My aunts cut fruit

Every morning my aunt cuts fruit for breakfast and does so for whoever else is there, weather her daughters are visiting or other family.

But I wish she would cut the members most likely to get soggy quickly, last.

I dare not ever make this suggestion however cuz I know the response would be: “oh really? that’s interesting. cuz there’s actually an awesome way around that little problem that I just read about in Martha Stewart Magazine. It’s called ‘cutting your own God damn fruit’. You should check that out, or if that’s to motherfucking hard for you, I guess you could always just go ahead and not wait a million years after its prepared and let the shit leak everywhere before you eat it. Stupid”.

She doesn’t really talk like that. But that would be the sentiment behind the response.

And for that reason I must say nothing.

The Buss Stops Here

Unfortunately, I’m announcing that richardland resident Jimmy Bussey is officially exiting the friend-zone and entering the Toolbox. hopefully not for long. except definitely forever. maybe. probably. most likely. god dammit.

jimmyb

You later richardland residents dont even know, or have forgotten how awesome Jimmy used to be. Well let me tell you a little something.. let me tell you a little story about a boy. a boy named Bussey…

Once upon a high school musical non-musical in the plains of the American midwest there was a driven and career oriented blunt and bold Renaissance man by the name of Bussey. Sure, he didn’t look like much on the outside, but that was only because the boy didn’t know how to present himself properly. See, despite being a football and basketball jock and controlling the schools media, he was poorly socially connected and not on his way toward changing that so when he took note that this spastic faggot named Richard in his drama class had a lot of hot chick friends, he saw opportunity for networking. When spastic faggot drama-Dick was approached by a journalism jock – exactly the puzzle piece that was missing from the new friend network he was building – he saw a similar opportunity and an association was struck.

Unplanned by either side, we actually got along. Like Beauty and the Beast. except when the silverware would burst into musical numbers, he thought it was gay and when he tried to sexually advance toward me I thought it was gay. I’m Beauty in this scenario by the way (duh).

Soon Jimmy was coming over my house every weekend and only 52% for the reason of hanging out with my hot bitches anymore. Before and after the social events I’d conjure up, Jimmy was early to arrive and late to leave. We’d hang out in my room, watch tv, go get food, go to the mall, see movies, and spend late nights at Dennys talking money, philosophy, religion, politics, and current social climate in our school and our new group of friends.

Most unique of all, he was loyal as fuck. Jimmy was the only one I never had to explain the concept of “we’re on the same side, idiot. always. that’s how this works” to. And he never fucked up. Whenever someone in the group did something really inconsiderate, shady, or downright shitty, Jimmys hands were always clean of it.

I got seriously mad and disappointed at Jimmy Bussey exactly one time, ever and that son of a bitch fixed it within hours of the damage… I had amassed an extensive library of Mp3’s on my computer that was the envy of all my friends and I would share copies of songs with people who introduced me to new music and gave me songs themselves, but I got annoyed as hell when others would try to leech songs from me and have nothing to exchange. It sounds silly now, and it would be – NOW. But this was 2001: Napster was still a cool new thing, music on computers was still kindov a novelty, finding it was not super easy, burnable CD’s were not expensive – but they were more costly than they are now, and downloading on dial up internet took 45 minutes per song at minimum. Finally, I set up ways of catching these leeches who would sneak into my music folder and pilfer my precious songs. The culprits where usually Feminine Mikey and Wheeler, but one night… I caught Jimmy. I questioned him and he denied it. I kindov believed him until evidence disproved his dirty lies and was annoyed that I was double-frauded. I invited these people into my home. and they were stealing from me? and lying to me about it? No SIR. not acceptablez. I said as much to Jimmy before he left my house that night. He listened and my words sunk in deeper than than Ted Kennedys car off a bridge, but unlike that analogy, this night would cause no death or ruin either of our chances for running for President. Later that same night, he delivered a note he had written acknowledging that it was an abuse of my trust to take the songs and lie about them, that he was very sorry, wouldn’t do it again and that he will replace the CD’s he used.

Are you listening to this? Dude delivered me a fkking hand written note expressing sincere regret and request for forgiveness because he burned music off my computer.

So what happened to that Jimmy? He withered, faded, and… died? idk. probably. He at LEAST went on extended vacation… lost motivation career wise. knocked up a girl who couldn’t give .5 shits about him and became an aimless alcoholic un-interesting bland and boring puke-for-brains. sad. but add to that.

busstopMaybe he’ll see this blog some time and realize its all true and he’s failing majorly at his potential and it will start a life reformation that brings him back on the road to awesome. Or… more likely: Maybe he’ll see this blog some time and think to himself “wow. Richard sure is a punk ass faggot. I sure am glad that dipshit ain a roun no more. lets go play some bas” and swig back the last shot left in his can of Loser-Ale lager. Or, even more likely: maybe he’ll never see this blog and still think the same thing.

Where is the sporty businessman with the drive and ambition who’s dependable and true?

I’m afraid that bus may have left the station.

My brother and his child bride are awesome

My half brother (pops kid, previous marriage, up to speed now? k,cool. lets keep this rollin), whom I spent Thanksgiving with earned a 10% “you’re cool now” credit with this little anecdote he shared at Thanksgiving dinner…

I was seated to the right of his new bride whom he married the week prior and with whom he has 3 children (if you’re doing the math at home, that means that yes, the babies came before the “i do”, but she didnt want to be preggers at her own wedding so it got delayed a few times). The actual numbers aren’t important (mostly because I don’t know them for sure) – she’s a year or so younger than me and he’s a decade plus years older than me. Whatever. So I’m seated next to the dad.. and he says something along lines of me getting married – be it “when are you?” or “soon it’ll be yours” or “i guess you’ll be next huh?” – i don’t remember. also not the important part of the story. The fun started when I gave the answer I always do, which is that my future wife may not even be born yet, and if she is, she’s probably just now learning to read, so lets not jump the gun on the Richards-wedding thing.

So he chuckles and thinks about it for a second out loud, saying “boy, I don’t if I can do that”, to which I ask “what do you mean?” and he sayyyyyyz: “I don know…If I were 30somethin? and gettin together with an 18 year old girl? i just don’t think i’d be able to handle it” – referring to the lifestyle, interests and maturity gap. but the comedy gold comes in that he quickly cut himself off with that thought as he suddenly realized “er, well – i guess it works sometimes though” while making an “oh ya” type hand gesture to my brother and his daughter who are in exactly that situation.

All of that is still the setup to the REAL fun though, which was that that instance got my brother to openly share the fact that he got his now-wife in trouble at school while they were “dating” because the principal caught them “stealin some kisses” a few times when he’d drop her off at high school, adding that “[the principal] didn’t like to see those kinda smooches” with a laugh.

And if that’s not awesome. then – no. nevermind that cliche. it is awesome.

Dolla store killaz

My brothers Sprint broadband card (I quit mine) gets a .6th of a bar of reception at his house and only in certain spots, so to use the internet he usually drives up to Starbucks a few miles back into civilization. Since my day job is teh internetz, I’ve been freakin dying during the visit, so my dad drove me and my nephew Aidan up to the library so I could get some work done and he could surf Ebony porn for awhile. I lost him in the there and didn’t want to say so to the creepy library people so I went out in the parking lot and called 411 to get the library’s number and then asked the person who picked up the phone there to find him and send him outside.

From there we headed to McDonalds where I was able to point out to him the importance of doing well in school, as the lady who served us had to make her 3 kids wait at a table until she got off work… from her job at McDonalds. 3 kids. just saying.

Next stop: strip mall down the road where we’ll have my dad pick us up. In the mean time? Dalla Stooooore yo.

dollarstorekillaz

Dear Mikey lovers: don’t say I didn’t try…

Sorry ju guys. As much as I hate deeply to disappoint the hundreds of thousands of fans who were feverishly following the FMFS (Feminine Mikey Facebook Saga), I gotta call it to a close for my own sake. Don’t try and make me feel bad about it cuz I put in HOURS negotiating with this schmuckluck to see if a friendly re-joining could be possible, but OY. I’m sorry… he’s just too god damn annoying. no longer friend material. I tried for you guys who frequently voice your love for the old material on richardland he was a part of, but I’m sorry – I’M SORRY OKAY????? – he’s just too far down the rabbit hole of douchitude to be recovered at this point.

To give you an idea of what an assface the once great Feminine Mikey has become, here is a rundown of the first sentence of every paragraph in his latest Facebook reply. Read this horseshit and keep in mind that these messages are supposed to convey “I’m sorry I was such an asshole in the past, but I really want to make it up to you and try to be friends again”.

Maybe its me, so you tell ME if that’s the tone YOU glean here when you read these openers:

MIKEY: Jesus Richard.  Way to make an ultimately simple statement confusing and overly complicated.

Context: Instead of being grateful that I’m actually putting thought and effort into replying to his messages and contuing to steadfastly make his case, he won’t stop whining about how I’m being too mean to him in my replies, so I gave him this awesome deal: vote for the other guy instead of your original choice in the Nov 4 election and I’ll tone down the rhetoric a little in return. He couldn’t wrap his head around the whole “do something as a sign of good faith and i’ll tamp down the mean words as a return-favor” concept, claiming that if my harsh words can be graciously waved due to an act of concession then they lose credibility. I replied to let him know that he’s retarded for thinking that, and apparently that was me making a simple statement confusing and overly complicated. douchebag.

Comment: Really? Even if you’re so much of a weak little bitch to get frustrated at someone you’re trying to apologize to and regain favor with do you really show how flustered you are with an exasperated “Jesus” and go on to blame the person you’re supposedly trying to curry favor with? is there a BETTER way to send a stronger translation of “I suck at life. pleae don’t take my apologies seriously”?. It’s cool to go that route if the person you’re apologizing to is actually being retarded in response to you, cuz then you’re really just JudgeJudy-ing them into a no-nonsense approach to forgiveness with no added horsecrap onto the load the apologizer is already admitting is there.

Instead, Mikey is just a little shit whose frequently wrong and easily frustrated when challenged, so that explaining something in simplistic terms so he could understand it automatically becomes unnecessarily “confusing” and “complicated”.

And FYI: “overly complicated” is redundant you twit. I didn’t tell him that cuz it would be an unnecessary diversion.

MIKEY: Now, on to this online chapter book you’ve presented…

Context: he’s making a derogatory comment about the length of my reply.

Comment: Really? you think it’s a good idea to insult the time taken by someone who hates you but gives you lengthy and thoughtfully written reactions to your whiny ass little pleas anyway?

And a “chapter book” is a childrens book, so I don’t know if he’s claiming I was using child-level vocabulary, or if he didn’t know that chapter book was a real phrase and he was just trying to say “a book long enough to have chapters” to insult the length of my reply while i was hearing him out on his request to be my god damn friend again.
I didn’t tell him any of that cuz it would be an unnecessary diversion.

MIKEY: I can’t believe you’ve injected politics into this discussion…way to make an already overly drawn-out topic even more overly drawn-out.

Context: when he said why he could never vote for the other guy earlier, he said a bunch of stuff that wasn’t true, so I corrected him.

Comment
: Really? you can’t believe that after you talked about politics to someone that they would reply? Really? I would want to be friends with someone this easily shocked, why again?

MIKEY: The fault lays with you here, Bush.  Cause I didn’t sound like I misspoke from the beginning.

Context: He mentioned how votes don’t count (electoral college-wise) in California and it’s too bad my vote couldn’t be put to use back in Missouri. I misunderstood and commented on it – he explained his original comment further and in the reply to that I said his explanation makes sense and my bad for not getting it on the first go-around.

Comment: Really? You think its useful to keep going on the “I was right! you misunderstood! YOUR fault!” path even after the other person says “yup. you were right. i misunderstood. my fault”?
And calling me Bush (not a nickname I’ve ever taken)? wtf.

le sigh

So can I finally get a little wut-wut here? (I heard a black person on tv say that so I adopted it. its in the right context, right?). I mean, I’m as sorry as you are, guys. I “mate” for life with my friends, so when they destroy the relationship I hate it and there’s always an open invitation to apply to re-enter richardland after doing appropriate pennance but – more importantly – proving that you’re worth the re-entry. If you’re not friend material, thennnnnn…wtf

I promise I gave him more than a fair shot. Femanine
Mikey just sucks at life too bad to be recovered right now.

Cousin Marty gets a Birthday Singing Telegram

My cousin Marty turned 40, and apparently his awesome new wife Lisa loves awkward moments as much as I do, cuz she got him a singing telegram and, whoah, does the uncomfortable hilarity flow like esoteric references in a Dennis Miller monologue. The sheer uncomfortableness is delightfully awesome as the performance seems to last about 2 minutes too long and cousin Marty is left stranded in how the eff to react to this madness.

I wish there was a DVD of moments like this with different characters and victims honoree’s.

First, I’m kinda annoyed that cousin Marty never told me he was Scott McClellan and I don’t know why it took this video to make me realize the identity but it would have been pretty awesome to have a family member who was White House Press Secretary (even though he sucked royally at that job).

Second, lets not knock the calypso chachacha telegrammer girl woman who did just fine at her job which I’m sure she loves and has a lot of fun with. but… doesn’t a part of you kind of watch this and think it would be interesting if she’s a single mom struggling to make ends meet and cries profusely when she gets in her car to go home each day?

Will Femanine Mikey return to Richardland?

I’ve been receiving this question ever since captain Fem-Mi appeared on this website, which was only weeks before our friendship crashed and burned after he perpetrated a social suicide bombing on our relationship after converting to Douchebagelism in college. It was unfortunate timing, cuz  everyone on richardland had just started to meet and went on to love Feminine Mikey – and for good reason – I did too. he was fun. Great guy, good pal. but unfortunately he started to achieve meltdown atomic levels of doucherness, achieved by matching a sudden decrease of his interesting and unique attributes with a sharp increase of his opinion of himself (always the scientific douchebag ratio). The unbalanced scales led him to turn into a huge burnout loser that I still stuck with for awhile until he topped his make-your-own-sundae of disaster with a cherry of Brutisesque betrayal.

Mikey relations were cut at that point and laid mostly dormant until earlier this year when he tried to add me on Facebook, resulting in a smack-back that was detailed here on richardland. He responded to it and I responded back eventually – which he would obnoxiously try to copy? Cuz I would take a month or so to respond to a message cuz I’m terribly uninterested in the sob story this douche has but I at least get to it. He however is supposedly trying to apologize and become friends again so wtf is HIS excuse for all of a sudden taking 4 weeks to reply now? moron. he can’t stop trying to be like me even after all this time.

So what’s the deal with Mikey? The answer to the headline of this post is “not bloody likely”, but said in a really obnoxious way, maybe with an accent, and definitely delivered only a few inches away from your face with an awkward pause afterward.

I’m totally forgiving if a repentance is genuine, but that’s only half the story with a friend-gone-wrong. Duh – hello? I have to still LIKE you if you wanna be friends again. So I might forgive someone but if I still don’t respect them then what’s the point?

Well Mikey, being an idiot and all, failed to understand why he had to sell himself as a good person when I should already know this (that whole 6 months where he was a jerk that ended our friendship doesn’t count when Mikey’s the score keeper). The Feminine Mikey brand has been sullied, I told him, and you need to market it properly or no one’s gonna remember or at least apply to your party affiliation the good times – they’re just gonna remember the shit you at best, failed to explain properly and they’re gonna choose the inexperienced black guy over you no matter how seasoned and worthy you might be.

It’s like a guy who breaks up with his girlfriend cuz he doesn’t like her anymore but then a few years later gets lonely and finds himself regretting the good times with her. so he goes back and apologizes and she points out that he was a jerk during the breakup. he agrees and apologizes but is all “wtf ELSE do you want from me? i SAID i was sorry. gaaad” . So she throws her drink in his face.
if he really loved her, he goes on accepting the mantle and explaining why he’s worth a second shot. the other scenario though, is if he was just a schmuck who was only going through this cuz he got a little nostalgic lately after re-examining his current quality of life – then he decides he doesn’t need this kind of bullshit and totally remembers why he dumped the bitch in the first place and they’re both better off for it.

I threw the drink.
your move holy man.

My last response to Mikey sums it all up in my usual dosages of prose, sober comment, compassion, stern explanation and ruthless logicality that Roger Ebert called “the best to hit the internet in years”. It’s an explanation in response to him whining about his attempts being hopeless and if I “clearly whole heartedly hate” him and blah blah – you’ll see. Here’s it be at for y’all to take awn in:

Michael, the opposite of love isn’t hate. it’s apathy.
there’s lots of that with me towards you, but clearly not 100% as you can see the length of the responses [you get].
so no, I don’t “whole heartedly hate” you. I think you’re a selfish opportunistic ass whose narcissism led him to devalue any friends that could be seen as dominant or hindering to a new decidedly consequence-free lifestyle you thought would lead you to happiness and when it failed, you come back to the friends you sneered at in the past while retaining the same resentment you had for them when you hastily cut them out of your life.

I’d love to be proved wrong.
I’ve always doubted I would.

And that… meui dea frens…is the situation with Mikey.

Be brave like Matthew

A great little lesson by a 4 year old on the virtues of bravery occurred in the pool.

 

As my twin cousins visit for the summer and graduate to jumping off the diving board into the pool here, the innate differences between the male and female biological wiring are already presenting themselves as Kylie is a thrill seeking danger junkie that will jump into the abyss no problem and always wants to be tossed higher and farther into the air, while Matthew is much more calculating, cautious and fearful of the potential dangers that exist in all of the above.

 

The other day he was on the edge of the diving board, staring down into the wet unknown expressing the kind of trepidation typical for him in this situation and from the water I encouraged him to trust me that it is a safe jump and just do it. I wasn’t breaking through to him in the slightest until I said “be brave”. With that, he perked his head up like a dog and repeated back to me “be brave?”… and he looked back down into the water with even more calculation and now determination and resolve and leaped into the air.

 

Even a 4 year old understands the value of bravery. Bravery isn’t the absence of fear. By definition, bravery is the presence of fear, and the action that goes against that fear-grain anyway. A person without fear cannot be brave. They can be fearless, and maybe stupid or irresponsible but not brave. Brave takes into consideration the fright that is holding you back from action, using intellect to decide what the best choice to make is, and then making that choice despite that fear. That is what bravery is and I was happy to be a small part in pushing the concept to Matthew.

 

Be brave like Matthew. Look at your surroundings and make your choices to go forward in the best ways regardless of the fears that would otherwise anchor you.

In 37 1/2 days, I’ll know if the data on my laptop can be saved

Last week my 17 inch Macbook Pro crashed while I was using it so I force-powered if off and finished the nights work on my desktop PC. The next day I powered up the Macbook and after a prolonged Apple screen, would receive only a blinking question mark every time a reboot was attempted…

Took it to the Apple store. The “Mac Genius” (I use quotations as a double meaning since its the phrase Apple describes the position themselves, but also that I am skeptical of the validity of the title – both of which can be represented by quotes and would be ambiguous to the reader on which I was trying to convey if I didn’t just tell you “both”. man, I’m awesome) said the hard drive is broken and I need a new one. So I bought one from a local computer store and started to dissect the computer to install it. I did… and stared at it awhile… thinking of all the gorgeous pictures of myself and the time spent editing the 5 or 6 videos on the old hard drive that would be lost forever.

Apple Macbook Hard Drive Replacement
(this is actually just some random person’s picture on photobucket cuz I was too lazy to take a picture and upload it myself cuz its so many extra steps to do it on the PC. my open mac and the new/old hard drive look exactly like this though, so whatever. screw you guys)

The data recovery place that Apple recommended I go to if I wanted to save the info from the busted drive gave me an estimate of $500 to $3,500 before I told him to die and hung up on him (or politely said “okay, thank you so much for the info, have a great day, goodbye”. whatever). But I couldn’t just leave the stuff on there only to be recovered years later when I could afford the time, energy and cost.

So I unhooked the new hard drive and put the old one back in. Tried a few things I found on Google. No use. Got a tip on a software fix, since the hard drive was clearly not physically broken as I found out through other tests I did and went to Apple to buy it. Upon checkout my card was declined. I remembered my current balance and totally lied to the guy and said to give me a minute to call my bank and get the issue resolved. Instead, I bolted out of the mall and back into my car and deposited some checks into my account at my bank 5 miles down the road and zipped right back to the mall in under 5 minutes and told the same guy to try the card again. When it worked he was surprised and asked what the problem was. I blamed it on my exorbitant and luxurious travels abroad for business and pleasure and the bank just has a sensitive “suspicion of lost or stolen card” policy. He was very impressed. And I was very a liar.

I brought the software home. Data Rescue 2. It came with no directions. Just a CD in a box. Ok… I start running it. It goes great for about 20 minutes. Stops the scan at 60 gigabytes. Freezes for about 40 minutes. I call the software makers. They say when it reaches a corrupt cluster it could take a few hours. I say okay, just wanted to see how to proceed – but also, just as a side note – this “estimated time remaining” number isn’t accurate…right? Because it keeps bouncing around from thousands to several thousands of hours. The guy says no, it could in fact be accurate and that he’s heard of drives scanning for up to a month, but that the people do indeed get their data afterward.

Dammit…

That was last week..
So far the scan is up to 75.5gb on a 150gb hard drive, making the progress till now a consistent 2gb per day.

So… continuing at this pace.
with 75gb to go..
at 2gb a day.
2 into 75 is….
37.5 days

Dammit…

(a personal journal adjoining the Richardland comedy network)