LOD was rooting through his walk in closet the other day and found a metal box labeled "do not open" but LOD being the full beard kind of man he is decided to open it. What LOD found were countless short stories LOD had written when he was five years old to pass the time while locked in the dark recess that was his room most summer days. Here are two of them:

THE BELLY

  I’ve got this neighbor named Pete. He is about 6’4 and has the gut of an adult hippopotamus. Whenever I say “for pete’s sake”, I think of him. I wonder if he knows that whenever I say it I think of him. When I say it in front of him, does he think that I’m saying it especially because of him, which I do, or for Petes in general. This is one of those questions that may plague me for the rest of my life. Oftentimes when I look out my bedroom window and see him doing yard work, with his shirt off and sweaty, I think to myself should I just ask him and end my anguish? Would he take it better if I rubbed his belly when I asked? I wonder, I wonder, I wonder.

DINNER FOR THE WHOLE WORLD

      Life is for living. Am I right? Yes, probably but I guess we can never know for sure. Anyway I took this women I met out on a date the other day and you know where I took her, to the greatest place on earth, Olive Garden. Mmmmmmm give me those breadsticks, mmmmmmm pass that salad, mmmmmmm hand over that nicely marinated steak. Not only is the food good at this heavenly banquet hall but also the service is impeccable. The only way the service could be better is if they actually hand fed you the food, which if you stay after twelve o’ clock and the mood is right, might happen. This particular sultry, hot evening we had a server by the name of Dale and let me tell you something, he treated us right. He told us that he treats every one of his customers like he would his own cat, with love and tenderness. Boy, did he ever deliver on his promise,  by the end of the night me and my date were ready to take him home with us. Man, when I said that did it get a laugh at the surrounding tables. 
     So, anyway the date was going amazing right up until dessert. It was at this point that I realized my date, Yesha, was getting up to go to the bathroom basically every five minutes. So, I am thinking either she is pregnant or something fishy is going on. Therefore, I get up and start snooping around, I yell into the ladies room “Yesha, you need my help?” no response, and then suddenly through the round window that leads into the kitchen I see it. Dale has Yesha in a huge salad bowl and he is pouring dressing, salad and shredded cheeses on her like there is no tomorrow. I am about to rush in and save her when I see the look on her face, and the way she is looking at Dale. She loves this appetizer she has become apart of and loves Dale. I rush in and ask her how she could do this to me, her reply “Dale treats me the way I want to be treated, like a meal, You, you treat me like a drink, only sipping on me when your thirsty. By treating me like a meal Dale lets me know one thing, and that is when he is finished with me, he will be satisfied.” It was strange but I understood, I shook Dale’s hand and walk away, a better man.

An attack on the coronary

Wednesday

Bones had a dream about the Pit Tuesday night. Although, he is running the risk of his not so loyal followers only reading the first sentence and repeating it to everyone they know this dream must be told. The dream began with Bones walking into a Golden Corral. When he walked into this cholesterol heaven it had turned into a Chucky Cheese. (You know how dreams are or maybe you do not and in that case you need to stop reading and get some sleep.) Bones thought he was a kid again as he frolicked in the ball pit, destroyed the masses in air hockey and set the new world record for wack-a-mole. He collected thousands of tickets as a growing crowd followed him around and stated that there was no Bones about who the best gamer of all time was (Hiyoooo). Your loyal narrator finally made his way to skee ball and this is when things got weird. There were only two skee ball machines, Bones had an opponent, and instead of skee balls there were heaping portions of food to be rolled up the runway. This opponent was none other than Mrs. Pit, the wife of the great eater. She looked Bones right in his gorgeous, baby blue eyes and in a hallowing tone stated, "Man meal is over. My husband is on a diet." At this point, your loyal narrator realized that in place of the holes that usually accompany skee ball was the head of the Pit. His loving wife rolled salad, fish, fruit, vegetables and other disgusting health foods towards the Pit and he consumed everyone of them. Mrs. Pit's scoreboard was rising at a dizzying rate but Bones did not hesitate. He began to pick up pizzas, sliders, subs, bacon, and other delicious foods and send them in the Pit's direction. The Pit did his part devouring every last morsel. Down 45 points, Bones was down to his final piece of food. He rolled a KFC double down sandwich toward the Pit's 50 head and knew victory would be his. The Pit caught the sandwich as expected but then began to choke. The violent choking eventually led to the Pit spitting the double down out of his mouth handing Bones and man meal a fatal blow. The Pit walked over to Bones in his #6 Heat jersey, put his hand on his shoulder and simply said, "it's over." Terrified, Bones woke up in a cold sweat and reached for his phone. There was a text message from the Pit that read, "$4 cheese steaks at MOJO's tomorrow be there at 5:30." He looked his favorite stuff animal in the face gave him a squeeze and whispered, "It was only a dream Patty Mayonaise. Go back to sleep."

Value of Special: The actual cheese steak special did not begin until 7. This obviously hurts the value of the special. However, MOJO's is on the campus of VCU and caters towards college students so there are only always specials. Beers were $1, wings were cheap and quarter pound burgers were only $3. Except for Beer, ("wasted stomach space"), the Pitt consumed all of these while waiting for the clock to strike 7. At the end of the meal he had polished off 6 wings, a greasy cheesy, (slider with egg and cheese) and 2 cheese steaks for $16. That is not only impressive but cheap.
Value of Special: 3.5 Bones

Taste: The food at MOJO's was surprisingly good. The wings were the second best Bones has had in Richmond (Cafe Diem's mutant wings cannot be topped) and the cheese steaks were above average.
Taste: 4 Bones

Service: It was actually a normal dining experience. The waitress did not get mad when we ordered in layers, did a great job on refills and made suggestions on what to order. Truly shocking. She also stated that she had been a vegan for 10 years and the cheese steaks were here undoing. MOJO's make this commercial happen...NOW!
Service: 5 Bones

Overall Experience: MOJO's is a great place to get a great tasting, quick, inexpensive meal. There menu allows customers to order a variety of different items and still pay under $10. They also deliver as far as their skinny tire riding, skinny jean wearing, skinny bodied delivery boy can pedal. Their only real weakness is that wings and beer places usually cater to sports fans. The two 15 inch, standard definition televisions with basic cable would not get it done for Bones during football or NCAA tournament season.
Overall Experience: 4 Bones

Bay of Pigs

Tuesday

The original plan was for the same five gluttons to attack another special on tuesday. However, when you're attempting to pull off the Tour de France of eating there are going to be some casualties. One participant called in claiming of neck pain from over chewing a Po Boy and another had to mysteriously "work late" for the first time in years. Bones like to think these excuses are like the one he used when he was merely a fourth grader and seventh grade tom boy Tammy Toughner told him to meet her behind the bushes after school and bring chap stick. Much like young Bones' prostate did not actually flare up at the age of ten, the neck injury and meeting were a result of the fear one gets when being way over there head.
But worry not my loyal followers for there is nothing for you to fear. The remaining three warriors would not be denied there unalienable American right to overeat and the Pit was in attendence. (he was forced to write, "I will not ask for one more than one Po Boy per visit" on the Lady N'awlins ceiling in chalk and then released.) Rain clouds were in the sky as we descended upon City Dogs to see what their $1 Richmond Original special (hot dog loaded with chilli, onions and mustard) was all about.

Value of Special: There is nothing out of the ordinary about a $1 hot dog. The value comes from the fact that the hot dogs at City Dogs are delicious and that the dog is covered in chilli. The dogs are normally priced at $2.39 and would be worth every penny. In addition, with the Pit downing 8 Richmond Originals, your loyal narrator downing 6 and our other compadre downing 5 we saved a substantial amount of money. One would think we will spend more than we saved in hospital bills down the road but you cannot predict the future and more importantly, YOLO.
Value of Special: 3.5 Bones

Taste: As previously stated both the hot dog and the chilli are delicious. They also have the perfect amount of onions and mustard. It is also pretty hard to mess up a hot dog and judging by the name it is City Dogs specialty.
Taste: 4 Bones

Service: Our server was taken back when we combined for 9 hot dogs in our first order and seemed perturbed that we were all ordering the special (note to waitresses in Richmond. If you have a special people are going to order it. I know it is confusing but stop acting suprised every time.) Then a crazy thing happened. On our subsequent orders she began to laugh at the absurdness of the amount of food we were consuming. There was even borderline banter going on between customer and server and refills were granted without request. Instead of rushing us out of the restaurant she actually challenged the pit after 6 to order two more. (Needless to say he did.) This resulted in the waitress getting a healthy tip and the Pit ordering a regular and not large milkshake to top of the meal.
Service: 4 Bones

Overall Experience: City Dogs has a wide variety of delicious hot dogs. They are pretty one-dimensional but being really good at one thing and knowing your limits has worked out pretty well for Mathew Mcconaughey. It is also a great place to watch football on Sundays (specials, specials, specials) with a relatively friendly and attractive staff. Bones believes he can get 8 Richmond Dogs down and the Pit sees double digits in his future. If there are any challengers among my loyal followers please let us know.
Overall Experience: 4 Bones

restaurant week

Bones makes no bones about taking pride in being able to digest a large amount of food. He also makes it pretty clear that he does not like paying a large amount of money or traveling far distances to do this. This is one of the many reasons the fan in Richmond is the perfect place for him to live (other reasons include his love of Art, PBR, museums, tattoos, piercings and bikes with skinny tires.) In addition to having the most tattoos per capita in the country one would also assume Richmond tops the list for Restaurants. It seems that there are almost as many restaurants as people in this great city and many of them are within walking distance of your loyal narrator. The problem for these restaurants is that the fan is overrun with wooks (For non-richmonders a wook is someone who likes or pretends to like Art to fit in, loves PBR, likes or pretends to like museums to fit in, loves tattoos, hates or pretends to hate the goverment to fit in, loves piercings, likes or pretends to like terrible music to fit in and loves bikes with skinny tires).  These wooks are not going to spend their hard earned money, or goverment handouts, on expensive cuisine. Because of this many of the restaurants are forced to run absurd specials to stay alive. Because of that the website www.rvaspecials.com exists. Because of those Bones has not spent over $8 on a meal in quite some time and is a happy, well fed, love machine.

As he has stated time and time again, Bones is about helping his loyal followers every chance he gets. So for the next seven days he will frequent a special on the website, eat as much as is humanly possible and then write about the experience. He will be eating most of the meals with a man who will be referred to as the Pit and whose eating exploits are world renown. (The Pit once destroyed Kobiyashi in a mutten eating contest and then attempted to eat the man he just defeated for desert). The restaurants will be rated on a scale of 1 to 5 Bones for value of special, taste, service, and overall experience. On Monday, Bones and four of his compadres headed to Lady N'awlins to see what their $5 Po Boy special was all about.

Value of Special: The food at Lady N'awlins is easily among the best in the fan. Their barbecue shrimp and grits should not even be legal as it is better and more addicting than any known drugs on the streets. The Po Boys are also delicious. Considering that all of the Po Boys are at least $10 and some more the value of the special cannot be questioned. The sandwiches also come with fries. It is tough to beat a delicious sandwich and fries for $5 but this was not good enough for Bones and definitely not for the pit. The pit managed to get down 3 Oyster Po Boys, normally priced at $13, and three heaping orders of fries. If my math served me right he saved an astounding $24 and admitted he was "kinda full."
Value: 5 Bones

Taste: Everything at this restaurant is absolutely delicious. The Po Boys are fried perfectly and served with the perfect amount of tarter sauce. The fries are also delicious. The only weakness was that they were out of gator and Bones had just watched an intense Gator Boys marathon.
Taste: 4.5 Bones

Service: As everyone who lives in the fan already knows the service at the majority of the restaurants is atrocious. Not just bad, atrocious. Requests for refills result in eye rolls, requests to change the channel to a game are met with laughter and inquiries about what is taking so long lead to being drug out back and beaten. The service here is no exception. Every time the Pit told the waitress that he would gladly have another he received a glare reminiscent of the one fourth grade squeeze Catherine Carter gave Bones when she saw him give a signed JTT picture to 6th grader Jaquelyn Jones. Refill requests seemed confusing to the staff. Also, on his third sandwich they tried to pull a fast one on the Pit by substituting pasta salad for his side instead of fries. He pointed at his stomach, state "Do I look like a man that eats pasta salad?" and politely asked for the freedom fries that were rightfully his. This was met by laughter from the table and the disappearance of the Pit. We're looking for you big guy. However, I have been to this restaurant before and it is usually better than most places in the area. This is kinda like saying wee man from Jack Ass is pretty tall for a little person but it is only fair to compare them to their competition.
Service: 2.5 Bones

Overall experience: As previously stated Lady N'awlins in is a nearly perfect restaurant. It is not to expensive, there is a wide variety of delicious cusine (jambalaya hash is best brunch meal in Richmond and only $9, gumbo is phenomenal, barbecue shrimp and grits is unreal, Po Boys are great, etc) and it is an awesome atmosphere. The staff is not the friendliest but it is not to the point where it greatly affects the experience.
Overall experience:4.5

Life is full of disappointments. The older one gets the more disappointed they become. You realize Santa Clause is not real, the opposite sex is not that cool and you read Little Orphan Danny's latest blog (in his defense he had just finished a vision quest that involved peyote, MGMT, Kimmy Gibler and the older brother from Home Alone). The worst part is that you constantly disappoint yourself. It seems like you hit rock bottom time and time again only to sink to new lows. Well, my loyal followers Bones thinks he has finally reached a depth so deep that not even Aron Ralston (that crazy guy that broke his own arm and then cut it off with a dull blade to get out of a life-threatening pickle. In this situation Bones would take a long nap and let the buzzards have an early supper.) could climb out of. He has joined twitter. (Follow me @WhoisMikeBones #I hate my life) Bones has always hated two things; twitter and followers. Now he has joined this decrepit social media brothel and follows an abundance of people he has never heard of. Within a week he realized he is not nearly as funny as he thoughts and no one cares about the thoughts that go through his head. As always Bones' drawn out rant has something to do with helping his loyal followers. Becuase of twitter (@WhoisMikeBones #Imactuallyhilarious) your life narrator now knows that no one cares about his thoughts. But what many of YOU do not somehow know is that no one cares about the ins and outs of your repetitive, monotonous and sometimes depressing lives. So stop posting them on Facebook and blowing up my news feed! Below is a list of the 5 worst offenses in descending order.

#5: The over-dramatic post break up recovery: Everyone gets dumped. (Bones will never forget in 6th grade, dumping 6th grader sweetheart, Breanna Briley, for 8th grade vixen, Becky Broccato and then getting served a huge dose of Karma when Becky asked if he was really a big enough idiot to think she would date a 7th grader while in high school) You probably feel vulnerable, embarrassed and like everyone is watching you. Fear not. Bones has some great news. No one cares! No one is waiting to see how you react and most importantly no one cares that you found your soul mate the next night while at a bar (Middle schoolers know what a rebound is). So please save Bones and the rest of humanity from statuses like the following, "OMG can't believe what I was missing. Spent 3 years in a blind prison but now I have met the man of my dreams. John, thanks for showing me my self worth and what a real man is like!"

#4: The couple that just can't decide what they want to do.
John is in a relationship with Sally-heart picture
John is single broken-heart picture
John is in a relationship with Sally-heart picture
It's complicated with Sally.
John how about you and Sally sit down together offline and decide what you want. Bones has no advice but can tell no matter what you decide, No one cares!

#3 Updates about your job. Getting a promotion that causes you to move or being a Realtor and selling the Playboy mansion are the only two examples Bones can think of that anyone would potentially care about. Mentioning a funny story that happened at work is acceptable (For example, you're an elementary school teacher and a kid pulled one of his dad's Bud heavy's out of his lunch box in the cafeteria.) The reason no one is liking your statuses about making sales, getting asked out to lunch by your boss or how many hours you have worked this week is because no one cares.

#2 Posts/Pictures about your baby: The only people that care about your baby are people you already talk to. The harsh reality is if you have a white baby they are probably ugly (they are pale and have huge heads covered with stringy hair) and its of no concern to people that he kinda almost took his first step. Do the facebook universe a favor and post a funny youtube video. Because when you post a photo of the tiny bug bite little Johnny got on his misshapen head...no one cares.

#1 Posts that have a link to your twitter account: Follow me @WhoisMikeBones #imtheman.