In which Birdmonster recounts various adventures, mocks mythical heroes, and bets something, yet wins nothing

I know this much: a stupid bet deserves a stupid wager. I also know that nothing stops a stupid argument like a stupid bet. Children, instinctively, know this. "Wanna bet?" was a favorite rejoinder in my monkey bar days and, if the kid I heard at Cracker Barrel this morning is any indication, the phrase remains popular in the kiddy vernacular, alongside "Your mom!" and the golden oldie "I don't shut up, I grow up, and when I see your face, I throw up."

It should go without saying that, yes, we get into silly arguments. And when we do, we bet lotto tickets. It's like betting for a chance to gamble. Actually, it's exactly like that. And there's the outside chance that you'll become a thousandaire, when, in reality, you're basically wiping your ass with a dollar. Everybody wins. Even the Wisconsin school system.

Me? I'm a roll. I won a scratcher a while ago betting Dave that Palin wouldn't drop out of the race. Then we doubled down on whether she'd debate in the first place. And the scratch off I've got in my lap at this very moment? Won off Peter for insisting that Darth Vader said "When we last met, I was but a learner; now I am the mastah." That might be exact, but Pete swore it was "student" and not "learner" while I remembered it was George Lucas and not someone who had a passing familiarity with conversational English. Easy money, in other words.

I'm telling you this because I'm bored. Oh so bored. And because I'm saving the lotto ticket for the end of this blog. That's what passes for excitement in my life. Sad, I know. I'm sorry for dragging you down with me. At least it's warm down here. Warm and smelly.

But I digress. Or rather, I haven't started saying anything of import at all. Either way. Where were we last? I believe it was California. That was a bizarre trip, honestly---not bad in any way, being that its the home state for three of us and contains the hometown for all of us---but because we went home in the middle of a tour. This was a first. The layover in San Francisco was barely twenty-four hours but it was incredibly rejuvenating. I ate food from places called "kitchens." I slept on a bed that didn't feel stuffed with hooker cadavers. I woke up to something other than "Housekeeping!"

Plus, I picked up my absentee voter envelope. I hear there's someone named "Alabama" running for President, which makes me pretty excited. Also, I'm apparently supposed to know four different people who deserve a seat on the San Francisco Community College Board, which is a lot like asking me to choose the four people with the coolest name. Rodel Rodis? You've got my vote. In fact, I'm just voting for you four times. I'm writing you in for President too. Sorry, "Alabama." You lose!

Of course, since California, we've gone back to the East Coast. In between, we enjoyed the Pacific Northwest, which was completely gorgeous in mid October, all red leaves and fog---the hills looked like they were on fire, and---well, to be fair, we're not on the East Coast yet. For some reason, my brain lumps Chicago and Minneapolis in with Boston and Philadelphia. It's wrong, I know. We're in the midwest, have been since our hellish Seattle to Minnesota drive. Yeah. That's 1800 some-odd miles. You know that guy who ran a Marathon from Marathon to deliver a message back in the "olden days"? He's a bitch. I'd like to see him drive ten hours a day on a diet of Olive Garden and McDonald's.

Things have happened, of course. We got joshingly heckled by a pair of self-described "repugnant queens" in Portland---one of whom liked "Gummo," which, really, when somebody tells you that, walk backwards slowly but never take your eyes off their hands. We tried to eat at a Red Lobster before discovering that we were actually too poor for Red Lobster, then wept ourselves to sleep. We played a gamut of fantastic clubs, though the Doug Fir in Portland and the Casbah in San Diego are my personal favorites---the former of the pair is very "Twin Peaks-y" according to everyone else in the band who has, you know, seen "Twin Peaks." To me it looked like a creepy futuristic log cabin. Maybe those things are one in the same. I do not know.

I feel boring though. Really boring. I'm basically rotting in the van as we speak. My brain isn't working anymore. But wait! I've got this lotto ticket. It's called "Krazy Eights." Ok...scratching. Not an eight. Not an eight. Mayb---nope, that's a nine.

That's what we call an "anti-climax." I'm going to slink into the back seat and try to recover from my Gunslinger withdrawals with a new book. Have a fine Sunday.