According to the search results I obtained from Googling my symptoms, I could be dying from at least 10 different illnesses. I was surprised to find out from Wikipedia that all of the diseases I’m suffering from are incredibly rare, some of them have never even been diagnosed in the U.S.- just my luck.

I decided to seek out a second opinion, so I Googled Web MD and then searched my symptoms there, only to find out my first diagnosis was completely accurate; I’m dying.

I’ve always thought it would be difficult to find out you are terminally ill, but usually there is one disease you are fighting and the doctors have a plan to alleviate your suffering. In my case, it’s not that easy. Some of my diseases have never even affected a man before; others haven’t been diagnosed in decades or are routinely found in only animals. There is no cure, and since I forgot to bookmark the Wikipedia pages for each disease, I already forgot at least seven of the illnesses I’m dying from.

My only hope now is that NBC will do a mini-series on my heroic struggle, battling at least 10 different terminal illnesses (that number will probably increase by the time I’m done reading through all of my search results). I hope they get someone fantastic to play me, like Neil Patrick Harris, or get Justin Timberlake and make it into a musical.

This news is obviously upsetting, but it really makes me think about what’s important- search engine results. Before I go and draft my will— deciding who will get my most cherished possessions, like my iPhone and my Jesus bobble-head doll— I’m going to work on redefining my symptoms for Google and see if it will re-diagnose me with something non-life threatening; like a sinus headache, which is what I thought I had to begin with.

- Daniel Savickas

I’ve begun to realize that although mothers don’t go through the exact same experience, they do go through something similar with their sons. Now, most mothers aren’t worried about their sons falling prey to some smooth talking high school girl, but they do go through a stage in their parenting where they want to turn their sons into a “Mama’s boy.”

While mothers are less likely to try and intimidate their son’s girlfriends by showing them their gun collection or telling them, “I have a shovel and big back yard, I don’t think anyone would notice you’re missing,” I think they have a much more passive aggressive way of trying to accomplish the same thing.

I think mothers can, and will do little things to sabotage their son’s love lives in order to keep women away from their sons and keep their sons close to home. The reason for my hypothesis is simple: flannel boxers from the Gap.

The boxers aren’t even really flannel, in fact, they’re 100 percent cotton, but they feel as hot as flannel without any of the flexibility.

Now, I used to think that my mother was just a thrifty shopper for buying Christmas themed boxers in the spring and sending me a box full of them, but recently I’ve begun to question her motives.

Think about it, what woman in here right mind is going to date a grown man wearing navy blued boxers with little snowmen sporting Santa Clause hats?

I once had a girl in college tell me my boxers were total errection killers. I’m sure it had been phrased much more eloquently in her mind — the alcohol didn’t help with her articulation— but she made her point.

The theory that my mom is a genius when it comes to being a thrifty shopper went out the window when I recently went to a Gap outlet store to return the majority of a package she sent me. The packages almost always contain a sweater, a few shirts, a pair or two of pants and about five to six pairs of Christmas themed boxers.

When I walked into the store I discovered something shocking, the Gap offers non-Christmas themed boxers for the same cost as their Christmas themed counterparts. So why had I suffered through a decade of penguins, igloos, polar bears, and mittens all with Christmas décor on my undies?

Of course my mother and I have argued round and round about shopping for me. I insist that she not buy me anything at any store unless I am standing right next to her for two solid reasons.

One, after years and years of seeing the way I dress myself and the clothing I buy to do so, my mother is still convinced that I really want to dress is like a 42-year-old man out of the pages of an L.L. Bean catalog, a fact that could not be further from the truth. I guess in her mind she just believes the only reason I don’t dress this way is because I can’t afford it. She sends me packages filled with button down shirts and cargo pants that look like they were designed for an expedition trip to the Congo, or for a suburbanite that simply wants to look like they’ve just returned from an expedition trip to the Congo. Khaki, olive green, and all shades of cream paint every inch of the shirts and pants she sends, all with extremely boxy fits to them and a strange over-abundance of strategically placed tiny pockets that aren’t even big enough to fit enough change to pay for a half-an-hour on a parking meter.

The second reason my mother is not allowed to shop for me is, although she has a heart of gold, she has a soft spot for clothes that have incredibly tiny stitching, stitching that is so tiny it could only be made by tiny hands. To put it bluntly, my mother frequents stores that are routinely accused of using child labor.

Its not that she doesn’t think child labor is wrong, it’s just that she doesn’t follow the news or listen to me when I explain to her why I don’t shop at stores like the Gap.

“Mom, thank you for the package, but I told you, I don’t like to support companies that are accused of using child labor.”

“Well alright, you don’t have to keep it,” she routinely says. “I just thought those shirts were really nice, and they were on clearance.”

“I know, I just don’t like the Gap. But thank you, it was very nice of you to send me clothes.”

“Well I just thought those shirts were nice, but you don’t have to keep them. Stuff from the Gap just lasts so long. I’ve had this pair of jeans from the Gap for years. Every time I wear them people say, ‘Wow, those are nice jeans! I bet they were expensive though,’ and I say ‘No, I got them at the Gap on clearance.’”

The story goes on for a while longer where the person continues to doubt, in a friendly way, that such amazing denim could ever be purchased at the Gap, let alone on a clearance sale. The doubting Thomas claims, ‘No way!’ a few more times, then assures my mother that the jeans are in fact awesome and purchased at an unbelievably awesome price.

My mother loves clearance sales, they’re like the Mecca of all sales to her.

Our conversations about the clothes she sends me usually ends with my mother fighting off hurt feelings, or simply accepting that her son will never dress like Indiana Jones, but she’s always happy that at least kept the boxers.

“I thought they were cute,” she’ll say. “And I know you can always use some new boxers.”

The first part of that statement is true, but on a severely sliding scale. Yes, they are cute, if I was in second, or possibly third grade. The last part of her statement could not be more true. Yes, I’m always in need of new boxers, so I’ll never turn down a free pair, even if they have pictures of snowmen all over them. My mother knows that if it were up to me to buy boxers, I simply wouldn’t wear any. And this is where her scheme to scare off any possible female callers from coming into play works so well.

Over the past few years I’ve received boxers with the following designs: dark green boxers with polar bears; navy blue boxers with multi-colored snowflakes; navy blue boxers with multi-colored Christmas trees; navy blue boxers with monkeys wearing Santa Clause hats while in a snowball fight; blue boxers with stocking hats, mittens and scarves on them; and blue boxers with Santa clause hat wearing snowman. To be fair, she recently sent me some boxers that were not Christmas themed. Those pairs included: navy blue boxers with green frogs; brown boxers with mugs of beer; and the pair that completely backed up the hypothesis that my mother is trying to sabotage my sex life. The latest pair were navy blue pair with bright red lobsters on them. Yes, that’s right, she sent me a pair of boxers with fucking CRABS on them!

I have recently begun to voice my objection over the themed boxers, pointing out that if she simply must buy me boxers from the Gap, at least they could lack a Christmas themed design. My mother has tentatively agreed, but I don’t buy it. I’m positive that next spring she’ll send me a brand new package of clothes from the Gap complete with boxers featuring red-nosed reindeer playing hockey or ice-skating. Then I’ll of course call her to get the receipt in order to return the clothing, at which time she’ll say, “What, you didn’t like any of it? I just thought it was nice stuff and I know you can always use some new boxers. They were on clearance. Aren’t the ones with the reindeer so cute?!”

- Daniel Savickas

I mean, come on. Who didn’t love themselves some Urkel? For me, Urkel represented one thing, and one thing only- pure comedic genius. And who could forget Full House? The first time I headed into San Francisco I lowered the top on my Jeep and imagined I was Danny Tanner cruising across the Golden Gate Bridge in a red convertible with Uncle Jessie and Uncle Joey. CUT. IT. OUT! Of course the first time I drove across the bridge, as well as the second and third, it was so foggy I could barely see. I thought to myself, “Danny Tanner lied to me!”

Now days I don’t really associate Friday nights with quality television broadcasting. I guess if I associate it with anything I associate Fridays with the freedoms Saturday mornings provide. Friday means I don’t have to wake up early the following morning and if I want I can go out, stay up late and do whatever I want for as late as I want. But I usually don’t, the older I get the more likely I am to stay in on Friday nights, go to bed early and think back to a time where Friday nights meant ordering pizza, drinking massive amounts of pop and hanging out with my homeboys Urkel, Danny Tanner an Uncle Jessie.

- Daniel Savickas

The saddest part about this story, to me, is that even if this suicide bomber was greeted by Allah, and a handful of virgins, he did not mutter the only phrase that would’ve made this a tolerable or worthy act. “Rectum, I damn near killed ‘em!”

And this was the case, because although this asshole (no pun intended) managed to cram a bomb up his butt, he literally only blew up his own ass. The bomb was apparently detonated by a text message, and although security officials have no clue what the text said, I believe it was something like this: “OMG! I still can’t believe you shoved a bomb up your ass, you’re so gay! JK! Good luck, and know that we think you’re the bomb! No homo. L8.”

The Prince was mildly injured in the explosion, but the real story is, what’s next for airport security? Then on Christmas day, after asking myself that question, another man smuggled an explosive material onto a plane underneath his taint.

After the shoe bomber people had to start walking through airport security wearing socks or barefoot, while their shoes were x-rayed. Then there was the liquid bomber, the people that were going to mix liquids together to blow a plane out of the air. This resulted in people having to pack Barbie sized portions of shampoo, toothpaste and any other remotely liquid looking substance. Now we’ve had two bombers with explosive materials up or stored directly near their ass. What’s it going to take to clear airport security now?

The last time I flew I was a wee-bit hung over and didn’t think twice about filling up my water bottle for a little re-hydration on my flight home. I nearly drank the entire bottle before tucking it into my backpack to go through security.
“Whose bag is this,” called someone behind the x-ray machine.
“Mine,” I replied, quickly searching my mind to make sure I didn’t have anything illegal in there.
“You have liquid in your water bottle,”
“That would be water,” I replied.
After five minutes of arguing with the man to just let me drink the rest of the water and take my bottle, I realized I was about to miss my flight, so I left the guard standing there with my brand new $25 water bottle. The entire flight home I swear I was thirstier than I’ve ever been before.

I’m afraid that the next time I go to fly anywhere I’m going to have to drop my pants, grab my ankles and cough, with my ass two inches away from some TSA agent.

When I was young I saw the movie Delta Force, which dealt with the hijacking of a commercial plane. Unfortunately, I saw this fine film before I’d ever actually flown anywhere, causing me to believe that my first time on a plane, it would surly be hijacked. I had the same fear/concern the first time I boarded a train, but I can’t for the life of me remember what movie it was that instilled this fear in me.

So when I was 8, or somewhere around there, I boarded a plane to plane to Disney World, convinced that a group of heavily armed men would stand up halfway through our flight and inform us of their plan to take our plane to anywhere but the Magic Kingdom and Epcot Center. I’m not sure where I thought they would take us, but based on the hijacking movies I had seen, I assumed it would be someplace sandy with a lot of cacti- so maybe Arizona?

In the movie, the only reason any of the hostages survive the whole ordeal is because of the kick-ass heroics of Major Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris). But the hostages were incredibly lucky, when the hijacking was first announced and The Delta Force was called back into action via a live cable news broadcast, McCoy just happened to be watching. And he did swear this was his last mission, although he made it back for Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection. But how could I be sure that McCoy would be watching cable news if our plane hijacked? And how could I be sure he would even take the mission, after all, he didn’t appear for Delta Force 3: The Killing Game, and it was a killing game for Christ’s sake! McCoy was replaced in the third installment by a bunch of clowns that didn’t even go by military rankings, Greg was by far the best bet for a hero and that’s only because he’s Chuck Norris’ son in real life. But I didn’t know that when I was 8, I only know that now because of Wikipedia.

Of course our plane didn’t get hijacked and we made it safely to Disney World. It wasn’t until nearly five years later that I realized how crazy it was that I thought that McCoy, or rather, Chuck Norris, could save me from terrorists. I came to this conclusion after watching the movie Passenger 57 and immediately realized, Chuck Norris could never save me from a plane full of terrorists- but Wesley Snipes could!

In the movie, Snipes single handled takes down a crew of international terrorists. At one point, when talking shit to the No. 1 bad guy, a white boy from… some international country, Snipes asks, “Do you ever play roulette?” To which the terrorist responds, “On occasion.” Snipes then delivers the main zinger, “Well let me give you a word of advice, always bet on black!” Get it, cause Snipes is black? OH, man!

To this day I have the hardest time going against Snipes on the roulette table. Anytime I even consider betting on red or green I just think to myself, “Was betting on red or green the key to Snipes taking down a plane full of terrorists?” And the answer is simple, of course not. It was betting on black, and betting on black alone that allowed Snipes to single handedly take down an international terrorist organization. I guarantee Snipes only bets on black, even if he’d want to bet on red, I don’t think there is a pit boss in the world that would allow him to place that bet. “I’m sorry Mr. Snipes, you always bet on black.”

This could explain the financial predicament Snipes is in, but something tells me it leans more heavily on the fact that he is accused of not paying his taxes. I used to live with a conspiracy theorist who supported Snipes and claimed, as did Snipes, that people do not actually have to pay the government taxes. The argument, which is known as the 861, argues that domestic income of U.S. citizens and residents is not taxable by the government. Often times people who use this argument are made an example of and hit with large fines or even jail time.

But my friend is not the type to be swayed by such verdicts. He is not the type of person who believes the government is behind Sept. 11, the JFK assassination or the illuminate- he knows it, and he has books and DVDs to prove it. He stores his library right next to his shotguns, which he keeps close to his bed for the upcoming civil war.

Some of the “evidence” he has for his conspiracy theories is pretty convincing and I find myself worried for him at times. If he knows these secrets about the government, and he can prove it, what’s to stop the government from slipping him a lethal dose of something in his kool-aid? But shortly after developing these fears for his safety I took the time to listen to a few more of his conspiracy theories, then a few more.  Then I realized that he’s a snowboard bum and smokes roughly the same amount of pot as Bob Marley did on a daily basis, the government would never have to worry about discrediting him. The same can be said for most conspiracy theorists.

The government would simply have to say, “That is an interesting theory and you have some pretty convincing evidence. Did you come up with this theory before or after the roughly 19-hours a day you spend smoking pot and playing World of Warcraft?” And just like that the theory would lose all clout.

One time we were out to dinner and he was telling me about Sept. 11 and a third building that fell that day. The building is referred to as Building 7, and according to my friend, it was located around the corner from the twin towers and its collapse was widely ignored by the mainstream media. The building housed some of the world’s premiere financial institutions and different government agencies. His theory is that the government imploded Building 7 to insure that important financial and government secrets would be lost forever.

I asked, “If this really happened, and you know about it and have so much information about it, how come more people don’t know about it?”

At that moment, as if on cue, a man sitting in the booth behind us popped his head up and asked, “Are you talking about Building 7? I know about it!”

“See!” my friend exclaimed.

After that I did some research and there is undeniable evidence that a lot of things about Sept. 11 don’t add up or seem to lend themselves very plausibly to conspiracy theories. There are the engineers who insist the buildings infrastructure would not simply melt and then implode due to the heat caused by airline fuel. There are the demolitions experts who swear the towers fell like a controlled demolition and not like a building that was crumbling. You have the cell phone calls from victims to their families even though some experts claim that technology, to make cell calls while in the air, did not even existed at the time. And then there are those at the Pentagon who clamed to have seen something more like a missile, than a plane, crash into the buildings. Engineers question how a 125-foot wide 757 could punch a hole that was simply 60 feet wide in the building.

The more I read, the more I started to believe. Yet no one in the mainstream seemed to be paying any attention no matter how plausible these theories sounded. But then something happened; Charlie Sheen published a story on-line of a fictitious conversation between him and President Obama. And just like that, people in the mainstream were talking conspiracy theories.

In his story, Sheen thanks the President for thinking his show, Two and a Half Men, is funny, and then implores the President to look into the events of Sept. 11. Sheen goes through a laundry list of conspiracy theories with the President and presents each case with a number of “facts” to back them up.

After reading the story, entitled, “20 Minutes With The President”, I decided once and for all, if Charlie Sheen believes this shit, then there is no way it could be true. After all, if someone convinced this guy, who once played the roll of Patrick Swayze’s brother in the kick-ass movie Red Dawn, to play along some bumbling moron- whose name I refuse to even Google- in Two and a Half Men, then he can be convinced of anything. How could you ever go from playing the roll of Patrick Swayze’s brother, to playing to role of that guy’s brother? Once you go Swayze, there’s no going back—no one puts baby in a corner.  Even playing the role of his real life brother, the Mighty Duck man, Emilio Estevez, would’ve been a better bet.

The man who believes these conspiracy theories is no longer the Sheen that played in Young Guns or made out with Ferris Bueller’s sister in a police station. No, these are the thoughts of a guy who now makes his living playing a jingle writer who wears socks with his loafers and bowling shirts on a daily basis. Sadly, someone created a Web site dedicated to making shirts like the one Sheen’s character, Charlie Harper, wears on TV. The site claims, “They say of the wearer, “I’m stylish, laid-back and cool but don’t take myself too seriously, just like Charlie.”

Sheen has admitted to sleeping with 5,000 woman– I don’t know if I’m more shocked that he hasn’t contracted every STD known to man, or that he can keep track of that many different woman— and I’m sure that all 5,000 of them occurred before he started taping Two and a Half Men.
But my point is this, if Sheen believes all of these conspiracy theories, that’s good enough for me to exonerate our government of all wrong doings. I know our government is screwed up, I know that all of the events of Sept. 11 don’t add up and I definitely know that airport security is screwed. I guess, in the end, I just want my ass left out of it.

- Daniel Savickas

I remember back in college when it seemed like all I did was write words on paper and I smoked then. Why did I ever quit? David Sedaris quit, but when he smoked it provided him with plenty of content, and when he did finally quit, he wrote half of a book about his journey to become smoke-free.

I remember my first cigarette clearly. Nine months shy of my 18th birthday, I bummed a Marlboro Red off of a friend. To be honest, I’m not sure I’d ever felt cooler than the first time I lit up that cigarette, except maybe the first time I lit up in front of a girl who smoked. I’d pretended to smoke thousands of times before, but somehow the awful taste of tobacco just made me feel so much cooler than all of those times I’d lit a fake cigarette made out of marshmallow, or simply held my fingers up to my mouth in a thin horizontal V.

I wasn’t too graceful with my first cig, but my years of pretending and watching R-rated movies had given me some clue of how to properly flick the ash from the end of my phallic torch. The awesomeness I’d felt with my first few drags quickly turned into what can only be described as flu-like symptoms. Before I knew it, I’d ditched the cowboy-killer into a 20-oz bottle of Cherry Coke and jumped in the nearby lake to cool off. Cold sweats seemed to plague every inch of my body. Although I didn’t throw-up, I came close; and yet this was not the last time I smoked.
I took up smoking full-time my freshman year in college, and although it took me awhile to settle on my brand, after a brief love affair with Winstons, I settled on Camel Lights. I’m not sure why now, but I’m sure it probably had something to do with the packaging. I didn’t live in a smoking dorm, but the first girl I dated in college, who smoked Marlboro Mediums, did. It seems so ridiculous, thinking back on it now, that universities offer smoking rooms to kids who aren’t even 18, but what do I know; maybe they were simply trying to craft dynamic writers at an early age. Hey, maybe if I had picked a smoking room back then, I’d be getting paid to work on chapters for my new book instead of writing for a building trade publication.

Over the years I grew skillful with smoking. Mouthfuls of smoke, which at first caused occasional fits of coughing, were eventually transformed with ease into perfect circles or allowed to slowly leak from my mouth and pulled into my nasal cavity via a French-inhale. All of this lasted about two glorious years until a nasty whooping cough which lasted two-weeks and made my lungs feel like they were going to fall out of my chest every time I inhaled even the tiniest hit of a cig encouraged me to quit. I might as well have stopped taking creative writing courses at that point and changed my major from journalism to phys-ed. It’s clear to me now more than ever that when I put out that last, beautiful, cigarette, I put out my dreams of ever becoming an accomplished author.

Of course like any one-time cigarette smoker, there hasn’t been, up until this point, a LAST cigarette. There are the occasional hits, puffs, drags and in extremely rare circumstances- entire cigarettes; which to this day make me feel just as light-headed and drenched in cold-sweats as they did on that very first night I choked down that Marlboro Red.  Maybe its these little rendezvous with lung cancer that are the only thing keeping my creative juices flowing, and the only way I’ll ever complete an actual collection of writing is to rekindle my love affair with cigarettes on a daily basis.

The only problem with this theory is that in order for me to crave a cigarette, I have to have a healthy alcohol buzz. So, logic would dictate that if I need to smoke to write, and I need to drink to smoke, I must also drink to write. There are a few things that bother me about this formula; aside from the obvious health risks, there are additional strains that would be felt on my wallet.

Cigarettes are now close to six dollars a pack and a 12-pack of good beer, which I would have to insist upon if this diet were to last, runs around $16.99. Lets say I smoke a pack and drink 12 beers a day, five days a week, because this would be my profession; I’d be looking at around $6,000 a year. There is the possibility of writing that amount off as a business expense, but I would be screwed trying to justify the receipts to the little Korean market around the corner from my house.

Recently I decided to test out my hypothesis. After a few beers, a cigarette started to sound appetizing and I bummed an American Spirit off of a friend. Now, an American Spirit is no cowboy killer, and thankfully so, but there is an odd sort of cosmic connection. People who smoke Marlboro Reds tend to be the exact type of smoker young hip people who smoke American Spirits never want to become.

As I grabbed a smoke from the yellow pack—that had a graphic of an Indian, feather not dot, smoking from a pipe that looked similar to a steamroller I used in college to smoke pot—I began to twitch with excitement. I had a small notebook and pen at the ready for the inspiration that was bound to flow like the smoke from the end of my cigarette.

Immediately after lighting and taking the first hit of the cigarette I felt amazing. I was ready to open up my notebook and write, clutching my pen with the same hand that now held my cigarette, I attempted to do just that. But by the third hit, I wasn’t feeling the inspiration so much as I was feeling the onset of a headache. I capped my pen and put my notebook back in my pocket. A few hits later, not even halfway through the smoke, I put out the cig. I felt like shit; I was done. I needed a glass of water.

In the morning my sweatshirt smelled like cigarettes, as did my T-shirt, my fingers and what’s left of my hair. I began to think about my hypothesis—that all great writers are smokers—and I began to realize how stupid it sounded. The longer I sat there, the more I thought about how I had come to such an idiotic conclusion, and before long, I began to write about it. Before I knew it I had written an entire essay about smoking and it all started with one cigarette. And then it hit me like a wall of smoke, all great authors are smokers.

- Daniel Savickas