Ed's Dead, Baby... Ed's Dead

I'd like to announce how shocked I was to hear of Ed's recent Bus accident, and more distressingly, the fact that he will no longer be able to post here at The Handsomes. I anticipate that we will have to search for many, many minutes before a qualified candidate is found to replace him.

But rather than dwell on the negative, I thought I'd share a few of the happier moments Ed and I enjoyed while he was mobile. For instance, there was that time the two of us got drunk on a bottle of Wild Turkey and then wandered to the dog park! We stumbled around the place like... like a couple of drunken kids on Easter morning! No, not in search of eggs, but dog shit--dog shit we planned to put in paper bags, which would then be set ablaze on people's porches. Unfortunately, we didn't have any paper bags, so as I rested on one of the park's benches, Ed scurried about filling his pockets with excrement. Man, we had some laughs that day.

And then there was the time Ed called me up one night in a panic:

*Ring-a-ling-a-ding*

"Hello?"
"Wino!! Shit, I'm so glad you're there, man!" Ed said between sobs.
"Ed--what's shakin'?"
"Wino, I fucked up, man--I fucked up bad! It's over! It's fuckin OVER for me!"
"--ED! Relax, dude--just tell Wino what's wrong, so he can get to making it all better."


Ed: "I told you never to look me in the eyes!! Argghh!!!"

Ed then related how he had accidently killed a Malaysian prostitute and that he needed help disposing of the body. Oh, Ed. What a character! I quickly devised a scheme to harvest the whore's organs, put them on ice and then sell them back to her own people through the black market. She netted us thirty-thousand dollars by the end of that day, and we both purchased luxury hot tubs for our houses with the money earned!

The Demise of Ed

I am sad to report that Ed's short-lived contributions to this blog are at an end.

What happened was, he was getting himself a coffee the other day, and crossed the street against the light. He was tragically run over by a bus.

Ed was dragged about thirty feet before the driver could stop. Both of Ed's hands were crushed into pancakes under the wheels, and doctors were forced to amputate one of his legs below the knee. In addition, the skin of 90% of his face was erased on the pavement. It was an uncomfortable hospital visit:

Ed: Thanks for coming man...why are all these bandages on my face?

Me: (looking at the ceiling) Uh, I dunno. I guess you've got some bruises or something.

Ed: These bastards, they won't give me any pain meds. The doctor gave me Ibuprofen. What the fuck?!

Me: Demand the real meds. You lost a leg, for Crissake.

Ed: The way things are going for me, they'd just inject it in my butt anyway. The humiliation.

Me: That's a good thing, you get up to 10 times the benefit from rectal administration.

Ed: Yeah, that's what I told her!

At this point, Ed gamely attempted to give me a tough-guy "thumbs-up" but couldn't do it. I think he started to cry a bit, but I couldn't really tell, with the bandages and all.

Anyway, before he passed out from the pain and everything, Ed told me that he didn't think he could contribute to the blog anymore, not unless his rehab goes a lot better than doctors are predicting. He has to do a lot of exercises and things with his hands, once all the bones heal and the pins are removed.

"With these casts on my hands...well, it's going to feel like a stranger, eh?" Ed said.

Nobody is stranger than you, Ed. Good luck.

Blogging

Gentlemen, I am done with public blogging (again).

Jesus Is Magic

Watch Sarah Silverman's movie trailer. It will probably be more funny if the Pope was sitting on your lap at the same time. Or any time, really. He could call you Santa and say what he wants for Christmas. Probably, he wants your youthful blood. He is becoming a bit of a Montgomery Burns, is he not? Sorry, Pope.

Huge horns

It was with great pleasure that I informed Argus that a "Spanish team found a direct link between the length and complexity of a buck's horns and the quality of its sperm."

As dominant males in our locale, we often discuss our height and strength advantages over the lower-status men. This may or may not involve routine bullying: Systematic yet unpredictable beatings which remind the boys who the men are.

Enough prison stories, back to the science. The Spanish researchers are only proving what evolutionary psychologists have been saying for years. Women are attracted to success, so men keen on passing on their DNA should display their potency.

And now you know why we put product in our hair.

The Nurse

Imagine you're sick with a dreadful cold and you just can't seem take good care of yourself. Your nose is constantly runny, your throat feels like it's on fire, and you're coughing like there's no tomorrow.

Then someone tells you that they are willing to provide a nurse who will care for your every need. She will bring you hot soups, fluff your pillows, soothingly rub your back and make your life much easier!

The only catch is that you are not to look at this nurse--not even a glance. You are required to keep your eyes shut whenever she is around.

After a while, you feel a lot better. This nurse sure has worked her magic! You come to the conclusion that you've just got to take a quick look at her and thank her for all she has done.

The next time the nurse enters your room, you open your eyes and are horrified to see that the nurse is a corpse nurse! That's right! Her flesh is all green and black and her eyes are rotted and sunken. What a horrible sight!

Man, I wish I hadn't looked at that nurse!

The Dung Beetle

The Dung Beetle has got to be one of the most fascinating insects! When it comes across the feces of other animals, it collects and rolls it into a ball. After doing so, it will lay its eggs within the dung and hide it. When the eggs hatch, the ball of shit becomes their food source. Talk about resourceful!

It's got to make you wonder if the Dung Beetle takes any abuse from his insect buddies, though.

Grasshopper: Hey, there goes Steve! What are you doing, you crazy fuck!?
Ant: It looks like he's...Nah, it couldn't be.
Grasshopper: No, I think he's really--he is! He's rolling a giant ball of shit!
Ant: I think I'm gonna puke!
Grasshopper: Steve, you lunatic!
Steve: Shut up, guys! You're just jealous!

The Inappropriate Office Chick

I'm talking with one of my friends at work, visiting with her in her cubicle, and then in she comes.

The Drama Queen.

Every day, she has a new helping of woe to heap on the unsuspecting. She'll have an anecdote about her criminally-inclined ex-boyfriend to relate, or maybe something horrible and expensive that happened to her car over the weekend. But her favourite are immature gross-out stories, designed to shock or offend her audience. In her mind, talking about pus, ingrown hairs, fatness, mucus...anything that's exuded by her body is a way of expressing her unique and vibrant nature. This woman, she has two kids, and it's like she wears some kind of "run away from me" pheremone with her layers of whorish makeup. Anytime I see her coming, I pretend I forgot something in my office, and spin on my heel to go in the other direction. I don't care how obvious I look, life is just too damn short.

I'm trapped though, now, in my friend's office when she barges in. It's nothing to her to interrupt a conversation.

"Do you see a lump on my lip?" she asks my friend. She's poking her tongue around behind her lip, like a dog trying to get at a lump of peanut butter stuck to its soft palette. Lap, lap, lap.

"No, I don't," sighs my friend. Their offices are side-by-side, so interactions like these happen every day.

"I'm wondering if I'm growing a tumour or something. You think that's possible?" she says. Her belly pooches over her too-tight pants.

"I guess anything's possible, I mean, sure...there's mouth cancer," my friend says. She's looking at her through half-lidded eyes.

"Maybe that's it...I'm getting mouth cancer."

I'm suddenly inspired. "I bet it's herpes," I say.

One thing about people who think they're quirky and cool - for some reason, it's always okay to unleash the zingers on them. Beats me why.

The black bird

Writing is like making music. You can be a solo artist, or join a band. Blogging is like being an independent artist, putting out free MP3s to create a buzz. You brag about how you will never sell-out, because you are in it for the love, not the money.

And you will not have to sell-out, because nobody will ever offer you that money. Why should they? The music is cheap, unoriginal. The blogs are insular, often completely boring. Either they strike a chord with you, to keep the music theme, or they offend you so greatly that you return every day to see the next outrage.

This entry is introspective. A blog entry about blogs, how unoriginal. Yet, I am not going to punish myself for it. For the first time, I am writing with others. Imagine us in a basement. We know how to play our instruments fairly well. We may have different musical influences, but we like each other enough to want to jam.

And so I sit at the keyboard, feeling my shoulder strengthen, trying to remember the brilliant ideas that I had just before I fell asleep. If only I had written them down, they were such good concepts!

Here is a question for you. No, let us make it a scenario. You are an aspiring writer. Your friends and lovers (all of them) say that you have talent. You can spell. You are at home say, recovering from a devastating shoulder injury, and you read The Maltese Falcon. Hammett's writing, his story-telling, is pure and terrifying. Do you feel encouraged to continue writing, or do you feel as though you can never write something as good as this story, and so give up forever?

Separated from the one I love

Due to the March Break, my bus to work has changed its schedule. Why a bus that runs specifically to haul suburbanites to the downtown core would change to accommodate a reduction in high school student ridership, I do not know.

I was in a hurry and kept my eyes on the empty bus stop ahead of me. Nobody there, did the bus already come? Do I have a 45 minute wait ahead of me? Perhaps the bus -- OH FUCK! -- and I slipped on a patch of ice. I have not slipped on ice in years, and had forgotten the golden rule: Just fall and take it. Sadly, I thrust out my right arm to break the fall. It lodged itself into a solid snowbank. Instead of breaking my fall, my body broke. I heard tearing.

Rolling in agony on the ground, a witness to the entire scene drove off. Asshole. Using my three functioning limbs (I no longer count my "third leg" as a limb), I primitively stumbled home. Once in my apartment, I tried to assess the damage. Unfortunately, I was in too much pain to do so. I called my boss, left a message summarizing the morning's events. I called a co-worker and left a message, in case my boss was absent. It was now 6:50AM, you were probably still in bed, reader.

I called a few family members, did not get answers. I called a clinic, and expressed relief to the woman who answered the phone. She said that the office was open, but a doctor would not be present until 9AM. "I think I separated my shoulder," I plead. She coldly replied, "Then, sir, you should go to the hospital." Not a bad idea.

I called a cab, got into the cab, and experienced every pot hole my city had to offer. Screaming in anguish, my driver apologized and slowed the cab down. Other drivers angrily honked at us as they sped past. Assholes! Kill you!

Upon entering the emergency ward, or ER as you American readers might call it, I found a chair to grimace in. I only waited a couple of minutes. O! how great our medical system is in Canada! The receptionist asked me a few questions and arranged for a man dressed in green to put me in a wheelchair. The wheelchair took me down a hall to a stretcher. The man helped me take my dress shirt off. He cut my undershirt off. Then I saw what had happened to me.

My shoulder, upon first glance, was a sharp point. The arm was several inches below where it was supposed to be. I looked at the green guy, and said, "Oh, this is bad." He deadpanned, "It's not that bad." He is being paid to lie to me like that.

Blah blah blah, it took another seven hours for me to get out of the hospital.

Now I am typing this entry for your reading pleasure. These events occurred yesterday. Yes, this is how tough I am. I have wrenched my arm towards the keyboard so that I could painfully type this message to you. Just another reminder of how awesome I am!

The Work Blanket

*
A woman of insufferable attitude here at work has recently taken to wearing a blanket around the office. It actually looks like a giant, plaid scarf, but I just like saying that word. Blanket.

Me: Hey. Why are you wearing that blanket?
Her: Tee-hee! It's not a blanket, it's a wrap! Tee, hee!
Me: (growing irritated already): Okay then, why are you wearing a fucking wrap? What are you, a burrito?
Her: Tee-hee! No, silly! I'm just cold!
Me: It's 24 degrees in here. I'm sweating, it's so hot, you stupid bimbo.
Her: Well, I'M cold! Tee-hee!
Me: You're retarded.

Turns out she's pregnant.

I suspect the Work Blanket is all about concealing her growing fatness, and has nothing to do with specious reasoning like, "I'm cold." I know I'm right, because guys like me are right about everything.

*

Bathroom behaviour (male)

Argus is not the only one obsessed with bathroom etiquette. Bob has posted another entry regarding the sights and sounds of the office restroom.

My day off from the office saw me delight in the fortress of solitude that is my bathroom. And by delight, I mean that I used it as little as possible. Handsome men have no need to fuss in the washroom; we awake, adventure and slumber in a natural state of excellence.

*

Two invitations have been accepted. We may be hiring more writers, I have not decided to what limits this monster will grow. And yes, we all need limits. Some of you ladies need restraints, from the way you act around us. For shame!

Handsome powers for the cause of Good

Years have passed since I last operated a web log. Emails by the dozens have landed into my inbox, demanding that I create something new. They wanted me to create a place where I could express myself, unfettered by my nation's laws against stupidity and the asinine. I knew that in my mentally weakened state, I could not undertake this mission alone.

The concept is simple: Assemble a writing team of the most handsome men in the four corners of the world, nay, the universe. Together, we would use our good-looks and witty banter to save bored websurfers from having to read the blogs of the ugly, lame, impoverished, and decrepit.

The first invitations go out tonight. You should bookmark this page now, before it becomes so popular that we cause the melting of each and every server that Google can provide.