A Thanksgiving call to mom.

Alright, so I didn't get out to see mom for Thanksgiving again this year, and she'd been leavin' all kinds of messages on my cell about not callin' her back, so I blocked out a good hour of time, fired up some calamari with mustard aioli, and cracked some Moët. Moms should be treated to the finest of phone calls, and if that means that the caller is lavishing calamari and bubbles on himself, then I think that just makes all kinds of sense. Getting a phone call from me when I'm munchin' and sippin' on the crispy brut is like talking to an enlivened spirit from Silk Dimension 9. You get better energy.

So, I have a few bites of the hot crunchy squid and throw back a glass, just to fortify myself for the long call ahead, and then I dial her up on the speakerphone. While it rings I trundle over to the bed and get my tray all balanced on a pillow that puts it at a comfortable level. It rings a few times, so I have the chance to put a few pieces in the old boca, which makes me cough a little. She picks up sort of outta breath, and seems kind of not herself:

MOM: (real strict) Hello. Hello who is calling please.

RAY: ACK HACK KHACKH ACK HACHK

MOM: Raymond! Drink a glass of water!

RAY: HRRRHKAKH HRKHAKH HRRR-R-R-R-RHR-HR-HR

MOM: RAYMOND!

RAY: (tries to slug from Moët bottle, which is a mistake, as it explodes out of my nostrils and dribbles from my lower eyelids) SQWRF! PFFFFFFFFFFPFFFFPFTTTHTTTH

MOM: Raymond, can you hear me? Are you drinking?

RAY: No, mom! No drinking here!

MOM: Is that Coca Cola, then? You always did drink Coca Cola a bit too fast. It will rot your teeth, Raymond.

RAY: It's diet, mom! It's diet! [places hand over phone and vomits tiny piece of calamari that has a huge piece of dried chili pepper flake stuck to it] [slaps chest twice] So how you been!

MOM: Are you okay?

RAY: Yeah, mom! But how YOU doin'?

MOM: I've left you seven messages, Raymond!

RAY: Aww, mom! We gon' talk about that or are we gonna talk?

MOM: I just don't see why you can't call your mother back.

RAY: I am callin' you back! Right now!

MOM: Why didn't you return my calls?

RAY: I am, right now!

MOM: I called you seven times!

RAY: And I'm returning those calls!

MOM: I don't see why you can't call your mother back.

RAY: I. AM. ON. THE. PHONE. WITH. YOU. RIGHT. NOW.

MOM: I just wish you'd call me back, is all.

RAY: Well, maybe I'll call you sometime!

MOM: Raymond! Did you just sass me?

RAY: No, mom.

MOM: Good.

RAY: Sorry, mom.

MOM: Good boy, Raymond.

RAY: Did you have a good Thanksgiving?

[seventeen hours of Mom talking]

RAY: Uh huh. Well, I guess we all hope that the troops get home safe.

MOM: That's right. Now, I have to get back to Circle.

RAY: What's Circle?

MOM: It's my workout gym. A bunch of ladies my age do a weights-circuit. It's all planned out.

RAY: So long as you enjoy it!

MOM: I love you, Raymond. Thank you for calling.

RAY: I love —

MOM: [click]

Thanksgiving wishes to all my chochachos.

Hey, all. Yeah, this is Ray, here. I got much good wishes for you all this year. I myself got much to be thankful for, including another year of good health, good business, and finally some progress with Boliqua, that bubble butt Haitian on from down Rodrigo's. We had a little chat this weekend and it turns out she told me her favorite local restaurant, which is Celia's, which is a pretty ass-crap kind of a local mini-chain with way too much melted cheese on everything, but I guess that's what powers the bubble butt. So I'm gonna hop on through there during happy hours and see if I can't catch some of that tail. Thank you, Celia's over-portioned cheese. Thank you for the bubble butt.

Thank you also to the guy who takes away my trash every week. I know you don't care, but I'm glad you do a nice job of it, and shake the can extra hard to make sure that all the Starbucks cups that are stuck to Taco Bell burrito wrappers that are stuck to the inside of the can, still come out. You are good at your job, man. That is rare these days.

Thank you to people who took the time to make old movies. I saw Sunset Boulevard on AMC last weekend, and it was waaay good. It was like an equation. You could see the stuff on the left of the equals sign start to pile up, and then the equals sign happened in this real elegant snap of the fingers, and then the stuff on the right of the equation started to add up. Is that a good way to describe a movie? As a science problem? Probably not. End of thought. Dash this thought to the ground. The option is yours!

I am thankful for the conditions that make life possible.

Thanks to the dude who delivered my pizza tonight. You came fast, and remembered that I like an extra package of hot pepper flakes. You were polite, and seemed like you were a PhD student during the day. I'm guessing Operations Research, by the cuffed corduroy pants.

Do you have a list of things you are thankful for? Honestly, you should print one out. It'll surprise you how little time you spend thinking of things like this. Here is a handy template you can copy and paste:

1. _______________________
2. _______________________
3. _______________________
4. _______________________
5. _______________________

PhunkyListMaker template © 2005 Ray Smuckles

Happy Thanksgiving, fat old world!

Friday party, naturally!

Man, you know how this crazy big world is. At all times, while it spins, there are dudes dotting the surface of it, completely doing the best possible job at their respective tasks. There are always dudes out there who are giving not just 110%, but, at times, 100% factorial (do not challenge me at math concepts, I have Toilet Tim's Big Book of Manageable Math, and I am owning at all ways of thinking about math).

Tonight, while planning tomorrow's week-ender bash, I am one of those dudes. Sure, a man is probably sitting in a computer laboratory somewhere in Wisconsin, completely jazzed that he figured out how to create a computer code that automatically reduces the amount of computer code it takes for itself to exist, but my party plans are also humongous.

For starters, I have Zen-embraced the basic idea of the party. In the past, I have just made available a lot of things that partygoers like to enjoy, but I have not given any deeper thought as to the complex reasons why they enjoy them. Sure, if you put a drop of blood on a microscope slide and then on Friday evening around eight o'clock you put a drop of Bombay onto that blood, the blood will be observed as having more fun, and listening to Aretha Franklin and The O'Jays, but there is more to it than that. There is also the romance of the animal brain. Stay with me, people.

A man goes to a party, sure, he likes that he can put on the booze bag and eat snacks of delicate cheeses and teriyaki drumettes. But WHY does he do that? It's because he wants to find a lady (or, in certain cases, a playful dude). Now, here's where Ray gets a bit outta' town: why does he want to find someone?

It's life, man. And I don't mean life how like a distraught lady takes over her dead dad's established chimney sweep company and it goes bust because all his old-school customers don't think a female can do that kind of work. I mean life like this basic signal in all our cells that says

GO

GO ON

GO

MORE FUN

GO

I guess that's my way of sayin' that life wants more life. Some old grumpies use the sentence, "misery loves company," but that ain't at all what I mean. I go against that sentence. Life, me, wants to see life, you, havin' some fun. Life wants to share. Sharing is the essence of life. A party is the essence of sharing. Hello. Come to my party. I have a lot of activities where life can seek itself out. I have trampoline Twister, which really blurs the lines between contact that was intended and contact that may only have just been subconsciously wanted. I also have a crepe bar, and a place where you can change into your swimsuit such that only your head and legs show, and in the middle is a 36" plasma TV showing old workout videos from the 1950s.

You know what? I forgot Little Susan's. That was my Lazy Susan-themed restaurant where each table...

You know what? I'm high. I'm not kidding. This may be the first time I ever broke into a thought to relate my situation, but I am high. I've got like six guys down in the living room all completely amped up to watch Braveheart, and it looks like I typed over seven pages about some kind of idea about a great party, but I am high and I just don't care. Sorry if you think this is bad or low to abandon a thought like this. I kind of see it as convenient, and easy. Sure, there will be a party tomorrow, and everyone will have a great time. It only takes me like half an hour to get that stuff together, including twenty minutes where I read magazines on my bed. Oh, man. I really need to get downstairs. What if everybody's mad at me? What if they LEFT? Crap!

I got a cold, but I did not get bubble butt. Unfair.

Man, I just got me the nastiest old head cold this fall season. I think it came from usin' the vanilla powder salt-shaker they got on the Starbucks straw/napkin/spices counter. I think a dude sneezed on that, and got his infected snot molecules down in through the holes, into the vanilla powder, where his germs could roam free, thrivin' on simple sugar structures. I ain't never again goin' on into that place and usin' their publicly shared ingredients. My nose is all swole up like the ass of a baboon watchin' his first stag loop, and it itches to all hell besides. Man, SCREW that I got to feel this crappy! My eyes also are itchy.

So, what's new with me...I didn't get any play at my Halloween party, mainly because Boliqua didn't show up. There were some skinny chaliquas down from the Stila counter tryin' to mack it up, but I was holdin' out for the bubble butt. When, by 1am, the bubble butt did not arrive, I just laid into the gimlets with my fellows and ended up doing a brief Google search for "bubble butt" before hitting the hay. (I know that I tried to do a Google search for "bubble butt" before turning in because the next morning my browser was still open and it turns out I had typed in "bubble boot," which had resulted in lots of pictures of Popeye's shoe and the shoes of other characters like Popeye).