by Rob Gunther
Mahine Party Press
Copyright © 2013 by Rob Gunther
All rights reserved
Library of Congress LCN: 2013921972
ISBN: 978-0-615-92548-6
www.strictlyautobiographical.com
Foreword
Hello, there, dear reader. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Jose Vargas and I am here to do the foreword.
Who exactly am I? Well, unless you spent much of the early 2000s patronizing bars in or around Albany, New York, chances are you have no idea who I am. If you did meet me back then, I probably don’t remember you. If you happen to be one of the twenty-three young ladies that knew me in a more biblical way, let me assure you, I have been tested many times since my “wild oats" period concluded, so it probably wasn’t me. And if you think I had anything to do with that child walking around in your living room right now, well, I don’t have much taxable income, so do yourself a favor and don’t waste your time trying to get at it. Also, heart disease and nearsightedness run in my family. Just a heads up.
Luckily, I did manage to gain some notoriety that didn’t come from drunken decisions made in Albany during Bush Jr.’s first term. If you know me - or of me - it’s because you visit the website, reddit, where I’m known by my reddit username, /u/_vargas_ (note the underscores). For those of you who may not be familiar with reddit, here is a brief description from Wikipedia:
Reddit is a social news and entertainment website where registered users submit content in the form of either a link or a text (“self”) post. Other users then vote the submission “up” or “down”, which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site’s pages and front page. Content entries are organized by areas of interest called “subreddits”.
Those votes “up” or “down” (known as upvotes and downvotes) are a big part of what make reddit so addictive. The site keeps track of each user’s upvotes, known as “karma.” Some users will do nearly anything for karma: dress up their pets, publicly shame their children, photograph themselves or others immediately after sustaining a gruesome injury, and - worst of all - repost content that’s already been submitted.
Karma doesn’t just come from posting content, though. Commenting on posts is the other way. That’s where I come in. Over the past half year, I have commented my balls off. Dick and fart jokes, personal stories of sexual miscues, graphic depictions of bowel movements. All of this and more has made me the owner of the sixth highest comment karma total of all time (I don’t think I’m telling my parents anytime soon).
I guess that’s why our friend, Rob, choose me to do this foreword. I think he may be under the impression that I’m more famous than I am and by simply having me attached to his book, it’s going to somehow reach a wider audience. I’m telling you right now, Rob, I think you might have overestimated my fame. I’ve always said, “You’re not really famous until someone has sex with you for no reason other than your celebrity.” But you asked me this favor Rob, so I’ll do my best.
Anyway, I’m done trying to justify to myself to you, the reader, what business I have being in Rob’s book. Speaking of Rob, let’s talk about him.
Right off the bat, I have to admit that I’ve never actually met him. Based on his writing style (I’ll get into that in a minute,) I can guess what he’s like. I’m picturing an impressive specimen of a man. Square-jawed and stoic. He has the beefy paws of a crab fisherman and the broad shoulders of a coal miner. He walks upright and with confidence, without thought to conceal his massive bulge (like such a thing could ever be concealed.) When he makes eye contact with a woman, it puts a twinkle in her eye, a skip in her step, and song in her heart. In short, he is everything that most men are not.
You might be thinking to yourself “But how can he evoke such thoughts, Mr. Vargas?” Well, I guess I should explain how Rob came to be viewed in my mind’s eye with such veneration.
I first encountered Rob just a couple months ago. It was in one of the most popular subreddits: AskReddit. Basically, it’s a place to ask thought-provoking questions. Some of the answers are pretty great. Unfortunately, most are generally cheap attempts at humor. It’s a free-for-all of users trying to outdo each other by reciting puns, movie quotes, and sex jokes (my bread and butter.) Seriously, it’s like a bunch of spider monkeys simultaneously trying to hump the same football. Most responses show little effort. Rob managed to set himself apart from the crowd.
In the middle of reading a popular submission, I saw a massive “wall of text” (reddit-speak for any comment over a couple hundred words.) Home to redditors with the average attention span of a Chihuahua, AskReddit typically isn’t very receptive to longer comments like this. Something was special about this one, though. Despite being the reddit commenting equivalent of War and Peace, this sucker was getting upvoted, a lot. “Got to read this one,” I said to myself. But first, I scanned the replies to this comment.
“Oh my god this is hilarious!”
“Dayum sun! (sic)”
“I just want the opportunity to say I am glad you wrote this ;)”
“I read that in Dennis Leary’s voice.”
What the hell? Dennis Leary? No one ever compared me to Dennis fucking Leary. Pauly Shore? Sure. Andy Dick? Yeah. But never Leary. After all the tremendous effort I’ve put into my comments. All the tears I cried, all the blood I shed, all the sweat I’ve … swat? Sweated? Never the Leary-comparison stamp of approval. I was practically writhing with jealousy.
Scrolling back up to the beginning of the comment, I settled in, ready to hate. I was there to dismiss whoever this /u/Rob_G character was. He couldn’t be as good as me. No way. I need not remind anyone of how much karma I have accumulated (in case someone was wondering, it’s 1,129,056 as of this writing.)
Fifty words into Rob’s diatribe about Starbucks, I became a fan. It wasn’t good, it was outstanding, such a departure from the typical banal AskReddit comment. Rob’s writing style reminded me of Dave Barry, only if Dave Barry had chronic back pain, $100,000 in debt, and no wife (I mean that in a good way, Rob.)
After reading through several more of Rob’s comments, I did what any fan would do: try to take him down. I spent the better part of an evening copying portions of his comments into Google. I wanted to know if Rob was a fraud. Maybe he was stealing material from some obscure blogger from Des Moines? Some guy that doesn’t blog anymore.
I searched and searched but, like Halloween in 2002 when I went trick or treating dressed like Bin laden, I came up empty. It was all Rob. It made me kind of hate my own comments. Next to Rob’s, mine are positively sophomoric. By the way, thanks for that, Rob. Thanks for taking away one of the first and only things I thought I was truly good at. I’ll be going back to Twitter now.
As for everyone else, enjoy Rob’s book. Thank you.
Jose Vargas
/u/_vargas_
Another Foreword
When Rob asked me to write a foreword to his book, I agreed without hesitation. How could I say no when Rob literally saved my life? If it weren’t for Rob, I would be decomposing in a ditch somewhere outside of Ciudad Juarez right now. The story of how Rob saved my life is a testament to his personality and courage.
It all started several years ago, when I was set to go on a week long vacation to Cancun with my girlfriend at the time. We had a great deal on the price of the vacation. The resort was actually free because my girlfriend just swiped these tickets that were supposed to be part of a promotion for the company she worked at. All we had to do was pay for a flight from Philly to Cancun.
For some stupid reason, it was cheaper to have a layover in Denver, and then another layover in El Paso, before we got to Cancun. I hated Denver because of an unfortunate incid
ent a few years earlier when I was there on business. I realized that the Eagles would be playing the Broncos in Denver that Sunday, so I figured I could extend my stay a couple days and catch the football game, then fly back Sunday night. I would just have to pay for the extra day at the hotel since my company would be paying for the return flight anyway, right?
Wrong. This stupid lady Beth from our operations department started giving me all of this shit. She was saying that it was too complicated to split hotel days between the company expense account and my personal account, flights were cheaper on Friday instead of Sunday, pretty much, “I’m fat and lazy and I don’t want to do my job.”
I ended up flying home on Friday and missing the game. I got my revenge, though. Beth always brought her lunch to work and left it in the fridge. I started taking bites out of her sandwich every day and it gradually turned into me eating her entire lunch. I would hear her freaking out in the kitchen but she had no idea who was doing it. I would have thought she suspected me, but seeing as she was an awful person, there was probably a huge list of suspects seeking revenge.
She ended up switching her lunchbox. It took me a week to find the new one and I started eating her lunches from that one too. She even tried bringing her lunch in a bag that said “Steve’s lunch,” but there was nobody named Steve at our company, so I ate that too. Eventually she gave up and started ordering takeout. Every now and then I would overhear her ordering on the phone and then I’d drive to the place and say, “I’m picking up for Beth" and just buy her lunch and eat it.
She must have complained because the last time I tried to pick up her food, the girl at the takeout counter told me “the person on the phone said to only give the sandwich to a woman who would present identification.” I panicked and ran out of the store and haven’t been back since. It sucks because I really liked their cheesesteaks.
/u/rambles_off_topic
Introduction
Hello everybody, my name is Rob G. A little less than two years ago, I started documenting my life, as accurately as possible, on my blog, Strictly Autobiographical. Committing to posting something everyday, in the hopes that, someday in the future, my descendants might be able to study my writings and try to figure out what I was doing with my time on planet Earth, I toiled away in obscurity, all while receiving occasional words of encouragement from my mom. “You’re such a good writer!”
Then, much like my counterpart /u/_vargas_ eloquently put it above, I discovered reddit. I started posting some of my stories to /r/AskReddit, and the response was enough that I decided to self-publish this volume. Who knows? Maybe I’ll sell some eBooks.
Or maybe generations from now, one of my great-grandkids will stumble across this archive, they’ll be like, “Mom? What’s a blog? What’s reddit? Was this guy Rob G. related to us?” and she’ll silently hand the little brat a fifty-seventh generation iPad, it’ll be some parenting app, the kid will lose any interest in what I was talking about, the mom won’t have any idea what the kid was saying, she’ll be thinking, man, I don’t relate to these kids at all, the future is such a cold, desolate place.
That’s a little depressing. I think I’ll shoot for the former. Anyway, I had fun writing, so I hope you have fun reading.
Your best friend on the Internet,
Rob G.
Table of Contents
Don’t call me Robbie
I just had a great idea for a tattoo
Biscuit
Universal translator
Wine: The basics
An intermediate guide to wine
Intermediate to intermediate-advanced wines: An introduction to bottle service
It was the perfect day for a picnic
Stop telling me that I’m talking too fast
Being the bigger person
Quarterly Performance Review
Hello? Waiter? Hello?
I’m always looking to help out
Alfred!
I’m telling you, everything happens for a reason
Unfounded claims and unwarranted accusations
Look who set a world record
Why is morale so low?
The tale of the haunted coffee machine
We all scream for all-you-can-eat ice cream
Medium-rare
I’ll never go skydiving
I insist
Making amends with Andre
Gardener’s revenge
Lot of people in this city
That’s the worst
Is it too late for me to be a doctor?
I’ll only accept the best
Stuck in an elevator with five guys and one pizza
Howdy folks
Thank you, thank you, please, sit down
Andre ruined my karaoke night
Business Lunch
Stupid goddamn idiot stupid morons
My friend is friends with Keanu Reeves
Calling in sick
I haven’t seen my old friend Rich in forever
Stop bossing me around
That’s enough. I’m done.
Virtual Insomnia
A bunch of movie reviews
Career Day
Andre’s grandmother just died
Cheer up!
Hey neighbor
Please hold
Five-year plan
Feeling down? I can help!
Don’t lend Derek any more hats
There’s the door
Assert yourself, get aggressive
Justice was served, and I was the server
Andre and me on a boat
Robots are better than people
Birthday parties and Power Rangers piñatas
I’d just hate to trouble you
The magical properties of crystals are real
These comic books don’t make any sense
I want to be a space waiter
I got a huge speeding ticket. Thanks a lot, reddit.
I sent Andre a friend request
Appendix: The Trilogy
The Trilogy: Part one of three
The Trilogy: Part two of three
The Trilogy: Part three of three
The Trilogy: Part four of three
The Trilogy: Part five of three
Don’t call me Robbie
When I was a little kid I wasn’t Rob, I was Robbie. Everyone in my family still calls me Robbie. When I was in grade school, I didn’t think anything of it. Sure it was a little kid’s name, but I was a little kid, and so it wasn’t an obvious problem. Although it was something I had to be very specific about. Whenever I moved up in school, like when I finished the third grade and went to the fourth, I’d have to make sure to tell my new teacher right away that I didn’t like being called Robert, it’s Robbie. And they’d be like, “OK Robbie, you got it!”
And then they’d be doing some sort of an icebreaker at the beginning of the year, something where they’d write down every student’s name on the chalkboard, and maybe they’d write Robby. And I’d try to raise my hand in the middle of this little game, but the teacher would ignore me. Teachers can’t encourage that type of behavior, raising your hand whenever you feel like it, expecting her to stop midsentence to listen to whatever it is you’d have to say. She’d dismiss my hand with a wave without even looking my way, a wave that said, “Robby! Put your hand down right this second! I’m the teacher and I’m in the middle of talking here!”
But instead of putting my hand down I would reach even higher, like a yoga pose, reaching from my heart, trying as hard as I could to make it even higher than it was before. I’d wiggle my fingers dramatically, like, teacher, I know I’m not supposed to interrupt, but this is important, this is my name here, and you’ve got it all wrong, and maybe all of the other kids, well, they won’t be consciously looking at it, but it’s going to be there, in their memories somewhere, and the next time they have to write out birthday party invitations or Valentine’s Day cards, everyone’s going to write out Robby instead of Robbie.
But the new teacher would be pissed. Finally she’d turn dramatically to me with that mean teacher scowl and say, “Robby! Put your hand down, now!” And yeah, I probably could have put my hand down, but at least I’d have her attention, so I’d say, “But …” and she’d say, “But nothing! Is this how you want to start off the school year? Is it Robby?” I’d fidget a little, put this helpless expression on my face, and I’d say, “But Mrs… .”
“That’s it! One more word out of you and it’s straight to the principal’s office! Put! Your! Hand! Down! Right! This! Second! Now!”
I wouldn’t have a choice. I’d have to sit there and squirm in my seat, Robby written right in front of me on the board, mocking me, taunting me. And when the teacher said, “Is this how you want to start off the school year,” that’s not really fair, because she’s making it like it’s a question, like she’s giving me the option to start off the school year a different way. But all she really cared about was doing her little intro lesson, and I interrupted her, twice, so regardless of how I acted for the rest of that presentation or whatever, I’m already the little nuisance kid, one of those students who won’t sit still, one of those kids who, if he has his hand raised, you better not call on him, because you don’t want to encourage his thinking that he can just sit there and raise his hand every time he wants to hijack the class.
When I got to the eighth grade, I realized I didn’t want to be a little kid anymore. I didn’t want my parents telling me I couldn’t buy CDs with the parental advisory sticker on the front. I didn’t want anybody telling me when I had to be home for dinner or to go to bed because it was late. I wanted to be a man. And try as I could, I never found any real-life men named Robbie. They just don’t exist. I settled on Rob, which sounded pretty adultish, definitely to be taken more seriously than Robbie.
Implementing the change was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Sure, I could start writing Rob instead of Robbie on all of my homework assignments, but by this point in school I had already made such a huge deal about being called Robbie to every teacher that it was a little much to expect them to notice I’d started writing my name differently on pieces of paper they probably weren’t really grading anyway. And then trying to get my classmates to call me Rob instead of Robbie? That was impossible. The minute you try to do something like that, it’s an automatic invitation to have everyone call you Robbie at least twice as much as they did before. Why? I don’t know. Little kids are all assholes. That’s what I would have done if little Johnny one day came to school and told everyone that from here on out he was Jack.