Sunday, September 04, 2005

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Those of you that haven't been reading 19Thoughts for very long may be surprised to realize that I actually have an underwater correspondent. Actually, he's a famous underwater correspondent. Everyone knows him, but let me start off with an actual email I received from the guy (there is some salty language here, which is appropriate, because he lives under the sea):

Dear Ass-Face:

Now that you're "drawing" crappy cartoons about douchebags, all of a sudden you're too important to answer my emails, faxes and phone calls? Well, screw you pal, I've got a million better things to do with my time than to waste my time on the owner of third-rate Blog. Consider this the last correspondence that I'll ever send you, unless you let me write a column. Up yours.

Yours in Christ,

Aquaman


With such a forceful message like that, how could I ignore the guy? Plus, it's nice to have a celebrity around, it really classes the place up. So without further adieu, I present Aquaman and his Summer Tale. (BTW stick around for my latest book review.)



Thanks cockpunch, I'm serious about this though ... you better give me my forum or you're going to get your balls ripped off by a tuna. Hey everyone, wow what a summer, huh? I did a lot of cool stuff and I can't wait to tell you all about it!

As you can tell from the above picture, I spent most of the early part of the season working on my pitching form. My agent thought that she heard that the Red Sox were looking for a submariner for their bullpen, but they ended up getting these two scrubs:



Look at that those two jerks, they couldn't get anyone out ... it's obvious that they throw like chicks. Yeah, I said it, chicks. Women. Dames. Broads. Anyway you slice it, Aquaman could throw better than those two jerks. And I can prove it, for most of June I spent at least 20 minutes every day throwing to Tusky, Aqualad and my wife Mera nothing but heat.

And guess what, none of them got a hit off me ... well, that's not true, Mera hit a lot of dingers off me, but she was always wasted, so that really shouldn't count. Anyway, I had my heater all ready to go, but no one ever called. You figure that the Marlins or the Mariners would call, I'm a nautical dude and all, but they didn't. I don't care, they can all rot in hell. Baseball sucks.

After my major league dreams died, I started to focus on more important things, like drinking. I don't know why, I just enjoy doing it, so stay the fuck out of my face. Sorry, I didn't mean that ... sometimes when I have a few too many Fuzzy Navels, my dander gets up. Where was I? Oh yeah, drinking.

Even though we live in Atlantis and have been independent forever, we still have the fourth of July. Sure, no one except me celebrates it, but we still have it. I woke up early that morning and started to get my drinking groove on. I invited the guys (Aqualad and Tusky) over and they brought over a case of Zimas.

I don't drink that fag shit, so I walked to the store and picked up some Fuzz-ay Navel (that's what I call it) mix and some booze. On the way over, I picked up some fireworks, I'm talking a buttload of them. We were going to have some fun and really celebrate the Fourth of July correctly.

The Fuzzy Navels were going down smoothly, as were the Zimas and after about 15 minutes we were all properly oiled up and I pulled out my stash. I aimed a bottle rocket at Tusky, and he completely freaked out! Even though we were miles beneath the ocean, I was able to light it and it shot right at him. Being a walrus, he has great reflexes and just missed him, but guess who it hit? That's right Aqualad, right in the eye! Literally, a bullseye!

I've got game, man ... way better than Green Arrow. For the next 45 minutes, I shot bottle rockets, Roman candles at them as well as throwing sparklers. Instead of leaving, these two dudes stuck around and took it like men. That gets all of Aquaman's respect. Much respect to those two guys, but I still shot fireworks at them until they were bloody or until I passed out. I can't remember what happened next.

For a few weeks, I was really bored and nothing was going on at the Hall of Justice, so I was pulling some of my trademark Aquaman Punks with the surface dwellers. I have a couple of fish buddies that happen to be sharks, so what I did was telepathically tell them that there was a lot of fat tourists off the waters of Florida. Well, you don't have to tell these guys that twice and they were up there two or three days a week for the next three weeks.

Apparently they got a couple of kids and it was on the news for a little while ... the story du jour, if you will. I'm not sure if I spelled that word correctly, I'm not good with Romanian words. So, that sea disaster was all my doing. But, it was wicked funny, so you have to give me a pass.

Towards the end of August, I thought it would be a riot to ruin a major American metropolis, so I chose ... no, not New Orleans, what are you on crack, but Pierre, South Dakota. Unfortunately, that city was a bit more landlocked than I remembered, so not much happened. I think a couple of toilets backed up, but that's enough for old AM. You should've seen the people who owned that house though. They had to buy a plunger and everything!

You've been PUNKED! My friend ... say adios to your $5. Again, I'm not sure if I spelled that foreign word right. Romanian ain't my bag, but that's how the kids of today talk. I wish everyone would just talk American.

Well, that's enough from me today. I'm going to think up some more maritime pranks. Until then, go eat a shit stapler.

Thanks, Aquaman for that fine report on all of your summer hijinks. Speaking of hijinks, I finally read Mark Twain's "Pudd'nhead Wilson" last week. I was originally supposed to read this for one of my college courses, but I blew it off and only read the first 30 pages.

That was a pretty stupid move on my part because this was a really interesting book, probably one of the better books that I was supposed to read. As usual, Twain does a great job of setting the scene and painting the picture of a small town on the Mississippi River and the events of a few weeks that changed the began with a pretty innocuous event that eventually changed the lives of the entire town.

The Reader's Digest version is that a slave freaks out and thinks that her master is going to sell her down the river, so she decides that if this happens to her, that's cool, but it's not going to happen to her newborn son ... who also happens to be the same age and looks a bit like the newborn of her master. She switches the kids and the kid who is supposed to be white eventually becomes a slave and the black kid (Tom Driscoll) lives the prevailed life.

Twenty years pass and the black kid has become somewhat of a prick, as he has a gambling problem which causes him to burglar homes from neighborhood towns. As this crime spree happens, two Italian twins come into town, which instantly makes them celebrities. One of the twins ends up kicking Driscoll in the ass, which pisses him off. But since he's a wuss, he won't fight the Italian twin. So his uncle, who is now Tom's guardian because his "father" died earlier, takes it upon himself to defend the family honor.

He ends up wounding the Italian and all is forgotten. In the mean time, Tom ends up gambling more than he should and to pay his debtors he tries to rob his uncle, but ends up killing him. The twins happen to be there and they get framed for the murder. Pudd'nhead Wilson (who was named that because he said something stupid the first day he came to town) has to defend the twins in court and it all works out at the end.

There's a ton more detail in this story, and it's a pretty decent story. Mark Twain really understands both the common man and the clever man, as well as the thoughts of a scoundrel and a righteous person. Each character may be an archetype, but the way that he writes each character and he moves the plot along is flawless. While not on par with his masterpiece, "The Adventures of Huck Finn", this is truly a lost classic that is a breezy and fun read.

Also included in this book is a story called "Those Extraordinary Twins" that Twain said was buried in the Pudd'nhead Wilson book. He wrote that he had to extract this story from the book in order to make both of them better. TET was based on the Italian Twins who come to town in Pudd'nhead Wilson, but they were Siamese twins.

It's a very cool read on the dichotomy of two completely different people living in the same body and how they handle it.

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