Transform your ugly face

If you're looking for an interesting diversion, check out the Face Transformer Image Upload (http://www.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~morph/Transformer/index.html). You can download a .jpg or .gif of your own face (or any other non-copyrighted face) and the web site morphs it into a baby, child, teenager, old person, various different ethnicities, opposite sex, manga character, apeman, etc. Hour(s) of fun.

Currently reading: Stanley Elkin's Greatest Hits by Stanley Elkin

Guest Post

Hey, everybody. Today we have a very special guest post by none other than CNN's Larry King. Take it away, Larry:

Havarti is a quality cheese.


Currently reading:
Dr. Mystery is currently reading Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Movies We Can See by Jonathan Rosenbaum. Dr. Mystery says: "This book will fire you up and make you angry about a lot of stuff you can't change, but it's a great book anyway. Instead of blaming the audience, which is what most critics seem to do when they criticize the dumbing down of our culture, Rosenbaum places the blame on the people and systems who need it most and who have been given a free pass so far whenever this argument arises. Namely, the corporations, distribution systems, studios, mainstream critics, entertainment news reporters and programs, and mainstream media and journalists. The audience can't be expected to make good decisions when it's not even given a choice. To make an analogy, let's say most grocery stores in the country only carry gruel. People buy gruel because what else are they going to eat? Someone finally asks the gruel producers, 'Hey, why are you pushing gruel on the public? We're tired of gruel.' The gruel producers respond, 'Our sales reports show that you're not tired of gruel. As a matter of fact, gruel is selling like crazy.' The same guy who asks the gruel producers this question turns around and says, 'Yeah, I guess you gruel producers are right. The public just keeps lapping up that gruel. Stupid public. You're just giving those idiots what they want. May I have another bowl of gruel, please?' It's obvious how insane the film distribution system is in this country, so obvious that we don't even see it, and Rosenbaum holds it up to us plainly and clearly. I've never seen a book better articulate what's wrong with the film business and the effect this has on the choices we're given."
Larry King is currently reading Booty Food: A Date by Date, Course-By-Course, Nibble-By-Nibble Guide to Cultivating Love and Passion Through Food
by Jacqui Malouf. Larry says: "I've sure had a lot of heart attacks, and a lot of wives."

Working for the weekend: Job 3

I was 15 when I got my first real, taxable, working-for-a-boss kind of job. It was easy for a teenager to get work in Bridgeport, but the choices didn't exactly make me want to break out in spontaneous eruptions of joyful song. My options were: a) farm work b) washing dishes in one of the handful of restaurants or c) bagging groceries in one of the two grocery stores. The choice was easy. I had little aptitude for or interest in farm work. One of my friends washed dishes for a restaurant and didn't get off work until eleven or midnight, then finished his homework afterward. The grocery stores closed at seven. What choice did I have? I applied for, and was hired at, Jack and Jill, and I spent the remainder of my high school years working there. I bagged groceries, stocked shelves, and mopped and swept the floors. I hated it. I was introduced to a world of boredom beyond my understanding. This boredom was more intense, more prolonged, more severe than I had prepared myself to expect. It was a boredom that dwarfed previous boredom champions school and church and destroyed my perception of employment as an honorable and respectable way to spend my time. This is something pounded into all of us by anyone in a position of authority, but it became pretty obvious to me after only one day at Jack and Jill that the only honorable and respectable work is work you love. If I'm doing something I hate for money, I feel like a whore. But how do I stop being a whore and get some dignity and satisfaction out of what I have to do to eat and pay the rent? I haven't been able to answer that question in my life yet, but I'm still holding out hope.
Anyway, the grocery store was owned by a divorced, middle-aged, conservative Christian with a mustache. He also cut all the meat and spent most of the day in the meat department, but he would periodically dart in and out of the aisles, making sure we (the high school help) were doing our jobs and not goofing off. He was one of those bosses who believed that even if there was no work to do, we should pretend like we were busy. I'm reminded of that Bill Hicks joke where the boss tells the employee to pretend to work and the employee (Hicks) says, "You make more money than me. How about you pretend I'm working?" Twice a week, freight was delivered. These were items we had sold out of that needed to be restocked. Freight days were the only days when there was something to do, so they were good days to be at work. Time actually leisurely strolled on freight days instead of crawling agonizingly and sickeningly to workday's end like a legless, dying turtle. Instead of pretending to stock shelves, on freight days we actually got to stock them. Oh, what a glorious adventure. My boss, let's call him Shalamar to avoid any libel suits, was a big fan of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. However, his spirit of Christian giving didn't extend to his employees. I made minimum wage the entire time I worked for him and was never given a raise, though he told me more than once that he was pleased with my work. None of my fellow teenage workers got a raise, either, except for B., a favorite of the boss and the manager and the only one of the high school help who worked full-time in the summers. He was given a ten-cent raise during his last year on the job. Shalamar was on top of everything that needed to be done in the store, but the interactions with his employees were clumsy and awkward. He was kind of a wimp, especially when it came to the store manager (let's call her Vulva). Shalamar, despite everything I've said about him, was basically a nice guy and treated me well (except for my salary). Vulva, on the other hand, was a sack of shit of a human being. She decided, shortly after I started working there, that she didn't like me. I'm not really sure why, but part of her animosity may be attributed to the utter lack of interest/ability I had in showering her with praise and buttering her up. She thoroughly enjoyed getting her ass kissed, but I am genetically incapable of putting my lips on my superior's anuses. This may have sealed my fate, but her patronizing and mean-spirited treatment baffled me. To offer just one example of her behavior, one Saturday morning I overslept and was late for work. My mother called the store for me, so I could hurry up, get ready, and be on my way. When I arrived at the store, she said to another employee loudly enough for me to hear, "He had to have his mommy call for him." This kind of thing happened about once every couple of months the whole time I worked there. I did my best to ignore it and do my job. Besides, Shalamar liked me and the mini-drama at least made the job a little more interesting. When I started working at the store, Shalamar and Vulva were dating. Within months, Vulva dumped Shalamar for the guy who delivered the Snapple. I'm laughing as I type these words. Oddly enough, Vulva kept working there and Shalamar let her keep manipulating him. All of us lowly grocery baggers found this drama compelling, hilarious, pathetic, and a little sad. Shalamar became a completely dejected sadsack, and he even fell so low that he let Vulva talk him into giving the Snapple guy some weekend hours at the store stocking shelves with us. It was a painfully awkward extended trainwreck of human misery, but it made the job more interesting for a few months. Shalamar eventually snapped out of it, fooled around with a married woman, then got a regular girlfriend. Vulva married Snapple, he moved into her house, and later dumped her and moved away.
Customers. How could I forget to talk about the customers? They made the job even worse. To digress for a second, I'm a huge proponent of humanist art. I spend a lot of time listening to music, going to concerts, watching films, reading books, looking at art and photography, reading comics and cartoons, taking an interest in comedy, and having drinks with friends because I want to connect with other human beings, I love what human beings are capable of, and I generally like people. I don't have much time for irony, cynicism, and dead-end nihilism in art and life because I think it distances us from our humanity. But, I gotta admit, I fucking hate the public. The "public" as an entity, especially when your job is to serve them, blows. Some people are just assholes, especially if you are selling a product they need. Especially old people. It's good that they're going to die soon, because a lot of them are jerks. The public at large is capable of doing things like: Keeping you waiting while they shop even though closing time was an hour ago (and they damn well know it, too, because they keep apologizing for keeping you waiting), buying $300 worth of groceries and telling you to fit it all in two bags but "don't make them too heavy, hon, I'm old and I can't carry heavy bags," making you wrap ice cream in three paper bags and two plastic ones even though it's winter time and 15 degrees outside "so it doesn't melt all over the place," bawling me out for ten minutes because the old bastard asked for a case of Coke and I accidentally brought him a 12-pack, etc., etc., etc.
Work is fun!!!!!!

Jerry Lewis: Captain Beefheart of comedy or blubbering dummy? Answer in next week's Parade magazine!

I watched four more movies in the last couple of days. The one that really stood out was "Yeelen" (Souleymane Cisse), but the others were "Guardian of the Night" (Jean-Pierre Limosin) and "The Big Mouth" and "Cracking Up" (both Jerry Lewis). I've been on a weird little Jerry Lewis kick for the past few months, mostly because I have no idea whether his movies are good or bad. One thing I do know about them is that they are some of the weirdest goddamn things I've ever seen. If you've never seen an old Jerry Lewis movie (I'm talking about the ones he directed), try one some time. Or maybe don't. I can't truly recommend any of them, but if you die without seeing at least one, you're missing out on something. What you're missing out on, however, I'm not exactly sure. The films' pacing and sense of comic timing are the strangest I've ever seen. I'm not sure how to even describe what I mean, but I'll try. The tempo of the films is both languid and kinetic, and Lewis' directing style is simultaneously tight and economic (sometimes even bringing to mind the crime films of Don Siegel and Robert Aldrich in the 1950s) and indulgent and sloppy. He's also a fan of long, awkward pauses in conversation, something you don't find in most other slapstick comedy. Most of the jokes are painfully unfunny and generic (though a few are actually hilarious), but he drags them out for such ridiculously absurd lengths of time that you have to laugh or at least admire his audacity. There's something a little queasy and off-putting about his acting and comic timing, but I have yet to pinpoint exactly what it is. That these films were popular in our culture at one time is pretty astonishing. It's some of the most uncommercial stuff I've seen, a little disturbing and sick and a whole lot weirder than super-contrived shit like "Napoleon Dynamite," a movie that never stops trying to sell you on how oddball it is. Jerry Lewis is the real deal, a sick fuck who thinks he's making "normal" films but is actually giving audiences a guided tour through a deranged mind. Either that, or they're just a bunch of really stupid films full of tired jokes given an odd sense of pacing due to inept, egotistical direction. I only get this feeling once in a while, but even if it's true, these films are stupid, tired, and inept in ways previously unknown to man. Idiot or genius? This question can only be answered by Kathleen Hanna on the next Le Tigre hit, "What's Yr Take on Jerry Lewis?" Currently Reading: The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry

I'm back

I have been back in town for a week, but I haven't felt like posting anything. I still don't feel like it. But I will probably feel like it soon. I still need to write about the other eight jobs I had. Also, I watched several movies while I was away from the blog, four on video/cable, two on the big screen. Three of these movies sucked ("Napoleon Dynamite," "Laurel Canyon," and "Sex: The Annabel Chong Story"). Three of these were good, with some reservation ("Bowling for Columbine," "The Aviator," and "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou"). Full report later. I still have half a case of Busch beer in cans (I'm unemployed, dudes) left to drink. Keep it real.

So long, suckers

Hey there everyone,
This will be probably be my last post until early January because I'm heading out for the big Nebraska road trip early Friday morning. We're going to drive to Lincoln, hang out there for a week, then drive across the state to see my mom and dad (which will also involve a lot of driving because my mother and father live in different towns), then drive back across the state to spend New Year's Eve in Lincoln, then drive back to Austin a few days later. Lots of driving. I'll be writing a lot more about my previous jobs when I come back from the road trip.
I watched four more movies this week. Here they are:
After the Rehearsal (Ingmar Bergman)
The Family Jewels (Jerry Lewis)
Frat House (Todd Phillips, Andrew Gurland)
Red Line 7000 (Howard Hawks)

Merry Christmas, jerks. See you soon.

Currently reading: Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste by Lester Bangs

Can you still call it the weekend when you're unemployed?

I had a pretty good weekend, give or take a couple of bad movies and some unsolicited criticism of my personal appearance (see comments under "Unemployment Journal: Day Five" post). My life is so much fuller and busier now that I'm unemployed, oddly enough, and my sugar mama wife treated me to not one, but two, concerts: The Magnetic Fields on Friday and Neko Case backed by Kelly Hogan and The Sadies (the latter's opening set was pretty stunning as well) on Saturday. I even ran into friends from the old job and their equally friendly significant others at both shows. Ah, the glories of being a kept man. Also got to see the James Agee/Walker Evans exhibit at the Harry Ransom Center on the UT campus on Friday and had some drinks with the old co-worker friends on Thursday night. I don't miss the job, but I miss seeing the fine people that work there. On the movie front, I'm going to start with the two disappointing films:
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir) Not particularly terrible, and opening with some intriguing scenes of the everyday routines on a British warship during the Napoleonic Wars, the film ultimately gets bogged down in the cartoonish simplicity of the characters, confusingly edited battle sequences, and sluggish pacing. The open-ended conclusion is too obviously a plea for a sequel rather than an interestingly ambiguous touch.
Yankee Doodle Dandy (Michael Curtiz) This is a wildly overpraised musical biography of super-patriot George M. Cohan, Broadway actor and writer of the flag-waving anthems "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "Over There," "Grand Old Flag," ad nauseum, that changes most of the facts to suit the story. James Cagney plays Cohan and is pretty great in the role. There are some nice moments at the beginning of the film showing Cohan's rise to fame on the vaudeville circuit as part of a traveling act including his sister and his parents. Even with Cagney's performance and a handful of good scenes, the movie is mostly vulgar, stupid, boring propaganda. Filmed and released shortly after our involvement in World War II, the film was obviously meant as a morale booster, but is so cloying in its rah-rah jingoism I'm surprised we won the war. If you really want to vomit, watch the scenes of Cohan receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor from a patronizingly smug FDR lookalike. And those songs. Ugh. Imagine Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American" or "God Bless the U.S.A." or whatever the hell it's called given a John Phillips Sousa arrangement. Then imagine about thirty more songs that sound exactly the same. This movie is interminable and even a force of nature like James Cagney can't save it.
Leave it to those freedom-hating Saddam-lovers, the French, to keep my movie-watching weekend from being a total bust:
Story of Women (Claude Chabrol) Isabelle Huppert is so good in this movie, and her character is beyond complex. Trying to figure out the motivations for her behavior in this film could be a full-time job. The other actors are wonderful, too, and the period recreation (the movie is set in Occupied France during World War II) is flawless. It's not like I was in France in the early 1940s, but the film seems like a document of a living, breathing corner of the world, not a hollow, stagey movie recreation.
Under the Sun of Satan (Maurice Pialat) This might be a great movie, but I think I need to see it a few more times to decide. And seeing it a few more times might not be much fun. This is a somber, austere, cerebral, dense, joyless film. Gerard Depardieu plays a humorless, zealous priest who feels the world is manipulated by Satan, not God, and is constantly tormented by this belief. This is such an artfully composed, deeply felt film, but its lack of humor and narrative confusion throw some obstacles in the viewer's way. Like its most obvious influence, Bresson's "Diary of a Country Priest," the movie is based on a George Bernanos novel.

Currently reading: Werner Herzog's original script for his movie "Fitzcarraldo"
Just finished: The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell

We live in a scary world

This is really creepy. I'm sure a lot of you have read about the shooting of ex-Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell while he was performing onstage, a bodyguard, a club employee, and a fan by a lunatic who was later killed by police in Columbus, Ohio last night. I'm disturbed by the news, partly because it makes me feel like we're basically unsafe anywhere, partly because a bunch of people got killed for no reason, mostly because I was at that same club less than two months ago seeing Guided By Voices. Here's the AP story about the whole frightening incident for those who haven't heard about it yet.

Oh yeah

I saw an excellent movie tonight at the Alamo Drafthouse downtown as part of the Austin Film Society's Recent Spanish Directors series. It's called Lovers of the Arctic Circle (Julio Medem), and it's a great love story with a tough ending that doesn't give you what you want. Instead, it gives you something much better, harsher, and more thoughtful. A magical realist fable, the film is a sweet romance but never ignores the disappointments, darknesses, and brutalities that fill our lives.

Working for the weekend: Job 2

I can't remember how old I was when I started mowing my grandparents' lawn. Maybe it started before the babysitting thing, which would make it Job 1, but I already wrote that one so fuck it. I would ride my bike to this job as well, eight blocks this time. My grandparents lived on the other side of town, which was the three or four blocks west of Main Street. My hometown is very small. Don't make fun of it. I have heard (and said) it all before. Some people brag about escaping my hometown (by the way, it's Bridgeport, Nebraska), but everyone who leaves has little choice. There are only so many jobs in a town of 1,500. No college, no record store, no movie theater (though there was a drive-in theater open in the summer that closed only about four or five years ago), no bookstore, nine or ten churches, not many interesting people, an unhealthy fixation on high school sports, lots of white houses, and a hatred and fear of anything slightly different or new, unless it was something like the new Super Wal-Mart in nearby Scottsbluff. If this was even remotely not your cup of tea, you had little choice but to get the motherfucking fuck out of there once you graduated. Maybe three or four people from each graduating class stay in town. The rest get out. After some time passes, four or five more usually come back. That's about it. There are some good things about the place. It's very safe (houses and cars stay unlocked most of the time), which made it an exciting place to be a little kid. You had the run of the town, even after dark. There is a really nice lake, some wonderful rock formations a few miles outside of town that are great for climbing, the aforementioned drive-in theater where I saw on-screen boobs for the first time ("Police Academy") and got drunk and stoned in my friend Clint's blue van with tinted windows. And I would be lying if I didn't say that some really great, interesting people live there (though there aren't many of them). Luckily, much of my family and friends from Bridgeport are in this category When I remember my childhood, my memories of the way the town looked contrast sharply with the way it looks to me now. It seems so gray, empty, deserted, narrow, unfriendly to outsiders, ugly, plain, ridiculous, backwards, laughable. I feel a haughty sense of superiority to it, which makes me feel ugly about myself. The way I remember it is different. As a child, Bridgeport seemed healthy, happy, green, expansive, full of possibilities, friendly. Then puberty hit, everyone turned into an asshole, the town seemed to shrink, I had to drive to Scottsbluff to buy music and books, I learned about all the stuff I was missing from the music and books, I felt lonely and unhappy, blah blah blah. Basic teenager shit, but at least you city teens had a little more at your disposal to fuel the angst and loathing. (A digression: one positive aspect of being from the small town and living in the city, though I'll never feel totally comfortable in either place, is that the city always seems so exciting and new to me. I still get excited knowing I can see bands I like in concert, buy CDs the day they come out, go to great movies, buy great books, meet new people in unexpected circumstances, eat in different restaurants, etc. This seems like a privilege and a thrill, and even though I've lived in cities for nine years, the novelty hasn't worn off.)
What does all this have to do with mowing my grandparents' lawn? Not much. It's just that the transition from small, happy, small-town Josh to teenage, unhappy, small-town Josh occurred while I was mowing their lawn. Thinking about riding my bike to their house made me think about what I saw when I rode my bike, which got me reminiscing about all that hometown shit. That job wasn't bad either. Mowing a lawn isn't much fun, but it's physical, not too hard, and you actually accomplish something, unlike the job I just quit. I show up. The grass is too high. I cut the grass. Not an amazing feat, but fulfilling in its own small way. A far cry from the endless bureaucratic loop of my last four years, in which I would a) proofread a document b) document would undergo slight, usually meaningless revision c) document would return d) I would proofread document again e) rinse and repeat. Sure, the grass grows back, but that's what grass does. It's nature, baby. A document won't revise itself. It takes an army of jackasses to handle that one.
Also, after I finished mowing, my grandmother would give me a ham and cheese sandwich and strawberry soda. If they were out of strawberry soda, I would have a Coke. Then I would get a five dollar bill from my grandfather. Not too shabby.

Working for the weekend: Job 1

Is there anything worse than terrible world music? Right now I'm listening to a multinational clusterfuck of badly overproduced swill on an otherwise decent compilation album. It's the aural equivalent of Peter Gabriel rubbing his engorged member on every item in your local Pier 1 Import. Sorry about the digression, but I can't stomach that shit. Remember, protesters, globalisation is also to blame for the horrible miscegenation of 1987 stadium rock production values and watered-down, scrubbed-up indigenous musics located in the record collections of pseudo-intellectual (often pony-tailed) assholes who think culture is something you can purchase. Also, at least one of these guys owns a ferret. I know, because he brought it into the record store with him every time he decided to buy some masterpiece like "Sting and Youssou N'Dour Celebrate the Music of Bulgaria: All-Gregorian Chant Version." I don't care how many Putamayo compilations you own, no self-respecting woman is going to sleep with you if you walk around with a ferret on your shoulder. Fuck those guys.
Anyway, my first job was pretty good. I rode my bike three blocks to my aunt and uncle's house whenever they called me, and babysat my cousins Mariah, Andy, and Gunnar. My uncle has a large television and a great record collection. In addition, the kids were easy to watch and usually well-behaved. Their favorite game was to turn some music on pretty loud, turn off the lights, and run around like crazy people. That suited me since I could bring over a bunch of my favorite music, play it loud on awesome speakers, and wait for the kids to get tired and fall asleep. I thought most of the music I listened to then was deeply on the cutting edge. I'm embarrassed by it now, albeit affectionately embarrassed (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Murphy's Law, Follow For Now, Infectious Grooves, Metallica, a predilection for slap bass in a heavy metal context, etc.) I'm glad I also explored my uncle's record collection (Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Howlin' Wolf, Alice Cooper, Zeppelin, Stevie Wonder, etc.), which elevated my musical taste a few notches. Once I found a dirty joke book in my uncle's room. I read it and memorized as many jokes as I could. I had great material for the entirety of eighth grade study hall. Solid gold. That was a pretty good job. Better than most. Mariah's getting married soon. Gunnar just finished his first semester of college. He's majoring in physical therapy. Andy's in Iraq. He's already been there longer than he should have been, and he has to go back again next year. I'm sorry this post ended like "American Graffiti."
Tomorrow, or whenever I get around to it: Mowing my grandparents' lawn.

Unemployment Journal: Day Five

Things haven't been very productive on the writing front, excuses being sickness, lost mail, minor but affordable car trouble (timing not so great, am I right?), ennui and self-loathing, worrying about money, doing a lot of reading, buying music and listening to it, watching movies. Sometimes I think I might have made a mistake quitting the comfortable state job, but I didn't quit my job because I want to be comfortable. Patterns need to be broken for life to move forward. Discomfort, unease, change, uncertainty. These are your friends. You can't spend your life doing something you don't want to do because you're worried about insurance and a steady paycheck. Money is meaningless. Money isn't worth shit. You don't need that much to eat. All you can do with money is spend it. You can save it, but then you end up spending it later. If you never spend it, someone else will spend it after you die. That dollar in your wallet is eventually going to be spent. What else can it do? Nothing. At the same time, I realize that I grew up in the middle class, I'm white, I'm an American, and I have a college education. It's a privilege that I get to quit my job, that I have enough to tide me over three or four months until I'm forced to prostitute myself for rent and turkey sandwiches again. Instead of having a horrible life, I was lucky enough to be born into mediocrity. Hooray for me!
I watched these movies during the weekend:
Intervista (Federico Fellini)
M. Butterfly (David Cronenberg)
Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (Eric Rohmer)
Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk)

I bought some music (already budgeted in before I quit the job):
Various-Dave Godin's Deep Soul Treasures Vol. 1
Dramatics-The Best of the Dramatics
John Frusciante/Josh Klinghoffer-A Sphere in the Heart of Silence
Kaada/Patton-Romances
Oneida-Nice/Splittin' Peaches

I'm also growing my beard again. Right now it's at the stage where it itches and I look like a fucking derelict. Another week or two and maybe I won't look like trash.

Working for the weekend: a tragedy in ten acts

I have had ten paying jobs in my life.
1. Babysitting my cousins Mariah, Andy, and Gunnar.
2. Mowing my grandparents' lawn.
3. Stocking shelves and bagging groceries at Jack and Jill.
4. Flipping burgers at Hardee's.
5. Telemarketing Part One: Working for assholes, selling subpar NASCAR videos to big dummies.
6. Telemarketing Part Two: Selling tickets to a charity dinner for firemen.
7. Bagging groceries and cashiering at Russ's Market.
8. Cashiering at Homer's Music and Gifts, a record store.
9. Writing and copy editing for The Daily Nebraskan, my college newspaper.
10. Proofreading for the Texas Legislative Council.

I will get into the specifics of each job, and which ones deserve their own little corners of hell, each night for the next couple of weeks.

Unemployment Journal: Day One

I thought today, my first day as a free man, would be awesome. It was decidedly not. I woke up feeling a little sickly, which I assumed was the remnant of last night's boozefest with my pallies from the former job, but it took such a turn for the unbelievably sickly that I had to rule out the hangover theory. I had a headache so intense that it made me vomit up a little bit of bile and remained intense even after taking four Ibuprofen. I was also nauseous, too hot, and too cold. I didn't accomplish any of the day's goals, which included going to the grocery store, getting an oil change, and doing some writing and revising on a few stories. I did drift in and out of consciousness, drool on several pillows, clutch my head in agony, punch myself in the forehead a few times, and curse everything. In addition, the wife and I have been stressed out about post office woes. We were out of town last week and had the post office hold our mail. Except they didn't hold our mail. They fucked up. There was mail in the box when we got home. When Kristy went to the post office to see why there was mail in our box, they were holding what they claimed was the rest of the mail. It was three magazines. We should have also received some packages, bills, etc. They couldn't find those. Then we find out that our regular mail carrier was on vacation, and the substitute carrier set the packages down in front of our door. These packages were stolen. This is the tenth time we've had trouble with this particular post office. I hope the motherfucking place burns down with the incompetent staff inside. Back to today. The combination of post office stress and sickliness pretty much turned me into a nasty little prick. Needless to say, I had a fight with my wife. Then I felt a little better, so I vacuumed the apartment. This made me feel a little nauseous again. Then my wife started feeling sick and went to bed early. There is no way tomorrow could be worse. I'm still looking forward to the unemployment experiment, but day one sucked a horse cock.

This is the Big Easy, baby. We do things a little differently down here.

Today is my last day at work. As of 6:00 p.m. tonight, I will be unemployed. I am happy about this. Also scared. So I'm going to change the format of the blog to reflect this change in my life. I'll still tell you about movies I watch and absurdities I witness, but the focus of the blog will primarily be a journal of my unemployment and my thoughts about working for a living. I will also be soliciting bad and absurd work stories from you instead of having a Robot of the Week contest. Tally ho.

I guess I need to pick a robot winner

Let's put this Robot of the Week contest to bed. It's been two weeks plus since I put up the robot. So, the winner is Kristy for her name Trumpetino, the Tiny Tooter. Congratulations, Kristy. Hopefully, Blogspot hasn't posted a link to any advertisement this time. Cocksuckers.

I'm going to kick this blog's ass

Weird. I just noticed that certain words in old posts (e.g. "guitars," "no plans," "t-shirts") have been turned into links directing you to sales of guitars and t-shirts and, weirdly, a search for the phrase "no plans." I attempted to erase these links and repost the posts, but it didn't work. Is this some insidious, underhanded attempt by Blogspot to insert advertisements in my blog against my wishes and without notice, or am I being hacked? Anyway, if you click on a link and it leads you to an advertisement, I apologize. It's not my fault and it's not what I want. And fuck you, Blogspot.

I'm back, M.F.'s

I'm back in town after a week in the wilds of western Nebraska, my homeland, for Thanksgiving. I'll spare you the details except to mention that my five-year-old cousin Dylan came home from school a few weeks ago, walked into the house, and calmly announced to his parents, "George Bush has lied to the American people." Excellent. He also unwittingly coined a fantastic new phrase, to be uttered when you are stunned by someone's unexpected behavior (in this case, my aunt squirting canned whipped cream into people's mouths after sprucing up the pumpkin pie): "Man, I can't even talk to that!"
I saw a wonderful movie tonight, and if you live in the Austin area, you have one more chance to see it at the Alamo Drafthouse downtown on Tuesday night. It's called Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen), and it's a three-hour essay film about the city Andersen grew up in and how it has been portrayed on film. For those of you who are turned off by the phrase "three-hour essay film," let me mention that it flies by, is accessible, engaging, and funny, is filled with clips from nearly 200 movies set in Los Angeles, and, if you've spent any time thinking about film, architecture, Los Angeles, Hollywood, memory and nostalgia, a city's gradually changing landscape, and the disparity of wealth between classes in the United States and the effect of your class status on the way you observe art, this movie can change the way you think and the way you watch movies. I'm serious. This is a phenomenal achievement, and one of the greatest pieces of film criticism this country has produced. If you're interested in any of this stuff, see this movie. See it, see it, see it. Tuesday night. I'm not being paid. It's just really fucking good. Alamo Drafthouse downtown. Come on. See it. 9:30 p.m. I know that's kind of late for a three-hour movie, but take your diaper off and go see it. It's not on video or DVD, and so far there are no plans for a DVD release. What the hell happens on a Tuesday anyway? Nothing.

Gone for a few days

Hey everybody. There will probably be no new posts until a week from Monday because I'm going home for Thanksgiving. I might be able to get to a computer this week, but most likely not. Here are the movies I watched over the weekend:
Wedding in Galilee (Michel Khleifi) This was the first, and maybe only, Israeli-filmed movie with a Palestinian perspective.
Lost & Found Video Night Vol. 4: All Music Edition (Various) Awesome.
Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara) Creepy, beautiful, excellent.
The Color of Money (Martin Scorsese) Great entertainment, but not really up there with Scorsese's best stuff. Lots of interesting supporting players. There is something weirdly unsettling about young Tom Cruise.

Currently reading: The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comics, Theatre, and Other Aspects of Popular Culture by Robert Warshow

Adventures after hours

Last night was pretty good for a Thursday. After work, I went to a happy hour and had some drinks with work friends. When I got home, my friend Aaron left a message saying to call him back no matter the lateness of the hour because he needed to know if the singers involved in "We Are the World" wore sweaters or t-shirts. My gut instinct told me sweaters, but I had to call him back after checking it out on the Internet. (Answer: sweaters and t-shirts. Everybody won.) Then I felt like having another beer even though I had three giant ones at the happy hour, so I walked to the creepy convenience store two blocks from my apartment. The convenience store is creepy because there is a thin film of dust over everything except the beer, transients like to hang out in the alley next to it, the owner relentlessly hits on my wife when she goes there so she doesn't go there anymore, and I'm pretty sure I caught the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad when I was there once because a drunken, bearded man wearing camouflage was arguing with the owner about why they didn't get their "shit" from another party and how he was pissed off and willing to do something about it. Anyway, I was glad I went last night because I was privy to this wonderful scene:
(Young blonde kid, maybe 19 years old at the absolute most, walks into the convenience store with a big grin on his face.)
Kid: Do you have a beer garden here?
Owner: A beer garden?
Kid: Yeah, a fuckin' garden with beer in it.
Owner: We have beer in the cooler back there, but I don't know what you're talking about with a beer garden.
Kid: Cool.
(Kid walks to the cooler where I am already standing, trying to decide what beer to buy. Kid is looking at the cooler full of 4os. Kid grins even wider and nods head rhythmically. He looks at me and smiles and nods his head even more.)
Kid, in Spicoli tone: Yeahhhhh. Alright. Ha ha. Yeahhhhh. Yeahhhh. Alright.
(Kid grabs two 40s and walks to counter. I grab six pack and stand behind him in line. Kid is still smiling, saying "Yeahhh" and "alright" and nodding vigorously. Kid looks out front door of convenience store, nods, smiles, and waves. I look out door and see an even younger kid, maybe 17, sitting in a Bronco. Younger kid smiles, nods, and waves back. Kid stretches arms out in guitar shape, a 40 in one hand and a 40 in the other, and plays air guitar on his beers.)
Owner: You have some ID?
Kid, in exuberantly exaggerated game show host style: Yes, I certainly do!
(Kid plunks ID down on counter, buys beer, and leaves.)