Fools

by Joseph Mackey

  Chapter 5

  My own Friends.

  My friends have been a minefield of information for this book. They have done so many dumb things it hurts to list them. First off is Tony Salimbene he is dumber than dirt He graduated from high school with a Special Education diploma first of all, and second he acts like it. For example, I was hanging out with him when I was in college he didn’t attend. I wonder why. (Note the sarcasm). He started dating 4 or 5 girls at a time, and he got caught all the time. That isn’t the worst though, one time we were at an amusement park and

  two of his girlfriends showed up there. He was on a date with one the other just was there.

  He tried to pass one off on me which worked well until they found out I wasn’t dating

  anyone. They then both broke up with him, although it worked for the night. They probably beat his skinny ass to a pulp afterward though. I would have if I were them. Then there was his girlfriend Lizzy.

  I didn’t care much for her because she gave Tony so much trouble, but they deserved each other. Anyways she tells him, Tony I think I am pregnant and he says who’s the father. Now if they had had sex she should be upset at him. They hadn’t slept together, yet she got pissed. In fact Tony’s probably too stupid, to this day to get any woman to go to bed with him. Now if that isn’t stupid I don’t know what is. I mean having sex is, to my knowledge, the only way to procreate. And yes I did need to put that in there, since some people obviously don’t understand that. Either that or she’s a ho and just got mad at Tony to cover up, whatever. I mean a song by Ludicrous comes to mind. Tony still doesn’t catch on to the fact that she might be cheating on him. If I had a girlfriend who told me that I would break up with her, if I hadn’t been sexually active with her. In fact I would have actually said one of two things, one, you’re a fool! How can you say that and then get mad at me that’s how people procreate. Or two you cheated on me, we’re through.

  He acted like everything was ok except for her being so stupid. This was confusing since he’s no Rhodes scholar himself. He makes Beavis and Butthead look like college professors. She makes them look like Harvard medical doctors, maybe even Tokyo University doctors. What amazes me (and I just realized this) is someone out there exceeds his stupidity rating. That is just scary, I hope he and her never have sex or children because Tony would forget the condom, have kids, and they would be a bunch of retards. I’d feel sorry for kids like that. In fact it should be a crime for them to have kids at that level of idiocy.

  Next would be Bret Pries. I’m not trying to trash Bret he volunteered himself for this book. His misadventures are hilarious. It is a good thing too, I could write the rest of my entire book on his escapades (this means misadventures). One time he almost became a farm boy. I called him Farmer Bret. Haha man what a stupid move. I believe that this is why he says I’m a dumbass to himself. He gets the idiot medal when I see him again. (I’m actually going to give him a medallion stating he’s a certifiable idiot) Nah I realized that would be too mean. He did not go through with being a farmer’s assistant for the reason that he would stink too much like a horse. However, what is the point of working if you don’t come home smelling of manure? My father used to do that all the time. I would have done it for fun, I mean just temporarily.

  Then there was the time he drove home from a party while higher than a kite with

  wings. Now you’re thinking damn what an idiot, and you’re right operation of a car while under the influence is really stupid. I totally agree with that, he should have his license rescinded. For the illiterate fools, Dave would say this means taken away. No actually, I think he would give up trying to teach anyone anything, get pissed off, and say you guys are idiots. I’m getting a mental picture of that now. If Dave met my other friends he would just explode, especially the ones noted in my book, he would say you’re all fools after about 5 seconds. Nah, I am joking he would have slightly more patience. However, it would be a bad experience for him, and for them. Another one is when he drove to a club in 3 degree weather. I laughed until I cried at this one. He told me he was just bored and wanted to go out.

  I told him he was an imbecile, and he wouldn’t see me out in that weather for almost anything. He agreed, but still would do it again im sure. He has done plenty of other stuff too like the time he became homeless. He told me he had 2 kids and I was like dude you need to get straight for them. His response was I’m a homeless bastard what should I do. Seriously, he was homeless for a long time and eventually moved around New York, becoming a paperboy. For a while, he was staying with his dad and sleeping for 12 hours a day, working out part time, and driving around looking to pick up girls. Guys this is what happens to people who like the sauce too much. They end up homeless , have reckless sex (which sounds fun until you see the consequences) probably get disease, hopefully Bret didn’t, make drunk calls, which Bret has done, lose jobs which were bad to start with, talk shit on their drunk calls , and drive into ditches shouting deer!

  Nah I know he was not drunk when he did that. One other funny thing he did was sneak out of his girlfriends house when he was homeless. He was trying to leave to meet up with me to hang out that night. I was thinking Bret you idiot don’t get killed over a girl! I think his girlfriend’s father was blocking his escape, but didn’t know he was there. So his buddy Sketch shows up there too at some point, and they come to church with me that night. Note Sketch should have his own chapter. Why? He’s voluntarily homeless and he drags his friends into that life it seems too. Hell the fact that he wants to live in the streets and sell newspapers shows something’s wrong upstairs. I mean why would anyone with his intelligence do that? Bret is currently trying to start a band in New York with me as the lead singer, if this book sells a million copies I will go there first and make the band with him. So if he wants that band I am sure he will advertise, he will probably go street to street telling people to buy my book, which would be hilarious in itself. In fact, I’ll bet he is trying to at this moment get people in New York to buy copies of this unfinished book.

  Next would be Ed Carniero, here is a man who has done everything. He claimed to have no shame, so I am putting him to the test here. He’s not a bad guy. I’m not doing this to trash him either. He’s just very entertaining. One really stupid thing he’s done is graduate high school at twenty years of age. I think he had 2 junior years and 2 senior years.

  He was in fact on drugs to have done that. In his case, he almost dropped out anyways because his G.P.A. had turned to 1.6 in his 2nd senior year. Miraculously, he made just enough to get by. I didn’t make fun though because even though his actions were stupid I knew he was struggling. However, all the while even in his last senior year he went out and got cocaine. Once, he and his best friend went to go get an eight ball of coke. Come to think of it I should make fun of this guy, he is such a fool, I personally understand the depths of Ed’s intellectual capabilities, which is why he’s in a book of buffoons. He is an idiot for not realizing his intellectual capabilities, he opted to be like the rest of the sheep we call our society. Ed should get the moron trophy for that. Or maybe he should run in the Special Olympics. He’s a fake intellectual, he claims to be a liberal but he really is not. He once tried to get me kicked out of a band we were once in by obeying the leader’s commands to go against me, without even hearing me out.

  He’s conservative when it suits him. A liberal would have been fair and heard me out at least instead of following orders, like a sheep. In fact, that’s what I will refer to him as it’s his new nickname. Ed if you’re reading this you’re a sheep got a problem with that? In any case, he lost that one and even though he was a total jackass I saved him from being kicked out numerous times, once when he broke a microphone and stormed out of practice, once when the band nearly disbanded without me, and once when he was going to lose the lead position in singing.

  Again I’m only talking trash about him and the others who turned their backs on me. I ‘m just stating what happ
ened. So yes this book has everything drama, fighting, idiocy passion between men and women, men and men, and men and animals. It is also rumored that Ed and Jackel were lovers, I didn’t think it was true, but who knows I mean Ed used to have sex with other men and on Jackel’s dead journal it says he had a boyfriend in the past. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I think they both could do better than each other.

  Then there was Jackal, his best friend. What a dope, he vows to save Ed from his drugs, then gets caught up in them. He is perhaps the stupidest man alive, he claims to be an intellectual and then doesn’t go to college after high school. The stupid part is Jackal really is smart and he passed on law school which he could have actually completed. I have no doubt he could have done it, except for the fact that if he passed on it could he have done it? This is probably a philosophical question that cannot be best answered in a book about fools. So if he sees Ed’s name in here he should not laugh, because he is literally next, and they did the same damn thing it seems. Oh well sheep do tend to flock together. I say who cares they’re idiots. Sheep are stupid.

  Next, John Sherbondy is on the stupid list. He’s cool, I am just putting him in to be funny. He has done some crazy stuff in his time. He once rode around town carrying an ax while biking. He was making a BMX track he claimed. He also said he wanted to chop up graves. He nearly clipped some old woman with the ax, he was also carrying a shovel, but he never made the track. I rode with him carrying a shovel, but I didn’t do any damage. He also used to go around stealing golf balls on golf courses.

  Then there was the time someone (myself) pissed in a bottle of soda and he got someone to drink it. Oh the humanity, the poor fool who drank it turned out to be some dude nicknamed Batman. He made quite the face and that was before realizing exactly what he drank. John then tried to pull the same dumb joke on me but it failed. He did however get Tony to do it supposedly. I’d believe it as Tony is by not just my account, the lowest form of life there is. In my next book I am going to list all the girls he cheated on, and who he cheated with. I am also going to release a list of who he talked badly about among his guy friends. No mercy for the stupid will be shown. If any of the people want a list before my next Book I will offer either one for 5 bucks each or 8 bucks for both. If Tony doesn’t like it, tough that’s what you get for messing with smart people. John just might get his own book as Tony might as well, who knows if this book works out and the movie does too I might write books about both of them which promise to be more interesting than this one.

  Anyways back to John. He and I used to get into trouble all the time. He would take me to a golf course sometimes and we would take balls. Well one time he and I went and he told me to grab a ball, but he grabbed it and ran. It turned out it belonged to a cop who lost a 100 dollar bet. That would be the least stupid thing John had dragged me into. Then there was the time we tried to go to Miami to find drug money. He tried to hijack his grandfather’s car (later it turned out he gave John the keys the whole time, John just forgot.

  So we cruise off for Miami and he hits a fire hydrant on the sidewalk because he didn’t know how to drive. He shouts Buffoons! on impact and water gushes from the hydrant. I say give me the wheel and he hands me the wheel. It broke off. So I reattach it put on Plush by Stone Temple Pilots, and cruise off to Miami. He finds the drug lab too and he says we are rich. Of course I say let’s not and say we did. He rushes into the lab and gets caught. He says oh s*%$ and somehow breaks loose, he managed to grab some money a whole suitcase full of it. I let him drive and I count it in the back seat of the car. I hand it to him and say there’s at least 3 million in here. Of course, he opens it up to check it and the cash blows out the driver side window. I was like FUCK A DUCK, dude why did you open the window and spill all our money? The cops rolled by and we took off like a bat out of hell, because I knew they would suspect something. I pretended to be very sick and fortunately had been drinking a lot to celebrate our newfound wealth.

  So the cops ask why John was speeding so fast and he said (after I told him to tell them I was sick and had to go to the hospital.) that I was ill and was going to the hospital. They escort us there and I end up leaving after the cops leave. Meanwhile Johnny had gotten high as a kite and wanted to fly down the road. I sober up and try to go home as fast as possible, however he’s wilding out, and he causes me to hit a mailbox. So I shout Beep! when the fucker makes me have an accident. We get home and his grandfather says &%$#@!*$# what the *%$##@@!@##$%#%^##$%!!!!!! happened to my car. I say well he got high and started bugging out while I was driving, and made me hit a mailbox, to which I shouted BEEP! In what turned out to be the most bizarre thing to happen, the guy just laughs because I shouted Beep! after having an accident.

  Of course, he makes Johnny get his old job back at Publix and work for the money to fix the damage. He doesn’t get mad at him for getting high. I soon figure out why, the old man was the one Johnny was stealing it from. In fact, I figure it out because he was singing You’re Beautiful by James Blunt to no one in particular while obviously high. Michael Barrett was someone I used to be friends with, but thought was too dumb to keep around. He once got so high that he saw a Budweiser frog and it asked him to get high with him. That’s when you put the drugs down people. He refused to cut it out and was eventually caught with it at school. At least that is the story he told me. He was a really dumb kid, he failed sixth grade two or three times. In other cases he just did stupid things, like try to act perverted claiming he had sex with his dog and other stuff that most people wouldn’t do or admit to doing.

  He might be the reason Blink 182 made the song I want to fuck a dog in the ass. Then there was Jason. He was one of Tony’s friends who I knew and considered him to be a great guy. But he had his moments. For example, he ran up over a thousand dollars in phone bills at a week stay in a hotel. He had a cell phone, so he had no excuse. It wasn’t a drunk call either. He was calling his girlfriend which was nice, but you don’t do that with a hotel phone.

  This was sometime in 2004, I think and I hadn’t seen Tony to hang out with since before then, Jason either. Oh well Jason got them to drop some of the charges luckily. However, he’s doing some other stupid things back in Coral Springs. He is going to the clubs trying to watch naked girls. Instead he should be trying to pick them up. He drops like a thousand bucks on them, he should drop half on his clothes, cologne, etc so he can get dates with them. At least that is what I would do if I had that much to spend freely. Nah, just kidding 500 bucks is too much to spend on clothes at one time for me.

  Then there was Brian again, one day he tells me he wants to be homeless like another friend of ours, named Sketch. He woke up one day and decided that having a house was too much trouble and having a job was even worse. So I try to reason with him, but it doesn’t work. He has his heart set on being a bum like his hero Sketch at that point. I guess Sketch straightened this fool out about what being homeless is like. He eventually decided being homeless sucks, (for anyone else contemplating being like him, it does don’t do it) and decided to create Ideozine, a web design company that would make him a rich man if he knew how to market it right. He then changed his mind and got pissed at me for not wanting him to give up his dream. I say fine who needs to put up with his foolery. Too bad I used to like being his friend, but he decided to end that. Sketch by the way is a fool too. He’s a darn fine person, but stupid because he is voluntarily homeless. I do not understand why anyone would want this on themselves, let alone why this desire is starting to be a trend, or so it seems. It tends to come from people who do a lot of drugs particularly weed. Apparently these people think they are intellectuals and their great ideas come from that. Note the sarcasm there. Sketch actually passed his GED with a good score while high and rolling on ecstasy or something else I don’t remember. He said when he is 21 he wants to turn his life around completely. I told him Sketch don’t you think that this might be something you’re stuck in permanently, if you don’t chang
e it now. He hadn’t considered that possibility of course, but he was cool about it.

  I say he needs to go home, but as of yesterday I heard that he isn’t going back. I know a guy who failed his test, but he did it because he threw out a section that didn’t make sense. Actually, this fool would be Bret Pries (insert trumpet sound here). He went off on some sort of rant about how he hated some politician, probably George W. Bush. Bush will get his part in this book believe me. As for Bret he already made enough appearances in here, its kind of getting weird. I should give him his own book too.

  Finally, the tale would be left untold if I left out the greatest fool of all, Frederick Williams. He got himself into the classic situation that Tony gets himself into. It should be noted that I told Fred jokingly I was putting him in the book and he told me in all seriousness that I could. He is currently involved with 2 women, a thing I would never do because I know what happens to men who do that, they get in big trouble with both. The women in question are named Hally and Taryn. Now the stupid thing is not just that he is with 2 women, but one is the old love of his life, and the other is the new love of his life. He finally after around four or more years of trying got Hally to go out with him again, then all of a sudden he decides he does not want her anymore.

  He was with her or trying to be with her on and off since he was sixteen, he is now twenty-four. He decides it was all about the thrill of the chase, which is fine and dandy in many cases, but not when you’ve suffered so much and the stakes are so high. Fred actually asked how stupid he is for that, to which I said no stupider than the average person. Perhaps this is giving him too much credit. Of course Fred will probably lose Hally for good and I warned him of that possibility. I suggested that he might decide to change his mind down the road 3 years from now. Well I think he’s made a bad choice but I hope I am wrong. By the way he and I have talked about similar scenarios but I never thought something that Tony did on a regular basis would come out of Fred, he knows better I thought. As it turned out even in his fantasies the girls found him and murdered him, and they got really mad at me for covering for the guy as he skipped town, and the state and even faked his death

  . He for now, wants to be with Taryn, well to that I say good luck man you’ll need it. You should take your secret with you to your grave, but like a friend of mine once said, your grave is going to be mighty full.