"Depression"

So I've been over at Nichols' place again.

Yeah, he's still pissed about his Thundarr DVDs.

But he bought pizza for us anyways so we could eat and write.

Or he wrote.  I ate. And most importantly, dictated my story while he did the bitch work.

Then he got all pissy.  He stopped typing, bent down and rubbed his eyes.

"This is all too depressing," he moped.  "I can't take it."

"It's the truth," I yelled back, damn near spitting a pepperoni slice back at him.  "I can't change the truth of what the war was...or what it will be...or whatever."

So then he starts going on about how tough his life is.  He's having money troubles and doesn't know how to better his situation in life (like most liberals, he just doesn't work hard enough.)  He tells me about "this great weight" or something that depression is, then something about some broad named Sylvia Plath, and how he wishes he could reach into his wimpy wittle head and "rip the depression and anxiety cogs right out of the machine."

That's when I lost it.

I told him he needs that depression.  Yeah, that's right. We all do.  Depression helps us survive.  When we expect the absolute worst, we're either prepared and can defend ourselves or we're pleasantly surprised and get a rest...until the next crapstorm.  Depression is what gives you that "gravel in ya guts and that spit in ya eye" like the holy Man in Black once said.  In fact, I started having serious doubts as to whether or not Nichols could even write an accurate account of my story if he weren't depressed.

And so my mission orders became clear.

It was up to me to keep him depressed.  I needed to keep him just one reach away from the razor blades.  I needed to leave him drained of the energy to even scratch his own ass.  And lemme tell ya, folks...

Jake Timber's just the man to do that.

First off, I thought I'd build eez hopes up...just before I send 'em crashing to the ground.  That works every time for depression.  I told him I wanted to quit my idea of an unlimited series of Jake Timber books and just start out with one.  See how it goes.  This seemed to perk him up a bit, bushy up his tail and whatnot.

Then I came back about ten minutes later with an "I'm just fuckin' with ya, put the ball and chain back on, jackass."

Ha!  Shoulda seen eem.

I reminded him that Julius Peppers got traded to the Packers...meaning this year for the Packers is GONNA ROCK!  Then I went into details about all the dead animals I've found during my time, especially the ones I hunted and skinned myself.  That messed with his head.  Then I got hold of his credit card statements, his FICO scores, and the rejection letters from PhD programs (all 11 of them) and taped them up all around the computer while he was taking a dump (which I helped along by sneaking Ex-Lax into his chocolate brownie.  Dumbass.)

After that, I mighta taken it too far.  Just as soon as I got done taking a claw hammer to the side of his sucky Saturn in the garage ("Hey!  Got more car maintenance ya gotta pay for!  How ya like dem apples?") I came back into the house to give him a lecture about just how alone in the world he really is when I saw him...

He was hunched over the laptop, just staring off into space.  Not doing much more than that.  I put a hand in front of his face and felt little breaths.  Guess he was still alive, but geez...

Let this be a lesson from Jake Timber, boys and girls.  Depression is pain.  Pain is power.  When you stop feeling it, you can use it.  That's what I've done on the battlefield.

But when you're a putz like Nichols, a little bit can cause a cave in.

Gotta make a note to myself about that.

Top Ten "Bromances" and immigration "reform"

So I've been thinkin'...

I recently tried to secure our borders.

Yeah, yeah, how was I supposed to know it was the border between Illinois and Indiana?  My navigational systems got all fouled up, one thing led to another, and...anyway...

There's all these new laws I've found out about.  Laws that really put a crimp in protecting our borders if you know what I mean.  So I've had to formulate a new idea...

I ride a unicycle across the barren border while wearing a glow-in-the-dark mask of Nancy Pelosi, all while wailing "WAHHHHHHHHHH!"  I mean that's got to be speaking the universal language of terror, right?  That face comin' at you live in the pitch dark of the desert?  Would scare the hell out of me, tell you what boy.

What else?  Oh yeah...

While I'm against any kind of romantic funny business between men (read your Bible a little closer if you're still confused why), is it wrong to have a strong admiration for a guy?  To want to spend long hours with him, drinking beers or building log cabins together?  Or rolling around on the floor together, wrestling each other like a couple of platonic Vikings?  Yeah that's what I mean.  It's what the kids these days call a "bromance." Well here's a few guys that get Jake's stamp of approval:

1. Charlton Heston.  On here as tribute.  Still crying.
2. Christian Bale.  He, he falls into the "geek squad" camp a bit with Nichols, but that ain't Bale's fault.
3. Bear Grylls.  I'd go camping with him any day.  I mean that totally not in the gay way.
4. Joel Osteen.  Inspirational prayer, that winning smile...
5. Charlie Sheen.  He made Two and a Half Men, but he was also a Navy SEAL.
6. R. Lee Ermey.  The Gunney!
7. Brett Favre.  Come back to Green Bay.  Just one more season.
8. Jackie Chan.  Yeah, he's a foreigner.  But I want him right next to me in a close quarters fight any day.
9. That guy married to Scarlet Johansson.  Cozy up to him to get in the door so when things go wrong...Jake's there.
10. Don Rickles.  'Nuff said.

Teaching Nichols about the apocalypse

So I broke into Nichols' house again this morning.

Scared him so bad he spilt milk all himself.

See, the homo was sitting on the couch in his jammies and watching cartoons while eating a bowl of Cap'n Crunch.  I slapped him on the forehead for it but regretted it pretty damn fast.  He felt sticky.  I hated to ask why, but I did.

"It's marmalade," he said.

I sat myself down and started watching cartoons with him...except it wasn't any one I recognized.

"It's Thundarr the Barbarian," Nichols says.

The cartoon's about this guy (a cool and manly guy) who lives in a post-apocalyptic future.  Apparently, a runaway planet "hurtled between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction."  This guy Thundarr travels the wasteland with Ookla the Mok (whatever he is) and Princess Ariel (who is a hottie!  For a cartoon, I mean.)  They fight wizards trying to rule over the scraps and rabble of humanity.

Man, it was like the story of my life.

Except the apocalypse wasn't no cartoon.  Neither is the war for the future.  I wondered if Nichols had this in mind.  So I asked him if this was his idea of a post-apocalyptic world.

"Pretty much," he said.

And this is the guy writing my books?  Hooo-boy.

Sos I ask him if he had any other ideas what the end of society might be like.

He shows me comic books.  Of course.

One's called Kamandi.  It's about a young kid (who still looks manlier than Nichols) surviving in an Earth that's suffered a catastrophic disaster.  People are reduced to savage barbarians but all the animals are intelligent and evolved.

Geez, it's PETA's wet dream.  Gimme a steak.

Then he shows me one about a guy called "Killraven."  He's muscular and manly (I'm noticing a trend here and I'm likin' it) guy in an Earth rendered a post-apocalyptic wasteland by a Martian invasion.  Yeah, very same Martians as in that book by Orson Welles.  Anyway, Killraven leads a band of human freedom fighters against the oppression of the Martians.

I like the sound of that, but I'm wondering something.  Does Nichols think the apocalypse is all fun and games like a cartoon or a comic book?

"What about a game like Gamma World?" he asks me.

I don't even know what the hell kinda geek shit that is so I don't respond.

Instead, I teach him a lesson.  If he's going to be prepared for the war of the future, he needs to know how to survive.  He needs to know how to adapt.  So I left his house.

But not after I took his Thundarr DVDs.  He'll have to follow the scavanger hunt clues to find them again.  I left notes in the crisper of his fridge (not a vegetable anywhere near there), at the bottom of his toilet bowl, one taped to the ceiling of his boss' office, and finally one in the hands of the Jesus statue in his college's grotto (where I paused to kneel and offer a prayer for Nichols' wimpy soul.)

It'll take him weeks to find it.  Hell, he could use a little fun.  And it'll be good for him too.

Mostly.

To protect our borders

Can we face it that our borders leak like a screen door on a  Los Angeles-class submarine?

We got illegals of all kinds crossing over from Mexico, bringing drugs, weapons, and God knows what else along with them.  As you'll eventually see from my books, this leaky border helps bring us down.  And by "us" I mean "U.S."  But as I've told you time and again, Jake Timber's here to stop all that.  These are my log entries from my trip to the border last week:

0120
I headed out to the border.  It was cold, fair amount of snow on the ground.  Didn't matter none.  Had my winter fatigues on.  Gortex-lined boots kept my feet all toasty warm.  Set my bivouac up with a campfire for my kettle.  Ate my soup straight out of a heated can.

0212
I called Nichols on my scrambled sat phone.  Figured I'd get that pansy-ass to take down my log entries for the night.  It'd make a good blog post and he could make himself useful for a change.  Anyway, he got all bitchy with me, saying that I woke him up at 2am.  So I ended up writing it all out myself.  I ask you, folks.  What's he good for?

0242
Saw my first car.  A Suburu Outback.  I held my hand up and the driver stopped.  He skidded a bit, made me wonder what was with his brakes, but it being a foreign car I should've known.  I asked for his ID papers.  He seemed real puzzled-like.  Then I think he saw my suppressed M4 slung across my front and he got the picture real fast.  The license said he lived nearby.  Looked normal enough so I let him go.

0311
All's quiet.  Too quiet.  I jumped back and forth across the border.  I was in one place, then another, then back, and then back again.  Just shows to go you how easy it is to do.  Take a moment.  Say a prayer to Our Lord for our country.

0337
Saw my second car.  A pickup truck.  A big one.  No matter.  I once stopped a fully-armored Humvee with a spoon.  Anyway, this driver?  Looked kinda...well...Mexican.  Got him out of the truck and I told him I had to search it.  I took everything apart.  I mean everything.  Even the engine.  Didn't find much.  He got kinda pissy with me when I confiscated his insulin, but I needed something for the effort.

0412
I farted.

0445
Saw my third car.  A minivan.  This guy had two kids asleep in the back, telling me he's on the way to day care and then work. A likely story, but you can never be too sure.  Illegals smuggle all kinds of crap under what looks like a completely innocent family.  Went through the van with a fine tooth comb (which if you've smelled the floor of any vehicle that transports small kids...well, it was rough.  All I can say about it.)  Couldn't find anything except for a McNugget that the dad said must've been "about two weeks old." I confiscated their bag of animal crackers...and the McNugget.  

0455
Cops!  They wouldn't understand.  They're in the pocket of the Obama administration.  I'm not getting my face and prints in the system so I bugged out.  I evaded the squad car and left the outskirts of Beaverville.

Oh yeah, it was the border between Indiana and Illinois.  Forgot to tell you that.

But that doesn't change nothing.  Any unsecured border is a threat to our national security, to American values, and maybe even honor itself.  If you saw how easy it was to cross between Indiana and Illinois then it just might wake your lazy, apathetic, un-patriotic ass up.

Maybe.