VACATION!!!!

that's right, i am going to take a vacation. where you ask? well the wild wild west of course. due to cicumstances beyond my control (my really good friends joe and natalie are getting married), i am flying out to phx on the night of may 02 and staying for a week leaving may 12. if you want to see me, you will have pleanty of time. i still have the same az phone number if you are out there and are not aware. here i am adressing probably no one since i don't talk to too many people in phx anymore, but you never know.




i hate canadians... i am sorry but i am going to have to vent real quick. i am doing a business deal with a canadian right now, and just sold him $1000 worth of used equipment. he has givin me hell since i started the deal, and now wants a refund for some of his purchase buecause they are not in perfect shape. sonofabitch. I am sure he will get his damn money back (even though its the companies money).

funny story time, you are going to love this one, it is long, but take the time to read it, i am about to embarass myself but you need to know this.


here goes: last weekend i spied something at the pawn shop that i would like to tinker with. what i came across was a 100,000-volt, pocket sized tazer gun with a clip. for those of you who are not familiar with this product, it is a less-than-lethal stun gun with two metal prongs designed to incapacitate an assailant with a shock of high-voltage, low amperage electricity while you flee to safety. the effects are supposed to be short lived, with no long-term adverse affect on your assailant, but allowing you adequate time to retreat to safety. you simply jab the prongs into your 250-pound, tattooed assailant, push the button, and it will render him usless. if you've never seen one of these things in action, then you're truly missing out - way too cool!

long story longer, i bought the device and brought it home. i loaded two aaa batteries in the thing and pushed the button. nothing! i was so disappointed. upon reading the directions (rtfm), i found much to my chagrin that this particular model would not create an arch between the prongs because not enough current exsited to make the "jump". how disappointing! i learned that if i pushed the button, however, and pressed it against a metal surface that i'd get the blue arch of electricity darting back and forth between the prongs that i was so looking forward to. so i did. sparks, a blue arch of electricity, and a loud pop!!! i'm easily amused, just for your information. okay, so i was home alone with this new toy, thinking to myself that it couldn't be all that bad with only two aaa batteries, etc., etc.

there i sat on my couch, my dogs looking on intently (trusting little souls), reading the directions (that would be me, not the dogs) and thinking that i really needed to try this thing out on a flesh and blood target. i must admit i thought about zapping one of the dogs, for a fraction of a second, and thought better of it. but, if i was going to use this thing on a mugger, i did want some assurance that it would work as advertised. am i wrong? was i wrong to think that? seemed reasonable to me at the time. so, there i sat in a pair of shorts and a tank top with my reading glasses on, directions in one hand, tazer in another. the directions said that a one-second burst would shock and disorient your assailant; a two-second burst was supposed to cause muscle spasms and a loss of bodily control; a three-second burst would purportedly make your assailant flop on the ground like a fish out of water. all the while i'm looking at this little device (measuring about 5" long, less than ¾-inch in circumference and loaded with two itsy bitsy aaa batteries) thinking to myself, "no way!" no way - trust me, but i'm getting ahead of myself.

what happened next is almost beyond description, but i'll do my best. those of you who know me well have got a pretty good idea of what followed. i'm sitting there alone, the dogs looking on with their head cocked to one side as to say, "don't do it buddy." reasoning that a one-second burst from such a tiny lil' ole thing couldn't hurt all that bad. (sound, rational thinking under the circumstances, wouldn't you agree?) i decided to give myself a one-second burst just for the hell of it. (note: you know, a bad decision is like hindsight--always twenty-twenty. it is so obvious that it was a bad decision after the fact, even though it seemed so right at the time. don't you hate that?) i touched the prongs to my leg, pushed the button, and HOLY *********!!!! i'm pretty sure that jessie ventura ran in through the front door, picked me up out of that recliner, then body slammed me on the carpet over and over again.

i vaguely recall waking up on my side in the fetal position, nipples on fire, testicles nowhere to be found, soaking wet, with my left arm tucked under my body in the oddest position. the dogs were standing over me making sounds i had never heard before, licking my face, undoubtedly thinking to themselves, "do it again, do it again!" (note: if you ever feel compelled to mug yourself with a tazer, one note of caution - there is no such thing as a one-second burst when you zap yourself. You're not going to let go of that thing until it is dislodged from your hand by violent thrashing about on the floor due to the fact that your muscles contract when elctricity runs through them, a fact I learned in college and decided to ignore. even then, if you're lucky, you won't dislodge one of the prongs ¼-inch deep in your thigh like yours truly.)

SON-OF-A-BITCH that hurt! a minute or so later (i can't be sure, as time was a relative thing at this point), i collected my wits (what little I had left), sat up and surveyed the landscape. my reading glasses were on the mantel of the fireplace. how did they get there??? my triceps, right thigh, and both nipples were still twitching. my face felt like it had been shot up with novocain, as my bottom lip weighed 88 pounds, give or take an ounce or two, i'm pretty sure.

moral of the story, don't mess with electricity. and remember kids, i am a trained professional, some of the stunts i do can cause harm and possibly kill you. so please, enjoy my stories, but don't try this at home.