My Buddy Jay- ENEMY #98273482

My buddy, Jay, is the reason I came to blog here. It gave me a slightly more mature forum than say, Myspace, as well as a way that we could sort of keep up with each others' busy lives, without having to do that thing women who want to keep in touch do: use the phone.

Well, my buddy Jay and his wife are currently in the process of adopting a couple of little girls from Ethiopia. For more information on that, and how you can help out go HERE. No REALLY, go there and check it out. If you don't go, you can't read the rest of this blog. I mean it. Go now and come back when you're done.



Okay, now that you've done what you were told to do (you better hope you did, I am a rent-a-cop after all and I will hit you with my flashlight if you lied and skipped right to here), we'll get to the meat of the issue.

Recently, part of the process of this adoption is for Jay and his wife to get their passports so they can go overseas. Jay posted the stories Part 1 and Part 2.
To summarize part 1, providing the exact same documents, Jay's wife received her passport, however Jay himself did not. Jay has gone to great lengths to get his passport, which are explained in part 2, making some statements which I have decided to take issue with.

Instance #1: Jay says, "As you may know, I am completely reasonable and patient person when dealing with inept government agencies."

For those of you who don't know Jay, let me assure you, I've known him since he was in diapers, which was approximately right after I got out of diapers. And not getting out of them by merely ripping them off, but by actually being a big boy and wearing pull-ups. Soon, I fear, I may be back in diapers again as I have a teeny tiny bladder. ANYWAYS....Jay is the furthest from being a reasonable and patient person in general, never mind dealing with inept government agencies.

Example 1- (generalities) Growing up Jay persistently stole Christmas lights off a retired teacher's tree on a nightly basis around Christmastime. This is entirely unreasonable to begin with. The timeline also shows how impatient he really was to get back to doing it again...every night those lights were up, for years, he engaged in such juvenile criminal activity. Now, he will tell you that I did this stuff, which (for full disclosure reasons) I did, but only because he was doing it first, and as his boy, I was required by the Bro Code, not only to have his back, but to engage in guilty acts so as to prove my trustworthiness to him.

Example 2- (dealing with authority figures) When I was 16, I decided to take an unauthorized trip (read: runaway) to the Twin Cities. I did not take my buddy Jay with me, nor did I inform him of my plans. This was for his physical well-being, and to avoid rumors that we were off to engage ourselves with gay-marriage somewhere that it might be legal. For the record, we're both hetero, and happily married, to women. But the people in our small town could get pretty imaginative when it comes to cooking up the next set of rumors to spread. Well, after it was determined by my parents that I was in fact "missing" (this is untrue, I knew where I was at all times- even if I was unsure how to get out of a particular Minneapolis neighborhood at one point), the search parties were sent out, and my dad and his dad grilled Jay as to my whereabouts. When asked, Jay stated he had no idea where I was (which was true, and a reasonable response), but then for added artistic style points (which failed miserably..the judges from Belarus totally ripped him off and only gave him a 6.3 out of 10) made mention to the effect that "even if I did know, I probably wouldn't tell you." While sticking with the Bro Code here (which was honorable), given the child abuse history of our dads (they must've beaten us within an inch of our lives a million times!), this was probably an unreasonable elaboration that should have been omitted from his reply.

Example 3- (dealing with government institutions) There was the infamous DMV incident of 1997. Jay decided not to study for his written driver's test to get his license. He failed...miserably. Before the station attendant was able to tell him he'd have an opportunity to retake the test, Jay stormed out of the station letting fly with some unsavory words and something about a holocaust, or genocide, or dead baby seal pups...I don't fully remember the exact words, but it was filthier than roadside motel that rents by the hour if you know what I mean. After having gone back home, we watched a re-run episode of Macguyver (which by the way, my kids are addicted to!), and then went back down to the DMV in the middle of the night (after stealing Christmas lights from that retired teacher's house...for the 2nd time that night). I of course had to go because Jay called the Bro Code on me, plus it was too cold to walk, and I had a car to drive him there. Well we thought we had the whole Macguyver thing figured out, but Jay tried to substitute a strip of aluminum foil for a piece of wax paper (our moms had used all our wax paper up for Christmas cookies and hadn't bought anymore), and we somehow ended up almost 3 towns away with my car landing almost right on top of us. We had to walk back to another town and call his mom for a ride back home. I told my dad a rod went out in my car. He was pissed because he specifically told me NOT to go out of town with that car, but I'm sure he would've been even more pissed had we succeeded with the DMV.

Okay, so that last thing wasn't entirely true...we did steal lights and my car did throw a rod out of town, but the rest...total baloney. But it sounded good, right? (would someone keep an eye out to see if that story gets Jay and I on the Terror Watch List please, and let us know?)

Instance #2: Jay says, "I was worried there for a bit, but as it turns out, I am not a terrorist. This according to the United States government who has now seen fit to give me a passport. Or at least that is what the passport confirmation website tells me. It should be in the mail now."

The way I see it, the government may have decided to give him a passport afterall. However, the whole part about him not being a terrorist...don't buy that for a minute, because I don't. I'm sure someone in the GOP put the pressure on some passport issuer to give it to him anyways. After all, Jay has been a very loyal gun-toting, bible-thumping, hatemonger for years now, so whether or not he's a terrorist is just a moot point in their eyes, at least as long as he continues to vote a straight Republican ticket every election anyways.