Today was a good day

Wessside

Excuse me for using gangsta' slang in the title of this post but I couldn't help it. I'm back in L.A. Due to economic reasons, I decided not to re-new my lease and move in with family to save some money. I have been packing this last week so I apologize for being a bad blogger by not updating my blog or taking part in certain blog activities.

I want you guys to know that things aren't as dire as my last post suggests. I'm ok but I am trying to improve myself. I will take all of your advice and support. I also want to thank "The Tsarista" from the Tsaritsa sez for sending me her hand made collage. It was unique and super cool. Also, Yvonne from Writing my life away, I shall email you. Actually my email is listed on my blog so you can send me what you wanted to send me. And to Lil Pixie form It's a Lollipop World @ http://alollipopworld.blogspot.com/, I shall play "confessions" once the dust settles.

You guys are the best and I'm glad to be part of a virtual community where everyoe has a unique take on things. All you guys are a creative bunch and this motivates me to keep on with blogging. I'm also thrilled that Kelley from http://www.kelleysbreakroom.com/ decided to contine with her funny ass blog.

I feel like I haven't given as much as I receive from you guys. I'm hoping to get back in the swing of things. I have one more delivery before I'm completely moved out and I already have my internet service but my time will be limited because my new commute is long. Oh and to Quincy, I promise you man, we will make radio magic one day on the internet.

Don't go anywhere people, I promise to be a better bloger and bring the humor with it. Peace.

My First day of Counseling

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you may remember that I played the message that a counselor left on my voice mail. In it, the counselor asked me to call him back if I was still interested in counseling. At the time I left his clinic a message, I was not in a good mental state. The message was very late but I guess when you go to the free or "affordable" clinics, you get what you pay for. Beggars can't be choosers.

I decided to get counseling because I have struggled with depression all my life. At first I just thought that I was different and I never really felt like I belonged, especially in social settings. I'm a little bit better now but In my early twenties I can recall showing up to social settings and feeling ackward. Many times I just sat in a corner and people watched.

I have had problems with insomnia as well. For many years I have felt the typical symptoms of depression; the isolation, anxiety, and feelings of despair. I have had every dark thought imaginable.

I applied and got accepted to Chapman Law School. Acually I got accepted to every law school that I applied for including Pepperdine, Whittier, and Chapman. My first year I was overwhelmed. I was taking five classes and the reading was immense. During this time I had several traumatic incidents that shook me up. I broke up with my girlfriend at the time, I was a full time law student, and my father passed away.

I was put on academic probation and was ultimately dismissed because of grades. I rarely tell people that I attended law school because I never finished. When I did attend, I noticed that I had difficulty focusing epecially during exams. My anxiety prevented me from focusing and so I sought counseling after I was dismissed and I was diagnosed as bipolar depressive. I was given medication namely Paxil which I took for several years.

The medication did help me to sleep but my depression seemed to worsen. I finally got off the meds and have been med-free. But I take natural supplements and I seem to be o.k. However, I never sought counseling.

Having been unemployed recently increased my depression and I was starting to lose hope until I got work but I have always had this nagging suspicion that my depression has taken alot from my life. Too often, I am ambivalent and I just felt that talking to a professional may help improve my life.

THE FIRST DAY OF COUNSELING
I show up to the center and it is in a residential area. The building looks like an old house and because it was dark when I arrived at 7:00PM, it was kinda creepy.
"You need to sign a few forms and it's $10 for the intake meeting," the recptionist tells me.
"Can I have a key to use the restroom?"
"Sure let me buzz you in"

I return and I wait in the waiting area when a little Mexican dude opens the door smiles and says, "Israel Carrasco follow me."

I walk down a small hall and I enter a little room in the back. I see a couch and a chair. I yell, "Sigmund Freud!" The counselor giggles.

I'm asked to sign all these disclaimers. I read and sign privacy forms, confidentiality forms, and am told that our conversation is confidential unless he feels I'm a threat to myself, I intend to hurt some one, Or I'm abusing a child or elderly person. I sign away.

"So why counseling Israel. Why are you here?"
I explain to the counselor that I think counseling could help me and I also explain my history with depression and while I'm explaining my story to him, I get fixated on the fact that he is tiny and has a big head. Those two things are my obsessions: Tiny people and Big heads. He had both! I had to look down.

I talked and talked and I mentioned some of my interests including poker,chess, comedy, and blogging.

"The time is up Israel. I will see you here next week", the counselor tells me.
My next appointment is Thursday at 7:00PM. I have no idea what to expect but it seems like counseling is just listening to myself speak. I could have saved $10.

WTF Wednesday - I need a new car

My car has a sense of humor. It turns on. It runs. It works, sort of.

Sometimes, if I don't warm up my car, the gas gives out on me. I can be pressing the gas pedal all the way down and my car acts as if it is on neutral or it travels 20 miles an hour. You should see the faces of motorists light up when I have to put my emergency lights and pull over. I get honks, dirty stares, and the 1/2 peace sign finger flick.

The weird part is if I turn my car off and start it up and press the gas pedal all the way down and then hit drive, my car almost always works o.k. I may have to stop and restart several times. But the way I see it, I'm becoming more familiar with my neighborhood.

Today my car decided to give out on me in Irvine,CA, named one of the safest, big cities in America! It is suburbia heaven here. Everyone smiles, the houses are perfect and crime hardly exists here.

I'm driving along Barranca Boulevard when my car decides to act funny and slow down. It does this over and over again. Each time, I have to pull over, turn off the car, restart the engine and continue along my merry way.

Traffic going home was hell. I was stressed out as I also started my new job today and started getting depressed because shit has not gone as planned. I knew I had to do something to relax so I got Bob Marleyed and now I'm feeling Irie.

jokes 2-23-11

A new app. has come out in Libya called Angry Libyan birds. The object of the game is to topple a regime.

A judge in L.A lifted a court order allowing Chris Brown to get closer to ex-girlfriend Rihanna so long as he wears 12 ounce boxing gloves.

A study by the National Institute of Health in the U.S suggests that using a cell phone can affect the brain by increasing sugar levels. Researchers also found that permanent brain damaged was caused speaking to customer service in India.

4 Americans were killed when they were hijacked by pirates off of Somalia. They were caught when they left behind key evidence: a hungry and pissed off parrot.

Alyssa Milano is having her first baby and is already planning on hiring her favorite babysitter, Tony Micelli.

This Spring, Larry King is going to tour and be a stand up comedian. He has to overcome his most difficult challenge: Standing Up. "Take my 7th wife please."

The Way of the Dodo

I was packing some stuff when I came upon this ancient artifact. Chances are if you don't know what it is, you are of the MTV generation that never knew that MTV actually played music thus Music Television. Well if you're still baffled, it is a casette tape.

See before you had MP3 files, you had a thing called an 8 track. This was like a casette tape except that it was larger and you couldn't rewind or forward. Once you put in the Beatle's Revolver album, if you wanted to hear Yellow Submarine, you'd have to listen to Eleanor Rigby first. Things weren't so rushed then.

The casette tape was next. It could play songs and hold data on the tape but it had the added benefit of being able to record songs that you wanted! Could you imagine that. This made for creative rendition of songs. People would make "mix tapes" of love songs and give them to their love of their life. I know what you are thinking: People used to actually be romantic at one point??? Yes folks it used to happen. The tape also allowed you to record stuff on top of other songs but the more you did it, the worse the sound quality became. The downside included having the tape get tangled. At that point, you either did one of two things: 1- Become a technician and use your surgeon like hands to fix the tape or fling the tape into a wall cursing God,asking him to improve the technology.

The CD came next and it blew people's mind because now you would store more music in a smaller space and the sound was digital folks. The CD blew away the vinyl record. The CD was a record that was in a hurry and was a perfectionist. It was compact and it felt modern. It was metallic.

The next obvious step was making stuff smallers so the nerds got together and said, "what if we break down sound and just release the sound into bits?" This way you don't need a messenger;just the message which is sound. Thus the MP3 file was born and a guy created a site called Napster and the world was changed once again.

Technology is always moving forward to the next thing. I belive that in the future, you will just think of stuff and it will manifest. Call me Rod Serling. When I found this tape, I realized that I couldn't even find a player for it. My tape had become obsolete. It had gone in the way of the dodo, the dinosaur, and the typewriter. Just like the kindle is replacing books, self checkouts are replacing workers, the internet replaced encyclopedias(I'm ok with that one), and video killed the radio star.It's the way of progress.

Just this last few weeks an IBM computer beat the best Jeopardy champions. Don't be surprised when the host of Jeopardy is replaced by a souless machine that operates on "Xs" and "Os".

How times have changed

I saw the best- Worst Movie ever. YOU MUST SEE IT

Fellow Bloggers. I rarely endorse anything on my blog. But, if you want to laugh, feel repulsed, confused, and be entertained, then you must see THE BEST WORST MOVIE EVER.

This movie is supposed to be serious. The guy that wrote this movie is the main actor and he is very, very foreign. The film came out in 2003 and yet the lead character looks like Milli Vanilli's third member. Girl you know it's true.

The acting is horrible. The plot makes no sense. The music and love scenes are cheesy. The dialogue goes nowhere and yet this movie is pure genius because even if you got the best producers and asked them to make the worse film ever, they can't touch The Room.

This movie has a cult following. Now it sells out and people line up for hours to see the masterpiece of crap. They yell out the cheesy lines and the main actor, Tommy Wiseau is a cult hero. His horrible acting made him a hero. Though now he tries to say he purposely make a bad film, the truth is that this gem was discovered by accident by the masses that saw humor in crap.

If you want to have the best movie night, invite good friends, grab some wine or beer, order The Room and don't be surprised if you say, "What the hell was that?"

I will buy this movie make no mistake about that. Below is one of many classic scenes of The Room. Watching this movie should be part of your "bucket list".

The Best Worst Movie Ever - The Room

A commercial that would work in the Middle East today

Flashback Friday - The time I decided to amuse myself at the expense of students

Years ago I was teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) to mainly Asian Students. I had students from Japan, China, Thailand, Russia, and Pakistan. The students ranged in ages from highschool to coma.

For the most part, the students were well behaved and actually took my class seriously. (Suckers). I tried to make it fun by doing interactive exercises like having students converse in a a mock social setting.

"Hi my name is Ling. Do you come here often..." You get the idea.

One day I had a genius idea! What if I bring my fart machine to class and not tell my students? My fart machine has given me so many fond memories. The nice thing about the fart machine is that it's remote controlled and it can be activated at a distance. There was the time my friend Anna walked into a book store and I randomly pressed the button to the horror of customers.

There was the time I put the fart machine inside a couch and perfectly timed the fart to be activated anytime my friend Christine would sit down.

"I swear I didn't fart!" she kept pleading. It was one of the funniest moments of my life.

Back to the story. I decided to place the fart machine randomly under a chair and which ever student sat there, well they had it coming. I arrived early to accomplish this. I held the remote in my hand and the idea was to give a lecture and simultaneously release the fart noise.

THE VICTIM
The girl that sat under the fart machine was a lady from Pakistan who wore a full on Hijab that covered her whole body minus her face. Needless to say, she was very conservative and serious.

I'm doing a lesson on who knows what when I decide to press the button.
BRRRRF! BRRRRRF! The sound was angelic. It sounded like a real fart and the nice thing about this is that the next fart noise is slightly different like real farts.
I press it again Rrrrrrrrif! brrrrrrnk! She squirms in her seat and it was very ackward. No one says anything for fear of offending the gas blaster.

I press it one last time. Bweeeeef! Then I lose my shit. I start cracking up. "I brought my fart machine! It's here! I then walk over and show everyone what a fart machine was. There was maily silence and stares of bewilderment.

That day they learned that fart machines sound like real farts. They should have been learning the difference between present tenses and past tenses.

Class dismissed.

jokes 2-18-11

Lady GAGA dressed up like a condom to promote AIDS awareness. Afterwords, she felt like a dick.

In Belgium they have been without a Federal Government for 249 days. Citizens knew something was different when things actually got accomplished.

On a sports radio show, Charlie Sheen offered advice to Lindsey Lohan saying she needs to control her inpulses. Isn't that like Michael Vick telling PETA to be nice to animals?

If a midget homeowner loses his house to the bank, is that called twoclosure?

Britney Spears debuts her video for "Hold it against me" - it's a song about what you should do to her if you ever come across a stun gun.

Michael Jordan turns 48 today. Nowadays the only dunkin' he does involves donuts.

The FDA has approved marketing the Lap-Band surgery for patients that are less obese than those whou currently use the device. So if you need it, jog to your local hospital and jog home and repeat this several times. Save money.

Answering Machine Message - 2 months late!

WTF Wednesday- Old School Rap Video starring me!

Insomnia Video of the Night - That's Entertainment

The Game is still strong

Today I went to my Vietnamese spot to get a massage. No not that kind! They don't love me long time there. Shame on you. I mean a real massage- not a mASSage.

Anyway I had to wait 15 minutes so the receptionist asked me to sit and wait on the couch. A young girl was sitting on a long couch but the shorter one was vacant so I was planning on sitting there.

"I'll move my stuff so you could sit next to me", the girl tells me. She smiled after that.

Fellas, you know how sometimes you question what you hear because it's such a rare event? This was one of them.

"Oh you're not going to sit next to me?" she continues.
"It's ok. I'll sit here."

I did make small talk to not make her feel rejected. "So you decided to treat yourseld for Valentines?" the girl went on with the persitance energy of youth.
"Yeah"

I got on my phone to surf the net and she went back to reading a magazine.

A few minutes later the Vietnamese lady said it was my turn.
"Have fun", the girl tells me with a flirtacious smile.

As I was getting a massage I began to ponder what just happened. Do girls go crazy on Valentine's day? Am I that dam charming? Do I still have game? I mean the player card was never revoked it's just not activated.

Whatever the reason, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't flattered.

I do this dance

Jokes to start your Valentine's day! 2-14-11

Lady Gaga arrived to the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in a giant egg. She's a yoke.

Elizabeth Taylor is expected to remain in a Los Angeles hospital while she gets treated for congestive heart failure. Unlike Dick Cheney, doctors can actually improve her heart.

Angelina Jolie is squashing rumors that she was planning to adopt a child from Haiti. Angelina was quoted as saying: "Don't Haiti the player, Haiti the game."

Shooting a final round of 75 at the Dubai Desert Classic, Tiger Woods again came up short. "Not true at all", said his mistress Joslyn James.

The CEO of a Western Grocery Store chain resigned after being busted by a child prostitution ring. He knew he was caught when Chris Hansen asked him to take seat.

Now that the Egyptian Revolution has taken place, the world is asking who, besides the Most Interesting Man in the World, is going to rule Egypt?

Health officials are investigating reports of a respiratory illness that was spread at a Playboy Mansion fundraiser. My guess is that more than illness spreads at the Playboy Mansion.

Quirks - I have some do you?

First of all, I want to thank all of my fellow bloggers who gave me words of encouragement after I took a mini-break from my blogs. Morgan from the Adorkable Ditz' Missteps reminded me that I had been up way too much and lack of sleep was not good for my health. There were countless others who were also very supportive in understanding that maintaining a blog requires a certain amount of creative output and energy to do so. It was cool to know that you guys weren't going anywhere. Thank you for that.

Ok, today's topic invloves quirks that I have. Because I prefer to run with a selective small group, few casual acquaintances are even aware of several idiosyncasies that I have. That is the public "me" is very different than the private "me". Sometimes people are surprised of the many interests and experiences that I have because I tend to be guarded among strangers. After reading many blogs, I have come to recognize that many of you experience the same thing. For example I read a great article where the female blogger expressed that her boyfriend (the extrovert) has no difficulty "working the room" while this female blogger (the introvert) is often overlooked.

Anyway, the point is that there are certain private, often embarassing things that bloggers do or think that are expressed freely in a blog that one would never divulge in a crowd or in a social setting. Here are mine:

1- I NEVER FILL MY GAS TANK IN MY CAR.
Please suspend judgement and try to understand the logic behind this. Since I am a human, I am mortal. Because I'm mortal, that means one day I will die. Chances are that death will come as a surprise to me. Therefore, on the day that I DO die, it would be a waste to have a full tank because that's an extra couple of bucks that were wasted prior to my death.

2- I ALWAYS CARRY A BOOK OR NOTEBOOK WHEN EVER I GO OUT
I rarely ever actually read or write when I go out because the object of going out is to go out but I have a fear of being stuck somewhere and being bored out of my mind. I have actually read my book probably 1% of the time but I carry it for that 1%chance encounter.

3- I CAN'T SHARE A STRAW
If you drink from my straw, the drink is yours.

4-I'M TOO LITERAL SOMETIMES
I hate ambiguity in communication. Therefore, I hate it when I get incomplete information such as, "Can you get me that thing that's over there?". My blood boils as such comments. The converse is true. I get irritated when I express a precise statement and I get questioned when the answer is in the statement itself. "Make a right turn on Beach Boulevard." If I hear, "Should I turn here?" I'm going to flip. Let's see. Is that Beach Boulevard? Yes. O.K do you know what general direction right is? O.K then.

5- WHEN I"M UNWINDING, I HATE TO BE INTERRUPTED.
My routine when I get home after work is to play chess and listen to Pandora. Sometimes, I will just be surfing the net but when I'm doing this, I hate to think. However, my girlfriend likes to use this moment to make plans about an event that will happen 5 years from today.

6- I DON'T KILL SPIDERS
I hate to kill spiders because they kill flies. I just see spiders as my friends and I'm afraid that they may be reincarnations of people. However, I have no problem killing roaches which makes no sense since they too can be reincarnated.

What are your quirks? Please do tell!

What do women want? - It's simple really

Jesus Forgive me for I have sinned for posting this

Taking a little break

I have decided to take a mini break from this blog because I think I'm getting sick and I feel weak and crabby, My throat hurts, I've been sneezing, amd I have been stressed out a little bit. I would hate to produce half ass work for the sake of posting so I'm going to chill for a while.

The act of writing jokes takes a long time and effort and right now, I don't have the energy.However, I might still post random stuff if I get the urge to say something. I just don't want to limit myself to having to produce monologue jokes. At the same time, I feel pressure to write jokes because my blog clearly states that I will write jokes and I feel that people may come here just for jokes but as any casual observer of my blog can tell you, I try to mix it up. I hope my readers wont abandon me if I write about other themes and observations.

I believe that part of getting into a creative mode includes making writing fun again and I'm hoping that by putting less pressure on myself, I can be free to create. Does any of this make sense? I didn't think so.

Flashback Friday (The Sunday Edition)- The Farewell Party. Missing a good friend.

I have to warn you in advance that while my blog is primarily a humor blog, this posting is very sad because on this late evening I'm missing a good friend of mine who died way too early.

I met my friend Maya in high school. Back then she was very well liked by just about everyone. I used to run with the hip hop heads and she ran with some of the party girls and it was a big social scene. She always accused me of being a "player" because I did hook up with some of her friends but it was all innocent then. Her image of me was not grounded in reality. She thought I had action like R.Kelley. The truth is I knew alot of girls but I was ackwardly shy.

She was very opinionated and was very dramatic about things. In Situations that I found trivial, she found drama; especially if she believed that another woman had obstructed her chances of hooking up with a crush. But the truth is that she was very insecure because during high school and through most of her adult life, she was bigger than most girls. On some occasions, she would even tell me that I didn't have to be seen with her because others may perceive that we were an item. I downplayed that for her sake and reassured her that she was a friend and that she never had to worry about that. Frankly, I don't care what people thought.

After H.S, she went to an art college in L.A and designed clothes. I don't know exactly what she did. I just know that she drew shit, cut shit, and designed shit made from cloth. She worked with other artistic types from Los Angeles. She had the best parties. She had theme parties and everyone went to her parties in Whittier. Once she had movie night and we all watched Pulp Fiction (One of her favorite movies)using a film projector and a wall with sheets as a screen. On another occasion she had a circus theme party where people dressed like clowns and she had a pop corn machine and dressed up the back yard like a carnival.

She was full of life and united everyone. She was the reason that I went to so many parties. Many times I showed up alone and conversed with her friends and they treated me like a friend because I knew Maya. We would often smoke cigarettes, yeah cigarettes, the kind that make you sleepy and she would go on and on about the latest drama.

" Israel, he is giving me mixed signals. He flirts with me but then he doesn't...."
I would just listen and give a smart ass reply like I was Al pacino in Scarface.
( In a horrible Cuban accent) "He's a fuckin' asshole." I had the ability to make her crack up with my dry and sarcastic humor. You don't know how many times she would laugh at an off color remark only to be followed by, "you are such an ass."

We would just hang out and laugh at the stupidest of shit. I know of only one serious relationship that she was in and her boyfriend was distant, had depression, and was oftentimes insensitive. Welcome to the club. After partying agroup of us would go to the backyad in the silence of the night and tell stories and jokes and all you would hear throughout the night was her piercing laugh.

She ended up getting a lap band procedure and she lost alot of weight but she was still the same funny and dramatic person. After losing the weight she was notified that she had cancer. She seemed optimistic that she would beat it and she would email us the latest medical treatment she was receiving. She travelled alot and was pretty sure she would beat it.

THE CALL
I git a call from her sister. I was surprised because she never calls me. She tells me that Maya was having one last party with all of the people that were special to her. She wanted me to be there. It was a good bye party, literally. I was told that the cancer had spread throughout her body and had damaged her liver.

The party took place in her grandma's house on the back yard. She hired a blues band and had set up tables and there was plenty of food and booze. As you entered the back yard, there were two trees in two tables as ornaments. The trees had fruits but the fruits were the photographs of all her friends and family. You were then asked to take a fortune, like fortune cookie. Mine read: Trust Your Instincts.

It was difficult internalizing the party. One the one hand we were celebrating her life, on the other hand, chances were we would never see her again. People got in line and hugged her exchanging hugs and tears. I watched from a distance and began to get sad. I approached her and ackwardly hugged her briefly and just said, "you will be alright." Her skin looked yellow and even though she was sick, there was something angelic about her. I ate and drank and didn't stay too long. I do not know how to act around tragedy.

Soon afterwards she died. She was in her early 30's, But before she died I had written her a 5 page letter trying to encourage her and telling her that I had faith in God and that she should too. It was weird because I had never written her anything. I also expressed my grattitude about having her as a friend and I reminisced about how much time and memories we shared.

She was cremated and the service was very secular but beautiful. Photographs were flashed on the screen. There was a black and white picture of me and her that we had taken in a photobooth in an L.A bar. Friends and family spoke highly of her and we were all shocked to have lost such a charismatic person.

At the time that we were hanging out, I would sometimes get annoyed at her drama. Now I recall that drama as some of the best memories of my life. I still hear her piercing laugh and still her her tell me that I'm such an ass but I'm a better person for knowing her and in challenging times I'm trying really hard to trust my instincts. I miss my friend.

Winning Caption " They call me the redneck Flava Flav. Would you like your grass raked?"

Congratulations to the Tsarista from http://thetsaritsasez.com/. She made the Flava Flav connection with the clock and that was actually the first thing that crossed my mind so I chuckled loudest with her caption. However, all the submissions were funny and creative. Tsarista holla back at me with your address and wait an eternity for your prize. I promise it will arrive. Ask my previous two winners: Gnetch and Belle.

A lesson in poking - "She's down like a clown to touch your Charlie Brown"

2-3-11

Anderson Cooper was attacked and beaten in Egypt.He’s blaming it on on a misunderstanding. Being a smoker, he asked if it was o.k if he lights up a camel?

In Egypt the world got see the Police be idle and do nothing as chaos and destruction was all around them. These cops are being recruited by U.S members of Congress.

China is restricting reports on the internet regarding the recent, Egyptian uprising. Censorship made in China.

Charlie Sheen was thankful for all the support he received following reports of his wild partying. I'm of course talking about the wonder bras.

Borders announced that they will go bankrupt. It's a sign of the times in America when the only closed border is a bookstore.

At 180 miles an hour winds, Cyclone Yasi has left thousands of people homeless in Australia. There hasn't been this much damage caused by wind since Sarah Palin last spoke.

Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband was hospitalized in Los Angeles after he collapsed in an elevator. It took a long time to discover him on the floor. Everyone was facing straight ahead.

WTF Wednesday - Helping out a Skinhead

As many of you know, I work for an organization that provides short-term housing to homeless families. The pre-requisite is that the family household must include a child or a pregnant mother. The families go to a homeless shelter and we find the families and we provide hosuing to families. We don't want children to sleep in a homeless shelter with dozens of homeless adults.

After an intake is done, we provide a taxi and place them in a motel. Then within 72 hours, a case worker is assigned to a family. That's where I come in. I meet with families and makes sure that they are looking for alternative housing and/or looking for work.

One of the families I got recently was a young guy, his wife, and little child. I was told that the guy had gone to jail for fraud so I was a little apprehensive. I knew that people that do fraud tend to be manipulative so my guard was up. I went to my first visit, no show. On the second visit, I met with the wife and she seemed razzled but the guy wasn't around. "He's looking for work," I was told.

THE MEETING
Before meetng them I had seen a picture of the father and my first instinct was "Skinhead". But when I met him, he seemed very courteous and polite. I began to think that perhaps I had pre-judged him. I was told that he had gotten a job but wasn't paid yet. I told both of them that they needed to seek work and shelter as our program is short term.

THEY ARE GONE
On another visit to the motel to see my other clients, I stopped by to speak with management to see how our clients were doing.

"You know your clients So and So. I caught them sporting colors and I told them that I would not tolerate any flashing of gang colors in my motel."

At this point, I was scrambling my head to figure out which of my clients she was talking about because typically when people "flash colors" they are usually gang members. It turns out she was talking about the white couple.

"I saw both of them flashing their red suspenders and I told them that was a no-no and I further told the dad, "what are you doing man, you're a father now." The dad agreed it was time to grow up.

It turns out that among many skinheads, wearing red suspenders is a sign that they are neo-nazi skin heads and therefore adhere to a white power ideology. My instincts were right

"Where are they now?" I asked. "They left because their time expired and had to scrounge up money to stay one night at another motel", the manager tells me.

MORAL DILEMA
I have the option to expand their time. I have discretion. To be honest, I wasn't fazed by their flashing of colors. "What do you think I should do?" I asked management at the motel. "I think he is really trying and I know they are hurting because he was reported to be pan handling." She went on, "plus he felt kind of embarassed for flying colors in the first place." I decided to help them. My main concern was their child. I spoke to the wife and explained that I could extend their time so long as they follow our rules and "stop flashing colors." The wife giggled. I think she was ashamed that she got exposed.

In the end I felt good that a child was not going to be sleeping on the street. I also giggled to myself about what had just happened. A Mexican decided to help out Neo Nazi skin heads. They couldn't have been that hardcore. They accepted my help.

A painting Louis CK

A painting of John Belushi

A painting Mitch Hedberg

My Nephew Armando explains our monetary system

Feelling Weak?