These Things I Know

We Love Dead People

2012-02-13T23:03:00.000-08:00

Whitney Houston died and that’s a bummer. But not anymore of a bummer than the factthat other people I don’t know have died this week. I don’t get jazzed when people die, but I also don’t get clinically depressedwhen a person that I have never talked to, been near, or physically affectedanything that has ever affected anything that has affected her (andlikewise) dies. I don’t give a shit aboutWhitney Houston anymore that I give a shit about the person that lives threelots north of your mother’s childhood home. Don’t know them (unless I do). Don’t really care (then I do).

I understand that it sucks for everyone who knew the personthat lived three lots north of your mother’s childhood home and I feel bad forthat. For the living people. But the fact that the person I don’t know isdead fails to influence me emotionally in any major way. This is one of the reasons I think everyonefreaking out about Whitney Houston’s death is a little ridiculous.

Check this out: Twoweeks ago, nobody gave a fucking shit about Whitney Houston. If you brought her up, people would be like,“Oh yeah. Wasn’t she in that movie withNic Cage before she got hooked on rock and then got beat up by Bobby Brown likethirty years ago? Who cares?” But now that she’s dead, she becomes Jesus’wife. LL Cool J read a prayer for her atthe start of the Grammy’s. She been onevery single news broadcast since her death and continues to be the top story. Twitter and Facebook nearly imploded aspeople posted her music videos and said shit like, “omg Whitnees ded im sof**kin sad! :*(“

She is now a diva and the pope and the queen of theuniverse. All because she died. Why do we do this? Everyone is cooler after they die. Kurt Cobain would have slid into obscurity ifhe hadn’t blown his head off. Same withthe dude in Full Metal Jacket. And ifAxl Rose had died about 25 years ago, people would still like him. I don’t know if it’s the mystery of death,the fact that their story is done and they can’t accomplish anymore, or a fearof our own death in the face of another life ending. For whatever reason, we fucking love deadpeople.

Look at Michael Jackson. Five years or so before he died, he was on trial for fingering a kid orsomething. Everyone thought he was amonster. His face was all fucked up, hecouldn’t dance anymore, he acted like a lunatic. Nobody liked him except thepeople who liked to say they liked him. Then he died and all of a sudden he’s afucking god. People are crying in thestreets, wearing t-shirts with his face all over the place, TV specialsdedicated to his influential career. Everyone fucking loves him now that he’s dead.

And now it’s happening with Whitney Houston. I could understand Jackson a little bit. He made a ton of solid music for a littlewhile there. Houston had a couplesongs. That’s it. She was good at the Super Bowl. Otherwise, she was the star ofthe National Enquirer .

People keep saying they’re shocked that she died. I was more shocked to hear that she was stillalive. I figured she had died a whileago. And if not, I probably could haveguessed that she would die in LA under mysterious circumstances. That hasn’t really seemed like to risky of abet for a while.

It sucks for her family and friends that she died. No one likes that. But the rest of us need to get our own livesand stop co-opting other people’s pain. She sang well in the nineties. She didn’t hand-deliver the first baby to be born since that famine. There’s no need to treat her like she meant alot to everybody. In fact, she didn’tmean a lot to anybody. Yes, I’m going togo ahead and say that Whitney Houston didn’t mean anything to anybody. Dispute that.

7-8-9 Plan

2012-02-10T00:14:00.000-08:00

A lot of people live their lives the wrong way. I’ve been saying this for a while but I’venever put it together in a perfectly succinct manner that renders allopposition to my viewpoint blatantly incorrect. I just thought about it five minutes ago, so it’s definitely thought allthe way through and completely irrefutable. It’s called the 7-8-9 Plan, and it will show you how to live a happylife. It goes like this:

7 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, and 9 hours of free timefive days every week.

That’s it. That’s howyou live a kick ass life while also being able to pay for some shit. Not a ton of shit. But all the shit you actually need. This won’t make you rich. This will just make you happy. You won’t have a jet ski or a sweet motorhome through this system (unless you spend some of your free hours at the Priceis Right and win the showcase) but you won’t need that shit. Let’s just say, you’ll make your way withoutshowing off.

7 hours of work isn’t bad. It’s not a short shift but it’s easily tolerable. I’ve worked sixteen hour shifts before. The job was really easy but it didn’tmatter. Simply being in one place forthat long makes you want to peel your brain out. But working 7 hours is no problem. Even if you don’t like your job, 7 hourshifts are pretty easy (unless you drive for a storm chaser in Oklahoma [whichsucks double time because you gotta drive directly towards tornados and youalso have to live in Oklahoma]).

8 hours of sleep is all you need, and it’s as much as youshould get. If you oversleep, you feellike shit. If you don’t sleep enough,you feel like shit. But if you get 8hours, you feel great.

9 hours of free time is a TON of time to get your errandstaken care of and still be able to hang out a lot every day. 9 hours. It takes a half hour to build a fort (unless you gotta drive to thestore to get clothespins), ten minutes to drag a TV in there and hook up a DVDplayer, a half hour to make spaghetti with meat sauce, and boom: You just made a perfect place to eat yourkick ass lunch and you still have 7 hours and fifty minutes to do a ton ofother sweet things.

Of course, you still have your two off days (thanks to laborunions in Wisconsin) to really go hog wild on doing whatever the hell you want. It’s really quite a perfect system. I was doing the 10-7-7 plan for a while (10work, 7 sleep, 7 free time) which was tolerable, but not ideal. Some people do the 12-5-7 or the 8-10-6 butthose don’t have to sensibility or the shear marketability of 7-8-9. It sounds like a protein shake or something,which is how you instinctually know it’s good for you before you even know whatit is.

I’m hoping this becomes the new Atkin’sdiet/Macarena/Scientology and I think it can do it. First of all, it makes perfect sense and iscompletely right. Second, it has beenmentioned in an article on an extremely influential website. And it also has a catchy name that wouldeasily lend itself to key chains and shot glasses. Within two years, I predict everyone will beliving like this. And those that aren’twill pray every night that they can and probably huff to forget they can’t. It’ll be like the moonwalk: Not everyone can do it, but everyone wishesthey could.

Sadly, I myself, the vessel that the 7-8-9 chose to revealitself through, am not living my life according to the plan. However, I am very close. I’m currently doing a 6-8-10, which isn’t toobad. But pretty soon I’m either gonna getsick of eaten Ramen or find more work.

Bill Clinton is Awesome

2012-01-28T21:57:00.000-08:00

If you don’t think William Jefferson Clinton, our greatnation’s 42^nd president, is awesome than you’re an idiot, a loser,or a combination of the two. It’s notjust because he won two presidential elections in a row (the first DemocraticPresident to be elected more than once since FDR), introduced clauses to helpAmerican workers before signing NAFTA, and helped the economy flourish, butbecause he did so with so much fucking style.

He played sax on Arsenio Hall, he admitted to smoking weed(no one bought the “I didn’t inhale” bullshit), and he campaigned on MTV. After staring at George Bush (the first one)for four years and Ronald Reagan for eight years before that, the countryneeded something other than a mummified librarian that would break if pushedover running our country. Actually, weall know that the president is little more than a figurehead that puts asmiling face on our inefficient government, so instead of running the country,I’ll say “simultaneously accepting the credit and blame for our country.” Aside from all of that, check this guy out.

Before he graced our country with his omnipotent leadership,he was the governor of Arkansas. Now, Ifeel like Arkansas is probably one of the easier states in which to becomegovernor, but it’s still a good resume builder.

His accomplishments during his presidency are numerous andthoroughly covered on sites that actually do research on their subject, so Iwon’t cover that ground here. I’ll juststick to what everybody thinks of immediately when thinking about Clinton’spresidency: The sexual scandals.

It happened to Herman Caine. It happened to Anthony Weiner. Ithappened to Eliot Spitzer. And ithappened to Bill Clinton. People justlove to come out of nowhere and accuse politicians of lewd conduct and sexualharassment. Especially people thatexperienced lewd conduct and sexual harassment from politicians. I don’t know what their motivation is. I think it’s just jealousy that the politicianwon the breakup by becoming more successful. Or maybe it’s the chance to get on TV, the possible multi-million dollarlawsuit, the aversion to marital infidelity, or a general dislike of the personthat did the harassing. It could beanything.

Aside from the personal ramifications of what happened withClinton, he almost lost his fucking job. This is when we learned how awesome Bill Clinton actually is. During a four-hour testimony in front of theFederal Grand Jury, he busted out some great anecdotes including:

“That depends on what the meaning of the words ‘is’is.”

"There were a lot of times when we were alone, but Inever really thought we were."

"[I said] things that were true about thisrelationship. That I used, in thelanguage I used, I said, there’s nothing going on between us. That was true. I said I did not have sex with her as Idefined it. That was true.”

When you boil the whole impeachment stuff down, it’s reallyquite ridiculous. First of all, NewtGingrich was the one leading the charge against Clinton. He was all worked up because he can’t standthe idea of someone screwing around with a marriage (who dumped his first wifewho had cancer, cheated on and dumped his second wife, and then there’s thewhole open-marriage thing…). Sure, youcan say the impeachment was because he lied under oath and blah blah blah… But essentially, all he did was finger a fatchick and then lie about it. That’s whyit’s all so ridiculous, because his actions are perfectly understandable.

Beyond having not-literally-sex with ugly chicks during hisyears in office, he continues to kick ass. Remember when he went into North Korea, an entire country brainwashedinto hating Americans and everything we stand for, and walked out with two journalists that were held captive? That’s basically some superhero shit.

Before our country elected our first black president (orMuslim president, or immigrant president, or Martian president, whatever thehell he is) we had a small chance of electing Hillary Clinton. Now, we can all make the easy jokes abouthaving a woman president (they’d bomb innocent countries every month for oneweek, they’d control the largest army in the world but would need help to killa spider, etc.) and you can even make all the jokes about Hillary herself (thatshe wears pantsuits like she is sponsored by whoever-the-hell makes pantsuits,that her eyes look like they’re going to burst out of her head at times, thatshe seems like a raging bitch) but the simple fact remains: If she were elected, Bill would have beenback in the White House and back into our everyday lives. That would have been kick ass. And I won’t listen to anybody that tells meBill wouldn’t have had a say in her presidential decisions. He admitted to the entire country that hecheated on her, twice, and they’re still married. It’s pretty obvious who wears the pants(pantsuits not included) in that relationship.

I mean, look at his presidency and tell me she’d have anyreason to think her opinions would be better than his. By the end of his second term, the nationalbudget had a surplus of $236 billion. SURPLUS. Also, he had the highestend-of-office approval rating since WWII. And everybody knows that people get all hot and bothered for Americaduring times of war, so these ratings scales are slightly skewed. If we put every president on a stage and hada popularity contest, Clinton would take first prize every time. Who’s gonna beat him? JFK? They’d be pretty close until Clinton busts out his saxophone during thetalent contest. Game over.

Post Renaissance Sucks

2012-01-25T19:10:00.000-08:00

A few days ago we hit a speed bump while searching for an apartment. The speed bump was man-made (as most are) and I was a little pissed off. I proceeded to compose an all-out internet assault on the perpetrator. Except for posting the inflammatory blog, I put the assault into action. Eventually, everything was straightened out and the guilty parties acted in a very nice way and actually asked for the denigrating content to be removed from the web. After having enough time to take a few deep breaths and after everything worked out fine, I decided to back off of the assault.

But, the post had been written, and I still think it's a little funny so I might as well post it. In a gesture of gratitude for the quick rectification of the situation, I will rescind the name of the guilty party. Those who knew me in Atlanta, however, will be able to know who I'm talking about (my former residence). The original post follows verbatim, except the name of the perpetrator has been removed and replaced with (NAME DELETED). So every time you see that, imagine the asshole's name in its place.

UPDATE 1/31/12: We got our security deposit back and, wait a minute let me rephrase that, we got our notice that we own them more money today. They used all of the money from our security deposit and still say we owe them another $500 to repair the apartment. Five-hundred dollars. Keep in mind the apartment was fine. We didn't put any holes in the walls. We didn't have any broken windows. There was nothing wrong with the apartment but they want FIVE-HUNDRED more dollars than we already gave them (which was a lot). So in honor of this, I'm going to rescind my previous nice gesture by re-posting this entry unedited. Fuck you Post Renaissance.

Here you go.

Moving to a new city sucks because of two things: Looking for an apartment and finding ajob. Living somewhere new is kick assonce those things are done. We’ve beenin the Los Angeles area for a little over a week and are closing in on thesetwo goals. I’m currently waiting to hearback from two interviews I had last week and we submitted an application for asweet apartment.

We got a phone call this morning telling us that we got theapartment. Woo! Everyone’s happy. Everything’s great. Nothing is bad forever. I started gathering my things and makingplans to drive into the city the next day, to meet up with friends, started mentallyplanning out my feng shui of my bedroom and my argument to get the bathroomwith the window. Happy times forever becausewe’re halfway done with the bullshit.

Half the day goes by and we get another phone call tellingus that we lost the apartment. It mustbe some mistake, right? Why would thathappen? We’ve paid all of our bills ontime, we have solid rental histories, we’re a bunch of righteous bros. What could have possibly happened?

OH. That’sright. I used to live in Atlanta wherenothing runs smoothly.

Turns out, our previous renter employs a bunch of fuckingretards. I’ve always suspected this, butI now have indisputable proof.

First of all, let’s get this out of the way, Post Renaissance is the place thatsucks. Post Renaissance. Maybe the more times I say Post Renaissance the more times it will pop up in a Google search for someone thinking of livingat Post renaissance at 400 Central Park Place in Atlanta, GA 30308. Post Renaissance.

Post Renaissance has a wonderful policy that if your rent isa day late, they immediately start to file for eviction. That is what the late fee goes towards: Thwarting the eviction procedure. A little dramatic, but fine.

We racked up one of these wonderful late fees in 2009. We needed to wait for a check to clear and itwouldn’t go through until the 4^th of the month (rent is due on the 3^rd). We talked to someone in the office about itand they told us that would be no problem. Two days later, we get a notice for the late fee. Thanks for that, assholes.

“Oh yeah, it’s totally fine if your late. We understand exactly what’s going on.”

…two days later…

“Holy fuck these guys are late on their rent! What a bunch of lowlifes. EVICT THEM.”

Or at least this is how I imagine their thought processwent.

We eventually got it all cleared up and continued livingthere until two weeks ago when we parted amicably (kinda) with all the properforms filled out and nothing left to legally fulfill.

Flash forward to today when we get the call about losing theapartment. Turns out, they found aneviction notice in our rental history from October of 2009. Where was I living in October of 2009? Post Renaissance. Looks like they never filed the properpaperwork to cleanse the eviction (that shouldn’t have happened in the firstplace) that was started when we were one day late on our rent (even though theytold us it was okay).

So here we are. Perfect, irrefutable evidence that the people that work in the office at Post Renaissance are (or at least were) bumbling idiots that obviously can’tfill out routine paperwork. And probablydon’t know how to write. Or read. Because they’re idiots. At Post Renaissance in Atlanta 30308.

If people do find this because they’re searching forinformation about possibly moving there, I’ll say this: There used to be an awesome bar around thecorner from the complex called O’Terrill’s that shut itself down becausethe neighborhood is overrun with demanding, rude, crack-infused bums that shitin the street and break into cars. Nomatter how nice that pool looks, you still have to see these people everysingle day that you live there and there’s no way to avoid it. Sometimes, they even get through the gatesand smash into people’s cars/apartments. Don’t worry though, there’s ONE security guard with a walkie-talkie thatwon’t do shit if he sees one.

And if people don’t find this in their search before they move in, there’s achance they’ll hit other sites for reviews of the property. After this debacle of ineptitude, I decidedto hit up a few of these sites and tell my cautionary tale about the inadequaciesof Post Renaissance. These can be read here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Upon reposting all of my negative reviews, I went ahead and wrote different reviews for each site. This way, it won't look like a blanketing of resentment, which is exactly what it is but it won't be quite so noticeable. Plus, different reviews gave me a larger sense of release of the anger that these assholes have instilled within me. The reviews make use of attention-grabbingtitles such as “Avoid Post Renaissance,” “Post Renaissance Loves Your Money,” and the straight-forward “Post Renaissance Sucks.”

We’re hoping they will send out a fax to the new landlordexplaining how stupid they are and that we were never evicted because we’regood neighbors. Seriously. Go ask Teddy White. He’ll tell you how much we kick ass. And he’s a fucking ninja.

At first, I could understand their mistake. Sure, you forget to dot a few i's and the wrong form gets sent through somewhere. That's human. That's fine. But this whole $500 business? That shit is not going to fly. They have legality on their side, so if I have to pay I have to pay. There's not much I can do without that. But that doesn't mean that I can't let them know how I feel about being dealt such a large helping of horseshit. Post Renaissance, expect a phone call from me as soon as I get out of work tomorrow. 404-875-4429? Yup, still got it in my phone.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE 2/10/12: After constant badgering by my roommate's father, Post realized that they overcharged us by $165 on the carpets. Once again, Post Renaissance makes a small clerical error and fucks us. Something tells me, however, that this wasn't a small clerical error. I think they were intentionally trying to fuck us out of more money. Not because of anything personal or in retaliation for anything, but because they are greedy fucks who like to suck as much money out of the assholes of their clientele. Fuck Post Renaissance.

Traffic sucks

2012-01-22T12:37:00.000-08:00

I thought living in Atlanta and working in my car duringrush hour was bad enough, but then I moved to Los Angeles. Well, not exactly Los Angeles quite yet. I’m staying in Yorba Linda with my verygenerous aunt and uncle while trying to figure out my life in the city. This means that I have made the forty-ishmile drive into the city every day this week. At best, I make it there in just over and hour. At worst, it takes close to two hours. This isn’t due to bad luck with red lights, slowspeed limits, or low tire pressure, it’s simply due to the fact that there aretoo many fucking cars on the road.

Traffic jams are generally caused by three things;accidents, road work, or that there are too many fucking cars on the road. There’s nothing more frustrating than sittingin traffic for a half hour, only to start moving faster for seemingly noreason. After having a lot of time tothink about it, I finally figured out why this happens: Everyone is self-centered.

That’s basically it. When the cars in front of you start going fifteen miles an hour, you mayonly go twelve miles an hour because you know you’ll have to stop soon andthere’s no rush to stop again, screw the people behind you. Likewise with braking. If you’re at a full stop and the car in frontof you starts moving, you may not move for two to five seconds. Multiply this by the amount of vehicleswithin a mile (average length of a car is 13.517 feet, excluding buses/garbagetrucks/semis. This would make theaverage amount of vehicles in a mile to be 5,280/13.517=390.619) and you’ve got13–32.5 minutes of delay every mile. Stretch that out along a few miles and you’ve got a lot of time to talkon your phone. But you can’t talk onyour phone in your car without a Bluetooth thing so that means I either have tobreak the law or talk to myself about how much I wish I drove a monster truck.

I saw a video today that illustrates this on a smallerscale.

The video pretty much lays out the main reason it sucks to livein a big city: Too many people = Unavoidabledelays. That’s just how it works. One person could tap their brakes in front ofa large line of cars and it would create a traffic jam. Kind of a Butterfly Effect idea but insteadof a hurricane, it creates a wave of road rage.

This non-reason reason for traffic jams leads to a strangething I have experienced over the past week: Excitement over car accidents. It’s a peculiar thing to root for. But it’s not in the The Running Man sense of rooting fordestruction. There’s a strangeexcitement that comes over you after you’ve been driving 5 mph for twentyminutes and then all of a sudden you come around a corner and see the roadflares on the shoulder, police lights whipping around, and a tow truck in frontof a smashed car. You know as soon asyou pass the carnage that you’ll be able to speed up to fifty mph for at leasta couple minutes, which is like coming up for a breath after diving for anoyster shell while snorkeling. There’s asmall amount of guilt that comes along with rooting for a car accident, but atthe same time, traffic would have been running smoothly the whole time if theperson hadn’t crashed. Sure, accidentsare called “accidents” for a reason, but sometimes a person is just an idiotand crashes for no good reason. Andthese people fully deserve to be heckled when we come upon them on the side ofthe road with their front fender smashed in.

Another strange thing I’ve seen in traffic jams is the waymotorcycles don’t seem to give a shit about anything. You’ll be sitting in your car with your footfirmly on the brake pedal, and all of a sudden what sounds like a chainsaw willbe directly next to your window as a motorcycle rides the lines that divide thelanes, weaving between cars and basically giving all of us with four wheels thefinger.

“Oh, you cocksuckers can’t fit here? Too bad. I’m outta here.”

This practice is obviously very dangerous, as any smallmiscalculation could send the rider flying into the side of a car, andillegal. But what is a cop going todo? There’s no way a cop car could chasethe motorcyclist, and I doubt a cop on a motorcycle could fit in the narrowslot between lanes. There’s nothingstopping these guys except for their fear of disfigurement, which obviouslydoesn’t exist. But good for them. I watch these people fly past my car and I’mfilled with nothing but admiration. Every once in a while it’s nice to watch a means of transportation dowhat it’s supposed to do: Get you somewhere. That’s a very easy thing to forget whilesitting on I-5 at seven o’clock and hoping an earthquake doesn’t take out thebridge supporting you as well as thirty other cars.

If all goes right, I’ll be living within city limits by theend of the week and I won’t have to deal with the freeways anymore. An inside source said that the best way toget around Los Angeles is to stick to city roads and avoid the freeways at allcosts. I thought about taking thisadvice on Friday as I drove into the city for an interview. However, after seeing the route my GPS gaveme, I decided I’d stick it out on the freeway until I learned a little moreabout the city. I don’t need to bedriving through the streets South Central with a GPS on my dashboard andWisconsin plates on my car. Somethingtells me that wouldn’t be the best idea.

The Drive

2012-01-14T19:45:00.000-08:00

I used to enjoy driving. When I was in high school, I would just jump into the 1987 Chevy Astrovan, blast some music, and head to a stretch of road that ran along farm fieldsand held just as many kids smoking pot as it did people with legitimate business. I would simply drive along the road, all bymyself, enjoying the empty asphalt and singing along with whatever terribleband I was into when I was sixteen (probably of the nu-metal variety).

But now, driving sucks. I worked as a delivery driver in downtown Atlanta for two years and myshifts started in the peak of afternoon rush hour. My road rage had built to intimidatingproportions and the former joy and sense of freedom I had gained from drivinghas been replaced by a deep-rooted hatred of my fellow drivers and perpetualannoyance with their habits.

That being said, I just drove across the fuckingcountry. Eastern Time Zone to PacificTime Zone. Altogether, it took fortyhours in the car. I packed my car fullof all of my belongings and my dog, Ted packed his car with all of hisbelongings and his dog, and we drove until the end of time, trying to campalong the way when the weather wasn’t dangerous. We stretched it out over five days because wewanted to try to enjoy the trip instead of wanting to explode because we felttrapped inside a tiny box flying down the highway. That feeling of wanting to explode happenedanyway, but at least there were a few things to break up the monotony.

To say that I came close to dying three times in the last fivedays sounds pretty crazy, but driving is dangerous. That’s what they tell people that are afraidof flying. “You know more people die incar accidents than in airplane crashes, right?” Three tiny instances that took no more than two seconds over the courseof a forty hour drive seems almost negligible.

The first was while driving through northern Texas (orOklahoma) (not that there’s that much of a difference) when all of a sudden apolice truck on the opposite side of the highway pulled out of a lane and ontothe shoulder. Not onto the side of theroad but off the road and into the field next to the highway. I watched this with interest because it madeno sense. Then I luckily glanced forwardand saw that a ladder was sitting in the middle of my lane and I swerved to theside no more than five feet away from the damn thing. After watching Ted do the exact same thing inmy rearview mirror, I saw a truck pulled off to the side of the highway. It was towing a boat and the owner waswalking down the shoulder towards the ladder that had just presumable fell offhis stupid boat. I don’t know how heplanned on froggering his way out there before some poor bastard slammed intohis ladder, but hopefully he did it before he ruined somebody’s family’s day.

The second instance was in New Mexico when the car in frontof me suddenly decided to slam on its brakes and turn around on the stretch ofgravel connecting the east and westbound lanes that is usually reserved forpolice cars. No warning. No thought about the fact that there is asolid car behind him and obviously no understanding of Newton’s first law ofmotion. All of the stuff in my carshifted forward as I tried to slow down in time to give him enough room to getout of my way. I’m sure an elongated,“Ffffffuuuuuuuuuuuucccccckkkkkkk!!!” fell out of my mouth in the process, but Ican’t be too sure. After he finally gotout of the way I heard, “What a fucking asshole,” through the walkie talkie(I’ll explain later).

The third instance was in Arizona. We pulled off to a rest area to look at themountains surrounding us and hit golf balls at them. Unfortunately, there were too many peoplearound so we had to leave the driver in my car and just look around. The exit from the rest area basically comesto a T with the highway and you get about two seconds to figure out what todo. There was a semi-truck piggy-backingtwo other semis rolling down the hill when I came to the T. I freaked out and just pulled onto thehighway directly in front of the truck and luckily sped up enough and swervedinto the next lane in time to avoid getting crushed by about 60,000 pounds oftruck.

“Is there any reason you merged into traffic at forty milesper hour?” Ted asked me a few minutes later.

“I don’t know. I didn’tknow what to do, so, I just, I guess, did that.”

“Good. Well, you’rean idiot.”

“I know.”

Aside from almost dying three times, the terrible weather inMississippi/Arkansas/Oklahoma/Texas, tenting in the rain, my dog refusing toeat food or drink water even though that decision can eventually cause herdeath, and eating nothing but fast food, the trip was amazing. Before the trip, I bought walkie talkies soTed and I could talk to each other the whole way out there without racking up aton of roaming charges on our phone bills. Quite frequently, the walkie talkie would beep and I’d hear Ted’sdistorted voice say something like, “Holy shit, dude. Look to your right.” And then when I turned my head I would see awind-farm covering a giant field/flat land stretching to the horizon in everydirection/mountains stretching as far as I could see.

Throughout high school, I always said that I wanted totravel Europe. I didn’t have aparticular reason, it just seemed kickass to me. After a while, however, I realized that thereis an entire country right here that I haven’t seen. Why fly across the world when I can justtravel here? It saves money and plus Idon’t have to screw around with another language.

It took a long time, but I was finally able to do it. I finally saw my first natural cactus inArizona. I finally spoke with a NativeAmerican in New Mexico. I finally spenttime in six states that I had never previously seen. I finally found myself in the middle of adesert with nothing on either side of me for a hundred miles.

Being isolated like that is an interesting experience. Within city limits, you have help all aroundyou if something goes wrong. Tow trucks,police/fire department, ambulances… Butwhen you on I-10 east of Quartzsite, you’re on your own. You’re basically just another animal, besidesthe personal tank you have the privilege of driving at 80 mph.

I guess I could add a fourth near-death experience, but notin the same genre as the others. Thisone was entirely self-imposed. Earlierthis summer while driving through Tennessee, I had my first panic attack after looking across a mountain range. I don’t know what the hell happened, but Iwas worried that it might happen to me again. As luck would have it, towards the end of day 2 on our way to the Motel6 in Gallup, New Mexico, I started to freak out. The only difference between this time and thelast time is that there was a last time (follow me?). I knew what was happening and I was able totalk myself through it. I got shaky andnervous, I wasn’t able to look at the mountain ranges surrounding me, but I wasable to finish the drive without flipping my car off of a cliff.

And this makes no sense to me because the next day we drovethrough more extreme mountain ranges and I was fine. No problems at all. I don’t get it.

As I closed in on my final destination today, I got a phonecall. I said how I had just finisheddriving through more crazy mountains and she said, “Still?” This is because I had driven throughmountains for about ten straight hours. Ted made a comment as we started driving through California that he hadno idea there were that many mountains in this area of the country. He’s right to be amazed, because there was averitable shit-ton of mountains.

I feel like I should say, “The one thing I got from thisdrive is that this country is a lot bigger than I had thought.” But that sounds like something someone wouldsay after the Disney version of a movie about a road trip like this. It’s too easy. It’s cliché. Of course this country is big. Ofcourse there was a lot of stuff I didn’t expect to see. That’s why we did it. That’s why I was excited to do it even thoughI hate driving. That’s what everybodywho does something like gets out of it, and it’s one of those things you don’tfully understand until you see it. Everyone knows the country is big. But after you see a giant mountain in the distance and drive straight atit for two hours at 80 mph only to find it still looks just as far away as itdid two hours before, you feel how big everything is and how tiny you actuallyare. I could do whatever I wanted tothat mountain; dig at it with construction equipment, dynamite it, startchopping down trees; and none of it would matter. That thing has been there longer than theIndian walking down the side of the highway and all of his ancestors, and theywere here long before we showed up. Andthat thing is going to continue being huge long after my insignificant life isover.

Somehow, we made it to our destinations; myself in YorbaLinda and Ted in San Diego. My cardidn’t blow up even though the oil light came on at the border of New Mexicoand Arizona even though the oil level was fine. Neither of our cars ran out of gas even though service stations werespaced perilously far apart. We wereable to easily find shelter each night, even when the weather fell to drastictemperatures or the wind blew like a hurricane. And above all, we were somehow able to keep high spirits even afterdriving our fucking cars all day long for days in a row.

It’s still too early to call this trip a success since we’retechnically homeless and unemployed at the moment. But aside from all of that, the physicaltrial is over. I’m far from saying “thehard part is over” but at least one flavor of the hard part is over. Now I just have to figure out which parts ofLA to stay the hell away from and convince somebody to give me money on aregular basis simply for hanging out. That shouldn’t be too hard, right?

Buy my books!

2011-12-30T10:15:00.000-08:00

Writing a book is a bit of a strange experience. It takes far too long. You have to read your own work countlesstimes while trying to pay attention to miniscule details even though you canbasically recite the words from memory. You have to hope the people you stole anecdotes from don’t realizeit. And above all of that, there’s thedebilitating fear that it’s all for nothing and the piece of work you haveslaved over for a year or two ends up being one big stinking pile of garbage.

Neurotic fears and self-deprecating caveats aside, iteventually comes to the point where you can do nothing but put your work outthere and hope no one tells you exactly what they think to your face. In the spirit of here-goes-nothing, I’mputting copies of two books I’ve managed to “finish” for sale on the interwebs.

The newest of the two brand new novels is calledOverhead. I started work on it about twodays after moving to Atlanta two and a half years ago. I got through about eight barely sketchedchapters before setting it aside and waiting for my computer to be broken soeverything I had done would be erased, which is exactly what happened. After finally finding a job, thus bringing abit of structure to my life, I started working on it again. Five months or so later, the first draft wasfinished. A few friends did me a giantfavor and read the thing (thank you so much, guys) and gave me enough tips toadd another 10,000 words and some much needed filling out of the narrative.

Overhead can be bought by simply following this link right here.

Before the overhaul of Overhead, I decided to take a book Ihad originally written in 2006 and make it worthwhile. That eventually became Yield, which isactually the book’s third title and overall version. I always liked the story in the book but feltthe writing to be a little sophomoric. So I went ahead and re-wrote the whole damn thing. I had the old version for sale for a coupleweeks two years ago before I read it myself and realized that I didn’t like it(the writing, not the story). So I usedeverything I learned in college and improved the writing. Now, after reading and re-writing the thingsomewhere around seven times over the last five years, I’m throwing in thetowel and calling it “finished.”

Yield can be bought by following this link right here.

The website is a pay-by-copy deal so as soon as you put inthe order, they’ll build the book and ship it out. They are twelve bucks each, which is aCOMPLETE steal. Those of you that takethe time to order and read either of the books, I offer you my most sincerethanks and hope you find it to be worth your while. Those of you that don’t buy them, that’s finetoo. You can just wait for them to bemade into movies, which I’m absolutely positive will happen within threeyears. That’s how these things work,right?

Man in the Mirror

2011-12-13T15:05:00.000-08:00

I smashed my mirror on a column in the parking garage at myapartment complex. I was a little tooexcited to see Battles and I was laughing at my roommate doing somethingstupid, and then boom. Shattered glassand curse words started falling out of everything around me. Luckily, the mirror thingy had a little givein it so it didn’t completely rip the whole thing off, leaving behind a crackedmirror that gave me three different angles of the area behind my leftshoulder. After a few days of trying todeal with it, I colored in the smaller sections with a black marker and triedto get by with the tiny corner of mirror that I had left.

The mirror was fine for backing into a parking space ormaking sure the bum behind the car didn’t have a bat, but it inflated theblindspot to a dangerous degree and made changing lanes on the highway intomore of a neck-straining exercise. Idecided earlier today that I would take the twenty minutes to go to the autoparts store down the street and buy a new mirror. It’s not hard. I just needed to take the time.

Or so I thought. Apparently, mirrors are rare artifacts that people have only heard ofand not actually seen. As I walked intothe third auto parts store (inexplicably, the only other one within ten miles)I had had enough of driving around on my day off. I drive about five or six hours every nightof work. My car is my enemy on myoff-days. Of course, they didn’t haveany reflective surfaces that would fit on my car, except for a quick-fixoption. A company called Pilot makes aCut to Fit mirror that you simply trace the outline of your mirror, cut alongthe line, and use the adhesive backing to stick it where it needs to go.

A mirror that you simply snip with a scissors? Sounded a little weird to me but I didn’tfeel like ordering a part and driving back to the store, so I bought it. I drove home, peeled off the remaininguseable section of mirror from the mirror holder thing and ruined my scissors,sending tiny shards of glass flying that I will be picking out of the skin onmy fingers for days. I applied theadhesive, took a step back, and congratulated myself for fixing something on mycar. I hopped in the driver’s seat tocheck out the view and all of the self-worth I had gained from spending fifteenminutes cutting the mirror immediately drained from my body as the curse wordsstarted crawling out of my throat again.

The thing that sat where my sideview mirror used to residecould, I guess, be called a mirror since it reflected light. But to sell this as something that could beused for driving is ridiculous. It benteverything around like a cloudy funhouse mirror. At least I could confidently move in reversewith the tiny shard of glass I had before. I didn’t even feel confident enough to say “Hi” to a neighbor behind mycar out of fear that it could actually be a garbage can.

Here’s a sweet shot of my “mirror” in action.

And just in case you might be thinking that maybe it’s justa bad picture, here’s a shot of the other mirror.

Notice how you can see the car behind me in the second oneand the first one just looks like an abstract painting? Sweet. Thanks for the sweet setup, Autozone.

I don’t understand how people can sell shit that doesn’t do whatit’s supposed to do. This is a mirrorfor driving, and it would be impossible to use safely on the road. The only thing it could do for me that wouldmimic a sideview mirror would be if a tall vehicle came behind me and blindedme with its headlights.

This happened to me last year, too (buying something thatdidn’t do its job, not the broken mirror thing). I bought one of those things you can hook upto your iPod to listen to it through a radio station in your car. It cost about $80 and didn’t work. At all. Not even a little bit. I tried differentsettings and stations and nothing worked. It was an $80 cord that charged the iPod and did absolutely nothingelse. I immediately walked back into thestore and got my money back.

It seems like you can just sell anything without anyrepercussions as to the effectiveness of the product. This is bullshit, but I guess it’s justcapitalism. I think “Buyer Beware” is asaying or something and I guess that fits this shit. It’s the same thing with those dickbiggerizer pills. There’s no way theywork (trust me), but there are still tons of them out there waiting for dudesto stop shaving their armpits long enough to turn off the porn and grab theircell phones.

Everything should have a guarantee. Everything. If you buy something and it sucks, you should be able to call thecompany, tell them they suck, and get your money back. Of course, this would take some mutual trustthat the consumer wouldn’t abuse this ability (which they surely would). So, thanks society. You fucking suck and you’re the reasonnothing makes sense.

Just like when I called Advance Autoparts (fuck Autozone)and tried to have them order me the actual mirror, but they told me theycouldn’t order it until I came in and paid for it. Apparently, a ton of people had them orderstuff, promised to pay for it later, and never showed which then cost thecompany money to ship the stuff back. Soeven though I need this part and really don’t want to drive all the way toMoreland and Memorial tonight, I have to do so in order to get the parttomorrow. That sucks. But I’ll do it because if I have to drivearound with the faux-mirror for the rest of the weekend, I’ll end up in abloody car wreck on I-75 and everyone will be mad at me for holding up traffic.

Every Time I Die/GWAR - Atlanta, November 22

2011-11-27T11:45:00.001-08:00

I saw GWAR. It was nuts. Read about it here.

Happy Birthday Alameda!

2011-11-21T09:23:00.001-08:00

I grew up watching cartoons and movies where every pet was adog or a cat. Not every family had ananimal. But when they did, it was one ofthe two. I, on the other hand, enjoyedthe company of a few guinea pigs, a gerbil, some fish, and a short-livedattempt at having a rabbit (it died after three days). We also had a chinchilla, but it hated us andmy parents had to give it away after my brother and I gave up on thething. Basically, even though I lovedall of my pets in their own special way, I envied everybody that had a dog or acat. They grew into becoming almostmythical animals. The top-tier ofpetdom.

Finally, after years flirting with the idea, I can callmyself the proud owner of a dog. Now that she’s done shittinginside, screaming her head off every time I leave the house, and eating everysock she can find, I can firmly say that all of my built-up views of livingwith the responsibility of keeping a dog alive were completely right.

Alameda’s a lunatic. A total weirdo. For the mostpart, she acts more like a cat than a dog. All she wants to do is rest on top of a pillow/ cushion/pillow on acushion. She doesn’t annihilate all ofher food at one time, instead choosing to ration it throughout the day. She avoids other dogs besides the one she’snow forced to live with. They’veactually become friends and play with each other on occasion, even though it’susually pretty one-sided. She’sskeptical of new people until they prove that they won’t make any unexpected,sudden movements and won’t beat the hell out of her.

Also, she doesn’t play with toys. She only plays two “games,” and I use theterm lightly. One of these games is“String Cheese,” which simply involves me tossing small pieces of string cheesedown the hallway which she chases, locates, and runs back to me for more. In a good game of “String Cheese,” she’ll runback full-speed and rocket herself off the ottoman and onto the couch. In a bad game, she’ll simply walk back and forth. Sometimes she’s a little more jazzed up thanothers.

The other game is “Come Over Here, Go Over There,” whichshe’ll only play when she’s extremely happy to see me. I’ll sit on the ground and she’ll run tome. Then I’ll say, “Go over there!” andshe’ll run into the other room, jump on the couch, and wait. Then I’ll say, “Come over here!” and she’lljump off of the couch, run to me, and huddle up. Repeat.

Like I said, I use the term “games” lightly.

This, of course, is all the product of being raped in a cagefor the first eight months of her life. I got her from the Humane Society after they helped shut down one of thelargest puppy mills in Wisconsin. The vet told us that he couldn’t be sure, but it looked like sheprobably already had puppies. When shewas eight months old. That’s like atwelve-year-old girl having a kid. Something like that can really fuck you up.

She wouldn’t even walk down the sidewalk for the first weekI had her. I had to carry her like ababy for a few steps and then set her on the concrete until a car would go by,or a dog would bark, or someone was sitting on their porch, or the wind wasblowing a plastic bag past us and then I’d have to pick her right back up. That’s not normal.

But that’s okay. Infact, that’s why I like her. Not thatshe was traumatized when she was young, but the fact that she’s a littlestrange. She has an aura about her thatseems a little heavier than with other dogs. She’s weathered. She’s seen some shit. It’s like that Jaycee Dugard story. She had a pretty shitty time for a while andnow she gets to coast for the rest of her life. So get a piece of string cheese, set the pillow on the couch, and keepthe noise down for a while.

People say that wiping your baby’s ass isn’t gross becauseit’s your baby. Smearing hunks of shitoff of them is no big deal, even though it looks absolutely disgusting. This sounds like a bunch of ridiculousbullshit someone says to try to convince you a bad idea was actually a goodone. “No, seriously. This raw eel is delicious!” as they slurpdown tentacles with tears rolling down their cheeks.

But now that I have a dog, I’m more inclined to believe theshit-smearing parents. I am nowresponsible for disposing of my dog’s shit every single time it comes out ofher. No matter what. Even if I’m not physically near her, I haveto arrange to have somebody there to take care of it. And if somebody’s not there to take care ofit, I have to dispose of it the next time I see her. That’s my job now. Forever. That’s a pretty gross duty.

But, it’s my dog so I don’t mind it. This dog has made me do tons of gross thingsthat I haven’t really minded. One timeshe puked next to the couch and it looked like a southwestern omelet the sizeand shape of a Chipotle burrito. But, ofcourse, it was just a bunch of weird stuff that came out of her stomach. It smelled so bad that I almost followed herlead and all I had to clean it with were paper towels. No rubber gloves. No gallons of bleach. No car wielder’s face mask. And it was hot. Really hot and squishy. Plus, it was on the carpet so I had to scrapethe hunks from the fuzz. But I didn’tmind.

Even as I type this, she’s sitting next to me andalternating between snoring and briefly waking up to loudly lick her ownasshole. That’s gross, but I don’tmind. Because she’s my dog. So maybe wiping a kid’s shitty asshole isn’tso bad as long as you are the reason that kid’s around.

Aside from not minding really gross things, dogs are greatbecause you always have someone to hang out with, but not someone you reallyneed to entertain. If I have you at myhouse, we’ll hang out and it will be cool, but I won’t be able to simply say,“Fuck you,” and fall asleep on the couch. There’s a clause in the social contract that precludes me from doingthat. But dogs don’t mind it if you’rerude. The only time my dog got mad at mefor being rude was when I tried to lay my head on her and use her for a pillowat four in the morning. Other than that,she doesn’t really give a shit what I do. That’s pretty kickass.

I’ve thought about what I’m going to do when my dogdies. It usually ends in my just hopingthat either she lives to be 75 or I die within the next ten years. I really hope it’s the former, but itdefinitely has to be either of those two choices. If I somehow outlive my dog (which I hope Idon’t do), I don’t know if I’ll get another one. Definitely not another beagle. I’d just be hoping that the new dog would actjust like Alameda, but that definitely won’t happen. Unless I find another super-abused dog. Or if I just get puppy and abuse it myself…

Today is her fourth birthday. It seems weird to me that I’ve seen every anniversaryof this dog’s life. With the calculationof dog years factored in, she is now two years older than me. She’s my elder. Who the hell am I to tell her not to bark atthe window every time someone walks by? What right do I have to tell her to stop licking the couchcushions? That would be like a youngerbrother telling the older brother to stop driving so fast. I’m out of my element.

Over the past two years alone I feel like her and I havebecome old friends. We’re one of thoseold married couples that are a little too comfortable with each other. We watch each other go to the bathroom, wetell each other what to eat, we go for ritual walks together, we’re gettingfat, etc. I can’t imagine what she and Iwill be like another four years from now. Or another four after that (hopefully). We’ll probably have tattoos of each other’s faces on our backs and bewearing promise rings. Who knows? Maybe we’ll even be married. I mean, they’re letting homosexuals getmarried these days. If the republicansare right, we’ll be able to marry animals pretty soon, too. Fingers crossed for that.

Married or not, Alameda and I are tethered to each otheruntil one of us dies. Or both ofus. Hopefully we’ll die together. That way, she won’t have to howl over mygravesite every night and I won’t have to crawl into the incinerator with herat the vet.

Battles - The Masquerade, Atlanta GA - 10/28/11

2011-11-03T22:40:00.000-07:00

Last week I saw Battles and it was the shit. The review of the show can be found here.

Beirut - 10/27 at Variety Playhouse - Review

2011-10-31T23:14:00.000-07:00

I saw a kickass show last week and wrote a review which can be found here. Check it out.

Occupy Atlanta: The Eviction

2011-10-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

I heard the news before I left for work: Mayor Kasim Reed withdrew his offer to letthe Occupy Atlanta protesters remain in Woodruff Park until November 7^th. Apparently there was an unsanctioned hip-hopconcert this weekend that pissed the mayor off, causing him to revoke his priorpeace offering. Everyone knew they wouldbe kicked out, but no one knew when.

Work happened to be ungodly slow and I managed to get cutearly. I woo-hooed for a bit and thenpulled out my computer as soon as I got home. I checked a few news sites for any word on the eviction of theprotesters and saw an update stating that it was going down at thatmoment. I quickly grabbed my camera andhopped in my car. As I pulled around acorner heading towards the park, two motorcycle cops blew a red light andblocked off the road in front of me. “Ohshit,” I thought. “This might get a little nuts.”

I quickly drove home and swapped my car for my bike, huffingand puffing my way back downtown. Copshad the roads leading to the park blocked off, so I had to cut down a sidestreet, sneak behind the library, and go around another block before I foundmyself next to the action. I later sawkids simply walking past the roadblocks, but my sneaky entrance made the wholeexperience seem more “real.”

Cops on horseback lined the street to my left. A row of cars and a line of cops blocked thestreet to my right. The park was stillvoid of all police presence, but everyone was hustling to get off the grass andonto the sidewalk. People grabbed theiropened tents, holding them above their heads, and ran them out of thepark. Sometimes they put them on thesidewalk. A few people simply set themup in the street.

“Occupy the street! Occupy the Street!”

As people hustled back and forth, I spoke with a couplepeople standing next to me. They hadbeen camping in the park, but wanted no part of the arrests. Their adrenalin was obviously running high,as they spoke in quick spurts, constantly swinging their heads back and forth.

“I heard that they are blocking off the streets so we can’tget out. They’re going to arrest everyperson here!” a blonde girl with full braces told me. “I know! It’s totally illegal.”

Oh great, that’s some kickass news.

People gathered in the street in front of me, beatingfive-gallon buckets and chanting cliché protest chants.

“Hell no, we won’t go!”

The noise of the protesters was soon drowned out by a loud,familiar sound from the sky. Helicoptersare nothing new around here. Living soclose to the highway will frequently subject us to the sound of news chopperscovering whatever mess is occurring on the highway at that given point. However, this wasn’t the sound of a newschopper. As the searchlight started illuminatingthe crowd in front of me, I realized it to be a police helicopter. A police helicopter always makes me think ofthe scene in Terminator II where they break into the office to destroy the chip. It’sbecome a bit of an ominous symbol to me.

It was a little overwhelming. Cop cars flashing blue lights in the distancein every direction, helicopter circling overheard, people chanting andscreaming at the police, and there I stand in the middle without a definiteproclivity towards either side. Peoplenervously looked back and forth as no one knew exactly what would happen. We have all seen videos of cops beating thehell out of people with big sticks and shooting tear gas into largecrowds. There was a large policepresence surrounding us and nobody knew exactly what they were capable of.

“Here we go!” someone yelled.

Our attention shifted towards the north side of the park asa large amount of police officers made their entrance. It’s a little strange seeing such a largenumber of cops working in such a well-practiced fashion. These guys have guns and can do whatever theywant. The only people that can stop themfrom doing something are themselves. Anynormal person can’t do anything to a cop besides spit in his face and chuck arock in his direction. They have guns,handcuffs, mace, and clubs. Not really afair fight. And all of these untouchablepeople have all of their shit together and their coming towards you. It’s a little intimidating.

The remaining stragglers that decided not to get arrestedquickly funneled out of the park. Alarge crowd gathered on the sidewalk next to the park, so I crossed the streetto join them. Everyone stood alongpolice barricades under careful watch of at least twenty officers standing in aline behind the makeshift fence. Moreofficers walked along the street, keeping a close eye on everybody. At one point, a man in the front of the crowdstarted screaming and tried to jump the barricade. He was tossed to the ground like a child andeventually dragged out of the crowd by a friend of his as he screamed,“Citizen’s arrest!” while pointing towards a cop that had just arrested one ofthe protesters. Apparently the cop hadbeen a little to rough with the kid, and this guy wanted to arrest the cop forperforming a bad arrest.

The protesters sat in the grass in a circle, calmly waitingfor their turn to have a zip-tie fastened around their wrists. The police took their time, dragging out thearrests for over a half hour. At onepoint, the circle of protesters became more of a shoddily collected bunch ofpeople as the police grabbed people at random like a game ofduck-duck-goose. The protesters quicklyscooted along the ground and rejoined each other, locking arms.

As each protester was arrested, they were first treated to aknee to the back, or possibly a leg depending on the amount of kicking, thenthey were either led, dragged, or carried out of the park depending on how much they refused to use their own power. While being taken away, the arrestee was showered with applause andwords of encouragement from the crowd. It seemed like all of the protesters standing on the sidewalk envied thepeople getting arrested for their dedication to their cause (whatever that maybe). They knew someone was going to haveto get arrested tonight, and they were glad it didn’t have to be them.

Throughout the arrests, the police on horseback slowlystarted walking down the street, closing the gap between the police and thecrowd. Other than that, the policepretty much held their ground throughout their seizure of the park. Once they were set in their positions, therewas no need for movement. They hadplanned everything down to the smallest detail and it was going incrediblysmooth. Nobody rushed the policebarricade (besides that one guy), no one threw anything at the cops, no oneacted out in any way besides yelling, “Fuck you pigs!” or the one guy I sawwalking past the horsecops while giving them the Nazi salute.

Which brings me to my next point: The protesters were acting like the policewere kicking them out of their own home. They were angry and befuddled about the police presence. They seemed to be thinking they were doingnothing wrong and the police presence was completely unwarranted. I even heard talk on the radio today thatpeople want to impeach Mayor Reed over this whole thing, which was voiced againtonight as people yelled, “Kick out Kasim!”

I spoke with a member of the Atlanta Fire Department as Iapproached the scene and asked him his thoughts. He said that he doesn’t really get what thebig deal is. The city kicks out the bumsthat try to sleep in that park every night at eleven o’clock. He didn’t see why the protesters felt theyshouldn’t be subjected to the same laws and punishments. I think that’s a really good point. I know I’ve already given my generalviewpoints on this subject and will refrain from repeating myself. You can yell about being treated poorly andhow angry you are after the city does something unfair and uncalled for. But you can’t yell about being mistreatedwhen they’re treating you according to universal, well-established rules andlaws.

A big question I had while watching this, as I’ve also hadduring my entire experience with the Occupy Atlanta movement, is how does thisfurther the cause? How does thisaccomplish the goals? I asked a guy thatmistook me for a friend of his on the sidewalk if he thought the arrests wouldhelp or hinder the movement. Without apause, and with a giant smile, he said, “Oh, it definitely helps. This is good.”

“We’ll be right back here in the morning!” a girl standingnext to him said.

I smiled and waved as they walked away, but a question stilllingered in my head: How? How does this help? The protests have already been the lead storyon the news all day long. It’s not likea few arrests will gather more news coverage. That being said, the news channels were all over the place. Every station had a camera and a truckpositioned for live coverage of the arrests, so maybe I was wrong aboutthat. Even if that aspect is true, morecoverage can only be good if there is a general message to convey. Now that you have people’s attention, how doyou use it?

That’s the big question that might sink this movement. And I think that’s a shame, because there isa lot of potential with these Occupy protests. They’re absolutely everywhere right now. If they had something to focus all this attention, all these people,there would be no end to what they could do. A civil uprising has to start somewhere, and this is a great spark forthat fire. But unless they figure outwhat they want, nothing will be changed except a lot of people will lose theirjobs for sitting in a park for three weeks (I know, one of the things they’reprotesting is the shitty economy and that they don’t have jobs, but some ofthem work).

As a quick show of force towards the end of the arrests, agroup of about sixteen police officers in full riot gear marched towards thecenter of the park. They stopped aboutten yards from the focal point of the arrests and simply made everyone awarethat they are fully padded and have very big sticks that they will use to beatthe piss out of you if you make any large moves. That was it. After about fifteen minutes they retreated to the back of the park andprobably shared bubble gum and talked about the World Series.

The streets started to clear out. A section of the protesters started marchingdown the street. I followed them becauseI assumed this would be where the mace would come out and I could get some goodpictures. But they simply avoided thepolice barricades and went off towards the court house. I turned around and left them because Ididn’t feel like following a bunch of makeshift drums into an area of town thatI know to be absolutely packed with bums. Not that the bums would pose any danger, I just didn’t want to talk toany of them. I know the basic gist ofwhat they have to say and I don’t need to hear it again.

I turned back towards the park and overheard a couple copstalking to each other. They slowlystrolled down the sidewalk, joking to each other and smiling. “They have nowhere to go,” one of them saidto the other as the plastic drums started fading down the street.

I walked down the street, glancing into the park and at thesidewalks. Everything was filled withtrash. Abandoned tents littered the parkand filled the sidewalks. It looked likethe street about a mile down the road by all the bums, except worse.

As I walked past the horsecops, I noticed an abundance ofshit and piss covering the street and couldn’t help but feel it mimickedsomething. The fact that the protestershad to leave the park? No. The appearance of entering a police-state ina democratic society? No. The protest itself and how it will probablyhistorically equate itself to these droppings? No. I think the thing I willcompare with these piles of shit and piss will be the crowd throughout thearrests. Many treated it like aparade. People lined the streets,obviously without any ties to the protests, simply to watch people getarrested. Now, I have a hard timedifferentiating myself from these people since I don’t consider myself asupporter of the protests, but I can justify my presence by saying this: I was there to document what happened. This may only be partially true (I mean, Iwant to see someone get maced just as bad as the next guy). But at least I walked around and took theevents seriously. I constantly heardpeople joking about what was happening. At one point, I saw a couple take a picture of themselves in the sameway someone might do at the Grand Canyon when they couldn’t find anyone to helpthem take the picture. It was a show toa lot of people. To others it was justas important as the Civil Rights movement.

This juxtaposition was disarming. I seemed to be one of the only peoplestanding in the middle ground between feverish support of the cause andridiculing the participants. I can’t sayif this separation of viewpoints was so vast at more historically importantprotests, but it really jumped out at me. In the age of youtube and Tivo where our attention spans are shortenedto the point of alarm, I don’t think many people are able to care about amovement like this. And likewise, itseems the movement can’t find a main theme to focus upon.

I made one last lap around the park, looking for a cop totalk to. While none of them wereparticularly busy, most of them just stood around looking bored, I didn’t findone that looked friendly enough to engage in light conversation. However, as I turned a corner I heard anofficer say this:

“I’m just trying to figure out where that motherfucker withthe AK went.”

I saw this guy on the news earlier in the day. Apparently, he’s trying to make a statementabout the 1^st and 2^nd amendments, but I don’t care. Walking around downtown Atlanta with a loadedAK-47 strapped to your back is not a good thing. If anything, it might put the idea intosomeone else’s head who might be a little less rational. We don’t need irrational guys with automaticweapons just walking around the city anymore than we already do.

“Wait, that guy’s here?” I said to the cop.

“Yeah, he’s right over there.”

“Oh shit. Well, Iguess I’ll go this way.” I walked awayfrom the AK, but changed my mind and tried to find the guy. Eventually I found him casually talking to aphotographer as if he was simply showing off a new puppy. I don’t know what an AK-47 has to do withpeople camping in a park to protest anything and everything, but I guess itmakes just as much sense as getting arrested because you don’t want to moveyour tent from an illegal campsite.

And now, with it all over, the remaining question is, “Whathappens now?” Where do they go fromhere? I don’t think this will be the endof the Occupy Atlanta protests, but I do think this is a big blow to them. I hope they take this as an opportunity tolegitimize themselves a bit. Find apermanent location and start making moves that can have some lastingrepercussions. Focus your attention tospecific causes and use methods that can actually affect something. They have the attention of the city right now,and it would be a shame to let it all go to waste. Get out of a city park, but remain in thepublic eye. Drop the blind idealism andget realistic about your demands. Anduse this opportunity to get out of the park and take a fucking shower.

Minus the Bear live - Review

2011-10-24T09:36:00.000-07:00

I went to see Minus the Bear on Saturday on their tour for the tenth anniversary of Highly Refined Pirates. I wrote a review for Deckfight which can be found right here. Enjoy.

The Bet

2011-10-18T10:25:00.000-07:00

Throughout the years, I’ve really grown to dislikebetting. Not gambling, mind you, butbetting. Gambling is great. Every lottery ticket or hand of cards or spinof the slot machine promises the possibility of unfathomable riches and a lifeof leisure. Granted, it usually endswith a quick curse word and a moment of regret, but in the end it’s all worthit no matter the financial outcome.

Betting, on the other hand, requires a certain level oftrust between the two bettors. This iswhere everything goes to hell for me. Iknow that when I bet on something, I will pay if I lose. Every time. There’s no choice in the matter because I made a bet and you pay yourbets. That’s what adults do. Don’t make a bet you can’t pay because that’sdishonest and a clear indicator that you are a complete asshole. I’ve been burned by this kind of shit toomany times and now feel like every bet I make is stupid because I only standthe chance of losing. There’s nopossibility of actually winning. Themost I can hope for is to break even because everyone is an asshole besides me.

That might be a pretty pessimistic way to view the world,but every once in a while my suspicions are confirmed and the world is provento be a dishonest cesspool of assholes that only focus on personal gain. One such example occurred over the course ofthe past week. Let’s start at thebeginning.

THE BET:

It really is the dumbest bet in the world. An exorbitant amount of money for somethingso unbelievably trite and inconsequential. I came back from a delivery at work to find another order waiting to goout. On the way into the restaurant, Isaw another driver walk in before me. Therefore, the delivery is his. Plain and simple. Easy tounderstand. Very straightforward. However, the other guy either didn’t want theorder or is retarded because he refused to take it on the grounds that I wasthere before him. I informed him that hewas wrong. I told him where he was as Iparked my car, that I have no reason to lie, and to just take the order andshut the hell up. Big surprise, hedidn’t shut up. After he bitched andcomplained for twenty minutes he said, “Alright, let’s bet on it. How much do you want to bet?”

“I’ll bet you five-hundred dollars that you were here first,”I replied.

“Okay,” he said witha smile as we shook hands.

The idea was to replay the security tape and see who wasright. This was preceded by him laughingand talking loudly about paying his rent with my money, how stupid I am, how hedidn’t care that I had bills, how he doesn’t take checks, and so on. Eventually, he got really amped up andstarted yelling, “I want my fucking money!” since he decided that he alreadywon the bet because he thought he was right. I guess that’s all the proof he needed.

Now, when I quoted him five-hundred dollars for the bet, Imade it intentionally high. My thoughtprocess was that no one would expect the other person to actually pay five-hundreddollars for something so stupid. I cameto learn that he takes his finances very seriously and the abstractfive-hundred dollar figure was a very real, very concrete number to him. This is when I realized, “Oh shit. If I’m wrong, I’m going to lose five-hundreddollars.” As you can imagine, this mademe a bit nervous. The guy is probablyabout fifty pounds heavier than I am, and from the stories he’s told, he’s beenin a few fights. Plus, he was talking ina mafia-style “give me my fuckin’ money” way, which was a littleunnerving. The possibility of losing alot of money became very real to me.

I knew I saw what I saw, but now that so much importance hadbeen placed on being correct, I began doubting myself. Memory is a very plastic thing, which is whyeyewitness testimony doesn’t really mean shit in court. The more you try to recall something, themore you fill in the holes for yourself, taking you further and further fromthe truth. There’s a very good chancethat all of your memories are skewed in one way or another, leaving the pastyou recall as actually an amalgamation of your experiences and your inaccurateperceptions of those experiences. It’s alittle depressing, isn’t it? Think backto your most beautiful memory, and then realize that it didn’t actually happenthe way you remember it. Because that’strue. I’ll bet you five-hundred dollars.

We weren’t able to check the tape the night of the betbecause the owner was sleeping in an apartment connected to the officeupstairs. It was said that we wouldcheck the tape two days later, which also happened to be payday.

“That way, I know you got money!”

I woke up the next morning with a nervous pit in mystomach. Since I’m trying to save moneyto move across the country right now, five-hundred dollars would be a big hitfor me to take. I replayed the scene inmy head a thousand times.

“I know I saw his truck. I know I saw him walking in. Butdid I? Yes, yes I did. I think…”

THE RESULTS:

That night at work I asked the manager to check thetape. Finding out the results earlyisn’t cheating, I figured. The managerwas apparently curious about it too, since he watched us fight for about ahalf-hour the previous night. Afterabout twenty minutes of trying to find the exact moment from the best cameraangle, we found it. In the frame, youcould clearly see my opponent walking down the sidewalk and into therestaurant. Two seconds later, you cansee my car pull off the road and into the parking lot. Boo-ya.

I had indisputable evidence that the whole deal went downexactly as I had said it did. Exactly. Everything wascrystal-clear. Those security camerasmust have been expensive.

I couldn’t wait for his dumb ass to come into work to pickup his check the next day. Normally, Iwould never have expected anybody to pay this bet. But after his childlike display the previousnight, I knew I had to push the issue. If he’s going to demand that I pay, to the point of intimidation, then Iwould be an asshole to not expect him to pay. Why should that shit only work one way? It shouldn’t. But that remainedto be seen.

Payday finally came around and he was nowhere to befound. I didn’t have a chance to see himuntil he finally showed up an hour and a half late for work tonight.

THE OUTCOME:

“Hey man, did you get a chance to look at that tape fromlast week?” I asked him.

“Uh, no.”

I know for a fact that people had told him what we had seenon the replay. He just didn’t want toadmit it. I filled him in on what thetape showed. He denied it (without evenseeing it, mind you). It was basicallythe exact same move that people pull on the Maury Povich Show all thetime. “Naw! I don’t care what no blood test say. That baby ain’t mine!” We argued for a while about my irrefutableproof and he continued to reject it until other coworkers chimed in andvalidated my claims. Then, his wholetune changed. Now, he was doing me afavor by not paying me. As it turns out,I had apparently called him “a bitch” while he was acting like a complete bitchthe week before. So, his payment on thebet was to not “beat my ass” in lieu of paying the previously agreed uponfive-hundred dollars.

“Go ahead,” I told him. “Beat my ass right here on camera and then go to jail.”

“Oh,” he said with a smile. “If I do it, it’s not going to be on camera.” Apparently he believes that unless a physicalassault is caught on camera, there’s no way he could be prosecuted for thecrime. It doesn’t matter if five peoplejust heard him threaten me.

We argued for a bit more before I said to the manager,“Either you send him home right now, or I’m leaving.” He left. End of all the fun.

The thing that amazes me the most is how much he acted likea seven-year-old throughout the whole ordeal. He wanted to beat me up because I called him a “bitch.” It doesn’t matter how he told me thateverything I say is the dumbest thing he’s ever heard or any of the otherinsults he hurled at me during his pair of tirades. I called him a name. That’s unforgiveable, apparently.

His entire argument and reason for being so mad at mebasically boils down to this: “He calledme a name! I’m gonna kick his buttbecause he called me a name and it hurt my feelings!” That’s it. That’s why he was so mad. Icalled him a name. Now does this soundlike something a reasonable man in his thirties with a small son would do? Or does this sound like something a childwould do? Or, maybe a little moreaccurately, is this something a man in his thirties that is actually a littlebitch would do?

It’s a word. That’sit. It’s not like I called him theN-word or anything. If I did, I wouldtotally understand the fifty punches I would receive. I would be totally okay with that. But anything else is fucking ridiculous. We’re adults. Didn’t he ever learn the “Sticks and stones will break my bones…” line? Surely he has to have heard that at somepoint in his life. And if not, I guess Ijust have to hope his child can teach it to him before I call him a “dummy” orsomething and he tries to stomp the living hell out of me.

In the end, no money was exchanged and my beliefs about thegeneral trustworthiness of my fellow citizens was reaffirmed. Betting is stupid, because the only thingholding someone to the bet is their own sense of self-worth and the gravity oftheir word. And finding someone thatstill believes in the power of their word these days is like someone that stillbelieves in Santa Claus. The only peoplethat do are too young to really have any impact on anything relevant.

The Occupy Atlanta protests won't accomplish anything.

2011-10-14T12:04:00.000-07:00

“This is the most radical thing that’s happened in this citysince the 70’s.”

Or at least that’s what I overheard from a member of theOccupy Atlanta protest currently taking place in Woodruff Park, downtownAtlanta. Apparently, the group isprotesting corporate greed and misappropriation of funds. Just don’t ask somebody what they stand for,because it will invariably take them five minutes and a lot of umms to get tothe equivalent of that succinct description.

Let me say from the start that I support this movement. Maybe I shouldn’t call it a movement. An “idea” might be more accurate. Some people have too much money while otherscan’t afford toilet paper. That’s nogood. And it’s apparent that that’s nogood. With this basic tenet, everybodyshould support this movement/idea besides maybe the people that are too busyswimming through gold coins to know about it. Call it socialism or communism. Idon’t care. Say that I only believe thisbecause I’m not stuffed to my ears with hundred dollar bills. That’s fine. It doesn’t change the fact that I think the members of Occupy Atlantaare right about this point.

BUT…

…they aren’t going to accomplish a goddamn thing. Not one thing will be changed by this“radical” movement besides a little bit less money in the city’s funds cache dueto the extra police presence required in the park until they pack up andleave. That’s it. They will only be a drain on society withoutmaking any of the changes they hope for.

I visited Woodruff Park this afternoon to see what the fuss isabout. I’ve seen news stories, but Ifigure I might as well make up my mind based on what’s actually happeninginstead of what some asshole on the news says.

I showed up mid-afternoon, apparently at a down time in theprotest. A quick glance at a dry-eraseboard filled with the day’s itinerary showed me that the real action wouldn’tstart until 5 p.m. when the “March for Task Force for the Homeless” wouldbegin. As their flyer states, “morehomeless people are created by foreclosures and joblessness every singlemonth! Even with this, the Atlanta TaskForce for the Homeless is being threatened of closure. WeCannot Allow This!!!” If one is toread into the boldface script, it seems the march will turn into a superherobattle until every person in Atlanta has a roof and a nice quilt. But they are right: Homelessness is a big problem in thiscity. Do I think a group of sweatymiddle-aged men and women walking through the streets with signs paintedearlier in the day will convince public housing to sporadicallyself-materialize? Nope. Also, Woodruff Park normally holds a largepopulation of homeless people. I walkedaround trying to find them and couldn’t see them anywhere until I found theircorner. Apparently they had lost theturf war and had been banished to a grassless section of the park that housesthe oversized chessboard. There’s a verydefinite line between the protesters and the homeless, and the homeless stareat their invaders like an opposing team in a game of Red Rover.

I think this needs to be pointed out: A large majority of the protesters are whitepeople in their twenties. This isn’tsurprising. Historically, this is theage group that will most often grab a picket sign and hit the streets. The only difference between protests todayand the protests of the previous generation is that they had a clear cause thathad immediate effects on society. Civilrights, the Vietnam War, etc. There’s abit of a difference. Now we’reprotesting successful businesses, or something like that. And it’s this lack of a clear focus thatbrings the entire protest into the realm of being “useless.”

I found an information booth and talked to a young man namedEvrick. He was very eager to discusswhat the group would be doing, what the group has done, and what the grouphopes to do. However, when it came towhat they hope to do, his clear manner of speaking began to waver as hestruggled to find out which word should follow the previous one. I tried to secretly record him, RichardNixon-style, by using my phone’s Voice Record function so I could accuratelyquote him when I finally got a computer in my hand, but the general noise ofthe park makes everything unintelligible besides the “umms” and “ahhs” he wouldfrequently use as space-fillers while searching for the stock rhetoric thatmade up most of our conversation. It wasalmost like he was using the signs that were walking around behind me as cuecards.

“Making money is not the same as taking money!”

Apparently, there is no leader to the movement. The group holds a townhall-style generalassembly every night where actions and goals are debated, only able to bepassed with a unanimous vote. This isone aspect of the protest that I really like, but it is also sure to be theirdownfall. Without a firm leader inplace, the group is forever doomed to waver between ideas without actuallygaining a clear focus. In large groups,someone needs to take the reigns and make a decision. Have you ever tried to decide where to eatwith a large group of friends? Nobodycan decide on anything until one person says, “Fuck it, we’re going toBenihanas.” It’s the same idea but on amuch larger scale. Unless someone stepsup and makes a move, Occupy Atlanta will be stuck in a park like the homelesspeople they displaced.

I asked Evrick what they hoped to accomplished and how theyhoped to do it. He didn’t know, eventhough he had been designated to disperse information. This is why I didn’t bother talking to thekids beating empty water jugs in a drum circle or the guy walking around with aguitar and a sleeveless Descendants shirt. I asked Evrick if they planned on trying to pass bills or affect the lawin any way. He told me they weren’tpolitically affiliated. At this point Iwanted to ask him, “Well then what the fuck are you doing out here?” The answer of course, is nothing. He alluded to the idea that the protesterswere a means of disseminating information and “waking people up to what wasgoing on”. I asked him what he meant by“going on.”

“Oh, well, I mean, you know…”

I felt bad for him so I tried to help him out. “You mean the whole 1% of the populationhaving all the money?”

“Yeah yeah yeah. Andthe corporate greed and the bailouts, like, people need to know about this kindof stuff.” Not an exact quote, butthat’s the basic idea of his argument.

The problem with the idea of spreading information aboutwhat’s happening by protesting for a week straight in the heart of downtownAtlanta is that people already know about what’s going on. That’s like protesting the fact thatcigarettes are bad for you. We alreadyknow about the problem, now what are your suggestions for a solution? Oh, you don’t have any? Then shut the fuck up and go somewhere quiet andthink about something productive to say instead of filling a city park withpiss and trash.

Eventually, I decided that I wouldn’t be able to get anymore useful information out of Evrick and made my exit. I wished him luck, shook his hand, and said Iwouldn’t be able to attend any of the protests due to work. He said, “That’s fine, you can sign up forour mailing list right here and pledge to be a volunteer.” I felt bad for taking up his time so I showedmy support by signing my first name and filling out my roommate’s e-mailaddress for the organization’s newsletters.

The Occupy Atlanta movement is nothing more than a white whine. It only takes a fewminutes of walking around the park to realize that the group of kids that havebeen hanging out in the park for the past week, apparently with no qualms aboutlosing a week of work or possibly losing their jobs, in two-hundred dollartents that are protesting a general misuse of money are hypocrites. They are relying on other people to pay fortheir vacation, because without a plan of action that’s all a sit-in protestreally is, while they yell about other people spending money in ways they don’tlike. That’s bullshit. If this group were to have an effective meansof creating political change, my opinion would be different. But they aren’t accomplishing anythingbesides killing all of the grass in the park, eating taxpayer dollars as wellas the dollars of those donating to them, and distracting the police that havemuch more pressing matters to attend to. These hippies and punks, which are basically the entirety of thepopulation in the makeshift tent village, are simply protesting because theywant to protest. Why else would you joina movement before a goal is set? That’slike taking a job before you know which position you applied for. Or going to a restaurant and simply ordering,“food.”

My generation has grown up listening to the music from thesixties and hearing the stories from our parents about how there was somethingspecial about that time. There hasalways seemed to be an aura and magical feel to that time period, where drugswere new and opening doors to new worlds (before the addiction set in andruined everyone’s lives) and everyone treated each other in a Utopian way (fora little while before they had to start a career to support their family) whilestanding up to “the man” to create a perfect society. My generation wants that. Instead, we have cable TV and the internetwhich has sucked the life and creativity from everyone and everything. We all want a little of the magic that weperceive to have existed in the sixties, which is how you’ll get a bunch ofpeople to protest nothing in a park for a week, no matter the consequences. We’re bored with the way things are and wanta little bit of the turmoil and excitement that a clash with authority canbring. It’s like wanting someone to hityour car at an intersection just so you can remember the difference betweenTuesday and Wednesday and maybe have something to talk about the next time yousee a friend.

The shitty part is that we have things to protest, butnobody is moved to action because we aren’t directly affected. People didn’t start protesting the VietnamWar until the draft was put into effect. People won’t truly protest the wars we are currently involved in as longas it doesn’t directly affect anybody that doesn’t volunteer for theeffects. Just look at how we have beenfighting for ten years without any real, game-changing protests. People will voice their disapproval, but themajority of us won’t do anything about it. We’re far too complacent, neutralized by the X-Box and Transformermovies. Everyone knows war is awful, butuntil we see firsthand repercussions, we’ll care about it as much as we careabout cancer: Something you don’t likebut also something you won’t truly think about until it affects you or someoneyou know. But money affectseverybody. Might as well go to a parkand yell about that for a while, right?

I asked Evrick about the five-day deadline imposed by MayorKasim Reed. On Monday, the park must bevacated or arrests will be made. He toldme that the protest is an act of civil disobedience, at its root illegal, andif they have to get arrested for the cause, so be it. I’m sure images of riot police shootingprotesters with water hoses fly through his brain like a wet dream every night,because that’s what these kids want. They want a story to tell. Theywant to feel like they are doing something “radical” even when they’re doingthe equivalent of writing “Fuck the Police” in spray paint on an abandonedbuilding. Empty protests spoken in clichés.

As I said at the start, I support the idea of a more equaldistribution of wealth in the means of taxing the rich, not simply taking awaytheir money, and using it to help the indigent. Large corporations shouldn’t get taxpayer money and should be punishedif they happen to get it and use it inappropriately. Before I went to Woodruff Park, I believedthis to be the centerpiece of the movement and stood with them on this account,in theory. But now that I’ve spoken withthem and seen their methods, I believe the Occupy Atlanta movement to be onebig blind circle jerk set to the tune of a CSNY song being played through afive-hundred dollar stereo connected to an iPhone.

Bjork - "Biophilia" review

2011-10-11T22:58:00.004-07:00

I wrote a review of the new Bjork album, Biophilia for Deckfight which can be read here. I believe the link will start you in the middle of the article, so you may have to scroll up a bit. Enjoy.

The Georgia Dome is a backwards hell-hole.

2011-10-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

When the tickets to the Falcons vs. Packers game fell into my hands on Friday, I wanted nothing more than to see the stupid Atlanta team get their dicks ripped off by Aaron Rodgers and stuffed down their throats. As expected, this is basically what happened as the game clock finally counted down to zero. However, I was not as elated as I had expected to be as this happened. Why not? Because the news came to me through a text message as I walked down Ivan Allen Blvd, away from the Georgia Dome and towards my lonely apartment.

The day began as anyone might expect. We took a taxi from our apartment to the Yellow Lot outside of the Georgia Dome with a fistful of Riot Punch. What is Riot Punch? On this occasion it happened to be equal parts Everclear, vodka, and coconut rum topped off with Coca-Cola. We sat in the parking lot for a few hours playing beer pong, talking to other Packers fans, and watching pieces of the Brewers game in some random person’s tent. The normal shit-talking one would expect from Falcons fans was in abundance. People walked around with WWE championship belts that they wrote “Falcons” over the top in order to mock Green Bay’s wonderful quarterback and his famed celebration. Speakers were set up to blast rap music so a small group could perform a choreographed dance routine. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

As game time approached, we parted ways with the people we had been hanging out with and made our way to the stadium. We quickly found our seats in the top tier and waited for kick off. It didn’t take long for the stupid Falcons fans sitting behind us to complain about damn near everything we did.

“Hey, sit down! We can’t see!”

Well, maybe you should stand up and support your goddamn team. But of course they are Falcons fans, and supporting their team isn’t nearly as important as appearing to support their team, but only when they are winning. I was also in attendance for the playoff game between the Packers and the Falcons the previous year when Green Bay stomped the living hell out of the Falcons. It was beautiful. During this slaughter, we noticed nearly all of the Falcons fans leaving during the third quarter. That means that with at least twenty-five minutes of game time left, the fans gave up on their team and decided to try to beat traffic. In the playoffs, mind you.

I never had a problem with Falcons fans before moving to Atlanta. Now I am subjected to their horse shit all the time. Generally speaking, Falcons fans are loudmouths, quick to tell you how great they will be when your team plays them. And then, after their team loses, they get mad at you for bringing it up. But if they win, you won’t hear the end of it for two weeks. That’s just how they are. Falcons fans don’t actually care about their team. They want their team to win so they can have a reason to gloat. That’s why they’re all fair-weather fans. If their team isn’t winning, then they don’t give a shit. But as soon as they get a few wins, then they are the biggest “fans” of their team that you’ll be able to find. They don’t celebrate their team winning, they celebrate your team losing. And that is despicable.

So these pricks are yelling through their gold teeth for us to sit down while their team is actually winning the game. However, we didn’t give a shit what they said because they’re Falcons fans. So fuck them. We stood, clapped, yelled, and did what any normal person would do at a professional football game.

Eventually, half time came around and we decided to find the smoking deck.

“Down one floor,” an attendant told us on every floor until we finally reached the ground level. We found the area to smoke, but of course everything was completely ass-backwards because it’s Atlanta so nothing can make sense so we just went back to our seats. We sat down, but I still wanted to smoke. I did a quick poll of everyone surrounding me, asking if they would mind if I had a cigarette. Everyone said no. I shrugged and lit a cigarette. Two drags later, I hear a voice from eight rows back.

“Is he smoking?” the guy yelled.

Okay, fine. I put it out and stuck it in my pocket. Two small drags, not a big deal in a place as big as the Georgia Dome. It wasn’t long before an attendant in a yellow jacket approached our row.

“Sir? Come with me.”

“Oh sweet Jesus,” I thought. I followed him out of the seating area and into the hallway that wraps around the stadium.

“Were you smoking out there?” he asked with the same tone that a man might use while asking his wife how many times she cheated on him.

“What? No, of course not.”

“You weren’t smoking?” Apparently, he expected me to tell the truth.

“Nope.”

He walked away and spoke with another worker before coming back to me.

“Step over here, sir.”

“Did somebody say I was smoking?”

No response.

“Who said I was smoking? Was it a Falcons fan?”

“Sir, stop talking.”

“No, this is bullshit. If it was a Falcons fan then they said that just to get me out of here. Do you really think we’d be having this discussion if I was wearing a Falcons shirt?”

He spoke briefly into his radio before turning into a statue. I tried to speak with him on a human level, to appeal to his emotions about how I just came there to watch a football game, and that I paid good money for my seat (even though the tickets were free). But the man didn’t acknowledge anything I said. He stood motionless like a robot without a battery. This is when I flipped my “Fuck It” switch and start berating this man. I can’t recall my exact words and I wish I had the sense to record what I said to him. I was going for a while without any breaks about his demeanor and my general displeasure with it.

And honestly, what was the big deal? I took two drags off of a cigarette. It’s not like I had a bomb. If they are worried about the fact that it’s a dome and the smoke will linger in the air and be harmful to everyone’s health, then maybe they shouldn’t light off fireworks which burn sulfur, magnesium, and god knows what else. I have a feeling those fumes are a bit more toxic than a Camel Light.

After verbally abusing this man for about five minutes, an officer showed up and asked for my ID. He took it, gazed longingly at my picture (probably), and handed it back to me before asking me to turn around. I was pretty surprised as I felt the handcuffs get firmly locked around my wrists. For a cigarette? Fucking handcuffs? Are you kidding me? The argument could be made that they gave me the handcuffs because of my verbal abuse of the attendant, but that’s bullshit. As soon as the officer showed up, I stopped talking to the guy in the yellow jacket and was very courteous and genial with the officer. He had a gun and a can of mace, that’s the only way to talk to him. I think the handcuffs were more about the fact that I had a green shirt with a big “G” in the middle of it. They relished the time we spent walking down the hallway, me with my hands strapped behind my back like a goddamn animal and him with a smirk. They refused to discuss the incident with me no matter how hard I tried to speak to him on a personal level. I forgot that I wasn’t dealing with a person, I was dealing with a cop. Emotions are not one of their attributes. They are simply machines built to enforce an arbitrary sentence written on a piece of paper. If you step over that line, they will do what the piece of paper says, void of all empathy.

We rode an elevator to the basement of the Georgia Dome and into a little dungeon of a room filled with other cops and a few people that all seemed to be constantly muttering the word, “Bullshit.” After sitting in this fucking hole in the middle of nowhere at the bottom of a building that should be burned to the ground for twenty minutes or so, they gave me a piece of paper voicing their displeasure with my conduct and instructed me to follow the man that first dragged me there. We walked through a few indistinct corridors and before I knew it, the cool air of the autumn night was blowing against my face and I was on my way home.

I immediately pulled out my phone and started frantically sending text messages and making phone calls, ready to rant about the injustice I felt I had just endured. Of course, in the end, they were right. I broke a rule of the stadium and deserved to be punished. But handcuffed like a convict? Tossed out of the entire stadium for something that honestly didn’t affect anybody? That’s a bit much. The worst part is that I know this wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t wearing a Green Bay Packers shirt. The guy that snitched on me like a little bitch was a Falcons fan that hated me because he knew is team was going to get annihilated. In fact, this guy didn’t stop being a bitch even after he got me kicked out. My roommate stayed for the rest of the game and was continually yelled at for standing, by spectators and Georgia Dome personnel alike. After watching me get the boot, apparently his “Fuck It” switch had also been flipped because just told everybody to go fuck themselves, like a true American.

Thankfully, this will likely be the last time I ever have to go to the Georgia Dome, and I can simply hate it from the outside like everybody else. Unless, of course, the Packers come back for another playoff game. But the Falcons will actually have to win some games for that to happen, and I don’t think they have too much of a chance of that.

Fuck the Georgia Dome. Fuck the Falcons. And fuck Falcons fans. I’m sure that when I go to work tonight I’ll still have to hear some idiot Falcons fan talk shit on the Packers even though they just lost last night.

"Hey, Detroit is gonna beat y’all ass.”

Peacocks are awful.

2011-10-07T10:35:00.000-07:00

Our internet has disappeared, so I’m forced to walk out bythe pool to connect to some apparition called “linksys” to get my fix of theWorld Wide Web. It’s not ideal, but itmight be for the best. I no longer sitin my bedroom until five in the morning watching videos of The Deftones fromthe nineties or videos of tigers mauling people on elephants. Although those are definitely productive waysto spend time, it gets a little repetitive after a while. Now the internet bill has disappeared with myroommate’s girlfriend and I have gained a little piece of my soul back.

I walked out to the pool today with my computer firmlytucked beneath my arm and heard the light strumming of a guitar. “Oh shit,” I thought. “Some boner is gonna be out here playing someshitty songs.” Turns out, I’m a fuckingpsychic. As I closed the gate behind meI heard the melody of a familiar song. It took until I sat down on the other side of the pool from the guy forhim to kick into the chorus of a Jack Johnson song. Great.

I looked around to see if he had any friends out there. He didn’t. He was simply sitting by himself in an area where people are constantlywalking past strumming his shitty chords on his shitty guitar playing hisshitty songs. He immediately ripped intoa castrated version of “Hey Jude” and I knew my e-mails wouldn’t be worth thetrouble.

This may be my pessimistic mind working in an unproductiveway, but here’s what I decided about the guy: He decided to walk out of his apartment to sit by the pool where he knewa lot of people would be walking past to play his guitar in hopes of somebodyhearing him, telling him he’s quite good, and then convincing her (because itwould surely be a girl) to give him a blowjob. These musicians are a slippery bunch.

I’ve played music for about twelve years now and it hasalways been in the back of my mind not to act like guys like this. I call them Peacocks. All they want to do is spread their musicalfeathers and have somebody tell them how pretty they are. They don’t play music because they love it,but because they love having people pay attention to them. This is the reason I’ve only played maybefive shows in my long career of practicing scales. Sure, the first six show-less years arebecause I was deathly afraid of playing live, but after I got over that I stillrarely make that jump. It takessomething away from the music to pimp it out in that way. Once you try to market it, it loses its sheenand becomes a product instead of an expression. I know, this is a silly way to look at it. But nonetheless, here I am, sitting on mycouch with the window open and still listening to this charlatan desiccatewhatever song he attempts. Right nowit’s an Allen Jackson song.

I sat around a camp fire behind some guy’s house while incollege. Maybe twenty people in variousstages of sitting, standing, leaning, and passing out filled out the backyard. Conversation was lively. People were laughing. And then some guy pulled out a guitar andstarted singing. Loudly. Everyone quieted down. Nobody was smiling anymore. Everyone was listening to the guy run throughwhatever song he was playing (most likely a John Mayer song since it was acollege party and sometime around 2004). It was like this guy had some magic spell that made everybody payattention to him, and trust me, it wasn’t because they wanted to. Everyone felt it would be rude to speak whilehe played. I glanced around the firewith an incredulous look on my face, trying to get someone to make eye contactso we could share in mutual hatred for this guy. But it didn’t happen. People who don’t play music will often notknow when they are being fed three servings of horseshit from some hack at acampfire. Not to say people who don’tplay music are less refined or more stupid than people who do, it’s just thatthey have a higher tolerance for this shit. Or maybe I just have an unusually low tolerance. Either way, fuck that guy and fuck this guyat the pool.

It is because of these people that I feel like an asshole bysimply carrying a guitar around in public. I always feel like I’m trying to get as much attention as possible whenall I’m trying to do is go to a friend’s house so we can jam together. That’s another word that’s been ruined byasshole musicians. “Jam” makes you soundlike a dick. “Yeah bro, we’re gonna jamsome sick tunes. It’s gonna wail!”

I feel I need to make another clarification. Not every musician that plays around acampfire, or in public in general, is an asshole. It’s actually a small percentage that fallunder the heading, “Peacock.” You justnotice the Peacocks more because that’s exactly what they want. Here are a few ways to tell them apart:

Level of skill – Peacocks will usually only be able to strum a few chords and sing like they are the retarded offspring of Jack Johnson and John Mayer (I hate to bring them up again, but I feel the need to be accurate).

Flashiness – If somehow a Peacock actually possesses skill, they will rub your face in it. This includes guitar solos played behind the head, excessive volume to make sure you can hear them, or simply an announcement to let you know they will start sharing their gift with you in a moment.

Original material – Not all cover songs will point towards an asshole, but it will in most cases. If you hear a plethora of songs you may hear on your local classic rock station, or any song that would be on the Dave Matthews Band Pandora station, you’re probably in the midst of an asshole. If they do happen to play some original songs, they are very likely to be simple songs with lyrics that read like an eighth grader’s notebook.

Type of instrument – Most of the time, you’ll hear people with guitars. In this part of the world, it seems to be the most popular instrument. This is the main choice for Peacocks. Bongos can also point to an asshole, but this is more rare. If the person in question pulls out an accordion, or a ukulele, or a banjo, or nearly anything else, they immediately move past all questions of being an asshole because that shit’s just awesome. You could play “You Are My Sunshine” on a glockenspiel all night long and I’d think you’re kickass.

There should probably be a part of me that respects thesepeople for simply sharing their musical talent, no matter what level they areat, with people around them. If a guy issitting in the grass at a park with three girls around him and playing aSublime song, I should be proud of him for entertaining the girls. Right? If they are all happy, I should be happy too. It certainly shouldn’t make me angry. But, I also wish I didn’t like the taste ofwhiskey and staying up until the point in the night that you are forced torefer to it as morning (you can get away with calling one a.m. night, but youmust call five a.m. morning). There arejust some things you can’t change. I’mguaranteed to hate this theoretical guy in the park as well as hisaudience. There’s nothing I can do aboutthat. And there’s nothing wrong withthat, as long as I can subdue the urge to slam the guy’s guitar into histhroat. And I feel like if I’ve made itthis far into my life without an incident like that, I’ll be fine for the nexttwenty years or however long I have left.

Bums are Communists.

2011-09-29T12:42:00.000-07:00

I walked to the store today to buy frozen fruit and Ramennoodles. I figured if I was going todestroy my body with an atomic bomb of sodium, I might as well try to convincemyself that I’m doing something good for it by equaling it out with nature’sdessert. After gathering my foodstuffs,I bought a pack of cigarettes and two scratch-off lottery tickets. I feel like my hopes of making myself richare basically infected with terminal cancer, so I have nothing to rely on butblind luck.

I walked into the sun, opened my cigarettes, and sauntereddown the road. I remembered about fiftysteps in why I decided it would be a good idea to wait to smoke before passingthe park. The reason being a large packof bums that absolutely love that park. Why else would they hang out there in packs at all hours of thenight?

I had headphones on, but my sonic-shield was invisible tothem.

“Excuse me. Sir? Sir?” The original politeness of a bum is always highlighted by the starkcontrast that follows a refusal of their request.

I continued walking, because fuck that guy.

“Sir! Hey!”

I turned around.

“Lemme have that smoke.”

“What?”

“Gimme that smoke.” He pointed to make sure I didn’t think he was talking about somethingelse.

I looked him directly in the eyes and said, “No.”

“Then just gimme a hit.”

Of course, this was followed by a, “No.” But what balls by this guy. That’s an amazing backwards rendition of the foot-in-the-doortechnique. Why would anybody firstrefuse a man with half of his teeth and dried spit surrounding his mouth feeltotally okay with giving this man the opportunity to touch his mouth tosomething that will soon be in your own mouth. The leap from a simple gesture to such an extreme opposite isastounding. That’s like asking someonefor a kiss, and then upon refusal asking for hardcore, unprotected,unlubricated anal sex. Quite a boldmove.

I deal with this shit all the time. I’m amazed that the tires on my car aren’tslashed daily. Because of my work, a largeamount of homeless people know who I am and what I drive. Many of these same people have a poor view ofme due to me telling them to go fuck themselves frequently.

At one point they made me disappointed in society and in theway we cast aside people when they need our help the most. Although that feeling hasn’t completely leftme, it has definitely been drowned out by pure annoyance and apathy.

“Hey, I don’t have any shit. Can I have your shit?” Or oftenmore accurately, “Give me your shit.”

I always wondered why they felt so entitled to things that Ihave worked for. I just had to drive tenmiles to get a two dollar tip, and now you want me to give you threebucks? Go fuck yourself.

As I walked away from the guy that basically wanted to lickthe lollipop I was eating, I realized why many homeless people act thatway. They’re communists.

Communism is all about spreading around wealth so everybodygets an equal share of the surplus. Homeless people happen to be on the lower end of the spectrum of owningshit, so they are entitled to some shit. You happen to be walking past at the time, so they ask you for yourshit. Makes sense.

Communism isn’t endemic to the homeless population, but theslice of the pie graph of members of the Communist Party seems to have itslargest slice labeled, “Homeless.” Richpeople can be communists, too. This isjust more rare. Bill and Melinda Gatesvowed to donate ninety percent of their earnings to charity. They are simply mirror images of homelesspeople. They are the same, but justworking in the opposite direction.

I don’t believe this realization will convince me to be moregiving to the communistic poor. Iunderstand their plight and point of view now. But I don’t share their point of view. I understand why people are Jewish, but that doesn’t mean I’m going torecite a piyyuttimat the service on Rosh Hashanah. They’recommunists, and I’m not. So I don’t needto give them shit.

Weddings are fun.

2011-09-27T01:02:00.000-07:00

It didn’t dawn on me that I had never seen the ocean until Iwas crossing a bridge that seemed more like a roller coaster at about eight inthe morning after driving straight through the night while I looked at theocean. We were approaching St. Simons Island(no apostrophe, apparently. I guessthere was more than one St. Simon and they decided to simply honor all of themat one time with a singular island) for a wedding.

Weddings are a little strange to me, because I loveattending them but I don’t really plan on participating in one. That’s like never eating your favorite food(kinda). Everyone is always in a greatmood. Everyone always lets loose. Everyone is having a great time except forkids. It sucks to be a kid at awedding. You’re around a bunch of peopleyou don’t know who are doing things you don’t understand and doing other thingsyou are not allowed to do. But I’m not akid anymore so I don’t really give a shit about all of that.

The wedding was set to take place at a villa on the water. Three floors, two buildings, six rooms (Ibelieve), a pool, an elevator, a microwave in a drawer, and a king’stable. It was basically the epitome ofdecadence (not using the Motley Crue usage of the word). I immediately felt spoiled and was afraid thatI would start crying when I finally had to leave.

We tossed our bags in a room, disrobed, and hit thepool. It wasn’t long until beers weredispersed and the bottom of the pit began making its way towards ourheads. Time passed, people were met, jokeswere made, lies were told. Standardstuff.

As I ate dinner on the ledge next to the pool, I stared atthe ocean and thought about my previous experience with an anxiety attack. It’s easy to feel swallowed up by the enormity of something likethat. I will never see anything biggerthan the ocean (discounting the sun, the stars, and everything else in thecelestial realm). Sitting next to that,eating mac and cheese and drinking a can of Miller High Life, makes you feel alittle insignificant. If I filled thatcan of beer with dynamite and threw it into a geyser of gasoline, the oceanwouldn’t be affected in the slightest way. If I found a new mathematical formula that explained time-travel andopened a hole into the future, the ocean wouldn’t care. It would be exactly the same. The tide would still go in and out (assumingthe moon doesn’t disappear in the future) and it would still be really fuckinghuge. Most likely even more huge withthe way the polar ice caps are going.

As I sat on the ledge staring at the ocean and trying not tofreak out, I heard a little noise and realized a six-year-old boy was sittingnext to me. I had already discussedhairstyles and remote-controlled cars with him and his brother, so it wasn’ttoo big of a shock. I tried to tell himabout how we know more about outer space than we do about the bottom of theocean, which is true. He didn’t believeme. I tried to explain to him the waythe tide works. He didn’t believeme. We followed this path for a whileuntil I realized the truth was simply not good enough for this kid, so Istarted telling him about the sea monsters that live in the ocean. This, of course, led to me explaining to himhow a 350-foot-long squid destroyed the Titanic. I’m not exactly sure how we came upon this,as I said I had been drinking all day on no sleep, but once you tell a kidsomething like that, there’s no taking it back.

He was quite excited, comparing the size of the squid to thesandbar in front of us.

“Oh no, the squid was much bigger than the sand bar,” Isaid. “Yup, that’s right. The whole thing.”

We talked about the squid some more until his brother cameup and informed us that there were cameras surrounding the villa, which wastrue, and that we had to find the control room. So, of course, I told him he was right and that we had to find it assoon as possible. Fast forward aboutfifteen minutes, sprinkle in a few more lies, and we find a room with a TV thatwe have to convince the child not to destroy after identifying it as thecontrol room. Congratulations werepassed around, and I went about my night trying to avoid the children for theirown sake.

The night continued in the only way it could until I wassimply a mumbling mess that had to be told to go to bed by my roommate becausehe likes to pretend to be my babysitter, which is nice because sometimes I needa babysitter.

I woke up in the morning feeling like top-notch shit andhopped out of bed. The window outside ofthe bedroom had a third-story view of the sun rising above the ocean, which isa fairly decent thing to see when you get up in the morning. After a little while of complaining anddrinking as much water as possible, we decided to brave the ocean.

I’ve never particularly enjoyed the feeling of not knowingwhat’s below me in a lake. But sinceit’s only a lake my fears are nothing more than the reason I can’t sleep in mybedroom without the closet door shut. Namely, monsters. But in a lakeand in my bedroom, the monsters are purely psychological. And if we’ve learned anything from the firstNightmare on Elm Street during the absolute worst ending to any movie of alltime anything ever, if you choose not to believe in these psychologicalboogeymen, they can’t do a goddamn thing to you. Seriously, what an awful ending to amovie. He slashes the absolute shit outof people for two hours, and then some whiny bitch says, “I don’t believe inyou,” and this demonic killing-machine goes, “For real? Shit!” and dies? Jesus, it’s like the writers had two minutesto write the last twenty minutes of the movie and said, “Well, if we just addone more creepy he-didn’t-actually-die thing at the very end, then our trackswill be covered and no one will notice how bad the ending was because they’llbe trying to be the first one of their friends to predict a sequel.” I mean, what the hell were theythinking? At least knock his brains outof his head and give me a little satisfaction and retribution for all theintestines I just had to watch him pull out of screaming people in theirpajamas.

Anyways, the point was that these monsters I’m afraid of ina deep lake are actually real in the ocean. We simply don’t know what the fuck is out there. We know a great amount, and what we do knowabout is already horrifying, but we don’t know everything. Just because one of these deep seatentacle/teeth/bloodlust/meteorite fish things hasn’t ripped off someone’s legso far doesn’t mean it will never happen. Plus, there’s crabs and shit out there. I saw a couple. And gettingpinched sucks.

Leg-ripping sea monsters or not, we swam to the sandbar andwalked around, making sure to take enough time to let the sun burn the shit outof us. We watched people try to surf ontwenty-inch waves. I tried to catch abird with my bare hands (and only succeeded in realizing how out of shape Iam). We found a point where shiftingyour weight between your feet will slowly dig yourself into the sandbar. After making it to my knees, I decided tostop just in case the suction I was feeling around my ankles and shins wasstronger than I wanted it to be. Itwould only be a few hours until high tide and certain death, and although I’msure we could have dug two feet into the sand by then, the possibility wasstill a little too close.

I freed myself, we braved the monster-filled ocean, andprepared for the wedding. The villa wasa bit of a madhouse of people frantically power-walking and trying to tie upevery remaining loose end while trying to appear like everything was goingsmoothly. But, of course, everythingcame together as people arrived and the wedding went off without a hitch.

The only thing that disappointed me about the wedding wasthat I couldn’t hear the speech given by the bride’s brother, who wasperforming the ceremony. I was in chargeof releasing the ring-bearer at the appropriate time (which was, of course, asnaggle-toothed, two-year-old dog) and therefore couldn’t hear most of what wassaid. Even though I couldn’t hear thespeech, I could tell it was going well by the amount of crying going on in thegallery, as well as from the speaker. Iexpected one part stand-up show mixed with two parts sentimental well-wishing,which I think might have been fairly accurate. Laughs were heard, acting as cymbal crashes separating the steady streamof sniffles. I came close to joining themoist-faced observers, but then the dog probably whined or pulled to hard onthe leash and I had to focus on my duty.

After the ceremony, heart-felt handshakes were passed aroundto the participants as well as the families and everyone took a deep breath,changing gears towards the celebration.

Personally, the coolest part of the wedding was a favorasked of me a couple months before the ceremony. While drinking at my apartment one blazing,summer afternoon, the idea was tossed out by the bride-to-be that maybe Ishould throw some music together for the wedding. A few days later I e-mailed them somethingand they liked it. Boom. Pretty simple. They asked for a couple more songs, I sentthem some stuff I had recorded over the last couple years, and that’sthat. Little did I know, they used asong of mine for the bride walking down the aisle, and another for when theywalked out together. Now, when I saythis was the coolest part of the wedding, I don’t mean because my music made itsuper kickass. I mean it was personallythe coolest part because I got to feel like I contributed something while alsofeeling a little validation. I got towatch a woman I have known since I was around five-years-old marry a great guyI met a couple of years ago to a song I made. That’s insane. Throughout thenight, they would thank me for putting the song together, but the jokes onthem. I would have done thatanyway. They did me a huge favor byincluding it in this wonderful event.

Then a few hours later, immediately after I finished makinga joke about feeding monkey meat to a monkey and following it up with a jokeabout bestiality to the DJ’s girlfriend, the DJ approached me and asked me ifhe could use the song in future weddings. I agreed, we shook hands, and I walked away with a big smile on my face,and not entirely because of the hilarious jokes I had just finished telling.

The celebration flew by, probably because of the openbar. Champagne was obliterated in thekitchen after we grew tired of drinking liquor and beer. The bride’s uncle touched eyeballs with myroommate’s girlfriend. I gainedpossession of someone’s camera and snapped around 500 pictures in twentyminutes. And before I knew it, everyonehad gone to bed, leaving me to snag leftovers from the refrigerator and eatplate after plate of cold food while watching a TV that I couldn’t figure outhow to operate.

I woke up the next day and could only describe the way Ifelt as fifteen different pieces of shit crammed into an ass, and then that assexperiences diarrhea. I was pleased withthe simile, but not the way my body felt. This sentiment was basically the theme of the day, besides, “Go PackGo.” I survived the hangover day, andgot to enjoy another wonderful oceanic experience. A lightening storm had surrounded the islandand eventually moved out to sea, leaving us safe of electrocution and with anatural fireworks display. We sat inchairs and watching the lightening crawl across the sky. It was probably the calmest portion of theweekend, surely due to the fact that I wasn’t hammering alcohol like a goddamnidiot. A perfect way to end a weekend ofcraziness.

The final morning was simply packing and hitting theroad. After a short drive, or at leastit seemed short since I didn’t drive at all, I found myself back at home andhugging my dog like she had just won me the lottery. I started the day watching the sunrise overthe horizon of the Atlantic Ocean, and within hours I was back to the land ofform rejections and shitty tippers. Thatwas okay with me, though. You can’t livein a dream land on a beach forever. Ifyou lived in a place like that you would become boring and stale because youwould have no reason to want to do anything better. All you would do is enjoy what you havewithout reaching for anything more, and that’s not acceptable. Not yet, at least.

Dumb Dilemma

2011-09-22T00:23:00.001-07:00

You shouldn’t hate someone for something they can’t help,meaning race, gender, place of origin, etc. This is easily apparent to anyone born after the 1800’s. Being a bigot has fallen out of fashion,which is most likely for the best. But Ihaven’t seen any research on that idea, so I guess I can’t really say for sureeither way.

Why bring up such a mundane point? Good question. But shut up. I bring it up because I find myself bigoting all over the place everyday I leave my apartment (which is almost every day). Race, age, gender, none of that shit mattersto me. You could be a baby Chinese girlor a Chilean grandfather (which, I believe, are opposites), it really doesn’tmatter to me.

What group do I bigot all over everyday? Stupid people. Dumb, stupid idiots that seem to follow mearound like the sun. To be clear, I’mnot classifying someone as stupid because they don’t read non-fiction books, ormight not know the specific years of the Civil War, or how to divide fractions,or how to change the oil in a car. WhenI say “stupid,” I’m talking about the people that look like they have glasseyes when you talk to them. A vacantstare of non-comprehension. A failure topossess a basic grasp on the way the world works, how to interact with otherpeople, and how to conduct themselves in accordance with an everyday situation.

Also, the scale of stupidity slopes with age. You can get away with being stupid whenyou’re young. I’m not going to fault asix-year-old kid for walking in traffic against the light, or asking fordirections to the store that sits directly behind him. But if you make it to be sixty years old, youbetter have your shit figured out. I’vemet stupid, old people and it blows my mind every time. How can someone survive in the world thatlong and still not know how shit works? That deserves a medal and a kick in the face at the same time.

This is a highly contested issue between me and me: Are stupid people worthy of hate? Should you hate someone just because itdoesn’t occur to them to turn their phone on after they tell you to callthem? Should you treat someone withcontempt because they try to pay for an item costing twelve dollars with twofive-dollar bills? That depends.

Viewpoint One states that they are stupid people. From day one, they were stupid. No teachers sparked their interest inlearning. Maybe their supply of oxygenwas cut off for a minute while they were still in utero, leaving them withlimited brain capacity. Maybe they justgot whacked on the head and haven’t been the same since. No matter what the cause, the person isirrevocably stupid. Nothing they can dowill change that fact. In such a case,hating these people is a contemptible act along the same lines as hating peoplewith Down’s syndrome. It’s not theirfault.

Viewpoint Two states that they are people that arestupid. There’s a difference. These people have simply never cared enoughto figure shit out. They are stupid notout of lack of resources or the physical ability to enhance their mind, but outof sheer laziness. They never botheredto learn how to speak English in a clear, coherent manner because people havebeen able to decode what they were saying in the past. They never bothered to learn the rules of theroad because they’ve gotten to their destination in the past. Why take the time to learn how to do thingsin the correct way when you can just wing it and get by in a barely acceptablemanner?

I waver back and forth between which viewpoint Ibelieve. Mainly, I side with Viewpoint Two. I’m sure there are people out there that fallunder the umbrella of Viewpoint One, and it sucks for them because I’m going totreat them the same way as I would treat Viewpoint Two-type people. Telling them apart is impossible. The same slack-jawed demeanor is present inboth types, so the irrevocably stupid will just be lumped in with the lazy.

I believe that’s all stupidity is: Laziness. But at the same time, laziness is what holds everybody back from being aprofessional hockey player. It’strue. If everybody practiced hockey allday every day from the time they could stand on skates through college, we’dall be hockey players. The thing thatsets professional hockey players apart from the rest of us is the intensedesire to become a hockey player. Anybody can do anything (besides shit like jump over the moon) if theywork at it for long enough. Did WayneGretzky become the best hockey player because he was born with the knowledge ofhow to control a puck while skating around 200 pound maniacs while dealing withthe pressure of having thousands of people watching his every move? No. Ofcourse not. He had to work long and hardto get to that point. And he had toreally want it to stick it out for that amount of time. It wasn’t Gretzky’s natural talent (well,maybe some of it was) that set him apart, it was his work ethic.

It might be the same way for stupid people. They might not be interested in beingsmart. Some people like oranges, somepeople like apples. Some people likelearning shit and growing intellectually, some people like watching TV all thetime and smashing a full sentence into one word. They might be okay with watching JerrySpringer every day and working as a Wal-Mart cashier until they die. If that’s the case, fine. That’s okay. But they should at least have the decency to figure out how to exist ina society without driving people insane. This means they would have to stop being selfish, but that’s not endemicto stupid people and is also an entirely different conversation.

Is it right to hate stupid people? I’m not sure. Maybe chronic stupidity is nothing more than a physical handicap that ismore worthy of consolation that hatred. I don’t know. But I also don’tknow why I like fruit snacks. I justdo. I do know that I can’t stand talkingto a stupid person. I don’t know why,but that’s okay.

Who needs planning?

2011-09-20T00:24:00.000-07:00

As you may know, I don’t have the highest opinion of the waythis city is run. The fact that the roads, including thehighways, will flood and the traffic lights will stop working after anything heavierthan a light drizzle solidifies my viewpoint. Tonight, I came across another Atlanta-fix that seems to lack allforethought and rational planning.

It was about 9:45 p.m. and the lane leading to the highway on-ramp was packed with cars at a standstill. Although at work, I wasn’t busy, so I figured I’d just turn up the musicand wait it out. It shouldn’t be long,right? It’s just a fucking on-ramp. People can figure out how to merge withtraffic. It shouldn’t be too long and willstill be quicker than taking the city. Right?

Wrong.

First, let me describe this beautifully constructed on-ramp. It cuts off from a main road atan intersection, so the people crossing the road have to merge with the peoplesimply turning right. Then, after thosetwo roads become one, another on-ramp joins the party. This shouldn’t be a problem, since there is aset of red and green lights above the point the two lanes merge (as is commonin such a situation). However, the factthat this on-ramp is located directly in the middle of the fucking city, and isused whenever the Georgia Dome clears out thousands of people, still doesn’tmake the ramp important enough to make sure these lights work. Ever. Now you have two rows of cars fighting for one lane while trying tomerge with highway traffic. Perfect.

Now, the only time traffic moved was when someone in theline would get fed up and cut out, opting to deal with one of the Peachtreestreets instead of the dreaded on-ramp. Eventually, I pulled a dickhead move and merged into the second lane,turning onto the on-ramp from a non-turning lane. I’m not proud of what I did since I yell atpeople for it every night. Literalyelling. I probably look like a lunatic. But the opportunity was just sitting thereand I felt a need to seize it.

Eventually, I get around the corner and see some flashingpolice lights near the section that merges with the highway. Okay. Fine. Some idiot crashed his carand everyone has to look for some brain matter on the windshield before movingon. Understandable. After slowly inching through, we get to thepoint where we merge with the other ramp before hitting the highway. Fully around the curve, I can now see what’sgoing on: Construction. The two right lanes are blocked off. Sounds pretty routine, right? Like it probably shouldn’t create a trafficjam at ten o’clock at night on a Monday? Well, all you have to do to create a shitty situation is do somethingstupid. Atlanta, you never let me downon this.

They had road cones set up to merge us over the two lanesand into moving traffic. However, theydid it in about twenty feet which made the entrance to the highway intobasically a T. It was like you came outof your garage, stopped at the end of your driveway, and found cars flying byat seventy miles an hour. Not theeasiest entrance. Also, how about we addthe fact that there’s a curve in the highway right before your driveway andit’s night so all you can see are blurs from headlights, making their exactlocation and lane unidentifiable. Soundsa bit like a death-trap, right? Right. Good luck!

That’s what was taking so long. Nobody expected to have to go through anAmerican Gladiators-style obstacle before they could continue theirjourney. There was no way out of it. Every single car in that line had to jump intotraffic essentially blindfolded. And thewhole time, there was a cop about ten yards away, keeping a constant vigil overhis cell phone. Really earning those taxdollars.

I sat in line, waiting for my chance to try to not die, andmy first instinct was to find someone to yell at. Someone made the decision to set up the roadcones in this way, and they were probably nearby. The only person I saw that wasn’t anotherdoomed motorist was the cop, and he was far too busy texting someone to botherwith the ravings of a demented delivery driver. Instead, I had to stew in my hatred until it was my turn to jump off thecliff and into traffic. I had to waitout a few waves of cars before I saw someone slow down and switch lanes, givingme enough time to jump onto the highway.

As I drove past the sectioned off lanes, I noticed there wasabsolutely no workers or machines doing anything behind those closedlanes. Nothing. They were completely empty. At least show my some guy in an orange vestsetting up a light. But they didn’t evengive me the satisfaction of feeling like my wasted time and dangerous fewminutes were worth it. Sure, maybeeventually they’ll do some work there, but how about you give people a fightingchance to get home while you don’t need the space?

I passed one exit and came upon the one I planned ontaking. Big surprise, there were thefucking people that should have been covering the last two miles ofhighway. Police cars blocked the off-ramp,I’m guessing because they used all their cones on the last couple miles. I swore loudly, punched my steering wheel,and reached for my phone. I wasn’t surewho was going to get it, but someone was going to feel my displeasure. Someone would know that I did not approve ofthe situation. Since I don’t have afancy future-phone, I texted Google for the phone number of Atlanta PublicWorks. Of course, their office wasclosed, but the recorded message gave me a number to some poor guy if I wantedto report a dysfunctional traffic light. Close enough, I thought, and wrote down the number. After a few tries, he picked up the phone.

“Who do I talk to about what’s going on on 75?” I tried not to yell. There would be time for that later.

“Well, what’s going on there?”

I went into a tirade about dangerous intersections andman-made traffic jams. I tried not toswear, but I did a bad job.

“It’s idiotic. It’salmost as if they put no thought into it whatsoever.” The man stayed quiet for the majority of myrant. “It’s not hard to fix.” I thought for a moment. “All they would have to do, is stretch outthe area to merge. Give us anotherquarter of a mile to get up to speed and find a spot to fit in. Or, block off the last open lane a half-mileback to give us an open lane. Thenpeople can merge back after the on-ramp and do whatever they want to do. There aren’t any other on-ramps for miles, sothey’d only have to do it that once.”

These are two ideas that I came up with after thinking forten seconds. I could have thought ofsimply sticking a yield sign and saying “Good luck, assholes!” in about twoseconds if I hadn’t just seen it. Ifwhoever was in charge of that had thought for eight more seconds, this wholedisaster could have been avoided.

The man eventually informed me that since he only works withtraffic lights, he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. He took my information, allegedly wrote downmy gripes, and promised to pass along my information to the proper departmentafter locating the phone number. Myhopes of anything coming of this were extremely low, but I felt like I had toat least try.

Let me make one thing clear; I didn’t feel like I had to tryout of some Robin Hoodian desire to fight the good fight, or stick up for thevoiceless, or help out my fellow citizens, or any other Rage Against theMachine lyric. That makes it sound toograndiose and too kind-hearted. Plus, ifthat were true, this would make this entire story just a big jerk-off about mesaying how great I am. The truth is,they pissed me off. That’s it. Trying to do something was a self-serving actbecause they simply wasted some of my time, and that is something that pissesme off to no end.

Anyways, a couple hours went by and I came across the on-rampagain. I didn’t see a huge line ofstationary cars, so I decided to check it out. Maybe on some long-shot chance, they did something about the bullshit, Ithought. I came around the corner andalmost shit my pants.

The fucking cones were set up in a long row, easing themerging lane with traffic. Exactly how Itold them to do it. Immediately, Istarted patting myself on the back and thinking about starting my long careerin local politics. Nothing fancy likeMayor, just a position that makes shit work the way it should. I had no idea what that would be, but I wascertain I was perfect for it.

As I drove along MY long, gradual merge lane, I noticed acop waving traffic along. I slowed downsince the lane became narrow by the officer, and noticed the smashed car aboutten yards after the spot that housed the Yield sign.

They didn’t take my advice. They simply had to re-work the entrance to the highway to go around thecar that got smashed trying to merge with traffic from the original entrance. The very same entrance that I called the cityand told them was dangerous. This, in away, is just as validating as having them take my advice. I was right all along. Except this way, I get to continue to callthem idiots because they didn’t avoid what I told them was going to happen andhow to avoid it.

Another few hours later, I tried the on-ramp again. They say insanity is repeating the sameaction and expecting different results. However, I expected nothing from this on-ramp. I just wanted to quench my curiosity abouthow it was going to play out. I turnedthe corner, and saw a worker standing in the middle of the merge lane. The road cones were a solid line behind him. He looked at me and held out his hand for meto stop like a crossing guard that was simply filling in for a friend. He stood like that long enough for me to grabmy phone and take a picture.

It’s hard to see since my phone sucks, but he’s there. He looked around like he didn’t expect to seea car on the road and wanted someone to make it go away. After a few confused minutes, he moved acouple road cones and let me go through. This was at 12:45 a.m. Threehours after I first noticed how shitty the whole situation was. After three hours, they still didn’t figure outhow to close two lanes while still allowing cars to merge from an onramp andinto traffic. Three hours. And there was no end in sight. For all I know, the lane could still beimpassible right now at 3:15 a.m.

I have no delusions about me being smarter than the peoplerunning this city. They went to schoolfor what they do and have years and years of experience doing it. That being said, this was an easy fix. The guy who got hit should not have to go tothe mechanic tomorrow. If people wouldjust pull their heads out of their asses for a few minutes every once in awhile, the city would be a much more enjoyable place. But, that will never happen. With each passing day, a quiet cabin in thewoods with my nearest neighbor a mile away is sounding more and moreenticing.

Dragon Con: The Final Chapter

2011-09-05T00:42:00.000-07:00

Usually, today is completely awful. A hangover rides in my head and cloudseverything I encounter until I can finally go to sleep and try to forget theday ever happened. Why is today usuallyso shitty? Because it’s the day afterDragon Con, and if we’ve learned anything from past experiences, that means apretty drunken, shitty Josh.

This year was no different on the main points of beingridiculously hungover. I woke up at fouro’clock this afternoon with a mouth that felt like sandpaper, moaning and wishingI could be a different person while being thankful that I couldn’t remembermost of the end of the night. A quickglance through my text messages revealed a little bit of what I was up to, andI wasn’t too curious about my other performances. Some things are better left in the past. Except for this wonderful nugget of wisdom myblackout brain came up with: “I’ll babyyou.” It was one of the text messages Isent to my lesbian friend in Milwaukee. It’s a pick-up line of sorts, to mean something along the lines of“Girl, you lookin’ so good that I want to put a baby in you.” I think that’s pretty awesome and plan onkeeping it around.

Throughout the day, I came up with two other nuggets ofwisdom that someone should have tattooed on them at some point. Number one: The only two choices in life are to either go big or go home. Therefore, if you’re already home, you haveto go big. There’s no other choice. Number two: A fist is a rectangle and a hand is a square. As everybody knows, a square can beconsidered a rectangle buy a rectangle can’t be considered a square. Likewise, a fist is still a hand but a handisn’t necessarily a fist. So, thinkabout that for a little bit.

Anyways, last night differed from the last two years in amain way, and not just because I didn’t poop on a hill this year. Dragon Con was checking entrance passes thisyear. Total bullshit. They had that place locked down like thepresident was inside. Every door atevery level was being guarded. Even theloading dock had a guard stationed at the door. I know. I looked. Simply getting into the ridiculous gala ofridiculousness became the main goal. Itwas like we had an epic journey filled with obstacles and enemies on our way tosome grand reward. Pretty fitting sincethe place was filled with people dressed in Star Wars and Lord of the Ringscostumes. However, it was actually justa brisk walk at night with a water bottle filled with orange Gatorade and toomuch grain alcohol.

Our day started at eleven in the morning when we walkeddowntown and watched the Dragon Con parade. The parade is a weird idea, because they didn’t have floats or anythingto make it look like a parade. It wasjust a bunch of people dressed in strange ways walking together down the road. Well, I guess I should take that back. Occasionally you would see a sign that saidsomething along the lines of “Chapter 37, New Jersey” and then a bunch ofpeople in Storm Trooper costumes. Thismeans that not only are people signing up for clubs based around Star Wars, butthey are doing it on a nationwide scale like a fraternity or sorority. That’s nuts.

While watching the parade, I wavered from outright awe athow excited everybody was/ how much they believed whole-heartedly in what theywere doing, and pity for the parade members. To be in your mid-forties, dressing like Darth Vader, and honestlythinking you’re the man and living it up like you’re a rock star struck asbeing a bit pathetic. They were makingthe crowd chant and relishing the attention like nobody had ever made eyecontact with them in the past. I watchedthese people pretend to be other people and seeming like they were sexuallyaroused strictly because of the aura they were projecting.

My moments of pity were soon demolished when I realized thatthese people aren’t pathetic for what they were doing, they were lucky. They have found something that theyabsolutely love and are able to do it. It may be only for one day out of the year, but that’s okay. How often do guys sitting in a sports bar,smoking cigarettes and pounding beer, actually get to play in the NFL? Never. How often do people who sit in their rooms and play guitar actually getto play in a football stadium for thousands of cheering fans? Never. But these nerds, and yes that is the proper term for these people, getto live their dream every year if they feel so inclined to make the trip. That’s awesome. It could be said that this analogy is flawed,since they are simply dressing up as characters and are not actually thecharacter. But that’s okay. That’s not the point. The point is that for this one weekend, theycan feel like that character, and that’s close enough.

The best thing I saw all day was when a group of abouttwenty dudes in kilts were walking down the street. A guy from the crowd, also wearing a kilt,walked into the middle of the street to take a better picture of the otherkilted men. He snapped his photo, made eyecontact with one of the marchers, gave him a thumbs up, and mouthed, “Welldone,” with complete sincerity and a touch of admiration. It kinda blew my mind.

The parade ended and we headed to the Georgia Dome totailgate for the Georgia vs. Boise college football game. Personally, I don’t give a shit about collegefootball. I just wanted to try to getsome free hotdogs and drink beer in a parking lot.

During our twenty mile walk (or something along those lines) my roommate made the mistake of having "1997" on his shirt. Apparently, something fucked up happened in Nigeria that year, because a random voodoo woman on the sidewalk took an interest in him.

"1997! Nigeria is Kenya! I paralyze you! I paralyze you!" she yelled while throwing imaginary lightening bolts in his direction. I'm not exactly sure what she said. "Nigeria is king," is another theory. Either way, she definitely freaked out about the year 1997 and Ted should be getting his back broken any day now. Actually, about five minutes after the curse, he almost got hit by a car. Now, it would've sucked to have to take him to the hospital and deal with all of that shit, but it would've been kinda awesome if the curse came through so quickly.

Cursed or not, we eventually made it to the Georgia Dome. We knew people that were going to betailgating so we figured we’d just meet up with them and party down. But since we went there straight from theparade, we arrived far too early. Thepeople we knew wouldn’t be showing up for another few hours. Great.

We stood in the shade as much as possible and drank ourbeers while watching a bit of a live soap opera unfold. Apparently, some parking lot attendants hadbeen taking some bribes from people to hold parking spaces. Security found out, and they were chargedwith felonies. Yeah, felonies. A bit of an over-reaction? Perhaps. That sucks for the parking lot attendants, but I guess they shouldn’thave been doing shitty shit. Also, itgave us something interesting to watch for a little while so I’m glad ithappened.

After an hour or so of sweating our asses off, we walkedhome to rest up for Dragon Con. A fewhours, two pizzas, a swim, and a shower later, we were ready to hit theroad. We rolled with a crew of eightpeople, all dressed in a different color. The general consensus was that a costume would somehow help us sneak in. We mixed our riot punch (one part Everclear,two parts Gatorade) and hit the road. One of the members of our rainbow knew a person working security whichwe figured would help us get in, even though the guy wasn’t working thedoor. We approached the Hyatt throughthe taxi section of the driveway and walked directly into the building. Booya. The main party was going down at the Marriott across the street, but westarted slow in hopes of crossing through the connecting bridge between the twohotels.

Inside the Hyatt was the general craziness we had come toexpect. Cartoon characters followedcomic book characters through crowds of video game characters. Pretty standard stuff. While wandering around the ground floor, we stumbled across a crowd of people. If we've learned anything from past Dragon Con experiences, it's that crowds equal cool shit. And, of course, we found a Spiderman breakdance battle inside the crowd. A Spiderman breakdance battle is exactly what it sounds like. About five different people dressed as Spiderman traded off breakdance moves in an attempt to draw more applause from the crowd. Kickass.

Eventually, we decided to try to make the switch to the Marriott. Fatal error.

We followed the crowd through the skywalk and towards theMarriott. Two guards at the door. Checking entrance passes. Fuck. We turned around to go back to the Hyatt.

“Hey you, in the hat. Let me see your badge.”

Fuck.

“That one, right there with the black hat. Hey! Stop!”

Busted. But I was theonly one. Everyone else kept walkingwhile they hauled my ass to the sidewalk. I walked around to the front of the hotel and tried to get in the same waywe did the first time.

“Let me see your badge.”

Fuck.

I shrugged my shoulders and walked down the road, finishingoff my riot punch along the way. Eventually, my roommate called to see what the hell was going on. I told him I’d meet him at the bar and thatthey should stay there for as long as possible. There’s no need to make them feel bad for me getting the boot and havingthem leave when there was so much more ridiculousness to enjoy. After a short walk, I sat down at O’Terrill’sand ordered a drink, shocked to find them open past eleven o’clock.

E-book

2011-08-20T09:26:00.001-07:00

Deckfight, a music website that I occasionally write for, recently began releasing e-books under the pseudonym Deckfight Press. They were genial enough to ask me to contribute something, and it is now up for you to look at/download over at their website which is here. You should go here and get this. Just go ahead and click right here, where it says here, and you can get this. For free. You've got nothing to lose besides a tiny amount of disk space, and everything to gain such as the e-book in your choice of a variety of forms.

Download it.

Do it.

Inconsiderate Assholes

2011-08-17T00:52:00.001-07:00

There’s nothing that pisses me off more than when someone is being inconsiderate. Seeing as how I live in Atlanta, I am faced with this brand of horseshit every single day. Seeing as how I drive around Atlanta for my job, I am faced with this horseshit in quantities that are not easily survived by the normal person. Or maybe I have that backwards. I don’t really know.

I have dealt with this selfishness in its truest, purest, concentrated form twice this week and even had a chance to have words with the offenders. The first incident happened as I walked into work during rush hour. The place I work is located on a busy street with four lanes of traffic that are usually packed straight across and backed up for a few blocks.

On a side note, Atlanta’s traffic problem could be solved very easily. Ready for the earth-shattering idea? Time the fucking traffic lights in a coherent fashion. That’s it. That’s all they have to do and the average commute would be cut in half (probably). You would not believe how often you will sit at a red light and stare at a green light a block up, then when your light turns green, you pull up to another red. If the lights would simply keep traffic moving, cars wouldn’t back up. Duh. And yes, I know that if one direction was green at all times the other direction would simply get backed up. That’s where the planning comes in. Just ship in a few college graduates from the north (sorry, people just have it together up there more than they do in the south) and give them a month to figure shit out. But then again, they’d also have to figure out how to keep the traffic lights working when it rains. I’m sure this screws with the timing so they’d have to solve that impossible feat first, I guess. Seriously, every time it rains the traffic lights around Midtown immediately start blinking red or yellow. Every fucking time. And then, of course, no one knows how to drive through blinking lights so traffic backs up even more. Goddamn it, why don’t they have driver’s education classes in the south? Do people here like being uninformed about how to live in a society? Is that fun for them? There’s a sign at a stoplight right next to my work that says, “Left Turn Permitted After Stop.” That means you can turn left on a fucking red light when you’re coming from a one-way street and going onto a one-way street. It’s okay. It’s says it’s okay right there. Just fucking go you illiterate pricks. You should know that fucking rule already. Or at least you would if your state actually taught people the rules of the road instead of depending on parents who are uninformed to pass their uninformation on to their kids. Goddamn it.

Anyways, back to the four lanes of congestion in front of work. So, yeah, shit is always backed up. Sometimes, however, the late-afternoon commuters are given an extra gift when someone decides to park in front of our restaurant and simply throw on the hazards, traffic be damned.

Earlier this week, I walked up to the restaurant and saw a UPS truck out front with the hazard lights on. Okay, no big deal. He’ll just be a minute and then off he’ll go. He only parked there because it would be a hassle to park in the parking lot just for the two minutes it would take to drop off the package. Then I walked into the restaurant and found a man in a brown shirt with matching brown shorts casually eating some goddamn chicken wings.

“Is that your truck out there?” I asked as I pointed to shit-colored truck receiving a symphony of honks.

Buffalo sauce dripping from his chin and chicken wing in hand, he wordlessly nodded as if I asked him if he knew where I could find some clouds.

“And you don’t care that you’re blocking traffic?”

Again, sauce dripping and chicken wing clenched in his fingers, he silently nodded. If I could hear other people’s thoughts, I’m sure I would have heard him say, “Yes, of course that’s my truck. Traffic? Yeah? There sure is a lot of it out there! Whew!”

I felt a bubble grow in my chest and knew that if I didn’t walk away, I would probably lose my job. I’m guessing it would be frowned upon if I were to call a customer an asshole in front of my manager in the lobby of the restaurant while wearing a hat with the company name boldly displayed on the front. I simply walked in the back and tried not to keep track of how long this fucking asshole calmly ate his dinner while inconveniencing at least two hundred people.

There had to be at least thirty cars behind him at one point in time, which were constantly moving past and being replaced by other cars. Then the cars in the adjacent lane would also be inconvenienced, doubling the number. Even if there was only one person in each car, that would be about 60 people every five minutes that this guy caused about twenty seconds of displeasure. And that’s a conservative estimate. Doesn’t seem like much? He was probably there for twenty minutes. That’s 240 people. With three people equaling one minute, this man caused 80 minutes of pissed off people which could have easily been avoided by simply parking in one of the two parking lots within twenty feet of where his truck sat. Or he could have just taken the box into his truck, driven somewhere else, and eaten it there. It was already in a to-go box. But he didn’t care. He actually seemed to not even understand what was wrong with what he was doing.

Inconsiderate asshole in its purest form.

This type of shit happens all the time. People are always pulling the hazard light maneuver. Another great move is simply parking in the driveway for the restaurant but not pulling the extra fifteen feet to the parking lot. I’ve also had words with customers about this. Every time I do it, I am reminded that this might lead me to get “swung on.” But, I figure if no one’s done it yet, I should be in the clear.

The second instance of assholery I encountered this week happened in my car. I was stopped at a red light and people were trying to hurry up and turn left which inevitably leads to someone piling into the intersection when there isn’t enough room for their car. Sometimes you misjudge how much room is there, it’s okay. Kinda. Well, not really. Usually when this happens and the light turns green, leaving people going the opposite way with an obstructed path, the offender will pull as far forward as possible or simply move over to the unoccupied lane to clear the way.

Now, I was at the front of the line. The first to go through the intersection. I saw the numbers on the crosswalk sign counting to zero and knew this stupid woman was not going to get through the light. Big surprise, she was stuck in the middle of the fucking intersection when the opposite light turned green.

Once again, this is rush hour traffic. The entire block as far as I could see in my rear-view mirror was full of cars in all three lanes. The woman in front of me, her car was about four feet in front of me, was simply talking on her cell phone and waiting for the cars in front of her start moving so she could go about her trip.

I gave her a polite horn honk. She glanced over at me for a moment before continuing to do nothing. I honked again. She did nothing. I hung my head out of the window.

“Hey, just move over to the other lane,” I said, pointing to the clear lane three feet to her right.

She just ignored me, surely talking about the situation with whoever she was speaking with. I took this opportunity to lay on my horn for about ten seconds straight. I hung my head out of the window.

“Move your car!” More horn honks. And not just me, people behind me waiting to turn left have joined in. I guess I should have mentioned that I sat in the far left lane, and with the middle lane a constant stream of cars, I had no means of going around the woman.

At this point, people on the sidewalks have taken notice of the situation, as have people in cars heading across my lane, calmly waiting for their red light like well-behaved citizens. I see people facing us and smiling, obviously taking pleasure in the sight of a guy losing his mind because of the stupid actions of another person.

Eventually, she rolled her window up and continued talking on the phone, even smiling as I gradually lost my mind with anger. I hung my head out of the window.

“Oh that’s right. No one matters but you, right? Nothing matters as long as you get what you want and everybody else can just go to hell, right? Is that what you really think?” I was screaming like a deranged lunatic. If I was on the sidewalk watching myself at this moment I would have applauded and tried to get everyone around me to do the same, as soon as I had finished laughing at the crazy person.

I wanted to get out of my car and kick a hole in her stupid window and then grab her by her stupid hair and pull her onto the pavement where I would kick her in her throat, reach in her car, put it in neutral, and then push it into the vacant lane that she seemed to have a holy grudge against.

But I had the sign for the restaurant on the top of my car and a hat with the logo prominently displayed on the front, so I did none of these things. I didn’t even get to swear at her or spit on her window when she finally moved the fuck out of my goddamn motherfucking way. All I could do was hang my head out of the window.

“Thank you!”

Inconsiderate asshole in its purest form. And there are thousands of them surrounding me at all times.

Anxiety attacks suck.

2011-07-24T23:46:00.001-07:00

A few years ago, I had the privilege of watching a friend of mine have an anxiety attack. We were at work, probably schleppin’ potato salad and complaining about Russian accents when all of a sudden her eyes grew wide and she started freaking out.

“What is wrong with me? I feel like I’m dying,” she repeated over and over as she paced around and asked anybody and everybody what the hell was happening and how to make it better. Eventually I had to punch out and take her home where she could continue losing her mind while not being in public.

“Shit, I don’t know. Slam a bunch of water and try to take a nap or something,” was all I could tell her when asked what she should do. I had no idea what was happening. It just looked like she was freaking out and those two things basically fix everything (including cancer) so I figured that’d be the way to go. However, I failed to realize that what she was going through was a mental thing and not a physical thing.

Also, my roommate is afraid of heights. I always assumed this just meant that he’s a big ol’ pussy and have taken every opportunity to mock him mercilessly whenever bouts of vertigo overtake him while we find our seats in the top tier of Turner Field.

Now, however, both of these things have become illuminated by the wonderful light of experience. Today, for some reason, my mind short-circuited and I came the closest I have ever come to completely losing my mind.

There could be many factors for this (drinking coffee and five-hour energy drinks right beforehand, high levels of stress due to dangerous driving conditions, an oppressive lack of sleep, an alcohol-soaked hungover body, etc.) but nothing is certain except for the inciting moment which is something that should merit nothing more than a comment to somebody right next to you at the time it happens. It’s definitely not an experience you would recall at a later point and fill somebody in on the details.

We were driving through the mountains in Tennessee when the trees lining the road cleared for a moment and the horizon became clear. A mountain range sat below a setting sun with a few clouds strewn about the sky. A sharp drop-off could be seen next to the highway after a sturdy guardrail and a brief section of trees. It was a beautiful view, but not anything crazy, out of the ordinary, or new. But for some reason, when the trees cleared for that two second window and I saw all of this, my entire view of myself, the world, and physical properties such as gravity and simply which way was up got thrown right out of the window.

My heart stopped like a cop had just busted me selling black tar heroin to a six-year-old handicapped child on Christmas. My head spun like Bo Jackson blasted my internal equilibrium with a baseball bat. My heart then started to race and my breathing became heavier. But the mental repercussions of viewing the sunset were far worse than any physical change I was experiencing. I’ve been dizzy and scared before. I can deal with that. But what really freaked me out was fifteen minutes later, when I finally got my vision and balance under control and I became afraid of everything around me.

I was completely overwhelmed by nature and the outside world. There were too many billboards. The mountains where too big. There were too many trees. Nothing made sense to me. I was convinced we would be falling off the side of the highway at any minute and shortly afterwards an explosion would incinerate me and my roommate. For sure. That was definitely going to happen. I realized that I wasn’t thinking rationally but had no control over it. I couldn’t just say, “Hey Josh, that’s crazy. Start thinking normal again.” It was more like, “Uh-oh Josh, that’s crazy. I hope one day you’ll be able to think normal again.”

I thought I was going to puke. I thought my body was going to stop working. I envisioned scenarios where I would never be able to leave the house again because if the world continued to look to me the way it currently did, I would never be able to go outside ever again. The world was horrifying. Everything about everything scared the living shit out of me.

I was in the middle of having my first anxiety attack, and it was the most awful feeling I’ve ever experienced. It was all triggered by a forgettable, albeit picturesque, view which was followed by a hit of vertigo before becoming a mind-paralyzing, body-melting couple of hours.

Now that I’m able to look back on the experience with an objective, reality-based viewpoint, it really blows my mind. Not as much as a sun hanging out over a mountain, I guess, but still pretty amazing. I’ve never lost touch with reality that much before. I was completely humbled to the world, fully realizing my insignificance next to a mountain. I’m just a speck of nothing in an inconsequential period of time in one tiny section of the universe. Nothing I do will ever actually matter. Nothing any of us do will actually change the course of the world, and even if it did it still wouldn’t matter to the universe. This realization all came in one instant and it basically popped my brain. I came as close as you can get to literally blowing my mind besides stuffing dynamite into my ear and lighting the wick.

I spent the following couple hours or so trying to piece my life back together and convince myself that the imposing outside world is nothing to be afraid of. The fear that is turning your insides into ice is irrational and should be ignored. Sure, those mountains all around you are big, but they’re not going to hurt you. They can’t. Neither will the clouds above them, the dirt beneath you, or anything else besides the cigarettes in your pocket. So just grab one of those and chill the fuck out.

It’s been a little over five hours since my little dance with insanity and I still don’t feel completely normal. I’m hoping a solid night of sleep will knock the rest of this weirdness out of me. Now when I think of Ted saying there’s no way he’ll go to the top of a hotel and look out the window or Katrine saying she tries her best not to drink coffee because it might make her body freak out again, I have a completely new perspective. If I had known then what I know now, I would have handled each situation in a completely different manner. I guess that kind of goes without saying, but I feel like if I don’t learn anything from this experience it would really be a terrible way to waste time. And now I have a brand new thing to worry about and try to figure out how to never do ever again.

Journey sucks.

2011-06-29T15:57:00.001-07:00

A few years ago (and when I say a few, I actually mean somewhere around six) some friends of mine and I got into a pretty heated debate. It’s a simple question with a simple answer: Who’s better, Boston or Journey? The answer, of course, is Boston. “Hey Josh, Boston only had one good album!” You’re right. But that album is fucking awesome. And don’t tell me that “More Than a Feeling” is played out because that’s not even close to the best part of their self-titled debut album. Find something as kickass as the high notes in “Rock & Roll Band” at the “Signed a record company contract!” part, and then we can talk.

But Boston’s kickassity notwithstanding, Journey sucks. They suck. Sorry. You may think you like them, but that’s only because you’ve liked them in an ironic way for so long that you bought into your own bullshit and can’t even remember who you are or what you actually like anymore. Everyone says they “love” Journey, which is fucking ridiculous. How many times have you been at a bar/party and “Don’t Stop Believing” comes on, leading to everyone screaming the lyrics at the top of their lungs? Most likely a bunch unless you sit at home and suck all the time. Everyone smiles beneath their backwards baseball hats and says, “Shit, man! I love this song!”

But you don’t. You don’t love that song. If are you one of those people who says they like Journey in situations like this, ask yourself this question: When was the last time you were driving in your car, flipping through your ipod (or CD case, depending on where you are in portable, musical technology) and said to yourself, “Y’know? I really feel like jammin’ on some Journey.” Of course there will be exceptions, but I’m willing to bet my balls that 95% of you never say this. Never even think it. You know why? Because Journey sucks and you don’t actually like them.

Their songs sound like what I imagine a 12-year-old girl’s diary would sound like if the words were converted to musical notes. Steve Perry looks like a guy that would stand outside of an arcade and try to hit on overweight, single moms (because, let’s be honest, they’re the easiest ones to get). Plus, they made this video. Now, I bet a lot of people would see that and say, “Dude! That’s video’s awesome! LOLZ!!!” But they’re wrong. This video sucks. I don’t care that it was one of the first music videos. They look like idiots. You can’t argue with that.

I’m going to give a pass to anyone born before 1970 because that would put you at eleven-years-old when “Escape” came out, and therefore affords you the possibility of having sentimental attachments to these songs. Anyone born after 1970 is full of shit. And people born in the 80’s can seriously go fuck themselves.

It’s funny to say you like Journey, just like it’s funny to say you like to eat black licorice, wear t-shirts with shitty slogans, and ice your bros. The thing is, no one actually likes that shit, and if they do, they shouldn’t. Why? Because all of that shit is stupid. Listen to Journey's music without thinking of impressing the guy with the tribal sleeve or the girl in the tank top with the flower between her back-fat flanks next Wednesday at karaoke. It’s horseshit. It doesn’t “rock,” it doesn’t “wail,” they don’t “shred,” and it certainly isn’t good. If I see you at a bar and you try to blast anything with Steve Perry’s voice shitting all over the place, I’ll simply turn the jukebox down (a bartender showed me how to do it) and softly hum “Master of Puppets” to myself while you forget what just happened.

Let me look in.

2011-06-12T18:35:00.003-07:00

A few months ago, I wrote a song based on a short story I wrote in 2004. I recorded the song yesterday and then went on a bike ride. On said bike ride, I recorded some video on my camera and plopped it together in a video editing program I stumbled across the other night.

Here it is:

The story was written while in a paper mill in Kimberly, WI. I sat on my tow-motor and wrote it on a scrap I peeled off of a thousand pound roll of paper while waiting for the winder to spit out a few more rolls for me to move. It's not my favorite thing I've ever written, but I still think the idea is pretty interesting.

Anyways, here it is:

Let me look in

Let me look through your skin, past your bones, and into the deepest parts of your body. I know it sounds a little perverted, but I want to be inside you. To go in as far as I can go and fall asleep atop your stomach. I could sit, legs crossed beneath me, and look over either shoulder and watch your lungs slowly inflate and relax. I’d listen as the oxygen is drawn in and slowly released, trying to time my own breath to match yours. I could reach a hand over and draw small, circular designs on your intestines, whistling or humming to myself. I could reach over and grab your gall bladder, or maybe a kidney or two, and play catch with myself. Or maybe I could drag my hand along your ribcage like an old washing board, scratching out simple time signatures. However, I’d most likely lie back on the soft cushion of your stomach and watch your beating heart. I would trace along your veins as the blood is funneled through. After a short while I would figure out the rhythm and tap along on my leg, adding slight syncopations every so often to spice things up. I might even reach a hand up and grab hold of the beating muscle. I wouldn’t grab hard enough to constrict it, but just enough to feel the slight movement within my hand. I would hold it this way until my arms grew tired, experiencing you in the most simple, intimate way possible. When I couldn’t hold my hands above my head anymore, I would lie back down and watch your rhythmically pulsating heart as I fell asleep.

But perhaps I would grow tired of the situation. Perhaps after crawling inside, I would find it cramped and uncomfortable. I would look in disgust at all the dripping pieces of you flopping around me, each of them performing their own repulsing action simultaneously in perpetual motion. I would look down at my seat of yesterday’s food, and up at your tar-filled lungs processing smoke and other pollutants. I would first push my right arm up and into the warmness above me, blindly reaching around since I’d have to look down to avoid the falling liquids. My arm would eventually find its tunnel and move to the right until it reached the end. My other arm would mirror the action of the first. With my new-found sleeves, I’d kick my legs down as hard as I could until they found tunnels of their own. People around you would notice your right arm start to bulge at the shoulder and move towards your hands. A kid might say it looks like the balloon animal a clown made for him at a birthday party. The bystanders would watch in horror as the same thing happened to your left arm, then both of your legs while you scream in excruciating pain. After finding proper resting points for all my extremities, I’d make the final escape. Using my arms and the tunnels they found as hoists, I’d start to pull myself up. The onlookers would notice your arms flailing about wildly as if you believed if you flapped hard enough, you just might be able to fly. All of a sudden, fluid would start shooting from your mouth, gargling your screams. Bystanders would either turn away, vomit, or watch through the fingers covering their eyes. Eventually your screams would become muted, leaving you with only the ability to gasp for the air that has ceased to come as your neck begins to slowly swell. Beginning at the base of your neck is what would look to be a small basketball working its way up, much like when a snake is in the process of swallowing a smaller animal, except in reverse. Your eyes would bulge as if they might pop right out of your head as they become as red as the blood pouring from your ears, nose, and mouth. I’d continue pulling myself up. The basketball in your neck would slowly rise, emitting a slight stretching sound with an occasional crack or pop, each of which would send your body into a slight convulsion. Finally, when the basketball reached the top of the neck, I’d break free of my prison, wearing a brand-new suit and various fluids dripping from my face and hair. I’d look down to notice your head lying next to my (your) feet, eyes wide open, tongue hanging from the side of your mouth, blood draining from all available holes. I’d look at my (your) arms which would resemble yours, just inflated. As I walk away from the crowd that would be sure to gather around me (us) when I first climbed in, I’d realize this to be the closest I have ever let myself get to somebody, and it would feel good.

Art can be idiotic.

2011-05-24T17:23:00.006-07:00

I’ve always had a fairly tenuous relationship with visual art. I don’t know much about it, I have pretty specific tastes, and I think a lot of it is complete horseshit. Specifically, abstract and conceptual art is often horseshit. I’m not saying all of it is bad, but I’ve seen a lot of examples of horseshit in the few exhibits I’ve been to.

I’m sure you’ve gone to an art gallery with somebody that doesn’t want to be there, or at least stood near a group where someone was dragged along. Inevitably, that person will say something to the effect of, “Jesus Christ, I did a child draw this? Shit, I could do this!”

This adulation for the mundane has now been taken to a whole new level. In a few weeks, an exhibit by Aelita Andre will open in New York. Why is this notable? She's four-fucking-years-old.

FOUR. She’s been deemed a prodigy by the art community for her abstract paintings. That should be read: Dribbles with paint on canvas. It’s nothing more than that. Every four-year-old makes paintings like that. You know why? Because they don’t yet have the talent to really express themselves in a meaningful way, so they just throw a bunch of shit together because it’s fun. Watch the video in the article. She’s playing. She’s not throwing this on that because it represents anything. She’s doing it because it’s fun to do. If that’s all it takes to be a prodigy, then I’m a prodigy at swimming, watching Maury Povich, and eating sandwiches.

The first question that popped into my mind was answered before I even asked it, somehow. How did she get into this shit? Here comes the surprise: Both of her parents are artists. Wow, never would’ve guessed. They probably saw their kid pick up a paintbrush one day because it had a drop of water on it and it looked pretty, and they were like, “Honey! Holy fuck. She’s meant to be an artiste!”

The story goes, her mother showed some of her work to the curator of an exhibition and he liked it. She then told the guy that it was done by her kid. He’ll never admit it, but here’s what happened: He got caught in his own bullshit. Immediately, he thought, “Oh fuck. A kid drew that? I know it looks like a kid drew it, but adults throw this shit together all the time and then retards buy it for thousands of dollars. If I say I don’t like it now that I know a kid did it and not some dumbass adult, the whole charade will be recognized and the entire industry will crumble, not to mention the fact that I’ll look like a total boner.” So instead of saying, “Oh right. I should have known a kid drew that,” he said, “I don’t care. She’s a prodigy.”

And the really fucked up part is that everybody believed him. Now she’s traveled the world, had a 60 Minutes piece done about her, has her trash hung in Europe, Asia, and Australia instead of on her mom’s refrigerator where it belongs, and people are calling her a genius.

The article talks about her like she’s the offspring of Jesus, John Lennon, every Queen of England ever, and Aphrodite. They praise her, saying “despite all her fame and international travel, she continues to maintain a child’s innocent perspective.” You know why she has a child’s innocent perspective? Because she’shttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif fucking four-years-old. Do you expect her to be smoking cigarettes and talking about how the world is a hollow shell driven by consumerism and populated by charlatans? She’s four. She’s too busy thinking about fruit snacks.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ripping on the Aelita. In fact, good for her. She’s getting paid for being a kid. That’s awesome. It’s the art community that I think needs to seriously re-evaluate how they operate. The definition of “art” has always been an evolving subject. I don’t doubt that her paintings can be labeled as “art.” But I doubt they’re worth between $4,500 and $9,000 a piece (which is what they’re selling for). At most, they’re worth the cost of the canvas and paint plus the banana from your lunch box. That’s all kid’s art is ever worth: Whatever you can trade for it at lunch.

Fuck the Postal Service

2011-04-23T01:00:00.002-07:00

Not the band. I have no problem with them. I’m talking about the “Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow” assholes that only seem to be capable of bringing bad news. The only things I ever get from them are bills, unsolicited advertisements, or notices from my bank that could easily come to my attention by e-mail. “Did you know that if you open an account with a balance of $1,000, we’ll give you a coupon for a car wash?” Fuck you bank, I don’t care. I have bums take care of that for me.

I don’t receive letters (maybe once in a while), I don’t receive checks (besides the tax refund I just got), and I don’t receive toys/candy/beer EVER by mail. So what is the United States Postal Service good for? Turns out, nothing.

What’s the Postal Service’s job? To bring shit from here to there. Or from there to here. All you have to do is read the thing where it says, “Bring it to this exact location. Here’s some specific numbers to guide you,” and bring it there. That’s it. I’ve been a delivery driver for a while, and it’s basically the same thing. It’s simple. I’ve worked with some really stupid people, and even they were able to get it right. A person who doesn’t speak English or know the arrangement of roads could do it. Get a GPS, and match the numbers and letters one-by-one if you have to. Easy.

I recently decided to splurge and buy myself three Elliott Smith records (XO, Figure 8, and New Moon). Now when I say records, I mean the black things that spin in a circle with a tiny needle scraping off the music (that’s how it works, right?). They’re not small. They’re not something that could fall behind a lamp and be lost forever. If you had weak fingers, it would take two hands to hold them. Point being, they’re hard to lose.

Two records came in one package which had a tracking number. It lets you know where it checks in during its journey from one side of the country to the other until BOOM it’s delivered to your house. Ideally. It even tells you the exact time the package was delivered. The package with a tracking number says it was delivered to my house on April 6th at 3:38 p.m. The funny thing about that is, I was at my house at that time and I got like no fucking package.

Keep in mind, there is another record of mine without a tracking number floating around somewhere out there in the black hole of the Postal Service. Who the fuck knows where that one is, though.

I called the post office with the tracking number for the first package and they said it was in the leasing office. So I went there and found out that they also got like no fucking package. I call them back, they say they’ll look into it and call me back. They don’t. I call them back and bitch and bitch and they give me another number to call which I do and they say they’ll call me back. They don’t. I call them back and bitch and bitch and they say they’ll make a quick phone call and call me right back. They don’t. I call back and the office is close and I’m PISSED. Next morning, I wake up and call and bitch and bitch and bitch and bitch. They tell me they’ll call me back and I tell them to go fuck themselves, I’m not hanging up.

They set up a little conference call with the local post office, myself, and the person who’s supposed to be helping me. They say all the same shit they had said all along and eventually tell me that the postal carrier is in the room if I would like to speak with her.

Sure.

“You’re my postal carrier?”

“Yes.”

“Did you scan my package as delivered?”

“No. I was off that day.”

“Then why the hell am I talking to you?”

“I don’t know.”

Goddamn it. She gets off and I go back to bitching like crazy until they let it slip that the person who was actually working that day is there.

“Put her on the phone.”

I don’t know why, but they do it.

“Did you scan the package as delivered?”

“If it says it was delivered, then yes I did.”

“Then where the hell is it?”

“If I delivered it, I put a note in your mailbox.”

“There was no note.”

“Well, I always put a note in the mailbox.”

“Well, you didn’t put a note in the mailbox.”

“I always do.”

“Did you put it in the right mailbox?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you know how numbers work?”

I guess she got offended because she put the phone down and walked away. After this, the person at the post office said she was busy and hung up. Now I’m just left with the original woman that has no idea how to make outgoing phone calls.

“Well, it looks like it’s lost.”

“Excuse me? There’s nothing we can do?”

“No. Sorry.”

Apparently, using the United States Postal Service is a gamble. Sometimes they’ll do their job, and if they decide not to, then you’re shit out of luck. Sorry. It’s understandable though, addresses are really hard to understand sometimes. I mean, the street name only matches the street you live on every time, and the address where you live is exclusive to only you so it’s easy to get it mixed up with somebody else.

Those fucking mother fuckers not only cost me about $75, but they robbed me the joy of opening a package to find something I really like. That’s like going into a family’s house on Christmas morning before the kid wakes up, but you have to go in right before he gets up because you want him to hear the parents stuffing the presents underneath the tree the night before so he knows he’s getting a bunch of sweet shit, then before the kid gets up, you take all the presents out to the front yard, cover them in gasoline, and light them on fire. So not only did the USPS cost me $75, but they also cost me a Christmas morning in April.

The USPS hates Jesus and Capitalism.

I can’t wait until I see the fill-in mail carrier bitch around the apartment complex. I’m usually walking my dog at the time they come and have a bag of poop in my hand. She might not know where my records are (or maybe she stole them that fucking bitch) but she’ll definitely know that she fucked up when there is poop all over her windshield and car seat.

Do not pass "Go"

2011-03-22T00:08:00.005-07:00

I go to jail almost every night. Sometimes more than once. It sucks. Every time. I’ve never left there and said to myself, “Hell yeah. That was kickass.” Now, I’m simply delivering there. I usually wait next to the metal detectors and try to avoid conversation with the guard sitting behind the table who’s alternating between reading a magazine, staring at the wall, or making a joke along the lines of, “They won’t notice one wing missing from that box!” That joke wasn’t funny the first time I heard it, and it’s still not funny after the thousandth time. Also, I don’t carry around extra food with me, which is another question that seems like common knowledge but apparently is not since I get asked all the time.

The funniest part about going to the Fulton County Jail is the electronic sign in the area that people wait for their family/friends to be released. It’s the same sign that might tell you balloons are on sale at the grocery store, or to inform you that you have just entered Spencer’s Gifts at the mall. It has the multi-colored letters that sometimes scroll from the left, sometimes from both sides, sometimes appearing pixel-by-pixel, sometimes exploding after the message is fully formed, etc. spelling out messages such as “Welcome to the Fulton County Jail.” The point being, it’s really festive. It’s supposed to portray a “fun” mood which is juxtaposed with one of the most oppressive atmospheres in our society.

My first delivery tonight went to 901 Rice Street. The jail. A great way to start a night because you know you’re going to have to wait a long time for them to show up and you know you aren’t getting tipped. This is just the way it works there. As I parked my car, I noticed the CNN van sitting in one of the parking stalls. As I got inside I asked the guard what was going on. He told me this crazy story and proceeded to tell everyone who came within earshot the exact same story. He told the story to a guy who worked for the jail that was eating a HoneyBun (or whatever they’re called). When the first guy was done with the incinerated children story, the second guy asked him about another gentleman standing outside. The guy outside had been there since I showed up and hadn’t moved more than ten feet from the front of the jail. He was smiling, swinging his arms, and talking to people as they walked past him, at one point he clapped the rhythm to the start of the car wash song while slowly dancing back and forth.

The guard told the HoneyBun guy that the dude outside had been released earlier that day and was waiting for a ride.

“He’s intimidating people out there, man,” said HoneyBun.

“Yeah, I’ve already told him he needs to go. I’ve been nice. If he don’t leave soon I’ll call up the muscle. I’ll put it on him if he don’t leave. I’ve tried being nice,” responded the guard.

“Yeah, he said he was gonna snatch my HoneyBun,” he said as he crinkled the wrapper and shoved more in his mouth.

Eventually I found the person I was delivering to, but there was a problem and I had to call the restaurant. Since you can’t bring phones into the jail, I had to step outside to make the phone call. I was about six feet from the dude that wouldn’t leave.

I finished my phone call as a girl approached the jail with her cell phone in one hand and her I.D. in the other. The dude snatched her I.D. from her and started twisting it, trying to tear it.

“I know you. You live on Brookhaven. I know you,” he said as he bent the card without actually breaking it.

He did this for ten seconds or so while the girl stuck her head in the door and asked the security to help her out. The guard came out, as did HoneyBun and another guard that was standing around doing nothing.

“You gotta go. You gotta go,” said the guard as he pulled his can of pepper spray from his Batman utility belt.

The dude wouldn’t move until the pepper spray came out, and then they walked into the parking lot. I figured the show was over so I went back inside to finish the delivery, get my no-tip and carry on with my night. I walked inside, and waved for the guy to meet me by the metal detector since I couldn’t take my phone inside. He started walking towards me, then quickened his pace.

I turned around and saw the dude sprinting towards the jail. Towards the only door into the jail. Towards the door I was standing directly behind. The dude tried to open the door and come back into the jail as four security guards body checked him into the glass like hockey players and took him to the ground. The guy I was delivering to, another guard, ran outside just after the dude hit the ground.

I glanced around to see if it would be deemed inappropriate to take a picture of the ordeal with my cell phone. I turned to my right, towards the waiting room, and saw two different sets of gold teeth smiling and watching the fight. Two other jail workers sat safely behind the glass and watched with smiles. A woman walking up to the jail from the sidewalk stood a few paces from the brawl and watched it like a TV show. I felt like a cell phone picture would not bring resentment because of its lack of tact. The only resentment it might foster would be from the fact that I was the only person that had access to their cell phone to take such a picture and the resulting jealousy.

Now, this dude was strong. The guards had to fight him for over a minute to get his arms behind his back to handcuff him. When they first took him down, I saw the can of pepper spray roll away from the pile, obviously slipping from the hand of the guard during an attempt to use it.

Before he was tackled, I was nervous the dude was going to get into the door I stood next to, but after seeing how strong he was I realized how lucky I am that he didn’t get through. I have no reason to believe he was coming back inside to hurt me, but I also don’t have a reason to believe he wouldn’t. One punch from that maniac and I would have been a bloody, shitty Josh.

Eventually, they cuffed him, stood him up, and walked him back into the jail where I’m sure he’s sitting right now. It wasn’t until ten minutes later, when I finally got to leave, that I thought about what had just happened. The man got released from jail, banished from the premises because he wouldn’t leave, and then arrested as he tried to break back in. To jail. He got arrested because he tried to break back into jail. Think about that.

My first thought was that maybe he didn’t have anywhere else to go. He looked like he was out of his mind, and after the events I witnessed now have no doubt he was. It’s not like he was going to go back to work or anything now that he was out of jail. Maybe not being in jail is scarier for him than being in jail. At least you know you won’t get rained on and when you’re going to eat next when you’re in jail. That’s a strange thought, that normal society may have been more frightening to him than jail. And this isn’t a nice jail either. I’ve heard stories from coworkers about what goes on in there. It’s fucking horrifying.

When I got back to the restaurant, I told my coworkers what had happened.

“He didn’t want to be out.”

“Yeah, he wanted to be right back in there.”

They raised another good possibility: People could be looking for him. People that are obviously worse to get caught by than the police. Perhaps he owes someone money. Perhaps whatever he got arrested for in the first place has earned him a beating, or worse, by whomever he committed the crime against.

Or it could just be that he has severe mental problems without the resources to take care of it. Maybe he’s just off his meds and didn’t know what to do/what was going on and ran towards a familiar place. I was looking into his eyes as he tried tearing up that girl’s I.D. He was nuts. For sure. There’s this vacant look I’ve come to recognize in many homeless people that are either fucked up on drugs, mentally insane, or a mix of the two. It’s not a good look. This man had it.

Either way, he’s in a reality I can’t even begin to understand. It’s funny to watch a dude getting taken down by the cops when it’s obvious that it needs to happen. It’s a little depressing to think of what might be going on inside the dude’s head as he struggles with all of his strength to keep his arms from being forced behind his back to be handcuffed.

Music!

2011-03-10T23:51:00.005-08:00

I've had a myspace music page forever, but that sucks and I've forgotten my password long ago. So, imagine my excitement when I stumbled upon a new website (or at least new to me) where I can post all my music that never sees the light of day.

I've decided to put up a few new songs, as well as the album I put together last year called Luna Programme,

and an album I put together in 2008 called I Hate the Desert So Much.

The two full-length releases are available for free download, so if you feel like taking a stroll down memory lane (even though you most likely have no memories involving these songs) you can feel free to plop them right onto your computer without fussing with a CD case or any of the hassles involved with getting music the old-fashioned way. But, of course, there is the try-before-you-buy (for free) feature where you can simply stream the songs and hear what they sound like before commiting your precious disk space to them.

So there you go. Enjoy.

New Orleans pt.1

2011-02-09T00:32:00.005-08:00

As soon as the Packers won the NFC Championship, the immediate question was, “What the hell are we doing for the Super Bowl?” A few stupid ideas got tossed around before the god’s of great ideas shined upon Ted and his eyes lit up.

“New Orleans.”

Everyone who was within earshot immediately knew it was a great idea. Everyone that eventually heard about it knew it was a great idea. Even if you never heard it, you knew it was a great idea. We had been looking for an excuse to go there since Ted’s brother Stu moved there a few months ago. The Packers in the Super Bowl, preceded by my birthday? Perfect excuse.

All necessary arrangements were made and it was solidified: Jeff, Ted and I would go to Stu’s where he had two other friends meeting up. Six dudes. One apartment. In New Orleans.

We started the drive after I got out of work on Friday night, which made it around 3:15 a.m. when we hit the road. I took the first leg of the trip since I’m up until five in the morning every day anyways. The first weird experience came somewhere in Alabama. We stopped at a gas station to fill up on Twix bars. As I walked around, I noticed the gas station attendant looking at me so I looked up and nodded at him.

“Hey, is your name Josh?” he asked.

No shit. I thought it was one of those moments when the whole universe finally makes sense, and every silly thought I ever had about things linking together finally came to fruition and from this point forward everything could work in a new way and I’d be one with the universe as well as all living things and we could learn together and grow into a new beautiful future without any pretense or ill-will in which no ruling class would be needed and common sense would govern all actions and people could finally live together without crime or hate or anything that makes society difficult to live in.

“Uh, yeah,” I said.

“Are you Josh Whateverthefuck?” (I don’t remember the last name he actually said).

“No.”

“Oh, whew! That would have been cool!” he said while shaking his hands and catching his breath.

It turns out there is a local guitar player named Josh Something that must be a pretty big deal since it had this guy worked up like a little girl that just saw Barney (he’s still around, right?).

I walked out of the gas station immediately mad at myself for not pretending I was whoever he thought I was. I could have signed an autograph for him, maybe taken a picture with him on a cell phone. And maybe they would have taken that picture and hung it on the wall with my fake name on top of it until somebody realized that I wasn’t who I said I was. But for that amount of time, I would have had my picture hung on the wall in some nowhere gas station in the middle of nowhere Alabama. Or maybe they would forget about it once they put it between the scratch-off tickets and the bulletproof glass or something and it would stay there for a long time. Then, someone I know might drive through Alabama and stop at the same gas station for Twix bars and see my picture, after which they would lose their mind and either laugh hysterically or kill themselves. I’m still mad that I missed this opportunity.

We left the gas station and joked about the guy’s accent because we’re assholes while eating Twix bars when we saw the next fucked up thing: There was a car on a side road that was on its back. Upside-Down Car with the headlights still on could only mean one thing, it just happened and the dude was probably still in there (I guess that’s two things).

“Should we call 911?”

“Nah, fuck him.”

A minute later we saw ambulances coming down the opposite side of the highway so we figured the guy in the Upside-Down Car would be alright. We continued driving and had the kind of conversations any normal group of under slept guys in the middle of Nowhere in the south would have. I told Ted everything I know about clouds. He told me that it was the cloudiest day he had ever seen in his entire life, and was completely serious in his assessment. We then tried to guess where the sun was. As you can see, really exciting stuff.

Eventually the sun came up and we could see the brand of Nothing we were surrounded by. We started hitting bridges that were longer than you could see and taller than they needed to be. On each side there was usually nothing. Just a big, wet, swamp that can never be used in a productive manner and will never be used in a productive manner besides hunting wildlife and disposing of bodies.

After getting through that mess of useless land, we hit New Orleans where the uselessness of everything didn’t change. The first thing you see when you come into New Orleans is the section that got hit hardest by Katrina. Hurricane Katrina, that is. I don’t know if you remember, but there was a pretty bad storm in New Orleans in 2005.

It looks like they didn’t fix anything. I think this is because they didn’t fix anything. All the houses had holes in them. All of them. It looked like a town that had been abandoned in 1952 and left to slowly wear away in the breeze while being taken over by birds and squirrels. I don’t remember seeing one person while driving through this section of town. I saw a lot of birds, but not one person. Did they just give up? Were they forced to move because they couldn’t afford to fix their house? Did they decide to do nothing because everybody else was doing nothing? It’s been five and a half years, something should look better by now, right? What the fuck?

I didn’t really think about it at the time, but now when I think back to the videos I saw of people sitting on top of their houses with “Help Me!” signs or paddling canoes through the streets or just generally what happened at the Super Dome (or the Rape/Poop Dome), it’s unbelievable. The whole section of town was basically flushed down the toilet, but the toilet is the city itself so it just backed up and resulted in sewage and dead bodies floating around like bubbles after a splash. That’s crazy.

And now when you see this section, it’s deserted. It’s abandoned. I don’t know how they could start to clean it up without simply bulldozing the whole thing and starting over. What else is there to do? If they have only gotten this far in the amount of time that has passed, it seems like they don’t have any better ideas, either.

We drove past the Super (Rape/Poop) Dome, through the skyline, and into the city itself. There wasn’t anything too special besides this Packers Subway on the way to the place we would be staying, just a lot of stupid intersections that didn’t seem to have any forethought put into them and one-way streets that make it much more difficult to find your destination after missing a turn.

Go pack go.

I planned on just knocking out the whole trip in one go, but this is already getting long so I guess I’ll do it in chunks. Here’s where I feel like I should put in a joke about staying tuned, or maybe the Batman thing from the old TV show, but that all seems pretty dumb. I think I’ll just stop typing right……now.

Watch your shit.

2011-02-03T00:40:00.003-08:00

It’s a really good idea to hold onto your time-slips at work. This way, you can be sure you get paid for every hour you’re there. Every meaningless thing you do, every drop of garbage juice that spills on you, every time you trip and knock your elbow against a corner, it’s all made worthwhile by financial compensation. However, if you don’t keep track of your time, there’s no way to know for sure that you are, in fact, paid for all of this crap.

A long time ago, a coworker of mine was bitching about a mistake on her check and said, “You gotta watch these mother fuckers. They’ll rip you off. You gotta watch ‘em.” To which I nodded, smiled, and pretended like I understood what she was saying. However, after a while, I thought about it and realized that it doesn’t take much effort beyond remembering to grab my time-slip at the end of the week. And although I had absolutely no faith in myself being able to remember that on a frequent basis, I started doing it about a month ago.

Today was payday, half of the two best days of the month. It’s like your birthday and Christmas rolled into one and then mixed with the day you buy your books at the start of the semester. Exciting, yet not without the pain of seeing your money fly away to an obligation. On top of all of that, this is also the first paycheck I am able to check my hours. Every day on the time-slip has the amount of time down to a hundredth of an hour listed next to it, so I can get pretty exact. I found the correct dates, added them together, and what did I find?

The fucking check is wrong. I was shorted 1.2 hours. One hour and twelve minutes (thanks GRE studying for that quick mental math!). I know what you’re thinking because, at first, I thought it too. “Yeah, okay. But it’s only 1.2 hours. You make minimum wage. After taxes that’s barely enough to buy a value meal at Burger King.” And you’re right about that. But then I thought about it in terms of time and not money. I was in that fucking restaurant for one hour and twelve minutes, dealing with the dumbest people I’ve ever dealt with (the customers, not my coworkers [scratch that, some of my coworkers are really dumb, too]) instead of petting my dog/strummin’ the banjo/reading/cleaning the oven/whatever the fuck else I want to do that’s better than being at work. I know that I was only shorted $8.70 (before taxes) but the time I lost is worth much more to me.

Now, of course, I have no way of proving which hour of work I’m not getting paid for. But also, there’s no way of knowing which hour of work I’m not not getting paid for. This gives me the luxury of choosing one at random, and I think I’ll choose the worst one. Granted, this hour of work didn’t happen during the last pay period, but I don’t care. This is what I’m focusing on so I can get more mad and convince myself it’s worth the trouble of bringing it up to my boss.

I was to bring a delivery to a dude named “Big”. Big lived a little south of Turner Field, which is out of our delivery area. I brought this up to my manager, to which he responded with the classic manager move, “Just take it out there, and if it’s not good, we won’t go back.” Sure. Okay. I’ll be a good sport.

I drove to his house and started hiding my GPS before coming to a full stop. It wasn’t the type of neighborhood you wanted people to know you had something electronic sitting inside your car. I walked up to his porch, which looked like the porch from the cabin in The Evil Dead. The wood was peeling, the support poles looked like they could crumble at any minute, all traces of railings were gone long before. The screen door was more of a thin piece of wood with an enormous hole in the front since the screen had worn through. I raised my hand to knock on the door when a man jumped onto the porch next to me after skittering around the side of the house.

Oh yeah, and the streetlights were two houses in both directions so it was dark.

“Hey man! You goin’ in there?” asked my new friend.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Great! Me too!” He raised his hand and knocked on the door through the hole that should have had a screen. He stood back and lightly rocked from foot to foot until the door opened.

“Who the hell are you?” asked the guy that opened the door.

I held up the bag and said, “Delivery.”

The man looked at the bag, back to me, to the bag, to me, all while taking drags off his cigarette every two seconds before nodding and opening the door. He walked into the house, as did the guy next to me. I thought for a moment how bad of an idea it might be to go into the house. But then a general feeling of “fuck it” flashed through me and I followed them in.

Big sat on the couch and didn’t get up the whole time. He had between one and two hundred bills on his lap (I don’t know the exact denominations of each, but they looked to be mostly twenties, tens, fives, and singles). “How much I owe you?” This might be racist, this might be one of those things black guys laugh at white guys about, this might be because I’ve seen movies like Friday, but I’m certain he had a gun either on him or within arm’s reach.

I told him his tab as the guy who opened the door paced in the corner across the room, constantly smoking his cigarette. “Oh man. You guys got the best wings. So good.” Pacing. He didn’t stop moving the whole time. While he did that, the guy from the porch was doing nearly the exact same thing, except he didn’t have a cigarette.

Big gave me the money, I nodded to the perpetuous (I just made up a word and I think it should stick around) people pacing in the corners, speed-walked to my car and got the fuck out of there. “We’re not going back there,” I told the manager when I got back.

One more thing: Big is dead now. He got shot. Good thing we never went back there.

That’s what I’m going to think about when I go to work to bitch about missing 1.2 hours on my check. And this didn’t even take that long, I could combine this with the time a transvestite thought I was a cop and acted like he/she was going to kick my ass and still have some time left over.

And now I know that this could have been happening the whole time, which is even worse than finding out I got shorted a little more than an hour of work. It has certainly happened a handful of other times. This may mean that every single shitty thing I have ever experienced at work, every person that said “my-ooh” and meant “mild,” every time someone didn’t know their own phone number, every time someone turned left out of the middle lane, I might have been dealing with it while not on the clock. That’s fucking terrifying.

Yoplait is delicious and dumb

2010-09-29T09:19:00.005-07:00

I came home from work tonight and decided to grab a snack because I’m a fat ass. This is why I can’t buy chips, cookies, or anything else delicious. I’ll chew my way through the entire box/bag/whatever until there are only crumbs left that are so small even my dog would ignore them. Example: this weekend I bought a box of Rice Krispie Treats because it was the weekend and I wanted to treat myself. Why not treat myself with a treat? I know, it blew my mind too. I was so excited I took a picture.

Well, as you can guess, the box didn’t make it through the weekend. For some reason I bought the value pack, ensuring an upset stomach and a broken idea of self-respect. I tried to pawn the delicious pouches on everyone that came near me, besides the bum in the park that asked for one on the way back to my apartment from the grocery store, in hopes of still being able to consider them snacks instead of a meal.

Anyways, while looking for an after-work snack this evening, I stumbled across the giant container of yogurt I bought earlier in the day. Yogurt is great if you can ignore the fact that it feels like you’re eating baby food. I popped off the plastic top to find the next obstacle before the delicious, red goop: the aluminum peel-top. No big deal, right?

Wrong.

Breast cancer fundraiser. The bullshit alarm went off in my head and I didn’t even know why. Then I read the label.

“Help us raise up to $1.6 million to fight breast cancer. Yoplait will donate 10 cents per lid up to $1.6 million to Susan G. Komen for the Cure for each pink lid received by 12/31/10.” Then there’s an asterisk-notice-thingy that says Yoplait will donate at least $500,000 even if nobody sends in any stupid, pink lids.

The bullshit had been found. First of all, they put a limit on how much they’ll donate. “But what if people send in every single lid they put out, that will raise like twenty gablillion dollars! You can’t expect them to pay that!” True, that would be a lot of money, but they’re only donating ten cents for each one that gets sent in. That container retails for around five dollars. I’m guessing Yoplait pockets a lot more than ten cents out of each container even after taking out all the expenditures that go into putting the product on the shelf.

“But still, it’ll take a hit out of their profit.” Once again, that’s true. But they are supporting a cause that they supposedly care a lot about. Couldn’t they take a bit of a hit to give their cause all the support they can? This ties in with the end date, too. Why have one? Why not do this all the time? Even if they cut it in half, do only five cents for each lid, they could raise a shit-ton of money for breast cancer research.

You know why they are doing it like this? Because they don’t give a shit about breast cancer research. It’s all a marketing ploy to make you think you’re helping out by simply buying something to feed your fat ass. That’s why they set a limit, that’s why they are doing it for a finite amount of time, and that’s why they make sure you know there’s a $500,000 minimum donation. $500,000 doesn’t mean shit to Yoplait. They are a multi-million dollar company (probably) and spend money like that on simple advertising all the time (probably). I’m going to keep making guesses about the company and assume they budgeted this “act of charity” into their advertising budget.

Also, let’s think about this: What could $1.6 million really do to help find the cure for breast cancer anyways? How many fundraisers have you heard about for breast cancer? Isn’t there a breast cancer awareness month? Haven’t they been trying to cure this since the 1400’s? Maybe the cure for breast cancer is just out of the reach of the capacity of human thought. Seriously, if we haven’t cured it by now, you have to ask if it’s possible. Or, if they’re really trying.

You wanna hear something weird? I hope they’re not. I hope breast cancer never gets cured as I also hope AIDS, all other cancers, and any other disease that kills millions of people every week never gets cured. Sorry. I don’t want anyone I care about to die a premature death, but if myself or anyone close to me gets cancer when we’re old and shitty I’ll be like, “Yeah, well, it’s about time.” I think it’s inevitable that we’ll all get some form of cancer at some point anyways, so it’s almost like a lottery. You’ll be sitting in the hospital hooked up to an IV, all bummed out, and then you’ll see someone from high school get wheeled past your door.

“Hey!” you’ll cry out. “Jim! Jim Tablesaw!”

A slight squeak will resonate through the hallway as he halts his wheel chair and comes back to your door.

“Is that…John Wiltzenplop?” he’ll ask through a growing smile.

“Yeah! Hey man, what’s up?”

“Oh nothing, finally got my cancer.” He’ll put his wheel chair emergency brake on and prop his hand against the doorjam, all nonchalant and James Dean-esque.

“No shit? Me too! What did you get?”

“Skin cancer.”

“Oh you lucky bastard! I got screwed,” you’ll say as you sit up in bed. “Testicular cancer.”

“Whoo boy!” he’ll say, slapping his knee. “You sure got some good cancer!”

I know what you’re saying, “You’ll feel different if someone you love is afflicted by one of these diseases!” And you’re right, partially. I’ll want that person’s cancer to get cured, but I won’t want the disease to be eradicated. You know why? Because these diseases are necessary. Without factors such as disease, natural disasters, and the rhythm method, there will be too many fucking people. There are already too many fucking people. If we cure cancer there will be even more too many fucking people.

We often forget that we’re just monkeys with the ability to say, “Hey, I’ll give you this hammer for those two apples.” We’re not “chosen,” we’re not “special,” and we have no more right to any plot of land than any other animal. Not that I wouldn’t shoot a lion in the face with a bazooka if it came into my apartment, but that’s more about power than it is about rights. We can “own” the land because we have to ability to kill everything and have set up ideas of ownership throughout our species, but we don’t have a “right” to it outside of the societal meaning of the word.

I guess the main point of this is that I should stop reading the labels on yogurt containers and simply enjoy the delicious bacteria that sit inside them.

DragonCon 2010

2010-09-10T12:32:00.006-07:00

I walked into work on Monday and heard the stories of what I had missed over the weekend. First, there were complaints of the unusually large amount of homos walking around and coming into the store due to Black Gay Pride Weekend. Second, there were jokes at the expense of all the people in town for DragonCon.

“I saw this one at the gas station, dressed as, I don’t know, some kind of Star Wars monster or something. I just don’t get it. Why would you want to dress like that?”

Why? Because that’s what they’re into. Some people like dressing as gangsters everyday, some people like dressing in skirts while others prefer pants. Different strokes for different folks, y’know?

I calmly explained this to them, but they still didn’t get it. So I looked back and forth at the two people I was talking to, tapped my foot a few times and said, “I was there. Both nights.”

After their initial shock wore off, the questions started pouring in. “What do they do? What is it like? Why the hell were you there?”

We had an entire crew ready to depart on Saturday night, but only half of us made it there. No costumes, we simply walked up to the hotel and joined in on the craziness I had come to expect from my experience last year. I got a picture with Scooby Doo, my friend got put in a headlock by Sergeant Slaughter, and we connived our way into a VIP-ish bar. I say VIP because there was a line to get into it, which we bypassed after my friend sweet talked the security guard. I say “ish” because we saw other friends up there that obviously had no trouble getting in, as well as a pile of puke next to a table, which I got unjustly blamed for. When I think of VIP areas, I don’t think of sloppy drunks puking on the floor.

We observed the general craziness, rode the elevator to the top of the hotel and tried not to spit on people, and then took a horse-drawn carriage to O’Terrils were I promptly blacked out, fell out of my barstool, and almost broke my shoulder on the way home because my roommate’s a dick.

And that was only the first night.

It was decided that for our return to DragonCon, we were going to need costumes. We noticed Halloween candy at Wal-Green’s earlier in the day, so we figured they might have costumes as well. However, while walking to the store, my friend Jackie decided to simply break in to somebody’s house and steal one. So we did.

Okay, it wasn’t a complete break in. She knew the guy and happened to know where he hid his key. But we were there without permission so I’ll still say we broke in.

So we broke into this guy’s house, found his pink, full-body, rabbit costume and hit the road. Wal-Green’s ended up being a bust so we headed to O’Terrils to figure out a game plan. After putting our Hurricanes into to-go cups, we decided we would have her fiance bring over her bag of costumes from their house once he got out of work. I know, “her bag of costumes” is a pretty funny sentence.

A couple hours later, we were suited up and ready to rock. The bag of costumes ended up not having any complete costumes, so we were forced to improvise with what we had. Ted had some leisure suit kinda thing that he threw on as well as his Barney Rubble wig. Jeff had Santa pants and an Andre the Giant Shirt. Jackie had the rabbit costume. I had blaze orange shorts with an electric blue Club Med tank top as well as a blond, surfer wig. On the way to the hotel, I also found a bike helmet on the street which I decided would perfectly complete my outfit.

However, entrance wasn’t as easy as it was the night before. The security guard was actually checking for entrance passes this time. We collectively whatthehelled for a while before I found a knife. Ted walked up to the security guard and told him about the knife, he threw up a big WTF, and Ted said, “I think letting you know about that should get us into this place, eh?” The security guard agreed.

We entered to find the hotel lobby to be less full than the previous night, but still surprisingly happenin’ for a Sunday night. After buying two drinks for $30, I managed to get a green army man to flip me off, meet the dude that got his thumbs broken by Jerry Seinfeld, hug a mermaid, get an entire bathroom to harmonize with me, and finger a robot. And that was just me. There were three other people with me that did equally ridiculous shit.

And still, that wasn’t the craziest part.

After a while, we decided we had enough. After riding the same escalators about twenty times we finally figured out how to get outside. We exited the hotel, said something to the extent of “That was ridiculous,” and then heard the bass. We figured it was just some car passing by, but it wasn’t. It was something much more magical. As we turned the corner we saw the crowd. In the middle of said crowd, were two guys that had amplifiers strapped to their backs like backpacks. Blasting rave/dance/ecstasy music. Surrounding them? About twenty people dancing their asses off and following the music like the Pied Piper.

Without looking at each other to see if the others wanted to join, we all ran into the crowd and joined in. The dance riot skipped down the street like a parade. Onlookers either laughed, took pictures, or joined in. It was like a costumed katamari ball set to a pounding bass line. Occasionally the group would pause at a certain point and party for five or so minutes before moving along.

Chants were also in abundance. Crossing a crosswalk? Might as well chant “Crosswalk!” while doing so. Approaching a different hotel that has nothing to do with DragonCon and has no idea what’s going on? Might as well chant “I’m so horny!”

After about a half hour of dance rioting, we decided to split off and head home. The crowd had grown twice the size as when we started and didn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

While explaining my DragonCon experience to people at work, I left the majority of this out. For one, I didn’t have the energy to tell them everything. Also, they wouldn’t have understood. The fact is, it’s a pretty hard thing to explain to somebody and have them fully get it. There is a weird energy at something like that that can only be described as one of those you-had-to-be-there kinda things. It’s pretty easy to make fun of some skinny kid dressed up as a ninja walking around downtown at three in the afternoon. But, there’s a good chance that kid is going to go have a brand of fun you’ll never be able to understand unless you join in yourself.

The Ultimate Feminist

2010-08-26T10:20:00.004-07:00

Although she became a total wuss since she married that dude from Bush, Gwen Stefani was pissed off in the nineties. Was she pissed because she grew up in Orange County California where the weather is awesome all the time? No. Was she pissed because her band took off, meaning that she’ll never have to punch-in to a real job ever again? No. Was she pissed because she was on the cover of magazines while gladly accepting the adoration of fans the world over?

No, she was pissed because she was oppressed. After all, she’s a girl in captivity.

Women had it pretty rough in the nineties. They were working the same jobs as dudes (although not making equal wages, but still). Lesbians were running amok. Salt N Pepa made promiscuous sex legit. Oh never mind, they could do pretty much whatever they wanted to.

If Gwen was so pissed at the oppressiveness of the nineties, she would have definitely shit a brick if she lived in the fifties. Accidentally got knocked up while banging some dude behind the high school? Now you gotta get married soon enough that it looks like it happened during the honeymoon or find some crazy asshole in an alley with a wire hanger to rip the thing out. Those are your choices. Also, no career for you. You gotta stay home and tend to the children, clean, and cook for your husband while he plows prostitutes which you know about but can’t say anything because then you’ll get divorced and be “tainted.”

There’s no way she would stand for that shit. She’d be like, “That’s a total bummer, bro!” and jump kick the dude that told her the halter top she’s wearing is inappropriate in the supper club during the Friday fish fry.

Women in the nineties would have posters of her straddling an armored tank and cut off their pony tails in solidarity. History books would list her as the coolest, most badass female activist of all-time.

Which, I guess is good for us but it sucks for her. Her nasally half-in-tune shouts wouldn’t match up against Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holliday. Her antics and slang would be so out of touch that everyone would think she’s crazy. She’d live a life of constant annoyance, discomfort, and soul-melting loneliness.

But she shouldn’t be so selfish to take away an extra Bob Dylan activism song, Lesbo chants about her accompanied by some asshole on a conga drum, misquotes from the muscular girls in high school that don’t wear dresses, and a sweet episode of VH1’s Where Are They Now? series. The pain she would suffer herself, does not equal the enjoyment it would bring the world.

Don't go to sleep.

2010-08-08T01:59:00.001-07:00

Last year a friend of mine (named Katrine) and I decided to drive to Colorado from Milwaukee. Sixteen hour drive. She doesn’t have a driver’s license. We loaded up on Airheads, Combos, beef jerky, and 5-hour energy drinks and hit the road. Twenty thousand hours later we ended up next to mountains.

Halfway through Nebraska I lost my mind. Started shaking, couldn’t keep my eyes straight, started rambling meaningless words. So we pulled over to get some food. I thought that may bring me back to normality (totally a word). But we forgot that it was four o’clock in the morning and we were in the middle of bumfuck nowhere Nebraska and all they had was shitty microwave BBQ sandwiches and soggy bananas. So, of course, I ate a shitty microwave BBQ sandwich and half of a soggy banana in hopes of feeling like a person again. Kind of worked. And moved on after watching some redneck trucker shock himself on a toy that’s only use is to shock unknowing people (keep in mind it was labeled very well).

Point of the story is I drove for a very long time. Now that I live in Georgia while my family/friends live in Wisconsin, I’ve made similar drives quite a few times. I have also never slept during these drives beyond (maybe) twenty minute naps in truck stops. These drives usually involve me consuming energy drinks like oxygen and smoking cigarettes to keep my head from bobbing up and down from exhaustion.

Tomorrow night I plan on making another such excursion. Except this time, I have to go to work before the drive begins. So this means I have to work for 7-8 hours (in a car) then drive about 14 hours (in a car) all on one good night of sleep. This is diminished by the fact that I’ll have good ol’ Teddy Smith to split the drive, but he’s a little baby girl so he’ll probably cry in the backseat and miss his girlfriend the whole time. Which will leave me with about twenty billion miles of pavement to cross with only manufactured energy to take me there.

That’s okay with me though. Sleep has only been a hindrance to fun lately. I haven’t enjoyed trying to sleep and I haven’t enjoyed sleeping for a while. 24 hours in a car driving through whereverthefuck? No problem. As long as I get to see my family and friends at the other side, sleep can wait for another time. I know there’s a good looking beer and a lot of good looking people at the other side.

The reason I started babbling about this is because it is currently 4:53 in the morning and I want to stay up as late as possible. I figure, if I can sleep until the moment I have to go to work I’ll be all the better to stay up all night tomorrow.

I’ve learned tonight that Goodfella’s pizza is not worth $20 for their tiny bullshit house special. I’ve learned that the same spider that stole my cigarette last night is tough enough to do it again tonight. And I’ve learned I’m no good at shuffleboard. Like, really, really bad.

So there you go. Sorry if you read this.

Islam is not scary.

2010-08-03T12:26:00.001-07:00

There’s a debate going on right now about whether a Muslim community center, including a place for Islamic worship, should be built two blocks from Ground Zero in New York. Many people think it’s a slap in the face to all the victims from 9/11, that it’s a tribute to Islam and a victory for the perpetrators of the attack.

Understandable. I can see where these arguments come from, but they’re wrong. The building of this community center, (yes, community center, including a culinary school, swimming pool, and performing arts center) is not of bad-taste, is not going to create more terrorists, and is not a victory for supporters of 9/11.

It’s a community center. That’s it. It’s a place to worship, swim a few laps, and get involved with members of the community. If the Muslim faith wasn’t attached to it, everyone would be saying, “Hell yeah, community centers are vital in large cities.” But Since the word “Mosque” has been attached to it, everyone assumes they’re going to be launching grenades from water-balloon launchers at Ground Zero.

Which is an important distinction to make, by the way. The building isn’t on Ground Zero. It isn’t located in the footprint of the Towers. It’s down the street. A short jog. Further than Brett Favre can throw a football. Out of shouting distance. It’s not like Al-Qaeda said, “First we’ll blow up the towers, hang loose for almost a decade, then build a community center down the street that gives local children a good place to be active and learn as the final ‘Fuck you!’ to America!”

People are outraged by this because they see a headline that says, “Mosque to be Built on Ground-Zero” and they freak out. To a lot of people, Islam equals suicide bombing, and mentions of 9/11 equals fuck-everybody-else. Blind patriotism springs up and eyes become shut off from reason and the actual facts.

The simple truth is that a mosque is nothing more than a place where Muslims practice their faith. The only differences between a mosque and a church or a synagogue are different songs and different names for “God.”

9/11 was a huge attack on America which caused people to “stand up” and “support the beliefs our country was founded on.” However, one of the original beliefs of our country was freedom of religion. That’s why we came over here in the first place. If the community center in New York is not allowed to be built because “it would be shameful to our country,” then we are enormous hypocrites and are only doing exactly what we are trying to stop: The dissolution of the core beliefs of our country.

Things learned.

2010-07-27T08:09:00.002-07:00

A big motivating factor for moving across the country was to see/learn new things. A good way to do this is to meet new people and put yourself into situations you haven’t been in before. This has all been fully accomplished simply by finding the job I have had since January. Not only have I learned a lot more about the city of Atlanta, including many fancy shortcuts, where the hell everything is, and where the hell to stay away from at all costs, but I’ve also learned a lot more about life from my co-workers. Not that I’ve learned the meaning of life from them, but definitely a different perspective.

One of the favorite topics of conversations is women, during which I learn stuff like this:

1. Don’t fuck with no women who ain’t got no money. They’ll eat up all your food while you’re at work and leave your lights on all day.
2. When you slap her on the ass while hittin’ that shit from behind, spread your fingers so if she bangs someone later that day, he’ll still see a perfect outline of the handprint and he’ll know someone’s already been there.
3. Be sure to wrap it up with the pretty ones. They’re the ones with all kinds of diseases you ain’t never heard of ‘cause they get banged the most. The ugly ones you don’t have to worry about.
4. If you’re gonna beat your woman, make sure you get drunk first. Also, it’s better to do it while you’re in college, because you can get away with that shit in college.

I also get to learn new slang, including:

Smash: (verb) – To have sexual intercourse with. Ex: “She was giving me the eye, you know I’m gonna smash that ho.

BWM: (acronym) – Body Made Wrong. Ex: “Her belly stuck out further than her titties. Now that’s a BMW.”

I'll holla at ya: (interjection) - An expression used at parting. Syn: Goodbye

Butterhead: (adjective) – A woman that has a nice body but an unattractive face. I.e. Everything looks good “but her head.” (Also known as a Butterface)

What it do: (interjection) - Used to express a greeting. Syn: Hello

Stupid Booty: (adjective) – A booty that, while being sufficiently fat, is undesirable due to shape, curvature, or lift. Ex: “She got a stupid booty.”

Who: (pronoun) - Although conventionally used for requesting information regarding a person, also used in any situation where information is needed. Ex: "Meet me at 7 o'clock." "Who?" "Seven." "Oh, okay."

Miscellaneous things learned:

1. How to shoot craps.
2. If someone asks for your shoes in jail, it’s best to simply give them away because you’re going to lose them regardless.
3. A large percentage of nurses are assholes.
4. An overwhelming percentage of guards at the jail are assholes.
5. Hopping fences leads to holes in your pants. It doesn’t matter how old you are.

I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of things right now, but that’s okay. I have a feeling there will be many more entries about work since it’s basically taken over my life lately.

20 million is a lot of dollars

2010-07-02T10:33:00.005-07:00

Jaycee Dugard just got awarded 20 million dollars for her ordeal. “What is the ordeal?” you may be asking. Oh nothing big, just KIPNAPPED when she was 11 and held hostage for 18 years while being RAPED and having TWO kids during this time. No big deal? Yeah right. That’s fucked up.

When I first saw this story I was like, “Well, yup, that’s seems about right.” But I was thinking as 20 million as an abstract number. Just something we say like “Dude, I just ate a gazillion sandwiches!” You didn’t really eat a gazillion sandwiches because that’s not a word and you were exaggerating.

All large numbers have become this to me. Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. “Okay, that’s a really big number,” and that’s as far as I think about it. When you realize how large of a number 6 million is, you’re like “holy fuck.” Six million. That’s enormous.

When I thought further into the story of Jaycee Dugard, I realized that 20 million is a lot of dollars. Too many dollars. She’ll never have to work again. Not only that, she'll have enough money to buy an island, blow it up, and hang out in arcades and bars until the day she dies. It’s forever fun. I know, after 18 years of being raped, she’s probably going to have a few psychological issues. So her days might not be all fun, but that’s up to her.

So, 20 million dollars is a shit-ton of money and she gets all of it forever. Now, when comparing this, again, with the Holocaust, that’s a little fucked up. Think of all the money every Holocaust survivor got from their suffering. I bet it doesn’t equal 20 million dollars each. Okay, so Holocaust survivors had to have a maximum of about five years of hell. Dugard had 18. So maybe we should divide it by the difference. But no, that’s not even, because Dugard had food the whole time. I think that may even it up for the Holocaust, should probably even throw another few years onto Dugard.

But also, a thing called “inflation” comes to mind. I don’t have any idea how it works*, but I think the result is something along the lines of “Everything gets more expensive as the world gets older.” Sure, Holocaust survivors didn’t get 20 million each, but that’s just because one dollar could buy you two cars and half a boat back then. Things have changed.

Okay, nevermind. Maybe I was wrong to think 20 million dollars is too much to give one person. I guess what she went through is worse than the Holocaust.

*This is how I think it works: Everything is cool now and everything sucked then. Our new shit should be more expensive. How would you like to sit around with two channels, no remote control, and a fucking antennae that barely works? Sure, fifty cents for a ladder but it’ll fall over and drop you head-first onto the concrete if you sneeze.

But the fucked up part is that, now, all that old shit that used to cost a dollar now would cost twenty because it’s “vintage” and “collectible”. Shit, that shoots a hole right through that argument.

Is Mike Tyson retarded?

2010-05-29T01:29:00.003-07:00

First answer is, no, of course not. He’s won over 300 million dollars. Plus, people used to call him “Kid Dynamite.” That’s awesome. Sure his voice is a little higher than a badass's voice should be, but, is he retarded?

Declared bankruptcy (even after the 300 million)? Prison time? Bit off Holyfield’s ear? Face tattoo? Threatened to eat Lenox Lewis’ children (even though he had none)?

Uhhhh, maybe.

You can make the argument that he was a professional boxer for 24 years and anybody would be retarded after getting slapped around for that long. Valid. I remember once telling my mother that I was interested in pursuing a boxing career when I was around nine years old (right after I saw my first Rocky movie). She proceeded to tell me that if you look closely during boxing matches, that you can see the brain matter that gets punched out of each boxer’s head during the match. Of course, I was horrified, so I focused on playing Mario Kart instead. All she would have had to say was, “Watch an interview with Mike Tyson," or I guess Muhammad Ali would have worked as well, "and see how awesome they sound. Still feel like getting punched in the head all day?”

This is all nothing new. However, I saw this video tonight.

Look at Tyson. He has a child’s demeanor. He’s gentle, he’s polite. There’s something about this video that just makes me want to give him a hug. And then I remember what he was like in the 80’s and I remember that I don’t want to be anywhere near him. It used to take him 30 seconds to knock out a trained fighter. Imagine what he could do to a hungover guy whose back gets sore for no reason.

I feel like I should define my usage of the word “retarded” since it has such a negative social stigma attached to it. Keep in mind, it’s not just a word assholes use to describe the mentally handicapped. It actually has a meaning.

This is the Merriam-Webster definition: “Slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development or academic progress.”

Quote from Tyson speaking of his mother : “I never got a chance to talk to her or know about her. Professionally, it has no effect, but it's crushing emotionally and personally,” (read as: limited in emotional development).

I have no evidence of him being “slow or limited in intellectual…development or academic progress,” except for his own words.

Want some examples? Okay.

“My defense is impregnable.”

"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."

"He called me a ‘rapist’ and a ‘recluse.’ I’m not a recluse.”

“I want to throw down your kid and stomp on his testicles, and then you will know what it is like to experience waking up everyday as me. And only then will you feel my pain.” (Maybe we should file this one under, “Emotional Development.”)

I don’t want to purport the wrong idea. I love Mike Tyson. Aside from the crazy/ridiculous things I just listed, he also says awesome/ridiculous things like, "I can sell out Madison Square Garden masturbating." And, "I just want to conquer people and their souls."

Plus, he used to do shit like this.

It’s just that, I think he may be retarded. I’m not knocking him for that, though. Shit, if a retard can make 300 million dollars, it gives me hope to at least make over fifty grand in a year at one point in my life. It doesn’t matter if he eventually lost all of it. The same thing happened to MC Hammer, and he’s not retarded (in the literal sense). Plus, if Tyson takes offense to being called retarded, I don't want him to come looking for me.

Also, this is just hilarious.

"I broke my back."
"Uh, what do you mean by that?"
"My back is broken."
"A vertebrae, or what portion?"
"Spinal."

Classic retarded conversation.

Leggings are not pants.

2010-05-26T12:37:00.004-07:00

My buddy Leslie Peckham got pissed off the other day, I guess. Saw some fucker that rubbed her the wrong way so she wanted to write about it and plop it up here. Being the humanitarian that I am, I awarded her the honor of posting on this site. She should feel lucky and thank me for being so generous. But, she probably won't because she's kind of an asshole. Anyways, here's what she had to say.

---

There’s a nasty trend happening that I feel should be called out. I’ll allow that tapered leg and cigarette jeans in all their antiquated glory are back, I’ll even admit, I enjoy form fitting fashions as much as the next vintage hungry hipster but somewhere the line is drawn. I’m talking about leggings.

Consider the following outfit: Nike hightops, leggings, and some vintagesque shirt. The hightops and the vintage tee claim 1980’s hip hop roots but the leggings say “I was working out today”. Wrong. Maybe it was laundry day and the shredded cutoffs that you intended to add to that outfit were too sticky to be worn in public. Maybe. Or in the shifting weather of spring, you weren’t sure if you’d be too hot in your skinny jeans so you work your quietest pair of skin tights into that outfit with a blousy top and a cute pair of flats. But does that blousy top cover your ass crack? No.

Seems like it would be ok, you’re a fit young woman and your legs are viewed at their best advantage when practically naked save for the black nylon ceran wrap you put on but guess what. Leggings are not pants. They’re an accessory. Let me repeat that: Leggings are not pants, they are an accessory, meant to be worn as pants underneath short dresses and long shirts. Letting your junk hang out does not make you look cute.

Living in America

2010-05-25T11:37:00.004-07:00

I realized that I’ve been living in this apartment for almost a year and we still haven’t put anything on the walls. Plain, white walls. Boring. So I decided to spruce the place up a bit. First purchase? Chalkboard, of course. Feel like drawing a dinosaur on the wall. Go right ahead. Awesome idea.

After buying the chalkboard, I realized I needed chalk so I drove to Target to get some. And what did I spy while walking around? The next thing to go on the wall. Goddamn old glory.

The first Rocky movie I ever watched was Rocky IV, complete with James Brown’s musical number “Living in America,” Apollo’s flag shorts, patriotic undertones, and the most inspiring speech ever (“If I can change, and you can change, everybody can change!”) And don’t even get me started on the training montage. Goddamn it Rocky is awesome.

Anyways, I bought the flag and hung it on the wall. Now various scenes from Rocky IV run through my head every time I walk into my living room. Needless to say, this might have been the best purchase I’ve made since the last time I bought Cheetos.

When I opened the package, I noticed a small insert entitled, “Our Flag – how to honor & display it.” This eight-panel pamphlet is full of random facts and rules for being a proud owner of the flag. One of the most surprising ones was the preferred method of disposing of it.

“Always dispose of a worn flag properly, preferably by burning it.”

Burning it? Really? Isn’t that what people get pissed off about? What about all those videos from the middle east where people had effigies of George Bush being hanged, automatic weapons being fired into the air, and American flags burning? Everyone was so quick to judge this as an anti-American act, but, as I have now learned, they were only disposing of the flag in the proper manner. I don’t remember the translations of their chants, but maybe they were just saying, “America is tits and this flag is unsatisfactory! Let’s go buy a new one at Wal-Mart!”

Another big one in the “Care and Respect” section of the pamphlet, says “Always treat the flag with respect. Never use it for advertising purposes.”

This has to be a joke. Either that or the companies that use the flag for advertising are actually the opposite of what they claim to be: Patriotic. If they truly were, then they would know that using the flag for advertising is against the rules.

Under the, “Displaying the Flag Properly,” section, it gives the rules for hanging the flag with other flags. Oh, sorry, “subordinate” flags.

“When the U.S. Flag is in a line among a group of subordinate flags, the U.S. Flag should be at the left of the line as seen by the observer.”

That’s right. If you’re not American, you’re subordinate. Who says Americans don’t respect other countries?

This is only a small dose of the wealth of information included within the pamphlet. There are many other rules that are simply too boring or moot to write about. My only hope is that I don’t get too drunk on July 4th and burn the fucker before I can wear it like a cape and recite the entire Rocky speech.

I'm a doctor!

2010-05-14T12:16:00.004-07:00

Some friends of mine have a wonderful site called Doctors of Za. It's a pizza review website based in Wisconsin. Even if you've never been to the places they review or don't even plan on doing so, their articles are still funny enough to make it worth the read.

A couple weeks ago Tyler contacted me about writing a guest article for them which I gladly jumped at. An excuse to eat an entire pizza and call myself a doctor? Hell yeah. Well, it was posted today and can be found here. Check it out and then click around for a while, chances are you'll find something to laugh at.

CBS, we ask the dumb questions

2010-05-08T00:56:00.007-07:00

"As you know we're the only ones to put the heat on them every week."

First line in the story. Oh that's right. I forgot how health inspectors sit around and talk about cartoons while CBS news checks if people wash their hands.

God damnit.

For people not from Atlanta, the local CBS news station asks the "tough questions". Trust me, they tell you every ten seconds so it has to be true.

I watch a lot of local news, and I often get angry. However, I've never been angry enough to write an e-mail to explain how much I hate it. Keep in mind, I went to school for journalism. I hated it before I learned about it, and I hated it more when I did. Now when I see reports like this it makes me hate it even more than I thought possible.

I can't find an embed code on the CBS page so I'll just post a link here.

Watch it. Go ahead. Does it seem like bullshit? It should. And here's why.

First of all, Dickhead Adam catches the manager at lunchtime when she's busy seating tables. Is she avoiding the tough questions, or is she just doing her fucking job?

Okay, they got a bad grade on their surprise health inspection. That sucks. They should do a better job of having their employees wash their hands and have their refrigerators at the proper temperatures. Duh. Not groundbreaking news.

But CBS tries to make it seem like they're "sticking up for the little guy" and "giving a voice for the rest of us" by saying what is blatantly obvious. What's more, they are doing so in a backhanded way that vilifies the employees at said restaurant to make themselves seem righteous.

Want an example? Go to the 1:27 mark and watch how they turn the manager asking the reporter to repeat himself, freezing the screen and saying this:

"And from the look on her face, she'd probably like to wash her hands of the failing inspection."

Oh really? Because from the look on her face she probably couldn't hear the fucking question.

Editing like this pissed me off so much I had to e-mail these pricks and tell them how much I hated the segment. These are the e-mails unedited. I know I come across very unspecified in my original e-mail, but I was pissed and mind-puking my disgust. Either way, here it is.

_________________________________________

Monday, April 19th 12:32 p.m.

I just watched your report about The Flying Biscuit on the noon broadcast. I have to say, it sucked and you suck...bad. You're "tough questions" were the equivalent of something a six year old could come up with.

"46, thats not a good score."

No shit. Great journalism.

I hate how on CBS you guys are so proud of your "tough questions" that you try to create conflict where there is none. You interviewed the manager during lunch. You asked her a question and she asked you to repeat it. You then froze the screen and focused on her facial expression like she was trying to avoid the question. You did the same thing at the start of the interview. You came in during lunch, no wonder she couldn't speak with you immediately. Restaurants get busy during lunch. Everyone knows that, it's not interesting, it's not a conflict, and this isn't journalism.

Your interview asked "Why aren't these things getting done?!?!?!" when in fact it had all been taken care of. Good work on digging up the dirt, Action Adam. I can't believe this is what you get paid for.

Josh Rank

________________________________________________

I was happy to find a response e-mail.

________________________________________________

April 19th 1:24 p.m.

Josh,

Thank you very much for your email. I appreciate your opinion. This report was not about us trying to create conflict. Keep in mind, the FB scored 46 points and a 'U' for unsatisfactory. If they had passed their surprise inspection, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation via email and I certainly would not have had to question them regarding violations. The FB had food items at unsafe temperatures which is a serious health violation. That said, they have corrected most of their violations and we have already reported it.

As I stated in the report I am a FB fan. I have featured several great scores from multiple locations during the past seven years. I don't believe I've ever heard from you regarding the good scores we've mentioned. At any rate, thanks for watching CBS Atlanta News!

Regards,
Adam Murphy
CBS Atlanta

_______________________________________________

Nice. A passive-aggressive personal shot in there? "I don't believe I've ever heard from you regarding the good scores we've mentioned." Duh. I'll get to that in my response e-mail you dick.

_______________________________________________

April 19th 3:23 p.m.

You haven't heard from about the positive scores because those reports didn't piss me off. You say the report is not about creating conflict, and, ideally it isn't. But the way you posed your questions was aggressive and, frankly, unfair to the person you were interviewing. I hope you use a little more discretion in the future and report the news, instead of trying to make it.

And just so we're clear; It's not the fact that it was the Flying Biscuit that pissed me off. It's the way the story was presented and executed.

josh

_______________________________________________

I know, misused semicolon. Don't care.

_______________________________________________

April 19th 6:54 p.m.

Okay fair enough Josh. Thanks for your feedback!

Adam Murphy
CBS Atlanta

________________________________________________

What a dick.

The only thing CBS Atlanta has going for it is the 4:00 broadcast. They figured out that it doesn't matter who reads the stories since none of them have any talent anyways. Might as well pack the room with a bunch of hot chicks. Example? Dagmar Midcap.

There ya go. I don't want to talk any shit on Dagmar in case she Googles herself and finds this page. If that happens, e-mail me Dagmar, we can discuss this whole debacle over coffee.

Bums vs Homeless People

2010-04-17T12:49:00.001-07:00

One of the main moves of the homeless folk around here is to stand at a street corner, wait for a red light, and then try to get money/cigarettes off of the people waiting in their cars. I see this all the time. Sometimes they'll pretend to cry, sometimes they'll be wearing big smiles, sometimes they'll be holding signs that say stuff like "anything will help, god bless!"

The place where I work is located on a fairly busy street corner. This means a lot of foot traffic and a lot of homeless people hanging around. I've come to know a couple of them since I see them all the time. My favorite is a guy named Hawk. He's a guy I would classify as "homeless" and not a "bum". Bums are the ones on street corners. Homeless people may beg, but they're not in your face about it, or may do odd jobs for a few bucks.

After Hawk and I talked one night, he realized I was a sympathetic figure and kind of began taking advantage of me. If he asks for a couple bucks, he does so in a very polite way. Usually, though, he washes my car. I'll be walking around the store, into the parking lot, and notice a running puddle of water.

"Please don't let that be my car."

But, of course, when I turn the corner I see Hawk wiping away on my hood.

"Oh, hey! Three more minutes and you woulda never known I was here!"

I then have to sit around and wait for him to finish up, make small talk, and fish out a few dollars when he's done.

Not that big of a deal. I'm a few bucks poorer, but, at least my car is clean (kinda). It may get annoying how he'll do it whether my car is dirty or not (three washes in two weeks? C'mon man) but it's still better than him just saying "Give me a buck."

A few nights ago, I ran into a Bum. Capital B. This guy is a bum in all sense of the word. I saw him standing on the corner of 14th and Williams street at one o'clock in the morning. Work was stressing me out and I didn't have any patience for the scroungy white dude on the corner with a sign asking for my money.

I pulled up to the red light and tried not to make eye contact with him. Once eye contact is made, a bum won't leave you alone. He stood maybe ten feet away from my window and I could feel his stare burrowing into the side of my head. I finally gave him a quick glance, shook my head, and gave a little dismissive wave. This is a move I have perfected. It usually gets them to leave me alone with one try. Usually.

After my dismission maneuver, he continued to stare at me, holding his sign. I looked at the green light that I didn't have, noticed the pedestrian-walking sign was still lit, and knew I'd be there for at least a few more minutes. His beady, angry eyes, were still drilling me through the window.

I did the move again. He saw this and did the move back to me, highly exaggerated, mocking me like a six year old. I gave him the what-the-fuck hands and he got pissed.

He dropped his sign, began walking towards me car, and yelled, "Fuck you!" He continued coming at me so I looked left, looked right, and ran the red light. I figured that if I got pulled over, I could just tell the cop what had happened and he'd probably understand. I watched in my rear-view mirror as the man kept staring at me until I turned a corner.

I don't know why this guy had targeted me like he did. There was another car right behind me the whole time and he didn't even look at it. He figured I had money that he deserved and didn't want to wait to get it. That's what amazes me. He was pissed that I didn't give him my money. What the hell? Why does he deserve it so much? He should be happy/grateful/shocked if I actually do give him money. If I don't, he should be like, "Yeah, well, I mean, it's not my money anyways."

So that's cool. Bums are annoying. Homeless people usually have an interesting story to tell you. Go talk to a homeless person and avoid every bum you see.

I can understand police brutality.

2010-04-11T11:00:00.004-07:00

It's pretty easy to say police brutality is wrong. Because it is. The inherent abuse of authority it implies is enough to make the case for it's wrong-ness. Not to mention the beating of a defenseless individual.

That being said, I can easily understand the need sometimes to kick an asshole's face in after finally slapping the handcuffs on him/her. Think about it, if you had just chased somebody, at very high speeds through residential areas where kids run around and bunnies frolic, wouldn't you want to punch him in the face for selfishly endangering everyone around you just to avoid paying the price for their own actions? I imagine the thought of a squished kid running through the mind of a cop as he/she kicks the criminal while he lays on the ground.

At least, that's what I would be thinking while I did it. If I were a cop, I would definitely beat the hell out of at least a few people by the time I retired. For sure. I get mad enough at people doing the job I have now, I can't imagine what I would do if I saw assholes like this on their worst day, every shift.

"Stop. Selling. Drugs. You. Useless. Pile. Of. Shit." I would yell as I punched until my arms got tired, trying not to rip up my knuckles too badly.

Plus, our penal system is pretty screwed up. Someone may get arrested and released on the same day, only to go back and do whatever they did right before they went in. Maybe if they were put in a figure-four leglock before being tossed in jail, they would learn that prostitution/selling drugs/stealing cars is illegal.

I'm not saying that all police brutality is acceptable. Far from it. About a month ago I saw a cop standing on the sidewalk with a man in handcuffs lying on the sidewalk, apparently unconscious. The cop looked around, took out his nightstick, and bopped the guy in the stomach a couple times. This isn't acceptable brutality. The man on the ground was no longer a threat, he had probably already gotten a healthy beating before I arrived, it was the middle of the night and no one was around (so it's not like the guy was endangering and innocent, church-going, citizens). If the guy had been pulled from a car around 3:45 p.m. I might be able to understand a little better. But this guy didn't pose a threat. Good try, cop. But you have to learn to withhold the beatings for more qualified applicants. Or at least do a better job of making sure no one is watching.

"Hey! You'll be singing a different tune when you're the victim of some overzealous cop!" you may be saying. Yeah right. Been there, done that.

When I was in high school, a cop got a little liberal with his method of apprehending me. I don't hold it against him. I deserved it. He would have been totally justified in kicking me in the ass and throwing me into a wall. I'd be okay with that. Sure, not while it was happening, but looking back on it now, he would have been right.

I'd bet that the majority of police brutality cases are just some egotistical cop wailing on some minority. However, there are some instances where the cop is totally justified in giving a leg-drop of the top ropes to some asshole.

Fuck (some of) the troops.

2010-04-06T09:45:00.006-07:00

It's too bad this video was released on the day Tiger Woods had a press conference because it got swallowed in the black hole of the news cycle.

This is a video of U.S. soldiers taking out what they think to be insurgents. As the video explains, what they think to be a gun turns out to be a camera held by a journalist.

I understand that it's very difficult to know what something is from a great distance. I understand that when a threat is posed during a war, that threat will be removed. I understand that there are probably twenty different things that happened right before this that led to the helicopters being in this position and the perceived necessity to fire. I have never been in any form of the military or in a situation like this, so I understand that there is a lot of things I don't understand.

That being said, this is fucked up. Listen to how eager the shooter is to shoot when the van pulls up. There is nothing that looks like a gun yet they can't wait to annihilate them. The celebration and light-hearted banter between the soldiers shows just how much they have been desensitized towards the Iraqis.

My main beef with branches of the military is this brainwashing and groupthink mindset. "Your enemies are not people. They are enemies." The van rolled up and the shooter only saw Iraqis, enemies. Even though they didn't have guns and were only helping wounded people, they were enemies. There was no thought to how the deaths of these people would affect family members, friends, or whatever. There was only the thought of, "enemy." Therefore, they were ripped apart by a giant gun in the sky.

A lot of people are stressing the fact that this video shows U.S. soldiers killing unarmed civilians. This is horrible, no doubt about it. But that is not the part that pissed me off the most. It's the dialogue. It's the blatant disregard for the people seen through the binoculars (or whatever they use these days).

"Let me engage. Can I shoot?" says one of the men while the van is being loaded with the wounded.

Does this not sound like a ten-year-old playing a video game? Is this what we get for giving young, immature men giant guns and telling them local, brown people are evil?

To be fair, I know not all soldiers are like the ones shown in the video. When the children are found at the end, two soldiers scoop them in their arms and literally run them to safety. Sure, they were eventually turned away, but it still doesn't dampen the compassion shown by these soldiers.

These are the soldiers that deserve those stupid, yellow magnets you see on the backs of minivans in suburbia. But to blindly support ALL troops means you also support the bratty kid with a fucking cannon unloading on a dude for trying to take pictures. And if you support that troop, you're a fucking asshole, too.

My dog is better than yours.

2010-03-01T12:33:00.002-08:00

I’ve debated for a while on whether my dog is either a complete idiot or just stubborn. I now believe that she is not only not an idiot, but she’s got it all figured out.

Ask her to sit and she’ll simply stare at you. Call out her name and maybe you’ll get lucky and have her look at you. I’ve tried teaching her how to shake, ring a bell when she wants to go outside, and lay down. All failed. This, one might think, means she’s stupid. However, I don’t think she can’t learn tricks. I think she simply doesn’t want to. What’s in it for her besides a treat that she’ll probably get eventually, anyways?

She knows how to sit, but she’ll only do it if you have food in your hand. Call her name with some food and she’ll be right next to you. Why won’t she do this in the absence of food? Because who gives a shit, that’s why. She doesn’t care about jumping through hoops to make me happy. I admire this. Who the hell am I to tell her what to do anyways? I’m just some dude that bought her leash. This doesn’t entitle me to complete ownership of her.

People often equate an obedient dog with a good dog. I don’t share this view. Long before I got her I thought about how people treat their dogs like slaves. Something as small as making a noise when your master doesn’t want you to can result in verbal abuse or even a beating. That’s fucked up.

I think a good dog is one that does the thing the owner got it for: Company. A good dog sits next to you on the couch, runs to you when you get home, and has a generally nice disposition. My dog does all of these things. Sure, she won’t roll over or bark when prompted, but who really cares? That’s not why I have her around. She’s here to hang out. And she does that very well.

This whole deal about a dog “liking” you is an interesting one, too. Do dogs really “like” people or do they just like a person because they give them food and backrubs? I think, to an extent, it’s true that if you feed a dog and don’t punch it in the face all the time, it will like you. But, I think dogs have an inclination towards certain people while shunning others, just like the rest of us. My evidence of this is the few months before the dog became officially “mine.”

She was staying with an ex-girlfriend of mine, which meant I only saw her once in a great while. During this period I hadn’t fed the dog once, taken her outside, pet her, or had any contact of any sort. However, when I would finally show up she would get so excited she would literally piss herself. My explanation: The dog likes me. Boo-ya.

And I’m not saying that she likes me because of my wonderful personality or anything like that. I think it’s very situational. I was there when she left the Humane Society. I was there to carry her up the stairs to my apartment because she was too afraid to walk up them. I slept next to her on the kitchen floor the first night with my fingers in the cage so she would stop crying long enough to fall asleep. These things built a level of trust between us that I don’t think she’ll have with anyone else. She’s my partna. And I know how when people say their dog is sad or happy that it’s actually just the person projecting their emotions onto their pet, but I don’t think this is the case here. We’re partnas.

And now as I write this, at four in the morning with Alameda snoring beside me, I’m thinking about if I would rather have her listen to all of my commands or just keep being a bitch (not in the literal sense, because she really can’t help that). I think I’d rather have a dog that does whatever she wants. It’s more respectable. Sure, it gets pretty annoying sometimes when I’m walking her and she tries to pull me down a hill because she found some interesting scent, but I like that about her. Her curiosity about the world and all it’s wonderful odors trumps everything else, including my desire to walk on pavement and keep my shoes clear of shit (since no one in my apartment complex knows how to pick up after their dog). Curiosity is one thing I really enjoy seeing in people so it follows suit that I enjoy having a dog that likes to investigate every damn thing she possibly can.

Story online.

2010-02-20T12:19:00.002-08:00

I got a story published on The Four-Cornered Universe. I wrote it for a contest in Creative Loafing, but (obviously) lost. I sent it here and a month later they put it up. Yay. Follow the link and check it out if you would like.

Backflips gone wrong. A retrospective.

2010-02-11T14:45:00.003-08:00

I had a bit of an accident the first week I moved to Atlanta. The evidence of which is in the picture of myself you can see to the left. I’m pretty bored and feel like writing something so I might as well spin you a web of stupidity.

Ted and I went to a Braves game with his sister and her dude earlier in the day. We imbibed a good amount of Miller Lite tall cans before leaving and hitting the bars. The bars didn’t offer anything too exciting besides a cross-dresser in a cheerleading outfit. We elected to spend the night drinking heavily to offset the mundane bar experience. We returned to Ted’s apartment, where I slept on his couch until we procured our current apartment, we decided to head to the pool. The pool hours ended at ten, and it was nearing three in the morning, but we didn’t care.

“Fuck the rules!”

We entered the pool and went right to work. Yelling, diving, splashing, general stupidity. It’s amazing nobody called the cops or at least the apartment complex to complain about the noise. The pool is surrounded by apartments and we were yelling like it was two in the afternoon on the Fourth of July while AC/DC played on giant amplifiers next to the pool while bombs exploded from un-oiled tanks.

Eventually, we realized that neither of us had ever done a backfilp. This, of course, had to change. I stood on the edge of the pool, facing out, and jumped backwards with no real plan in mind. I had watched the Olympics in the past and played a lot of Tony Hawk, so I felt I was qualified to just go for it. I jumped, pulled my legs up, and held until I crashed into the water.

“Did I get all the way around?”

“Pretty much. My turn.”

We practiced our backfilps until we had them perfected. This new skill, of course, would come in handy later. However, we couldn’t stop there. Backflips turned into running backflips which turned into gainers (spinning the opposite way of your momentum). Jumping off of chairs followed that before I decided to do a harmless swan dive. Pocahontas did one in the Disney movie, can’t be too dangerous, right?

I jumped, with impeccable form, and entered the water. In my enthusiasm, I forgot the pool was only five feet deep. I hit the water with enough force to travel ten. After breaking the water tension I immediately hit the concrete. My hands scraped along the bottom like I was clearing snow off of my windshield, followed by my face that hit like a half-deflated basketball.

I stood up and immediately grabbed my teeth to make sure they were still there. Luckily, they held strong. I walked towards the edge of the pool and Ted noticed something was wrong. I got out. He followed me and inspected my wounds.

Nose isn’t broken, teeth aren’t missing, can still walk. Success. Everything else is merely details. I grabbed my towel and felt the blood begin to run. My face was pretty much covered in blood as we walked back to his apartment, joking along the way. It would have been very easy to get embarrassed or mad about what happened, but that wouldn’t be fun. The blood dripped down my face, onto the pavement, onto my chest, and all we could do was laugh. It was just too ridiculous to take it seriously. Sure, I could have broken my neck, but, I didn’t. We made it out so who fucking cares.

I went into the bathroom and looked at my face, or, I guess, what was left of it. Ted grabbed me some band-aids and anti-bacterial cream and I patched myself up, not looking forward to the next day.

When I woke up, I was surprised that my face wasn’t the part of my body that hurt the most. It was my stomach. It seems obvious now, but I hadn’t really thought of it before then: Doing backflips for an hour works out obscure stomach muscles. I didn’t know I had backflip muscles, but I do, and it’s pretty apparent that they were out of shape.

I picked up my phone and saw two messages I had sent the night before. The first was sent a little before three a.m. that said, “Going to the pool, fuck the rules.” The next was sent a little before four a.m. that said, “There is blood everywhere.” That pretty much sums it up.

I walked to the mirror and saw the holes in my face and the chunk of hair that was probably plastered to the bottom of the pool and thought, “Well, I hope I don’t have to go to a job interview for a couple weeks.”

Cleanliness is Next to Speediness

2010-02-01T13:38:00.002-08:00

I contacted a guy a couple months ago about a local magazine he was starting. It was to be based around the service industry. Reviews, stories from work, etc. I threw something together for him to try to get a feel for what he wanted. I sent it, he liked it, then I lost contact with him. I don't know if it's ever going to happen so I might as well put my article on here.

Here it is:

We all know that we don’t live in a perfect world. People habitually speed up when they see yellow lights as well as pretending the change in their pockets doesn’t exist when walking past Salvation Army buckets. However, when people step into a restaurant they seem to believe they step into a world of magic. A world where everyone washes their hands and no corners are ever cut in the name of efficiency. This, however, is wrong.

I have worked in many different kitchens throughout my pursuit of the American Dream and have noticed a few running themes. I’ll skip past the obvious one, that every kitchen has at least one habitual substance abuser, and talk about the side of working in a kitchen that most people don’t want to think about: Fast-paced restaurants are not spotless.

Sure, they may be clean enough that people don’t get sick, but they aren’t the shining, sparkling havens of cleanliness we may want them to be. Mr. Clean is not the kitchen manager and Scrubbing Bubbles do not slide all over the floors at night. Sorry. When you’re trying to figure out if that strand of melted cheese is a hair or not, don’t be so quick to assume it didn’t come from someone’s head. Or worse.

I’m not saying every restaurant is infested with mice and filled with drunk cooks farting into their hands. Far from it. Restaurants are usually able to find a happy medium between being safe and sanitary while also delivering food promptly. The truth is, people rarely get sick from food. It happens, but it isn’t as big of a threat as some think. You could lick a high school basketball court from one end to the other after a game and not get sick. You could eat a filet of fish that has sat on a counter for three hours and not get sick. Trust me. I’ve served it.

When it comes to getting grossed out by un-cleanliness, I am at the top of the list. I habitually wash my hands when out in public out of fear of catching a cold. I stand as if surfing when I ride the MARTA train to avoid touching the poles. But when it comes to sitting in a restaurant, I am a pragmatist. I know what happens back there and I’m okay with it. As long as I don’t see my burger hit the floor, I’ll eat it. However, I‘m not going to trick myself into believing it never happens.

You may be wondering how restaurants can get away with having below-standard sanitation practices when there are health inspectors hired by the city to regulate this very thing. It’s pretty easy; they don’t do their jobs well. Every restaurant I’ve worked in got a notice about a week before the inspector arrived. These were hell weeks. All employees would be scrubbing every inch of the building to prepare for the inspector. When the day would finally come, we would hide the list of things we needed to dress up to seem acceptable. The inspector would walk around, find a couple minor problems, like the refrigerator door’s seal not being tight enough, write our little grade sheet and move along. As soon as the inspector would leave, we would all breathe a deep breath and continue using the same gloves to handle beef that we used for the chicken.

This system of health inspectors is not completely worthless, however. Restaurants are now required to post their cleanliness grade for customers to see. This gives the restaurants the incentive to perform well. In early 2008, a restaurant in Gwinnett County scored 13 out of 100. Yeah, that’s right, 13. The health department closed down the restaurant after probably continually muttering, “You have got to be kidding me. Just wash your fucking hands! It’s easy!” So, if Mar Y Tierra in Lilburn opens back up, go the first week when the health problems are all fixed because they will surely revert to their old ways soon after.

Okay, so some restaurants take the idea of expediting the food a little too far. But I will stand by the general idea that complete cleanliness is unnecessary. Sure, I’d like it if every restaurant that ever made me a sandwich did so without skipping any sanitary steps, but then again, I’d like wings to sprout out of my back so I could just fly to the liquor store. We can’t always get what we want so we might as well get used to reality. I’m going to have to keep driving drunk to the liquor store and you’re going to have to keep eating sandwiches cut with knives that touched raw meat.