Sterling's Weekly

Des called me the other day all flustered.   I’d just sat down and poured myself a big bowl of Grape-Nuts, was fisting the first spoonful into my gob when she started yammering on about the dreadful state of plane travel, asking me if I’d seen the latest, the whole bit about the fucking lunatic who, mid-flight, went for the emergency door on that 737 out of Seattle, not realizing that doing so is impossible at cruising altitude.   But even equipped with such knowledge, you’d still shit your britches if you witnessed something like that, so kudos to the strapping young fellow in the emergency row who gave that nutjob a good old-fashioned walloping.   Reverend Al was actually the one who sent me the now viral clip of the guy, hands behind his back, being led down the jet bridge by three cops, showing off two black eyes, a bloody nose and split lip, and, as he passed the camera, a cavernous plumbers crack—turns out, the fucker not only received the beating of a lifetime, but...

I got my teeth cleaned last week.   Finally.   I hadn’t been to a dentist in at least seven years, mainly due to a severe mistrust of the dental profession as a whole.   And not because I think dentistry is a phony profession or pseudoscience.   No, absolutely not.   Even though I find them repulsive and, dare I say, unnatural, the teeth are a part of the body, and, like any other part of the body, they deserve a designated doctor.   I get we needed to develop shorter, more blunted teeth as we evolved, but now you can’t go around and smile without flashing what looks like an ice cube tray of frozen, spoiled milk.   We humans don’t have it the worst, though.   Take any mammal in the genus Equus, for example—the horse, the donkey, the zebra, etc.   Ever pulled back the lips on one of those bad boys?   Good God.   Or, even worse, go look up the sheepshead fish.   I get the willies just thinking about those guys.   Or, switchi...

The other day, the Reverend Father Alabaster Fudge called me around lunchtime.  He said he’d finished his rounds early, that his 1 o’clock at the prison had up and died on him—a lifer who had, unbeknownst to the prison officials, silently committed himself to a hunger strike that he’d apparently (and remarkably) seen to the end, credit where credit is due—so he was free for the afternoon.  He asked if I wanted to hit up Chili’s, noting that they’d lowered the price on the Triple Dipper appetizer by a buck fifty.  I’m usually a sucker for a steal like that, but I still hadn’t recovered from my most recent Chili’s experience with the Dude.  (I wrote about it not too long ago, but if you missed it, the CliffsNotes version is that Al set me up on a blind date, and, while I was waiting at the bar, the Dude appeared like a Viking raider and proceeded to rape and ransack and pillage and plunder the village of my personal space, so much so that I dipped out early and never m...

Don’t tell her I said this, but Desdemona spends way too much time on dating apps.  She’s pretty bad at them, too, swiping left on real charmers, right on complete duds.  To prove my point, the other day she matched with a fella of real tautonymic proportions: Isaac Isaacs.  She sent me a screenshot of their text exchange where he’d asked if she wanted to “meat up” that Wednesday night at Margaritaville, asking me my thoughts on the matter.  Well, Des, he’s either a major tool who wants to have sex with you, or he’s a moron who’s got a brain with a Zamboni-finish.  Probably a combination of the two, if I’m being honest.  But I didn’t say any of that.  What I did say was that it looked like her man Ike couldn’t spell, to which she responded that “maybe he’s a butcher.”  Good heavens, what would she do without me?  Anyway, you guessed it, she practically begged me to tag along as her incognito guardian angel, the parrot on her shoulder, said sh...