To better illustrate the absurdity of being handed a handgun based on having a driver's license and signing an agreement not to try and kill every last motherfucker in the room, scott and I were denied entrance to beaverton's premiere cabaret (read: strip club) and steakhouse (free turkey dinner on thanksgiving said their radio ad) because we only had our BC drivers licenses on us.

It took me a moment to realize they were serious after examining our ID; that a 26 and 27 year old would not be allowed to see some american boobies because of the danger we posed to the public if said boobies were witnessed without proof that we were of legal age.

We headed off to dinner at Gustav's, a great german restaurant and after downing an wonderful 8oz slab of prime rib (the smallest they served) each, picked up our passports and went back to avenge our offended sense of freedom.

With the queen's representation in hand they finally allowed us in and we were bewildered to see four women dancing naked simultaneously throughout the establishment. It was the fast food of nudity; women removed their tops within 30 seconds of dancing and doffed their underpants by the start of the second song. We sat in the background having a beer, laughing that I was given $15 in change for my drink in one dollar bills and playing very cool to the women who came to chat us into dropping more dollars than we had planned to.

Oddly enough, we found ourselves bored with most of the dancers; they shifted and moved with such lack of finesse that their striptease seemed more of a gynecological exam as they just stuck their crotches in the faces of the patrons and shook them. When a dancer finally did some impressive pole work, we pulled up a seat and watched her act as we put those wonderfully inexpensive tickets to nudity (one dollar bills) on the edge of the stage. When she asked in a sultry voice "are you ready to see my pussy?", i shrugged my shoulders and answered with a "yeah, sure" which was probably not the most enthusiastic or polite answer I could have given her but accurately reflected the fact that I was in a room full of naked women and was more interested in seeing her spin herself dizzy while inverted on the brass pole without the use of her hands.

With the number of stages and lack of patrons we actually conversed with the some of dancers in the middle of their sets; one laughing as she watched me sing along to Skid Row's "I'll remember you", wondering why the fuck the DJ was playing 80's power ballads while they tried to milk their patrons of a few more bills.

We didn't stay long; not even long enough to finish our beers but having another city's boobies on the list of have seens was good enough for these two business travellers tired from the 8am starts to our work days.

For no other reason than curiosity and masochism, scott and I entered a Red Lobster near closing time for what we expected to be an interesting meal if not a good one.

Noting that a steak and lobster meal could be had for only $24, I commented that they must use some pretty utilitarian grade of meat which proved to be the case when scott was only able to cut 3 slices of meat off of his steak before giving up.

While choosing the items for my three item custom combo, I incredulously asked the waiter "you take a prawn and then stuff it full of more prawns and seafood?". Indeed they did and they covered those little motherfuckers with a salty fatty sauce, just opaque enough to prevent me from discerning what bounty of the sea they had stuffed inside.

Despite having ordered only one entree each, the waiter dropped enough food on the table to feed a small african village for a week. Salads, half a dozen biscuits, a bowl of pasta, seven sickeningly sweet coconut shrimp with a chunky coconut chutney/marmelade/syrup/tub of sugar, my stuffed prawns, rice pilaf, steak and lobster with vegetables hit the table and illustrated in fine fashion why western culture was so full of fat fucks.

The food while plentiful was rather terrible. Overly salty, fatty, sweet, and tough; all facets of culinary shittiness were represented on the table. The caesar salad that started our meal was the outstanding hilight as neither of us found it to be gross and my rice pilaf fared well also. The seafood was seasoned to the point that you couldn't quite tell what it might have been in the first place.

We left feeling terrible but full of stories for the road. When the business is paying for your meals, you can afford to eat shit just so you can tell your friends you did.

I'm back in america for another week and I'm looking for some other favourite american pastimes to engage in while here. So fire away.

Oh, no plans to kill brown people for oil so skip that suggestion.

It is perfectly fitting that that person you meet who you think was meant to help you understand love is also the person who will incite in you the feelings of rage, anger, jealousy, and pain to a degree that you had not imagined before.

For a moment I was angry that the gym in my building has no stairclimber and then I remembered that I live on the 24th floor and there's plenty of stairs between the earth and couch.

While slowly moving through the line at the panda express at the airport, the woman in front of me commented on how she hadn't gotten a fortune cookie like I had. After I mentioned that I had simply picked it up off the counter when it was placed in front of me, she explained that she keeps all of her fortunes as they seem to always speak to her situation at that time in life.

When she said she hoped her latest fortune would tell her that her friend would survive her battle with cancer, I wished her friend well but also thought it wasn't the best idea ever to let your emotional state depend on a mass produced fortune cookie handed out by a chinese fast food depot with a panda mascot.

What's both amazing and frightening about the USA is that all I needed to do to be handed a lethal weapon was show my drivers license and sign a form pledging that I would follow the rules of the range. After a 30 second demo on how to load and unload the weapon, I was handed a sig p232 in a plastic bucket with a box of ammo and sent on my way.

Walking onto the actual range, the first thing you notice is how loud the gunfire is. Someone firing 9mm rounds ten feet away from you is something you not only hear, but feel in your chest. I loaded the clip with 6 rounds nervously; cramming a live round pointed at your fingers into a spring loaded clip is an odd feeling.

We chose simple human shaped targets to begin and placed them only about 25 feet from us. Even at such a close range, hitting the target where you wanted wasn't easy. It's easier to understand why cops sometimes empty their entire clip into someone when the shit goes down. Pistols and adrenaline aren't a great formula for accuracy and I could understand that when your life is on the line, it's easy to want to play things on the safe side.

We switched up to some more interesting targets; street thug, hostage taker, and asshole and continued pumping rounds into them. We tried each others guns, putting me at the helm of a .357 magnum revolver, a .45 semi automatic, a 9mm glock, and a .380 Sig. The .357 and .45 kicked like mules and kept me from even considering firing the largest gun in their inventory.

As much fun as this adventure was, guns are nuts and I'm glad we have pretty tight restrictions on their use back home.

interesting reminders that I'm not in vancouver anymore:

I ate chinese food cooked by a mexican for dinner and I bought a sack of olestra chips which while low in calories and digestable fat, have a chance of making my anus lose control of itself.

America is grand.

Day one in the USA:

Make plans to shoot guns this weekend.

One week of travel checklist:

One pair medium boxer briefs.
One pair large black socks.
One bottle of febreze.

check.

I'm off to the suburbs of portland tomorrow night for a week of non stop fun (and by fun I mean working and sleeping in mediocre hotel bedsheets).

In the meantime, just imagine all the witty things I'd write about if I weren't so busy being an asshole right now. If you can't imagine anything good, just picture mentally retarded people having sex. You know they do it.

The troubles of living with a 2 digit IQ.

Both unbelievable and totally awesome.

This place has been so completely shit lately that it's time to delve into my personal stories of shame, which coincidentally happen to be some of the fan favourites here.

The date is February 14th 2005, the day we celebrate St. Valentine's discovery of what happens when rohypnol is ingested along with alcoholic beverages.

My then girlfriend and I are having a wonderfully romantic meal together at Red Robin, home of the famous cock rings. As I always do on the rare occasions that I get to visit Red Robin, I'm having the clucks and greens which I proclaim to all who will hear me as "the best chicken strips I've ever fucking eaten" accompanied by the ever so lovely non-alcoholic groovy smoothy.

Now you may ask, why the fuck are you at Red Robin on valentine's day? It's a long story and the explanation does nothing to make this story any funnier, therefore I will omit the details. Mind you, I am loving the fact that I get to tell people (such as yourselves) that I took my girl to Red Robin on Valentine's day and didn't get dumped for it.

Not only am I not left finishing my clucks and greens by my lonesome that evening, but I even manage to find the two of us in a situation back at my apartment rapidly heating up (as you may expect when you wine and dine a girl as such on a celebrated occasion like this).

With clothes cast aside, music playing and the lights dimmed, I notice a slight problem; my equipment isn't working right. Not having any history of such complications and not having any anxiety about the night, I was rather horrified with the conclusion I had quickly reached.

Eating at Red Robin had given me erectile dysfunction.

The girl was none too pleased with the situation or my diagnosis of the medical condition of "Red Robin Wang" but she cut me some slack due to bonus points earned previously. Most fortunately for me though, is that said erectile dysfunction cleared up by the next morning. The lesson I learned though was to only go to red robin with guys you don't plan to take home and fuck. At least not unless you're usually the bottom.

Somehow it has occured to me that eating fried chicken from the 7-11 down the street from me would be a good idea at 3 in the morning one of these days.

Unrelated: Flying Spaghetti Monster one step closer to being accepted as plausible science in Kansas.

Has inanimate.ca just become a shitty link repository without the witty social commentary of years past?

yes.

now go read the top thirty facts about chuck norris.
Did you know that the chief export of chuck norris is pain?

For my sweet twenty-seventh, taz crafted a cake with three layers using five different types of meat (short rib, chuck, sirloin, chorizo, turkey) and frosted with parsley mashed potatoes.

Best birthday cake evar.

While I go with handing out raisins and goodies (those shitty licorice candies) to spite children on halloween, someone in calgary went balls out this year.