My friends

So, a while back I went to Gosho of Japan for dinner. This is one of those places where the oriental guys do all sorts of Kung Fu kinda crap while they make your food. The thing is, last time I was there, I didn’t get a real oriental guy. They fucking jipped me on my Japanese dude! Seriously, they must have thought they could hire someone who was not Japanese and no one would know the difference because I got a fucking Hispanic guy who just squinted a lot and talked in a shitty oriental accent.

“Ok Juan, here’s the deal- white people don’t know shit about other cultures, so as long as you don’t open more than 30 percent of your eyes and pronounce all your “L’s” as “R’s” none of those stupid ass crackers out there will know the difference. Here’s your ‘Takashi’ nametag, now get out there and bounce some pepper shakers or it’s back to Taco Bell with your ass”

Ok, yeah, I’m a honkey and all, but I still know when someone tries to pull a fast one on me and…yeah…

Also, it’s official! Zachary Byron Helm has now been officially recognized by the brothers. While stopped at a light the other day a lowrider pulls up next to me while I am in the hearse and this black guy leans out and goes-

“Damn nigger! That shit’s TIGHT!” and drives off.

Hell yes, that is right, I have officially been “Niggered”! It’s like being knighted, but unlike Elton John I am not some pussy. My new neighborhood rocks!

At any rate, I started thinking about depression the other day. You wouldn't know it by looking at me, but I usually never get sad. Depression is not my thing. Sure, I might bitch non-stop, point out consistent faults in everything around me, and hurl power tools through drywall while screaming the longest, most grammatically complex strings of profanities you have ever heard, but moping around like a bitch is not my thing. I have found that anger is better than sadness any day of the week if for nothing else than the fact that people who are sad tend to write suckass poetry and listen to the Smiths. They also post bad Live Journal entries with mopey little avatars and sad 'smiley faces'.

At any rate, there are a very few things I find sad on this planet, but when I find something that is so overwhelmingly bereft of joy and steeped in agony that it strikes me as sad, I can't help but laugh my ass off at it. That being said, here is a short list of tragic yet hilarious things that I like to think about to cheer myself up when I think my own life sucks.

1. Christmas at the Dollar Store - One time I was looking for some chains and I figured why the hell not check the Dollar Store out. The Dollar Store is just sad on so many levels, I mean El Numero Uno in the sad as fuck category are the cashiers.

Every time I go in there, I have to wait in some long ass line for one of two reasons, either someone is buying like $1,400 worth of shit that isn't worth a dollar in an effort to stockpile supplies for a really cheap and shitty apocalypse featuring a fuck ton of canned corn and grape cola, or the cashier is currently having a great deal of difficulty grasping the complex mathematical concept of counting in multiples of ONE. Seriously, it's a fucking dollar store you retarded toaster screwers, how hard can it be? At what point in the process of counting to ten is Euclidian geometry part of the equation? I swear, I don't think they even have employment application forms there. Here is what I imagine the prescreening process goes like-

They take 10 of the people who want a job there and place them in a room with one of those boxes with different shapes cut out, you know, the one with like a star cutout, and a square cutout, etc, and then they have wooden blocks cut out in corresponding shapes that you are supposed to slot up in the correct holes. They tell everyone to do the best they can with the exercise and let them have at it. Anyone who gets the shapes in the right hole is dismissed and told to go try working at Pizza Hut. People who try to cram the square into the circle hole are given management positions, and the ones who try to stuff the little block of wood shaped like a star up their dumper are given cashier positions.

At any rate, the whole point of this was that while I was there it was right before Christmas, and you could tell, you could JUST KNOW that some of these people were doing their Christmas shopping there, which is sad. Really, really sad. I imagined kids getting the ghetto version of Barbie dolls, the ones that are like 4 pieces total with hair that is all one piece, and are made out of plastic that is all warped and has been proven in laboratory tests to cause sterility in cockroaches. I get all sad for a minute but then I remember that it is not ME getting one of those jank ass Barbies and I just laugh like a fool.

The other great irony is that these places retail Faygo cola at $1.00, which anyone from the East Coast will tell you is a ripoff as you can buy a 3 liter for like $0.66. But that is just stupid and not really all that sad.

Next on the big old list of sad ass is…

2. The toy section at Goodwill - Ok, first off, try going into a Goodwill store and standing around for an hour WITHOUT leaving with the vague sensation that you need a shower and that you may never, ever smile again. Visiting Goodwill is roughly on par with giving road head to a Dementor from the Harry Potter movies in terms of depressing soul/cock sucking experiences.

From there you are going to want to head over to the toy section which is a smorgasbord of depressing toys that all look like they served several tours of duty as butt wipers for the Israeli army before being turned into Goodwill awaits you. Anything motorized will NOT have the little door that keeps the batteries in and the 4 piece ghetto Barbies that someone bought at the Dollar Store will have since lost their heads. I personally recommend that you look for "Shitty Bunny", he is my favorite. Don't ask me why, but EVERY secondhand store has a stuffed rabbit that is all stained, whose ears are drooping like the flaccid genitals of a well rogered porn actor, and smells like dandruff. I think that there is some sort of federal law requiring Goodwill to have one of these in stock at every location and if they ever find out your GW has lapsed on it, they bulldoze your shitheap of a store and put an Old Navy and a Starbucks over it. Anyway, I call him "Shitty Bunny".

Take him out of the toy bin, which is always on the floor so as to accumulate even more dirt, and place him on the shelf in front of you. Stare at him. Get to know "Shitty Bunny". Now imagine a kid whose life sucks so bad that they actually WANT "Shitty Bunny" and does not run screaming to the nearest toilet to drown themselves at the sight of him. Imagine said kid cradling "Shitty Bunny" in loving arms, happy to have at least this one good friend. Now imagine the day that "Shitty Bunny" finally bursts his last remaining stitch, spilling his vital, well soiled filling out onto the carpet and said child weeping as mom's new boyfriend who wears a nasty wifebeater 24-7 but rarely wears pants throws good old S.B. into the trash and the little kid watching the next day as the garbage truck hauls him to the city dump.

That is a sad, SAD scenario folks, and the saddest part is that you know, you just KNOW that things like that are going on in the world today.

Could it ever get worse than "Shitty Bunny"? You bet your sweet ass it could. That is the magical thing about life, no matter how much of a suck hole your life has become, it is never so bad that it could not get worse. You know that saying "Nowhere to go but up"? Well it's total and complete bullshit guys, things can ALWAYS get worse for you, and here is one great example.

3. Big Ass Documentary. No, I am not talking about a documentary of epic proportions here…just hear me out…

So you are sitting at home one day watching CNN and one of those news reports comes on that is talking about how Americans all have gigantic asses, bigger than anyplace else in the world. You know how they always show footage of someone with a huge ass walking down a crowded street but they only show their butt and not any of the top part of their bodies? Imagine you are watching and you see that someone has the exact same pair of pants as you! Wow! What are the odds of that? Hey, that looks like the mall you usually go to as well! Weird! Hey, lookit that, they had an Orange Julias cup with them too, just like the last time...you...went...to the mall.

Aw SHIT! You're ass was used as file footage to illustrate the point that some people have enormously huge asses! FUCK ME! Last time you go out into public without wearing a trench coat!

Ok, and let me emphatically state that I have NOTHING against big asses. I am PRO big ass. I am so into commodious posterior that I make Sir Mixalot look like a mere admirer of booty when compared to my vast appreciation of ass. I just wanted to get that out before people go nuts accusing me of being anti-bigass or something. Comparing me to Hitler Of The Asses and shit. I swear.

Well fuck, I can’t think of how to end this one. Job hunting today, so huzzah for smiling like a bitch while dumbass human resources ho’s get all up my ass about what I think constitutes “world class customer service” and shit.

Z-Dogg out*