There's a bike lane on the right side of the street, but I needed to make a left on Broad. So I waited for my opportunity, then merged over in between a couple cars to the left turn lane.

Now I'm on the left side of the one-way street, riding next to the driver's side of traffic. As I was nearing Broad in the turn lane, I was riding next to a grey Range Rover. Big vehicle. It's the kind of SUV they drove on the OC, except Seth Cohen would have driven less aggressively.

Preparing to make the left, the driver started easing over more and more to the left side of the street. I was getting crowded in between the car and the curb. The driver probably didn't notice me.

I panicked a little, afraid I was going to be run off the road, so I squeezed my brakes hoping to come to a complete stop. Instead, my front wheel turned a bit toward the curb and I lost control. I flipped over my handlebars going forward and landed on my knees and hands in the street between the curb and the car. My bike landed upside down on my back then flopped onto the street in front of me. I felt like an asshole. Bruised and embarrassed.

The Range Rover slammed on it's brakes. I slowly got up and picked up my bike. I could see that a young blond woman was driving. A guy got out of the passenger seat and ran over toward me. I assumed he was going to make sure I was okay and to help me get out of the street and onto the sidewalk. Instead, he raced over to the driver's side of the car and started looking for damage. The driver rolled down her window.

Guy: "You dented my car!"
Me: "What?"
Guy: "You dented my car, man! Right there! Take off those sunglasses and you'll be able to see it."
Me: "You've got to be kidding me."
Lady: (to me) "Are you okay?" (to the guy) "Get back in the car."
Guy: "You got bike insurance?" (He said this with a snide tone. I think it was supposed to be funny and insulting.)
Me: "I don't know what you mean by that."

The driver seemed to be the guy's wife. She immediately tried to diffuse the situation. I got the impression she wanted her husband to get back in the car so they could drive off and get their weekend started. I picked up my bike and laid it down on the sidewalk.

Guy: "He dented our car!"
Lady: "Are you sure?"
Me: "Listen, I was just trying to stop and get out of your way."

There was definitely a little ding on the driver door. There was no way to tell if it was from my bike or if it had been there for weeks. The lady got out to take a look. I was still in a daze. I didn't talk much. The guy and his wife had their own little conversation about whether or not there was a ding and whether or not it was caused by my bike. They also talked about filing an insurance claim. She reminded the guy that they had some kind of dent repair coverage through their warranty.

The guy was pretty amped up. Yelling and gesturing in a very animated way. He was a tubby little wealthy-looking guy in shorts and a bright orange polo shirt. His wife was fit and probably 10 years younger than him. She calmed him down and made him get back into the car.

She and I spoke for another few minutes. She wanted to make sure I wasn't hurt. I told her I didn't think I broke anything. She suggested we exchange info. I guess that's the sort of thing people do when there's a traffic accident. I didn't know how to react. So I just gave her my info and took her phone number. Then we all rode off.

The whole ordeal was probably 10 minutes. Super awkward and surreal. I was a little embarrassed that I fell off my bike in front of dozens of people. And I was in shock from the fall. Just dazed and bruised. I couldn't believe the guy's reaction to the whole thing. He was fuming.

During the couple of minutes when the couple were talking to each other and checking out their car, a young couple walked up to me on the sidewalk. The guy had sort of a hipster look. Tall guy, skinny jeans, flat-brimmed baseball cap. He looked at me directly in the eyes and said "You okay, man?" Maybe it was just because of that surreal daze I was in, but I picked up a tough-guy tone in his voice. Like he was implying "You need me to help you deal with this asshole?" "I'm okay, man. Thanks for asking though."

I was a total mess. Senior year of high school. I smoked weed and drank daily. Hell, I used to take swigs of port wine in the morning before school. Weed, whatever. Weed's good for you. But the alcohol was becoming a problem.

Somehow I managed to keep my grades up. I guess school just wasn't all that challenging. I ended up graduating and going to college and whatnot. So this story isn't exactly a cautionary tale.

I was heavily into indie rock and punk. I have blond hair, which I grew out to shoulder length dreadlocks. Real dreadlocks. Knotted up nappy hair in big chunky ropes. I guess I was a stoner. At least I looked like one. I wore ratty jeans with a white t-shirt. I added a flannel in cool weather. This was the 90's after all.

Around this time I became obsessed with Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation. I had a dog-eared copy of the Dharma Bums that I must have read a dozen times. The lifestyle those guys led fascinated me. Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady and William Burroughs. They made alcoholism and drug abuse seem genuinely cool - the kind of shit creative people were into. So I drank and smoked weed and ate over-the-counter uppers. In retrospect I honestly think I was cool.

I'm getting off track. What I'm trying to explain is that I was a drunk. I was no where near the path to happiness and success. I was having fun and doing well in school, but I felt isolated and out of control. This was my mindset the day I hit bottom.

It was a random evening after school. Late spring or early summer. The sun was out and I was surrounded by friends. It seemed like a perfect day to waste some time outside smoking cigarettes and listening to music, so we piled into a couple of cars and headed toward the nearest open field.

We ended up a few miles from my family's house in Tampa. I drove my mom's car with a few other kids riding along. We parked on the edge of a large clearing, where we sat under the shade of a few trees. We were surrounded by a couple acres of undeveloped land. Car stereos blasted Pavement or the Flaming Lips or Mercury Rev as we knocked back a couple of beers, smoked a joint and bullshitted about nothing. Like Lou Reed might suggest - it was a perfect day.

As the sun started fading, we knew it would be time to head home soon - even though none of us really wanted to leave. The main road was all the way on the other side of the clearing, a half a mile away. We all reluctantly piled into our cars to start making our way home - to make the requisite appearance at the dinner table.

The first car took off toward the road, the driver revving his black pickup truck's engine, spinning his wheels in the grass. The second car followed close behind - a yellow Honda Prelude. That driver took it a step further, curving off to the left, then to the right, carving a dirt path in the grass field as he spun out onto the road.

I was in the driver's seat of my mom's white stick-shift Mustang. A friend rode shotgun with another guy in the backseat. I was about to get moving when I looked over at my passengers. We all sort of nodded in unison and agreed we should put on our seat belts. Driving slowly and cautiously toward home was not an option.

We buckled up and I floored it. Grass shot up behind us as the car finally caught some grip. We tore off through the field and I curved left. The car spun out and bounced around on the uneven ground. I swerved back over to the right. The car's rear passenger-side wheel lifted up a little as we spun around nearly in a full u-turn. I turned back toward the main road and started picking up some real speed. Maybe twenty yards from the exit, I pulled the steering wheel once more, trying to spin us around in a full circle. Instead, the driver's-side front wheel dug into the earth.

The car twisted like soft metal as the right rear wheel lifted high off the ground. The front end of the car dug further in under the pressure. It all happened in slow motion. The car slowly upended itself, rolling over. In a split second, the car was completely upside down - chassis hanging out in the open air, windshield smashed into the dirt. A fucking Ford Mustang. 25th anniversary edition.

The glass of the windshield was folded in, just inches from my face as I hung upside down, held in by the shoulder strap of my seatbelt. I looked back at my friends and saw they were in the same situation. Just inches from death, dangling by a nylon strap.

The car's body was crumpled badly enough that we had to kick the doors open to get out. Once outside we did what any logical teenagers might do do rectify the situation, we tried to flip the car over with our bare hands. Three teenage boys. The thing didn't even move. I remember even picking some grass out of the rims, hoping it wouldn't be obvious what had happened.

I soon realized we were completely fucked. We walked maybe a mile to the nearest house so I could call my parents for help. This was way back in ancient history before high school kids had cell phones.

We walked back to the scene of the crime to wait for my parents who said they'd call a tow truck. When we arrived, the car was not alone. A single police cruiser was parked nearby, and the cop was patiently waiting to have a word with me.

He sat me down in his car where he asked a few questions. Luckily there was no property damage aside from the Mustang. And I didn't appear drunk. He took down some information to submit his report as we waited for my parents to arrive.

My mom and dad both showed up. They were followed by a tow truck as promised. The driver flipped the Mustang over and got it ready to cart off to the shop. We all knew there was no saving it. The thing was totally crushed.

My parents were relatively calm through the whole ordeal. I guess there were so many details to deal with, they didn't really have a chance to freak out. A cop, a tow truck driver, a totaled car, and three embarrassed teenagers. They had their hands full.

That night after my friends made their way home and I climbed into bed, I immediately knew life was going to be different. What was I doing? I was acting like a complete asshole. Getting blackout drunk in downtown Tampa and sleeping on a park bench with the homeless, nearly getting arrested in Ybor City for open container violation at age 18, knocking back a handful of ephedrine I bought at a shady truck stop thinking it was the same as Jack Kerouac eating goofballs. Those are all stories for a different day. The point is, I was a wreck.

So as much as I loved my friends and even though I was having insane amounts of fun, I knew I had to make a change. And for some people this might be the weird or shocking part of the story: I didn't decide it was time to quit drinking or doing drugs. Instead, I decided to focus on school without necessarily cutting back on my addictions.

I cut nearly all contact with my friends, electing to spend evenings in my room reading with a joint or a bottle of port wine in hand. I focused on English and science and Buddhist philosophy, with a minor in getting wasted. A couple months later I graduated with Honors and enrolled in college. I didn't even wait until fall. I started right away that summer.

Three years later, I graduated college - again with Honors. There are plenty of stories to tell about those few short years and I may get to more of that eventually. The weirdest thing to me is this: I had such close friends in high school. People I spent hours and hours with every day. People who knew all my secrets. Then one day I crashed a car and suddenly decided it was time to move on. I completely dropped them. It wasn't until maybe 15 years later that I finally came back in contact with some of the old group. And that was mainly due to MySpace and Facebook. Things certainly have changed for all of us since then.

I heard recently that there were some rumors about me back then. I sort of dropped off the face of the earth after that day, so people guessed that maybe I ended up in rehab or even tried to kill myself. In reality, I simply vanished - moved away to college and cut all ties to my old life. It was the first of two Flitcraft moments in my life. The other happened nearly 15 years later. Another story for another day I suppose.

It happened in high school. My sophomore year. Just after lunch, I went to the restroom to take a piss before heading back to class. The men's room was lined with urinals - the kind that are full length from chest height down to a drain in the floor.

There was only one other guy in the restroom at the time. Class was about to start.

I sauntered up to a urinal, whipped it out and started letting it flow. The other guy was pissing a couple urinals over to my left. He mumbled something incoherently. He had a snide tone to his voice like he was mocking me. I was a little flustered by it. Was he checking out my cock? I ignored him.

A second later, he repeated himself - this time much louder. "You're pissing on yourself!"

I looked down and aimed up. There it was, the infamous split stream. I had two streams of piss coming from my dick - now both of them hitting porcelain. Before adjusting my aim, one of the streams had apparently been hitting the left leg of my jeans.

I finished my piss and kept my head down in embarrassment. When I finally looked up again, I was alone in there. The bell rang. I was late.

I washed my hands and checked myself out in the mirror. It was obvious what had happened. I could have made an excuse - like I spilled a soda on myself or accidentally splashed myself in the sink. But even if it were true, high school kids wouldn't let such an obvious opportunity for ridicule someone pass by.

So excuses weren't an option. How about a cover-up? I was wearing a t-shirt with a flannel long sleeve on top. This was the 90's after all. I took off my flannel and held it in front of me as I walked out of the restroom. I figured it looked like I took off my shirt because I was warm.

As I entered the room for my next class, no one really seemed to notice I was late. Kids were still chatting, waiting for the teacher to start. I made my way to my desk, set down my books, and kept my shirt on my lap, draped over my legs.

I could smell the piss wafting up, but it really wasn't enough for anyone else to pinpoint.. Every few minutes through the rest of the class, I peeked down to see if it was drying up. Sure enough, the wet spot went away within maybe half an hour.

I have no idea what caused the splitstream. It was probably just a fluke. But to this day, I am always very very cautious when starting up - making sure I hit porcelain and nothing else.

I said "Where you headed?"

Dude laughed, thinking I was being sarcastic and said, "Yeah it's gonna be a good game tonight."

I don't follow baseball. I know the Phillies are the current champs and all, but the sport is just fucking boring. Apparently my neighbors had tickets and were headed to the ballpark. I guess it was obvious to everyone but me.

At least the guy thought I was trying to be funny and didn't openly mock me for being completely oblivious. Or maybe he thought I was being a moron and he decided to be nice about it.

I didn't even know where to start. Should I draw a profile? A full body head-to-toe picture? I looked around the room, trying not to look like I was cheating (not that that's even possible for a self portrait). It seemed like the other kids were sticking to mug shot style drawings. Most of the kids around me had started by drawing a big oval. I followed their lead and pulled out the black crayon.

I drew sort of an egg shape on the sheet of paper, then added to circles for eyes and a big semicircle for a smile. Not a bad start really. By this point I was feeling pretty confident. My picture wasn't awful. The border of the egg shape was nice and smooth, and the eye circles were perfectly round. I was moving right along now.

I decided I had to give my picture some characteristics that would let the other kids know it was me - some uniqueness. I have blond hair and blue eyes. Easy. I added some yellow lines for hair and a couple of small blue circles for my eye color. Not bad. But it felt like something was missing. The picture had the bright areas of yellow and blue, but mostly it was black lines on a white background.

Ahh yes! Skin tone. I wanted to fill in the face with some skin color, so I scanned the crayon box for something appropriate. Nothing. No "flesh" or "tan" colors. I was using the classic Crayola 8 pack.

I mulled over the decision for a few minutes then decided to go with the closest color I could find. I pulled out the orange crayon and started filling in one cheek. It looked kinda weird, but maybe that's because I had only filled in a small section. I moved on to the other side of the face, then the nose area, then the chin. Soon, my entire face was filled with bright orange. It looked terrible, but I could only assume that all the other kids had the same problem. In that moment, I remember thinking the black kids in class were lucky that Crayola included "brown" in the 8 pack.

The teacher started wandering around the room, collecting everyone's drawings. As she lifted up each sheet, I started to notice that some of the other kids left their faces white. They didn't bother to color it in. I thought maybe they were lazy or slow. I pitied them.

The teacher finished collecting the papers and then hung them up on the wall one by one. She started on the top left corner of one wall, and put them all in a row from left to right across the top of the entire wall. As she tacked up each picture, I began to realize that it wasn't just a handful of slackers who forgot to fill in their skin color - it was everyone. Even the black kids left their faces white.

She hung up maybe 15 pictures before she got to mine. And as each picture was revealed, my actual face turned redder and redder with my growing embarrassment. By the time she got to mine, it felt like my skin was on fire. I was sweating. Then she got to my picture. It would have been more realistic if I had used red instead of orange.

Of course all the other kids laughed when they saw it. And who could blame them. This is probably the first life event I can remember where I felt truly different. All I wanted in the world was to be like all the other kids. My orange face remained on the wall for weeks, surrounded by all those white faces, a constant reminder of my outcast status.

During the semester in which this story takes place, I was edging toward a blue collar, faux-rockabilly sort of look. I wore jeans, a long-sleeve plaid flannel over a white t-shirt, with oxblood red low-top Doc Martens. My hair was getting long, and I had gotten into the habit of slicking it back behind my ears with a generous slathering of Vitalis.

I headed to the Hardback Cafe in Gainesville to see an old friend play in his band Hot Water Music. It was a little weird for me - going to see a hardcore show. I was heavily into that scene in high school, but during college I had mellowed out a lot. I spent far more time listening to the likes of Sebadoh, Pavement, and The Mountain Goats than I did listening to hardcore bands. And it had been years since I last spent any time in a mosh pit. But this was a special occasion. Old friends, awesome music, and a gullet full of alcohol - I was ready to throw down.

The band started up and I made my way toward the front of the crowd. I knew the music, and I had memorized the lyrics. I was fucking psyched. I consciously decided to forget all inhibitions so I could rock the fuck out. I longed for the early 90's when I spent every weekend checking out hardcore shows and Saturday nights ended with me dripping in sweat (and sometimes blood).

Lost in the moment, I jumped and threw fists into the air, banging around with a couple of other die hards. It was so nostalgic for me - feeling like I was to be back in the scene.

Three or four songs into the set, they played one of my favorites. I started screaming along with the chorus and I jumped back with passion. I felt bodies hit against mine and I turned around to brace myself for the physical reaction from the other guys in the pit. But no one was pushing back. Instead, there was a girl laying on the floor. I immediately bent down to help her up. Her friend grabbed one hand and I took the other as we guided her out of the crowd toward a nearby barstool.

She sat down on the stool and gathered herself. She was bawling. Completely sobbing. And her lip was bleeding. It didn't look like the kind of bleeding that would lead to stitches - more like she got punched in the face. And it was all my fault. I was embarrassed and apologetic. I offered to do anything I could to help or. Water? Damp towel? Anything? Just thinking about it now, a dozen years later, still gives me douche chills.

She seemed to accept my apology - but I was certain she and everyone else who witnessed the event thought I was a fucking jackass. Paranoia set in immediately (is it paranoia if it's true?). I stuck around for another song or two, standing way behind the crowd in the back of the room. Then I just couldn't take it anymore. I was red-faced and sweating from embarrassment. I had to get the fuck out of there.

After that, I couldn't bear to hear that song anymore. Every time I tried to listen to it, I pictured that horrible moment when I smashed a girl's face. I never saw that girl again. And I stayed far away from the hardcore/punk scene. I felt like I clearly didn't belong. I stuck strictly to indie rock and lo-fi.

I still have that 7" single in my basement. Maybe one of these days I'll give it a listen. I'm a glutton for punishment.

Elvis invited a couple of friends to visit for the weekend. That alone is a recipe for disaster. Gainesville is home to more than 50,000 college students and dozens (maybe hundreds) of bars. Every weekend is a party, and every decent bar is swarming with scantily-clad hotties and guys guzzling uber cheap beer. When people visited from out of town, the night often ended in a fog. Saturday and Sunday mornings inevitably led to a mumbled, "What happened last night?"

This particular evening, we gathered the troops and headed to our favorite bar - a place just outside of town called JD Penguins. The place was a real dive. For years, the bar's regulars were the kind of guys who bellied up to the bar at noon and stayed there till midnight. Real full-time drunks. But somehow in the early 90's hipsters stumbled upon the place and before long it was a true hipster hangout. They even hired a DJ who played things like Morrissey, the Flaming Lips, and Pavement.

This place had one major draw. It's probably the thing that drew the attention of the first college aged trendsetters who made the place popular. It had a giant rotating bar. The bar slowly spun - maybe one revolution every 15 minutes or so. The bartenders worked in the middle of the big circular bar, while the patrons sat around the circumference. Of course we never referred to the place as JD Penguins. It was always called "the Rotator."

So me and Elvis and the guys showed up at the Rotator ready to get shitfaced. The beer was cheap - I think it was $1.50 for a Sam Adams draft. It was affordable enough to down a couple 12 ounce beers for every rotation of the bar. That way, by the time you were done with one beer, you'd be near another Sam Adams tap just in time for a refill. After a few hours you were bombed.

It was right about this time that Elvis started feeling woozy. The 12+ beers and the rotation of the bar had gotten to him. He was wavering, almost like he was going to fall off his barstool. He put his head down on the bar and a minute later he suddenly sat up. He had that look on his face. You know the one. That look - like "I'm going to fucking puke all over this bar." But he didn't puke. Instead he wobbled toward the bathroom with that expression of shock and fear. He made it to the bathroom door and disappeared into a stall. No puke.

After a few minutes, Elvis stumbled back to the bar looking slightly refreshed with a goofy grin on his face. We assumed he had been in there tossing his cookies. He sat back down at the bar and ordered another beer. He assured us he was feeling much better. The night raged on and we made it home safely.

The next morning, everyone woke up feeling like balls. A couple of us exchanged the whole "man, what happened last night" thing. And then I remembered that Elvis hurled in the Rotator bathroom.

Me: "Dude, how are you feeling today? I can't believe you puked last night."
Elvis: "What? I didn't puke."
Me: "You totally did. You were in the bathroom for like five minutes last night."
Elvis: "Oh... at the Rotator?... I didn't vomit, man."
Me: "Dude we saw you get up looking all freaked out like you were about to puke - and you ran into the bathroom."
Elvis: "Alright. Here's the deal. I think I passed out at the bar for a minute. I must have lost control. Because I suddenly woke up sitting at the bar and I realized I had shit my pants. I ran to the bathroom to clean up."
All of us: "What the fuck are you talking about?!?"
Elvis: "Seriously. I shit my pants at the bar. I went into the bathroom and threw my underwear into the trashcan. I washed up and started drinking again."

How's that for dedication? Disgusting perhaps, but it shows dedication nonetheless.

This story starts in seventh grade. We were bussed from the burbs out to the projects in downtown Tampa for school. The bus ride was like 45 minutes each way. And when I say the projects, I'm not exaggerating. The school was in the very center of a low income housing complex. One of my best friends at school was a drug dealer named Star. He sold joints and Now & Laters on campus.

I'm totally getting off track - but remind me later to tell you about the time I got knocked the fuck out by a ghetto ruffian while I stood outside the school building waiting for first period.

I was a skate rat back then. A skinny skater fag with long blond hair in my face and retarded black pants with skulls printed all over them. I think I thought I looked cool and maybe even tough. Nope. I was a fucking mess.

Anyway, I remember the entire day, because it's burned into my memory like a near death experience. I won't bore you with extraneous details. But I will tell you what I ate. My mom used to buy these frozen glazed donuts. You'd pop a couple of them into the microwave and they'd be all warm and soft. I think I ate two of them for breakfast that day.

By lunchtime, my stomach was cramping up. I thought for sure I was just hungry. You know the feeling. It's that pre-flu weakness where you're all cold and hot at the same time. Sweaty with the chills. I get a similar feeling sometimes when I haven't eaten in a really long time. So I thought I was hungry - I couldn't wait for lunch.

I sat down with my friends and housed a PB&J and a big bag of white seedless grapes. Dude I'm telling you this is so fucked up. That was almost twenty years ago and I still remember what I ate for lunch.

So the afternoon went on and I began feeling even worse. The food didn't help me. But I figured I could hang on until I got home. It would have been silly to have one of my parents drive 45 minutes out to the hood to pick me up when school was almost over anyway. So I fucking got on the bus like an dumbass.

I sat down next to a window about halfway toward the back of the bus. Wearing my stupid skull print skater pants and a hoodie. About 30 minutes into the ride home I could feel the saliva start to flood my mouth. You know the feeling. I'm telling you right now, if you have a weak stomach stop reading.

I kept swallowing it down, that saliva flow. I was conscious of the situation. Stop after stop, kids would hop off the bus. And I was counting down the minutes till we got to my subdivision. I knew it was only a matter of time before I could go inside my own house and puke in the toilet like a normal human being.

So I swallowed. And swallowed. I began to think that if a little puke came up I could just swallow that too. We were almost to my stop.

There were maybe another 15 kids on the bus when I reached my breaking point. I would have yelled out for the driver to pull over. I would have opened the window at least to puke out of it. But it was too late. It was coming up - and it was coming up fast.

Like a fucking fire hose, a half digested combination of donuts and peanut butter and grapes and juice splashed into my stupid skull pants. I tried to hold out the front of my hoodie to catch it so it wouldn't flow down the floor of the bus into the other rows. That was just wave one. Then another wave and another. I had no control whatsoever. The vomit kept flowing.

Kids all around me jumped up and ran toward the front and back of the bus screaming. The driver didn't know what was going on. Maybe she thought it was a fight or something. But no - that evening, she was going to be cleaning puke off the floor of her only means of income.

When the puke fest ended, we were only a minute from my house. The driver didn't even realize what had happened until we stopped at my street. I trudged off the bus, dripping puke everywhere. I was soaked from my chest down to my knees in thick odorous sludge.

When I got home, I dumped my clothes into the washing machine, took a shower, and crawled into bed. I didn't go back to school for two weeks. Sure I had the flu. That was a valid reason for the first week. The second week - that was pure embarrassment. I wondered if home schooling were an option.

By the time I made it back to school, no one said anything. No one made fun of me. I guess some other drama came up in the meantime. Maybe there was a fight at school while I was home sick. Or maybe someone got arrested for selling weed. Who knows what kind of shit went down while I was away. At least in my friends' minds, my little drama was forgotten. But I know I'll never forget it.

P.S. If you want to share your fucked up story from childhood, email it to me and I'll post it for you (anonymously if you prefer). I'm thechurning AT gmail DAWT com. Or just add it as a comment.

P.P.S. Can you believe it's been two whole fucking years since Puke Week?!?!

My big brother celebrated a birthday last week. He went out to dinner with friends and family to mark the occasion. Before dinner, he called me on my cell and he was a little frantic.

Big Bro: "Dude, what if the servers come out and start singing Happy Birthday? I hate that shit."
JJ: "It's definitely gonna happen."
Big Bro: "Is there any way I can stop it? Like if they start singing, maybe I can distract them or something."
JJ: "Like how?"
Big Bro: "I don't know. Maybe I could start singing another song right over top of them."
JJ: "Yeah! Like the National Anthem or something! Then they'd have to stop, because they'd have to put their hand over their heart or whatever."
Big Bro: "Yes! I mean, it would still be embarrassing, but I'd least I'd be in control of my own embarrassment."

I also suggested that he could identify the leader of the singing waitresses and try to strike up a conversation in the middle of the birthday song.

Waitresses: "Happy birthday to..."
Big Bro: "So, how long have you worked here?"
Waitresses: "..you. Happy birthday..."
Big Bro: "What's your name? You're a good singer. Do you take singing lessons?"

But Big Bro didn't like that idea. He's married and he figured his wife might think he was trying to hit on the waitress if he pulled that stunt.

Are there any other tricks for getting out of the whole restaurant birthday song thing?

(Happy birthday, Big Bro!)

Yes, you are a failure, that much is embarrassingly evident. But not because of this. Rather because of the inane, immature effluvium of thine mouth in all the rest of this colossal waste of bandwidth.

Not funny, not hip, not even germain to life in this dimension. Just childish, boring… as you yourself must certainly be.

Grow up.

Or not.

- bob

Bob is apparently trying to impress us with his vocabulary while insulting The Churning. Let's take a closer look at his choice of words.

He agrees I am a failure. That I can not dispute, because I said so myself. But I'm not sure why it's "embarrassingly evident." Why would Bob be embarrassed? He's never met me and he didn't leave a URL or valid e-mail address. He can't be embarrassed by my website - he's anonymous here.

"Inane?" Yes. "Immature?" Check. "Effluvium?" Definitely. "Thine mouth?" Now that's just fucking ridiculous. First, it should be "thy mouth." Thine is used before words that start with a vowel sound. Second, who talks like that? LARPers do. Fucking dork.

"Colossal waste of bandwidth." Hmm... sounds impressive. However, I really don't use much bandwidth at all. Some text, a picture every once in a while, and a few hundred visitors a day. I'm a drop in the internet ocean, Bob.

"Not funny?" Perhaps, but that's subjective. "Not hip?" No doubt about that. I've proven that day after day. "Not even germain to life in this dimension." I assume he meant "germane." Looks like he's saying this website is not relevant to anything. That's a tough argument to make. I write about things that exist, so it's relevant to something. Unless he's saying that shit, sex and beer don't exist.

"Childish" and "boring." This is true on occasion. Though after a few beers, I'm far from boring.

I love the ending. "Grow up. Or not." So noncommittal. After all that work reading my site, making an informed judgment and crafting a critique in the comments section, you'd think Bob could at least stick to his guns. Turns out he really doesn't care.