MORE MONEY LESS PROBLEMS (I ASSUME)

I would like to be wealthy enough that I could go to a restaurant that I frequent enough where I would walk in and they would say: "Mr. Jake!" and then kiss me on both cheeks (face and butt) and then escort me to a table reserved for me alone. Do you think that this is millionaire status, or would we be facing like multimillionaire status? Either one is not realistic for me, but I would like to temper my expectation accordingly.

Does money buy happiness or not? I think that anyone who says that it doesn't has never been poor before. I think that only poor people should be allowed to make laws and decisions. Because they would have more compassion for how it affects others, rather than only how it affects themselves. At least, that's just my opinion. I have met very few poor people (outside of drug addicts) who aren't empathetic for others. They always tip well, they give their cash to people holding cardboard signs promoting lies about their veteran and/or family status, and so on. When you lament to a poor person about having trouble making ends meet or getting a medical bill dropped in your lap, they always have something comforting or nice to say, or a story of their own to share. If you say any of that shit to a rich person they immediately think you're trying to swindle some money out of them, or say some dumb shit like "you probably should've been smarter with your money. Have you tried making shoes out of duct tape? Have you tried not wasting your money on things like potable water? Irrigation water works fine, you just have to boil it. You are just a stupid dumb idiot poor person and it's your own fault that you don't have rich parents. Work harder, you absolute slob."

Maybe not those words exactly, but you get my drift. I don't hate rich people, I just think their outlook on life and how they treat others is questionable at best sometimes. Maybe there is a tipping point in life where you make enough money and then you don't have to care about anyone else. That might be a nice development. I would love to make enough money that I can turn into scrooge McDuck and can just go swimming in my big ass piles of gold coins and not give a mother fudge about anyone else. Can you imagine how much it would hurt to dive head first into a big ass pile of gold coins? Cartoons are always promoting lies/unrealistic expectations. Like: you'll survive an anvil being dropped on your head, adults are happy, you make a puff of dust behind you when you run really fast, Elmer Fudd is a coherent human and not a mentally disabled southerner, a mouse can set a trap and outwit a cat, skunks can find true love, classical music is good, and so on. This hasn't stopped me from trying all of these things, but so far my success level is fairly low. I identify as Wyle/E. Coyote; for the record. Always running off cliffs and holding up signs before I fall, and pretty much consistently failing at every task I attempt. So anyway, those are my pronouns. Please use them accordingly.

I have been working the graveyard shift at my new job and I spend a lot of time perusing the internet looking at things to buy. I tell you this because I think this is the reason I have been brooding over rich people. I am just jealous. Because if I had as much money as Bret Michaels, I would buy so much shit online. Not just different bandanas to cover up my baldness. I would own RC cars, a jetski, nunchucks, lots of shirts, my cabinet would be stocked with so much cereal, and if I'm being honest I would probably buy the craziest ass sex toy stuff I could find just to see the horrified look on my wife's face. Imagine me walking out of the closet wearing nothing but latex and false teeth, then imagine my wife falling off the bed clutching her chest; then tell me it wasn't worth the 5 gallon bucket of baby oil it took to squeeze my fat ass into that gimp suit.

I guess to round this all out, the point I want to make is that there isn't a poor person on earth who hasn't spent lottery money in their own mind. Also, there isn't a rich person alive who hasn't lived that sorry persons fantasy on a daily basis. Tip well. Be nice to those you consider 'the help'. Who gives a shit if someone is working at McDonald's? At least they're trying. We are all trying to realize our own 'American Dream', and so far I have found that you usually have to be asleep to believe it. But that shouldn't stop anyone from trying, and it shouldn't give you the right to criticize others for doing jobs you feel too qualified to do.

I should end this on a higher note so you don't walk away feeling like you need a cigarette...

Here are some thoughts of what you can do if you win the lottery:

-Visit Disneyland for one day and you'll have $30 left over

-Buy the most expensive car you can think of right off the show room floor, and drive it through the front window

-Buy the Grave Digger monster truck and smash your high school

-Fill a super soaker with piss and get revenge on birds (I guess you don't need a ton of money for this, but the potential for friendly fire is pretty high, and you could face a law suit for by-proxy pissing on someone)

-Visit Guy Fieri's house and kiss him on the lips

-Visit Tom Brady's house and sneak into his sons bed so he kisses you on the lips

-Buy a nice house somewhere

-Take a vacation in Nebraska

-Fill your grandma's medication for her

-Buy a strip mall

-Franchise a Chick Fil A and go in on a Sunday to see if God is eating there and that's why they are closed on Sundays

-If God is at your Chick Fil A bribe him into making the world a better place

-Also give God my phone number so I can ask him a couple questions

-Actually just send God to my house, I wanna talk in person

-Buy your groceries at Whole Foods

-Buy me a gimp suit so we can see what my wife's reaction is

-Take a cruise 

-Buy a sailboat and get stranded on an island and learn survival skills

-Buy a PS5 off the black market

-Ride a Greyhound bus and see where you wind up (Maybe you'll get lucky and wind up in beautiful Nebraska and get a twofer)

-Buy turtles and hire a scientist to see if he can genetically mutate them into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and then subsequently turn you into Splinter 

-Pay for my lawyers to sue State Farm for their insufferable Jake From State Farm bullshit

-Pay Liberty Mutual to stop airing the worst commercials I have ever seen

-Make N*SYNC do a reunion tour

These are just some off the top of my head, feel free to reach out if you find yourself flush with cash and I will give you other great ideas. Please do not visit Nebraska. It's the worst state we own.

I will catch all you money (aka hoe) bags on the flip flop.

Please Sign Your Name On Hell's Guest Registry

Sure, I have written about heaven and hell fairly recently. But I don't care. You're not the boss of me.

I have been thinking a lot about the devil. Not in a perverted way, necessarily, just pondering his existence. Do you think the devil is fork tongued and carries a pitchfork like he is normally portrayed? Or maybe he is some serpent that slithers throughout the earth and bites people on the ankle, injecting the venom of bad thoughts like: "yellow lights mean go as fast as you can" or "take 2 fortune cookies even though it says to only take one." ? Or maybe he just looks like any other white person (I guess in my mind a white person is the most viable to be the devil, but I guess he could be Asian. or Russian.) and he wanders around creating chaos, and slips into the shadows undetected like Bigfoot or some other fairytale hoax like a narwhal. 

I hope I don't ever have to find out what the devil looks like unless I am mooning him from on high, but when I tally up my life points of good deeds versus evil, my accountant suggests it more likely I will be meeting the devil than God. So maybe that's why I have been thinking about the devil and hell more often, because I am pondering my future there. I hope that there is a system where you could move up the ranks and get into heaven, or at least eventually become an assistant torturer. 

But therein lies the biggest question of all; what is hell like? Is it rivers of poop that flow freely from the mouth of a giant poop waterfall, and there is nothing to eat but stale bread, and all you can smell is poop? So it kind of tastes like eating poop. And anywhere you look there is just pigeons. Everywhere you cast your eyes, there are rats of the skies eating the bread you don't get to first. Do you have a cell there, or can you wander aimlessly through the corridors without purpose, sitting idly by the river of excrement, passing your time in hell?

I would like to imagine that hell is some kind of holding place where I could go, pay off my debts as a sentence in hell for a period of time, then move on to the great beyond where I work at a celestial McDonalds, trying to move up the chain and buy a bigger mansion in a better part of heaven.

Here is what I would suggest that hell should be like, it could be like the American "justice" system where people die, get sentenced, and have the opportunity to move up to a level of hell from the one they are currently on. Similar to Dante's Inferno, there would be levels of lower hell for the more heinous crimes, but the upper levels would offer mild torture, then after a time and, coupled with good behavior, you can get into heaven and do arduous labor for people who were worthy.

The upper levels of hell would be for people who jay walked, skipped class, gave a titty twister to an unexpectant victim, and lied to their mother. This level would basically be spending time in a cell where they served you plain rice cakes and irrigation water for every meal, and you could earn rights to read books like Who Moved My Cheese?, anything by Dave Ramses, or some other dry self-help book, and the especially well behaved could watch 1 episode of Murder, She Wrote on Fridays. You have a toilet but can only flush it once every 3 days. People here would typically only spend 20-50 years time and could move on. 

The middle levels of hell would be for more serious crimes, or sins, if you will. People here might be the ones who leave shopping carts in the middle of the parking lots rather than putting them in the corrals, trampled someone at a Black Friday deal, drew phallic images in their school-owned text books, got several piercings, dyed their hair an unnatural color, watched HBO after midnight when their parents were asleep, went to Burger King on a Sunday, wore a shirt that revealed their midriff in public, called someone a dumbass or dipshit, purchased thong underwear, has worn a toe ring, or read the 50 Shades Of Grey series. (This list is not exhaustive, just examples of crimes in the afterlife)

This level of hell would be slightly more severe. The temperature would always be either too hot or too cold. And you could never manage to get your pants off when it's too hot, or find a jacket when it's too cold. Typically you would be all alone, and wandering some kind of wilderness. You would be thirsty but all that would be available to quench your thirst would be flat 7-Up or Diet Pepsi. When you are hungry all you can find is Boston Baked Beans candy, and someone's leftover plate from thanksgiving, being mostly gravy and fragments of mashed potatoes and turkey that is dry. Occasionally someone will come along and their sole purpose is to hurt you, so that would depend on what kind of person you are. If you are the type of person who liked getting spanked, obviously they wouldn't hit you, they would probably compliment you and make excessive eye contact. I will likely be in this level of hell, so as an example for me, they would send a new person every time and the person would want to make small talk and invite me over for dinner, where they would ask me about my work and hobbies (Of which I have none). Maybe you can work up from this level of hell after wandering for so long, but unlike the first level there isn't a prison system to determine your good or bad behavior. So maybe it's time contingent, and after so long you get sent to the upper level where you could make license plates and move into heaven.

The lower level of hell would be for very serious crimes and sins. Examples: Fornicators, thieves, politicians, people who leave babies in hot cars, auto mechanics (see also: thieves), people who honk immediately when the light turns green, DJ's, murderers, rapists, Keith Urban, anyone who held a Playboy subscription, the person who wrote the 50 Shades Of Grey series, Charles Manson, people with nipple piercings, most newscasters, belly dancers, people who wear cowboy hats in public, Anne Hathaway, the creators of candy corn, people who posed nude for an artist, grifters, anyone who exploited poor people, most, if not all, landlords, the inventors of screamo music, people who have watched Friends, Hitler, the inventor of the bikini, masturbators, drug users, most people who own motorcycles, vegans, Stalin, members of Florida Georgia Line and their fans, people who follow very closely on the freeway, and Miley Cyrus.

This last level of hell would be the full blown torture stage. Women would have to experience blue balls. Men would have to give birth. A steam roller would run over penises. You would be forced to listen to Luke Bryan play for 80 straight hours. You could eat, but all the food is on the floor and most people aren't wearing shoes and walking all over it. Occasionally you could find one of those stale tins of popcorn from Christmas 1995, but all that is left is the cheese popcorn with a little mold on it. Vegans would cry about not being able to eat anything at all. There is always someone with a cowboy hat nearby asking who you voted for, and saying he doesn't want taxes to go up. There is a girl crying constantly. You are allowed to drink but all that is available is peppermint schnapps, skunked Bud Light, and hot water that they filtered from the poop river. You always have an itch on your back that you can't reach. When you lay down to sleep you wake up suddenly thinking you're late for school, even though you are dead. You always have the sensation to pee. Your clothes smell like cigarettes. Your back hurts always. You have to go to the dentist every single day and he gives you a root canal. The floor is made of loose Legos. You cannot work your way out of this level of hell. They have determined you are too bad to move up. 

I don't really think any of this is true, I am just hopeful that it is, as I am likely on a fast track to the underworld. If this does turn out to be true and I have discovered the blue print for the afterlife, mention this blog and I can get you 10% off your mandatory sentence in hell.

I think the best we can hope for is a little grace, because we all kind of suck in our own way. You just have to do your best along the way. Maybe we will all end up in hell. Maybe we will all end up in heaven. Or maybe all of you will end up in hell and I will end up in heaven. Or vice versa.

DIEting

Do you think that God invented food, or the devil? Let's just say for argument's sake that it was God. My follow up question would be this: Does God have a twisted sense of humor? I just can't understand why he would make everything that tastes good, lovely, praiseworthy, or of good report be so bad for you. And everything that tastes like dirt, dog shit, and water be so good for you. 

Maybe he enjoys seeing us all suffer? Or have you ever wondered if God is fat and he wants you to be more like Him? The 600 lb people are closest to God? So in this scenario, skinny people would be like the devil. I enjoy, very much, painting skinny people out to be the bad guys for once. I mean, to be fair, every artist depiction of the devil I have seen, he is usually skinny or has a six pack. Can't think of any time I have seen the devil portrayed as fat. Food for thought. But the other side of that is that fat people die fast and have a lot of health problems. Every medical diagnosis I have ever received they have directly correlated with me being 'morbidly obese'. Which I am pretty sure is the highest level of obese. So at least I am in first at something. Sick burn by doctors though, they're just like "you're not just fat, you are going to DIE because you're so fat. You are morbidly obese bro. Do you want to pick out which piano box you'd like to be buried in tomorrow? You fat loser?"

Have you ever just thought passingly about food and it arouses a feeling in you? That sounds oddly sexual, but it's something I am working through right now. I have been doing a diet for a total of 4 days and just the thought of certain foods evokes a reaction in me that I can't explain. I sometimes think about Raising Cane's, In-N-Out, and Astro Burger the way mothers think of their sons who never returned from the war. Just longingly gazing at pictures of their food for an ineffable amount of time, while tears gently roll down my cheeks, and I help myself to a tall glass of water to curb the appetite, like the dumb ass I am.

I have tried to come up with goals ever since I got my A&P licensing in July, and needed something else to work on. So I have been trying to exercise and lose weight. It's been going well, except I have this problem where, now that I lift weights 4 times a week, I justify eating whatever I want. Cake for breakfast? I'll burn it off at the gym later. 64 oz soda? Gym later baby. So I have been stagnant, for the most part. But I have been doing well otherwise.

I have always been a big proponent of the idea that "fad diets don't work" and in a lot of ways, I think thats true. Most diets aren't that sustainable unless you're Oprah and have the funding to be able to do Weight Watchers for the rest of your life. Most people I know don't have that. Most people say: "you just need to change some eating habits" and I hear that, but when you're someone like me, changing my eating habits would take an act of congress, God, or the British Parliament. You can't just tell me to "Stop eating when I am full" the same way you can't tell a dog to look up. There are some things that aren't possible. Whether in this life or the life to come. So please stop saying that to me, it's hurting my big fat feelings. So yeah, I am trying a fad diet. And it's going okay. I stuffed a donut down my pants just to try and curb the desire to stuff it entirely into my mouth like an anaconda, but otherwise it's been fine.

So yeah, I guess I am an emotional eater. Everybody has problems. Some people don't eat because of their feelings and that's something I don't understand even a little. But that's okay. We all just have to suffer through this thing together. You don't have to understand things to support people who are trying to change and be better, or not. Even if someone is just trying to survive, you can be nice to them. I'm not sure what that has to do with food, but it felt like a bridge.

So good luck to everyone who is trying to make changes, whether it be for the new year or not. I wish you the best of luck. If you see me and I act like a caged animal, it's just because I am hungry. Which could also double as the title of my memoir. Just pound on the glass and keep moving.