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The Book of Despair

  1. In the beginning there was the Uncaring Universe. And the Uncaring Universe did not give a shit about you or your problems
  2. And, behold, the Uncaring Universe did look upon the vastness of space and say “that’s a lot of room. I should put some shit there”. And the Uncaring Universe did shit upon the space.
  3. And when the Uncaring Universe had shat upon space, it gazed upon its shit and it did say “Meh. Good enough”
  4. The Uncaring Universe did gaze upon its shit and it saw that one of the pieces was a little less shitty than the rest.  And it said “I should do something about that.  I will create Man and place him upon the less shitty world that he may cause the world to be more shitty.
  5. And the Uncaring Universe did place man upon the face of the Earth that he may go forward, multiply, and cause The Earth to be shitty.
  6. And shit happened
  7. And one day Ian the Campbell was born.  And behold, that was bullshit, because that was not his real name
  8. And Ian, whose name was bullshit, did grow into a man
  9. And Ian, whose name was bullshit, did wax wise in the sophistry of men.
  10. And behold, Ian, whose name was bullshit, did inflict his sophistry upon willing readers
  11. And thus he spake unto his willing readers
  12. “Willing Readers, this I desirest thou to know:
  13. People Suck
  14. When someone you’re not related to welcomes you to “The Family”, turn and run like a son of a bitch
  15. Whenever a manager uses the word “proactive” in a sentence, you know something is about to suck
  16. If wishes were fishes we’d have some to fry
    1. (Corollary)  Actually, If wishes were fishes, they’d probably all get that disease where the fish literally puke their guts out and die and float to the top and all the other fish would devour the dead fish–or wish–in an orgy of cannibalism.
  17. If someone preemptively assures you that something isn’t going to happen, you can count on it happening
    1. (Corollary) If someone preemptively assures you of anything, then they are full of shit.
    2. (Corollary) If someone preemptively asserts that they are or are not something then they probably are, or are not exactly that thing
  18. The bigger the pickup, the bigger the asshole at the wheel
    1. (Corollary) The bigger the pickup, the smaller the penis on the asshole at the wheel
  19. Suicidal teenagers are fucking annoying
  20. Teenagers who think they are Vampires are fucking annoying
  21. Teenagers are fucking annoying
  22. They have mobile phone coverage on the Summit of Mt. Everest now.  Climbing Mt. Everest has jumped the shark.
    1. (Corollary) The phrase “jumped the shark” has, itself, jumped the shark
  23. The driver’s side windshield wiper will always wear out before the passenger-side
  24. The shitty-ness of the music is directly related to the loudness to which a teenager will feel compelled to turn up the volume
  25. The internet is full of shit
    1. (Corollary) People on the internet tend to be full of shit as well
    2. (Corollary) …and they don’t know when to sit down and shut up
  26. Everyone thinks that no-one loves music as much as they do
  27. When picking up a take-out order from a restaurant, the special order you have to double-check before leaving will be at the very bottom of the bag
  28. In the parking lot, that stupid person meandering aimlessly in front of you will be parked right next to you
    1. (Corollary) They will also drive the way they walk
  29. Whenever someone comes into your office, the most embarrassing song on your your iPod will come up in shuffle.  No matter how many un-embarrassing songs there are to choose from.
  30. Nothing profound has ever been said on Twitter
  31. Nothing profound will ever be said on Twitter
  32. The further away from New York you were on 9/11/2001, the more likely you are to wax rhapsodic with affected pathos about The World Trade center on any given 9/11.
  33. Everybody thinks that they are more like grumpy cat than anybody else
  34. Wikipedia:  A million nerds can’t be wrong
  35. Unless they’re talking about women, in which case a million nerds are always wrong
  36. All internet comments sections are headed to the same destination:  a huge dick-waving contest.
  37. You will hit every light green when you just need 10 more seconds to finish surreptitiously sending that text message from your car.
  38. Everybody thinks the drivers in their town are worse than everybody else’s town.  The truth is everybody is a bad driver everywhere.
  39. Jaywalkers will always run across the two lanes you’re not in, then walk across the lane you are in
  40. Any person who declares that they were educated at “the school of hard knocks” or “the school of life” on Facebook is 99% likely to not only be catastrophically ignorant, but also noisily proud of their own ignorance.

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Home Repairs Using Four Letter Words Alone

Home Repairs Using Four Letter Words Alone

By on June 15, 2018 in Home is Where Our Beds and TV Are, Kid Stuff

Action Shot of Me Fixing the Door.

Last year, when we moved into our new house, we discovered that the door-hinge to my older son’s bedroom was perpetually loose. Tightening the screw would buy you two or three days of unhindered door use, but it’d slowly droop back to its former loosened state over time. Mrs. Campbell asked me to fix it so, I immediately leaped into action and put it on my list. Not my “To Do” list, but rather on my special list–the list where I park things I either don’t want or don’t know how to do. The list where I hope to out stubborn the problem through inaction.

Now, fast forward fourteen months later. The door has won.  It hangs from the wall shedding desolation, like a scenic element in a haunted house at a High School Production of “Scooby Doo! The Musical”.  So I do what every red-blooded American man does, I look up how to fix it with google, then confidently explain how I’m going to fix it as if the knowledge comes with the “Y” chromosome itself:

  1. Remove door
  2. Drill out the stripped holes to 3/8″
  3. Insert 3/8″ dowels liberally smeared with wood glue
  4. Allow 1-2 hours dry time
  5. Drill pilot holes for the screws as appropriate to the size of the screw
  6. Replace hinge
  7. Replace door

Step 1, easy.

Step 2, easy. Well, with step 2 I made an executive decision. The middle screw was holding. I couldn’t pull it out with my fingers like the other two, but it wouldn’t snug down.  So I decided to just replace the 1″ screw with a 2 1/2″ screw. This made sense to me, however, if Bob Villa or Norm Abram ever reads this, please know I am ashamed and I express regret to your people–carpenters, I mean.

Step 3.  Huh. These dowels seem a little looser than I expected.  Well, fuck it.  Damn the torpedoes and all that. I smear the dowels with glue and push them in.  But they’re really loose.  So I start loading wood glue onto my finger and shoving it at the seam between the dowel and the door frame hoping to pack glue down into the spaces.  Now I walk out to the kitchen past my wife who is looking on with horror, I, holding my glue-caked hands like a surgeon who has just scrubbed in except I am heading toward the sink.

Step 4 & 5. Two hours pass.  I drill the holes without much drama.

Step 6. So far, so good.

I totally pimped your door.

Step 7. I hang the door and replace the pin in the top hinge.  But the bottom hinge won’t go into place.  So, holding the door with one hand and the hinge pin with the other, I call out to the living room “bring me my mallet”. If you ever want to frighten you wife, call out in desperation “bring me a mallet!”–it gets their attention. The first tap didn’t do much. But, after I called it a “no-good son-of-a-bitch” and lightly tapped it again, it popped into place then back out the other side. So then, I was all “come on baby, you know I love you”. At this point, I was able to jockey it into place with my bare hands. You’ve got to know how to talk to these things. I finished the job and, triumphal, came out to the living room and said “Son, I totally pimped your door.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a teenager give you that look that says “I wish more than anything, that I was a test-tube baby right now”, but that is the look I got. So, then I doubled down: “son, I want you to tell your friends that your dad totally pimped your door hinge, ok?”  So he got up, and exercised the door hinge by seeking refuge in his room, shutting the door behind him.  I was like “THIS MOMENT OF SOLITUDE WAS BROUGHT TO YOU BY YOUR DAD, THE DOOR HINGE WHISPERER!”

What I’m saying is teenagers embarrass easily, father’s jobs are thankless, and door hinges respond to verbal abuse.

Happy Father’s Day to all!

 

“Construction Zone” image ©Feverpitch/depositphotos.com
“Sexy Construction Worker” image ©Dario Lo Presti/Dreamstime.com

About the Author

About the Author: Ian is a 3rd generation native of Southern Nevada, where he lives today in a quiet suburban neighborhood with his wife of twenty years and their two sons. Ian has earned his bread in a variety of occupations including stocking a beer freezer, mixing and pouring concrete, being a roadie for a synth punk band in San Francisco in the early 90's, being a not-very-well-known hard rock DJ, scenic carpentry, theatrical lighting design, theatrical sound design, playing Ku Klux Klan Member #5 in a professional production of "Grover", and writing for an virtually unknown, subversive, underground blog called Radio Free Las Vegas. .

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