The Spencer's Chronicles 2: Laser Lights, Tiger Blood, and Salvia

First, I apologize for not writing for a little while. I got caught up in working on that article for Cracked four days ago, and I just realized it was Tuesday. Also, who's Sapphire, and why is her name tattooed on my ass?

Anyway, I was working at Spencer's the other day when my friend Wes and I noticed something rather peculiar: one of the laser lights has a warning on it not to look directly into the laser... but that's not the weird part. It's the placement. Let me show you a picture I took of the warning label:

Warning: Do not look directly into the-- AAAHH! MY RETINAS!!

I can't tell if the person who decided on this location for the label was playing a sick joke or assumed that people would enough sense to not look at the front of the laser device when the lasers are on. But, if that was the case, why put the warning there at all?

Saturday was also the day that our supply of tiger blood energy potions expired. I'm sure you all remember the Charlie Sheen debacle-- right? Well energy drink companies decided to cash in on that by making tiger blood energy drinks, and putting them in IV-pouch shaped containers.

                                                   via candyhero.com

To be perfectly honest, I prefer the Adonis DNA.

So, Wes did what he always does when things like that expire: taste it and dump the rest down the break room toilet  when he confirms that it tastes horrible. The only problem about doing that with this particular product was the effect it had on the toilet: the appearance that someone had explosive, bloody diarrhea  and forgot to flush.

It stained the toilet for three days.

Shortly thereafter, the phone rang and another guy who works there, Chris, answered. from what he told Wes and I later, the conversation went like this:

Caller: Do you sell salvia?

Chris: Salvia? Is that some sort of clothing line or something?

Caller: No. It's a plant. You smoke it.

Chris: No. We don't sell that here. *Abrupt hangup*

Afterward, when the three of us were talking about it (and done making fun of Chris for not knowing what salvia was) we were unanimously stumped as to why someone would think they could buy it at Spencer's.

Pictured: Definitely not clothing.

And now I must bid you adieu, for the sun is coming up, and if I don't retreat to my cavern, I will burst into a ball of flame. Or the sun will damage my retinas or something. God knows that laser damaged them enough.

Writing is Hard. Not Writing is Harder.

Ladies and gentlemen, this may surprise you, but I am a writer. I know, I know. You were under the impression that I just beamed my thoughts straight from my head to the computer, but unfortunately, I write them down. I compose them into tangible and logical trains of thought, with sentence structure, nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Sometimes I throw in the occasional semi-colon; sometimes I don't. Nonetheless, I am a writer, and I hope you can forgive me.

Today, I lounged around the house with one purpose in mind: churning out an article for cracked.com. This often leads to a lot of stress. The editors for Cracked push their writers and can be quite picky. This is a good thing, since it ensures that the content they publish is always of the highest quality. It may prove to also be a bad thing though because after so much banging my head against the wall, I'll either have to shell out a lot of money to repair my walls or induce severe cerebral hemorrhaging.

                                                                               via wall designs.net

And the cost of repairs to my walls will be extensive.

Despite all of that, writing for Cracked is a pleasure. It's one of the most friendly environments for a writer to learn in, and I learn every day. If you submit your work to a writing journal or magazine, you could wait three to six months just to receive a fill in the blank rejection notice. At Cracked, you receive personal feedback from the editors on a weekly basis. Sometimes more often. Plus, rather than be sodomized when submitting work to writing journals,  the Cracked editors only verbally sodomize you. (David Wong, please don't vaporize me for that joke He can do that you know. With his mind). In all seriousness though, the editors are fantastic. And comedy wizards. My fellow writers are the nicest people in the world. And everyone in the community wants everyone else to succeed.

A wise writer once told me "You've got to cut yourself open and bleed on the page. That will give your words power." I tried this once, but I couldn't tell how powerful my words were. It was hard to read through all of the blood. Did I not say the right chant to Sithis or something? But he was right. Sometimes the words just pour out of you like blood from an open wound, or to be less morbid, like water from a river. Other day's there's a drought, or you have a clotting problem (You should really see a doctor about that. It's nasty business).

Earlier today, the words just kept coming. I was a finely-tuned writing machine. I punched those words out of my head like Liu Kang punches hearts out of his enemies.

 

                                                            via GamingBolt.com

Pictured: The writing process.

But then, when I sat down to work on my blog, the words stopped coming. I'm having trouble formulating this very sentence. Seriously, I revised that sentence three times. If I didn't flapjack, revise my sentence bacon, they would be almost water-buffalo to understand. I'm going to stop now before I hurt somebody with the wildly irresponsible way I'm flinging these words around. Someone could put an eye out is what I'm saying.

Let me close by saying what you've already read in the title: writing is hard, but not writing is harder. It's one of the only things that make my life worth living. The sense of fulfillment I get when I complete something... not to mention when someone actually likes it... That feeling is indescribable. And I hope you can all feel it someday- in whatever it is that gives you purpose. Find that something and strive toward it. Punch hearts out of people's chests-- figuratively of course, and never lose sight of what you love and the people who helped you along the way.

And just one last thing: a tip for the aspiring writers out there. Caffeine is your friend.

                                                                               via msn.com

The nectar of the Gods.

The Spencer's Chronicles: Lying About Dildos

For those of you who don't already know, I work at Spencer's. In my opinion, it's the coolest part-time job ever, and the only one that involves selling both penis-shaped lollipops and a remote controlled helicopter shaped like the word "fuck."

                                        via Spencersonline.com

Do I look like I give a flying fuck?

But there is something about my workplace that perplexes me. We have an entire section devoted to the more promiscuous part of human nature: sex toys, lubes, and other things that I'm not even certain on the usage of. I don't have a problem with this because people have to buy it somewhere. Why not Spencer's? But the thing that gets me is: why do they have to be so goddamn embarrassed about it?

Let me give you an example. The vibrators that we sell are battery operated. Because of this, we're supposed to ask someone who buys one if they want to buy batteries too. The most common response to this question is: "No thanks. It's not for me."

First of all, it's for you.

Second, I don't care if it's for you or not. Everyone who walks into the store knows that we sell them and isn't going to be surprised to see someone buying one. They aren't going to give you the evil eye as you shamefully shuffle past them and back out into the mall. Hell, they probably aren't even looking at you in the first place.

And third (but I believe most important), even if it isn't for you (and it is) doesn't it seem like a dick move to buy something for someone that requires batteries and not get them batteries too? I remember being ten years old and getting a remote-controlled car for my birthday without batteries. I had a special name for the people who did this to me: assholes. And I was ten. I think, no hope, that the person (you) that you're buying this vibrator for (again, you) is older than ten, and if they are, they'll probably think you're an asshole for not shelling out an extra 2 bucks for some AA's.

                                                    via Spencersonline.com

Where the flying fuck are my batteries?!?

One time, I was ringing a woman up who was purchasing one of the objects in question, and the second I scanned the bar code, she swept it off the counter into another one of her bags. There wasn't even anyone else in the store, so I don't know who she was trying to hide it from or why it needed to be done quicker than it would take me to reach under the counter and grab a bag. Does the Spencer's logo carry that much social stigma that people who pass her in the mall and see the bag will whisper in disgust? Was she embarrassed by the mere fact that it was laying on the counter, in plain view? If that's the case, there's an entire rack of clitoral massagers on the counter. She's not embarrassed that those are right there? Sure, she's not buying them, but no one's even looking, remember?

Even more baffling is the woman who denied that she was trying to buy a vibrator. I told her "that particular vibrator needs batteries, would you like a pack of those as well?" and she said "Vibrator? I didn't know this was a vibrator." She promptly returned it to its shelf and left the store.

                                       via Spencersonline.com

Vibrator!?! I thought this was a back scratcher!

Let's be clear here. This wasn't an innocent misunderstanding. She knew it was a vibrator. That box has the phrase "g-spot vibe" on every face, plus an image of the vibrator:

                                        via Spencersonline.com

The only conclusion that I can come to is that my mere mention of the word "vibrator" embarrassed her so much that she just had to get out of there. Immediately.

But the strangest vibrator-related thing I've had to deal with at Spencer's is the time a woman asked me what vibrators were best. Because I've obviously tried every one of them at least once and can give in-depth reviews about their individual performance. Seriously girls, why would you ever ask a guy that question? More importantly, what kind of answer are you expecting?

The Boredom Affliction

Today was boring. Really boring. It was so dreadfully boring that if you sat down and watched professional golf on TV, you still wouldn't be as bored as I was today. This probably has something to do with the fact that I was nice and decided to let my brother play Skyrim today. Now I'm suffering withdrawal.

Yesterday, I was Arcus, the necromacer scourge of Tamriel. I could raise the dead with one hand and conjure a blade of pure magic with the other. People would explode in a cloud of red vapor at the mere sight of how awesome I was.

Today, I'm Kier, the pasty, white scourge of no one. I have a cat named Cuddles, and she loves me... sometimes. I also have an imaginary pet seahorse who lives at the park. He lets me ride him.

Sometimes.

Yesterday, people ran screaming in fear, hoping against hope that I would spare them. Today, people still run, but for different reasons.

But I digress. I needed to find a way to pass the time, so I returned to an older game that I've spent a lot of quality time with: League of Legends. It actually helped ease my boredom, but I was interrupted after my first match by a loud whining noise. It was my cat, demanding that she be given food.

Who can say no to that face? Not me.

After I filled her bowl, she rewarded me by rubbing up against my leg and informing me that I was allowed to pet her now. Then, the second I started petting her, she scratched the hell out of my arm. But I couldn't stay mad at her. An open wound is the only way her love particles can enter my bloodstream.

I picked her up, very much against her will, and went back to playing my game with her on my lap. I sat there, with my eyes transfixed on the computer-box for a couple hours, until I realized that dinner was ready. Dinner was tacos.

After eating so many tacos that I spontaneously learned Spanish, me senté a ver algunos televisión. Uh... I mean... I sat down to watch some TV, but after fifteen minutes, I decided that TV wasn't doing it for me either. Then I decided to watch the second Paranormal Activity. That movie was scarier than that one time that I had to carpool with a monster.

Plus, he smoked in my car, and that was not cool.

My mediocre day came to an end with this week's episode of The Walking Dead. Any show with some good ole' fashioned zombie killin' is all right in my book, but this one has something more. Maybe it's because it's a weekly show instead of a movie. There's a lot more time to show what's going on, so it seems more of an accurate representation of how a zombie outbreak would work in real life. Perhaps it's the character Daryl. If I've ever had a man-crush on anyone, it's that guy. Or maybe it's the necklace of ears that Daryl wore tonight. That was pretty special.

                                                          via "The Walking Dead"

© 2011 Kier Harris

The Glow Bowling Excursion (A Photo Documentary)

I drug a few of my family/friends kicking and screaming to go glow bowling with me earlier tonight. For those of you that don't know what glow bowling is, it's like normal bowling but with the normal lights off, black lights on, lasers, and loud music.

Like this, but with more Katy Perry.

People don't usually want to go bowling with me because of how good I am. I've been bowling for seventeen years (since I was three) and my friends have this thing about not liking to be shown up. When I finally guilt enough of them into coming along, a night of fun always ensues. Fun for me at least. 

Let me introduce you to the stars of this saga:

 My Friend, Cody

My sister, Briana (front) and my girlfriend, Emily (back)

And me.

The four of us bowled a couple games together, but my companions soon tired of seeing a repetition of this:

Hey, I never claimed it was good music.

Cody in particular was getting really frustrated. He'd made such good friends with the right gutter that it probably bought him drinks later that night. He'd throw gutter-balls over--

And over---

Cody and Emily kept shooting me dirty looks every time I threw a good shot, and after two games, they threw in the towel and went to play pool.

"Screw those guys and their bowling."

My sister and I kept bowling in spite of our party-pooping friends. We played a couple more games and both did fairly well. Then, as the night drew to a close, the owner turned the lights back on, and Cody returned for a rematch.:

Hey, I never said it was a good rematch.

At one point, I even wound up with a split that looked pretty difficult to make, and I'm pretty sure Cody had to restrain himself from throttling me when I picked it up:

I drove my friends home, grinning from ear to ear, as they fumed in the back seat. I said things like "Did you see it when I......" and "Remember those five strikes in a row?"

Maybe I'm starting to see why my friends never want to go bowling with me. I can be an ass sometimes.

© 2011 Kier Harris

The Chainsaw: The Coolest Instrument in Rock n' Roll

I'm up at the crack of dawn to bring you one more post before the sun peeks over the horizon and I scurry into the deepest recess of my cave. That light stuff is bright, and I'll have none of it, thanks.



Everybody loves rock n' roll. Being in a rock band is every teenage boy's dream: the lights, the roaring crowd, the fame and recognition, and all the sex and drugs you could ever want. What they don't seem to realize is that you don't necessarily need to play a "standard" instrument to get there. Take this baby for instance:

                                               via e-chainsaw.com

Ah, the chainsaw. It's the preferred tool of lumberjacks and zombie slayers alike. You can use a chainsaw for just about anything: cutting meat for dinner, defending your house from trespassers, scratching your back, and even playing music. Wait. What?

As the video begins, a blue car pulls up to a barn in backwater Tennessee, and an elderly man (whose name I can only assume is Cletus) gets up from his rocking chair and says "Hey boss, there's some men here to see you. You want me to shoot 'em?" Apparently this is just a customary hillbilly greeting because the camera then cuts to the band, who is already gotten from the car to the barn and the song begins. This music starts out like any respectable hair metal song should: slick guitar riffs, shirtless white guys in skin tight pants, and singing voices three octaves higher than any man should be able to hit without a swift kick to the testicles. There are some chainsaw noises in the background, but the first time viewer could attribute that to establishing theme. The song is called "The Lumberjack" after all.

It doesn't take the band long to convert the citizens of the town to their side through the sheer power of metal. It starts with the hicks on the porch, then the rebellious teenagers in the classroom, and soon even Cletus is rocking back and forth and grinning like a lunatic. Then, as the music builds to an inevitable guitar solo, the singer (Jesse James Dupree) reaches down for his guitar, and pulls up a fucking chainsaw.

Now, at this point, any normal person would stop the song, yell at his band-mates for swapping his guitar with a chainsaw, cry like a little girl, storm off to his trailer, and eventually come back and start over.

                                                       via huffingtonpost.com

I'm looking at you, Axl Rose.

But this is rock n' roll. It's an unstoppable, testosterone and drug fueled, exploding sex tornado. Dupree presumably says "Fuck it," and plays the shit out of that chainsaw.

He controls the pitch by revving the engine and using the brake. He flails the chainsaw around like a merry-go-round from hell, narrowly avoiding the other members of the band and his own face, but he doesn't care. Why? Because it's metal. And metal just doesn't give a fuck.

                                                     via Wikipedia

Pictured: Metal

At the end of this song in Jackyl's live shows, Dupree saws a stool in half with the chainsaw, smashes it, then throws the pieces into the audience, because there's no better souvenir than a concussion.

Someone once asked Dupree "How the hell can you play a chainsaw?" His response? "How the hell can you not play a chainsaw?"

                                                               via metalsludge.tv

Case closed.

© 2011 Kier Harris

Musings of an Insomniac (part 2): The Quest for Skyrim

I don't know if you guys heard or not, but the new Elder Scrolls game came out a little over a day ago.

                                          via Wikipedia

Now, The only Elder Scrolls game that I really got into was Oblivion, and I played it pretty regularly until I beat it. So, as I'm sure you can imagine, when I heard that Skyrim was going to improve upon Oblivion in every single way, I was mildly excited.

 You should see me when I'm really excited.

Before I continue, note that store clerk's extreme disdain for his job. He wishes he was at home playing Skyrim.  Anyway, I bought the game, and probably broke the sound barrier running back to my car. I sped home as fast as I could, hoping that there wouldn't be any cops along the way, or if there were, that I'd be going too fast for them to even see me. Once I reached home, I popped the disc into my Xbox and tuned out the rest of the world. 

I just now resurfaced, and that was only because my bladder kept rabbit punching my kidneys in protest. Once I relieved myself, I realized that I had a throbbing headache from not eating all day and proceeded to eat half the contents of our refrigerator. Only then did I remember that I had a blog to tend to, so I headed straight for that next. I don't know what's scarier though: the fact that I forgot to eat all day, or that the pain of having to urinate was so bad that I didn't even realize how hungry I was.

The Elder Scrolls games always bring out the worst in me. For example, I've spent more time terrorizing the townsfolk and going on city-wide murder-sweeps in Oblivion than I have actually playing quests. But somehow Skyrim is different. It brings out the Snidely Whiplash in me. Let me explain by telling you something that happened to me in the game today, and don't worry. There won't be any spoilers.

It all started when I stumbled across a lumber mill that you can actually run at the edge of a mountain stream. I spent about five minutes splitting huge logs and going "This is so cool," and then I continued on my quest up the mountain path. After a short distance, I reached a spot where the path crossed the stream just above a large waterfall. I bumped into a man on the bridge who offered to sell me skooma (drugs), and something called moon powder.

                                                                                                            via Wikipedia

Moon Powder?

The only responses the game provided me with were "This sounds illegal," and "No thanks. I'd rather not." I chose the first. The man responded by saying that he couldn't have me talking to the guards, and he attacked me. I think this was a bit of an overreaction, considering that I actually wanted to buy me some moon powder, but I was left with no choice other than to kill him in self defense. (Imagine my joy when I realized that I could loot all of the drugs off of his corpse after I killed him).

There I was, standing on a bridge in the mountains with nothing but a dead body and the sound of a roaring waterfall for company. Then, the sound of a saw tearing through wood would echo up the slope, and I remembered the mill.  Then, the gears started turning, and came up with a great way to dispose of the body:

Snidely would be proud..

Never mind the fact that I was standing over a roaring waterfall. I drug the corpse the entire way back to the mill, and tossed it over one of the logs like a towel on a towel rack. The bewildered woman running the mill chimed in and asked me "What are you doing with that?" NPC's (non-player characters for those of you that have lives) in Skyrim don't register corpses, so she was most likely referring to to lever I had thrown to start the mill, but her timing was just so damn perfect.

Now don't worry. The saw didn't actually cut the him in half. As soon as he hit, his arm glitched and attached itself to the saw blade. He flailed around wildly, like a macabre marionette, until the mill stopped moving, and he detached and fell into the log chute. Then, he slid into the stream and was carried away by the current.

As you can see, Skyrim has opened the door for me to be dreadfully maniacal to my heart's content. And for this reason more than any other, I love this game to death. So now I'm off to go play it some more. Tune back in tomorrow for the next post, which I promise won't be about video games.

© 2011 Kier Harris

Musings of an Insomniac (part 1)

Greetings internet travellers! My name's Kier, and let me start out by thanking you for taking the time to sit down and read my blog. There's a lot of other stuff out there vying for your attention: videos of cats chasing laser pointers, the music video of "Poker Face," and every porn created in the history of ever. That's a lot of breasts you're missing out on my friends. The entire internet is at your disposal, and you've landed here and are offering up some of your time to read this drivel that I pass for "writing." Thank you.

The title of this blog is "Makeshift Coma," and I think that might require some explaining. I'm a self-diagnosed insomniac, and I do my best writing between the hours of 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. Therefore, this blog is my alternative to sleep, or my makeshift coma. When you're all safe and snug in your beds, I'll be pounding away on my keyboard, preparing the next post for you day-walkers to read.

So that you have an idea what I look like, here's a picture of my friend Matt and I riding the monorail at Hershey Park. Why? Because it was the best picture of myself that I had readily available. And before you ask, I know that I look like I'm fifteen or sixteen years old. I'm really twenty.

 I'm Kier Harris, and apparently I approve some sort of message... Monorails?

I play drums in a local rock band by the name of Sinistry. We frequently have trouble getting gigs because everyone thinks we're a group of Satan worshipers or a death metal band. We are constantly getting responses from venue owners like "Sinistry? Like sinister ministry? I don't know man. That sounds a little too hardcore for us." In reality, our name is an intentional misspelling of the word "synastry," which is the compatibility of two people based on their astrological charts. We changed the spelling cause, hey, we're a rock band, and the word "sin" makes everything cooler-- right? To make matters worse, our font doesn't really help that much.

Remember: we're not a death metal band.

Rather than summoning demons, our songs most often talk about love, bad relationships, and people who died, died. (Bonus points if you got the Jim Carol reference, you music nerd, you.) We write a lot of our own music, but a lot of people prefer to hear songs that they know, so covers are a necessity. We mainly play covers of bands like Black Sabbath, the White Stripes, and the Black Keys. To the untrained observer, it would appear that we only cover songs by bands with colors in their names, but I would rather gouge out my eyes with the dullest spoon I can find than cover a song by Deep Purple.

At this point, you may be asking yourself: "If he's in a band, is there any way I can check out his music?" Yes, there is. And because I love you guys so much, I did the hard part for you and embedded it right here.

Now that you know a little bit about me, just what can you expect from the future of this blog? Well, I plan on making two kinds of posts. The first will be tales of my conquests and pillaging as the viking warrior Denbar Althrak humorous tales of my experiences in this world. I have a plethora of stories about my band, my writing experiences, and other facets of my life. And newer, stranger things are happening every day. The second will be humorous list based articles, much like the ones that run on Cracked.com, where I am a contributor. For any number of reasons, one of my pitches on Cracked could be rejected by the editors. Sometimes, it has nothing to do with the quality of the article, just that it isn't a good fit for Cracked. In those situations, I'll post those here for you to enjoy.

And last but not least, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me here: ogdrin@gmail.com.

Tomorrow, a new post and the rib-busting humor begins!

© 2011 Kier Harris