I’m pretty sure that I’ve told you people this but I hate memes.

For the uninitiated a meme - which I am certain is slang for forced internet anal rape - is a clever device in which people are asked to participate in the 21st century version of a chain letter. I’m not exactly where memes are born but I’m betting it’s some broom closet in hell that is occupied by people who committed suicide live on webcam and blogged about the experience on their Xanga account or Livejournal right before they bought the fucking farm.

Memes are a device that is used to force bloggers to interact with each other and drop links betwixt their blogroll. I’m not sure if they’re a play for attention or comment count but they drive me fucking insane. With that said there are about two or three writers on this here internet that can tag me with a meme that will actually make me sit down in front of my laptop - as I am now with a glass of wine and a cigar - and go through the motions of filling out a meme. But doing so doesn’t make me despise them any less.

The current meme making the rounds, like the flu, is something called six words. The premise being that you are supposed to write six words that encapsulate you as a person and an internet writer. I’m sure that the accuracy of these words holds about as much as being able to rub your tummy and pat your head. But seeing as how I was tagged by not one but two writers I figured I would indulge them and go on with the six words format. So here they are steeped i glory and mysticism.

MY HANDS SMELL LIKE BARBEQUE SAUCE.

I’m not exactly sure why this is considering that I only eat a moderate amount of BBQ sauce. Well moderate for any man who thinks that Double Western Bacon Cheeseburgers should be the holy sacrament. But anytime I smell my hands during a normal work day I get a distinct nose full of succulent BBQ sauce. It confuses and confounds me but never fails to make me smile like a retard holding a balloon.

So there. I did a meme. I refuse to make someone else do one out of guilt or the threat of having nine years of bad luck.

I hope your happy.

I know I am.

Because my hands smell like what I would imagine an angels tits would smell like.

Travis
i smell great

The Sad Truth
The great thing about being the structural engineer for Playdough Town is the fact that I’m around people a lot more than I used to be. Quite frankly in the last few months of my last job I only saw people roughly once a week; and for a social person like myself the alone time can become quite stifling. Though I do occasionally enjoy some time by myself the crushing silence of my last office, among other things, actually caused me to be clinically depressed for a while.

Fortunately; Playdough Town is a very social place where even in a training and orientation environment one has the opportunity to crack jokes and converse with one’s co-workers. And to be honest just having other people around during the day is quite refreshing.

But there’s one advantage of being alone in the office that I took for granted and now, somewhat, miss. It is - apparently - completely unacceptable to pick your nose and let out a mighty Taco Bell scented fart in a small conference room. And no matter how many times you make reference to feeling better, or providing a plethora of natural gas for America’s Eco-Obsessed economy - everyone’s gonna give you the hairy eye. Other than that Playdough Town is working out quite nicely.

Travis
oooh that smell

Ps - I won’t have true internet access at the new palatial HTKP villa until the 5th of April so I can’t post any new articles on How To Kill People until then. But once the blazing high speed internet is installed you can expect updates to be forthcoming.

Things have been interesting in the last nine months or so. After the wedding, the honeymoon, my public raping in the press, the fall out and now moving into a new home and starting a new job - though for security reasons I won’t be saying shit about my new job on here. As far as you people are concerned I’m a structural engineer for a new theme park called Playdough Town. It’s an entire amusement park built out of playdough and my job is to make sure that all of the attractions and buildings will stand up to the elements. But after all of that; yesterday I ran into what - might possibly be - the greatest decision that I’ve ever had to make.

Today is my birthday and this past weekend, after moving into our palatial new estate, my wife and I were out shopping for neccessitties when she told me what her and her parents had decided was going to be my birthday present. I was to be faced with a choice. I could have an xbox 360 or a nintendo wii. This was to be the best, worst decision I’ve ever had to make.

The Wii is a social system. It’s basic game play and functionality is based around having a large group who will invest time and energy into it’s motion sensitive landscape. This would be the system to get if I wanted to continue to provide entertainment for my friends when they come over for dinner. Sadly this system would provide very little for the solo game - me - in those times in between having guests over. That and kicking my wife’s ass over and over again at Wii sports would eventually lose it’s luster. But the pelvic thrusting victory dances would never, EVER lose their joy and fervor.

The Xbox 360 is a system mainly built for people playing at home by themselves. It’s a system that I could invest hours of play into on my own - whether from the couch or in the bathtub. It wouldn’t provide as much entertainment for the group but it would certainly bring joy to one very important and key person…namely me.

This was a fundamental question, one that strikes at the core of one’s being. A decision that would play upon that very basic ideals and tenenets by which one will live their life. This would be like deciding between communism and capitalism. This is a choice that brought nations to the brink of nuclear destruction. This is the kind of decision that destroyed countries and lives. And it was down to me. LIttle old me. Kennedy couldn’t ford this river without catching a bullet with his face and Castro couldn’t stop this “China Shop Bound Bull” without exiling himself and his country and here little old Travis from howtokillpeople.com was goign to have solve a microcausm of the world’s issues all on my own.

I chose the Xbox
It’s what Reagan and John McClane would have done.
Fuck the commies.

Travis

it’s good to be back

This is only a test. I’m planning on bringing the blog back online sometime soon. I know that I ‘ve abandoned it quite a ubit since the whole investigation thing started but I expect that there will be a redesign fgor the site some time soon and the blog will play a larger part. It will probably get switched back over the the blogspot account though. THat way it can be embedded. I know that makes no since but it works for me.

I also wanted to test updating from my phone pand it seems to be a bit combursome in the wordpress GUI.

Off to make more tests.

Travis
easy now.

RV Scheide from the Sacramento News and Review interviewed me recently in regards to the whole situation and I have to say he did a pretty fair job.

“It’s been said that comedy is not pretty. For California National Guard Senior Airman Travis Gruber, it couldn’t get much uglier. Comedy had been cruel to the 27-year-old Sacramento resident. In fact, it just might cost him his job….click here to read more.

Travis

i wish i could tattoo a feeling.

Um wow…just wow.

Before moving on please do me a favor and Read This first. It’s the first thing I posted on this blog and should explain a few things. But other than that I would assume that everyone is here to hear my thoughts on the current situation I am currently embroiled in. And to that I honestly don’t know what to say.

The original article - which was picked up by the Associated Press - by Mr. Thomas Peele is available by clicking here . More interesting than the article itself are the comments that have been left. You can view them by scrolling to them bottom of the article and clicking on them.

The next article to appear - in the New York Times no less - can be viewed by clicking here. Having previously stated - in a posting about my step mother’s untimely death due to brain cancer no less - that humor is my default defense mechanism I find it entertaining to say, “I’m on record with the New York Times as not being fond of Superman.” Even the humorless should find a chuckle in that.

The next article was in the San Francisco Chronicle and can be read by clicking here .

I would like to state two things in regards to all of the articles.

1. I find it interesting that no matter what article was read; the people reading them assigned traits to me that they could never know. The greatest example of this was the political affiliation trait. If the person reading the article agreed with me and was a liberal then by all means I too was a liberal and the newspaper at hand was merely a rag of the Bush-Bots trying to silence me. If you were a liberal and disagreed with me then obviously the paper was a good liberal news source trying to silence another hate mongering conservative. And vice versa. I found that interesting.
2. After all of the email I received - supportive, hate mail, or death threats - I find this comment posted anonymously on the Contra Costa Times article to be…well…it shall stand on it’s own with one qualifier - I did not write it. “You know, after reading the article, Airman Gruber’s website, and the comments that have been posted, I have noticed something interesting: Most of those that have been on the side of Airman Gruber, either friends or normal readers of the CCT, have responded with what appear to be rational, well thought out arguments . The majority of supporters for Thomas Peele have responded with name-calling and words of hate and aggression.To me, that speaks volumes about the character of both Ariman Gruber and Thomas Peele.”

But do yourself a favor…read all of the articles, read all of the comments, read my statement posted here and come to your own conclusion.

The Bachelor party was astounding.

The wedding was beautiful. Thank you to all who came.

The honeymoon was amazing and we got out of Jamaica two days before Hurricane Dean.

Travis

coming up for air

This will be my last guest post on the HTKP blog. Barring any international incidents involving contraban vibrators, Travis and his lovely new wife will soon be landing here in Sacramento on the wings of their love to embark upon the silly romantic adventure known as marriage. 

Fuck. Did you just gag too?

Anyway. While Travis was gone he had entrusted his dog Joe to a few close friends who quickly became way too inebriated to care for him, necessitating an ASPCA intervention. Joe was carted away in a dramatic scene worthy of an episode of Cops and the hijinx that ensued after Joe’s incarceration and subsequent journey home was captured on film: 

As has already been mentioned, Joe contracted chlamydia. Well, there was a long time when we had no idea who had fondled Joe’s girly parts with his diseased naughty bits. This is the rat bastard who did the deed just before promising the poor pooch that it would be “their little secret”.

After Joe escaped Ol’ Drippy Dick he joined up with a peculiar circus troupe called “The Hotdog Eaters”. As you can see by the last guy’s expression, Joe took the name literally. He was kicked out promptly. Travis, I’ve assured these guys that they can forward the medical bills to you.

Joe then went on a week-long bender of hookers and drugs. Here is Joe with one of his “Ladies of the Night”: 

…and chilling out in a local opium den.  

It became apparent that Joe definitely had a child star complex. 

Something had to be done before he ended up like Travis and Hillary’s first attempt at pet ownership, who went over the not-so-proverbial ledge. 

Finally Joe just clicked his heels and said “There’s no place like Heidi, There’s no place like Christy…” 

But he ended up in bed with a jetlagged Travis instead where he found both religion and a shitload of coke.

It’s been fun everyone, thanks for everything. I now return you to your regularly scheduled blogger…

Well, it’s official. Joe has chlamydia. What’s more, early testing has revealed that he didn’t contract it from Snogdot, myself, or even Heidi. I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we are mighty relieved to no longer be at the receiving end of a intensive bitch slap session perpetrated by the Doggy Interrogation Task Force.

But! This begs the question: How did Joe get chlamydia?

As it turns out the truth was much darker. Like chocolate. Or coffee. Or my men.

While his human parents play in the Caribbean surf, Joe has slowly been whirling around the drain of excess. Sometime shortly after Travis’s wedding, Joe was left alone with a set of car keys. Couple this with a lack of supervision and voila, a situation has arisen in which he has earned the moniker ”Joe the John”.

I present to you the following photographic evidence.

When Travis asked me to blogsit for him I am willing to bet he did it while under the impression that I am not a complete dumbass. Unfortunately for him, I am.

Sometime last night for reasons that will never be clear to me no matter how many mind-altering substances I’ve done in my past, Travis decided to scout out a computer and log on to this blog. From an all-inclusive resort. In Jamaica. As in Paradise. On his honeymoon. (Ok so really? When I write it out like that all the sudden I’m not feeling like the only idiot in this situation.)

But I digress.

So last night Travis sends out the following e-mail:

we’re here

we’re safe

I’m drunk

hooray for me

So I log onto my computer this morning, see this e-mail and immediately spit my coffee out because really, what kind of guy logs onto his blog when he has unlimited booze and a spanking new hot wife in a skimpy bikini waiting for him? Then I do what any good friend would do. I hit “Reply To All” with the following:

WTF?!?! Why aren’t you drinking and having hot monkey sex in every nook and cranny of your room? Get off the damned computer!

Of course, I thought Travis had only sent this to Heidi, his father, and myself. Can you imagine my joy when his father quickly responded to my e-mail (though privately, because unlike me Jack has half a brain) with:

You know you just emailed his mother, right?

No. In fact I did not. You know why? BECAUSE I AM RETARDED AND I DON’T KNOW ANY BETTER.

Obviously Travis wasn’t lying about being drunk though, because after having electronically commanded him to debauch himself in front of his mother, the only response any of us received was:

item one

ummm.

RUM IS GOOD

And radio silence has been maintained ever since. Let’s hope it stays that way.

…to thoughts of his pretty pink princess day. This is Steph again, just covering for Travis until he gets back, making sure that HTKP fans get their daily dose of tits, booze, and Transformers jokes.

Anyway. Does anyone want to see the real bridal photo of Travis? (As opposed to that bastardized photoshop chop that he posted on his way out. Like he’d let his wife upstage him by wearing the white dress. As if.)

So here goes:

Isn’t he purty?

At any rate, Travis really didn’t want me to post many photos of his wedding until he’d had the opportunity to review them but I couldn’t resist putting up just this one. I mean really, have you seen a lovelier bride?

The only thing I would have changed about his wedding was to maybe dart him with Xanax or something because if I had to listen to him throw a fit about centerpieces, berate his bridesmaids or whine BUT IT’S MY DAAAAAAAAAAAY! one more time I think I may very well have made myself a healthy helping of Travis stew.