HAPPY JULY!! Actually I didn't mean to yell. I forgot I had the Caps Lock on.
Anyway, in honor of it being July (and in honor of me having nothing to write about today), I decided to re-post an old blog that seems to be a popular one. I have heard from a few people that this was a good entry, and since I don't know how to do that neat link-to-a-specific-blog trick, I'm doin it the old fashioned re-postin' way. It's a great story filled with love, hate, laughter and deer antler.
Here goes:
Once upon a time, Lisa had a boyfriend who lived with us named Mike. I'll leave his name at that to protect his anonimity. So once upon a time Mike lived with my family in our condo in Middletown. He cluttered up the place with tie-die and sunflower seeds, and enriched our lives with Star Trek facts and memorabilia, and a Star Trek "Q" boxed set of videos. It seemed very out of character for Lisa to be this guy's girlfriend, as they were clearly from different worlds and had vastly different interests, at least from an outsider's point of view. Mike, unlike Lisa, was a habitual pot-head. He had a large collection of bongs and pipes and hookas, most of them he had fashioned himself from various pieces of hoses and glass bottles and other trash, and each one he could talk about endlessly, with a glimmer in his eye much like that of a child on Christmas morning. Mike was okay. He was never mean or anything, always very nice and usually smiling, but he was not exactly my favorite of Lisa's boyfriends over the years. There are a number of reasons why I wanted him out of our home, some of which I've been sworn to secrecy never to talk about, but here's a little story for ya.
I can't remember the exact date, but it was late 1997. I was going to Brookdale Community College at the time, and had an early Algebra class the next morning so I went to bed early that night. Anyway, after a few short hours of slumber, I was awoken by a loud noise. As of someone not-so-gently rapping, rapping on my chamber door. I got up, very groggy and still half asleep and looked at the clock. 2:30 AM. What could have happened? Was there an accident? Was someone hurt? Did someone eat the last piece of chocolate cake? I opened the door and found Mike, smiling broadly, looking very pleased with himself.
Me (in my bitchiest, most tired voice):"What?"
Mike:"I just made something, and I want you to be the first to try it out!"
With this, he slaps a dirty broken old piece of antler into my hand. Ah yes, the deer antler he found in the woods somewhere in Arizona when he and Lisa vacationed there a few months before. The one he planned to make into a pipe, and then planned to smoke weed from said pipe. Indeed, he had drilled a hole through it, and attached a metal bowl to it, which looked ripped off of one of his many bongs. I didn't like the idea, antlers are for deers to protect themselves and disguise them from hunters in the forest, not for Mike to smoke from.
So he wanted me to take to be the first to try it. Take the maiden voyage. He had packed the bowl with his "kindest bud", and was very insistant, even though I wasn't really interested in getting high, especially not from old dirty deer parts. Still though he insisted, like it was the highest honor, being offered the first hit. I just wanted to go back to bed. So okay, fine.
I took the "pipe" from him, and lit it, and took a fairly large hit, larger than I was prepared for, and also more painful than I was expecting. Apparently, Mike had forgotten one very important step in creating this masterpiece. He had forgotten to clean out the excess chunks of deer antler from the hole had drilled. My throat closed up, and I could feel bits of bone in my mouth, lungs and throat. It was the most disgusting feeling EVER, and I spent the next hour or so practically hacking myself to death, desperately trying to cough up the antler bits. See, that's a sentence no one should have to write! Mike apologized profusely and ran back down to Lisa's room in the basement, leaving me to fend for myself in the fight to breathe. That was just fine with me though, because if I could have talked, I probably would have told him to get the fuck out of my house!
The best way I can describe how it felt is imagine how it feels when at the beach you mistakenly get a few grains of sand in your mouth. Multiplied by 1,000, and at the same time suffocating in smoke, and at the same time having a severe sore throat. I didn't sleep any more that night, needless to say.
I was really glad when Mike moved out. Yay.

Happy 4th of July everyone. Be safe and try not to stir the kool-aid with your dick this year. Mom really hates it when you do that.