this talk.

      "Of course the rich should pay more. They make more money."

      When I threw out the 10% example, his eyes dulled a bit. No surprise. We went to the same school. The discussion slowly dissolved into a ping pong match about the government, and it always does. The United States (even the world) faces problems so deeply rooted into the ground, the air, the very nature of our existence, sometimes people start blaming some of the limbs for not providing enough shade, using too much water, hogging too much sunlight. But nobody wants to cut the fucking tree down, Because then nobody has the tree and we can't imagine living without it. Life without the tree would be like life without Hot Pockets. Hell on Earth.

      When Stephen King bitches about not paying enough taxes, the natural response is to tell him he's more than welcome to throw in as much extra dough as will make him feel better. Apparently that Band-Aid is not enough to cover Stevie's boo boo. He wants everybody to pay, no, to WANT to pay as much as he WANTS to pay. King's idea of self-betterment is for everyone to give until it hurts. Too bad most of the pain threshold is being preoccupied with the aforementioned cock to the ass.

      It's like going to dinner with that asshole who orders the 2000 Bordeaux to go along with his veal medallions while you and your friends get burgers and shakes. The bill comes and the asshole is the first to suggest you split the check evenly. You try to tell him that he's the one that ordered the expensive shit because he wanted it, but he balks because obviously true friends don't bicker over pennies. Everyone begrudgingly pays more because one person decided he needed to show off.

     Fuck you and your veal medallions, King. I'm not paying for anything more than I need too. Hell, to take this analogy further, I'm being FORCED to pay for a hamburger deluxe at Uncle Sam's Bar and Grill whether I wanted the fucking thing or not. Very likely, I'll never even see the food I paid for because some asshole didn't bring any burger money, but looked hungry and probably needed it more than I did. I'll be lucky if I get a french fry.

      That's okay, I tell myself. I've gained a couple pounds and don't need the hamburger anyways. My digestive system would only turn it to poop and then I'd have to figure out how to get it past that IRS penis I have lodged in my lower intestines.

Unoccupied Hands are the Devil's Protest Sign Holders

OCCUPY WALL STREET seems to be the trend these days. I'm sure Martin Luther King Jr dreamed of a day when illegals and white kids with dreadlocks could coexist peacefully in a public park shantytown. Starbucks and Goya products united.

I understand the concept of protest. As an American, if something has wronged you, offended you, oppressed you, you have every right to assemble with like-minded folk and let your protests be heard. Usually you should have a reason to protest and perhaps a reasonable goal. But this isn't required, so don't pack up your tents yet.

As near as I can tell, people are mad about other rich folk having more money than them. It's not fair, some say, that they should have so little while the rich have so much. I keep hearing the term ONE PERCENT. Assuming that anyone who'll mess with percentages has a strong grasp of math so I'd like to make a suggestion.

OCCUPY JOB

Work more. If you get paid $8 an hour and at the end of a twenty hour workweek, you're not happy with the $160 fruit of your labor (before taxes), try working 30. A magical thing happens. All of the sudden, that $160 check transforms itself into a $240 check. Witchcraft? Hell, naw, baby! That's math!

Not satisfied with that?

OCCUPY SECOND JOB

I've heard of this elusive creature called a SECOND job! The possibilities are endless. But then I'll never have time for fun, you say. Here I thought all the unhappiness stemmed from money. Perhaps protest a maternity ward. Those little fucks have a whole life ahead of them. Certainly they could spare a couple years.

Justin Bieber smells

There's a huge Justin Bieber cologne/perfume display at Macy's. Scientifically formulated to attract bubble-headed teenage girls. I may have to buy some if the cotton candy vodka stops working.

Banana Malfunction

Maybe those emails are right...

The Ballad of Phuong Ly Qui

I love recycling day. Not because I'm an Earth nut or anything. I heard a rumor that they bring all your rinsed organic almond flax seed butter containers to the same landfill used rubbers go. They don't recycle those. At least not in my neighborhood.

I moved to a city where little old Asian women scour the landscape like carpenter ants on trash day, ripping open garbage bags looking for aluminum cans with a 5 cent deposit. 20 of those babies is a buck. A full stolen shopping cart renders...I don't fucking know. I never played the HOW MANY GUMBALLS game, and I could care less about GUESS CHAN'S CANS (I put the over/under on Bs. Broads are way flat.)

The fun started when the city got rid of the designated plastic/glass/paper green buckets. One day, a gigantic flip top bucket showed up. No more sorting, they say. The recycling bin poses a problem for the average four foot bottle snagger. It wasn't unusual to see a pair of two dollar sandals wiggling out of the trash.

When the 'no-sort' policy hit, the recycling dude's productivity went through the roof. All he had to do was drive up to the curb to utilize a forklift device, catapulting the contents into a large flatbed. Suddenly, the ants are on a time crunch. It's amazing to see how fast ants can sort when a recycling truck's on their ass.

Reminds me of JOHN HENRY.

Bumwrites

Did anybody else know Rufus the Stunt Bum wrote a book?


I was in a BORDERS bookstore during a store closing sale (funny how even after discounts, it was one of the most expensive joints around), and I caught those unmistakable knuckle tats on the cover out of the corner of my eye. I hadn't thought about BUMFIGHTS in years. I downloaded the whole thing from Napster. After downloading a few gay porn red herrings. Napster was like a box of chocolates back then, Forrest. People loved to mislabel shit and the best thing you could hope for is that the dehabilitating viruses stayed on the screen, not on your hard drive.

Though I only read the excerpt, Rufus' memoir almost ruins the memories I had of BUMFIGHTS. You can check it out on the LOOK INSIDE feature on Amazon where he talks about this incident:



The only thing I can compare it to is when I found out Santa and FACES OF DEATH weren't real. I felt bad for enjoying it as much as I did. The shame is almost enough to keep me from accepting a copy of BUMFIGHTS from anyone who may have it laying around.

hint hint

TWITter

When I took latin in fourth grade, I learned two things:

1) How to tell if a Catholic priest is blessing me or trying to throw game, and

2) You can tell a lot about a word by breaking it down.

Look, I'm getting older. Fuck you. You are too. But I don't wanna be that guy who has to pay the kid next door five bucks to reprogram my TV every time the batteries in my remote crap out. I begrudgingly opened a MYSPACE account just in time to see the digital UHauls disappear over the horizon. It was a hard way to find out how creepy and uncreative my friends were. Like FLUFFYLOVER77. You know who I'm talking about, BILL.

It was cute. I told everybody my favorite bands, my favorite movies, my likes, my dislikes(mean people *sadface*). I got a bunch of friend requests from half naked chicks who wanted me to check out things they couldn't show me HERE and metal bands from the Czech Republic who thought I should check out their shit since I liked SIMON & GARFUNKEL. I get disgruntled pretty easily (sometimes before a single stone is ever thrown), so I took my journal entry power to proclaim to the cyber ghost town that I was going to single-handedly bring everyone back to MYSPACE. Then I left.

The next day, I opened a FACEBOOK account, hunted down a couple schoolmates, and started my friend accumulation. The comment box on other peoples' walls was a perfect way to express myself in real time. Taunting my buddies for putting up pics of their families, giving me updates on how the laundry was piling up, and (my favorite) asking if anyone had any weed they wanted to sell. I would post a link to the description of THE PATRIOT ACT on their wall, hoping they could teach themselves to fish before they ended up in the belly of a whale.

But it's never enough, is it? As phones got smarter, we got dumber. Telling people when we went on vacation so one of our 'friends'(who was more likely a desperate token to help get your number up to look more popular) could take their sweet time burglarizing our house. When we went to work so your 'friend you have in common' could sneak over and fuck your 'in a relationship with' girlfriend. Life is a card game, and the more tells you have, the more likely you are to lose. When you TELL the world EVERYTHING, you should just hand the world your wallet. Save everybody the time and trouble.

Then comes TWITTER. The ultimate in live feeds. 140 character bursts of GPS worthy up-to-the-minute action coming at the speed of Matrix style binary code. Only instead of zeroes and ones, it's a flood of #s and @s. All TWITTER's missing is a dude with a dog's head holding a golden staff up to the sun next to some pyramids. I didn't have the first clue what was going on. I thought I hit the DOS button on my computer. They make TWITTER FOR DUMMIES books. I'm not willing to throw my hands up in defeat. I'd rather bash it instead.

After a couple 'tweets' (God, I feel dirty even saying it), I realized I was was out of my depth. People were @ing me, putting # signs next to my name. I didn't know whether to take it as a compliment or call the cops. People I never heard of started following me. I'm already paranoid as it is. The unsolicited attention made me go on a canned good shopping spree and warm up the bomb shelter.

Jesus only needed twelve followers (or was it thirteen? My research department is on vacation). In a stockpiling effort that would rival the Cold War arms race, people greedily make 'follow me and I'll follow you' promises. After making a few of those deals myself, I don't make those deals anymore. Blue balls hurt like a mug.

What's in a Name?

I know boner pills when I see 'em. The Asian characters graphic on the bottle would lead some to believe the product's name is mere coincidence. I'm not a PHUKing idiot. After reading the reviews, I'm tempted to buy a bottle myself. And I don't even have THAT problem. No, I really don't.

I'M A MAN, DAMMIT!!!

The Time I (almost) Died

As the story goes, your whole life flashes before your eyes just as you're about to die. Everything from child birth to your final moment can end up on your greatest hits reel. It didn't quite go that way for me. Not that I died or anything, I was pretty convinced I was going to, so I guess it counts. As my hands balled up into clenched fists and my head felt like a teakettle about to explode, the only thing I could think about is whether or not the investment company where I had my 401k was open on Sundays because I forgot to name a beneficiary. I had my phone in a kung fu grip, but it was unlikely they would understand me even if I could find the number because I don't think they speak convulse at ING.

I had no idea what had happened to me. The cop who showed up before the ambulance asked me. The paramedics who drove the ambulance asked me. It was probably the first time in what I figured was the end of my life that I wish I'd gone to medical school so I could answer the questions properly. It felt, without exaggeration, like the worst electrocution I'd ever received. Worse than the one I got pissing on an electric fence. Yes, I did.

The paramedic had a rhythm about him. He would ask me two important questions, and then, in pure non sequitur mode, ask me a nonsensical question. He wanted to know the name of my dog three or four times. I understand it was an attempt to keep me calm, but considering I was strapped to a gurney in the back of a fucking ambulance, calm wasn't likely to happen. Chest pain was one of my main bitches. We all decided maybe I was having a heart attack. A rubber gloved hand shoved four orange baby aspirin into my mouth. I was told to chew. In probably the most pleasant part of this whole experience, they tasted like oranges (what else would they taste like?). I heard that taking aspirin can help if you have heart disease, and I was seriously considering picking up a bottle of these bad boys to have with breakfast.

The other thing they do if they think you're having a heart attack is set you up for an EKG. This whole process involves at least 5 to 7 stickers which REALLY stick. They put them on exceptionally hairy places if you're a guy ( or a hippie chick). I would recommend you never tell a paramedic or a doctor they think you're having a heart attack unless you're 100% sure because they're harder to get off than a eunuch and you can't get a prescription to kerosene.

Another tip is if you get an EKG done in the ambulance, the people at the hospital don't trust the stickers that the paramedics use, so when it's time for THEIR EKG, the nurse will tear the ambulance stickers off without warning. Well, at least the first one is without warning. Only a moron would think they would stop at one. They're like potato chips, after all. I think medical schools should at least teach the common courtesy of putting the new stickers on the bald spots where the old stickers were. I look like a leopard now. Aside from all the normal reasons of not wanting to take off my shirt in public, now I have the added worry of getting shot by poachers.

Both of those readings came back normal. Normal meaning I didn't have a heart attack or any sort of heart related thing other than an actual heart. In the back of the ambulance, we all took turns guessing what was wrong with me. We crossed out stroke since I didn't look like the people at the end of INDIANA JONES AND THE RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. As a product of watching too many movies, when somebody has a medical background and they say, “I don't know what's wrong with you”, I hit the panic button (which didn't help the situation much). While the paramedics concentrated on driving, I wondered how I possibly could have gotten a disease only spotted monkeys in South America get. Other than the obvious. But I was drunk that night.

We pulled up to the hospital;it was like the express lane. I got right in. No waiting in the lounge next to other people about to die. Instead I had the pleasure of being double parked next to them in the back hallway. Funny how it might take forever to get your room, but they put the triage on wheels now. Some chick with a laptop on a modified office chair came over and took all my information. It takes a lot of faith to do that job considering that sometimes people can't talk. Like me, for instance. I still thought I did well and deserved a gold star. Or 9 EKG stickers.

Through hours of poking, prodding, bloodletting, and being plugged into all sorts electrical monitors, they came up with anxiety attack. They asked me if I had any extra stress lately. That's like asking a hobo if he's been MORE homeless lately. When I asked about the numbness NOT associated with anxiety, he blamed it on hyper-ventilation. Even though I wasn't.

“Look,”he said matter of factly,”if you breathe twice a second for two minutes, it causes *insert latin words here* to your muscles.”

“So I won't do that...”

I thought it was funny. He didn't. An hour later, I was discharged (heh) with a prescription to Xanax. Well enough to handle the stresses of the world again, the nurse, under the guise of 'walking me out', led me directly to billing. Watching the guy try to ask for my emergency room payment while looking at paperwork stating ANXIETY under my information was like seeing a bomb squad technician not touch the red wire. I suppose if I relapsed, the ER was right there.

I wonder if they'd charge me for a separate visit?

Eligible for Amazon PRIME

There's nothing I enjoy more than browsing around, minding my own business, and accidentally finding something I didn't know existed. I'm sure there's locksmiths out there who'll tell a story about something like this if enough pitchers of PABST are offered.



*BULBSHANK does not endorse or recommend putting such devices on, in, or around the same room as your weenie. But if you MUST, get a spare key made. The ER is full enough.

Why I Hate COMMON (Sense :P )

A while back, I went to see Organized Konfusion in New Hampshire with my friend Tony. My BLACK friend Tony. He's one of the guys I refer to when I try to convince people it's okay when I make off-color witticisms ON color. Of course, he'd disavow me in a split second. So don't tell anyone I use him as a reference. A rerun of ROOTS puts me on thin ice as it is.

To put a timeline on it for the hip-hop heads, it was right after they released STRESS: EXTINCTION AGENDA. Four mics in The Source, if I remember correctly. I bought the CD at midnight at Tower Records on Mass Ave in Boston and loved it like fat people love parking spaces close to the door. When Tony told me they were on a bill with ARTIFACTS, COMMON SENSE, and THE BEATNUTS, no price was too high. Not even fifteen bucks (though that was a quarter of my gross national product at the time).

I went so quickly, I forgot to inform my girl Sonya, a friendly but testy half Jamaican. She killed the triple A battery in my pager (only doctors know what a pager is). I don't remember how much change I plugged into the payphone (a wha...?) to assuage her suspicions, but as soon as she was convinced I wasn't picking up whores, I settled in to enjoy the show.

You can let people tell you what they want about “not seeing color”, but it's bullshit. If the demographic needle tacks too deep into one wedge of the color wheel, the other spokes notice (I didn't misspell spooks or spicks. I was making a wheel analogy). Take it from a guy who dated a Colombian. I sat in a room full of expired passports more than once. Shouts out to SABADO GIGANTE. This time, it was like a piece of black construction paper with two drops of WITE OUT. One would be me. The other was one of the bartenders.

Artifacts opened the night, performing “Wrong Side of the Tracks” amongst others. Pretty good stuff. Check out TAME ONE. He was half of the duo and ,though I'm sure El Da Sensei is doing fine, TAME is the shit. Still.

And then Common came on stage...

I only knew him from “Breaker 1-9” and “I Used to Love Her”. The latter was on heavy rotation. A clever metaphor and the first talk of Common (formerly of Common Sense fame) being a conscious rapper. Put in the same stable as Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul. I didn't see the comparison.

He did a song. I don't remember which. Then he started talking to the crowd:

“I got a hotel room here and needed a couple extra towels, so I went downstairs. When I got to the lobby, there were two WHITE PEOPLE (you see this coming?) watching the OJ trial on COURT TV. They didn't know I was there. One turned to the other and said:

'They should just kill that nigger.'

YOU KNOW I WANTED TO FUCK 'EM UP, RIGHT!?! But I didn't... You know why? 'Cause white people...they're just LIKE that...”

You could've heard a pin drop. The club was filled to capacity and they all turned to look at me. Not US. ME. The bartender saw it coming and fucking bounced. So much for sticking together. I stood as an unwilling representative of all things cracker. Shit was tense.

But Organized Konfusion hadn't gone on yet, Tony was elsewhere, and I wasn't running. Spending the rest of the show with hateful eyes on me, I watched Phaorohe Monche ignore the first stage call because he was too busy sucking down Heinekens at the bar, women clinging to his winter coat (and ski goggles) which he was still wearing. He stumbled onto the stage and performed perfectly, not missing a syllable, even as he laid on his back, rhyming while kicking his feet in the air like an overturned turtle.

The Beatnuts headlined, and though I specifically remember the crowd missing a cue (something about 'eating' your mother), they had a spectacular set. Ahhh...memories.

But I'm getting off track. I don't care what the President says. Common's a jackass. TAKE THAT!

Hallmark has nothing on me

I can still write a pretty mean "I'd like to have sex with you and maybe bed your roommate if we haven't run out of wine coolers and I don't have to be at work early tomorrow" card.

The Great American Sellout

I've been thinking about how tacky it would look if I monetized BULBSHANK. I decided that 1) it would look pretty tacky and 2) I don't care. Every once in a while, you may find a link on something I brought up. Use it as a footnote, a point of reference if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about. If you happen to buy something while you're there, BULBSHANK gets a piece of the pie. Who doesn't love pie?

If I find out you bought something without going through me first, I'll write bad things about you. About you and your mom and maybe the family dog sharing a tequila-fueled weekend of debauchery in Tijuana. Trust me. I'll do it.

JUDGMENT(sic) DAY

You thought I wouldn't jump in? The amusing spelling error was pointed out to me AFTER I drew this. Bummer.

Russell the Barbarian

I ate anything I wanted. Laid around on the comfiest of couches. Smoked more packs of cigarettes than Dean Martin and Joe Camel combined. For YEARS.

Then, out of the blue, I decided to exercise and shun the extra cheese option when it was available. At an age when people my age are starting to look their age, I can laugh heartily. For because I was a gluttonous, lazy kid, I'm now in the best shape of my life. SUCKERS!!!!

Make a Wish and Blow Me

I hate my birthday. And not for the older thing. We're all gonna die. Yeah, sweetheart, you too. (Sorry. Someone go console that person.) My hair's falling out in a light but persistent frequency, letting me know I'll be bald by 40. No sore feelings there either. Sean Connery was named MAN OF THE YEAR. Out of principal, I don't bitch about Social Security because of him. Or is it desperation? As long as there's pudrow* involved...

The HAPPY BIRTHDAY tune irritates me like a Black Eyed Peas song (with similar repetition issues). I feel sorry for any waitstaff forced to participate on a  crummy waged barbershop quartet just so some asshole can get a free sundae. When I require the attention of strangers to celebrate my birth, I'm not worth the candles on my cake.

As a child of lower income, birthdays were a reaffirmation of poverty. Kids were getting full sets of diecast TRANSFORMERS at twenty to thirty bucks each, HE-MANs at five. Way over budget in my world. G.I. Joe's were $2.99 each, and on special occasions, I might get two along with a pair of sneakers to replace the foot puppets flapping on my feet.

A McDonald's Party was the holy grail of birthdays. I wanted one so fucking bad. I'm sure I kid-hinted at it, all subtle-like: "You know, I bet those cakes taste just as good as the burgers. Tommy had a party. I heard it was really cool..." My mother found out they sold the McDonald's cake with the sugar mold topper without having to commit to the party. She bought one and involved my also unhip teacher at school to agree to an in-class birthday party. As they handed out slices, I could feel the children, piecing together the clues, knowing why I didn't have it at Ronald's castle. My parents were broke. And the splurge to keep up with the Joneses only confirmed it.

One year, I got a blank VHS tape so I could tape my favorite TV shows. It was a Monday, and I recorded that night's ALF. A riveting episode about time shares and free toasters. My father had his first stroke while he was outside fixing the family car. I woke up the next morning, heard the news, and felt the extra year, full force, putting its foot in my ass. I've tried to avoid birthday spankings ever since.

*PUDROW: a derivative of the word "pussy". Welcome to the first BULBSHANK footnote.

Shopping for Women's Shoes

If I were a chick, I'd totally wear these. They're like Chuck Taylors with heels.

Capitalism Part Three

I must admit, the main reason I did this was so I could tag it with ARIZONA WALL MEXICAN KANGAROO. It's the 'To Catch a Predator' in me.

Capitalism Part Two

I haven't seen a human cannonball in a while. Perhaps I could peruse Craigslist, pick up some of those cannons cheap, and sell them at a huge profit before the Department of Immigration knows what hit 'em. Which would probably be a flying Mexican. Safety net not included.