Dining Out with Uncle Sam

I am dining downtown at a restaurant with cloth napkins, I raise a glass of crafted beer to toast Uncle Sam for taking me out.
“Thank you for giving back
some
of that money you took
from me
last year”

I just received my tax refund, and (I’m “Spilling while I’m sipping” because I’ve got Money to Blow…) as a true American patriot I am immediately donating the money to the suffering economy via large corporate retailers and restaurants who’s failure would have a significantly moderate impact on my daily affairs.
(I also paid my fiancée for my half of the last two months rent but that is not as glamorous as the previous and I just spent the last 12 hours at the gate of a construction site checking in people who bring home more bacon than I do so I am hording all the glamour points I can counterfeit because they don’t grow on the trees in my backyard.)

Here is the breakdown-
I have a car: +2 Glamour Points
But it is a 1996 Subaru Outback station wagon: -1 GP
with a tape deck: -1 GP
I have a tattoo: +1 GP
of a 1984 book quote: -1 GP
I have a job: +1 GP
as a rent-a-cop: -34 GP

Total = -33 Glamour Points

Feeling Good about Failure

The day started with a bang. A bang about the size of an M-150 firecracker smuggled across the Colorado-Wyoming border. So to be more specific, the day started with a largely insignificant and mostly unsatisfying bang. My buddy and I set out to change that.

An M-150 firecracker is a small cylinder with hardened light gray stuff and powdery dark gray stuff packed inside. A green fuse runs in from the top. I don’t know how much these things cost, I didn’t ask, but I do know that if a person runs a saw blade down the side of the cardboard cylinder, the different color stuffs can be segregated. The light gray stuff does not catch on fire, but if a person was to crush it up then add small amounts of water it can be reshaped, molded to fit the size of a small pill bottle spray painted black. The dark grey stuff is the moneymaker. It is packed in a smaller cylinder that encases the bottom of the green fuse. This is the sound and the fury.

We dissect seven firecrackers with wavering precision. Light gray matter spills onto the kitchen table, the kitchen floor, onto my jeans.
If my fiancée was here …

With Scotch tape, four inner cylinders are fastened together and a Dremel tool is used to drill a hole in the top of the pill bottle for the fuse. By definition, this is an Improvised Explosive Device.

I get the video camera

The fuse sparks up and we start to run for cover behind my car. Glorious yellow orange sparks illuminate a small section of the parking lot behind my apartment building. In my mind, I am adding this to my resume as an example of creativity, resourcefulness, self-motivation.

The fuse burns for less an half a second then fizzles out. No fireball, no explosion. We wait behind my car for three minutes before walking up and hesitantly kicking it over.

We try the fuse again but nothing happens. I unlock the dumpster and we throw it away.

Witness to only the realization of my ineptitude as a terrorist, and that is surprisingly more satisfying than the alternative.