If my change could talk

I made my first trip to the new fast food restaurant in the BRF the other day: Culvers. I've always like Culvers, even knowing that it is ten times more likely to cause massive heart failure than a prison shank to the ventrical. I paid with cash (a rarity for me) and the cash register discharged my change down a plastic slide.

I immediately noticed that something was amiss when I didn't see the honest faces of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Rumsfeld staring at me from the change in my hand. Some son of a bitch loaded the register with Canadian change. Nevertheless, I decided not to make waves and shamefully left the Culvers with my American food and foreign change.

However today I took a closer look at the change and discovered one of the pennies was actually an American penny from 1941 with the wheat leaves on back. As I palmed the piece of copper with 67 years of decay, I couldn't help but think of all the hands it changed, and how the holders of this penny must have lived. I also wondered how many of the prior possessors of this coin washed their hands.

It really is amazing. This coin was probably minted before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Hell, it may have belonged to a soldier who used it to buy a soda at the drug store before reporting to basic. People were using this penny to pay for goods during the cold war, Watergate, the moon landing and the rise of the Bee Gees. It may have seen the insides of cash registers everywhere from the halls of Congress to NASCAR facilities in the South.

I have to wonder where else it will travel before succumbing to a heating bin at the Denver mint. In all likelihood, the penny will find its way to my change bin and eventually my bank. Will I be the last holder of all this history? It's pretty cool to ponder. Will someone else 67 years from now get this penny in their change and wonder if I saw the great chicken migration of 2011, the reign of Pope Ronald Mexico I, or the Presidency of Air Bud, and his son Air W. Bud?

The only story this penny won't tell is how it was once given in an act of benevolence to a homeless guy.

Why the early 90's were almost as bad as the 80's

This title has nothing to do with Saved by the Bell...jut their perception of what was cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSF1brtyHdA

Quasi Point Break News

Patrick Swayze, the actor who portrayed Bodhi in Point Break was reportedly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Some news sources (the National Enquirer and the Superficial) are reporting that the Bodhizafta has but five weeks to live.

I certainly hope the reports are exaggerated...Bodhi deserves an honorable, badass death. This is how I see his real death going down: Bodhi and Johnny Utah meet at an Australian beach during the 50-year storm. Huge tsunamis are crashing down all around them. Then Utah walks up behind Bodhi and throws a Ronald Reagan mask on the waves beside him and asks "lose something, bra?" The two proceed to fight, with Utah handcuffing himself to Bodhi in the waves. Upon seeing the incoming Australian SWAT team ready to mop up on the arrest, Utah lets Bodhi go for one last go at the waves. Bodhi paddles out on his surfboard and the flabbergasted Australian SWAT team informs Utah that they'll get him when he comes back in. Utah nonchalantly says, "he's not coming back," as a huge tsunami envelopes Bodhi and carries him to the afterlife. Utah then tosses his FBI badge in the ocean and the sounds of Ratt serenade and comfort us in the death of surfing/bank robbing guru Bodhi.

But that's just how I imagine his death. If the prognosis is indeed true, in the words of Special Agent Utah: "Hey Bodhi, Vaya con dios."

Bodhi: "Yo Johnny, I'll see you in the next life!"

Something that happened

I woke up at around 6 this morning for work and heard the sounds of multiple police radios squawking in my hallway. Initially I prepared to flush my stash of crystal down the toilet and double fist tommy guns to greet the officers whom I assumed were serving an arrest warrant for my drug palace/emporium. However, when the dogs didn't immediately storm through the door, I went to blend a breakfast smoothie instead.

I didn't run into any police officers on my way to work and didn't think twice about it. However, over lunch, the District Attorney informed me that my neighbor had show himself with a shotgun on his balcony. Upon returning home, sure enough, there was evidence of seeping blood and guts on his balcony and the one below it. He was dead, and apparently I slept through the blast of a 10 gauge twelve feet feet from my own head.

I didn't know the guy, although I bitched about him parking in my spot now and then. It never fails to amaze me that a person would choose to end his own life rather than work through whatever problems he was having. I guess this statement comes with the quasi-pretentious assumption that I could overcome any problem life dealt me. However, regardless of your own woes, the amazing thing about personal tragedies is that opportunity to begin life completely fresh, to start over in every capacity despite the magnitude of a given loss. I wish someone had been there to assure my neighbor of this certainty, that there was an alternative. Instead he took his gift of life and threw it away. I didn't know the guy but I'm sad for him nevertheless.