The Astronaut’s Henchmen

Neil Armstrong died this weekend. I almost met the man once, but instead his goons kicked me out. Unlike everything else in my life, this is not a lie. The incident made me reevaluate the famous astronaut. On one hand, he was the first man to walk on the moon. On the other, he died without meeting me. For that reason alone, his life was a failure. Our near miss happened when I was a newspaper reporter. After his career with NASA, Armstrong avoided the public and the press the way creationists avoid science. To coax the shy explorer out of seclusion, his alma mater commissioned a life-sized bronze sculpture of him and put his name on a new multimillion dollar building. It seems like a bit much just to get someone to show up to your party, but the university thought it was a good idea. There’s a reason tuition increases outpace inflation.

I covered the dedication ceremony because all of our good reporters had gone home for the night. In the journalism hierarchy, the better you are, the more sunlight you’re allowed to see. The assignment didn’t call for me to actually interview Armstrong, who would rather shove glass up his urethra than talk to a journalist. Instead, I was supposed to snag quotes from his acceptance speech to share with the other newspapers in our corporation. There was company-wide interest in this story because it involved Neil Freaking Armstrong, which is actually how his name appears on his birth certificate. People figured he must have something worthwhile to say after spending so many years out of sight. Maybe he’d tell everyone the moon landing was a hoax. Maybe he’d fail to see his shadow and we’d have six more weeks of winter. Whatever went down, my editors could rest easy knowing I was there to capture it all with my usual piss-poor attention to detail.

Back when I was still a reporter, I secretly hoped someone would subpoena my notes. I would have turned them over without a fight, but all they would have been able to decipher were the penis doodles in the margins.

The event began with a reception packed full of alumni astronauts who came to honor Armstrong and take advantage of the open bar. This particular university pumped out space travelers like Catholics pump out babies. I squeezed my way through the room and interviewed as many VIPs as I could while also trying to grab a free drink. I remained disappointingly sober throughout the evening, but I did manage to interview Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the lunar surface. It was his job to lock up the place after everybody headed back to earth. Unlike Armstrong, who had a team of bodyguards to protect him, Cernan hung out in the crowd sipping a beer. I guess if you’re the twelfth man to the moon, you’re expendable.

I still don’t understand why Armstrong needed protection. Yes, the world is a dangerous place, but it’s not like they were holding this soirée in downtown Kabul. I’d like to think he had bodyguards to shield him from my hard-hitting questions: “Mr. Armstrong, you were the first man to walk on the moon. What’s your opinion on the flat tax and abortion?” The spaceman’s security detail wasn’t as airtight as it at first appeared. One of our newspaper interns managed to meet Armstrong by putting away her notebook and posing as a student. He was polite and engaging with her, but only because he didn’t know her sinister career aspirations. Armstrong always made time for young learners, but the only thing he ever taught a journalist is what it feels like to be punched in the throat.

The intern wasn’t the brightest girl in the world – she was going to college to be a reporter, after all – but she did manage to pull one over on NASA’s finest. I figured I could do the same. In case you’re questioning my professionalism, I assure you my motives were strictly selfish. I just wanted a story I could tell my grandkids.

Me: “I once shook hands with Neil Armstrong.”

My future grandkids: “Shut the hell up and go back to the nursing home.”

When the reception ended, the crowd made its way out into the freezing rain to trudge across campus to the formal banquet room. In the process, the security detail managed to lose Neil Armstrong. I found him standing by himself just inside the entrance of the dinning hall. This was my chance to casually offer him my hand, congratulate him, and be on my way. I’m amazingly smooth in my own mind. In reality, by the time I made my move an unseen bodyguard was all over me.

“Are you a reporter?” he asked. It was more of an accusation than a question.

“Yeah, but barely,” I wanted to reply.

Instead, I explained I didn’t want to ask Armstrong any questions. I simply wanted to meet him, just like our intern did without ill effect a few minutes earlier. The guard looked at me intently and heard absolutely nothing I said. He couldn’t. He had one of those Secret Service-style earpieces that are scientifically designed to block out reason. In the same way that animals have bright colors to scare off predators, security types wear communicators with incredibly obvious wires to warn the world that abusing authority is part of their job description.

True to form, the guy demanded to see my media pass. I didn’t have one. Nobody gave me one when I arrived at the reception an hour earlier. In fact, nobody had ever given me one for anything I’d covered at the university. The purpose of public relations is to get a message to the public, a function best performed by a class of professionals known as reporters who relay information to the masses on a daily basis. Inviting journalists to your event is a great way to get the word out; expelling them is not. The university’s public relations staff understood this, but that’s because they didn’t wear Secret Service earpieces. The bodyguard didn’t have that advantage. He threw me out and sent the intern with me for good measure. He didn’t physically drag us to the door, but only because I gave up easily. It wasn’t worth getting beaten up for my poverty-level salary.

Shortly before the evening’s formal program was set to begin, I found myself standing outside in the freezing rain staring hopelessly at a locked door. My only job that night was to be in the room when Armstrong gave his speech, and I still found a way to screw it up. I called the university’s public relations director to see if she could get us back in, but she was too busy hobnobbing with tipsy astronauts to answer. I also called my editor, but she didn’t pickup either. I finally gave up trying to contact a higher power and trudged across campus to the building where the reception was held. Apparently there really were media passes this time. They were lying on a table in a corner that an hour early had been hidden behind five hundred mingling people. Any security function the credentials served was defeated, though, because they didn’t have our pictures on them and they were left unattended. Anyone could have walked out of there with an official media badge, which is exactly what I did. I got back into the dining hall as Anderson Cooper.

I made it back to the banquet room just in time for Armstrong’s brief remarks. The bodyguard who threw me out made a halfhearted apology as I came in. To prove I was the bigger man, I glared at him angrily as I stormed by. Armstrong’s remarks weren’t worth all the trouble I went through to hear them. He said he was incredibly fortunate because all his life he had done only what he wanted to do. This described the exact opposite of my own life on that night and every other in which I worked for the paper. Afterward, I drove back to the newsroom and banged out my usual low-quality article. Nobody else in our chain ended up using any quotes from it. I think they pulled their information from an Associate Press reporter who had his media pass the entire time.

I’m sure Armstrong was an upstanding human being, but I wasn’t there for his whole life. I can only judge him by the thirty second incident in which he watched his bodyguard jerk me around and didn’t intervene. That’s the disadvantage of being famous. If you let down your public persona for even a second, people will assume that momentary lapse represents the real you. That’s why when I become a celebrity, I won’t even bother pretending to be nice. If my security team smashes your camera and pees in your face, please be aware this is not a misunderstanding.

Primate Primacy

I write a lot of long-winded diatribes on nonsensical topics, but today I want to focus on something serious for a change: Whether or not I can win a fight to the death against a chimpanzee. The short answer is “yes,” while the longer, more nuanced answer is “hell yes.” This conflicts directly with the opinion of every person ever. I’ve never talked to anyone who thinks I can beat a chimpanzee, and I bring up this topic a lot. Just ask my wife’s OB/GYN. His only comeback was “Shut up and let me deliver this baby.” I did not shut up.

Before I go any further, I want to make one thing clear for any animal lovers out there: Chimps are dicks. Anytime an environmentalist tells you humans are the only species that kills its own kind, they’re lying. Chimps do it all the time. Sometimes, they kill to overthrow the existing group leader. Other times, they kill and eat weak members of their society just because they can. In the animal kingdom, boredom is an acceptable justification for murder and cannibalism. The only thing chimps hate more than other chimps are humans. If you come within arm’s reach of a chimpanzee, it will do everything in its power to literally rip your face off. Chimps don’t even eat faces. They tear them off for the same reason we pop bubble wrap: It’s fun, and it makes a cool sound. There’s no such thing as a peaceful chimp; there are only chimps currently engaged in face ripping and chimps waiting for you to come a little closer.

Chimp vs. Human Combat Guide

An ape is a ferocious opponent, but it’s still no match for me under the right conditions. Arguing otherwise is an insult to me personally and to our species as a whole. Throughout history, human beings have harnessed their collective creativity and intelligence to massacre creatures dumber than themselves. Mankind and chimpanzees once shared the savannah. Humans went on to invent tools and NASCAR and the dollar menu and McDonalds. Chimps just hung around the grasslands throwing poop at each other. I’m not sure who came out ahead on that one. In terms of total population, though, Homo sapiens are the clear winners. There are more than six billion people on earth, while chimpanzees are teetering on the brink of extinction. The endangered species list is a victory banner showing all the uppity animals we knocked down a peg. We already fought our battle with nature. Spoiler alert: humanity won.

While a group of humans will always beat a group of apes, this debate is about whether an individual human can defeat a lone ape in single combat. Chimps are stronger and faster than humans, which will help them exactly not at all. Human beings didn’t surpass lesser primates by challenging them to foot races and arm wrestling matches. We did it by spearing them to death in their sleep. If you match a chimp’s physical abilities against my cunning, I would emerge victorious at least some of the time. As with everything in life, the outcome depends on the circumstances. If I bump into a chimpanzee while wandering alone across the savannah, my face is as good as gone. But if the same encounter happens in the middle of my kitchen, I’d look pretty good for family photos later that afternoon. This is of course a lie. I’d ruin those pictures even with my face intact.

For this scenario, let’s say a chimp wanders through my front door and we’re both surprised to see each other. He was hoping for an unopposed home invasion, and I was looking forward to a quiet day without any fights to the death against a fellow hominid. All that goes out the window when the chimp lays his beady little eyes on my supple, unripped-off face. The next few seconds are critical. First, I’d crap my pants. This is not a sign of cowardice. It merely lightens my load and makes me more agile for the graceful combat maneuvers that lie ahead.  What happens after that depends on what I was up to before the chimp’s unexpected arrival.

Watching TV

If I’m sitting on the couch watching reruns of Law and Order, my reaction would begin and end at voiding my bowels. I can’t fight back if I’m not already in some kind of combat stance. The last time I was taken by surprise by an animal, a raccoon wandered through the doggie door and onto our enclosed back porch. I didn’t exhibit courage in that encounter, although by the time my wife got home you could hardly tell I’d been crying. A chimp is the size of at least five raccoons stacked on top of each other. The best I could hope for is a swift trip to the hospital and an attractive face donor.

Odds of survival: 5%

Odds of my story being loosely copied on the next episode of Law and Order: When Animals Attack: 82%

Making Dinner

If I’m chopping up vegetables when the chimp wanders into my house, I’d immediately drop the knife and reach for a kitchen chair. It would force separation between us and act as a reach weapon. Nothing in Darwinian evolution prepared an ape to defend itself against a thrashing from a sturdy wooden seat.

Odds of survival: 80%

Odds of getting yelled at by my wife for ruining a perfectly good kitchen chair: 100%

Performing Impromptu Indoor Carpentry

Every once in a while I get the sudden urge to build something out of wood in the middle of my living room. If I have a power tool of any kind, the chimp would have a bad day. He may be quick, but he can’t outrun a circular saw blade spinning at 1500 RPM. I’d live, but the price would be high. Nothing stains carpet like monkey blood.

Odds of survival: 95%

Odds of someone pointing out chimps aren’t monkeys: 75%

A circular saw isn’t as effective as a gun, but you can buy one without a three-day waiting period. 

Working out

The key to surviving a chimpanzee attack is sensible footwear. If I’m wearing running shoes, I’d use them for their intended purpose: kicking chimps in the balls. Even if I died, all that chimp would have to look forward to would be a life with no offspring and two exploded testicles.

Odds of survival: 50%

Odds of getting an endorsement deal from Nike for their new line of nut-crushing cleats: -5%

My victory may not be as inevitable as I at first assumed, but the scientifically rigorous results above speak for themselves. There are multiple ways I could survive and even thrive during an unprovoked chimpanzee attack. Chances are I’ll need to use some or all of these methods within my lifetime. There are nearly two vicious chimp-on-human attacks every year. I’m ready for my turn. Are you?

A Simple Wedding Homily

From time to time, people jokingly ask me to write speeches for them. No one ever makes this request seriously because letting me put words in your mouth is a very, very bad idea. If you want proof, keep in mind I spent my early 20s ghost writing for Sarah Palin. Since nobody seeks out my oratory advice, I offer it unsolicited. My dream is to convince a priest to read something I wrote for a semi-important function, like a battleship dedication or royal funeral. If you botch a eulogy, there is no do-over, at least not until the zombie apocalypse. I’d settle for ruining a wedding, which is a lot like a funeral in that the guest of honor will never have fun again. Thanks to the skyrocketing divorce rate and its many wonderful side effects, I may yet get my chance to ruin some unsuspecting couple’s special day. By the time you get to your third or fourth spouse, you can’t expect a minister to come up with a fresh sermon about the permanence of love. If you’re an apathetic preacher looking for the easy way out, put down that gun and plagiarize this speech instead:

Like my Lego Darth Vader wedding cufflinks, I’m evil, don’t bend at the knees, and look damn good in a tux.

We are gathered here today to celebrate the union of Edgar and Jill. Like the fat kid in gym class who always gets picked last, we knew someone would eventually choose each of you by default. Love is like alcohol: It makes ugly people seem more attractive than they really are. Edgar and Jill, you must love each other very much. I recommend you do everything in your power to make this marriage work. In each other, you found literally the one person in the world who can tolerate your personality, morals, and smell. If you divorce, you are guaranteed to die alone. Try not to screw this up.

This is normally the part where I encourage the bride and groom to fulfill their biblical duty to be fruitful and multiply, but I think God will make an exception for the two of you. Your paternal instincts are suspect at best, and you don’t exactly represent the finest qualities the gene pool has to offer. I shudder to think what your offspring would look like, but I’m sure the scientific community is curious. I’m told there’s a spot in the Smithsonian reserved for your hairy goat children. If you disregard the common good and reproduce anyway, be prepared for the added burden offspring bring. Kids are like big, ungrateful puppies, only they cost more to feed and you go to jail if you put them down. You won’t be able to support your ravenous hoard of freeloaders by robbing homeless men for loose change stealing doorknobs for scrap metal, even if those are the only careers your sociology degrees prepared you for. Try not to go on welfare too quickly. The current political climate supports the needy, but it only takes one election to transform the social safety net from feeding the poor to chopping them up for spare parts.

Marriage isn’t just about ugly children and soul-crushing poverty. There’s also a downside. For the rest of your life, everything will be a negotiation. Whether you’re deciding what to watch on TV or figuring out how much money to budget this month for crystal meth, your chances of deciding even the simplest matters without incurring domestic battery charges are extremely low. The fairest compromises leave both parties unhappy. Get ready for a lot of unhappiness. Remember, too, that there are some situations where you can’t meet halfway. Sometimes the fairest settlement you can reach results in one of you getting what you want and the other one agreeing not to castrate you in your sleep. Every news story you’ve ever read about a wife cutting off her husband’s penis started with a fight about how to load the dishwasher. Don’t forget to keep score. Most marriages have a winner and a loser. Yours has two losers. That’s why you’re such a good match.

You came into the church today as two separate individuals. You’ll leave it as two separate individuals who entered into a legal contract that is very costly and time consuming to break. From today forward, you’ll share a last name and a credit rating, although Edgar already ruined both. If you work hard and pay your bills on time, in seven years you can qualify for a  large enough loan to buy a sizeable breakfast at IHOP. Someday, you might even be approved for a mortgage on a cardboard box, although with your credit rating it will probably be soggy. It isn’t exactly the American dream, but it will keep out the wind and make your dinner parties memorable. Just remember to keep the gatherings small and intimate and only invite short people.

You won’t be alone in your married life. You will be surrounded by friends, family members, and acquaintances, all of whom will mercilessly judge you and everything you do. They’re not necessarily rooting for you to fail, but your success would certainly be a disappointment to us all. Everybody needs to know someone whose life is so terrible it makes us feel better about ourselves by comparison. For most of us here today, that person is one of you. Your train wreck of a marriage will be a form of therapy for the entire community. Be sure to take lots of pictures.

If it were up to me I’d talk all day, but the crowd is getting antsy. We’re glad you’re getting married, but honestly most of us are here for the free booze. A wedding is just the dead time between “Here Comes the Bride” and the open bar. The reception is the most important part of the ceremony. In a few days, nobody will remember what your dress looked like or what your wedding colors were, but everyone will recall the sweaty guy doing the worm on top of your wedding cake. I hope you brought a spare. At least your marriage won’t be the only bad decision made tonight.

A Totally Legitimate Roommate Agreement

Several months ago, a guy I know rented empty bedrooms in his house to two of his friends. They sealed their deal by signing a roommate agreement they found on the Internet and never read very closely. Since there seems to be demand for such a document, I’ve created a roommate agreement of my own. Feel free to use it, preferably without looking it over first. Written contracts are most effective when used sight unseen:

The best roommate agreements are based on mutual understanding and respect, neither of which applies here. You made that clear the day you spilled six gallons of ostrich blood in the back seat of my car. Seriously, you can’t just go to the store and buy a barrel of ostrich blood. That took planning and a lot of ostriches. I’m tired of hiding my car keys and my membership card for the zoo. From this point forward, our interactions will be based solely on this legal document. Failure to abide by the rules established herein will result in the forfeiture of your security deposit and possibly a war crimes tribunal. Feel free to test me on this one. I have The Hague on speed dial.

Rent for one bedroom is $_____ per month and must be paid by check. Chickens will not be accepted as payment under any circumstances, no matter how hopped up on LSD they may be. Also, there will be no more giving drugs to poultry, even if you promise to put down a tarp first. A man should be able to walk through his own house without being attacked by farm animals on an acid trip. Given that the damage you’ve caused so far exceeds the value of my home, a small retainer is necessary to ensure your future good behavior. For a security deposit, I want two months worth of rent and the names and addresses of the twelve people you hold most dear. Everything that happens to my walls happens to them, so you might want to think twice the next time you drill holes to hang a picture.

Personal property rights will be upheld in this household. The following are acceptable ways to mark your food in the fridge: 1) black marker 2) adhesive labels from a label maker. The following methods are unacceptable: 1) blood 2) feces 3) ancient Indian curses. Nobody believes those bones are real anyway, but as a courtesy please refrain from duct taping them to unopened packages of foodstuffs. In the future, ownership of edible items will be determined by who purchases them, not by who can most quickly cover them with artifacts that look suspiciously like the human remains stolen from the natural history museum last March.

From now on, the company you keep will be monitored. You need the unanimous approval of your housemates to have more than two visitors at a time, no matter how hot you claim your guests to be. For future reference, you weren’t hosting an orgy; you were running a brothel. One is a consensual arrangement between adults. The other involves the exchange of sex for money, locks on the basement door that can only be unlatched from the outside, and large numbers of women who don’t speak English. Also, sex slavery is both a crime and a violation of the homeowners’ association covenant. If the board can shut down those kids with the lemonade stand, they definitely won’t let you run a whore house, no matter how many times you show them your business permit from the Vatican. One last note on the subject: I’m pretty sure the pope doesn’t sign his letters as “dude with the pointy hat.” Also, I sincerely doubt he has ever in an official papal document used the phrase “get all up in that ho.”

For that matter, absolutely no businesses can be run from this property. Yes, this includes unlicensed surgery and gold prospecting. I had to get a permit to dig a hole for the rose bushes last May. You can’t just get a backhoe and start tearing up the backyard. There are no precious metals or mole people in the vicinity. Please stop stealing construction equipment to look for them.

Everyone is responsible for the cleanliness of the common areas. We will all take turns cleaning the kitchen and the living room on a weekly basis. Simply letting trash pile up until the house gets condemned is no longer an option. When we do tidy up, we will use standard cleaning products like Windex and Pine-Sol. Fire and dynamite are off the table. So are herds of goats. I don’t care how much trash they eat. They poop everywhere and, according to the doctor who treated me, at least one of them has rabies. This is the last section in which I’m going to address livestock. If you have to steal it from a farmer, it doesn’t belong in this house. This includes the farmer’s wife. Don’t pretend like you actually wanted her. You just used her for her goats.

In the communal rooms of the house, I supplied all of the furniture. Please refrain from testing its structural integrity. Under standard operating procedures, a kitchen table should not suffer a catastrophic failure. There are better places to rebuild an engine block. And for the last time, the living room décor would not be improved by the addition of a trampoline, mechanical bull, or slip and slide. Stop asking.

You are responsible for furnishing your bedroom. Acceptable fixtures include dressers, a bed, and maybe a chair. A Civil War cannon does not fit into any of these categories. While I agree it is incredibly effective at waking even the deepest sleeper, I insist you find an alarm clock that doesn’t puncture the eardrums of everyone in a two block radius. I reserve the right to inspect your personal space at anytime without prior notice, especially if your room is emitting obnoxious noises, odors, or liquids. The easiest way to keep me off your back is to stop practicing taxidermy in your bedroom.

You are a bad roommate and an awful human being. If I had any other options, I would never rent you a room or make the slightest effort to save your life if I saw you choking on a wad of goat hair. You’re lucky I need the money and have a strong desire not to die alone. But even my desperation has its limits. If you don’t sign this contract by the end of the day, I’ll start tracking down hostages.

Homeowner ________________

Tenant            ________________

Date                ________________