Puntabulous

This is the story of my bottle of Tanqueray. Felice get out of here! Stop being such a camera queen!

Anyway, let’s start this story when I was like: “Screw you Mom and Dad! I’m moving to Brooklyn!”

And then a year later I was completely broke and like “Jus kitteh! Can I moves back in wit yous?”

So I moved back home and for two years I squirreled away all my money like some sort of savage beast that squirrels away stuff, and yet isn’t a squirrel.

And then this cute little house in my neighborhood went up for sale.

And I fell in love with it and imagined myself in that house and life would be just grand.

And my fantasies may have looked something like this because I would be the master of the Outer Rim Territories my own home!

Another fantasy included me having a cat, because I really want a cat but my Mom (fine, and me too) is allergic.

And the last fantasy involved me being totally sophisticated in my own home and having totally sophisticated dinner parties where people drink sophisticated drinks and talk about sophisticated things like America’s Next Top Model.

And part of drinking sophisticated drinks included owning an actual bottle of Tanqueray for Gin and Tonics because I always get the house gin when I order them and for some strange reason I equated owning my own home with allowing myself to buy the good stuff (even though if I had a mortgage to pay I’d probably only be able to afford water, but go along with me on this).

Don’t ask what that picture is about. I googled sophistication and that’s what I got. Deal with it. So after I was done fantasizing about my new life as a criminal overlord slug the epitome of class and sophistication, I called my bank to see about getting preapproved for a mortgage. I had squirreled away all that money after all!

And they were like:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! And when they finally stopped laughing and were able to catch their breath, they were like “You can afford this“:

And all my hopes were crushed, because while I may have saved all that money by living at home, I still had enough debt in the form of student loans for Scrooge McDuck to swim around in.

And didn’t I go to a state school to avoid spending all that money? Oh right. It’s still pretty dang expensive. Oh, and grad school. Sigh.

But fear not! This story has a happy ending! No, I didn’t win a million dollars and buy the house anyway. But at least now I have a benchmark and a goal to work towards. So while I may still not be a homeowner, or a criminal overlord slug, or the proud parent of an adorable little kitteh, I bought myself a bottle of Tanqueray because I deserve it. Cheers!

THE END.

This is the story of my earring. Oh, I’m sorry. You didn’t know I was such a badass? Because I totally am. Except I was never a street fighter. Or an owner of such arms that were so muscley that you get that vein running down them. Or on a show that was really awesome for approximately one season.

I was a sophomore in college, and being the total badass I was at the time, I figured the best place to get a badass earring would be at the home of badass: Hot Topic. Because nothing says badass quite like crappy clothing designed by an annoying (albeit a million times more famous than I’ll ever be) blogger. Hey look! A kitten skull and crossbones! You don’t want to mess with that guy!

So I went into Hot Topic, and picked out this totally badass 18 gauge earring with a blue stud. I swear it was the most masculine one they had. No really. So I get brought into the back room by this really nice lady who looked like this:

And she’s really nice, but looks like crazy. And you know what they say: “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, unless they’re darker than you.” And she’s super excited that I’m getting an earring, and she’s even more excited that I’m getting that particular earring because she has the same one in her: PICK ONE: A) Belly Button. B) Tongue. C) Nipples.

If you answered C, give yourselves a pat on the back. And before I could say “Ew! TMI!”, she was putting an earring in my left ear cartilage. And wasn’t there some sort of archaic rule where gay guys are supposed to pierce their right ear? But I assume that’s a really awkward question to ask a guy before you pierce his ear. And I was such a champ about it. I didn’t cry once! Maybe that’s part of the trick. Distract them images of nipple rings in their ears, and they won’t feel a thing!

And now that I had my new badass earring, I had to go around doing badass things like going to class, doing homework, and reading Harry Potter. Man, it’s a miracle I survived those crazy years. And the first time I went back home from college after getting the earring I had to walk sideways so my mom wouldn’t see it because I failed to tell her about it because I was such a badass and knew she wouldn’t be crazy about it.

And who would have thought that walking sideways wouldn’t be enough to sustain the secret of my earring? So obviously she found out. Let’s just say that she wasn’t too pleased.

But she got over it because I was such a badass she had no choice but to respect my badass ways. A couple of months later I changed the earring to one of those even more badass hoops with the ball in the middle. I don’t even want to think about where that Hot Topic girl had one of those! And while I was home I was waiting tables at Ground Round, and my manager said I had to take out my earring. Did the girls have to take out their earrings, you ask? Nope. Just the guys! Goooooooooo feminism!

Because apparently Ground Round is too classy to have male waiters with earrings, but they’re not too classy to weigh kids when they walk in the door and charge by the pound. You stay classy, Ground Round! But I was also given the choice of either taking out my earring or covering it up with a band aid. And since I was such a badass I chose to cover it up with ridiculous bandaids that were a million times more noticeable than the earring itself. Such a badass!

And since I was wearing ridiculously noticeable bandaids, my customers would always ask why I was wearing them, and I would tell them how my manager made me do it, and they’d feel bad for me and leave me bigger tips. But then one day there weren’t any more bandaids. And I had to take out my badass earring. And this is what I looked like:

And for reference, this is what I looked like with my earring in:

And while I was in the restaurant bathroom taking out my earring, looking at my gorgeous self in the mirror, it dawned on me that I looked exactly the same without my earring as I did with it. So I never put it back in. And even though it’s been seven years since I’ve had that earring, to this day whenever one of my siblings garners the negative attention of my mom, they stutter for a moment and then exclaim: “Yeah, well, Craig got an earring!” Because it was just that much of a scandal. Total badass.

THE END.

This is the story of an awesome guy. You know the guy I’m talking about. He’s ridiculously good looking, and loves animals, and always votes, even for those stupid non-November elections that people hardly remember.

The guy who was captain of their high school football team. He was quarterback and still managed to score like 20 homeruns during every game. It’s like that Bugs Bunny cartoon where he plays all the positions, he’s just that awesome. Wait, am I mixing up my sports again?

If that weren’t enough, he was also an honors student. And he’s the kind of guy that everyone likes because they’re also really nice and humble. And at graduation everyone cheers really loudly when their name is announced.

And people like me are right behind them in the alphabet so it’s even more noticeable when no one cheers for me and all you hear is the clack clack clack of my dress shoes as I cross the stage. And I’m already self-conscious about my dress shoes because they sound like high heels when I walk and the whole not cheering thing makes it even worse.

And afterwards my sister tries to make me feel better by saying that Captain Awesome’s applause was so big that it almost sounded like people were clapping for me also, but it was only because of the slight overlap in name calling. At the time it makes me feel better but now that I think of it “There were plenty of people cheering for you, you just didn’t hear them from all the way on stage.” would have worked better.

Anyway, back to this awesome guy. He goes on to marry his equally awesome high school sweetheart. Did I mention that they were Prom King and Queen?

Of course they were. Don’t you just hate them?

He went to one of those fancy colleges that looks like a castle and has a cool mascot like a Dragon, Tiger, or Ninja, while I went to a state school that still has the same 1970’s furniture since it was built and our mascot was a Bearcat. Seriously, what’s a Bearcat?

So they got married when his girlfriend got pregnant because he was all noble like that and dropped out of college so they could get married and he could get a job and support them. And of course she was one of those annoying pregnant women that hardly gains any weight and still manages to do yoga and shit.

After the baby is born they form this perfect little family. And most nights when the baby cries he’s all like “Don’t worry honey, I’ll take care of the baby, you took care of him all day while I was off working for the man.” And you just want to puke.

And he’s ridiculously good at taking care of the baby in the middle of the night. Like that “Baby Mine” scene from Dumbo, which may or may not make me cry.

And then in the morning he’s off to work. He hates his job. He says his boss is evil. But it pays well and the important thing is being able to take care of his family. Did I forget to tell you that he’s a stormtrooper?

Oh, I’m sorry. Does that change your opinion of him? Because it shouldn’t. He’s still an upstanding guy. He always purposely missed shooting the rebels because he was secretly rooting for them. He’s not sure if that’s the same reason why his coworkers never hit them at ridiculously close range either. He would have joined the rebellion but he needed the health benefits to take care of his family.

Then one day as he was silently cheering on the rebels while aiming at the wall behind them, he was shot by some chick with cinnamon buns on her head and fell down a deep chasm that served no logical purpose.

Amazingly he survived, because he’s even awesome at falling down deep chasms that serve no logical purpose. Is there nothing he can’t do?

As he laid there paralyzed, all he could think about was his family. About how much he loved his wife and son. And how he didn’t want his son to grow up in a galaxy full of daddy issues without a father. He struggled for days to gather the strength to pull himself to the nearby escape hatch. Hunger, thirst, and pain nearly overtook him, but the love of his family kept him alive. Just as his fingers grasped the controls to the escape hatch:

The End.

This is the story of how I survived the transit strike of 2005. Remember that time when all the New York City transit workers went on strike (struck?) and there were no subways and buses and people all over the city had to walk everywhere? And I had to pretend to be like this:

Because people my age are supposed to be radical and stand up for protesting workers and damn the man and all the business, but I was really like this:

And being like: “Those damn whipper snappers! How am I supposed to get to my bingo night?” And what is a “whipper snapper” exactly? I picture them looking something like this:

Which isn’t all that threatening if you think about it. But old people scare easily. Just look at Harrison Ford’s face!

So at the time of the transit strike, I lived in Brooklyn, and worked in publishing and generally lived a super trendy lifestyle like this:

Except not douchey looking. And not that trendy. And basically just sat on the couch all day watching TV like I currently do while I live with my parents, but back then I did it in Brooklyn.

So I woke up the morning of the strike and turned on the news and found out that the transit strike had really happened, and I was like: “Woo! Sick day!” But then I saw that loads of people were walking across the bridges from Brooklyn to Manhattan to get to work and I felt like a loser, and guilted myself into walking to work. So I bundled up nice and warm because around that time New York City looked like this:

Because apparently it’s not a law that all strikes that cause people to have to walk to work don’t occur in the winter. So I put on my iPod possibly playing Tyra Banks’ “Shake Ya Body” and I started off being all like:

But then it didn’t take long before I as all like:

Except I wasn’t completely adorable. (Can someone make one of those for me?) I was more like:

Because halfway across the bridge I reached that annoying body temperature level where you’re absolutely sweating, but completely bundled up, but you can’t take anything off because its freezing, and your nose looks like:

And by this point my gloves are absolutely disgusting from wiping my nose. Did I ever clean those gloves? I doubt it. Oh well. So I finally get to the other side of the bridge and Red Cross is there handing out little packages of tissues and hot chocolate. And possibly doing this:

And did I mention that this was all happening after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, so people in New Orleans were like:

And someone in the Red Cross was like:

“Oh my god! Some white people in New York need to walk over a bridge! We have to bring them little packages of tissues and hot chocolate!” And then they all flew away in helicopters. And the people in New Orleans were like:

“Say what?”

So after I blew my nose and said “no thank you” to the hot chocolate (because it would have been a logistical nightmare to drink hot chocolate with my unwieldy, dried snotty gloves) I had a renewed sense of vim and vigor. I know what vigor is, but what is vim exactly?

And as I walked through the streets of lower Manhattan, I came across a giant billboard that looked like this:

And it makes me think to myself: “Daaayum! Good thing I have those tissues!” and I patted myself on the back for being so damn clever, because even after an hour of walking in the freezing cold to get to work, I never pass up an opportunity to congratulate myself for being awesome make a joke.

This is the story of the average day in my life. Firstly it starts off with me being completely adorable and asleep:

And it’s 4:10 AM and my alarm goes off. And we all have a good laugh over the idea of me actually getting out of bed the first time my alarm goes off:

And I really want to watch whatever they are watching, because it looks really awesome. For the time being let’s just pretend it’s this:

And I do a bit of snoozing, because snoozing is my downfall, and we do some super genius math:

And come to the conclusion that I actually get out of bed at 4:37 AM, and I look like this:

Because I’m really angry that I snoozed 3 times instead of 2 times, and snoozing really doesn’t make you feel better when you wake up, it just delays the act of feeling crappy and makes you angry and Asian.

So I shower and get dressed like this:

Except in reverse because I wear Wonder Woman pajamas to bed, and a respectable skirt suit to work. And before I run out the door, I run down to the computer and publish the post I wrote last night, which only makes me later.

And then I drive really cautiously to the train station because I didn’t take 3 snoozes.

Oh wait, yes I did.

So I catch the 5:35 AM train and hope that the person who sits next to me looks like this:

When in reality they always look like this:

Except they’re not made of crappy computer animation, so they have a weight to them, and that weight gets pressed up against me.

And then I read sleep the whole trip into the city because having your lands ravaged by the white man really takes it out of you:

But if this little girl was supposed to start beating the Warning Drum, you can see why the Native Americans didn’t fare so well. Or maybe it was those disease filled blankets we gave them. Oh well.

So at 7:00 AM I arrive at work in Trinity Center.

No, not the church, the building next to it. And did you know that Trinity Church is where they found the treasure at the end of National Treasure? So everyday at lunch I go to the church and look for the treasure. And by “treasure” I mean “Nicholas Cage” and only so I can tell him what a bad actor he is.

And once I get to my desk I hook myself up to a Roman Numeral 4:

Except it’s filled with:

And work makes me feel like this:

Because you should never write anything bad about your job on your blog, because that’s just asking for trouble, unless you’re Dooce, which in that case it makes you super famous.

And I don’t really leave my desk for lunch because I’m a dedicated worker extremely lazy. Did I tell you I got my yearly review and it was awesome and I got a raise? Go me.

And then at 5:00 PM I slide down the dinosaur tail, which looks a lot easier than it really is:

And then I get home at 7:00 PM and eat dinner:

And I talk about my day with my parents who hate when I say that my day was “fine” because they insist on getting details, even if there is nothing to tell.

And then it’s 8:00 PM and I feel like a zombie while I sit in front of my computer trying to put together a blog that makes the slightest amount of sense, which you can currently see didn’t go so well:

And then it’s suddenly 10:00 PM and I have nothing written so I take a bunch of pictures and make a lame post about my day to post in the morning before I run out the door to catch my train:

And the 10:00-11:00 PM hour is the fastest hour on the face of the planet, because I start to think about getting ready for bed at 10:00 PM and then it’s magically 11:00 PM when I get into bed, and where did that last hour go? And OMG Family Guy is on, and I love Family Guy and I try to look away, but even if I look away, I’ve seen all the episodes a million times, so I still laugh along with the episode because it’s so gosh darn funny. And then I fall asleep.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

This is the story about when I got my first hickey. This romantic tragic story takes place at the Long Island Game Farm, which looks a bit like this:

So apparently “Game Farm” is a fancy word for “Crappy Petting Zoo”. I don’t know why they would even call it a “Game Farm”. There are no games like this to be had:

Seriously, if I landed on Box 87, I would flip over the table and run from the room screaming. And you would so not be allowed to play with my Power Rangers anymore.

Now I know you’re probably thinking that I was approximately this many years old when I got my first hickey:

But in reality I was approximately this many years old:

Except I’m not a lesbian.

Now don’t worry! This isn’t a story about how some random creepy dude took me to a secluded area in a petting zoo and gave me a hickey when I was 4 years old. That is a much scarier story that doesn’t exist. And besides, if this were a scary story, I would have wet my pants by now.

The situation started off a bit like this, with me being completely adorable as usual:

But then one of the pigs put its snout on my arm and inhaled like some sort of crazy vacuum cleaner and the situation started to look like this:

Excuse me while I blow your mind: “If a pig’s snout is so much like a vacuum cleaner, why are pig pens so dirty?”

Back to the story: People think pigs are cute and innocent like this:

But they are really evil and ugly like this and force themselves upon lady pigs and four year old human children:

And their surprisingly powerful snouts work like this:

Which answers the question: “If pigs had superpowers would they use them for good or for evil?” Because this pig’s super suction snout was most definitely used for evil.

So my arm was stuck to its snout for what seemed like:

But in reality the whole situation was probably over in a matter of:

And even though my first romantic experience was incredibly short (even shorter than they are now!) when the pig let go, I had something on my arm that looked remarkably like this:

And as I’m sure you can imagine, I was just as tough then as I am now, so the whole experience made me look like this:

And while I call this “The Story of My First Hickey” it should really be called “The Story of Why I Love This:”

And when I become a rich and famous children’s book author, this will be the wacky story I tell on all the talk shows I go on. But then again, rich and famous authors aren’t really brought on that many talk shows because people don’t recognize their faces, and TV is all about ratings, and if people don’t recognize your face in the previews for said talk show, they probably won’t watch. And if there’s nothing else on TV, they’ll probably just read a book instead. Maybe even the one that you wrote. Oh the irony.

This is the story about when I woke up in Speonk. Speonk is a magical little town on the Isle of Long. But you see, I was actually supposed to wake up stay awake until I arrived at Central Islip, which as luck would have it is also on the Isle of Long. Now if you look at it in the grand scheme of things, Speonk and Central Islip aren’t too far away from each other:

If you look closer, they still aren’t too far from each other:

Even closer, they still aren’t too far from each other:

But if you look on the Isle of Long Rail Road map, they appear to be a bit further than originally anticipated:

Now if I do some quick math:

I come to the conclusion that Central Islip and Speonk aren’t even on the same line as each other.

Now I’m sure you’re currently asking yourself: “But what happened, Craig?”

And I would say: “That’s a very valid question, dorkus. I think what happened looked a bit like this:”

Kinda.

But then it looked a bit like this:

And eventually it looked a bit like this:

Except I’m a boy.

And all the while my parents looked like this:

Because we planned on me getting a bit tipsy, so they were gonna pick me up on this:

Whereas we already know I ended up on this:

So when I was gently woken up at the last stop (which as you can guess is in a town called called Speonk) by someone who looked like this:

I had to call my parents with the cell phone that had 34 missed calls and mutter incoherently about needing to get picked up in a town a half an hour drive away with a funny name that sounds like the noise a donkey makes:

Now this is where I give a special shout out to all my fellow passengers for not disturbing the cute passed out drunk guy who’s phone was ringing off the hook because his parents have waited for over an hour at the correct wrong train station.

And the next weekend I had to treat them out to dinner for making them worry so much about where their incredibly sober talented son was, because my mom was envisioning me in a place that looked remarkably like this:

Imagine having to climb all those stairs to get to heaven? I’d be like: “Dude, I just died! What makes you think I’m in the condition to climb all these stairs?” And Saint Peter would be like: “Oh, I’m sorry. Are the stairs too much work to get to the magical place where all your grandparents and old pets are, and clouds taste like peanut butter ice cream? Because you could have easily taken the twirly slide down to hell if you’d like.” And I’d be all like: “Oh man! I love twirly slides!” And he would just shake his head and wave me in. THE END.

This is the story of a snake wrangler. Show of hands: Who knew the word wrangler had a W in it? LIARS!

But in this story, the snake wrangler is played by Diablo Cody, because I feel like she would totally have a wacky job like that when she was in college. Did she go to college? Maybe for a year or so, and then dropped out. I don’t know. Oh well. That doesn’t matter.

Anyway, this hipster snake wrangler has this lame job where she brings snakes to kids birthday parties and schools or wherever else her fat boss who is cheating on his wife sends her to. She hates kids though. Like, really hates kids.

Then one night she’s sent to a big giant theater. She enters through the back door and she ends up behind stage and everyone is going crazy. She assumes they’re all getting ready for a big scene. And she’s like: “Hello? I have the snake you ordered.”

And then somebody who looks like this is like: “Perfect! Paint her silver, she’s on in five!”

And the snake wrangler is like: “Whoa! What?!” And somebody who looks like this takes a can of spray paint and paints her silver.

And before you know it, she’s hanging up in the air with the snake around her neck and there are people SCREAMING.

Then she looks down and she sees Britney Spears!

This regularly scheduled post is interrupted for a brief moment to remember how awesome Britney Spears was that night. VIDEO EVIDENCE.

Okay, and then she’s on the floor, but she still has to wear that weird awkward diaper thing that they used to hang her from the ceiling because she never received the proper dance training to be able to take it off gracefully without dropping the snake or missing a beat to “I’m a Slave for You”, because even though she considers herself “edgy”, she still thinks it’s a pretty cool song.

And OMG Britney Spears is walking RIGHT TO HER holding out her hands. She guesses she’s supposed to hand the snake over to Britney. “May I call you Britney?” she jokes to herself. And Britney is like: “You’re not the girl from rehersal!” but she keeps going because this is her big moment to shine, and Justin is in the audience and he just broke up with her so she wants to be all: “Look what you’re missing out on bitch! Why don’t you cry ME a river?!”

So she hands the snake to Britney, even though her fat boss who is cheating on his wife always tells her not to let the kids hold the snakes. But it’s Britney Spears, she thinks to herself! And then HOLY SHIT she’s sees herself in a monitor! This is her big moment! “Too bad I’m painted silver! I wonder if anyone will recognize me?”

But her hipster friends are watching and they totally recognize her! “OMG OMG OMG!” they squeal. But they actually say the words “OH MY GOD!” because they’re actually talking in real life and not on the internet and it would be gay if you actually shouted “OH EM GEE!” And then they’re like “Why the fuck is she silver?”

Anyway, they tell people they’re only watching the VMAs to be “ironic” but none of them really knows what that means. But they’re secretly watching because they look like this on the inside and they totally love the VMAs and Britney Spears, and especially love seeing their hipster snake wrangling friend on TV, because how many times does that happen? Never.

Except maybe this one time. THE END