Monday, August 19, 2002
I can’t count the number of times in this life that I’ve been unfairly accused of being a pessimist. Actually, I probably could, since I’m a capable adult who made it through grade school with little trouble, unlike some people I could mention by name. So perhaps it is more accurate to say I don’t care to count the times. If somebody out there is hot to get on my good side, they could run up some figures and leave the result on my desk after working hours today, but otherwise we’re just going to have to work from my general estimate of “a whole lot.”

Usually the name-calling follows a familiar scenario: Some dewy-eyed dreamer with his or her head up in the clouds will make some unrealistically optimistic statement about his worth as a human being or her newborn baby’s chances of surviving its current bout with pneumonia. My reply then invariably inspires a response along the lines of “You know, Doug, you’re a real ‘glass-is-half-empty’ kind of guy.” Sometimes this is followed by a physical assault. That’s a figure I can actually peg at exactly 107, as the county sheriff’s office has done the tallying legwork for me on that one.

What few have the patience or acumen to realize is that I’m not a pessimist at all. Far from it. I’m an asshole. I don’t fear the worst in any given situation, I embrace it and wish it upon all those in my immediate vicinity, hoping to be myself passed over in the cosmic game of “duck, duck, goose” called misfortune.

I see the glass as neither half-full nor half-empty. I just want to know who the hell drank my water. I’m not performing a glass-filling service here, people.

Irregardless of the truth, I am continually accused of finding the cloud inside the silver lining and the bucktooth on the beauty queen. In my high school yearbook I was voted “Most Likely to Sue the High School Yearbook,” which actually ended up being true. They must have had a couple of Criswells working on the staff there, pretty impressive. However, a couple of Johnnie Cochrans might have come in more handy since they lost the suit and now South El Paso High has been without a yearbook department for going on forty years. Sucks for them.

As for me, I parlayed my windfall from the settlement into the beginnings of a successful 1-900 telephone business, Psychic Kick. You may remember our television commercials from the early 80’s. They featured three actors, in heavy makeup, dressed as a clown, a simpleton and a mean pro-wrestling sumbitch, with the three of them together representing “The Fates.” During the 30-second spot they would taunt and heckle the viewer into calling to hear what the future had in store for them, for a modest per-minute rate and generous telephone surcharge.

Our “telephone psychics” were actually a bunch of gum-popping beauty school girls moonlighting for two dollars an hour and free tax advice. When a customer would call in, the girls would keep them on line as long as possible, pulling “fortunes” that I had written on slips of paper from a large novelty hat. Most of them contained terrible news, like “You will die alone in Oklahoma” or “Your dog will contract a rare blood-shitting disorder known as diarrheabetes,” but somehow the service still became wildly popular.

Some have suggested that the service’s great success was due not to my sharply penned fortunes, but more to the fact that the girls, under heavy pressure to keep the Johns (as we referred to callers) on the phone as long as possible, would resort to describing their blowjob technique when they ran out of fortunes to read. This may or may not have been true, but since I didn’t pay the girls a red cent in the end I like to think they at least gained some experience toward their inevitable future careers.

Pessimist? I think not. Asshole? That’s more like it. I implore you to contemplate the difference as you lie there on your deathbed in the poor house one day, examining the broken shards of your wasted, miserable life. You might learn something for once.

I Say It Needs More Salt
Seems like everybody’s got something against salt these days. You can’t dip your French fry into the saltshaker in a restaurant any more without getting dirty looks from every overzealous health nut in the joint, like you just sluiced the skin off an newborn baby and stuffed it with StoveTop and onions.

Back in My Day, Business Wasn’t For Crybabies
These days, it seems like you can’t rifle through a newspaper looking for the comics or pretend to read a magazine on the subway while starting down a young lady’s blouse without hearing something about the latest business scandal.

Stick a Fork in the Whole Damn Team
Hey, I can’t pitch like Satchel Paige. Hell, I can’t even pitch like Jimmy Page. But I’ll tell you one thing: the Macon Turdburglars are the worst team on earth.

I Know You Love Me
I have to admit you had me going for a while there, when you “broke up” with me, quit your job and moved to Tacoma. Things got a little weird when you didn’t leave a forwarding address and I started to wonder if we were doing okay.

Keep Your Hands Off the President’s Money
Once again the current political climate has brought out the worst in the spend-o-crats. In case you’re thinking that’s another name for a real political party, don’t be stupid.