Q. What’s up with all the vuvuzelas?

The origin of the vuvuzela is little known these days, despite their prevalent usage around sporting events.  In the olden days, the vuvuzela were used in the traditional summer ritual to appease the dark god with a million mouths.  In those days, just the mere start of a football game was enough to pique the dark god.  The field would soon rumble, disorienting fans and knocking players down left and right.  The god would then burst through the ground and its black tentacles would began grabbing players and dragging them into its not-quite-a-million mouths as the remaining mouths song a strange song that would spell the end of the world if left unchecked.  A clever shaman discovered that the way to stop the dark god (other than just not playing football) would be to make the most annoying noise humankind was aware of.  By blanketing the field with that song, the result was twofold.  First, the annoying buzzing would prevent the god from being aware a game was on.  Second, should the god decide to visit anyhow, it would not be able to hear its own song, the noise drowned out and the catastrophe to the world thus deserted.

Over the years, sonar detection devices and rocket propelled grenade technology has kept the god at bay without the use of ritual implements. (You wondered what FIFA really did, didn’t you?)  These days, the vuvuzela are pure leftovers from old tradition, much like your appendix is left over from your bovine ancestors.  However, that is not to say the vuvuzela no longer carry some of the tradition.  As seen in modern games, vuvuzelas are know to cause disorientation and brittle bones – just look how many times players are just barely tapped on the field and they fall down to the ground, wailing and clutching a body part far from any impact.

Q. Mr. Lies, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop?

For aeons, this secret has been kept from mankind by the nefarious manipulation of owls.  Whenever a single person licks a Tootsie pop for too long, coming close to the secret inside, an alert goes out across the airwaves.  Equipped with built in wifi, owls awake from their dreaming slumbers and take action.  It does not matter where you are or what you do they will find you.  Sometimes it is an obvious tactic; many is the small child with painful memories of an owl flying buy and chomping down on their Tootsie pop.  It happened far more often than we admit, but some part of our consciousness refuses to admit this hidden pain.  Other times the owls use more subtle methods.  Think back, dear readers, to the last time you had a Tootsie pop you declined to bite.  Think back, dear readers, did you finish that pop?  No, you did not.  Something happened, didn’t it?  A coworker jostled you, you tripped over something, a bee stung your hand.  Something happened and you dropped it.  In slow motion you screamed in defiance as the pop descended to the ground at the dirtiest part of the earth thus preventing any reasonable invocation of the five second rule.  I suggest to you that this was no mere accident, no mere defect of fate – no, this was a deliberate event, so orchestrated by owls to prevent mankind from this knowledge.

For if mankind found this knowledge, we would have an unfair advantage.  It is not the knowledge of the center of the Tootsie roll pop – no, that while surely hidden is mere pedestrian knowledge.  No, knowing how many licks, the number itself, a Qabbalistic signifier by which mankind would then know the name of God himself (Yaweh is just his AIM name) and then unlock the keys to this universe.  The owls have done it, they have looked behind the curtain and seen the universe.  Why they choose to remain owls is unknown.  They just want us to not have this knowledge.

So I say to you all, lick as you must, lick as you enjoy, but know that if you lick too long, you will lose your Tootsie pop to the ground.  And those brave souls, those risky souls who choose to lick in your hermetically sealed environments under lock and key, sniper and surveillance, I say good luck to you – some secrets mankind is not meant to know.

And that’s it for this week!  Remember to email your questions to askdamnedlies@damnedliesproject.com!

For those unable or unwilling to look at the site, I’ll give you the experience.  The initial experience of the site is surprisingly classy and business-like, with only the 18-and-over warnings giving you a clue.  Even after that, it’s simply a black flash-enabled page with a cartoon of a lounging gentleman in a suit.  A subtitle to Dapper Dicks notes that it is “Dress for Marital Success”.  Like most of us, you would still not be getting “it”… just what do they mean?  The About page would give you a clue, but it is in such dressed up language that a quick read of the page might make you miss it.  So, you click on the link for products, which gives you another clue: “Designer wear for down there”…

This takes you a page of little outfits.  I don’t think I’m the only one who was slow to have it dawn on them.  By the second outfit, the Fireman, I finally realized.  As you, my insightful audience, might have already guessed.

They make little costumes to go on your penis.

Yes, I realize that a fair amount of my readership is female and that statement doesn’t fully apply (unless they consider their ownership of their significant other’s penises), but no clauses, admonishments, or adverbs should weaken or clutter up that very significant realization.

They make little costumes to go on your penis.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about the thought processes.  Somewhere out there, someone had the idea of dressing up a penis.  That’s not really so strange.  Lovers have their inside jokes, their strange bedroom conversations – euphoria and familiarity do that.  But to the next level, someone made the costume, and I assume… I guess the verb I’m looking for here is that they deployed it.  In some bedroom somewhere in America (or maybe Canada, they’re odd there) there was a cock wagging around in the bedroom with a fireman costume, looking for penis-scale fires to put out.  (Wondering which costume was the original prototype is a mind boggling experience that will keep you from working for a week or possibly cause a brain aneurism.)

So yeah, let’s consider that diminutive fireman somewhere in America, confined to just bedroom experiences and likely a single lover.  Weird, but hey, what lovers do to each other behind closed doors is their business.  But here’s the leap into high weirdness – “Hey baby, I think we have a great idea here.  Let’s mass produce these and sell them on a website!”  I leave it up to the reader to decide whether it was a man or woman who made that initial push towards entrepreneurship.  Let’s just say that at some point, someone decided that the world needed this product and that there was a buck to be made.  And maybe there is a buck to be made; I am no economist.  Dapper Dick management, I wish you sincere luck on your endeavor.

At present time there are six different outfits to choose from: business suit, fireman, pirate, cowboy, soldier, and doctor.  Those are either all the archetypes from the cover of romance novels or a new millennium version of the Village People.  Each of the costumes has an affectionate name that is either sly naughtiness or a terrible pun depending on your tolerance level.  For example, there’s Stroker the cowboy, Pirate Hardwood, and Private Willy.  It’s okay – the most adventurous consumers of this product will invent their own names.

I will point out that our litigious and idiotic society has infected even the creative cock clothing industry.  You will find on the site the below list of precautions:

Dapper wear must be removed prior to intercourse.

Dapper wear will not prevent sexually transmitted disease.

Dapper wear will not prevent pregnancy.

I for one am disappointed that after all my effort to suit up my boy that I would have to disrobe him for the main event.  However, let’s talk about the others.  They have to mention that a little fireman suit or pirate hat will somehow prevent STDs and pregnancy?  Really?  Who the fuck are these people who think that dressing up their willy in archetypical occupational clothing will stop pregnancy and disease?  There’s no magic power that comes from dressing up as firemen and pirates.  Then again, one of the costumes is a doctor.  I see that as yet another way for cunning, unscrupulous men to convince women not to use a condom – their penis says, “Don’t worry, I’m a doctor, it will be okay.”  And since that cock is dressed up as a doctor, maybe he knows what he’s talking about.

This brings us to the inevitable discussion in regards to wearable willy waistcoats.  They’re already dressed up, how long is it before we start making them talk?  Oh you might be some of the more conservative types, sitting there going, “Sure, fully dressed and accessorized penises are okay, but I draw the line at them talking!”  Why people, why?  Do you have something against cock ventriloquism?  It simply ads to the realism.  There’s a pirate costume.  Are you going to stand in the way of someone dressing up their penis as a pirate, then make it say a fully-accented “ARRRRRR” in the bedroom?

But I agree, there’s a slippery slope.  How far is it from dress rehearsals of talking puppet penis personas before it turns into performance art?  Somewhere out there, there is someone with a hidden talent he never knew about.  Out there is one who was born decades too late for vaudeville, yet he has a talent the world needs to see.  Think of him as the up-and-coming equivalent of Jeff Dunham, but instead of using puppets constructed out of fabric and plastic, his medium is the penis.  Dressed in a number of fully articulated costumes, his mastery of veiny ventriloquism is unparalleled.  Some lover discovers it, and in a thundering realization, she knows, she just knows that this gift must be shared with others, with America, with the World.

Yet how would that gentleman receive the proper fame?  With most talents, there’s a vague track.  You begin showing on the street, in venues, talent shows, and somehow work your way up to Johnny Carson and his latter-day imitators.  Unfortunately, I do not see our hero playing birthdays and bar mitzvahs without serious threats to his life.  And then there is the TV angle.  Yes, he could try to get on the Tonight Show or America’s Got Talent, but unfortunately, things don’t work that way in this country.  The FCC takes a poor view of pirate penis puppet theaters.  Oh, I know that it would be fine American entertainment, they type on which we should be raising children, but alas, no, the FCC , heartless un-American bastards that they are would not allow it.

At best, I see a grass roots phenomenon that slowly makes its way across America.  I see it in rented space of empty stores in shopping malls, unused office space, or empty strip mall locations.   While their families and significant others go shopping, they steal off to a prearranged location in the mall, paying a fee before being ushered in to an enclosed space.  There other adults have congregated, sitting on folding chairs while they await the show.  There’s soft murmuring, but there’s an air of nervousness and excitement as the main event starts.

Sure, there could just be a normal stage, but I don’t see that.  This needs to meet with the people.  This is a clearly populist event.  No,  I see these performances like the Punch and Judy acts of yesteryears.  Instead of a stage, there is more of a booth, with drapery.  Instead of modern ventriloquism, where the ventriloquist themselves are both seen and part of the act, instead the penis puppeteer is unseen, obscured by the drapery on the booth.

It is in this way that modern adults can feel like children again, truly enjoying a joyful show of puppets, except in this case the puppets are penises.  I do not expect it to be a complete replication of the Punch and Judy experience.  First off, Punch & Judy hit each other frequently.  While some may be interested in such penis jousting, in general the logistics of doing so and keeping the penis puppeteer obscured would be too difficult.

Second, Punch was male and Judy was female.  When both puppets happen to be cleverly disguised male organs, making one of them female seems awkward and wrong.  Oh, I agree that in Shakespeare’s era, often women were played by men, but if those bygone theater companies were going to establish that rule for penis puppetry, they should have done it then – this is not a tradition we are going to carry forward.  So instead, we would need to change the script.  One possibility: Dick & Peter.   Two men operated by two penis puppeteers.  They could be a gay couple, or instead they could have a platonic relationship.  The other option would be to do the Judy role justice.  For that, we’d need the female version of Dapper Dicks: a Voluptuous Vulva, a Pretty Pussy, or a Comely Clothed Clitoris.  Don’t ask me on the proper naming or prospective products.  I leave that for some other entrepreneur out there to fill that niche, just as Dapper Dicks has done the fine job of thrusting their way into another niche which needed filling.

In the meantime, let’s dress up our dicks and perform Shakespeare.  That’s clearly what the public wants.

A friendly hand shook me awake.

“Mom?” I said groggily, wondering when my bed had become so uncomfortable and covered with faux leather.

There was a giggle and then a drawling response.  “I ain’t your mom, Sugah.  Don’t make me feel so old.”

I sat up and groggily returned to my senses.  I was still in the roadside diner in Oklahoma.  I had finished my very delicious burger and fries.  Audrey said she’d work on getting me a ride, so she let me sit down in the corner booth for a while.  Since it was late, she wasn’t sure when a ride would show up.  At a certain point, I had just gotten so tired.  I told myself I would just lay and relax for a few minutes, but I guess sleep overtook me.

I squinted out the windows and saw it was morning – just barely.  The sun was just barely over the horizon, the daylight much more gold than I had ever seen it.  If I hadn’t been so tired, my eyes so red, I would have enjoyed it more.  Instead I found myself searching my backpack to see if I had sunglasses.  No luck.

When I had gotten more of my bearings, Audrey came back over to me.  “I did find you a ride, Sugah.  Never let it be known that Audrey doesn’t come through.”

I stood up, grabbed my backpack and thanked her profusely.  She handed me a paper bag with a muffin which she claimed was “on the house” by way of it being a day old.  That was fine with me.  I continued thanking her before stepping outside into the blinding morning to find my ride.

Squinting through the darkness, I found myself shocked at who my ride was.  It was the humongous trucker, Bill.

Welcoming me with a handshake and a grunt, he led me over to his truck.  As massive as him, it was parked off the road, as I had seen it last night.  He opened the door for me and then I climbed up onto the massive beast, putting myself in the passenger spot.  I looked behind and noticed that this truck had a sleeper.  I realized that Bill had eaten dinner last night, than slept a few hours in the truck.  Audrey must have woken me right before he was to leave.

He slid himself into the driver seat.  I had never realized before how big the front seat in a truck is.  In most vehicles, being in the passenger seat puts you right next to the other person.  In a truck, you only feel like you are in the same room as the person, both staring out the same windshield.  Between us was a massive console of knobs, levers, gearshifts, and buttons.  I didn’t realize so much was needed to drive a massive truck, but maybe he had the augmented version with ejector seats and surface-to-air missiles.  I know if I drove a truck, I’d have that model.

“Ready?” he uttered briefly, turning the ignition, causing the entire truck to shudder as if the roar of a monster.

Admittedly, I was nervous.  As I had mentioned, the redneck trucker stereotype was still fresh in my mind.  Sure, he was doing me a solid, and I had to be appreciative of that.  But I wondered what this trip was going to be like.  Sheepishly I gave him a smile and a thumbs up.  He kicked the truck into gear.

In minutes were rolling down the highway at seventy five miles per hour, the roar of diesel fuel and the vibration of the truck the only things I could feel.  The scenery rushed by, but I wouldn’t dare open the window.  I’m sure poisonous diesel fumes would be sucked back in through the window.

We sat in silence for the first hour.  It was only an hour in when Bill finally grunted something about Route 66.  “Sometimes Route 66 is called the Mother Road.”  He paused.  “It was John Steinbeck that first called it that.”  Then there was silence.

I smiled appreciatively at that, but had no real comment.  I had no real comment on the Mother Road or on Steinbeck, other than if Bill wanted me to be George to his Lennie, I was willing to dive out of the moving truck at any point.  I had no desire to live off the fat of the land on a rabbit farm, and there’d be nothing but trouble when he tried to stroke some chick’s hair.

There was a long silence, then Bill had another fact about Route 66.  “The whole original Route 66 isn’t drivable.  Some of it is closed, and some of it can’t fit a truck on it.  Interstates have taken the place of Route 66, so no one needs to drive it.  People have to make an effort to drive it.”  He paused again.  “I try to drive it as much as I can.  I make up the time on other roads.  It’s just sad it’s not used.  A lonely, unused part of America.”

He made a few more of these informative declarations, each a little longer than the next.  On the longer ones, I actually had enough to comment back on.  And after a while, we slowly eeked out something like a conversation.  It was strange, but the longer I spoke to him, I sort of started to get a feel for this man called Bill.

Bill was a thoughtful man, far more than you would think.  There was much in him that he reasoned out in his head, long before it reached any sort of speech.  Truly an introvert, he rarely spoke without thinking ahead.  He was also a man purely of inertia.  In the same way that bodies at rest tended to remain at rest, Bill’s mind and social skills were the same way.  He was a man of few words if you interacted with him briefly.  If you said Hello to him, you’d most likely get a grunt from him, because he hadn’t spoken in a while, so it was an uphill action to speak.  But sit him down somewhere, start slow, and the man would open up.  His inertia would be overcome, and he would be able to keep talking.  So spending hours with him in the truck allowed me to really get to know Bill.

I had to change my opinion of him as a redneck.  He wasn’t in the way we would think.  He was not thoughtless, uneducated, stupid, or low class.  There was some of what we associate with rednecks, but that was not his fault.  Growing up in Arkansas, that’s all he knew.  He grew up with country music, chicken fried everything, grits, and a strange set of values.  You can take a man away from his place of birth, but typically something carries over.  Sure he may learn new things, new ways.  But like us all, anything new we don’t learn tends to default back to how we learned it growing up.  Those things can change too, but if we never try to change them, they tend to be the habits we learned way back when.  Such were Bill’s habits.  If he had lived in a cosmopolitan city, he might have been someone else.  But as a trucker, travelling the heartland, there were certain things that were going to stay the same.

So all in all, though it started slow, it was a good trip with Bill.  He had some company for his drive, and I got to somewhat revise my view of redneck truckers.  Slightly.  There’s always one exception.

We rode for twelve hours before it was time for us to part.  My butt was heavily numbed and I could feel the rattling of the truck in my bones.  I could not imagine a world with sensations of buttedness and stable bones.  The truck pulled into a rest stop as the sun began its descent from the sky.

“This is your stop, little buddy,” said Bill.

For a moment I had a strange flashback of Gilligan’s Island, but it mercifully passed quickly.  As I opened the door, I said.  “Thanks, Bill, it’s been a pleasure.”

He gave me a bashful smile with a grunt.  I closed the door and the truck rode off.  I looked around the rest stop.  Currently it was empty except for a few tourists using bathrooms, getting touristy maps and buying worse-than-typical lunches from the McDonalds.

I rubbed my hands together.  Which of these suckers would be giving me my next ride?

Overjoyed as I was at being back in civilization, that still left me in an uncertain position.  I had been dropped somewhere along Route 66.  For those not familiar with the intimates of American geography, Route 66 is a very long road.  It stretches from California through the middle of America and then up to Chicago (though some biased readers may suggest that it begins in Chicago and ends in California instead).  I knew that I was on it, but I didn’t know where.  Before my sojourn through the wasteland, I had thought that I was in Texas or New Mexico.  But after that dream-like experience of dark worlds and walking houses, all bets were off on where I ended up.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I was in Oz.

Lost with only a backpack full of meager possessions is in some people’s minds a very romantic way to get to know a place.  Having been there, I disagree.  Sure, if this were Paris, Rome, London or New York City, I might agree.  But when you’re on a highway at night with darkness as far as the eye can see, you are not very endeared to the desolate expanse.  I was tired and hungry, weary of travelling and wanting a bed where I didn’t expect a crazy person to wake me up with cryptic words in the middle of the night.

And so I walked.  The good thing about roads is they go one way or another.  Walk far enough and long enough, and you’ll find something.  It’s important not to second guess yourself, though you inevitably will; about an hour in, you become sure that only five minutes from your starting point in the other direction was the cheapest, comfiest hotel in the world that allows guests to sleep away and gorge themselves on a continental breakfast based on the promise of money via Western Union in the morning.  When it’s you, tired feet, dark nothing, and only the occasional beams of fast moving cars, your thoughts don’t have to be rational or practical.

Yes, there were cars passing me.  That’s the only way I knew I wasn’t in some Omega Man scenario – oh, no, the old man had returned me to my world, but years later after a plague wiped out humanity and I am the last man – dum dum DUM!  Even if it were a Planet of the Apes scenario (either way I get to be Chuck Heston), the apes wouldn’t drive cars, they’d ride around on those horses in their black leather.  A car, even though more efficient, is not very imposing when you’re enslaving another intelligent race.

But yes, cars.  None that I could flag down, of course.  I’m not sure if they could even see me before they were practically on top of me, driving at sixty miles per hour.  And if they could see me, I’m not sure if they would stop.  It’s a good many years since Jack Kerouac’s On The Road America or even the carefree road life of Easy Rider.  Serial killers and news reports have made people very gun shy on the whole hitchhiking situation.  I’m not saying there aren’t some kind souls who still do it, it’s just perceived as a much more dangerous thing these days.  The unfortunate result of that was me having to jump out of the way of oncoming cars that didn’t slow down, their drivers probably never seeing my middle finger in the dimming darkness behind them.

In the middle of nowhere you find strange things.  I bet no one even knew about half the things on the road in the middle of nowhere.  Lacking a flashlight, my eyes had to adapt to the moonlight, welcoming the rare light on the road.  So I tripped and stumbled when I found the boot.  Lying on the shoulder of the road was a single leather boot, old and unhappy.  Not a cowboy boot, just a lone brown boot of creased and bent leather.  Not two boots, mind you.  I glanced around and could not find the companion piece of footwear, just the sole boot.  Stretching the bounds of my curiosity, I reached inside, hoping not for some danger like a scorpion or a venomous snake who had curled into the boot like an old mother with countless children.  No, there was nothing harmful, if you discount the funky smell which emanated from inside.  Instead I found what seemed like a torn scrap of paper.  When I finally reached the next road light, I discovered that it was a well-worn ten dollar bill.  Lucky break for me.  That elevated my road funds to, including my lucky John F Kennedy half-dollar, to $10.50.  I wasn’t going to buy any bridges anytime soon, but maybe I could buy a meal now.

That was fortuitous, because after another while of walking, I found a diner.  I didn’t know how long I walked, and I know it probably felt longer than it was.  But from afar I saw the diner, lit up with neon, a glimmering jewel in the darkness.  I knew now how those who saw mirages in the desert felt.  A shimmering oasis would present the same amount of hope and unlikelihood as a garish neon diner would in the middle of the night on a dark road.

As I got closer I saw that this diner was the extremely traditional sort of diner you sometimes don’t see anymore.  Like some mythical beast of stainless steel and neon, this oblong trailer-shaped building was the traditional mass produced pre-fab diners that they shipped all across America via railway cars, plopping them down whenever there were hungry people and some entrepreneur willing to make a buck off said hungry people.  To say they don’t make them like this anymore is an understatement.  Whoever did own this one kept it well-maintained.  The street lamps around it made it shine in the darkness.  A pink neon sign proclaimed it the “Nighthawk”.  At least I knew it would be open.

I passed by the handful of  cars and trailer trucks parked in front of the diner; some were parked on the small square of concrete that the diner sat on, while others were parked in the well-worn dirt around the diner.  I felt something akin to glee as I walked up the steps, glancing in the windows at the well-lit inside drowned in fifties nostalgia and neon.  I lovingly touched the stainless steel door handle with its uncomfortable grip.  I paused for a second, took a deep breath and opened the door.

I lingered a moment in the door way, looking around, causing some of the customers to stare at me.

“Large Marge sent me,” I said.

After a long pause where nobody got the reference, I sat down at one of the stools in front of the counter.  Real faux red leather seats, just like they used to make them, long ago in a time before I was born.  But part of the whole vintage fad is being almost religiously affectionate towards things that allow you to reminisce about times when you weren’t born, so I think I was covered.  I spun a full 360 around in the chair, trying to not be too loud with my “Wheeeee!” exclamation.

I got a dirty look from the burly fellow on the stool next to me.  On second thought, with the girth and size of the man, I have no way of know if he actually just took up the stool next to me, he could easily take up both that stool and the stool next to it.  Sure, I could make jokes about the sheer enormity of the man’s gut and ass (“When’s the baby due, and will it come out a fan of Budweiser, or will you have to wean it onto it?” “Do they make retail pants to make such a huge plumber’s crack, or do you have them custom made?”), but he was a big man all over.  His forearms seemed the thickness of my neck, covered in a coarse hair I’m sure he sold for use in wire brushes used for the most extreme hair styling catastrophes.  He wore a collared flannel shirt and a dark, coarse beard which removed any suggestion of a neck to the point where viewers would begin to wonder if he still had a neck, or if it had collapsed under the weight of his enormous head, that head coming to a wobbly rest on the massive slab that was the man’s torso.

Upon his head he wore a rather worn baseball cap which proclaimed his name to be “Bill”, which would have been a surprise to no one.  He was clearly a trucker, and here in the heartland of America (I still assumed), he fit a stereotype.  All the fat redneck truckers had names like Bill, or Biff, or Joe Bob, or Rick, or Rex, or Big Jim.  They never seemed to differ.  Of course, I know by saying that, I would now meet some exception to the rule.  I’ll be sitting in a roadside diner, and a trucker will walk in with the name Thelonious stitched into his hat, a name given him by overzealous jazz enthusiast parents.  Willing to drop my stereotypes about truckers, I would ask him about jazz and the works of his namesake.  Turning to me with a sneer of disgust, he would remark, “Jazz is for fags,” then he would burp right in my face, poisoning with toxic beer fumes, before returning to his chicken fried steak.

Surprisingly, this particular instance of the Platonic trucker stereotype, our Bill, was not eating chicken fried steak.  Instead he was eating apple pie, which would have looked delicious, if I actually liked apples.  Of course, that did not rule out him having chicken fried steak earlier.  Chicken fried steak would have actually helped to nail down what state I was in, since it was a southern dish, particularly Texas and Oklahoma.

I realize that some of my readership may never have heard of chicken fried steak or if they have heard of it, they have never actually seen it.  I know when I first heard of such a notion, I had imagined something different.  I had imagined a thick, juicy, rare steak that had been flash fried in the same way someone might fry a Twinkie (also a southern delicacy) or fried ice cream.  Instead, chicken fried steak relies on a very thin cut of beef, some flour, and a pan frying.  Historians and chicken fried steak haters would suggest that it really is a form of schnitzel, but don’t believe their lies.  When chicken fried steak is drowned in the appropriate amount of white pepper gravy (appropriate amount = when you think it’s too much) is one of the most American foods out there; assuming your America is both southern and heavily fried.

I put my hand on one of the menus on the counter, both to check for chicken fried steak and maybe order something, but the waitress materialized out of nowhere and placed her hand on it.

“No offense, Sugah, but you look pretty rough.  I need to confirm you can pay for things before you order them.”

I sighed but understood her point.  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the crumpled ten dollar bill, which I placed on the counter.

“Welcome to the Nighthawk, Sugah,” she said, taking her hand off the menu and wandering over to another customer.

I’d like to point out that it is not simply writing for local color that causes me to write “Sugah” for her dialog.  If you had met her, you would know the way she said that word, no letter “R” was within twenty miles of the word.  “R”s had been deported to Europe, and we can get along fine having sugah in our coffee without them.  Seriously though, she was a doll.  Older, so not one I would go for, but as sweet as the “Honey”s and “Sugah”s she repeated continuously.  I’m pretty sure I could create a fairly successful internet meme of edited footage of her saying “Honey” and “Sugah” set to “Sugar Sugar” by the Archies.

I did find chicken fried steak on the menu.  I had hoped for some of the rumored things I have heard of that I wanted to try, like chicken fried bacon, but alas, not on this menu.  I settled on a regular burger, which was within my price range, still leaving me a dollar or two of my own.

When she took my order, I asked the waitress the pertinent question: “Where the hell am I?”

She started, “Well, Route 66 will run a few more miles before it hits – “

I stopped her.  “I mean,” I said sheepishly, “What state am I in?”

She looked at me weird then laughed.  In backpedal mode, I lied some story about how I was hitchhiking, and some crazy guy decided in the middle of nowhere that I had to get out of his car immediately, and since I hadn’t been paying attention to the road I really didn’t know where I was.  It sounded plausible, if not rambling.  Still, it got me an answer.

I was in Oklahoma.

I’d have a joke here, if I had any knowledge of Oklahoma.  But I got nothing.  There’s no TV or school textbook stereotypes of Oklahoma.  Here’s the best I got.  Oklahoma: Texas’s Hat.  See?  Nothing.

After she took my order, the waitress, who I knew now as Audrey, came back and talked to me.  Hearing an account such of mine demanded she try to get as much of my life story as possible.  Obviously, there would be believability issues if I told her the entire thing, so I told her the relevant parts.  She learned that I was without resources and a thousand or so miles away from home.  I probably had taken far too long on this summer trip, and now I just wanted to get home.

Sure, I embellished for purposes of drama, making myself seem more of a lost and hopeless case than maybe I was.   Then again, as I thought in my mind of my actual experiences, they were so outlandish that I had no way of knowing that I hadn’t been slipped a drug at some point and then spent the past few weeks in a ditch somewhere hallucinating fanciful experiences.  So yeah, maybe I was that hopeless.  I knew at this point I had only two fifty to my name and a backpack full of scavenged items.

Whatever the reason, Audrey took pity on me and decided to help me.  As she put my hamburger on the table, she said she’d try to find a ride for me.  She wasn’t sure how far, but perhaps a regular might take pity.  I thanked her as I bit down on my burger.  I wasn’t sure where things were going to go, but sometimes it’s hard to be too depressed in the face of a tasty burger.

Now you have more ways to find out when we update.

The more you know…

Q: Didn’t this website used to be funny?

A: Uh, yeah.  We’re getting back to that…

Q: If Jesus and Superman got into a fistfight, who would win?

A: I take a certain offense to your question.  Why only the titans of Christianity and DC?  Would not a fight between Spider-Man and Moses be worth equal consideration?  Perhaps you have something against Marvel or Judaism?  Though, to be honest, Jesus was Jewish and many of the greatest superheroes were invented by those of the Jewish faith, including Superman.  So to be honest, even in your original question we are assured some hot Jew-on-Jew action.

But I don’t think that Jesus and Superman would find each other kindred souls and go on adventures.  Both recently free from abusive relationships (Lois Lane got a kryptonite ring for the sole purpose of using it during spousal abuse), the two would steal a convertible and make a run across the heartland of America, evading cops at every turn while getting to know truths about each other and ultimately themselves.  It would be a heartwarming television series full of emotions, feelings, transubstantiation, and turning back time by circling the globe in both a non-canonical and affront-to-the-laws-of-physics manner.

Let’s be honest, though.  Fox would cancel it after one season.

Q:  Why don’t we have lasers yet?

A: We haven’t made it far enough up the tech tree.

Q: What do you think of the current gulf catastrophe with BP?

A: I believe that they have unwittingly opened a gate to places man was not meant to touch, and now that it has been opened it cannot be closed.  It will continue to spew pure darkness out upon our unsuspecting world, with the full effects not visible for many years to come.

Actually, I haven’t really kept up with it or know all the facts.  I am disappointed that I missed out on an opportunity to pee on buildings for a good cause.

And that’s it for this week!  Remember to email your questions to askdamnedlies@damnedliesproject.com!